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Post by VALKYRIE on Jun 19, 2016 5:06:32 GMT
 Even mighty Oricon, with all its money and all its power, is not immune to occasionally needing repair work done on its buildings. Thalia strolls beneath the scaffolding perched high on the side of a skyscraper, sipping on a cappuccino and trying not to meet anyone's eyes (it's tourist territory in the Plaza this time of year, and she doesn't want to sign any autographs right now), when there's the whisper of metal and concrete that rapidly becomes a screech.
Thalia looks up to see a piece of the scaffolding a few feet ahead break away and come tumbling down, directly for a man walking beneath it. Because she is a professional superhero and her fight or flight instinct is finely tuned to fight, she throws herself into flight at him, knocking him to the ground and trying to cover as much of him as she can with her own body as the wreckage rains down upon them.
Her coffee cup lies in a forlorn puddle on the sidewalk.
nemesis
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change your name and keep your face
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Post by nemesis on Jun 20, 2016 9:26:36 GMT
and his day was going so well, too.
okay, maybe an exaggeration. sure, max would genuinely rather die than call the starbucks barista who'd left his name and number on max's morning flat white, but it had been a welcome ego boost. the CAD software hasn't crashed once all morning - basically unheard of - and here he is, enough work comfortably under his belt that he can take an early lunch. a long one, maybe, which is an opportunity he has maybe once a year.
of course it means he can pound a couple espressos in his extra time, too, because he's yawning as he leaves the building - he's been scouring the entire goddamn city for decent money-laundering outfits, and the results have been shitty enough to be genuinely demoralising. it's like every decent creative accountant in the state is either mob or in new york, and that shit doesn't help.
so of course max is preoccupied, tired and thoughtful, when his own place of work decides to dump a scaffold on his head.
it all happens suddenly. one minute he's upright, the next his shoulder and hip and knee are slamming against the sidewalk. there's something on top of him, a woman-shaped something, and it's hard to fight the instinctive click of his mind against the periphery of hers, the feeling of defences. sharpened posts in the trenches as he trips precariously along the rim.
dazed, winded, he can just sort of lie there under her with pink hair in his face and her body spread over his.
"ow," he manages, completely ineloquently, just waiting for more shit to start. nope. just a shocked silence, bystanders gawping. "i'm, uh. i'm okay, thanks for that. are you hurt?"
VALKYRIE
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Jun 20, 2016 20:23:51 GMT
Post by VALKYRIE on Jun 20, 2016 20:23:51 GMT
Thalia rolls to the side. A slab of concrete on her head rolls with her and thuds to the sidewalk.
"Ow," she says as well, more out of a desire to appear human and normal than because it actually hurt. The sky is very blue overhead, construction workers scrambling down the scaffolding in fear and worry. For a moment she squints in confusion at them, wondering if the slab got past her shielding somehow, because they look like giant lizards, but then they get closer and she realizes her eyes are fine. They just really are giant lizards. Dinosaurs, almost.
A cluster of very similar mutants, she assumes, or maybe a friendly race from beneath the Earth's surface who have realized the questionable value of the American dollar. They fuss over her and the man she saved (?) with delicate, wickedly shining claws. One of them offers to buy her a replacement coffee. She declines.
Instead she staggers to her feet and offers her hand to the man. She's guessing he would rather take her hand than entrust his fragile human fingers and palm to one of the dinosaur's claws, no matter how friendly and concerned they are, but she might be wrong.
"I'm fine," she says, looking a bit embarrassed now. "I'm sorry about that. It was rather dramatic and all instinct, I'm afraid."
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change your name and keep your face
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Jun 23, 2016 17:07:30 GMT
Post by nemesis on Jun 23, 2016 17:07:30 GMT
and now all the weird shit is coming out of the woodwork. fucking cool. excellent.
max just lies there for a moment, taking inventory. his elbow’s bleeding where it got dashed against the sidewalk and he rolls his sleeve back, stemming the flow - none on the concrete, which is good, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt like a bitch. the abrasion has torn through the fabric and skin completely.
when he sits up the world lurches unpleasantly, and he might be in danger of hurling. it sure feels like he’s gonna, so he ends up folded in half awkwardly with his right elbow and left hand joining his head between his knees. “hurghh. just. gimme a sec.”
at least he didn’t hit his head. sure, the rest of him got fucked, but anything is fine as long as his brain isn’t gently leaking out of his ear. not that he doesn’t feel disoriented, dizzy from the whole ‘tackled to the ground’ thing, and his ears are ringing, but that’ll pass.
he lifts his head and there’s a sensation like cold water running down the back of his neck. of all the luck the samaritan to flatten him to the sidewalk is valkyrie? he might’ve preferred taking the scaffold to the head. he’s never come up against her directly, but anyone with any sense knows of her, knows she’s one of the initiative’s best, and-
another wave of nausea forces him to close his eyes a moment, before he reaches up with his slightly bloodied left hand to take her help getting to his feet. “it’s, uh. it’s fine. i’ve never been personally rescued by a hero before, is there special protocol, or?” the joke is to layer atop the veneer of normality, to disguise his unease.
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Post by VALKYRIE on Jun 24, 2016 7:01:30 GMT
"Most people ask for a selfie," Thalia says. On one memorable occasion, a teenage boy had asked for a selfie while they were still in his burning house. His house. That was on fire. It had been surreal.
(She had declined and told him to wait until they were outside.)
"You'll have to fill out the report for this, of course," she continues solemnly. "It's the nature of bureaucracy. You'll need to submit a formal request for assistance from a natural disaster or Act of God, and then we'll process it in a few weeks, and get back to you with whether we can help or not."
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change your name and keep your face
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Jun 26, 2016 13:26:32 GMT
Post by nemesis on Jun 26, 2016 13:26:32 GMT
the thought of it does actually make him crack a smile, despite the pain. he can imagine it, to be honest, and he can also imagine the amount of times they hear it in a day. ‘pain in the ass’ wouldn’t even begin to describe it.
max is left blinking in confusion for a second - shit, does he? well, fuck, there goes his afternoon - before he realises she’s kidding. the laugh sounds a little startled, with no small degree of underlying pain to it, but he’s maybe a little less terrified of her now. probably should be, definitely, but he can’t really think straight right now. too dizzy. “ha, you had me going. seriously, though, how stupid would it be to get crushed right outside where you-”
there’s something tickling his neck, so he reaches up as he’s speaking to brush it away and abruptly stops. he brings his hand away and his palm is slick red.
“oh,” he says quietly. “maybe i hit my head after all.”
he sways a little on his feet.
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Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 1, 2016 5:34:19 GMT
One of the dinosaur construction workers makes a strange hiss-clicking noise at the sight of the man's bloody hand. He fumbles out an iPhone and is dialing 911 before Thalia can even get her own phone out of her pocket.
They're then all treated to the sound of a dinosaur stating the nature of his emergency in a smooth baritone, but Thalia's really not in a great spot to appreciate it. Her hands flutter in front of her like trapped birds. She can heal that kind of injury on herself without thinking but she can't--she can't do anything here. She's useless.
"You should sit down," she says, and then thinks of something. All the blood drains out of her face. "Do you have insurance? The Initiative can cover this. You wouldn't have gotten hurt if I hadn't tackled you."
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change your name and keep your face
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Post by nemesis on Jul 3, 2016 11:08:26 GMT
the fog in his head is making a lot more sense, now, the unsteadiness. if he has a concussion...
well... what if? he has no idea what that’s going to mean. he’s been out of whack anyway lately, and shit, the jobs, can he do those with a concussion? don’t those mean a ton of passing out at sudden movements?
he has to reach for her to steady his descent back to the sidewalk. his work clothes are past help now anyway. “i... it’s not... full cover,” he manages. max might be sitting on almost half a million of ill-gotten gains, but his personal budget doesn’t stretch to anything other than oricon’s standard plan. “i don’t think i get ambulance callouts, but... ugh.”
more nausea. he looks up at her, the valkyrie, and absolutely none of the tension is gone from him. “i don’t know about that, i might be dead otherwise. which’d. you know. be a buzzkill.”
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Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 4, 2016 7:30:01 GMT
"Okay," she says firmly, the Valkyrie mask sliding into place. "The Initiative will cover it. If you don't want to go to the hospital at all, I can probably get a healer out here, although I think we have at least one stationed at Misakatonic. Concussions are no big deal for people who can actually do that."
Healers are in rather short supply and high demand, but she's not above using her authority to shove to the front of the line. Never let it be said that Thalia doesn't clean up her own messes. She's sure the ambulance is on its way by now, but she can't hear it yet. She crouches down beside him, disliking the feeling of towering over him.
"You should keep talking," she says, "Keep your mind off of it. That helps, at least for me. I don't even know your name. You know mine, I guess, but it's still nice to meet you." She pauses for a moment, as if realizing what she said. "I wish it were under better circumstances, but I guess they can't all be meet-cutes."
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change your name and keep your face
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Post by nemesis on Jul 5, 2016 11:46:55 GMT
“n-no,” he says, rather too quickly - the distaste is something he can’t quite hide. “i don’t... i don’t like people messing with me like that.” and it’s true, ironic as it is - the manipulator of minds is made viscerally uncomfortable by that sort of intrusion into the function of his body. “it kind of... weirds me out, i don’t know. i don’t trust it. i’ll... i’ll deal, it’s okay.”
usually talking isn’t something max has any trouble with, but the spike of adrenaline is fading and he’s realising that he’s just hungry and tired and his head fucking hurts. “uh, i can try, but i can multitask pretty well.” the laugh is a little weak, nervous. he turns his head to look at her despite the pain, because the colour of her hair is making it hard to think when it’s hovering in his peripheral vision. “y-yeah, you’re... valkyrie. my name is max? max fischer. actually work in the building that just tried to flatten me, which is gonna be a fun round of HR paperwork to fill in, but... ow. yeah.”
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Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 7, 2016 17:23:21 GMT
"You can call me Thalia," she says. "It's weird when people call me Valkyrie off-duty." As if she's ever off-duty, but whatever.
She looks up at the Oricon building that tried to smash him and makes a low hmmm noise of consideration.
"You might be able to slap together a lawsuit, sue them for at least a sixteenth of what they're worth, and happily retire," she suggests. It's probably an unhelpful suggestion, but she's trying. "I'm not sure I could get away with the same if the Initiative dropped a building on me, but it's probably different for mundane people."
Huh. Is calling him mundane insulting? Maybe she should have gone with regular. Normal. Different for non-superpowered freaks.
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change your name and keep your face
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Post by nemesis on Jul 7, 2016 21:54:37 GMT
“uh. sure. thalia, that’s the one. i’ve seen it on stuff. merch.” his brain doesn’t really want to work in sentences longer than a few words. “it’s a pretty name. suits you.” he can sort of see why there’s a poster of her in jessica’s room. “my little sister wants to be you. thinks you’re the best.”
the suggestion makes him laugh. him versus oricon’s lawyers, that’s like... david versus goliath if there were ten of goliath and david had no weapons at all. “i mean. sounds nice, but i don’t think it’s really... possible, but...”
max will blame the possible concussion later, but in the moment he’s just concentrating too much on keeping up his end of the conversation to realise he should shut his mouth. “not mundane, but i don’t work for the initiative, so... i mean, i can’t shake off concrete falling on me. you’re just a special case.”
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Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 8, 2016 17:15:06 GMT
She's struck silent by that comment, crouching beside him quietly for maybe a moment too long. She tries to picture a poster of herself hanging in a child's room, and fails miserably. The sight of her seems incongruous against a background--she guesses--of fluffy pink blankets and glow in the dark stars stuck to the ceiling. She's posed for merch shots before, in a gleaming uniform untouched by soot or blood, and even seen the finished product, but here, at the last, her imagination fails her. The memory of press conferences, autograph signings, fundraisers, even the stunt she did on that kid's show, all fall away.
My little sister wants to be you. The seven most horrifying words in the English language.
She seizes on his next words gratefully. Another mutant? Maybe. She feels a startling wave of kinship, just because that's who she is, and resists the impulse to rub his shoulder and tell him everything is going to be okay. He looks a little older than her. Which admittedly says nothing about his actual age, because she's met teenagers who looked older than her. (She doesn't know what they're feeding kids these days, but she swears it must involve MGH. At least a little bit.)
"That's nice," she says faintly. Okay, maybe she isn't entirely over the seven most horrifying words in the English language yet. "Maybe that's a good thing though. Once people realize you can shrug off concrete falling on you, they tend to start dropping buildings on you a lot more. I'm sure whatever you can do is--" Vague, fluttering hand motion goes here, god what is she doing? "--better than that."
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change your name and keep your face
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Jul 11, 2016 17:11:17 GMT
Post by nemesis on Jul 11, 2016 17:11:17 GMT
he doesn’t notice the horror-struck pause - he’s a little busy with the head trauma. if he were a little more present he’d wonder if she thinks he’s awkwardly hitting on her, but that’s beside the point.
he’s more occupied with the dull realisation that he’s saying too much, and yet it just keeps coming. “uh, nothing to do with punching people, anyway. some psi stuff, memory editing if whoever lets me. nothing too powerful.” but the tension is starting to rise again. max wants to hurl. the deception is going to be obvious, it’s going to bring him sailing so close to the knife-edge of discovery and yet his fucking mouth is running too fast for his dazed brain to intervene. “i’d be a pretty shitty hero, anyway. super-punch me once and i’d snap in two or something.”
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Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 17, 2016 9:53:28 GMT
Psi stuff. Memory editing. His words ring in her ears like church bells, half as loud and twice as deafening. She talks on autopilot, all shiny, glistening celebrity facade. The irrepressible Valkyrie. The coin-operated girl.
"Well it takes all kinds," she says. "The nice thing about psi stuff is that you can make people not want to punch you."
As if there's anything nice about psi stuff. But she can't censure other heroes and their abilities in front of the press, she can't censure her own abilities, can't let a slip of her doubts peek through--it'd be like vultures to bones for the media, scouring her clean for every last scrap of meet--and that ingrained instinct carries her through here, even as the high whine of an ambulance's siren draws closer and closer.
She can't stop thinking about it. Psi stuff. Memory editing. If the person wants. If he could get into her head in the first place. If she wants it.
She wants it.
Does she want it?
When the ambulance pulls up, it takes her a second to even notice, sunk into her thoughts like an anchor, and she almost jerks into a fight when the the paramedics swarm over them, too fast and too close.
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