Summary:Anya and Gwen stop some bad guys, and dig up a fresh lead on an old case. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
Related LogsTheme SongNone |
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Superheroing. University. Young adult life. Work. Some things mix, others have a hard time… like, really, superheroing and just about everything else.
"Did you know how reactive Oxygen atoms are?" Gwen hangs upside-down from a webtsrand, dangling from the roof of a building, about twenty stories up. "It's really fascinating," she continues, flipping the page in a textbook. "I mean, it's pretty basic stuff, but I imagine talking about Oxygen is something you might be able to manage. It's really wild that we need the stuff to live, you know? You should look up Oxygen free radicals sometime, they're really gnarly."
"Let me down!" wails the man beside her; judging by the van on its side in the streets below with a number of webbed up automatic weapons scattered around, along with a couple other dudes similarly restrained to the roof of the van, looks like a bank robbery interupted, maybe?
"Time out isn't over until you tell me who sent you," Gwen sing-songs back, as she flips another page. "Now, unless you're going to tell me soemthing useful, please hush up so I can study, I have an exam tomorrow."
"Men are so whiny." Anya is stretched out upon a web hammock of purple, pink and black, a cell phone in her hand. Its running a hack, streaming Planet Zoo from her laptop at home onto her mask's HUD, her fingers lazily adding decorations to a Chief Beef building.
"Oxygen is way rad," she says to Gwen, grinning. "Never got too much into chemistry, but, ya know. It's all interesting stuff."
Anya reaches out and lazily flicks one of Gwen's web strands, causing one of those bad guys to yelp as he goes swinging from side to side. "How many times, ya think, til he barfs?"
"Six," Gwen replies. "Maybe seven." She turns another page in her textbook, and looks sideways at the man beside her. "Come on, dude. All you gotta do is tell us who sent you. And don't play dumb, we know someone sent you, 'cause when we showed up you yelled at us 'Our employer is going to make you sorry.' Do you remember that?"
She shuts her text book, and stuffs it into the backpack on her back — a really neat trick when you're upside-down — and folds her arms, looking back up at Anya.
"You remember when he said that? That was kinda funny, wasn't it? It was all he could do not to squeak like he was still trying to grow his first beard." She snorts audibly. "You'll be sorry," she croaks, doing her best immitation of a high-pitched man's voice. (Don't quit your day job, Gwen.) "You'll be sorry," she repeats.
Gwen pulls herself up her webstrand, until she's up almost level with Anya's hammock. "We need a faster interogation method. Whaddaya think? Pliers on fingernails, like in that movie… uhm… what was it called, the one with Clooney in it?"
"Oh yeah," Anya quips. "I remember." She rolls over on her hammock, stuffing the cell phone into what seemed to he an invisible pouch on her hip. "These thugs are all the same, y'know? All bark, no bite."
Planet Zoo is paused and minimized. Her head lolls over toward Gwen; she's got a subroutine running, scrambling 9-1-1 calls based on a voice recognition subroutine that allows calls unrelated to this incident to go through, while also re-routing police to keep away from the area.
"Want me to ring up Batman?" she asks. "Nah, he's got his hands full down in Staten. You really wanna go all Jack Bauer on these ass hats?"
Anya suddenly flips off her hammock, sliding down upon a webline until she's face to face with the one they're pressuring. She grins at him, baring her teeth. "You know, these webs? They're organic. I got little spinnerets on my hands. You know what else I got?" Her grin fades. "Venom sacs."
Gwen flips upwards, landing gracefully in the middle of Anya's hammock, where she sits with her legs dangling over the edge. She pulls out her cellphone, and starts running a google search, and generally doing nothing anywhere near as sophisticated as what Anya's up to. "Hum de dum," she murmurs, "Oh! Syriana, that's the one. I mean, geeze, dude got all his fingernails ripped out, and he didn't talk."
She looks down, watching Anya get close to the would-be bank robber. "Nah, he'd just make fun of us," she answers. "We got this, even if we do need to rip out fingernails. Right?" She reaches over and grabs one of the other webstrands, and starts bouncing the guy in it up and down.
He promptly passes out.
"…What a light-weight," she pronounces.
The one Anya is menacing, meanwhile, goes wide in the eyes. "You're… you're a complete freak!" he squeaks. "No no no, wait! Wait, she didn't tell us her name, just… told us where to leave her cut, since she hacked the bank security for us. That's all we know! I swear!"
Anya reaches up, fingernails pressing against the silken material that clings to her fingers. She rakes them against the man's neck, eyeballing his opposing jugular with a hungry expression as he swears by his information.
"You have… no idea," she purrs. "I would break you, paralyze you, and eat you up when I'm done with you. Unless…"
She pulls her fingers away, lifting them to lick at her index finger. "… you tell me where… and when… the drop is to take place."
"We're supposed to put everything inagarbagecan outside the back ofthePlazaHotel," the man gasps, spitting the words out as rapidly as he can. "Tommorrow morning by Nine-O'Clock ifwewant to be paid! I swear I swear!"
Gwen just rolls her eyes. "Man, wasn't that so much easier?" She hops off the hammock, and lets herself plummet the short distance before sticking the the wall beside Anya. "I mean, really, if you'd just led with that, we could've avoided the last…" she glances at her cellphone, "Twenty… three minutes."
Gwen glances sideways at Anya, then at the man. "Twenty-three minutes? We are definitely not telling anyone it took twenty-three minutes." She glances back at the man, "I'm impressed with you, you held it in for twenty-three minutes." she reaches over and flicks him on the side of the nose. "Think you can handle time-out for a little longer? I think the adults need to have a talk."
"I gotta pee," the man complains.
"Hope you wore your granny panties." Anya flings a webline at the rooftop, and drags the man howling up to the top of the building, where she webs him down in a black cocoon, leaving only his nose and mouth exposed.
Then, the young woman comes flipping over the edge of the building, landing next to Gwen upon the webwork the two have woven. "Definitely not telling anyone about that," she says, and grimaces. "He smelled. Bad. Like… like stale beef jerky, cheap dip, and Wild Irish Rose." A pause. "And halitosis. Definitely got a bad, bad case of gingivitis. Pendejo needs to learn how to floss."
She settles her face in her hands, eyes upon Gwen. "So. Whattaya think?"
Gwen shrugs her shoulders lightly. "Can't expect lowlife to maintain good personal hygene," she replies. "Or, y'know, men in general…" she pauses. "Oh, you mean about the whole drop thing, right." Smooth, Gwen.
"I dunno. I mean my exam is tomorrow afternoon, and I don't have a shift at Luke's, so really I'm good for hanging around tomorrow morning and watching to see if anyone comes to check the garbage can. Thing is, we sorta stopped these dorks before they got around to breaking into the bank, so we don't exactly have cast stacks of money to let someone pick up and then follow them."
The black and white spider shrugs her shoulders. "Whaddaya think? Could be that lady we were trying to find before, with the ninjas and all that, who's trail just went cold several months ago?"
A snort comes at Gwen's mistake. "Well, ain't worried about that. No one drops money out in the open. It'd be in a bag. Bags are easy."
She considers the whole thing, and eyeballs the fellows down below. "If these guys talk to the cops, the cops'll be there. And… yeah. If their employer finds out…" Her brain is clearly moving. She looks up to Gwen and says, "We gotta clean this up. I got a couple guys up in Spanish Harlem who can get rid of the van, and we're gonna need to hide the uglies."
"I'm pretty sure at least a third of the office spaces in this apartment are empty," Gwen replies. "So like… a bag full of… stuff that feels sorta like money, but isn't? I guess we could just fill it with packages of printer paper. That stuff's… well, paper, so in quantity it's reasonably heavy for ordinary humans."
She looks down at the van, and all the weapons laying around. "I'm not really comfortable with letting illegal firearms back on the street, so I'm gonna go wreck 'em. I'll do your friends the courtesy of putting the van back on its wheels. You okay with babysitting a few minutes longer?"
"Do your thing," Anya agrees. "I'll get Enrique and Eduardo on the phone, they'll make that candy van disappear."
As she rings up her old friends, Anya gets to work at collecting the bad guys, dragging them up on weblines to the rooftop. Maybe there's an abandoned office space in this building? They could be that lucky.
As she works, an animated conversation in Spanish takes place. When it comes to her neighborhood, she's well connected.
"Right-o," Gwen cheerfully agrees. She jumps off the building, executing a perfect swan-dive that she breaks at the last moment with a webline before landing amongst the previous scene of… not so much battle, more a series of beatings with some gunfire thrown in for variety.
"Tampering with a crime-scene," she mutters, as she grabs an AK-47 and bends it in half, after taking the clip and the round out of the spout and stuffing them in her backpack. "Taking evidence," She adds, doing the same to a second AK and an M16, "Assault and battery," she muses, casually hoisting the van up and depositing it on its wheels, gently enough to not risk damage to the suspension or drive train. "Vigilantism, cruel and unusual punishment, unlawful imprisonment… damn, nobody told me that fighting for justice was gonna mean breaking so many laws."
With all of that finished, the Spider-Woman stands amongst the crimescene, hands on hips. "Hey," she inquires over the Spider-Comms. "Any luck up there? And, did I miss anything obvious you can see?"
Anya's spider-drone floats down to hover near Gwen, performing a scan of the area. "Oh, we're doing just fine up here!" she reports over the Spider-Comms. An image is broadcast to Gwen's mask, showing that the bad guys are being webbed to the rooftop in webbing that matches the color of the rooftop; their noses are exposed, but their mouths and eyes are webbed shut. Cruel and unusual punishment, indeed, but it's the only way to keep them quiet and not attract attention from patrolling NYPD choppers.
"My hombre's are on their way. Think you can strong arm that van into the alley behind you? I mean, I know it's a quiet street and all, but, someone's gonna come along and call the fuzz and that's gonna wreck this whole very questionable thing we've got going on."
One of the dudes comes to and yelps, promoting Anya to quickly fire a glob of webbing at his face. "Hush, no one said you could squeal."
Looks like time-out is going to have to last a little longer," Gwen muses. "And… yeah, 'very questionable' just about covers it. If my Dad knew how I was spending my nights, he'd win that one, and me having spider-powers would not change a darn thing."
She wans around to the back of the van, and lifts the back wheels off the ground. "No problem," she adds, as she drags it on the front tires across the road. "Alleyway over there… that oughta do. …Hey, think we can get that other girl involved again? What's her name again? The one who was helping us out last time, in the van. She was pretty on the ball."
Gwen drops the van in the alley, and starts on her way up the walls. "We should definitely give her a call, she'd be great for stake-out duty. And I she's got as much right to see this as we do I think."
"Skye!" Anya answers. "Oh my god, yes. I'll give her full access to Arana, the multi tasking gets old." Anya is truly grateful for her hovering technological wonder, but sometimes, it can be a bit overwhelming, trying to operate the quasi-AI drone while also doing her thing.
"Okay," she says. "The boys are gonna be here in twenty. They'll get the van running and get it to a junk yard over across town. These guys are legit, but they used to run a chop shop til they did some time in County," she explains. "They help me out, cause. You know. Loyalty."
"Bye bye, van," Gwen replies, pretending to be mournful. "You had a good run. Hope you've enjoyed every oil change and new set of tires. Sounds like you're off to the great race track in the sky." She hops up onto the top of the building, standing on the edge of the roof on the opposite side of the street to Anya.
"You have the best connections," she adds. "Everyone I know who might be helpful is, well, either my Dad or one of his work colleagues, so… basically all cops. And they're good at what they do, it's just y'know, they don't do… this." she shrugs her shoulders lightly. "So… yeah! Skye! Let's ring her up. But, if we're going to be staking a place out, we should definitely go get snacks. Also, I need like three hot dogs from that stand downtown that's always open."
"I used to hate cops," Anya admits. There is a pause, as she considers whether to go on. Of course, she's already cracked open that can of worms. She'd be a real bitch if she didn't bring it to completion.
"I mean… you know, where I grew up? Cops weren't our friends. Weren't on our side." She wrings her hands a moment. "Then I met one of those PCU cops, and a couple others who like, totally played ball with my vigilantism." She turns to Gwen. "Some of them are real assholes, but, some of them realize that we're doing what they can't. And they're doing what we can't. It's kind of like, this weird symbiotic relationship." A pause. "Hydrogen and Oxygen."
Arana is put into standby mode, and she crosses the rooftop to join Gwen. "I'll leave Arana here to keep an eye on these guys until game time." Then, she grins. "Food… is a must."
Gwen gives a wry smile; which of course, Anya can't see, across the street and under her mask and all that, but it's probably audible in her voice. "Anya, you don't gotta appologize to me for that one," she points out. "Some cops ARE assholes. And some are dirty, and those are the ones my Dad really hates. They're worse than regular criminals in his eyes." She pauses. "And mine."
The Spider-Woman grins, "Yeah, some of them get it. They're the best ones. …Alright," she adds, "Operation: Empty Stomach is a go. Let's go find that hotdog stand, hopefully not completely scare the bejeezus out of the poor guy, and get some dogs, yeah?" As she speaks she's already leaping off the building, gathering some momentum before she starts swinging.
"I'm gonna have to meet him some day," Anya says, and grins. "Without this." She gestures to her masked face, before leaping along after Gwen.