Mara Lee is just your regular teenage girl living a double life as New York's friendly neighborhood Spider-Woman. Until one fateful day when she's thrown through a strange orange portal and everything she's ever known changes drastically. Trapped in...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The sun had begun to set, sending a warm glow over the red-brick entry path to the school. Golden hour. My shadow was outlined against the ground; sullen, weak...
Defeated.
I kept replaying that scene over and over again. Deku jumping at me, fist raised... The split second I noticed that his hand wasn't angled toward me, but at the ceiling... Her webs wrapping around him as she tackled him out of the way...
She'd seen Deku's plan before I could. She'd known how to stop him when I couldn't. And she hadn't hesitated to take him down, despite their closeness.
She'd helped me again.
And that's what confused me the most. One minute she was yelling at me and threatening me. The next she was looking at me with those big blue eyes, brows crinkling in concern, hands raised like she wanted to protect me. Despite my frustration at her actions, despite my promise to myself that I didn't need her to help me, I couldn't help but wonder why? Why would she help me when she was at Deku's side?
My head spiked with pain, and I shook myself, trying to make sense of the mess in my mind. It was better just to go home, to train until my thoughts went numb. I couldn't deal with seeing anyone from school, couldn't handle their strength shoved in the face of my weakness.
"Kacchan!"
I stopped, my blood boiling at the sound of his voice. I turned my head slowly.
"What?"
Deku was running toward me, his arm wrapped in a sling. He looked frantic and jumpy as ever, but my focus was locked on the girl beside him. She was back in her school clothes, the top button of her blazer undone. Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail with a few rebellious strands slipping loose from the hair tie. But what caught my attention most was the angry redness of a burn curling down the back of her ears to her neck, disappearing under her uniform's collar.
I couldn't move.
I couldn't speak.
That burn was my fault.
I realized immediately how she had gotten it. That ponytail girl mentioned how she'd been following my fight with Deku. When I'd used the tank-
I'd been so focused on the damn nerd that I hadn't even noticed her! The explosion had been too big for her to avoid and she'd-
And she'd still helped me after I hurt her like that.
"Izuku, wait," she said quietly. "Let me talk to him first."
Deku gave her a nervous look. "Are you s-sure?"
"Yes. You can go wait over there. I'll call you if I need you." She smiled to reassure him, but I felt certain there was anger hiding behind it. She had to be boiling with rage. How could she not be after what I'd done to her?
