Chapter 2
An insistent jazz melody played through the office, just distracting enough to be useful. The room was spacious and soft with warm, light tones that didn't strain the eyes. A few simple, brightly colored trinkets were scattered around — clever little things that gave your gaze somewhere to land so you weren't staring at the person across from you or wandering aimlessly around the room. A good trick. I'd been grateful for it more than once.
The couch beneath me had soaked through long ago, but after my very first visit it had been swapped out for an identical one made from a special waterproof fabric. God, I'd kill for something like that for myself — though a couch like this probably cost more than the house Grandma and I shared.
I drifted off into that thought and went silent for nearly a full minute. Then, without entirely meaning to, I complained out loud about my complete lack of funds — which my companion promptly looped into the topic we'd been discussing.
"And here I thought things couldn't get worse."
"I understand, Herman," the green-haired man said. He flashed me that wide, earnest smile and gave one of those slow, confiding nods that made you want to clock him across the jaw. "I had trouble with girls when I was young too, and—"
"Trouble implies you could actually talk to them," I said, cutting him off. This man's arms were thicker than my thighs. He probably had more muscle mass than everyone on our street combined. I pushed myself up onto one elbow and aimed the full force of my contempt directly at his face — enough that even this particular immovable object, who happened to be shaped like a person, picked up on it. "I react like that cat meme. The one that sees a woman for the first time and backs itself into a corner."
"Don't exaggerate — it's not that bad," my therapist said, trying to smooth things over.
He got a single raised eyebrow in return. And a puddle of water on the floor from my mouth.
"Oh, easy there, Herman. Try not to get worked up—"
"E-easy for you to s-say." And now the stutter. Wonderful. I sat up properly, elbows on my knees, and buried my face in my hands, fingers digging into my red hair. "You weren't the one who passed out because you got left alone in a room with a woman."
The memory of my very first day at the clinic surfaced unbidden, back when I'd had a different doctor. Yeah. That had been something.
"Herman, there's no need to worry." My therapist leaned forward and dropped to one knee so we were eye level. He produced that particular smile — the bright, painless American grin, the kind you saw in toothpaste commercials, and it drove me insane. "Claire Foster is a professional. She's exceptional at what she does—"
"Obviously. A strong, independent Black woman — who would've doubted that she—"
"Herman." My muttering got cut off cleanly. His voice went low and resonant, the kind a father uses on a kid who's pushing it. Annoying. We held eye contact for a few seconds before his hand slipped off my shoulder — along with a small cascade of water that nearly pulled his arm down with it. "Good lord… when did that happen?"
"Like I did it on purpose," I said, running my palm across my hair, then my other shoulder, then down my arm, sweeping water off in sheets onto the floor. Even the wetsuit wasn't containing it anymore; moisture was starting to push through to the surface. "If you knew what was currently happening inside my underwear, you'd be genuinely impressed."
"Look, you seem like a good guy, and clearly a very… *active* young man, but I prefer women—"
He stood to his full height and laughed, glancing away with exaggerated discomfort.
"Jackass."
"Ha — sorry, sorry, I couldn't help it." He shook out his magnificent green hair and drifted back toward his desk, sinking into his expensive chair with the easy grace of someone who'd never in his life worried about knocking anything over. One leg crossed over the other in a *Basic Instinct* pose. "You're not gay, I know, I know—"
"I'm *not!*"
"Ha-ha-ha!"
The irritation held for a few more seconds. Then the absurdity of the situation got to me — and honestly, just my own personality — and I found myself laughing along with him, the tension running out like water from a drain. It took less than a minute to stop the leaking and settle back onto the couch, under his satisfied, good-natured gaze.
The money spent on a real specialist was paying off faster than I'd expected. I glanced sidelong at the enormous man who looked like he ought to be sprinting through the streets in a cape or competing for Olympic gold, and pushed down the wave of anxiety that came with the memory of how I'd gotten here.
Getting the job at the water park had been a stroke of genius I would never regret.
In just two months, my skin had gone from a genuinely alarming vampire-white to an actual tan. My wreck of a body had started acquiring something resembling muscle, partly because my employer had let me swim at night after the park closed. A decent paycheck meant real food, money set aside for sessions with an outrageously expensive therapist, and finally a reason to do something with the pile of coins in my room — because as it turned out, a super with my particular abilities could cover the work of a dozen people at one of the largest water parks in Los Angeles.
The first stretch had been rough. Very rough. Fine — it was an absolute disaster, the kind I hadn't been remotely prepared for. My entire previous life I'd rolled my eyes at people who claimed panic attacks were real.
But here's a mild example that happened to become something else entirely.
The first time I walked into a large, open building full of people — full of women in swimsuits — instead of water, blood almost came out. Well, from my nose it definitely did, when a pair of girls walked by, took one look at the scrawny disaster in the wetsuit, and winked at each other while laughing.
I'd thought that kind of thing only happened in anime.
But the moment I spotted some enthusiastically bouncy assets barely contained by a swimsuit clearly one size too small — my heart went absolutely haywire. I could practically *hear* my blood accelerating. My palms went slick, water began streaming from every surface of my body, and then—
I came back to consciousness because someone was gently slapping my face.
Someone enormous. Someone green.
Not like, a little green. *HULK* green.
A massive, jade-skinned creature, all muscle and very little else — furious, wild, barely containable — wearing small round glasses and an enormous hoodie, with the sleeves tied around his neck like a cape. It was the Hulk. Clearly the Hulk. And yet there was a mind behind those eyes. A mind that quietly outclassed mine by several orders of magnitude, and didn't feel the need to mention it.
*Professor Hulk,* I thought immediately. And as it turned out, I was completely right.
Because he's the one who told me about the best super-specialized therapists in the city and handed me their number.
Bruce Banner — scientist, victim of a badly failed experiment, an MCU fixture in a world that was not the MCU. The poor man had spent his existence in a permanent state of compressed control, terrified that the green monster inside would break loose and start demolishing things.
Here, though, on *this* Earth, things had gone differently. People had actually helped him. Nobody had hunted him. Nobody had tried to strap him into a uniform and point him at a battlefield. With the caliber of beings walking around on this planet — things that arrived from space on a fairly regular basis — Bruce Banner simply wasn't that scary. There were plenty of things that could stop him.
So the former scientist and failed experiment survivor had ended up on the street. On the *street.* The 7-Eleven wouldn't even take him because one bad moment could close not just the store but the entire block.
An Avenger and a hero in one world. A homeless nobody in this one. Irony, you heartless creature.
Bruce never told me exactly how he'd worked out the arrangement with Claire Foster — founder and head of her own private practice — but the big guy had zero regrets about it. She had helped him find peace inside a body he shared with another consciousness, and her work was the reason Professor Hulk existed. Though nobody called him that here, since Bruce had no interest in becoming a superhero. He was perfectly content working in a lab with dangerous radioactive materials that his physiology simply didn't care about.
So on a hot summer day off, Banner had gone to the water park and practically tripped over my body in the entryway, bleeding and expelling water from multiple orifices simultaneously. Without a second thought, the big gentle idiot had stopped to help.
I'd glanced down during that interaction. I could literally see his muscles shifting under the skin with every small movement. Real steel cables.
Then something slid out of his Hawaiian shorts.
I don't need to be precise about it. The point is: it was a rope. A real one.
I screamed like a small child and launched myself two meters sideways. Bruce laughed — embarrassed, but laughing. And don't you dare judge me. *Anyone* would have screamed.
That was how I met this world's Bruce Banner. And through his persistence and well-meaning interference, I eventually got myself an appointment with Claire Foster herself — who normally only took the most severe cases. But with me, things hadn't gone according to plan.
So instead of sitting across from a strong, independent woman, I was sitting across from a giant white man with green hair, a smug grin, and—
Well. He was actually not bad. In just a few sessions he'd already made a real difference, enough that I could work at the park during the day now, not just the overnight shift.
Leonard Samson.
He presented as a straightforward, uncomplicated alpha male. That was entirely a front for a genuinely kind nature and a very well-trained mind. Oh, and he could also transform into a massive green monster of some kind — Yeti-adjacent — but that was more of a footnote.
"Herman, stop daydreaming. Let's get back to our session." A soft cough pulled my attention back. Samson tapped his finger against his open notebook — the one he was always writing in but never let me see. "Tell me more about what happened today."
"Not much to tell," I said. There was, in fact, quite a lot to tell — but I didn't particularly want to get into it, and I was doing my best to wriggle out. His perceptive, patient gaze wasn't budging. "Fine. But don't expect a gripping narrative."
"That depends a lot on the delivery." He turned the notebook over in his hand. When he caught me staring at it, he smiled, tilting it back and forth slowly. "Give me the full version, and I'll let you look at my notes. Interested?"
It was a transparent bribe that no mature, well-adjusted, self-confident adult would fall for.
"Deal."
…No one had ever accused me of being any of those things.
"Then start from the beginning." Samson flipped to a fresh page, turned down the music, and settled back into his chair with the ease of someone who had nowhere else to be. His body language was deliberately slack — low interest, minimal attention. It was all performance, of course, but he'd already figured out that this approach made it considerably easier for me to talk. "From the store."
"All right. I went to pick up a bottle of whiskey for Grandma…"
---
"Oi, freak — did you wet yourself or something?"
A typical day, a typical question. I'd stopped counting how many times I'd heard some version of it. All it took was a moment of distraction, a small flash of anxiety, and the water came — usually pooling at my feet in an undignified puddle that was very difficult to explain to strangers.
It was better than it used to be. I wasn't constantly soaked anymore. But incidents still happened.
"Hey — *dipshit.* I'm talking to you." Also not new. No matter how much the rudeness got under my skin, I made a point of avoiding unnecessary conflict — partly on my therapist's advice, partly because Grandma had drilled it into me. Protecting people from actual threats was one thing. Getting into a brawl with some loud mouth over a few harsh words was another. "You're gonna get it now!"
Whoever this was, they were working directly from the script. Word for word, practically. But something in the voice kept nagging at me, something I couldn't quite pin down. My brain was too slow to catch it. I was running on fumes — the brutal schedule of training, work, and keeping the house for Grandma had ground me down to something that barely resembled a person.
A hand grabbed my left wrist without warning and yanked me around.
Well. *Surprise,* technically.
My body handled the surprise the way it always did: I'd been holding water in my mouth, and it came out.
"Bleegh—"
"AUGH! Oh my— are you *serious?* What is *wrong* with you? You absolute psycho!" And there it was. The thing that had been bothering me finally clicked into place, now that I was actually looking. The problem hadn't been in front of my eyes — she was shorter than me, which is why I'd missed her. The person who'd grabbed me, yelled at me, and was now staring at me with pure outrage was a fifteen-year-old girl. A decent-looking kid who was clearly going to grow into someone quite striking — still at the angular stage, but the outlines were already there. A brunette, scowling ferociously, wringing water from her hair which was gathered in a simple ponytail. "Not only did you *piss yourself* in front of the store in broad daylight, you *threw UP on me!*"
She scrubbed furiously at herself, trying to get the water off. I'd gotten used to it by now — she had not.
"And the *bums* — why don't they just round all of you up and dump you in a camp in the middle of the desert—"
"Easy there." I placed my hand on top of her head. With a quiet effort of concentration, I gathered the water across my palm — a thin, glove-like film that covered my hand completely. I'd gotten better at this, though I had no particular desire to stop and appreciate it. I flicked it off onto the ground in one smooth motion. "You're pretty small to have a mouth like a sailor."
"Go to hell, virgin. I can smell the inexperience from across the street." No thank you for the help. She shoved her shoulder into me — or tried to, and when I didn't move, she stomped hard on my foot and, as I bent forward, drove her knee straight into my groin. "Enjoy it," she said, turning away with her chin in the air. "That's the first and last time a woman will ever touch those."
She marched through the automatic doors with the righteous energy of someone who had definitely won, heading straight for the cashier, who had been standing frozen behind the register like a statue.
"Nasty little brat… Since when did kids get so vicious?"
I hadn't meant to say it out loud. I knew I'd made a mistake the second every hair on the back of my neck stood straight up and my gut sent an urgent, full-volume alarm through my entire body. Please, not the explosive diarrhea. Please. I had such a complicated relationship with my own power.
"*Kid?*" She spun on her heel and looked at me differently now. First: her eyes. The green irises were gone, replaced by a vertical black pupil set in yellow sclera.
Then things got worse.
In a single instant her canines extended to something genuinely disturbing, her body surged upward and outward, and she became a towering green nightmare of a creature.
What was it with the universe and green monsters?! Why did they keep accumulating around me?! Was this a pattern? Was I cursed?
Saying I was terrified doesn't come close to capturing it. I knew what the Hulk could do. I had a reasonable guess about Samson. And with every stereotype I'd absorbed about enormous green figures who went full monster-mode — my body was ready to shatter a steel rod with sheer clenching force alone.
But instead of coming at me, the creature lurched sideways and threw a blow so fast it barely registered — and caved in one of the display cases. The crash, the roar, the general apocalypse erupting inside a convenience store.
The cashier finally moved. He went straight for the back exit.
The enormous shape was careening around the cramped shop, chasing—
An invisible person?
I blinked, in case my eyes needed resetting. I happened to catch the exact moment the monster-girl — who looked startlingly masculine in this form — seized an invisible ankle and, without ceremony, swung its owner into the floor.
The invisible person became visible on impact, gasping for air. The creature grinned something horrible and advanced — then took an ordinary grocery-store black pepper packet directly to the face.
Enhanced senses turned out to be a real liability there. The enormous green thing collapsed, gagging and clawing at the tile, shredding chunks of it clean off the floor.
The now-visible girl grabbed something from the floor — an *inhaler,* apparently, because what else would it be — pocketed the cash from the register, and strolled toward the exit, whistling quietly.
She stopped when she saw me.
She was pretty. Actually quite pretty. The "bad girl" presentation worked against it slightly, and the nose ring gave me certain bovine associations, but objectively—
Tanned, well-built, and very aware of both facts.
She looked me up and down — the wetsuit, the posture, all of it — gave a short, contemptuous hum, aimed a dismissive smile somewhere around my collarbones, and pulled from the inhaler.
And vanished.
A second later she reappeared on my puddle, one foot shooting forward, and connected with my already-suffering anatomy with startling precision.
My battered, exhausted body decided that was simply one indignity too many.
I went out cold.