He tried to retract the blade in his right arm, but it caught.  Pressing the point against the ground, he bent it back into alignment.  It retracted on his next attempt.

Having a bit of trouble, Mannequin? I’m sure things will only get better for you from here.

Totally.

My strike with the two-by-four hadn’t done much there.  My second just-in-case measure hadn’t worked out.

Ah, right, that’s what did it. Well, it may have won you a moment, at least?

That same arm disconnected and extended towards me as he tried to grab for me, and I turned to one side just in time to avoid being caught.  He fired the other arm out with an almost explosive force and I managed to catch hold of it before it got a grip on my costume.

Mannequin has such a hands-on approach.

My swarm made a fourth pass, focusing on the chain of his extended arm and the joints of his shoulders, elbows, crotch and knees where the webbing had already accumulated to some degree.

I suppose literal mannequin anatomy helps with Taylor’s aversion to putting enough insects in a certain area to get a sense of its shape.

Fifty or sixty spiders stayed on the extended chain, spitting out large amounts of their stickiest webbing.

Excellent!

I hadn’t used the black widow spiders I’d brought into the factory earlier out of a fear that he’d realize what I was doing and counteract it before I could really get the ball rolling.

Ah, yeah, that would be a problem.

So I guess the crawleidoscopes are just straight up distactions for this whole thing. Make it so he doesn’t notice he’s getting tied up by getting him to focus on the other bugs.

I like it.

Now I gathered them up and brought them into play.  I used all of the spiders I’d already placed on him, focusing on his joints, reinforcing the stronger webs that were already there.  Their silk was nothing compared to the black widows, but it was something.

Every bit of string helps! Hopefully, anyway.

He moved without a problem, either unaware or uncaring.  Silk strands stretched and snapped as he extended his arms, more broke free as he walked.  Alone, the threads were negligible.  It was together that they were stronger.  Much like my costume.

Yeah, a single thread isn’t very strong, easily ruptured by someone getting it in their face as they walk through the woods, but woven together they become stronger than steel.

Spider silk is a really cool material.

Third pass with my swarm.  They focused on his legs, and very nearly unbalanced him.

Honestly, I should probably have seen a focus on unbalancing him coming. There’s been too much emphasis on Mannequin’s excellent but precarious balance for it not to be essential.

I could see him pause, watched his head tilt quizzically.  I bit my lip.

To his right, my left, the swarm had once again gathered in a tight cluster, and were expanding slowly, with controlled movements.

A second round of the crawleidoscope?

The swarm consisted of pairings of flying insect and arachnid.  Every spider from my lair was clutching a bee, a wasp or a larger dragonfly, who clutched the spider in turn.

Oooh. Are we going to be binding him in silk?

A thousand pairs.

That is a lot of spiders and insects.

Connecting to one another, these bugs quickly drew out five hundred or more lines of webbing.  Mostly dragline silk, this ‘net’ maintained enough of the sticky webbing to attach to him, draping over his artificial body and staying there.

I love this tactic. It’s the perfect way of making the bugs useful without finding a way to penetrate his casing. 😀

He paused and looked over his shoulder at the swarm.

“Ooooooh…”

Hmm. Maybe I was onto something when I talked about turning biosphere sensors outward, but looked at the wrong thing to sense? Maybe he senses the world around him via air pressure, and moving the bugs like this could stir the air in ways that are very confusing to him?

Except Skitter appeared to abandon her musings on how he sensed things, and that particular explanation is a bit far-fetched.

He was apparently able to sense my bugs on the floor, floating in the air.

Hm, interesting.

That much was apparent.  He hadn’t, at the same time, been able to tell I wasn’t bleeding out into a pool on the ground, or that I was still breathing while I lay prone on the factory floor.  My plan hinged on two things; whether his peculiar means of sensing things would let him grasp what I was doing here, and if he would be able to do something about it.

Alright, so it does at least indirectly have to do with his senses. But that’s apparently more a thing to overcome and/or use to make the crawleidoscope work, than the thing it’s designed to deal with.

The formation ceased expanding, then swept over him again.  Once again, he wobbled, staggered a step.

Looks like it’s throwing him off-balance, at least.

He charged through the mass of bugs that now sat between the two of us, running towards me.  I managed to parry one swing of his blade with my piece of wood, then jump out of the way of the second blade.  When I tried to block his kick with the two-by-four, however, I lost my grip and it fell to the ground.

Expelliplankus!

He kicked me a second time, hard, and I staggered back, hand to my stomach, nausea building up in my throat.  I controlled my breathing to keep my dinner down.

Yeah, please do. We don’t want too much vomiting around here.

Murder, blood, gore, creatures never meant to exist? Sure, that’s fine. Vomit? No thanks, that’s just gross.

He stopped spinning and retracted his leg, apparently unfazed after the dizzying act of spinning like a top.

However his sense of balance works, it’s probably not the conventional human way.

I saw my bugs tugging the baton, but Mannequin spotted them at the same time.  He stepped back and placed one foot on top of it.  With a kick, he sent it sliding across the floor, away from me.

Welp.

Fuck.

Also an appropriate response.

I’d have to take the slightly less efficient route.  I grabbed a stout two-by-four as I stood.  It was old, dusty, damaged by years of exposure, and the screws that clustered in one end were rusted.

Huh. It was actually lucky that she just got tossed into the timeout corner, where bad and naughty planks are sent to atone for their sins.

Better than nothing, as weapons went.

Absolutely.