A man stood in a dark alley. For all intents and purposes he was just a lazy worker, stealing time to have a smoke and skip out on whatever job he was supposed to be doing. No one would’ve paid him or the person walking up to him another glance as the second person asked for a light.

But when the lazy worker leaned forward to light the newcomer’s cigarette, he quickly whispered “Warehouse 14, 10 o’clock, two weeks.” and leaned back. The second man thanked him for the light and walked off again.

The whole interaction lasted less than fifteen seconds.

After another few minutes, the worker snuffed out the butt of his cigarette, turned, and retreated inside. No one noticed a line of quarter sized spiders suddenly emerge from several nooks and crannies and make their way to the rooftop.

-o-

Gwen glared at three notebooks. Silently commanding them to tell her the information she needed. If anyone else looked at the notes they would only see the innocent ramblings of a college student, to Gwen they were a compilation of all the tidbits she had gathered from spying on Falcone fronts and encoded in the way her father taught her.

She pushed away the pang of grief she got at the thought of never leaving encoded notes to each other again.

Something was about to happen in the criminal underworld. Something big. The Falcone Family was gearing up to make that move and while Gwen had managed to narrow down the timeframe, she had no idea where it was supposed to happen or what it was going to be. Not exactly something she could bring to the police or the heroes either.

‘Something will happen in two weeks!’ she scoffed. It was Gotham. Something was always happening. Whether that meant the Penguin had organised another art theft or Scarecrow was trying to infect the water supply with his fear toxin again. Raising an alarm with nothing to go on wouldn’t get her anywhere.

Of course that wouldn’t stop her from poking around. Warehouses were mentioned more often than not so the Falcone’s were either shipping a lot of something out, or smuggling a lot of something in.

Gwen was shocked out of her thoughts when an irritated Barbara sat down heavily on the opposite chair.

“Why are boys sometimes such dicks?” she said hotly.

“Hello Barbara, how are you? I’m fine. Sure you can sit here.” Gwen retorted dryly.

Barbara’s face shifted from annoyed to slightly sheepish. “Sorry, there were no open tables.” she said in half-apology.

Gwen looked around the small campus cafe she had been settled for the past few hours. True to Barbara’s word the entire place had been filled with college students and the only open seat had been the one Barbara just claimed.

She waved Barbara off and closed her notebooks.

“So what’s this about boys?” Gwen decided it was just easier to accept the redhead had adopted her as a friend and move on. “Trouble in paradise? Grayson put his foot in his mouth again?”

Contrary to what most of the campus thought, Barbara and Richard Grayson were not dating. Not that Gwen could blame them for thinking that, to the uninformed they definitely acted like a couple. It might’ve been a byproduct of growing up...not next to, but maybe adjacent?...to the pair of them that let her see Barbara and Dick thought of each other more as siblings than partners.

Of course if Barbara was going to keep injecting herself into Gwen’s life then she wouldn’t hold back teasing the redhead about the misconception.

“No thankfully. I’d have to kill him if I heard this from him.” Barbara groaned. “I just got done sitting through an entire class listening to half the boys wondering how I was bribing the professor to get my scores to the top of the class, because I can’t be smart enough to get them on my own. I don’t get it! You never have those rumors going around!”

Gwen scoffed. “That’s because I am the weird introvert that spends most of her free time studying. You are the extroverted campus princess that spends her time being nice to people and talking up a storm. You don’t get to be friendly, pretty, and smart.”

“But you’re all those things too!” Barbara whined.

Gwen cocked an eyebrow.

“Introvert, remember?” She said, pointing at herself. “I don’t talk to people, so by default they think I’m a bit of a bitch. Besides it’s just for another week, then everyone will be too busy with finals bother you.”

Barbara ignored her to take a vicious bite out of her sandwich. Gwen shrugged and picked at her own meal, somewhat forgotten while she was looking at her notes.

They ate in comfortable silence before Barbara put down her food and leaned in.

“So, did you see the news the other day?” she asked conspiratorially.

“About the alien invasion near Hawaii? What’s that like the third one this year?”

“No not that, the new supervillain that showed up a few nights ago!”

Gwen rolled her eyes. She had been hoping to avoid this topic.

“I mean I saw the newspaper, but I didn’t see anything that pointed to supervillain other than she and Batgirl got in a fight.” She said in an uninterested tone, hopefully Barbara would pick up on it and drop the topic…

“Then why did she steal a bunch of money and run away? Yeah, she left the cash behind- or so Dad thinks, they’re still counting all the money taken out of the truck. -fought Batgirl. Apparently trapped her and then...just ran off? Who does that?” She pointed dramatically at Gwen. “I think it’s supervillain posturing. The whole ‘I beat you and now I’m going to mock you’ thing.” Barbara said confidently.

“Ooor,” Gwen drawled out, pushing Barbara’s finger away from her face. “There could be another reason Ghost Spider ran off.” Thankfully her chosen name had been leaked to the press so she didn’t have to avoid using it.

“Yeah? Like what?”

“New hero was intimidated by meeting an established one, GS is shy and doesn’t like the attention, the bad guys were stopped and she just wanted to leave?” the blonde ticked off a couple reasons. ‘Not wanting to be around someone who could identify her by her voice.’ Gwen added mentally.

“From what my dad was saying Batgirl reported Ghost Spider definitely isn’t inexperienced or shy. I just can’t figure out her motive...”

“Does it matter? Even if there was a goal, you need more than one data point to get anywhere.” Gwen desperately wanted to drop the conversation. “And why not ask your boyfriend. Isn’t he the one studying criminology?”

“He’s not my boyfriend.” Came the reflexive response. Barbara pouted a bit at Gwen’s exaggerated eye roll. “He’s also still in class for another half hour, besides you’re the only girl friend I have that I can talk about these things with. It’s nice having an intelligent conversation.”

Gwen despaired quietly at the confirmation she had been officially adopted by the extroverted redhead and went back to picking at her food.

“Fine, tell me all about the dastardly villain who hasn’t seemed to have done anything yet.”

-o-

Ghost Spider silently moved across the top of the warehouse.

She still hadn’t managed to figure out exactly which one was the one marked out by the Falcone family. It certainly wasn’t just the address number. And without another lead she had no way of narrowing it down, so she did the next best thing she could think of…

She went spying on all of them.

It was going faster than she would’ve thought. Most of the warehouses were either slightly empty at the moment or the contents easily identifiable. For the ones that weren’t, Ghost Spider had a trick to get a close look at their contents.

She dropped in through a skylight and made her way over to a plastic wrapped pallet and placed a hand on it. Her costume from the elbow down suddenly started to dissolve into a mass of black and white spiders that swarmed over the wrapping. Proving that there was nowhere a spider couldn’t get inside pretty soon Ghost Spider was able to look through their eyes and see a crate full of hundred dollar bills.

White eyes widened when a quick check confirmed that several more crates lined the warehouse.

This was millions of dollars being stored in what was essentially wide open space with no guard.

That told Gwen two things. Someone was obviously looking to make a large purchase entirely in cash, and that they were confident no one working in the warehouse would try to make off with anything in here. Gotham work crews were infamous for ‘misplacing’ merchandise for sale on underground markets. Which meant this warehouse was owned by organised criminals.

As if waiting to confirm her thoughts a door slammed open and five men walked in. Well, four of them walked. One was dragged inside, his face a bloody mess.

Ghost Spider shifted invisible and made for the shadows.

Unaware of their invisible guest the four men set about tying their bloodied friend to a chair in the middle of the floor. Once that was done one of them not so gently smacked the person in the chair awake.

The man’s head lolled around and he groaned indicating he was conscious at the very least.

“Time to wake up, Mr Russo. The Don has some questions for ya before ya go for a swim.” Three of the men spread out across the warehouse making sure nothing was out of place while the apparent leader stayed with their captive.

Russo took a moment to collect himself before glaring at the gangster in front of him. “Not the friendliest welcome Jon. Do you usually lead with a death threat? Might be why you're such a shit enforcer.”

The gangster- Jon apparently -shook his head. “Not my call. The Don doesn’t ask a lot from his goons, but selling out to the cartels? Turning your back on the Family? The Don can’t let that go unpunished in his city.”

Russo spat at his feet. “Go jump off a pier, Jonny. Mario doesn’t have half the hold his father did. He’s barely keeping ahead of the costumed freaks and Gordon is ready to jump on him if anything slips. I’m just looking out for myself.” He started off strong, but when Jon took a step forward his demeanor cracked. “N-now wait a second. You gotta understand. We take all the risks in this business and we’re lucky if the Don gave us some scraps. I-I didn’t even give them anything on the family, just let them know where to avoid stepping on toes.”

“And told them exactly where our operations were. You think it was a coincidence our safehouses have been hit across the city? Our businesses trashed?” Jonny spat then shook his head. “Forget it. Did your men go after Captain Stacy?”

Gwen had been preparing to intervene before anyone got hurt, but the mention of her father made her go very still.

“The c-cop? What’s he got to do with this?”

Jonny started to circle the bound man. “See, someone pinged the Captain off on a secret the Falcone Family doesn’t want out there. Then when we find out Gordon has him poking around where we don’t want. The Don tells me he found something. Something that we want back very much but before we can talk to him, guess what? He’s dead in a sudden shooting walking around with his daughter.”

Jonny stopped behind the chair and placed his hands on Russo’s shoulders. “Now the Family has the whole force looking at us cause not only was Stacy good at his job but it’s the kinda sob story the media will just eat up. Pretty little blonde orphaned by the mafia? People are going to be keeping an eye on her for months. So...did...you...go...after...him?”

“No! I don’t do those kinds of jobs. Look, Jonny you don’t have to do this. I’ll clear out okay? One day, and then I’m off to the west coast. You’ll never see me again!”

“No? That’s good for you I suppose. At least you weren’t stupid enough to completly betray us.” Jonny said, ignoring the plea. “Do you know anyone else who betrayed the Family?”

“Please-, No there isn’t-” there was a sharp crack as Jonny smacked the back of Russo’s head.

“Who else?!”

“I don’t know! I only met the boss once! He said I could either work for him or he’d kill me, I never talked to anyone else!”

Crack! “WHO?”

“Bane! It was Bane!”

Jonny suddenly released his shoulders and walked back in front of the chair. “The wrestler, hmm? Well at least you were somewhat useful, and it matches some of the other rats.” he said in an almost friendly tone.

“So you’ll let me go?”

The gangster laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Oh no. Like I said, the Don can’t let this go.” He pulled out a silver revolver and pointed it at Russo. “Nothing personal, but at least I’ll make it quick.”

Thwip!

The gun was swiftly yanked out of the gangster’s hand by a line of silk.

“You know, they always say it isn’t personal, but I think it’s pretty personal to him.” Ghost Spider quipped as she revealed herself on top of the shelves.

“Shoot the freak!”

The three gangsters who had spread out around a bit more, pulled out much more reasonable pistols and fired at the black and white figure.

Ghost Spider dove at one of the gangsters, easily dodging around the bullets and knocking him out with a sharp jab to the jaw. The two others quickly had their guns jammed by additional globs of webbing, rendering the guns useless.

“Wow, you really know how to make a girl feel welcome.”

The gangsters charged her, one of them swinging a crowbar he found on the way. Ghost Spider ducked under the blow, grabbed the man by the front of his shirt and threw him at the other. Pausing for a second, she noticed a chemical smell in the air and turned to see some kind of liquid dripping from the shot up containers.

“That’s probably not good.” she vocalised.

Her spider sense blared and she sprinted into a rolling dive, a machine gun spitting bullets at her the whole time. Sparks stitched a line across the ground where ricochets bounced off. One particular spark managed to land near the leaking containers. Unfortunately the fumes proved to be quite flammable and soon the entire shelf was on fire.

“Hey genius! How about you don’t shoot up a warehouse full of flammable things while we’re inside it?”

More gunfire was the answering reply.

Ghost Spider was keeping ahead of the gangster’s rather lousy aim but she also didn’t have a chance to web his gun with the rate of fire he was sending her way. Of course if he kept this up, pretty soon he would- Click! -run out of bullets.

With a burst of speed, Ghost Spider flipped over the pallet she had been using as cover and quickly webbed the last gangster’s feet, yanking them out from under him, and causing the machine gun to clatter uselessly to the floor.

Ghost Spider took another glance around. Four gangsters groaning on the floor or unconscious, one criminal tied to a chair and alternating between begging her to let him go and trying to bribe her, and a warehouse that was only a little on fire-

Boom!

-or maybe a lot on fire! Gwen panicked a bit as the chemical containers exploded and spread the fire to almost all sides of the warehouse.

“Well it could’ve gone worse” Gwen consoled herself as she quickly ran to collect the beaten criminals and drag them to safety.

On her last trip out, she glanced at the pallet containing the bricks of cash lying in the path of the fire.

On one hand, it went against two lifetime’s worth of memories. Her dad saying money was only good from honest work. On the other, a third lifetime cynically pointed out the money was going to be burned if she did nothing and she was swiftly running up to the point where money might become a legitimate issue.

She dumped the last of the criminals together and webbed them all far away from the now burning building. She would only have a few seconds to make a decision.

Gwen worried her lip for a second before making up her mind.

She only hoped it was the right choice.