Chapter Text
Staring over the vast expanse of city lights from a rooftop at 3:00 on a school night – or morning, Ivy Coleman supposed, was not something she would have expected from herself twelve months ago. Forever a straight-A student, having skipped a grade and now being in her final year of high school, she would have hoped the only reason she’d be up this late would be for the sole purpose of studying.
But it wasn’t really her that was standing there, it was ‘Hurricane’ - the city’s most trusted vigilante. Magazines named her the ‘superhero for the people’, newspapers discussed her being ‘The New Spiderman!’, and television programs updated their viewers regularly on who ‘the man of the city’ had saved today.
So what if the whole city was under the impression that she was a guy? Sure, it was sexist, but it made her ‘secret identity’ a tad bit more secret. It helped that she stood at a solid 5’10, having one or two inches on her fellow ‘friendly neighbourhood’ vigilante, Spiderman. So no, she didn’t mind. As long as her family and friends were safe, being perceived as the wrong gender couldn’t hurt.
After just under a year of patrolling each night, she’d had her fair share of fights. Ivy wasn’t really the sort to help old ladies cross the street, or save cats from trees. Hurricane came out at night only, blending into the darkness with her black and green suit, and using this skill to sneak through alleyways and surprise criminals in the act.
Her super speed wasn’t so super as the Flash, but it could keep her in front of Captain America without too much of a problem. She’d heard from Spiderman that he’d lost his asthma and poor eyesight when he was bitten by the arachnid, but she hadn’t been so lucky. Lacking pigment in her eyes, she found the main problem about sneaking around in the dark was her inability to see clearly, with contact lenses unable to fix her astigmatism.
As well, asthma and super speed were not a great pairing, as she had found very quickly after she hunted down a thief driving a car on one of her first nights as a ‘superhero’.
Despite this, she was doing quite well for herself as Hurricane. Being struck by lightning wasn’t what she had pictured for herself on that cloudy October night, but being able to form miniature storms and cyclones with her hands was definitely a perk that made the event worthwhile.
So as Ivy stood on that rooftop, she figured she wasn’t in such a bad position, realistically.
As no more sirens or yelling were heard for the next few minutes, she figured it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to head home. After all, she had school in a few hours.
-
An alarm startled Ivy out of her sleep. 6:45am, an impressive three hours of shut eye! As she struggled with insomnia, she had found that the best cure was to patrol until exhaustion, come home and collapse, then repeat that each day.
Her Dad, of course, wasn’t aware of this unusual tactic, as he provided her with sleeping tablets prescribed from the doctor every couple of months, and was completely under the impression that they had cured her of the sleepless nights.
But even if they had worked, saving the streets of New York from crime each night was her priority, and she would stay out as late as she could to prevent the citizens from getting hurt.
Forcing herself to roll out of bed, Ivy quickly stepped into the bathroom to conceal the dark bags under her eyes with makeup, a trick that she had also recently discovered worked very effectively for the bruises that trailed up her body after a tough night of patrol.
Eating a quick bowl of oatmeal, she threw her books in her backpack and headed off to school. She enjoyed the journey to school, with her earphones in and plenty of things to think about as she walked.
Dropping into Delmar’s Deli-Grocery on the way, Ivy purchased a sandwich for lunch. This way, she didn’t have to deal with the school’s horrifically long lunch line when she could spend her precious time working, or chatting with her friends.
She entered the gates of the prestigious girls’ school that she had been lucky enough to have received a full scholarship to for the remaining year of her high school education. She didn’t have many friends, as she chose them wisely, and truly, she didn’t have enough time to spend with them. Sure, she only had one or two, but she wasn’t hated at school, and that was enough for her.
Despite the fact that she was receiving an education that she should be grateful for, she still stared at the clock in the math classroom as the minutes ticked by, desperate to escape after a horrifically late finishing time of 4pm. So by the time four o’clock rolled around, Ivy was already up on her feet and straight out the door.
She knew Spiderman patrolled in the afternoons, so she didn’t stress about the civilians during that time, knowing they’d be relatively safe under his watch. Instead, she usually attended a boxing or self-defense class at her local gym, as since starting patrol, she had quickly realised that not having super strength was a major disadvantage for a lanky teenage girl such as herself.
Sure, she had played some sports as a kid, whether swimming or running, but the muscle that had left her with was limited, and some of the criminals she fought were almost twice her size. The only plus side was that she didn’t have to pull her punches like she knew Spiderman and some of the other avengers did.
So, from four to five pm, she attended the classes each school afternoon without fail, and would then head home to have dinner with her Dad before he attended his night shift.
‘Hey kiddo, dinner’s already on the table!’ Her Dad called out as she opened the front door.
‘Thanks Dad, be there in a minute.’
She flung her backpack on to her bed and pulled out a pair of Christmas themed pyjama pants (despite it being September) and a loose hoodie. She’d already showered quickly at the gym, so she could come home and eat dinner with her Dad, making the most of the two hours a day she could spend with him.
‘So, how was your day at school?’ He asked as she sat down, smiling.
‘Not bad, we moved on to more complex integration today,’ she replied, mouth watering at the food that was sat in front of her. Her stomach rumbled, revealing her hunger to her Dad.
‘Well, tuck in already. I know those gym classes take it out of you, I’m not even sure why you signed up in the first place if I’m being honest.’
‘Dad! New York is a dangerous place! Do you want me to be kidnapped?’ She questioned in fake shock.
‘Fair point.’
Finishing up, Ivy put on their favourite movie ‘Dead Poets Society’. Her Dad left for work at around 7pm, and instead of staying and finishing the film, Ivy quickly shut off the television and ran to her room, pulling the suit out from under her bed and shrugging the mask over her face.
Her lips turned upwards into a smile as she opened the window and climbed outside onto the fire escape.
She loved being Hurricane. When she was out of the suit, she was just a quiet, nerdy kid, who teachers ignored, and adults talked down to. But in the suit, she was the one that was in charge. Hurricane was a different person entirely, extroverted, confident, strong and fearless. All things she felt she couldn’t be without the black and green covering her.
Leaping off the fire escape, she used blasts of wind from her hands to give her a safe landing on the ground. She had found that her storm powers were not strong enough to push her upwards, and only able to give her soft landings from heights up to thirty metres, otherwise they weren’t very effective when it came to jumping off buildings.
Patrol that night was relatively chill, simply stopping a thief or two and interfering with a drunken fight. It was 10pm when she heard through her slightly enhanced hearing the familiar sound of web shooters near the rooftop she was sitting on, and she turned around to see Spidey landing behind her.
‘Hey storm boy,’ he waved.
‘What’s up, webs?’ she replied, lowering her voice as she usually did around others.
He strolled over to her and sat on the edge of the rooftop next to her.
‘Quiet night. I’m bored. I mean, on nights where the city is chaos and I’m chasing three criminals at once, I would kill for a night like this. Not literally of course. But suddenly we get one, and I’m bored out of my mind,’ he ranted to her, laying backwards on the roof in exasperation.
Ivy understood what he meant. The thoughts had a chance to cloud her mind when she had silent nights like this, and she disliked that immensely. Patrol was meant to be a form of escapism, but she didn’t feel like she was escaping when she was sitting there, pulling at the emblem on her suit and waiting for another exciting chase or fight.
‘I get what you mean, but I always feel bad for thinking like that, y’know? I mean, here we are, wishing to put civilians in harm's way just so we can get a bit of excitement,’ she laughed. ‘That’s not very superheroey of us.’
Spidey cracked a smile as he pulled out a protein bar from his suit and took a bite of it.
‘See this is why we aren’t avengers yet,’ he grumbled.
‘You aren’t an avenger? Don’t you hang out with all those guys?’
‘Nope. Mr Stark said I’m a “junior avenger”, whatever that means. Maybe when I’m eighteen next year I’ll finally be allowed on more missions,’ he said, before slapping a hand over his mouth. Ivy’s eyes widened.
‘You’re not an adult?’ She spluttered in shock. There was another vigilante like her!
‘... I wasn’t meant to say that,’ Webs muttered from behind his hand before pulling it away. ‘You can’t tell anyone! I – I'll web you up if you say anything! Only a few of the avengers know, and the public won’t trust me if they think I’m a kid!’
Hurricane laid a calming hand on his shoulder. ‘Calm down, man. I’m not gonna say anything. Even if you’re just a moody teenager after all.’
Webs didn’t need to know that she was younger than him. Knowing him, he’d probably go blabbing her identity to Mr Stark if he did find out.
‘Hey! I’m not a moody teenager!’ He stood up with his hands on his hips, challenging him.
‘Of course you’re not, just like how I’m not ancient in comparison to you,’ she stood up crossing her arms, before both of them burst out laughing, Spidey doubling over as he giggled.
So, she was laying it on thick. Who cares? It was effective, and now Spidey thought Hurricane was at least in his late twenties.
Sirens interrupted them from their laughter, as Webs suddenly stood up, clearly using his spidey sense to check which direction to go.
‘Come on!’ He shouted, as he suddenly took off in the opposite direction.
Hurricane jumped from roof to roof, using her super speed to push her further into the city. She couldn’t see Webs clearly from where she was, but she could hear him use his web shooters to push him up one final time before he dropped down into an alleyway.
Ivy followed suit, leaping down the fire escape of an apartment building before landing on the ground and taking off towards the direction of the sound of Webs having a “chat” with the criminals.
Speeding along the path, she approached the situation quietly, and took a quick breath of her asthma puffer before joining the fight.
Unfortunately, it looked like they had brought punches to a gun fight.
One of the men already had a gun out and was firing at Webs, who was narrowly avoiding the bullets and trying to web up a woman who was throwing knives at him. Ivy used the distraction of Spiderman to jump on to the man and yank the gun out of his hand, using wind to push it under the dumpster.
Spidey used this chance to take down the woman, webbing her up against a wall and confiscating her knives.
‘Hey, throwing knives at people isn’t cool,’ he said as he yanked the knife out of the wall beside him and threw it to Hurricane, who used it to peg the hoodie of a man to the floor. She trusted Spidey to web him up as she turned around and punched a guy straight in the jaw.
‘Why are there so many of you tonight? This is way too much effort,’ she joked, as the guy punched her in the face. Spidey was busy with someone else, so she kicked the guy in the groin and almost laughed as he fell to the ground in pain. This was too easy.
Unfortunately, she had underestimated exactly how easy the fight was, as she heard Spidey scream ‘Watch out!’ and felt a knife lodge itself into her calf muscle.
‘Son of a-’ she was cut off as the guy who she had just hit to the ground pulled himself back up and threw her to the ground instead.
These were the moments she really wished she had super strength.
Instead, she used her powers to send a surge of wind and lightning at the man, throwing him against the wall and effectively knocking him out. At the same time, she glanced behind her to see Spidey knocking out the final criminal, and webbing him up.
He leaped over to her as she sat up slowly.
‘Hey man, you alright?’
‘Yeah, yeah, nothing I haven’t felt before,’ she replied quickly, gritting her teeth as she felt the knife move inside of her leg.
‘You don’t look too hot, storm.’ He said, concern visible through the mask.
‘I’m always hot.’ She replied jokingly, before taking off into the night, hearing Spidey shouting at her, but unable to separate the words he was saying from each other.
The last thing she needed was webs asking to swing her home and finding out where she lived. Or worse, him caring about her. People who cared about her always seemed to get hurt, and Spidey meant a great deal to her, as a friend and as a superhero. She wanted him safe, but that was almost impossible considering what he did each night.
She figured it was hypocritical to want him to stay out of danger when she put herself in it each night, so she gave up the thought as she crawled through her window and limped to the bathroom.
Ivy had done this too many times to count, but it still didn’t hurt any less as she yanked the knife out of her calf and immediately applied pressure using an old washcloth that seemed to constantly have dried blood on it.
She quickly cleaned the wound and covered it with a bandage, knowing it was going to take a while to heal. She was jealous of the heroes that had enhanced healing. Instead, she was forced to always wear long pants to cover up the scars that littered her body. Some of them eventually went away, some of them didn’t. But new ones kept coming recently, as it seemed criminals had finally figured out that fighting with hands was too slow, and knives or guns did the trick a lot faster.
She checked the time – nearly midnight. She decided to lie down on her bed, wondering if she could get a new personal record for the most amount of sleep in one night. Unfortunately she ended up staring at her ceiling for an hour instead, so she hopped up and decided to do some work. Working on her AP Chemistry assignment through the night was a good distraction, before she finally decided to try once again to get some sleep as the sun began to rise.
As the morning light peaked through her window, her eyes shut and she fell into a dreamless sleep.
-
For once, that weekend wasn’t such a bad one. After receiving an unusual amount of sleep on that Friday night, she had felt far more energetic than normal, and had spent extra time patrolling each night to make up for the lost time when she had been forced to cut her patrol shot due to being stabbed in front of Spidey.
She’d had to lay low due to the stab wound, avoiding any situation where she knew she’d have to run away, as that wasn’t really an option right now. Instead, she focused on using her other powers to take down any criminals she came across.
She’d decided to take Monday night off, as she was planning to spend the night with her friend, Jade. It was unusual for her to plan a sleepover, as she preferred patrolling to hanging out with friends. However, she figured one night couldn’t hurt, especially considering her stab wound was preventing her from fighting properly.
Jade was Ivy’s closest friend. They’d known each other since seventh grade, and although Jade didn’t know about Hurricane, she was the one Ivy trusted most with her secrets.
‘Hey! Come on in,’ Jade smiled as Ivy strolled through the front door. ‘My parents aren’t home, so we’ve got the place to ourselves. I was thinking a Harry Potter movie marathon?’
‘Honestly, that sounds like a great idea,’ Ivy grinned, and threw her bag down next to the couch.
‘I’ll grab the snacks, you set the TV up,’ Jade said, before heading to the kitchen.
Ivy grabbed the remote and turned the television on, making herself comfy on the couch. Pulling a blanket over her, she heard only the last few words that came out of the reporter’s mouth.
‘... Avengers want vigilante ‘Hurricane’ to sign the Sokovia Accords.’
Shit.