Roxanne walked down the streets near her home one afternoon. She had put her hood on to shield herself from the light rain that was falling down. Seeing her lost gaze and slow steps, anyone would think she was just wandering aimlessly, but she had a very clear destination in her mind, one that she remembered too well but had avoided going back to for many years.

The further she got from her family's apartment, the less friendly the streets appeared. Thanks to the weather, not many people were out and about at that moment, but the condition of the buildings, asphalt, and overall atmosphere were greatly contrasting to what she had gotten used to in the past years, yet it was far from being unfamiliar or intimidating.

The few people who were out or watching from underneath humble door frames or shady corners caught glimpses of Ro walking melancholically past them but did not think much of it and went back to their own business. Aside from her unusual strength for someone her size, something else that had helped the girl survive for that many years on her own in the streets was her ability to not bring attention to herself. There was nothing outstanding or extraordinary about her, so people would often look right through her and not even notice she was there, which had come in extremely handy in such an environment.

Well, at least, there didn't used to be anything extraordinary about her.

Now, that seemed to be changing, not in a physical sense since her looks were as plain as they've ever been, as far as she was concerned. But for a full month now, she hadn't been able to stop thinking about the events that transpired during the alien attack. Sure, her life had pretty much returned to normal, and she had a fair share of distractions in the form of work and spending time with her siblings or her boyfriend, but whenever she was left alone with her thoughts, it all came back to her. Both what happened mere weeks ago, and what happened 9 years ago. What she did on both occasions. Sure, it was one thing to be able to fight off a small group of thugs with nothing but a plank to save her younger sister, but it was another to lift a boulder larger than her from a car. Or to sense incoming danger before actually seeing it. Or running on the walls.

That last memory was the one that lingered in her mind the most. For years, she had been certain that it had been a feverish hallucination. But now, she was not so sure. And today, something moved her to find it out. Maybe it was thanks to the sheer amount of content about the Avengers that every news and even entertainment media had shown for the past month, but another thing that didn't leave her mind was that strange but fascinating group of people, people that had remarkable abilities that make them stand out from the rest, and how they had used said abilities to fight for humanity. To save countless lives, including her own.

Roxanne had never been one for standing out, but she wondered if now, she maybe could do something useful with what she was given. For years, she had considered what happened to her as the worst night of her life. Sure, things eventually turned out for the better when she found a new family, but she would never forget that night. In a matter of hours, she had been left homeless, orphaned, lost in a city she barely knew, and had gotten God knows what experiments done on her before she managed to escape from her captors.

But what if she had been able to escape for a reason? What if she had survived the car crash for a reason? She had tried her hardest to forget the trauma and pain that had come from that night, not even attempting to replicate the odd feats she did, but as much as that memory had faded, it never truly left. And neither did the enhancements that she had acquired. She had hid them and ignored them for years, but maybe, just maybe, something good could come out of the most horrific experience she had ever been through.

After all, if Steve Rogers had decided to lay low and live on as a normal man after receiving his powers, Ro probably wouldn't be here right now. Maybe it was about time she made the many chances of survival that she had been given count.

The girl turned a corner and finally arrived at the old, abandoned warehouse that she had lived in for a couple of years. She looked at the rundown building with a mix of nostalgia, pain, and the slightest hint of shame. Ro looked around to make sure she wasn't being followed, and surely enough, she wasn't. She then approached it and walked towards the back. The building's entrance and most of its windows were nailed shut, but when she came across it years ago, she had found a way to get in. When she got to the back door, she was surprised to find that her entry was just as she had left it the last time she left the warehouse 7 years ago. A large and empty trash container, now rustier than the last time she saw it, blocked the door entirely. Ro pushed the object to the side with relative ease, revealing the door to have a long crack which was just the right size for a small person, such as herself, to squeeze through. She checked her surroundings one final time, and crouched down to get through the narrow hole, albeit with a bit more difficulty than when she was 15. She had grown a little since then, but not much.

Once inside, she stuck one arm through the hole again and used it to pull the trash container back into place, just as she had done nearly every night during the time she lived there, to avoid any undesired guests entering. It was one of the many advantages of her above-average strength, possibly the only ability that she had kept in touch with since the incident but that she had gotten so used to that she barely gave it much thought anymore.

After "locking" the door behind her, Ro got up and looked around inside the warehouse. Since there were other, more easily accessible abandoned buildings in that area of the neighborhood, barely anyone had bothered to try entering this one, and seemingly, that hadn't really changed in the years she had lived with the Garcías because everything was nearly exactly as she had left it, only dustier and moldier. All the boxes and crates inside were in the positions she remembered them. She saw the buckets she used to hold the water that leaked through the roof, and they were unsurprisingly overflowing. She took a breath in and was suddenly overpowered by a strong smell of humidity, which reminded her of the very first time she entered this place and had that same reaction. She, of course, had gotten used to it in time.

In a corner, Roxanne found an old and dirty mattress that she used to sleep on. The old blankets that she used to put on top of it were gone, since she had taken them with her when she moved with the Garcías, but a single one, folded into a square, which she used as a pillow, remained. She kneeled beside her former makeshift bed and held the "pillow", now a lot more humid, in her hands.

She couldn't stop a few tears from escaping her eyes as she looked at it and all the objects around her. She had such mixed feelings about this place. As much as she had hated her years living in the streets, she was nonetheless grateful for having found a relatively safe place to live in during that time. When she was accepted into her new family, she thought that she would never have to return to this place now that she had a proper, much cozier home, but today, she was back. Not because she needed a place to live in, but because this was the only space she could think of that was secluded and private enough to use as a testing ground.

As Ro wiped the remaining tears from her cheeks, she quickly shook her head and got up. It was time to start doing what she came here to do. She would need plenty of free space, so she began to move some of the crates to the back and the sides of the large room, until the center of the floor and an entire wall were completely clear. She now stood in front of the big blank wall, knowing what she wanted to do but not totally sure how to start.

The girl pressed a palm against the wall and looked up. She closed her eyes as she visualized her frantic escape once again. The then-13-year-old Roxanne had tripped while running away from the armed guards, and her palms had landed on a wall. Without even noticing, she then began supporting the weight of her entire body against said wall, and began running, as if she had switched her point of gravity from the floor to the wall and then to the ceiling.

Now, she had to figure out how to do that again. She pressed her other palm against the wall, and then a foot, expecting it to stick, but it slid right down. She tried once again, this time with her palms more separated and more above her head, only to get the same result. Maybe she needed a little impulse. She took several steps backwards away from the wall, then ran towards it and jumped a little. To her surprise, she actually felt like her right foot stuck for a brief second, even though she once again slid down once she tried pressing her left.

Impulse and distance seemed to give her better results, so she was going to focus more on that. If she was aiming for a higher spot on the wall, she was probably going to need a bit more cushion for the likely slips ahead. She dragged the old mattress and blanket and put them right underneath the spot she was jumping to. They weren't much, but at least it was something. She tried once again, this time stopping to jump a little further away from the wall and putting a little more energy in the spring. Both feet stuck to the wall this time! But it lasted less than a second before gravity pulled her down and made her land on the mattress she had ready.

"Alright. Not a bad start," Ro told herself aloud, looking up at the ceiling.

She got up and tried the same thing a few more times, getting similar results in each of her tries, but noticing how every few attempts, she managed to stay on the wall as little as half a second longer than before. It didn't seem like much, but every bit of progress counted.

After the process began feeling a bit repetitive, she got an idea to take it a small step further. She looked around for one of the smaller boxes, and grabbed one that was not more than a foot tall. As she laid it on the floor in about the same spot where she stopped to jump, she noticed how her palms were beginning to feel a little irritated from all the slamming she was doing, so she pulled a pair of fingerless gloves out of her hoodie's pocket, and put them on. She wasn't sure if wearing them would affect her ability to stick, but there was only one way to find out.

She took a slightly bigger distance away from the wall, and charged towards it again, this time stepping on the box to increase the momentum on her jump. Sure enough, she landed higher up on canvas, but that also meant that the fall was harder. It wasn't really that bad, but she definitely felt it. She walked it off and tried again and again and again. With each new jump, she built a little more trust, a little more distance, a little more sticking time. Even though some of her falls were harder than others, this process was quickly becoming more and more exciting and intriguing. How far could she take this?

In a particular attempt, she took a moment before jumping to visualize. She visualized the small boy and the relief on his and his mother's faces when she got him out of that crushed car. She visualized her siblings' amazed expression as they watched this and also the stinging urge she felt to protect them as soon as that tingle ran up the back of her neck and alerted her of the imminent danger. She visualized the absolute awe of watching Captain America in action, running straight into danger without an ounce of hesitation or even breaking a sweat.

With those motivational images in mind, she once again charged towards her objective, and the leap she took from the box was particularly high this time around. As she landed on the wall and used her fingertips and toes to support herself, she didn't slide down anymore. For a few seconds, she just stayed in the same position, roughly 7 feet from the ground. She panted as she looked around. It seemed as if she had finally mastered this first step.

And now, it was time for the next step: moving. She knew she would fall flat on her back if she attempted to stand up and walk around on the wall at once, so like babies did, she needed to learn to crawl first. In her current position, her arms were bent close to her chest. She slowly stretched her right arm up, making sure that she didn't lose balance or slipped down again. Once her palm was once again firmly pressed against the wall, she repeated the process with her left arm, this time also pulling herself up with her legs in order to move up the wall. She slowly repeated the process a few times, supporting herself on her palms, knees, and soles. Before she knew it, she bumped her head on the warehouse's ceiling. She had reached the top of the wall!

She once again turned her head but quickly regretted doing so. Ro had been afraid of heights all her life, and now as she saw how far the ground was from below her, she began feeling sick. Her heart pounded fast and her vision unfocused as well as her concentration, making her begin to slide down.

"No, no, no, NO, NO, NO, NO!" she frantically yelled as she realized she was going down.

The girl closed her eyes in fear and desperately attempted the maintain her grasp and to avoid the much nastier fall that would await her from that height, and as she clawed her hands against the wall, she closed one of them as if trying to grab on to a non-existent ledge or protuberance of some sort, and as she squeezed her fingers against her palm, she suddenly heard a faint "THWIP", and her slide down halted suddenly.

Ro's eyes popped open in surprise and she looked up to see what force was keeping her once again in place. Shock overcame her as she saw a long, translucent thread that was coming out of her wrist and whose end seemed to be glued to the ceiling.

"WHAT THE--!?" As she yelled, she unthinkingly moved away from the wall, making her lose any semblance of balance she had left and pummel down towards the ground, screaming. In a reflex-like manner, she managed to stretch out her legs and stick her feet to the wall once more, making her stop abruptly not more than two feet above the floor, remaining almost parallel to it.

She gasped for air once she realized she was safe, and for a few moments, she didn't move as she tried to catch her breath. As it steadied, she once again looked at her wrist and the bizarre thread that came out of it. Without taking her eyes off of it, she put her feet on the ground slowly and adopted an upright position. She was still trembling a little. In all her previous incredible feats, she did not remember her body doing anything like this. Hesitantly, she touched the thread and studied it. It had a silky yet sticky texture. It was firm and was stretched tight from the ceiling to where she was now standing. She pulled from it using the opposite hand from where it came from, and it stretched even more. She twisted it a few times around her hand, and it took several turns for it to finally break. It fell down slowly and gracefully, showing that despite its rigidity, its material was surprisingly light.

"Okay," she said under her breath, still processing what had just happened. "That's new."

She looked from her hand to the ceiling and back again, wondering how that strange string had come out of her in the first place. Then, she thrusted her hand out, willing the substance to come out of her wrist. Nothing happened. She tried a second time. Nothing. On the third try, she tried facing her palm the other way. Still nothing. She kept thrusting her hand over and over and over again, incorporating a different hand gesture each time, but still the weird string refused to come out of her. AAAARRRRGGGGHH!!!

Roxanne took in a long, shuddering breath through her clenched teeth before slowly exhaling. She repeated this process until the frustration ebbed away and her thoughts cleared. Okay, what had she been doing before the thread shot out of her? She remembered sliding down the wall, panicking, desperately trying to cling to the wall as she was sliding down and panicking. Ro closed her hand as she recalled those harrowing moments, pressing her two middle fingers into her palm. A tell-tale "THWIP" sound followed the motion, causing her to look up. Sure enough, a long translucent thread was running from her wrist to the ceiling.

With the shock having worn off, she couldn't help but let out a delighted chuckle as she proudly looked at her newly-produced thread, which was coming out from just below where her fingerless glove ended, and had reached an even larger distance than the last. Ro once again twisted it around her hand, only this time she used the same one where it was coming out of, and she walked backwards to test out its elasticity again. She reached as far as the back corner of the warehouse without it breaking off, until she gave it a strong pull with both hands, and she once again admired the odd delicacy with which it fell. She held the now loose string and studied it once again. She couldn't decide if this new ability was gross or awesome, or both. Probably both.

As she looked on at her peculiar creation in wonder, a small dangling object on her peripheral vision caught her attention, and she turned to look at it.

A spider. Hanging upside down from the ceiling from a thin string of web, not dissimilar to the one Ro had just produced and was now holding.

One of the few images she remembered seeing from inside the glass tube she was held in all those years ago before frantically escaping, was a screen that showed, amongst lots of other data, a large picture of a spider. It appeared as if the scientists surrounding the screen were studying the abilities, anatomy, and other various properties of said animal. And while she ran, she even remembered seeing some sort of rectangular, small-ish glass container that appeared to be holding tiny bug-like creatures. Putting two and two together, those creatures very well could have been spiders.

It suddenly clicked for her. Spiders. That's what the scientists who experimented on her must have based her powerset on.

The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. The wall-climbing. The strength. The superhuman senses. And of course, the most damning piece of evidence, the string of web-like material. Her former kidnappers must've been trying to create some sort of human-spider hybrid, and by some twist of fate, she was now it.

Roxanne stared at the small arachnid as she processed all of this information, but a sudden beeping emanating from her cellphone suddenly snapped her out of her trance. She took the device out of her back pocket and turned off the alarm she had set before coming to this place, as a reminder to return home in order to not alarm her family in case she lost track of time. As she put her phone away again, she took one last look at the string she held in her hand, which was starting to slowly dissolve. She let go of it and began walking towards the exit, not without also stealing one final glance at the spider, which was now back on its spiderweb, placed in one of the corners of the roof.

The young woman exited the building the same way she had entered it, putting the trash container back in place, and began walking back to her home the exact same way she came from.

She now had a new topic to do research on once she got there.

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The next few weeks for Roxanne became all about learning, in more ways than one. She continued finding out as much about the Avengers and their past and present deeds as she could. She also did research on spiders, their most characteristic skills, and even some of the basic physics behind them — at least as much as her 7th. grade education combined with basic video tutorials allowed her to grasp.

But the biggest thing she had to learn about now was herself. What she was really capable of doing. The strengths and weaknesses that came with her rekindled abilities. How she could use them to potentially help others. On her days off from work, Mondays and Wednesdays, she would sneak off to the warehouse to train, under the guise of taking a stroll down the street for a few hours to clear her head from the stress of the week and the recent events. Technically speaking, this wasn't entirely a lie. Walking and clearing her head were definitely involved. She just happened to omit the part where she spent 3 to 4 hours practicing her spider-like abilities that she acquired in a freak accident almost a decade ago.

Ro couldn't help but feel a slight sense of guilt whenever she was asked where she was going by one of her family members. She hated keeping secrets from them and even more so lying to them, but she came to think of this as an extension of the original secret she decided to keep from them since the beginning, and that was her own past. She had never felt ready to share with them more about her past than the fact that she had lost her parents in a car accident at the age of 13. Although she was now beginning to face her past, she still did not feel ready to let her family know. Knowing the overprotective nature of her mother, the nosy and often reckless personalities of her siblings, and the often stern —although ultimately caring— attitude of her father, telling them would just create a mess and a half, not to mention unnecessary stress for every member of the family, herself included.

She might feel prepared to let them know about this one day, but not for now.

For now, she decided to take things one step at a time. And with typically less than 8 hours a week available for her to practice and familiarize herself with these new powers, her training sessions were typically pretty intense. Once she mastered the wall-crawling, she began testing wall- and ceiling-walking. As expected, her first handful of attempts resulted in a lot of tumbles and bruising, but luckily none of them were visible for her family to see and question. Her worst injury was a twisted ankle product of a bad landing, but thankfully that one was relatively easy to mask as a product of a careless biker. Not to mention, she took notice of how it, just as the rest of her minor injuries, was able to heal at a really fast rate. Within the first month, it seemed like her family still didn't suspect a thing. At least, as far as she knew.

Little by little, Roxanne started getting the hang of each of her skills. Her fear of heights was one of the greatest struggles, so increasing her elevation gradually helped her with it. The closer she got to the ceiling, the more time she had to take to get used to the new altitude. A couple of her sessions had to be dedicated entirely to try to not throw up when crawling and then walking on the roof, but ultimately, she managed to build enough trust in her own ability that the paralyzing terror of gravity pulling her down began to diminish. The nervousness was still there, but it was a lot more manageable.

Probably one of the most exciting parts of her training were the days when she got to practice how to use her webs. After observing the many spiders that were in various parts of the warehouse and even one that eventually installed itself in her bedroom, she came to the conclusion that one of the greater uses she could give the substance was as a sort of rope for her to swing from place to another, thus allowing her to move greater distances at a much quicker pace. She began testing out the strength and resistance a single thread had, how far she could actually throw it, and how good of an aim she had with it.

All of these aspects were tricky, but surprisingly fun to test out. She found that the shorter distance she threw a string of web at, the more compressed elasticity it had, thus allowing her to throw herself farther (her landings were another thing that she had to learn to master the hard way). The thickness of the string could vary depending on how much pressure she applied on her wrist with her fingers, and said string was usually cut if she released the pressure in a quick motion, thus allowing her to use her web as a projectile. Not only that, but she found other handy uses for it such as pulling objects to herself, catapulting herself when using the web on both hands at once, producing nets relatively quickly that came in really handy when the heights she was using were too much for the old blanket and mattress to cushion... she was just amazed at how versatile this power was!

After a while, the warehouse became too small of a training ground. Ro felt as if she had jumped, swinged, climbed, and flipped through every inch of the inside of the building. There really was not much else for her to do inside of these old, damp walls. If she really was planning on putting her powers to use, she first had to expand her limits.

And given how she still wanted to go as low-key as she possibly could, especially in a neighborhood where rumors spread so quickly, Ro figured that she now needed to start concealing her identity. Looking at the costumes that the Avengers typically wore to battle, she knew she didn't have the budget nor the sewing skills to make herself something similar, so she had to make due with what she already had.

She couldn't use an outfit that would be too recognizable, so rummaging through her closet, she found what she was looking for. A light and form-fitting red zip-up hoodie with yellow accents. Ever since her adoptive grandmother had gifted it to her two years ago on a Christmas visit the family did to her home in Guatemala, Roxanne hadn't really had much of an opportunity to wear it, given how it was too light for cold weather, and too hot for warm weather. But it might just be the right weight for swinging around the city and climbing the sides of buildings. She would be surprised if anyone from her family remembered it, anyway.

She put the hoodie on and looked at herself in her bedroom's mirror. The garment was nice, that was for sure. This shade of crimson red had always been her favorite color, so she liked the idea of incorporating it into her "suit". But the color might just be a bit too eye-catching for what she was going for. She quickly got an idea and looked through her closet once more. Last year for her birthday, Alejandro had gifted her a black faux leather vest with the intention for her to wear whenever she came along with him on motorcycle rides, along with a pair of goggles with a black rim and a yellow tint in the lenses. Thanks to the tensions that often arose between her family and romantic partner, she had yet to wear either of the items in order to avoid arousing unnecessary drama. So these two for sure would also go unnoticed by her family. Her boyfriend might suspect if he ever happened to see her in action, but they were probably generic enough that he might not think much of it. And even if he did, if he happened to question her about the matter, she probably wouldn't hide the truth for him. It wasn't the worst thing to let at least one person in on her secret, and if there was anyone that she knew she could trust with it, it was Alejandro.

And so, she put the black vest over the red hoodie, and placed the goggles over her eyes. This probably wouldn't be a look she would sport on a daily basis, but then again, that was exactly the point. With the black on top of the red, the outfit quickly became much more discreet while still having the slightest touch of flare. And the goggles did the intended trick of making her face harder to identify at first glance, but just to make sure her identity was better concealed, she grabbed a dark red handkerchief that was inside of one of her drawers and tied it at the back of her head, making it cover her nose and mouth, acting as a sort of face mask.

She tied her hair in a ponytail and pulled up her jacket's hood, making sure not much hair stuck out of it. She took a good, long look at her improvised outfit in the mirror, complete with the most generic-looking pair of dark gray pants and black military boots that she owned. Once again, it was not the prettiest of fits, but for some reason, she liked it. It would do its intended job of concealing her identity as best as she could as she used her powers out in the streets, and she felt satisfied with it.

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Finally, after over two months of training inside her former warehouse home, Roxanne went out on her usual "walk" that day with a different purpose in mind. She now was carrying an old backpack with her, and inside it were the components of her new vigilante "suit". She did return to the warehouse, but this time, all she did inside it was change into the outfit. She made sure to double and even triple-check her surroundings, because this time, she would be going out in a less inconspicuous way than usual.

Once she was in full "supersuit", she climbed one of the warehouse's walls until she reached a high window that had no glass. She climbed through it and clinged to the outside of the building. She looked around. The zone was not very populated, so she couldn't see anyone. She climbed the remainder of the wall and stood on top of the high roof. She had to take a second to steady her breath as she became aware of the height, but doing so was now a lot easier than it had been at the beginning.

This was it. Time to head to where the people are.

She took another deep breath, then a few steps back. She started running and took a great jump towards the boarded up apartment that was on the other side of the street. She landed on its roof, and in order to not to lose momentum, she kept running across it and threw a long string of web from her right wrist unto another nearby, taller building. She used the web to pull herself to it, and her feet landed on the side of its walls, sticking to it. And so, she kept swinging and leaping her way through the skies to the center of the city.

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Roxanne finally arrived at a heavily populated area of New York, which was not exceedingly far from her home, but just far enough that it would be unlikely for any member of her family to be nearby. Sure, her face was concealed, but she didn't want to take any chances, just in case.

Still running on building tops, she landed on a terrace and looked down from its edge. In such a busy town, so far people didn't seem to take notice of the black and red blur that was making its way across the city's roofs. Ro suddenly felt very nervous, yet full of adrenaline. She couldn't believe she was finally doing this around people. For so long, it had been just her and those four walls (or more accurately six, considering both the floor and ceiling played such significant parts). Now, she was out there. Officially, she was still training, but she knew that if she saw an opportunity to help someone today, she would take it and do the best she could.

Suddenly, Ro gasped as she felt a light but telling tingle at the back of her neck, which urged her to be very alert.

"Hey! Who's out there?" she heard a gruff male voice call from inside the entrance to the terrace. Thanks to her now greatly enhanced hearing, she was able to perceive quickly approaching footsteps. Thinking quickly, she stuck to the side of the same building she was standing on, out of view from the person that then burst through the door and stormed on the terrace brandishing a baseball bat.

"Hey, you're not allowed to be--!" the heavy-built middle aged man suddenly halted his threat, as he looked around only to find no one else but himself standing on the roof. Ro did not see the man from where she was, but she listened intently. He was skeptical for a few moments, but after a while, he simply let out an annoyed sigh and shook his head, heading back to where he came from and slamming the door shut behind him.

The tense Roxanne let out a relieved sigh. This served as a great reminder of the last of her abilities she had yet to fully master: this foretelling tingle that came about from time to time whenever an unexpected danger was approaching her, allowing her to narrowly avoid it just in time. She of course had not had many opportunities to test this out in her training; she could only familiarize herself with it on the field.

"Alright, you weird lifesaver tingle," Ro addressed the power aloud, "time to do your thing."

She hurled her right hand forward and pressed her middle and ring finger to her palm, producing a long web that stuck to the nearest building, and then swung herself from it, making her way through the neighborhood, looking down for any possible danger that she could either see or sense.

Surely enough, people started to take notice of her. As fast as she was going, she caught glimpses of some civilians that were looking up at her, some murmuring amongst themselves, a few others taking pictures with their cellphones, and most of them simply staring agape. She started feeling a little self-aware, causing her to slightly stumble upon landing on the edge of an office building, and she was even able to hear a couple of gasps coming from below as she did so. She had been aware that she would inevitably draw some attention to herself eventually, but reminded herself that none of these people knew who she was thanks to her disguise, so she shook off her slip and kept moving forward.

After circling around the streets for a little while, she started thinking that maybe there was not much for her to do around here. However, this thought was quickly proven to be wrong as she once again felt the tingle, this time a lot more intensely. She paused for a moment in the corner of a tall apartment and looked down to see if she could spot the source of the danger that her body alerted her of.

At first, she saw nothing out of the ordinary. When she first felt this tingle, she remembered how the sensation seemed to have a sort of upright motion that went through her nape, which encouraged her to look up and locate the danger, which was then the chunk of debris that was plummeting towards her siblings. So she figured that what she needed to do was listen to what her power was telling her, and hopefully, it would once again guide her to where it wanted her to look.

She closed her eyes and exhaled, feeling for any direction that the tingle would start moving towards. And after a few seconds, she noticed how the pulsations seemed to point her to her back left. Not only that, but she began hearing voices that came from that direction.

She turned around and looked down at the alleyway that was next to the building where she stood. In it, a mugger was holding a skinny teenage boy at gunpoint. The latter was clenching a white laptop close to his chest, both arms crossed over it.

"I'll only say it one more time, kid. Hand over the laptop, or I'll shoot!" the criminal growled, holding the boy against the wall with one hand and his gun in the other.

"Please, I can't give it to you! I'm begging you, just take my wallet and leave!" the young man pleaded on the verge of tears.

The bandit clicked his gun, startling his victim. "Last chance, boy! I will shoot in three, two..."

But before he got to one, a sudden kick coming from above his head knocked the gun out of his hand. He didn't get a chance to react before a second kick landed on his chin, knocking him backwards and making him land on his back.

When he looked up, he noticed a feminine-looking figure dressed in black and red standing in front of the teen he tried to steal from, her eyes obscured by a pair of goggles, and the lower half of her face covered by a sort of scarf.

"Stealing from a kid? Really?" Ro defiantly asked the mugger as she looked down at him. "What part of 'pick on someone your own size' do bullies like you never seem to understand?"

The criminal growled as he sat up. "Why, you meddling little b!+(#, I'll kill you!"

He reached out to grab his gun, but the masked vigilante quickly threw a weird sticky net at his hand, which made it get stuck on the ground mere inches away from the pistol. He tried to pull it free, but found that he was unable to. Roxanne threw a web at his other hand before he got a chance to think about using it. The girl leapt towards him, and the man attempted to kick her. However, she swiftly avoided his foot and instead was the one to land a kick on the criminal, this time knocking him unconscious.

"Rude!" she yelled at the knocked-out man. After she made sure he wasn't waking up (and that he at least still breathed), she turned to look at the teen. He was looking on at her in awe, though still understandably frightened.

Ro looked down and noticed a dark blue wallet that was peaking out of the mugger's pants pocket. She took it out and opened it to see the identification inside, which was a student ID whose picture matched with the boy that stood in front of her. She stretched it towards him, keeping a respectful distance.

"I believe this is yours, isn't it?" she asked him in a calm tone.

The young man looked from the wallet to his mysterious savior and back to the wallet, nodding slightly. He took a hesitant step forward, reaching out for it, and Ro finally handed it to him.

"Thank you, miss. That was, that was pretty impressive," he nervously thanked her as he put the wallet back in his own pants pocket.

"Hey, no problem," she replied, unable to not feel a little sheepish. "Be careful with that laptop of yours, though. Seems pretty valuable, wouldn't want to lose it to some second-rate crook," she lightly quipped as she tilted her head towards the still unconscious delinquent.

The teenager chuckled slightly. "You're right, I'll hide it a little better next time. All my schoolwork is in here. Not to mention, my parents worked pretty hard to get it for me, so I wouldn't wanna let them down."

Although he could not see it, Ro gave him an understanding smile. "I know what that's like. Alright, kid, you better get out of here before that guy comes to," she urged him as she threw a web up and began heading away. "Be safe."

"Wait, wait!" The boy stopped her before she started to swing away. "Who are you? Are you... an Avenger?"

Without turning to look at the kid, Ro couldn't help but smile to herself. "No. They were just an inspiration."

And without saying another word, she climbed up the side of the tall structure and swung away as she threw strings of web from one building to another. The young boy walked out of the alleyway and followed her with his gaze for as long as he could, as did several other passersby, who stared at the disappearing figure with intrigue and wonder.

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AUTHOR'S NOTES: OOF! Pretty long chapter, huh? That introspection got longer than anticipated, hehe. But I'm still really satisfied with how it turned out! Action scenes are not my forte, but I think the ones that are here came out pretty well! (And I can say the same for the illustrations) We'll see how I do when we get to actual fight scenes though, hahaha :'D (halp)

Anyways, our baby girl Roxanne has officially taken her first steps toward herohood! :'3 Where will she go from here? We'll find out soon enough.

P.S: No, the kid's not Peter Parker xD