4919/A G.I.R.L.'s night off.

A G.I.R.L.'s night off.
Date of Scene:	28 January 2021
Location:	6A - Janet's Condo
Synopsis:	Nadia and Janet have a girl's night in.
Cast of Characters:	Janet van Dyne, Nadia Pym-van Dyne

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Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Okay, we've got everything we need." Janet hipchecks the door shut and walks up the short flight of steps into her penthouse. In her hands are two pizza boxes and an extra-large platter of chicken wings, and they're carried over to where Nadia's sitting in Janet's lounge. The socialite's dressed down in a way few people ever see: flannel jammies and a pale blue camisole. She's not even wearing makeup or jewelry, either.

"I didn't know if you'd want buffalo wings so I got you some plain ones and some sauce to experiment with," Janet tells Nadia. "I like 'em spicy though, so don't feel like you need to eat them to be polite." She sets the food down and sits crosslegged on the sofa near one arm, opposite Nadia. A little plastic caddy full of nail polish ingredients is set in arms' reach, and Janet pats her thighs and beckons at Nadia. "Left foot first. What do you like better? Salmon pink?" She hoists two bottles. "Or tiger orange?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia has just kind of deflated herself upon Janet's couch. It takes a lot of energy being Nadia and eventually without enough opportunities for rest something's gotta give. Or it would if not for the fact that in a sign of potential growth, rather than throw herself at the problems of the world until she simply breaks Nadia has actually elected to take a night away from everything and come to Janet's to hide out from the world. Even her T-Comm has been switched off. Highlighting all of this she is also not dressed in any sort of suit or even her street clothes.

Pajamas are a new experience for her, she's usually content to sleep in an oversized t-shirt and bicycle shorts. The yellow flannel bee patterned pajamas she's now wearing are not only cute but incredibly comfortable as well.

"But Buffalo don't have..." Nadia begins to protest for a moment before realizing it is probably another of those 'expressions' or food names that don't really make sense, like Lady Fingers.

She obendiently gives Janet her left foot, still not quite sure about this strange 'pedicure' ritual but she's taking Janet's word for it that it is supposed to be relaxing. "Hmmm." She considers, "Tiger Orange! Rar! It sounds fierce!" She grins making little tiger claws in the air with her hands.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Rawr!" Janet agrees, and mirrors the gesture. She breaks out laughing and sets aside the little phials of polish and picks up a warm cloth to give Nadia's feet a little wash and scrub before painting her nails.

"We'll have to get you some sandals once the weather gets better. Can't wear them in the lab," she says, anticipating Nadia's objection. "But a great pair of sandal heels, they really set off an outfit. You've got a couple of sundresses they'd pair with really well."

The food's closer to Nadia at the moment, and Janet attends to the grooming ritual so the younger woman can eat her meal. "That was one thing I hated about being in the labs. Five hundred dollars on a pedicure, and I have to wear closed-toe shoes? No thank you," she sings. "That's why it's best to be the boss."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia's eyes do stray towards the food, though she is briefly overcome with giggles while Janet is washing her feet. Yes, the former Red Room assassin trainee is apparently ticklish. Sure, she could probably resist, block the reaction out, but she doesn't want to. It is liberating in its own way to just let herself feel things.

Nadia's flailings come dangerously close to toppling some of the food, but eventually she wills the reaction under control, though she is still giggling a bit. "I don't know what you're doing to my feet but it tickles!" She states the obvious while reaching for a pair of pizza slices and sandwiching them together for efficient consumption as she has learned to do from the other Titans.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"I'm /washing/ them," Janet says with tested patience, and flicks the side of Nadia's ankle. "Quit squirming, you gotta hold still when I put the polish on."

The bathing is over and she reaches for alcohol wipes to start prepping the nails. "Okay, so before the food got here, you were telling me about your friend, uh... Maury. Maureen?" Janet hazards, and prompts Nadia with a flickering look. "She's the one with the space aliens in her brain. Which is /weirdly/ not the craziest thing I've ever said," she observes, and sighs heavily.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia does her best to stop squirming as she swallows a mouth full of pizza, "Washing them. Right." Sometimes one is left to wonder about this girl's hygiene. 'Lab Funk' is definitely a thing when she gets lost in a project. "Did you know the Amazons have pizza to? But not exactly pizza, like different pizza. The name sounds like plankton." This information brought to you by Nadia's Newly Aquired Pizza Facts.

"Mori," Nadia interjects between mouthfuls of pizza. "We're not quite sure what the aliens are doing to her, but some of the things she is seeing are definitely not Earth and some /are/ Earth, which seems like it never bodes well." But rather than dwell on that she takes another bite of pizza. "Yeah, I think it is a tossup between DadTron of the Alternate Earth and this alien race called Seekers of the Forever Dark that were looking for a wormhole inside a wormhole that formed a singularity around a blackhole that was traveling backwards through time in Hyperspace after being created in the future. Actually maybe that one does win weirdest. They were pretty weird and from what we've learned my Titans friends were trapped in their Forever Dark while they were missing."

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"That sounds confusing /and/ terrifying. Good job," Janet compliments Nadia with a bit of playful sarcasm. "I'm glad you're helping Mori out. Friends should do that for each other. How are things with the Titans?" The nail polish is uncapped and Janet leans over Nadia's foot to start carefully applying it with smooth, even strokes of the miniature brush. "I heard you're spending a lot of time over there. I've met a few of them, they keep to themselves a lot though," she allows. "Whole, like, family thing they've got going. I like Tony and Carol all right, but after a year in the Mansion after Loki I was about ready to kill them. I am not made for long-term cohabitation with teammates. I can't imagine ten years in the building with the same people. I don't like my downstairs neighbors as it is."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Despite her previous ticklish reaction it seems like when necessary Nadia can pretty much block out all sensation, likely related to training involving overriding pain responses. It's quite handy for not squirming when nail polish is being applied though.

Nadia is just reaching for the wings and eyeing the array of sauces like she might a chemistry set pondering what sorts of flavor reactions she can create by mixing them, when Janet asks about the Titans. "Things are much better now that our missing members have returned. I mean 'Mothers manipulations aside that was a pretty tough time, since both of my lab friends were among them. But these dopplegangers from the ZZGU dimension are really testing things again. Gar almost got killed and Terry seems to have lost his powers to his double, it's a mess." And then she stops as if remembering something, "Oh god Janet and then I got literally the worst news the other day. Apparently I have a double. She attacked Terry but he managed to escape and come to me so I could fix him. But apparently she's calls herself Ant-Girl and she's... she's with...she didn't die in the other world apparently and calls herself The Queen."

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Jesus," Janet mutters. "Great, that's all we need. What is with all these alternate universes with evil clones?" she wonders aloud. "It seems like this happens more often than we'd like."

The topic of discussion doesn't pull her focus from the task at hand, though. "Wait, so-- is it Ant-Girl, or The Queen?" Janet inquires. "I think Waspette's the way better name, personally. Ant stuff is your dad's shtick anyway. Wasps are /way/ cooler."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia shakes her head the pizza forgotten for the moment. "No no no, there's two, Ant-Girl and her mother who didn't die, " she has to drag the name out of herself, "Maria Trovaya is The Queen." She thought she'd made peace with these feelings after visiting the unmarked grave in Russia but this is a whole other level of haunting horror.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet pauses, watching Nadia's face. When the girl says 'Maria', she sighs with deep sympathy. "Oh honey, I'm sorry," Janet murmurs. It sounds earnest. "God. What a nightmare. I can't even imagine what you're dealing with. It's bad enough having an evil twin."

She pauses the application of the polish and looks up at Nadia. "Look, I know you want to help your dad, but... me and Hank, we'll deal with Ma-- The Queen. Him and me, we'll do that," she says. "You shouldn't have to deal with her /and/ your evil clone/twin thing. Not that I don't have any baggage," she admits, "but it's nowhere near as heavy as what you'd need to deal with."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia has deflated somewhat from her previous perkiness though not enough that a wing covered in an odd mix of sauces doesn't find its way to her mouth. "I had just finished putting all of this to rest I thought. The dead returning evil, this is like those terrible B movies we sometimes watch at the Tower. At least the other me iss Ant-Girl and not a Wasp, that should at least make her a little easier to tell apart. If Dad would stop just giving out costumes to people anyway."

She rolls her eyes and sighs remembering something else. "Because I already wound up attacking one false Ant-Girl. Apparently Dad decided to train some girl and not tell me, so I showed up to his lab the other day and met Ant-Girl, kind of shocking, so I attacked her thinking my doppleganger had infiltrated Dad's lab. It was not the doppleganger one though. Just some girl with a terrible attitude obsessed with power. Why does Dad have such terrible taste in Ant-people protoges?"

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Yeaaah, remind me to talk to your dad about that," Janet mutters. "He's not the one who's gonna take a bath on the licensing rights if 'Ant-Girl' destroys a bunch of private property on camera."

Janet looks up from the nail polish-- she's got her priorities in line, people!-- and flexes fingers at Nadia apologetically. "Sorry. I know I shouldn't bitch about your dad in front of you. Bad ... parenting. It was in one of those books. I think."

She goes back to the task at hand. "Anyway. Put it out of your mind for now, okay?" she tells Nadia. "I'll talk with Hank and we'll figure out how to handle this Queen thing. I mean, we can deal with 'Ant-Girl', too, I guess, which is a terrible name," she points out. "But I mean, if you would get some, um... closure, I guess, in kicking Evil Nadia's ass, I would understand that. Put your enemies in the ground and they don't come back, that's my motto."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
For all that she looks up to her father in many ways, Nadia definitely doesn't seem thrilled with his judgement related to this topic herself, "Scott Lang is bad enough. I still can't believe he went into my room. This girl though, she didn't seem to understand the meaning of having friends or being part of a team, just wanted more and more power to solve everything herself no matter who got hurt around her." For a girl who grew up largely without any close relationships and very much learned the hard way to depend more on those around her after the Red Room's attempts to get her back this just seems utterly anathaema.

Thoughts of fighting Ant-Girl filter into her mind again, "It seems really weird to fight myself, like I didn't think about it at all when I fought that other Ant-Girl, I just reacted. But like fighting me, if I kill me, what does that even mean?" It seems to boggle her mind a bit showing the cracks in an education heavy on super science and lacking in philosophy. "I think it will be fine though, I have a team, more than one now, teams! And we help each other. Like every other crisis, we'll get through this one way or another."

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"She's not 'you', honey," Janet points out. "For one-- /her/ mom sounds crazy and insane. Your mom is awesome and almost done painting your nails. Also, pizza, hello?" Janet gestures at the spread. "Anyone who didn't grow up with a good pizza place on speed-dial is probably too traumatized to be reckoned with."

"My advice is don't overthink it. I mean, I guess, like, don't kill her if you can help it," Janet says, and makes a face. "But if there was some shitty clone of /me/ running around? I'd ice that bitch in a second and not lose any sleep over it. No one rips off all this--" she gestures at her face with a motion of her palm. "And gets away with it. Especially if it's a shitty knockoff."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia at this point in her experimentation has reached the point of wrapping a slice of pizza around a sauced chicken wing and taking a giant bike of the resultant concoction. She nods her head few times listening since her mouth is full of food before swallowing it down. "You are the best Janet!" Nadia agrees taking another bite of her strange melange, did she really mix honey mustard and blue cheese?

"I guess, I want to at least see what she's like first." It's that same insatiable curiousity that drives her SCIENCE! and may one day be the end of her, it's certainly part of what sets her apart from other Red Room assassins who would just put a bullet in their double from a kilometer away without a second thought. "I'm not going to let her harm my friends though, and she certainly doesn't get to replace me." There is a determination there, she finally has a life, she's finally started to value herself a bit more, and she's not going to give it up to some interloper from another dimension.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Why?" The question accompanies a flicker of Janet's eyes, making it more than just a rhetorical question. "She's not -you-. Like not by any remote measure of who you are. She's not 'you' from a happy or stable home, or 'you' if you'd been born left-handed. She's obviously dangerous and her m-- the Queen is clearly crazy enough to be indulging her violence." Clearly, Janet doesn't see any equivalence there, but presses on. "So I say hit her hard and take her down fast. Trying to talk to her is at best going to confirm what you already know: that you're an awesome and unique individual who can overcome pretty extreme circumstances," she tells Nadia, and beams an approving smile at her.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Why? Nadia repeats the question to herself again. "I guess part of me just wants to see this dark mirror, how under a different set of probability circumstances the collection of space dust that became me in this reality became like that in the other reality? Maybe I just need to see things with my own eyes. I don't know. You're probably right" It's definitely bothering her on some level.

She shakes her head and smiles seemingly in an attempt to banish those thoughts, "Thanks, Janet. You're the best. It's all just a lot." She finishes off the strange pizza wing experiment.