FIREWEAVER | A Spiderverse Fanfic

Chapter Nine

Get your headphones ready to play the song when you see: 🎵

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    The city was a pain in the butt. As soon as Esme had stepped out onto the rooftop of Spectre the sky had begun pouring. On top of that, neither Esme nor Sophia had considered the fact that she might need something to guard her eyes from the rainfall.

So here she was, swinging with fogged up goggles as she tried to figure out how to swing forward without looking like a fidget spinner.

Esme had already dusted up her new suit with smog as she flailed helplessly through the pillar of smoke vented from a chimney, cursing herself for going through Brooklyn heights.

She thought it would have been a good shortcut to take on her way to the address, but was wholly regretting it as the combination of smoke and rain made it much harder for her to navigate through the city roof tops.

She had gotten the hang of sprinting across the roof tops and jumping across, only using her webs sparingly, and for only certain distances. She didn't dare test how much further she could go, she was still nervous with the idea of shooting webs as she swung.

Sophia spoke into her ear piece, guiding her through the city, chattering away as she tried to focus on jumping over air vents and chimneys, banners and billboard signs with models that looked unreal.

She kept up this pattern that made her feel like a 3D model of subway surfers, until Esme landed on the directed vantage point, a cornice molding  of a window that overlooked the small restaurant across with an upstairs apartment.

Esme could see a few tops of umbrellas on the empty sidewalk, though with the rain and closing hour she knew business was dwindling. The lack of people and the eerily blinking street lamp set her on edge, her hand tightening around the ledge she crouched on.

Her eyes located an open window, a figure sitting in a chair gazing out at the street, releasing a puff of smoke from his lips.

She grimaced. How archaic, she thought. He must have been in his late forties, no one her age smoked anymore.

She knelt and waited, watching him rise from his chair and check his holo watch. Her eyes zoned in on the small silhouette of a rhino on his wrist, the tattoo in silver ink.

She watched him type something before going out the door. Only when she saw him leave from the side door did she aim her wrist, hooking a silk thread to a taller building before swinging across, snapping the thread with her fingers and landing against the wall, her palms and feet sticking to the surface.

Carefully, she grabbed the frame of the window and swung her lower body through before dropping to the ground, her eyes scanning the empty bedroom.

"It should be a gold chain necklace. Check any drawers or boxers he would have hid it in." Sophia's voice throbbed in her ear and Esme adjusted the volume.

"Are you certain he hasn't pawned it off already?" Esme whispered, sifting through a desk and opening the drawers one by one, pushing binders and flipping through papers.

"No, he just stole it today and I saw from the traffic cams that he's been in this room all day since." Esme could almost hear the roll of Sophia's eyes.

"This feels wrong." Esme grumbled as she lifted a sock from a drawer, scrunching her nose as the scent seeped through her mask.

"You're just stealing back something that wasn't his to begin with. It's not a crime to be fair."