Simon 'Ghost' Riley - The Spiders Web

1

When the rest of the 141 had heard about their new member, they hadn't exactly been expecting the figure that walked through the hanger to meet them.

The short asian woman hadn't even reached Price's shoulders, and had short black hair just brushing above her own. At a closer look her eyes were like coal, but she moved quick in her all black gear, not allowing herself to fall a single step behind their Captain, moving a bit like a shadow.

Soap was the first to notice her.

"Oh shit," he'd sat up straighter in his seat. "Skeldon's a woman."

Gaz had glanced up from his game of cards with the Scotsman, Ghost doing the same from his space behind them at the table, arms crossed and sharp eyes having been observing in silence up until that moment.

Soap couldn't help but whisper amusedly to his mates, "what exactly is the height requirement for joining again?"

The man in the skull mask had kicked Soap at the back of his calf, making him shoot a glare over at him. Gaz coughed to hide his amusement as Price began to introduce her to the team.

Before they had the chance to properly work together, they got to know a bit about her in the up and coming weeks.

Price called her Spider.

At first she sort of kept to herself, though none of them could tell if that was just her or if it was the fact she was practically the only woman on base. She didn't talk a lot and liked to sit on the sidelines and observe, something only one of them really took notice of. Like a cat watching its surroundings, ears twitching, eyes alert and muscles coiled ready to spring into action at any split second; only after a few weeks did she begin to settle.

They tried their best to make her comfortable, friendly banter shooting between Soap and Gaz while Ghost kept to himself almost as much as she did.

Though none of them said it, all of them were quite eager to start their training with their newest member; mainly because they wanted to see what this Spider could do.

Captain Price had chosen her for a reason and they trusted his judgement, but actually seeing it was something different.

Being a woman of her sleight stature, she knew the men all had their reservations about her skillset, and had spent years fighting tooth and nail to be seen as an equal. In such a male dominated field she had no choice but to be better.

Their first batch of combat training had gone surprisingly well; that meaning no broken bones or serious injuries - just a couple of bruised egos.

Gaz was the first to go up against Tina, and he'd had doubts about it in the beginning.

"It don't feel right. I feel like I'm going up against a kid." He had told Price before hand.

The Captain had coughed to hide his amusement and patted the boy forwards on the shoulder.

"You'll make quick work of it, then, won't you?"

The fight had began lazily, as a bit of a way to size eachother up and gauge the others movements.

Tina liked to watch, to scrutinise every placement of a boot or twitch of a muscle, and had a habit of it without even realising she was doing it. Observing was her means of survival in a fight she was going into blind.

She may have barely scraped five foot, but she prided herself in being fast, and minutes in - they realised her size was actually her advantage.

Tina had always been fast. Fast in combat, fast in the field, fast with her reactions and faster in whit. It was what kept her alive. She had less weight to lug around in comparison to the others, limbs more lithe, agile. And while the men may have been bigger and stronger than her, to do any of the real damage they would first have to catch her.

She ended up catching Gaz by surprise. They were only practicing, but he ended up winded on the mat and staring up at her like he didn't know how he'd got there so fast.

The boys had their fun watching from the sidelines, cheering her on after laughing and poking fun at their friend.

She'd been surprised at first by the sincerity in it, so used to mocking and sarcasm. Maybe that was what helped her warm up to them.

Over the course of the weeks, despite her naturally quiet nature, she slid into their strange dynamic quite well, meaning they didn't have much mistrust when they started with her out on the field.

Tina stared up at the side of the decaying building, planning her route and where she would be safest planting her feet. Eyes scanning the old brick rapidly, the others watched her from the side.

Soap eventually nudged her, "need me to give you a leg up?"

She had given him a bland look before jumping up to grasp a piece of jutting out brick much higher than they expected her to reach, swinging her leg up to the first windowledge and seamlessly balancing herself on it in a crouch above them. It took her less than a minute to get to the roof four stories up, without alerting anyone on the inside that she was even planning an ambush.

From that vantage point, she gave all the call outs they needed that a drone couldn't without making noise and giving them up, and infiltrated through a broken window to take out two opponents that would have bottlenecked the boys on the stairs.

It was safe to say they now knew why they called her a spider.