...in other news, the supervillain known as ‘Ghost Spider’ was seen after the abduction of GCPD Detective Renee Montoya...” the newscaster said as a grainy video played, showing Ghost Spider firing a webline into the distance and jumping into the air with the limp form of the detective slung over her shoulder.
*thunk*
”...the detective was one of several members of the GCPD attacked last night, and while neither Ghost Spider or the police have released a statement regarding these incidents; it is possible that these attacks are linked…”
*thunk*
”...no demands have been made so far for the return of Detective Montoya, but we at Channel 7 have been asked to remind the public that Ghost Spider is considered to be a dangerous metahuman and should be avoided or approached with caution if absolutely necessary. If you have any information about the location or sighting of this villain, do not try to confront her and call the local GCPD for assistance. Our next story is the potential disappearance of the dau…” The TV shut off.
*thunk*
*thunk*
*thunk*
“If you aren’t going to be helpful, stop trying to destroy the table. I still need it.” an annoyed Renee Montoya growled at the black and white figure next to her as she dug through Captain Stacy’s recovered journals.
The newly branded villain rolled her head to the side and gave the detective a pleading look, surprisingly effective when the oversized white eyes made her look rather pitiful, and made a weird whining noise that was a mix of indignation and disbelief. All while gesturing at the now turned off TV.
Renee rolled her eyes.
“What were you expecting? No one’s managed to actually talk with you after all those incidents you get caught up in and Roman Falcone isn’t an idiot. Of course he’s going to push the blame on you to stop anyone looking at his group. Especially if he really is about to make a big move like you told me.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to call into the station and let everyone know you’re fine?” Ghost Spider whined. It might’ve been childish, but she was almost willing to scrap the advantage of having the detective safe and willing to help if it salvaged her reputation. Almost.
“I owe you one kid, but I don’t owe you that much.” Renee said with humor. “Besides, it’s only for a couple days at most. We’ll find a way to clear your name then.”
Ghost Spider growled but didn’t say anything.
It might only be a few days but that would be plenty of time to cement the name ‘Ghost Spider’ and ‘villain’ together.
“Fine,” She said mulishly instead. “Is there anything else we can do then? Reach out to your boss or something?”
“He probably already knows.” Renee said, turning a page. “He was cagey the last time I saw him and definitely getting ready for something. It's better not to split his focus right now.”
“And not let him know his detective is fine and not being tortured or something?”
“Oh he knows,” that caused Ghost Spider to blink, “and if he hasn’t asked me to come in then it means he wants me out of sight for now.”
“And how does he know that?!”
Renee smirked and held up a small electronic device.
“Pagers. Hardly anyone uses them anymore and they can’t be tracked. I let him know once we stopped here.”
Here being a hotel room that they had broken into. Not exactly a safehouse, but then Ghost Spider wasn’t keeping Renee hostage so that was fine. They only needed to be there for as long as it took to plan their next move and the place had a TV and internet connection.
“Huh, that’s...neat.” Certainly not something Ghost Spider would’ve considered but it was a cool trick.
“Don’t think only the superheroes have neat tricks, kid. Even normal people might surprise you.” Renee laughed.
“I’ll definitely keep it in mind. Will you be fine if I leave you here then?” Ghost Spider asked, getting up in preparation to leave.
Renee cocked an eyebrow. “And why would you be leaving me here?”
“Whu-Why?!” Ghost Spider stammered incredulously. “The auction is tonight! Falcone is going to kick off a major gang war and I need to do something about it. You aren’t expecting me to babysit you here, are you?”
“And what exactly are you planning to do?” Renee asked in return. “Run around the city looking for foot soldiers and hoping to stumble into something big enough to derail their plan?”
“...I know a few meeting points they are going to use. I’d probably get a few lieutenants if I was fast enough.”
The detective nodded. “Not the worst plan, but that won’t matter in the big picture. Anyone you take out would be little fish. What we need to do is take out a major cog in their operation.”
“Would you stick to one expression?” Ghost Spider muttered. “Fine, you have a better idea then.” it wasn’t a question.
“I do.” Renee held up the notebook she had been going through. “The police can deal with the small fry. We are going after the specialists.” She pointed at one specific passage where the words ‘Royal Emerald’ had been underlined several times. It was apparently some method of payment for a mercenary that was mentioned in several plans.
With the sheer amount of danger the mercenary was supposed to face in each operation mentioned in the notebooks; they were either world-class or a metahuman. A rarity when dealing with the Gotham mob, since the various groups tended to operate old-school and disliked reaching out past their own respective groups unless forced.
But then none of them had done anything this ambitious recently either, so maybe it shouldn’t have been that surprising.
“I thought of trying something like that too, but I don’t know who the mercenary is or where they would be.” Ghost Spider admitted.
“I don’t know who it is either, but you’re thinking too direct. All we need to do is deny them their prize. No merc is going to work for free and if this is the payment then no amount of money is going to convince them otherwise.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because ‘Royal Emerald’ is the black market slang for Kryptonite.” Renee explained as Ghost Spider’s eyes widened in shock. “Anyone with the skills to work for something like that can make as much money they want without the risks these jobs are expecting. No, if Roman can’t pay with the Kryptonite then whoever this merc is, is going to walk.”
“That still doesn’t matter if we don’t know where they are.”
Renee smirked. “We might not know where the merc is, but we do have a lead on where his payment might be…”
-o-
Ghost Spider looked at the five storied gothic building from a rooftop across the street.
“Are you serious?” she asked into a short-range headset Renee had given her out of a stashed duffle bag the detective had in a safe location.
The building belonged to one of the most prominent art appraisers in the city. Sculptures, paintings, jewelry, poems...if it was art worth anything and hadn’t been (officially) stolen then it passed through here.
”Where else would you keep a highly regulated material than a place no one would expect it or has any business poking around in?” Renee said dryly. ”We’ve known the gangs use the Roderick Appraisal building for their more semi-legal art dealings but since they all use it, they have a vested interest in keeping us away, and the Commish hasn’t been able to get around their blocks yet. But a couple days ago, word on the street was that the Falcone had something moved here under heavy guard. I’m guessing it’s our merc’s payment since keeping it anywhere near their personal vaults would be too much heat for them.”
Ghost Spider looked over the mini-fortress in front of her. Guards were visible just inside the doors and CCTV cameras covered nearly every square inch of the building.
“And you want me to break into it...in the middle of the day...with no idea where in the building it might be…?”
”Don’t be so pessimistic. The Falcone have a reserved vault -through an alias, naturally- that's on the fourth floor. Our target should be somewhere around there.”
Ghost Spider sighed.
“I don’t suppose you have a plan on how to actually get in there?”
There was a crackle of static that Ghost Spider interpreted as a sarcastic huff. ”Don’t look at me. You’re the supervillain thief here. Not me.”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Ghost Spider very pointedly did not reply to that. Instead she started looking over the building more closely, trying to find a weak point in their surveillance net she could take advantage of.
She ended circling the building a few times before she settled on a potential option. There was an air vent leading into the fifth floor that was only monitored by a single camera. It was on a bare section of wall and protected by the overhanging ledge on the roof, so there was little chance of it being used easily as a means of entrance...unless you could walk on walls.
But first there was a camera that needed to be handled.
Ghost Spider quickly crawled down the wall to where she was slightly above the white plastic housing of the camera and held out a hand. A small bump formed on the back of it and quickly shaped itself into a spider. With a small mental nudge the little arachnid scurried onto the camera and positioned itself just off the lens.
That should be good enough.
Working quickly and trusting her invisibility to hide her from the people on the street below, Ghost Spider removed the screws holding the vent grate in place. With another nudge her spider crawled onto the lens; conveniently blocking the vent from view as Ghost Spider removed the grate, slipped inside, and secured it in place with a bit of webbing.
The interior of the vent was tight but still sufficient for Ghost Spider to slip further into the building. Every so often, another spider formed and split off to investigate the rooms she passed. Detective Montoya might have an idea where the Falcone might hide her target but there was a possibility that they could’ve hidden it elsewhere in the building to throw off suspicion.
Through her spiders, she was able to investigate most of the fifth floor with no issues. But it seemed there was little chance that anyone would be keeping kryptonite on this floor. Nearly everything was personal offices or filing rooms, with only a handful of people walking about. None of them looked like they might be guarding very expensive objects, so she quickly made her way to the central air shaft and went down to the fourth floor.
It was only a single floor, but the difference in security was massive.
Pairs of guards stood at the end of every hallway and each room was locked with a metal door and an impressive looking keypad. Even when her spiders managed to find a way inside, Ghost Spider wasn’t always able to determine what was in a room; the contents sealed in airtight containers.
“Montoya, any way to narrow this down? I can’t go poking through the rooms without alerting someone that I’m in here.” Ghost Spider whispered into her headset.
”You’re already inside!? How...no nevermind, these kinds of buildings need to submit blueprints to the city for safety reasons. There should be a reinforced vault in the middle of the second through fourth floors. You’ll need to check in there.”
It took some searching but Ghost Spider found the route to the middle of the floor and the entrance to the vault room. She almost missed it because unlike the display rooms, this one was behind an unassuming wooden door that led to a much more advanced metal one.
In fact, Ghost Spider only realised it wasn’t just a janitor’s closet or something like that because of a man and a woman walked underneath her talking about the vault itself.
“...will have three seconds to insert and turn your key. Then you will be free to retrieve the contents of your box.” the man was explaining. “As you know we take our security very strictly here so in the event your key does not work for any reason you will be detained until either the fault is found or you are handed to the police.”
“Of course, I would expect nothing less from Roderick’s.” the woman replied.
“I think I found my way inside.” Ghost Spider whispered to Renee. “Don’t know how secure the vault is, so I might lose reception.”
”Got it. Be careful.” was the reply.
Ghost Spider carefully shadowed the couple, trying to stay close enough to slip in behind them yet far enough away a casual movement wouldn’t bump into her invisible form.
She felt her heart start hammering faster when the woman paused and looked behind her, eyes skimming over Ghost Spider and looking down the hallway.
The man noticed and paused. “Something wrong, Ms. Franklin?”
“...no, nothing.” she said eventually, eyes still scanning behind her. “I just thought I felt someone watching me.”
“I assure you, if someone tried breaking into this building we would know about it. We use some of the most advanced security features on the market.” the man replied. “Perhaps that is what is bothering you? Several of our clients have remarked on feeling observed in the past.”
“...yeah. That must be it.” the woman didn’t sound convinced at all but dropped it.
Ghost Spider silently released a sigh of relief.
That could’ve been bad.
The three of them entered the door after the man typed in a passcode and swiped a card through a reader. Ghost Spider made sure to memorise the code over his shoulder, just in case, and they entered the vault proper.
The inside was about what Ghost Spider expected. Heavy sealed containers lined the room, each one with a pair of keyholes and an electronic display in front of them. Unsurprisingly there were no cameras on the inside, couldn’t have there be proof of stolen goods out there as possible blackmail afterall, so Ghost Spider was able to duck behind one of the containers and decloak. She hadn’t been invisible long so the stamina drain wasn’t an issue, but she also didn’t want to risk getting in trouble because of it. Besides there were only two people in here, they shouldn’t be a problem…
Her thoughts ground to a halt when there was a crash and she peeked around the containers to find the man unconscious on the floor and the woman digging through his pockets.
“Honestly, this is such a pain,” the woman was saying to herself. “I spent weeks scoping this place out and in the end I nearly managed to walk through the front door. What a waste of time.” she pulled out a key and looked it over before putting it into her jacket. “Of course, now I need to deal with YOU!”
Ghost Spider’s eyes widened as her spider sense blared an alarm. In the blink of an eye the woman stashed the key, retrieved a whip from her jacket, and lashed out at Ghost Spider’s hiding spot. On pure instinct, Ghost Spider raised an arm to protect her face. The whip coiled around her forearm and with a sharp tug the woman pulled her out into the open.
“Well now, what’s a little spider doing sneaking around here for? I heard that word on the street was that you were trying to play hero.”
“Oh, you know, heard this place had some cool stuff and decided to take a tour.” Ghost Spider quipped back. Internally she was studying everything about the woman. Pretty, short black hair, a very athletic build mostly hidden by the formal pantsuit she was wearing, and she knew how to use that whip. Plus, she knew Ghost Spider was setting out to be a hero.
She had literally -and depressingly- only told the Batfamily and Detective Montoya about that. And considering the detective hadn’t mentioned knowing someone who could break into this place Ghost Spider doubted she had called this person here, which meant it was someone the Bat Brigade knew…
Catwoman!
It fit.
Appearance-wise the woman matched what Ghost Spider knew of Selina Kyle and she probably had the skills to back it up. That still didn’t tell her why Catwoman was poking around a semi-legal business operated by several mafia families.
“Can’t say I’ve been impressed though.” She continued “So far it’s just been offices and some boring display rooms. Not really worth the trouble if you know what I mean, so I guess I’m wondering what brought you here…..kitty cat.”
“Aren’t you just a clever little girl…” Catwoman, well, purred. She slowly moved away from the unconscious man but stayed in a combat crouch, ready to react to anything Ghost Spider did. “...but if you know who I am, then you should already know why I’m here.
I’m far more interested in what a self-proclaimed hero is doing breaking into vaults. Looking for a career change already?”
Ghost Spider debated exactly what she should say. Neither one of them probably wanted a fight, that would draw too much attention to the both of them, but she also didn’t want to just start telling her plans to everyone that asked. She tried the full disclosure approach once and got burned for it.
“Let’s just say I’m here for asset denial.” She said eventually. “I really doubt it has anything to do with why you’re here, so why don’t you just grab what you came for and we’ll go our separate ways?”
“Hmmm, but now you have me curious. Maybe there’s something here more interesting than a prized statue stolen by a bunch of mobsters. So what is it? C’mon you can tell me.”
“Just a fancy rock wanted by some mercenary.” Ghost Spider deflected, she refused to respond to such easy bait. Some jokes were so low hanging fruit they were on the floor, and she was better than that.
“I like rocks,” Catwoman said offhandedly. “I’ve got quite the collection too. Why don’t you tell me about this one or things might get a bit tricky for you.”
Ghost Spider scoffed. “What, you're going to fight me in the middle of their vault? That just means you won’t get what you want either.” she pointed out.
“Not quite,” Catwoman said as she slowly stood up and slid closer to one of the containers. “Afterall I am currently allowed to be in here.” she placed a hand on her collarbone, ”if the alarms go off then I’m just ‘Erika Franklin’, the poor woman that was attacked in their secure vault. You get to deal with security and I’ll just come back later. So why don’t you make it easy and just tell me what you’re after?”
That was definitely something Ghost Spider wasn’t exactly thrilled to do. Catwoman tended to be the ‘lightest shade of grey’ when it came to the Gotham Rogues, but she was obviously still a criminal. That, and there was a very good chance word would get back to the Batfamily and she was already going to have to deal with her new villainous image, she didn’t want more complications with that future conversation.
But at the same time she couldn’t think of a way to get out of it without risking an alarm being set off. And since both of them knew how little time there was until the auction…
Ghost Spider took a mental step back.
What if Catwoman didn’t know about it?
She hinted that she talked to someone in the Batfamily, sure, but that didn’t mean they read her into everything going on as well. Nightwing seemed prepared to keep everything ‘in house’ as it were, besides reaching out to Commissioner Gordon for support. Which meant...
“That's fine. I managed to break in here today pretty easily.” she told the thief. “But it sounds like you put quite a bit of effort into your heist. Trip the alarm and I’ll just come back later, I’m not in a rush.”
It was a pretty big bluff-
Catwoman scowled but relaxed out of her crouch and turned her back on Ghost Spider, walking over to one of the containers.
-but it had a good chance of working.
Still, Ghost Spider was practically gaping at the blatant dismissal by the older woman. Even if they weren’t going to fight, turning your back on someone you had just been threatening seemed like a dumb move.
“Don’t act so surprised, little spider. We both know we don’t have time before someone notices something going on in here and comes to take a look. We tested each other, we both called a bluff, just don’t get in my way.” Catwoman said as she opened the container and pulled out a fancy but ancient looking wooden statue...which she immediately shattered to reveal several modern day tools. “Now I’m going to get what I came here for. We can continue our conversation after that or you can run off now.”
After that, Catwoman seemed content to ignore her and started poking at another container. Ghost Spider wasted a couple seconds just staring at the woman in surprise but eventually shook herself out of it and began looking for her own target.
It didn’t take her long. Knowing the properties of kryptonite meant that the container would need to be a certain size and shielded for radiation. Otherwise it would ruin anything else in the vault or build up a charge and douse the next person to open the container in harmful energy. With those conditions, Ghost Spider found the possible containers almost immediately. The problem was determining which one of the five held her target when they were all a featureless white metal with only an electronic lock for clues.
“Well you don’t think small, I’ll give you that.” Catwoman said as she came up behind Ghost Spider depositing a golden egyptian cat statue into a bag. “Might not want to mess with these though. They’re alarmed to go off if anyone messes with the casing and I don’t see an access port so you aren’t hacking it.”
Ghost Spider looked over her shoulder, one eye enlarged in a parody of a raised eyebrow. “Why are you still here then? You got what you came for already, if you want to get out before the alarms start ringing now's the best time.”
Catwoman shrugged, “Call me curious. It’s not often I see someone able to sneak into a place like this without looking in a mirror.”
“I appreciate the compliment at least.” the thief nearly pouted when Ghost Spider still refused to take the bait.
Ghost Spider didn’t really care and went back to looking at the electronic locks.
It was advanced stuff. A LexCorp RAU-1336 model. Sturdy, reliable, and with very few exploitable software flaws Ghost Spider wasn’t going to be able to crack the password for these without a decent computer on hand.
“Not to rush you, but time is running out.” Catwoman reminded her. “If you want my help you just have to tell me what you're after.”
Ghost Spider ignored her and walked up to each of the five containers and proceeded to yank the touchpad out from it’s housing. While the containers themselves were alarmed to detect tampering, by necessity the panel itself wasn’t and there was a hardware defect she could take advantage of.
With quick movements she separated out the grounding wire and cut it after shifting her fingers to resemble wire cutters and a simple application of her super strength. Then she stripped the negative wire and shorted out the system. There was a spark and a flash as alarms suddenly started going off in the background, but more importantly the electronic lock was forced into test mode as the electric surge fried its insides. The locks receded and opened to reveal...a 1809 bottle of wine.
“Well done,” Catwoman admitted grudgingly. “But not a rock by the look of it.”
“Why are you still here?” Ghost Spider complained, already moving to the next container and repeating the steps. This one was an old book that was nearly crumbling with age.
“Curiosity.” Catwoman repeated. Then complained when Ghost Spider said nothing in return. “You’re no fun, kid.”
“Little busy at the moment.” Ghost Spider had moved onto the fourth container, “Gotcha!”, and finally found the softball sized chunk of kryptonite. She covered it in webbing and secured the resulting ball to the small of her back.
There was a crack of a whip and a thump as a body hit the floor.
Ghost Spider turned back to the entrance to see Catwoman dealing with a pair of guards that had come to investigate.
“Alright then, time’s up. We have to go.”
Ghost Spider was still wondering why the thief was hanging around, especially when she had already gotten what she came here for, but she was right. This wasn’t the time to stand around.
The spider themed hero followed her out of the vault and into another group of armed guards. The guards tried to level their handguns at the two of them, but Ghost Spider snared all of them with webbing before they had the chance to fire and buy that point Catwoman was close enough to put them down with a series of kicks and throws that put all the guards on the ground.
“This way.” She said and pulled Ghost Spider into another display room.
“Hold that door for a bit.” Catwoman ordered and knocked over an antique clay pot.
Ghost Spider simply webbed the door shut and turned to see the other woman pulling a whitish putty out of the debris and lining the room’s window with the stuff.
“Is that C4?!” she exclaimed as Catwoman pulled out a blasting cap and placed it on the putty.
“Yep,” the certifiably insane thief chirped while kicking over a table and crouching behind it, gesturing Ghost Spider to come join her. “You’re gonna want to cover your ears for this.”
Ghost Spider wasted no time diving behind the table and covering up as suggested. “Aren't you supposed to be a cat burglar?!” she complained.
“Sorry, not that kind of job this time.”
There was a click and then the wall exploded. When Ghost Spider trusted it was safe she peeked out to find the window was now just a hole. Catwoman was clearly crazy, but she knew what she was doing. That was the perfect amount of explosive to blow the window and not bring the roof down or kill them with the blastwave.
Catwoman was out the hole in a flash, somehow in the few moments Ghost Spider had been covering herself for the explosion, the thief had shed her pantsuit and was decked out in a tight leather catsuit. Not one to be left behind Ghost Spider was right on her tail.
The pair quickly made it to the neighboring roofs and took off with Catwoman following after Ghost Spider.
After some changes in direction to make sure no one was following them Ghost Spider eventually came to a halt and decided to ask why she was still being tailed.
“Still want to know what the big deal is with the ‘rock’.” was Catwoman’s answer. “But mostly it’s because she wanted to talk.” the thief pointed to the other side of the roof where Batgirl had just touched down. In an instant Ghost Spider was crouched and had her back to the ledge of the roof so she could look at both the others.
“Hold on! We just want to talk!” Batgirl exclaimed and took a few steps forward, her arm raised in her direction.
“Although if you’re planning to run, think again.” Ghost Spider whirled around to see Supergirl floating above her, arms crossed over her chest.
Caught between two superheroes and an allied supervillain/antihero. There was really only one though on Ghost Spider’s mind.
’Well….shit.’