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firelance2361 · 2 months

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What If…Pym Misplaced His Particle?

Here’s a trippy new piece I did based on my earlier work, with Hope Van Dyne/Red Queen and Hank Pym as the Wasp in honor of the (late) anniversary of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which I have now fully developed into a What If…? Scenario.

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In this universe, shortly after Scott Lang is released from prison and goes to see his family and daughter Cassie, things take a turn for the worse when Cassie suffers a heart attack and needs to be hospitalized. After Cassie is treated and stabilized, the doctors tell Scott, Maggie, and Jim Paxton that the cause was some mysterious nanotech device near her artery valve. Upon closer examination of the x-rays and later the discs, they find a Pym Tech logo on each and every one of them.

Jim and Scott go to confront Hank Pym and interrogate him on his possible involvement. After showing him the Resizing discs they found from Cassie’s X-rays, Hank agrees to fill them on everything. After telling them the history of the Pym Particle and how he retired after Janet went subatomic, he shows them both the Ant-Man and prototype Wasp suit, telling Scott that he had him in mind for a successor since the Vistacorp burglary.

Hank then reveals the other potential culprits behind this: Mitchell Carson, Bill Foster, and Darren Cross. He also informs them that his daughter Hope can’t be a suspect since she died in this universe soon after Cross announced plans for the Yellowjacket armor, something he believes is connected to Cassie’s hospitalization. Jim and Scott decide to bring Hank along as a consultant to keep a close eye on him while they investigate further; Jim calls in his police friends to secure all of Hank’s assets and suits elsewhere as a precaution, and Scott enlists his Ex-Con friends Luis, Dave, and Kurt to keep tabs on any street news.

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Deciding to work their way up to Cross before they jump the gun, first on their list of suspects is Bill Foster, due to his involvement with Project G.O.L.I.A.T.H. Upon arriving and learning of his and Hank’s rivalry, Jim and Scott get right to questioning, They ask Bill about his whereabouts and his recent actions regarding the Pym Particles, to which Bill tells them he hasn’t been involved with anything regarding the Particles as he’s been busy tending to someone else.

That’s when Ava Starr phases in out of nowhere, about to kill Hank before Bill stops and talks her down. Upon realizing she’s Elias Starr’s daughter, he informs everyone how he and Janet confronted her father over his misuse of the Quantum Tunnel, leading to his accidental death and Ava’s molecular disequilibrium. A riled-up Ava chews him out for being responsible for Elias’ death, which causes her condition to flare up suddenly. As she makes her way to her Quantum Chamber, Bill explains the logistics of her condition as well as how the container operates to treat it.

As Ava’s being administered her quantum particles, Scott and Jim call Maggie about Cassie’s condition and the information they’ve gathered. Maggie tells them she’s fine, and that the police are keeping guard outside her room 24/7. Before they hang up, Maggie tells them that she did some digging regarding Hank’s past, and that Hope’s death happened in a car crash not too far from the Lang household. As they hang up with this new info in mind, Scott texts Luis about the location, telling him to look more into it.

That’s when alarms start going off from the chamber, and Hank notices something going wrong with Ava. He and Bill checks the schematics and sees that the chambers systems have been set in overdrive and are now overloading Ava with quantum energy. Bill tries to stop it, yelling for them to help, but to no avail. All Bill can do is watch as Ava screams for mercy as her body begins to tear itself apart from the inside. Then the chamber explodes, blasting everyone back, killing Ava in the process. Bill lays there in shock, horrified by how this happened, until Jim pins him to the ground, placing him under arrest as Bill shouts frantically that he’s innocent.

Hank and Scott just look on at the scene, knowing now that whoever’s after them was after more than just the simple particle. This was personal.

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Bill gets taken into custody as the group reviews the information regarding the murderer. They’ve yet to nail Darren Cross as their culprit since they don’t have any definitive proof it was him and not an imposter.

Things only get more intense when the Ex-Cons calls up Scott and tells them Luis heard from a street informant about a possible lead, which sends the cops over to an old S.H.I.E.L.D. warehouse upstate. As the group checks in on them via camera feed, they all are shocked to find the body of Mitchell Carson, half his face burned off, ruling him out as a possible suspect.

Hank, while reviewing the evidence, laments to Scott over the disappearance of his wife and the death of his daughter, and how his life spiraled after that. He shares his regrets about creating the Pym Particle, calling it a doomed miracle that brings nothing but chaos wherever it brings. Hank tells Scott he chose him because he believed that perhaps Lang could succeed where he himself had failed, giving him the advice not to take his family for granted.

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Going in to interrogate Bill on the matter, the two of them discuss the reasoning behind the killer, correctly assuming that whoever’s after Hank is using these people to get to him, to break him down and weaken him. As the two of them chat, they remark about the old days and their partnership, and Hank apologizes if his temper did get the better of him then.

Before they can finish their talk, however, Bill collapses on the ground, suffering from a fatal heart attack. Hank and the others rush in to try and help save him, but it’s too late. As the medics try to save Bill, Hank notices a small figure leaping away through the doorway; they try to catch the figure but they are too late as it’s long gone.

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Now with no other leads and an official warrant, Hank, Scott, and Jim go to arrest Darren Cross for the murders committed. Scott tells Maggie, Cassie, and the Ex-Cons to stay alert and keep her eyes and ears open, and Hank gives him the Ant-Man suit as a precaution, telling him to stay close.

The group goes advances with their police team on the Pym Technologies Building, Darren barricades himself inside the Yellowjacket chamber, suiting himself up. As Hank, Scott, and Jim break into the containment unit, Darren starts attacking them, taking out guards lefts and right, with only Scott managing to stop him from killing his friends.

As Darren gets back up, however, a malfunction starts to go off in his suit. His Pym Particles start to alter his size uncontrollably, shrinking and growing different parts of his body. The others watch in horror as the Yellowjacket begins to grow into an amorphous mass, his screams echoing throughout the building, before exploding in a mass pile of smoke and blood. Everybody watches on in shock, before immediately moving to arrest a now dumbstruck Hank Pym, as he is the only suspect left they have.

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A confused and worried Hank tries to tell Scott and Jim that he’s innocent, that he didn’t kill them, but neither of them are having any bit of it. The mood stays tense until they get a face-time call from Luis, Kurt, and Dave, who said they found something interesting at Hope’s death site. Kurt and Dave double-checked the impact on the tree where the car crashed, and they found out it doesn’t match the ones normally found at these kind of crashes; they say it almost looked like someone blew it up from the inside.

The news sends Hank into a panic. He tells Luis and Ex-Cons to get out of there now, but it’s too late, as the phone goes dark and screams are heard from the other side. The trio rush over to the crash site, trying to save them, but arriving too late to save them as the trio lay dead before them.

Hank rushes over to the tree stump where the crash happened, using a Resizing disc to open it up. Scott then enters it to find massive laboratory inside the tree, with computers and generators shrunken down to fit inside. They also find a mysterious layout of the city sewer system and where they all connect to where they’ve been chasing the killer. Scott checks the computers, confirming that the killer had been keeping tabs on them since the Yellowjacket announcement, and that revenge on Hank Pym and his legacy was their real target. Knowing now who the killer is, they rush over to the hospital, calling Maggie to get Cassie to safety.

When they get to the hospital though, they find a swarm of police officers surrounding it, and a wounded Maggie being hysterical. Scott and Jim ask her what happened, and they learn that the killer knocked her out as she tried to get Cassie out of the hospital, and she woke up alone only to find a note left for Hank.

Hank opens it to find a tracking beacon and a message from the killer: (Graveyard. 11:11. Tonight. Both of you. Or history repeats itself.)

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The group returns to the police station to stock up on the remaining Pym-Tech they have, and Hank grabs the prototype Wasp suit they still had locked up, figuring now’s a better time than ever to finish it. After retrofitting it to fit himself and suiting up, Hank and Scott fly over to the San Francisco Cemetery to save Cassie’s life with a SWAT team on route, with Jim and Maggie monitoring from the police station. The new Ant-Man and Wasp follow the beacon to its source: the gravesite of Janet Van Dyne.

Hank laments to Scott again over his wife, sorrow in his voice, until his tone turns to disdain when the killer finally appears, revealing herself to be none other than Hope Van Dyne as the Red Queen. Hope chews out her father for wearing her mother’s suit, and gifting his own to a complete stranger, blaming him for Janet’s fate. We learn that Hank’s decision to pick Scott as a successor drove Hope far more over the edge in this universe, leading her down a bloody path of vengeance against the legacy of Ant-Man, a legacy she says is nothing more than that of a coward.

As father and daughter engage in combat, Scott runs off to find Cassie, searching everywhere until he finds her in shrunken Quantum Chamber like Ava’s, rigged and timed to go subatomic. Scott works fast to free his daughter, trying to dodge the barrage of Wasp stings from both Hank and Hope. The two Pyms keep dueling each other, their long-suppressed trauma and grief over Janet’s demise coming to light.

Scott manages to free Cassie from the container in time, but their troubles are far from over, as Jim reports they’ve picked up readings of multiple Pym-Particle bombs laced throughout the city sewer systems all linked to Hope’s heartbeat. If she dies, the city goes subatomic. As this happens, Hope manages to pin Hank by his wings using her shoulder spikes, immobilizing him.

She knocks back Scott, before holding Cassie captive, telling him to make the choice between saving Cassie and saving the city. Scott seemingly hesitates for a moment, unsure of what to do, but that was only a distraction. He managed to slip Cassie a Resizing disc earlier, which she uses to shrink Hope off her long enough for Scott to land a critical hit, knocking her back onto a tombstone and crippling both her suit’s systems and her leg.

Scott and Cassie are safely reunited, and Hank breaks free and radios for the Feds to move in. Despite Hope’s hatred of him, he tries to reconcile with her about their past, apologizing for what happened to Janet because of his failure.

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Hope gets taken into police custody, and Hank promises to help repair the damage she has caused to the city and Scott’s family. Sometime afterwards as they all gathered at the Lang house for dinner, Scott, Hank, and the family get a visit from the Avengers themselves, who thank them for their service in catching the Red Queen, offering them both a spot on the team.

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Sorry again for the lengthy bio on this one, but this is something I wanted to throw out before the month ends.

Hope you like it!

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