Prologue
The Entangled Web
Prologue
Cassandra Web, better known to the world as ’Madame Web’ sat and concentrated. She had felt a presence that was both highly familiar and yet at the same time managed to be utterly alien. Whatever or whoever was heading this way was their presence was interfering with her monitoring of Spider-Man’s progress. That in itself was a cause for concern.
Odd, I should be able to tune out anything that does not concern the web of fate. She took a deep breath and reached out with far sharper focus. What she saw was a young mind, tortured and fractured to the point of breaking, of a young woman, a good few years younger than Peter Parker. She sharpened her focus and studied her closer. What she saw horrified her. By all that’s holy, that creature she brings with her must not be allowed to arrive.
Cassandra Web straightened up as she prepared to reverse the emergence of Khepri, but there was only so much she could do. The rest would be up to this ‘Weaver’ herself and that would be terrifying in its own right.
* * *
Same old villains, same old bluster, same old fights. Shocker was, as so many times before, hanging upside down from a lamp post. Spider-Man wondered why so many of his rogue’s gallery didn’t simply pack up and move to somewhere easier. He’d heard Latveria was lovely this time of year. For now though he had loose ends to tie up.
“Herman, seriously how many times is this now?” Spider-Man sighed theatrically as he flicked out his fingers, then pausing for a second, waggled his toes. “Often enough that I don’t have enough digits!”
“Screw you web dweeb.” Shocker’s eyes blazed with helpless fury, wanting nothing more to turn his signature gauntlets on his old foe and turn them into fly swatters
“Hey, I was nice enough to leave your face unwebbed, don’t make me have to wash your mouth out, you know I can.” A webbed finger was held up in a cautionary manner.
“Fine.” Shocker knew he was beat, he’d had enough practice at it.
Spider-Man picked up the shock gloves and was about to swing away when he was hit hard by a familiar buzzing. This was different though, It was actively crippling him to the point where he was curled up and clutching his head.
Shocker blinked and smiled ever so slightly. At least this isn’t a total disaster...
A portal of shimmering energy swirled near him and a form stumbled through. She was clad in strange armour and sported a jetpack with damaged wings and mechanical arms. The mechanical arms weren’t the only damaged limbs. The newcomer’s right arm ended in a stump above where her elbow should have been.
New Yorkers, long used to the daily dramas between superhumans stepped back but in many cases only as far as they thought was strictly necessary. Many of them looked at the insectoid shape and wondered if this was the web head’s girlfriend.
The woman in the armour looked around, confused and angry as she tried to make sense of how she had got here. By instinct alone she tried to take command of the human swarm around her. Reaching out she went for their minds, her head jerking back in shock as she felt the absence of that power. Billions of Arthropods lived and thrived in this city though and she felt them all. Then she narrowed her eyes behind her mask as she made contact with one human mind.
Simultaneously she called every winged arthropod she could, gathering them up, calling them to her. Spiders crawled away from their webs and
Spider-Man tried to stand, having overcome the painful, incessant, buzzing. Even as he did so, he felt a foreign presence in his mind and could feel that someone was trying to take control of his actual body. Whoever it was had a will to match his own. But one thing he would not do, ever, was back down.
A name came to the new arrival’s mind, though she couldn’t tell whether or not it was her own thought or someone had spoken to her at first.
Your name is Taylor Hebert, but to my brother and I, you were and will always be, Skitter.
“Sk-Skitt.. Skitter. I was Skitter.” With that the swarm of bugs enveloped the immediate area and she was lost to sight.