There appears a person in a steel-blue suit of power armor with a motorcycle-style helmet.

"What the fuck!" says this person.

"I don't know what the fuck!" says a possibly twelve year old girl, in a thick blood red top with armor made of shining red scales with black accents, black pants, and a circlet with small golden horns. She's not wearing a mask, unlike most of her companions. "Please tell me you just dropped on us on accident. Or that you're frantically searching for someone to save your dying world, that'd at least be an entertaining kind of 'our problem.'"

(Her companions are: a teenage girl in an orange bodysuit with panels with a dizzying star effect and a deep orange cowl that hides her face, a teenage girl in a white bodysuit with blue lightning designs and also a motorcycle-style helmet, a large boy with green skin and hair and wings and a purple bodysuit and no mask, a teenage girl in a purple outfit over a black bodysuit with a purple mask covering her face, and a possibly teenage, possibly young adult girl with long white hair, dressed in a stylized Chinese martial arts robe with a sword she apparently dropped beside her, in a slightly askew demon mask. There's also an older man, dressed in red and purple metallic plates, who everyone else is conspicuously avoiding standing too near as they get to their feet.)

"It's the first thing and I was kinda in the middle of something! Where am I? I don't have signal."

"I don't know. Wiccan, where'd you drop us?"

"Uh," says the girl in an excessive amount of orange. "Latveria? Maybe? I was mostly aiming for 'away from the murderous speedster,' and that is not a situation conducive to aiming, but this looks kind of somewhere in Europe-ish? And I'd been thinking about Latveria recently."

"...where's Latveria?"

"...Somewhere in Eastern Europe I think? Mostly known for producing that von Doom weirdo - Loki you know any geography, right - "

"Northern Balkans."

"Onboard memory's never heard of it and neither have I, if it's in fact known for things as opposed to being a short-lived warlord territory or something it ought to be in here."

"...Which Earth are you from - I'm pretty sure 926 doesn't have a Latveria so it'd make sense if others didn't..."

"Uh, we're using Hebrew letters, it's Bet? I didn't know there were numbered ones."

"You'd run out of letters pretty quick unless your area was pretty sparse. This's 1023 - they're not numbered sequentially, but by some weird randomizer that the person running it swears is unlikely to have a duplicate with another universe's randomizer, so no one has to redo their ordering system if a new connection's made."

"Not to interrupt this fascinating conversation," says the girl with the sword, "But weren't we kind of running away from people tracking us."

"Von Doom might know we're here, but he's got up stuff preventing the Avengers at least from tracking him. He'll probably send something out to meet us, but we should really get who's who and what we're actually doing all squared away before that."

"I'm Lorica. We aren't running out of letters, powers that go between Earths aren't common - there's a stable data connection to Aleph for transmission of alternate universe Star Wars movies but nothing for commuting."

"I'm Loki. Orange girl is Wiccan; she's got a wide set of powers but the most relevant are flying, throwing lightning, and as of yesterday apparently teleporting. Girl in white is Jet; she's a speedster. Green boy's Hulkling; he's strong. Girl in purple's Phosphor; she's got a far-sight thing. Jian's the one with a sword; she's kind of super-soldiery and has a sword. Magneto's the old asshole; he's got metal manipulation and swears up and down he's not a villain anymore. Which, valid, but he's not part of our team technically - we're just looking for the same person, the Scarlet Witch, who's his daughter and who maybe made Wiccan and Jet. The Scarlet Witch's old teammates are either trying to stop us or trying to let us lead them to her - it's really unclear and I think they disagree with each other about that."

"Well, that sounds really complicated. I'm not playing with my full gear, here, so I don't know that I will be much help to anyone."

"Well, once the Avengers aren't pissed at us we can talk to Doctor Strange - he's one of the interdimensional people - about getting you sent back to your world, or the Scarlet Witch should have that ability, and depending on what your full gear is we can probably help?"

"I can also conjure things if I know enough about them."

"What do you need to know? I usually have a flock of little robots."

"Uh, if I don't know how stuff works my power sometimes fills in with randomness which is usually bad, but I know how like RC robots work and can duplicate a thing that's in front of me without knowing how it works unless it's got, like, power weirdness happening. Usually things either work or immediately explode, though, there won't be a question of whether I got it right or not."

"I should be able to tell even if they're just subtly off but I definitely can't explain them, they're Tinker-made. Some of it's similar to tech in my suit, but it's all Tinker bullshit all the way down."

"...I'm not sure I can just pull them from your world... That'd probably go hilariously wrong somehow."

"I'll just do without till I can build more, I guess."

"We can - try to leave you with stuff if we find somewhere safe for you to stay? Which is uh 'not here.'"

"That'd be good. I can make some stuff with random junk but it won't be my best work."

"How quickly can you make stuff? Especially that'd mess with other robots, Von Doom's declared himself King here, he's the type of person who calls himself 'Doom,' and he uses robots."

"Depends on part quality. If you can get me one of his robots wrecked I can probably use that unless his specialty is booby traps."

"...I know where that one bot we fought is, I think, it probably hasn't been moved... Would you need it like in a workshop or something?"

"I have field repair tools, if necessary."

"Would you be able to do a field repair thing quickly? I'm trying to figure out if we should move from here before I try summoning the Doom bot."

"It depends. I can probably at least get it flying under my direction in less than an hour if I can do anything."

"Awesome! Though I'll probably want to stick us somewhere slightly less exposed before then? And, like, maybe a bit over the border out of Latveria so no one tries to investigate us..."

"I'm flexible, under the circumstances."

"Right. Uh, you know what, it might be good if I had like a map..." She turns to her team.

Loki mumbles something and then a view of a forested area springs up in her hands. "Transylvania, past the border enough we shouldn't run into trouble. They're not super friendly with Doom."

"Right."

"I want us to be there, I want us to be there, I want us to be there, Iwantustobethere..." Wiccan starts to chant, closing her eyes.

And then there's a flash, and they're elsewhere, this time with appropriate footing so no one falls down.

"Interesting way of working your power you have."

"I need to focus on what I'm doing kind of a lot, and the whole thing - helps, especially if I'm not worried about saying what I'm doing out loud, you know?"

"Yeah, it's not the weirdest out there."

She laughs. "Yeah. There's someone I heard of who needs incantations and can't use the same one twice."

"Well, that seems easy unless they also need artistic merit."

"Dunno, though rhyme and meter'd be aesthetic at least."

"I'd just mention the date every time, effectiveness is more important unless they've got a branding bureaucrat breathing down their neck and a startling amount of camera coverage."

"I might track down her email next time we have internet, then, in case she hasn't thought of that."

"What'll you do to fetch the robot?"

"...Oh yeah."

She closes her eyes.

"I want that robot Quicksilver broke..." she chants, over and over until a humanoid robot with several external panels missing and a hole through it appears on the ground.

And Lorica takes her field repair tools out from under a panel on her calf and starts picking it apart.

The power source is damaged, badly, and the robot seems to have been broken by a wooden pole being shoved through it at massive speeds. There's little splinters inside. The power seems the main important thing damaged, and it was apparently designed to fail gracefully. Or at least non-explosively. There's a few centers that seem to be capable of running software, and some bits for receiving signals, and some bits for generating sound - this thing was meant to be hard to distinguish from a human, at least in a quick assessment.

The girl in the white suit with the helmet - Jet - pulls the old man - Magneto - away and gets into a low but heated argument with him. Everyone else seems to be settling in to wait, Phosphor, Hulkling, and Jian softly discussing Doom's last few public appearances, while Loki and Wiccan seem to be working on getting images of Doom's castle.

Whatever's going on and whoever she winds up throwing in with, whether it's these people or a subset or somebody else altogether, having a robot will help.

Was this guy even a tinker? This is a weirdly simple robot. It does look like it'd work, he didn't just animate metal with a Master power, but it's so straightforward. She has the signal receipt bit hijacked in short order for her onboard Rete instance to operate, and then she can get a spare battery from under a hip panel and hook it up to that. Rete eats the software and holds it in suspended animation for her to make some quick and dirty edits so it'll stay slaved to Rete. She could make it its own software solution but then it'd be autonomous and she doesn't trust it, this is not software tinker grade output here and she could probably rejigger it wholesale but it belonged to a guy who capenamed himself "Doom" so it's not something she wants to make too load-bearing.

Presently Rete can pilot the robot. "Okay," she says, "my AI's running this thing now."

"Right," says Jet, breaking off from her argument with Magneto to zip over. "Is going into Doom's castle to poke around without a solid plan and backup plan really what we're doing, because it does not sound like anyone here has a plan other than 'hope we don't get mobbed.'" She sounds annoyed. "Or, like, looping random robot girl in slightly more? All offense, Wiccan, you suck at explaining things."

"More explanation wouldn't hurt but I figured whatever was going on having more hardware in my sphere could only be good. Are you good at explaining things?"

"I'm usually better than Wiccan, though I have more trouble talking at all. Still, I can drop into acceleration to put my thoughts together and get some space if I need it."

"Well, I'd like to know more if you've got more."

"Yeah. This is all stuff that happened before I was born, but I've put a lot of it together since." She briefly blurs, then:

"So - the Scarlet Witch was for a long time mostly really famous as a member of the Avengers, who're a big superhero team in the US. Her powers aren't really public knowledge, but usually get summed up as 'changing things.' A while ago, she had kids."

"They died."

She blurs again.

"She I guess grieved privately - no one outside of her team actually knew about the kids - for years, until something pushed her over the edge. She trapped everyone on the planet in an altered reality, where things were peaceful, and where her kids were alive. Only a handful of people remembered the previous world, and they rebelled against her. No one would tell me what happened next - but she was supposed to have died. The story circulated is that she killed herself, and undid her altered reality when she did. Before she died, she used her power one last time, to erase mutants, the type of powered person she was, from the world. It didn't catch everyone, but almost all mutants were depowered, and a lot died."

"Wiccan's pretty sure she's still alive - she claims to have seen her once - and that the Scarlet Witch can undo what she did then."

"The - irregularity here is that Wiccan and I exactly resemble the Scarlet Witch's dead children, and we have the same powers as those two did in the simulated world. Magneto's the Scarlet Witch's estranged dad, and he's sure we're somehow connected to his grandchildren, so he wants to help her and us out. The Avengers are trying to stop us from finding her first - at least one of the Avengers wants to kill her, though I think they're fighting among themselves about that. Her sister's trying to stop anyone from finding her at all. Still, we don't think she'll react well to her old team."

"Mutations are not how powers work where I'm from.

Uh, do you have - separate not-the-Scarlet-Witch families?"

"Yeah. On paper we're not actually related - different families. Wiccan's swears up and down she's not adopted, and I'm not in contact with my birth family. Though memory editing stuff's pretty common so that's not proof of a lot."

"Yeesh. Why's Scarlet Witch's sister trying to stop anyone from finding her, d'you know?"

"Didn't stop to explain, even while we were both in acceleration - Scarlet Witch's sister is Quicksilver, who's the fastest known speedster. She probably thinks it won't end well, I guess."

"Not an unreasonable assumption, I guess, it all sounds messy."

"Yeah. Situation's probably not going to get any better even if left un-poked, though."

"What's your plan for if you find her?"

"Talking to her. Hopefully getting her to undo the depowering thing. She knows Loki - who's older than she looks, and who was one of the Scarlet Witch's students briefly. And Wiccan's good at talking to people. The Scarlet Witch hasn't done anything, too, in the fifteen years she's been off the scene - so we'd want to figure out why, and use that."

"- huh. Is the world actually a worse place with fewer powers - what's the villain to hero ratio like among mutants - or is this mostly about expecting her to be able to put back the ones who died -"

"Ones who died. And most mutants aren't heroes or villains? Powers tend to be pretty minor, though a lot are a bit useful, and it's - a big cultural identity thing. Mutants are discriminated against in a lot of places, so there's mutant neighborhoods and mutant schools and - subculture stuff - so a lot of people viewed it like if someone magically changed a ton of people's orientations or whatever. Extremely powerful mutants are I think disproportionately some kind of pro-social, or at least the - big name ones are all? And the - most notable villainous mutant was probably Magneto, who went clean and talked a bunch of the others into being more pro-social, too. Of course the best thing'd be if the Scarlet Witch can make it opt in, since some powers outright suck, but we don't actually know what her limits are."

"Huh. I think the villain to hero ratio is something like two to one at home. Those are legal categories, there's also rogues who are neither, but way fewer."

"They're not legal categories here, more social stuff, and pretty recent social stuff, too - as far as I know, first guy formally getting called a hero was Captain America, back in World War Two. Lots of people also move around in category kind of just depending on who's talking."

"I know less about how it works outside my United States, some places are way less formal."

"Figures. Here a lot of people don't even like the heroes, of course."

"We have full time PR people and people don't always like us either."

She nods. "Yeah. Uh. Questions?"

"What's your plan B if you can't find her or can't convince her?"

"I'm hoping I can get to where I'm at her level eventually, so kind of just keeping on practicing and training?" Wiccan calls over. "It took her decades to get that powerful, though."

"Your powers respond to practice?"

"Yeah? Most do. Even super type soldier stuff where you just - have it, you need to practice to use it right."

"Ours mostly don't, not like conventional skills, though obviously if your power is not actually related to hand to hand combat skill or whatever it can be useful to pick that up."

"Huh. Yeah, I'm - a lot more powerful and precise than I was a year ago, and the teleportation's actually a new ability. Loki also thinks most humans could learn some kind of power, but most just don't know how or bother without having a talent getting them started."

"Ooh, learn it how?"

"Uh - Loki?"

"There's some - stuff that's basically metaphorical physics to learn, and then a lot of meditation and stubbornness is the traditional way. It's rare for humans to manage, but I know someone who got technology manipulation that way."

"What does the meditation do?"

"Helps you focus your will, and helps you get your thoughts out of your own way."

"...and doing stuff with the power doesn't involve thinking about it? Sounds dangerous."

"It does involve thinking, but it's dangerous if you get distracted because you suddenly have a song stuck in your head or something."

"Fair enough. But people mostly don't do this? It takes too long or something?"

"It's hard, apparently frustrating, highly individualized, and takes a while to even get small effects, though once you have any effects it's relatively easy to escalate."

"How long is a while?"

"I have a talent and got magic that wasn't just sensing my surroundings within a few months. The technomancer I know got a decent amount of power in ten years, but that's measuring from when she decided to teach herself at six years old."

"Hmm. Did she decide to be a 'technomancer' or did that just fall out naturally from the process?"

"Didn't ask, sorry. I think it was - partially both, though. She liked technology, and most people tend to find one area - usually one they're interested in anyways - easier than others."

"I wonder if I'd find technomancy redundant or not."

"Hard to say."

"Are we, like, sleeping here? What time zone are you guys on? My onboard bot thinks it's ten thirty where I came from."

"Like, New York City time - it's super late for us, it was night when we started all this and I haven't slept, so yeah possibly we should sleep before doing anything... Though maybe not here? Dunno."

"My bot'll keep watch but it'd make sense if you didn't wanna trust that."

"I can drop into acceleration instead of sleeping, too," Jet says, evenly. "Which between us should be enough, and then I'll be able to react if Quicksilver or someone catches up with us."

"Accelerating substitutes for sleep or just lets you do it really fast?"

"Substitutes, kind of. Don't sleep while accelerated, and it does close enough to resetting me."

"Keen. Well. Dibs on that nook over there." She goes and lies down, apparently planning to sleep in her suit; the stolen doombot stands sentinel.

And she drops into acceleration to scout for a bit.

She's back within two minutes, to update the team on nearby villages and possible approaches for the Avengers or Doom or anyone.

She then zips up a tree to settle in.

Phosphor and Loki seem to be doing something complicated to actually indirectly track people of concern.

Jian and Hulkling curl up to sleep pretty much right away.

And Wiccan approaches the bot.

"Hey!" she says, softly.

"Hello," says the robot. It has a different voice from a Doombot, sort of like Lorica's but androgynous and with a more carefully standard-television-American accent.

"So, uh, first - is there something you like to be called, how much of a person - are you or do you want to be considered as..."

"I'm called Rete. I'm not a person."

"Alright." She hums. "Are there a lot of AIs in your world?"

"Not very many. Most Tinkers have specialties that don't lend themselves to AI."

"Huh. I know one person-AI, Jarvis, and as far as I know his creator's only power is being rich and smart."

"I'm not aware of any unpowered person able to write AI in Earth Bet."

"Huh. I guess I don't really know a lot about programming or anything to guess what the difference is..."

"Without interacting with Jarvis I can't speculate."

"Well, hopefully once this's all sorted we can introduce you guys."

"Perhaps."

She hums. "Kind of awkwardly, though, Jarvis's creator's an Avenger..." She shrugs.

"Lorica has no historical dispute with the Avengers. Are they likely to distrust her by association?"

"Probably not as a group, but they're a really big group, so some individuals might be suspicious. Still, Loki's brother's sometimes an Avenger, and his boyfriend's one of the like founding members and is friends with Iron Man, Jarvis's creator."

"Sometimes?" asks Rete.

"He's part time, and not always even on this planet."

"What planet is he usually on?"

"Uh, I think before seventeen years ago that was Asgard, but Asgard's not really. Inhabitable. Anymore. I dunno now. Loki might?"

"What happened to Asgard?"

"...I don't know all the details. It burned, though, is what was - reported. No one was reported as surviving except Thor, though I guess Loki did, too."

"Who are the members of the Avengers?"

"Uh, not sure I can remember all them and who's current and who isn't, since the roster changes a lot - Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Luke Cage, Wolverine, Mockingbird, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, Power Woman, Echo, Spider-Woman... They've also got a lot of new recruits the American government doesn't super like? Who I think used to be less well-liked heroes or even villains. Thor's not currently a member. The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver used to be pretty major members."

"How is the team managed?"

"Not really sure. I think they've got a guy funding them and someone else leading them in the field? But they do a lot of stuff by discussing things among whoever's present."

"Does it have subdivisions?"

"Uh, there at least used to be West Coast and East Coast but I think that's not as much a thing anymore..."

"Are there other major organizations of powered people Lorica should be aware of?"

"Hm... X-Men - Loki's kinda associated with them, they run Xavier's Institute, a school for mutants and some other types of powered kids, and used to have an associated team and do some lobbying stuff, though they were gutted when the Scarlet Witch happened. Still, they've got a lot of - something like respect, at least among powered folk. Leader's Professor X, who I think is a telepath? Magneto or Loki probably know more about him - Magneto's got some kind of history with the X-men, though it dates way back to the Cold War, and Loki went to school at Xavier's. They're mostly in America but are a bit worldwide. Internationally - the big deal is SHIELD, who do - basically weird stuff and exceptional threats? They're run by the World Security Council, sanctioned by the UN, all that. SHIELD's got a subdivision, SWORD, which deals with extraterrestrial threats specifically."

"For major villain groups - HYDRA is the big boogieman. They're literally Nazis, they were Hitler's powered branch or whatever, and they went underground and then started recruiting, and started popping up again recently. They're one of the more - stubbornly willing to rock the boat? We get apocalyptic groups and all but those usually get their asses kicked."

"And - there's a lot, I could probably sit here listing teams and organizations for hours, especially worldwide or historically relevant. Like, Doctor Doom picks fights with the Fantastic Four a lot, but they're a pretty minor team, and Magneto used to be associated with the League of Mutants, which was disbanded but a lot of people still bring up..."

"How many types of powers are there?"

"Not sure what you mean by types? Like, power origins, or what powers do?"

"You said 'some other types of powered kids'."

"Oh, yeah - meant power origins, there. Mutants have their powers genetically, though I don't know the science stuff there. Some kids are immigrant extraterrestrial aliens or part alien or something. I think there was also an experiment by some aliens to see if they could give people powers? And some kids stubborn their way into getting magic, and some get experimented on by jerks, and some get into weird accidents with things that can grant powers."

"Are there many alien civilizations in contact with Earth?"

"Lots! I probably can't even list them all, and I'm a bit of a geek for this stuff. Wanted to be a space diplomat as a kid. I think the ones most people know about are the Kree, the Skrulls, and the Asgardians."

"What is known about those?"

"The Kree and the Skrulls are at war with each other, and because they refuse to cut it and any wars of expansion out they're not part of any of the interplanetary consortiums, just their own empires. The Kree are mostly blue skinned, all humanoids roughly the same size as humans, pretty aggressively expansionist but not the worst out there. The Skrulls are shapeshifters - natively they're green skinned humanoids, and they find keeping a humanoid body plan easier. They're a lot less expansionist. The Asgardians were very human like in appearance, but a lot heavier and more durable and way longer lived, and had this weird thing where they had super advanced technology but had this medieval-ish fantasy cultural aesthetic. Like, they'd have actual books with thin screens embedded in the page for moving pictures, was an example I remember reading."

"How does the Skrull/Kree war tend to affect Earth?"

"We're kind of - on the edges of between their empires? So they sometimes decide we'd be a good point for controlling this part of space. Asgard used to - kind of have us as an unofficial protectorate? And by the time Asgard was gone we were able to fight back, so they haven't ever succeeded, but I guess if people always learned from mistakes we'd stop having dumb wars."

"Why did Asgard consider the Earth an unofficial protectorate?"

"I think it had something to do with a fight they were having with some of their neighbors - there was an attempted invasion by one of their enemies like a thousand years ago, Asgard repelled them, told them and everyone else around to not try it again, and the Asgardians are really long lived so that warning kind of just stayed in effect."

"Are those enemies still a factor?"

"Uh, you'd have to ask Loki - I haven't heard much about them?"

"Loki appears to be elsewhere occupied, but I will remember that, thank you."

"You're welcome! Loki's usually pretty good about explaining things. Thanks for talking to me, by the way."

"Thank you for answering my questions!"

"Welcome! I should possibly actually sleep at some point - Jet might try to sit on me again if I stay up."

"Please don't let me keep you."

"Have a good evening," she says, before finding somewhere to conjure an orange hammock, pillow, and blanket for herself (she offers for the others, but apparently people are leery about whether it'll fall apart on them. She sticks her tongue out at them, then settles in to sleep).

Phosphor finishes what she was talking to Loki about, going to sleep nearby her team, though she does so lightly.

And Loki pulls a book out and sits in a tree, apparently just reading.

Rete's new robot walks over to the tree. "Do you not require sleep?"

"Not as much of it as humans. Humans sleep a lot."

"I see. You prefer to read while the others sleep?"

"Yeah. I like reading, and stuff's less exciting when everyone's resting, usually."

Rete nods and goes back to stand by Lorica, watching.

The night passes uneventfully.

Lorica sits up after eight hours or so.

The others are waking up too, some more easily than others - Phosphor, Hulkling, Jian all seem to have woken up easily, Loki and Jet never went to sleep, and Wiccan's being repeatedly poked by Jet as she grumbles about it being too early.

"Morning, all. - is she always like this or is it Rete's fault, it kept her up chatting a bit."

"She's just like this," Jet says, sounding annoyed.

"Then I won't scold it." She gets up and stretches.

Jet ends up flipping Wiccan out of her hammock, who falls a foot before remembering she can fly.

"Do we need to do anything specific before moving on Latveria?" Jet asks more broadly, ignoring how Wiccan's quietly grumbling at her.

Headshake.

No one else seems to have thought of anything.

"Okay, good. We're going to try to get in, investigate, and get out without Doom noticing. Lorica, how much do you think you can mess with Doom's bots' sensory stuff?"

"Like if I'm having at one with a screwdriver or over a network?"

"Preferably over a network."

"I wasn't optimizing this recent hijacking attempt for that, but I can probably do it in simple ways - cut out their vision, not make us effectively invisible. If you get me another bot or some kind of terminal they talk to I might be able to do better."

" - Loki? Phosphor? Wiccan? You guys' powers combine ridiculously here, right - "

"I have no idea how robots work but I think they'd notice me teleporting a terminal out. Would they?"

"Probably, unless they lose contact all the time in random glitching."

"I can cause power outages," the old man, Magneto, says. "Doom's grid isn't reliable enough for him to never have those - at the worst, he'll notice it's me, and I'll pretend to be attacking on my own, providing cover for you. He's only sometimes smart enough not to send anything containing metal after me."

"Okay, I can probably work with that as long as you don't affect my stuff."

"I can be careful with my aim."

"What's the best case I should aim for?"

"Knocking down the relevant parts of the grid will mostly disable their communications, especially with Doom himself. It should also cause enough confusion that things like missing terminals and bots should take longer to be reported. The bots themselves have their own power sources, though if I escalate to acting openly instead of pretending to be a natural phenomenon, I can disable most of those."

"Okay, but how long do they need to not notice us?"

"We should be able to get in and out within a few hours. Less, if we're lucky."

"How many bots are we talking about?"

"No one's ever gotten a good count. Me and Loki tried to get a broad estimate last night - the region has hundreds, maybe low thousands, but it's, well, a region, and Doom uses them for a lot of maintaining order and work stuff. Sentry bots - maybe half a dozen to a dozen anywhere near our route, those are a bit better hidden though so that's somewhat guess work. If it comes to an open fight - I think we're really unlikely to have to deal with more than.. One or two dozen? That're actually meant for fighting, even if we get really unlucky, and Doom's bots tend to be high volume, low durability so Wiccan and Speed can probably break them pretty easily. That's assuming we teleport out pretty quickly rather than sit around and wait for them to call reinforcements, though, which I'd suggest we do."

"Yeah, I'm wondering how many I have to hack. I'm thinking I'll find a bug to trigger, that won't look as much like enemy action and I don't think this guy's actually a Tinker, there are shallow bugs all over the place."

"I know anything about interfacing my powers with technology - I might be able to help that spread."

"How d'you work when you're doing that?"

"You mean how does my power work like that?"

"What will happen if you use it, what am I coding around?"

"Probably the most useful thing here is if I have something containing whatever code - like a flash drive or something - and I make their systems behave like I just plugged it directly into them, without me actually having to get close to them. I'd need to know more about computers to do more complicated stuff than that."

"Ooh, cool, okay, I can work with remote delivery."

"Good. How much prep time do you need? And do you need anything other than 'an example bot and a terminal'?"

"Have my example bot, and with remote delivery I don't require a terminal. I'm on it. I've got a gaze tracking setup in my helmet."

"On it enough Magneto should go ahead and start causing them grid problems?"

"Give me five and then yeah."

"We'll work on getting him away from us, then," she says, already turning to Phosphor and Wiccan to start working on locating a good place to drop him.

"Virus ready to go," Lorica reports shortly.

"Be right back, then," Wiccan says, tapping Magneto and vanishing with him.

"How quickly does it act?" Loki asks Lorica.

"I can send it out in a sleeper state and then trigger it if this guy is as bad a programmer as I think."

"Should I get it into a terminal to start, then? Sounds easier on me, that way."

"Sounds good."

"It'll take me a bit, but should be done around the time Wiccan's back. Can I have something with the code and just that on it, like a flash drive? That's the easiest."

"I don't have a flash drive but if you do I can probably hook into it?"

"Yeah." She pulls one out. "Should be clear of stuff, and should have enough storage even for something ridiculous."

Lorica pokes some loose wires from her hijacked doombot into the drive and hands it back a minute later.

And Loki clears some space for herself, warns the others not to disturb her, and starts chanting. A circle, glowing a dark, bloody red, appears around her, with runes and odd patterns inscribed within.

She frowns, eyebrows pinching together, then scowls, never letting up her even chant -

And then the light flares and then the circle fades entirely.

"Done. Doom had any magical protections, better than most I see on this planet, but they're still pretty amateur. Slipped around them, then tricked the alarms he'd set up into thinking I wasn't there."

"...virus isn't designed to cope with magic because I know jack about magic, will it encounter normal software obstacles from there?"

"It should unless Doom notices it - the protections were just to keep someone like me from getting in the way I did. Magical firewall, pretty much, but normal antivirus."

"Okay, cool, should be all good."

And then Wiccan returns.

"Magneto's getting to work. No one noticed him while I was there. Hopefully that should hold - are we otherwise ready to go?"

"I am. Unless we were planning to stop for breakfast or something."

"I vote granola bars while we wait for Magneto's confirmation. Dropping in on active Doom bots sounds like something I'd rather not be hungry for."

"I'd take a granola bar."

"We've got a stash. Chocolate chip, apple granola, peanut butter, Phosphor's weird cranberry bars... Wiccan can technically make things like that too but it always tastes funny."

"Can I have a peanut butter?"

"Sure. Let me know if you want more, or if you want water or a sports drink or something." She tosses one over, gets one out for herself, then goes to make sure Jet's actually eating.

Lorica's helmet opens just a little so she can eat. "I'd take a water too, and one of the apple ones if we're not short on bars."

"We're not expecting this to run that long, so we've effectively got plenty." She loops back around to pass over a bottled water and an apple bar. "And if it does run long we'll find somewhere with a grocery store to lay low while we're figuring out what next."

"Do you have money?" Munch munch.

"Stash of US dollars, smaller stash in some assorted other types, plus favors - decent chance we'd lay low in the country Magneto's from, especially since the Avengers are less likely to come knocking there. Jet and Wiccan might get squirrely over that, but, eh, I don't care."

"Squirrely because..."

"He's the Scarlet Witch's dad, who's arguably their mom, at least in a roundabout way. Magneto said as far as he's concerned they're his grandkids, so he'll help them out and stuff, but they're both super weird about family."

"Legit."

"Supers have a bizarre amount of family drama."

"Do you not so much with the secret identities?"

" - Rephrase that?"

"Capes where I'm from have secret civilian identities. My classmates don't know I'm Lorica. My dad is also a cape and it's known that his cape identity is Lorica's dad, but that isn't typical, so that cuts down on family drama being particularly concentrated in capes."

"Oh yeah. We do have secret identities, and most people are pretty good at upholding them. But, like, there's a lot of heroes with villain parents, and a lot of villains with hero parents - though possibly the type of people who use their powers to punch each other in the face just have way more drama than people who decide to be, like, an accountant who sometimes goes flying on the weekend."

"Accountants who fly on the weekend are really rare on Bet. And capeyness runs in families but I think usually people wind up on the same side of that line - or the relationship's not public."

"Most people don't have useful powers, especially not for combat, and most people try to keep their powers on the down low - discrimination against mutants especially can get really bad, though that fluctuates a lot. You're also generally not supposed to be a hero or villain while raising kids, so a lot of people doing those actively aren't good parents in the first place..."

"...huh. I think literally every cape power has combat applications.

My dad triggered after I was born for whatever that's worth."

"Sounds like it's pretty different in your world? Here the risk of someone going after your family'd be too big, and you'd be coming home injured a lot, but, like, I could envision a world where that all happens less, and it's more like being a firefighter or something"

"No, capes get injured all the time. The secret identity thing is surprisingly robust though."

"It isn't very robust here. Scarlet Witch's name was public knowledge by like the year two thousand I think? And a lot of mutants have trouble keeping their powers secret, especially kids. Though there's a few edge cases - Captain America still has a secret identity, and he dates back to World War Two."

"I guess having a lot of kids with powers makes it harder. Capes can be kids but rarely younger than teenage."

"I think mutant powers are more likely to manifest in your teens? But it happens to under-tens enough to be notable."

"Something real bad has to happen to trigger an elementary schooler."

"We pretty much just get them usually. Some stuff's helped along by adrenaline, but, like, I've pretty much always been faster, more agile, and stronger than my classmates, and the gap just got wider as I aged."

"Sounds nice."

"Isn't always pleasant, but I'd imagine it's better than PTSD powers, yeah."

"We cope. Or don't as the case may be."

"Yeah. Lots of suck to go around in both worlds, sounds like."

"Mm."

She finishes her granola bar.

"'Bout ready to go?"

"All set."

"And Magneto's got us clear."

Everyone else seems ready, so Wiccan tells people to gather around her, then starts chanting about where she wants to go.

The teleportation's still a bit disorienting.

It's roughly the same time of day, here, a forested hill with a view of a castle on a larger hill, an old town sprawling around it, transitioning into more modern buildings at the edges.

"We're gonna need to be careful about civilians, but me and Loki's scrying thought that at least the trail should be around here."

"Suit sensors should hear people coming a ways off."

"Yeah. And Loki can make us harder to see. We'll need to stick together for that - it's kind of a chameleon area thing, won't hold up against bumping into people, and breaks when I teleport us."

"Okay." She huddles in.

And Loki mumbles. It creates a small visual distortion - "This isn't really effective against fast movement either, but it's the best I've got for groups."

"Right now - the name 'Cecelia Maximoff' or 'Scarlet Witch' would be stupidly convenient if someone said in our hearing, but, hey, sometimes we get lucky. I also know what she looks and sounds like, and have a feel for her magical signature, so our best bet might just be a grid search until we do get lucky. I'm assuming Doom's not intentionally hiding her, because he's usually somewhere between not dumb enough to give asylum to someone on everyone's shit list and dumb enough to actually try to openly use her as a weapon, which should make this easier on us."

"Should we stay together? If we want to split I can go with one group and the bot with the other for comms and location."

"Might be smart. Wiccan's our only teleporter, but Jet can move people just fine, so those two should split up - I'd say Phosphor and Wiccan in whichever group doesn't have me, to increase the chances of them picking up any trails. So me, Jet, versus Phosphor, Wiccan, and however else we're splitting it. I'd say Jian with Wiccan, Hulkling with me - Phosphor's not a fighter, and Wiccan's powers aren't super reliable in combat, if it comes to a fight."

"I'd vote for Hulkling with us, actually, our best bet's gonna be avoiding fights, and he can shapeshift, which's good for staying on the down low."

" - Right. Then Jian with me?"

"Works."

"Lorica? Where do you want to end up?"

"I'll defer to you there."

"Let's put you with Wiccan then."

Lorica goes Wiccanward.

"Right. So - avoiding the town proper, but maybe we should investigate along the road? If she's hiding her powers she's going to be traveling normally, and we got a sense for her around here..."

"Each group could go a different way maybe?"

"Yeah. We'll search more the woods, away from the road, broadening out from here."

Nod nod.

And they're off.

They get to work.

And, in the middle of it, a bot from the town starts flying out in their direction.

"Bot on our four o'clock."

" - The virus thing?"

"It'll probably work but there's a lot of stuff in play so be alert anyhow."

"I don't want it to notice us - " Wiccan starts mumbling, figuring a bit of magic can't hurt here -

The bot flies on overhead, though it's going slowly, apparently searching.

"If it can't see us it still won't if we keep moving."

"Right. Let's keep going." She turns -

There's someone standing behind them.

"Who are you?"

The hijacked Doombot says, "The other group's been approached by someone."

"Where are they?"

"A kilometer that way." Point.

"Do they seem like they need backup immediately?"

"No. She's just asked who they are after appearing suddenly."

"We should start making our way there, but maybe not try to spook mystery super."

"Lorica agrees."

Meanwhile, Wiccan reflexively smiles at the strange woman. She seems familiar, but the thought's sliding out of Wiccan's mind -

"Sorry. We're no one important, just looking for someone who got split up from our group."

"Your group?"

"Just me and my friends! We're traveling Europe, apparently neglected to charge our phones."

"What's the name of your missing friend, then?"

Wiccan opens her mouth, then frowns, then presses the heel of her hand to her forehead - "I don't want to tell you that - I know you - "

"Wiccan is reporting a cover story in response to questions, but claims she knows the stranger."

" - Is Wiccan behaving weirdly at all - "

"Yes, she seems confused, maybe disoriented."

"Jet, get me over there - "

"Right."

And zoom -

And it's like she hits a brick wall.

The strange woman has a hand up, keeping them from approaching. "I see you found your friends."

"She noticed," the bot reports to the rest of its group, "and intercepted Jet and Loki. No aggressive moves per se so far."

That's just Jian.

"Great. Just great. I'd bet we found the Scarlet Witch but I super don't want to be right."

"Lorica says, 'wasn't that the point?'"

"I was kind of hoping we'd find her body. Or nothing."

"She's concerned that the person who may or may not be Scarlet Witch is causing some mental effect, to which she and I are immune and you may be out of range. She suggests you stay out of range for the time being."

"Yeah. Sounds legit."

"Ma'am, is everything okay?" says Lorica, attempting 'neutral'.

"You're Americans. You're not Doom's. You're looking for me, aren't you? I don't want to be found."

The others seem confused - except Loki, who stands.

"Professor Maximoff. We'd wanted to talk."

She frowns, seeming disoriented suddenly.

"Do I - know you?"

"I was your student for two years, and I damn well remember shooting you to end that world you made."

"We don't want to fight, though, we just want to talk, and we'll leave you to keep hiding afterwards if you want - "

"I don't remember making a world. I don't remember you, just - waking up, fifteen years ago, in the mountains. No one's found me since. I don't want to be found."

"Why?"

"It's bad."

She puts a hand on her head.

"Finding me is bad."

"Okay... but why?"

"I don't remember, just that it is."

"...You kind of killed a lot of people right before vanishing."

"I don't remember that!"

"Well, you weren't found, you did all the finding yourself."

"You all were looking for me. That one was using magic." She gestures to Wiccan, frowning.

"Sure, but we didn't show up someplace you were, you showed up someplace we were. We looked, but you found."

The bot reports, "Scarlet Witch may be herself under the influence of some kind of mental effect."

"That seems concerning... What's wrong?"

"She claims not to remember making a world, the people she's talking to, or why exactly she thinks being found is bad."

"Does it seem like amnesia or something bigger?"

"Lorica thinks it's not amnesia simple, but isn't acquainted with Scarlet Witch's baseline personality."

"I think Loki's the only one of us that is..."

"Lorica's worried about trying to talk to the others in front of Scarlet Witch."

"Uh - I don't have international texting set up - " She pulls out a phone, fiddles with the screen. "Reception here's crap, but if weird Lorica-you-me-someone relay works I can text - probably Jet, Hulkling, or Phosphor can get away with checking texts, I bet Wiccan and Loki have her attention - I can turn on roaming and make Loki pay my phone bills? No idea if that works if they don't have roaming on, though... Anyways I can maybe send at least one-way messages to three of them."

"Lorica's not yet sure of anything worth sending under those constraints but if you think it wise defers to your judgment."

"I don't think those three can do - the right sorts of things here that talking to them would help... Especially if she already countered Jet. Though I bet Jet hasn't tried maximum acceleration, yet..."

"I mean worse comes to worse I text the Avengers her location - but only if she looks likely to start a fight."

"So far that does not look likely but Lorica's concerned the effect that's making her certain that being found is bad may make her unpredictable. Lorica's trying to convince her that she was not found, because she approached the group rather than the other way around."

"Maybe an assurance we're not telling anyone where she is? We talk to her, we leave, she vanishes again."

"We're not here to report to anyone on your whereabouts," Lorica tells Scarlet Witch. "Just here to have a conversation and then be on our way."

"Why do you want to talk to me?"

"Right before you vanished, you said 'no more mutants.' It felt like a spell, and then when the alternate world you'd made broke, a lot of mutants were dead, and most of the rest were depowered. Some of the dead were my classmates. Your students."

"We want you to undo that. As much as you can. This time without trying to mind control everyone on the planet into playing nice."

"I'd personally like some closure from that clusterfuck but it's been fifteen years and you don't remember, so, whatever."

She looks horrified.

"I - "

"I did that, didn't I?"

"I - wanted my girls back. Those assholes killed my kids and I wanted them back - "

She starts crying.

Wiccan pushes her hood back and pulls her scarf down, showing her face.

"We were reborn, after that. I'm looking for you because I'm - I'm Nausicaa Maximoff, okay? Or close enough, I've been having visions of you since I was a kid and I look just like her and I've got your powers, and my sister has your brother's, and - I can't undo what you did, I don't know enough or have enough power or something, but maybe you can."

Jet pulls her helmet off. "Same here. 'm Sue."

"...Oh."

"I - my memory's still so patchy - but - "

"I think I can try."

"It - "

"My powers sometimes make things worse."

"Usually, even."

"I'm not good at wanting what I should."

"What do you mean?"

"My powers work on their own, sometimes, if I want something desperately enough, and if I'm not focusing enough on controlling my emotions. I - don't think that was common - but I'm - "

"I think it's better for the world if I'm a mountain hermit somewhere peaceful."

"That makes sense.

"There would probably still be mountains, if everyone came back to life."

" - It'll be hard, pretending you're actually dead afterwards, but I can take credit for - undoing all that, and then lie through my teeth. I've already got a bit of a target on my back, so - it's better that people think I'm scary powerful than people thinking they can hunt you down."

"...Thanks. I - would like to talk more, afterwards." She shakes her head, then looks up at the sky. "I think... I have a sense for what to do." She closes her eyes, focusing -

"More mutants."

The air feels heavy -

Though, from here, decently far from any population centers, it's unclear if anything changed.

Rete reports this development to Jian.

"I'm figuring that's good but we might need to - actually talk to anyone to confirm - at least she's seeming friendly? I might head into town, find an internet cafe or library or something and check to see if anything's trending about sudden re-powering and resurrections while they finish up - unless you can connect from here?"

"Not without Lorica working on it. Our wifi protocols differ."

"Right. - Jet's going to be able to check faster but is probably too frazzled to think of it; can Lorica ask her to head for town?"

"I don't have wifi, can you go to town and check the results?" Lorica asks Jet.

Deep breath.

Quiet nod.

Then she vanishes.

"She's gone to do that," Rete reports.

"Great."

"We probably need to figure out 'what next;' there's a good chance we're not getting away with pretending she's dead or unfindable..."

In the distance, there's the sound of rather powerful jet engines, entirely unlike the small, local passenger planes that have occasionally passed, far off.

It's getting closer, too.

The robot climbs a tree to get a look.

Sleek, black, seems to be designed for vertical take-off and landing, doesn't have a logo or anything visible from this angle but doesn't look like what they've seen of Doom's aesthetic.

"- bot says that's a plane, black, VTLL, no logo. Guesses, anyone?"

"Lots of planes like that, including some of the ones used by the Avengers and especially SHIELD, which's basically the watchdog for supers. Probably not Doom. If Doom's not shooting at them, probably SHIELD, they've got international heft and also he's pissy at the Avengers. ETA?"

"Bot guesses a minute or two if it's heading straight for us and doesn't speed up."

"We shouldn't be standing here then. We can come back for Jian and Jet, unless anyone has bright ideas - "

"We can meet up with Jian and follow Jet, maybe?"

"If they've found a way to track the Scarlet Witch it might be better to just teleport out..."

She starts moving towards Jian, though, fairly quickly. (Either way, it's better if they move, and Wiccan's teleports aren't exactly subtle.)

"I'm really not that fast at aiming."

Rete's bot drops to the ground. "They're on their way to rendezvous with us and then head into town to catch up with Jet," it reports, "rather than stay to encounter the airplane."

"Well, at least someone's making good decisions. Let's go meet up with them." She takes off at a light jog.

Rete leads the way toward Lorica, who keeps pace with the others.

Loki does her best to hide the group as they move - the plane passes over them, goes a bit, then starts to circle, flying more slowly.

Around the same time Jian catches up to them.

"If we knew who the plane was I'd be tempted to go introduce myself, as an independent agent, but if they might just shoot me out of the air..."

"SHIELD's stupidly variable about how trustworthy they are, too, even if it's them..."

"People are sometimes reluctant to shoot me; I could try talking to them, if it looks like pretending we aren't here's gonna fail."

"Do I have better odds being seen with you or striking off?"

"I think best odds are if we can delay until we get Jet and Wiccan targets a teleport out of here, but I don't know how likely that is versus them noticing us. I can also talk to them as a delaying tactic; I don't mind being left behind. - I think if we stay still here I can cover us decently, especially if the Scarlet Witch continues focusing on keeping them from finding us, and Jet's probably more able to find us than we are to find her. That'll give Wiccan extra time to target..."

"Okay, I'll stick by you."

She nods, as Wiccan starts mumbling.

And then, soon after, as the plane's apparently running a search pattern over them, Jet zooms up.

"Do we have a plan for getting out of here?"

"Yeah, Wiccan, any second now - "

And then the world sort of shivers, and Wiccan's spell goes off.

They're all elsewhere.

Jian stumbles.

She doesn't appear to be any elsewhere she recognizes.

And, more importantly, she can't see the rest of her team.

This is an alpine forest and it's cold.

"Wiccan. What the fuck," she groans, face palming. Unfortunately, speaking of the overpowered magic user apparently doesn't summon her.

Jian rests a hand on her sword, listening, and turns slowly in a circle. Is there anything not an alpine forest around? Or anything she could use for shelter - her metabolism's a super soldier's, and she can adapt, but she wasn't dressed for the cold.

There's a cute little alpine village with smoke rising from its chimneys down that way, if she squints through the trees.

Well, trudging towards the cute little alpine village it is.

She doesn't get any less annoyed over the course of the walk, though it settles more into a sulky simmer than anything active.

There's a path of sorts she can find en route but it isn't paved, or carved into steps in steeper sections.

The village has no cars and no streetlights and the houses are all made of wood.

LARPers? Amish? Bizarre aesthetic choices? Different planet or dimension? Who knows!

Jian doesn't have cell reception (she checks on the way over, then turns off her phone), even the pricey international roaming kind, or a functioning GPS, which suggests she's not on a familiar Earth. Joy.

Is there anyone out and about in the village?

Yup. Not too many - it's cold - but somebody's going from house to barn, somebody's chopping firewood.

She lets her route take her towards whoever's closest, then.

That's the guy with the firewood. He says something but it's not English.

She knows... Mandarin, like five words of Cantonese, English, technically Spanish, how to say 'sorry I'm lost' in German...

She tries those. German's maybe the best bet, given the local aesthetic.

No luck. Foreign words foreign words? Pointing. Foreign words.

Where's the dude pointing?

Toward another, fenced-in, village-y thing up the slope from here.

She nods to him and heads towards that.