Chapter 1: The Accidental Trigger
The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, a relentless insect trapped in the ceiling tile. It cast a sickly glow over the disaster zone of their shared study table: towers of legal textbooks threatened mutiny, coffee cups harbored new ecosystems, and Ava’s meticulous notes formed a precise fortress around her.
Lewis slumped in his chair, rolling a mechanical pencil across a blueprint. His back ached. “Remind me why torts require this many footnotes? It’s like they’re legally obligated to be boring.”
Ava didn’t look up. Her pen moved in quick, sure strokes, underlining a passage. “The precedent set in Harlow v. Fitzgerald is foundational. You’d know that if you read past the case title.”
“I absorb through osmosis.” He kicked his feet up on an empty chair, smudging a corner of her neat grid with his sneaker. “And through your suffering. It’s very motivating.”
A flicker of irritation crossed her face, gone so fast he almost missed it. She adjusted her glasses, a habitual gesture that meant you’re interrupting the workflow. She was small in her chair, swallowed by a crisp white button-up and a grey cardigan despite the room’s stuffy heat. Always so put together, so contained. It was kind of amazing.
His phone vibrated on the table, skittering towards the edge. He snatched it, thumb unlocking the screen. A news alert blared, stark white against black.
BREAKING: Downtown Ramage – Casualties Reported. Suspect at Large.
He clicked. The video loaded, shaky, frantic. It was a city street, but not one he recognized through the chaos. A news anchor’s voice, professionally grave, sliced through the hum of the light. “—authorities confirm at least fifty fatalities, with numbers expected to rise. The perpetrator, described as a massive, green-skinned figure, tore through the financial district for seventeen minutes before vanishing. The so-called ‘She-Hulk’ remains—”
“Turn it off.”
Ava’s voice was a wire pulled taut. He glanced over. She had gone very still, her pen poised above the paper. Her knuckles were white.
“Nuts, right?” Lewis said, turning the phone so she could see the frozen frame—a blurred, emerald shape, all terrifying muscle and rage, mid-leap. “Just… look at that thing. It’s a walking natural disaster. They should just carpet-bomb whatever hole it crawled out of.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice was low, flat.
“I know it killed fifty people, Ava. In seventeen minutes. That’s… that’s a factory farm of murder.” He shook his head, a cold knot of outrage forming in his gut. “What, you’re on team monster now? It’s probably some military experiment gone wrong. A weapon. It doesn’t deserve a trial, it deserves a crater.”
She finally looked at him. Her eyes, behind the lenses, were dark and shockingly intense. “Maybe it couldn’t help it.”
“Couldn’t help it?” He barked a laugh, the sound too loud in the quiet room. “Are you hearing yourself? It’s a monster. It doesn’t have a bad day and level city blocks. It’s a thing. A dangerous, ugly thing that needs to be put down.”
“You don’t know anything about its life!” The words burst from her, sharp and sudden. A flush crept up her neck. “You don’t know what pressure it’s under, what it has to hold in every single day just to… to walk around. To seem normal. One crack. One single crack, and everything falls apart.”
Lewis stared at her. This was more emotion than he’d seen from her in three months of shared study sessions. He leaned forward, a sarcastic grin playing on his lips. This was interesting. “Whoa. Okay. Deep identification with the giant rage monster. Freud would have a field day. What, you think it’s just misunderstood? Probably had a tough week at its monster job, right? Monster boss riding it about its quotas?”
“Stop it.”
“I mean, does it pay taxes? Does it get stressed about finals?” He was rolling now, enjoying the break in their routine, the rare flash of fire from the quiet girl. He didn’t see the way her breath hitched. “Come on, Ava. Admit it. You’ve got a little crush on the big green wrecking ball. It’s the bad boy thing. Literally.”
“Lewis, I’m warning you.” Her voice trembled. A single tear escaped, tracing a hot path down her cheek. She swiped at it angrily, as if betraying her.
The tear threw him. Guilt, sharp and unexpected, pricked at him. But he doubled down, his own anxiety about the news, about the sheer unreality of it, morphing into misplaced humor. “Aw, come on, don’t cry. I’m just saying, it’s a little weird to defend something that could squash you like a bug. Unless…” His eyes widened in mock revelation. “Oh my god. You are the She-Hulk. That’s why you’re always so quiet. You’re conserving your rage. You’re like a battery. A really small, well-dressed, legally-minded battery of apocalyptic fury.”
He meant it as the ultimate joke. A ridiculous punctuation mark to end the weird tension.
Ava went perfectly still. The tear stopped. Her breathing stopped. The only sound was the maddening buzz of the light.
Then, a sound he did not expect. A low, visceral growl. It didn’t seem to come from her throat, but from the air around her, from the very molecules in the room.
Her eyes snapped up to his.
They were glowing. A vibrant, radioactive green.
“Oh, shit,” Lewis whispered, all the laughter draining from his world.
The first button of her pristine white shirt popped. Then the next. The sound was like gunshots in the silent room. The fabric strained, threads screaming as her shoulders expanded, her chest swelling with impossible mass. Her cardivan seams split with a dry rip.
“Ava?” His voice was a child’s now.
She stood up. Or, something stood up, lifting her body with it. The chair screeched back and toppled. Her form swelled, stretching, transforming. The dusky gold of her skin deepened, then shifted, flooding with a brilliant, fearsome jade. Her modest pencil skirt tore at the seams, becoming a tattered band around muscular thighs thicker than tree trunks. The glasses fell from her face, clattering on the table, the lenses cracking.
Lewis stumbled back, his hip hitting the whiteboard. He watched, utterly paralyzed, as his study partner—the quiet, brilliant, fragile Ava—was erased. In her place, rising to nearly eight feet, was sheer, sculpted power. Rage given solid, shuddering form. The She-Hulk.
The creature that was Ava took a shuddering breath. The potted fern in the corner trembled, its leaves shivering as if in a gale. She looked down at her own hands, at the giant, green fingers that curled into fists capable of crushing steel.
Then she looked at him.
The intelligent fury in those glowing green eyes was unmistakably Ava’s. And it was utterly shattered.
A roar tore from her, not of mindless rage, but of agony, of despair, of a secret held too long. It shook the books on the shelves. It vibrated in Lewis’s teeth.
The door was behind him. The world was outside. She took one step towards him, and the floorboards groaned in protest.