#In this au its a collaboration between Pym and Stark (and Shuri and Riri but ya know)

[noneedtoheedtheweed]

Bolts upright at 3 am in a cold sweat: What If-

Young Avengers/ Champions (whatever the mcu calls this team) goes back in time to prevent the disasters of the last 12 years.

First up is the first Marvel baby to be introduced: Cassie Lang

Cassie is taken in by Dr. Janet van Dyne after Scott and Hope are dusted and her other parents are killed in a car accident during the Snap.

Given that the world went to hell, she finishes the bare minimum of her high school education online and is accepted in UC Berkley (they desperately need student tuition) where she majored in Physics. Although she is incredibly smart and does well on tests and such, she is putting in the bare minimum as her main priority is her work with Dr. van Dyne.

After learning that Scott was in the Quantum Realm when the Snap happened, she desperately tries to get in there and save him. While she can't (because he was dusted), the heavily modified events of Quantumania occur in roughly 2021/2. She returns and devotes all she has to figuring out time travel. When she finally does about a year later, she takes it to the Avengers.

Janet convinces her to combine some of her tangential research into the Quantum Realm (not time travel specifically but some of the more believable stuff around it) to Dr. Foster, and the two help her get her PhD in quantum physics without doing a Masters.

While the Young Avenger's team is formed during the Snap and she was approached about it, she doesn't officially join until after. Cassie is closest with Riri who is a fellow STEM kid and worked with her and Dr. Stark on the Time Machine.