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As it got close to Halloween, it seemed a lot of the stores around the city were getting into the spirit of the season. Decorations of pumpkins, bats and spiders decorated many of the front windows and displays. They were cute, but Rana found that after a while they all looked the same and barely worth noticing.

She had gone into a convenience store one afternoon to grab a drink, and as she headed down the isles she passed one rack of shelves covered with cotton fake webs and an oversized hairy spider. Like most of the Halloween decorations, she'd barely glanced at it. She just headed over to the drink case in the corner, grabbed a soda, and turned to go.

Then stopped short when she saw the huge spider was now on the floor, right between her and the rest of the store. She stared at it for a moment, puzzled but not afraid, and tried to walk around it. But as soon as she moved, so did it. It reared up and waved its front legs in a way that managed to look incredibly threatening. Even worse, she could see it's mouth parts wiggling about as if it was chewing. Or eager to get a bite of her.

She stepped back quickly, bumping into the drink case behind her. "What the hell?" she said, startled.

Rana was studying the spider, trying to figure out what to do about it, when someone else came over. She glanced over at the other teen, but didn't want to take her eyes off the monster arachnid in front of her.

The suggestion was obvious, and also impossible to follow. "I'd love to, but I'm literally backed into a corner here," she pointed out. On ether side of her were glass-fronted refrigerated drink cases, and she stood in a small triangle of floor space between them and the spider. The only thing she had at hand was the bottle of soda she'd grabbed. Would it be heavy enough to beat the spider with so she could get away? But she had no idea how fast this spider could move, and if she could even hit the thing before it could dodge or attack her.

Instead she tried inching to the side, pressing herself against one of the cases to try and slide past. But as soon ash she tried to take a step, the spider rose up and began to move towards her. Rana froze again. Moving was bad, trying to attack seemed unwise. She was stuck.

"Got any other ideas?" she finally asked. She could probably figure a way out of this eventually, but she didn't really want to be in this situation any longer than she had to.

Rana was trying to remember if spiders could jump, and if so how high, when the other girl offered a suggestion. She frowned and glanced at the bottle in her hand. Spray it with soda? That seemed like a bit of a toss-up whether it would drive the spider away or make it angrier. But at least it was the option that didn’t get her any closer to the monster spider. So she nodded. “I could give it a try,” she said.

She lifted the bottle and started shaking, keeping an eye on the spider to make sure it didn’t interpret the action as hostile or anything. It didn’t do much beyond twitch it’s legs a little, so she kept at it. The bottle gained pressure quickly, and in moments it felt hard as a rock and ready to blow.

But…how to actually spray the thing? This would have been easier with a can, but she had to work with what she had. She slowly pointed the bottle at the spider, brought her other hand to the cap, then as quickly as possible she twisted off the cap and let go. The cap was blown off by the pressurized contents, spraying frothy, sticky liquid all over. A lot of it managed to get on Rana, but a good deal of it headed towards the spider.

Rana watched the spider warily as it started to move, hoping it didn’t run towards her. Thankfully it started to back away, but still got hit. And started to spark.

She stared incredulously as it was revealed to be a weird robot, and a kids ran up complaining about the damage. When the kids started to cry, she grew angry. “If you’re using your robot to terrorize people, you deserve to have it broken,” she said indignantly. “What did you think would happen when you used a monster spider to threaten people?” She put her hands on her hips (accidentally dribbling soda on herself from the bottle that was still in one hand) and glared at the kid.

Then the manager came over. He’d likely be upset at the mess, so she defended her actions. Pointing at the crying boy, she said, “This kid was scaring me with his giant robot spider. I honestly thought I was being threatened, so I tried to fight it off with the only thing at hand. It was self-defense,” she asserted. Though she realized a giant spider usually wasn’t a realistic threat, so she added, “And I was attached by the giant bats the other day, so I’m on edge enough to take the threat of huge mutant animals seriously.”

Rana felt a spike of vindictive satisfaction when she heard the prankster boy would have to clean up after his mess. Served him right!

The store owner's offer to do something for the trouble kind of surprised her, though. That was rather nice of him, he didn't need to do that. At the other girl's comment, she looked down at herself and noticed that she did indeed seemed to be splattered liberally with soda. She grimaced at the sticky dampness, and told the store owner, "Yeah, if you have some paper towels, that would be great." She didn't really need anything else though; even asking for a free drink seemed like taking advantage of the guy.

...Oh right, the soda. She looked at the now-empty bottle in her hand and added, "I'll pay for the soda, though. I did use it up, after all." She didn't bother to get a second one to drink, though. At this point, she just wanted to get home and into clean clothes.