It was like a lightning bolt to the back of the head. Seven heads snapped up, seven pairs of eyes snapped wide as seven sets of spider-sense suddenly shrieked. Ollie jerked up from where she lay across the top of the couch; in a small alleyway in the Narrows, Specs gave a small scream, flinching violently as his hand flew to the back of his neck. And on a rooftop less than half a mile away, three heads swiveled towards downtown.
"Okay…what the hell was that?!" Blue asked as he rose up from the rooftop.
"What was what?" Honeybee asked, looking up at him.
"Spider-sense. And it's a doozy," Lucky replied.
Honeybee looked around with a confused look on her face. "I don't have a spider-sense. Guys, what happened?"
"Something big," Lucky replied, glancing down at her even as he stood.
"How big are we talking about?" Blue muttered, taking a few steps towards the source. "Magneto? Doctor Doom?"
"Bigger than Magneto and presumably bigger than that…Doom guy you just mentioned. If I had to guess, I'd have to say—"
"Tiger, don't say it." Scarlet pleaded.
"We might be dealing with Decepticons."
Blue and Honeybee stared at Lucky.
"What's a Decepticon?" the latter asked.
Lucky sighed.
"Okay…this is going to sound really weird, but bear with me. Back home, we've made contact with aliens. They're giant robots from some planet called Cybertron, and they transform into vehicles and other machinery. There're two factions. On the one hand, we have the heroic Autobots under Optimus Prime. On the other, we have the Decepticons led by Megatron. They want to conquer Earth and use it as a jumping-off point for an interstellar empire."
A beat. "Okay," said Blue. "Let's hope it's not that."
Three right hands lifted, palm up, and pressed their middle and ring fingers into their palms. Two thick strands of whitish, biological spider silk and one strand of a substance like nylon shot skyward and connected with the corner of a nearby apartment—the beginning of a chain of increasingly tall buildings. A buzzing noise grew in the air as Honeybee's wings began flapping and she rose skyward, and then the group were off like a shot.
"What the heck are we looking for?!"
Teresa's frustrated exclamation was almost lost to the wind, but Drake could make out the tone and questioning lilt. Releasing his webline, he stuck to the glass wall of a skyscraper and waved for her to join him. When she got close enough, he called back, "I think we'll know it when we see it. Spider-sense is really freaking out right now; they must be close."
As if to demonstrate, spider-sense twinged hard just as three very, very talkative robots appeared around a corner down the street. They were all bug-like: two resembled spiders, and one a green wasp. Beneath them, people screamed and ran in droves as gunfire from the robots rained down around them. Bodies already littered the street.
"There, see?" Drake said, and he leapt off the wall. Star-Spider followed him, and they reached the robots in seconds, just in time to hear:
"Finally! Something has gone right for Wazzpinator!"
Teresa and Drake looked at the giant metallic wasp and spiders near the building they were standing on.
"Who…what are you?!" Teresa sputtered.
The wasp rubbed his legs together.
"Allow me to demonstrate! Wazzpinator: terrorize!"
Teresa looked on in shock as the wasp reared up in midair and seemed to split open down the middle, his body unfolding and rearranging from a giant insect into a tall green robot with hornet parts all over it. Right after, the two spiders turned to face Teresa and Drake.
"Tarantulas: terrorize!"
"Blackarachnia: terrorize!"
The two arachnids transformed into similar robots, while a man in a green-and-black Spider-Man costume flung himself onto the roof with Teresa and Drake.
"And as for me…I am Arachnolord!"
Teresa dove out of the way as Arachnolord went to tackle her. He slid to a stop and threw a hand at her, firing a webline from the top of his wrist and snagging her ankle. She hit the rooftop on her side, and as she rolled over Arachnolord pounced on her.
She met his pounce with a fist, rolling rapidly and springing back to her feet. Two weblines found Arachnolord's back as he recovered, and the smaller Spider reeled herself in and stuck to his knees with her feet, aiming punches at his face.
As Arachnolord dodged the punches and attempted to return a few, Drake skittered backwards as the three robots began to fire at him.
"Impressive reflexes," Blackarachnia murmured, sauntering a bit closer as she continued firing. The rooftop cracked audibly under her weight.
"Yeah," Drake grunted, dodging fire and web-zipping towards her. "One of the many perks of spider-sense." He fired webbing at each muzzle, punching her in the side of the head. "What, you don't have one? Lucky me."
Arachnolord dove under Teresa's punch before he struck back and hit her in the stomach.
"You're good, girly," he grunted, pinning her to the roof. "But I'm better than you'll ever be. Tell me where to find the Parker brat, and I might—"
Teresa delivered a solid kick to her opponent's gut, then as he jerked back in response she grabbed his shoulder and punched him in the throat.
He jerked backwards, clutching his throat. Teresa came up fists swinging.
"Feisty one, aren't you?" he growled, ducking under her blow. "I like them feisty. Makes it all the more enjoyable when I finally get them around my th—"
Teresa's fist slammed into Arachnolord's stomach. He rolled backwards as the Star-Spider grinned under the mask. "Ha!"
"Frag you, you slag! I was going to go easy on you, but now? Now we're gonna play hardball."
"Bring it, knockoff!" Teresa shouted, advancing. "I'll show you what the Amazing Star-Spider's capable of!"
"Ooh, I'm shaking in my boots right about now! Tarantulas—go and finish this bitch off so we can find the guy we're supposed to be looking for!"
Tarantulas fired off his weapons, only to miss as Teresa dodged the shots.
Aim a bit…lower. And maybe I can be rid of both filthy organics as well.
A shot hit the building's roof right before Teresa made contact, sending her toppling into the building below.
Drake, who was swinging around Blackarachnia and dodging her fire as he tried to bind her spider legs, gasped. "TERRY!" He yanked hard on his webline and landed at the edge of the hole, peering in.
Teresa shook her head, clearing the cobwebs from her eyes as she shifted some rubble off of herself. She was lying in the shattered remains of a dinner table, and Arachnolord was crouching in front of her, his mask hiding his sneering visage.
"Score is Me: 1. You: Nil."
Teresa's dignified reply was to grab a table leg and swing it like a billy club, knocking him (uselessly) in the head as she scrambled to her feet.
"Temper, temper," came the reply, accompanied by a condescending finger wag.
"Shut up, asshole."
"Language."
As Teresa lunged at Arachnolord, Drake looked past them at the Hispanic family that looked at the two fighters through the doorway less than five feet away. His spider-sense tingled as he dove over the fight, landing just in front of them. "I'll help you guys out," he muttered, gently taking the nearest kid's hand.
Teresa flew through the wall directly to his left. As Drake darted to the apartment's main hallway and back, pulling the family with him one by one, Arachnolord pushed himself through the hole in the wall, looking around for the Star-Spider as plaster settled like dust. "Running scared yet?" he asked the air. "Wouldn't blame ya! You're prolonging the agony, little gi—"
Before he could finish his statement, he felt his opponent's well-muscled legs settle upon his shoulders.
"Ever see Blade Runner? 'Cause right now, I'm Pris and you're Deckard."
Before Arachnolord could make a comeback, he felt Teresa's legs squeezing against his neck with as much force as she could supply. As he gasped, clawing at her leg, Teresa slammed her palms against his ears. He yelled in pain, falling to his knees, but then a web shot hit Star-Spider in the face and she recoiled in surprise.
Son of a-
And then she was hurtling towards a nearby granite countertop. Arachnolord had managed to break her leglock in her moment of distraction, and now he slammed her head into the counter hard enough to split it in half before throwing her through the kitchen wall and into the apartment building's main hallway.
She pushed herself to her feet amidst a rush of people. Drake was darting into each apartment on the floor, pulling people out and directing them towards the stairs, but as he paused to look at her an electronic sound came from within one of the apartments—the one they had come through the roof of. The sound of heavy gunfire cut off several muffled screams.
"This is a disaster," Drake muttered.
Both of their heads snapped towards the hole in the wall as Arachnolord jumped into view and perched on the lip of the hole, almost in mockery of the way they perched. He stepped down, raising his fists eagerly as Teresa stood and did the same.
"Good technique, but no points on the landing!" Arachnolord jeered.
Teresa responded by jumping. Her leg lashed out like a whip and smashed against his face, shattering his right eyepiece and knocking him back. Her spider-sense tingled as his hand came up, but it wrapped around her ankle before she could withdraw it.
She was slammed into the floor. As Arachnolord shifted his grip from her leg to her neck, his amber eye glared at her and one of his fists pulled back.
Drake's foot smacked into the side of his head as he leapt over them both. Arachnolord snarled as he rolled from the impact and came back to his feet, but Drake was already bolting down the hallway and into the next apartment building. He started to pursue, but a webline splattered against his back and suddenly Teresa was on him again.
Down the hall, across from the door Drake had ducked into, a webline hit the fire alarm and pulled. The shrieking ring echoed through the building.
"My God…" Lucky stammered as he stared down into the hole in the roof. Several stories below, a living robot themed like a spider looked up at them, and Lucky leaned back as a memory hit him.
Peter winced as his spider-sense went off a fraction of a second too late and he was hit by a laser blast. As he lay sprawled across the ground, he heard a tinny mechanized laugh. His head rose up to track down its source, and standing before him was a boxy blue robot about the size of a two or three-story building.
"Soundwave, superior. Spider-Man, inferior."
"Um, guys?" Blue piped up, snapping his fingers in Lucky's face. "We need a plan of attack. You know these things, you tell us how to fight them."
Lucky cleared his throat. "Right. Blue, Honeybee—you and the bees take on the green 'Con. Honeybee, once you're done, you're on medic detail. Scarlet…you and I'll deal with the robot spiders. Everybody got that?"
Everyone nodded.
"Great. Try not to die." With that, Lucky leaned forward, dropping into the hole and firing a webline at the edge. He could feel Scarlet follow his lead, a web shot hitting the barrel of one of its guns and making him look up at them. Taking his webline in both hands and pulling, Lucky kicked downwards, right into Tarantulas' face.
He landed several feet away, sprinting out of the robot's shadow as it fell backwards from the blow. Before it had even hit the ground, the sound of shifting metal and joints filled the air, and the resulting enormous robotic tarantula flipped right side up to face him.
Specs was practically flying across the rooftops as he ran, the tinging on his skull warning him of every possible hazard in his path and slowly rising as he hurtled towards its initial source. Pain shot up his leg with every footstep, and his ribs screamed as he inhaled. He didn't even slow down, leaping from roof to roof and sprinting at 130 miles an hour.
Don't let it be Ungoliant, he begged silently. Don't let it be her don't let it be her don't let it be her—
From the bag on his back he could feel his phone vibrate. In midair he fished it out, his bag returning to his back before he had touched the next rooftop. "Hello?!" he practically screamed into it.
"Parker!" Conway's voice was hard to hear over the wind, but he managed. "Something just came up on the scanner. Something about giant robots and all those Spider-People—"
"Already en route!" he gasped, vaulting off a parapet and firing a webline at the first skyscraper. He yanked hard, zipping to the roof, and continued to sprint.
"Good man. Be careful, I don't want you getting any closer than—"
He hung up, shrugging the bag off one shoulder and dumping the phone into a random pocket. Zipping it up, he leaped off his current roof, vaulted off the next, fired a webline at the nearest reasonably tall building and began to swing.
"Seriously? You think that trick's going to save you?"
Teresa sensed the presence of Arachnolord through the cloud of powder—the result of her smashing a fire extinguisher against his head. She moved with all the stealth her training under Rena had given her, but when she aimed a punch at the back of his head Arachnolord dodged, warned by his own spider-sense. She retreated rapidly, but he had found her: as he advanced towards her, the knuckles of his gloves rose up as though something was growing under them.
"You little minx," he snarled, webbing her and pulling her towards him. One hand grabbed her shoulder, and then a punch slammed across her mouth, shredding the side of her mask and dropping her to her knees. Her spider-sense tingled as he wound up for a two-handed blow, and one of her hands found a piece of pipe that had been ripped out of the wall at some point.
She punched him in the stomach as hard as she could. Rising up as he cradled the impact, she grasped the pipe tightly and said, "Batter up," before hitting him in the head with it.
Arachnolord gasped in pain. He grabbed at the pipe, ripping it from her grasp, before grabbing her arm and forcing her to the floor. She could see large chitin growths along the back of his hand, beneath the tattered material of his glove, right before he punched her in the face hard enough to send her through the floor.
Amidst the screams of the residents of the apartment she found herself in, she shoved herself several feet away an instant before Arachnolord landed hard exactly where she had been. One civilian hit him in the back with a chair, which shattered against him, and he furiously backhanded him away. She watched him hit the window, cracking it, before Arachnolord looked behind himself, turned slightly, and kicked the civilian hard enough to shatter the brick wall and probably his pelvis, catapulting him out of the building.
"NO!" screamed Teresa, staggering to her feet. She charged Arachnolord as he turned to face her again, and although one fist slammed into his rib cage, he managed to catch the other one.
"Heh. Heroes," he growled. There was a flash of red outside the window. "You got spirit, little girl. We could call this whole thing off, and I could show you the best five minutes of your—"
Behind Arachnolord, a red and black human shape had appeared in the shattered window, and she could see their reflection in his silver-black eyepieces for an instant before he looked towards the mother and child trying to sneak around the two combatants.
"Let me break my response down for you," Teresa snarled. "One, I won't let you get away if I can help it. Two, five minutes? That's sad. And three—"
Specs grabbed a brick from the broken wall, tossing it to her as he vanished into a blur and she smashed the brick against Arachnolord's head with her free hand, hard enough to shatter the brick.
"I'm not attracted to dudes," she finished as he groaned, dragging himself back up. "Especially assholes."
Arachnolord fired a webline at her without turning all the way around. "Well, Spider-Dyke. I guess I'm going to have to deal with you the hard way."
She slid under his fist, slamming a heel into his crotch. As he yelled, trying desperately to stand, she glanced around the room. The remaining family had vanished. The front door leading into the hall lay shattered against the opposite wall, and a transparent, faintly golden webline drifted in the draft of the broken window.
"Nice work, Specs," she breathed, and turned to resume the fight.
"Wazzpinator having good day!" mused Waspinator, crawling in insectoid form through the building. "Not get shot once!"
Just then, Waspinator felt something slam into his chest armor. "Who dares attack Wazzpinator?!"
He looked down and saw a Spider-Man punching him.
"Wazzpinator is not impressed! You cannot defeat—"
"I don't have to!" yelled Blue, looking up at him. "She does!" He dodged away as Waspinator transformed, grabbing at him with a giant metal hand.
"Wazzpinator doesn't know who she is," he replied confusedly. The tall Spider-Man was crawling on his back, just out of reach.
"You will," Blue called. He managed to open up the metal just enough to let something in. "In fact, you'll find out right NOW!"
Honeybee stepped out from behind a shattered wall, made an extravagant gesture, and a colossal swarm of bees headed straight for Waspinator.
"HAH! Wazzpinator—OH SLAG! They're inside Wazzpinator!" He flew upwards, paying no heed to the floors and ceilings he smashed through as he hopelessly clawed at his own armor.
He was fifty feet above the building when suddenly, with almost comical abruptness, Waspinator literally fell to pieces.
"Not again…" he griped.
Far below, Blue and Honeybee high-fived as pieces of the Predacon began to fall in a swarm of bees. "Nice one!" Blue said, looking up at the metal rainfall.
"Thanks," Honeybee replied brightly. "So what do we do now?"
Julie Masters stalked up the stairs slowly, each footfall as silent as possible. She flattened herself against the wall as a crowd of people, dusted with plaster, barreled down beside her, and then the apartment building seemed to shake slightly and a chunk of the ceiling fell.
She stepped around the rubble nervously. This had been a stupid idea; she had already known that. But it was impossible to get a good shot of the action from the street, and Parker would probably come in with his stupid drone if he showed up. But maybe, if she was lucky, she could get a few photos of the battle before beating a hasty retreat.
She was more than lucky. As she reached the top of a flight of stairs the wall down the hall shattered, and a Spider-Man in shredded red and blue was flung into the opposite wall. As he stuck there, shaking his head, two large, mechanical spider legs came through the hole in the wall and reached for him. Julie dropped to one knee, snapping two photos as the Spider-Man webbed one, then leaped off the wall and wrapped both legs in webbing. She darted a little bit down the hall as a robotic black widow spider came through the wall, ripping the webbing apart, and a redheaded woman in tattered scarlet crawled along its back.
All at once, the robot seemed to unfold, shifting in less than a second into a female humanoid shape. She gasped, taking another picture, as the robot swung around, shooting at the Spider-Man and destroying more of the hallway. Julie glanced up at the ceiling, beginning to backtrack down the hallway. There was a cracking noise in both walls, and Julie broke into a sprint as the ceiling started to collapse.
Something slammed into her, and suddenly she found herself on the stairwell, just outside the range of the collapsed ceiling, with someone's arm wrapped around her waist.
"Ach, geddoff!" she grunted, pulling at the arm. Its owner released her, and she turned to see the Spider-Man she was familiar with, barely an inch taller than her and outfitted in what amounted to modified sporting clothes. "I can handle myself!"
"Oh, sorry," Spider-Man said, already starting back up the stairs. "I'll be sure to let you get crushed next time." He was breathing hard, twitching, the shirt of his costume torn in patches and soaked with sweat. Both of the contraptions on his wrists glowed red, and as he started to swap out the cartridges Julie matter-of-factly popped the flash out on her camera and snapped a photo of him. The flash reflected off of his eyepieces.
"Agh. Yeah, yeah, laugh it up." As Julie retreated down the stairs, Specs turned back towards the battle and stretched one leg. Taking a few deep breaths, he rolled up his mask and spat on the floor before breaking into a sprint.
The tingling in his head jerked and snapped as gunfire tore apart an exterior wall. He flinched as two rooms away, Arachnolord threw a punch at Teresa. He kicked in the elevator door, dropping into the shaft and swinging onto the next floor up. As he touched the ground, something slammed into a wall in the distance, and he flinched at the pulse in the floor and leaped upwards again reflexively, bouncing off a wall and web-zipping out of a window.
He fired a webline at the brickwork, swinging around and back into a hole in the wall, right on time to see someone fall through a collapsing floor. It gave way under his feet, too, and one webline found a revealed steel girder as he fired the other towards—
—NO, Specs realized wildly, THE WHIPLASH—
—he abandoned the line he had caught himself with as the second splattered against the screaming woman's shoulder, scrambling down it towards her as they both fell. When he reached her, he wrapped both arms around her, turning so that he was below her and firing a webline over her shoulder as the tingling rose—
His back hit the concrete foundations hard, her body landing on his and winding him. As he gasped for breath, rolling over and pushing himself up, the body lay still.
Specs looked at it silently. Gently, one hand touched her wrist—he knew what he was going to find, but if there was any chance…
Nothing. He shifted, finding the artery. Nothing. Specs closed his eyes tightly behind the mask, leaning back onto his knees with his head bowed low. He looked very, very small, kneeling in that basement as his hands trembled ever so slightly. The tingling in his head was growing slowly more insistent, bullets firing and punches being thrown and the cracking of walls itching at the back of his mind, but he couldn't find the self-preservation to care. Slowly, one leg at a time, he pushed himself to his feet.
move
Specs flinched, his eyes flying to the top corner of the basement. His mind suddenly dead clear, he could feel the support in the wall about to give and ripped a cartridge from the strap around his waist. He threw it as hard and as fast as he could, and just as the steel I-beam suddenly broke and tore through the wall, the cartridge hit it and broke open.
He didn't wait to see if the resulting explosion of webbing would hold—if it didn't, he would know very quickly. Glancing around quickly, he barely noticed the young man pressed into the corner next to a humming washing machine. Specs flung a hand out, middle and ring fingers practically crushing the trigger in his palm, and he was sprinting even as he reeled the webline in.
The man yelled sharply as he found himself yanked along with him. Specs heard something in the corner tear as he bolted towards the stairs, and when the young man had been pulled close enough Specs pulled him onto his back, leaping up the stairs in one jump and bursting through the building's front doors. Swinging the man off his back, Specs pushed him towards the nearest paramedic before turning and leaping back up the building.
Teresa ducked her head and squeezed her eyes shut as Arachnolord bodily smashed her head-first into a bathroom mirror. He dropped her, and she fell to the floor, hazily trying to push herself up.
"You're wearing out," Arachnolord noted, his shit-eating grin audible. "Getting tired. Making it all the easier for me to gut you like a fish."
As Teresa began to push herself back up, her fingers brushed across a large, triangular piece of broken glass. She stuck to it, gathering it into her palm. All at once, she whirled towards Arachnolord, swinging it at him.
He leaned back quickly, then grabbed her wrist before she could take another swing. Undeterred, Teresa dropped the shard and caught it in her other hand, slashing him across the stomach before pulling back and delivering another slash across his face.
Arachnolord jerked to the side, blood gushing from his now exposed cheek and mouth. The side of his face with the missing eyepiece was facing her, so Teresa could see both his amber eye and the long, sharp bottom teeth in his mouth.
"What…are you?" She whispered, slumping against the sink and breathing hard.
Arachnolord put a hand to the wall, recovering his breath. The blood running down his face didn't seem to faze him much as he looked towards Teresa, but not quite at her yet.
"My name is Peter Palmer," he said. His voice was quiet, but not soft, and there was gravel in it. "I was what you might call a guttersnipe. Until one day when I got bitten by a spider…and with great power, came great opportunity." He smiled at the memory. "And I took advantage of that opportunity. Not my fault you weren't smart enough to do the same." His eyes flicked to Teresa, his half-smirk just barely revealing his teeth. "What's it matter to you, anyway? This isn't even your world. You could get out of the way, leave Peter Parker to me, and what would you lose? Huh?" He pushed away from the wall. When he drew himself to his full height, as he did now, he was nearly a head taller than her. "But no. You're gonna play the hero. Well, bad news, little girl…" He grinned widely as he started towards her. "In real life, the heroes die."
"Oh, will you shut up!" Teresa slugged Arachnolord and sent him sprawling backwards.
"What, it isn't enough to terrorize my dimension?" Lucky snapped as he approached the two robots. "Now you Decepticons have to spread to other ones?"
"Decepticons?! You fool! We are Predacons!" Tarantulas replied.
"Seems like there isn't really a difference. Now what do you want?"
"Bring us this universe's version of Spider-Man or die!"
"Bring it!" Scarlet cried as she leaped into battle.
"Well, if that's the way you're going to be – Tarantulas! Beast mode!"
"Blackararchnia—beast mode!"
The two robots transformed back into giant spiders.
"Let's do this," Scarlet said.
The entire building slumped. Drake, who had just been starting towards the last apartment on the floor, almost lost his footing, and he heard a scream from inside. Gasping, he kicked through the door and saw a hole in the floor. He ran to it and looked down: a boy about his age had fallen through, but had been caught and was now being held bridal-style by Specs.
"Hey, Specs!" he called down, leaning over the hole casually. "When did you get here?"
"Five, ten minutes ago. Pay attention, man! Be right back." He hopped to the windowsill, then out of sight. He was back less than thirty seconds later, hopping through the hole, landing next to Drake, breathing hard.
"The building's coming down," Drake said somberly.
Specs nodded, not looking at him. "I know. One of the supports gave earlier. I blew a cartridge to hold it, but—" he gestured around at the slumping floor and cracking exterior walls. "Yeah. You've been on evac, haven't you?"
"Yeah," Drake said. "I've gotten through most of the building. A lot of people are dead." He paused, examining Specs' posture. "…Specs? Peter?"
The mask had small holes torn in it; bits of brown hair poked out of the top and back at odd angles as the silver-black eyepieces turned to stare at Drake.
"Are most of your battles like this?"
Specs was silent. He looked away, and then his head jerked up an instant before a scream pierced the air.
"That came from below us!" Drake shouted, starting towards the door. "We've got to—"
Specs was already gone.
"There, there. I'm not going to hurt you too much. I need you for far greater things…" Tarantulas hissed at a little girl. She was crying, pressing herself into the room's corner as Tarantulas, too big to fit the eight feet from floor to ceiling, moved in on her.
Something smashed through the wall just next to the girl, he felt something hit him right in one of the eyes again, making him flinch backwards, and then a webline was on each of his front legs and a foot on the back of his head, pushing hard.
"Ah, there you are," he muttered as he felt himself being pulled back.
Specs looked down at the Transformer beneath his feet. "Oh, am I late to my own party?" he said through gritted teeth. "Let me make it up to you."
"Tarantulas—TERRORIZE!"
The floor collapsed. Specs barely made it off the spider before it transformed into a robot about fifteen or twenty feet tall, standing in a hole in the floor and rounding on him as he stuck to the wall.
"So glad you could join us…Parker," Tarantulas hissed, almost whispering the name.
"Doesn't look like it," Specs snapped back, even as his blood ran cold and he gestured for the little girl to go through the hole he had made. She started to edge towards it when Tarantulas ripped away the floor in front of her. "Unless things like you celebrate with wanton destruction. What the hell are you, and what are you doing here?"
"I am Tarantulas, chief science officer of the Predacon vessel known as the Darksyde, commanded by that delusional warlord who dares to sully the name of Megatron! I am here for one reason…you. More specifically, someone has a score to settle with you…and she's promised us a piece of the action if we help her take you out."
"You know she was probably lying, right?" He leaped off the wall as a crack jumped across it and fired a webline, swinging to the ceiling and sticking to it, still facing Tarantulas. "Warlords! They're all the same! What'd she promise you, Australia? You don't want it! Everything there wants to kill you!"
"Joke if you like—"
"Thanks, think I will."
"—but don't think I can't see through you. You're terrified, boy. Look at the way you tremble. All this destruction—" he stepped forward. Specs flinched backwards as the floor crackled. "All this death…and look at you. Pretending to be a soldier in a war you can't win."
"Yeah, well, everyone loves an underdog," Specs muttered, but in all honesty he had stopped listening to the words the second the robot had called him "boy". He was staring at that little girl, trapped to the wall by the robot, her coating of dust interrupted by the clean lines down from each eye. He glanced between her and Tarantulas surreptitiously. Then he shifted one foot back and vanished from the spot.
MOVE
He had barely stopped moving, grabbing the little girl and pulling her into a position he could carry her in, when a huge arm came down above them and he barely pulled her away before it smashed through what was left of the floor. As the girl screamed, Specs fired a webline and swung her to the next floor down, sprinting before he hit the ground as Tarantulas morphed into a huge spider and came after them.
His leg was burning, his ribs screaming at him with every breath. Every crack in the wall, every falling brick or chunk of concrete scratched painfully at the back of his head, barely drowned out by the shrieking sensation pulling his attention towards the tarantula. The girl was screaming in his ear. His breath caught in his throat as, with a terrific cracking noise and a sensation in his mind like nails on a blackboard, the nearest exterior wall began to fall towards him.
"DRAKE!" he screamed, his voice shrill, and he leaped through the nearest window feet-first.
"It has been so long since I dined upon organic prey," Blackarachnia hissed. Her clawed fingers swiped through the plaster walls where Lucky had been a second before.
"Sorry, but I'm not exactly haute cuisine. I'm more 'tastes great, less filling'," Lucky quipped, swinging around her and pulling himself upward.
"Insolent wretch! Do you not fear the Predacons?!"
Lucky silently fell in mid-air before punching Blackarachnia in one of her eyes.
"I've survived the Decepticons," he said. "And they're bigger than you."
Just then, Lucky's spider-sense blared, and he instinctively leaped away just before a mass of steel, glass, and concrete came tumbling down.
Seconds. That was all it took. Specs hung onto the wall across the street, cradling the little girl in one arm as he watched her home collapse inward and vanish into a cloud of dust that billowed through the streets and blinded everyone within half a mile.
There were police, fire and ambulance sirens filling the air. Screams and sobbing could be heard from the street below. Specs became aware, all at once, that that little girl was sobbing into his torn, sweat-soaked shirt. Gently, he held her closer as he began to climb towards the ground.
His feet touched the ground, a bolt of pain darting up one thigh, and he kneeled as he set down the girl. "Were your parents in there?" he whispered. She nodded tearfully, and Specs could almost physically feel the blow to his heart. The shadows of people were coming closer, and a pricking sensation nestled in the back of his head as he stood and looked around at them nervously. His gaze turned towards the source of the cloud, and with some hesitation he began to jog towards it.
Where there had once been an apartment building, there was now rubble. Six people were combing through it, looking for survivors and one of their own.
"Terry! Terry!" Drake called out. He dug through the rubble, throwing aside a large chunk of concrete. A collection of bees flew in front of him, attracting his attention.
Specs worked silently, digging through the wreckage with a desperate fervor. He had felt a heartbeat here, he knew it. The fabric of his gloves tore from his carelessness; his arms and legs ached; he barely noticed. One survivor, he told himself. One less scream he would hear at night, one less death to haunt him when his eyes closed. Tears blurred his vision. It would be enough. Just one, please…
There was no heartbeat. He slowed and stopped, leaning his weight on his hands as his shoulders shuddered.
"Guys? I think we found Terry." Honeybee piped up, nearly impossible to see through the dust. Specs, Blue, Lucky, Scarlet, and Drake turned practically in unison towards her voice, making their way to her as she held up a piece of rubble that would have intimidated even the strongest of them. Half-buried in the rubble beneath her was a female form in dark red and black. A lock of dark purple hair protruded from a tear in the mask.
"Terry!" Drake gasped, dropping down and rolling her over. "Oh my God, Terry. Please be alright—"
"She's got a pulse," Specs interrupted. His voice was barely a mumble, but it carried.
"How would you know that from over there?" Drake snapped, even as he checked with two fingers. "Oh, thank God. Terry! Wake up!"
A slow, mumbling sound was audible behind Teresa's mask.
Drake blinked. Lucky leaned forward. "…What was that?" he asked.
"Don' call me Terry," Teresa repeated, a little louder.
Honeybee laughed. It started out as a small giggle that grew into a high, loud laugh, shaking her frame and threatening to make her drop the slab. Everyone looked over at her, with hidden expressions ranging from relieved to amused to outraged
"I'm glad somebody feels like laughing," Specs snapped, even as he stooped down next to Teresa. "Terry. Terry, look at me. I know you're kinda woozy, but—
"I'm fine," she said, slapping his hands away as she sat up. "…And it's Teresa! Seriously, what is with you guys? I don't want a nickname! Why do you all call me that?!"
"It's because we love you," Lucky snarked from where he was standing. There was a loud thud as Honeybee set down the slab of concrete, and then he silence was broken only by sirens and screams.
"We should get out of here," Blue said grimly. "Let's head back to Specs' place and try to figure out what just happened."
"I've get a pretty good idea," Scarlet said. There were five thwips and a loud buzzing noise as Honeybee rose into the air and one by one the Spider-Men began to swing away.
The last to go was Lucky, and he paused before his takeoff, looking at the hunched figure behind him. "Specs? You coming?"
The shorter Spider shook his head, head still bowed slightly. "I need to stay a little longer," he muttered, "help the rescue team. See if we can find any more survivors. You go ahead." The last statement was more of a whisper.
Lucky held on for another minute, staring at his alternate self. Hesitantly, one hand reached out, and Specs turned his head to look at it when it settled on his shoulder in an attempt at a reassuring pat. "Are you—" Lucky stopped. He released Specs' shoulder. Without another word and with more than a little regret, he pulled on his webline and swung into the dust cloud.
Specs looked up to watch him go. Then, silently, he dropped his head and wiped at his covered mouth with the back of a glove. The nearest rescue team was to his right. Taking a deep breath, he turned and ran to join them.
Note From Courier:
-Arachnolord's real name is a reference to a famous misprint in Amazing Spider-Man #1 (the issue that introduced J. Jonah Jameson and the Chameleon).
Note from Brackets:
-The "Rena" mentioned in Teresa's internal monologue was Rena Raminoff, the cousin of Kraven the Hunter who trained Teresa and acted as a sort of mentor figure. And that is literally all I know of her.