The bell rang quickly, making Pietro jump. He was not used to loud noises, and did not like the loud clanging that the bells here made.
"Calm down, Pietro. This is school, there are bound to be bells." Wanda soothed, putting her book - a thick german novel - into her pack. She stood and waited for Mr Summers to dismiss them - they had English with Dr Grey next. Pietro, upon hearing the name, had made endless fifty shades of grey jokes. Wanda rolled her eyes and felt herself settle as the class grew silent, waiting to be allowed out.
"Okay, I trust you all know where your next classes are?" Mr Summers didn't look up from his laptop. "Go on then, but don't make too much-"
And that was it. This was when everything started going wrong.
Mr Summers disappeared exactly halfway through his sentence, leaving nothing behind, not even the irritating red sunglasses Wanda had noticed he was wearing. There had been a quiet pop sound, but apart from that, the class was silent enough to hear a pin drop.
"... Everyone else saw that too, right?" Someone asked. Shortly after, the class broke into hysteric conversations.
"Pietro, let's just go to our next class," Wanda whispered, and the two siblings snuck out of the room.
"What on earth just happened?" Steve asked, swivelling backwards to face Sam, Natasha and Clint. He'd have to tell Bucky about this - Bucky, being unlucky, was stuck in another tutor with Peggy. Steve missed having his friend around in the mornings.
There was the sound of someone coming down the hallway at a high speed - maybe a teacher had been alerted, Steve thought. He was surprised when an out-of-breath Bucky swung in through the door.
"Mr Summers?-" He panted, looking around the classroom wildly, long pieces of hair falling from the bun he'd scraped it back into. "He went too?"
Steve leapt to his feet. More than one teacher had gone?
"Yeah, he just disappeared while he was dismissing us. Did something happen in your class, too?" He asked, walking over to the front of the class.
"Dr Grey just went, like a poof of smoke. Peg's gone down to get Xavier, if she can find him. Like half the class is gone too - all the older people. What on earth is going on?" Bucky hadn't sounded this worried in recent memory; usually he was very blaise in these situations.
"Just keep calm, wait in this room, and Xavier will be down shortly. If we make a run for it, we're asking for trouble." Natasha said calmly, pulling out a phone. She frowned when there was no signal. The only reason she'd bought this expensive model was because it was known for keeping signal. It shouldn't have lost it in the middle of an average-sized town.
"Do any of you guys have signal? I'm going to call Barney and get us a lift out of here if nobody comes in the next hour." Clint decided, still unhappy about the lack of phone signal. A resounding "no" echoed from the group.
"So the phone signal and wifi is down, and there are no teachers or older kids in the school. Man, I haven't got time for this shit," Sam hissed, rubbing a hand over the back of his head. Steve wanted to call him out on his language, but decided now was not the time.
Tony, or as many knew him, Stark, had meanwhile gotten into Summers' computer. He grinned as his fingers flew over the keyboard with ease. "Guys? I have a wifi connection!"
Steve and Clint raced over, eager to see what was happening. "Is there any way we can find out what's going on?"
Tony quickly typed a brief version of events into google, and a few hundred news articles came up. He scanned them at a pace Steve couldn't even hope to match.
"Something similar happened at Perdido Beach a few decades ago, and it lasted a couple of months," He muttered. "Half of the town was encased by an impenetrable dome, made of translucent material that went clear about eight months in. Nobody under the age of fifteen could be found outside the dome - everyone above that age was teleported out by an unknown force."
"Can we make contact with the outside? Assuming we are in a dome, that is. Maybe somebody knows what's going on." Bruce padded over, ever the voice of reason in a class of hysterics. Bucky, Clint and Natasha had all returned to their respective cell phones, with Sam talking to Richards about what had occurred.
Peggy, much like Bucky, appeared in the doorway, breathless. "Is James Barnes in here?"
"You bet I am," Bucky said, leaping over. "What happened in the office?"
"Nobody's there, and I checked a few classrooms; all the adults and older teenagers are gone, too." Peggy rested against the doorhandle for a moment, before gesturing to where Tony, Bruce, and Steve stood over Summers' laptop. "That's not a good idea."
"We're just trying to contact peoples' parents. If there are any adults left, we'll find them." Steve reassured her. "Tony also found articles on a similar event from a while back that happened in America. If this is the same, we're not going to last very long."
Peggy went pale. "Oh god, I read about that. The Perdido Anomaly? That lasted nearly two years! The fatality rate was half! Oh god," Peggy sat, head in her hands. Natasha came and reassured her; apparently many were having breakdowns that day.
Sam beckoned for Steve to come over. "Look, man, I don't want to do this, but if we have any chance of surviving in a scenario like Perdido, then we have to get everyone we need and make tracks, like the Maximoff kids." As Sam said it, Steve realised the Maximoff kids were gone.