14388/A Dressing Down

A Dressing Down
Date of Scene:	12 March 2023
Location:	Van Dyne Industries
Synopsis:	No description
Cast of Characters:	Natasha Romanoff, Janet van Dyne, Nadia Pym-van Dyne

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Natasha Romanoff has posed:
The awards season it up! The Razzies have come out. The Oscars are right past them. That means that everyone that's wanting to look fabulous at the parties, has the contacts, and has the money is going to wear the most fashionable things around. That can be only one place in the City.
    And around the entrance, sometime in the middle of the evening, people are coming and going to pick up their outfits. No doubt Janet there to meet and greet, handle any quick last minute things..

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Well, 'people'. Janet has people for 'people'. Some celebrities are years on the waiting list for an authentic JVD outfit. She's there to gladhandle and greet people, wearing a sleeve-style dress that hugs her like a second skin from shoulder to ankle. Only her face and her left arm are exposed, and a plume of flowers over her right shoulder make the asymmetry work for emphasizing her slender curves.

"Smile, Nadia," she tells the Waspette through clenched teeth, and waves at someone approaching the fitting rooms. "You're gonna have to take this business over someday. Gotta know how to handle the high-rollers."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Nadia is looking this way and that at all of the people, seemingly fascinated. There are almost certainly comparisons being drawn within her head between how an ant colony or a beehive would function as people scurry about on their errands with Janet in the center as the queen.

    She's smiling of course, the times Nadia isn't smiling is usually when one should start worrying. And rather than her usual attire, which more often than not consists of her street clothes with a lab coat draped over her shoulders like a cape, she too is dressed in a fancy black dress, the surface of which has been crisscrossed by two inch swaths of red ribbon, that all meet in a large bow at the small of her back like some super stylish present in dress form. All the better to observe the celebrities and socialites in their natural habitat, well that and both being here and the dress were Janet's ideas.

    Even after two years there is still some mystique to it all though, the high fashion world is about as far as you can get from the dreary bunker that she grew up in and there is still something of a starry eyed quality to her as she looks around.

    "Can't I just have people for that?" The dress clad Waspette asks Janet. Dealing with high rollers naturally being time that she won't have for SCIENCE!

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
If by 'deal with' you mean 'blackmail and intimidate' then yes, the future is in good hands. But Nadia's nice! Really! Celebrities, high society, everyone who is important is there to get the things they're wearing for the social event of the.. Next week until Saint Patrick's Day! Or whatever thing comes next.
    Some of them are witty. Some of them gregarious. Others are belittling and taunting. Some take the time to make small talk. Some are swapping stories of things in show biz. Everything is going rather.. Casually, if that's the appropriate term for it. People come up, make the exchange, and likely talk some as they come and go.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet flashes a grin down at her daughter-- more genuine than the plastic smile she can paste on her face all day if needed. "See, /now/ you're thinking like a businesswoman," she congratulates Nadia. She glances up at the crowd and spots a Bentley pull up. Some rapper or performance artist who is currently in vogue; he's covered in diamonds and precious metals, and draped in Gucci and Louis Vuitton. "See, this one-- he can queue up with the others," she murmurs to Nadia. "He goes by Willy Slide. A flash in the pan who'll burn through his money in a couple years after he's no longer the darling of the moment."

She looks around, then nudges Nadia with an elbow. "Now, here's one of our people," she says, and leads Nadia over to an older couple disembarking from a Rolls-Royce. Neither of them are dressed particularly vainly, but there is a sense of old-school money radiating off of them.

Janet makes with the introductions, including presenting Nadia to them, and walks them over to an attendant who takes them back into a private fitting room.

"That's a six-hundred dollar t-shirt he's wearing, and if you saw her shoes, they're Manolo Blahnik's. Two thousand dollars. Gucci and Versace-- those are what poor people *think* rich people wear," she explains sidelong to her protege. "Those two are the kind of people who have so much money that they can dress however they want. That's our clientele-- the truly wealthy. Not just the intermittently fortunate."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Nadia beams. Like most, people she likes getting praised, especially by Janet. She nods her head slowly taking in Janet's explanations. Somewhere in the back of her brain there is a David Attenborough-esque voice comparing everything to behavior found in the animal kingdom and talking about the meanings of overt displays of plumage. "Why don't people just wear what they think looks cool?" She asks innocently. The notions of brand loyalty and conspicuous consumption still being somewhat lost on her. Though the fact Nadia herself has never really wanted for money whether during the time that the Red Room was providing what she needed for SCIENCE! or after connecting with her wealthy parents. Once price tags lose revelance 'oooh that looks cool, I'll wear that!' becomes much more viable.

    "Wouldn't it be smarter if he invested his money in a way that would provide future returns so it doesn't only last for a few years?" She adds after a moment.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
While Janet attempts to introduce Nadia to the lifestyles of the (very) rich and famous, from the front entrance there's a glow, then seconds later an explosion that goes to blow the front doors clean off the front of the building! And then coming out from them is a man that seems.. Floating? Wearing a white suit seemingly patched together with a full facemask and goggles. "Hrrn. Everything's corporatized these days. Nothing's original. It's all about the -brand- and the -expense-." The face of his mask would twitch. "It's all a soulless void of whatever is imagined. So we're going to burn it all down!" The phasing anti-corporate crusader, aka GHOST!

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Because poor people put too much stock in what other people think of them," Janet explains. "They want to wear 'rich people' clothes so people think they're rich. People like us, we wear brands that are off the radar of anyone making less than fifty million a year. It's--"

Janet's cut off at the sound of an explosion, and reflexively yanks Nadia's arm to put herself between Nadia and any kind of danger. "Oh, for fuck's sake," Janet gripes. "Another one of those stupid anti-capitalist crusaders. C'mon honey, let's switch to our party outfits," she bids Nadia. Janet abruptly disappears, leaving her dress to collapse on the ground like so much discarded fabric. The Wasp can be seen swiftly pulling her black bodysuit into place and buzzing towards Ghost, before her dress even hits the ground.

"<Nadia, go wide and look for anyone else planting bombs,>" she bids Nadia as soon as she thinks the girl's comms are online.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Nadia also disappears in the blink of an eye. A much tinier Nadia performs an unbelievable feat of mid-air acrobatic outfit change as she switches to the suit she keeps in her necklace. <<Okay! On it!>> Nadia zips off on biosynthetic wings to examine the perimeter not only with her eyes but the myriad sensor upgrades she has done to her suit which these days is as much technological marvel as heroic fashion statement. Bombs also happen to be a thing she knows a thing or two about. <<Just be careful, never trust anyone who just casually floats around.>>

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
There don't seem to be any other bombs, according to Nadia's quick sensors! Everything was set out front. Nadia is however likelier to notice that everything in the store has been cleared out. Outfit wise. Prototype wise. Fabric wise. Everything around the front end of the facility has been Ghost-napped.
    And then Ghost is calling out, "So you call catering to the highest elite strata of society that live off the suffering of everyone beneath them? All you do is dress it up for them to let them appreciate their spoils." He doesn't add a 'literally' there, but it's -implied-! Then over with the grab-bag of everything that he's taken swung over his back in some sort of mag-locked container.. He's running right through traffic.. And literally -glides- through an oncoming vehicle!