Summary:Immediately following the events of 'Spider-Hunt 3', Spider-Girl calls for the help of Angel to heal her wounded grandmother… and herself. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
Related LogsTheme SongNone |
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«Angel. Angel, please respond, it's Spider-Girl. I need you, it's an emergency.»
The message is sent over the Spider-Comm, but it's sent to Thea directly, privately. It's a voice message, and the tone in Spider-Girl's voice can only be described as haunted. An address is affixed to the message, a location in East Harlem (also known to many as Spanish Harlem).
Upon arrival, Thea will find something that resembles a disaster zone. A huge hole has been blown into the street outside of the mid rise, roped off by police and firefighters, because the hole has been opened directly into one of the city's main sewer lines.
The stench is unbearable.
The apartment building itself has two holes blown right into the wall upon the eighth floor, not far from each other, with debris on the ground beneath and damage to the street. Spider-Girl's signal is coming from the eighth floor, an apartment opposite the side of the building that has been damaged.
The voice had given her pause. « All right. I'm coming.» Thea had responded quickly, without more than a mere second's hesitation. She had grabbed the backpack she'd had packed since the last time she'd had to heal Peter on a parking garage. Dark hair is braided back quickly, and not for the first time, Thea wishes she had a spider rig. But she recently made a purchase that makes no need for a cab or an Uber, much less the subway.
The engine of the motorcycle cuts off not far from Anya's building, and Thea finds a way into the building away from the smell. It's a good thing she can make herself breathe and not smell it. Yay powers.
Thea will be intercepted by police, but once she provides her SHIELD ID, there won't be any trouble entering the building. The eighth floor hallway has police and EMT's scattered around here and there, speaking with various residents; the apartment where there are holes in the outer wall seems to have had its door blown clean off its hinges. Police tape is across the open door, and a crime scene investigator is there, snapping photos.
Spider-Girl's signal, however, has her pinned on the other side of the building. The young woman is masked up, arms across her chest, and is pacing back and forth from one edge of the hallway to the other, lips pulled into a heavy frown.
Thea will make her way past all the insanity, drawing closer to Anya, reaching out with her powers. She will glance back over her shoulder to make sure no one is paying attention before she approaches. « I'm here. » She doesn't want to startle Anya any.
Anya is weak. Her first encounter with Morlun involved the monster siphoning nearly all of the life from her; had it not been for her enhanced physiology, Anya would be dead right now.
When she hears Thea's voice, Spider-Girl turns to look down the hallway, trying to find her. Once her eyes fall upon the woman, she picks up and walks toward her, and doesn't stop when she gets close. She grasps Thea and pulls her into a hug, and doesn't seem to be ready to let go any time soon.
"Angel. Gracias a Dios," she whispers, and her entire frame shudders. Her body is running on sheer adrenaline and enhanced physiology, operating on a sense of total overdrive, but if she doesn't settle down or get some help soon, she's going to crash. Given what Morlun did to her, that could be dangerous.
There are also strong endorphins running through her body, typically associated with someone going through intense and strong emotions.
There is a faint 'erp' at being hugged, then she is hugging back tightly. She's already boosting Anya's energy, balancing her chemicals more. "Easy, tiger." She says softly. "Deep breaths." Thea is in big sister, almost mothering mode.
She will rub a hand along Anya's back, before she pulls her head back. "You look sound enough, so what's the emergency?"
Anya can already tell that her body is regulating, but she's still a little shaky. She's in such a state of overdrive that the changes won't set in immediately, but certainly they will come far faster than without Thea's help. She finally takes a step away, with tears dampening the mask around her eyes. "It's mi Abuela," she says, using the Spanish term for her grandmother. "Morlun. She's… she's breathing, but she won't wake up."
Turning, Spider-Girl leads Thea back to the apartment at the end of the hall opposite where the crime tape is located. It's currently occupied by a tenant named Angelica Renardo, but she's not the only one inside the one-bedroom apartment right now. An old Mexican-American woman is lying on the couch, presumably Anya's grandmother, and there are two teenage boys huddled up in the corner together, their faces stained with tears. A police officer is nearby to them, but he's not well suited for consoling traumatized young men.
"Morlun." It's a whisper, and Anya will see anger in Thea's eyes, though it reflects no where else. She lets Anya lead her into the apartment, before she glances around. She unslings her backpack, before she's moving to kneel next to the couch. She will look at the police officer, before a glance at Anya. "Start rubbing her feet. I know it sounds weird, but it can help. " It will also give Anya something to /do/, which is more important.
Thea will lay one hand on the shoulder of the old woman, closing her eyes to let her powers 'feel' what's the worst and how to direct her power best.
Were it not for Spider-Girl's mask, Thea would have seen the same anger in Anya's eyes. She, however, will be able to feel it in Anya's body. The rush of endorphins, the flood of emotion, the sheer hatred that suddenly fills her blood. It's fresh, raw, something that wasn't there before.
When the two enter the apartment, the two teenage boys turn and look to each other, suddenly seeming excited. One of them makes to stand up, but the other one grabs his brother by the arm and pushes him back onto his rump, shushing him quietly. By the look of them, they might be related to Spider-Girl, and her comatose grandmother.
At the recommendation, the cloud surrounding Anya is suddenly broken. She breaks into a nervous laugh, and crouches down by the old woman's legs. "«This one's on me, Grandma,»" she says in Spanish, and removes the woman's slippers to begin rubbing her feet. How many times she's done this and loathed every minute of it; now, it's the only thing she wants to do.
Teresa Martinez is her name, Anya's maternal grandmother. She's suffering from a severe case of shock, which has pushed her body into a coma. When she lost consciousness, she fell and bruised her hip bone, an extremely dangerous fall for a woman of her age.
There's a deep breath in and out. After Peter's injuries, this is a walk in the park. Eyes open to look up at the other woman in the apartment. "Do you have any juice? When I get her roused, she will need sugar, and then protein, to deal with the shock." Thea could cure it, but there are some things that are just better to let the body handle. Not only that, but it gives the people around something productive, and people feel better after eating and drinking.
Angelica, who is paying close attention to all of this, nods her head hurriedly, and goes to collect a few things. Apple juice, leftover carne asada, which she promptly throws into a microwave oven to begin cooking.
Meanwhile, one of the teenage boys, Arturo, leaves his brother and walks over to crouch down beside Spider-Girl. "«You don't want us to tell anyone, do you?»" he asks her in Spanish.
Spider-Girl turns to look at the young man, and sighs. "Si," she says. "«I'm sorry, Arturo, but you've got to keep this a secret. I never wanted any of you to know.»"
Arturo looks upset, and looks from his masked cousin to Thea, then to their grandmother, and back to Anya. "Que?"
"«We'll talk about it later, okay?»" Anya turns to look back at her grandmother, all while rubbing her feet. Her mouth is still torn into that horrible frown. Something bad happened here… judging by her mood, Teresa's shock, and the way the teenage brothers are behaving… something has happened that none of them are talking about.
Thea glances at the teen, giving him a wink of conspiracy. If she knows Spanish, she doesn't act like she does. (She knows a little) She closes her eyes, and starts at the hip, repairing tissues and strengthening the bone a bit. She will start to balance the old woman's internal chemicals and rhythms.
Anya turns her attention from her grandmother to Thea. For a few moments she remains quiet, not wanting to distract her from her work, but then she remembers the operation they were on with SHIELD, when she repaired Anya's broken arm. "How bad is it?" she asks.
There's a twitch of Thea's mouth, a lazy smile before she opens her eyes to look at Anya, almost looking daydreamy. "It's not bad at all. Some bruising around the hip pretty bad, and I'm strengthening the joint to help her out there. Shock, but there's not a lot of real physical trauma. Of course, at her age, she doesn't need a lot to need help.
"Yeah, that's why I called," Anya tells her, but the words sound a little stupid when they come out of her mouth. She shakes her head and scowls. "I mean, I need it do. Spider-Woman too. We've all gotten the shit kicked out of us."
The teenagers aren't bothered by the vulgarity. After all, they're used to it.
Teresa begins to stir, a sign that Thea's work is, in fact, working. "We need to regroup," she says with some urgency, "figure out how the hell to stop this guy."
"I told …our mutual friend, that I want to help. Just get me near the guy." That anger is back, a hardness in Thea's face, distorting her pretty features. "I'll come when we can get everyone together. "
That anger is seen, and it's felt, in a deeper way than Anya could have ever expected. Her lips form into a frown again, and her hands stop working on her grandmother's feet for a moment.
"Can you bring back the dead?" she asks, bluntly. "I don't care if it's a dumb question, it's something I need to know."
Thea sputters at that, blinking at Anya and in silence a moment. "I.. no. Think of me as Miracle Max. Mostly dead, yes." There's a hint of a smile. "Once the electrical activity in the body stops completely, there's nothing for me to work with. And actually, no one's ever asked me that before."
"He killed my uncle."
Anya doesn't want to talk about this while her grandmother is awake. She doesn't want to talk about it all, but she has to provide a reason for why she asked Thea that question. The worrisome part is… she doesn't sound like a twenty-one year old young woman anymore. There is a numbness to her words, but beneath it, like lava boiling beneath the thin shell of obsidian, there is unbridled anger that is beginning to temper. What it tempers into, only time will tell.
"She saw it," she says quietly, nodding her head to the old woman under Thea's care. "And so did they." She doesn't reference her teenage cousins, but her words are spoken quietly enough that they shouldn't be able to hear.
"We've got to regroup. You need to get Spider-Woman back in working order. Then we have to find out how to stop him." She shakes her head, lips drawn into a thin line. "We have to stop him," she repeats, but the tone of her voice suggests a finality that might make some people uncomfortable.
Thea wouldn't have asked why, it seems a reasonable question, especially if someone had seen the shape Peter was in before Thea got to him, and after. There's a softness, an understanding. "I'm sorry. I wish I could." The fact is, most of the time Thea is glad she can't. That's a whole other level of responsibility.
The healer looks at the older woman, then at the young men. "Sadly, I can't do anything for that sort of trauma. I'm sure there are some who could."
That finality in her tone makes Thea give a vicious looking smile. "Oh, I plan on stopping him for good. If he has a heart, I'm going to make it explode in his chest." She whispers, before the abuela is opening her eyes. "But for now, I will leave you with your family. You need each other now."
"No." Anya reaches out to grasp Thea's arm, shaking her head. "No, they don't need me. They need SHIELD. Protective custody." Her words make sense. If Morlun came here, targeted her, used her as bait, and murdered her uncle? None of them are safe. "I need you to make this happen, Angel. Grandma, the boys. Their mother and sister are in San Diego. Them too. I'm not strong enough to kill him myself."
Lord knows she's tried.
"But I will help you do it, so help me."
Thea pauses, staring. "I can't do that myself. I can only try. Morlun has to be on their radar by now." She looks at the boys in the corner, a deep breath in that she manages to not sigh out. "But right now, be here with them. I'll go make calls, okay?" She will get to her feet.
Spider-Girl nods her head, slowly. "Okay," she says, and then shifts places with Thea to sit by her grandmother's side. The ice in her heard softens for a moment, and she looks up to the woman with a thankful expression on what can be seen of her face. "Thank you," she says, in a heartfelt way.
She knows people, herself. There are some calls she can make, as well.