Chapter Text
Through The Empty Glass
She doesn't think she'll ever get used to the sound of gunfire. It was just so loud.
Mirabel grimaces, jaw tensing harder. It was a distant sound, but it was still so jarring. It was awful for regular people's sense of hearing – many people could easily go deaf if a gun fired too close to their ears. It was worse for Mirabel's superhearing. It always made her head ring, a mix of her spidey sense flaring and something close to a thunderclap of a severe storm echoing in her ear canal.
She's fought plenty of people with guns and she should be used to gunfire at this point in her vigilante career, but loud sounds are something she thinks she's always going to have to wrestle with. And, with the rapid fire and screaming of guards near the entrance of the facility, she's almost glad she's not there.
Almost.
Instead, she's crammed in a ventilation shaft with barely enough wiggle room to drag herself forward with the sharp of her elbows, pushing with the tips of her toes awkwardly in an army crawl.
"This sucks," Camilo says from behind her, voice sharp and whiny. She'd make fun of him if she didn't agree with him.
This does suck.
The only reason she's here instead of out there with the rest of their family is because she was the smallest of them – well, her and Camilo. She'd hit a little bit of a growth spurt, but not taller than Isabela or Dolores yet – they still had about an inch and a half to two on her, which was better than the solid three it used to be – and there was no way Luisa would be able to shimmy her way through the vents since she towered over everybody in a bulk of muscle. So, into the ventilation she went with Camilo, who was in the same height department as her.
"Let's just hope the vents get wider soon," Mirabel mumbles.
Camilo huffs out something unintelligible, but doesn't offer anything else. Mirabel doesn't bother with trying to have any conversation, either – she was burning up; it was fucking hot in the vents. She felt like she was being waterboarded in her own mask because of the sweat on her face.
Honestly, she's not too surprised that her day turned out this way. She hadn't been able to sleep the night before, tossing and turning with a sense that something was going to go wrong before she eventually just went out to patrol by herself. She was running on pure adrenaline at this point, along with two cups of coffee and an energy drink that she had earlier in the day despite getting at least four different disapproving looks from her family.
And then her day went from bad to worse when a trembling scientist who worked under Wilson Fisk came into the police department, went straight to Captain Stacy's office and told them his boss wasn't up to anything good. The scientist was shaken and pale and informed the captain that Fisk was "messing with things he doesn't understand". The Encanto were called in immediately and Mirabel had tagged along as Weaver just in case. Fisk was bad news and her danger sense had been buzzing since the night before and Mirabel wasn't taking any chances.
She'd even relented and taken a comm with her for once.
"You're going to come up to a split soon," her pá instructs from the comms. "Take a left. It should take you down and then you'll keep going straight."
"Got it," Mirabel mumbles back. She squints through her lenses. They're fogged up like she just stepped out of a car with AC and straight into the burning summer sun. Fuck. She hopes she's not going to have, like, a heatstroke. She doesn't get sick anymore besides the winter weather being dangerous to her since she can't thermoregulate, but even she knows heatstrokes don't fall under the same category as common colds.
It's something she's definitely going to be asking her mamá when she gets back to Casita. Although, that might make Julieta have a heart attack at the mere thought of Mirabel getting a heatstroke–
Okay, maybe she won't mention it, afterall. If she can avoid any unnecessary drama, then she definitely will.
The split Augstín mentioned is, thankfully, not too far away since she reaches it in the next two minutes, Camilo wheezing something behind her. Worried, Mirabel chances a glance awkwardly over her shoulder, ignoring the twinge her neck gives at the angle. Her primo looks worse for wear, his curls soaked with sweat and his breathing is making a weird rattling noise like he's on the verge of hyperventilating.
"You should go back," Mirabel finds herself saying. Camilo jerks his head up to look at her. His eyes are a bit red behind his mask, almost bloodshot. "You don't look good."
Camilo gathers up enough strength to glare at her. "No way," he snaps. "I'm not leaving you."
"I'll be fine–"
"You don't know that," he interrupts, voice sharpening. Worried. "We don't know what's in that basement."
Mirabel's jaw clenches. He's not wrong. The scientist who came to them was vague, muttering and frenzied. Manic, really. All they know is that Fisk had his best workers building something in that overly big basement of his. They were the ones tasked with finding out what was down there and shut it down if possible.
Giving her mellizo one last wary glance, she turns back and makes a left and immediately pauses, tilting her head at the whirling noise. There's even a bit of a draft coming up from the tunnel that sinks straight down. Suspicious, Mirabel crawls forward and peeks her head over the ledge.
A large fan circles at the bottom.
"Stay here for a moment," Mirabel instructs and then braces herself against the side of the vent, crawling down the wall like a real spider would. This part of the vent is, thankfully, wider than the narrow tunnels the two of them had been forced to navigate through.
When she's close enough, she shoots a web, then another and another until the blades of the fan screech to a slow halt. Not taking any chances, she webs the blades, too, before signalling Camilo down.
She doesn't even glance up as she moves to the side after standing up on the still fan as Camilo slides down awkwardly, using his hands and boots to drag down the walls until he drops the rest of the way. The fan wobbles and Mirabel holds her breath, eyeing the blades.
They don't budge.
Together, they hop through the gaps and fall into another tunnel.
"Finally, some wiggle room," Camilo says, looking around at the spacier vent.
Mirabel snorts in agreement. "Goodbye army crawl, hello crouch walking."
"This job is going to be the reason I have a bad back when I'm old," Camilo complains as they make their way forward. "I'm going to need a cane before I hit my twenties, Mira." Mirabel chuckles a little. "I'm so serious right now, stop laughing!"
Mirabel opens her mouth to respond before slamming it back shut as she picks up voices. She stops abruptly as they near a vent exit and she peeks through the little bars down below. There's nothing but an empty room below, full of computers and monitors flickering like they've somehow got a bit of static. But somebody is close to the room and Mirabel tilts her head, leaning in closer.
"--sn't been the same since–"
"--and that makes it okay?"
"What is it?" Camilo whispers, flopping over her shoulder.
Mirabel slaps a hand over his mouth, not taking her eyes off the vent opening. "Shut up for a moment."
"--it's damn near crazy–"
"--revolutionary–"
"Still fucking crazy–"
Mirabel's brows furrow. Footsteps echo like the two people are walking down a long, empty hallway outside of the room below her. Their voices grow a little louder.
"--we have our orders. Unless you're doubting–-"
"I'm not doubting; I'm exhibiting caution. We're talking about the literal fabric of the multiverse here–"
Mirabel feels a cold jolt of apprehension slide down her spine. Her spidey senses flare out, like it could already taste the danger of the statement, even though Mirabel doesn't understand it herself. The people – scientists, if she had to believe – wander off further until their voices are just faint whispers to her superhearing ears.
Snapped out of her thoughts, she jerks her hand away from Camilo's mouth, face scrunched in disgust under her mask. "Ugh, did you just lick my hand–"
Camilo just gives her a cheeky grin. Mirabel shoves him off her shoulder and then smears her hand on his cheek. He squawks out a protest, slapping a palm against her forehead. Both spitting out curses, Mirabel's knee jabs against his side and Camilo makes her head hit the side of the vent with a loud thud.
They both freeze at the sound, sharing wide eyed looks when they're reminded they're on a mission.
Their comms suddenly come to life, the channel on the other side opening back up to the others where they're fighting at the entrance.
"I don't know what you two idiotas are doing," Isabela hisses into the comms like a vicious viper, "but knock it the hell off."
The sound of more gunfire sounds from the other end before Isabela shuts her channel back to mute. Mirabel and Camilo glance at each other.
"That was your fault," Camilo accuses immediately.
Mirabel sputters. "My fault? You're the one who started it–"
"Mm, did I?" he pretends to think, clearly trying to gaslight her.
Mirabel gives up on arguing and just gives him one last shove. He's clearly not ready for it because he snaps out a curse in Spanish as he tries to stop himself from falling, hands scraping the walls of the vent before he ends up on his ass.
She doesn't wait for him as she starts down the vent again.
"Hey, wait up!" Camilo whisper shouts as he tries to scramble to get his bearings.
It takes fifteen minutes for them to reach the end of the ventilation. Another barred covering greets them and Mirabel twists around and gives it one good, harsh kick. It gives away with a horrible screech of metal and the popping of screws before it flies off and goes, down, down, down. Mirabel's brows scrunch in confusion as she waits for it to hit the bottom. Camilo peeks out of the opening.
"I think it's an elevator shaft," he notes, confused.
Mirabel's eyes widen as her senses suddenly scream at her. She grabs Camilo by the back of his suit and yanks him away from the opening just as an elevator whooshes by.
"Gracias," he croaks out, hand coming up to touch his throat like he's already imagining what would've happened if Mirabel hadn't pulled him away in time.
She gives him an awkward pat on the shoulder. "You good?"
Her primo nods, hands shaking a little. "I'm fine."
Mirabel looks out and down at the elevator making its way down. She glances over at Camilo.
He grimaces, already knowing what she's thinking. "No, no. Absolutely not."
A minute later, Mirabel is making her way down the elevator shaft, using a web attached to the opening they came from like a rope from one of those spy shows they used to watch. Camilo is latched on her back like the world's worst backpack.
"Don't drop me, don't drop me, don't drop me," he keeps chanting.
Mirabel rolls her eyes behind her lenses. "I'm not going to drop you."
"You said that last time, too, and guess what happened? I was dropped!"
"You were fine."
"I almost had a heart attack. Tía was going to have to take me to the hospital!"
"She was not–"
Bickering quietly all the way, they both fall completely silent when Mirabel lands them gently on the moving elevator. Camilo looks like he's just barely holding himself back from kissing the solid floor under his feet finally. Mirabel shakes her head at him but crouches down, listening to the voices in the elevator. She holds up a three and then a five with her hand, getting a nod from Camilo – she couldn't tell exactly how many were in there, but it had to be within that range.
Mirabel grabs the handle of the escape hatch at the top, sharing a look with her primo.
And then she rips it open and drops down right on top of one of the scientists, knocking him to the ground. Startled screams erupt from the passengers and she socks another in the face. Camilo swings in from the top, hands on the ledge of the entrance as he lands a solid kick with his feet on a guard's chest, sending him toppling over. Mirabel ducks as one lashes out with his rifle like a bad imitation of a baseball bat. She grabs the rifle when it's over her head and yanks it out of his grip, webbing it to the ceiling before shooting another web into his helmeted face in a smooth motion. Camilo launches himself over her shoulder, kneeing the same guard in the face right as Mirabel is already moving again, sweeping a scientist's feet out from under the woman when she tries to tase them. The taser clatters to the ground, useless as the scientist lands in a pile with the other two.
She turns towards the last one – another scientist robed in a white coat. He squeaks and holds up his hands. "Please don't hurt me," he pleads, clearly surrendering.
Mirabel webs his hands to the elevator walls. "Good choice." She crosses her arms. "Now, tell us what you're doing in that basement."
The scientist swallows nervously, glancing between her and Camilo. "Boss w– will kill me."
"He's not the one you should be worried about right now, amigo," Camilo speaks up after duplicating another pair of handcuffs he keeps on his belt and restraining the last person in the elevator.
The man looks at them again. A bit of sweat drips off his chin. "Okay, okay," he whispers hoarsely. "Y– you know about– about Boss' family? About his wife and– and son?"
Mirabel, admittedly, doesn't, but Camilo nods. "Yeah, they died in a shootout six years ago." Mirabel glances over at him, curious. He gives her a grimacing, weak smile. "We had a bit of trouble with Fisk from…from before." Mirabel stiffens at the meaning. Before she was Weaver. When her family was lying to her face. "That bit of information came up when we were looking into him."
Mirabel grinds her teeth together at the thought as the conversation pokes at old wounds. She takes a deep breath when the scientist nods his head at Camilo's words.
"He's been working on something since then," the man says, wobbling a little. "A– a machine. It's…" He shakes his head. "Boss never got over their deaths, you know? He just– he wants his family back."
"What does that mean?" Camilo asks warily.
"The machine," the scientist answers slowly, "it's called a Collider. It's purpose…it collides into other universes and builds bridges between them. It– it pulls other things from those universes to this one."
Mirabel is struck with a horrible realization. "It can pull people here," she whispers. Her senses prickle the back of her neck. "He wants to bring his family here."
The scientist gives a weak laugh. "Got it in one."
That's why, Mirabel realizes. That's why her senses have been creeping slow in the back of her head the entire night and then today. The fabric of the multiverse, she remembers those other scientists talking. Her universe was in trouble if that Collider was used. Fisk might be just wanting his family here now, but what about later? Once he gets what he wants, what's stopping him from bringing more over? Another Fisk? Another variant of a supervillain? Another Goblin? Another Octavius? The possibilities were endless. How many universes were out there that Fisk could meddle with?
Could he accidentally tear the fabric of the entire multiverse apart if he messed with it too much?
"We have to stop him," Mirabel blurts out, wide eyed behind her mask lenses.
The man is already shaking his head. "Fisk had ordered the Collider to be used today. And once your team," he sneers the word a little, "got here…"
"Oh shit," Camilo whispers.
Mirabel webs the scientist's mouth. "Don't go anywhere," she quips a bit snidely before turning on her heels and sprinting down the hallway they're in, Camilo on her heels. A large room opening is ahead and Mirabel doesn't waste time as she shoots a web and slingshots herself forward, landing in a balanced crouch on the railing of a balcony. Her eyes are wide in shock as she takes in the room. A large, hulking machine takes up almost the entire area, two gigantic contraptions almost like satellites are built into the opposite ends of the walls. She rips her gaze away from the Collider to take in the rest of the room. There's guards littering the bottom floor, clearly on alert. To her right, there's a huge one way mirror stretched across the entire length of the room where she'd bet Fisk and his best workers are behind.
"Oh my god," Camilo breathes out as he comes to a stop beside her, having caught up. "Guys, we have a problem."
"We heard," Isabela grunts out when she opens her comms channel. The gunfire isn't as bad, now, from what Mirabel can hear. They must be making good work of the guards in the rest of the building. "We're on our way as fast as we can."
"Be careful," Dolores adds before their ends shut off again.
Camilo goes to respond, but the hair on the back of Mirabel's neck sticks straight up. "Watch out!" she shouts, shoving Camilo out of the way and tossing herself backwards in the same movement right as something sharp slams where they'd been, busting the metal of the balcony. Mirabel lands back on her feet, muscles coiling and her fingers curling into fists at her sides. A clawed, metal hand sinks into the floor and heaves up a large figure. Something almost like a tail rips up from the ground and Mirabel eyes the sharp end. Green substance drips on the floor from it and she watches it bubble slightly.
Poison or acid? She doesn't know and really doesn't want to find out.
"Hello, little heroes," the man rumbles out from inside the metal suit. Mirabel tenses up. "You shouldn't be here."
"Ouch," Mirabel says, forcing her voice to stay calm. "So, it was on purpose that I didn't get a party invite? Am I not popular enough to sit with the cool kids?"
The villain chuckles. "You are funny, tiny spider."
"Yeah? Thanks, I try."
Mirabel's senses give a shriek and she leaps up as the sharp tail strikes where she'd been, whip quick. She lands on the wall, hands sticking to it. She jerks her head up to watch, to her horror, as the Collider's satellites give a mighty rumble before slowly starting to spin. She throws a glance towards her primo.
"Go!" she shouts. "I've got this one!"
Camilo makes a face under his mask like he wants to protest to leaving her, but he turns on his heels. Not before hurling two items at the machined man's back. They explode on impact, bursting into clouds of smoke. Mirabel uses it to her advantage and catapults herself forward, slamming her fist into his face. It doesn't seem to do much besides knock him off the balcony. She leaps after him and has to twist midair to avoid the stinger.
"So, who are you?" Mirabel asks conversationally. "I'll start first." She lands a hit on his side before narrowly dodging his fist. "Hi, I'm Weaver. I don't like bullies or criminals or broccoli on my pizza. Now, you."
She grunts as the man's next punch catches her in the shoulder. Mirabel backs up and then backflips when he reels back and stomps the ground open where she'd been.
"I am Scorpion," the man answers, amused. At least some people appreciate her quips. Take that, Isabela. He then tries to squash her like a bug after his greeting. Rude.
His palm opens and Mirabel's spidey sense scream danger! at her. She dives out of the way as a missile flies towards her. To her surprise, it veers off track and heads straight for her again. Tracking missiles then, she realizes with a grimace. Mirabel fires off a web and swings through the air and straight for the ceiling. She glides close and then, at the last second, shoots another web and launches herself to the side. The missile hits the ceiling and she coughs around the dust and debris that falls, wincing as the explosion nips at her shoulder, burning some of her suit and blistering her skin.
"You've got to be kidding," Mirabel snaps to herself as she looks down to find another missile heading straight for her. She drops herself down straight at it before twisting to the side at the last second, webbing it. She flips herself midair and slings it right into Scorpion before he could move. It collides with his armor in a horrible noise before she's thrown back. She grunts as her back hits the ground before she hops back up, squinting behind her lenses.
Scorpion comes roaring out of the smoke and she has to catch the stinger of his tail before it could sink into her gut. Mirabel strains her arms to hold it away before pushing off the ground. The tail slams into the floor and she lands on the nonpointy end, shooting double webs. They stick to Scorpion's goggles, blinding him momentarily.
Her electricity crackles to life, the orange-gold making light dance on her mask. Her next punch shoots out like a shockwave, electricity rolling through Scorpion's armor like the ocean waves on a beach. He lets out a short scream, his armor steaming, metal plates shifting. Mirabel hisses between her teeth as she's slapped away, a stray hand slamming into her chest and sending her flying back. She skids across the ground before using the momentum to roll onto her feet again.
Suddenly, a blaze of heat erupts from behind her. Mirabel whips her head around, eyes wide as she realizes the satellites are whirling around like the largest fans in history. A beam shoots between them, red, orange, and yellow bathing the room. Mirabel balks as her feet lift off the ground for a moment, like gravity is trying to decide to rewrite the rules of the atmosphere. All of her senses are dialed up to eleven, like she could hear and see everything.
"Mirage," Mirabel speaks up into her open comm channel, a warning.
"I know," Camilo snaps, though his frustration isn't at her. "Give me a minute."
A loud crash has her glancing up to the one way mirror. A part of it is busted open now and she catches the bright colors of her primo's suit flashing across the gap as he makes his way towards the controls.
She doesn't have time to worry before she has to leap away from an attack. Her stomach twists as she seems to float more than have to fight against the drag of gravity. Mirabel twirls through the air as Scorpion barrels at her. She grabs the mechanical tail and attempts to throw him before his claws hook into her side. She yelps and slams a fist full of electricity into his arm to make it go limp.
Mirabel doesn't even have time to move or react as Scorpion opens his other palm. The missile fires point blank.
She feels like she's in freefall as she's thrown up and Scorpion is thrown down. She barely sees how he makes a crater into the ground before she slams into the blaze of fire of the Collider. Her gasp of pain is lost as the world falls away from her.
All she can see are colors. Pinks and oranges and reds; a blinding yellow and then a blue that sears straight into her retinas. She can see.
Walls are broken and the threads of the universe are in her hands, unweaving like someone's pulling a string and watching a scarf unravel. There's bridges of bright pink and sky blue and rifts that tear open space itself in reds and oranges. She can see it all and it's right there and she thinks she can hear someone nearby; someone like her.
Mirabel opens her mouth to call for them, for help.
She needs help. It hurts– her head feels like it's going to explode– she can see– she can hear– it hurts– it hurts–
The next time she blinks, Mirabel's flying across the room. An arm is hooked around her waist and colors are still dancing behind her eyelids, but the Collider is off. She heaves for breath and blacks out again and the next moment she's on the ground, surrounded by her family. Her teeth are chattering and she's so cold. Where her lenses had once been fogged with heat, frost is now creeping along the edges. Her breath saws out in harsh puffs of chilled air. She's shivering and she can't even feel her fingertips.
When'd you guys get here? she tries to ask when she finds the blurry figure of Isabela crouched beside her, dressed in deep purple and pink while Dolores checks her vitals.
She doesn't get the chance to before her vision leaves her again.
The next time, she's only aware enough to know she's bundled up in a pile of blankets and being quickly carried away. Mirabel blinks behind her lenses and notes the frost is pretty much gone. She tips her head back to find Luisa's masked face above her, jaw set and clutching her tight. She can see Casita in the distance. She thinks Luisa says something to her, but she can't catch it. Her ears feel like they're clogged and ringing.
Instead, she dreams of a masked face similar to her own and shattered mirrors.
Mirabel Madrigal was alone.
If there was one core truth about the universe, that was it. And Mirabel was familiar with truth – and lies, and lies, and lies, and lies. But she knew that no matter what happened, no matter how much anyone in her family tried to show her otherwise, Mirabel knew in her heart that she was the only one.
Things were good now! Her and her family had reconciled, and she had that big talk with her abuela, and her parents had exhaustedly told her that they were always there for her, even when they hadn’t been in the ways that counted for years. But Mirabel still put up a grin around the family that let them know that she was at least trying, because she was.
She still didn’t know if she deserved to be anything but alone.
She was alone right now, for one thing, backflipping across the slippery rooftops of Manhattan as rain pattered away at the surfaces. She could barely see anything through the night and the wet, her lenses wide as they could be and still taking in nothing but the dark outlines of buildings and the dull light from the streetlamps below. She paused at an edge, feeling the tug of gravity tip her slightly.
Her senses were of no help in locating her enemy. Her foe was invisible, completely – which was supposed to be her thing – and that only meant one thing.
Something dark and slick wrapped around her leg, and Spider-Moth was yanked to the ground in a graceless pull, her chin slapping against the edge of the rooftop and drawing out a startled cry from the vigilante. A heartbeat later and she was flung backwards into the open storm.
The glass windows of the skyscraper broke against Spider-Moth’s back as she slammed into it, drawing a hiss from beneath her mask. She kept going and she was tumbling across the shallow carpet of an office as rain rushed in from the thunderstorm outside.
Spider-Moth groaned as she stood up, glancing sourly around the room at the broken desk and scattered office supplies. “Guess someone’s not coming into work tomorrow,” she called out into the storm. “Never me though, huh?”
There was only the crackle of lightning in response. But the spider knew that her foe was out there, waiting to strike at any moment.
Breathing in deeply, Mirabel closed her eyes and centered herself in that broken, rainy office space. Her enemy could be inside the building by now, and without her spider-sense, she needed her hearing to be as dialed up as possible.
“I know you’re out there!” Mirabel called out vaguely, feeling the broken glass shift and squish into the wet office carpet beneath her feet. It was getting cold, and she knew that drying out her suit would take forever at this rate.
Maybe tía could make it super sunny, even if it was the middle of the night?
But Mirabel bit her lip at the thought – she did not want to think about her family right now.
Her senses twinged, vibrating through her thoughts and she leapt out of the way just in time for a copy machine to fly right above her head. Twisting in the air, Mirabel fired a line blindly, letting out a breath as it found purchase on the ground. The copy machine smashed against the floor before crunching and tumbling out of the gaping hole in the building that Mirabel had made.
“You know, you’re gonna have to pay for that,” Mirabel spoke mildly into the darkness. It was starting to tick her off how cowardly her enemy was being.
But that was how it always was – this particular adversary loved the dark and dragging anything and anyone it could grab into the darkness with it. The enemy Mirabel was facing was not a new one – not by a long shot. Mirabel sometimes laid awake at night, thinking about how it knew more about her than Mirabel did herself.
Camilo had given it a name –
Venom.
Mirabel never called it that. She called it the symbiote when she needed to, but naming it was a line she was still afraid of crossing. The time they spent bonded was one of the worst times of her life, leading to the second worst decision she had ever made.
She wondered who it was possessing right now. She wondered if the host welcomed it openly, like Mirabel had once. And then, with some dark mirth, she wondered if all exes were like this, or if it was just hers.
She had never seen Mariano try to kill Isabela.
It would more likely be the other way around, anyways.
With nothing but the terrain to guide her sense, the moth’s leaps and zips were clumsier than normal, twisting her through a tornado of office supplies and chairs, each cubicle becoming a warzone as she backflipped through the halls. Ceiling lights crackled as the glass shattered and exposed them to the pounding rain, and Mirabel cringed as she imagined how this would look to the others, when it was her patrol.
Something from the darkness whipped out at her, and before Mirabel knew it, she was on the ground, crying out as her back met the sharp ends of broken-window glass. For not the first time in her life, Mirabel felt hopeless.
But then Mirabel’s senses blared to life with a fresh intensity that they hadn’t done before that night, and the ground shifted beneath her, rippling like it was water. The spider’s sense of balance was thrown off, but she knew immediately what was happening, and she was furious.
“Damn it, Shaper!” Mirabel glared at her cousin as she was stretchered over to him and hoisted up, the carpet literally lifting from the ground and pushing her up until she was looking right into her cousin’s masquerade-masked eyes. “This was my patrol!”
For once, Camilo didn’t smile or laugh at her frustration. “And you were fighting Venom! You know you’re supposed to call for backup when that happens, Mira, you can’t sense him!”
On cue, something green and leafy and from the corner of her eye snapped forward and snagged her wrist and pulled hard, and Mirabel growled as she yanked her arm inwards, dragging her annoying eldest sister forward and intensifying her glare.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Isabela hissed, peonies sprouting along the vine and in her hair.
Mirabel snarled as she leaned in. “I wasn’t–”
“Yeah, you weren’t,”
“Shut up!” Mirabel felt her cheeks warm. She glanced around the room for a moment, wondering why the symbiote hadn’t made a move since she had been discovered by her sister and cousin. Her senses were alive now, and she kept one eye on her sister as she scanned the offices around them.
“Is there anyone else who wants to show their face?” She called, her frustration scratching through her voice. When Her-cules and Soundstorm climbed up through the hole, eventually, the rain sliding down their backs, Mirabel couldn’t even huff at the kicked-puppy face her other sister was making.
Something buzzed in the back of her head, tick-tick-ticking until it rang out like an alarm bell.
“Wait,” Mirabel muttered, ripping the vine from her arm and looking around. “How did you all even find me?” She had left the house alone, angry, hoping that her mutterings about going on patrol were enough to keep the family at bay. She hadn’t even seen Antonio – she was worried that she would lash out at him, too, and then that would be a whole thing that she just couldn’t deal with.
Earlier that day, Abuela had finally taken Mirabel down to the family hideout. The Encanto hideout. Mirabel had been putting it out of her mind until then – the fact that her family really had kept everything a secret – but seeing the doors and the candle and the city layout and everything else made her feel so small in the basement of Casita. The basement that until that moment, she hadn’t even known existed.
It was like she was back at square one, right after she had found out everything. Back when she had found out she lived with a family of liars, people who thought they knew what was best for her. She was so angry that night, angry and sad, and it was the same way now.
“I’m sorry, were you all following me?” Mirabel said, feeling her palms heat up with that familiar warmth. Her hands flickered like lightbulbs before stabilizing, a faint light seeping through her suit. “You don’t think I can handle this?”
She glanced around the room. At least Camilo and Luisa had the graces to look ashamed, but Dolores and Isabela had that same intensity in their looks. Isabela lifted her chin.
“What were we supposed to think when you stormed out of casita like a child and swung away?” Isabela insisted. “And then, we come to find you fighting the one villain that your ‘spidey-sense,’” she spat the word out, “doesn’t work on? Who do you think we are?”
Mirabel had so many answers for that.
She could feel a familiar anger well up inside of her. The kind of anger that had trapped her before, a cold, controlling fury that slid up her back and into her head. In the back of her mind, she knew that she was overreacting right now, but there was something that was whispering in her ear, telling her to just give in to her worst impulses and push him into the street –
“Mirabel!” Isabela’s voice cut through the dark and the spider was dimly aware of the inky tendrils that were crawling on her arms, and how her sister didn’t look angry anymore, just afraid and that was good. It was good that she was afraid, afraid of Mirabel and Spider-Moth because Isabela was a liar and they were all liars and we don’t need them –
“No!” Mirabel cried, her body blinking in the darkness until it glowed hotter than the sun and shined, and then burned. She had already fought this infection, she could do it again –
But then something happened.
The ground beneath her began to split open. But not in the way of concrete and plaster – it was like the world itself was splitting apart, leaving a hole that was full of impossible colors but also empty and gaping. Mirabel felt her stomach sink, stuck between the pull of gravity and the symbiote as it continued to grab onto her and feed on her anger and fear.
It had been a long time since she was afraid of falling.
Two more vines wrapped around her suit by the wrists, and Mirabel forgot all the anger she was feeling at her sister in that moment as Isabela cried out for the others to help her. Luisa and Dolores were there in an instant, pulling on a vine a piece, and the ground rippled in desperation as Camilo tried to lift it so she wasn’t falling in anymore.
“Come on, sis!” Luisa called, but even her super strength wasn’t enough to fight the force of whatever the hell was happening.
And then it hit her. With a sinking realization, Mirabel remembered what this feeling was, and what it had led to two years before. She wondered, then, if she would ever make it back home, this time.
And with her sister’s vines still wrapped tightly around her arms, Mirabel pushed herself back into the hole, letting the unnatural glow of the multiverse envelope her.
In another universe, in another New York, a moth without wings slams into another Manhattan rooftop, her body breaking into a steel water tower and denting it. She groans at the impact, fainting before she could realize that it wasn’t raining anymore, and that it was sunny, and that she no longer was attached to the dark evil thing that she had brought along.
Because elsewhere in the same city, that thing crawls across a brick wall, pausing only as it spots a colorful mural across the street with the image of a familiar hero splashed across the surface.
Underneath, the symbiote reads the words inscribed in spray-painted black:
Thank you, Weaver!