Summary:Monday afternoon it's time to relax from a bad start of the week. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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It's always mondays. Mondays the Regent of Wakanda calls to request notes on the political situation. Mondays the press calls to ask about trying to get a documentation about Wakanda done. Mondays some Jellyfish monster attacks and the coastguard asks for backup from the navy, having it blasted to pieces miles out of the city with the Avengers waiting on standby in case that the cruise missile… misses? gains sentience and chooses to attack the town in a suicide attack? Nobody knows, because it never happens. But always somebody calls the Avengers and asks them to stand by for possible disaster looming. Always on mondays.
But there is one thing good about mondays: after the town starts to go home or partying, there's time for Shuri, Black Panther, Ambassador of Wakanda and member of the Avengers, to take a nice relaxing time in the sauna of the Avengers mandion. That is, if nobody is gonna try and take over the world. And if… Shuri might accidentally skin them for ripping her out of a relaxing time in the spa.
Mondays exist to trouble the rest of the world. They involve frantic calls and paperwork by the perilous load, emails dinging and exhausted efforts by lackeys to reach through the screen and get hold of information. Press calls, assistants running about, demands flung by the handful. None of those touch Wanda Maximoff, partly because demons don't leave voicemails and cultists serving one of the elder evils inevitably use more direct methods to get his daughter's attention. Like, say, blood ritual sacrifices. Fortunately those aren't more common on Mondays than they are on the thirteenth of the months, a kind of anti-Ides.
Mondays are like any other days for a woman living her life in retrograde, whipping in and out of the other Avengers' orbits like the most erratic of moons. Moons with devastating potential, of course. Moons who can step sideways through the fabric of reality to stifle threats the town doesn't even know about, or stopping that river from maliciously murdering a few homeowners because they encroached on its favourite bank with their ridiculous garden and dock. Sentience is an issue she can at least manage.
It makes sense she's already wet, then, though her boots only squeak a little. The same that her hair is spangled with ice crystals that defy the warm summer evening. The mansion has no barrier keeping her out, the door used just fine but no doubt the squawk of the security systems recognizes she is, in fact, the one thing that might shut it down for staring at her too long. Magic hums around her while she munches on a honey stick, swallowing the contents with slow deliberation as part and parcel of a quick energy hit. Shuri will take a few minutes to reach since she winds and twists her way through, the spiral of her aura building back up thanks to every natural jot of energy stolen from the golden stuff. The girl may be a hummingbird in human form, eating /only/ honey. Either way, she slides sidelong into the outer room near the sauna and snaps her fingers, banishing her abused, favourite burgundy coat into unknown space. Her hair braids itself at this point.
As the ruckus outside starts, Shuri lifts her head from her resting spot on her towel, glaring at the door a little while she's baking in the dry air, sweat glistening on her body. Nothing on her, not even a single piece of jewlery, just as she had faced the panther goddess in the dreamscape once after eating the heart shaped herb, the muscles under the skin tensing as she mutters to herself. "Don't tell me they can't handle something and need backup…"
Ruckus is a bit of a misnomer where Wanda's involved, though she looks back over her shoulder at the errant beeping heard here or there. Scanning her invariably isn't going to work well, at least, though the telltales for those heightened senses might set her apart: the sharp blend of leather, sandalwood, and honey being easy enough to identify. Never mind the trailing hints of river water, the snow crystals, which impart their own kind of unique signature. She flicks the wrapper of the honey stick into a trash can with the kind of accuracy learned by practice, boredom or necessity. Pacing for a moment like a ghost, she takes a dark, long breath to make the final crossing of a threshold from which there is no return. She has enough Slav in her to appreciate the sauna and all it represents, and she twists the door open, a golden ghost whose clothes are conveniently dissolving into crimson sparkles behind her, twisted lines that settle in a mist that becomes its own kind of modesty screen by bending light. Because illusions are easier than, say, a towel that she doesn't normally carry. Giving Shuri one of those grave nods, somewhat averted, she plunks down on a bench. "The Avon is better now."
Tony had just finished working on a new Iron Man suit, this time colored black and gold with a red-colored repulsor-tech reactor. Tired from the mental and physical work of doing so, Tony comes down to the sauna, though it becomes very clear that he has no idea that Shuri and Wanda are already present (and without sufficient clothing, because Sauna). So, Tony heads to the changing room and puts on a towel around his waist after he strips down to his birthday suit, though he still very clearly has the miniature arc reactor directly on the center of his chest. So, when he enters the sauna while he whistles, he opens the door and closes it behind him, leaving the towel behind and so when he turns around proper to see Shuri and Wanda? He pauses.
"Oh! Uhm…" his eyes wander, admittedly admiring the ladies before he rubs his eyes. "I definitely didn't know anyone was in here. Kindly don't aim for the face or below the belt?"
He's still going for a bench though. Yes, he's looking. Sorry.
Once the door opens, Shuri was about to jump up, to shove whoever was about to yell for backup back out before finding the most painful way to end whatever threat New York faced this time. But then it's Wanda readying for a soak in the dry heat herself and those muscles relax, the head sinking back down on the towel. "Avon? Sure, grab a spot. A good sweat cleans all the skin and soul." She seems to be content for the moment, still looking over to Wanda though. "Nice trick with the light, but we're all g…"
That moment the door opens and Tony gets in. "or not. Wanda, you're still standing, would you…" She doesn't speak out what to do with Tony, Wanda should maim him or kiss him… or turn him into a frog.
Having long hair normally would be an advantage to the witch, but said hair is in a braid much less Rapunzelean than twin, long tails that do little except permit self-garroting if she needs to. Backup is hardly called for in her case, the lithe Transian sorceress a threat to few. Or so meets the eye. She deflects her attention to the midpoint of the floor, settling in against a bench with the ginger ease required for something polished within an inch of its life and potentially able to scorch the skin under the wrong circumstances. She crosses her legs at the knee, adopting what amounts to terrible posture as she leans back. And then the door is starting to move, a silhouette falling upon it with its own light source. Golden-green eyes tick to the entry, and perhaps that neat light-bending trick is entirely irresponsible. Or understood to be a necessity. Is she to blame? The uptick of her brows is all eastern European sardonic wit and little else, though she isn't screaming and covering herself with a towel, fourteen suddenly sprouted trees, or anything remotely akin to a forest and adjacent secret garden shrub-wall bursting from the ground. Probably for the good of anyone. She puts her hand to her face as Tony backpedals, Shuri asks her to fix the problem, and she is probably inclined towards…
What /is/ Wanda Maximoff inclined toward on a regular day? "Blind him?" she asks bluntly. English isn't her favourite tongue by a long shot, her proficiency agonizing compared to native and semi-native speakers. "It is what we did in old days." Right, the girl who isn't much beyond half-past twenty knows 'olden times.' Ye olde renfaire witch!
Tony looks at Shuri as she seems to suggest that Wanda take care of him. "Whoa! whoa! No blinding me, please. I need my eyes to do my work and Jarvis can't do everything." Though Tony's not expecting to be kissed, he would totally allow it. These ladies were basically supermodel goddesses sitting in a Sauna and Tony was….Tony.
Well then.
Though he does look over to Wanda. "The hell you mean, Olden days? This isn't exactly the Witch Trials." Tony is still on the defensive. There is no way this doesn't end badly for him.
Clearly.
You mean billionaire tech playboy? Oh dear, the scandal.
Shuri's hair is pretty much cut very close to her skull. Partly because it's tradition partly because it allows to wear the tight mask without needing to stow away hair. And it also didn't give anyone a chance to grab it. She raises the head to glance at Tony's face, her brown eyes narrowing a little as Wanda threatens to blind him. "Oh, what then if we can't blind you because of your work? You walked in on us after all, and you got to pay." She aswered with a grim look, reaching for the towel to wrap it around her waist as she sits up, mirroring Wanda's crossing of the legs. "Witch trials… na, if at all, it's techlok-trials."
Blinding isn't so much a threat but a deadpan statement from an extremely laconic young woman. The inquiry is strictly defined within the context provided by Shuri. Thus, the response is what it is. She inclines her head while watching the Wakandan woman from the corner of her eye, measuring up the numerous tells and posture more than she listens to exact words. Complexities teach her as time goes on, so to speak. "I am not Artemis." A shrug of her shoulders distorts the wavering light around her, pulling on the dewdrop incandescence thrown by the steamy confines. It's easy to play with humidity when it's hanging there in its abundance. She doesn't in the least bit seem perturbed by being nothing but a gilded silhouette run through the blur filter a half-dozen times, at least up to a point. Her face is more or less clear. No kisses either; alas, it's all in neutral balance of the fates as the petite version of the crone measures him, snips off an answer, and knots the thread of conversation. "Is there a fire?"
"Maybe a kiss?" Becuase yes, Tony has to flirt. "Uhm…or letting me sit down and enjoy a sauna in peace." He notices them crossing their legs, and he's not really looking THAT far down, but he seems to be slightly appreciative of their want to cover that part of their body. He does look over at Wanda as she questiosn if there was a fire. "Hopefully not. I'd prefer not to be burning." He knows Wanda's powers are weird.
So yes, he's checking himself to see if he's actually burning anywhere.
But then he looks at Shuri. Techlok trials, that seems to get a grin.
Shuri seems to be content to let Tony steam and fidget for some moments, then finally shrugs, pointing to where he had dropped his towel outside. "Grab your towel, if it makes you more comfortable. We're not barbarians that rip your pumping heart out and devour it for being a man… though I heard Amazonians did that…"
"In New Guinea too." Wanda nods to this. "And the Sixth Dimension." She twists her words around her Transian accent, lilting them as often as she approaches sheer cliff faces for consonants, the inherent musicality of the Eastern European steppes slamming into the crossroads of the Balkans with its Latin background. The questions are present enough in her eyes, but she shies away from them only out of expediency.. No one wants to be here for twenty minutes parsing English with her, they really don't.
She's not responsible for any burning. Other previous inflammations and conflagrations notwithstanding, of course.
Tony looks at Shuri when she tells him to grab his towel. "No. Are you uncomfortable over my package or something?" Tony says with a grin, though he does rest his hands in his lap, letting his head fall backwards so he could relax. "God, I missed this Sauna." He does look over at Wanda. "Wanda, I have no idea what the Sixth dimension is." Tony admits tiredly.
Shuri shrugs a little before looking over to Tony, leaning back against the wood. "Well, usually one uses a towel to sit on to keep the wood dry, but sure." She doesn't seem to care that she is pretty much without cover but for the towel in her lap. "Yea, a good sweat helps to forget it's monday."
Wanda never smiles. She certainly doesn't when Tony dares Shuri on the matter of bad packages or good dreams, all the same glancing to Shuri. She is perfectly comfortable on her bench, stretching out her feet ahead of her. Look, bare feet! Real feet with bright purple iridescent polish applied just so. Wiggling indeed. "She is right." Isn't it nice to be vindicated? A nod to Shuri. "A good place. Clean in spirit. Clean in self." She flicks her fingers to throw shadows on the wall as Tony looks at her. "There are dimensions. Not only this one. Many others."
"Ugh, I feel like if I want to know about dimensions, it probably won't be right now. Especially since I won't understand any of it, because screw string-theory." Tony shakes his head for a second before he stretches out a bit. "So, what are you two ladies up to? Anything serious happen in Wakanda lately, Shuri? Or any demons you need help with slaying, Wanda?"
"Nothing that would impact the world as a greater, the usual shuffle of Wakandan politics." Shuri playd down, even if the slowly lessening grip of the regent was concearning. She had to put plans in motion though, but those would take time to develop. "And besies that interviews, statement requests and people wanting to make a documentary and not understanding no for an answer and calling each week because of it. Can't you invent something helpful to deal with entitled filmmakers?"
The witch flicks her fingers against her brow. A thick segment of auburn hair resists being shoved aside so easily. She tries to follow along with Shuri, but it's just too much to make sense of. She shakes her head, bemused at the very mention. And there goes her hair covering her face again, minus the braids that slither across her decolletage. "None attack now. But I hunt them." That's got to be ominous.
Tony looks at Wanda for a moment as she seems to answer that she is hunting them. "…mysterious." is all Tony quips, before he looks over at Shuri. "I can certainly try that. Though it would mainly just be a bunch of filmmakers being mind-controlled and constantly believing that they had found the piece they were looking for, whether it was real or not." Tony is teasing indeed.
"Believe me Wanda, if they would attack now, they'd lack a couple organs later. That's, if they have such." Shuri notes at the other way to interpret Wanda's statement, a little smile in the corners of her lips. "That'd be a little overkill. Can't your machine just find them and have them sign up for a tour of duty as UN observers in some area close to Latveria or Genosha or something?"
Overkill? There's no such thing. "They are in the city," she says bluntly. "Danger zone. I hunted them with a man in the wrong place. He killed them. It was not so hard." Not so hard to get this unknown guy to do all the stabby work while she did the other stuff, no doubt. She looks over blankly at Tony on the mention of mind-controlled filmmakers, and if there's anything in those fathomless eyes of hers, it's recognition for certain aspects of it. Whether she doesn't like it, disapproves, or considers blindness an appropriate response, jury is hung. But she rises and nods to Shuri once, then sashays for the door. Her gait is efficient, a stalking, deadly glide through the world. The Black Panther might be the true hunter in the place, but she's more like the snow leopard: ambush predator, pouncing unexpectedly, moving with quiet grace to murder-face the unsuspecting. "Stark," is all she says before heading out. Flirtation by witch? Hardly.
Tony looks at Wanda as she totally flirts-notflirts, and yes, he DOES watch her leave with a bit of a smile on his face. "Maximoff." and then she's gone! He then looks over to Shuri for a moment. "I mean, I can totally do that. But where's the fun in that? Besides, Magneto and Doom arn't exactly as friendly as you when they say no."