somethingwithturquoise | Outside MHA #4; Late Thursday Night [11/18].

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Outside MHA #4; Late Thursday Night [11/18].

Well. So. That was...a whole thing.

Honestly, Summer was kind of disappointed. That didn't take nearly as long or as much effort as she thought it was going to, and while there was a certain cleverness to what ultimately brought down the New and So-Called "IMPROVED" Galactic Federation, it was all kind of an anticlimax, and then....that was it. Sure, once again, the planets under Federation control were being thrown into utter chaos, but that she was a little more willing to leave to her mom and her crew because she was honestly just a little bit over it and kind of just wanted to get back home again. She missed people. She missed Fandom. And, obviously, she was totally on call if anything started up again, which she was sure it was going to, but for now?

Home sweet home, baybeeeee!

She parked her spaceship in the junkyard, feeling glad her spot was still there but a little disappointed not to see any ships she didn't recognize, grabbed her bags, and headed back to MHA under the cover of darkness, Pancakes prancing along next to her. And it felt good to get back, with a little wistful grin at Caritas as she passed it by before slipping into MHA and heading on upstairs, down the hallway, to her apartment, slipping her key out of her pocket and ready to just get back in and revel in being home.

...only to have the key not fit into the lock.

"What the hell?" she murmured, frowning down at it as she tried again, and jiggled the handled. Pulled. To no avail.

"What the fuck?" she gave it another tug, another attempt to unlock it. "Did someone change the locks?"

Someone defintiely changed the locks.

"Great," she murmured. "Just fucking great. I swear to god, Jon, you asshole, if you rented my apartment out...I paid you six months rent in advance! In cold hard cash! So help me..."

She was already on her knees in front of the door, shaking her head as she dropped her bag and started digging around for some hairpins. "If I have to break into my own damn apartment, because someone fucking sublet it out, despite the rent being paid in full for six fucking months, I am going to choke a bitch. I will." Pancakes let out a protesting meow. "I'll fucking do it, just you wait.

"Wait," she then realized, blinking, pausing in her attempts to pick the lock and pulling out her phone. "Have I been gone for more than six months--no. Nope. Definitely not, okay, good, because I was going to be fucking pissed if I was gone for...I mean, I still am pissed," she resolutely returned to her work, "but not about that. At least I didn't just lose half a year, even if I guess I lost my apartment!"

Pancakes let out another meow, this one more impatient and upset, and Summer cooed at her with a small apologetic smile.

"Ohhhh, I know, baby," she said. "I wanna get home, too, but Mama's just got to break into her own damn apartment, apparently just reaaal fast and we'll be golden, okay?"

And as she got back to work, she shook her head. "I swear to god," she said again, "he better not have fucking rented out my apartment to someone else, or else this is about to get real fucking awkward!"

She was just glad that, with all her experience breaking into Rick's lab (and, hey, she even broke into Rosa's place that one time, too, and that was Rosa!), a lock like this should be easy-peasy.

And if not? Well, fuck, then, she could just portal in, dammit.

[[ OH HEY GUESS WHO DECIDED SHE WANTED TO COME BACK BECAUSE SOMEONE HAS BEEN TOO BUSY TO WRITE HER SOME CRAZY SPACE ADVENTURES and is insisting that, okay, other characters got to have their time to shine a little, we're OVER it. I was going to do this over the weekend, but, well, this happened and I couldn't refuse? Like, how could I not do this??? Anyway, oh, hey, yeah, the post is totally open ]]

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"No idea, we opted out," Annie replied, shrugging. "Because we just replaced it after I broke the door in August, anyway."

Hopefully there wasn't, like, an important impetus for this lock change that they'd just ignored. (Though, as always, Annie was pretty confident that anyone who broke into #2 over there deserved the blinding-slash-stabbing-slash-Lord-help-them-if-Five-was-over they got, anyway.)

"Are you, like, back?" she had to add. "Or is this, like, just a visit under cover of night?" Because Annie could be sneaky about this if needed, for sure.

There was a little sympathetic sort of what-can-you-do expression about breaking the door, like that was just a totally normal part of life (and really, where was the lie in that?), and nodded, before all pretense of caring about locks and doors were swept completely away by a big, unabashed grin, so big she had to bite her lower lip a little with a little eager bounce as she reported, "Back back! That's right, the New, Supposedly Improved Galactic Federation is nothing but space dust! Like, pro tip? If you're gonna reboot an evil galactic federation, don't get in bed with corporate sponsors. Like, I know it sounds appealing, like, match made in heaven, right, you scratch my evil back, I'll scratch yours, but, see, here's the thing: when all your weapons are branded to prove that nothing, not even space lasers, can destroy your jeans, some bitch is definitely gonna show up and open a portal to a dimension made entirely of Wranglers jeans and fuck your shit up."

Because, yup. That's how it went down. She just opened a portal to a denim dimension and that destroyed them utterly.

She...still wasn't sure if this was actually really awesome or the lamest thing ever, to be honest.

It definitely seemed to track with canon, though.

Edited 2021-11-18 14:17 (UTC)

"...you defeated them with denim?" Annie wasn't sure why this was surprising to her, knowing all that she did about Summer's particularly weird world and the multiverse in general, but -- really?

From where she was sitting (over here as a reluctant semi-minion of corporate overlords and all), it sounded kind of awesome? In, sure, a slightly lame way, but -- way to hoist them with their own petard! (Whatever a petard was!)

"Is your mom good, still?"

But they were Wranglers, Annie! Wranglers! Not even cool jeans! They were jeans that her gross pervert brother and her nerdy ass boyfriend who could barely even dress himself wore! She felt that kind of nudged it in the lame category, although, really, at least that also meant there was no love lost for the denim sacrifice that had to be made. The world was not any lesser for it.

Summer smiled a little fondly at the question and nodded. "Yeah," she said, "she's good. She..." There was a small sigh, a shake of her head. "She's a little weirded out right now because, like, she doesn't know what to do with herself? Which I definitely get, she's kind of made this whole Fight against the Galaxy bit her whole thing now...but...there's always mercenary jobs in space, and she's keeping a close eye on things because you just know they're going to try again eventually, why wouldn't they, they're an evil space empire, they're like fucking cockroaches."

A pause.

"Literally in this case, too! Because, you know, bugs!"

"Gross," Annie said happily. Fighting evil space bugs sounded kind of appealing, at least, in the 'rah rah these guys are clearly evil and gross' kind of way. Things were always muddier in Annie's universe. "But, like, Beth totally has my sympathy -- even if I feel like I'd probably want to, like, retire to Aruba after all that. Or, like, space Aruba. Maybe that planet with the spa."

"I don't really think my mom's the retiring type," said Summer, who didn't know what that was like at alll, relaly, how many jobs did she have again? She lost track somewhere down the line. "But, I mean, hey, if you are going to retire to space Aruba, doing so after you've kicked off all your Earthly ties to your family is not a bad way to do it!"

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they were partners in fighting the evil galactic empire together and she'd embraced letting her daughter into the fold wholeheartedl and everything, but that was always going to be at least a little sore spot of contention with Summer.

"But enough about my mom," because geez, that was really what they were talking about, wasn't it? "What about here? What have I missed? You have to tell me everything!"

"Pff." Annie waved a hand. "Like, nothing. It's been weirdly quiet. I think some shit went down on Halloween where, like, people turned into monsters? I didn't dress up or anything since I didn't want a repeat of last year. Um, people were babies last weekend, aaaaand...I'm glad you're back 'cause I'm totally throwing the ugly sweater rager over here this year and I need help planning?"

Once upon a time, Annie would have felt guilty about greeting a newly-returned Summer with 'hi, help me plan a party.' Not anymore. Party-planning was, like, their love language.

"Annie," said Summer, leveling a look at her, "I could still be literally elbows-deep in space bugs and I would still make it back for the ugly sweater rager."

The ugly sweater rager. As if they'd totally done it more than just the once, but come on. Even just the once was epic enough that it could be considered a thing now.

And now her face brightened into an eager grin, because, ohmygod, she was so right, 100% their love language!

"But now that I'm already back," she gushed excitedly, "that just means we have even more time to start planning and making it that much more ah-maze-ing! Like, I might already be thinking we need to dress some gremlins up as elves, for a start..."

Which was a terrible idea. But that's how you got to good ideas! Start with the bad and work your way up!

It was clearly an annual ugly sweater rager, forever annually scheduled way too early in the holiday season for no reason!

"Oh my God, genius," said the woman who could not actually suffer a gremlin bite due to her diamond-tough skin. "Do you think we could get, like, a magic person to make it snow inside or something?"

Eliot and Margo's party had given her so many ideas.

Ohmygod, she was barely even back on Earth and already, they were totally vibing, because Summer lifted a finger and pointed out exactly that.

"That party I crashed a little bit ago," she said. "They had a bunch of fake magic stuff, right? Maybe we can get the in on it. Or I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be that difficult to rig up some sort of sweet snow machine, too. Something that sort of self-cycles, so that it's just continuious and easy clean up?"

Did she have any idea how something like that might work? Nope!

Did she plan on fully leaning on her boyfriend to just figure it out based on a half-baked idea alone? Fuck yeah she did!

"I bet Barry could even use the same tech he used for the glitter vacuum," Annie noted, clearly very much on the same page. "And we can get Eliot and Margo in on this, maybe, or like -- do you know Wanda upstairs? She could probably help, too."

With the added bonus of Annie not feeling vaguely judged for wearing a hoodie while talking to her or whatever.

"I don't know Wanda!" Summer realized (although she did try to kiss her a few times!), her eyes going wide with excitement, because she clearly needed to get out of town more often, there were all sorts of new people to meet!

Forget that Wanda was definitely here before she left, shh.

"Honestly," she said, "I feel like the more hands helping with this sort of thing, the better."

More cooks in the kitchen and all that, that was how it went, right?

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Outside MHA #4; Late Thursday Night [11/18].

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