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mangoisms · 1 year

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wolves without teeth ━ miyuki kazuya in which you get bitten by a radioactive spider and attempt to hide your secret identity from your childhood best friend and it all goes as well as you think it will.

━ chapter one: be the catapult to storm the gates

━ word count: 6.4k

━ warnings: brief portrayal of domestic abuse and violence

━ masterpost

You should’ve known your day would be shitty after you got hit in the face by the drone.

The guy had lost his shit and started screaming at you for ruining his expensive drone. You kept it going because hello, you were the one hit in the face with it! Right on your temple! You could’ve died!

Okay, maybe not that last part.

Since… everything happened, you’re fairly durable.

Hard to kill. Like… a cockroach.

So it couldn’t have killed you. But it gave you a nasty cut, the area probably red and swollen, too, aching when you move your head too fast.

Then you realized you had lunch with your friends in fifteen minutes and you were all the way in Minato when you needed to be in Shinjuku. You could’ve made it with time to spare but then you had to save a dog who ran in the way of a truck that didn’t have the time to brake. And then a little old lady waved you down to help with her groceries and how could you say no to that?

You aren’t complaining — you’re happy to help these people. Really. But you still ended up getting to Waseda, specifically the Humanities building where you hide your stuff, with only two minutes left to spare; two minutes to change into your normal clothes, hide your suit on the roof, and attempt to fix your appearance so that you didn’t look like you were just sweating in your suit for two straight hours as you swung across Tokyo.

More than that, with everything that has happened in the past six months, it is… imperative that you try to be on time.

Tardiness has, sadly, become your best friend. Late for class, late for games, late for hang outs. Your excuses aren’t that great, either. Your friends are patient with you for the most part but you can tell it is starting to raise some red flags. You cannot afford for them to look too closely at it. It would raise too many questions — questions you cannot afford to answer.

So, naturally, in your haste to be on time, you completely forget about your run-in with the drone. You’re only reminded of it when you meet your friends at Unicafe 125, at your usual table by the large windows next to the maple tree, red leaves glowing under the sunlight, and then —

“WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE?!”

It perhaps speaks to how bad the cut looks that neither Kuramochi, Wakana, or Kazuya scold Eijun for his volume.

“Gross,” Kuramochi says.

“Oh, my god,” Wakana gasps at the same time.

Kazuya just raises an eyebrow and tugs at your wrist, pulling you closer.

“It’s nothing,” you pant, a little out of breath. The only time you ever are is times like these, when you’re swinging yourself back to campus as fast as you can, then scrambling to change when you arrive, and practically sprinting to wherever you need to go.

“That doesn’t look like nothing,” Wakana says, looking like she wants to climb over the table to you. Eijun is already halfway on it. Kuramochi tugs half-heartedly on his arm.

“It’s fine,” you say, dropping into your seat beside Kazuya with Kuramochi on your left. “It’s from earlier. Banged my head on the counter in the kitchen.”

One of your more convincing lies, as, since moving into the shared house you all rent two years ago, all of you have dropped something on the floor in the kitchen and banged your head on the edge of the counter coming up. Eijun the most out of all of you.

“Do we need to wrap you in bubble wrap or something?” Kazuya asks lightly, fingers grasping your chin to turn your head, the affected area on your left temple. “This is, what, the third time this month?”

“Try the fiftieth in a couple months,” Wakana mutters.

“It’s not that bad,” you protest.

“It kind of is,” Kuramochi says.

“You were never this clumsy when we were kids,” Kazuya adds.

“I’m a growing girl.”

He spares you a wry look. “You’re twenty-one.”

“The only thing still developing is your brain,” Wakana says matter-of-factly. “All of our brains.”

“Especially yours, Sawamura,” Kuramochi snickers.

“My brain is fine, thank you very much!” He stands abruptly, jostling the table a little, golden eyes set determinedly on you. “This Sawamura Eijun will run to the health center to pick up some bandages for you, senpai!”

“Thank you, Eijun.”

He salutes you — Kazuya and Kuramochi snicker and Wakana rolls her eyes — and then he takes off, practically sprinting out of the cafe.

“How’s your head?” Wakana asks sympathetically.

“Mild headache but it’s fine.” You’re convinced that is from stress rather than your wipeout with the drone.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Kuramochi asks, holding up four fingers.

“Two,” you say, just to mess with him.

Kazuya snickers and pulls his bag into his lap, digging through it.

Kuramochi glares at you but it holds little heat. “What date is it?”

“It’s July third… summer regionals are starting soon, aren’t they?”

Kazuya laughs and Kuramochi finally cracks a grin. “Well, if you’re joking like this, then you’re definitely fine.”

“Summer regionals are starting for Seido, though, aren’t they?” Wakana asks, peeling off the wrapper of her chocolate chip muffin.

“Tetsu says they’ve got good prospects,” Kuramochi says.

“Well,” you muse, “with him under Kataoka’s guidance this season, I’m sure.”

Kazuya pulls out a bottle of aspirin from his bag, shaking out two pills for you. They don’t work on you (for it to have an effect, you’d need far more than that) but you appreciate the thought, anyway.

More so when he pushes your usual cup of hot chocolate and accompanying croissant toward you.

You take a minute to calm your still pounding heart, to be extra vigilant of your strength. Your adrenaline is still pumping and if you aren’t careful of your grip, you’ll break the mug.

Yeah, you only went through that once a few months back. It’s less an issue of burning yourself — like you said, you’re durable — and more you were able to write off that incident as a freak accident. If it happened again, you don’t think you could use that excuse again.

With that in mind, you take the pills and carefully pick up the mug, throwing them into your mouth and taking a sip. You set the mug back down gently onto the table.

Eijun returns, then, a little sweaty from the unforgiving July heat, with probably too much first aid supplies in hand.

Kuramochi voices your thoughts — less kindly, though, as usual. “That’s too much, idiot. She’s not bleeding out.”

“It doesn’t hurt to be careful!”

“Inside voices, Eijun,” Wakana presses.

Eijun ignores them, coming to you. “Here you go, senpai! Do you need anything else?”

“What’s with this sudden respect for your senpai, huh?” Kazuya asks, prying the supplies out of Eijun’s hands. “You’re never this respectful to me.”

“You play too many games! It’s not nice!”

Kazuya laughs. Eijun scowls.

You reach for his hand, squeezing it gently. “Thank you, Eijun. I appreciate it.”

That mollifies him. He beams. “Of course!”

Kuramochi wrestles him back to his seat, muttering about his volume.

Kazuya takes control of the first aid supplies. If not because he has a decent grasp on some medicine due to his studies in kinesiology and health science, then because he has years of experience from being patched up by you when you were kids.

You sip your hot chocolate as he cleans the cut.

“Not even a flinch. This really is happening too often,” he says with an underpinning tone of disapproval that makes you want to curl into yourself.

“It was just an accident,” you mumble.

“Accidents that keep happening.”

“Yeah, I hate to agree with him, truly,” Wakana says. “But he’s right.”

Kuramochi grunts in agreement. “You in an underground fighting ring or something? If you are, don’t hold out on me.”

You snort. “As if you’d risk those precious hands of yours.”

Kazuya lets out an amused exhale. You chance a glance at him. His eyebrows are still furrowed. The back of your neck tingles. He’s thinking too hard about it. All of them are.

Goosebumps prickle your skin as it usually does at hearing that ever-so-vigilant voice in the back of your head.

Kazuya swabs some antibacterial ointment onto the cut, then covers it with the band-aid.

“Don’t deflect,” Kuramochi snaps. “You’ve been weird.”

“I make it my mission to be a little weird and off-putting every once and a while. It’s important to do that in life.”

“Every once and a while?” Wakana asks, eyebrow raising, brown eyes sharp and calculating. She looks too much like Kazuya like that.

By the weirded out look Eijun sends her, you guess he thinks the same. It makes you smile.

“It’s not funny,” Kuramochi adds.

You cough. “That’s not…”

“First, you quit the cheerleading team,” Wakana says and okay, here we go, this is going to happen whether you like it or not. You wonder if you could excuse yourself to the bathroom.

You barely float an inch off your seat before Kazuya slides his chair up besides yours, throws an arm around your shoulders, and pulls you snug into his side. Come on.

(As if you can really complain. It’s nice to feel the weight of his arm over your shoulder, the heat of him pressed against you.

You could get out of his grasp.

You could do that and more but… you’re a glutton. You’ll stay right here, even if they give you the third degree.)

“And don’t lie and say it was to help with CIE!” Kuramochi puts in. “You haven’t taken on more with them at all!”

(Center for International Education — Waseda’s student exchange department, basically. You used to help the new kids coming in, even held a few tutoring sessions in Japanese for extra cash. They’re right. You haven’t picked up any more hours than your usual ones.)

“You don’t go to our games anymore!” Eijun says, pouting.

“Hey, the season is over —”

Kazuya squeezes you. “That’s not what he’s talking about and you know it.”

“Look, I went to the finals in April! And the championship last month! It’s just… you know it’s so hot these days… climate change is just so —”

“And!” Kuramochi continues, eyes narrowed. “You’re suddenly not a lightweight anymore.”

Referring to your tolerance of alcohol.

That one is harder to excuse.

After all, you can’t tell them that the amount of alcohol it would take to get you even a little buzzed would probably put down a cow.

“I’ve been, uh, practicing.”

“I think they call that alcoholism,” Kazuya says.

Kuramochi and Wakana narrow their eyes further at you. Even Eijun is squinting. God knows what look Kazuya is giving you now.

You let out a nervous laugh. “It’s a joke! Guys, it’s fine. It’s fine. I quit the team because I wanted to focus on school. It’s our last year. I haven’t worked more with the CIE like I wanted to because of my hours at the rec center. And the games, you know, it was just… I was busy. I’m sorry.”

The truth is, they overstimulate you like crazy. But you’d only attempted to attend the games in April, when they were in the midst of the Tokyo Big Six tournament and those games were between Waseda and Keio, universities that had a century of rivalry between them so tempers were certainly running high, especially when Waseda won.

Before then, after everything happened, you hadn’t attended any games and you didn’t attend any more than you needed to in June, when the National Collegiate Baseball Championship was being held, where Waseda represented the Big Six.

Things are better now, you think. You’ve improved at phasing out the extra sensory information. Like, several months ago, you’d gone to a party and your senses had gone off for a girl crying over her boyfriend breaking up with her. Not, you know, actual danger. You’re better at that now. Much better.

(You still helped to comfort her, though. It was only fair since you’d barged into that room like the house was on fire.)

“Oh, who cares about the games and the alcohol,” Wakana says, ignoring the guys’ protests. “But let’s face it. You’ve still been weird.”

“We’re graduating next year,” you say. “It’s just weird right now, is all.”

“I don’t know what you have to be worried about,” Kazuya says, a tad peeved, probably because he can tell you’re lying. “We both know you’re coming with me to whatever team wants me.”

You elbow him. He grunts.

“I’m just stressed. Even with that guarantee…” you shake your head. “There’s just a lot going on right now. With school, with the world…”

The tension eases into something more sympathetic.

“That’s true,” Kuramochi sighs. “Well… don’t be stupid about it! You know you can talk to us!”

You smile. “Yes, I know.”

Kazuya eases off you, not before pushing your head gently, giving you a look that says He’s right. Don’t be stupid.

It’s probably also meant to emphasize the ‘talk to them’ part, with the exception that it’s him, your best friend and you can talk to him about anything.

But that’s not quite true, is it?

Kuramochi whistles as he looks at his phone. “Yo, check out this video of Spider-Woman saving a dog.”

“Ooh,” Wakana says, leaning over to him. “Let me see.”

“Me, too!” Eijun echoes, the sound of the chairs moving following it.

Kazuya sighs through his nose very loudly.

“Don’t be such a cop,” Kuramochi says distractedly as the three of them watch the video on his phone.

“Oi, that’s uncalled for!”

You hide a smile, taking a bite of your croissant.

“I just don’t think it’s that great,” he continues, shuffling the rest of the first aid supplies into his backpack. “What person wouldn’t pull a dog out of incoming traffic? That’s, like, basic human decency.”

Kuramochi scowls at him. “What the hell do you know about basic human decency, jerk?”

“I’m decent!” He nudges you, grinning in that particular way that annoys everyone else but endears you. “Right? Nice to strangers, nice to kids, nice to service workers —”

“That’s the bare minimum, Miyuki,” Wakana scoffs, rolling her eyes.

“That’s Miyuki-senpai to you, kid.”

The temperature seems to drop a couple degrees. Eijun blinks. You and Kuramochi share a look.

“Anyway,” he cuts in, turning his phone towards you two, where the aforementioned incident plays, “if you’d just watched the video with us, you’d see it was actually a pretty close miss. No one could’ve saved that dog but Spider-Woman.”

Kazuya smirks at him from over the rim of his mug. “Spider-Girl isn’t going to date you, Kuramochi-kun. Let it rest.”

Kuramochi looks a second away from clambering over the table and strangling him.

You nudge Kazuya sharply in reproach. He pouts at you, rubbing his side idly.

“It’s Spider-Woman,” Wakana corrects. “This doesn’t exactly help your claim about basic decency, you know that, right?”

He just laughs.

She rolls her eyes again.

Kuramochi points threateningly at Kazuya. “This is what makes you sound like a cop, okay? She’s freakin’ awesome. Why do you even hate her?”

If that isn’t the million-dollar question.

See, there are more than a few pieces in play here.

One. You were bitten by a radioactive spider six months ago and promptly gained spider-like powers.

Two. You made your debut as Spider-Woman one month after that. You’ve been in business five months now.

Three. While most of your friend group — most kids your age, actually — think Spider-Woman is awesome, your best friend, the one you’ve known since the shy age of five-years-old, for some reason, hates Spider-Woman.

So. You can see the dilemma.

You already can’t tell them anything because it would put them in danger. Or that’s what you’ve been led to believe by consuming copious amounts of Spider-Man and Batman comics.

But more than that, you’re pretty sure if you told Kazuya, he’d stop being your friend.

And the thing is… you can’t stop being Spider-Woman. Not after everything.

You don’t want to force yourself into a position where you have to choose.

It’s just a secret you’ll have to take to the grave.

For now, you can only hope the others’ continued support of Spider-Woman will help soften some of his feelings. Because really, there are only so many rants you can take from him about how you’re just making the city worse. That you’re encouraging others to act out.

(Then you start to question if it’s true. This far in, you can’t afford that kind of doubt.)

“She’s so cool!” Eijun exclaims. “She’s like, fwoosh! Bham! Kapow!” He follows this up with motions that you guess are supposed to be mimicking you webbing stuff, thrusting out his wrist, middle and ring finger folded towards his palm.

That’s not how it is for you since you are a bit… different from your oh-so-iconic model figure, Peter Parker, but good enough, you guess.

“You idiot,” Kuramochi says. “It’s none of those things. It’s more like, thwip.”

You polish off your croissant, wiping your fingers on a napkin. “I have to agree with Kuramochi there.”

You would know.

Wakana nods her agreement.

“Elementary,” Kazuya scoffs. “Do you actually hear yourselves?”

“I know you’re generally miserable, Miyuki, but you don’t need to make it like that for the rest of us,” Wakana grouses.

“You’ll be miserable when you understand she isn’t just some fun little ‘hero’ or whatever and actually real trouble for us and I’ll enjoy saying I told you so.”

“God, you are unbelievable.”

You wince as they continue to bicker.

Things weren’t always this tense between them.

You think Kazuya thinks that she hurt you, back when you and her slept together.

This was two years ago, when Wakana and Eijun were a couple months into their first year and you, Kuramochi, and Kazuya into your second.

Mostly, it had happened because you two were willing. Wakana was in the process of getting over her crush on Eijun. You, well, you’re still head over heels for your best friend but at the time, he’d been seeing this guy, Naoki.

But look, Naoki was nice! He was on the cheerleading team with you. That’s how the two of them had met. Then Naoki was doing a work study at the library, a place Kazuya frequented since he was in the throes of his human anatomy and physiology class and a basic statistics class. And, well… it was history.

It was a short-lived thing, only two months, and ended amicably, mostly by Naoki’s hand, saying he wasn’t ready for a relationship quite yet. You two were still good friends in the cheerleading club. At least until you quit six months ago… you haven’t seen him much since then… any of your old teammates really but…

The point is, you’d been in love with Kazuya, then, too, and you were happy to see him happy. But it still hurt.

Wakana had been hurting, too, and, well, misery loves company.

That’s what happened. Once. Well, like, four times, actually, but one night. It was just one night. You both weren’t under any pretenses. You’d still be friends after. You two are outnumbered. It was — is — imperative to remain friends in your shared group.

No one else was supposed to know but Kazuya found out, after walking in on you in the bathroom changing and he got an eyeful of the hickies on your neck and chest. Then pressed you for an answer because ‘I like the drama, what do you mean why? You know that!’

And that… yeah. That’s true.

The thing is, you kind of suck at lying at him.

Like… abysmally bad.

So, of course it came out. And... it was this whole thing. He didn’t say anything to the others but he did make it a problem for Wakana, who got so fed up with him she brought it to the rest of your friends’ attention.

You were furious, of course. At him pressing the issue. At him thinking he could make decisions for you, that he knew better, that he was ‘protecting’ you. What a load of shit. It was anything but that.

If it was, he didn’t handle it like he should’ve. You were upset with him for a long while after it happened.

The issue was settled for the most part eventually. But it continues to be a problem for them, first impressions entirely tossed out the window and their current relationship horrible because of it. You’ve tried to speak to Wakana about it — mostly about clearing things up with Kazuya, it’s definitely not her fault, Kazuya can just be a possessive little shit sometimes — but she always waves you off. Insists it’s not a problem. You still make sure Kazuya knows his limits.

So, they bicker and they bite. You don’t think it’s as personal as it was two years ago, though. Still an annoyance. Mostly for themselves, you’re sure.

Especially because, and you admit to finding this too funny, like the icing on the cake of that shitstorm, they’re both kinesiology majors. And right now, they share multiple classes.

Classes they pack up to go to, arguing all the while.

“One of these days I’m going to shove those two into a room and make them talk out their issues,” Kuramochi mutters as you, he, and Eijun pack up as well.

“That doesn’t sound very psych major of you.”

“Good thing I’m doing it for social work and not clinical, then.”

You grin, digging out the smoothie container Kazuya snuck into your bag while you were eating. A croissant and hot chocolate is nowhere near enough to sustain you, and the others, while not quite understanding why you eat so much these days, still look past that to help in anyway they can, usually by these smoothies that you oftentimes forget to make for yourself before you leave the house.

You sip at it. A familiar concoction today — orange juice, mandarin oranges, pineapples, mangoes, bananas, and sweet potatoes.

“Ready, Eijun?”

“Yes!”

Kuramochi cuffs him gently over the head. “At least wait until we get outside to start yelling, idiot.”

Eijun just grins, coming up to your side. He’s pleased as usual on these Monday afternoons, since you two share a class this term — comparative literature. He’s a Japanese lit major, while you’re studying Modern Languages; they intersect fairly frequently. This isn’t your first shared class with him.

Kuramochi heads off to the Social Sciences building and you two trek to Humanities, chatting idly. He eagerly tells you about the local cats around your neighborhood that you and he feed, saying he saw Momo, a feral cat who had disappeared a few weeks ago.

“She’s back, though! I came out to feed them this morning and whoosh! There she was! What do you think she was doing?!”

“Probably trying her luck in another neighborhood. She knows she’s got it good with us, though,” you say, nudging him with a smile.

“I think so, too! She even let me pet her!”

“Now that is cool.”

After your classes and a quick dinner, you do your usual nightly patrol. It’s a bit earlier tonight but mostly because the others are out of the house. You lied and said something about going to study.

With it being earlier than usual, there are more people out. Shibuya bursting at the seams, as well as Minato and Shinjuku. You swing through a few quieter wards of the city. Save for that dog today, not much happens in the densely-populated areas of the city. At least not this early in the night and with so many people out.

A trip through Setagaya affords you a few drunken fights, a few warnings from patrolling police cars (that you roll your eyes at), and some catcalls, which you promptly take care of.

You pause for a breath on the roof of an office building closed down for the night.

Your senses alert you to it first, then your ears.

“No, I don’t want to talk about it! Just leave me alone —!”

The sound of skin hitting skin.

You crawl over the edge of the roof; in an alley, a man and a woman. The woman touches her now-red cheek, eyes wide in indignation. The man…

“O-Oh, I-I-I didn’t meant to, Fukumi, I swear, I-I wouldn’t —”

“Well, you did!” she yells. “So, your word doesn’t mean shit!”

“Then don’t talk to me that way —”

He surges forward. You jump from the bricked wall, landing between them. Both of them let out choked noises of surprise. The man stumbles back into the wall, eyes wide.

“Hey, man,” you say, deceptively calm. “She gets to talk to you however she wants. Especially after you hit her.”

His face reddens in anger. “Stay out of this! Leave us alone! This isn’t your business!”

“Hm.” You turn and look at the woman. She presses against the wall, eyeing you. Dressed smartly in a cream blazer and skirt, her dark hair is piled into a neat bun, makeup immaculately done. Pretty. “Eh, Fukumi-san, right?

“Abeno.”

“Abeno-san. This is sort of my thing, you know? I’ll step out if you want but I can’t promise I won’t intervene if he tries to touch you again. Who is this guy, anyway, if you don’t mind me —?”

“Don’t answer that, Fukumi, please, and can you just get the hell out of here?”

She scoffs, dark eyes hard. “Ex-boyfriend.”

“Probably for the best.”

She smirks.

You grin, though she can’t see it under your mask.

“Stop ignoring me —!”

You sense the movement as soon as his hand twitches, everything slowing as his hand goes for your shoulder; to move you out of the way by force, you guess. It is a futile effort.

Your hand snaps around his wrist right before he even touches you. You twist it, not hard enough to break, though he might deserve it, but hard enough to cause pain, to buckle him to his knees as he cries out.

You keep your eyes on Abeno, searching for any signs of discomfort. You don’t usually like to do this in front of others. For you, they’ve experienced enough violence. But for her, that is not the case.

“Let this be a lesson, then,” you say lightly to him. “For you —” you look at her “— what’s his name?”

She rolls her eyes. “Chihaya Daizen.”

“Chihaya. Right. This is a lesson, on what happens not only when you try to touch others without their permission, but also when you try to hurt them, too. Just don’t do it. It’s embarrassing, don’t you think?”

“You’re doing it!”

“Shut up!” Abeno snaps. “She’s nothing like you! She’s protecting me! You know why? ‘Cause you hit me, you asshole!”

“You bitch —”

Your fingers squeeze harder. He yells out. Sweat runs down his red face, twisted in pain, trying to break out of your iron grip. But he won’t get out unless you want him to.

“You’re making it worse,” you scold. “I don’t give a shit about what you say about ‘not meaning it.’ It should never happen in the first place.”

You release him. Then lean down to bunch his collar in your hands, lifting him entirely from the ground. He weighs nothing to you.

His eyes widen, true fear evident in them.

“You’re not going to lay your hands on anyone like that ever again. You’re not going to bother her. You’re not even going to look at her. If you do any of those things, and I can and will find out, I’ll string you up from the Skytree. Got it?”

“Okay, okay, okay, alright, I-I swear!”

You let him go. He folds in on himself, then scrambles up from the ground, running off.

“What I’d do to have super strength,” Abeno mutters.

You chuckle, turning back to her. “It has its perks. Are you okay?”

She sighs and waves a dismissive hand. “I’m fine.”

“Does he work with you?”

“Oh, not at all. I’d broken up with him a few days ago and he kept bothering me. Finally showed up here after I got off work to try and talk to me.”

“He shouldn’t bother you again. But if he does…” You reach for an hidden pocket near your hip, the zipper expertly concealed; you pull out a small slip of paper and pass it to her. “Text that number.”

“This is your little sidekick, isn’t it?”

You cock your head. “Is that a popular rumor?”

“Not much in the public. But it gets around.”

“To those who need it, I hope. Anyway, they’re not a sidekick. More like a partner. If he bothers you — if anyone bothers you — you let them know and they’ll get it to me.”

“How can I trust that?” she asks.

You suppress a small smile. She reminds you of Kazuya, with that critical look in her dark eyes, that challenging expression on her face.

Of course, if you met Kazuya like this, he would simply scoff in your face and leave. But if he ever gave Spider-Woman the time of day… you imagine it’d be something like this.

“You just have to,” you say, shrugging, lifting your hands. “You mind if I walk you home?”

“Not sure it’s great to be seen with you.”

“Fair point. Then you mind if I shadow you?”

“By all means.”

You follow her to a nearby apartment building. Secure, you conclude, seeing a doorman hold the door open for her. Good.

You canvas the area a little more, then swing back to Minato.

After another hour, you pause to take a breather, slipping out the burner phone hidden away in another concealed pocket against your ribs.

Your aforementioned partner was the one to source the suit for you. They didn’t say much about where they got it but you imagine it was some kind of dark web circle, the ones that they run in; they insist they aren’t a hacker but considering the files and information they get access to and tell you about, you would very much consider them one.

You’re certain the police know about them, but the general public mostly doesn’t. Those like Abeno, the ones you look out for, do. By word of mouth, your services are extended to those in need.

Everyday, the police turn away women concerned about stalking, about rape, about abuse, about sexual coercion. Men, too. But most often — women.

People like to say Japan is a low-crime country. Maybe so compared to places like the US. But even that was a whole other conundrum, a question of what a government should be required to do for its people and what happens when they don’t, when they fail, when they create systems that actively disadvantage minorities and poor people, when those systems make those people desperate to do whatever it takes to survive. That was different.

Here in Japan… there’s crime. The only thing is — women or otherwise marginalized groups of people are the ones often experiencing it.

So, of course it’s not going to be counted.

Delphi, your mysterious partner slash informant, connects you to the ones the police forget about or ignore. Sometimes they dig in, too, doing all manners of unlawful things by compiling evidence against whoever the target is to ensure the police can’t ignore it. Other times, you both know nothing will happen.

In that case, it’s up to you to drive the point home.

With great power also must come great responsibility, right?

You aren’t sure Peter Parker would be so approving of you, since you generally don’t like the police and they don’t like you, either, but why the hell would you do this just to become some kind of beat cop?

You were doing this because the system didn’t work the way it should.

Yes, you and Delphi have landed quite a few people in police custody. You would utilize it when you could, when there was no other choice. But you’d still take care of the ones they would rather ignore.

You two do good work.

More good work than you would expect from a five-month-long partnership with someone you’ve never even met, someone who you know next to nothing about. Though, that isn’t quite true. You know Delphi likes shoujo manga, yakitori, matcha ice cream, and soccer, and a whole slew of tiny tidbits of information that piece together a clumsy picture of your partner.

In fairness, they know nothing about you, either.

A month after your debut — so four months ago — a shoebox with a burner phone, this current suit, and a note appeared with your stuff.

Not at the house, no. See, if you aren’t storing your things on some roof on campus, you’re usually webbing it to a wall, hidden away, in some alley. That day, you’d been in Meguro, a neighborhood south of Shinjuku. Fairly residential, fairly quiet. You came back to find that shoebox.

The note had been sparse. Your mystery informant introduced themself as Delphi — the call to Greek mythology was very intentional, you’d learn — and they said they could help you.

How? you had asked.

By being the messenger. An informant.

Gave out the number to a woman tonight. Abeno Fukumi.

what was it this time?

Her ex-boyfriend wouldn’t leave her alone. Hit her, too. I stepped in.

nice. did he pee his pants?

Your lips twitch.

Not this time. He just sweat a lot. But I can’t judge. I’m sweating like hell right now.

gross i’m literally eating dinner

It’s 22:10

what are you a cop??? wait until the press gets a load of this. “BREAKING NEWS: Spider-Woman Nags About Mealtimes”

That’s better than half the headlines I get these days.

hahahaha about you getting hit in the face with a drone?

Someone caught that????

A screenshot of the front page of some tabloid magazine appears in the chat. The headline reads: SPIDER-QUEEN NOT SO QUEENLY AFTER RUN-IN WITH DRONE! Andddd a picture of the incident in question. Great. Just great. You’re so glad none of the others read the newspaper. Or magazines. You’d all collectively dissed this particular tabloid after they spread some dating rumors between Kazuya and a manager on the team (that were entirely false; apparently, she doesn’t even like guys).

That’s just great.

hahaha it doesn’t beat nyt’s from a few months ago. remember that one?

A screenshot of the front page of the New York Times from March appears on the screen in the next second. A bolded title reads SPIDER-WOMAN: SPIDER-FRIEND OR SPIDER-FOE? It’s accompanied with a picture of you swinging through the city.

You laugh.

Yeah. I’ll give them that one. At least they got the name right.

Someone called you my sidekick tonight, you know.

ugh

Don’t worry. I told them we were partners.

yeah. and if anyone is anyone’s sidekick you’re mine

Don’t push it.

Nothing tonight?

nope. we’re good.

Cool. And just a heads-up — I’ll be out of the city the 6-8.

tanabata?

Yup. Are you celebrating?

no. probably not. you done?

Yeah, I’m done for the night. Let me know if anything else happens. I’ve got a few minutes to get back home.

They just send a thumbs-up in response. You chuckle, tucking away the phone. A breeze whips through your hair.

Up here on Toranomon Hills, Tokyo’s third tallest building right after the Tokyo Skytree and the Tokyo Tower, no one can see you, so you’re free to catch your breath after a few hours of patrol and let yourself breath without the mask.

Even nights in July just barely toe the line of unbearable. You’ve used an ungodly amount of baby powder in your suit to prevent chafing, and you have to wash it frequently to keep it from smelling too bad. Yeah, Peter Parker wasn’t kidding about that.

After taking a moment to enjoy the view of Tokyo glowing in the night, Mount Fuji off in the distance shining under a full moon, you pull the mask back over your face, then the hood.

Then you jump.

This is one of the nicer parts of everything.

You freefall through the air, your stomach lurching like it does on a rollercoaster. Air whips against you.

You extend an arm, webbing shooting from your index and middle finger, latching onto a nearby building. You swing from building to building. The webbing left behind will dissolve after a few hours.

That’s one thing that, while also cool, stumped you.

Peter Parker can’t make his own webbing. Not organically, anyway. Sure, Tobey Maguire did it in the movies but in the comics — no. He had web-shooters that he created, a sticky webbing he formulated with chemicals.

You? Well… it comes out of you. From your fingers, to be specific.

You guess you can’t complain. If you’d come away from the bite without it, you aren’t sure you would’ve done this.

You swing back home, to the two-story house the five of you rent. Five bedrooms, three and a half baths. It’s in Toshima, a neighborhood north of Shinjuku, in a more residential area. It’s only thirty-five minutes by train from the house to campus.

You swing from a nearby parking garage, the roof of the house in sight. You usually don’t go this way, that is, swing down from above, too scared that they’d somehow hear you (you are very quiet as a rule of your biology now but you still can’t help fearing it), but Wakana texted you that she and Eijun were going to be studying at the library and Kuramochi was going out with some of the guys from the team to an izakaya and he’d drag Kazuya with him. They should still be out.

But as you swing close and release the web, ready to land silently on the roof, you belatedly realize someone else is there.

Panic seizes you as you recognize them; what has always been instinct fails you as you become too aware of it.

You hit the roof hard, completely flubbing the landing. Instead of a quiet land on your feet, you mistime the landing, rolling instead, stopping near the edge. You lie there for a minute, grimacing sharply to yourself. Maybe —

“Oi… go find another roof to haunt or I’ll call the cops.”

Your head snaps up.

Your best friend and Spider-Woman’s number one hater stands there, arms crossed, the look on his face leaving much to be desired.

#daiya no ace #ace of diamond #miyuki kazuya #miyuki kazuya x reader #daiya no ace x reader #ace of diamond x reader

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