3414/Would the Real Mother Please Stand Up

Would the Real Mother Please Stand Up
Date of Scene:	18 September 2020
Location:	Somewhere Beneath the Russian Tundra
Synopsis:	Nadia is brought to a Red Room facility in Russia where she encounters Maria Trovaya, Janet?!, and 'Mother'.
Cast of Characters:	Nadia Pym-van Dyne, Janet van Dyne

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Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
It was a long flight from America over the Arctic Circle and back to the Russian Federation. Four months ago Nadia had fled this place, fled halfway across the world and now here she was coming back. It was a homecoming full of mixed emotions. She certainly did not want to return to the Red Room Science Class and yet she needed to find the truth about her mother somehow and find a way to keep them from coming after her or her friends and family in the future. The time for running from her past was over.

After the plane landed, she was shuffled into a chopper with the Black Widow operative who was overseeing her extraction. They flew for what felt like forever in silence, as the air grew colder and colder. Finally they would land in the middle of the barren snow covered permafrost tundra, not a soul for hundreds of miles.

Nadia is pulled from the chopper and lead through a shimmer in the air, an illusion concealing the true nature of the Red Room's facilities out here far from the prying eyes of civilization, and down into the bowels of the Earth.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Salt water.

There is a broad swathe of drugs on the market that can induce unconsciousness in somoene, and Janet's been exposed to-- or experimented with-- a lot of them. Her tongue is so dry that she's smacking her lips even before she's fully conscious.

"Rohypnol," Janet mutters. A hand lifts to block mellow light from her sensitive eyes and the fashionista forces herself to sit upright. Slitted eyes search the room. It's featureless. A shelf for a bed. What can only be a commode with a sink over it. Cold, freezing cold plastic, and her bare feet recoil from the floor reflexively.

"Great. Didn't even leave me my shoes." Janet staggers to the sink and cups water to her mouth, drinking thirstily. Once she's had her fill, the socialite looks around, then bangs on what must be a one-way mirror making up one full wall.

"Hey ya pervs! Those Louboutains are made custom for me, they won't fit you!" she shouts, and flips the bird in their general direction.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"Look Olga or whatever your name is scary Black Widow lady, when am I going to meet Maria Trovaya? Or was it just more of the usual stupid lies?" The annoyance in Nadia's voice sounds almost Janet-esque as she stares daggers at the Black Widow operative escorting her as she is guided through the twisting corridors of the underground bunker. It's not the one she remembers, but she knew it wouldn't be. That base would have been scuttled after she successfully escaped to maintain the security protocols.

"Patience, Nadia." The Black Widow operative admonishes her calmly, "We are on our way to see your mother right now, and you should address me as Katerina." They come to a large pair of high tech secured metal double doors.

Janet's initial outbursts get no response. It is hard to know how much time passes in the windowless prison without a clock, moments just bleeding into each other. Eventually there is a flickering in the air as a hologram seems to resolve in the center of the room. In the back of Janet's foggy mind she remembers this woman, the reason she's here. "Welcome Miss Van Dyne. I hope this accommodation is comfortable enough. It was not originally our desire to involve you, but we could not have anyone interfering and it has been decided that you could still have some value." The hologram flickers if touched, though it is hard to make out where the projectors might be.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Of course, the first thing Janet tries is to shrink. And, predictably, the Russians have thought of this. Her body is wracked with pain and the socialite collapses to the floor in writhing agony. It takes a few seconds for it to subside.

Once it does she pushes unsteadily up to one hip, then to a kneeling position. Her cocktail dress, gold with subtle green underlayers, looks limp and dull with the prolonged bout of incarceration. Even her jewelry is gone.

"Bill the Russian consulate for fifty grand worth of Cartier," Janet mutters. "And a new mani-pedi." Her nails don't look much better. Realizing there's nothing she can do but wait, Janet finds a seat on the bench and sits on it.

Patience isn't something she does well, but lying in wait-- that, she can handle.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia scowls at Katerina and looks at the door. For now there is nothing to do but cooperate.

"Katerina Turgenev." The blonde haired Widow tells the door, waiting for it to recognize her vocal patterns and match it against the records associated with her general use identity before the doors slide open with a whooshing sound.

Beyond the doors is a grand chamber, almost like an audience hall or a throne room. At the far end of the long chamber is a raised dais upon which sits a table such that might be used for tactical planning with a holographic projection display. There are a few chairs around the table with one against the far wall almost throne-like and clearly reserved for someone of greater import. Looming ominously above that chair there is also a video screen that takes up most of the wall.

Lining each wall leading up to the dais almost like an 'honor guard' is a sight very familiar to Nadia, one that triggers an involuntary shudder in her to see again, teenaged girls of varying ages in grey jumpsuits. They are Black Widow cadets that have been put out on 'parade' to 'welcome' her back. And in the grander looking chair at the very far end sits a figure Nadia has only seen in pictures. For a moment she freezes and chokes up as she gazes upon what appears to be the form of Maria Trovaya in person.

Meanwhile back in the cell.

"I wouldn't try that if I were you." The holographic woman informs Janet when she is suddenly wracked with pain. We learned our lesson about that sort of thing after Nadia escaped. We won't be making that mistake again." She smiles at Janet, though like all Black Widow emotions it is completely feigned. It's really quite a detailed and sophisticated hologram. "Now, we need you to get ready to play your part," A door in the wall slides open revealing a corridor likely full of similarly opaque cell entrances, "If you would proceed to the green." She cants her head with a small grin like she is actually enjoying this.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"This is the part where I tell you to go fuck yourself, and then you torture me, right?" Janet says. But she's on her feet already, and adjusts her dress so it sits *just* so on her slender frame. Barefoot, dirty, and in a designer skirt, Janet somehow still projects imperious disdain with her every motion. "So let's just skip that, consider yourself dissed, and I'm only going because literally anywhere in Russia would be better than this shitty Logan's Run knockoff."

The grandeur lasts until she gets two strides out of the cell and both bare feet hit a metal plate. Energy courses up her body and every sinew and muscle seizes up for a moment. Janet contorts with an improbable curvature of her spine, held pulled back in an arc.

Then the humming stops and she collapses onto the ground, obviously inapacitated.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia steps into the room, while Katerina remains near the entrance. Her eyes remain very alert as she walks between the two rows of Red Room cadets flanking her, it would be just like them to turn this into a test, take down the escapee and earn your stripes.

"Mother?" she calls out tentatively as she approaches the dais, voice full of both hope and trepidation. "Is it really you?"

Maria Trovaya stands from the large imposing chair and walks around the table to the front of the dais. She is wearing a labcoat, though against any lab protocol her long hair is worn down about hair shoulders, and she has a soft smile on her face projecting a warm friendly demeanor. "Welcome home Nadia."

Nadia takes a steps closer, wide eyed, "They said you were dead..."

"Nadia, dear girl. As you can see, I am very much alive." Maria Trovaya begins descending the steps towards Nadia.

"But then, why? Why hide yourself? What is this? What do you mean home?" There is an almost rising panic in Nadia as the pieces seem to begin putting themselves together in her mind. This is clearly not how she was expecting to find her mother.

"Nadia, child," Maria Trovaya moves to give her a hug, "I would have been a distraction from your father's work. You needed to focus and you achieved so much. Now that you are back we can be together again, you help me accomplish even greater thing."

Nadia embraces her mother, "Mom, I've always wanted to be able to know you. Which makes this the cruelest trick you've ever pulled MOTHER!"

In a flash from somewhere on Nadia's person a small disc is sized up from wherever she had it concealed and slammed into Maria Trovaya's chest. Electricity arcs around the matronly woman in the labcoat as she collapses to her knees, skin melting away and robotic internals becoming exposed as her circuits fry. In the same instant Katerina is also in motion seeming to practically teleport behind Nadia and pressing a strange yellow ring into her back, instantly paralyzing her save for her ability to speak.

The screen above the throne-like chair flickers to life and resolves into the face of an elderly looking woman, though much of it has been replaced by metal and cybernetics. "Nadia, dear. That wasn't very nice. You know I only want what's best for you."

"Mother." Nadia spits the name almost like a venomous curse as she looks at the screen, the very antithesis of the smiles and sunshine she has for most people.

Meanwhile in the Hallway.

A pair of muscular men in military jumpsuits appear and hoist Janet up while affixing something small to the middle of her back before they begin carrying her down the hall. At a T-junction they are joined by the woman who was in the hologram, looking decidedly less holographic. "Oh? Did that hurt?" The sadistic gleam in her eye is probably genuine. "We need to get you into position, just in case." Janet is lifted and carried through a series of twisting hallways, seemingly designed to make the routes through this place difficult to remember until she is brought to a room adjoining the room where Nadia is, behind a section of wall that is transparent from her side, just as Maria Trovaya says the words 'Welcome home Nadia'.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet's paralyzed, limbs twitching incoherently. It seems to have little effect on her voice, though, and the socialite spews profanities sufficient to make even a hardened military man blush a little. A litany against the two men is launched, revolving around questionable ancestral breeding practices and an obsession with their microcephallic organs.

Her eyes widen when Nadia is 'welcomed', and they flick uncertainly towarsd Maria, then Nadia, then Maria again. Then 'Maria' gets shocked with a chestful of portable EMP and Janet hoots drunkenly in approval. "Oh shiiit did you see that? That's my girl!" she squeals. Janet's head lolls around and she looks up at the guard, smiling in a winsome way that fails to conceal lethal venom in her voice. "Wonder what your life expectancy's gonna be, Vlad. Or is it Boris? Because that kid, right there, is going to *wreck* you." Her head lolls back to the other guard. "And you, Pavel, you're gonna get it bad. Maybe she'll crawl through one eardrum and out the other. Can you imagine a more painful way to die? A little... thing, wriggling around in your brain? It's how I'd do ya," she says, confidently. "But then again, people tell me I'm a real bitch some days."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
It is a testament perhaps to the level of discipline instilled into these girls that through all of this none of the Red Room trainees have moved so much as an inch without orders to do so and just stand there watching, even as the robot formerly known as Maria Trovaya's remains continue to smolder on the floor.

"How did you know she was not Maria Trovaya?" The woman on the screen who Nadia addressed as 'Mother' asks curiously.

Nadia has glares for everyone today, maybe Janet is rubbing off on her but then this is not exactly a place for smiles. "My mother, the woman my father loved, would never be part of... this!" She gestures broadly at the room, "Also do you really think you can fool Hank Pym's daughter with an uncanny valley like that?!"

"You never cease to impress me Nadia dear." The elderly cyborg on the screen's tone is matronly, "But it is time to stop this tantrum now and get back to the important work, I need you to do."

"HELP YOU?!" Nadia yells incredulously, "I only came back to destroy you!"

There is a sigh from 'Mother', "I thought you might say that." The panel concealing Janet and the goons suddenly slides away. "Bring her in!" she orders.

Janet's attendants carry her into the room and she is set down on the floor. One pushes a button on a small remote control looking device and the disc on Janet's back emits an electrical pulse through her body, not enough to knock her out, just enough to be really painful.

"Tell me Nadia, dear. How many mothers do you need to lose before you learn to behave?" Asks the elderly cyborg on the screen in a tone of matronly malevolence.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet manages to lift her chin enough to grin at Nadia. It's haggard and rictus, but somehow vaguely reassuring. Then electricity crackles through her body, making Janet twitch and spasm on the ground.

A screech of surprised agony and her body flops around like an oxygen-deprived fish. "Oh! Oh! Ohhh," Janet says, and the cries of pain turn into something low and groaning. "Oh, yeah, right there, I wasn't ready for it that first time," she tells the Red Room. "Jesus, what a bunch of fucking amateurs. I've had worse at the Hellfire Club."

Janet looks up at the attendant. "Can you do like, four small pulses and a long one? Don't worry, I won't tell on you to the haggard old bitch over there."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Another pulse from the yellow ring on Nadia's back and her gesturing arm freezes in mid-air as the paralysis spreads. Her eyes go to Janet, to the brace face she is putting on and back to 'Mother' on the screen, "This is the Pym Particle paralysis technology that Ying and I made. You never did bring Ying back, no matter what I did for you! Why should I believe you this time?!" Her eyes go between Janet and the screen again.

"Dear girl, I taught you better than that. You shouldn't believe /anything/ but I think you know me well enough to know I have no qualms about executing Miss Van Dyne or anyone else close to you if you don't cooperate." The face on the screen looks pointedly at the attendant with the remote control, "Make it hurt." As if it didn't before. The button is then pressed for a longer more intense interval of searing white hot pain.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet screams, and screams, because it *hurts*, and all she *can* do is scream. But then the pain stops, and the endorphins don't, and she starts sobbing with laughter. Writhing on the ground, body twitching without her permission, her teeth bare with a hollow grin at her torturer. Shoulders and hips writhe with an erratic attempt at looking seductive.

"You remind me of my friend Cecily's boyfriend. He died trying to get her off, too. He was old as balls though. It's okay, I don't hold it against you. If there's anyone here who needs to get laid, it's Skeletor."

"Hey bitch, I'm talking about you!" Janet calls over to the cyborg. "I *dare* you to kill me. I dare you so *fucking* hard. My boyfriend is--" She screeches again and writhes involuntarily as more pain is administered. High, giggling peels echo off the walls. "My boyfriend's going to come find me and when he does he will pull this place down around your *ears*."

The guard kicks Janet in the stomach and she grunts, curling around the toe of his boot. "Nadia don't mind me honey, you do what you gotta do. I'm cool here. I'm good," she insists, though her voice is thin and a bit reedy from the pained screams.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"Janet!" Nadia screams as Janet is reduced to writhing pain on the ground. Every muscle, ever fiber of her being is straining against the paralysis to go and help Janet, the closest thing to an actual mom she's ever really had. Her teeth grit as her eyes look towards the screen again, "Mother, I'm going to...!"

"You'll do what child?" Another pulse of pain for Janet, "You will do as you are told if you value Miss Van Dyne's continued existence." The wizzened female cyborg face on the screen turns towards Janet. "Yes, I know who you 'boyfriend' is and we are already making preparations to properly welcome him and your other friends. It will make a nice field test for some projects we've been working on. Your life however is hardly worth more than the Pym Particles we can extract from your veins. Increase it again." The last is directed to the handler with the remote control.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet's laughing and sobbing all at once, the sound of which is so deranged that even the seasoned handler must be finding it disturbing. Let alone the girls being trained to be weapons of the Red Room-- whether they show emotion or not, there's a certain discomfort in someone who seems thoroughly unmoved by the pain wracking her body.

"You stupid cow," Janet gasps, as soon as she can talk again. "It's not just Steve. You've kicked the nest now. They're coming for you, they're *all* coming for you," she grunts. "The whole fucking team."

The guard raises the remote again and Janet stammers a "No! Okay. Listen. Okay." One trembling arm pushes her halfway to a sitting position, shaking legs off to the side. "Okay. Listen. I know what you want. You let Nadia go. She'll tell the Avengers I'm dead. I'll give you the Pym tech."

A floppy hand twitches at Nadia. "Then you can kill me or whatever. That's what you really want, isn't it? Nadia's just another operative. Hell, even I could tell she's a major cost-loss to your organization here. What's gonna make the bean-counters happy? Reclaiming something you shouldn't have lost in the first place, or giving them Hank's invention?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
The wizzened metallic visage on the screen regards Janet again, with a look of what almost seems like amusement. "Miss Van Dyne, I raised this girl. I'm the one who put the serum in her veins. I know all about her. Do not think you can bluff me. I respect your determination, in another life you'd have made a fine Black Widow. Nadia however is my precious daughter and I do not give up any of my precious daughters." Her gaze returns to Nadia even as she says, "Again."

"STOP!" Nadia cries as the button is about to be pressed, "Stop it, just stop hurting her!" There are tears streaming down her face now, "You win, Mother. I'll do what you want. Just don't hurt Janet anymore..."

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"You didn't raise her," Janet retorts. "You fucked around with her head and shot her full of goofy juice. You're a child abductor with a shitty plastic surgeon. That's not being a mom. That's a monster with delusions of motherhood."

"I mean, I get it. I bet you were ugly as hell before the upgrades. Is that what it was?" Janet's voice can cut like a knife and she puts her words to work on 'Mother'. "Ugly Russian peasant girl, couldn't get laid in a Tijuana whorehouse filled with frat boys? So you're stealing other people's kids?"

A steel-toed boot connects with her kidney; Janet grunts in pain, curling, but keeps up the tirade. "Naw, that's too easy. Infertility, that is probably more on the mark. Doesn't matter how pretty you *were* or how hard you tried, you're never going to have kids of your own."

Another electric shock drops Janet back to the floor, twitching and shaking; she rolls around and casts one eye up at the monitor, grinning through the agonizing pain. A hoarse whisper slips her lips:

"Or is it because you know deep down that no one's ever gonna love you?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Mother's smile fades as the face on the screen looks askance at Janet, something in there seems to have struck a nerve, "Children need proper discipline and a firm hand, all of my girls would do anything for me." The head shifts to focus on Nadia, "Isn't that right Nadia my dear?" It's a loaded question, a blatant test.

Nadia grimaces as the yellow ring is removed from her back allowing her to move again. She looks at the floor and then looks at Janet with tears streaking down her face, a look of a thousand 'I'm sorries', before she straights up, squares her shoulders looking at the screen like she is standing at attention and says, "Yes, Mother."

"Don't worry Nadia dear, Miss Van Dyne will be well taken care provided your good behavior continues." The wizzened cyborg on the screen looks back to Janet's handlers. "Take Miss Van Dyne back to her accommodations." After a moment she adds, "I may not have biological children of my own Miss Van Dyne, but you never will either."

Meanwhile Katerina turns Nadia around and begins escorting her out of the room, presumably to 'her lab'.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Don't trust this bitch, Nadia!" The guard grabs Janet's wrists and starts hauling her out of the room. "She's full of shit! I'm dead either way!"

The guard wrestles with Janet and for his trouble, gets his hand too close to Janet's mouth. The socialite bites down on his hand, hard enough to draw blood and elicit a scream of agony from the man.

"I mean it! Run away, kill her, just don't give her what she wants!"

A baton comes out and *cracks* against Janet's noggin, knocking her out cold. She's dragged off again, disappearing around the corner with her protests temporarily silenced.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
It is all Nadia can do to keep walking. She hears Janet's words, every syllable. They make her want to cry out, to lash out, but she knows Mother will not hesitate to have Janet killed in front of her. Mother has been tugging her psychological marionette strings since the beginning and she can only believe in the slim chance that things will work out if she cooperates, even if they never did with Ying.

She and her Black Widow escort walk back down the length of the room, flanked by the lines of Black Widow trainees on each side, past the still smoking gynoid body of 'Maria Trovaya', and disappear into the hallway beyond.