“What do you mean it's weird?” O’hirn asked. Leave it to his partner to be weirded out by having a successful robbery.
Marko gestured to the building they’d just left. “There was hardly anyone in there, and they didn't even look to see us gettin’ the money. That ain't weird to you?”
“It is what is. If you can't look up from your phone, then you don’t deserve this kinda job. That's how I See it.” O’hirn paused between two parked cars, glancing at the empty street. His scratched his chin, hidden by the grey fabric mask. “Hmm. Maybe we shoulda got a ride before we did this.”
“Pfft, last time we had a ride after this,” Marko shook the trash bag full of cash in hand. “The cops had it marked for an extended parking time.”
O’hirn rolled his eyes. “You’re the one who made us stay the whole hour.”
Marko shrugged. “ When you gotta go, you gotta go.”
“Thats what you two were doing the other month? I thought you were going through like, security systems or something.” A familiar voice made them tense, just as Spider-man landed on the roof of the car next to them. His lenses were stylized like raised eyebrows. “I mean, I always use it before going out in this thing. It's just courtesy to my suit, yeah?”
“Um, yes!” An unfamiliar voice made Spider-man sigh. “Good one, Spider-man!”
Then a girl in civilian clothes marched out from the other end of the street, and the crooks exchanged confused looks. Why was she wearing those awful sunglasses? Why was she wearing a bandana, or even those gloves? Why did her head look like a walking Mcdonalds advertisement?
“Beware, um...Fiends! For you are now facing the combined might of Spider-man,” The girl struck a pose that Captain America throw up at seeing. “And Firecracker!”
“What part of let me do the talking didn't you get?” Spider-man rolled his lenses. “Is it that hard to stay quiet?”
“Who is this?!” Marko wasn't sure why he sounded so offended as he pointed his weaponized bat at her and stared at Spidey. “You’re working with strippers?”
The girl gave him an offended glare, turning a little more red. “It is not a stri--” She breathed in and exhaled calmly. “I...am a new hero! Ready to rid Queens of scum like you!”
Marko looked at Spidey again. “Is she serious?”
“Yeah, sorry. She’s new to this whole thing. Look,” The red and blue hero fought the urge to facepalm as he turned his attention to his partner. “First of all, I said that I’m gonna be the one talking. So let me talk. Secondly, you--you’re coming off with too much of a Frank Castle vibe, okay? So, let’s tone that down.”
“No, don’t say that!” O’hirn scoffed at him. “You want her to go around sounding like Captain America?!”
Sam looked a little sheepish. “I mean-- I thought--”
Spidey nodded at the crook. “Okay, yeah. Good point. I got you,” He readjusted his position to sit on the car, hands gesturing to her. “Listen, you have to sound like me, if anything. But also go your own--”
O'hirn's fist swung into his side, and a small explosion of purple force launched Spider-man a good thirty yards down the street, where he rolled to a groaning halt. Sam gasped at the sight, and swallowed nervously as she noticed the criminals’ attention was now focused solely on her. At least her hands were glowing, whatever good they might do for her.
“Awright.” O'hirn smirked at Marko as if telling some joke. “Now I wanna what see that bat of yours does. Hit her.”
“Um, no.” She backpedaled hastily as Marko started towards her quickly, rearing back the bat in seconds. “That’s not--don’t--”
She shrieked and jumped out of the way of a fist, saving herself from a strange surge of purple electricity that hit the car behind her. The metal of the doorframe crackled with raw energy and began to melt away into smoking liquid. Samantha backed away faster, holding out her glowing hands and hoping that her partner would get up soon. “Spider-man?! A little help here! Please wake up!”
O’hirn laughed to himself, a whooping guffaw not unlike that of a teenager. “Ha Ha! Dang, man! Got th’ power of a Rhino with this thing!”
“Don’t play around too much. Cops will show up will all this noise.”
“Let ‘em come--this shit is for real. If I can't hit her, then I'll test on one of the cops.”
Sam stopped backpedaling, biting her bottom lip. It seemed that Peter was still out, though she could just barely make out his body twitching back to consciousness. Her hands seemed to glow brighter the closer they got to Marko, almost too bright for her to look directly at. Well, she had to try something new, or she'd eventually slip up and get hurt. She punched the air in front of him, and then a couple more times to see if she could get any reaction out of herself.
Marko kept the bat reared back, scoffing at her fruitless efforts. “What, ya tryin’a punch me?”
“Come on, Come on,” She was practically thrashing her hands now, trying every signature move in the book. Little sparks appeared occasionally, but nothing particularly helpful. “Come on, come on, come--”
Just as he swung at her, she positioned her palms up with her fingers spread slightly. Raw wisps and tendrils of yellow energy sprayed out from the base of her hands, crackling as they stabbed into the bat and halted it. Sam gasped as some form of alien energy from the baseball was swiftly drained into her, sucked away as fluidly as drinking from a straw. When the mechanical clasp at the handle gave a mechanical whir of death, she straightened with a light sight. Why did she feel so refreshed? Energized?
“What the--?!” Marko blinked at his deceased weapon, then shook it a few timed as if that would get it working again. “This things busted.”
“Then just hit her with it anyway!” O'hirn barked, nervously noticing a certain web head groaning his way back to consciousness. “We gotta go!”
In her energized stupor, She couldn't bring herself to move in time and shrieked as the bat swung against her head. She flinched at the feeling of pan but wrinkled her nose when she realized how small it was. She looked at the heavily dented bat; that hit felt like a small slap to her chin! It didn't even leave a stinging sensation on her face!
Marko stared at her, dumbfounded, and Sam bit her bottom lip--what else could her hands do? She tried the same move as before but closed her fingers together rather than holding them apart. Marko grunted as a shortly lived beam of orange energy zapped him straight in the torso and launched his body into a nearby car. When his unconscious form crumpled to the ground, Sam's jaw went slack with surprise.
“Holy shit.” She breathed. “Holy shit.”
Spiderman finally rolled himself into a kneeling position, recovering more with each passing second. O'hirn, knowing he was soon to be outnumbered, muttered a curse word and zipped towards a nearby alleyway. Sam started to step towards him with an outstretched hand before she yelped at the crackling yellow lightning that lashed out from her palm. It wrapped around his midsection like a rope and hauled his body into the air effortlessly.
Sam gasped loudly, accidentally shaking the crook in midair. “Holy shit!”
Needless to say, Spider-man was surprised as well, evidenced by his wide lenses. “Holy shit! How are you doing that?!”
“I don't know! This feels so weird!”
“Put me down, bitch! Put me do--”
She lost her grip when she closed her fist, and he plummeted from a fair height right on top of a car. A web quickly pinned him where lay, groaning unconsciously from the impact. Spider-man gripped at his head with his hands, occasionally gesturing to the crooks in his excitement.
“Holy Shit, that was the coolest thing I've ever seen!” Peter exclaimed with a grin large enough to be seen behind the mask. “That was so incredibly dope! Like man! Wow! Did you see that?!”
Sam blinked at him slowly, but his excitement was contagious to the teen girl. She puffed out her chest a little and smiled widely, highlighted by a red glow in her cheeks. “Y-yeah. That was pretty cool, wasn't it?”
Peter gaped at her. “Pretty cool?! That was like, Iron man level awesome! Like how he tried to hit you with the bat and it then it dented like you were Luke Cage! It was just swoosh and then DINK!” He practically bounced around. “And how he was running away--and then you were all like--not today! And then you just--zzzzzaaaap! And then you dropped him--and it was all so dope!”
The girl rubbed her arm sheepishly, grinning from ear to ear. “...R-really? I mean, it was kinda accidental.”
“I don't care--that stuff was amazing! And you handled your own against two crooks! I'm promoting you to partner level!”
“I--! Really?”
“Totally. Truth is, I wasn't really gonna keep you at junior level for a long time.” Peter waved a hand dismissively and began to walk off in the direction of a building--perhaps they had to leave before the cops arrived? She awkwardly followed behind. “That was just me messing around. You did real good so far.”
Sam looked down at her hands with an eager smile. “I...I never knew I could do any of that stuff. It was so exhilarating to feel, to be able just...do that stuff. I can't even explain it, you know?” She glanced at the sky in wonder and hope. “I wonder if I can fly? Or make weapons out of electricity?”
“If you could do either or both of those things, my respect for you would increase by a thousand,” He shrugged and nudged her playfully. “You can try doing that as we continue!”
“Continue?” She blinked suddenly.
“Oh yeah, hope you weren't expecting our patrol to be so short...Partner!”
“Eight grande is all you got for it? That's only fifty above the last sell.”
Brice chewed the inside of his mouth nonchalantly, leaning his back against the liftoff platform--he'd learned by now when and when not to tune out when the old man was talking. Or yabbering, as he liked to put it. His eyes were trained on his fingers, flipping nonchalantly through the wad of bills in his hands. “Yeah, yeah--we went to school. We know how math works.”
“Do you? If we keep going at this rate, its not gonna look good when I divide the cut between the four of us, alright? Raise the price--It ain't gonna kill anybody to pay a couple extra grande.” The old man instructed, shifting the locks on his helmet so that he could take it off. “Especially for the big guns.”
“Thought you told us not to sell the big guns. Just the little knick-knacks,” Schultz reminded him half-heartedly.
The old man rolled his eyes and scoffed. “I said to clear out the knick-knacks. I never said don't sell the big guns, alright? We got enough production on ‘em to last us a while--Let's get this stuff up and running.”
“Its as good as done, old man.” Brice clicked his tongue.
“Yeah, well get it done under the radar. We've been keeping this gig up for six years because nobody's noticed us.” The old man said. “Let's keep it that way,”
Peter’s experience of falling through the air never seemed to get any duller for him, just more and more memorable. The wind rushing at him thanks to gravity rippled his ‘suit’ and tried in vain to whip against his eyes through the white lenses,which he needed to determine the best time to start swinging. About a hundred feet above the streets, the teenager aimed his device-clad wrist at a gargoyle mounted on a nearby building. Swinging from 0-slope areas like the side of a regular building was easy, but swinging from gargoyles was easier to do.
The webline sliced through the air at the speed of a bullet being shot from a gun, and it's sticky beginning splattered over the entire gargoyle. The rest of the webline hardened just in time for him to snap off the part connected to his webshooter, and soon he wrapped the slack part of the line around his right hand to grip it effectively. As his momentum caused his body to swing down at swift speeds, Peter aimed his free wrist at the next building in preparation for him to swing on the next webline.
In the meantime, Peter squinted at objects or people below him in case of any random occurrences that required his aid. His enhanced sight caught every little detail of civilian faces that he passed by like a blur, as if he were staring at them through some 1080p video. There didn't seem to be much action at the moment, but it always appeared when he went out. All it was going to take for now was a little searching and a whole lot of patience...and not just with finding crime.
He turned as he landed on the roof of a building and waited patiently. The sound of energy turning off and on signaled Sam's arrival; she was apparently unable to fly at all, let alone push herself skyward for a few seconds before having to do it all over again. It took some time, but she eventually managed to propel herself up the building and haul herself on the roof. She wheeze a little as she stumbled over. “...Any way...I could invest in one of those...um, web thingies?”
“Web shooters. And no,” Peter stated simply. “I'm super strong, so I don't have to worry about the momentum of my swings. If you used one of these, you could tear your arms off.”
“Yeah...that makes sense.” Samantha cracked her back with a well placed stretch, and followed Peter as he started towards a set of flags. “So, what's the next part of our patrol, partner?”
Spiderman gestured to the American flag billowing in the wind. “Now we stand in front of this flag and look all heroic and stuff.”
She would have questions that otherwise, but she seemed to cave in to his notion after a few seconds. She watched as her partner took a true Iron Man stance in front of the flag, fists balled as if ready to fight. After thinking for a for a moment, she stood behind him and crossed her arms.
“What are you doing? This isn’t a rap video.”
“Oh. Well how should I pose?”
“Uh...do hands on the hips. No, like Captain America, not a drag queen. Yeah, that's much better.”
Samantha glanced down at the civilians walking by on the sidewalk. Only a few seemed to notice them, and even less stopped to stare for a while. “So…Can’t say this is the weirdest thing I've ever done.”
“Me neither. Weirdest I've ever done is eat pancakes with hot sauce.”
She couldn't stop herself from giggling if she wanted to. “I ate waffles with barbeque sauce, once.”
Peter snorted in amusement and started to say something else when a voice from below suddenly spoke up. A middle aged guy holding a boombox on his shoulder waved up at them. “Yo! Up there! You're that spider dude from youtube, right?!”
Peter waved back. “Call me Spider-man!”
“Okay, Spider-man, do a backflip!” When Peter obliged, the guy nodded in approval. “Yeah! Good stuff.”
Another civilian nodded at them. “Not bad! Who's your girl?”
“Um, I'm not his girl!” Sam was quick to explain, standing in another heroic pose. “I am his partner, The Invincible and Incredible Fire--”
“Fly!” Spiderman finished frantically. “She's Firefly!”
As Sam gave him a patented look of confusion, the guy down below nodded in understanding. “Huh. Spiderman and Firefly! That ain't bad!”
The girl turned to Peter and growled. “Firefly?! My name isn't gonna be Firefly!”
He rolled his eyes and was quick to wave her off. “Oh get over it. It's better than your stripper name, and you know it. It's like we're both bug themed heroes now...well, I'm not technically...but...oh, you get it.”