Oneshot stories| FireWeaver

The Scorching FlameWeaver

A/N: After writing chapter twelve (and getting the idea from the coolest author out here -fablecor ), I wanted to imagine a world where Esmerelda got bit, but the powers were a little too much for her to handle. She's a passionate character, but what would happen if one took away her heart?

New York, 2066

It's been a full year. Esme sat at the edge of the building, watching flames devour a building, embers reflecting on her visors. She watched the neon sign melt and crumble, the letters that once spelled out a club's name now turned into an unrecognizable puddle.

"Mmph! Mm mm mm!"

Esme looked beside her at the squirming man caught in her webs. He was writhing in the cocoon she made him, trying to roll towards the edge of the roof she sat upon.

"I thought you'd be comfortable. Why are you complaining so much?" She clicked the roof of her mouth with her tongue and shot a thread, pulling him towards her. "You were a tough rat to smoke out, weren't you Goliath?"

Sparks crackled before the building in front of them exploded, fully enveloped in flames and the support beams finally caving in, the upper half of the building collapsing.

Goliath's eyes went wide as he heard the piercing screams as people were suffocated inside- whether by the smoke or the debris that pinned them down.

He looked back up at the vigilante, hatred and anger contorting his features. If there hadn't been web on his mouth, he would have been screaming obscenities at her.

She pressed her hands to her knees for support before slowly standing up, her fingers twitching. It wasn't from nervousness. No, Goliath realized. As soon as she took off her mask, saw the fiery excitement in her eyes, he knew her fingers were twitching to set something on fire. Someone.

She wasn't called the areña arsonist for no reason.

"Do you know how many people I've killed this past year, for this exact moment?" She spoke but her words seem to be the air itself around him.

He shook his head but he knew. It was all he heard about. Every day, for the past twelve months, someone different would come up to him and tell him the last had been murdered by the spider-woman. Found burned beyond recognition. The only way the police could identify them was from DNA evidence, and the photo spider-woman would leave of their mortified faces moments before they died.

Goliath himself had stumbled upon one of the scenes days before. Found one of his closest friends in a mess of his own skin and clothes smelted together, half his face burned with the scent of charred flesh and hair so strong Goliath thought he would vomit just from the smell.

What set him over was the eyeball melted from its socket and dripping down his face.

"All the work I've put in for this moment." She crouched low and ripped the web from his mouth, causing him to cry out in pain as it left his skin raw.

"You took two people that were important from me. So, I took everything from you." She tilted her head, her voice unnervingly calm as her calculated green eyes studied him.

"Go back to the inferno you crawled out of!" He spat, refusing to give in to the overpowering chill that flooded him.

"Why go back when I can bring it to me?" Her lips curled into a half smile and she stood, a vindictive look in her eyes. Her mask materialized over her face, completely black with half her upper face painted with blue flames.

"Goodbye, Goliath."

He didn't have time to close his eyes as he felt something hot burn through the webs around him and seep into his clothes. Then his skin. He screamed, piercing through the sounds of the crackling building, louder than how it rumbled as more debris fell.

He rolled and writhed, unable to escape as he felt himself consumed in fire. Layers of skin melded with his clothes before turning into asphalt, his eyelids singed away and forced to watch helplessly at his own body deteriorating.

His lungs filled with smoke. Felt the flames lap at his bones til it was exposed to air. He screamed until he ultimately was killed from his heart racing too fast, the pain choking it until it collapsed on itself.

Esme stood and watched, completely motionless. Devoid of any feelings besides hate, and satisfaction as the man who took everything from her died along with his legacy.

She thought it would have been more satisfying to see her enemy die. After so many days and months of imagining this very moment, he wasn't in as much pain as she wanted him to be. She had planned to break every bone in his body- to kill his wife and kids in front of him and make him listen to their bloodcurdling wails.

But she realized, sitting on this roof- that it was all worthless. That none of it mattered. That he, simply wasn't worth it. That nothing she did would ever bring her the satisfaction she craved. Or bring back the person she once was.

Esmerelda Costello was gone. After losing her aunt and everyone she ever loved, there was nothing to keep her going anymore. Nothing to stop her from burning everything to the ground.

She wouldn't stop at just killing Goliath- no, she would make sure every bit of his life's work would be gone too. Kill every member of his gang until it was just an empty rumor of what once was. Destroy every club that was ever associated with him. Even his wife and children were found days later, locked in a safe room and having suffocated from the smoke that devoured the rest of their house.

But it wasn't enough. Every news channel headlines were filled with footage of downtown New York in flames. Crime rates plummeting as the alley ways were filled with the melted corpses of thugs, rapists, thieves, murderers and parolees. Sightings of a woman dressed in blue and black- the devil they called her.

The police dubbed her a sociopath. Religious leaders said she was a prophetic sign of the end of times. Others said she was a lunatic.

A shadow that left a scorching inferno wherever she set foot.

Yes, tonight had marked the beginning of a new era.

The era of the scorching Flame-Weaver.