"It's… pretty big," Tammy noted as they stood on the roof of a building, looking out over the modified Makati skyline.

From the TV footage and the phrase 'building webs', Sanny had gotten the image of a giant spider web draped over the buildings like some kind of giant circus tent, or strung between them like huge nets. Instead, he'd been reminded not all spiders built webs. Some built nests.

Several buildings on both sides of Ayala Avenue were covered in webs, supporting a large, warehouse-sized nest. Uprooted trees, abandoned cars taken from ground level, and bits of building had been woven into it as some sort of filler or aggregate, and lines of silk like bridge cables arced from the buildings, somehow supporting the whole thing. Sanny suspected that from the way the buildings were missing windows, the webs were anchored to the support pillars of the superstructures.

The surrounding buildings were dark and evacuated… for about a block, after which people were stubbornly holding on. While the office buildings were empty, many of the residents of the nearby condos were insistent on staying, too stubborn to leave, as if by their presence they could prevent their residence from being damaged, or were afraid of looters, or possibly waiting for an opportunity to start looting.

Typical reaction to being told to evacuate, really.

All this centered on the giant spider– the Gagambuhala, as the internet had lazily dubbed it, a portmanteau of 'spider' and 'giant'– which had caused all this. Its main body– the cephalothorax. and abdomen– was the size of a bus, and its limbs proportionately longer. Long hairs that got finer and finer at the tips covered its body, and a smell seemed to surround it, one that a part of Sanny instinctively identified as the smell of silk: raw, unprocessed, fresh silk straight from the spinnerets. It was a bright white and purple hue that Sanny wasn't sure was natural in any of the local spiders, and was currently occupied tearing apart an abandoned car with surprising delicacy considering the thing was using its fangs and pedipalps. It was on the ground, and Sanny was glad that despite its utterly bullshit ability to stick to and climbs buildings as if it was were a normal-sized spider– something that Sanny hadn't been able to scale up himself because of the square-cube law– it probably still found it tiring to supports its now-massive weight.

"What's it doing? My eyes aren't very good and there aren't any plants around to peek through," Tammy said.

Sanny obligingly added an eye to the ones he had, one that had better long-distance telescopic vision than the compound eyes he preferred for situational awareness, and tried to focus on what the Gagambuhala was doing. What he saw made that single eye blink on his forehead. "It's… removing the car's wheels," he said. "With a lug wrench."

"It's doing what with what?" Tammy asked.

"It's taking off the car's tires with a lug wrench," he repeated.

"What's a lug wrench?" Tammy asked, confused.

"It's… you know, those x-shape things you use to take a tire's nuts off? That's a lug wrench."

"Sound dirty," Tammy said. "Wait, it's using one? Seriously? "

"Seriously," Sanny said, just as bewildered. "Holding it in its pedipalps while the jaws holds the car still."

"The what?"

Sanny wanted to roll his eye, but she couldn't be blamed for not knowing, or not bothering to remember, grade school biology classes about spider body parts. So he just grew a couple on his head. "These, the muttonchop-looking things."

"Oh, those. Got it," Tammy said, giving him a thumbs-up and nearly falling over. "Oh crap!"

Sanny moved quickly, catching her before she fell and pulling her to stand her up straight again. "You okay? Balanced yet?"

"Uh, give me a few minutes more," Tammy said. Plants, it turned out, didn't have balance-correction organs like humans did. Sanny had to wonder how she'd been standing straight when they'd met. Maybe she'd kept her inner ears? "Maybe I should put down little roots, let those tell me if I'm tipping over…"

"Can't help you there, I'm afraid," Sanny said. "I'm kinda spoiled for choice when it comes to keeping my balance."

"Wait, I think I've worked it out," Tammy said. "Right, the roots was the right idea. Just… give me time to make a few more…"

"Take your time," Sanny said. "It's not like that thing's going anywhere."

He looked, just to be sure, but it was still playing around with the car. It seemed to be trying to pry off the hood with the lug wrench.

"I swear I don't usually have this sort of trouble balancing, even when my body goes full plant," Tammy said, her voice a strange vibration. "Now I actually have to think about my balance. It's weird."

"I think it's because it's not our 'real' body, so to speak," Sanny said. "It's a puppet, so we have to handle everything that needs to be done to make it move like the 'real' thing."

"Eh? Wait, really?" Tammy said, turning her head to look at him. She started to tip over, but before he could grab her she straightened to correct it… and overcorrected, so he had to grab her anyway. "Thanks, still getting used to this… wait, so you have to tell it to breathe? Involuntary functions? I thought the brain or the spinal cord is supposed to do that automatically."

"Apparently it can, but only if I'm paying attention to it," Sanny said, rolling his third eye.

"Wow. Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of, you know, having a brain to deal with involuntary functions?"

"It's not so bad," Sanny said. "This body is trimmed down. No digestive system, no endocrine system, no excretory system." He shrugged. "This should actually die in 12 to 24 hours from build-up of body wastes, but my bodies can bullshit through stuff like that, for the most part."

"Oh yeah, I get that," Tammy said. "This one has no flowers and no organs for it, minimal xylem and phloem, no sap, just offensive latex, and the chlorophyll is purely decorative." She gestured down at herself. "You know, for the nice color pallet. I really don't like looking like wood."

"So instead you look like a stick of celery," Sanny noted with amusement.

"Celery is good for you!" she said. "Cuts down on inflammation, helps prevent arthritis and stuff."

Sanny nodded sagely. "Well, now I know."

"And knowing is half the battle!" Tammy cheered.

They looked at each other and snickered like the dorks they were.

"Okay, I think I can try walking now," Tammy said. "Be ready to catch me so I don't fall off the building, okay?"

The edge of the roof they were on was five feet away, and there was another roof fifteen feet down, but Sanny nodded. He stayed close as Tammy carefully got to her feet. The body had been grown from the initial small offshoot she'd made, and they'd even stuck it in some soil for nutrients, though Sanny wasn't surprised Tammy was able to grow the offshoot beyond the amount of nutrients the soil could have possibly provided. It was human-shaped– two legs, two arms, a torso where they all met, and a big round thing on top for a head– and had the smooth texture of bamboo, despite being bright celery green. She wavered slightly, but whatever solution involving roots she'd come up with seemed to be working. The joints all creaked as she moved, as if protesting, but despite that Tammy's movements were smooth.

"Okay, looks like we're in business," Tammy said after walking back and for a few times. She put her fist on her hips. "Okay, let's take thing down and make the city safe for businessmen and bankers again!"

"Hmm," Sanny said, holding up two fingers. "How many fingers do you see?"

Tammy had no eyelids to blink, but Sanny felt she would have. "Two."

He changed the shape of his hand.

"Seven," Tammy said.

He changed the color of his external exoskeleton. "Tell me what colors you see, from right to left," he said, showing her his forearm.

She shrugged and peered at him in the weak light. "Uh, red, green, blue, yellow, pink or violet, I can't be sure, I think that's brown, orange, black and white."

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Sanny nodded. "Which way is the wind flowing from?" he asked.

She stared at him with the strange, black blotches on the otherwise smooth wood on the front of her head. "What?"

"I'm testing your senses," he said. "You didn't have a sense of balance, so there might have been other senses you missed. Touch seems to be missing, and… would you say you feel hot or cold?"

"Oh. You could have just told me that, you know," Tammy said. "Yeah, I don't have taste or smell in this, and hearing is… weird. There are these weird hums I don't recognize."

Sanny listened with his own range of auditory organs, from ears to feelers to antennae. "Those are probably subsonic vibrations," he said. "I think plants emit them, so it makes some sense you can hear them."

"Ah. Good to know," she nodded. "And I have a sense of touch, it's just kind of… dull? It's more like I feel vibrations than impacts."

"There are plants that react to being touched," Sanny suggested. "Can you rig something like that?"

"Give me a minute," she said. "Huh, this is really different from using my own body. Sometimes I sort of lose my sense of touch there, but that's when I'm not paying attention. This doesn't have one to begin with. That's so weird. I guess there's still a lot I need to learn."

"I think you're doing pretty well," Sanny said.

"Not as good as you," Tammy said.

"Yeah, but I've had practice, and my body is pretty much a basic human form with stuff added to it," he said, gesturing down at himself. It was the combat form he favored as a starting point: humanoid, with long limbs, all fast-twitch muscles that he could reconfigure as needed, overlapping exoskeleton, compound eyes for wide field of view and claws. The mouth wasn't one he usually had, but he had one now because he wasn't alone. "You turn into a plant. Plants don't walk, they don't talk, they don't have to maintain bilateral bipedal symmetry, heck, they can't even see. Given you have to reverse engineer ways to get senses I take for granted back, I'd say you're doing pretty well. Plus you haven't tried to eat me once, which is more than I can say."

"Do you think I look bland?" Tammy said.

Okay, that wasn't a response he'd been expecting."Uh, what?"

"I think I look bland," she said. "I look like someone in a zentai suit."

"I thought that was the look you were going for?" he said.

"Well, yeah… but I look bland, right?" she said.

"I… don't really feel comfortable saying," Sanny said.

"Maybe I should add vines, or leaves," Tammy mused. "A flower on my head, maybe? I'm technically a plant girl, so should I show some green hair? Or vine hair–?"

He smelled raw silk in the wind, but it was too late as a pair of giant spider legs snapped up over the edge of the roof, a net of silk webbing held between the two limbs, and slammed down hard on the two of them. There wasn't even so much as a vibration as the giant spider climbed up the building they were on, and Sanny had a bewildered moment to see that it had wrapped silk around the its feet like shoes.

Sanny tried to move, tried to get away, but the silk was sticky, and the Gagambuhala was wielding it well, using it to sweep them off their feet. The resulting fall and tangle had gotten them wrapped on more of the rope-think strands. Sanny tried to claw at it, tried to bite through it as in his panic rush he let go of his control, letting his body change shape according to panicked thoughts and her. His limbs became bendy and fluid as his body eschewed arms for tentacles, mouths like scars tearing open and growing sharp, serrated triangular teeth as they tried to bite through the silk, to tear through, to try and get out of this trap.

Vaguely, he noticed Tammy was doing the same, forgoing an ordered body plan in favor of rampant growth as she grew branches, leaves, thorny vines, as her torso became a trunk that–

There was a sickening snap, and Tammy was torn in half as the Gagambuhala's jaws uncurled and sank down fangs, jabbing through her stomach. If she cried out, Sanny didn't hear as a sharp, bitter, acid stink suddenly washed over him, and his eyes and mouths burned as digestive juices were sprayed on them by the spider. He could feel them attacking his skin, going into his mouths, melting his eyes…

––––––––––––––––––

They Died.

It was the sort of phrase that should be bright red and glowing, perhaps with a chord of ominous music to go with it. They died.

This wasn't the first time it had happened to Sanny. He'd learned to split himself off into drones for exactly this reason. Given how the spider had managed to catch him by surprise last time he'd gone to check it out, leaping at him and entangling him with the web it had been holding before devouring him… yeah, he'd sort of been resigned to getting eaten again. That spider was no joke.

It was also monstrously, horribly unfair. There was no way it should be sticking to buildings like that! Or being that quiet and sneaky! It was too big! Sanny had tried doing the same, trying to stick to walls like a spider. It had worked when he'd been the size and shape of an actual spider, but it wasn't the sort of thing that scaled up well. Stupid square-cube law!

Tammy had been fine when he contacted her, though mildly disturbed. Plant didn’t have nerves and pain centers like human did, so while she'd been aware of the damage done to her drone body, she'd hadn't really felt it, and she had apparently 'bailed out', as it were, as soon as she'd been torn in half. She'd even joked she'd given the spider its roughage for the day.

Sanny had tried to give the thing intestinal parasites, reconfiguring bits of the drone even as it was wrapped in web. Unfortunately, the spider had stayed true to how spider ate, injecting digestive juice into the web to start melting the meat. Sanny had given up at that point, but he swore that one day, he was going to get that bug– arachnid, whatever– and devour it whole and figure out how it was messing with the square-cube law to stick to buildings!

In the morning, he woke up covered in hairy exoskeleton, with eight tentacle limbs and sticking to his bed sheet because apparently she had decided to give spiders a try. His bits were, incongruously, right where they should be, between his rear-most limbs, and he had to work out how to stop sticking to the bedsheet before he was able to change back to human. Once more he compared his appearance to the pictures next to his mirror.

Then, as he sent his office-going drone to be an office drone, he sat down and began to search the internet for details about those wasps that lay their eggs inside spiders so the larvae could eat it from the inside out.

Later that day, Tammy messaged him asking if he wanted to patrol looking for crimes to foil.

I don't think public order is so bad we'd see crimes happening right in front of us if we walked around, he sent back. Not any more than usual, anyway. Didn't you see that movie?

Heroes on TV foil crimes.

Only in the opening scenes of episodes, and usually they're lucky enough for the crime to either be happening right in front of them, or have some sort of tap into some high tech police network and some way to get around town instantly, he pointed out. I can fly, but not nearly that fast, and I don't think you or Willy can.

You have a point. Stupid real life! Why does being a hero have to be so hard?

We don't have sloppy writing, contrived coincidences and 41 minutes to resolve the plot on our side?

41 minutes? Really?

Yup. Check Netflix.

Huh, you're right. 41 minutes. So, on TV basically a third of the time is all for ads? I feel cheated. So what do we do now?

Well, I've been following social media for reports of new monsters, following the news about what's happening to the ones still roaming around, and trying to figure out ways to kill them. I'm thinking parasite wasps for that spider.

I think I've seen that movie.

What movie?

Killing a giant spider by flying at it and dropping bombs.

I don't think I can do bombs. Not ones that go boom, anyway. I can do parasites though.

Maybe I can. Bombs are basically things that expand so fast they break things around them, right? Trees are pretty good at breakings things when they expand, it's how roots break rocks.

I'll leave that to you then. Wanna try tomorrow?

Make it the day after, I'll see how Willy feels about being put in a bottle so we can turn her– or a part of her, at least– into a bomb.

––––––––––––––––––

Two days later, all three of them tried going after the Gagambuhala again.

This time they came at it from the air, Sanny carrying the other two, using a bird-shaped drone. Tammy's offshoot kept pricking him with thorns, which she kept apologizing for over the messenger app, but he withstood it, although the burning pain and blusters were… irritating. Willy was less troublesome, since she'd agreed to be carried inside a reused plastic soft drink bottle. They'd decided to communicate using their non-drone bodies with apps, since Sanny suspected all their talking last time had been how the spider had been able to learn they were there. Maybe they'd made its webs vibrate or something.

The first run seemed to go well, with Tammy releasing burrs that latched all over the hairs on the Gagambuhala's body. Then they exploded into saplings.

It was morbidly fascinating, watching such small seeds literally grow explosively, roots tangling onto the Gagambuhala's hairs and trying to burrow in deeper as the rest of the trees grew and grew, weighing it down, the trunks and branches reaching and melding into each other to stay on its back.

Sanny had been about to sweep down for a second pass when the Gagambuhala had scrambled for the entrance of an underground carpark and managed to rip the trees off its back by scraping them against the small opening. Tammy had tried to make the best of it, taking control of the trees and sending them to try and chase after the spider into the car park, but it had scrambled out through the other entrance and quickly climbed up and away towards it's growing webs and lines above the buildings. It had quickly scrambled towards the nest it had made over Ayala Avenue, climbing inside it.

They'd vetoed chasing after it, since they didn't think they had a chance against a giant spider in its own nest, and decided to try again some other time when it was out.

Three days after that, they had their chance again, coming at the Gagambuhala with the same strategy of dropping seeds so Tammy could grow them and entangle it, as well, as sending more seeds to block off any carpark entrances it might use to scrape them off.

They Died.

WHY DOES A GIANT SPIDER HAVE ANTI-AIR SLINGSHOTS?

I don't know. Please don't capslock, Sanny replied over the app.

It had little robot spiders too! WHY does it have robots spiders? HOW does it have robot spiders?

Going by the shapes of some of the parts… I think it built them from the cars it was taking apart. Maybe using computers from some of the office buildings to run them.

THAT IS SUCH BULLSHIT!!!!!!

Speaking as someone whose entire physiology is bullshit, I don't think we can throw around that particular stone.

The day after, word came of the military moving into the Makati. Apparently, giant spiders were one thing. Giant spiders that built robots and silk-powered slingshot turrets? That it somehow controlled with its webs? That made someone nervous.

Maybe we should leave this to the authorities and concentrate on some other monster, Sanny suggested.

It's not going to work, Tammy sent back. I've seen this movie too.

Well, this monster doesn't have any fans, so maybe the director will let the military kill it this time.

The next day, what became known as the Battle of Makati began…