A/N: I don't know, I needed an absurd and funny break from my super-angsty Hawke-hates-herself-for-using-blood-magic story.

As ever, I'm sticking with default appearances. As for personalities, Garrett is more the tactful/serious Hawke and Marian more the charming/cynical Hawke.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Not the characters that Bioware made or any of the myriad of wacky references, from the X-men to any of the books mentioned.

After the blinding light subsides and she recovers from the blast of force, the first thing Marian notices is that her car keys aren't digging into her thigh but a giant wooden stick is jammed between her shoulder-blades. She blinks and coughs as the dust settles around her, struggling to stand and taking stock of her surroundings.

She stands in the midst of a wide dirt patch, the dust settling to reveal lumpy rocks and knotted hills. What trees exist have a withered, even charred appearance. It sure isn't her parents' garage, which means that if she can figure out where she is, she and her brother are going to make history for proving m-theory by traveling between universes, or at least for inventing a working teleportation device.

"Garrett?" she yells, looking around the barren landscape for her brother. "Garrett!"

A groan behind her makes her turn, still coughing. The motion makes her head swim and she covers her eyes with a hand.

"I'm right over here—Marian?" his voice rises into a question and she opens her eyes, staring up in horror at her brother. He should be only two inches taller than her at five foot ten, but this guy towers over six feet. Garrett doesn't have a beard, not even one of those popular douchebag twentysomething goatees, but this guy has full-on facial hair. It's her brother's deep, measured voice but with a British accent. And she's never seen her brother run around in medieval plate armor with a massive sword on his back.

"Garrett?" she asks. "What the hell? Where are we? Why are you wearing armor and what's with the beard? And the accent?"

He shrugs, making the plates of his armor clank together. "Your outfit's not much better and you have an accent, too. And you have short dark hair and a staff on your back."

Marian panics and grabs her head. Her wavy golden hair, her greatest asset, is gone. No long, thick layers of curls spilling over her shoulders and framing her soft features. Tears burn her eyes as she feels the fine texture of smooth hair, pulling the bangs down in front of her eyes (bangs, she has bangs) and staring at the shiny raven black strands. She must look as different as he does.

"Shit," she says, her brain churning at maximum capacity. She and Garrett are smart enough to design a bridge device to penetrate the membranes between reality stacks, even if it wasn't intentional, and to build a working prototype. They can figure this out. "Shit, shit. We're not in our own bodies. Our consciousnesses have somehow been transferred into new bodies, which may or may not have had consciousnesses in them," in her panic she babbles through the forced logic of her thoughts until she realizes what she's doing and stops herself.

His eyes—blue instead brown now—narrow, but she recognizes the swirling, troubled expression for the Garrett she knows back on planet earth. "Are we dead?" he suggests a too-reasonable hypothesis that she feels an immediate need to disprove.

Marian answers by kicking his shin, which is also armored. If she didn't have thick brown boots on, her toe would have broken. "Sonofabitch," she hisses, staggering back. "Well, I feel pain, at any rate."

"I read Riverworld," he answers, pointing an accusing finger at her. "You made me. And according to Farmer's depiction of afterlife, death doesn't mean an end to pain. Shit, according to the Bible death doesn't mean an end to pain."

"Well we aren't bald and naked, so there goes the Riverworld thesis," she sighs, touching her short hair again. "Although I might as well be."

"Garrett! Marian!" cries a female voice.

Both siblings turn in their unfamiliar new bodies to stare at the girl who called out to them. Dark hair hangs loose to her shoulders, which are bared by her revealing peasant dress and like Marian, she has a stick with ornate carvings and a wicked blade on her back. Marian glances down at the leather-and-metal strapping she's wearing and wonders how she ended up in something so ugly if there are actual women's clothes available.

"How does she know our names?" Garrett mutters as the girl jogs up to them.

Marian shakes her head. "I don't know, but play along."

The brunette girl flings herself against Garrett's chest and hugs him, plate mail and all. "Thank the Maker you're alright," she cries, not seeming to notice the awkward pat he gives her before she pulls back and hugs Marian in the same desperate fashion. "Mother and Carver and I have been looking for you two for nearly an hour."

Marian glances at her brother, who raises his eyebrows at her behind the amiable stranger. If the girl is calling someone 'mother,' it's a reasonable supposition that this mother is all of their mother, which makes the girl their sister.

"Where are Mother and, um, Carver?" Marian asks, turning her attention to the girl who seems to be their sister as she pulls back. She studies the girl's face for a moment and decides that if this body bears any resemblance to the sister, she can't be too bad looking. At least that's something.

"Are you all right, Marian?" asks the girl, squinting at her. "Did you take a blow to the head when that Emissary attacked us?"

"Uh, I might've," she answers, touching the back of her head.

"Bethany!" thunders a young male voice. The trio looks toward the source of the sound as a young man crests one of the nearby hills at a full run. Like Garrett, he has a sword nearly as large as he is tall strapped to his back. And he looks enough like Garrett's current face, albeit clean-shaven, that Marian decides it's safe to assume he's their brother.

The boy stops short just in front of them. "How did you two get all the way over here?" he asks, sounding irritable and short of breath.

"No idea," Garrett mutters. It's the first thing he's said to these strange new siblings and she can see the measured gaze he gives the boy. She feels damn lucky that he's there all of a sudden. Even if he's the younger sibling, he's been strong enough to protect her since they were kids.

The girl that the boy called Bethany looks at her brother. "Where's Mother? Did you just leave her alone with no defense against the Darkspawn?" she asks. The way she says the last word, 'Darkspawn' makes Marian flinch. It sounds worse than creepy from the note of fear in the girl's voice.

"D'you think I'm an idiot?" the boy asks, glaring at the girl. "She's right behind me. She just can't run as fast."

"Carver, how could you?" the girl says, her eyes widening and her sweet voice rising to a panicked pitch. She grasps Marian's hand and casts those wide, puppy eyes up at her. "We have to go get her."

"Well, duh," answers Marian, letting the girl tow her over the hill. "She's our mother."

She glances over her shoulder to see Garrett and the boy, Carver, following a few feet behind as Bethany releases her hand. They look a lot alike, walking with similar saunters, shoulders straight against the weight of their weapons. Marian is grateful that her stick is so light, though she doubts it will be much use against someone with a sword, or worse, a gun. Although everything they've seen indicates that this world has only medieval technology, she doesn't want to trust that there isn't something scarier than swords and whatever Darkspawn are.

The boys catch up and Bethany and Carver take the lead as she and Garrett fall in behind them. Marian listens to them arguing, trying to gather whatever information she can as they crest the hill.

"The entire horde on our heels and you just run on ahead of Mother?" Bethany says, managing to sound irritated, disappointed and frightened at the same time.

Carver glares at her. "Isn't that what you did, rushing off to look for our fearless leaders?" his sour tone sounds like he's not much for bottling his resentment. "What if you had run straight into a group of scouts looking for them?"

"Well, I didn't," Bethany huffs, her cheeks coloring. "And we agreed to spread out and look."

"Fine. Whatever you say," he grumbles, coming to a short stop and staring around.

Marian and Garrett stop as well, exchanging glances. Marian feels her heart pounding as Carver's says, "Maker's blood, where is she? Mother!"

"Shit," says Marian, scanning the long slope for any sign of a person as her new siblings start arguing. She sees nothing.

Garrett shifts next to her and points to the road far below. "Look," he says, and she stares at the black, scuttling mass of creatures running, swarming the road as they come into sight.

Bethany and Carver fall silent a moment, and then begin their squabble anew—"How could you let her out of your sight? Now there are Darkspawn!" and "You can't blame me for the bloody Blight!" and "It's your fault we can't find mother," and "It's your fault Garrett and Marian got blown up by your failed spell."

Marian glances at Garrett, guesses that he's figured out at least as much as she has, and tilts her head toward the argument.

He steps forward. "We have to find her and keep moving away from those things," Garrett announces, his voice just loud enough to shut both Bethany and Carver up. Their younger siblings look up at him, startled, just as he glances at Marian.

"Bethany and I will check the hillside. You two go down further, in case they attack," she says to the boys.

Garrett casts a dubious glance at Carver. "Wish we had an archer or something," he mutters. Marian can tell he's wishing she'd woken up with a bow on her back instead of a staff, not that she'd be much use anyway. She was terrible at archery in high school, and has never participated in any activity more violent than ballet or tennis. Garrett is the one who played football and swam and took three types of martial arts through college. She hopes he can wield that sword well enough not to get killed by the zombies below.

"Do you want us to cover you from up here?" asks Bethany. Her soft voice trembles with a note of something dangerous underneath and Marian stares at her new sister with raised brows, waiting for whatever the girl has to reveal.

"Isn't that a little bit out of range?" Garrett asks, keeping his voice neutral. His eyes dart toward Marian.

Bethany nods. "Good point. I guess that's why you're the big brother. We can move down the hill after you and start shooting when we're in range," she says, looking at Marian as though seeking approval, a tentative smile and doe-like eyes.

Marian nods at Bethany before she glances back to Garrett. He's probably thinking what she's thinking: 'if we aren't already dead, we will be soon.'

"What are we waiting for, then?" asks Carver. Marian wants to swat the sullen out of his tone, but she knows better than to start a fight she can't win. The boy starts jogging down the hill, finding footing without any apparent effort. Garrett sighs and takes off after him.

"Come on," says Bethany, following the boys at a slower pace. Marian brings up the rear, staring across the vast burnt landscape and wondering if they've landed in some hell dimension.

Their little band gets about halfway down the mountainside when a horrible wet growling noise fills the air. Marian shudders; her fascination with zombie movies doesn't mean she wants to live one. She halts, staring at the sight below: a red haired woman and a man in heavy plate emblazoned with a flaming sword are fighting through the crowd of monsters.

Garrett and Carver start running toward the couple, pulling their swords from their backs with identical sweeping gestures. Marian hesitates even as Bethany chases after the boys; she knows she needs to do something, but she has no idea what. How can she hope to fight a band of armed zombies with a goddamn tree branch?

The man turns to look at the woman for a moment and one of the beasts slinks behind him, slashing daggers into his back. His scream echoes through the valley. He swings his shield in a wide arc, knocking the creature to the ground as he stumbles against an outcropping of rocks and slumps to the ground. The zombie thing growls and gets to its feet, swaying toward him with murderous intent. Before its blade can slash again, the woman tackles.

"You will not have him," the redhead snarls, punching the growling zombie right in the face. Marian thinks that hand-to-face zombie contact is listed somewhere on the Rules of Zombie Survival under 'don't.' Her feet propel her forward but it's too far down the path. Even Garrett and Carver haven't caught up to them and they're going full speed. But the woman cuts the creature's head off before it can struggle against her, jumping to her feet and grabbing the man's shield.

A moment later, the boys crash into the mob of creatures with the clang of metal and the thick ripping noise of flesh. Marian feels her hands and arms tingling and thinks back to her research on the electromagnetic fields emitted by humans, wondering if adrenaline affects the field resonance in some distant corner of her mind. Dizzy with the speed of the battle, she pulls the staff from her back. It hums.

She can't describe it even as it happens; it's like the staff releases an EM charge to build the tingle in her limbs, or perhaps focuses the inherent charge of her body. Something inside her tells her to pull the tingling sensation through her hands and as the thought takes form in her mind she feels it happen, feels the energy current reverse and shoot down her arms, through her fingers, into the staff—and flames shoot from the tip of the staff. The nearest monster howls as it blazes up and she sees Garrett's face flash toward her, his eyes wide, before he spins his giant blade and lops the head off another zombie.

"Holy shit," she screams, laughing with hysteria or relief or manic glee. Rather than subside, though, the tingling grows. This time it's easier. Push and burn. By the third or fourth shot she doesn't even have to think about it. The tingling electromagnetism just floods through her, setting zombies ablaze in controlled explosions every time she points her staff at them.

At one point she glances over to see Bethany doing the same thing, swinging her staff around. A fireball erupts through four of the monsters, flinging the survivors to the ground at Carver's feet. He slashes their crispy stomachs open without hesitation, as if they practiced this combination.

It doesn't occur until the last monster falls that this medieval reality somehow adheres to the rules of fantasy, like Lord of the Rings or Earthsea. Somehow she can manipulate electromagnetic energies to the point where she can set people-sized monsters on fire without effort and so can her medieval-reality sister.

Marian hurries down the mountainside. Garrett and Carver stand as the redhead rushes to the injured man, all of them splattered with reeking black blood that can't be their own. By the time she and Bethany make it over to them, the woman has her man on his feet, and she can tell by the way he looks at her and her sister that maybe their whole magic-energy-manipulation isn't super common here.

The man confirms it when he says, "Keep your distance, apostate." He hurls that last word at them and Marian recognizes it for an epithet of sorts, a condemnation most likely based out of religious certainty.

"Well the Maker certainly has a sense of humor," says Bethany, a bitter note twisting her voice. "We escape the Darkspawn only to run into a Templar."

The man, even trembling as he loses blood, takes a weak step toward Marian and Bethany. "The spawn are clear in their intent, but a mage's intentions can never be known," he says, staggering closer still. "The order dictates… the order dictates…"

Garrett steps between Marian and the advancing man and she can imagine his eyes narrowing and his jaw clenching. The Templar steps back. Good old Garrett.

"Dear, they saved us," says the woman. It's the first thing Marian's heard her say and the softness of her voice seems in contrast to the fearless fighting. "The Maker understands."

Garrett and Marian exchange glances and she sees him utter a small sigh of relief when Carver speaks up. "Did you also come from Lothering?"

"I was at Ostagar," she answers, shaking her head in a mournful way. "The horde has spread north. We're cut off."

"We can't go south, that's the Wilds," protests Carver, looking at Marian and Garrett for support. She has no idea what the Wilds are, but they sound a lot better than the zombies. Or Darkspawn. Apparently people here call zombies Darkspawn, which made sense, considering the medieval setting. She makes a mental note not to call them zombies until she can figure out how to get out of here.

"First we need to find Mother," Bethany says in a small voice. Marian looks over and sees how shaken the girl looks.

"We need to find her fast," Marian says, glancing at Garrett and Carver as she pats Bethany's shoulder. Her gaze falls to the woman and the Templar last of all. "If you guys don't mind helping us look, I think this is a more-the-merrier kind of situation."

"I do not know if Wesley can make it up that hill right now," the woman answers. Marian notices that one of her hands remains on the man's back as if to prop him upright.

Bethany glances at her with pleading eyes. "I know he's a Templar, but you can heal him, sister," she suggests, once more grasping Marian's hand. Her expression—terrified and hopeful at the same time—leaves Marian with a hollow sense where her stomach should be, even worse than the dread the word 'healing' invokes.

She dropped out of medical school only to end up in a parallel universe with a slew of X-men powers that she doesn't know the extents or limitations of, being asked to use said powers to heal a guy who has an obvious issue with her even having them. Fantastic.

Garrett catches her eye as he steps up to the Templar's other side. "Then we have a plan. Marian will stay here with Wesley and try to heal him," he says, and she can see the hint of smirk on the corner of his mouth as he says it. "The rest of us will look for Mother." She wants to punch that unfamiliar bearded face and knock her brother's smirk off it.

The woman—who introduces herself as Aveline Vallen—helps Marian lower Wesley the Templar to the ground, shifting him so she can try to check his back, where the knives sank around the pieces of his armor.

Carver and Bethany are halfway up the hill, calling for their mother and arguing with each other in equal amounts. Garrett remains, helping the women even though Aveline proves strong enough to handle the task on her own. The redhead leans over her husband and murmurs something to him.

He grips Marian's forearm and pulls her aside the moment the couple seems distracted. "How did we land in a Dungeons and Dragons game?" he asks.

She shakes her head. "Parallel universes, shared dreams or hallucinations, time travel and a whole lot of shit we need to figure out as soon as we get somewhere safe. I really don't want to take my chances with the whole Inception theory that I'll just wake up if I die here."

Garrett puffs his cheeks up and blows air out through pursed lips. "Yeah," he says. "This is so fucked up."

"Amen to that," she mutters.

"We need a plan," he says. "I don't think we're going to survive long around these monster things and I'm getting the vibe that we're already on the run from them."

Marian opens her mouth to answer, but the ground shakes. She stares at Garrett and then over to Aveline, who stands with her feet braced and an expression of equal confusion. Up the hill, Carver and Bethany both shout and wave their arms, running back down, skidding over stones and kicking up a cloud of dirt.

A moment later, the creature appears, charging up the mountainside toward their group. Marian hears Carver shout 'ogre' and she wishes this thing resembled Shrek in any way, shape or form. Huge horns protrude from the bony ridges over its brows and it bares its sharp yellow teeth under flared nostrils. It stands at least fifteen feet tall, with mottled gray and purple skin stretched over thick muscles, including several muscle groups that humans lacked around the arms and shoulders and neck. It would need the extra muscle to hold those horns up, she thinks, her head swimming as she stares at the ogre.

The massive beast jumps and pounds its fists on the ground, making everyone stumble. It lets out a noise somewhere between a snarl and a howl, spittle and bits of torn flesh that looks all too human flying through the air. Marian flinches and reaches for her staff just as both Carver and Bethany leap through the air at the monster, attacking with flames and blade.

Before anyone can react or do anything, the ogre swats them aside and they crash into the hillside with sickening crunches.

Marian glances over at them for a split second and then the beast charges at her and Garrett and she has to dodge away. Everything seems to happen in slow motion. She grips her staff and feels the energy howling in her hands, demanding release. The air around her crackles, making the hair on her arms and head stand on end.

She sees Garrett rolling to his feet, sword in hand, just as Aveline kicks a rock between the ogre's eyes and shouts at it. The monstrous head swings toward the redhead and Garrett swings at the back of the ogre's knees, slashing a cut that looks like little more than a flesh wound. The huge foot jerks back and connects with her brother's chest, knocking him several feet back, and the sizzling energy gathering in her hands and staff reacts like a bomb.

It would be light, but it's black with purple and silver sparks shimmering throughout, and it feels in her mind more like force than light. It sears through the ogre's back and chest and her fists clench, jerking apart with her subconscious desire. The force light tears through the immense chest cavity like paper, ripping the monster into pieces. Chunks of stinky burnt flesh rain down on the others.

Marian swivels her head to look at Carver and Bethany and sees both of them staring at her, half-conscious with broken limbs and blood on their faces. When she glances back at Garrett, he and Aveline stare at her with similar expressions. Fear and awe and concern.

She sways on her feet, aware of how dizzy and drained she feels after her feat. The gurgling growls fill the valley again and hundreds of Darkspawn pour up the hill and around the path, circling them and edging close to the limp forms of Carver, Bethany, and Wesley. Marian tries to lift her staff, drawing close to Garrett and Aveline, but her arm trembles and it drops to the ground with a thud.

"Maker," Aveline whispers behind her.

Her heart should hammer with the impending death she faces, but instead Marian feels resigned, fatigued, too weak to object or resist the inevitable.

A howl from above shakes the valley and everyone stares up at the source.

"Holy shit," Marian says, "That's a dragon."

I have no idea whether or not I'm going to continue this fic. It's fun and funny to write, but I somehow doubt people really like these were AUs where modern-day people end up playing the heroes of the story.