Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled as the two masked robbers hurried to climb the old fire escape to the rooftops, bags of stolen jewelry clutched tightly in their hands. Nothing new in Gotham, considering the seemingly perpetual storm clouds that hung over the city all year.

  Police sirens wailed just behind them as several officers rushed to catch up. After so many public black eyes they had gotten in the media recently there were many in the force that felt pressured to prove themselves capable of dealing with at least the more common criminals without the help of some masked vigilantes.

  There were muttered curses all around as flashlights frantically searched the alleyway only to catch a last glimpse of one of the robber’s legs disappearing over the roof of a building.

  Six officers rushed to climb the fire escape, knowing that the robbers were likely going to be long gone by the time they reached the roof.

  So it was a big surprise to all of them that when they made it up the last ladder they saw both robbers wrapped up in a giant silk cocoon with a smaller patch over their mouths and the stolen jewelry bags sitting innocently on the ground in front of them.

  There were several muttered curses as the officers pulled their sidearms and started checking every corner they could while keeping their backs to one another. Flashlights jumped from shadow to shadow but nothing appeared or was found. So the officer in charge eventually ordered four of them to start moving the captured crooks and loot back towards the fire escape even as the other two kept their guns drawn and searching for the thing that caught them.

  -o-

  “You would think they never had a pair of criminals mysteriously caught and tied up before.” Ghost Spider commented to the stone gargoyle she was leaning against, watching the police officers from another nearby building entirely. “It’s almost like they never had a near run in with Batman before.”

  She paused and tilted her head in thought.

  “Then again, all of them look kinda younger. They might not have been around when Batman was doing the whole ‘Dark Knight from the Shadows’ routine and not just…popping into the station or a crime scene now and then.”

  Like most jobs there were a few gaps in experience and training between the ‘old men’ and ‘new bloods’ for Gotham’s police. Possibly because the older men on the force dealt with certain things so often that the new guys never had the chance – either because they didn’t know something needed to be done, or because it was ‘the other guy’s job’ – or because the situation didn’t happen that much anymore.

  If any of the officers on the scene had been around Ghost Spider’s dad’s age they probably wouldn’t have been nearly as freaked out.

  Or maybe they would have, considering the stories ‘credible sources’ had been spreading about her. Meh.

  “What do you think, Goliath?” She asked her stony companion jokingly.

  Predictably, the gargoyle said nothing in return.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I should focus on what I actually went out for instead of watching the local nightlife. But you have to learn how to stop and smell the roses or the stress is going to make you go bald.” She chuckled a little as she patted the statue’s smooth head. “Anyway, keep up the good work!”

  Goliath didn’t move an inch as Ghost Spider leapt off the building and began web swinging into the city. It just continued its silent vigil into the night.

  …Menacingly.

  -o-

  Ghost Spider landed silently on the second floor balcony of a Gotham Park mansion and took all of ten seconds picking the flimsy lock before stepping inside.

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  It was a little funny to the spider themed metahuman how so many rich people would pay thousands to secure and reinforce the ground floor of their property while the upper floors relied on the same locks that had been top of the line when they were first installed a few decades ago.

  This was the third mansion like this that she had accessed through the same way and she was almost embarrassed for the owners at this point. But if they lived this long in a city with both Catwoman and the Batfamily and still relied on the illusion of security rather than anything solid she figured they deserved what they got at some point.

  Besides, it wasn’t like she was here to rob them of anything valuable.

  At least in the traditional sense.

  The inside of the mansion had better security than most of the outside, but it was mostly CCTV cameras and motion detectors. Things Ghost Spider avoided by simply crawling along the walls or ceiling. And soon enough she found the room she was looking for. Another lock that was picked in forty-five seconds separated her from a frankly beautiful study covered in books and tasteful trinkets that only proved how unfair the world could be sometimes.

  Ghost Spider frankly doubted the owner actually read any of the books he had lining the walls.

  Or maybe he had. Hidden depths and all that.

  But what she was after was something stored in the massive wooden desk that dominated the back half of the room. The small camera she had snuck in using one of her symbio-spiders the other day confirmed that much. Unfortunately the angle had been wrong to see exactly where it was hidden so she was going to need to poke around a little.

  The good news was that knowing there was a hidden compartment in the desk in the first place went a long way towards finding it. Especially with the partial angles of the opening and closing process she had on video. Enough fiddling with various ‘decorative’ knobs and panels and eventually she was rewarded with a soft click as a hidden compartment unlatched and revealed her prize, a small leather bound book filled with handwritten details about various debts owed and meetings certain three letter agencies would love to have an ear in.

  Ghost Spider didn’t have time to read every single entry and couldn’t take the notebook without possibly letting her opponent know she was coming, but after five minutes with a small digital camera that wasn’t going to be an issue.

  Task complete, the last things she did were to return the book to its hidey-hole as close to when she found it as possible and to retrieve her other camera before stepping back out of the office. She was back out the balcony window and off into the night with the only trace that she had even been there being a few unlocked doors that were dismissed as carelessness by the residents of the manor days apart from each other.

  -o-

  “Hrm, probably not Morrocco.” Gwen muttered as she crossed another entry off the list and then took another sip of her coffee.

  “Probably not India either. Miami? Hrmmm…”

  The problem with secret notebooks was that most of the time they were more meant to jog the owner’s memory about something rather than give a detailed breakdown of what each entry was about. Gwen was lucky if there were more than four complete sentences for each line item along with a handful of keywords that didn’t mean much to her.

  But cross referencing the new information with the other two notebooks she copied from two other ‘legitimate businessmen’ helped narrow things down to the point she could start to triangulate where all of them had been close enough to meet up.

  The problem was that sometimes one book didn’t have an entry where the others would or had one describing another location on the other side of the country.

  But with enough breadcrumbs, Gwen eventually found the trail she was looking for. All three books had an entry in the same city and the newest one even referenced ‘pest control’. Not exactly the strongest lead in the world but it was a start.

  The fact the city was reasonably nearby was also a point in its favor.

  “Guess I’m taking a roadtrip to Philadelphia then…”

  -o-

  “Any word back yet?” Barbara asked as she made her way over to where Dick was typing away at the Batcomputer.

  “Not really. Manhunter is probably busy with League stuff and hasn’t responded, but I reached out to Miss Martian.” He replied without taking his eyes off the screen. “She’s never heard of a Klyntar before or any other species like it. The closest she ever heard of was the Reach’s scarabs, but those are obviously different.”

  “You didn’t reach out to the Lanterns? The Hawks? Starfire?”

  “I was hoping that we could learn something without taking things that far. If a Klyntar is some kind of galactic threat I didn’t want someone going after Gwen just to throw her in a Sciencell no questions asked…or worse.”

  Barbara grimaced but acknowledged the point. Hawkman and Hawkwoman were well known heroes, but they viewed that position as something lesser to their roles in the Thanagarian military.

  It normally wasn’t an issue but that was mostly because Thanagarians tended to be a lot more permanent when dealing with threats that went beyond normal crime fighting.

  She didn’t miss how Dick omitted someone though. “And Starfire?”

  “Korrie and I haven’t spoken in years.” He said tersely. “Not since…”

  Not since the Titans, Barbara finished in her head.

  And from her own conversations with the alien girl, the main reason for that was Starfire was waiting for Dick to reach out first. But apparently even their newest issue wasn’t enough to convince her friend to put the past aside. She made a mental note to reach out herself later.

  They couldn’t half-ass this. Not without knowing if what happened to Gwen that night at the charity dinner was her losing control…or the start of something much worse.

  It wouldn’t be the first time alien tech - or in this case a symbiote - caused issues for whoever found it. Granted, a lot of the time those issues could be addressed. But there were plenty of times where they couldn’t or hadn’t that had resulted in tragedies for everyone involved.

  “Is Gwen still keeping to her schedule?” Dick asked, interrupting Barbara’s thoughts.

  “As far as I can tell. We’re only keeping an eye on when she’s back at her apartment, not exactly tracking her every move. But there’s still plenty of reports about criminals getting webbed up and left for the cops so we know she’s still active.” Barbara sighed. “She left home earlier today than normal though, but that doesn’t mean anything on its own.”

  Dick nodded. Sometimes people just went out at different times for no discernable reason. It could be the start of a new pattern or just a random occurrence. And they were doing their best to avoid jumping at shadows while still being careful.

  “At this point we might just need to accept that we aren’t going to be able to handle this on our own. We might need to ask for help.”

  Barbara could see the desire to handle their problem ‘in house’ warring with the desire to make sure Gwen was safe play out across Dick’s face. But eventually the Original Boy Wonder nodded his head. “One more day. If no one gets us solid information about what’s happening to Gwen or what a Klyntar is we’ll bring it to the others.”

  Left unsaid were exactly who those others were…but Barbara would take what she could get.

  AN: April Fool's! This is still on the backburner for the moment.