8730/Dude Where's My Bike

Dude Where's My Bike
Date of Scene:	19 November 2021
Location:	Midtown
Synopsis:	April's bike is nearly stolen until Shadow Spider swings in and saves the day! And even the milk survived!
Cast of Characters:	April O'Neil, Miles Morales

---

April O'Neil has posed:
April steps out of a local grocery store with her yellow leather jacket on, her backpack over her shoulders and a dark blue hoodie zipped up under the jacket. She has a receipt in her hands as she comes out, reading the list of things she just bought off as she huffs and stuffs it in to the front right pocket on her slim fit jeans. She steps over to her bike and leans down to undo the chain lock. With the combo entered the bike lock opens up and the young reporter is about to wheel the bike down the side walk when the grocer inside calls out for her.

April pauses and leans her bike up against the door and moves to go inside to get the half gallon of milk she forgot. She thanks the clerk with a big smile and is in the process of turning around to go back outside when she sees a kid in sweats run up and just gank her bike super fast!

"Hey!" April calls out as she runs out of the store after the kid, who takes the bike down a side alley! "Hey, stop!" April shouts further as she tries to run after him with her bag bouncing on her back, and a half gallon of milk in her left hand! "Get back here!" She says as the teenager with the hood up just stands up on the pedals and starts to ride faster away, splashing through puddles in the alley!

Miles Morales has posed:
Well above the street level comes Miles, the lithe spider thwiping his way through downtown. Obviously, he's wearing the Shadow-Spider costume, the black and reds actually blending in fairly well to the night sky. It's just a normal patrol, so far pretty uneventful. There had been a few minor incidents, but by the time he reached them other superheroes, or police, had already responded. Not that he minds a slow evening. It gave him time with his thoughts, and less crime was always a good thing. He does a particularly deep dive, swinging up fast and arching into a few forward rolls just for the fun of it. Sometimes being a spider is actually enjoyable!

And then he hears somebody shouting. Quickly honing in on the sound, he snaps a line out to catch a cornerstone of a roof, altering his his trajectory into a tight turn. Less than a minute later, he's crouched on the edge of the alleyway April and the thief are going down. He quickly figures out the situation, and runs further up the alleyway, snapping out a crossline over the top of it, then attaching a particularly stretching webline to the middle of it and dropping down like a bungie jumper, the webbing wrapped around one leg. He ends up dropping right in front of the fleeing thief, reaching out and grabbing him with both hands. "Boo!" Then rebounding back up into the air. On the way down, he quickly ties up the thief then drops the rest of the way to the ground himself, leaving him bobbing in mid-air, struggling and muffled. He brushes himself off, then moves over to pick up the bike, turning back towards the redhead that's no doubt almost caught up. "I think this is yours. If you were trying to rob him, I'll probably have to apologize to that guy. And that's always awkward."

April O'Neil has posed:
April is still hoofing it like a champ when the Spider-man sweeps in and just steals the bike thief! She skids to a stop with her hands coming up and her eyes going upward in to the dark. "Holy shit." She says with a stunned voice before the figure in black and red drops back down to the alley floor. April's blue eyes are huge, a bike helmet worn on her head keeping her red hair held back out of her face. She just stares at the lithe figure in his fancy suit. "Wow. I mean. Wow. Okay." April stammers, breathing heavily as she stands there with a carton of milk in her left hand.

"Not robbing him!" She tries to catch her breath some as she shakes her head. "He grabbed it when I was coming out of the store back..." She just sighs heavily then and her shoulders slump a bit. "Thank you." She tells Miles back with a smile showing then. "I didn't realize, I mean..." She glances upward then.

"Did you throw him in to space?" She asks then, apparently unable to see him up there.

Miles Morales has posed:
Miles nods his head to her, "Since you're wearing a helmet, and he wasn't, I'll believe you. You deserve the bike more for proper safety anyway." He sets the bike down on the ground in front of her, then follows her gaze up into the sky. "Oh, that guy? Nah, I didn't throw him into space. But I am feeling kind of peckish, so I webbed him up to drink later." He pauses for a heartbeat, two. Coughs. "That... that was a joke. I don't eat people. I just tied him up. He'll drop down eventually. Hopefully thinking twice about doing this sort of thing again." He rubs at his head, then considers her. Hmmm. She looks kind of familiar... "Haven't I seen you somewhere before?" She has a pretty face. And he can't help feeling like it's one he knows for some reason.

April O'Neil has posed:
The bike is received by April who slips her backpack off then to set it down on the seat up against her stomach. She unzips it as he speaks and she pauses at his joke. Then she laughs softly at it before shaking her head and looking down to put the carton of milk in to the schoolbag with some plastic grocery sacks audibley moving around within. "You're funny too." She says at the masked man. Once the milk is safe and secure, April looks back up at his question and bites her bottom lip for a second of thought. "Yes." She says, as if she wasn't sure she should! "I only hesitate because now you remind me that I should be asking you for an impromptu interview...." A second of a heartbeat later and SHE is smiling.

She hesitantly offers him her hand then as she holds on to her bike and backpack. "I'm April O'Neil. Channel Six field reporter and fill-in anchor for when Sally or Tom are sick." She says that last part with a bit of a smarmy edge to her tone but just smiles again.

Miles Morales has posed:
Well, at least he managed to get a laugh out of her! His duty as a Spider was officially completed. "Thanks. Gotta try to live up to the OG and all." He tilts his head as she puts away her groceries, then blinks a few times at her response. "An interview? Wait..." He's starting to put the dots together as he imagines her without the helmet and with her long red hair down. Oh damn. "Uhh. Shadow-Spider. Nice to meet you. ....I can't say that spiders have a very good history with the media. But hopefully this'll be a little better." He takes the offered hand, shaking carefully. "I don't watch the news much, but I've liked what I saw of you. I've seen some of your stuff online too. You have a lot of charisma on screen." He takes his hand back, shifting a little awkwardly. "So, um. Do you want to ask here or should we go somewhere that isn't a dirty alley?"

April O'Neil has posed:
April reaches up to her helmet to take it off then as she runs a hand through her hair and then smiles again at him. "Ta da! My disguise works every time." She states then next with a smirk accompanying her words.

With her helmet held in her left hand now she blinks a couple times as he asks that last question. "Oh, wait, for real?" She asks him next. "I mean... Uh." Her blue eyes go up as she considers the best option and then looks back at him. "I mean, I guess that depends on how many questions I get." She says with a grin now. "If you know of me, and my internet work, then I'm guessing you know about my podcast..." She tilts her head then as she stares at him with a soft smile. "Ever been on a podcast Mister Shadow-Spider?" She asks him next.

But she grins then and shakes her head. "I figure you're too busy tonight for such a thing, but if you'd be up for it some time, you'd be welcome to come on my show. My studio is not far from here."

Miles Morales has posed:
Miles watches the hair fall down then says, "Well, that does stand out when you don't have it on." He crosses his arms over his chest and thinks. "Well... no, I haven't. But you seem pretty nice. And hopefully my saving your bike will incline you to not tell the whole city I'm a menace.... I'm not gonna take my mask off or anything, obviously." He pats at himself a few times. "Uh, do you have a pen and paper? I have a twitter account. But I also don't have any pockets so it's hard to carry stuff like that around." He also shrugs, "Not that busy. Been a slow night. But I guess it is still getting a little later in the evening..."

April O'Neil has posed:
April grins at his reaction and just shakes her head softly. "I do have a pen paper, I was an understudy under a very old timey reporter guy. Saul Rockers. He told me to 'Don't rely on your dumb phone, o'Neil! Get yourself a pad and pencil! Never go without i, O'Neil!'" She does a silly voice trying to emulate this man before rolling her eyes as her hand digs her phone out of her pocket.

She hands her phone over to him. "Here, you can bring it up on this and I'll have it stored that way." She says with a quick smile at him. "I do go through a lot of phones though, but I've become addicted to cloud storage these days." She draws in a breath then as her hands go to the backpack on her bike seat. "Wow. Yeah. I didn't know there were a bunch of you Spider types around. You must be multiplying. Typical spiders." She says with a grin at him. "So is this your... patrol area? Or just swinging by on your way to a crime scene?" She asks further, because... reporter!

Miles Morales has posed:
Miles can't help laughing. "Sounds like a character. I guess going analog isn't a bad thing at times. Hard to go back to that sort of thing with how the world is today, though." He takes the phone from her, and quickly brings up his twitter account on it before handing it back. "There's a few of us. We try not to get TOO into the limelight. Spiders don't handle heat well." He glances around the alleyway. "I mean.... can show up all over the city. Sometimes in Manhattan. Sometimes New Jersey. Depends on whim and what seems active that day. Or if I happen to hear about something nearby. Or see some pretty redhead running down an alleyway shouting at a thief." He does a little hop onto the alley wall, a little above her head, and crouches there. "I can move around pretty fast. Faster than a cab anyway. So I don't have a big need to restrict myself to one area. Though there ARE areas that are regularly patrolled by others so no need to pay too much attention to them. Like Hell's Kitchen."

April O'Neil has posed:
April accepts the phone back with a quick smile as her blue eyes drop down to peruse the twitter page that he brought up. She spies on the last several tweets he'd made with a little grin at what she sees before her eyes dart up at him again. She watches his display of agility and slips her phone in to her backpack side pocket. "Wow, well, yeah. Heck. I trip going up the stairs still, so ... yeah... you Spiderlings have an unfair advantage, I say." She says at him with a faint smirk. "But, so long as it keeps my bike with me... I'm all for it." She pats the handlebars of her yellow and black bike affectionately. "Probably time to get a car though, huh? They're a little harder to steal!" She grins then. "But hey, thank you, for real. I'll make sure to shout you out on my show tomorrow. We talk all things super heroes, so be it crime or those who stop it, we talk about it. So you'll get a fame spike tomorrow, I wager." She grins at him then.

Miles Morales has posed:
Miles wasn't trying to show off, honest! He just felt like sitting on the wall. "Yeah. I guess. I'll admit, before I was a spider, I was on the clumsy side myself. I still can be at times." He shrugs his shoulders. "Cars are expensive. And people still steal those. Though yeah, it is harder. But you do you." He salutes her. "It was a real pleasure meeting you, Ms. O'Neil. I hope we can get in touch again soon." Then he skitters up the wall in a way that's.... maybe vaguely unsettling, disappearing into the darkness. There's a reason Spider-Man wears bright colors! To creep people out less.

April O'Neil has posed:
April watches him go and she shouts up at him. "Thanks again!" She says as he disappears in to the dark. Her eyes going up and around to see where the criminal who took her bike was. "I bet he shot him in to space..." She mutters softly to herself as she puts her bike helmet back on. A few moments later and she has her backpack back on and is getting on her bike. She huffs out a heavy exhale and starts to ride onward.

"Another day, another near crime avoided..." She talks to herself as she pedals, then does the gruff grumpy voice of her mentor. "'Good job, O'Neil. Maybe you're not such a lost cause after all!'"