15109/Spiders, Subs, Spirits, and Swift

Spiders, Subs, Spirits, and Swift
Date of Scene:	20 May 2023
Location:	Outskirts of Manhattan
Synopsis:	Gwen Stacy comes across Cindy Moon, returned to NYC after a lengthy absence. They catch up, and make irresponsible life choices, as is the right of Spiders.
Cast of Characters:	Silk, Ghost Spider

---

Silk has posed:
Making up for lost time is rough.

Making up for lost time compounded on catching up post-vacation time, well, that maths out to some sort of crushing amount of behind the curve Cindy Moon doesn't even want to think of.

The spectacular Silk (peter can't have -all- the s-adjectives!!) has been a missing presence on New York City until recently, and the reason for that is relatively simple: Cindy Moon has a lost family to find. So she put in for leave at the Fact Channel, spun up her best out-of-state outfits, and went out on the hunt. And what she found was...

... nothing.

And so Silk returns to her native New York, defeated but undeterred. J. Jonah Jameson was surprisingly understanding about the absence - she's not actually sure why he likes her so much but she's not going to complain - and after an affable period of him yelling at her to get to work, Cindy went back to her side job: the exciting world of getting herself nearly killed all the time saving, like, cats from the villainy of Paste Pot Pete or... whoever. Spider-Man's villains are weird.

Currently taking a well-deserved break from her routine patrols, Cindy sits, perched on the rooftop's edge of an abandoned building at the edge of town. It's one of her favorites; it's so derelict even criminals don't like to hang out here, which means it's one of the best places for her to just... relax, without fear of being spotted or interrupted. And so relax she does, legs drawn up against her chest and arms folded over her knees, silk-clad posterior parked on the very edge of the rooftop's ledge. It gives her a great view of Manhattan on as she rolls down her half-mask and start going to town on the best meatball sub in New York, heaving a little, put upon sigh as she does.

"Well, at least you never change," she remarks distantly to her steadfast building companion, giving the ledge a pat. A piece of concrete dislodges and falls off, crashing into the ground below. Cindy stops chewing and withdraws her hand from that cracked ledge v e r y  s l o w l y. "Uh... mostly. Sigh."

Ghost Spider has posed:
Cindy's not the only one who knows about the abandoned and derelict building with the great view. Gwen doesn't make it over this way too often, mostly because nearly all of her Non Spider Time is occupied by Alchemax, the band, getting yelled at by MJ, or now, hanging out with a Russian supergenius. It's a hard life for Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy, but she likes it.

Today is one of those days that she -does- have a minute, so she's going to take her state mandated fifteen minute break from vigilantism, and hang out and look at the skyline. She's not stealthy at all as she swings around the building, her head jerking a little bit as she sees Cindy for the first time in ... quite a while. She lands on the rooftop, dropping her webline and walks over to the ledge.

She sits, careful to evade a crumbly space, and throws her hood back, tugging the mask off. Her hair is, of course, a mess from it. Unavoidable. "It's been ... a minute or twelve since I've seen you around."

Silk has posed:
A powerful spider-sense (SILK-sense if you will) is a bit of a double-edged sword. Nigh-precognition is neat if you can actually get the hang of it, and it's helped Cindy out of more jams than she can think of beyond simply dodging the Shocker's deadly shocker blasts. On the other hand --

Having a warning sense that's amped up to 11 and on bath salts on the best of days sometimes means 'Gwen Stacy webslinging over' gets confused with 'ruffians imminent' and leads to situations like, for example:

"Oh crap!" Cindy, eyes wide as her Silk Sense starts blaring in her head, starts an abrupt scramble-flail to both set her meatball sub aside -and- yank her mask over her mouth. The result is her kind of mixing up her hands in a moment of panic, mashing her sub briefly against her face before swapping hands so quickly that she accidentally sends a chunk of prime sandwich meat careening off the edge of the slightly-unstable building. She reaches out, in vain.

"No, meatball--!"

And so it is that Gwen settles in next to a Cindy with her mask half-tugged over her face and a vague marinara smear on her cheek, staring wide-eyed and bewildered at the blonde beside her. A second passes. And then she realizes who she's staring at.

"Hah hah heyyyy Gwen, more like thirteen, am I right!" exclaims Cindy, totally playing it cool; she lets her mask drop back down, slinging one arm over an upraised knee and offering a winning smile that just sort of draws more attention to the marinara. "Ssssup."

She knows it's there she -knows- it it's just... just too embarrassing to acknowledge.

Ghost Spider has posed:
It's been so long that Gwen has forgotten that Cindy's precognitive sense is way, way, way, way more powerful than any of the rest of the Spiders'. Part of her is insulted that it thinks she's a threat. The rest of her get it. It's been long enough, and they weren't -super- close before, so it kind of tracks.

And she feels the pain of the lost meatball. She's been there.

She's never tried to use a sandwich as a mask, though. She has enough grace not to mention it. She does try to click the barbell in her tongue against her teeth, except it's not in because patrolling with metal on and in your head is really dumb. Really, really dumb.

"The usual. Dayjob at Alchemax. Drumming occasionally. Made friends with a supergenius on the run from a clandestine, Soviet-era Russian organization of super spies and assassins. You?"

Silk has posed:
Even Cindy '10 Year Bunker Buddy' Moon knows: on top of -everything else- inadvisable about it, patrolling with metal in your head is just -asking- to get Magneto'd.

He's probably just out there, waiting for it.

Sometimes, though, you can just -feel- a well-placed tongue-click. Cool as Cindy plays it (and she plays it -so cool-, you don't even know), her cheeks flush briefly pink as she looks aside and awkwardly clears her throat. She takes this time to also discretely wipe her thumb across her marinara mark of shame, too. You know, on the down-low.

"Oh, you know," Cindy begins, resting her sub on her lowered thigh so she can swivel her wrist nonchalantly through the air. "This and that." She lingers, as if debating whether to go on. Part of her things to just leave it there; she doesn't want to burden Gwen with her problems. Especially not after she thought the blonde was some kind of evil goon. But... she chews on her lower lip for a a second or two before she ultimately goes on. "Went on a long trip following a lead about my parents. Didn't find my parents. -Did- find the World's Largest Uncle Sam, so that was..." Her brows screw together. "... harrowing. ... Yeah, harrowing."

She plays it easy come easy go, her smile a lopsided thing as she looks Gwen's way. "On the plus side, I -did- get to keep my job. -- wait." Brown eyes flutter in a blink. "Russian supergenius superspies??"

Ghost Spider has posed:
Gwen pretends not to notice the flush. She's a pretty good actress, so she probably pulls it off. Though the news that Cindy went on a journey to find her parents and came up empty is a sobering enough thought that she doesn't really need to act. "I'm...really sorry," she says quietly, reaching a hand out to consolingly rest a hand on Cindy's shoulder for a moment. "You'll find 'em. I know it. People don't just -disappear-. They're out there, you'll find them, and it will be amazing."

Her hand drops back to her lap, glancing sidelong at Cindy and nodding once. "That's a bit of a surprise. Jameson isn't usually so ... merciful about that." Now it's Gwen's turn to grin. It's sly, maybe a little conspiratorial. "Yeah. Her name's Nadia and she makes Pete look like a fifth grader. You should -see- the stuff she's built. She's a really nice person too." Gwen pauses, considering. "I, uh, told her about me. The Spider stuff. Just me, not the rest of you, of course, but she's working on a group of, well, Science Ladies. To share research and resources and stuff. She bought me drinks, convinced me to sign up."

Silk has posed:
A hand falls on her shoulder. An apology is offered.

Cindy briefly stiffens at the contact, but only briefly; her attempt to laugh off the sympathy is a more enduring thing, though. "Hey, c'mon, it's okay," she insists, flapping one hand in the air. "Sometimes things just... slip through the cracks, y'know? We've just gotta keep pushing forward."

But even she can't sound entirely content, despite the best foot she puts forward. So when Gwen continues, Cindy blinks; she ducks her head, a smaller, more genuine smile creeping at the corners of her lips.

"... Yeah. It will," she agrees, voice just a few degrees quieter. "It'll be a real Home Alone moment."

Thank god some things are classics and don't require her to pretend she knows anything about the modern day pop cultural frontier.

Brown eyes steal a glance her fellow Spider's way, as she continues; all she can do is mouth an emphatic 'I know, -right-?' about JJJ because she's not -entirely- sure invoking his name too many times doesn't summon him like Beetlejuice. The rest, she listens to wonderingly, gratitude briefly filtering into her expression as Gwen assures her of the continued sanctity of her identity; at some point she plants her hands against the roof behind her, using them as an anchor to flexibly pivot herself until she can face Gwen, while -still- balancing that sub on the toned slope of her thigh. See, now she's just showing off to make up for earlier gaffs. Shameless.

"Huhhhh," she begins, the sound coming out in an impressed whistle. "So what I'm hearing is... I can get you to agree to some -wild, dangerous stuff- if I ply you with drinks. Hmmm." She considers this, tapping her lower lip with her finger. "Okay. I've got an idea."

And here, Cindy lifts that sub, offering a conspiratorial look of her own. "I'm thinking... we split this sub because my eyes were -way- bigger than my stomach, ditch this place before it collapses under our combined carbo load, finish patrol -- and then I show you the most -radical- karaoke joint in NYC and we drink and sing the night away, and in between you can answer my, like, my two billion questions about your wild super science life with all your Science Lady Super Friends." They don't know each other that well, but, well. That's something Cindy would like to change. After all... there's only so many people who understand her situation. And--

"... We... till say radical, right?"

-- won't judge her for thinking radical was ever relevant, please don't judge her

Ghost Spider has posed:
The greatest strength, the strongest -power- of the Spiders is compassion. It's the link that truly ties them all together. Well, beyond the Spider Totem Thing, which may or may not be real. Stay tuned and find out someday. Maybe. If someone feels like it.

We're looking at you, Morlun.

"That's the wild thing, Cindy. I've had my share of Party Girl nights, I've got these powers that make me able to resist toxins and stuff," she says, blue eyes narrowing slightly. Gwen leans closer, conspiratorially. "She had just as much as I did and she had to help -me- home." Straightening, she smiles. It's big and bright, a ray of Gwen Stacy Sunshine. "You put a drink in my hand, and I can be talked into a lot of things. Many of them foolish and/or humiliating."

A voice in her head says to not agree to the sandwich share. This suit is -white-, Gwen. You -will- wear it. Then her stomach growls, and she looks sheepish. "Of course. I'll help with that sandwich, and then we'll go punch some muggers, maybe kick Shocker in the face, then go sing some T-Swift. It's a date."