Maya couldn't believe that she had followed through with Flash. She was walking home in the emptier streets of Queens, by herself, and taking her time. She had gone on a ... date with Jason Ionello, mainly just for entertainment, and he was the same as she remembered (which was not a good thing in her opinion).
It wasn't necessarily bad, but it wasn't good either. They had kind of just split after the event, and she watched him get into the taxi, telling him she would take the subway, before walking off and making her way home.
She liked the cool night air blowing her hair back, and plus, it was a more lowkey way to patrol (although she didn't have her suit or police radio with her, so it was a little more inconvenient than normal).
It was going all great until the catcallers.
Maya had walked past a group of drunk men, who seemed all too invested in their own incoherent and slurred conversation until she saw out of her peripheral vision that they were smacking each others' arms and nodding their heads toward her as she walked back.
They stood up behind her, and she sped up only slightly so as to not look too suspicious and wary, but wanting to get away faster.
And of course, cue the whistling.
"Where you goin' all by yourself, girlie?" one of them called out after her.
She didn't bother turning around as she kept walking on, but she could tell they were still following her with their eyes.
"Your mom's house," she called out.
"Why don't you give us a show?" she heard one of them say.
"Of me fucking your mom?" she yelled back, turning her head around.
There were five of them and three bottles being passed between them. She turned towards them with a heavy sigh and flashed them a sarcastic smile.
"You want a show?" she said under her breath and they didn't hear. "I'll give you a show."
She reached her arm back to where the zipper of her dress was, and they started hooting and hollering.
Maya didn't know what kind of idiot they were, thinking she would actually pull down the zipper. She took out one of the small knives she had hidden there, and before they could realize she wasn't in fact taking off her clothes, she threw it.
She didn't really have to use her abilities to throw knives well. Maybe it was assisting her, but after all the times in actually making the throwing motion to make it look natural, she had picked up some knowledge.
The knife sailed through the air, and the sharp object barely grazed the main perpetrator's ear and landed right next to his head. His cronies looked at him, before looking back at her in fear and running away, but he stayed.
She heard something dropping in from behind her, quickly peeked, and rolled her eyes when she realized it was Spandex-man from the night before.
He walked up to stand in line with her, and they both watched the man in front of them with scrutiny, wondering what he was going to do and what they would have to do.
The man reached up to his ear, touched it a bit, and brought it back up to his face to inspect the fresh blood on his finger. In an unexpected move, he smelled it before sucking it off in a vulgar fashion.
Both Maya and the guy in the suit next to her recoiled before exchanging a weirded-out glance. She didn't want to have any sort of friendly exchange with him, but considering their company, he seemed to be the only stable one there with her.
"Are you trying to turn me on?" he asked.
Maya opened her mouth to speak before shutting it again and resorted to an uncomfortable frown. Well, that's a different breed of pervert.
Spandex-man took the liberty of shooting webs at his arms, legs, and all over, effectively containing him and sticking him to the wall. Once he was for sure stuck, the man in the suit walked up to the man to inspect his handiwork, and Maya went to retrieve her knife.
"Pretty good," Spandex-man said to himself, pretending to wipe his hands against each other. He held up his hand for a high-five. "We make a good team."
She only raised her eyebrows and gave him an incredulous look before pulling out her knife from the wall next to the man.
"Okay," he said awkwardly, dropping his hand.
"Ouch," the ensnared man said. "That was rough."
Maya held her knife at him before realizing he might've liked that.
"This thing is pretty cool, though," the ensnared man said, referring to the webbing he was caught in.
"Yeah, thanks, man," said Spandex-man.
He sounded a bit hesitant, probably because it's not every day someone admires your work of trapping them.
"Yeah, this, uh—this has definitely awakened something in me."
Maya's eyebrows raised, and Spandex-man cleared his throat. They walked away quickly in the direction that Maya was originally walking.
When they were far enough away from the man, Maya turned to ask why the man in the suit was still walking with her, but right when she looked at him, she burst out laughing from remembering what had happened.
The initial shock of that whole situation had blown over, and Spandex-man burst out laughing, too. They were wheezing along, quoting the man through laughs, before Maya remembered she didn't like him and cleared her throat, quieting down. He followed suit, sensing the moment was over.
"I could've handled myself back there," she said, flipping her knife once, twice.
"I—I know," he said, rubbing the back of his neck, "but what kind of hero would I be if I didn't look out for the people?"
"One who could prioritize," she said. "So you're some sort of hero, huh?"
He made a noise to start speaking before blowing out a breath. "Well that could get philosophical—I mean, what even makes a hero? There's the entire question of morality—"
"But."
"—but I help people and catch criminals," he said. "So, maybe, yeah."
"Huh."
He looked at her before averting his eyes straight ahead of him again. "I'm not saying I'm some flashy superhero that—you know. I'm just your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man."
"Spider-Man," she repeated.
"That's me."
She turned to look at him, eyebrows furrowed. He looked at her, too, when he realized she was looking at him before clearing his throat and adjusting his mask (that didn't need adjusting) because of her scrutiny.
"Why are we still walking together?"
"I, uh, I figured I would walk you home," he said.
She raised her eyebrows and dropped her gaze down to the floor. "I said I was fine and could handle myself, did I not? There has to be something better for you to be doing right now."
"Right—right, but it's part of my duty to protect people, and ..." he trailed off a bit before regathering his thoughts. "It's—it's probably not super safe for someone to be walking home by themselves at this time."
"I guess," she said, not wanting to argue with him to get off her back.
They were able to walk a whole span of a building before Spider-Man spoke up again.
"That's a pretty dress," he said.
"Thanks."
"You, uh, going somewhere fun? Like—like on a date?"
She recoiled a bit and scrunched her nose. "Maybe I just like wearing nice dresses and walking around by myself."
"Right—right, yeah, no, I wasn't—I wasn't—"
He smartly chose to shut up. They walked the rest of the way in awkward silence. Sometimes, Maya would look over and catch Spider-Man looking like he wanted to say something, but nothing ever came out of it.
They reached the entrance of her apartment building, and the doorman looked at Spider-Man a bit oddly.
"This is me," she said.
"'Night, Ma—" He stammered a bit. "Ma'am," he coughed out awkwardly.
She furrowed her eyebrows, weirded out by the ma'am part, and also his flusteredness while saying it.
"'Night ... Spider-Man."
During patrol another night, Maya ran into Spider-Man again.
She was dressed in her vigilante outfit—black cloth covering almost every inch of her skin, with knives strapped down wherever she could find a good spot. She had a few bullets in her pockets in case she needed extra weapons as well.
At the beginning of the night, she saw him perched a few rooftops away from where she was. They both had their own devices zeroing in on police calls. Maya needed to talk to him and find out what the heck was going on with his existence. He gave a quick look over his shoulder and dropped down from the roof he was on.
Near the end of her patrol, she saw the trail he was leaving. It was a path to a trap, she figured, unless he also had the completely civil intentions of talking things out. She followed the clues of spider webs. It was too easy to not be a trap.
She followed them from rooftop across rooftop, until she found one where there was none. Spinning around, she caught her breath and looked around the city. Had she gone the wrong direction? Maya went back to the roof she was previously at, wandering around it.
It looked familiar. She walked around it, both trying to find a clue and trying to remember why it was so familiar. Then it struck her; it was a building she'd been on before when some guy had fallen through the roof.
And now she was falling through the roof.
You've got to be kidding me.
Maya had landed in a sticky web sort of thing—a giant spider web, if you will, spanning the edge of a boxing ring. Her weight caused her and the web to bounce a little.
She turned to find Spider-Man perched atop one of the four corner posts of the ring, and he cocked his head in scrutiny.
"Can't believe you fell—fell for that," he said, pointing up to the ceiling for emphasis.
Maya stifled a laugh at the voice crack that had occurred halfway through his statement.
"Can't believe your voice just cracked," she murmured. Of course, he heard it.
"Pretend that never happened."
"How old are you anyway?" Maya ignored him. "Twelve?"
Though her limbs were ensnared and she had little mobility, her powers still worked and she slipped her knife out of her boot, working it through the webbing in the most careful way possible.
"Nope."
"Oh gosh, I'd feel really bad for kicking a twelve-year-old's ass."
"I'm not twelve."
"You're pretty tall for twelve," she said, before cutting off the last strand that held her up.
She landed square on her back, but it was only a small fall so the air wasn't knocked out of her too hard to have dodged the web that he shot. She rolled out of the way before it could hit her and quickly weaved her knife in rows along the ring, cutting through the webbing.
Maya rolled around, dodging webs that he was shooting, as her knife finished slicing through the webs and they fell to the floor. She rolled underneath the ropes and off the platform, her fall the least bit grateful, before finding her way onto her feet outside of the ring.
"How old are you then?" she asked, hoping she could figure out something about his identity.
He scoffed as he shot a web that she easily dodged. "I'm not gonna tell you that. Again—the point of the mask."
Their fight was pretty lame considering Maya felt bad. She wasn't going easy on him as a thing of pity, but her typical attacks were knives. She normally only took on regular humans with no abilities who gave up after being held at knifepoint.
His main web-slinging powers weren't exactly getting sliced up by a knife. He was shooting out webs, while she dodged, and since there was no reason to play any sort of harsh offense, he was probably also holding his punches (or web shots).
"Can I have a range?" She dropped to the floor as he rapid-fire shot webs at her.
He paused to visibly think it over, his head lulling right and left before clicking his tongue. In the meantime, she pushed herself back to her feet and adjusted her garments.
"Definitely older than twelve," he said. His voice hitched to think about how specific he wanted to be. "Older than fifteen, younger than twenty-five."
They had moved so the ring wasn't between them anymore. Webs shot through the air, never finding the moving target they had originally been aiming for, and Maya took out a pack of bullets she had.
"Now you," he said.
She raised her eyebrows, though it was not like he could've seen that.
"Now me what?"
"I told you my age range; now you say yours."
"I never said I would," she said, eliciting a scoff from him. "Fine. Same as you—older than fifteen, younger than twenty-five."
She started sending the bullets at him, only at a regular speed that a human hand could throw them at.
He was dodging them at first before realizing that the velocity at which they were being shot at really wasn't that dangerous. He caught one with his hand and held it up in front of him, inspecting the small pellet of metal that had most likely been stolen from police fire.
"Are you tossing bullets at me?"
Maya shrugged. "You seem harmless enough."
He cocked his head to the side as a lost puppy would. "I have to say, quite frankly, I'm insulted." He tossed the bullet back to her.
"Well, I'm insulted you built some giant spider web for a giant fly," she said.
He gestured to her outfit. "You don't not look like a fly."
"It's called practicality," she said. "You don't need a tacky logo to be useful. Or maybe they're mutually exclusive, and look at that—" she gestured to the spider on his chest "—you have the tacky logo."
He scoffed before starting to laugh.
"What's so funny?" she said. She swore she had heard a laugh like that before, but it probably wasn't the best time to be trying to pinpoint a small sound.
"I get it. I get it—I do."
"Get what?"
Spider-Man pointed at her. "You were New York's hero before I got here, and that's why you're jealous."
"I'm not jealous," she said, holding up a finger, "and I wasn't their hero."
"Why not? You do what I do."
"Not exactly. You're sloppy."
He held up his arms defensively before gesturing back to himself. "I'm a vigilante. I'm vigilant."
"A bad one," Maya scoffed.
"And you're so great?" said Spider-Man. "Everyone thought you just left."
"Yeah, because I'm actually vigilant."
He shook his head, moving over to casually lean on the ropes of the fighting ring. "Not vigilant enough considering crime still exists."
She wished he could've seen the incredulous look on her face.
"You calling yourself a hero is a crime."
He raised his arms and shot two webs to the ceiling. Using his webs, he swung himself upward and over Maya's head, doing a flip in the air and landing behind her. She turned around, arms crossed at his theatrics.
"A crime that you're unable to stop," he said. "And who are you to talk about crime? You hold people at knifepoint."
"Better than using random fluid coming out of me," she said.
He held up a hand. "Hey, it's webbing that I designed using science. Not some strange phenomenon of white, sticky fluid coming out of me."
She opened her mouth to speak before quickly shutting it and shaking her head. He started shaking his head, too.
"Don't say anything."
"I don't think it's as strange as you say," she said at the same time.
"Don't say anything."
"It's completely normal, actually."
"Don't say anything."
She held her hands up in mock surrender.
"It's spider webbing, which—by the way—works in a way that's not murder," he said.
"I'm not committing murder," she said in defense. "I hold people up at knifepoint, but only those who deserve it."
"That exact attitude is why you're not the city's shining hero."
"I never said I wanted to be the shiny hero that upholds the law," she said.
He shrugged. "Then why are you fighting so lamely?"
"Fine," she scoffed. "You want more excitement?"
Spider-Man made a dramatic consideration of it, before nodding a bit. "I'll bite."
Maya held up a finger, telling him to wait, as she pulled out a random spoon she acquired from her pocket. She balanced it on her right wrist without revealing it. All her right fingers were extended except for the middle and ring fingers.
She quickly lifted her right hand up, and once her pointer and pinky fingers were extended and aiming at Spider-Man, she shot the spoon at him like how he shot his webs.
"Thwip," she added as the spoon bounced off his chest.
He raised his eyebrows. "Is making a mockery of me exciting to you?"
She pulled the spoon up and placed it on top of his head. "Is it to you?"
"I was prepared for more of a fight when the police on the bike said there was a vigilante named Knives," he said.
"Fine. If you really want a fight, I'll show you a fight," she said.
She didn't give him a chance to retort, or even think, as she started launching out the knives decorating her all over. He wasn't given many opportunities to shoot webs as he flipped about, dodging the knives. For her own entertainment, she also continued to balance the spoon on top of his head.
Maya felt her last knife slide out of her left boot and launched it with wild abandon. Wild abandon was not the best move.
Seeing as the knife was aimed straight for his face, she stopped it mid-air. At the same time, Spider-Man regathered his wits and shot out two webs—one, which he hoped would stop it, and two, where he grabbed the edge of the released strand and pulled it in, grabbing onto the handle of the knife.
"I believe this is yours," he said, waving it around a bit.
She clicked her tongue. "Yeah, I'll be taking that back."
Maya made a move to pull it back, except there was resistance because of how strong the webs were and Spider-Man's apparent adamancy in keeping the knife in his hand.
"Seriously?" she asked, flicking her eyes from the spoon to the white faux eyes of his mask to the knife in his right hand.
"If you want it so bad, why don't you come get—"
His voice sailed up an octave as she forced it towards her harder, and it resulted in her pulling him in as well. They were both thrown off and had no choice but to let the momentum carry them. His body slammed into hers and they fell to the ground.
Spider-Man held his knife-holding hand wrapped under Maya's lower back to prevent her body from slamming into concrete, and the other hand moved up to shoot a web. He held onto the strand with his left hand as it stuck to the wall, leaving him suspended an inch away from Maya and leaving Maya's head hovering inches above the ground.
The spoon could be heard clattering from behind them, and Maya released the breath she was holding from the anticipation of slamming her head onto the ground.
Spider-Man glanced up at the web strand that was holding them and back to Maya's dark eyes that weren't covered by her mask.
"We've gotta stop meeting like this," whispered Maya.
author notes
- author is bad at ending scenes, cry about it
- the reason why maya goes after peter/Spider-Man is really lame, but I just needed something to get them at a fight scene