15073/There are all sorts at the Zoo.

There are all sorts at the Zoo.
Date of Scene:	03 June 2023
Location:	Central Park Zoo
Synopsis:	A new Spider appears on the scene. Cyber Spider and Spider Woman cross paths at the Central Park Zoo.
Cast of Characters:	Miguel O'Hara, Jessica Drew

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Miguel O'Hara has posed:
Keeping animals in cages.
What the shock.
Miguel looked into the enclosure, watching the red panda ambling around. It looked so weird.

But then again, he was watching from the top of a light pole while dressed in a form-fitting unstable-molecule costume, so his concept of "weird" has been recalibrated so often he probably didn't have a good understanding of the concept anymore.

He had been eking out a fragile existence ever since The Worst Time Lord EVER sent him to this universe in 2023. Lyla had been something of a help, cluing him in to events to help find ways to make money, but with ID and an education that wouldn't be valid for another 70 years, he found himself panhandling and spending time at the local F.E.A.S.T. location for three hots and a cot.
He exhaled, then looked around for trouble for the tenth time before looking back at the red panda.

Jessica Drew has posed:
A dark haired woman in running tights and a Metropolitan Art museum t-shirt ambles down the path in front of the Red Panda area. The trees overhead give shade and add to the ambiance of wild forest if you ignore the kids running with balloon followed by doting parents.

The Zoo was where Jess cooled off after a 7k run. Not that she enjoyed the sight of animals in captivity. Captivity was something she understood intimately. She consoles herself on the efficacy of Zoo's conservancy projects and how well they take care of the animals. Modern zoos are a far cry from eight by eight concrete cells and bars of the 19th century.

She stops and leans on the railing, watching a couple splayed over the limb of a tree. They appeared to be watching the weird two legged animals strolling in front of their compound. Though one was particularly focused on a light pole across from him.

Miguel O'Hara has posed:
Miguel shook his head. People below him and along the paths, with homes and jobs and lives. He'd had times where he'd felt outside of the world around him, and shoved seven decades backward only heightened the feeling. Was there anything that was like his own world...?

"Hey, watch-HEY!"
Miguel glanced to his right, where two people in athletic clothing were looking over the side of the Bengal Tiger enclosure to stare at a third guy who had been standing on the barrier of the enclosure after parkouring over the fence and was now flailing around in the moat along the inner wall of the enclosure, and two tigers were glaring at the intruder who had chosen to invade their territory.

Okay...apparently people were STUPID wherever he went.
Time to work.

Clint pulled himself up to the bank, scrambling out of the water. The plan hadn't gone according to plan, and his selfie attempt had left him in the water, along with his iPhone.
He looked around for his $1200 iPhone, not realizing it shouldn't be the priority it was...

Jessica Drew has posed:
Jess looks to her right as people start running toward the Bengal Tiger enclosure, phones in the air. It doesn't take much for the agent to jump to the logical conclusion. Someone had done something stupid. Her super hearing picks out distinct conversations in the general clamor.

"The dude went right over."

"Think they'll get him."

"Someone call 911!"

"Think they'll spit out his sneakers."

Evident from the overheard conversations, someone had taken the big leap into the enclosure to play with kitties. She sprints through the crowd.

Miguel O'Hara has posed:
Clint grinned as he saw the iPhone, plucking it from the water. "YES! No damage at all!"

He turned around, holding the phone triumphantly...and then saw the two tigers slowly advancing on him.
"H-hey! Scram! Go away!" He waved his arm at them, eliciting a low snarl from one of them.
"Hey! You can't..."
The tiger pounced.

If Clint had still been there, he would have been Tiger Chow, but he wasn't. Primarily due to the webline that had yanked his sorry butt out of the enclosure and was now dangling him ten feet above the ground, slowly turning in the air like a human pinata.
Clint heard a voice from above him.
"You are a rare breed of moron, aren't you?"
He looked up to see...
Well, he'd heard of Spider-Man, but the costume was different and he looked a little...bulkier.
"And for the record...I saved them from YOU, not the other way around. It's not healthy for tigers to eat humans. I think you'd have actually made them DUMBER if they ate you."

Jessica Drew has posed:
Jess elbowed her way to the front of the crowd in time to hear a familiar -twip- and the sardonic voice of the web caster. Not any voice she had heard before. Cameras are now held upward trying to capture the rare image of a man dangling from a nearly invisible line of spider silk.

Like the other gapers, Jessica, cranes her head back and her mouth drops open. It's not Parker for sure. But...who? She grins through her perplexity at the well served observations on tiger health and human stupidity and takes a step closer.

"Hey, you." Not her most brilliant opening but the circumstances are already very public and very strange.

"When you're finished here. Meet me at the penguins. We might have mutual friends." She points to herself and then back at the man perched on high, waiting for his response.

Miguel O'Hara has posed:
The man whose costume suggests influence from Batman looks down at the woman and...
Not familiar, but...socially familiar. Her invitation is curious, her words suggesting more.

And after dealing with THIS schmuck, what else was he going to do?

He nods to the dark-haired woman, then looks back to Clint, who was...taking a selfie with him in the background.
Holy CHIP.

Five minutes later, after Clint was left webbed up and hanging upside-down from the light-pole (because the guy needed as much blood flow to his brain as he could GET), Miguel lands on a bench near the penguin enclosure and looked around. Apart from the rather dapper-looking birds, he didn't see her.
But that didn't mean she wasn't there...

Jessica Drew has posed:
The woman with the dark hair and vivid green eyes had debated how she would greet the unknown spider. For Spider he undoubtedly was unless some super criminal/scientist had created webbing techniques her agency hadn't heard of yet. Nope, she was calling him a Spider like herself. Perhaps exposed to the mutagens that had changed her or the subject of experiments.

It remains to be seen. From the seventy-year old maple that extended its leafy boughs over the alley in front of the King Penguins she looks down observing him. At least, he came which doesn't absolve him of suspicion. With practiced ease, she leaves her thirty foot high perch and lands lightly in a crouch within several feet of him. She stands nonchalantly.

"Well, you came. I suppose introductions are in order." Despite ten years in the United States, Jess still has an English accent, a legacy of her parents though she was born elsewhere. "I'm Jessica Drew. Have you met any of the others?"

Miguel O'Hara has posed:
"The others?" He blinks as he steps off the bench to stand on the pavement. "Well...I only know of a few, by reputation. I'm...new in town."
VERY new. Pre-release, even.
"Hello, Miss Drew," he says politely, and there is a trace of an accent. Latino, by the sound. "You can call me...Cyber-Spider. The cool names were taken."
Jessica Drew...that sounded familiar. Something about genegineering...he'd have to ask Lyla.
"I'm...pleased to meet you. The name is familiar, but we've never met before." He looked around. "I'm a little....universe-displaced."

Jessica Drew has posed:
"Undoubtedly. Well, pleased to meet you." Jess takes a step closer, putting herself in his personal space and sniffs audibly. "And please. A pseudonym?" One eyebrow arches as she takes a step back and walks over to the bench. After taking a seat she pats the wooden slat next to her.

"You seem to know my name. But you are more a Cypher Spider, right now. Interesting choice of names. I have just been called the Fabulous Spider Woman, but I prefer my given name." Something he said strikes her, she asks incredulously, "Universe displaced?"

Miguel O'Hara has posed:
It's gotta be some kind of custom or something. Don't react too much, you've already borked up a few times. Man, that thing at F.E.A.S.T. was something he was STILL trying to live down.

After a moment, he sits down next to her. He was getting a few looks from passersby, but he was getting used to that part. He was about to speak when she shared HER pseudonym and he blinked.

"Shhhhhhock. That's right. I remember now." He glanced around. No one was very close, but he DID look kinda scary. "Sorry. From where I came from, it was....October, 2099. And I'm pretty sure it is a different universe because I haven't heard of HALF of the supertypes flying around. Is there REALLY someone calling himself BATMAN?"

Jessica Drew has posed:
Keeping a straight face, Jess only nods at the impossible date he reels off. She has seen many strange things during her tenure as a SHIELD agent - dimensional travel, beings from other worlds, Asgardian gods. Though this may top the list.

Twisting herself to face him, "Remember me, do you? I don't want to know when I die in your universe. Universe," she repeats, weighing the strangeness and accepting it on the surface.

Chuckling, she nods, "Yes, there is a Batman. No Santa Claus though. We are blessed or some would say cursed with quite a few capes or supertypes, if you will. But, I've never heard of you. Apparently you don't have a doppelganger here."

Miguel O'Hara has posed:
Cyber-Spider hmmms. "He may not exist for another 70 years. So...yeah, I don't want to risk shocking up the future, mine or anyone else's. I did read about you, though. In a way, the data on you was used to make me. Not at my request, unfortunately. But there is a bio-file on you, like there is on Spider-Man. Well, WILL BE a file on you. Sorry."

He takes a deep breath. "Anyway, in the process of trying to clean a drug dependency forced on me by the company I worked for, my boss sabotaged it by switching out my genome for a spider's genome."

Jessica Drew has posed:
A sigh escapes Jess as she shakes her head, "HYDRA did a lot of experimentation. What happened to Peter was different. An accident." Her lips curl, "Not deliberate neonatal experimentation. I'm sorry to hear that. Sorry to hear you were subjected to that."

"Just what kind of world did you live in? We have our share of terror and injustice here but that...That sounds dystopian desperate."

Miguel O'Hara has posed:
Cyber-Spider smiles wryly under the mask. "I...don't want to give anything away. Just that there is good and bad, just at a higher tech level. And people like Spider-Man...well, people like him are an inspiration to many. His real identity was never revealed, but he is known as a real hero. He's...kinda who I aspired to be, once I realized what happened to me."

Jessica Drew has posed:
Nodding, Jess studies his face in silence, reading the careful man sitting next to her.

"You would be many bad people's ticket to world domination, I think and could lead a very unhappy life captive until they bled you dry." She sits back and crosses her arms, thinking.

"You took a real chance telling me that. Thank you. I won't even tell my employers about you. You would be a hot topic and though it wouldn't be prison, they might not just give you your freedom."

Uncrossing her arms, she twists back to face him, "How are you doing? Do you have a place to live? I can't imagine what that would be like to, to be spat out into another world with no means of support."

Miguel O'Hara has posed:
He looks to her for a moment, then over to the penguins, who are admittedly better-dressed than him.

"Well...I'm effectively an illegal immigrant, when you get down to the genetic level. I'm living at this place called F.E.A.S.T. Stands for Food, Emergency Aid, Shelter and Training. I have a bed, three square meals a day, no soy, and I even have a mailbox setup should I qualify for employment. A Ph.D. in genetics doesn't count for much when graduation won't be till December 2098. But...I'm not sleeping on the streets, though. Good thing it's summer."

Jessica Drew has posed:
A scowl replaces her sympathetic look. "F.E.A.S.T? That place?" Tapping the side of her head in thought, "I may have heard about that place. She untucks her phone from the waistband of her running tights. While typing, she asks, "You seen anything peculiar there?"

Before he can answer, "Look, I'm working this evening and need to go. How can I get back in touch with you? I guess you don't have a phone. Do you trust me enough to give me your mailbox setup?"

Miguel O'Hara has posed:
Cyber-Spider frowns. "Right now, I think *I'M* the most peculiar thing there...uhm, hang on."

He takes out a small disc, then says, "Lyla? You got that cell-phone thing sorted out?"

The tiny golden woman with long hair and a wide smile appears above the disc. "Of course. Let me scan her phone-"
"Lyla...NO SCANNING. Just have her TELL you her phone number."
Lyla pouts cutely. "You're no fun at ALL." She looks to Jessica. "Speech-to-text. SO 20th Century."

Jessica Drew has posed:
"Much appreciated...Lyla. Cyber Spider." Jess types in the information and shares her own. "Clearly, you have technology that people would kill to have." She stands, tucks her phone back into its holder at her waistband and contemplates the new Spider a moment.

"We have a lot to talk about. Stay safe. Keep a low profile if you can."

Miguel O'Hara has posed:
Lyla disappears as Cyber-Spider puts the disc away. "I'm trying. But people like that chiphead throwing himself into tiger dens don't make it easy. But it was nice meeting you, Miss Drew."