A/N: I own nothing except any original content. All Spider-Verse content belongs to Sony/Marvel. Also, as with this story's prequel, most of this story will be in Gwen or Miles' point of view from a third person perspective unless specifically stated otherwise. If you don't understand yet, don't worry, you'll catch on. Now, enjoy!

Chapter 1

Gwen POV

One thing that could be said for New York City, it was never uneventful. Even on the blandest of days, there would always be something interesting happening somewhere in the city.

Sometimes, it would be a new pizza place opening up, bringing along with it its very own variety of pizza that would have to find its place on the scale every single citizen seemed to have for which pizza was the best and which was the worst. Other days, maybe there would be yet another hot dog-eating contest at Coney Island, which was of course really just a contest to see who would throw up first and bring the rest of the crowd with them.

And then, some days were like today, with a high-speed police chase rolling down Sherman Avenue, involving about half a dozen squad cars following a truck suspected of carrying a bomb of some sort.

Unfortunately, the cops were having trouble getting close to their target due to the serious potential threat of there actually being a bomb inside the vehicle ahead of them along with a couple men with automatic rifles standing in the open back of the vehicle shooting at the pursuing police's cars. The PDNY had already lost two of the cars that had gotten too close and become easy targets, and though the officers who'd been involved in the wrecks had survived by no small degree of luck, the other cops weren't eager to run that same risk themselves, but they might have to take some risks if they couldn't close in on the truck soon.

That was why it was so fortunate that someone present here wasn't too worried about bullets.

Running faster than any normal person would be able to on a rooftop above the chase, following its progress, was New York's one and only Spider-Woman, known by few to really be Gwen Stacy beneath the mask and hood she wore as part of her superhero suit.

As she ran, jumping and vaulting over any obstacles that got in her way, Gwen looked down at the scene and smiled to herself beneath her mask, confident in her ability to handle this simple runaway truck. She'd handled plenty worse than it in the past.

Or, at least, this particular job was supposed to be simple, but it all got worse when Gwen was preparing to jump down off the building when she suddenly got an unexpected call. Getting distracted, Gwen reached up to the side of her mask, beneath which an earpiece was placed inside her ear for quick calls, and she hurriedly answered. Not knowing yet who had called her, Gwen started by simply greeting, "Hello?"

"Gwen, it's me," came a familiar, female voice, and Gwen mentally cursed. Now was really not the best time for this, but that wasn't exactly the sort of thing that one told to a woman like Maybelle "May" Parker, a middle-aged woman who could probably intimidate just about anyone into getting her way even if she didn't control your home life. Which she did, in Gwen's case, for better or worse.

Now, don't misunderstand. Aunt May (as she'd insisted Gwen address her years ago) was as sweet as any woman could be, if not more so. The fact that she'd taken Gwen into her home after Gwen had lost both of her parents by the age of only sixteen should be some indication of that, but that wasn't even the end of her kindness. Nor was the citywide homeless shelter organization that May had founded years ago and still ran today despite her sufferings, the Food, Emergency Aid, Shelter and Training Center, or simply the F.E.A.S.T. Center.

May had officially adopted Gwen following her dad's passing three years ago simply because she remembered that Gwen had been the best friend of May's now-deceased nephew, Peter (whom she'd also taken in after his own parents' deaths and treated like a son, even after her husband Ben had died and thus left her no longer possessing any real relation to Peter).

For years, the Stacy and Parker families had been as close as could be, but though Gwen and May had grieved together after Peter's early passing, they had slowly drifted apart over the next year. Yet somehow, May Parker had discovered that Gwen had lost her dad and had immediately rushed to her aid, taking her in and giving her a good, supportive, loving home for the last couple years of her childhood and now even some time into her new adulthood.

Yes, May Parker was stronger than steel with an iron will and a heart of gold. But she also had a silver tongue, and Gwen knew that no amount of aging would ever allow her to stop obeying that woman.

A dangerous circumstance, for a superhero to be under anyone's influence to such a degree, but it wasn't as though Gwen could pretend to be too busy at the moment (even though she was) and hang up. May would know Gwen wasn't telling the whole truth. And then Gwen wouldn't get wheatcakes for breakfast tomorrow. There were some things worse than putting yourself at risk of getting shot by criminals, and Aunt May's wrath was one of them.

And so, as she shot webs in front of herself to pull herself forward, trying to run ahead of the truck, Gwen responded, "Oh, hey, May! How's it going?"

"Your boss just called me and said that you haven't clocked in to work yet," May said, her words sounding just short of a reprimand.

"Oh, yeah," Gwen said, trying to quickly think up an excuse. "Well, you see, I was on my way to work, but then there was- BIRDS!"

Gwen yelled out that last part as she leapt from one rooftop to another and was surprised by a flock of pigeons flying up in front of her, startled by her arrival. She'd been too distracted to notice them at first, not helped by the fact that they blended in oddly well with the concrete on the rooftop, and the wall of feathers that had risen up in front of her had shocked her an embarrassing amount, but she'd been going too fast to stop herself.

But it got worse, of course. One of the birds apparently had either a death wish or a personal vendetta against Gwen, because it had flown directly at her when it had been scared into taking flight. Now, with her super-strength, Gwen was quite capable of handling most attacks that could be thrown at her, and this bird's kamikaze flight was among the weaker ones she'd had to deal with, but taking a pigeon to the face at 60 MPH was still enough to stimulate Gwen's nerves. And unfortunately, when Gwen's nerves got activated, her sticking powers tended to act up, which is exactly what happened to the pigeon that hit her.

Trying to keep up her speed but hardly able to see where she was going, Gwen stumbled forward on the rooftop and tried to pry the pigeon off of her face, only succeeding in making it nervous when she grabbed it so that it began pecking her head repeatedly and painfully.

Through the pinpricks dotting Gwen's forehead, she heard May ask, "Gwen? Are you alright? Did you say… birds?"

Finally relaxing herself enough to pull the pigeon off her face and throw it behind herself, where it once again stretched its wings and took off to find its next victim, Gwen continued her run and answered, "Uh, yeah! Birds, you know. I just… saw them in the middle of the street and didn't want to hit them, so I had to slam on the brakes and ended up running a bit behind schedule. No big deal."

There was a short pause, then May said, "Gwen, you didn't bring your car today."

Her ears turning red beneath her mask as she realized that May was right about that, Gwen helplessly said, "...Whaaaat? That's so weird…"

Somehow, May seemed to accept her adopted niece's oddness and simply told her, "Just… get to work. Don't make your boss call me again."

Deciding that she'd finally reached the perfect place to attack from, Gwen jumped off the edge of the building, diving down towards the runaway truck she'd been following, while responding, "Don't worry, Aunt May. I have it on very good authority that traffic's rough this morning anyway."

Gwen landed on the top of the truck in a low crouch, using her sticking powers (deliberately this time) to keep herself from rolling upon landing due to the wind and the way that the car was swerving back and forth.

Knowing that if this vehicle indeed had a bomb in it, it was most likely in the most protected part of it, Gwen turned and started crawled to the back of the vehicle, looking down once she got there to see the two men with automatic rifles standing inside the cargo hold, each of them holding onto one side of the open doors for stability while their other hands held their guns to keep the cops back.

However, at that moment, Gwen heard May say, "Oh, and we also need eggs, Gwen. Can you get those before you come home tonight?"

Despite knowing that she was throwing away the element of surprise, Gwen had no choice but to answer, "Yeah, two rotten eggs. Beaten or scrambled?"

Looking up at the sound of Gwen's voice and only just now realizing that she was there, the two gunmen seemed shocked by Spider-Woman's appearance, enough so that they didn't have the sense to react to Gwen's arrival before she struck first. Keeping her hands stuck to the metal surface beneath her, Gwen rolled forward and swung down into the cargo bay, spreading her legs out to either side of herself to kick the two gun-wielding men into the walls of the cargo hold, causing them to drop their guns due to the force with which Gwen kicked them.

They still weren't giving up, however, and they each rushed towards her at the same time and attempted to throw a punch at Gwen, both of which Gwen caught by intercepting their fists with her own palms before she pushed one of them back, making him hit against the wall again, while she jumped towards the other one and bounced off of his chest to hit the first one in the chest, knocking him into the wall for a third time, this time hard enough that he fell unconscious.

The remaining guard then threw another punch at Gwen from behind, and her biological early-warning system, her Spider-Sense, tingled and allowed Gwen to dodge the punch without looking and catch his wrist before spinning around to kick him away, knocking him unconscious as well.

Once the back of the vehicle was secure, Gwen ran towards the open back and flipped herself back onto the roof. However, that was when May asked over Gwen's phone, "Rotten eggs? Scrambled? What are you talking about, Gwen?"

In honesty, that little comment had actually been more of a joke aimed at the bad guys, but Gwen recognized her wrongdoing and quickly corrected herself, "Yeah, right, sorry. I meant good eggs, the best eggs. And a dozen of them, right?"

"That'll do much better," May agreed.

Peering over the top of the truck down through the windshield in the front once she'd reached it, Gwen could see the driver of the truck sitting alone in the cab of the vehicle. Deciding that he could use some company, Gwen slipped off the side of the truck and swung herself in through the window on the right side of the vehicle, casually sitting herself down in the passenger seat and ignoring the shattered glass she'd just kicked all over the driver.

When he turned to look at her in shock and fear, Gwen looked around and said, "Oh, sorry. I confused this for my Uber."

"Gwen, are you feeling alright? Maybe you need some rest," May suggested as the driver of the truck reached down for the pistol holstered at his hip.

However, Gwen's arm shot before he could grab it and knocked him out with one punch to the face, and as Gwen examined his unconscious face, she responded, "No, I'm fine. Actually, my driver looks even more tired than I do."

Gwen leaned over and pulled the man's leg off the gas and instead pressed it down on the brake to stop the truck while she heard May sigh over the phone before she said, "Alright, Gwen, if you're sure. I'll see you tonight. I love you."

"Love you too!" Gwen managed to say before she heard May hang up. As the truck pulled to a stop, Gwen thought to herself idly that it was probably a good thing that all the bad guys were already unconscious for the last part of that call, or they might've thought she was talking to them, which she imagined would be rather confusing. Although, it probably would've been quite fun as well, a nice break from the monotony that Gwen's heroics had become lately.

But she had other responsibilities that got in the way of her fun, and so, with a deep exhale, Gwen opened her door and climbed out of the truck while saying back to the unconscious driver, "Fell asleep on the job, buddy? Sorry, but you're getting a low score on Yipe for this one."

As Gwen exited the vehicle, numerous police officers pushed their way past her as they approached the stopped truck, some of them patting her on the shoulder gratefully as she walked through their perimeter and others just giving her a distasteful look. Ah, well. They used to treat her much worse, so she could hardly complain. Besides, now Gwen had the opportunity to get to work before too many more people could realize that she was missing…

Right on cue, Gwen's phone buzzed in her pocket and her earpiece rang in her ear. Sighing in resignation, Gwen answered the phone and asked, "Yello?"

"Spider-Woman," a woman's voice responded, revealing with that first word that she wasn't looking for Gwen Stacy. "We need to talk."

Line Break

Captain Yuri Watanabe of the PDNY stood on the roof of her precinct building, leaning with her back against the perimeter railing and looking above her at Spider-Woman tightrope-walking on one of her trademark web-lines that had been strung between two poles that Gwen knew had not been there the day before, though she'd seen some sort of construction going on up here. Now she knew what it had been for.

After a few moments of watching Gwen, however, Yuri called out, "Are you gonna keep showing off, or are we going to get to work?"

Pushing her full body weight down on her web line then springing off of it, Gwen did a double front-flip in the air and landed a few feet in front of Yuri before saying, "I thought you wanted me here to test out your new antennae. Good news, they seem to work just fine. As big metal poles, at least."

Pushing herself off the railing and back to her feet, Yuri said, "We already know that they work. We tested them just this morning. Each PDNY building is now equipped with state-of-the-art criminal tracking technology. They can notify the police of break-ins practically the moment they happen within an extended range, and they have the most advanced facial recognition software I've ever seen, able to find a target by their face in under less than a minute. And we got them on a discount, too, courtesy of Seraph Technologies."

Raising an eyebrow beneath her mask, Gwen asked, "Seraph Tech, huh?"

"Yeah, why?" Yuri responded.

"Nothing," Gwen responded, not wanting or being able to go into detail on why that particular company held some significance to her. Changing the subject, Gwen asked, "How did you test them?"

"We found you this morning," Yuri responded, and Gwen looked at her in shock and some wariness before Yuri smiled and said, "Don't worry, I don't mean your secret identity or anything. But we just plugged in an image of your mask, and in less than a minute we were tracking you going after that truck."

Relieved by that, Gwen asked, "So what happened with the truck?"

Sighing, Yuri answered, "Nothing good. The bomb wasn't there, no surprise, and the three guys you brought in are refusing to talk, just like all the rest. This is our fourth dead end in three weeks, which by my count, isn't the best record."

"The bomb thing was just a rumor, remember," Gwen pointed out.

"Yeah, and the man who shared that rumor with us was shot ten minutes later," Yuri reminded her. "I'm inclined to at least humor the idea that there may have been some truth to what he said. But that's not why I called you here. I thought you might want to know that we brought in another seven Mutes last night."

Her expression falling beneath her mask as she finally realized what this was about, Gwen paused for a moment before she responded, "Uh, seven? That's… Well, I mean, are you sure that all of them were him? He would've had to be pretty busy."

"Their wounds were consistent with the previous victims," Yuri answered, getting straight to the point and leaving no room for argument.

Not wanting Yuri to see her face at the moment, not even the general expression of it conveyed through her eye lenses, Gwen walked over by the railing behind Yuri and jumped up to perch on top of it, her feet sticking to the metal as she looked out over the city in thought. Yuri came over and looked out with her while saying, "I know that this one's personal for you… But that's all the more reason you need to put a stop to it. You need to bring him in."

Trying to defend the case, hoping to stall if nothing else, Gwen said, "The Mutes are all criminals, Yuri. And didn't you once tell me that you would work with whoever you had to in order to protect the city?"

"First of all, that was during what was essentially a war," Yuri argued. "The rules were different then. They had to be. And now, the rules have changed again. And second, that's the whole reason we're talking. I managed to get the state governors to let me deputize you, and they weren't easy to convince. They're not about to let me do it again with someone like him. And besides, what are you even arguing about? Didn't you tell me that you were getting bored?"

Yes, Gwen had been feeling bored lately. For the last year, she'd gone through the same usual routines, stopping some common criminals with ease and still making it home on time at the end of each day. Of course, she'd never get tired of saving lives, or the thrill of being Spider-Woman, but… It used to be different. More fun. But after losing the thing that she'd most loved about it, it all became much harder to enjoy when all she saw anymore was what she was missing out on. And maybe what Yuri was suggesting could help with that… But it would also hurt Gwen more than she knew.

Still trying to convince Gwen, seeing her indecision, Yuri prompted, "Come on, I figured you would jump at a chance to fight a supervillain. You haven't run into any of them since Jersey."

An uncomfortable chill going through Gwen, she subconsciously looked towards the Hudson River, where she could see from here the faint shadow of the giant statue on the Jersey shore that still served today as a warning to all would-be supervillains. Since the day that statue had gone up over a year ago, not a single super-criminal of any sort had dared to show their face.

Finally tearing her gaze away from the distant statue, Gwen looked back at Yuri and said, "He's not a supervillain."

Raising an eyebrow, Yuri asked, "How exactly do you define a supervillain? Because my definition is something like, 'ridiculously strong person that I need to call Spider-Woman to deal with so my people don't get hurt,' and this guy definitely falls in that category."

"Go after him yourself," Gwen suggested.

"I would if I could," Yuri responded, then gestured back at her new scanners and said, "That's actually a big part of why we bought these things. Your friend apparently knows how to avoid every security camera in the city and I'm hoping that these things will do a better job finding him."

You have no idea, Gwen thought to herself with a hidden smirk, thinking to herself that the PDNY's new towers probably wouldn't be quite as effective at that as they were hoping.

Yuri then continued, "But even if I found him, I can't do anything without your help. I can't try to have my own people chase someone like this! He'd tear them apart! Whoever you thought he was before, that's not who he is now. Now, he's a torturer. A madman and a kill-"

"Don't!" Gwen cut her off abruptly, turning to glare at her, then looked away again and lowered her gaze in shame, knowing what was coming.

Sure enough, Yuri looked at Gwen in disbelief and noted, "Seriously? Even after all this time… After everything that's happened… You still care about him?"

Gwen was silent for a moment, then looked out at the city again wistfully and responded, "You try losing everything sometime. See how quick you get over it."

Third Person POV

While Spider-Woman was meeting with the Captain of the PDNY at their uptown precinct, neither of them knew that only about half a dozen blocks away, a very different meeting was going on.

A man named Leo's eyelids fluttered open and he groaned in pain as he awoke, feeling weird. After a moment, he tried to move, and that's when he realized why he was so uncomfortable and lightheaded. Looking down at his body, Leo found himself to be sitting in a reclined position on some sort of stone table, his wrists and ankles bound by thick chains holding him down, unable to even try to free himself.

Looking around, he discovered that he was lying in the middle of a large, dark, domed chamber made of rough stone, seemingly underground, but he couldn't really tell for certain. The only source of light in the room was a single, dim lightbulb hanging directly above Leo's head. As he observed his surroundings, having to arch his back upwards to look behind himself, Leo could see that all of the walls in the room looked exactly the same, with no door or windows in sight. For all he knew, it seemed that he may well have been buried alive down here.

Starting to panic, he tried to remember how he'd gotten here. He'd been doing what was supposed to be a simple job, but then they'd received word that the cops were onto them. Leo had been scared and tried to convince the driver of their truck that they needed to find a place to hide, but the driver had refused and had instead tried to escape, drawing even more attention.

Realizing at that moment that he may be a bit too easily frightened for a life of crime, terrified of what would happen if he went to jail, Leo had opened his door and jumped out of the truck mid-travel, thankfully before it had really gotten up to speed. It had hurt, but it had been survivable and doubtless was a better alternative to ending up in prison. After that, Leo had tried to run, not wanting the cops to see him and think he looked suspicious, so he'd dodged into an alley, and… And then what? His memory went blank at that part.

Perhaps the police had gotten him after all. But if that was the case, their interrogation tactics were more intense than the man had ever imagined. Then, Leo's face blanched as he considered an even worse possibility. Maybe his bosses had found him and were now punishing him for bailing on his team, putting their operation at risk. He didn't know much about their operations, having only signed up a couple days ago, but maybe he knew enough to be worth killing? At least to be used as an example of what disloyalty bought someone.

Though Leo was easily scared, he wasn't stupid. He knew that noise was a criminal's worst enemy (as he ought to, being one himself), and he tried his best to take advantage of that fact. Praying that maybe somehow someone would hear him even if he was indeed buried beneath the earth somewhere, Leo opened his mouth wide and yelled, "HELLO? SOMEONE? ANYONE? PLEASE, I'VE BEEN KIDNAPPED!"

To his surprise, someone actually responded, though the voice wasn't anything like what he would've expected and what it said was certainly not what he would've hoped to hear.

"No one can hear you, Leonard. No one's coming to save you."

The voice that spoke was deep and carried a heavy modulation that made it impossible to place, and it spoke from directly in front of Leo, making him shiver with the cold indifference evident in its words. But he began to shiver even more when he looked at the figure that he was sure had just appeared out of nowhere right in front of him. It was a man, sitting with his back against the wall and his hands folded in front of himself.

However, Leo could only see the faint outline of the figure, and the only clear part of him was a black mask covering his face, lit up just the slightest amount by a pair of white slits for eyes surrounded by a bright magenta light, a pair of reflected, glowing angular shapes that suggested danger to Leo's inborn instincts. From those simple eye shapes, Leo was able to recognize whose clutches he'd ended up in, and the realization was worse than any of his previous guesses, causing his eyes to widen in terror.

Tilting his head at leo, the figure asked, "You know who I am?"

Gulping down his fear, Leo answered, "You- You're the P- Prowler. The Scourge of the Criminal Underworld. The Bane of the Earth. The only supervillain to never be captured by Spider-"

"Stop," Prowler cut him off impatiently with a growl, instantly making Leo fall silent. "Just my name would've been enough, but whatever. You were mostly correct. But now that I know you understand who you're dealing with, let me tell you what I know about you, Leonard Avery Carlyle."

All the color draining out of Leo's face, he asked, "You know my name? How do you-"

"I know everything about you, Leonard," the Prowler interrupted him. " I know your name, your PIN code, your Social Security, your home address… And the names and addresses of everyone you care about. So I'm going to ask you some questions. If you lie, I will know, and you will be very sorry. You understand?"

Leo nodded furiously, his mind already made up not to tell a single lie to this demon that had kidnapped him. When he'd received that affirmative signal, the Prowler stood up and walked menacingly towards Leo, making the criminal try in vain to lean back in his chair to put some distance between the two of them again.

As Prowler entered the light, his outfit became revealed to Leo. It was mostly all black, especially the long trench coat that he wore, but like the rest of the outfit, the coat was lined with magenta, filling the inside of the collar. Beneath the open front of the coat, Leo could see the famous logo of the Prowler painted proudly on the man's chest, and similar magenta linings went down the front of his legs, ending in a pair of unique-looking shoes glowing on his feet.

Most notably, however, were the silver gauntlets covering Prowler's hands and running up his forearms, the fingers of which ended in razor-sharp claws. The claws were the biggest cause for Leo to cower in fright, but luckily Prowler didn't try to hurt him, instead just looking down on him and saying, "Good. Let's get started."

Miles POV

"You were in a truck this morning, one suspected of transporting a bomb," Miles told the detestable criminal before him.

"We didn't have any bomb!" the man protested, trying to avoid looking at Miles.

Miles frowned beneath his mask and asked instead, "Where was the truck going?"

"I don't know," Leonard answered, his voice just short of a sob.

Getting frustrated, Miles next demanded, "Who hired you?"

"I don't know," the pitiful man repeated.

Glaring down at him, Miles said, "You're not giving me much to work with, Leonard. I hoped I wouldn't have to warn you about what happens to criminals who aren't useful to me, but maybe I was wrong."

Stepping up to Leonard's side, Miles kneeled down and abruptly seized one of the other man's wrists, forcefully pulling his hand up despite how Leonard fought against it with a quiet groan of fear, then held one of his claws next to the base of Leonard's outstretched index finger and told him, "You know what happens to people who get on my bad side, Leonard? The PDNY collects them now. They call them Mutes, short for 'the mutilated ones'. You see, what I do is I get people to talk, one way or another, by taking something from them until they do. First, I always start with the trigger finger on your dominant hand…"

"Oh, please, no, no…" Leonard begged, his eyes wide as he watched Miles' claws get closer to his own finger and understanding what he was being threatened with.

However, Miles ignored him and next held his claws up by the man's face to tell him, "Those who don't break at that point lose more. Sometimes another finger, sometimes an ear, sometimes… other things that no man wants to lose."

Leonard watched Miles' finger with crossed eyes as it hovered in front of his face, but when he still refused to say anything more, Miles grew impatient and suddenly stabbed the claws on his other hand into the man's thigh, causing him to let out a scream of pain. Miles might've done worse, but fortunately for Leonard, that was the moment that Miles suddenly heard a female voice over his mask's communicator say, "Miles, stop!"

Turning his head away from Leonard, Miles quietly said, "About time. Where have you been?"

"Some of us actually work, sleep, and eat, you know," the voice said sarcastically, then added, "You shouldn't have started without me. Without me here to tell you whether or not he's telling the truth-"

"Save it," Miles cut her off, pulling his claws out of Leonard's leg as requested and standing up again. After the voice had stopped speaking, Miles turned his attention back to the criminal breathing heavily beneath him and told him, "I'm going to repeat my questions, and you're going to answer them again. Any lies, and your finger goes next."

Leonard looked up at Miles fearfully and nodded his head to show his understanding.

Part of Miles hoping that Leonard had been lying on one of his answers, not so he could hurt him but so that he could get something valuable out of this interrogation, Miles repeated, "Did you have a bomb or do you know where one is?"

"No, I never saw or heard anything about a bomb," the criminal responded.

"Where was your truck going this morning?" Miles repeated next, careful to be specific so the lie detector would be most accurate.

"I don't know!" Leonard insisted. "And I don't know who hired me either! Look, I just heard about a job and came looking to sign up. I don't know what it is or who wants it done, but someone contacted me and said that they were willing to pay two hundred in cash for one simple job, just a couple weeks going around town, sometimes hauling these big wooden crates that no one got to talk about. They gave me a street in the Village where they sent a car to pick me up that first day, but they don't tell me anything, I swear!"

Miles listened to all of this carefully, drawing in as much information as he could, then finally asked at the end of it all, "Mason?"

His friend over his communicator, Mason, didn't give Miles the expected response and instead complained, "Hey, what did I say about the name? I told you that you can call me by my codename, or just 'Tink' for short. Why aren't you doing that?"

"Because I'm not Peter Pan," Miles responded professionally, then pointed down at Leonard and said, "Now tell me if he was telling the truth before I just cut him up until I believe him."

He heard shuffling on the other end of the line as Mason followed his orders, then she told him, 'Alright, alright. Uhhh… Yeah, he's being honest."

Miles let out a deep sigh of disappointment. Most of his targets regarding the bomb threat in the last few weeks had been annoyingly uncooperative and scarily devoted to whatever they were involved in. Miles had cut some of them up badly, going further than he'd wanted to go in several cases, and somehow they'd all been too stubborn to tell him anything, leaving him no choice but to leave their damaged remains to the police. What had initially started out as a simple rumor had at first only been a minor concern to Miles, but when some criminals started being more willing to lose both hands than talk about it, that got the Prowler's notice. Now, he had finally found someone that he didn't even have to hurt to get them to talk, and he didn't know anything. It was just yet another dead end.

Annoyed, Miles glared back down at Leonard and asked him, "Is there anything you can tell me?"

To his surprise, Leonard noticeably hesitated for a moment before answering, "No."

In an instant, Mason confirmed Miles' suspicions, saying, "That one was a lie!"

Immediately, Miles snapped his claws outward on one hand, extending them with a threatening snikt, and Leonard seemed to quickly realize his mistake as he said, "Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I just… I don't know much, and I can't be sure how much use it'll be to you!"

"Tell me," Miles ordered.

Taking a deep breath, Leonard said, "Look, all I have is what I heard from some of the guys I was running with. It's not a lot, but… All I know is whatever's about to happen, it's supposed to start later today."

"What happens today?" Miles asked, excitedly thinking that he was finally getting somewhere in his investigation.

Looking up and meeting Miles' eyes for the first time during this interrogation, Leonard answered, "Wilson Fisk is getting released from prison."

A/N: I know this chapter is a bit shorter than normal, but this is just the introduction, to give you all a small taste of the new world we're entering. But for all interested, welcome (back) to Earth-107! Now, just a few housekeeping things. First of all, please remember that this story starts approximately three years after the end of Trials of Nature, meaning Gwen is 19 and Miles is 18. Also, for visualization's sake, know that Gwen's costume has not changed much (yet) from how it was in the first story, and readers of this story's prequel will probably already know why. Miles' costume, is a different story. I've left an image of it on this story's AO3 page to help you see what it looks like. Before you judge, though, please note that I am not exactly an artist, but I did my best. Anyway, with all that said, I'll close by saying thanks for reading!