Spiderbro sat within the warm confines of Martin’s head who in turn stepped into the warm confines of the school bus, which would take them both to school. Martin did not expect to learn anything of value in school that could solve his brain-spider problem. Martin did not want to go to school. Spiderbro, on the other hand, wanted to attend school very much. It was expecting to learn things about humanity to integrate better into the local environment, so that it could someday find a nice, safe place to breed and multiply.
Martin relentlessly tried to fight off, to resist the alien presence that was now in charge of his body, but it was no use. Every one of his attempts had been easily thrown off. It was akin to trying to catch ocean waves with bare hands. The young hero desperately wanted to hide away from the looks of other students who saw and greeted him as Cassie’s minion.
Spiderbro fearlessly drove Martin’s body forward.
“Look who decided to show up today. Mittens! Thought they suspended him for setting the school on fire,” someone declared loudly.
Martin’s body stopped mid stride, turning. His eyes locked onto a muscular teenager at the front row who made the comment to a blonde girl sitting beside him.
[I see. This human subtype is labelled as a [jock].] Spiderbro caught and dissected Martin’s thought. [Hanging out with a [cheerleader] subtype as is their standard behavioral pattern.]
“Ah, you’re the kid whose entire life revolves around proving your superiority to everyone else,” Martin’s mouth said, a hand pointing at the seat the bigger teenager was occupying.
“Say what?” The jock twitched.
“I merely wanted to point out that you are a pompous, staunch laddie who sadly lacks self-awareness due to insufficient mental capacity," Spiderbro added.
“What?!” The jock said, standing up, looming over far smaller Martin. “I think that you belong in the back of the bus, along with that… pyromaniac weirdo. I think that someone needs to…”
Martin’s body moved with impossible precision. His leg struck out into the jock’s shin and the muscular teenager yelled in surprise, bending over. Martin’s arms guided the bigger body into the empty space between the seats, kicking him forward as the bus moved. The jock whimpered, impacting face-first into the floor. Martin sat into the vacated seat next to the blonde cheerleader.
[What the frig are you doing, you dumb alien spider?!] Martin screamed inside his head. [Don’t you want to blend in?!]
[Blending in does not work by hiding. I am establishing dominance to build trust. Something you failed to do. Once I am on top of the student food chain, along with my other shard as the top teacher we shall rule this place of human learning,] Spiderbro answered inside Martin’s head.
“I’ll murder you! Don’t think you’ll get away with this, Mittens!” The jock hissed from the floor.
“Please don’t fight on the bus. Don’t make me get up. You, take a seat NOW!” The bus driver said resolutely. The jock stood up, slowly limping to the back of the bus.
“You are welcome to challenge me again after class, bud,” Spiderbro commented with Martin’s lips, smiling at the retreating jock.
“What the...” The driver pressed on the breaks and the bus lurched to a sudden stop. Martin’s eyes looked ahead at the two people standing in the middle road. It was Alexa and that Equalizer girl… Cottie. The villain had too many bandages on for reasonability and was bouncing up and down excitedly, with her hands behind her. The Equalizer stood perfectly still, gray cloak fluttering in the wind, silver pin glittering on her chest. She looked determined as if she was a western novel sheriff waiting for the antagonist to emerge to have a shoot-off at noon.
The bus doors opened and the pair of girls entered the bus.
“Hey, Alexa!” Martin’s mouth began to speak.
Alexa’s left arm emerged from behind her. She was holding a bowl of what appeared to be fruit loops.
“Would you like some lööps, brother?” She asked.
“Hrm. Are you offering me your nutritious breakfast, again?” Spiderbro made Martin’s eyes focus on the bowl.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Whoopsie!” Alexa slipped on the rubber floor mat, the bowl of fruit loops tipping over, hundreds of colorful, small, ring-shaped cereal pieces raining down, bouncing and scattering all over the floor of the bus. Martin’s new, improved eyes tried to focus on all of them, to catch all of the motion —
Alexa’s right hand emerged from her back, revealing her pink hairdryer contraption. Spiderbro, distracted by the fruit loop waterfall, reacted far too late to the threat of the raygun. The villainess pressed the trigger.
The skinwalker-enhanced eyes could see a horrible ray shimmering from the barrel, flickering with a new, freakish color Martin could not name. His body tried to leap away, to get out of the path of the beam but failed to do so in time. There was only so much space in the bus for the skinwalker to escape to.
The normally mildly annoying pocket ray gunfire struck Martin in the head and the skinwalker inside his head screamed. Martin fell to the floor, twitching and frothing at the mouth. Alexa, still holding the trigger of the ray gun, advanced towards the slain, shaking boy.
“Thought you’d be in Mittens, my little friend,” she said, bending down.
“Is that boy having a seizure?!” The bus driver stood up.
“Remain in your place, citizen.” Cottie put her hand on the bus driver’s arm, her other hand resting on her railgun, visible beneath her gray cloak. “This is Enforcer business.”
The driver gulped, sitting back down, forced into obedience by the calm voice of the Equalizer, staring with worry at her glittering Enforcer pin.
“Martin. This is your only chance!” Alexa said, leaning down to the twitching boy. “You will soon lose yourself forever to the skinwalker if you do not reassert control now! Awaken. Restrain, wield the spider in your head. Do it for me. Do it for the world! Be more!”
Martin’s mind was aflame with agony. He could feel what the skinwalker felt. The little spider in his head was burning up, dying. Martin tried to take control of his own body but was in too much pain. He saw nothing but sparks in his eyes, felt nothing but the fire in his head. Alexa let go of the trigger. Martin stopped flailing on the floor. His eyes filled with dread stared at the villainess.
“You’re hurting me, Alexa! Please stop! Please!!!” Spiderbro whimpered, black and red tears dripping from Martin’s eyes. Martin knew, felt it then - the little skinwalker was terrified of dying, not wanting to lose even more of itself to oblivion, not wanting to let go of its new, human body and the intelligence and understanding it had granted.
Alexa pressed on the trigger once again, flooding both the skinwalker shard and the boy with pain. “Wake up, God damn it! Ignite the power in your head!”
She pressed the raygun trigger on and off, drowning and releasing them from the ocean of suffering.
“Hrmmm. He’s bleeding pretty badly. Are you sure you should keep this up?” Cottie stepped in, the slightest bit of concern in her eyes.
The burning sensation of the skinwalker intensified in Martin’s head, he coughed out black sludge along with copious amounts of his own blood. The little spider lost even more parts of itself, fried by the raygun.
“Make her stop! Please! We’re both going to die!” The skinwalker wailed. “I can’t hold myself together!” Martin suddenly understood that it had done severe damage to his body by burrowing from his mouth to get into his brain and fixed it all, repaired it with its own flesh. Flesh that was now melting away, coming apart and killing them both with internal bleeding.
Alexa pressed her face against Martin’s head, clicking the trigger in very quick intervals. Martin felt like he was being dragged into the dark abyss by the river of agony.
“It’s my fault. Everything is my fault,” Alexa whispered into Martin’s ear. “I planned all of this. A thousand little events, a thousand people pushed in just the right way, all to lead everything to this pivotal moment. I filed hundreds of anonymous reports to the SCA that my father was concocting villainous deeds. I got into the SCA database, pulling and pushing the bureaucratic machinery of the Superstate into action. I arranged, made sure that Daniel Kilborne would get this mission. That you, his son - the child of a prognosticator and a mental manipulator, someone utterly clueless and nice, someone who is still not awake to their power, could come here to this town, could become my friend, could trust me! I did all of this just so you could get infected with a tiny, weak skinwalker shard from the future!”
The feelings of confusion, betrayal, and anger overpowered the pain.
Martin wanted to scream at Alexa. He should have known better. He should have expected this! He suddenly saw the skinwalker spider in his head as a burning, sparkling web-like shape, overlaid atop another, far wider, dim fractal web. He reached out towards it with all of his being, desiring, wishing, needing to do something!
The feelings of rage and Alexa's betrayal pushed him forward, made him desperately grab at the dying skinwalker with his entire mind and soul.
The fractal network around the skinwalker ignited in a radiant splendor of impossible colors, tendrils twisting, entwining, cocooning the little burning, dying life into itself. Martin’s eyes flashed from within with a multitude of colors as his nails gripped into the floor mat. Alexa had released the raygun trigger in that instant.
A foreboding message flashed in Martin's vision woven from a million colors, the letters swimming in and out of view.
Terraforge GLM status: Integration 98.74% complete.
System Error: Terraforge GLM system control lost due to _unknown interference.
Please consult G-dir manufacturer for further detail.
“What in the hell is wrong with you?! Why have you done this to me?!” Both Martin and Spiderbro cried out in unison, grabbing at Alexa. She was giggling, no laughing with wild abandon of a supervillain as Martin shook her in impotent rage.
“I win,” she finally pronounced with a wide grin.