866/Tony Says Relax

Tony Says Relax
Date of Scene:	30 March 2020
Location:	Liberty Island
Synopsis:	Tony risks intimacy with a champagne glass on a mission to try and get Karen to relax a little.
Cast of Characters:	Tony Stark, Karen Starr

---

Tony Stark has posed:
There was something that had been on Tony's mind.

Well, a lot of things are on Tony's mind. It's a very busy mind. It sees a lot of foot traffic.

But this particular thing was kind of bugging him. He wasn't sure it was even his place to get involved. It seemed more fitting to just let it be someone else's problem. Someone who knew her better. It certainly seemed like she had friends, at least. Harley Quinn was hanging out with her at the Dungeon. Weird choice in friends, but he didn't judge. He was friends with two senior citizens who looked like supermodels and a man from space who was the actual god Thor. Weird was a matter of perspective.

So, standing on the crown of the Statue of Liberty, he waits. He's vacated the armor, but it stands at attention nearby. He looks down at his write, with the watch that was given to him as a gift. After a moment he takes a deep breath and presses the button on the side. That done, he immediately takes a few steps over and slips back into the waiting suit just in case. Though he leaves the helmet down.

Because it's about trust.

Karen Starr has posed:
    "Sir, she's..."

    There is a rush of air as all of the matter she'd been dragging around her comes thudding forward. After only a few moments, floating in the air before him, is that sometimes-intimidating six-foot-three figure of Kryptonian health.

    "...Here." Jarvis' voice emulation is perfect, and it simulates the genuine concern that the AI has for Tony's current maneuver and its possible effects on his health. She clocked at double the speed she'd registered the last couple of times she'd visited. She takes the watch seriously- so that's good.

    Tony's presence in the armor doesn't instantly disarm her. "What's going on? Hostage situation, or is there a bomb?" Apparently, there are only two things that you can do at the Statue of Liberty. She begins looking down at the statue, her eyes glowing this faint blue.

    This is the window Tony will need to explain what's going on, as she searches the internal structure of the statue for whatever emergency is gooing down.

Tony Stark has posed:
"We have a real emergency, Power Girl," Tony begins earnestly, activating the repulsors that allow him to take to the air and hover opposite her, "One that only you can deal with. A tailor-made Power Girl problem. A genuine PGP. I need you to focus on what I'm saying, because we've only got one shot at this."

There's a pause, adding significant weight to his next words. His eyes meet hers, and for all the bluffing he can muster it seems as though there really is some serious issue to be dealt with.

"I need you to relax."

A pause, but he speaks quickly to try and circumvent any withering glares.

"I read up on you, you know? It seems like ever since you very abruptly showed up here about a year ago you've been playing emergency services all over the world. That's good. That's great. I admire that, truly. But I'm starting to worry that you might be one of those people who is living 'mission to mission'. That's not a way to be. Especially when you've got the weight of the world on your shoulders."

Karen Starr has posed:
    Power Girl has caught on that something duplicitous- though perhaps not malicious- in nature is happening by about the second sentence in Tony's monologue. This is because of a number of things, nonetheleast of which is the incredible normality of the inside of the Statue. Her attention returns to Tony proper a little sooner than the playboy-turned-candidate might like.

    There is a raise of her brow. Her expression, chilling normally, has turned into a nonplussed glare that is only what it is because what Tony's talking about at least has some level of real weight to it.

    "I can handle the weight." she responds, with a level of certainty that might be a little spooky. "Stark," By now, her hand has come up to pinch at the bridge of her nose. "Did you really call me out here to tell me that I need to loosen up?" It's more than that, but it's going to take a little convincing.

    At the very least, she hasn't started punching.

Tony Stark has posed:
"I absolutely did," Tony agrees without trying to mask it at all, still hovering there, "And I know you can handle the weight. Nobody's worried about you flipping out and punting the Moon into Jupiter or whatever it is you people can do." A pause. "I meant you super-people, you - eh, you know what I mean."

He presses on, waving a gauntleted hand as he does.

"We're working together now," he explains, "You and me. The Avengers. It's one of the perks of the job. I'm telling you that you ought to loosen up. Whether or not you do is entirely up to you. I don't think any amount of arm twisting I do, in or out of the suit, is going to work on you."

Karen Starr has posed:
    There's a prolonged sigh. For a moment, her brows knit, and she looks altogether frustrated. She hasn't heard statements like that in a long while- but on her world, things like Cadmus and Kryptonian distrust were nonexistent. "Yeah. I get it." she responds, at first.

    There's a long silence before she speaks again. "As far as I was aware, I was only an applicant." The look on her face during that is... Closer to neutral than before. Regardless, she continues. "So what do you want? Me to have a few beers, laugh at a few jokes, and then pretend that we're as present as we need to be?" There's the impossible task, the Be Everywhere At Once ideal.

    It's not as if she believes that she can be omnipresent, necessarily- or that anyone or group of anyones can. It just seems like there's something more there- something weighing on her that might be heavier than the world.

Tony Stark has posed:
Tony shakes his head, waving a hand dismissively at the idea: "No, I don't need you to pretend to do anything. I'm also not standing - floating - here telling you what you have to do. There's always more we can do. I think all of us get that. What if the Avengers had been here, what if Iron Man had been in Los Angeles instead of New York? I don't know how long you've been doing this. I'm guessing a while, though wherever it was you were doing it I'm not even gonna begin to guess. But I've been doing it a while. Long enough to tell you that you need to take the wins where you get them."

He shrugs a little, an effect not easily pulled off in the armor he's wearing. It's almost as though he built a special sub-system purely to allow for shrugging. Surely not, though? Then again, it's not the weirdest thing he's done.

"The worlds still here. There are probably thousands of people who are alive and kicking for you. You don't need to act like you failed. You haven't."

Karen Starr has posed:
    "You're right, Tony. You don't want to guess." There's a grimness to her voice- something... Deep-seated. Hateful- but it isn't directed -at- Tony, if that can be believed. She continues, before he can rebut. "Almost twenty years." That's... That's a long time. Staggeringly, actually. -Impossible-, one might say.

    Hold onto your suspension of disbelief, Tony, because it's about to take a fucking -beating.-

    "Yours is-" she pauses, then, and corrects herself. "This one is. But you have no idea what's out there. You haven't seen-" There's a sort of angry halt. Of course he hasn't seen. She's the only one that has. "You can't even imagine."

    There's less articulation- as if what she's possible expressing she can't really put into words, at least not at the moment.

Tony Stark has posed:
The words bring pause to Tony, and his brow furrows. Whatever it is she's talking about exactly; he's got no real idea of what it is. It's something strange, certainly. Everyone in this line of work has a strange story. Some of them far stranger than others. Maybe he doesn't have an idea, but he can hazard a guess.

"Look," he holds up a hand in front of himself, the boot repulsors doing all the work of holding him aloft for the moment, "I'm not going to pretend that whatever you're referring to was easy? I'm sure it wasn't. Nobody who can bench-press an aircraft carrier get derailed by the small stuff. But ... "

He trails off, trying to find the best way to word it. He keeps his distance for the time being, maybe seeing that anger in her eyes as directed at him.

"We're here. We're going to work with you. If whatever it is ... follows you here? We're in your corner. But you can't let stress eat you until there's nothing left."

Karen Starr has posed:
    Tony's lack of understanding- despite that he's probably got a good guess or two- is starting to... Bother Karen. The hand that was pinching the bridge of her nose as if nursing a headache drops from it. Then, Power Girl starts to float down, until she's landing on her rump atop the Statue of Liberty.

    "It's not about it following me. Truth be told, I kind of want to go back home, to see if there's anything left. To see if maybe I can save it."

    A long pause, then. Tony might think she's talking about Krypton. She eventually speaks up again, seated where she is and staring off into nothingness for a while.

    "My name is Kara Zor-L." If Tony ever hears Supergirl's birthname, there will be an odd difference in pronunciation that, to some degree, can't present itself in English, but is still recognizable. Aliens. "And I'm not from this universe."

    That might make a lot of sense, to be fair, or Tony could be terrified at the idea that parallel universes are apparently very real. It's all about perspective.

Tony Stark has posed:
Tony's head spins. He knew the theory of parallel universes. It had never been his particular bag, but one doesn't study physics academically without brushing up against it. He'd also met Reed Richards a few times - enough to know that, in that guy's summation, that time travel was possible. Other dimensions exist. He knew that. Though the idea of other universes that contain mirror versions of himself and the people he knows? That stuff is wild.

On the plus side, he doesn't really let any of that show in his face.

He floats down towards the Kryptonian, landing alongside her with a clang of metal on bronze. He lowers himself down as well, one leg cocked up with the knee raised. He's not getting out of the suit just yet.

"Okay, Kara Zor-L from another universe," he tries his best to match the Kryptonian pronunciation as its laid out towards him, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Karen Starr has posed:
    Even if he did, she wasn't looking at him. Instead, she's looking off into the ocean beyond the United States- its crystalline reflection of the night sky above entrancing her for a time. She seems lost in thought.

    "I want," she begins, eyes narrowing just a touch. "To go home. To find out my adoptive parents are alive. To find out my best friend survived the blast that brought me here. But I don't get to have any of that. They're all already dead. Superman. Batman. Wonder Woman."

    Another pause, letting that all sink in. Survivor's guilt is one thing. Imagine outliving -those- three.

    "Because I wasn't fast enough. I wasn't strong enough. I wasn't tough enough. An entire universe is dead and I'm all that's left to show for it."

Tony Stark has posed:
"Okay," Tony says quietly, taking it all in. It says something of the solemnity with which he treats her words that he doesn't make a joke, brush it off, or charge headlong into a different topic. Just a quiet acknowledgement, following by an empty space of silence in which to process what is said.

"I don't do the 'everything happens for a reason' thing," he says finally, resting an arm over his raised knee, "We make our own universe. Nothing happens unless we make it happen. Whoever did that to the place you're from? They made it happen. You're here and alive because you made that happen. I don't think you want to hear it isn't your fault, but if you start putting every single decision you make on a pedestal and wondering what you could have done better? Down that road lies madness."

A shrug of his armored shoulders accentuates the point.

"What I mean is the world isn't going to stop turning unless you stop it from turning. Which means sometimes you need to take your victories where you find them. You can't keep the world in a bottle."

Karen Starr has posed:
    "You'd... Be surprised, actually." Oh, yeah, she lost her universe's version of Kandor, too. Well, maybe this universe's version of Brainiac will have one, that'd be neat. In the midst of facing the most dangerous artificial intelligence ever conceived, they could walk away with a cultural souvenir. Jackpot.

    Karen slumps, somewhat. "-What-ever." she corrects, at first sounding like she's being dismissive. "I don't think it was a -who-. I don't think it understood what being a person meant. I think its only option was just to destroy. To conquer." she offers this... Sigh. For once, she simply looks... Defeated, in the bad way. Depression and guilt have been eating at her, even in the good moments.

    "I keep failing to get home. I'm... So close, but that last bit never... I created an extradimensional space, but I can't make the tunnel breach the wall. I don't know if it's around this universe or home." A pause. She's staring down now. Leaning forward like she is, she can actually see in that direction. "That's what I've been doing, but- No matter how much I do I never feel like I've balanced the scales. It's an entire universe, and I was supposed to save it. And I didn't try to survive, I wasn't trying to live through it, I wasn't trying to -come- here, I was just trying to save my friend. Thought if I could just save -one- person, maybe it wouldn't be so bad."

    She exhales, this quivering breath filled with frustration. She hasn't shed a tear, yet. "Except she's gone and I'm here. Woke up vomiting blood with multiple organ failure. Cold and alone. If it hadn't been sunrise in Hawaii, they'd have found a really confusing corpse."

    "Pretty though. Got that going for me. More than my fair share. Starting to get greedy." There's a mild amount of resentment in her voice, then. "I'm dating, somehow, someway, not even sure how it works. Just... Couldn't resist. Still want to get home more than anything, but I have to pile on the selfishness and bed down with someone."

Tony Stark has posed:
"Dating's good," Tony says, latching onto the one positive in that whole surging sea of negativity, "You gotta take the wins where you find them. If this is someone whose getting you outside your head, getting you away from all the trouble your brain wants you to retroactively solve? Good. You could use that. Maybe put on a pair of glasses and a brunette wig and pretend you're just an average person with parents who obviously got in on the designer babies kick early."

It's odd, sitting down in the armor. But given Karen's mood, he's not extremely comfortable with getting out of it. He doesn't really expect she'll hurt him, but best to be on the safe side. Also, he's really high up here and he doesn't want her to have to catch him if he slips and falls. He'd never live it down.

"That's not selfishness," he adds, "That's humanity. And sure, you're not a human. But you look like one. I mean, a exceptional one - don't tell Nat I said that. Anyway, you look like one. You're living with them. Maybe it's okay to just ... act like one once in a while?"

Karen Starr has posed:
    Slumping further, Karen's head hangs heavily. She hasn't actually slept in a couple of months. Not that she -really- needs it, as long as she keeps moving to where the sun's shining bright.

    "She does." Karen finally admits, "Maybe it's just because of the attraction, but maybe that doesn't matter. I have- There's an alter ego, yeah. I do what I have to. Help where I can in ways that don't involve punching, but... That's not important."

    There's another period of silence. "It is selfish. I can't- I can't abandon the idea of going home. I ran more tests. More experiments. More tries. Still failures, but... But if they succeeded I'd just -go.- I'd... Disappear. On someone who needs me, I think. Or needs someone who can talk to them the way I do." Her gloved hands come up to her face for a moment. "It won't happen often- and that's not a slight against you, or anything. Just, for a moment there, you sounded like Him. I think that's the advice Kal would give me." There's a laugh, at that. Really ought to be illegal.

    "If she needs someone to body-double as Agent Romanoff while she's undercover, let her know I'll bite that bullet if we can find one of those bodysuits that fits. I think I have a red wig."

Tony Stark has posed:
"Well," Tony meanders his way through the conversation, casually tapping the earth ahead of him in search of verbal land mines, "The way I see it, you want to go back to look. See how things played out there. That's just natural curiosity. Without natural curiosity I probably wouldn't have shards of metal working their way tirelessly through my chest to try and kill me. I don't think you're necessarily selfish for wanting to go back."

"I think you're probably thinking the grass is greener on the other side. Maybe it is. But, judging by what you've told me? If you're the sole survivor? It probably isn't. Whereas what you have here is good. Someone who cares about you. Needs you, by the sound of it. People who are glad to have you on their side, even if you do threaten to sodomize them with a wine glass."

He smirks a little at the memory.

"You're probably always going to be curious. Trying to go back. Maybe you'll succeed one day. But all I'll say is that if you do? I wouldn't be too surprised to see you come right back."

The mention about the body-double raises his eyebrows, and he sub-vocally prompts HOMER to send off a text message to Natasha regarding the offer. A moment later he glances down at his wrist where a display shows the reply from Nat: 'I'm not getting that work done. Fitting in air vents is already an issue as-is.'

Karen Starr has posed:
    "It's not that simple." she states, her voice a little harsh. "Or- I guess- It's that simple. But laterally. I... I know whose body I held in my arms. I know who I watched get... Treated worse. I just- I want to go back. I want to kill it. I want revenge. Whatever's left of home, if there -is- anything left, it deserves to be saved. It deserves someone. This one already has so many."

    There's a small scoff at that. "I don't know if I'd stay either." The admission... Hurts. It's like daggers in her heart. "If there'd even be someplace to -exist- in." There's another moment of silence, and Power Girl speaks back up. "Sorry about that. I was trying to..." God, if he's recording, now's the time.

    "I'd interrupted something. Showed up unannounced, and ruined the night. Thought maybe if I played the part of villain, it'd. I dunno, make it easier to get right back in the mood. A girl like that doesn't show up in a dress like that for no reason." She's not... Great at relationships. With some effort, she'd probably remember what Tony was wearing at the time.

    "Maybe went a little too far with it. Probably should've just turned back around before I got to the tower. I just felt- I'm not really a member, so there needed to be a good way to get in touch if things went south. They do that sometimes. Real sudden."

Tony Stark has posed:
"I can't tell you what to do there," Tony says, admitting there's something he can't do - but he's doing it while Karen is revealing her deep, dark secrets so there's less danger of that admission getting out, "But I'm reasonably sure you're gonna make the right decision. And hey, if you don't? I've got a watch. I can annoy the hell out you with it. I'm pretty sure I can get this thing to work across dimensions if it doesn't already."

He holds up his wrist, as though to emphasize the point, then grins broadly at the apology.

"Hey, I think we kind of blew that whole night anyway," he explains, waving a hand dismissively, "Plus with the new assignment? I guess it's probably not a good time, right? Don't want to muddy those waters."

He keeps the actual nature of his relationship with Natasha a secret for now. Power Girl may have her suspicions, but he's not about to confirm them for anyone. That's the deal, it would seem.

Karen Starr has posed:
    "I don't think anyone can. Least of all me. I'm not a leading authority on what I should do. Just what I did. I guess that's the best I can do." She's lightening up, but it's a tossup as to whether it's the levity from Tony or the not-levity from Tony.

    Then, she can't- she just can't- nobody could- Not even Power Girl can stop herself. She laughs a little. Not at the misfortune of Tony's relationship necessarily, but that's part of it. She's just- the comment, it can't be halted.

    "I'm having better luck with women than -Tony Stark.-"

    There's a little more laughing. She rubs at her face. She's definitely looking happier now.

    She's fired.

Tony Stark has posed:
"I didn't drag you all the way out here to laugh at me," Tony chides, though there's not a whole lot of venom in it, "Or, I guess I did since that's better than moping. Laugh it up, McGee. Just remember who gets the final say in your action figure when they start designing it."

He sticks out a thumb, jabbing himself in the chest with it a few times and making a 'clang clang' sound as he does so.

"Anyway, go enjoy this girlfriend of yours while a thousand teenage boys cry into their Cheerios. You are officially off the clock for the rest of the day. I don't want to hear about you rescuing any kittens from trees until at least ten A.M. Give some of the other guys a chance to do the superhero thing."

Karen Starr has posed:
    There's a smirk, then, and Karen offers this dispassionate shrug. "Design away. You'll get the size wrong and probably tone it down, and people will wonder why an action figure shipped with a champagne glass." she states, pulling herself into a stand.

    "That's- Probably slightly private, I guess. I never got to... Nobody back home knew. Things were different there. Older. He probably would've understood but... I never got the chance. Guess I got something like it this time around." She takes off, then, and calls back.

    "Sorry, not -really- an Avenger yet, so I don't have to listen! I'll just keep doing what I do." He'll hear of the kitten she rescued from a tree later. Maybe she put that kitten there. He'll never know. But, at least, he won't hear of her in Afghanistan unless... Zod or something.