2019-04-17 - What It Means To Be A Spider

Summary:

Spider-Girl and Spider-Man meet for the first time, while lamenting over their near-death experiences earlier that day in Harlem.

Log Info:

Storyteller: None
Date: Wed Apr 17 12:39:32 2019
Location: Harlem

Related Logs

None

Theme Song

None

peter-parkeranya-corazon

Only six hours have passed, and it's almost as if nothing happened; as if a subway train hadn't nearly derailed and killed countless innocent people.

Spider-Girl is perched on top of a building right next door to the very same subway tunnel that the heroes had converged upon, just hours ago. At her feet is a backpack, a foil wrapper containing eight tacos that she hasn't eaten, and a brown bag that probably has some kind of liquor in it. She hasn't really touched that either. Rather, she's just staring at the tunnel, watching as the occasional train comes and goes, a frown on her face.


Peter has to get back there. The Go-Pro camera he had set up was left behind, and he needs to get it back. And he certainly can't get it back as Peter Parker, unless he can explain how he can climb a brick wall without climbing gear.

So, when it is suitably dark, a familiar red-and-blue-longjohns-wearing Spider-Man swings into the area, heading straight for the building where the camera was mounted. Get in, get it, get out. That's the plan…

But the plans of mice, men, and spiders go awry. And often.


Five hours ago…

Anya Corazon had climbed into her bedroom window, eight floors up a mid rise apartment building in a part of Spanish Harlem yet to be touched by gentrification. She stripped the costume off her body in rapid time, threw on some dirty clothes, and rushed to the bathroom only to get sick in the toilet. Moments later, her grandmother began pounding on the bathroom door, and what followed was a heated argument in Spanish about school, her grant money, the NYU scholarship, drugs and alcohol, and the counter culture friends she surrounded herself with.

The argument ended with Anya slamming her bedroom door shut, locking it, and crying for a little while. Then, she turned and stared at the discarded, tiny pile of black and white, and angrily began pulling it back on again, only to slip right back out the window as Spider-Girl once again.

Back on that rooftop…

Spider-Girl is about to finally grab that bottle of tequila, when she spies Spider-Man crawling around. Standing up, she walks over to the edge of her respective rooftop, raises a hand, and fires a splat of webbing that'll strike the building about a foot away from Spider-Man's face.


Spidey senses the incoming web-missile, but is still startled by it. He thought he was alone here, and everyone else was home, sleeping the sleep of the just, the mature, and the bounty-less.

Then he looks to where it came from and…

Well…no denim shorts this time.
He doesn't move away. He didn't peg her for being responsible for what happened hours ago, but wondered what she was doing out here. Was this her home ground?


"Psst!" the masked girl calls out into the night, then jerks her hand over toward her rooftop, in a 'come here' gesture. Her face forms a smirk, and she shakes her head a moment before crawling back away from the edge of her rooftop, and going right back to where the tacos, tequila and backpack were left.


Spider-Man ohs and nods, but still pauses to grab the camera, fold up the detachable mount, and stow it in the ratty red-and-blue matching backpack. So doing, he fires a webline and swings over to the rooftop where the woman with the brown hair and black costume had indicated. He had no idea what would happen next, and it raised a lot of questions. He hoped he'd get a few answers.


When Spider-Man lands, he'll find the young woman setting down that brown bag. Apparently it was finally tequila time. "So you're Spider-Man," she says, staring at the masked fellow for a long, contemplative moment. Suddenly she's blushing, and fidgeting with gloved hands. "Look, uh, I don't know if you, like, have a copyright or intellectual property thing or, you know. Anything. I just, you know, it…" She stammers for a moment, before sighing and letting her shoulders slump. "I'm Spider…. Girl?"

The benefit of having a full face mask is that people can't see you grimace. Unfortunately, Anya opted not to cover all of her face. It just felt wrong.


Spider-Man stifles a snort of laughter. "Intellectual…property?" He snickers. "Sorry…sorry, Spider-Girl, I just…oh, gosh." He takes a deep breath to quell the chuckles. "Look, you can call yourself Spider-Girl all day. I've already met a Spider-Woman, though, but you're good. I am really sorry. I just wondered at the inanity of it. 'I'm on the back of a speeding subway train, trying to save the lives of 82 people, but SHE isn't giving me my CUT…'" He snickers again. He couldn't help it.


For a few moments, it almost looks as if the woman behind the mask might cry. Soon enough, a smirk cuts past the mollified expression on her half-face, and a burst of laughter escapes.

"Okay, okay." Spider-Girl wipes her mouth on a black sleeve before making a conceding gesture. "Yeah it kinda sounded stupid, but I was legit concerned. Right, amigo?" She finally stands up from that crouched position, and takes a few steps closer. "Come back to lament over the fact that no one gives a shit 'bout the fact that we all risked our necks today, huh?" Her mask turns to view the site below, frowning a little.


Spider-Man's chuckles subside, and he rests a light hand on her shoulder. His voice is quiet.

"There were eighty-two people on that subway train. Eighty-two people who got to go home tonight. To kiss their loved ones and tell them about the CRAZY day they had today. Some of those people are going to Tweet about it, Facebook it, heck, maybe even put it on their Tinder profile for all I know. And they are going to say that SOMEONE SAVED THEIR LIVES TODAY. Those are the only people that matter, Spider-Girl."


"Yeah," Spider-Girl murmurs. "Guess I'm just… adjusting." She keeps staring down at that train track for a moment. Eventually a single laugh escapes, a bitter one. "You know, I followed the Avengers from day one. Kinda thought it was cool that, ya know, we have real life super heroes. Figured I'd grow up, get a degree, end up in some shitty place like Silicon Valley or, I dunno, Atlanta. Working." She shakes her head. "Instead, here I am, sneaking out of abuela's place and… jumping head first into runaway subway trains."

Straightening, the girl turns away from Spider-Man and walks back over to her stuff. "You hungry? Want tacos? I'm starving. Like, extra starving, but I can't eat them. Maybe if you have one I'll suddenly be able to do it."


Spider-Man smiles wryly under the mask. "Sure. I'd love some. And I'll even kick in dessert." He unshoulders his backpack as he walks over to where Spider-Girl has her stuff. "I have a batch of homemade brownies for a friend but he was out carousing, so…his loss is your gain?"


"Great," answers the young Latina, a grin showing up. "Hopefully better than my grandmother's, she can't bake for shit."

Crouching down, Spider-Girl unwraps the tacos again and waits for Spider-Man to get started. "That one girl, with the armor? I literally just met her like, two days ago. She and a friend told me I should talk to you, but, honestly I was gonna ignore them. Guess fate had something different in mind." She's peering at the masked fellow, probably wondering what he looks like, or trying to guess how much younger he is than she. The voice isn't quite what she expected.


Spider-Man chuckles. "Mirage? Thought she WAS one when I saw her. On the winged horse." He shakes his head as he unzips the backpack, taking out a couple of cans of strawberry kiwi fruit juice. Still fairly cold. After placing them on the concrete riser, he reaches in and pulls out a large plastic disposable container, and Spider-Girl can see the brownies stacked like dark brown bricks inside. "I…had a case of the heebs and the jeebs after the train stopped and realized I jumped on a moving train with the barest idea of a plan…"


"Same," Spider-Girl answers ruefully. "For a sec there I was like, seriously what the hell am I doing? Should've killed me, instead it just… hurt like hell." She rolls a shoulder as if it's still sore from the impact.

She finally musters the will to grab a taco, and all but shoved the whole thing into her mouth in a ravenous manner. "So, anyway," she says between chewing. "How does this all, like, really work? Cess says I need to keep like… me from this. Like, not tell people my name, or vice versa." She chews some more, seeming a bit discomforted from the whole idea.


Spider-Man picks up one of the tacos, then lifts the mask to expose perfectly-normal lips, straight white teeth. Definitely a "gringo," and a young one. He's certainly ripped, though.

He takes a bite, chews as he opens one of the cans of juice. He hands the other to Spider-Girl. After he swallows, he takes a drink and says, "This is prety good."

He pauses, then says, "Having a secret isn't great. You have to lie to friends, to family, to people you respect. But the alternative is worse. If you're fighting bad guys, and I mean REALLY bad guys, how well can you sleep knowing they can find out where you live with an internet search? You risk putting those same people in the line of fire. And if it does happen…people will blame you. A lie is bad, but the truth can be far, FAR worse."


"Late night taco truck," Spider-Girl explains, then provides the cross street in Spanish Harlem where the truck has found itself a permanent residence after blowing a fatal rod in its engine.

Anya had only briefly considered the ramifications to her family. It wasn't something she wanted to think about, so, she intentionally hadn't. Now, of course, she's confronted with it and doesn't have anywhere to run. "So," she says with a hoarseness to her voice. "That's why."

Its almost enough to make one hang up the spandex.


Spider-Man nods. "There's also the other thing. I don't know who you are but having a public identity means you are Spider-Girl ALL THE TIME. When you go to work, to school, to Yankee Stadium, to Timbuktu. It can be too much, especially if you want to live a normal life for yourself, without people wanting you under arrest, or under surveillance…or even getting hounded for autographs or 'just one little favor.'"

He looks out at the skyline.

"But having these gifts and not using them to help people? It's a sin. One of the worst. Someone I respected and loved very much told me, 'With great power comes great responsibility. I had to do something horrible to find that out for myself." He looks to Spider-Girl. "And you should learn it this way, rahter than the hard way."


These are all the sorts of things that, behind the mask, Anya simply hasn't thought of. Oh, she's thought of everything else; she's tested her powers over countless sleepless nights, lifting cars and finding out just how her spinnerets work. The costume she wears isn't even spandex; a close inspection might reveal it to be finely, sturdily woven spider silk. There are no seams, and it's durability and elasticity is beyond remarkable.

However, all of those things Spider-Man mentioned? These are all things that have been at the edge of Anya's mind, but they are things she's forcefully not thought of, until now. It wouldn't take a telepath to understand that she's feeling a bit green in the gils; her fingers are shaking just a bit.

"I can't," she says quietly, but stops there, the words choking. She finally looks up from the food and drinks, her lips drawn into a line. "I can't… just not. You know?" A breath. "Not when I can lift a whole car."


Spider-Man nods. "Yeah. When I found out, my first thought wasn't how to help people. It was how i could make a buck or three." He looks down. "And it cost me EVERYTHING."


Anya chews her lip for a moment, and there comes one of those silences that could either be awkward, or meaningful. Sometimes, words are less helpful than silence.

"I'm gonna need a burner phone," she considers. "And you know what? You, me, and this Spider-Woman…" Why didn't she go with woman instead of girl? "… we need like our own private secure comm network. I could hack Verizon…. no, Sprint has a much stronger network. Could bury the IP's under a subnet mask inside their back door software update channels…"


Spider-Man raised an eyebrow. She certainly knew her stuff, that's for sure.

"I'm…hmm. maybe we can try something a little lower-tech." He reached into the backpack and took out a thumb drive. "This is an encrypted USB drive I was going to give to Spider-Woman. The first time you plug it in, you set a password. There are a bunch of files in there I put together. Code lists, dead drops, caches only a person like you or me can access. An invite to a special Internet channel where we can use the code system that only we will be able to decode with these drives. Works on any computer with a USB port." He smiles wryly. "I…had some time on my hands."


Eyeballing the drive, Spider-Girl suddenly forms a big, sly grin. "So you're a tech junkie too, huh?" she asks, and reaches out to take up the thumb drive, considering it. "I could modify this, ya know. Put it into a masked Bluetooth channel and a micro-solid state memory chip." She then reaches up to pat the side of her mask. "Easy enough to weave them right in. Voice activated command menu system… I mean, I can't do AI, but…" She leans forward, her smirk widening. "I might have lifted the Siri code from the most recent iOS patch."


Spider-Man nods. "Okayyy…that's clever. We're going to have to do our best with the budget we have available to us, though. Spider-Woman's got serious skills as well. I think she has access to a machine shop. The guy I use for my tech has his own lab. He's…kind of a genius."


At the mention of budget, Spider-Girl snickers. "Boy, you don't even know. Ever gone dumpster diving outside a tech firm? You'd be amazed at the perfectly good stuff they just throw away like garbage." She shakes her head. "Just gotta get over the smell." She's understandably curious about this lab and machine shop, but also, tacos and brownies. Another one gets shoved into her mouth.


He looks to her with a visible grin before he pulls the mask down again. She seems hungrier than her. He holds up his hand so she can see the wrist-mounted gadget on his wrist. "He designed these, as well as the stuff that makes the webs."


Once finished with her taco, Spider-Girl leans over to look at the contraption. "What?" she asks, and reaches a hand out to touch and inspect the device. "You mean yours aren't..?" Confused, she pulls her hand away and fiddles with one of her gloves, separating it from the wrist and letting it dangle freely for a moment. Turning her hand over, she plies open a little flap of skin on her wrist, revealing something that should not be there. A little pinch of her fingers, and a bit of webbing oozes out. "They, like… just…. grew there. After it happened."


Spider-man looks at the…well, for lack of a better term, spinneret. "That's interesting. And without prying too deeply, how did whatever happened happen? Was it biological?"

He was feeling a little unsettled. Had OsCorp gone further?


"I don't know," answers Spider-Girl, truthfully. "To be honest, I was… I sometimes go underground. Exploring. Kind of a dare with some of my friends. So I was down there, and I found this… this thing. A rock, I thought. I picked it up, you know, just to have a look, and it… something happened." She seems confused by the whole affair. "It started glowing, bright blue, with this spider shape, and then I was out. For like… for like two days I was down there, just out. When I woke up, the rock, or crystal? It was gone, and then I started… changing."


Spider-Man nods. He's no expert, but he's seen enough to know of magic. He doesn't understand the tenets of magic, but he knows a few things.

"Hmm…so, it sounds like magic. I'm no expert, but based on what you told me, it's different than what happened to me. So the aspects of it could be different." He opens the container of brownies, placing them within reach. "So, your webbing draws calories from you in order to create itself…?"


Behind the mask, Anya is cocking an eyebrow. "Like, Temple of Doom shit? The lost Shankara Stones?" Spider-Girl sounds dubious at best on the subject, but isn't about to argue it. "Well, spider silk is protein based, right? And I'm faster, stronger… explains why my appetite has like, literally doubled." And she clearly hasn't gained weight, either. The costume doesn't hide a thing, and it would appear the young woman is almost nothing more than skin, bone and muscle.


Spider-Man nodded for a moment, looked to the container of brownies, then pushed some her way. "Natural spidersillk…hmm. Another tick in the magic column is why the spinnerets didn't show up in…well…the USUAL place. "And I'm a rational guy, but I've seen things that cannot be explained by science. So I'm more willing to use the M-word than I used to be."


With a brownie in hand, Spider-Girl's mouth goes ajar for a moment. "Mierde," she curses in Spanish, "Thank God! It wouldn't look nearly as cool if I had to swing around from my ass!!" She blurts out what's next without even thinking.

"I'm feeling better about my next period! Worried I was gonna start…." She stops suddenly and looks at Spider-Man, mortified. "… laying eggs."

She shoves a brownie into her mouth, pretending it's her own foot.


Spider-Man doesn't seem to notice. "I think you need a MALE spider to make that possible, and as far as I know, I'm the only one around.

STUPID MOUTH!

Spider-Man also grabs a brownie. "Uhm…sorry…I talk so much when I'm nervous. Sometimes I only open my mouth to change feet."


Spider-Man might find a little chunk of brownie flying right toward his mask.

"You'll be the first one to know now for that one, Spider-Boy." She eats the rest of that brownie before the phone in her backpack starts to ring, the song from a local band out of Brooklyn. She dives for it and pulls it out, before sighing deeply. "I knew it. It's mi abuela. We had a fight, and… I should go home."


Spidey catches the bit of brownie out of the air before it hits the mask. He knew it. He overstepped.

He nods to Spider-Girl as he steps back. "Keep the USB drive. I can encrypt another with the same data for Spider-Woman." He looks around. "Yeah, I should head out. Keep the brownies, you could use the sugar."

He steps over to the ledge. "Take care of yourself, okay?"


"It's alright," Spider-Girl tells the other, earnestly. "Seriously. You should see how me and my friends talk to each other." Smirking ruefully, she pockets the thumb drive in one of her nearly invisible pouches, then gathers everything else up into her backpack, which ends up slung over both shoulders. "You too, Spider-Man," she says, before cocking her head a little bit. "Oh, and hey." She grins, and odds are there's a wink in her eye. "Nice to meet ya."

With that, she turns and runs toward the rooftop, leaping into the air and gliding down gracefully. Peter's right… it must be magic, because it all just seems to come so naturally.


Spider-Man watches her go, then sighs. Another Spider-person. And she sounds Hispanic. Such a different personality than Spider-Woman. A different style. But they're both sharp as tacks, which is encouraging.

Holy Cow, is he feeling…PROTECTIVE of them? Jeez, who the heck is he?

He shakes his head, then heads off in the other direction. Promises to keep, and miles to go before he sleeps.

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