A/N: i changed my mind. this fic isn't so much a rom com as a... platonic rom com? Kamala Comes To Terms With Her Character Development And Befriends Dumb Fire Skeleton Guys On The Way. that.
also i apologise for literally taking almost a year to update this its just How I Am. high school is killing me and writing is hard.
Kamala tore the sheet of paper off her wall with all the resignation of a man about to be unjustly hanged. In front of her, mocking her, was the month of April.
April 1st would have originally meant Kamala celebrating the school year's end in sight. Now, it just meant she had 78 days until June 17th, when senior year ended. She wondered dully if she was going to graduate here. She had 78 days to catch Ghost Rider, who hadn't made an appearance in weeks. It was almost like he knew someone was on to him.
Or her. Kamala wouldn't dismiss the possibility of it being the redheaded girl she saw around the school, tall and self-assured. She walked with confidence, a confidence that could be born of having crazy unholy demon powers. Or, a confidence born of being really hot. Could go either way.
She sighed, turning her dramatically morose gaze to the kitchen table. On it were four items: Verity's bracelet, a bowl full of what used to be milk and is now green slime, a black felt pen, and last year's yearbook that Kamala stole from Mr. Baxter's teacher's office. She had a few faces circled, upperclassmen who seemed like they could be Ghost Rider. She annotated the portraits with notes of who started which fight, and who won, hoping there was a clue in that, but it just made it that much messier. Kamala finally understood the pull of corkboards and string.
"I still think it's the heterochromat," Loki said, sitting on the counter and swinging his legs. "Nobody ever has weird eyes for no reason."
"His hair's weird, too," Verity agreed sagely. "Gotta be your guy."
Kamala sat down heavily at the table and frowned. "Okay, but he could be weird in a way that has nothing to do with Ghost Rider. It's LA, the only place with more superhero shenanigans in New York."
"Kamala, he has an orange eye and Ghost Rider is a skeleton that's always on fucking fire. Color-wise, he's thematically coherent." Loki paused to sniff. "Unlike you."
"You're just jealous 'cause I'm cuter than you," she said without missing a beat. "Anyways, might as well investigate this guy first."
"You'll need to get close to him first, see if there's anything particularly 'flame skeleton warrior'ish about him," Loki said.
"Oh, that's easy. He's a math tutor. I'm failing math."
Verity raised an eyebrow. Loki grinned. "Very Mean Girls. Except, I'm fairly sure any google search of your name turns up hundreds of pictures of you at the Tri-State Ultra Mega Science Fair," he said.
"Oh." Kamala blinked. "Shit." She blinked again. "You know Mean Girls?"
"Of course I know Mean Girls," Loki said, "I'm the God of Stories, which means I'm omnicintly aware of all stories, including alt-rocky teen rom-coms."
"Liar. He watched it for the first time at my house, and cried like a baby at the prom scene," Verity clarified.
"It was very heartfelt!"
"Anyways," Kamala said, filing away that information for later, "can't you just erase those off the internet? You're like, a magic god. God of magic. Magic."
Loki winced. "Sorry kid," he said, "the internet is forever."
Kamala sighed. "Well then, I guess I'm just gonna go for it and hope he never googles me."
"Good plan," Loki said, getting up to leave.
Verity snorted. "Liar," she said from the couch. Loki flipped her off on his way out of the room, leaving Verity and Kamala alone together.
It's not that Kamala disliked Verity or anything. Actually, she noticed the books that had been appearing around the house, and there was no way Loki gave a shit about pure mathematics, which meant there was actually someone to talk to for once about stuff that didn't involve magic and storytelling (as cool as that was). It was just that, well, Verity was a walking lie detector, which apparently extended to Kamala's shapeshifting powers. And sure, it's been almost a year and a half since Kamala was insecure enough to pretend to be someone else as an alter ego, but, well, she couldn't help but feel very aware of herself whenever she shifted in front of Verity.
It was all small, dumb things she was second guessing. She'd spent a lot of time on the "brains not beauty" side of things, and she'd certainly spent more time than she wanted to admit ridiculing the other side of the equation. It's only been a few years since she ever let that go, and sure, people change faster when they're young, but she can't quite shake the feeling that her new acceptance of herself, of everything, is not quite true. That when she tells herself that she doesn't want to be white, or she likes being Kamala Khan, Pakistani-American, it's just a lie she's desperately trying to speak into being. And every time she changes a feature, makes herself a little taller or clears up her skin or messes with her eyebrows, she feels Verity's eyes on her, and can't help but second guess herself.
"That shapeshifting thing," Verity says, and christ this is the exact conversation Kamala didn't want to have, "how does it work?"
Kamala blinks. That wasn't what she was expecting. "Uh, I guess it's like another body part? Or something? I don't know, when it first happened, it felt like my skin was all tensed up, like a full-body migraine and it was like suddenly having a sense I didn't know how to use."
"You weren't born with it?"
"What? No. Wait. I don't think so? Actually, wait, yeah, I was."
"I can't believe you just gave me three different answers without lying."
"Ah, it's really… complicated and I sort of don't understand it myself, which makes this even more complicated." Kamala wrinkled her nose. "I'm not entirely human? At least, I don't think so. So technically, I've always had these powers, it's just I didn't know until this Terragen mist two years ago, and honestly, I'm not totally sure how everything actually works. I got superhealing though - found out when someone shot me and the bullet just fell down my pants. The more I superheal, though, the less I shapeshift, so back home, I kinda didn't use it too much. Now though, I don't get injured too much, so… I've been trying out shapeshifting."
Verity looks aghast. "Someone shot you?"
"Yeah," Kamala shrugged, "but it was my best friend's brother, and an accident. Plus, insta-heals!"
"Huh. I forgot that you're, like, a superhero. With crazy superhero stories."
"Yeah," Kamala smiles, "most people do. Speaking of, did I ever tell you how I met Loki? He crashed my school dance and spiked the punch with honesty juice."
Of course, Verity demanded to hear the story, and Kamala obliged, and Loki didn't even try to stop it from the other room because he was probably duty bound by his weird space viking god powers to let Kamala tell the tale of the time she punched him in the face and made him ward her school.
All in all, a Sunday well spent.
April in California seemed to have been designed to make up for the arid brightness of every other month. The entire sky was silver-lead grey and the air was mildly humid without the heat Pakistan usually offered. Kamala stepped into another puddle and flexed her definitely now wet toes inside her sneakers. She should have worn multiple pairs of socks.
The school usually had students spilling out all over the front lawn before the first bell, but now everybody was inside, under a roof, due to the threat of rain. It gave a slightly claustrophobic feel, stepping inside the hallways and maneuvering around rings of seated freshmen and huddles of conversing sophomores. Robbie was in her first period class, but he was also in math with her fourth period, so she'd wait until then to approach him and ask for tutoring.
The day could literally not pass quick enough. Usually, Kamala loved school. She loved her classes, loved hanging out with friends, even loved the stability the constant schedule brought into her life. But without her friends, without her brother in law, and Nakia, and Mike and literally everyoneshe knew, it was just a boring, slightly depressing drudge forwards.
When she got back, she was so taking Nakia and the rest on an intergalactic roadtrip of friendship. She's pretty sure Tony owes her that, at least.
Fourth period finally, finally rolled around, just as the clouds let up and the sun broke through. As Kamala walked to math, she tilted her face to the light like a human sunflower and let herself relax.
She was almost an adult. She'd been an Avenger for a year, and a superhero for almost two. She kicked ass and took names. She was totally going to catch this homicidal Ghost Rider dude, get back home, graduate on time, and keep her unweighted 4.0 while she was at it.
She has got this.
Just as she finished her impromptu pep talk, she rounded a corner and immediately sighted Ghost Rider Suspect Number One talking to Ghost Rider Suspect Number Two. Wow. She had no idea if this was good luck, or bad. Either way, shockingly fate-y. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. She was pretty well known for being brash as hell.
"Hey, Robbie, right?" She asked.
Suspect Number One looked over. "Who wants to know?" he asked. Anybody who used the phrase 'who wants to know' should always be doing it with a glare, or at least a frown, but it seemed Reyes didn't expend any energy into facial expressions that he didn't have to. Weirdo.
"I'm Kamala," she said, sticking her hand out. "I need a tutor for physics?"
She totally didn't , by the way, but she was an Inhuman shapeshifter living with the God of Lies, so she could totally fucking act like she did.
Robbie turned to Suspect Number Two, the redheaded girl, totally ignoring Kamala's goodwill gesture hand. Fine, whatever. She dropped it.
"Talk to you later, Lisa," he said. She nodded, sharp and decisively, then smiled brightly at Kamala as she walked out. Kamala mentally bumped her up to Suspect Number One, because she could definitely get away with murder with a smile like that.
The new Suspect Number Two regarded her with narrowed eyes. "I'll talk to Mr. Dub about it. You got a start day in mind?"
Kamala smiled sheepishly. "Well, today or tomorrow would be best. I have a test Wednesday. Wait, Mr. Dub? Isn't he an English teacher?"
"He handles all the after school stuff and extra credit for the school. Can you give me your address? I can make 6-8."
Kamala can immediately hear exactly what her mother would say if she heard about Kamala inviting strange men into her home and hanging out with them alone. Amma would instantly have her call it off, stop investigating, and go home to New Jersey for good measure. She would absolutely, under no circumstances, allow Kamala to give a strange man her home address.
"Sounds great!" She says, and gives him her address.
Fourth period was the last period of the day, and the fact that they were covering polynomials, stuff Kamala could do in her sleep, meant she had way too much time to plan. She wasn't even a fan of planning, not really. That was Amadeus or Miles's thing. She was more of a fan of the spur of the moment brilliant idea.
But still, here she was, planning. As much as she tended to ignore her Amma's advice, she did have to take into account the fact that Ghost Rider was a terrifying homicidal serial killer with fire powers who happened to also beat up bad guys too. And she just gave her number one suspect her home address.
To: Verity
hey stay home tonight im having suspect number one over for tutoring session but he won't do anything if there are witnesses.
From: Verity
will do.
Well, that was one contingency taken care of. She checked the news next.
Local news on google turned up nothing, so plan A was a bust. Good thing she lived with a walking Plan B.
Wait, that came out wrong. Whatever.
To Loki:
hey i need ur help in like three and a half hours
From Loki:
Sounds intriguing!
To Loki:
u text so fuckin weird. anyways at 6:30 cause a giant disturbance and draw ghost rider out. i wanna test a theory. no casualties please.
From Loki:
Anything for you! Have fun!1! ;-P
Kamala spent precisely three seconds wondering who it could possibly be who taught Loki how to use emojis, figured out it was Kate Bishop in two, and vowed to hit her in the face next time she saw her for letting him use noses in emoticons in one.
Whatever. Plan set. Time to execute.
Kamala and Verity had just spent a very frantic hour hiding all evidence of Weird Viking Alien Magic that Loki tended to leave lying around. There was so much of it, and all of it was weird, so Kamala made Verity the Sometimes Ghost get rid of all the slimy stuff.
Verity had just flung a jar of eyeballs (eyeballs? seriously, oh my god?) under the sink when the noise of a car parking at the curb startled them both into freezing. Kamala had then, in the way that realisations and emotions worked, very suddenly remembered that she was 85% sure that Robbie Reyes was Ghost Rider, and Ghost Rider was an unrepentant killer.
Fear bubbled up in her chest before Kamala very sternly reminded herself that both Lisa and Mr. Dub knew Robbie and Kamala were meeting at 6-8, Verity was a witness, and Robbie had no reason to suspect her of anything, let alone murder her.
With the wall of rationality repressing her sudden fight-or-flight instincts firmly in place, Kamala grabbed the remote, switched on the TV to the local news station before muting it, and strode over to the door to welcome her guest.
She opened the door and watched Robbie get out of his car.
His car which was Dodge Charger.
His car which was the same car that Ghost Rider drove.
Oh man, this bitch was so fucking guilty.
A/N: see u next year when another random person comments on this thing, reminding me it exists, and i write a chapter in a day again. anyways every time u leave a review the world becomes a happier place and a puppy is born.
