16104/A Roof With a DOOM!

A Roof With a DOOM!
Date of Scene:	18 October 2023
Location:	Candle, Booke & Belle Rooftop
Synopsis:	DOOM comes to the Candle, Booke and Belle's roof when a cameo broach calls to be returned to its owner after an eighty year separation. Nettie finds out she's part of Latveria's lore and that her wife has a statue and is gonna get a park.
Cast of Characters:	Victor Von Doom, Nettie Crowe

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Victor Von Doom has posed:
The Secluded Laboratory of Victor von Doom, Latverian Embassy, New York City.

The package that had arrived from Latveria was an odd one. Doom had been told by one of his mystics that what was inside had energies that they could not quite explain. Thus Doom had the package expedited to him in his care.

Now, with the small item placed on an altar with archaic runes, and Doom's own mystical powers as two large spell circles eminating from his fists, he is not trying to decypher what secrets the item may contain. Not yet.

First. He tells the item in question in Latin, "Dic mihi dominus tuus." The item rattles. Rises, starting to glow and spin. And that is when Doom realizes that the item is not going to show him -- it is trying to teleport to them.

Immediately, a gauntleted hand slams over the item to capture it, just as it teleports, bringing Doom with it as he pops into existance in a burst of green energies upon the rooftop of the shop.

"Where have you taken Doom?" he demands.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    Say what you want, but the Candle, Booke and Belle is one of the higher buildings in the neighborhood, which allows for views of exactly six other buildings that are higher, some semblance of the Manhattan skyline, the lack of a rooftop garden space without having to drag up lights, and she's almost sure the physical structure of the building is already stretched to its limit as it was. There's only so much a witch can do.

    Which, by the by, leads us to WHY Nettie Crowe was on a roof, wearing ripped jeans and an over large sweater, her hair a bit of a crow's nest as she sits with a lit cigarette, surrounded by empty bottles. They weren't all from today, but they were all hers. When she couldn't stand to be inside, this was her little bit of sanctuary since opening her home to the Justice League's Dark Side, the unmarketable antiheros who do bad things for good causes.

    And weirdly now there's a teleportation incoming. She can feel it grating against her skull, and Annette Victoria Crowe is not about to take this standing down.

    So naturally she stands up, prepared to protect her home, her little flock of duckies (which in all actuality is her calling everyone a boob, not a fowl), and as the teleportation circle appears, flashes, and fades, leaving a masked figure with a notable green cape, she tilts her hea dback, pale eyes going wide -- and then, realizing who it is who has arrived on her rooftop, she sloooowly... tilts... to the side... and then tumbles backwards onto the piece of sectional couch that's been dragged up here.

    "What the... bloody... Jaysus..." she begins.

Victor Von Doom has posed:
Is Doom ever seen without the armor and green cloak that swirls around him as if carried by it's own wind? No. As his bearings recover quickly, he is almost ready to power on his gauntlets as his armor's GPS quickly relays information where he has arrived.

Whriling upon Nettie, one hand still grasping the small item, he demands, "Who dares summon Doom?!" And then he realizes as she collapses on the couch. She's bloody at least two sheets and working on hoisting the third.

And as he scans her face and is given feedback, the look of anger sinks into one that could border, if one could read his eyes, into disappointment.

"You are the Greywitch." he says. Not a question. Statement of fact.

"You are more youthful than I imagined."

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "Right in one, Your Grace." Nettie raises her hand, her nails all different lengths, broken or worn down -- but she was a Victorian Lady, somewhere, underneath the gin. And then she pauses "... no, no, you're not a Count, I think that's Count von Count." she mutters half to herself, and she wrinkles her nose a moment before she slowly pushes herself back up to at least a sit, slowly so that the world doesn't spin.

    "Aye. I hear that lilt of disappointment. Trust me, lad, no one ismore disappointed in m'self than m'self." she states, but she does magic up another glass. She sits this on the pile of pallets serving as a table.

    "And I wouldn't admit that, 'cept you've landed on top my house. So. What can the Greywitch do for Doom?" she questions, and pours him a couple fingers of whiskey. She sticks to her gin.

Victor Von Doom has posed:
"Doctor. You may call me Doctor." Doom replies, a simple enough title. One that he has earned. Through right of passage. Through hard work and skill. And he has used that title to cultiivate a nation. A garden within his iron glove. Doctor is a title of respect and one that he earned of his own accord.

"You are a drunken wretch." he tells her bluntly. "However. I have read of your exploits in Eastern Europe during the Second World War. It is a shame that leaders of this world do not realize how callously they bring themselves towards a third, so lock-stepped with their fragile beliefs. Doom could unify them all. But that is not the point of my visit."

"There were few battles in Latveria during the war. The attempt of annexation of the German jackboot. The relentless press of the Soviet meatgrinder. Both were turned away. And both remain kept at bay, even as they taken on new nomme de gueres. NATO. Russians."

"However, in one of those stories in one of those battles, there was the story of one that assisted Latveria in her time of need and then disappeared. She asked not thanks. She wished not accolades. She only sought something she had lost, the legend goes."

His hand opens, and within the gauntlet is a simple cameo. "This object believes itself to be yours." Green energies lift it to float it over to Nettie. "Sober up so you may accept it."

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "Aye, so I am." Nettie replies quietly, and she listens to her exploits. Or at least exploits she guided. She'd been to Latveria before. She helped free Romani from camps. She herself retained the pink triangle patches used to denote lesbians and gay men along with her collection of skulls.

    She taps her ash off to the side and returns her cigarette to her mouth.

    "You don't do the things I do for the accolades, or the ticker-tape. Someone's got to have faith in people doin' the right thing when it's needed most." she states quietly, her eyebrows rising up, and she purses her lips.

    Because it's true. She had lost so much fighting in the war.

    And then her eyes go wide. She seems to sober up on her own, looking to the cameo broach.

    "-- where in the blazes did you get *that*, Doctor?" she questions, and she gently plucks it from the air, like it was a fragile memory. She turns it over in her hands.

    A broach. An old-fashioned thing with the depiction of someone's face rendered from black oxhorn on a quartz stone. A bit of pink and black. And her expression softens.

    Her fingers curl protectively around it.

    "Aye. So it is. Mine, I mean. My wife."

Victor Von Doom has posed:
Coming over to take a seat across from Nettie, Doom accepts the finger of whiskey and drinks it back, before setting it down on the table. "Soon after the fall of Poland, as the Nazis advanced and their Soviet allies at the time did nothing, Latveria faced a crisis. It is a small country. Their armed forces could not repel an invasion by numbers."

"Instead, Latveria turned to magics and mystics to protect their home. The call was put out for any with ability to come to Latveria and defend it's borders. Latveria at the time had become a place for Romani refugees to retreat to. And it was those, the things that mustached dictator did not understand wished to claim."

His hands settle on his lap, folded over each other. "There was a town. Jelgava is what it was called. It is now Doomsdale. It is near the border with Hungary. When the wolves came, it would be where they would be met. Armor and technology against mystics and magic."

"The battle was long. Bloodied. And in three days, the sheer numbers of the invaders had threatened to break the lines. Then reinforcement came. Arriving from the skies above, a single figured rallied the broken lines of the Latverian defenses and with her abilities and skills -- I was told that she opened the Earth itself to swallow an entire panzer divisions. She called upon lightning to destroy Luftwaffe planes before they could ever drop their bombs. She made it so that Latveria became not the place where you came to die as an enemy, but where you came to lose your soul into the Abyss, to never be freed for eternity."

His hands splay. "At least that is the stories that are told around the Romani campfires of my youth." he finishes, before gesturing to the broach and the Greywitch. "I am sure you could enlighten me more about the Lauma of Latveria and her role in my nation's history."

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "Lauma of Latveria. Lauma after the guardians of orphans?" Nettie inquires, seeming to have sobered as she takes a deep breath, and looks to the sky.

    "We were nurses, to the one of us. My wife. Our students. All walks of life from Western Europe to the UNited States. We arrived to save lives... an' that's what we did." she states softly, and she opens her hands, looking at the cameo, and she turns it over. 31-10-35. Their 'wedding' date -- though it wasn't seen as legal at the time.

    "We spread out across the lines, so that it seemed as if there was one figure traveling fast. Now a days that'd be psy-ops I suppose. I did most of the heavy lifting." she gives a small smile, recounting that night.

    "We came to air-lift orphans and their tenders out of the way, but we couldn't... we couldn't just leave others. So we made a bit of a stand. Rallied the troops, as it were." she takes a deep breath and lets it go.

    "I remember Nancy's broom came apart mid-air after being hit through the straw with anti-aircraft fire. She an' Harriett had to hightail it back, but would set charges to planes. We all did. God, the amount of times we almost ended up in propellers..." she whispers.

    "This is the profile of my wife's face. My Addie Flynn. Six foot tall Irishwoman. Kissed by fire and had Brigid's flame running through her veins, could outdrink any of our officers."

    Nettie's pale eyes water.

    "We were just supposed to be nurses, not the stuff of legends. Jelgava was our last battle that we came away from. I think..." she sucks on her lips a moment, and then she lifts a hand to wipe at her eyes.

    "Lauma. Lauma'd be a good title for her. She was fire and rage when it came to the wee one's safety, I think that's where I get it from these days."

Victor Von Doom has posed:
"There is a statue of her on the border of Doomsdale. Doom has allowed this statue, as it speaks to our history of Latvia. I can understand why one would see a woman of red hair and magic and assume she would be the sole defender. When I was young, I too wished to be the sole defender of Latvia."

Perhaps Addie inspired Doom somehow. He doesn't say. It's not his place to do so. He listens to the story, taking it all in. And he considers his next words.

"She. Nor you. Asked for award or accolade. And if that is the case, I shall hold this secret for you and only return this as a generosity of Doom on behalf of a grateful nation to a grieving widow. You said you were married."

A thoughtful pause. "At such time, such a union would be illegal." Not a question, a fact of the matter. And he is pondering something, and a moment later, he is lifting his gauntlet, opening a small screen and putting in information. After a moment, he splays his hand, and before Nettie appears a contract. A marriage contract.

"I do not know your wife's full name, Greywitch. If you wish, you will fill this out, there is no magical energy bound to it, you may check. Doom is generous. Completion of this form will, in the country of Latveria, legally acknowledge your marriage to your wife and entitles you to a hero's pension as her widow."

His other hand pulls out a single Latverian gold ignot and sets it on the table. "Considering the circumstance, I believe that the pension should be more symbolic than negotiated. Do you not agree?" And he lifts his eyes to see how she reacts.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "A statue of my Addie? Well, she'd be most impressed. I shall have to make a trip out. There's no other memorial to her. No cenotaph in her town, nor is her name posted on any of the memories of the Lost." Nettie states softly, and she breathes out.

    "Still is illegal in most countries," she remarks with a small amount of humor, and then she pauses. She looks at the contract. And she tilts her head to the side.

    On one hand, to have it officially acknowledged. She had a wife. She lived and died and was a hero. She wasn't just an entry in a family bible with a pair of dates.

    Not just a skull kept and kissed gently.

    "...that is... very kind, Doctor." Nettie chokes out after a moment. For all her long life, she's lost for words. She considers a moment.

    "... take the money. Make a park. A place with red flowers in all hues around the statue. Tell the story, make it part of history. She's gone. She's... she's gone." NEttie states softly, "... but words have a special magic in that brings her back for just that moment. I think she'd like having a park where people of all types can get married. Somewhere with a little pavillion to cover people from the rain and snow, and a little garden where the dead from that awful war won't be forgotten. The best way to avoid repeating history, after all -- is to teach even the awful parts of it." she reflects.

    And she looks at the contract.

    "I can't sign my name to any contract. Technically, I also died at the end of the war."

Victor Von Doom has posed:
"Doom acknowledges your wish." comes what sounds like a cold response, but it is the way he is. The ignot is taken, slipped within the innumerous pockets of his robe. "Your park will be established as you request."

The contract forgotten, set aside, as he acknowledges her extraordinary circumstance. "I will have papers prepared for when you visit, so that you will be unbothered by national security. Just you." he is quick to add. No 'extra guests'.

"Know that your wife is celebrated in my country. Know that Doom has gifted you his and Latveria's gratitude. It is not a gift to be placed in a drawer and forgotten."

Rising into the air as he prepares to depart. And he pauses. "But I have to ask."

"How would the Lauma react to having seen you as I came across you this morn? A pleasant day to you, Greywitch."

And with that, he is summoning his energies to return from whence he came.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "... she'd probably complain that I hadn't invited her. The thirties was a weird time to be queer." Nettie mutters, and then just... tilts back. She looks at the cameo. And then she tilts her head back and looks to the skyline, her mouth hanging open a moment. "... wonder if he could've made up adoption papers for m'boy." she asks outloud... and then looks at the cameo.

    And she holds it to her chest.

    And not for the first time today, Nettie Crowe weeps for the fallen.