Night Of The Hunter

Gwen Stacy felt some mixed emotions as she scrolled through her Twitter feed. Her social media followings on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook continued to grow, she got a lot of steady modeling work over the last couple of weeks with companies like Vaughn-Pope Cosmetics and Kingsley Cosmetics, and she'd been corresponding with some of the directors who were planning productions for the summer theater season. The month of June had just started, and Mary Jane was confident she'd be busy until Empire State University's fall semester started in September.

At the same time, though, Gwen missed an important callback audition because she'd had to fight the supervillain Boomerang as the spectacular Spider-Woman, her superhero alter ego. The injuries Gwen suffered in the fight forced her to rest, much to her frustration. The callback audition was for the lead role in a movie that adapted the Italian Winx Club cartoon in a live action format. Gwen aced her initial audition, and she knew she'd have done even better at the callback if she hadn't gotten hurt as Spider-Woman.

It wasn't the first time being Spider-Woman had cost Gwen some choice acting or modeling work, and she doubted it'd be the last either.

Gwen didn't regret becoming Spider-Woman, and she was glad she'd been able to help so many people and do so much good with her powers.

Even so, she felt frustrated every time she thought of what it made her miss out on.

SPIDER-WOMAN #103

NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

"Three million dollars?" Kitty Pryde said, an incredulous look on her face as she contemplated what her cousin Ben Reilly had just told her.

"We don't know what happened to it," Ben said, his face etched with worry. "Somebody's robbing us blind, Kitty. It's driving Dad crazy-he can barely sleep with the stress. Mom isn't doing much better either."

Kitty grasped Ben's hand, wishing she could do more. They'd met for lunch at the Blue Star Restaurant when Ben texted Kitty and told her he needed to talk to someone. Ben told her all about the problems the Reillys were having. Money was mysteriously vanishing from their bank accounts, and neither the Reillys nor the police nor the banks could figure out what was happening to it, much less who or what was causing it to disappear.

"Has anyone threatened Uncle Andrew, or something like that?" Kitty asked. She knew that her uncle Andrew Reilly had made his share of enemies building up the family's fortune, but she couldn't imagine anyone who'd hate the Reillys enough to go after them like this.

"No!" Ben said as he started to shake. "That's the thing. Somebody just started embezzling money from us a couple of weeks ago! The police and the bank can't trace what happened to the money, or who did it. Those idiots told us there's nothing they can do! Bullshit!" he said, tearing his hand free of Kitty's and slamming his fist on the table they were sitting at.

"Ben, calm down!" Kitty said, grasping his hand again. Alarmed by Ben's outburst, she quickly stood up and hugged him, whispering reassurances into his ear. Much to her relief, Ben eventually calmed down and stopped shaking.

Although Ben was calm, now Kitty was the one feeling upset.

She didn't know why, but Ben's words filled her with dread.

Entry #1:

The money I've taken so far from the Reillys is a good start. It'll pay most of my initial expenses, including buying another image inducer from Mysterio and finding a place to stay.

It won't be enough, though. There's so much I have to do-constructing new equipment and a new costume (including the waistcoat in the new design)…acquiring the samples I need for my project…enlisting the appropriate help (willingness to help and adhere to the plan are considerations-Mister Sinister? Arnim Zola?)…training and mentally preparing my subject (need someone who is noted for discretion-the Tinkerer? The Fixer?)…and most importantly, deciding how and when to involve Spider-Woman.

I put the cap back on my pen and close the journal. I find myself smiling as everything starts to come together in my mind. I see how I'll break Spider-Woman not just in body, but in spirit, destroying everything she is and everything she ever could be.

It'll take time, but I burst out laughing as I realize I'll have all the time in the world. It won't matter where Spider-Woman goes, what she does or who she seeks help from.

Why is that, Spider-Woman?

I know where you are.

Gwen minimized her Internet browser before she raised her Word document again and typed her notes on the latest agency. She was looking at several different talent agencies she could sign with to find better acting and modeling work. She originally hadn't planned to join an agency until she graduated from Empire State University, since she wanted to focus on her schoolwork. Now that she was a senior, she realized that it was probably a good time to start looking.

One of the things Gwen was wondering about was how much of her earnings she'd have to pay to the agency. Even with the payments she'd already made, she would still have a lot of student debt when she graduated. She wanted to pay it off as soon as possible, particularly given what it would do to her credit rating and that acting and modeling didn't always provide steady work. While Gwen had gotten several jobs on her own and made good money from them, she knew she could a modeling agencies the help in looking for new and better prospects.

Gwen frowned at that, realizing how her bad luck had kept her from having as many prospects as she would have liked. When she was growing up, her father George Stacy had only ever grudgingly consented to her doing acting or modeling work. He hated what he considered women parading themselves around in too-revealing outfits, and he only relented to Gwen working to improve the family's finances.

Things weren't any better after George kicked Gwen and her mother Helen Lieber-Stacy out of the house. Gwen's spider-powers started to manifest a couple of years after that, and she went full into becoming the spectacular Spider-Woman. Being Spider-Woman allowed Gwen to do a lot of good for other people, but the strain of being a costumed hero on top of keeping up with her studies, paying her bills and her responsibilities to her family and friends cost her several jobs she knew she would have excelled at and benefited from. The latest one was that live-action adaptation of the Winx Club cartoon-Gwen aced her audition and got a callback. Unfortunately, she had to miss it to fight the supervillain Boomerang as Spider-Woman.

That's the thing, Gwen realized. Am I going to be able to balance being Spider-Woman with full-time auditions and casting calls? If I get involved in a big production, when will I be able to-

Gwen was snapped out of her reverie by her phone ringing. Her eyes widened in surprise when she picked it up and saw that Joanna Fortson, the casting director for the Winx movie, was calling her.

"Hello?" Gwen asked in surprise.

"Hi, Gwen!" Joanna Fortson said. "It's Joanna Fortson. I'm not calling you at a bad time, am I?"

"Oh no, of course not!" Gwen said, wondering what Joanna wanted to talk to her about. She'd missed the callback, which didn't reflect well on her at all. "What did you want to talk about?"

"I just wanted to see how you were doing, and invite you to another callback, if you're up to it," Joanna said. "I heard about how you were injured in that supervillain fight. I kind of figured that's why you missed the first callback."

"Why, yes!" Gwen said, both pleased and surprised by the invitation. "But how-"

"You weren't the only one injured in some super-powered thing," Joanna said. "A couple of other actors were injured too, so we thought we'd give them another chance. It wasn't their fault, after all."

"Thank you so much, Ms. Fortson," Gwen said in relief. "I can't tell you how much this means to me."

"Johnathan Caesar told me about you once," Joanna said. "He was so proud when he described your talent. I looked up your social media, too-pretty impressive."

"I'm so glad to hear that," Gwen said, beaming.

"Great, I'll see you soon," Joanna said, before she gave Gwen the time and address for the callback.

When Gwen hung up, she felt a sense of relief.

Things are looking up, she thought with a smile.

Maybe my luck's finally starting to turn?

Ever since Spider-Woman confronted him when he was breaking into a drug lab, River Verys had been a changed man. That change was a ghastly transformation that turned Verys into as much of a monster on the outside as he'd been on in the inside. Many people would not have been able to endure what the transformation did to Verys, but he not only accepted but eagerly embraced his new status. He'd gone on to have what he considered fulfilling relationships with several women, although he knew they were just one-time things. It wasn't until he'd met Spider-Woman again that he realized he'd found his one and only. It was too bad Spider-Woman hadn't felt the same way, and too bad that she'd bested him in their ensuing confrontation.

It didn't take long for Verys to be tried and convicted for the murders he committed. For the last six months, he'd been confined to the superhuman wing of Rikers' Island Penitentiary, locked in one of the special cells the prison authorities used to treat particularly dangerous criminals. He wasn't allowed to leave the cell or interact with anyone except a few prison guards dressed in Guardsman combat armor or the prison psychiatrists who tried to analyze him.

River didn't care too much. He spent much of his time mentally comparing many of his favorite horror movies-Saw, Hostel and The Hills Have Eyes were some of his favorite franchises-and determining how their artistic impact could have been improved. He spent the rest of the time fantasizing about all the webcam footage he'd probably missed ever since he'd been locked up in this hellhole. To River, it was a pity-some of those girls could have been stars if they knew the kind of art they were making, but if he ever uploaded it then there wouldn't be anything special between him and them.

He thought about Spider-Woman too. Of all the girls he'd loved, his affection for her ran deepest.

He was thinking about her and how much he wanted to show his love for her when the door to his cell opened. Looking up, River recognized the doctor as Dr. Emile Noseblum, an ambitious young professional with big dreams and a personality to match. Dr. Noseblum looked impassively at River, which wasn't an easy feat given his appearance.

River had eight hideous compound eyes, shining a gruesome red and blue, which were underscored by a mouth filled with vicious needle-like teeth and a pair of curving fangs, one on either side of his mouth. He had four arms and an equal number of legs, as well as eight long, clawed spider-like legs growing out of his back. His entire body was also covered in a mass of silvery-grey strands that resembled spider webbing. Worst of all was the disturbing leer on his face, a leer that showed he knew how much his appearance terrified other people, and how much pride he took in it.

"I didn't think you'd want to waste your talents on a lost cause like me, Doc," River said as Dr. Noseblum walked into the cell. River was securely shackled to the walls of his cell, all sixteen of his limbs firmly anchored in place. Despite the shackles, Dr. Noseblum seemed completely at ease sitting down across from River.

"River Verys, was it?" Dr. Noseblum said as he wrote something down in his notebook. "Or do you prefer-"

"Tendril," River interrupted Dr. Noseblum and finished his sentence for him. Given that one of the stranger powers he'd gained since the chemical accident that turned him into a physical monster allowed him to release the web-like threads covering his body the way a spider might, River considered it an appropriate superhuman name for him.

"Tendril, yes," Dr. Noseblum said, not seeming to take offence at Tendril's interrupting him. "Tell me, what's on your mind?"

"You don't stand on ceremony, do you?" Tendril said, his leer turning into a wide smile. "None of the holistic bullshit-I like that. Long story short, Doc, Spider-Woman's on my mind. She's my baby-girl, and I miss her so much."

"She didn't seem all that eager for your company," Dr. Noseblum pointed out, pushing his thick glasses back up on his nose.

"So what if she didn't?" Tendril said, seeming to roll all eight of his eyes at once. "She and I are meant to be. Two star-crossed spiders finding each other again…"

Dr. Noseblum was about to ask what Tendril meant by that, but then he remembered how a combination of the drug chemicals Tendril was breaking in to steal and a knife with Spider-Woman's blood on it had combined to turn Tendril into the spider-like horror he was now.

"What would you do if you were able to get out right now?" Dr. Noseblum asked. "Try to kill Spider-Woman?"

"Kill her?" Tendril asked, surprise crossing his face. "Why the hell would I do that when I love her? Hell no-I'd get back together with her, and that'd just be the start of it!"

Dr. Noseblum's eyebrows raised in surprise, but then he realized this could be even better than what he originally planned.

"You'll get your chance," he said. Before Tendril could react, he'd pulled a syringe from his pocket and injected one of the monster's arms with it.

Tendril couldn't even say anything before pain lanced through his body. The last thing he saw before everything went black was Dr. Noseblum seemingly vanishing into thin air, as though he'd never been there.

When Tendril regained consciousness, he was in a room that was entirely dark saved for one bright light that shone down on top of him. He tried to struggle to his feet, but he staggered as he felt a wave of dizziness. He caught himself with his spider legs, but he couldn't stand properly.

"Whoever's out there, you picked the wrong guy to fuck with!" Tendril shouted into the darkness. "I'm going to find out who you are, and then I'm going to skin you alive! I'll make you beg, I'll make you scream, and-"

"Why would you want to do that to me? I thought that was what you had in mind for Spider-Woman," Tendril heard a voice say in reply.

"…Spider-Woman?" Tendril said, intrigue replacing his anger.

"Exactly," Dr. Noseblum said as he emerged from the shadows and stared at Tendril, a wide smirk on his face. "Why do you think I freed you from the prison?"

For once, Tendril was at a loss for words.

"You…you mean…" he said.

"You miss your baby-girl, don't you?" Dr. Noseblum said, lowering his glasses and looking at Tendril with a pair of cold, dead eyes. "You want to tell her how much you love her, don't you?"

"…Yeah, I do," Tendril said as a dreamy look came into all of his eyes. "I want us to be together forever…"

"Why do you think I freed you?" Dr. Noseblum said as his smirk grew wider. "Now's your chance to show baby-girl that you and she were meant for each other. It's destiny, it's time, it's yours!"

"Together…forever…" Tendril said, before a suspicious look crossed his face.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked Dr. Noseblum. "What's your gain in all this?"

"It's all for your therapy, my friend," Dr. Noseblum lied. "I saw in our files how much this meant to you, so I decided to give you what your heart most desired."

Tendril decided not to question his good fortune, as the knockout drugs Dr. Noseblum injected him with started to wear off. He stood up straight, feeling reinvigorated at the chance to reunite with his one true love. When Dr. Noseblum used a remote control to open a door at the far end of the building, which spilled the faint light of the streets into the room, Tendril didn't waste any time.

The monster quickly departed, visions of his beautiful mate dancing in his head.

Dr. Noseblum watched Tendril depart, and waited in the dark for several minutes until he was sure Tendril was far away. His skin and his clothes all rippled and changed color as he changed from a professional-looking psychiatrist to a tired-looking shipping clerk, eager to drive home after a late night at the office.

The man that was Dr. Nosebaum used his remote control to turn off the lights and ensure that the warehouse was securely locked, before he got into an old beater of a car and started it up. Soon, he was just another working stiff driving home late at night, one of millions that drove the streets of New York every day.

The man drove his beater into a nondescript parking garage and parked and locked it. Finally, he went to a far corner and pushed a small half-brick in the wall. A hidden panel in the wall slid open, and the man walked through it. The hidden panel closed behind him as he stepped into a chamber that looked vaguely like a futuristic elevator. The man pushed a button on a control panel before he was engulfed in light and seemed to vanish.

The man reappeared in another chamber several blocks away, one that resembled the one he'd just left. Pushing another button in the chamber's control panel, the man walked through a section of the wall that slid open and he stepped into a luxurious penthouse. Finally, his skin and clothes rippled and changed color again, this time revealing him as a man with deep blue skin and monochrome gold eyes, dressed in comfortable evening wear.

Alistair Darkholme, alias the Chameleon, was finally home.

The Chameleon went to the bar at the far end of the room and poured himself a glass of fine wine, weary from the day's work. He knew the prison authorities would be looking for Tendril and Dr. Noseblum, who they assumed had murdered Tendril and then somehow disappeared. They could look for Noseblum all they wanted-it wasn't easy to find a dead man.

As he took a drink of the wine, the Chameleon thought about the plan. First, he'd had Dr. Noseblum abducted and murdered by some of the men who worked for his crime syndicate. Then, using his mutant shapeshifting powers, he'd impersonated Dr. Noseblum at Riker's Island Penitentiary. He accessed Tendril's psychiatric profile to determine how to appeal to the spiderlike monster, then used Noseblum's credentials to get into Tendril's cell.

The serum he injected Tendril with resembled a deadly toxin that killed its victims on the spot. However, that serum was one of two related drugs developed by the brilliant scientist Dr. Karl Malus. The serum made it seem as though its victims were dead, but when they were injected with the second related drug, it fully revived them. He then used a portable teleportation device, purchased from the criminal engineer called the Fixer, to escape the cell himself. He teleported into the morgue where the prison authorities took Tendril's body, where he hid until the body arrived. Finally, he used his teleporter again to take himself and Tendril to an abandoned building the Chameleon's syndicate used for various secret purposes. Finally, he injected Tendril with the drug that revived him, before inducing the monster to go after Spider-Woman.

There was no love lost between the New York crime lords and the city's superheroes, but the Chameleon especially hated Spider-Woman. She'd interfered with several of his past schemes and caused him no end of trouble with the New York Police Department, leaving him as the lowest-ranking crime lord in the city. He blamed her for his inability to raise his status as a crime lord above those of his rivals Philippe Bazin and Crimewave, and he was determined to make her pay.

He might have employed another supervillain in his desire to have Spider-Woman killed, but Tendril especially appealed to him.

The more Tendril made Spider-Woman suffer, the more the Chameleon would like it.

"You had a great audition, and we're sure you'll go places," the casting director told Gwen, "but we're looking for someone with maybe a bit more poise and experience."

"Even with the other Winx characters?" Gwen said, trying to keep her disappointment from showing.

"I'm afraid so," the casting director said. "We'd definitely like to have you and a few of the other girls who auditioned as Alfea students, if you'd like."

"Sure, I'd love that!" Gwen said as she shook the director's hand. "When do you plan to start shooting?"

"Probably in a couple of months," the director said. "We'll be in touch with the shooting schedule. I take it we can reach you through your social media profiles?"

"Definitely," Gwen said with a smile before she left the studio.

Gwen fought a rising sense of dejection as she rode the subway home. Rationally, she knew the girl who'd won the part of Stella was really good, not to mention a natural blonde like Gwen herself. Losing another role she was sure she'd be an excellent fit for hurt, though, and she wasn't sure what her next step should be.

Am I really living up to my potential? Gwen thought. Sure, I'm proud of all the work I've done so far, but it seems really thin compared to what some of these other actresses have accomplished. Somehow I doubt I'm going to be the next Hilary Duff, Miley Cyrus or Lindsay Lohan at this rate, she continued.

Shouldn't I be doing better? she wondered.

Or am I not good enough?

That night…

Liz Allan yawned as she considered what to watch on Hulu. She couldn't sleep, and cursed herself for having too much coffee after supper. Her boyfriend and roommate Harry Osborn was out with some friends, and he'd told her not to wait up for him. That was fine by Liz-after all the pain and suffering Harry endured growing up as the son of the abusive criminal Norman Osborn, Liz thought Harry deserved all the fun he could get.

She started at the sound of the window in the next room breaking, but she couldn't even get up from her seat before the horror overwhelmed her.

In between visiting my different girlfriends, I made a point of reading up about what spiders could do and seeing if I could do it too.

I learned how a few species of spiders could use pheromones to track their prey and each other. That was how I tracked my girlfriends, especially baby-girl.

That wasn't all, though. I learned how some spiders could use their pheromones to block the ones emitted by other spiders…at least until they were ready for the other spiders to come to them.

I found that baby-girl hung out with this girlfriend-in-training quite a lot. She'll make a decent bite-sized snack, but her real purpose is to bring baby-girl to me once I'm ready.

It won't be feeding time, though.

Oh no, I've got something far more special in mind for my one and only.

When Gwen's spider-senses triggered, she felt a sensation unlike anything she ever had before. Her spider-senses almost seemed to burn in her mind, as she felt an irresistible compulsion to follow them. Not that Gwen needed any persuasion-she realized that someone she cared about and had marked with her pheromones was clearly in serious danger. She changed into her Spider-Woman costume and swung off without hesitation.

Spider-Woman didn't know how long she swung across the city. She didn't know where she was going, guided only by her unerring spider-senses. She felt a distinct sense of unease as she did, even as she noticed how unusually chilly the night was and she started shivering uncontrollably. She knew something was very, very wrong-why were her spider-senses acting this way?-but she also knew someone desperately needed her help at that moment.

By the time Spider-Woman landed in an abandoned industrial park, the sky was entirely dark. Her spider-senses were screaming in her mind now, and Spider-Woman felt increasingly unnerved. Her spider-senses had never acted this way before, and she couldn't understand what was happening. As she walked towards the nearest industrial building, a now half-crumbled wreck, Spider-Woman felt as though every nerve was on edge.

When Spider-Woman screamed at the sight of Liz bound up in webbing in a corner of the building's ground floor, it seemed to her to come from somewhere else. She ran forward, intending to free Liz, and her footsteps caught Liz's attention. Liz, her mouth gagged by the strip of webbing across the bottom of her face, shook her head vigorously, as if telling Spider-Woman to keep away.

Liz's terrified expression made Spider-Woman pause as the implications of Liz being wrapped in spider webbing suddenly dawned on her. She looked around in alarm, her anxiety turning to full-blown horror.

She tried to leap away, but a flurry of silvery-gray spider web strands flew down from above and entangled her limbs. Spider-Woman struggled desperately, but she was trapped as the webbing slowly began to pull her up towards the room's ceiling. As she rose up, Tendril lowered himself down to face her. His webbing extended from his skin, flowing up and over the ceiling beams down to entangle Spider-Woman.

They stared into each other's faces as they came level to one another. Tendril had a sickening leer on his face, while Spider-Woman's expression was a combination of horror and loathing.

"I'm back…" Tendril said, his voice making Spider-Woman feel as if her skin was being filed off. "Come on, baby-girl. You didn't think I'd forget about us, did you?"

Spider-Woman's only response was to thrash violently.

"Oh, you little tease…" Tendril said, laughing at Spider-Woman's fruitless attempts to escape. "See, I came back for you because we're something special. We're the only two of our kind-that's a special bond between us. Those other girls were just appetizers like your little friend over there," he said, gesturing towards Liz with one of the spider-like legs protruding from his back. "But you and I mean so much more to each other."

Spider-Woman thrashed even harder as she repressed a disgusted scream.

"We're natural mates, baby-girl. Don't you get it? Your pheromones…my pheromones…"

Spider-Woman felt like she was going to vomit as she realized just what was making her spider-senses go crazy. Tendril's pheromones overlaid the ones she marked Liz with, doubling her instinct to come to this place.

"That's why it's time you and I settled down and had a family. The only thing I'm wondering is if you'll lay eggs, or-"

He never got the chance to finish, as Spider-Woman replaced her fear with rage. Her hands glowed brightly with the energy of her sting blasts, burning through the webbing binding her hands. As Tendril recoiled in surprise, Spider-Woman pointed her hands at him and hit him in the face with a double shot of her blasts. As he recoiled, screaming, Spider-Woman burned herself free of the rest of his webbing with her sting blasts.

Tendril tore himself free of his webbing with an enraged shriek and threw himself at Spider-Woman. He started with a long stream of webbing flung from all eight of his arms and legs, forcing Spider-Woman to dodge. Before she could counter, Tendril lashed out with some of the spider legs growing out of his back and tore into her. As Spider-Woman reeled, her torso and legs suddenly red with blood, Tendril entangled her again with his webbing. He securely bound her wrists at her side, leaving her unable to blast her way free. A smile crossed his face as he began dragging Spider-Woman towards him, his fangs glistening with dripping bile.

Tendril's smile turned to a look of surprise as Spider-Woman suddenly stopped moving. Tendril paused and then resumed tugging at her, but she remained still. Alarmed, Tendril saw that Spider-Woman was using her wall-crawling abilities through her feet, anchoring herself to the floor. A tug of war started between them, Tendril trying to force Spider-Woman towards him and Spider-Woman trying to hold her ground. Tendril proved the stronger, and Spider-Woman started inching forward until she shot her own webbing to the ground, strengthening her resistance.

Hissing angrily, Tendril glanced from side to side, until some of his eyes caught sight of Liz still caught helplessly in the web cocoon off to the side. Liz couldn't escape the webbing, and was stuck watching the fight in horror. Her eyes widened in fear as Tendril extended some of his spider legs towards her, and she saw how sharp they were.

"That's enough out of you, baby-girl," Tendril said. His expression was calm now, but the look of menace in his eyes was all too clear to both Spider-Woman and Liz. "Best you stop this and come here, so we can finally-"

Tendril was caught off guard as Spider-Woman released her wall-crawling abilities and sprang at him. His pulling gave her additional momentum, and she smashed him square in the face. Dazed from the blow, Tendril reeled as Spider-Woman pulled him away from Liz. He screamed in pain as Spider-Woman tore herself free of his webbing, yanking large chunks of it out of his body.

Tendril slashed at Spider-Woman in a mad fury, cutting her again with the spider-legs on his back. He then slammed her with a large chunk of debris he picked up with his webbing, sending her flying back to slam into a broken table. Spider-Woman wasn't finished, though, and she staggered to her feet as Tendril thrust his legs at her again. Spider-Woman was ready for him this time, and now it was her turn to entangle him with her webbing.

Tendril tried to tear himself free of Spider-Woman's webbing, but he was caught by surprise when she started spinning in place. Spider-Woman flung him into a far wall, lancing his body with pain. As he fell to his hands and knees, struggling to regain his footing, Spider-Woman caught a broken metal beam with her webbing and pulled it down on him. The beam had a wicked, jagged edge, and it tore into Tendril as it landed on him, causing blood to well up all along his back. He shrieked before passing out from the agony of the long, jagged wounds torn into his back and the spider legs that grew from it.

Liz was horrified by the fight, and she was horrified even more as Spider-Woman freed her from the webbing. Spider-Woman's physical injuries disturbed Liz enough, but the look of enraged terror on Spider-Woman's face made her sick to her stomach. Spider-Woman sank into Liz's arms once Liz was free, sobbing quietly as tears flowed down her cheeks.

All Liz could do was call 911 on her smartphone before tightly hugging Spider-Woman, whispering reassurances into her ear.

The next day…

"Are you alright?" Liz asked Gwen as she walked into Gwen's bedroom. The paramedics who'd come with the police that arrested Tendril had given Gwen first aid, and when she refused to come to the hospital with them they insisted that she get some bed rest. Gwen did just that, giving her mother Helen Lieber-Stacy, her Aunt Nancy Stacy and her cousin Jill Stacy the excuse that she wasn't feeling well that day. Liz came over to see Gwen after all the other Stacys had left, not wanting to risk letting them know she knew Gwen's secret identity.

Gwen sat up slowly as Liz approached. Liz saw that Gwen's physical injuries were healing well, but she'd need longer to recover from her mental scars. Gwen looked pale, and for a moment she didn't look like she recognized Liz.

"How many times have you saved my life now?" Liz asked. "Three? Four? More than that?"

Gwen tried to smile, but Liz could tell she was having a hard time keeping it together.

"It's alright, Gwen," Liz said, sitting down on the bed next to Gwen. "You can let it all out."

Liz hugged Gwen tightly as tears flowed down Gwen's cheeks, taking Gwen's fear and anxiety with them.

"You beat them all, Gwen," Liz said. "Firebrand, Supercharger…all of them. You saved me, you saved yourself, you got justice for their victims."

Gwen looked up at Liz after a few minutes, and the grateful, relieved look on her face filled Liz with relief.

Liz returned Gwen's smile.

(Next Issue: As Gwen recovers from the trauma of her fight with Tendril, she starts contemplating the next steps in her career and in her final year of university, which is starting in the fall. Things quickly become more complicated for Gwen when her friend Ben Reilly's family is bankrupted, she gets caught up in the war between Crimewave and Philippe Bazin, and she ends up fighting for her life against her old enemy Joystick! All this and more in Spider-Woman #104: Riches To Rags!)