[color=gray][h1][u]Saturday, October 4th, 20XX[/u][/h1]
[h3]Koreatown, 5:58 pm EST[/h3]
[h3]One month after the Recluse Incident[/h3][/color]

[hr]
	Scott slipped out the darkened fire escape into the alley like he had hundreds, maybe half a thousand times before. It never felt great. The feeling that he was lying to his parents always tugged at him, made his stomach sink.
	But there was another feeling tugging at him. One he hadn't noticed at first. After that day a month ago, Scott had been surprised that he was completely unaffected, despite being next to Marcus and others at the time. They'd clearly faced the brunt of it, but Scott had felt like there was TV static bursting in his head for the better part of a week. Over time, the sensation had faded into vague crystalline pops. He almost thought it had gone away. Then the dreams came.

	He thought back to the nights of waking up with foggy memories of searing pain, shadowed figures standing in the light, beckoning him. He'd had dreams like this when he had first gotten his powers. Scott thought better than to ignore them.

	Tying the blindfold over his eyes, he took in a deep breath, as Strand rode again. Pulling on that suit, the blindfold, the black trunks, had always felt rather dramatic. Not to say Scott disliked it. His hands pressed to the old brick wall in the shadows of the alley, as he scaled it for the umpteenth time.

	Cresting the roof, he took a deep breath.

	[color=98fb98]'Alright, where are you...'[/color]

	The sudden pull on his senses unsteadied him for a moment. Scott instinctively widened his stance without noticing. It was like he could see lines, fibers running through the city. They weren't unlike the webs that he shot from the clunky arm mounted devices he wore which gave his alter-ego his namesake; except these thrummed with life.

	“[color=gray]Bingo,[/color]” he whispered to himself.

	Lining up the barrel of one of his web launchers with the skyline, he scanned the nearby buildings.

[center][i][h3]W h a - p s s h[/h3][/i][/center]

	The web fires off as Scott steps off the edge of the building. It snags on a buttress, and he goes careening through the air over the street like a roller coaster. Before he reaches the apex of his swing, he fires the other launcher. The web catches a traffic light, and as Scott releases the first, the second curves him in the air, sending him southward.

	[color=98fb98]'Greenwich Village?'[/color] he ponders to himself, seeing the phantom lines beginning to converge.
	An image flashes through his mind as he looks where the lines converge and overlap. A child? Scott realigns his focus as he passes over an intersection and begins to run across a set of flat rooftops. Able to ignore the tangle of traffic and pedestrians on the streets, Scott's making great time. He feels an edge of excitement as he runs. A smile plays at his lips, bright and confident.

	Suddenly, he stops. His mind told him to stop before his eyes knew why. Down below, someone had a camera pointed in the air, and Scott had almost ran directly into the shot. The young man with brown hair had his lens aimed at the reflection of the sunset off the Empire State Building.

	Moving behind a water tower, Scott fished a pair of CO[sub]2[/sub] cartridges out of his pockets. Catching his breath, he wrenches the spent ones from the web launchers, and inserts the fresh ones. Since each canister was good for about three shots each, and he had already drained both crossing Koreatown, he had to make his swinging count, and leave some reserves if he ran into trouble.

	Scott did some quick math before leaping over a narrow side-street, firing a web line onto an antenna to get him securely onto the next rooftop before falling into a swinging leap and into the night. The four CO[sub]2[/sub] cartridges left in his pocket pressed coolly against his leg. As he swung towards the flickering, emboldening lines that stretched out before him, he only hoped he wouldn't have to use them all tonight.