Chapter 252 - Ms. Marvel SPECIAL (PART 1)

Summary: Roughly a year has passed since Creature Z and since a college-age Kamala Khan has had her powers. Mildly experienced and a massive Spider-Man fangirl, she one day aids him in stopping a radioactive villain. They quickly become friends and start to work together. 

You know how it goes.

A/N: This was a commission, but with how I wrote it, it does "fit" into the canon lore of the story. Is it canon? Probably not. Think of this as a movie special. This takes place before the Red Goblin arc, during the time-skip after Creature Z.

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TIMES SQUARE - LIVE

New York City was never, ever at peace. The people knew it and the Daily Bugle most certainly knew it. 

Static rolled across the Daily Bugle's live feed like rain down a window. Every few seconds the frame stuttered, pixels smearing into pale blocks before snapping back into reality. The cameraman muttered a curse. Behind the lens, rotor blades chopped the air into thunder.

"Good afternoon, New York," Katherine Farrell greeted. "This is Katherine Farrell, live for the Daily Bugle! I need everyone watching to stay exactly where you are!" 

She sat in the open bay of the news helicopter, red hair whipping across her face despite the headset clamped over it. A yellow Geiger counter rested in her lap, its speaker clicking like a nervous insect. The radiation-counting device was going to be addressed sooner. Right now, the helicopter hung nearly two miles west, over the Hudson, as far as the police would allow. Even this felt too close.

"What you are seeing is Times Square! Roughly twenty-five minutes ago, an unmarked helicopter hovered above the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue. Witnesses say its side door slid open and a single, large armour-like figure dropped out. With no parachute, the large-figure fell the length of a forty-story building and hit the center of the Square like a meteor."

Katherine paused to breathe. 

"The helicopter was gone before anyone could read a tail number. NYPD air support lost it somewhere over the river. As of this moment, we do not know who it belonged to, who sent it, or why. And given what has happened since, I suspect no one is lining up to claim it."

Katherine nodded at the cameraman. "Zoom in. Slowly."

The lens crept forward and the Square swelled into view, hazy and trembling.

The crater came first, a ring of blackened, cracked asphalt where the large man had landed, the road around it bulging and glassy as though something had cooked it from the inside. Beyond it, the wreckage spread outward in a wide, ugly bloom. A line of yellow taxis lay crushed against each other like crumpled foil, their tires melted into black puddles. A city bus rested on its side with every window blown out, its advertisement for a Broadway musical still smiling cheerfully along its flank. Police cruisers had been flattened or flung into storefronts, their light bars still spinning red and blue over empty pavement. Glass glittered across the ground like spilled sugar. The famous red steps of the ticket booth were scorched brown at the edges. A lamppost had folded in half, bowing toward the crater like a mourner.

Above it all, the giant LED screens kept running. Sneakers, soda, a smiling model with perfect teeth. Bright, beautiful color washing over a street full of bodies.

Time Square wasn't totalled. It wasn't brought down, but it was not looking good either. There were hardly any people. 

"Those are officers," Katherine said, and the camera drifted to the bodies for half a second before she added, "Cameraman, please. Not that."

The lens lurched back toward the center.

The man responsible sat in the middle of the crater.

He was seven feet tall when he was not being folded in on himself, knees pulled to his chest, arms locked around them, head bowed so far that his hood hid most of him. However, at his full height, he boasted a containment suit that unquestionably added to his height and width. That wasn't to say he was overly muscular like a wrestler or lanky like a basketball player. This containment field of a man was perfectly proportional. An "ordinary" big man in a hoodie-like containment suit that was segmented and a dried-blood red, strapped down with black harnesses and belts. 

The gloves were reinforced, the fingertips tipped with hooked, claw-like caps. A hard respirator jutted from the front of the hood like a snout, and behind its round lenses, a sickly green light glowed, like a lantern left burning in a sealed room.

The contained man was not moving. Every few seconds the suit shuddered, a slow tremor that rolled through his shoulders and out to his hands, and the seams along the metal fabric pulsed with a dull red glow, like a heartbeat or the threatening of an explosion perhaps, in a man who was curled up like a child hiding from thunder.

"Nobody knows who is inside that suit," Katherine said. "Nobody knows what he wants or where he came from. We only know, from the thermal imaging, that there is a man in there. A living one."

The Geiger counter in her lap crackled louder.

"About twenty minutes ago, a team of volunteer officers in full hazmat gear approached him. They only meant to move him. To touch his shoulder, to see if he would respond. Our camera caught the moment. The instant a glove touched him, he stood, towering over them, and swatted them away like insects. Officers were thrown through windows, through that bus, through the front of that theater. Those not killed by the blows were dead before they hit the ground. The suits did nothing. Nothing at all."

More than a dozen officers. Their families would be getting calls soon.

"The man then returned to the ground, and curled up again, exactly as you see him. He has not moved since."

She lifted the Geiger counter toward the camera once more. The display glowed amber, numbers climbing in steady, ugly increments.

"I want you to understand where we are. We are nearly two miles from the source, at four thousand feet. The reading here is eighteen millisieverts per hour. Normal background radiation is a fraction of a microsievert. Eighteen… nineteen… that's twenty-two now."

The speaker went from a patter to a rattle to a constant tearing sound, like cloth being ripped.

"A physicist from Columbia University has been advising us live. According to him, anyone within fifty yards of that man would receive a lethal dose in under a minute. That is far beyond Creature Z, which until today was the most toxic radiological event this city had ever recorded. Creature Z at its peak does not even compare."

The reporter Katherine swallowed.

"Sources tell the Bugle that the military are working together on a plan to neutralize him. Until then, the message from the mayor's office is simple. Shelter in place. Seal your windows. Do not approach Midtown. Everyone must stay put."

The cameraman zoomed tighter on the red seams. The glow had not been there when the man landed, Katherine said. At first it had been a faint ember. Now it was bright enough to see in daylight.

"I will be honest with you at home," Katherine said. "If he keeps curling in on himself, and that light keeps getting brighter, I do not know what happens next. The city…needs a hero."

The counter shrieked. Twenty-six.

Her earpiece buzzed. Katherine pressed two fingers to it and listened, brow tightening.

"Pan east. Now. Someone is coming."

The camera swung and the frame blurred, then found a dot against the blue, small and fast, arcing over the glass towers of Midtown.

"It's a bird…" the cameraman whispered.

"No, it's a plane!" shouted the pilot.

Katherine grinned in spite of everything. "It's Ms. Marvel!"

Ms. Marvel came off the top of a skyscraper, one leg stretched thirty feet behind her to launch, then snapping back to normal as she sailed over the Square in a long, glorious arc. A red sash trailed behind her like a banner. She landed on the roof of a crushed taxi in a low crouch, one fist planted on the metal, the whole car groaning beneath her.

She looked to be in her early twenties. Her skin was warm brown and her long black hair was tied back in a ponytail that whipped in the wind. A black domino mask hid the upper half of her face, but her eyes were sharp and wide and very awake. Her costume was a midnight-blue bodysuit with a golden lightning bolt blazing across the chest, red gloves, red boots, and that long crimson sash wrapped around her neck. 

However, most importantly, she was not wearing a hazmat suit—and she wasn't dying! 

Her right arm shot forward.

It stretched like taffy, forty feet of rubbery muscle sailing across the Square, and her fist slammed into the curled man's shoulder with a crack that echoed off the buildings. 

"Oh my god! I-I believe—the Radioactive Man has been hit!" Katherine declared.

The Radioactive Man toppled sideways out of his crouch, boots skidding, one claw dragging a long groove through the asphalt.

He rose slowly. The green lenses locked onto her and then he charged.

Ms. Marvel leapt back, smiling. "Come at me!"

Kamala Khan had been watching this happen forty minutes ago, in the back row of Physics 101.

Professor Lind had been in the middle of explaining half-lives when the first phone buzzed. Then another. Then the whole lecture hall was leaning toward one screen, a classmate's, where Katherine Farrell's face was hovering over a smoking Times Square. Kamala had seen the officers die. She had felt it in her stomach, a cold, awful drop.

She had to do this. She just had to.

'You've been a hero for six months now! Come on, Kamala! You got this!'

The Radioactive Man swung at her head. She folded her torso backward, spine twisting like a wrung towel, and the claw whistled over her face close enough to part her hair. She snapped her arm out to wrap around a lamppost, hauled herself sideways, and the monster's fist punched through a taxi where she had been standing, crushing it flat.

'Okay. Okay. He's not as fast as me. He's heavy. I can work with heavy.'

There was the matter of the radiation. She felt it rolling off him in waves. It tingled on her skin like standing too close to a microwave. But…nothing worse. She wasn't dying like the reporter suggested it would. She kinda figured as much. Her strange, rubbery resilient body shrugged it off the same way it did cold and hot temperatures, toxins, and poisons. 

'I can do this!'

She vaulted over his swing, legs elongating into long, springing coils, and landed behind him. Her arms stretched back, drawn tight like a bowstring, and she let them snap forward with everything she had. Both fists slammed into his armored back.

It was like punching a furnace.

"Ugh!" 

Heat blasted up her arms and the skin on her knuckles blistered and blackened in the space of a heartbeat, smoke curling off her gloves. She yanked her hands away, staring down at them, at the red, raw meat of her fingers.

"T-the hell…?" Ms. Marvel hissed and shook her hands. "I-I guess resistance doesn't mean immunity…" 

The Radioactive Man turned. She never saw the backhand. Ms. Marvel became a wrecking ball and the world became a blur of color, sky, signs, glass. She tumbled through the air, bounced off a billboard scaffold, and punched through the window of a building in a spray of shards before slamming into a wall of drywall and concrete. Her ribs screamed. Her ears rang. Her ruined hands twitched uselessly at her sides, and her body, which should have stretched and sprung back, simply lay there.

'G-get up. Get up, Kamala.'

She could not.

Through the broken window she saw him coming. The Radioactive Man walked—thud, thud, thud! The asphalt glowed molten orange where his boots fell. The red seams of his suit were blazing now, brighter than they had ever been, so bright that the green lenses seemed to swim in them. His hand rose, clawed fingers curling into a fist. One last punch. That was all it would take.

'Ammi is going to kill me,' Kamala thought, absurdly. 'She's going to find out I skipped class and she's going to kill me.'

The fist came down.

The fist was stopped by a long black, spludgy arm. 

"Huh…? I-it's…"

A distinctly masculine figure stood on one knee between her and the radioactive monster, back to her, one arm raised to the Radioactive Man's huge metal fist. His suit was black, a thick, rippling liquid-weave that shifted and flowed across his shoulders to seemingly bolster his strength and to protect him from the radioaction. A red spider stretched across his back, bright as bone. Where his hand met the glowing suit, the black fabric smoked and boiled, burning away and reforming in the same instant, again and again.

"Spider-Man…!"

The relief on her face was obvious. Spider-Man turned his head, just slightly, and the huge white eyes of his mask found hers. They held for one second and in that second Kamala felt every ounce of fear drain out of her chest.

'He's here,' she thought, and her throat tightened. She ended up smiling, despite the pain. 'He actually came…!'

The saviour of New York City. Her hero. Her idol. 

Spider-Man said nothing to her. He simply lifted his knee from the ground and began to pus up.

Those villainous beaming green eyes were agitated, however, and Radioactive Man delivered another punch. Except…he was too slow and Spider-Man's fist answered him first. He sent the villain flying.

Kamala dragged herself onto one elbow in the wreckage of the window and watched. 

"Wow."

It was not close. She had assumed, in some small, stubborn corner of her mind, that it would be. That a monster who had killed a dozen officers in seconds and sent her through a building would put up a real fight. Instead, Spider-Man chased and deftly side-stepped the giant's fist. He then drove a double-punch into the chest. The Radioactive Man skidded backward forty feet, going outside and plowing through the shell of a taxi.

The Radioactive Man stopped only because of physics, and Spider-Man was on him before he could catch his breath. 

A fist to the side of the hood. A fist to the ribs. A knee that lifted the seven-foot titan clean off the ground. A thick black tendril whipped from his waist, coiled around the giant's leg, and hurled him overhead into the city bus, which folded around him like paper. Spider-Man never spoke. 

Neither did the Radioactive Man. He only exhaled, a thick, wet rasp through the respirator, again and again. Everywhere Spider-Man's hands touched, the black suit burned and smoked and grew back, burned and grew back.

So what? 

Kamala was giddy. "He's beating the snot out of him…"

Felix Faeth agreed with that assessment.

'This guy's radiation is all that's dangerous about him,' Felix thought.

'Mmm, agreed! How about we wrap this up?'

'Agreed, Rash.' 

Radiation tickled along every nerve in his body, a thousand tiny needles. But with Rash aiding him and Extremis already sorting it, learning it, and shrugging it off, this was really nothing. He caught the giant by the collar, hauled back his fist, and drove it straight into his respirator.

CRACK! 

A hairline fracture shot from the respirator down to the suit's sternum and into the side to the shoulder. From spilled a light so green and bright that Kamala flinched.

The Radioactive Man actually screamed.

"NOOO!"

It was the first real sound he had made and it rattled the glass in every window in Time Square. The crack branched and branched again, down the arm, up the neck, and across the hood. Beams of green light speared out through each fracture like sunlight through a shattered lantern, and the green lenses turned even brighter. 

Two miles away, in the helicopter, the Geiger counter in Katherine Farrell's lap stopped clicking. It shrieked, one long, flat, unbroken tone, and the display pegged itself at its maximum and stayed there.

"Oh no," Katherine whispered. "Oh God."

Spider-Man went still. 'Oh fuck.' He had read it all wrong. He treated this like any guy in a suit, except this was not that. 

'Idiot,' Felix thought, and the word echoed cold and loud through his skull. 'Idiot, idiot—! He's going NUCLEAR!'

The light was accelerating. The pulses were stacking closer and closer together. A runaway chain reaction. Central Midtown. Millions of people. This man was about to go off like an atomic bomb in the middle of Times Square.

He had made a mistake. Perhaps the biggest mistake of his career.

There was no time to run, to evacuate, to think of anything clever. Spider-Man had to protect everyone! Even if it cost him his life! 

Tendrils exploded from his shoulders, his back, his waist, a dozen of them, then two dozen, black and thick as tree trunks, and they lashed around the screaming giant in layers. Coil over coil. Wrap over wrap. He cocooned the Radioactive Man in a swelling ball of black, crushing inward, sealing every crack, every seam, every sliver of escaping light. Spider-Man threw both arms around the cocoon and planted his feet, hugging a star.

The light fought back at once. It pushed through the gaps in white lines that burned the black away, and the black grew back, and the light burned it again. Spider-Man's whole frame was fucking ready. 

'First stage of a nuclear fucking explosion is happening! Be ready, Felix!'

He made this bed. He had to lie with it.

Fortunately for him, it wouldn't have to be alone.

"I'm here too!"

"...!"

Kamala Khan, sorry, Ms. Marvel was here! She saw the cocoon swelling and flickering, saw the black tendrils tearing away faster than they could regrow, and she did the only thing she could.

She threw her arms around it.

They stretched, as they always had, and her arms wrapped around the black cocoon again and again like rubber bands around a ball, a second shell of living, stretching, resilient flesh. 

"O-oh my god, oh my Allah…! I-it's really blowing up! Hnnngh…!"

The heat hit her like a wall. Her skin blistered. She screamed. She did not let go.

Spider-Man's white lenses turned toward her. A single tendril uncoiled from his shoulder and pressed against her ribs, silently asking her to leave. 'This was my mistake, not yours, Ms. Marvel!'

"No!" Ms. Marvel shouted, over the roar. "I'm not leaving! Not alone! I'm here!"

For one heartbeat she thought he would shove her away. Luckily, he didn't and the real explosion happened.

BOOM! 

The Radioactive Man imploded and it happened inside the cocoon, a collapse so sudden it seemed to pull the very light inward before it burst. For one impossible instant, everything was dark and silent. But as they feared, an explosion did happen and it was NOT easy to stop. 

White. That was all there was. White light forced through every gap in the black and the brown and the blue, a light so bright that Kamala could see the bones in her own arms like shadows in an x-ray. The screens across Times Square flared in unison and died. The wind rushed in from every direction as if the city itself were inhaling. The heat peeled her skin and curled her hair. She could smell herself burning.

Spider-Man's tendrils boiled away and grew back. Boiled away and grew back. His body shook so hard that his teeth rattled in his skull.

'Thirty seconds,' Felix counted. A normal nuclear detonation burned itself out in about a minute, the energy spreading and thinning into open air. But there was no open air here. The energy had nowhere to go but through them. It would not thin. It would gnaw.

'One minute.'

Kamala's voice had cracked into a hoarse, wordless sound. Her arms were numb. Then they were not numb, and she wished they were. "Grrrr! W-we can do this! We can!"

'Two minutes.'

Somewhere far away, Katherine Farrell was crying on live television, narrating what she could not understand: a blinding column of white light rising from Times Square and not spreading, not growing, held in place by something she could only describe as two people holding the sun.

'Three….!'

The cocoon quivered. A tendril snapped. Felix yelled at Rash and they fixed it together. 

'Four…! Four, four! Come on, end already!' 

Kamala's vision whitened at the edges. She thought of her mother. Of her brother. Of the lecture hall, so dull and so far away. She thought, 'If this is the end, at least I'm here. At least I'm next to him.' And she held on.

Right when she thought she was going to die, the light thinned.

It happened slowly. The white yellowed. The yellow reddened. The red dimmed to a dull ember, to a flicker, to a thread, and then, between one breath and the next, to nothing at all.

Silence.

The tendrils uncoiled, black strands falling away and dissolving into Spider-Man's shoulders. Kamala's arms slid off the cocoon and shrank back to normal length, trembling, shining red and raw. What lay at their feet was…nothing. Nothing but smoke. Naturally so.

The wind blew the smoke away. 

Above Midtown, the counter in Katherine Farrell's hand began to tick again. It actually started clicking down toward the numbers of a normal day.

"It's…" Katherine said, and could not finish. She wiped her face, laughed, tried again. "The readings are dropping. They're dropping to normal. There is no explosion. No fallout. Not one civilian is hurt. Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel… they did it. They stopped it."

Spider-Man was the hero of New York City, and New York was quite the passionate city. Windows opened up and people celebrated. People leaned out of towers and apartments in defiance of every warning, hands waving, and woo-hooing. Cops lowered their weapons and removed their helmets. Strangers hugged on fire escapes. For the first time all day, the city exhaled, and it exhaled their names.

Kamala heard none of it. She was on her knees.

She did not remember falling. Her legs had simply stopped, the way a dial tone stops when the line is cut. The world tilted and blurred. Her hands hung useless at her sides. She tried to say something, anything, and what came out was a thin, cracked, whispering laugh.

"Did we…?"

Spider-Man caught her before she hit the ground.

He lifted her in both arms, one black hand cradling her head, and he nodded once. Ms. Marvel smiled. Then her eyes rolled shut.

'...you really helped me back there, Ms. Marvel,' Felix thought. 

'Hmph. I guess….'

He ignored Rash, raised a hand, and thwip! A webline snapped upward and he pulled himself up. Time Square fell away. He swung high and hard, and then turned invisible. 

No one saw where they went. No one could. And still, from every window in Manhattan, the city cheered for them.

***

Wind.

That was the first thing Kamala felt. Cool, steady wind combing through her hair, and the distant, hollow sound of a city very, very far below.

"H-hnn…?" Her eyes fluttered open.

Gold light. The sun had slid low and warm over New York, painting the clouds orange and the glass towers copper. She was sitting with her back against cold stone, her legs stretched out before her, her hands wrapped in thin black webbing that cooled and soothed the burns beneath. Above her, a steel spire climbed into the sky. Beneath her feet there was nothing but air and a narrow ledge.

Kamala Khan leaned over the edge. "O-oh." The streets were toy-sized. The cars were crumbs. The Hudson was a silver ribbon. Her stomach flipped end over end.

"Ohmygod, how did I get here—!?"

It was the Empire State Building. She was on THE Empire State Building. She calmed herself thinking she could survive a fall, probably, but….but…

Short of breath, she looked to her left and she saw him.

"S-Spider-Man…!?"

Yep, her idol was crouched on the ledge a few feet away, back to her, one hand resting on the rail. He was looking out over the city, perfectly still, as if nothing in the world could ever knock him off.

Kamala's breathing slowed.

'It's okay,' she thought. 'It's Spider-Man. He's right there.'

She looked around. No helicopters. No cameras. No police sirens, no drones, no crowds, no one. Just wind and gold light and two people on the roof of the world.

Kamala swallowed and found Ms. Marvel voice.

"I-it is a REAL honour to work with you, Spider-Man. Sir, Spider-Man."

He turned his head. Those huge white eyes settled on her, calm and unreadable. "…you did good work there," said Spider-Man. His voice was low and quiet and a little rough, like a door opening after a long time. "Really good work."

Kamala's mouth fell open.

"Ohmygosh, you talked!"

"…"

"S-sorry!"

'B-but…!' Kamala giggled in her head. 'He…he talked to me! Spider-Man did!'

Six months. She had been doing this for a whole six months, learning, failing, getting back up, and in all that time, she had never been sure. And now not only had she helped him save the city, she had his APPROVAL too. Her hero had looked her in the eye and said she did good work.

She could not stop smiling.

"R-right, right, uh, I'm Ms. Marvel, by the way."

"I'm aware." A pause. "Ms. Marvel."

Kamala's heart did a small, ridiculous flip. He was saying her name. Her hero was saying her hero name.

"Y-yes?"

Spider-Man rose from the ledge. He did not turn fully toward her. His head tilted a few degrees, the white lenses catching the last of the gold light. "You should come with me."

"Come with…where? Why? What?"

Oh shit, was she giving him the ick? Wallahi, she needed to stop talking already…!

"The radiation is still on you. Your suit, your hair, your skin. Your body resists it, but resisting is not the same as erasing it. If you go home like this, you carry it with you."

"Oh. Uh…"

"Your family would be in the room with it," he said. "Your friends. Anyone who hugs you."

The warmth of the moment drained out of her chest. She thought of her family sitting around the dinner table, breathing it in. She had not even considered it. In the name of all that was holy, was she stupid or something?

"Oh. Oh. No. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense."

"Then come with me." Spider-Man held out a hand.

It was a simple gesture, a gloved black hand extended toward her in the orange light, palm open, steady. Kamala stared at it. Her ears went hot. Her cheeks went hotter. 'Do not blush,' she told herself. 'Y-you are a professional. You are a superhero. You are twenty years old and you have a master's degree in being cool.' She did not have a master's degree in being cool. She was blushing so hard she could feel it in her teeth.

Kamala took his hand.

He pulled her up as easily as lifting a feather. Before she could say anything, he turned and walked to the edge of the ledge, and her stomach dropped into her shoes.

"Wait, are we…?"

"Hold on."

She flung both arms around him. She did not decide to do it. Her whole body decided for her, wrapping tight around his shoulders and chest, face pressed into his chest. He smelled like smoke and rain and something metallic. He felt solid as a wall.

He stepped off the Empire State Building.

The scream tore out of her before she could swallow it. They fell, and fell, and the city rushed up in a blur of glass and gold, and then there was a soft thwip and the world swung. 

"Wooo-hooo!" Kamala yelled out. 

They rose in a long, perfect arc over Fifth Avenue, so close to the rooftops that she could see the rivets on the water towers. The wind roared. The lights of Manhattan were coming on one by one, tiny and bright.

Her scream turned into a laugh. She could not help it. It bubbled up out of her, giddy and shaking, because she was swinging with Spider-Man. She was being carried. Spider-Man was carrying her.

'Worst day ever turning into the best day ever! I can't believe my life now!' 

They swung and swung, and the skyline slid by. After a while, his voice came low against her ear.

"Close your eyes."

"Huh? Why?"

"Trust me."

Kamala did. Obediently, completely, squeezing her lids shut.

The wind changed first. The roar of the city fell away and a hollow echo took its place, water dripping somewhere in the dark. A smell reached her, faint and sour and unmistakable. Her nose wrinkled. They dropped, quick and steep, then…oh! Spider-Man was walking! A-and carrying her! 

'G-guess he is taller than me…'

So yeah, she could be clinging to him and her toes wouldn't touch the ground. 'But, ew, where are we? It feels…wet and slimy somehow.' 

She heard running water. Her nose wrinkled though. It smelled like literal doo-doo here.

'Is this a sewer?' she thought, horrified. 'Is Spider-Man taking me through a sewer? Is this a test?'

However, came the quiet, a smooth mechanical hum, a sensation of descent like a lift, and the air turned cool and clean and dry. They came to a stop. Her feet touched solid floor.

"Open your eyes."

She did and she froze.

A wall of light stared back at her. Her gaze climbed and climbed, up past a console the size of a stage, up to a colossal monitor set into the center of the wall, glowing a soft electric blue. Twelve smaller monitors stood on either side of it, stacked in two tall columns, streams of data and diagrams and strange rotating shapes flowing across every screen. It looked like the bridge of a starship. It looked like a place where history happened.

"W-woah, what is this?"

Tiny robots buzzed through the air around her, dozens of them, each no bigger than a football, glowing yellow eyes blinking as they zipped past. A few stopped to hover near her face. One tilted its entire body, examining her like a curious puppy. Behind her, she heard a faint mechanical click, and turned to see a circular seam in the floor sliding shut, a hatch she could have sworn was not there before.

'There's an elevator,' she thought, spotting a steel door at the far end, the lab's main entrance. 'That is definitely the elevator, and I definitely did not take it.' She turned her head around aimlessly. 'Are there secret entrances?'

She turned in a slow circle. The lab laid itself out around her in the shape of a plus sign, and she was standing in the dead center. Ahead of her, the glowing monitors of the great computer. Behind her, the elevator. To her left, a long hallway lined with shelves and workbenches and strange half-built machines, little robots swarming over them, welding and soldering and sparking. To her right, a shorter hallway led to a gleaming silver chamber.

"My secret lab," Spider-Man said, standing beside her. "This is Daxter Labs."

"Daxter Labs," Kamala repeated. It sounded important. It sounded like it belonged on a plaque. Her eyes went wide and she whirled on him. "Y-you have a lab!? Are you rich or something!?"

"Mhm."

"That's all you're going to say!?"

"Now please," said Spider-Man, a little amused, a little patient, "come with me."

He led her down the right hallway toward the chamber. Her boots clicked on the polished floor. A pair of tiny robots followed overhead, whirring softly, and she heard one of them chirp, as though whispering to the other.

At the mouth of the corridor, Spider-Man stopped and spoke out loud to the empty air. "Herbie, is everything calibrated?"

"YES, MASTER."

Kamala yelped.

The voice came from everywhere at once, deep and male and mechanical, rolling out of the walls like the voice of a god. She spun around, hands raised, looking for a person, a speaker, anyone.

"Who was that!?"

"Herbie," Spider-Man said. "He's the lab's AI."

"THIS MUST BE THE LADY ADVENTURER FROM THE TELEVISION," Herbie announced. "GREETINGS, MS. MARVEL. PLEASE REMOVE ALL CLOTHING AND PLACE IT IN THE TRAY."

Silence.

Kamala's face went the color of a tomato. "I'm sorry," she said, in a voice that cracked in the middle. "I'm sorry, WHAT!"

"Herbie, be more curt," Spider-Man said with weary patience.

"APOLOGIES. I WAS INSTRUCTED TO BE DIRECT."

"Not that direct." He turned back to her, and for the first time his voice took on an edge. Not unkind. Stern, the way a doctor was stern. "Listen to me. The chamber has to treat your costume separately. The fabric holds isotopes differently than your skin does, so the clothing decontamination will have to be done on its own. That means you need to take it off."

"I-I-I…"

"You're going in alone. Nobody will be in there with you, and nobody is going to look. I'll be at the other end of the lab with my back turned." He paused. "And before you ask, my own body is fine. The suit takes care of itself. This is just for you."

"B-but…I'm…my mom…Muslim…it goes against…"

"Think of this as a medical emergency. And remember, this is mostly for your family. You won't die, the radiation will wear off with time. The same can't be said for them."

Kamala's protests died in her throat. She stood there, wringing her blistered hands, stuttering through half-formed words, her face on fire. Then she thought of Ammi at the door. Of Abu's hands on her shoulders. Of all the people she loved, warm and breathing and unaware.

She drew a deep breath.

"Okay," she said, and her voice came out small but steady. "Okay. Yeah. I'll do it."

"Thank you."

The metallic door hissed open. She stepped inside, and it slid shut behind her with a soft, sealed sigh.

It was a small room, white and cool and humming, lined with vents and smooth panels. A narrow tray stood by one wall, and a soft white gown hung from a hook. Kamala stood very still for a long moment, listening to her own heartbeat. Then she unwound the sash from her neck, and unfastened the rest of her costume piece by piece, and set it on the tray with a care that bordered on reverence. The tray slid into the wall and vanished.

She pulled on the gown. 

There was no need to beat around the bush: Kamala Khan was a blessed, stacked woman. Really, she could have been mistaken for the best hijabi porn stars out there. She got from her Ami, frankly, D-cup breasts and luscious thighs with a gap. Putting her in modest clothing was a travesty for the male gaze but absolutely necessary for her well-being. Indeed, for all of society, it was the correct choice. Kamala might not have been able to go to college without boys trying to flirt with her. 

A big-titty brown girl would be a zoo animal. They'd push her to be a perverted form of a woman not meant to be modest. Which—to be clear—she disagreed with. She was Muslim and she loved being modest. Cute clothes, less male-bound, everything. She liked it! 

"COMMENCING DECONTAMINATION," Herbie declared.

The vents opened.

"Eeek!"

Kamala covered her breasts with her arms. A pale blue mist poured out of the ceiling and the walls, cool against her skin, smelling faintly of mint and ozone. She gasped as it swirled around her, curling through her hair, sinking into the raw patches on her palms. Then came a cold gas, and a sweep of violet light that slid from her head to her feet and back again. 

"PLEASE REMOVE YOUR HANDS FROM YOUR BREASTS—"

"Fine, fine! J-just don't say it so loud!"

If Spider-Man was hearing this…uugggh! He'd definitely get the ick! She removed her hands and her boobs did that little jiggle it did. The tragedy of D-cups. Going braless was impossible…even if she kinda licked it.

Somewhere in the walls, a Geiger counter ticked, steady and fast, slowing down with every pass.

"RADIATION TRACE AT SEVENTY PERCENT," Herbie said very loudly. "FORTY…TWENTY…."

Her whole body tingled. When the mist cleared, her hands felt strange, lighter. The burns had faded from angry red to a tender pink, and the pain had dulled to something she could ignore.

"G-guess this actually helped."

"OF COURSE. THIS WAS EVERYONE'S SAKE, YOUR OWN INCLUDED. YOU SHOULD MASTER FOR THIS."

"Heh." Kamala smiled shyly. She rubbed her elbow with her other hand. Boobs brown and nipples also brown—and this little shyness about being nude—there was no doubt about her ethnicity, religion, and personality. This was Kamala Khan, and she was a Muslim, writer, college student, and virgin. "I really should…"

"FIVE…ZERO…RADIATION TRACE IS GONE."

A panel opened in the wall. Her costume lay on the tray, folded, perfectly clean, smelling faintly of lavender. Her sash lay on top, crisp and bright.

Kamala dressed as fast as she dared. She smoothed the lightning bolt flat across her chest, tied the sash with trembling fingers, and took a moment to look at herself in the polished wall. A tired face looked back at her. A little singed. A little scared. But alive…and smiling way too hard. 

'Not to mention I helped stop a bomb today,' Kamala thought. 'With Spider-Man.'

She pressed the panel, and the door hissed open.

The lab was quiet. The robots had gone back to their work, buzzing in gentle swarms over the benches. At the far end of the hallway, the great wall of monitors glowed, and in front of it, in a large black leather chair, sat Spider-Man, his back to her. He had not turned around, just as he had promised.

He sat with his chin resting on his fist, perfectly still, eyes fixed on the main screen.

Kamala crept closer.

The giant monitor was filled with footage she recognized. The curled red shape in the center of the crater. The hazy, flickering picture from Katherine Farrell's helicopter, frozen on the instant of the first crack. Beside it ran graphs and spectrographs and a wireframe model of the red containment suit, rotating slowly, fine lines tracing the seams and straps and stitching she had been too busy to notice. Little red dots pulsed along the model's chest where the cracks had spread.

"Who is he?" Kamala asked softly. 

"The news are calling him the Radioactive Man."

"Oh. That sounds…a little lame for a guy that nearly nuked New York."

He snorted. "Tell me about it."

Kamala was thrilled to make him laugh. "S-so, uh, do you know who he is yet?"

"Not yet," said Spider-Man, without looking away. "But that suit of his…I just realized that it was able to withstand my punches and contain a literal atom bomb. People with power had to build that suit. And those same people dropped him in the middle of Times Square on purpose."

Kamala stepped up beside the chair, close enough to see the data scrolling across the screen. Her hands twitched. Kamala Khan was Ms. Marvel but this…this was a different level of hero work. She was standing in Spider-Man's secret lab, and the man himself was working on a case…and he he had not told her to leave.

"Can I help?" she asked.

"...not yet. You should go."

"What? C-come on, I can help."

He turned on his chair to face her. "Give me your number."

"H-huh? W-w-w-what!?"

Ami told her to NEVER give out her number to boys! Ever! 

"Investigating is my forte and I do it best alone. When I get an update, I'll call you. Your powers might come in handy."

"R-really?"

"Really."

'Sorry, Ami…' 

But this was Spider-Man! Of course she gave her number out like a lovesick high schooler! 

***

The window slid up, and Kamala put in one leg over the sill. "Finally…"

She hauled herself through, landing on her bedroom carpet in a crouch that would have impressed Spider-Man and nobody else. Her boots came off first, then the sash, coiled and tucked under her mattress. She was putting on her PJs when the hallway light flicked on.

'No no no no.'

Hastily, she tugged on her pants, tripped, and fell. Ow, ow…!

The door opened. Light poured in. Looking up…

"Kamala."

She saw her father. "B-Baba…"

Her father was a middle-aged man that didn't often scowl. Wrinkles didn't show, his father was lush and only slightly receding, and garbed in white shalwar kameez. He was good-natured, typically conservative as a desi father should be, and when he was mad, he was mad. He stood in her doorway, arms crossed, glasses catching the lamplight in two flat coins. The news played behind him in the living room, muted, Katherine Farrell's face frozen mid-shout over a smoking Times Square.

"You missed dinner," her father said. "You did not text. You did not answer. Your mother called you eleven times."

"Baba, I can explain—"

"Eleven." He held up his phone as proof, the call log glowing. "I counted them myself. Your brother wanted to wait for you. He sat at the table for an hour."

The guilt landed in her stomach like a dropped plate. Kamala pulled herself off the floor and sat on the edge of her bed, hands folded. Did she have an excuse for this?

"I-I had a migraine," Kamala said. "A really bad one, during class a-and so I left class. My head was splitting, I couldn't see straight. I-I went to the hospital."

Baba's eyebrows went up a fraction. "Really." He didn't believe her.

"Here! Look!" She reached into her backpack and produced the discharge slip. See, Spider-Man instructed her to go just in case. Clinics were currently taking in people free of charge in order to check for radiation. He took it, tilted it toward the light, and read it twice.

Kamala smiled weakly. "See?"

"Migraine," he repeated. "Why didn't you call back?"

"A-and my phone was dead. Actually not dead—messed up. Everyone's was. You saw the news, right? The thing in Times Square? The radiation fried some of the cell towers in Midtown. People were standing on the street holding their phones up like this." She demonstrated, arm extended, face blank. "Really, Baba, I'm not lying. Wallah! Sach!" 

Baba grunted. He handed the slip back and rubbed the bridge of his nose, where a permanent dent had formed from years of exactly this.

"You should have found a payphone."

"Baba, you tell me never to carry cash and coins!"

He grumbled in Urdu and he looked at her—really looked, the way he did when he was measuring how much she'd grown since the last time he'd blinked.

"You are filling out," he said, and Kamala's soul left her body. "You look more and more like your mother did at your age. Same face. Same…" He gestured vaguely at all of her, which was worse than words.

"Baba…!" 

"I am being serious." He sighed and sat down on the chair by her desk, suddenly older. "Kamala. You are twenty years old. When I was twenty, I was already asking your mother's father for permission. There comes a time for every woman."

"Baba! Is this about—"

"Yes, the Siddiquis' nephew. He is studying to be an engineer."

"I don't WANT to meet the Siddiquis' nephew."

"You don't want to meet anyone. That is the problem." He stood, kissed the top of her head, and paused in the doorway. "You are lucky your grades are good. Otherwise you would be grounded."

The door clicked shut.

Kamala flopped backward onto the mattress and stared at the ceiling. She had held a nuclear explosion in her bare arms today. Her hands were still pink. And this was the conversation waiting at home.

Five minutes later, the door opened again—softer this time.

"Ami…"

"Kamala."

Muneeba Khan came in wearing her teal robe, the silk one with the gold trim, and the room changed temperature. That was the only honest way Kamala could describe it. Her mother moved like the air itself made way for her. The robe was tied loosely, and it did nothing—nothing—to hide what Kamala had spent years trying not to notice. Muneeba carried a forty-inch wobbly bust, and the robe's soft folds gathered between her brown breasts, dipping low enough to show the smooth brown swell of them.

Kamala looked away. She always looked away. A little jealous, but also, because she wasn't there yet. As her father mentioned, her mother was a wanton, attractive woman. 

"He is not angry," Muneeba said, sitting on the edge of the bed. The mattress sloped toward her. "He is worried. There is a difference."

"He wants me to marry the Siddiquis' nephew…"

"He wants you to have a life that is safe." Her mother reached out and pushed a strand of hair off Kamala's forehead, and her lower lip caught between her teeth for a second. That was the tell, the one she only did when she was choosing her words carefully. "I told him not to push. I told him you are still becoming."

"Becoming what?"

"Whatever you are." Muneeba smiled, and it softened her whole face—those warm brown eyes, the fine lines at the corners, the full glossy mouth. Kamala had spent her whole life in the orbit of this woman, and she had never once stopped finding her the most attractive person she knew. It wasn't a complicated feeling. It was just true. If Muneeba Khan walked onto Kamala's campus, boys would stop mid-sentence. Professors would forget lectures. It would be a problem.

"There comes a time for every woman, Kamala," her mother said.

"But Ami…!"

"I know." Muneeba pressed a hand over hers, warm and dry. "I know. I am not saying this year. I am saying—someday. You will want a partner. Someone who sees you." She squeezed. "You had a migraine. Should I make you something? The dahi will settle your stomach."

Kamala put a hand on her stomach. "Yeah. Yeah, that'd be good."

"Okay." Muneeba rose, smiling. Kamala smiled back. 

The dahi came. Kamala ate it in bed. She fell asleep somewhere around midnight, phone face-down. She thought about Spider-Man's number glowing in her contacts like a secret.

Except, in the middle of the night, she woke to the headboard.

"What the…?"

Oh. This noise. The little grunts and lewd sounds. 

Oh no.

Oh no.

"Yes, yes, yes…!"

Kamala's eyes flew open in the dark. The wall between their rooms was thick. However, when her parents really got at it, they REALLY got at it. 

Thump! Thump! Creek!

Kamala grabbed her pillow and clamped it over both ears, pressing until her skull hurt. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought, very loudly and very deliberately, about absolutely nothing at all.

'La ilaha illallah. La ilaha illallah. La ilaha illallah—'

The pillow wasn't thick enough.

***

(***R18 Start***)

A healthy married couple had a healthy married life. Muslim or not, that was the truth.

"Oh yes, oh yes…"

That morning was no different.

The bedframe groaned. Muneeba's hands found the sides of the headboard, biting her bottom lip.

Like his discipline, her husband was vanilla in bed. Thrusting steadily with no technique or rhythm, just slamming into that pussy balls-deep. His back hurt a little from the effort. So what?

Look at his wife. Look at the big titty hottie he was fucking.

Heavy globes of flesh bounced and jiggled with a rhythm of their own, nipples dragging across his chest. She bit her lip, trying to stay quiet, but the sounds escaped anyway—soft, breathy moans that she muffled against his neck.

He smiled and thrust, butt clenching. Every inch of brown dick sank into her pussy, and Muneeba's eyes rolled back.

"Oh—oh, Allah~!"

He groaned. He fell. Her breasts were smashed between their bodies now, spilling out on either side of his ribs. He kept thrusting and the soft weight of them quivering every time he drove home. 

"You feel—" Her husband grunted, pace quickening. "—so good. Always so good."

Muneeba couldn't answer. Her mouth was open, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. The bed was creaking louder now, headboard knocking against the wall, and neither of them cared. Her hips rolled up to meet his, meeting each thrust, and he could feel her tightening around him. 

That flutter, that grip…!

Oh fuck, she was cumming. Back bowing, a long, low moan left her. Her husband felt every pulse, every wave, and it pushed him over the edge. Two more thrusts and he was spilling his baby batter inside her. His balls emptied themselves dry. 

Muneeba's hands slid from the headboard to his face, cupping his cheeks. Her eyes were soft, sleepy, and satisfied.

"Good morning," Muneeba murmured.

He laughed, breathless. "Good morning."

This was how a woman of Muneeba's caliber took care of her husband's morning boner.

(***R18 End***)

…

…

…

Kamala woke to sunlight, not sex, thankfully. She stretched in bed, arms over her head, toes pointing, the thin cotton of her pajama pants riding up her calves. Her phone said 7:14 AM. Physics 101 was at nine. "College. Mm…"

A mental reminder of her normal life, despite the fact that she had nearly died yesterday. 

"Spidey…"

But she also handed Spider-Man her number. Heh.

Now, in the soft morning light of her bedroom, Kamala pressed her face into the pillow and let out a long, high-pitched sound that was absolutely not a scream but definitely came out like one muffled through a pillow.

She was being so weird about this. She needed to get ready for college. Normal. Normal life. Eat breakfast. Go to class. Pretend she had not stopped a nuclear bomb and was then carried through the sky by Spider-fucking-man!

The guy who she wrote fanfictions when she first saw him on the news! 

Giggling, Kamala kicked off the sheets and swung her feet to the floor. There was a song in her head, one of those bright, mindless pop songs that seemed to live in the walls of every coffee shop on campus, and without thinking she began to hum it as she moved around her room. A little sway, a little shuffle. Her hands were no longer pink. Good night's rest helped! 

She grabbed a towel and headed to the bathroom, humming, then back to her bedroom to dress. Her parents' door was closed. She blushed a little and huffed. She tried not to think about last night or what was happening behind doors. 

She was still humming when she pulled on her clothes: a soft maroon hoodie, dark jeans, white sneakers. She left her hair loose, long and black, still damp at the ends. She caught herself in the mirror and did a tiny spin. She looked like any other brown girl college student. 

Her phone buzzed. Three messages from her best friend, Nakia, about a study group. As she set the phone down, she heard a sound at the window.

"Eh…?"

She thought it was a hard pecking at the window or something…until the knock became harder and human. Kamala turned, heart already jumping, and saw him.

Spider-Man.

On her windowsill.

Her mouth fell open. Her body went hot all at once. Her brain, her stupid, brilliant, completely unhelpful brain, did a somersault and landed in a pile of screaming, dizzy feelings. Spider-Man was outside her window. In daylight. On her family's apartment unit. Looking at her.

She rushed to the window, fumbling with the lock, and shoved it open. The wind blew in. Spider-Man stayed exactly where he was, crouched on the ledge with three stories of city dropping away below him. One hand braced against the brick. The other raised in a small, casual wave.

"Hello," said Spider-Man.

"S-Spidey!?"

There was a nod. 

"How do you know where I live!?" Kamala demanded, then clapped both hands over her own mouth. Too loud. Her parents were asleep. Her whole body was humming. She was not prepared for this. Not before chai. Not before breakfast. Not before she had a chance to calm the absolute zoo of butterflies stampeding through her stomach.

"I'm Spider-Man," he said like it was an answer alone. It was. He WAS that guy. According to rumours, he stopped an international underground auction. He had some detective skill, the police said to the public, as well as deep police knowledge. 

"R-right." Her voice cracked. Her cheeks burned. She wanted to be cool. She wanted to be smooth. She was neither. She was a twenty year old girl in a hoodie, caught between her bed and her window, and her hero was outside like he'd just popped over for a visit. "O-oh no, wait, m-my mask! My identity!"

She covered her face, and there was a small tilt from him. Maybe he was smiling or laughing. Maybe he was not. She could not tell, and this drove her close to madness.

"I know your face but I don't know your name," Spider-Man said. "It's fine."

"Oh, uh..." Kamala shifted from foot to foot. The hoodie felt too warm. The window was letting in a breeze and the breeze was touching the back of her neck where her damp hair hung, and everything felt electric and new and so, so embarrassing. "W-well, I'm Kamala."

She had NO idea why she told him. None. Her brain had reached up and popped the name out of her mouth before she could stop it. Ammi's voice, stern and sensible, echoed somewhere far away: never give your name to boys, Kamala. But this was different. This was Spider-Man. This was the hero of the city. This was the man she had been writing about. Giving him her name felt like offering a key to her whole world, and she had done it without a second's thought.

Spider-Man tipped his head. "I…see," he said. "Anyway, I finished my investigation about Radioactive Man."

"Really!?" The Ms. Marvel part of her kicked in and she pumped a fist. "Awesome! Can't wait to kick the butt of whoever sent that guy!"

He didn't laugh. "It's…complicated. I found more or less what happened. That helicopter was owned and used by a mercenary. A Chinese mercenary, to be exact. It was hard but I managed to uncover this as an attack by a rogue division in the Chinese government."

"Chinese government...?" 

"Rogue division," Spider-Man repeated. "Not the official state. But big enough to be a serious problem." He paused, and she saw him glance down at the street, then back at her. "Mind if I hop in?"

"O-oh sure."

Kamala backed off and she let him inside her room. Oh god, her toes curled. She let out a little laugh as the hero closed the window and faced her.

"Alright. To make a long story short, a influential Chinese-based politician had an idea. He wanted a superhero. After…what I did, the idea became quite popular among the assembly. A state-bought and created superhero turned into a craze, and one man decided to go the radioactive way. He bought and used many of Creature Z's radioactive scales, leftover in New York, to experiment on a man named Chen Lu. This politician did everything through black market channels, behind the official government's back. He wanted to present his creation as a gift. A weapon. A symbol."

Kamala listened, heart sinking.

"But the official government didn't like the actual capabilities of their 'Radioactive Man.' He was too toxic. Too dependent on the containment suit. Not at all marketable. So Chen Lu was left purposeless." Spider-Man's voice had not changed. But there was a thread of something hard in it now. "Angry and wanting to prove their invention, the politician behind the project sent Chen to New York City on a submarine. Partially to wipe evidence of it, but also as revenge on New York, on me, on everything that was their enemy. Chen Lu was intended to detonate and nuke New York City."

"Oh my god…"

"Yeah."

"That's... so sad. Chen Lu, he didn't want to—?"

"He resisted," Spider-Man said. "He wanted to be a superhero, not a bomb. He didn't want to die in the end. That's why he was curled up like that. They must have done something to his suit and…he tried to stop himself. But…they had built him to be a bomb. All that radiation, all that fury…"

"Oh no…and we…we killed…him…"

"We couldn't have known." Spider-Man put a hand on her shoulder. "If we didn't interfere, so many more would have died."

"True…" Kamala's eyes went downcast. "Still…that's... so sad. Did he have family?"

"No. He was a scientist and government agent, as well as someone with great understanding of radiation. It is what it is, I suppose."

There was a length of silence. Kamala shuddered, slapped her cheeks, and then focused. "What's our plan then?" Kamala asked, and she was proud of herself for not crying. 

"I haven't been able to pinpoint who exactly it is that was behind this project," Spider-Man said. "But I think I may be able to get some final answers on that submarine."

"It's... not gone yet?"

"It isn't. The submarine was part of a university project. Started from Pakistan's Gwadar Port—"

His words hit her like a burst of light. Kamala's eyes sparkled, and she bounced once on her heels. "Pakistan! Pakistan mentioned!!"

She saw him go still. He just looked at her.

"S-sorry." Kamala flushed. "It's rare that anyone brings up Pakistan like, ever, in a conversation. It's a great place! Our mangoes are the best! Have you ever tried mutton?"

"...no."

"You should! A-after the mission, I guess..." She was digging herself a grave. Ugh, she must have been giving him the ick…

"Anyway, that's how they snuck him in there. The politician used this college experiment to go from there to the New York Port."

"Wait, so…do the students know?"

"Of course. They're spies. And since they're spies, they can't afford to leave. That's why the submarine is still at the port."

"Confident much?"

"No one suspects other than us, so it's rightful confidence. If we weren't around, New York wouldn't be here and they'd get away. But we're not going to let that happen, are we, Kamala?"

"Yeah! Absolutely! College comes later!" Kamala threw a glance toward her bedroom door, then her phone. She had class at nine. It was 7:24 now. Her family would wake soon. Her mother would knock, ask if she was hungry, see the window open, see a man on the fire escape, and…end this.

No way she was letting that happening!

"I appreciate it. I'm... not very good with water. You use your arms, bring it up, and—" From his palm, he showed her a small device, a ball with a hollow, bright blue light at its center. "This magnet will keep the submarine afloat for us to investigate."

"Sweet! I-I mean, you got it, Spidey!"

"Let's go."

"Understood! But, uh, I gotta change, so…"

He understood and opened the window. He disappeared instantly too. "Wow, he really can go invisible. Guess it's not fanfic speculation," Kamala muttered.

Regardless, she changed fast, unzipping the hoodie, stepping out of the jeans, pulling on the blue and gold, the sash, and the mask. 

When she opened the window again, he deactivated the invisibility and revealed to have his back to the wall. "Ready?" he asked.

"Yep!" 

"I'm much faster and we have a short window of time, so…"

He held out his hand. Giggling, she took it. Spider-Man pulled her in, arm was around her and she was wrapping herself around him, face against his chest, his heartbeat steady through the black suit. 

He leapt off. "Hold on tight," he said.

The thwip of a web, the jerk of the swing, and the city yawned open beneath them.

"This is so awesome!!"

Sorry college! But today was her date with Spider-Man! 

***

They arrived at the Port of New York and New Jersey while the sun was fresh. The water lay flat and gray as unpolished steel, the cranes rising like the skeletons of ancient birds. Shipping containers crowded the docks in great squares of red and blue. 

Spider-Man landed soft on a shipping container nearest to the water. Kamala slid off him, legs a little weak, taking in the sprawl of the port. In front and below, a long pier disappeared into the water, and a cluster of low buildings sat to the left end near the shore.

"So, uh, where do we go?"

"The university students who own the submarine are Chinese students and spies," Spider-Man said. "And to blend in, this is a legitimate project. Therefore, they have the submarine doing what it's supposed to be doing for their assignment: self-surviving and driving. Which means it's staying deep underwater."

Kamala nodded, still pressed against his side. "Okay. Got it. So it's underwater and we gotta fish it out?"

"You have to. My tendrils don't exactly work with water."

"Oh. Uh, is it a weakness or something?"

"Exactly."

Kamala blinked. Water was his weakness. "Is it because of the salt?"

"Something like that."

Kamala was happy that she was able to help in this. "Okay, got it!" She slammed a fist into her hand. "Wait, what about the spies?"

"They'll return in twenty-ish minutes. They're having a lunch break and it's in walking distance though." He started muttering, "I wanted to hack their phone and use it to fool their cameras but…I couldn't. It's a special phone built solely for a special connection to a satellite that connects them to the submarine. No Wi-Fi in between for Herbie to hack. We have to move." He looked at her, and behind the mask, she imagined his eyes. "Can you lift it?"

Kamala cracked her knuckles. "Watch me."

They moved to the edge of the pier. The water was dark and cold, lapping at the wood pilings. Kamala squinted down. "Time to fish!" Her arms lengthened, fingers flexing. She reached down, down, down, arms stretching like great elastic cables, hands sinking into the cold water, groping and fishing.

It took a whole minute until they brushed metal.

"Got it! A-at least I think it's this one!"

"It has to be."

She braced, thighs burning, and pulled. "Grrr…!" Talk about heavy! The submarine rose, streaming foam and slime, long and low and ridged along the top like a sleeping whale. It groaned, shedding water in sheets. Spider-Man threw the magnet device and the blue light in the magnet flared. The submarine settled on the surface. 

"Let's go!" Spider-Man grabbed her hand and helped her leap across. He kicked open the hatch near the back.

They dropped inside, one after the other, boots hitting metal. The interior was narrow and dim, lit by strips of red light running along the ceiling. "Ow!"

Except immediately, they felt something was off. It was crazy hot in here!

"Radiation," Spider-Man said. "Figured. They did house Chen Lu here…"

The fact that it was hurting her meant the radiation level in this submarine rivalled that of Time Square.

"You okay?" Spider-Man asked.

"I'll be fine."

The walls were lined with pipes and cables, and in the center, a long table held models and charts. But if she was being honest, the radiation was no joke; it bit at her skin, a fizzy, stinging pressure. But it made sense: the had steeped Chen Lu in this for days, weeks, marinating him in the fire of stars before sending him to die.

Spider-Man ran across the corridors and she followed. Soon, they arrived at the main computer. Spider-Man tapped at the keyboard and data bloomed across the huge round monitor. He lifted a finger and a tiny tendril took the shape of a USB. He used it to fill up the USB port in the keyboard. 

"S-so you're downloading everything?"

"Yes. But…dammit, the students noticed."

Kamala gasped. "N-no way, already!?"

"Yes way."

RING! RING! RING!

INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALART!

The monitor reddened and announced, "SDM ACTIVATED!"

The whole submarine shuddered, and every alarm in the submarine went off at once. Red lights, klaxons, and a woman's voice in Chinese, calm and automated. She knew exactly what was happening. 

"SDM," Spider-Man said. "Self-destruct. Dammit. It's erasing all files too…"

"Do we—?"

"Let's go." Spider-Man grabbed her, one arm around her waist, and ran. He was way faster than her. 

He found them the hatch and leapt out into the cold air. Below—

B-B-BA-BOOM! 

The submarine blew up and bloomed into a fireball.

The spies stood at the water's edge, staring at the rising column of smoke. They didn't see them. They assumed the heroes were dead.

They were wrong. Spider-Man turned invisible the moment he jumped out with Kamala clinging to him, invisible by association. They crashed onto the docks without a soul noticing. 

Spider-Man hit the ground back-first, one arm wound around Kamala protectively. "You alright?"

"Y-yeah…"

She looked up at him. Her boobs to his chest, her little smile comforting. Kamala Khan was a cute, attractive woman. There was no denying that. Brown lips, the mask, the tits, the ass…

Oh. His hands, he realized, were on her ass cheeks. Holy, he thought, they were soft! And squish! Twitch, twitch, his fingers accidentally got a handful of them. Kamala hardly noticed due to the fall and the explosion over her shoulder. 

No man with balls wouldn't slightly get aroused here. "W-wow…" she said. She looked down. "O-oh, sorry!" She sat up and there was this arc to her seating posture. Still hot, in other words.

With her smiling down at him like that…so damn hot. 

Spider-Man tried to play it cool and said, "We need to go back to Daxter Labs. That explosion and submarine was chock-full of radiation."

Her smile fell a little. "O-oh. Right."

***

The elevator to Daxter Lab opened and Ms. Marvel saw it all over again. The Fantastic Computer at the far end, the left and right smooth corridors, the same cold blue light, the same small robots zipping past. 

"WELCOME BACK, MASTER FELIX. AND MS. MARVEL. RADIATION LEVELS DETECTED. DECONTAMINATION REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY."

Spider-Man and Kamala walked and took the turn down the same hallway. They stopped at the open chamber door. 

Kamala took a breath. "Okay, uh. I'll just—I'll go in." She stepped through the door, and started stripping. Sash tossed off, wiggling off everything else. "Phew."

An arm over her boobs, she turned. She turned bright red.

"S-Spider-Man!?" 

Black suit, red emblem, white lens. All that was right there in the chamber with her. Kamala instantly put a hand over her pussy, then realizing that showed off her boobs, she collapsed into herself. "S-Spider-Man! Y-you can't be here!"

"Yes I do. I have to be decontaminated too this time around." He pointed at some splodges throughout his suit. She didn't notice them before. "A lot of water hit me and affected me. Just in case, I need it too."

"U-uh, um…b-but…it's…" Tits or pussy, which to hide! S-she couldn't fully hide both! She blushed! She looked away. She squirmed. "I-I'm Muslim! I can't just... you can't be in here with me…!"

"I'm sorry, but I'm sure a matter of health can circumvent tradition." His hand came up to his waist, and she heard it before she saw it. A thick, wet, heavy sound. The sound of something massive being freed.

She looked down.

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Kamala Khan's brain simply stopped.

"O-oh my god…"

The symbiote peeled back from his lower body, slithering aside in black tendrils to reveal what he'd been carrying there. A long, pale white cock hung between his thighs, fully soft, and it was large enough to make her heart lurch and her tongue go dry. It swung once, a lazy, pendulous movement, and the sound it made against his thigh—thwap—seemed to echo in the chamber.

'Ohmygod. Ohmygod. He's hung like a horse!'

Kamala Khan had written fanfiction about Spider-Man. Laptop glowing in the dark, typing out fantasies of Spider-Man unmasked and hungry. And in those stories, he was always big. Always thick, always long, always enough to make her hand ache just thinking about it. But this was real. This was bigger than anything she'd ever typed. Bigger even than the wildest draft she'd ever saved. Allah help her, his testicles were bigger than expected too. L-like apples in a sac! Was that normal!? No way! 

She had seen penises on the internet. Her parents might have disapproved of public education and had her skip on the "ed sex classes" but the internet was free. And she knew. 

Kamala made a sound that was not a word.

"Radiation affects fertility for men."

"T-t-true."

"So just this once."

Kamala couldn't breathe. She stared at his penis.

"Something wrong?" He asked, a hand on his hip. He was fully nude and didn't even boast about being hung like a horse! 

"I-I-I…"

Eyes. On. White. Dick. That was Kamala's existence right now. 

Felix chuckled. "Alright, I suppose I can give you my real name: Felix Faeth."

Her head snapped up to his face and for the first time…she saw Felix Faeth. She saw the man under the mask. He was sexy, just like his penis. He was hot, with black hair tipped in brown at the ends. Decently tall and quite yoked up! Muscular with no hair or anything like that! Very much a hung, muscular white guy!

"M-mm…Felix…"

"Nice to meet you, Kamala."

Meeting her idol in his civilian form…nude. What a turn of events. Kamala's complexion was a dark shade of brown at this point from embarrassment. 

"COMMENCING DECONTAMINATION," Herbie declared.

The chamber was humming now, mist starting to rise from the floor. "It's starting," Felix said. "You should—"

"PLEASE REMOVE YOUR HANDS FROM YOUR BREASTS, MS. MARVEL—"

"Y-yeah, I know! Why do you have to say it so loud," Kamala grumbled. With trembling fingers, she stood up straight and peeled her arms away from her sticky skin. First it went down, then down, then it was off, and she stood there in the cool air with her full brown breasts out, her nipples tight and dark, her belly shivering below, and between her legs—bare. She had no hair there. None at all. She was bald and smooth and so, so pink.

They faced each other. The chamber hissed. The blue mist rose around them, curling up their legs. Neither spoke. There was no place to look but him, no place to run. Kamala kept her hands at her sides, fingers twitching.

"So, uh, you're Muslim," Felix said randomly.

"M-mhm."

"Aren't you supposed to wear a hijab?" he asked.

"I-it's a choice. Especially in Pakistan, it's like a culture thing."

"Gotcha, gotcha."

More mist. More silence. The Geiger counter on the wall ticked down. 60. 50. 40.

Felix's cock had not hardened. It just lay there, thick and pale, swaying slightly as the mist currents moved. Kamala could not stop looking at it. She could feel her own pulse between her legs. "So, um…are all…white guys…like this?"

"RADIATION TRACE AT SEVENTY PERCENT," Herbie said it so loud that Felix thought he misheard it. "FORTY…TWENTY…."

"White guys?" 

"W-well, uh, I mean…on the internet all of you guys are so…n-nevermind." Kamala looked away. What the hell was wrong with her? 

"Okay. Well, if you have questions, I'm here."

"Your name is Felix?"

"Felix Faeth." He smiled, and goddammit, it was cute and sexy. 

"K-Kamala Khan."

"CLEANSING COMPLETE," Herbie announced.

"Great."

"Yeah, great!" Kamala agreed.

"...for the record, I'm glad I got to show my identity to you."

Oh why, oh why did he have to be so cute and hot and humbling? It made covering herself so much harder. 

Felix turned and stepped out of the chamber. Thwap, thwap! His cock slapped wetly against his thighs. He stopped at the doorway. He turned halfway and showed his penis a little. Hardly the full thing and yet she was glued. Yet she didn't become modest and dress up or hide her tits or cunt from him. 

"Clothes are going to take a little while longer to decontaminate. You want to come out or…?"

"I-I'll stay here," Kamala said stupidly, because her morals still existed. 

"Understood. I believe Herbie has a plan for us. I'll brief you when you come out."

"W-wait, we know what to do? Wasn't everything deleted?"

"I wasn't able to download everything but…" He pointed to his temple. "Not only did we get some data, but Herbie keeps track of everything I see. So we have more than you think. More than enough to figure out who is behind this and why they did it."

"Oh. Ohh. That's great!" Kamala exclaimed. 

Felix smiled. "Yep."

God, he was hot. 

***

The plan was set for tomorrow. All that was left was to go home and sleep. It was nearly midnight when Kamala slid the key into the lock.

She turned it slowly, the way she had a hundred times as a kid sneaking in after curfew, and pushed the door open one careful inch at a time. The apartment was dark except for a single lamp in the living room. In its yellow glow, sitting upright on the couch with his hands folded between his knees, was her father.

'Oh no.'

"Baba…"

"Close the door, Kamala."

'Dammiiit! The window was locked! This was why!' 

She closed the door. The click sounded like a gavel. Ammi hovered in the kitchen doorway in her housecoat, twisting a dish towel into a rope, her face tight. Down the hall, Aamir's head poked out of his bedroom. He mouthed 'good luck' and ducked back inside.

"Where were you?"

The calmness was the terrible part. If he had shouted, she could have braced for it. Instead he spoke softly, evenly, the way he did when he was too angry to waste breath.

"I…was with friends."

"Which friends?" Baba's eyes did not leave her face. "Nakia called this morning, asking if you were sick. She said you never came to class. Your Ammi called your phone eleven times. Eleven. It went to voicemail every time."

"It was on silent, I'm sorry, I…"

"Do you know what I imagined?" He rose from the couch, slow and stiff, and now he was not quiet anymore. "All day I imagined. A hospital. The police. The river. This city is not a small village, Kamala. Girls go out and do not come home."

'Girls go out and do hero time,' she thought, bitterly, and then bit the inside of her cheek to keep the laugh from reaching her mouth. It was not funny. None of it was funny.

Kamala said nothing and hung her head. She stood on the mat with her sneakers still on and let it wash over her. College was not free. They had not crossed an ocean so that she could waste a good education. Her Ammi had been worried sick. He had been worried sick. She had a duty to this family, to herself, to her future. She let him have every word. It was the least she owed him. She could not tell him the truth, and the lie sat in her chest like a stone, so she took the lecture the way she had taken the radiation: bracing, gritting her teeth, waiting for it to burn itself out.

"And this is exactly why," Baba said, "I keep telling you it is time to think of your future."

Kamala's stomach dropped. She knew that tone.

"Baba, don't."

"You keep this up and I will marry you off!"

"Baba, no."

"I'm not joking. A husband would give you some structure, some…"

"I'm TWENTY!" The word cracked out of her louder than she meant. Ammi flinched. "I just started college! I have a whole life! I'm not a problem you can hand to somebody else so you can stop worrying!"

"Kamala, lower your voice."

"No! Every single time I do something wrong, it's 'marriage, marriage, marriage!' Like it's the answer to everything! Like I'm a, a, a broken appliance!"

"Yusuf," Ammi said weakly, "maybe tomorrow…"

"He will come for tea on Sunday," Baba said. His jaw had set like concrete. "You will meet him."

"I don't want to see him!" Kamala shouted, already stomping down the hall, past a wide-eyed Aamir. "Or marry him!"

She slammed her bedroom door so hard the frame rattled.

Kamala stood there in the dark, chest heaving, fists clenched. Her hands still tingled where the chamber had healed them. Two days. Two days ago she had held a nuclear detonation in her arms, and tonight her father had looked at her and seen a girl who needed a husband to keep her in line.

'Stupid customs…!'

She flopped face-first onto her bed and screamed into the pillow, the sound muffled and furious. She screamed until she ran out of air, and then she lay there, glaring at the ceiling, and did not feel any better at all.

***

THE NEXT MORNING

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

The sun had barely cleared the rooftops of Chelsea when Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel crouched on the edge of a brick building on West 26th Street, looking down. Kamala had to do it, she had to skip college for this. 

Across the road stood the Hartwell Gallery, a converted warehouse with a glass front and a banner stretching down its length: SILK ROADS, ART OF THE PACIFIC CENTURY. Early light turned the old brick amber. A long line of black SUVs sat parked along the curb, engines idling, drivers standing at attention. A velvet rope funneled guests through a pair of metal detectors at the front door, and on either side of it stood men in dark suits with curled wires running from their ears to their collars.

"Forty-two private security inside," Spider-Man told her. "Eight Secret Service. Two NYPD cruisers on the corner, one more around the back. It's a private breakfast preview for donors and diplomats. Fewer than three hundred names on the list, and every one of them is someone who matters."

"Right," Kamala said. "So no one gets in."

"No one gets in."

"What about the VIPs?"

"There's a governor, two ambassadors, a senator, and a few CEOs." He tilted his head. "And the Secretary of State arrived ten minutes ago."

Kamala whistled. "Okay, I know I said this yesterday, but that's the biggest guest list I've ever seen in my life."

She tugged at the end of her sash, a nervous habit, and felt his gaze settle on her. Even through the mask, she could sense it. It lingered. Her argument with her father still rattled somewhere under her ribs, and she shoved it down hard. 

'Let Baba stew,' she thought. 'Let him wonder.' 

He watched her a moment longer. Then, to her relief, he let it go.

"The ambassador of China to the United States," Spider-Man said. "Zhao Wenbo. He's in there right now."

Kamala nodded. Zhao Wenbo: he was the politician responsible for all this according to what Felix and Herbie connected and deduced. Sitting on that chair, looking up at the huge monitor, she recalled Felix's explanation:

"Herbie recovered about forty percent of the submarine's data before the purge. Shipping manifests. Payment records. A shell company in Hong Kong with his signature on three separate transfers. All of it leads back to him." A row of documents scrolled down the monitor, some half-burned, some corrupted into digital static. "It's him. Zhao Wenbo."

At the time, Kamala said, "So what are we waiting for? Let's go get him!"

"It isn't that simple. Look at what we have. A submarine that blew up. Partial files and blurry recordings. That radiation messed up my Advanced Lens a little. Any lawyer worth their salt will call everything forged. And on top of that the ambassador has diplomatic immunity."

"Diplomatic Immunity. I've heard of that," Kamala repeated, wrinkling her nose. "So he can do whatever he wants?"

"Under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the protection belongs to the sending state, not the individual diplomat. Local police can't arrest him. Courts can't touch him. Not unilaterally." He paused. "But there is one thing the host country can do. Under Article 9, it can declare a diplomat persona non grata. Unwelcome. No trial, no explanation. Once that happens, China is legally required to recall him or end his mission, usually within forty-eight hours to a week."

"That's…actually pretty good."

"It is. But the State Department won't do it over a half-burned hard drive. They'll want more."

"How do we do that, then?"

"Tomorrow, they'll be at an art gallery. We need everyone in there, specifically the Secretary of State, to hear him admit that he did it."

They had planned for this since yesterday. On the rooftop, Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man exchanged looks. 

"You ready?" he asked.

"I am!"

The plan to catch this criminal was afoot! 

***

HARTWELL GALLERY - BATHROOM

Ambassador Zhao Wenbo excused himself from the Secretary of State with a polite bow. "Duty calls," he said.

The criminal was a sleek man in his sixties, silver hair combed back, navy suit immaculate, a small red pin gleaming on his lapel. The conversation had gone well. The Secretary had laughed twice. In his experience, nothing was as pleasant as a morning where nothing could touch him.

His bodyguard stationed himself outside the restroom door. The ambassador went in alone.

It was an elegant room, all marble and brass, soft classical music trickling from a hidden speaker. The ambassador straightened his cuffs and stepped up to the urinal. His fingers found his zipper.

He was about to piss, until something moved in the corner of his eye.

The ambassador turned his head and gasped. A dark human shape stood against the far wall. He lunged backward so hard that his shoulders hit the sinks. "Spider-Man!? What are you doing here!?"

The black-suited figure said nothing. The ambassador gulped, backing away, and that was when he saw that Spider-Man was not alone.

A man stood beside him. Tall, lean, gaunt about the cheeks, in a rumpled gray jacket and slacks. Black hair hung over tired eyes. His arms hung loose at his sides, his face wiped of expression, and he stared at the ambassador with a flat, unblinking gaze that seemed to look right through him.

"I-it can't be…" The ambassador's blood ran cold. "N-no way," he whispered. "You…you should be dead!"

"You set Chen Lu up," said Spider-Man. "You killed him."

"T-that's not…" Zhao Wenbo looked at Chen Lu. It was him and it wasn't an illusion. It couldn't be. "I-I did what I had to!"

Yes, the man beside Spider-Man was the Radioactive Man. As a person, not in a containment suit, and panic took over the ambassador. He raised his hands, palms out, the way a man might approach a dog he was not sure about. 

"You must understand, you were never supposed to feel anything! The Assembly was going to shut the program down! They called you a failure, a liability, a toxic waste. I was trying to save the project! I was trying to save you!"

Chen Lu said nothing.

"Look. Look, look. I-I don't know how Spider-Man saved you but…but we couldn't do it. We couldn't. Do you know what it cost me to get those Creature Z scales on the black market!?" The ambassador's voice cracked upward. "Do you know what it took, arranging the submarine, the students, the port? We had to do it! We had to attack this damn city! We had to prove your worth!"

"..."

"I made you into a bomb, yes, I admit it. I made you. And it was the only way anyone would ever have noticed you!"

"Excuses," Spider-Man said flatly. "You're saying this because his existence could destroy your future."

"Chen. Chen Lu, listen to me." The ambassador took a shaky step forward, hands clasped now, as if in prayer. "It was a mistake. I admit it, it was a terrible mistake. But it is not too late. Good things can still come of this. I can have your name cleared. Your pension restored. I can make the Assembly honor you as a hero. You wanted to be a hero, didn't you? You still can be! We can fix this together!"

Chen Lu stared at him. His mouth did not move.

"Say something!" The ambassador was sweating now, beads trickling down his temple into his collar. "Anything! I will give you whatever you want! Money! Status! Why won't you speak!?"

The silence stretched.

"Blah!"

The sound burst out of nowhere, a wet, explosive gasp. The tall man's flesh darkened by a couple of tones, and before the ambassador's eyes his height shrank and his shoulders narrowed into the soft curves of a young woman. Gray jacket rippled into a blue and gold costume. Ms. Marvel doubled over, coughing and sucking in air.

"S-sorry, Spider-Man!" Ms. Marvel wheezed. "Told you I wasn't good at this…"

The plan ultimately worked though. 

The ambassador's jaw hung slack. "W-what…?"

It was a trick, and not an easy one. Ms. Marvel could shape her body into almost anything, but she was not good at it yet. She had to stay perfectly, painfully still to hold the form. She could not hold a voice, not even a whisper. Which was why Chen Lu had never spoken. And it had worked. It had worked beautifully.

Spider-Man reached into his hip and drew out a small black tape recorder. A red light blinked on its side. He raised it between two fingers.

"I got all of it," he said.

"W-wait, no…y-you…"

Above the stall, a tiny gray spider-bot tucked into the air vent, blinked a yellow eye. Spider-Man briefly nodded at it. 

There was a loud buzz and every speaker in the Hartwell Gallery crackled to life.

"Do you know what it took, arranging the submarine, the students, the port? We had to do it! We had to attack this damn city! We had to prove your worth!"

The ambassador's own voice boomed through the marble halls, through the main floor, through the sound system that had been playing soft strings a moment before. "…Do you know what it cost me to get those Creature Z scales on the black market…? The submarine, the students, the port…"

The color drained from Zhao Wenbo's face. His lips moved, but nothing came out.

He bolted for the door, shoving past Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man. Spider-Man did not stop him. He stepped aside and let the man go, watching him stumble out into the hall with his tie askew.

The ambassador burst onto the gallery floor, and stopped dead.

Three hundred of the most powerful people in the city stood frozen in place, their heads tilted toward the ceiling, listening to his voice. Champagne flutes hung forgotten in their hands. And then, one by one, he saw the phones. They had all buzzed at once, an emergency alert, and now every screen in the room glowed with the same video. Scorched shipping manifests. A half-burned transfer record with his signature circled in red. Grainy submarine schematics, a bright red containment suit, a man curled in a crater in the middle of Times Square.

"…It was the only way anyone would ever have noticed you…"

At the center of the room, the Secretary of State lowered her phone. Slowly, deliberately, she turned her head and looked at him. She wasn't a judge but she might as well have been judge, jury, and executioner. The ambassador did not have a place in this country anymore. 

"Wow, hehe! I've never done anything like that!" Kamala exclaimed.

"Sometimes, punching your problems isn't the only solution."

"Wow, no wonder you're such an urban legend. Is this how you do things?"

"More or less." 

Kamala's heart was still hammering from the gallery, from the confession, and from the audacity of what they'd just pulled off. Three hundred of the most powerful people in the country had watched Ambassador Zhao Wenbo's face turn the color of old milk while his own voice spilled out of the speakers. They infiltrated, they tricked, and they got away with it.

The recordings that were being publicized voided mention of Spider-Man. Herbie was fast at editing like that. 

On the rooftop, her legs were still jelly from holding that Chen Lu shape. The city spread out below them, loud and glittering, and she felt so full of adrenaline she could have jumped off the building and flown.

"All's well that ends well!" Ms. Marvel declared, throwing her arms out.

Spider-Man turned, and through the mask she could hear the smile in his voice. "Indeed."

For a moment they just stood there, two superheroes on a rooftop, the wind tugging at her sash and the sound of sirens starting to gather around the Hartwell Gallery. 

Both of them suddenly looked up. Ms. Marvel grimaced.

"Aw, no," she said. "It's raining.

Within seconds, the sky opened up. Rain came down and every droplet caused a hiss on Spider-Man's costume.

Luckily for him, she was able to project an umbrella with her stretchy fist, protecting the two of them. 

"Thank you," he said. 

"You really hate the rain, huh?"

"Yeah. It's not good for my powers."

Kamala's phone buzzed. She fished it out of the damp pocket of her sash. The screen glowed in the gray light: Baba. Her stomach flipped over.

"Ugh, my dad's calling…" she muttered, and jabbed the red button. Reject. The phone buzzed again. Reject. A third time. She turned it off and shoved it back into her sash, and for one hot, guilty second, she was glad the rain gave her an excuse to let it go. Let him wonder. Let him sit in that apartment and picture her in a hospital or a river. Maybe then he'd stop trying to marry her off to an engineer.

"I have a place nearby," Felix said.

Kamala looked up, rainwater dashing around them from her massive umbrella-fist. "What, like an apartment?"

"I have a lot of small apartments throughout the city. Little hubs." He shrugged, water streaming off the black symbiote. "This one's three blocks away."

Kamala didn't hesitate. "Take me there."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

Felix didn't question her. With the human-glove umbrella still covering him, he crossed to her in two steps, and his arm came around her waist. Kamala wrapped herself around him on instinct, her face against his chest, and the world lurched as he leapt off the edge.

What did they do? Well...

TO BE CONTINUED.

***********

A/N: This Ms. Marvel Special is so long that I literally can't post the smut portion of it on Webnovel. Word count is too much for the website to handle. Part 2 will come later and be posted here. But...if you want to read it early, feel free to subscribe to my Patreon!