With half the heroes out of the city for the moment, Ghost Spider was half expecting there to be a huge upswing of crime that she would need to deal with. Of course since the heroes themselves didn’t exactly scream from the rooftops that they were leaving, that didn’t happen.
If anything, petty crime was down for the moment now that it was clear Ghost Spider wasn’t another thief joining the long list of Rogues looking to enhance her reputation by playing in Batman’s backyard and was actually another vigilante looking to clear out Gotham’s streets.
It would likely pick back up again once the more analytical criminals figured out where she liked to patrol and how long she was active.
Naturally she would do her best to mix things up now and then to make sure no one could accurately track her, but the bad guys dedicated or wealthy enough could and would spare no effort if it meant they got away clean.
Speaking of criminals, Ghost Spider was busy tracking down the supplier of her two friends in the alley and finding out where he got his goods.
Marcus, real name Eustace Gaylord, was the manager of a small shipping company when he wasn’t moonlighting as a drug dealer. He was fairly unremarkable in just about every regard, looks, lifestyle, talent…
Just about the only thing he seemed to have that wasn’t utterly average was his ambition to have everyone follow his orders. And when his lack of legitimate business talent and connections prevented him from moving up in his company, he branched out to other means.
Ghost Spider was learning a lot about Eustace these days. And thanks to her little connection to the Batcomputer, so was Nightwing.
The two of them weren’t quite back on talking terms, but they also weren’t avoiding each other at the moment. Though truthfully, Ghost Spider had less impersonal, professionally polite conversations with her cable service than she did with Batman’s protege. A necessary sacrifice to get access to the multitude of backdoored systems the hero team had available.
Such as the city traffic cameras.
Eustace hid his operations well enough for a casual inspection, but with the Batcomputer following him throughout the city Ghost Spider had the location of the heart of his drug operation in no time. A nice little office building and garage technically owned by the company he worked for but in reality was purely a front for storing his illegal product.
Between him, the five permanent workers in the building, and his small horde dealers it was no wonder Eustace was able to supply a new version of Venom to underground fight rings. The man had managed to create one of the largest drug rings in the city that Nightwing was aware of and from the sound of it, he was still looking to expand.
That wasn’t what Ghost Spider was here for though. As she silently slipped into Eustace’s third floor office while the man was doing something elsewhere, she pulled out a USB dongle Batgirl had given her and plugged it into the drug pusher’s computer. The little wireless device allowed the Batcave direct access to whatever it was plugged into and by extension, the many different hacking tools available there.
“Ghost Spider to Batcave, I’m plugged in. Anyone there or am I on my own?” She was hoping that Nightwing had stepped out for a minute or Alfred had taken over but when she heard her estranged friend’s voice she realised she wasn’t quite that lucky.
“Nightwing here, I’m pulling the files now. Should be five minutes to get the source locations if they’re on his machine.”
Which meant Ghost Spider had to hang out in an office alone on an awkward phone call while she waited for the download to finish. Fantastic, this was going to be like that tech support job in highschool all over again…
“So any news about what the others are up to?” she asked after a little while in an attempt to break the silence.
“They have everything under control.” Nightwing said shortly, smothering the conversation before it even began.
Ghost Spider felt a surge of annoyance building as, once again, Nightwing was being a Dick and refusing to actually talk to her.
She waited until a slight beep from the dongle let her know Nightwing had cut the connection to the computer, he must have gotten everything he could already, and pulled the device before slipping it back into a discrete pocket.
“Anything interesting?” She asked while she snuck a peek out the window. Eustace and a group of his workers were all heading towards the garage.
“Give me a minute. Some of the locations match locations we’ve already taken care of. I’m cross checking those now.”
When Nightwing didn’t say anything else, Ghost Spider stretched before opening the window and climbing out. “Well, while you do that I’m gonna go say hi to the owner. You mind calling the GCPD to pick them up for me? Thanks.”
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“Wait what--”
Ghost Spider snapped the communicator closed and when it immediately began buzzing, muted it.
“Alright, let's go take care of the trash…”
The spider-themed hero didn’t bother with stealth at this point. In fact she boldly walked into the garage like she belonged there and made no attempt to hide herself as she walked up behind the group that entered earlier.
Eustace, or perhaps it should be Marcus now that he was in his dealer persona, was handing out orders for deliveries to his smaller scale dealers. Ghost Spider listened in just in case one of those locations hadn’t been on his computer, but when it seemed like Marcus was finishing up she prepared to announce her presence -- only to be interrupted by a trilling ringtone coming from her communicator.
The drug dealers all started panicking when they noticed the black and white figure behind them, but Ghost Spider calmly retrieved her communicator, flipped it open, and set it to speaker. If Nightwing was going to go through the effort of taking the device off mute, she might as well answer him.
“Y’llo?”
“The GCPD is on the way,” Nightwing said sourly, and all of the drug pushers close enough to hear paled. One looked like he was going to be sick. “Did you catch them all or do they need to be on the lookout for runners?”
Ghost Spider was carefully watching the criminals. Most of them seemed like office types that had never run a day in their life if they could help it besides the few that looked like they had a clue when it came to a fight. Even those didn’t look thrilled at their chances. In a fight or otherwise.
“Nope, I haven’t even gotten started yet.”
Nightwing misunderstood and sighed in relief. “Good, just leave them for the police. If the other drug rings realise we are looking into them they’ll panic. As long as no one sees you there, we can pass it off as a police raid.”
“Weeell...about that.” Ghost Spider scratched her cheek awkwardly. “You’re on speaker so now they all know…”
“...Why?”
“You turned on the ringer and called me when I was right behind them, what’s the point in being sneaky at that point?”
“You--” “Stop standing around and get her you idiots!”
Marcus finally recovered his wits at finding a superhero right behind him in the middle of his highly illegal operation and decided to order his lackeys to distract her while he tried to escape. Unfortunately for him, instead of his shout spurring them into doing what he said more than half started running for the exit along with him. The rest actually tried to attack her. Whether out of loyalty or desperation was up for debate, though…
“What were you expecting? It’s not like they wouldn’t have noticed a ringtone going off anyway.” Ghost Spider chided, ducking around the haphazard punches of the drug dealers and focusing on the ones running away.
“I was expecting you to have finished or stayed out of sight. How was I supposed to know you would walk right up to them?!”
Most of the fleeing criminals were quickly wrapped up by Ghost Spider’s webs. The few that were lucky enough to dodge or hide behind one of the others at first were thrown into the garage walls and stuck there when Ghost Spider used considerably more force to trap them. Marcus got some special treatment after he threw one of his employees into the path of one of the webs and was wrapped up completely. Ghost Spider even webbed his mouth shut when he started screaming obscenities.
“That’s not the important part! You should have realised I was busy when I muted the line, not blasted noise to anyone nearby!”
The few people left uncaptured had practically given up fighting her properly. When every punch kick or thrown object was easily dodged, one of them desperately tried to tackle Ghost Spider. However, she simply jumped over his attempt and kicked off his shoulder in the process, sending the man face first into the floor.
“Anyways, I’m going to finish up. I’ll give you a call when I’m done so we can discuss your highly unprofessional attitude.”
”You’re calli--” Ghost Spider interrupted him again by closing the communicator and turned to the last three people standing.
“So now that you have my full attention, you guys ready to begin?” She asked, raising her fists.
Two of them looked at eachother and by some unspoken signal, charged. One going low, the second going high in a last ditch effort to overpower the metahuman.
Ghost Spider wasn’t really feeling interested in a wrestling match though, so she lowered one fist and shot a blob of webbing onto the first man’s foot, tripping both him and the man behind him. Once both of them were tangled together on the floor, Ghost Spider simply webbed both of them and looked at the last one remaining.
She couldn’t help but feel a little bored at this whole bust, but that was what she got by expecting anything from office jockeys. The last man was even the stereotypical balding fat guy that seemed to be in every office. And considering how much he was shaking, he wasn’t secretly some kind of secret weapon.
“I don’t want to go to jail…” He cried even as he sank to his knees and raised his hands.
“And I don’t want people selling dangerous drugs to kids.” Ghost Spider snarked back. “Guess we both are disappointed tonight.”
-o-
The police eventually arrived and took all the drug pushers away.
As the last of them was pushed into the back of a van, Ghost Spider gave all the officers a cheerful wave and took off, even the one officer that looked like he would rather arrest her than deal with the drug dealers.
Too bad that meant she no longer had a reason to delay calling Nightwing back again. So even though she wasn’t really willing, Ghost Spider pulled out her communicator one more time and called the Batcave.
“Finally finished then?”
Ghost Spider smirked over Nightwing’s pouting tone, even if he tried to hide it.
“Yup, one major drug distribution circle dealt with. And with plenty of info to start scoping out some more.”
“For all the good it will do us. You realise most of his suppliers are just going to stop working out of the locations we found once they hear about this right?”
“But it will force them to stop shipping to other dealers for a while.” Ghost Spider argued. “Plus it’s not like you aren't setting up monitoring on them right now to see where they run off to.”
Nightwing growled but didn’t refute that he was spying on the locations he could.
“You’re being reckless. If you had just waited we could have set it up so the GCPD could have helped us secure all the sites at once.”
“With what people? Most of the ones the Commissioner can trust are still out on injury. I think it’s better to throw a wrench into their operations and track them down later than wait till you get a perfect scenario.”
“You think they have a bigger plan in the works?” Nightwing must have picked up on her concerns.
“Yeah, I don’t like that the first we’re hearing about a ‘new and improved’ Venom is through street level dealers.” Ghost Spider sighed. “I think this is either a distraction or a setup for something big we weren’t supposed to figure out yet.”
“Because we focus on bigger criminals than drug dealers…” Nightwing muttered, thinking out loud.
“Talked to Batgirl about that recently?”
Ghost Spider hoped he didn’t take it the wrong way. She genuinely understood that the Batfamily had to prioritise. Cleaning up the city streets didn’t matter too much when every public official would let them walk because they could be bought/bribed/blackmailed or some other reason they were little better than the criminals that were caught.
“We talked…” Nightwing admitted. “...fine. If this is how you want to play it, go ahead, I’ll back you up when I can. Do you plan on going to another location tonight? I can give the police a heads up so they aren’t surprised.”
“Nah, I’ve got other plans for the rest of the night. They should be able to handle a few of Mr. Gaylord’s friends on their own.” Ghost Spider was inwardly relieved that Nightwing was at least starting to talk to her like a friend again and not a subject to be interrogated or holding her at an emotional distance. Maybe by the time Batgirl was done with whatever she was up to all three of them would be able to talk again without things getting awkward for once.
Somehow she doubted it would be that simple, but hope springs eternal and all that jazz.
Pushing those thoughts out of her mind for the moment, Ghost Spider started swinging back into the city. She had a patrol to finish and a tub of chocolate ice cream with her name on it waiting at home…