Chapter Text
Perhaps I should have known that what I'd thought was my death wouldn't have been the end of things.
Sure, there was still a chance I was actually dead: I'd been shot twice in the back of the head, which should have been enough to kill just about anyone. However, as the fevered flashbacks of the last few minutes of my life masquerading as dreams began ebbing and I returned to consciousness, the likelihood of that dove off a cliff. My surroundings were far too normal for this to be any kind of afterlife I'd ever heard about: no pearly gates, no devils with pitchforks, no endless void of nothingness, not even a single fantastical element I could point to as a sign this wasn't any iteration of Earth.
Instead, I'd woken up in a wooded area with all the things you'd expect from one: trees, grass, weeds, some flowers, and a few small animals scampering about. I didn't recognize the birdsong, but perhaps that was to be expected: despite my travels, I'd had time to appreciate so little of the world outside of Brockton Bay that I didn't remember much of it. I wanted to get up and figure out more about where I'd just found myself, but with my head spinning and a migraine threatening to split my skull wide open, for a while I just lay in place, looking at the cloudy sky while I waited for the agony to die down.
After a few minutes, the pain had lessened to a manageable level, and I managed to push myself to a sitting position. A normal move at first glance, but then I looked down at the imprint I'd left from doing that, and I froze up for a second as I processed what I'd just done.
I'd pushed myself up from my right side.
The side where I was missing my arm.
Incredulous, my eyes darted to the space my right arm now occupied, and then I ran my left hand over the new limb over and over again, wanting to make sure the arm wasn't just an illusion. My right arm was back, flesh and blood. No pain came from the shoulder it was attached to, and a quick test confirmed I had full range of motion in the limb. It was like I'd never lost it in the first place.
It didn't look the same as I remembered it, though. Examining it more closely, I noticed the whole arm was covered with short black and yellow striped fur (which probably explained why it'd felt like a blanket while I'd been rubbing it), and looked way too stick-thin to match mine. Just for comparison, I checked my left arm, which was supposed to have remained intact, and found it to be nearly identical to the right. Worse, when I managed to get to my feet so I could try and take a closer look at the rest of my body, it almost instantly became apparent that either the world had gotten a lot larger or I stood several feet shorter than I remembered.
My jubilation soured. That meant that either this wasn't my body, or I'd been mutated so badly during my time as Khepri that I didn't even recognize myself anymore. I couldn't definitively say which was worse.
If that wasn't enough cause for alarm, I also sensed something was attached to my back that didn't belong. Two somethings, in fact: it felt like someone had welded tree branches to my shoulder blades. I felt something odd on my forehead, too, but perhaps that was just a strange hat I couldn't see; I'd check my back first. When I didn't see anything upon turning my head, I started reaching behind my back, fumbling around behind me until I brushed against something, a papery surface that twitched away as my finger brushed it.
My first thought was almost discarded. No way was that what I thought it was. Not in a million years.
I felt behind me in the other direction: same as my arms, I got an identical result from the other side of my body. The next step was to try to get them to move; I wasn't sure whether I wanted that to work. Either way, synapses I definitely hadn't possessed before started firing; without a single twitch from either of my legs, I found myself on my toes before I almost toppled forward, catching myself at the last second.
Feeling like a child, I jumped as high as I could, then tried again, concentrating with all my might. I didn't gain altitude, but I managed to hover in place for a few seconds before touching down again.
Wings.
I had wings now.
That gave me another thought as my hands flew to the location of the strange sensation on my head. Identifying that was much easier; when I made contact with the other new appendage, I didn't just feel my hand, I tasted it a little, too.
Antennae, no doubt about it. No wonder I looked like this: I'd been turned into some nightmarish bee hybrid.
"Contessa, if this is your idea of a joke or a fitting reincarnation, I swear…"
I cut off that train of thought before I let myself get dragged into a pit of misery: I didn't have time for that right now. Before I could do anything else, I needed to orient myself. Figuring out whether this was a world like the one I'd grown up in, one similar enough I wouldn't notice the differences yet, or somewhere else entirely, was paramount to determining the depth of the hole I now needed to dig myself out of.
Especially since the third, and probably the most important, thing I noticed was that I could still feel the thrum of my potential power at the back of my head, just waiting to be used. I hoped I wasn't still jailbroken, because the last thing I needed was to become the biggest threat to my new home less than ten minutes after I'd arrived. Still, if this world was anywhere near as cutthroat as my old one, I needed a way to defend myself, especially since hand-to-hand combat probably wasn't going to cut it anymore when I was this small.
Right. I still needed to figure out where this was. The trees were thick enough that I couldn't see very far on the ground, but with wings, I could work in three dimensions. They were part of my body now; figuring out how to use them competently couldn't be that difficult.
Taking off properly took a few tries, the wind and my own unease thwarting several attempts before I got off the ground, but right as I thought it'd take me days or weeks to learn how to fly, I managed to both get in the air and stay there. However, after a few seconds of not touching down, my stomach started flipping like I was tumbling into a bottomless pit, not used to the sensation. I'd flown before on Atlas, but there was a world of difference between relying on a friend for the lift and creating it yourself. The instincts I shouldn't have had clashing with the ones I was used to certainly didn't help.
It didn't take too long to fly to a height where I could see above the trees, though I could feel the strain from climbing that high that quickly: my wings clearly had similar limits to the rest of my body, likely doubly so since I'd never had them before and thus never exercised them. By the time I'd dipped back below the trees and begun coasting to the ground for a brief rest, I'd figured out that the nearest settlement was about a mile away in the direction of the setting sun. Furthermore, while there were no roads leading there in my direction, the terrain between me and my destination was pretty flat, so getting there wouldn't be too difficult.
After a few minutes of walking in the right direction, I took off again, this time a little more smoothly. I stayed fairly low to the ground, reasoning that horizontal movement would be far less taxing than vertical movement, even while airborne. Weaving in and out of the trees was more difficult than I expected, but I managed despite a few close calls. Before I could collide with anything, the trees began thinning out, and I touched down on the outskirts of the city I'd seen earlier.
The first impression I had of the place raised some old alarms: the city looked like it had been through hard times. While I'd seen worse, with both Scion and the Slaughterhouse Nine's destructive efforts having this city beat, it still looked like the Teeth had used it as a pit stop. The sidewalks and roadways were chipped, cracked, and devoid of other people. Most of the nearby buildings had numerous windows that were either boarded up or just plain missing. The only movement came from debris and leaves being blown by the wind, and the only noise came from that wind and some odd clanking noises in the distance.
It looked like I'd have to return to my roots as Skitter: doing something that could even hint I had powers felt risky, but venturing into this place blind felt ten times worse. I'd try to keep things low-key, since I didn't know whether there were any cape equivalents here. No swarms, at least not yet, but that didn't mean I couldn't run a simple patrol route with an unaware outsider none the wiser.
I suppressed a sigh. I'd been here less than an hour, yet I was already falling back into old habits. At least in this case the situation required it unless I wanted to risk suffering a grisly fate, but if I ever wanted to go back to something resembling my life before I'd first gotten my powers, another roadblock had just been thrown in my path.
Perhaps I'd never been meant to leave caping behind. Ever since I'd gotten my powers, everything I'd done, everyone I'd befriended, every last facet of my life had revolved around them. Even before Leviathan had changed everything, what had I had in my civilian identity? A dead mom. A dad who'd tried as well as he could, but he'd seen eye to eye with me less and less over the years. Classmates who'd either pretended I didn't exist or actively made my life hell. At least I'd had food and a relatively safe place to live, there were lots of people in the world who didn't have either, but that wasn't a high bar to clear, even on Earth-Bet.
Being a cape it was, then. Some things were just ingrained too deep. And I couldn't go back to the person I'd been before, no matter how I tried.
Taking a deep breath, I began to scan my surroundings for insects, hoping against hope that I wouldn't go down the same path that had gotten me here.