Gwen plopped down on her bed and looked out of the window. Spider-Woman had been absent from the streets for a while now. When she first started, she'd been excited to go out. She sighed. It had cost her Flash. She remembered her Uncle Ben's last words, rolled her eyes and got up and pulled her costume out of its hiding spot. She pulled it on and slipped out into the night. She skipped over a few buildings and ended up at Flash's house. She tapped on his window. He looked out. His eyes went wide. He whispered excitedly.
"Spider-Woman! I thought…"
Gwen wanted to punch him in that beautiful face of his. She frowned under her mask. Fortunately, she wasn't Gwen Stacy tonight, she was Spider-Woman.
"That I would not come see you anymore. Discontinue our relationship because you screwed over my friend?"
Flash blushed. He ran his hand through his blond hair and began to pace.
"I screwed up bad, SW. So bad."
Spider-Woman climbed in his window. Into the danger zone so to speak. She sat on the window bench she'd always been jealous of. It was perfect for a girl. Why did her jerk ex-boyfriend have one? She crossed her legs.
"Do tell."
Flash shook his head.
"Gwen blew me off again on Saturday night, I was so upset. I left her a voice mail breaking up with her and then I blocked her. I just… I just wanted her to know what it felt like, you know? Then I got upset she didn't try to talk to me or come here… so I did something so stupid."
Spider-Woman kicked one of her feet up and down slightly.
"You blocked her, then got mad because she took the hint and didn't bother you? You are one dumb S.O.B."
"If she'd blocked me, I would have tried to talk to her. I would have done something… anything to get her back."
Spider-Woman wrapped her fingers around the edge of the bench seat.
"That would be both creepy and inappropriate. You see when a girl blocks you it means she really doesn't want to talk to you. So, when you block a girl, it generally means she understands not to be creepy and pathetic. In most cases. What did you do that was sooo terrible Eugene?"
"Okay there is this girl, Liz. They used to be friends. But something happened and they… I don't know girl stuff. Anyway, Liz has been trying to get me to date her forever. I was so mad that Gwen didn't even try… I… we…"
Spider-Woman held up her hand.
"Just don't finish that sentence I get the hint; I just threw up a little in my mouth thinking of you procreating. So basically, you dumped Gwen on her birthday, bumped pelvises with someone she despises and… now what? You want me to tell you it's all okay. Sunshine and roses, unblock Gwen and try again?"
Flash rubbed his face.
"It's so much worse. I thought if Gwen thought Liz and I were together she'd get jealous and try to win me back."
Flash clenched his fists.
"I'm such an idiot. Gwen was perfect. Just distracted. I mean she's smart, beautiful, sensitive. Not clingy. Oh, my fucking God Liz is so clingy. Then I see Gwen… in a corvette with this guy. How do I compete with that? Is it going to be, okay? Do I have a chance?"
Spider-Woman tapped her fingers on the edge of the bench.
"Yea, no. You had better get used to Liz being all over you for the rest of your life. Or break up with her after taking her v-card. Wow. I bet she murders you in your sleep. She's a bit nuts if Gwen is to be believed."
Flash wringed his hands.
"It can't be over. I just can't. I can't believe this happened. Why was I such an idiot?"
Spider-Woman held up two fingers.
"Two reasons, one, you're male. Two, see reason one."
"What can I do? You can talk to her right?"
Spider-Woman shook her head in disbelief.
"Sorry Loverboy, I'm with Gwen on this one. You really hurt her. Let me tell you a little story about Gwen's birthday night. I needed some info about some bad people. Gwen, being the overachiever she is, decided on her own initiative to go on out there and get the intel. Guess what happened to Gwen? She gets surrounded by armed guards. Who shot at her. Now I'm not going to debate the merits of her lack of situational awareness. But suffice it to say, she called you and was blocked. She called you again, was blocked…"
Flash went pale.
"She sees a voice mail from you. She's hoping its going to be you asking why she called… but no, you dumped her on her birthday when she was very close to being killed. Soo… Do you have a chance? I would say after that night, maybe there was the same chance you'd win the lottery. After the Liz thing I'd say odds are you're lucky to be alive."
Flash collapsed in his desk chair he looked to be in a state of mental shock. Spider-Woman patted him on the shoulder.
"There, there Eugene, at least Liz is a slut and puts out. Maybe you'll get her pregnant. You two can peak in high school, be sweethearts and you might grow up to be a decent parent. Or you might be an abusive prick like your father. Either way if you ever call Gwen or talk to her again, I will personally feed you your own balls. Or I'll tell her father you basically left her to die. Or even better, her Uncle Liam. Now that is a man who knows how to punish a guy who screws over his niece."
Flash grabbed her arm. Spider-Woman paused. Gwen under the mask was about to throw him through his door after his admission he'd done the deed with Liz. He looked up at her with pleading eyes.
"Could you please… just explain to her… how sorry I am?"
Spider-Woman patted him on the shoulder.
"All the apologies in the world are not going to fix the mess you made. Cut your losses and forget Gwen exists. Maybe she might forget you exist. I heard through the grape vine; Little Eugene had a run in with her temper."
Flash flinched at the mention of that. Spider-Woman stepped back.
"I discussed our business arrangement with Gwen. She admitted changing YouTube posters would be… disruptive. So provided you stay away from her, she said I could keep coming to you without endangering my supply of web."
"I don't want to stay away from her."
Spider-Woman put her finger under his chin and lifted it up.
"Eugene do not go there. She is really angry at you. She mentioned sticking one of her explosive rounds up your ass and kicking you in it. I doubt she'd ever go through with it, but I guarantee if you go harass her, she will tell her dad and he will arrest you for stalking."
Flash looked up at Spider-Woman. He looked like someone had gut-punched him. Gwen under her mask could relate, it's how she felt Saturday night. He looked so broken she just wanted to hold him like she used to. She awkwardly patted him on the shoulder again.
"It will get better."
Spider-Woman slipped out of the window leaving Flash to his thoughts. She needed to think too. Sometimes her mouth and temper got away with her. She never used to be like this. Every emotion was heightened. Her nerves were like her reflexes, heightened. It was like she was always a bow string pulled taut just ready to launch her emotions at whomever triggered them, good or bad. Her mother had told her being a teenage girl was going to be a roller coaster, but she'd never imagined this.
She jumped, pulled, climbed and swung her way to her favorite perch on top of One World Trade Center. She liked it because all of her problems as Gwen Stacy seemed so small and far away up here. She sat on a ledge, pulled out her phone and checked the tracking data for her various spider bots. One had gone dark a few days ago. The rest were still busy little bees. She pondered giving the next generation web dispensers.
Spider-Woman glanced at the one for Obadiah and noticed he was in Afghanistan he had recently stopped moving. Her bot had hooked into his satellite phone data uplink. No video, not enough bandwidth currently. She slipped one of her blue tooth ear pods into her ear and listened in.
Obadiah: "If you'd killed him when you were supposed to, you'd still have a face."
Unknown: "You paid us trinkets to kill a prince."
Obadiah: "Show me the weapon."
Unknown: "Come, leave your guards outside."
There was some shuffling.
Unknown: "His escape bore unexpected fruit."
Obadiah: "So this is how he did it?"
Unknown: "This is only a first crude effort. Stark has perfected his design; He has made a masterpiece of death. A man with a dozen of these could rule all of Asia. And you dream of Stark's throne? We have a common enemy. We are still in business. I will give you these designs as a gift, and in turn I hope you repay me with the gift of iron soldiers."
Spider-Woman winced and yanked out her earpiece when a high-pitched whine likely almost imperceptible to the human ear slammed through her head. She put it back in when it went away.
Obadiah: "-ology. It's always been your Achilles heel in this part of the world. Don't worry, it will only last for fifteen minutes. That is the least of your problems."
More shuffling could be heard.
Obadiah: "Crate up the armor and the rest of it. Alright, let's finish up here."
She heard gunfire and started having flashbacks to the other night. She stopped her eavesdropping and looked at the dot representing Obadiah. She knew he'd kill her if he ever found out she had heard him. This was basically him admitting to hiring someone to kill Tony Stark. She looked at her phone. She was torn. Obadiah had done so much for her. She also didn't know his motivation for wanting Tony dead. Maybe there was a good reason… He always seemed to have a good reason. She sighed and looked out over the city. She heard sirens in the distance and swung towards them. Some normal, street level thuggery is just what the doctor ordered.
Spider-Woman landed on a building nearby the scene of the crime. She saw six armed men pulling money out of the back of an armored car. No one had been this bold in a couple of months. Her absence must have been noted. She frowned under her mask when she realized two of them were armed with TX-01 air-pressure weapons. One had a weapon from Stark Industries she didn't recognize but it had a very wide bore. The other three were armed with more conventional assault rifles. She pulled her burner out of her backpack. Any police arriving here would be shredded. They just weren't equipped to handle military grade weapons. She quickly dialed emergency services. She tapped her foot while she waited for them to answer and go through their intro script.
"You need to tell the police on the way to the armored car robbery to stay back. They have anti-tank weapons!"
The operator sounded a bit indignant.
"Who is this? What are you playing at?"
Spider-Woman sighed. If she told them who she was it would be pointless to tell them not to come, they'd swarm the area.
"I'm just trying to warn you."
She disconnected the call and dialed Coulsin's number from memory. She heard him pick up.
"Agent Coulsin speaking."
"Coulsin, its Spider-Woman. There is an armored car robbery in progr-"
He sounded confused when he interrupted her.
"That is a matter for local authorities."
Spider-Woman sounded annoyed when she spoke next.
"I don't have time for your bureaucratic bullshit. The people doing it have Stark anti-tank Weaponry. The police are not equipped to handle that kind of firepower! The police will listen to you guys. Call them off. Before they get themselves killed. I thought you were going to take these off the streets!"
Coulsin still sounded like the absolute calm in the center of Spider-Woman's storm.
"I will make a call."
Spider-Woman rolled her eyes under her mask.
"Whatever."
She hung up the phone and jumped onto the top of the armored car. She webbed one of the TX-01 guys to the wall of a shop. The other one unleashed a rapid-fire burst. She was forced to dodge. Her costume probably wouldn't survive the explosive rounds and if it did, she'd be in a world of hurt. It splattered thermite all over the pavement. She saw the police rolling up. It distracted her enough that the one with the large bore rifle got a shot off at her, it came very close to taking her leg off. It punched through the side of the armored car and out of the top like it was butter.
The man armed with the last TX-01 weapon pointed it towards the police. Thankfully for them they seemed to have been warned just beforehand and managed to reverse out of range. She gave a silent thank you to Coulsin. She shot a gob of web at the man with the big gun. Hit him in the face. He was forced to try to pull it off. This bought her time to disable the TX-01 guy by pinning him to a car with a web. He struggled against it.
She lept off the armored truck and put herself in the middle of the men with the more conventional assault rifles so they couldn't shoot her without hitting each other. She grabbed one with a web and flung him over her head into a car. He smashed the window and dented the hood. She'd be disappointed in herself for damaging the car, but it was already smoldering in parts from thermite from the TX-01. She blocked several rounds with her bracers. Dodged others.
Spider-Woman was forced to dive for cover as another one of the large rounds blasted toward her. It punched right through the armored truck's armor, the engine block and out the other side. Through another car and into a brick wall which showered the sidewalk with brick fragments. The man carrying the big gun walked up to her and fired at her point blank. She closed her eyes and crossed her arms where the bracers covered. To her surprise, and his, she didn't even feel the hit. It had fired. The gun was not quiet. She didn't hesitate. He did. She launched herself in a flying tackle. They slammed into a parked car. He groaned. The weapon fell from his grasp. She webbed it to the ground and then webbed him to the car.
She backflipped towards another one of the robbers. He had unloaded his magazine at her. She got clipped by a bullet in the arm. It hurt a lot but didn't pierce her costume. She grabbed the gun and tossed it aside. She kicked him into a car and webbed him there. She spun around expecting a stream of weapons fire from the last one, but he was in the car pulling away. Spider-Woman launched a web at it and to a wall to the side. The effect was she got pulled with the car and was swinging. She released the wall web and landed on the car. He was swerving through the light traffic jam their brazen robbery had caused. He seemed to be trying to loosen her grip.
He sped through several blocks weaving through cars, running red lights. Spider-Woman realized this wasn't going to end well for any innocents he might hit and he didn't seem to care. He pulled off his mask. Though it was sweat covered she recognized him as James Fisk. She almost lost her grip in her surprise. She had seen him; He had such severe brain damage he was non-vocal. There is no way he could drive a car. He swerved onto the sidewalk to avoid a truck and almost hit a woman and her two children. Spider-Woman reacted swiftly and webbed the truck he'd tried to pass and yanked the car, narrowly avoiding a terrible tragedy. This is the point where her father would call off a pursuit because it was too dangerous for bystanders and the officers. The children almost being killed was a really good hint she should do the same. She punched the rear window of the car and dropped a spider bot. She called out.
"I'll be seeing you, James."
His eyes went wide. Spider-Woman jumped off the car and shot webs at a nearby building to throw herself towards the roof. She crouched and watched the car vanish into traffic. He was driving less erratically with her not right on top of his car. She pulled her burner out and made a second call to emergency services. She was surprised to hear the same 911 operator from earlier.
"Hello, this is Spider-Woman. I've disabled the men robbing the armored car, one got a way he's driving…"
Spider-Woman provided the necessary details to track the car. The operator put her on hold to speak to their dispatch.
"It really, was you?"
"Uh huh."
"Oh my god. Spider-Woman I'm your biggest fan! I'm so sorry!"
Spider-Woman gave her a soft laugh then glanced at her phone.
"I uh, have a tracker on him so would you like to know where he is going?"
The operator gasped.
"I'm so sorry!"
Spider-Woman rubbed her arm in the area around where the bullet had clipped her gingerly while relaying the positioning of the man who appeared to be James Fisk. Eventually the car stopped. The operator advised Spider-Woman that the police were on the scene, and they disconnected the call. Spider-Woman tapped the dot representing the spider bot and started observing his take down. It shouldn't have surprised her to see James Fisk pull cash out of the money bags and hand two stacks to the responding police officers. Nor that they seemed to know him. They parted ways. She swore out loud.
"Are you fucking serious with this shit?"
A few nearby pigeons gave her dirty looks and fluttered their wings. She went back to the video and watched as he tried desperately to find the tracker. He was unsuccessful of course. Her bots were very shy. She zoomed into his face. She was starting to realize in the light he was not James Fisk, but he was definitely related to him in some way. He was younger looking. There was a part of her that silently wished she had equipped her bots with some form of poison… She pushed the thought away. That wasn't justice, that was just punishment. Not her style. She sighed. Snipped the video. Put it on a cloud storage account. Grabbed a link and emailed it to her Gwen account. Maybe her dad would know what to do. She jumped off the building and pulled herself towards home.
An hour later, found Gwen at her dad's precinct with enough donuts and coffee for the nightshift. Along with her dad's favorite supper, a to go platter of chicken wings from her Uncle Liam's pub, though he'd never admit it. She had no trouble getting in to see her father. Everyone at the precinct knew who she was with a glance. Gwen knocked on her father's door. He was on the phone. He waved her inside when he glanced up. She sat in one of the old black vinyl chairs he had in front of his desk. They were faded. She silently pondered what era they were from. A real New York City police precinct was far from the slick stylish offices one would see on movies or television shows. It wasn't dirty, but they had better things to spend their money on modernizing them beyond computer systems.
Her father finished his call, which didn't sound pleasant. He had raised his voice a few times. It had been about her of course. Well, her alter-ego. Someone from police headquarters was upset there was no attempt made to capture her tonight. On the other side her father, who's district the original armored car robbery had taken place was ripping whomever it was a new one about how Spider-Woman basically wrapped the last guy up in a bow all they had to do was their jobs, yet he still got away. He smiled at her and opened the lid of the chicken wing box. He closed it and looked at her again. She put a bottle of Diet Pepsi beside it and a container of Tums.
"You know how I feel about you going near your Uncle Liam."
Gwen leaned forward.
"Yet you sent him to talk to me about my criminal enterprises? Just ignore where they're from and enjoy. If Erica finds out, I will disavow this meeting ever took place."
Her father smiled at her and opened the box again taking a long deep whiff. He sighed and pulled out one of the wings. When he bit into it, he closed his eyes like he'd just tasted ambrosia. He finished it then started on a second. He offered the box to Gwen she held up her hand.
"No, I like my stomach lining too much to eat wings called bucket nukes, thank you very much, dad."
He shrugged and tore his way through them. Then he wiped his hands off on a wet napkin. Then a couple of dry ones. He started his way through the veggies and ranch they came with. He looked at her.
"You want something. You never show up with coffee, donuts and wings out of the goodness of your heart. Or you have bad news."
Gwen hmmed and hawed for a few moments. She still wasn't sure showing her dad the video was the right thing to do. He might feel obliged to do something and it might screw up the delicate balance in her cold war with the man who she had learned was often referred to as Kingpin. Her threats seemed to have stopped him from acting against her father, his precinct, herself and Erica. If her father pressed him it might make that all go away. She sighed.
"Dad, I want to show you something… but you need to promise me you will not do anything yourself."
He leaned forward after taking a drink of his soda.
"You know I can't do that. If it is criminal activity… I need to respond; I took an oath."
Gwen fumbled with her phone.
"Look it came from… someone who saved our lives. Made a deal to keep us safe. She isn't sure what to do with it and asked me to ask you. I don't agree with her. This already got mom killed."
Her father's face showed signs of recognition.
"Oh, I see."
"So, when you watch this, please promise you'll be a dad who knows stuff about the law, and not a police captain."
He sighed heavily. She could tell he was not happy about the situation with Spider-Woman. It weighed on his conscience.
"I can't email it to your work account for obvious reasons. So here."
Gwen started the video she'd snipped from her spider bot. She watched as his large hands tightened on her phone. A dark look crossed his face. The video finished. He played it again and zoomed in. Eventually he handed the phone back. Gwen put her hand on his.
"Dad, they're probably in the same position you were."
He sneered.
"They didn't have to be so happy about it. This is a federal crime. This is for the FBI."
Gwen nodded and sighed.
"She's worried anything she does against Fisk, or his family might impact our safety."
He frowned and hit his desk with the side of his fist a few times in frustration.
"I hate that he gets away with this. There is a part of me that wants to just walk in there and arrest that smug son of a bitch."
Gwen nodded.
"She is also concerned that the crew was using experimental Stark weapons. She had thought only the new cartel in town had them. She thinks this might mean Fisk is working with them."
Gwen suddenly had a thought. Everything she'd heard on the street was that Fisk was at odds with the cartel, they were fighting for territory. She had an idea creep into her head.
"That was all I wanted to talk to you about dad. I'll let you get back to work."
She moved to stand up. Her dad motioned for her to sit down.
"Well, I have something to talk to you about."
Gwen sat down. She was a bit frustrated, she wanted to put her plan into action. Her father folded his hands.
"So, you met someone new?"
Gwen blinked at her father.
"What are you talking about?"
"Your Aunt May told me all about Adam Thomas. So, I did some searching. Found several pictures of you talking to him. On the web. He's a rich Senator's son? There are some stories about his antics. I'm concerned."
Gwen sighed and rolled her eyes.
"I just met him. He likes me, he came down to see me. We're going to go on a date. That's all it is right now. Okay?"
Her father huffed and resettled himself. Turned his monitor back to face him.
"I'm still concerned."
Gwen frowned at her father.
"Dad. I'm fifteen. I'm not six anymore. I'm also not impressed by his money, or car. If he's nice I'll date him more, if he's not I won't. You should be happy. He's planning on being an honest upstanding politician like his father when he finishes school."
Her father wrinkled his nose.
"Honest politician that's an oxymoron."
Gwen shook her head.
"Dad, I need to go. I have homework. And its late."
He nodded.
"Have a good sleep tonight. See you in the morning."
Gwen went around the desk, hugged him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
"Stay at your desk and don't get shot."