Shimmer, Glimmer, & Gleam - A Quest of Loss & Gain

"Cover me, but don't fire unless I give the order." You look around at your civilians comrades, and say it again. "Do. Not. Fire. Unless I give the order." You wait until you see everyone, even the doctor, nod, and then you scurry forward, from car to car. You don't need to get into the dominion of the webs, just close enough to touch one. You glance back and note that the others are staying on you at a relatively safe distance and, satisfied, you approach a light pole with a single strand of glassy web attached to it.

Climbing...

Wait, you have an axe.

You get said axe out, line up your swing, and bury it in the metal of the street lamp. It won't stay in, but it doesn't need to; you yank yourself upwards, wrap your legs around the pole, and hook the axe around the other side so you can use the handle to grip with. Up, and up, and up you go; you cross your ankles, grip with your legs, and touch the web with a single finger.

It should be sticky. Your mind is insistent on this. But it isn't. That odd place in your breast, where a window of glass is, reaches out to understand, and -

* * * *

The strain of doing this is getting intensive, but what else is there to do? If you can figure this - wait, who's in here?

You can perceive me?

You're in my HEAD?

No, I think it's more like we have two telescopes pointed at one another and we're doing sign language.

...That is a very specific metaphor but listen - wait where are you going -

Checking for refracted spiders one second -

* * * *

You pull away, gasping hard. That was weird. Not more intense, or less intense, just fucking weird. You look around, fail to spot any giant spiders, and then you touch the web -

* * * *

BITCH THE FUCK?

I'm sorry, there are massive glass webs and people keep calling me 'stacked' and saying they mean 'like pancakes' and I don't know what that means but I assume it indicates that GIANT SPIDERS might find me especially delicious.

Oh. OH! You're refracted, you're doing refraction things. No wonder, we gotta be doing bootleg versions of the same shit. Oh this is fascinating, I have so many questions -

Can we start with names? I'm Orchid.

...No last name?

...Do I have to ask for a second name?

Heh. Doctor Brianna Heller, I'm an oneirophysicist. My body's currently unconscious. Has been for a little while. My friends haven't been able to understand my attempts to communicate with them, but at least I've been able to keep them fed...I've been casting my perception into various refracted animals.

Fascinating. What's with the webs?

So our society had some very bad ideas about sex workers and now the strippers from the club down the street are currently giant spider-women. I've been working on returning agency to them...it's going well, but in the meantime I've been prototyping designs for a web that carries air.

Hhhhhhuuuuuuuhhhhhh. Is air a problem?

We're in an underwater research facility under Salt Bay, so, yes.

Oh. I'm. I'm so sorry, Doctor, I...listen, I...

I can see emotions I used to have to read out as numbers on a fucking sheet, believe me you've got nothing to apologize for. Did you need a favor or something?

I'm trying to take a rescue team to the university. Lives are at stake. But I feel like a jerk asking when your life's in danger too...

...I've got an idea.

* * * *


Choose one
[ ] Simply pass through the webbed territory
[ ] GAIN arachnid reinforcements in exchange for agreeing to work on rescuing the residents of Station 104

You climb down carefully, sliding the last few feet, and turn to your team. "Friendlies incoming," you tell them. "Lower your weapons, and hold your fire."

It takes a few moments of giving them the stare-down before they comply; clearly they're confused, but, then, you're kind of confused. Praise be to the porno, you understand what a stripper is, but you're trying to mentally combine it with 'spider' and coming up pretty shy, so it's gonna pay for no one to be jumpy about this. And, indeed, when the glass webs start twanging - ringing? Like someone stretched a beautiful chime to just before its breaking point - you try your best to upgrade 'stare' to 'glare' and are rewarded with several people visibly flinching back from their weapons.

Hrm. That might be bad actually. Note to self, ask Sasha how to not terrify your own...

Your mind is trying to throw up 'allies' and 'family' at the same time. Let's repress that.

Turning slowly faces you with a need not to flinch yourself; your first thought when you spot all those glassy legs is that Corporate has found a way out of its dominions, but, no. The creatures are uncanny, and they are beautiful; human torsos, dressed in scavenged and rumpled shirts with almost universally long and wild hair (in desperate need of washing, but still...) are fused to stained glass spider bodies that move in eerie silence, with only their weight on the webs making any sound. There are, perhaps, a dozen, fifteen max, of these, each of them sad and hungry and yet oh so gorgeous. Whatever collective nightmare turned these people into...this...did not have it all its own way. Some part of you was expecting the stained glass to depict money or salacious acts, to reduce them to only their jobs, but instead your eyes show you a panoply of personal dreams and ambitions; portraits of children you know are yet to be born, graduation caps flying high in the air, brushes and canvases, beautiful gardens, all frozen in stained glass and rippling as the body moves with an impossible fleshly grace.

Only one lowers its way down to your level, on a thread of glass that spools from its arachnid half. It 'crouches', and for a moment you fear an attack, only to realize that it's...sniffing you. Something in your pockets seems to have its attention, and after a moment it paws at your coat with a whine.

"...What do you want?" you ask, confused. You look back at your group and they're staring. The doctor is turning blue from holding his breath, and you look back to see what he's so worried about. Sure, the spider person has long talons of glass that grow from the tips of its fingers like some kind of nail accessory gone wrong, but come on. It's got flesh. You could kill it.

...That's a bad thought...

The spider makes a high, sweet whining sound, a look of frustration on its smudged face. Slowly it starts to lift its shirt and you realize what it's asking for.

"Hold up, hold up! Wait!" The spider pauses. You dig into your coat pockets and take out a fifty dollar bill, which you hold out. "Is this it?"

The spider-person's face lights up with joy, and it delicately snatches the money from your fingers before cramming the bill into its mouth, chewing with tears running tracks through the dirt on its cheeks. Something in your heart breaks. "I'm sorry they did this to you," you whisper, not certain who you're blaming but knowing it's someone, someone, someone did this.

In answer you are pulled into a hug that crushes your face against a pair of very generous breasts, and the resulting mix of confusing feelings is one we will also be repressing. You're on a mission, and not all these feelings are positive, and also - "I need to breathe -" You're let go, and the spider wrings its hands in apology. "It's alright. You can understand me?" A nod. "Brianna asked you to listen to me for now?" Another nod, this one excited. The spider gently brushes your jacket with its fingers, and coos before gesturing at its companions in the webs above, who are salivating. "Soon, we're gonna hit some liquor stores," you promise. "They have to be flush with cash, even if I gotta open up some safes. Can you stay high and follow, even without your webs?" Another nod, this one proud; the spider preens, a gesture that brushes its hand down its front and yeah let's just repress that immediately too it's fine.

"Alright. Stay high, and stay with us. I need to tell the people we're helping not to shoot you."

* * * *

"Say again, relief team?"

"Large -" you look at Sasha, who mouths the answer back to you yet again, "- sexy spider women, also friendlies. Please be advised, and once again, check your fire."

You do not get to hear Nattie's answer to this, because the voice that is yours holds the call for nearly six minutes of straight laughter before you give up and leave the call to continue your march.

* * * *

Arrival (Near 6:34 PM)

Oh this is bad.

Let's break it down. Assets first. Everyone loves assets. IU-SBC is, true to what you heard, a severely renovated castle atop a commanding hill, with one road leading up to the parking areas from the gates and a truly ruinous field of fire. You hear the siege before you see it, mainly because anything stupid enough to leave the cover that the walled gate provides takes a rifle round for its trouble. Additionally, you have your forces, quite a few improvised explosives made from high-proof liquor and bad decisions (note to self, ask the doctor why he knows how to make these, you'd thought for sure it would be Sasha with her, in her words, "bad-girl personality"), and the element of surprise. The intelligence provided by the spider-women (note to self, figure out why they were instantly identified and accepted as women) in the form of their height advantage plus your shocking talent in the language of barbarian pantomime helped you maneuver around the police pickets and get a height advantage, and now all of you are spread out across three nearby roofs looking at the killing ground below.

Most commanders would offer an actual human sacrifice for something this perfect. Unfortunately for you, that's where the good news ends.

Problem number one: the enemy. You had thought perhaps that 'squadcars' was a unit of measurement. It is not. What used to be police cruisers are now amalgamations of flesh, metal, and glass, with stretched human faces in place of their windshields; they pass around a bullhorn intermittently, though each new mouth only repeats the same few phrases. 'COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP', 'STOP IN THE NAME OF THE LAW', and their perennial favorite, 'STOP RESISTING!'. Whenever one of the squadcars takes a bullet, it walks, its wheels stretching obscenely on the ends of multijointed bone legs, to the nearest non-police vehicle and takes a bite from it with the maw of fangs that is its grille, chewing and gnashing and healing itself. Whatever statues were down there are long-since shattered, though every now and again one of the squadcars, its lights and sirens going like all the rest, turning your battlefield into a painful cacophany, stops to lap at the congealing blood that soaks into the asphalt.

It gets worse from there; the 'squad' in 'squadcar' comes in the form of faceless mannequins of flesh and glass that the vehicles extrude from their open doors, jerkily doing the sorts of things one needs thumbs for - prying at the gates, bashing away at the stone wall with the butts of shotguns, wordlessly gesturing up at the college. You're not sure where they're getting their ammunition from, but they're uncanny shots; however they're seeing, and however they're aiming, you hear two cries of pain from the University while you're observing, at a range you know should be impossible for the nine millimeters their pistols look like.

Problem the second: hostages. Or, rather, 'hostage negotiators'; the squadcars have brought in survivors from elsewhere. Maybe they used to work for or with the police, maybe they're just unrelated victims, but there's about nine of them, their clothing torn and filthy, looking terrified out of their minds. Every now and again one of the squadcars will start snarling and biting at one of the hostages, and they'll raise a bullhorn and shakily demand that the 'terrorists' send someone out to negotiate. This soothes the squadcars, but for how long?

Problem the third: as Nattie said, SWAT is inevitable. You may even have to hold this position against them once they arrive in order to get everyone out, assuming an evacuation is even possible. If you don't break this first line quickly and get inside, you'll be faced with enemy reinforcements charging towards Nattie's position. There's a tactical argument to be made for that...

...No. That's a bad thought. And you want to think good thoughts.


There is a butcher's bill to pay. Lose 3.
[ ] The good health of Jill, Sasha, and yourself
[ ] The excellent health of your squad
[ ] Your supply of improvised explosives
[ ] Ammunition
[ ] One Gift (choose: offensive/defensive)
[ ] Any pretense of stealth
[ ] The lives of the hostages