ONE

Who in their right mind hurled a ing cab toward a puppy cafe full of grandmas, little girls, and—well—puppies?

Hell, even serial jailbird Flint Marko looked dumbfounded at the slaphappy slip he’d just made.

“For ’s sake, Marko!” Karina yelled. Her biceps still stung from having to web-catch the flying cab, stopping it just a few feet from the puppy cafe’s windows. Behind the windows, its patrons either were holding each other or have fallen to their knees in shock. Some little girls were already bawling.

There’s a loud siren and far louder cops coming their way, Karina sensed. Marko cursed under her breath as he snapped back to his sense. Knowing that he would gain some advantage while Spider Woman was stuck between himself and the cafe, he disappeared as a whirlwind of sand into the air. Dust flew to Karina’s nose, and she just had to sneeze out loud.

Which resulted in her losing her grip on the webbed cab and dropping it to the ground with a loud crash. “Sorry!” The cab’s alarm went off at once, and the crying from the little girls inside the cafe cranked up louder. “And that’s one death cab for puppies,” she grumbled. She then turned to the cafe patrons. “Everyone alright? All good?” she yelled to check on them.

A girl her age stood up and knocked on the glass windows separating them. She’d been covering two very young, very terrified girls off the corner. Good god, Karina realized in horror. Had she failed in catching the cab Marko threw, this girl and the two kids she’d shielded with her body would’ve been crushed, quite possibly killed on the spot.

“Get moving, web-head!” the girl yelled back. The name tag on the girl’s chest read Giselle. Must be one of the cafe’s attendants, Karina deduced. “That freak’s getting away!” She knocked on a higher part of the window, pointing at the vanishing Marko. “Go!”

Karina only spared one glance before she refocused on her mission of the day. Right. Stop Marko. Get the stolen tiara back. Go home. In that order. Right.

As she launched to the air, the sight of the puppy cafe became smaller. She felt Giselle’s, and the rest of the noncombatants in the scene, eyes on her back. Still. Yet another clique of Manhattanites who wouldn’t appreciate her enough, but that’s just a day in the work. Same old, same old.

=.=.=

TWO

Somewhere off Chelsea Park, between W 29th and 9th Ave, she came across Giselle—again.

Homegirl had her airpods on and was completely oblivious to her surrounding, which from Karina’s aerial view included a hunky guy in a tattered winter jacket tailing her since she exited Penn Station. Karina’s sense told her that the guy wasn’t exactly Giselle’s admirer of some sort.

And yes, yes, she’s very rarely wrong in that department.

There’s a shadowy alley ahead, and the man made a sprint and reached inside his jacket to pull out a—oh —knife. Wooden handle, steak, and IKEA.

Karina landed on the top wall of a building overhead Giselle and the mugger, and she shot webs aimed at the man’s feet. Surprised at being suddenly pinned and rendered immobile, the man lost his balance and tripped forward, hitting a trash can in the process. The loud bang managed to reach Giselle, who in an equal surprise turned around just as the man’s knife flew from his hand.

“Miss, I would really, really, really advice against listening to music when you’re walking by yourself like this.”

For the second time Giselle shrieked in surprise.

Karina winced at the decibel because holy homegirl was loud loud. She hopped down from her perch on the wall to the trash can where Giselle’s failed stalker had hit himself before. “Yo, who the are y—” Karina shot another web to shut the man before he could even finish his rant. She turned to Giselle, who’s looking at her in part disbelief, part annoyance.

Wait.

Annoyance?

Unbelievable.

“Have some more awareness of your surrounding next time, lil missy.” She gave the girl a stare, the large eye patches on her mask narrowing to half their size.

Giselle had the guts to scowl instead. “There won’t be a next time.” She clutched the straps of her backpack tighter. “Just so you know, I have more chances of getting a heart attack from you than from getting mugged.”

Inside her mask, Karina rolled her eyes and dear god sometimes she wished her mask could show that. “You’re welcome, Giselle.”

She grabbed the man to turn him in at the nearest precinct and shot to the air, while Giselle below yelled out how on earth she knew her name.

Just another day superheroing, yes.

=.=.=

THREE

The third time they met, she snatched Giselle away from the path of a flying street lamppost the Rhino had lobbed her way.

Naturally, girlie was beyond shocked to be airborne a hundred feet off the ground in 0.43 seconds (Karina counted, she did; not gonna give any haters a chance to call her dumb or, worse, careless, no). She banshee-shrieked and koala-clutched onto Karina as if trying to strangle her.

“You okay?”

Amidst her shrieking and panicking and pawing, Giselle could still manage an acerbic reply: “Sunshine and ing rainbows, web-head!”

“Ok—ay—you’re okay. Now—argh—not too tight, please—just a sec.”

Karina landed them on top of the lone cast-iron eagle statue next to the idling Mercury, Hercules, and Minerva. Down below, the Rhino roared at finally being able to spot Spider Woman. The cursed bulk of 99% steel and 1% brain started charging toward the Grand Central Terminal.

“Wait here. Gotta take care of this first.”

“Wai—wh—oh no, no, no, no. Get me down now! I have a train to catch!”

She pointed at the impending Rhino. “Well, if you’re not so much of a magnet for trouble, you’ll see that hunky baddie of a tin man is coming to get us!”

“To get you! And what are you afraid of? You’re Spider Woman! You’ll kick his !”

Karina blinked. “…What?”

Giselle poked her shoulder. Hard. So hard they both winced at the force. “You’re Spider Woman! You’ve quashed the Green Goblin and Vulture. What’s a trash can on feet compared to them?!”

“Well, not to be nitpicky here but I didn’t exactly quash them. I sent them to prison. I mean—”

Giselle looked like she’s a mere inch close to tearing her own hair in frustration. “Whatever! Now get me down and get him!”

Karina only had a few seconds to act now. And so: she wound an arm around Giselle’s waist, pulled her close, shot her web at Mercury’s outstretched arm, and swung them toward the upper level of the Grand Central Terminal, Giselle’s surprised gasp immediately turned into an unbridled scream. They slid inside through an open window and landed safely. Giselle fell to her knees, frantically cussing and wheezing both it was almost impressive.

The Rhino was about to arrive, Karina sensed. “You’ll be alright here?” Giselle looked so, so pale Karina was about to have a second thought of leaving her.

“Go.”

“Right. Uhm. Yes. See you around?” She shot another web sling and swung out through the same window she came in.

“If you die, I swear I’ll kill you, web-head!”

=.=.=

FOUR

Technically, Spider Woman didn’t meet Giselle for the fourth time. Karina did—for the first time.

To her enhanced sense, it all happened in a slow motion: a group of student reporters entering her organic chemistry lab. One of them knocking one of the lab crucibles as he bumped onto the table. A bowl of sulfuric acid tipping toward the nearest hand to the table, which happened to be—out of the 10 million-something people in the city—Giselle.

By now Karina was convinced that the girl was totally, utterly, and undoubtedly a magnet for trouble.

Thanks to her equally enhanced reflex, she made it on time to discreetly pull Giselle behind her under the guise of wanting to show her a chemical reaction meme poster, snatch the cover for the acid bowl and screw it shut with her webs, and discreetly slide it away to the farthest end of the table.

What she miscalculated was that her impromptu save resulted in her being in a close vicinity to Giselle without the presence of her alter ego, so close that she could feel Giselle’s breath on her face, so close that she could count Giselle’s eyelashes that swept over her cheeks. Well, too close, that’s what. Too. ing. Close.

Goddamnit, sense!

Someone cleared behind them. Someone named Winter, Karina’s best friend and perpetual pain in the .

“Well,” Giselle’s small laughter broke the awkward silence. It’s only the mental reminder that all superheroes needed to keep up the harmless civilian façade that stopped Karina from jumping to the ceiling—or, worse, through the roof. “Don’t suppose anyone’s hardly surprised you lab nerds love nerd jokes, no?”

“The wh—”

Giselle’s eyes widened. “Oh! Didn’t mean anything bad, really. I love nerd jokes, I do.” She then looked sheepish, eager to clear the misunderstood quip “Am a bit of a nerd myself, y’know. Like, failing to make the science olympic team last year? Yeah, that’s me.”

Okay, Karina didn’t know that.

B