[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/rFsVPbQ.png
[/img][/center][center][h2][b]The Mandela Effect: Part 13[/b][/h2][/center]
[center][b][url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5132366]Previously On Create-A-Hero[/url][/b][/center]
[center][b]Will Grant[/b][/center]
[center][b]Pacific Point, CA[/b][/center]
	The orange glow of the morning’s first light shown through the windows of the abandoned factory where Will and Aubrey had spent the night. The silky web that the young couple lay upon sparkled in the sunrise’s rays. With each passing second, the light creeped up across the room until it had reached the two slumbering metahumans.

	Once the morning rays struck Will’s eyes, he began to rouse from his slumber. As he pried open his eyes, it took him a moment to remember where he and Aubrey had spent the night. Aubrey still had him in a vice grip while she continued to slumber off her caffeine overdose. For a few more moments, Will just lay there as he contemplated how he would wiggle out of her embrace without waking her up. He had to contact the Immortals about turning her back to normal, at least mentally. After what had happened last night, he had to get this done as soon as possible. Plus, since she expressed her anxiety over ceasing to exist, Will thought it would be better to fix his girlfriend before she woke up.

	After Will had ran everything through his head, he began his attempt to free himself. Every movement he made felt painfully slow. Yet this was how he had to make his escape, as any sudden movement might wake Aubrey up. Although it took Will quite some time to pull himself out of her clutches, he was finally able to free himself. Yet, even once free, he also had to be careful while moving around the web, as the vibrations could rock his sleeping girlfriend enough to stir her awake.

	But before Will could escape from Aubrey’s giant web and call the Immortals, he had to first the parts of his costume that his girlfriend had pulled off his body. Luckily, she had only gotten to his mask and the part of his costume that covered his torso. Otherwise, there would have been one awkward meeting if the rest of his costume had fallen through the gaps of the web and lost in the darkness below. He found his mask stuck to the web next to Aubrey. His costume’s top was just hanging by a thread and he barely caught it before it fell.

	Once dressed, Will was about ready to make is way outside, but he peered back at his little sleeping beauty. Even though he was only going to be outside only long enough to contact the Immortals, he knew he could not leave him in her current state of dress. As he looked around for something to drape over Aubrey’s body, Will discovered that the pieces of her costume had not been as lucky as his. He managed to find the bomber jacket she had been wearing and he laid it over her torso. He also stumbled upon the part of her costume that covered her spider half, although that was not such a difficult task due to how much fabric made up that part of her costume. 

	Now that Will had covered up his girlfriend, he crawled away from the center of the web, where Aubrey was sleeping, to the edge of the silk structure, while trying not to create too many vibrations over the web. After he had reached the wall, he carefully lifted himself off the web and began to scale the interior wall of the abandoned factory. Exiting through the same window, through which Aubrey had first pushed him, he reached the roof and retrieved the small communicator that the Immortals had given him when he had visited them two nights before.

	“Do you know what time it is?” Will heard a robotic voice speak through the communicator.

	“I’m sorry about the early call, but I think we need to get Arachne back to normal,” Will first responded. However, after what Talus had said registered in his head, he spoke again. “Wait, do you even need to sleep?”

	There was a long pause over the communicator before Talus made his answer.

	“Touché. [i]Anyways[/i], we’re be over as soon as I can get in contact with some of the others. They, unfortunately, have to sleep. Anything else you need?”

	“If you guys have a spare of Arachne’s normal costume, I would recommend you bringing it. She’ not going to be happy with her current one.”

	“That’s such a shame. Vol looks great it her new one!”

	“You’re lucky she’s didn’t hear that or she would knock your head off,” Will responded. But then he realized something. He had not seen the costume that belonged to the Aubrey from the parallel reality until that night. “Wait, how do you know what it looks like?”

	“The paparazzi can be brutal! Although they weren’t able to get any close-ups, the few pictures they did snatch up have made the rounds on the news cycle.”

	Will began to panic. Earlier that morning, alt-Aubrey had gone into work. Even if she had somehow escaped the ever-watchful lenses of the paparazzi’s cameras, she nonetheless participated in that month’s photoshoot for the modeling contest she had been unwillingly signed up for by some shapeshifter. How long would it take for people to start connecting the dots? How long could she dodge this public outing by claiming coincidence?

	Because Will was so occupied with the possibility that his girlfriend’s secret identity might have been compromised, he failed to recognize the buzzing of his spider sense that had been slowly building up in his head. By the time he did feel it, it was far too late. All of a sudden, two giant bird talons wrapped around his shoulders and lifted him off the rooftop. The shock of the unexpected ambush caused Will to drop the device that the Immortals had lent to him for contacting them.

	“Are you there?” Talus asked when he heard the commotion on the other side of the communicator. After no reply was given, he sighed. “Vol is [b]so[/b] going to kill me for this.” 

[hr]
[center][b]A Few Hours Ago[/b][/center]

	While the two lovebirds were still fast asleep, an inconspicuous black van bumbled up to the abandoned factory. Once the vehicle had pulled into what would have been the factory’s main loading dock, the side door of the van slid open and a handful of men and women, all clad in black military gear. Although the arrest of Travis Murdock and the confiscation of their main cash of weapons had been a blow to the cause of the Hounds of Humanity, they nonetheless had not been eradicated. Like a horde of cockroaches, the remnants of this anti-metahuman terrorist organization had crawled back into the shadows. While the Hounds could not show their force like they could back at the height of their power, they could still wage their crusade against unnatural humans from the shadows.

	[url= https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5099425]Willie Tate[/url] sat in the driver’s seat. Although he was basically a glorified chauffeur, since he had only recently joined the local Pacific Point cell, he had finally felt a sense of belonging. Before then, his life had spiraled out of control once superhumans had made their presence known to the world. He had left his roots in Ohio after his brother, Doug, made the untimely decision to visit Lost Haven right when some jerk opened up an interdimensional portal to a realm inhabited by demonlike creatures. Yet, his family’s luck did not reverse with the change of scenery. The opposite, in fact, was the case. During the chaos brought about the Game Genie’s actions, Willie lost both his home and job, forcing him to take on odd jobs just to scrape by. And it would be his luck to pick the wrong horse in the battle between the Hounds and the metahumans.

	While the other Hounds skittered inside to set up the explosives, Willie sat restlessly in his seat. He knew that the twilight hours were primetime for superhero patrols. If they were not careful, some unsuspecting hero could stumble upon their little operation and spoil all the fun.

	Out of the corner of Willie’s eye, he thought he saw something swoop overhead. He rubbed his eyes and then tried to peer at the sky to make sure he was not seeing anything. Nothing was there, although the sky was too dark to make out anything from above. Willie therefore concluded that his eyes were just playing tricks on him.

	After a few minutes had passed, Wille heard three taps against the exterior of the van. This nearly made Willie jump out of his seat, as he thought some costumed crusader had gotten the jump on him. However, when he turned his head to look at the rear of the van, he saw that all the Hounds had finished up inside and were ready to go. Willie wiped the sweat from his forehead and gave off a relieved sigh before beginning of the van’s engine. Once the van was operational, this small cell of Hounds disappeared into the darkness.

[hr]
[center][b]Back to the Present[/b][/center]
	Whoever had snatched up Will from the abandoned factory’s rooftop had already flown several blocks before she dropped him off on a nearby rooftop. At first, he was surprised that he had made a soft landing without needing the use of his alt-reality self’s spider powers. Although it took Will a few moments to figure out who the winged figure was, once she had made one circle around the rooftop before landing, things started to click in Will’s head.

	While Will had never met any of the Immortals prior to his encounter with them two nights ago, he had read about them on the internet out of curiosity concerning who were the heroes his girlfriend was hanging out with. The Immortals had mentioned two nights ago that they had not heard from Firefox recently. Reckoning from the woman’s costume, Will concluded that he had finally found her, or rather, she had found him.

	Will did not need to be a rocket scientist to knew something was off. As her name hinted at, Firefox should have vulpine attributes. Yet, the woman who stood before him possessed no foxlike features. Instead, her arms and feet seemed to have become hybrids of the respective appendages of birds and humans. However, because Will had been so preoccupied by the mismatch of Firefox’s name and her animal characteristics, he did a doubletake when he finally realized there was something almost uncanny about what was human about her. If it were not for her Avian traits, Will would have sworn that she looked as if someone had spliced her head onto Aubrey’s non-drider body. Although everything below her neck was not identical to his girlfriend, there were not many people running around with comic book physiques, despite this being a world full of metahumans and magic.

	“Thank God I was able to get you out of there before anything bad happened,” Firefox finally spoke up once she had landed.

	“Wait, what kind of danger was there?”

	“I don’t know what they were up to, but I do know that nothing good could come from a pack of Hounds.”

	When Will heard that the Hounds could be involved, a panic immediately struck him. Although he knew that his girlfriend had already faced these creeps and came out victorious, there would not be much she could do fast asleep, let alone altered into a parallel universe version of herself. Plus, even though the Immortals were on their way, would they be able to come in time before whatever the Hounds had planned comes to fruition.

	“But Arachne is still in that building. We need to go back for her!”

	“You mean Black Widow? That villainess can handle herself just fine.”

	While Will could have guessed that this Firefox had a different history than her counterpart from his world from her appearance, her not recognizing her own teammate sealed the deal. Although some people have mixed the two up because they both are driders, their wardrobes and general appearance was different enough for even the least observant person to tell the difference between the hero and the villain.

	Will knew there was no point trying to argue the difference between his Arachne and the villainess Black Widow. Therefore, he needed a different approach to convince Firefox to get his girlfriend out of the troublesome situation she was in.

	“Yet, aren’t we the good guys? We don’t leave people behind for a gruesome fate, even if they’re villains.”

	“Always the moral compass,”  Firefox muttered. She reached out with her hand and ran it down the side of Will’s masked face. “I always loved that about you.”

	Will was taken by surprise Firefox’s actions. While he did not want to jump to conclusions, he guessed that she believed they had a prior relationship, maybe even a romantic one. It would explain why she had snatched up him alone, or why she fled from her little scuffle with Arachne when he showed back up after he had handed over Moon Bunny to the authorities.

	He then jerked his head away from Firefox’s avian hand. While he had struggled with the moral conundrum concerning his girlfriend, this was simple. He would not fall to temptation. His conscious, that had troubled him so much when trying to figure out what he should do with Aubrey, made everything oh so clear. Although Firefox was attractive, there was no way he would risk compromising his relationship with Aubrey.

	“The Silver Sorceress must have done quite a number on you,” Firefox concluded aloud when she saw Will pull away from her hand. “But we’ll deal with her later. You stay here while I check to make sure Black Widow is clear from the building.”

	She then placed her hand on Will’s shoulder and then dove off the building. With her feathered arms, she soared over the nearby rooftops.

	“Well, this could have turned out way worse,” Will concluded as he watched Firefox fly back towards the abandoned factory.