Maria is just about ready to tear the warehouse apart plank by plank, and you know it because she's stopped pretending otherwise. The hunt has dragged on across the length of Nueva York, through rain-slick alleys and over half-collapsed rooftops, until at last she has cornered you in this run-down, half-forgotten building at the city’s edge.

Black Cat: one. Spider-Woman: zero.

The score is smugly yours for the moment, and you make the mistake of purring low in your throat as you settle higher into the rafters, where the darkness gathers thickest. It echoes against the stone walls like a taunt.

Below, Maria lifts her chin, listening. One gloved hand rests on her hip, the other flexes once at her side, patience fraying by the second. “Ay, coño-” she mutters, sharp and breathless with irritation, though there is a dangerous sort of delight hiding beneath it, the kind that always appears when she is closest to catching you. Her eyes narrow as they search the shadows, that familiar, infuriatingly focused gaze sweeping the beams above with a hunter’s precision.

The trouble with Maria is even furious, she's too clever, too quick, too hard to shake, and the heat in her temper only seems to sharpen the glint in her eyes. The warehouse is silent save for the creak of old timber and the soft drag of her breathing. The air between you feels charged with all the times she has nearly had you and all the times you've slipped through her fingers.

“Come down,” she says, voice dropping into something lower, rougher. "You can't hide up there forever, gatita..."