Expanding


Jan 25, 2011

Taylor awoke to the knowledge that Arachnae had discovered a new
possible lair site. It was well to the west, inland and actually
beyond the technical borders of Brockton Bay. As it was still within
easy reach for the openings of the...

Taylor paused. Something had changed, a while ago actually, and she
had only just noticed. Arachnae could open these portal things herself
now, and as Arachnae was Taylor was Arachnae, Taylor could too. Oh,
sure, technically she was using Arachnae's power to open portals
while using Arachnae's link to Taylor to open them where Taylor was,
but it was still her doing it.

She made a small opening and grabbed her notebook from her desk without
getting out of bed. It was not actually very different from using
Lockheed, and as far as she could tell, it did not change what she
could do from what she had been able to do before. She had already
been able to use the power through Lockheed to open them wherever
she wanted, as long as one end was within her extended range. Given
that Lockheed could have multiple openings at once, that was really
no limitation at all.

The difference, such a minor thing that really made all the difference
in the world, was that when using Lockheed's power, she could only
sense the portals from Lockheed's side, using his power. Somehow, the
fact that she was Arachnae and Arachnae was her meant that she could
sense the folded space, even when there were none of the portal capable
insects on her side. It was not sight, exactly, she could not see them,
but she had known exactly where they were, where the edges were.

It was something that made a massive difference in her confidence
in using the openings. It did not seem like it should have that big
an effect, since she had specified both ends of most of the openings
she had made, but apparently, intellectually knowing where they were
and actually physically knowing were worlds apart.

She made a quick note in her book to spend a bit more time exploring
what she could do with the portals, then she hopped up and started
getting ready.

---

Good-self had done more than just finding a lair. She had already
started occupying it. With Lockheed and Martin to keep her linked to
the main lair, she had gone through herself, and installed laser-fly
beetle lamps to light the space, and then created more laser flies to
act as infrared heaters. It was a dark granite cave, rather than the
limestone caverns that so often made for beautiful pictures. There were
no smoothly rising stalagmites, nor elegantly descending stalactites,
no massive slow-formed crystals jutting from the ground. There was
a large pool of glassy still water, and a broad expanse of broken
jagged ground. The cave was nearly forty feet tall in the center,
tapering down to nothing along the edges.

Good-self's eight legs had not had any difficulty traversing the rough
terrain, but it would not be rough for much longer. Her searching
dragonflies no longer being needed for hunting down a new lair, they
now located massive piles, small mountains of sand, rocky aggregate,
and gravel made, though Good-self did not realize it, by the road
crews as temporary storage while they worked on repaving roads. The
dragonflies did have to be cycled through warm lair to recover from
being active in the chill air, but the lightly drifting snow did not
cause them any real problems. Tunnels deposited groups of insects near
the tops of these mounds, then another portal linked the bottom edge
with the cave, and the insects dug until they caused a collapse in
the side of the pile, sending sand or gravel hurtling down the side,
and through the tunnels into the cavern.

She redirected the output tunnels here and there, discovering as
she did that she did not need to have the dragonflies dismiss and
reform the tunnels. She could drag and reposition them using her
own power over them, which made things faster and easier. If a bit
of snow made it through on or with the sand or gravel here or there,
it was not a concern, the snow quickly being melted as the infrared
laser flies kept the temperature up.

Committing an innumerable string of small, unnoticed thefts, and
entirely unaware of the illegality of her actions, she took shameless
advantage of the potential energy the human workers had put in place
by building their mountains, and filled in the low places of her cave,
and then went on, deepening it until it was several feet from the
top of the sandy layer to the hard rock below.

The stillness of the pool was disturbed continually, as gravel and sand
trickled here and there into the waters. Ants and termites poured in
next, as the dragonflies spread through the countryside, setting up
collection points for her to draw colonies through. On their backs,
they brought in worms and beetles and spiders that were close enough
to reach the streaming rivers of ants.

Here and there a few insect hunters, rodents, frogs, scorpions,
and centipedes came through by accident, though Good-self was not
bothered by them. Let them eat some of her insects now. They would
be food themselves in good time.

Some of the ants trucked in fungus with them, smaller fungus-farming
ants from the forests there about, and these too she let pass without
comment.  Managing to get wood for her termites to eat was a trickier
proposition, and here she actually got involved herself. A dragonfly
who spied a sizable fallen branch would put a tunnel on the end of it,
and she would reach through and drag it in. She amassed a fair pile
of dead wood and leaves by this method, piling it all by one side of
the cave.

As she proceeded, she noticed that the musty, unpleasant, almost
choking quality of the atmosphere was steadily being ameliorated,
becoming almost pleasantly woodsy. Curious, she sent some of the
dragonflies to the coast, and setting up a tunnel, reached through it
and collected a cloud of flies and brought them through in a rush. The
salty tang of a sea breeze and a mild flurry of snowflakes came in
with them.

She double-clapped her hands. Scary-self would be pleased with her
for figuring out a new facet of their abilities, she knew. It seemed
that the blockage against air passing fell when something else was
crossing the tunnel, even though the blockage of light did not.

Pleased with her progress as Scary-self's school day neared its
end, but recognizing that there was no-where yet in the cave for
Scary-self to sit or work, she set her bugs to building a chair. To
avoid compromising her nice large space, she placed it at one end
of the cave, though far enough out that Scary-self would not find it
cramped in height.

Out of simple necessity, it ended up resembling a throne more than
a chair.  Rather than a chair's spindly legs and cross-bracing,
Good-self's insects carried in stones cooperatively, and stacked
them carefully into a layer. The spiders wove webs, tying the stones
together, then the mud-daubers filled in the gaps with mud, and the
wasps papered over the outside to keep smaller stones from falling
out. It rose up, layer by layer, while Good-self set her modified
spiders to laying out two smaller weaves.

She could not use Shelob to do the weft lines, so she modified a
couple of spiders, making them larger and capable of weaving thicker
strands to make a strong weft.

The mass of unmodified spiders wove and climbed, back and forth,
felting together a mass of airy silk, while Good-self carefully
designed another spider, with a hard carapace like the spiny spider,
but that was much more slender, with a single long spine that reached
past its cephalothorax. It was designed to act as a living needle,
weaving a thicker, stronger thread than most, with an abdomen that was
only partially covered by the carapace. It would use the carapace to
pierce a hole in the silk that it could squeeze through, then repeat
the process from the other side, generating its thread as it went
rather than having to draw it through.

---

Jan 25, 2011

Taylor's good mood did not last long into the morning. Breakfast with
her father was fine, as was her morning run through a thin veil of
falling snow, but when she got on the bus and had to face thoughts of
school, she remember the revelation she had the night before. Sophia
Hess... was Shadow Stalker, a 'hero' with the Brockton Bay Wards.

As she walked in to the school, her fly-eyes ready and watching, her
enemies quickly tagged, she was expecting, anticipating that Sophia
would be burning with anger, frustrated to the point of exploding with
having continually missed her on Monday. She was not at all expecting
the look of smug self-satisfaction on her tormentors face. One of the
school's track stars, Sophia Hess was a strongly built black girl, and
the one behind most of the physical aspects of the bullying. Taylor had
thought the school overlooked the bullying because of Sophia's track
wins, but now, she wondered if the school knew that she was a Ward.

To think she had considered trying to join the Wards! That was a
nightmare she had thankfully dodged. Unfortunately, Sophia's good mood
boded little better for Taylor than a black mood. Angry or happy,
Sophia seemed to genuinely enjoy pushing others around, even gang
members, so she would probably not be looking to avoid Taylor today.

It also meant that Taylor's budding plans of somehow using her
knowledge of the Trio's whereabouts to get them to commit an obvious
act of bullying where someone official could see it was pointless. They
would look the other way to keep their Ward. Everyone knew that all
the Wards went to Arcadia, the fancy high school downtown close to
the PRT headquarters. They were probably getting paid hush money or
given extra facilities or something for having Sophia there. Not that
the school couldn't use it, in her opinion, Winslow was a dump.

Taylor spent much of that day enjoying a variety of visions of using
her powers to make Sophia's life miserable, from laying spider-silk
trip-wires to send her sprawling, to dropping bugs on her, or letting
her find a bug in her lunch. She particularly enjoyed the mental image
of Sophia dropping into a space-fold and landing in the salty waters
of the bay.

She did not act on them, though she did push her own boundaries
a bit by using her ability to monitor those in the area and know
when there was no-one in her line of sight to skip straight from a
stairwell to the girl's bathroom in an empty stall, and then back
again, leaving the occupants to wonder when no-one came out after the
toilet flushed. If they decided it was haunted, that was no skin off
of her back, as long as it could not be tied to her, and it let her
neatly avoid a cordon Emma tried to lay for her. She could only hope
that a few more failed attempts like that would see Emma's star fall a
bit in the eyes of her peers, as she kept failing to humiliate Taylor.

She noted the Trio and their various hangers-on waiting outside the
door to school at the end of the day, and smirked to herself as she
slipped into the bathroom, ducked into a stall, and stepped out into
the lair.

Which was curiously empty of her innocent smaller self. She reached
out for her sister-self's memories, confident that she would not have
gone out where anyone could see her.

---

With a fresh sheet of paper borrowed from Diana's printer, Annette
started charting out a decision tree. She had researched the current
cape scene in the city, since if she wanted to watch over Danny and
Taylor, staying in Brockton Bay was a given.

She had choices though. She could either hunt for private work
and avoid the cape lifestyle as completely as possible, or accept
her powers and become a cape. If she did the first, she would have
to still somehow scrape together enough money to get a replacement
identity, and avoid having it looked into, which would limit her job
prospects. Getting that money without being able to get a job first
and without being a cape would be beyond tricky.

If she took the second course, she could either try to make a go as
an independent hero or rogue, or join or found a group. Independent
heroes had short life expectancies, she had seen the figures, which
would cut short her ability to watch out for Taylor and Danny, unless
whatever had brought her back did it again. Against that, though,
was how well suited her power seemed to be for defense. Sure, she had
thought of a few offensive applications, but given the way it seemed to
act on its own, and to want to close her in an impenetrable ball, she
might have better prospects as a rogue or independent hero than many.

Joining a group was touchy. The Protectorate would involve revealing
her identity to them, so that was out, since they would undoubtedly
check it quite thoroughly due to Master/Stranger protocols, the
defenses they had against those capes that could appear to be someone
else or pass unnoticed, Strangers, and the capes that could control
other people, or make and control things that seemed like people or
could pass as such, Masters.

New Wave was a family grouping, a pair of interrelated families,
and being all open about their identities, would likely expect the
same from her even if their decision to do so had led to the death
of one of their own.

The local villains groups were equally problematic. The ABB, the Azn
Bad Boys, were an asian-only group, and engaged in unconscionable
behaviors according to rumour, including forced prostitution. Not a
pleasing prospect.  The E88, the white supremacist - well, truthfully,
the Nazi group, she could fit into, being white herself. It was hardly
an enticing prospect for all that, given how few of their views she
shared, and how repugnant she found their politics.

The last major gang in the city was the Merchants, and they were
bottom on her list as well. Drug-users, drug-pushers, they literally
gave villains a bad name.

There was supposed to be a mercenary group in town, but they seemed
to mostly take jobs out of town, which would take her away from Taylor
and Danny.

There were a couple of other minor groups. The Undersiders were a
bunch of teenagers, probably not looking to have a mother-figure
around, while Uber and Leet were a villainous duo that were focused
on presentation, as they filmed their exploits to release them on
an online video site. The rogue, Parian, who ran a clothiers, not
something that barriers would be much help with. Finally, the rogue
Planesman, a force field user who had given up on heroing and gone
into construction, or well, destruction really. Tearing buildings
apart. Apparently, his ability ignored the Manton effect and when he
accidentally sliced a villain in half with his force fields, he swore
never to employ them against humans again.

Her abilities might mesh well with his, so that was a possibility,
though again, as a legitimate company setup, his employers might take
issue with her lack of an identity.

She looked at the leaves on the decision tree. That was the point of
laying it out like this, after all, to take into account not just
the decisions one needed to make, but to make sure one could live
with the outcomes as well.

---

Jan 25, 2011

Taylor took a few minutes to stroke Shelob and Masque, and to look
about the place to make sure there was nothing else she needed to take
care of, before she took a step and entered the new lair. Arachnae
crossed the distance from the far end to Taylor's side nearly as
fast, her legs, which Taylor was used to hearing clattering across
the concrete at the lair, virtually silent as she flowed across the
now even sand and soil.

"Big, see? And water." Arachnae gestured enthusiastically. "Got dirt
for ants." There were a myriad of spider webs adorning the walls now,
and mosquitoes were appearing from nowhere as dragonflies hunted
them down and threw openings in front of them, only to get caught
in the innumerable webs.  There were several obvious ant mounds in
construction, ants swarming over them, on the periphery of the cavern,
where the roof ducked down to meet the floor.

Arachnae and her bugs had done a masterwork in leveling the gathered
dirt and stones, forming a smooth though yielding surface. Arachnae
tugged on Taylor's hand, drawing her down across the massive chamber
to where what could only be described as a throne awaited her. There
was a golden pillow sitting on the stone chair, which had armrests,
and a high back. In the face of Arachnae's effort, Taylor could do
nothing else but sit in the proffered throne.

Arachnae had clearly not been idle on her own behalf, for beside
the throne, spanning probably twenty-five feet from the ceiling to
several large stones set in the sand, was a massive web-hammock thing,
which Arachnae promptly leapt onto. It swayed gently beneath her.

Her innocent smaller self mimed opening and holding out her hands,
and Taylor obliged, whereupon several interesting stones fell into her
hands. Flattened, but rounded, they were mostly clear, with streaks
of color through them, like squashed marbles.

"What are these?" Taylor rolled them between her fingers, letting
them clack and squeak against each other. They even sounded like glass.

"Tried melting sand." Arachnae was clearly enthused, and bounced off
the web.  She dragged a heavy flat stone across the sand, which was
promptly smoothed and leveled by a platoon of beetles. Its surface
had black spots and spatter.

Arachnae grabbed a handful of the sand and dribbled it into a blackened
and very slight depression in the rock, then held up her hand. Two
giant wasps flew down and latched on to her fingers, but contrary to
Taylor's mental images, they grabbed on facing her finger-tips. They
were too long for her short fingers, which she had to hold out fairly
straight, as they crossed on to the back of her chitinous hand. She
clicked her chelicerae together twice, then scraped her fangs together
in what a moment later Taylor recognized as a fair approximation
of a flint being struck, and two bright spots appeared in the sand,
sending off dazzling reflections.

The brightness grew, then a globule of molten sand appeared, the
bits of unmelted sand adhering to it, then melding into it, until a
single blob rested on the rock, which glowed itself occasionally when
Arachnae's aim faltered. She chittered, and the glow slowly faded to
a warm red, then cooled further, leaving a glassy looking stone there.

Arachnae wiggled her fingers at Taylor, who giggled. "Awesome,
just awesome."

At the same time, Taylor recognized that it was only really useful as
an intimidation tactic. Her laser flies flying in controlled formation
would give her better accuracy and control, and the ability to hit
simultaneous targets. A trio of flies flew down to hover over her
shoulder, and lit up the stone plate with three lights in a triangle
pattern.

It took only a couple of minutes practice to be able to use her
sighting of the three dots to get the fly's motions adjusted so
that the dots followed where she looked. Seeing what she was doing,
Arachnae pushed the still warm glass pebble off the platter and
scooped up another pile of sand for her.

Where Arachnae had used the infrared wavelength she was used to using
to keep her lair warmed, Taylor was using the red default, and when
she pushed the power up, the beams were faintly visible as dust in
the air drifted through them. She had to push the power up a fair
bit more than she expected before she got the glow in the sand that
Arachnae had achieved, but soon she too had a melted blob.

When she reached out to her swarm to find something close enough to
a stick to make an opening and grab it, Taylor shivered. Her swarm
had grown massively. She had hundreds of circles of control scattered
across the coast and inland of Brockton Bay. Arachnae had shielded
her from them while she was at school, but her attempt to reach out
had encompassed them all.

Through millions of eyes she looked at once, and chose a nice
straight stick.  She reached out, her hand vanishing into the air,
returning drawing that stick out. Four feet long or so, and nicely
slender. Her flies maintained the glow in the little ball of glass
as she reached out with the stick and poked it into the glass.

It came up on the end of the stick. Experimentally, she rolled it in
the sand, then brought it back up. Her flies easily maintained their
focus on the blob as it moved, and the sandy coating it had gained
rapidly melted, and it once more formed a smooth blob. She drew back
a bit, then stuck the stick through nothingness and rolled it in the
smooth white sand of a beach and drew it back through.

The blob was large enough now, as the prettier white sand melted and
fused into the same red glow as the rest of it, to continually try
and droop off of the stick, so that she had to keep turning it to
keep it on top.

The stick itself was flaring every now and then at the end, flames
licking up momentarily, and it was getting blackened, but was not yet
truly burning. She vaguely recalled from television documentaries that
actually making something with glass this way usually involved blowing
into a hollow pipe, but she was not really wanting to make anything
anyway. Nor did she have the skills to, but it was kind of cool. She
held it above the platter-like stone again, and let it droop down,
then rotated that against the stone, and worked the blob off the
stick by scraping it on the stone.

"That was fun," she said, wiping her forehead and realized that
it was getting hot. A cooling breeze caught her by surprise, and
she looked up to see that a flow of beetles was coming out of an
opening in the air directed towards her, then flying up and passing
out through another. A few lonely snowflakes drifted through amongst
them, and laughing, she caught one on her tongue.

---

Jan 25, 2011

Now this, this was a beyond a breakthrough, Annette thought, staring
at the bed in the guest room. She had remembered that the porcelain
bits that had shattered off of the plate had not vanished when it had,
after she had been shot at, and had considered trying to pry off the
porcelain and sell it. She already knew she could not pry off the gold
sheet, even to be able to find out if it was gold or something else.

But when she had gone for a shortcut, having already failed earlier
in producing the porcelain by itself, and tried to cause the backing
to vanish without the porcelain, which had worked perfectly to her
surprise, she had seen her chance, and taken it a step further.

Now she was staring at a sheet of gold, or what at least might be
gold, more than paper-thin. Against a dark backing in the light,
it appeared golden, but held up, it was practically transparent. On
the bed it seemed to barely tint the cover... but was it actually gold?

The next few minutes passed in a blur, incidentally demonstrating
to Annette that her power did not seem to draw on her stamina, as in
the air above the bed a flat plate appeared, gold shimmering on the
bottom. It vanished, leaving the thin gold to fall slowly through the
air even as the space above it was suddenly filled with another plate,
which vanished.

It took nearly a thousand falling sheets before she thought she had
about an inch of material once she pressed the air out. Another plate
appeared, and she linked it to her hand and pressed it down to the bed,
unlinked it, placed her hand on the back, linked it again, then slid
her other hand in under, and turned the whole mess over. She produced
another plate on top, and linked it to her free hand.

She pressed down, incidentally and finally testing the force she
could apply.  She had not dared test this in the alley, as if the
plates actually did resist or apply significant force when moved in
this way, she might have done serious damage to the surroundings.

The sound was good, metallic, as the sheets pressed against each other,
rubbing and squealing as the air escaped and they flattened against
each other. It was a curious thing, as she had to be careful to move
her hand slowly. There was no force feedback, no sensation that made
it feel like her hand was hard to move. She released the connection,
just to allow herself a chance to untense. If she had simply dropped
her hand when moving something like that, would it have been stopped
by the pressure? Or maybe only by the other plate, while the metal
in between, if that was metal, shot out as liquid at high speed?

Thinking of a possible safety valve, she rested her hand on the bed,
then linked again. Now at least she could not accidentally drop
her hand. Instead, she had to press lightly into the bed surface,
listening to the squeal and crackle of the sheets as they were crushed
between the two flat plates. When the mass in between them started
glowing, she let up in surprise. Because her hand was still linked,
the plate rose as well, pushed up by the expansion of the compressed
bed, revealing a ragged edged lump of warmly glowing metal.

It was thin now, barely a tenth of an inch thick, tighter on one side
than the other where the plates had not quite lined up perfectly with
the sheets.  What had been flexible, even where individual sheets
still stuck, was now rigid, crinkled, and frankly, looked a bit
dangerous. Held stiff, those slender protruding bits could probably
offer one hell of a paper-cut.

She used a smaller plate to fold and press the sides down, then lined
up several plates like a miniature car-crusher and squeezed the block
together, shrinking and lifting it, forming it into an ingot shape. It
took a couple of tries to get it right, and not leave sharp edges
where metal had squeezed out between gaps, but eventually she had
a nicely shaped lump that, given its malleability and the lack of a
color change as the surface buckled, indicating it was not oxidizing,
made her hopeful that it was genuinely gold.  If so, then her money
problems had just been solved.

Not only that, but the ability to apply enough pressure with her plates
to cause metal to not only deform but become heated to the point of
glowing, and probably of fusing and melting if she had kept going,
the fear of which was why she had immediately stopped, confirmed the
offensive potential of her nominally defensive power.

Of course, now she had the secondary concern of how to keep this
development quiet. If it got out that she could simply make gold, any
number of villains would be willing to do literally anything to bring
her under their control, and given that Masters like Heartbreaker were
out there, she needed to keep this very quiet indeed. Which meant,
unfortunately, that she could not show off this aspect of her power
to Diana.

That did not mean that she could not, or would not use it to help
her out, or set up a trust for her kids.

She waited until it was cool enough that she could touch it, and
tried to pick the block up. Though she was half afraid it would have
welded itself to the underlying plate, it actually slid off as easily
as it was on ice. It was very heavy for its apparent size, which was
another promising point in favor of its being gold.

Unfortunately, while she had awoken in a familiar outfit, one she
regularly wore to college, and had her key to the house and her
identification card, now long expired, in a slim pocket wallet, her
usual purse had not been with her, so she did not have a convenient
way to conceal the ingot while she hunted for a place that would buy
it from her, nor could she ask to borrow a spare purse or bag from
Diana without the risk of revealing the gold ingot.  She checked the
window and confirmed that it had a removable screen. She created a
container of small plates fully enclosing the ingot, linked most of
the plates to the bottom plate, and the bottom plate to her hand,
then slid it out the window, after lifting the screen out.

It took a couple of cycles of disconnecting it from her hand, raising
her hand, connecting and lowering it, then repeating, before it was
resting on the ground outside, neatly protected, as she restored the
window-screen and closed the sash, and headed out to collect it.

---

Jan 25, 2011

Sophia grinned beneath the mask of a stern woman's face she wore,
as she looked down from the rooftop and spotted an obvious drug deal
going down.  Still off-the-clock and off the patrol duty rotation,
she did not bother calling it in or letting the PRT know. She shifted,
and flitted as a shadow down to stand on the top of the covered bus
stop, then returned to solidity.  She could have easily leg-shot the
drug dealer from here, if she had wanted to, crippling his ability
to flee. That would have been too easy, too quick.

She drew out a broad-tipped quarrel and let the tip scrape noisily
across the glass roof before she brought it up and slotted it
ostentatiously into one of her crossbows. The snow had stopped about
mid-day here in town, so she was clearly visible, silhouetted against
the distant light of the street-lamps.

"Shit, man! Oh, shit, run! I don't want to die!" The druggie broke and
ran, but the dealer had drawn a gun. She shifted into shadow-form
and let him waste bullets, then solidified again, lifting the
crossbow. Elation surged in her mind as he broke, turned, and fled,
dropping the gun. She was tempted to stop for it, spoils of war and
all, but it was probably stolen and hot anyway.

"Weak," she muttered, racing after the fleeing man. The weak were prey
to the strong, that was the way of the world, and she was one of the
strong. A track star against an overweight drug-pusher. Not much of a
contest, normally, but fear of death lent swiftness, made it more fun.

---

Good-self enjoyed showing off her creations, the spiders that could
now spin web as strong as the black widows, the needle-spider which
really impressed Scary-self, and Scary-self had liked her little army
of dragonflies that stretched their reach so far. But homework had
reared its ugly head, and Scary-self had to leave, and have dinner
with Angry-man and do her work.

Good-self went back to the first lair shortly after Scary-self left, to
feed Shelob. She also arranged for the transfer of the actual beehive,
as the lair was not really a suitable place for honeybees, to a wooded
area near several large fields that could provide more flowers.

Then she set up another experiment Scary-self had thought of. It
was easier here, due to the rafters. A large web was woven between
the rafter first, but a flotilla of cooperating spiders, the first
strand across laid much faster than a normal spider might manage it
by simply having the spider carried across the gap by wasps.

From the center of the web, a spider dropped a line to the ground,
where a larger spider took hold of it. Eight more spiders, each about
six inches from the center, extruded a line that another, smaller
spider grabbed on to and hung down, acting as a weight to draw the
strand down.

When they reached the ground, they crawled to the center strand, the
eight strands were glued to the ninth, central strand and gripped by
the large spider, which began marching in a small circle, rotating
the line again and again.

Good-self could see very quickly that while this might be a workable
method of producing strong thread, it was far too slow and cumbersome
to be worthwhile. It could be made faster if inverted and with wasps
flying around but then the silk would all have to be extruded up front.

She perked up. Had not Scary-self thought of adding wings to spiders,
or spinnerets to wasps some time ago? She left the spiders to their
slow winding, and brought a black widow and a cicada-killer wasp to
her. She considered for a bit. Would these be the best to use? She
tried to picture a spider with beetle wings, and that seemed like it
would interfere with the legs. Butterfly or moth wings could lift a
larger body, but would attract too much attention. No, she decided,
satisfied, a wasp was probably the best fit.

A beetle flew over and dropped one of the spiky bee-stones into her
hand, still moist with fluids from where her insects had captured
and slaughtered one of the bumblebees.

Theoretically, she ought to be able to do this herself, without a
stone, but the stones had accomplished things she would not have
thought to do, so having it might help cover for anything she missed
in combining two bugs from such divergent lineages.

She pushed some of her own bee-stuff in to be sure there was enough,
as she commanded them to "Combine!" After the glow faded, she delved
in, tweaking and adjusting, examining the changes the stone had
made, and giving it her own flavor. The outcome had been kind of
patchy color-wise, and she made it all a glossy black with tinges
of deep purple. It had no stinger, as that space was used for the
spinnerets, and it had ten limbs. The venom had been diluted a bit,
and she considered for a bit, before dropping it down some more, to
where it would be a painful bite rather than a lethal one, to make
her removal of the warning colors more reasonable.

Now she needed more, but she did not want to have to use a bee-stone
for each one, nor did she really want to wait while they slowly
grew. There should be some other way she could manage it. Could
she just use this one as a template, and mold some spiders? Spiders
swarmed up her legs, up her thorax and torso, and out along her arms.

She focused in, as spiders filled the three palms that did not hold a
modified flying spider. A glow filled them, spiders melting together,
merging into each other, combining and expanding, then details began
to emerge, the chelicerae, the head, the eyes, the rest of the thorax,
the legs, the wings, the swollen abdomen. Three wasp-spiders flew from
her hands, and three more began to form. A third time, and then she
stopped, tired and drained, and crawled up into her hammock, watching
motionless through lidless eyes as ten flying spiders converged, one
dropping spider like to form a central strand, the other nine linking
their strands to it, letting them hang down, extruding a long loop to
have enough room, before dropping and setting wings to flight, twirling
down as they spun around and around, like dancers around a Maypole.