Melissa
PatientBean
Qia
webboysurf
Festive
Zoldyck
Kuro
Dark Cloud
Eviledd1984
P A L M E R M E D I - T E C H B U I L D I N G - N E W Y O R K O F F I C E
Two Weeks Post-Crisis | Brooklyn, New York
Scott Lang had checked in an hour ago. Forty five minutes late and to a very dissatisfied response from the now aptly named Cross Brothers, who felt the need to remind him of his daughter’s precarious situation. He gave his final briefing before the PalmerTech heist, and arranged for the drop-off and exchange to take place at another CrossRoads site which was currently vacated for “Industrial level cleaning and sterilization” in between their company’s projects.
Apparently New Jersey could never be fully sterilized, surprising no one.
Janet, Ted and Scott all knew their roles and cues.
Scott had on his new shrinky suit underneath his cleaning jumpsuit. He scanned his way into the Brooklyn office and made himself part of the background, mopping up on the fourth floor.
Ted walked into the lobby in a business suit and announced his presence to the receptionist on the front desk, claiming to have a meeting with Ray Palmer. She asked for his name and Ted feined outrage and a ‘Don’t-you-know-who-I-am’ attitude.
He didn’t have to stretch too hard to really sell the ‘don’t-you-know-who-I-am’ irritation.
She called upstairs and after a few hurried redirects managed to get through to the CEO himself and appraised him of the situation. She hung up, and the receptionist informed Ted that he was coming down. A small bug seemed to fly off of Kord’s shoulder and seeing her reaction, Ted swatted at thin air and loudly exclaimed “And is it too much to fumigate in here? What kind of operation is Ray Palmer running here?”
“I’m sorry, Mister Kord. Doctor Palmer will be down very soon.”
Janet was carrying the message that the CEO was in motion and that Ted would look to stall him downstairs, or preferably off-site, for as long as possible. She flew into a thin air conditioning vent and rode upon air pockets which helped carry her up to meet up with Lang faster than her wings would generally carry her. She popped out of the vent, flew over and whispered Scott Lang’s cue to him.
“Clear. Ted’s got him downstairs.”
Lang unzipped his cleaning jumpsuit, and dropped his mop. Running for the CEO’s office through the wet floor, he shrank down to slip past Palmer’s personal secretary’s desk.
Wasp meanwhile flew over to the front facing window and looked down, hoping to see Ted lead the CEO away from the building. If he couldn’t convince him to walk off-site, their window of opportunity was set at two and a half minutes. If he could get him to leave, they agreed upon one and a half from the second he walked back into the building. Ted knew he wouldn’t be able to stall as well to drag out a goodbye, but if he could get him off site he also knew they should have more than enough time already.
“What is this, Ted? We don’t have any appointment.”
“Ahh, yeah. We do. April fifteenth last year ring a bell?”
“... No. Not particularly.”
“LAST April fifteenth. You don’t remember? We were at the Ivy Town Cybernetics Seminar…”
“Yes. I vaguely remember having a discu--”
“And we said we should meet up and compare notes on our preliminary nanites findings and discuss our ethical concerns for the industry... In OCTOB--”
“October. We said October, we never set an exact date and we haven’t even spoken since.”
“Well, forgive me for correcting you, Ray. But we did set a date. It’s why I’m here.”
“If we set a date I would have put it in my calen--”
“You didn’t have your calendar on you. We were at a seminar and just going back and forth, you said you’d add it later when you had a better working network connection.”
Ray Palmer furrowed his brow.
“I may not be a doctor, and I may not have gone to MIT but--“
“Oh don’t pull that card again, Ted…”
“--but if I can be so blunt, I know whose memory I’d trust...” Ted’s stomach churned from his deception.
“...” A smile gradually creased across Dr Palmer’s face.
“Well how can I argue with that? So where are we gonna do this? I should have a conference room free on--”
“No reason we should be so formal,” Ted replied, walking to the front entrance, “we could just do this in the grounds outside. Weather’s fine. Justify the gardeners pay.” Ted smiled.
“Just a second…” Ray turned back to the receptionist at the front desk. “Just call up to Tracey and tell her I’m going to be out the front for a while.” He turned back to Ted. “I may not be my brother’s keeper, but my secretary keeps me on a short leash.” He returned the smile. Ted was about to tell Doctor Palmer that his secretary was in the same boat when he spoke again.
“Probably for the best. When she lets me walk around free range that’s how appointments get missed.” He made a self deprecating joke and Ted’s guts churned like a tumble dryer as he gave a hollow laugh in response.
“He’s done it! He’s going!” Janet said, before flying over to Scott in the CEO’s office to tell him in person.
“He’s--”
“Got it!” Scott whispered hoarsely. “Clean room third floor, I’ve got the drawer and container numbers!” He quickly scribbled down two figures for himself. Got up from the chair, shrank back down and ran back to his cleaning coveralls. In seconds he zipped up the outer suit, grabbed the mop, rolled the bucket to the elevator and called for the lift. Wasp spent a final few seconds checking the CEO kept walking away from the building, before flying into the elevator as it dinged, the doors closed behind them.
“I should go get my notes though.” Ray Palmer thought, breaking free from Ted’s grip and stepping back towards his building.
“No!” Ted barked, before putting a lid on it. “No. As I said. No need to be so formal. I mean I’ve caught you at a bit of a disadvantage since you outright… forgot we were having this meeting. We’ll just keep it cazz. Just a chat. I won’t use my notes, you don’t use yours, we’ll just talk preliminary concerns. Shoot the breeze and then we can dig deeper next time we talk. You know. When you’re better prepared.”
“Wait a-- You’re not carrying notes.”
Ted’s mind kicked into overdrive. He tapped the side of his head and winked. “Truth be told I don’t ever need them. I just bring papers as a prop normally. Psychological.”
“So when you said you ‘won’t use your notes’... That was just bulls--”
“It was a gesture, since you’ve come in less than prepared.” Ted was making himself feel sick diving deeper with lie after lie.
“First general concerns to address... No Skynet, and no destroying New York or Star City with nanite drones.” Ted winked, as the pair walked.
“Ah, I see. Yes, I suppose there have been some recent developments which make it a bit more urgent for us to get the ball rolling.” Palmer chuckled. Believing he was reading between the lines as to why Ted had been pressing so hard that they go out and discuss their work. The tension in Ted’s shoulders left as the Doctor seemed to feel comfortable that this meeting was justified, but his stomach continued to tie itself in knots.
Scott pushed the mop bucket forward and out of the elevator as the doors opened. He swirled the mop around the floor, Wasp flew up to blindside the surveillance cameras. She disconnected the camera aimed at the Clean Storage room, and plugged the wire into the other camera.
From what little advance research on Palmer’s security Scott had been able to do, it seemed they used a system which cycled through camera angles on three monitors every five seconds, unless there was a manual override in progress. Every single camera in the facility, changing in five second increments. The risk was in the specific camera they were trying to take out being monitored by one of those three at that exact time. Otherwise, the cycle would just seem to skip the room they were in and use the other angle twice as much. Scott and Wasp would know soon enough if anyone had been watching that camera at the moment of change. Alarms would sound and they’d have maybe a minute tops, and more likely seconds, to shrink down and evacuate via the duct system roofside.
But no alarms had sounded. Scott ran into the clean room, he produced his scrap of paper and flicked through the draws until he found what he was looking for. He pulled the canister out of the drawer. About a foot long and clearly professionally labeled with a Palmer Medi-Tech decal. Scott reached inside his suit pocket and took out the other generic looking canister the Blue Beetle had given him.
Wasp looked at him as he held both canisters. “Do it!” She ordered him.
“Look it’s all well and good for us to talk all day.” Palmer surmised getting to his feet. “But we aren’t alone in this field. I mean if we can’t involve the likes of Pym, of Stark, so many others then nothing we say here is going to mean anything here.”
“But it’s got to start somewhere, Ray. And I speak with Pym on a pretty regular basis. We’ve discussed this before.”
Palmer raised his eyebrows. “Oh, you do? So let me see if I’ve got this down. You talk all of this out with Pym, and carve yourselves out the world of nanotech and then you come strolling up to Stark, a desperate Stagg, ME and whoever else and offer up the scraps if we go along with what you two are putting together. Then push out all of the other competition.”
Ted laughed, which only raised Palmer’s ire further.
“I’m sorry,” Kord said as he wiped his eye, “if you knew Hank Pym at all you’d know how ridiculous that assertion is. And frankly, I figured you knew me a little better than that too, Ray.”
“Stop using my first name. I barely know you at all.” Palmer grimaced.
“Hank doesn’t view science like that at all. The reason why I’m talking to you alone is because he’s pretty much a complete recluse. If I don’t go meet with people and have these discussions then they don’t happen. And they NEED to happen, Ra-- Doctor Palmer.”
Doctor Palmer looked over the younger CEO with significant scrutiny.
“I had a fully functional B.E.E.T.L.E suit already put together and with the means of production set when Stark pulled his Iron Man suit out of the market. I had the means to print money and I didn’t take it. Mankind has enough ways already to destroy itself, that’s not what I’m looking to do. Palmer Medi-Tech? I’m banking that you’re not looking to either.”
There was a long hesitation as Palmer eyed Kord, looking for the slightest tell that he wasn’t being straight forward with him. Then he reached out a hand. Ted took it and stood up, the pair started to walk back towards the building.
“So what’s he like? Hank Pym?” Ray Palmer asked him.
Ted looked up to the bright blue sky as if searching for the right words to describe him.
“Hank is… unique.” He finally came out with, as a broad smile crossed his face. “And thank God, because I don’t think the world could take a second one of him. I know I couldn’t.”
Scott stood on a chair and reached up for the camera, he unplugged the first camera from the second, and plugged it back in.
He got down and moved the chair back.
And that was when the alarm sounded. Scott sighed deeply. He tapped his interior pocket to make sure the canister was still there and shrank down. The pair made their escape.
Ray Palmer stepped back into his building as security was going into pandemonium. There had been some kind of breach down in Clean Storage. Palmer called for a report of the incident to be delivered to him as soon as facts came to light. He quickly went up the elevator to his office.
He sat behind his desk and tapped it anxiously. Then he looked down at his desk’s blotter paper and was stunned at what he saw.
A series of tiny wet footprints leading from the far side of his desk towards his seat. He rolled his seat back to try and get some sense of perspective. He furrowed his brow and looked at his note pad. He tore off a sheet from the bottom and using a pencil he scratched an etching of the note that had left a deep indentation in pen on the top. It was two numbers. Ray thought for a second and then called down to security, giving them the tip of what to look for in the Clean Storage room. After a few minutes they confirmed his tip was right. The canister at that number had been replaced with another. Generic and unlabelled.
His prototype medical nanites. The topic of discussion he’d just been having with Ted Kord as they were stolen right out from under him.
He looked back at his blotter paper. A drone of some kind? The footsteps were irregular. And shaped like a person’s, albeit miniature. But if they belonged to a robot then they should be uniform?
He rocked back in his seat and pondered what this could all mean for a few seconds before hitting the button on his phone for his secretary.
“Tracey, that lump of rock we’ve got down in Boston. I want you to double security on it and clear a sizable block of time with our senior scientists on site down there.” He said to her.
He tore off a section of the blotter paper with the footprints and held it up to the light.
“I think it’s time we had another look at that white dwarf star matter…”
C R O S S R O A D S I N N O V A T I O N S - T E S T F A C I L I T Y
Still Two Weeks Post-Crisis - But Later | A Not Particularly Clean Part Of New Jersey
“I’m going to be fine, Hank.” Janet whispered into her mouthpiece.
“I told Ted to take care and make sure you were OK. This doesn’t sound safe.”
“Everything’s going to be fine, Hank. It’s a good plan.”
“Everything is a good plan until it isn’t.” Hank replied, his voice rich with concern.
“Now hush. I have to concentrate for what comes next.”
Scott stood out in the open, exposed and worried about what would come next. Darren Cross and his lunatic brother were supposed to meet him here with Cassie. He still had the suit on underneath his cleaning coveralls, but it was a trump card he hoped to never use. The thought of what the Cross brothers might do with access to such technology was frightening to Scott. He’d not said anything to the Blue Beetle and Wasp, he didn’t want to make raise any more problems than he already had. He could barely believe when they’d agreed to help for the sake of his daughter, but I suppose that’s the kind of thing these hero types do.
Meanwhile, Ted crouched from his position of cover. He’d got to the meeting place a half an hour early and staked out a prime location to provide cover for Lang. Between him and Wasp, these Cross idiots wouldn’t know what hit th--
“Alright. Take your right glove off and throw it in the dirt and come out slow.” Came a rasping growl of a voice.
Ah shit.
Ted did as he was told. He removed the glove with the Bug’s controls and threw it away. He then raised his hands above his head, with his palms open and stepped out from behind his cover. He turned around and came face to face with “the other Cross brother”, decked out in a red and white tactical suit, with a cybernetic sight over his left eye and armed with a high powered rifle. Scott Lang was able to easily identify Darren Cross, the CEO and frontman of CrossRoads Innovations, but he had limited information on this more dangerous brother. All he knew was that he went by ‘Crossfire’ rather than an actual name and was former CIA. If Darren Cross had no brother according to birth records, it wouldn’t have surprised Ted at all. Hank couldn’t find a thing on him working behind the scenes other than a bunch of dark ops which even he couldn’t hack his way past to see what they entailed. Ted wasn’t sure he wanted to know, even if he had been able to.
“Wow. What do we have here? A gen-u-wine superhero. Now how on Earth did a scumbag like Lang find a way to get in touch with somebody in the capes and cowls community?” His voice was loaded with venom, but had a dark humour behind his growl at the situation.
“When you stole his daughter it activated his regional superhero social worker...”
The Cross brother with the darker past laughed, but without any trace of good humour to it. He poked him in the back with the muzzle of his rifle and gestured for the Blue Beetle to join Scott Lang in the clearing. Darren Cross was unseen, probably with Cassie Lang, and presumably armed. There was no play to be had here.
“I saw you when you got here thirty minutes ago. Pro tip, don’t leave it for the last half hour if you’re going to stake out an exchange point. I’ve had eyes on here for four hours.” He tapped his cybernetic implant.
“You capes and self-proclaimed heroes are all the same. All flash, no substance. Headline grabbing antics without basic fundamental training and craft behind what you do. Pitiful.” The former CIA agent spat his distaste.
“You’re just jealous because I have functioning depth perception.” Ted quipped as he was perp-walked down to where Lang was.
“They found me.” He said, stating the obvious to Scott.
“They did.” He said. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t risk her.”
Ted snorted as if he shouldn’t have been surprised.
“You ratted. The one person who came in willing to hear you out. To take your side and you sell me down the river…” Ted shook his head and looked away from Lang.
“It’s my daughter.” Was his only reply, baleful and regretful as it was.
Crossfire laughed. “He’s a goddamn thief, you idiot. You really thought you could trust him to be straight with you?”
The Blue Beetle drew his BB gun and levelled it at the Scott in rage.
“Uh, uh, uh.” Crossfire tutted at the Beetle. “As entertaining as it would be to watch you two tear each other apart, we’re not going to have any of that gun play here. Toss it in the dirt.”
The Blue Beetle let the BB gun swivel on his finger from the trigger guard, as he bit his cheek in frustration. “That’s a good boy.”
Crossfire spoke into a shoulder holstered mic. “Well, it looks like we’ve got everyone ready and waiting, brother. Time to make your fashionably late entry.”
A long Lincoln towncar rounded the bend a few hundred yards ahead of the trio. It drove up to them and took a hard turn right in front of them, showing the passenger side doors to the waiting onlookers. A large boot touched down in the dust ahead of them. The backdoor opened and a small girl came out calling for her father.
“Daaaaaad!”
“Cassie!”
“Hold it right there, Lang.”
“Cassie! Wait!” He held out an open palm. The blonde little girl stopped, clearly distressed.
“Have you got what you’re here for? I’d hate for this to abruptly change from happy family reunion to funeral.” The CEO of CrossRoads asked.
Scott Lang held out a single finger with his right hand to ask for a moment to get it. He put his left hand well within the folds of his own clothing and produced the Palmer Medi-Tech canister.
“What’s going to happen to him?” He asked about the Blue Beetle.
“Do you care, or furthermore, do you really want to renegotiate terms so close to getting what you want whilst looking down the barrel of a gun? I know you’re not in the business world, but a word to the wise… it’s not the best bargaining position.” A large smirk crossed his face.
“See, you’ve just proved your value here. But when I said no police, it kind of goes without saying that you shouldn’t have been going to the likes of him either. I think you’re getting off pretty light here by just having him be the cautionary tale in this one. What say you, brother?”
“I couldn’t agree more. Besides, I must say this one would reeeeeally pad out the resume. Never liquidated a superhero before.” Crossfire darkly leered.
“So… how are we going to do this?” Scott asked. “Because in terms of trustworthiness, I think I’ve proved myself at the head of the class on this one. So I think I get Cassie first, then someone - maybe this guy?” He suggested the Blue Beetle. “Gives one of you the canister, you give him the bullet and we should be all square.”
Cross snorted at the ridiculousness of giving the prize to the hero. “Leave the canister on the ground and come forward and get your daughter.”
He put the canister in the dirt and slowly started to walk forward, with his back to Crossfire. “Come here, Cassie.” He called. “It’ll all be over soon.” He had his suit coveralls unzipped and was wearing something strange underneath that he was also unzipping, but this wasn’t what had captured Darren Cross’ attention.
The would be the Blue Beetle, who had moved fast, spurning subtlety and drawing the CEO’s attention. Stomping on the ‘Release’ button on the canister, and releasing what nanites it contained in a quick expulsion of air. As well as the rest of its contents.
Scott Lang grabbed his daughter and held her tight to his chest, zipping up the suit over the pair of them and rapidly shrinking away from any stray gunfire.
“No!” Came the call from Darren Cross. Crossfire quickly swung the barrel of the gun to make short work of the hero only to find his muscles seize from a blast of bioelectricity.
Wasp had grown exponentially as soon as the canister’s release freed her from her own hiding place. She had seized the advantage and made sure the CIA agent would never get a shot off.
The Beetle dived back for his B.B gun and pulled the trigger on a blinding flash of light.
“Aaargh!” Cross howled, flinching away from the action.
It was all the opening that Scott Lang needed, he’d let others fight his battle for long enough. He grew once more to full size and in one motion spun to let Cassie out of the suit, before growing to nine feet tall. The giant figure took three lunging steps and unloaded a heavy right with the full weight of a much larger man into Cross’ jaw and the senior executive crumpled.
Scott stood over him and panted, the exertion had worn him out fast. And he was only slightly larger. He felt exhausted. He staggered back to Cassie and shrank back to his regular size. He dropped to his knees and hugged her, the pair of them emotionally and physically wrought.
“So, what have you got for me?” Palmer asked his head of security.
“Well, we’ve checked out the reference number you provided…”
Ray Palmer furrowed his brow. Ted Kord kept him out of the building discussing issues pertaining to his prototypical medical nanites, whilst someone else broke into his building and stole the exact thing they’d been discussing under the pretext of a meeting they were “supposed to have” which Ray had no record for in his calendar. The whole thing was far too on the nose to be any kind of coincidence.
“Let me guess... It’s gone.” Palmer finished his sentence.
“Well, yes and no, sir.”
“Yes and-- How do you figure?”
“Well, the canister itself is gone, sir. In it’s place is this generic canister. And when we checked it the contents. Well… It’s a full canister. And it contains your patent-pending medical nanites. It appears that the break-in culprits just relocated the nanites to a fresh canister and stole the Palmer Medi-Tech tube.”
Ray Palmer considered this news, adding it to what he already knew, tenting his hands with his fingers to his mouth.
“Thank you.” He said as he turned his seat. “That should be all.”
The Hell was Kord up to..?
Doctor Palmer pondered. Switching nanite canisters still left trace quantities in the original. Trace quantities would be all the likes of a Ted Kord, or especially a Hank Pym, would need to replicate and learn from the technology. Technically, this could just be Kord trying to steal his tech so he could learn from it. But that didn’t scan for a few reasons. First of all, it would make more sense to just outright steal the nanites in their original canister. Replacing the tube made it no less obvious that the theft had taken place. In fact, the presence of a non-Palmer MediTech tube made it more blatant that something strange had taken place. Did Kord WANT him to know he was stealing his tech? Was this part ofthat Kord-Pym powerplay he’d suspected. Trying to edge him out, so they wouldn’t even need him? Or was this something else? What else could it be?
Scott, Janet and Ted all sat around Hank and Janet’s kitchen table in full costume. Hank was also there dressed in his regular lab coat. And L-Ron was naked. Which was usual, unless a chassis counts. Which it doesn’t.
Scott had dropped Cassie back off at Peggy’s. A lot of the stress having dissipated and changing form more to general excitement than anything else. To her, her father had become a superhero just to save her. She knew enough that if her mother found out what had happened, there would be no calming her down, so it could be their little secret. Couldn’t it? Her dad was a superhero. Her dad was HER superhero and she couldn’t wait to see him again, next time she got to visit.
“So I suppose you want the suit back, Hank? It’s only fair--” Scott started to unzip. Janet looked away until Ted told her he was wearing shorts and a t-shirt underneath.
“No. I-- I don’t think I need it.” Hank said.
Scott raised an eyebrow.
“I was just upset that it was stolen. That people close to me would do that.” He said.
“Aww Hank. Buddy, I’m sorry. But I-- I know it doesn’t make it right, but I needed it.”
“I know. I’m not really upset about that now. I’m more upset that you never asked and just took it.”
“Well, I couldn’t really risk you saying I couldn’t have it. I needed it. It was Cassie.”
Ted rocked back and watched everything, before making a suggestion.
“I think I’ve got an idea that makes a lot of sense.”
Janet looked at him and scowled. “Ted, no.”
“Well, Hank pretty much just gave him the suit.”
Scott turned to the pair, not really understanding what was being said.
“The only job Scott’s been able to get is as a cleaner. I’m pretty sure he could use a job which pays a bit better for his skills. This gives us a chance to make sure the suit isn’t being used… improperly. It puts pay in Scott’s pocket, which in turn will let himself get set up enough that he could still keep in touch with his family. And it gets us another team member.”
“What are we talking about?”
Janet and Ted both turned to him, on opposite ends of the emotional spectrum regarding his possible membership.
“Super Buddies.”
“Oh. You’re going to have to come clean with Ray Palmer too. It’ll be alright, I’ll go with you and smooth all of that out with him. Explain why we needed one of his company decal’d containment tubes. I’ll have a word with the parole board in the morning as well. And we can work out a system where this will count towards work and time served on your parole period, in addition to having your name kept out of things. The last thing we want is for this to splash back again on Cassie and your ex-wife.”
“My wife. We’re not divorced.”
“Didn’t you say she’d changed her name?”
“It’s probably just a phase. It can’t be easy being married to someone who’s in prison and having to explain that to people!”
Ted offered a skeptical, yet sympathetic expression.
“This is a terrible idea.” Said Janet. “You’re just going to completely forget what he did to poor Hank?”
“I’m not forgetting it at all.” Ted said to Wasp, before turning to face Scott. “And he’s on a ZERO tolerance probationary period, where he has to be COMPLETELY HONEST with us about things like this. Anything that’s giving him trouble. We can work through stuff like this. You’ve just seen that, Scott. But you’ve got to let us know. No long cowboy stuff and absolutely no robbing. OK?”
Scott nodded enthusiastically.
“See? He gets it. Part of this whole Super Buddies thing is trying to make a difference in society. Whether that be accepting metahumans as people who have the same rights as all of us, or whether it’s showing the public that reformation is possible and should be the goal of the prison system. Wait, you’re not one of those metahuman bigots are you?”
“Uhh… no?” Scott replied, wondering where that question came from.
“Great! That’s what I thought.” The Blue Beetle continued jovially.
Janet did not look happy about any of this.
“OK. But I get to treat him like crap, and stinging him is an acceptable communication method between us.”
“Fine by me.” Said Ted.
“Wait, what?” Scott asked.
“Ahhh!”
“OK. Yeah.” Janet said. “Maybe this could work, after all…”
' T H E E M B A S S Y ‘
Present Day | Manhattan, New York
The man in red showed his little girl around his own bedroom in the superhero fortress known as ‘The Embassy’. She gaped in wonder at the ins-and-outs and had a hundred questions ranging from his female teammates through to what he thought he’d be doing for this team. How big he could grow. How small he could get. Then the one in the blue cowl came and wrapped on his door.
“Sorry, Scott. Her mother’s at the front door. Time to go home, kiddo.”
Scott picked Cassie back up, put her on his shoulders, although he could barely do it anymore. She was growing so fast. Even without affected Pym Particles.
He put her down as they got close, and she took his hand and they walked to the front door and revealed Peggy, not too pleased to be kept waiting.
“Oh is she going?” A Scandinavian voice called out, as a beautiful woman in tight blue pants and white hair ran over and gave his daughter a hug. “We’ll see you next time, Cassie! Come back soon!”
Peggy looked at Scott and raised a single eyebrow. Scott looked at his wife with curiosity until he realized what she was suggesting.
Another beautiful woman in a two-piece swimsuit, with long green hair cascading down her bare shoulders walked past calling out in a thick South American accent “Bye, Cassie!”
The eyebrow dropped and the skepticism left her face as if she’d just had her doubts justified.
“Oh! No. That’s not--” He raised a single finger to correct her.
Suddenly Janet Van Dyne stepped into the doorway in front of Scott. Arching her back against him and purring.
“Ohh, you’re not going too, are you, Scotty?” She played with his hair.
Peggy flushed red with anger.
“Ohhhh no. No. This I can explain. I know how this looks, but she’s messing with me. This isn’t that kind of place.”
Suddenly L-Ron clanked to the doorway from parts unseen within the compound.
“Oh, Hello! I don’t suppose you have any pictures of yourself?”
Peggy’s jaw dropped to the floor. She quickly grabbed Cassie and began the long march to the main gates.
“OK. That-- That I can’t explain. Peggy? Peggy!?” But she was well beyond earshot.
“I don’t suppose you think we’re even now, do you?” He turned, speaking to Janet.
“Not by a long shot, 'Scotty'. Never. Ever. Mess with my Hank.”
Sparks flew and Scott Lang cried out.
“Ahh!”
