How did Jack put that on the shoulders of someone so young? The failure, the struggle, both long before and long after Annika lived. It had been a lifetime since he'd heard that name, and hearing it spoken by her hurt. He had long since made peace with it, accepted that he couldn't change the past and undo his own mistakes. But even still, a scar could ache if disturbed just right.
For a moment, Jack didn't seem so old and world-weary.
"He was... Someone very important. That book was something he treasured, and it absorbed enough power to take on a life of its own," Jack explained. "He was a sorcerer, his magic was of right and wrong, and as far as the book is concerned, things have not been set right in a long time."
He sighed and stood up. "It wants me dead, an eye for an eye."
The windows filled with light that passed through the house, and the damn book appeared in the entrance. The door flew open, more swords appearing.
Jack extended a hand, and he made a weapon of his own. A long spear.
The book didn’t level a response. What Annika said must not have been what it was looking for. Or perhaps its sense of awareness didn’t extend to that… Or perhaps it could only convey so much context. Who could say. The small sword icon pulsed again. And then, with no warning whatsoever, it slammed shut with the crack of paper against paper that was reminiscent of a gunshot.
It floated upwards roughly a foot. The imagery on the front was practically ablaze with golden energy. Flickering, transparent images of swords materialized around it, blades pointed outwards and slowly rotating like spokes on a wheel.
The cat’s ears went flat.
”Annika?”
At the far end of the hallway, her father stood there. He saw the golden glow and seemed paralyzed.
There was an unfamiliar look on his face. It wasn’t that usual, unflappable look of confidence he had. It wasn’t the tired, warm smile that he showed her when she tried her best. It wasn’t the look of mischief that usually came before one of his grand feats of risk and magical skill.
No, that expression was shock. And then it became anger.
He wasn’t even looking at her, though.
”…If you even dare-“
Fwoom.
Light flashed through the gloomy hallway, and in the blink of an eye, Jack had shifted. His upper body tilted backwards, and his hands clapped around the book’s attempt at killing him. One of the glowing swords, the blade barely an inch away from his face. Shadows bloomed between his fingers, and the entire thing was shunted away.
”Get away from my daughter!”
The glowed brighter until it threatened to blind.
Jack charged.
The rest of its swords launched out and steered mid-air, all aimed at his body. His face, his heart, his magic hand. But he was faster. His arms went out wide and black smoke curled around him.
Just before they could reach him, he embraced Annika and they were both subsumed by darkness.
They reappeared on the stone path that led to the front door of the house, inside the black iron fence. Jack placed her down gently, one arm still around her shoulders.
”Did it hurt you?” He asked.
He hadn’t had such a distraught expression on his face in years.
There in the strange glow, the pages flickered and settled on the very first. Words from the author that didn't seem to have any relevance to the contents after, and were more directed at the reader than any magical findings.
They didn't light up, but they stayed there where Annika could easily read them as the book floated.
To whoever it may be that finds this book, know that it will likely need to be handle with care. It absorbs my magic.
Know also that my name is Reza Cabrera, the Shining Witch. This book is one of several journal that I have wrote, and will write in the future, if we live long enough. This one, I am writing as I set out on a journey with someone I've made fast friends with. Jack Hawthorne, or he calls himself. A sorcerer who bends darkness and always seems to find himself in the strangest of places. As I write this, we're preparing to take a trip across the countries of Europe, and we'll be going through a gate that he intends to open.
My father won't approve, but there aren't enough ghouls in the world he can throw at me to take me off this road. If you've found this book because we've died and you found our remains, then congratulations, you've probably found something filled with the power I wielded in life. I'll trust Abraham won't be happy.
But if you've found this for any other reason, take this away: We were here. Whatever we might do, wherever we go, we lived. It might be a tragedy that two kids can't avert, but God willing, we'll have stories to tell one day.
Beneath the text, as if to replace a real signature, there is a small drawing of a sword, simple and made with flowing lines. Something between a rapier and a longsword.
That icon pulsed. And then there was no further response. The book seemed to have absorbed some kind of power from its writer, and was animated by it. It was intelligent, to a point. Why, it wasn't immediately clear. But for some reason, the book was buried in the magical construction of the house. Jack had sealed it away, despite growing so close to its previous owner.
At last, Rohan and Root joined the others on the porch. The sky was getting dim, as if to encourage them to walk in. Up off of the ground with his bow still out, he looked around and didn't see much. It was empty, and that made him visibly relax a little. The shoe box caught his attention, they had walked through the wilderness for a moment to get here. Their feet would surely drag in dirt or bits of grass. But then, the Neverish wasn't Earth. So why...?
He sighed. It reminded him of home. There was a little pang in his warped chest. Rohan could remember places like this, before the Forest got him. His grandparents lived in a house a bit bigger, though theirs was better kept. An old habit kicked in, and he put his bow and arrow away, then removed his shoes. They were a mix of wood, hide and some strange adhesive he'd made from animal horns and wood ash, and they lasted longer than most things people wore. Nothing fancy. He didn't want to dirty up the floor. Even if there was something chaotically unknowable about this realm, shelter was shelter, and in the infinite possibilities one might associate with the Neverish, Rohan wouldn't rule out other travelers winding up here.
It was warm inside. He looked around. The glass baubles strung up overhead probably had something in them that would hurt the group if broken somehow. So he moved carefully with the owl on his shoulder. He saw instruments on the wall.
A koto, a long board with strings that one played sitting down. A sho, a handheld organ of pipes that could be played similar to a flute. And a tsuzumi, a small drum. Seeing those, the look on Rohan's face went from feral outside, uneasy inside, and now it was spite. Back in the old days, he had an aunt who loved to play the koto. She was pretty damn good at it, said her parents left the city with it when she was young.
"Kono basho wa watashitachi o chōshō shite iru nodeshou ka?" He quietly asked Root, whose only answer was a low-pitched mrp and a rustle of his wings.
Right, how would he know any better than the rest of them.
Rohan turned and slid the door shut. It seemed as if the weather could turn to rain and thunder here. Besides, shutting out the natural world helped normally, maybe it'd help here. He then unslung the pack holding his bow, quiver, and most of the things he brought in. The gentle thunk of his artifacts against the wall was easy to hear in the quiet of the building.
He noticed something on the table. A leather journal, it looked old. Did things age here?
Rohan sat down at the table and opened it up. The writing inside was written in gold ink. Somehow, he could tell it was meant to be read from top right to bottom left, and he found that curious because he didn't recognize the language. It wasn't English, and if it was Japanese, it wasn't any form he knew or was raised with. He squinted, trying to identify what language, if any, it could've been. The longer he did, the more Rohan felt something creeping into his mind.
So he kept reading, kept staring at the words. And then there came a sound no one but him could hear.
The thunder growled outside, and the wind seemed to go silent. Between the rumbling, he heard a voice far beyond the dimly lit walls of the Coven's shelter. Neither masculine nor feminine, in any way he could discern. It was easy to hear, because it was neither near nor far.
His skin felt stiff.
"For whom weeps the storm,
Her tears on our skin
The days of our years gone,
Our souls soaked in sin
These memories ache with the weight of tomorrow..."
"What-"
Creak.
Rohan heard the sound of cracking bark. Splinters creaking and twisting, the hum of wood bending in the wrong ways. A hand flew to his chest, and he heard screams.
The clang of metal against metal. The shouting of men over one another to be heard. Burning.
Fire. Fire. Fire, more fire. Everything ablaze. His body felt as though it was burning. They carried torches, they screamed, as if the end of the world were upon them. Just burning, everything BURNED. Rohan's hands scrabbled all over himself to put out flames that weren't even there. He was burning, the demon had to die-
Rohan fell backwards, and-
Snap.
The journal slammed itself shut, closed by some unseen force.
And Rohan was back in the real world.
He was sweating, but the pain and the flames weren't real. A trick of the mind, a trick of the Neverish, he didn't know. His throat felt dry. The wood in his chest ached, and Rohan took a long breath.
It was at that moment that he decided he hated this place.
He stared up at the ceiling and laughed. It wasn't a happy laugh.
"...Kono ba- Heh, this place has a sense of humor," He commented, pulling himself off the floor. The dark look in his eyes betrayed the cool grin he put on. "Be careful with that. I don't know what that language is, but it doesn't like being read. We might as well start taking notes. Dysphoria's right, we're alone. For now, anyway."
Root tilted his head at Rohan, and then stared up at Annika.
Rohan got comfortable in front of the table and withdrew his own journal, made from deer hide and... Something in place of paper. He withdrew a pen from a pocket and set to writing in silence.
Kono basho wa watashitachi o chōshō shite iru nodeshou ka? = Is this place mocking us?
We entered the Neverish today. Frank couldn't come, so it's just me, Annika, Dysphoria, and our familiars.
We touched down in a forest. I'm surprised Namiki isn't waking up. Could've been bad with the others here. Dysphoria seems to think we're safe.
Redwoods, maples. A cloudy morning, it looked like Earth. There's a fountain, and the three of us walked past it into a cottage. Almost reminds me of Rei's tool shed when the winter came. It's small, just one room. There's a stove, the fire smells like the redwoods. Plates on the table, but no idea what's in the pot.
There are instruments on the wall behind me. Koto, sho and tsuzumi. It's like the whole Neverish is trying to drive me insane. I'm trying not to look at them. You watching me, Aiko?
We found a journal on the table. The writing's a language I don't know, wrote in gold. Something about it made me want to read from the top right first. Then I started hallucinating hearing and feeling things. Some voice singing over the thunder, I was on fire. Like someone just threw me into a furnace.
Screaming too, but the burning was so much.
I'm fine. Nothing real. Didn't affect Root either. Is that because he didn't read it (He's a bird) or did it not happen to him because being made from my magic didn't matter? Marino had us build that Sympathic heart to connect us to the lab, is it different for him?
(Shouldn't matter. Ask her later)
I think this place is building off memories. This forest feels like home with the trees. Then the burning all over. The sound of fighting. The building we’re in. Hope I’m wrong. Maybe ask the others?
Location: Margaret Carter - Winter Carnival Magic Items: Thousand-Faced Rose, Rune Stones Today's Fit
Leah was usually up before most people. Old habits meant her metaphorical inner clock woke her up not with a beep but with a foghorn. Ever the morning person, things were already in motion by six in the morning as the sun rose over Los Angeles. Black coffee was in her hand and a bagel in her stomach, and Leah did her best not to wake Sabine as she knelt before her bad and withdrew a wide cardboard box. Contained within was a smattering of whatnots that Leah had always kept with her. Pictures she had taken with the others, a few mementos from Asgard, a laptop she hadn't used much lately... And a container full of rocks.
She collected them. Not only were they useful for her powers, but her powers also made her a bit of a nerd about geology. It was useful to know how different places in the world reacted when she shifted the ground, and that attention she paid often had the byproduct of Leah collecting stones, gems, and anything adjacent that she came across. A chunk of scoria from Mount Rainier, prasiolite from near the Pacific Ring of Fire, Sandstone from the Sonoran Desert... Basalt from the ocean floor, she used part of that to make a gift for April, once. Leah snatched up a variety from the container and sorted through them. It was unlikely that they'd be useful in an actual fight, but stones and precious minerals had other uses. And, every now and then, Leah used to spend time making them look nice. It was a good bit of practice with her powers, and part of how she got so good at fine little details.
There was a small chance her powers wouldn't even work in Otherworld. It wasn't Earth, it wasn't Jotunheim, and it damn sure wasn't just going to be all caves and deserts. Fae could surely use a chunk of kanoite for something.
When she got the ones she wanted, she slid the box back under and and then looked at the seven foot long sword she found a place for by the wall.
Did Leah want to bring Sjafnamarr with her? It was practically weightless to her, and in a strange way, it was a puzzle piece in her being that she didn't know was missing one before they found that prophecy. It was a way to cast spells and wield magic that didn't require drawing or handling runes, there'd probably be dangerous situations where the group would need to fight. But Leah wasn't an expert in swordplay. And it wasn't like there was anyone who could teach her to wield that fucking thing. She wondered, for just a moment, if it'd be easier to just stick to her old MMA training if things went that far.
Well, they needed as many advantages as possible.
She threw her closet open and broke out some more things. Her "camping gear" wasn't exactly glamorous, but she was an outdoors-y kind of girl. A hefty duffel bag, a backpack and a hefty water bottle were retrieved, along with a book she hadn't gotten around to reading.
Then she left the dorm building and got the food she and April had prepared. She stored it in Home Ec room, and thankfully, no one had come in and imped the entire stash of rations she prepared. She had some time to kill, so Leah got in a few practice swings in the gym with her sword, just to get her mind ready for the journey. At 7:50AM, she left and walked across the Campus, wearing her Excelsior jacket and a lot of other things. Being so physically strong, all the things Leah carried on her body didn't weigh her down much. She appeared before the mystical tree that no one dared go near lest they walk away without their soul or with ten years of bad luck. Leah noticed Percy had a sword. That was weird, weren't those heavy for normal people?
"Starting to see a pattern, here," Leah commented, standing next to Percy and April. She elected not to comment on how unprepared he was. That was why she overprepared.
Location: Margaret Carter - Winter Carnival Magic Items:She’s no magician but you know she’s got that magic wand. Today's Fit
Everyone around Marlena was gold and pale white.
Beneath her, there was nothing but champagne bubbles of every size. All stretching out in every direction, every horizon, until she couldn't see them anymore. She walked forward in the field, in a place so alone that she might've been the only living thing that ever walked the world. No flowers, no people, nothing but herself. Marlena walked and walked, and there was no difference between the hours and the seconds.
The champagne bubbles floated around her as she walked, drifting away and around her. It was almost beautiful in its own way. But the light that shone wasn't from the sun. There wasn't a sun to be seen, and there was scarcely any sky. Not a star to be seen, or a cloud to gaze upon. Rather, there were moons in the empty air. Three of them, so massive and bright as to be the horizon themselves, as though they were falling.
They surrounded her. Far to the left, there was the waxing crescent, the waning to the right, and front and center was the full moon. They didn't move, or maybe it would have been more accurate to say she didn't. She knew she walked along a fourth one. An empty moon, the new moon, but it couldn't be seen. It was too dark.
Marlena looked all around, until she saw something different.
Far ahead of her, a small speck of something she couldn't see clearly. She ran, faster than her feet were used to carrying her. The air burned her lungs with each breath, it felt like she ran for an eternity. The shape in the distance could've been moving either further or closer to her, and her eyes wouldn't have told one from the other. The bubbles floated away, up and around her until they obscured her vision. Marlena shoved them aside, but there were so many that it was almost impossible to see how far to go or how far she had gone. Her lungs began to ache, but her legs still carried her.
"Where..."
There.
The bubbles of champagne thinned out. It became easier to push through the morass and the rest flew off away when her body went to all fours. Marlena caught her breath and hauled herself up, to see where she'd gone. Standing before her was a rectangular structure, ten feet tall. It looked almost like a mural, flowing lines of the palest silver she'd ever seen, wreaths of gorgeous flowers that she couldn't tell the names of. All tracing the edges and the center, a wonderful work of art that didn't feel as if it belonged here.
She rested a hand on it. There was no sensation of touch.
"What are you?" Her voice didn't sound like hers.
Marlena walked around the edge of the structure, to look at the other side. She recognized what she saw. A depiction of a tree, and a body hanging upside down by a rope. A girl with curly, bouncy hair. She looked unhappy. The girl's name was Marlena Evans, depicted as the Hanged One.
For a moment, the real Marlena stared at the fake one, and the fake one stared at her.
On the face of the Hanged One, the eyes came ablaze.
Fire streaked across the card, down the middle and rising high. There wasn't enough time for Marlena to react, before a hand shot out of the blaze overtaking the card. The hand grabbed her throat, and she felt something in her chest give out. The hand was made of old, corroded metal, that reeked of aged coins. Marlena's hands flew to the wrist, but her breath was already gone and her throat stung.
"Sto-" She choked on her words. "St-Stop-Stop-"
In the flames, she saw a shape forming. An upper arm, a head, hair... The smell got worse.
Clink. Clink. Clink. The sound of gears.
"No- No... Stop- No-"
CLINK. CLINK. CLINK.
She felt her throat collapse.
Everything became black.
There was a crash, and then there was a scream.
Marlena was not in a strange land where the powers that be wanted her neck. She was not under the light of the moons. She on the floor, hands digging into the carpet of a dorm room, gasping for air. Pencils and bits of hand-made projects, a thermos and her phone hit the floor after her, flung about in her sleep by telekinetic force. A box she'd yet to open and unpack was flung across the room, its contents spilled everywhere against the door.
For long minutes, she choked on air that was trying to force its way in and out of her lungs. There was a throbbing pain in the back of her neck, and every breath was like brimstone in her mouth.
A bead of sweat landed on the floor.
Just a bad dream.
Marlena eventually calmed down enough to look up, and around. She was in her room, the one she shared with Vicky, who she didn't see crashing through a window ready to blast someone with an electromechanical Anihilationator 9000. She stood up and leaned against the wall. It was still dark, so she flipped on the lamp and saw the damage. The walls appeared fine, even if the room suddenly looked like someone had come in with a search warrant. She coughed and reached for water, feeling her throat start to relax.
Marlena rolled her shoulders and checked her phone. It was nearly six in the morning.
Well... No going back to sleep this early.
She spent half an hour re-organizing things and making sure her powers didn't accidentally destroy something. Then she sat down on her bed and thought about that dream she had. The Hanged One tried to kill her, and the card meant a change was coming. Marlena didn't put much stock in dreams and prophecies, but a lot of coincidences were lining up lately. Carlos saw her in that card, the Otherworld was somehow influencing everyone who wasn't in Excelsior's immediate company to ignore all mentions of the place. Oh, and now she was being attacked in nightmares.
She had spent plenty of time yesterday, before the party, reading up on Otherworld. It was a land of the medieval. Of swords, kingdoms and power of Story Magic. There was a narrative to be told, and that was how things carried out. Ominous prophecies weren't out of the question when a hero needed to go on a journey. Hollywood sure knew that much... But why her? She wasn't a hero in any sense. What story was there to be told from haunting her with that?
Clockwork didn't fit the aesthetics she saw in those books. Metal arms moldered and aged to the point of corrosion weren't what she thought of when she imagined the Fae.
The moons had so many meanings. Triple goddesses were a thing in many cultures, apparently. It wasn't even limited to gender, from her study. But she didn't know much about Fae religion. The arm didn't match the shadowy ones in the visions they were given, either.
What was going on?
She spent the time getting ready. Marlena grabbed a shower to wipe off the sweat she was caked in, then began packing her things. Food, knives in case things got heated, her cruiser. A backpack was good enough to pack everything she needed, since she wasn't much of a camper. Marlena was used to urban activities like spending whole days out in places where some people wouldn't go, but she didn't think that translated to wherever they were going. She got water and some things to write with. Then she gathered up her usual traveling gear, the sorts of things she'd always have on her back in Brooklyn.
The time between then and the meet-up was filled with pondering fashion, something that always put Marlena's mind to rest. She got her most outdoors-appropriate fit on and boarded around to pass the time. When she met the group, she looked plenty put-together. It seemed the group was just starting to link up, not many of them were here just yet.
"Hello, hello, hello," She withdrew a pocketbook from the underside of her button-up, layered over a sweater. Then she sat her cruiser down in the grass and sat on it, biding her time. "I'm ready to jump over there when we're all here, but I did learn a few things yesterday. I think everyone's ignoring us because of Story Magic. Exactly what it sounds like, we're in some scheme and someone, somewhere, doesn't want it stopped."
She opened her pocketbook and flipped to an empty page. Then she drew it in pieces, separated vertically across the page's length. "I saw this symbol in the Scarlet Witch's eyes, right as I tried asking her about Otherworld. Then I look into it, there's something really close to this that blocks memories. If I write it down fully, not separated like this, I'd probably forget something- Think that happened to me last time."
Dysphoria was right, they could disappear from this place any time they wanted. Rohan had a dilemma, where they could learn a great deal from the Neverish, but they could also find out the hard way whether the curse had any sway here. It never affected Root, who was a dead thing in a vessel, but could it affect Annika’s cat familiar? The one actively running off right this minute? As far as he was aware, it wasn’t a normal beast anymore than Root. A small piece of him wanted to whistle for the damn thing to come back, afraid that something with thumbs would reach out from behind a tree to pluck Nochella from the ground like a flower.
That didn’t appear to be the case.
If they followed the Heart’s pulse back to Earth, would the shadowy familiar be able to follow? Could Annika summon her back from the Neverish?
Root chittered in his ear.
”I know.” He sighed and relaxed just a fraction. ”Better not leave her here, just in case. Let’s go, but stay aware of everything around you. If you see the trees start to follow us, say something.”
Rohan stood up straight and whispered something to Root, who got comfortable on his shoulder. He held Wallbiter low, holding the arrow and string in case he needed to pull back and fire at something suddenly. And then he started forward, eyes going between the cottage in the distance and the grass at his feet, which Rohan took care to disturb as little as possible when stepping around.
Andy and Glimpse went separate ways. Andy didn't know what all they need for this trip. However they did know that Gideon would need her primary sword back. She went looking for her girlfriend.
Gideon was in her second favorite place in the world - her first favorite place, of course, being where her sword currently was. She had had the Thirsting Blade for as long as she could remember and being parted from it was agony. So to take her mind off of things, she had gone to her next love - pumping iron. Her body was wet and glistening with sweat in the gym, as she exercised her straining muscles with the bench press, using three hundred pounds of weight. Her headphones were in, blasting music and her sunglasses were still on. The rapier was down at the ground within reach.
Andy had guessed right. Several of the times they had run into before dating had been here. So she wasn't surprised to see Gideon lifting. Andy slid into the spotter position and waited for Gideon to finish her reps.
With each rep, Gideon grunted - and she caught a glance of Andy, smirking up at her girlfriend. “Sup, my Princess of Darkness?”
Andy smiled at the nickname. “We have some free time. We should be getting ready to head out though. I can’t be sure but I’m gonna bet the others aren’t going to want to wait longer than a night. If we don’t leave tonight I’ll be honestly surprised. We need to get your sword back.” Andy wasn’t sure how they were supposed to do that but there was no way Gideon was going to go anywhere without it.
Gideon immediately dropped the weight and scooted back up to a seated position. She grabbed a nearby towel and wiped the sweat off her face. “What’s the play then to get Thirsty back?”
Andy kept her face surprisingly neutral at the sword’s name. It wasn’t the first time she heard it, she was getting better at it. “Well it is probably in Scarlet Witch’s office.” She remembered where Lady Nimue’s office had been, that was probably the best place to start. “It is probably locked down with a bunch of magic.” Andy’s magical skills did not extend into breaking and entering. Not many in the group had that sort of magic. Leah had her runes... but Andy doubted that would help.
Magic didn’t phase Gideon. She hadn’t met an enchantment yet that she couldn’t just punch her way through. It was just bullshit with extra steps. “Okay, so we smash in and grab it, easy,” Gideon stood up and shook her arms out, and took a swig of water from her water bottle. “Just need someone to keep the witch at bay.”
“Grab the first person we know?” Andy suggested. She had a feeling everyone was going to be running around like chickens.
“100%, we grab the first person we know and tell them they have to help us,” Gideon agreed. They just needed a warm body to distract Wanda. Someone who hadn’t been involved with them in the fight earlier, so that way the witch wouldn’t suspect anything was off. “But not Arthur or his bodyguard.”
“Sounds good.” There probably were people who would be better at distracting her adoptive sister over others. Ideally it would be someone with an interest in magic but not enough of an interest that Wanda needed to be in her office to talk with them. She led the way back out of the gym. Wondering who out of the group they’d run into, anyone that at least knew they were going to the Otherworld, the less the better.
“HEY, YOU!”
Gideon pointed across the quad, catching one of the girls from before dead in her sights. She’d been in that entire ominous montage, too.
“GET OVER HERE!”
That girl just happened to be one Marlena Evans, who was carrying three books under one arm.
She blinked.
”...Me?”
“Yeah... you’re friends with some of our friends right? Going with us and all,” Andy confirmed. “We’ve got to get something but we need help. You chill giving us a hand?”
”Hm… Why not?” Marlena stuffed the books into a messenger bag slung around her shoulders and walked towards them. ”What’s going on? I think some of the others are packing, a whole wing of the school smelled like fish for a while.”
“A witch stole my sword and I need it back, otherwise the world will end tomorrow,” Gideon said seriously. “How good are you at chattering away about nothing?”
Andy glanced at Gideon, trying to gauge how real the assertion that the world will end if she doesn’t have her sword. “It is the new magic teacher, Scarlet Witch, that we need you to distract. Just keep her out of her office for a bit.”
Scarlet Witch? The Scarlet Witch? Marlena’s eyebrows shot up. She didn’t know a lot about her, but the woman had a reputation for a reason. ”Not to brag, but I’d say I’m pretty good at chattering about nothing. I’ll talk her up, if you think you can slip in and out of a witch’s office before she catches you.”
Gideon didn’t joke when it came to her sword. The world would end if she didn’t get it back. She knew that innately, a truth carved into her bones. “Hell yeah!” She pumped her fist in the air. “Andy and I can be in and out super fast. You just need to buy us like five minutes tops.”
”Sounds good. Gonna have to show me where we’re going though, don’t know where her office is.”
“No problem.” Andy led the way to Wanda's office. She indicated which one for Marlena and then pulled Gideon with her to hide around the corner to give Marlena a chance to get Wanda out of the room and to some other place.
Marlena strode right up to the door and thought for just a moment. Legendary witch, a master of Chaos Magic… Oh, yeah. She reached into her bag and withdrew one of the books she swiped from the library, one she’d gotten almost three chapters into. It had a bookmark in it and everything. She tucked it under one arm, and locked the fuck in.
Knock, knock.
“Enter, Marlena.”
The door swung open of its own accord, a bit of enchanting pink mist swirling on out invitingly.
That was… Ominous.
She felt a chill go down her spine. But she was already roped into this, so Marlena took a step forward, and then another, until she was surrounded by all the bits and bobs, all the whatnots of a witch’s office. Marlena looked around and took everything in, careful not to knock anything over.
”I’ve never been in the lair of witch before. Spooky,” She observed.
While not too long ago Leah had entered a herbalistic paradise, the counters crowded with plants spilling out of jars, strange potions and concoctions bottled and ready for use, today the aesthetic of Wanda Maximoff’s office was far cozier. Lush red carpets were laid out on the floor, overlapping rugs with arcane sigils woven into each thread with care, gleaming, polished oak furniture and chairs with high quilted backs. A large picture window looked out onto a snowy mountain peak, and music played softly from a record player. On the circular table, books and scrolls were laid about, with the Scarlet Witch sipping her coffee as she perused through them. To her back was a glass cabinet, a padlock holding it shut - and visible within were a gigantic two-handed sword, a sword crafted from darkness, and a sentient shadow, straining against its bonds.
“A lair?” Wanda laughed. “I should hope it is more inviting than that.”
”I like it, it's very homey. Makes me think of a magician’s fortress against evil… Word around the campus is you’re the most qualified person available for supernatural situations. I’m new, and I only moved in around the time of the Contest of Champions, so I thought an expert would know more about a few things than me.”
Her fingers drummed the book under her arm. ”If you can spare the time?”
The Scarlet Witch tilted her head. She caught the flattery, but she didn’t know why Marlena was laying it on so thick. “You know how to compliment a tired old witch. What ails you, child?”
”A friend and I have noticed a pattern that keeps cropping up. We met this guy who sees the future. He saw visions of me and the team Excelsior, all caught up in images of tarot cards.” It was easier to just be straight with someone than flat out lie, and she could always omit a few details... ”We got Amnesia to help convey that vision more clearly, and a place called Otherworld came up in conversation a few times. Do you think it’s a coincidence for that many people to come up in visions that alike each other?”
Wanda opened her lips to speak, but suddenly faltered. A strange symbol flashed inside her eyes, pulsing pure white - nothing like any sigil Marlena might have ever seen before, but immediately memorable, burned into her memory. “I am afraid I must be going - there is a faculty meeting that I have forgotten about that I must be present for,” she commiserated, frowning sympathetically. “If you recall your question, I would be happy to answer it another time - but if not, then I must bid you farewell for now, Marlena.”
Marlena blinked. ”Oh- Are… Are you alright? That looked like it hurt,” She commented, stepping out of the way of the doorstep. What was that?
“Of course, why wouldn’t I be?” Wanda asked, genuinely confused. But each time she glanced at Marlena, her eyes seemed to slide right past her, never properly focusing on her student as she walked down the hallway from her office and towards the faculty lounge.
”...Huh.” Marlena saw herself out of the room, equally perplexed. She watched the Scarlet Witch walk away, then looked back at the girls in the corner.
”Well.” She stuffed the book into her messenger bag and reached for a notepad. ”You needed her gone, there you go. Make it fast, ladies.”
“Damn, you are good,” Andy said. “What did you say to her?” Andy quickly went over to the office, slipping in the open door.
”I was gonna ask her about Otherworld. But I guess she had places to be.”
Gideon whistled approvingly. She’d stolen a fair number of things from professors in her day, but never had she seen someone be chased away so thoroughly. She leaned in and sniffed. “It’s not BO, at least,” she offered with a shrug. “Well, I’m not going to look a toy horse in the mouth, so let’s get Thirsty and get the fuck out of here - aaaand if we see anything shiny that we happen to also want, I think that’s for our pain and suffering.” She barged into the office and went straight for the cabinet at the back of the room, her eyes narrowing as she saw their next obstacle.
It was locked.
“I’m going to punch this and break the glass, unless either of you have a better idea?”
”Something less noisy, maybe something that doesn’t make it so obvious she was robbed?” Marlena suggested from the doorway. ”She’ll know anyway, but maybe you don’t want to rub salt in the wound, you know?”
Andy frowned, and then shrugged. That was weird, but alright. It worked in their favor. She looked at the cabinet. “Maybe the key is in the desk?” Andy turned and started to open drawers and search the desk for the key. She was careful to make sure anything she touched was moved back into the place she had found it in. Marlena was right. It would be so obvious that they had come in and grabbed the sword. Among the stuff Andy dug through to find the key she found a letter from her dad to Wanda, which made sense. She put it away, not opening. That wasn’t hers to read. No key though. “You wouldn’t happen to know how to pick locks? I only ever did pick pocketing, never learned how to pick a lock.”
Gideon looked at Marlena with confusion. “Why would you ever put salt in a wound? Do they do that in Missouri or wherever you’re from???” She didn’t know how to pick locks. Every lock before this she had broken with her sword. If Marlena didn’t know, she was going to just punch the glass. Wanda could know she was robbed. Gideon wasn’t scared of the witch.
Marlena put one hand up in fake surrender. ”That’s what we in the business call a metaphor, Shades. I got nothing. Unless your girlfriend over there can use lightning to melt a lock.”
Andy considered the lock. She’d have to hyperfocus the lightning. Andy concentrated what would normally come out of her whole fist to one finger, brushing slightly against the lock. The lock melted and deformed. Andy smiled and opened the cabinet, careful to avoid burning herself. She stepped aside once the weapon was free to grab so that Gideon could get it.
“Alright, Blinds,” Gideon snorted. But the minute Andy blasted the cabinet open, she jumped for joy, picked up her girlfriend, kissed her furiously, spun her around, set her down, and made a beeline for her sword. She tugged it free immediately, ignoring her shadow - she didn’t seem to really need one of those, anyway - and the tension relieved in her body was immediately visible, her shoulders relaxing and her muscles loosening up. “Oh Thirsty, I’m never letting you out of my sight again,” she murmured, before giving a sweet kiss to the hilt of the sword.
Marlena elected not to ask how such a huge and wicked-looking sword justified being named something as off as Thirsty. She chuckled and withdrew a pen from her bag, thinking about something. That symbol in the Scarlet Witch’s eyes. It was simple, albeit a little elegant.
It was easy to remember.
She drew it on a page of her notepad.
“Let’s bounce,” Andy said. She did not want to be found here. She was in enough trouble. Getting caught red handed was not something she wished to experience. Though, she did glance at the shadows and wondered if she could touch them. She reached out, and pulled the person shaped shadow. As soon as it was free it started dancing and flying around the room. Andy watched it for a moment and said, “Yeah, not dealing with that.” She grabbed the shadow sword. She’d find Chase and hand it over to him.
As Marlena inscribed the symbol into her notebook, something deep pulsed within her, as if a gate had swung wide open… There was the faintest sensation of breath on her neck, of spiders crawling up her arms… And then, the feeling that she had forgotten something very important.
“Who needs a shadow, anyway?” Gideon shrugged. She had the Thirsting Blade back and that’s all that mattered. She then eyed the other sword. “Can I have that one too? She needs a good home.”
”Woah, woah- Hey-”
Marlena scrabbled around, clearly caught off guard. Her hands roamed all over her upper body for a brief moment as she made sure the feeling of bugs all over her wasn’t actually real.
That spooked her.
”Ooookay.” She scribbled all over the symbol and mucked it up. ”Not doing that again… You two wanna get out of here soon?”
“Uh, I think it is Chase’s. I was going to give it back to him.” She nodded at the next question, and went for the door immediately. Time to scoot. She cracked the door and looked to see if the coast was clear. She spotted an older man, and closed the door back. “Well we have to wait Mr. Pym is heading this way.”
”Mr. Pym?” She asked, keeping her voice down. ”As in Hank Pym? the Antman guy?”
“Yeah, like I said, she needs a good home.” Gideon frowned. Ant Man. Hank Pym. He was someone who… she had no idea at all. “If he’s ant sized, can’t we just squish him?”
“He is currently human sized. Now shhh.” Andy pressed her ear against the door. Trying to listen. If Mr. Pym's footsteps were fading. She didn't hear him, so again slowly opened the door to see if the coast was clear.
”If he is still out there… Let me do the talking,” Marlena suggested with a whisper.
Hank Pym was standing right outside the office, with a giant caterpillar on a leash. “You… are not Wanda Maximoff.”
Gideon raised her sword. “Nope.”
Marlena’s eyes widened. ”Uhh. What is- Is that real, or am I hallucinating things still?” She’d never seen a giant bug before. ”You’re Antman, right? Is that a bug from the Quantum Realm?”
Andy nodded at Pym. She hoped since he was new he wouldn't recognize her. She had left her Excelsior jacket in her room so that helped. Maybe. She didn't say anything letting Marlena who was apparently a wizard at getting adults to leave do the talking.
Hank Pym stared at Marlena for a moment. Then Andy. Then Gideon. His eyes lingered on her sword and slowly, slowly Gideon lowered it.
His eyes flickered back to Marlena.
“Believe it or not, you aren’t hallucinating. I am Ant-Man,” Pym grinned, looking down at his giant bug with pride. “This is Arthur. You can say hi, if you want. He’s a little shy, but let him smell you for a moment - he’s a monarch larva, so you can give him a pet, there’s no danger of stinging. I was hoping Wanda was in, I’m low on milkweed and that’s what he eats exclusively. And to answer your earlier question - he’s not from the quantum realm. He’s from somewhere almost as exotic - Alberta.”
Marlena chuckled and held a hand out, as if she were greeting a stray dog. ”Hi, Arthur. She was here, just a minute ago. I came to ask her something, she stormed off suddenly before we could talk.”
Andy stayed quiet. She did not want to draw attention to herself. She let Marlena do the talking. She took Gideon’s free hand and slowly started to try to pull away from Pym, Malrena and... Arthur.
Gideon held her breath, slowly backing away along with Andy. Pym and Marlena were standing in the hallway, and with the angle just right… Her and Andy managed to sidestep around Pym, before slowly continuing to creep backward, giant buster swords in hand. If Pym noticed, he didn’t bat an eye.
Arthur sniffed at Marlena’s hand for a moment, before butting his head up against it happily. He didn’t make any audible noises, no squeaks or whimpers or whines, but even then it was clear that he immediately was taken with her. Pym beamed down at him with pride.
“I think he likes you. You said she stormed off - did you happen to catch which way?” He then looked at Arthur again for a moment, an idea occurring to him. “How would you like to help me out some this semester as my TA? I need someone who’s good with Arthur and the others - help me clean them, feed them, care for them - you’d get credit for it.”
That sounded like fun. Would she have to occasionally teach someone how to shrink down? Did that mean being more A than T? Marlena didn’t think of herself as much of a bug person. But then again, giant bugs were pretty damn cool. She nuzzled Arthur’s buggy little head… Maybe she’d get out of some other classes by saying she was too busy herding giant caterpillars to fight people.
”She went that way-” Marlena pointed down the hall. ”And… Sure, why not? Not much of an entomologist, but he seems nice.”
With Pym distracted by Marlena, Andy gently pulled Gideon with her out of the hall and out of sight of the teacher. She sighed relieved once they were around the corner. She'd need to find Chase, or text him since he was in a group chat now, and let him know she had his shadow sword.
“We'll call it a success. Smart grab getting Marlena. She is great at this.”
“Everything is proceeding according to plan,” Gideon agreed, pushing her shades back up. She hadn’t had a plan at all.
Meanwhile, Pym glanced back in the direction Marlena pointed, before nodding. “Excellent. Send an email to my faculty address and I’ll get it all set up - thank you, Ms…?”
”Marlena Evans. I’ll get on that as soon as I have a spare moment.” She flashed the old guy a smile and then looked behind her. ”...Did they just teleport away or something?”
Pym chuckled. “You can’t throw a rock without hitting a kid who can teleport these days. I’ll be seeing you around, Ms. Evans. Come along, Arthur.” He tugged slightly on the leash before going off in the direction Marlena had indicated, hoping that the Scarlet Witch would be able to help him out with the food sourcing issue. She waved him off, then shut the door to Wanda’s office. She had places to be herself.
Marlena looked down at the strange symbol she wrote. Something seemed different after she scribbled it out. Not about the symbol itself, but about her.
What was she supposed to do again, after reading about Otherworld?
It was later in the day, after the carnival was mostly finished. Leah had gathered up some ingredients for food and did a lot of staring at various websites before sending Percy a few texts to be sure the list she compiled was acceptable. That list happened to include at least ten different varieties of food she knew she could cook before they all disappeared, just in case the school’s Home Ec room didn’t have much. But, thankfully, it was the same school that Excelsior and the Young Avengers attended, so someone made sure this place was stocked enough that the entire gaggle of chaotic kids had something to ground them in reality.
She made it her responsibility to ensure the whole team was well-prepared for a journey that could very well take them through miles of forest or mountains. Something she was familiar with, herself. Some of her friends were city people at heart, and didn’t have the experience she did. The ability to freeze food would surely be impossible there unless April got creative.
So Leah piled up raw ingredients on a counter and started grabbing pans.
“Sorry I’m late!!” April hurried into the kitchen, tossing their tote back down on one counter and several shopping bags down next to it. “Showing Millie and Ben around took longer than I thought, then I had my visit slot with August - he’s doing well, def a little stir crazy, he asked if I would bring him back a souvenir from Otherworld so please remind me if you see anything that a lovable nymphomaniac would like - and then the only store near CAGE that had a good selection was Target, I’ve never shopped in a Target before - well if I did it was when I was like seven and I don’t remember it - BUT mission accomplished - I got things that won’t go bad!” April preened, pulling out a full bag of jolly ranchers, a box of granola bars, two boxes of Twinkies, a bag of gummy sharks, some trail mix, and two cases of blue Gatorade. “Girl dinner!”
”Absolutely not.” Leah side-eyed the trove of teeth-rotting nonsense that April brought in. She would’ve looked terrified if she didn’t know that April was, well, April. ”I’m making you some real food before we’re done here, I hope you weren’t just going to eat those before we left. We’ll bring them with us, though. Save the boxes.”
“I mean, we could eat them now. But I think they’ll be better for snacks when we’re in Otherworld. Except I did have a Twinkie already. Maybe two. But def not more than that, I promise, scout’s honor,” April giggled, beaming at Leah. “What are we making? I can be your sous chef, it’ll be fun!” They didn’t get much of a chance to cook at home - Danni and Appa did most of it, with the rest of the family banished from the kitchen while it was occupied. Not that Pops knew how to do much more than putting ingredients for a protein shake into a blender.
”Steak and fish, I’ll show you how to season it right so it stays good for whole days. I think I’ll see if Percy’s willing to teleport around and get some bread. Not the bagged kind, the fancy kind. We’re making stuff that won’t need to be kept cold, give someone an allergy attack, or make Percy and Andy feel bad for eating.” She pointed at some packaged slabs of meat from different animals. ”We’re gonna overprepare so no one starves.”
April stared at the slabs of meat for a moment. It didn’t gross them out or anything - they’d thought about going vegetarian a few years back, but had never really been able to put the follow through on it. Cheeseburgers just tasted too good. “How long is all that meat going to last?” It wasn’t the food going bad that April was concerned about. They doubted they’d be in Otherworld for more than a few days, really. No, it was the quantity that concerned them. “You’ve seen the way Dori can inhale meat - there’s, what, fourteen of us? Well thirteen, Vicky doesn’t eat. Do we need to go get more?”
”I’m going to make sure everyone packs their own. This is just extra. I’ve never been to Otherworld, but you’d be surprised how hungry you get walking. Danni can fly, Percy and Dorian can teleport, but you get hungry fast walking through hills and mountains. Speaking from experience, you really don’t know what being hungry feels like until you’re sleeping on a volcano in the middle of winter.”
April nodded, making a mental note to have some food thrown into their dorm room. They were planning on using the magic transportation tote to carry most of their things, so that way they didn’t have to drag around food or blankets in the fae realm. Their meds and other more transportable items would go in their school bag. “Sick, okay. Not the volcano part, but, you know. It’s super cool of you to be stepping up and leading this - I bet your meat is gonna taste great, too. Did you want me to text everyone to tell them to have their meat ready?”
”You can tell them to pack food. Maybe don’t phrase it like that.” She facepalmed. ”Okay. Food. You know how to cook any of this? If not, I’ll show you how while we go.”
“You just throw it in a pan with some, like, oil and seasonings and turn the heat on, right? And shake it every now and then and push it around with a wooden spoon?” they asked, as April quickly shot off a text message in the new group chat with the Excelsior kids and the newcomers -
make sure to pack your meat everyone!!!
”Right, but there’s more to it than that.” Leah stuck some oil in a pan and turned on the heat, then grabbed a cutting board and a knife while it got warm.
”When you can’t store food in a fridge, you dry it out so there’s no water for anything alive to live off of.” Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. ”Especially in places that are warm and humid. That’s where spice comes in, dried meat that’s got plenty of that on it will stay good to eat for days, maybe weeks if you do it right. And I doubt we’ll be there that long, but you never know. There might be deserts in Otherworld… Knives are over there, grab a board. We do the fish after.”
“Do you pull the water out before or after you cook it? I’ve never pulled all the water out of meat before, but I could give it a shot,” April volunteered, before doing as directed. They grabbed a board of the same size and shape as Leah’s, before staring at the knife block. The first one they pulled out was long with a serrated edge to it - almost like a saw. “Uhhhh is this one okay?” They held the knife up for Leah to see, pointing it right at the giant.
”Nope. Straight one.” She held her knife up, the blade was straight and smooth. ”Cut through it the way I am, try to cut it into thirds, don’t worry about making them perfect.”
Leah was chopping off bits of fat around the edges as she did so. The big pieces would be thrown into pans soon.
”It’ll be pretty dry after it’s finished cooking, but we’ll dry it out after. We can try it with your powers if you want, but don’t worry about it if you can’t.”
April put their knife back, pulling options out of the block until they produced one about the same size as Leah’s with the same edge and finish. They set the knife down on top of the cutting board and carried them both back on over to Leah, setting them down next to her. “Yes, chef.” They washed their hands quickly at the sink, before heading back to their station and picking up one of the slabs of meat - “what kind of meat is this?” - before they started to mimic the cuts Leah had made in hers.
”Steak. The good kind. Had to make sure it was something Percy and Andy could eat, and I’ve made it before.” Leah slid some bits of fat to the side of the board. ”Once you’ve got yours cut up, stick them over here with mine, the pan’s almost hot enough.”
She reached for a bowl and a measuring cup, then started collecting some of the dry ingredients. ”We’re gonna mix some of these and throw that on, then it goes into the pan.”
“What cut did you get?” They’d never cut up steaks before, but they loved ordering a ribeye from a restaurant. Still, they weren’t familiar enough to identify the different cuts by eye - a few of them, for sure, but not all of them. It didn’t take them too long until they’d butchered their steak as requested, and April grabbed the pieces, tossing them over with Leah’s. The fat pieces they left on their board, their hands stained red. “D’you like cooking? Or is this just sort of a - you do what you gotta do activity?” They then paused as Leah was throwing together a dry mix. “And at what point do I get to wash the blood and stuff off my hands?”
”Flank steaks, they’re big and don’t have much fat to cut away. You can wash your hands right now, if you want,” She said, cracking open a tube of garlic powder. ”I used to cook all the time back before my mom died. She couldn’t do it herself, and dad was usually out of sight by the time we ate anyway. I got pretty good at it by feeding her, so… Yeah. I like it.”
April frowned sympathetically, about to put a hand on Leah’s shoulder and give her a squeeze - only to stop themself. The blood was still there. “What was your favorite thing to make for her?” They scrubbed their hands in the sink thoroughly, washing away the minor bits of gore. “My nan liked to show me how to bake things - she was a shitty cook, but she could follow the recipe on the chocolate chips bag without too much trouble. Came out different every time, though.”
”pozole, easily.” She turned around and flashed a smile at the tiny waterbender. ”That was her favorite, too. She never ate a lot, but any time I wanted to really make sure she actually took care of herself? Pozole. Have you ever had it? It’s basically a meat soup with a lot of stuff in it like garlic and chili peppers.”
“pozole,” they repeated. They shook their head. “No, but that sounds incredible. Do you have plans for what you’re eating tonight for dinner? Hm, we should text Danni and see if he wanted to make something special for Percy’s birthday - but if not, wanna make pozole together? I’m guessing we can’t really bring soup with us although hm - maybe if we grab a thermos?” They’d missed this, spending time with Leah. It was strange, they’d dated most of the semester last fall and it still somehow felt like it’d been years since the two of them had been able to just hang out.
”Pozole takes a few hours to make, so we can’t take any to Otherworld. And it’s got pork in it so I’m pretty sure Percy can’t eat it.” Unless… ”Hm. Actually. I could try some different meats, something that’ll soften enough. It would still take a while, you need you prepare some hominy- that’s corn- and then there's still the time it takes and-“
She stopped herself. ”I’m rambling. Sorry. Anyway… Don’t have plans for what I’m eating tonight. It would be pretty nice to make something for Percy, if he’d even want that.” Or if they were back in time.
“Damn, that’s too bad. But! Maybe we can make it when we get back, then? Ooo what if we planned something like a Friendsgiving, just in January? Everyone makes something, we all bring the food, we just chill and vibe without an existential threat breathing down our necks. Maybe we make it into a friendly competition for the best dish, obvi it would come down to you and Danni but I bet the others would wanna give it a try. I saw a Snikt for making fried jolly ranchers and tbh I would be super down to try it with whatever we have leftover - or I can buy more, that works too. We should probably avoid any Cajun food, no one seemed thrilled in New Orleans about that,” April shook their head, giggling slightly. The way some of their friends’ eyes went wide when they saw the menu at the cafe they’d eaten at had been pretty funny - if not surprising. “As for Percy, I think if Danni or Dee threatens to put on the waterworks, he’ll fall in line and accept a birthday feast. So! What can we make that he can eat and that we have time for? After we finish this stuff, obvi. We could make him a cake out of twinkies? A twink cake for the twink boy?”
”I think that would just kill him, actually,” Leah joked, mixing stuff in a bowl. ”You could just breathe on Percy wrong and he’d be scattered over the timeline like a dead person’s ashes. I don’t understand how you can eat that stuff either.”
April snorted, but they were grinning like mad. “Everyone knows all the Snikt recipes are good for you, Leah,” they teased, sticking out their tongue at her. “It has all the nutrients you need. Like sugar, more sugar, extra sugar… But you’re probably right about Percy. Should we bring him some, like, pre-workout stuff? Protein shakes maybe? He’s so smol.”
”Maybe. We should ask first, though. I’m sure Dorian makes him actually take care of himself.” The bowl Leah was working with now had a mixed assortment of stuff that smelled pretty strong. ”Try not to sneeze.”
She shook some of the mix onto the slabs of meat they prepared, using her hands to really work it in on both sides and the edges until it was completely covered. Then the pieces went into the pan with a loud hiss.
“Pfft, I think Dorian’s maybe got a bit of a feeding kink, tbh. I’ve only ever seen him giving Percy coffee and sweets.” They inhaled deeply through their nose, letting the aromas wash over them. The garlic and spices together smelled fantastic and their mouth started to water. It was important to taste food as they went, right? So the minute it wasn’t raw, it was totally acceptable for April to try some, right? “But tbh, can’t suuuuper blame him. I don’t think even you managed to keep me away from my gummy sharks. And Percy is way more stubborn than I am.”
”And that’s why every guy in our friend group is built like a toothpick.” She was amused, though. It was funny. ”Speaking of sugar and sweet stuff, maybe I’ll make something nice like that when we’re back. Maybe we save Nemo and Danni and I make a huge cake to celebrate it. Maybe I’ll ask Percy if he’d eat it if we’re home in time for that. I swiped a book about Otherworld from the library, but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. You think time works different in there?”
“No idea tbh. Ben was going on earlier about how maybe it would be like Captain America and we’d all wake up frozen in a hundred years? Idk, it didn’t make a tooooon of sense. Like I guess maybe it could be like Narnia? Oh god, what if Nemo is only really old because he spent a lot of time there and we all come back with wrinkles and beards and limps??? No, absolutely not. That can’t be it. If we’re lucky, we just show up, kick some fae ass, grab Old Man Percy, and run back here and it’s 1 to 1 on time here and time there. And it shouldn’t take too long - like we defeated Arcade in an evening and the Young Avengers in an hour, so at that rate it should be like… so easy. And if it’s not, maybe we make that gestalt thing again but as all of us - did you know Danni and Dori used that to bring back freaking Genosha??? Not even Doctor Strange or Pa was strong enough to do that! So we should be able to steamroll the fae.”
Leah turned around and looked at April like they just grew a second head.
”They did fucking what?’
“They brought back Genosha! When Danni and Dori went inside Billy, and they turned into that huge entity thing? Tbh I’m still a little sad I was left out, or replaced really - and they didn’t tell me they did this until they told the parents on Christmas and they were all like omg we are so proud of you three! and that made me feel even worse bc I didn’t do shit??? Like I made everyone stupid little crochet things and they gave them an island??? But anyway, they used the, like, magical powers in that state to fix Genosha. We went there on Christmas. It was fucking wild. So so cool. It’s not all, like, healed yet but it’s getting better. It’s like all the magic radiation is starting to recede. So maybe in a bit people will, like, be able to live there again and stuff? I overheard my Auntie S talking to Pops about it, how she’s gonna start gathering up supplies and stuff.”
That sounded insane to her. Genosha, in 2039… Damn.
”That’s… Holy shit, April. Danni, Dorian and Billy Maximoff undid all of that? I- I’ve heard about what they did to Genosha, I didn’t think anyone could fix that. Fuck me.”
“I don’t think Sabine would like it if I did.”
”You- What? Come on, you know what I meant…” She turned back to the pan. ”You’ve been hanging around lovable nymphomaniacss too much.”
“That’s, like, every boy in our friend group,” April giggled. “But yeah, it’s a fucking incredible feat they pulled off. Fucking insane shit. Def not street level heroes anymore. That’s, like, planet wide stuff - honestly cosmic level tbh.”
”Yeah. That- Yeah. Magic’s fucking crazy, apparently. I wonder if I could do something like that, I can already make plants grow.” Leah shook the pan a little while the meat began to cook. ”Been learning a lot about that lately, it’s actually a lot easier than all the other magic I learned so far.”
“Love a plant lesbian era,” April hummed. “I’ve been wanting to learn some magic - wanted to ask Pa to teach me some over break but the timing didn’t end up working out. Like so much magic is about being attuned to the elements - it makes sense you can do plant stuff, since that’s all earthy. But imagine what I can do with my affinity for water - or Danni’s for fire? Kinda wish Nimue had stuck around a little longer to teach me more than she ended up doing.”
”What about blood magic? Think about it, most of a person is water, usually.”
They grimaced a bit. “What if I accidentally make them pop though? Plus that feels like crossing a line… taking control of another person like that… when I have other ways that I can help people.” It was different when Dorian did it - he usually had consent, and if he didn’t, it was a last resort situation. They didn’t know exactly where Sabine had landed on feeling about it. But they weren’t like those with psychic powers - they had other options, other tools. Blood magic felt… icky. And if it wasn’t about taking control of people, it was about curses - just about hurting them. April wasn’t here to learn how to hurt people.
”Who said anything about controlling someone? What if you just took the blood that was coming out of somebody, and put it back in them so they lived longer? Or what if you were in a desert and couldn’t get your hands on water, but you could use your own blood?” Leah asked. ”It’s magic, April. You can get creative with it.”
April twisted their face up as they considered it. Using their own blood in a desert scenario seemed risky - especially when there’d be an abundance of sweat on hand. But the idea of using their control to effectively keep pressure on a wound, to stop someone from bleeding out… “I can dig the healing angle. Like healing magic would be cool - our group definitely needs it and… well it’s a stupid idea, but I was thinking some about what I’m going to do after school, and like… Like when we aren’t going around being superheroes, there’s other ways to be a hero, and I think I could - I think I want to be a firefighter, maybe. And being able to help heal would be super useful there. Just as useful as being a human fire hydrant.” Their face was light pink. It was an idea they’d had for less than a day. But they really liked it all the same.
”That sounds like. I worked out a healing spell with my runes, but I’m not great at it yet. I dunno what I’d be doing if I’m not beating the sense out of supervillains and other assholes.” The whole room began to fill with the smell of cooked meat. Leah flipped the steak in the pan over. ”I’ve been thinking about doing something like this school, though. Something where people with powers are shitty parents can go to. But different, somehow. Like if the school didn’t expect you to go and be a hero one day.”
“I think Andy had a similar idea - but more oriented around a gym,” April smiled softly. It was incredible seeing Leah now and remembering the paranoid girl who had showed up on a rock a few years ago. She’d really blossomed, the contrast night and day. “I think that sounds rad. Like obvi I love that this school prepares you to be a hero - but every superpower school has its own agenda or exclusions. A place for kids who need to be safe and just wanna be people - I think that’s incredible. Leah’s School for Super Kids. We can workshop the name. Maybe it’s a place where kids don’t have to scramble to find somewhere to stay over breaks - more of a home than just a school.”
”Exactly. No burrowing underground when it starts to snow like I used to before they started kicking me out, no need to fuck off of to Mt. Rainier for a month. If somebody wanted to be a hero they could, I wouldn’t make them. They could learn other things. Like how to cook. Because a lot of people our age are actually pretty shit at it.”
“Maybe instead of a group potluck after, you run a cooking class for all of us.” It sounded pretty fun - and Valentine’s Day was coming up so someone had to help the nymphomaniacs out when it came to wooing their partners. “Speaking of people our age - what did Chase want to talk with you about?”
”We talked about everyone giving him shit. You know Dorian keeps looking at him like he’s about to murder him? Turns out it sucks for him so far.”
April nodded. The siblings had talked about Chase prior to the start of the school year - a conversation that had included Dorian begging for no one to cause Chase drama on Percy’s birthday, but… that ship had already set sail and been set on fire. “Yeah, Dori kinda hates him for what he did to Percy - but Danni really likes him and wants him to have a second chance. None of this stuff was supposed to come up today - like Dori even asked me to not come out to our friends today so that way things would be peaceful. I dunno if Dori would be happy to know that Chase is having a rough time but… it’s not super my place to meddle with it all. If Percy’s okay with Chase being around, then him being around is chill with me, y’know?”
”Dorian had damn well better not be happy he’s having a rough time. That’d be shitty of him.” Leah considered telling them about what Chase had mentioned, about how her dad tortured him too. ”He, uh. Don’t tell anyone I said this, but Chase knew my dad for a while. And not in a good way.”
“Oh. Oh,” April bit their lip. “Is that how he… how he got his powers and the…” they gestured up at their eyes. Chase looked like a walking advertisement for sleep medication. They hadn’t known what the source of his powers was, but if he knew Leah’s dad in the way April thought she meant, then it wasn’t good. “Did you recognize him, back at the contest?”
”Nope, never met him until he came up to me and Sabine after we won. We got to talking about stuff, and he got antsy. Then I told him I used to look human, and when I showed him the difference? Surprise, he recognized me from a picture on a desk.” There was an unhappy look on her face, to put it lightly. ”So it’s pretty much official that he survived getting a mountain dropped on him. Don’t know why I was surprised.”
“And he’s still hurting people,” April said quietly. They put a hand on Leah’s, hoping it would be comforting and reassuring. They’d known that this was a possibility, but still. They didn’t want Leah to have to face this demon from her past. Not alone, at least. “So that’s what we are going to work on after Otherworld then. We’ll make sure he doesn’t get away this time. And that he can’t hurt any other kids.”
”That, and other stuff. That vision was a lot. A lot of things keep adding up in small ways, and I do not like it.” The thought crossed her mind, for a brief moment, that he might be there in Otherworld. Just for the love of the game, fucking with whoever that witch was. Leah wiggled her hand and curled it around April’s. ”Everything’s getting more intense lately, after the Contest. People watching our every move, Chase, the TVA, we’ve got plenty of shit to worry about.”
April gave Leah’s hand a squeeze. She was warm - not hot like Danni, more like the heat the ground radiated on a summer’s day. “D’you think it’ll ever calm down - that we’ll have days where we can just go to the beach and chill without some new threat looming over us? I miss those - miss the things we used to do.” Missed the people they used to be. Even though things were better now. They were harder, too.
”I’m sure we will. It’s gotten better before. It’ll get better again. And…” Leah removed her hand from April and wrapped her whole arm around the small mutant’s shoulder. ”If nothing gets better, we’ll make it better somehow. We’re getting way more powerful lately, we’ve got more friends, and we’re only going to get more of both the more we do things. Things are gonna work out, somehow and someday.”
April curled into Leah with practiced ease, throwing their arms around her into a hug - food and cooking be damned. It was one of the safest feelings in the world, having Leah’s arm slung around her shoulder. A bit of tension they hadn’t known they were carrying left them. “Careful, you’re beginning to sound like an optimist,” they teased. The Leah of a few months ago would have shut down at the idea of the group going after her father. Once more, they couldn’t help but marvel at how far their friend had come. “I’m so fucking proud of you, btw. You’re incredible. I’m so lucky you’re in my life.”
She grinned, and felt her face heat up. ”Yeah, and I’m glad we’re still friends. We’ve both come a long way, huh? We’re both getting better at a lot of things.” It felt so great being friends with April, still. Leah could remember the day they first met, and she was just all piss and vinegar when April tried to make nice with her. The first real friend she ever made, only a week after her whole life had been upended. The deepest rivers on Earth were once unchanging, unflinching stone, and all it took to make something beautiful in them was time.
There was a fluttering feeling in her chest. She squeezed them tighter. ”Okay, now we flip the food over. Let me show you how to get the scales off that fish…”
It took about an hour and a half for the two to finish preparing all the food. The steak and fish were seasoned properly, cooked on oil, and April got a few free lessons in how to not burn a kitchen down in the process. The result of their work was a stack of square meat rations that had been chopped down further after they were off the pan. To dry them fully, Leah dug a counter-sized smoker out of the storage closet, and spent several minutes infodumping in April’s general direction about why it helped food stay edible for longer.
Seasoned, spiced steak and more mild cuts of salmon with significantly less seasoning. Enough to feed over a dozen superhero kids.
The last step was to wrap it all up in containers that someone, most likely Leah, would be carrying into Otherworld with them.
”And that’s how you feed fourteen people.”
“Nice!! Can I try some? I’ve been wanting to try some so bad, it smells amazing.” April’s stomach growled in agreement. They hadn’t had time to eat much since breakfast that morning and being around all of this meat, they were absolutely starving. “And how do you feel about me trying to pull the water out of some of these, well, whatever water remains?”
”Go ahead, shouldn’t be much left but you want this stuff dry as possible.” Leah swung around and pulled stuff out of a fridge. ”And don’t eat any of it, because I’m going to feed you something better than expedition rations. Whatever you’re feeling. Then we’ll eat dinne and I’ll do some research for Otherworld after, you can come if you want.”
April thought about it for a moment. They’d been eating Danni’s cooking for the last few weeks and it was fantastic, but it was very much Southern comfort food. They were Cajun, gumbos and whatnot were a staple. “I’m feeling something spicy - and I haven’t had good Mexican food since December, so I’m deprived… What about enchiladas? Do you know how to make those?” They turned their gaze to the food again and focused, trying to feel the water inside of it, but it was dry as a bone. If any lingered, they couldn’t grasp it.
”Of course I do.” The Mexican Giant damn near scoffed. ”I’ll make some, red pepper and chili flakes and everything. While that cooks, I’m gonna talk to Jen about what we’re up to… Any luck over there?”
“I think it’s dry, chef,” April did a mock salute. “If there’s any water in them, I can’t feel it.” They beamed though. Enchiladas were exactly what they wanted. “After you talk to Jen, there is something I wanted to talk to you about, by the by. Something else.”
”Sure, what’s up?”
Leah started grabbing things, and got a new pan, and some chicken for protein. She moved around the school’s educational kitchen like she owned the damn place. It seemed that making food for someone other than herself had a way of lighting her up inside.
When the pan began to sizzle, she pulled out her phone.
Earthbender: hey
Earthbender: todasy been weird. We leanred nemo is stikl alive and aboit to br exrecuted.
Earthbender: xcels planning tp savr him from otghreworld before then.
Earthbender: never sern percu frint before. or so distrahgt
Earthbender: if youer free im a while gonna eay dinner with team. Talk in persom if yuo want.
For a brief second, time stood still - as if the universe itself was attempting to decipher Leah’s message. In her Los Angeles apartment, She-Hulk glanced up from a container of leftover Chinese food and stared directly at the reader in confusion, before resuming eating.
And then, back in the kitchen at the Margaret Carter Institute, Leah’s phone buzzed.
Message not delivered. Tap to send again.
”…Huh. Okay, I guess I’ll talk to her later.” Leah stuffed her phone back in her pocket, and got back to cooking up enchilladas.
“So! Obvi I had a lot of time to think end of last semester, with the hospital and then being grounded. And um. Well. I think I figured something out about me, something that’s important to me that you know, since you’re one of my closest friends. Aaaand I am sorry in advance at how, like, weird and awkward this sounds but… I think I figured it out. I’m not a girl.” April clasped their hands together and rocked back on their heels. It shouldn’t have been scary to say, they’d told Millie and Ben earlier, their siblings already knew, Andy knew… but they still found themself craving approval from Leah, craving acceptance. “I don’t think I’m a guy, either, but I’m not sure yet.”
”Good to know, do I still call you April, or…”
“I like April.”
”I like April too, and the person it’s attached to. So… They-them? I’ll try to remember. I don’t think that’s weird, is it supposed to be weird?”
“Yeah! They/them,” April’s face brightened, their cheeks flushing. Had this been a few months ago, they would have kissed Leah right now. The urge to do so was strong and compelling. “Um, it mostly just feels weird telling people but like - I think it’s a good weird. Because I want you to know who I am. I’m glad you like April - and me. I like you, too.”
Leah smirked. ”Weird because it’s new? It’s a change? I know how that feels, kind of. A lot of things were weird for a last… Two, two and a half months. But that’s good, things changing can be good.”
She tossed some chives into the pan with the chicken, along with some butter.
“We’ve gone through a lot of change lately - but I think it’s been good. Maybe the next change will be you letting me play with your hair,” April joked. “Pa gave me a comb that dyes hair whatever color you want for Christmas - we could give it a test, put in some fun colors. Maybe a yellow that matches your eyes? Or pink, I bet Sabine would love a pink on you.” They leaned up against the counter.
”You do know my hair can turn Vibranium into sand, right? What’s that magic comb of yours made from?” She asked. God, how would her wild hair look if it was bright, neon pink?
April shrugged. “I dunno, magic?”
”I’m sure a lot of things are made of magic. But… Sure, why not? Do you have it with you? Just don’t touch my hair, you’ll bleed all over yourself and I don’t want all four of your dads asking me about that.”
The kitchen began to smell like chicken.
April squealed, their eyes lighting up with delight. Never in a million years had they guessed that Leah would be ready for this now! The comb happened to be in the pocket of their denim jumpsuit, kept just in case of a fashion emergency - but mostly because they had put it there and forgotten to remove it earlier. April pulled it out and offered it triumphantly to Leah. “Pfft, it’d be Pops you’d have to contend with. Pa would understand. Papa just does what Pops wants. And Appa… hm, I think he’d get it. Pops is the one with the temper. Anyway, just imagine the color you want and pull it through the strands and it’ll dye, super easy! I can even put some color in my hair to match if you want!”
”Hmm…” Leah plucked the comb out of April’s hand and stared at it for a moment. She had so much hair it would take at least half an hour to comb this thing through all of it. But she was curious.
So she held it up to her head and pulled it backwards. The top portion of her dark curls changed, and the color of sunflowers cascaded down until she pulled the comb away. Then she looked at the comb again, and was pleasantly surprised that it was still in one piece.
”Did it work?”
April tilted their head, considering the result for a moment. They walked around Leah, taking her in at different angles. The color was really pretty - and it did remind her of Leah’s eyes, a little streak of sunshine. “It worked! And it works, I think,” they appraised. “It really pops and like - this is a good way, btw - it’s giving Umbreon. Which love!”
Leah looked at a few of the strands that fell down to her field of vision. It was weird seeing her hair resemble April’s in color. This could be useful though. What if she could go back to looking human for an emergency situation and change her hair to look a different color? That little comb could be used to completely disguise herself, or someone else. It was cool. She wondered if it was permanent.
Leah hummed, grabbing some tortillas from a cabinet. ”Who’s Umbreon?”
“Umbreon’s a Pokémon. They’re little magical monsters that you catch and battle. Umbreon’s really cute, it’s an eeveeolution and has black fur with yellow rings.” April took the comb back and studied it. “What color do you think I should do?” They had pink mixed in with the blonde right now.
”Hmm.” That was a good question, actually. Blue was the obvious one, but there were at least a hundred colors, right? Leah pondered that for a moment, and came to a rather genius conclusion. ”All of them. Every single one.”
April’s eyes widened, before they giggled with glee. “Pride special it is!!!” Their hands were shaking with excitement as they imagined every color, a rainbow soup of shimmering swirls, and they pulled the comb through their hair. The blonde and pink locks changed into vibrant reds and oranges, yellows and greens, blues and purples - an explosion of pure artistic creativity. They pulled out their phone and immediately snapped a selfie. “Ahhh I look so gay!!!!”]
Leah stared at their super gay hair.
And stared. And stared. And stared.
It wasn’t until she realized she was staring that she blinked, and focused her attention all the way back onto the food she was making for April, face feeling hot. She repeated the words Be normal in her head a few times.
”...Looks nice on you.”
April put the phone down. They caught Leah’s eye and their breath hitched in their chest. Their ex-girlfriend had been staring at them. Their ridiculously hot ex-girlfriend. The ex-girlfriend they were still in love with. As a friend, they thought. But their body felt hot and a blush spread across their face.
“Th-thanks, yours looks nice on you too,” they couldn’t pull their eyes away.
”Yeah…”
The pan full of enchilladas-to-be was suddenly fascinating.
Leah liked to think she was pretty hard to read. But then again, April was the oldest friend she had. Of course they’d pick up on it. Why did Leah have to have so many issues with emotional stuff like this? Why did it have to be? Couldn’t the universe have given literally anyone else the absolutely dysfunctional ability to separate attraction from friendship?
She cleared her throat.
¿Quécarajolepasaamiestúpidocerebro? I mean-” Leah grabbed a bowl and a fork and began stuffing the enchiladas down into it. ”Food’s done! Okay take your pick, red or green?”
“Um…” April’s eyes darted to the red of Leah’s Excelsior jacket. “Red would be great! Red sounds super good. You look super good, btw. Really accentuates your shoulders. Have you - have you thought about what you’re going to wear in Otherworld? I don’t… I haven’t thought too much yet about what I’m going to bring, I’ll probably raid Dorian’s closet again, he’s really nice, doesn’t seem to mind…”
Leah grabbed some sauce off a rack and tossed a solid chunk of it onto the food, then stuck a fork in it.
”Uh- Not particularly. I know I’m bringing some rocks just in case my powers are weird there. I’ll probably just pack whatever I usually wear, nothing fancy that I’d miss if I get set on fire in there.”
“Any rocks in particular or just some rocks? I was thinking about bringing a canteen or something full of water, Katara style - like there should def be water in Otherworld, but just in case there isn’t… and hydration is important, tbh. Hydrate or die straight, y’know. And as fun as that trick with the Mountain Dew was, it feels weird to manipulate - like I can feel all the other stuff and it’s kinda gross,” April shuddered at the memory of the texture.
”Remember that box of rocks I have in my room? I’m cracking that open and bringing several. Aegirine, kanoite, that chunk of basalt I brought back from the ocean floor… As many as I can pack, I might just bring them all.” She sat the bowl of ready-to-eat enchiladas on the counter beside April. ”And something tells me fae probably don’t take human money. Just in case.”
“Ooo, yeah. Love the basalt - not as shiny as the others, but the texture is so nice, and I like the almost blue hint to the color,” April knelt down and took a big sniff of the enchiladas, before letting out a happy sigh. “They smell so good!! Did you wanna eat them here? Or we can go to one of our rooms or maybe the roof or something? If we go to my room, we can put on a movie while we eat - see if we can catch Percy and the others for birthday food.”
”I’m good to watch a movie.” Leah smiled. It’d be nice to sit down with the whole group and chill the fuck out, actually.
Then, a thought jumped into her head.
”Hey, pass me that comb before we go. I just had an idea, ‘Bine’s gonna love it…”
It was not until Rohan was near the dirt at the bottom of the nothingness that he slowed. He hit the floor with a thud, not so dangerous as it seemed at first. It still took the wind out of him. His eyes had to adjust from the darkness to a bright clear day for just a moment, and Root fluttered to the ground beside him. Rohan's fingers dug into cold soil, and against blades of grass. The air felt cool against his skin, a lot warmer than when he walked through the portal. His gear clattered against him.
"Ouch... Okay, that stung." He pushed upwards with his staff and dusted himself off. "Root, where did-"
The smell hit him like a dagger to the throat.
Fresh food, living wood, the faint tinge of loam. He took in the forest around him, and went still. Root went rigid as the block of wood his vessel was carved from. They were in a forest. A fucking forest.
His heart writhed in his chest.
"...No."
He slid his staff into a sling sewn onto his bow sleeve and pulled out Wallbiter, wasting no time readying an arrow. He crouched down low, eyes narrowing to pins. Root leapt from the ground onto his shoulder like a rabbit.
Not good. Not good. Not good.
There was no barren soil he felt safe enough to move towards, and even if there was, the thing that made this whole mess worse was that Rohan recognized the trees around him. They were redwoods and maples- Japanese redwoods and maples, tall with canopies that spread wide. That was worse. Why was it so much like Earth? What was he dealing with? The sun was up, allegedly, so he could see plain as day, but what about this realm of ever-changing chaos made this?
His knuckles went white around the grip of his bow.
The others were falling in. They didn't know.
"Quiet," He growled, looking back at them with teeth bared. The owl on his shoulders was tensed up.
This was already a problem. Everything was wrong, right now. If it were just him and Root, this would've been so much easier. If they weren't in a goddamned forest, perhaps there wouldn't even be a threat. But no, it was just his luck.
Both he and his familiar scanned the trees, the sky and the distance around them. There were wildflowers, he couldn't touch those. There was lush grass growing thick enough to hide something small in. A house ahead of them, a fountain overtaken by the woods... The water probably wasn't safe to drink for several reasons. Someone was cooking up ahead by the smell of it. Rohan didn't see a person walking the nure-en. That was good, at least, but he wasn't about to discount the possibility there was something masked as a person around here. But it was strange, how this place was so calm.
There was nothing he could see. No animals. No eyes in the branches. The wind was faint, and it wasn't speaking to him. There were no footprints in the soil. Rohan didn't see a damn thing that indicated any actual danger. Not at first.
"Don't get focused on one thing, don't touch the flowers- We're not safe here."
He could hear the water in the fountain and a crackling fire.
The cottage up ahead seemed almost abandoned. He didn't trust that it actually was. It was entirely possible they just hadn't been noticed yet. That was usually how it worked, Rohan had ways to slip past their attention for at least a little while, usually by staying mobile. But even still... He already wanted to go home.
"Stay close to each other. It looks like no one's been here in ages, but do not get comfortable."
“I’D LEAVE TOO IF I WAS MARRIED TO YOUR FAT ASS, DIANE!”
Vicky slammed the front door of her house, threw her arms down by her side, wrinkled her face, and released a steaming sigh of frustration that loudly morphed into a full blown, FUCK! The early birds dropped the worms from their mouths, shocked by the profanity, and scattered. The kitschy, wide plank sign standing next to the door that her mother had lamely painted the word ‘hello’ vertically on it in sloppy cursive with one L noticeably larger than the other fell over, floored by the vulgarity. The rolled up newspaper slipped out of her neighbor’s hands, this interruption to a normal, peaceful suburban morning likely to be the headline for tomorrow’s issue of the Cornell Daily.
“Oh! Morning, Mr. Parker,” said Vicky with a sudden twist of cheer, whatever rage she had carried outside seemingly had left her body alongside the FUCK! that had reverberated around the cul-de-sac and was now heading out of the neighborhood.
She gave a big smile and a wave at Mr. Parker as the old man gawked at her, a smile that fell from her face the second she walked past him, mouthing ‘you old motherfucker’ as she rolled her eyes. She hated Mr. Parker. She hated how he thought it was okay to wear a robe outside with nothing under it except for his tighty whities. She hated how he always seemed to have yard work or some other reason to be out anytime she was tanning so he could trap her in a conversation. Mostly, however, she hated him because he was old and fat and boring and how he had been born in Cornell and how he will die in Cornell and how every time she walked by him she couldn’t help but think in abject horror, Oh God one day that could be me!
Vicky hated a lot of things now. She hated her friends for talking shit about her behind her back and ignoring her. She hated Chef because now that he was dead she was single. Also, his funeral had been weird and his mother had made some big ol’ scene about how Vicky didn’t deserve to be there, that Chef would’ve still been alive if they weren’t dating, about blah blah whatever, how was it Vicky’s fault that college boy’s mother had raised such a loser that he was dating a high schooler? Maybe it was better to say that she hated Chef’s mom. She hated her parents, too. She had hated them before, but now she had new things she hated about them.
She also decided that she kind of hated her magic, because as cool as magic was, the moment she got magic was the same moment her entire life started falling apart.
But that didn’t matter now, no! Why? Because school was back in session, great, wonderful, stupid, boring, underfunded school, with its cardboard pizza and its massacred student body and it was actually kind of crazy that they were already going back to school, actually, if she thought about it, actually it was, like so many kids were dead. Still, it was a return to normalcy. Normalcy was good. Normalcy meant her friends would stop being such little bitches and repledge their fealty to the fucking queen of Cornell High. So, as with every other normal day of school, Vicky walked down to the end of her street, stood on the corner, and waited for Gwen to come pick her up.
And waited.
And waited.
“Whatthefuck,” muttered Vicky under her breath, fusing with the oversized sleeves of Chef’s varsity jacket, the blood all washed out along with the color. She was still unsure if it was a smart idea to wear it, worried that it might make her look desperate for sympathy and attention—which she was—but even more worried what everyone would think if she didn’t wear it.
Not that I care, she told herself as she let out a little surprised gasp at the sound of an approaching vehicle.
Her body sank into the coat as the vehicle turned the corner and revealed itself to be a school bus, the hiss of the air brakes sending a chill up Vicky’s spine, her throat gulping as the door swung open. An eternity passed as she locked eyes with the bus driver. Vicky was not a stupid, friendless bus kid. Only losers rode the bus. She was cool. She was a car kid, even if it had to be someone else’s car because she wasn’t allowed to drive she was still a car kid. It wasn’t like it was her fault she couldn’t drive. The instructor was just a prick. Vicky had been right: if those cones were kids they would’ve moved.
“Well, ya getting on or not?” asked the bus driver.
“I got a ride,” whined Vicky, acting so offended by the frankly outrageous question that the bus driver was taken aback and apologized before closing the door and driving off.
Vicky stared after the tail lights, frowning. Maybe she should’ve gotten on, actually. There was no way she was going to get in a car with Diane, who was probably still drunk off of last night’s box of wine, and even if she wasn’t it would still mean being in a car with Diane. Her bicycle, maybe? Nah, the sound of the garage door opening would fill her mom with hope, send her rushing out, and then Vicky would be dealing with fucking Diane’s bullshit again. Absolutely not.
The bus turned the corner, Vicky waited a few more seconds, and then she started to walk in the same direction with her chin up. It had fallen by the time she got to the end of the neighborhood and ran out of sidewalk, the darkening rain clouds above telling her that this was becoming a bad idea.
Tommy’s two-door car rounded the corner, on the way to school. He drove himself pretty much every day since he had finally finished turning the veritable coffin of diverse microbiology into something indistinguishable from brand new. It was a pretty peaceful experience, being alone in a car and unbeholden to the schedules of either a parent or a bus full of people who didn’t know Tommy’s name.
His dad had words for him the day after that party. Like any decent parent, he was worried beyond reason. Kids had turned up dead, there were police there and it was the one time Tommy had actually thrown his hat into that kind of social gathering.
He had to lie about a few things. How could he have explained that he was a wizard now? That a dozen or so people who survived were wizards? The true part was that he just hauled ass home. The false part was that he had done so before he made sense of anything. And then his mom had her turn at fussing over the entire situation, looking at the cuts he’d received from slipping on shitty alcohol.
So Tommy was technically on notice. They didn’t want him meandering much. He had places to be and he was the sort of kid who actually did things, but he was expected to be home at a reasonable hour and refrain from dying in a dark alleyway.
He saw Vicky moping on the corner of the street and stopped. The window went down.
”I think you missed the bus already, it’s usually here earlier.”
Vicky had tensed when a car pulled up alongside her. There was no relief in her face when she saw that it was just Tommy.
”I don't ride the bus,” scoffed Vicky with a flick of her hair, wincing as she felt a raindrop hit her forehead. ”Ugh. Just great.“
”...Right.” He glanced up at the sky. ”Get in. You’ll get soaked waiting there for somebody.”
Thunk. The left-side door unlocked. Vicky glared at Tommy, her arms crossed, her mind made up for her the moment she felt a second raindrop.
“Fine, fuck it. I’m texting my friends, though, so you better not stab me,” she said as she jumped into the passenger seat, tossing her backpack down at her feet as she slid the seat as far back as it could go. It was accompanied by a mysterious clank, the source of the sound imperceptible. She kicked her pearly white sneakers up on the dash as she pulled out her cell, “What’s your name again?”
”Tommy. And get your damn shoes off the dashboard, or you’re walking.”
With the doors shut and the windows up, it was easy to hear the barely-audible CD Tommy had on the radio at the moment. The car started to move, and they were off the block in the next minute.
“Wow,” said Vicky as she moved her feet with a huff. She had to admit, it was probably the cleanest boy’s car she had ever been in. Whenever she got a ride with Chef it felt like she was inside of a motorized gym bag. Still, her shoes were clean too. Ridiculous. “Not rude at all.”
They came to a stop sign. The way to school was to the left, just a mile or two of awkward silence and Tommy would be free of Vicky. Instead, she said, “Take a right here. I need to get some Starbucks.”
It was pretty damn clean. Solid black seats that had to be something after-market, not a speck of dust on the dashboard, and weirdly enough, it didn’t seem to have that obnoxious ozone smell new cars often had. Tommy took care of it.
”Yeah.” Caffeine sounded good right about now, actually. They went right.
Vicky slumped against the window, at first seemingly content with watching the rain streak down the glass and listening to the quiet tunes. Yet Tommy would be able to feel her eyes on him any time his eyes were on the road, Vicky quickly glancing away anytime his head turned her direction, back to the window, back to the rain, and then always back to him. Studying. Analyzing. The staredown solidified. The next time his head turned she didn’t look away. Instead, she just kept glaring. Until finally she broke the silence, unable to bear it anymore.
“So what’s your deal?”
”...I have no idea what you mean. Did you prefer to just walk through the rain, or something?”
“Yeah, that. That right here,” said Vicky, gesturing at Tommy’s whole being. “That whole thing. What’s up with that? Like normally anytime I’m in a car with a boy they at least attempt to make some kind of conversation, but you? Pfft. You’re acting like I’m bothering you, so why even stop?”
”Why not? Costs pretty much nothing to just give you a ride. And it’s not like we talk much anyway, figured you didn’t have much to say either.” She was everyone’s favorite bat-swinging Pick Me Girl, and Tommy was that weird kid who could fix things and make coins disappear. She didn’t even remember his name.
”I guess hanging around Tyler as much as you have, you’ve never heard of the concept of being a decent human being.”
Vicky let out a hmph. Or had it been a muted laugh acknowledging the truth in Tommy's words? ”So a decent human being brings a knife to a party?”
”You walk into a place full of people slinging shitty drugs and cheap beer, you bring some way to defend yourself,” Tommy remarked. ”It’s either that or I pack a gun, and that’s not happening.”
Vicky raised her eyebrows, genuinely weirded out by the response, and then she let out a small, annoyed sigh. He was fucking with her, right? He had to be fucking with her.
“Yeah, otherwise someone might ask you to do a kegstand or a bong rip. Those parties are sooooo dangerous,” teased Vicky.
Her face quickly screwed itself up, her mind catching up with her mouth, a guttural screaming cut through the sad bastard music playing on the stereo as she felt herself soaked once again in warm blood and viscera. Nope nope, nope, nope, nah, nah, nah, she blinked it away. No more talking about that, no more thinking about that. Move on, change the subject, tuck and roll out of the car, something, anything, other than reliving that night.
Vicky bristled and cleared her throat, her tone turning confrontational, “What did you mean when you said you figured I didn’t have much to say?”
”You don’t know me.” He shrugged with one shoulder, eyes on the road. ”I mean, I don’t do softball or whatever else people do after school. Was I wrong?”
“Do softball, Jesus fucking Christ,” groaned Vicky, smacking her forehead. She turned towards Tommy, her expression a mixture of disbelief and disgust, as she jabbed a finger at him. “Are you just fucking with me, or—”
She let out a loud UGH!
“I know who you are, dude. I just pretended to forget your name because—” She was a bitch. She thought it would be fun. Perhaps Vicky had wanted to create a power dynamic, clearly, that at some point Tommy had seemingly reversed. She kept ranting,“Everyone knows who you are. Do you think that just because you refuse to participate you aren’t noticed? It makes you stand out even more! You’re, like, the most talked about guy in our school.”
Vicky shook her fists by the side of her face as if she was quaking in terror, pretending to be the other kids at school, as she shrieked like a banshee:
“EWW! IT’S TOMMY BRACKEN. I HEARD HE’S PART OF THE TRENCHCOAT MAFIA!”
“EWW, TOMMY BRACKEN! I HEARD HE’S HAS A HITLIST IN HIS LOCKER!”
“EWWWWWWWW-UH, TOMMY BRACKEN! I HEARD HE STOLE HIS CAR AND KILLED ITS OWNER!”
Actually, now that she thought about it, she was pretty sure those were things she had actually said. Not that he could know that. Vicky slumped back in her seat, crossed her arms, and raised an eyebrow Tommy’s way as she sneered.
“Everyone knows you, everyone hates you, everyone is afraid of you. We were all shocked when we found out that the kid who had planned that school shooting wasn’t you. You’re the school freak, but it’s great that you’re actually such a decent human being, like, oh my God, Tommy! Decent people don’t call people human beings. Whatever. It’s fine. You’re not a bad guy, you’re not, you’re just not,” said Vicky, flopping her hand out as if she was making a grand revelation. “But you are boring, and if not for getting magic, you would’ve just been a boring guy who never left his boring hometown and lived a boring life before dying a boring death caused by heart disease or some kind of cancer, the boring one, like, I don’t know, the prostate one.”
Mockingly, she added, “Was I wrong?”
No. She wasn’t, not really. Tommy was… Well, he was a lot of things. He liked to think he was kind, he knew he was good at figuring stuff out, and he was magical. He did things he wasn’t especially proud of, and he had the self-awareness not to be bothered much by what others thought of him. But he wasn’t out there. He wasn’t social, or rooted the way most people were.
It was a little ironic, considering the magic he got. Everybody thought the guy who could do card tricks but didn’t play a sport was out to kill them, and never tried to fix that myth.
Tommy sighed.
”You and Tyler really are perfect for each other.” He propped an arm against his door and leaned his head on his hand. ”You know no one ever actually leaves Cornell behind, right? We all get these dreams in our heads that we’ll be the ones who make it out. We try our best, and everything goes right, but the thing about living here is you run out of more things than money. People are shit to each other, and small towns like these usually just make that worse. It sticks with you, even if you move out. Now, I’ll be straight with you and just admit I’m not great at being social, but that wasn’t bad enough, now there’s monsters and demons from Hell and whatever the fuck that werewolf thing was.”
They finally turned into the Starbucks parking lot.
”It’s going to get a lot worse when Cornell starts tearing itself apart, Vicky. Maybe I sound lame, but it’s not right to leave people to fend for themselves right now. Everything’s fucked… Doesn’t have to be.” He pulled into a parking spot and pulled the brake. ”So, yeah, I guess you’re right. If people didn’t get killed, I’d be pretty boring right now. Sorry if you always thought I was out to get people, but I’m not. ”
The mean smirk had fallen from Vicky’s face as a heavy silence smothered the inside of the car. Normally this would be the moment where a person would realize they had gone too far and apologize: oh, Tommy, no I never thought that, everyone else did, and I don’t actually think you’re boring, it was just a joke, you can take a joke right? See, I’m a decent human being too.
Vicky, who could never quite sell the sincerity anytime she said sorry, felt like she hadn’t gone far enough. Not just with Tommy, whose lack of squirming under her assault had made her feel deeply unsatisfied, whose comparison of her to Tyler made her want to slam her head into the dashboard repeatedly, but with everything. She had been held back by Cornell and by her so-called friends and all her stupid obligations for long enough. It wasn’t fair.
“I’m getting out,” said Vicky through gritted teeth.
She didn’t move to leave the car, her mind envisioning the bitches who hadn’t picked her up today, the whole reason why she was in the car with a guy who would-have-been-boring-if-not-for-whatever. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair. She took a deep breath, trying to calm down, and then realizing she didn’t care. Who would Tommy tell anyway? So instead she erupted, slamming her fist against the door three times, as she screamed:
”I’M! GETTING! OUT!”
She started spewing out verbal magma.
“You’re right about one thing: this town is shit. Our school is shit. This Starbucks is shit. These people are shit. My family is shit. My friends are shit. TYLER is a FUCKING piece of SHIT!” She smacked the dash, imagining it was his face. “And I’m just covered, just absolutely soaked in their shit, fucking caked in it, that I’m going to get mistaken for shit and flushed down the toilet too and I’m not, I’m not shit, I am absolutely not shit.”
Although at that moment, she kind of felt like shit. She jabbed a finger at Tommy.
“And you’re an idiot! It’s not right to leave people to fend for themselves? We—no—THESE people treated you horribly. THEY TREATED ME HORRIBLY! They treated me worse than you! They can all just get what they deserve…” muttered Vicky, deflating into the passenger seat before suddenly jolting back up like the killer who was supposed to be dead in an old, formulaic slasher movie as she snapped, “What the fuck are you doing? Go through the drive thru.”
Then, as she slumped back in her seat and sulked, she kicked her shoes up on the dash again.
The look on Tommy’s face was blank as an empty canvas. Whatever was going on in his head, he wasn’t particularly eager to share it. Why did Vicky have to be like that?
Honestly, why did either of them have to be like that?
”You just said you’re getting out. I was too.” He popped the door open and elected to let her explosive nonsense just go. ”I stop here too, sometimes.”
“Go. Through. The. Drive. Thru.”
He grumbled. ”Fine, damn.” The door snapped shut and they wheeled out and around the whole building.
Vicky let a little smile slip through. For someone who thought that everyone and everything was shit, she still deeply cared about who she was seen with while out in public. And Tommy hadn’t snapped at her about her shoes being on the dash. It was weird how he seemed completely unphased by her crashout. Definitely weird, but honestly, kind of refreshing. There was a word for that. Unflappable? Dimwitted? One of those. Hopefully the former. She was tired of dimwitted.
Going inside would’ve been way faster than waiting in the drive thru, the line creeping forward at a snail’s pace. Still, Vicky didn’t mind. She had wanted this, she had won this, and now the line wasn’t an inconvenience, not even when the fucking idiot in front of them got to the talkbox and had only then suddenly seemed to realize that they were at a coffee place and were asking all kinds of stupid questions like ‘what’s in an American?’ and she could practically hear the nineteen-year-old on the other side of the speaker die. No, it wasn’t an inconvenience at all. It was a small, personal victory parade.
When they finally (finally!) got their turn in line, Vicky turned to Tommy and said, “I want a trenta Iced Vanilla Protein Latte, with sugar free vanilla, three pumps of sugar free caramel syrup, extra cinnamon, nondairy lavender cream cold foam, two stevias, two splendas, with toasted coconut flakes, an extra shot of espresso, and no ice. Got that?” There was a look of abject horror on Tommy’s face. ”You want some damn coffee with all that? Holy shit…”
Somehow, he managed to repeat all of that into the talkbox, and in an almost ironic contradiction to Vicky’s insane order, Tommy got a large black coffee with a singular dash of ordinary milk. The warm kind, too, not the iced or cold ones that people sometimes got. They pulled forward, and Tommy could’ve sworn the haggard worker at the window was genuinely relieved that someone in this damn town drank actual coffee as they handed the cups to them. Once they had their stuff, and a handful of brown napkins, they were back on the road.
A quiet fell between the two, less uncomfortable than before. The coffee seemed to calm Vicky, or maybe blowing up had just given her some kind of catharsis. She no longer felt like shit now that there was something in her stomach other than half a grapefruit and a banana, yet as the car turned down the road that was one off from their high school that feeling changed. In fact, it was worse than before, compounded by a growing bubble of anxiety and a creeping sensation of dread. Vicky wrapped a strand of hair around her finger, thinking, worrying.
“It’s fucked that we’re already going back to school,” she said, softly killing the silence. She released the coil of hair, letting it spring. “Y’know, it’s not too late. Wanna ditch?” Not just school. Cornell. She took her feet off the dash, a peace offering, a bribe, as she leaned towards Tommy, her voice falling low, her face getting dangerously close to his. “C’mon, I know you wanna.”
Tommy took a long, contemplative sip of his preposterously boring coffee. Should he tell her?
He probably should’ve.
”Can’t. Not now, I don’t think anyone’s ditching anything right now. Even if I had enough cash and a place to go, it’s not possible right now.”
“Not possible? Or are you just a pussy?” hissed Vicky. “C’mon, prove me wrong. You’re not really boring, right?”
”After the magic stuff started happening…” Tommy stuck his coffee in the cupholder. ”Things are different. You ever notice that there are pieces of Cornell that aren’t the same? Like someone took a whole block, got rid of it, and stuck a fake one in place of it? We don’t really know much about magic, not yet, but I’ve been working things out with Kari. She got magic too and hers lets her learn things. She just knows when something weird happens. Like seeing the future, maybe. Stop me if I sound like I’m insane, but there are other Cornells. Not ones you can just drive to, I guess you’d need the right magic to get to them.”
They stopped at the end of a street where two more cars were passing. ”But something went really fucking wrong, and now those Cornells are coming here.”
“All the more reason to leave.”
”We can’t. What’s happening is worse the further out you go. For now, at least. It might get worse, but I’ve checked and… It’s bad. If you kept going, you’d probably get trapped. I don’t even know how that works, but we’re stuck here. We need to figure out how it’s supposed to be fixed. Then we can leave.”
Vicky pulled back. Trapped? She was trapped here? No. No fucking way. Tommy was wrong. Kari was wrong. That was it. That was that. She would get out of here one day, just not today. Today she would just have to keep pretending that everything was normal. Today she’d just have to go to school, and pretend that it was a normal day, and pretend that she hadn’t read those texts from her friends, and pretend that everything was fine and that she was fine and that she was going to someday get out of this town and it just wasn’t fair, seriously, it really wasn’t fair.
The car turned onto the street. She could see the school down the long road. She reached for the door handle. Ka-chunk. Locked.
“Let me out.” Ka-chunk, ka-chunk. “Let me out!”
”We’re on the road, let me pull over, the school’s right there.” He didn’t remember locking the door, that must’ve been her. ”It’s not like we’re late.”
“We’re close enough.” Vicky could not be seen pulling up to school in Tommy’s car. Ka-chunk. Stupid fucking door. “Just let me out here!”
Tommy smacked the buttons on his side of the car, and the door locks popped. She was really trying his patience right now. ”Go. And don’t get hit by another car or something.”
Crisis averted. Thank God! Vicky hopped out of the car, grabbing her backpack, and then grabbing at something that wasn’t there. She slammed the door without a word and for a moment Tommy had peace. Then there was a tap, tap, tap on the passenger window. As it was lowered, Vicky passed Tommy a slip of scrap paper with her name and number written on it, a heart as the dot for the I.
“Thanks for listening to me, weird kid. I’m glad you’re not actually a total psychopath. It's oddly easy talking to you,” said Vicky, giving him a big, manipulative smile. “Text me your number?”
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