It was idyllic.
Parker Needler-Addams tried not to let out a half-smile as she brewed her coffee. Looking at the day, she wasn't at all surprised that her wife hissed like a snake as she moved the curtains that morning before declaring that she would be in her lab until after midday.
The lab, about five levels underground.
They still lived in Assimilation (although in recent years there had begun to be talks about changing the name of the town), but no longer in the Mansion. Wednesday had argued for establishing their independence and after the wedding and with Gomez and Morticia's blessing the two moved into a small house on the outskirts of town. A typical white wooden house, front garden and back yard. Very bucolic.
In just two days the wood had turned an ashen gray, the shapes had contorted and twisted, the outside wooden fence had become one of black metal, and gargoyles and a central tower had manifested out of nowhere as the basement had become a labyrinth of corridors and secret rooms. Oh, and plants and vines had grown all around.
From what they could gather, a little spawn of the Addams Mansion spirit had followed them and decided to acclimate the house. Parker couldn't complain, they had saved time on renovations. And having a possessed house had its advantages as long as you remembered to flush your leftover coffee down the toilet to give it to it to drink.
With the hot water ready, Parker completed the preparations for the brew that would finish awakening her senses that Saturday morning and took a good gulp, without sugar or cream. Even though it was the weekend, she too still had some work to do.
While the house was much more modest than the mansion, they lived in comfort. Wednesday had become an elusive celebrity in multiple scientific circles, with many of her wackier theories being proven by herself and with plenty of patents on various inventions that would have allowed them to live without lifting a finger for the next century. But Parker had her own calling: she was the literature teacher at Assimilation's High School, and there were exams to be graded.
There was no clearer mark of the town's general improvement in matters of acceptance than having no problem with an Addams educating their children. An Addams by marriage, but an Addams nonetheless. At thirty-five, the once tall, lanky, gangly cute young woman had become a tall, lanky, gangly beautiful adult. She still retained her gothic look adopted in her teens. And apparently, a teacher with one side of her hair shaved, leather jacket and skull rings automatically made her the "cool" teacher at school.
What a turn of events in life.
But that morning there was something else more important to attend to that required her to drink her coffee to stay alert.
Like, for example, the knife that had been about to plunge into her head if not for a quick move to dodge it, followed by a groan.
"Drats!"
"Good morning to you too Varadi," Parker replied, turning with a smile to her daughter.
When they married, Wednesday and Parker had not seriously considered having children. Varadi was a surprise, in more ways than one.
They found her on a vacation trip to Europe, a little thing of about four years old running around alone in the woods of Romania and dressed in rags, more feral than anything else and semi-adopted by the local wolf pack. She had been living in the remains of an old abandoned laboratory where they seemed to have been experimenting with creating artificial people.
Varadi was, for all practical purposes, a homunculus. A flesh and blood golem. The girl was indistinguishable from a normal human being except for her extreme pallor, her clear, whitish eyes that more than once caused some people to take her for blind, and her gift for dismembering her hands and feet and moving them independently of her body. Something she loved to do races with her Uncle Thing.
Wednesday declared the girl an Addams immediately. In less than two days she was theirs, with all papers in order just before returning to the United States with a little girl who could barely speak and had a propensity to bite people's ankles.
Now at ten years old, Varadi was already a full-fledged Addams, and with a mind bent on invention and engineering. But if her scientist mother focused on breaking the boundaries of nature, Varadi's interest lay in creating the most insane weaponry she could conceive.
Like the knife-throwing crossbow she'd just finished trying to test with her mother.
Parker arched an eyebrow, taking another sip of coffee, "Isn't that one of your uncle's old crossbows?"
Varadi nodded, raising the weapon high, "Uh-huh, refitted and modified. Look, look! I've added a support system to it so that instead of bolts it can throw multiple sized knives, and I'm trying to adjust a mechanism to switch from manual to automatic firing!"
"And those three red lines decorating the handle?" asked Parker as the two moved from the kitchen to the living room.
"They make it shoot faster."
Parker smiled, "What's the scientific basis for that?"
"That I'm ten years old," Varadi replied, before a thoughtful expression crossed her face. "Mom... Do you think mama will like it?"
Parker set the coffee cup down on a small table next to the couches and knelt down in front of her daughter, "Of course she'll like it, little gremlin," she said, "When hasn't your mother ever liked one of your inventions?"
"Never. She always loves them. But I just want her to like-like this one...if I get it right I plan to make another one with an electric firing motor for her birthday."
"I'm sure she'll love it, just like she loves you."
"And it will shoot piranhas!"
"Mmm, I'm certain your mama will love that but I think the piranhas won't like it too much."
"Oh, I'll use some of the mutants that Great Uncle Fester has..."
The moment between mother and daughter was interrupted when, suddenly, at the other end of the room a circle of intense multicolored light began to form out of nowhere, finally stabilizing and revealing a group of silhouettes that began to take shape as they crossed it.
Parker stood up, instinctively planting herself in front of her daughter and glancing at the knife rack still visible through the door to the kitchen. Behind her, Varadi was readying her crossbow again, though she could not disguise the fascination on her small face at that display of lights.
Lights that finally dissipated, leaving a group of people in front of them. A group of which Parker immediately recognized a few, partly because of the obvious similarities and partly because she remembered a certain story her wife had told her years ago.
One of the newcomers stepped forward, a young woman of about eighteen with blonde hair and blue eyes, wearing green tights and leather that looked like something out of a fantasy novel. She took a step forward raising her hands in a conciliatory manner...
"Uh... Hello?" she greeted, nervously, "I'm so sorry, you don't need to be alarmed... Oh, I hope we didn't get the wrong place."
Parker looked her up and down. She wasn't entirely sure, but... "You wouldn't happen to be Enid, would you?"
Enid's eyes widened in surprise, "You know me?"
"My wife told me the story of her unexpected trip to another universe years ago," Parker replied, relaxing slightly, "I confess to my shame that part of me didn't quite believe it until one day she put a fishbowl-like thing on my head connected to another in her head that turned out to be a memory sharing device. That cleared up any doubts, and I remember vague mental images of what she saw, so... well, you look like an Enid to me," she said, before looking at Saint-Clair and Eneit, "Though there seems to be more than one now..." she muttered.
The first thing that followed her explanation was an exclamation of pleasant surprise from one of the other Wednesdays, one Parker couldn't identify but who appeared to be of similar age to Enid and to have almost attached to her another young woman with tousled curly hair and an intense gaze.
"Wife?" asked Pup with a cheerful smile, her eyes dancing between mother and daughter, "Needler has started a family?"
"And she's spawned," said another of the Wednesdays, a younger but more aggressive looking one with a slight frown that faded when who appeared to be one of the other Enids, the brown-haired one, rested her hand on her shoulder.
"I'm not a spawn," Varadi said, very seriously, observing the newcomers who were almost identical to her mom (but not half as cool in her opinion).
"Oh, honey, I'm sure she didn't mean to say that...," Enid began, fearing that the girl had felt insulted.
"I'm a hellspawn!" exclaimed Varadi suddenly, raising her crossbow and firing a knife that sliced through the air, flying straight at Woe. The Addams merely parried the knife, catching it in flight between the tips of her index and middle fingers. A hint of a satisfied smile crossed her face.
"Indeed," she said.
"Varadi!" exclaimed Parker, "What have I told you about throwing sharp things at people?"
"Not to do it if they're not Addamses," the girl replied, "But these are clearly Addamses, mom!"
"It's no bother, really," said Shark, leaning over her shovel, "Beautiful contraption you got there, child. I like the red lines to make it shoot faster."
"Thanks!" replied Varadi. They may not have been as cool as her mom, but some of those versions of her didn't seem so bad.
"Mmm, I have to ask," Parker said, trying to pick up the conversation, "But... why are you here?"
"Because of me, obviously," said a new voice. A quiet, monotone voice.
Everyone present turned to the main entrance door of the room, where a pale Wednesday with her eyes covered by protective eyewear, dressed in a white robe filled with traces of ash, grease and other unidentified fluids and black rubber gloves watched the scene with her arms folded.
"Needler!" exclaimed Enid, rushing to meet her and squeezing her in an intense hug that lifted the Addams off the floor, "Look at you all grown up!"
"Heh, it will never stop being funny to me that you gave them my last name to use as a nickname," Parker said.
"I explained my reasons, cara mia," Needler retorted as Enid deposited her back on the floor. The mad scientist removed her goggles, revealing her dark shadowy eyes, though there was a spark of recognition and nostalgia in them, "And it's an appropriate name, after all I am Wednesday Addams-Needler now."
"It suits you, I'd say," Enid said, showing her fangs as she smiled. Needler looked at her with analytical interest.
"You've changed, Sinclair."
"Oh...I...uh...well, it's complicated."
Needler merely nodded. She advanced towards the rest of the group, though not without stopping to ruffle Varadi's hair as she passed the girl, causing her to let out a small giggle. Finally, she planted herself in front of Shark.
"Shark. You've hardly changed at all. I see you still have an almost pathological predilection with that burial and exhumation tool."
"Well, it's a multi-purpose instrument, Sister Needler," Shark said, softening her sharp grin slightly, "I'd say we've empirically tested it in more than one universe, wouldn't you?"
Next, Needler turned her attention to Woe. The two Addams watched each other in silence, their faces turned into impenetrable, expressionless masks for anyone who couldn't read the microsignals that marked their faces.
The two merely nodded to each other, with a slight mutual "Hmm" as a vague sign of approval.
And finally, Needler stood next to Pup, who graced her with a warm smile.
"You were a little more reserved as a little girl," Needler observed, "If you wore pink I could almost mistake you for Friday."
"I've opened up more to people over the years," Pup said. At the same time, unconsciously, her hand slid up to brush the fingers of Taylor's hand right beside her, causing a furious blush to appear on the Hyde's cheeks. Something that did not go unnoticed by the rest of those present, although no one commented on it. Needler merely raised an eyebrow and made a mental note of it on the list of topics to be discussed later.
Because this was clearly not the time for small talk after all. Her gaze fell on the rest of the visitors. New but also familiar faces. And she couldn't help but notice a couple of significant absences.
"Enid," she said, turning to the she-wolf, "I can deduce at once that this visit, though welcome and perhaps more belated than I would have liked, something no doubt attributable to the lack of temporal correlation between universes, has not been made for mere reasons of courtesy or nostalgia."
Enid's countenance became serious, nodding in response.
Needler had seen that determination before in the werewolf, but it seemed to have gained multiple levels of intensity. There was a new aggressiveness latent in her, a sort of aura that seemed to change the atmosphere around the she-wolf in a subtle but perceptible way. It was something more Addams than ever, but there was also something else, something that could not be discerned by mere observation.
Needler had begun to wonder if Enid would give her permission for a vivisection when the lycanthrope finally responded, snapping the mad scientist out of her daydreaming reverie.
"Needler, we need your help."
"In what way?"
"What do you say about finding a way to inter-dimensionally travel to a magically sealed universe to rescue Wednesday and Friday and deal with an army of supernatural monsters?"
Needler didn't react, but only for a heartbeat. The smile that formed on her face after a moment caused two reactions in Parker as she watched the scene. First, the realization that interesting times were ahead.
Second, that her wife smiling like a maniac would always be the most beautiful sight in the world.
NOTES
A very brief chapter as a last respite with a small glimpse of the life that Needler has built. In the next one we'll get right into the action, and if things go well, you'd better get ready... Shit's gonna get crazy. Nothing as dark as the FUBAR chapterts, be at ease. This time is the heroes time to shine.
Varadi's name comes from Karina Varadi, the actress who played kid Wednesday in the flashbacks of the 2022 series and who is also the model for the character in the collage at the beginning of this episode. Oh, and Parker is "Mom" and Wednesday is "Mama" :3
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