Eternity's Voice rubbed her hands together menacingly. The keyboard attempted to slither away, but she began a relentless barrage of typing, pinning in it place. "Don't think I like this anymore that you do," she growled and struck the keys more forcefully. "You only get beaten by nice, soft fingertips. My readers aren't quite so gentle with me. It's always write, write, update, nice but go faster...yaggh!" The mouse, not nearly as timid as its furry cousins, had bitten her.
***
Wanda
***
Wanda charged at the jeep. She gestured towards Lance with an angry sweep of the hand. The key chain he twirled around a finger shot out of his grasp and hurtled towards the witch. It settled neatly on her outstretched index finger. In moments, she was in the driver's seat, screeching out of the parking lot. Belatedly, Wanda called back, "Go to the pizzeria on fifth! I'll pay the bill when I get there."
As she left the parking lot, a strong wind appeared out of the blue and brought Todd's words to her ears. "Wow, must be some 'mergency. 'M not even gonna touch the bill Fred's goin' to ring up." The Scarlet Witch groaned slightly. The wind turned into a gale and she cursed Lance and his car that exposed her to the elements. It was bad enough that she would be broke for months and Pietro was probably going to die; she didn't need to be tortured by tornado winds.
Suddenly, an object fell into the empty front seat. A gap appeared in the traffic and she was driving on an empty stretch of road at illegal speeds. Wanda glanced at the passenger side and saw a fat leather wallet lay neatly on the seat. She chuckled sarcastically, "Now what were the chances of that?" Her black mood turned a midnight blue; good luck always made her feel cheerful. She quickly peeked at the amount inside and whistled. Fred could eat his body weight with that. "Hell, we all could eat that much and then buy new wardrobes for our fat selves and I would still come out ahead." Wanda remembered what she was doing and increased her speed. The speedometer read one of those insane numbers only legal on the Autobahn. Even then, she wasn't sure a German cop wouldn't throw her in jail for speeding. She didn't worry about it except to concentrate harder on the road. The odds of blowing past a cop car were almost nothing even without her luck.
The Scarlet Witch ran two deserted red lights. The third red had a busy intersecting street, but the traffic signal machine experienced a brief malfunction and her lane turn green at the last moment. She had never slowed down. Cars on either side squealed as their braking tire left dark lines on the pavement. Miraculously, the drivers had been paying attention to the lights and all stopped in time to let the lone driver barrel past unscathed. Behind Wanda, people sorted themselves out and drove off. Their cars were undamaged, unless they counted their bald tires. She zoomed on ahead, trusting her extraordinary luck to prevent any unfortunate accidents. Like all things, she trusted it only as far as she could throw it, but her hexing range was just outside thirty miles so it hardly mattered.
Ten minutes after leaving school, she drove through the gates. She would have like to have claimed responsibility for their open state, but her arrival had been expected. About 230 pounds of muscles and metal bone snarled at her form the steps. Wanda ignored the animal and stormed through the mansion's doors. She chose a random path. As luck would have it, she managed to find the secret elevator and then the medical lab without missing a step.
Two bodies lay on hospital beds. The Scarlet Witch spared only a brief moment to feel pity metal girl. Judging by the composed attitude of her blue attendant, she was going to be fine. A machine's whine brought her attention. It was a heart monitor. The sound seemed frighteningly like a flat line, but was only the speed of his heartbeat. Instead of solitary beeps, it came out as a solid sound.
Wanda placed her hand on Pietro's chest. A vibration went through her palm and up into her mouth. The buzz entered her teeth and she heard a faint sound come from them. "Vibrations at twenty hertz are audible to the human ear," the girl recited, remembering her Physics teacher's words from only a few hours ago.
Wanda commanded the professor's attention. "How fast is the heartbeat?"
Xavier's eyes opened and he looked at his former, failed student. "Several beats per second."
"Define several."
"Fifteen or sixte..." His mouth finished the lie, but his voice had cut out when the Scarlet Witch snapped her fingers.
"Wrong answer, try again."
He leaned back into the back of his chair. 'Lucky that.' She laced her thoughts with acid. 'You can always lean back in that wheelchair to look wise and all-knowing. You can't fool me with that shit anymore. Nothing is perfect, especially not you. If you lie and attempt to make me think that you can handle this yourself, more than your back will be permanently broken when he dies. He doesn't need your help, he needs a miracle. We both know that miracles are my specialty.'
Pietro's eyelids fluttered. *Wanda?*
She glared at the professor. What sort of fool did he take her for?
*Wanda, you pull that disbeliever crap, an' I'll burst my heart. Hell, I could do Xavier's too and he knows it. Don' let Anita get taken any farther from me and can the lights be dimmed, my eyes are killing me.*
Okay, it was Pietro. The blue catlike man transferred Anita to a trolley and Wanda called out. "Don't move her." Her twin spoke in her mind and she repeated almost word for word, "I'm not...Pietro isn't done yet. He needs to balance her hormones and strengthen the new bone. Strengthen her entire body, actually. He's doing some chancy work and if he stops in the middle, it could be bad. Xavier, he says to tell you that he knows it is sapping his strength, but he doesn't care. She's too important."
Wanda snapped out of her trance and berated her twin. "I don't think so, brother. You have ten seconds to log off the mental net. She placed her hand over his head and counted down the numbers aloud. She felt a scrabbling in her own head, but called on her luck to slip away from Pietro grasp. At three seconds, his tensed face smoothed over and the sound coming from the heart monitor immediately dropped down a few octaves. She smiled. Thanks to Physics, she knew that his heartbeat had slowed dramatically.
"...Three, two, one." Another monitor slowed, the one that measured brain activity. "Goodnight Pietro and good luck to you."