Summary:A classic tale of Spider meets Spider, high above the city. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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The Man Who Would Be Someone's Retirement Package gazed at the OsCorp building with a rueful smile. He had a pretty good idea WHY…
Well, no sense debating the pros and cons of turning yourself in at Aunt May's protection. Her tuna fish sandwiches are filling, and it is probably time to run along the city skyline and find something to do…or something to web up. Criminals and crooks, of course.
He fired off a webline, tossed his leavings in the trashcan, and vaulted himself up to the moderate height of 50 feet, and gaining altitude as he hit cruising speed, navigating between tall building and above smaller buildings.
Who needs a car in New York, after all?
New night, same old game. The two guys harrassing an ATM with a crowbar never saw her coming. "It's SPIDER-MAN, RUN!!" Pfft. Does she /look/ like a man? She thinks /not/. But the effect was satisfactory, all the same. Clotheslined by a web, flat of their backs, and looking up at Spider-Woman, they realized their error. But it was too late, either way. They ended up webbed together, back to back, and left dangling from a streetlight, with red and blue flashes approaching at a fantastic clip. By the time the cops got there? They'd only have the crooks' tale to help them put the pieces together. That, and one ATM that's seen better days.
Gwen is speeding through the city, away from the police. Away from the crime. Away from anyone who could ask questions. "A dame. 'It's a DAME?' Who even SAYS that anymore? It's like I'm stuck in a frickin' mob movie…" Cares away, the Spider-Woman is focused on finding new turf, far enough away that she can't be tracked down by the fuzz, or whatever those guys would have called the police. /Dame/, indeed…"
Spider-Man was moving at a pretty good clip. He spotted blue-and-red lights and decided to just bypass them. Cops weren't exactly on good terms with him since…well, he knew.
He figured he's head back to the Science Wing and find a way inNNNNNNCOMING!
He only had a glimpse of the female figure as she swam into view. He usually didn't run into people at this..altitude…and then realized he had to angle up or he WOULD run into her.
She passed him below and to the left, and he was JUST beginning to unclench when their weblines met.
One one level, he could see it purely from the science perspective. He had done a paper on the "second pendulum" concept on Physics class, referencing Foucault's primary work…
And on the other hand, HANG ON.
They spun away, then up and over in tandem, winding up the connecting lines. Spidey shifted his balance to slow the trapeze thing until he was hanging by one hand, turning slowly to face in the direction of the other figure.
Gwen's making good time, and by that I mean she's making GREAT time. She'll be far beyond the lights in NO time. Then, there's another flash of red and blue. Only this time, it's not lights.
And just like that, she's caught. "I'M CAUGHT!" And there's a high-pitched squeal as she swings around, up, over, down, back up again, and entwined. She, however, is already facing her entwining partner, when he turns around, fac—er, mask, to mask. "Uh….hi."
The eyes do blink in the new suit. And they do so repeatedly.
He suddenly realizes that he is…kinda close to this strange girl (like HE should talk) and looked up to spot the point where their weblines met. THEIR weblines?
He suddenly scoots back on the webline, and he stammers, "Uhhh…sorry! Sorry, I…I didn't see you until you were right there and…" He stops, and then looks at her. "Uhm…hi. I'm…Spider-Man…"
"Apparently, so am I…" Gwen mutters, glad her face is hidden so he can't see the flush when she thinks about those crooks. "I mean, somebody thought I was you just a little while ago…back there…where the…uh…." She peers back over her shoulder to see the flashy flashy in the street, many blocks away. "So like, these guys, and they thought…" She turns back to him slowly, dangling in a slow turn, and using her turquoise ballet-clad foot as if it has an invisible pedal to try and turn her back toward him. "They thought I was you…but they figured it out…"
She sighs, flustered, and looks up at the crisscrossed webs. "I'm um…Spider-Woman. Dude you're worth SO much money right now, do you KNOW how much money you're worth?!"
Spidey blinks. Spider-WOMAN? Are they family? Nahhh, they couldn't be family. They…
He suddenly looks down and realizes they are hanging 140 feet above the ground. "Uhm, maybe we can find someplace to talk before someone decides to swing a very long stick at us?"
He points to the nearby skyscraper belonging to Chase Bank. "Want to go talk on the roof up there?"
"I dunnoooooo~," Gwen quips with a playful lilt. "I'm kinda scared of heights…" She giggles, and as she shifts to do so, she goes off aspin, swinging slightly. "Okay, okay. Yeah sure, I mean, it's probably safe up there. 140-foot sticks, sure, they're a dime a dozen. But nothin' THAT long, right?"
Without warning, she catches the right direction of spin and thwips a web at the Chase building, then another, then one more, swinging right on up to the roof. She misses her mark, the tower on top that she was aiming for, and hits the edge of the roof itself. So there is, clambering up over the edge, in a MUCH less graceful display than intended. He's probably not watching, anyway.
Uhh, YEAH, he's watching. But not in THAT way. She is…well, she's wearing a costume (with a hood? Hey, he DID miss his hoodie from the old costume) and…light blue ballet slippers?
Right now he is seeing how well she handles herself. Oddly enough, she reminds him of himself, the first few weeks. Bruises that had nothing to do with the bullies he normally dealt with. Good recovery, but it made him realize how far he had come.
He launched himself up to fire a webline to get him over to the side of the building, and if Spider-Woman is watching, she sees him…RUNNING up the side of the building. Extreme parkour.
He fires a webline at the top and pulls himself up to vault over the ledge to land on his feet on the helipad. He looked around, then walked over to where Spider-Woman was, sitting on the edge of the raised helipad.
"How long have you been at this whole vigilante thing, Spider-Woman?"
Pff. Whatever. Gwen could've done that if she'd wanted. But noooo. No, she had to miss, instead. "Uh…not…not too long. Like maybe…six months?" How long /had/ it been? Time flies when she's having fun. "I try to stay under the radar. Cause YOUUU, Mister….YOU are trouble," she replies, circling a gloved finger pointed at his nose. Or where she assumes his nose should be. If he's actually human under there.
Spidey blinks. "Yeah. You did say something about money. Last time I heard, the bounty was…what? 100 grand? Not exactly chump change…" He looked at her circling finger. "I do have to give you credit. If I didn't nearly crash into you just now, I'd be heading towards Midtown without any knowledge you even existed…" He stops. Does that sound bad? It could sound bad. "Not…that you aren't impressive…" he adds, a little lamely.
"More than that, now," Gwen replies evasively. "Dude, you have SERIOUSLY upset the underbelly of this city." She doesn't take offense. Quite the contrary, in fact. "Good, sounds like I'm keeping a low enough profile. Not that I'm not guilty by association, or resemblance, if I get caught. But I mean the guys I deal with don't exactly have all the scruples in the world." A beat. "Or the brains. So I've gotta be careful…"
Gwen's fidgeting. Maybe not even consciously. But she's taken to walking tiny circles around a little metal vent cap on the roof, stepping on it every third step, and causing her to bob upward a little.
Spider-Man shrugs. "I gotta be me, Spider-Woman. And I can't let something like a bounty keep me from doing the right thing…"
She looks antsy, ill-at-ease, maybe.
"Hey…if you don't mind, can I ask a personal question?"
Gwen doesn't stop circling. She doesn't even look up at him, but instead keeps her gaze down, intent on the steps and step-ups. "Sure, I mean, what about me isn't an open book?" Except for her costume. Her mask. Her bravado and no-nonsense attitude, even as she's up to total nonsense. "Ask away, I got nothin' to hide."
Spider-Man steps forward, then raises one arm to show Spider-Woman his inner wrist…and the gadget under it.
"How do you make your webs? I had to make my own web-shooters…and a synthetic spidersilk fluid for the web-shooters…"
"Oh…" Gwen pauses in her merry-go-round and looks down at her wrist, holding it up so he can see. "It's my own design. It draws moisture from the air, so I won't run out of fluid, y'know?" She turns her wrist a little, examining it. "It's hell on them if I'm an an arid climate, though. If there's not enough moisture in the air, they sorta jam on me. It's a work in progress, really…" She shrugs. "I didn't know what you had. I figured maybe you just…made it, or something. But I can't….can't do that, exactly. Kind of a relief to see we have that in common, I guess."
Spider-Man blinks. "Wow. That's pretty amazing. Do you have your own machine shop?" He steps closer to peer at the rig Spider-Woman is using. "That's pretty clever. Moisture, hunh? I just went back to the root and analyzed natural spidersilk, then reverse-engineered it. Mix it up in liquid form, then the spinnerets convert to solid. A little like silly string."
"Thanks…Nah, not a machine shop, exactly…" Gwen becomes a little more evasive. "I work in…laboratories…where I could find some spare parts, and figure it out. Then just replaced some of them with better versions of the same, as I got the time and money." Her hooded mask is hiding the darting of pale blue eyes, this way and that, because talking about herself isn't exactly the first item on her "To Do" list. "I guess you're probably pretty scientifically inclined, if you came up with that whole reverse-engineering idea for webbing. I mean, not just anyone has the capability or resources to do that, do they?"
Spider-Man nodded. "Well…let me clue you in on a little something. But you have to keep it a secret. The guy who designed everything…? He's the real brain. His name's Peter Parker. He designed the tech, and I let him know where I'm going to be doing my crime-fighting so he can take pictures and sell them to the Daily Bugle. The editor's not a fan, but he'll buy the pictures. It's…something of a symbiotic relationship."
"Huh…" Gwen tilts her head, staring at him now. "Can't believe you'd just out someone like that, knowing that there's a bounty on your head for like millions of dollars, so I'm gonna assume that /you're/ Peter Parker." She shrugs. It's a long shot, and she knows it. But deductions all seem to lead the same place on the situation. It doesn't, however, explain where all those nifty pictures come from. They aren't exactly selfies. Besides, she's mostly teasing, anyway.
Mostly.
Spider-Man chuckles. "I wish I was that smart. Besides, there's a method to my madness." He glances up to her masked face. "Maybe he could take a look at your work, see if there's anything he can do to fix the dry-air problem."
"Uh…" Gwen thinks, and thinks fast. "I mean, I guess that'd be okay, if he was okay with the fact that I don't take this mask off for anybody. ANYBODY. It doesn't matter how smart they are, or how much money they have, or how many pictures they've taken of you, or …." She takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. "I have trust issues."
Spider-Man nods. "Yeah, I doubt he'd have a problem with that, Spider-Woman. And I do have something of an ulterior motive. You see…I've gotten hurt a lot of times doing this. If there's anything I can do to help someone else in the same line of work…well, it can't hurt me, and it could even help." He smiles slightly under the mask. "Most days I feel like I'm in over my head."
"Ohhh I feel like I'm in over my head every DAY, and that's before I even put on the suit!" A giggle like shining bubbles emanates from beneath her mask. "But when I'm up here? Free and easy, and swinging between buildings, I don't have a care in the wooooorld…" She pauses. "Except now I'm suddenly afraid I'm gonna clothesline myself on some guy's webs again…"
Spider-Man chuckles. "Well…maybe I can check with Peter on that. Something he can rig up so we know the other Spider-Person is in the area."
"Sounds good! Well then. Youuu can message me….here." Spider-Woman fishes in her pocket (yes! she has pockets!) and pulls out a card. It has nothing but a phone number on it. "At least for the next week. If you don't hit me up by next Friday, you'll have to bump into me on the web…" She laughs, because 'web.' She turns and starts to thwip out a web, then thinks better of it. "Catch ya on the flip, Spider-Man. I'll try to stay off your turf." She does a pirouette, and bows with a flourish, then does the Nestea plunge off the building, backwards. If he happens to look over the edge, he'll see her swinging between buildings, at full speed, off into the distance.
Spider-Man blinks, then heads to the ledge.
The last thing he needs to to be like Carl or Flash and be someone who you have to cultivate favor with. They were both doing the same thing, after all.
However, he doesn't have time to say all of that, so he just calls out, "But…I don't *have* a turf!"
He sighed as he watched her swing away. "…Peter, you GOOBER…" he whispers to himself.