That girl, she holds her head up so high
Pairing: Hobart “Hobie” Brown (Spider-Punk)/Original Character (Chanel Gajowa)
Synopsis: Hobie and Pavitr go on their first mission together to a dimension called Earth-46296. There, they meet a very difficult Spider who seems convinced that they’re both mega-fans with grandiose delusions.
Content Warnings ⚠️: Canon-typical violence and peril, arguing throughout, usage of weapons (blades), light use of ableist language, portrayal of erratic behavior and allusions to hallucinations
That girl thinks she's the queen of the neighborhood/I got news for you, she is!/They say she's a slut, but I know/She is my best friend, yeah
“I’ve been trying to tell you for the past five minutes that I am not a copycat, you’re seriously not that special—”
“And I have been telling you that I don’t have time for this negging fanboy shit right now! For the love of— move!” For the third time today, Hobie braced himself against the girl (he assumed) shoving him, knowing full well she was going to get him out of her way regardless.
Her elbow tossed him like a poppet once again, and off he slid, the ice on the roof almost sending him to his doom. She webbed him at the last second, though, and leapt off the building with him still attached.
“Are you mental?! Oi!” Hobie twisted and turned round until he could web himself against the nearest skyscraper (what was with the skyscrapers?), only to realize she was hurling herself straight at the Vulture anomaly he’d been trying to nab. “Ey— ey, stop!”
Unfortunately for his blood pressure, he had a conscience; he dove after her. Which made the whole tussle earlier pointless, damn it!
“Blimey, what’s wrong with you!?” Hobie ducked out of a stray feather blade’s way while the girl tossed her whole body directly at the guy, walloping him in the face with a fist double her arm’s size. “Fuck’s sake!”
“Doing great, guys,” Pav yelled from the Vulture’s talons, yelping in fear as they briefly unclenched around him, “I feel so safe right now!”
“Are you being cheeky, mate?”
“No, Hobie, I am not being sarcastic, I’m having a great time being tossed around like a ragdoll by a bird-man! I don’t want to be anywhere else, such as my warm bed or on a date with my perfect girlfriend whom I love!”
“It’s great that you two are bantering!” The girl leapt back from the Vulture’s wings as he viciously whipped them around, digging her fingers into Hobie’s belt loops as he braced himself against the kicked-up wind. “Really sells that you’re besties or whatever.”
“‘Sells’— come off it, I’m not hawking a product, don’t talk like I am. Disrespectful, innit?”
“Well, if you’re going to be a pedant—”
“Piss-ant,” Hobie corrected.
“Doesn’t that literally mean the same thing?”
“AHA!” The Vulture crowed, startling all three of them. “Quip all you’d like, Spider-Man, for your witticisms are no match for my sheer technological power! With this hostage and my overwhelming intellect, I will soon rule all of New York City, and there is nothing you or anyone can possibly do about it!”
“Spider-M— are you talking to me?” She sounded absolutely incredulous; fair, considering that the average man didn’t sound like he could sing in X-Ray Spex and (besides the Yank accent) not be out of place.
“Think he means me,” Hobie posited.
“Are yaar,” Pavitr sighed, tossing his head back in annoyance before whipping it around to stare wide-eyed at both of them, “Does it matter who he means?! I do not have room in my timetable to be a hostage— I have exams to pass! Help me!”
“Right,” the two of them chorused.
“Hey, asshole! I don’t know where you think you are,” the girl cracked her neck from side to side and yanked Hobie by the belt to the other side of her, ignoring his affronted scoff, “But for better or worse, Chicago is for the people!”
Through the blur of getting tossed like a Molotov, Hobie managed to overcorrect in the right enough direction to shoot a web at Pav’s chest and yank him from the Vulture’s grip. The younger Spider flipped through the air and broke the thread to swing onto the nearest perch, the corner of a roof, to catch his heaving breath.
“Wow!” He exclaimed, whipping his head back around to watch the girl exchange blows with the Vulture with a gnarly sword attached to her arm. “That’s— should we stop her?”
“I don’t see why we can’t let her rough him up a bit. Not like he doesn’t need it.”
“We’re supposed to bring him in alive,” Pavitr pointed out, bringing his fingertips to his chest while straightening up, then flattening his hands to push down like he’s forcing his energy to lower. “And unless you two have a telepathic link I don’t think you’ve told her that. Well, unless you do. Do you have a psychic link? I want to be part of the psychic link.”
“We don’t,” Hobie stated.
“Then we should stop her! What are you doing?!”
“Stopping her,” he explained, then turned his head toward the fight and said, “No, stop, don’t. Come back.”
“Miss, we’re supposed to not kill him! Hey— hey! Suniye!” Pavitr swung after her, and Hobie followed; her eyespots barely blinked (but certainly got rather wide) as Pav locked an arm around her middle and yanked both of them back. “Sorry, hi! I’m Pavitr—”
“I don’t care who you are,” she growled (no shit, like a feral cat), “Let me go! I have to do my job!”
Hobie, not one to give particularly bitey people the chance to argue more than they really deserve, finally yanked his guitar off of his back. Clinging for his life, he notched his knees on either side of the Vulture’s neck and found the opening chords of Anarchy in the UK— thematic, eh?— for the very special purpose of absolutely blasting sound into the geezer’s head.
“Is that the fucking Sex Pistols!?”
“Nah, it’s the Beatles. Who the fuck do you think I am?!” Hobie cackled.
True to form, the Vulture careened out of the air and smashed down through several stories of windows. Hobie reached his wrist out for Pav to wrap his yo-yo around at the last minute and enjoyed weightlessness for all of three or so seconds, then skidded across the glass until he could stick to the nearest steel beam.
“No, Miss, please do not attack my friend— no!” The younger Spider immediately returned to his much greater task of holding back the girl. She squirmed like a rat in a trap, but thankfully didn’t try to take a chunk out of him again. “We have teams that can cover this damage, it’ll be like it never happened— Miss, please!”
“You little assholes wrecked a block! Ohhh, you are so screwed, the second I get my hands on you I’m gonna—!”
“You’re not gonna do anything because we’re leaving,” Hobie segued, sliding down to meet Pavitr on the ground so he could finally let the girl go. She elbowed him, but thankfully didn’t go any further, probably because she was running out of steam. It takes energy being that mad. “Pav, get the guy.”
“Oh! Yes, just give me a—”
“I’ve got it.” The girl shoved past both of them, drawing line after line of… icky, gooey something… out of her arm before wrenching it off between two fingers. Then, like an actual spider, she dropped on all fours and skittered over the guy (turning him over several times) until he was well and mummified in whatever that was.
“Whoa,” Pav said eloquently.
“Hobie! Be sensitive! That is obviously her… um… her goop, and we have no room to talk with our, uh… our… our web-shooters— is it moving?” Pav cocked his head and then narrowed his eyes, pulling back from the sight. “It’s moving.”
“It’s biomass, it moves, you’d think you would know that considering how you’re obsessed with me or whatever.”
“For the last time, if you’d just let me—”
“Alright. Fine.” Hobie threw up his hands. “Squashed!”
“We’re from, er, other worlds, Miss,” Pavitr jumped in to finally explain, pressing his hands together in a little prayer motion, “We’re like you! But… but different.”
“And men!” Pav nodded emphatically. “That— falls under… um, under being different, yes.”
“Do these other worlds happen to feature, say, aliens? Russian spies? Government conspiracies? Don’t tell me,” she laughed bitterly while tightening up the last of the binds on the Vulture, “You’re both trusted by God on High to save the world; it’s your responsibility and yours alone.”
“Well, I did get my powers from spirits…”
“She’s being sarcastic, Pav.”
“I’ve heard it all before and I’ve said it all, too. Lots of people have said it all before, actually, and just because a lot of people say it, that doesn’t mean it’s true. You two,” she scooped the other yo-yo Pav had been missing off of the ground and tossed it to him, “need to go home.”
“You’re saying we’re schizo.” Hobie narrowed his eyes slightly, considering her again; all posh and she has the nerve—
“Nooo, you’re putting words in my mouth,” she snorted mirthlessly, giggling like girls do when they’re trying their hardest to be nice, “That would be the pot calling the kettle black. No. I’m saying you’re both not well and you should leave before the cops get here.” She adjusted the wide brim of her hat and dusted off her suit, cricking her neck this way and that as if to depart. “I’m going to leave before the cops get here, and before I hit you in your smug fucking face, so…”
“We can prove it!” Pav blurted out.
“Absolutely not,” Hobie instantly countered.
“Prove it, then,” she said at the same time.
“It’s the obvious solution, Hobie! You get to say I told you so and I get to say I got a new recruit on my first day!”
“We are not dragging another pretentious git into this, Pav, I get enough of it from Miguel—”
“Pretentious?” She scoffed and crossed her arms, giving Hobie the evil eye. “Are you fucking serious? You wreck my city and I’m pretentious for thinking you’re out of your mind?! If anything, that’s charitable, because if you don’t have something going on up there then there’s nothing up there and you’re just stupid.”
“I know you can hear, asshole!”
The girl whipped around to snap at Pav and froze at the sight of the portal.
A thousand different shades of oranges and yellows and reds flashed across the surface of her face while the smaller Spider-Man slowly heaved the Vulture through the rip in spacetime. Every shape a person could conceive of sparked and fizzed in her face.
“Okay,” the girl breathed out, her orange eyespots narrowing into slits and her head tilting backward. “Alright. Thank you, dream people. This was a great time. I’ve been Chanel. I am going to go back to my bed and wake up in the dream so I can wake up in real life. XOXO, kisses, hugs.”
“Chanel— like the brand? Hey, wait— hey!” Pav watched in slack-jawed disbelief as she immediately turned around and swung away, blinking several times and looking at Hobie with wide eyes.
“Bit of a tosser, eh?” Hobie strode to Pav’s side and hauled the Vulture the rest of the way through the portal, yelping in mild surprise as a bit of the goop caught on his hand and wiggled around there a little bit. “Jesus…”
“I still think I could recruit her.”
Love you like a sister always/Soul sister, rebel girl/Come and be my best friend/Will you, rebel girl?/I really like you/I really wanna be your best friend/Be my rebel girl
Thank you to @shypervydolly, my lovely mutual, for being here for the entire writing process… I started this on July 13th. It is 04:32 in the morning as I write this. I think I started thinking of this almost as a short, like the Miles spider one, and that’s why it ended like that. I am so tired. I am going to sleep. I love my baby girl, though, and I’m so excited to write more about her! I hope you like her as well. Thank you for reading!
