2018-10-14-A Sticky Encounter
| Roleplay Log | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | A Sticky Encounter | Date | October 14, 2018 |
| Location | New York | ||
- Cindy.jpeg
- Alyx01jpeg
Cindy has been having a day. Or two. Mostly she's absolutely thrilled to be out! And a little hyper because of it, though she feels....well, out of time. It's been 9 years. Everything's...different. But she's trying to adapt! And the internet is....well okay, the internet is still REALLY scary if you wander around but she's sort of getting a hang of some things that have happened. And are reeeeeal careful what you type in the search bar.
But the thing she's almost immediately wanted to do is to see her family again. So she's asked Anya to go with her to find them. Because she's a little afraid they might be in trouble once the people who had her realize she's gotten out of the bunker and that she went willingly. "See, that's our building up there!" Cindy says, practically bouncing on her toes as they draw close, as if she wants to break into a run. "They'll be so worried if those jerks told them I was gone...and they're gonna be majorly PO'd that they got tricked into letting them lock me up."
Staying at Anya's grandmother's apartment in East Harlem (referred to still as Spanish Harlem by the non-gentrifiers) has likely been an experience in and of itself. As it turns out, Anya and her grandmother aren't the only ones who live there. An uncle and two cousins also share the four bedroom apartment. The two cousins are teenage boys, and they're forced to share one of the bedrooms, which means there's constant noise in the form of music, banging, and shouting. The uncle may have something of a minor drinking problem - not a violent man, but he lives on disability and pretty much has a permanent spot on the couch and a steady inflow of tequila.
Anya's grandmother, a woman everyone simply refers to as 'Abuela', is a true blue naturalized Mexican-American. The uncle, the cousins, Portuguese, related to Anya's late father.
As for Cindy's visit, it's consisted primarily of a small handful of things. Star Wars Episodes VII, VIII and Rogue One; a catch up on some music and pop culture developments, and a tour of social media ventures ranging from Instagram to Spotify and Snapchat. However, soon enough Anya got the idea that she wasn't gonna be able to keep Cindy there much longer. It took some convincing, but... now, here we are.
Cold weather has finally gripped New York. Anya is bundled up in combat boots, black tights (totally her Spider-Girl uniform, really), black denim shorts, and a grey hoodie beneath a black leather studded jacket, concealing the SLAYER shirt under it all. She's got a dark green beanie on her head, black lipstick and matching dark green eyeshadow for the occasion. And, of course, the ever present patched up backpack.
"Do you have any idea -what- they told them?" asks Anya, who looks up at the apartment with an expression of worry. "I mean... what if they freak and call the cops, Cindy?"
When the two arrive on the right floor, they'd find the hallway pretty empty except for one standard-issue teenager waiting for someone. Hoodie with earbuds leading into the pocket, check. Ripped skinny jeans, check. Chunky boots, check. Blue eyes stand out in her otherwise standard asian features, and two locks of hair framing her face are just visible inside the shadow of the hood. She gives the pair an acknowledging nod, before going back to looking at nothing in particular.
Anya is good at webbing up new sets of close. As it turns out, Cindy is REALLY good at webbing up a new set of clothes. So she's in comfy leggings and a long striped shirt that hangs down to just above her knees, and matching black slippers. Though she totally borrowed a coat from Anya, because coats are hard. "They'e not gonna call the cops, they're my /family/." Cindy insists, looking back at Anya. "Yours wouldn't if you were in trouble, right?" She frowns. "And they might be in danger because of me too, what if they send someone looking for me at their apartment or something?"
Anya looks over toward Cindy with worry. "I dunno. I'm getting real paranoid these days." She strides forward, moving toward the apartment building. "Not sure that's a bad thing," she mutters under her breath, before reaching into her jacket pocket and producing her little Spider-Girl drone, Arana. Newly repaired with a brand new LED light. "Arana, vigilancia." The little drone chirps, sprouts its wings, and takes flight, entering surveillance mode around the apartment building.
As they walk down the hall, Anya casts a look toward the teenage girl. Ripped jeans, always a sign of approval, and it prompts Anya to give the teenager a quick upnod.
Alyx returns the nod, giving Anya a brief smile, before looking back down at her phone again. The muffled tinny music abruptly cuts out, replaced with the theme song for that one really good Superwoman cartoon from a couple years ago. She perks up, quickly answering the phone. "Hello? ... Where the heck are you? ... You said to meet you at your place, and you aren't even home yet? ... Come on, their pizza can't be /that/ good that it's worth walking a mile and a half in the cold."
Cindy isn't USUALLY rude. But there's something about the place that feels....off. She down't know what, but it makes her move a little bit faster down the hall, the vague sense of unease only fueled by Anya's worries. "There, it's right here, see?" She pauses in front of a door and knocks! And all three girls can hear someone moving around inside as Cindy visibly perks up, grinning big, bouncing on her toes a little. It's been YEARS since she's seen her parents, and her brother! She wonders if they'll even recognize her anymore...
As they walk down the hall, Anya's forehead creases. She's distracted, and almost keeps walking when Cindy stops at the apartment door. "Huh? Oh. Damn." She turns back around and walks up, forcing a smile on her face while clearing her throat. Then, she's looking down at the floor again, taking a step back away from Cindy, and listening to what's going on down the hall. She turns her head just a pit, peering beneath painted eyelashes toward the teenager in the hoodie. Then, her eyes are turning back toward Cindy's shoes, but this time they are dashing back and forth. Clearly, someone's gears are spinning... and someone's pores are starting to sweat. She looks up at the door, the worry clear on her face, but she just can't yet bring herself to speak up.
"Oh come on, Bertucci's is /way/ better than Antonio's!" Ah, New Yorkers debating pizza. Truly, a city pastime. Seemingly oblivious to the goings on, Alyx turns and starts to pace back and forth along about a ten foot stretch of hall. "Bitch please!"
The door opens as CIndy's lips part eagerly, then halts as an older black man looks out, a ruffled beard on his cheeks and a very bald head above. Looks to be in his late fifties.
Also, definitely not Korean.
He raises his brows. "Yes?" he rumbles, friendly enough. Cindy ums, her feet resting flat again a she hesistates. "I'm....I'm looking for the Moon family? They live here...or...they lived....her?" the Korean girl stammers a bit. The stranger raises his brows. "Ain't no one livin' here by that name, hon. I bin here three years. Don't know anythin' about the famly that used to live here. Sure you got the right place?"
Cindy's fingers curl at her sides. "I...yes. Yes, I'm absolutely sure this is the place. Three....three years? Did they leave a forwarding address, or....?" The man shakes his head. "Sorry hon, can't help ya there. Maybe the super would know, or the rental office. If you can get 'em to pick up the goddamn phone." He huffs. "Damn answering service picks up practically anything, I bet they don't even check it. I got a pipe in my wall that's bin leaking nigh on nine MONTHS now, and they still ain't fixed it."
That energy just seems to flow out of Cindy a bit. "I..o-okay...thank you." she says after a moment to get herself together, as the man nods. "Sure thing, hon. Good luck findin' 'em." And he closes the door again.
The moment the door closes, Anya walks up and puts a hand on Cindy's shoulder. "We gotta go," she whispers, with a sense of urgency in her tone. "Now." Her hand squeezes the girl's shoulder, both to encourage, and also hopefully to startle her out of whatever emotions she might be feeling right now.
Anya turns, only this time she isn't turning toward the elevator. That would put them crossing paths once more with Alyx. Instead, she turns Cindy straight toward the stairwell, the one with a big red EXIT sign above it. Looks like they're taking the stairs. As she goes, Anya walks over toward a fire alarm panel affixed to the wall, and pulls it.
Nothing happens. No alarm, no sprinkler system.
"Typical," she mutters. "Fucking slumlords."
"Yeah, see you soon." Alyx hangs up just in time to catch the tail end of the conversation. "Hey, you guys looking for the Moons? I think they moved out like... six years ago. I've got a friend who lives on this floor, pretty much lived here when I was twelve." She offers a friendly smile, although Anya pulling the fire alarm gets a /really/ confused look.
Cindy is...numb. Looking a bit in shock now as it sinks in. Her family isn't HERE. She doesn't know where they are. They've been gone for years. Where...WHY would they go? Did something happen to them? Are they SAFE?!? She doesn't know! And it's freaking her out a bit.
Thus, she isn't really resisting as she's pulled along, though the attempt to pull the fire alarm snaps her out of it a little bit. "That's been broken since I lived here..." she offers, her brow furrowing. "What...what are you doing?" And she's starting to pay a bit more attention to her Silksense, turning her head slightly as she starts to look for what would make Anya pull it. Or try to.
Words flash like images through Anya's mind. <Growth accelerated by a factor of six.> 12 months divided by 6 equals 2, yielding two months to grow a person one year in age. A twelve year old person, reaching that age in two years. <Invoked Memory Stimulation used to implant background life and improve psychological development.> Another memory, of her laptop at home, processing the decryption of the next segment of data, a video file, which was 98% complete when she and Cindy left her grandmother's apartment to come here.
"Six years?" Anya looks over her shoulder, flashing Alyx a big smile. "Thanks for the tip, but we're good!" She turns back to Cindy while raising her hoodie up over her head, and gives her recently rescued friend a warning look. "Don't," she says quietly, then pushes the stairwell door open and nods for Cindy to go on in.
"You're welcome!” Another cheery wave from Alyx, and then the stairwell door is closed again. The other two out of sight, the smile drops away and the teen runs down the hall to a window, climbing out onto a fire escape and easing it closed after her. Her clothes melt into a skintight black suit, and a quick scamper up the wall leaves her on the rooftop, eyes and ears pealed for when the two exit the building.
Cindy looks a bit confused as she's pushed into the stairway. "Wait, maybe she knows more about where they went?" she says, furrowing her brow. "What's up with you? she asks Anya, not annoyed so much as uncertain as she's guided along.
Once they're in the stairwell, Anya shoves the door shut before Cindy has a chance to confront Alyx again. "Cindy!" she hisses. "Listen." She moves in front of the stairwell door, blocking the way out of the stairwell. "Listen to me. You trust me. Yeah?" Her tone, her stance, both are mildly aggressive in an attempt at redirecting Cindy out of her trauma and onto Anya. "Listen to me. We gotta go, -now-. I'll explain later."
Meanwhile, Arana is doing another probe of the building when her IR scanners notice a heat signature climbing the building. The drone turns, activates its video feed, and zooms in on the black creature.
Anya's phone chirps at her. She retrieves it and pulls up the video feed, and her fears are confirmed. "Oh no." She turns the phone around so that Cindy can see, then climbs up on the wall so that she can peer through the small, square window in the stairwell door. As she suspected... no sign of the teenage girl.
Arachne's head spins around, turning farther than should be humanly possible when the drone pops up. Shit! They should have noticed that earlier. The figure in black flips onto the top of the roof-access stairwell, thwipping out a spread of web in an attempt to capture the drone and reel it in.
Cindy blinks, tilting her head. "What...of course I do. Is it Alchemax?" she says, her gaze sharpening a bit. "Crap..." Her eyes widen at the image. "What...what's that? Another spider person? How many of them ARE there?!?" She looks to Anya, blinking. There probably hasn't gotten to the whole 'by the way there's also a symbiote made from your DNA running around' conversation. Not quite yet.
"Yeah, I think its CS-1," Anya starts to say, then gapes at her cell phone.
Arana is suddenly plastered in black webbing. Her motors overheat and pop with little tufts of smoke, and she's caught.
Watching the feed, Anya seems honestly hurt. "Oh, no!" she openly grieves. "Oh, that's... that's not cool. Totally not cool. C'mon." Turning, she starts down the stairwell, hopping over the railing and bouncing off the wall to make quicker time. It isn't until they reach the lobby floor that she stops, and lifts the phone. "Arana..."
There is a pause, during which Anya considers.
"El uno mismo termina."
The drone suddenly blats in a manner that sounds like an upset R2-D2. The spider-girl emblem on her dorsal end changes from a light blue to a menacing red. There's the sound of something powering up, but then... there are sparking sounds, and the drone simply shuts down. Self terminate... her innards are now fried and melted, the solid state memory banks melted into slag.
Cindy oooohs. "Oh. Oh, that's really not cool." she says. "We need to get out of here...if she's here, more Alchemax people might be on their way." She looks around. "It'll see us if we go out the front door, if it's up on the roof watching...."
The drone is swiftly reeled in, and lands in Arachne's hands. She lifts it up, peering into the camera. "Look, we just want to ta-" It's about then when their spider-sense goes nuts, and the drone is tossed across the roof and webbed up further to contain any explosion. ...Which turns out to be entirely disappointing. Shit. But now they know about drones. That is good information. Better keep lurking.
"Probably," Anya agrees. "You ever play in the basement of this place?" she asks. "Maybe you know about like... like some secret way out?" Meanwhile, she's going on her phone and calling up a search parameter, including the address and key words like 'blueprints' and 'City Utility Lines'.
"Heck no, the basement is creepy and there are rats and cockroaches!" Cindy notes. "I mean, I think there might be a sewer grate or something maybe, but nothing that's made to open up or stuff. And we don't have lights or anything to go spelunking!" she points out. "Maybe if we got on an upper floor balcony and just...swung away?"
"Good enough," Anya answers. "Hold on." She exits the stairwell, eyes vigilant as she looks around the lobby. Finding a door marked 'MAIN ENANC ', she smirks. "Jackpot." Rushing over, she elbows the locked door open, the doorknob popping off and skittering across the floor. There's some rummaging around, and then she's out with two flashlights. One of them is flung across the way toward Cindy. "Which way to the spooky basement?" Stupid thing to keep connected.
...Shit. No movement. Well, they're definitely not coming out the front now. She heas to get inside, in a way thay can't see her... Arachne turns her head, staring at the HVAC unit behind her. Maybe if...
Bit of a tight squeeze, but it totally works, and she's still quiet. The spider-girl in black worms her way down through the vents, following the tingle in her spider-sense of her target. Who is a completely horrible person who eats babies and wants to kill her and that has nothing to do with any of the conditioning with her eyes held open and-NO BRAIN THIS ISN'T THE TIME. Time to go catch Moon.
Cindy takes it, then ums. "This way!" She starts running down the stairs towards the door at the bottom of the stairway, pauses as she tries it. "Locked. Oh, wait...' YANK! *snap* "Not locked!" She pulls it open and holds it for Anya. The room beyond is about what you'd expect. Building furnace, more maintenance lcokers, some old junk and boxes, rat droppings. There is, however, a small grate in the floor. It would be a squeeze. Because Anya is, y'know. Curvy. "Um...I thihk we can fit? It looks bigger down below..." she says, shining the light through the grate.
"Not gonna be long before it- before she realizes we ain't usin' the front door." Anya flings a hand toward the sewer grate, and a strand of webbing whips out and latches around the metal rods. Then, with a heave, she yanks it into the air, swings her arm, and sends the heavy sewer grate right back toward that doorway, jamming it shut. "You first," she says. "If she comes for us, I'll hold her off."
Gah. ~These vents are filthy. ...Is that a dead rat!? ...Nevermind, we don't want to know.~ Arachne slithers through the vents, stopping when she's as low as she can go, and shifting to crawling forwards. Getting closer... Oh! She peers down at the pair through a vent, remaining completely still and holding her breath. Even if Moon is RIGHT THERE AND ~SO FUCKING HORRIBLE AND-Calm. If we follow them to their hiding spot, we can get TWO spiders.~
"And this way, the CHUDs eat me first." Cindy mutters, then reaches out with her fingers, shooting out webs to latch onto the rusty grate, then yanked as it snaps free with a crack of metal giving, clattering to the side. "...I reeeeeally hate this plan." she says, sitting on the edge as her legs dangle over, then slips down through the hole and out of sight, landing with a soft splash below. "....EWWWW!" comes floating up.
"Me too," Anya answers, then drops in after her. The splash has her scowling, but she does have at least some positive news. "At least it's just a storm sewer. So, it's not like, 100% foul and gross. Just... you know, 40%. Maybe 50." The flashlight comes to life, and she moves forward into the mire. "What an incredible smell we've discovered," she quips, still completely unaware that they are still being hunted.
~...Okay... Very carefully pull the vent up and in... Web on either side of the hole...~ Two soft thwips, and Arachne has her webs anchored. She stretches, then releases, shooting through the opening and swinging around to stick to the ceiling of the tunnel again. "Moon!"
Cindy jerks around, turning back to look down the tunnel. "Um...nutbunnies...RUN!" She grabs Anya's hand and bolts down the tunnel away from Arachne!
"!Cogida!" Anya feels a shiver crawl down her spine as Cindy makes for a run. That shiver is something she's felt before, and she can feel the terror mounting in her body in ways that others may not comprehend. The first time was too traumatic to really understand, but the second time... the second time brought some clarity.
Knowing what's coming, she grimaces. "Oh boy." The clothing around her begins to bulge as they run, as if something were -growing- underneath her monochromatic clothing.
Arachne picks up the pace a little, shifting down and around the side to get a bit better face. "Have to... Have to catch you! Make you pay! They tortured us and it's your fault!" The pursuer lets out a scream of rage, thwipping away again as she tries to pin down the other spiders
A split second before Arachne fires, Cindy suddeny changes course, straight into Anya as she knocks them both out of the way, then leaping to the opposite wall to draw the fire as she clings. "Geez, psycho much?!?" she says. Then remembers...HEY, she has webs TOO! And her hands come up as she fires back, trying to stick their pursuer to the ceiling with her hooked webs.
Cindy might be surprised to find that contact with Anya feels like punching solid rock. She does move, yeah, but not much further than is necessary to let Cindy through. Her clothing suddenly rips off her body, and an ugly, chitinous hide reveals itself in its place. The stuff crawls over her face, and when she turns, she now has the appearance of something monstrous and threatening. Black by initial appearance, there are layers of luminescent blue when the light catches it, but the transformation isn't quite complete. Upon her fingers, sharp claws begin to grow in the armor, a thing to which Anya can't help but smirk.
"Chica," she calls out to Arachne, "you are -really- misguided here."
"That happens when people play with your brai-Ack!" Arachne... mostly dodges. However, one leg doesn't quite make it, and she's left dangling from the ceiling by one leg, flailing and struggling. And then another burst comes in and sticks her arms to her chest. ...This is very awkward.
"They made us because of you! They made us and lied to us and put things in our head, and they broke us! We have to capture you, or they stop giving us food bars. They broke our body so it can't make this thing and they put the thing in the food and they made us into a weapon! We hate you!" By now, the wide mouth ahs formed, and Arachne's flailing hasn't ceased.
Cindy drops back down, eying the struggling girl as she raises her hands. "Where are they?! Where are my PARENTS?!? Where did they take them!" she shouts back. "You work for them, you know that much, right??" She hesistates. "I didn't...I didn't force them to be JERKS to you. I didn't make them treat you like that. I'm sorry they did! But I just...I want my family. I want to be free again..."
Spider-Girl looks between Cindy and Arachne. The angst is strong with these two, and in some quiet part of her brain, she finds it kind of funny that for once, it isn't her shouting and cursing. However, there are some very interesting little factoids swimming in the shouts, mostly coming from Arachne.
"She's a hostage," she murmurs to herself, and a fresh new look of disgust forms on her face. Okay, yes, a part of it may have something to do with that horribly disgusting, toothy grin that the monster is forming, but mostly, it's leveled at the invisible third party at play here: Alchemax.
"Whoa-whoa, okay, HOLD ON." Her armored hands rise, one aimed up at Arachne, the other toward Cindy. "Everyone, shut the fuck up, ALL OF YOU." She looks from one to the other, the armor crawling down toward her lips and forming a menacing pair of glowing, yellow globes over her eyes.
"This's gonna be one ugly fight if we don't all settle down and work it out. You got me?"
Arachne is cut off mid-rant by Anya, although the squirming doesn't stop. She pants for breath, glaring at the pair of heroes. ...Probably glaring. It's kind of hard to tell exactly what spidersymbiote eyes mean. "They don't have them! If they did, they would have talked about it. We didn't hear anything, and we heard a lot they think we didn't." A few more violent thrashes, before she settles back down into the near constant wriggle. At Anya's exoskeleton though, she stops completely, eyes widening. "...That is really cool."
Stupid thing to keep connected.
Cindy is getting a good look at Anya now too. "Whoa. You're all Guyver now..." she says slowly, distracted from Arachne for a moment, before she pauses and looks back. Wait, she's....they're keeping her from leaving because of...bars? And something she lacks. "...oh. You're...they're using you too." she says slowly. "With bars, right? That's what you said? Something your body doesn't make normally?"
"No," Anya counters. "It's gross." She raises an arm, pointing at it. "Just like this sewer water, and that... and that -thing- they've bonded to you." Her hands rise up, showing innocence, and the words that follow come quickly and perhaps a bit panicked. "Which is fine! We live in a, in a weird world, and, and some things that are gross to us are... well, they're... 'cool' to others."
She turns to Cindy, then back to Arachne. "How long can you last without them?" she asks.
"...Yeah." Arachne nods to Cindy, but Anya's words get the glare again. "We're not a thing. We... We're Alyx, and... We're Arachne. We trust eachother because we can't trust anyone else, and we can't lie to eachother. We /help/ eachother." The expression shifts again, almost somehow... sadness. "...We have to check in every three days or so. ...Maybe a week. If we don't have something to report, they punish us."
Cindy frowns. "And they sent you to find me and bring me back." she says slowly. "Because I left the bunker." She hesistates, looking over at Anya, then back to Archne. "...and could you get, like, a piece of it or something to bring back? Cuz, maybe someone could, I dunno, Macguyver a way to fix it, right? Science it up?"
"Not just you, Cindy." Spider-Girl turns and walks over toward Cindy's side, then looks back up at Arachne. "Us. -All- of us. That's what Alchemax wants." She rustles her shoulders and flexes her arms, and the pieces of armor begin dropping off and falling into the sewer water. "It won't stop there, though. It never does. We got a bigger problem, right here, right now." She looks back to Cindy. "If one of us doesn't go with her... chance is she might die." She then turns to look back at Arachne, and a coy smirk shows up on her face. "But I'm willing to bet they won't let that happen." She walks forward a bit, looking up at the symbiote. "The assholes've already gone to some pretty serious lengths to get you two working together. I seriously doubt they're gonna let you die." The smirk then fades. "But... they will let you suffer. They'll let you think they're committed. But that ain't the case."
Anya turns back to Cindy. "We need a better plan than that," she offers. "I mean, what's she gonna do, sneak some out in the prison wallet?" Anya shakes her head, then turns back toward Arachne. "No. If we're gonna help, if we're gonna get you free, we need to try and figure this out, and fast." She then gulps, and the color might just be leaving her face a little. "I think, we, uh... we uh, might need like... a tissue sample."
"Bring you back, and stop Spider-Man from causing trouble. Spider-Girl wasn't high priority. You stay in your neighbourhood and don't cause trouble. " Arachne nods slowly, before shaking her head at the second question. "Have to eat it all, or it wouldn't work as well. Then we don't have as much time. Not getting it... hurts. What's a prison wallet?" Despite her face not really conforming to conventional human standards, she somehow manages to radiate confusion. "...Don't need one of you. Some of... Some of the exoskeleton would do. And... Have to fix our brain. They made us... made us hate..." She thrashes violently for a moment, teeth bared at Cindy, before calming down again. "...Sample? Of what?"
"She means, like, a little bit of blood or something form you that we can store, so someone could look at it and figure out what they did and how it could be undone." Cindy says, folding her arms. "So they measure doses out, huh?" She frowns. "Gawd these guys suck so hard, they shoudl be a Hoover."
"Yeah, well, I'm new," Anya quips at the mixed compliment/burn. "Give it time." Regarding Alchemax sucking, Anya couldn't agree more. "More like a Dyson," she allows, then considers... was Dyson a thing nine years ago? "Never mind that," she says of the prison wallet remark. "Tell you what." She reaches down to her leg, and pries off another piece of that chitinous hide. "I'll give you this, if we get a blood sample. Not... not here though." She looks around, scowling. "I mean, we all need to wash up, and find something sanitary." Back to Arachne she looks and asks, "Are they watching you? Right now?"
Arachne pauses squirming a moment. "...Could work. You'd get Alyx, but not... Arachne. They gave us a bracelet. When it vibrates, we go to the meet spot. And we're plenty sanitary! Bacteria dont' get to live on us. ...And you need to keep me away from her." The symbiote-girl nods towards Cindy, before one particularly violent wriggle detatches her from the ceiling, the aging concrete finally giving way, and dropping her headfirst. Fortunately, there's only a foot or so of standing water. Unfortunately, that's not enough to catch her fall.
Cindy is in motion even as the concrete gives way, leaping forward as she catches Arachne on the way down before she goes headfirst into the concrete. "Whoa! Uh, hey..." She quickily puts her down in a seated position. "Sorry! Reflex...didn't mean to touch..." She backs up a bit. "...um...do they bring more than one bar? Maybe we could, you know...beat them up and take their stuff too. So you weren't directly involved?"
Damn, Cindy is... fast! It must be that Spider-Sense that Peter and Gwen have talked about. Anya can't help but feel a bit jealous, but then again, none of the others seem to be able to armor up. Which, yeah it's still gross... but she's starting to understand it may be cool, too. Still, the contact has her alarmed. "Okay, so... okay. So, first, we clean up. Then, we go to like... you know, there's a syringe exchange we can hit up. Just gotta keep the sample on ice."
Cindy lunging forward and handling Arachne causes more violent thrashing and and angry hiss, although she calms again when her 'foe' backs off. "...Only one. They're scared of us. They made us, then they have the FUCKING NERVE to be scared of us." Cue smug grin, although only briefly. "They'd know we told you the meeting spot. And we dont' see a way out of this stuff quickly." She wriggles a bit to indicate her current bound state. "...Oh yeah. You know what we look like. Spider-Girl, your friend Lexi. We met her, both as Arachne and as Alyx, but... We don't think she knows yet. She volunteers at the shelter where we're staying. ...Please don't tell her about us. We like FEAST. The people are nice, the food is good, there are warm beds, and no pigeons waking us up."
Cindy ers, then looks at Anya uncertainly. Not her friend! She hasn't even met the girl. I mean, she's obviously awesome if she volunteers at FEAST and stuff, but, well. "...uh..well. I dunno, maybe Anya could make make a tracer. They gotta belong to a lab somewhere, right? And if one's already been raided, they shouldn't be too suprised if another one gets raided?"
"We want to help you," Anya reiterates. She can't possibly imagine what it must be like to have mind-melted with an alien symbiote, but she can certainly understand why Alyx... okay, well, Alyx and Arachne... seem so crazy. She walks forward, and extends the hand holding that piece of chitinous armor. "Here. Take it. This'll get you fed. But if you -really- want our help? Meet us at the syringe exchange on Duke Ellington in two hours." She then reaches down and pries her fingers into the webbing that keeps Arachne bound up. The young woman gives a great heave, and the webbing eventually gives away and rips open.
Arachne springs into a crouch, reaching out ans snagging the plate from Anya. "...Tracer might work. Ask Spider-Man. He has them. The octopus one /hates/ those." This grin looks almost normal and not creepy. "...But why help us? We attacked you and chased you. You should hate us like they made us hate her." Her head jerks in Cindy's direction again.
Cindy uhs. "I don't even really KNOW you, why would I hate you? I mean, you're kinda scary with the teeth thing, but it's not like it's your fault you were sent after me or can't say no to whoever's giving you orders." She wrinkles her nose. "I mean, they at least pretended they were just helping me when they stuck me in the bunker and convinced me I could never leave without it being too dangerous. I bet if they'd been able they would have done something like those bars with me too."
"You're not the bad guy," Anya adds. "Alchemax is." She turns then toward the ladder they'd descended to get into this place. "Now, can we get outta here before the walls start moving, or some sewer monster grabs us? Or... or one of us loses our dinner?" Her nose curls at that, because it really doesn't smell that great down here.
