[ he hadn’t been talking to anyone in particular, and he’d been so fixated on triangulating on the sound, the subtle pitches of grief in the rain, that he actually startles when billy addresses him. ]

Ah, sorry—

[ the young man, at a glance, isn’t immediately familiar. but the mind stone hums in recognition. vision can’t fully place that sensation, except for where it recalls his wife’s elegant and hovering hand, the way her magic commingled so effortlessly with the power concentrated in the center of his forehead—and that was before she remade him completely.

he doesn’t fully know what kind of mark her act of creation may have left on him, and anyway wanda hadn’t understood her magic either, so there’s no ready explanation for this familiarity. he looks billy over at length. when no further recognition comes he realizes sheepishly he has yet to answer the question. ]

... no. Not in here. [ he juts his head towards the window. ] It’s a child. In one of the zones that I believe has already been evacuated. I don’t know how she was missed.

[ she might have missed the evac call. vision glances back outside, calculates, during which time in a flash of static fuzz he dispenses with his human face: the deep fruit color of the chassis, the coloration of the suit that isn’t fully a suit, the flow of the cape. ]

I can retrieve her unassisted. You should rest if you can.