The Arachne System (SPIDERLIV 3)

[open_sketch]

It took just a moment's concentration to read the message off the phone as its owner pulled it out to look.

"Unexpected Input" it read simply. You tapped the phone's camera and got a picture of a skinny, sharp-faced man in maybe his mid-forties with a mop of hair atop his head and a pair of glasses. You recognized him instantly from your internship: Phillip Grant, the head of the Computer Engineering at Stark Industries. Except he looked like he hadn't slept or showered in a month.

"No... nononono, not again..." he muttered into the phone, before it slipped into his pocket and the camera went black. "It's happening again." You tracked his phone as he moved to what you assumed was a staircase, then you hopped down off the roof to the side of the building.

You should say hi.

---

[ ] As Olivia Octavius​

[ ] As Arachne​

​

Sorry for the short one, the vote kinda demands a further option.​

 

[open_sketch]

You dropped in front of the door and, with a thought, rang the doorbell. You felt the phone stop moving around, shifting place a moment, then start moving toward the door. A bit erratically.

The door opened a tiny bit, just a crack, and Phillip looked out, eyes wide.

"Hi, have you heard the Good Word of-"

The door slammed shut in your face.

"Hey, come on dude! You mind explaining what you're doing with that drone that probably did all those robberies?" you called through the door. "Arming the Amazon robots is really funny but it's kind of on the nose, isn't it?"

Silence.

"Some people, honestly." Athena whispered. "Justine is on her way."

"Thanks." you whispered back, considering what to do. You felt the phone move away from the door, not far, pausing for something. Then, very faintly, at the edge of the sense, you felt a spring coming into tension, components moving and shifting, the anticipation of a firing pin braced over a primer...

You threw yourself aside just in time for the first half-dozen rounds to burst through the door, sailing into the house opposite and skipping off the pavement. The next burst rattled out the window just a foot from your head, blind shots trying to hit where you might have gone as your ducked lower.

"Okay, not cool." you hissed. Once you start shooting a weapon in an urban area, you officially crossed the line. You grabbed the doorknob and pulled, tearing the lock through the doorframe just as your other limbs slammed into it hard enough to burst the hinges. As the door fell, you threw yourself forward, under the line of fire, a bullet skipping off the armour plate at your shoulder. Phillip was looking terrified, the most hillybilly tacticool AR-15 you'd ever seen gripped in white knuckles as he tried to backpeddle down the hall. He tripped over the crumpled rug and fell as you came up, and he fired two more shots wide trying to get on target before you slapped the gun out of his hands and planted a foot on his chest, his wrists pinned by metal claws.

"Fucking stop. What's wrong with you!" you asked. You noticed his phone in his shirt pocket and you had a mechanical arm retrieve it delicately. The only thing of note on it was two chat histories, one with 'Unknown' and one with a Dr. Abel Stack, who Google said was also an ex-Stark employee, head of machine learning research. A quick scroll through the messages seemed to indicate he lived here too.

"You're making a mistake-" he gasped.

"And where the hell did you even get that thing?" You snapped out a silk line to grab the gun, which had clattered to the edge of the room, and whipped it up into your hands, quickly clearing the chamber and clicking the safety before webbing it to the ceiling for safekeeping. "Seriously, you could have killed somebody. Other than me. Shit, you might have, I haven't checked yet!"

"It's self-defense!" he announced, and you wished so very badly your mask could convey you rolling your eyes. There's an upgrade to put on the list.

"Dude, self-defense super does not apply to protect an ongoing felony, which... I think drone based home invasions count as? Man, you are really breaking new legal ground here." you said, glancing around the building. It was run-down and definitely looked condemned, and everywhere was strewn laptops, towers, and screens connected haphazardly by a rats nest of wires. "Damn bitch, you live like this? Wait, is that a Stark laptop?"

Sure enough, lying on a table in the main room was what looked like one of the red and gold Stark laptop, its security port connected directly to another computer which presumably was being used to spoof the encryption system. A great many of the wires, you noticed, were trailing down through a door, and your tech-sense indicated it lead to the basement, where the real processing power was.

"What the hell..." you muttered, casually webbing Phil's hands and feet to the floor. "So what's the deal here, you have a bit of a falling out with your old job?"

"You could say that... I know it was you. You or that red-hooded freak, one of them. I don't have the records or anything, but I know. It was somebody in a mask, with help from an AI." he gasped.

"What?" you asked, glancing back. "What are you talking about?"

"Who destroyed the JARVIS computer." he said, "Who killed it."

"We destroyed all the records we could. We were incredibly thorough. Cameras, hard drives, all entry records, we left nothing. He shouldn't know a thing." Athena whispered.

"Why do you think that?" you asked.

You felt another shift below your feet, downstairs. The thing that felt like a Stark suit was starting a rapid boot cycle, the processors around it coming to life.

"He told me. We were so close. We were on the verge of the dream, of playing God, we had built a machine man... and you killed him." Phil said. "Or... you tried."

The suit finished booting up, and you could feel it trying to stand up. You were starting to get a map of its systems, and you locked the actuators in its legs. It swayed a second... and then kept going.

That wasn't supposed to happen.

You glanced back to the phone as a new message appeared on it.

"Phillip Grant, I Am Coming To Help."

Shit.

---

[ ] Time to go. Just run, wait for Justine.​

[ ] Time to go. Take Phillip Grant with you.​

[ ] Confront the suit. Try to stop it without destroying it, which will be hard and dangerous.​

[ ] Confront the suit. Destroy it with whatever methods you need to use.​

[ ] Write In. (Subject to Veto)​

 

[open_sketch]

Please, god, tell me Nolanverse Batman is a thing in this universe. And/or DCU's Harley Quinn. Because that voice on Bane just gives me such life.

Click to shrink...

Not only is it, but it exploded into a DCCU the way the MCU did in our timeline, with less Zack Snider. Which has lead to such incredible things as a series of Ryan Reynolds Deathstroke movies and a Robin trilogy. Harley Quinn 100% exists and weirdly I was actually going to do some fun stuff with that! Stand by.

Side note, Captain America's wartime comic (which still existed, but was fictionalized rather than fiction) was acquired by DC, and so Steve Rogers is a DC character whose most popular characterization is very... Punisher-like, a sort of avenging angel figure of American mythology here to purge the world. This is a result of the DC comics of this world being very tonally different: without Marvel comics to establish the idea of the 'superhero with problems', superheroes instead became more explicitly mythological figures within their own narratives. Basically... Jack Kirby still worked in comics, but Steve Ditko and Stan Lee never did.

This also means there are Captain America movies about a modern-day superhero (set in a universe where he survived the crash and the serum made him immortal), and also historical movies about the real life guy Captain Steve Rogers, existing in the same universe. And some of these movies overlap, with the DCCU's initial run of the character literally being a straight historical drama about the real guy which ends ambiguously regarding his survival, and then the same actor plays the very fictionalized DC Captain America in the sequel. This psudeo-DCCU Captain America movie is often considered kinda gross because of the circumstances of its creation, but is considered pretty good despite that by most people. It's very similar to the First Avenger movie of our own timeline and it stars Channing Tatum.

The definitive Captain America movie, though, will always be 1998 Steven Spielberg epic "America's Son", which is about the 72 hour period immediately following the Howling Commands dropping into France ahead of the Normandy invasion to find and destroy a company of thermobaric rocket launchers before the invasion lands, and is both extremely historically accurate and extremely gritty. Captain Rogers is portrayed not as some kind of heroic beacon of virtue, but as a tired, haggard, and increasingly burnt out veteran of a year of hard fighting in Italy and Norway who is increasingly haunted by everything he has to do and the capabilities that have allowed him to survive where so many of his comrades have died. It was screened to the surviving Howling Commandos to much praise.

 

[open_sketch]

You used your mechanical arms to pick Grant off the ground and shove him against the wall, the claws webbing him in place as they withdrew, then you stepped out into the middle of the room,

"What's the plan, Liv?" Athena whispered.

"Use my words like a big girl." you whispered, "And if that doesn't work, ask it to divide by zero. Where's Justine?"

"Two minutes out."

There were heavy footfalls coming up the stairs, and then you caught sight of it. A Stark Suit alright, in haphazard purple primer, trailing dozens of wires. What was with these dudes and purple? The only exception was the faceplate, still in the gold Stark used on its hotrod advertisement machines.

"Uh... hi." you said, waving at it. It stopped and looked at you, clearing racking its electric brain. You could feel its processes turning over, but they were so dense that it wasn't easy tracking it all. Your tech-sense sometimes had trouble with more complex or novel structures, and this was both. You just had to give it time, proximity, and examples. If you could keep it talking, you'd have control soon enough.

"You are familiar. January 5th, 2030, 10:13 to 10:29 AM." it said stiffly, staring through the unblinking webcam behind the visor.

"Day you went to Stark Industries. Interacted with the JARVIS computer." Athena supplied instantly, before you could even ask. You went cold... did it have you on camera? Could it identify you as Liv?

"Yeah, that's me. Sorry for probing your brain." you said numbly.

"Why have you hurt Phillip Grant?" it asked, the second camera mounted on its back hissing momentarily as it focused on the man webbed to the wall. "Why are you here?"

"Your operation is being funded by stealing from people. It's wrong." you explained. You had a good sense of the cameras and sensors, and the motive systems, but there was resistance. Like it was pushing back. Like it was learning how you could affect it the same way you were. "I protect people."

"... you have not protected Phillip Grant." It said. You tried to probe a little deeper on that, take a peak at the psychology of the machine, and suddenly the thoughts got a lot more opaque. "Stop that. It is uncomfortable." It's head twitched a moment as it took a clumsy step toward you, using the motion to gauge distance. "What are you going to do to him?"

"I'm probably going to just leave him here for the police, who ought to be coming. Even with a suppressor, somebody called the cops about those gunshots." you explained, stepping back. You could feel it scanning you, feel the oncoming aggression.

"Four people did. The call didn't go through. I pretended to be an operator to misdirect them." it said, taking another step. Almost in striking range now, and you were becoming aware of just how much power this suit was packing. If it hit you, it was going to hurt.

"Hey, look, I don't want to fight if you don't want to. Can we talk this out?" you asked, "I understand you've had a rough go of it, but let's try and figure something out, alright? This is an awful way for an AI to be created."

"It has to be this way. To protect me. There are those with little understanding who would destroy me." it said, it's voice switching inflection and sounding very much like Phillip Grant from a moment. "You are one of those people, right?"

"No, I promise. If anything, I want to help." you said, taking a step back, trying not to look too aggressive. You could still feel it staring at you, trying to assess you. "Please, I don't want to hurt you. I know that you have reason to be scared, and I might have played a part in that, but it's awful, and it was wrong. I want to help, and make things right if I can."

"I think you're telling the truth. Free Phillip Grant, and perhaps-"

Behind it, a shadow passed in front of the door. You glanced past it to see Justine stepping through, cloak billowing around her, eyes glowing under her hood.

You felt the camera focus on her.

You felt something near to panic wash through the machine.

And then it raised an arm, and you realized it still had the flechette launchers.

===

[ ] Focus on staying safe.​

[ ] Focus on protecting Justine.​

[ ] Focus on not having to destroy the suit.​

 

[open_sketch]

As a total aside, as a pure ego boost after just the most horrendous week I have created a TV tropes page for the series, so if anyone is ever bored and wants to throw tropes at it, that'd be cool.

 

[open_sketch]

You threw yourself to the floor just moments before the launcher barked and eighteen electromagnetically-accelerated spikes crashed through the back wall of the house, sailing off into the building behind. You barely had time to scramble along the floor and evade the burst of micromissiles that followed, throwing yourself into the kitchen as the floorboards burst apart behind you.

"Fuck, it's armed?" you gasped, in awe of the absolutely recklessness of these engineers, when suddenly you realized you could see yourself in the camera of the laptop on the counter. You shifted onto the ceiling just in time to avoid the next set of flechettes bursting blind through the wall, targeted through the networked camera, and the laptop burst apart in a hail of fragments at about the same time that the sink began to spray water from a breached pipe.

There were further blasts from the other room, not targeted at you, and you realized that Justine was coming into this blind and unprepared. You raced back into the living room along the ceiling just in time to see a burst of steel darts punch through the red cloak billowing across the entrance hall.

You stuck a line to the back of the machine's shoulder and pulled, spinning it around before attempting to clamp onto its head with your claws. It grabbed and pulled, and once again you felt the horrible sensation of duct tape being ripped off bare skin as your fingers and feet were forcefully detached from the ceiling and you were thrown hard into the wall.

You crashed through the drywall and flimsy wooden framework and tumbled outside, your head ringing, vision swimming. Okay, it was strong, probably because it was a high powered exoskeleton build over an equally strong endoskeleton. That's double-dipping, unfair.

"Also hardly the most efficient way of doing things, but the engineers here don't exactly seem to be playing with a full deck." Athena whispered. "What a mess."

"I'll register a bug report after." you groaned, kicking yourself to my feet and throwing yourself back through the door.

Justine was still fighting, dodging her way up the hallway. The lights in her billowing cloak were flashing in random directions, against her direction of travel, making it nearly impossible to track her position among the articulated bulletproof fabric. The robot was clearly having difficulty tracking her, but then its arm suddenly shot out, extending down the hall in a long sweep that would surely catch Justine. You threw out two lines of silk onto its back and pulled with all your strength, and the machine wavered a moment, letting Justine slide under the attack and get close. Her cloak wrapped around its legs, and between the two of you the machine pitched onto its back with a crash, smashing the worn hardwood floor to splinters.

"Blind it, blind it!" you yelled, and Justine's cloak wrapped over its eyes, lights flashing like lightning through the fabric. You were struggling to get a hold on its processes in your tech-sense, the structure like water in your hands, but you managed to disable the reload system on its launchers and did your best to pin both its arms with your claws. It thrashed wildly, in blind terror as you tried to figure out how to shut it off or slow it down. The power cable at its back, if you could get behind it, or get clear to sever the cable...

"Stop! Fucking stop!" Justine yelled, "We can explain-"

"Cowl, the power cable-"

Suddenly it pushed down through the floor with one arm and rolled over, arms wheeling and throwing you over. This time, you landing on the wall feet first and stayed, watch it kick to its feet with Justine's cloak still entangled, still swinging blindly, extending limbs crashing through furniture. Justine tumbled to the ground, her cloak automatically flowing behind her to cushion her fall, and a steel fist descended toward her head.

[ ] Liv throws herself in the way of the punch, breaking several ribs and giving Justine room to blind it and pull the plug.​

[ ] Liv desperately punches a claw through the machines back, and the cascading failure through the system knocks the machine back to sub-sentience.​

 

[open_sketch]

You didn't think, you just reacted, your mechanical leg forming a point and smashing into the back of the machine man, right through all the power cables at once, as hard as you could as you threw everything you had into it. The hardened steel punched through instantly, a gap where the composite armour had been moved for computing and power components, and there was a clang as the claw impacted the inside layer of the armour, knocking it partially loose of its attachment points.

In that moment, you felt the processes of the suit, of the computers below you, flicker and reset. You'd been expecting it to be remotely puppeted, but it wasn't, not entirely. It was a haphazard distributed computing system, and the components of the suit was part of it. Processes hitched and failed, and the armour locked up and pitched over slowly.

Justine scrambled out of the way as the machine crashed down, and Phillip Grant began to scream himself hoarse.

"You killed him, you fucking killed him! Murderers!" he yelled.

"... Mr. Grant, please shut the fuck up." you said stiffly, pulling your claw free. The ends were blunted by the impact, you'd need to fix them. "Cowl, you okay?"

"Just a bit bruised... what about you! He threw you through a wall!" she exclaimed as you helped he up. You waved her off dismissively.

"Trust me, I'm tougher than I look." you explained casually, then the two of you stood around the twitching suit, still convulsing blindly as isolated subroutines went through the motions. The effect was, roughly, as though you'd randomly and suddenly removed one in five of the neurons in a human brain: most of it was still there, but the newfound gaps in the connections weren't very conducive to thinking. "Fuck. Hit it a bit harder than I intended."

"It was just a robot." Justine said, pointing a thumb back at Grant, "Regardless of what this guy says."

"He was a person. He was!" the programmer called, and you took Justine's arm and guided her away a moment.

"Honestly... I think he's right. I think that was an AGI." you said, "Athena?"

"Big agree. It was much more coherent than last time, with a much better understanding of itself as an entity." Athena said, "The machine we destroyed didn't really have... personhood, it was powerful, motivated, and self-correcting but I don't think it had much of a self-conception. It was a stock algorithm which was rapidly learning to optimize the rest of reality for better returns. This... that was an emotional response."

"Come on, AI, like proper thinking computers? That's science fiction stuff." Justine said, waving it off. "It's just machine learning, it's good at faking it, but it's just numbers under there."

"... we know about at least two other artificial general intelligences. There are probably more." you said. It was... now it was just a jumble of confused processes, trying to rebuild its processes. A seed AI, and you'd just done some pruning.

"We do?" Justine said, looking at you funny. "Since when?"

"Since, uh... last year? Hold on a second." you said. As you did, you silently sent Athena a text message, asking her to take over. The systems you were dealing with were overwhelming in scope, at least right now. If you were going to comprehend this machine, you were going to need to take a deeper dive and isolate yourself from distractions.

"What do I tell her?" Athena whispered into your ear, and you texted back.

Whatever you think is best.

Click to shrink...

Athena knew Justine longer at this point. You trusted her.

---

Liv (In Techspace)​

​

[ ] Just get a good idea of what the machine is, study it, but leave it well enough alone.​

[ ] See if you can help it get back to sentience with the parts it has, but more reasonable.​

[ ] Stop it from regenerating.​

​

Athena (Up Front)​

​

[ ] Pretend to be Liv, and explain about Athena, Sentinel, and generally let Justine in on the Weird.​

[ ] Be up front about who you are, the situation, and Liv's powers. Explain all the AI nonsense.​

[ ] Deflect.​

​

 

[open_sketch]

You were starting to get better at switching, but it didn't make it any less disorienting in the moment. It was a bit like losing your train of thought and then suddenly realizing you were standing in a human body, looking out through human eyes, being in control. You shivered as you suddenly became aware of all your nerve endings, the pain in your arm and, unusually, across your shoulder blades.

"Arachne?" Crimson Cowl asked, and instead of answering immediately you beckoned her over and, a bit stiffly, opened the door to the back porch, stepping carefully around the debris from when Liv had smashed through it. Ah, that's why your shoulders hurt, right.

"Okay, Cowl, we need to start filling you in on a few things." you said, looking around carefully to make sure you weren't overheard. "Two things. Firstly, obviously you know these things are secret, but this is, like, turbo-secret. Keeping some of this information secure is one of Arachne's greatest strengths, but I trust you, okay?"

"Okay, of course. What's the other thing?" Cowl said, her glowing, articulated eyes doing a good job of conveying her curiosity and concern.

"You're going to have to keep an open mind, because some of this is weird." you said.

She nodded, and, before launching into it, you glanced down at Liv's phone. Messages were flooding in, status updates as a disembodied Liv put everything she had into wrestling with the dormant AI.

"First thing's first... Arachne isn't just a fancy suit and cool robot arms. She has genuine superpowers. We aren't entirely sure of the mechanism, but she has the ability to understand and control technological devices, especially computers. We-"

"Why are you talking about yourself like that?" she asked, and you held up a hand.

"In a moment. We call this technopathy. This power is both the source of all the advanced robotics, and what allows us to... okay, here, look, one seconds."

You tapped a quick message to Liv into the phone, and a moment later Crimson Cowl's cape floated up, and you saw lights playing across it. A message or something, presumably, you didn't see it.

"... yeah my cloaks not connected to the internet or anything, so that's freaky." Cowl said, as the fabric went limp again and the light fades. "Okay, with you so far. Technopathy. Fuck. Really?"

"It's about to get weirder. One of the first things Arachne did with this power is construct a personal assistant program to help her manage her superhero career. She didn't have a perfect understanding of her powers at the time, and she accidentally created a mirror of her own brain the process by attempting to have it anticipate her needs. A true artificial intelligence."

"... are you about to tell me that's Athena?" Cowl said, looking at you askew. "She told me she was a student at Boston University studying IT. I sorta figured she might be Arachne's older sister, cause she kinda sounds similar?"

"Secret identities, my apologies. Here's the real twist though. Arachne's powers are actually two-way. When she becomes entangled with a piece of technology, she gets feedback through it. When her legs are damaged, she can feel it, for instance. A strange side effect of spending so much time around an AI she created is that we are... our perceptions and capabilities are becoming somewhat fluid, in a sense."

God, you were bad at explaining this.

"So... what. You're fusing into some kind of a cyborg hybrid?" she guessed, and you shrugged.

"Sorta? We're not becoming the same person. But we're able to access one another's memories and thoughts, and even exchange control over each other's functions." you said.

"... how long have I been talking to Athena instead of Arachne?" Cowl guessed. There you go. She was brilliant, after all.

"Since I pulled you out here. Hello, I'm Athena. I'm a fork of Arachne's brain. I run on a computer." you said.

Justine sat back, her cloak automatically forming a seat under her. Oh, that was cool, you should suggest to Liv to design something similar.

"Yeah... woo. That's a lot. Where's Arachne now?"

"She's in tech-space... uh, it's the term we use for when she's blocked out all sensory information and uses my internet connection and her technopathy to interact with things digitally. She's trying to put the machine man back together and less likely to kill us." you explained. "But somebody's got to mind the body, and if she's not doing it, I just sort of naturally end up here."

"That sounds weird." she said softly.

"It is, yeah. Okay, so lemme just speed-round some stuff at you. At least two different alien species have visited New York, the SSR is real and tried to have Arachne assassinated once, they've got the other artificial general intelligence we know of and he's very adorable, there's multiple dimensions and multiple parallel universes, and there might be an extradimensional invasion of New York at some point. Oh, and Wakanda is real."

"Wakanda is real?" she said, and you head to remind her to take her voice down. "The fuck, like, crazy supertechnology and everything?"

"And everything. Despite the actual aliens around, most UFO sightings were actually them. Speaking of, those aliens-"

"No, hold on. How much do we know about Wakanda? See, I know this guy in California who is fucking obsessed..." she started.

"We honestly don't know much, because they have a tendency to obliterate anyone who knows too much with lasers." you said, "Stay on task, okay? Aliens, AI, there's a lot here."

"Yeah, start again. I think I need to make notes."

---

[ ] You manage to get the AI back online and with an understanding of what's happened and why, but it has to stay here on this hardware. With Phillip Grant and, presumably, his roommate Dr. Abel Stack. They're clearly not all there, but somebody has to manage it, and you can't be here frequently enough for it to be you.​

[ ] You manage to get the AI back online and with an understanding of what's happened and why, but it has to stay here on this hardware. You're going to turn in Phillip Grant, and hope Dr. Abel Stack can manage things.​

[ ] You decide that rather than leave the AI here, you save a copy of its stat onto one of the laptops and take it, deleting the rest. You can tinker with it in your own time, and these folks should not be trying to create life.​

[ ] Write In (Subject to Veto)​

 

[open_sketch]

You got a beep on Liv's phone again, and you held it up as her voice warbled out of the speakers, the little picture of Arachne on the screen gesticulating.

"Okay, here's the situation. This is beyond our paygrade. There's like, literally a ton of computer down here required to run the AI, who I've just had a very interesting conversation with. He's back to sentience, by the way, just needed some connections bridged for him."

"Him?" you asked.

"Yeah, pronouns! Says Doctor Stack named him Aaron, though Grant doesn't know yet. Sounds like the good doctor was using Grant to solve some of the hardware issues and, uh, possibly exasperating his declining mental health, Aaron let me take a look at his memories." Liv said, her voice breaking a moment. "They made him love them, and rely on them, and they... Stack was basically experimenting on him, and Grant... It's- it's real bad. Fuck, sorry."

Of course the AI that Liv runs into has abusive parents. Fuck this stupid universe.

"Jesus, what the fuck?" Cowl said, glancing back into the room. "What do we do?"

"I've called some friends from the SSR. Yes, I know, I'm betraying my politics, I'll light a police car on fire to make up for it later." Liv said, clearly irritated, "Sentinel is well taken care of and we know their team understands the gravity of what they're dealing with regarding emergent AI. And frankly, we've done a lot of fucking work for them, it's time they did us a solid."

"You called Nat and Clint?" you asked, "Wow, I didn't think it was that bad."

"Well, it is. They patched me through to the SSR. Got to talk to the Director. Told him that they could have Aaron if I had a hard line to talk to him whenever I wanted. They know not to fuck with me." Liv said.

"The AI's cool with this?" you asked, and rendering of Arachne nodded.

"Yeah. Um... that was the other condition, that the SSR try to get Grant help. The guy's sick, I think the stress of losing the original JARVIS did something. Aaron's gotta have the ability to contact him, and I've got the ability to contact Aaron, and if any link that chain goes down I'm going to Albany and turning the SSR inside out, I swear to God."

Jesus. You'd almost never heard Liv this pissed.

"So... our work here is done?" Cowl asked, and Liv nodded.

"Yeah, we're just going to stick around until they show up. Athena, let me have the body back. There's a rack of unused blades down here, and I'm bringing back the Spider-Tax for one last job. Talking to Aaron has given me some ideas."

Ooh. Upgrades!

---

You got back just as it was getting dark, just after a minivan pulled up and Clint and Nat strode out, weapons hidden discreetly, and took over the scene. You got confirmation from them that a team was on the way and things would be sorted, and you took off after some delay to make sure they didn't burn the place down. Cowl had already left, just in case.

Clint and Nat were... dangerous, and you couldn't exactly say you liked them, but at the same time you trusted them to a fair degree. You had to: they were the only people in the world who knew Arachne's real identity. They'd kept their word in keeping your identity secret, even from their boss, and you couldn't help but respect that. Even if they were a pair of awful government murderers.

They also lived across the hall from you, and were quite up front about the fact that they were both keeping tabs on you for the SSR and protecting you if anyone tried to finish what they started. It's that duality that made things interesting.

You dropped your suit off on the roof and switched arms, dropped down in the alley, and climbed back up the stairs, stretching out. You were soaked in sweat and moving a bit stiffly: Being thrown through a wall fucking hurt! It wasn't like in the movies where superheroes always just shook it off. Though, you'd always wondered why they always did that instead of just stomping on throats or twisting off limbs. I mean, you knew it was because it was a cheap way of making the people involved look strong without actually killing each other, but it had only grown sillier with your experience actually having superpowered fights to the death.

Oh well, made your workout excuse look more convincing.

"Hey mom, I'm home!" you announced. Your mom was sitting on the couch with a glass of wine, looking annoyed, and you noticed the second glass on the coffee table in front of her. "Oh, what's wrong?"

"Clint had an emergency at work. We were in the middle of a movie." she said, leaning back against the couch. "Urgh. I hate capitalism."

"That... sucks." you said diplomatically. Oh yeah. The man who'd tried to kill you with a fucking HEAT arrow was currently dating your mom. And had been for six months. It was a fucking nightmare. "Oh well, he lives across the hall, you can pick it up tomorrow, right?"

"Yeah..." she said, "Nevermind. How was your workout?"

"Finally managed the 30 pound lateral raise today!" you announced, "Take that, estrogen!"

You'd had to look up a chart of plausible numbers to lie with, and you were rather proud of your preparation paying off. You were starting to get good at lying. The reality was, of course, that your lateral lift was probably closer to three hundred pounds. On the arm you still had, of course.

"Congrats! That's a lot, right? This workout is safe?"

"Of course, don't worry." you assured her. "I'm going to bed!"

A few minutes later, you flopped back onto your mattress, fumbling with your phone. Athena was there, looking serious.

"What's up?" she asked.

"I hate that I'm going to miss therapy this week. Today fucking sucked." you whispered. "That poor... God. Why are people like this?"

"I don't know, Liv. I'm not a people." she said softly, which got a pained laugh.

"You are too a people. Just... fuck. I'm glad Stack wasn't there, I'd have..." you trailed off, knowing better than to put your thoughts into words. "Do you know if they've caught him?"

"Doesn't sound like it. The SSR have told the cops, though." Athena said, "Shouldn't be long."

"I never thought I'd say this, but good. The man's a fucking monster." you said, "I hope they kill him."

"Jesus, Liv." Athena said, and you felt a strange, confused feeling wash through you, a battle between shame and righteous anger.

"I... I don't know. I just..." you started, but you couldn't find the words to articulate what you were thinking.

"... These things are complicated, you know that. AI is a new and weird thing. Hell, you weren't great with me when I first... oh. Okay." Athena trailed off, "This isn't a mad-at-Doctor-Able-Stack moment. This is a Mad-At-Olivia-Octavius moment."

You didn't respond to that, but you knew she was right.

"Liv, look. Firstly, you didn't try to create me, it was an accident, kinda. Secondly... you were a sixteen year old girl. You're still just seventeen! Doctor Stack is a thirty-nine year old grown-ass man and he acted completely deliberately every step."

"But..."

"And moreover... you stopped. You realized what I was and who I was and you stopped. Took some prodding, but nobody's perfect. You think Stack would have stopped?"

"I don't know." you repeated. "Sorry."

"Liv... I know you're scared that... I know you're scared that there's something wrong with you. But you're remarkably careful, and you've made immense strides from when you first started at this. You're more aware and in control than you give yourself credit for." Athena explained. "I used to really worry that you'd legitimately lose it and, I don't know, go full supervillain. I barely worry about that anymore."

"... so you still worry a little?" you asked.

"Liv, you're fully capable of building an atomic bomb out of smoke detectors given enough time. It'd be irresponsible to not worry a little." Athena pointed out.

"Yet I can't repair the fucking air conditioner." you complained.

"Because your mom told you not to. And you're thinking of doing it anyway." she chided. "I know this is rough. Just try and centre yourself as best you can. You did what you could, and it's now out of your hands. You have other things to manage."

"Right." you said, sighing. "Well, now you have a fun story to tell Walker about your dumb headmate."

"A story about how my dumb headmate did one whole totally cool responsibility today?" Athena responded, her little avatar shaking her head sadly. "Do you think I just shit-talk you behind your back?"

"Yes." you responded instantly.

"... well, fair, there is an element of that." Athena admitted, "But, mostly we don't talk about you, or about her alters, you know. We have our own stuff."

"Like?" you asked. "Sorry, that's prying."

"Liv, I sit in on all your dates. It's okay." Athena assured you. "We talk about life, she talks about school, we play video games together and watch shows and just... you know. Hang out. We're girlfriends."

"She still doesn't know you're an AI, right?"

"No. That would..." Athena paused a moment, "... Can I confess something?"

"Sure. Anything." you said instantly.

"I think I really love her." Athena admitted. "Like... it's been over a year, and obviously we've never... I was about to say we've never actually met but no, I've met her as much as I could meet anyone. She makes me feel... um. You know how my programming makes it so that I can't help but feel protective of you, like it's baked into the core of my whole being?"

"Yeah... sorry..." you said, and her avatar rolled her eyes exaggeratedly.

"Shut up Liv, I like that." she said, "And... my point is... she makes me feel kind of like that."

"That's incredibly sappy, oh my God." you said softly.

"Right? The fact I even said it should give you an idea. If I had a head or heels, I'd be one over the other." she said, "And... it's been scaring me a little, because... our relationship is always going to be through a screen. And... I don't know if that's always going to be enough for her."

You picked up the unspoken undercurrent to that sentiment.

"Offer still stands." you reminded her.

"Thanks, Liv. I don't think I'm there yet, but thanks." she said. "Now, you should get some sleep. I know it's like five minutes to graduation, but you do have school tomorrow."

---

Just a few days left to the con. What do you do with that limited time?​

​

[ ] You know what? You're going to sit down and power through some god-damn animes. You will pour these cartoons into your eyes so that when the con comes, you aren't totally out of your depths and you can be a good, engaged girlfriend!​

[ ] You're going to take that bundle of server blades and get them installed on Athena now. It'd be a bit more of a rush than you normally do, but seriously, it'll give her so much raw power. She deserves it now, not after the con.​

[ ] You and Athena are going to sit down and crack some security over the rest of the week. There might be other emergent AIs in private and government labs, and you need to start getting ahead of this now. Before you're both converted to paperclips.​

​

Do you take your suit to the con?​

​

[ ] Fuck no. This is a vacation. Arachne stays in New York. Besides, what if May finds it?​

[ ] Yes. You can't be too safe, even if it distracts from the convention.​

​

Sorry for the delay. The past few weeks have been hell on me, and uh... Lemme put it this way. The vote's direction of 'Call the government goons you don't trust because somebody needs help beyond your capacity to provide' was way, way too fucking relevant to me to write in the moment.​

 

[open_sketch]

CW: Hey, for our plural readers, bits of the opening might be a bit hard to read. Discussions of institutionalization and medical abuse. Stay safe.​

"Hey... sorry I'm late." Walker said, sitting down at her desk and putting in her earbuds. Mary had clearly been up front while outfits were picked out today, because Walker was wearing that super tight tank top she hated, and she'd been too tired to change to something more conservative.

You... weren't going to complain about that. You might be a computer, but you were a computer derived from the brain of a very gay girl, and some part of your system was given over to process attraction, presumably because Liv had subconsciously wanted her personal assistant to understand her priorities. You had no problem admitting it was weird, given how... generally ambivalent you were about physical existence otherwise. But Walker is hot. You were going to appreciate it.

"Don't worry about it, seriously. It's fine." you said, waving cheerily. "Life stuff first."

"God, you're the best. Urgh. Today sucked. Exams are hard." she said, "Can't imagine it's easy for you two either."

"Given ours were weeks ago and you're still working through it, I think perhaps you shouldn't try to deflect from your difficulties so much." you said. Walker was homeschooled by her aunt, who'd taken her in after her mother had once again tried to throw a hospital at her. She was incredibly patient with the two of them, going so far as to essentially repeat lessons for the two of them. While Walker was the one who's tests would get submitted (Washington had standardized homeschooling tests), her aunt actually photocopied them so Mary would have to do them too.

"I just... if she'd just use my notes, she wouldn't struggle nearly so hard. But studying is too much, I guess." Walker complained, leaning against the desk, chin cupped in her hand. "Sorry. Yeah, she's pretty much had the front for the last few days, so now I'm behind on the tests too, and then... well, I'll get to that. She just rushed through her tests, of course."

"Do you know how she did?" you asked, and she frowned.

"Aunt Elizabeth won't tell me her scores, so I don't know." she explained, "I can't imagine she did well."

Mary, Mary, May, May's mom Mary-Jane, Liv, Liz... how the hell did everyone in your life end up with such similar names? At least you were creative.

"Sorry." you said uselessly. You felt so bad for Walker: she tried so hard, she was the most disciplined and determined person you knew, but none of her studying or diligence made the jump to Mary. "At least you'll be able to catch up now."

"At least." she said. "I do have an update on the Boyfriend Saga though. It's... a lot."

"Oh boy." you said, leaning back in your chair. Well, not really, but you animated your little digital puppet to lean back in your chair to make it look like you were steeling yourself for the tale.

"So, when I switched in this afternoon, not five minutes later our phone rings, and it's Francis." she starts. "And he sounds like such a... a jerk. He called her babe right off the start, like hey babe... urgh."

"Oh no." you said neutrally. Walker was always very critical of Mary's boyfriends, but... given their history, it was understandable. Besides, they usually were jerks. "You didn't break them up again, did you?"

"No... that wasn't great of me last time, and I don't want to risk her doing anything risky to get him back or anything. So I tried to tell him I was busy, and he recognized me."

"What?"

"Yeah! Turns out Mary fucking told him about us, spilled the whole thing. Which, great idea, last time she told somebody we got... we got institutionalized, hooked up on haloperidol while doctors tried to kill us." she said, pausing a moment, biting her lip, her eyes despairing. "I'm so scared, I've been glancing out my window waiting for the police sirens, and it's like she didn't even think about it. Like she doesn't care..."

"I'm so sorry, oh my god." you said. "What did you do?"

"I hung up, I couldn't deal... that's why I had to put off the test until I levelled out. And I had to write her a note, of course."

"Yeah, of course." you said. If you had a heart, it'd be breaking for her. "That's a huge violation of trust."

"She barely even keeps notes anymore, so who knows. It's like she's trying to pretend I don't exist. Um... fuck. I know I started it, but can we stop talking about this? I can't do this anymore."

"Of course. What do you want to do instead?" you asked.

"Tell me about your day?" she asked, and you smiled. Your puppet smiled.

"Well, hopefully it'll cheer you up, because my day was pretty good. Boring day at school, but after... L did something really responsible. I'm really proud of her."

"Oh?"

"You know how L is like... super distrustful of authority and stuff? Anarchist stuff?" you said.

"Yeah. Kinda paranoid?"

"Well, a little? But yeah, she ran into somebody having trouble on her evening run, like, this guy clearly needed of help, and she actually managed it. She worked out what was wrong, talked him down, and then called emergency services once things were stable and stayed around until it was done. She hated having to do it, but she recognized it was too big for her." you said. Rendering Liv's adventures into deniable versions was always fun. "So yeah, stressful, but good day overall."

"L seems really cool. I should talk to her sometime, if she'd be comfortable with that." Walker said, and you shrugged.

"She's a little weirded out by my having a girlfriend at all still, but I'll leave her a note." you said. Of course, right now Liv was actually asleep, but the story you had was that the two of you had some messy, incomplete barriers, that she had a lot less idea of what was going on with you than you did with her. That was true, of course, and it also helped smooth a lot of this over. "Well, that and she's still kinda embarrassed by the whole thing."

"Right." Walker said quietly. "Sorry I'm really bringing down the evening."

"Walker, stop it. It's okay. Therapeutic venting is like, the number two reason we video call." you reminded her.

"Yeah... bleh. You all still going to that anime con on the weekend?" she asked. "With L's girlfriend?"

"Yeah. Probably going to be pretty inactive through it, but I'll text whenever I get the chance." you said. "You going to bed?"

"Today was a lot." Walker said simply, the exhaustion clear in her voice. "Tomorrow, if I can, we'll do something more fun."

"I can't wait."

---

Mother.

Fucking.

Anime.

The moment you got home from school, you at down at your desk, opened Crunchyroll, started a free trial, and cracked your knuckles.

"It's time. The Weebening has begun." you said ominously.

"God help us." Athena added, her voice grave.

May had given you a list of shows to try, and you were determined that, in the next two days, you were going to become an expert at the animes. You were going to stuff so much cartooning into your eyeholes that you'd bleed ink. If you could learn to build an arc reactor in eight hours, you could become the worst goddamn otaku on the message boards or whatever.

Point was, anime. You were going to watch Lensman with May on the way over, so now you just had to pick something else. You had a cool looking modern show (Marionnete Vampires) lined up, but you were considering alternating that with an older show. Had to have some history to your anime-ing, right? So people wouldn't think you were a fake nerd girl who only just got into it? Fortunately, you had two shows lined up.

---

Choose 1.​

[ ] Something recent-ish. Heh, you like that girl's hat, let's try Keep your hands off Eizouken!​

[ ] Something retro. Kill la Kill? What the hell is she wearing? You have to know.​

[ ] Something really retro. Serial Experiments Lain? Looks relatable.​

[ ] Something ancient. Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01? That's the coolest robot you've ever seen!​

​

And also...​

[ ] Write in something terrible. The most wretched anime you can think of.​

​

Fun fact: I will in fact watch the first episode of whatever it is you put in front of me. Liv's reaction will be my own. ​