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"To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty."

- Maximilien Robespierre.

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"Look, Valeria, I appreciate the feeling but..." James started, not finding the correct words to tell me that this was way over my head.

At least it was over Valeria's, but not....Actually what would be my superhero name? I had to think of a good one later. Instead of running my mind in circles around that idea though, I just shook my head and gave him the best, most determined, smile I could muster as I interrupted him.

"I know what you're gonna say, but don't worry! I just wanna help come up with ideas, it's not like a politician is gonna hear someone like me." I shrugged, lying as naturally as I breathed.

Obviously I was gonna go check on other alternative sponsors. Hell, if I could find a good person that actually had the money to back their words, I could just occupy my afternoons helping them with their political campaign. Would be sure to make a few extra dollars too, if I was lucky.

"That's not...." He just sighed and gave up, the other volunteers in the room smiled a little at this, but kept to themselves.

"Alright, with that out of the way, we should come up with ideas. First off, who are the other candidates? We could use the charity work as leverage to bring down Blackwood's votes and make another candidate more popular in return." The volunteers looked at their phones for a few seconds before the TV in the room was turned on, a screen being projected on it.

That was pretty neat.

"There are three candidates. Mr. Blackwood is running first since he's drawing most of his support from the higher society of the city and all that." The woman that was projecting her screen onto the pc pointed out at what looked like a news article on the preliminary votes.

"In second place it's Montgomery Burns. He's got most of the support from the industrial district, being chief of their union and all. I bet you can guess what most of his speeches sounds like." She joked, before showing the third candidate.

"On third place it's Bella Reál. She's most popular with the urban district and most people actually have a good opinion of her. She's honest and straightforward, but she is a bit hot-headed, so she's having trouble getting more support from the other districts." She explained, a worrying look on her face.

"You know her?" I asked, curious about that weird expression.

"Used to work at the same corporation a few years back. She's a good person." She explained, taking a moment before clarifying herself. "Good people don't last long in power."

The room went back to silence for a few moments, James looked like he was a fish out of water and the woman looked a bit more distressed than I think an acquaintance would look when speaking of a past colleague. I knew that look, but I decided to ignore that and just let her keep that hidden away. I figured it wasn't a good topic to touch on anytime soon. Instead I looked over at the diagram, Blackwood had a solid 50% with Burns at 26,4 % and Bella at 24,6%.

Some work would be needed, but surpassing Burns wouldn't take much if we could manage to convince Bella to accept a deal with their party. The problem was that 50% Blackwood seemed to have. It looked a bit fishy, sure, he did "Charity" work and all, but even then Bella and Burns would be fighting over most of the city's population, how come he had so much support anyways?

"So we should meet with Bella then, well, I mean you guys should." I realized I might have been pushing myself onto them a bit much, but James just sighed and put a hand on my shoulder. "We will need first hand experience to get a good deal, you're coming with us kid."

The volunteers didn't seem to mind the idea, with the woman even smiling a little more.

"Ooooookay then." I said, feeling a bit awkward, but soon enough I just shook the sensation off and started thinking. "Well, I got work from monday to friday, we could try to see if she can meet us on the weekend and show her around."

Then I remembered that there probably would be more community centers lying around, opening them back up with help from other authorities would be a good idea. Who knows, maybe Burns could help out a bit too? I'm sure the guys at the union would like the idea of helping each other out, hopefully. I still wanted to see if I could get some actual connections before starting vigilante work, and a worker's union was usually a good spot to look for mafia presence.

Scheming thoughts aside, I realized I didn't ask the woman her name, so once the ideas were settled and things returned to the usual calm, I extended her my hand.

"I forgot introductions, sorry!" I explained. "My name's Valeria Ramirez, pleasure to be working with you."

"Ashley." She said, shaking my hand with a smile on her face. "Ashley Barton."

With introductions aside, it was decided that Ashley, James and me would be meeting with Bella to see if she would be down to support the Goodwill Rally instead of Blackwood. In the meantime, I had the rest of the day, and the week for that matter, occupied with work and checking out the districts. If I wanted to start doing sneaky stuff I would need to know my way around the city, and I was a bit curious to see if the mafia cliché would actually be real or not, so I decided to sneak into the union that night to check things out.

But dinner came first! And the soup was delicious. I'd really need to ask James to teach me how to cook sometime soon.

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With the meeting over, I figured it would be a good idea to go home to have a good alibi before sneaking out. Once I made sure that the owner saw me walking in, which wasn't very hard, as creepy as that was, I weaved another mask over the lower half of my face and opened the window before jumping over and closing it on my way.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

The little trip over to the deepest parts of the industrial center was actually pretty nice. The factories seemed to have kept toxic fumes to a minimum, which allowed them to remain inside the city perimeter without needing to distance themselves too much. Still, the absence of smog did not last long until I reached the inner, and most probably older, sections of the district. Old factories that worked overnight, expelling smoke that I'd rather not test first hand, populated the streets with a few apartment buildings that looked like those old concrete bricks the soviet union used to have.

It was an interesting sight, but soon enough I located the one building that seemed to be more lively than it should. Interested, I swung myself over.

Using the webs to swing across the air felt a little odd at first, but as I kept using them they started to feel more and more natural to me. I knew a fair bit of the mathematics used in the swings, but my body seemed to take it as more of an instinctual action than an active one. Like walking on auto-pilot. Or at least it worked that way when I moved at a relatively slow pace, I had yet to try to move at full speed with the webs, scared I'd break stuff if I shot at weak points in the buildings or something.

In any case, I arrived at the old warehouse. Made from red bricks and concrete, it was a massive construction that connected to the main street of the district.

Inside there seemed to be a good number of people, judging from my vantage point. I approached silently, peeking over one of the windows to check if I had a clear route inside without being detected. The men down at the floor level were armed and looked mean. A truck without a license plate was unloading some crates inside, carrying what I would assume to be illegal goods.

"Well, I was curious but I didn't think they'd just go ahead and do this kinda stuff...." I mumbled to myself.

I was a little surprised. I mean, according to the movies, the bad guys always used old warehouses in the middle of the night to get their illegal cargo but I didn't figure I'd stumble across such an operation on my first night of vigilante work. And, curiously enough, the voice behind me also seemed a little surprised.

"They are not the smart-type, that's for sure." A feminine voice spoke, mature and sultry.

I almost had a heart attack right then and there. Out of reflex, I jumped back and landed on top of the ceiling, clinging to the side of the wall while a web was ready to be shot at the woman. Taking a closer look, she wore some kind of armored suit. The black tones made it hard to spot her silhouette in the dark, but the golden decals over the chest and the mask made her a little more threatening than I'd like. There was a faint sense of familiarity growing in the back of my mind, but I shut it off as soon as the woman looked over at me with more serious eyes.

"Name's Owl, you are?" She asked, and it took me a full second to realize she was asking for my superhero name.

"Spider." I said, I mean, I did shoot webs out of my body and clung to walls pretty well.

Maybe I could make some kind of venom? That would be neat. That aside, the woman nodded and approached the window, using a claw from her gauntlet to pop it open and slither inside. Somehow she did not make a single sound during the process which was pretty interesting. She moved like a normal human, that much I could tell, so she seemed trained for this sort of stuff. I hoped I wasn't staring at a thief making her way inside, so I just followed, sticking to the window and remaining on the ceiling instead of crawling through the pillars and maintenance catwalks.

"So, who are these guys?" I asked, making sure to keep my volume low enough to not rat us out as we moved.

"Monty's guys." She replied, her feathery cloak covering her figure as she moved.

I kinda wanted to get one too, but capes wouldn't work pretty well for me I think. She seemed to point to something in specific though, so I looked over and noticed Montgomery Burns himself. Talking to one of the armed thugs, probably the lieutenant in charge of this particular operation. Owl seemed a little concerned, but she kept her expression so serious right now that I figured I shouldn't poke fun at it, and instead I just looked over and started to make a mental note of every thug's location.

"Sooooo....Bad guys. Illegal cargo. We taking them down?"

"I'm taking them down, and you're staying right where you are." Was her reply, which made me feel a little dismissed from the conversation, especially as she climbed onto the railing of the catwalk and took a few nails? needles? I didn't get a good look before she threw them at the lights, breaking them and causing the warehouse to go dark.

My eyes adapted to the dark quickly enough and I sighed. Looked like I was being put aside on my first night. Thankfully it was not my first fight, so I just dropped down to ground level and moved in the dark. The thugs were already firing all around while Burns ran away, soon enough I heard the rumbling of an engine as he escaped. Shame, really, but I had a bit of a fight to win and some thugs to beat up, so I ignored the fact I missed my best chance at taking out the competition for the elections and just moved onto fight mode.

With Owl taking care of the weapons, I moved right behind her. There were a dozen guys. Five of them were already disarmed but the rest were opening fire on us, so it was my time to shine!

*Thwip!* *Thwip!* *Thwip!*

Three guns were ripped from their hands by force and launched directly against the walls, breaking on impact. The other four moved on from targetting Owl to shooting at me, which I repleid in kind by rushing them and dodging their poor accuracy. Ducking low to evade the last bullet, the familiar click of a fully spent mag was well received as I lunched up to land a sick uppercut at the first guy! I did held back though, making sure not to break his jaw and skull, but applying enough force to knock him out.

The other guys still tried to tackle me since they didn't want to risk shooting one of their own guys, which actually worked for half a second before I gave the closest one a quick headbutt, freeing my arms to land a palm strike on another's face, breaking his nose on impact by mistake. Wincing a little from the sensation of it, I stood back up and landed a back-handed slap against the third one. He wasn't knocked out, but he seemed to have a tough concussion by the looks of his wobbly legs.

Fourth guy was clear to shoot me though, and shoot me he did. I managed to evade the first burst from his SMG and ripped it from his hands, striking it off his hands and breaking a finger or two from the hit. A bit concerned about having my fingerprints on it, I *Thwip!* grabbed it mid-air with my web and used it as a club to hit him on the side of the head, knocking him out. Next, I threw it against the wall as hard as I could, breaking it into a thousand peices to get rid of evidence.

Turning around, I saw Owl taking out the three unarmed guys and looking over at me. I could see through the mask that she raised an eyebrow, judging me as I just shrugged and took out my phone. She understood what I was doing almost immediately and just nodded, waiting for me to finish the call.

"ACPD, how may I help you?" This time it was a man's voice that responded.

"Hello, I think I heard gunshots over at the industrial district. Just wanted to let you guys know."

"Alright, do you have an idea of the general direction they came from?" He asked, taking notes as he talked by the sound of the pencil rubbing against paper.

"Central section I think. Dunno which building though."

"Very well, remain calm and stay indoors. A patrol will go through to check things out. Thanks for letting us know."

I was a bit surprised they sent one without specific information but I guess the general pressence of crime made the police department a bit more likely to believe any caller than bakc home. But with the call done, I hung up and put my phone back in my pocket before walking over to Owl. She was checking the cargo, and didn't seem very pleased with what she was seeing.

"What're we looking at? Weapons? Drugs?" I asked, honestly curious how serious my first op was going to end up being.

"Both, actually." Damn, double cargo. That didn't seem very good.

"That's not very nice." I said, causing Owl to sigh.

"No, it isn't." She turned to me. "And you."

"Me?"

"No, the unconcious guy behind you." I turned, and she looked a bit angry as I looked back at her. "Obviously I meant you!"

"Okay, okay." It probably wasn't a good idea to make her mad. She seemed like the dark and broody type. I'd rather not get tracked down and killed in the middle of the night.

She didn't kill any of the thugs though, so she was probably nice? They certainly had a lot more broken bones than mine did though.

"What are you? Alien? Augmented? Earthborn?" She started to list some very interesting concepts. But I just shook my head.

"I have no idea to be honest."

She looked a bit more annoyed now. Less angry though.

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"I mean I woke up in a garbage dumpster like two days ago. Realized I had superpowers and stopped a bank robbery. Figured I'd take a look around the city and found these guys here."

Owl looked like a fish, her mouth opening and closing without making a single noise as she clearly struggled with understanding just what the fuck had I just said. Not that I was judging her though, if I heard the same words coming from someone else I'd be just as baffled. After a few moments, she groaned and massaged the bridge of her nose. The siren of a patrol car interrupted our talk.

"Tomorrow. Downtown District. 11 PM. We need to talk." She said, conveying her thoughts one piece at a time before she picked up the edges of her feathery cloak and flew?

No, she jumped and some kind of booster helped her glide upwards through the window, where she disappeared into the night again. To be honest I was a bit interested in checking out if I could take a few dollars as payment from the thugs but then again, last time I did that I got questioned by a police officer so I just made sure the guys that remained conscious were shot with a web to keep them in place before crawling my way up the wall and out the window I came through.

I had a very important meeting the next day, so I should grab some good sleep while I could. At the very least now I knew Burns was connected to some kind of illegal operation, and I hoped that he'd just limit himself to drug trafficking and illegal firearms. I'd really rather not have to investigate organ harvesting operations and such.

...

I just jinxed it, didn't I?