Starting from Scratch

Sylvie had no idea where she was. Only that, for the moment, it was quiet.

Admittedly she tested that with something of a yell of frustration, and was very relieved when there was no answer, but even so.

She’d been putting together a fairly competent wardrobe, and no wit was gone – the TVA would have erased all the variant clothes from the timeline by now. All she had was…

She crouched, seeing what she’d been able to hook around her foot. Jessica’s shirt and jeans; a decent start, she supposed. Looking around guardedly, Sylvie hastily pulled them on, then straightened. No underwear, no shoes, but it was better than nothing.

She screamed again, her magic momentarily flickering. Things had been going well for a bit; her body was still humming from just how well things had gone with Ava. And now she had barely any clothes to her name, nor an abandoned world to call home.

Which, admittedly, happened. She never liked going back to the same world again, for fear the TVA was monitoring it closer. Maybe it was superstition, but she’d gotten this far by being paranoid.

Briefly, she wondered if there was anything she could do about Ava. It didn’t seem it; she was at the TVA already, and storming the place singlehandedly was suicide.

There was a buzzing by her head. She vaguely waved her hand, annoyed – it figured, of all the worlds to end up on, it’d be one with bugs.

The place looked fairly plain anyway. She was in some kind of cul-de-sac, the walls indicating artificiality, so there probably were people somewhere. Still, she could catch her breath and plan.

Find another world to hide on. There had to be a better way than deserted worlds to hide, but until she found it, she was stuck here.

More buzzing. Sylvie groaned again. She vainly tried swatting.

The first order of business was finding a new base. Collecting clothes wouldn’t help her until she had somewhere to put them. Though – she shifted, uncomfortably – underwear wouldn’t go amiss.

She took a step forwards. The buzzing stopped, and suddenly there was a fully-sized person in front of her in some kind of mechanical suit. Sylvie blinked.

“I see today’s going to be one of those days,” Sylvie muttered.

“What is this?” the person in the suit said; she took off her helmet, revealing a woman with long, slightly curled dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail. “What did you do? Where are we?”

“No idea. Who are you?” Sylvie said, annoyed.

“I followed you,” the woman said. “I thought you were with Ghost. I shrank and followed you, and ended up… what was that? Some kind of quantum bridge?”

Followed… Sylvie paused.

“You’re human?” Sylvie said.

“Are you not?” the woman said, suddenly guarded. Sylvie sighed in relief.

“That’s a relief then,” Sylvie said.

“What?” the woman said.

“Underwear,” Sylvie said, and grabbed the woman’s arm.

The enchantment was unsurprisingly easy. Her name was Hope, her suit allowed her to shrink, and she’d used it to surreptitiously approach; when Sylvie had opened the portal, she’d taken it to be a way into some cloaked area or some such, and hadn’t expected the result.

Sylvie couldn’t help but blush as she realized just how much hope had witnessed. In a way, it was only fair to enchant Hope to unpeel her costume, slipping out of each mechanical part, unzipping the tight jumpsuit.

She was in only underwear underneath; it was either too hot or too tight for wearing other clothes beneath, it seemed. Not that Sylvie had much use for anything else yet.

The shrinking suit was tempting, but Sylvie wasn’t about to trust her life to unknown Midgardian technology.

She would, however, take the dark navy bra and boyshorts that Hope so eagerly offered. Sylvie snatched them in one hand, but entered new coordinates into her TemPad before stripping to put them on.

She’d already kicked the suit through the portal (not to use it, more to keep Hope from having it – she felt like being petty) when Hope emerged from the enchantment and yelped. With her underwear, Sylvie slipped through to another time, only taking one last look back at the newly nude heroine, left who-knows-where until the TVA picked her up.

Sylvie had, with the extra time, used the coordinates to locate another apartment on Earth. It was familiar, more than anything. She could dress, then work on finding an empty world.

The room she ended up in was fairly simple. There was a bare table, a few plates over to one side, and an adjoining spartan bedroom; Sylvie gave it a quick look around, making sure it was empty; she looked out of the kitchen window onto a ramshackle, warm colored city, before closing the blind.

Then she took off her shirt and pants, laying them over the worktop, and lifted up Hope’s underwear to redress more completely. First the snug pantie-shorts, a little tight but comfortable. Then the bra – tight as well, though at least not nearly as egregious as when all she’d had on was underwear.

Then it was time for the clothes she’d stolen from Jessica. There was something faintly encouraging about having on more than just the outermost layer. It felt almost decent again.

Out of curiosity, she looked around the apartment she was in. It was hard to get a feel for Midgardian norms admittedly, but it was definitely a fairly lacklustre place; it reminded her more of her hide-aways from the TVA than any home.

Apparently people used similar things on Earth. She didn’t know how she felt about that.

It had been…. easier than she’d expected to bond with a human. Until the TVA had come down on their heads. No, better not to think about it; Sylvie shook out the jeans, and stepped into them, lone leg after another.

It was when she was straightening the shirt, locating the arms and holes, that the door burst open.

“Freeze!”

“Hold your fire!”

There was a sudden cacophony of conflicting voices, and half a dozen or so people appeared crowded around the door to the apartment, primitive weapons raised and pointed at Sylvie.

She was still in the form-hugging jeans and the constrictive bra, pushing up and emphasizing her exposed cleavage; both her arms were in front of her, slim and told, still holding the shirt at a distance.

She jumped; she turned, to try and hold the shirt over her, and several people apparently got itchy trigger-fingers. Bullets rushed past; they were no physical threat to her, given her species, even if they did sting a little. For a shirt she’d taken from a human, though; Sylvie grimaced, half a dozen holes peppered into the loose-fitting garment before someone yelled for them to stop.

“You’re not the target,” someone said. A woman, by the sound of it. “No one else should have access to this safehouse.”

Sylvie raised an eyebrow. She slowly tried to draw her shirt closer, stalling more than being afraid.

“Don’t move!”

“I need to put my shirt on,” Sylvie said, as if talking to someone exceptionally stupid.

“Drop it!”

“Excuse me?” Sylvie said.

“We don’t know what that is. Drop it. Hands above your head.”

“Oh, this is pointless,” Sylvie said.

The TemPad was on the far side of the table; they hadn’t shot at it yet. To make sure they didn’t, she’d want to put herself between it and them. Just had to get there.

Too many to enchant, and the TVA was due any second.

Sylvie took a slow step forwards; guns shifted.

“Who are you? Drop it!” another shout.

Of all the places she could end up in, of course it was the home of someone that was being hunted by some rather dubious figures. Couldn’t get a break, could she?

Then, having cleared the table, she ran, balling her shirt up in one hand while she didn’t have time to get into it. Gunfire rained out.

“How are you people missing?!”

They weren’t. The sting was more annoying than painful, but she felt the bullets bounce off of her as she crossed to the other side of the table. She stabbed at it to open a random portal, held it in the same hand as her shirt, and sprinted through.