The Spider Job

The Backpack

Lara stared down at the battered black backpack that was currently webbed to a dinghy wall behind a dumpster in the back alley she had been using as a shortcut on her way home from band practice. The webbing was a pretty good indicator that Spiderman was the one who left this backpack here. Lara had no idea why the friendly neighborhood hero would leave a backpack in such an out-of-the-way place, and really, and even if she did have a few theories floating around in her mind, they were far less important than the webbing that was being used to keep the backpack sticking to the wall. 

For months now, ever since the first Youtube videos of the web-slinging vigilante had started making their way around the internet, Lara had been trying to get her hands on some of that web fluid. It had proven to be insanely difficult. One of the first hurdles she had to overcome was trying to figure out locations Spiderman was likely to be patrolling and determining a pattern to his routine. That way, she would be able to be in those areas during his predicted patrol times so that she would have a higher chance of spotting him. She also set up a program on her phone to alert her if anyone posted about spotting Spiderman anywhere. It narrowed down the areas she had to search quite a bit. Social media was an amazing thing.

Lara had spent a couple of weeks doing her homework in parks and cafes in areas within Spiderman's patrol radius. Whenever she received notifications on her phone or spotted Spiderman herself, she would make her way to those locations and hope there was some web fluid she could snag. And eventually, her persistence paid off.

But then Lara had encountered her second hurdle. She had managed to collect some of the web fluid, and had thought that that was going to be the end of it, but then, as she was taking the subway home, the web fluid had dissolved, leaving nothing behind in the glass vial Lara had stored it in.

Apparently, after two hours, give or take, the web fluid dissolved.

So Lara had spent a good month and a half developing and testing a solution that would bind with the web fluid and prevent it from dissolving. That had taken her much longer than it should have, after all, she not only had to develop a solution, she also had to tail Spiderman, hope he used his web fluid and that she was close enough to get to it before it dissolved, she also had to gather the web fluid and test her solution to see if it would actually keep the webbing from dissolving after two hours. There had been a lot of frustration involved in the process, and Lara probably should have given up after the first two months, but she had inherited her father's stubbornness and her mother's tenacity, so quitting had never really been an option.

Half a week ago, Lara had finally managed to create a solution that successfully prevented Spiderman's web fluid from dissolving, but since she had been testing out eight different solutions at the same time, the sample of webbing she had been left with had been too small to do any good. And so Lara had continued stalking Spiderman in search of more web fluid.

So it only made sense that the one day she hadn't purposefully gone hunting for Spiderman would be the day where she managed to stumble across his webbing completely by accident. Lara had been heading home from band practice after school and had decided to cut through this alley in order to get there more quickly. Fortunately, Lara had a couple of vials of her solution on her just in case. After all, as her father would tell her, the only situations that would cause her trouble were those situations she hadn't prepared for.

Crouching down behind the dumpster and trying very hard not to think about how disgusting the ground in this back alley probably was, Lara set down her trumpet case and clicked the latches open. She would disinfect her trumpet case thoroughly when she got home. Nestled within her case was her golden trumpet, but that wasn't what Lara was interested in at the moment. Removing the dark blue velvet that lined the top of her case, several vials of clear liquid, along with some basic tools, were revealed.