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Janet Van Dyne had a recent meeting at NYU with some science friends, of which no doubt the tabloids would state she was just looking to score with. Either way, she took the close vicinity to Mutant Town as an excuse to do a bit of patrol as the Winsome Wasp, buzzing about in flights of fancy. Beware evil doers! But for the most part, they don't quite know she's around before it's too late. Heck, sometimes there's no evil doers, and she gets to meet nice people instead. Always a pleasant time in and of itself. Janet likes to bask in the glory of being a superheroine after all.
"Hnnnnhso bored…." Jessica siiiiighs from her perch, adjacent to a pair of looming gargoyles. She's arguably more aesthetic than either of them, wearing black tights and a red leather jacket with yellow highlights. Goggles shield her eyes from the wind, but they're drawn up to her brow for the moment and help hold back her wealth of black hair.
Three stories above ground is weird enough; the fact she's perched against the wall with zero visible effort or supporting tools just doubles down on it.
She narrows her eyes, then squints at Wasp with a wrinkled nose suggesting an inadvertent sneer, trying to make out the buzzing figure against the backdrop of people.
Julie is driving through the night-time streets, one girl on a lonely patrol through the night-time streets of New York, vigilant eyes seeking that person in the kind of distress that can call her out at odd hours… She downshifts the little '50 Studebaker pickup and picks up the handset of the big old CB radio bolted under the dash, "Hey, Carmine, you sure these people knew where they are? I don't see no Plymouths here. Could be we got poached or they got their streets and avenues backwards…" Her accent's very local, that of New York Italians, the customers, apparently not so much, …she rolls along for another block, "Arright, forget that, I think I got em." The little green truck, doors labeled with the lettering 'Uncle Sal's Garage,' pulls up alongside what seems to be a stranded vehicle. Someone's begun changing a tire already as Dizzy steps out and turns on some lights. Said someone freezes a bit as Diz hops out. "Hey, Mr… Stevens, was it?" Funny, it seems they're changing *all* the tires, and brought friends, it turns out.
Just like Jessica is aware of the faint buzzing sound, Janet spots something odd midflight when she considers the gargoyles on one of the buildings she passes by. When she draws nearer for a better look, she does spot Jessica and gives her a friendly wave of her tiny hand, "hey, you're not a gargoyle," she offers with an obvious grin at her silly statement. For now her attention not quite set at the wouldbe shenanighans below. Maybe Jessica would be keener.
Jessica emits an entirely heroic squeak and promptly falls six inches, slapping her palms to the wall for purchase. It arrests her descent, but she claps a hand to her sternum and takes a few shuddering, shocked breaths.
"Holy SMOKES, you scared me!" she scolds Janet. Her accent is weird— difficult to place. It sounds a lot like that classic Transatlantic accent all over Hollywood movies and found nowhere else in America— that, and heavily Eastern European.
"Sheesh, what the—!" she peers at Janet as the Winsome Wasp flits past her, squnting heavily.
"Goodness, is— Tinkerbelle?" she asks, baffled. "Did I get into some absinthe and not realize it?"
The conversation below catches her eye, and she starts crab-walking (spider-walking?) down the side of the building so she can eavesdrop rather shamelessly on Julie.
Julie spares a few moments looking around at the fellows who've got one side of the Plymouth almost propped up on a little stack of wooden blocks, or nearly so already, three younger hoods standing up from there to present a bigger problem. "I guess some people's really tuned in when it comes to rotating yer tires, but it couldn't wait till morning, there, guys? I'll just check out this work order, here, and…" She's just backing off toward the driver's door of her truck when some fellow, presumably one Mr. Stevens, comes running back up, presumably from a walk to a phone booth, crying out the helpful information, "Hey, that's my car!" One of the larger hoods simply gut-punches the fellow without comment, causing the man to double over. "Oh, fantabulous," Diz comments, as the thug raises a tire iron for good measure. The girl reaches into her back pocket for… A wrench?
"Eeeep!" Wasp squeks with concern for Jessica as she slides down the building before regathering her hold on it, following along in flight, intent to catch Jessica if she slips again. "Are you okay? Didn't mean to spook you!" She apologizes, her smile becoming a bit more sheepish now. "Believe it or not, I get the Tinkerbell thing quite a lot! It's okay…I'm actually the Winsome Wasp! So, that's not absinthe. Also I would…hey," she finally realizes something is wrong, now that Jessica drew her attention inadvertantly to the on goings below, "sorry, but I have to look into this," she squeaks hurriedly at Jessica, unsure if she can do more than hang on buildings. "Hey!" She calls out, swooping down from the air towards Mr. Stevens, "what's going on here? I suggest everyone be cool!"
"Ooh, that's /not/ okay," Jessica murmurs, leaping off the building. She flings out her arms and subtle webs under her ribs spread out, arresting a great deal of her momentum and allowing her to land heavily on a street light nearby. It wobbles violently, making shadows dance, and she cranes her neck aroudn with an inhuman amount of flexibility to peer at the thugs— while inverted.
"Hey, so, punching's not nice?" she says, with a polite diffidence. "And I'm pretty sure that isn't your car. So maybe you can knock that off, and I won't have to come down there and twist anyone's legs behind their ankles. You're probably not as limber as I am."
Everyone on the ground pauses as voices from above appear, including man-with-raised tire-iron among others. And Diz, with an orange-painted wrench cocked back to throw. "Hey, boys, how bout we call this one a wash and everyone goes for a beer somewhere," she says. Discreetly, she twitches her left hand a little, and the truck revs in accord with what's in fact the throttle linkage being turned somehow. But apparently, to observers, there's someone else in the truck, too, hard to see behind those extra lights.
Wasp is a bit surprised by Jessica's handling of the situation, turns out she's quite experienced, far more than Janet would assume at the very least. She looks back, somewhat impressed, before turning to see how the baddies will take it. "I think you don't want to try your luck…" the fact Jessica seems to be so confident, and there's a second voice that's hard to place, seeing how tiny the Wasp is, flying about quickly to close down distance. It may prove quite a gamble to try one's luck.
If it were just three women in the street, it might not have done anything. But between the corkscrew-spined Spider-Woman, Julie's wrench-flinging readiness and the roar of her car, and Wasp's buzzing, invisible presence, the thugs seem to think better of things.
"Seriously, boys. I already washed my hair and I don't wanna have to go through /that/ mess again tonight," Jessica adds.
It's probably not as intimidating as she hopes, being honest.
There's some hesitation from most of the hoods, though one of the older ones glares ice. Tension hangs a moment, some of the younger tire-boosters looking to each other with uncertainty. One of the truck's doors unlocks and pops open, slowly swinging. Suddenly, as if all at once, a few tools clang to the ground and the little crew, clearly strictly small-time, begins to scatter. Two of the older ones hold out a moment longer, and one says, "Come on, Ike, it's masks." Defiantly, they step away slowly before running, themselves. Dizzy's glancing around and up uncertainly as she skirts around the vehicles to the fellow doubled-over wheezing, "Hey, mister, you gonna make it, you think?"
"Masks!?" Janet cries out loudly, a bit offended by the generalization, "I'm the Winsome Wasp! I'm an Avenger! I'm not just a mask! I saved the world from a nuclear holocaust! Have some respect!" She huffs to herself, frowning, and turning to look at Jessica, "what does it take to get some respect in this business?"
"Beats me," Jessica says, her black hair hanging from her inverted position like a bizarre cowl. "I'm wearing goggles," she points out, adjusting the yellow lenses on her fine, aristocratic features.
"Maybe it's a slang thing. I'm Jessica, by the way," she tells Wasp, once the villains are gone. She rotates around by the shoulder and drops to the ground, landing in a limber squat on the ground before standing. Even barefoot, she's most of six feet tall— positively towering. "Are you okay?" she asks the man who got punched, moving towards him cautiously.
Strangely, her perfume follows her quite closely— the smell is something exotic and impossible to place, and the sort of strong scent like durian that is either pleasant or repulsive, and inconsistently so from person to person.
Julie seems a bit startled as the heroines make themselves more apparent, the fellow fending off her assistance with a gesture as he stands straighter and catches his breath. Guys and their pride and all. Diz looks to the two and shrugs. "Well, hey, I'm sure glad to see youse," she says. "Avengers and everything, how's that? Think he just got the wind knocked outta him." She takes an angle-headed flashlight out of her jacket and looks over the other side of the car. Tsks when she plays it over the bumper says, "Out of state plates, they musta figured you wouldn't be back tonight," she informs Mr Stevens, with some embellishments in Italian about presumably the hoods' character. "We'll have you rolling again though before long."