20261/-- UNSTOPPABLE!

-- UNSTOPPABLE!
Date of Scene:	16 March 2025
Location:	Genoshan Embassy
Synopsis:	Lorna brings a pair of heavyweight personalities together to talk about the benefits of sanctioned violence.
Cast of Characters:	Lorna Dane, Jennifer Walters, Cain Marko

---

Lorna Dane has posed:
Some period of time ago, Jennifer Walter explained her brilliant strategy for helping superstrong, superdurable beings work out their stress, frustrations, and other assorted complex emotions without courting the enormous damages and casualties that tend to result from such beings cutting loose:

Consensual, community-based punching.

Lorna herself is a different breed of posthuman, and while she certainly benefits from safe, or at least acceptable outlets for power expression, the pseudopsionic nature of her Mutant gift changes the variables significantly: she doesn't get as much out of hitting (or being hit?!) extremely hard as her emerald-skinned partner does, because beneath the force-fields and nebulously enhanced Mutant vigor, she's terribly soft and squishy. However, she knows more than her share of posthumans, as Queen of a nation people primarily by them and one-third of the leadership apparatus for said nation's posthuman militia, and so:

"... know when the last time you and them ran into each other was, but I do know they're pretty much always down for a good fight-- and that's just for starters," Lorna explains while guiding the Jade Giantess forward with hands clamped over green eyes and subtle magnetic prodding. "Between you two, and Mary, and Carol, and-- I mean, Genosha's got plenty of folks who don't do military, but would probably love a chance to learn a couple things from people like you guys..."

Rather than permanent office space, Lorna tends to pick an unused room and furnish accordingly for clusters of appointments, since the Embassy isn't her permanent residence. Today's office is an expanse of softly carpeted floors and bottom-to-top windows that would feel downright cavernous if not for the guest she's invited to wait for she and Jen's arrival.

"... just know that THIS place is only reinforced enough to support you guys talking," she warns, nudging Jennifer through the door-- after which she pulls her hands away with an unseen flourish and unspoken 'ta-da!', revealing a Prospective Puncher massive enough to occupy every inch of one of the titanium-reinforced sofas set up for her guests.

Unlike Jen, Cain Marko had the benefit of knowing exactly who he was brought into Mutant Town to meet today. This is important, because - while she has a fair amount of faith in his self-regulation/control - she is not up on the complex web of relationships that surely exists between superstrong entities, and didn't want to risk triggering some kind of obligate score-settling.

Jennifer Walters has posed:
ERSTWHILE, ON JENNIFER WALTERS' BRILLIANT IDEA

"Jen! Jen!! You invited your nemesis TITANIA to PUNCH CLUB?! What's wrong with you!"

"Ha ha, don't worry about it! I know exactly what I'm doing! Probably!"

AND NOW, ON THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF JENNIFER WALTERS

"Lornaaaa, I have no idea what I'm doooing--"

Context is important, it should be noted. The context for this somewhat whimpery declaration comes in the form of Jennifer Walters, stumbling blind through the Genoshan Embassy. She has no idea what she's doing, of course, because her eyes are covered and she is not the lawyer with radar sense and superhuman Catholic powers, that's the other guy. So! Existentially, Jen -still- has a -pretty- good head on her shoulders.

"I meannnnn."

Probably!

And so it is that Jen is guided like someone who is about to be surprised by a new car for their birthday, into that sequestered office space in the embassy. To her credit, she -does- know her way around the place pretty well by now, and with Lorna's expert guidance, she doesn't knock into a single thing on the way the--

*WHACK* "Ow!" *CRASH*

--she almost doesn't knock into a single thing on the way there!

"I swear I'll pay for that Lor but you're gonna need to tell me what it was first--"

And this is about when the proverbial and literal veil is lifted and she is brought face-to-face with--

"Ohmigosh it's Cain Marko the Unstoppable Juggernaut."

So it is that the Glorious Green Glamazon is left to just sort of stand stock still for a few seconds as she through a mental rolodex of meticulously backdated events in which Juggernaut bulldozed his way into her life, or her cousin's, or the Avengers, or like the X-Men tangentially.

It's a huge backlog of issues. Proverbial issues. And it leaves her standing their lamely for three solid seconds of deep debate. On the one hand, she's got a HUGE amount of evidence that Juggernaut can brawl, and he can brawl GOOD -- evidence so densely packed one could even say it's practically sixty years worth of proof but that'd be ridiculous. Perhaps some sort of sliding timescale of proof.

On the other hand -- if something goes wrong, what is she going to do here? He's the Unstoppable Juggernaut. Unstoppable. That literally means he cannot be stopped!

Ultimately, after the third second passes, Jennifer harnesses her awesome barrister powers instead of her awesome brawler powers and lifts a hand to wiggle green fingers in greeting while only SLIGHTLY side-eyeing Lorna with a 'HELP ME OUT HERE' look.

"Hhhhhi Cain Marko the Unstoppable Juggernaut. ... What's up?"

Literally means cannot be stopp"thanks i get it" Jen mumbles irritably under her breath.

Cain Marko has posed:
"Weeellllll. Lookee, lookee, lookee.."

The gravelly earthquake like rumble of Juggernaut's voice vibrates through the room from the epic center that is the goliath himself, standing in his full 'embodiment of power' regalia with one hand on one waist and the other arm up and spinning his 'wok' shaped helmet around on a thick finger the size of a tree branch.

This in turn leaves his brutish, thick necked visage fully visible and exposed - big grin plastered on his broad features with all the nuance of a schoolyard and playground bully ready to get to teasing and needling the first thing that he sees.

So 'surprise indeed'.

Those three seconds that Jen takes to fully take him seem to drag on and on and on, his grin widening with each beat that passes Then when she finally, finally addresses him directly., the red haired behemoth simply rumbles, "That's me! The Unstoppable Juggernaut." <tm>

The word Unstoppable will no doubt come up enough times, very shortly, to become a banned word.

"I hear you're lookin' to blow off some steam..." he finally says, his grin lessening but still there enough that you can practically hear his voice rumbling 'Stop hitting yourself!' over and over again.

"I know, I know, I get the feeling. Nobody around you can do that 'safely' with. I get the feeling. I'm kinda in a similar situation, what with me laying low over these days.. Hidin' out where I'm at. Can't exactly do my usual stompin' around!"

He gestures towards Lorna, "So when good ol'Queen of Green gave me a call...how could I resist!" His gaze flickers back to Jen once again, smile growing larger once more. "..Aint a problem, is it?"

Lorna Dane has posed:
"Oh no it was a gift from a local artist--"

Thankfully, the Unstoppable Juggernaut is here to put a stop to two green women's efforts to put each other at ease about their (mutually-inflicted) destruction. Lorna uncovers those Gamma green eyes, the barrister reacts, and the Queen gets a moment to swing around and touch down beside her. Both of her arms begin coiling around Jennifer's before she catches herself, flicks her eyes between the two giants, then edges half a step away, leaving one set of fingers barely poised against an emerald bicep while the other presents Cain in his unsettlingly joyful glory.

"I'm SURE you two know each other, but I figured... why wait for the grapevine to do its thing with your mutual interests?" Wandering eyes find their way all the way up to Jennifer's; green brows bounce, then Lorna flicks her attention back to the Juggernaut.

"Cain is..."

A beat; a furrowing of brows as she slowly looks back at Jen.

"... on..."

Another beat as Lorna drifts from Avenger to mercenary.

        "... my..."

                "... pay... roll... ..." is ultimately where she lands, features scrunched in utmost bemusement and mild frustration by the end.

"... and he LOVES fighting," she hastily appends. "So you two should get along excellently! Because you ALSO," she addresses up to Jennifer with a big, beaming(, hopeful) smile, "love fighting, and--..."

Beat.

        "... are..."

                "... on... my... pay roll..."

                        "... in... the sense that sometimes... I pay for dinner... ..."

Blinking, Lorna exhales, edges another half step away, and puffs her cheeks out.

"... the POINT is that you should both get along really well," she murmurs without looking up.

Jennifer Walters has posed:
Look at that grin!

It's an UNSTOPPABLE GRIN--

With one mighty eyeroll, Jen pushes past the metatextual hype and focuses entirely on things that -can- be stopped. Like her preconceived biases!

I hear you're lookin' to blow off some steam...

"--There's PROBABLY less threatening ways to say that--"

It's... slow going. Look. These things are a process.

Thankfully, Lorna is a steadying presence -- a green anchor in a storm of editor's asterisks detailing all the reasons this is an incredibly bad idea. A beautiful, wonderful, thoughtful, patient, loquacious as she calmly sets the stage for the conversation--

Because you ALSO... are... on... my... pay roll...

--and wonderfully, beautifully, thoughtfully, patiently, loquaciously starts to Imply Certain Things--

It's about here that Jen is just completely tilting her attention AWAY from the Unstoppable Menacing Aura of Cain Marko to SLOWLY turn her head Lorna's way, every subsequent syllable causing her to squint a little more scrutinizingly at her partner-in-life-and-law(-and-crime??).

She's pursing her lips profoundly at the time Lorna reaches pay roll, her expression having completely metamorphosed into a 'where exactly are you going with this babe' look.

Silence hangs its damning presence over the conversation.

"... you want a second to think that one over? Maybe do a retcon?" Jennifer asks. To Lorna. To the silence. To the Unstoppable Juggernaut.

Still.

At least Lorna stopped JUST short of implying something untoward about Jennifer and payrolls and her profession, and for that, she gets one single, fond-if-exasperated squeeze of that hand rested on Jen's bicep.

She tried. And that's what counts.

Still. Cain - who cannot be stopped - presses on. And hearing his voice, Jennifer draws a deep breath -- and then turns her sunniest smile his way, radiating Gamma glee that could surely cause radiation poisoning in lesser beings with its sheer, polite affability.

"Not a problem -at all- (asterisk)," she answers back. Takes another, deeper breath.

You can do this, Jen. You brought Titania into the fold, and that worked out really well, and Carol was only SORT of mad at you. You've got the chops to roll diplomacy on inviting the Juggernaut after telling Carol, right?

...

Oh god. You're not gonna tell Carol beforehand, are y--

"SO! I've been trying out something new. I know, people like you -- like ME -- there's not a lot of ways we can get our..." BUILDING SMASHING RAGE TANTRUMS "... frustrations out without drawing people into the crossfire. And whenever we do, it -never- ends well. So I... started a club. Maybe Lor told you -- nothing formal, just something where people like us can get together in safe, faraway places, and just... -get- it out of our systems."

Jen scratches her chin. She thinks of the prospect of fighting with Cain Marko, in any circumstances. Harrowing, but... also...

... exciting.

"We're calling it Punch Club."

Yes. This is the right call.

She gives one last squeeze of Lorna's hand before she turns her full attention upon Cain, dark green brows lifting. "Here's the deal: what happens in Punch Club stays in Punch Club. That means, you won't get in any trouble for anything that happens between all of us during any sessions. We don't do any permanent damage. And we won't get on your case for anything going on -outside- Punch Club, provided you haven't done anything -really- egregious. It's neutral ground, to a certain extent. Like Switzerland. As long as -that's- not a problem... we can talk."

Cain Marko has posed:
The Juggernaut chortles.

It's...not necessarily a comfortable sounding laugh. Just a few steps shy of a One Piece villain laugh, really. Which is...appropriate when you think about it.

"Firstl...What is this? A blind date? You don't gotta explain anything or play match maker, queenie. You sound like you're trying to set us up. Not that I'd mind that..... Maybe we can make a 'date' a bet... You know... I win you take me out. You win, I take you out. That sorta thing..." Cain's tapping his big cinder block of a jaw as he considers this, eyes looking off to the side as if eyeing some far off distant five star resturant able to handle them both. Buffet of course.

Naturally he therefore completely missing the --- charisma -- and further context clues that--date night is probably not on the cards here."

He's still thinking over how to make this come to pass when the full scope of Shulkie's suggestion finally lands home and he turns back to look at her, inclining his head slightly and letting his ice blue eyes bore right into her emerald ones, searching for any signs of deception or trickery or misdirection to her words.

And not seeming to find any he declares, magmonously: "Punch Club?! --- That's a pretty cool name. I like it! You know ther's fight club's that pop up now nad again in Mutant Town and elsewhere. Used to be in Madripoor but that place is a dump now. Somethin, somethin', Mutant Liberation Front or whatever."

It's in the throes of a crossover event.

"I had been -thinking- about doing somethign myself like this. I'd even stolen some --- I mean uh -- I got ahold...of...some.... Well nevermind all that it got busted up anyway."

He decides to leave out the part of possibly kidnapping people and the illegal gambling and all that as well. No need to burden Jennifer with all that additional information.

"Anyway.... sounds fun. Yeah, not a problem. Terms are fair sounding.." He holds up a massive hand, as if swearing an oath, "I promise not to break any tectonic plates or whatever." he offers as if it's his way of saying he'll play fair.

Ooops, looks like his fingers were quite visibly crossed there. "..Ah, whoops. I gotta remember to do that with the hand behind my back..."

Lorna Dane has posed:
"Cain, I'm gonna need you to NOT cross your fingers when you make promises to my Avenger g--al pal," comes with a moment of fleeting tension and bouncing eyes amidst an otherwise light and airy tone.

Something about being between her partner in life/crime-fighting and her unabashedly criminal friend invested with the power of a dark god makes what would normally be a simple task - connecting people who need things from each other - harder than it needs to be-- though, thanks to the suggestion of fighting for a date, and the knowing amusement it conjured as she glanced up at Jen to see how it landed, the tension has receded somewhat. Nobody is likely to start a fight in the middle of her Embassy, and that's a win and of itself when combining volatile personalities.

"Also - and this is just a thought, subject to modification based on the results of surveys conducted in the region - there are areas of Genosha that still haven't been properly cleared-- lots of rubble, and ruins, and..."

She takes a moment, touching her tongue to the edge of her teeth as she quietly exhales.

"... as arenas go... you could probably do worse, right? I mean, you guys like having buildings for this kinda thing, don't you?"

A beat as she glances between them--

-- don't they? Does suggesting such a thing constitute some kind of anti-brick discrimination or stereotyping?

Jennifer Walters has posed:
Is it normal to instantly regret a decision? A silly question, of course. Jen's -years- of high-flying adventure as the Sensational She-Hulk has taught her very clearly:

It's extremely normal to instantly regret a decision and you will do it just -- just, -constantly-.

Jennifer may not personally agree with this. The withering glare she tries to turn on the narration however, is soon turned into one of pure exasperation as Cain starts to work his way through the logistics of turning a fight-date into a date-date. Her brow lifts. She folds her arms over her chest. She even taps one purple-lacquered nail against her bicep in a perfectly deadpan metronome.

"Uh huh," she begins. "Maybe we put a pin in that one. I don't have Juggernaut Buffet money."

It all goes to her clothes, after all.

At the very least - for Lorna's edification, if nothing else - this put-upon pronouncement is much more relaxed than it could be. On a sliding scale it's closer to Glib Avengers Banter levels than Imminent Dramatic CGI Fight levels. -Less- promising is the way her brows furrow and those bright gamma green eyes narrow when Cain VERY OBVIOUSLY CROSSES HIS FINGERS in the wake of his promise, COMPLETELY voiding the legal binding of it! Yes, Jen is a lawyer, and -yes-, Jen knows finger-crossing does not hold up in any court of law except that -one time- she got pulled into an alternate dimension and had to advocate for a cartoon Kangaroo Court (don't ask), but still. It's the spirit of the thing!

Jen's frown is a rapidly growing thing (which was, shockingly, -not- added to by him skirting around his legal snafus because, frankly, he is right, she's not his lawyer, she doesn't need to hear that right now); in the end it's only stifled by Lorna's well-timed intervention, suggesting the lingering disaster zones of Genosha as a staging ground for club meetings. Jen blinks. And then, she lifts one green hand to cup her chin, a pensive look crossing jade features.

"Huh. ... /Huh/," she says, realization dawning on her. "That'd help me work around a few messy legal snafus, too..." And ponderings give way to a big grin, as tension melts away from Jennifer in the wake of that ever-clear excitement that sees her taking Lorna's hands in her own and practically bouncing with delight. Bouncing! "Lor, that's an awesome idea! I think we'd want to go over some technical details about it first but -- but -- wow, that works so much better than the abandoned airstrip I was using! Good thing, too, because I'm pretty sure I was a stone's throw away from getting the military on my ass for that one, and I hadn't put together a convincing suit on it yet, haha!"

the what, for why

"Okay!" Jennifer -immediately blows past this entire troubling line of thought-, turning her attention back Juggernaut-wards. "This has been a weirdly productive meeting, but hey, I'm not gonna complain. Look, full disclosure -- there's gonna be a lot of people in this club you have history with. But they all know the score, and... frankly, I think you and I can both admit that we need something like this in our lives if we want to keep from doing something we regret. Don't cause problems, and we won't cause problems, either." Jen might not get the Hulk Rages her cousin does, but even so. ... She knows sometimes it just takes one bad day. So why not try to find a productive way to channel those frustrations.

She takes a deep breath. The Juggernaut. The -Juggernaut-.

And, without letting any second thoughts stop her, she takes a step forward and stretches out one hand towards the even-larger man. In offering.

"If you can agree to the terms... I think we can put something together to break in the new grounds." A brow lifts. A cocky, self-sure smile - the She-Hulk Special - forms on green lips.

"What d'you say, Juggs?"

Does she regret this decision?

A little. ... But strangely, not as much as that kneejerk regret when she impulsively invited Mary to Punch Club. It's Nemesis thing.

Besides! It's the Juggernaut! What a get! He's UNSTO--

Cain Marko has posed:
"I dunno I mean....aint something missing without screaming people and sirens going off? There's an art to the whole 'mass destruction thing..."

Juggernaut rubs his jaw again, seemingly very -seriously- considering this as an issue....a potential deal breaker.

But then - he grins again. "...I'm joking! It's a-" bad "-joke! And I was kidding earlier. The crossed finger thing. Don't you two ladies know about 'trollin'? I thought -I- was the old person here.."

He suddenly reaches forward and accepts the offered hand, slapping his immense mitt into Jen's own and doing so with----very reasonable force! No attempt to try and squeeze and crush her hand. No attempt to exert any sort of dominion or proof of his might as the UNSTOPPABLE JUGGERNAUT....

Just a fair and share shake and acceptance of the terms.

"Listen...." he suddenly grows more serious, as if a switch had been hit right then and there. The bruiser, brute and affable menace briefly put away as he says with all due seriouslness, "..It's a good idea. I aint about screwing up a good idea. If they behave - I behave. Of course that means they need to be able to handle some ....trash talkin'....but I won't be about any vendetta's or anything. Truth is... I've tried this sort of thing before but the folk flaked out after the first round. So I got you. It's play when I'm there, not business. I'll behave when I'm there..."

He grins down at her again, though it is less bullish, unlike before. "...Scouts honor.."