Secret Origins, Part One

And so, one day, I woke up to find myself smack dab in the middle of a comic book.

I had a few odd sensations that day, beginning with waking to find something that obviously wasn't human standing above me on my bed. It looked human, sounded human, but very clearly wasn't human. The creature was a young woman, looking to be about twenty-six or twenty-seven. She reached down with one hand and touched me on the forehead. She giggled, then stood back up again.

"You have been chosen," she said, her voice almost like music. "Power has been granted to you. But your form is not correct." She whispered something and then disappeared. I sat up, extremely confused. "You shall be reborn today, Arachnya," her voice resonated throughout my bedroom.

A pink and green mist began to fill my room. I coughed a lot, probably because I was suckin' that mist in something fierce. I hopped off my bed and ran for my door, practically falling through it into the hallway. My mom was standing there, a look of pure horror on her face. She dropped the lamp she was holding and fainted. My dad rushed out to see what was going on. "Charlie?" he said, though I heard nothing. It was almost like he was mouthing the word. I couldn't figure out why he'd be asking if it was me, but it didn't matter a few seconds later anyway. I fainted, too.

I awoke a couple hours later, and felt like I was crawling through a thousand cobwebs to regain consciousness. It only took my dad opening my bedroom door to find that I really was crawling through cobwebs, which had almost completely overtaken my room. The cobwebs and my concern for my mom made me numb to the differences in my body, for the time being.

"Dad, what's going on?" I asked. I scratched at my throat, because my voice sounded different.

"What the hell happened to your room, kid?" he asked, ignoring my question. "Looks like a spider went overboard!" He pushed his way past a few webs and finally reached me. "Sit down, Charlie, you've got something to take in."

I sat down on my bed and then I felt it. My ass was different. It felt like my ass was bigger. I stood back up and rubbed at my ass - completely preoccupied with finding out why it felt bigger, not even considering the embarrassment of rubbing my own ass in front of my father - and found that it was, indeed, bigger than it had been before. "What's going on?" I asked again.

Dad yanked on my arm and sat me back down again. "There's no easy way to tell you this, Charlie."

"No easy way to tell me what?" I asked, after a long pause. "And why do you keep saying my  name after almost every sentence? I think I figured out my name was 'Charlie' when I was two."

He sighed. "It's not easy to tell you that you're... well..." he trailed off. "Well, you're... y'know..." he trailed off again. I was about to just scream at him when he finally asked, "You haven't noticed your boobs, yet?" I was taken aback, to be sure. I looked downward and saw that my shirt was pushed out by the breasts that were now underneath it. I fainted again.

When I woke up for the third time that day, my mom was awake, too, and had set a tray of food down on by night stand. And cleared out all the cobwebs. I sat up in my bed and looked over at the simple sandwich and potato chips my mom left me and decided to eat. I hadn't had any food the whole morning (actually, it had become afternoon by the time I'd awoken from the second fainting), so I figured it would be a good idea to chow down then. I managed half the sandwich and then I just set the tray aside. I was too freaked out to eat.

I got up and walked around my room for a while. Walking around felt different. I could feel my hips moving and my breasts jiggling. I stumbled a few times, thanks to my new way of moving, but I got the hang of it after a few minutes. The bouncing boobs was still weird, though. I opened my closet door and looked at myself in the mirror that hung on the backside of the door. I looked very much like a younger version of my mom, with little of my dad's features still present in me. The only thing I still had from my dad was my brown hair, but even that now fell past my shoulders. I don't know if it was the mirror or what, but my breasts looked bigger on my reflection than I thought they were.

I rooted through my closet and grabbed an old pair of cargo pants that hadn't fit me for a couple years. They fit better, now, but still fit wrong. How do girls deal with wearing guy clothes all the time? I guess I was going to have some practice. I left my plain white sleep shirt on and then grabbed a hoodie. I left it unzipped, but I still pulled it closed. At first I didn't put any socks on before slipping my shoes on, but after they fell off twice, it took me two pairs of socks to get them to fit right. I was going to need to buy some new clothes.

I crawled out my window and rushed down the fire escape. I'd done it dozens of times, so my parents probably figured out what I'd done when they checked my room later and didn't find me. I needed some alone time that I couldn't get in the apartment. Granger Park was only six blocks from home, so I immediately made my way there.

In the last alley before the Park, I stopped. I felt something. Something weird (and not related to my new female body, that is). I looked around me, but I didn't see anything. Then, like they'd been following me, three guys wearing gang colors walked into the alley from the street just ahead.

"Hey, chickie," the leader said, coming close to me. He was wearing a tan shirt and a black vest over top of it, the usual 'uniform' of the Upscales, a gang that dressed a lot more sophisticated than they actually were. "Never seen you 'round here before." He grabbed me by the chin and pulled me closer to him. "You real pretty."

I pushed him away from me. "Get offa me!" He hit the wall of the closest building and groaned in pain, as if I'd broken something in him.

That feeling hit me again. I dodged to the left just as one of his side thugs swiped at me with a knife. At some point when I was concentrating on him, they'd moved behind me. How I knew where he was gonna slash at me, however, I don't know. I felt that weird sensation again and, somehow, did a cartwheel out of the way. I was almost in shock when I finished rolling. The three Upscales stared at me in absolute surprise.

"Get that bitch!" the leader spat at his thugs. They ran at me, and those weird sensations guided my movements. I jumped clear over their heads, then knelt down and did a leg sweep, knocking those two on their asses. As one of them fell, his knife went skyward, and I grabbed it just before it landed in the other thug's right eye. Those two got up really quick, the one grabbed his knife, and then they bolted. Behind me, the leader reached out to grab me, but I rolled out of the way just a second before he reached me. "Bitch!"

"Hey, you came up on me! Probably wanted to rape me, or something!" He ran at me with his own knife, but just ducked to the side and clotheslined him, knocking him flat on his back. I grabbed his knife and, with strength I didn't know I had, broke the blade off of it and tossed the two pieces into the nearest dumpster. "Now, stay the hell away from me!" He stood up, then joined his friends in getting the hell away from me. I just stood there, looked at my hands, and said to myself, "Holy crap, I'm Spider-Man!"

Something landed to my left. I jumped in surprise, which made the thing - an African-American boy my age - laugh at me. "Nah, you're not Spider-Man, on account of he's a dude. You were pretty good at makin' them piss their pants, though."

"Who the hell are you?!" I asked in a squealy high-pitched voice that made me want to facepalm right after I did it.

"Whoa! Now, granted, I'm from Luther, and people think I'm ghetto all the time, but the way I see it, aren't you supposed to tell me your name before you scream at me for mine?"

"You nearly made me piss my pants! Why else do you think I screamed?!" Again, I wanted to facepalm.

"Still. What's your name?" He slammed the dumpster shut and hopped up on top of it.

I folded my arms under my breasts. "Charlie. My name's Charlie."

"Short for Charlotte, I bet, right? I've got a cousin named Charlotte. That's actually where she's from, too. North Carolina."

"So, what's your name?"

He smiled. "I'd tell you, but you wouldn't believe me."

I pointed at the scuff marks where my little fight scene had taken place. "I just pulled a Warriors on those guys when I've never been in anything other than a boring old school fight before, I don't think you can surprise me any more than that."

"Fine. Francine."

"Francine? You have a gi..." I cut myself off. Where had he come from? I was the only one in the alley before those three Upscales showed up. I was a guy when I went to sleep last night, woke up to a weird creature in the shape of a girl standing over me, and then I suddenly became a girl who can kick ass better than most professional wrestlers. "You were a girl yesterday, weren't you?" I asked.

His eyes widened, and then he jumped down from the dumpster and came closer to me. "You can tell?"

"You were a girl, and you woke up this morning, and something not quite human told you you'd been 'chosen', right?"

"Yeah. The same thing happened to you, too? Were you a guy before now?"

I nodded. "And I couldn't do everything I just did before now, either. Were you watching from the roof? Is that why I didn't see you before I got here?"

It was his - or her, technically - turn to nod. "I heard that dumbass talking to you, then I saw you wipe the floor with their asses."

I looked him head to toe. Unlike me, a girl dressed in guy clothes, he was dressed in male clothing, that didn't look like it fit him right. "Do you have a brother, or something?"

He blushed. "Um... no... These clothes belonged to my boyfriend."

It was my turn to be surprised, and embarrassed. "Oh, sorry... Were you..." I trailed off.

"He spent the night and we both woke up to that weird chick standing on top of me. She didn't change him, and when he saw me with a dick, he stormed out. I grabbed these clothes from a pile he'd left in my closet."

I didn't feel comfortable talking about stuff like this in an alleyway. "C'mon, we're only across the street from Granger Park. Let's talk there."

***

Francine - or Frank, as he chose his new male name to be - and I talked for awhile. He came from a not-exactly-poor/not-exactly-rich family that had lived in Luther for generations. I described what I'd looked like before to him and he told me he'd seen me at school a few times, thought I was 'cute for a white boy'. He laughed at my surprised reaction. He wasn't one to draw race into any situation and knew I was the same. He told me what he'd looked like when he was female, and I vaguely remembered seeing a pretty black girl like that, but we'd had few classes together.

We talked about what it was that had happened to us. From all indications, other than just getting our genders swapped, we had gained superpowers to some extent. I didn't know if I could crawl up walls, but I definitely had the spider-sense and spider-strength. I was willing to bet the cobwebs in my room had probably come from me, too. Frank could jump extremely high, and could glide to a small extent. He also seemed to be able to feel footsteps through the ground. A weird power, to be sure, but no more so than spider powers.

"Think we could be super heroes?" he asked me, as we threw stones into the lake in the middle of the Park. "Fightin' for truth, justice, the American way and all that other stuff?"

I laughed. "No. I get lucky with my goofy spider-sense, but we're just kids, we can't fight crime and that sort of thing."

"Hey, Spider-Man was a teenager. Iron Man was a teenager in that cartoon from a couple years ago. Maybe we find a few others that got changed, just like us, and we go around like a little Justice League, or something."

Time to get my nerd on. "If we're going with Spider-Man and Iron Man, that would be the Avengers. The Justice League's a completely different team from a different comic company."

He patted me on the back of the head. My spider-sense didn't go off, which told me that it could somehow tell between harmful and playful actions. "I don't read comic books, I just watch 'em on TV."

I laughed again. "Still, I don't know if I want to go around being Spider-Girl, web-swinging across the city and beating people up. I'm just a plain nerd, not a super nerd like Peter Parker. Say I can't actually make webs with my own body, I don't know how to make web fluid or anything."

Frank knelt down next to me, placed his hands on the ground and whispered, "Someone's coming."

Almost as if on cue, I heard my dad say, "I thought you'd be here."

I sighed and stood up. "Yeah, Dad, I'm here." I turned around and saw him walking up to us, his hands in his pockets. He stopped in front of us and reached out to Frank to shake his hand. "Frank Holden, this is my dad."

"Nice to meet you," Frank said, shaking my dad's hand.

"Firm handshake you've got there," Dad said.

"Did I have you guys worried for too long?" I asked.

"No. Your mom checked on you, found you gone, knew you probably headed out here." He looked Frank over. "And just how did you come to meet my daughter?"

He answered very honestly. "I watched her beat the crap out of a bunch of dumbass gang members."

Dad looked at me with a critical, but loving, eye. I looked away in embarrassment. Thanks, Frank. "It wasn't like that... Well, I mean, it was. I did beat the crap out of them, but... well..."

Dad waved me quiet. "I'm not sure I wanna know about it here."

I pointed to Frank. "He's a lot like me, Dad. He was a girl yesterday."

"You, too, huh?"

Frank nodded. "Yeah."

"Well, I'm willing to bet you two aren't the only ones." He turned back to me. "I got called into work, there's been a bunch of missing persons reports in the last few hours."

"Wait, are you a cop?" Frank asked.

"Matter of fact, I am."

"Oh..."

Despite my best efforts, I giggled. "Sorry, I forgot to tell you that my dad's a cop. Wait, what are you doing here if you got called in on your day off?"

"Well, I came here to get you while I head to work. You're gonna have to tag along with me at the office tonight."

I sighed. "Okay." I hated going to work with Dad. Two dozen cops running around a small room, usually bumping into me and knocking me around. Just the implications frightened me.

"How about I drop your friend off at home on the way? Where you live, Frank?"

"A hundred thirteenth street, in Luther."

My dad narrowed his eyes. "That's two boroughs over. How the hell did you get here without a car?"

"I... jumped."

"What?"

I quickly said, "It's a long story, Dad. How about he just comes with us?"

Dad sighed. "Okay, I guess." Just before turning around and leading us to the car, he asked, "I'm gonna regret this, aren't I?"

I smiled. "You'll never know until we get to the precinct."

***

Frank and I followed my dad into his office just off of the main detectives' office. My dad was a lieutenant, so he got his own office, though he kept it near the detectives' office, because that's where he did his best work. Thankfully, Dad had a mini-refrigerator, so the thirst I'd worked up kicking the crap out of those Upscales was quenched as soon as we got in the room. There was a stack of folders as long as my arm sitting on my dad's desk. There were more missing persons than I realized.

"All those people are missing?" Frank asked.

"Yeah," Dad answered, rolling up his sleeves and sitting down behind his desk. About five seconds later, one of the other detectives walked in and dumped another stack of folders on his desk. "And that's a lot more." He picked up the top one. "Francine Holden." He looked over at Frank. "Your sister?"

Frank looked nervous. "No, actually, me."

Dad raised an eyebrow, then lowered it. "Oh, yeah, Charlie told me you'd been a girl." He looked over at me. "Speaking of my lovely young daughter, are you gonna keep going by 'Charlie'?"

"It's a girl's name," I said, defending my name.

"I guess." He sighed. "Hard to believe this many people have gone missing just since this morning. What the hell happened to you two, anyway?"

I sighed. "It's a long story, Dad."

"Well, out with it. If you don't tell me, that's technically impeding an investigation."

I pulled a chair up beside Dad and told him the whole story.

***

ACROSS THE CITY:

A man wearing a dark cloak stood upon the roof of a two story building. He walked around the roof, the metal braces on his legs making clanking sounds, loud enough to have been heard inside the building, if there was anyone living inside. As dusk turned to night, he looked up and saw only what he could see, an aurora of such brilliant colors that the fact that it was his alone was almost a crime unto itself.

He spun around and made his way to the door and down the stairs, back into his laboratory. He pressed two buttons on his keyboard and the aurora appeared on the monitor, and he began recording it. He also clicked on a small audio recorder.

Day seventeen, August twenty-third, twenty fourteen. Approximately two hundred seventy-three subjects have been infected. The aurora's strength was not as great as I thought it would be, but the effect was just as intense as the one recorded in nineteen oh eight, above Tunguska. Of the two hundred seventy-three, approximately sixty-eight of them will become more than human, but thirty-seven of those will die within the week. The remaining thirty-one will be exterminated once their diseases are diagnosed. Everything is going according to plan."

He shut off the recorder and slipped it into his desk. He smiled, a thin, hope-stealing smile, and shut off his computers as well. 31 people with above human abilities. Once he found them, he would eliminate them, just as he had for centuries.

***

At around midnight, I woke up to find one of my dad's coats draped across me. I don't even know when I fell asleep, but I wasn't the only one, either. Frank and Dad were both asleep, too, only Frank was sleeping on the floor and Dad was drooling on his desk. The detectives were all busily scurrying around the detectives' office, phones were ringing, people were yelling, it's freaking amazing I was able to get to sleep with all that going on.

I went to get up and the chair I was sitting in moved. I stopped for a second, looked around, and then tried to move again. Again, the chair came with me. I looked down at my hands on the arms of the chair and saw some webbing between my wrist and the chair. Oh, great, I could spin webs. I really was Spider-Man. I yanked my arms up and broke the webs, then cleared them off of the chair before anybody saw them. Just one more thing to file away on the What Super Powers Do I Have? list.

I slipped out of my dad's office and walked down the hallway to the restrooms. My mind must have been preoccupied with something else, because I nearly walked into the Men's Room, which I would never use again, unless something just as weird and magical happened to change me back. Fixing my mistake, I slipped into the Ladies' Room and sat down in an empty stall. That right there would be something to file in the New Female Experiences list.

I was actually feeling a lot weirder now than I was before. When I woke up from my second faint, nothing really seemed off to me, and I was almost kind of numb to my new body parts. The only thing I could use to explain it was that weird pink mist that filled my room that (I assume) changed me in the first place. Could it have made me indifferent to what it was I'd become? Was that what that weird woman standing over me wanted, since my 'form was wrong'? Ever since I met Frank, I've felt very detached from my situation, despite the fact that I'm gonna need to re-register at school, completely ignore all my friends, spend a lot of money on new clothes, etc, etc...

As I finished up on the toilet, I walked to the sink. My hands started to shake, and I was pretty sure I knew exactly why. This was my first real time alone, to think about what it was that had happened to me. I would never be the old me again, probably, and I didn't even know who the new me really was. Cop's daughter? Yeah, I guess. But what did that really mean? Any guy rapes me, my dad'll just toss his badge in the trash and shoot the guy on sight, probably. Potential super hero? The only one of my new abilities that I actually had a handle on was my spider-sense, and that's only because I read comic books. Now that I thought about it, could I even get raped? That spider-sense warns me of danger, would it help me avoid potential sexual abusers?

"You look tired, kid," a voice behind me said. I jumped. Thanks a lot, spider-sense. I turned around saw a woman in a simple white blouse and tan slacks standing behind me. She'd obviously come from one of the other stalls in the restroom, since nobody had come in through the door. "Hey, don't worry, I'm not gonna hurt ya."

I sighed. "No, you just surprised me, is all. Sorry."

She looked me over, and I realized right then that I recognized her. Detective Holly Montoya, my dad's former partner. Mom always thought Dad was cheating on her with Detective Montoya, but he always said it wasn't true. She was a very attractive lady, that much was for sure. If, and I stress that, Dad was cheating on Mom with her, I could kind of understand why. Mom wasn't unattractive, though.

"You look familiar, honey, what's your name?"

"Charlie Harkins."

"Harkins? Lieutenant Harkins' kid? I seem to remember you being a boy, sweetie."

I chuckled nervously. "Uh... yeah... there's a funny story about that."

She patted me on the head. "Yeah, I'm sure there is. I met you once, and you're pretty obviously a tomboy. I just guessed wrong, is all. Not something to brag about in my line of work, but it happens sometimes."

"Yeah," I almost whispered, rubbing my left arm.

Following Detective Montoya, I returned to my dad's office, where I found he'd woken up. He was busily shuffling through a lot of papers when we walked in. It appeared as though more had been stacked onto his desk. "Hey, Holly, you noticing any pattern between these people? They just seem to be random." He flipped through a couple more papers. "A gym owner over on Jefferson Avenue, a mother of three on Bonham, a school teacher from Harker." He looked up from his papers. "What's the connection?"

She shrugged. "Cappy was hoping you could figure that out, LT."

He sighed. "Maybe, next week, when we catch the guy who did this and I ask him."

I wanted to speak up. Dad knew what Frank and I had told him, which I assume he believed since it's not every day that your son wakes up and turns into your daughter before your eyes. Dad probably wanted to tell the rest of the detectives that he knew what was probably going on, too, but it would be too crazy to believe. I kept my mouth shut, and so did he. Frank was still sleeping on the floor, so he had nothing to say either way.

When Detective Montoya left the room, I shut the door and asked my dad, "So, what do you think? Probably the same thing that happened to Frank and me?"

Dad sighed. "I don't know, kiddo. It's not hard to believe this is all connected, though. After all, I doubt those weird things that changed you guys were gonna stop at two teenagers." He sat back in his chair. "So, he can jump real high," he pointed at Frank, "what can you do?"

"If I just said I'm Spider-Man, would that explain it?"

He stared at me for a few seconds. "Spider-Man didn't have boobs, kiddo."

I glared. "I know that. I didn't, until this morning."

"So, what does that make me? Uncle Ben and Denis Leary?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Wait, you remember Uncle Ben but not Captain Stacy, even though he was a cop, just like you?"

He shrugged. "I remember Uncle Ben because of the food with that guy who looks a lot like a black Orville Redenbacher. I only saw the movie once, Charlie, with you." He added, "I could have just said Martin Sheen."

"Anyway, yeah, I guess that does kind of make you Uncle Ben and Captain Stacy, but hopefully without the dying part."

"I would hope so as well."

I sat back down in a chair. "The only thing I can't figure out is why I was chosen."

Dad leaned forward. "Sweetie, back before you were born, I was a regular old beat cop. I just drove around in my squad car with my partner, and all we ever did was take in punks like the Upscales and the Delancy Street Gang. Then, one day, out of the ever-lovin' blue, we came across this average, every-day-type thug, wearin' a dead guy's watch. Turned out, he'd stolen it off a stiff who's case the Homicide guys were working earlier that week. He'd seen the whole murder, and knew the murderer personally. That's the case that bumped me up to detective. It wasn't some thing that happened gradually, it just came, and I was just in that place at that time, I'm not even gonna call it the right place, just that place." He leaned back again. "That's what happened with you, with Frankie down there on the floor, and probably with all these missing people that probably aren't really missing, if we've got two people who swapped gender this morning." He looked out the window. "And they've probably got super powers, too."

I sat there and thought about that. He was probably right, too. I guess it really didn't matter, yet, why I was chosen, just that I was. Wow, Dad, great work. You just became my super hero motivation, and you didn't have to die!

But with that stack of folders on his desk, that had to mean at least five hundred others were chosen as well. And that's just here in East City, no telling how many in other places, too. Things were gonna get a lot weirder, to say the least.

***

ELSEWHERE, IN EAST CITY:

His name had been Bernard Winchester. Had been because he was no longer a he. He looked at himself over and over again in the mirror and found it hard to believe that the picture of womanly beauty he was staring at was truly him. From the tips of her toes to the follicles of blonde hair on her head, that gorgeous woman was Bernard Winchester.

Not to mention the angel wings on her back.

Bernard's wife, Gloria, was still in shock. There was no way that woman could truly be her husband, even though she'd seen his transformation with her own eyes. Bernard's body was every definition an angel's, perfectly sculpted as if someone found a statue and brought it to life. His wings fluttered just a bit, probably thanks to his own shock at his situation.

"Bernie?" she said, walking close to her newly-shaped husband. He brought his hands to his perfect face and began to cry. The tears glittered, just as Gloria assumed an angel's tears would. "Bernie, please, talk to me."

He fell to his knees, his breasts bouncing with him. "Why did this happen?!" he cried. Gloria put her arms around him, a little awkwardly thanks to his large breasts. "Why did this happen to me?!"

Gloria wept along with him. "You heard the creature, dear, you were chosen." She didn't understand where the words were coming from, she just said them. "Whatever the reason, this had to happen to you, and no one else."

Bernard heard the soothing words of his wife and attempted to stop his crying, but it was difficult. Everything he had once been was lost, never to be regained again.

***

THE NEXT DAY:

Frank hated his sister, in more ways than one. Back when he was Francine, Amelia would tease him for anything, from boyfriends to clothing choices. Now that they were newly brother and sister, Amelia was teasing him for having become male. It wasn't his fault, and he hadn't asked for it, but he wasn't going to just cower in a corner, cross-dress and get a sex change to please her.

He heard a knock on his door. "Go away, Amy!" he shouted, assuming his sister would finally take the hint. The knocking happened yet again. "I mean it, sis, go get laid, or something!" Yet another knock, and this time, he was pissed. He walked over to his door, yanked it open, and there stood a smiling Charlie, dressed a little more appropriately for her new gender, and carrying a large plastic bag. "Charlie? What are you doing here?"

"I had my dad find your address, then I made a quick stop, then I swung over here." She walked inside his room and shut the door. "And I literally mean swung, you'll never believe how fun it is to web swing across this city. And it's really fast, too."

He looked her over. She was wearing a simple pair of jeans, a tank top and a hoodie, not unlike the day before when he met her, only this time, the jeans were lower cut and the tank top was quite a bit snug around her chest (and showing off some decent cleavage, too). The hoodie was exactly the same. "You look a little bit girlier than yesterday."

She shrugged. "I couldn't help it. My mom wouldn't let me get anything more unisex than this. You think I'd pick a top showing this much cleavage if I was in charge of my clothes?"

He chuckled. "No, not really. I'd make it easier on you and give you my stuff, but you're a little smaller than I was in every department except the boobs, where you're a bit bigger." He pointed at the bags she was holding. "So, what you got there?"

She smiled again. "You wanna be a super hero now, right?"

"Well, we've got the powers, might as well put 'em to good use."

"And there's one thing that every super hero needs to do his - or her - job, right?"

"You don't mean..."

She cut him off. "Yep. Costumes!"

***

ACROSS THE CITY:

The man in the cloak checked to make sure the straps were good and tight on the operating table. The man strapped to it was naked, struggling to get out of the restraints. "You'll never get out," he said to the man, "those restraints have held thousands of your kind over thousands of years, and will continue to do so long after you've been dealt with."

The restrained man spat at him, "What the hell do you think you're doing?! I'm an FBI agent, dumbass!"

The man held up the file folder. "Yes, agent Renee Weisinger, born the third of six daughters to Harold and Mary Weisinger, October sixteenth, nineteen seventy-three." He looked down at the naked man. "And just like all the rest over the years, your form was incorrect when you were chosen."

"How do you know about that?"

He chuckled. "I told you, I've hunted thousands of you. I've killed thousands of you." He clapped his hands. "Lucky for you, I'm not killing you. You'll be my first experiment, this season."

Weisinger's eyes widened. "What are you going to do?"

"You'll see. Now, tell me, just what is your special ability?" He then shook his head. "Never mind, don't tell me. I'll find out for myself once I've frayed the layers from your mind." The man picked up the rotary saw from his equipment table and held it to Weisinger's head. The poor man's screaming was so exquisite, it made the man in the cloak burst into laughter.

***

THE DAILY NEWS BRIGADE:

Anna Adamsen chucked another breath mint into her mouth and went back to typing up her story. Over six hundred people of all ages - well, between thirteen and thirty-six - missing in the course of a day was pretty big news. She was going to finish what she'd done so far, then go try and snaggle an interview with that hero cop, Lieutenant Harper, or whatever the hell his name was.

Nothing has been reveallled so far about the manner in which the six hundred and thirty-three people disappearred, she wrote, but the simple fact that it happened cannot be overluked.

"There's only one 'r' in disappeared. Only one 'l' in revealed, and two 'o's in overlooked," a voice behind her said. She spun around in her chair and saw a particularly handsome looking man wearing glasses standing there, his blue suit jacket slung over his arm and a dorky looking hat on his head. He was smiling. "How'd you ever win a Pulitzer with mistakes like that?"

She stood up and crossed her arms over her chest. "It's called spell check, and it's every writer's best friend. Who are you?"

He held out his hand. "Keith Cabot. You're Anna Adamsen, star writer, right?"

She pushed his hand away. "Matter of fact, I am. What are you doing here?"

"I'm new. Applied for the job yesterday morning, got hired today."

She felt her brow crease. "I seem to remember a pretty brunette girl applying yesterday."

He smiled. "Yeah, I saw her, too. Asked her out, but she refused to give me her phone number."

She waved her hand. "Don't expect to get mine, buster, I don't date co-workers."

As she turned around and walked over to the coffee maker on the opposite side of the writer's room, Keith whispered to himself, "Wasn't planning on it."

***

"Yup," I said, holding the bag in front of me in an embarrassingly feminine way, "costumes!"

Frank hit himself in the face with his palm. "You went out and bought costumes? Isn't it some super hero rite of passage to make 'em up yourself?"

I hugged the bag close to my chest. "Well, yeah, once you go out and screw up some, first."

"Oh, so we have to screw up first? Are you even listening to yourself? You sound like a traditionalist nerd, trying to go through every little super hero cliche in the book."

I made a face, I assume. "Hey! Every super hero does it! Watch the movies, they're all the damn same!" I set the bag to my side. "Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, The Hulk, Iron Man, Aquaman..."

Frank cut me off. "Who?"

"Aquaman? Arthur Curry? King of Atlantis? Wears orange and green?"

"Nope, still nothing."

"Can talk to fish."

"Oh! That guy! Doesn't do much, since he can't help out of the water?"

"Hey! There's plenty of stuff to do in the water!"

"So, what's his story, anyway? He was on that Superman show a few years ago, but other than that, he hasn't been in anything else."

I felt like I was boiling. Bet there was probably steam coming out of my ears like on an old cartoon, too. "He's done lots of stuff!"

He grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "Calm down, Charlie, calm down," though a lot of chuckling. "So, you bought the costumes. I imagine, since you don't seem to have a whole lot of imagination, you got yourself a Spider-Man costume."

"Whaddya mean, no imagination?!"

"Am I wrong, or is it a Spider-Man costume?"

I lowered my head. "It's a Spider-Man costume."

"So, what's mine?"

I looked back up. "I couldn't find anything that looked like it would work for a jumping guy, so I grabbed you a Wolverine costume."

"Wolverine? I don't have claws!"

"I know, but it was the only thing I could think of at the time that didn't look hero-specific."

"So, Superman wouldn't have worked?"

"No!" Again, I wanted to smack myself on the forehead for acting far more feminine than I wanted to. This whole female thing was getting to me far faster than I wanted it to, and I'm sure it had something to do with that pink mist that made me numb to my change in the first place. Actually, Frank seemed to be taking to his new form pretty well, too. Maybe those beings that changed us decided that dealing with super powers and our new 'roles' in life were enough to deal with, the fact that we were switching genders should be as easy a transition as possible. "Look, I bought you the Wolverine costume and that's what you're gonna wear!" Again, far too feminine. Good job, Charlie, you're a real girl, now.

Frank, of course, was enjoying himself in making fun of me. "Okay, okay, since the pretty white girl I just met yesterday bought it for me, I'll wear it."

I folded my arms under my breasts and muttered, "You bet I'm pretty," under my breath. His treating me like a girl wasn't helping the fact that I was trying not to be a girl.

***

Anna was quite happy to ditch the new guy, even though Barry had told her to bring him along. She didn't like sharing bylines, and keeping him back at the office while she ran off to interview Lieutenant Harkins (that was his name!) would be a refreshing way to ignore him for the rest of the day.

At least, until she walked down the hallway to the lieutenant's office and heard Cabot's voice. How did that skunk-head get here before I did? Unless he can jump down fifty floors of stairs, I should have been in the parking lot before he could even have gotten the elevator back up. She didn't ponder it for long, she just walked into the lieutenant's office and saw Cabot sitting across a very messy desk from the hero cop.

"Now, you say that none of these missing people have turned up, yet?" Cabot asked.

"That's usually how it works. It's when they don't turn up in forty-eight hours that we start to get worried. The only problem this time is that we have no solid leads on where they might be, just reports of family members having disappeared during the night, some of them also involving burglars appearing in the homes of the missing people."

"Burglars, you say?" Anna said, surprising Cabot. "My father always told me to lock the doors and keep a loaded forty-five under your pillow. Daddy was in the Air Force."

"As long as you have the permits, I guess that'd be a pretty good way to stave off burglary," Harkins said. "I know you, don't I? Yeah, Adamsen, the reporter. I thought you said you'd be here as soon as possible, you didn't say your partner would be here first."

"I didn't know." She turned to Cabot. "How did you get here first, anyway?"

He smiled. "Oh, I just flew."

***

I couldn't help but feel like crap wearing a generic, off-the-shelf, Halloween Spider-Man costume. I looked ridiculous. I had to tear a hole in the back to stick my hair through, which was already a problem, then there was the fact that despite being made for teenage girls about my size, the curse of my mom's family's history of large breasts reared its ugly head and I had to tear open the chest of my costume to make some room for my breasts.

Yeah, I looked like the over-sexualized, extremely obvious that I'm female, female version of Spider-Man. And all the while, Frank looked very at home in his Wolverine outfit.

"Oh, c'mon, you don't look that bad, Charlie," he said, laughing all the way.

"You don't have to lie, Frank, I look like Spider-Hooker more than I do Spider-Girl."

"Please, for the love of God, tell me you're not going with Spider-Girl. I'm pretty sure Marvel can sue you for copyright infringement."

Thank the mask for hiding my extremely red face. "I couldn't think of anything better!"

And thanks go to Frank for making me feel even more embarrassed by laughing his ass off at me. Lucky me, I figured out how to make my webbing earlier this morning, so I webbed his mouth closed. He tugged at the webbing on his mouth and glared at me. "That wasn't very funny," he said.

"Neither was laughing at me," I sassed back at him. Hands on my hips, standing like I was some mega-important badass babe, I was, yet again, showing off just how feminine I'd become in twenty-four hours. I could tell he was enjoying just how much I was embarrassing myself. "Okay, let's get going." I walked over to his window. "Wow, you have no neighbors with windows that look out this way."

"It's how my sister and I always got our boyfriends in here without our parents knowing."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Lucky me I know you used to be a girl, otherwise that would have sounded so awkward." I opened the window and stepped out onto the fire escape. "Okay, let's do this."

Frank asked, "You sure you can stick to walls, too?"

"Yeah, I spent the morning practicing all the stuff I can do. My mom was pretty pissed about it, too, but I weaseled my way out of a grounding by cleaning the apartment and feeding my baby brother."

"You have a baby brother?"

"Yeah. I'm not an only child."

"Wait, feed? Did you breast-feed your baby brother?"

"Ugh, no! God, you're gross!" I used that as my excuse to get a head start on him. I did a short hop onto the fire escape railing, and then onto the wall. It's an odd sensation, having tiny little things on your fingers, your palm, your toes and your feet that allow you to feel the fact that it's your skin sticking you to that wall. I could feel every pull as I scaled the wall up to the roof, where Frank was meeting me. I got up there first, but, then again, I only had a wall to scale, not six flights of stairs.

When Frank got upstairs, he was out of breath. Against my better judgment, I giggled. He just scowled at me. I jumped over to the next rooftop, and then Frank followed me. He wasn't out of breath anymore. We continued this for about six more roofs, some taller than others. I practiced some more of my web swinging, at one point landing on top of Frank as he made a particularly tough jump, but he still did just fine. Our first time really practicing our abilities, and we were already getting good at it.

I used to laugh at the fact that in most comic books, the characters only spent one or two pages learning about their powers and getting used to them. In reality, it pretty much worked out that same way. By the time we got to 22nd and Abel, I was actually pretty proficient at wall crawling and web swinging. Bet I could have rivaled the real Spider-Man, if he was real.

***

Lieutenant Harkins took a bite out of his mushroom and swiss and wanted nothing more than to understand what the hell the connection was between all the Chosen, as he'd taken to calling them. Six hundred of them, and none of them even seemed to have anything in common. The only two he could even find half a thread between was Charlie and Frank, and that's only because they were of similar age and went to the same high school. Many of the others their age went to different schools around the city, and none of the ones older than them even seemed to work in the same office buildings.

He took another bite out of his sandwich and almost dropped it when the radio crackled to life. "Go for nineteen-kane-thirty-nine."

"LT, we've got some weird reports of people in funky costumes jumping around on rooftops. Plus, there's a police standoff with some Upscales over at the Bank of America on seventy-third."

Harkins shoved another bite of sandwich in his mouth, then answered the call. "Got it, I'm heading for the bank." He set the files and the sandwich down on the passenger's seat and started the engine, then flipped on his siren and lights. "Time to earn that paycheck."

***

I almost stopped mid-jump, but, luckily, I was already over the building, and I still landed on my feet. My spider-sense was, wait for it, tingling! "Hey, Frankie, you wanna be a hero? I feel something."

He smiled. "Yep. You know where?"

I pointed west. "Feels like it's coming from that direction."

"Let's get going, maybe we can make a name for ourselves. And then we make real costumes."

"I spent fifty bucks on these!"

***

Anna offered to drive, if Keith agreed to pay for lunch. While she waited for him to get some sandwiches from the nearest Quiznos, her phone went off. It was the Brigade. "Yeah, chief?"

"Anna, where the hell are you? There's a robbery-turned-shootout over on seventy-third!"

She looked to see if Keith was done getting the sandwiches, but he wasn't. "Yeah, chief, I've got it. Tell Cabot where I'm going, I'm gonna havta leave him at Quiznos or else I'll miss this scoop!" She hung up, started the car, and sped off down the wrong side of the road to get to 73rd as soon as possible.

When Keith walked back out to the car and found it gone, he merely sighed. "That's just great." He set the bag down on the picnic table and was about to eat until he heard all the sirens in the distance. A distance further out than anyone else would be able to hear. He ducked down the nearest alley and started pulling his clothes off. He scrambled the day before to stitch together a costume, but he thought he managed very well. Too bad for him, Superman was already taken, so instead, he went with what the odd creature had called him, Guardian.

The Guardian flew upward, into the sky, and people around looked up and marveled at the sight of a man in blue and gold tights and gold cape hovering in the air.

***

I landed on the outer wall of the bank and just sat there for a while. I shot a webline at the nearest crook's gun and pulled it up and away from him. "Didn't your mother ever teach you manners? It's not exactly polite to shoot at people, y'know."

A couple of the other crooks stopped shooting. "What the hell is this?! Is the circus in town?"

"Ugh! Why is that every two-bit robber's first line?" I webbed him in the face. "Can't you see I'm trying to be witty and crime-fighty here?"

Frank landed next to the one who's mouth I webbed up, then kicked him in the gut, sending him directly into the wall just behind the cops on the other side of the street. "Didn't you hear the girl? She's trying to be funny!"

I yanked a few more guns away from the robbers, all the while Frank knocked them out. Eventually, the gunshots died down, the cops stopped shooting. We were heroes!

At least until my dad showed up.

He pulled out a megaphone. "You, in the Spider-Man suit! Get down off the wall!"

***

And get the hell back home, because if your mother sees this on the news, she's gonna go nuts! Harkins wanted to say, but he didn't. Obviously, Charlie wanted to add hero duty to her teenaged, super-powered life. He'd have a very stern talk with her later, and then commend her for taking down a bunch of crooks who'd had his very police force pinned down for half an hour. He couldn't see Frank, but he assumed he was there as well.

Charlie hopped down from the wall and walked around the toasted cars that the Upscales had been using as cover from the bullets. He wondered how those cars had bitten it, considering the seven or eight crooks Charlie and her new boyfriend (he'd tease her about that later, too) had taken out just seemed to have handguns. Nothing big enough to blow holes like that in cars.

And the exploding squad car beside him was how he got his answer. He ducked out of the way just in time to avoid Ford debris hitting him in the face.

***

Anna pulled up to the shoot-out just in time to see Lieutenant Harkins jump out of the way of the exploding car. The girl in the Spider-Boy outfit hopped up onto the wall of the bank behind her, just as one of the cars on her side of the street exploded too. Anna ducked out of her car just before it, too, exploded. She caught a piece of the shifter in her leg, but that was about it.

The source of the explosions seemed to come from a purple-haired woman standing on the roof of the bank, looking down at the street below. She jumped, landing in a crater that she seemed to create herself. "Cops and stupid kids in costumes?" the woman said, then laughed. "I guess East City's turning into a den of freaks!" She held out her hand toward one of the squad cars and it exploded, taking out at least a couple of cops with it. "This is gonna be fun after all!"

Anna saw that the woman looked like she was going to destroy another car when, suddenly, a circle of fire appeared around her. She looked just as surprised as everyone else on the scene. That was when He appeared.

***

The Guardian used his heat vision to burn a circle around the purple-haired woman. He saw a girl in a Spider-Man outfit and a boy in black leather across the street from the police. He didn't know if they had anything to do with the robbery, but they didn't seem to be with the purple-haired woman. Guardian landed on the ground in front of Purple Hair.

"Robbing a bank isn't any way to get ahead in life, ma'am," he said, walking toward her. "Stop this, and maybe you'll get off easy."

"You think those pitiful jails can hold me? Bet they'd like to get their hands on you, too, Superman." She spat at his chest symbol.

"That's Guardian, ma'am. I'd prefer it if you didn't spit on me, as well.  Now, what's your name?"

She smiled. "You can call me Quake, since we're going with stupid super hero names."

"I don't think you'd qualify as a hero."

"That's safe to say," the girl in the Spider-Man costume said.

"Shut up, powderpuff!" Quake shouted. "So, Mr. Guardian, you gonna take me in now?" she asked, seductively.

***

Powderpuff? Un-uh! I shot a webline at her and pulled her away from that Guardian guy, and she responded simply by taking out a chunk of the wall above me. I jumped out of the way and landed on one of the cop cars across the street. Dad grabbed at my leg and whispered, "Charlotte Elaine Harkins, get your ass home and away from here!"

"Wait, when did you get my name changed? Elaine, seriously? No!"

"Charlie, go home!"

"Dad, I'm doing just fine, I can handle a bitch who makes cars go boom."

I said that, and then the Guardian pushed me and Dad just out of the way before the car I was perched upon exploded underneath me. Thank you for not tingling, spider-sense! Oh, wait, it might have, had I actually been paying attention to it.

I thank Guardian for knocking Dad and me out of earshot, because his first words to us were, "Lieutenant Harkins, please take your daughter and get out of here. Your men are already pulling out. I'll take care of Quake." And then, he was gone.

"Let's listen to the superman, okay, sweetie? You're lucky the building's bank of washing machines are out of order and your mother keeps the laundry in my trunk. It's all boy clothing, but at least it's not that stupid costume."

I sighed and said, "Yes, daddy."

***

Guardian rushed at Quake and grabbed her by the neck. It took her less than ten seconds to lose consciousness, and then he dumped her on the hood of one of the remaining squad cars. "Take her and keep her hands contained. If she's not at least six feet away from what she wants to destroy, her powers don't work, and she can't blow it up if she can't point," he explained to the few remaining officers standing there, all wide-eyed at the super hero floating above them. He turned and flew away from the scene, back to the alley beside the Quiznos that Anna had left him at. Hopefully, nobody had taken them yet.

***

ACROSS THE CITY:

The man in the cloak sighed as he watched the news broadcast on the bank robbery. Four of them. Four Chosen who had all become capable of using their advantages, in so short a time. He sighed. It would be hard to get to these four, now that they had experience with their advantages. But still, he enjoyed the challenge. And it would be a challenge.

He turned to Weisinger, who stood off to the side. His formerly blue eyes had gone opaque, as if his mind were empty, which was, of course, true. The man smiled. "We'll have so much fun, won't we, my Avenger?"

Avenger answered, his voice as blank as his eyes, "Of course, my Master."

The man's smile only widened.

***

I stood in the living room, rubbing at my left arm, which hurt a little after Guardian grabbed me, and just took it. Even Dad looked uncomfortable, like he wanted to leave the room as quickly as possible. I couldn't blame him, I wanted to, too.

"And so, I ask you again, Charlotte, what the hell were you doing out there in the middle of a firefight?! What possessed you to put on a silly costume and go hunting trouble?! You could have been hurt! You could have been killed! It's pure luck that you weren't!" Mom turned to Dad. "And you! She's fifteen years old, and you just let her go out and nearly kill herself chasing down bad guys? She could have died out there!"

Dad held up his hands in defense. "Whoa, wait a minute, what did I have to do with this? She and Frank took down those Upscales thugs before I even got there!"

"All but the one with the super powers who nearly killed her!"

"Nobody saw her! Everybody we talked to on the street said they thought the Upscales used bombs on the cars as a diversion to get as many people out of the bank!"

"And that Guardian person, you let him just attack our daughter?"

"Actually, Mom," I piped in, "he was saving me from the car I was sitting on exploding. He saved Dad, too."

"You stay out of this, young lady, you're already in enough trouble as it is!"

"Mom, I don't regret what I did, and like Dad said, Frank and I took those guys out before the cops did."

"And then their leader nearly killed you!"

"I have a spider-sense, I knew when the danger was going to hit, and I ducked out of the way just in time."

She wagged her index finger at me. "No, no, no, don't you bring up that comic book stuff to me! You could have died, and it was a stupid thing to do!"

I folded my arms under my breasts. "Okay, I get it, I'm an idiot, can I just be grounded and go to my room, now?"

"Oh, you mean where you can sneak out the window and go do this all again? No! First, your father's going to nail that window shut. After that, whatever time you're not accounted for in your room, or at school, you're going to be everywhere I go with me, or at the precinct with your father."

"And just how am I gonna go to school, Mom? 'Oh, hi, I'm Charlie Harkins, no, not that Charlie Harkins, even though we share the same mom, dad, baby brother, apartment, initials, DNA'! How am I gonna go to school, Mom?"

She turned to Dad. "Henry, go nail down her window. Charlotte, you sit in that chair, and I don't want to hear another word from you until I say so!" Chris, my baby brother, started crying from my parents bedroom. "Good work, everybody, Christopher's awake and crying!"

Dad got up from his chair, squeezed my shoulder as he passed me, and then grabbed his toolbox and walked into my room. I sat down in his chair after that. Mom was pissed at me, obviously. It didn't matter, I was pissed at her for being pissed at me and for being pissed at Dad. Generally, the feeling between the two women in the family was that both of us were extremely pissed off at one another, and Dad and Chris were caught in the middle.

The day couldn't get any worse.

***

THE DAILY NEWS BRIGADE:

Keith listened to the stories Anna was telling about the Guardian, inwardly smiling. He hadn't expected his little scheme to work. People suddenly develop super powers and the new guy at the news desk wasn't initially suspected of being the Superman rip-off? Enough people knew the story of Superman for this to be as obvious as white on black.

Still and all, it helped that immediately after he'd been changed, he applied as Keith Cabot, and no one made the connection between him and Kathy Cabot, the pretty brunette that had applied just a few hours earlier. He was a little surprised, considering Keith Cabot had little background information on his resume that would actually check out. Clearly, the Daily News Brigade didn't check their references when they hired.

Anna walked over to his desk and set down her story. "Check it over for me, will ya, Keith? I might have stumped my spell check a couple of times."

He flipped through it, noticing more errors than should have been present if she'd actually used spell check. "Yeah, I'll do that, Anna."

She leaned over his computer monitor. "Say, why didn't you show up at the bank while Guardian was taking care of that Quack chick, anyway?"

"You left me five miles back without a car. By the time I flagged a taxi, I'd have been late anyway, so I just waited and ate my sandwich."

"Yeah, well, you missed one helluva show, Keith. Bet you would have loved it."

Yeah, he thought, I bet I would have.

***

I laid on my bed and just watched TV for a while until Dad walked into the room. He shut the door and sat down on the beanbag chair beside my bed. "Just so you know, those nails in that window are pretty loose," he said.

I looked over at him. "How come?"

He shrugged. "Because, I believe in what you wanna do." He leaned back in the chair. "I'm not saying I want my teenage daughter running around on rooftops beatin' the crap out of everybody that looks at her wrong, but there are some people who are just plain bad that we cops can't go after. Now, you and your boyfriend saved a lot of good cops today, though a couple of them did buy it later."

"Sorry."

"Not your fault, kiddo. You couldn't have saved them from an exploding car they were trying to escape in, no matter how hard you tried. That's something you're gonna have to live with. It's not easy, believe me. But what you did, jumping in there..."

I cut him off. "Swinging in there," I corrected him.

"Swinging in there, and takin' those guys down from behind their cover so that you could save those cops, that took guts, guts that I don't know if I'd have had at your age. You did good, even if everything went sour at the end."

I sat up and moved closer to the edge of my bed. "Thanks, Dad." I scratched the back of my head for a few nervous seconds, then asked, "Hey, Dad, did you think my costume was ridiculous?"

He sighed. "In a word: hell yes, sweetie. Not only was it ridiculous, I'm suggesting you take home ec classes at school. Sew your own costume, one that doesn't look like one of Spider-Man's bastardized rejects."

I made a noise that I can't quite describe, which made Dad chuckle. He ruffled my hair and left my bedroom. I immediately walked over to my window and checked. All three nails were loose. I smiled. Thank you lots, Dad.

***

ELSEWHERE IN EAST CITY:

Bernard sat huddled in a corner and cried. Cried his eyes out. He couldn't begin to think of himself as female, yet, despite the obvious. He had pulled on a pair of his wife's pants, with her help, and wore a backless halter top to cover his chest. He didn't like the feel of the fabric against his new breasts, it made him think about them, and he just wanted to ignore them. He wanted them gone. He didn't want this burden of being the Angel. He just continued to cry.

Gloria, for her part, hated seeing her husband the way he was. She knelt down in front of him and leaned forward, her face close to his. He looked up, his eyes almost a solid red thanks to all his tears. She leaned further forward and brought her lips to his. It was a first for her, kissing another woman. His lips were soft, softer than they had ever been when he was a man. She brought one hand to his face and rubbed at his cheek while they kissed, determined to make him feel as though nothing important had changed.

When she broke off the kiss, she looked upon a happier woman, a smiling woman. Gloria spoke, her voice soft, "It doesn't matter to me whether you're the man I married or the angel in front of me, you're still the person I love, and I'll always love you." She began to cry, herself. "For whatever reason, you were chosen. That means you have a higher calling than simply being Bernard Winchester, and it's your responsibility to live up to that calling." She closed her eyes. "You've always been an angel to me, now you need to be one for everyone else, as well."

She stood up, as did the woman in front of her. "Thank you, Gloria."

She smiled back at the Angel. "Go now, help others. They need an Angel."

Angel nodded, then walked out onto the balcony of their home. With the power of her wings, she lifted off, into the sky, and then out, toward the center of the city. Gloria simply sat there on her bed, crying tears of joy. Little did either of them know, but it was Angel's power that brought about acceptance in them both, first in Gloria, and then in Angel herself, after Gloria spoke her encouraging words. That was why Angel accepted her fate as she did, and why Gloria accepted a life without her husband.