Peter Parker, hunched over the ledge of a building in Midtown, let out a sigh that briefly fogged the inside of his mask. The night breeze rustled the copy of the Daily Bugle he held.
"'Hero or Menace? The Final Verdict on Spider-Man,'" he murmured to himself. "Jameson, never change. Or better yet, please change. A little variety wouldn't kill me."
These were the days that, in theory, allowed him to be a normal student. But normality was a flexible concept after spending months crawling through the aftermath of Stacy's death. The nightly patrols had become a distraction, a noise that drowned out the echo of her laugh in his mind and the urge to smash Norman's face in.
A sharp scream shattered Peter's thoughts. He swung into action with a grace only he possessed, clinging to a brick wall and scanning the scene. A child, no more than six years old, was pointing desperately at the sky while his mother tried to calm him.
"I don't see any alien symbiote, or a glider-riding goblin... where is it...?" His gaze followed the direction of the little finger until he saw a red balloon, serenely ascending into the orange twilight. "Ah. Critical mission. General alert."
With a smile beneath his mask, he ran along the wall, launching into a flip that sent him directly toward the balloon. He caught it in one fluid motion, halting his fall with a web and gently descending to the child's eye level.
"I think this is yours."
The child's eyes lit up, the tears instantly gone. "Spider-Man!"
"Thank you, really," said the mother with a relieved smile.
"All in a day's work for your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man." He stretched out his arm to swing away but stopped upon hearing applause. People on the sidewalk, witnesses to the feat, were cheering him on.
"Well done, Web-Head!"
"You're the best!"
For a moment, the void in his chest filled with a warm tingling. He knew it was silly, he knew it...
"I wish I could stay and enjoy this unexpected recognition," he said, his stomach growling eloquently, "but even superheroes need fuel." Deciding to get something to eat, he shot a web and swung a few blocks to his favorite hot dog stand.
"Hey, Bob. The usual, please."
"You got it, Spidey."
Peter rummaged in his belt. Web fluid, trackers, solvent... "Oh, no." He sighed. "Bob, cancel the order. I left my wallet in my other suit."
"Don't worry about it, Web-Head," said Bob, handing him the hot dog. "This one's on the house."
"Really?"
"Absolutely. Remember that elevator in that building you saved last week? My granddaughter was in it."
"I can't take advantage of your generosity, but this is taking an incredibly good turn for a normal day..."
A blinding, silent purple flash lit up the sky like a sickly bolt of lightning, followed by the screech of tires and a muffled scream.
"I should have learned by now not to finish that sentence out loud," Spider-Man sighed. "Save it for me, Bob, I'll be right back!"
He leaped, sticking to the wall of the nearest building and scaling it with spider-like speed. From the rooftop, his eyes scanned the chaotic scene. A taxi had skidded, crashing into a fire hydrant. But that wasn't what took his breath away.
At the epicenter of the flash, on the cracked and steaming asphalt, lay a figure.
It was a girl, a bit smaller than him, dressed in a suit as black as midnight, so dark it seemed to absorb the streetlight. A black cape was tangled around her legs. A hood covered her head completely, with no opening for skin, only two white, empty panels where eyes should be and pointed bat-like ears. On her chest, there was a yellow symbol: a stylized bat.
"Nice people, free food, and now... a goth girl falling from the sky?" he murmured to himself. "I definitely took the wrong turn into the wrong universe this morning... or got really lucky."
He descended to street level, landing softly a few meters from her. The few pedestrians who hadn't fled watched with a mix of fear and curiosity.
"Hey, are you okay?" he asked, approaching cautiously.
The girl didn't respond; she seemed to be there, analyzing. Her body tensed, her fists clenched.
—Hey, easy, I just want to help. —He reached out a hand to touch her shoulder.
It was then that his spider-sense exploded in his skull like a bomb siren.
DANGER!
He moved instinctively, but not fast enough. The girl spun with physics-defying speed, her leg describing a perfect, lethal arc. Her heel struck the side of Peter's mask with the force of a sledgehammer. The impact slammed him back-first into a shop door, splintering the wood. Peter reacted quickly, moving to dodge her next blow. She was fast, very fast.
"Ow! Wow!" he gasped, shaking his head to clear his vision. "Well, that definitely wasn't a dream. And my subconscious isn't that twisted."
The girl was already standing, in an impeccable combat stance, fluid and lethal. She didn't say a word. She simply observed him with her head tilted, reading every one of his muscle tics, every micro-movement that betrayed his next action.
"Who are you?" shouted Peter, dodging another blow that nearly broke his jaw.
The young woman didn't respond; she seemed cold and a little confused. Her movements were precise, too precise. Each strike was faster, sharper, more controlled than the last.
Peter jumped backward and landed on a nearby wall, trying to see her face under the dark hood. "Look out! I'm one of the good guys!"
She tilted her head, squinting as if deciding whether to believe him, reading every muscle contraction, every shift in balance. Then, in a low tone, she finally uttered a single word.
"Batgirl."
That voice... he thought, staring at her as she began to circle him again, muscles taut like springs. She's my age.
That hit him harder than any punch. Beneath the mask and the precision, she wasn't an assassin; she was just a scared girl, no older than... maybe nineteen or twenty at most.
But before he could speak again, she lunged at him like lightning. Peter barely managed to grab her wrist, pulling her just enough to make her look him in the eyes again.
—Listen —he said, his voice softer, almost pleading—. You don't have to fight me.
"Look, I don't want to fight. I'm just trying to understand what..." His spider-sense warned him again. She charged. Peter barely dodged a palm strike aimed at his throat. "Hey! Seriously!" It seemed with each blow she moved faster.
She attacked again, with a series of kicks and punches that were a blur of motion. Peter defended himself only with reflexes and webs, dodging and blocking. It was easy, but only because he noticed she didn't really want to hurt him either.
"This is incredible! But stop!" He shot a burst of webs at her, which she dodged with a flip that seemed to defy gravity.
Suddenly, the street filled with noise and the sound of vehicles intensified around them. Unmarked black vans screeched to a halt at both ends of the street, and men in dark suits and armor swarmed out, aiming advanced rifles at them.
"SHIELD," Peter cursed under his breath.
The girl turned towards them, her stance even tenser.
"Freeze! Both of you! You're surrounded!" shouted an agent.
The girl looked at the agents, then at Spider-Man, then at the web still hanging from a lamppost. In a fraction of a second, she calculated the odds, the angles, the intentions. Peter saw the change in her body language; the fight was over for her.
"Wait, don't..." he started to say.
She ignored him. To Spider-Man, his spider-sense warned him not to do it, and in a move of pure audacity, she ran straight towards the edge of the building, used an agent as a springboard to propel herself, and leaped into the void.
—Idiot! —shouted Peter, launching himself after her.
But she didn't fall. She caught the web line Peter had left earlier and, using her own momentum, swung in a wide arc, letting go to disappear as silently as she had appeared.
Spider-Man landed on the rooftop where she had vanished, only to find... nothing. Just the night breeze and the distant sound of SHIELD sirens.
"Great," he muttered, running a hand over his mask's visor. "A Batgirl, SHIELD on my doorstep, and my hot dog is getting cold." He looked into the darkness where she had disappeared, with a small mix of worry and fascination. "This... this is going to be a problem."
Down in the street, Nick Fury stepped out of one of the vans, his good eye severely scanning the scene, definitely looking for him.
"Okay, Parker," Peter murmured to himself, looking at the red balloon still tied to the lamppost, an absurd reminder of how simple his life had been just minutes ago. "What the hell have you just gotten yourself into?"
-A few blocks away-
Cassandra Cain clung to the shadows of a building's ledge, panting... What happened? One moment she was patrolling, and the next... what happened? Every muscle screamed, every wound burned, and the whole world was a torrent of impossible data.
Where? The question echoed terrifyingly in her head. How?.. Who?
She closed her eyes, trying to calm the panic. She started to remember the Batcave. The smell of stone and Wayne Enterprise technology. Her talking to Bruce, but then came the... pain. An all-encompassing pain, as if the universe itself was tearing her apart. And then, nothing. And then, here.
"It doesn't make any sense."
The man in the spider suit... No... he wasn't a man. He was a boy. His movements gave him away. He had to be more or less her age. He wasn't hostile, just surprised..... when she approached him, his body didn't say "kill". It said "help". He wanted to help, but for her, the fear, the confusion, were stronger, the here and now were stronger. She had attacked. As she always attacked.
And now she was here. Lost. Again.
Alone.
She sank deeper into the darkness, wrapping herself in her black cape.She simply stayed there, trembling, a statue of fear and pain in a city that wasn't hers, wondering if, once again, she was completely alone in the world.
The tingling on the back of his neck wouldn't stop. For Peter, his spider-sense had always been like a thermometer for imminent danger, and now it was going crazy over something he didn't understand or know what was happening. Now, it was a needle being driven in, oscillating between a constant buzz and spikes of pure adrenaline.
"Parker." Nick Fury's voice, rough as sandpaper, cut through the night from below. He didn't use a megaphone. He knew Spider-Man could hear him. "Get down. Now. This is not a request."
Peter looked at the red balloon, a ruby red heart against the wet asphalt and a terrible day. His normal day was over, and he had only been on the ground for a few minutes. With a sigh, he dropped from the rooftop, landing with a dull thud in front of the director of SHIELD.
"Fury. What an unexpected surprise. Did you come for the fire hydrant? Because I warn you, the city water department is very territorial with its..."
"Who was she?" Fury interrupted, his single eye boring through the mask.
"Who was who? The girl in the party goth outfit? No idea. She showed up, we chatted a bit about the weather, we argued, and she flew off."
"Don't waste my time!" Fury growled, taking a step forward. "A transdimensional energy event materializes in the middle of Manhattan. Out of it falls an individual with advanced, unknown combat technology. And you, coincidentally, are here to greet her. Do you want to tell me your version, or shall we do it at the Triskelion?"
Peter felt a stab of frustration. "My version is that I was about to bite into a hot dog that, by the way, is turning into a fossil at the stand. Then I saw her fall, I tried to help her, and she reacted as if I were a danger, she got scared. Suddenly, your boys in black show up with the subtlety of an elephant in a china shop and scare her even more. If she left, it's thanks to you."
Fury studied his expressionless face, or at least what he could see of it. "That person is a national security asset. And you will help us find her."
"Me? Look, boss, I deal out street justice and photograph my alter ego for an editor who hates me. I'm not a bounty hunter."
"She saw you. She interacted with you. You are our only point of contact." Fury moved closer, lowering his voice to a dangerously calm tone. "Either you cooperate and we find her to secure her and understand what the hell happened, or I start seriously wondering what connection you have to this event. And you won't like where those questions lead."
"Fine," he sighed, defeated. "But if I find her, it won't be with handcuffs. She's scared."
"What she is, is armed and dangerous," Fury corrected. "Find her. And call me." He tossed him a small communicator. "Don't fail me."
Without another word, Fury turned on his heel and got into the van.
"Idiot," Peter whispered, as if he was going to hand her over.
The SHIELD convoy dispersed as quickly as it had arrived, leaving a solitary Peter Parker in the street, with a communicator in his hand and the weight of a manhunt on his shoulders.
Meanwhile, Cassandra was moving.
It was the only thing she knew how to do, the only thing she could do right now. Start moving like a madwoman. Become a shadow in this city, a whisper of cloth against the wind as she used her grapple to move. Batgirl slipped through alleys, clung to ledges, her black cape blending with the shadows. But every corner seemed new to her.
The faces in the streets were unfamiliar to her. This city breathed with a different pulse than Gotham's.
Home. No.
Babs. No.
Steph. No.
Bruce. No.
There were no anchors here. The people she would want to contact... she tried to access the Wayne Enterprise network. There was nothing. She couldn't find the satellites. Only emptiness.
She stopped on a rooftop, next to a large tower with a huge, illuminated 'A'. She watched the people below. Families. Couples. Friends. Laughter and bodies relaxing in company. A sharp, familiar pain pierced her chest. It was the same loneliness she had felt as a child, before him... before Batman...
Why? Why again?
Her body, still aching, shuddered, but it wasn't just the cold or fear; this was a fear she knew all too well.
She closed her eyes, trying to find a reference point, something, someone her body could read and understand.
And then, she remembered.
The spider-boy.
His movements… they were fast, erratic, but not bad. When she hit him, his body didn't show rage. It showed surprise. And after… concern. Even when the soldiers arrived, his posture wasn't one of attack towards her, it was one of… frustration? Concern?
He hadn't wanted to hurt her. He had wanted to help her. And that was exactly what she needed.
But in the ocean of confusion that was her mind right now, he was the only buoy she could cling to, the only one who could help her.
She didn't know how to find him. She didn't know if she should.
But in the silence of her mind, the word "alone" was too heavy to bear again in a city that wasn't hers. Maybe... maybe a calculated risk was better than a certain sentence.
As she thought this, a familiar figure was swinging between the skyscrapers, a red and blue arachnid against the canvas of the city lights. He was moving fast, searching for her before someone else did.