A few hours ago, she had been trailing a lead in another reality and had found a well hidden A.I.M. base out in the boonies. The infiltration had gone surprisingly well at first and she had even managed to get to one of their computers copying the files on it to a USB flash drive (praise the gods of technological compatibility!) .
The trouble had started when she had tried to open the attached vault. Instantly alarms had started to blare and Gwen had to fend off A.I.M. foot-soldiers in their ridiculous, yellow hazmat suits. While they were physically not much of a challenge, they had insane weaponry on their sides: Sideways shooting lasers that ricochet of walls, cold flamethrowers and even a bloody gravity gun. You'd think that with such an arsenal they would use some modicum of caution, but noooo they had fired near randomly, killing more of their own than Gwen could incapacitate. Her running and snarky commentary had probably not been helping.
But sooner or latter they just HAD to manage to score a hit and slowly but steadily they had been wearing her down. So, being the prudent superhero that she was, Gwen had decided to make herself scarce, only to notice that one A.I.M. member had opened the vault and had been busy stuffing whatever was in it, into a mundane sports bag. Thinking quickly, Gwen had barreled her way through the henchmen, grabbed the bag and kicked her way back out. As thanks for her efforts, the cold flamer had hit her right in the face. It hadn't hurt as much as she had feared, but had left her costume in a bad shape and had even frozen some parts of it.
From there escaping had been largely smooth sailing until she had been out of the facility. There a bunch of hover crafts had been waiting to blast her into next week. With a sigh on her by now exposed lips, Spider-Woman had tried to evade them, but had only gotten more hurt for her trouble and nearly lost the bag.
Frustrated, hurt and simply fed up, Gwen had decided to use her Reality hopping device to get away. Now there were two reasons why that had been a less than optimal idea.
First, she had no idea how this place looked like in her reality.
And second, the device wasn't meant to be used on the fly. It only had juice for one trip without a proper power source and it would take weeks until she would be able to use again. This meant she had cut herself off most of her support, both physical and emotional. And the jump wasn't the least bit pleasant, ending with her crashing in an alley and the bag ripping and spilling its contents. And what it contained was the cherry on top: A bloody symbiote!
It was yellow and red mostly, so not the Carnage or Venom symbiotes she had been told about by Peter Parker, the adult, cool, smart and handsome version of Spider-Man in that other reality. She might be idolizing him a little bit, or a damn whole lot, it was hard to say. Either way, she pushed herself to her feet, ready to protect her body and self from being taken other by alien goo.
Only the symbiote didn't move. Well, it twitched a bit. Looking closer it appeared that the head was separated from the body and its hair - it had a titanic amount of yellow and red tendril-like hair on its head - was trying to pull it closer. From what she knew, the symbiotes never had problems attaching parts of themselves. In fact, it should be kind of fast enough to catch Gwen, tired as she was. She took a few steps in its direction and noticed that it wasn't formless like it should be. It appeared like a costume. A monster costume, what with the typical weird fanged mouth, and a living one at that.
So now Gwen Stacy, shivering, hurt, tired and partly naked was standing in an alley inside her own reality wondering what to do with that thing. Trapped in this reality she had no idea who to turn to. There were only Em-Jay and the other girls from her band, and her dad. The latter was part of the police, the same police that had only increased its manhunt for her over the last few months.
She had a small, but decent Apartment in the middle of New York (with generous help by alternate reality Spider-Man and Spider-Woman (Jess Drew)) and she was sure she could reach it, too, though it had scientific equipment to. The problem here was that her mask and hood, hell her entire costume, was little more than a mess and unlike her male counterpart there seemed to never be a lack of cameras trained at her. And, frankly, this weird symbiote costume made her more than curious.