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sodasa-was-taken · 6 months

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Romantic foils done right: How G-Witch uses romantic foils

Or why none of the characters who showed interest in Miorine and Suletta ever posed a threat to them getting together.

So, after the unexpected response to my last analysis and some recent discussions, I felt inspired to make another one. This time about romantic foils, a frequently misused but great tool in romances. I hope you enjoy it.

As far as I can tell, G-Witch has five romantic foils: Guel, El4n, Shaddiq, El5n, and Sophie.

In romances, when a character is in contrast to one of the main characters as a romantic option, they're a romantic foil. Having romantic foils in a story can be a great way to show what the principal characters see in each other. This is done by showcasing what the characters like and dislike about characters with contrasting attributes to the one they'll end up with.

Sometimes, it can feel like a romantic foil is just there to create cheap drama, often when they're a romantic rival, i.e., actively trying to get in the way of the main characters becoming a thing. Other times, when one of the focal characters isn’t the best person, an author might have a character who’s a romantic rival be even more of an asshole to make the character look better in comparison. This doesn’t make the character look better; it just creates a pick-your-poison situation. Furthermore, jackass and even more of a jackass ain’t foils since there isn’t any contrast. That isn’t to say that romantic foils can’t be antagonistic. Many of the romantic foils in G-Witch are also antagonists. In cases where a romantic foil is an antagonist, they emphasize the virtues of the characters they’re a foil to by being everything they’re not.

Guel, foil to Suletta – At the beginning of the show, Guel is everything Suletta is not regarding their treatment and intentions towards Miorine. Suletta is apologetic to a fault, while Guel pushes Miorine around like he owns her. Guel is abrasive, while Suletta is considerate. He’s ostentatious, and she’s shy. Crucially, Suletta’s shyness doesn’t prevent her from having pride in herself. She just doesn’t need to show off like Guel.

Miorine grows fond of Suletta for the same reason she dislikes Guel. He’s the embodiment of everything Miorine hates about her predicament, and Suletta is the opposite. Although Miorine sees them as two sides of the same coin at first, both are out to insert themselves into her life, just in different ways. Except as Miorine soon enough learns, Suletta had no intention of doing so but just couldn’t stand by while seeing someone in distress. Side note: It’s ironic how opposed Miorine is to Suletta interfering in her life when Miorine later follows Suletta around like a lost puppy and insists on helping her any chance she gets.

Attributes Miorine likes about Suletta that Guel notably lacks include, but are not limited to, her humbleness, her upbeat nature, her gratefulness, and her commitment to doing what she thinks is right. Also relevant if you think Miorine is a Lesbian; Suletta is a girl.

When it comes to why they become the Holder, Guel is doing it for himself, and Miorine is simply a prize to be won. Suletta, on the other hand, ends up as the Holder unintentionally, dueling to help out Miorine rather than to have her. In fact, when she learns that being a woman does not exempt her from being Miorine’s groom, she goes full blue screen of death.

Guel, foil to Miorine – Straight from one character’s romantic foil to the other. Guel is Suletta's foil until he catches feelings for her and shifts to become Miorine's. After being the first demonstration of Suletta's extreme discomfort with someone coming on too strong Guel denies his affection for Suletta. This happens shortly after Miorine has Suletta donning the uniform which shows the two are engaged.

In episode nine, while Miorine does everything she can to guarantee they win the duel against Grassley House, Guel won’t even fight because Dad told him he wasn’t allowed to duel. He doesn’t want Earth House and, more specifically, Suletta to lose, but not enough to disobey his father.

At the backend of season two, Guel becomes a regular foil to Miorine instead of a romantic foil since he’s no longer interested in getting with Suletta or, as he puts it, there are more important things than whatever feelings he might have for Suletta. This means he isn’t being motivated by those feelings the same way Miorine is by her love for Suletta and can, therefore, look a bit more objectively. It also means that he doesn’t stop Miorine from doing something he sees as fruitless because helping her break Suletta’s heart is a prize he’s willing to pay to save Jeturk Heavy Machinery.

Side note: Guel does his job as a foil quite well, but because he’s a foil, his prominence is completely unwarranted. It might’ve been a little more reasonable if he was the only romantic foil, but this story has five. Giving this much attention to a romantic foil in a romance about a straight couple would be unthinkable. Still, because the story is about a same-sex couple, they can’t be the image of their own story.

El4n, foil to Miorine – El4n is the only romantic foil in the story, highlighting the flaws of the one he's a foil to. His function in the show is to get Miorine worked up and showcase that Suletta isn't the type to pine. Side note: Suletta appears to be quite binary when it comes to others having feelings for her. Either they like her romantically, or they never will.

From very early on, El4n shows a fondness for Suletta, which Miorine is having none of. Later on, El4n asks Suletta out to get to Aerial. Side note: Gotta love how Miorine compares Suletta and El4n to Romeo and Juliet, considering that if any characters in this series have their budding relationship sabotaged by the feud between their families, it’s Miorine and Suletta.

When El4n learns that Suletta isn’t an Enhanced Person like himself, his demeanor towards Suletta changes on the spot. The progression of Suletta’s relationship with El4n is an inversion of her relationship with Miorine. Where Miorine had to overcome a misconception about Suletta for her fondness for Suletta to grow, a misconception about Suletta is what El4n's fondness for Suletta initially sprung from. Additionally, El4n asks Suletta out because he wants something from her, while Miorine pretends she wants something from Suletta, but in truth, she wants to prevent Suletta from becoming the one who got away. Girl didn't pass up the chance to go to Earth in order to save Suletta because she needed a shield.

Despite Suletta having an interest in El4n, spurred on by him showing an interest in her and El4n eventually reciprocating, a relationship between them would never work as their goals are diametrically opposed. If El4n wants to keep his life and be allowed to live his life as he pleases, he needs to win a duel against Suletta and take Aerial away from her. Something she can’t let happen because, for one, she wouldn’t even give up Aerial for the person she’s excited to marry, and two, losing would be letting down Miorine, someone she cares deeply about, and Suletta’s not about that.

When Suletta wins the fight, she also wins back El4n’s heart, but their relationship is doomed before it starts because El4n fails to secure Aerial for the Peil company and has to die for his failure. El4n accepts this and doesn’t fight to stay in Suletta’s life, instead thanking her and letting death take him.

In the last episode, El4n apologizes to Suletta for standing her up to which Suletta basically tells him not to sweat it as she’s come to learn that the person for her wasn’t him.

Shaddiq, foil to Suletta – Here’s someone who starts out coming off as approachable but who’s revealed to be more and more deranged as the series goes on. Shaddiq is willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants all the while keeping his friendly appearance and calming smile.

Throughout episode nine, it becomes clear that while Shaddiq and Suletta are both upbeat go-getters, their views on Miorine couldn’t be more different. Shaddiq does, to some degree, care about Miorine, but what he thinks is best for Miorine is at odds with what Miorine wants. He justifies his attempts to control her with her being stubborn and unreasonable. She doesn’t know what would be the best for her, and Shaddiq’s been nothing but kind to her, so he doesn’t get why she keeps turning him down. This guy sure is tipping his metaphorical fedora.

The epitome of Suletta and Shaddiq’s conflicting views is shown when Shaddiq runs into Suletta after being at the greenhouse. He fails to reason with Miorine, so he tries to get Suletta to talk some reason into telling her that as Miorine’s groom, it’s her responsibility to talk some sense into her. Suletta doesn’t agree with the sentiment and instead thinks that her role as Miorine’s groom is to stand by her and support her. A very how the spouge of a woman should aim to protect and provide for their wife vs. they should treat their wife as an equal and encourage them to do what they want schools of thoughts. As Miorine seems perfectly content to be the primary breadwinner in the relationship, that first idea has less than no appeal to her.

Suletta ultimately turns out to be right, with the show taking a shot at the whole strong man who’s the sole protector of what’s deemed to be his mentality. After his defeat, he tells Miorine that he should have offered to fight for her, which most likely would have gotten him nowhere. Before Miorine met Suletta, she wouldn’t let anyone fight for her, and a good part of why Miorine rolled with Suletta becoming Holder was because she had no intention to. There’s no way of having the intention to become Holder and do what Suletta did. The intention is there, and that’s the problem. It cannot be overstated how little Suletta would care about being the Holder if Miorine hadn’t wanted her to be.

When Shaddiq learns that Miorine will be at Plant Quetta, he callously shrugs off the idea that he should try to stop her from getting hurt and leave it up to fate if she makes it out alive. This becomes somewhat vindictive when he probably justifies this kind of thinking by making it Miorine’s own fault for rejecting his protection. She doesn’t want him to keep her safe so he will do no such thing.

El5n, foil to Miorine – There’s not much to say here. El5n showcases Suletta’s aversion to someone coming on too strong and her commitment to be with Miorine, as by the time El5n first makes a move on Suletta, she’s already hopelessly in love with Miorine. He and Miorine are also opposite extremes when it comes to their interactions with Suletta. El5n insists that Suletta should get with him while Miorine rejects that she has any veto over who Suletta can be with.

Sophie, foil to Miorine – Mostly qualifies for acting antithetically to Miorine and self-identifying as someone who sees Miorine as an obstacle to getting to Suletta. Although Sophie technically doesn’t express interest in being with Suletta romantically, since she goes full Yandere mode at the mention of Suletta being with someone else, she might as well be. One of a romantic foil’s main functions is to demonstrate why a relationship with them wouldn’t be in the best interest of the person they’re interested in having a relationship with. Declaring that she’ll have to kill Miorine to get the relationship she wants with Suletta makes Sophie succeed with flying colors in that regard.

Being a Yandere, Sophie doesn’t understand what would be offputting about telling Suletta she’s going to kill her loved ones. In her mind, she’s setting Suletta free to become a ruthless killer, which really shows how much she’s misjudged what Suletta is like as a person. As the cherry on top, it turns out Sophie’s obsessed with Ericht and not Suletta.

This is another case of a character being the opposite extreme of Miorine. Concurrently with the event involving Norea and Sophie, Miorine is at the point where she’s blaming Prospera for Suletta’s actions, as she can’t see her little ball of innocence killing people unless she has been manipulated.

From a meta-perspective, El4n, Guel, and Shaddiq are also the antithesis of what a romance protagonist should be due to their inability to fight for love. They’re defeatist and, at points, almost deterministic. After one major setback, they turn back to the person of their affection in the sense that they leave the person’s well-being up to fate. Something Suletta and Miorine never do to each other. Even when their insecurities get the better of them, they still have the other’s happiness and well-being in mind.

Furthermore, having the romantic foils display philosophies associated with determinism is a sort of social commentary in a sense. A part of Japanese culture is the acceptance of bad things happening and a willingness to make the best of an unfavorable situation, sometimes expressed through the word shouganai and similar words. This is a perfectly wealthy mentality until it gets used in situations people can and, more importantly, should be doing something about or, at the very least, be less accepting of. Case in point: whatever is up with Japan being behind on queer rights despite its several partnerships with multiple Western countries. So, having characters that act like their hands are tied and just shrug it off makes them foils to Suletta and Miorine, where needing to do something about a bad situation is a major part of their characters. The fact that the characters in question are products of the elite and two queer people who keep getting screwed over by the system is quite reflective of the contrast between activists in Japan and the country they live in.

As the show is now, pairing these guys with the heroines reeks of heteronormativity. It doesn’t matter whether or not that’s the intention; it still does. Two female characters can go through thick and thin together, always having each other’s back whenever possible, and some people see their relationship as equal or even inferior to their barely existing or one-sided relationship with a man. The level of hypocrisy is astounding. It feeds into the idea that guys are entitled to have their feelings returned just by existing. That’s a big part of the reason there are guys who feel threatened by sapphic couples. It messes with their indoctrination that a woman would rather be with another woman than them.

It’s almost amusing how any of these characters come across as having a chance with either Miorine or Suletta when they’re never presented as such in the narrative. Unless the series was going to do a storytelling faux pas, Suletta and Miorine getting together is an inevitability by episode three. Having all this build-up just for them to end with someone else would be narrative nonsense. Good thing that didn’t happen.

#mobile suit gundam: the witch from mercury #g witch #the witch from mercury #suletta mercury #miorine rembran #guel jeturk #el4n #shaddiq zenelli #el5n #sophie pulone #sulemio #suletta x miorine #welp! here we go again

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clowningaroundmars · 2 days

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thanks to the amazing @starcut-sand for the inspo, i now present to you all... a new multi-chapter adventure! this time featuring our beloved gwen stacy and miles42 :)

no, it's not a ship fic lol but i hope to keep you all entertained nonetheless

this one will update much faster since i've plotted it all out and have drafts written already. so stay tuned for new updates coming soon!

general content warnings: canon-typical violence, mentions of blood, kidnapping, drugs, poisoning, death, bullets and explosions, teenagers being teenagers

without further ado, let's get into it!

part 1 of 4 >>

Gwen woke up in a small, dark room not knowing how much time had passed since she was knocked out cold.

And she knew she was knocked out cold, of course, because even she knew never to take a cat-nap in the middle of a mission.

That she was on currently… if memory served her correctly.

Slowly, painstakingly-- with knives in her ribs and her left shoulder still sore from her earlier encounter-- she sat up. Flicked through her watch to make double-sure that the migraine throbbing in her brain wasn’t tricking her into a vivid hallucination of some kind.

Earth-42 stared right back at her, bright green digital letters dancing and blurring in and out right before her very eyes. When she reached up to touch her forehead in a spot that itched, her glove came away with a bit of dried blood on the white fabric.

Shit.

Gwen could not let Jessica down under any circumstances, especially since this was her first mission since… well, since Miles Morales from earth-1610 came in and single-handedly caused the collapse of the Spider Society as everyone knew it.

Which wasn’t really a bad thing in the end, but it did mean that poor Jess had to step up as the leader shortly after Miguel was forcibly dethroned.

“I’m the interim leader right now,” she would say to anyone who called her “boss” or “CEO” or any variation of the word. The poor woman already had enough on her plate as it was with a newborn and a new family life to tend to, so Gwen understood 100%.

It was also why the pressure was on her shoulders to complete this one tiny, manageable task that was given to her.

Gwen wasn’t stupid. She knew she was on a sort of probationary period after her first blunder on earth-1610. And the fact that she turned her back on the Society to break a couple of rules, help Miles, save the multiverse... well, all of that didn't help matters much.

She ignored the looks cast her way every now and then by other Spiders when visiting HQ, but she knew. She tallied up those glances whether anyone knew of it or not.

But then there was also the stupid feeling of… sentimentality hanging in the air, keeping her chained to the Society when most of her other Spider friends had already abandoned the group.

Yeah, her relationship with her father was… repaired, for the most part. But damn it if she didn’t take a liking to Jessica Drew, too! Sue her.

So here she was, on a mission to visit earth-42 and investigate an anomaly that seemed to threaten the very fabric of space and time. Again.

Gwen was already starting to regret her very dumb, not-very-well-thought out decision to volunteer for this one, though.

No time to complain right now though. We’ve got a problem to solve, Gwen mused, forcing her annoyance, frustration, and panic deep down for the moment.

Her aching brain switched over to Work Mode once again, and she immediately slid into compartmentalizing and sorting every bit of detail that she could manage to remember in the present moment.

Her head was bleeding and throbbing, which meant she sustained a brain injury of some kind. She wobbled unsteadily to her feet, wiggling them and checking on her balance. Her head complained louder, but she seemed to be able to walk just fine.

Okay. Good. It wasn’t a bad injury-- and if it was, it seemed her enhanced healing factor already took care of the majority of it in her sleep.

Alright, time to examine her surroundings now.

While she did so, she found it pretty irritating that while her injury didn’t put her out of commission, it seemed to wipe her entire short-term memory instead.

She eventually sat down on a crate in the corner of the room that she was imprisoned in and with her head in her hands, started sorting even harder through her mental files.

… Nothing.

Well, nothing past the memory of flying through the designated portal she opened back in Jess’s office shortly after receiving her mission assignment. And then landing on top of a familiar-but-not-so-familiar building on earth-42's Brooklyn.

She vaguely remembered the late evening sunset, almost choked out by the various plumes of smoke reaching up to the heavens from the fires that still raged on in parts of the city.

... And then? Nothing else.

Gwen remembered how it was like when earth-1610’s Miles-- her Miles-- ended up in this strange world for the first time, a time that seemed like it was eons ago to Gwen, but couldn’t have been more than a few months ago. The fires were much more numerous, news helicopters everywhere and crime seemingly never-ending.

She couldn’t speak on the crime rates per se, but the place looked a little bit less like the mess she and her Spider Band stumbled into at first.

She distinctly remembered thinking to herself-- before swinging down and heading towards the reports of the anomalies-- that she was glad that the Prowlers seemed to get some things under control. If it was them battling the crime in the first place, that is.

But now there was no time for such thoughts. Wherever the Prowlers happened to be now, they were most likely nowhere near her location. Calling Miles-42 up on her watch would be… distasteful, especially this early in the game.

Especially when she had no idea if he was even available or not. Hm. Maybe she should’ve let Jess ping him and let him know of her arrival as per the usual protocol, but. Oh well.

Too late for that now.

So she stood up again, massaged her shoulder and rolled her neck, and blinked the stars out of her eyes. Time to get to work, for real this time.

She eventually happened upon a door that seemed to lead to the outside, which was really well-hidden against the four walls that enclosed her inside.

The room she was held in wasn’t very big, but it was dark. There was only one tiny little window high up near the ceiling that offered a glimpse up into the night sky beyond.

So it was well past sunset… better than not knowing anything at all, right?

The exit was seemingly hard to get out of, unfortunately. Try as she might, Gwen’s strength alone couldn’t get the giant metal door open. She pushed and pulled on the edges, tried sliding it left and right, tried kicking at it. It didn’t budge.

Whoever trapped her in this… storage closet seemed to know exactly what they were doing, who they were dealing with… whoever they happened to be.

Sinister laughing echoed in the back of her mind as she recalled her run-in with the bad guy but… couldn’t for the life of her remember who he was! So frustrating!

Still, this was earth-42. The baddie could’ve been anyone at all, anyone from the Sinister Six Cartel that she knew still held power on the streets here.

Even with their power slowly slipping from their collective grasps, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that one of those assholes still owned a high-security compound out in the middle of nowhere. It also wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for one of them to have enough tranquilizers to knock out ten elephants, and use that drug on her to drag her out here.

For all Gwen knew, she was probably miles and miles away from Brooklyn, too. Just great.

No time to despair. Time to concentrate.

Okay, so she couldn’t really get past this gigantic metal door that seemed to be made of some titanium alloy or whatever. That left the small space up high on the wall that probably served as ventilation for the room, only sporting thick metal bars to prevent things from getting in… or out.

Gwen quickly scaled the wall and eyed the dimensions of the space before deciding that if she got the metal grating off of the concrete wall, she might be able to squeeze her shoulders through and possibly achieve freedom.

Assuming as well, of course, that the security in this building was easy to get past.

But she would rather take her chances with evil police-drones and bumbling goons than sit another minute in this prison waiting to see who exactly captured her.

Gwen got to work, using her super-strength to painstakingly detach the grates corner by corner, trying to stay as quiet as possible. She bent a few bars in the process, but what was a little property damage to a Spiderperson? No big deal.

If the bad guy who kidnapped me wanted his compound to be spotless and damage-free, he shouldn’t have kidnapped me in the first place, Gwen reasoned.

After what felt like hours, the grating was off. She was free! Now all she had to do was--

Gwen’s heart almost leaped out of her throat and into her mask when glowing purple and white eyes suddenly came into view. They narrowed into slits.

“Jesus Chr--!!! What the…” her brain fully booted up this time, taking a second to stare right back into the glowing eyes of...

“Miles?” She gasped, once it hit her.

The glowing eyes blinked once before finally nodding at her. He raised a metal claw to his mask’s mouth in a universally-recognizable gesture.

Shhhhh.

Gwen’s own giant white eyes blinked back at him before shifting out of the way to allow Miles to extend a begauntleted arm into the room through the window and shoot out… something.

A spark of purple lit the room up, and shortly after, a clattering of glass and plastic resonated through the room before the place fell deathly quiet once more.

“There was a camera in there with you, most likely recording audio, too,” Miles offered as an explanation.

“… Oh. Well, thanks.” Gwen said awkwardly.

So she was wrong. Somehow, in the middle of the night in this odd prison she woke up in, Miles Morales happened to find her anyhow.

She wasn’t used to… this other Miles, and they hadn’t spoken much after their first meeting months ago.

He would join the Spider Band on their own missions sparingly. As far as she knew, only 1610’s Miles hung out with him with any sort of regularity. The kid was a complete mystery to everyone else otherwise, and whenever he was brought up around 1610, the topic was usually brushed off as casually as possible.

Gwen had no clue why 42’s Miles didn’t seem to take a liking to any of the members of their little motley crew. She figured he probably had a hard time keeping up with super-powered heroes and just left it at that, even though from what she could see of their encounters-- however far and few between they were-- the kid seemed to have talent. He was able to keep up with them on most days without barely breaking a sweat.

So all in all, a total mystery to her. Even if this guy shared the same face as her best friend and ally Miles Morales, he... moved differently. Acted differently. Like Miles Morales, but in a different font.

He started to shimmy his shoulders into the room to get past the tight constraints of the window. Gwen stared at him with a cocked head the entire time.

He used his sneakers to cling onto the wall for a little bit, reaching right back out of the window once inside. He pulled in a backpack through the opening and promptly dropped down onto the cold hard floor of the room.

“Uh, hi? Wait. Weren’t we supposed to both escape through that window instead of you, y’know, coming inside?”

Miles-- well, 42--shook his head as he threw his pack back on in one swift motion. “I checked the perimeters, and we’re a long, long ways away from the city. Even if we managed to get past the millions of goons and cameras everywhere, they got dogs doing night shifts out in the woods.”

Gwen’s heart sank. Shit. Her earlier thoughts were coming true. They were far away from Brooklyn, which complicated their escape plans even more.

“I mean… ugh, I-- we can climb the trees! Right? If we just--”

“The guards, Gwen. They got guns loaded up with bullets. But you know what I got? A plan.”

Gwen blinked back at 42 yet again. “You do?”

42 took confident steps back as he put some distance between them and then triple-tapped the side of his mechanical mask. Gwen watched with awe as the front of the mask sectioned itself up and off of his head, revealing a laser-focused expression on Miles’ handsome face-- er, his regular, normal, totally-not-good-looking face!

From somewhere on his mask, a bright purple hologram was projected between them, suspended in mid-air. The lights cast the entire room in a hazy purple glow.

The hologram projected a 3D blueprint-like map of the entire building-- all 5 stories of it. Each floor was meticulously detailed, down to the various entrances and exits and relative dimensions of the many, many rooms the building held.

42 tapped his mask again, this time on the chin, and a maze-like structure materialized, all of it hovering on top of each other and weaving themselves in between the floors… a maze-like structure that seemed very, very familiar.

“Vents!” Gwen snapped her fingers once she recognized them. “You have the blueprints of all the ventilation shafts in the building!”

42 nodded, the projection bobbing along with his movements. “Yeah, I do. I’m a Prowler, right? We always stay prepared.”

Gwen squinted at him. “I guess...? How’d you get stuck in this place if you’re always prepared, then? Did you get kidnapped too?”

“Nah,” 42 answered easily, a corner of his mouth quirking up for a split second, “I followed you here.”

Gwen blinked at him for what seemed to be the umpteenth time. "What."

42 sighed. “You got knocked out by this dimension’s Doctor Octopus. He threw you into the back of a van and ordered his goon squad to bring you back up here, to a secret location he’s got surrounded by energy dampeners and signal blockers. Most likely? He knows you’re not from this dimension and wants to experiment on you. But me? I’m here ‘cause me and my uncle have been lookin’ for this place for months. It’s… top-secret, this compound. Classified.”

“Oh. How did… how did you know he’d bring me to the place you and your uncle have been looking for this whole time? What if he brought me to another building?”

42 smirked, the purple lights of the holograms twinkling in his eyes. “Doc’s assets are being… uh, slowly compromised by us with the underground resistance. Not many places for him to throw his unwilling science experiments into nowadays.”

So it wasn’t just Gwen’s imagination. This dimension really has been steadily cleaned up by the Prowlers and their freedom-fighting allies. Well, that was good to hear. Still didn’t provide much relief for their current situation considering this was Doctor Octopus they were talking about here, but it was still nice to know.

“Well. That’s great to hear, then. What’s the rest of your plan, after ducking out of here through the vents?”

42’s mask re-formed back onto his face and the glowing purple and white eyes came back online. “We’re not ducking through the vents. Well, yet. I came here on my own mission and I gotta complete it before leaving.”

Gwen sighed softly. “Which would be...?”

Getting the whole story out of this version of Miles was like pulling teeth! Was it always going to be like this? Because if so, this wasn’t going to be a very easy mission to pull off after all.

“I can get you out of here first, if you want,” 42 glowered at her, voice distorting behind his mask’s voice-changing technology. His tone seemed impatient, too. “I can stay behind ‘til I’m done.”

Gwen shifted her weight onto one leg. “No, not a chance. I have to stay here and make sure Doc Ock doesn’t turn you into minced meat. Plus, you’re the one who has all the blueprints and cool glowing tech thingies. I’m sticking with you until we can both get out of here!”

This seemed to satisfy 42, because he gave her one unreadable nod in her direction. “… If you’re sure, then let’s go.”

He moved swiftly, much more gracefully than Gwen was used to seeing a Miles move. He walked almost silently, crouching down near one side of the wide metal sliding door thing that Gwen was trying to unsuccessfully pry open earlier.

He reached back into his gear that was saddled on his back and pulled out what seemed to be a small metal object with tiny purple lights on the outer edge. It attached itself onto the door and then 42 was sliding a hidden panel that Gwen had completely missed.

Gwen eventually sidled up to him and clasped her hands behind her back. “I see we’re sticking real well to the branding here. Purple lights, purple holograms… very cool,” was her lame attempt at lightening the mood.

“Yeah, it’s a family thing,” 42 muttered as he worked on… what seemed like some electrical circuitry built into the door. It glowed a soft green. “Been passed down for a couple of generations.”

Gwen hummed. “Oh, I see.”

A beat of silence as 42 continued his work.

Gwen checked her watch once more as she leaned on a wall. “Soooo… should I be doing something while you… y’know…?”

“Yeah, you should be quiet.” 42 answered.

“Ouch.” Gwen replied back as flatly as she could. “Look. I don’t wanna step all on your toes or anything while you do this whole… Prowling thing, but we’re a two-man team here! I’m at the very least trying to make conversation,”

“Okay, sure,” 42 replied easily, never taking his eyes off of his task. “Why are you in my dimension in the first place? Since you like to talk so much, maybe you can tell me that.”

Gwen sighed loudly. Great. Here she was trapped in a bad guy’s compound in the middle of who-knows-where, with the meanest Miles in the entirety of the multiverse. Just her luck.

“I was sent here on a mission. By Jessica. You know, the other other Spiderwoman? Who’s now in charge of the Spider Society, by the way? Yeah, we detected anomalies here in this dimension and she sent me to check it out. But… well, I kinda already screwed that up so I guess I can go and kiss my Society membership goodbye for good this time. Happy?”

42 glanced up at her then, his mask as unreadable as ever, the darkness enshrouding much of his body language. He slowly stood up and backed up, silently gazing at Gwen all the while.

She stood there glaring at him with her arms crossed.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m happy.” 42 finally replied coolly. “Now keep quiet, we don’t know if there are guards out here on patrol. My mask is still calibrating its infrared heat sensors so I can’t see ‘em yet.”

Infrared heat sensors? God, is this kid packed to the teeth with high-tech spy gadgetry or what?

Gwen begrudgingly did as she was told, taking a couple of steps back as 42 lowered the brightness of his mask’s glow.

The door rumbled open with a mechanic hum, and that’s when it hit her; Gwen couldn’t have possibly gotten the door open by herself, because it wasn’t just locked… it was hooked up to a main power source and sealed that way.

Damn. Looks like she really did need to rely on this guy to escape this place, after all.

Well then.

They poked their heads out of the dark room and quietly surveyed the expansive maze-like hallways of the compound. Pipes running the entire length of the ceiling as far as they could see told them both everything they needed to know.

42 took a quick step back to update his mask’s digital blueprint and map out exactly where they were.

Gwen glanced back at him. “What’re you doing now?”

“I'm marking where we are...” He then drops his voice to a near whisper, eyes still methodically scanning the area around them. "This compound's built into the side of a steep hill, which is how I climbed in. We must be on the north side, then."

He tapped his mechanical claws on the tip of his chin and started thinking aloud. “Which means… what I’m lookin’ for has to be underneath the ground, towards the south. I’m lookin’ for a room not on the blueprints. And... and I think I know exactly where to start.”

“You think you know? I thought you had a plan!”

“I do,” 42 threw back. “An escape plan. But you’re stickin’ with me, so now we’re gonna do some Prowlering. Unless you changed your mind?”

Oh, right. This game. Well, this kid wasn’t getting rid of her that easily, that was for sure.

“Oh no, no. Just making sure you’re capable of getting out of here, is all,” she offered innocently.

42 might’ve rolled his eyes behind his mask, but it was hard to tell.

Together, they moved through the halls as silently as possible, straining their ears for any sign of human life-- or robot life, really-- as they quickly made their way down several wide corridors.

All of the halls started blurring together since they all looked completely identical to Gwen, save for the numbers on the various doors they passed by changing and getting smaller as they advanced.

After several minutes had passed, Gwen wanted to open her mouth and ask 42 where exactly they were heading to since it didn’t seem like their trip was even coming anywhere close to an end, when he suddenly grabbed her and pulled her around a corner they had just walked past seconds earlier.

Gwen made a slight noise of confusion and then sucked in a breath when the sound of metal clanging and machines whirring echoed all around them. 42 was closest to the corner, head turned over to where she suspected the intruders were coming from.

Sure enough, a pair of heavy work boots stamped gracelessly down the halls and the casual back-and-forth between the men that suddenly came into view could be heard more clearly.

“… Can’t believe he’s got us down here working doubles now, man! Sucks,” one of the men grumbled as they made their way past the two vigilantes and opened yet another giant metal door with a keycard.

Gwen’s vision zeroed in on it as the man reached behind him to tuck it back into his pocket, and her split-second reflexes allowed her to time her web just right.

She snagged the card and held a breath as the door whirred shut right behind the men, both of them none the wiser.

“Whew,” she said after a second of tense waiting, and smirked at 42 who held a metal claw out for the keycard. “Look who’s got a plan now! Aren't you glad I stuck around?”

42 chuckled, the sound warbling slightly under his voice modulator. “Yeah, that was pretty cool. I can admit that. Now that we got this, we might be able to use it to get into the room I wanna get into once we find it.”

“Right,” Gwen pipes up once they continue their descent deeper into the bowels of the compound, “about that. You never told me what it is that you came here to find. In fact, you’ve been pretty cagey this entire time. Like, about everything.”

42 made an undecipherable sound. “Uh, yeah. This is my recon mission, not yours. You’re not even from this dimension, this doesn’t really concern you.”

Gwen grunted. “Gee thanks. If that’s how you feel, then I’ll be having my keycard back!”

42 shook his head and laughed. “I didn’t mean it like that, man. I meant… just don’t worry about it. It’s info we’re looking for to eventually take down Doc Ock. If I said it out loud here, it might jeopardize this whole thing me and Aaron have planned. I'm in work mode right now, I'm sure you get it,”

Gwen relaxed a bit more. In a way, she did get it. She even understood 42’s hesitance to have her aboard to work with him, since working on group projects wasn't exactly on her own list of top ten favorite things… especially when the project itself concerned the very fabric of the space-time continuum.

Gwen was a solo hero, and maybe since 42 was here on his own, he finally graduated into being a solo hero, too.

Actually, on that topic…

“Does your… does your uncle know you’re here, then? If he does, maybe he can help us get out of here?”

42 helped himself to a healthy pause. “Yes, and no. Aaron’s not… here, near the compound. But he does know I’m out on a mission.”

Gwen stared at him. “Sooo… call him? I’m sure he can get past security, right?”

42 laughed yet again, shaking his head. “Guess you didn’t hear me back in the other room when I told you there are blockers all over this compound, huh.”

Gwen cocked an eyebrow at him and their lenses met.

“What I mean is,” 42 continues, “tech down here doesn’t work very well due to all the interference the Doc’s put up to conceal this place. Again, top secret. Super classified. My own mask took a little while to come back online, and some stuff is still… coming back online. Kinda."

“And your communicators wouldn’t happen to also be on the fritz, would they?” Gwen asked, fully knowing the answer she was going to get.

“Mmnnyep, communicator’s offline. I dunno what the hell Doc’s got this place running on, but it’s not electricity. I’m not too concerned about the details, though,”

Here, they came up to a wide metal door marked in bright caution-tape stripes with several warnings plastered on its surface.

“... ’Cause I got my eyes on the prize,” 42 finished, swaggering up to the door’s keycard panel and successfully getting the thing to slide open.

They both fell into fighting stances in case anything behind the door leapt out at them and attacked, but… there was no one and nothing in the spacious cave-like room beyond it.

Nothing except… a humongous collider!

Gwen gasped as she lowered her fists and advanced forward, making her way over thick wires and past computers to get closer to the giant dimension-ripping machine in the center of the room.

It looked… not quite as high-tech as the one in her dimension, or Miles’-- er, 1610’s collider, that is-- but it was completely unmistakable. The form never changes, neither through space nor through time. It was indeed a collider built by none other than the infamous Doctor Octopus, even if it didn’t quite look as close to being complete.

There were still various wires draped on ladders near the edge of the lab, scissor-lifts located below the platforms parked for the night, and several components were missing that seemed to lay underneath odd-looking bulgy sheets on top of several tables nearby. Gwen made her way over to a computer and woke it up, balking at the password-locked screen in front of her eyes.

Damnit. Damnit! It wasn’t just an anomaly that the Society managed to detect… it was the energy signals from this collider, most likely having gone through some initial tests before advancing to this final stage of construction.

If this was it, then Gwen needed to get back to Jess with this information ASAP!

She fiddled with her watch a bit, but it still looked to be on the fritz somehow, not letting her switch to any other dimension or access the other features Hobie had installed into it. Weird.

She straightened up and glanced behind her, hoping that 42 had some kind of tech or knowledge that would help crack this computer open so she could take a look through the files to gauge just how far along this little pet project was… only to find that she was alone.

... Alone?

"Miles?"

Silence. Her heart jumpstarted a bit and started hammering away in her chest as she hurriedly made her way past rows of tables, science equipment, and computer screens of all sizes, only to find a pair of legs sticking out from underneath a weird car-shaped machine set aside in the corner of the gigantic lab.

She stood there for a bit with her hands on her hips, quieting her thoughts and watching as 42 tinkered away at whatever the hell he was tinkering away at.

She eventually kicked a purple Jordan gently and smiled bemusedly at 42 shuffling his way out from under the machine.

“Having fun down there?” She said as casually as she could manage.

42’s mask was off slightly, still framing his face, but now Gwen could see his slightly exasperated expression in full view.

“Yeah, actually, I was.” He gave her a full view of his snarky attitude too, while he was at it.

He laid back down and pushed his way underneath once more.

“Is this gigantic collider in the middle of this room not a huge concern to you at all?”

“Not really.” 42 answered from under the machine.

“Can I ask why? You do know that if the Octopus gets this thing done and booted up, that your entire dimension is at risk of collapsing just like every other dimension that’s had a collider in it before?”

“Really? Ya don't say,” 42 replied sarcastically, clinking and clanking away. The machine rattled a bit. “That’s nowhere near done right now and I gotta prioritize my priorities. I’m getting to root cause of the problem rather than just climbing in here and smashing stuff up.”

“… Are you now?” Gwen deadpanned.

A mighty metallic scraping sound jolted its way through her eardrums suddenly, making Gwen jump slightly. After a second or two, 42 slides out once again with a big sunny grin plastered onto his face, holding up what looks like a small motherboard with a bunch of metal wires still attached to the metal casing it was screwed into. He only wore one gauntlet, she noted.

He quickly took his pack off and got to work inlaying the computer part into a panel in his pack that she had never noticed before.

A total tech marvel that thing was, really. Even Gwen had to make a noise of approval when with a few purposeful jabs and swipes, the whole pack disengaged and unfolded itself open, much like his mask. No tools required.

He made quick work of the task at hand, using one metal gauntlet as a makeshift toolset, his other gloved hand working to set the entire component into the rest of the pack’s inner workings.

Once that seemed to be done, all of the circuitry glowed purple for a beat before going dark once more. 42 tapped at his gauntlet, bringing up more info on the inside of his wrist, which he seemed to approve of.

“All set?” Gwen probed, still standing a little ways away from him, watching as he seemed completely engrossed in his little side-mission.

He reached back under the machine and pulled out his other gauntlet, springing back up once it was in his hands.

“Yeah. Better than all set, ‘cause now my pack’s online! I can use my climbing gear again.” At this, 42 unlatches a reel of rope from behind him, his grappling hook dangling on one end as he swings it in circular motions through the air. “Hell yeah,”

Gwen stared at him once again. “Your climbing gear wasn’t working? How did you climb into my window, then?”

42 gave her a bit of side-eye. "I got other gear besides my rope, you know that, right?"

Gwen huffed, clearly annoyed. "No, actually I don't. I've been following you this whole time and you haven't really been saying much at all,"

42’s mask slid back into place as he rolled his shoulders and readjusted his pack. “You ask too many questions,”

“You don’t provide too many answers,” Gwen bit out dryly. “Seriously, dude, we are in the middle of giant evil lair of some kind with no way to communicate with the outside world and you’re swaggering through this whole ordeal like it’s a walk in the park,” she huffs. “Why can’t you just tell me like, anything?”

They’re both face-to-face now, mask-to-mask, very obviously frustrated with each other if the electricity in the air was as thick as it felt.

Two teenagers butting heads in the middle of a giant lab, trapped in the lair of their greatest enemy… it would embarrassing if it wasn’t so absurd, but here they were, glaring each other down anyways.

“I am telling you things, you just don’t listen! Probably ‘cause you think your powers make you all-powerful and omniscient or something, that you think you don't need to listen to a word I'm saying,” 42’s words dripped with venom. “Seriously, staying with me to make sure I don’t get myself killed? Gimme a damn break. If sticking with me is soooo boring and you know more than I do, you can get yourself up out of here, then.”

Gwen bristled. “Listen here, jerk. I never said that I was better than you. Kinda telling on yourself there, don'tcha think?” She jabbed a finger in his direction. “I was perfectly capable of letting myself out before you fell in here and got us all turned around! I had it on my own, I could've gotten myself out of here ages ago!"

“And who’s stopping you?” 42 threw his hands up in the air. “Use your little spider powers to bust up out of here, and just leave!"

Gwen stepped back, seething. With fists clenched by her sides, she shoots 42 more daggers his way, hoping her mask’s lenses would convey the message.

Wordlessly, she turns around and shoots a web up to one of the ventilation grates high up in the cavernous room, sticking to the wall.

She works the grating off while 42’s Jordans pace right out of the room and into another side room, leaving the lab completely silent.

Fine. If that was how things were going to be, then fine. This was hardly the worst situation Gwen’s ever found herself in, and it most likely wasn't going to be over anytime soon. But she’s gotten herself out of stickier conundrums on her own, so this was just going to be yet another one of life’s little tests. Just a bump in the road.

A small, insignificant little bump.

As Gwen quietly seethed and crawled her way through the ventilation shafts (completely blindly, since she didn’t really bother to memorize the absolute maze that was whatever 42 showed her earlier) she came upon a vent opening that overlooked a room filled with monitors and… guards.

It looked to be a security room not too far from the collider room, and the men inside were armored to the teeth, only slipping off their helmets and masks to chat some shit over takeout containers and coffee cups.

The rest of the room was covered in tv monitors that showed various different CCTV camera feeds, all of them stationary. Most of them were pointing to the outside, though, hardly any of the screens showed views from the basement level’s numerous corridors, curiously enough.

Gwen doubted 42’s earlier claim that this building ran on some other form of power, since she didn’t think it would be very economic on the Octopus’ wallet to buy so many cameras and monitors and computers that ran on alternate power sources.

Maybe… if he was wrong… then maybe she could even use her watch to open up a portal in an empty room somewhere and just peace out!

Tell Jess what she found, because by now she’d pretty much done her job. Leave the rest to a more capable task force put together by the Society and just go back to her normal, boring, definitely not eventful life.

But then… as tempting as the thought was… she’d be leaving 42 behind. 42, sure, but a Miles nonetheless… a friend.

From what she could gather, the poor guy had very few friends, if any at all. If he wasn’t communicating to her properly, maybe isolation from his vigilante work was to blame, rather than a fault of his character.

Gwen propped up her chin in one hand and ruminated on all of these thoughts, arguing with herself over whether she should stay or go. She glanced at her cobbled-up watch, a permanent reminder of her best friend Hobie Brown, and laid on her back to mess with it one more time.

Her thoughts sunk down into the bottom of her stomach as she fiddled with it, continuing to get error messages as she tried to scroll through the various dimensions she knows she’s saved to her little watch, coming up with nothing even when she dared to try and open a portal in the middle of the vent shaft.

Nothing, nada. No dice. No portal whatsoever happened to materialize. It gave small sad beeps instead, really hammering home that… she really was on her own this time.

Damn.

Gwen didn’t know why, but this thought kind of depressed her.

At least on previous missions and patrols in her dimension, she was always acutely aware of how much rested on her own shoulders. She always went in with confidence and some sort of game plan, content enough to just let her quick thinking and powers get her out of any fight, any problem.

But ever since landing here on earth-42, she seemed… discombobulated, not entirely in her element. Everything in this dimension seemed to work against her at every single turn.

She’d have to bring that up to the other Spiders, ask if they’ve ever felt anything like she was feeling before.

If she could get out of this building in the first place, that is…

A loud, jarring alarm jolted her violently out of her wandering thoughts, and she almost hit her head on the ceiling of the vent, rolling over quickly to peer down into the room below her.

The guards were pulling helmets and masks on, scrambling up from their previous positions and pouring out of the security room door as quickly as they could.

In the midst of the sudden chaos, Gwen’s wide eyes honed in on one particular screen, which was pointed directly at the collider room’s interior…

... And directly at earth-42’s Miles Morales himself.

#mine #spiderverse #gwen stacy #miles g morales #earth 42 #welp. here we gooooo #new adventure! yippee!#don't worry. hobie1610 will continue to be updated. but for now? a nice lil gwen and miles g story to cleanse the palate :)#again big ups to starcut sand for the inspo!!! go read their miles g and gwen dynamic posts. i promise they're absolute bangers #and almost direct inspo to everything you read here and beyond :)#that being said #i did try to make their dynamic here my own thing too like... i'm not trying to bite off starcut too hard or anything LOL #lemme know if i'm doing a good enough job or anything #and before yall ask: yep. each chapter will end with a cliffhanger. LMFAO #i like torturing readers a lil sometimes :)#anyways as per usual thx for reading and hope you enjoyed!

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