Of Gwen's three screens, two were dedicated to competing photographs of Peter at work. On the left was Peter—in costume—doing a dive through two silvery loops, catching another and throwing it aside, while shooting a ball of web at a man in a black suit with silver loops inset into it. The Ringer was an idiot. To quote Peter, he'd been a great morning workout. If he could, Peter would keep the man around as an exercise machine.

Thing is, the Bugle didn't like happy stories. They didn't want the title to be 'Spider-Man Wins', they wanted the title to be 'Spider-Man in a Fight for His Life'. If they didn't go with that photo, there was one of the Ringer catching Peter's foot with a well-placed ring, so it looked like Spider-Man was about to derf headfirst into the ground. Villain smiling and looking triumphant, Spider-Man derfing. They'd love it. It might even pay well.

Gwen loaded her accounts page again. It was not near so flush as she had been hoping. Seventy-percent of their income from the paper went straight to web-fluid and film. Admittedly important expenses, but higher than she'd anticipated. Then, they split the last portion evenly, which meant she didn't get a lot. If she spent literally every dime she had, Gwen could buy her computer. She

She put the derf-picture up, titling the article 'Spider-Man Struggles to Best THE RINGER'. Then she emailed it to Peter. He did the actual writing. For being terrible at telling stories, he was surprisingly good at writing them, and he didn't need more notes than the title implied. He knew as well as she did that they'd get paid twice as much for a story of Spider-Man nearly losing.

After a moment, she put the other picture up with the title 'Ringer no match for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN'. She added a note that they might try both, see if they could actually sell the better one. They needed the money as much as they needed the good press, though.

Her phone buzzed. A string of police codes and an address. They'd found the shorthand was easier. Gunfire down near the port, no big deal, but he was in the area anyways.

No big deal.

She lay down, then slapped a pillow over her face and screamed into it. No big deal. Her boyfriend was just running at some gunfire. No big deal at all.

Maybe it wouldn't feel so awful if she wasn't always encouraging. He'd said it first: With great power comes great responsibility. She'd sure backed it up, though. And she did believe it.

She also believed that, with friendship to great power came a moderately large amount of responsibility. Like making sure nothing big slipped through the cracks. She grabbed her tablet and went back to a story she'd ditched a week ago.

There was something new, and her initial hunch no longer looked crazy. Thirty stores of sewer alligators. Except, the witnesses didn't say alligator or crocodile, which was what tripped something in her mind the first time. They said, 'Some big lizard thing.' It just felt weird. Now there was a new one. A wrecked veterinary clinic, just ripped apart, and the owner claiming some big lizard did it.

She loaded up the video. The news quoted 'It was a huge lizard' but they cut some key bits of the raw footage she'd acquired.

'He looked up from where he was digging through that cabinet over there.'

'He?' the reporter asked.

'Uh, the huge lizard thing. I swear, he— it was up on it's hind legs, digging in there. Maybe it was a dinosaur?'

He said it might be a dinosaur despite the scales, but his instinct, the first thing he said, was that it was a man. 'He' wasn't a meaningless word.

Gwen dug up the address and started finding out everything she could about the clinic. It was in the same vicinity of the other sightings, which meant she had a firm pattern. Not to bring to Peter, though. He'd think it was too dangerous, tell her not to investigate, and then he'd be trying to find it on his own, which really wasn't his specialty.

Work was always a good way to distract herself. It took a while to do research properly. She was digging through property records, making sure she had the right owner to contact, when the scrape came at the window.

"Come in," she said in her most alluring voice.

He didn't.

"Peter?"

A cough, a scrape at the glass.

She rushed to the window, and on the other side, Peter dangled from a web, one foot on the wall, one hand barely reaching high enough to touch the window. She scrambled to grab the window and jam it open, then grabbed his shoulder to pull him in. He immediately gasped and twisted out of her grip.

Gwen looked down. There was blood on her hands. He'd said it wasn't serious, just a little thing down by the port. She reached out again, slipped her hands about his chest, lower down, and dragged him in. Once he was halfway through, he released the web and his weight was entirely on her. They fell hard, a strained whimpering sound coming from him.

"Oh shit. Peter. Peter, look at me!"

Gwen jerked off his mask, revealing a face clenched tight with pain.

"Peter, where are you hurt?"

He didn't reply. She looked across him, but couldn't see anything, not even on the shoulder she knew was bloody. A red uniform hid blood too perfectly. "I'm gonna get you into the bed, alright?"

No reply. She started to stand, trying to pull him along. For the first time in a very long time, Gwen wished she worked out more. "Alright, the floor is fine."

She straightened him out and began trying to pull of his uniform. It wouldn't move. She dashed out into the kitchen.

"What's up?" her Father asked. He was in the living room again, TV on, reading up on some case.

"Nothing," she called as she grabbed a towel to cover her bloody hands as she dug for scissors in the knife drawer.

"We should talk more," he said. "I hardly see you outside of your room, these days."

"Tomorrow," she replied as she ran back into her room with a bundle of towels under her arm.

She could almost hear him trying to find something to say as she slammed her door shut and bolted it. She ran over to Peter and started slicing away his clothes. In seconds, he was in just a pair of briefs, with bloody little ducks on them. Gwen forced herself not to cry, she just began pressing towels to wounds and then securing them firmly in place with belts from her closet. Once she had everything covered, she wiped away the blood, pulled out a clean sheet, and set him on it.

On her tablet, she started searching for anything, looking up every few seconds to see if there was any change.

A circle of blood was spreading out on the white sheet, spreading from the small of his back. She braced him, tilted him up, and found a little hole there. She put a towel on it, then belted it down. An army medical guide on bandages had a section on irregular places and she skimmed over it. The lower back wasn't like an arm, since she couldn't just put a belt as tight as she wanted. The abdomen would just compress, and he'd get hurt more from the pressure on his organs.

She didn't have quite what she needed, but it would have to do. She stuffed torn-up sheet-cloth directly into the wound, then reapplied the towel and used two belts around his hips, as well as some cloths tied about his thigh, to pin it in place.

Looking elsewhere online, she found some EMT guides, and found out more than she wanted to know about what bullets did when they entered a person. She turned on her music to mask the sound as she threw up into her trash can.

He still wasn't conscious. She went over and flicked his eyelid, as the guides recommended. He twitched, which was apparently a good sign. He was still responsive to pain. It seemed rather dire to be considered a good sign.

She checked all the bandages, and confirmed that they weren't getting any redder. So, he was probably stable. Probably. But there were still bullets in him, possibly, and if she went anywhere for help their lives would be ruined. She pulled down a whiteboard, listed times down a side, and then checked his pulse twice. She wrote it down. Every five minutes, she'd check, and if there was a decline, then she'd get help, she decided. He didn't want to go to a hospital, but she wouldn't just let him die.

"You can do this," Gwen said softly. "You're Gwen Stacy, and you can do this."

She grabbed a smaller whiteboard—usually, the large one was for planning, not the small one—and made a list of what she needed. Then she read a few chapters on suturing and removing bullets, checking his pulse twice more along the way. It didn't look impossible. In fact, it looked easy, which was worrisome. Gwen had done a lot of things after reading about them, and things that looked easy were usually hiding something.

Still, he needed those bullets out of him.

She removed the pad on his shoulder. Beneath it, the blood was mostly clotted, only a little sluggish trickle resuming once the bandage was gone. She grabbed an old computer mouse, wrapped it in a towel, put it under his arm, and used two belts—her last two, and now every belt she owned was bloodstained—to pin the arm in place. As promised by the reference, the bleeding slowed. The mouse added bulk, and pinned hard enough against his side it pinched down on an artery going to his arm. It wasn't a proper tourniquet, but it was something.

Next came the worst parts. She started cutting. And failed. The kitchen knife was dull, but not that dull.

"Damnit, being super-durable is supposed to help you," she said, somewhere between whining and yelling.

Another quick trip into the kitchen—she had to change clothes, to hide the blood—discretely procured a sharpener and a better knife. She spent a few minutes honing it, checked his pulse—still steady—and went to work. A small slit to open the wound, then in with the clamp she had from the third-hand she used during their robotics project. It was meant to clamp down, but it could be screwed wide just as well, pushing the muscle aside so she could see.

She ran to the trash-can and wretched up water and bile, then got back to Peter. She swabbed away the blood, and began poking in with the tongs, trying to get the bullet. She could see the glint of it, but pushing the muscle aside was difficult. Whenever she pushed, he would twitch and tense his muscles, disturbing the scene. She needed anesthetic, but there was no getting that.

Taking a pause, she decided to give it a rush, to try to beat him to it. She pushed in quick, clamped onto the bullet, and lost her grip on the tongs. There was a sharp metallic clink, and the clamp shot out of the wound. A muscle spasm had pinch shut the opening she had, knotting the tongs in place and completely wrecking her clamp.

She sat back, got a grip on the tongs, and waited. Slowly, his muscles unclenched. She pulled the tongs out. The metal was twisted, wrapped around the bullet. Cheap tongs on a super, go figure.

"I'm gonna spend my computer money on a medical kit," Gwen mumbled.

She wasn't sure why that was what made her cry, but it was. She tried to work through the tears, trying to stitch the wound closed, but it useless. She leaned back against the bed, toes just touching Peter's bloody arm, and scrubbed at her eyes, wishing she was anywhere but there. The responsibility didn't feel moderate at all. It felt monumental, crushing, deadly.

Then the timer beeped. Time to check his pulse. Despite the tears, she made herself take the notes again, and was surprised to find that the counting and keeping time pushed the tears away. And his pulse was still steady. This could work. It had to.

She got to stitching. The guides on sutures were for special tools, but the basic principle translated easily enough. The main problem was that he was too strong and too durable. Whenever he spasmed, she had to wait for him to unclench. Twice, she bent a needle on his skin, but she didn't want to use a heavier gauge and leave a massive hole in his skin. The only large needle she had was for canvas, and it was almost two-millimeters across at the eye.

She kept going through the smaller needles, using ten stitches to close his shoulder. She removed the binding from his sides and pressed a clean bit of towel onto the wound. After a minute, she checked, finding little blood. She waited another minute, and found similarly little blood. This time, she just used a large, stick-on bandaid. It was sufficient.

Then came the wound on his leg and the wound on his back. At first, those had been the terrifying ones. There were all sorts of comments from EMTs on forums—she had read quite a bit in her rush to figure out what to do—about how a bullet would ricochet through a person, splintering and coming out in odd places. Internal bleeding was deadly, they all warned.

Thing is, if he was bleeding internally, his pulse wouldn't have stayed steady. Closer inspections revealed clear through-and-throughs for the other two hits. She stitch shut the wound on his leg—seven stitches—and decided to just tape down the one on his back.

She knew she should clean up, but she couldn't find the strength. She just lay down beside him, curling against his uninjured side, and fell asleep.

Sounds of motion woke Gwen, and for an instant she was terrified that there was an intruder in her room. Memory rushed in, and she was terrified that Peter was alright. She leapt up, searching for him. An instant later, he stumbled out of her closet, the shreds of his uniform in his hands.

"I had to cut it off," she said, as though she had to make excuses for what she'd done.

He let it fall. Looking down at himself, he seemed to finally realize there were stitches in him. "I didn't know where to go."

"You made the right choice," Gwen assured him. "When in doubt, come to me."

"Thank you. Where did you learn to stitch up gunshot wounds?"

"The internet. It's not all supposed to be free, but there are some excellent references for most everything." She scooped up the tongs, still bent around the bullet, and showed it to him. "This one was still stuck in your shoulder."

He looked down, trying to see the cut there, and winced at the pain. "It's weird, getting shot didn't hurt too badly, way less than getting kicked around by some super-powered baddie, but I could always just bounce back from those hits. This, it just kept hurting, worse and worse."

She set the bullet down. "Let's not talk about it, not right now."

He smiled, that same shy smile he always had. Then he looked down, blushing at he took in his boxers.

"Let's get cleaned up. I'll be right back." Gwen went into the hall, came back with the last of the towels and a pitcher of water. She dipped one into the water and walked towards him, setting the wet towel against his blood-smeared chest.

"Gwen, I can—"

"Shh." Gwen slid the towel across his chest, wiping away the blood. "Don't talk."

He blushed even harder as the water ran down towards his boxers. "Gwen—"

She kissed him, which shut him up properly. "Now, let's get cleaned up, alright?"

The next morning, Peter and Gwen rushed to clean up the last of the blood, then he had to dart out the window just seconds before her father would have thrown a fit if she didn't open her door.

The bloodied mess was all in Peter's bag, ready to be burned somewhere discreet, and then they had a list of household goods to replace, and then they had to track down the people that had shot Peter up, and in the midst of all that they had to go to school.

It was feeling like a normal day again. Peter was walking around like nothing happened, and she envied his powers a bit yet again. She was still sore, and she hadn't been the one getting shot. Still, better it was him. He could already smile about the encounter with the gunman, not at all worried about going out there again. Had it been Gwen, she suspected she wouldn't have been a hero at all, she'd just have been a girl with superpowers.

Or maybe the superpowers changed people, she didn't know. All the same, even if she wasn't a superhero, she could help. During school, she spent her class periods noting down possible ways to figure out who had been there. She also downloaded some information about ballistics and read up on that, being as she had a whole bullet to work with.

Lunch and the afternoon were dedicated to the news, blogs, twitter, and what police reports she could scrounge. It looked like the encounter on the docks had been between the Manfredi crime family and some unspecified vigilante that loved to kill people. No wonder everyone had ended up shooting at Peter. The idea of him going back in there was more than a little terrifying, but Gwen made herself imagine him going back in not knowing what to expect. That was clearly the worse of the options.

So, she didn't head home after class. She headed to the subway and came up near the crime scene. It was still taped off and busy with forensics teams, so she just took some photos from a distance, making sure to include every marker they had laid down, so she could better place things later. She also tried to get some good angles into the adjacent warehouse, as some of the gunfire had come from inside it, but the angles weren't the best. Then it was off to police headquarters. She said hi to her dad, which cheered him up, then found a quiet corner to sit down in for a few minutes, earbuds in like she was listening to music.

She had the workup of the bullet on her tablet, and police headquarters had wifi. It wasn't hard to break in, and from there to hi-jack a computer that was recognized as being on the right network. A few queries later and she had ballistics reports.

Those were, as it turned out, rather arcane. At first, she was just confused, as the bullet didn't have striations like she was seeing in the comparisons, but then she did some more reading on rifling, specifically looking for that, and found the answer: polygonal rifling. The facts were clear: There was no reliable way to match a bullet to a specific gun with polygonal rifling.

That said, there was some she could learn. From the slug size—45 ACP, full-metal jacket—she narrowed the list down a lot. Not too many polygonal-barrel pistols used those. The next step was careful comparison.

She pulled a few hundred images, all the ones that seemed relevant, and cleared out before anyone asked her some awkward questions. She sat around on the subway for a while, just riding in circles, doing more reading and comparisons.

She had a copy of Forensic Investigation of Unusual Firearms up to reference, and a whole lot of pictures to go through. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't exactly difficult, either. A few hours later, she switched trains to reverse direction, as she'd passed her stop on the loop yet again, and went back to the station.

The slug had been fired from a very short-barreled pistol, probably a compact designed for concealed carry. There were a couple rare possibilities, but only one likely match: an H&K USP 45 CT. They weren't the most numerous guns in existence, and they weren't exactly cheap. Not the sort of thing random thugs walked around with.

Nobody much noticed her walking through the parking lot, and it was easy to lean into a car and stick a wifi link into one of the computers. She walked away and started loading up crimes involving an H&K USP 45 CT, keeping an eye on the car the whole time. Fortunately, nobody drove off. It would have sucked to lose the transmitter—fifty bucks sort of sucked—or to have to search for it later and risk getting caught again. Nobody did drive off, and she finished her download.

Gwen walked back over, leaned in, pulled the drive, and turned away.

"Hey!" Someone yelled.

Gwen let out a breath. She'd prepared for this. "Yeah?"

"What the hell you doing?" He was rushing her way.

She leaned against the car and let a little box discreetly drop in. "Eating."

"You pulled something out of the car."

"You caught me officer." She held up her hand. "I pilfered a donut. Hey, you should charge me with theft. Value of stolen goods: maybe a nickel."

He towered over her, and was unfortunately not the sort of fat cop that would have made for good donut jokes, but a younger, fitter guy. "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

"Yes? No? I'm not psychic?"

"Just sarcastic?"

"Not just, but it's in the mix." She stood up, making it obvious she was walking away. "Are you gonna let me go, or do you want the donut back. Because I gotta say, it's not in good shape."

"I remember, you're Captain Stacy's girl."

Damn. "You caught me. Next time, I swear I'll try to abuse that relationship, rather than hiding it from you."

"What do you think he'll have to say about this?" the man asked.

"What do you think he'll have to say about harrassing his daughter?"

The man sighed. "Come on, do you expect me to—"

"Let me leave? Yes, I do, because you don't need this today."

The police officer glared, just glared at her. He move to stop her, though.

She kept calm all the way down to the subway platform, where she sank down against the wall and stuck her head between her knees, trying to slow her racing heart. If she ever got caught hacking into the police databases, she was going to be in worlds of trouble. Yeah, being a police captain's daughter would shield her, but that only went so far. Just one little thing she needed, and she was nearly caught trying to get it.

The train arrived, and she made herself get on. Almost caught. Only almost. But she had gotten what she wanted: every crime with an H&K USP CT in the last ten years. It was a sizeable list.

The first step was culling all the weapons held in evidence, which was most of them. The next step was ignoring cases which were self-defense, because those just seemed unlikely to involve a vigilante. Then there was the comparison: crimes with the right gun, and crimes involving the Manfredi Family.

There were seven over the last three years, none before that. The locations gave her nothing, but it did imply some intent.

Unfortunately, that sent her back to the waiting game. She had sent out a request that would help clarify the situation, but hadn't gotten a reply yet. Not everything was easily hacked into. Often, the best route was the legal one.

Slumping back in her chair, Gwen loaded up some TV channels on her main computer screen. Nothing interesting presented itself.

She checked her phone. No texts, no calls. She thought a moment, then called Peter.

"Hey, Gwen," he answered. "It's uh, been, since last night."

God, still so shy. "Yeah, it's getting towards evening again. What're you up to."

"I was swinging past the docks, seeing if I could spot anything."

"Still crawling with cops?"

"Yeah, they're still busy."

"The first report indicated a few hundred rounds fired," she pointed out. "They need to collect all the slugs, and photograph all of the impacts, and generally just record a whole lot about a fight that big. DNA swabs from blood stains, all that nonsense."

Her eyes widened, her mouth turned dry.

"So," he said, "when do you think—"

"Peter, where did your blood land?"

"What?"

[[Peter's blood. Add this in later?]]

"Peter, you were shot, and the cops are collecting blood. Some of it's yours."

"Oh. Shit."

"Dammit!" Gwen snarled. "I should have thought of this earlier. It's already gonna be at the lab, or at least being packaged to ship out. This is way too late."

"Alright, we'll figure something out. We'll, I have no idea."

"No, I know what to do about this. Trust me. It's not something we can solve just yet."

"You're sure?" Peter's nervousness came through clearly.

"I'm sure. Look, just come by my room. Let's relax a bit."

"Relax?"

"Maybe."

Thursday was a schoolday like any other, which is to say Gwen largely ignored her teachers and focused on her work. It wasn't that she didn't care about her education, she just didn't find that it came from school very often. School was for most people, smart or not. Peter needed school, and he was way smarter than Gwen, by her honest estimation.

However smart he was, he was at his best with a little guidance. He didn't just grab a book and learn a thing on his own, and Gwen did. Teachers just felt superfluous to her.

Also, of late, school seemed less important than ever. She had the manifests she had requested. It wasn't precisely legal, but it wasn't precisely illegal either. It was one of those things that happened as a favor and wasn't prohibited, even though it obviously violated the spirit of the regulations. It took a while to find everything that had been off-loaded to that warehouse, and that assumed nobody had been playing with things—a serious concern, being as this was the Manfredi Crime Family.

There were quite a few things shipped there that night, and any of them could have been a cover for drugs. One stuck out, though. Roxxon Europe. It could have been entirely innocuous, if she hadn't bothered to actually look at the rest of the manifests. It wouldn't do to just glance at one warehouse without context, so she'd done a little research.

Roxxon was massive. Beyond massive. It had an entire complex of warehouses entirely its own. If it shipped something from its European facilities to its headquarters in New York, it would ship them through its own facilities. It had entire container ships dedicated to its shipments, yet there was one lone container shipped on an otherwise unremarkable cargo freighter and stored in a facility that happened to be the location for a serious gunfight. Something was inside that container.

She went back to her photos from earlier, looking at all the containers she could see. She did her best to enhance the numbers on all of the container doors, and could quickly discard most of them. One, depending on whether or not the last two numbers were sevens, might have been the Roxxon container. The door was open, so the shot only caught the numbers at an angle.

Probably the correct container, being as it was open and almost a perfect match. She mentally filed it as being the target of Manfredi's goons, and then it was time for the really important question: were the contents missing?

The report said nothing about theft. For that matter, it said nothing about breaking and entering.

Gwen spent the entirety of fifth period chewing on her pen. It was impossible to get any real work done during the lab portion of physics. Last year she'd been partnered with Peter, which meant the teacher let them do whatever they wanted. Peter had just been a geeky guy, then, if a little cute. She wondered what would have changed if she'd asked him out then.

At the least, working on the robotic arm would have been more fun. Less successful, perhaps, but certainly more fun. He could have—

"Miss Stacy."

Gwen looked up. "Yes?"

"Would you care to participate?"

She shrugged. "Sure, it's not like I've got much else going on right now."

"I don't appreciate your tone."

"Really? That's funny, because I got just for you." She picked up her bag in preparation

The teacher glared. "Miss Stacy, report to the prinicipal's office immediately."

"Sure thing. Later." She gave a quick wave to the class as she walked out, immediately pulling out her tablet to load up the files while she walked. The records listed warehouse owners. The warehouse in question was owned by Coordinated Holdings, Ltd.

"That's a fake front if I've ever seen one," Gwen muttered as she got to the principal's office.

"What was that?" the secretary asked.

"I said that I'm Gwen Stacy, here to be talked at by the principal."

"Again?"

She smiled. "Guess he likes me."

"This isn't a joke, Miss Stacy. Your parents will be called."

"Really? I'm pretty sure I was telling a joke," Gwen replied. "Also, you might want to check your records about whether that was supposed to be plural."

The secretary glared. They did not get along. "Take a seat. He'll be with you in a few minutes."

Gwen walked over to the row of chairs alongside the door, sitting down beside Tiny, who she knew well from detention and other instances of this particular situation. She gave him a fist-bump before sitting down and going back to her research. So, Manfredi—or someone associated with him—owned the warehouse. A shipment arrived, and while he was retrieving it, a vigilante interfered. Manfredi's men managed to get away with the goods. Therefore, the vigilante would next strike where that shipment had been moved to.

The vigilante who had shot her Peter in the shoulder. Gwen did not like people who shot Peter in the shoulder.

Once her father got the call from the principal, Gwen was grounded. Since she had to stay in her room, she had Peter swing her out the window and they went down to the docks together. He stopped atop a nearby warehouse, checking out the scene from a distance. It was probably a good precaution, the sort of thing a responsible superhero did, rather than just rushing in blindly.

"You have a clever plan to track this shipment down?" he asked.

"I do not. But that doesn't mean something won't come to me as we work. Let's get down there."

He scanned the area once more, but shook his head. "May as well. Uhm, I'm gonna lower you down, then split up. Not that I don't want to go with you, but I'm in uniform, so in case we get seen..."

"Yeah. Good idea. Or, you could change again. I do like it when you change."

"Later, Gwen, later."

He was bolder already, just having the outfit on. She gave him a quick kiss—weird feeling, with a layer of polyester in between. Next time, she'd pull it up before she kissed him.

He pulled her close for a second, then swung off the edge. A little yelp of surprise escaped, but he set her gently down before leaping away. On her own in a dark lot where a gunfight had happened only two nights earlier. No big deal. She suppressed a shiver and started exploring.

She checked her photos to look everywhere the cops had been looking, but it was all just bullet-marks, nothing useful for her. She made her way inside, towards the questionable container. Someone had closed it.

She sat down and fiddled with the lock, spending a few minutes getting the stiff tumblers to move, then opened it up and looked inside.

Empty.

She turned, walked back out. No traces in the vicinity, no traces in the container, no leads for her to follow. Except, there were always leads. Gwen had talked to her father more than a few times about his job. He skirted a lot of topics, but he was proud of his detective work, and damn good at it. Now, he had a team of detectives. He didn't get to work as many cases, but he still kept up with them, kept an eye out for leads others had missed. There were always leads, he insisted.

She began wandering through the warehouse, wondering what she was missing. They needed a truck to move whatever they'd taken, but there was no easy way to figure out which one. Any truck would do, and she had no pictures from the night of the firefight. Peter hadn't seen them unloading anything, had claimed the containers were all closed when he cleared out.

So, after Peter left, Manfredi's goons had driven the vigilante away, gotten a truck over there, loaded it up, and driven off. Gwen headed over to the forklift in the corner, a hunch starting to form. The manifest said there was one object inside. The name had clearly been fake, as was typical with some sorts of high-tech shipments, but it would still have been a single box inside the container. If it were just one box, it weighed a lot. The manifest listed it at 16120 kilos with the container, 14220 for the contents alone.

A search turned up the fact that forklifts have a clearly labelled plate that listed their weight capacity. The forklift in the warehouse was limited to 10000 kilos. Maybe they'd ignored that and just moved it anyway. Those 'maximum' limits always had some leeway.

Still, that was off by a lot. More likely they had a truck that was designed to load it, either an overhead crane or a bed that was hauled up by hydraulics. She went back to the container, shining a light on the ground out front. There was a hard groove in the ground, the point where a descending bed, not yet onto the truck but with all of those 14220 kilos on it, pressed into the concrete. So, that was the truck type, and where the truck had been.

She turned her light out and headed outside. Time to hope for luck. She called Peter. He confirmed that his wider search had turned nothing up, so he came back to get them swinging again. She gave directions to four different sites. They were every place she had been able to connect to the front-business that owned the warehouse.

The first turned out to be an office in a shared building with limited parking. No leads, there, although if the others didn't pan out they could always break in and hope the criminals kept meticulous records.

The second was another warehouse. Peter crawled along the windows and assured her there was nothing inside that matched the truck she had described.

The third location, far enough out that she suspected they were actually leaving the city, required them to abandon webbing their way between skyscrapers. Peter changed back, but insisted on keeping his outfit on underneath, which made it much less fun to watch. They took a bus to a nearby stop, then ran.

Well, Peter ran. She made it a hundred yards and gave up, so he carried her, piggy-back style. That was actually kinda fun, although it got scary when he turned off onto a path through the woods and didn't slow down. He was kicking off of trees, barely touching the ground, once doing a flip over a branch, all without dropping her or slowing down. He made it look easy.

She hugged a little tighter and gave a kiss to the back of his neck. No time for the evening she suddenly wanted to have, though. They had arrived, and they were in the right place. Up ahead was a truck of the type she'd been suspecting, parked alongside a low, concrete building. Just past the truck was a large, roll-up door.

"Is it just me, or does that look ominous?"

Peter stood tall. He swiftly undid his shirt. When he slipped his shoulders back, and shirt and jacket both slid to the ground. "It looks like an invitation to the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, to me."

She lunged forward, grabbing him and pulling in for a kiss, this one much deeper. After a few seconds, she backed off. "Alright, let's save that for later. Don't get shot, okay?"

"With that for later, how could I risk it?"

He pulled on his mask and began sprinting across the open ground, bent low in the high grass to keep out of sight. He moved so naturally out there, like he had always been meant to be a hero. It wasn't just some fluke of powers, she decided. The powers hadn't made him the sort of man who would rush headlong into danger just because he believed it was right, that confidence had always been in him.

She watched him a moment more, then took out her camera and started taking pictures. Seconds later, the shooting started. She twitched, but forced herself to keep her camera trained. The action was all indoors, but that didn't mean it would stay there.

A sudden staccatto screed of automatic weapons being fired, then quiet. The metal rollup clanged, as though it had been rammed by a truck. Light spilled from where one corner had been torn open.

She trained her camera there, ready for a photo. The wind carried Peter's voice to her, bellowing. "Seriously, how do you get these things? Is there a catalog?"

"Get offa me!" roared somebody with a voice that fair overwhelmed Peter's.

The rollup shredded, a massive gray bulk plowing through. She started snapping pictures, wishing that she could use a flash, or better yet, flood lights. The night was not kind to high-action photography. She could use a really high f-stop and a really sensitive film, but if she lowered the shutter speed it would turn into a blur. Her only hope was to take enough shots that a few of them worked out, which made her glad she'd filled her bag with rolls of film before they left. If any of the shots came through, they'd be spectacular.

The brute facing Peter was easily twelve feet tall in that massive, mechanical suit. The top of the suit, where the man's head stayed level with his shoulders, came to a point, as though it where some rhino, designed to ram through doors headfirst. Perhaps that was the design, as the door had ripped apart like newsprint rather than steel. Now, he was wheeling back towards Peter. He ducked a bit, as though bracing himself, and the suit opened up, revealing gun-mounts. Her heart climbed into her throat, but Gwen kept her camera snapping.

The two gatling guns began to spin, spitting fire towards the slight figure before the Rhino, but Peter just leapt towards them. He twisted strangely in the air, tugging himself about with two webs he'd shot wide. He passed the fire untouched, flipped over the brute's head, and jumped down behind. The brute fell, although Gwen couldn't see how he'd been tripped.

Peter jumped away, launching webs behind himself, then diving into the grass. The Rhino struggled to his feet, tearing at the webbing, and just as he got upright, Peter dove in. He rolled, planted himself on the side of the truck, and tugged.

The truck fell apart, and he came up with the entire, twenty-foot drive-shaft. On the end Peter held, the axle was still attached, one wheel dangling. The other end collided with his opponent, a clang ringing through the night air.

"Home run!" Peter yelled.

The Rhino started shooting, but Peter was already in the air, landing on top of his foe. He had the metal bar high, ready to swing down in a powerful strike. "And the crowd goes— Oh crap!"

Peter leapt, and the Rhino was engulfed in flame. There was a clang and the mechanical suit went to one knee, and then silence. Gwen got pictures of where the metal armor was damaged, a big gap in the armor on the left shoulder. Not indestructible by any means. Hopefully that shot developed.

Gunfire sounded, and Gwen spotted a flash from the other side of the drive, just at the edge of the treeline. She aimed her camera, homing in on the flashes, adjusting the zoom, and taking more pictures. Finally, she got the shooter fully in frame. A man, lying down behind a rifle, sighting through some big, ugly optic, shooting. When the muzzle flared, it illuminated a discarded rocket-tube, and an open case that had probably held the rifle.

Gunfire sounded from the Rhino again and the man rolled aside, the ground where he had lain spraying dirt. Rifle in hand, he ran deeper into the trees. Seconds later, another muzzle-flash shone from the darkness.

"Where are you!" roared the man in the mechanical armor.

"Well, I'm right here," Peter replied.

Gwen spun, just in time to see him take another swing with the drive shaft. This time, he hit the back of the Rhino's knees and toppled it. Lying on its back, the Rhino bellowed and thrashed, ripping up concrete with each swing of his arms.

Another gunshot, and Peter leapt aside.

Gwen spun back that way, refocusing the camera on—

"Shit, he's gone," Gwen said, then silenced herself, glad the thrashing mechanical suit was making such a ruckus.

She scanned the area for the other gunman, but couldn't find him. Then, he just walked out of the treeline.

Peter scooped back up his driveshaft and glanced at the Rhino. "If you stop struggling, I won't hit you again."

The Rhino kept struggling. Peter raised the bar high, and when the brought it down one of the Rhino's arms stopped moving.

"See," Peter explained, "you have these huge actuators in your joints, and if they get dented, they bind up. So, you can stop thrashing, or I can keep breaking your actuators." The Rhino stopped struggling.

The gunman came closer, stopping several paces from Peter. Gwen swapped film as swiftly as she could manage, then resumed her picture-taking. The man was a touch taller than Peter, with a hard-edged, unshaven jaw. His scowl looked permanent. He was laden with weapons, grenades and handguns, but the rifle was the only weapon in-hand.

"I see that we're allies in this," he said.

"Allies?" Peter pointed at his shoulder. "You shot me. Have you ever been shot? What am I talking about, of course you've been shot. Just look at you, you probably get shot for fun on the weekends."

The man shook his head. "Are you going to finish him, or should I?"

From behind his back, the man produced a white block, about the size of a brick. Peter stayed still, staring blankly. "Is that C4?"

"Yes."

"You're going to kill him."

"Yes."

Peter shook his head. "Yeah, uh, no. See, he's defenseless. Well, I mean, he has some guns and a semi-functional mechanical suit of armor, but defenseless against us. It's over."

"If you let him live," the man said, "he'll just do this again. They'll give him a trial, give him maybe a few years in prison, and let him go again. If you let him live, you've accomplished nothing."

Peter drew himself up. "If I let him die, I've accomplished nothing. This world doesn't need anymore death. It needs second chances."

"He'll waste his."

"I don't—"

Gunfire sounded. Gwen stared, open-mouthed. She hadn't even seen the man move, but the rifle was pointed at Peter, muzzle smoking. Peter shrugged. "See how you missed me?"

"But—"

This time, it was Peter who interrupted, a spray of webbing coming at the gunman. He dove aside, and Peter gave chase. Suddenly, they were swinging at each other. Gwen didn't get it. Peter was so strong, he could have tossed the guy with ease, but instead he was just fighting like they were equals. It made no sense. The man tripped Peter.

Gwen expected him to leap up, but he just lay there, hands casually linked behing his head, looking up at his enemy.

"So," Peter asked, "this is what it comes to. Do you fire, do you slay a man who is innocent, or do you let him live, and back away from the path you have chosen?"

"You are not innocent. By your mercy, you aid them, you aid the enemies of mankind."

"They are mankind."

The man glared down at Peter. "Not anymore. They've made themselves less. And you've chosen to join them."

There was a burst of sound, a scream, and Gwen gave a little cry herself, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. And then Peter stood up. Her fear turned to confusion. The gunman had fallen, the gunman was screaming.

"Funny how a barrel filled with webbing doesn't work so well. Sometimes the choice is between doing the right thing and failing entirely. Shame about the choice you made."

Gwen remembered to take more pictures, and caught the entire sequence of Peter webbing the gunman to the wall, then got good pictures of him dismantling the suit and webbing that man up alongside. He dug through both of their pockets until he came up with a phone, and he called the police.

Once they were blinded, he joined Gwen, to wait for the police together. She pulled his mask up a bit, and kissed him again, properly.

"I've never seen you like that before."

"What, out there fighting?" He glanced at the smoldering wreck of the truck, at the twisted mess of the mechanical suit, at the damaged wall of the building. "You've seen me fight dozens of men. You took pictures of it."

"It was always in the city, with so much else going on. I couldn't hear it. You're so calm out there, snapping jokes, just laughing it off."

"Me? Calm?" Peter laughed. "Oh no. I'm not calm. But once it all starts up, the adrenaline pumping, once I know it's going to happen, I guess I just have to joke around a bit. It's crazy in there, and if I didn't have some humor, I think I'd lose it. Joking around's the only thing that keeps me calm. Also, it throws them off. They're all like, 'Huh? Is he a comedian? Have I seen him on TV?'"

She laughed. "It's really like you're a different person, once you put the suit on."

"Is that... weird?"

"Weird?" Gwen grinned. "It's great. It's like I get to date two people at once, and neither minds. I've got this smart, considerate guy back home that is always making sure I'm alright, and I've got this badass muscular athlete out in the city who is always saving the day. It's way more fun this way."

Peter wrapped his arms around her, pulled her against him, and kissed her again. "Let's go back to your place."

Gwen pulled away a bit. "Hey, don't get too excited, or I won't be able to wait until we leave. The cops aren't even here yet."

"I have supernatural hearing. There are sirens on the road. Now, can we go back to your place?"

"Actually, I don't think that's where I want to go," Gwen said.

"Oh, and where do you want to go?"

"I want to go to the top of One World Trade Center."

He quirked an eyebrow, a motion oddly conveyed through his mask.

"Keep the outfit, and bring some blankets."

He didn't ask, he just scooped her up and started running. They didn't make it all the way there in one go, but they did finish the night there.