WHAT: Peter and Kamala run into each other, literally WHERE: Somewhere in the skyline of Vallo City WHEN: Backdated to August 2nd WARNINGS: Nah STATUS: Complete
When Kamala woke a day later, the fact that she’d world-hopped had slipped her mind until she pulled back the covers. No, she hadn’t fallen asleep on the couch again and had to hear her mother telling her to get up on a Saturday to get her homework done because she knew Kamala didn’t do it on a Friday. The entire room was completely unfamiliar until it came back into focus and she sat up straight, looking around for the hero of her dreams.
Yep, Carol Danvers was still there. She was still in a place called Vallo. Getting it into her head would take a while to process but it was time to explore, and Kamala had promised she’d be back before nightfall.
Technically, it wasn’t nightfall. It was still light out at the end of the day, when Kamala probably should have been tired but she was full of energy. She got her suit on with her mask and started climbing up into the sky, the light shining through the evening dusk all the way to one of the highest buildings in the area. This was… Vallo. So, it wasn’t Manhattan across the river from Jersey City, but it had its own beauty and from the amount that Kamala was looking at now (the forest, the various buildings, New Asgard somewhere there too) was enough to tell her she had to keep going.
And so, Kamala kept going, climbing a little higher. The streetlamps weren’t on yet and there was still plenty of light so she could spend more time around in the skies.
Four months, Spider-Man had been swinging through the streets of Vallo, and in that four months, he hadn’t done a lot. There was the occasional robbery, the occasional mugging, and one multi-day attack from killer dessert, but Vallo had a surprisingly (or not so surprising, maybe) high ratio of super-powered heroes to civilians, and so most of the time, when he heard of a crime, by the time he got there it had already been taken care of by someone else. So most of his time was spent rescuing kittens from trees, or helping little old ladies with their groceries, or whatever else he could do to help when he saw someone who might need a hand.
He probably shouldn’t complain about it being boring. Boring was good. Boring meant that people weren’t dying, or getting hurt. But before he’d fallen through whatever multi-dimensional portal that had led him to Vallo, he’d pretty much given up his identity as Peter Parker and was doing Spider-Man full-time. He’d study for his GED, he’d get a job so he could pay for his rent and maybe eat something once in a while, and the rest of his time would be spent as New York’s Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man.
Things were different here. There wasn’t a need for a full-time, web-slinging crimestopper. People from home hadn’t forgotten who he was, and people who weren’t from home knew who Peter Parker was. He had friends, and while Stephen and Wanda could never take Aunt May or Uncle Ben’s place, they’d become sort of like family for him. He had his dream job, working at Stark Industries with Tony Stark (not his Tony Stark, but different one and one who didn’t seem to think that Peter would break everything he touched, though to be fair the other Tony Stark hadn’t been entirely wrong).
There was even MJ.
MJ was probably the reason he was out here swinging around. Web-swinging helped clear his head. He did some of his best thinking fifty feet above the ground, swinging from building to building.
He’d decided that he wasn’t going to tell MJ who he was. He was going to keep his distance from her, and she would go off to Boston, and she would be safe. Safe from his enemies, and safe from his reputation, and she was going to go on to MIT and she’d probably graduate with honours and become some big shot in her field, and Peter would have only ever held her back from that.
But then she’d shown up in Vallo, and he couldn’t keep away from her. He visited her at Taurbucks, he’d invited her to Stephen and Wanda’s wedding, he liked spending time with her and couldn’t make himself stop. Which meant that sooner or later, he was going to have to tell her that he was Spider-Man.
And she was going to be pissed when he told her, especially when he told her he’d promised to tell her back on the Statue of Liberty.
He was caught up enough in his thoughts that he wasn’t paying any attention at all to his surroundings – sure, there was the occasional flying car to dodge, but they were big and his Tingle usually warned him when he was about to be hit.
His Tingle did not warn him when he was about to do the hitting. He noticed the girl on the floating brick of light too late to dodge neatly, but he managed to shout “Look out!” and twist in the air, changing his momentum enough that he managed to avoid a head-on collision and instead managed to only lightly clip the corner of her… glow rock or whatever.
The thing with Kamala’s powers was that she was still fairly new to it. So while she could hold up a good strong barrier with her powers if she put her mind to it, the steps she took were temporary and didn’t require much thought. Which meant they were also pretty fragile.
She hadn’t expected anyone to be up here with her just yet, maybe someone like Captain America because she’d seen him on the network. Maybe Carol Danvers was flying around too, But the voice didn’t sound like either one and Kamala barely had time to register who it came from when she felt herself drop, her ground in the sky scattering into several smaller pieces and flying off.
Before the ground could reach up and hit her extra hard, she put out her hands, forming a platform for herself and catching her body in time. When she was sure the thing wasn’t going to break again on her, she eased onto her side and looked up at the person responsible for breaking the first platform.
Peter twisted in the air, shooting a string of webbing toward the nearest building, and another one toward the girl that was now falling; it stuck to the back of her shirt a second after she slammed into another one of those light platforms, and Peter sighed in relief, dropping that bit of web and swinging over to the building, where he stuck, hands and feet. The platform had seemed solid enough when he’d clipped into the other one, but he didn’t know how strong they were, and wasn’t about to risk landing on her new one.
“Sorry! Sorry about that!” he called, standing up – or standing sideways, rather: he was standing perpendicular to the building. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Should I bring you to the clinic? They can get you fixed up if you broke anything.”
Kamala had to pause and readjust her mask. Not that it was really in the way or anything but she had to be sure she was looking at SPIDER-MAN?! So Carol wasn’t kidding when she had said there were many of them here but she hadn’t expected him. She should have expected him. But it’s not like he had come into her entry and said “Hi, Spider-Man here”.
“I’m fine,” she started saying, getting to her feet slowly. It seemed that since she’d gotten her powers, she had considerably more falls especially during training but not as much as far as getting banged up went. Though it was hard to tell how durable she was now in comparison to before being a superhero because she, thankfully, was not getting beaten up daily or anything like that.
“Wow, you’re really here, aren’t you?” Kamala smiled, finally steady on her feet and exactly at ninety degrees to how Spider-Man was standing. “I… don’t you usually sense when something is in your way?”
Peter let out a sigh of relief when she got to her feet. It sure didn’t look like she’d gotten hurt, at least, not any more than a bruise or two.
“In the spandex,” Peter said, in the same tone that someone might have said ‘in the flesh.’ He blinked behind his mask – the eyes in his mask, being made only of a special glass, did not move. He was pretty sure there was information about his Tingle out there, but he didn’t think too many people knew about it. It wasn’t as flashy as his other powers, and he didn’t think the every day news-listener would know about it. “Wow, you really know your Spidey facts, don’t you? But it really only works if I’m in danger. If you had come flying at me out of nowhere, it probably would have gone off, but not the other way around.”
At least, he was pretty sure it would have gone off if she’d been flying toward him, but he didn’t always know how it worked himself.
“Well, you know. Scott Lang talks a lot on his podcast!” She brought up her fingers at him as she shrugged. She had just… finger-gunned Spidey! Kamala dropped her hands right away after that.
“I highly doubt someone who is just starting out like me would be much danger to anyone, actually. My powers are probably not as sturdy as your… webs?”
“Scott –” Peter started, and then stopped. He’d spent a lot of time swinging through Vallo City, but hadn’t yet run into this girl with light powers, who was, apparently, from his own world, and wearing an outfit that reminded him a little of Carol’s. Kamala was also new in town, from his world, living with Carol (and apparently her biggest fan), and also listened to Scott Lang’s podcast.
Peter liked to think of himself as pretty smart, on occasion, but he was pretty sure you didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to solve this mystery. Still, it was probably better not to out her immediately.
“Oh yeah, me and Scott, we go way back,” Peter said, finger-gunning right back. It wasn’t really true – he’d met the guy all of twice, once at a massive battle and another time at a funeral – but he seemed like a funny kind of guy.
“My webs are pretty sturdy,” he said, resisting the urge to break into a soliloquy about their chemical make-up and properties. “But your… light blocks? Is that what those are? Light shelves? Those look pretty sturdy too. And they just float in mid-air. My webs definitely don’t do that.”
Kamala took the chance and hopped a little closer making herself a newer platform with each step as she got closer. Thankfully, they all held firm but that’s because there wasn’t a Spider-Man running right into them. “They’re light. Noor, in particular. Which, I guess… yeah, it translates to light from Urdu. I don’t know too much about it? I’m still, uh, kind of new to this superheroing thing.”
“Hey, everyone starts somewhere,” Peter said. “And sometimes it takes a long time for us to learn about the limits of our powers and what all we can do with them.” He started to reach out a hand, and then stopped. “Can I touch it?” he asked. “That’s not going to make it disappear or explode or something, is it?”
“Oh, yeah!” Kamala made herself another platform to sit down on and then raised up her hand, forming a hard light into her hand. The crystal-like object glowed the same blueish purple hue as did her seat and “floor” in the sky. “It won’t disappear or break if I’m paying close attention to it. I had the DODC firing at me and a friend and I put up a shield to stop them. It was, uh, not the strongest, but it kept up. I’m still learning.”
“The DODC? The Department of Damage Control?” Peter asked. Kamala had mentioned that they’d had their asses handed to them, but he hadn’t realized they’d been shooting at people. What on Earth was going on back home?
He pulled his glove off and carefully touched it. It felt a little like rockcandy, he thought, and when he tried to pull it toward him, even with all his strength, it didn’t budge.
“This is amazing,” Peter said. “It’s as if you’ve taken the light and have turned them into particles in truth, like they’re always under observation. This could explain the particle-wave duality of matter. Do you realize what this means for quantum mechanics? Does this prove or disprove the Von Neumann-Wigner interpretation of double-slit experiment, do you think?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He hopped off the side of the wall, sticking to the ball of light with his finger tips, looked down to where his feet were dangling fifty-feet above the ground, and then back at the light. He laughed. “This is so cool.”
All of that just went over Kamala’s head. This was Bruno’s area of expertise, definitely not hers. Oh, yeah he would definitely get along with Spidey if he was here, maybe even watch them geek out together. And Kamala couldn’t help the touched little smile as she watched Spider-Man’s fascination with it. She had something that amazed the Spider-Man! How cool was that?!
Watching him hang off of her light though suddenly set off a light within her own head. “Hey. You know? It would be super cool if I was like, to throw out a light high enough and strong enough for you to grab onto with your webs and all!”
Before he could speak, she had already made up her mind and was standing up, pulling her mask down to her neck, and then holding out a hand for him. “Okay, official introduction? I’m Kamala. I’m from Jersey City. Just got here super recently. I’m going by the moniker Ms. Marvel. Dad’s idea!”
Peter knew he shouldn't be – Vallo was different from Earth and enough people knew his secret identity by now that he could hardly consider it secret anymore – but he was still wary of revealing himself. Still, fair was fair, so with the hand that wasn't hanging from a chunk of solidified light, he pulled his mask up to let it rest on his hair like a beanie.
"Peter Parker, from Queens," Peter said with a grin, extending his hand out to her. "And yes, let's get our experimentation on! I'd love to see what you can do with these powers of yours!"
Kamala’s eyes widened. “You!” Her distraction wavered and the light orb scattered but she immediately threw out her hands to form one underneath his feet. “Oh, no, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. See? Still working on it!”
She collected herself enough though to return his grin. “Okay, well, it is wicked cool to meet you officially! If you got time now, we can start! I’d just have to send a text to Carol to let her know where I am. And who I’m with. And speaking of, can I have a selfie?? To keep for myself and also send to Carol so she knows?”
Peter landed hard, neither expecting to fall or for the ground to be that close underneath him when he did, but he wasn’t hurt. After the initial shock wore off, he grinned and tapped the light block with his foot.
“Hey, you seem to be pretty good at it,” he said. “And yeah, absolutely we can test it now. I was just going to swing around for the next few hours anyway.” He bounced on the balls of his feet, glanced at the light block Kamala currently had her feet on, and then jumped easily up to it, hoping that it would hold under their combined weight but not seeing why it wouldn’t, and if it disappeared beneath them, it was probably good to get Kamala used to the unexpected anyway.
“And yeah, selfie’s are fine. Carol seems like she’d be pretty chill, but I bet she appreciates you checking in anyway.”
Kamala usually only lost the structural hold if she got too distracted. Bumped into at a train station or the bangle decides to give her a vision while she was in the middle of rescuing a falling kid. So rude.
But Peter hopping on did not count and it stayed where it was. Maybe she really was getting better at this!
“Okay, sweet! Also?” She scrambled to get her phone out of her pocket. “If my best friends show up here, I deserve the right to show them this picture! They’re trustworthy, don’t worry.”
Peter thought about it for a moment, but really, chances are her best friend would find out one way or another, the way things were here in Vallo, so there didn’t seem to be any harm in it. “Alright, deal,” he said, and posed for the selfie – head tilted toward Kamala’s, big grin, two fingers up in a peace sign. “So, shall we get this experiment on the road?”