[AMY IN DISPATCH (2025)] CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The porch light switched on automatically as Mandy stepped up to the door, keys already in her hand. It was a small convenience she had installed years ago, long before dimensional incidents or unexpected houseguests had complicated her routine. As the door opened, the house greeted her unfamiliarly, silent, orderly, and faintly scented with lemon cleaner mixed with the lingering trace of whatever detergent she had used during last Sunday’s laundry.

She stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and turned the lock.

It was only then that she felt it.

The space.

The house had never been particularly large. It was reasonably sized, efficient, and arranged with the sort of practical minimalism Mandy preferred. Nothing had changed about the layout, and yet the moment she stepped inside it became impossible not to notice what was missing.

Amy’s presence.

It wasn't the girl herself, exactly, but the constant background noise she generated without even trying: the soft off-key hums that drifted through the hallway when she was working on something, the constant rustling of snack wrappers, and the occasional commentary delivered to no one in particular as she argued with cooking tutorials or narrated some strange biological experiment she was conducting in one of the rooms.

Mandy stepped forward and set her keys on the entry table before pausing, her hand lingering there for a moment longer than usual.

That had been unexpected.

Her phone buzzed in her hand, the vibration snapping her attention back to the present. She glanced down automatically.

Still no reply.

Her eyes lingered on the message thread for a moment.

Panacea – Delivered.

The timestamp told her it had been sent three hours ago.

A slight frown touched her expression as she leaned back against the wall beside the entryway, crossing one ankle over the other while she reread the last exchange.

Handling meteor cleanup in Japan is harder than it sounds…

That had been Amy’s last update before the silence.

The message itself had been accompanied by a long string of half-coherent explanations about impact dispersal, fallout containment protocols, and the logistical nightmare that came with coordinating three different international superhero organizations while attempting to keep an unstable chunk of extraterrestrial matter from dissolving half a city block.

Mandy had offered assistance.

Amy had responded with a thumbs-up emoji, and then she had vanished, presumably into what Mandy suspected was now a very large crater somewhere outside Tokyo.

Mandy glanced at the clock on the wall.

It was late enough that she told herself she wasn’t worried.

Just… waiting.

With a quiet exhale, she pushed herself away from the wall and moved into the living room.

Everything inside looked exactly the way it always had. The treadmill stood where it had been placed months ago, its display screen dark and untouched. The couch cushions were arranged haphazardly, and the coffee table was clear.

There was no discarded hoodie draped over the armrest. No half-empty snack bowl abandoned beside a stack of medical textbooks. No dramatic teenager sprawled upside down across the cushions while passionately explaining why bioengineered slime absolutely counted as a viable passive income strategy.

Mandy let out another slow breath as she looked around the room.

It had taken five months.

Five months for Amy to transform from what Mandy had initially categorized as an unexpected dimensional liability into something far more difficult to define.

Somewhere along the way, the girl had quietly and comfortably become part of the daily routine, an orbiting presence that filled the empty spaces between work, training, and sleep.

Without ever asking permission, Amy had rearranged Mandy’s pantry, adjusted her training schedule, dramatically increased the household milk consumption, and somehow convinced her to install additional locks on the doors and reinforce the guest room walls. And at some point, without Mandy noticing exactly when it had happened, the girl had wedged herself into Mandy’s life in a way that now felt oddly permanent.

Which was why the house felt larger than usual tonight.

Mandy walked into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of juice, already reaching for the carton before something caught her attention. There was something inside the freezer that absolutely had not been there when she left that morning.

She opened the door and looked inside.

Resting carefully on the top shelf was an ice cream cake.

It was clearly homemade. The frosting wasn’t perfectly smooth, and the piping along the edges was slightly uneven in a way that suggested enthusiasm had won over precision. At the center of the cake was what looked like an attempt at a stylized blazer symbol made from chocolate shavings, though the lines were a little crooked.

Mandy blinked slowly.

A small note had been taped to the lid.

She peeled it free, already recognizing the handwriting before she finished the first line. The letters were light, looping, and slanted slightly to the right in a way that somehow managed to look both hurried and intentional at the same time.

Dear Mandy,

Thank you for not treating me like a problem.

Thank you for the guest room that was absolutely a storage closet.

Thank you for the treadmill you definitely use.

You made this universe feel less like some sort of cosmic punishment.

I figured you’d pretend you don’t like sentimental things, so I made dessert instead.

– Amy Dallon

P.S. It’s structurally stable. Probably.

Mandy stared at the note for several seconds. Then, without quite meaning to, she let out a soft laugh. And the sound surprised her with how warm and unrestrained it was as it echoed through the kitchen.

She shook her head slightly and read the note again, her thumb brushing absently across the ink.

“Structurally stable,” she murmured to herself.

Of course it was.

She closed the freezer gently, leaving the cake inside for the moment as if it were something delicate that shouldn’t be disturbed. When she stepped back, the house no longer felt quite as large as it had when she first walked in.

Mandy set the note down on the counter and reached for a plate.

“Twice a week,” she said softly to the empty kitchen.