I should've known I'd mess something up. It's what I did best back in my old life — brilliant on paper, catastrophic in execution. But I never expected my last experiment to end me. One moment, I was cataloging a quantum anomaly in my lab, sipping cold coffee like a proper over-caffeinated genius, and the next… darkness swallowed me whole.
And then, nothing.
No lab. No blinking fluorescent lights. No smell of burnt circuits and despair. Just silence. A silence so profound it screamed in my skull. I felt weightless, untethered. And then, a heartbeat — not mine, but definitely mine, faster, younger, brimming with potential I didn't recognize.
I opened my eyes.
The world was red. Everything felt… different. My hands looked delicate, almost fragile, and yet there was a strange warmth, a raw energy pulsing beneath my skin. I flexed my fingers experimentally. Sparks of… something — magic? — flickered at my fingertips.
Magic.
Wait. That wasn't supposed to happen. I'm a scientist, not a sorceress. And yet, somehow, I knew the truth immediately: I wasn't me. Not entirely.
I was Wanda. Wanda Maximoff.
Of course. That explained the red eyes staring back at me from the mirror. That explained the absurdly familiar, yet impossibly youthful body. That explained the overwhelming sense of potential — and danger — thrumming through me.
And the timing… oh, the timing.
Tony Stark had just been kidnapped. The world was about to pivot into chaos, and I, nerd extraordinaire, had been given a front-row seat — in Wanda's body, no less.
A grin tugged at my lips. "Well, this is new," I muttered to my reflection. "Not that I needed another life crisis, but hey, free superpowers and a whole MCU to play with? Sure, why not."
I flexed my fingers again, sending a small swirl of red energy across the room. It hit the wall with a satisfying crackle. Science met magic. I could already feel my IQ humming in tandem with these powers. This wasn't just Wanda Maximoff. This was Wanda… but smarter. Much smarter. Dangerous, even.
The possibilities were dizzying. I could prevent tragedies before they happened. I could bend the world to my intellect and… maybe even rewrite history itself.
And I was going to.
But first, I needed to learn how to walk in these boots.