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After having been on the ship for a number of weeks now, Merlin was beginning to get the hang of the place. Or at least, he wasn't finding himself in completely unfamiliar places where it would take him all day to get back to somewhere he recognised quite so often.

At least now he didn't have to worry about needing to get back to his rooms so he could feed Iniss. He hoped that Tom was alright - he still wasn't sure that taking Iniss back was the best thing for Tom, but Merlin had resolved to check up on him. And if Iniss still wasn't letting Tom control his own body...well, Merlin could always cast that spell again.

One thing Merlin definitely hadn't gotten the hang of, however, was the omnicomm. Which meant that he was currently walking along the corridors of Stacy, blissfully unaware of the fact that a very public declaration of both Merlin's actions and his magical ability had recently been broadcast to the entire ship.

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If there was one thing Spider-Man wasn't used to at the moment, it was being Mr. Police Officer. He never thought, in his lifetime, that he would be actually arresting people and bringing them in, instead of beating them senseless and webbing them up. Oh, sure there would be time for that sort of thing. Just not right now.

At the moment, the web-slinger was busy crawling along the walls of the hallways, trying to find Merlin before stopping and noticing the guy.

Ah-ha...! Gotcha...! he thought before moving in and grabbing his attention.

"'ey! Pointy-ears!" he called out, landing on the floor behind Merlin.

Merlin spun around, startled by the sudden appearance of...a man? (Was it a man? Merlin wasn't too sure; either it was a man wearing the strangest garment he'd ever seen, or it was some bizarre kind of man-shaped talking creature.)

"What's wrong with my ears?" he protested, feeling a little indignant that some strange man-shaped creature had felt the need to come up to him and start making fun of his ears.

"Oh, I could go on about your ears, bub, but that's not here or there." Spidey said. Going for his omnicomm, he brought up the message from Iniss (along with some of the rage-filled messages) and held it out to Merlin.

"Sorry, looks like you've been outed. That, and you're in trouble. As much as I'm not to fond of symbiotic creepies taking over other people's minds and all... rules are rules. Now, do you want to do this the easy way or the humiliating way?"

Merlin stared at the screen, his eyes ignoring most of the message and zooming onto one part. Magic. Iniss had told people about his magic!

Never mind that Merlin was pale already - he was going to get even paler, as all the colour drained from his face. He'd hoped that what people had been telling him was true, that magic wasn't illegal, except now everyone knew about Merlin and here he was, about to be taken away.

If he'd stopped to think rationally, Merlin might have realised that it was taking Iniss, not his magic that had gotten him into trouble. But living under the threat of execution for having magic tended to skew one's perceptions.

"But...but magic's not evil!" Merlin pleaded, trying to fight the panic. "I didn't use it to hurt him, and I promise I wouldn't use magic to hurt anybody!"

"Listen, buddy, I'm not here about you using magic." Spidey said. "I don't give two licks about you using magic. What I care about is the fact that you kidnapped someone - someone who half of the crew thinks should be kept away for good, but, hey, who am I to argue with Captain Pretty Boy and the walking man muscle that is my boss?" He shrugged at that.

"You're...not?" Merlin repeated, blinking. He didn't care about his magic at all?

"Wait, kidnapped? He's a slug that was controlling Tom's body! How is taking him out kidnapping?"

"No, I'm not." Spidey repeated, just to make sure it went through.

"Well, you took him out and held him against his will. Despite what he is, apparently, he's crew, so... it's considered kidnapping."

This was going to be a loooooooooooong day.

Merlin blinked. Again. He seemed to be doing that a lot in this conversation.

He wasn't sure what was weirder: the fact that he wasn't being arrested for having magic, or the fact that taking a slug out of someone's head counted as kidnapping.

"That makes no sense. What else was I supposed to do with him? I couldn't really go and stick him in someone else, could I?"

Spidey threw his hands up in defense.

"Look, I'm just following the rules here!" he admitted. "All I know is is that he's out, he's complaining and half the ship's jumping down a seventeen year old's throat because of what he is and they don't want him to be treated the same as the rest of us."

He leaned back and sighed. "Trust me, if I go through with this, I'm gonna have them jumping down my throat because I'm defending the slug."

It's the J. Jonah Jameson syndrome all over again - Spidey does something, someone views it as evil, Spidey becomes vilified on the ship.

"I'm sorry," Merlin said quietly. He didn't really know what Spidey was referring to - Merlin actually knew very little about how Yeerks were regarded on the ship, and he was quite frankly baffled by the thought that stopping Iniss was apparently against the rules - but he could tell that somehow, what he'd done had made things harder for Spidey.

"I just wanted to help Tom. I didn't want to make things difficult for everyone else."

"Believe me, I know how you feel." Spidey said, feeling sympathetic for Merlin. "Though, it's got a lot of people up in arms. Apparently, the Council's trying to fix things, but with Tom's friends distrusting that slug and his kind like they are, it's making things hard. I don't think anyone had expected something like this."

A brief pause.

"Or maybe they did and didn't expect this to happen..."

"I didn't know that Tom had made a promise to keep him," Merlin admitted. "Iniss just took control while I was talking to him, and when I asked him to bring Tom back he just refused and said Tom's body was his. He even said he was unwelcome, so I didn't think that Tom might have actually agreed to it."

Merlin watched Spidey, looking uncertain.

"So...what happens now?"

"Well..." Spidey said, perching himself on a wall (Yeah, check this out, Merlin - no magic!) "...the best we can do is bring you to security. Yeah, you need to deal with the consequences, but the way I've been seeing it, you might be getting off lightly." he shrugged a bit.

"Frankly, I don't blame ya for what you did. You helped the guy he was stuck with. If I were in your shoes, I'd do the same thing. 'With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility' and what you did was responsible - you helped the guy. We just wish we didn't have the little thing saying that the bug was crew, too."

Spidey shuddered at that though mentally. What if Eddie Brock or Mac Gargan arrived with the Venom symbiote - or worse, someone like Cletus Kassidy with the Carnage symbiote? Would trying to stop them from killing him or other crewmates mean getting violations or being arrested?

You're not helping Merlin's mistaken belief that you're some kind of creature there, Spidey.

"So no one's going to be chopping my head off then?" Merlin tried to say lightly, though he couldn't really hide the fact that he was relieved. He could deal with being thrown in a cell, or the stocks - he'd been thrown into them all the time back at Camelot - but he'd really rather not be executed. "Why do they think he's crew, anyway?"

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