Captain George Stacy leaned back in his desk chair, eyes fixed on the corkboard pinned above him.
Across it, a web of printed incident reports, red string, and marked maps stretched in silent confirmation of something no one else in the precinct wanted to admit.
Low-level crimes stopped before police arrived. Unexplained outages. Glitched cameras. Zero suspects. No public recognition. But always the same signs.
Blurry outlines. Static-filled audio. Vanishing acts.
He'd started calling it the Phantom Pattern.
In his private folder, each case was tagged: G.S. + S.H. — names that meant nothing officially, but something deep inside him believed otherwise.
"Ghost-Spider. Strawhat," he murmured to himself.
Not names from a police file.
Names from whispered rumors, fleeting sightings, and online urban legends.
He didn't share this with the task force. Not yet. They'd just laugh again.
But he knew something was happening in the city — something coordinated, methodical, and increasingly bold.
And he would find them.
At the Stacy residence, Gwen watched her father from the hallway.
George sat at the kitchen table, his reading glasses perched low on his nose, a small stack of reports in his hand. His brow was furrowed, and he hadn't touched his coffee in ten minutes.
She stepped in casually. "Late night again?"
He looked up, surprised. "Hey, kid. Yeah, just trying to make sense of these 'untraceable incidents.' Starting to feel like half the city's being cleaned up before we get there."
Gwen forced a small laugh. "Maybe the city finally got lucky."
"Maybe," he said, not sounding convinced.
She walked past him, glancing at the corkboard briefly. Crime scene photos. Red circles. The word 'unknown' repeated.
Her stomach twisted.
Back at Field Alpha, Gwen paced near the main server terminal while Luffy lay on his back, a wrench dangling lazily from one hand.
"He's too close," Gwen said. "I think he's starting to suspect something. Maybe not us, but... something."
"Then we prep. We don't panic," Luffy replied. "Field Alpha goes full ghost mode."
They worked in silence, Gwen tapping in command protocols, Luffy rewiring power grids.
Within the hour, Field Alpha had a new layer:
Auto-purge sequence activated on forced entry.
Suit log encryptors connected to a wearable lock.
External decoys set to draw attention elsewhere if any surveillance pinged their tech.
Luffy tested the voice scrambler.
"Testing, testing," he said. The recording distorted and played back: "System error. No voice signature detected."
"Perfect," Gwen said. "If anyone tries to trace our comms, they'll get ghost data."
That night, dinner was quiet.
George made pasta. The smell of garlic and herbs usually brought comfort, but tonight Gwen could barely taste it. She tried to focus on her plate, twirling the noodles mechanically. Every word her dad said made her heart race. Her fingers clenched slightly on the fork each time he mentioned an unsolved case or the phrase 'no evidence.' She nodded when appropriate, trying to appear calm, but her mind spun with worst-case scenarios.
"We've got an odd batch of reports again," he said. "Break-ins that were interrupted, but not by us. Suspects found tied up or unconscious."
"Still no leads?" Gwen asked carefully.
George shook his head. "Not even fibers. Whoever's doing this? They're smarter than the guys we chase. More precise. And very deliberate."
He looked across the table at her. "I trust you, Gwen. You'd tell me if something was going on, right?"
Gwen smiled, slowly. "Of course."
But the lie sat like a brick in her chest.
Later, Gwen sat at her desk, writing in the Power Journal:
He's so close… and I'm still lying to him.
She stared at the words, then added beneath it:
But if he ever knew… he'd try to stop me. And I'm not ready to stop.
At Field Alpha, Luffy sat cross-legged, organizing the supply lockers. As he tucked away a set of spare gloves, he glanced up at Gwen.
"You ever think about how far we've come?" he asked.
She paused, halfway through sorting her data drives. "Sometimes."
"Feels like yesterday we were hiding from Oscorp, figuring out how to use our powers without burning down a building."
Gwen chuckled softly. "Now we're deploying stealth tech that could confuse satellites."
"Yeah. We're not just pretending anymore. We are the mission."
She looked at him with a faint smile. "And we're still just thirteen."
Luffy grinned. "Wild, right?" Gwen entered silently.
"Everything's set," she said.
Luffy nodded. "No one's finding us unless we let them."
Gwen walked to the whiteboard and added a new line in bold:
Status: Hidden. But Watched.
She stepped back. Luffy looked at it, then at her.
"Let him watch. We're not doing anything wrong."
Gwen stared at the board.
"Maybe not. But it won't feel that way when he finds out who we are."
They stood in silence, two silhouettes outlined in faint blue light, their secrets stretching heavier with each victory. Gwen exhaled softly, the weight of her father's faith echoing in her mind. She reached for her journal, flipped to a blank page, and began sketching the whiteboard scene in front of her—two shadows, a symbol of vigilance, and a truth neither could yet speak aloud.
She closed the book gently. "We'll keep each other grounded, right?"
Luffy nodded. "Always."
Because being invisible was safe.
Because being invisible was safe.
But not from the people who loved them most.