A Trip Between Two Worlds (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

"...being any gender is a drag."-Patti Smith

Earth-XX

September 3, 2010

Trailing her usual aura of good feelings and cheerful optimism, Marcie Lucas walked through the halls of Clairemont Academy with a smile on her face and a spring in her step. For once she wasn't in uniform, either her Edge costume or the blue and gold of Clairemont's cheerleading squad; rather in a pink sweater and blue jeans that wouldn't have looked out of place on a girl her age back in the 1950s. Maybe her mother's disappearance a few months earlier had changed her life for the worse, but she wasn't going to let that get her down!

Books under her arms, she headed into the nearly-empty science building. "Hey, Aaron!" she said with a cheerful wave as she caught sight of the hunky loner Aaron White, walking into the same corridor of the science wing that she was. Aaron wasn't exactly her type: she preferred guys like that hunky Zach Harris, even if he was a little too angry for her tastes, but she could see why so many of her friends secretly had the hots for the dimension-hopping powerhouse. He certainly filled out his uniform well! She ran after him, her Sketchers squeaking slightly on the tiled floor. "Are you taking the expanded physics class too? Isn't it cool that-"

-

Earth-Prime

September 3, 2010

"...we can get out of the whole first semester of senior physics just by being here for a few experiments! I guess it's more important for us to learn about super-science than boring stuff like physics." Mark grinned at Erin as they headed inside. "Looks like we're here first." Ms. Harcourt was there to greet them both, nodding a polite hello.

"Mr. Lucas, Ms. White! Nice to see both of you." She smiled. "I always appreciate volunteer assistants. I'll be especially glad to have someone here who's as resistant to trans-dimensional radiation as you are, Erin. Why don't the two of you get started setting up the equipment," she said, pointing to the large Y-frame set against one wall, "and I'll get the others going when they arrive."

[Electra]

Earth Prime

"Sure," Erin murmured, keeping her voice low enough that the teacher wouldn't hear. "Anything that gets me out of a semester of science classes is cool with me." She went over to the Y-frame and looked at the equipment set up around it. She had no idea what any of it was, so she began laying it out, putting like pieces together, figuring that either someone would come along who knew how to put it together, or Mark would somehow suss it out. "I just hope we can maybe not get shot at quite as much as when Trevor and I went on that field trip with Dark Star..."

Earth XX

"... and we wound up in the middle of an invasion." Aaron shook his head. "White Star headed them off, but Tricia and I had to protect the younger students and the civilians." He looked at the large white X-shaped frame. "I wonder what exactly we're going to be doing."

[Gizmo]

Earth-Prime

"Ears are burning," Trevor murmured dryly as he entered smoothly, hands in his pockets. The lanky young man wore simple jeans and a white undershirt, but the unfastened black jacketed and prominent belt he'd topped them with were unmistakably those of Midnight. Evidently he'd felt it prudent to prepare for mishaps as well. Although his dark hair was covered my his grandfather's beaten fedora, Trevor had left his sunglasses hanging from his pocket, having grown more comfortable with the red and black discolouration of his eyes caused by the continuing development of his powers. A faint smile touched his expression as he stood next to Erin and gave Mark an amiable if brief nod. "Any idea what this..."

Earth-XX

...equipment is for, Tricia wondered silently as she padded into the room. Barely an inch under six feet tall, the willowy girl had an uncanny ability to remain unnoticed despite her proportions. She'd recently and without explanation taken to wearing a pair of sunglasses under the beaten newsboy cap she'd inherited from her grandmother everywhere she went. They certainly didn't make the laconic youth any more approachable, but at least they distracted somewhat from the midnight mist coloured blush that briefly touched her cheeks when she spotted Aaron talking with Marcie. She hesitated, debating whether to greet them or remain quiet.

[Avenger Assembled]

Earth-XX

"Trixie!" Marcie had sensed Tracie's shyness on their first meeting, and had been doing her best to bring 'Trixie' out of her shell ever since. She waved vigorously, trying to get her attention. She'd been letting Aaron do all the heavy lifting: it'd be silly for her to get her hands dirty when Aaron was so strong! "Come on over here! We're building..." She turned to Mr. Harcourt. "What exactly are we building again?" Marcie wasn't a particularly good student, but with her cheerful demeanor and good luck when it came time to take tests, she did well enough to fit into just about any class. All perky attentive student, she listened as Mr. Harcourt explained,

"We're building a doorway into trans-dimensional space," the friendly science teacher explained. "Not into other dimensions, of course, just into space outside this one. If it works, we can adapt a transdimensional device for the use of the school, so that we can-"

-

Earth-Prime

"-maintain a security system for the school in the event of dimensional crossovers. You've all had dealings with that yourself," she said with a nod to the students, "and if we get this working, we can...make a cork in the bottle, so the school is shielded against transdimensional leakage. Not enough to prevent overall invasions in the city, but enough that the school itself is shielded in the event of problems. This is just the first step, but we can do a lot of work on behalf of the school if it goes well."

"Okay," said Mark, stretching high as he tried (not well) to help Erin get a curl of electricity connected to the big Y-frame's top. "I think I understood most of that. I guess we just need to get all this put together and powered up, then!" He smiled at Trevor as he joined the group. "So, how are you guys doing?" he asked. "After all the...stuff lately, it seems like we haven't been hanging out as much."

[Electra]

Earth Prime

Erin gave Trevor a quick smile and a light touch on the arm when he arrived, before turning back to the assembly of the confusing machine. "Things are pretty good," she told Mark. "Keeping busy with the school year starting. This is probably more your cup of tea than mine, Trev," she admitted. "You want to take a look at this, and maybe we'll get done sometime before the end of the..."

Earth XX

"Afternoon, Tricia," Aaron greeted Tricia with a half smile. He hefted a coil of cables into place above the X-shaped frame, balancing them easily with one hand. "I think we can get this put together if we put our heads together. How's it going with the bike?"

[Gizmo]

Earth-XX

Cool but not aloof, Tricia reminded herself, walking over to the others. "Hey, Marcie." The slim, dark haired girl let the nickname pass; she'd initially taken it as a backhanded insult, but had eventually come to realize that the gregarious cheerleader wasn't really capable of insincerity let alone malicious intent. "Good," she answered Aaron, studiously not focusing on the athletic young man's ability to lift heavy objects. "Got the new nitro injectors fitted last week." It was probably the longest string of words either of the other students had heard from her, and Tricia immediately turned to the unpacked equipment, embarrassed. Stupid. He doesn't want to hear about..."

Earth-Prime

"...setting all of this up," Trevor considered, giving the gear an appraising look. The lanky youth was intrigued by the defense system Harcourt was describing. A barrier against extradimensional incursions certainly seemed wise, though he privately wondered if something similar could be developed against abilities which warped their own reality. Granted, if he had to choose someone to have that kind of power, Mark would certainly be near the top of the list. "Good," he agreed, unconsciously returning Erin's smile and following her arm with his own to prolong the contact. Following the teacher's directions, he went about preparing the equipment as she unpacked it, understanding the engineering principles at work better than the finer points of the theory behind experiment's design.

[Avenger Assembled]

Earth-XX

"I think it's so cool that you do that," said Marcie, bouncing lightly up and down on her white and pink sneakers as she finally joined in on the assembly process. She was competitive enough that she couldn't let Tricia, friend or not, make her look lazy: that was how she'd won so many cheerleading competitions! "I mean some girls think they won't look pretty if they get engine grease up to the elbows or something, but I think they're just cowards," she said decisively. "Girls can look pretty fixing cars too! I should learn more mechanical things," she said thoughtfully as they continued working, murmuring to herself when Mr. Harcourt gave them directions. "I mean the stuff I use usually doesn't break, but I could help out someone else if they were having car trouble-"

-

Earth-Prime

"Besides, it looks really cool," said Mark, stepping back as Erin had to climb up a little to assemble the last pieces of the Y-frame. "Making something myself is one thing, but really...you know, making it, that's cool! It's like writing with a quill pen." He took a position at the control panel Ms. Harcourt was steering them all towards, listening as she showed them how to carry out the bridge into trans-dimensional space. "I mean look! We just built a gateway!" And with that, following directions closely, he began pressing buttons as the Y-frame slowly crackled to life, showing a shimmery white wall growing inside the crossbars of the Y.

[Electra]

Earth XX

"Being able to fix a car is a good skill for anyone," Aaron maintained, tapping the last bit of the X-shaped frame into place. "You never know when you'll need to fix it and there's no mechanic around." A briefly troubled look crossed his face, but he shook it off and replaced it with a smile for the girls. "All right, that's that," he announced, taking a step back as the frame began to glow. "Now the question is...

Earth Prime

"...What do we do with it?" Erin asked, hopping off the glowing Y-frame and studying it uncertainly. "Do we know exactly what's there on the other side? It could be something dangerous." Even as she spoke, the light seemed to brighten, as though someone had turned on a lamp in the next dimensional room. She tensed, but nothing else happened, the frame just stood there and glowed.

[Gizmo]

Earth-XX

The slow, bemused blink Tricia gave Marcie was concealed behind her sunglasses and the brim of her cap. "...right." The dark haired girl was pretty sure the probability controller was trying to be supportive, but it was a little hard to parse the intent behind Lucasese sometimes. At least it distracted her from Aaron's moment of cryptic moodiness, which objectively shouldn't have been nearly as attractive as it was. "Good to be prepared," she agreed quietly, adjusting the compartment laden belt which hung from one of her hips. "Could take a look at your truck some time? I mean, it seems..."

Earth-Prime

"...to be working alright," Trevor observed softly to the other students, tilting his head slightly to one side as he observed the glowing framework. "If we're opening into a void, though, shouldn't it be dark?" Even his relatively limited experiences at Claremont had convinced him that the experiment was almost certain to go horribly awry, but it usually took a little longer for the wheels to come off. He moved to stand a little closer to Erin when she visibly tensed, but let her take the forward position. If something did try to come through, they weren't going to find a better first line of defense than the bat wielding teen.

[Avenger Assembled]

Earth-Prime

Mark didn't have much to add at this juncture, having left his own knowledge of science far behind. Instead he simply watched the dimensional doorway with some fascination, glad to see a gateway to another place and reality that wasn't disgorging monstrous invaders out to wreck them all."There's really very little cause for concern," Ms. Harcourt reassured Trevor and the other doubtful students. "I've tuned this gateway to within a milli-micron of dimensional confluence. There's no chance of the Terminus or a hostile dimension tapping into this gateway, the quantum spectrum is just too narrow. The only way anything could happen is if some near-duplicate universe opened up a gateway into this one simultaneously, but the odds of that happening are extremely-"

Earth-XX

"scanty," said Mr. Harcourt, explaining to students as he walked up to the X-frame, a frown on his handsome face. Marcie had stopped humming Ke$an in the background, even the scatterbrained Lucas having caught the teacher's concern. "But we do seem to be encountering some dimensional confusion." He hmmed, then said, "Marcie, Aaron, would you put yourselves on both sides of the frame? If Aaron lifts the machinery out of the way and if Marcie uses her reality-manipulating powers, we should be able to disengage from whatever we're aground on without having to risk damaging ourselves or the equipment."

Earth-Prime

Obligingly, Mark took up position, waiting for Erin to take up her post on the other side of the Y-frame, waiting for the signal from Ms. Harcourt before he went into action. As Erin strained and lifted the frame up, making sure his powers wouldn't interfere with the machinery, he concentrated, reaching out at the fabric of the universe through the hole and tugging at it. He'd practiced like this before, the hard reality underneath his powers something he had to be familiar with if he wanted to help his friends in the field. But suddenly, even as he reached out, black dots rushing from his fingertips into the void, he felt something pulling back!

"Hey, someone's-"

Earth-XX

Marcie shrieked in surprise as suddenly she felt her powers yanked at, hard! Automatically she pulled back, trying to avoid getting sucked into the hole herself, but found things coming with her! A flash of light burst from the portal, bright enough to blind everyone for a second, and when it cleared she found herself face-to-face with an eerie reflection of her own face! "Aiype! Who are you!?"

"No, who are you!?" Mark shot back, gathering himself up as he looked around the classroom, looking largely unchanged to his eyes with the exception of the bizarre, oddly familiar dopplegangers of everyone around the room. There'd been a flash of light, a strong tug on his powers that had seemed to snap across the room like a cracking whip, reaching out to touch everyone, and then..."And how did you get here?" He stared at the girl looking at him as everyone reacted with exclamations and more all around them. She was a sweet-faced blonde in a cute pink sweater, her eyebrows furrowed with concentration as she glared at him. She was...she was...

As one, Mark and Marcie Lucas cried "Great Caesar's Ghost!"

[Electra]

Despite Erin's best efforts, she was unable to hold onto the Y-frame with everything in the universe seeming to distend and distort around her. She lost her grip and was sucked in, tumbling through the gate and across a floor that was curiously familiar. She came up with her bat in hand, extended to its full five foot length, ready to fight.

She found herself face to face with a tall young man, extremely cut beneath a blue and gold uniform, holding a silver nightstick in each hand and looking about as concerned and confused as she felt. He looked really familiar. It took Erin a second to realize that he looked a lot like old pictures she'd seen of her father, except with no hippy hair. She glanced around, taking in the other people in the room, the different pictures on the walls... nothing seemed to click. "Who are..."

"you?" Aaron asked, directly in time with the girl he was facing off against. She looked... well, he couldn't quite place her, but something about her was more than a little familiar. She definitely looked capable of holding her own in a fight, to judge by the muscles under her blue and gold uniform and the practiced way she held her long baton. He looked to Marcie and Tricia, hoping one of them would have an answer.

[Gizmo]

Earth-XX

Thanks to her sunglasses and mutated eyes, Tricia recovered quickly from the blinding light. By the time it did, a noticeable transformation in her demeanor had occurred. Straightening to her full height, shoulders squared and expression set, a matte black bo staff had appeared in her ready hands. Standing a few steps back from the gateway, she was in a position to observe her classmates and their suddenly appearing doppelgangers next to each other, making the similarities obvious if difficult to believe. "Should probably be expecting..."

Earth-Prime

"...a nearly identical universe to be doing something different?" Trevor asked Ms. Harcourt flatly as he reflexively unspooled a length of carbon micro-filament cord from his belt, tossing the elctro-magnet anchor behind him and leaping forward into the expanding light after his friends. Gritting is teeth through an unpleasant twisting of reality not unlike a slowed down version of teleporting, he came out on...

Earth-XX

...the other side, just behind Erin and Mark in a crouch, a grimace on his face and he adjusted his fedora with one hand and retrieved one of his escrima sticks with the other. "Hnn, bright lights..."

"Never a good thing," agreed an uncannily familiar voice ahead of him. Tricia gave the new arrival a short wave while still keeping a firm grip on her staff with her thumb and free hand. Same eyes... she thought to herself.

Trevor looked about the room, quickly taking in the scene as he rose carefully to his feet. "Huh," he opined.

[Avenger Assembled]

"They must be..."

"...from the gender-switched Earth..."

"...that my dad visited!" Mark and Marcie were staring at each other, eyes wide and huge grins on their faces. "OHMIGOD! It's like we're twins!" And sure enough they did look much like twins, closer than any outside of Shakespeare: Mark's blue shirt and slacks matched in style, if not cut and color, exactly what his feminine counterpart was wearing. God, she's cute. thought Mark irrelevantly.

"And for me it was...it was my mom! I never went, though, that was way back in the 1960s." Marcie looked sad for just a second, but then shook it off. "But you came here, not us!" She pointed. "Look, there's a picture of Martin Curie on the wall! He was one of the greatest scientists ever, and I bet he'd be a girl on your world!" The two of them began...talking; throwing out a series of references that went by too fast for the others to get.

"Yes, well..." The two Harcourts; a handsome black man in a natty suit and an attractive African-American woman in work clothes, began talking quickly to each other, scientific chatter that was right over the head of most of the kids there. When they were done, Ms. Harcourt said, "All right, kids, I think we can solve this, but we'd better get ourselves over to the Freedom League for help."

"You too," Mr. Harcourt told Marcie, Tracie, and Aaron. "These are our guests. And it's best if we stick close to our duplicates; that way there's no risk of confusion creeping in. The last thing we need is everyone thinking that we've actually switched genders ourselves."

[Electra]

Erin stood down when no immediate threat presented itself, collapsing her bat with a practiced twirl, then sliding it into its holster. Opposite her, her counterpart was doing the same thing, putting away his weapons in one smooth motion. They studied each other for a long minute, mingled interest and suspicion on both their faces. Aaron and Erin both had more than a passing familiarity with dimensional travel, but that didn't make either of them more comfortable about it.

Finally Aaron looked over at his teacher. "All right, what do we need to do?" he asked. Since that was Erin's question as well, she simply nodded agreement.

[Gizmo]

"Hrn," Trevor grunted as Mark and his distaff counterpart began gabbing at accelerating speeds. "Stereo."

"It's... actually 'Tricia'," the dark haired girl across from him softly corrected her science teacher, who didn't seem to hear. She realized she still hadn't been at Clairemont very long, but you'd think at least the instructors would get her name right.

Her parallel self returned his escrima stick to its holster and smoothly walked over. "Trevor," he introduced himself, tapping a finger to the side of the fedora in an odd salute. "So. This is odd."

The willowy young woman gave him a slow once over, reflexively adjusting her sunglasses when she came to his discoloured eyes. "Already like you better than being 'Misty, the Midnight Maid'," she decided with the beginnings of a slight smile in spite of herself.

"Ouch," Trevor commiserated, placing his hands in his pockets. "That's definitely worse than 'Kid Midnight'. Did the outfit have--?"

"Horrible bright yellow? Mmhmm." Tricia shook her head ruefully. "Since Jamie was already a brunette and Marcie's blonde, she made me a redhead."

The lanky youth stifled a chuckle. "Yellow trunks on top of black pants," he countered.

"Yee."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Just stick together. I'll take care of contacting Mrs. Sin as we go." Mr. Harcourt, who after all knew the Clairemont terrain better than any other adult there, answered the Whites' question by walking the kids and the new arrivals outside. The sky was blue and the grass was green, a world where men were women and women men not actually that much different than their own. Mark and Marcie made up the rear of the group, their animated chatter a counterpoint to the more reserved adults and other kids.

"You're a cheerleader!?! Wow! That's so cool. I wanted to try out for our squad, but my dad said guys shouldn't do that stuff."

"Yeah, tell me about it," said Marcie, wrinkling her pert little nose. "I mean, guys should do guy stuff and girls should do girl stuff, but sometimes my mom would..." She sighed a little, and suddenly threw an arm around her counterpart's broader shoulders. "Did you have the bad stuff happen too?" He's cute.

Up front, as the Lucases shared their joint traumas and joys with each other, Mr. Harcourt was telling the kids, "We'll go visit the Freedom League and see what Hypatia can do on our behalf. I think I can reverse the polarity of the transference, with the help of my counterpart here, but we can get things done a lot faster there." He led them past what it took a minute for Erin and Trevor to recognize as Aaron's red truck, looking a little dingier than its Earth-Prime counterpart, and started up the van. With the adults taking the lead, that left the kids with nothing to do but talk.

"So, uh, Girl-Aaron," asked Marcie suddenly, turning and giving a searching look at the less-than-hunky counterpart of her favorite strong-but-silent type. "Are you from a parallel world parallel to Earth-Y, too? Because that really blows my mind!"

[Electra]

It took Erin a minute to parse that question. Aaron stepped in with a little more explanation. "We've noticed that there seem to be, you know, two axes of dimensions, well, at least that many. There's an X axis, that we're on, and a Y axis, where everyone is gender reversed, where you guys came from. And on those axes, all the universes near them are similar, but different in certain ways. In this universe, I'm not, um, not from here. She wants to know if you're the same way." He looked at Erin, and they shared a moment of perfect unspoken understanding of things neither of them wanted to talk about.

"Um, yeah," Erin told Marcie. "I'm an immigrant in my universe, too. I guess things along the two axes, or whatever you call them, must be similar in a lot of ways except for everyone being opposite genders. That's kinda weird."

[Gizmo]

Hanging toward the back of the group, Trevor raised an eyebrow as they passed by the pickup. "Not into mechanics?" he asked Tricia, a vague note of disappointment in his tone.

"What? Of course." The willowy girl followed his gaze. "That's Aaron's truck. I ride a motorcycle."

Her counterpart raised his eyebrows as he donned his own sunglasses now that they were in public. "Right, but he doesn't let you work on it? Weirdly macho." It was a little tough to imagine a world where Erin's double could be emasculated by his own.

Tricia, for her part, gave him a confused look. "'Macho'? What?"

Slow realization dawned on Trevor's face. "You two aren't...?"

"You are?"

Wincing slightly, Trevor looked upward and rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "Whoops." Tricia pulled emphatically down on either side of her newsboy cap, pale cheeks colouring with a deepening black blush.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Ohmygod! You guys are dating!? That's so sweet!" Marcie put her hand over her heart, but fortunately wasn't quite as socially blind as her male counterpart could be. When she saw how embarrassed Tricia was, she changed the subject. Sort of. I've totally got to set them up later! But not right now!"I mean, uh, that's cute! Are Michelle and Alex dating on your world too? That's my roommate and Aaron's roomate," she filled in cheerily. "They're totally in love for real, but Alex is always trying to get in Michelle's pants, but she's worried she'll bust him up. You know..."

Mark winced theatrically, but couldn't be embarrassed for long. Am I really this funny? No, surely not. "I think, uh, something similar is happening here. Mike and Alex are dating too, and they're pretty serious. So are you dating...uh, Zartan?" He thought about his quasi-girlfriend back home, who he hadn't seen since she'd gone back to the Lost World over the summer.

"Yeah, but it's mostly just for his body," said Marcie with her usual bluntness. "I mean he wears a loincloth! And he's got a real...you know!" She flexed a perky bicep. "Big muscles! Robusto! There was him, Angelo, and that's it. Guys are fun to have around, but I don't think I'm ready for like a long-term relationship. I've got a lot going on!" she exclaimed cheerily.

"Yeah...yeah, I know that feeling," Mark agreed. "Zarana's real athletic." He'd picked up on the hints she'd dropped about what had happened to her mother; Ricki Lucas, maybe? But it was easier to talk about other things. Is she wearing lilac perfume? Even Mark fell silent as they passed the Sentress statue, looking up at the Centuria cast in marble with a wistful look on his face.

[Electra]

Erin colored, while Aaron mostly just looked confused. "Ah, yeah, Trevor and I are you know, going out." It was weird to actually say it, but then, nobody had actually asked before. She was also distracted by what Aaron had said about where he came from, and how their backgrounds seemed to be so similar. She chewed on her lip for a minute, then leaned in and murmured to Aaron, "What happened to your family?"

Aaron's face closed down for a moment, going blank and still. He didn't talk about his past with anyone, except a few short words with Alex, his roommate. But if anybody could understand, maybe it was this version of himself. "The flu with Mom," he murmured, "then Dad in the attack, and Michael..." He pursed his lips, an expression Erin unconsciously mimicked. "What about yours?"

"About the same," she murmured back. "I guess the universes are all pretty close together. Sucks."

"Yeah," he agreed. They both turned, looking out opposite windows.

[Gizmo]

Trevor unconsciously pulled the front of his fedora down with one hand at Marcie's outburst, feeling worse about his unintentional embarrassment of his distaff counterpart than anything, even as Erin's confirmation caused the corner of his mouth to twitch upward. After a long moment of awkward silence, he tilted the hat back up part way and gave Tricia an apologetic look without saying anything out loud. The expression she gave him in return as the colour faded from her cheeks was just as clear. Nothing to be done now.

He glanced over at Aaron as the athletic young man looked moodily out the window, then back to Tricia with a raised eyebrow. You like him though, right?

That's pretty obvious now, her flat look replied as she crossed her arms. For once the slim young woman was glad for her crush's apparent obliviousness.

Trevor shrugged slightly, the movement all but imperceptible. So ask him out.

Tugging on her hat again, Tricia slouched in her seat. Now's probably not a good time. Her Earth-Prime double had to concede that point with a concerned look in Erin's direction; he'd learned to give her space when the topic of her family history arose, but that didn't make seeing her so obviously upset any easier.

[Avenger Assembled]

Though their emotions ran the gamut from boundless enthusiasm to quiet unhappiness, the kids all kept their eyes open as Mr. Harcourt drove them all to the Freedom League building. Freedom Hall didn't look any different: it wasn't as if the building was going to be built like a woman, after all! Inside Hypatia turned out to be a stocky woman with a Greek cast to her features, her world-weary bonhomie as she spoke to the Harcourts familiar to the students who'd met Daedalus on their own world. They wound up stuck in the lounge while the science-types talked. That meant that Mark and Marcie were free to talk as they will, which fortunately didn't last long. Aaron and Erin, and Tricia and Trevor, had already been through enough.

When Hypatia and the Harcourts came back, she had good news. Well, sort of. "We haven't yet finalized why your attempt at opening a gateway resulted in a breach of both dimensions. Even a combination of the Lucas family's reality-altering abilities shouldn't have so empowered a gateway powered by a nucleonic reaction." Folding her armored fingers, Hypatia said "I'm going to continue my studies here. The good news is, there's a high probability the transition will reverse itself within 48 hours. You'll be returned to your home dimension from whatever subtime localities you happen to occupy."

"What Hypatia is saying," said Ms. Harcourt, "is that we'll be returned to Earth-Prime...er, Earth-Y," she added, in deference to their host, "from whatever spot we happen to be occupying."

[Electra]

"What are we supposed to do until then, though?" Erin demanded. "We have to get back. We've got training to do, and I have English homework, and Oliver is going to be hungry."

Aaron ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. "Well, I have English homework too," he offered, "it's probably the same thing. Book report, right?"

"Yeah," Erin responded with a half smirk, "but I don't think the teacher's going to be impressed if I come back with a report about Gina and Philimina in A Separate Peace. And they don't give extensions for being thrown across dimensions, I've tried that one before."

"Fiona," Aaron corrected with a shrug, "but yeah. You all can train with us, anyway. That doesn't change, probably."

[Avenger Assembled]

Marcie brightened at this news, looking well-pleased at the idea of having her double and his friends around for a while more. "Yeah, that'll be great! Boys and girls together! Well, they usually are together, I guess, but it'll be like even more so! Ms. Archer won't know what hit her." She hmmed, stroking her chin at the news. "I've got drills after our team practice, but you guys can come see that too. I've got my uniform and stuff in my locker in the Doom Room, right next to my costume. I mean it's not as important as my superhero stuff, duh, but it's still important. After that, we can go hang out! It'll be super!"

"Yeah, that sounds awesome!" said Mark, who as usual wasn't terribly worried about getting his work done, and was far more impressed with the novelty of this exciting new world and the perky way his double kept smiling at him. He smiled back, and she colored just a little. She's cute! He reminded himself that a world with female supervillains wasn't cute, nor were the deeds of these ladies any less super. Not cute like stupid, he thought, just...cute. "And hey, I bet we all get out of physics for this one!" When the Harcourts confirmed that, Mark and Marcie jumped up and slapped each other five. "Woo-hoo!"

[Gizmo]

Trevor gave Tricia a muted shrug. Both versions of the dark haired youth would probably end up taking physics anyway this year; they liked learning about the way things worked. At least they might be able to use this excursion as a prerequisite for a more advanced class. "If we're sparing, I'm going to need a coffee first," he mentioned.

His Earth-XX counterpart murmured in agreement. "Set my dorm room up like a Stardoes," she assured him, looping her thumbs in the beltloops of her pants, her utility belt rest asymmetrically off of one hip. That had taken the willowy girl a little ingenuity to pull off; the original Midnight had been notably curvier during her heyday.