2984/The Morning After

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The Morning After
Date of Scene: 19 August 2020
Location: Living Quarters - Four Freedoms Plaza
Synopsis: Do not poke the mamabear. (Also Val is grounded until she's 30.)
Cast of Characters: Valeria Richards, Jason Todd, Reed Richards, Susan Richards, Johnny Storm




Valeria Richards has posed:
Sunday morning, mid-morning. Rain is pattering outside the windows at Four Freedoms Plaza. Valeria Richards opens one eye, blearily, wondering how a hundred jackhammers have made their way inside her skull and why she desperately needs to throw up.

That latter bit actually is what drags her to awake enough to roll out of bed, except there is a large lump in the bed beside her that takes her a moment to actually remember who or what it is.

"...Jay?" she scrubs her face with her hands, groaning quietly. Sneaking him in last night seemed like SUCH A GREAT IDEA four shots of tequila in. This morning, she's having second thoughts, mostly because she has a mental image of Uncle Ben throwing Jason out the window. Despite being a Bat, she's pretty sure Jason can't fly.

Uggggghhhh.

She shakes him a bit, then squeaks out of the bed and runs to the bathroom-- wow, sooooo not hot. A few minutes later (along with washing her mouth because oh god why does everything taste like the worst thing ever) she's opening the bathroom door to peek out, grabbing her dress off the floor and tossing it towards the hamper (it misses, but given the clutter of clothing also not quite in the hamper, this isn't new) and snagging the braclets she has her unstable molecule suit in, because the fastest way to get dressed is just let the molecules do it. A twist and a tap later, she's in a form-fitting blue suit with lightweight boots, quickly running her fingers through her mussed hair.

"Welllllll." She gives Jason a Look. "Do we want to try and sneak you back out? Or... are you wanting to run the gauntlet?"

Jason Todd has posed:
Val's movement wakes Jason and he sits up shirtless, glancing over when she says his name. "Hey," he says scrubbing his hands over his face. "How are you fe-" he begins before Val sprints across the room to her bathroom.

"That good huh," he remarks mostly to himself, before smacking his lips, he definitely needed re-hydration and an aspirin, but he was surviving the aftermath of night's drinking fairly well, which shows in how nimbly he climbs out of bed before he grabs his shirt and looks around the mostly bare bedroom while Valeria deals with things in the bathroom.

When she emerges and the question is asked, Jason tilts his head to consider before answering "Gauntlet. Though the question is, just how pissed off do you want your parents to be?"

Valeria Richards has posed:
"Are there level of options?" Val tilts her head considering. "I figured that just them knowing you were here would..." there's a moment of her running through the scenarios. Consider it theorizing. "I mean, I don't want you to get in too much trouble either," she admits. Not that Jason probably cares about that.

Her phone buzzes, and she checks it. *ping!* "Oh, that's right," she rubs her temple. No one explained how much this was going to suck this morning... "Happy birthday. You're officially old or something," she teases, leaning up and kissing him lightly.

"Gauntlet it is," she brushes off non-existent dust from her costume. And she starts for the door, peering down the hallway, and once Jason is up and following, making her way towards the main living quarters and in theory, the front door.

Jason Todd has posed:
"Sure there are," Jason assures her like a pro at this. Though really he's just making things up as he goes along. "And nah, I'm not worried," the phone ping and the birthday wishes give him a pause for a second before he explains, "I'm officially old now, what can they really do to me?"

He returns that kiss and when he follows Val to the door, he gathers up his boots and jacket before padding bare foot after her towards the main living quarters.

Reed Richards has posed:
"Hmm, hmm, hmmm."

Reed Richards is the very picture of the stereotypical early television father. His greying hair (now more grey than greying), his legs crossed at the knee, and a copy of the Daily Bugle open before him. He grasps it with one hand, the other holding a porcelain mug decorated with the complex formula for unstable molecules rendered in finger paint. On the base of the mug, a neat hand has written 'Valeria, Age 4'.

He takes a sip form the mug, humming along with Paul Simon's 'Diamonds on The Soles Of Her Shoes' which plays quietly through the stereo. He clicks his tongue at the paper, tossing it down on the table. It's then that the phone nearby beeps, and he picks it up to examine the digital game of Scrabble in progress.

"Floccinaucinihilipilification? Really, Victor?" he murmurs to himself, before tapping a few keys, " ... D-I-S-M. Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism. Hah! Sue, come loo - "

He peers over the top of his phone, first at Valeria, then at Jason, then back at Valeria. Finally, he looks towards Sue with the wide-eyed stare of a prey animal that just realised it sprained its ankle. A sprained ankle, but there just so happens to be a wildebeest with its fingers in its ears and a blindfold on that's coating itself with barbeque sauce.

"Oh dear."

Susan Richards has posed:
    Life is good for Susan. The sun's high, the house is secure, everyone's rent came on time, her family is healthy... and there are pancakes! What could possibly ruin the mood?
    Susan cheerfully, if distractedly, hums some made up tune that occasionally comes dangerously close to the Price is Right theme as she brings two plates of food to the table in front of Reed, setting one down in front of him, and another in front of the chair she sits in shortly afterward.
    "Hmm?" She makes a curious noise as Reed speaks, distractedly setting a handkerchief in front of her. "Did they finally enlarge the board to keep things compeeeeeeeeeeeee-"
    The word extends into infinity as her blue eyes spot her daughter and a strange young man, her tone slowly getting lower in pitch, eyes getting wider. She stands. "-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhh-" she points "-hhhhhhhhhh-" she bites off the end of the syllable with a sharp "-hhhh*ttt*?!"
    There is a moment of palpable silence. Her lips are pressed together *very* tightly, occasionally quivering with attempts to speak that are aborted before they start.
    Then, very softly, she manages, "... Honey-" with a gentleness that is undercut when her chair suddenly propels itself through the air and into the wall with a blast of invisible force.
    Susan looks at the broken chair for a moment.
    She looks back to Jason.
    She's smiling very tightly.
    "... Who's your *friend*?"

Valeria Richards has posed:
"Mom, Dad." Valeria puts a bright smile on. "Um, you... remember... Jay..." He had studied for a little while under Reed, though that was years ago, when he was... 16? ish? Her throbbing head goes through about 72 permutations of ideas for what would be the best or worst or bestworst or worstbest thing to do at this point. She decides on slipping her arms around Jason's waist, which should both be aggravating AND prevent Mom from squishing him. "Surprise! He's not actually dead." Since, likely, the last either of them would recall was his funeral a few years back in Gotham.

Jason Todd has posed:
In his totally made up scale of how much someone might want to piss off their parents Jason rates this at about a five. Rookie numbers really, he can definitely think of ways to pump that score up.

Putting his arm around Valeria he gives Reed and Sue an upnod "'sup." he greets.

Reed Richards has posed:
"He's back and apparently sleeping in our house," Reed notes, putting his phone down and picking up the coffee mug.

"Sue, you remember Jason. He and Ben had that ... disagreement. He's Bruce's boy."

He lifts his mug in a sort of half-salute to Jason, raising his eyebrows with the universal look of 'you're in trouble now' before taking a sip.

"It's nice to see you again. Did you ever figure out how to get the hang of the stoichiometric coefficient? I actually read a very interesting article about air-to-fuel ratios. I think it's around here, somewhere ... "

He once again puts the mug down and starts to look through the small stack of magazines and printed articles piled up next to him on the table.

Susan Richards has posed:
    The gears are turning in Susan's head, but they're turning through a molasses-like sludge of motherly fury, and her attempt to keep her cool has put an extremely strained look of attempted patience on her face that shoots from zero to 'Stepford' very quickly, apart from her eyes glaring daggers at Jason.
    "*Really?!*" Susan acknowledges the miracle of Jason's existance very stiffly. "That'sssssssssssssssss-" her head tilts very slowly to the side, eyes, turning to take in Reed's casualy reaction in her peripheral vision.
    Fine. She'll be mad all on her own, then.
    "-ssssss soooo... *nice.*" Susan's voice and expression shift to a much more honest curtness as an invisible force appears between two of Jason's fingers and begins to widen, stretching them apart uncomfortably as far as necessary for him to take the offending hand off of Valeria. "I wished you'd called." She says quickly. "I wish you'd said hello!" Susan crosses her arms as another paper thin invisible force field is slid between Jason and Valeria's bodies, and gradually widens between them. "I wish you'd done a whole *host* of things before coming into my *home*-" her voice rapidly becomes louder and more terse, "-like a *thief* in the *night*; and spending it with my *extremely young daughter!*"
    Susan takes a breath so slow that it seems like it ought to exceed her lung capacity, and then, much more gently says, "Unless I'm missing something incredibly important, I hope."

Valeria Richards has posed:
Valeria is very well aware of what Mom's very finely controlled force fields feel like, and Val's attempt to prevent those from coming into play by simply latching herself to the shirtless batling seems to not worked quite as planned as she is literally pried off and slid aside. "Mom!" she protests.

She also really quickly realizes that within a short time frame the method she used to get around the anti-grav detectors Dad has set up will totally be discovered, which means she'll be back to the drawing board. Oof. Grounding might actually stick for a little while.

...maybe a negative zone powered teleportation system...

"And I'm not a child!" That part comes out petulantly enough to render her protests fairly moot.

Johnny Storm has posed:
A flash of flame goes by one of the windows, and it isn't long before the the Human Torch himself, Johnny Storm is walking into the living area of the Fantastic Four, dressed in a sleek sporty suit, and designer sunglasses that are just now getting pushed up on his forehead as he steps in on whatever it is that's going on here, and not even a drone of water wetting his clothing or his hair despite the rain outside, and one of his neatly trimmed brows arches ever so slightly as he walks in on everything.

"So, what do we have here, did Val bring home a stray or something?" Johnny asks with a little grin that creeps to his lips as he saunters over towards them, glancing from his sister then to Reed before his attention, and his grin, comes to settle on Jason and Valeria.

Jason Todd has posed:
"I think so," Jason replies to Reed, giving a helpless shrug about his current predicament too late to turn back now! "But a rapid and extreme increase of volume and release of energy cut my studies short. Well, that and a crowbar."

Then it's forcefield time! He'd forgotten about those. He struggles against it for a moment looking like a mime doing the walking against the wind bit before he just gives up and lets it happen, crossing his arm as he's slid across the floor to whatever safe distance Sue decides.

Once again he cocks his head to the side before righting it and nodding, "Nah, that sounds about right," he says. "Except unless there's a weird dimensional thing going on," which you can never rule out at Four Freedoms. "We're in a place where your 'extremely young daughter' is an adult."

Then as Val's uncle joins them, he looks over and upnods cheerfully to him, saying "Hi, Johnny," like he was doing that bit from The Room.

Reed Richards has posed:
"Now, now," Reed says, trying to keep a soothing tone after the look from Susan confirms he really does need to be weighing in on this, "Nobody's calling you a child, angel-pie. We're just saying maybe you should have spoken to us before ... this. It's just a bit of a shock, isn't it, honey?"

He glances towards Sue with hopeful eyebrows raised. Johnny's arrival elicits a sigh from him as he leans back in his chair, once more nursing his coffee mug.

"Johnny, you remember Jason, don't you?"

Susan Richards has posed:
    Susan's eyes looks to Valeria, and she says, possibly for the millionth time in the last couple years: "You're as young as I say you are until you either stop rushing to grow up, or get your name on a lease, whichever comes-"
    When Jason makes his remark about Valeria, Susan grimaces and steps right up close to Jason and points one finger in his face, angrily saying, "*Do not* sass me, young man, I cried at your stinking *funeral!* *Put a shirt on!*" Before she wheels around to step away from him while Reed talks in... somewhat calmer fashion; taking in another very sharp breath, lest her nerves fly off the handle, To Johnny, she adds, "Bruce's boy. The second one. He's alive." Susan rubs her head with one hand and mutters "He's alive..."

Valeria Richards has posed:
Valeria huffs at her mother's comment, flushing bright pink in both anger and embarrassment. "This is the problem, it's like you think I'm still twelv--"

Her hand quickly flies to her mouth, and she rushes to the sink, vomiting again. "Oh god I am never drinking tequila again..." she mutters, then rinses out her mouth. This is The. Worst.

Johnny Storm has posed:
"Oh yeah, I saw him at the party a couple weeks ago, over at Bruce's. He was surrounded by young women, like, literally surrounded." Johnny says with a nod towards Sue, "I guess It is strange that he's up and walking around, a little bit though." He says with a little hrm passing his lips at Susan's exclamation.

Jason Todd has posed:
When Sue approaches finger raised, Jason takes a step back. Which is impressive considering he's the guy who took over a big chunk of the Gotham mob that one time because he was mad at his dad.

"Okay, hey," he says before Sue brings up his funeral. "Wait, you what?" he asks expression softening to smug defiance to something like resignation. He sighs and digs into his bundle of clothes for his shirt tugging it on. "See, all better-" he begins before Val runs to throw up in the sink.

"Crap," Jason says as he braces for a new round with the Mother Bear. He'll explain about the dead thing later... if there is a later.

Susan Richards has posed:
    "And you didn't tell us?" Susan replies to Johnny, flabbergasted, but suddenly there are more pressing matters.
    "*Tequila?!*" Susan cries with genuine distress, whipping back around to face the crowd assembled in her home. "When?! How much?! You're *tiny!!*" She says rapidly, oblivious to the fact that her daughter is somewhat taller than her now. Stupid Reed's stupid handsome tall genes. "You're too young! This is-" Susan looks to Jason and growls "*Yyyyyoooouuuu!* This is...!" Susan seems to have a quick think, and then points the finger to... Valeria! With less anger and more resignation in her voice, she finishes the sentence softly: "... *your* idea.'
    Susan covers her face with both hands and just... breathes for a second. "... Jason, I want you to leave. I'll be contacting your father." She literally can't imagine the Bat family dynamic at the moment, or that she's talking to a sort of former mob leader, so she can only assume that still has some kind of weight. "Valeria." Susan's hands drop away from her face, and she just looks... sooooo... deflated. "You... I..."
    Susan's at a bit of a loss for words.
    She is hardly ever at a loss for words.

Valeria Richards has posed:
Valeria looks over from the sink to her Mom's finger, pointed at her. She shrinks a little. Busted. Very, very busted. "It was my idea," she admits, "but you don't have to call his Dad, it was totally all my idea," she has no idea how that dynamic is either but having met Bruce, even in his nicer moods, she would REALLY not want him mad at her so she's pretty sure she doesn't want him mad at Jason either.

Johnny Storm has posed:
"Sorry Sue, I guess I figured you and Reed already knew, since it would be really weird for him to just show up at a party like that like nothing even happened." Johnny says with an apologetic shrug of his shoulders, "I guess if I see anyone who's been dead, I'll let you know in the future." He says, moving to lean up against a piece of furniture nearby as his attention shifts back a little towards the duo of Valeria and Jason with a curious little look as Sue does what she does best.

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason shoots a look to Val, raising a hand. "Call Bruce or don't, I don't really care," he tells Sue. "But I'll go, but for the record? The tequila was my idea. So don't put that on Val." He says as he begins to pull on his boots.

As for his sudden Lazarus act? "The official story is I was away in reform school," he says. "Germany, or upstate, it changes with every telling to keep it all vague and rich people rumour like. Anyway, sorry you guys didn't get a memo, I really didn't think anyone would care."

Reed Richards has posed:
"Interesting," Reed muses, finishing the last of his coffee with an annoyingly audible sip. He makes a mental note to ask Jason about returning from the dead sometime. Given the odd nature of their lives, it's not the first time he's encountered something this strange but it's nevertheless rare enough to merit curiosity.

"It's probably wise to go though," he adds with an even, low voice - trying his best to play the Good Cop alongside Sue's Very Angry Cop, "It was ... an experience seeing you again, Jason. I hope next time is under better circumstances. I hope you'll give your father my best?"

On the table, his phone buzzes irritably and he picks it up with a long-suffering sigh: " ... impatient, clanking, pile of ... "

Susan Richards has posed:
    Susan's gaze snaps to Jason, and she tersely says "Young man, if half a decade and a *miracle* haven't finally drilled it through your head that people care about you, you are too dense to be influencing my children. Please. Leave."
    Susan quietly watches her Very Busy And Distractable Husband for a brief moment, before she hangs her head with a sigh. She begins to rub her eyes with her thumb and fore finger, and finally says "... Valeria, I'm very disappointed in you. You are too smart for..." Susan gesticulates wildly with frustration, and huffs, "... for *this*. You're grounded. I want you to stay in your room until..." Susan grimaces, and hesitates, too many thoughts and feelings bottlenecking in her brain at once; which is exactly the reasoning behind the conclusion: "... Until I can talk to you without *shouting.*"

Valeria Richards has posed:
Valeria looks between her parents-- the shouty one, the reasonable one-- Uncle Johnny... always helping in the worst possible way-- and Jason. "Fine." She moves like she's going to her room, but then slips closer to Jason and throws her arms around his neck, kissing him firmly. It's not for particularly long-- she doesn't really trust mom not to slam another force field in between them-- but it serves whatever point she was trying to make. "I'll text you," she promises Jay, before heading back down the hall to her room.

She doesn't slam the door.

...mostly because the doors are slam-proof.

Johnny Storm has posed:
"So uh, nice seeing you again." Johnny waves a little at Jason with a bit of a grin as he watches Val get parented on by mostly Sue, he pushes away from the furniture he was at and makes his way over to whatever reed-tech drink dispensor is currently installed in the kitchen and gets himself a diet coke before turning back to everyone, "So, is this Val's first boyfriend?"

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason nods to Reed. "Think so," he agrees about leaving before Sue's words cut right through all of his defenses putting an expression on his face that clearly reads 'well, damn'. People cared, who knew.

Though that's not the end of the surprises, as before he can say much more Val is kissing him, and by reflex as much as anything he kisses her back in that brief moment and remembering his role in this little play of theirs, does sort of grab Val's ass, even if he'll feel guilty about it later.

Once Val's and Jason is left standing in the family room with most of the Fantastic Four, he says, "Unless I've got another force field coming my way, I'm going to head out, I'll say hi to Bruce and the fam though," but he expects Bruce will be hearing about this long before Jason gets back to Gotham.

If no one stops him he heads out the door and out of the building.

Reed Richards has posed:
"Take the Fantasti-Car," Reed suggests to Jason, blurting out the words almost like he didn't mean for them to get loose but now they have, "It's got Gotham programmed into the on-board computer. It can fly you right there. More comfortable than the Hyperloop - I'll send it to meet you outside?"

He lifts his arm, the seemingly blank cuff of his jumpsuit illuminating with a holographic keypad that he taps a few times: "You shouldn't be driving if you're hungover, anyway."

When he's sure (or reasonably sure) Sue isn't looking, he also sends a subtle command to HERBIE to bring water and greasy snack food to Valeria's room.

A glance up towards Johnny and a brief shrug of his shoulders: "At least he comes from a good family?"

Susan Richards has posed:
    Susan's motherly fury is almost palpable, but no physical force is brought onto Jason. Though nearby, a picture frame does crack as Susan very tightly clenches her fists.
    With their 'visitor' gone, and her daughter vanished into her room, Susan slowly staggers backwards to the nearest seat that HASN'T gone flying across the room, and sits down heavily, putting one hand over her face.
    Muffled, she very tiredly mumbles, "... welcome home, Johnny, how was your day."
    Reed's remark prompts the elbow connected to that same hand to drop onto the table with a thud as Susan leans on it. "... I don't think Valeria's marrying into it, darling..."