BooksandStars

Hatchetfield is now a huge metropolis, but still on an island, which fucks immensely

It grew fast in the early 1900s after the U.S. government sponsored CCRP’s research into magic. Publicly, CCRP is a science/tech giant. Secretly, it’s contracted by PEIP to study the supernatural phenomena leaking into Hatchetfield. Of course it’s headquartered in Hatchetfield bc the barrier between reality and the Black and White is thinnest

CCRP’s current billion-dollar top-secret project is siphoning power from the Queen in White, Webby

During a junior-year field trip to CCRP, Steph gets mixed into a top-clearance Webby-summoning experiment that ends up permanently tying her to the Queen in White

And it is a weird tie, less “bestowed powers” and more “actual eldritch deity sharing Steph’s body and mind”

As Steph, she mostly feels Webby as a faint presence in the back of her mind, warning her of danger (or silently disapproving of her choices). To actually communicate, Webby has to take over.

Webby being in the driver’s seat stretches Steph’s body into this terrifying glowing form with extra eyes, thick weblike skin, and wayyy too much power. Steph can vaguely understand what’s happening around her, but she has no control.

Eventually, after a summer of trial and error, they work out a compromise: a halfway transformation where Steph stays mostly in control, keeps her face and voice, and gets access to the spider powers. Webby can still take over if Steph is about to die (or missteps on a rooftop, or swings from webbing at a bad angle, or is about to say some stupid shit). Steph ends up really liking Webby. Webby is kind and understanding about the whole “unwilling host of a permanent parasite” thing, so Steph is any ignoring long term implications of Webby in her mind.

Webby also explains what the Lords in Black are doing and their plans to widen the rift between realities through human sacrifice.

People can access the Lords’ powers through knowledge, desperation, or both. If they misuse that power and implode, it counts as a sacrifice. Anyone they kill also counts. If they’re stopped before they implode, the rift stays unchanged. Villains are dangerous when they’re wrecking the city and wracking up casualties, and then also on a larger scale they’re actively helping the Lords tear reality open.

Meanwhile, Grace Chasity finds the Black Book.

Grace is a good and devoted Christian, so she hates these ancient creatures. They are not gods, obviously, because there is only one True Lord. But if God put this book in her hands, then clearly He expects her to use these powers to carry out His will. Grace starts studying the Black Book carefully

Then Max Jagerman gets tied to Pokotho. Maybe it’s his hatred for nerds. Maybe something’s happening at home. But it transforms him into The Monster: stronger, crueler, nearly invulnerable, and absolutely thrilled by the power. And as The Monster, during another random destructive attack, he kills Ruth and Richie in front of Peter.

Authorities can’t do anything and no one cares, it's another casualty from a villain. 

Grace cares. She’s the only one that actually reaches out to Pete after their deaths. Pete expects platitudes of “they’re in a better place” or “Jesus would forgive their killer,” and is completely blindsided by Grace wishing death on all villains. Pete, grieving and furious, connects with that way more than he expected. Neither of them meant to become friends, but Grace is present and steady when Pete has no one, and Pete is willing to help Grace without treating her like a joke. Pete’s scientific mind and Grace’s Black Book knowledge turn into a long series of hypotheses and experiments about how villains access the Lords’ powers and how to stop them.

Meanwhile, Steph sneaks out to be Spiderwoman as much as possible outside of villain attacks. She tells Webby she’s doing patrols to keep Hatchetfield safe, which is technically true (plus Webby has access to her mind and the final say on power use, she could veto whenever she wants), but mostly she loves the freedom of flipping around the city and not being Steph Lauter, mayor’s daughter.

One night, she finds some nerd getting beaten bloody behind a restaurant and scares the bully off. She pulls the guy (oh my god it’s Micropeter! She hasn’t heard of him since middle school!) onto the rooftopsto make sure he doesn’t immediate medical help, they talk, and Steph finds him unfortunately funny. So Steph decides to hang out with him in person. Dorkass bowtie be damned.

She uses tutoring as an excuse, which is technically true because Spiderwomaning is destroying her grades. But they become actual friends. Studying turns into hanging out, hanging out turns into dinners, and suddenly Steph is spending more time at the Spankoffskis’ than her own house. She also warms up to Grace, even if Grace and Pete are the weirdest pair of friends alive. Steph truly cannot figure out what glues their friendship together, because they constantly bicker and seem to agree on almost nothing, but somehow they fit

The three of them also bond over being way too interested in Hatchetfield’s supernatural disasters. Steph knows it’s weird that she keeps such "close tabs" on Spiderwoman and the villains, but Pete and Grace are just as obsessed, so it’s nice to have people to talk tactics with. Grace doesn’t necessarily approve of Spiderwoman’s power source, but she can begrudgingly admit Spiderwoman is useful as long as villains are running around. Steph comes so close to spilling her secret so many times, but she holds back.

Pete and Grace keep researching the Black Book in secret, and their experiments and mini rituals keep getting stronger. They end up mostly pulling from T’noy Karaxis because (for reasons they don’t fully understand) his power responds best

Pete never asks Steph to homecoming, but Steph’s got plans with other friends. It’s no big deal. She is extremely pleased that he keeps asking if he’ll see her there, if she’d maybe possibly consider saving a dance for him on her extremely full dance card. She promises a dance.

Then Pete finds out The Monster’s identity.

Maxwell Jagerman. Max Jagerman, the asshole who made his and Ruth’s and Richie’s lives a living hell. Max Jagerman, who killed Ruth and Richie. Max Jagerman, who is living his best life, getting a full-ride football scholarship, nominated homecoming king, and getting away with everything under everyone’s noses. Pete goes to Grace with that knowledge, and she sees the fire in his eyes, and agrees he should attempt what they’ve been working up to in their experimentations, a summoning ritual, a bond to connect Pete to the powers, to take matters into their own hands

It works. Pete transforms into a horrific goat creature with a single-minded rage to destroy Max Jagerman. He tears into the stadium during the homecoming game and singles Max out. Max also transforms and the two tear apart the football field, wrecking havoc among the rioting panic of the fleeing crowd. 

Steph, who had been saving Pete and Grace seats in the bleachers, transforms to help get civilians out, shielding people from debris and trying to push the fight away from the crowd. By the time she joins the actual fight, The Monster and the new villain have practically torn each other apart. 

Webby is horrified and uncertain. She isn’t used to seeing two of her brothers’ pawns fight each other.

Then the goat creature kills The Monster. And then just… stops.

He doesn’t attack Spiderwoman. He doesn’t go after the city. He just slumps in the middle of the field. His form starts flickering, which means the connection to its Lord is unstable. Which means he is going to implode and Spiderwoman needs to take him out quickly.

Spiderwoman approaches carefully. She usually takes out a villain mid-fight, but a strange sense of guilt arises at the thought of having to do it here, without the heat of the battle backing her moral justice. 

Then, between flickers, she sees him. Peter.

She rushes forward, grabbing her catatonic friend by the shoulders, trying desperately to shake him out of the inevitable countdown of implosion. To understand why in the fuck her smart friend would do something so monumentally devastatingly stupid. A smile breaks through his bloodied and beaten face when he finally locks eyes with her, pained and satisfied in a way that looks familiar on his face but so wrong (it was the smug look of the boy who’d proven she could get a B on her math test, not a villain who’d just killed Max Jagerman in front of the entire school).