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The Arachne System (SPIDERLIV 3)

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Barondoctor said:
Besides, the last time they tried to bag us we handled their two top agents.

Their best play is to make themselves our friends.
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And this time you have even more of an advantage!

Because you have one less arm.

Which means less arms for knives to be stabbed.

Into your arm.
 
Vebyast said:
Well, for one, it's not "I made it". It's "I made her".
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I very much agree.

[X] "Well when a Mommy AI and a Daddy AI love each other very much they take their 1s and 0s and..."
[X] "She contacted me on my Tinder app and we just hit it off from the very start."
[X] "Something something else flippant"
[X] "My dead grandma is not an it you ass! Turns out? Ghosts, spirits, souls or whatever you call them are real. She liked studying computers when she was alive and her passion allows her to possess machinery and software. Allowing easy access to computers and running my gear."
 
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What's actually going to happen with Liv's detached arm: It's going to be fixed up and attached to a robot body because it turns out that Liv's genes allow people to control the robot it's attached to telepathically but it starts developing sentience and breaks out to reunite with Liv and they decide to recombine into a single whole Liv with two arms but it ends up integrated into Liv's system so her head now has Liv, Athena, Goo Fren, and Liv's Arm. </comic plots>
 
10ebbor10 said:
It's a subreddit dedicated to memes about political compasses. Last time I checked, it was rubbish.

Like any place that allows people to LARP as Nazis, it contains a disquieting amount of nazis.
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The typical issue for internet spaces, you either don't tolerate Nazi's or you are overwhelmed by them.
PCM isn't so bad that its likely to get banned yet, but I think its showing the sorts of signs that its getting worse.
 
10ebbor10 said:
It's a subreddit dedicated to memes about political compasses. Last time I checked, it was rubbish.

Like any place that allows people to LARP as Nazis, it contains a disquieting amount of nazis.
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gross
Dark as Silver said:
Nah, you aren't getting out of this that easily, you have been exposed as a purveyor of the subreddit r/PoliticalCompassMemes
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I basically only use reddit to look at rimworld mods lol
 
[X] Inkbones

Because I like that 'hey you know we can help you if you ever need us to bail you out somehow' take. Not quite what Nat was expecting, I think. It'd be a neat twist to their relationship.
 
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Black Widows
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    • This is a bit of a complex update. CW: transphobia, allusions to sexual assault, its icky.​

    "Liv, don't tell her the whole truth, but don't lie entirely. She'll see through it," Athena whispered into your ear.

    "I made her. The AI I mean. By accident," you explained. She looked you over critically, and you wondered if she had some kind of lie detection going on. You used to pretty reliably be able to tell when people were lying through your danger sense, but it was one of those things that had slipped after you lost your arm. Talking to doctors muddled it up, given how often they spoke in half-truths, and you'd stopped trying to use it. Too many false positives.

    "AI isn't something that happens by accident. This isn't the movies, kid, takes more than getting struck by lightning."

    In your ear, Athena giggled.

    "... is that a reference?" you asked.

    "Johnny 5. Movie from the 80s. Urgh, okay, let me make this easier. Liv, patch me into the car sound system."

    You did, and dashboard screen suddenly lit up, showing a dark room with Athena in her black version of the Arachne suit, poised regally.

    "There are two of you?!?"

    "Hello, Natasha Romanov," she said, and despite the mask, and the fact it was all an illusory render, you could tell she was grinning. "She's telling the truth. The details of my creation are not something we would like shared, but she did, in fact, create me."

    "Huh," she said, looking back and forth between the two of you. "Alright. Not the answer I was expecting. Sort of figured there was a brains-and-brawn situation going on here. So did you design your cybernetics too, or did the AI help?"

    "She thinks you're cybernetically enhanced and that's why you're as strong as you are. Roll with it," Athena said. You know, with her feeding you answers like this, maybe Nat's assessment really wasn't that far off.

    "Joint effort. Bit hard to do surgery on yourself," you said quietly. God, you were hungry. How long did pizza take to happen?

    "It is. I'm guessing you stepped things up since you fought the Red Skull. Still, it's impressive. Can't help but wonder how you're paying for it," she mused. "But I won't pry. Best not to piss off the unshackled AI. Wouldn't want to you eternally torture my mental duplicate or whatever you get up to."

    "Is that also a reference? Why do you have so many references?" the symbiote asked. There was a short pause and vague mental discomfort. "... my people rely heavily on duplication. This basilisk could be a real threat."

    "So, I get a question now?" you asked, and she shrugged.

    "If you want," she said casually.

    "Why did you think I was from where you were from?" you asked. She took a deep breath, and you could feel through your tech-sense all the very-much-not biological parts involved. The mechanical diaphragm, the churning of her artificial heart, the steel framework holding her lung tissue together.

    "Wasn't always an SSR agent, and the SSR wasn't always the only agency on Earth managing the supernatural. Soviets had one too," she said, talking about it as though it were common knowledge. "They captured the lion's share of Hydra's technology after the war, including the alien artifacts much of the technology was sourced from. They set about trying to come up with peaceful uses for it all, but then the Cold War happened and there were more pressing concerns."

    You wondered, for a moment, how her body handled that much replacement. There had been enormous strides in anti-rejection technology in the past decade, fueled by the never-ending wars and the increasing age of the monied classes. Transplants were given CRISPR treatments to make them closer match the host, implants coated in self-perpetuating protein mats your body recognized as part of itself. But on a scale like this...

    "There was a lot of interesting things the Red Army got their hands on, but one of the biggest was captured late in the war. They overran a camp where Hydra was doing medical experimentation, and one of the samples they took was promising. They called it a virus at the time, though now we'd recognize it as nanotechnology. They'd tested it before the end of the war: it allowed easy interfacing with simple electrically powered limbs and organs, filling in the gaps of the technology at the time. They were going to reveal it to the world, but..."

    "But Stalin," you summarized, and she frowned.

    "But Truman. The Cold War meant it was now a secret weapon. First in the event of nuclear war, then for espionage. It fell under the MVD as the highest of state secrets, then the KGB. Come the 1960s, they were using it to make assassins."

    "Okay, I see why you thought I might be one of them," you said, and she grimaced.

    "Well, few problems with that. First is that most of them are dead, second is that as best we know, no new ones have been created since the the late 70s. Their sample of the T-O Virus degraded over time. Third-"

    "Wait, how old are you?" Athena asked.

    "I don't know," she confessed. "They did things to my memories, I have a lot of missing time. The people who created us envisioned... disruption on a worldwide scale, the destruction of capitalist nations, assassinating fascist leaders with ease. They picked women to do it, one of their early test subjects was a Red Army nurse who got blown up. They said it was because women made better assassins, though I'm starting to favour the belief that the men in charge of the program liked having women who couldn't say no."

    "... I'm sorry," you muttered. She shrugged.

    "As I said. Don't remember much. Pizza."

    You glanced out the window just in time to see the pizza guy knock on it, and you rolled the window down, grabbed the box, and tore into it. Fuck, you were hungry.

    "Sorry, um, you were saying?" Athena asked, gesturing with a slice. She smiled and reached for one.

    "So yeah, instead of any of that high-minded shit we just got used for internal affairs. Arranging the occasional accident. Party politics," she said, taking a bite. She interacted with it like she'd never eaten pizza before. "Mmhm. Alright. So, yeah, next thing I know, no more Soviet Union. I'm killing mobsters for other mobsters. Thing was, they were sloppy, idiots. Didn't believe in anything. Careless. The exact kind of corrupt assholes who got in after Stalin and ruined it. It says something that the SSR was a step up from them."

    You were starting to suspect that maybe Nat wouldn't take kindly to you trying to argue that Stalin and his cronies weren't exactly not corrupt and ruining it.

    "How'd that happen?" you asked, and she waved a hand.

    "One question. Story for another time, kid. But to answer your question from before, I thought you were one of ours because they're the only people who had access to that kind of cybernetics. And I figured you weren't, because they don't typically work with boys."

    "... I'm not a boy," you said sternly. She seemed utterly indifferent.

    "Of course not. This is America. You're whatever you say you are," she said dismissively. "Just remember. Everywhere else in the world, being a woman is something you only earn with pain."

    "Liv, I'm taking the front." Athena insisted, and you let her, because otherwise, somebody was going to die.

    ---

    "I'll take that under advisement," you said, looking away. Focusing on the pizza. Pizza good, almost good enough to make you forget how Cool Cyborg Lady was apparently a fucking terf. "I'm sorry you went through all that."

    "That's what they told me, anyway," she said, tapping the wheel. "So, what's the deal with the Life Foundation? What's going on in there?"

    "Yeah. It's-" you paused, suddenly feeling rather disoriented. You could feel the symbiote seizing on it, on the fact you weren't nearly so accustomed to taking and keeping the front, and Liv's voice echoed a warning to him in your ear, that she still had control of the Pain Device. "Something hacked my implants. Fucked up. Never had that happen before. My AI is helping work out the bugs..."

    "Look, goo dude, I am really in the mood to hurt somebody and you are rapidly finding your way to the top of my fucking list," Liv snarled, and the symbiote laughed.

    "You'll let your guard down eventually..."

    "Try me, bitch."

    ".... Sorry about hitting you," you said. Nat shrugged, like it was below consideration.

    "Barely even felt it. Let's get out of the city. Clint's got a date to make," Nat said, punching a new destination into the GPS. The car began rolling, and you numbly stuffed another bite of pizza into your mouth.

    "Is Clint dating, um, my mom as weird for you as it is for me?" you asked.

    "Honestly, a little. He's a terrible spy," she said absently. "But he's just about the only good man I think I've ever met."

    "He's killed like six hundred people," you pointed out. You heard the symbiote perk up at that, clearly impressed.

    "Yeah, he's good at his job. But he's the only person I've ever felt safe around," she said. "Though in your defense, I wouldn't trust any man dating my mother anyway."

    "How many people have we killed?"

    "Depends on your definition of 'we', 'people' and 'killed'," Liv responded.

    "... if such distinctions are important, you have not killed enough."

    ----

    Liv's got investigations to do when she gets home into this symbiote business. But she also needs to show the flag at some life stuff. What has she got?​
    [ ] Liv also has a date she has to make. May's going to have to be debriefed.​
    [ ] Justine asked for help with some unrelated superhero stuff. Time to suit up!​
    [ ] Nothing. She's just going to hang out at home and watch Star Trek with her mom.​
    ​
    this is basically choosing what hilarious scene of shenanigans you wanna see the symbiote mess up for her.​
     
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    • [X] Justine asked for help with some unrelated superhero stuff. Time to suit up!

    We haven't hung out with Justine in a while, it'll be good to check in
     
    [X] Justine asked for help with some unrelated superhero stuff. Time to suit up!

    It'll be good to see Justine again!
     
    [X] Justine asked for help with some unrelated superhero stuff. Time to suit up!

    We should totally tell her before hand that we're currently fighting a possession and to please be vigilant that we don't let our guard down.

    Superhero life be wild.
     
    open_sketch said:
    "Is that also a reference? Why do you have so many references?" the symbiote asked. There was a short pause and vague mental discomfort. "... my people rely heavily on duplication. This basilisk could be a real threat."
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    God tell me the symbiotes don't do rationalism things :V

    open_sketch said:
    "One question. Story for another time, kid. But to answer your question from before, I thought you were one of ours because they're the only people who had access to that kind of cybernetics. And I figured you weren't, because they don't typically work with boys."

    "... I'm not a boy," you said sternly. She seemed utterly indifferent.

    "Of course not. This is America. You're whatever you say you are," she said dismissively. "Just remember. Everywhere else in the world, being a woman is something you only earn with pain."
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    ...oh. Negative a lot of points from her for this.

    open_sketch said:
    "How many people have we killed?"

    "Depends on your definition of 'we', 'people' and 'killed'," Liv responded.

    "... if such distinctions are important, you have not killed enough."
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    I actually think it's pretty impressive how low the body count has been so far! Not like we couldn't have voted to let loose at a few points too, but we've been consistent.

    [X] Liv also has a date she has to make. May's going to have to be debriefed.

    I think May should know about our new goo friend.
     
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