The Unnatural Disasters

1, p2. All the reasons not to trust strange women: Newton

There's another robot spider behind goop man. Of course there is! Why wouldn't there be.
And, because my life is a nightmare, this one's bigger than the last- an awful lot bigger, and I can't see an unarmoured part anywhere. That decapitation trick is not going to work again, I can tell.

Why am I here? I ask myself. It's a good question that I have absolutely no answer to. In hindsight, it was probably a terrible idea to go along with the words of someone you've never met.
But I was curious. Curious, and, well, not expecting to be teleported to a bathroom corridor.
But then I saw goop guy being death-squished by that spider, and- okay, I probably should have fact checked. But the guy seemed like he needed help.
Hey! For all I know, the spiders are the loyal sentinels of this... whatever it is. Somehow that seems unlikely though. Call me prejudiced, but I find it easier to trust the neon humanoid than the robot attacking it.
Trying to ride it bucking-bronco style was not my brightest idea. My bruised shoulder can attest to that. But it worked!
-Ish.

But anyway, back to Mama Spider.
The charging cable is still in my hand, I notice. Why I picked it up, I don't honestly know: I haven't done ribbon twirling in years. However, apparently the ability to wave a piece of string around your head is something you never really forget.
The spider hasn't moved, which is good news for goop man. Even if you can get smashed to a pulp and come out singing, I doubt it's a particularly fun experience.
GM- that's what I'm calling goop guy- looks at me. Despite not really having facial features, he looks confused.
"Well?" I ask Mama Spider, who just sits there like a lethargic nightmare. "You going to do something?"
Wrong thing to say. Wrong thing to say.

Mama Spider rears up; GM gives me an annoyed look.
These spiders don't really do too much, do they? Run, charge, change direction. Repeat ad infinitum, until a kid with a charging cable kills you. Doesn't really seem like the greatest existence, does it?
Back to the task at hand. Right! The spider's charging at us and it really looks like it's about to hit.

I flick my charging cable out, somehow managing to lasso GM with it. He looks at me: it's a confused look.
"No time to explain!" I yell, jerking my head to the right.
And now GM and I are standing on the wall. As it turns out, a thing that's touching a thing that's touching me can be affected by my gravity bubbles.
That's pretty convenient.
Good thing that we didn't just die then.

Mama spider, being the jerk that it is, spirals round at the last second.
"I do not like this guy," I tell GM, who's looking similarly exasperated at this turn of events. GM doesn't respond- I am feeling increasingly convinced that I'm talking to the nightmare equivalent of a dog- but that's okay. I've talked to less animate things in the past.
"Could you stop that?" I yell at Mama. It keeps ramming into the wall, too dumb to understand that it can't reach us: the shaking is really disrupting my train of thought. It's only mildly annoying, though.
I think I have a plan.

"Goop man!" I grin as I turn to face my slimy companion. Startled, GM looks at me. "I have an idea, and it's probably terrible, but it's all I have and it's worth trying, okay? Anyway, I need you to distract giant angry robot for a sec-"
Robomama slams into the wall, making me lose my balance. By the time I look round, GM's gone.
He appears to be wiggling around the robot.
Apparently his entire idea of 'distraction' is doing a little wiggle dance in front of a robot the size of an armoured tank.
I think the weirdest part is that it's working.

The spider seems confused. It's not, I know. But it must be fascinating for this thing: like a mouse taunting a cat. GM looks up at me, in a 'hurry up please I am going to be killed soon' way, and I suddenly remember what I'm supposed to be doing here.
I wrench my head to the left and run down to mama spider. The charging cord is looped around my hand- I'm sure that my stunt with GM wouldn't work with something this size. It'd just slip off, and that'd be curtains for me. So no, unfortunately, I have to touch this thing directly.

It's even uglier up close. From far off, it at least has some merit of looking like a spider, but from here?
It's a metallic monster, a mess of metal and welding. I put my hand on its uncomfortably warm back, and jerk my head right.

The spider notices. It's fairly hard not to notice going from floor to wall, suddenly, without your own approval: but I wouldn't put it past these things to do so. They're not exactly the brightest robots in the lab. But this one scuttles round in a hiss of oil and bad engineering, red eyes leering at me. No points for guessing what it does now.
It charges! I know. How unoriginal.

I spin around, with a level of grace that I'd be very proud of if I weren't in imminent danger of being crushed. Unfortunately for me, my idea won't work if I'm not touching the thing directly. So I run toward Mama Spider. Curse everything leading up to this moment in my life. grab onto its leg, blow the thing a kiss, and turn the world on its head again as we land on the ceiling.

"Now!" I yell down to GM. He looks at me blankly in response.
Wait- I haven't- crap. I didn't tell him, didn't I? I didn't tell him what the actual plan is.
I didn't tell him the bloody plan.
This is why nobody should ever put me in control of things.

GM's up on the ceiling with me in a second- upside down, clinging onto it like those sticky hand toys, of the type that are doomed to become dust-clogged. I grab what I hope is his hand and haul him into my gravity bubble. There's no point to fighting upside down, not if it can be helped.
I look at him. He looks at me.
"There's a loose panel on the underside of the robot," I tell him. "I saw it when I was on the floor."
That was my original plan, to try and impale it from there. "If we can get to it, then we can rip out the wiring, and maybe deal some damage. Ready?"
He nods.
And this time? We're the ones who charge first.

The spider hisses, and runs too: we clash, GM on the right and I flanking left. I'm close to the front two legs: somehow, miraculously, I actually manage to hook my cable round them.
I yank.
The creature collapses, roaring as it does so. Somebody actually programmed that roar in, I think to myself. Somebody actually sat down and did that, for dramatic effect only. Yet I can't stop to consider that: GM's wasting no time in using the distraction. A fluorescent wave dives underneath the spider, emerging seconds later with a metal plate. There's no words spoken between us, but the meaning is clear:
I got the panel; now you get the wiring.

GM, now more resembling water then any kind of humanoid, grapples with Mama Spider. I sigh, looking down at what I'm getting into.
And I slide underneath the thing.
Ever been on the underside of the giant robotic spider that's trying to kill you?
No?
Well, I can tell you that it's not a fun experience.
The gap between spider and ground is not exactly spacious, for one thing. It reeks of oil. I'm near blind in here, because I assume giant evil spiders don't really get built with good lighting in mind. Overall? Zero stars out of five, horrible service altogether. But anyway.
I grope around, trying to find the wiring, my hand shaking and eyes screwed tight. GM's doing his best out there- but Mama Spider's very large, very heavy looking legs are stomping uncomfortably close to my head. I'm doing this all by touch, unable to see, and-
Yes!
What I feel to be wires, clutched in my hand. I'd love to savour the moment. But I got a goop guy waiting on me.

I yank them out.
You wouldn't expect evil spider wiring to be that easy to pull- but I'm not complaining, really. Mama Spider freezes. Stops.
Moments after I've scrambled out of the underbelly, the beast collapses.

I lie there, on the floor of the ceiling, for just a moment- breathing heavily, covered in motor oil. Still shivering, glad to be here now.
And when I look round for GM?
There's someone new there.

He's a guy, about my age. Oliveish skin. Long black hair, with a white streak in it on the left side. He's unmistakably Goop Man, though. The neon green thing snaking up his arm proves it.

"Hey." He grins, flopping down on the floor beside me.
And I'd love to savour this moment. Just to lie down, next to the corpse of a dead robot and the guy who was, until around ten seconds ago, neon green.
To grab the feeling of somehow-I'm-alive, if only for a few seconds.
But no.

Because, as the screaming begins, I'm beginning to regret ever being a hero in the first place.