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Kamala, white and blonde and superpowered, is a little self-conscious about how her huge, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman thighs are clothed in skin-tight spandex and elevated for all the world to see, but at least it doesn't seem like anyone's around. She holds the helicopter carefully – the blades are still whirring – and sets it down on the ground, in the empty ex-industrial field where it'd been about to crash.
"Ms Marvel!" the people in the helicopter call, shading their eyes to look up at her. "How can we ever thank you!"
"Uh, it's fine," Kamala says. She wonders how Captain Marvel replies to that kind of thing. She's probably suave about it, probably says something cool and grins and flies away. Kamala can't fly, so instead she turns and jogs a few steps – a mile or so – to the edge of the field and thinks, as hard as she can: ensmallen.
She overdoes it a little, and spends a panicked moment in a tense stand-off with an aphid before she's suddenly, unexpectedly airborne.
There's a long second where she thinks she's flying – just what she needs, given how many powers she has that she already can't control – before she realizes that the soft, rough texture beneath her hands and knees is human skin, that she's being lifted into the air in someone's palm.
"Ms Marvel, I presume?" the someone asks, in a low, amused voice. Kamala blinks once and shudders back to her normal size in an instant, her knees hitting the ground awkwardly. The sudden shift in their relative sizes means that the stranger is now holding her hand. She looks up.
"Uh," she says. The Young Avengers aren't as well known as the regular-flavor Avengers, since they're relatively new and keep changing and disbanding and getting new names and new costumes – not unlike the regular-flavor Avengers, to be fair – but Kamala knows them. Or, at least, she knows enough to recognize America Chavez when she's standing right in front of her, short-shorts and combat boots and all.
"Miss America," Kamala manages, eventually. Miss America smiles at her, a bright wicked grin, and shifts her grip so that their hands are clasped together. Then she steps back, braces with her back foot, and pulls Kamala to her feet.
"It's funny how our superhero names need honorifics, isn't it?" America says conversationally. "You don't see a lot of guy superheroes who go by Mister."
"Mister Fantastic," Kamala offers, dusting herself off. "Though to be fair that's kind of a dumb name."
"It is," Miss America agrees, grinning.
Kamala shifts a little from foot to foot. "Plus they want to make sure people know we're girls. If I were just Marvel, or you were just . . . America, I guess . . . "
"It's misogynistic bullshit for sure," Miss America agrees easily. "Though you can call me America, it's my name."
"And I do like Ms Marvel, since, you know, it was Carol Danvers' old name," Kamala admits.
"That why you change your face to look like her?"
Kamala freezes. "Uh." She didn't really notice, while she was brushing herself off, but when she tugs a strand of hair down into her eyes, it's definitely not blonde anymore. Her hands, as it turns out, are her own, brown and small, not the strong pale punchy Carol Danvers fists she'd been wearing.
"Everyone's been talking about you, you know," America continues, as if Kamala had answered her. "New teen superhero, taking on Danvers' legacy. Shapeshifter. Lotta people don't like shapeshifters."
"Did you come out here to find me?" Kamala can already imagine what Abu and Ammi would say if Kamala ended up on the news, dressed in spandex and standing next to . . . to . . .
Well, to America Chavez, for one.
America shrugs. "Not really. I saw the helicopter and came running. Lucky you got there in time."
This is like the people from the helicopter trying to thank her, except much worse, because it's coming from an actual real-life superhero. Kamala licks her lips.
"I just wanted to help," she says. "I don't – look, you're not going to tell anyone, are you?"
America raises one eyebrow elegantly. "Lotta people don't like shapeshifters. I like 'em fine. Figure you've probably got a good reason for not showing that pretty face to the news cameras."
The way America says it - pretty face - is so confident, and so full of heat, that it makes Kamala feel hot too, her skin tingling with it.
"Thanks," she says, meeting her eyes. "It's just – my life is complicated, and I know I should, you know, be myself or whatever, out and proud superheroes, but – " Kamala trails off, tangled up in her thoughts: how much she wants everyone at school to know, how little she wants everyone at school to know. What her parents would think. What Aamir would say about the degeneracy of superheroes.
What Carol Danvers might say.
"World's full of complicated," America agrees, when Kamala trails off. "Full of problems. There's a lot of good work to be done. That's why I like it here, I never get bored." She glances at Kamala's face. "You fight your battles in your own way. Don't let anyone else tell you it's easier than it is."
Kamala smiles. "Yeah," she says, surprised to be understood like this. "Thanks."
"Anytime, chica."
Kamala looks up at the sky; it's already getting dark. "Uh, I'd better get going, though. It's late, and I don't want to miss curfew."
America nods, and she turns to go. She hasn't gotten more than five steps, though, when America calls back to her.
"Hey Marvel. Want a lift?"
Kamala turns back. America's got her fists stuck in her jacket pockets, is standing with her legs planted shoulder-width apart, and as Kamala watches she tosses her hair over her shoulder. She looks like she could be a poster on Kamala's wall, but she's not, she's standing right here in front of her. That smile on her face isn't for a camera: it's for Kamala herself.
"You got a . . . car? Or something?" Kamala looks around doubtfully. How had America gotten to the middle of this deserted area so quickly? Kamala had embiggened and run to get to the helicopter in time to catch it, but America doesn't have superspeed or anything like that.
Instead of answering, America brings her boot down on the ground, hard, and the sound her heel makes as it impact against the soft grass and dirt is just wrong, harsh and sharp, like glass breaking.
Kamala blinks, and reality shifts, so that where there was nothing but earth there's suddenly something else: a glowing white star, a hole in the world.
"Wow," she breathes.
"Like it?" America asks. "It's an interdimensional portal."
"Uh, my place isn't really that far – I was going to take the bus – "
"We just pop out to another dimension, then pop back into this one at your house, easy as pie," America says. "You in?"
Kamala stares at the space between them where reality has become something different, stranger, more special. She hesitates.
"Hey. Marvel." Kamala wrenches her gaze up from the portal and meets America's eyes. She realizes that she never told her her name, and that America never asked. "It'll be fine, I promise. I wouldn't let you miss curfew."
Kamala takes a deep breath.
"Unless you wanted me to, of course," America adds, with a wink. And Kamala feels herself blushing again, so to cover it up she runs at the portal, and jumps, and then she's falling through a rush of light and darkness and –
"This is one of my favorite places," America says, her boots crunching against the dark indigo sand as she walks up next to Kamala. The ocean before them is like a field of stars, a million points of light glowing and shifting in the darkness, all interconnected.
"What is it?" Kamala breathes.
"Touch it and find out."
Kamala stumbles forward down the beach, unable to help herself, and skids to her knees in front of the shoreline. The lights aren't water, and don't look wet, but they lap against the sand like water, friendly and playful. Kamala, tentatively, reaches a finger down to touch it.
Slowly, the light crawls up her finger, then up her arm, so that she's coated in a fine filigree of silver stars. They have thoughts, she realizes, the stars, thoughts and feelings that she can almost hear, almost touch. It's like a low hum just below her awareness.
"They're beings. Or one being. Sort of both, actually," America says, standing a little ways behind her.
Kamala lets her hand stretch and elongate, giving the stars more surface area to rub up against, and the thoughts and feelings get a little closer. Togetherness, she feels, and welcome.
"Nice to meet you, too," Kamala says quietly.
"You don't want to miss your curfew, though," America says. Reluctantly, Kamala withdraws her arm and stands up; the stars let her go easily, with a tinge of regret as the last one drips down from her fingertip.
"No, I don't," Kamala agrees, turning away from the ocean of light. "Can you drop me on Mallory Avenue, near Lincoln Park?"
America brings her boot down again, and there's that breaking-glass noise again as a perfect five-pointed star blooms beneath their feet.
"Door to door service," America says, gesturing at the star. Kamala jumps.
The next thing she knows, she's standing on a streetcorner, five houses down from her own, and blinking against the light. It's close to sunset, but after the dark sky and the ocean filled with light, it's quite a contrast.
"It looks so normal," Kamala says, taking in the houses and the trees that she's walked past every day of her entire life.
"Right?" America's got her coat done up, has her hands in the pockets again, but she's smiling, like she understands how Kamala's feeling. "Well, it was nice to meet you, Marvel. Hope I see you again sometime."
She turns to go, and Kamala can't help but call out to stop her. "America," she says. America turns. "It's Kamala. Kamala Khan. I live just up there, the house with the oak tree."
America takes a few steps back towards her, holding out her hand. Kamala takes it, remembering their first moment together, in the field, when Kamala had been tiny and cradled, for a few seconds, in America's palm.
They shake hands. "Good to meet you, Kamala. Hey, if we're ever in trouble, you think I could come ask for your help? You seem like you'd be good to have around in a pinch."
"Yeah," Kamala says, a field of stars still behind her eyes. "Yeah, if you need me, you know where to find me."
"That I do," America agrees. She turns Kamala's hand, then, so that her palm is facing down, but doesn't let go, holding her hand the way a knight might hold a lady's in some fantasy story.
Slowly, giving Kamala time to pull away, America bends at the waist and kisses her knuckles. Then she straightens up, winks, and turns to go, fists shoved back in her jacket pockets, whistling a little tune.
Kamala, dazed, walks down a sidewalk she's walked down a million times before, absently touches the old oak tree, and climbs her usual, familiar front steps.
"Kamala Khan!" Her mother's voice finds her the moment she steps in the door, and Kamala smiles; it's reassuring to hear her, even if she's yelling.
"Hi," Kamala calls.
Her mother appears from the front room. "Was that a boy I saw you with on the corner?"
Kamala blinks at the absurdity of this, and then laughs. "No, Ammi. It was a friend of mine. A girl friend." She puts as much space between girl and friend as she can, even though her mother probably wouldn't know the difference. "We were just joking around."
"And what's this girlfriend's name?" Ammi doesn't put any space at all between the two words.
"America," Kamala says. She considers adding, America Chavez, she's a dimension-hopping Latina superhero who wears short-shorts and punches guys, and I think she might be a lesbian, but decides to spare her mother that knowledge.
One day, Kamala figures, she'll have to tell her. But right now it's complicated. Kamala hasn't worked it all out yet.
"Well, next time tell her to come in to meet us," Ammi says. "She doesn't have to drop you at the corner like she's ashamed of you."
"She's not ashamed of me, Ammi," Kamala says, surprised to find how true that is, and how much it means to her. "She likes me for who I am."
Ammi smiles at her, suddenly, and then wraps her up in a surprise hug. "My good girl," she says. "Who wouldn't?"
Kamala smiles, ducking her head. "Aw, c'mon," she says.
Ammi puts an arm around her shoulders and starts leading her towards the front room, where Abu and Aamir are sitting together, watching baseball and studying, respectively.
"I mean it, Kamala," Ammi says softly. "You work hard, you keep away from distractions like boys, and you can be anything you want. Then everyone will see how good you are."
"Thanks, Ammi," she says. She imagines it, being a superhero, protecting the Earth, doing it with her brown skin and her brown hair, as the daughter of her proud parents. She wonders what Aamir would think of the ocean of living stars, whether he might pray with joy and gratitude if he saw it, if it touched him.
"As long as she does her math homework," Abu puts in, not glancing up from the television as they sit down.
"Thanks, Abu," Kamala laughs. "I already did my math homework, though."
"Good girl," he says absently.
Kamala settles in next to her family and thinks about the day, sometime in the future, not too far away from now, when America Chavez will knock on her door and ask for her help.
She figures she'd better get ready.