𝐈𝐍𝐕𝐈𝐒𝐈𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 - 𝐇𝐨𝐛𝐢𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧

[Chapter 1]

╔ • ╗

Maybe it was a bad idea eating before my shift.

I mean, it was a good dinner at a local pasta restaurant, and who am I kidding? This isn't a lousy work shift at McDonald's. I'm a big girl with a big girl job.

I hear the familiar, evil cackle again of a good friend, and I'm launching myself from this building to the other to get to him.

I'll try to keep it short. Let's run by this with Cherry Bomb.

My name's Dove Nadia, and for the last 2 years, I've been the one, and only, Spider-Woman.

I got bit by a radioactive spider during a company dinner my foster dad hosted, in hopes to collaborate with a scientist. The man put the mad in "mad-scientist," because the spider came from the test tube he brought in, and ever since that my world was ripped into two.

How did I notice something off? That night my arms were sore, exactly like how they feel after shots, only, it felt like I had hundreds of them all around my arm. The next morning they were gone as if it never happened. My eyesight, too. Ever since it's been like a newborn child's, and usually my eyesight wa way older than it should be.

"Give up, Spidergirl!" Green Goblin hisses at me as he advances to strike me.

I duck. "Spider-Woman! It's Spider-Woman, sir. Have some etiquette, it's the 21st century."

"I'm fighting a child! Restless and immature and jumpy!" He complains at the sight of me jumping on my toes.

"Yup!" And I pull an air kick to his face.

Home isn't much of a home. My foster mom, Viv, is in charge of my life like it's her own. She raises us with the "my house, my rules" and everything we want or have to say is irrelevant to her. And my foster dad, Jack, isn't too glad about having a teenager in his clean, orderly house.

I live with 5 other foster kids. I'm the oldest and since the parents are as shitty as they are and holding full-time jobs, they hold me accountable for feeding them, finding a way to resolve injuries and colds, helping with homework, and getting them to bed.

I love those kids, and I try to be there for them anytime they need me to, but Spider-Woman holding New York together is Dove tutoring or in ice skating practice to them. It's the two things I have trouble balancing.

Proudest moment as Spider-Woman? Going on a mission in my prom dress. Having to leave prom early was a bummer, though, but I had never gone on a job with a dress on. And I have never felt so badass. I think I fought better than I ever did before that.

Apart from Spider-Woman, I've been all around the place, meeting different people like my best friends Peter and Harry. Picked up deejaying like I always wanted to. I try to keep it away from Viv, though. She'd foam in the mouth and start seizing up if she ever found out.

Shouldn't really matter to me. I'll be out of her hair as soon as I graduate high school.

Easing out of that...there's also scrapbooking that I like. I like reading Jane Austen. I tried playing guitar, didn't work. The only strings I can really play is the harp because... Viv. She has this vision of a proper daughter that's poised and classy. But I still enjoy it. Aerial acrobatics class, too. I wouldn't be able to be Spider-Woman without it, to be honest.

Aaand there's doting after Peter Parker, because he's a pathetic nerd.

I don't think it's doting, actually, not when my heart feels like it's being pulled out seeing him drool after Mary Jane.