6291/Virtuous Signalling

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Virtuous Signalling
Date of Scene: 21 May 2021
Location: New York
Synopsis: No description
Cast of Characters: Janet van Dyne, Emma Frost




Janet van Dyne has posed:
"It's just such a ... I don't know. Departure," Janet tells Emma. "'Frost Outreach Foundation'. Don't you worry it's going to dilute your brand a bit?"

The two women sit at a corner table at Le Cirque. It's not just 'a' corner table, it's currently 'the' corner table, with the adjoining dining seats removed and thick drapes set on rolling casters between them and the restaurant. It's the sort of power move only billionares can play, walking into a restaurant that averages five hundred dollars a plate and buying out 20 of them for some privacy during lunch.

Janet's in black lined with gold trim, a lightweight sleeveless dress with a thigh-length skirt appropriate for the warming springtime weather. An origami-like lapel creates an asymmetrical neckline, and the gold trim is actually 18k gold thread that glitters like nothing else can. Slingback Ferragamos with a yellow sole and gold jewelry at her wrists and ears all look like they've never been worn. The sole contrast to the outfit is a thin necklace chain with a pendant that disappears under the dress, plating slowly eroding from prolonged wear.

"I mean there's cut-throat, in-your-face, take-on-all-comers Emma Frost, CEO of Frost Industries," Janet clarifies, and sips a deep claret wine in front of her. "But now there's this philanthropy thing. You're not worried the competition's going to smell blood in the water?" She picks up a cube of exquisitely prepared Kobe beef and nibbles it delicately, brows rising at the blonde woman across from her.

Emma Frost has posed:
Emma sets down her claret, watching the tears of the wine slip down the sides of the glass as she takes a drag of her cigarette. Expelling that and then playfully adding some visual illusions to make it look like the smoke coiled around her shoulders like a dragon before vanishing into, well, a puff of smoke, she finally replies.

"I hope they smell the chum." The voice is amused, somewhat, and has a streak of cruelty in it. "I'm well prepared for fools who mistake that for weakness. I'm even egging on some habitual shorters. The blood they smell now is chum. The blood I smell later will be theirs."

She nibbles at her salad, glancing at it in surprise. "I must have this recipe." A moment's concentration later she adds, "And now I do."

"No, Janet, this is not only, however, chum in the water for the smaller sharks to get eaten by, it's a longer game." She grins at her counterpart across the table, recrossing her legs to lean slightly to the other side, skin slipping against the silk brocade cheongsam she chose for her outfit. The one with the hand-embroidered dragon in platinum thread on the white-on-white weave of an obscure stylized Chinese character repeated in medallions across the outfit, barely visible unless the light catches it just so. "There's potential others are not seeing in Bushwick. I will be the gateway to it."

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Bad," Janet scolds Emma with a low voice at the casual mind-reading, and clucks her tongue. It doesn't sound remotely concerned, and she sips her wine again before turning her attention to a small tower of finely diced ahi tuna and avocado.

"I'm not saying Bushwick doesn't have -potential-, I'm saying that it's gonna be hard to rehabilitate the district without driving property values up," she clarifies. "I'm sure even after that announcement the area's gonna see a ... what, five point gain by the end of the week?" she hazards. "Then if these programs go through and development starts, every slumlord sitting on a condominium is going to sell it or demolish it to make something bigger and more expensive. Manhattan real estate, it's a cut-throat game," she observes sagaciously.

Emma Frost has posed:
"What you're going to see is people trying to squeeze the inhabitants, yes," Emma says. "And you will see the inhabitants fighting back with the tools and the spirit I help them develop. There are ways of dealing with slumlords that make them rethink their dedication to making others miserable."

She lets that sit a moment for Janet to think the worst before holding up a hand.

"Let me finish. It's not twisting their little minds, as much fun as that would be. That would be sure to get interference from Chuckles out at the Mansion, and likely Erik as well for entirely different reasons. No, the weapon in this is public relations: both formal through agencies and ads and news stories and the like to name and shame them publicly, but also underground. Letting people know that any who 'invest' in properties in Bushwick will find their businesses under attack legally and fiscally in a no-holds-barred contest that spans the globe."

She pauses again to sip her claret, eschewing the cigarette this time before picking at another piece of her salad, watching with interest the dressing as it clings to the leaf, pooling along the bottom edge before dripping off into the rest below. She consumes it then, with the same kind of detached ardour that she's known for in her other appetites.

"I've already made a solid guess, from reading the market movements, who is going to be the first to try and buy something. His hedge fund will collapse by end of trading tomorrow in the sort of bloodbath I'm famous for instigating. Then word will be quietly spread as to who and why. There will be smaller fish still too stupid to walk away, but those are dispatched handily. I'll only have one big fish to fry."

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Emma..." Janet squinches her eyes shut and touches fingertips to her forehead in momentary exasperation. "Think long-term," she pleads. "You can shut down a couple of Harvard money boys easy. Take down some old guy who's been sitting on a few hundred million dollars and letting his money team turn the profit crank. But you can't do it indefinitely," she warns her. "Remember China? Remember me, in China, /in Beijing/, saying I'd own the market? Eighteen months later I couldn't qualify for a bank loan for a fashion studio. The other fashion houses formed a cartel and forced me out."

"And before you even say 'I'll change their minds'," she says, heading off commentary with a horizontal slash of her hand, "you can't make a business out of making puppets out of everyone who goes up against you."

"I'm not telling you not to do it," Janet adds, with an upticked finger. "I'm just saying, don't be cavalier about it. You're talking what, eight, nine hundred city blocks?" Fingernails drum, doing some fast math in her head. "You can't sell apartment buildings in Bushwick for what they're worth now. In ten years that property could be worth a hundred million dollars per block. That's the sort of money that some people will kill for. Let alone going after your personal piggy bank in the process."

Emma Frost has posed:
"I have access to something in Bushwick that no cartel can match. They don't know it yet, but the biggest asset in Bushwick will be its people."

Emma sets down her fork and her glass both, leaving only the cigarette left which she makes ample use of.

"Janet, the real estate in Bushwick is worthless in the long haul if the people living there start taking pride in themselves and in where they live. Gentrification works because big money moves in, glad-hands a few people, throws a bit of money around, and before anybody in the broken community is aware of what's going on, they've been carefully split along tribal lines and rendered ineffective."

Emma's eyes take on a bit of a blaze as a candle starts to gutter on the table, lending her a spooky almost fanatic look.

"I'm reversing this, Janet. I'm going the other direction. I'm going to bloody the noses of the first sharks who try to swim in those waters which will give them enough pause that I can build that community. Instill a sense of pride in the mutants of Mutant Town. Give them a desire to both stay where they are because it is their home, their family, their community, and to clean it up, improve it THEMSELVES. Not with some smooth-talking developer who's going to shaft them, but they themselves choosing ..."

She pauses a moment, pursing her lips in concentration.

"Have you ever," she asks, changing the topic in an oblique direction, "seen neighbourhoods where housing has been given for free to people? Where the disaffected and poor are just handed homes? Anywhere in the world. I have. They are disasters. They become the worst of slums. The people in them have no pride in what was just given to them. Deep down they 'know' that they don't deserve what they got and that they exist only at the whim of greater powers. This is devastating. I can FEEL them suffering. FEEL their self-loathing. Their sense of worthlessness."

She pauses, eyes wide, breath running a bit quicker, like she's just run a short sprint down a hall.

"Now compare this with things like that 'Habitat for Humanity' organization. The houses are still free ... except that to get one you have to BUILD HOUSES. You may not have built the specific house you live in at the end, but you built one or more houses in the neighbourhood. As has everybody else. All the neighbours worked together to build homes and then live in those same homes. There's a sense of cameraderie and worth that comes from this. Those neighbourhoods feel like communities, even if they're still largely impoverished. They have some pride in themselves, and in each other."

A slightly triumphant look takes over.

"I'm going to hold off the sharks with brute force and shivs in the back long enough for the mutants in Mutant Town to get that same sense of pride. A sense that they're not the cast-off waste products of homo sapiens sapiens. A sense that they are PEOPLE and that they matter. To each other. And once that sense of pride starts and builds, developers will find themselves having a harder and harder time wedging themselves in. I can't win it all, but I can win enough that I have a core of people proud in who and what they are."

She leans back, reducing the intensity of her presence. "Is that not worth the fight, Janet?"

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet props her chin on her hand, elbow on the table, and listens attentively to Emma with an inscrutable set of features. A long pause follows while she digests Emma's rather lengthy tirade.

"You either need to stop taking so much coke, or start doing more," she concludes sagaciously.

At the first sound of objection Janet holds her hands up, fork in the right, and shakes her head. "Nonono, I get it. I do." She makes eye contact with Emma, rolls her eyes. "/I do/," she emphasizes. "I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I'm not saying it doesn't even sound like it could be fun," she allows. "You'll get mafia strongmen, corrupt city councilors, every philanthropic enterprise from here to Miami trying to get a piece of the action. It'll be like when I built the fashion house, except like, a hundred times more. I'm not--" Janet takes a bite, chewing, and waggles her empty fork at her temple. "I'm not the voice that tells you what to do," she says around some pine nuts and peppers. "I'm the voice that tells you to be a cunning bitch when you do it." She flashes a winning smile.

"So. What do I do to help from my end?" The question's left deliberately open ended and Janet drops the inquiry right in Emma's lap, an offer of likely unqualified assistance and with no pre-emptive strings attached.

Emma Frost has posed:
"Sorry, Janet," Emma says with a laugh. "I'm still fine-tuning the pitch." Her eyes dance with laughter even after the sound stops. "But, Janet, are you sure of your counsel in recommending I do cocaine?" The smoke forms a dragon with glowing eyes resting in her hair, staring down at her counterpart. "Might you wish to reconsider?" she asks as the dragon vanishes again.

Mouth quirked with amusement she tackles a few pieces of her salad before moving on, upon its completion, to the roast duck, Beijing style, sliced in a perfect heap of crisp skin in the middle of associated condiments and starts to assemble a wrap.

"I've got the bitch part down pat," she says as her deft fingers wrap a morsel dipped in the sauce and supplemented by leek and cucumber. "Cunning, time will tell." Her eyes look up from her task to grin an expression of purest malice. "I could use some signals intelligence," she says, coming straight to the point. "Mine is good, but limited in scope. I need ... electronic intelligence so I can spot the blades coming in before they reach my back."

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Quit doing the--" Janet wiggles her fork at the simulacra. "Dragon thing. I know you're doing it and it's giving me a headache." Eyes narrow for a second and then the look vanishes.

"You should talk to Kitty," Janet suggests. "She did the overhaul for my security here last year. But if she's not down to clown, I can make some calls," Janet muses. "There's someone suitably mercenary who could get some phones tapped in the right places. Put some bugs in computers, all that... geeky stuff."

She stabs a bite of Kobe, chews. "There are a couple mafia guys who owe me a favor if the neighborhood gets harassed. Not enough to take on a whole family, but they could put you on the right path with the right people. You might also talk to Wilson Fisk," she adds. "He's done a lot of good charity work in some really bad parts of the city, and he's done it without the Families leaning on him. Might be a good friend to make."

Emma Frost has posed:
"Fisk now..." Emma narrows her eyes as she chews slowly on the wrap, savouring the mingled flavours of the dish while her fingers busily make another. "That is an intriguing proposition. He likes to be involved in things that make him look like a philanthropist. It disguises what he really does."

The second wrap is carefully and thoroughly chewed while she ponders.

"I like that plan. And his name will send a chill down the spine of many of the marauders. I wouldn't even really have to get my fingers directly dirty. So, Kitty, and failing that your people as a fallback. And Fisk for protective services if the major crime families start taking an interest in my people."

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet spreads her hands and nods. "Sounds easy enough," she concurs. "I mean it's New York, honey, you know it goes. Everyone's a little corrupt. Just gotta get the right people in line with one another."

For as slight as she is, Janet can put the food away, up to an including the fine gelato dessert being brought to the table with some gold-flecked dessert wines. "Tell you what, put Streets to Suits down on the donor list," Janet says, offering her own charity to the discussion. "I'll tell my people to make Bushwick a priority for donations for the forseeable future. If you're dead set on trying to bootstrap these neighborhoods up, it's gonna be hard for people to interview for jobs unless they're dressed for the occasion."

Emma Frost has posed:
"Oh, don't be silly, Janet!" Emma scolds her friend. "There's really only one neighbourhood. The rest are going to be smokescreen projects. But I do appreciate your participation. And naturally if there's anything you need from me, drop me a line."

The smile is genuine, if perhaps a bit haunted.

"I've started work building a kernel of people with some pride left in the dregs of their souls," she says. "I found one. On my first night. That was heartening. Now I only need a few hundred more like him."

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Okay so now this *is* the good advice fairy: don't try to seduce the neighborhood, either," Janet cautions. Fingertips play with the thin chain of her necklace, rolling it back and forth between thumb and forefinger. She grins at Emma with a teasing expression. "Not saying you can't do it; just saying that it'll give you the sort of reputation you can't live down."

She drains her drink; a waiter brings the check to Janet's assistant, who is the epitome of unobtrusive at another table, and who signs it after briefly reviewing the costs of the meal.

Janet gets to her feet and gathers her small clutch that coordinates so well it was likely made at the same time as her outfit. "This was fun thought. Let's go out and hit the scene again soon, huh? I could stand a girl's night out. Unless this sudden burst of civic-mindedness is gonna cut your social life down," Janet says with a finger wiggling vaguely at Emma.

Emma Frost has posed:
"The boy was seventeen, Janet. Even I have limits."

Emma's voice is stern, but mirth bubbles beneath the surface.

"But that's beside the point. In the end I can't let the people in Mutant Town get the feeling that I'm the source of their community. They have to believe THEY are. That's the only way I get what I need. Seducing them one by one, as much fun as that could be, wouldn't accomplish my aim. I have to pull this off with invisible strings of loyalty and pride."

She, too, rises, to give Janet a hug, carefully avoiding bare skin contact, air-kissing the cheeks. "And yes, we do need to pick up our engagements. Next outing, dance club. Or opera. Opera, yes. I haven't been in ages. I understand there was some kind of kerfuffle at the Met recently. Dead people and everything. That could be entertaining and my box has been unused for months now."

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet returns the hug as much as Emma prefers, and squeezes Emma's forearms once before fully breaking away. "Done," she agrees. "God knows we pay enough for those seats, and I'm sure Steve's a little bored with me making him sit through Les Mis three times last month." She beams a smile up at the blonde and hugs her once more. "I'm happy to see a smile on your face and a little pep in your step," she assures Emma, and starts towards the exit with her assistant falling into orbit. "Ciao for now!"