Chapter Text
“Alright, people, let’s start at the beginning one last time.
My name is Shin Ryujin. I was bitten by a radioactive spider. And for the last two years, I’ve been the one and only, Spiderwoman.”
“You guys know the res-AH SHIT!” Ryujin grunted as her ribs collided with the top of a lamppost. Sirens blared through the streets of New York, fading and becoming part of the buzz of the city as police cars flew past. She just barely reached out in time to catch herself on the top of the streetlamp, hanging with one hand.
“Good day for superhuman strength”, she mumbled, still clutching her freshly bruised side as she pulled herself up. She crouched down and studied the not-so-rare pandemonium unfolding. Bank heists are annoyingly common around here, surprising since none of them ever actually get away with it, not with Spiderwoman around. The NYPD’s talents range far and wide from handing out parking tickets to stopping elderly women j-walking, but bank heists? Car chases? Knife crime? Newborn giraffes could outperform them on ice skates. That’s where Ryujin comes in.
The thunder of more police sirens jolts Ryujin to attention. She stands up, stretches her neck, rolls back her shoulders, and without hesitating, jumps. Those few seconds where she’s falling send electricity through her veins, her heart pumps with adrenaline, and the world suddenly becomes fast again. Her senses heighten, and her focus is sharpened, pushing Ryujin away, she lets Spider-Woman take over. She slams crouched down on the roof of a moving cop car, leg out to steady herself.
“It’s Spiderwoman again!” she hears the driver roar.
“Nice to see you too, Mr Park” she smirked, knowing the annoyance her presence brings to the chief of police. Captain Park, or JYP as Ryujin had taken to calling him despite his animated protest, is a good man. His morals are strong and his intentions are honourable, even though his team is a run-down assembly of disorganised clowns, he cares deeply for each of them, and Ryujin has personally watched him save more lives than she can count. One tiny little personality flaw, however, is that he hates Spider-Woman.
“Beat it, spider, we’ve got this!” he barked out the window. Ryujin took this as an obvious invitation and silently slipped through the open back window of the car. Grabbing the shoulder of both chairs, she pulled herself in line with the driver, JYP and passenger, Hwang Hyunjin, his most trusted detective.
“Hey guys! Nice morning for a heist, am I right?” she beamed. Revelling in the way both men flinch upon hearing her voice. Their frenzied shouts of rage and indignation fall over one another as they fight to be the most offended by her presence. She rests her elbows on their shoulders and grins.
“Hey, hey, I know you guys are glad to see me, but we can catch up later, I’ve got a calc test today,” Ryujin said, turning to look between the pair, voice still cheery as ever.
Captain Park, so distracted by his need to express his irritation, doesn’t notice a pedestrian getting pushed onto the road in the commission. Electricity bursts through Ryujin's skull, and her eyes flash up. Ryujin's sister, Yuna, has jokingly called this “spidey-sense”. Her arm bolted forward and grabbed the steering wheel, pulling it away from Captain Park. The car screeched in protest as it swerved over lanes and slammed into the back of… the stolen armoured van. Of course.
“Double shit” she curses, clambering through the sun roof of the car to see two masked men taking aim at her. The cops must have actually managed to stop the thieves- impressive for them, she thinks, aiming her forearm towards one of the robbers and pushing her two middle fingers down on her wrist to shoot a jet of web at his gun. Flicking her wrist round and grabbing the web in her fist, she pulls in towards her, catching the gun in her other hand. The man falls forward in a rather embarrassing attempt to hold on to his gun.
“You guys call yourselves professionals?” she shouts, making him slam his fist into the ground and charge towards her. Now, one thing you should know about Ryujin is that she never kills, never uses guns, never hurts anyone more than she has to. Which is great most of the time, but when a 6'4 tank of a man is running at her full speed…morals become more like shackles.
“You know I wasn’t kidding about that cal test, right? She says, breaking into a sprint, firing webs at the man's swinging fist and pulling him down as she uses her momentum to slide between his legs.
“I really can’t afford to miss another one, so could we make this quick?” she grunts, wrapping the man’s fists and legs together with the same web, leaving him squirming like an overturned beetle.
Feeling that familiar electricity jolt through her, Ryujin turns around just in time to see the other man firing at her. Throwing her body back, she avoids the shot and fires a web at the remaining man's ankles. Pulling with her body weight, she trips him up. She cringes at the sound of his head making contact with the concrete. She flips herself up in time to see what must be a whole division of cops circling the two men, with handcuffs. Of course, now that the hard part’s done, they show up guns-a-blazing.
Now’s her chance to escape because technically she’s a criminal too, even though the NYPD will be celebrating how they “single-handedly” stopped a bank heist with no civilian casualties for weeks. While everyone’s attention is divided, she can slip away.
~
She practically falls through the door to her calculus class. Her hair is windswept, makeup smudged, and clothes borrowed from the lost and found about 3 sizes too big. She's looked better.
“Miss Shin, nice of you to join us”, Professor Myoi mumbled, not even glancing up from her papers.
“Your test is on the table, just do what you can in the time left”, she sighed
Ryujin murmured a noise of gratitude and walked to her seat.
Most of the other students didn't look up from their tests as she shuffled to her seat, too engrossed in what looked to be a hell-sent test. She dropped her backpack, which she had shoved her suit into while running down the empty corridor.
“Damn it, I cant flash my suit to the entire back row rummiging around for a pencil…” she whispered to herself. Looking around in some pointless cry for help, her attention is caught by the long, orange hair of Hwang Yeji.
Yeji is the smartest student at this school, after Ryujin, of course. Her academic success landed her an internship at Oscorp Industries. Ryujin definitely wasn’t jealous. Not to mention her father is the chief of police, Mr Park adopted the Hwang twins at a very young age and raised them as his own. Although it’s her unfaultering kindness towards literally everyone that makes her so popular among the other students. Everyone but Ryujin, that is.
Ryujin leaned across her desk and tapped Yeji on the shoulder, wincing as her ribs still ached.
She turned around immediately, kindness soaking her expression until she saw who it was. Her face dropped into barely contained disdain within seconds as though Ryujin had just slapped her.
“Do you have a spare pencil? I forgot mine.” Ryujin whispered, ignoring her glare.
“No way you practically crawled into this exam 30 minutes late and you didn’t even think to bring a pencil?” Yeji spat back, rolling her eyes. It wasn’t a question.
“Well…to be honest…” Ryujin looked up at her with faux shyness. Yeji's face softens slightly in curiosity.
“I was kinda embarrassed. See, my pencils aren't as cool as yours.” Ryujin gestures towards Yeji’s meticulously lined-up row of pens with fluffy pink pom poms on each one's end.
Yeji's face hardens once more as she realises Ryujin's sarcasm.
“Good luck scratching numbers on the page with your fingernails.” Yeji responds with a sickeningly sweet smile before rolling her eyes and turning back to her own paper.
Damn it. Why did I say that? It was worth it too see Yeji’s pissed off glare, Ryujin thinks. That never gets old. Glancing down at her paper, she briefly considers Yeji's suggestion of clawing answers on the page but quickly shakes herself back to reality.
It would be so easy for Ryujin to just grab one of those pretty pencils with her web shooters. Though Miss-stick-up-thine-ass would notice before the web even left her wrist… She needs a distraction! What a great idea. A room in almost complete silence, with the watchful stare of her Calc professor and absolutely nothing written on her page. Time to cause a kerfuffle.
Ryujin leans down and pretends to rummage about for something in the general area of her bag while casting a glance down the aisle of seats. What can she do to cause a minor commotion? Smash some glass beakers? Too dangerous. Send a metal water bottle thumping down the stairs? Not unusual enough. The lights? Could work. People generally look up in curiosity when the lights turn off unexpectedly. Cute human behaviour, Ryujin muses. Or in this case, exploitable human behaviour.
She hasn't mastered her electric webs quite yet… but she can control them well enough to short circuit a damn light bulb. Ryujin sits up straight and slides her hand under the desk, fingertips just touching the charger ports installed there. She closes her eyes and lets the electricity jolt through her arm, down her wrist, prickling her fingertips. The charge builds up until tiny flashes of electricity burst from her hand. Taking a deep breath, she opens her eyes and presses her palm to the port.
The room flashes around her, little sparks of light flash from the overwhelmed light bulbs overhead as they groan into darkness. A hum of confused voices and screeches erupts in the classroom. Ryujin can’t hold back a small smirk as Yeji, like everyone else in the room, looks up with such intense curiosity, as if the lights will be describing their ailment in sign language. Seeing her opportunity, Ryujin discreetly aims her webshooter at one of Yeji's neatly arranged pencils and pulls it into her hand. Success! That was certainly the easiest method of getting a pencil in a classroom, Ryujin thinks.
Ignoring the commotion around her, Ryujin quickly starts to scribble down her answers.
“Okay, okay, settle down, everyone. Stay in your seats, I'll open the blinds and we can continue the test.” Professor Myoi announces with the calm, control she always seems to have on the class.
~
Ryujin just about completes the test in time. She leans back in her chair, closes her eyes and sighs, exhausted. Ryujin isn't much of a bragger; in fact, she's quite modest. But man…sometimes she wishes people knew how hard she worked. That someone would tell her she’s doing a good job, or acknowledge how difficult it is to balance a double life.
Her eyes flicker open at the sound of Yeji’s chair scraping the floor as she stands up.
“Yeji, wait!” Ryujin calls after her.
Yeji turns around, her expression cold.
“Thanks for letting me borrow this”, Ryujin says with an innocent smile, holding out one of the fluffy pink pencils.
“Wha- how did you get this?” Yeji snaps.
Ryujin laughs and shrugs, “You gave it to me!”
Yeji stares at her for a moment with a furrowed brow and thoughtful expression. Ryujin shifts under her stare, standing to leave. Yeji watches her go wordlessly.
~
Ryujin stumbles through the rest of her classes that day, nodding off and getting yelled at for forgetting her books here and there. She spends lunch in the bathroom, wrapping bandages around her ribs. She winces, gripping her side as she shoulders her backpack and limps towards the school doors.
“Can't believe I got this swinging into a lamppost and not from the literal bank heist I stopped earlier…” She mumbles as she pushes open the main doors into the deserted car park.
Ryujin jolts as she hears a loud bang from the side of the school building. What the hell was that? It sounded like metal or something…
“Please be nothing, please be nothing....” Ryujin pleads, limping towards the sound.
“What's the matter, princess? Not so smart now, huh?” A boy sneers.
Ryujin's heart drops. “Shit.”
She rolls her shoulders, ignoring the pain in her ribs and runs around the side of the building. She screeches to a stop and takes in the scene before her. Flash, the school bully, is sniggering, holding a backpack in his hand, looking down at a scowling Yeji. She's on the ground, leaning against a dumpster with bloodied knees.
“Flash!” Ryujin barks, approaching him with clenched fists.
His head snaps towards the sound, his expression still smug.
“What the hell do you think you're doing?!” Ryujin demands.
“Come on, lighten up. We were just having some fun, weren’t we, Yeji?” Flash snarls, looking back down at her.
Ryujin’s eyes meet Yeji’s for the first time, and she feels a fresh wave of rage at the fear she finds there. Ryujin grabs the bag in Flash’s hands and tugs it in towards her, making him stumble forward. She cracks her knuckles against his jaw. He cries out in pain. Ryujin has to be careful. As much as she wants to beat this guy up, she can't be suspiciously strong or use any of her abilities. She can't give away her identity; he’s not worth it.
“You bitch!” He shouts, clutching his face.
Ryujin takes the opportunity of his position to connect a swift kick to his stomach, winding him, and he crashes to the ground coughing. She ignores him and moves to crouch next to Yeji, setting her backpack down next to her.
“Are you okay?” Ryujin says softly.
Yeji just stares at her with wide eyes and a dropped jaw. “How the fuck did you do that?!” She asks suddenly.
Ryujin laughs at her out-of-character swearing and stands up, holding out a hand to Yeji. She seems just fine.
“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Ryujin says with a smile, pulling Yeji to her feet.