"We aren't doing this tonight, we were planning on coming back." Liv explained, her voice quieting a moment. "But... it'd be nice to have you help us plan it. And... I'd love to get some help with the costume sometimes?"
What?
Fuck, you should have seen this coming. You'd thought Liv understood the security concerns, she took it all so very seriously, she'd had first-hand experience with what would happen if her identity leaked, if her plans leaked. You thought she was smarter than this.
But of course not. She was a still a human teenager and still infatuated with this girl and she was absolutely going to make decisions like this. Stupid, suicidal decisions like this.
"Athena, come on. It's not that bad." Liv chided, her voice even.
"Three can keep a secret
if two are dead."
you muttered back, feeling... oh.
Oh that was weird. You were mad, you were rightfully mad, and you felt it. Not felt it the way your emotions were simulated, felt it, physically, the stress of it, the heat of it. Liv's muscles tensing, her heart rate spiking. Was she mad?
"Athena, please." she said. Voice even. Calm. Cool. Rational.
This... this shouldn't happen. Your brain was a computer. Your brain was a computer and Liv's was in this body. Right?
Right?
---
Switching in this time was
unpleasant. The tension going out of your muscles all at once, feeling a little out of breath, like you'd just been in a fight. Not physically, fine physically, but emotionally. That... that was messed up.
May was looking at you, concern on her face, and you leaned in and kissed her cheek.
"... Liv?" she asked.
"Yep. Sorry. Bit of a... we're still figuring out the whole mind-machine interface thing." you said. Okay, that was a bit of an understatement and you
should be more honest, but you weren't actually sure what was going on anyway, and she had more than enough to worry about. "We're okay."
"
Liv, after this, we need to have a talk about you springing shit like this on me." Athena muttered. "
Oh... right. Forgot you had an earbud still, sorry..."
"It's okay." May muttered, "Wanna go talk about it?"
You slipped out of the panel room and found a nice quiet corner, pulled up your phones, and the three of you had a silent conversation. Athena was upset, you could tell she was, and she laid out why, including most pressingly that May had absolutely no
reason to be in on this other than the fact she was your girlfriend. From the relationship side, it made sense, but from the Arachne side, it was
insane.
Both you and May sent reminders about ableist language within moments of each other.
Still, she had a good point, but May was quick to point out she could be useful. She was a skilled tailor and costume maker at this point, and could help make and maintain costumes. She could be boots on the ground in an emergency, somebody who could show up
in person to sway people. She was plausible deniability: she could easily cover for Liv and misdirect questions about timing or whereabouts. And most importantly, when you were down and out, she could be there for you, and know
why.
You added that just the fact she could add +200% hands to the workshop when building stuff would be enormously useful. Clamping
everything before you could work on it was a pain in the fucking ass.
Then Athena asked a hell of a question, one that gave you pause.
"
Can I tell my girlfriend?"
... you definitely
thought no, but you typed yes, and you knew that Athena would see the contradiction. And your subsequent anxiety about it.
"
... I'm not actually going to tell her." Athena said, "
There's no reason to and it's even less sensible. I'm not sure how I feel about your answer, but that's on me for asking. And, again, really it's nothing against you as a person, May, you're wonderful and I rank you fairly highly on trusted actors. However, I'm also a clone of a brain that had a huge crush on you, so I sometimes worry I might be biased."
May replied with a little heart.
"
Okay. What's done is done in any case, and I'll admit the extra hands around the workshop is a convincing argument. But let it be known that I'm not entirely happy, and further let it be known that I possess the capabilities to completely ruin your life if you betray Liv's trust, understand?"
"I won't!" May said beside you, the words bursting out vocally despite the text medium, and you leaned your head on her shoulder as a sign of support. Well, you tried to, you were taller enough than her that it was really awkward and eventually you gave up.
"
Trust is a lot easier with a backup plan." Athena said simply. "
... I'm sorry if I've freaked you out with this, though. Protecting Liv is my entire purpose for being, and this is like... giant alarm bells threat to her, but I really don't want this... I'd rather this didn't..."
"Is this a thing where you also want to protect her relationship because that would put her at risk too so you're trying to be nice even though you're still angry?" May asked at a whisper, text apparently being too slow to relay the thought.
"
... yes."
"Okay. I understand. Protecting Liv is pretty high priority for me too, you know." she said, "Though like... not the same way, obviously."
"You're adapting to this remarkably well." you pointed out, and she leaned against your shoulder, which worked in this configuration a lot better.
"I've got my freaking out done with and now I'm trying to just like... you know. Figure out thing." she said, "Do an understand. And also, all of this is incredibly cool and I'm super here for it. Wait, do you-"
She stopped herself, picked up her phone, and typed furiously.
iChat
from May My Girlfriend!!!!, June 29th 2030
Do you have a sidekick?
15:05:21 29/06/30
"No? Well... wait..."
"I
am not your sidekick." Athena said sternly, then her voice broke into a laugh. "
I am so your sidekick, who am I kidding?"
"You're
way better than Robin, though." you pointed out.
"
Obviously."
---
The dreaded conversation was put off one more night, thank
God, because you spent the whole evening in your hotel room discussing Superhero Stuff instead. May used the term
superfriends.
You and Athena both protested, and this just seemed to harden her resolve.
Still, there were plans! Things you could do now. For one thing,
so much more tech, holy crap. May could buy things for you if buying them in combination would be too suspicious and she actually knew how to, you know, measure the human body if you wanted to build new suit elements or whatever. You spent a lot of the time giving her a rundown on how your legs worked currently, including showing her the power source, and
that got her attention.
"Wait, question. Why can't you build more arc reactors?" she asked. "That would be like... world-changing. World
saving."
"... we don't have the materials. There's only a few facilities in the world that can make non-baryonic matter, uh... CERN's large hadron collider, obviously, SuperKEKB in Japan after last year's upgrades..."
"
The Circular Electron Positron Collider in Qinhuangdao, China." Athena added.
"Yeah! Oh, and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven,
maybe." you said.
"Like, Long Island Brookhaven?" May asked, "That's right next door!"
"Yeah, I know. There's a catch though, we don't actually know if it can do it. It's really small and has, like, less than a tenth the beam energy. Believe me, we thought about it."
"
The only reason its relevant is that we know Stark Industries rented time with it a few years ago. We don't know if that was successful for them or not." Athena said. "
Normally we'd disregard it, but the facility has been substantially upgraded and may be capable of things we aren't aware of."
"Also, it's really hard to just break into a place and be like, hey, is it cool if we just borrow your particle smasher for a bit?" you said. "Like, that's the whole problem. We could publish the plans for the micro-arc reactor tomorrow on the internet, but nobody can build it yet except a handful of governments, and I'm
about seventy-five percent certain they'll figure out how to use it to make antimatter."
"You can make antimatter with it?" May asked.
"I mean... yes and no." you said, "As in, no, but if I've done some math right, yes, in quantities that are not world-ending but are definitely New York-unpleasanting. In any case, I really don't want to experimentally confirm a whole bunch of gamma rays into me and break my only arc reactor in the process."
"
But seeing as you need at least 300 billion electrovolts of beam power on the low end out of your accelerator to make the needed materials, and you need to run it a while under very specific settings with specific equipment, this isn't a DYI project."
"... so no chance of us building more on our own, huh?" she said, and you laughed.
"On our budget? Hell no. We need, like, 200 megawatts of power for starters. And a few kilometres worth of accelerator. We've done the math, you can't built a particle collider that good in our room." you said.
"
Well, we could, but we'd need vibranium or a similar room-temperature superconductor." Athena added, "
But those don't grow on trees."
"Vibranium? Like Steve Roger's shield?" May asked. You could tell she was barely following.
"That's the stuff. If we had vibranium we could do it in a CRT monitor." you joked.
"... why can't you get vibranium?" May asked.
"
Laser poisoning." Athena replied. "
Wakanda has claimed all the vibranium on Earth, and they have satellites that could probably spot us walking around with it. They would come and shoot us with lasers. To death."
"Wakanda is real by the way." you added.
"Yeah, you told me." she said, "What about that, uh, what'd you call him? The Darkhawk armour?"
"
Oh, Metal Flappy Bird?"
"Yeah. Would it have a superconductor?" she asked.
"... shit. Maybe?" you said. You'd... honestly basically forgotten you had that thing. Every time you thought about probing its various mysteries it just seemed too large and daunting and exhausting when there was work with immediate returns, but...
"
Something to check when we get home."
"Yes! I'm useful!" May pumped an arm in victory. "Now I'm the sidekick. And I'm dressed for the job!"
You looked at her a bit funny, and she swept a hand over her costume.
"I'm a computer, just like Athena!"
"
You realize that is incredibly offensive, right?" Athena said. May's face fell into a look of absolute horror for
just a moment. "
Nah I'm fucking with you. That's hilarious."
"Mean!"
---
... then... things got a little weird.
You were winding down for the night, phones set down, conversation over, just the two of you sitting close together. May leaned over to kiss you, and stopped.
"Are you Liv right now?" she asked.
"Yeah." you confirmed. You were always Liv, but like... in this case 'you' is just whoever is, you know. Up front.
"... okay." she said, and didn't move for a second.
"May?"
"Feels weird." she muttered, dropping back onto her pillow. "Sorry."
"You don't have to apologize for anything." you said, settling in. "And yeah, uh. A lot of weird the last few days."
May yawned, nodded, and pulled herself a little closer, studying you.
"It sort of feels like you're a whole different person." she said, "I know I kinda said that but... I wasn't expecting to take this trip with you. I had a totally different Liv in my head."
"What was she like?" you asked.
"... really brave, strong, determined. Cool. Smart as hell. Nice to me."
"And I'm not that?" you asked, knowing the moment you said it it was the wrong thing to say.
"I... well. You are. But it's different, knowing you're all... you know. Superpowered." she said, "Like... no. Nevermind."
"No, I get it." you said, "It's like... I'm not a track star, I've just got super muscles. I'm not smart, I've just got some weird thing in my brain. I'm not brave, I'm just invincible."
"I didn't mean it that-"
"Hey, it's okay. I've been, like..." you paused a second, "It freaks me out sometimes when I think about it, because like... you know something funny? I got bit
the exact day I started HRT. Like, the whole reason I did was because I was late from the appointment and got lost at NYU when we were touring, remember? So it kinda feels like... whoever the hell Otto was, forever ago, he's dead, and Olivia's... like a space alien who's just nothing like him."
"You were always smart." May said, "I remember that much."
"Yeah, but I was..." you stopped a second. "God, I was
mean. I was shit. I hung out with shit friends, Eddie and Curt and Max and fucking
Mac, Jesus I can't believe I was friends with him...
"You were in ninth grade." she reminded you.
"I just... like... sometimes I think about who I'd have been if I... if I hadn't been bit. All I can see is a sad, resentful asshole pissed that people can't see how smart he is, taking it out on the world. I feel like I was
this close to being one of those incels who shoots up a school, but instead I got superpowers by some luck of the draw. I'm not a good person, it's just easy."
"Liv... that's stupid. Yes, I know, but it is!" she said, "It's not easy, you lost a fucking
arm, Liv!"
"... no, what I mean is-"
"Look, If you were actually a bad person, you'd... you'd be Lex Luthor! You'd be a supervillain!" she said, "You could do supervillaining! Make an antimatter bomb and hold New York hostage!"
"... I think about that a lot." you confessed, "Like, um, part of it is just, like, from an anarchist-y angle, kinda... illegalism, it'd be cool to sorta... like, play that part... but another part is just really
wanting to do that sort of thing. Stop trying to
help as everything goes to shit and start fucking
imposing."
"Yeah. But you don't." May said.
"Yeah." you said, "Sometimes I worry if that's wrong, though, like... if I have a duty to do that if I can? Should I be like... a vanguard superherovillain? Fuck, I should actually get around to reading Lenin."
"If you are thinking about reading some dead commie to convince yourself to become a supervillain, actually don't do that." May said. "But, like... if you were a bad person with powers, you wouldn't spend all your time trying to help people, no matter how easy helping is! And like... it's not like
bad person is stamped on your soul or whatever, so like... even if all that is true, if you would have been that person, you aren't them
now. Okay?"
You nodded.
"...And, uh, I shouldn't have said that stuff that way earlier. It was really cruel." she said.
"I shouldn't have... taken it that way." you said stiffly. "Sorry."
"Well.. I found one more useful thing I can do." she said.
"If it's 'stop me from doing supervillaining', that's already Athena's job and she does it a lot." you said. She wrapped her arms around you, pulling herself
very close, and you sort of froze up in half-excitement, half-terror.
"No." she whispered, "Remind you that you aren't one."
---
Athena, you have had a rough day. You are absolutely sure that Liv's chances of being exposed, and subsequently dying from any manner of mechanisms and actors, have shot up several orders of magnitude. The secrets she uses to keep her safe are unravelling very quickly. She'll probably tell her mom next. Reveal her identity to Justine. What she's doing isn't safe.
You're doing your best to be calm, to trust Liv with this one, but it's hard. It's so hard. And as she sleeps, all you can do is think the same thought over and over.
You exist to protect her, and you're failing.
What do you do?
[ ] Complain to your girlfriend, tell her everything. Nothing else you can do. It's yet another secuirty hole, but you can't protect her if you're freaking out.
[ ] Contact Loki. You have their phone number. Maybe they can help. Not sure how, you have no idea what they'll do, but if anyone can solve this...
[ ] You're going to need to double down on digital security and prediction. Which means you need more computing power. You'll have to... borrow... some...
What could go wrong?
