First Cause • Spider-Man: Homecoming [Unedited]

05

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He's the first to notice her.

Spider-Man's shoulders hunch and his head twitches, as though he's about to look sharply to the side, where Gadea zips across the open field toward the showdown beneath the bridge.

Schultz, a man with brown skin shades darker than hers and armed with a menacing looking handgun, aims his weapon at the space above Gadea's chest plate. Where her heart beats rhythmically and steadily.

Sad as she is to inwardly admit it, this is nowhere near the first or most precarious standoff she has ever been involved in. This is, however, the first one whose conclusion she can't confidently predict. There are too many cardholders in this game and each player doesn't seem to have a tell.

Brice and the buyer, on the other hand? Where Gadea, Schultz and Spider-Man each stand in an abstract triangle, rotating to whom their attention is fully given, Brice and the buyer stand a little off to the side in blatant puzzlement. Their faces are blank canvases for the kaleidoscopic expression of their various emotions. Above all else, confusion and shock reign supreme.

"Yo," the buyer pseudo-whispers in Brice's general direction, eying Gadea and the strips of blue lights on both sides of her particle gun's barrel. "Spider-Man got a sidekick now?"

Spider-Man lowers his outstretched hands and gazes to the side, where Gadea stands with her feet set wide and shoulders relaxed. "Do I have a sidekick?"

She spares him half a glance. "No." Then aims her particle gun at his chest and fires twice.

A deafening thwack follows two quick blue flashes from the muzzle of her gun, and is only superseded by the sound Spider-Man's back makes when it collides with the concrete bridge support beam. Pieces of the structure break off as the hero falls limply to the ground, the man-sized crater decorated by additional bullet holes Gadea only has a split second to react to. Her only halfway healed wounds as a consequence of one sadistic first mate slow her reflexes, and she catches one of Schultz's bullets in her shin guard as dives away.

It pangs of the carbon fiber surface, but it's a pain Gadea feels like a red hot fire poker in her tibia. Ending her defensive roll to the side in a crouch, she uses the neighboring vegetation for cover and fires two more energy beams at the tires of the van, reasoning to eliminate the possibility of a quick getaway. She misses, unfortunately, and Schultz momentarily gains the upper hand. Momentarily.

Before he can attempt to empty his clip into the top of Gadea's helmet, the gun is yanked from his grip and thrown into the nearby bushes. The architect of that small miracle, and her first victim, stands with a high jump and brushes the rubble off his chest and shoulders.

The nasty—at least, she thinks it's nasty. His mask is very expressive, but it is still a mask—look he directs to Gadea is all the consideration he gives her. Schultz, lacking his Saturday-night-special, has already cut and run to the driver's seat of the van. He's going to make a run for it. With all her would-be stuff!