Wanda had somehow found the time to get changed whilst battling Mephisto. Strange knew Loki had the power to change his clothes without trying, which he supposed was part of his conjuring/shapeshifting powers, but as far as he knew, Wanda had neither of these powers. Though he couldn't really think anything when they got closer and had a proper inspection of the fight against Mephisto.

And all he could think then was, wow, she looks cool.

Somehow her outfit had changed to a dark red, armour-like, sleeveless top, attached to dark combat leggings, made of maybe Kevlar, but more stylish, with knee-length high-heeled (but not ridiculously so) boots of the same dark red as the top. She had black fingerless gloves reaching to just above her elbows on, and a blood-red cape was attached to her waist. (Strange's cloak seemed to quiver as he noticed it.) A dark red headdress finished off the look, making a sort-of M shape, keeping her long flowing hair off her face. The outfit was almost disturbingly similar to one he knew belonged to a certain dark witch he'd researched about, but doubted that was anything to worry about.

She looked pretty epic, in other words.

However, he didn't have much time to register Wanda's new fashion choice before he had to dodge some of her magic that had just zipped towards him. Or maybe it was Mephisto's. Or maybe the wizards'.

He didn't even have chance to think, hey, who just sent that magic? before Wanda signalled she was going to start the spell by meeting his eyes and tapping her finger to her head and... er, her eyes started glowing?

He hardly had chance to register that before Loki pushed him out of the way before one of the demons ran him through from behind. Then Loki did a sort of mid-air flying kick and got the monster straight in the face. That was pretty sick.

Stephen used a magic shield to push away the monsters to buy Wanda some time. They were still pretty far from her and Mephisto, but now Strange could see Mephisto looked scared to death of them and Wanda – his face was so pale pink it was almost white, and compared to its normal scarlet red, that was an immensely noticeable change. The sight made him smile.

Then suddenly all the wizards that had been flying around trying to help the devil regained their senses. And their real heads.

As the wizards stopped still, half of them only just realising they were flying before nearly falling out of the sky, all of them looking completely bemused, Mephisto shouted in fury and regained his normal... red-ness?... and flew at Wanda, launching a new wave of attacks on her.

Strange was frightened for her, and felt himself start to float over to help. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder pull him around roughly, or that could have just been the combined effort of that and his cloak.

With reluctance, he looked away from Wanda and turned his attention to Loki, who had pulled him around. "Strange, remember the plan," Loki told him.

Strange looked around at the confused looking wizards and kept up his magic shields for a little longer. A lot of them were regarding the battle between Mephisto and Wanda, but Wong had noticed Stephen and was giving him a look of what the hell is going on here? (No pun intended.)

It was that which made him speak.

Bringing order to the chaos that was erupting around him.

Sort of.

"Wizards!" he shouted, hoping to draw the attention of everyone, and thankfully succeeding. Maybe it was the edge of fright in his voice that got their attention. It sure was noticeable. "All will be explained before long. If you are with me, go kill some monsters and leave that big red moron over there to me and my friends here. Are you with me?!"

He couldn't help that last exclamation. A tad over-dramatic... but hey, what you gonna do? It was a dramatic moment.

It was fortunate his wizard colleagues recovered from weird events quickly. Hey, they ate weird for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Their occupation was just straight out crazy. This wasn't the worst they'd faced.

Though Wong did stop by for a quick conversation. It went something like this:

W: What the hell is happening?

L: Good joke. Haha.

S: Loki shut up. Remember the hell casino thing earlier?

W: Hell casino?!

S: You were all possessed basically.

W: Possessed?!

S: Yeah he stole your soul and reanimated your body to do as he said.

W: Stole my soul?!

L: And we're secretly his minions and we're here on order to kill you all in violent way. Nothing personal.

W: WHAT?!

S: Loki stop being stupid. Er... you are joking, right?

L: Well duh. Mephisto is a ________ _____ _________.

S: Fair enough.

W: I'll... go help the wizards.

S: I promise I'll explain everything later. To everyone.

Sort of like that. But Stephen would explain everything later, if he survived Wanda's plan for battling Mephisto first.

About that...

"Are you going to help or not?" Wanda shouted at them, sounding very tense. She was using all her power to keep Mephisto at bay, who was pressing her even further with the whole fight and flight battle. "You know, after you've had your nice little chat maybe we can find a bit of time to worry about minor concerns like, oh I don't know, getting hell back off Earth?"

Mephisto laughed evilly before anyone could answer. "You puny mortals! You think you can just get rid of my realm with your own weak party tricks? Only the one in charge of hell has any control over it, and that person is me."

Loki rolled his eyes. "This guy is testing my patience. Trust me, if I could, my knife would already be embedded between your eyeballs Mephisto. And you would not be smirking like that right now."

Scott's voice crackled over the earpiece. "I'm really missing out. What are we doing now?"

"Duck!" Strange suddenly shouted, ducking his head before remembering he was in the air and a blast of fire missed his hair by about a centimetre.

Loki missed the next blast with milliseconds to spare, being forced to do some kind of weird backflip in the air to avoid it. It was probably the clumsiest thing Stephen had ever seen the god do – Loki had already told them with reluctance he wasn't the best flier out there. Strange could relate to that.

"Wanda, we need you to tell us what to do!" Loki shouted over at her, he and Strange diving about as Mephisto sent blasts of fire at them, Scott clinging to Loki's collar for fear of his life.

The battle was raging all around them, but Strange's magical shields mostly kept out any of the demons so Mephisto couldn't call for backup. But that was fine, because fighting Mephisto and dodging his fire was like fighting dozens of monsters at the same time.

"Also I thought she said he had no magic?!" Strange shouted.

"This isn't magic Strange," Loki corrected. "It's pyrokinesis, which is the manipulation of fire using the mind."

Smart-arse, Stephen thought. "Thought you didn't know anything about Mephisto, Loki?" he challenged.

"It's not hard to tell," Loki retorted. Stephen didn't think he'd heard the smart-arse comment. "Besides I literally have the opposite power myself."

"What's that?" asked Stephen, dodging the fire by doing a sort of funky disco dance move in mid air. Thank goodness no one was watching.

Out of the corner of his eye, Strange saw Loki frown slightly at him. It wasn't quite the look but it wasn't far off. His silent message said enough with the personal stuff. Out loud he shouted, "Wanda?! You got a plan or not?!"

They weren't even that far away from each other, so Stephen didn't know why everyone was shouting. But Wanda wasn't hearing them or just choosing to ignore them. But why would she ignore them?

Then, upon turning his head to look, he realised why she wasn't responding. Wanda wasn't there.

Before this fact could even compute with Stephen's brain, the onslaught of fire bolts suddenly stopped. He was floating in an upside down position, so Strange flipped himself back around (the cloak had been directing his flying – actually, yanking him around out of harm's way – for a while in a manner that was probably as clumsy as Loki) to upright himself again. He was having trouble comprehending what he was seeing.

Mephisto and Wanda had simply disappeared. Stephen and Loki were alone, still surrounded by the magical shields (which he'd put up to stop Mephisto from escaping or calling for backup). Loki was looking around, completely perplexed, much like Stephen suspected he was.

"Where did Wanda go?" asked Strange.

Loki shrugged, taking in the fact they were completely alone when they could've sworn things were seeming very claustrophobic earlier. "What's with the... er... fancy sparkles?"

"My shielding magic?" asked Stephen, a bit hurt. "It's not just some fancy sparkles-"

"No, not those fancy sparkles," Loki interrupted. He pointed towards a faint reddish glitter that was where Wanda and Mephisto had just been. "Those ones."

Strange looked at them for a moment. It was definitely Wanda's magic; with some sort of sensory powers he had from being a magician, he could tell with residual magic who it was from. Hm, he should ask Wanda and Loki about that at some point and see if they had the same ability. Stephen turned back to Loki and gasped as he noticed something.

"Loki, where's Scott?" he asked worriedly, noticing the tiny Ant-Man was no longer clinging to Loki's collar. He'd been replaced by a similar, smaller glow of residual magic.

Loki's eyes went wide as he saw that Scott wasn't there. He began searching through his pockets and everything, to see whether he might still be there, but Strange knew he wouldn't be. He just hoped desperately hoped that Wanda had teleported (Stephen assumed she had teleported) away from them with both Mephisto and Scott. But why? And why not tell Strange and Loki?

Loki stopped checking his pockets, unsuccessful in his search for Scott. "Strange, take the shields down. We've got to find them."

"How are we going to find them? They could be anywhere!" Stephen argued back.

"Well we aren't going to find them stuck here are we?" Loki said.

Strange knew he was going to do something Loki-esque if he didn't cooperate – probably leave him here and find a way out, then he'd have to find all of three of them – so complied with the order.

Because it was always a smart idea to keep on the good side of unpredictable magic gods with knives.