Spidergwen: DIY Defeat (part 1)

The second Gwen Stacy landed on the rooftop across from the local Citibank, she knew this wasn’t your normal robbery. With all the wannabe super villains running around New York City, bank robberies were more common than an outsider might expect, and as Spider-Woman, Gwen had seen more than her fair share. At none of them had she seen the bystanders looking more confused than terrified.

Balanced on the balls of her feet but crouched in a way only a spider-person could make nonchalant, Gwen rested her elbows on her thighs and watched the scene below. She’d followed police sirerns to the bank, where she’d heard the alarm bells ringing and expected to see squad cars and people fleeing from out the bank’s glass doors. Instead, people were crossing the street or exiting the bank with their fingers in their ears, annoyed and confused, glaring around looking to blame someone for the disruption of their day. There was also not a single police car or patrolman. Not even a meter maid.

“Ooookay…?” Gwen blinked.

With more than human flexibility and bug-like posture, the young crime fighter scuttled fluidly over the side of the building. She could have just jumped off the roof and landed without even a grunt, but she didn’t want to startle anyone, and wall-crawling was just as easy.

She made it about halfway down the building, shoulders and hips shifting beneath her skin-like spandex, then stopped. From here she could see more of what was going on inside the bank, but facing downwards and entirely vertical, she had to crane her neck to look.

A chubby guy in a security guard uniform was in a yelling contest with a man in a suit, both gesticulating in native New Yorker fashion. Gwen couldn’t hear what they were saying through the glass, but no one inside was cowering or emoting anything that wasn’t somewhere on the scale of annoyed to pissed off. If she had to guess, the suit was angry at the guard for the alarm making his customers leave, while the guard was equally furious that the suit was blaming him. The guard even threw his arms wide and yelled with such deliberate enunciation that Gwen could read his lips, saying “whaddaya want me to do about it?!”

Bemused, Gwen planted brought her feet together and sat back onto her heels, the same position she’d been in before but now on the side of the building. Now able to watch the bank without craning her neck, she rested her chin on her palm to observe the yelling match between suit and guard with only idle curiosity. She was starting to think she’d web swung and parkoured her way over here for an equipment malfunction.

What was weird was she’d clearly heard sirens heading this way. If there had been cops en route, they would have at least stopped to check out the alarm. She hadn’t seen the squad cars, but she couldn’t have been too far behind them; they couldn’t have gotten here and left before she arrived. So, where were the cops?

Just as that thought crossed Gwen’s mind, she heard the sirens once more. Distant at first, barely audible over the ringing of the bank’s alarm, they grew louder as they approached.

Gwen stuck her head out and peered down the street. It sounded like the sirens were coming right down the main thruway, but she didn’t see any flashing lights. She thought perhaps her ears were playing tricks on her at first, but they grew closer still, close enough that she was sure she should have seen a squad car.

Cupping her hand over her brow, Gwen scanned the oncoming cars, thinking maybe they were running the siren without the lights somehow. But there was no black and white car, no chopper, nothing. Even when the sirens drew so close it seemed like they should have been nearly pulling up at the bank, she couldn’t see the cop cars they belonged to. Then they were right on top of her, even sounding like they were… in front of her?

Gwen looked up.

Hovering across from and slightly above her, was a white drone. The quad-propeller device was decorated with numerous pink stickers and had a speaker box on top that blared the police siren. A small camera attached to the underside zoomed in on her from inside a little clear dome.

“Uhhhhh, hi.”

She tilted her head.

“Ya know, something tells me you’re not an official NYPD flying speaker toy.”

Gwen shot out her hand and tapped her two center fingers to her palm. A glob of web splattered over the drone’s camera lens and tangled up a couple of its propellers.

The drone immediately made a grinding sound and fell. It wobbled madly on the way down, its remaining propellers trying to compensate, then finally flipped upside down and clattered to the sidewalk.

The second it struck the ground, the sirens stopped. So did the bank alarm.

Gwen blinked at that. It suddenly seemed very quiet without those two blaring noises, even with the distant city sounds.

A few people blinked and took their fingers out of their ears, grunting in satisfaction.

“Jesus!” one New Yorker yelled, “It’s about fucking time!”

Gwen crawled down the building to get a closer look at the drone, hanging on the wall between two parked vehicles. The toy was still wobbling about on the ground, trying to lift back off again, but only able to skitter around like a fly with its wings torn off.

Someone gave it a kick, breaking one of its propeller arms, “Piece of shit!”

Then, Gwen’s spider sense blared.

As the doors of the van behind her burst open, Spider-Woman was leaping into the air away from danger. Even from a vertical surface, her powerful, gymnast’s legs could throw her a good 25 feet straight up, higher if she had time to crouch.

Unfortunately, she didn’t get that high. From the van’s back doors, some sort of plastic, mini cannon fired a net that came out the size of a baseball, then unfurled as wide as a parachute. Before she could get completely to safety, the net smacked into her, wrapping her up with a cry of surprise.

Tangled, unable to fire a web line to swing to safety, Gwen landed on the roof of a car with a grunt.

People nearby gasped in surprise, stepping away from the young superheroine. Most New Yorkers knew to stay out of superhero business.

Embarrassed rather than hurt, Gwen immediately began to squirm inside the net.

“Freaking…” she wriggled around in surprise, “What the…?! Get off!”

Before she could put much effort into breaking loose, a figure in white spandex and a racing helmet buzzed out of the back of the van on a metal glider, painted white and covered with more speakers.

“Perfect! 10 points! That was one in a million, kid!”

The figure, her voice piping with enthusiasm, did a quick loop de loop as several more drones buzzed out of the back of the van. The drones spread out and began filming from several different angles, while the girl came to a stop above Gwen, cell phone in hand. She held it overhead, to get both herself and the tangled superheroine in the cell’s camera reticle.

“What up, what up, what UP, internet!?” she threw up the deuces sign, “It’s ya girl Screwball, coming to you from the big apple! And if you’re watching this, that means you’re a member of my exclusive Screwhead channel and have access to ALLLL my content! Right on!”

The girl, Screwball, looked like she was a personification of the latest IPhone mixed with an Olympic speed skater. Her helmet and spandex speed suit were all a plasticky, pvc white, with pink racing stripes and room for various gadgets. Her eyes were hidden behind a golden visor, the strap of a pink satchel crossed her chest, and a pink tool belt was fitted tight to her waist. Other than the pink stripes, her only other real decoration were links to her website and all her social media accounts, printed in pink on her helmet, back, chest, butt, anywhere there was room.

Spider-Woman wrinkled her nose behind her mask, then put focused on escaping the net. She had fallen with one arm trapped behind her back and the other pinned to her side, so it was an awkward struggle, and the net was sturdier than she expected. It was made of metal links that pinched her a little, lightweight but surprisingly hard to break.

“As a big thanks to you and all the Mega Screwhead level members of my patreon, I’m gonna give you my biggest video yet!”

Screwball bit her lip and paused, building the anticipation.

“The ultimate super villain DIY!” the internet villainess whirled around to aim her camera phone directly at the struggling Spider-Woman, “How to bag a superhero!”

Gwen had just worked herself into a position where she could get her hands on the net when she heard Screwball’s announcement. The oval-shaped links were too small for her to slip her fingers through, but she could still grab two handfuls and pull.

“Reality check, psycho…” she grunted, arms straining, “I’m… not exactly… bagged…!”

The young heroine put all the strength of her arms into pulling the net apart, but the links stretched, taking their time in breaking.

“Uh huh…” Screwball replied, flying a bit higher to get a wider shot, “So, I made the net out of the tab thingies from about 10,000 soda cans. You can go collect them yourself, but that takes forever. I recommend buying them in bulk, then soldering them. Doesn’t take much skill, just time, but it’s worth it. Just ask Spider-Girl here!”

Gwen blinked at the net. It WAS soda tabs! She got nailed by a net made of soda tabs?!

She grunted and jerked at the net with added frustration.

“Aside two!” Screwball continued, “If you wanna catch a spider, lure them with police sirens and a fake bank robbery. It’s gotta be something kinda small time, in the right neighborhood, so you don’t attract one of the BIG superheroes.” She laughed, “Do NOT try to fake a bomb threat or, like, take a school bus hostage a block away from Avengers mansion! It’s… just not a good idea, guys!”

The villainess tapped a key on her phone and the doors of her van shut. A second later, it peeled out and took off down the street, making its getaway.

At the same time, Gwen managed to snap one of the soda tabs. Once that one weak link was destroyed, the rest gave way one after the other, a domino effect. With a frustrated snarl, the young heroine yanked her arms wide and ripped a gaping hole in the net.

“Aaaaaand aside three?” Screwball turned her glider back down the street, “Always have a legit, fool proof escape plan!”

After a jaunty wave, the jets of her glider swiveled then kicked in with a low whine. Screwball buzzed away with another loop de loop and a wild laugh.

“I don’t think so!” Gwen snapped, “Get back here!”

She sprang after the villainess as soon as she got her feet underneath her.

Gwen had been web swinging for long enough now that she didn’t have to think about extending her arm and firing a web line, flying through the air until she reached the apex of the swing and firing another line. Beneath the white lenses of her mask, her gaze was focused entirely on the annoying villainess and her little plastic goblin glider, intent on catching up.

The nature of web swinging was that it wasn’t the fastest off the mark, but once she got momentum going she could pick up some serious speed. Her initial swing seemed lazy compared to her next one, using the strength of her arms to throw herself forward. The webbing had an elastic quality, if you were strong enough to stretch it, and a good tug would add another burst to her already growing speed. Soon it was more like she was web-springing than web-swinging.

Gwen fired two web lines at an old fire escape, then yanked on both, slingshoting herself forward with her body completely horizontal. Her hood flapped behind her head, her lithe, curving body as straight as a javelin, her costume gleaming with a subtle mesh pattern that was almost like a web itself. She held that pose for a second, waiting until she began to slow down, then fired another line to continue the swing.

As the heroine began to catch up, Screwball looked over her shoulder and grinned.

“She can really hum, can’t she?” the villainess said to her viewers, aiming her phone back so they could see the approaching spider, “I’ve clocked most spider people at about 60 miles an hour when they really get their momentum going!” she aimed the phone back at herself, “So to stay a step ahead, you need something that can at least go 75 nonstop!”

Gwen managed to fire a web line at her, trying to yank the villainess off her glider.

Screwball weaved out of the way. The line stretched harmlessly past her, then fell towards the street.

“Also maneuverable enough to avoid their webs!” she giggled, “And rearview cameras in your helmet work wonders during a chase! The spiders are sneaky little buggers, that they are!”

“And make sure to have lots of ice packs!” Gwen yelled after her, “You’ll need them after they catch up with you and drop-kick you into a wall!”

“Ooh, nice banter too!” Screwball laughed, “The spiders are always a lot of fun. I highly recommend bagging one of your own, if you can. There’s like twelve of them now, right?”

The villainess made a sharp turn down another street and Gwen had to shoot a line onto a traffic light, then swing around it to follow.

“If you need to get any more distance on your spider or other swingy type,” Screwball continued, “Make a few sharp little turns. Spiders are pretty quick in a straightaway, but, as you can see, the turns slow them down.”

Gwen gritted her teeth and worked harder to catch up. The running commentary wouldn’t have been so irritating if it weren’t also accurate.

This universe’s Pete had told her about Screwball. A super villainess for the internet age, everything Screwball did was for clicks, likes, subscribes, and general online fame. She relished every second in the spotlight and was willing, even eager, to put people in danger if it meant more views. She was obsessive, infuriatingly clever, unpredictable, and daring. It made her a major headache, if not a threat to the entire city.

Gwen had never encountered the villainess before, and she already wanted to beat her like a double bass.

“Another useful little super villainy hack,” Screwball called out, “Is what I like to call window shopping!”

As soon as the villainess finished speaking, she made an abrupt 90 degree turn and smashed through the window of a shop.

“You freaking psycho!” Gwen yelled, swinging after her.

The inhabitants of the department store dove out of the way, crying out in surprise as Screwball barreled through.

“It’s fun!” she called, “Makes for great action shots later! And it slows the hero down cuz of all the pedestrians!”

The detour through the department store slowed them both down. Gwen didn’t have the height she needed to swing, so was forced to parkour her way over tables of clothing, scarf racks, jewelry cases, and the occasional pedestrian too dumb to duck.

Screwball, on the other hand, slowed simply so she could enjoy herself, knocking the head off a mannequin, snatching a scarf off a rack and throwing it over her shoulder, dive bombing customers and making them throw themselves to the ground.

“Hashtag: hide ya kids!” she cackled, as she buzzed over perfume case, making an employee duck behind it, “Watch out, one-percenters! Super chase scene, coming through!”

Gwen sprang over a rack of designer dresses, then fired a web line to yank herself along, adding an extra little burst of speed. The maneuver drew her a bit closer to the airborne villainess, so she did it again. She was itching to call out a taunt, but she bit her lip, hoping she could get close enough to Screwball to nail the internet junkie before she knew she was in peril.

Unfortunately, as soon as she saw the white-clad spider beginning to gain, the villainess tossed the scarf away and picked up the pace.

“To all my angsty cis white male watchers out there,” she cast a grin back at her pursuer, “The idea is NOT to hurt pedestrians! Have fun, give a few people haircuts if you can, but a rampage will put you right on the radar of everyone that will get a revenge high on wrecking your life! The plan is to piss your spider off a little bit…” then she said in a lower voice, “and to keep her following you.”

“If you don’t want to hurt people,” Gwen yelled after her, “Then stop DOING this crap!”

“No can do, Spider-Girl!” the villainess called back, “The internet wants its entertainment!”

Gwen glared behind her mask, “I’m NOT Spider-girl!”

There was another chorus of screams as Screwball zipped across the checkout counters and smashed through the glass-paned doors to street level. She flew over traffic, several New Yorkers honking and yelling at her, then dropped back down to duck through an open garage door on the other side of the street.

Gwen followed, swinging out through the hole the villainess had left in the glass, running over the roofs of several cars, then firing another web line to swing through the garage door. The property on the other side was similar to the department store she’d just swung through, but this one was fortunately empty of people. Numerous crates were set about on bare concrete floors, the windows shuttered, a few dollies set about with a small crane on the second level, like the movers had stopped in the middle of work and went to lunch.

The upshot was it was a much more open area. Much, much easier to web swing.

Screwball did a barrel roll, then a little flip, her pace slowing. Apparently, she thought her pursuer hadn’t crossed the street yet.

“Don’t wanna go TOO fast!” she giggled, “Always keep your spider just in sight! The last thing you want is to lose them, then go peaking around corners until they deck you!”

Gwen smirked at that, launching herself forward. She didn’t plan on decking Screwball, but she WAS going to kick her off that glider.

A crane’s arm hung down from the second level, being used to lift the heavy crates up directly rather than teams of men using the stairs. It was in the perfect position for a web swing. While Screwball was fooling around, Gwen could use that thing to swing right into her before the villainess knew she was there.

“Itsy bitsy spider went up the vacant storefront!” Screwball sang, doing another twirl in mid-air.

Gwen leapt forward and fired a web line that smacked into the crane’s dangling hook. Momentum already behind her, she yanked hard on the line and let physics do the rest, the flexibility and strength of the webbing itself working to ling her forward.

But when the highest amount of torque was on the line, her speed the greatest, her webbing slipped neatly from the hook.

Gwen didn’t have time to cry out before she slammed into the concrete floor.

All that speed and momentum she’d built up sent her skipping and tumbling across the ground, grunting and gasping in pain.

“Off slipped her web and she smacked her little butt!” Screwball tittered.

Before Gwen could stop herself, she crashed into a crate, cracking some of the wood, but fortunately not her bones. Dizzy, disoriented, and utterly shocked, she lay propped against the crate for a moment, catching her breath.

Screwball floated towards the ceiling, grinning into her phone.

“Recap time! Step one, we lured our spider!” she held up a finger to count, “Step two, we got our spider’s attention! Step three, the chase! And nowwwwww… the step everybody’s been waiting for!”

The garage doors on either side of the property rattled down and banged shut, the lights clapping off. It was completely dark for a spare second, before black lights hummed to life, giving everything a strange, haunting glow.

“Step four,” Screwball grinned, “The trap.”

“Unnhh…” Gwen shook her head, pushing aside her scrapes and bruises to get back to her feet. She used the crate to help her, still dizzy, and looked around in growing alarm.

The black lights made everything seem somewhat unreal, like she was in a dream where everything was either darkness or bright neon. The white of her costume lit her up like a lamp, the lenses of her mask even looking like they were glowing, while the black only blended in with the rest of the darkness. As the white was mostly on the upper portion of her body, she almost looked like a floating bust or a ghost with only a head and shoulders.

What concerned her was the rest of the building. It had all seemed empty and undecorated before, but fluorescent paint, invisible under normal light, now glowed at her from almost everywhere. On the walls, ceiling, floor, the crates, even the crane, were paintings and messages, mostly in hot pink or glowing white. There were cartoonish scribbles of Screwball posing, Screwball emojis, messages telling her “Welcome!!1!”, listings of the villainess’s websites or just explosions of color for decoration. On the crate Gwen had crashed into was written “#BagASuper”, in bright pink.

It would have taken a long time to do all this. Which means it was a setup. A setup Gwen had swung right into.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” she shook her head again.

She looked around for Screwball, but despite being able to hear the thrum of her glider, Gwen couldn’t see her. That didn’t make any sense.

“The first thing you have to do in your trap is disorient and confuse!” the villainess’s voice called out, “Which is why we’re having to use this Paris Hilton sex-tapey night vision thing with our cameras. Kinda cool, huh?”

Gwen flipped up onto the crate and landed in a crouch, trying to gauge where the internet junkie was by the sound of her voice. She was dressed almost completely in white; why wasn’t she lit up like a candle?!

“You might want to remind your viewers,” she called out, “Locking yourself in a room with me? Not the best idea, iCrazy!”

Screwball continued her explanation, ignoring the taunt.

“Messing with their vision is plenty bombish,” Screwball said, “But spiders have this precog danger warning thingy. Even in the dark, they’re hard to hit with anything. So…” she clicked a button, “Let’s raise the roof in this biznatch!”

Speakers in every corner of the property beat out loud, thrumming music, the kind in the most obnoxious dance clubs. As a musician and dancer herself, Gwen hated this type of music. It was basically just a deep, repetitive thumping of a bass with some techie sounds thrown in, like nerd jazz.

But the music didn’t turn out to be the main problem. Almost immediately as it began to play, Gwen’s spider sense began to buzz, a gentle warning at first, then growing louder.

Instinctively she tensed, gymnastic body coiled and ready to leap, but no attack materialized. She looked around wildly, years of trusting her spider sense making her almost frantic, even more so as the buzzing in her head grew more insistent, telling her she was in immediate, dire peril.

“See how she’s all jumpy?” Screwball said, “Thanks to the latent tone I mixed in with this sick beat, her little danger warning thing is going cray cray! Like a dog whistle for spider people!”

Her heart racing, sprang and flipped over to land on the ceiling, hanging upside down. Jittery, feeling like she had to move, she sprang again and jumped behind a different crate, head still whipping this way and that. Despite where she moved, her spider sense continued buzzing, unrelenting, growing in intensity.

Back pressed against the crate, she put a hand to her temple and shook her head in frustration.

“What the hell--?!” she snapped.

Screwball floated down from the ceiling, the sound of her glider masked by the thumping music.

“And when her danger sense is going off at everything,” she grinned, “She doesn’t know when actual danger is about to come down the pipe!”

Gwen’s spider sense was still rattling her skull when Screwball swooped down and hurled a bucket of silver marbles at her.

Spider-Woman’s prewarning system was shot, but her reflexes were still superhumanly fast and she sprang out of the way, though not quite far enough. Once they reached her, the marbles burst with loud cracks, a shot gun spread of small explosions which she mostly avoided, but a few still caught her in the shoulders, back and legs, each one a miniature punch. It turned her graceful leap into another painful tumble, the heroine crying out in frustration and pain as she banged her shoulders and elbows.

The LED covering on Screwball’s race suit and glider filtered from black back to white, making the high-tech villainess seem to appear out of thin air, glowing like an angelic messenger. An angelic messenger with a tart grin.

“Our spider here is very high movement, low durability,” she held up one of the silver marbles between thumb and forefinger, “So the best thing to use is something with a wide spread but low damage. Like these little guys I made out of ball bearings and party poppers!”

Gwen came to a stop on her stomach and pushed back to her feet, ears ringing both from the explosions and from her spider sense. The buzzing in her head was getting so loud, it was starting to become painful.

Unfortunately, no sooner had she gotten up, than did Screwball swoop down again, this time simply hitting her in the back with her glider.

The heroine was knocked flat with a grunt, while her opponent looped around for another pass.

“Remember, Screwheads, she’s a tough little bug girl!” Screwball explained, “The first thing you should do is slow your spider down some! Take some of the super out of her heroine!”

Gwen rolled back to her feet, shaking her head to ignore the blaring of her spider sense, then leapt out of the way as Screwball tried to dive bomb her again. She landed on top of the crate from earlier in a crouch.

“Fool me once, nut bag!” she yelled, firing web lines into the villainess’s back as she flew past.

The lines shot out, smacked into Screwball’s back, then fell off, not sticking.

Her spider sense still screaming at her, Gwen wanted to scream back in frustration. As she did so, the top of the crate burst up like a jack in the box and slammed her into the ceiling.

“AFFF!” she made a sound that was part frustrated cry, part grunt of pain, pinned against the ceiling by the crate’s lid.

“Doesn’t hurt to coat your suit and a few things you want to be slippery with a little chemical concoction patented by a guy named Slide!” Screwball pretended to brush something off her suit, “And for the crate trap? All you need is a crate, a scissor platform, and some gas pistons to put a little Tyson in it!”

Trapped with her arms and legs splayed out, Gwen had just regained enough of her wits to try to squirm free, when the lid snapped back down onto the top of the crate with the same force it had exploded up. Suddenly no longer suspended, she fell but managed to land herself on her hands and knees rather than falling flat on her face.

It was getting harder and harder to think. Her spider sense was a blaring air horn inside her head, blending with her pains and general disorientation from the blows to her head. She clenched her eyes shut, then shook her head in a desperate attempt to make her spider sense quiet down.

“See how I don’t give her a chance to breathe?” Screwball said from somewhere above her, “You have to have enough bang-bang to keep your hero on the backs of their footsies!”

Something clattered in front of Gwen, then a blinding flash knocked her off the back of the crate, deafening her. Dazed, the world whirling around wildly, she landed on her back with a grunt and lay still.

“Flash bangs are easy,” the villainess continued, “Just a teensy bit of phosphorous, some boom boom powder in a little package and you have one blind, deaf, dizzy, itsy, bitsy spider!”

Seeing triple, unable to hear anything but the ringing in her ears, Gwen groaned then coughed in utter misery. Even now her spider sense was still rattling her skull, overwhelming her along with the rest of her numerous pains. Sprawled on her back, she lay still, other than the heaving of her breasts, having no idea what to do. If only her head would stop spinning and ringing long enough for her to think…

Something looped around her ankles and drew tight, squeezing them together. Too dazed to completely understand what was happening, she did nothing. A moment later she began to be dragged across the floor.

“Sweet!” Screwball called out, towing Spider-Woman by a line attached to her glider, “Ready for a ride, Spider-Girl?”

Gwen found herself dragged up into the air. Her arms flailed reflexively as Screwball made a sharp turn, slinging the heroine around behind her.

“Ya gotta keep making ‘em move and try to do things!” the villainess called out, “The LAST thing you want is for them to come up with some heroic thingy that turns your own plan against you! Ya gotta pwn them from start to finish!”

Building up speed, she made another sharp turn that cracked the line, and Gwen at the end of it, like a whip.

The heroine’s body jackknifed and she cried out in surprise and pain.

“Ouch!” Screwball laughed, “She is one dizzy, hurted spider right now! Let’s see how much she’s got left!”

Another turn. This time Gwen was slammed into a wall.

“One slam!” the villainess counted.

She ascended sharply, then shot down, Gwen following her up and slamming into the ceiling.

“Two slams!”

Not wanting to be too repetitive, the villainess zipped around in a tighter circle, slinging the line and attached spider wide. Picking up speed, she made the circle tighter and tighter, which only made Spider-Woman swing harder from the centrifugal force.

“She’s going…!” Screwball cried out, “Going…!”

Gwen might as well have been a rag doll being swung around the head of a giant child. The force stretched her out and made her wail helplessly, but she had no way of stopping herself or even a clear understanding of the forces pulling at her. Her head was spinning, spider sense was blaring, the music thumping, the world itself whipping past her too fast for her to see. It was less like a battle and more like a nightmare, her own personal hell that wouldn’t stop.

“Gooooooing…!” Screwball called again.

Then she detached the line.

Gwen was flung away like a stone from a sling, a senseless, Spider-Woman-shaped projectile. Her flight carried her right into a wall and she slammed into it hard, flattening like a bug on a windshield. Her momentum pinned her there for a moment, arms and legs spread, back flat to the wall, then she pealed away to fall. She thumped onto a crate then rolled off to the floor, landing in a boneless heap.

“And she issssssss GONE!” Screwball laughed, punching her fist into the air.

Sprawled on her stomach, Gwen didn’t even try to move. Even someone as strong and willful as her could only take so much. The deep beat of the music thumped, her spider sense still crying out, her head pounding and spinning. She could only escape the misery by letting her consciousness sink into the void, where it was dark and her pains were distant.

She moaned and let her eyes close, surrendering herself to the cool concrete floor.

The music stopped.

Silence rang, particularly in Gwen’s head, where her spider sense had abruptly stopped screaming as well. Her head continued to pound to the beat of the music, but some part of her felt great relief.

The black lights went out and the normal lighting clapped back on, transforming the mysterious, neon painted cavern back into a drab, vacant New York property. It seemed much emptier than before, almost dead after the chaos of battle. It was still and muted, like a party had ended and now all that was left was to clean up the mess.

Compared to the sounds from moments before, the buzzing of Screwball’s glider as she descended towards the fallen Spider-Woman sounded like the lonely trilling of a cicada.

Uncharacteristically quiet, the villainess landed her glider then hopped off, striding briskly towards the still figure beside the crate. The scraping and clapping of her footsteps echoed off the stone walls, her phone still in hand and fixed on Spider-Woman. There were numerous other high-res security cameras getting shots, but this would be like found footage, the viewers watching the shot bounce slightly with Screwball’s gait as she grew closer to the beaten girl.

She stopped beside the figure and panned over her, getting her from head to toe. Unlike that of Spider-Man’s, Gwen’s costume had a glossy finish, making her curves shine. The flexible web pattern of her suit served to make it more durable, but also formed a grid over her contours, showing just for far her rump protruded, the depth and shape of her thighs, the surprisingly toned muscles of her shoulders and back. Her arms were stretched out beside her, like she was attempting to hug the ground, head turned to face the camera, the lenses of her mask looking like big, unblinking eyes, staring vacantly at the floor.

Screwball panned up and down, wearing a big grin but saying nothing. She didn’t know what this footage would be used for yet, but you never knew until it got to the editing room.

“Croikey…” she said softly, affecting a bad Australian accent, “Looks like the spider’s roight tuckered! Had a hard day, she did. But even though she’s having a lie down, you gotta be careful! She’s a dangerous, woild animal!”

She giggled softly and sank down to one knee, reaching into the satchel at her waist.

“But seriously, guys,” she said, her tone returning to normal, “Heroes are FAMOUS for looking like they’re down, then pulling off a last-minute hail mary to save the day.”

She withdrew a rubber oven mitt from her satchel. It looked unremarkable except for a large battery fixed to the wrist and metal prongs on the palm.

“That’s totally not what we want,” Screwball said as she slipped her hand into the glove, “So, I’m going to give her a little finishing touch with my taser mitt to make sure she’s nice and defeated!”

Turning the phone towards the mitt, she brought closed her fingers and thumb just enough so the camera could see arcs of electricity crackle between the metal prongs.

“This one is easy to make and you could always just use an actual taser for what I’m about to do. But… we super villains have to have a little flair, ya know? Besides, if you don’t like making gadgets, you’re kinda watching the wrong video, lolz.”

Turning the phone back towards Gwen, she attempted to close the glove around the back of the heroine’s neck. It was trickier than she expected, first having to push the hood of the costume back and down, then as she reached for the heroine’s neck, she had to simultaneously lean back to get as much of her in the shot as possible. She grunted, annoyed at how difficult this simple task was becoming, then finally shuffled to the side, where she was closer to her target.

“We really need the drones in here, don’t we?” she muttered to herself, still straining to lean back and reach forward at the same time.

Finally, she was pleased enough with the angle that she took a firm grip, pinching the base of the heroine’s skull.

Nothing happened at first.

“Here we go!” Screwball grinned, “Ready? Ready!”

With that she pushed a button inside the glove and Gwen’s body immediately jumped, going into a shocked rictus.

It was a rude partial awakening. The heroine’s conscious mind was lost in the ether, but she could still feel pain, her instincts making her react even as her muscles clenched reflexively. She bowed up from the floor, back arching, legs and arms shooting out and shivering with convulsions. Her head jerked up, the wide lenses of her mask making her look surprised, her mouth wide open underneath the spandex.

“Hold it for just a few seconds…” the villainess said.

Every muscle in Gwen’s body clenched, shoulders pulled together, the moons of her rump clenching tight, toes curling in her ballet slippers. She kicked her legs once or twice, fingers curled in claws, unable to cry out but straining to do so with the same intensity as her body convulsed.

“And then we’re done!”

The current cut. Gwen’s body immediately flopped back to the floor, her head thumping into the concrete. Having been unable to cry out due to the convulsing of her vocal chords, the tail end of her pained scream now slipped from her lips as a pitiful whimper. The panic faded quickly and even the survival part of her brain gave in, going inert. She relaxed, entirely, simply, completely, and unequivocably done.

Screwball flapped her hand until the glove was flung off. Once it plopped to the side, she worked fingers a bit then smoothed her hand over the heroine’s shoulders. She felt gently around on the lean back, massaging, like she was soothing a troubled friend and at the same time enjoying the feel of her body.

“Now that is one beaten super girlie,” she cooed, “All helpless and safe. Free to handle with no worries at all.”

To demonstrate, she slid her hand up to Gwen’s head and gave it a little waggle, then took the heroine’s wrist and lifted her arm from the floor. She waggled it as well, the hand flopping about on the wrist, then let it go. It plopped back to the concrete without a fuss.

She panned the camera back up and down again as her hand returned to feel over Spider-Woman’s back. She was greatly enjoying this, being able to touch such a seemingly powerful person how she wanted, particularly one with such an appealing figure. Playing with her was going to be a lot of fun.

But, for now, she had to get on with the show.

She sighed, then reached down to give Gwen’s butt a pair of loud, parting smacks.

“Wellp!” she pushed herself back to her feet, “THAT is how you pwn a spider! But we’re not done!”

She pressed a button on her belt and the garage door at the front entrance rattled up, coming to a stop halfway open. The camera drones, having been left behind in the chase to the property, buzzed under the door and spread out to get various angles on the scene.

Once they were inside, Screwball pressed the button again and the door closed once more.

“Step 1: check!” she grinned into her phone, “Step 2: checkaroo! Step 3: Checkity check! And step 4, the trap?”

The villainess raised the phone a little higher, so it picked up both her and the spandex-clad figure sprawled behind her.

“Checkoslovakia!” she gave a thumbs up, “And now on to step the fifth: collection!”

The drones quickly surrounded the two girls, buzzing and hovering in place, their high-def cameras streaming the footage back to the mainframe at Screwball’s home base. One of them in particular hovered right in front of its mistress, getting a frontal close up.

Screwball grinned at that one, then turned back to her phone. She was still taping, but if there was one thing she loved, it was selfies. And if this wasn’t a selfie moment, she didn’t know what was.

Switching her phone from video to single shot, she pouted her lips, cocked her hips, and snapped a pic of her posing with Spider-Woman slumped behind her.

“Right on!” she pumped a fist, “Your trap worked perfectly and your super type is down like Charlie Brown! But whaddaya do now?”

She stepped back, a bit closer to Gwen, then tilted her head and grinned cutely, taking a similar shot with a different pose.

“Can’t just le em go, can ya?” She threw up the ‘stay loose’ gesture with thumb and pinky, then took another shot, “Nopers! Super people tend to take getting their butts kicked a little personally! Makes em wanna come find you and—ooh, this will be a good one!”

She turned sideways to the heroine and planted a foot on her back, raising the phone almost directly overhead. Angling a downward shot, she snapped a picture of herself standing posing on top of Gwen like a conqueror, first sticking her tongue out and throwing up deuces, then another flexing and mean mugging.

“Yeah, if you just let em go,” she planted a foot on the heroine’s butt to do a similar shot, “They try to come find you when they wake up! You need em to… not do that, obviously!”

Crouching down, she took a more level shot with her shoulders shrugged forward in thug-inspired posture, her victim in the background. Then she simply plopped her rump onto Gwen’s back and grinned brightly, blowing a kiss.

Gwen grunted at the sudden weight and moaned faintly. Other than that, she seemed unbothered by Screwball’s antics.

“So, pop quiz, Screwheads!” the internet personality paused to lean back, almost lying on top of the heroine for the next selfie, “How do you make a super spider not want to pwn you after you pwned them?”

She took another moment to lie to one side, cupping Gwen’s chin and turning her face towards the camera. She laid her head against the inert heroine’s, grinned broadly and snapped another shot. Two girls, a close-up picture with both facing the camera, the best of friends.

With that, she was finally done with selfies… for the moment. She tucked her phone into a pouch on her belt, then climbed off Spider-Woman’s firm, spandex-clad body.

“The answer is simple,” she turned around to kneel, “You don’t let em go! Let’s lay you on your back, sweetie.”

She lifted under the heroine’s hip and shoulder, rolling her onto her back.

Gwen plopped to the floor, one arm swinging out wide and landing with the palm up, her head lolling towards her shoulder.

“And the VERY first thing you want to do once you have your heroine all beaten like this,” Screwball turned Gwen’s face back towards her, “Is something that might be a little controversial…”

She cupped the back of her subject’s head and propped it up off the floor. Grinning, she stared into the blank, white eyes of the mask, then scooched a bit closer on her knees. Though she was speaking in a lazy, conversational tone, she was excited about this part. This was the coup de grace of any superhero defeat.

Lost in the moment, she looked up and down Gwen’s body once more. The spider’s breasts were a bit small, but perfectly round and perky, the spandex so snug that both shapes stood out individually. She bit her bottom lip, shivering with anticipation, then lay her hand on the heroine’s firm tummy, rubbing it as if to calm her.

Abruptly remembering the cameras, she turned over her shoulder to grin at one.

“What you do… isssssss…” she turned to look at another camera, “take… their mask off!”

(to be continued...)