System Crash

However much Gwen Stacy might have enjoyed the Fright Night Halloween party she'd attended with her friends, that enjoyment had been thoroughly spoiled when she'd investigated a series of mysterious murders in her costumed heroic identity as the spectacular Spider-Woman. She'd learned all too well the horrifying truth behind the murders, and the sickening part Felicia Hardy had played in them. The fact that Gwen couldn't prove anything about Felicia's sickening crimes, thus ensuring she'd never face justice for what she'd done, infuriated Gwen to no end.

Of course, with the month of November now in full swing, the problems in Gwen's personal life had come back into her life front and centre. Empire State University's professors had now corrected their students' midterm exams, and the students were now anticipating their exam results half in hope, half in dread. Gwen was decidedly more on the dread side-everything she'd had to deal with, ranging from her efforts to find better-paying modeling and acting work to the problems she encountered as Spider-Woman, had prevented her from getting as much studying done as she wanted. One particular encounter with Moonstone had been especially bad-Gwen had been so exhausted from the injuries she'd suffered in her battle that she hadn't been able to finish her Biology exam, and while resting after the fight and the test she ended up sleeping half the day away and missing her English exam altogether.

Asusual, the old Stacy luck is running true tof orm,Gwen thought glumly as she walked up the steps of the Arthur Miller Building for her morning Drama class.

SPIDER-WOMAN #38

"SYSTEM CRASH"

The C-plus Gwen got on her Drama exam turned out to be the good news. Over the course of the day, Gwen found that she'd gotten a D-plus on her History exam, a D-average on her Chemistry exam, and a zero on her English exam. Although her English class wasn't scheduled for today, she still stopped by to see Professor Huddleston during his office hours and get his exam from him personally.

Now, making her way to the Erskine Building to visit Dr. Curt Connors, Gwen was wondering how she'd possibly be able to explain her terrible grades to her mother. Helen Stacy had been doing so much better since she'd gotten the therapy she so sorely needed, but Gwen was afraid of dragging her down again with any bad news. That made Gwen feel terrible by itself, but what frustrated her all the more was that she'd had to become Spider-Woman in order to try and stop Moonstone from stealing the Enervator machine.

AndIcouldn'tevendothat right,Gwen cursed herself as she knocked on Dr. Connors' office door. Entering at his call, Gwen saw that the Doctor was the same as he always was. Dressed in a rumpled cardigan sweater, formal dress shirt and pants, and his formal dress shoes, Dr. Connors cut a distinguished academic figure seated at his desk and surrounded by the scientific journals and books that made up his life's passion behind him.

"Gwen," Dr. Connors nodded in response to her greeting, frowning heavily as she sat down. "I take it you're here for your exam?"

"Yes, I am," Gwen replied, as Dr. Connors nodded and sighed. Searching through the pile of corrected exams on his desk, Dr. Connors selected one and handed it to her with a disapproving look on his face. Gwen's heart sank when she saw the look on his face, and then it fell even further when she saw the F he'd marked on it in red ink.

"I..." Gwen trailed off.

"Suffice to say that I'm very disappointed in you, Gwen," Dr. Connors shook his head. "Several students have had trouble in this class, but you haven't even seemed to try! The quality of your work has been well below what I would have expected. I know you're smart enough to get the material, but what I can't tell is why you aren't putting in a good enough effort."

Gwen hesitated, her stomach turning in knots as she tried to figure out what to say.

"I don't have as much time to study as I'd like," she finally ventured. "I have to do a lot of extra work to pay for rent and food and things like that."

"So do a lot of other students," Dr. Connors reproached her, "and they're still doing better than you. In fact..." he trailed off, noticing the pile of exams that Gwen had unwittingly placed on his desk in full view for him to see. "In fact, with these kinds of grades, I'd be very surprised if you didn't end up on academic probation."

Gwen flinched visibly, her frustration building as she tried to figure out how she could possibly explain the situation to Dr. Connors without giving away more than she needed to. At the back of her mind, she began wondering what her mother and Aunt Nancy were going to say when they found out how badly she'd been doing...

"...I...I'm sorry, Doctor," Gwen said, an edge in her voice. "I...don't know what to say..."

"Well, I do," Dr. Connors said, folding his arms. "You need to get your priorities straight, Gwen. If you can't apply yourself in my class, then you don't belong in it. Like I said before, you're smart enough to do well, but if you won't make the effort to do the work then you shouldn't be wasting your professors' time," he concluded reproachfully.

Gwen tried to say something, anything, but she forced herself to stand up, nod in appreciation, and leave. Inwardly she was boiling with frustration and anger, not so much at Dr. Connors but her apparent inability to keep everything going.

I need to stay in school but I also need to get enough good paying work and build my acting and modeling resumes and that doesn't give me a steady paycheck so I have to work at the coffee shop on top of all that and on top of everything else I keep having to intervene as Spider-Woman to stop some costumed freak from robbing or killing innocent people and if I don't do that I'm just as guilty as the villains themselves but it prevents me from dealing with my personal problems and that means I'll end up letting down my mother and Aunt Nancy and everyone else who's ever believed in me...

Gwen's train of thought continued like that through the rest of the day, even as she somehow managed to keep up a brave face in front of Kitty and Kong that evening at home.

Tony Stark and Stuart Clarke were widely known as two of America's most brilliant engineering and business minds. As the respective heads of Stark Enterprises and ClarkeTech, they had been engaged in a friendly but heated rivalry to outdo one another and become America's leading high tech manufacturers. Their competition had led them both to develop many new pioneering inventions, spurring a new tech boom in America that had earned them both immense fortunes. Tony Stark had invented the Global Positioning System, while Stuart Clarke had become known as the father of the smartphone; Clarke had developed new neural interface technology that allowed amputees to control their bionic limbs as easily as their real limbs, and allowed paraplegics to walk again, while Stark had developed the Guardsman battle armor now used by law enforcement agencies the world over to arrest and detain superhuman criminals; Both men and their companies remained on the cutting edge of medical technology, telecommunications and laboratory technology, meeting but unable to fully overcome the challenges they posed to one another.

Stark Enterprises seemed to have the upper hand with its new solar power technology, which the company had released last year. Tony Stark had designed a new type of solar technology that could absorb and retain far more solar energy than previous models. In addition, Stark had also developed a type of special battery that could absorb and store the power to be transported and then used in another area. This innovation t was set to provide a new source of clean energy both to areas like northern Canada and Europe, and poorer countries in the developing world that did not have much access to electrical infrastructure.

In response, Stuart Clarke had begun pursuing another interest that he hoped to undercut Stark in, namely the still largely untapped science of nanotechnology. Already ClarkeTech had made tremendous profits from its inroads into new markets with nanotechnology that was built into everyday consumer goods ranging from video games to sports equipment. But Clarke was intrigued by some of the more theoretical abilities of nanotechnology-namely, that it could be preprogrammed to form everything from chairs to flashlights. Every part of the nanotech could be programmed to form a part of the greater whole, much like how each atom or molecule formed part of a greater physical entity.

Larson Gatesworth was one of the ClarkeTech scientists working on this project along with Stuart himself. As a matter of fact, they'd managed to develop a working, pre-programmable form of nanotech that could alter itself on its programmer's command, but it still needed extensive testing and review before it would ever be ready to be brought to market. Larson had taken some of this nanotech home with him to work on in the evenings, just as eager as his boss to unlock nanotechnology's true potential.

None of this mattered to Larson's son Jonathan, however. Although Jonathan Gatesworth was likely Larson's equivalent or even his superior when it came to engineering talent, Jonathan wasn't the least bit interested in applying his talents for constructive purposes. He preferred to spend his time playing video games and reading dirty Japanese hentai manga. All the computer programming and design he actually did was to indulge his perversions

Despite this, Jonathan had in fact taken a very keen interest in the nanotechnology that Larson brought home to study. He'd begun experimenting with it himself after Larson and the rest of the family had fallen asleep, seeing what he could do with it. So far he'd been able to preprogram the nanotech with the appearances and actions of his favorite video game characters-Sonic the Hedgehog, Donkey Kong, the Super Mario Brothers, Duke Nukem, Bomberman, Kratos...

The nanotech had formed small humanoid figures within the glass display case connected to the computer Larson and Jonathan were using to program the nanotech. However, so far even Jonathan couldn't tell if they were just three-dimensional holograms, or if the nanotechnology was actually replicating itself and forming a genuine figure. Intrigued, he tried to open the display case to see whether or not the entities created by the nanotech were solid.

The glass case was harder to open than he would have thought, and Jonathan ended up cutting his finger on the sharp-edged lid as he finally got it off. Cursing under his breath at the pain, Jonathan sucked the blood from the cut before reaching his hand into the display case to touch the nanotech. The figure was in fact solid, although it collapsed into a pile of dissolute nanites as soon as Jonathan touched it. As it did, Jonathan felt a weird tingling feeling pass through his finger, but when he withdrew his hand and looked at it everything appeared normal.

Shrugging in disappointment, Jonathan turned off the equipment before replacing everything the way he found it and heading to bed.

For all his talent as a programmer, Jonathan Gatesworth couldn't have known that some of the nanotech had entered his bloodstream through his cut and begun bonding with his body's cells, replicating along with them as the cells thrived and died, combining their computer programming with the genetic programming of Jonathan's DNA...

Saturday was the big day for Gwen, when her modeling and acting careers were going to truly take off. She would be shooting the first commercial for Kingsley Cosmetics' new Satin Angel fragrance, and later in the day she'd be trying out for the final auditions of the new production of LesMiserables,hopefully to get her dream role of Eponine. Gwen had been looking forward to this day for a long time, and despite all the stress she was under she was eager to rise to the challenges before her. While it had rained heavily last night and the streets were filled with puddles, Gwen wasn't bothered in the least by the dismal weather.

Roderick Kingsley was wreathed in smiles as he greeted Gwen, his bright and eager eyes looking her over approvingly as his taller, more muscular brother Daniel stood impassively behind him. The way Kinglsey always stared and leered at Gwen had made her distinctly uncomfortable, but she'd forced herself to put up with it because of how well he paid. Today was no different, especially considering what she'd have to wear for the commercials.

"It's so good to see you, Gwen," Kingsley grinned. "I just know you're going to knock them dead with these ads. They'll make me a fortune, and they'll make you a star!"

"I'm looking forward to it, Mr. Kingsley," Gwen smiled back, before she was led away to the dressing room where she would have her makeup applied and change into costume.

It was a strange sensation for Gwen to be so eager to get in front of the camera and give the performance she knew she was capable of, and yet at the same time become increasingly apprehensive about the way Kingsley was always looking at her.

Shooting the ad gave Gwen everything she could have wanted-an attractive, tasteful costume, good close-ups of her face and a brief speech to the camera extolling the virtues of Satin Angel. They only needed one or two takes before filming was complete-Gwen had done so well the first time that the director was more than happy with the results.

As she emerged into the main studio area after changing back into her street clothes, Gwen was surprised to find that almost all the crew had left. The only people still around were Daniel and Roderick Kingsley, who stood to greet her as she emerged from the dressing rooms.

"Where is everybody?" Gwen asked Roderick, looking around in surprise as she felt a sudden nervous apprehension rise up within her. Ominously, Daniel was standing at the exit, blocking the doors as Roderick advanced towards her with a wide smile on his face.

"They had to go to another project," Roderick explained, smiling that smile that reminded Gwen of a crocodile's grin. "It was scheduled right after this one. Daniel and I will be joining them shortly. I needed to talk to you before we left, though."

"What about?" Gwen asked, now extremely uncomfortable with the way Roderick Kingsley was leering at her.

"Have you thought about the future?" Roderick asked her, as Daniel stood impassively in the background. "Specifically, about your long term plans?"

"...Mr. Kingsley, I really need to go," Gwen explained. "I have to-"

"Just hear me out," Roderick interrupted her. "Times are tough these days, especially for the younger generation. I take it you have a lot of problems making ends meet?"

"...Why are you asking me these things?" Gwen asked, alarm coming into her voice. "I just want my paycheck-"

"I'm asking because I care about you," Roderick explained. "I take it you've got a lot of problems? I could help you with that."

"I appreciate the thought, but I don't need the help!" Gwen protested, now looking quickly from one side to the other as she backed off. "I just want to leave, damn it!"

"You lost your father in that mob war, didn't you?" Roderick grinned, as he quickly closed the gap between him and Gwen. "That's where I can help you, sweetie-I could be your daddy, if you like!"

Before Gwen could react, Roderick reached out and quickly pulled her into a tight hug, passing his hands down over her back until he groped her bottom. Still leering all the way, he spun around to stand behind her, even as one of his hands came back around to her front and began stroking her breasts.

"Go on," Kingsley whispered to her. "You can call me daddy..."

For the first few seconds Gwen had been too paralyzed with shock and horror to do anything, but now her temper flared angrily. Easily breaking free of Roderick's grip, she spun around and slapped him hard across the face. The sheer force of her blow knocked Roderick flat on his back, as blood gushed from his now-broken nose. Daniel Kingsley came up behind her, but Gwen drove an elbow into his gut and flipped him overhead to land prone in front of her.

Gasping at the blood dripping down the front of his nose, Roderick Kingsley stared with pure hatred at Gwen, livid at what she'd done to him.

"You...little...witch..." he gasped.

"We're done," Gwen said slowly, her eyes narrowing angrily. "And you're going to pay for this."

"That's what you think, honey," Kingsley smiled maliciously. "I pay my lawyers top dollar to make sure little incidents like this get swept under the rug. And they're very good at what they do. You really think you can get anything on me? Besides, who's going to believe you? It'll be your word against mine."

Shaking in anger and humiliation, Gwen stared back at him with pure loathing.

"Oh, and about your hopes of becoming a model? I have a lot of friends in the modeling world. Suffice it to say that, when I'm through with you, you'll never work in this town again!" Kingsley smirked triumphantly.

All Gwen could do was leave, seething in anger. She wasn't sure what upset her more-the things Kingsley had done to her, or the fact that he was right when he said that there was nothing she could do to get some justice for what he did.

The thought stayed with Gwen as she made her way home to change and prepare for the afternoon's audition of Les Miserables.

Gwen's mood wasn't any better as she continued on her way to the theatre. If anything, she felt even worse, wondering how she'd be able to get any modeling work at all if Kingsley used his influence to ruin her prospects. That would be all she needed, which was why she was looking forward to this LesMiserablespart so much-

Gwen was so distracted that she didn't see the man come up behind her and shove her off balance, and it took her long enough to regain her footing that he was able to steal her backpack and begin running off down the street. Shouting angrily, Gwen ran after him, but the man quickly looked behind him and put on another burst of speed, running for the stairs that led to the underground subway tunnels with astonishing speed.

Ordinarily, Gwen wouldn't have had any trouble catching the thief, but her high-heeled boots were extremely awkward to run in. Cursing herself for not wearing flats, Gwen couldn't catch the thief before he'd made it down the steps and into the underground subway station. He'd timed his movements well, running towards the nearest open train. Shouting at the people around her to stop him, Gwen felt a rising sense of panic as she saw the man getting away. Her Spider-Woman costume was in that backpack, and if the thief managed to find it...

Most of the people were too preoccupied with getting onto or off their trains, and even when they heard Gwen's shouts they weren't able to react quickly enough to catch the man. Shoving his way through the surprised passengers, he made it onto the train just before the doors closed and the train began to leave. By some miracle, Gwen managed to get onto the car behind him, although she was very nearly crushed by the door as it closed.

Stewing angrily, all she could do was wait until the thief got off the train. She'd managed to mark him with her tracking pheromones, so her spider senses would be able to trace him.

Three stops, then four. Once again, Gwen frantically checked her watch, realizing just how much time she was wasting, but she couldn't afford to lose her backpack, especially when it had her Spider-Woman costume and her wallet in it.

Finally, the subway stopped, and they got off the train. Looking through the crowd, Gwen finally saw the thief, walking slowly and casually to avoid drawing attention to himself. Shouting again, Gwen was the one to catch him off guard this time.

"Stop him! He stole my backpack!" Gwen cried out, putting an edge of panic in her voice.

It worked just as well as she'd hoped-a couple of larger men reacted to her pleas for help and caught the struggling thief. The thief himself began struggling and shouting in denial, as the transit police came up to see what was going on.

"What's going on here?" one of the policemen demanded.

"This bitch just started chasing and yelling at me, man!" the thief shouted, still struggling in the larger men's grip. "I don't know what the fuck her problem is!"

"You stole my backpack!" Gwen accused him.

"Bullshit!" the thief shouted back.

"Can you prove this?" one of the police officers asked Gwen.

"Of course I can," Gwen replied, taking the backpack from the thief. Opening it up, she pulled out her wallet and showed her student ID to the policemen. "Why would he be carrying around my identification?"

"Good enough," the policeman nodded, as his partner put a pair of handcuffs on the struggling and shouting thief and dragged him away. "We'll take it from here, sweetie."

Breathing a sigh of relief, Gwen boarded the subway to go back to her normal route, looking increasingly frantically at her watch. Fortunately, the ride back was much swifter than she could have hoped for. Finally, Gwen slowed to a brisk walk as she got within a couple of blocks of the theatre, taking a moment to relax as she began mentally rehearsing the lyrics to OnMyOwn,the song she was planning to sing as part of her audition.

Unfortunately, Gwen had so many things on her mind that she wasn't paying as much attention as she could have to the very large puddles that had formed by the street curbs after last night's rain. Nor was she paying much attention to the vehicles that were racing down the street at high speeds.

The splashing she got from the next passing car jolted Gwen out of her reverie, although it took her several minutes to overcome the shock. Brushing her wet hair out of her eyes, she looked down at her suddenly wet and filthy attire. Taking a hand mirror out of her backpack, Gwen then paused to look at her face and see just how badly her makeup had been smeared by the drenching she'd gotten.

Sighing wearily, she made her way into the theatre and looked for a bathroom where she could at least redo her makeup.

The time she'd needed to get back to the theatre after her backpack had been stolen and then tidy up her makeup had cost Gwen dearly. The auditions for the part of Eponine were already half over by the time she finally made her way into the theatre, and from the looks the casting director and the producer were shooting her Gwen doubted that they were going to give her a turn. She tried to imagine what she must have looked like, stumbling in late, dripping wet and dressed in filthy clothes, her hair a rat's nest and her makeup hastily redone.

Everyone was looking at her.

On stage, Felicia Hardy was smirking triumphantly.

No one said anything, least of all Gwen, as she turned and left.

In a way, she was glad her face was still wet.

It helped camouflage her tears.

As she headed for the bus stop to go home and get cleaned up and changed for her late afternoon shift at the coffee shop, Gwen stewed over everything that had happened so far that day. At the back of her mind, she almost felt a certain sense of bemusement over how quickly things had gone bad when they'd seemed to be so much better when she'd woken up that morning.

Granted, that's the way it always seems to go for me these days,she thought.

Gwen had just reached the bus stop when she heard the screams and crashes. Despite everything on her mind, she didn't waste any time in realizing that they were coming from the bank down the street, or in ducking into an alley where she changed into her Spider-Woman costume. Spider-Woman emerged from the other side of the alley and doubled around, webswinging towards the bank as she prepared to confront whatever was causing the trouble.

What she found as she leapt into the bank was just about the last thing she expected. Standing there pulling at the bank vault was what looked like a giant, oversized gorilla grunting as it ripped the vault door right off its hinges. As the creature turned around, Spider-Woman found to her amazement that the gorilla was wearing a long red necktie with the words DK on the front. Unsure of what the thing was, but knowing that its intentions were bad due to the bloodied and dead customers and guards in the bank, Spider-Woman struck the thing with a sting blast before it could react.

Howling in pain, the gorilla fell and landed on its back. As it did so, it shrank down to the size of an ordinary human. To Spider-Woman's astonishment, the resulting creature was a deep blue in skin color, except for the orange lines running up the front of his torso, legs and arms. At regular intervals, the orange lines expanded into orange circles with multiplier signs drawn in their centers. Much to Spider-Woman's horror, a pair of those orange circles actually seemed to serve as the creature's eyes, ringed around with metal rims.

"Unnghh," the blue-skinned creature muttered as he staggered to his feet. "Who the hell...oh my God!" he recoiled in amazement as he saw Spider-Woman. "You...you're Spider-Woman!"

"And you're going to jail," Spider-Woman said evenly, as she fired a double blast of webbing at him. To her amazement, the blue-skinned man's body seemed to shift and distort until he took on an appearance that was even more bizarre than his first one. His new form looked to Spider-Woman vaguely like a human-sized blue anthropomorphic hedgehog...that was wearing red sneakers?

"No can do, babe," the hedgehog-thing smirked as he easily dodged the web blast. "If I want to establish my rep, I can't let myself get caught, you know?" he continued, dodging the rest of Spider-Woman's web shots with an almost blinding speed. Before Spider-Woman could react, he'd charged in and slammed her in the gut with a vicious charging punch, made all the stronger with the speed he'd managed to put behind it.

"I take it you're not that familiar with Sonic the Hedgehog?" the hedgehog-man laughed, as he dodged the punches and kicks Spider-Woman threw at him with almost insulting ease. "How about the Mario Brothers?" he asked, as he suddenly began to warp and shift again. This time he took on the form of a human man with a thick moustache, clad in a pair of red overalls, a matching cap and a blue shirt. Grinning wickedly, a pair of fireballs appeared in the man's hands and he threw them with abandon, aiming directly for the wounded and prone bank employees who couldn't move. As Spider-Woman frantically moved to pull the defenseless employees out of the way, her bizarre opponent shifted back to his Sonic form and emptied the bank vault with lightning speed.

As he emerged, he ran for the door, but had to leap into the air to avoid the webbing that Spider-Woman had strung across his path like a tripwire. As he flew through the air, Spider-Woman tagged him with another webline and this time held firmly onto him, using her spider-strength and wall-crawling abilities to hold him firmly in place.

"Who are you?" she demanded, firing a sting blast at him with her free hand.

"The name's Netshape, sweet thing," the man grinned, grunting in pain as he absorbed the sting blast, before changing shape again. This time, he looked like a man in blue body armor with a white helmet. That didn't worry Spider-Woman nearly as much as the large explosive bomb he held in his hand, which he threw at her as she prepared to strike again. "And I'm starting things off with a BANG!" he leered as she dodged. Switching from his Bomberman form back to his Sonic form, Netshape dashed out the door.

Spider-Woman only shuddered at the damage the bomb had done to the area she'd been standing in. Angrily, she charged out the door after Netshape, focusing her spider senses to track him. He was already halfway down the street, dashing with that almost inhuman speed. Webswinging through the air after him, Spider-Woman made him stop short by throwing a sting blast ahead of him, which came down and exploded just before he came to a stop. Scowling angrily, he changed form once again, this time to a massively muscled man in sunglasses and army fatigues. The man's hair was a bright blonde, and he carried a very large gun in his hands.

"You want to play, bitch?" Netshape shouted in a rage. "Fine then, let's dance!" he continued, firing his gun at Spider-Woman. The bullets exploded all around her as she made her way down to street level, but one of the bullets cut through her webline and she ended up falling towards the pavement. By landing on her hands and immediately springing into the air in a series of cartwheels, Spider-Woman managed to avoid being injured by the fall, but she left herself wide open to the explosive bullets Netshape was shooting at her. The explosion blew her off her feet and cut her all over with shrapnel, leaving her stunned for a moment as Netshape came towards her.

"You know, you're pretty fucking hot," Netshape smirked at her, briefly turning back to his normal dark blue form. "I bet even most of my groupies won't look as good as you do. That's why I'm doing this, you know-chicks love a badass," he continued, changing shape into a massive-looking man with ash-gray skin and a large, vicious ball and chain in each of his hands, dressed like something out of Greek myth. Previously he'd been Duke Nukem, and now he was Kratos, from the GodofWarseries. As Jonathan Gatesworth, he'd designed Netshape as the result of a half-baked idea for his own video game franchise. Along with all the other established characters Gatesworth had programmed into the nanotech he was now infected with, he'd added Netshape to as well and used it as his default form.

Rolling out of the way of the balls and chains Netshape swung down at her, Spider-Woman sprang to her feet. Charging in at Netshape before he could raise his weapons again, she pounded him viciously and sent him staggering back. He swung his balls and chains at her, but Spider-Woman easily snagged them with her webbing and flung them aside. With his defenses wide open, Netshape couldn't avoid the sting blasts she threw at him, which blew him off his feet once again. Spider-Woman prepared to shoot her webbing at him, but he recovered with frustrating speed as he shifted into his Bomberman form. Throwing bombs all around him in a frenzy, Netshape forced Spider-Woman to catch them with her webbing before they hit anyone, which in turn left her wide open to be struck by another flung bomb.

The explosion blew her off her feet and left her badly burned, as Netshape laughed at her plight. He threw what he thought would be the final bomb, but now it was Spider-Woman's turn to recover more quickly than he expected as she caught the bomb with a webline and sent it flying back at him. Shifting into his Mario form, he blew it up with a fireball before it hit him, but the resulting explosion blinded him long enough that he didn't see Spider-Woman shooting her sting blasts at him. Worn down from the blasts he'd already taken, he couldn't react quickly enough to avoid the first, second or third blasts, all of which staggered him. The fourth blast, which he was belatedly trying to deflect with a fireball, hit him hard enough that he finally collapsed.

Sighing in exhaustion, Spider-Woman webbed up the unconscious Netshape. She felt a bitter sense of disgust rising up within her-even considering the supervillains she'd previously fought, she found the idea of committing wanton robbery and attempted murder simply to attract women to be uniquely stupid.

Worn down by her fight with Netshape and everything she'd had to go through that day, Spider-Woman wanted nothing more than to go home and get some rest. Unfortunately, she had to work at the coffee shop that evening, and so she needed to get home to get cleaned up, treat her injuries and change into her work uniform.

Unfortunately, what she didn't realize until it was far too late was just how much time she'd lost fighting Netshape. Gwen might have had enough time to webswing home, shower and eat, treat her injuries and then get back to the coffee shop in time for her shift if she'd done it all immediately after leaving the theatre, but by the time she finally arrived at the Empire State Coffee Shop she was almost half an hour late for her shift.

"I'm so sorry I'm late, Mr. Spencer," Gwen apologized profusely as she made her way into the kitchen. "I-"

"I don't want to hear it!" Mr. Spencer scowled angrily. "This is the eleventh time you've been late for work since I hired you! You've been completely unreliable!"

"But Mr. Spencer, it's not my fault-" Gwen tried to interrupt him.

"You're fired," he told her bluntly. "Go on, get out of here."

"No, please!" Gwen tried to plead, feeling sick to her stomach all over again. "I need this job! I'm going to lose my apartment!"

"You should have thought of that before you started showing up late and costing me business," Mr. Spencer rolled his eyes. "Maybe it you showed some responsibility, you wouldn't be in this mess!"

Despite her anger and tension, Gwen was remarkably calm as she left the coffee shop and headed for the bus stop.

Getting splashed for the second time that day by another speeding vehicle didn't shake her unflappably calm demeanor, nor did her having to ride the bus home filthy and wet.

Nor did she visibly react when she saw the eviction notice Mrs. Muggins had put in her and Kitty's mailbox.

It was only after she'd gotten home, and changed out of her dirty clothes for the second time that day, that she slumped down onto her bed and finally released all of her frustrations, her anger and her guilt as the tears began to flow.

(Next Issue: Gwen has lost her apartment and her job, and her grades, her acting career and her modeling career are all in miserable shape. As she struggles to get things back on track, she finds herself learning far more, both about herself and the people around her, than she could have ever expected. All this and more in Spider-Woman#39:TheWayYouMakeMeFeel!)