Athena.exe Today at 07:33
sure, just for u
this is super top secret of course
she got the robot arms i mentioned, shes almost done those
another new prosthetic because of course
and shes rented this plasma cutter for some absurd new thing
its like metal oragami its totally buckwild
Walker Zero Today at 06:52
god i wish i shared a brain with somebody half as cool
more robots
less terrible boyfriends
---
Let's start from the beginning, one last time.
Your name is Olivia Octavius. For two and a half-ish agonizing more months, you are a 17 year old transgender girl from New York City. The year is 2030, the date is June 2nd, and you're doing your absolute level best to live at your girlfriend's house right now. See, the air condition at your place broke, because
of course it did, and this was basically not a tolerable situation when the temperature was doing its damnedest to get about 90 every day. You couldn't even
imagine what July and August was going to be like if this was
early June.
But May's place had central air and the best air conditioner of all time, and while it wasn't why she was the Greatest Human, it was ranking pretty high right now.
"Holy shit, you see this thing from London?" she asked, holding her phone up so you could see. You were sprawled out on the couch where all your hangouts seemed to spend most of their time, owing to the fact she had fancy little lap tables so you could do homework together, her video game systems were right there, and also when her parents weren't around (which was often) it was a good excuse to cuddle up to one another.
Mostly that last one.
Really almost entirely that last one.
On the screen was a short video of a person wearing what kind of looked like a CQC Ltd soft exoskeleton, like the sort British Army soldiers used, except it was still in tan primer and had some red plates crudely attached. The reason it was notable was because it was footage from one of the omnipresent riots in London, and the wearer threw a punch into the riot shields that blew the wielder and most of his cop friends off the feet with a flash that definitely looked like electricity. The line broke down, and the protesters swarmed them, pulling equipment from their hands and chasing the cops down the street as the kettle broke down and people escaped.
"Holy shit." you said, "I'm guessing its some kind of contact plasma generator, like those fucked up riot cannons." you said. You'd seen them used on TV all the time growing up, but usually they were bigger and bulkier, vehicle mounted: they fired a blast of searing hot air that dispersed so fast that it wouldn't burn anyone (so they say... burns of varying degrees were common among protesters these days) but would expand suddenly with a thunderclap, knocking people flat with the shockwave. A concussion grenade with no risk of shrapnel. It was cool to see the tech hacked and turned around.
"Guess London was feeling left out on the superhero thing. Just like Crimson Cowl." May said. "That's so neat."
"It's dangerous is what. I hope they get out okay." you said.
"Yeah... you ever wonder what happened with Arachne?" May asked, "She was really cool. I feel like she disappeared at some point."
Oh jeez.
"Did she? I guess, yeah." you replied, doing your best to sound disinterested. You had no idea if you were a good liar or not and this was not a great place to have to find out.
"Yeah... it sort of feels like she dropped off the radar at the same time the Crimson Cowl started doing stuff. I hope she's alright." May said wistfully.
"She's probably fine." you said, trying not to panic, "I bet she just dropped the identity. Too much heat because of the CIA thing, you know?"
"Oh! Maybe she
is the Crimson Cowl? Have they ever been seen together?" May speculated, poking at her phone again. Through your tech sense, you followed her search engine request bouncing through the internet, and raced ahead to check. No... you were in the clear... "Huh... yeah, that's probably it. Neat as heck."
"As heck. Hey, weren't we supposed to be doing homework?" you asked, desperate to change the topic. May made a face of utter disgust.
"I
guess. I don't understand why. It's not like any of this matters right now. T-minus 15 days to graduation. I don't even know why they're still assigning us stuff." she complained, "Especially
math stuff."
You glanced over at the problems in her textbook. Just running your eyes over the polynomial equations, you could see the graphs she was supposed to plot unfold in your mind, the detailed filled in instantly by whatever force of infinite computing power lurked behind your eyes. Sure, you could do it yourself, but you didn't even have to think about it, it wasn't
your brain doing the work. It'd be spooky if it wasn't so useful.
"Want me to show you a trick?" you asked, and she gave you a very funny look.
"What are you proposing, Olivia?" she asked, a quality to her voice that made you shiver a title. You'd watched enough movies with her to recognize
femme fatale voice.
"To... uh... make it easier to... solve... this..." you said awkwardly, "So we can do other stuff."
"... Other stuff?" she responded in the same voice. Aaaaaaaah!
"Video games?" you proposed.
"... Video games?" she said, the voice holding only momentarily, then she started laughing, "Sounds good. What's the trick?"
Your artificial arm snapped into shape to grip her tablet in its silicon fingers, then shot back, pulling it into your hand. Explaining was like putting your brain on autopilot, like connecting the pipe of Mysterious Math Juice to your mouth and letting it run while your conscious mind wandered. It was getting... more than a little hard to ignore that May was trying to escalate things in your relationship, like... physically? She'd had six months to process the hurt of her last relationship and reevaluate her opinion, but you?
Holy shit you were not ready for that. Oh my
God no. The very idea turned your veins to fucking
ice.
Cuddling was fine. Great! Wonderful. Also, making out, that was good, you liked that bit. But the idea of anything more than that was... well, dysphoria was the
fucking worst, and it made what ought to be an excited idea into something you absolutely dreaded. Two weeks ago, after Prom, you'd ended up by total happenstance in a room together at an unsupervised house party, and you'd never felt so much like you'd dodged a bullet in your
life when she said she was on her period and you played video games instead. And you'd actually dodged bullets for real!
(This had also begun the unbelievably funny running gag in your texts that "reenacting prom night" was code for "playing smash brothers").
"That actually sounds harder." May said.
"It's... it shouldn't be?" you said, frowning. She pushed her tablet away and leaned back against the sofa, groaning until it became a comedic gurgle and she flopped over onto your shoulder.
"Dead from math. Let's play something." she said, and a few minutes later you were setting up for more
Play God. She was starting to get startlingly good at it, and watching her interstellar civilizations grow was the highlight of your visits. Her current, almost unbelievably adorable gecko-people were rapidly spreading through the local spiral arm, and had encountered some less cute neighboring civilizations, pulled from some other player's game. The miniature simulated galaxy wasn't big enough for the two of them, and you knew May's opinion on what qualities were most important for the survival of the species.
You were watching the glowing afterimage of an adorable tiny nuclear purge when she leaned against you and poked your thigh.
"So what's your weird robot stuff today, huh? You've been really secretive." she asked.
"It's, uh... just some experiments." you said. She laughed.
"You gonna show me? I love your robots." she asked.
"Maybe? I'm not sure. We'll see it if works." you responded cagily.
By experiments, you meant it was the new Arachne suit. You'd went back to the drawing board to take full advantage of your miniaturized arc reactor and the new technology you had access to or had invented since. The limbs were now articulated by coiled steel artificial muscle, making them stronger than ever, and you'd added an extra joint, from three to four, which would make movement smoother and more flexible than ever. All the joints were now capable of independent rotation as well, whereas previously rotation was limited to the base and the ends. Atop that, the clawed ends were packed with every technological doodad you could come up with an afford on the budget TrackMerge and your new app (another music one, which would dynamically remix songs into the style of another artist using uploaded samples). There was a taser, most of a toolbox, your webshooters, cameras for looking around corners, smoke generators, a pneumatic launcher that could fire anything that would fit in the end of the claw, and a blinding strobe light inspired by the Crimson Cowl's gear. You could even take it off, lay it down somewhere, and activate a 3d printer function which could fabricate (slightly less robust) replacement parts.
This was attached to a new suit that you'd cut together out of some cheap military surplus armour plating you'd maybe bought from a very shady man over the internet who was almost
certainly in the Russian mob. The stuff was almost unbelievably tough, so much so you'd had to rent workshop space to use a plasma torch to cut it (and even then it wasn't easy), but you'd built yourself some armoured protection. It wasn't full coverage, you were hardly a Stark Suit, but under your hood was a sturdy helmet and upper faceplate, and you had plates covering your vital organs and major arteries, plus your wrists so you could easily block things. It felt badass, yet with all the improvements you'd made to the harness the entire thing actually weighed less total than your previous rig.
(You'd also shaped the chest to imply assets you really didn't have, which also felt pretty fucking rad.)
The best part, though, was that you'd very carefully laid it all out so it'd fold up small. So small it'd fit in a regular school backpack, rather than the giant surplus military one you'd had to use previously. So small you could take it with you on trips and not stand out. That had been the original impetus behind the extra leg joints, and as you refined the design you kept finding more and more ways to compress it. It'd basically become a small rectangle of steel and tough plastic after you took it off.
Today, though, today was the final component. You were building yourself a new prosthetic arm. Not because the one you had wasn't good enough, you
loved your weird slinky hand, but Arachne wasn't supposed to be disabled, and your old plastic arm was a liability in combat. You were putting the last of your electric muscle fiber and military plate to work creating a new arm. It'd not be precise, but it'd be fast, nearly as strong as your natural one, and extremely tough. Plus, it would move naturally enough to fool people.
"I still think you should have finished that cute little robot dog." May said, pouting a bit. You reached over to pat her head with your prosthetic, which you loved to do (and she loved to pretend to hate, given her hair would cling to the silicon).
"If this stuff doesn't work, I probably will." you said, "Why are your geckos making so much antimatter?"
"... you'll see." May said ominously.
---
Alas, you did have to leave to finish your roboting, and you did so with promises to hang out at school tomorrow and maybe this time listen to May's fashion advice (which you'd do if her advice wasn't always trying to steer you out of your various oversized garments). You made it home with a spring in your step, slightly dampened by the ache in your arm that returned with a vengeance on the train ride home (and the fact you passed what a quick check of the police scanners indicated was a double homocide just a block away from your house), ate a quarter of a cookie (now partially paid for with Medicare subsidies!), and got to work.
Arachne was coming back to the streets of New York City.
===
What's Liv's plan for Arachne's return?
[ ] So... there was a warehouse in Bensonhurst that was being used to move illegal weapons into New York, including stripping smart guns of their restrictive software. Police are either ignorant, corrupt, or don't want to tangle with it. Justine has wanted to do something about it for a while, but she hasn't had the capacity alone. But with you helping...
[ ] Honestly, a low key return is best. Just go out on a patrol like you use to, say hi to people, help out where you can, and be a friendly neighbourhood spider-lady. Won't be dramatic, but it might be kinda nice.
[ ] You were going to lay low until the next big out of the blue threat emerges. Justine and Athena had a weird punch up in an alley a few months back with a guy who claimed to be a Dark Elf, and had the speed and strength to back it up. Like Loki said, something was drawing all kinds of interstellar nonsense to New York City. It was only a matter of time.
