Empusa 1.1
I hate winter. I'm not built for it. It's cold. It's windy. My insects are sleepy and crime is at an all time high. I could be out in the streets right now, defeating evildoers and whatnot. Instead, I'm in the forest to the west of the Bay, looking for bugs. Why am I here, you might ask? I had a theory. What would be more potent: natural Gu forming, or artificial?
I left ten control groups around places where I wouldn't normally go. One of them being the creek to the northwest of DWA warehouses. It's been a month since I gained my powers and the jars I kept at home only had one insect left, each.
I've tried different configurations of insects, what traits I want to test, what traits I want to keep. My own little entomo-eugenics program.
I've already bred my first successful Gu insects, a pair of especially poisonous brown recluses and black widows. They birthed two massive egg sacs of thousands of spiderlings whom I fed diligently each day, for them to break off in hundreds and go into their own clay jars. I've repeated that process three times now. Each time keeping specific bloodlines of them. One I bred for tougher silk, one I bred for higher silk generation. The other lines I bred for venom. It's potency and quantity.
I've also been slowly raising my own venom tolerance. Having brown recluses bite me with gradually increasing frequencies had me stay at the hospital an extra two weeks. And during that time the only jars I could use were the discarded piss bottles in their garbage bins. And even then I could only use the ones they throw away at the end of the trash collecting day.
Panacea has been extremely annoyed with me because I kept fainting due to anaphylactic shock. But for the past week I've been in the clear even with the new generation of the more potent recluses biting me every five minutes.
My power also seems to slowly mold itself to my needs. Now I have a keen sense of how poisonous or venomous an insect is just by it entering my range. Nothing else though. I tried various breathing techniques to keep them from gathering in my extremities but none seemed to work. The tips of my fingers and toes are now just… pale blue and cold all the time. I still can feel through them just fine, but they stain anything I touch and I don't like that. It ties me to my cape persona too much. And if I keep pumping myself with poison, whatever's going on with the tip of my fingers will spread. That would be a disaster.
But now I'm free from the hospital and tomorrow I go back to school. So today is the day I see for sure if my method is better than letting nature run its course. I looked up what Chinese Gu practitioners used, if they fed the bugs special drugs or anything. But then I realized. Any species that doesn't produce its own venom is trash. Cause their venom depends on the substance they consume. So might as well just use the substance, right? Wrong. Any chemicals that can be bought for venom making or poison making is heavily regulated. And any searches on the library PCs about venoms that can be made with more accessible ingredients end up in PRT raiding the library.
Good thing I used a bug contraption to press the keys and move the mouse. Flinging beetles at high speeds at the keys I want pressed was kind of fun. Making tiny trebuchets and slingshots out of the elastic web breed I've got was even more fun.
But I'm going to wait another month until I go out in costume. I can't use the generation I bred in the piss bottles! Those are piss spiders! I know, logically, that they groom themselves and even molt. And that there is no way for their webs to stink. But they do! The piss is caked into their tiny bodies!
When the Gu jar enters my range, I can feel that it’s got one spider left inside it. It’s injured and weak, but slowly recovering. That’s good. But I’m disappointed. The spider is of worse quality than the ones I doctored. Like if mine are gold star quality, this one is bronze at best. It doesn’t have the strongest venom, toughest body or some other trait that made it stand out. Rather, it was sheer luck that it survived because the most dangerous ones targeted each other. My experiment is a failure ten out of ten times. I guess that’s why Gu only exists in folk tales. I still collect the spider. It’ll be good feed for my babies.
Upon returning home, I checked on the underground tunnels I had my ants dig. They should have been hibernating right now, waiting for spring at least. But I’m making them work overtime to fit my steadily growing army of doom. Brown recluses, black widows, black wolf spiders, yellowjackets, bald-faced hornets, kissing bugs, centipedes, millipedes, all kinds of bugs, really. All I need is to find some fire ants and maybe, just maybe, order some exotic bugs when I gather enough money. I don’t think I’d be doing crimes, but maybe some mercenary work? But who needs mercenaries nowadays? Villains. So I’ll still be doing crimes. At least, I won’t have to bother with coming up with ways to earn said money. Just be dangerous, maybe deadly, scary and hot. That last part is still work in progress, but the rest? I’m pretty sure I can kill someone with a scratch. So, dangerous? Check. Deadly? Check. Scary? Hmm, with a proper costume, check. Hot? Gotta keep working out.
I came up with a fun idea when I just started running, which is… today. So my muscles release lactic acid when I use them. That’s how muscle fatigue works. So I need a way to disperse it. Or a way to prolong the time before my muscles begin anaerobic respiration. The easiest way is to improve my cardiovascular fitness and oxygen efficiency. How? Kettlebell swings. Just so, so many kettlebell swings. With a proper breathing pattern, I could increase how efficiently I use said oxygen. And the better my heart pumps blood, the faster it disperses the lactic acid across my body, not letting it gather in one spot. That’s step one. Step two? See, bee stings have a special vasodilatory property. They contain melittin. It makes your blood vessels widen as a side effect. Wider blood vessels - faster blood flow. Faster blood flow - faster lactic acid clearance. That’s step two. Step three? Basic venom. It’s high PH would neutralize lactic acid, making its buildup easier to bear. But it would also be a tad bit dangerous in the long-term. But tomorrow’s problems are tomorrow’s me’s problems. Today’s me doesn’t have to worry about them. So which insect has those basic compounds? Wasps and fire ants. I don’t want to hide wasps under my clothes because they’ll get injured easily. They’re rather big insects, after all. But fire ants? They’re too tiny to get easily crushed by my soft flesh. And even if some do, they win by quantity. That’s why I want them.
That’s why, once I’m done inventorying my sweet baby bugs, I go out running. I keep a bunch of bees in my hoodie. Their melittin is my temporary solution to blood vessel width, soon to be replaced by a more efficient, medically tested vasodilatory drugs. I know those exist cause dad was complaining about getting cold hands all the time before getting an IV drip and suddenly he’s a walking furnace. Warm hugs are best hugs. Cold hands are the devil’s gloves. I would know. My hands are cold as fuck. And here I am debating whether I should accept contracts for murder. Instead of, I don’t know, outright denying them?
Another thing I want to train up is my pain tolerance. I’ve already endured a month of getting bitten by venomous spiders. But not the bees. Oh god, not the bees. They don’t sting as painfully as spiders, sure. But I keep stinging myself every ten minutes across the entire length of my legs. And it hurts! I hate it! Oh god, I hate it so much. And to know that I have to sting myself again ten minutes later? Torture. Pure torture. I can’t wait to get enough money for proper drugs.
In the middle of that run is when something interesting enters my range. Fifteen very special spiders are evenly spaced out in a three by five grid. Ohh, my legs are getting weak just from feeling their traits. They’re the best of the best of all the spiders I’ve ever felt. Peak muscle strength, absolutely bonkers body weight to lifting weight ratio, webs so good you could suspend entire human-scale bridges with them! And such potent venom that I am reluctant to let them bite me right now. I want them! I want them so much! I’m ready to commit crime. For these babies? For them to be mine ? I’m ready to kill. Well, maybe not kill . But maim? Absolutely.
I change course, walking straight towards the newly built Columbia U labs. New York proved to be a bit too much of a warzone for several big corpos and universities and they moved to the closest big city that was ripe for picking. Boston, being a warzone itself, was also dismissed so what was left was Brockton Bay. Now, I wouldn’t call BB a big city. But it was a hub. It has four hundred thousand residents and is big enough for these corporate britches to settle down. It was a coincidence that the recent fight of the Protectorate with The Teeth left their main buildings mere rubble on the streets. So now, Brockton Bay turned from a minor medical tourism city into a medical tourism hotspot. Life Foundation, Oscorp Medical and Horizon Labs towers making Medhall look less imposing now. It’s almost like they’re competing for who got the highest skyscraper. Eugh. I’m still not used to the new BB skyline.
And with the companies came the people. Those who didn’t want to lose their positions or those who didn’t have anything that kept them in NYC. So the suburbs faced a sudden influx of new arrivals. Even that house that’s been on sale for the past three years on our street got bought by an elderly couple. Dad told me to keep an eye on them, in case they need help.
My musings came to a halt when I reached the labs. I was thinking of just obscuring my face and break into the building, but guess whaaat? They’re having a tour ~! Oh suhweet. I use fruit flies to tag everyone at the back of their heads and at the top of their heads, basically giving me the general idea of where they’re looking. Using their blind spots, I sneak around the group and blend in. They’re teenagers around my age, maybe a year or two older, but I’m tall, I fit in just fine. They aren’t even wearing their school uniforms, except for a couple kids. Specifically, the Dallon duo and three other kids, and by their looks, they’re unfamiliar with anyone around them. They’re sticking together and other kids hit them up with random questions about New York from time to time. Well, they aren’t my concern right now. Right now? I’m a ninja . I am one with shadow, I am one with nothing. Do not look at me, do not talk to me, do not perceive me, actually.
“Hey, I haven’t seen you on the bus.” One of the uniform-wearing boys says. What did I just tell you? How dare you perceive me? “Sorry about that, you probably sat at the back. We- uh, didn’t have much time to get to know everyone yet.”
“You’re the new guys? New Yorkers?” I ask.
“Uh, yeah. I’m Harry, Harry Osborn.” He offers me a hand. I grasp it. “Woah, cold hands!” Sure, talk more about my debilitating medical condition.
“... I’m Stacey Gerbert.” Oh god. Why? Brain! I’ll be having WORDS with you, young lady! The name sounds so baaad. GERBERT?!
“Hi, Stacey! I’m Mary, Mary Jane. But my friends just call me MJ.” Does every new yorker do the name-name-surname thing?
“Hi, I’m Peter Parker.” Says the last kid. Bless your heart, Peter. But why are all of you targeting me? Huh? There’s a whole tour happening in front of you! A tour! Look, cool tech! Or- or look at those lizards! That one has two heads! Just don’t look at meeeeee!
“Hi Mary, hi Peter.” I greet them. Please look away. Look how uninteresting I am. I am grass. I am grass in the field. Do not perceive me or notice me, thank you very much.
In my panic I don’t notice how one of the spiders somehow got out of his cage and landed on Peter’s hand. When I finally did, it already bit Peter and tried scurrying away. Oh no you don’t, mister! Come to momma! I shift the pant leg of my jeans and let it climb it up. Now I just need to get the other fourteen. Eheheh. But wait. Something important just happened, right?
“Oh god, Peter! Are you okay?” I grab him before he falls over and reach for an epipen. I carry it with me just in case I experience another anaphylactic shock due to, you know, a couple hundred venomous bites a day.
“Ouch! Uh, thanks Stacey. I think I’m fine.” He says, looking at his hand. It’s getting a bit red. Oh man. Oh no.
“C’mon, let me stab you, this is specifically for insect bites.” I say, holding the epipen up.
“I think I’ll be fine. You don’t have to spend your epipen on me. Anti-allergic injections are expensive.”
“It cost me fifteen bucks, Peter. Relax.” Before he can protest, I inject him and let his hand go. “Now there is no danger of you, I don’t know, keeling over and dying?”
“It’s just a spider bite!”
“Yeah, and are you 100% healthy? That was their genetically modified spiders. What if it had super poison?” Oh they absolutely do have super poison. But I can’t be too sure in front of them, can I?
“Okay, mom .” Peter grumbles, lightly caressing the zone of the spider bite. I huff and focus on getting my other baby boys out. That’s when I realized a major flaw in my plan. They’re all male. They’re all male! They can’t breed between each other! Augh! I wish I could fall over right now and punch the ground. How- how could it bee? Are there- ugh. I look around the lab but the only other spiders I feel are regular daddy long legs. I’m gonna cry.