There was a hum in the walls.
Faint. Just below hearing. But Gwen could feel it — like tension in a spider web, a vibration no one else could pick up.
She turned slowly, eyes narrowed beneath the dim overhead lantern in Field Alpha.
"You hear that?" she asked.
Luffy didn't answer immediately. He stood in the center of the training ring, eyes closed, one hand resting on the floor.
His Observation Haki wasn't strong enough yet to see the future. But it felt things. Movement. Pressure. Patterns.
And something was wrong.
"It's not in the base," he said quietly. "But it's near."
The Warning
Gwen moved fast, climbing the support beams to the upper catwalk. Her spider-sense was tingling in short, irregular bursts — not panic, but warning.
She checked their proximity grid. The motion tracker screen glitched, then snapped to life with a flickering red blip just outside Tunnel 2.
Luffy joined her a moment later, mask half on.
"Static pulses started ten minutes ago," Gwen said. "I thought it was our broken comm line."
"It's not," Luffy said.
They both stared at the screen.
The red blip moved forward again.
Tunnel 2 was one of their deepest, most camouflaged entries. Sealed behind old debris and hidden from the surface with hand-rigged echo dampeners.
Something had found it anyway.
Luffy reached for his utility belt. Gwen slid on her full stealth mask.
They didn't speak.
The time for words was over.
They dropped into the main corridor just as the pulse signal grew sharper.
A dull hiss echoed down the tunnel — not a mechanical sound, but organic. Precise. Unsettling.
Then it appeared.
A spider-like surveillance drone crawled into view. Unlike anything they'd seen before.
It was sleek. Black-metal limbs that bent backward. A headless body with four red sensors rotating in a slow, deliberate circle. The Oscorp insignia was etched into its chest — burned in, not printed.
It didn't make noise.
It listened.
Gwen froze behind a support column, her breath silent.
The drone tilted slightly.
Luffy stayed perfectly still across the corridor, pressed low against the floor.
The drone clicked.
Then a thin red laser line swept forward — slow and surgical — scanning the walls, the air, the vibration.
Gwen's spider-sense flared.
Luffy's heartbeat slowed.
It didn't see them.
Not yet.
But it was looking.
The drone crept forward, limbs whispering over concrete.
It paused near a loose section of wall plating. A sensor extended like a needle and tapped the floor.
Gwen's eyes widened.
"Biometric scanner," she mouthed.
The needle stabbed into the wall and retracted.
Its lights flickered—processing.
Then, without warning, it leapt toward the center of the chamber.
Gwen moved.
She dropped from the catwalk, flipping midair. Her boots landed silently on the far side of the drone, drawing its attention.
The red lenses spun toward her.
"Now!" she shouted.
Luffy launched himself from the opposite side with a coiled jump. His arm stretched wide, slamming into the drone's side like a whip.
It skidded across the floor but didn't break.
Instead, it adapted.
Its legs expanded. Blades extended from the joints. Its central core glowed hot.
It wasn't here to spy.
It was here to fight.
The drone released a stun flash — a white-hot pulse of energy that lit up the entire chamber. Gwen turned away just in time, but her ears rang with the force.
Luffy bounced back, absorbing the recoil into his shoulder.
"EMP pulse," Gwen shouted. "It's targeting our systems!"
The emergency lights flickered. Several of their sensor panels went dark.
The drone skittered along the wall like an insect, its claws dragging sparks.
Gwen launched a webline to intercept — but it sliced through it midair.
"Smart," she muttered.
"Too smart," Luffy agreed.
He rushed it again, arms twisting in a corkscrew.
"Gomu Gomu no—Screw Jab!"
He struck low, targeting the undercarriage.
The drone reeled, one leg snapping off — but it fired a spike into Luffy's shoulder.
He yelped and rolled out of the way, blood beading through his hoodie.
Gwen moved faster than thought. She rebounded off the ceiling, using her full weight to slam down onto the drone from above.
It shuddered. Sparks flew.
She jammed a web cartridge into its core and fired — point blank.
For a second, it resisted.
Then it cracked.
And collapsed.
Smoke filled the chamber.
Gwen helped Luffy to his feet. "You okay?"
He winced, yanking the spike out. "Just a scratch. You?"
"Alive. Barely."
They stared at the wrecked drone.
Then noticed something.
A thin green light on its chest blinked three times.
And died.
Gwen crouched beside it, brow furrowed.
"This wasn't just recording."
Luffy nodded. "It was streaming."
"Back to Oscorp."
They stared at the drone's core.
"Which means they saw how we fight," Gwen said.
Luffy exhaled. "It was bait."
They stripped the drone of anything useful—sensor cores, tracking coils, frame memory. Gwen disabled a failsafe module that was seconds away from melting the whole unit down.
They stored the remains in the Far Shelf of Field Alpha—an area only accessible via a high wall crawl Gwen designed specifically for things they never wanted found.
Luffy sat against a crate, wrapping his shoulder.
"This wasn't a probe," he said. "It was a test."
"And we passed," Gwen replied.
"Or we failed," he said quietly. "Depends on what Oscorp wanted."
She looked over at him. "They've seen us now. How we move. How we hit. How we think."
Luffy didn't speak for a long moment.
Then said: "Then we change."
Aftermath
The rest of the night was spent re-securing Field Alpha.
They replaced the melted circuit boards and rerouted power through backup insulation. Gwen installed two decoy thermal signatures near the upper vents. Luffy restructured their armory crate placement to optimize cover in case of future invasions.
Neither of them slept.
By dawn, the base was sealed tight.
Safe.
For now.
Later that morning, Gwen sat in the treehouse—now more of a shell than a home.
She flipped open the Power Journal, her fingers slightly trembling.
She wrote slowly, deliberately.
Entry Thirteen: They Came for Us
Oscorp sent something real this time. Not a bug, not a probe. A predator.
It was fast. Smart. Almost too smart.
We won. Barely.
Luffy says it was a test. I think it was the beginning.
They aren't guessing anymore. They're learning.
And so are we.
She closed the journal and stood.
They were no longer training.
They were no longer hiding.
They were fighting.
And next time, they'd be ready.