The first thing Silver noticed when she woke up was the blaring of her alarm and the blinding light of a new day. The morning rays were barely streaming through the blinds of her window, managing to filter through the tall buildings of New York City at just the right angle so that they were shining directly in her eyes.

Her groan filled the air. It was a resistant, almost pitiful whine that was ever indicative of Silver trying to force herself out of bed and motivate herself to face another day. She had, for all intents and purposes, planned on sleeping in today. Her gymnastics coach had cancelled her practice and announced the gym's closing the day before and Silver had reveled in the fact that she'd finally get a day off to, hopefully, relax and take it easy.

It's not that Silver didn't absolutely love her job - being a professional gymnast was something most people could only dream about. It had taught her to not only push herself past her own limits, but to be positive in times of hardship and determined in the face of failure. Sometimes, though, it was nice to just have a day to herself.

Even Silver's other job had been slow the night before.

The normally fast-paced streets of New York had been weirdly tame and calm, even before Silver had changed into her Spider-Woman persona and began her patrol. She had even taken to swinging leisurely through the streets and chilling out in random places across the city to people watch, although she may have freaked some people out when they noticed her hanging upside down from the bottom side of a billboard. It was still hard to believe that this was her life.

It had all started from what she had thought was the flu. She had just moved to New York four years before to train with one of the world's most esteemed gymnastic coaches when she suddenly began feeling like she'd been hit by a subway train. When it had cleared up, Silver had felt like a completely new person. In a way, she was. Not long after that her powers began to surface. In the first few days, everything Silver touched stuck to her hands and feet; she had a hard time explaining to her coach exactly how she had managed to 'glue' herself to the balance beam every time she touched it. Of course, that was nothing compared to when she had started shooting webs out of her wrists. That'd been fucking freaky.

So, despite her rigorous schedule as a gymnast, she'd taken to swinging through the streets. Protecting everyday citizens from everyday crime. A friendly neighborhood Spider-Woman, as the papers would say. Which was why Silver, detangled herself from her nest of sheets and blankets and blindly searched for her phone on the nightstand, which was still chiming loudly at her to at least try to get up. With a swift slide of her finger, the alarm shut off and blissful quiet filled the room. Before she could fall back asleep, Silver opened her eyes and sat up, groaning at the ache in her back.

There was a small moment where Silver felt something was off, which disoriented her until she realized what, or rather who, was missing. Practice had taken so much of a toll that Silver had almost completely forgotten her girlfriend was still visiting her family overseas. The separation, especially on a day like this, caused her heart to ache. Luckily, Silver knew the temporary cure.

She'd been halfway through fixing breakfast - well, lunch, considering the time - when a different, more concerning alarm went off. It had snapped her awake instantly, all signs of sleep vanishing as she abandoned her lunch and sprinted towards her phone. The police scanner. She'd modified it long ago to notify her of certain keywords being spoken over the radios and now it was going off like mad.

Silver snatched the phone from its discarded place on the couch, her eyes glancing over the screen in attempt to figure out what was going on.

'Breaking News', read one of the news notifications flooding her phone. 'Hostage situation at Empire State Building. A man dressed in a scorpion costume is currently holding people hostage on the roof of the Empire State Building and demanding the presence of Spider-Woman. The NYPD has the building surrounded and urges all citizens in the area to stay indoors. More details to come.'

In a flash, Silver was suited up. The light, durable fabric of her suit was snug against her skin and the deep purple and blue colors of the design contrasted vividly against the rest of the black fabric. When the suit had debuted, Silver had been ecstatic - the purple and blue lines that came over her shoulders and hips also wrapped around her arms and legs to meet between her shoulder blades and form her iconic spider symbol. It had been something she had worked tirelessly on between her hours patrolling and her practices. And it had turned out really well.

Silver pulled the mask over her face as she jumped out of her apartment's tenth story window. For a moment, she let herself fall, relishing the swooping of her stomach as she fell. She caught herself when she was a few feet from the ground - shooting a web onto a nearby building and allowing her momentum to swing her forward. It was something that came natural to her, the push and pull and rhythm of the fluid movement felt incredibly freeing. She normally would've relished it more, but she was in a hurry. People were in danger and needed her help - she needed to focus.

Honing her senses and speeding up her swings, Spider-Woman made her way to the Empire State Building, narrowly avoiding the everyday traffic of the city, just to feel the adrenaline pump through her veins. The scene that she saw at the Empire State Building wasn't that different from what she'd been expecting. Police cars had blocked off the entire city block, their lights flashing against the nearby buildings in warning. The building itself was surrounded by a small army of vehicles - police cars, SWAT vans, ambulances, and firetrucks were all parked as close as they could get to the building and all of the lights were flashing out of sync. A chaotic sight if Silver ever saw one.

But that wasn't why she was here.

Silver turned her gaze upward, squinting against the light in attempt to see the top of the building. From where she was perched, she couldn't see the scorpion-man or any of the hostages. She could, however, feel them. It was a low, tingly sensation at the back of her brain - something telling her that there was danger nearby, but nothing too imminent.

Before she could even begin to question herself, Silver swung over to the side of the Empire State Building and began to climb upward. Towards the danger, as her spidey-sense was so helpfully telling her.

The observation deck was completely silent and deserted - with no hostage or scorpion-man in sight. Even with the distant sound of the police sirens below, the scene was eerie and sent shivers through her. Something within her screamed that this was incredibly wrong, like when someone got into an elevator and stood with their back to the doors. It wasn't inherently bad, but it was certainly...uncomfortable to say the least.

As quietly, and quickly, as she could, Silver climbed over the fence, cringing every time the metal rattled and shifted. But her feet no more than hit the ground before the alarms went off in her head.

MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE , they screamed. And move she did. Silver had just barely ducked out of the way when she saw a green flash where she had been standing.

Silver didn't know what she had expected to see when the news report described a 'scorpion-man', but they certainly hadn't been lying. The man standing before her was, indeed, dressed as a scorpion: a sickly green suit, burnt orange goggles covering his eyes, and a pointed, wicked looking tail. She didn't want to think about what happened if she got stuck by that tail.

The man - villain - cackled, in the typical supervillain way, and a broad smile painted the lower half of his face.

"Spider-Woman!" he boomed, in an annoyingly scratchy voice. Okay, now she was just getting pissed off. "I've been expecting you!"

"Most criminals who 'demand my presence' do," she pointed out, her eyes rolling beneath her mask. "Especially the ones who hold hostages on top of one of the most famous buildings in New York."

There was a long pause, where the wind picked up and the man's tail swayed hypnotically behind him. It went on so long that Silver began to feel uncomfortable. What was this, a first date?

"Soooooo….are you gonna tell me what you want or?"

"Oh, I don't want anything, little Spider," he hissed tauntingly, speaking like a parent would to a child. "I just needed you here to kill you."

"Good luck with that buddy," she laughed, taking care to stay on her feet should the scorpion tail decide to, once again, strike. "I'm pretty sure there's a line somewhere you'll have to get in."

Instead of responding, the man growled and lunged, with both body and tail.

Silver dodged - ducking and rolling and following that momentum to shoot a web and get the higher ground. She ended up perched on top of the fence separating the viewing platform from the short way down. "Alrighty, not a big talker then. Where are the hostages?"

Her opponent scoffed, "A simple bluff to get you here faster."

"Ah, I see," Silver said in a sickly-sweet voice, cocking her head as the scorpion-man made his way towards her, "So there's nothing stopping me from kicking your ass?"

The other man simply growled something about her being a 'stupid child', which Silver considered pretty rude since she was at least a straight B student in high school...okay, so there might have been a few Cs or Ds, but who was really counting?

The tail lunged, but this time, Silver was ready. She shot a web towards the tail, catching the stinger while webbing up the man with her other hand. It didn't take long for Silver to have him wrapped snugly in her webs or for her to hand him over to the police.

A quick end to a rather anticlimactic villain.

"THIS ISN'T OVER SPIDER-WOMAN!" the man screamed hysterically as the police shoved him into the back of a SWAT van. Silver turned just in time to see him drive his shin - none too gently - into the first step of the van and trip the rest of the way up.

Oof, that looks like it hurt , she thought, trying not to cringe.

"YOU THINK I'M THE ONLY ONE?" he continued to scream, even after the door to the van was closed, "YOU'LL BE DEAD BY THE END OF THE WEEK, I GUARANTEE IT."

"Uh huh," Silver mumbled underneath her breath, "Suuuuuure."

As the van drove off, Silver swung in the opposite direction. A part of her didn't want to believe anything that Scorpion - a name the man had dubbed himself as she'd been dragging him through the Empire State Building - had said, but a small, tiny voice in the back of her head insisted that his words held some truth. The man hadn't acted smart enough to properly operate his suit, much less build it, and he had insisted he'd been paid.

Part of her worried about the implication of what was to come. If someone was giving out super suits and paying people to come after her, then she needed to nip it in the butt before someone got hurt. But who had that sort of money? That sort of intellect?

Her line of thought was interrupted by a soft chiming sound. Someone was calling her.

Silver perched on top of a water tank, to watch the city continue around her, and answered the call.

"Hey babe," came her girlfriend's smooth voice, nearly a purr over the phone.

The smile that curled on her face was magnetic, she couldn't have stopped it if she tried.

"Hi, Felicia."

This was something I was inspired to write after I saw Into the Spiderverse and immediately thought, what would it be like if I was a superhero? This is what I came up with. Enjoy!