Thankfully for Gwen’s blood pressure Kara didn’t hang around. Gwen assumed that she was only in Gotham to pick up Barbara, because after that both of them disappeared. That didn’t mean Gwen didn’t obsessively check the skies for a blonde haired superhero on her night time investigations.

She was oh for two with superhero encounters already. No need to get caught in a compromising position with another hero.

The rest of the week went by surprisingly smoothly. Gwen was able to investigate several more warehouses belonging to the Falcone without being spotted. Most of them seemed to be filled with nothing special, but one in particular had been filled with enough smuggled guns to fight a small war.

She had debated leaving a tip for the cops, but she knew that by the time they authorised someone to check on the place the Falcone’s would’ve heard about it, moved the guns, and arranged an ‘accident’ for anyone trying to dig deeper.

Instead she decided she was going to try and track these to wherever they ended up for distribution. A cannibalised phone was turned into a basic tracker and rigged to send a text to a burner phone if it got within a few feet of the loading dock. From there it was just a matter of following a GPS signal until she found it again.

Which led to her current situation. Crouching on a roof, staring at a fairly nondescript brick building. The problem? It was practically right across the street from the Iceberg Lounge. The Penguin’s legal front operations and occasional black market gathering place.

Gwen started painting a picture with all the little clues she had stumbled on over the last few weeks and she wasn’t sure she liked it.

The Falcones were importing a large amount of guns if the money in the warehouse she found earlier and the shipment she was currently tracking were related. On top of that, she had found more references to the mafia family meeting in coded locations at a certain time. A time that just so happened to coincide with the black market auction she had overheard the Penguin talking about.

The most damning piece of evidence?

The nightclub directly across from the Lounge. Bright neon lights innocently proclaiming the name of the club.

Warehouse 14

Gwen cursed. The meeting spot was the club not an actual warehouse! And the only reason they would be moving so many guns and people to the area on the same day as the auction was if they planned to need them.

She had a bad feeling the Falcones were going to make a rather bloody grab for power during the Penguin’s auction. It made a twisted kind of sense. Most of the attendees would be high level criminals. Maybe not the top of whatever organization they were a part of, but high enough that the loss of them would hurt. If the Falcones removed enough of them then they would be the biggest organised group in the city and back on top of the heap.

Gwen worried her lip as she thought it over.

This might be more than she could handle alone. Sure she could probably break it up by herself after everything started, but this was a game changing move. The mafia family wouldn’t call it off just because she started poking things. That might just make everything spill out onto the streets and get innocent people hurt. But who could she call for help?

Batman was still helping out the Justice League since Gwen had overheard Dick and Barbara talking about him being out of town still. She had already beaten up Nightwing and probably poisoned her image with the rest of the Bat family in the process. And the police simply weren’t equipped to handle the amount of firepower Gwen had seen.

She supposed she could approach Dick or Barbara out of uniform, but she could already imagine the consequences.

Hello Barbara/Dick. I know you are secretly superheroes and need you to work with me for reasons. How do I know this? Why, I’m the new hero that you both fought and lost to, Ghost Spider! I’m not a hero? I’m a thief who robbed the mafia? Well, not everyone has a billionaire to support them. Who are you calling? Supergirl? Oh-god-my-spine!”

Yeah…

Maybe not a good idea.

Gwen closed her eyes and ground the palms of her hands into her temples hoping if she squeezed hard enough a good idea would materialize. When nothing did she sighed, walked to the edge of the building, and jumped off.

She enjoyed the feeling of freefall for a second before webbing another one of the buildings with a *thwip!*. Gwen just swung through the city talking a moment to enjoy herself. Releasing her growing tension into the repetitive process of *thwip!*, swing, aim, *thwip!*, repeat. She continued for a solid fifteen minutes when a high pitched feminine shriek from the street attracted her attention.

Ghost Spider pulled herself to the closest building to where the noise came from and looked down into the alley where she saw two figures. One was a woman somewhere in her late twenties to early thirties, the other was a somewhat younger man in casual clothes. Against her expectations the woman was the one advancing on the man with a knife while he was frantically digging through his pockets and pulling out his phone and wallet begging her not to hurt him.

Guess that would teach her to assume…

“Please just take my stuff.” the man was begging. “I didn’t see nothing. I won’t talk. Just take it and you won’t see me again.”

“Oh I know, hun.” The woman crooned brandishing her knife. “But I can’t take that risk. See, my boss is kind of a hard ass and if any heat comes down on this place then it’s my ass on the line.”

“Y-you don’t want to do this. I-I’m a police officer!” the man stuttered and the woman stiffened.

“Well I was just going to give you a good scare. Maybe give you a little mark so you knew not to poke around where you aren’t wanted.” she said darkly. “Now I’m gonna have to kill you.”

“N-no, wait please!”

Ghost Spider heard enough and webbed the knife in the woman’s hand, ripping it out of her grip and tossing it into the alleyway.

“I know this usually goes the other way, but no means no Lady.” Ghost Spider said sarcastically. “Also murder is bad, m’kay?” Life advice dispensed, Ghost Spider knocked the woman out with a punch to the jaw and webbed her hands together. Then she turned to the shaking form of the man she saved. Now that she saw him up close, Ghost Spider realised he was younger than she first thought. Maybe early twenties if she was generous.

“Hi there! How’s your night going?” Ghost Spider asked cheerfully.

“Oh god, a supervillain! Please! Do whatever you want just let me live!”

And just like that, Ghost Spider’s mood took a nosedive.

“Why would I want to kill you?!” She asked incredulously. “And I’m NOT a supervillain.”

“B-but you fought Batgirl? And you robbed that warehouse?”

Ghost Spider fumed but she couldn’t exactly say he was wrong.

“The fight was a misunderstanding.” She tried to deflect. “Look, are you really a cop? And what were you doing that had Little Miss Sunshine over there so pissed with you?”

“I-I am! Officer Nick O’Hara, I just t-transferred here out of the academy.” Nick stuttered. “I always heard that Gotham was bad, but I didn’t really believe it until I got here.”

“Focus Nick.” Ghost Spider chided. “What was so important that she went from deadly joking to deadly serious?”

Nick shook himself and refocused somewhat. “There’s been drug reports in the area. People walking out with armfulls of needles and junk, but the sergeant kept telling me it was a waste of time. No one would take it seriously. So I kinda...thought I could do some poking around. Off the clock and all.” Ghost Spider just stared hard at the newbie cop for doing what her father had drilled into every subordinate he worked with. ‘Never investigate alone’. “Y-yeah, it sounded better in my head. But I peeked through a crack in the window there-” He pointed at the frosted glass window on a door in the alley, “-and saw that chick loading some kind of green goo into syringes. I guess she saw me and...well, you know the rest.”

Ghost Spider narrowed her eyes at the cop. He gulped and looked to the side but didn’t say anything else.

“Okay, since you decided to risk your life for this might as well follow through with it.” She said and walked up to the door. Just like Nick said, inside was a bunch of syringes surrounded by various sized containers of a fluorescent green liquid. She turned back to the new cop and gestured into the room.

“Welp, if my guess is right. You managed to uncover a Venom den. You’re probably going to want to call this in so someone who won’t kill themselves handling it can clear it out.”

“Venom! Really?”

“Yep. Have fun explaining to your boss and the media how you stumbled across a supervillain drug operation.”

Nick’s eyes widened as he realised the implications of finding this off duty. If it was part of a sanctioned police action then he could disappear into the crowd as an officer just doing his job. Doing it in his time off meant the media was going to try and jump on it and use it as a local hero piece. Great for publicity, ratings, and a good story. Bad for the health of the person it was about.

“Can’t I just say you found it? Y’know supervillain foiling supervillain?” Nick pleaded.

“I am not a supervillain. Say it with me now. I am not a supervillain” Ghost Spider poked Nick in the chest in time with her words. “But sure, if you want to say you saw me poking around and I led you to it, that's fine. You should still give your boss a call though.”

“R-right.” Nick pulled out a cellphone. “Wish I could just light up a signal for him to know I needed him. I hate talking on the phone.” He muttered. He probably hadn’t intended for Ghost Spider to hear him but she did, and it gave her the perfect way to contact the Bat family in a hopefully neutral way.

“Glad you got it covered. I’ll see you around. And remember…”

“‘Not a supervillain’, I know.”

“Great!”

With a leap, she was halfway up the alley walls and soon she was swinging her way home. She had an encounter to plan.

-o-

The next morning Gwen was pounding her head against the wall.

She told Nick one thing. One!

Either he had been incredibly literal in his interpretation and simply said she wasn’t a supervillain, or the media had decided to spin thing a bit to keep it in line with their previous articles but the morning’s headline read:

Thief Against Drugs?

Ghost Spider Uncovers Venom Den

The story went on to say that the superpowered thief Ghost Spider had raided a suspected drug den and was noticed by a passing police officer. Nothing had been taken but the drug dealer on site had been knocked out and wrapped up for the police to take. Not entirely wrong even if the details were fudged, but it missed the point she wanted to make!

Why was it that everytime she interacted with someone in law enforcement she seemed to be cementing her position as someone on the opposite side of the law? She had avoided directly saying she wanted to be a hero because she wanted her actions to speak for her! Maybe that had been a mistake. She just hoped reinforcing the public’s opinion of her as a thief wouldn’t complicate her upcoming meeting.