Operation: Teenage Wasteland - Waking up Sixteen, Part II

[x-tarot.livejournal.com]

This day is not getting any better for the rest of X-Force either, or their overnight guests.

Marie-Ange and Amanda wake up amnesic and confused, and so does Wade.



Wade rolled over, not really awake yet, and stifled a yawn in his pillow. Only his pillow was... not very pillow-like, actually, and it sort of made his nose itch. But it smelled nice. Rubbing his nose back and forth a bit to make it stop itching, he tried to suppress another yawn, deciding that, if he couldn't hear any banging from the kitchen, he definitely wasn't going to get up. Maybe his dad would stay passed out for long enough for him to get to school without any problems. But that was for later. Later when he wasn't nice and warm and definitely disinclined to move.

Maybe it was Saturday. Maybe he didn't have school at all and he'd only dreamed his math teacher saying they had a quiz tomorrow. That would've been a really crappy dream.

"Doug, please stop squirming." Marie-Ange's voice was barely audible under the comforter and sheet that she had pulled up almost all the way over her head. She'd thought she'd gone to bed in her own bed with the canopy and the curtains, but she must have gotten up, or had insomnia, and forgotten going to sleep in Doug and Jamie's room, because there were no curtains and no canopy and there was someone else taking up more than their fair share of the bed. Curiously, no snoring though, and Jamie snored quite a bit. Perhaps he'd gotten up already. She rubbed one eye with her hand, and pulled the covers off her head.

And then she screamed, and backed herself all the way over to the wall and pulled the pillow up to her chest, and tried to pull the covers as well but whoever this man was, and he was not Doug, certainly, was much too heavy to pull covers away from. So she just screamed.

Bolting upright at the scream, Wade jerked away from the woman he'd apparently been sleeping with - and what was that even? - and pinwheeled backward, right off the side of the bed. "Holy shit," he said, because where was he? Who was she? She was still screaming. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

Completely disregarding the fact that he was wearing nothing but a truly awful pair of boxers, Wade scrambled toward the door. Only he didn't recognize anything after he got out of the room, he still had no idea where he was, and he was starting to panic - his dad was going to kill him.

Strangely, waking up to screaming wasn't entirely a new experience for Amanda - someone was always rolling someone, or trying it on with one of the girls, or just plain losing their shite and screaming at the purple pixies or whatever it was crawling all over them. But waking up in a bed - when she didn't remember picking up a john that night and certainly not one who would spring for a hotel room - was a lot more unusual. She sprang out of the tangle of covers, realising she was only in a t-shirt and knickers and scanning the room wildly as she looked for her clothes, her boots, something of hers and only coming up with some other person's rubbish. Then she remembered the screaming and decided that whoever was doing that probably knew what the fuck was going on, so she opened the bedroom door and found herself in a living room, staring at some older geezer in his boxers, babbling apologies.

"Where are my clothes?" she demanded, bunching her fists on her hips. "And what the fuck is all that screaming?"

"I don't know!" Wade looked down at himself, then grabbed a pillow from the couch and held it in front of himself. "I don't know - she won't stop screaming - who are you? What is this place?" An apartment, obviously, but where? What part of Camrose was he in? And who were all these women who kept screaming and yelling at him?

Marie-Ange had finally stopped screaming and was frantically searching though the twin piles of discarded clothes, neither that she recognized for a phone. She had a phone, she had her cell phone only she couldn't find it, just some weird looking things with tiny keyboards that might have been phones only they had passwords to unlock the keypads. This was useless. She didn't bother looking through the closet for clothes, she found a t-shirt, and there were jeans on the floor and they fit, even if they looked like nothing she would ever buy, they covered her underwear. Also something she didn't remember buying. Or wearing. Doug would have gone spare. Her parents would have killed her.

She was pulling the t-shirt on over her head when she heard a familiar accent yelling at the man who had been in the room with her and she burst out of the room. "Amanda, thank God. Where are we? Who is that? Why are you blonde?" She hadn't meant to say the last, it was just... it was Amanda, only almost none of her piercings and blonde hair. Well-cut nice looking blonde hair. Amanda looked... pretty. It was so weird..

Amanda's head whipped around at the sound of her name and she glared at the redhead. French, by the accent. "How d'you know my name?" she demanded. "And me hair's not..." Then she realised that yes, her hair was blonde, a strand hanging over her face. The fucking fuck? "Who are you?" she demanded of them both. "Is this some kinky threesome thin' you paid us for, sunshine? Because you don't fuck with how I look, that wasn't the deal."

Wade grabbed a blanket off the couch because if he was going to be standing there with two women, he wasn't going to flash them his jewels by accident. Even if he'd been sleeping with one of them. Which still - that did not even make any sense. "Look, I just need to know where I am so I can get home before my dad finds out I'm gone and calls the police or something, okay? I don't know either of you and I'd just like to not get the tar beaten out of me for showing up at home late. Early. Whatever time this is. Please."

"How do you not know who I am?" Marie-Ange ignored the strange man for now. He was... clearly not well because he was far too old to be worried about his father. "What do you mean ... " She blushed, very pink and looked down at her feet. "What do you mean, kinky threesome? You are dating Manuel. I am dating Doug... Is this because of that... that club that he is part of?" Her attention snapped over to the man and Marie-Ange glared at him with all of the anger a sixteen year old girl could sum up. "Put some clothes on, and then call whoever it is that put you up to this. I want to go home."

"Look, you French tart, I don't know who the fuck you are an' I don't know where I am. Or who this pillock is either." Amanda jerked her thumb at Wade. "This sure as hell ain't Brighton, either, but 'm not stickin' around for whoever owns this place to get back an' call the Old Bill." Amanda cast her eyes around the room. "You two do whatever the fuck you want - 'm grabbin' what I can an' gettin' the hell out of here."

"Of course this is not Brighton!" Well, she was fairly sure this was not Brighton. It was not her dorm room and it was no room she had ever seen at the mansion. "I do not know why you do not know who I am!" Marie-Ange shook her head. "I thought we were friends. I thought that we had art class together. I do not even know where I am now and now you are saying you do not know ..." Her mouth snapped shut and she looked closely at Amanda. Could this blonde Amanda be Mystique? They had been warned. "I am going to open a window and find out just where I am and if you stop me... " She would probably scream again but if this was not Amanda, if it was anyone else, they might not know she would not fight back unless she thought she might be killed.

Brighton? Brighton as in like. England? Wade wasn't too good with that whole geography thing, but he was pretty sure he'd never heard of a Brighton in Alberta and that lady had a really think accent. And then the other lady kept scowling at him and she sounded French, but maybe she was from Quebec or something, they spoke a lot of French over there. But that still didn't explain why he'd woken up in bed with her in nothing but these really ugly boxers.

Looking down at his makeshift pillow-blanket toga covering, Wade blushed. He'd never even kissed a girl except for that one time on a dare and now he'd woken up with a really pretty lady wearing almost nothing - what was he doing here? Of course, it was about that time that he realized he wasn't sore - at least no sorer than someone who'd fallen out of a bed would be. Pulling the blanket away from his shoulder, he checked out his arm and realized... he didn't have any bruises. He decided to just keep quiet, though, because the ladies seemed to be getting angrier and when people got angry, it was usually a good idea to just try and make them forget you were there.

"Go ahead, Red. Throw yourself out for all I care." For her part, Amanda was going through the pockets of the jacket she'd spotted hanging over a chair. Some kind of computer gadget, keys, cigarettes... Bingo, a fat wallet. She flipped it open, expertly eyeing the credit cards for those easiest to use, then riffling through the cash. American currency, must be a tourist... Then she caught sight of the driver's licence and the wallet tumbled out of her hands.

"No way," she grated, stepping back away from the wallet on the floor. "No fucking way."

Wade watched the redhead go for the window and the blonde go for the valuables but made sure he maintained his distance from both of them because the last thing he needed was someone else to start screaming. That redheaded lady had an impressive set of lungs on her.

Edging around the couch, he tried to find some sign of clothing that looked like it might belong to him, but he couldn't find any corduroys or band t-shirts anywhere. He really hoped he hadn't lost his AC/DC shirt somewhere. Maybe they were in the room where he'd woken up. Inching back toward the doorway, he tried to keep an eye on both women. The blonde looked like she was three seconds from flipping out, though, and so he stopped, still a good ways away, and looked between her and the redhead. "So uh. Look. I dunno what's going on, but uh. After I figure it out, I could. I mean. I could try and help you, eh? Since it doesn't seem like ah... either of you are from Camrose. Probably."

"New York." At the confused noise, Marie-Ange turned away from the window, face paler than usual. "No, I am from Lyon, France.." She turned back to the window and swept both curtains open to stare at the city outside the fire escape. "I mean to say, I think we are in New York City." It did not seem quite real, to look out and see parts of a city that looked just slightly familiar to her. "Perhaps we were evacuated. If something has happened to the school." But that did not seem quite right, because why had she been in bed with a strange man and why didn't Amanda know who she was, and where were her clothes?

"We're at my place." Amanda pointed at the wallet. "That says I live in New York an' I have blond fucking hair an' a job. 'S all wrong. 'S gotta be a dream or somethin'." She rounded on Wade, inching his way back towards the bedroom. "Or it's a spell. Somethin' Rack decided to use as a way t' get t' me, right? Somethin' one of you two set off for him." She said something in Latin and a wall of flame sprang up, blocking them from the doors. "No-one gets the fuck out of here until someone tells me what's goin' on."

Wade dropped the pillow when the flames burst forth and he didn't even bother with trying to make a grab for it. He just gaped at the fire, still clutching the blanket, and stuttered, "How - who could - what the hell?" It was official. He was freaking out. He'd been trying to hold it together but now they were saying he was in New York and fire was coming from all the doorways and he was seriously going to get beaten to within an inch of his life - he might as well not go home. He'd probably live longer if he didn't.

The doors were blocked, so Wade kept a white-knuckled grip on his blanket and headed for the window.

"I do not know what is going on!" Marie-Ange said. "I do not know how we have gotten here or why your papers say this is your apartment." But now that she thought on it, if Amanda had papers... "I ... I hate to suggest it, but perhaps we should see if the rest of us have papers? If someone is not playing a very elaborate prank on you, if this is a spell..." She slid down against the wall and held her head in her hands, knees drawn up against her chest. "I do not know what else to do."

"Stop right there, sunshine." Amanda gestured and more flame erupted between Wade and the window. "The French tart does have a good idea, tho', checking for ID. Somethin' fucked up is goin' on here." She glared at Wade. "But no tryin' to do a runner, old man. We're in this together."

Wade skidded to a halt. He was in a room full of crazy people. Okay - one crazy person and one who looked like she was going to cry which was - which was not cool. "Who are you people?"

"I am not a tart!" Marie-Ange had finally lost any ability to keep from just ... reacting to every little thing, and she had her head buried in her arms. "Last night I was sleeping in bed with my boyfriend in his dorm. My boyfriend who is not you." She pointed at Wade. "And you were my classmate, and knew who I was." Her hand moved over to wave at Amanda. "And you were my friend and I am not going back in that room where someone expected me to have .... to have sex with you." Back to Wade. "and Amanda, can you please put the fire out before we all suffocate?" Which came out calmer than the almost frantic burbling from before, or would have, if her voice hadn't broken between 'put' and 'fire'.

"Only if the john here promises not to scarper." Amanda folded her arms over her chest. These people had obviously been hit with the same spell and she wasn't going to let them out of her sight, not when they were the only clues she had as to what the fuck was going on. "An' 'm sorry, Red, but I don't know you. Last night I was dossing down in a doorway in Brighton an' then I woke up here with some driver's licence that says I live here an' my hair fuckin' blonde." She turned to Wade. "What's your story? Where were you last night?"

Face draining of color, Wade shook his head and backed away from the redhead on the floor, winding up in the corner as far from both women as he could get. "My name's not John. It's - I mean. I'm Wade. I went to sleep at home and I have school today and my dad - my dad..." His dad had been passed out. They'd had another fight about what he was doing in school and what classes he should take next year. Lifting the blanket a little to check his side, he found that he still wasn't bruised up like he should've been. Looking back toward the woman he'd been in bed with, he said, "I'm sorry - I'm really, really sorry. I wouldn't - I didn't mean to be there. I swear. I wouldn't ever make you - do that. I'm sorry."

Marie-Ange looked up from her arms, and shook her hair out of her face. "Will you please stop talking like you are ... are my age? You are at least twenty-five. You did not have school, you do not live with a dad, not unless you are special and I do not think that adults who need special care are allowed to go to gyms and you are too in shape to be one of those people who needs a caretaker." She had clearly had it. "And you were in a dorm room of your own, Amanda. Stop being ridiculous. Or you were sleeping with Manuel, and if he did this I ... well he is in a very lot of trouble, that is certain."

"Eh?" Wade blinked. "What are you talking about?" He looked down at himself again, then turned to look in a mirror because what was she talking about? "I'm sixteen. I -- " He caught sight of himself finally in the window and dropped the blanket. That wasn't so bad, considering he promptly sat down on it. "Oh Jesus Christ. What'd you do to me? I'm old." And both of them looked like women, not girls, but Wade was too busy freaking out even worse than he had been, before, to bother with telling them that.

She'd lost her piercings and her hair was blond, this Wade bloke thought he was sixteen but looked to be in his twenties, maybe early thirties, and the french redhead kept insisting she and Amanda were friends and went to school together... Wrinkling her forehead, Amanda gestured again and the magical flames died. "Fuck, I really need a fag," she muttered, before remembering there had been cigarettes and a lighter in the coat pocket she'd been going through. Taking a seat on the arm of the couch, she lit up, sucking in the smoke greedily before exhaling with a sigh. "All right, let's start over. 'S obvious none of us are who or where we're s'posed to be, but panickin' ain't gunna solve anythin'. So, let's work out what we do know." She pointed at Marie-Ange with her cigarette. "I know you say you know me, but honest to fuck I don't remember you an' I can't keep callin' you Red. So, what's yer name and what's your story? You said somethin' 'bout a school?"

Marie-Ange uncurled a bit, but stayed sitting against the wall with her knees to her chest. Even in jeans and a t-shirt, and she was starting to thing she'd grabbed the strange man's t-shirt but she most definitely did not want to tell him that, she felt very exposed. "You do call me Frenchie sometimes." She offered. "Marie-Ange Colbert. I am from Lyon, in France? My parents sent me to the Xavier school because ... my mutant power, I make ah, images? And they were giving me headaches, and I kept making the pictures from my textbooks come to life in my classes at my old school. We had some classes together, art, and sometimes self defense." When she didn't skip class, that was.

"So, yer a mutant. So 'm I, tho' mine's for magic." Amanda glanced at Wade. "What about you, Wade? You one of the twisty helix club?"

"What? No." Wade wasn't really processing much at the moment. "I don't..." He waved his hand, then looked at it and blinked, reaching up to touch his own face because seriously, what was going on?

"I think he is going to be useless." Marie-Ange said. "Also you could use clothes. Perhaps go get them, yes?" She felt entirely unsettled telling this grown man to go get dressed, but he thought he was sixteen so he was only as old as she was. Which, now that she thought on it, seemed a little strange. "Let me guess, I do not look sixteen at all, no? And Amanda, she was dark haired and not blonde when I knew her. So how can you be sixteen?" She pointed at Wade. "if I am sixteen, and Amanda cannot be sixteen because she is older than I am."

Wade blinked when she said he was going to be useless - his dad always said that. He'd always tried to prove his dad wrong. What did it say about him that this woman he didn't even know was saying it, too? "Right, no - clothes." He could do clothes. He had a blanket, but that obviously wasn't working - and he still had no idea why he was wearing such hideous boxers, but he'd deal with that later. "I'll uh... just go see if I can find some, eh?" Pulling himself up, he rearranged the blanket as best he could so he wasn't showing the ladies anything and then walked through the middle of the room in an effort to not get too close to either of them.

Luckily, he found what appeared to be his clothing in the room where he'd woken and, on the bedside table, a wallet that was apparently his. It was next to a little shiny thing, so he guessed it had to be his, too. Picking it all up, he pulled his pants on and a shirt over his head, then poked his head back out into the living room area, very pointedly not thinking about anything but what he needed to do right this moment. He walked out slowly, trying not to startle the women, and opened the wallet. "It uh... it says I'm me, but..." He frowned. But his birth date was wrong.

"But what?" Amanda asked, catching the hesitation.

"It says I was born in 1978. That's not right." Wade held up the driver's license. "That's two years from now."

"You think it is 1976? Nineteen seventy six? I was born in 1987, so it cannot be nineteen seventy six." Marie-Ange pointed at herself, and then at Amanda. "And Amanda is older than I am, but not that much older. What year is it?" What on earth was going on? It could not possibly be when Wade thought it was, the things in the apartment were much too new looking, and the clothes were certainly not the fashions of the 70's. "What year were your papers issued? Does it say?"

"'76?" Amanda made a rude noise as she headed towards the kitchen. She was hungry and all of this talking wasn't getting anything done. "No wonder yer such a space cadet. Been hittin' the hard drugs, have we? 'S 2003, I don't need to check..." Her voice died away as she caught sight of the large calendar that hung on the fridge door. "2012? This has to be some kind of wind up. No way 's 2012."


Wanda wakes up with one Doctor Stephen Strange, who has no better luck trying to find out what went wrong.



Muffling a groan at the feeling of an arm slung tightly around her waist, Wanda buried her head back into the pillow. She didn't remember anything from the night before but considering how wild her time in Berlin had gotten wasn't surprising. To wake up, almost naked, in someone else's bed with that someone else - it just wasn't surprising.

She tried to collect her thoughts but her brain was refusing to help and gave up, determined to slip out, get her things, get some money out of his wallet (for a ride back to the caravan site, of course. They had no access to payphones there, even if she wanted to feel her mama's wrath by calling her.) and then clear out.

Wanda gently gripped the wrist that was resting on her stomach and lifted as she scooted away. Until her limbs got tangled in the blankets and sent her crashing to the floor, along with the entire duvet and all the sheets, and almost with her one night stand.

She cursed in Rom and flailed about, unsure of why she couldn't get her bearings.

Stephen woke with a start, his hair sticking up comically as he leaned up on one elbow to see where Wanda had gone to so abruptly. "Darling?" he said, smiling sleepily at the bundle of bedding on the floor. "Are you all right?"

Wanda paused in her floor flailing and stared. Whoever she'd picked up the night before was old - how much had she had to drink? He was speaking at her in English, a language she was starting to learn but was not as familiar with as others and she was now looking at him with some suspicion as she started her attempts to free herself again.

"Sorry, I did not mean to wake you," she said, still in her native tongue, uncaring if he understood her or not. A feeling that something was off was starting to weight on her and all she wanted to do was find her pants and leave. "I am expected back to do chores or they will send my brother looking for me."

Frowning, Stephen changed to Rom. "Chores?" he asked. "Since when are you needed to do chores? Unless you mean you have to go to the office."

One thing that Wanda was good at was going on the defensive. "Office? How old did I tell you I was?" She glared as she regained her feet. "Unless it is some other word for a brothel? Do you think I am a whore? I bet you do! All Rom women are whores, you say, even though you do not turn us down!"

"Brothel? Whore?" Stephen sat up, well and truly confused - and not a little alarmed. "Wanda, beloved, why would I think such a thing? Are you feeling all right?"

"I am not your beloved," she sneered, looking down at her nose at him with as much dignity as a sixteen year old can gather. "Nor a whore. I am leaving and -"

She yelped when the strange, sleek looking device on the night table suddenly lit up as it began to sing and Wanda couldn't help it, she just couldn't. Red light filled the room and the thing exploded with a garbled noise - along with a number of light fixtures.

By now, Stephen was out of bed, dressed only in his boxers. "Wanda, please, calm down," he said, as soothingly as he could manage. "Obviously something isn't right here. Do you know who I am?"

She lowered her hands, which she'd raised just in case something had flown at her, and stared at him. "At your apartment, in or around Berlin. And no, you are just some old man who bought me too many drinks last night."

He blinked at her, now seriously worried. "Wanda, you're not in Berlin. We're in New York, in your apartment. My name is Stephen Strange and we have been dating on and off for several years now." He moved to approach her, hands spread open. "Something has happened to you. You seem to have lost your memory. Just let me..." He called up his aura sight, intending to scan her aura and see if something magical was wrong.

When asked later what had happened, Wanda would not be able to explain it fully. Her powers responded to what the old man - a wannabe pimp maybe? - was doing and responded, if not accordingly, then at least quickly. The lines that she'd come to know as strings in her sight started to flair and she flinched away from the old man, inadvertently setting off a chain reaction. Someone yelled, there was a bright flash and then ...

He was just gone.



Finally, some semblance of responsible adult arrives! In the form of Nico, so we're dubious on how responsible and adult things really are. She does sort of explain X-Force to the three not-quite-teens, and gets them moving to the office.



As she reached the door, Nico repeated to herself for the millionth time how bad of a plan this was. Suddenly the population of the Brownstone thought they were sixteen? go fetch them! Never mind the fact the three she needed to check were 1) Her mentor, and a more powerful witch than her (and wasn't she supposed to do all sorts of stuff when she was younger?) 2) Marie-Ange who...well, she could do paper monsters or something, and see the future, no big deal, but Nico was sure she had a gun. And 3) Wade, although Nico had no way to know the man was in there. It was such a bad idea that she had even brought out the Staff of One out already; if she knew something about confused teenage mutants was that they had a propensity to do stupid things.

Standing in front of the door, Nico extended her free hand to knock on the door, but stopped herself when she felt the traces of magic that had been used recently. She was experienced enough to know there had been a barrier erected and dispersed there. Taking a deep breath, Nico grabbed the handle of the door and leaned a bit against it. "Amanda, Marie-Ange?", called out loud. "Did you guys, by chance, I don't know, woke up thinking you have a decade less of existence? Give it a year or two, I guess."

Marie-Ange yelped, and faced the door. "Who is that?" She turned back towards Amanda and Wade and rubbed her face wearily. "Maybe it is the future and we have been caught in a time machine. I think I want answers, I very much hate not knowing. I am going to answer the door, unless one of you stop me." She moved towards the door, and after a moment of fumbling with the deadbolts - and who had more than one on a door? - opened it to find... a teenage girl.

Said teenage girl had removed her hand from the door and waited for the door to open. Giving Marie-Ange a quick look she realized the woman certainly looked disoriented. "Uh, hi. I have answers, but might want to take a sit. And make Amanda take a sit too." Nico inclined a bit to see inside, trying to spot her mentor inside. "I would be a lot more relaxed if I can make sure she doesn't go making magic all over the place." Teenage mentality or not, fighting Amanda was unnecessarily dangerous for Nico, even.

Hearing her name, Amanda appeared around the edge of the door, beer in one hand, cigarette in the other. "No-one makes me do anythin', sunshine," she growled, lip curling as she took a drag of the cigarette. "But if you have somethin' t' say 'bout this whole Rip Van Winkle act we've pulled, come in an' say it." She grinned briefly. "I'll be good, I promise."

"Yes, sure whatever." Poker face on, Nico walked in. "Okay so, I insist on the taking a sit part, mostly because this is as ridiculous as it can get and I want to make sure nobody does anything silly. So to the couch we go." Nico had to make an effort not to hold the Staff of One as a baseball bat, and remind herself these were her superiors, and not a bunch of teens. Still, she would wait for them to get to the couch first.

Wade moved toward the couch, staying about as far away from both Marie-Ange and Amanda as he could get, then cleared his throat and shifted a little because this was still exceedingly weird and, while compartmentalizing might work for him, it couldn’t keep him from remembering Marie-Ange’s screams. That, and the girl who was apparently going to explain things to them looked... so weird. What was up with all the black? And her clothes - they were all wearing strange clothes, but he couldn't believe it was 2012, that was just too much.

"I have questions. Who are you, and how do you know us, and how do we know you are not responsible for all of this?" Marie-Ange could not quite believe this girl, maybe her own age, could be responsible for something like that, but then, for all she knew this was not a teenage girl. Shapeshifters were tricky.

Nico made a point of waiting for everybody to sit down -Wade included- before she flung her staff over a shoulder. Of course they would be wary of her. "Oh trust me, I would know if this was my mess, but Amanda can tell you there are no magic traces on any of you, so this isn't my doing. More importantly, out of everybody who kind of lives here only two people doesn't seem to be affected that I know." And then Nico sat too, because she didn't want to be in a position where she was more likely going to be distrusted.

"I'm Nico by the way. I'm not sure of what is going on myself, but the residents of the Brownstone are all acting like they are suddenly sixteen. Have you guys looked yourselves on a mirror? I mean, that's all it takes to realize you all stopped being sixteen a good while ago."

"Listen to the cheeky one. Someone thinks she's Queen Sheba," Amanda said, still eying the younger girl with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity - she hadn't met any other magic users, apart from Rack and his group. Another teenaged girl witch was interesting. "So what is this place? Some kind of commune for mutants?"

"Not really", said Nico as she tried to find the best way to explain things. "This is basically a Special Operations kind of team thing. I'm not really good at explaining, but think of it as a bunch of people doing good for others from the shadows, usually being as...shadowy as possible." For some reason she wasn't comfortable telling them they killed people, or worst, they tortured people (if needed) and then killed them. Remy could deal with the finer details better than her.

"But yeah, we all are a team of sorts. Not you though", added as she pointed at Wade. "The hell are you doing here? Wait, nevermind, it's not like you remember."

"Oh, so like the X-Men!" Marie-Ange said. That made a strange sort of sense, if they were doing things from the shadows, she was not hurting anyone. "Did someone attack us?"

"The X-who? Nevermind. I have no idea how I got here or anything else," Wade said, shaking his head. The thought of anyone but his dad wanting to 'attack' him was pretty much ridiculous. If this was some kind of special forces thing, he was in way over his head.

"Special Ops? Us?" Amanda couldn't help but laugh. "And what're you, the mascot?"

Nico smiled as she tried to remind herself this was her dear mentor, and that Amanda would not like to get out of this mess with a black eye. "Sure I am! I mean, other than a receptacle of evil power and capable of turning you to dust with the wrong mood, I'm pretty puny, if I might say so myself. Anyway!, added quickly as she stood up, not letting anyone reply to her. "Remy wants you all together so we can make some damage report. Get some shoes on and let's get out of here." And she wouldn't ask twice.

Marie-Ange nodded, as though she actually knew what was going on. If Remy was involved, well, clearly this was a disaster like when the demons had attacked and stolen Illyana and he'd be in hip-deep. "I am not wearing these out." She plucked at the t-shirt as though it was Wrong. "I think perhaps it is yours." She pointed to Wade, and shrugged. "I will be right back. Besides I need shoes still." She raised an eyebrow at Nico, suddenly looking every inch the 20-something adult and then giggled, losing any hope of appearing an adult. "I promise, I will be right back." There had to be something in that closet that was decent.

Amanda grimaced and finished off her beer with a belch. "'S long as there's food an' a cuppa, 'm in." she looked down at the t-shirt she was wearing. "I'll be right back too -'m not going' anywhere in my skivvies."

"Uh," Wade said as the two women disappeared. "I don't actually know where my shoes are?"

Nico sighed. "This is when you start looking for them then. Come on, I'll give you a hand." Sometimes she wondered if she could just Accio things, but today was not a good day to try.



On her way out the fire escape, Wanda encounters Christophe Nord, and they both encounter Remy. Miraculously, no one dies.



Christophe Nord was having similar thoughts, having thoroughly panicked when he woke up in a strange, too-hard bed with rough sheets and a coarse duvet. He must have been kidnapped from his bed at home, because last he remembered, he had barely managed to sneak into his room before daybreak after a night of drunken revelry. It was a small mercy that he had not woken up still drunk or completely hungover, although he did feel rather strange.

Upon waking, a Spartan room had met his bleary eyes, void of any personal touches. Clearly it was a safehouse; a hidey hole for the politically deranged that opposed what his father stood for. It was all right, the teenager had counselled himself, desperately trying not to succumb to the hyperventilation that threatened to overwhelm all rational thought. The guards had taught him what to do. It was well within the abilities of a Nord to escape from what he hoped was as poorly a guarded room as it seemed.

Carefully tugging the pair of shoes by the bed, Christophe tried to make as little noise as possible as he crept towards the fire escape, eyes darting toward the front door with every step. Ever so carefully, he tugged the window open, cursing colourfully (but silently) at the slightest sound it made. He just needed to get to a phone to get in touch with his Papa, who would send someone to pick him up and put things right for him. Perhaps he should have searched the room for a weapon, but at that moment, all he wanted to do was get the hell out of there before his kidnappers thought to check up on him.

Before she started down the fire escape Wanda had made sure to shut the window as quietly as she could. There was no need to call anymore attention to herself than possible - the last thing she wanted was for someone to call the German police. That never ended well and her clan certainly wouldn't have enough money to get her out.

Trying to climb down a fire escape in a skirt was difficult but not impossible and she was starting to feel more secure about the situation ... until she almost stepped on the man coming out of the window below her.

Wanda yelped and scrambled to avoid doing so and it almost cost her the grip she had on the bars.

Swearing out loud, Christophe shoved himself back through the window and took several steps away from it. His head swivelled between window and door as he strained to listen for disturbances from beyond the room. As moments passed without mishap, the boy eyed the window, heart pounding as he watched the sunlight shift with each movement from the person hanging outside.

Carefully, he inched back towards it and stuck his head out again, getting an eyeful of a woman hanging from the bars above his apartment.

“What do you want?” He demanded in German, as polite as he could in the given circumstances.

German! Now that was a language Wanda knew very well. She eyed him as she adjusted her grip on the bars, fully prepared to bolt either up or down depending on how this turned out. “Nothing,” she replied in German. “Well, no. Getting home, I suppose, but I do not think you could help me with that.” Another old person but he was handsome enough, even when startled. “Though you look like you could help certainly help someone with other things,” she said, giggling.

“Whatever do you mean?” A flirtatious older woman posed little threat, Christophe supposed, as he flashed a cheerful grin at her. The fear of having been kidnapped ebbed away a little at the sight of a friendly face. His Mama had told him not to trust girls, especially pretty ones, but he seldom paid her mind. Hefting himself up and out of the window, he found footholds in the metal rails. “Up or down, Madam?”

Now this was familiar, even if she thought him insane for calling her 'madam'. The older gypsy women found themselves lucky to be called such by gadjo and she was too young for the title. But she ignored that in favor of leaning around the side of the ladder so she could smirk at him.

"Now that is the question," Wanda said, giggling again as she ducked her head. "But down, I think, for now!"

“We’re headed in the same direction then,” Christophe replied, charming smile still in place even as he carefully closed the window of the prison cell he had just liberated himself from. It was only when she had leaned down and turned her face in his direction that he noticed that his unlikely companion was no German lady. But while he had no fondness for gypsies, well, one always made exceptions for the aesthetics. “Usually I would say ‘ladies first’ but I think I would want to be below you to catch you should I need to, yes?”

Carefully but ably, he made his way down the fire escape, glancing up now and then to make sure the woman was not about to land on his head, regardless of what he had told her. His body seemed strange, almost as though it was a little too large and long, but he made it down the building without mishap and, dusting his palms off on his pants, pushed the thought away for the moment.

When Wanda's powers had emerged, she'd been given the ability to do fairly wondrous - and odd - things. But it was a chaotic mess at the worst of times and it turned a lanky growing girl already prone to accidents into a lanky growing walking disaster. She'd gotten over some of that but she did almost lose her grip and drop down on the pretty looking German.

She caught herself at the last minute and laughed at herself before she dropped down to the ground. Wanda dusted her hands off on the seat of her pants and gave the man a curious look. "Are you fleeing the building as well or just looking for some company?"

“No reason why I can’t do both, really.” Christophe’s heart was not really in it, however, as he glanced around the wholly unfamiliar area. Everything looked really strange. He could not quite put his finger on it but something seemed… off. No matter. Just pick one direction and start walking. Turning back to Wanda, he cocked his head to the side and covertly studied her, a small smirk (that he thought was particularly charming) tugged at the corners of his mouth. “What are you fleeing from then? Who dares cause you distress?”

Oh, he was something, that was for sure. Wanda returned the smirk as she shrugged one shoulder. She wasn't about to tell him that she'd made the man she'd apparently slept with disappear thanks to her powers. "Someone wouldn't take no for an answer," she said instead, "so I decided that I should go home instead. Getting out of Berlin should not be hard, especially if I have some company for part of it."

“Not to worry, I know to treat a lady better than that.” He did not particularly wish to get out of Berlin per se, but Christophe nodded and gallantly offered Wanda his arm, eager to get out of the immediate vicinity before his absence was noted. “Shall we?”

She giggled again and looped her arm through his. The contact allowed her to quite shamelessly press up against his side. "I will most happily follow you," Wanda replied. Especially considering the view that would allow her.

"Dat's far enough." They didn't even see the figure until he dropped from the fire escape above them, landing in the mouth of the alleyway. He wasn't tall, and was lean in the way of a dancer. But his eyes were an intense red-on-black, and his face was hard and set. Seeing Wanda leave via the fire escape was the answer he needed whether or not she was effected, and now with North looking uncharacteristically uncertain and surprised, he must have joined the pack. Great, more disfunctional teenagers instead of his team.

"We going back inside de Brownstone and we all going to have a little chat, where I explain why you think you've woken up someplace strange. Remy is in an unbelievably bad mood right now, so let's not make dis hard, neh?"

Starting at the sound of Remy’s voice, Christophe swung around and stared at the newcomer. Instinct told him to take two steps back, turn and run like his life depended on it. But Christophe could not help but frown at the stranger’s lousy English and odd accent even as he relaxed his arm by just that little bit to make it easier to shake off Wanda’s arm if need be.

“Who are you?” He demanded in his own heavily accented English. Narrowing his eyes at Remy, the spy turned teen prepared to make a break for it, even if it meant leaving the pretty gypsy behind. “And why should we listen to you?”

Remy switched to excellent German. "Because I know all about you, Christophe Nord, and you, Wanda Maximoff. I know about your lives, your families, and most of all, I know why you think you went to bed in Europe and woke up in New York City. You run, and you'll never know why all this has happened. That a good enough reason?"

A quick glance towards the end of the street told Wanda two things. One, that she probably wouldn't make it to the end of the street. She was fast but this man looked faster. And, two, that there was something to his words because what she could see - the street signs, the taxis, even the people - certainly didn't look German.

There was one thing she knew for certain and that was nothing had made sense since she'd woken up that morning. "I will need to send word to my mama," she said slowly, "so she does not worry but ... I wish to know what is going on, I suppose."

Torn between his insistent flight system and that nagging want to assuage that strange feeling he could not put his finger on, Christophe continued to glare at the strange man. Except that those eyes were ridiculously difficult to stare into for long, so he settled for staring across the street as Wanda spoke and he considered his apparent choices. It would take more than Remy just knowing his name to get him to trust him, but it was true that things just did not… feel right.

“And you’ll have to prove that this is New York City.” It was a gauntlet thrown down on the pavement; a teenager’s bravado. “My Mama always said to never listen to dubious strangers.”

Remy sighed and pointed behind him. The skyline of New York wasn't as recognizable this close up, but it was obvious that it was more dominated by skyscrapers and newer buildings than anywhere in Europe. "If I have to, Remy buy you a slice of pizza. Now come inside."



But whatever happened to Dr. Stephen Strange? Alberta, Canada happened. Strange/Tim Hortons OTP 4 EVER.




"Uh sir? Mister?" Stephen Strange shivered in the cold, trying to clear the disorientation from his head as the voice tried to penetrate. "Mister, look, you can't order here. This is the drive-thru." The man in the Tim Horton's hat said, leaning out through the window.

"He's not wearing any pants! Sheri, look!"

"Yeah, I saw. He's old. Must have wandered away from Westbrook or something." The two girls behind him twittered.

"Both of you be quiet. Deacon just left with his coffee. See if you can reach him and get him back with the patrol car." The man turned back. "It's pretty cold, Mister. You want to come inside?"

Trying not to be too offended at being called old twice in one morning, Strange did his best to seem amiable and non-threatening. And not die of hypothermia, which was harder considering he was ankle-deep in snow. "Please, this might seem to be an odd question, but can you tell me where I am? And possibly allow me to come inside before I freeze to death? I mean no harm, I promise."

"Westlock, Alberta. You hit your head or something?" He waved Strange around the drive-thru lane and into the thankfully warm interior of the donut store. "Cheri, dig out a uniform he can wear until Deacon gets here."

"Alberta? As in Canada?" Strange said through chattering teeth as he came into cinnamon-scented warm heaven. "Dear me, I did not expect..." He collected himself and gave his saviour a wan smile. "Thank you for your kindness. There was... an accident of sorts and as you can see, I was not expecting to be anywhere, let alone Canada."