"Marvel: Tomorrow Initiative"
Chapter 6: "Return to Normal"
Disclaimer: The universe depicted here is an extrapolation of the future of the Marvel Universe and thus belongs to Marvel Comics. I make no money off this story and the only profit I get is intense satisfaction from knowing that I have readers.
Author's note: As the title suggests, I found a way to return Audrey to her normal life. However, her life is never really going to be normal again. Not with the CSA gunning for her costumed alter ego and with the double life she has to lead. Plus, you will be seeing the debut of a new superhero team – unregistered, of course. For those developments and others, read on.
In the week that had followed the vigilante breakout at the holding facility for unregistered posthumans, most of the freed vigilantes had gone off on their own paths. Six of them, however, had chosen to follow Fearless and see what she had in mind. Those six were Nightshade (Wilhelmina), Winter Soldier, Iron Fist, Iron Cage, Tsukikishi, and Artemis.
Fearless had led them to an abandoned clock tower. At least, that was what it looked like on the surface. When they stepped inside, they saw a high-tech fortress. "The lower levels are the living quarters," Fearless explained. "There's a dining space, a recreational space, a living space, and sleeping areas. The higher levels are where we do our work."
"Sounds interesting," Winter Soldier remarked. "How did you set this up?"
"This state's X-Men cell helped out considerably," Fearless replied. "As well as certain sympathetic parties within the government."
"Sympathetic parties within the government?" Iron Cage echoed. "Forgive me if that doesn't make me feel good about this."
"I can understand your suspicion," Fearless answered, "but if every normal human wanted us under their control or exterminated, I never would have been able to escape from the CSA in the first place."
"Mind showing us these upper levels?" Nightshade asked.
"Why not?" Fearless replied, and walked to the antigrav lift. She stepped inside and the other six vigilantes followed her in. The lift carried all of them to the top levels. "This level here is where we hone our combat skills and perform exercises of physical prowess." The lift moved up again. "And here is where we tap the surveillance drones to watch the city and keep track of posthuman criminals." They stepped out of the lift, walking into a room with multiple flat-panel displays surrounding them.
"Sophisticated stuff," Iron Fist remarked.
"What's it all for?" Artemis asked.
"We're going to teach them a lesson," Fearless replied. "We're going to show them that posthumans don't need to be controlled by the government to shut down criminals. We're going to do it better than any CSA or S.H.I.E.L.D. pawn. And we're going to show the humans that we're not the ones they need to fear."
"The first two we can do easy, but the third sounds more like crapping bricks," Iron Cage replied.
"That's because ever since the Superhuman Registration Act became law, every politician who wants to make a name for himself – or herself – has jumped on the 'posthumans are inherently dangerous unless controlled by us' bandwagon," Tsukikishi remarked. "For Tsukuyomi's sake, those politicians keep normal humans in a near-constant state of simmering terror where people like us are concerned. How do you propose we change that?"
"We'll prove it by our actions," Fearless replied. "We will be more efficient. We will be more effective. And when the CSA pawns ultimately attempt to neutralize us, we will defeat them. We will humiliate them. Furthermore, we will wage information warfare on the CSA. We will leak so much evidence of their misdeeds to the general public that they will not be able to suppress it or ignore it."
"Sounds good, but how are we going to do that without them catching us?" Iron Cage asked.
"This computer system we have is cloaked from pretty much any digital tracking method the government has," Fearless answered.
"Stealth technology for computers," Artemis mused. "I like that."
"Where's the spider-lady?" Nightshade asked.
To the blue-furred girl's surprise, a certain crimson-clad spider hybrid lowered herself from the ceiling on a web-line. "Whoa!" she exclaimed. "Don't do that, Spider-Lady!"
"It's Arachne," the girl in the spider-styled costume replied. She pulled herself off the web-line and landed on the floor.
"How long have you been here?" Winter Soldier asked.
"Long enough to get bored," Arachne replied. "I think Fearless is on the right tack. We're not going to show normal people anything by just flagrantly violating the SHRA. We need to have a purpose. We need to show normal people that they don't need to fear us . . . or at the very least, that there are worse things to be afraid of than us."
"What are we going to call ourselves?" Nightshade asked. "I mean, if we're going to be a team, we need a good name."
"The Knights," Fearless replied.
"Knights?" Arachne echoed.
"Yes, the Knights," Fearless confirmed.
"Knights of what?" Iron Cage asked.
"Good one," Iron Fist replied.
"I wasn't joking, Fist," Iron Cage grumbled. "What the hell are we standing for with this 'Knights' thing?"
"We're standing for justice," Fearless answered. "We're standing against the oppression of our people."
"Fine," Iron Cage said. "You got me. I'm sold. Not totally, but if it means sticking it to the Man, I'm in."
"I'm in, too," Iron Fist said. "Someone has to bail you out of trouble."
"I appreciate the thought," Iron Cage drawled sarcastically.
"As long as I get my shot at that fake they call Captain America, I'm in," Winter Soldier added.
"I'm in, too," Nightshade replied.
"You don't even have to ask," Tsukikishi said.
"Likewise," Artemis chimed in.
"And, of course, Arachne and I are in," Fearless said. "There we have it. The Knights are assembled."
That was three days ago. Two days before, Audrey Hopkins had finally been able to return home, courtesy of the X-Men. Wireless had used his powers to hack into the surveillance drones and erase every trace of Audrey using her powers in civilian guise. An insider had swapped Audrey's blood sample with that of a normal human. The end result was that the CSA no longer had any hard evidence that Audrey was anything other than a normal human girl of 15.
When Audrey returned to her home, her parents and sister hugged her tightly, tears streaming down their faces. Audrey was weeping, too, overwhelmed with joy at seeing her family again. After about thirty minutes of this, her parents and sister gently released her. "Thank God you're home," Mrs. Hopkins said. "Where have you been all this time?"
Fortunately, Audrey remembered the cover story she and Karin had come up with. "I was kidnapped by a 'porter. This woman in a spider costume found me and saved me from him."
"A 'porter?" Kaye asked. "That would explain how you disappeared from your room, but why was the window open?"
"Misdirection, maybe?" Audrey replied. "Make you think I'd run away or something."
"As long as you're home," Mr. Hopkins said. "If I ever see that Spider-Woman, I'll thank her, even if she isn't licensed."
Audrey let out an internal sigh of relief. "It's been a long month for me. Mind if I go up to bed?"
"Sure," Mr. Hopkins replied.
Audrey went upstairs to her room and collapsed on her bed, nestling herself into it. She rolled onto her back, looking around at her posters of Spider-Man, the heroic Spider-Women, and Captain America. She laughed giddily. "I'm home . . ." she murmured, hugging her Scarlet Spider teddy bear.
She had spent the entire next day "recuperating from her ordeal," although Jenna had shown up with the material from last month's classes on a USB thumb drive. Audrey had plugged the thumb drive into her laptop and used it to catch herself up, spending all the daylight hours making up the homework she'd missed. When nighttime came, she paused to have dinner with her parents, engaging in animated conversation with them.
After dinner was over with, she returned to her room and resumed her homework. Her fingers flew over the laptop keys, typing in answers to homework questions. As she typed, her cell phone buzzed, prompting her to answer. "Hello?"
"It's Karin," the voice on the other end replied. "Gonna come over?"
"Why not?" Audrey responded.
"See you," Karin answered, hanging up.
Audrey saved her work and removed the thumb drive from her laptop. She put her laptop and its charger in her backpack, hooking the thumb drive to her belt loop. She jogged downstairs, shouting to her parents, "I'm going to Karin's to study!"
"Who's Karin?" Mr. Hopkins asked.
"She's the girl in my class who visited me while I was in the hospital!" Audrey replied.
"Don't come back too late!" Mr. Hopkins advised.
"I won't!" Audrey answered, dashing out the door. She walked down the street until she was sure she wouldn't be seen, proceeding to hide in an alley and remove her backpack. She pressed the button on her wristwatch, activating her costume. Within mere seconds, Audrey Hopkins was gone, replaced by Arachne, who slipped Audrey's backpack onto her shoulders and fired a web-line at a nearby building, swinging on it.
Arachne traveled in this fashion to the clock tower, spotting a convenience store robbery in progress. She dropped down on the convenience store and crawled down the front, flipping down onto the ground and walking inside. The simple act of opening the door and stepping inside caused the would-be robber to turn his attention to her, which prompted her to impact-web his gun and the hand holding it. The would-be robber attempted to run, but Arachne webbed up his legs and bound his arms to his torso. She picked up the would-be robber and used a web-line to hang him from the ceiling.
"Call the police to pick this guy up, all right?" Arachne suggested to the storekeeper. "That webbing is only going to hold for an hour or so. See ya!"
Arachne swung away from the convenience store, resuming her trip to the clock tower. As she swung, miscellaneous citizens walking the streets below pointed up at her in surprise and shock. Arachne allowed herself to drop twenty feet before shooting another web-line to catch herself and swinging up again. She dropped again, swinging between cars on the street and then launching herself high into the air again.
Arachne somersaulted four times in midair and fired twin web-lines at opposing skyscrapers, swinging from them. In no time, she made it to the clock tower, slipping inside via the door next to the clock face that gave the tower its name. "Hey, Fearless."
Karin Kusanagi, currently garbed in her Fearless attire, looked at her. "Hey yourself."
"Where are the others?"
"Elsewhere. Cage and Fist are busy trying to see who can kick whose ass in pool, Winter and Tsuki are cleaning their weapons – which is my code for 'they're polishing each other's lower organs,' but don't tell Nightshade or Artemis. Speaking of Artemis, she's practicing in the training area and Nightshade is –"
"– right here!" a teleporting Nightshade chimed in. "Now what did you say about Winter?"
"Nothing," Fearless replied.
"You said they were doing things to each other. Sex things. You must be nuts."
Fearless chuckled. "You like Winter?"
"How do you know?"
"Because your heart beats faster whenever I mention him or whenever he's near you."
"I forgot. You have super-senses."
"That I do." Another chuckle issued from beneath the faceplate. "Anyway, I'm only kidding. Winter and Tsuki are literally cleaning their weapons and not engaging in any sexual activity that I am aware of – and if they were, I would be aware."
"Really?" Nightshade's expression was almost pathetically hopeful.
"Really. Although they do have excellent chemistry."
Nightshade took a playful swing at Fearless, one which Fearless dodged effortlessly. The blue-furred girl spotted Arachne, who had been watching the exchange with bemusement. "Hey, Spider-Lady!"
"It's Arachne."
Nightshade flipped over to Arachne's side, hanging off her shoulder. Arachne blushed at the close contact, although no one could tell just by looking at her. Fearless could tell, though; Arachne's body temperature had gone up a little. The Girl Without Fear narrowed her eyes beneath her faceplate in jealousy.
"Anything for us to do, O fearless leader?" Nightshade asked.
"Power Broker," Fearless replied. "We're shutting him down tonight."
Power Broker was an infamous name among the posthuman community. The original Power Broker had been around back in pre-SHRA days, putting people through a procedure that granted them superhuman strength and durability. One such person had been John Walker, who had started out as the Super-Patriot, been inducted into the CSA as Captain America, and finally become the U.S. Agent. The current Power Broker was a former S.H.I.E.L.D. official who had absconded with some PDT – posthuman development technology – and started using it to turn a profit on the streets. The problem was that he still had connections, which he mainly used to keep himself out of prison.
In a way, it was to the profit of the politicians to keep him loose. After all, the posthumans he engineered allowed them to continue pandering to the fears of the populace about out-of-control super-powered "living weapons of mass destruction." As long as that went on, ever-more restrictive policies on posthuman activity could be drafted and passed. But it wouldn't go on any more, not after this night.
Thus it was that later that night, the Power Broker found himself sitting in a holding cell. How it had happened, though . . . went something like this:
The Knights had burst in on his sanctuary, a warehouse in the seedy underbelly of the city, only to run afoul of a small army of super-strong thugs that worked for him. Fearless could hear the Power Broker getting ready to flee and had gone to pursue him, Arachne following her. As they pursued the escaping Power Broker, the other Knights busied themselves with his goons.
Iron Fist dealt chi-reinforced blows to the thugs, knocking them unconscious by overloading their nervous systems with his chi. Tsukikishi delivered Tsukuyomi's vengeance to the goons in the form of vicious punches and precisely aimed crescent throwing weapons. Artemis dodged the goons' blows by simply not being in the same spot by the time the blows would have landed, an easy trick for someone with temporal perception on their side. Winter Soldier used superior speed and agility to dodge the thugs' attacks until he got them where he wanted them . . . and then the gloves came off.
Iron Cage ducked and weaved between blows like a boxer, delivering vicious uppercuts, hooks, and crosses whenever the opportunity struck. Nightshade teleported so much she seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once, which frustrated the thugs immensely and made it easier for her to attack them. Attacking, teleporting away, and attacking again was the strategy of the day for her.
The Power Broker had been hoping to escape while the Knights were busy dealing with his goons, but twin lines – one energy cable, one web-line – wrapped around his torso and legs, shattering his hopes of maintaining his freedom. He struggled against his bonds, but they were too strong for him to break.
That was all earlier in the night, and now the Power Broker was sitting in a jail cell. An evidence disk of the Power Broker's activities had been left for the police, as had a copy for the press. At that particular moment, the Knights were sitting in the living space of their clock tower base.
"You think it's going to get out?" Arachne asked.
"I think so," Fearless replied.
"You sure?" Winter Soldier asked. "You don't think S.H.I.E.L.D. will find a way to suppress that information?"
"The Power Broker no longer officially works for S.H.I.E.L.D.," Artemis replied, polishing her sai. "They can't very well try to quash a story regarding someone who no longer works for them without looking suspicious."
"Does S.H.I.E.L.D. even care about not looking suspicious anymore?" Iron Cage asked. "I mean, they're an international military intelligence agency. Suspicion is what they do best."
"Doesn't mean they like it being directed at them," Iron Fist mused. "Especially with all the crap that came out way back about them using forced labor to mine the Savage Land and stockpiling super-criminals as living weapons. Not to mention the crap about Stark . . ."
Winter Soldier glared at Iron Fist. "Did I say something wrong?" Iron Fist asked.
"His grandfather spoke a lot of bad about Stark," Nightshade replied. "According to him, it's Stark's fault the original Captain America is dead."
"You mean the only Captain America," Winter Soldier hissed. "The one they've got in that costume and using his shield is a fake, a liar. A puppet paraded around by the CSA."
Arachne looked at Winter Soldier sadly, her expression imperceptible behind her mask. "Your grandfather must have loved Captain America – the real one – very much."
"He lived for him," Winter Soldier replied solemnly.
Arachne found her backpack and opened it, pulling out her laptop and turning it on. She found her thumb drive and plugged it into the laptop, accessing the last homework file she'd been working on and resuming her work.
"What's that?" Tsukikishi asked.
"Homework," Arachne replied.
"How old are you?" Tsukikishi inquired.
"Fifteen, not that it's any of your business," Arachne answered. "Hey, what time is it?"
"Quarter to midnight, why?" Iron Cage asked. "Curfew?"
"Now that you mention it, yes!" Arachne cried out in panic. "My parents are going to kill me!"
She saved her work, ejected her thumb drive, and put said thumb drive away. She closed her laptop and put it back in her backpack, closing the backpack. She slung the backpack onto her shoulders and began running for the door. "See you guys tomorrow!" she called out.
As soon as she was outside, she swung away on a web-line. She swung frantically from building to building, not wasting time on acrobatic stunts. She just needed to get home before midnight and salvage something from the mess she was likely to be in. Of course, trouble had a way of finding her, despite her efforts to avoid it. Said trouble was the NYPD Superhuman Restraint Unit, which had probably been summoned by a patrol car that had spotted her.
Arachne swore silently and swung away from the SHRU hovercrafts as fast as she could move, which was pretty fast. The hovercrafts pursued her, the leader using a loudspeaker to shout at her, "Attention, unlicensed posthuman! You are in violation of the Superhuman Registration Act! Surrender now and you will not be harmed!"
Yeah, right, Arachne thought. She continued swinging away from the SHRU hovercrafts, even as they opened fire on her. Fortunately, she was moving faster than their aim, so it wasn't as though they were hitting her. Unfortunately, they were hitting her web-lines, which left her standard mode of travel somewhat unreliable. After another one of her web-lines had been broken by a SHRU laser blast, Arachne dived for the street. She could survive the street landing; she just had to bounce off a car and not land right in the street, but the SHRU wouldn't dare endanger civilians just to get at her.
Arachne bounced off a passing car and flipped onto the façade of a nearby building. She crawled over it and hid in the alley, hoping that she could change back to plain old Audrey Hopkins and blend in with the crowd. Unfortunately, a SHRU hovercraft began to shine a spotlight into the alley, forcing her out of it. She crawled faster than the hovercrafts could properly track, moving with a desperate terror. She climbed onto the rooftop of a building and began to run . . . and she kept on running, outmaneuvering the hovercrafts' laser fire.
Finally, she jumped between two buildings, bouncing between their facades as she deactivated her suit. The nanobots receded into her wristwatch, changing her back into ordinary Audrey Hopkins. She landed on the ground agilely and walked out onto the street, hailing a cab. The cab stopped for her and she slipped into the backseat.
"Where to?" the driver asked.
Audrey gave the driver the address and he drove there. As he drove, Audrey had only one thought: I am so in trouble.
End Notes: What, like none of you have ever stayed out later than you should have? Well, Audrey gets to go back to her "normal" life, but it's not like it's going to be that normal. Double identities sure are hard to balance, aren't they? And it's not like she can tell her folks what she's really been up to; she'll be putting them in danger, too. No, better that she shoulder the burden on her own and not lay it at her parents' doorstep. You're free to let me know what you think, you know, both good and bad.