A/N: Thanks for the follows and reviews! They really help keep me motivated.
It is a lot of fun mixing and matching Marvel characters with my own.
Chapter Two
"Nice job," said the girl in the booth next to Carly after they presented Carly with a "3rd Best Use of Display Materials" ribbon.
Great. A ribbon for the nice-looking charts. Woo. Her power was good for something: making a flowery display. Carly suspected someone must have felt sorry for her, being one of the few women who'd entered the fair. Some suit mentioned after looking at her petal-display that she might have a career in Marketing, and that she should think about Business School when she graduated, a much better career for a young woman than Science.
Huh? It was all Carly could do to stop herself from strangling the dude with her plants. There was no reason women couldn't be just as good or even better than men at Science. Next year she vowed to do a real project with real research, just to show them. And she'd take her display seriously too…no more frilly flowers
"Thanks," said Carly, eyeing the girl and her reams of charts and computer algorithms. It was the end of a long day and Carly just wanted to leave.
"Ginger," said the girl, holding out her hands. Ginger had a ginger look, red curly hair, freckles, pasty complexion. Thick glasses. But a nice figure, tasteful clothes.
"Carly." They shook.
"What I don't get about your work is that you never identify the agent."
"Agent?"
"The thing that makes your plants grow unnaturally. You claim that you isolated it in a syringe. So…what is it?"
Curses. Not a single sighting of Lance, and now Nosy Nellie was asking questions that Carly didn't really want to answer. Or couldn't. Like she knew what her power was. Like she even knew what made a car run or a computer computerate. "Whatever it is, it's powerful."
"So you didn't take it to a lab, isolate it, chemically analyze it?"
"I just catch it and measure its effect. I'll let the squints figure out that sciencey stuff."
"Ah. So much for Real Science, I guess. How do you 'catch it,' exactly? That's not explained here, either." Ginger peered over the charts.
Carly squirmed. What the hell? None of the judges asked these questions. Ginger eyed her with some kind of accusation in her eyes.
"I just gather the affected material and extracted it."
"How?"
Carly looked away. Girl was on it. Actual smart. Science-smart. A squint. Glasses were the giveaway. "Okay, well, I didn't extract it myself. I just acquired it." Well, that was close to the truth.
"And how did you do that?"
Carly smiled and shrugged. "I can't reveal my sources."
Ginger stepped close, eyeing Carly through her glasses. "So how do you know that it's legit, that it's really the same thing as what destroyed D.C? It could be anything."
Holy carp! "It is, okay?"
Ginger shook her head. "Listen. I'm not going to tell you how to do these science fairs, and it's probably a good thing you weren't a finalist. But if you want to get into research or get a scholarship, you're going to have to do a lot better. You can't just throw random flowers up there and call it Science."
If Carly even knew the first thing about her power, where it came from, how it was put inside her… "I know. I'm just trying to understand what happened. This is the first time I've ever done anything like this.
Big sneer. "Oh, don't give me that. Do the actual research. Maybe someday you'll learn something." Ginger turned away, busying herself with dismantling her displays.
Peter nudged her. "I think, yeah. Ginger has a point. We're here to learn."
"What did you learn about all those icky spiders?"
Peter stood straight. "They're not icky. " He put a hand on an aquarium. "Pound for pound, they're the strongest creatures on the planet. Throw in radiation, and they go beyond that. I learned that they don't talk, and that if I want to find out what radiation does to them, I'm going to have to do the experiments."
Carly sighed. They were right. Annoying, but right. Carly didn't just want to be some flower for Hydra, some plastic rose they stick in a vase. She had to find out what was done to her. No one was going to just tell her what she was. She'd have to do the work and find out herself.
After she found Lance, of course, who'd been mysteriously absent from his own house. Now it was tear-down time and still no sign of him anywhere.
Sigh.