ALL NOVEL Bad feelings and signs
Slipping out of her friends' clutches-sometimes Mary Jane and her obsession with her band could be unbearable-Gwen slipped into a garishly bright party outfit and disappeared into the crowd of New York City as she prepared for the night. Gwen's phone had to be disconnected and replaced with Spiderwoman's, or else Red would have been annoyed by her angry calls and texts, seemingly lacking Parker's attention lately.
Stacy knew exactly what, or rather who, the boy was doing at the moment, though she was somewhat skeptical about the idea. A sixteen-year-old looking for a way to beat cancer! How desperate Wilson was to believe his promises ... Parker is a genius, of course, but still, it's already beyond reason! And then there was Connors, with his vague allusions to a new lab and a job for who knows who.
At the entrance to the club, which was her goal for tonight, someone shoved the girl hard in the back. It was unexpected, for Stacy felt no threat or even movement behind her. A tall girl, a head taller than Gwen, in a light, airy dress, slipped to her side and disappeared into the dark doorway, only the last glint of blue ribbon tied in her blond hair. Stacy had an uneasy feeling.
Once inside, Gwen didn't head toward the dance floor or even the bar, but went straight to the back of the room, trying not to draw too much attention to herself. The right clothes helped her in this. Her destination was a door, recessed under a canopy against the back wall. Naturally the doorway was guarded by a pair of stern-looking broads, lavishly adorned with metalwork in the facial area. One of them was picking at her mouth with a toothpick as if she had just eaten her own mother. And the occasional flickering lighting of the nightclub only increased the sense of menace emanating from them, which, however, did not embarrass our heroine.
- Hey, boys, do you want to take a little break, relax? - Gwen caught their attention, shouting over the music.
The closest guard measured the girl with a crushing stare from under her mighty eyebrows. Because Stacy had her head tilted to hide her face from the cameras, all she could see was her dark wig.
"Get out of here while you can," she growled without taking the toothpick out of her mouth.
"Yeah, I don't even want to waste a joke on you..." Stacy sighed sadly.
Then the lights went out again, so no one could see Gwen put her cobwebs in both of the guards' mouths. With an indignant mooing, the women tried to tear the sticky stuff from their faces, and when they couldn't, they decided to attack their aggressor, but, unfortunately for them, the lights disappeared again, and when the dim light was restored, it was just Gwen standing in front of the open door, both her opponents lying on the floor in the hallway they were guarding the entrance to. With the next flash of darkness, Stacy herself was gone, and the door was locked again, this time from the inside.
Without raising her head, Gwen covered the chamber in the corridor with cobwebs and, quickly re-dressing in her Spiderwoman costume, raced after her only known target. She quickly stunned, disarmed, and webbed all the women she met inside. Within minutes of disarming a dozen female criminals in this way, Stacy had reached the heart of the local criminal cell. From behind a loosely closed door came scraps of conversation.
"Now the deliveries would be regular." The calm, mature voice of a mature woman.
"You're good, sister, good for us, we'll make so much money," some woman cheered, expressing her emotions violently behind the wall. Her voice was husky and authoritative.
"Just remember who you working for!" Another girl, obviously younger than the others.
"What did you say?" She shouted sharply at the one who had been cheering before.
"Just a reminder not to forget that they work for you," said the girl, chickening out.
"Don't they know, do you think? Do you think they're stupid?" The bossy woman at the door was getting very heated, and clearly she should have taken an anger management course.
"Yes, no... I was just saying..." the young woman was making excuses with increasing panic.
"So you didn't mean to imply that they were stupid. Are you saying I'm stupid?" She went on shouting and continued to press the raging girl.
"Yeah, no... what are you... I was just saying..."
"No! You were talking for me! Like I'm a sheep and I can't speak for myself! You're gonna pull my shit for me?" It looked like a fight was about to break out without the Spiderwoman interfering.
Deciding there was no better time than to have a fight between criminals, Gwen swung the door open.
There were seven people in the room, divided into several groups. The closest to the door was a couple: a bald woman of medium height and age in a hat, suit, and sunglasses, and a young girl, a little taller in simple sportswear. Near the far wall were two obviously female guards, just as vaguely scruffy with metal trim on their faces as the couple at the entrance. And the last three, the most picturesque. In the center a Mexican-looking woman with bulging eyes was pressing some pole against the wall, and behind her an overweight girl in loose clothes was trying to calm her down in an unsure way. It was between them that the conflict erupted, which Stacy unwittingly witnessed.
"Hi all, is this a bad time?" Gwen waved under the crossed eyes on her: anxious from the couple at the entrance, surprised from the pierced, furious from the ataman and grateful from the cornered damsel.
"What the...Spiderwoman...kill her!" The Mexican woman made an instant decision.
"Hey, you can't kill a Spiderwoman - it's bad luck!" Gwen contradicted her.
And, without waiting for the criminals to act, she attacked herself. The first two: the bald one in the hat and her young friend did not resist and quickly went to wait for the cops, bound by cobwebs, but the rest were not timid and rushed into the fight.
However, the leader of the gang, the only one armed with firearms, fired a couple of shots into the milk and hurried to retreat through the back door, leaving her subordinates to fight for themselves. To Stacy's surprise, dealing with the inner circle of the head of this drug cartel cell was not easy, they were all armed with edged weapons and knew how to handle them, the girl's sense of danger was alarming.
Realizing she was wasting too much time, Gwen tried to dash past the women to the exit, blinding one of the opponents with a web, but failed: another criminal, armed with a knifepoint, figured out her plan and almost caught the girl in a rash dash. The perpetrator's knife drew a long bloody streak across Gwen's left arm. The wound was shallow, but unpleasant.
Stacy was forced to hastily break the distance with the dangerous woman, bouncing back toward the ceiling. Everyone but the desperately struggling couple and the blinded bandit trying to clear her eyes froze, waiting for the enemy's next move, and Gwen used this respite wisely.
Putting her hand to her ear, she activated the communicating device Parker had made for them:
"Tuco is running to the backyard by the secret passage, she's got a gun, will you take her?"
"I'd love to," came the reply from the other side.
Gwen wanted to say something else, but she was interrupted by a toss of a wooden stool.
"Hey!" the girl said indignantly, "that was rude!"
Bobby quickly rushed to the back of the club as soon as she got the message from her partner. By this time she'd already got her part of the plan down: the drug lab, brazenly set up in the building next door to the club, was already cleaned out, and everyone involved was waiting for the police to arrive in a state of disintegration.
She was just in time to intercept the gang's ataman as she dashed across the courtyard, pushing the club's patrons away. There was no chance, no need, to be stealthy, for Tuco was the last criminal to be caught, and Bobby simply ran ahead of her.
Tuco's peripheral vision spotted the danger and she jerked to the side, evading the attack. Already terrified after her encounter with a real superheroine, Touko was horrified by the sight of the symbiote's tightly knotted, muscular body. Her mind immediately flashed back to a report from months ago, when a similar creature, only with a slightly different coloring, had terrorized the city. Panicking as she retreated from the danger, she pointed her gun at the new enemy, but immediately realized the pointlessness of resistance. But Tuco had no intention of giving up so easily.
"Stay back!" The woman yelled, and then grabbed the sluggish blond girl nearest to her, "Stay where you are, or I'll blow her fuckin' brains out!" Toco yelled madly, with her eyes spinning."
She knew how pointless it was to take someone hostage when your enemy was a flesh-eating, man-eating monster, but wasn't he in league with the Spiderwoman?
The criminal's assumption paid off. When Venom saw that a human life was at stake, she stopped. Bobby didn't really know what to do in a situation like this, but her very appearance was playing into her hands right now. Unable to understand from the symbiote's face what her opponent's intentions were, Tuco was winding herself up more and more with each passing second. The monster's creepy eyes seemed to be staring right into her soul, waiting...
"It's just waiting for the moment to grab into my flesh!" Tuco realized.
"Go on, walk to the exit," she urged her hostage in the back.
"I should have grabbed such a big brat!" she thought irritably. The hostage was a head taller than her captive, which made the situation look a little ridiculous, but there was no time to change the choice: all the other visitors were already jostling for the exits, hurrying to get away from the symbiote and the gun-wielding criminal.
"You're only making it worse," Bobby decided to talk to the gangster, "the police are on their way, your face is in their database, your actions only add up to more time."
Thanks to her criminal past, Barbara had a pretty good grasp of the subject.
"Noooooo," Tuco hissed, sputtering, "there's no way in hell I'm going back in there! No fucking jail! Move it, bitch!"
The last was again directed at the hostage, who was not hysterical, but could hardly move her legs, as if her whole body was shackled by fear, which made Touko have to almost drag her on her own. And that eventually caused her to stumble. Neither Bobby nor Gwen, who had already dealt with their opponents, would have had time to do anything, but then the passive participant in the altercation intervened.
The hostage took advantage of her hiccup to break free, remembering to point her gun hand away from herself. A shot rang out, thankfully to nowhere. Gwen and Bobby rushed forward and immediately twisted Tuco, pushing her away from her victim, who in an instant lost her recent prowess and sat down on the floor right where she stood. Her lips trembled with fear and she breathed rapidly and shallowly.
Meanwhile, Gwen tied Tuco up with a spider web, preparing a pretty gift for her mother out of the outlaw. Seeing that her help was not required here, Venom decided to turn her attention to the victim.
"Hey, are you okay?" she asked, taking a seat next to her, "Are you hurt?"
I don't think Bobby was thinking at this point what an impression close contact with a toothy humanoid monster would have on a girl on the verge of hysteria.
"Yeah... thanks, I'm fine," the girl reacted surprisingly calmly.
"You did a good job! What's your name?" Putting a hand on the shaking girl's shoulder, Bobbi asked.
"D-Daisy," the recent hostage said, glancing nervously at Venom's paw.
"Hey, you're only going to scare her!" Gwen noticed Venom's movements.
"No, no, it's okay, you saved me," Daisy told her.
"You're good, Daisy, can I ask you a favor?" The girl nodded, "The police will be here soon, tell them the truth about what happened. All right? Thank you."
"Yeah... yeah," Daisy mumbled as she was left alone with the disarmed criminal.
But as soon as Gwen and Bobby left, the hostage stood up, showing no sign of concern over her promise, and headed for the exit.
"Mm-mm!" tried to get her attention with a bound Tuco.
"Shut up," Daisy kicked the criminal right in the face, breaking her nose, "dumb bitch."
Then the recent victim hurriedly retreated from the scene.