I finally found a good name for this arc: The Clone Conspiracy!
Meanwhile, Jessica Drew is feeling dour and depressed, her mind still rolling with her own body dysphoria at being a female clone of Peter Parker, and having memories of being a boy as well, leaving her confused and unsure of what part of herself is truly herself.
Strangely enough, she finds a confidant of sorts in Twice, who, in his own way, shares his issues with being able to make clones of himself, as well as his own fears of not being the original Twice. The two end up developing an odd sort of friendship, helped along by their interactions with Kirishima and Tetsutetsu, who express their own concerns and complexes about being so similar and people being unable to distinguish them from each other.
During this time, the four members of the Spider-Gang would begin chasing up sighting of Itsy Bitsy going around and murdering criminals once more. However, during their investigation and many skirmishes with the renegade clone, they begin to piece together a conspiracy to restart the cloning experiments of Doctor Octopus and the HPSC, and learn that the villains that Itsy Bitsy was targeting were all couriers and hired muscle for this conspiracy that had been ordered to be disposed of.
Eventually, the four are able to track down one of the heads of this conspiracy by taking advantage of the commonplace bureaucracy that would no doubt be part of a conspiracy like this, that being the need for materials and the paperwork that would come with this, and realise that it is a former agent of the Hero Public Safety Commission, who has been pulled into this conspiracy by other former agents. During this, Jessica and the boys would come across a damaged Spider-Slayer drone that was being used by the HPSC Remnant's conspiracy, which they would reprogramme into a friendly female A.I.-piloted mech that, whilst originally being designated as SP-DR, they would nickname as Peni.
Soon, the five of them, with the help of Peni's tracking software, are able to track down Itsy Bitsy to an abandoned set of buildings, and find a makeshift lab filled with stolen cloning tech and repurposed medical equipment. The HPSC Remnant seemed to be dead-set on restarting the Winter Soldier programme.
During their investigation, they would learn that the primary logistics of the HPSC Remnant's operation was focused on cloning the quirk-erasing bullets that their spies had seized from Overhaul's agency after the building's destruction, and had been selling them to various hero agencies across the country in order to build up a new powerbase and spread their influence out once more.
But then, the group are forced to protect themselves from the HPSC Remnant's agents and forces, including Itsy Bitsy, who is revealed to have been effectively held hostage by the Remnant, who has been withholding the medication that she needs to starve off clone degeneration unless she does their bidding.
And that's when we get to the main villain of this arc, that being the former HPSC President calling and commanding the operation from out of prison, now going by the moniker of the Jackal, who had planned on first using the quirk-erasing bullets to eliminate her enemies on the path to restoring the HPSC, and then using the cloning tech that they had their hands on to kill and replace major figures of government with clones, allowing them to control all forms of government in Japan, and bring about a return to the status quo and the power that they, that she, once had.
She commands the Winter Soldier programme to be restarted and for their organisation to be brought back to power once more in the shadows, and Jessica, Peni, and the boys to be killed for learning about their plans.
However, Jessica and the others have an ace up their sleeves, as, thanks to Peni's software and comm signals, they are able to send a signal out to Adriana and S.I.L.K., who quickly respond by storming the old base and arresting everyone inside, eventually shutting off the Jackal's connection to the base and shutting down the HPSC Remnant's operation, and subduing Itsy Bitsy and taking her away.
In the aftermath, Adriana congratulates Jessica and her crew for tracking and taking down the HPSC Remnant, and then presents to them a proposal. She had been thinking about giving the rest of the Spider-Gang (and yes, she was aware of their existence, and no, she wasn't going to arrest them for it) the same offer to join S.I.L.K. as her agents as she (somewhat) had Peter, and now, Jessica and her lot had given her the provocation and opportunity to do so.
So, starting today, if they wanted, they could become fulltime agents of S.I.L.K..
At first, Jessica would be put off by this offer, not particularly trusting Adriana, same as the boys.
But, for some reason, there was a strange smell in the air, an flowery aroma, and for some reason, Jessica found it easy to trust and listen to Adriana and what she had to say, and even agree with her. Around Adriana, with the strange scent in the air that didn't seem to register in her mind despite somehow knowing about its presence, she felt safe, relaxed… happy, even. Like she was finally at peace with herself.
And so, without thinking too much about it, Jessica and the boys would accept Adriana's proposal, and Peni, not wanting to be left out, yet also concerned for her new friends, would follow along shortly behind.
Soon enough, Jessica and the boys would leave the Spider-Gang and join Peter in S.I.L.K.'s main headquarters, and Jessica would express to Peter how she finally feels like she's growing into her own skin instead of constantly living in his, her older brother's, shadow.
Now, she knew for a fact that she wasn't Peter Parker. She wasn't a knockoff copy of him.
She was Jessica Drew.
She was Spider-Woman.
Meanwhile, the former HPSC President is sitting in her (rather luxurious) prison cell, fuming at how she has lost her powerbase, again, to a hero-wannabe spider vigilante, again. She is filled with rage at this, and vows to completely and utterly destroy the spiders for destroying the status quo of hero society themselves, no matter what it takes-
And then the door to her cell opens up, and in steps Overhaul, who is displeased at how the HPSC President has squandered the resources that he has given her, all without any gain for himself. As it turns out, the former President had made a deal with Overhaul to use the various hero agencies under his control and his criminal networks to fund and fuel the rebirth of the HPSC, all so Overhaul could regain his prominent position within hero society once more and reclaim his power, and then rise even higher in the ranks to become one of the most prominent people in the reborn HPSC. The former president tries to assert her authority, claiming that Overhaul will wait until it is time, and then, when that doesn't work, promising him that she would try again and-
Overhaul doesn't believe in second chances.
He grazes his hand over her, and she is turned into a splatter on the wall.
And Overhaul leaves the bloody cell behind, deciding to deal with the Spider-Gang, who had messed up his operation in the old warehouses with all his trigger supplies in it, his own way.
Giving Jessica Drew her own arc and letting her have the spotlight for a while was always something that I wanted to do, and I knew that, since she was a clone, I also wanted to tie it into the unresolved arc with Itsy Bitsy and something to do with heroism. Originally, the main villain of this arc would've been Detnerat and the Meta Liberation Army, but then I decided that I really wanted to tie up the last remaining threads with the HPSC President and her cronies, and that's how we got here.
Hey, at least the former HPSC President got her well-deserved karma at the very least! That's one loose end we don't need!
On a quick side note, Peni's here! Albeit as a Spider-Slayer and an A.I. rather than a girl and her mecha! When I was writing out this arc, I had envisioned Peni to be a crossover hybrid between the Peni from the Spider-Verse comics and the Peni from Into and Across the Spider-Verse for the looks and physical appearance (or at least, the appearance of her holographic avatar, and finally Penny Polendina from the web show RWBY in terms of attitude as a reference. I thought it was neat, and the similarities between the two in this story were too good to pass up.
Also, I'm just realised that I should've added a bit during Aizawa's quirk assessment test where Peter was trying to help the other students pass the test, only for Aizawa to shoot that down and force them all to pass on their own terms. It would serve to highlight one of the first fundamental flaws of hero society, how it looks down upon heroes assisting each other in favour of highlighting one's own power, in a dark parallel to All Might's tenure as the number one hero.