Chapter One
Penny was tired. She was tired and she wanted to go home. This seemed to stump her, as she was almost always tired but she had never felt such an urge to stop patrol this early for something as trivial as rest. She sat on top of Delmar's Sandwiches and kicked her legs back and forth. It was around two am and she didn’t typically call it a night until five. However, this night had been rough on her already, with seven armed robberies, two random street fights, two attempted rapes, four kidnappings, and many more menial crimes that she had to deal with over the course of only five hours. It was by no means the most horrific stuff she has had to deal with, that title surely belonged to the child sex trafficking rings she seemed to be dealing with every month or maybe it belonged to the mutant experimentation labs she had to deal with at least every four. Regardless, she was tired.
Sometimes, when she had these off moments when she was sitting in silence on random rooftops, she would wonder to herself why she even bothered being out so late anyway. No matter what she heard the newscasters say over her radio, crime didn’t seem to be going down. She knew it was a selfish thought, just going home and living a normal life when she had the ability to help, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Maybe she should go somewhere with less crime, she would think, because then she wouldn’t do this to herself. But she stayed. She stayed in New York, she stayed in the ridiculous costume, and she stayed tired.
As she debated the morality of quitting her vigilante life-style, she heard a hammering heartbeat two blocks down. She tilted her head and listened to where it came from. She heard the heartbeats of six men and one woman- the owner of the hummingbird heart. It sounded as if they were dragging her along with them as they entered a building. She heard the woman trying to plead with them through desperate quips, when it failed she resorted to insulting them, to which one of the men told her to shut up with a heavy Eastern European accent. Penny sighed and lifted herself off the edge of the sandwich shop. ‘This,’ she reminded herself, ‘is why you’re out here.’ And with that she made her way across the rooftops to where the group was. It only took her about five minutes and when she arrived she was looking at a dingy bar which she recognized as being owned by the Russian Mafia. Wouldn’t you know it, she was here earlier breaking up one of the street fights. Clearly the Russians kept busy.
"Where’s the other one?" a new voice said from inside the bar. Penny quietly made her way across the buildings until she was standing directly on top of the bar. She could hear the woman resisting being tied up, but her struggling didn’t seem to be of much use, as she was quickly sat in a chair and wrapped in rope.
"Knocked into the water, boss." one of the men replied. Penny knew she could take the seven men in a fight, the Russian Mafia were practically a joke now that they didn’t have Fisk backing them, so she climbed her way through one of the back windows and crept her way to the front, sticking to the shadows. The men talked amongst themselves for a minute and Penny held off stepping in yet in hopes that they would say something of use to her, but when it became clear that they were as useless as she thought, she stepped into the light.
“A dingy bar really?” immediately all the heads in the room whipped around to look at her, except for the woman, whose seat was already facing her. Penny took a quick glance at her; she was young, in her 20s, she had brown hair and she was wearing a strange outfit; black combat pants and boots with what looked like a black and purple long-sleeved swim top. Putting the woman’s bad taste in fashion aside, Penny continued to walk forward. “I mean, props for not choosing a warehouse like you guys always do but this isn’t much of an upgrade.”
Several guns were raised to her face and she rolled her eyes. “And here we go with the guns, why can’t anyone be more creative?” before any of the men could say anything she kicked one of the tables forward, it collided with and knocked down four of them, the other three started to shoot but she ducked behind the bar, she waited until they were out of bullets and had to reload when she jumped into the air and shot her webs at all the men. All of them were stuck to the ground. She walked around the bar and grabbed one of the guns from one of the men who had been knocked down and proceeded to pistol whip the men unconscious.
“Holy shit! You’re Spider-Woman!” the woman said with a big smile on her face. Penny was caught off guard, she expected the woman to be more upset than this, but she supposed people react to trauma in different ways. Penny got to work on untying her, not feeling a need to respond. The woman didn’t seem to mind though. “I’m a huge fan, you might not know me but-”
“All done,” she replied neutrally, cutting the woman off. The ropes were all cut up on the floor, and Penny walked to the unconscious bodies and grabbed one of the guns, putting it in her belt. She looked back at the woman and saw that she was looking at the bodies and looked a little disgruntled. “Call the cops.” was all she could offer as she walked to the back window from which she came and swiftly climbed out, ignoring the woman asking her to wait.
She should probably be more compassionate, she thought to herself as she sat down on the roof of the bar, waiting for the cops to show up. She never liked to leave until she knew the victims were safe. She chose to stay even when she realized that the woman wasn’t calling the cops to come get her, but a man. Probably her father, or boyfriend. Whatever, as long as she got home safe. She ended up having to wait for a little under fifteen minutes, which was fine because she couldn’t hear any other crimes during that time. She stood and looked over the roof. About 20 meters away was a man with dirty blonde hair, a little over six feet and in his late thirties. She was about to turn to leave when suddenly the man’s eyes shot up to meet hers. She stood still for a moment, they both did. He seemed to recognize who she was and was about to open his mouth when the woman walked out of the bar. “Clint! Thank God! What took you so long?” He looked away from Penny and walked to his friend and when he peaked back at the roof she was gone.
Penny heard their voices fade away as she got further away. Eventually she found herself sitting on top of Delmar's Sandwiches once again and she sighed. She looked up at the night sky and stared at the stars, she stared until she heard a scream, and then she was off.