Chapter Text
Stella:
My name is Stella Adams. I was bitten by a radioactive spider, and for the last four months I’ve been New York’s one and only Spider Queen.
The heart of the city truly never sleeps, like anyone would tell you when you mention my home state. The hustle and bustle of the city was never truly my style, but it also meant everyone is preoccupied with nature and the cover of darkness made it perfect to scout out and stalk potential bad guys. Yes, stalking sounds bad, I know, but what else would you say? Running out in broad daylight and giving them time to strike? Hell no!
A small garden spider crept out from the tiles of the roof and onto my hand. It was my stealth build today, the dark blue of my gloves blending in perfectly with the shadows. I was feeling more casual, and the black jacket I wore helped combat the chilly night air and hide the main part of my mint-green palms. Though the little spider didn’t have a voice, I could pretty much hear it in my head, kind of like a conscience as it scuttled around my hand, frantically waving its little pedipalps. Danger. Shady. Weapons. Wrong.
I leapt to the next building, this huge warehouse long since shut down because of one safety concern or another, and I didn’t blame the city officials. The walls were cold and clammy as I scaled them, peering into frosted windows. The resident spiders there all said the same thing. Danger. Danger. Danger. This had to be the place. I jumped onto the roof and approached a skylight, peering down into it. The thing was so cracked and thin one web could shatter it to smithereens… but it also revealed something crucial.
Around 30 guys were gathered down there, all armed with weapons of some sort or another. Looked like some sort of weapon exchange. The thugs weren’t frail guys either… Most, if not all were heavyset and strong, reminding me of the quarterbacks I often see on the football field during games.
I silently opened the skylight, calling out mentally to all the spiders in the building. I told them where each of the weapons were and to sabotage as many as they could in the time it took me to get down on the floor. Every waiting second inside the building was risky, but I waited until sufficient amounts of the little arachnids gave me the all-clear, their assigned weapons now useless in the holder’s hands. Disarmed. Detained. Strike.
I snuck up to the nearest guy, sharp blue eyes fixed everywhere but above him… and when he turned to look I webbed his mouth and pulled him to the ceiling, webbing him there and one punch to knock him out cold. I went from guy to guy, repeating the same procedure, and when the four corner guards were webbed and unconscious, I started with the duos and trios, grabbing them from under their arms and knocking them out cold while they were bound to the ceiling.
I had gotten to the twelfth guy, the last in his group, when someone took notice of their missing numbers. “Yo, there’s someone here!” His voice echoed through the massive room, and everyone was immediately on high alert, pointing their guns at every point on the ceiling, tracing the walls and door.
And the guy that had called fixed his eyes on me and yelled, “Found him!”
Him?
All the others immediately trained their weapons on me, triggers clicking uselessly as I blinded them with webs. When the guns obviously didn’t do their job the unblinded ones (which was about half of them) made dives for pipes and crowbars and started charging at me. I took a defensive stance, bracing myself against the wall, and when they got close enough I leapt off and gave one guy a bloody nose. He hit the floor and I finished the job. I waved my hand, egging the rest of them on, and a brawl ensued.
I knocked out one, stuck another to the wall, and when left-hooking a third I told a group of spiders to bite the shins, hands, and neck of a fourth. Their clumsy weapons couldn’t land a hit on me, and (what else) spider-quick reflexes and precognition just made things easy. That wasn’t to say I didn’t get out with a few bruises.
I stood, littered by the bodies of six incapacitated, before the voices of the spiders screamed in my head DANGER DANGER DANGER . They weren’t quick enough, and the ones that I had blinded and failed to knock out pounced, pipes and crowbars beating into every bone they could reach. Even after I hit the ground they kept going until one yelled, “Wait a minute! You aren’t the Brawler!”
My voice cracked under the pain. Every bone and muscle was screaming, as were the voices of the spiders. The ends of those pipes hadn’t been filed down… blood spots grew on my jeans where the sharp edges hit. “The who?”
They all raised their crowbars for another good beating when they were all yanked back by a seemingly invisible force, their backs hitting the ground. A new form seemed to materialize from the shadows, walking up to the remaining thugs.
His voice rang out clear. “Yeah, that’d be me.”
Moving with reflexes just like mine, the newcomer knocked every single one of the other guys out with ease, dodging the blows that never even got close to him in the first place. He wasn’t even panting by the time everyone was K.Od, bodies littering the floor, and as he walked toward me, I got a good view of him.
About medium height, face concealed by a gray mask with the standard spider web designs… again, like mine, but with goggles. His attire was jeans, a navy blue sweater atop a gray shirt. On his head he wore a gray newsie cap, and his gloved hands grasped mine as he hauled me to my feet. They were black fingerless layered over gray… he looked fresh out of a 1950’s movie… but with more color.
“Now that that’s taken care of,” he, who I assumed to be the one they called Spider Brawler, said, crossing his arms over the big blue spider symbol on his gray shirt, “Who the hell are you?”
Holden:
My name is Holden Smith, I was bitten by a radioactive spider, and for the last 4 months I thought I was the one and only Spider Brawler.
I didn’t really like this place… this clammy, shabby, long-since abandoned warehouse that just so happened to be the origin of the weapons used to take the life of a friend of mine. I had been tracking these thugs’ operations since then by the light of the moon and putting them to a quick halt. Weapons disarmed, thirty plus incapacitated bad guys, all in a night’s work.
But this time… this time was different.
Tonight, someone beat me to them.
And I stood over her, examining her with a bit of curiosity and intrigue. She wasn’t what I was expecting… not by a long shot. I wasn’t expecting a girl with street clothes over spandex… as seen by the mint-green ankles, dark blue, purple-webbed gloves and mask, and golden points on the top of her head that reminded me of a crown. Gold spider sigils shone from her jacket’s shoulders and gloves, and as I hauled her up, her palms and parts of her elbows and collar were the same shade of green as her ankles. Her shirt was pure black but had a gold trim that shared the same color as her insignia.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked, a bit firmly.
Even behind cyber-blue eyeholes, her gaze seemed distant, until she snapped back. “Uhh.. right. Sorry. I’m Spider Queen.”
“Spider Brawler.” I responded with a nod. That explains the crown points.
“Brawler?” She tilted her head, putting her hands on her hips. She was about my height, her clothes not revealing much except she was deceptively strong for a lean girl. If I hadn’t seen her, I wouldn’t think she would be able to hold her own against 30 gun-armed thugs. “Why a brawler… isn’t that a little old-fashioned?”
“Look at how I’m dressed, do I look modern?” I crossed my arms, annoyance creeping into my voice. I really didn’t, with the black-and-white (and blue for jeans and my jacket) color scheme. The goggles had to have been a hint. “Besides, do you really wanna be here when the cops arrive?”
Her shoulders sank. “no…”
“Then if you’re anything like me, you’ll be able to keep up.” I glanced up to the open skylight… we’d be going out that way. I shot a web through the opening and pulled myself up, launching to the next building over where we’d go unseen by prying eyes. As expected, “Spider Queen” followed in the same fashion, landing beside me.
I glanced at her again… her dark outfit blended in with the night sky, the only stand-outs being the crown-points and her gold sigils. “Why do you call yourself ‘Spider Queen?”’
“I can communicate with spiders.” Her head lifted a little, and she sat cross-legged in front of me. She looked straight at me and said, “Can’t you?”
I shook my head, taking a seat atop a nearby discarded steel beam. “No, I can’t.” My gaze focused on her wrists. “What do you use for your web fluid?”
She stared at me, head tilted again. “My what? What do you mean ‘web fluid?’”
I rolled up my sleeve to reveal a wrist-mounted, mechanical web shooter. I pried out the capsule containing said web fluid and held it up to the moon for her to see. She didn’t have shooters? Then how did she follow me out the skylight? “Don't you have something like this?”
She unhooked her jacket from her thumb and rolled it up to reveal no web shooter underneath. Confusion took the reins until she flexed her wrist and shot out a milk-white web that stuck to the ground, nearly webbing my feet to the roof. I blinked. “Yeah, sure, okay, I am made of questions right now.” I got up and helped her to her feet. “But now’s not the time. The cops are on their way.” I walked to the edge of the roof. “Follow me.”
I shot a web at a nearby crane, pushing off the roof and feeling the pull of the web, swinging me through the air. I looked over my shoulder and saw Spider Queen follow, letting go of her web before I did and did a few twists and flips… which I couldn’t do even if I tried. She seemed to like swinging, and I didn't blame her. It was as close to flying as we could get.
We swung through the city, eventually webbing and swinging in tandem, before I landed on a rooftop near my home. When she landed with a thump beside me I heard her ask, her breathing slightly heavy, “How are you like me?”
“I’m guessing you got your powers the same way I did.” I looked over at her. “Assuming you got bitten by a radioactive spider.”
She leaned against the chimney and eventually stuck to the brick and ‘sat’ there with her arms crossed. “Yeah… that’s exactly what happened. Didn’t get the memo that it was radioactive until much later…. But yeah. Little thing bit me and jumped away.”
I tilted my head. “Yours got away? I swatted mine.”
We fell into silence for a moment, then I said, “I think you and I aren’t the only ones.”
I got up, dusting off my jeans and jacket. “I got places to be, but yeah. Look out for any signs of spider people out there, and I’ll do the same. We’ll talk if either of us hears anything.”
She nodded. I heard the smile in her voice. “I’ll send a little messenger if I do catch anything… look for a blue and purple peacock spider. I call him UV, but…” she shook her head. “Anyway.”
I dipped my head. “Until next time. Brawler out.”
I stepped back and jumped backwards off the roof.
Cassandra:
My name is Cassandra Jones, and for the last 4 months I've been researching the possibility of other spider-powered people such as myself.
This is also the third morning I've woken up at the desk in my room to my damned alarm, which I slapped so hard I was afraid I had broken it when I heard a crack.
I'm a photographer for the Daily Scoop, so that meant a whole load of sleepless nights, more all-nighters than should even be possible for a human body, and one too many espressos at 3 am in the morning as I reviewed photos I had taken the previous day and caught up on homework.
After inspecting my alarm clock (which sustained no damage) I grabbed my leather jacket and my backpack and raced to the kitchen to grab a quick bite to eat before setting off for school. My mom and dad had already left for work, but she had left me a breakfast burrito in a bag. It was a sweet gesture, considering her doctor duties kept her in early mornings and more often than not, late nights. My dad, too, though not a vigilante, fighting crime on the streets wasn’t a bad profession either. But that meant neither of them were around much.
I double-took the halls and my parents' rooms, then I quickly stuffed my clothes into my bag and searched for (frantically, worried I had dropped them on the streets. Found them in my sock drawer, of all places-) my mask and hoodie, donning them both. I opened the window, greeting New York’s morning air, and I stuck a web to the next building over and jumped out.
The sun hadn’t yet broken over the massive skyscrapers, and no one looked up as I skimmed over their heads, running on walls and jumping to the next building over. It 100% beat riding on buses or subways.
I arrived at Midtown High near the faculty entrance and stumbled to put on my regular clothes. I had my sweatshirt on and slung my school bag over my shoulder as I joined the rest of the kids rushing to get in the doors.
I hung a right, then a left, following the mob to the cafe. Kids were there, chatting, doing homework, copying each other’s assignments, but most of them were scrolling aimlessly on their phones. I picked out a group of 3 familiar faces near the back and walked over to them.
"So, how are my favorite weirdos this sleepy Monday?" I announced, and Stella jumped.
"I've been better, I've been worse.” Holden replied with a hand tilt. “Still not getting enough sleep at night."
Stella looked up at him and set down her book. Jeez. ‘ Crime and Punishment’ looked like a pain in the ass to get through, forget the fact that it was massive. "Still thinking about what happened to Steve?"
"Yeah, and I don't think my coping strategy has been working.” He sat down across from her. His eyes went distant. “But something changed for me last night, something that I think will actually help."
"Good for you, Holden.” Stella scooted around and hugged him from the side. He sat there awkwardly until she let go.
"How about you, Wanda?” I turned my attention to the other girl at our table, “how's it going with band?"
"Good.” Wanda looked up from her phone and smiled. “My section might be going out to lunch sometime this week."
"Nice,” I nodded.
All other conversation fell flat, save for Stella’s occasional muttering to herself. It was a usual thing that she talked to herself in public. No one knew why, they just knew not to make fun of her, because when they did, a mysterious bite mark always appeared on their ankle. At least, that was the urban legend that was around the school these days, and everyone very openly dissed it.
Later that day, right as I was about to eat lunch, I heard bank alarms from a nearby building. I rolled my eyes. "I hate having powers sometimes." I muttered to myself. So, I quickly dashed out the faculty exit into the alley, stumbled to don my suit and mask, then swung toward the sound of the alarms.
As I honed in on the sound, I debated how I would go in. Stealthy? Punching heroically and making a scene? Or just picking them all off one by one? Whatever the case, this was a normal Tuesday for me. I landed on the roof and peered through a window.
Ready to fight at least 2 people, I was really surprised when there was another person there battling maybe 6: Dressed in all blue with darker web designs on most of her suit. Blonde hair was tossed around during her battle from behind a hood and white mask as she dodged and threw kicks and punches, which instantly knocked down two robbers.
I blinked, thinking it was a trick of the glass when I saw her vanish, then appear behind one guy and land a kick square in his back, sending him flying. The same thing happened again, and she webbed up the next. I blinked, then pulled out my phone on reflex and hit the record button, watching the rest of the battle.
The robber she had her back turned to reached into his holster and pulled out a gun, aiming it at her neck. I hit stop on my phone and stared at the gun, feeling it in my hand…
The weapon wrenched from his grip and skittered across the tile.
The girl landed a roundhouse kick on her current adversary, then turned to see a final, very bewildered-looking guy, so she knocked his lights out and then webbed him against the wall.
I had seen enough, and as the prior guy staggered forward I decided to leave.
Turning invisible, web shooting, the patterns on the suit?! I didn’t know what I had just witnessed, but all I knew was that I wanted coffee.
Wanda:
My name is Wanda Allen, and for the last 4 months I've been the one and only Phantom Spider.
I guess it all started on that field trip we took to Genetech, a company that specializes in bio tech and genetic science. We were being shown some of the genetically modified spiders, of which they had 17 as the tour guide oh so helpfully pointed out.
“17?” Holden stepped up to the glass and squinted. “I only see 14.”
All the color drained from the guide’s face. “E-excuse me for a second,” She stuttered, then speed dialed someone on her cell and ducked into another room.
Though 3 spiders were missing, that didn't stop us from looking at the other 14. They were all different species: a few jumping spiders, maybe a few orb weavers, and hell, even a premature wolf spider in there! But was off-putting was each of them were unnaturally colored: from the beetle-orange of one jumping spider to the deep violet of the wolf spider.
Stella took interest in the jumping spiders and Holden had to drag her away as the group retreated to the cafe to have our break.
As my friends and I chatted away (as we usually do on breaks) I felt a sharp pain in my hand. I reflexively swatted at it, and caught a little something falling to the floor. I ducked under the table and took a closer look: It was white and blue, one of the orb weavers. I had found one of the 3 missing arachnids, but I just decided to leave it there for the time being. All I wanted to do now was figure out if the bite was poisonous, but that was for another time.
After a mound of homework after I got home, a few hours of band practice, and a little bit of phone-scrolling, I scarfed down dinner and crashed into bed.
When I woke up, got all changed and my bag packed, I stepped into the bathroom to check if I looked at least alright. I stepped back and nearly screamed.
I had no reflection!
I looked at my hands; I couldn’t see them, either!
I paced for a minute, then shook out my hands and tried to walk out of the bathroom, but it seemed like someone wrapped a rope around my wrist. I looked back, and it was a thread, but silk white, just like a spider’s string. I yanked on the web and it came loose, but as it did I instinctively reached up and caught the shampoo bottle it had taken with it.
I looked at my now-visible hands, confused. I set down the bottle and looked in the mirror. I could see myself. So I picked up a brush and combed through my hair, still reeling at what had just happened.
Then, as I set down the brush and it didn’t let go of my palm, something clicked. Genetech, the missing spiders, the bite on my hand. I had gotten some kind of power from the spider bite!
So yeah, now I fight crime when I can. Homework could wait (even if it meant more in the evening.)
During a jewelry store robbery earlier today, one of the robbers had commented on how I had changed my outfit, then started jeering at it. So I knocked his lights out and did the same with his cohorts. After switching to street clothes I picked up some takeout and high-tailed it home to do homework and practice.
Today was no different than it has been. Go to school, talk with Holden, Cassandra, and Stella, beat up some criminals, suffer through classes, band practice, go home, web a few guys on a roof, you get the idea. So after classes were over, I ducked inside an alley, switched to my suit, and made a quick drop-off of all my things back at home. And that’s when I started the usual routine of patrolling the city streets for any not-so-funny antics.
My spider sense suddenly went off, and sure enough, I swung low enough to catch someone hijacking a pretty nice BMW and taking off with it. I swung just above the roof of the car, a hair away from landing when the thing’s back wheels picked up and spun uselessly in the air.
It was at that moment I saw someone standing in the middle of the street, fearlessly , a hand raised. She had a dark green hoodie, black tights with blue designs, green converse, and a black webbed mask. She took a few steps toward the car. Her arm was shaking.
The guy shifted in the car, and I saw the metallic barrel of what I thought was a revolver. I reached in through the open window and snatched it away before he could load it: it was indeed a gun.
“I could've gotten that,” The stranger said with one hand on her hip, as the other was a little occupied.
“I just saw it happening and I, you know.” I gestured to the gun, which I tossed into a nearby trash can. “Also, who are you?”
“You can call me Spider Girl, and I saw you earlier today.” She dropped the car, and the suspension held up pretty well. She pulled on the driver door handle, revealing the hijacker. “Heck, I just about saved your life.”
I stared at her. “What do you mean by that?” I held the guy against a wall and she webbed his wrists and ankles to the bricks. I took the rest, webbing up all along his legs and his head, just to be sure.
“Let me just call the cops real quick.” She dialed up the cops and tipped on where the guy (and the car) were left. After, she stashed the phone and jumped up to a rooftop. I followed.
After we landed and watched a couple police cruisers show up, she turned to me. “How long have you had your powers?”
I shrugged. “Four months.” I crossed my arms. “Also, how can you do what you do? I thought I was the only one.”
“Also four months by the way,” She sat down on the side of a chimney, sticking there. “And if I had to guess, the same way as you.” She stared at me as I combed my hair with my gloved fingers back into its place. “But, I'm wondering why your abilities are different from mine.”
My phone pinged, and I looked down at it. “Crap, I gotta go. I'll see you around.”
And I jumped off the side of the building without waiting for a reply.
–Meanwhile, in a skyscraper…–
“Boss, one of our factories was hit. We think it was…”
“The Brawler. There are other ones out there too, I've heard the police reports. I think it's time to actually even the playing field.”