Marvelous Miracles

Spider-Man stepped into the lab at #4 Yancy Street, a building bigger on the inside than on the outside, accompanied by Val Richards, the now teenaged daughter of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman. "So, why does your dad want to see me?"

"We have video," Val explained. She didn't seem happy. "It'd be easier to just show you."

As Spider-Man took in the lab, he could make out the rest of the Fantastic Four hanging out... Johnny was icing a nasty bruise on his face and Sue was noticeably bandaged.

"What happened?" Spider-Man said, rushing over.

"We think your old foe the Jackal is up to his old tricks again," Reed said, drawing Spider-Man's attention to monitor with a still frame of what appeared to be a young girl with greyish blue skin, glowing red eyes, and dark blue lips. The upper part of her face was concealed by a red domino mask while the rest of her body was covered in head to toe in an exact duplicate of Spidercide's costume with a Spidercide doll of some kind tied to her hip. There were clearly visible road signs and street lamps torn down around her.

"While on the way home from a family excursion," Reed began to explain, "we caught sight of this child causing a great deal of property damage. Being who were are, we, of course, parked the Fantasticar and made to deal with it, though considering her apparent age we took care to more gently admonish her at first and well..."

Reed started the video. It'd clearly been taken by some kind of device on the Fantasticar itself. As the Four stepped out of their vehicle and walked around to approach the rampaging child, Sue taking point to try and calm the young girl down...

And then the girl screamed "Smash!" and punched Sue across the street.

Peter watched in growing horror as the Fantastic Four did battle with the small girl who claimed with increasingly less coherence that she would get revenge on the world and that nothing would ever hurt her again. She moved with speed comparable, maybe even faster than Spider-Man's own. To be fair, the Four clearly werren't trying to hurt her, but...

"It doesn't make sense," he said as he observed. "The girl seems to have powers like mine," Even organic webbing or web-shooters, judging from how she smothered Johnny's flames with web, "but the Jackal's never made someone more than a little bit stronger than me. And she's... I know I beat you guys the first time we met, but you're all constantly getting stronger while my powers plateaued years ago. At her age, she shouldn't be able to..."

And then the girl countered Reed's attempts to bind her in his stretched arms by stretching and deforming herself in a somewhat more fluid way and punching him with an oversized arm.

"Ah. The costume isn't just for show," Spider-Man said. "she's a full-on Little Miss Spidercide."

The video concluded with Franklin jumping into the fray and sucker-punching the little girl with a blast of cosmic energy before the Four retreated.

"There's something up with that kid," Franklin said as he walked over from the wall he'd been leaning against. "I undercharged that bioblast, but that's still the same attack I used to destroy Mephisto's body that time I got sent to Hell. But look."

Other than damage to the back of the costume that quickly regenerated, the child didn't seem at all hurt.

"Wait," Spider-Man said as the feed cut off. "Can we go back and freeze-frame on where the girl's upper back is exposed?" Something had caught his eye. A red mark.

Reed complied, and Spider-Man was able to get a better look at it. Between the girl's shoulder blades was an oval symbol, four wedged surrounding a smaller oval with a sharp horizontal line running through it.

"I'm vaguely familiar with that symbol," Spider-Man admitted. "I saw it once when I was working with the X-Men on something... Grey skin, blue lips, red eyes... I don't think this girl's a spider-clone. At least, not just a Spider-Clone. I think she's related to Apocalypse."

Reed sighed. "Franklin. I have a very important job for you. Normal humans and mutates aren't allowed on Krakoa without an invitation, but any mutant can go there at any time. As much as I'm uncomfortable with what they're doing if this involves Apocalypse we're going to need the X-Men's help."

"Do you want me to write down a specific message?"

"If you run into Wolverine," Spider-Man added, "tell him that I'm tied up in this and that I'll forget about the fifty bucks he owes me if he convinces the X-Men to help."

"While the X-Men may be of invaluable help in this situation," came a new voice from behind everyone, "you're all missing some vital information."

Spider-Man spun on his heel to see that Doctor Strange had teleported into the room. "While the child is, from what I've put together, a mutant descended from En Sabah Nur, the origin of her powers is mystical in nature."

"Of course they are," Reed said with dissatisfaction clear in his tone. It was no secret that Mister Fantastic just couldn't wrap his head around the supernatural, no matter how much he stretched it

"What, someone enchanted a little mutant girl to give her Spider-Man's powers?" Val asked. "You can do that? Because if that's possible, there are so many uses for a psionic danger sense and superhuman contortionism in a lab setting and dozens of—"

"In a manner of speaking," the Sorcerer Supreme interrupted, "but you'd be better pursuing Spider-Girl or Silk with that line of questioning because no amount of training will allow you to replicate the effect that transformed this little girl into a second Spidercide."

"How about you explain what's going on for us, Doc?" Spider-Man asked.

Steven Strange adopted a pose, with the same finger positions that Spider-Man used to activate his web-shooters, and with a golden glow, he conjured an image of a small fairy-like blob thing. "You're all familiar with the Phoenix Force? Well, certain magical beings fulfill similar roles but are more overtly benevolent. This is a generic representation of them, they can't normally be seen. They're called Kwamis and embody concepts like creation, destruction, illusion... Transmission."

"Like a genie in a bottle, each godlike sprite is bound to an artifact called a Miraculous and must serve whoever owns it. They're meant to be used for good purposes, but the power of Transmission has been coopted and is being used for evil by a Parisian villain called... Well, his name translates to Butterfly, but I've been told that Hawk Moth is the preferred English."

"Now, I normally stay out of it because of a magically binding contract made between one of my predecessors and the magician who created the Miraculous," Strange explained, "and because the Wielders of Creation and Destruction have been more or less keeping it contained, but I can't be completely inactive when the abuse of benevolent magic is happening just outside my door."

"Luckily," the surgeon turned sorcerer finished with a finger snap, causing some kind of invisibility spell to fade away revealing two teenagers dressed in red and black, "Ladybug and Chat Noir both happened to be visiting New York City for reasons I didn't pry about... Though we did get accosted by the Black Cat on the way here."

"She's just jealous that I do a better job of staying on theme," the blond boy in black leather said with a smirk as one of the cat-ear hairclips upon his head cocked to the side.

"I don't know why," Spider-Man said, "but I like this kid." He extended a hand. "I'm assuming Chat Noir? Amazing Spider-Man."

"Oy vey, he found a mini-me," The Thing muttered under his breath as the kid in the cat costume took Spider-Man's extended hand.

"After learning of their presence in the city," Strange continued, "and bound by thousand-year-old oaths not to directly act, I did some investigations and called in a few favors to get more information. The girl's name is Ashley O'Leary. She's mixed race, being Japanese on her mother's side and a mix of Chinese and Irish on her father's. She was kidnapped about a year and a half ago by mercenaries employed by some unethical scientists and arms dealers so they could harvest her for mutant growth hormone, and those mercenaries also killed her parents right in front of her." Doctor Strange looked directly at Spider-Man, "and according to some posters and drawings her landlord saved in case she ever turned up, she has nothing but love and admiration for you specifically, Spider-Man."

"The Butterfly Miraculous is meant to amplify emotions and give people fantastical powers for a short time," the girl in red and black spots said as she stepped forward, "and to help coordinate efforts between those temporary heroes and other Miraculous holders, but Hawk Moth is abusing it to turn innocent people into supervillains for his schemes." She walked up to Reed. "Excuse me, sir, could you rewind the video so we can get a good look at her?"

Reed complied, and Ladybug continued to explain. "The usual process is that he'll corrupt a butterfly into something called an Akuma, which he then sends out to find someone who is angry or sad about something, and it merges with an object, usually something either close to what caused the emotions or of sentimental value to the person to be possessed, which then gives the person powers but amplifies their negative traits and emotions. Break the object, the Akuma is released, they turn back, and I can purify the butterfly and work a spell to reverse all the damage they caused."

She pointed at the doll on the girl's hip. "That's obviously where the Akuma is. Based on what Doctor Strange learned and shared with us, the most likely course of events is that Hawkmoth sensed little Ashley's despair and anger at what was happening to her, maybe all the way from Paris... He normally sticks to things like getting fired unfairly, senior citizens being grumpy about the world-changing, or kids being embarrassed about something. This is on a whole other level... Anyway, that he sensed her and gave her powers that were meant to be a reflection of her idol's."

"So we destroy the doll and an innocent little girl turns back to normal, got it," Spider-Man nodded.

"It's more complicated than that, " Doctor strange interrupted. "Hawk Moth was explicitly imitating the abilities of a known Spider-Totem, and so inadvertently turned the girl into a Totem herself. The inadvertent mixture of two high-order magics—"

"Spider-Man isn't magic," Reed interrupted.

"I kind of am," Spider-Man replied. "It's complicated."

"The point," Strange continued, "is that there's a feedback loop constantly making her stronger. A scan of her mystical aura I managed to get while back tracing her indicates that there are strange reactions between the magics and her own nature as a mutant. We have to stop her now because no one knows what could happen if she remains so transformed for an extended period of time. I can't help directly but I do have a plan."

*Gratuitous AU crossover*

There were a dozen shattered Sentinels on the ground of Central Park when Spider-Man managed to swing into action, a little girl now grown to giant size tearing a thirteenth's apart with her bare hands.

She laughed in a bitter and almost demented matter. "Mutant detected? Mutant Detected?! Too bad! Nothing can hurt me, I'm the strongest!"

"Yes, yes you are!" Spider-Man called out to her, causing the giant child to look down at him.

"...Spider-Man?" she shrank down to normal size, sounding suddenly very confused and conflicted.

"Yeah," he said, slowly stepping forward. "I heard one of my biggest fans was out and about and decided to have a little chat with her. Is that alright, Ashley?"

"It's Menace!"

"Menace?"

"French Jerk wanted to call me Itsy. I like Menace better."

Spider-Man suppressed a shudder. The girl turning out like Spidercide was bad enough, but if she ended up like that hybrid mutate...

"Like me?"

"Huh?"

"You're a menace, just like me," Spider-Man began. "That's what the papers always called me. But I don't think you want to be."

The child ran towards him, rage apparent in her every movement. She threw a punch, her arm enlarging and extending.

And Spider-Man stood his ground without flinching.

And her first stopped just inches before impacting his body.

"See what I mean? You don't want to hurt me."

"Shut up! Just shut up!"

"I get it," he said, "you're hurt. You're angry. I know who you are," he said changing topics, "I know you know who I am. That french jerk? He wanted to make you into a monster, so he gave you a great power... But you know what comes with that, don't you?"

The girl did not respond, so Spider-Man pulled the trump card and produced a photograph framed in red with black spots. A photograph of a little girl smiling, held in the arms of her parents with her grandfather standing by her parents. And he showed it to her.

"What would they think of what you're doing?"

It was like a switch. One second, the child had been nothing but rage, but that had gotten through to the real girl beneath the spell. she collapsed to her knees and cried in the middle of the park.

His first instinct would be to comfort her, but he couldn't. Not yet.

As Menace cried, she was too caught up in her feelings to notice the yoyo snatching away the doll from her hip until it was too late. By the time she became aware, her magically induced rage returning to her as she jumped to her feet, the Doll was already in the hands of Chat Noir, who cried "cataclysm" and destroyed the doll with a touch.

Instantly, Ashley's Spidercide costume vanished and was replaced with some kind of gown. She fell into the fetal position and began crying as though no one was around. Spider-Man tossed the framed photo like a frisbee over to Ladybug. She'd conjured it, and now she needed it to work whatever spell would fix all of this. He didn't really pay much attention to the burst of red in the sky above them that vanished the broken Sentinels. He had more pressing concerns.

He kneeled down next to the crying child. "Ashley? Are you okay?"

"...No."

*And now the ending*

Peter Parker practically dragged himself into bed. The little girl. Ashley... She'd been through so much. Shortly after putting everything right, Ladybug had come over and given Ashley the photograph that had been in the frame and the now repaired doll, now in the form of a spider-plushy. This had gotten Ashley talking. About how she watched her parents be gunned down. About how she was sick all the time. About how she was only able to keep going because she'd managed to grab her spider-plushy when she was taken and holding it and imagining that Spider-Man was coming to save her.

And hadn't that hurt to hear.

She talked about how there was some major commotion in another room, and about how she'd managed to will herself off the table, rip the tubes from her arms and legs, and escape the facility she was in even when she lost her strength and had to crawl only to get captured again just ten feet out the door. About how the guard that found her tore up her plushy just to hurt her, and then the next thing she remembered she was in central park.

And then she asked why she was periwinkle.

Doctor Strange appeared then, cast some kind of diagnostic spell, and confirmed that the unforeseen mixture of magics had caused permanent effects to the child down to her DNA, awakening some recessive traits from her ancient ancestor. She hadn't taken it well.

Chat Noir and Ladybug ran off, saying something about timers, but not before the Parisian heroine made it clear that she'd be in contact to check on the girl.

Franklin arrived, having delivered Reed's message and gotten help from the X-Men just in time to miss all the action.

The X-Men took the little girl back to Krakoa, arguing that nobody was going to buy the brainwashing story with a mutant involved and that since she now looked like Apocalypse she'd never be able to have a normal life, but there had been no Argument when Spider-Man insisted that he'd be checking in on her regularly.

After that emotionally exhausting ordeal, Peter needed to rest.

"Rough day, Tiger?" questioned the beautiful redheaded woman who owned the apartment he was crashing in.

"Yeah," he admitted. "It's a long story. How was that meeting with the French fashion designer?" Mary-Jane Watson, the woman that Peter Parker wanted to spend the rest of his life with now that they were back together, had recently gotten back into modeling and had received a grand opportunity.

"Mr. Agreste rushed out in the middle of the meeting," she said. "Apparently his son went missing."

Peter sighed. "Well, that's one more thing I need to take care of," he said as he climbed out of bed. How hard could it be to find a foreign fashion designer's son when he's lost in New York City?

*AN* Based on discussions of what an Akumatisized Ashley would be like.

I hope that no one minds the Ladybug characters taking second fiddle, but I honestly don't think I can do their character voices very well just yet.