Chapter 24

Surrounded by knock-off Bane wannabes and all alone, there was one thing Ghost Spider had to ask…

“So does ripping out of your clothes like that hurt? Don’t they reinforce the seams so they specifically don’t do that?”

One of the men scowled. “Yeah, pinches like crazy for a few seconds and then the outfit is scrap afterwards.”

“Ouch, do your bosses at least pay for those?”

“Nope. In fact-”

“Jacob. SHUT. UP.” The boss cut in. “Talk on your own time. I want to be out of here ASAP.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Ghost Spider’s spider sense blared a warning and she jumped off the machine she was perched on to avoid a pipe one of the men had thrown at her. The jerk had used the rain and his buddy’s voice to cover up his movement to try and get a free hit in.

“Hey, rude!”

“Not in this business because I’m polite. And don’t really care about the opinion of a dead girl.” came the growled reply.

“Just get her already!”

Two guys charged her from seperate directions and Ghost Spider decided the best way to handle that for now was to backflip over a punch and land in a handstand on the other guy’s shoulders. A quick kick to the back sent the second guy crashing forward into the first.

They went down in an awkward crash of limbs before she webbed them together. They might be strong enough to break the webs but it would slow them down, especially if they wound up working against each other.

That did, unfortunately, put Ghost Spider in the middle of the rest of the goons.

They didn’t hesitate to rush her all at once.

The heroine ducked under, around, over, and just about every other direction to avoid getting punched, kicked, or grabbed but she made sure the other guys were feeling it when she had an opportunity with punches and kicks of her own.

She also made sure to web them in the face every once in a while. Sudden blindness was good for distracting people.

The main problem was, she had no idea how hard she could punch these people before she did some major damage. So she was slowly hitting harder and harder but in the meantime she wasn’t exactly putting the Bane imitators out of the fight for more than a few seconds to shake themselves off.

“She’s one girl! How is this taking so long?”

“Maybe I’m just that good? That, or that Venom stuff isn’t as good as you think. One of the two.” Ghost Spider taunted.

Then she got caught in a feint that let one of the goons plant his fit in her jaw and sent her flying through the air and towards another goon that kicked her in another direction.

When she stopped bouncing over the concrete floor and seeing stars, she shot a webline at one of the support columns holding the roof up and pulled herself towards it.

“Or maybe you’re just lucky!” One of the men called after her.

“I have yet to begin to fight, random goon number 3!” Ghost Spider retorted, trying to ignore the aches in her jaw and ribs. The hits didn’t seem to do much damage, but they really hurt!

And unfortunately for the goons Ghost Spider had mostly figured out how much the steroid had boosted them…and how hard she could hit them.

“Right, sorry boys, this is going to hurt!”

Two weblines shot out and attached themselves to the chests of two separate goons, both of whom looked at the lines of silk and laughed.

“What’s the matter spider girl, running out of webs? You didn’t even get our arms this time.” they jeered.

Ghost Spider’s eyes narrowed and curved in malicious glee. “Nope, just going to do this instead!”

The heroine jumped straight out over the group of men she had been fighting with…and pulled her webs upward.

The two men she webbed screamed as they were suddenly yanked into the air and Ghost Spider used her newfound momentum to dropkick a third. She flipped midair to land on her feet and pulled on the webs again, this time yanking them so the airborne men slammed into the ground around where the one she kicked landed.

This time the men didn’t get up after getting hit. They were solidly unconscious.

Ghost Spider turned back to the now significantly more wary thugs.

“So. Who’s next?”

-o-

The goons didn’t last long after that.

Punches were delivered. Kicks were had. And all of them got a generous amount of webbing donated to their own personal silk cocoons.

“Well, that's that.” Ghost Spider mused, dusting her hands off. “Now all that’s left is the…oh, goddamnit.”

At some point during the time Ghost Spider had been making the thugs regret their life choices, their boss had decided running was the smart idea and booked it.

She turned to the groaning mass of men. “Looks like your boss ditched you, so I’m gonna go after him real quick. You boys just hang around. I’m sure the cops will be here to cut you out…at some point anyway.”

Another webline let her ascend to the skylights and out onto the roof, where she was immediately drenched again by the ongoing storm.

“Hey Nightwing, the factory is handled but the boss pulled a runner. I’m chasing him down now but you think you can have the GCPD send someone over?” She sent through the communicator while she scanned the surroundings, on the lookout for where the boss had run off to.

“That took a while, any problems?” Nightwing sounded distracted. He was probably multitasking.

“They used that new Venom formula. It took some time to stop them from getting up.” She replied. “Just give them some time for it to wear off and it should be an easy pickup.”

“I’ll let them know.”

“Cool, I’ve got to see a man about a drug problem.”

The sound of squealing tires rose above the constant sounds of rainfall. Ghost Spider looked down into the parking lot where she saw a car fishtailing out onto the street. She ended the call and started swinging after it. Not the most enjoyable experience between the rain reducing her visibility and the drops themselves stinging like hornets.

The car pulled a sharp right turn and started to head towards the city. If it got lost in traffic or the boss bailed out in a building somewhere Ghost Spider was likely to lose him.

So it was a merry chase through terrible conditions as Ghost Spider lept, swung, and launched herself through the air to follow the car that must have caught sight of her in the rearview mirror or wasn’t slowing down until he was sure he had lost her.

It took a bit, but she was eventually able to get close enough that she could get a webline on the car and reel herself in. That’s when the car’s driver knew for certain she was on his tail and decided to go absolutely nuts.

Ghost Spider clung to the frame of the car for dear life as the driver did his best to kill them both by trying to navigate through the streets with his foot trying to push through the floor and janking the wheel all over the place trying to throw her off. Thankfully the rain had driven everyone else off the road already or they would have crashed into someone by now.

“Look pal, you're just going to crash going like this! Just pull over already!” Ghost Spider yelled, smacking the car’s roof. Only to nearly fling herself off the vehicle when the driver pulled a handgun and started firing blindly back at her.

Suddenly, Ghost Spider felt the car start drifting to the side and looked up to see a wall coming straight for her. Her eyes widened as she realized what was about to happen. The crazy bastard was going to try bumping the side of the car into a building to either crush her or knock her off! Unfortunately that was the moment the tires lost their grip on the wet road and started hydroplaning. The car was now going fast enough there was no chance they weren’t going straight into -and maybe even through- that wall.

She had just enough time to brace and then the car hit…

-o-

“Gah, and that’s the ribs again…” Ghost Spider groaned as she picked herself up off the floor. It felt like Supergirl had used her ribcage as a punching bag.

“Ghost Spider?”

She looked up to see not only Batgirl standing nearby, but also a group of what looked like mercenaries, Robin, and a gray-skinned man easily over six and a half feet tall in a ratty suit all standing around the room like they had been in the middle of a fight.

“Oh, hey there. What are you guys up to?” Ghost Spider looked back at the driver she had been pursuing. Sure enough it was the boss that had run off. It also looked like the crash had knocked him out. A generous amount of webbing ensured he wouldn’t be running anywhere else anytime soon. “I was just catching up with some local businessmen, but it looks like you guys were having a party.”

Suddenly a large scaly green figure exploded out from a ruined pile of furniture that had hidden it from view.

Looks like Killer Croc was here in addition to Solomon Grundy.

“And you even have a petting zoo.” Ghost Spider quipped. “So what kinda party did I crash?”