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- SANDMAN
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- GOBLIN
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- SISTER GRIMM
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- HUSK
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- THE WASP
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- DAREDEVIL
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- CANNONBALL
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- YELLOWJACKET
MIRRORS
By Wesley Overhults
Earth-112, Two Years Ago
It was going to happen tonight. It had to happen tonight, just as it did every other night. The need was so engrained into her at this point that she couldn’t stop. The lies and excuses to cover it up came so easily to her at this point, the deception like a second nature to her. It had to happen tonight.
“C’mon,” she muttered, her fingers trembling as she tried to open the bottle. “I don’t have time for this.”
Her fingers finally obeyed her commands and the bottle’s top came off. She downed a good portion of the pills in one gulp, chasing it with a glass of water she grabbed from its place on the sink. She waited with her breath held, hoping that she had taken enough. She could feel it starting to happen, could feel the familiar ache up and down her spinal column. It wasn’t enough though. The wings weren’t coming out soon enough. People needed her and they needed her now.
“C’mon, work,” she prayed as she filled up the glass with water again, staring at herself in the bathroom mirror. Only plain, old Kate Bishop stared back at her. The world needed Wasp, not plain, old Kate Bishop. She poured the rest of the bottle’s contents down her throat along with another gulp of water.
The change came instantly but something was wrong. It hurt too much. Her back felt like it was on fire. There was a sickening noise of flesh ripping as the wings erupted from her back. It was too violently this time. She screamed in agony, howling like a wounded animal as she collapsed on the floor. Her vision blurred and her body began to convulse. The last thought that Kate Bishop had as her father burst into the bathroom was that she was going to die. She was going to die and there would be absolutely nothing heroic about it.
Earth-211, Now
“Great, where are we now?”
Wasp’s wings twitched unconsciously even as she asked her question. A faint, flickering memory of that night that changed her life crossed her mind. She didn’t know why she chose to remember it now but it couldn’t bode well for her immediate future. Perhaps it was her exposure to the Goblin formula that brought back flashbacks of that night. Her wings twitched again, a nervous tic she had developed since that night her body was permanently mutated by the MGH.
“What’s the Tallus say, Nico?” asked Sandman. He waited along with everyone else as Sister Grimm put the charm bracelet to her ear.
“It says that this is a special assignment just for Kate,” she explained. “It wants you to ‘see how the other half lives’.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” inquired Wasp in return.
“That’s all it says,” declared Sister Grimm. “Well, it also says you’ll know what it means.”
“Sounds like there are some more cracks in the marbles on that thing,” joked Daredevil. “What’s up with the going solo part? I thought it was all for one and one for all here.”
“The Tallus says it’s Kate’s mission and only hers,” said Sister Grimm. “Looks like the rest of us get the night off.”
“Oh c’mon,” whined Wasp. “I don’t even get a chance to hear anything from the Tallus about this mission and I have to do it by myself? That’s totally unfair.”
“Never took you for a whiner, Kate,” said Sandman. “We could all use a break. Everybody take some personal time tonight. We’ll meet back here in the morning.”
“Guys, c’mon,” pleaded Wasp. “You gotta help me a little here.”
“Tallus says it’s all yours,” reminded Daredevil as he left with Sister Grimm, their hands clasping together.
“Et tu, Harry?” inquired Wasp with a forlorn look in Goblin’s direction.
“Never was a fan of Caesar,” admitted Goblin. “I was more a fan of Macbeth or Hamlet.”
“You would like Hamlet,” chided Wasp. “C’mon, you could stand to have a little fun with me while I figure this out.”
“You’ll do fine, Kate,” assured Goblin. “Besides, I have an errand to run.”
Wasp watched her teammates leave her stranded and grumbled some choice words under her breath. Someone was going to have hell to pay for this before the night was over.
The Bowery, Manhattan
“So which date are we on now? Third? Fourth?” Johnny Gallo’s question fell on deaf ears, almost literally. He had been to clubs of course but nothing so loud as this.
“First,” replied Sister Grimm, her voice somehow breaking through the cacophony. “Thanks for taking me here, by the way. In my world, they closed this place down before I had a chance to check it out.”
“You didn’t say it would be so loud,” he reminded her. Again, he knew she didn’t hear him. She was too lost in the music coming from the band on stage.
Johnny took a moment in the frenzied, fast-paced world of the legendary punk rock club to admire her. He remembered their talk after what happened during the Kingpin mission. What were they making themselves into and was it something they wanted to become? Johnny’s instincts couldn’t quite answer those burning questions. He did know that he wanted to do better. Over the years, Johnny Gallo was always a slacker, a screw-up, and a general pain in everyone’s collective ass. Maybe he could tell that Nico was a bit of a screw-up and a letdown too. Maybe that was why he wanted both of them to make themselves into something better.
“Lordy, there are some crazy-lookin’ people here,” cut in Husk as she pressed herself against a wall to avoid the overflow of the mosh pit. She at least had the foresight to purchase some normal clothes earlier in the night so she wouldn’t look so out of place, though here she wasn’t sure what exactly “out of place” was.
“Says the girl who rips off her skin,” commented Nico.
“Trust me, when some o’ these folks are old and gray and their tattoos look like crap, they’ll wish they had mah power too,” promised Paige.
Nico shot her blond teammate a very unfriendly glare that she shrugged off a little too casually. Johnny could see the magic spark in the dark-haired witch’s eyes and he moved to insert himself between the two girls before something unpleasant happened.
“Take a walk, Paige,” he warned her.
“Ah was makin’ an observation,” reminded Husk. “Just ’cause yer girl don’t like it ain’t a reason ta get all huffy.”
“It’s fine, Johnny,” said Nico. “All that time sucking up to Emma Frost was bound to pay off eventually.”
“No need ta be jealous just ’cause I was gettin’ a real education while you were busy learnin’ magic tricks,” retorted Paige.
“Paige, I won’t say it again,” warned Johnny. “Take a walk.”
“Yeah, fine,” she muttered before pushing herself off the wall and walking away.
“Some days, I think the Timebroker threw us together for no other reason than to watch us drive each other crazy,” said Johnny after a long sigh.
“Seems that way,” agreed Nico before grinning at him. “At least now we have more time to ourselves.”
Paige Guthrie moved her way through the club with all the grace and tact of a bulldozer. Inwardly, she fumed and sulked over Nico’s remark. So what if Paige got into a good school and did well? Was that a crime? It certainly wasn’t in Paige’s book. She was getting the best education that money could buy and she was damn lucky to get it considering her family wasn’t that well-off. So what if Miss Frost wasn’t the nicest teacher on the planet?
“Can’t believe Ah let ’em drag me here,” grumbled Paige. It was then that she heard something, something she hadn’t heard in a very long time. She was amazed she could hear it at all but there was no mistaking that voice.
“Tabs, Ah ain’t got all night ta spend here,” reminded the voice, the Kentucky drawl matching Paige’s almost to perfection. “Ya know we’re on call in case something happens at tha mansion.”
Paige turned her attention to its owner just as he locked eyes on her. It couldn’t be him. She hadn’t seen him in so long, not since they were kids and there was that accident in the mines. Yet all of the Exiles knew that nothing was certain when alternate realities were involved and now here he was standing right in front of her.
“Paige?” asked Sam Guthrie skeptically. “What’re ya doin’ in a place like this? Ah thought ya went back home ta take care o’ Momma.”
“Sam?” she asked him in return. “Yer . . . yer supposed ta be dead.”
The Diamond District
Kate Bishop wasn’t a quitter. When things got tough, she didn’t whine and cry about it. Detox and rehab had fixed that problem for her, had drilled a sense of courage and fortitude into her that helped forge her into a hero. She wasn’t a whiner, wasn’t a complainer, and wasn’t a coward. Yet even for the bravest of heroes, there were times when life just seemed completely unfair. For Wasp, this was one of those times because she didn’t have a clue as to how she was supposed to complete this mission.
“The other half of what?” she wondered aloud. “If I just knew what the stupid bracelet was talking about, I would so be on this.” She knew what the phrase meant of course. Her father had used it on more than one occasion and it was never in a positive light. Kate didn’t like the way most people with money treated those who didn’t have any. She was better than that.
It was this line of thinking that lead to Wasp checking in on homeless shelters and watching over the squatters who slept in subway tunnels or dark alleys. These actions produced no discernable result so obviously the poor and downtrodden weren’t part of the “other half” the Tallus spoke of. Currently, she was heading into the high-class part of the city. She would’ve flown right past it had not the bank alarm gone off and alerted her to the robbery in progress. Wasp stopped short and banked towards the sound of the alarm. As she came upon the bank, she saw someone fly out of the building clutching a bag of cash.
“Might as well help out,” decided Kate, giving chase in an effort to catch the robber. She noticed that the perpetrator was female and sported wings like hers. She wondered just who exactly the girl was.
The robber looked over her shoulder and saw Wasp on her tail. Her hand glowed white-hot before she discharged an energy blast at the Exile member that was eerily familiar. Kate shrunk down to avoid the blast, cutting right to go through an open window and into an apartment building. She zipped out of another open window and fired a sting blast downward at her prey. The robber used the same tactic to avoid the blast, shrinking down to evade it before returning to normal size. Wasp muttered under her breath and managed to catch up to the costumed girl enough to grab one of her wings. She yanked the mystery villain backwards and received a sting blast in her face for her trouble. She retaliated with one of her own that clipped the other girl’s wings and sent her spiraling to the street below. She could tell the robber was wearing a helmet that covered her face entirely so there was no chance of recognizing her.
“Who the hell are you?” asked the unknown girl, her voice altered by the equipment in her helmet. “You some kinda wannabe trying to copy my look?”
“Name’s Wasp,” replied Wasp. “I’m from out of town.” She sped towards the girl but the girl met her halfway, grappling with her in mid-air.
“You can’t be Wasp,” stated the girl. “There hasn’t been a Wasp since Janet Van Dyne.”
“Then what the hell are you?” countered Wasp, the two of them kicking and clawing at each other.
“Yellowjacket,” retorted the girl before kicking Wasp away from her and hitting her with a sting blast. “You make me drop this score and I’ll take your head off. You have no idea how much I need this money.”
“More than the people you stole it from need it?” asked Wasp, taking the sting blast and then zipping upwards to avoid another. She darted through the air, shrinking in size to conceal her movements from Yellowjacket. She zigzagged her way through the sting bolts and returned to normal size just as she delivered an uppercut to Yellowjacket’s jaw.
Yellowjacket grabbed Wasp’s fist before the Exile’s follow-up punch could connect. She drove her knee in Wasp’s gut and then backhanded her across the jaw before trying to get away. Wasp clipped the sack Yellowjacket was carrying with a sting blast and smiled while the money tumbled out of the bottomless bag. Kate tried to close the distance but Yellowjacket threw the empty bag into her face to momentarily blind her. Yellowjacket blasted Wasp with a sting bolt that took her to the street.
As she fell, Wasp let out a sting bolt that clipped Yellowjacket’s already injured wing and both girls found themselves lying on the concrete of an alley. Wasp groggily shook her head and got back to her feet, using her flying ability to close the distance between her and Yellowjacket. To her credit, Yellowjacket tried to fly away but her wing was too damaged. That didn’t mean she was defenseless though. She grabbed Wasp’s arm and wrenched it behind her back in a hammerlock. She slammed her helmeted head into the back of Kate’s head and knocked the Exile silly. Wasp managed to get her fingers onto the latch at the bottom of the helmet and unclipped it even as she fell forward and separated from Yellowjacket. She turned and fired a sting that knocked the helmet off of Yellowjacket’s head though thankfully her head remained attached to her body.
“Now let’s see how ugly you are under that . . .,” began Wasp as she spun on her heel and pounced on her prone opponent. She couldn’t finish her sentence though because what she saw under that helmet was too surreal to comprehend.
“Kinda like looking in a mirror, huh?” inquired Yellowjacket, looking back at Wasp with the face of Kate Bishop. Neither of them said anything for a few seconds.
“You can’t be me,” declared Wasp, the shock still evident in her voice. “I would never do something like this. I’m not a criminal!”
“Funny, I used to say the same thing,” retorted Yellowjacket before blasting Wasp off of her and hurriedly putting her helmet back on. She scooped up some of the loose stacks of cash and shot into the air, her flight path wobbly due to her injured wing.
Wasp wanted to pick up the chase again but she was too stunned to move. It wasn’t possible. Sure, she had been through some dark times in her life with her addiction and everything but she couldn’t become that. She was a hero, not a criminal. It wasn’t possible. She refused to believe it. Kate felt the rage well up inside her. She held herself to high standards and when she screwed up she was always quick to blame herself.
“See how the other half lives, huh?” she asked the empty alley. “Fine then, Tallus. Let’s look into that mirror one more time and see what happens.”
Calvary Cemetery, Queens
It didn’t take him long to find out the information he needed. William Baker had picked up a lot of tricks in his time as both a criminal and a hero. He was surprised that things were the same in this reality as they were in his own. No matter what reality you called home, Floyd Baker was still a low-level thief and thug who abandoned his wife and his three-year-old son. That night still haunted Sandman because it was that night that truly changed his life. Will’s life took a different turn without his father. He got into fights at school, got into some dirty business that no teenager should’ve involved himself in. Will turned his life around in the end but he always wondered what would’ve happened had he grown up with a father who made a decent, honest living. Would he even have become the Sandman if his father stuck around?
In his reality, Sandman’s father still lived though he was serving a number of life sentences in prison. In this reality, however, Floyd Baker was dead and had been for many years. It gave Sandman an interesting opportunity. He hadn’t seen or spoken to his father since the stint they served in the same prison before he obtained his powers. He never told his father who he really was, preferring instead to use the alias of “Flint Marko” that he had since discarded permanently. Now here he was a world away about to have a conversation with his father who wasn’t even alive and wasn’t even his father. Still though, with a momentary lull in the action it seemed best to take the opportunity when it came along.
“Bet you don’t recognize me, do you?” Sandman asked the marble slab that marked his father’s final resting place. “Did I use my real name when I met you, Dad? Did I even meet you in this world at all?” There were, of course, no answers to these questions. He didn’t expect there to be.
Will thought about bringing flowers. He did that often for his mother’s grave but his mother was the one who stayed. His mother was the one who stuck around even when she shouldn’t have because God knows her son was a huge pain in the ass. Sandman never got a chance to straighten things out with his mother. He never got to show her the man he turned into. It pissed him off but he knew his mother was proud of him. His father was an exactly opposite story.
“You made a huge mess of your family,” stated Sandman. “You could’ve stayed. You could’ve been a real man and toughed it out. You were nothing but a coward, Dad, nothing but a two-bit thug and a coward.”
He felt his fist harden into sandstone as he clenched it and fought the urge to raise it and tear the headstone asunder. William Baker made himself into a good man but inside there was still that angry, sad kid who watched his father walk out of his life forever. He never really let that anger and that sadness go even when he decided to break the cycle and become something more than his father ever could’ve been.
“Wish you could see me now,” he admitted to the silent slab of stone. “You know what I think about every time I’m out there on the streets busting my ass? You know what I think about every time I see some young punk looking to make the big score? I think about you, Dad. I think about how all I ever wanted to do was meet you and talk to you and understand why. Then I met you and I talked to you but I never understood why. I still don’t understand why and I never will. I got my own family, Dad. I made myself a good family and a good life. I did everything you could never do for me and Mom. I just wanted you to know that.”
He could feel himself starting to cry a little but that feeling faded as he squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists even tighter. He felt his entire body become hardened sand and his heart hardened along with it. He had his family now and he built his future on solid ground rather than shifting sand.
“I think about leaving them sometimes,” he confessed. “When things get tough, I think about running out on my family. I guess I got that from you, Dad, but I’ve come too far to run away now. I’m everything you could never be and every day I wake up in the morning trying to prove to the rest of the world that I will never be you. That’s all I came to say to you.”
He turned his back on his father’s grave but in more ways than one the man in the coffin was never a father to him. He needed to regroup with the rest of his team, his family, and find a place to settle down for the night. None of them knew exactly how much time they had before Kate completed the mission and they moved on to some other world.
The Bowery, Manhattan
“Yer jokin’ right?”
Samuel Guthrie had seen some crazy things in his time as an X-Man. He had been to Limbo, Asgard, and everywhere in between. It wasn’t a huge stretch of his imagination to think about alternate realities, to think about his life turning out differently because of different decisions. This, however, was a little too surreal for him to imagine.
“All true, Sam,” admitted Husk, looking across the table from him.
The two siblings from different realities had decided that the dingy, noisy club was no place for their unusual reunion so they retired to a coffee shop nearby where they could talk. Husk knew her teammates wouldn’t mind her absence and she needed this. She couldn’t believe he was sitting across from her in the flesh. The only difference between looking at him now and her memories of him was that he was, of course, older now. Other than that, he was the same big brother she remembered. She, on the other hand, was apparently not the Paige Guthrie that this Sam had come to know and love in his own reality. All it took was one decision to set things down a completely different path. It was really amazing when she thought about it. How many decisions did the average person make it one day, one year, one lifetime? The possibilities were truly endless.
“Yer really a Hellion?” inquired Sam, looking at this person who was his sister and yet not his sister.
It made no sense to him either. In his reality, Emma Frost was a prominent member of the Hellfire Club and the Hellions were bitter rivals of the New Mutants. Sure, Frost had mended her ways later in life but only after her Hellions were brutally slaughtered. Sam still remembered how evil Frost was and he couldn’t understand why his sister of all people would put her trust in someone like that.
“Ah didn’t have another choice, Sam,” she explained to him. “It was either that or Ah work at Uncle Luke’s shop fer tha rest o’ mah life. Miss Frost is givin’ me a top-notch education and it don’t cost Momma too much.”
“There’s always a catch with her, Paige,” warned Sam. “Not ta mention this crazy outfit ya got yerself involved in right now.”
“Sam, Ah don’t wanna have this conversation,” admitted Paige. “I haven’t seen ya since . . . since the accident. I’ve missed ya.” It was the only thing she ever wanted to tell him ever since they pulled his body out of the collapsed mine shaft that claimed not only his life but their father’s life as well.
“Ah’m sorry yer brother passed on,” he apologized. “Musta been hard on Momma and tha kids. Yer a strong gal, Paige. If anyone kept ’em straight, I woulda wanted it ta be you. Dad woulda wanted tha same thing.”
“Ya have no idea how scared Ah am,” she told him. “Ah just wanna go home, Sam. Ah just wanna go back ta school and make Momma proud and you proud and Daddy proud and . . .”
She choked out some tears and couldn’t finish her sentence. She talked tough in a fight because she had to. She acted like she was better than everyone else because she was always the one everyone else belittled. On the inside, she was as soft as any human being despite whatever hard shell she wore as her skin.
“Momma and Dad taught us ta do tha right thing,” he reminded her, reaching his hand across the table and gripping hers. He squeezed it and smiled as she smiled and wiped her eyes. “Ah know you’ll do that when it counts, Paige. It don’t matter what reality yer from or what happened in yer life. Yer still Paige and yer still my sister and Ah know yer a good person underneath it all.”
Somewhere in the Bronx
She felt like she wanted to throw up. Was that the point of this mission, to make her relive every single terrible thing in her life she had buried long ago? Kate Bishop tried to shake the sickly feeling she felt as she watched the apartment window from her perch on a nearby rooftop. It was going to happen tonight. She knew her former routine. The second she got the craving and had the cash on her, she had to go see her dealer. Being an addict was more work than everyone thought. Everyone thought that all it took was a simple exercise of willpower and you could kick your habit. Kate knew differently from personal experience. When the chemicals in your brain were telling you that you needed a hit, you needed that hit more than anything else in the world. You needed it more than sex, more than food, more than sleep, and even more than breathing.
“C’mon,” she muttered under her breath and it all felt eerily familiar to her.
This was the same dealer she scored from back in her reality. Some things, the important things, never changed no matter what reality you called home. Kate knew herself now, perhaps better than she ever wanted to. If this guy was Yellowjacket’s dealer, she would come to him as soon as she could. Wasp smiled to herself as she saw someone flying over to the window and opening it with a barely controlled frenzy that only an addict could possess. It was going to happen tonight, unless of course she was there to stop herself.
“Wouldn’t want to keep myself waiting,” said Wasp ruefully as she rose into the air and flew towards the window. She shrunk down and managed to get inside the room just before the window closed after Yellowjacket let go of it.
“You can’t just roll up in here in the damn middle o’ the night,” stated the dealer, looking at Yellowjacket without even batting an eye at the girl’s costume. “I got channels and shit, girly. You come bustin’ in here whenever ya want and I could get the five-oh on my ass in a heartbeat if you ain’t careful.”
“I don’t give a damn,” retorted Yellowjacket. “I got the money now give me what I need.”
Wasp studied the evil version of herself as objectively as one could when faced with the girl in the mirror. She knew she had to move quick so as to not let the situation get out of hand. She had to pretend this was some other person she was busting. She had to pretend she wasn’t fighting against herself.
“I’m out till I get more from my supplier,” explained the dealer. “You gimme a down payment and I’ll get your shit. You know I’m always good for it.”
“You’re holding out,” decided Yellowjacket, the energy of her sting welling up in her hands. “You gimme those pills or I’ll take ’em and things’ll get ugly.”
“Do I really sound like that?” asked Wasp, returning to normal size and stinging Yellowjacket in the back of the head. “I mean be honest with me and with yourself when you answer that.”
Yellowjacket staggered from the sting and fell to the floor. That gave Wasp the opening she needed to further contain the situation. She stung the dealer enough to knock him out before he could yell to any of his neighbors or, worse yet, call the police. After that was done, she turned to see Yellowjacket getting back to her feet.
“Why are you trying to ruin my life?” she asked the Exile. “I was fine before you had to come along. C’mon then, gimme some sanctimonious speech about how much better you are than me because you obviously took the high road.”
“We both know you wouldn’t believe a word of it,” reminded Wasp. “I don’t want to fight with myself any more than I have to. I got clean, Kate, and you can too. Just turn yourself in and break the cycle.”
“I was clean,” retorted Yellowjacket bitterly. “I did a stint in rehab and thought it worked. I worked hard to become what I always wanted to be but the Young Avengers didn’t think I was good enough. That’s when I stopped caring what everyone else wanted. You have no idea how good it feels to fall off the wagon and not get back on. You have no idea how good it feels to get that hit again when you’ve gone for so long without it.”
“You have no idea what I know about,” stated Wasp. She knew exactly what it felt like because the second that Goblin formula slid down her throat she felt the craving all over again.
“I know you better than you think,” promised Yellowjacket, raising her glowing hand and pointing it at the dealer. “You let me finish my business or else I’ll blow his head off. You really want that on your conscience?”
“That’s funny you say that about knowing me really well,” chuckled Wasp, her hand moving to the dresser beside her and pulling open one of the drawers. She took a bottle of pills out of the drawer after a few seconds of rummaging and both girls knew exactly what the pills were. “I know where he always keeps his emergency stash. Assuming he wasn’t lying about being out, this is all the MGH he has right now. You let him go and turn yourself in or I incinerate it right now. How bad do you want that hit, Kate?”
“Guess I’ll just take your head off instead,” snarled Yellowjacket, flying towards Wasp without warning.
The two girls collided with one another and crashed through the window. They hit the pavement and the bottle of pills slipped out of Wasp’s grip. It clattered and rolled across the concrete and Yellowjacket immediately scrambled after it. Wasp grabbed her evil twin by the hair and yanked her backwards before hitting her in the jaw. She turned and made a dash for the pills, trying to convince herself it was only to keep it away from Yellowjacket and not to satisfy her own craving. The bottle rolled out into the street and traffic was still going even at this late hour. Wasp fired a sting blast at the ground with pinpoint accuracy, popping the bottle into the air before a car could run over it and crush the pills inside. She darted through the air to grab it but Yellowjacket slammed into her and made her miss. The two girls spun around in mid-air, clutching and clawing at each other. They traded blows before finally separating. Yellowjacket immediately dove for the ground and the errant bottle of pills.
“Give it up,” ordered Wasp as she gave chase one more time.
“You wouldn’t,” replied Yellowjacket, scooping up the bottle. “This is the only thing in my life that’s worth anything. You and I both know that.”
Wasp never got to retort and even if she had, the sound would’ve been lost in the screech of tires and the honk of a horn. Yellowjacket looked up, still in the air though only inches off the ground, to see the glare of headlights. An oncoming car hit her and sent her sailing through the air. She hit the pavement and bounced, skidding across it before coming to a stop. Wasp immediately flew to her side and stared at her in disbelief. In her bloody and battered fingertips, Yellowjacket still hung onto the bottle of MGH pills for dear life.
“That’s the difference between us,” said Wasp. “I let go and you never could.”
“I don’t need a sermon from you,” rasped Yellowjacket. “You know you wanted it too. You know you miss the rush.”
Wasp didn’t respond. The police and the paramedics would be here eventually and Yellowjacket was too injured to escape. Wasp felt confident that things would work itself out from here. She took off into the night sky and flew towards the team’s designated meeting point. She estimated it was a few hours until morning. Inside, she was a nervous wreck. She had looked into the mirror too hard and now she didn’t know exactly what she was looking at. Could she really have turned out like that? Was she really hanging by that thin of a thread? Those were questions for another night. Right now she could use a few precious hours of sleep.
“Where’s Kate?”
No one had an answer for that question. The rest of the Exiles had gathered at their meeting spot. According to Sister Grimm, the Tallus said that the mission was over and that they were about to leave for the next reality.
“Didn’t see her all night, boss,” said Daredevil, answering Sandman’s question to the best of his ability.
Sandman and Goblin were both about to say something when a rustling noise caught everyone’s attention. A trashcan tipped over and everyone realized Wasp was curled up behind it and that the movement created when she came out of her shrunken form was the cause of it toppling in the first place.
“Did you sleep there?” asked Goblin in disbelief.
“Yeah,” admitted Wasp, stretching her aching limbs and flitting over to the rest of the group. “I just had to remind myself what rock bottom felt like. Can we leave now? I’d really like to go anywhere that’s not here.”
Next Issue: The Exiles travel to the next world gone wrong and go up against . . . The Runaways?
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