#d:mj

For whatever reason, the whole ‘invisible demons taking over New York, which, hey, was no longer on Earth’ development didn’t phase Daisy as much as it might have a few years ago. At a certain point, she figured, you saw so much weird shit that weird became normal. It was unavoidable, and she’d known it would happen eventually, but it did seem to be happening kind of fast. She figured she’d have at least another couple of months before invisible demons seemed like commonplace! 

Regardless, the demons felt more like an annoyance than anything else, and Daisy was sort of rolling with the punches. That was, of course, until they interrupted her lunch date. That was when she started getting a little pissed. “This is so unfair,” she announced, tossing MJ an utterly disgruntled expression. “They were just about to bring us our sushi. I could see it! It looked incredible! Do you think the demons’ll pay us back?” They were currently ducked behind a fallen table, giving Daisy time to tug her gauntlets onto her wrists. It was lucky she never left home without them these days!

It was hard not to be worried about her friends, with everything going on. Somehow, pretty much everyone Gwen cared about had been hit with whatever the hell this was, from Wanda suddenly catching fire to Pietro moving slowly to Peter hearing everything all at once. It was terrifying, and Gwen was no less afraid than the rest of them. She might have even been a little more nervous about the whole thing; she couldn’t say for sure.

Still, she refused to show her fear. Her dad always warned her against fear. If you let it control you, you’d lose any fight before you started it. If you let it stand in your way, you were no good to anyone. And right now? Right now, Gwen desperately needed to be good to everyone. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and the memory of Peter’s head in her lap as he died remained at the forefront of her mind. She’d been afraid back then, too; she’d been terrified, and she’d let herself lose control of her abilities for a single second. That was all it had taken back then. A single second of letting fear be the boss was the only thing that had stood between Gwen Stacy and the ruination of her own life. It had been the only thing separating Peter Parker from an untimely death. She wasn’t about to give it a chance to do the same thing now.

So when she approached MJ’s room with two mugs of tea in her hands, she didn’t let the fear show on her face. She replaced it with a smile instead, nudging the door open with her foot as she walked inside. “Hey, tiger,” she greeted, keeping her voice cheerful. “Want some tea?”

Okay, so, things didn’t look great. That wasn’t exactly rare. If Clint went back on his life and tried to count the number of times he’d gotten into some seriously shitty situation, he was pretty sure he’d lose track somewhere in the triple digits, but most of the time, he at least had the good sense to get into trouble alone. Tonight, apparently, all sense was gone.

“So, uh,” he started, glancing over to where MJ stood next to him. Like him, she had her hands raised above her head, and she was eyeing the cop in front of them with an incredibly unhappy expression. “I might’ve fucked up a little bit.” It wasn’t his fault, really; with everything going on, Clint hadn’t figured the cops were actually out to arrest people for something as simple as breaking curfew. For Christ’s sake, there were demons in the streets! Being out after ten didn’t seem so bad, did it?

Pregnant. The word had been bouncing around in Johnny’s mind ever since Wanda told him and, truthfully, he couldn’t think of much else. They were still trying to come to a decision, still trying to figure out what to do, what this meant, and Johnny’s mind was buzzing with the gravity of it all. When he had big decisions like this, when he was left with a choice and a clock, there were three general places he wound up going to. He had the Baxter Building, where he could talk it over with his family, he had Peter’s, and he had MJ’s. Somehow, MJ’s had become Stark Tower, and while the whole ‘robot voice in the ceiling’ thing still kinda freaked him out, he hadn’t hesitated to make his way inside now.

Stark’s AI directed him to the floor the guy had given MJ -- an entire fucking floor, Wanda hadn’t been kidding about how over the top Tony Stark was -- and he found her quickly after the fact. He figured he must’ve looked pretty antsy for Stark’s AI to help him so readily, and he knew MJ would see it immediately. Unwilling to beat around the bush with his best friend, he decided to just up and say it. “Wanda’s pregnant,” he blurted quickly, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Wanda’s pregnant, MJ, and I don’t ---- I mean, I’m not really sure what to do.” He figured he might not have a definitive answer when he left here, but talking to someone who knew him better than pretty much anyone else would definitely give him an idea.

Take it easy, the doctor had told her. Jess understood the order -- her body had been through hell, and her mind wasn’t in the best place, either -- but she couldn’t follow it. She couldn’t sit still and do nothing, not when she knew there were still Skrulls out and about. She couldn’t rest until she was sure there were none left on Earth, couldn’t stop until she was free of them entirely. If that meant patrolling when she could hardly stand, so be it.

It wasn’t rare to see other heroes and vigilantes out patrolling, of course; in fact, Jess was more used to seeing them than not. Seeing one whose arm was wrapped in a cast was sort of unusual. She didn’t recognize the costume, but she recognized the webs. Like Peter or Gwen, the girl had web-slingers. Maybe that was why Jess felt a surge of protectiveness shoot through her at the sight. As the senior-most Spider-Person, she’d once felt a sort of responsibility towards these kids. Now, though, things were different. 

“Heard Kate invited you onto the team,” he said in lieu of a greeting, crossing his arms irritably over his chest. “Nobody asked me if I was okay with it but, sure, yeah, whatever. We just let anybody on now, I guess.” To be fair, Tommy was sure at least one member of the original roster had had similar complaints when he’d secured his spot on the team on account of the whole ‘murder’ issue, but he’d proven himself. His homicidal tendencies were pretty much just a fun little quirk these days. MJ, on the other hand, was awful, and Tommy intended to have words with everyone who’d thought making her a Young Avenger was a fun idea.

“Your phone was going off,” Franklin informed Johnny as he stepped out of the shower. His feet were propped up on Johnny’s coffee table, the remote in his hand. Glancing at the television set, Johnny made a face at whatever sports game was on. Football, maybe? Something outdoors.

“Did you, like, answer it?” He already knew the answer, even before he picked the phone up off the coffee table and saw the missed call. 

“Didn’t want to wind up talking to Captain America or anything.” If Franklin’s tone felt less like the way Johnny joked around with MJ or Peter and more like the way Mike Snow made fun of him in high school, Johnny pretended not to notice. He elected to ignore the comment entirely, putting the phone up to his ear and listening to the message. The pleasant female voice got all of three words out before Johnny was cursing, fumbling over to the bedroom area of his apartment to find his uniform.

“I gotta ---- I’m leaving,” he yelled in Franklin’s direction as an afterthought, zipping the uniform up and discarding his phone onto his bed. Franklin didn’t respond, and Johnny didn’t give him much of a chance. He jumped out the window, arms outstretched, and soared off in the direction of Avengers Tower with none of his  usual flair.

He made his way to the medical wing in a daze, not really listening as someone tried to speak to him. He thought maybe they were asking him a question about Reed, but he wasn’t sure. Later, he might feel bad for ignoring them, but right  now, his mind was elsewhere. Making his way over to a receptionists’ table, he glanced around wildly. “I’m looking for MJ --- uh, Mary Jane Watson. I’m Johnny Storm, I’m her emergency contact. They told me she was here?”

After being pointed in the right direction, Johnny wasted no time in making his way over to where MJ sat on a bed, looking, frankly, like shit. “What happened?” He was too terrified to make a joke of this, his heart pounding against his ribs like it was looking for an exit.

During the power swap, when her friends were hurting and she was saddled with abilities she had no idea what to do with, Gwen had been terrified. She hadn’t known how to help anyone, hadn’t known how to do anything worthwhile. When her powers came back in a rush, they’d brought a flooding sense of relief along with them. Ever since, Gwen had been out pretty much every night, fighting bad guys and (hopefully!) looking good doing it. So it wasn’t exactly surprising that that was where she found herself now, swinging through the city at top speed.

Catching sight of a familiar flash of white and red ahead of her, she grinned under her mask and swung towards it. Spinneret was, unsurprisingly, holding her own among a group of would-be robbers when Spider-Woman landed at her side. “Hey, look, it’s the newest Young Avenger! Oh my god, Spinneret, I’m you’re biggest fan! Can I have your autograph?” She shot a web at a nearby robber who was brandishing a handgun, waving it menacingly in her direction right up until the moment he found his hand and the gun webbed to a nearby wall. “Want a hand? We can grab coffee after!”