Chapter Text
Essentially, it started with a quarter.
The coin flew over the stained sidewalk, plunging into the dark shadows of an alleyway. It skimmed over water puddles, narrowly avoided cracks in the concrete, squeezed between small scraps of litter. It even managed to roll underneath the green hull of a dumpster before emerging on the opposite end where it finally met the wall. It rolled back, then gave into gravity and hit the ground.
And in that second, the sky broke open.
An impossible cyclone of color and light erupted from the stagnant night air. Thousands of multicolored rays shot through the dark and lit up the brick walls of the alley, bubbles and particles spewing out of the vortex. From around the corner, it looked like a rave had materialized behind the strand of upper west side apartments.
A guttural screech broke out of the seam. Then, a swift punch followed by the crack of bones and flying teeth. The hole expanded for two figures, still sparring, to fall from its maw onto the concrete, yelling and now overturning dumpsters. A man four stories above groaned as he wrapped his pillow around his ears.
The girl, wearing a white suit adorned with spray paint and a spider symbol, pulled her arm back to land another blow. Before she could release it, she suddenly realized her change in scenery. The winged creature underneath her took advantage of the distraction, and shifted his large body into the darkness. She glanced up at the quickly shrinking vortex before turning back to him.
“Vulture, what the hell did you just pull…” She says, voice raspy and serious. The creature, a humanoid shaped head attached to an oversized, decomposing avian body, merely growled. His form had patches of metal and tech, sewn into the remaining organic matter. His throat, pink like a hooded vulture’s, was connected to something resembling a gas mask, but with far advanced machinery.
She lowered her brows at his answer, reflected in the shrinking of her bug-eyed lenses. “Yeah, you’re gonna have to give me more than that.” Two spider webs shot from her wrists onto the chest of “The Vulture”, and she propelled herself into his sternum.
His back hit the ground in a thump, and he released another screeching sound from below her feet. She wore black, spiked boots that cut into the flesh of his neck. She pushed her heel deeper into the skin as he writhed beneath her. “Let me ask you again-” she started, but she was interrupted by The Vulture flipping himself over and shaking her loose.
He scampered back towards the corner of the alley, and she swiftly caught herself from hitting the ground with a single thwip to the wall. Huffing, she chased him as he circled the enclosed space, attempting to open his massive black wings. She stretched out an arm and snagged him with a web, swinging herself onto his body.
She perched between his shoulder blades in an arachnid fashion as he shuffled. Her hands were steady and spread flat on his feathers. Breathing slowly, she pressed her head close to his, questioning him again.“What did you do?”
If The Vulture understood her queries, he didn't make it known. He kept clawing at the brick and wailing hard enough for bloody spittle to fly from his gas-mask beak. The girl had assumed it was a mouth, but confirmed her theory as red dots sprayed over her suit. With how much paint was already on it she could barely tell.
She continued sticking to the creature's back, but found herself fixated on one of his eyeballs. Bulging out of the goggles of his mask, the yellow eye was dilated and shaking frantically, completely out of focus. The girl tilted her head in curiosity, before a realization crept over her. The hairs prickled on her neck.
He’s just as confused as I am.
As she was lost in thought, The Vulture had successfully taken flight, albeit slowly. He swung like a pendulum between the two walls of apartments as he struggled to breach the roofline into the night sky. The girl snapped out of her rumination. “Oh no you don't-" she started, and leapt off of him.
She kept two webs stuck to his back as she propelled herself beneath his talons, then back over his wings. Now, The Vulture wrapped up in silk, she landed on the roof, and pulled down hard. His body caught the edge of the rooftop-access room and tore at the spine, blood erupting onto the concrete.
The mass slumped onto the roof, belly up, his talons still twitching. She brushed off her shoulders and walked towards him. His crazed eyes were still open, but he was dead.
She let out a struggled breath, and forlornly glanced at the skyline. “Oh shit.”
The bright, flashing colors of New York stared back at her. The sounds of honking and yelling all flooded in at once. City lights sparkled through the yellowing leaves of early autumn trees and the blinking wings of planes soared above looming Manhattan skyscrapers. She drew back the hood covering her head, and let the sights fill her wide lenses. I’m in New York, she thought, hands falling to her sides, but not my New York.
She went to sit down on the corner of the rooftop to let it all sink in, take a minute to think. But a quick glance over the edge under her feet gave her the second surprise of the night.
She swung back into the alley at lightning speed, eyes narrowing on the body. She hadn’t noticed the other girl before and she hoped it was because she hadn't been there. She really, really hoped she hadn’t been there.
The girl was on her stomach, limp on the ground, limbs sprawled, trench coat and scarf collecting grime as they soaked in puddles. She drew back a lock of the girl's blonde hair to check her pulse. She had no physical injuries, but her form was still and freezing. The girl in the suit lowered her head at the lack of a heartbeat.
She began to scoop up the body, checking for any causes of death. She wanted, wished to find something to prove she hadn’t been caught up in this mess. That she hadn’t taken the life of an innocent bystander she didn't even notice.
Instead, she turned the girl's cheek, and stared straight into her own face.
“What the fuck?”
The girl dropped the corpse and scooted away, breathing hard. From where she was kneeling now, up against one of the overturned dumpsters, her eyes traced the lifeless angles of her own jaw, the curve of her own lips, all frozen in perpetual sleep. This version of herself was softer, covered in a thin veil of makeup, hair long and straightened.
But there was no doubt it was her. And there was no doubt she was dead.
Thinking a million miles a minute, and struggling to collect herself, the girl in the suit ripped off her mask in a swift movement. She needed to breathe. She’d had hundreds of strange, disturbing moments in this suit, but this was something else entirely.
Because this, quite literally, wasn't possible. Shouldn’t be possible.
She dug her fingers into her cuticles, trying to narrow her racing thoughts into feasible actions.
Looking up, she saw the couple of windows that dotted the back half of the apartments. Guess I should… hide my own body? Everything about this was a new level of unnaturalness she wasn’t sure she could grasp yet. She dragged herself up to a standing position.
Suddenly, her eyes caught on something underneath her boot. A small, laminated card catching a stray ray from a nearby streetlamp, gleaming up at her. Talk about a sign?
It seemed to have spilled out of her alternate’s messenger bag, along with a tube of mascara, a strange, emotionless green person on a keychain, and a quarter. She bent down, hands still jittery, to pick it up.
Holding the square in the small patch of light, she observed Gwen Stacy’s student ID from Empire State University. Despite the gravity of the situation, she still nodded in approval at her fuzzy picture. As she admired her own beaming smile, a plan began to creep its way into her head. Unfinished, but promising, and among very few other options.
Feeling naked and out of place, she clung to the one thing that made sense. She gave another glance to the blurry image, at the white of her alternate’s teeth, the neat black hairband on her head. She shuffled through her own dyed pink hair to pull her mask back down.
I have always wanted to try character acting.