7881/Secret Warrior Swap

Secret Warrior Swap
Date of Scene:	18 September 2021
Location:	Quon's Chinese Cafe, Chinatown, NYC
Synopsis:	Melinda May meets Lily Chen to take part in an intertemporal swapmeet, exchanging one set of armor for another. They chat a little about the perniciousness of anger, but May's not really interested in therapy.
Cast of Characters:	Melinda May

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Melinda May has posed:
OOC NOTE: This scene takes place between Log 7557: "Suit up, Warriors" (https://heroesassemble.mushhaven.com/index.php?title=7557/Suit_up,_Warriors) and Log 7629: "Outbreak" (https://heroesassemble.mushhaven.com/index.php?title=7629/Outbreak)

Melinda May has posed:
The glowing orange doorway in spacetime blinks into existence like the screen of an old tv set coming to life. From a tiny pinprick in the middle of nothing, it expands to create a three foot by seven foot gap in reality. Melinda, sat in an elegant chair in Quon's back room, tenses when it first appears -- an automatic reaction she knows now stems from prior experience.

The woman that walks through it this time, however, is not a jackbooted, black armoured timecop, but almost a mirror image of herself. Lily Chen gives Melinda May a broad, easy smile. "I got your message," she says lightly, reaching out to offer her hand in greeting. "Sorry it took so long to respond."

Melinda pulls herself to her feet, taking Lily's hand in her own, surprised by how muted and yet how open her time-echo's emotions are. "It's fine," she says, relaxing at Lily's touch. The other woman's optimistic calm is contagious when shared skin to skin. "Thanks for coming."

Lily cants her head, curiosity flitting through her emotional aura. "Peggy said you needed a favour."

"Mm." Melinda grunts softly and turns to heft a small black duffle off the floor, tossing it onto the nearby table. The zipper buzzes as she pulls it open. "I don't remember how I got this stuff." She pulls the orange and black helmet she found herself holding that day in Peggy's basement, out of the bag and sets it out for Lily to see. "None of us do." Not yet, anyway.

Methodically, she empties the bag, spreading the pieces out on the table -- the helmet, the gloves, those heavy padded boots, the matching trousers and coat. Even the weapons -- the plasma swords and sniper rifle.

Lily watches her, her curiosity sharper. "I told you. You got it from one of your variants."

There's a sense of reserve about her now, however. Caution, perhaps. Melinda's brows twitch with a faint frown. "Think you can return it?"

Lily's brows rise. That was clearly not what she was expecting Melinda to say. "Probably. But why?"

Letting out a soft sigh, Melinda turns and leans back against the table. The heels of her hands press against the solid mahogany. "It's not... me. And the longer I have it, the more often Daisy will ask me to use it." When Lily cants her head in confusion, May snirks. "Her Secret Warrior thing. She wants us to look like freakin' superheroes. This was all I had in a pinch."

An expression of comprehension flows over Lily's features, even sympathy. "Ah. Yeah. You..." She chuckles, correcting herself. "We have never been the flashy sorts."

Melinda grunts her agreement softly. Her arms cross over her chest and, weight held by the table at her back, one ankle crosses over the other. She knows she's blocking off 'energy' even as she does it. And knows Lily can read it as easily as she ever could. She doesn't care. "It feels weird." She doesn't explain it. Somehow, she expects Lily to just know.

And Lily does. "You're an empath." She gives Melinda a small, unsurprisingly empathetic smile. "And a SHIELD agent. That's a bounty hunter's get up." A killer's. "I get it."

Melinda's shoulders relax a little, a tight breath easing from her. "I'd be stupid to go out there without some sort of protection, and the armour in it's good."

"Not to mention the aerorig."

"The what?" That captures Melinda's attention.

Carefully, Lily detaches a small device from the front left breast of the heavy coat. "This." She fits it against the breast of the brown leather bomber jacket that is her signature piece. "See?" Her fingertips brush a small button on the face of the device. A harness rig flows out of the box to solidify across her upper back and shoulders. She flexes her body as if she might jump, and gently drifts a few inches up off the floor. "Aerorig. It's a lot like Mockingbird's. It just doesn't need the wing tech." Her fingers brush the device again and a blue energy field flows out to completely surround her body. "Kinetic barrier and environment seal, too. Great if you get blown out an airlock or teleported into a volcano."

Melinda stares at her. "Why do I get the distinct feeling you're talking from experience?"

Lily laughs, a quiet sound, but a free and open one, too. She drifts back down to the floor and taps the device a third time, deactivating it once more. "Just a little." Her eyes dance as she says it.

Melinda's eyes dart between the device and Lily's face. "Maybe I'll keep that..."

Lily grins. "I would." She detaches it from her chest and tosses it to her 'twin'. Her eyes stray to the rest. She pulls out the hilts of the plasma blades and lays them beside the rifle. "Frankly, I'd keep all the weapons. You are a fighter. Always have been."

"What am I going to do with two plasma swords?" Melinda snirks.

"You'd be surprised." Lily gives her a small, wry smile. "Doesn't hurt to have a spare."

Melinda chuffs a skeptical breath, though she can concede the point. "Yeah, well... the armour's gotta go. I can pull something out of the SHIELD armory. Can't go wrong with basic black."

"Or," Lily says slowly, a flutter of amusement in her aura as she pulls a silver band from her left wrist, "you can try this." She extends the band to Melinda, a wry smile touching her lips. "Though, if you have it, you don't really need the aerorig."

Brow arching faintly, Melinda uncrosses her limbs and takes the band, looking at it on an open palm. "How's this supposed to help?"

"Put it on."

Sliding her wrist through the narrow gap on one side, Melinda eyes Lily skeptically. When the timewalker reaches out to adjust the band's fit, closing its ends together, Melinda holds her arm out patiently enough, but the gesture belies the mounting impatience knotting itself between her shoulder blades.

Lily steps back. "Remember that suit I was wearing when we all blinked in the basement?" When Melinda nods. "That's where it comes from. Just... make a fist and think about turning it on."

Melinda blinks. She looks at the plain silver band on her wrist, first from one side and then the other. "Think about turning it on," she echoes. She makes a fist, brows knitting as she twists it back and forth, looking at the band. Her eyes flick to Lily. "Nothing's happening."

"Give it a moment to sync to you." A beat. "And stop glowering at me. You're fine."

Melinda snirks and opens her hand, still flipping it back and forth. She clenches her fist a second time, and startles as her arm is covered in an energy field that crawls across her body and solidifies into matter in nanoseconds. "Shit!"

"I know. It tingles." Lily's grin is infectious. Melinda can't help reflecting it. "Lightweight. Flexible. Strong." The timewalker continues. "Thirty-first century tech. Really cool. It'll adapt to how you use it. It's already started." She gestures to how the colour on the suit is shifting from the white and blue Lily favoured to a dense black with narrow silver and navy highlights.

A helmet forms around Melinda's head. The HUD comes to life and she watches an analysis of the little room that surrounds her scroll by in one corner. She looks at Lily and the HUD changes from displaying the relative strength of plaster and wood to analysing the woman's vitals. Surprisingly, it also highlights the temporal energies that focus within her -- chronitons, tachyons, and fluctuations in the quantum fields that surround her body. "Does it know I don't do science?"

"It's a threat analysis suite. It'll adapt." Lily smirks."It did for me."

"Do you know you light up like a Christmas tree to this thing?"

"No, but I'm not surprised."

"Because you're..."

"A walking temporal anomaly? Yeah."

Melinda raises her newly gloved hands to her face to try to remove the helmet. It recedes before her fingers ever touch its surface.

"Think-do," Lily says. "The helmet. The flight rig. The kinetic barriers. HUD readout. The whole suit." She picks up the black and orange helmet Melinda has left on the table and puts it in the duffle bag. "I'll leave you the weapons, take the rest of this stuff."

"No," Melinda says, clenching her fists briefly before she shakes out her hands. When she closes her fists again, the suit disappears into the band on her left wrist. "Take them. They're cool, but... if I need something stronger than an ICER, I can get it."

Lily turns and leans against the table with her hip. Her arms cross lightly over her chest, her head canting faintly to one side. "You sure?"

Melinda nods. "You know better than anyone, Lily. I am a weapon. I don't need more weapons." She gives a wry smile. "The swords are cool. But, I can always pull out the staff, if I need the boost."

Lily frowns. "Are you sure? That staff..."

"Hurts. Yeah." Melinda moves to stand beside Lily, leaning back against the table again. "But... it needs to." She glances sidelong at her 'twin', a wry, self-deprecating twist to her lips. "I'm good at anger. But that level of rage, it's not natural. It's not supposed to be. And... picking up the staff, using its powers shouldn't ever be easy."

"Maybe there's an alternative," Lily says, adjusting so that she's nearly shoulder to shoulder with her twin, each of them leaning back against that table. She looks at Melinda. "Rage isn't the only emotion that can enhance a body's strength, speed, and resilience." Her own lips twitch into a wry smile, but one with considerably less mockery in it than what Melinda is inclined to. "Maybe there's a way to change the root of the staff's enhancements."

Melinda's brows dip and her head tilts. "How?"

Lily shrugs. "I don't know. But if a thing can be made to channel rage, why can't it be made to channel any emotion? Something that takes full advantage of your empathy."

"Oh, sure." Melinda snirks softly. "I'll just go knock on the Asgardian Embassy door. 'Hate to bother you, but could you guys fix this for me so it doesn't rip my heart out every time I touch it? Thanks so much.'" She shakes her head. "They'd just confiscate it -- justifiably, I might add -- and then Fury would yell at me anyway for handing both a weapon and a cultural relic back to its original culture."

Lily laughs now, conceding the point with a nod. "Doesn't change the fact it could be done."

"Maybe." Melinda chuckles softly, mainly because Lily's mirth is contagious. All the more so because of the empathic gift they share. "But not by me."

"Mm." Lily nods faintly, that wry smile returning. "Keep the weapons," she says, jostling Melinda's shoulder with her own. Her eyes are serious, however. "Just in case. At least keep one of the swords. So you don't have to rely on that staff. All that anger, Melinda..."

"You sound like Peggy."

"She's not wrong." Lily swings her head, her hair flipping back in a gesture characteristic to each of them. "Don't get me wrong. She's got her own issues."

"God," Melinda groans, raking her hands through her own hair. "The guilt."

Lily echoes that groan, though she smiles fondly and chuckles as she does. "The guilt."

"You know, don't you, that I know exactly why anger comes so easily to you? I have those memories, too..."

"Stop." Melinda lifts a hand to forestall anything else Lily might say. "How many years have you lived in the ten months since I returned from 1949? It's been a long time since you've dealt with anything in my memories. And you didn't live through the Framework." Her tone is sharp, but not openly hostile -- which for Melinda is greater progress than most anyone else would realize. "I don't know much about you, beyond what was in your diary, and that Peggy trusts you, but you need to let me handle all this my way."

"An angry empath is a dangerous empath, Melinda."

"I said I'll handle it."

Lily knows that tone. She nods simply and pulls the zipper on the duffle, the weaponry left on the table. "Fine. I'll take this stuff. Just..." She eyes Melinda sidelong. "Think about it, okay?"

Melinda nods simply, though she doesn't really see there's anything more to think about. She knows who she is, what she is. And she can live with it. Enough of it, anyway. She raises her left hand, where the new band wraps about her wrist. "You don't need this?"

Lily shakes her head. "I can replace it." She hefts the bag and settles it on her shoulder. "Good luck, Melinda."

"You, too, Lily."

The timewalker gives her a smile, at once fond and regretful. The orange doorway flickers back to life. Lily steps away into some tomorrow Melinda expects she, herself, will never see But that's fine.

Melinda has work of her own to do, now.