The Shimmering Spider-woman! Issue #10.5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fNLEPrNi2A

>You wake up screaming

>Every moment replays in your head, like a ruined disk
>The stormy night sky, lit by dim city lights and brief flashes of lightning
>The relentless rainfall soaking you to the bone, making your outfit cling to you like a second skin
>The roar of thunder reverberating through your very core

>And him

>A child's nightmare, clad in shifting green and crowned by a pair of sickly yellow eyes, hunched over of sleek flying wing
>An impossible maw filled with needle-like teeth speaks
>The words are warped and cruel, each one like a viper's bite, venomous to the last

>There's a fight, confusing, lethal, a death-struggle between powers
>Hero and villain
>Right and wrong
>Good and Evil

>The monster gets some space and attacks in a manner the hero doesn't expect
>He attacks the heart
>You see the fall, the blood on its claw wiped clean by the endless rain
>The biting wind whips by

>An act of desperation

>The sound is distant, but your ears pick it up over the howling wind, the rushing water below, and the hateful cackle, as if it was right beside you

>A distant shape, held by a futile strand

>The fight isn't over and the beast takes advantage

>Survival flares in your skull, burning with primal selfishness

>You let go

>Your mind is distant, your body numb
>You are drowning in cold silence
>It doesn't matter

>Something shifts
>The fight changes
>The monster is hobbled, reptilian features drooped and unarmored skin exposed
>A face behind the fiend, eyes in disbelief

>Back against a pillar of rain-slicked metal

>There is pleading, a confession, a show of grief
>A lie
>A layered scream; one machine, one barely human
>Cut short by jagged blades, driving through their wielder, pinning him
>Like a fly in a web

>Last words are had
>An honest show of vulnerability, real and raw as the blood that washes away as it flows

>You feel nothing

>Two people are dead, but only one body is buried

>Arms wrap around yourself, an empty, solitary comfort
>Windows rattle with the distant thunder and the staccato of the mourning downpour, matched by the tears in your eyes

>Your name is Sunset Shimmer
>It has been two weeks since you let Anonymous Osborn die