Flash Thompson did his best to try to keep the craziness of his life away from his family. Andrea Benton had always made that difficult- a member of his family born from the craziness of his life. But he felt responsible for her, and wanted to ensure she was keeping out of trouble as much as possible. Unfortunately, the reports he was getting from Philadelphia painted a much different story about what she was doing.

"I know about the fire, Andi. You're not the only one who can put two and two together." His arms crossed over his chest, he didn't mean to try to be a father to her, but sometimes he didn't know what else to do.

"I didn't start that fire. Honest," she promised. It was the truth- mostly. Pyro had shot at her first.

"And that whole situation with… Nazi vampires? Did that actually happen?" Flash had been through a lot during his tenure as a hero but even he had trouble believing some of the reports he'd heard. Had the report not come from Captain America himself, he wouldn't have believed it at all.

"Yeah, that… I didn't really have a choice there," Andi admitted sheepishly.

"And that attack at the mall? You weren't involved with that either," Flash pushed, not giving Andi a chance to minimize what she'd done.

"That was handled before I even got there." She knew it wasn't what Coach wanted to hear, but she didn't feel the need to lie to him. Even if he wouldn't agree with her choices, he'd understand why she'd made them.

"Look, Andi. That Hell-Mark… it messes with your head. That cure I gave you was only temporary, and we don't know how long it's going to last. I just want to make sure you're being careful." He placed a hand on her shoulder, hoping she understood that he was only trying to keep her safe.

"I know Coach, but I'm fine. Plus, I have a friend that's been helping me out with the hero stuff," she explained. She hadn't told him about Gwen at all, positive that telling Coach about her new partner would only make him worry more. Gwen wasn't exactly the kind of partner that made her look like she was being careful.

"Yeah, Captain America told me. You gonna introduce us," he asked with a laugh. He hadn't expected Andi to be the type of person open and willing for team-ups. At least none that didn't involve an alien symbiote. He was at least glad that she was branching out and making friends. She'd mostly been a loner kid at WPHS and Flash knew firsthand just how lonely the hero life could be.

"I'd… rather not," she replied hesitantly. She'd been hoping that he would leave before Gwen finished her classes for the day. The less interaction they shared the better in her opinion.

"That's fair. Look, as long as-"

"Is that Flash Thompson!" Gwen had rounded the corner and spied the two standing in front of their shared dorm at the end of the hallway.

"Oh god." Andi hid her face in her hands, preparing herself for the worst.

"Hi! Hey, it's me! Gwen Poole. I'm sure Andi's told you all about me, it's so cool to meet you! Wow, the legs look so real! It's like the whole amputee thing got retconned, huh?" Gwen shook Flash's hand excitedly, talking a mile a minute.

"Oh, you were protecting me," Flash asked, eyeing Andi as she tried to be as small as possible.

"Yeah. She has this really weird ability to be super creepy and know things she shouldn't," Andi hissed, glaring at her partner.

"Right, right, sorry! My bad. Don't use my encyclopedic knowledge of this entire universe to make people uncomfortable," Gwen laughed, waving at the man as she walked passed to get into her dorm. "You looked cooler with the Venom symbiote-" Andi pulled the door shut, cutting off Gwen's ramblings.

"Look, if you're that desperate for a partner-"

"Coach, don't you think I'm suffering enough," Andi whined, groaning into her palms. Flash laughed, deciding she was right and letting the joke go.

"Just remember, Andi. I'm here. And so's your… friend," he reminded her.

"Thanks Coach." Andi wasn't big on physical affection, but she leaned into her coach anyway. Sometimes a good hug helped make things easier, and even she couldn't be hard and invulnerable all the time.

"Psst. Can I borrow Anti-Venom for a little bit? I've never actually worn a symbiote in canon and- hey!"

"Hey, Andi. Are you, um… are you alright?" Gwen had come back from breakfast and was cautiously looking at her roommate. Andi had class now and she still hadn't even gotten out of bed. The lights were off and the blinds closed while she scrolled through her social media.

"Hm? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," Andi replied offhandedly, not even bothering to look up from her phone.

"Well… I know you get kinda uncomfortable about me knowing things I shouldn't but I do know today is the anniversary of Venom Volume 2 #38…" Gwen's voice trailed off as she spoke. She knew what was bothering her friend, but she didn't want to be the one to bring it up.

"Gwen, I'm not in the mood for your weirdness." Andi huffed and turned around in her bed, giving Gwen her back. She wanted her to leave, but she didn't want to be alone even more.

"I know. That's why I'm gonna try to be the least weird possible." Gwen joined Andi in her bunk and threw her arms around her friend, hugging her closely.

"You're… you're not doing a great job." Andi could feel the knot in her throat and the tears threatening to fall. She hated feeling like this.

"I know. You goth trope kids hardly ever open up. You can talk to me, you know? You don't have to be so tough all the time." Gwen kept her arms around her friend for a long while. "She hasn't kicked me off yet." A few minutes passed before she finally heard her friend sniff and wipe a tear from her eye.

"I just miss him so much."

"I know," Gwen hugged her a little tighter. She missed her family, too, even if they might not remember she existed.

"I'm just so… so angry. And it's not the Mark. It feels like… like I should be doing something that I'm not. I hate this." Andi was never good at opening up about feelings, but anger was an easy place to start. "He's just sitting there, on the Raft… He gets to breathe. He gets to eat… My dad was one of the nicest people ever- god he was so annoyingly nice… And he's gone because of that asshole." No pentagram lit up on her chest. Her feelings were her own, entirely unassisted by the Hell-Mark.

"I… hm, never mind." Gwen bit her tongue. She wasn't normally one to think about the consequences of her words, but she really didn't want to bother her friend at the moment.

"No. What? What were you going to say," Andi pressed, sitting up and turning to face Gwen. All this time she'd known about Gwen and her weird powers, she'd never thought to ask her about… this. Maybe she knew something that could help?

"Well I was looking through the G- the news… and long, complicated story short, Deadpool killed Jack O'Lantern in Wakanda. He's dead." Gwen half expected to see Andi's Hell-Mark, and was more than a little surprised at the couple of tears that fell instead.

"... that's… that's fine. That's fine. I don't care," her voice was weak and shook as she spoke. "I don't care. I'm glad he's dead. He deserves to be dead. He brainwashed that guy into… into what happened. My father…" Andi trailed off, emotions she didn't even know she'd felt washing over her. Anger. That was one she was used to. She screamed, tearing her pillow apart and her eyes glowing orange as her Hell-Mark burned on her chest.

"Andi! Andi!" Gwen held onto her as tight as she could as the shadows of demons danced along the walls in the flickering light of Andi's Hell-Mark. Her breath smelled like brimstone and her hair whipped around her face as an invisible storm flowed from her. Her voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, as if thousands of tortured demons were speaking through her and with her. Hellfire danced along her wrists, threatening to burn Gwen as it spread up her body like water flowing uphill. And as quickly as it'd begun, it stopped. The shadows faded away into wisps, the wind tugging at her hair died down, and everything was back to normal. Save the tears falling down her face. "I'm really sorry, Andi," Gwen sighed, nuzzling into her friend.

"I should've been the one… I should've done it…" She remembered how Coach had stopped her from killing Jack the first time. It hadn't actually been Jack O'Lantern, instead it was an innocent storage worker who'd stumbled upon some of Jack's robots and been brainwashed into believing he was the murderous psychopath. She hadn't killed that man, but the real Jack was safe on the Raft the whole time, and she'd wanted nothing more than to break into his cell and snap his neck as he begged for mercy. To take from him what he'd taken from her father. And now even the chance of revenge was gone.

"Andi. If you need help with anything… I'm kinda reliable." Gwen knew she wasn't the kind of character that others would look to when they needed help. She knew she was the comic relief, whacky, happy-go-lucky teammate whenever she was part of a team. But she really hoped Andi would understand just how much she cared.

"... thanks Gwen," Andi nodded, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands.

"Alright. Want me to text Himawari? She'll probably bring snacks," she offered hopefully.

"Yeah… thanks."

"... and the new Unstoppable Wasp looked so familiar and I checked and it was Gurihiru! I'd be jealous if she didn't look so cute." Gwen landed a good leg sweep against Andi, nearly knocking her off her feet. They'd been sparring for about an hour, keeping in shape for the next fight. Andi still didn't feel entirely safe knowing that two Nazi vampires were out there potentially plotting their revenge, and she wasn't going to be caught unawares.

"Alright, what's up with all the weird stuff you say," Andi asked exasperatedly.

"Huh," Gwen asked confusedly, her heel missing Andi's nose by an inch as she spun like a ballerina on the ball of her foot. Gwen was pretty good and Andi usually had to do her hardest not to get knocked on her ass as long as she wasn't using her Hell-Mark.

"The way you talk. Like everything's just a trope or something? Why do you do that?" Andi ducked under Gwen's leg to try to tackle her, a quick punch in the gut forced her to keep her distance.

"Oh! I haven't been doing a very good job hiding that, have I," Gwen sighed, trying to block a punch from Andi before getting tackled and pinned on her back. She tried to struggle, but after a couple of seconds she realized she'd lost. A quick tap on the floor got her friend off of her, "I guess we have gotten close enough for you to unlock that question tree."

"That's what I'm talking about. Why do you talk like that? It's so weird," Andi wiped sweat off her forehead before gulping down almost half of her KSU water bottle. Gwen was surprisingly agile despite claiming to have no formal training.

"Yeah, I've been told," she laughed, taking a sip of water for herself. She seemed to hesitate, like she was hoping Andi would forget she'd asked.

"Well," Andi pushed. She'd known Gwen for weeks now and the question had been burning at the back of her mind the entire time. Himawari had even asked her in private more than once and Andi had never been sure what to say. Advanced LARPing? A mental disorder?

"Okay. Yeah, I think we've been through enough issues together. But you can't get mad about what I'm gonna say, okay," Gwen said sincerely.

"Sure." Andi really doubted anything her friend could say would be a surprise anyway.

"You know how different universes exist, right," Gwen started, doing her best to try to make what she was about to say believable.

"Yeah. Coach told me about how he spent time in some miniverse a while ago," Andi replied. The multiverse theory wasn't too difficult to grasp, and Gwen coming from another universe would explain… a lot.

"Right. Well, I'm from a different universe, too. And in this universe, we have books that tell the lives of every superhero in this universe," she explained.

"Like a comic book," Andi asked confusedly. It wasn't entirely outlandish- they had comic books in this universe as well. And Gwen did seem to know about a lot of things most people probably shouldn't.

"Exactly like a comic book! I could pick up Amazing Fantasy #15 and read about Spider-Man's first adventure, or grab Secret Wars and read about Battleworld... And it's not just books, we have movies and tv shows and video games… Everything that anyone in a costume has ever done, I know about it." Encyclopedic knowledge of the Marvel universe didn't come without a lot of work.

"So they're just, like, portals into this universe? Like scrying or something?" Andi wasn't sure if she liked where this was going. Universes crossing over wasn't such an outlandish event anymore, and if there was an entire universe out there full of people with information like Gwen...

"No… Not like a portal… They are this universe," Gwen watched as Andi wrestled with the idea. The look in her eyes as she finally settled on an emotion made Gwen tear away, inspecting her shoelaces.

"You think we're a comic book," Andi hissed angrily.

"You promised not to get mad," Gwen reminded her desperately.

"You think this whole universe is a fucking book," Andi asked again, grabbing the smaller girl by her collar.

"That doesn't mean I think any less of it! I loved this universe before I even got here, Andi! This is a dream come true for so many people. I used to kill people all the time when I first got here. Extras, bad f tier villains. I've already had my character development. I don't wanna ruin that-"

"You're fucking crazy," Andi let her go, dropping her onto the floor and walking away.

"Andi, wait! I can prove it! There're text bubbles and sound effects and panels and The Gutter! Andi, please!" Gwen picked herself up off the floor and tried to follow Andi out the door.

"Gwen. We're done. I've been around enough psychos to last a lifetime." She shot a look at her partner, hell glowing in her eyes. Gwen got the message and, for once, didn't press it. Andi slammed the door behind her and walked back to their dorm.

"This crossover sucks. Can't believe I miss the West Coast Avengers right now," she mumbled, wiping a tear from her eye.