Waking to find Wanda's room empty, Magda smiled as she made her way down to the basement, sure enough finding the twins already awake, sat cross-legged on the floor together with a game of Monopoly laid out between them. Tutted at the pile of empty cookie wrappers and chip packets beside them

"Really?" she said, "chips and cookies before breakfast?"

"But it's our *birthday*!" they chorused in unison. Reaching up and accepting her caresses gladly

"Well then, I guess you won't want –" Magda stopped, blinked. Her son was nowhere to be seen

"Pancakes?" he called down from the top of the stairs, "I already laid the table, Mom. I can help if you like!"

"I'm never going to get used to that" she muttered, "C'mon birthday girl. Let's go get things going before he sets the house on fire somehow"

With breakfast done, Magda finally turned to her children and asked

"So did you decide what you want to do for your birthday yet? You haven't left me time to plan, but we can still do something if you want to"

"Actually, we were thinking we'd go out this evening," Wanda said innocently, meeting her brother's eyes and giving him a little smirk that their mother caught and found extremely suspicious, "Just to the arcade in town. We won't be back late"

"By yourselves?"

"Mom, we're sixteen, we're practically drawing our pensions" Peter drawled, stretched back in his chair, gave her an irresistibly wide-eyed look, "Please?"

Magda thought, sighed, relented.

"Well I guess if you're home by eleven it's okay. It is your birthday after all. Whatever makes the two of you happy"

She was smothered by twin affection as both of them launched themselves at her, hugs and thanks bubbling over her as she struggled to keep her balance. Sometimes when he bowled into people like that, Peter forgot how strong he was getting, and Wanda was no better.

Spending the day occupying themselves with games, TV, playing with their little sister, and a quantity of junk food that Magda thought incredibly unwise, the evening had come at last and she had somehow resisted the urge to tell them to dress warmly, that it was chilly. To warn them not to talk to strangers and look both ways when they crossed the road. It was hard to think of her little ones as grown-up enough to go out by themselves. She put a lid on her maternal fussing, succumbing to it only to yank Peter aside and warn him darkly

"If you get your sister into trouble, Peter Maximoff, you'll be very sorry"

Peter only gave her that cheeky grin, hugged her once more, put on his innocent face and promised that under absolutely no circumstances would he allow the slightest bit of trouble anywhere near Wanda. Like a fool, she still believed him despite the amount of times she'd had police at her door in the last year. Since being expelled, Peter seemed to have found more and more ways to amuse himself, none of which were very legal. She was sure there were better uses for the superhuman speeds he was capable of, but for now he hadn't found them – or simply didn't want to.

They had waited until they rounded the corner of their street before they had begun to discuss their plan in hushed tones, keeping a close watch for anyone who might recognise them and paranoid that someone would overhear.

"Relax, Buttface, I've got this all worked out. You sure you can lift something that heavy?"

"I moved the new refrigerator in on my own didn't I?" she hissed back, her brother considered it and nodded, pleased.

"Great. Then this is going to go so smooth nobody will even know until it's too late" he grinned, "Trust me"

"Not as far as I can throw you"

"That's probably a pretty long way, you know"

Whilst they could hear the chatter and bleep of arcade machines from inside, the back gates of the Hamilton Arcade were dark and unfortunately, locked. Peter quickly grabbed Wanda and stifled her little cry of surprise as he spotted the glow of a match, a security guard loitering out back for a smoke break. Under his restraining hand, Peter could feel his sister giggling, looked down at her and saw that her eyes were alight with panicky joy, seeing suddenly why he was always out causing mischief. If this was how good it felt, it was no wonder.

"That's the storage bay," he whispered, "all the new machines are in there waiting to be set up on the main floor. The door doesn't latch properly"

"How do you even know all this?!"

"I've been in there a hundred times, Sis! All the best games are in there! That guard is the only one they have, and he'll be back on the floor as soon as he finishes his smoke. Then we can do what we like"

They watched the guard grind the butt out with his heel, Wanda shaking against her brother in anticipation, until finally he had vanished inside and the coast was clear.

"You're crazy, you know that right?" she whispered

"You're helping me. What does that make you?" he winked, and vanished from sight. Over the fence like a little monkey and beckoning her to follow. She snagged her tights, stifled a giggle, dropped down beside him. As promised, the door to the storage bay was easily jimmied open, and they crept inside. Banks of machines stood still wrapped in cellophane, and she stared around her in delight. Peter was gone again, and when he zipped back to her side was already halfway through a catering pack of Twinkies, offering her one. Wanda wrinkled up her nose, waved it away

"Where did you get that?!"

"Snack bar storage" he said, muffled around an entire cake bar shoved into his mouth, "S'over there. What?! I was hungry!"

"You totally deserve to be huge, you know that?" she told him, "Now how do we get this thing out?"

"That's your part," he grinned, threw the empty box down, and took one last look around before darting over to open the door for her, "Do your floaty thing, dump it on the other side of the fence and voila! We have a Pong machine of our very own"

"Have you thought about how we're going to get it home without anyone seeing us?"

"Bah, details," he waved a hand dismissively, "We'll work that out as we go. That's half the fun. Do your thing, Weird Wanda"

She gave him a look that seemed to accuse him of six different kinds of insanity, but couldn't deny that she did feel exhilarated by the whole thing. Concentrated for a moment and raised her hands, enveloping the machine in a pulsing red glow that gently lifted it off the ground, frowning as she focussed on moving it gently. Reached the fence, and hesitated a moment before hefting herself up to perch on the console and lifting it again, hopping down once it was safely on the other side of the fence. Her brother was carefully shutting the wonky door behind them, giving her a grin and for some reason, deciding not to climb the fence but to slip between two bars. He was halfway through when the cocky smile suddenly fell off his face and a look of slight panic replaced it. Turning from gently pushing the Pong machine down into an alleyway out of sight, Wanda caught his eye and clapped both hands over her mouth to stifled the guffaw of laugher that immediately erupted out of her.

"Don't just stand there!" he hissed urgently, "Get me out!"

"You're actually stuck, aren't you?" she sniggered, "Why the heck didn't you just climb over again?!"

"I don't know! I thought I'd fit, I've done this before!"

Wanda was convulsing with supressed laughter. He struggled but couldn't squeeze through, giving her a glare of death as she crouched down to eye level and whispered

"Yeah, but did you eat a whole box of Twinkies first last time you tried to get through there?"

He somehow twisted to look back at where he was caught, seeing with some dismay that she was right, and he was stuck against the bars by his full belly. He cursed Hostess in his mind, wished he hadn't had such a big dinner earlier, turned back to her and glared. She was still shuddering with laughter, wiping tears from her cheeks.

"Suck it in, fat boy" she whispered, "Give me your hands, I'll pull you out"

Doing as she said, he finally came free, dusting himself off and giving her the filthiest look he could muster

"It's not funny"

"No, it's hysterical! I'm gonna call you Pooh Bear for the rest of your *life*"

Peter thought about snapping back, but finally free he saw the funny side and giggled. Grabbed her hand and pulled her back into the alley until they had both got themselves under control. It took them almost an hour to get home, but if anybody had happened to spot two shifty-looking teens and an arcade cabinet floating in a bubble of red light, they clearly dismissed it as an hallucination. Having wrestled the thing down into the basement, Peter keeping their mother busy with a stream of confusing chatter, Wanda wiped the sweat from her face and joined them to slump down into the sofa thoroughly exhausted. Her mother looked between the two of them suspiciously, but said nothing. Finished watching the late news, kissed her children goodnight, asked them

"Did you have a good birthday?"

"Oh yeah," Wanda sighed happily, "The best."