skitter | IC Inbox

However you want it to look. Mine was body-suits with hidden armor plates and a capelet when I was fighting, but here on the Barge it's usually turtlenecks. Even just a scarf, sometimes.

Come over, I'll show you some stuff.

Huh...well, you definitely caught my interest. Though now I have to ask...if you got enough spiders together do you think you could swing around like Spiderman? Or is that a little too much?

[He'd already changed his shirt when he called her so thankfully there wasn't so much blood, but he is absolutely going to have to squint a little when he gets close to make sure he knows which room number he's going into.]

Give me a bit, my vision isn't that bad, like I can navigate, but it's definitely a little blurry.

[And he doesn't want to slip and fall down the stairs because he can't see them super great. Elevator it is. Slipping out of his room, Atticus in hand, he'll start heading over to her cabin.]

I mean, I have used the silk to rappel, but they’re usually so fine the danger is cutting myself. But shooting out web and having it just adhere wherever, not happening. Spider-Man’s web-shooters were mechanical, though. I probably could have gotten tech like that from a friend, but it was counter to the theme when we worked together.

[Her cabin door is open, as always, but now the yard is a large room, with a sculpted pool to one side, potted plants in the dozens, and paintings of a forest around the walls under a starry ceiling. Ramen the hen is roosting in the pot under a small pine tree, looking like a feathery Christmas present.]

Come on in, costume department is back here.

[The fact that it was a possibility with some tech is enough for Hanna. His Warden is spiderwoman with extra steps, which is fucking cool of you ask him.

The change of the space is a little bit of a surprise, but he supposes with what the Barge went through, being conservative with what it can so is probably for the best. Slipping inside, he follows her with a gentle greeting, though he might be squinting to make out certain things properly]

Costume department, huh? That sounds fancy. You have a sewing machine and shit back here? Makes me sad we kind of missed Halloween with all the bullshit.

Oh fuck, we did, didn't we? Man... I wanted to get Hunter in a Nosferatu costume this year.

[At least it's brighter than it was, which might help him out. Taylor leads him into the house, where she's opened a big room towards the back - the room that was Kiryu's before. Now it's got her collection of mannequins, with shirts and a swimsuit in various stages of completeness. One that's barely begun makes it clear how they're made - faint traceries of web are still being laid down over one another, layer after layer after layer. No spiders are present right now, but their work is obvious if he can see enough.]

I don't use a sewing machine.

[Smol Tepes seemed to be a good candidate for nosferatu. A bummer she didn't get to make him something.

Walking in, the small details are practically impossible to discern, but he does get up real close, can see it then at least.]

woah...what kind of spiders are you using anyways?

[Her grin widens, pleased that he isn't in the least bothered.]

Mostly Darwin's bark spiders - they're a kind of orb weaver, totally harmless if you're not a fly and they outproduce everything else by two to one. Some black widows - their silk is strongest, but I don't like to keep a large population here.

I kept a lot of my working population on the greenhouse roof, so I'm having to rebuild my numbers, but I've still got enough in here to do some work.

[Thankfully Hanna has seen his fair share of creepy crawlies. He's not afraid of most things, spiders don't make the list, though there definitely is something about the way some bigger insects move that make him slightly uncomfortable.

Pulling back so he isnt inches away from her work to see it, he nods, glancing around the room curiously. He'llhave to come back when hes got his new glasses.]

Aww, did some of them get roasted in the fire? I thought the green house got the least of it anyways...bummer.

It doesn't take much. A lot of them wiped each other out too, since I wasn't there to keep peace. Territorial.

[She reaches into a box tucked back on a shelf, and pulls out a large and spiny spider, with a body about the size of a quarter, letting it crawl across her palm before setting it on the mannequin to keep laying down silk.]

Oh, gotcha. Makes sense I guess.

[He squints at the drawer, the spider a blurry shape in her hand before it gets started.]

Is it usually just one working or you can get them to play nice while they're doing their weaving?

I usually have a few dozen at work on a piece at once. I can make them ignore each other, with a bit of attention. But it wigs people out.

Oh...yeah I can see how that would bother people. Spiders have a sort of disturbing gait with those legs of theirs.

"That's why I try to work on the net at night. I usually fly down there with my arm covered in black widows. Folks hate it."

I forgot that was you...you and Hunter, right?

Does the alarm still work now that he's gone? I know Shaw hangs out down there sometimes.

Yeah, the two of us.

It doesn't. Folk started using the net as a toy, so he took out the alarm because it's just kind of awful.

That was like...right before he left right? He didn't stay the whole first month of our Pairing, I remember that much.

[He is curious though...]

Do you still keep in contact? I know Wardens can go off Barge. He doing alright?

I visited him right after he left. Had to make sure he didn't get sent back to the Boiling Isles. He's good. He's- in the best possible place for him, with Dracula and his family.

Oh yeah, he said he was adopted by Vlad Tepes. Which, I'm sure he was kind of scary, but also rad as hell.

You think you might visit again sometime? I was thinking...I wanted to apologize. And I know he has no idea what I did, but when I used Atticus to summon that alternate dimension, I felt like it was a betrayal somehow, even if I didn't know what would happen.

What did go down...I don't really want to use it for that, and I'm sure he would have been thoroughly disappointed.

I will. Hunter is- well, a brother. [And it's plain from her expression just how much she misses him.]

I can't take you along unless you graduate first, but I can take a letter?

[Hanna glances around to see a good place to lean and sets himself up.]

I dunno. That feels a little weird. Send a letter to a guy I knew for like three weeks tops?

I don't know about you, but letters are a good way to talk to someone you don't know well.

Hmm... [He'd written little things on pieces of paper and burned them before, just to get it out and away from him, but an actual letter?]

I'll think about it. If I actually write something worth sending, I'll make sure you know about it. [Which reminds him of that page in the Speakeasy where he'd written some things down on Hunter's long after he'd gone. Perhaps he could look at it again, see if anything there was worth sharing.]

I write to him, to Rags, to Dad- They're all in a locker in the counseling office.

[Just to let him know that option is always there.]

So, what do you think? A turtleneck?

[He at least appreciates the sentiment.]

I think you just want us to be twinning, but I have nothing against that, so I would totally wear one of those. Just, so long as the neck isn't like so tight, that is the worst. I had one turtle neck when I was a kid, and I was a small kid, so I dunno who this thing was for, but I felt like it was choking me. Never stretched out.

[She laughs, eyes squinting shut for a moment.] Honestly, like four fifths of my wardrobe is tank tops with bug puns. If you want to twin, I can share. But turtlenecks are life-saving.

[Literally. She doesn't say it aloud, but she touches her own throat, thumb absently following the ghost of a blade from years ago.]

I'll make it a bit loose. Better that way anyway.

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