Being shot at is fun!
"I got you now, you bi-" Before he can continue or pull the trigger, I shoot two consecutive webs, one at his face that both shuts him up and pins him to a wall and another to pull the gun away. I recognize him as one of the guys that got knocked out by Black Cat on the way here, I didn't web down every single one of them since I was kind of in a hurry, but I should have taken the extra time, I guess.
Rather than bothering with the guard, Black Cat turns around and looks up at me with a coy smile "A knight in shining armor, or rather a spandex costume, came to save the princess?"
"Just caught sight of a stray cat in the streets of New York and wanted to see what she was up to," I say, dismissing the web I was hanging from and jumping to the ground, no point in trying to hide anymore. "Say, wasn't the previous Black Cat more focused on stealing expensive art and the like?"
Black Cat takes the USB from the computer before walking toward the webbed down guard and dealing another hard blow to knock him out for the second time today. "You have no clue what this sort of information is worth, do you? People like Osborn have many enemies who would pay very well to get their hands on this." She turns to me, "What are you gonna do, stop me from stealing?"
"No, no, go right ahead. Stealing from other criminals is all good in my book. Though I do have to say that stealing from Kingpin, in particular, might not be the best if you plan on to keep living." I say, looking at the clock on my system display. Damn, it's already 3 AM.
"If this guy woke up, there is a good chance the others got up and called for backup as well. You don't happen to have a plan on getting out of here quietly, have you?" I question.
"This was more of a quick in and out operation. I never planned to leave quietly in the first place." As if on cue, as soon as Black Cat finishes her sentence, a loud alarm starts blaring out all around the underground base.
"The door to this room was trapped. If you opened it and didn't input the correct code into the keypad over there," She points at a keypad between the door and the unconscious guard stuck to the wall. "Then the alarm would go off after three minutes. Unfortunately, I didn't know the code, so it was always gonna be a fight out of here. Anyways, time to go."
Saying that she rushes out of the room, and I quickly follow in her footsteps, catching up to her moments later. Now that I don't have to keep a distance between us, I could easily run past her if I wanted to with my superior stats.
Along the way, I notice some of the unconscious guards who I webbed down are awake and struggling but failing to escape. As for those who I didn't web before and are still down, I make sure to do so now just to make their night a little more annoying.
As a pair, we run through the halls, backtracking our steps all the way to the front entrance that brings us outside. Black Cat places her hand on the doorknob and looks at me. "There's gonna be some not so friendly people waiting for us on the other side, so you better be ready."
Saying that, she takes out her grappling hook with her empty hand and pushes open the door. Almost immediately, we are met with a hail of bullets from men standing next to several SUVs. Instead of taking cover like a rational person, Black Cat instead rolls through the door and shoots her hook at the building across the street from where she was observing before starting her attack on this base.
Kingpin's men, like the stormtroopers they are, miss every single bullet, of course, as Black Cat manages to make into cover behind a generator on the roof of that building. I cast my magic shield before following suit and webbing myself up to the same building.
Rather than just escaping, though, I plan to do some damage to them at the very least as mid-air I use mana bolt, and the two projectiles that manifest around me fly at one of the vehicles, blowing it up upon contact.
"Nice," Black Cat says when I land on the roof next to her. "That will slow them a bit, but we probably want to get out of here."
Despite blowing up one car and the people standing around it, there are still many survivors who are already opening fire on us, so she is definitely right about that.
Together we start running back from where we came from, and that's when I realize that this could get rather awkward if we end up going to the same apartment building. Guess I'll have to split from her at some point and wait half an hour or so before going home…
After only escaping a few dozen meters, the guys behind us get the picture that we aren't going to be staying around to get shot at, so instead, they get inside the three cars that are still functional and start chasing after us on the streets below with gunners shooting from the rolled-down windows.
If you couldn't hit us when standing still, what makes you think your aim is good enough to shoot while in a moving car?
I look to my right to make sure Black Cat is still keeping up with me, and I am with a wide grin on her face.
"Why are you smiling so widely right now, you crazy woman!" I yell as another bullet whizzed past my head.
"Oh, come on, aren't you having fun right now?"
"I don't think getting shot at by some thugs chasing you in cars is what most people would consider fun."
She laughs at that. "Then why not add helicopters to the mix?"
"What?"
She points to my left. "Look over there."
Sure enough, two helicopters are approaching from our left, and inside them are sitting more men carrying assault rifles. "Does Kingpin have a private army or something to be able to bring out two helicopters for some random robbery on his base?"
"That's exactly what he has." She says, "You wanna try doing that magic explosion thing on them you used on that car earlier?"
"I have a better idea." There is actually something I want to test right now since this is an excellent opportunity. I remember the strength of my webs being tied to my strength stat, so now that I have the Super Strength perk that makes each point of strength be worth more than normal, would my webs also be a lot stronger?
To test this, I shoot webs that connect the two helicopters, an easy enough task as they are both flying pretty close to each other, and for good measure, I shoot like ten more of the connecting webs.
Almost immediately, the pilots panic and try to draw further away from each other to counteract the webs pulling them together, but that only ends in both of the helicopters crashing to the ground in a fiery explosion.
"I see you can handle yourself just fine. In that case, I can go home with an easy heart, knowing that my knight in a spandex costume won't be dying just yet. See you next time Spiderman" I hear Black Cat say from my right as I admire the explosion I created. Glancing over at her, I notice she is completely gone.
Really? I stayed around to make sure she wouldn't be dying to Kingpin's men, and she could have escaped at any time? I suppose she had the exact same goal in mind, making sure I wouldn't die from them, so at least she seems to be nice…
I decided to wait another half an hour before heading back home, so I wouldn't accidentally run into her again tonight and, in the meantime, have some fun making the three cars chase me around the city.
Maybe being shot at by bad guys really is fun.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: This is and the previous chapter used to be one single chapter at around 3000 words but I decided to just cut it exactly in half so I could play CK3 instead of writing today so if the end of the previous chapter and the start of this one seems a bit weird then that's why.