CHAPTER ELEVEN ;
"  sorcery & finger guns "

"   sometimes moms and dads fall out of love
     sometimes two homes are better than one
     somethings you can't tell your sister
     'cause she's still too young, yeah you'll
     understand when you love someone   "
✧  WHEN YOU LOVE SOMEONE
               james tw!

"So, whaddya think, Nimrod? Impressed yet?"

Laurie and Gordo stare at Luis, Dave, and Kurt with inquisitive expressions. The three dudes stand around the old timey study of the mansion of doom, poking at some of the weird crap around in fascination. Or, wait, maybe it's not fascination. Actually, they may be potentially casing the joint. It's hard to tell.

Still watching the dudes, Gordo thoughtfully rubs his chin as Laurie sits on the desk beside him, resting an elbow on his shoulder. Scott and Hank stand a few feet away as Hope steps over to the table and sets down a couple of dark red mugs.

"Thank you for the coffee, ma'am!" Luis so politely polites, "It's not too often that you rob a place and then get welcomed back." He giggles, "Because we just robbed you!"

As Hank sighs, Laurie dorkily smirks and Gordo looks deep in consideration.

But Hope just frowns, giving Scott a deadpanned look, "You know that he was arrested for stealing a smoothie machine, right?"

"Two smoothie machines." Luis corrects, giving a goofy proud grin.

Laurie expectedly looks at Gordo.

The boy promptly nods and shrugs, "Respect earned."

Laurie beams in excitement, glad that her best friend approves of her dad's three weirdo friends/partners in crime (quite literally).

Hope sighs deeply, "Are you sure they can handle this?"

Scott opens his mouth to respond, but he doesn't get the chance.

"Oh, we can handle it!" Luis quickly cuts in, trying to be, like, confident or something, "We're professionals!"

Old Man Pym frowns, "You'll forgive us if we're not instilled with confidence."

The three wombats look ready to argue when Dave so proudly steps up, extending his hands and squinting his eyes, "Whoa, well, hey, everybody just kick back and relax a little bit, man. We know our business." Straightening up, Dave nods to the lanky teen with his chin, "Us and mah girl over there broke into this spooky-butt house, didn't we?"

Gordo gives his best buddy a dirty look, still not completely having forgiven her for trying to get thrown into prison and leave him behind.

"Ayyy." Laurie just fingerguns back at Dave.

Hank, however, is not impressed, "I let you."

Dave blinks, "Well, one could say that I let you let me."

Hank is still unimpressed (which is fair).

"Look, it's okay." Scott speaks up, trying to smooth out the tension and assuage some fears here, "They can handle this."

"Yeah, we can handle it!" Luis brushes it off with that everlasting big grin.

"You got their credentials?"

Hope sighs out, "He's in the system."

"I'm in the system?" Luis repeats highly.

"You're in the system!" Dave points at him.

"The system?" Luis grins brightly, squinting between them all.

Hank gives a nodding awkward smile before mumbling to Gordo, "Yeah, we're doomed."

Laurie bounces happily. This is such a good day!

"All right." Scott gathers his buddies like elementary kiddies, "There's something you guys need to see."

Luis, Dave, and Kurt look confused at what Scott could possibly mean.

Well, they got a big storm coming.

As Scott goes to change, Laurie smirks over at her best friend, "On a scale from One to You, how bad do you think they're going to react?"

Gordo then promptly shoves her completely off the desk.

"Oof!" Laurie lands on the wooden floor with a hard thud.

No one - not Old Man Pym or Hope or even the three wombats- pays any attention to her misery, completely used to her oddities by now.

And as Scott re-emerges completely decked out in the black and red suit, Dave gasps, "Dang!"

"Whoa!" Luis jumps up, being as hyped as ever, "That's so cool, bro!"

Scott briefly glances down at Laurie who is still rather casually sprawled out, briefly wondering why she's on the floor but choosing to move on.

"Now, look." The man lets out a slow breath, extending his hands to get the message across, "This is gonna get weird, all right? It's pretty freaky, but it's safe. There's no reason to be scared."

"Oh, no, no." Luis reassures, "Daddy don't get scared."

Gordo scrunches his nose at Luis' nickname for himself.

"Really?" Scott raises his eyebrows in disbelief.

"Says the guy who punched the toaster when his poptart popped." Laurie smirks, whispering not so quietly up to her best friend.

"Hey!" Luis sharply objects, pointing an quick accusing finger down at the fifteen year old girl, "You threw it against the wall right after!"

"Uh, you better believe I did!" Laurie pushes herself up on her elbows and proudly nods, "Those poptarts were unfrosted!"

Luis looks ready to argue before he shrugs in agreement, and then the teens and Three Wombats™ proceed to get into a heated discussion about why unfrosted poptarts are the most unforgivable sin.

Still standing in the middle of the living room with the Ant-Man suit on, Scott just frowns at how off topic they're getting. Taking a deep breath, Scott just nods and then snaps his thumbs into his buttons before he shudders down from view. And if the poptart scare got Luis to punch the unfortunate toaster, well, that is nothing compared to how the men react now. The dudes all start yelling and leaping up to get away from the disappearing man.

Kurt shakily points to where Scott once was, spitting out in a panic, "Thees es the work of gy-gypsies!"

"That's witchcraft." Dave quickly shakes his head.

"Wow, that's amazing." Luis mumbles, legitly impressed but now growing uncharacteristically calm, "That's like some David Copperfield crap."

"That's some kind of wizardry!"

"This is sorcery!"

"How'd you do that, bro?!" Luis yells out into the empty air, his eyes narrowed and focused.

"Don't freak out." Scott's reassuring voice suddenly fills the air, "Look at your shoulder."

The man raises a questioning eyebrow at Laurie and then follows her gaze to his shoulder, only to find a miniature tiny Scott chiling on up there.

And now he flips out.

"Get off! Get off!" Luis screams like a lil baby girl, running from the room in a flash and into the dark mansion until all everybody else can hear is his shrieking and him crashing into something that's probably, you know, hundreds of years old and unique and priceless.

"Wait, I thought Daddy didn't get scared!" Scott nonchalantly yells back, barely hanging onto his shirt.

♢ ♢ ♢

A few hours later, Laurie finds herself standing uncomfortably near the foyer of the massive house and rubbing the toe of her dirty converse into the plush carpet. She really doesn't want to do this, but that weird little voice in her head keeps telling her suck it up and so here she is, begrudgingly sucking it up.

Scott and Hope talk and quickly laugh by the front door, making the teenage girl roll her eyes at what may or may not be flirtation (kinda gross but that's beside the point, at the moment). Laurie's got a mission in mind and she can't stray. Not quite yet.

And as soon as she sees Hope step out, Laurie quickly pushes herself away from the wallpapered wall (which like who even had wallpaper anymore but whatever) and awkwardly moseys on over to her dad.

"Hey, uh, Scott?"

Her dad glances over his shoulder, a smile immediately finding his lips when he sees it's her, "Hey,"

Laurie's palms are sweating and her mouth feels like it's been stuffed to the brim with cotton and she curses her body for reacting this way. She has got to pull it together!

"I just-I wanted to say..." Her voice cracks and she irritatedly rolls her eyes at herself, forcing herself to say it before she loses her grit, "Don't stop."

Scott's eyebrows crinkle in and he cocks his head to the side, "What're you talking about?"

Laurie swallows hard, really wishing the dude would make this easier on her by knowing exactly what she means. Figures she couldn't get out of this so easily.

She nods quickly, suddenly not being able to hold his gaze, "I just don't want you to stop trying. With Cassie. With me. I don't want you to stop being here for us, being a dad. I-I want to see you the way you see me."

"Okay, Laurie." Scott smiles a little, nodding back but keeping his distance to make sure she stays comfortable, "I won't stop."

The girl of fifteen smirks back but then suddenly huffs, "And I mean, like I really don't give a single crap but like if you want which you don't have to obviously but uh, if you want to keep calling me by my nickname, I-I wouldn't mind... I guess."

Laurie honestly sort of misses it... the nickname. Not that she would ever fully admit that, of course! Geez, imagine the damage that would do to her reputation.

The guy laughs a little, "So Monkey it is then, huh?"

"Okay, okay." She rolls her eyes before sobering again, "Listen, something else I feel like I need to clear up, uh, I'm sorry I ignored you and then blackmailed you and then flipped out on you-,"

"Hey, hey," Scott quickly cuts her off, grabbing her arms, "I'm sorry, Laurie. I'm sorry for-for all of it."

Laurie stares at his face for a long sec, seeing nothing but sincerity. She sighs, knowing that it's time she resigns her presidency of the Dads Ditching Club. She doesn't need it anymore. She's got her actual real life dad. And she wants more than anything to find a way to tell him that she's flip-floppin' happy he came back for them, that he wants her, that he's here, that she cares about him, but then the fifteen year old moron remembers that she is emotionally handicapped and very bad at expressing emotions.

So, she just winks and finger guns.

♢ ♢ ♢

As the remaining days until the big showdown go by, the plan begins to grow more concrete and serious (or about as serious someone like a Lang can allow).

Scott looks around the table in the middle of the downstairs lab, staring pointedly at the heist team, "All right, just so we're clear, everyone here knows their role, right?"

Gordo's confused expression suddenly morphs into worry. He wasn't aware there was gonna be a test! He was kind of just there to be with Laurie and because Mr. Pym has a really big tv. If he had known he needed to have a cool job description, the overachieving adorkable nerd would've studied. Dang it, the fifteen year old is extremely unprepared when it comes to having a cool superspy title that sounded legitness.

Scott looks around the circle, pointing to his friends one at a time, "Dave?"

"Wheels on the ground." The cool guy answers without skipping a beat.

Gordo sweats.

"Kurt?"

"Eyes in the sky." The Russian feller nods confidently.

Gordo wheezes.

"Gordo?"

And then the boy panics, "Hands in the air!!"

A beat of silence follows as everyone awkwardly looks at the teenager who is now beet red.

With a sigh, Laurie slowly rolls her eyes, "That's what we're trying to avoid, I think."

Gordo desires death.

Scott makes a concerned face at the boy before hoping to move on to greener and smarter pastures, "Luis?"

But again Luis is no less worrisome as he puts on a huge white grin and bobs his shoulders around in excitement, babbling, "Oh, man, you know it! You know what? I get to wear a uniform. That's what's up!"

"Luis." Scott deadpans, really needing them to seem somewhat capable.

"I'm sorry." The guy quickly tries to compose himself, "I'm good. I'm good. I'm just excited!" And then he somehow gets WORSE, quickly motioning towards the woman on the other side of the room, "Plus, your girlfriend's really hot. So, you know, that makes me nervous, too. " Hope straightens and Scott winces and Luis turns to the uptight lady, "And you are very beautiful, ma'am."

"Oh, my Lord." Hank groans.

"Ew!" Laurie whines, blowing a big pink gum bubble.

"She's not my-," Scott sighs, rolling his eyes closed.

Gordo is still too dead to comment.

Luis just keeps going, "You know what? I was thinking of a tactic, like when I go undercover. Like a whistling. You know what I'm saying? To like, blend in."

"No." Scott stares at him dead in the eye, shaking his head, "Don't whistle. No whistling. It's not The Andy Griffith Show. No whistling."

Luis just smirks.

He's gonna whistle.

"And Miss Lang," Hank catches the distracted teen's attention, making her jump and her gum bubble pop, "Your father and I decided that if the heist goes sideways-,"

"Which it won't." Scott quickly tries to assure his daughter.

Hank goes on, "All of us - we're going to go our separate ways, acting like we don't even know each other. From there, Greg will get you out of there as soon as possible."

Used to this kind of treatment by now, Gordo just rolls his eyes and Laurie happily salutes, "It's a dealio, my good sir!"

"And only as long as you never say 'dealio' ever again."

Laurie frowns sadly, "Rude."

In honor of me seeing Endgame tonight, I have updated!!! I hope you guys liked this chapter, there was that usual mix of goofiness and slight somber moments! Aaaand next chapter, we finally get to see the big heist and how that goes completely terribly!! Oooo I am excited! And we're getting so close to end of PART I ugh, I have some big things planned for end credits and then leading into Ant-Man and the Wasp, geeez I'm excited.

So what about you, hm? Any theories? Guesses? Desires? Tell all!

Also, you might have noticed a few changes to this book recently as Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp will now both take place within this book. It was just easier and more aesthetically pleasing! I hope that's cool with you guys XD

Alright folks, it's been real, folks.

AND REMEMBER: THANOS DEMANDS YOUR SILENCE :)

Funny Thingamabob:

Funny Thingamabob 2 because I love you:

Funny Thingamabob 3 because you're special:

it's true