Gwen's father and Erica were both on shift that night. Erica had been forced to move precincts because of her ongoing relationship with George, who was a police captain. Erica was pretty much stuck working nights because she was the most recent transfer. Gwen had just made a frozen meal instead of going to see Peter. She chewed her nail and paced as she stared at a door neither her nor her father had been willing to open since her mother's death. Behind it was her mother's domain. Her bastion. She did all her crafts there. Many of Gwen's more esoteric outfits had been born there. She and her mother had worked together to make them. She reached out towards the handle and snapped her hand back. Finally, she shook her head and started talking to herself.
"She's gone Gwen, she won't get upset you messed with her stuff!"
Gwen paced a few more times then realized she didn't need to go in there yet. She went back to her room and pulled out a sketch pad and pencil crayons. She stared at the blank sheet of paper for what seemed like an eternity. Her eyes traced their way to the pair of turquoise ballet slippers she'd worn on her first night out as a crime fighting vigilante. She smiled, remembering her mother teaching her how to lace them around her ankles. Then her eyes went wide and she put the pad down and reached for her Stark Industries Tablet. She logged into the app store with her mother's email address and password. It helpfully reminded her that her mother hadn't logged into the app store in one hundred and twenty-seven days. She downloaded the app her mother would use to design clothes. Her mother wasn't a world-renowned designer or anything. Though many of her designs and clothes she'd sewn had been seen on the stage at the New York City Ballet. Her mother had made a decent living working from home. She had to make up for the costs involved in getting set up.
Gwen tapped the icon to take her to her mother's cloud storage. She decided right then to honor her mother's memory by using some of her designs in her costume. When she'd first asked Tony for the job it was some half-formed amorphas idea. To fight crime. After she got a hold of the bullet proof fabric it started to crystalize into something tangible. Her hand shook and her eyes grew moist as she leafed through the designs her mother had made for her that she would have been wearing to school this year, if her mother was still there. She let her fingers linger on one dress in particular that her mother had started designing for her prom.
She shook her head and started leafing further back. She leafed through all of the costumes intended for women. She looked at the tutus and shook her head and mused out loud.
"I can't wear a tutu. That would look like a skirt, what kind of crime fighter wear's a skirt?"
As she leafed through more of the ballet costumes, she found a basic template for a male ballet costume. She loaded that. She tried with it as a basic black, adding a mask with lenses shaped like the LIDAR goggles she'd rescued from the trash pile. She shook her head. Black wouldn't do. There was no style to it. She added white at the top and along the arms. Then some near the waist. She added pink around the inner arm. She made the mask white. It was looking better but the mask just kept looking stupid on its own. She tapped the stylus on her chin and happened to see the hoodie she'd left hanging on the wall because it had singe marks from being near the building fire. Her eyes focused on the hood, and she smiled. She added a white hood with a pink interior to the costume. She smiled then added a web motif to the inside of the hood and along the inner arms. She tightened up the crotch area. Adjusted the top for her bust size. She looked over the design then glanced up at the turquoise ballet slippers. She smiled and added those to the costume as well. She admired her work for a few moments then hit the command to create the pattern for the costume. The app started slicing the image design apart after she provided her measurements. It prompted her to purchase a printed version of the pattern. She looked at her mother's two-hundred-dollar balance. Finally, she tapped the purchase with the saved address option, then chose the next day delivery option. It was twice the price but she wasn't worried about that.
She swiped through her tablet and found her video chat app and tapped it. She sent a message to Flash. Flash answered right away. Soon they were looking at each other with dreamy eyes.
"Hey babe."
"Hey yourself."
Flash smiled at her.
"Hey how did your first day go?"
Gwen leaned her tablet against her vanity mirror and started wrapping her hair around one of her fingers.
"Oh, you know. Tony greeted me personally."
Flash pursed his lips.
"Tony? You're on a first name basis with him."
Gwen nodded.
"Of course, I am, we work together."
"Are you working closely with him."
Gwen nodded while keeping a straight face. Flash looked like he was about to freak out. She giggled.
"I'm teasing. Though he did tell me to call him Tony. He's not even there this week he is flying off to Afghanistan or something. Pepper is out of town too. I have this security guy supervising me. He's hilarious."
Flash breathed a sigh of relief.
"What are you doing there?"
Gwen kept playing with her hair and glanced up and to the left.
"Well, its high-level stuff, totally top secret. Can't really talk about it."
Flash's eyes went wide.
"Oh, come on, now you have to tell me."
Gwen shook her head and smiled playfully.
"No can do. Non-disclosure agreement, national security and all that."
Flash went a bit pale.
"No way. You could get in real trouble if you told me?"
Gwen laughed.
"No silly. I'm just cleaning some old storage room out. Has a bunch of junk Tony, his father, and some other research engineers made. I mean, they had stuff from the nineteen thirties in there. And a shield from World War 2. What good is a shield in a war?"
"A shield? Like in Star Trek?"
Gwen wrinkled her nose and laughed again.
"No, a shield, like a knight's shield. Bullets would probably go right through it. What a silly idea. Most of it is going to recycling or the garbage."
Gwen snapped her fingers.
"Though because it's going in the garbage I can keep whatever I want. Look at this thing!"
She held up the preserved spider that would easily be the size of Flash's palm. Flash leaned close to his screen.
"That's huge! What did they have that for?"
Gwen shrugged.
"Some retrovirus experiment to see about increasing growth in arachnids so they'll produce stronger silk. I didn't really pay much attention. I just thought it looked neat, so I brought it home. Besides I can't wait to spring it on Peter. He'll probably pee himself."
Flash laughed.
"Parker's afraid of spiders?"
"Yep. Don't you dare tell him I told you and I swear if you ever use that against him, I'll hurt you."
Flash held up his hands in surrender.
"I get it. I need to leave Parker alone."
Gwen nodded.
"He's my cousin, I'm the only one who gets to pick on him."
Flash smiled at her. He got distracted for a second when one of his parents spoke to him. He frowned.
"I have to go Gwen."
Gwen pouted.
"What's wrong?"
"The police are telling us we need to leave our house. See you later."
He ended the call. Just before it ended Gwen saw his mother pulling him by his arm. Gwen rushed to the living room and turned on the television. She found the local station and they were reporting an armed man on the loose in Queens. She saw her father in the background directing his officers. The reporter was advising everyone to stay indoors unless otherwise advised by the police. Gwen's curiosity got the better of her. She started pulling on her singed hoodie and leggings. She laced up her ballet slippers. As a finishing touch she added the bracers she'd saved from the recycling bin. She ran to the front closet and found the pair of binoculars they had inherited from her grandfather when he died. She hung the binoculars around her neck and climbed up to the roof.
Her building was at the dividing line between walk-ups and single dwelling houses, so she had a good view of Flash's house, which was one block down two blocks over. She searched around and found her father directing his officers to cordon off the area. In the center of the activity, she saw a burning police car and two officers down. She finally found the source of the disturbance. It was a man in full tactical gear, which had metal plates covering it. He had a tank on his back and a flamethrower. Along with a couple of assault rifles. She shook her head. How were the police going to handle that? She watched him torch another car.
She let the binoculars fall past her chest. She mused that having her fire-resistant bullet-proof costume would be amazing right now. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. She paced back and forth. Her dad was in harms way and as much as she wanted to strangle him. He was her father. He was also the kind of man who would make sure he was first in and last out. She sighed heavily and climbed back down and into her window. She mused to herself.
"Time to go confront the crazy man with a flamethrower, because that's a smart thing to do."
She hopped down the building and then climbed up the one across the street. She hopped off the other side and started running through the back alleys towards her target. She climbed up and over the roofs of a couple of the houses finally bringing her with in twenty feet of the armored man. She crept behind cars until she was close enough, she could get a better look at him. He was definitely prepared for war. She looked around. She decided a manhole cover would be a good choice of weapon. She picked the closest one up and threw it like a frisbee at the man. Between her strength and the weight of the solid steel disk it sent him flying into a car. He stumbled as he tried to get back up and find out what had just hit him. He spotted Gwen. He yelled at her.
"It's women like you that are ruining this country!"
He pointed the flame thrower at her, and a jet of flame shot out. She jumped over it easily and landed on top of a house roof.
"Dude, its Christmas, the season of peace and love? Why are you doing this?"
He growled. She was out of the range of his flamethrower, so he held the flamethrower with one hand and tried to shoot her with one of the assault rifles with the other. Even if Gwen was a normal girl, there was no way he would have been able to hit her like that. She waved and jumped through the bullets. She was about to punch him in his steel mask when her danger sense triggered. She did a back flip off of the armored man and then several more to avoid a full spray from a well-aimed assault rifle. She landed in front of the shooter who had been hiding. Her danger sense went off again. She heard the man say.
"Looks like someone's going to have a black Christmas."
The pistol was aimed at her face he was point blank. He sneered as he pulled the trigger. Gwen raised her arms to shield herself. She expected that was how she would die. But she didn't even feel the bullet hit her forearm. The man looked shocked. He shot several more bullets rapidly. Gwen blocked each with her bracers, feeling nothing as they hit them. She grabbed his wrist when the gun started to click as he tried to fire while it was empty. She brought her knee up into his groin. Then slammed his face into her knee when he bent over. This one wasn't armored. Gwen broke the rifle over her knee and tossed the pistol away.
The police were starting to advance so the armored man was distracted. He had dropped the first rifle and was unleashing another uncontrolled spray at the advancing authorities. Gwen used the distraction to do a running tackle. She made contact with her shoulder. The force of the blow twisted the metal covering his tactical vest and shattered the ceramic tactical plate inside. He went down hard. Gwen grabbed the hose for the flamethrower fuel and yanked it out of the tank. He struggled to get his gun pointed at her. Though he looked like a turtle that had been rolled on to its back, he was still a threat so she grabbed him by the front of his armor and lifted him up and slammed him into the ground.
He groaned and stopped any resistance at that point. Gwen saw the police approaching with guns out. Her father was with them. One of the officers opened fire. Which was followed by several more doing the same. Gwen dodged some, blocked others. She took cover behind a car. Her father was shouting cease fire over the sound of gunshots. The weapons fire didn't stop until the police were out of ammo. Gwen took the opportunity to jump on the roof of a nearby house. She gave her father a two-fingered salute. She taunted the police, though it was more directed at her father. Sure, it was petty but she was a teenage girl.
"If that's the best you can do, I think you lot are overpaid!"
She jumped down behind the house and made her escape. She rushed home and changed into her pj's again, they consisted of a pair of pink shorts and a loose-fitting T-shirt. She curled her knees up on her chair and had a jar of nail polish on the vanity to make it look like she'd been sitting there all along. Her tablet started to beep. She saw Flash was trying to video chat her. She accepted and didn't look up as she was starting to paint her toenails in a pale pink. She spoke.
"Everything okay?"
Flash looked like he was going to explode, he was so excited.
"Oh my God Gwen! You should have seen it. Some dude had a full suit of armor on and had a flamethrower! Then some chick comes out of nowhere and tackles him so hard he was crying for his mommy! Then the police try to shoot her, and she jumped on top of our house and didn't have a scratch on her. It was so hot."
Gwen kept painting her toenails.
"Oh, that sounds strange, I guess if you like that sort of thing…"
She paused and glared at the screen.
"Wait you called her hot, should I be worried?"
Flash's eyes went wide, and he stammered as he tried to backtrack. Gwen admitted to herself she was enjoying this a bit too much.
"No! No, babe. You're my one and only."
Gwen kept her face a mask of annoyance.
"Keep that up and you'll be single for the holidays."
Flash had a bit of whine to his voice when he spoke.
"Come on, don't be like that babe. I was just talking out my ass. I'm sorry."
Gwen looked to her left and sighed.
"Fine."
Flash smiled. He seemed slightly distracted like he was clicking around on something on another screen on his computer.
"We got it on video!"
"So, after the conversation we just had, you're not paying attention to me so you can see a video of her?"
Flash blushed.
"No! No. I was just…. I wonder if we could get paid for this."
Gwen did a fake roll of her eyes.
"No one wants to see some spandex wearing idiot charging a guy with a flamethrower."
Flash was nodding along with her while he watched the video. Gwen mused she was competing with herself for his attention. She let him have his moment of drooling. She did look good in those leggings. Gwen's eyes went wide when she noticed the bracers were sitting on the top of her vanity. While Flash was distracted, she tossed them under her chair. Then made her face a mask of annoyance.
"Maybe I should leave you two alone…"
That got Flash's full attention.
"No, it's not like that. It's just so cool. You know that Wonder Woman?"
"I'm aware of the movie."
"You know how she deflected bullets with her bracers?"
Gwen nodded.
"This chick was totally doing that!"
Gwen shook her head.
"There has to be some trick. No bracer is going to stop a bullet. It would go right through it and her arm. Maybe she was working with the guy or something."
Flash waved his hand and was bouncing in his seat then winced.
"No, there were two guys and oh my God, that dude is totally not having kids. You have to see this."
Gwen rolled her eyes and continued to paint her toenails.
"Nah, I'm good. If I want to watch fake superheroes, I'll go watch a movie."
Flash pouted.
"I'm totally posting this to YouTube."
Gwen looked over her knees at him.
"It's got to be fake somehow, why do you want to give this attention seeker a bigger platform?"
"No way Gwen, you didn't see it with your own eyes. I'm totally going to get a million hits."
Gwen shook her head.
"Your funeral Captain Awesome."
Flash grinned when she used his pet name. His feed got blurry. She assumed it was him uploading the video. He sent her a link in the chat portion of her program. She touched the screen and looked at the title. It was obviously the video of her. She feigned disinterest.
"I'll watch it if I have time. So have you gotten my present yet?"
Flash was still distracted.
"That's what I'm talking about, it's only been up for three minutes and already three hundred hits!"
"Are you going to be going on about this video all night?"
Flash blushed again.
"I'm sorry, it's just so cool! I mean just like wham! There was this massive crack afterwards, like she broke his bullet proof suit. I would not want to get tackled by her."
Gwen looked over her knees at him again.
"Are you sure about that?"
Flash's cheeks were the brightest shade of red she'd ever seen on him. She reached out her finger towards the hang up button.
"How about you take the night to get whatever the hell-."
Gwen held out her other hand and moved it around the screen.
"This is out of your system, and we'll talk tomorrow, k?"
Flash pouted.
"Aww, Gwen don't be like that."
"Be like what? Your second-choice girl? Talk to you tomorrow, Captain Awesome."
She hung up. Then without missing a beat tapped on the link to see how cool she looked on the video.
Gwen was finishing off her toenails while watching Flash's video of her for the fifteenth time when she heard the apartment door open. She paused the video and walked to her bedroom door with her toes curled back. She peaked out and her dad was standing by the door looking like someone had just beaten the joy out of his life. This wasn't an abnormal look recently. Gwen's scorched earth technique during their recent shopping trip had destroyed him. After that he threw himself into work and his relationship with Erica. George Stacy and his daughter had barely spoken twenty words to each other in the last month. And those words were usually monosyllable. She was still furious at him and Erica for their affair but seeing him like this, completely broken, was enough to break through her teenage angst.
"Dad? What are you doing home?"
He looked at her. There was a new sadness in his eyes. Like he'd given up all fight he had left in him.
"Hey hon. Don't worry about it."
Gwen waddled towards him trying to prevent her nail polish from getting ruined.
"Shouldn't you be at work?"
He sighed.
"I'm suspended for the near future. There was an incident tonight."
Gwen waddled closer. She wasn't sure if it would be well received and decided damn her nail polish and stood on her tip toes to give him a tight hug. She hoped her quip hadn't been the source of his suspension. He wrapped his arm around her back and held her tight. She felt a lot of the tension in his muscles relax.
"I'm so sorry dad."
He shook his head.
"Has nothing to do with you dear. I'm just going to get changed and head to the hospital. I lost a man and his partner is in critical condition."
Gwen hugged him tightly again.
"You want me to come?"
He shook his head.
"No, you stay here. It's pretty crazy out there right now. The press is all over this. You have work in the morning anyway."
Gwen released him and nodded. He stood there for a few moments, his eyes drifting to the fake Christmas tree they had put up. It still lacked lights and decorations. He'd done it out of habit, but it was Gwen's mother who usually did the decorating. Gwen noticed. She decided to offer an actual tangible olive branch.
"Hey dad, since you're suspended, you want to decorate the tree tomorrow with Erica before she goes to work?"
He looked down at her.
"You and your mom used to do that. It was your thing."
Gwen shrugged.
"Well, she's not here and we have to get used to that. I know you got Erica an engagement ring to ask her to marry you on Christmas Eve. It would look silly kneeling in front of an empty tree."
He blinked at her in disbelief.
"I was, am still sort of mad at you dad; That didn't mean I was blind or deaf. I heard you practicing in the bathroom. I also know you were worried about how I would react. You have my permission. I'll let you get to the hospital. Let me know if you need me to bring anything."
Gwen looked down at her nail polish which was still looking good. She waddled to her room again and put her feet up. Her father went about getting changed and left the apartment. Flash had been right. Two hours after he posted the video, which was apparently the first one up it had over two hundred thousand hits. She decided thirty watches was enough narcissism for the evening and put her tablet to sleep and put it on her wireless charge pad before curling up on her bed.