Summary:Spider Woman gets her costume… and promptly has a situatuon on the hand. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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He held off on using the Spider-Comm system for this, but he does leave him location open for discovery. It places him at the King's Landing Scrapyard. It is now shuttered, following the disappearance of the entire King family. But progress on what to do with it is slow, as all big cities are unless someone has a personal stake.
Spider-Man is there, the clothing box sitting on the metal bench near the three heavy bags — Unleaded (normal), Leaded (filled with lead shot) and Premium (battleship metal). He texted Gwen, the text hinting at a meeting at the library, then lunch at the White Castle.
Those plans are technically true.
Spider-Man checks the time. Still a few minutes to go.
And right on schedule, Gwen arrives. Or at least, more or less on schedule. It's entirely possible from the breathless manner of her arrival that she might have gone to the library first. She's dressed in baggy pants, too; not one of her usual clothing choices, but with a jacket to go along with 'em it's good for hiding the uptick in muscle she seems to have recently enjoyed.
"Made it," she announces. "Good thing I left early, so I had time to get confused, go to the library, then come here." She casually punches the 'Premium' bag on the way past, which makes a really satiscying 'clong' sound.
There's a lot of shadowy places in scrapyards, which means there are plenty of places where ghosts and scary monsters might hide, if one believes in such things. Belief doesn't matter much, however, when a female voice comes from a shadow nearby. The voice is tinged with an accent that suggests Latinx origin, and the tone of her voice is slightly amused.
"Okay, yeah. We were missing a blonde, weren't we?"
The outline of an angular white spider appears in the shadow, and then that shadow seems to extend beyond its boundaries and into the form of a young woman, with the angular body of a gymnast. Spider-Girl lifts a hand to peel the black away from her mouth, revealing just the lower half of her face and lips that are also painted black.
"Circle's now complete, ain't it?" she asks, with a head canted toward Spider-Man. Then back to Gwen, she asks, "Let me guess. Mutated spider bite?" A shift of her masked face back toward Spidey. "If she says magic rocks I'm gonna be irked."
Spider-Man chuckles, after being slightly startled. He should have put the proximity sensor on, but the rig in the new suit wasn't calibrated yet. "Gwen Stacy…I'd like you to meet Anya Corazon. She acquired her special gifts in a…different way. But she's one of us." He did note that Gwen showed no winces of pain from hitting sheet metal. Her joints are hardening up about as fast is his had, so hitting the Premium bag no longer risks shattering her knuckles.
"All right…glad you could make it." He pulls the lid off the box and lets Gwen get a good look.
It's in three pieces - bottom, complete with the blue-soled slippers; top, including the hood; and the balaclava mask and gloves, also matching her design. They are a Kevlar weave in impact cloth - thicker than lycra or spandex to enhance durability, but not so thick as to hinder movement or risk tearing at the joints.
"You can…go behind that car to change." He sounded a little bashful at that.
Gwen whirls around to face Anya; but hey, that thing in the back of her head that made her whole world tingle when that car ran a red light the day before isn't going off, so, that must mean she's safe, right? And then Spider-Man goes ahead and confirms it. "Always a pleasure to meet another spider-person," she agrees, grinning at Anya. "And that makes exactly two so far, so not a huge sample size, but hey." She shrugs lightly.
"No, no magic rocks," she confirms. "I went poking around somewhere I shouldn't have, and got bitten by a spider that gave me the most serious boost I've… ever heard of."
With the box lid off, Gwen stares down into it for a long moment. Afterall, this is it; "You know, somehow, the idea of putting on a costume feels like a bigger, more meaningful step than getting the powers did," she comments. "Thank you for making it." She takes the box and disappears around behind the back of… not the car, but a panel van a little further away.
Reaching up, Spider-Girl pulls the rest of her mask off, letting it flop against the back of her neck, brown ponytail and all. The woman behind the mask is certainly beautiful, but she wears a bright pink mohawk that has become a bit flattened by the mask, sticking against her shaved head to one side. It seems the brown ponytail is woven into the back of the mask. Clever.
"Or Spider-Girl, when I'm masked up," Anya offers, smiling in a friendly way. Of course, when she confirms it was a spider bite, Anya mock sighs in relief. "Thank goodness, I still have the weirdest origin story," she tells Spider-Man, before looking back to Gwen. "Sounds familiar though."
As soon as Gwen is out of sight, Anya walks up toward Spider-Man so that she can speak to him quietly. "She doesn't know about the others?"
Spider-Man says quietly, "She was bitten a few days ago. She's…well, she's one of the best friends I ever had, growing up. Her father is one of the top cops in the NYPD…and for good reason. He's a good cop, and a better detective. I'm trying not to overwhelm her. When I found her after the spider-bite, she had no idea what was happening to her. I'm…trying to protect her, as best I can, while she learns how to control her powers." He pauses. "I never had anyone to teach me…and look how THAT ended up. So if I can help her be a good Spider-Woman…then maybe I'll sleep a little easier."
Swapping clothes doesn't take long; Gwen reappears, now dressed head to foot in the spider-outfit she doodled up and Spider-Man fabricated for her. She's carrying the mask in one hand, and her backpack in the other, which presumably has her street clothes in it. She ambles back up to where a couple of more experienced spiders are waiting for her, and drops the backpack next to one of the punching bags. "Alright," she asks, "Left all my ID at home, so nothing to worry about in the bag…"
Gwen smooths out her hair a little, then tugs the balaclava piece on over her head, and then asks the ever-loaded question. "How do I look?"
There is empathy in Anya's expression; she remembers her transformation quite well, and how it messed with her. It might be time to dial down the sass a little. At mention of the top cop, her eyebrows shoot up a bit. "George Stacy?" she asks, then turns to look over at the van Gwen disappeared behind. "No shit…"
As Gwen emerges, Anya takes a step away from Spider-Man and takes a moment to look her up and down. Her fists are planted at her hips, and there's a smirk to her lips. "Daaaamn," she says as soon as the balaclava is worn, and whistles her approval. "The bad guys aren't gonna see it coming," she notes, but doesn't exactly explain what she means by that. Hopefully Gwen understands, and hopefully Peter doesn't blush.
Spidey has the good grace to look slightly uncomfortable. He'd crushed hard on Gwen, once upon a time. She hadn't reciprocated his feelings, and he had accepted that. Only tugged at his heart once or twice lately.
Like now.
He looked at Spider-Gwen, then said, "Uhm…it looks good. It's not uncomfortable in any way, is it?" He tried to focus on how she had put on the webshooters over the gloves, and that they fit fairly seamlessly. He walked over to the beat-up backpack he had brought in…and then began to turn it inside-out, the inner lining revealed as a red-and-blue backpack with the spider symbol on the back on the backpack. "I also have a reversible backpack for you, Spider-Woman," he said, adhering to his practice of using the code names when suited up. "How much practice have you got with the webshooters?"
Spider-Woman grins, under the mask, so naturally nobody can see it; but it's evident in the way she stands a little straighter. "I certainly hope so," she replies to Spider-Girl. "Practice? As much as I've been able to get in the last couple of days, while not missing school or work or otherwise doing anything to make anyone suspicious."
Gwen pauses, tugging the hood up over her head. "But, I can do this," she adds, before sticking her arm out to the side and clicking the webshooter, sending a little strand of web to hit a dispossessed rear axle assembly, right in the middle of the differential. She gives it a good pull, setting her feet while it's incoming, and catching it with one hand.
"Might've… clobbered myself right off my feet the first ten times I tried that," she acknowledges, before dropping the assembly at her feet.
"… I like her." Anya turns toward Spider-Man, her eyes entirely mischievous. "Where did you find her, hombre?"
Turning, she approaches Spider-Gwen to give the woman a closer inspection. Anya's costume seems to be made of a different material, and there are no visible seams on it anywhere. She's got a black backpack over her shoulders, but there are no visible signs of webshooters. "Any body dysmorphia?" she asks, while circling the woman. "I still have regular periods, unfortunately, but I don't lay eggs, thank God. Sometimes I do get the urge to bite the heads off my men, but, that's easy enough to fight off, unless they deserve it."
By this time, she's facing Gwen, and her face is written with visible sarcasm. She's clearly joking about that last part; let's hope Gwen isn't aloof.
Spider-Man ahemmed audibly. "You've probably also noticed how much faster your body heals itself. Let's hope we are not going to have to test that today, because now you are going to learn one of the better parts of this whole Spider-Person thing. I am going to teach you the fine art of Webslinging. AKA How Do I Get Around the City So Well and Have Fun Doing It?"
Gwen spffts inside her mask, "Well, it's only been a week so I can't comment on periods or laying eggs or anything yet." She scratches the back of her head, "I… I certainly hope I don't wake up one morning and find there's a million eggs all over the place. I'd *never* be able to explain that." Well, that's a concern for later.
"The bag is awewsome," she adds, as she goes to transfer stuff from her old bag to the new one. "And seems like a good idea, so that nobody goes recognizing me from Gwen's backpack. Just one thing needed." She takes the rainbow pin off her old bag — Gwen isn't LGBT so far as anyone's aware, but has always been a supporter — and sticks it on the back of the new one.
Standing up, and moves to stand next to Spider-Girl. "I'm pretty sure the urge to bite heads off of men is a pretty regular woman-thing, don't need spider powers for that," she muses, as an aside. "Alright, so let's go web-slinging, then! Hopefully with no grievous injuries."
"Odds are against any of that changing, is what I mean," Anya tells Gwen encouragingly. This was cause for countless sleepless nights on Anya's part! Better to be exposed to the idea and have it debunked by another spiderfemme, as opposed to waking up at 3am one night freaking out about it.
The addition of a rainbow pin has Anya positively beaming. One less thing to worry about, check! She looks toward Spider-Man and reaches up, yanking the mask back over her face. It's unnervingly stretchy, but it doesn't show any signs of wear or bagging, as one might expect with, say, dancer's spandex. So… what is it, exactly? A mystery!
"This is my favorite part," she nearly purrs, and can already feel the adrenaline mounting in her frame. A protein bar is whisked out of her own backpack, and she goes through half of it with one voracious bite.
Spider-Man chuckles. "She uses up proteins for her webs." He reaches into his backpack and takes out a Ziploc bag with a pound of homemade beef jerky. "Bought this off an online friend in Arizona." He tosses the bag to Anya.
"Okay…" Spider-Man points up to the warehouse next to them, and then fires a webline. "Yours should be elastic enough to do this."
He pulls hard, then releases his grip on the ground and, just like that, he slingshots himslf up to the roof.
The last thing(s) Spider-Woman transfers into the new reversible bag is a bagged up turkey sandwich, a bottle of coke, a bottle of water, and a couple of bananas. She zips it up and slings it over her shoulders, standing straight and ready to go. "Alright, things to not worry about, check. I can cross those off the list. …Which is good, because I hadn't worried *yet* but it was coming." She's about to say something else, before she puts two and two together, between Anya eating the protein bar, and Spidey's comment. "Wait, you don't need webshooters?" She looks Spider-Girl up and down with new respect — not that it was lacking before — and hunhs. "Cool."
And then Spidey is off; she watches what he does, and uhms softly. "Alright. I mean I *knew* that's what happens. Okay, Gweee-aaaah- Spider-Woman. You got this. Nooooo problem."
The white and black-clad Spider-Woman lifts one wrist and fires a webline, then pulls back and slingshots herself, mimicing Spidey's demonstration. Well, almost; she doesn't quite make hte roof, but ends up clinging to the side after a bit of a rough landing.
"Success!! …Mostly."
Spider-Girl snatches the baggie out of the air without even looking. "Still burns fuel," she tells Gwen, smirkingly. "And I run out." One of those jerky slices is shoved into her mouth along with the rest of the protein bar, before she shifts the baggie and shoves it into her backpack, with a thumbs up to Spider-Man.
Crouching, she fires a webline in similar fashion, going with the traditional white webbing to avoid any entanglements. A hard yank, while some of the webbing gets sucked right back into her wrist, and she waits there until Gwen goes before launching herself.
Her body is upside down when she skirts the rooftop. One hand plants on the cement barrier, while the other zips a webline down that splits and attaches to Gwen's shoulders. "Up!" she says, while perched there, upside down on one arm. Her legs bend backward, catch the inside of the barrier, and she hauls Gwen up and over with one hand.
"Tricky, isn't it?" she asks, and grabs another jerky slice out of her backpack while they regroup.
Spider-Man is waiting at the ledge on the far side. "Okay, Spider-Woman, I'm activating the Spider-Comm system connected to your suit."
A blip, and then a HUD display appears over the right eye. SPIDER-COMM CONFIGURATION.
Then it goes away, and Gwen can see an overlay against the skyline around her.
"The system is connected to the V.I. in my suit, so I can set waypoints." He points, and a red pointer appears over the structure of the Brooklyn Bridge. "We'll go there, first. We can also reach out to others using the system."
He touches a virtual panel, and begins sub-vocalizing a message. Then a new pointer pops up as another person marked ANGEL appears.
On Thea's phone, a message pops up. <Showing new Spider-Woman the ropes. Heading towards the Brooklyn Bridge. Want to meet there?>
Spider-Man then turns to Spider-Woman, looking into the lenses of her eyes under the hood. "Okay…now, I'm going to swing along the buildings along this street. I want you to follow me. As you move from point to point, visualize getting between each point. Stand on this ledge, close your eyes, then open them again to visualize your path."
Her phone goes off, and Thea will put down the shoes she is looking at, trying to finally replace the pair ruined by being teleported to a cornfield. Phone glanced at, before she smiles, turning to breeze out of the designer store. «Sure. Should I bring anything?»
She hails a cab, settling in the back after telling the cabbie to take her to the Bridge. Fingers toy with her hair, that chocolatey brown now touched with red highlights. She's not dressed like she usually would for adventuring, the black cashmere sweater and fine houndstooth pattered slacks paired with a pair of stiletto heeled booties, but if she has to, she'll make it work.
Gwen WhoooOoops as she's yanked up onto the rough, and phews, dusting her shoulders off. "Yeah, it is trucky," she replies to Anya. "Still, I think I'm doing better than my first day." She nods towards Peter, "He found my hanging off the wall outside my appartment, by my fingertips, shrieking in general terror. After ripping the faucet off my sink, flipping a table, and totally annihilating a perfectly innocent pillow." She holds her hands up and shrugs, "We live, we learn."
She listens carefully to Spidey's instructions, about how to get from point to point. "Alright," she replies. "And try not to plant myself face-first into a wall, yes? Got it."
The ledge is occupied, and she closes her eyes for a moment. She draws a deep breath, and lets it out again. "Okay," She murmurs. "I think I'm ready. Let's do this."
"My Abuela thought I got on drugs," Anya admits. "Y'know, staying out all night, coming home shredded, hair all messed up, and nothing but excuses…" She shrugs. "It's a weird life."
Once again, she'll take up the rear, just in case Gwen needs an assist.
Half an hour ago Chava had went down to NYC to shop some stuff, and after packing it to send it home by courier, she was walking down the street to try to grab a snack on the way. Just, this was New York. And it was known for its oddly rampant crime rate despite the ammount of heroes around. Sure, Chava wasn't really a hero. Well, not yet. So she just strolled into the shortcut between two buildings in the worst moment and got hit by a rag of choloform or something and then being dragged off, into a van where some 3 others already have been tied up.
Now. The black van stopped right in the middle of the typical traffic jam of the Brooklyn bridge, car doors flew open and a couple black dressed goons jumped out. A moment later they fired military harpoon guns at the support towers and a couple moments later four of them started to use some kind of crawler to pull themselves up along those lines, a human bundle in tow. It only took them a minute to make the last meters onto the pillars and hold their hostages there while the rest cut the strings and proceeded to unpack their arsenal. One of them yelled into a megaphone. "Ey yo heroes! Keep 'way from the dang bridge or we toss those innocents off it!"
Spider-man nods, then fires a webline and heads off towards the bridge. He doesn't go quick, but he doesn't take too much time either. Gwen'sgoing to have to start slow, but she should be able to pick up the pace.
Then the alert comes over the Comm, broadcast to everyone attached to it, Thea included.
"I think you're going to have to learn quick, Spider-Woman! We got hostages at the bridge!"
The alert makes sense as to why traffic has stopped further away from the Bridge than usual. She tosses fare and tip over the seat to the cabbie before she's getting out. She doesn't look much like a hero, in her somewhat upscale clothing - but running in stiletto boots? That's got to be a hero thing.
She doesn't have her usual bag of things to help out, either. Just her and her powers. Still, she's already lifting her eyes, and lets her powers take the lead as she looks for the guys holding hostages in the air.
"So I just—" Gwen cuts off, listening to the alert coming through into her ears, too. Well, that was quick. "Alright, learning fast on the job is a go!" She stands at the edge of the ledge, looking out at a really… really long drop.
"Alright, Stacy," she mutters, just to herself and not into the comms. "Time to step up. You've had a week to get used to all this, now there's hostages, and YOU have to go save them. Don't rely on Spider-Man or anyone else to do it for you."
Self-administered pep-talk complete, she takes a few steps back, then runs and launches herself into the air. Afterwards, a few things happen; her brain goes GWEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING. Her internal organs all suck themselves inwards around her spine, like maybe safety in numbers or something. Her eyes peel wide, and she sucks in a deep breath (which is effort — make room, heart, spleen, all you lot, lungs need room).
Fortunately, she doesn't forget about the webshooters; her wrist comes up and she fires, sticking a webstrand to the side of a building; her downward plummet becomes an arc, and she tucks her legs up just in time to avoid bailing into a parked van; on the upward arc, she lets go, and fires off again. "SPIDER-MAN!" she shouts, "I'm doing it!! Right behind you! Don't wait for me, just go!"
As soon as Spider-Man's alert comes over the Spider-Comm, Anya curses quietly in Spanish. She yanks herself short, essentially braking for a moment, then fires a long webline and goes for a long arc, coming up alongside of Gwen. Of course, she's now in free flight, no weblines in sight, and her body is twisting around in the air so that she can reach her backpack and pull something out of it. A sleek, black spider-drone.
"Arana, vigilancia!"
At the word command, the drone, Arana, switches on, rotors powering up while a soft LED Spider-Girl emblem comes to life on her dorsal chassis. The drone takes flight, even as Anya fires a webline to keep herself from entering freefall. The drone speeds ahead, heading for the bridge while activating its visual, IR and EM sensors.
What the heroes don't yet know is that the hostage takers aren't working alone. Down in the water, by each of the bridge's massive support structures, are men in Scuba suits, armed to the teeth with military grade weaponry and bags filled with plastic explosives. They're already halfway through wiring up the supports to blow, which means that they've been at this already. The hostages are a distraction… keeping eyes aimed up, not down.
"You're doing great, Spider-Woman," she says over the Comm, hoping to ease Gwen's nerves.
The guys in black clothes with likewise black blanchavas on the towers each wield an eastern block machine pistol, the other holding their respective hostage. Their accompanies have blown out AK-74s. They wear some tactical vest, and something about their suits is a little off. Not a ballistic vest, but those are wingsuits. Slowly the hostages start to wake again, shuddering in the cold fall night and wind from the ocean.
The guy on the car yells something in russian through the megaphone, then repeats his threat that the moment they see any hero, they'd throw hostages into the river. Meanwhile, his compannions car - their assault rifles on the back - start to send more dufflebags down along the ropes to the lower crew. Bags full of 'bricks' packed in brown paper.
As chava stirrs, she blinks a couple moments, grasping for air as she sees the deepness just before her. "What the…." Then she feels the pistol pushed into her side. "SILENCA" the guy demands and at gunpoint, Chava does comply.
Spider-Man swung lower along the buildings, speeding up at Gwen's insistence. He had to trust her judgment…as he always had.
He saw the pointer for Thea's location. If they were seen, people were going to die.
If they were seen…
<Angel, God made blind men see. I need you to do the opposite. Don't blind them completely…but can you obscure their vision somehow, so they won't see us coming? Fool them somehow?>
Thea is inching her way through the crowd. She need to get up in front so the bad guys are clear for targeting. Her head turns just slightly to the left at the communication, a sigh. « I'm not an illusionist, honey. I can make them not be able to focus their eyes. I can make them feel light-headed and and make them think they can't see because.. I don't know, too much exhaust from being on the bridge. I can even make them see colored splotches like they'd been looking into a flash. But I can't make them see something else. »
Spider-Man blinks. <YES. Unfocus their eyes! We just need to get close!>
For the most part, Gwen is just focusing on swinging, and landing one web-strand after another on the side of a building, a post, whatever; just as long as it keeps her going and she doesn't fall too far behind Spider-Man. Anya's presence is very welcome, even if she doesn't really have time to express it at the moment. After the first few swings, it gets easier; or at least, less hair-raising.
"What do we do when we get there?" she asks over the comms. "Don't want them to see us, right? So we go low, under the bridge, until we're ready?"
Gwen has no idea that there are bad dudes with explosives under the bridge of course, so it might be a horrible, horrible idea. But hey, she's just working with what she knows about. "I'm sure the police would be setting up snipers by now," she adds, speaking at the next high-point in her swinging. And maybe they are, but they won't be there for quite a while. Maybe too late.
Time is drawing thin, of course; this is a fr quicker way to get around than Gwen had ever considered. They must be almost there.
As Arana speeds ahead, her sensors begin mapping human bodies as IR and EM signatures upon Spider-Girl's mask HUD. She moves the fingers of her left hand around, batting in commands while swinging one handed. "Arana, fitrar." The bodies filling cars and the central pedestrian walkway are filtered out, leaving only the hostages and the bad guys.
One would immediately assume the hostages on top of the bridge supports are the problem. But Arana has spotted the twelve swimming in the water, six of them around each support. "Mierda," she curses, and with a swiping motion, she feeds the interlay to Spider-Man, but not Gwen. It'll be his choice to overwhelm her with data.
At the edge of the water, Spider-Girl stops on a rooftop. Not a heroic move, in the slightest, but she needs a free hand and a brain to focus on something. While her left hand dashes about in the air, commands are keyed into the HUD and to Arana alike; the drone zooms in on one of the supports at waterline, then upon the explosives being placed. Another window pops up, and Arana's AI is scouring the web to match the image.
"We got dudes on the water, at the supports," she reports over the Spider-Comm, anxiety in her voice. "It's C-4! They're gonna blow the bridge!"
Chava on the pillar tries to stand still while the gun pressed into her back painfully. Her guardian grunts, holding her by the tied up arms in the back. Tied with rope. Nylon rope. The type that burns skin if your rub it.
The guy on the bridge yells his threat again, then talks into a walkey talkey to get an info to his compannions. They send another pair of duffles to the water team, then cut the ropes, pulling out a box of rocket launchers, shouldering them in a silent threat.
Spider-Man looked at the situation and grimaced. Too many to take head-on. They had to use the element of surprise.
<Okay, ladies, round-up time. Angel, keep screwing with their senses. Spider-Girl, take the ones at the tops, try to neutralize them. Spider-Woman, follow me low. Web up the guards and any of the techs. If you can, web-grab the explosives and throw them into the water away from the bridge. I'll to the same. If you get the chance, use the two-click setting and spread nets under to bridge to catch any falling people!>
He takes a deep breath, then goes in low, heading for the underside of the bridge.
Thea tucks her head down just a bit, letting her hair obscure her features just a bit. Her actual vision takes a back seat to the way her powers view things. She has to be careful, so she can work on the bad guys and not the hostages.
It's not slow, it's just a gradual, slow, blurring that gets worse, the more they try to blink it away. It stings, like they got grit or something in their eyes. Down below - they too, will suffer blurred vision, and dizziness. Maybe it's something in the water.
"Got it!" Gwen replies into her comms. She's got it! She sure sounds like she's got it.
She hopes she's got it.
If you want to work up a sweat, says this little voice at the back of Gwen's brain, try being a super-hero. This isn't like taking a test or trying to justify what you did to your Dad. The consequences for screwing up, here, have just set into Gwen's mind and taken roost like a dragon on a pile of treasure.
So with that in mind, she follows Spider-Man, and as she approaches the bridge she sends one web-strand up high, getting a nice arc that will carry her over the edge of the bridgge; and then the next one on the side, looping herself around and changing direction to go under.
"Surprise!" she declares to nobody in particular. She releases her strand at a high point, letting her momentum carry her; hopefully it's a good idea. She twists in mid-air to sail upside down, flinging out one web-strand to pull a gun out of someone's hand and chuck it in the water. Another gets fired at a guy's face to cover his eyes, the next just misses. Then she goes for one of hte C4 bricks; she pulls it off the wall, and… straight up into her hands.
"WRONG! BAD IDEA! HOT POTATOE!" And this is the moment her hands choose to NOT un-stick. She has a moment of flailing panic, before remembering what Peter told her. Relax. Even when you're holding enough plastic explosives to turn you into a fine red mist.
So she does, and the C4 goes sailing off into the water. Gwen, meanwhile, webstrands the other side of the bridge and sails up to land on it, hopefully out of sight, where she can catch her breath.
"C-4 is not explosive until an electrical charge is added," Spider-Girl says quickly but clearly. "Arana's reading no cables. It's a remote detonator." She could pull up the specs on the bridge, measure the charges, do some quick math and determine how much more is needed to actually blow the supports, but there's no time.
"Stay on him, Spider-Woman," Anya encourages. It sucks for her to be thrown into something so heavy on day one.
There's a lot of distance between her perch and the bridge, so Spider-Girl turns around and crouches, firing two weblines at the tallest building in range. One hits the center of the building, the other hits the far right edge. She pulls and pulls and pulls, until her muscles are bulging against the costume that clings to her body, the tension enough to snap a normal person in half. Her toes are digging into the rooftop, holding her still, and she grunts into the comm system…
"Arana… pendulo!"
Relaxing her toes, Spider-Girl is yanked at breakneck speed into the air. Weblines are fires as she circles the building, gaining more momentum and more height, until she slingshots through the air, headed for the Manhattan-facing support tower.
Meanwhile, her drone has flown up to the halfway mark, high in the air.
It would appear that Spider-Girl isn't going to make it, but she fires a webline at the drone, using it for that extra push. Arana goes plummeting down at the force of contact, but it's enough to give Spider-Girl the upswing to make for the tower where Chava is held hostage.
The one not holding a gun to Chava finds a pair of sturdy feet landing in his chest, and is thrown right off the building. His gun falls, his hands flail about as he lets out a cry of terror, but before he meets his doom, a webline finds his chest and sends him dangling beneath the bridge.
Meanwhile, at the waterline, three of the men not setting explosives ready their machine guns and start firing at Spider-Man and Spider-Woman. Make that two, thanks to the newest member of the spider family.
Those on the Brooklyn side also open fire, which immediately makes the situation more dangerous; not only for the lower spiders, but for those on the bridge above, because their vision is steadily becoming more and more impaired.
Even with obscurred vision, the message of gunfire is clear. Time to drop a hostage or two. The guys on the brooklyn side start to push their victims, first a little, then more, until they loose the footing, starting to tumble down. They are on the worse side. There's solid ground under the brooklyn side, but at least for them, one of the spiders already is on the way. Their former guarians however take a step back, blindly searching for their rebreather masks. Full facial covering masks with a filter.
The bridge crew starts to retreat to the side of the bridge, swapping the skimasks with rebreathers and then throwing themselves over the edge, stretching out the arms… and glide. Black shadows aiming for the black water.
The Manhatten side guys react slower. They take some time it seems. Just enough that someone might reach them. And then one of them tosses the young guy down first. Chava follows a couple moments later, her guardian even sending a couple blind shots down after her. Aimed too high. But the gesture counts, right? They scream. Frighened, wind blowing through their hair…
Spider-Man is as busy as a one-armed paperhanger, and about as ungainly. The Spider-Sense is dovetailing with the alerts, pointing out the ones still active.
Get rid of the explosives first.
Spider-Man jumps from the underside of the bridge down towards the grouping of men setting explosives and the ones guarding them. He had to hit them hard, blitz them, really.
<Web-Grenade>
Two balls of webbing around a concussive core hit the area under the arch, and then all is chaos. Gunmen and techs are knocked sprawling, webbing to the concrete or the metal supports themselves. One had cover, but then the form of Spider-Man and his Spider-Fist come down…
and then there is nothin' but nothin'.
Spider-Man landed, looking around, sending a SitRep request to the whole network.
As people go over the side, Thea bursts forward in a run onto the bridge. She will move to the edge, though she has no intention of jumping in. There's a deep breath, before her hands clench and release. She completely shuts down blood flow to their eyes, rendering them all blind, before she's grabbing their bloodflow and forcing it to their extremities, rendering hands and feet throbbing with blood and other muscles starving and being nigh impossible to move.
Bullets ping off the bridge to either side of Spider-Woman just before she lands, up and out of the line of fire. She takes a moment to breath; this is, afterall, the first time she's ever been shot at. She's about to ask if it was like this for the others, but now isn't the time. And the gunfire is still going on, which means that people, both her best friend and people she's just met, are still in the line of fire.
Take a deep breath, Gwen.
"Face it, Tiger." Gwen jumps off the bridge, doing a backflip in mid-air (never could do that before) and sebbing the underside of the bridge, to carry herself back into the fray. That little feeling at the back of her mind buzzes, practically vibrating; no time for it now. She sets to yanking blocks of C4 off the bridge supports and flinging them away into the water.
One bullet passes so close by her head that she can feel it. "GEEZE!" she shouts, and fires a glob of webbing at the guy who's shooting at her; she misses, but it doesn't matter, because it forces him to at least duck for a moment.
And then there's hostages who are falling. Gwen's on her way back to the side of the bridge, so she throws out a new to catch them.
Well… at least one of them, anyway.
A bright red flash on Spider-Girl's HUD has her swinging around, but she catches the web net that's been formed for the falling Chava, and decidedly carries her swing around to begin making for the Brooklyn side. Let's hope Chava doesn't have a heart attack before hitting the web net!
Its a long way across that bridge.
Spider-Girl is pushing, hand over hand, firing lines at the suspension beams and tugging each one, trying to gain as much speed as possible. She ignores the bullet that strikes her leg, embedding itself into the bullet-proof costume and sending a pang of agony up into her lower spine.
"No!" she screams, and fires a webline as far as she can as the two hostages fall. Her webline drops, catches one of them, and sends him swinging out over the water, away from the land below with inches to spare.
Gasping for air, she shoves the webline onto the suspension beam, then swings through the rails, aimed for the other woman who falls toward land. Thanks to Gwen's intervention, they were able to save three of the four hostages. As for the fourth…
Spider-Girl comes swinging around, with eyes on the falling woman. She fires a line up, hooking it to the bridge, then fires one in a desperate attempt to catch the falling woman before she strikes the rooftop below.
Her web soars toward sprawling fingers… and goes past.
She fires again, this one aimed better. The webline catches the falling woman, and Spider-Girl tugs hard, but… she's too late. The webline goes slack when the woman's body strikes the rooftop, crushing her bones and ending her life swiftly.
"GRRAAAAHHHHH!" comes the infuriated scream, followed by an angry voice. "One hostage down."
Suddenly, on the Manhattan side of the bridge, there comes an arc of purple energy. A figure dressed in gunmetal gray appears, for just an instant, and grabs two of the webbed up villains. Then, in the blink of an eye, the teleporter and the villains are gone, leaving behind arcs of purple energy.
The guys on the pillars are rather indisposed for the moment while the bridge crew was already on their way to escape. Out while those at the pillars were pretty much out too. No, they had done their job.
Chava was falling. Not caught like the one on the other side. Then a web appears below her. REALLY, a WEB? Streads of maybe a finger thickness?! Those would cut her into pieces! Nice chunks of fingerfood!
Panicking, she reaches for her reserves, then for her own clothes. Not with fists or hands but her mind. Lift… lift! LIFT! She could pull herself up in sports class, she could carry her own weight in cloth, why not make herself float?! fly?! She couldn't end like that!
The fall slows, then she starts to rise again… slowly back upon the level of the bridge, the wind rufflign through the hair. Yep, flying… well… floating in spot. for the moment… it is hard though, sweat froming on her forehead as she pulls towards the bridge itself.
ONE HOSTAGE DOWN.
The three words seems to coat Peter's heart with ice. He…
He has to keep working. Some of them are gone, and he is already asking ALICE to try and determine what form of energy that purple stuff was, but he ALSO has to clear his side of the bridge. ALICE is telling him there are three detonators still active. He rushes over to them. then pulls them out of the C-4 blocks, blasting cap and all. The fact that his Spider-Sense did not react when he moved to pull them bolsters his confidence.
One…two…three, and then he flings them far out into the water. He gasps, then checks again. All clear on his end.
<Manhattan-side charges are neutralized. Are the ones near Brooklyn disabled.>
Then he spotted the…floating person. Okay…that's happening.
<Uhm…can someone verify the floating person I have pinned? I'm getting an odd feeling she might still need help…>
"That son of a bitch!" Thea gasps out, seeing that flash of purple, people vanishing. "That jerk owes me a pair of heels! We need to try and catch him mid teleport." She's furious, and it can be heard on the comms.
At Peter's query, her head turns. « Verified. Don't ask me, I can't reach her.» She's still working on immobilizing the bad guys left.
"Wait, what? Teleporter?" Gwen yanks a couple more bricks of C4 off the bridge supports and chucks them into the water. "All explosives on this side are in the water," she confirms. "Just one guy with a gone left." Sheswings around again after making her net, and then she's back under the bridge. She fires a webstrand once to pull the gun out of the bad guy's hands, then a second time to yank the man up to the underside of the bridge. She webs him liberally to keep him there, before jabbing a single finger at the middle of his forehead.
"You need to have a time-out and think about what you did."
Gwen leaves the man right there, as she swings around to the top-side of the bridge. "So, what else do we have to deal with?" she asks over the comms. …And then, it hits here.
"Wait, wait. One hostage down? What does that mean?" She knows full damn well what it means, she just wants somoene to tell her it means something else.
Anya's heart has run cold. The sight of broken body burned into her mind, she carries her swing down toward the Brooklyn side of the bridge support, fire in her eyes.
The men are running away.
<We need to try and catch him mid teleport.>
Another flash of purple appears before her, as her eyes are locked upon the two men who remain there. She watches as the teleporter (from this angle, clearly female) appears and grabs the men.
A webline is fired, because she's not going to get there in time.
The webline passes into a cloud of sparking purple energy, just missing.
And so, Spider-Girl lands on the Brooklyn support and starts yanking plastics out of the support, throwing them as far as she can toward the water. She isn't saying a word.
—
In a bunker elsewhere, at an undisclosed location…
An aging man wearing an old USSR-era military uniform with General's insignia watches as two men sit at sophisticated computers, wearing headsets. He looks to the left as a woman wearing a skinsuit of gunmetal gray appears in a flash of purple light, with two of the men in scuba suits at her side.
"«That's enough»," he says in Russian. "«Blow the bridge»."
"«But General, there's been interference. It's not enough to bring down the-»"
"«BLOW THE DAMN CHARGES!»"
—
A single C-4 charge remains, and when it blows, it sends Spider-Girl flying. All across the river, tufts of water are sent flying into the air when the charges that weren't fully disarmed blow under the water, with those on the Brooklyn side being in shallow enough water for their explosions to be seen.
Anya is thrown toward the Manhattan side, her arms and legs flailing around in the air for a few hair raising moments, before she brings her hands together and fires a webline at the bridge, bringing her soaring toward the others.
Chava tries to reach the edge of the bridge, struggling, hands still tied, just like the legs, hanging from her clothes. That wasn't entirely comfy, the clothes digging into her flesh… and just meters before the edge, she started to fail, sagging down, then starting to fall again, eyes closing.
Spidey looks at the charges on the wall, but the detonators are so much dust in the river now, He winces at the sound of the explosion, looking over to the other support. He fires a webline, making his way back towards the one floating in the air, trying not to think about the growing buzz of his Spider-Sense. "ALICE, call the police, EMTs, fire department…and SHIELD. They handle acts of terrorism."
The virtual assistant of his suit replies, "Notifying all of them, Spider-Man."
He nodded, then sent through the Comm, <One fatality. The authorities have been called. Damage Control will probably work through lunch to get this fixed. How is everyone else oh crap in a hat!>
That last part came out. <Spider-Woman! Live one to your 9 PM, heading for the drink!>
Thea's still doing her thing to try and immobilize the guys still around, but her eyes are looking out sharp for that teleporter.
They lost a hostage. Nobody found the time to tell Gwen what 'one hostage down' means, but she knows what it means, and that sucks. Standing on the edge of the bridge, even the explosion doesn't really penetrate Gwen's thoughts; she's too busy replaying in her mind the events since arriving at the bridge, looking for the error, HER error, that means she wasn't in the right place at the right moment to save someone.
What does get her back on task, is Spider-Man telling her there's someone who needs her help. Someone heading for the water is bad; nevermind that it's September and the water will be really damn cold, just hitting the water after picking up speed would be pretty much lethal. "Got it!" she shouts.
Gwen leaps down off the side of the bridge, tumbling through the air towards the falling person. She points her hands in opposite directions, firing two web-strands; one back up at the bridge, and one down to the falling person. When both connect, her arms get wrenched in both directions; but it turns out that's just fine. Afterall, she got bit by a radioactive, genetically engineered spider recently, and she's gotten a lot toughter.
"Gotcha," she breathes, as much to reassure herself as anything else, before she starts climbing her way back up, pulling Chava along behind her.
As for Anya, she's never lost someone. Oh, she's gone over the idea over and over again, but you can never quite be ready for it when it happens.
There's a ringing in her ears and the shock of an explosive impact at point blank range that courses over her body, but she's got that enhanced toughness as well, and a costume woven of bulletproof spider-silk; she hurts, bad, but nothing is broken.
Still, she swings aimlessly back and forth for a moment, before lifting an arm and firing a webline upward. She comes swinging high, and lands less than gracefully on the bridge near Spider-Man.
Chava had pretty much fallen KO, hanging from the webbing… and then getting pulled up.
Spider-Man is still webbing up any of the stray bad guys, but finishes the last one before Spider-Girl arrives. He looks to her, crestfallen, then says, <Okay, Angel…we got 'em all. We're up on the bridge near the Brooklyn side. (pause) Is everyone okay?>
Thea will let go once the baddies are webbed up, making them all go limp like oversized rag dolls. « I think so. I was a little hyper focused.» The bio-kinetic blinks several times in a row, shaking her head as if to clear it, feeling light headed. « Everyone going to get away clean?»
Spider-Woman pulls first herself back up onto the bridge, and then Chava, who she sets down carefully on the footpath where she won't get hurt. "I'm good," she replies, into the comms. "Well… I guess. I mean… We…" she trails off, and looks around herself, left and right. There was an explosion, but the bridge is still here. There was gunfire, but people are still here — well, almost everyone. Someone died.
"I left one of the terrorists webbed to the bottom of the bridge," she adds. "And yeah, I'll make it out of here just fine, I'm sure."
"We lost one." Spider-Girl is acknowledging what they all know. She draws another breath, and the anger becomes real. "We lost one!"
Without missing a beat, she throws an arm out and gestures down the length of the bridge; the anger in her voice becomes mixed with conviction, with passion. "But we saved all these people." Her hand drops. "Those assholes would'a blown this whole thing if we weren't here." She points to the structure beneath their feet three times, accenting those three words with the same anger and compassion.
Her tone finally softens. "We can't blame ourselves for that. We can go to bed knowing what we did do."
Turning, she lowers her head a bit and says softly, but still loud enough for the others to hear, "Arana, ubicar el White Castle mas cercano."
She'll lead the way, for anyone who wants to go.
Spider-Man nods to Spider-Girl. <Angel, we're heading to White Castle in Brooklyn. I'll come pick you up.>
He looked to Spider-Woman with a sad look on his face. "You were a real hero out there, Spider-Woman. I'm…I'm just sorry this happened on your first day."
« You've got the harness? » Thea sounds surprised. « White Castle? I uh… I've never had it. Is it good? » She will wait on the edge of the bridge for her ride.
"Yeah." Gwen scratches the back of her head; Peter would certainly hear the hurt in her voice. It's subtle, but he knows her well enough to know when she's hiding a hurt. "Dad always said the hardest part of his job is that he can't always save everyone. I thought I knew what he meant. Now I *know* I know."
She looks up at Anya, and takes in what she's saying about saving everyone else, and that rings true. She pulls her costume's hood up over her head once more, and tugs on her backpack. "if being a superhero was easy, you wouldn't need super powers for it. …Let's get outta here." She makes good, throwing a webstrand up into the air and sling-shotting herself, just like Spidey showed her.