Autonomy Part 4

"You alright back there?"

Jessica looked up to just in time to meet the taxi driver's eyes. She looked away quickly. "Fine, fine," she said, not really wanting believing it herself. "I'm fine."

She must have done a good job. The driver seemed to buy it. His accent sounded like a mix of Texan and Jersey as he said, "Right. Just asking. Not every day you get a girl calling you to drive her into Houston of all places."

"It was a bit out of we-" she stopped herself. "Walking range from Baytown." That wasn't true. For her. Her method of walking would have attracted too much attention though since it wasn't walking at all.

"You from Baytown?"

Jessica watched as they began to roll across a bridge. She could see the city in the distance. The sight made her stop breathing for a few seconds before she realized it. "Huh?"

"Baytown, you from there?"

"N-No, no I'm…" she shook her head to stop staring at the buildings in the distance. There was something about them, something about getting so close to them. "I'm from… all over. Was there for a bit. Working, you know."

"Girl your age shouldn't be working. Got a little girl your age. Should be out enjoying life, going to college, finding yourself, all that millennial hutzpah."

She smiled a bit. "Just wasn't uh… wasn't for me. Things were getting crazy, had to get away from my… family for a bit," she said, trying not to cringe.

She watched as the driver nodded in understanding. "Gotcha. Teen angst, what a bitch."

Jessica sighed. "Not exactly."

She glanced out the window to watch them drive just past the port and rolled down the window. The Houston air was hot, humid, and downright un-New Yorker this early in the morning, but she was too. She blamed Peter. It was just past ten, her watch said, and she spent an extra hour in bed because of him. Her hands sat rigidly on either side of her thighs, carefully away from between her legs, and she looked at the bulge of her wallet – her only bulge in that area. She thought of Peter again.

"Oh man," she muttered to herself trying to calm down. It had the opposite effect. Her mind was just as good as Peter's at doing mental acrobatics and coming up with something to say. It paired 'man' with 'Spider-Man' to 'Peter'. She did hope he was doing alright, what with the clones… their 'sibling's' deaths, Aunt May, and there had been the thing with Shield, and the chimera…

"The chimera," she whispered. "Oh, man…"

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

She changed her view before she started to work herself into a frenzy of worry for him. It wouldn't have been the first time. She took a deep breath of air. Manhattan air never smelled as clean as this. Houston. This was it. This was her new start. Away from everything. From the chimera. From Peter.

'And the award for sister of the year does not go to…'

It was a little silly she had to be so far away from Manhattan to feel comfortable but it was better this way. This was the only way. She needed to be as far away as possible but Baytown had been too quiet, and Houston was just supposed to be a pass-through to Mexico. Now though…

'Mexico… still an option I guess,' she thought. 'The farther away the better.'

She opened her eyes and almost missed it, but she managed to see them anyway. Beneath the bridge, down at the port she saw the small flecks of people between the storage containers. Men in blue. The cops. And the gray mats laid out in order like dominoes. Bodies in blue and bodies in bags. Her mouth opened in horror.

The cab kept driving, the scene got smaller as it went further away, further into Houston where she was supposed to feel better. Now she had a lead weight in her stomach. She managed to catch a glimpse of a man climbing onto the storage containers. The cops noticed him and then…fire. Flames erupted everywhere just as the cab drove out of sight.

The driver jumped as a loud explosion erupted went off and Jessica felt her eardrums pop, either from the sound of the explosion or from the driver shouting, "The hell was that?"

Another explosion, loud enough to shake the car and her teeth, went off with the sound of gunfire and screams beneath the bridge. Jessica grit her teeth and made a snap decision. She was moving already and ducked down, removing her shirt until she remembered where and who she was. "Guy shooting fire," she said tersely. "Killing cops. Stop the car," she added.

"What?" he exclaimed.

"Stop the car!"

From the rearview the driver gave that look that she thought only Manhattanite cabbies could give. The cab began to speed up. "This ain't New York lady Houston don't got no Spider-Man to come swoopin' down!"

Jessica stopped for a second. He had a point. She didn't know if she wanted to groan or laugh.

Rolling down the window, she dug through her wallet and spilled most of the contents onto the backseat before standing. "Thanks for the ride," she said, and jumped from the window of the car.

There was fire everywhere and Jessica was almost positive that it had something to do with the guy who was shooting fire from his hands. She wasn't totally sure since the fire looked more like… serpents. It was rude to assume. If she were being assumed for a guy who shot fire from his hands instead of a guy who shot webs from his wrists, she'd be downright offended. The difference between them was minimal and was and wasn't between her legs. She wasn't Johnny Storm's long-lost transgender sister like tall, Mexican, and flaming-ugly over there.

It had been a while since she had done this sort of thing. Busting up small time thugs along the east coast on her way to wherever, that turned out to be Houston, was one thing. Not once had she tangled with some psycho hopped up on their own super-power. New York seemed to have an almost undisputed monopoly on those types.

She doubted herself. Jessica was used to seeing Peter doubt himself like she was forced to watch it and wonder why. Now that she was faced with the reality that it would be her first bust up since Octavius, since not having Peter with her, she felt it all settle into her stomach. Wasn't nice.

She heard her heartbeat between her ears as she fell, jumping over the railing of the- freeway, highway, was and over the open water. Her hand snatched her mask from her pants because her pockets were too small to hold it, and her natural dexterity was there to rip off her shirt and reveal the scarlet spider suit underneath, like a dime store Superman that didn't know how to fly. Or in her case… Supergirl.

She saw the world in slow motion, was fast, but gravity was the great equalizer of everything. Unless you could fly. Jessica really wished she could fly, or glide, like baby spiders could. Instead she fired twin, thin weblines from her fingertips and yanked her mask on haphazardly. She pulled hard and zipped straight into the action, landing on a storage container to the pyro's left just when he was about to turn one of the boys in blue into a pigroast. There went her window for getting her clothes off.

She knew how that sounded and cupped her hands over her mouth. "Hey, flamebrain!" She yelled, catching his attention. His fist was clenched and covered in flame but he didn't care, and that was not a good sign for her. Then, the flame shrunk so it barely covered his knuckles.

He turned to face her, looking… more confused than her pride was comfortable with. "What are you supposed to be?" He asked in thickly accented English.

Mexico, she realized with a slight 'ah'. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to go there. Who knew what other kind of nutzo's they had?

"I'm the gu- ah," she took a look at herself and deflated a little. This was not going to be as easy as she first thought it would.

From the edge of her view she saw the bodies, and not just the ones in bags. Jessica swallowed and her eyes narrowed. Her legs were unsteady, It had been a while since she was in a fire-fight but if there was ever a time for it of course she wouldn't expect it. Those poor people certainly hadn't.

"I'm the girl that's about to rain on your flaming parade," she said and was surprised at how bad ass that sounded.

His eyes widened. Jessica followed them to her chest. Well. At least someone thought she had something worth looking at up there. "Escarlata Arana…" Pyro whispered. He grinned. Her spider-sense went off a second later. "I always wanted to fight a superhero…"

Then she was almost on fire.

Jessica's spider-sense blared and she bent back at a ninety degree angle to avoid a stray gout of fire headed for her face. She acted on instinct and zipped at the most immediate threat: the big guy with the blue hoodie, dark hair and tattoos everywhere that thought she had a reputation for entertaining people like him, or maybe he was just that desperate. She was a walking nobody-special and that was all the action he was going to get.

A special menu item that included slamming into him hard enough to make a linebacker curl on the ground like a little baby and cry for his madre. Jessica's shoulder rammed into him, straight in the chest, and managed to flip over and away just before the gunfire started.

A haze of heat ballooned outward and her mouth was suddenly dry. Her hair felt dry and… Jessica looking to her long brown locks and screeched as the edges were lit by small fire.. "Man!"

The gunfire continued without effects. Cops, she realized. They were all around her. She hadn't gotten a chance to get completely change, her jeans were still on over her costume, her shirt barely on while she jumped around in a skin-tight suit, but it probably said something about Houston that a sizeable portion of the HPD was focused on shooting the hot guy on center stage. Jessica was playing this by ear without a real idea of what she was doing. Just like Peter did in Queens. She hoped it went better than that.

The officers darted to cover and screams were everywhere. Jessica watched the bodybags begin to warp and melt over the corpses inside of them. Her stomach turned. Of the cops, some were snuffing out fires of their own and some just… were barely moving. She charged again, right into the thick of it and broke out into a full body sweat with three layers of clothing on, It was so hot she could barely breathe as she rammed into the pyro like a linebacker on steroids.

Her spider-sense blared. She moved by instinct and pure, unadulterated desire to not be a sundry alive as the guy reeled back a bit. His attention was on her now. Too steady to be a normal person. Too tough. Normal people didn't shoot fire from their hands either. 'Good conclusion, Drew!'

Coiled snake shaped streams of fire erupted from his hands and shot at her. They swirled in arcs too unnatural to be anything but unnatural and Jessica did her best to swerve through them, jumping through rings of fire like that video of the Johnny Blaze guy Peter watched once. She landed over the pyro in a backflip, her legs wide and tense.

She was going to easy. He was still standing. She hit him like a roided up linebacker and he took it like a roided up linebacker. Mexico. She made a mental note to stay out of there. He was grinning too. That was bad.

She swallowed and crouched. The air around him was visibly warped and the storage container he was on was melting. If she needed another bad sign she hadn't asked for that was it.

Another sign, her spider-sense started to go off again. "Oh crap."

More fire-snakes lanced at her. Jessica darted into the air barely above them, leaving a fading kick across the pyro's face that would have left a normal human knocked out cold. His head snapped to the side but normal human's didn't shoot fire. Snakes. A small bruise was quick to form on his chin and his gin got wider. She really was out of practice.

Fire collected around his hands, and as if that wasn't crappy enough, his eyes started to glow red. If that wasn't crappy enough, the smallest points of it were too close to blue to be comfortable. Johnny Storm, from what she could remember, couldn't concentrate fire like that. This guy was a walking stove-top lighter.

'Crap'.

Jessica did the only thing she could do. Then the gunfire started again, a salvo of bullets that made her stop or become a pincushion. She watched as the police fired from a distance and the bullets simply melted before they could touch him. It was nice to know for once police weren't shooting at her or her twin.

She did the second thing she could do. Buy time for the police and information for her. She crossed her arms, waved, and doffed an imaginary hat, feeling stupid as all hell while she did it.

"Well, I think we got off on the wrong foot Mr…" She trailed off, waiting for a name that wouldn't come. "My name is- well, anyway, I uh… like your hoodie? Blue, that's nice, very distinctive. I was thinking about getting a blue hoodie but, obviously, it's taken, so- whoa!"

A dart shaped projectile of fire burned the air by her head,. He definitely wasn't the type for small talk. Another small flame flicked into existence on the tips of his first two fingers much like webbing from her own spinnerets. Kind of uncomfortable looking.

"I always wanted to fight a superhero," he grinned showing off crooked, badly formed teeth. "But you're a waste of my time, imitación."

"Rude! I'm totally a superhero! It's just that- the market isn't really right this time of year. But I have always wanted to meet someone with…" she leaned forward, as if that would help her see him better despite the fact that there was a good twenty yard distance between them. "..Gecko face paint?"

"Axolotl!"

'Salamander,' Jessica thought. "Gesundheit- eep!" She ducked to the side as a ball of flame sailed past her, the brief movement allowing her to see the retreat of the police officers. She kind of wanted to follow them.

"You pathetic, ignorant American! Imitación! La arana panocha!"

"Rude language is immediate grounds for a verbal warning! And sexual harassment!"

So, he had something against people who didn't understand his culture. Jessica didn't judge. She did take offense at being called an ear of corn spider. "No habla es Americano amigo?" she shouted and cartwheeled to the side to avoid another fire-snake. It looked more like a basilisk. "Dude! It's totes fine, I'm cool! You're cool! We're cool!" She ducked. "Okay, we're not cool! But don't push your overwhelming hot, sweaty man-love onto me! I have enough of my own to deal with!"

A wall of fire pushed out at her. Thinking quickly, Jessica flipped back and ducked behind the container she stood on, cringing as a fireball slammed into it and spread around the metal. The metal was superheated but fortunately not enough to reach her. She heard it groan as it began to cool almost instantly.

The air was hazy and dry everywhere. He burned every speck of water out and she was feeling it. Her mouth was drying quickly and sweat was soaking her all around. Her jeans were a heat trap and her suit a punishment. Why couldn't she get arid, Houston air without the flaming homosexual trying to kill her? And the innocent police officers too.

"Dude!" She screamed. "America is the land of the free and home of the-" another ball of fire interrupted her. "Not cool!"

It was like he was beginning to enjoy it. The next volley came at a speed like he was playing catch instead of trying to burn her alive. If he started to sing 'fried bit of spider' in Spanish she was going to lose it.

Jessica ducked another container once more and dipped to the side. Out of sight, she scanned for something heavy to throw, and anything but the containers themselves would have sufficed. She could lift one, she knew she could… hoped she could, but wasn't about to chance it.

All she found was a shopping cart. A fucking shopping cart. "Fuck… my life."

With a flick of her fingertips, webbing erupted from her fingertip spinnerets that just had to be a big, fat dick in mother nature's mouth. Her day had taken a turn and she wanted to be back I bed, fantasizing about Peter's big, fat dick in her mouth but she couldn't remember the last time she got what she wanted. She grimaced. The heat wasn't helping her and the full body outdoor sauna made it hard to think while she just wanted to get naked.

She yanked the cart to her. It was better than wood, and much better than pelting Pyro with spit balls because that's what her webs would probably be to him. She reserved that for last. She could use the cart like a gigantic yoyo, knock him off his guard. If all else failed maybe hawk spitting him would snuff him out.

Acting quickly she wrapped the entire thing in webbing and left a long webline from it like a fishing pole. She took a deep breath, positive that she wasn't going to end the day without a blister or two, and dove into she dove from cover to cover in a serviceable imitation of bullet timing that was still pretty awesome to her.

The cart came with her and in mid-air she lobbed it at the flamboyant rave dancer's wet dream with slightly more of her strength. "Fine, so you don't want to meet in the middle. Do you like puns? You know why you're big, hard to look at, and on fire? You're Burning, Man!"

It hit harder than she expected and sent him flying. Jessica yanked it back like a yoyo, catching it soundly in her hand. The Burning Man, sailed back into the chainlink fence that surrounded the docks and tumbled to the ground. "La panocha that El Homo Simpson!" She shouted in badly accented English.

The cart, though… She looked at the cart in surprise. The webbing caught fire but hadn't diminished in the slightest even as the fire tried to eat away at it. She needed something to get in close after seeing what happened to the bullets. Her webbing was that something. It was fire-retardant! She was going to cover him in her sticky stuff.

It wasn't the kinkiest thought to go through her mind in the last day, but it was the first one centered around anyone but Peter.

The Burning Man wasn't down for long. Jessica was moved quickly. She had done some damage and thrown him for a loop, and save for getting in close and putting him to sleep like a big, flaming… whatever the Spanish word for dog was, El Barko, maybe. This was her only shot at kissing El Homo with her fists. Real damage.

His powers obviously differed from the Human Torch's, but fire had a universal weakness. Even if it didn't the steam when the two met would be a good cover. She leapt up and surveyed the area. No hydrants, no hoses. Not even a cup of coffee from the cops. Nothing. She'd have to improvise… but how?

'Hawk spit,' Jessica felt like slapping herself. She was at the port! 'Spit. Water!'

Leaping away to cover, when she touched the ground she ripped open a hole in the webbing. It took some effort, was more durable than she expected, even for her. She had to claw and tear at it to get enough of a hole done. The cart now an oblong container, and while it wasn't exactly what she needed, it was all she had.

Jessica looked at the dirty, dingy, unhygienic water. Suspicious water. 'Crap.' She dove in and made a note to write to the local congressman about cleaning up the docks.

She came up when the sac was full and she was extremely soaked, leapt from the water holding the cart by the headsized opening she'd torn in it and covered it with more webbing.

It wasn't a good plan. She doubted it would work. The cart wasn't for him, it was for her, like the biggest container of questionable lubricant ever. Aside from webbing her hair up and giving herself webbing-boxing gloves and slippers over her melted shoes it was all she had. Her underwear was soaked, not even in the fun, extremely shameful masturbatory way she was used to by now and her pants were dripping in the same un-fun way.

And her wallet was still on her. Jessica was afraid to dig into her pants and see the soaked, last few bills she had to her name. 'Shit.'

She leapt to the storage container the Flaming Gecko had been on. It was almost completely sunken in from his weight and the heat. It got worse. He was gone. That didn't improve her mood. "Shit."

She was out of dry money and soaked with dingy port water. She was as sexually frustrated as a teenager is supposed to be and wanted to fuck her brother. And she let the bad guy get away. "Shit!"

She was fucked. Now all that was left was to take her frustrations out the man who flamed so hard he would probably turn the burning man festival into one big gay pride parade. At least before she was on the street begging for nickels.

She should have stayed in Baytown. What could possibly be for her in Houston that could justify this?