The Most [s]Inappropriate[/s] Touching Of Reunions

[Vortex/Valerie Wei-Li-Zhao]

OOC: Month 6, week 3, day 4. Open thread!

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Valerie is the special stubborn kind of idiot who refuses to ask for directions. Which is usually okay since the woman had an extremely good sense of spatial location, but there is something about being on a flying fortress that messes with that very, very badly.

For the third time that day, she somehow ends up back in the mess hall, an increasingly deep frown on her face. All of these hallways looked exactly the same. How did she even find her way to the helicopter again? She should probably try and find a map somehow.

Sighing, Valerie decides to give up for the time being and go snatch a sandwich and soda out of the fridge to settle down for a proper sulk by a window. She’ll eventually get the hang of things but the annoying part was getting there. At least the view was good up here.

[Brawl]

Elsa has been working out in the on-board gym. She went through a couple punching bags before the guy in charge refused to bring her another one and she punched him instead. Then people got offended for some reason and she had to hit them. All in all, it was a decent workout. She worked up a sweat and then she took a shower.

Now she's clad in her usual tank-top and camos, a white towel draped over her shoulders as she saunters into the mess hall and starts rummaging through the fridge, grunting in Valerie's direction by way of greeting.

[Vortex/Valerie Wei-Li-Zhao]

Oh hey, it’s that woman. The weirdly familiar woman who was also weirdly familiar in the same nonsensical way that Lord Octopus was. Were it any other circumstance Val would be cracking out her Inner Flirt and diving into trouble, but things have taken a very, very weird turn these past few weeks.

Heck, things have been weird ever since she’d gotten out of jail, period. It was the vague feeling of stepping out onto a whirlwind wrecked town. Except without the exhilaration of having caused the destruction and the unhappy feeling that this was her mess to clean up.

“Hey,” Valerie grumbles at Elsa, sitting up slightly. “We ever met before?”

[Brawl]

"Y-no. We have not," Elsa responds as she extricates herself from the refridgerator, taking a seat across from Valerie with half a meatball sub in one hand and a can of orange soda in the other. They're both marked as belonging to the same person, but that person is not Elsa.

"Hi, I'm Elsa," she says between mouthfuls. "Only when I work they call me Devastator."

[Vortex/Valerie Wei-Li-Zhao]

Valerie arches a brow at the cut off ‘yes’ and then arches the other brow when the woman comes to sit with someone else’s lunch. She carefully decides not to comment on it, taking a bite out of her own sandwich.

“‘M Valerie,” she mumbles through her mouthful. “Don’t got a workin’ name, but Oct keeps callin’ me Vortex, so I guess I’m that.” She pauses to swallow before eying the other woman somehwat curiously. “So how d’ ya know Slaughter?”

[Brawl]

Elsa washes down what is now her sandwich with a slug of orange soda, coughing slightly as it bubbles in her throat in an unpleasant fashion. "I've worked for him before. And he busted me out of that prison convoy."

[Vortex/Valerie Wei-Li-Zhao]

Valerie laughs at the answer, a shallow, entirely humorless sound.

“Yeah, I saw. I was pilotin’ the heli. Nothing like good ol’ impromptu plastic surgery for a reunion party, huh?” she chuckles, lifting her own drink in a mocking toast. “‘Least he had the courtesy a’ knowing you beforehand. Asshole just picked me off a’ the street like I was some rent-a-minion.”

She takes another bite and then pauses, canting her head to the side thoughtfully before adding, voice muffled by the sandwich, “Yer nose healed up okay, I guess.” It was kind of a compliment. Valerie hadn’t flirted in years.

[Brawl]

Brawl has strict orders not to tell Valerie that she's Vortex, for whatever reason. Onslaught, like all smarter people, remains as inscrutable as ever to him.

Elsa's hand goes to her nose as her eyes nearly cross trying to catch a glimpse of it. "Oh, he broke my nose, yeah. Not the first time that's happened. Er, it's the first time he's broken it, not the first time it's been broken, though," she responds as a saucy meatball slides out of her stolen sub and onto her shirt. She glares at it as though this is a personal affront, then picks it up and eats it.

"So, uh, what did you do before you worked here?"

[Vortex/Valerie Wei-Li-Zhao]

Snickering at Elsa’s unfortunate meatball incident, Valerie slides the tissue box on the table at her, remarking, “You’re lucky. I don’t think I ever met anyone with a proper nose after the second time.”

At the second question though, she hesitates.

“... Nothin’ special,” Val answers after a moment, shrugging.

[Brawl]

"I'm awesome like that," Elsa responds, eyeballing the tissue box as though it might pounce on her for a moment before reaching out to get a tissue and wipe fruitlessly at her stained shirt.

"'Nothin' special'. Uh-huh," she says. So Valerie doesn't want to talk about her past supervillaining resume. That's fine with Elsa. "Whaddaya think of Slaughter, then?"

[Vortex/Valerie Wei-Li-Zhao]

Valerie’s supervillain resume included a brief bout of somewhat legit supervillain work, then being left for dead and THEN being put in prison for a decade. And then being a cashier afterwards. It wasn’t exactly flattering.

“He pays good. Too good. I ain’t exactly a very powerful meta nor do I have the best a’ records. Peeps like me don’t just get a nice salary outta nowhere,” Valerie sneers into her drink in the middle of taking a sip. “Something’s up.”

Wait, why did she just say all of that to Elsa? They’d just met properly half a minute ago and she’s extremely sure the other woman was lying about knowing her. There was nothing to trust. Valerie falls silent, gnawing on the lip of the soda can with a dark scowl.

[Brawl]

"Yup," Elsa agrees, sipping at her soda. Something is definitely up. She's not supposed to talk about it, though. "Sooo, uh, um . . . seen any good movies lately?" she asks, at a loss for conversation.

[Vortex/Valerie Wei-Li-Zhao]

“Movies,” Valerie echoes, giving Elsa the most amused of looks. Was the woman really that bad at cover up or was she planted here intentionally? Well, time to prod and find out.

“Well, there was this romantic comedy about a couple on a honeymoon fighting zombies,” she answers, leaning her chair back until it was balanced on only two feet. “Pretty terrible t’ watch alone though. S’ the kind a’ movie you’re supposed to make fun of with someone else.”

[Brawl]

"Zombies are overdone," Elsa says offhanded. She read that on the internet, and parroting other peoples' opinions makes her sound smart!

"Wait, how is that a romantic comedy?" she asks, tilting her head to one side in puzzlement after her brain catches up with her mouth.

[Vortex/Valerie Wei-Li-Zhao]

“Well, people screaming and dying stupidly is pretty funny and there was a couple innit, so it was romantic.” Valerie’s definition of ‘romantic comedy’ may or may not be rather far away from the standard film school definition of the world. Or heck, even an average viewer's definition of the word.

“So anyways, I was thinkin’ you n’ I could go hang out and watch it together?” She flashes Elsa a hopeful smile.