Night started to fall. Flash and Gwen parted ways. She felt bad he was going home to his abusive father, but there was nothing she could do without possibly getting arrested or outing herself. She plopped down on the couch feeling quite morbid about the whole subject. Erica noticed and sat beside her.

"I know… I know I'm not your parent, but do you need to talk?"

Gwen rubbed her face with her hands.

"Can you… talk as my future stepmother and not as a cop?"

Erica leaned forward elbows on her knees.

"That's hard. You know I'm a mandatory reporter. So, I can't not report something where minors are involved."

Gwen nodded.

"Let's talk in uh, possible scenarios then, hypothetically, okay?"

Erica nodded.

"Okay, so let's say I have this friend, her father gets drunk, and he hits her sometimes. It's not all the time he just gets angry…"

Erica frowned.

"That's domestic abuse. If I knew this was happening to her, I'd have to report it to CPS and file a police report. Then I'd likely need to arrest her father."

Erica had a very serious look on her face.

"Is you dad hitting you Gwen?"

Gwen looked at Erica like she was crazy.

"No! No. He's never laid a hand on me. I'm just wondering how I can help my friend; You know if that situation was occurring, and her father was the only one with an income in the house."

"Well, if your friend was going through that you should tell an adult so your friend and her other parent could get somewhere safe. If you know it was happening."

"Well, what if say, I were to beat up her father. You know, tell him to stop or else then curb stomp him a few times. What would I be charged with?"

"Well, if you were to do something like that, depends on how injured they were and if they started the fight. How much danger you felt you were in. Like say if I were to run into him and he were to get physical and I had to defend myself, that would be self-defense. But if I just tracked him down and beat him to a pulp, could be simple assault all the way up to attempted murder. If such a thing were to happen. I mean but, you're not a big girl, so, if you were thinking of that, you should definitely not do anything like that, hypothetically speaking of course."

Gwen nodded. She looked around.

"Where's my dad?"

"Well, he forgot to shop for presents for you. Apparently, your mother used to do all of that. He asked me to, and I told him to get off his ass and be a father for once. So just you and me for now."

Gwen smiled at Erica. Erica motioned at Gwen's hair.

"I am worried about you Gwen. Sudden changes like that. The dramatic change in personality in the last month or so. The hypothetical conversation about your friend. Is someone hurting you? Touching you? Did something happen while you were at work?"

Gwen shook her head.

"Look Erica. I'm fine. I just. I just got upset when I found out about you and dad. When he freaked out at me for making out with Flash. I just… I'm just adjusting to life without my mom. Then something happened last month to bring it all back. I wasn't angry when she died, but it's been five months, no arrests, no new leads. I'm getting really pissed off that whoever did it is going to get away with it. It's like dad isn't even trying to find them."

Erica sighed heavily.

"I don't know what to tell you Gwen. Your dad can't really investigate her murder. It could compromise the investigation."

Gwen kicked their living room table.

"I don't want him to arrest whoever did it, I want him to shoot them."

Erica put her hand on Gwen's.

"That's not justice, that's revenge. It's not how your father works."

Gwen nodded. She stood up.

"Thanks Erica. I'm going to go to my room, put some noise canceling headphones on and veg."

Erica nodded and watched Gwen go. Gwen went into her room and locked the door. She wasted no time pulling on her costume. It was time for the new costumed superhero who didn't have a name yet because she hadn't thought that far ahead to make her debut. She didn't have a burner to text Flash yet, so she decided to just go to his house and knock on his window. She climbed to her apartment building's roof and did a running jump and lept across the street to the identical apartment building across the way and skipped down the side. Flash was somewhat surprised to see her hanging outside his window. Gwen had never seen him so flustered. Gwen tried to make her voice sound deeper. She realized a voice modulator would have been a handy addition to her costume. She pointed to his black eye.

"Your girlfriend beat you up or something, dude?"

Flash touched his eye and blushed.

"No, no just uh horsing around with the guys on the field. So, umm what do I call you?"

Spider-Gwen shrugged.

"Make something up. I'll go with it."

He snapped his fingers.

"Spider-Girl?"

Spider-Gwen shook her head.

"How about, Spider-Woman. I haven't been a girl in a long time. A really long time. I'm old. Really old. Like old age home old."

Flash rubbed the back of his neck.

"So, Gwen, you know Gwen than right?"

"Yes. She made some things for me. Smart girl. You should stick with her, she's going places. Anyway, go on."

"She said you could get some video for me? You'd let me take some video of you just doing superhero stuff."

Spider-Woman nodded and held up two fingers.

"Two rules: You stay out of harm's way and no gratuitous butt or boob shots."

"But those are what people like."

"And people are perverts. Anyway, I just wanted to pop by and say hi. I'll text you when I'm going out. Need to go. People to save, criminals to trounce and all that."

Flash looked like he wanted to say something else. Spider-Woman looked at him.

"What is it, Eugene?"

He blinked when she used his real first name.

"How do you know my name?"

"I looked you up, duh. You should go by that; Flash is a stupid first name. Sounds like a porn name or something. Just saying. Anyway, you seemed to have a different question what was it?"

Flash hesitated then finally spit it out.

"So, like you know Gwen, did she talk about me? She's been like… busy all of the time lately. I'm worried she's…"

Spider-Woman laughed.

"As far as I know she's not cheating on you. She's not thinking of leaving you. Though she did say you do need to eat more vegetables. I'll text you."

She hopped down and vanished into the night. While jumping between buildings to see just how far she could jump, which she hadn't really figured out yet, she ended up missing her mark and started to fall towards the pavement far below. She didn't want to see how that would end so she used one of her new webshooters and tried to catch herself. She ended up swinging past the building and landing on another with it. She tried again. She found she could travel pretty quickly that way. She also found out it was incredibly fun. It only took her ten minutes to reach Manhattan proper once she'd escaped the single-family dwellings of Queens. She swung around there for a while. Mostly she was just practicing. She heard a scream and swung towards it.

Spider-Woman landed on a roof near the source of the scream and crouched down. She saw a man wearing a black hoodie holding a family of three at gun point. She formed a ball of her web and threw it at him. She hit him on the back of the head quite solidly. He got distracted and started looking around to see what happened. That gave the family enough time to flee. Her next shot was directed at the gun. She missed and hit his arm. When she yanked instead of a gun, she got the whole man who slammed into the brick wall really hard. She winced. The force of the blow made him drop his gun. He was trying to crawl towards it, but Spider-Woman landed in between him and the pistol. She put her hands on her hips.

"You should be thanking me, if this was a comic book, I'd have just saved you from creating your archnemesis."

He went to crawl past her. She flicked her wrists, and two bursts of web pinned his hands to the ground. She tsked at him.

"Bad boy. No touchy."

"Let me out of this bi-"

Spider-Woman didn't appreciate where that was going so, he found himself with web covering his mouth.

"This is a family friendly alley, no swearing."

He was trying to shout at her. Whatever would have been coming out of his mouth was probably better left unheard. She heard someone yell from the end of the alley.

"Hey you, stop!"

She shot two webs at the building on her left and used them to slingshot herself on top of it. The police officer who had arrived was looking up at her. She called down.

"Enjoy!"

She gave him a two-finger salute and vanished into the night again. Next, she found herself foiling a mugging at an ATM. She rounded out the night by breaking up three drug deals. Manhattan was definitely the best place to do the whole crime fighting thing now that she'd figured out, she could use her web to swing around. Queens not so much. Besides her area with the low rises and walk ups most were single family homes. She slipped into her room just after one in the morning and hid her costume in her hope chest and locked it. Gwen was pretty exhausted. Which was a first for her since her abilities manifested. It felt good. She fell face first on her bed and passed out.

Gwen woke up to her phone exploding. Flash had texted her thirty messages. First one was oh my God! She came and visited me. Then there was a break until morning. The texts after that were just links to news sites with stories about the new masked crime fighter. The Daily Bugle site, a ridiculously conservative news stream, was not kind. They were demanding her arrest for disturbing good citizens just going about their business. Most of the other news outlets were more or less just reporting what they were told. None had a good picture of her. She responded to his texts. Not a single one has a good picture. I bet you could sell one of those for a small fortune.

Gwen pulled on a long T-shirt and a pair of leggings and wandered out into the apartment proper. Her dad did a double take when he saw her.

"When did you do that to your hair?"

Gwen blinked at him tiredly then touched her hair and she remembered she had cut it.

"Yesterday. You saw me when I came back didn't you?"

"Yea, sorry I just forgot."

He was reading the paper and the front page was a picture of a spider with a bunch of question marks over it. Her father was reading the sports section. She rubbed her face.

"Dad, you know you can just use the internet to read the paper, right? You don't need to pay tree murderers for it?"

He looked over the top of the paper.

"I like something physical."

Gwen gave up. He was a dinosaur apparently. She was curious what he thought of the whole Spider-Woman thing, so she motioned to the newspaper.

"What's with the spider on the front?"

Her father closed the paper and glanced over the story he frowned.

"Just what the city needs, another vigilante. As if one wasn't bad enough. I wonder if this one will get blamed on me too."

He muttered under his breath. Gwen sat down at the kitchen table.

"You don't think she's helping?"

Her father tapped the picture.

"She's an amateur. She's going to get herself or someone else killed. She should stay out of it and let us handle it."

"I read she saved a family last night."

He shook his head.

"She was lucky."

Erica came out of the bathroom and looked between the two.

"Are you two going to be fighting it out soon?"

Gwen realized she was scowling at her father so readjusted.

"No, we're just disagreeing on the vigilantes."

Erica sat down and pondered for a few moments.

"Well, the one the other night probably saved a lot of cop's lives."

George grimaced.

"And got me suspended."

Erica shot George a look.

"No, your officers shooting at an unarmed woman did that. You could have blamed them. Instead, you decided to shield them. That's not her fault."

Gwen traced a pattern on the old kitchen table's vinyl top. It was older than her dad.

"What if they're the same person?"

Her father folded his paper in annoyance.

"Either way, she's a loose cannon. Probably arrogant enough, she thinks she can do no wrong. The Daily Bugle is right. She is a menace."

Gwen rolled her eyes.

"I can't believe you listen to those bigots dad."

"Those bigots are the only ones complaining about my suspension."

Gwen sighed and stood up.

"I'm going to get ready for church."

After church Gwen gathered a hoodie, one of her mother's old Yankees hats and made herself hard to identify. She kept her face away from any video cameras and went and bought herself two burner phones. She felt a bit like a spy. She texted Flash from one of them. Eugene. Meet me in the alley behind the travel agency by the corner of 7th street and 2nd avenue 8 pm. Bring your camera!

She went home after that and copied the video of her take down of the man who was holding the family at gunpoint. She edited it and saved it to a microSD card. She locked herself in her room at seven claiming to be feeling sick. By quarter to eight she was perched on a building overlooking the meeting spot. Flash showed up shortly after she did. She made him wait. He was pacing back and forth. He seemed pretty nervous. She thought it was adorable. She hopped down at eight o'clock and tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped with fright.

"Jesus! You scared me half to death."

She held up the microSD card.

"Aww, big scary high school football player is afraid of his own shadow."

Flash looked slightly hurt by her mocking tone.

"Well, we can't all have superpowers."

She moved the hand that was holding the microSD card closer to Flash.

"Take it. I think you'll like what's on it, little boy."

Flash took the card and put it in his inside jacket pocket. He frowned.

"You know I don't have to do this. I'm not going to let you just make fun of me."

Spider-Woman tsked.

"He does have a backbone. And Gwen said you were a pushover."

He lifted the digital camera he was holding.

"Why am I here? Why do I have a camera?"

Spider-Woman touched Flash's cheek.

"We are here because, I thought you might want to sell some pictures of me. We can pretend they're candid shots you took without me realizing it. Also, it's deserted this time of night."

"Sell?"

"You didn't hear? The Daily Bugle has a standing reward for clear photographs of me. Two thousand a shot. I figured you might want to collect on that. If I'm wrong…"

"But they hate you. You really want to give them pictures of you? You want to split it then?"

Spider-Woman shook her head.

"Nope. All yours."

"Feels kind of wrong. They're saying all kinds of nasty things about you. They're kind of assholes."

"You can feel bad rolling around on a pile of money?"

Flash looked down at the camera.

"I guess it wouldn't hurt. It'd be nice to get Gwen something amazing for Christmas. Maybe take her out for supper."

"That's the spirit."

Spider-Woman pointed to the corner of a nearby building.

"I'll go there and perch on the corner like I'm looking out for criminals. Lots of light. Then I'll shoot some webs and I'll fling myself at that building. So, you can get an action shot."

He nodded. She climbed up the wall. Flash started snapping pictures of her. She perched like she said she would and he snapped a few more pictures. She stood up, reached out her wrists and shot web at a large building across the street. She pulled back and launched herself towards it. Then she did the same to another bigger building. Flash was taking pictures the whole time. She heard gunshots in the distance and lost sight of him when she responded to them.

What she found when she arrived were two gangs shooting it out. There were innocent people stuck between them. A street corner Santa and a couple of families. There were injuries among the bystanders. The police seemed to be a few more minutes out. She swung down and landed on a car full of gang members who were shooting from it.

"Y'know when they say drive by, they mean keep driving by."

Spider-Woman was forced to block a few shots with her bracers as she yanked all four of them out of the car one by one. It wasn't really much of a challenge. She felt her danger sense go off, but she was stuck mid pull on one of the men. A bullet hit her in the back. It hurt a lot, but the ballistic weave did its job, so she was left with a bruise instead of a bleeding gunshot wound. She webbed each of the gang members she'd pulled out of the car to the ground.

Spider-Woman turned to the five shooting from inside the pizzeria. For some reason they looked frightened now. It might have something to do with the fact they'd just shot her fifteen times and none of them seemed to slow her down. She lept over the bystanders and while in midair stuck two of the gun-toting bad guys to the front counter with webbing. While the other three struggled to reload she weaved through the tables as she disabled a couple by pinning them to the walls with web. The last one managed to get a new magazine in his gun and was pointing it at her. He didn't look much older than her. She put her hands on her hips and stared him down.

"You really wanna do this, kid?"

His hand shook and he leveled the gun. Before he could pull the trigger, she flicked her wrist and web shot out hitting his pistol. She let out a mental cheer when she hit the gun instead of something else. Spider-Woman flicked her wrist and caught the gun. She crushed the barrel and tossed it to the floor. He pulled out a knife.

"Seriously? Did you get dropped on your head as a child? Eat paint chips?"

He made a move to lunge at her. She swept his legs out from under him, grabbed the back of his hoodie, threw him up in the air and then webbed him to the ceiling. His knife clattered to the pizzeria floor. She picked up the knife and looked up at him.

"Hey, wanna see something cool?"

She tried to stab herself and the knife wouldn't go through her costume. She shook her head.

"Idiot."

She heard clapping behind her. A few cheers. She bowed.

"Sorry I was late everyone. Y'all called 911 yet?"

Someone held up their hand. They were already on the phone.

"Well, that's my cue to leave. Wouldn't want to embarrass the police again."

She went through the front door and jumped up to the building then pulled herself to a taller building and swung away. What followed was another busy night of crimefighting. Once again, mostly drug dealers. There were so many drug dealers. She'd heard of the war on drugs. It was before her time but, whoever was fighting it on her side lost really badly.

Spider-Woman felt dead on her feet when she got home and the spot where she'd been shot hurt a lot. She pulled off her costume and looked at it in the mirror. Gwen was expecting it to be red and swollen. It seemed to have skipped that part and went straight to the purple. It covered most of her lower back. She winced. That was going to take some explaining if anyone saw it. She stowed her costume and flopped down on her bed face first.

Gwen awoke to her father calling her name and knocking on the door. She groaned.

"What?"

"Are you alright? Its two in the afternoon."

"Yea. Tired. Go away."

Gwen shifted and rolled on her back she'd forgotten she'd been shot last night. Strangely it didn't hurt. She jumped out of bed and looked at her back in the mirror. It looked normal, no bruise at all.

"Huh. That's interesting."

She pulled on a long T-shirt and a pair of underwear and left her room. Her dad looked her up and down.

"Are you sure you're alright?"

Gwen nodded.

"Yea, I was just up late playing video games. I'm fine."

She plopped down on the couch. The news was on the television, and they were showing pictures of the pizzeria that had gotten shot up last night. Her father grumbled.

"Gunfights in the streets. Armored psychos using flamethrowers. What is the world coming too?"

Gwen tuned out his complaining and focused on the news story it was Nancy Chung reporting.

"A gunfight erupted between two rival gangs last night at Anthony Supreme's Pizzaria where the hockey team the business owner sponsors was having a pizza party. What could have been a tragic mass casualty event was stopped by the masked vigilante that has been called Spider-Woman by the YouTube channel that proports to have video provided by her. Reports say she was shot but witness accounts vary. This is just the latest instance in a series of increasingly violent and brutal gang warfare events. Sources close to the police have said that we can expect it to get worse before it gets better in this ongoing territorial dispute. One has to wonder what the NYPD is going to do about it. Certainly, they dropped the ball both last night and last week when two of their number were gunned down. If not for Spider-Woman this would be a very different story."

Gwen's father frowned at the television and waved his hand towards it.

"Pure nonsense. We would have handled it fine without her interference."

Gwen rolled her eyes. Guess it would be a thing. He'd never respect Spider-Woman. Fine by her.

"Well say what you want but I think she saved lives last night."

Her father shook his head. His cell phone rang and he picked it up. He paced as he listened. He gave an affirmative answer every so often. When he hung up the call he looked at Gwen.

"They just lifted my suspension. Have to go into the precinct. You'll be alright?"

Gwen shrugged.

"Whatever dad. Do you mind if Flash comes over?"

He rubbed the back of his neck and thought about it.

"Yes, I trust I won't find the two of you like I did last time?"

"I promise you won't. You scared Flash enough he only touches me with ten feet poles."

Her father grumbled about kids these days, grabbed his jacket and headed out the door. Gwen plopped down on the couch. She was sort of feeling like her dad was actually caring about her again, so it hurt that he was off suspension. On the other side without him there, Erica wouldn't be around much, and it meant Gwen could do more crimefighting.

Christmas came and went. School had started again. Her workpapers were extended so she could continue her employment at Stark Industries. Her father had asked Erica to marry him. She said yes. Gwen's relationship with Flash was going great. Peter was still glowing as his relationship with Miles blossomed. Spider-Woman was a hero to many. Villain to J. Jonah Jameson and the NYPD. The video's Flash posted that she provided were a worldwide sensation. Everything was going great. For the first time since her mother had died Gwen was on top of the world. As such things go, it just meant she was ready for a really hard fall.

By February Gwen was feeling confident in being Spider-Woman. Possibly overconfident. She was helping all these people, but she hadn't helped her mother yet. When her father was asleep after his nightshift she went into his room and liberated his phone. She was planning on using it to access the NYPD online system. Her first hurdle was his passcode. She tried his birthday first, her mother's birthday next. Neither was successful. She tried hers last. She really wasn't expecting that to be his pass code, but it was. She quickly made her way into the NYPD online system. Her father had it set up so it would auto-log him in, so she didn't have to worry about that password. She was fairly sure that was totally contrary to department regulations.

When she tracked down her mother's file, she could not access it. The file was locked out. Defeated, she pouted briefly then realized she could check and see who ratted her and Flash out. She hovered her finger over the SMS application.

It was like she was looking at Pandora's box. Right now, she was confident she could trust everyone in her life to a point. Once she found out who did it, that way would lead to betrayal. She realized it could have been Liz or Sally and it would be a non-issue. She closed her eyes and tapped the app. She was forced to scroll for a bit because it would have been sent in November. When she saw the preview of the last message Peter sent to her father, she felt like she was going to be sick. She blinked slowly taking a deep breath before opening the message.

Uncle George, I am not sure I should be sending this, but I'm scared for Gwen. She's planning on having sex with Flash tonight at your apartment. I don't think she's thinking clearly and if I say anything she won't listen I just… I am worried about her and that she's making a bad choice. Please don't tell her I said anything.