SON OF MV1 PRESENTS:
THWIPP
Mayday gingerly tested the strand of webbing that lay between the
webshooter on her wrist – her webshooter, she thought, grinning – and the wall
opposite.
“It could hold the Rhino off the ground, honey,” Peter said, smiling.
“You won’t break it.”
Mayday smiled back softly. “I guess…” She looked down for a moment,
shook her head. “It’s going to take me a while to get used to all this, I
think,” she said. “No offence, Dad, but its a bit different having your legacy
to live up to.”
Stuck for anything to say, Peter nodded. “I’ll leave you to get used to it,
then.” His gaze took in the webshooters, the newly completed costume draped
over her chair, and the open window.
“I’m proud of you, May,” he said. “In case I don’t see you later… good
night.”
Mayday smiled. That was practically a sanction for her first patrol!
“Goodnight, Dad.”
The door closed behind him. May unclipped the web-shooter from her
wrist and set it aside, before tugging off her jeans and T-shirt and pulling on
the costume. The belt full of cartridges was slipped under her top and secured
around her waist; the web-shooters refastened over her arms and, finally, she
pulled the mask on snug.
A quick check in the mirror – looking good – and out of the window, and
Spider-Girl emerged on the wall of the Parker house. She looked across the wall
on which she sat to the window of her parents’ room, and smiled beneath the
mask.
“Guess I’m not quite
following in your footsteps, Dad,” she said. “But it’s close enough.”
She aimed and fired off her webshooter, attaching it to one of the
roofs nearby. Catching hold of the webbing, she kicked off, swinging free.
And now she felt she finally understood her father. The spider-bite
imparted powers were all useful, could all be employed purely for fun and
adrenaline rush.
The webshooters, though…
Those her father had made and, spider-sense nudges to guide her,
webslinging felt like the biggest rush of all.
She was grinning under the mask by the time she fired the other ‘shooter
and made the changeover from one webline to the next for the first time.
“So, let’s see what’s going on downtown…”
***
It was fairly easy, May found, to put your mind on automatic and let
your spider-sense do much of the work for webslinging. Which was presumably how
her dad managed to spot crimes happening around the place when you’d have
expected his eyes to be carefully on the next building.
Small wonder, too, that her dad had got a knack with his powers faster
than most heroes did, too; the spider-sense was great for that. An instinctive
part of the powers, it told her exactly where her wrist should be pointing when
it was time for another jet of webfluid to keep her aloft, so she could scan
the streets in relative safety.
So.
What was new?
For that matter, what were criminals doing in her fair city at the
moment?
There had to be something going on, Dad had been going on about how he
never got a quiet patrol since she found out the truth…
Would she know criminal activity if she saw it? That guy over there,
for example. He was leaning against the corner of a building, totally casual,
watching the world go by. Was he waiting for his buddies to show so they could
rush the jewellery store a couple of shop fronts down, or waiting for his girl
so they could go to the cinema a block along?
She couldn’t know. So she had to assume he wasn’t.
If that man were criminal, then, what she did was criminal in its
negligence.
She swung on past, looking for something else. Something more… definite.
Something where having a costumed Spider-Person descend upon you and
mete out justice would not simply be taken as the trigger for a new generation
of Spider-hysteria.
Who was running the Bugle now, anyway?
Couldn’t be as much a typical paranoid hack as Triple-J, anyway, so it
probably didn’t matter.
***
She found them, eventually; a drug dealer, a customer, and three
bodyguards clustered in the dark shadows of a New York alleyway.
As money and substances were exchanged, May aimed both webshooters
carefully; twin jets of webbing were released, spat out carefully. They
impacted as webbing balls, sealing two hands and a fistful of notes, two hands
and a plastic Ziploc of syringes.
So the evidence was assured… All that remained now was taking them all
down and attracting the police’s attention, whereupon she could depart.
She released the webline early, turning a complicated cartwheel in
midair and firing off a new line to change her direction, now swinging in
toward the confused scene.
A kick weighted with the momentum of her swing took the first guard
down. As she landed, her Spider-Sense cut in, causing her to duck just in time…
The other bodyguard got two shots off before May somersaulted over his
employer and sprayed webbing liberally over his face, cutting off his vision
quite effectively.
She landed beside him but kept moving, not wanting to give him a chance
to hit her with blind fire, instead stepping across the yard to the end of the
alley, planting one foot on the wall, and running up it before flipping off. A
well-aimed kick as she descended took him out of the equation.
Looking out toward the alley opening, an idea came to her. She grinned;
she couldn’t help it.
***
A quarter of an hour later, a police patrol car arrived on the scene
pursuant to an anonymous tip, to find the quartet trussed with webbing and
helpless, and a band of webbing spanned the entrance to the alley at shoulder
height, webbing letters suspended from it reading WEBLINE – DO NOT CROSS.
***
By that time, Mayday was halfway across town – and heading for a weird
green glow at about rooftop level. Her Spider-sense wasn’t acting up over it,
which made her wonder what was going on – normally, her dad said, it raised
Cain over the least little thing.
Of course, maybe the genes for that just hadn’t come through quite
right. But that idea hardly bore thinking about – a Spider with a deficient
Spider-Sense? She could teach classes in Getting Squashed 101.
She shook her head. That was definitely not something that merited
thinking about.
When she was close enough, the glow resolved itself – someone who
looked suspiciously like Bruce* was floating at the centre of the glow, which
seemed to be coming from him, watching a guy in a mechanical suit grimly.
*-last issue – Tom
The suit appeared to be making frantic repairs to a cannon strapped to
the arm.
Mayday landed nimbly beside the floating Defender. “Anything here for
your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Girl to do?”
Bruce looked stunned. “Uh, thanks – I think I’ve got it covered,
though. I dislodged one of the jumpers on the gun’s circuit board…” His smile
shone through the green glow. “I don’t want to try knocking him out, though –
my teke gets strong when I’m not doing fiddly stuff and I might do some
permanent damage.”
“Then I figure you can allow me,” May said, smiling beneath her mask.
She stepped forward, fist cocked, when the man looked up.
“Two of you? Stuff that…”
With that, he dived backward over the edge of the building, dropping
out of sight in moments.
“Damn!” Mayday was at the edge and over it in moments, diving toward
him. A hand stretched down and tapped twice, firing a webline toward him.
Catch this guy, then secure yourself. Save him and capture him. That
was the plan.
It was a good plan. Yes.
Except that he ignited the jetpack that had seemed merely an extension
of his armour, and scooted out of the path of the webline, flying away swiftly.
“Wha-?”
By the time May realised why the webline had failed to catch him, she’d
fallen below his height, picking up speed and plunging on toward the ground.
She twisted in the air, firing webline desperately for the nearest building,
but it wasn’t going to catch in time…
…
Her fall seemed to slow, then halt altogether, abruptly. Green light
enveloped her, bearing her upward.
The webline struck the building and held.
May panicked for a moment, hanging there in the air; too freaky for
words, but her Spider-Sense wasn’t actually complaining about it, which Dad
said meant whatever it was would be a good thing… if it wasn’t just that her
Spider-Sense was a little unreliable, as she’d been wondering…
This was so not something she
wanted to have to think about. There didn’t seem to be a good explanation
anywhere unless she was missing something.
She really hoped she was missing something.
Bruce floated down until he was level with her. “Lucky I caught you,”
he said. “It’s a bit temperamental when I use it that strong…”
“Uh, what is?”
“My TK,” he said, waving his arms in a gesture intended to take in the
green glow.
“TK?”
“Telekinesis.” He shrugged. “The higher energy levels are all
subconscious-driven, so I never know exactly what’s going to happen – why I
didn’t want to knock Armourdude out.”
May nodded, slowly. It was beginning to make more sense, she thought,
and even better, it pointed at an explanation which didn’t mean her
Spider-Sense was playing up, which had to be good news.
“So… it caught me, but it might not have done.”
“I wanted to stop you hitting the ground,” Bruce said. “It could have
done pretty much anything with that basic effect. Not exactly dependable.”
May nodded slowly. “I’m gonna try never to get into a situation where I
have to rely on it, then,” she said. “But thanks, cutie. I’m safe. Get after
the bad guy, willya?”
Bruce looked stunned for a second, then nodded. “Sure.” With that, he
was flying down the streets, and the green glow that had buoyed her up was
gone.
“Least he can rely on it to fly,” she said, softly, and smiled.
Still, it was probably gonna be time to get home…
She wasn’t going to do much more tonight, and it might be a good idea
to practice taking falls before she had to do that again.
Tired but exhilarated, Mayday kicked off and swung through the streets
of New York City. Her first patrol was… a qualified success… and she could
always do better next time.
But she couldn’t help wondering what the guy in the armour had been
about…
***
MASKED MENACE: WEBSLINGER THE NEXT GENERATION?
By Michael McGee, staff reporter
Longtime readers of the Bugle may well remember the exploits of the
masked vigilante Spider-Man, against whose sinister and ill-justified
activities we campaigned from his first appearance to the day he mysteriously
vanished from our streets.
Now, it seems, the city’s original vigilante – inspiration for such
menaces as the Punisher and Solo, to say nothing of Venom, Carnage, and the varied
criminals who, it almost seems, arose purely to clash with him, creating a
still greater threat to our city – has spawned a second generation. A Bugle photographer caught this picture
of a female Spider fraternising with an obvious mutant, seconds after the pair
apparently allowed the cyber-mercenary known as Killshot to escape.
We have to ask – what is the story behind this? Were Killshot’s motives
pure? What was this desperado duo doing?
A Bugle source can supply us
with the answers – Killshot, hired to protect the city by a wealthy businessman
who wishes to remain anonymous, was in action to prevent the mutant from
breaking in to the City Bank. It appears that only the intervention of this
webbed whelp who presumably calls herself Spider-Girl, besmirching the
reputation of one of America’s shorter-lived heroes, prevented the mercenary
from doing his duty.
Exactly what is the method to the webslinger’s machinations? You can
rely on the Bugle to find out, and to
present you with the truth.
***
The headline screamed out from the Daily Bugle’s front page. Beside it
was a picture; Spider-Girl talking to Bruce, hanging onto a building.
As the paper clanked and whirred it’s way through the presses, the man
who was Killshot looked down and smiled. “That ought to throw a little doubt
her way,” he said aloud. And then he left abruptly, not wishing to be caught
with the Bugle’s presses.
***
Mayday read the article incredulously over breakfast. Peter smiled
sympathetically as she looked up; her mother rested a hand on her shoulder.
“Believe me, honey, I know exactly how you feel,” Peter said.
“I can’t believe it,” Mary-Jane joined in. “J. Jonah Jameson retired.
Not a single Spider-phobe from your father’s day is still on the Bugle team. It
figures that there would be one…”
Mayday nodded, slowly, the ball in her stomach tightening. “And it
figures that the paper to employ him would be the Bugle.”
She shook her head. “This McGee’s source is lying through his teeth,
Dad! I mean, you know Bruce, right? He wouldn’t try to pull a stunt like that…”
“Honey, if anything Bruce is the one guy who’s got it worse than you,”
Peter said. “Your legacy is one of hate and the Parker luck. His stems back to
the Hulk, and to be honest, his mother wasn’t much better regarded at the end.
He’s worked to step out from under that all his life. He wouldn’t give it up
now, wouldn’t slip even for one second. The road ahead is too hard to have to
walk some of it twice.”
“Then the source definitely was lying!”
Peter nodded. “And if you want better press representation, it’s up to you to
bust this source and McGee and clear the field of Spiderphobic reporters.”
***
NEXT ISSUE: You met them last issue, now prepare for the real show as
Spider-Girl spends some quality time kickin’ it with the Defenders!
Comments, as always, to [email protected]