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So, Billy comes to the sanctum to deliver news, his expression grave. "So, here's the thing, the Planners have been dealing with this… Oh, I should start at the beginning. We sorta have a superhero team to you know, do world-saving stuff. Called Contingency Plan. We're all basically powered young adults and the like. There's been this *weird stuff* going on, someone keeps kidnapping us, and we keep rescuing each other. First they got this friend of Lorna's named Seth, and we went to rescue him, then they sorta got Hope, then we went to rescue him, then they got *Tommy*, and we went and rescued him. Its… we're being set up to fight things for like an audience of some kind by this giant slug guy who seems to be called Mojo…"
*
Silence. Flat silence. At least from Strange's end of things. Glancing with exasperation between the young man and Wanda, he meets the Witch's eyes. She seems…unimpressed with this whole explanation so far — which has his Suspicious Radar pinging at high volume. The last time Billy showed up and told them an unexpected tale, she'd disappeared entirely for a goodly number of hours. She knows something. For now, however —
The Sorcerer holds out palms in the universal gesture of cessation as he huffs and growls, "Alright, alright, wait. Let me get this straight. We — I assume you and Tommy — " That name comes out with a curt enunciation that carries through the rest of his words, " — have a team called the Contingency Plan and you've been kidnapped multiple times, you had to rescue someone and then Hope and Tommy?!" Negative points for not telling the man that one of his sons was in trouble. Disbelief wars with a glower and he throws up said hands before turning and pacing away a few steps.
Then freezing up. "Wait a second. Mojo. You said Mojo?" His stride takes him close to Billy, not so much as to invade his personal space, but definitely to be solidly present before him with his Sorcerous aura tickling at Billy's senses. Prickly, staticky, clearly agitated.
*
Blink! That name appears to work, "Yes, I said Mojo." Billy eyes Strange being all close and intense and looks a bit worried about it, "I'm pretty sure he's from another dimension though I only really figured that out after this incident, which is why I'm here to tell you. Well that and they got Lorna. See…" He takes a deep breath and lets it out, "They keep setting us up. They somehow teleported all of us to this jungle place, and there was this guy, the Absorbing Man, who like appears to take on whatever he gets hit with, and this Mojo guy wanted us to fight it out. He grabbed Tommy and turned him flat to force us to agree. So, we fought him and then the Mojo guy turned him 3-D again and released him. And look here's me coming right to you to tell you first thing… but uh, during the event, I had a wormhole thrown up and Lorna went through it but someone put a portal *right behind* it so she fell into it and… vanished." He winces.
*
Strange's arms fold tighter still as he listens, a scalpel-edge to his attention that should make Billy a little worried. It's been useful enough to send interns and apprentices scrambling alike.
His eyebrows rise high on his head as the calculations fly; Lorna missing?! It's a fight to not interrupt the young man even though he's dying to turn around and make sure that Wanda isn't reaching for a boot knife even as she draws up a gate to the Witch Road. The cringe signals a pause and the Sorcerer quickly glances over his shoulder.
"«I will scry. It is a place to start.»" With that laconic response in Tibetan to his unspoken concern, the Witch excuses herself and walks from the room. With lips rolled, he watches her go and then lets out a slow sigh.
"If anyone can find Lorna, it's your mother. She has the ability to track by blood." His voice is low, tight. "How long ago?"
*
Billy takes to figiting. And scratching the back of his head, "A couple hours, no more. It took awhile to escape the cannibals and get back. This Mojo slug-dude seems to be pretty good at the whole magic thing, but that Absorbing Man opponent we had to fight was a willing participant. Something about being famous or some other nonsense like that." He grunts. Billy has absolutely no ambitions towards fame. "During our audition at the W-ILD studios when we were on Seth-rescuing — he's a friend of Lorna's — they seemed to be able to conjure and teleport things pretty easily. From cars to tanks. I, uh, originally was using my TK to pretend to be super-strong, not wanting to give away what I was actually capable of doing… but I caught the slug watching me *real close* while I threw up a wormhole so the cat's probably out of the bag." Pause, "Why would anyone ever put a cat in a bag?" he asks, puzzled.
*
The gate might be already on the tip of her tongue, and the summons to thin the wall to the natural world, a dimension between dimensions generally known only to Wanda's ilk manifested in the brain. She might as well be trusted to go stuff a honey roll and three tablespoons of honey into her mouth before the pair of them are done discussing matters, not that the wards are going to report there's now a circle of ivy and various mystical herbs growing of their own accord into the hallway and she summoned a hairbrush from somewhere.
Consider it damage control. Or "dad mage" control, because while one of them is acting, the other probably has to go calm a certain Erik Lensherr.
*
"Oh….gods," Strange groans behind his hands as he turns and walks away from Billy. The concern is about cats in a bag, not the fact that one of the most infuriatingly-persistent and wily interdimensional creatures known to the Sorcerer now knows that the young man can contort reality around him and gods only know if Lorna has spilled the beans about relations. It causes his blood to run icily. His hands slip back beyond his silver temples into his hair and remain there even as he looks back to Billy.
"Does Mojo know you are ours? You and Tommy?" Please, nooooo — no no no…
*
Billy blinks, furrows his brow, then shakes his head after thinking about it for a moment, "I don't see how he could possibly, we gave fake names and stuff when auditioning." He pauses, then adds, "Well he knows Tommy's my brother, but nothing else really about us that I can tell, not unless he has other sources." Another pause, and a tilt of his head, "Do you know this slug guy? He's sorta yellow, big, has this mechanical chair thinger—"
*
The relief is palpable even across the space between them, though it doesn't do much to melt away the tension in his body. The silvery wards snake around him once in a ribbon of flight before hovering in a concerned cloud at his shoulder. Perhaps Billy can feel the weight of their testing regard before it disappears, deeming him not the immediate cause of its master's state of agitation.
Strange's scarred hands drop only to disappear again beneath crossed arms; the ripple of fingertips along his bicep is noticeable as he looks to the ceiling, maybe in some silent prayer for sanity, before he closes his eyes again and interrupts Billy.
"Spineless, loud-mouthed, too many teeth in his smile?" He gives the young man a narrow side-glance, waiting for the other shoe to fall. If it's the same Mojo he's thinking of…joy of joys.
*
Billy has always found these semi-sentient puppy-wards to be a bit weird, so when they starts regarding him he figits some more. "I don't know about *spineless* but that sounds like him, and he was certainly…blob-y." he agrees, nodding slowly, "Enemy of yours?"
*
Fidgeting attracts the attention of the guard-spells and they spiral off to the other side of Strange's shoulders, sinuous in a delayed manner. Their regard returns, if only to ascertain why this familiar person is uncomfortable.
Their master notes this and mutters, "Get." It's terse and a bit rude, sure, but the wards take no affront. They simply flit away in the same direction as Wanda, perhaps to check upon her instead.
"I know of him," he replies to Billy. "Demand of the job of Sorcerer Supreme — keep out the crazies from other dimensions. So he's here? Great." There's the same amount of enthusiasm as for a root canal. "Right, okay." Back to pacing across the room a short distance, back and forth. "Your mother is off locating Lorna. I suspect she'll find at least her location shortly, if not Lorna herself. What is your team going to do in the meanwhile?"
*
"Well I can't make wormholes to other dimensions…" Largely because he doesn't think he can, "…so if she's stuck in another dimension, I don't know what to do next." Billy wrinkles his forehead, "I figure he grabbed her for the same reason he grabbed Tommy, though. To get us to 'perform' again. But we're not really… equipped for interdimensional havoc making. We've got a me, a speedster, a shapeshifter, a Lorna, an electricity shooter, and uhh… a whatever-er. I'm usually transport, but this is out of my league wormhole-wise. So I don't know if we can do anything but wait for the other shoe to drop, which is not in *any way* ideal or okay."
*
"No, it's not." Strange needn't say more — though he does add, "Tell me you're at least closing these wormholes." There's a sense of resigned pleading to the question. Never in the ever has the Sorcerer been able to convince the young man that it's a terrible idea to be opening veils between dimensions willy-nilly and that's without the reveal that Billy might not know how to close them.
*
"I… make sure they're closed before I leave them." says Billy a bit defensively, "They close on their own usually, reality's not supposed to be bent that way so it snaps back. But I don't leave them unattended until they are closed. Sometimes it just takes a bit of poking. Don't worry, I know better then to just leave reality swiss-cheesed."
*
A sigh and a nod. "Thank you, Billy." It comes from the bottom of his heart. "I'll sleep better tonight knowing that, at the very least."
At some clarion call from his Beloved, Strange turns his head and listens. His eyes go steely and he looks back to Billy. "Your mother might have found something. Go — and keep us in the know. Don't do anything stupid," he adds, ever in Dad mode around the young man and his pale-haired brother.
*
"Me?" asks Billy with a sudden dimpled grin, innocence personified, "I'd never do anything stupid." One can practically see the halo shining over the good son's head.
*
Strange levels a knowing look at Billy. "That's cute. The grin does not help your case." Still, he smiles subtly back, sharing the ghost of those very same dimples borrowed in the younger man's features. "Lock the door when you go — or close the wormhole, whatever the choice you make." With that, he strides briskly from the room, intent on hearing the update from Wanda in-person.
*