9 9

This is an abandoned farm in the Dakota Territory. Some squatters have settled in it, while it's between owners.

Kershen the Huntress takes up a bow and arrow, and does some target practice. She puts her rage and impatience into it.

"Two witnesses still alive," she grumbles between arrows. "Four ex-husbands still at-large. Spider-Man's alive, knowing, and possibly stalking us. These Sacrilegious Six are not off to a very good start, are we?"

Trachtenberg, the She-Vulture, is flying around the farm. She lands nearby, and takes her goggles off. "What was once six has become seven. With luck, someone has long-squashed Spider-Man, like the bug he impersonates. No thanks to our special effects expert!"

A giant cobra rises from the sand, raises its hood, and bares its fangs. With sinister eyes, it looks down at her two teammates.

They just stare at her. Trachtenberg covers her mouth with her glove and coughs.

Bedir snores, and reimagines herself back into herself. "My illusions are not a hard science, you know. I told you all that before we all began. Besides, that kerosene tank would've caused a lot of damage; it's already bad enough that Reilly widow saw us."

"Yes. It is."

Marya advances towards them, flipping a crystal-shaped baton in her hand. Around her, grains of soil trickle through the grass, and orbit around her like gnats.

"At this rate," she says, "we could fail more than succeed. We might as well turn ourselves over to SHIELD now."

"And for what?" A patch of grass lights up, and Dijana erects herself from it. She's forged new sais for herself. She spins them a few times in her hands, and belts them.

"The Avengers would surely make sport of raping us! Worst case scenario, they'll expel us back to Afroasia...and this quest will have been for naught!"

They argue. They can't tell what each other's saying.

"ENOUGH!"

All fall silent. From aloft, Oseku parachutes in. Near the ground, she severs the parachute ropes, and falls. She raises her octopus prosthetics, and their claspers appear to peer around, like snakes.

"You pessimistic fools," she growls. "Spider-Man is our priority now! He's proven that his small size only makes him superior to his targets. If we are to evade his efforts to stop us," the green lights in her shades narrow, "we must even the playing field."

"How are we going to re-size him back to normal," Marya asks, "when we don't know where he is, or can't see him?"

"It's not him we will resize. It's ourselves!"

"What," Dijana exclaims.

"You're kidding," Kershen begs.

"We still have four ex-husbands and two witnesses to kill," Trachtenberg reminds their brainy leader. "Don't you think we'll all stand a better chance at pulling those off if we're still our present sizes?"

"Bedir," Oseku calls out, "I believe you can make us small, as you accidentally did Spider-Man."

Bedir shrugs. "I can't guarantee those results. I wasn't trying to shrink Spider-Man. I'd thought the blast had already killed him before I shrunk that explosion."

"You WILL replicate your success with Spider-Man," Oseku hisses. "If you don't, everything we work hard for will likely be in vain if Spider-Man is ever there to stop us again!"

"What I don't get," Marya adds, "is what Spidey's doing so far away from the Big Apple. He's practically its homeboy!"

"It doesn't matter, Oseku insists. "Crushing Spider-Man like a bug is a bad plan, as long as we don't know where he is. But if we're as small as him, we'll see him. Once we find him, we can resize ourselves, and guarantee our own success in this quest!"

A gold coin falls out of Kershen's threads. No one notices.

"I order you again, Bedir," Oseko hisses, "MAKE US SMALL."

Bedir swallows, nods, places her palms together, and closes her eyes. She breathes, and waits.

All around, the other Sacrilegious Six get dizzy. They hallucinate, lose all sense of focus, and dream they hear beautiful music; Loreena McKennitt's "Marco Polo," to be more specific.

They see hookah smoke. They see sand dunes. They see floating Afroasian rugs. They see towers topped with onion domes. They see cobras gliding in circles. They see clouds in Jannah moving...

The illusion takes over five minutes to pass. When it does, the Sacrilegious Six stand in a circle, facing away from one another.

Bedir has reimagined their clothing. They all now each wear a metal bra, and chain-mail panties. The bare essentials of their costumes are still present; just more refined, and tailored to match their new clothing.

"We look like whores," Dijana gapes.

As best as she can, Marya attempts to stare at her own barely chain-mail-covered ass. She tries to grin, while her head is turned, as she likes what she feels...if not what she sees...

They each stand on a metal hill. They look around. Around and beneath them, a metal plain expands for miles. They look up.

Trachtenberg spreads her cybernetic vulture wings, and takes to the sky. She flies around. She lands. She takes her goggles off.

"This is no plain," she reports. "This was Kershen's coin!"

Dijana faints.

"EASY," Bedir loudly whispers. "You could've electrocuted us!"

"I'm out of charge," Dijana mutters sleepily.

Kershen feels around for the coins in her pocket. Alas, her pockets have been replaced by chain-mail sacks, that hang from her new panties. "You owe me six pieces of eight," she yells at Bedir.

"No I don't," Bedir says, smiling and toting a magnificent silver-steel shield. "We're all wearing them!"

"Now that we are small," Oseku hisses, "Spider-Man has fewer places to hide! We will find and kill him! And once we do, no one will stand in our way! Not the Avengers! Not SHIELD! No sheriff's pistol on the frontier will ever hinder the Sacrilegious Six!"

Dr. Octopussy seems confident. As for her five loyal followers...some are starting to lose faith.

"How do we look for them? I doubt even Trachtenberg could cover much ground in this state." Marya nods at Trachtenberg. "No offense."

"None taken," Trachtenberg admits. "But seriously; how do six fleas cover the whole damn American frontier?"

"Easy." Oseku smiles, and blows a whistle, which now hangs from her neck. "As fleas, we are now the proud co-owners of..."

Bedir mimics a drum roll, as the Sacrilegious Six are approached by something tall and mighty. Some of them gasp as its shape becomes apparent. High over them, a coyote appears to stand. Except...it's made of metal...and moves like a robot...

"Say marhaba," Oseku beholds, "to our team's set of wheels...legs. Behold...the Sacrilege-Mobile!"

Robotically, the giant metal coyote opens its mouth. "Welcome," the AI inside it says, "Oseku, Marya, Bedir, Kershen, Trachtenberg, and Dijana of the Sacrilegious Six!"

Oseku clenches one of her metal tentacles, and raises it high. "Mount up!"

Dijana merges with one of the Sacrilege-Mobile's front legs, and travels up it to her mount. Trachtenberg, of course, flies up to hers.

Against each of its four legs, a ladder leads up to the other four mounts. Bedir imagines herself into a faun, and climbs up hers, as sure-footed as an ibex would climb a cliff.

Dr. Octopussy mounts the coyote's head. Once her team is mounted, she sounds the charge. The Sacrilege-Mobile howls, and runs. Once it starts, the other Sacrilegious Six members sure are glad they remembered to buckle in.

They've got a lot of ground to cover, if they want to kill Spider-Man. Fortunately, the Sacrilege-Mobile is just as good as tracking as it is covering large spaces in small times.

All six ladies know that their husbands wouldn't want to marry them if they could see them now. Lucky for them, though, two of them are already dead. It's just a matter of killing the other four. Tasks that'll have to wait, they're all afraid, as long as Spider-Man has proven himself capable enough to stop them from killing one of their exes.

They've no idea that their enemy is just as lost as they are. And in the middle of the American Wild West, he's soon about to become even more so.