March 11, 2017:
Still trying to figure out this new universe, Gwen stumbles upon someone familiar but very different.
Hell's Kitchen
Characters
NPCs: None.
Mentions:
Plot:
Mood Music: None.
Fade In…
There's an existential bliss in freefall.
Even in the late hours of the night, even when she's on her way home, Cindy takes the long route— it isn't just to make sure that it's rather hard for her to be tracked back to her place of residence, but because she enjoys making deep, huge swings that give her the speed to literally throw herself into the sky, arms spread and eyes closed, feeling the wind in her hair and buffering against her body in the black and white suit. He was right— this was the greatest way to travel, ever.
She's riding a bit of a high, still— she did something stupid and it paid off, in the pursuit of helping Jessica Jones, The Dark Devil, the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, and the Winter Soldier take down a gang of serpents.
The spider-girl's arm extends, webbing flying free from two fingers and securing to a nearby building. Making the deep arc again, she flings herself back up into the air, rounding a corner and flinging herself into the neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen. Breezing through her classes today, Cindy has had a very good day. Silk's had a *fairly* good night— a couple of muggings, a would-be hacker left glued— with his equipment— to an ATM, and getting caught texting back to Alias Investigations when she'd be home by a few stray citizens hoping to snap cellphone pictures of the heroine.
The web-slinger gives it some thought, mid-swing: A hot shower, a pint of mint chocolate chip, and a movie— then she can call this, arguably, one of the best days she's had in a few weeks.
Also still in Hell's Kitchen is a spider of different color. Those colors are white, black and pink. Gwen Stacy has had a rough week or so having landed in an alternate reality where there are no Blockbusters, her father doesn't seem to be anywhere, Peter Parker is alive, and Matt Murdock is a lawyer protected by Jewel. What is this hellish place?!.
Trying to figure more out, the Spider-Woman has staked out a rooftop nearby Alias Investigations. She has the current Daily Bugle nearby, too, reading the articles and trying to both learn more about this new world and see if there is any more mention of this Peter Parker fellow.
It's been difficult to try and track the man down in this city where she knows literally no one and has no internet service on her phone, but she has managed to find where he lives. Every now and again she'll check in on him. It's not a healthy thing and she realizes that, but she also can't help herself.
Now, though, she's watching as Silk swings her way toward Alias Investigations. She can't help it, she stands, letting the paper drop to the roof in front of her. Someone else with spider powers! She'd heard about it, but this is totally unknown to her. Was she bit by a spider, too? Is this some form of trick? She's really not doing a good job of hiding herself as she crouches on the lip of the roof and - let's face it - creepily watches Silk.
—-
Cutting through the air with one more deep swing, Silk lands on a nearby building, curling herself into a ball and flipping through the air. Touching down with her arms thrown out to either side, she stands tall, proud, and then takes a hop from one foot to the other before walking across the ledge to jump from roof to roof. Making her way down a few rooftops before the leap that brings her atop the roof …
… of the very building Spider-Woman is surveying.
Looking around, the girl in the black and white suit makes sure the coast is clear before she steps over the wall and takes a few steps down before settling into a crawl down between windows and settling herself at the window of Alias Investigations. She even opens the window— not the one at the fire escape, but one of the other windows to the side.
Then, she stops— she lifts her head, thoughtfully, looking around as though she can sense something. Her spider-sense, odd and uniquely sensitive, almost empathic in it's execution—
— she looks. Straight. At Gwen— but it's hard to say if she /sees/ Gwen—
— then she climbs inside the window and closes it.
The light inside the room turns on— there's a bed in there, and what looks like a hammock. After a moment of silence, there's a *thunk* as Cindy drops her school books, then comes running back to the window, whipping it open with her eyes wide and leaning out. Her arm swings up, pointing up at the rooftop where the otherworld Spider-Woman was watching.
Is she pointing?
Is she— gesturing?
Or — is she now firing a web-line straight at the ledge beneath Gwen and pulling /hard/, launching herself out the window and toward the roof? Yes, she's definitely doing /that/.
"YOU— SAW— NOTHIIIIIIIIING!!" she yells while approaching /very/ rapidly.
"…….."
It's not like Gwen is actually saying anything, but by saying nothing is really saying something about what she just witnessed.
It's hard to say what it is that leaves Spider-Woman so speechless. It's most likely a mix of watching Silk in action, and then the quick approach of Silk toward her with the almost Gollum-like yell.
Springing backward from the ledge, Gwen lands with spider-reflexes on the opposite side of the flat roofed building she perched on. The Daily Bugle is left to flutter int he wind where she was before.
There's a cant of her head as she studies Silk. Her own spider-sense is wonky, but it's doing weird things right now. There's alarm bells, but she also doesn't have the feeling that she is in danger. What does that mean, even? Instead, she studies the woman in front of her, trying to figure out what this all means, how there are more spiders in this universe.
"I certainly saw something. In fact, all your base are belong to us, web-lady. Who are you?"
—-
Cindy's weight shifts the moment before she hits the ledge, pushing off with one foot and flipping herself into a squat, perching where Gwen was just moments before. The taut red mask that covers the lower half of her face, her hair loose in the wind; the look of someone that is all-too confident with their balance on the ledge and at the same time not quite confident in themselves.
Cindy's eyes are unblinking as she studies the Spider-Woman. Newspaper flits across the roof, scattered now that it's free of Gwen— the urban equivalent of tumbleweed between two spider-gunslingers in the wild west that is Hell's Kitchen.
After a tense moment, Cindy finally processes what she's seeing.
"… Holy crap, why didn't I think of wearing a hoodie?"
The Mole Spider of Manhattan shifts her weight, centering herself before standing straight on the ledge. Her voice may sound familiar. "Did you— did you seriously— man, and I thought /my/ references were like, super old, Spider-Lady."
Hauntingly familiar.
"I'm Silk."
—-
As Gwen perches on the opposite side of the rooftop, she studies Cindy. This is definitely a woman with extreme balancing abilities. And there's something familiar about her. While she didn't hear it while she was yelling, it's when she makes a snide comment that things start to click into place.
While she never saw the face of the woman on the comsystem before she was sent here, this woman in the red mask sounds almost exactly like the woman who taunted her, who was behind multiple instances of hostage situations or robberies on her world.
The narrowing of her eyes is something impossible to tell beneath her hoodie. It's also, possibly, why this is a great costume choice. "Hey, 'all your base are belongs to us' is universal. It apparently transcends both time and universes. That's good enough for me. No knocking it." The displaced Spider-Woman, however, suddenly stands as Silk states her name. Silk.
"What?" There is clear surprise, fear and annoyance in her voice. "No. What? Shut up. You're Silk?" The immediate flight of flight instinct in Gwen makes her want to flip out of sight, to run, to get away from Cindy. However, her base instincts don't really work so well here. She attacked Murderdock only to be stopped by the Goth Version of Jewel. Things are very different here, she keeps trying to remind herself.
"How do you feel about evil science, Silk? Or being evil?"
—-
"… Universes?" Cindy asks, her eyes narrowing right down into slits. Aliens existing totally makes sense, and ghosts being real is weird, and magic being real is amazing and she's still trying to get her head wrapped all the way around /that/, but— alternate universes? Is that a thing? Could that even remotely actually be a /thing/?
"Yeah, like— you know, 'cause… spider … silk…?"
She wiggles her red-and-black-clad fingers for emphasis.
Hopping down off the ledge, Silk moves forward at an easy, slow pace before coming to a stop halfway across the roof, hands raised slightly in that Totally Not A Dangerous Person way. "Well, bad guys do bad things, and then I punch 'em, and then I leave them dangling in goofy poses until the cops show up. I mean not always, but enough." Her head slants, looking off to one side as she scratches at the back of her head. "Huh. That might piss 'em off more, I should probably reconsider that. … Maybe? Nah."
Cindy's thumb pulls over her shoulder. "Look, my friend lives over here, and I don't want to cause any problems for her. She's a nice lady. I mean, are we gonna be cool? Like, have a nice chat? Be friends?" she asks, echoing the words of another Silk on another world.
"Have you talked to Spider-Man yet?"
—-
As Silk approaches, Gwen stands. Her tip-toes are at the edge of the roof. It's a position no one but someone without supernatural balance would try. It's clear that the woman in front of her is making her uneasy. "Yeah, sure, uh huh." It doesn't sound like things are 'yeah, sure, uh huh', though.
"So, what, you're some sort of superhero here? Like Captain America?" She stops people from doing dangerous things. "You're with SHIELD?" She, at least, knows that organization. It seems to be universal. This woman sounds far too much like someone she dislikes for her to trust.
"I'm not here to cause problems. Your friend's Jewel?" She's staked out the roof enough times to know the window that Silk went into belongs to the apartment that Jessica Jones occupies.
Then, everything in her body tenses. 'Have a nice chat. Be friends'. It sounds exactly like that woman from the intercom. "No." Gwen shakes her head. It's unclear whether she is saying that to being friends or to meeting Spider-Man. "No."
Immediately on the defensive, Gwen shoots a bit of webbing toward Silk. She's pretty sure it will not hit, but it is a distraction. In the meantime, she steps off the edge of the building, swinging off. This is all just too weird at the moment.
—-
"Well, I thought it was kind of clever." Cindy folds her arms before she adds, "More like D-list superhero. I mean I'm— wait, what? SHIELD? Isn't SHIELD like that FBI thing? Or was that something else?"
The spider-girl's head tilts. "Jewel? Who?"
Then, the radioactive Spider-Woman has an adverse reaction to her offer of friendship— made mostly because she's a little nervous about a spider-person running around and knowing where she weaves her suit and studies.
"Okay, okay, s-sorry, I didn't mean to—"
Webbing.
Cindy's body moves instinctively, rolling to one side and ending in a crouch. In that time, Gwen's off the ledge— and regardless of the fact that she's /damn/ fast, by the time she makes it to the edge, the multiversal spider-woman's swinging away. Her brows scrunch together.
"I was gonna let you use my Netflix password!!"
Tugging her mask down under her chin and breathing the crisp late winter air, Cindy frowns deeply and looks … not quite the same direction Gwen is heading, but in the direction of the person she shares a unique link with— Spider-Man. She doesn't have his number, but this is something she /needs/ to talk to him about.
Hopping up to the ledge, fixing her mask, Cindy throws herself off the roof, extending her fingers to web-swing through the city.
"I hope she's gonna be okay."