"Marvel: Tomorrow Initiative"
Chapter 8: "Severances and Linkages"
Disclaimer: The universe and the characters and character archetypes depicted here largely belong to Marvel Comics, not me. My only profit is your reviews.
Author's note: Yeah, Peter has definitely gone into "Iron Dick" territory with what he did to Audrey in the last chapter. The repercussions of his actions will be seen here. Plus, Karin will have a meeting with a certain disgraced former superhero that will determine the future of the Knights. To see those things and more, read on.
No sooner had Peter Parker removed the interface visor that enabled him to remotely manipulate Arachne's suit's motor functions than Arachne herself stepped into his lab. His spider-sense had been tingling relentlessly the closer she got, so she had to be very pissed with him. He honestly didn't give a damn if she was angry; she was alive, and that was the important thing. When his spider-sense spiked, he jumped out of his chair and clung to the ceiling.
"I suppose you're not happy with me right now?" he deduced sardonically.
"Damn right I'm not happy!" Arachne yelled, looking up at Peter. "Now get the hell down here!"
"I don't know," Peter replied. "It's pretty comfy up here."
Arachne was not amused. Arachne was pissed. Arachne jumped onto the ceiling after Peter, but Peter dropped from the ceiling, landing on the floor. Arachne let out a bellow of rage and lunged down from the ceiling with her fist outstretched to pummel Peter, who dodged her attack. Undeterred, Arachne spun on her outstretched hand and swung her legs out into a kick that Peter evaded. Arachne twisted onto her feet and lunged at Peter, only for him to once again evade her.
"I really don't feel like fighting you," Peter said.
"Should have thought about that before you hijacked my body!" Arachne yelled, attacking Peter again. This time, he blocked her punch and threw her bodily over his head. Arachne flipped and twisted to kick him in the back of the head. Warned by his spider-sense, Peter twisted away and grabbed her ankle, using it to throw her at a wall. Arachne flipped backward and clung to the wall, springing from it and at Peter.
Peter evaded her lunge, only for her to flip onto her feet and spin into a roundhouse kick. Peter blocked the kick, but it stung his forearm. That's gonna leave a bruise, but not for long, he thought. Out loud, "If you want this fight, Audrey, you've got it. But I'm going to show you why I did what I did." He threw off his lab coat, leaving himself in just a black sweatshirt and sweatpants, and webbed it to a wall. "Come on."
Arachne took his invitation, springing onto the ceiling and bouncing off to attack Peter, who grabbed her wrist. Undeterred, she twisted into a kick that got him in the shoulder. She sprang off and flew backward, shooting stinger darts at him. Peter dodged the stingers and shot a restraining web at her. Arachne let the web hit her in the arm and attempted to use it to yank Peter to her. Unfortunately, he managed to adhere to the floor strongly enough that she merely dislocated her shoulder in the attempt.
Peter pulled Arachne to him by her dislocated and webbed arm, only for her to kick him in the chest. She flipped off him and onto a wall. Peter looked at Arachne and said, "See how easy it would be for me to kill you if I was trying?"
Arachne's answer was to spring off the wall, tumble on the ground, and spring up for a punch with her good arm. Peter grabbed her by the wrist, only for her to knee him in the solar plexus, momentarily knocking the breath out of him. Arachne wrenched her wrist free and kicked him in the stomach, pushing him back. Peter flipped onto the ceiling and jumped down to attack her, striking right at her dislocated shoulder. Arachne sidestepped it and rammed her good shoulder into his stomach.
"The Thunderbolts are murderers," Peter said. "Ruthless murderers, at that. They would have killed you without a second thought if I hadn't done what I did."
"I could have handled them!" Arachne shouted, redoubling her efforts despite the loss of use of her primary arm.
"You don't have the experience for that yet," Peter answered. "And I'd like to keep you alive long enough to get that experience."
Arachne flipped into the air and dropped into a kick that would have hurt Peter if he hadn't grabbed her ankle in time. He pushed her up into the air, only for her to somersault in midair and stretch her legs out for a kick. Peter dropped and she flew into a wall, kicking off it and swinging herself into another kick. Peter dropped again and she landed on her good hand, going into a handspring and twisting into a low kick that Peter jumped over.
Peter flipped in midair and kicked her in her dislocated shoulder, sending spikes of pain through her nerves and causing her to collapse while holding her shoulder. "And that's why you wouldn't have survived the Thunderbolts. You don't know how to ignore pain."
Arachne rose to her feet, snarling in rage beneath her mask. She shot impact webbing at Peter, only for him to dodge the exploding web-balls. He rushed in close to her and internally cursed himself for what he was about to do. He thrust his hand out at her stomach, eliciting a gasp from her. When he pulled it back, a stinger protruded from his wrist. Arachne let out a soft moan and fell onto the floor, unconscious.
I'm sorry, Peter thought. But I had no choice. I couldn't let you die, not like I let so many of the people I loved die. Uncle Ben . . . Captain Stacy . . . Gwen . . . Ben Reilly . . . Aunt May . . . Mary Jane . . . Matt . . . damn near all of the real Avengers . . . I couldn't let you die the way they did. Not even if it made you hate me. Not even if it cost me your trust.
Peter picked up Arachne and carried her into the medical lab. As he came through, the X-Men looked at him suspiciously. Impetus was the first one to speak. "What the hell happened to her?" he asked.
"We had a disagreement," Peter answered coldly, entering the medical lab and laying Arachne on the medical cot. He reset her dislocated shoulder and let her lie there.
"What did you do to her?" Impetus asked angrily when Peter exited the medical lab.
Peter stared at him impassively, causing him to repeat the question. Peter glared and answered, "I saved her life."
"Then why did she come in looking like she was ready to bust somebody's head?" Impetus asked.
"She didn't like the way I saved her life," Peter answered coldly. "Satisfied?"
"You hurt her!" Impetus yelled, speeding into a punch to Peter, who caught his fist. Impetus simply vibrated his fist to build up enough friction to force Peter to let go. Peter ignored the pain and punched Impetus hard enough to knock him back.
"Don't," Peter spat. "Just don't." He walked back into his lab.
"Bastard!" Impetus yelled, about to run into the lab and beat Peter half to death, only for Daybreak to telekinetically restrain him.
"Stop it, Eric," Daybreak said.
Impetus was frozen in her telekinetic grip, but that didn't stop him from screaming, "He hurt her!"
"He'd do worse to you," Fairbrook added. "Like it or not, it's best to avoid him for your own good. Let him sort himself out."
"He's had fifty freaking years to sort himself out!" Impetus yelled.
"Fifty years full of the deaths of everyone he ever cared about," Fairbrook amended. "Do you think he wants to lose Audrey, too?"
"What do you mean?" Impetus asked, slightly less loud than before.
"Don't you get it?" Fairbrook asked. "He cares about her."
"If he cared about her, why is she unconscious?" Impetus asked, his anger resurging.
"Ask him," Fairbrook replied.
"How am I supposed to get answers out of that guy?" Impetus wondered. "He's so frickin' secretive and closed off and crap."
X-23 looked at the door to the medical lab and the door to Peter's lab. She had heard nearly everything. Peter had used a neural interface to remotely control the motor functions of Arachne's costume in order to protect her, and she had responded as though he had violated her. X-23 supposed that in a sense, it was a violation, to take someone's body and manipulate it like a puppet. She knew what it was like to feel violated, to feel used; she'd experienced such things throughout her childhood and adolescence.
Fearless swung away from yet another underworld tavern, having left the patrons in varying states of injury. It wasn't her fault they wouldn't talk; she'd just wanted to have a drink and get some information. They were the ones who'd pulled out guns and started shooting at her. She was only defending herself . . . and they'd all live. Maybe some of them wouldn't walk for a while, if ever again, but that would just keep them from hurting people, so she felt fine.
At the moment, she was on her way to what used to be the Xavier Institute. The mansion where Charles Xavier had waged his struggle for peaceful mutant-human coexistence had been destroyed decades earlier, when the X-Men had chosen to rebel against what they saw as dehumanizing treatment of the mutants in their charge by the Office of National Emergency. The ONE had retaliated with the use of their piloted Sentinels, which had laid waste to the mansion and killed scores of both X-Men and unaffiliated mutants. That was when the X-Men went totally underground, forming into cells spread throughout the United States to protect mutants – and later, posthumans in general – from the repressive policies of both ONE and the CSA.
She leaped and somersaulted from rooftop to rooftop, dived off antigrav rails, and swung from the energy cables in her batons. After some time, she made it to the wreckage of the former Xavier Institute. In all the time that had passed, there had been no attempts to rebuild it as anything else. And it wasn't like there was anything to rebuild; the X-Men had absconded with as much tech as they could carry and destroyed the rest to prevent it from being used against them.
She looked at the ruins of the X-Mansion. Raising her voice, she spoke. "I'm here! Show yourself!"
"Glad you could make it," a man's voice answered.
Fearless turned and narrowed her eyes when she saw who it was. Even in the dark, she could make out his features clearly. A slow hiss escaped her lips. "Stark."
"Yes," Tony Stark, formerly known as Iron Man, confirmed. The man honestly didn't look a day over thirty-five, his hair as black as ever, but his blue eyes crystal clear with a contained sorrow. "I am."
"Why did you call me?" Fearless asked. "What do you want?"
"To make amends," Tony replied.
"I'd say you have good reasons," Fearless retorted bitingly. "After all, this whole nightmare we've been living for the past fifty years is your fault."
"I know." Tony sighed sadly. "I believed I could make the world better, that I could mold it into a place where human and superhuman could coexist in harmony. I clearly didn't foresee the people who would use what I had in mind as some kind of power grab. Some 'futurist' I turned out to be."
"Did I come here to hear your pity party, or did I come here because you had something to offer me?" Derision and contempt accented her voice.
Tony gathered his composure. "You're right. I called you here because I wanted to help you. You and your Knights."
"What's in it for you?"
"Throwing a monkey wrench in the machine I created. In case you don't know, there are surveillance drones hovering above our position right now. I'm using my interface powers to cloak us from their sensors."
"Thanks. Now, how do you intend to help us?"
"I can give you resources. I still have several hundred million dollars to my name. I can keep your technology up to date, or even better."
"And what do you want in return?"
"Nothing more than for you to stop these people. They've corrupted everything I ever tried to accomplish. The man currently controlling my company – Masato Kurosaki – is using my designs as weapons of warfare. S.H.I.E.L.D. is sanctioning thugs as agents and the CSA is trying to eliminate every superhuman that can't be controlled by it. It's disgusting and I've had more than enough of it."
Fearless stared at Tony. "You're telling the truth, but do you think this is going to get you forgiveness?"
Tony sighed. "No. It wasn't worth it. None of what I've done was worth it . . ."
"You've got an arrangement. We could use all the help we can get."
"All right. I'll contact you later."
Fearless walked away, but not without hearing Tony whisper, "If only you could see me now, Steve . . ."
The Girl Without Fear returned to the Knights' clock tower base, only for the other Knights to stare at her worriedly. "What is it?" she asked. "Where's Arachne?"
"That's what the X-Men called to tell us about," Nightshade replied somberly. "She's sleeping in their medical lab right now."
"Why?" Fearless asked.
"Spider-Man did something to her," Nightshade replied. "Don't know what it was, but she was angry about it and she confronted him over it. Then he knocked her out somehow."
Fearless snarled underneath her mask and turned away, taking the antigrav lift down to the underground garage. She took her motorcycle – with a modified chassis to distinguish it from Karin Kusanagi's bike so the connection couldn't be made between the two identities – and rode away. She rode like a madwoman, effortlessly weaving between cars and violating every traffic law written. Of course, that did get the cops' attention, which in turn got the attention of the SHRU.
SHRU vehicles chased her down the streets, but Fearless lived up to her name and launched herself off a bridge. She landed safely on the street below, just as a SHRU member called for assistance and pointed out the highway she was on. She accelerated down the highway, riding like a possessed woman. Nothing mattered to her, then, nothing except getting to Arachne and finding out if she would be ok. Of course, she'd have to lose the SHRU first.
That wouldn't be too hard. She'd just need to take more risks. Fortunately, risk was something she didn't fear. She didn't fear anything . . . but if she could fear, she'd fear losing Arachne. For Arachne, she could do anything.
She heard SHRU hovercrafts following her, shining spotlights on her. She rode as fast as she could, but the hovercrafts were able to keep pace with her. That just meant she'd have to go even faster. She pressed a button on her handlebars, shifting into "nitro." Her motorcycle went into overdrive, accelerating past its official limits. She used the boost to get herself out of the SHRU's sights and then turned it off; using nitro for longer than necessary would thrash the motorcycle's inner workings something fierce.
She made it to the X-Men's headquarters, parking her motorcycle at the edge of the abandoned tunnels and running the rest of the way. Once there, she was let in by Impetus, only for her to push past him. "Where's Parker?"
"In his lab, the prick," Impetus replied.
"Thanks," Fearless grunted, walking into the lab. She unsnapped her batons from their bracers and extended the energy blades on both. "You have a minute to explain yourself. After that, I'm going to hurt you."
Peter didn't even look at her. "I had no choice. She would have died."
"Died? What do you mean?"
"The Thunderbolts attacked her. You can guess why. Not only is she an unlicensed superhuman, she was also part of the Power Broker bust. That had to have sent heads rolling politically unless she was taken out of the picture."
"What did you do to her?"
"When I designed her suit, I included a neural interface that I could use to take over the suit's motor functions. In essence, I could fight for her by remote control."
"And she didn't appreciate it, did she?"
"No."
Fearless barked out a laugh. "Why should she? You violated her. You didn't rape her, but you might as well have, because the effect was just the same. She didn't have control over her body; you did." She sighed. "Why?"
"I couldn't let her die. Not like everyone else I've let die. Even if she hates me for it, at least she's still alive. At least she has the chance to survive people like the Thunderbolts."
"And you think that justifies what you did?"
"I did it to protect her."
"You sound just like Stark. I bet he was thinking something like that when he cloned a thunder god to use as a weapon against his friends, when he created a prison in the Negative Zone for anyone that wouldn't cooperate."
Peter whirled around to glare balefully at Fearless. "What the hell do you know? What the hell do you know about what I've suffered, the people who've died because of me?! I wasn't going to add Audrey to that list! I wasn't!"
Fearless glared back. "Let's hope that helps you sleep better at night." She walked out of the lab, retracting the energy blades on her batons and refastening them to her bracers. She looked at the X-Men, seething.
"Karin?" Fairbrook asked.
"Where's Audrey?" Fearless asked.
"In the med lab," Fairbrook replied. "She might be awake now."
Fearless nodded curtly and stepped inside, seeing Arachne still in her costume, lying on the medical cot. She took a seat beside Arachne's cot and took the other girl's red-gloved hand. "I'm sorry . . . for what he did to you."
She smiled softly underneath the mask when she felt Arachne's hand tighten around hers. "You're awake, aren't you?"
"Been for a while," Arachne replied. "I just kept quiet because I didn't want to talk to anyone."
"You can talk to me," Fearless said.
"And what's that going to do?" Arachne asked. "I feel . . . so violated. Can you understand that?"
"Better than you think," Fearless whispered.
"Take off your mask," Arachne requested.
"Only if you do," Fearless answered.
"We can take them off together," Arachne suggested.
"Sure." Fearless removed her mask as Arachne deactivated her costume. Now they weren't Fearless and Arachne; they were just Karin Kusanagi and Audrey Hopkins.
"Karin . . ."
Karin reached out to Audrey and held her tightly, as Audrey finally let her tears flow. "I'm here," she whispered into the spider hybrid's ear. "I'm here. Always . . ."
Back at the headquarters of the CSA, Niles Gyrich was staring down Terry Osborn. Finally, he spoke or, rather, began to yell. "What the hell was that, Osborn?! I sent you and your Thunderbolts to terminate one neophyte spider! You couldn't even do that?!"
"She had help," Osborn answered coolly.
"Help?" Gyrich asked. "Help? Where did this 'help' come from?"
"Beetle's armor analyzed her moves," Osborn explained. "The suit went into some kind of interface-driven autopilot. That's where the help came from. Someone was controlling her suit's motor functions and through those her body's movements and maneuvering her into defeating us."
"Interesting," Gyrich said. "I want you to go after her again. This time, I don't want you to kill her. I want you to capture her, and then, Psi-Ops will tear what we need to know out of her brain. Does that sound like something the Thunderbolts can accomplish?"
"I don't appreciate your tone, Gyrich," Osborn answered, narrowing his eyes at the older man.
"You can not appreciate my tone all you want, Osborn," Gyrich retorted. "I don't much care. What I do care about is that we stop these rogues. The Power Broker incident caused us and our friends in S.H.I.E.L.D. a great deal of embarrassment, embarrassment S.H.I.E.L.D. can afford even less than we can because of that new team they're debuting. Fortunately, the bastard's keeping his mouth shut, but if they can persuade him to talk, do you know what we'll be implicated in?"
"Want Venom to go in there and finish him before that happens?" Osborn asked.
"Yes," Gyrich replied. "That would be a splendid idea. Just make sure she uses spider webbing. It'll be the perfect way to throw suspicion off us when he turns up dead in his own cell."
"Will do," Osborn said. "I just have to make sure she's recovered first."
"See to it that she is fully healed before she goes on her mission," Gyrich advised. "We don't want any mistakes. Oh, and tell her she's free to kill whoever gets in her way, to add to her cover."
End Notes: Well, there. I had more in mind, but this is as good a place as any to end this chapter. With the alliance between Fearless and the former Iron Man, does it look like Arachne might get a new costume? Will Venom succeed in her dual mission? And what about that new super-team S.H.I.E.L.D. has in the works? And will Black Tarantula make a return appearance? For the answers to those questions and others, read the next chapter and let me know what you think of this one.
P.S. The Beetle was the armored guy who looked somewhat like an insect. My model for him is the main Kamen Rider off the 2003-2004 series Kamen Rider Faiz.