2018-07-20-Is That You?
| Roleplay Log | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Is That You? | Date | July 20, 2018 |
| Location | Manhattan, NYC | ||
Over the past few days, there have been a deluge of text messages at random hours, sent to Gwen's phone by Anya. One of them said something about stopping a bank robbery, another a photo taken in one of NYU's labs depicting a jar of black ink and curiously familiar spider webbing. That photo simply was captioned: 'Working on something. Can't wait to show you.'
Night has fallen on a Friday in the Big Apple, when another SMS message is batted into a cell phone. 'Hey. Meet me? Got something rad to show you.' Anya punches the 'send' button, including her GPS data. She's perched atop a mid rise in uptown Manhattan, along the border where the Upper East strikes East Harlem, more affectionately known to some as Spanish Harlem. The woman has ditched her normal attire, and is shrouded in a costume of black and white. Her backpack rests nearby, and the hood of her costume lies flopping behind her head, against the shoulders.
Gwen is the sort of person who is never late without apologizing twenty times first. It doesn't stop her being late most days. Tonight, however, she is determined to be on time. She forgets to leave a message for her father, in fact. So today the message board reads:
Gwen, don't eat my pizza Dad
Gwen, I mean it!
...Damn it, Gwendolyne, I bought extra for you.
Today, Gwen is in her hoodie and jeans, weaving through the crowd nimbly in a way she never could before she was empowered. Dodging people is no trouble and dense crowds have gaps that she could thread a bike through with her current reflexes. She approaches the meeting spot with a slow stride, one hand on the left strap of her backpack... And stares.
"That is so... Cool! Oh my god!" Gwen chirps in her most suburbanite way. "Is that you?" Blue eyes blink a few times, slowly, as the girl approaches, fearlessly but still slightly cautious.
Resting in Anya's lap is a big cardboard box filled with tacos. Well, it had been filled with tacos... she's eaten at least half of them. At the voice, she turns her head slightly then excitedly moves the box to set it on the rooftop.
Palms down, feet spread, and with a spring into the air, she performs a picture perfect backflip and lands, facing Gwen. The white emblem of an angular spider covers her upper half, with extended 'legs' running down each leg and wrapping around each arm. Without the mask on, her punk hairstyle is quite apparent, and she's //gleaming//.
"You bet it is," she answers, then puts on her best modeling pose. "What do ya think?"
"Sexy without being ridiculous. Spider motif... Perfect ten." Gwen is framing Anya with her fingersl ike she might be about to take a photo and grinning delightedly as she shifts closer. She walks toward the young woman in front of her with the punk hair and the newly minted costume... And then fires a line of web past her. Thwp! The box of tacos is yanked down from the roof.
"I'm starving," Gwen relates past cramming the first one into her mouth. "Thnks." If they weren't for Gwen they are now, apparently. "Yuu look, mmf. Great."
With a laugh, Anya leaps off the rooftop in pursuit of those precious tacos. A single line is let loose from her wrist to slow her fall, and she leaves it dangling after her feet touch the ground.
"You remember how you said it disintegrates after a while?" she asks. "Well, it does, //but//... I found that if you weave a cross-knit pattern?" She demonstrates by whipping her hands back and forth across each other, forming a panel of white webbing that looks more like a sheet of paper than it does webwork. "It //doesn't//." She tosses the item toward Gwen, proving it to be flexible yet durable. "So... I //made// it. Out of silk." She twirls once, revealing that in the dim streetlight, there are no seams to be found. "Takes a beating, too, I tell you that!"
"That is super cool. I never even thought of trying that," Gwen marvels quietly now that the web panel has landed across the box of tacos. She even stops eating for a second, leaving the food woefully undefended. Anya is more than welcoem to take a couple, of course. They're hers. Gwen will no doubt devour the entire box if given an opportunity. "I bet it does. It's always been really strong stuff. Though..." She pauses for a second. "I don't know that much about yours, to be honest. I didn't get the webslinging power. Mine is synthetic. And yours definitely isn't. Maybe it was a different kind of spider?" It isn't something Gwen kept from Anya, but it never really came up prior to now. She watches for the other woman's reaction, still cradling dinner under one arm and a web panel in the other hand.
"Maybe," Anya answers. "Or, it could have been just, how the venom reacted with our DNA. I went looking for it, you know, but with all the rooms at NYU, it was pretty hopeless. Human DNA is pretty magnificent though, all sorts of weird things can happen when you start tweaking it. It's the only answer, you know. Something in that venom, it... changed us."
She turns back to Gwen, grinning at the tacos. "Appetite hasn't calmed down for me, either," she admits. "Go on. I already had a whole box before you got here." Her eyes brighten, and a good honest laugh comes next. "You should've seen the look on Paulo's face when I told 'em they were all for me."
"My dad does nothing but leave messages for me on the fridge saying I need to stop eating all of his food." Gwen rolls her eyes and then returns to stuffing tacos into her mouth until she resembles nothing more than a wide-eyed blonde chipmunk. At least she chews and swallows before continuing to speak. "Mmm. We'll probably never know. I haven't been able to track down much about the experiment either... Whatever it is, it definitely did a lot. But I've been like this for awhile and no negative side effects, so..." She gives a faint shrug. "That's got to be good enough, right? And I never need to worry about New York traffic ever again, so."
A similar eyeroll comes from Anya. "Abuela's saying the same thing. She keeps trying to blame it on //drugs//! Like most drugs make you //not// eat. Spanish Harlem's just gotten to her head." She laughs again at the part about New York traffic. "I'm still not convinced that I won't start laying eggs at my next cycle, you know," she points out, before turning to look toward the city proper. "I've still got a lot to practice. Headaches went away, like you said, but sometimes it gets... dizzy. You know, if I go too hard, try to do too much. That goes away too, right?"
"Just takes a bit longer," Gwen promises, nodding. She slows down on the tacos now and turns her gaze upward to the sky far over their heads. It doesn't stop her unwrapping the next morsel, even if it is not immediately shoved into her mouth. "You're not going to start laying eggs or anything. You'd've noticed the, um... Equipment growing in by now." A wry smile follows but it soon falls away, almost as if Gwen is entranced by what she is seeing. "You've got an awesome suit and fancy powers. Planning on fighting crime now?" Weirdly enough, there's no mockery at all. It's an honest question.
A snort is given at mention of 'equipment'. "Spinnerets are weird enough, thanks," Anya quips. Her jovial, borderline brash demeanor sobers at the question, though, and for a moment she glances upward to try and see what it is Gwen's looking for. She never was much of a stargazer; not that one could see any stars with such light pollution.
"Ya know, I wasn't planning on it," Anya answers. "Not until that bank robbery. It was a powered person... cops were trying to take her down, but the bullets were going right through her. I couldn't just stand there and not do anything when I knew I could at least //try// to do something they couldn't. The whole time I was freaking out, Gwen, but... not because of the danger. Because everyone could see my face."
Maybe Gwen is staring at a satellite. Maybe her vision is just better than Anya's, more enhanced. Or perhaps she is staring at the silhouette of the city passing overhead. She's listening to Anya but doesn't look away from whatever she is trying to observe. "There are some things you're not going to be able to stop," she observes then. "And it could put people around you in danger. I figured a mask would hide my identity, but it's not really that easy. You know?" Her soft voice is almost wistful, though Gwen doesn't elaborate on her melancholy. "But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do anything. How did things turn out with the bank robber you mentioned?"
"I guess it isn't," Anya answers. She looks down toward the sidewalk, chewing on her lip for a moment or two, various thoughts remaining locked behind brown eyes. "Well, it wasn't pretty, but we stopped her," Anya says. "And nobody got hurt, not really."
The younger woman folds her arms and turns to lean against a brick wall, eyes on Gwen now. "You know much about my neighborhood? Spanish Harlem?"
"Not really. I grew up on the border of Forest Hills and Rego Park, which is... Barely in the city at all." Gwen reaches up and drags her slender fingers through her blonde hair, pulling it away from her face. I mean, I've heard stuff about East Harlem but I don't think I really know much about it, no." Gwen finally shifts her gaze to meet Anya's, studying the other spider-person's eyes carefully as she makes her response. "Tell me?"
"Well," Anya answers, "you can read one part of the paper and it'll say, 'New York's Next Hottest Neighborhood'. Just don't look in the crime section, right? Because that's a whole other story. Honestly, ever since the Latin Kings sort of... just went back to Chicago, it's a crap shoot. Bit of a shooting gallery, you know, whether it's the Russians or the Italians fighting over corners, or if it's the Jamaicans wanting a piece of the proper uptown action." There is a certain note of bitterness in her language, a toughness that comes from having been raised in a world where 'beat on sight' is a Saturday afternoon special.
Behind brown eyes, the roughness is visible. This is a girl who is no stranger to violence, and has likely seen things that might make one's skin crawl. "Hasn't ever been anyone in a mask looking out for East Harlem. Trust me, I'd have known." She looks away, a frown on her face. "It's probably stupid to want to make a difference there. What is it they say, don't shit where you eat? But... I know those streets, Gwen. I know how they work, how they breathe. If I'm gonna put a mask on and start fighting crime... it doesn't make any sense to go anywhere else."
"I picked a fight with some Jamaicans and Italians not too far from Harlem a week or two ago," Gwen observes quietly. "Pretty sure they all hate my guts now if they didn't before. So if you need some backup...." She blinks once and then sucks in a deep breath. It's held carefully for several long moment before finally being released. "Just, um. So you don't need to test it for yourself. You're not bulletproof. Like, at all."
"Picked a fight?" Anya asks, a smirk growing on her face that serves to break some of the tension. The subtext isn't missed though, and said smirk falters. "Well," she says, and pushes away from that wall, letting her arms drop to her side. "You know, they say spider silk might be tough as Kevlar."
She waits for a moment, before grinning again. "But I'm not about to tryin' to find out. Alright?"
"Okay." Gwen nods then returns the grin with one of her own. "Then we should work on what you *can* do about it." She straightens then, picks up another taco and then looks out along the street. "We've got plenty of room. I should suit up and then we should go check out the city, see if we find anything interesting. Sound good?" While she awaits her answer Gwen also stuffs a taco into her mouth. Priorities, after all.
Anya is quick to nod her head in agreement. Of course, she was considering this in more of a philosophical manner, so, when Gwen suggests suiting up, her eyes go wide. "Wh... right //now//?"
Adrenaline begins to work its magic. Anya turns away, chewing on her lip a bit. "Whoo boy. Alright, well, we're at East 109, shit always gets ugly when you get up around 118. That's not too far, really." Always the chatterbox! She gulps for a moment before reaching up to pull the mask up and over her head. It leaves the lower half of her face visible, but her eyes are shrouded in over-exaggerated, white spider-lenses, and her punk style hair is forced into a ponytail by a small hole in the back of the mask.
"We don't /have/ to run into trouble," Gwen replies with a shrug. "I wouldn't worry about it!" Then she's throwing back her hood and stepping into the shadow of the nearby building to pull off her hoodie and reveal the Spider-Woman costume she wears underneath. It doesn't take her long to disrobe and stuff her clothes into her backpack before tucking it somewhere out of the way. Then she starts to climb. Gwen has had a lot of practice, and she is /fast/. Gymnastics and most importantly practice play a huge role here.
"The most important thing to learn is how to keep up." Gwen will wait for Anya at the top but then she's planning on taking off for the far edge of the rooftop at a sprint. "So let's see what you can do, Spider-Girl. No webs. Come on!"
Hand over foot, Anya scales the wall behind Gwen, her own speed not quite matching. She's simply breathing too heavily for her body to make the most of its resources; she's still frightened of it, terrified by the unnatural way in which this simply //works//.
Once topside, Anya is steeling herself for whatever comes next. Bravery is written upon her exposed mouth, but it's short lived. "No webs??" she asks, but there's no time to argue. She's off, running after Gwen with remarkably fast legs. "Parkour, parkour, parkour," she whispers to herself, thinking of the friend who showed her the ropes not more than a couple nights back.
"No webs. Don't worry, we're actually pretty resistant to blunt trauma! If you fall you'll catch yourself or you'll shake it off in a week or two." Gwen actually looks back long enough to flash Anya a grin. She's making this look pretty effortless, actually. Either their physical abilities are very different or Anya needs to get her head in the game.
Gwen takes the first leap without even slowing down. It's more than ten feet. By all rights, it should be next to impossible but she doesn't appear to have even hurt her knees sticking that landing. That's encouraging, at least. There are some other rooftops ahead that won't be quite so easy to navigate.
"Well, //that// explains //that//," Anya answers cryptically, before leaping the first gap in a manner nearly as effortless as Gwen. Her landing comes in the form of a foot to head roll, sending gravel spraying in a wake behind her as she comes up charging. She's still not ready to test just how resilient her knees really are, it would seem, but she did notice Gwen's landing with a bit of surprise. "Okay, Okay, Okay," she pants to herself, and takes the next leap without the somersault. There is a preemptive wince, but no pain; in fact, the shock of landing is like a surge of energy through her muscles and bones, spurring her onward. "Whoa!" she exclaims in response. "//Mierde//!"
A couple more rooftops go by like this. Nothing too challenging, now that Anyau nderstands just how much momentum plays a role. If you don't bleed off the excess force of a jump, then the opposite reaction of hitting the ground that far only helps you move even faster. Physics, right? Normally, she'd probably have blown out both of her knees by now. But, as promised, the body does strange things after being directly altered DNA-warping spider venom. School would've made it out to be more like a recipe for cancer than anything. Funny how that works.
This upcoming run is different. The next building is a bit tlaler than the last. Two stories. Gwen takes the leap and catches herself against the side of the brick wall, clinging to it with nothing to support her but sheer force of will and electrostatic resistance. She shimmies herself along the side of it and then starts upward. A foot is placed against a window sill and it's used to get a bit of upward momentum so she can crest the apartment building.
"You're doing great, Anya! Don't let your nerves get to you on this next one, alright? You can do this." So saying, Gwen begins to run again, a headlong dash that turns into a long, soaring leap. It has to be when she's clearing a small street. Forty feet? Who wants to set a world record tonight?
...Does it count when you have superpowers?
Run, run, run! Anya keeps up the chase, leaping from one building to the next. The next one does have her slowing up a bit, a touch of uncertainty coming to her. "Great," she breathes. "Now don't fuck it up, Anya!"
Its a less than graceful leap, hands flailing about for a moment. She pulls in just in time to catch brick, and slides down a bit before flexing her fingers and toes the right way; microscopic, super strong hairs shoot out from her skin, through the spider silk of her uniform, and stop her sliding abruptly. "Oof!" she verbalizes, before crawling up after Gwen.
Nerves? Big jump? Must be E 116th, Pete Pascale Pl! "Oh, shit!" she cries out, but charges anyway, kicking dust up behind her with every powerful footfall.
Below, a kid in a window looks out, trying to find out what the noise above is all about; two spider women are what he sees, and his eyes are lit up with glee.
Anya gives forth a ferocious yell and leaps with all of her might. Over the street below she soars, eyes wide behind the mask as she looks down. Halfway through, she tucks her arms and legs against herself, feeling the air whooshing over her like a bullet in a wind tunnel.
It's hard to make out the noise of the city when you're bareening through the air,the rush of the wind screaming past on all sides and at all angles as Anya makes the momentous eighteen meter leap across 116th. Gwen is just ahead, watching as the newer Spider-Woman is making the final leap of faith. SHe has her arms outstretched, apparently ready to catch Anya? Welcome her to the roof? It's hard to tell when hurtling through space at a ridiculous speed with cars and people just meters below.
Chariots of Fire might as well be playing, but the needle is scratched upon a record when Anya hits the lip of the receiving rooftop with her ass. She bounces and flips, going right past Gwen and rolling end over end before fighting herself. "Gah!" she exclaims, and promptly checks her limbs for damage. "Wait, did I just -" She points at the impact point, a cement wall that now has a huge chunk taken out if it, vaguely shaped like her own posterior. She bends over and twists, eyeballing herself. "That should've broken my ass!" she exclaims.
On the other end of 116th, the boy snickers and ducks back inside.
"I told you you were tougher now," Gwen replies, though she's fighting back some laughter. She's not the snickering child nearby, at least, though she probably saw him while she stood facing out from the building. The blonde walks over to her friend, that grin broadening as she comes clos. "You were great. I was a little worried about that last jump but I guess I didn't really need to be! How do you feel?" Gwen looks Anya over briefly, ostensibly checking for any injuries. "Pretty good? ...Winded at all?"
"Guess so," Anya breathes, having not really understood until now just how much tougher she's become. She reaches down to rub at her tailbone, frowning just a little. "I mean, it hurts, but... barely." She then puts a hand against her chest, and shakes her head. "Not really! I think I'm just anxious. I mean, I ran //fifty// laps at school the other night." Her breathing is visibly slowing, not quite as quickly as it mounted but much more quickly than it should slow for a normal person.
"You probably feel like you're going to leap out of yoru skin at any moment, right?" Gwen smiles somewhat ruefully and nods. "I felt the same way. I probably would have leapt off a cliff if someone told me too. Not sure how that would've went." She takes another deep breath, holding it as she turns her gaze upwards once more. It's a couple seconds before Gwen breaks the silence again. "This is going to work. At some point we need to do strength exercises. We still don't know if our limits are the same..."
"Something like that," Anya answers. "I figure it's... metabolic changes. I just can't //stop//. Haven't stopped for days, but when I did, I slept for more than twelve hours." She steps closer to the middle of the roof so that she can take her mask off without anyone down below seeing her face. "Limits?" she asks, looking over to Gwen with curiosity. "What... how strong are //you//, Gwen?"
Gwen tilts her head slightly at this, staring off across the buildings in front of her. She seems to be thinking carefully. "Well, um. I had trouble picking up a van but I- think it was more because I kept tipping over than because it was too heavy. I think I managed around - ten tons? When I really had no other choice but to make it? I'm... Kind of guessing. I did a little research after but I didn't catch the model. I don't really know how much that truck weighed. Normally, it's around five. I guess? I mean. I can bench press a pickup truck even with these noodly couch potato arms."
For a moment, Anya simply cant believe her ears. Her eyes go wide, and she takes a step close. "Ten... //tons//?" She considers this for a moment, then walks back over to collect the chunk of cement she'd broken off with her landing. It's remarkably easy to lift, but she comes back with it, and looks at it for a long moment. Then, her fingers begin to clench, trembling for a moment. Suddenly there comes a crack, a crunch, and a snapping sound; the slab of concrete bursts into half a dozen pieces, with dust spilling between Anya's now closed fingers.
"You hadn't noticed that yet? Man. I broke my favourite drumsticks like an hour after I got home. I couldn't help noticing I was too strong for everything in sight." Gwen is grumbling,but it's good-natured. She turns to watch as Anya experiments with the concrete. "Ten. Maybe even fifteen." She nods once, firmly. "But we're going to end up having to deal with people who are even stronger than that." She walks over to the edge of the roof and eyes the hole Anya made on her landing. "That... Was at least a few hundred pounds. Was it heavy?"
"I could tell it was heavy," Anya answers, "But it kinda felt like... like picking up a box full of tacos." She opens her and, making a quiet 'ick' sound at her dusty glove and promptly slaps it against her hip a few times to get it clean. "I also noticed, well... I got into abuela's tequila and, well... I don't think I can get lit anymore." Which is probably a good thing, but the rough kid in her seems disappointed in that.
"If you got angry and weren't thinking you could literally throw a car at someone. Probably for the best that we can never get drunk ever again." Gwen shakes her head at that. "I know it's for the best for me. I'll stick to throwing salt shakers or something like my grandmother."
A laugh escapes again, Anya grinning ruefully. "Your abuela throws salt shakers too? Must be a generation thing." She considers all of this for a moment, before suddenly her eyes go wide. "Oh no. Abuela! I forgot to tell her I wasn't coming home soon." She winces and looks to Gwen with a panic. "Left my backpack on a rooftop back on 109." The panic fades in favor of a smirk. "Race ya?"
