Author's Note:

I write these stories more as novellas than individual chapters, although the chapters are meant to stand alone somewhat, more so in the first installment than the second. If you're new to this, Chapters 1-4 are the first book, chapters 5-9 are the second.

I hope you enjoy reading.


Lunch at Two-Oh-Eight was busy, as usual. Gwen sat at her spacious table, off to the side of the cafeteria. Her feet were kicked up on an adjacent chair, which was fine because the rest of the room was all crowded together, while there were only two at her table-for-eight. She paid her compatriots slightly more mind than the rest of the school, but most of her attention was for the ham-and-cheese she was working on.

"Too much mustard," she declared.

"What was that?" Peter said, looking up.

"The sandwich, silly."

"Oh." Peter was, as ever, distracted. "Too much mustard?"

"It was made with love, but also with too much mustard."

"Gwen," Peter pointed out, "you complain about having to make your own sandwiches everyday."

She took her feet from the chair so she could turn to face him. "Doesn't mean it wasn't made with love. A girl can love herself. I can prove it."

Peter twitched his eyes back down to his book. Gwen snatched it out of his hands, which finally got a proper reaction.

"Hey!" he said, glaring.

She looked over the page he was on. "Why are you reading up on genetic recombination?"

"The sit-down with Mr. Orborne that we won and you decided to miss out on. I'm still thinking about what I, uh, ran into there."

Gwen shrugged. "I was busy. Speaking of which..."

She half-stood, looking around the place. It didn't really require a hard look, but she gave one anyway. Either Flash would be obvious or he wouldn't be there, and Harry would be with Flash. As it turned out, he wasn't there, and then he was obviously walking in through one of the doors with a crowd of cheerleaders and meatheads.

He walked past their table and stopped. "Still hanging with The Brain, Gwen?"

"I'm sorry, were you looking for something other than, 'Obviously yes?' I'm sorry, we can't all share your interest in dimwits."

Flash glared as he always did when stymied like that, but he recovered quickly. "You know, there's more to life than just good grades, babe."

Gwen rolled her eyes, and Flash and his buddies kept going. Except for one. Harry spun a chair around and settled onto it, arms crossed on the back. "You know, some people are both intelligent and wealthy. The two aren't mutually exclusive."

Flash gave a glance back, but Harry waved him off. He may have been a part of Flash's clique, but Harry generally did as he pleased. One of the benefits of staggering wealth.

Peter closed his book and looked sick as he stood, saying he'd rather go. He hadn't even finished his meal. Gwen resisted her urge to kick Harry in the shins, being as she was working.

Once they were alone, Harry's expression tightened, his confidence sliding into worry. Gwen pulled out her notepad, down on her knee so nobody at another table would see, and got ready to write. "Well, what did you want? Some girl you want looked into?"

Harry was her best customer. He wasn't confident enough to just introduce himself to a girl if he knew nothing about her, which meant he paid well for some background, and background on people was basically the easiest bit of investigation the world offered. It was a bit stalker-y, but Gwen had decided she was fine with it. She charged an extra twenty-percent as a moral-discomfort premium.

"No, not that. I mean, yes, but not like that. So, I've been kinda getting somewhat serious with Mary-Jane."

Gwen nodded. "Yeah, I gave you a precis on her at the end of summer break. You'd best not break her heart, she's one of the good ones."

"Trust me, I know," he insisted. "Look, this isn't me going after her, I'm just worried. Mary-Jane's been acting odd. She missed a date last saturday. Not cancelled, just missed it entirely, and said she forgot, that she'd been busy. She wouldn't say why, though. That's happened a couple of times. During class, she's been falling asleep. She's never been an amazing student, but she's always been pretty good. Then, last week, I saw her up in Manhattan, looking all stressed out. She ran into the subway and I hate going down there, but when I said something later she lied and said she'd never been there."

"And you think she's stepping out."

"No. She's broke, and stressed out, and moody all the time. I'm just worried she's doing drugs or something."

"Wow. That's actually admirable."

Harry glared. "What, I'm too rich for admirable emotions?"

"Your words. And yes, I'll look into it." She tore off a piece of paper and passed it to him.

"This seems... cheaper than usual." He narrowed his eyes. "I'd best not get cut-rate service."

Gwen struggled not to laugh at him. "Wow, remind me not to do any favors. That's the admirable intentions discount."

"And my usual intentions aren't admirable?"

"No."

"I just want—"

"Don't try."

"But—"

"Seriously."

He sighed. "Whatever. Just get on this, okay?"

"I will. Now go away, before I get caught socializing with you."

"Fine."

Harry headed over to Flash and the gang, and Gwen got to planning her day. It was going to be a long day. Long night, really.


Long week, as it turned out, but a good one. Amazing, even. She hoped not to find someone hooked on drugs or something like that, and while Mary-Jane wasn't meeting the nicest of people, the truth turned out to be quite benign.

Photos of her going in looking a little nervous and coming out teary-eyed and stressed out seem bad, up until Gwen went into a couple places and realized they were talent agencies. The girl wanted to be a model, but her parents didn't approve and she was still a minor, so she was trying to get a job with a fake ID and a lot of moxie.

Gwen sent her an anonymous email offering a better fake at a reasonable price, as the one Mary-Jane was using really wasn't up to snuff. Gwen almost offered the service free of charge, but then she looked at the specs on her wish-I-had-it computer and decided to just offer the admirable-intentions discount.

That wasn't the amazing part, though. The amazing part came during the last little bit of picture-taking, as Mary-Jane left a talent agency at five in the afternoon. Gwen took a final few shots—she already knew what was going on, but preferred to have more proof rather than less—and then sat back on the bench, hoodie up so Mary-Jane wouldn't notice.

That's when a man when shooting by overhead.

Instinct brought the camera up and Gwen started snapping pictures as quick as she could. Up he went. And up, and up, and up, and gone. She kept looking, camera at the ready, but he didn't reappear. A few other people on the street were looking up, but nobody seemed to know what had happened. Gwen looked for anyone with a cell-phone out, ready to try and get another angle, but was let down. Her pictures would be all she had.

Back home, she started them developing and went to finish up the job for Harry. She did the write-up, double checked all her sources, and then went back to get the photos out. She didn't make any prints, just sent the negatives through the scanner. She wanted to check the shots of the super, but kept her focus on the job at hand. It was almost done, and then she could properly move on.

After adding a few key photos to the file, she emailed it out, along with the final bill. She never made Harry pay in advance the way she did most people. He was always good for it, and it seemed more likely to make him happy.

With that file closed out, Gwen moved on to the potential-new-superhero shots. A man with a read hoodie and ridiculously fashion-less khaki pants went leaping across the street. He landed on a wall and jumped off. He grabbed the side off a lamp-post and flipped to the bar arcing out over the street. He leapt again, high. He landed on the wall and ran. On all fours, he practically ran up the wall. And kept going. He disappeared over the edge of the roof and was gone.

A hundred pictures in those few short seconds. Gwen went through them again, clipping out headshots. She fiddled with blurring and levels, and even dug up an algorithm for enhancement of a form based on other pictures of the same object, but that was a desperate hope. The algorithm really needed a series, or at least pictures from similar angles, and she had almost nothing. In the end, she just marked out a key area and made a print—her scanner couldn't close to match the resolution of a print on a zoomed in portion—showing the line of his jaw and a bit of the profile of his nose.

Not a lot, but a huge scoop at the same time.

Gwen didn't consider herself a hero-chaser; far from it. A new hero, though? The first pictures of a villain? Whatever he turned into, those shots would be something. They could be sold. He scurried up walls and could leap great distances. He had to be new.

She went to hero-stalker forums and sank into the depths of the internet, until finally it was time for another day of school and she hadn't slept. He was new, though; she had done enough digging to be sure of that.


Gwen sat at the lunch table, lying flat, glaring at her self-made-with-love sandwich. Turkey with cheese, and not enough mustard.

"Are you alright?"

She looked up, surprised to hear concern in Peter's voice. "I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

Gwen sat up entirely. Two weeks of searching for information about this new hero, of whom she had the first-ever-photos, and she had nothing but exhaustion to show. Well, and an A- on a test, but mostly exhaustion. "You know what fine looks like?"

"You look like you've barely slept. I know what that looks like because I have mirrors in my house."

"My, how persceptive of you," Gwen snapped. He didn't look chastened. She rolled her eyes. "Alright. Fine. I've been working too much. Actually, you don't look so hot yourself."

"Like I said, I know what tired looks like. I was thinking, maybe we could just chill this weekend." He was suddenly looking down, not quite meeting her eyes. "You know, like, take a break from all the, uh, busy stuff—"

"Are you asking me on a date?" Gwen said, suddenly much more wakeful.

"No," he said immediately, his voice strained. "I'm just, you know. Not a date just, maybe a movie, or something."

"Well, if it's JUST a movie, I figure I might as well JUST do something else. Is it, JUST a movie?"

He bit at his lip. "Yeah, just a movie."

"Ugh. You're the smartest idiot around, Peter." Gwen reached out, grabbed his hands, and after an initial tug where he ignored her, she was able to move them. She set them flat on the table between them, so they were both forced to face each other, directly, sitting upright. "Now, repeat after me."

"What?"

"I said, repeat after me, Peter Parker."

"Alright."

She spoke slowly, clearly. "Would you..."

"Huh?"

"You're supposed to repeat it. Now, 'Would you...'"

"Would you..."

"Like to go..."

He paused a moment, but she just stared at him until he continued. "Like to go..."

"On a date with me..."

"On a date with—" He swallowed midword, his voice squeeking. "Gwen—"

"I'd love to, Peter!"

"Uh, you would?"

In her mind, she traced back through the week, to Flash cornering her against the locker while she was too tired to tell him to screw himself, to Tiny telling her she should go see a movie with him, a midnight showing of something violent, and finally to Peter, just worried that she looked tired, that she was overworking herself. "Of course I would."

Besides, he was literally the smartest guy at school, and he had cute eyes. Caring, cute, clever— if he was courageous and strong he'd be five-for-five.


Gwen sighed. Looking back from the mirror was a properly done-up face. Her hair was curled, nice and bouncy-blonde. Her eyes had that harsh line and a deep violet shadow, egyptian eyes as she liked to imagine them. She had matching purple lipstick, that she'd bought almost a month before but not found an occasion to wear. All of that matched the purple bag she was bringing. Admittedly, the bag was too big to be a proper date purse, but it was big enough for her camera and her notes, and she hated leaving them behind, even on a date.

Except she couldn't go. Her father was, at that moment, sitting at the dining room table feeling proud that the sanctity of curfew was inviolate.

Gwen's phone blinked at her. Running late, Peter said.

Me too, she texted back. She looked at the window, scowling, then texted a little more. I'll meet you at the theatre. Hopefully we only miss the trailers.

She pulled on her jacket—it wasn't matched to her ensemble, but she liked the vintage olive field jacket look—and walked to the window. She opened it and peered out. Ten feet over was the fire-escape, next to the dining room. She reach out, grabbed a pipe, and pulled herself onto the thin ledge of her window.

Scooting over, she got entirely onto the waterpipe and started going down. Hand over hand, feet in the cracks between bricks, slowly descending. One floor down. There was a little boy in his bed, staring at her wide-eyed. She grinned at him, then focused on descending.

She didn't exactly want to hurry, since it was still forty feet down to the pavement, but her arms were aching, and she had to keep going. Just a little further. One more floor, and the building had a ridge around it. Her toes touched that, and she sagged in relief. She still held the pipe, but it wasn't supporting her entirely. Next, to the fire-escape. Fingers in the cracks, toes on the narrow ledge, she edged across.

One step, a second. Her toe twitched, and panick shot through her. Thirty more feet of falling would kill her. Why hadn't she just tied a rope to something in her room, just in case?

Lessons for the future. No going back, that far in. Another step aside, one more. Her toe slipped free, and she was on one foot, breathing hissing in as her muscles tightened to lock her in place.

She didn't fall. She put her foot aside, got it onto the fire escape, and in a sudden rush of energy was doubled over the railing, safe. After a minute to catch her breath, she climbed properly onto the fire escape and went the rest of the way down on stairs and a ladder.

The plan had been to get down and run to the subway, but she found that running was out of the question. The short climb had totally winded her, and given her a new respect for the already-impressive parkour videos the internet offered up. If she were in better shape, it might have been easier, but Gwen had never been an athlete, and she sure didn't intend to start then. What would have been really nice was being able to run up a wall, but that wasn't likely to just be given to someone at random.

All the same, she managed to make the train, and was walking up to the theatre just about the same time Peter came jogging out of an alleyway. He was wearing a suit. Not that it looked bad on him, he just had no idea how to dress for the occasion. At least he had went without a tie.

Also, his hair was a mess. She decided to ignore that, just smiling and waving.

"Hey, Gwen." He ran up, grinning and starting to blush. "I think we might have even made it before the previews."

"One can hope." She glanced past him, at the dark alley. "You take a different route?"

"Oh, um, I was a few blocks over, so I just uh, cut across."

Peter was a terrible liar. All the same, she didn't really want to stake out her boyfriend—was he really that? It was a date; she had insisted—so she just smiled, grabbed his elbow, and gave him a push so he'd walk her inside.

As it turned out, they missed part of one trailer, and then enjoyed watching the new Iron Man/Tony Stark biopic.

"How weird is it to do a biopic about a guy that's still doing all that stuff?" she asked, as they walked out.

"A little weird," Peter agreed. "I mean, are they gonna just do a sequel in twenty years, after he saves the world a few more times?"

"Iron Man, the Second Decade? Iron Man, Over The Hill? Iron Man, Back Brace?"

Peter laughed at her jokes, which made Gwen feel all-sorts of warm inside.

Alright, she thought to herself, you like him. That's fairly well established, so why is this just a movie? "So, where are you taking me for dinner?"

"Uh, dinner? I uh—"

"Perfect." She stopped him at the corner and pointed down the way. "Pizza."

"I thought your father had a strict curfew."

"He does. In fact, it's so strict that I'm already breaking it, so I figure I may as well utterly demolish it. Now, about that pizza."

Nervous as ever, Peter let her lead him into the little corner pizza shop and bought them each a slice.

"So, Gwen," Peter said, starting to get a little twitchy, "I've been meaning to ask. What's been keeping you up all these nights? I mean, you said you've been working, and I know you never talk about it because it's private stuff, other people's problems, but it usually isn't like this. Can you talk about it?"

"I can," she replied. "Actually, I'm kinda excited to. It's not regular work, more of a one-time opportunity."

"What is it?"

"So, the other day, I managed to get a whole slew of pictures of a new superhero. Or villain. He didn't really do anything, so it's hard to say. Now, it's getting a bit too late to make much of it."

"What, selling the pictures?"

"Yeah. It's been two weeks, and now there's a picture of him in a fancy new outfit. Still, they are the first pictures, and they're way better quality than the grainy one up on the Bugle. I was trying to track him down these last two weeks, and all I caught was a little hint of a foot. Better quality than that other picture, of course, but still just a basic little thing."

"Huh. I never would have thought about selling hero pictures. You think they're worth a lot?"

"Yeah, heroes get clicks."

"That's a really good idea."

"Problem is, I haven't been able to pinpoint where he's coming and going from. It's somewhere in Queens, I'm sure of that, but that's still a couple million people."

"Queens?" Peter bit at his lip, as he always did when nervous. "Is that so?"

"I'd even wager pretty heavy on central Queens, although that's harder to say. Still, a million people to pick from. Households, say four-hundred thousand. Probably he's young, being new on the scene and wearing a tight, unremarkable outfit. Honestly, I'd call it a low-budget outfit, which fits as well. Not some old guy with savings to draw on, somebody in his twenties, maybe a bit younger or older. Still, a few hundred thousand people."

"You've, uhm, narrowed it down a lot."

Gwen grinned. "You know, when you put it that way, it doesn't sound so bad. I mean, I can facebook out a lot of those. There are lots of photo-processing algorithms, I can maybe find one to differentiate height. I'm sure I can determine his height from the photos. I mean, he's on a lamp-post, and those are completely standard, so I have great references. Male, too. Maybe just a hundred-thousand people, all in the age-range that uses social media."

"That's quite the get. Outing a hero?"

Gwen shook her head. "Nah, not outing. Firstly, that's his secret, unless he's a villain. Secondly, that's killing the golden goose. If I'm the one who gets the pictures of this wall-crawler, whatever they decide to title him, I get paychecks on the reg."

"You always had a mind for—" Peter just stopped talking, mid-sentence.

"What?" Gwen followed his gaze past her shoulder and took in the TV. Local news had broken in to show a downed police helicopter. Above it, a winged man flew. He circled once, and was away. "Wow."

Just then, Peter's phone dinged. Gwen looked back at him, seeing him already lowering the phone from reading a text. "I'm sorry, I forgot something for Aunt May."

Gwen rolled her eyes, and Peter's face stiffened. His eyes narrowed just a touch. "Ben's gone. She raised me when I needed it. I don't like letting her down."

Gwen had to swallow back a sudden lump of shame. "Sorry. Go ahead."

He instantly looked worried, like he'd done something wrong. For a second, she thought he'd apologize to her, but then he just left.

"Weird," she said, picking up the last of her slice of pizza and turning to the TV, where the flying man was no longer in sight. Nothing more to see.

She thought back over her conversation, a practice which was essential to detective work and close to as important for dating, in her estimation. Everyone had secrets, and Gwen wasn't one to let that slide.

She thought about Peter's talk about the business plan. About his reaction to the news broadcast. About the twitches that told about lies and nerves. About that text he received, and read, in seconds.

"Damn!"

Gwen scooped up her pizza, threw it into the trash, and rushed outside. She'd faked enough texts to recognize the practice, and that had been a fake text, surrounded by a mess of lies. Her 'boyfriend' was lying to her on the first date. Well, in fairness, dating was usually mostly about lying, but not about lying to her!

She couldn't make it into Manhattan quickly enough, especially not when she didn't know quite where to go, but she could think a step ahead.


The door to the parker residence shut with a solid thunk, sounding throughout the house.

"Aunt May?" Peter's voice was calm, unhurried.

The response was quiet, from the kitchen. A few words of muffled conversation, and then footsteps up the stairs. The door to Peter's room slid open, a band of light sweeping across the floor. The light turned on.

Peter yelped and jumped halfway across the room.

Gwen smirked.

"Peter?" May called from below. "Are you alright?"

It took him a moment to gather himself for a reply. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just startled myself, nothing serious."

May's next comment was indecipherable through three walls of plaster.

Peter straightened from the crouch he'd landed in, pulled over a chair, and settled into it. "What are you doing in my room, Gwen?"

"Are you familiar with my philosophy on secrets?"

"Um, secrets are powerful things for you to have, and inappropriate things for anyone else to keep from you?"

"Exactly. And yet you thought you could keep a secret from me."

Peter sighed. "Was it that easy to figure out?"

"Let's see, males from Queens with slim builds, about five-ten, who lie about texts and then disappear the instant they see a supervillain on TV. Honestly, I didn't check anyone else, I just assumed I was right."

"Damn. I'm gonna get figured out."

Gwen gave a pshaw and waved the worry away. "Nobody is going to find you out. I had inside knowledge, and I'm an awesome detective, and I'll help you learn to hide it better. Now, dish."

"What?"

"Tell me what happened. The flying guy, with the wings. Dish."

"Oh." Peter rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, he got away."

"You suck at telling stories."

"Alright. I tried to web him down, but he could fly with my weight as well. He has the razor-sharp wings that can slice through my webbing, so he flew high and sliced me loose. I think he assumed the fall would kill me."

Gwen nodded along as he talked. "Alright, new idea. What can you do? Because that made no sense."

"Oh, Yeah," Peter said. "You're not gonna out me, are you?"

"Oh, come on. Of course not." Gwen hopped to the edge of the bed, so they were sitting knee-to-knee. "Now, dish."

"This word means a lot of things to you."

Her eyes narrowed menacingly. "Don't make me— huh, I guess I can't beat you up anymore, can I?"

He held up his palms, as though to display his defenselessness. "Trust me, I know the value of your threats. I'll dish."

"Good."

"So, I got bit by a spider at Oscorp, and a few days later I could stick to walls. It was awkward at first, but I learned to control it. I'm also ridiculously strong, and really fast. I can kinda sense when something dangerous is coming my way."

Gwen nodded as he talked. "Yeah, yeah. Strong, fast, good reflexes. Webs?"

"Oh, those?" Peter dug into his bag and pulled out a pair of metal cuffs. "It's my own mixture. It's got some kinks, still. Tensile strength is good, at 54 kilograms per millimeter, but it degrades fairly swiftly. It dissolves entirely after 56 minutes, on average, but after 33 minutes its strength begins to swifty decline."

"That doesn't sound like kinks."

"The increased longevity and strength require more chemicals, which shortens the usage I can acquire from one capsule, so I need to carry lots of spares, and I go through it faster, and that costs money. I need a way to pressurize the base fluids better, and I need a way to streamline the process, because currently it has a waste-rate of 22 percent."

Gwen grinned. "You have more fun making webbing than fighting super-villains, don't you?"

Pater laughed. "Oh, definitely. Those fights are scary. Now, swinging between skyscrapers, that's more fun than making webbing."

"So, you're gonna take your girlfriend for a tour of the city, right?"

He blushed, red as ever, swallowing with that audibly-nervous gulp he always had. "So, you're not breaking up with me, even though, I'm—"

"Super-athletic, a hero, and still smarter than anyone I've ever met?" Five-for-five, not that she'd share her measurement system with him. "No, Peter, I'm not dumping you for being awesome. Now, if you don't scoop me up, leap out the window, and carry me to the top of the Empire State Building, we may have issues."


The ride to the top of the Empire State Building was awesome. It was also cold. Standing at the top was even colder than the ride over. Gwen endured it long enough to take a few dozen pictures to cull through later, and then they went to a much lower rooftop.

"Rule number one," Gwen announced, "I'm always wearing pants when we go on a date."

Peter flicked his eyes down at her skirt, biting at his lip. She wondered if he knew how obvious her was. She broadened her stance and swished her hips to send the fabric swinging. His eyes bugged out and he managed to draw them upwards. "Uh, yeah."

"As I was saying, rules."

"I won't—" Peter began.

"That's not one of them."

Peter flicked another glance at her legs, then back to her eyes. "Okay."

"But there are some big ones coming. Rule number two: You tell me everything that happens with a villain. Rule number three: You buy me lunch every tuesday. Rule number four: You text me whenever you go haring off after a villain. Rule number five: You don't get hurt."

"I can do that."

"Good," Gwen said. "I like pizza and other greasy foods, unless I'm on a diet, in which case I'll tell you what I want."

"Yeah," Peter replied, shaking his head, "rule number three wasn't specific about quality. You sure you don't want to renegotiate this contract?"

Gwen lifted her chin. "New rule number three. Right here, right now, you have to kiss me."

He was dumbstruck again—it's good to be able to keep them dumbstruck—and she had to initiate the kiss. It was good, though.


Sunday was a long day. It was good, because Peter had snuck her back in through her window so she wasn't in any trouble. It was also good because she had something to do.

Gwen was up early, skimming articles on the web. To start with, she read the Bugle's newest headline, accompanied by its first ever clear picture of Peter in-uniform. Well, relatively clear. Still, it showed the red and blue, and a bit of the webbing, which was why they dubbed him Spider Man. The man he fought—the Bugle claimed the two were accomplices, not enemies—a distant winged-blur in the night sky, they dubbed Vulture.

That wasn't important. The important bits were the details Peter had shared about this Vulture. Wizened skin where it was visible. Thin limbs but powerful strength. His suit was fairly thick, at least a centimeter of metal all about him, and the wings were metal blades that attached to it. Electronics, robotics, other such advanced equipment. He was masked above the lips, but that was fine.

Old man, slightly taller than 5'10", either with significant wealth or extreme skill in robotic engineering. Likely from the New York area, but that couldn't be decided with any certainty. Not a lot to go on, but it was something.

Wealthy old men were a dime a dozen, but she could discount most of them. If he was still wealthy, he wouldn't be robbing armored cars. She kept those up as a possibility, in part because the field wasn't too large to winnow, but turned more to the idea that he had made his own suit.

If he were young, the worry would be that he was working for someone who could afford the suit, but an employer would be unlikely to hire a septigenarian. Thus, she began looking at defunct electronics and robotics laboratories, especially failed startups. If it were still a successful business, there would be no need for the theft, unless it was flagging. Of course, with that tech to show, it wouldn't likely be flagging, it would likely be doing tech demos and making millions.

It wasn't a lot to go on, but it was a start. She found a dozen prospects and headed out. Coleman Robotics was now a loft, and the former owner was very polite and invited her in for coffee. He even helped her out when she explained that she was doing a science fair project with a robotic arm, and a friend had mentioned his name. She was well-prepared, with the robotic arm she'd helped Peter make—he did most of the work—for the Midtown Science Fair the year before. She'd removed a few pieces so it was semi-functional and would actually benefit from some assistance.

After Coleman came Razzle-Dazzle Racers, which was actually doing fine, despite what the internet implied. Topher Industries, Bestman-Toomes, Quantum Solutions, and Hyperpress all were likewise lacking in answers.

Then she got a text from Peter. 'Vulture Spotted.'

She began skimming twitter for info, and soon had an address. She considered setting his phone up to track him, but that would be too easy for someone else to discover and hack, ruining everything. She'd just have to tell him to text her addresses whenever he could. She waved down a cab, got going the right direction, and ended up stopped by a police barricade. They were out in force, guns aimed and loudspeakers blaring. It appeared that red-and-blue costumes and flying mechanical suits got you more than just a stop-and-frisk.

Gwen looked around, spotted her dad, and went the other way. Of course, he'd want to be down there. That's where the action was, and action meant advancement, and advancement meant something he never really explained, although probably money and wasted time. If he saw her, he'd flip his lid. Danger was fine for him, and only for him.

She headed around the outskirts, found a restaurant with a rooftop grill, and got a table. She perfunctorily ordered fries and a milkshake, already looking through her camera. It was clear to the waiter that she wasn't there for a meal, but he let it slide. Everyone else had run when the chaos started.

She aimed as best she could, taking photos swiftly. She had to swap out the film a minute in and resume. She'd taken a lot of pictures in her life, but she could tell she was going to have to practice quick-loading if she was to make a career of this. Or go digital, which unsettled her stomach a little. She finished the change and raised the camera again.

The vulture slugged Peter and sent him hurtling towards the cops. Her stomach dropped into her toes and the camera fell to the length of its lanyard, jerking hard against her neck.

A barricade shattered into splinters and Peter bounced off of the pavement, rolling over, ripping his uniform in a dozen places. He struggled to stand, clearly unsteady on his feet, and the vulture plummeted towards him. Cops were running, screaming, panicking. A shot was fired. Gunfire filled the air. Steel-bladed wings swiped towards Peter. He dove sideway, vaulted off a parked car, kicked off a wall, launched two webs, and sent the Vulture spinning towards a window while Peter swung around the corner.

Gwen caught her breath. As swiftly as she could manage, she swapped in new roll and took aim. As soon as she saw motion, she began snapping pictures as fast as the camera could manage. The vulture exploded out, hurtling down the street. Peter swung after, launched a web at the Vulture's foot, and missed. Gwen expended the last of that roll and lowered her camera.

"Get anything good?" the waiter asked.

"We'll see," she said. "It's hard to tell with that much action going on."

"Can I see the pictures?"

"Sorry, real-film camera."

He looked a little confused, as if he'd only ever seen digital cameras in his life. Gwen went through most the rest of the milkshake in a rush, then headed home without waiting for Peter's text. She had to start the film developing, which was not an overly-swift process.


"This whole in-through-the-window thing is great."

Peter looked nervous as he pulled off his mask. "Are you sure your dad won't find out?"

"Aw, are you scared?"

"Yes. I'm scared you'll get grounded and I'll never speak to you again."

"Well, that lock won't open, and if he hears me talking I'll say it's skype. By the way, you need to make an account on skype."

"Fine."

"Now, on to the photos."

Peter stepped up behind her and looked over her shoulder as she pulled one roll out of the film-scanner and put in another. "Get anything good?"

"I think so." She started skimming through them.

"I can't even see them, you're just skipping through. Oh, that one looked awesome."

She flipped back a few, to one of Spider-Man's foot connecting with the Vulture's jaw. "Nah, too much blur on the motion, and it was mostly out of frame. Besides, I'm not looking for awesome."

"I thought we were gonna sell photos to the Bugle."

"We are. We're also going to catch this guy, and sell photos of him getting caught. Oh, did you get anything good?"

"My efforts at web-launched cameras were close, but not quite," Peter admitted.

"Missed and covered the lense with webbing, did you?"

"How'd you know?"

Gwen looked back at him, then grinned and gave him a quick kiss. "Don't look so down, it's the first try at that. My camera, by contrast, is the culmination of over a hundred years of technological innovation, wielded by a hand with a decade of practice."

She went back to the screen, skimming through even faster. "These ones," she explained, "might be great for sale, but I'm looking for a little bit I took near the end."

At last, she got to the window.

"It's just a window," Peter said.

"Right now, it's just a window." She started moving through the rest of that rush of twenty-four frames, an almost movie-like progression of the Vulture bursting out into the the street."

"Those are fairly blurry, too."

"That, Peter, is why they invented algorithms." Gwen switched into a terminal and started typing. It took a second to get the right pictures selected, and the right areas to focus on, and then she threw it all into motion. As the computer crunched the numbers, she explained. "The first algorithm is detecting faces, or in this case the lower half of a face. You can see these all picked out successfully. If it had missed—not too likely here because his green outfit is high contrast—I'd have to hand-pick those. After that, it gets to the more complicated portion: interpolation."

"That's genius," Peter said. "You wrote this?"

"Nah. I mean, technically I coded this instance, but it's all really closely based on other bits of code out there."

"It looked like it was done, and now it's starting over. Multiple passes?"

"It still has to deal with the blur. There are a lot of methods, but the one I use is using a filter before-hand to try to sharpen the image, then use the sequence of images to try to add detail. There will be eighty-three different filters to reduce the motion blur, and they'll all be done before, and they'll also be done after to the one attempt that had no blur beforehand."

"So, in a few minutes, we'll have one-hundred-sixty-seven images of this guy's jawline?"

"A few minutes?" Gwen laughed. "Try four hours. These are film-scans at the best resolution I can manage. In the meantime, we can do something else."

She stared at him, and he started looking uncomfortable. It was tempting to kiss him again. Really tempting. It was even more tempting to jump him, and have him hold her up like she was weightless, as his superstrength could easily manage that. However, he really did look a little overwhelmed. Take it slow, he's still Peter, she reminded herself.

Scooping up her tablet, she hopped onto the bed. "Come on, we still have sixty other shots to pick through for what you can sell to the Bugle."

"I can sell? They're you're pictures."

"The Bugle did a scathing piece about my dad a few months back, on account of him restraining his men when there was a super-villain loose downtown. He won't pay as well with a Stacy on the byline."

"You think he cares about names as much as he cares about results?"

She shrugged. "Also, my father would flip if he knew I was doing this, and he would find out if I put my name on it. Now, get into bed with me and start looking at pictures of how awesome you are."

His nervousness leapt right back to the surface.


Peter had to go before the image refinement finished. Gwen spent the last thirty minutes pricing out the system she wanted. It would have finished the entire process in about ten minutes, but she definitely couldn't afford it. She also needed to buy a better film scanner and improve the dark-room in her closet. She had a lot of needs and not so much money. And that was if her father didn't notice that she was suddenly going through a lot more film and not showing him quite so many pictures. She checked her accounts. She was actually getting close to the computer, if she bought only the key components and kept using her old case and drives. Close.

She sighed and lay back, waiting for the program to announce its completion. Soon enough, it was done. She loaded up the pictures and started swiping through them. In truth, it was close to random whether they were right or not. She was looking for commonalities, things that implied something was actually there, not invented by the computer. Reducing blur and sharpening photos was a science, but it was far from perfect. The true data simply was not present, so the computer tried to make educated guesses about what was supposed to be there.

There was a lot to go through, as her twenty-four images had been turned into over three-thousand possible faces. Over half of them she could discard without worry because what the computer had guessed was clearly not a person's face. Another chunk were too young for what she and Peter had seen. The remainder were less clear. She slid through them all over a dozen times, spending a good amount of time on each.

She sorted a dozen to the top. They had a commonality that it seemed unlikely the camera would invent. A smear across the jaw, following the edge of a wrinkle. Liver spots. The Vulture had liver spots.

"Yes!" Gwen yelled.

"What are you on about?" her dad called from the living room.

"I'm on about winning, which I am doing. I am winning at life and at all things, and you can suck it!"

"I'm glad you're feeling upbeat, but that sort of language isn't allowed under my roof," he called back.

"Dad, you can't really say 'under my roof' when you rent an apartment. That's a house-ownership-thing."

"I can say whatever I want to say, under my roof."

Gwen laughed, then looked back at the picture.

She opened her door and joined him in the living room, where he was skimming a case file and watching TV at the same time. "As you wish, Father, I shall be polite, under your roof, and request egress for the evening."

"Seriously? That's your only mode of speech that isn't inappropriate?"

"Hark! He understandeth."

"Go, go. Enjoy your evening. Tomorrow's a schoolday."

"I'll be back by eight," Gwen called as she grabbed her coat and rushed outside. This was too easy. She texted Peter as she went and discovered he was busy. She suspect that if she had given him detail he would have made time, but she really didn't need him along for this. Four trains and three short walks later, she was standing outside of Bestman-Toomes on Staten Island.

It was an ugly, boxy little building, with boarded-up windows and graffitti on the walls. She snapped a few pictures and headed in. There was a chain locked around the door-handles, but she had her picks. It wouldn't do to leave home without them. Inside, the place was vacant, as expected. She turned on the flash and took some photos, anyways. This might all fit into the story, if they wrote a story, rather than just selling photos. The obvious gaps where machinery used to be were great, too. It had a bit of that Old-Detroit-Factory vibe to it, reeking of abandonment and waste.

She headed upstairs, into the offices that overlooked the workfloor, and found a room ripped apart. The desk was flinders, a table by the window was legless and broken, the filing cabinet in the corner had been caved in, and the windows looking down below had been shattered. She found pieces of a chair embedded in the filing cabinet, and it wasn't easy to ram a wooden rod through a piece of steel. More photos, more documentation of the evidence.

Unfortunately, it was all empty. The filing cabinet had—apparently with great difficulty—been pried open and emptied. All the desk drawers were pulled out and trashed. The table had been a drafting-table, which seemed normal enough in a place like that. Kicking through the mess on the floor, she found the only thing with an ounce of writing in the entire place, one of those pompous triangular nameplates. Gregory Bestman.

There was little evidence of Toomes and Bestman on the internet, but when she went digging that morning she had turned up one picture. They were posing in front of their newly-opened business, touting their prowess at small-scale robotics and custom electronics. Toomes was robotics, Bestman electronics. Toomes was fifty-seven—almost seventy, now—and Bestman was forty-three, now dead for over a year, at fifty-four.

There was only one problem remaining: She had no idea where Toomes lived.

She headed east. What records were available online—older people tended to have less—indicated an address in Dongan Hills. She went there and found a new name on the mailbox. The current owners were polite, but they didn't know who lived there before them and had never met a Toomes.

Gwen walked up and down the street, eying houses, until she found one that had too much lace visible through the windows for any reasonable person. She rang the doorbell, then again after waiting a long minute.

"I'm coming," came from inside, a thin voice.

As expected, the door was opened by an old lady. She actually looked a lot like Peter's aunt, perhaps twenty years on.

"Oh, hello young lady," the woman said.

"Hi there, I'm Stacy."

"Well hello, Stacy. What can I do for you?"

"Actually, I was just in the neighborhood, and my grandfather said he knew some people around here."

"Is that so?"

Gwen nodded. "Oh, yes. Talked about them a lot. The Toomeses." She almost stumbled over the plural of that name and had to hide a grimace. "They don't seem to be here anymore, though. I thought, maybe you'd know where they've gotten to."

"Oh, they haven't lived here in years, no they haven't. Moved off to Brooklyn after his parents passed, Adrian did. I'm afraid I don't really know what happened with him."

"Well, thank you for your time, ma'am."

"Oh, I'm always glad to help such a polite young girl as yourself."

Father would be shocked to hear that description, Gwen thought as she waved and walked away. So, no joy there. Well, a move to Brooklyn. She pulled out her phone and did a quick search. There were seven Toomeses in Brooklyn, and none of them were Adrian. Still, only seven.

Nine trains later, Gwen was at a strange little library in a strange little corner of the Bronx. She hadn't been by in a while, but nobody was really a regular there, so they still recognized her. In truth, that was the fifth time a case had required a visit to the Phonebook Cemetary, as she preferred to think of it. The place was actually the Archive of Telephonic Records, which was less inspiring.

It had every phonebook ever published in New York City, as well as more than a few from elsewhere in the country. It had phonebooks from way back when Toomes moved to Brooklyn, back when Adrian's parents passed, which has thirty years earlier, according to the death record for them. Gwen started going through old phonebooks until she found an Adrian Toomes. Then she went in five-year chunks until he disappeared, and narrowed it down to when exactly it was that he disappeared. A year ago. Right around when Bestman died.

She took the subway again, and sat there watching a man do an impression of Micheal Jackson, wishing she could just swing across the city. Not all things for all people, though. Peter got super powers, Gwen got a new computer. Assuming this story sold, which she was confident of.

More photos as she approached the place, then upstairs and knocking on every door but his, asking about the neighbor. It was a mediocre place, neither fancy nor poor, which meant stable residents. Specifically, old people with enough savings or children to support themselves decently.

Every neighbor knew Adrian, and every neighbor knew he'd not been back in seven months. His place wasn't rented out, though. In fact, it still had his name on the door.

Gwen stood outside the door, staring at it. Had he abandoned it and kept paying rent for some strange reason, or did he just resort to flying in and out of the window, rather than speaking to his neighbors. They hadn't made him sound like a very nice person, so he might have stayed around and just ignored them. It didn't seem overly likely that he was, at that very moment, inside. On the other hand, he'd punched Peter hard enough to shatter wood on impact.

She turned away, pushed the button on the elevator, and got a text from Peter just as the doors opened. Vulture spotted. Going after. Gwen let the elevator close and walked back to the door. Nobody was paying attention. It was a trickly lock, taking a few minutes, each second making her more nervous about some neighbor stepping outside, but no doors opened and nobody came.

At last, she stepped inside, and knew she was in the right place.

Immediately, she was snapping photos. The dishes, piled high. The empty boxes of chinese takeout atop the one bag of cash he'd managed to make off with when he robbed an armored truck. The rest had been left behind, on account of Peter's intervention. She took several pictures of that. It seemed such a perfect shot, the pile of money alongside the cheap food.

The rest of the place was more of the same. A half-made bed with old sheets. Laundry that may have been clean, may have been dirty, spilling out of a basket. A sink with toothpaste crusting in a few places.

She switched rolls, and used half of the next on the workstation. Tangled bits of wire, bits of rubber scattered about from stripped wires. An entire box of unused actuators, and another bin full of metal slats that looked right for his wing-feathers. A grinder, to sharpen things. There was a padded box beside that, with glove-holes. Not to keep something toxic contained, like in all the movies, but just to mask the noise from nosy neighbors.

The window was open. Gwen leaned out and took photos up and down the street. Sometime soon, he would fly back in through there.

Gwen hurried out, trying to leave most everything as she'd found it, and got down to street level. She texted Peter the address and told him that was where Vulture was stashing his stuff, that it was where he'd return to, and if he turned away from there he'd go to the old factory on Staten Island, most likely. She attached pictures of both—cellphone shots, not the good pictures she had for the story—so he'd know what he was looking for.

Then it was across the street, buzzing at random until someone opened the door. Up she went, until she was at a service door. It was, surprisingly, locked. She opened it anyway and went out onto the roof, situating herself in the shadows near the edge. And it was back to the stakeouts she knew too well. She waited, and she waited, and she waited.

More than usual, time crawled instead of rushing. Somewhere, Peter was chasing the Vulture. She kept checking twitter and instagram, finding stupid comments and blurry pictures under #spiderman. Useless.

Then another text came: He got away.

Get here, she texted back. He'll be here soon.

He texted back that he was on his way, and then Gwen was back to waiting. And waiting. And cringing when a rush of air signalled something flying by overhead.

She twisted about and aimed the camera, snapping a few good pictures. He didn't notice. He just climbed in his window and threw a little bag across the room. The twitter feeds said he had hit a jewelry store, so there could have been anything in that bag, but he looked too angry for her to believe it was full of diamonds.

She photographed him pacing, photographed him glaring down at his workbench, and photographed him hurtling across the room as Peter swung through the window, foot leading.

Vulture had escaped before because he was out in the open sky. Indoors, surprised, he had no chance. In seconds, he was bound up in webs. He started to cut free with his bladed wings, but Peter slapped unsharpened metal over those blades, bending it into place with his hand, and then webbing it down. Three minutes later, Peter strung him up on a streetlight. He had to wait another two minutes for the police to arrive. He gave a quick salute and was off.

Seconds later, Gwen's phone vibrated: Meet me on the other side of the building. I didn't want the cops to see you.

She grinned and ran to the opposite side of the roof, and then they were both airborne, swooping across the city.

"Where are you going," she yelled, trying to be heard over the rush of a downswing.

"Home."

"Go to my place. We need to sort through these photos and get a package together. The Bugle will pay way more for this tonight than they will tomorrow."

He adjusted directions.