Embarrassment saves the day

Exterior shot. The black and white streets of the idyllic neighbourhood. Two new characters. While their hair just looks like a shade of grey, it’s easy to identify one as a blonde, and one with black hair. For a moment, a tricky of the light has the blonde in some kind of suit, and the other in something far more ornate indeed; it doesn’t last.

Soon their clothes better fit the period. A thorny crown shifted to slightly ragged hair, pants became a skirt, which became a neatly floral dress. A sturdy gauntlet turned to delicate mitten, and baubles that shone through even in the monochrome fell forgotten on the grass.

A momentary flicker of confusion on their faces faded, and they got up. Each walked a different way, slowly stumbling into a role.

Sylvie made it a few steps before waving at a passing car. It was old-fashioned, of course, but it still trundled to a halt.

“Hello!” Sylvie said, with uncharacteristic cheerfulness.

The driver opened the door, leaning out to talk back to her.

“Can I help you, miss?” the driver said.

“I hope so!” Sylvie said. “Me and my sister are just visiting Westview. Do you know if there’s an inn or B&B anywhere near?”

“You can rent a place two streets down that way,” the driver said, gesturing back. “Can’t miss it.”

“Thank you!” Sylvie said.

She beamed with all the cheese and perk of a character on a 50s sitcom as the driver closed the door and drove away. Unfortunately, as the door shut, it caught on a trailing strand of Sylvie’s dress.

There was a loud tearing, and the car continued down the street unabated, grey fabric trailing behind it. A second later, and Sylvie looked down at herself and yelped. Her underwear was old-fashioned and bulky, but certainly nothing that should be left out in the open air; she flushed, and awkwardly held her arms over her front, more drawing herself inwards than actually being able to cover much more.

She looked up and down the street, rooted in place, seeing nothing else with which she could cover her half-bared form. Sylvie bit her lip.

“Oh fiddlesticks,” she said.

“It’s quite simple,” Agnes said with a perpetual grin.

The Maximoff kitchen was somewhat of a mess. Still, she and Wanda stood in the middle of it like nothing was amiss, Wanda looking slight frazzled. (If one had watched the rest of the episode, then one would know of the looming dinner plot).

“It is?” Wanda said doubtfully, her eyes going exaggeratedly wide. You could almost hear canned laughter.

“Meat, vegetables, potato are the key ingredient of any meal,” Agnes said wisely. “Every housewife needs to know how to cook. Appropriate meats are beef, pork, and lamb if you really went to push the boat out - and it’s always got to be vegetables, never fruit. Tomatoes are a vegetable. Exceptions include apple if you’re serving pork, and maybe peach with beef.”

She rattled it all off in a matter of seconds, Wanda’s expression turning more and more overwhelmed. She was almost relieved at the sudden crashing sound from outside.

Quickly, Wanda evaded the conversation, opening the door that went from the kitchen to the garden, to look for the source of the sound. There was a slightly damaged fence, a small shrub flattened, and very notably a woman lying face-down in the middle of the grass. Her bra was tangled up in the bush behind her, and her panties appeared to have been snagged on the fence, and were lying several meters away.

Agnes peered over Wanda’s shoulder. She raised an eyebrow, to see their new, nude guest.

“Well, speaking of peaches,” Agnes quipped.

Sylvie vaguely heard canned laughter again as she slowly pushed herself up. It was a second before she realised that she’d lost even her underwear, and a few more seconds before she decided where to put her arms, awkwardly shuffling from pose to pose before eventually settling on one across her breasts, and one over her lap.

She blushed.

“S-sorry,” Sylvie stammered. “I didn’t want to stay in on the street, I didn’t mean to…”

“Oh, come in, please, you’ll catch your ****,” Wanda said.

She gestured, trying to invite the blonde; Sylvie, flushing, pushed herself to her feet and stumbled in after Wanda, awkwardly fidgeting behind her arms. Agnes watched, unhelpful and amused.

“Let’s get you something to wear,” Wanda said. “My husband shouldn’t be back for a few more minutes. Poor dear.”

Wanda, with a careful hand on the small of Sylvie’s back, guided her through the kitchen. Sylvie had just stumbled into the main room when the front door opened, and Vision, his boss, and his boss’s wife appeared in the doorway.

There was a long pause. Sylvie yelped, and darted up the stairway, face bright red. Wanda hesitated.

“Well,” Visions’s boss’s wife said. “I’ve heard of being underdressed for a dinner party, but this is ridiculous.”

Canned laughter blotted out the sound of Sylvie’s squeak.

The talent show was in the square in the middle of Westview, several chairs set up and filled with most of the residents of the town. Sticking out among them was a newcomer - a woman with very dark hair, and tinted glasses, slouching back in her chair with the casual vibe of someone confident she was the coolest person in the room. She was also, notably, completely naked.

Those in Westview might call her Helen. Outside of Westview, she’d be known by Hela, though it was hard to recognize the intimidating goddess of **** in the woman comfortably lounging back in her seat, long legs crossed, bare thigh lifted to unconsciously show more of her butt, and her breasts unconsciously framed by her arm as she lifted the provided menu, perusing the snacks on offer at the show.

She seemed quite comfortable, despite the stares. It was only a bare arm waving at her from behind the curtain on-stage that drew her attention. Hela frowned, looking up over the top of the menu.

There was another wave, a bare arm sticking out from the side of the curtain. A moment later, and a flushed, blonde head poked out, looking fervently at Hela; she waved frantically, beckoning her over. Hela raised an eyebrow.

Then, deliberately, patiently, Hela put her menu down, and slowly stood up. She walked, still nude, through the tables, and up around backstage, not blinking once.

Sylvie was squirming behind the curtain, an arm over her breasts and a hand over her core, as naked as Hela. Hela raised an eyebrow.

“Well one of us is going to have to change,” Hela remarked.

“Helen! Shush!” Sylvie said. Beet-red, her eyes darted around. “I know you have your… thing.”

“Clothing is a scam invented by companies to get more use out of fabric and encourage women to take up needlework, and propagated by a government that wants us to neatly order and label ourselves into subversives and sheep and I refuse to participate,” Hela said smoothly.

“Yes, well, that,” Sylvie muttered. She continued, frantic. “I’m not that! I was on my way over here and my skirt turned out to be too loose, and then a bird tore my shirt and I… I was too far from home so I ran here.”

“And the lack of underwear?” Hela said. Sylvie blushed.

“I don’t have any left,” she mumbled. “Lost my last pair after that mishap at the Jones’s.”

“Huh. Thought you’d finally have taken my advice,” Hela said.

“Helen! You’re not helping!” Sylvie said.

“Well what do you want me to do, dear sister?” Hela said, somewhat sarcastically. “I don’t carry any of… those things with me.”

“I know! But I can’t go out there like this,” Sylvie said. She fidgeted, stumbling on the spot. “Can you get, I don’t know, a spare tablecloth?”

“A tablecloth?” Hela said skeptically,

“It’s better than this!” Sylvie said.

As if to make a point, she lifted her hand, flashing her bare breasts; she meant to snatch it back immediately, content she’d punctuated her sentence well enough.

Instead, her hand got tangled in a rope; when she tried to pull it back, she merely yanked the rope.

The curtain she’d been hiding behind drew open in a breath. Sylvie blinked, turned, and stared to see all of Westview staring right back at her.

She squeaked. Then lifted her other hand to try and free the first, revealing her core for a few seconds before finally getting free, and almost falling over herself to run off-stage.

Hela waited where she was. She paused, lifting an eyebrow.

“So undignified,” she said. Then, absently, turned and walked down off the stage to once more take her seat naked.

Sylvie was making her way down the street, a potted plant her only source of modesty. It seemed to happen to her a lot. Freshly in vibrant colour, the blonde awkwardly shimmied, holding a flowerpot over her core and keeping the leafy plant over her breasts with constant adjustments from her chin.

The sides of her body were left exposed, as were her legs, with very little to disguise the fact she was still completely naked.

“Yoo hoo!”

At the sound of someone calling her, Sylvie jumped, dropping the flowerpot. It shattered on the street below. Sylvie made a high-pitched noise, and crouched by Agnes’ white picket fence, awkwardly shuffling and twisting to try an hide what she could behind the planks of wood.

From within the garden, Agnes waved at her.

“Need any help there?” Agnes said.

At the offer, Sylvie looked back over her shoulder, then nervous hurried through the gate and in through Agnes’ open door. Smiling a little smugly, Agnes went in after her, closing the door with a wave of her hand.

“Er, thank you,” Sylvie said. “Can I borrow a jacket? I’ll return it as soon as I get home and get changed. Assuming my sister hasn’t thrown out all my clothes again anyway.”

“In a moment,” Agnes said. She tilted her head. “I have a sense for when people don’t quite fit. You’ve caught my eye, for more reasons than just the obvious.”

“Excuse me?” Sylvie said.

“I have a song if it’ll help explain it,” Agnes said. She shrugged, and leaned in, touching her hand to Sylvie’s head. “But never mind. Just let me take a peek…”

Sylvie swayed for a moment, as Agatha looked into her head. Sylvie’s expression fell back to black seconds later though, with no scripted response to the situation.

“We’ve been here before,” Agatha mused. “Everyone’s erased from time, except naked women they assume to be variants? Ha, if I were a century younger…”

Sylvie blinked a couple of times, before her blush returned.

“Um. Can I borrow a jacket? I’ll return it as soon as I-” she began.

“Shh, shh,” Agatha said. “Just a few more questions. Then you can be on your way.”