AN:

I've had Hartly/Amy in the tag of this fic since the beginning, but this chapter is where we finally start to see a bit of that come through. I'm not sure where I'm going to take it going forward in the fic, and it won't be the main focus, but it should still play at least a minor role.

"Amy! You need to get up and get ready for school! You are not making me late again!" Jake's words stir Starling from her sleep. She pushes herself up on her elbows and looks around at her surroundings.

"Do I have to?" She mumbles to herself.

"Yes!" Jake's reply makes her jump a little. She hadn't expected him to hear her. "You were supposed to be up thirty minutes ago!"

"Fine"

"I'm not leaving till you turn your lights on!" Jake shouts, and she can faintly hear him tapping his foot outside her door.

Starling swings her legs over the side of the bed and firmly plants her feet on the ground before pushing herself up and stumbling toward the door. Finding the light switch takes a couple of seconds of fumbling, but she regrets it as soon as it flips on. The small amount of light filtering through the curtains in front of Amy's window was nothing compared to the blinding rays emanating from the overhead light. She squints her eyes and throws her hand up to block out as much of the light as possible.

"Don't get back in, bead. If I have to come to your room one more time, I'll throw your bed halfway to Centropolis." As Jake walks away, Starling can hear him mumbling about how she would never get anything done without him.

Starling sighs and turns to look at Amy's room, and its emptiness strikes her again. There was no dresser draws to hold clothes and no mirror hanging on the wall. There wasn't even a dirty clothes hamper for her to root through. On her second scan, she notices another door in the corner of the room. She walks over to it, slightly more stable on her feet than only moments before.

When she pulls the door open, it screeches loudly, but that's not what catches her attention. A plain white Ikea dresser draws takes up ninety percent of the closet space. Some of the clothes in the closet have been pushed to either side of the dresser, but most are bunched up on top of it, unable to entirely hang down.

In her time fighting the villains under Onix's control, Starling had come to realize that they had little connection or understanding of the outside world, and this just reaffirmed that belief. She is confronted with an unorganized mess when she opens the top drawer. Looking at the top layer of clothing, she can see shirts, sweaters, pants, and skirts. Starling yanks open each and every drawer to find them in the same state.

The setup is entirely antiquated to what Starling is used to. If she's going to be getting her clothes from this collection for an indefinite amount of time, this could not persist. She yanks the first drawer out of its slot and upends its contents onto the ground. She places the drawer on the ground gently and grabs the next one. Once all the drawers have been emptied, she begins sorting the mountain of clothes into smaller piles of long sleeve shirts, short sleeve shirts, sweaters, pants, shorts, skirts, and a couple of other odds and ends. As she sorts, she grabs a simple outfit for the day and throws it to the side to pull on when she's done.

"Amy, Hurry up!" Jake shouts.

"Ok. Give me a second!" Starling yells back, throwing the last of the clothes into their piles.

"No, know." Starling rolls her eyes and starts changing her clothes, promising herself that she will finish her work later.

Starling walks over to the desk in the corner of the room to check Havoc's phone to see if she has responded to any of the questions she sent the previous night. When the phone clicks on the first notifications displayed on the screen are from the contact she had added last night. Before She can read the snippet of text on the home screen, she becomes aware of a rumbling sound growing outside the house. Starling parts the curtains to peer out the window. A yellow school bus boasting Valley View School District on its side appears around the corner, rumbling down the street. It stops before the Madden house momentarily, and its door slowly swings open.

Panic courses through Starling. She shoves the phone into her pocket and pulls the school-issued computer into her arms before rushing off. She nearly falls as she rushes out of the room and down the stairs. At the bottom sits a pair of women's sneakers, which she quickly pulls on to keep her feet from slipping around. In an effort to expedite the process, she leaves the laces undone. When she throws the front door open, she's confronted with the back end of the bus disappearing around the other end of the street.

Starling sighs and turns around to see if she can get someone to drive her to school, only to trip over her untied laces. She closes her eyes and braces for impact, only to knock into something halfway down. She cracks her eyes open to see Surge standing over her. Panic courses through Starling yet again as she remembers all the brutal battles she had gotten into with the villain. It only takes her a second to remember that she's currently inhabiting the body of the villain's daughter, but the worry still lingers in the back of her mind.

"Amy? What on earth are you doing?"

"Sur… Mom, I missed the bus. Can you drive me to school?" A look of confusion spreads across Surges's face. Before she can reply, Jake, who Starling assumed had already left, jumps in front of her.

"No!" he shouts. "Dad's driving us to school today." Jake clamps his hand on Starling's shoulders and nods his head enthusiastically with a fake smile plastered across it. His eyes are blown wide in a pleading look. "Remember!"

"Oh… Right." Starling says, slightly confused by the odd look on his face, "Sorry."

"It's fine; just finish getting ready for school. If I want to be the first student of the month two months in a row, I can't be late!" Starling nods her head and walks away to find her school bag, but Jake pulls her through a door and into the house's kitchen when Surge looks away. "What on earth were you thinking? I've kept Mom off the road for the past month. Why would you even want her to drive you in the first place? We hid her keys for a reason!" Jake leans in and whispers the last line.

"Um…" Starling is saved from trying to come up with an answer when Surge calls out to them from the living room.

"Speaking of driving, have either of you seen my keys?"

Jake clenches his jaw, grips her shoulders, and lets his head fall. "Why Amy, why? I've worked so hard to keep Mom off the road. So Hard!"

"Sorry," Starling says sheepishly, shrugging her shoulders to remove Jake's hands. He begins to look up at her but then pauses.

"Are you wearing mom's sneakers?" Starling looks down at her feet, shifting them around to feel the extra space at the edges of the shoes for the first time.

"Oh… was in such a rush, I just grabbed whatever was closest," Starling says as she slips the shoes off and throws them into the corner of the room.

"Never throught I'd see you in anything other than a pair of boots. It's kind of trippy." He laughs to himself.

"Do you think my keys could be in here?" Surge asks, peaking her head through the door.

"Why don't we check up in your room," Jake says, throwing his arm around Surge and leading her out. Just as they leave the room, Jake shoots Starling a look that says, 'You owe me.' When the door swings shut, she is left standing there in wonder for a second. It was easy for her to imagine Jake being part of a 'normal' family, but Surge, Havoc, And Kraniac seem entirely out of place in a familial equation.

It strikes her that one of the reasons she can't imagine them in a domestic setting is because she can only see them as their villain selves. She doesn't even know two of their names. She pulls the phone out of her pocket, hoping to find an answer to the name question.

[Sure=Eva]

[kraNac+Vic]

[Jak ad i ride bUs $12]

[My shedul claSas shoul b e in me binDer]

[cela is OuR nabor/ladylaNd / Hartely's GranMoter]

Starling takes a moment to decipher the confusing jumble of words on the screen. The concussion had clearly taken its toll on Havoc. She could understand most of it. She just hopes the names aren't so horrendously misspelled that she'd pronounce them wrong. As they stood, their pronunciations seemed pretty straightforward. After a second, Starling sends Ha… Amy a text asking why Jake is so against Sur… Eva driving. She slides the phone back into her pocket.

Starling isn't quite sure if Jake and Eva have left the living room yet, and she doesn't want to get drawn back into the key debacle, so she resigns herself to staying in the kitchen. If she's going to be staying in the kitchen for an indefinite amount of time, she might as well get something to eat for breakfast. Anna always stresses the importance of breakfast to her. They had worked together to find a healthy mix of foods for Starling to have each morning: A glass of orange juice, scrambled eggs, toast, and yogurt. Every once in a while, one of the items on the list would change because of a sponsorship she would take on, but otherwise, it was always the same.

Starling opens the fridge to grab her juice, resigning herself to the possibility of apple or cranberry being the only options, only to find the refrigerator close to barren. A half-filled jug of milk sits right in front of her. A carton of eggs, butter, cream cheese, peanut butter, grape jelly, and a random assortment of other condiments are scattered throught the fridge, but nothing that could make a complete meal. Starling turns her attention to the cupboards, only to find that they contain a similar assortment of unhelpful and random food items. The only things stocked in abundance are breakfast cereals and instant noodles. Neither of which Starling would consider a complete or healthy meal, especially not an acceptable breakfast.

Starling sighs, grabs a box of Honey O's, and returns to the fridge to grab the milk, praying it's not expired. It takes a few minutes of shuffling through the cupboards and drawers to find a spoon and bowl. As she goes to sit at the table, she notices a bowl full of fruit, a strange occurrence considering the lack of fresh food in the rest of the house. A banana sits perfectly on the top of the pile in the bowl; Starling had heard of bananas and Honey O's, but she had never had the combination. There was always a first time for everything.

Starling pulls a simple butter knife out of the drawer to cut the banana and places the other items on the table. When she reaches for the banana, she's met with a smooth plastic finish. She reaches to see if the other fruits are plastic but nudges the banana in the process. Instead of falling over, it flips from one end to another. A scraping noise sounds behind her. Starling whips around to see that the fridge has moved to the side, revealing an ominously lit passageway.

The NOT EVIL LAYER!

Starling looks from side to side and then quickly disappears down the passageway. With the villain family distracted getting ready for school, now is the perfect time to canvas the layer. Even if Havoc continuously insists that it's not evil, it's still the most logical place to hold the answers to their current predicament.

When she rounds the corner, she nearly jumps out of her socks. The family patriarch is hunched over, sleeping in an office chair in the corner of the room. She slowly backs up, but her sock-clad feet slip on the smooth tiled floor. She flails her arms to regain her footing but knocks over a lamp that clatters to the floor, waking up Kraniac. He jolts and falls out of the chair, crashing onto the floor.

"What on earth?" Kraniac yawns and rubs his forehead looking around the room in confusion. "Amy. What are you doing down here?"

"What am I doing down here?" Starling echoes, attempting to dodge the question, "Why are you sleeping down here?" On the few occasions that Kraniac had left the family's previous layer, Starling had been subjected to plenty of 'I hate my wife' style jokes, but she had always assumed that was part of their villain personas. They seemed to be pretty close otherwise. She had never imagined that their marriage could have been on rocky grounds, but here he was, sleeping in an office chair instead of his own bead.

"A commotion in the middle of the night from your brother woke me up. Today's the first day of Eva's new job. I didn't want to disturb her sleep, so I came down here to finish some work, and I guess I fell asleep." Starling is struck by how sweet the gesture is and how wrong her previous assumption must be. She's really misjudged the family.

A sense of irony hits her. "Mom's been up since like two in the morning."

"What!" Vic shouts with a look of shock, horror, and annoyance. He pushes himself back up into the chair and gestures toward it. "I slept in an office chair for no reason?"

"Ummm… yes?" Starling awkwardly replies.

"Not again!" Vic throws his hands up in the air and kicks the ground. He begins spinning in circles. Starling's not sure what to do. There's been no indication that any family member is on to her, but she's still incredibly on edge. Especially considering that she's in an underground layer surrounded by hordes of deadly weapons and their mad scientist inventor. A voice from the top of the stairway snaps her out of her thoughts.

"Dad, are you down here?" Starling turns to see Jake pop his head around the corner.

"Yep!" Vic calls. Instead of stopping his spinning so he can easily look at his son Vic swivels his head from side to side, purposefully speeding up by holding his arms to his side and pushing off the ground repeatedly.

"Did you sleep down here again?" Jake asks.

"Yep!" Vic replies. Jake shakes his head, but Starling doubts that Vic can actually see a movement so small.

"Well, go get dressed. You have work today and were carpooling with Hartly. If she's late, I think she'll have a panic attack,"

"I'm what?" Vic topples out of his chair again. Jake Shakes his head and mumbles about how nothing would get done without him.

"We need to leave in twenty minutes at the latest." He calls as he disappears around the bend in the staircase. Kraniac jumps up from the chair and runs after him. After looking around and getting a general sense of the layer, Starling follows suit.

When she emerges from the hole in the wall, Vic and Jake have already left the kitchen, but the cereal and milk are still sitting on the table. Starling ways the options in her mind and decides to simply skip breakfast. She can fulfill her nutritional requirements at another point in time.

After putting the food away, Starling returns to Amy's room to retrieve the boots she had been wearing when she returned to the home the previous night. It takes her a moment to lace them up, and when she does, she walks back down to the living room. As she nears the end of the staircase, a deafening noise arises above her, and she turns to see Vic racing down them in considerably more professional attire than before. Starling dodges out of the way just in time.

"Have you seen my briefcase?" He asks, disregarding that he almost crushed her seconds ago. He swings around the banister like an overly energetic child and looks at her expectantly.

"Ummm. No" Vic runs into the kitchen without even responding. Starling stands in complete silence for a second, attempting to regain her bearings.

"If he makes us late, I swear to Onix," Jake continues to mumble as he walks down the stairs and over to the closet. He pulls a dark blue/grey backpack, similar in color to his villain suit, out and lets it hang off one shoulder as he walks away. Starling walks over to grab hers and misses the smile that spreads across Jake's face as soon as her back is to him. She studies the two remaining bags, attempting to deduce which one is Amy's and the owner of the other.

The bag hanging on the middle hook is bright red, similar to Havoc's suit, but the other is purple. None of the villains in the family had a purple suit, at least that she could remember. Starling ponders the third backpack as she slings the red one over her shoulders and onto her back. As she walks away from the closet, she thinks back to the 'Not Evil Layer' and remembers seeing a purple suit displayed with all the others. Before she can finish her line of thinking, a strange bubbling feeling erupts on her back and shoulders, and the backpack quintuples in weight. Starling throws her weight onto a nearby couch to prevent herself from toppling over and looks over her shoulder to see what on earth happened. The face of a child completely fills her vision.

"Boo!" It shout's in her ear.

Starling screams and swings from side to side in an attempt to dislodge the child clinging to her back. As the commotion echoes through the house, Vic throws the door to the kitchen open, and Eva comes barreling down the stairs, both arms raised in defensive positions.

"What's wrong?" Eva calls as she descends the last step, her head on a swivel in an attempt to identify the threat."

"Amy's a coward, that's what," The child shouts as it leaps off her back and lands on the floor, leaving her standing in the middle of the room in complete shock. Starling expects The family of villains to charge at the intruder or retaliate somehow, but instead, Jake begins to howl with laughter. Eva lowers her arm, a disgruntled yet curious look spreading across her face.

"Colby, what did you do?"

"I transformed into Amy's backpack to scare the crap out of her. You should have seen the look on her face when she turned and saw me!" The child says, joining Jake in his laughter.

"So you sat in the close for Onix knows how long in your P.J.'s waiting for your sister to finish getting ready for school so you could prank her?" Eva responds, the disgruntled and annoyed side of her previous expression taking over her features.

"Ya, but I was transformed, so technically, I wasn't wearing my P.J.'s. At least, I think that's how it works."

"I don't care about the technicalities," Eva says sternly.

"You're acting like this is a bad thing." Colby retorts. "Were villains; this is what we do!"

"It is a bad thing. You need to leave for your first day of school in ten minutes, and you've done nothing to prepare." Eva replies.

"Do I have to go? There's nothing they could teach me in that school that you and Dad can't, and you'd probably do a better job too." Colby says dramatically, flopping into Starling's side. She stands frozen in shock and fear as the conversation continues.

"Yes, Colby. Your father didn't work day and night for a week to get you back to normal so you could stay home and do nothing. Now stop stalling and go get dressed."

"Fine." As soon as the child, Colby, shifts his weight off Starling, she relaxes again. "I'll be down in less than a minute." He says as he runs upstairs.

"Sure you will," Jake shouts after him rolling his eyes. "I'll be waiting in the car; you coming, Amy?"

"Uhh… ya," Starling says. "Where's my actual backpack?"

"I stashed it in Dad's car." Starling follows Jake as they exit the house.

"Wait, YOU stashed it in Dad's car? Were you in on this?" Starling asks.

"Obviously." Jake barely reacts to the accusation as they reach the car. Jake walks around to open the passenger side door, and Starling doesn't fight him on it. She slips into the back seat and pulls the red bag out from between the front and back seats. As she settles down, she pulls out Amy's phone.

[Since when have you had 2 brothers?]

While Starling waits for Amy to respond, she reaches into the backpack to grab the class schedule Amy said would be in the binder. She scans over it and attempts to memorize the classroom numbers and the teachers' names. The door to the front of the house swings open and then closes with two loud bangs, and Starling slips the binder back into the bag seconds before Colby throws the door to the car open with another crash.

"That was fast," Jake says, "but don't slam the door next time."

"You sound like Mom," Colby retorts around a piece of toast shoved in his mouth and plops into the seat next to Starling. A light ding sounds from her pocket, and she reaches to pull the phone out. She angles her body and the phone screen away from Colby as she opens it to see the text from Amy. One of the villains reading her text over her shoulder would be the dumbest way for her to get caught.

[have you seriously never seen colby before now?]

[No! He scared the crap out of me.]

[What did he do]

[He transformed into your backpack.]

[Clasic Colby]

[If you had another supervillain in the family, why did you never take him into the field?]

[he didnt get his powers until we had already moved to valley view]

[They were actually fritzing out for a really long time, but we fixed it]

[I remember when I first got my powers.]

[There was a lot of damage!]

Starling chuckles at the memory. For a long time, she had been extremely embarrassed and honestly kind of traumatized by the events, but the other heroes had helped her to see them in a better light.

"Who are you texting? Hartly?" Colby asks, wiggling his eyebrows and leaning over to try and look at the phone's screen. Starling jerks away and presses the phone to her chest.

"NO!" It takes her a second to realize Colby hadn't actually said anything that would indicate he knew who she really was, and then another for her to comprehend the name he had actually said.

"Oh, come on, Amy, don't lie to me. You two are always texting all the time, and the only things that can make you chuckle like that are her jokes and other people's pain."

Starling can sort of remember Hartly from the few times she had interacted with the young woman. Her bright and bubbly, if a little creepy, attitude seemed like it would clash with Amy's in every single way. It was hard for her to imagine them having a single civil conversation, let alone being friends, but it could be an opposites-attract kind of situation. Starling looks over to Colby and realizes she needs to form a response, but with truly no grasp on Amy and Hartly's relationship, he has no idea how to.

Jake saves her by replying to Colby. "Their friends Colby, just because you've never had any doesn't mean Amy can't."

"Sure, friends," Colby says, making air quotes and shimmying back into his seat.

"Speak of the devil," Jake says. Starling turns her head to see Hartly skipping down the sidewalk. "Once these doors open, this conversation ends!" Jake pauses for a second "I should probably give her shotgun."

"No, I think Amy would love to be squished in the back seat with Hartly." Colby quips.

"Colby, zip it," Jake says, glaring at his brother for a split second before opening his door and greeting the young women skipping closer to them. Vic arrives as Hartly and Jake settle into their new seats.

"Are you excited for your first day of school, Colby?" Hartly asks happily."

"No." The young man responds, slumping into his seat.

"It's not as bad as people make it out to be." Hartly responds, her cheery attitude never fading despite the glumness that Colby is sending her way.

"It's much worse," Colby says, sliding down so far in his seat that his seatbelt looks like it's strangling him.

Hartly laughs, and Jake pulls Colby back into a proper seated position. "Just because mom isn't driving doesn't mean we can completely disregard safety," Jake says.

"Kill joy," Colby responds. The two continue to bicker and try to pull Starling into the argument occasionally, but she gives a simple response, and they stop trying after a couple failed attempts. Hartly too, attempts to engage her in conversation, Starling puts a little more effort into maintaining them, but they also die out after only a few minutes.

When her attention isn't being drawn away by the other occupants of the car, Starling is left to wonder about her current situation. Does Amy have a crush on Hartly? Colby seemed to be implying it with how he talked about the two. Starling was an only child, but that seemed like the kind of thing a younger brother would blow out of proportion to tease an older sister, so maybe he didn't fully believe it.

Jake had been very adamant about them not talking about it, and Starling couldn't tell if that was because he knew the claim was unfounded, knew Amy was embarrassed by it, or was worried about Hartly hearing them. Only minutes earlier, she had been wondering how Harlty and Amy could maintain a civil conversation, and now she was trying to figure out if they had crushes on each other.

That final thought makes Starling Pause. Colby had made it clear that he thought Amy had a crush on Hartly. But she had no indication if Hartly felt the same way about the other girl. Starling had no idea how she should act around the young women, and every piece of information she received seemed to be conflicting, confusing, or both.

Amy and Hartly talked and texted all the time, but their personalities were the complete opposite. Amy might have a crush on Hartly, but Starling had no idea how the young villain would go about expressing that if she even did. From what she had seen of Kraniac and Surge's relationship, villain romance seemed to be comprised of constantly making quips at the expense of the other in a way that made it look like they hated the other. Vic and Eva, on the other hand, seemed like they genuinely loved and cared for each other, and Starling couldn't tell which was an act and which was the truth or if it was a combination of both of them.

Whatever she and Jake had going on before the original disaster in the Junkyard was complicated beyond all measure and definitely would not mirror how Havoc/Amy would treat her own romantic relationships.

Starling is so caught up in her thoughts she barely notices when they arrive in the school parking lot. As everyone exits the car, Hartly begins walking toward Starling, and she panics. She has no idea how to talk with the civilian.

"Jake," Starling calls, desperate to get away from the other girl.

"Ya." he responds, turning to look at her as they walk into the school."

Starling is frozen for a second, trying to think of something to say. "Thanks for helping me with Colby." She finally manages to squeeze out.

"No problem. If you're willing to cover for my disastrous love life, I can help you out with yours." He smiles and walks off to his first class, leaving Starling stunned yet again. His sixteen small worlds had so much meaning packed into them Starling wasn't sure what to do with them. When he said 'his love life,' he was probably referring to what had happened between the two of them. Did he still have feelings for her? Did he regret it? How had Amy helped him 'cover'? Had she just not told their family, or was there something more? She was torn away from that line of thought as Hartly skipped up behind her.

"Ready for class, bestie?" She said energetically, linking their arms together.

"I actually have to grab something from my locker. You go ahead, though."

"Ok, see you there," Hartley says, skipping away. Did she ever just walk anywhere?"

Starling walks in the opposite direction of Hartly, only to realize she has no idea where Amy's locker is. She leans against the wall momentarily and ponders everything she has learned about Amy and Hartly. Jake had referred to it as Amy's love life which meant he definitely thought Amy had a crush on Hartly. Hartly had referred to her as 'Bestie,' which meant they really were just friends, but Starling didn't know if that was because Hartly had no feelings for the other girl or because they hadn't realized the other had feelings for them yet.

Starling sighed and pulled out her phone, deciding to just ask Amy what was going on. Instead, she found a new text from Amy that she hadn't noticed due to all the commotion since she last checked the phone.

AN:

A tiny bit of a cliffhanger, but I wanted something interesting to start the next chapter with, instead of having each one start with the characters waking up.

As always, I hope y'all liked the chapter, I was really looking forward to writing it, because I've had the Ideas for a few scenes in it swirling around my head since I started writing the fic (Their kind of what inspired me to start the fic in the first place). I'm not sure what my posting schedule will look like from here, but I'm really going to try and finish the fic.

I'm always open to feedback and constructive criticism.