Morning Routine
Gwen Stacy woke up to the smell of eggs and slightly burnt toast.
"You up, champ?" George called from downstairs.
She rolled over, squinting at the sunlight filtering through her curtains. Her legs still ached from last night's narrow escape. She rubbed her eyes, then rolled out of bed and pulled on a hoodie.
"Yeah! Coming!"
The kitchen was cozy, warm, and familiar. George was plating up breakfast, his tie crooked as usual.
"You have anything going on at school today?" he asked.
"Nope," Gwen lied, stabbing a piece of toast. "Just... normal kid stuff."
He eyed her for a second. Then smiled. "That's good."
The unspoken words hung in the air between them.
After breakfast, Gwen grabbed her backpack—which, of course, had an encrypted backup drive tucked inside—and left for school.
Coding, Questions, and Boredom
The school day crawled by. Gwen aced her math test without really trying, helped fix a malfunctioning projector in the AV room, and coded a new diagnostics app during lunch.
In social studies, her mind wandered.
They'll come after me again, she thought, tapping her pencil. Maybe tonight. Maybe next week. But they're not giving up. I wonder if they'll actually send Stripes?
She didn't know whether that thought made her nervous or excited, but it definitely made her determined to win.
After school, she hung out at the tech club, pretending to be a slightly above-average kid interested in robotics. She helped two students rewrite faulty firmware and intentionally mis soldered one circuit just to maintain her disguise.
When she got home, George was already watching the evening news. The volume was low, but she could tell by the footage that Ghost Spider was still a hot topic.
She slipped upstairs, locked her door, and opened her gear drawer.
Her suit—currently in diagnostic mode—flickered with a soft blue glow. The new fabric she'd incorporated from scavenged military-grade cloth was flexible but layered with shock-resistant polymers.
A spare mask sat beside it. Just in case.
Trouble Brews
Her spider-sense buzzed softly around 8:20 PM.
She hesitated.
"You're going out again, aren't you?" George asked from the hallway.
She paused at the door. "Yeah. Just for a bit."
"Be careful."
She looked back. George stood there, arms crossed, eyes tired but understanding.
"I always am."
Patrol Begins
By 9:00 PM, Gwen was gliding across rooftops. The city pulsed with neon and chaos.
She intervened in two muggings, left a package of food for an unhoused veteran she'd been quietly helping, and made sure her tracker logs were pinging to a burner cloud.
Then she felt it.
A ripple in the air. A presence.
Spider-sense screamed.
She flipped sideways just in time to dodge a blast of compressed air that flattened a rooftop AC unit.
Above her, glowing against the night sky, hovered a figure with radiant blonde hair, a military cape, and twin red-white-blue turbines floating at her sides.
Stars and Stripes.
"So," the hero's voice boomed from a speaker embedded in her armor, "you're the little shadow causing all the fuss."
Gwen's heart thudded. "Oh shit."
Clash of Titans (Well, Sorta)
Stars and Stripes launched again, breaking the sound barrier as she zipped across Gwen's position. Her presence bent air and light—pure pressure.
Gwen fired two web lines and launched herself toward a billboard, using it as a slingshot to rocket backward and dodge another impact.
She's not playing around, Gwen realized. And she's way faster than Torque.
Stars and Stripes wasn't just powerful—she was precise. Her Quirk, New Order, let her rewrite reality within reason. Gwen couldn't afford to be caught, even brushed.
Stars extended her hand.
"Air within 30 feet of target becomes rigid!"
Gwen slammed into a wall of suddenly solid atmosphere mid-swing, grunted, then scrambled backward as the surface dissipated.
"Alright, alright," Gwen muttered, leaping away. "You're the big guns, I get it. But this is kinda excessive, don't you think?!"
She launched a burst grenade behind her—not lethal, but packed with chaff and electromagnetic interference. Stars veered to avoid it, using sheer speed instead of brute force.
They darted between rooftops, zig-zagging through alleyways, over empty highways, past blinking signs.
Cameras tried to track them. None succeeded.
Gwen led her higher, toward the industrial district.
Improvised Genius
"Air around my body becomes intangible!" Stars shouted, phasing through a collapsing scaffold Gwen had knocked into her path.
Gwen landed on a warehouse crane and triggered her emergency drones. Four of them buzzed out, creating a holographic field of Ghost Spider copies around her.
"Try finding the real me now!"
Stars and Stripes didn't hesitate. "All Ghost Spider copies vanish now."
The drones fried.
The Ghost Spider mask manages to blink "Oh come on, that's cheating!"
Gwen bolted.
She couldn't win a fight. Not against this. Not now.
But she didn't have to.
All she had to do was escape.
The Final Gambit
She led Stars through a canal zone lined with cargo cranes and steel containers. She moved erratically—left, up, down, double-back, pause, fake-out.
A stun round clipped her arm. She gasped.
Pain spiked.
But adrenaline surged harder.
She rerouted through a broken storm drain. Stars tried to follow—
BOOM!
Gwen triggered the portable mine she'd left behind.
It wasn't powerful—just flash, sound, and smoke. But it was enough.
By the time the smoke cleared, she was gone.
Aftermath
She limped into her room at 1:12 AM.
Her mask was off. Her lip was bleeding. Her elbow stung like fire.
She didn't say anything. She didn't have to.
George was standing outside her door.
"You okay?"
She hesitated. Then cracked a tired grin.
"They sent a Top Ten. Took 'em two hours and I still got away."
George rubbed his face. "You're gonna give me a heart attack."
"You and me both."
He nodded, and walked away.
Gwen sat down, slowly peeled off her suit, and hissed as she touched the bruise on her ribs.
She stared at the cracked HUD display on her wrist.
And laughed.
"Okay, Stars and Stripes," she whispered. "Round one goes to me."