5235/Another You: God Save The Queen

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Another You: God Save The Queen
Date of Scene: 17 February 2021
Location: Pym Technologies, Cresskill NJ
Synopsis: The Queen comes to Pym Technologies, The Queen does not leave Pym Technologies.
Cast of Characters: Nadia Pym-van Dyne, Hank Pym, Janet van Dyne, Kian, Vivian Vision




Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
It is a quiet evening at Pym Technologies, quiet in the sense of the surrounding area anyway. Inside is another matter entirely after the attack on the Pym residence and new reports of the alternate version of Nadia attacking and being detained at Titans Tower, the high tech corporate campus is on high alert. Extra security has been stationed at the perimeter and all of the various building entrances armed with all of the advanced weaponry a bleeding edge super science corporation can muster. To some it might seem like overkill, those people have not yet met The Queen.

"Gary you sure these things are safe? I know we have a manual but it looks like someone glued a vacuum to a toaster oven."

"Shut it Frank, don't let the science types here you say that, god this boring, I wish whatever it is would just come already, I want to go home."

The guards at the main gate banter oblivious to the danger that they are in and that Frank is likely to get his wish all too soon.

A growing rumble breaks their reverie. The Queen is not one for subtlety, in DoppleMaria's mind all may gaze upon her and despair. The rumbling grows as the guards peer out into the encroaching darkness as the sun sinks below the horizon. Barreling up the street are a trio of beetles, massive hercules beetles each the size of an armored car. The guards fire the energy weapons they have been given at them, but to little avail as the beams seem to bounce off of their very very shiny carapaces. The enormous beetles smash through the gates and the battle is joined.

In their wake an approaching buzzing can be heard as The Queen approaches standing on the head of a truly huge praying mantis and surrounded by a veritable plague of locusts.

Hank Pym has posed:
For Hank Pym it's a nightmare. All these attacks to whether with no preparation. A foe who has his technology and prepared to turn it against him. His house and most of his tech destroyed. Time to make a stand.

No. Custer made a stand. The Spartans made a stand. Hit and run is far better. Hopefully it comes as somewhat of a surprise when one of the electric smart cars comes sailing out of the dark (actually regaining its size a moment before it hits the lead beetle like a cannon round. In the shadows Yellowjacket palms two more cars. Waiting.

Okay. He had some prep time.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Hank's opening salvos are a pair of smartcars. A tactic Giant-Man uses well and often, the ballistic approach that hits as hard as anything else out there.

The Wasp stands atop the roof of GIRL and with a press of a button, starts opening the screens for the insect cages on the roof. There's more to controlling insects than mere biotechnology; it's pheremones and intent, a familiarity built over time and going back through generational memory of Janet and Nadia carefully tending to the wasp families and cultivating their colonies until they flourish.

The locusts form a dark plague onrushing the facility. A countering mass swirls and grows atop the roof of the facility as The Wasp releases her own pets. Janet is at the center of hundreds of thousands of wasps with her hands thrown skywards in an imperious summons of those insect legions. They buzz towards the locust swarm with a single-minded intensity, directed by Janet's angry will to attack the invaders head-on.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Meanwhile at Titans Tower, Nadia is strapping into the pilot seat of the T-Jet. "Come on Kian, Viv, let's go! They're going to need our help! Dad destroyed our house trying to stop her and she still survived. Be ready for anything!"

Having grabbed the two Titans that she could find on hand, the T-Jet engines roar to life and once everyone is aboard they are shooting skyward.

Kian has posed:
    Kían *hates* the T-Jets.
    They're too small, and he /really/ doesn't like anyone else doing the flying for him.  But, he definitely owes Nadia a good turn after she trusted him--along with Gar and Terry--with respite in her microverse castle so that his friends could heal mentally and physically.
    And, he's in the unusual (for him) position of being able to act against Nadia's doppel.  "If you know any way I can use my /rhy'thar/ to inter-fere wit' your double, please let me know," he asks, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.  "An' I hope we will not be in the jet for long...."

Vivian Vision has posed:
"I am currently re-reviewing all available data we have available on this 'Queen' and requesting a direct connection to the security systems on site. I'll ensure we have a comprehensive overview of the area before we reach our destination," Vivian calls out. Her mind already splitting portions off to go through all available information. "Do we think this is an assassination attempt on Janet or Doctor Pym?"

Other mental subdivisions review all current projects taking place within the building. Or at least the ones she has sufficient security clearance to know about. As well as checking all personel on site and co-ordinating directly with the local authorities to ensure they don't get caught up in an insect battle.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"Not long at all!" Nadia informs Kian as she punches the T-Jet's throttle and taps into the new propulsion systems that she herself said should /definitely/ /only/ be used in space, just a tiny bit, for SCIENCE!. There is a brief ripple in space/time around the upgraded T-Jet before it catapults forward hurtling through the sky towards Pym Technologies, Nadia having a look of mad glee on her face the entire time.

"That was amazing!" Nadia croaks as she extricates herself from her seat that the G forces had threatened to permanently bond her to, but in scant minutes the T-Jet has arrived above Pym Technologies. "I don't know what she's after."

Nadia finally replies to Vivian when it is easy to speak again, "Only that we need to stop her." And with that she engages the holding pattern auto-pilot, pulls on her Waspette helmet, and dives out of the T-Jet. "Titans GO!"

Down below a war is unfolding both in the air and on the ground.

Visibility in the air just above the Pym Technologies buildings has been occluded as massive armies of locusts and wasps smash into each other in the mother of all insect dog fights. The battle is fierce and down below it begins raining insect bodies as casualties mount on both sides.

This trickle of death falls upon a scene of flying cars. The first electric vehicle smashes into the armored head of the lead hercules beetle and while it doesn't crack the carapace it does slow its advance actually driving it back a few steps into its fellows before the other two begin fanning out away from it. The impacted mega-beetle shakes its head back and forth like a stunned rhinocerous before looking around for the source of the attack.

Amidst all of this descends The Queen, carving a path through the fray standing upon a praying mantis so large it belongs in a 1950's B Movie.

"<Resistance is futile, you cannot hope to stand before The Queen of All Insects.>" The words are half shouted and half conveyed by insect telepathy as her mantis mount lands inside the main gates with an earth cracking thud.

Hank Pym has posed:
Did this Hank endow Maria with the same chemo emitters and receptors Janet has? Unlike his insect tech, it did not depend on electro psionic waves. the queen is probably stumped. If she could do it she would have already. One for Janet. He snaps the last car he shrunk at the beetles. Rover would have been a big help right now. He feels a pan of guilt for the valiant virtual intelligence. He hopes it wasn't self aware.

<<Janet, can your wasps scuff up the giant bugs so the energy weapons can bite?>>

<<Security detail, Pym. Bring up the fire extinguishers and pressure hoses. Knock the beetles on their asses. Shoot at the ground to keep them unsteady... anybody see a Hummer nearby?>>

Then the mantis lits.

He spares a glance at the security men he really doesn't know, who are looking at him.

Then he is running and growing. With his current condition... oh stop whining Hank. Hit the blue particles and grow already. You can only die once.

He's sixty feet tall when he has to stop. His biomonitor beeping as he screams, "Get off my campus!" The headlines will read 'Hank Pym beheaded by Mantis'. He attempts to use his growth momentum and speed to one shot the bug.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
<With what, Hank, their harsh language?> Janet's tone carries a note of pique in it. The wasps are engaging the grasshoppers head on, natural viciousness and Janet's bristling anger giving them an aggressive edge against the blind hunger and panic of The Queen's directive to simply *swarm*. The jets of water and fire-suppression fluid make it difficult for her allies to swarm effectively against the giant beetles, but they do make a direct attack at the beetle's near-hidden eyes when possible.

Never bring herbivores to a bug fight.

Janet leaps into the air, no larger than her allies, and buzzes towards The Queen. <There's only one insect queen around here, bitch,> she mutters. The sound of a T-jet gets Janet's attention and she barrel rolls to watch the Titans making their arrival. <No! Nadia, get clear of this!> she snaps. <Let me and your dad handle it!> With renewed focus Janet plunges towards The Queen, looking for an oblique approach so she can sucker-punch the villainess.

Kian has posed:
    Kían fairly rockets into the air to get away from the confines of the T-Jet once it stops.
    The first thing he notes is active telepathy, not unlike the work he and Nadia and Gar did with psion particles when they were trying to make a beacon for their then-lost teammates.  This gives him An Idea: specifically, broadcasting the mad, incomprehensible, and loud sensations he got when he accidentally touched Harley's mind... coupled with the mad playground that is Vorpal's mind.  He can think of few things that would better interfere with someone providing telepathic direction.
    And then it's a matter of finding the person controlling the insects... and hoping the really big ones can't fly due to their mass.  He doesn't mind insects.  His home back on his world is strung through the canopy of a copse of trees; insects happen.
    Insects the size of a vehicle, however, should not.

Vivian Vision has posed:
Vivian Vision also splits off a portion of her mind to calm down some very upset air traffic controllers when Nadia decides to test her starship engines in atmosphere. While another collects all the data from the T-Jet and formats it for later study at GIRL. No point letting all that data go to waste.

Sometimes it's hard work being in the extended Pym-van Dyne family.

Once they reach their destination Viv doesn't waste any time opening the doors on the T-Jet or rushing to the exists. She just simply phases and drops like a rock.

Her flight systems kick in to allow for fine aiming and then her density cranks up to maximum. Turning Viv into a seventy ton kinetic bomb aimed directly at the top of one of the Hercules Beetles.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Hank's powerful attack using his growth momentum connects with the mega-mantis and sends it reeling, which is lucky as it causes one of those scythe-like arm blades to swing wide of actually taking off his head. The creature does not go down however, righting itself after a moment and lunging at Giant Man with predatory zeal. The clash of the titans has begun!

For her part The Queen takes off from the mantis' head to avoid the blow. With the PymTech forces suitably occupied she begins flying towards one of the storage buildings.

Meanwhile the huge hercules beetles continue to rampage as more and more security forces swarm into the area. A combination of fire extinguishers and bug bodies raining from above begins to mar their ultra-glossy carapaces enough that the energy weapons begin to find purchase.

Overhead the aerial battle does indeed seem to be turning in favor of the wasps, aided by their stingers and venom, and just naturally more warlike nature. There's still /a lot/ of locusts but the tide is slowly turning.

<<Don't worry Janet.>> Nadia's voice comes over the Comms. <<I met Hope Pym from the other dimension, I saw what I needed to. I know that thing has no relation to the woman who was my mother and I really want her to stop wearing her face and dragging everyone's memories of her through the mud.>> Even as she says this, a pair of energy blasts are fired in The Queen's direction, though the dexterous dopple neatly evades them.

<"Oh? I guess Hope failed."> The Queen doesn't seem terribly troubled by this, detached even as she notes the fate of her daughter. <"She always was weak and easily distracted.">

Moments later the Queen is shaking her head a bit as if distracted, casting an irritated look about. Without Psion particles while Kian's electromagnetic telepathic broadcast does indeed provide interference, the effect is perhaps not as strong as he might have hoped. Still the locust swarm does become a bit more disorganized losing still more ground to the Wasp armada.

Elsewhere on the battlefield however a kinetic explosion shakes the earth as dust flies up from the crater created by Vivians meteoric descent. Impacting with one of the hercules beetles, even at its huge size the poor creature is sent splattering in all directions and Vivian is left covered in beetle goo.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet materializes out of thin air behind Maria's shoulder with both knees hugging her chest and her body rolling into a somersault. At the last second she extends both feet and delivers a double-heel kick at the Queen, flashing into nearly twice her usual size and then disappearing again a moment later. She grabs a passing wasp leg to steal some momentum and buzzes in Maria's wake, preparing a second stinging ambush out of nowhere.

Janet's not much one for quippy commentary. Her face is set, mouth pressed into a thin and angry line, and her focus entirely on the woman who's been disrupting everyone's lives for weeks on end.

Kian has posed:
    Confusion will do -- Kian is looking for the center of all this mess, still broadcasting the wild kaleidoscope of the mad harlequin and Cheshire cat's minds.  What he's looking for now, by both watching for the center of activity and trying to track the source of the mental activity, is the person behind all this.
    And if he gets a clean view of her, he's going to wrap her head in a globe of bright light.  An inability to see her targets in addition to the mental confusion should lessen her danger.

Vivian Vision has posed:
A drop in density lets Viv leap up and out of the crater, phasing mid-air to let all the mess fall off, before landing lightly and looking around for her next target. The really giant mantis is hard to miss, so the synthezoid teenager directs a few energy blasts up at the vulnerable compound eyes.

As 'The Queen' attempts to head away from the fighting the portion of Viv's mind looking through security feeds cross checks the contents of those storage buildings. Making sure all employees are directed to safety, shutting every door and engaging every security system she can. If there's any useful equipment she can take control of and remotely use as a weapon? Physical stuff can always be replaced. And it's better than having it stolen.

All the while her physical self starts charging towards the rest of the Hercules beetles. It doesn't matter how tough they are when she can phase through the chiten plates or just throw them like toys.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Hank narrowly evades the second round of massive mantis blades aimed a carving his head from his shoulders. Stumbling back he reaches into his belt coming out with a vial and one of the Pym Growth Discs slamming both into the ground in front of him. From the resulting impact erupts a /massive/ wolf spider, easily a match for the mantis in size. One can almost hear 'Let them fight!' as the mega-mantis and awesome arachnid begin tearing into each other in a death struggle. "Bet you weren't expecting a spider!" Hank shouts before asiding into the comms, <<Get a containment ready, I can't actually control that thing.>>

There is a resounding crack as Janet connects with The Queen hard from a blind angle and yet at the same time it feels like kicking a brick wall as she impacts with hard chitinous exterior like the woman's skin has been replaced by an insectoid exoskeleton. Slowly The Queen turns to face her, <"Oh? You think you are a match for me?"> Energy bio-electric energy begins gathering around The Queen's hands, far in excess to what a human should be able to generate like she is about to release a veritable bolt of lightning at Janet, that is of course until her head is enveloped in a sphere of light blinding her and the blast goes wide.

Meanwhile one of the giant hercules beetles charges towards Vivian intent on impaling her upon its massive horn, while the other has found some nice grass to munch on and become nigh docile with the disrupted control.

Nadia blinks a few times at the sudden massive wolf spider, but speeds off after Janet and The Queen. She is done losing mothers and isn't about to let Janet fight her alone. Reaching into the pockets of her suit she pulls out some of her trademark sticky bombs hurling two handfuls of them at The Queen who is consumed within the explosions, though when the smoke clears her chitinous exterior seems mostly unharmed.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet times her approach until after Nadia's bombs go off and Kian's flashing light globe allows an opening. She reappears right in front of the Queen with an uppercut aimed at her jaw. Well, it's less an 'uppercut' and more a fistful of Janet's own bioplasma, cranked up to full power and cradled in her hand. The Wasp is immune to her own weaponry, but few others are, and she unloads a palmful of it at the underside of the Queen's face.

"I /know/ I'm a match for you," Janet snarls. She vanishes a flickering second later and hides atop a passing wasp, nudging it to circle the Queen once again while waiting for her next opportunity to blindside Maria with another sucker punch. Janet clearly has no compunctions about what defines a 'fair fight'-- she's in it to win it.

Kian has posed:
    Kían really has no concept of 'fair fight', but that's mainly because he barely has a concept of 'fight'.  It's just not a matter of a fight to him: the villain at the heart of this needs to be stopped, and he can help stop her even if he never need lay a hand on her.
    Besides, he couldn't throw a punch if his life depended on it.
    The light around The Queen's head intensifies, and Kían adds an undercurrent of additional infrared, because the heat will make it even more disorienting and uncomfortable, hopefully driving her to surrender peacefully.
    Yes, he really believes that's an option.

Vivian Vision has posed:
Vivian Vision doesn't really want to hurt the poor beetles, but it's better than letting them run amok and hurt the people working for Pym Industries. Her density spikes as she brings her hands up to grab the Hercules beetle by the horns. It might be big, tough and strong but it's probably not going to have enough of a run up to cause Viv any serious harm.

Besides once Viv has grabbed hold she intends to go for the lift and throw. Turning the beetles momentum against it.

All the while she unleashes energy blast after energy blast into any parts of the Giant Mantis that aren't heavily armoured.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
As the massive mantis and awesome arachnid square off in the center of the Pym Technologies courtyard, Giant Man takes a few steps back before coming in from a flanking angle and landing a crushing blow against the mantis creature. He is still careful to avoid the wolf spider which cannot be truly controled but it is more or less a two versus one fight now, not going in the mantis' favor. It goes even less in the mantis' favor when more security forces arrive blasting it with more high tech weaponry from all angles.

Meanwhile in the Battle of the Queens, Janet's vicious uppercut actually manages to crack Maria's face. It is a creepy sight to behold, like a cracked porcelin mask with pieces falling again though she does not seem to be out just yet. "<You'll pay for that!>" She screeches, finally losing her imperious cool.

It is disturbing to watch as The Queen begins to morph and change as if adapting in real time to her enemies with more and more insect features. Her eyes bulge becoming multi-faceted adjusting to the light, but not only that several more sets of compound eyes appearing around her head. Her body itself stretching, cracking, expanding as she nearly doubles in size, a second set of wings coming out of her back to keep her aloft. <"I will end all of you!"> She shouts as she begins gathering bio-electric energy again, but this time it surrounds her entire body as she begins glowing a brilliant crackling blue.

"Okay that looks bad." Nadia is thinking furiously and she begins fiddling with one of her gauntlets, "If I can just adjust the..." before she can finish her sentence she finishes her work and fires off a blast at The Queen. Unfortunately it does not seem to have the desired effect, whatever that was. But it does cause Maria to turn towards the Waspette. <"Maybe you can be a replacement for my Hope..."> Maria grins wickedly at the Waspette as her crackling aura grows.

Down below, seizing the armored car sized hercules beetle by the horn, Vivian manages to heave it up and over her shoulder. It sails through the air before colliding on its back with the gatehouse for the main entrance, crushing the small building, legs flailing in the air impotently.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet pulls back warily at the sight of that crackling bioplasma field. She's smart enough to know not to plunge headlong into it; the way wasps crackle and die as they cross the barrier is warning enough for the socialite.

Well, Hank's not the only one with some tricks up his sleeve. Janet appears behind Maria, rapidly shooting up to the most possible height she dares-- sixty feet, on par with Hank and tall enough to be eye-level with the upper floors of the Pym Building. Insects buzz in alarm and Janet grimaces at the locusts swirling against her supersized features, reflexively waving a hand in front of her face. The other hand goes up in the air and she brings it down in a huge arc aimed right at Maria, fingers splayed out into a five-ton flyswatter aimed for the monstrous woman.

Kian has posed:
    "/c'Rhys'yw/!"  Kían feels the surge in electrical potential and reacts automatically -- reaching out to simply shut down the electrical field if possible, merely damp it down if necessary.  Electricity is easy; it's the atomic force everyone, humans and Akiár both, have the most experience with.
    And then it occurs to Kían that maybe if he pushes a little harder, damping can become feedback and *really* convince The Queen that surrendering would be a good idea.

Vivian Vision has posed:
Oops. Well... The gatehouse won't be expensive to repair. Not for a corporation as wealthy as Pym Industries. And better a little property damage than loss of life!

Viv briskly walks over towards the gate. If the beetle gets back up someone will need to deal with it and until then she can at least provide some ranged support.

She scoops up some of the metal bars from the gate, hefts each one in turn to guage the weights, and then one by one she throws them like improvised blunted javelins. It's hard to say if any will hit Maria, especially with all that electrical energy flowing around, but maybe they'll scare her enough to encourage a surrender.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
The might mantis finally comes down under the combined assault of Hank, the giant wolf spider, Vivian, and numerous PymTech security forces. Of course they are then left with the wolf spider to clean up but with Hank's assistance they manage to sedate the creature and return it to its proper size while it feeds upon the mantis corpse.

Around The Queen there is a flurry of activity. Kian's attempts at bending The Queen's bio-plasma to his will meet with resistance as The Queen fights him for control of her own energies. That is until Nadia readies another shot, "Okay I think I definitely got it this time!" The energy blast impacts the Queen and there is a ripple through the energy surrounding her, just enough for Kian to not only seize control of the field but turn it inward upon her as if she had been shoved into a massive bug zapper, just in time for Janet's massive hand to slam her into the side of one of the buildings, like a normal sized person might swat a mosquito.

It is a testament to her enhanced toughness that The Queen is not merely a smear at this point, she isn't really moving either though. Recessed into an indentation in the shape of her body, she is stuck within the side of the building. The chitin that covers her body is cracked all over the places, pieces falling away revealing a grotesque form ravaged by science gone mad beneath. Perhaps mercifully while not quite dead she seems to be unconcious.

The remaining rhinocerous beatles are soon surrounded by the security forces and subdued so they can be returned to a more natural size. With Maria down, the locust swarm falls into complete disarray and is easy prey for the wasp legions.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet plucks Maria from the wall and lifts her into the air. She holds the woman like a broken ragdoll and lifts her up overhead. It's a seventy-foot drop at that point, and chitin armor or not that alone would be a problem. But Janet's got The Queen's cracked breastplate under the pad of her thumb and her fingers curling around her. From the rictus grin on Janet's face and the intense fury and hate in her eyes, it's pretty clear that she's going to break Maria like a fragile piece of glass in her hands. Ethics be damned-- Janet's got some pretty firm feelings about not leaving unresolved threats to her life and safety behind.

Kian has posed:
    Kían looks faintly horrified, partly at the rather gross display of broken chitin, partly at his own part in making that happen.  "She iss alife?" he radios down timorously, sounding genuinely concerned.  Stopping a broken one is one thing; it's not his place to end them.
    He does not land yet -- there's too much going on with the wasps and the locusts -- and instead looks for a rooftop to perch on and observe from above.  This is still all way beyond him.
    And no, he has no idea what Janet has in mind, so he makes no move to stop her.  That kind of rage and violence is literally alien to him.

Vivian Vision has posed:
With the main threat seemingly dealt with Vivian sets herself to the clean up and other post action tasks. Like putting together all of the most flattering footage of Ant-Man & Wasp in battle for Janet to review and submit to the media. And making sure no recordings of Janet looking like she might commit a homicide gets out.

She also helps out with giant beetle duty, having enough strength to wrangle them if they get upset, and picks out a suitable landing spot for the T-Jet so it doesn't have to keep hovering and using up fuel.

Once all the major tasks are dealt with she moves to boring old rubble clearing. It might not be glamorous but it's good for people to see superheroes joining in with the clean up efforts.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"Janet!" Nadia calls out as she zips over to hover above her step-mother's shoulder near her ear. "Are you sure about this? I mean I know she did terrible things and is a terrible person and isn't Maria and may be irredeemable.. but but are you sure you want to do this? ARMOR could like throw her into a dark hole forever, or maybe they'll quietly execute her but ...but it doesn't need to be you." It's the the grin really, the grin and the zeal, the hate in Janet's eyes that worries Nadia. She has seen death before, she even acknowledges it can sometimes be necessary but that expression has her worried.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
The chitin cracks and there's a gasp of the last wisps of air being forced from Maria's ribs. Janet hesitates at the sound of Nadia's voice, and blinks in surprise before looking sidelong at the girl hovering near her. The ferocious expression disappears and she looks once more at Maria, then at Nadia again.

"It doesn't matter if it's me who does it, honey," Janet says, finally. "Just as long as it's not you."

There's another moment of hesitation and she relents. Janet starts shrinking down to nominal size and tears away the last of Maria's armor, leaving her exposed and vulnerable. With those prosthetics exposed it's a trivial matter to neutralize all but those essential to life-support.

Janet turns and checks Nadia for injuries, then gives her a hug. Vivian, too, for good measure, once the android returns. "You girls did great. And tell your friend up there he was awesome, and remind me to send him a gift basket or something," she says. "Head back to the Tower. Your dad'n'me, we'll deal with the cleanup," she orders them. "We'll... we'll get together later and talk this out. The whole family," she promise.s