Chapter 2: Homefront

It's been a pretty slow and quiet weekend for Gwen. It mostly entailed her stopping street level crime. Knocked some teeth out of muggers, webbed some purse-snatchers to the ground by their faces, et cetera. Homework was done on time and her participation in class is presently adequate. Her friends weren't in any need of help presently, and were in fact doing well. Peni and SP/dr were back in the game like the collider incident never happened, Peter B was getting along well with his Em Jay, and Miles's standing with the police and his New York was going good.

"Hey, Gwen."

Gwen placed the newly-purchased bag of beef jerky at the top shelf of her locker by the time she heard Em Jay greet her.

"Hey, Em Jay." She turned and towards politely smiled at her former best friend and bandmate. "What's up?"

"Well I just wanted to ask if you've got any plans Friday night. Do you?"

"No, not really, same old, same old." Which normally consisted of her stopping crime and avoiding getting turned into swiss cheese, or doing so in other dimensions.

"Well I wanted to see if you wanted to come to this." Em Jay showed two things to Gwen. One was on Em Jay's phone, a post on Sally Avril's twitter, announcing that the Mary Janes will play at her birthday party (which Gwen of course never bothered remembering the date of). The other was a small paper card, a pink and colorful little thing with the words 'YOU'RE INVITED' in purple, and the date and time of the event in question is, of course, Friday night. Two days from now to be exact.

"Sally Avril gave you a gig at her birthday party?" Gwen asked looking at the photo.

"Yeah, and her family's paying well too."

"That's great." Gwen complimented, then her attention turned to the invitation. "And Sally knows you're handing me this invite to her party with her consent?"

"She does Gwen." Em Jay's smile faltered a little when Gwen pointed this out.

Gwen sighed. "You know how I feel about her Em Jay. Her and her friends." Gwen deadpanned.

As Spider-Woman, Gwen learned pretty early on in her adventures that the crooks and villains she takes down aren't born evil, they're made. Victims of circumstance or products of the environment or the people that directly influenced and corrupted them.

But with those bullies, they were just awful. Sally Avril, Liz Allan, Eugene 'Flash' Thompson, Kenny 'Kong' Macfarlane. They were probably the four Gwen loathed the most out of the entire collective. They're privileged, indulgent, undisciplined and had full sets of parents who loved them, and often had the incomes to back their children's desires on a whim. The world was practically on a platter for them, and they celebrated it almost every day at other people's physical and emotional expense.

Sadly this wasn't the kind of evil she could just pummel, web up, and leave for the police. That mess was just a bunch of pissy little kids who couldn't outgrow their badly skewed ideas of fun, and not realizing there would be a point of no return one way or the other.

Truth be told she never had to interact much with any of Peter's bullies since he died, which Gwen was thankful for. That time she punched one of them certainly saw to that, not that she was complaining. But Gwen had also suspected that they left her alone out of respect for Peter, but she didn't think too much on it. Pity from them? Gross.

"You really don't have to exactly talk to any of them you know. You can hang out with us during breaks." 'Us' meaning the band. "Come on, for old time's sake. It'll be fun."

"Don't most birthday people generally want to be surrounded by people who have positive feelings towards them?"

"She's inviting you on the band's behalf, and she does feel bad about Peter."

"And all Pete had to do was die for her to actually feel any kind of remorse. Bravo to her." Gwen said sarcastically, ignoring the stares she drew from a few nearby students.

"They didn't kill Peter, Gwen." Em Jay apparently felt a bit ballsy in that instance when she spoke that.

"Yeah..." Gwen muttered, then her mind took her back in time, to a memory where she saw Sally laughing cruelly at Peter getting roughed up by Flash and a couple other jocks. "But they certainly helped."

Em Jay seemed to be disheartened by the heaviness in Gwen's voice, then tried to bring up other things related to this party "This is also a good chance to see us play; critique us in a live performance. You get to meet Randy too."

"'Randy'? This new drummer I've been hearing about? Are you trying to set me up on a date or something?"

"Oh no." Em Jay asked. "And he's actually gay by the way. Anyway, I'm not forcing you to go or anything. Like I said it'd be nice to hang out again."

"I could go to your rehearsals, you need only ask."

"Pfft, yeah because you did that so well when you were actually in the band." Em Jay snorted. Gwen chuckled, she had her there. "In all seriousness though, Gwen. The Mary Janes would really like your input on the performance at the party, but at the end of the day I am asking you to come, not forcing. "

Gwen sighed at that then contemplated her next words carefully.

Maybe she should be taking it easy and start by enjoying herself at this party, which can be accomplished by generally interacting with anyone that wasn't a former bully of Peter. She's been going overtime as Spider-Woman and if she doesn't mix things up differently, her father might suspect something. She's been making up lies about where she's been to him, and he may one day be tempted to ask for proof. Clearly she's got an opportunity here to reinforce her credibility to him. She'll show off her invitation to her father and ask him to take her to the party personally as she had yet to get her permit.

On the other hand she's still Spider-Woman, and she vowed to put aside friendships in the interests of avoiding distraction, all in the interest of saving others and clearing her name. Obviously her relationships with the other Spider-People had shown her hypocrisy when it came to friendships, but they were all bonded in a way uniquely precious to them. Is it even fair that she's comparing the Spider-People to her former band? Also, Gwen left the band because she thought they'd be better off without her and her tardiness. She'd been struggling to make ends meet between Spider-Woman and Mary Janes, and tensions were escalating because of it, which was part of the reason she had left. She hadn't exactly been talking with them in a while since she left either, would they even want her back after all this time?

Then it hit Gwen.

Did Em Jay want Gwen to go see them at this party to see how they're doing? Did she really leave the band twisting in the wind all this time or is Em Jay genuinely trying to make her jealous? Gwen distanced herself from them after all, so she didn't know what was going on right now and she highly doubted any of the Mary Janes would admit anything to her, least of all Em Jay, being the most prideful of the bunch. Gwen knew she didn't really have to wait until Friday to find out though. She can just sneak into the band hall the Mary Janes rented out for practice and watch the rehearsal from afar. She'll get a feel for the demeanor around there and act on it if necessary.

With her decision having been made, Gwen turned to Em Jay's awaiting stare. "I'll be there if I can."

"Glad to hear it. See you then?"

"Yeah..."

As Gwen watched Em Jay's retreating form disappear down the hall, she began formulating plans on how to spy on the rehearsal. If the Mary Janes still scheduled band practice in the way Gwen remembers them, she can spy on them as soon as today if there's nothing crazy going on between then and now.

["So we got no leads thus far?"] Nick Fury asked disgruntled over the transmission.

Nick was transmitting to the Avengers Tower from his office in the helicarrier. It's been two days into the data hunt for Spider-Woman and thus far they hadn't come up with something significant. However, things do tend to change over time.

"No, Spider-Woman's good at obscuring herself. We're going to have to confront her directly in order to get to her. But we did find one thing in the police archives that stood out." Natasha said as she began uploading data.

The feed of Nick's transmission shrunk on the monitor and was pushed to an upper corner, and in the space it previously occupied scans of files had been opened for everyone to see.

"'Doctor Curtis Connors.'" Natasha began reading out loud. "Graduated summa cum laude at Empire State University, renowned biologist and biochemist, and worked at Midtown High School as a teacher. No next of kin and few close associates. He was reported missing shortly after the day that the Lizard monster attacked and Peter Parker died."

Nick suddenly paused.

["Curtis Connors..."] A look of familiarity, that none of the Avengers missed, shown in Nick's good eye. ["And he worked at the school that Parker kid went into?"] Nick asked.

"Am I wrong in getting the feeling you know of Doctor Connors, Nick?" Tony chided.

["I have, actually. He was considered for recruitment to S.H.I.E.L.D. at some point in the past, but he failed to meet some certain criteria."]

"What sort of criteria?" Steve asked with a raised brow.

["To simplify all that psychiatrist mumbo jumbo that I vaguely remember; Curtis Connors was a bit of a coward, and he displayed some level of obsessiveness with his own agendas without much care for anyone else. In other words; bad for unit cohesion."] Nick explained, then he went back turning his attention to Natasha. ["How long ago was his missing person's report filed?"]

"About fifteen hours after the Lizard's attack. But there's another thing, his name was struck off the database itself not too long after."

["What?"]

"His name was removed from the database just a couple days after it's been posted."

["And no one in the NYPD was any wiser?"]

"No, sir. In fact there was no evidence that it was done from any police accessible terminal. Just a defunct IP address that was supposedly done in Bangladesh."

["That shouldn't be possible."]

"Theoretically anyway." Stark interjected. But everyone ignored him.

["This can't be a coincidence. Did you reach out to Midtown High School and ask for Doctor Connors' employment files?"]

"We tried, but the files were marked confidential." Natasha informed. "Not even Tony was able to hack them."

["Tony Stark couldn't breach a school district's potato cyber-security?"]

"Yeah feel free to laugh it up Nick." Tony bit out. "But in all seriousness though. It was as if someone changed the entire layout of the school's cyber-security software and went out of their way to tailor it to be exactly like the old one. Then managed to find out the login information on everyone and only made Connors' files inaccessible."

["So whoever really locked down those files might have had something to do with Doctor Connors disappearing. Someone or something their went out of there way to make the doctor disappear, and they had the resources to do it."]

"And you also think that this hypothetical group is somehow tied in with Peter Parker and Spider-Woman?" Steve asked.

["Yeah. See whoever else you can get on board. I want Spider-Woman brought into the Avengers Tower as soon as possible. If she refuses, restrain her."]

The Bodega Bandit was just about as intimidating as one would expect from a superhero stance.

He was a scrawny and thin man of average stature, with brown hair and brown eyes and was almost always seen dressed like a burglar from a fifties cartoon. He had the fedora, the mask, and even the striped shirt. Admittedly Gwen didn't really know his real name. 'Bodega Bandit' has always seemed to be his name anyway. From what she could gather he's a homeless man living in a dumpster with a pet bulldog he affectionately named 'Bandito', who also accompanies him in his crimes even though the dog wasn't exactly bred for for him. Like his owner, Bandito also has a mask and hat.

The Bodega Bandit, overall, is more of a nuisance than anything, and because of how much of a minor threat he was, the Bodega Bandit was never kept very long in jail. He styles himself as Spider-Woman's arch-nemesis (which he really isn't) and uses cap guns to stage his robberies and almost always stole snacks along with money.

Spider-Woman's been stopping him more times than anyone can care to remember, and in most of those encounters ended with her throwing him into the closest dumpster within the immediate vicinity.

Today was good day for the Bodega Bandit. though.

There was no Spider-Woman in site to stop him from robbing the store he was in, Bandito was enjoying the corn dog given to him, and the cashier was just moping about the familiarity of the situation. His arms were raised thanks to him being fooled into thinking the Bandit's new and painted cap gun was a real one.

"Bodega Bandit, you are the worst..."

"Don't I know it." The Bandit just smirked cruelly.

What the two didn't see however, was Bandito running out of the store with his treat.

The small dog didn't even make it one foot past an alley on the side of the store, where a massive and imposing figure leapt from the shadows an towards Bandito. Its eyes bloodthirsty and red, and its claws and maw lined with razor-sharp teeth ready to rend and tear the small dog to pieces.

A/N

Hello again. Please feel free to review, I'm welcome to criticism. Sorry the chapter wasn't as long as I would've liked. But I'm still contemplating how this story will play out. I'm taking elements heavily from the Spider-Gwen comics and I highly encourage you all to take some time to read them if you're able.

So I wanted to put input for non-comic readers. The Bodega Bandit is a joke-villain Spider-Gwen regularly stops in the comics. And was mentioned in the show Jessica Jones, second episode of the third season if I remember correctly.

Anyways, see you next time everyone. BTW. I'm contemplating adding citations to this story. Something like the fanfic Spider-Network had. Another great read you can find here and a joy for all Spider-Man fans.

A/N