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Chapter Zero ——— Aftershock
Olivia Baxter's body hit the pavement in the alleyway on the Fourth of July. Even on such a holiday that meant to be joyous brought blood splattered out of the wound in which the robber had shot her. Vanessa's hands pressed against the wound, the liquid squirming out between her fingers and running down Olivia's cashmere shirt. That night, Vanessa had blamed her other sister Rachel for such a disaster since she spooked him with the electricity that sparked in her palms. Even with special abilities to be used for good, the ended up being a curse.
Her screams were inaudible. She promised her older sister that was bleeding out in the alleyway that she wouldn't die and everything would be okay. She yelled at Rachel to get help and the older sister fled towards the beachfront for someone. The fireworks exploded in the sky behind them as she pressed harder on her chest.
As children, Vanessa and her sister had be blessed ( as their mother called it ) with something disastrous. Vanessa had the ability to control anything with her mind, create a firecracker of energy from her fingers and levitate off the ground. Rachel had used her electrokinesis for bad things like stealing and causing power outages in the neighborhood. Rachel was destructive and often picked on the young Vanessa in a scary matter.
But as the night progressed and hours in the hospital with blood stained hands and dirty rain water pants, Olivia Baxter was unable to be saved. Few weeks after her older sister's death, Rachel disappeared into thin air. So did her mother and step father for they were all gone, leaving Vanessa to live with her grandmother.
Three years later, Olivia had been dead for three and thunder struck the air. It rained hard, almost like falling bullets from the sky and blue hues of energy struck the air. Her grandmother didn't know about her abilities but before she could check on Vanessa, she already hopped out the window of their New York apartment, feet splashing in the puddles. This wasn't some random storm, something about it had been much different from the others in the past week. Running, the rain water flooded onto her jeans and soaked through her jacket.
Vanessa was no hero. She didn't label herself as a person that's saves others. I mean, she was only fifteen and her identity was private and the only way to make it like that was to flow through the shadows. There had been weapons flooding the streets and not just any weapons — large guns that shocked blue electricity and tore down buildings and attacked the streets of Queens. This culprit was most likely the one causing the storms.
Vanessa felt her chest tighten — a signal that something dangerous was near, like some sort of super senses. Her ears perked up to the sounds of voices and hiding behind a corner, there was a truck with men loading boxes inside and a woman with a white and blue one piece standing beside them, ordering them to move the boxes. She had curly locks of hair, a cape to match like she was some sort of comic book character and when she yelled, stomping her food, the thunder crackled in the sky, her hands surrounded with blue sparkling energy.
"Hey!" Vanessa screamed, stupid move. The woman turned around and it happened to be a familiar face.
Rachel.
She had disappeared, everyone thought she died. How could this be? Why was she —? Vanessa's eyes widened and running towards her with her hands sparkling purple, Rachel had a menacingly smirk across her lips. "What a pleasant surprise."
She pointed her hands toward her, blasting a large lightning bolt at her. Luckily, Vanessa knew how to activate her force fields and she flew back, hitting her back on a dumpster. She groaned in pain and the truck drove off, Rachel coming at her with her eyes glowing white. "You shouldn't have came!" She struck her electricity again. Vanessa blocked it but another bolt struck, hitting her solider and singeing it.
"Rach! —" Rachel had retorted, screaming that wasn't her name and another bolt launched from the sky and landing onto the pavement, sending her flying back. Vanessa was quick enough to shoot a energy bolt of her own, sending her backwards. Even after minutes of intense fighting, Vanessa had given up, letting her sister escape in thin air. What had she missed? Her sister disappeared for a year and now she was some supervillain that she let get away.
But that had been the last time Vanessa played hero. She was no hero, just a person with unordinary abilities.
SOMETHING SURGED into Vanessa once she watched her sister being thrown into the back a large van, hands pinned to her back with hand cuffs. Her ribs had been aching, bruises forming on the skin that resided under her homemade suit she created from fabrics in the storage closet of her apartment but had been covered with a jacket and black jeans.
She wish she had something better than a dead sister, a would-be-world-conquer sister, and a mother that disappeared years ago. Her teeth sunk into the skin of her bottom lip, holding her tears back as the police van drove away. Her skin had been marked with bruises from being beaten up by her older sister after a fight that would've killed her.
Her feet kicked back and forth on the rooftop of the building, prepping herself to stand on her feet.
She felt something scare her, chest tightening again and she turned to see a figure dressed in a outfit with read and blue colors and a mask covering the features of his face. "Hey! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you —"
Vanessa shook her head, throat running dry.
"Maybe I could swing you down? How did you get up here?" He chuckled.
Vanessa was no stranger to the red and blue hero. If you live in New York, you'd know he was Spider-Man — the hero that shoots webs from his wrist. Luckily, he wasn't in the way of Vanessa taking down her sister — she didn't want anyone else to get hurt, not like the way she did.
"Fire escape. And sure." Her voice spilled from her mouth hoarse.
Circling his arm around her waist, he quickly warned her of the trip off the building. She could've simply just walked down the flight of stairs, hop off and using her powers to land gently but she didn't, her body couldn't carry her much longer from the fight she endured with Aftershock.
Quickly, she was on the ground, feet flat onto the concrete. She tossed her head of curls back as she tucked her hands behind her back, forgetting that she had a bandanna covering the bottom of her mouth. "I'm not going to question what you're wearing." He scanned her small figure and noticing she was wearing an all black outfit with her hair pulled into a ponytail with a bandanna covering her face. "I-I went to a costume party."
"Who are you dressed as?"
She licked her lips under her makeshift mask. "A robber. My friend was a cop, like cops and robbers."
Spider-Man nodded. He seemed suspicious as Vanessa was dressed like a robber at night. "Right," he said very unsurely.
"Anyway," she broke the silence, feeling her body starting to collapse. "Thanks for the swing?"
"Anytime."
She spun on her heel to leave towards her apartment. She awkwardly waved back as she skipped down the street. "Bye Spider-Man."
Then they were gone.
EDITED, 8.9.21 & 1.19.22 this was trash lol but peter and vanessa secretly met???
