3772/A little way to say 'thank you'

A little way to say 'thank you'
Date of Scene:	11 October 2020
Location:	6A - Janet's Condo
Synopsis:	Janet showers Kara with some gifts in appreciation for her intervention in saving Nadia and Janet from the Red Room.
Cast of Characters:	Janet van Dyne, Kara Danvers

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Janet van Dyne has posed:
It had taken a little while to pull some of the gifts together for the rescue team that had pulled Nadia and Janet out of the Red Room. The attack force had been some pretty heavy-hitters from both the Avengers and the Titans and it was still far from an easy or simple extraction. But chalking that one up was a solid one in the 'win' column-- the Wasp and Waspette both saved successfully along with thirty-some girls from the Red Room's clutches.

Getting some thank-you gifts together was one of the first things on Janet's mind after her rescue and recovery. Old New England social graces; nothing says 'thank you' like a gift basket, and when someone goes to the line like that, there's some unwritten and yet extremely complex math that goes into putting such an expression of gratitude together.

<Hi, Supergirl! If you're free, come to my penthouse. I have something for you.> The text was of course written in a GenZ's near-incomprehensible emoji-laden text, but transparent enough to someone verse in such a iconographic language.

Janet sends the text and turns a page in her magazine. It's gotten just cool enough out that there's a chill Pacific breeze constantly rolling up from the bay and making it unpleasant to sit on the balcony proper. So, Janet's in a lounge chair in the attached solarium, soaking up a little sun in perfectly regulated 85-degree climate controlled comfort. Her outfit's a little on the 'casual' side with a blue miniskirt and sleeveless black tunic-style shirt, the latter belted with a gold-link wrap around her hips and catching the sunlight with subtle reflective threading woven into it. It still looks like the sort of thing one could wear into the office with suitable confidence.

Janet turns a page and skims over the last few lines of the article. It never takes the Kryptonians long to appear, if they *can* appear...

Kara Danvers has posed:
Slumped over the crystal console in the Fortress of Solitude, Supergirl looks at the designs of her city building technology. A new Krypton for all those Kryptonians in the bottled city of Kandor. Her jaw twists from side to side. The bad memories versus the good memories. Dru-Zod taking the city away from them. Rubbing it in their faces.

With a set jaw she says, "/ewuhshehd/," to the computer and the designs are archived away. She unclenches her fist and sighs. Today had been another bad day, just when things seemed like they were starting to pick up. The DEO messing with things that should have been destroyed had resulted in a dozen people dead and more danger on the horizon.

~ding~ goes the message pick up and glyphs for /ehwor/ appear above the console as holograms. She motions to it and up comes Janet's message. A distraction, those are good for her mental health. That's what the Humans call it - mental health. She smiles a moment, saving Janet from the Red Room was a mostly good memory.

Her flight to New York was swift, but she slowed down so as not to alarm anyone, or hit the balcony with too strong a gust of wind when she lands. She wraps her finger tips against the door, "Miss Van Dyne?" She tries to peer inside without using her x-ray vision, "Hello?"

She didn't get changed before coming here, and so the Supergirl standing on Janet's balcony is one wearing a long white robe, a golden belt with the \S/ upon its buckle. The robe fabric is some kind of Kryptonian polymer, a subtle set of repeated small hexagons etched in to it.

Unsure she's going to attract Janet's attention, she takes out her phone and sends a message back, "I am here on your balcony," followed by a set of Kryptonian symbols spelling /bezhgamehd/.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet checks her phone; she can be seen getting to her feet and heading down the short steps, then opening the door to the balcony. "/Wow/, that is an outfit," Janet remarks with raised brows. She lifts sunglasses from her face, gives Kara a once-over, and grins at the blonde girl. "Very Flower Child. Is Superman a secret space hippy?" She giggles at the playful teasing and offers Kara a hug, then beckons her inside. "C'mon. Glad you weren't too busy to stop by. You want a drink or something? Mimosa, pina colada?" she offers. Once Kara's in the penthouse Janet shuts the door and invites her to find a comfy chair. "Stay, if you've got a minute. I've got a thank-you gift for you. Little something for pulling me and Nadia out of the proverbial fire. Well, literal fire, towards the end there," she amends, and heads towards the hallway leading furthur back into the depths of the superfluous square footage of her apartment suite.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara gets that so oft expression of 'huh?' on her face when Janet mentions a 'Flower Child', or that Superman might be a 'space hippy'. It only lasts for a moment, she recovers with a smile and a playful little shrug, then returns the hug. "Thank you. It's taken me a while to recreate the /ekherothz/ but, I think I have got it." She looks down at her comfortable gown and smiles.

"Thanks but I only drink water," she says.. dang girl scout Kryptonian. "I was unwinding from a long day of disaster after disaster when I got your strange message. What do all the extra symbols mean?" She flops down on to the couch, well, floats down. "Oh Miss Van Dyne I assure you no gift is necessary, I'm just glad you're okay. I had hoped to help find Nadia, but when I found out both you and Nadia had been taken."

She frowns a moment and then.. yep Janet is gone. She raises her eyebrows and then takes in the apartment around her. There's so much to Earth culture sometimes she's not even sure where to begin. Movie nights with the Titans have been helping a lot.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"C'mon Supergirl, you're a teenager, right?" Janet inquires with good humor on her return. There are a couple of large boxes in her hand. She juggles them a little awkwardly to a spot on a table in front of Kara. She digs her phone out of a neatly concealed pocket on her skirt, brings up the message, and shows it to Kara and reads it aloud again. A 'waving emoji', the <S> shield followed by the <girl> icon, a flying plane, an apartment, cartoon presents, a wink, a kissy face, and a heart. "Supergirl, come to my penthouse, I have something for you," Janet reads again, and tucks her phone away once more, clearly satisfied she's held up her end of things, then goes to pull Kara a glass of water from what is presumably a filtered built-in tap.

"Okay, so by the way-- you're as bad as your sister and Superman when it comes to shopping for you," Janet informs Supergirl with a wry tone. The glass of water's handed over. Fingers extend and flex, then interlace in front of her stomach with a casual poise. "But I asked some mutual friends for some suggestions. I heard you've got a joooob, kinda professional sort of thing, so I picked out some good office wear for you." Janet opens up one box. "Y'know, skirts, trousers, blouses, jackets. You can mix and match 'em without much trouble, and then two actual suits for like, oh, y'know, job interviews, formal occassions, that kind of thing."

She opens up one of the boxes, wrapped in distinctive 'JVD' luxury brand packaging. "I just brought the one suit, the rest of them are at the store on 5th. I can have 'em delivered to Titan Tower or wherever, I just wasn't sure where you'd want them," she informs Kara. It's a tailored skirtsuit in deep navy blue; pencil skirt, fitted jacket, and a cream-colored blouse. It even comes with a couple of smart black office-worker pumps and some stylishly modest jewelry. "If you don't like it, you can exchange it, of course. Nadia got your measurements for me so it should fit."

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara smiles with a touch of amusement at being called a teenager. The equivalent concept simply didn't exist on Krypton. "Uh, in a way yes." She peers at the convolution of symbols and then raises an eyebrow as it gets explained. "Oh." She then raises both eyebrows as if she is seeing it for the first time, "Another language to learn." It's almost an accusation of 'this isn't english' but there's a touch of delight in her voice too.

"Well as I was saying Miss Van Dyne, you don't need to get me anything," she says and takes a sip of the water. "You already do a lot to help the world by being the Wasp," she continues but.. boxes. There is a look of delight as she steps up and observes the stylish fashions. The artistry of an alien world and you're meant to wear it.

"This is incredible," she says with wonder in her eyes, though it's a good thing Janet can't hear her heart when it almost skipped a beat mentioning a job. 'There's no way Janet could know, right?,' she ponders to herself, 'university student isn't a job.. the daily planet is though.. may be someone in the Titans mentioned she worked for the DEO.. that must be it.' "Janet this is amazing. I can't accept it, even if I had occasion to wear it, work is fighting criminals and aliens and criminal mutants and the like."

Oh but she wants it, she wantss eet so bad. Mental checklist - reasons for revealing her secret identity to someone: ... you feel like it. Is Janet a trust worthy person? she's an Avenger. But... not the JLA. She and Nadia get along and Nadia is a Titan.. but.. she swore the Titans to secrecy about her alternate identity.

"Though I know someone who could really benefit from clothing like this Miss Van Dyne.. no.. no that's a lie, I'm so sorry. I was still thinking of me." She lifts up the blouse in her hands and holds it high. "I'd never worn clothing made from the remains of plant life before I came to Earth." aha, proof that Supergirl wears something other than Kryptonian clothing.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Oh. Okay," Janet says, thoughtfully, and nods along. "Well in that case, you can keep the clothes and use them to get a *life*," Janet tells Kara, rounding on her. Her smile's a little brittle and thin-lipped, but she tempers it with a warm laugh and a squeeze of Kara's arm. "Listen, you can't *be* Supergirl twenty-four/seven. You need to like... go out and do things, and interact with humans. That means you have to dress the part. Clothing is a language, honey," Janet tells the Kryptonian teen. "How you dress, how you present yourself, it sends a message to people. Now I don't know what you do in your free time, but this outfit--" she lifts the jacket up, holds it up to Kara and gestures at the girl's reflection in a large panel near by. "This says 'I'm a professional, I'm to be taken seriously'. And 'You can check me out, but be chill about it'," she quips.

"Anyway--" Palms make an emphatic little gestuer down at the pile. "That's the 'professional' stuff." The corners of her upper and lower lips pull in different directions, and she looks at Kara. "You probably don't wanna see the fun stuff then, do ya," she concludes with a wholly feigned reluctance.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Supergirl feels the sting of that burn. She tries to remember why she shouldn't be telling people her secret identity again. Then again, if she took the stuff, Janet might be forever spying passers by for the one and only person wearing this selection of clothing from her own personal range...

The arm squeeze reveals to Janet just how spot on the 'girl of steel' moniker is. Just like Superman, she's very firm.

"I spend time just being me," she confesses, though that's neither Supergirl nor Kara Danvers. She almost exclusively does that around family at the Fortress. "You're right," she says.. why couldn't Supergirl wear clothing like this? ...besides it being unable to withstand the forces exerted on it if she suddenly had to fight.. evil doers or something. Then again, she could strip out of it quickly and wear her Kryptonian armor beneath.

"It is very nice clothing. Though I think most people take Supergirl seriously. Sometimes too seriously, they often seem to want to test themselves against me." She rolls her eyes at that.

Her eyes move to her reflection in the panel and says, "Well, let's not be too hasty. What harm is there in exploring another worlds culture. It'd be rude of me not to." Nadia never mentioned Janet was fun. Then again, Nadia seems to only talk science at the Tower.

The last few moments of the battle in the Red Room come back to her. Teeny tiny little Wasp flying in to that cyborg. Instead of destroying it herself, she held it at bay and let Janet rip it apart. That fierce vengeance against the one who took Nadia and harmed her.. is probably why she's an Avenger. "Not that I don't like the name Supergirl, but if I told you my real name, you're not going to run off to a newspaper or tabloid or something and spread it around are you?"

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Mm, I could *tell* you I wouldn't, but that's not like, a really helpful bit of insurance, is it?" Janet points out. "Because as you know, humans lie. That'd just be me putting social pressure on you to tell me something you're worried would compromise you." She starts opening up another one of the black boxes wrapped in purple ribbon. "On the other hand, I'm the CEO of a Fortune 500 company doing cutting-edge fashion design, and I'm the head of the Board for Pym Technologies. Both of those are industries where loose lips around corporate spies can torpedo a company overnight."

Janet unravels some shimmering gold cloth and holds it up against Kara's collarbone, brow furrowing with a professional's critique of her work. "And I didn't crack when the Red Room was putting the thumbscrews on me. I wasn't getting their 'A' game," she concedes, "but they didn't pass up an opportunity to try and wring some secrets out of me all the same."

Janet's eyes go distant. She blinks, then forces a smile up at Kara. "Look honey, I'm not trying to bribe you into telling me who you are. I bullied some of your friends into helping me pick some gifts for you, but honestly I'm just entirely too self-centered to put any work into figuring out what you do when you're not in the blue tights." Fingers nudge Supergirl to turn around and face the mirror again, and Janet holds the gown up from behind so Kara can see how it drapes. There are a *lot* of such surfaces in Janet's penthouse-- definitely a sure sign of a narcissistic personality!

It's an evening gown, a proper one, done in shimmering gold. A choker-style collar holds the sleevleess haltar top up and decorative straps would frame bare shoulders and lay against the lower tricep when worn. The fabric is mostly shades of gold, ivory, and cream, with intricate glassy beading that is woven into the parallel lines of cloth. It hugs the busom and waist, forms a 'v' shape over the belly, and then drops from the upper thigh into a mermaid-style train that is just long enough to hit the floor with the proper shoes on.

"But *this* outfit, this is for Supergirl. Make those bitchy Amazons a little jealous at the next gala, okay?" she mutters with a theatrical aside.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Chin goes down as the golden cloth is held up against her body. Then she's redirected to look at the next reflective surface. Between the drinking and the mirrors Kara thinks there's definitely something not quite right with Janet.. but wow can she make beautiful clothing.

"I wish we'd had clothing like this on Krypton," she admits quietly and smiles at the look of the fabric against her body. "It's not a secret that will harm anybody, it's just not something I share around. Aliens on this planet don't always get... the warmest of welcomes."

She smiles and looks back to Janet, "It's gorgeous. Would the amazons not simply revel in our shared shiny clothing? But I think it's a dress for me, not for Supergirl. My name is /Kara Zor-El/" She offers her hand to Janet and says, "It's pleasure to experience your hospitality. /gynot-Wasp/."

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Kara. I like that a lot better than 'Supergirl'," Janet says with a winsome smile. She gives Kara's hand a squeeze, then embraces the other woman. "And, since we're friends, you can call me Janet. Okay? Wasp is only for when I'm punching a clock for the Avengers. Being Janet's my full-time life, Wasp is just an outfit I put on to punch bad guys and maintain some income from trademarked branding." She bobs her brows at Kara.

"Anyway, you've got some low-key stuff for, y'know, 'secret identity time'," Janet says, looking back at the boxes. Fingers curl in the air around those words. "Something flashy for the next time we have a get-together for the capes and tights crew. I'm still trying to figure out what to get your sister Peej, so, if you've got any ideas or suggestions, I'm all ears," she tells Kara. "At this point the best idea I've had is just sending her a cake with a couple strippers in it. Seriously, you Kryptonians-- *im*possible to shop for," she repeats, and rolls her eyes skywards in supplication.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara smiles, "Okay Janet." You don't have to tell her twice. She doesn't squeeze or hug back, that way lies injury and pain. Lessons learnt the hard way. "I appreciate this. It will help me a lot - to blend in with the people." She smiles and the desire to say 'well, she's me, so get her this' is intense.. but she keeps her mouth shut.

"I think she'd appreciate of cultural significance - a play, or a symphony. I don't think she'd appreciate a cake with people jumping out of it." She smirks just a touch and says, "You don't need to shop for us. We value your friendship above all else. And your understanding."

She looks at all the boxes, "Your suggestion of sending them to the Titan's Tower would be appreciated. I'm afraid I must fly, I'm needed in .. a place." She looks a touch apologetic, "Now I'm looking forward to attending one of those Amazon parties." She hates lying, she's already been to one, but as Kara Danvers. "But thank you again Janet. /ehrosh mbem/," she says and waves as she rushes to the balcony and jumps off in to the skies.