2019-09-04 - A Koifect Day

Summary:

Tony tries to ask Wanda out on a date. They end up saving fish instead.

Log Info:

Storyteller: None
Date: Wed Sep 4 20:15:47 2019
Location: Avengers Mansion - Foyer

Related Logs

None

Theme Song

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tony-starkwanda

On the foyer of Avengers Mansion, there is a very pristine kitchen that is very state of the art. This is where on-site Avengers often crack down on snackage and engage in more classical styles of comraderie.

Tony just restocked the fridge too. So come eat to your heart's content! But Tony is indeed present as he seems to have just finished making a sandwich. "Whats the weather gonna be like JARVIS?"

"Forecast is fully sunny with a light breeze, sir."

"Thanks buddy." Now all Tony has to do is wait for his favorite magic-toting Avenger.

Wanda doesn't live here. Wanda, in fact, doesn't seem to live anywhere that most can find. She excels in avoiding tracking with the mad qualities of a young woman born in the shadows of two superpowers crumbling into obsolescence, pieces of stone crashing into the borderlands once claimed by Nazi Germany and swallowed up by the hammer and sickle under a long red wave. Not the shade she prefers, at any rate, shrugging on her usual coat.

Security systems can and occasionally do run haywire in her vicinity, a usually good sign that she drops in from wherever she apparently lives. Or doesn't live. Another fine example is sudden manifestation through the ether, aligning two points in time and manifesting between the open portal on the floor or… in this case, it's the ceiling, allowing her to crash through the open space and land in a three point crouch. Along with, unfortunately, a few very concerned fish that flash with opalescent colours, patterned like koi, and broken coral. Water is fortunately /mostly/ absent, but it'll turn into ectoplasm and vanish away in a few moments when the dimensional aperture — or localized one, actually — snaps shut.

The fish flop around in despair, dancing across the floor. She scrambles after one, a harder task than it looks like, scooping up the flopping creature and putting it immediately into the sink. Water will have to be run but that's more than enough activity for a few split seconds.

Jarvis is likely having heart palpitations. Maybe? Tony is probably not, arc reactor and all.

There she is!

"Hey Wanda, we-" Tony stops talking as he sees the fish flop through her inter-dimensional portal with her. He waits until she has a strong handle on her life before he speaks again.

"Well, on the bright side, you look amazing. Hungry?" Tony is pretty much used to Wanda unintentionally breaking his shit. But that?s just what happens when you invite a walking chaos magnet into the house.

"So, where did you go this time?"

Interplanetary at least, or the dimension is Earth adjacent enough to count. Plucking the fish takes time, the wiggly creature flashing in fearful creation. She hits the faucet to send a stream of cool water over the poor fish, its tail swaying back and forth, until at least partly submerged. The frantic motions cease enough to where she can go corral another of the desperate water-seeking piscines, though this time she cheats completely and flicks her wrist out to telekinetically snare the thing with the accuracy of a baseball flung at the side of a barn. In this case, it carries more than a panicked fish; she hauls open a few drawers, a good sign of how tired she is.

"Honey," she says flat out, corralling the two creatures into a swirling passage like the symbol of Pisces, fish endlessly chasing their own tails. It beats ouroboros, eating their own tails. Another sharp gesture and her two extra guests join the first in the filling sink, the trio all flapping gills and desperate fins.

"Finias," she says, choking on the syllables, but Gaelic isn't precisely easy for someone raised in Slavic terms.

Wanda's distracted. Tony is not, he's very..fixated on her. She was beautiful, even if she looks like she just fell through like 85 gallons of water. He walks over to her and he puts his hands on her shoulders if she allows to see if he can bring her back to reality.

Tony was a scientist who did not understand magic, or refused to even consider it. wait, did she call him -honey- or the fish? Or is it just something she needs? He has the honey in his offhand

"Are you alright?" It was concern. He looks at the fish. Very pretty.

The water is shut off before it totally overflows the sink. Displaced waves slosh into the next side, though the fish are unhappy being practically stacked on one another. But to trust putting the other in the sink with the garbage disposal? Probably not a wise idea to introduce weird glowing fish to the garburator.

The moment Tony drops his hands on her shoulders, she jumps a good inch. Worse, that startling comes accompanied with a sudden twist and a defensive lift of her arm, protectively shielding her face or, worse, in position to fling one of those fate-warping hexes.

Cerise light glistens across her eyes, devouring her sclera and pupils in the afterglow, a haunting sparkle made exquisitely disturbing for how unnatural, how inhuman, it renders her. Sorcery might be alien to a technophile like Tony, but in its growing manifestation, there can be absolutely no doubt that skewed genetics and a natural disposition rooted in the warp and weft of the universe slants to other harder than a needle twists around in the Arctic to the magnetic North Pole.

"«What?»" she hisses in one of those Balkan languages, rendered sharp edged moreso than smooth, but eloquent all the same. Transian, her native tongue. Her curling hair starts to lift of its own accord, a Medusa ripple running through it.

It takes a moment for her to even register who, what. Not the why, but at least the dire rise of reflexive defenses can be put on /mild/ alert. Rather than DEFCON-8. Everyone probably appreciates she isn't reaching for a satellite to hurl on an unsuspecting person out of sheer recoil. "Hungry. Fine." A rough edge slices through the foundation of English, undermining the basement back to the age of the Angles departing Denmark over the waves for a bonny green island of white cliffs. The tremor running through her is ratcheted tension, even as the fish splash around, unaware of the risk. Or flashing semaphore of 'surprising the witch is a bad idea' at anyone who understands aquatic metaphor. Not really, just kidding.

She slowly lowers her arms. Brittle, her posture is probably the antithesis of anything that Tony normally gets out there on the street. But he's probably not startling Roman candles, more like models.

Wanda was certainly already a supermodel on her own right, so he did that much right. But he also startled a witch, which is historically a bad idea. When she flares out at him, Tony lifts his hands defensively.

"Just wanted to ask if you wanted to go on a picnic!" Tony splurges out. "Like…on a date? I can feed you, you can yell at me in Transian, it'll be fun?" Tony smiles nervously. But then she lowers his hands, and he lowers his own. Yikes, Tony pities whoever pisses her off.

The fish don't concern him anymore, just the red-eyed beauty in front of him.

Breathing in and out rapidly isn't the normal way to quell one's mood or emotions, but the edge is riding hot as a firecracker. Lifting her right hand oh so slowly, she reaches it out to the jar of honey. Is it safe to touch? "Please," she says, still rigid, holding back the anxious backlash from biting something, anyone. The energy display isn't full pyrotechnics, but she is still glowing from the eyes and her hair is moving as though caught underwater in slow motion. "I need food now." Now has a stress, immediacy brought on through halting English. Focusing on the right flip of words from one tongue to another just isn't with her right now. She hasn't plowed Tony through the ground, though, and he isn't getting a sudden view of subbasement 14 so that's a definite plus, right?

It's absolutely no secret to anyone in SHIELD that her faulty file continuously includes at least one note over and over, restored whenever they spontaneously delete. It's probably an open secret on the team, never, ever let her get hungry. Hangry witches are dangerous witches, as opposed to scientists or rage-balls who need their snacks for glucose benefits. She burns too fast, too hot, and instability sometimes follows. She pets one of the fish. Slowly. Hello fishie.

Ask and ye shall receive, the old saying goes.

Tony, NOT wanting to get thrown out the window, especially not in his armor (since he may be superhumanly smart, but NOT superhumanly durable). So when she asks for it, he hands her the honey.

"Sure." He says a little stiffly, and despite his question, she hasn't bulldozed him over yet, which is a pretty good sign! He lets her hanker down on that.

She really does burn out quickly, but considering that she hasn't caused a fifteen car pileup through simple force of chaotic will, she's probably not mad that he asked her out.

He'll let her eat, then see if she even remembered his question or if he has to say it twice.

His armour might show up, surely? No one knows how fast it can be summoned save Tony, probably. Wanda fusses with the jar, showing no sign of defenestration tactics at the ready. She fights and fusses to get the lid off, banging it twice against the counter, as having wet hands isn't very good for opening jars. Breaking the seal free, finally, she manages to reveal the golden elixir that will serve to satisfy her. Which also means acquiring a spoon slowly, burying it in the mixture. Two swirls and that's good enough for her to take a mouthful, immediately silencing her and not quite replenishing her reserves immediately. But as fuel goes, it beats most options. It means an actual meal that counts for something, Spoon in, spoon out. Happiness can be quantified as not keeling over on the spot.

Tony will have to be patient with her. The colours around her burn out and there's only the flopping fish in the sink, trying to circulate oxygen over their gills. They need to be moved, just not right now. Five and a half minutes and half a jar of honey will pass in silence before she's ready to speak again, but hey! Captive audience to listen, woo!

Sure, Tony has a few countermeasures when he's in such a pinch that he doesn't have time to tell Jarvis to bring on the suit or if he doesn't have a briefcase to put on in a pinch. But he is experimenting with Nanotech!

He stands there for a moment, watching amusedly as she just scarfs down a jar of honey. He whistles for a moment. "Man, talk about being quite the eater."

"But…uhm, you know, if you want we could…uh." Tony rubs the back of his neck. "How about we go out on a date? Picnic?" He points to the picnic basket he was low-key putting together. "Unless you have a monster to go hunt or something, then it can be another time. Erm, you know?"

Diligence rather than speed applies. Diligence and a healthy dose of additional licks of the spoon, done without any complaints. It's not like she has a ring of honey around her mouth or a glob stuck to her cheek. She is in fact exceedingly careful not to waste food. Call it a cost of someone who had food insecurity for so much of her life.

She puts the honey aside, and frowns slightly at him. "I needed it." Honey sticks, that's why they are in every go bag and bug-out pack she has stashed. Her friends in the sink earn a look. "They need a place. I cannot go and leave them here." A pause. "Bucky might eat them. Shuri could make them a house. It is not fair, though. Do you have… a…." She shapes a rectangle, not having the right word for it in English. A box? A cubicle? Charades is everyone's favourite day camp game, right?

"I left Finias. I will not be ready for Kerguelen until the quarter moon."

Tony blinks at her when her English seems to be failing her. Did she already eat and telling him no in exchange for later? Eventually he pulls out a disc-shaped object and moves to put it on the side of her head.

"JARVIS, activate translator 203."

"Of course, sir." This will allow whatever Tony says to be heard by Wanda in her native tongue. "Now, do you mean fish tank?" the words come through as Transian for Wanda to hear if she accepted the technological device.

"They need an aquarium," in Transian might be a pain. But in German, it's easy enough. German is hyperprecise and more importantly has lots, and lots, and lots of dictionary entries. "They live in water. I can alter the water. They must stay wet, however." Another spoonful of honey is ravaged, like she's the ultimate hummingbird ready to cause all manner of misery to those unprepared to deal with her. "Is there an aquarium here? Anything to use as it?"

She puts the honey back in a cupboard, already running on the dregs of the first hit of sugary danger in her veins. It's almost soothing as the lowered reserves are channeled back to where they should be. "I brought them here. I cannot leave them to die here. We can eat something after, but the fish first."

Tony looks at Wanda as she agrees to eat, but only after these koi-like fish manage to be saved. "Aquarium? I have an old one in storage that could definitely work here." Tony pauses. "What? I like fish." he grins. "Keep an eye on the fish, I'll be back." He wanders off.

About five minutes later, the Iron Man suit is remotely carrying a large-looking aquarium, putting it on a tall stand. "Alwaysdid want to put that there." Tony follows behind, with a large bucket of water, which he dumps into the aquarium. "Okay, work your magic baby!" Tony says in that mock-rock and roll voice.

While he's gone, Wanda cleans up the dishes. She can operate a dishwasher. One spoon is not too hard to add to the mix, and she collects the fallen coral. That goes straightaway into the rubbish bin, for lack of a better place to store them. In the garden doesn't seem quite right, even as she makes do with the lack of dishes otherwise. Rapidly moving here and there, she wipes up proof of her little excursion to a hidden city and leans against the counter, peering down at the fish. They peer back at her.

«Truly, it wasn't my idea to bring you here,» she says. From a drawer, she found an energy bar, one of those high calorie, tasteless things used by hikers and rescue agencies. «Until I can take you back, will you at least let me put you somewhere safe?»

Forget sleeping with the koi-patterned creatures, she's busy chirping at them.

Tony's re-entry with the tank illustrates her point. To the contrary, she doesn't work any magic. She picks up one lightly glowing fish patterned in orange and white scales, and gently places it in the tank in case it has severe issues with confinement. Tail flashing, gulps made, it swishes back and forth in circles. Apparently this will do.

Apparently it will do!

"Up top, Iron Man." Tony high fives the suit. Yes, he programmed the suit to high five. No, it doesn't hurt, because its programmed to release about 100lbs of force on the high five maximum. So…yeah!

But then Tony looks over at Wanda as she manages to help the fix get into the spacey aquarium. "That should do for the home away from home until you're able to send 'em back to…wherever it is you want to send them." He crosses his arms over his chest and smiles at Wanda.

Now imagine if Jarvis tinkered with the force and knocked Tony over with, say, 500 pounds of force. Or five hundred /kilos/! Halloween pranks abound. Now someone really needs to get out of this wicked mindset.

"Finias," she repeats. "They have more water. Here, it is dirty and cold." She shakes her head, lifting up the other fish, the third left in the sink. It hunkers low. Maybe it likes the idea of its ecosystem being made of steel. Is there any room for Steelkoi or Iron Carpatriot? Really, there should be. "I will ask them. The gate to Finias won't open for another two weeks."

"I don't know where that is." Tony says with a very straight look on his face. He knows that Wanda kinda thinks on a different wavelength than he does, considering her strong magic affiliation. "So…Dinner?" He smiles. He was nothing if not relentless. But at least he thinks he has a chance!

If anyone can make a steel aquarium, its definitely Tony. Maybe on his off-day where he can specifically mess with Steve on why he has a steel aquarium in his room. It'll be a joy.

"Near the lost land of Kerguelen. The children of Danu live there." With their majestic fish. Lofting a brow, she gestures to her newfound friends. No approval of Iron Carpatriot? She's already named it that, too bad. James will just have to deal. But her friend is busy splashing around thoughtfully, joining his buddies, and they have a trio of fish in the mansion. Very exciting.

Make sure Steve doesn't mistake the metal-clad steel aquarium for a locker to stash his suit in. "They will live now. Dinner."

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