Ghost Spider - Chapter 39 (Patreon)

“Now arriving: 30th Street Station” Gwen groaned at the announcement and did her best to stretch without bumping into the other passengers as the train finally pulled into her destination.

She didn’t mind trains in short bursts, but spending three hours crammed into too narrow seats wasn’t exactly her idea of a good time. And naturally she had finally gotten comfortable just five minutes before the train arrived at the station.

Still, besides complaining just to complain, the only thing to do was grab her duffel bag and slip into the crowd of people making their way out of the platform. Gwen needed food, a place to stay, and then a starting place to help narrow down her search.

Thankfully, none of those were particularly hard to find. There were plenty of places to eat in the city and she had already booked a hotel room before she even got on the train. And as for a starting place? Philadelphia might have been cleaner and less dangerous than Gotham, but criminals still existed all the same. Gwen was confident a bit of snooping around the usual spots would give her the lead she needed.

That was for tonight though.

Before Ghost Spider made her first appearance in the city, Gwen Stacey was going to take some time for herself and play tourist for a few hours.

“First stop: the Liberty Bell museum.”

-o-

Playing tourist for the day had been fun – and even though she wouldn’t admit it, letting herself be a normal person in a new city was something she really needed – but once the sun started going down, Gwen had to stop playing and get back to the reason she came to Philadelphia in the first place. 

Finding the people who hired Black Spider and sent him after her.

It wasn’t even about revenge or anything, though she wasn’t going to complain if her self appointed task ended up putting her up against the man that threw her off a building, but about making sure that no innocents got caught up in whatever vendetta they had against her.

Black Spider had thrown her off a building specifically to make sure Ghost Spider wouldn’t have a clean win even if she did stop Two-Face and his men. It was just pure dumb luck that the person he grabbed just happened to be the same person he was after and was also able to survive that.

Anyone else…anyone else – even Dick or Barbara – and the assassin would have succeeded.

Ghost Spider pushed those thoughts aside and focused on webslinging through the city.

Philadelphia was different than New York or Gotham. Much shorter in general for one, but Ghost Spider compensated for that easily enough by using her webs to slingshot herself forward instead of primarily swinging.

But something unfortunately constant was how criminals operated on the city streets and once she picked up on the patterns specific to the city it didn’t take her long to find a few on her little exploration.

Some purse snatchers here, a few muggings there. All of them wrapped up and reported to the police, but there was one group that made Ghost Spider slow down and follow instead of jumping in.

A group of men were surrounding and heckling another younger man, but from her position it didn’t look like they were shaking him down. From everyone’s body language it looked like the group was saying something that was making the young man angry while pointing at a nearby sports car parked on the side of the road.

Ghost Spider was too far away to hear what they were saying, but when one of the group shoved a metal tool into the younger man’s hands it was obvious what they were pressing the man to do. Oh, well. She had to start interrogating people somewhere. Might as well stop an idiot from getting a carjacking charge if she could.

Philadelphia had a much lower profile Superhero scene from what she could tell. So when Ghost Spider jumped off the nearby roof and landed softly on the top of the car the man was busy trying to break into, she was unsurprised the group that instigated him ran off after pointing at her and freaking out for a bit.

She let them go because there was no proof they had done anything wrong, and besides, she needed to have a conversation with the guy currently staring at her in horrified shock.

“Hi there,” Ghost Spider started, eyes curling into amused crescents. “Wanna explain what you’re doing there?”

“Uh…” The would-be car thief said intelligently. “It’s not what it looks like?”

Ghost Spider looked at the metal hook slipped into the car’s window the thief was still holding.

“Yeah?”

“Okay, it’s exactly what it looks like.” The man grumbled. “But look. What do you want to keep this quiet? Money? Drugs? Equipment? Keep this out of the news and I’ll make it worth your while.”

It was Ghost Spider’s turn to be shocked. “I’m sorry, are you trying to bribe me?”

“Look, I don’t recognize you so I guess you’re new - nice costume, by the way. Don’t normally see that on newbies." The thief was a lot more composed once he was over his shock. “You went out looking to dip your feet in by stopping a carjacking. Maybe drive off a few muggers. But you see, my dad’s sorta a big deal. A real Family Man, you could say.”

Ghost Spider gave him a skeptical look. “You expect me to believe a guy getting pressured into lifting a car is the son of some kind of Mob boss?”

The thief looked pained. “Yeah, I get how it looks. And I know I shouldn’t have let the others bait me into jacking a car by saying I was just some poser only coasting off my dad for everything…but really! My dad is Tracy Malone! Just ignore this and I’ll owe you a favor.”

Ghost Spider briefly froze at the name. Malone was mentioned several times in the books she used to track the people behind Black Spider but only as an organiser for their ‘parties’. She had originally thought it was code, a fake placeholder name for the actual organizer…and it still could be. But also, maybe not. Maybe luck was on her side for once.

“You know what?” The spider-themed metahuman said slowly. “I think we need to have a longer conversation about your dad…”

The car thief definitely realised he had messed up somehow, but he barely had time to scream before Ghost Spider tagged him with a webline and dragged him to a nearby roof where they wouldn’t be disturbed.

She had…questions for him.

-o-

A little while later, Ghost Spider dropped her unwilling informant off near a thrift store so he could replace his pants after she got a little too enthusiastic replicating some things she remembered Batman doing when looking for information.

And while he was definitely less than pleased about how things had gone, Ghost Spider was very happy about what she had learned. The location of a hidden meeting room that Malone rented out now and then for out of town ‘associates’ when they needed a secure space to meet. His son found out about it recently

To her that sounded like the perfect place to start her search.

And the best part about Philly’s lack of prominent heroes? There was very little security focused on people that could crawl up walls. A few minutes making sure the window wasn’t alarmed and a small hole later, she was in.

…and just late to the party by the look of it.

Ghost Spider had hoped Malone’s son would drag his feet telling his dad about getting captured and interrogated by her for at least a day, considering he didn’t seem like the brightest person around. But either the group that ran off had called someone or Malone himself found his son after she dropped him off and forced the question, and it came out that the kid had leaked the location. The meeting room was stripped bare with evidence that it had been cleaned out in a hurry.

Nothing that Ghost Spider could see that wasn’t decorative or just blank paper.

Well, except for a letter pinned to the central table by a knife.

Knowing it was probably planted there by the same guy hired to assassinate her, Ghost Spider spent a few minutes digging around the room anyway, looking for a hidden camera, a bomb, really anything that would ruin her night the second she pulled the knife out but found nothing.

So finally she just had to bite the bullet and yank the knife out of the table, ready for anything to happen.

“...”

Nothing.

Ghost Spider took a second to wonder if maybe Dick’s over-paranoia was starting to infect her before picking up and reading the letter.

‘Dear Freakshow,

Congratulations on finding this letter! You are now a far too troublesome target to assassinate as a personal passion project.

I’m getting called back to do my actual job and don’t have the time to deal with…whatever you are.

Don’t worry though, I hate leaving things unfinished and I wouldn’t want to leave the old guys you pissed off in the lurch so I made sure to reach out to a buddy of mine that loves hunting down freaks of nature like you.

You’ll be getting a visit from him real soon.

And if you survive, then maybe someone will take out a proper hit on you and I’ll get to take another shot.

Probably not though. Not because my buddy is a good killer. But because no one puts hits out on freaks like you.

Anyway, toodles!

Your friendly neighborhood assassin,

Black Spider.

PS. I wish I could have seen you run around the room looking for a trap that just wasn’t there. And if you didn’t…

Well clearly you’re too stupid to live long.’

Ghost Spider felt her eye twitch. “He’s really chatty for an assassin. This time he didn’t even speak to me and he pissed me off.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” An unknown voice said behind her.

Ghost Spider’s spider sense blared and she jumped straight up to the ceiling, barely dodging the trio of objects that passed right where she had been standing to thunk into the far wall of the room.

A quick glance showed that they were specially shaped hand thrown shurikens and Ghost Spider was almost afraid to look at who the new arrival was. Not that she could see much of him due to the combination of the long, full-body cape and pointed cowl. One name immediately came to mind but Ghost Spider wasn’t sure it was him.

There was something off. The colors were wrong for one.

“Well, it’s good to know he’s just generally annoying and not making a special effort just for me.” Ghost Spider bantered while analyzing the man. “But I don’t think we’ve been introduced. Care to share before we throw down?”

“I’m not here for a conversation, I’m here for a hunt!” The man growled and threw another handful of objects at her.

With how open the move was, Ghost Spider easily dodged the new projectiles. But just when she was about to taunt her opponent about that fact one of the original three shurikens beeped and the room exploded in light and sound.