Ultimatum

At Milton Summer High, Anya Corazon is in class with Jon Kasiya who she knows as Amun, the young assassin hired by the Sisterhood of the Wasp in their eternal conflict with her allies in the Spider Society. Since she saw Amun’s face the night before — as the assassin is known for not having a secret identity because he kills all his foes — she is worried about him recognizing her. That’s when he friend Lynn drops her pencil on the floor in order to make Jon pick it up. When he does, he notices the spider tattoo on Anya’s arm and pauses to look at it. Seeing it makes Jon smile, filling Anya is even more dread than before. Lynn saw this and interprets it to mean that Jon likes tattoos and, after school, drags Anya out to a tattoo parlor to look at possible tattoos. Anya tries to get Lynn to see reason, pointing out that she only wants a tattoo because she wants to try and impressed Jon. When Lynn suggests that Jon might like her, Anya reminds her that guys don’t like her, recalling back to their 8th-grade dance. None of the boys asked either Anya or Lynn to the dance so they ended up going together and standing in the corner while everyone else had a fun night.

Later that evening, Amun calls Vincent at a Sisterhood of the Wasp headquarters in Fort Tryon Park. Amun is unhappy about the previous evening, but Vincent insists that the Sisterhood needed to audition Amun before hiring them on. Hearing that he passed this audition, he agrees to work with Vincent, but not for him. These terms are satisfactory for Vincent who sends Amun his next assignment before terminating the call. He then gets his assistant, Sam, to prepare an army of Wasps to recover judge Thomas Bander when Webcorps moves him to a safe house. Meanwhile, Amun has made the connection between his classmate Anya Corazon and Araña and is looking up all the records on his enemy, learning that her father is Gil Corazon is an investigative reporter and a potential weakness.[1]

By this time, Anya is returning home just as her father is rushing out to follow a lead and tells her that he won’t be home for a while. She fears that her father might be investigating the same case her allies at Webcorps are and tries to check his computer. Unfortunately, it has been locked with a password. She then calls Ted Mankowski, Webcorps resident hacker, to crack the password and get her into her father’s files.

Later that evening, Araña has joined the rest of her team as they transport Thomas Bander to a safehouse. They are ambushed by two helicopters carrying an army of Wasps. As Sam leads the Wasps in attacking the convoy, as Vincent watches from the trees. Miguel tries to speed away from the scene, but Amun arrives using his Rewi abilities to move in front of the fleeing car in the blink of an eye, forcing the drive to slam on the breaks. Summing her carapace around her body, Araña leaps out of the car to fight Amun. Meanwhile, the Sisterhood’s Sam fights with Nina Smith and knocks her aside and reaches a nearby hill where she gets a clear shot on Thomas Bander and takes it. Meanwhile, Araña continues her battle with Amun when she suddenly notices her father has arrived on the scene. In order to protect her identity, Anya wills her carapace to completely cover her face. She then snatches her father and carries him to safety while Miguel tries to keep Amun busy. Unfortunately, he is instantly wounded by one of Amun’s daggers. By this time Araña has gotten her father to safety. She ignores his questions for fear that he might recognize her voice. She is troubled when he reacts to carapace in disgust she destroys his video evidence of the battle and flees.

Back at the scene of the battle, Vincent tries to take advantage of attacking Miguel while he is injured by Nina arrives forcing Vincent to flee. When Araña returns and learns what happened to Miguel in her absence, she decides that she needs to stay away from everyone from now on and walks off alone.

Recurring Characters

Araña, Miguel Leger, Gil Corazon, Ted Mankowski, Nina Smith, Sisterhood of the Wasp (Vincent, Amun) Lynn, Thomas Bander

Continuity Notes

1. The records Amun pulls up on Anya and Gil identify their dates of birth as June 17, 1989 and October 24, 1964 respectively. These dates should be considered topical references that provide the ages of these characters relative to the date of publication. Modern readers should interpret to mean that Anya is 16 years old and her father is 40 at the time of this story and not ascribe any specific years to their ages.

Topical References

• Obsolete technology: Gil Corazon’s computer has a CTR monitor, and his camcorder records video on tape.