Fanfic / Development Heaven

Being a civilian in the Marvel Universe isn't fun. In the grand scheme of things, all you can expect to be is a mere pawn, plaything, speed bump, casualty or worse in the machinations of superheroes and villains. Just ask Struggling Single Mother Sandra AeKure, who suddenly finds herself fired from her Oscorp job out of nowhere, leaving her destitute with no way to support her two children.

But like with many heroes and villains, extraordinary people come from humble beginnings and a chance to change one's circumstances can come out of nowhere. At the depths of despair, Sandra suddenly finds herself with power of her own, the power to take any field of knowledge in existence to its highest potential and beyond. And with that power, comes a host of attention that pulls her headlong into the interplay of heroes and villains.

And all Sandra wants to do is be a good mother to her kids. And anyone else that crosses her path.

Development Heaven is a Marvel fanfic written by Stewart92, about a civilian mother who gets the power to learn and build anything, and soon finds herself rubbing shoulders with some of the big names of Marvel New York.

For the trope of the same name, go here.

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This Fanfic Contains Examples Of:

• Ability Mixing: Depending on what blueprints Sandra has available when she unlocks the inventions of another field of knowledge, they can combine into new inventions. For example, when the first aid field gave her a blueprint for a healing factor vitamin, it combined with the high-energy Hummingbird coffee to produce the Hum Pill.
• Absurd Cutting Power:
  • A few charges in cooking allow Sandra to cobble together a Steel Grater... that is, a grater that can shave through steel.
  • Also, enhancing the first aid field provides the blueprint for an injector needle sharp enough to deliver a sedative through several layers of armor.
• Alliance of Alternates: Sandra-Prime's multiversal crusade against the Green Goblin has effectively turned all her selves into this. With all of them connected by their network, they can access each other's knowledge and inventions if they spend charges on their fields, and can occasionally peek into each other's universes if they spend enough charges at once.
• Almighty Mom: Sandra will not care if you're a billionaire engineer who flies around in a metal suit, a super spy with countless kills, a meek genius with a monster hiding inside, or a wall crawler with a responsibility complex; if she has something she wants you to hear, you will hear it.
• Amplifier Artifact: The Cape of Mercury, a seemingly magical cloak that turns whoever's wearing it into a Flying Brick able to take blows from Spider-Man, as well as warping the minds of everyone around if it is stolen. It was originally owned by one Thomas Halloway, a WWII associate of Captain America and Bucky, until it was stolen by Jack Star.
• Arch-Enemy: Norman Osborn to Sandra AeKure. Beyond being fired from Oscorp because her deadbeat thief husband stole something from them, Sandra-Prime declared a multiversal-level vendetta against King Goblin and every version of him that ever has, does or will exist, because he killed her kids.
• Author Appeal: Stewart92 included Boom-Boom because of his affection for X-Men: Evolution.
• Bad Liar: Sandra thinks that both Nico and Spider-Man are awful liars. When an injured Spider-Man shows up at the AeKures looking for Nico and finds his mother instead, he tries to say that "Nico" is hero slang for street doctor. Then, when Nico accidentally mentions to his mom that Spider-Man is Peter, he tries to say that he meant Pietro, their Russian transfer student classmate. Sandra sees through both instantly.
• Benevolent Boss: Mr. Geoff, the owner of the coffee shop that hires Sandra after her initial firing. While he's gruff and surly, he's understanding enough to Sandra to give her space to breathe if she needs it, and pays her extra for going above and beyond her work.
• Buffy Speak: Sandra is forced to use this whenever she's asked to explain how her creations work because she herself doesn't completely understand how they work.
• Clone by Conversion: William Stryker is dead, but the Purifiers are interested in data on his daughter, so they seize a mutant capable of absorbing DNA to force her to take a sample of Stryker's flesh so they can interrogate him.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure: When Iron Man goes to rescue Sandra from a sudden villain attack, he arrives just as a roof is about to collapse on her, so he saves her with his fastest method available: detaching his suit and reassembling it around her. Since Tony flew out right after a drunken wake-up call, he's left standing in his undershirt and boxers in the middle of the street.
• Commonality Connection: Tony and Tabitha immediately get along due to their shared desire to snark about everything.
• Culture Clash: Sandra only fully appreciates how rich Tony is when he says that the profits from an invention that Sandra gave him will amount to about a quarter of a million from the first return and likely that number will drop to 200 thousand monthly afterwards. When she asks if he made a mistake, he just takes that as meaning that she wants more and says that he'll raise it to 300 thousand for the first month and 210 thousand monthly afterwards. He even says that that amount isn't much, but she can earn more by improving the formula.
  It hit me then that I knew Tony was rich, but I didn’t consider Tony as ‘rich’. Anything under a million didn’t seem to be a figure worth talking about or worrying about for Tony and I don’t think I ever knew how he saw figures like this.
  For me?
  My entire world had just been blown apart and put together with Flex Tape.
  For Tony? It was the monthly report.
• Damsel out of Distress: Chapter 3 has Sandra kidnapped by some thugs as part of the conspiracy behind her firing. With a charge each in investigation and spycraft, she not only escapes on her own, but also gleans important information about the scheme.
• Deadly Euphemism: After Sandra learns of William Stryker in Chapter 11, she asks Natasha what happened to him. She says that he "was enjoying the experiences of the lakes of Canada and likely was retired".
• Determinator: Sandra and all her alternates never give up, no matter what. Sandra-Prime took this up to eleven, fighting against a reality stone wielding King Goblin and sacrificing her life to create the Sandra network when he was about to kill her, to ensure that the fight could keep going.
• Ditzy Genius: Tony Stark, genius engineer, businessman and superhero, yet gets his hand stuck on some tape that Sandra invented and proceeds to do everything including electric shock to get it off.
• Dramatic Irony: After learning that several versions of herself hate their Green Goblin equivalents, Sandra remarks that at least she's never been screwed over by a goblin, unaware at the time of the fact that her former employer, Norman Osborn, is the Green Goblin.
• Edible Ammunition: Several of the potential inventions that arise from Sandra's fields of cooking and coffee use food as ammo, such as spice-loaded chemical bombs, hot sauce that can literally melt metal, or a coffea-kinetic manipulator whip.
• Evil Is Petty: Whether the Green Goblin attacked Sandra's home because she took a selfie with Iron Man or because she humiliated him (as Norman Osborn) in front of his son and friends, both reasons are equally petty.
• Faking the Dead: Natasha's POV in Chapter 12 reveals that she strongly suspects that Nick Fury did this, with only her currently thinking so.
• Glowing Eyes: A medical examination reveals that Sandra's eyes now constantly glow a dim blue, due to the tiny multiversal portal in her brain. They get brighter when she gets a charge, and she has to start wearing contacts to hide the glow.
• Hate at First Sight: In Chapter 31, Norman remarks that he feels this way towards Sandra.
  "Something about you, Sandra AeKure, bothers me and it's deep... festering in my bones."
• I'm Not a Hero, I'm...: ... a mother. No matter what knowledge or inventions may pass into Sandra's head, she'll always be a mother and parent first. Nico and Emma will always come before any dreams of danger or excitement.
• Instant Expert: Sandra can become one in any field of knowledge in existence just by spending a single charge on it, and it only grows stronger from there. However, it doesn't give her muscle memory in any skills, so learning to sew with obtained knowledge still leads to a lot of pricked fingers.
• Kicked Upstairs: Natasha's POV in Chapter 12 reveals that both Maria Hill and Phil Coulson see being promoted to Director of SHIELD as this, as both wish to remain on the field.
• Klatchian Coffee: Sandra's expertise in coffee allow her to make one based off of a watered-down super-stimulant-serum. Tabitha calls it the Hummingbird.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Lampshaded by Spider-Man in Chapter 26 when he lists all the people who've fought him before becoming his ally. Sandra is bemused, and annoyed that none of these "allies" are people that Spider-Man could turn to for medical aid.
  (about Laura previously attacking him) “It’s fine. Some of my best allies started off trying to kill me. Johnny Storm, Iron Fist, Prowler, Luke Cage, Daredevil... -Brother Voodoo, Hulk, Moon Knight, Spider-Woman, Dazzler, ...Punisher always takes a shot, Black Cat confuses me, the Lizard has moments...
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The loud, flashy Tabitha "Boom-Boom" Smith and the quiet, pragmatic Laura "X-23" Kinney form this contrast as two of Sandra's tenants.
• MacGyvering: Sandra's inventing process often has her dismantling her kitchen or surroundings to construct what she needs, such as turning the contents of a hardware store into a rudimentary sawblade launcher.
• Magic-Powered Pseudoscience: The things that Sandra creates thanks to her blueprints are all like this, as they don't seem to completely follow the laws of physics.
  • The author later says that this is because they wouldn't know the science of how it would actually work.
• Magikarp Power: One charge in a field of knowledge turns Sandra into an Instant Expert. Three and above gives her a few blueprints for Weird Science inventions worthy of any gimmick supervillain, and further charges could take things even further. Just as an example, a glimpse into the field of coffee reveals Dr. Erskine's super-soldier serum, and even its own Infinity Stone.
• Mama Bear: Sandra's kids are first and foremost in her mind. She will confront dangerous spies or build deadly gadgets to face off against supervillains if she thinks they'd come to harm (or any kid under her care for that matter). Sandra-Prime also counts, as she sacrificed her life to the Infinity Stones to create the multiversal Sandra network in order to punish every version of Norman Osborn that ever existed, because he killed her kids.
• Martyr Without a Cause: After learning that Peter is Spider-Man, Sandra decides to support him to prevent him from becoming this.
  Somewhere... somehow, his powers became tangled up in a messy event that caused him to fear ever being relaxed again. It was like Peter suffered some sort of traumatic event early on with his powers that pushed him to constantly run himself ragged, push himself to the limit, risk everything for the moral responsibility of being Spider-Man, and it was killing him on some level.
• Meaningful Name: Sandra's surname AeKure is a Significant Anagram; rearrange it and you get "eureka", the word used when one gets a flash of knowledge or insight.
• Min-Maxing: Averted. Sandra could sink every charge she gets into "useful" skills like combat and engineering, but as her first priority is enjoying herself with her friends and family, she's more willing to invest in esoteric trivia like bubbles or clockwork.
  • Also, later on, Sandra gets a vision of another Sandra, battle-scarred, bionic-armed and practically unrecognizable. The node avatar Barista worries about Sandras like her, who have lost themselves and now only care about charges.
• Murderous Thighs: Tabitha is amazed when she watches Natasha kill a man who works for the Purifiers this way.
  Tabitha: Why not just choke hold him?
  Natasha: In case I needed to shoot someone that came after him and I didn’t hear over his struggles.
  Tabitha: Remind me to never get between your legs.
  Natasha: Men and women have killed to be there, but you’re too young.
  Tabitha: (thinking) Killed? Yeah, and likely those same people died down there. Romanoff likely had her organs and fluids replaced with venom sacs or something.
• Mythology Gag:
  • When handing Tony Stark some coffee, Sandra says: "You get demons in a bottle. This is passive-aggression in a cup."
  • After Norman says that he takes inspiration from Tony Stark, he clarifies that he wouldn't want to be Iron Man, and that he's more of a patriot.
  • When Doctor Voodoo and his associate discuss potential teachers for Nico, Agatha Harkness is mentioned. When Doctor Voodoo specifies the classic version of the character, his associate is happy it isn't the Stepford Wife one.
  • While fighting Scorpion, Spider-Man tries to save Laura after she's thrown off a building. The way he grabs her with his web results in her temporary incapacitation via whiplash. Thankfully, her healing factor means she's up and ready to continue in no time.
    Peter was never going to make that mistake again. Laura’s sideways head was going to make sure of that. But she was alive!
    He couldn’t imagine how things might have gone if it was MJ or Harry or Gwen.
  • Emma starts off her request for a robot dog by saying: "Mother, I’ve come to bargain."
• Nice Girl: Sandra is able to become friends with mutants, Avengers, and other kinds of people simply because she's a decent person who wants to help others whenever possible.
  • Tony tells her that this is why he is asking if she could be the base for the mental map of Jocasta. Sandra still declines permission.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Natasha and Coulson mention Legion having given one or more people superpowers when ruling out that possibility with Sandra.
  • When Tony shows Sandra the designs for Vision and Jocasta, he mentions Ultron, which causes her to remember him as "that villain who went across Europe, nearly causing a civil war".
  • Tabitha gives an example as to why she, Laura, and Sandra shouldn't mess with Morlock problems.
    “Laura we gotta let Morlocks deal with Morlock stuff otherwise we get dragged in, someone has a superbomb or opened a rip in space and we have to deal with it and one of us goes missing for three months while being trapped in a dinosaur-infested jungle. Morlocks are trouble,” Tabitha insisted with narrowed eyes.
    Why did that sound far too specific to be a random example?
    Spy and Detective both read that Tabitha was... earnest which actually made wanted to lie down for a moment. She saw the look and tried to look reassuring for my sake.
    “Kurt got hit mid-teleporting us and we landed in a jungle in the Antarctic,” she said, which answered nothing and only made me stare harder.
• Not Hyperbole: When Nico gets the first hint of trouble about his mother, he talks about putting a curse on the one responsible. Then it comes out that he actually knows enough magic to ward his house and create healing creams for Spider-Man's usage.
• Notorious Parent: Jack Star, Sandra's ex-husband and a thief by profession, is this kind of deadbeat. His only concerns are freedom and money, and would easily sell out his own family to get them. The inciting incident that starts the story is Jack being hired by Kingpin and Osborn to steal an Amplifier Artifact from a recently deceased man, but Jack decided to steal it for himself, and thus Osborn decided to fire and sue his ex-wife in an attempt to lure him out.
• Oh, Crap!: Sandra has this reaction when she realizes that Tony Stark and Tabitha Smith will be in the same coffee shop with her in a few seconds unless she can get Iron Man his coffee.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Tony is completely serious with Sandra when talking to her about the fact that she bought an old laptop that used to belong to Howard Stark which might potentially have files on how to make more super soldiers.
• Original Character: In this universe, William Stryker had a daughter, Ophelia Stryker, who also turned out to be a mutant. She was committed to an asylum before escaping after her father's death.
• Parental Substitute: Sandra acts as a mother figure to her younger acquaintances and friends.
• Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Sandra brings the claws out when she runs into Norman Osborn for the first time in person getting their sons out of school.
• Power Incontinence: Happens when Sandra gets teleported by Nightcrawler. Briefly ducking into the alternate dimension that he uses to teleport momentarily cuts her off from her multiversal network, which panics and thinks that she is in danger, and when she re-emerges, she is immediately granted three charges that are automatically invested without her input or say-so, the overload knocking her out.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: If Steve had been made aware of Tabitha's friend being kidnapped, he would've helped regardless of the political problems this would cause.
• Serious Business: The knowledge that Sandra gets can sometimes lead to irritation when she sees others mutilating that craft. After she gets knowledge in coffee, customers ordering ice-cubed, foamy concoctions make her twitch, and after putting a charge in tailoring, the sight of Tony Stark mistreating a very expensive suit sets her on edge.
• Shout-Out:
  • The blueprints that Sandra gets after putting a third charge in Spycraft are based on gadgets from Totally Spies!.
    To say they were cutting edge was a lie. I saw blueprints for a compact mirror that doubled as a communications device. I got specs for some gogo boots with unique suction cups on them letting me walk on surfaces, providing my core strength improved... and finally, perhaps the strangest thing was the laser inside a lipstick, but the heat wasn’t that great since the power source sucked.
  • Laura spontaneously decides that Sandra's Code Name will be Doctor Mother.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: The usual dynamic between Nico and Tabitha. When Tabitha relates to Sandra how she met her son, Sandra is at first puzzled that Nico took it lying down. Then Tabitha relates Nico's response and Sandra is reassured.
  Tabitha: He was haggling over some bark and I asked him why he was paying so much for some wood when the little blue pills are much cheaper.
  Sandra: (thinking) Honestly that didn’t sound like my Nico to take that lying down-
  Tabitha: He said he would need the pills after talking to me as I ruined the female race for him in ten seconds.
  Sandra: (thinking) Ah, there was my cherub.
  • Tony and Tabitha immediately become friends because of this. Much to Sandra's horror, Pepper's exasperation and everyone else's bemusement.
• The Spark of Genius: The spark that allows Sandra to create crazy inventions also keeps them from being analyzed. When Fitzsimmons try to analyze a regeneration pill, their results come back inconclusive and mixed with gibberish. Even Sandra herself has no idea how they work, as she usually enters a fugue state while building (though she might if she had charges in the right fields).
  • The author later says that the more she knows, the more steps she'll be able to understand when building.
• Split-Personality Team: Downplayed. While not going as far as developing extra personalities, Sandra envisions her repositories of knowledge and experience as other Sandras inside her head, working together as the Sandra collective to manage the challenges she faces. It's fitting as she's actually drawing knowledge from other versions of herself in the multiverse, each with their own experiences and worldviews.
• Struggling Single Mother: Sandra AeKure is this at the very beginning of the story, raising two children on her own with her deadbeat ex-husband nowhere in sight, and then she gets fired from her job at Oscorp. Then she gets her powers and her life takes a very hard swerve.
• Superhero Paradox: Discussed. The "Lee Effect" is a term that Sandra's therapist uses to describe how superpowered individuals appear and choose to come into conflict with each other.
  "When someone with power causes unbalance without any show of bending to the law of the land... a rival and equal power will eventually rise to match them. It was originally pointed to when talking about tyrants or criminal gang lords, but in the recent years, it’s become more common with what we call ‘Inhumans’ or ‘Masks’. When a Mask causes pain and runs amok, they will eventually create their enemy, a hero or another villain. Something about seeing another person in a mask or juggling cars causes a psychological need in people to equalize the gap between them and their tormentor."
• Supervillain Lair: In Chapter 21, Sandra finds one that used to belong to Kraven near her apartment complex, AeKure Acres. She repurposes it for Spider-Man's use.
• Supreme Chef: Sandra becomes one with just a single charge into cooking, and she only gets better. Everyone from Avengers to her tenants sing her praises.
• Surveillance Drone: Sandra makes a few of these in the shape of birds to keep an eye out if Norman Osborn/Green Goblin ever approaches AeKure Acres.
  I had done something... scary to the simple circuit board inside, connecting it to the mechanical body that worked off grinding gears and sprockets. The spybird was capable of limited learning. It wasn't alive, it didn't process the information in a way that spoke of questioning or pondering, but simply building a database of constantly updating numbers that it would use to produce an optimal result in regards to its coding.
  It's purpose?
  My first serious creation's task was to move about my block and send an early warning to my phone if either Norman Osborn or the Green Goblin was picked up by the camera. I slowly turned to the other 19 watching crow carvings.
  I was sending a murder against Norman Osborn.
• Talking the Monster to Death: With a few charges in persuasion and psychology, Sandra is able to talk her ex-husband Jack into handing over a dangerous magical MacGuffin that is actively warping his thinking.
• Team Mom: Sandra's defining feature is her care for others, her kids Nico and Emma first and foremost, but soon encompassing just about every teenager that crosses her path, from her son's friends like Peter Parker, to the eventual tenants of her new apartment building like Tabitha Smith and Laura Kinney. In fact, she is apparently the version that other Sandras get their knowledge of parenting from, and some parts of the collective say she personifies the concept of "family first, world second".
  • After she helps Spider-Man, he tries to disassociate himself from her due to how much danger his presence puts her in (and he just led the Scorpion to her doorstep a few hours ago). Sandra calmly rebuts him by pointing out that she has mutant girls for tenants, the Avengers as regular dinner guests, and a myriad of potential crazy inventions at her fingertips, and most of all, that Peter Parker is someone she cares about.
• Thought They Knew Already: An injured Spider-Man shows up at the AeKures looking for medical treatment from Nico, and Sandra gets to him first. After she talks to her son about it later, Nico mentions Spider-Man's first name to her, not realizing that when Sandra lifted Spider-Man's mask to treat him, she only lifted up half his mask, and didn't know his true identity until Nico told her.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: The awakening of Sandra's powers is after she gets fired from her job at Oscorp with two kids to raise on her own, and a potential lawsuit knocking on her door, leading to a downward spiral that eventually leaves her sobbing in despair on her apartment floor.
• Visions of Another Self: When Sandra invests four charges of knowledge into a field (or if she invests multiple charges in a short amount of time), she gets a glimpse into the universe of another Sandra whose knowledge she uses. For example, a Tier-4 investment into coffee gives her a vision of a scientist Sandra specializing in stimulants, who worked alongside Dr. Erskine during World War 2 to develop the Super Soldier Serum.
• You Fight Like a Cow: Spider-Man likes to make quips in combat and is proud of it.
  Sandra: Do you torment your villains, Peter?
  Spider-Man: I once read a ton of 'you're so fat' jokes to the Kingpin to his face. Don't think he ever quite forgave me.
  Sandra: I may need to put a muffler on your mask. It's not healthy to tease the super-villains.
  Spider-Man: And what? Deprive them of banter? It would ruin their days if I didn't make fun of them at least twice a week.

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