a/n- this is basically an introductory chapter to who Roxana is and a little bit of backstory, I promise they'll be more Peter as the story progresses

I hated the name Roxana. When I was a kid I wanted to be called Roxanne, there are songs about Roxanne. Now that I'm older I realise that the main song I knew by The Police was about a prostitute, and it was probably best that I wasn't named after it, but it doesn't make being called Roxana instead any better. While Roxanne was a prostitute, Roxana sounded like a stripper who was addicted to at least five different drugs and would one day end up dead in a dumpster somewhere. Oddly enough I'm pretty sure that's exactly how a majority of my classmates can see me ending up. Or at least that's where they see "Roxie" ending up.

After I was over my Roxanne phase I got people to call me Rocky. I grew up in Canada with my father, who at the time was just starting up the thriving business he owns today. My mother was missing to put it simply. She had been in and out of my life for the first 5 or so years, I don't have many memories of her but the ones I did have weren't good. Mostly her passed out on the sofa with her dress riding somehow up her ass and down her chest leaving nothing to the imagination. She was a mess who wasn't ready to be a mother, she was too young and enjoyed partying too much. It was almost a relief when she left and didn't return. I think my father looked for her for a while and filed a missing person report, but even he was relieved she was gone. She was a bad influence on the both of us.

I watched the movie Matilda religiously when I was a kid. I'd pretend to be able to move things with my mind, and I went as far as to study mathematics to a degree where I could list multiplication almost as well as she could off the top of my head. That was the first sign to the teachers and my father that I was a smart kid. So I guess suck on that mother- the alcohol you drank while you were pregnant with me didn't turn my brain to mush.

As I entered high school, I took a great interest in computers. I'd pull them apart, I'd put them back together, I just wanted to know how they worked. Alongside that came hacking. First it was basic things, hacking into the school website so it said stupid things when parents looked at it, just dumb and pointless things that would make me giggle. This caught the attention of a group of kids I would later call my friends. Quickly, the basic hacking turned into more advanced hacking into people's social media in order to blackmail the jocks with the dick pics they'd sent to the cheerleaders, threatening that if they didn't do what we told them to we'd send the images to their parents. Then I moved on to hacking the school systems to change the grades my friends got so they wouldn't get shit from their parents for not revising.

Things escalated and I was going down a slippery and sketchy slope, but I drew the line when they told me to hack into someone's bank account to get them some quick cash. They refused to take no for an answer and locked me into the schools computer lab and told me they wouldn't let me out until they each had at least $500.

I first considered contacting a teacher to get them to let me out, but I knew one thing would lead to another with that and they'd soon find out about my tampering with grades and whatnot, so I wrote that idea off as a bust.

My second idea was to activate the fire alarm, if they thought there was a fire in the school they'd get out and save their own asses, eventually a teacher would come past making sure no students were trapped and would find me locked in the room. I'd just say the door got jammed and I panicked or something, sure I'd probably get in a little bit of trouble but it wouldn't be as bad. But as I scanned the room I realised the flaw in my plan- there was no fire alarm in the computer lab. I was about 99% sure that's illegal or something, didn't all rooms in a school have to have a fire alarm just in case?

What I did notice however was a smoke alarm, which I hoped in turn would set off the fire alarms. The only issue was causing the smoke alarm to go off in the first place, because believe it or not you need smoke for a smoke alarm to go off. There was probably a button on it somewhere that would have triggered everything, but I was 5'2 and even standing on a chair I wasn't tall enough to reach it. So that left one last solution. I knew from personal experience that overloading electrical wires will heat them up, and in some cases it can heat up to the point where it will burn something adjacent to it, something like paper would easily do the trick and there was plenty of that in the printer. Quickly, I got to work on my master plan to escape.

And then I got electrocuted.

Like a total fucking idiot.

A few hours later I woke up in a hospital bed. By this age my father was too busy with his now prospering company so it was up to the doctor and the teacher who had found me in the room to explain what had happened.

My plan actually worked, the smoke alarms were set off, sadly it was my arm hairs being singed and part of one of my eyebrows that set them off. My so called 'friends' went running and a teacher walking past to get to the fire drill checkpoint spotted me in the room and immediately rescued me from the locked room, calling an ambulance shortly after. Apparently it was a good job he did find me, because my vitals were crashing and it took a round of CPR to get my heart beating properly and my lungs breathing air normally again. As the angsty teen I was I had joked many times about wanting to die, but actually dying had never truly crossed my mind as a thing that could really happen until it nearly did.

Once my father heard the story, or at least the parts that didn't incriminate me too much in my previous hacking escapades, he decided it was time for a change. His business was doing so well that he wanted to take it to America, and apparently his only daughter almost dying was a sign I guess? So when I was almost completely recovered, we packed up and moved to Queens, New York. He enrolled me in Midtown School of Science and Technology where I would have fit right in with my knack for technology and hunger for knowledge.

Would have.

I was given a couple weeks to settle in to the new town and new house before I had to start school. The house was nice, but it was too big for just the pair of us, it felt empty all the time. I suggested getting a cat or a dog to liven the place up but he said that with his business and my studies we wouldn't have the time for it and it wouldn't be fair on the animal. I reluctantly agreed.

So during my weeks of nothingness, I went back to fiddling with technology and found something very VERY strange began to happen.

First it just felt like weird tingles throughout my hands when I touched an electronic device of some sort, I assumed it was just psychosomatic after the electrocution and brushed it off. Then somehow I managed to turn my laptop on from across the room. I had been thinking about how I was too lazy to stand up and go get it, and how I wished my arms would stretch super far so I could do what I needed without having to actually move. Well my arms didn't stretch far but my laptop started acting as though I was touching it. It would do whatever I could imagine in my mind physically doing. For a moment I got really excited, thinking I could recreate that scene from Matilda where she's dancing around the house and making everything move with her mind, but I soon found I could only remotely control electronic devices. Which was still pretty cool but not as cool as I originally hoped.

However, this wasn't my only power. I found I could shoot beams and sparks of electricity from my fingertips, which burned a hole in the sofa that my father went nuts about when he found. I lied and told him I had been smoking which wasn't great but probably better to process than discovering your daughter has magic powers. Smoking could be quit, weird powers couldn't- or at least if they could I had no idea nor any wish to discover how to.

So before I had to sacrifice myself to starting school full time again, I decided to test my newfound powers out. I practically squealed in delight when I realised I could control things like the electronic billboards scattered around queens with vibrant ads flashing about on them. I changed one to say "look at the road and not at this sign, idiot". It made the news. I could turn street lights on and off at will, and the best part about it all is that I didn't have to be too close or even see the item, just picture it in my mind and boom! I could manipulate it! I could control a computer somewhere as long as I knew where that computer was and could picture it, I could hack remotely and leave no electronic trace of me being the perpetrator because brains don't leave an electronic trace.

So Katalyst was born.

At first I did the cheesy thing, and vowed to myself to only use my powers for good, but it wasn't long until I discovered that good and bad weren't exactly black and white. Good people do bad things for a good reason sometimes. Bad people do good things for a bad reason. So I had to go back on my personal vow.

It quickly dawned on me that people might start to make connections between the new vigilante in Queens, Katalyst, and the new girl who was about to join Midtown School who had a knack for technology and hacking. By this time it was Saturday and I was due to start school on Monday. I'd already in my two or so weeks of having powers had done some shifty and questionable things by exposing the plans of some even more shifty and questionable politicians, so I was already in too deep to turn around and be a shining beacon of good and justice.

My conclusion was that it was time to say goodbye to Rocky. I went to the hairdressers and had them bleach and tone my dark brown hair a light blonde, it would be a pain keeping up with the root growth but my father was wealthy enough for me to afford going to the hairdressers every couple weeks to ensure no brown ever peaks through. I then swapped out the glasses I wore to see for some blue tinted prescription contacts, turning my green eyes to more of a teal colour. Lastly, I introduced myself to everyone as Roxie instead of Rocky.

At first I struggled, I realised I was answering too many questions correctly in class, and so whenever I caught myself about to answer something, I would switch and give an answer I knew would be completely wrong. I very quickly gained a reputation for being Roxie the Airhead, which then turned into Roxie the Dumbass, which finally progressed to Roxie the Complete Fucking Idiot.

In a weird way it was exciting to me to be Roxie, it's like I was an actress in a TV show and my character was the stereotypical dumb blonde. Though I still ached and yearned to be able to answer questions with the correct thing, I knew I couldn't. I couldn't join the Decathlon Team, or the Robotics Club, or the Computer Club, or anything of the sort. I just couldn't risk blowing my cover.

The irony in all of this is that everything kicked off when I refused to hack a bank account, now here I was hacking into the S.H.I.E.L.D database to find out what they were hiding from the public on a weekly basis. I felt invincible.

But I wasn't invincible.

I soon discovered there were limits to my powers when I tried to control one of my ex friend's computers back in Canada. It drained me completely, like a battery. I was exhausted and my powers weren't working, it lasted for days. I panicked at the thought of my powers never returning, but over a couple of days as I built back my physical energy, my powers recharged like a battery. I had to take time off of school to recover but I passed it off as food poisoning.

After a couple of months at Midtown playing the role of Roxie, I hated to admit it but I was getting bored. So I did what any logical person would do and started a gossip blog based around students and faculty, but the difference between my gossip and other mainstream gossip blogs is that I had concrete evidence that I recovered through hacking. I had broken down many a friendship and revealed a relationship between two of the teachers that no one could have predicted.

My favourite target was Rachel Cooper. Rachel was pretty, popular, rich, and the meanest bitch I had ever had the displeasure of meeting. But most importantly she was Roxie's 'best friend'. She solidified my social standing as Roxie, I walked amongst the elite in the school, we got what we wanted, when we wanted. There were four of us girls who stuck together the most. Myself, Rachel Cooper, Amanda Carson, and Megan Sutton.

Amanda was your stereotypical spoilt brat. She got anything she wanted and if her daddy said no then she'd just take his credit card and get it anyway. She would agree to do anything if it meant that she got attention from it. Apparently she once flashed Flash outside his house because someone 'told her to do it'. One day she'd get herself killed by doing something stupid. I wouldn't miss her.

Megan on the other hand was the sweetest person I had ever met. She would do anything for anyone but most importantly she would do anything for Rachel. After researching more into students for my gossip blog I discovered the reason why hidden deep deep down within Megan's notes on her phone. It was a heartfelt confession of love, a confession written to Rachel. What she saw in the bitch I could never tell, but my heart went out to her nonetheless. I knew she would never have the guts to confess her true feelings, all I could hope is that she one day finds the happiness she deserves.

Rachel on the other hand deserves to burn in hell. I dug deep and found more shit on her than I could have ever dreamt of finding, but I held a large portion of it back from the blog. One day I would use what I knew to completely and utterly destroy her, but I still needed her for my social standing at Midtown, so I stored the information away for later use.

Of course, I also wrote some smaller articles about Roxie on the blog. Eventually people would have added 2 + 2 together and realised that I was the only one who had been left unscathed. I'd be outed as GossipGirlWannabeXOXO, owner of Midtown Madness, and probably eventually as Katalyst. I just couldn't afford that. So I threw in some bits and pieces, mostly just texts to Rachel calling various teachers and students bitches and whatnot, things mild enough to not go completely unnoticed but also not harm my reputation.

I didn't only use my powers to piss off drivers and expose people for being snakes, I actually did my fair share of vigilante crime fighting, which is how I first met the elusive Spiderman. Up close it was clear that his costume was as homemade as mine. I had patched together some black workout gear and sewn on green panels from a similar fabric. I looked like the Xbox logo personified, but it was the best I'd get. I also wore a plain black mask over my mouth, and I'd popped out the lenses of my glasses and created some goggles using them so I'd be able to see without my contacts. It wasn't the nicest or most professional costume, but it hid almost every hint of Roxie. The only issue was my hair, at first I considered wearing a wig, but then I realised that it was already hot enough running around after criminals in the workout gear which was supposed to be breathable, I didn't need added sweat running down my face and neck with the addition of a wig. Plenty of people were blonde, and I just made sure I tied my hair up as Katalyst, and kept it down as Roxie, for added effect I curled my hair slightly as Roxie to give some naturalish looking beach curls.

Another key feature of my costume was the cleavage. I quickly realised that a large majority of the people committing crimes were male, and being criminals they weren't exactly the most sophisticated bunch. About 75% of them would stop for a second to stare at my boobs, giving me a split second to formulate a plan and, in some cases, give them a good zap. It depended on how I felt that day and how much my teen angst bullshit got in the way.

But back to Spiderman.

It wasn't long until we wound up at the same convenience store robbery, Queens was big but it wasn't huge, it was inevitable that we'd bump into each other. In this case he literally bumped into me. I think he mistook me for a robber, and tried to pin me down, but I was stronger than my outward appearance let off. He took a step back to look at me and even though I couldn't see his eyes, or any distinguishing features for that matter, I saw that something clicked in his mind.

"Woah! You're that Kat girl person, right?" His voice sounded younger than I originally anticipated, this guy couldn't be much older, if he was even older at all, than me.

"Katalyst." I sighed, not in the mood for small talk with him.

"Right, yeah! Katalyst! Cool name by the way! I'm Spiderman." He was way too cheery for someone who, while talking, was actually shooting webs at the robbers and pinning them to the walls and floors. "I read about you in the paper! You're really cool, and kind of intimidating. Not that that's a bad thing! I mean it makes people take you more seriously which is a good thing and-"

"If you call pissing powerful people off by exposing their plans and royally fucking them over cool, I guess?" I rolled my eyes behind my goggles, sending a quick zap of electricity at one of the perps who had managed to wiggle their way out of part of the webbing.

"Well that part maybe isn't as cool- don't get me wrong! Still super cool! But the crime fighting! You're like Thor with the lightning! Does it just come out of your hands? That's awesome!" He rambled on.

"Do you ever stop talking?" I huffed, entering the store to examine the damage once I was satisfied none of the criminals would get away. A broken window and a slightly battered register, not bad, easily fixable. At least no one had been in the store and gotten hurt. "Look, how about you stay out of my way and I'll stay out of yours, deal?" I asked, as Spiderman trailed after me down the short aisles. I grabbed a chocolate bar and shoved it into my pocket, telling myself that it was just payment for my duties. They would have missed the money the robbers were about to make off with more than a measly 64 cent candy bar.

"Okay but hear me out! Think of how great we could be as a crime-fighting duo! I mean I don't know about you but that was record time for me. We could help so many more people together!" He cheered, nudging me in the arm with his elbow. I sent a glare his way.

"I prefer to stick to myself." I said dryly, making my way out of the store and double checking that all 5 of the guys were still firmly secured and would be until actual law enforcement arrived.

"But we-" He started, but I held my hand up to stop him and let a couple electric sparks shoot between my fingers for added emphasis.

"I'm not interested." I stated firmly. "If you try anything I will hunt you down. I will hack into every last email, every social media, every single piece of dirt I can physically find on you and I will send it all to the newspapers."

"Okay! Okay… I'll… I'll back off I guess." He mumbled, slowly walking away backwards with his hands up like he was surrendering. "Just know that the offer is there."

"Yeah yeah, whatever." With that we both went our separate ways. After that interaction we didn't speak again, we'd bump into one another occasionally at crime scene, but we'd just give one another a quick nod to say 'I've got this one' or 'You can take this one'. We always came to an unspoken agreement.

I have no doubt that we would have made a great team, but I just couldn't risk being tied down like that. Or… Webbed down like that I guess?

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