Argentina is not Nazi-Land

Far, far away from the civilized hustle and bustle of Buenos Aires, in San Juan Province, the urban landscape gave way to a mountains and forests. The buses went from air conditioned to open air, to trucks, to flat beds pulled by Donkeys. The quiet town of Santa Maria in San Juan Province had precisely one road in and one of each utilities, plus a satellite to provide for their internet. It had a Lake on one side and the great Sierras Pampeanas mountains on another.

Shauna checked in at the dingy town inn, a two storey concrete structure with the town's only Internet and general store below. There were only a handful of people at the Inn, almost all staff and a handful of foreign guests, here for photography of the Mountains and lake. Strange.

Everything in the town was painted a gaudy yellow with green highlight. The exception was the big white wrestling gym, where the Masters family started- though they went by a different name then. Shauna Masters went to the boarded up window and peered in. It was completely abandoned now, Barbells and weights rusting in the corner, a torn punching bag still hanging on a chain. The ring had decayed, along with everything else. It was long forgotten by the hero birthed here, who now enjoyed a rich life in North America. The gym where Shauna was born.

Well, she'd done herself a favor and seen where it all started, now she wondered about what she was really here for. The town was quiet, and there really weren't that many people up and about. She looked around the houses and found most were abandoned, likely migrating to the big cities. The people were a welcoming but cold. Shauna had to search a good twenty minutes on foot before she found a stall that made burritos, ran by an aging South American in jeans, boots, vest and a Red Sox shirt.

"Meat or no meat?" The man asked, and Shauna took a look at the locally made metal container that housed the 'meat'. A strange smell wafted from it as a small gas fire burned to keep it warm. She spotted some Donkey bits in there.

"Uh... vegetarian."She said, and was served a vegetable burrito. The tomatoes and lettuce were bit past due but it was still edible. The spanish rice was okay.

"You shouldn't be here, lady." The burrito maker said, but when Shauna turned the man had vanished, the fire turned off and the stall closed.

Shauna went back to her room at the inn as the sun went down. She had with her a bottle of tequila and a shot glass. She locked the door, hopped into bed and fired up her laptop to see what information she could find on the town, pouring herself her first shot for the night. There was quite a number of people leaving for the cities... but alot more people went missing without a trace. This worried Sun Queen, definitely.

That, and the pitter patter sound she could hear above her inside of the ceiling.

"No I don't speak Spanish; do I look like I'm from here?" The situation already put Bliss in a poor mood and the constant questioning only further soured it. Putting her head back to the cell phone, Bliss tried to get back the signal she lost roaming through the back roads of the Argentinian mountains. "If I spoke Spanish I would know what those signs meant." The sun beat down upon the smooth part running down the middle of Bliss's head. A tight ponytail found itself accompanied by a dark pair of sunglasses. A bead of sweat ran from behind her ear and dropped down the shoulder of the black bikini top as Bliss slouched down in floral skirt wrap over her hips. Giving up on her phone, she tucked the phone into the back pocket of her bag and shook her head towards a woman serving food. "I hope I'm not being too forward, but, actually, I know I'm not..."

"Que?"

"No, it's not okay, Panchita." Probably not her name. "First of all, lime juice does not make it a Southside. Second of all, I'm supposed to have coverage here. And saying there's Internet inside doesn't do me any good out here now does it? Do you know who I am? I'm Bliss Fokukama. I can rewire your entire network, find every weakness and it still wouldn't matter if you can't get me a signal."

"Que."

A well dressed man in a button up, white shirt and well pleated khakis walked up to address his establishment's loudest secret guest. A skinny tie kept the beads of sweat from running down any further through his shirt. The sun broke off his dark hair, further shading the light beard he kept tightly trimmed around his mouth. "Miss Fokukama, may I first tell you what a pleasure it is to have you..."

"First of all, step off, second of all, I'm pretty sure your Internet is working just fine when you swipe my card."

"I regret to inform you, the government has no information about the missing people in the..."

Bliss grabbed hold of his tie and pulled him closer without letting him straighten his back. "That's not surprising. What did the people I asked you to question say?"

The woman named Panchita walked up and delivered Bliss her drink. "No one has seen anything Ms. Foku..."

"Oh good, Panchita, you learned how to Google recipes. This is acceptable. Tell her it's acceptable." Bliss got louder as she informed the hotel manager of what her message should be.

"Muy Bueno. Senorita Fokukama es muy satisfechos."

"Woah, too positive. I said it was acceptable; I'm complimenting begrudgingly, also Senorita makes me sound old. Say the Bonita thing again. About me."

"Muy bonita. Muy bonita."

"That sound great. Now find out why people are disappearing. It is important." Tension let up around the manager's neck. He shot back up and straightened his attire. "Muy bonita." Bliss crossed her legs and continued to relax beside the pool.

All the while, a message would go out about people sticking their noses where it did not belong.

People in town hurried up to board up their doors and windows at night, and hung rosaries on their door. The guests at the cheap, dingy lakeside Inn would be the ones to find out why. It started when the sun set and darkness encroached, the very shadows of the mountain creeping up on the town like a skeletal hand. With the shadows came mist, mist that obscured vision at the Lake. The Staff at the small, rickety Inn were so kind as to vanish inside and lock themselves in.

The mist obscured their movements, masked their sounds. When she chatted with Xiao offhandedly about the spiderwebs amassing in her birth gym, Dragon Girl mentioned the Nazi Spider Witch she fought in Chicago.

"Nazi Spider Witch? Shit, that's a triple threat." Shauna said. She was about to switch to her Candy Crush game when the internet died out. Okay, now that was just lame. She heard them again, that pitter patter in the ceiling and rafters, and she saw them emerging from movable ceiling boards- spiders the size of corgi, except they were spiders and really creepy. And wanted to attack Shauna.

The Lake also had its nasty surprises, as the untended bushes beside the Inn obscured their emergence from a tunnel near the shoreline. They closed in on Bliss as well, the first wave of spiders- hunter types that leapt at her in groups of four, eager to sink their fangs into her tender flesh with paralytic poison.

Just above Bliss, she would hear the air sizzle as a brilliant green laser beam melted a diagonal line through the concrete and glass wall. Shauna flew out of her room in shorts and a tank top, smashing her tequila bottle on an eager jumping spider that got to close. Her laser eye beams popped them like little gore filled balloons, and left burning trails in the grass and on buildings. It seemed the town had a spider problem.

A southside went down the the good side. A little icy and they severely under poured, but it did in fact meet her standards. Maybe the under pour would keep her a little more alert as she planned out just how to make others solve this disaster for her. Too bad she sent Abby to watch after Hanna. Honestly she always forgot about both of those people until she came across those moments she needed an invisible girl, and- well, she never needed Seagirl.

Bliss looked around to find a server when a rattling in the bush caught her attention. "Looks like no one does any landscaping around here. I guess all the gardeners were taken too." Bliss tossed her legs over the side of the lounge chair when a strand of pure white webbing came down over her torso, pinning her to the chair. Two spiders lunged out towards her with mouths full of discontent. A savage blast from Bliss sent the two beast scurrying, but the one behind Bliss pried his legs over the back of her chair. Hairs brushed across her face as the multiple eyes looked down at Bliss with an open mouth.

Bursts of bright light tore through the beast, leaving behind very little of what used to be a body. The webbing held her down tight, but with enough try, she eventually slid herself out. A woman in attire just better than Bliss' but still ill suited for adventure swung from the building. Not how Bliss would do it, as she began looking for a way to get back inside the building. Every door she tried ramming open merely gave slight push before throwing Bliss back. With each attempt at a new door, Bliss found herself dismantling anywhere from three to five spiders, but she finally struck pay dirt by finding a door opening to the kitchen.

A southside displayed on the computer caught Bliss' attention. "I could use another one of those." Before Bliss could get her bearings to examine the rest of the room, a quick blow from a blunt object caught her on the back of the head and knocked her cold to the ground.

Bliss would find herself next awake, still completely wrapped in webbing, her vision obscured. The loud hiss of a larger than corgi spider would be stifled by a familiar sizzling sound, followed by the smell of flash roasted spider flesh. Then there was dragging Bliss around, then the slamming of a door.

"Don't move." a woman's voice would sound, as something hot was taken to the web and melted through it. Shauna's finger was momentarily projecting a minor energy beam as it cut through Bliss's bonds. She was now wearing her supero hero suit, complete with these really cool glowing green tron lines. Did Bliss have Tron lines on her clothes? didn't think so. The ensemble was complete with a translucent glass face plate that showed Shauna's lips and chin. Shauna put a finger to her mouth and Ssh'd Bliss, making a gesture that they were still up there.

Shauna had brought them underground, a basement pantry in the Inn from the looks of it. It was small and smelled of smoked ham and cured goat cheese. Shelves were sparsely stacked with food. There in the corner were the eight or so Inn staff, manager and waitress included, huddled together in fear. The manager had a double barreled shotgun trained on them, while the others had knives, shears and sharpened sticks.

"You know, you're better off shooting the spiders than us." Shauna whispered.

"You fought them. Now they will kill us all." The manager said in halting english.

"Yeah, so you let them slowly take your people one by one?" Shauna said, crossing her arms.

"No choice. No help. Some even come back... different." The waitress that served Bliss earlier used that as their excuse. Shauna let out a quiet sigh.

"So... what are you doing here? More importantly, what are we going to do with those spiders?" Shauna asked in a low voice to Bliss, as all around them they could hear the chittering and movement of the spiders looking for prey.

Normally after waking up Bliss could see something, anything really, but on this particular awakening the world seemed completely white. Appendages skittered in every direction Bliss lacked vision on. Every time a noise shot by her, Bliss would attempt a try at positioning her body towards any kind of barrier. High pitch screeches began to ring out, filling the room with moans of death and seeping bodily fluids. A hand moved under the webbed Bliss, lifting her back from the ground, but still  keeping her legs firm on the ground. Moans came from Bliss as the webbing began to subside from her head, granting her the vision of a crowded room, but not the gift of unadulterated speech.

"No muerto." The waitress stood over Bliss as Shauna cut through the webbing.

"No muerto. Mal." A shotgun greeted her from the anxious manager.

"There better be murto." Bliss shot up into a cadre of feared onlookers. "Where's the..." Multiple hands shot down to cover the noises coming from the mouth of Bliss.

Shauna moved up a finger to motion Bliss more quiet as she sawed through the rest of the webbing around Bliss. Once Bliss drew her hands out of the webbing, they refused to budge. Twisting her wrists did nothing but pull at her skin against another forming of binding- duct tape. Once the rest of the webbing came off, Bliss noticed her ankles with the same bindings keeping her in place. "So, are we going to claim spiders did this, or is someone going to confess what actually happened." It would be a couple of weeks before Bliss got all of the webbing out her bikini and wrap, but at least the waitress cut the tape off of her hands and ankles. "Okay, so I'm going to go over why I'm sure this wasn't a spider. First, spiders aren't made of metal..."

No one in the staff gave a word towards Bliss, mainly since could not understand her words, but knew her tone definitely came across as terrible. Stepping in as negotiator, the manager put his hand over Bliss's mouth to try and keep it more quiet in the underground hiding place. "Ms. Bliss, if you could..."

Negotiations clearly failed when the manager flew through the air and slammed into the wall. "No, no, I need to inform everyone. Second, and get this, what hit me in the head was metal!" Bliss pulled herself up to the ground. "Now, I've elected myself to lead this endeavor, if anyone has an objection, than a plan other than hiding down here and waiting to die needs to come up." Bliss reached down to grab the shotgun off the ground.  "I'm going to fill this room with gas and break the flooring up there, then we drop the spiders down and light it up."

None of the staff looked comfortable with the plan. Too many spiders; too many different kinds of spiders. Exploding spiders even. "We can't just burn them. These spiders are the size of a corgi."

"Those little rats dogs with no legs? This will be pretty easy." Tossing the shotgun over her shoulder, Bliss walked to the side of the room and listened to the other side of the door. More skittering, less cause for calm. "Okay, change of plans. Everyone be quiet. We'll try to see if they attack. We can hold choke points while the staff..." Bliss looked behind the see most of the staff vacate through a trap door. "Okay. I didn't need anyone getting in the way and suing me for wrongful damages anyway." Bliss readjusted her wrap and prepared to fight any spider coming through the door.

A man stood outside a town, this man had a simple look. His hair was a bit unkempt and he had grown a stubble. His black buttoned shirt was a little ripped and the matching colored Jeans also. Marcus had gotten off a train and had absolutely no idea where he was. But hey at least it gave him the break he needed. Going cross country, seeing the wild but for now he was at a town and it seemed pretty vacant. Human when was the last time you looked at yourself? Marcus gave a soft laugh to that as his stomach rumbled. He walked a few steps into the town and called out.

"HELLO. Anyone home?" Marcus yelled out only in return he heard some sort of footstep. He waited a few moments until he saw them. Spiders, so many spiders and they were more or less coming for him. Marcus took a few steps back as his mask came over his face and tendrils rose from the ground before flinging themselves at the spiders. Spearing all those that came forward. "I hate spiders. I love them but I hate them." Marcus said to himself and Dark as he looked around for any more.

Interesting. Marcus scoffed to those words. What the hell was going on.

"I didn't see what attacked you, miss... Bliss? but the spiders were dragging your cocooned self halfway through town towards the mountains." Shauna decided to impart this tidbit of information with Bliss.

Shauna decided to wait. For a few dreadful minutes she wondered if the Spiders were going to barrel in through the door, or scrape through the concrete. But watching and studying their movements, she came to a frightful theory.

"They're stalling for time. It's almost like they know they'll lose too many to take us from in here. Spiders can't be this smart." She concluded. Shauna was helping Bliss by taking the manager's bandolier of shotgun shells and handing it to the lady.

"You... you can see them?" The manager said, now deprived of his defense.

"Yeah, I can. Not that hard considering there's less than six inches of concrete between them and us. Also... light steel pipes are not construction standard for rebar." She said. Shauna watched as a number of the spiders suddenly scamper away from the basement towards a new arrival from out of town, who displayed powers of his.

"There's a new player in town. Now we can move." Shauna raised her hand towards the door and a plasma beam materialized from thin air, carving through the door and the piercing the large spider guarding it. The thing recoiled and fled, shrieking in pain; Shauna did not want it to drop dead on their only exit.

Once outside she helped the stranger, seeing as between the two of them they could give the spiders tons of damage. The spiders, guided by an unnatural intelligence, were quick to retreat, leaving only stragglers to keep the heroes busy.

"They were dragging me towards whatever is controlling them. Someone sold me out and wanted me out of the way." The plasma beam from Shauna signaled the beginning of the rampant bloodbath taking the two metas through the inn. "Well they clearly failed, but let us no whomever is controlling these is taking people alive- and with the help of someone in the village." Bliss concocted a new method of fighting, using her blasts with both hands, while telekinetically firing the shot gun as it hung in the air. Yet, Bliss could still not walk up stairs in heels. Mysteries.

Blood and entrails continued to paint the walls in a green and white ooze with each cadaver added to the trail. The scampered retreat of the spiders only worried Bliss more. Would they actually retreat, or merely regroup for some attempt at an ambush later down the halls? For a solid moment, Bliss wondered what would happen if she just brought down the entirety of the inn. It could take away the hiding place for most of these creatures, but saving the village by destroying it would also most likely prove impractical. Most likely. "I need to change." Fighting spiders in her sun bathing attire would prove futile, but trekking through this demented hovel might not prove very fruitful.

Not wanting any spiders getting the drop on her, Bliss knocked holes in the walls along her path to her bedroom. With her trail of destruction behind her, Bliss looked to what laid before her. And that something did not entail her powersuit. No, someone took it while plundering through her stuff. At least Bliss could grab a shirt and a pair of shoes before heading back to regroup with the others, but even still she did not like the situation.

Once Marcus was satisfied that no spiders were around he walked closer to one of the small but large things to inspect it or he was going to do that until he felt something on his back. He stood still and up straight as the small spider clinged to the fabric of his shirt. Human, seems that a spider is on your back. I recommend you kill it. Dark told the human rather plainly.

"No shit sherlock." With these words Marcus was about to spear this one when he felt heat and the clinging feeling was gone. Marcus turned around and saw the spider on the ground with half it's body missing. After that another burning laser came past, a missed shot? Marcus didn't know all he knew was that maybe more people were that way. So Marcus decided to just walk that way and if any more spiders came by he would send another spear at them or a shadow spear if He wanted to be on the spot. Marcus continued this walk until he came upon a woman who was shooting the laser's that barely missed him but they hit the spider on his back. "Hey laser lady, what's up with the spiders? He asked in his demonic voice. A misty cloud enveloped Marcus and any spider that got close was speared by the tendrils that formed in the cloud.

"Gotcha. But that means pretty much everyone still alive in this god forsaken town could be the Quisling. Or are." Shauna pointed out rather sadly. It means none of them could be trusted, even when they were here to save them. She spared one more look at the Inn staff, seeing them cower in fear, holding the door shut with all their might. How were these people malevolent enough to tolerate their own being taken?

Shauna spared a few passing glances at Bliss as she demonstrated energy blasts from her hands while telekinetically wielding a shotgun. Versatile, but a bit imprecise. She also went to get changed out of vacation wear... into Walmart casual, complete with bandolier and shotgun. Okay, so maybe the crisis made wardrobe scarce. Shauna was glad at least she spotted her own costume, slowly being dragged away.

Shauna stopped attacking once the spiders were outside of her 100% hit rate, which was quite far. She spots the new player in town, who didn't seem like he belonged, and Shauna didn't like him because he was playing with forces that were defying her ability to comprehend the visible spectrum- in other words, occult powers. But was at least poignant was how she addressed her.

"Don't call me Laser Lad- I mean, You can call me Sun Queen. Ahem." Shauna's agitation at anything that resembled her old name was still alive and well. She cleared her throat to be a bit more professional. "Well stranger, this town is currently under investigation due to a large number of disappearances... and we suspect the spiders have something to do with it. So please stay away for your own safety, or just don't get in the way unless you plan to help."

"Yeah, spiders..." Bliss pulled down a black t-shirt with the face of teenage heart throb Travis Masters from one of his many teenage dramas. "They take people. And most of the people around here are dicks..." A suspicious nature crawled into Bliss. "How long have you been around here anyways? You just show up when the spiders start retreating. Kind of odd and very suspicious." The time for accusations to fly around could last for some time, but for now the spiders continued on their retreat. "We need to follow to see where they go. Laser Lass, look out for this guy. Kill him if he looks like he's controlling the spiders."

At least her shoes still retained some cushion in them. The spiders did some damage to the resort, but the road still looked good enough to not give her much trouble on her trek towards the mountains. Even with good enough shoes, Bliss wanted to travel a little more quickly. Picking a jeep with enough comfort and four wheel drive, a focus pull of telekinetic force turned the engine over for Bliss. She slid into the driver's seat and dropped the car into neutral. A stutter shook the jeep as Bliss stepped on the clutch and tried to move the drive shift. A few more attempts to move the jeep into reverse brought Bliss to bang her head against the steering wheel in frustration. "Does anyone know how to drive stick?"

Marcus stood there as another spider came close and it was speared like all the others that came close. He listened to the sun queen and the other one who if she was like the other lady from the cemetery not trusting him. "Well Sun Queen I am one for helping out another and to answer the lady's question for I don't know your name. I just arrived and have no clue as to where I am and as for killing me, your find that hard to do." Marcus answered to the both of them but didn't answer to the driving question, He didn't know how to drive a car.

Marcus broke it down, A sun queen that shot lasers and not mini suns, a sus lady who didn't trust him and spiders that were kidnapping people. And from the large spider that had a hole in it Marcus could tell they came in many different sizes and definitely in Numbers. "I can help with killing the spiders if you need be, We're a bit bored or at least I am."

Well done human, make yourself sound crazy. Dark answered to Marcus when he heard the human say we.

"Arr be quiet." Marcus said though his teeth to Dark as he waited for an reply from the Sun queen.

"Well, from how I saw things- and do I see things- they did look like they were going for him, and he fought back. But they might have also been regrouping near him. Anyway, Looks like you're coming with us. Don't try to be sneaky and pull a double cross." Shauna warned Marcus then allowed him to come with them.

"Yeah, I got this." Shauna headed over to the jeep, shoo'd Bliss out of the driver's seat and showed her how things were done. She started up the Jeep with no problem, though she would have preferred to fly. "You can watch our guy, see if he tries anything funny." She remarked offhandedly to Bliss. She also turned on the headlights for the benefit of these people with normal eyes. They were off at a good place, Shauna driving the Jeep at 80 kph on the rough country path, smoothly avoiding large rocks and holes in the ground.

Once they neared the mountain, a spider jumped out of hiding to try and startle Shauna, but she reacted with cold indifference and just turned it into roadkill. A windshield covered in bug guts didn't deter Shauna either, as she turned the wiper on without stopping. "Stupid bugger, tried to startle me and..."

The ground erupted from alongside the Jeep on Bliss's side, or whosoever it was that called shotgun. Shauna turned on the steering wheel hard to keep them from falling down a cliff. Instead they were just hanging precariously on its edge, while a really big trap door spider, about the size of a bus, stared at its quarry from its hidey hole. No point in attacking just yet, so he sent out some corgi sized spiders to soften them up... or send the car completely plummeting down. Shauna was out of it for those precious seconds, having done something so pedestrian as to get knocked out in a car accident.

"Turn here." Shouting out from the passenger side, Bliss refused to allow Shauna any control over the situation she controlled. "Ten and two laser brains. Stay in your lane." Once Bliss managed to keep Shauna from doing her job in peace, she would turn back to the straggler they picked up. "So you're just coming to Argentina for spider watching or was there some other thing you wanted. I'm not suspicious by nature, but everything about you seems odd to me and I won't let you out of my sight again."

A sharp spike in the road sent Bliss' head into the dashboard, removing her eye from Marcus. "Ten and two! Ten and..." Bliss gazed down to see a massive spider open its mouth to brandish death row. "I knew I should have driven." A plan came to Bliss' mind, but she decided to keep it to herself. The glove compartment opened as Bliss turned to through a telekinetic blast to blast open the gas tank. Pulling a road flare from the compartment, Bliss tossed the road flare to ignite the gas stream to burn the spider and send a jeep down into it's face.

Since leaving someone unconscious in a plummeting vehicle did not bode well for someone's health, Bliss grabbed Shauna as they began to fall. A blast of energy would rocket them back to safe ground as the jeep would fall and burst into flame. "Okay, now we're even." Bliss was being humble. "Actually, I would have saved myself from those spiders after this guy..." Bliss pointed angrily towards Marcus. "Knocked me out from behind. So, you actually owe me one." She turned back to Marcus. "You owe me like two. Go ahead and open up a tab and I'll verify it at the end of this."