How the groove got Wanda back
Disclaimer: Marvel owns everyone and everything here.
…Once upon a time, Wanda Maximoff, aka the Scarlet Witch, was trying to make magic – via the Darkhold – and make magic she did.
She also made a scaly anteater, a real-life creature, that looks a lot like an animated pine cone that had sex with an actual anteater, and the end result was certainly…entertaining.
"Aw! Aren't you cute!" Wanda cooed, (she had not had much contact with anyone else other than herself since the Westview disaster, and it showed).
…Instead of verbally replying, (not that it could – it was not that sort of an animal), the scaly anteater, (aka the pangolin), turned around and lashed out with its tongue, and it was really long, and sticky, and it nailed Wanda right in one of the eyes.
"…Ok," Wanda blinked, as she used quite a bit of magic to heal herself – apparently, being tongue-lashed in the eye by a pangolin hurt, even if you were an ex-Avenger, (and currently – even more). "This was certainly something. Are you sure that you're not Tyler Hayward, polymorphed?"
Wanda and the pangolin just stared at each other in silence. Since Wanda was actually the human here, (sort of), and the smarter one here, (presumably), she broke silence first.
"Right," she told no one in particular, "maybe I should contact Monica and S.W.O.R.D. and ask them about the ex-director just in case-"
"I don't know who you're talking about, but this critter? It used to be a biohack ninja not so long ago instead," someone else spoke softly before Wanda could contact Monica (or S.W.O.R.D. in general).
There was a pause as Wanda looked at the speaker in question and at the scaly anteater, which was eyeing both the two women and a bunch of ants that were scurrying around Wanda's new cabin, because of reasons.
"Right," Wanda decided to try to make sense out of everything peacefully, though the newcomer set all of her alarm senses…immediately. "Let's try again. Who are you, and what is a biohack ninja?"
"I am Whitney Frost. Tony Stark and I used to have a thing, and then he met this Pepper Potts woman-"
"Tony Stark is dead," Wanda said curtly; she never cared much for the man himself, (especially at first, though eventually she had thawed out some towards him), but still… "And he did end up saving everyone alongside the rest of the Avengers, remember?"
"Why haven't you brought him back, then?" the other woman – Whitney Frost – muttered, very, very quietly.
…It was being dawned onto Wanda, however slowly, that her interlocutrix clearly had many issues that were not exactly super-villain related; at least, not entirely.
"I contacted him via an Ouija board, he doesn't want to because of reasons," Wanda lied through her teeth, "and, again, what is a biohack ninja?"
"There's a woman in Tokyo, named Tomoe," Whitney continued to mumble to no one in particular, (even though there was only her and Wanda, really, as the scaly anteater didn't count), "who used to have no powers, just as I didn't have, and then she ate some fish pills or something, and suddenly now she's some sort of a techno golem, able to control any technology with her mind, at least for a while, and when I ask her to help me get powers as well, because I got nothing, she sets her creations after me!" she burst into tears at the end.
"The biohack ninjas aren't human?" Wanda blinked as she eyed the animal once more.
"No, not really, not any longer, maybe she has them grown from some vat," Whitney said quietly. "She has powers, you have powers, everyone has powers, why can't I?" she wailed. "Even ex-Hydra agents and ex-A.I.M. agents, and what else have you are mocking me and are calling me crazy!" the wail turned into a screech.
"Right," Wanda exhaled and thought long and hard about a lot of things, including what it means to be an Avenger… as well as a decent human being, (she had kind of forgotten about the last one during her Westview misadventures, to be honest), and made a choice. Well, sort of. In a manner of speaking.
"So," she told Whitney carefully, "I can give you powers… sort of, but I would also have to put you into – S.W.O.R.D.'s custody, because honestly? You clearly got issues that will not be resolved in a hurry, no powers or powers. How does that sound?"
"I'll take it!" Whitney practically jumped to her feet and jumped up and down, her manic energy now turning to an almost hysterical joy. "Freedom means nothing when you got nothing, when you are worthless-"
Wanda grabbed her hand. Things went chaotic for the next little while…
/ / /
"…You know, Wanda, but you're something, and not necessarily in a good way," Monica Rambeau, the new director of S.W.O.R.D., said in a very noncommittal manner as the two of them looked at Whitney Frost in her new cell, as she pranced around, sometimes in her human shape, sometimes in one of her animal ones instead. "I mean, first you disappear without a trace, and now you're back, and your new friend-"
"Whitney isn't my friend; I don't think that she can be anyone's friend, and, moreover, I'm not so certain about myself," the recently-christened Scarlet Witch muttered back – she wasn't having a good day lately, and not just because of the scaly anteater that was trudging around Monica's new office either. "That said, I think that we can agree that she just cannot wander around unsupervised-"
"Yes, but, why us?"
"Well, who else is there? The Avengers are still disbanded-"
"Actually, they seem to be getting back now," Monica drummed her fingers over a tabletop. "Sam Wilson is captain America now, and I must admit that he looks good in his new suit… Wanda? You okay?"
"No," Wanda exhaled, as she caused her sudden emotions to subside, "I'm not. I don't know why exactly, but I'm not." She leaned back and rubbed her face. "I don't suppose that you care that my new pet used to be some sort of a biohack ninja, apparently?"
The look on Monica's face implied that Wanda's change of topic did not go unnoticed, but the other woman was still playing along. "Actually, I sort of do – the Southeast Asian Crime Syndicate has been using them a lot lately… what's with the look on your face?"
"Whitney Frost seems to know quite a bit about them," Wanda muttered to no one in particular, feeling especially not like herself at present. "Now that she's more coherent – slightly – you want to go to talk to her about it?"
Monica gave Wanda another look. "You realize that this isn't how it works?" she said softly. "Wanda, we all are aware that you got problems, but in our world? Either you're out or you're in."
"I know," Wanda rather withdrew into herself.
"Right," Monica sighed, realizing – and admitting – to herself that pressing the Scarlet Witch in the room could be counterproductive now. "So where do we go from here?"
The end?