Logs:Operation: S.O.L.S.T.I.C.E.

Operation: S.O.L.S.T.I.C.E.
SHIELD Overtaken: Ludicrous Summer Tomfoolery Induces Chaotic Emotions
Dramatis Personae Wendy, Polaris, Kitty, Ryan, Scramble, Natasha, Clint, Fury, Not Matt, Lucien, FitzSimmons
In Absentia Jax, Matt, Taylor, B	summer solstice '23 / jax's 31st birthday "Was that not party enough for you, Director?" (Jax's birthday party part 1-- preceded by disembarking, dancing, deliberating.)
Location <NYC> Rooftop - S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ - Times Square
There's an unexpected oasis at the top of this gleaming high-rise, the whole of it carpeted in thick, soft, layered ground cover of sedums, grass, and moss. A small, carefully manicured grove serves as the centerpiece, with benches, tables and chairs scattered around in the shade. Beside it, a professionally landscaped garden boasts a pond and quite a few planters that either used to hold plants or still hold dying ones. The greenhouse is somewhat sparsely and eclectically populated with tropical plants, flanked by garden beds even more sparsely planted. An open lawn on the side overlooking Times Square makes a great spot for a picnic. The otherwise unsightly structure housing the roof access, a single stall bathroom, and tool shed has been covered on three sides with turf and shaped into a little promontory offering a breathtaking view of the city. The lawn has been well trampled under the dimming stage, the wires to generators for some of the lights slowly being unplugged as the live music portion of the evening seems to be winding down. The DJ has shifted to some sort of "Last Songs" playlist, the energy more muted after so many hours of revelry. The sun is some hours gone, now, though the little suns of the fae-like uniforms of Jax's friends and Ryan's crew are easy still to pick out across the roof as they glow. Up on the promontory, transport crew is dutifully returning people to Times Square below, though in a slower, unhurried rush compared to when everyone first arrived. Fitz and Simmons have become more inseparable as the night has gone on -- now, stumbling towards the exit back to SHIELD HQ, the exact way they lean together seems to be all that is holding either of them upright. They're moving as one unit, at least -- or it looks like it until Simmons stumbles towards a Mongrel helping out by passing out water with all of his undulating arms again. "-- nervous system so distributed but clearly there is a main human-like brain how does he do it --" "No no no Jemma focus --" is too little too late before the uncoordinated limbs of FitzSimmons (unhelpfully unlinked by any nervous system across two bodies) tangle and they trip, stumble, fall onto the ground. Well, they nearly made it to the door this time! Maybe, if Simmons can tear her eyes away from Taylor, they can get downstairs sometime this evening. How long has Wendy been here? It's hard to say, but judging by the Captain America Playbill peeking out of her clutch, probably she was a fairly late arrival. Still, it's been long enough to warmly wish Jackson for his birthday, long enough to sample what remained of the delicious snacks before they get tidied back through the portals, long enough to find herself accosted by an excited trapeze artist from her circus troop who is tipsy enough to be thrown far off-balance when Wendy side-steps the hug he tries to come in for -- he recovers the near-topple with an acrobat's facility and is, now, gushing about the flowing green crepe jumpsuit Wendy is wearing, trying to reach for the wide belt that cinches it at one side, this time not stumbling when Wendy, with a small twitch of lips, side-steps that, too. She pulls out her phone. Texts him the boutique. Asks him, with a small tilt of head, if he has a buddy to get him home. After a consideration, also steers him in the direction of the friends he came in with, just in case. Polaris has been here all night, fluttering about spreading cheer--or at least chatter--amongst the partygoers. She's in a metallic purple-green duochrome corset dress, semi-sheer black blouse, wide v-shaped chainmaille belt, and black ankle strap pumps. Her long green hair is bound up in two crown braids woven together with a glowing flower crown, decked with intricate woven wire cuffs and choker, and an event workers' sun wands dangles from her belt beside a black velvet purse. Though she's fully sober at the end of a long evening, the excitement of the concert gone, there's a slightly frenetic edge to her energy, still. Maybe that will come in handy when it's time to break down the stage, but for now she's just--not quite pacing the lawn, but wandering in somewhat restive. She watches the drunk guy stagger away, eyes lingering long enough to see that he's cleared a table he looked liable to walk right into. Then, shaking her head, follows his path back whence he'd stumbled, eyes going wide an instant before her gaze actually finds-- "Wendy!" She stares for a moment, expression frozen, then takes a few steps toward her. "Oh my God, you--you came back! Did you--" Her last few steps are more hesitant, her eyes still wide as she looks Wendy up and down. "Are you just here for the party?" Wendy has just been going to claim herself a glass of wine before it all vanishes from the open-bar-table as it gets backed away, but stops short of pouring herself any. She looks up, hand tight around the bottle, and sets it back down. She takes a few small steps back as Polaris closes in, her not-really-a-skirt swirling around her as her head tilts to one side. She grips her clutch just a little tighter. "Five months ago," she replies, quietly, and then, with a small-tight smile, "I told the friends I thought would care." Polaris stops, looks as though she'd been physically slapped. For the space of a breath she just glares at Wendy's hands around her purse, tears brimming. "Wow. I may be a shit friend where you get off acting like--what? I'm gonna rob you? Attack you?" Her voice trembles as it rises. "You know what, fuck you." She whirls around stalks away to the chorus of rattling, shivering steel. Not far away, Ryan has been draped across one of SHIELD's actual pieces of furniture, here, planted on a picnic table with boots on the bench, stretched languid back on the prop of one elbow. "I am too distressingly sober to deal with the --" His hand flutters towards where Polaris is leaving Wendy behind as she storms off; his words come with a very faint and muted echo of icy-hurt-fury borrowed from That Part Of The Roof. "Though I gotta admit I am dying to know what the tea is on -- hoooly shit." He's propped himself up a little higher, eyes wide as he tracks past Polaris's exit to a redhead entering from the hillock roof access door. "That can-not be -- is that -- Damn but that woman got some balls on her." "I'll trade," Kitty replies, doing her level best to continue leaning against and not into Ryan's leg. Her commemorative HOLLAND WAS RIGHT shirt hangs loose over her dress, her grip on a bottle of water tight as though it might slip from her grip. "I'm not sober enough -- oh, oy--" But she is alert enough to follow Ryan's gaze, her own eyes going wide-wide. "-- I haven't seen her around shul, I thought she was gone-gone. Maybe," is a little hopeful, but mostly resigned as Kitty looks around the rest of the roof, voice faltering when she sees the subject of her question, "Scramble's already headed out?" Nat is not dressed like it's a fancy-dance party, but then, she hasn't been here, dancing or otherwise. She's in black stretch jeans tucked into high leather boots, a black camisole under a gauzy white blouse fluttering open over it. She's clearly come out here looking for someone, a black tablet tucked under her arm and her gaze searching -- but who she finds first is Definitely Not her target. Her eyes open just a fraction wider, flicking -- the door she came from, one side of the roof, another side -- reflexive even though she really does not need to check for the exits up here. Her forefinger taps lightly against the tablet she's holding, eyes continuing to flick for just another second like she is suddenly recalculating the urgency of this specific errand. Scramble might in fact be dressed up for a fancy-dance party, or maybe she just came as she was. She probably had a jacket at some point, but in deference to the dancing she's just in her formal cut over a purple button-down with an optically puzzling gold sheen, sharp black trousers stitched in gold, and black motorcycle boots with gold buckles. Her 'fro is teased out into a perfect soft halo, her makeup bold and black, accented with bright gold that matches her hoop earrings, bangles, and the simple ankh pendant framed by the unbuttoned collar of her shirt. She's just parted ways from some other revelers and turning, freezes when she sees Nat. Narrows her eyes. Stalks over toward her, not in a straight line but a sort of arcing spiral, looking the other woman up and down until they're close enough to touch. No closer. "Now, I must be some extra special kind of crazy thinking you have enough decency to answer this, but." Her voice is cold and sharp and tightly controlled. "What have you got to say for yourself?" Clint is dressed like it's a fancy-dance party only in the sense that he, like half the random Chimera punks and protesters from downstairs, is wearing a birthday edition HOLLAND WAS RIGHT tee (still crinkly from the cannon), some blue jeans, and sneakers. He had been on a pretty direct path to intercept Nat but mellowed out his approach a little so that he fetches up more meanderingly near the two women, looking slightly nonplussed. He lifts one eyebrow slightly at Scramble, then the other at Nat without lowering the first while he signs, subtle, one-handed, 'Need a moment?' Nat looks over to Clint -- then to Scramble on her approach. The shake of her head is very small. She tucks her hair (cut severe and sharp and sleek-straight, now, around her chin) behind her ear and just watches Scramble until she is close. "What do you want me to say, Scramble?" She's tilted her head just-so to look up at the taller woman. "I had a job to do." "You really pulling 'I was just following orders'?" Scramble laughs a quiet and breathy chuckle. "NO!" This roared so loud and sudden it feels like a physical blow. "Did your job tell you to fuck me? To hold me while I cried? You get paid extra when I fell in love?" The words come rapid-fire until her voice breaks on the last word, her eyes brimming. "Bullshit. You could have done your work without defiling me. Were you playing house to pass the time? Were you just curious how far you could string me along." She swallows, tears breaking loose and streaming down as her eyes track over to Clint. In sign to him, fast and fluid, 'She stole years from me, and I can't have one moment. You with this bitch, you might want to reconsider.' Clint blinks at Nat, then blinks at Scramble, slowly developing a frown as he tries to follow her rapid speech. The frown vanishes as his eyes go wide at the signing which is--possibly also too rapid for him to easily follow. "Thank you," he sim-coms, "for the advice." Then, after a small hesitation, "But I don't think this is quite on the level of the--" His lips compress and he drops the signing and just says, "--Holocaust." "Oh, you really are crazy if you think that card's going to work on me," Natasha replies, and her voice doesn't have any of Scramble's icy-sharpness but it is flat and deeply unimpressed. "Stopping you dumbasses from getting even more of yourselves killed makes me a Nazi? Saving your sister makes me a Nazi? You catching feelings is not a genocide. You know --" She doesn't finish this thought. Just furrows her brow, slightly. Shakes her head, slightly. Gives Clint a small lift of brows, and turns to walk back inside. Kitty is not looking at the explosion of drama Over There, she's drinking water. Staying Hydrated. "-- how the hell did Nazis get involved over there -- did I ever tell you about this one time, I was back in Chicago --" She lifts her chin off Ryan's leg, turning her head to look at him more directly, but pauses when someone else enters her peripheral vision. "Oh -- I thought he wasn't going to make it." Kitty sinks just a little lower into the bench, hiding behind Ryan's leg. "Lucien isn't here to talk to you, is he?" "Nat did a genocide on their relationship?" is Ryan's very patchy-confused guesstimate of the current complaint. "Not how I'd put a breakup but I guess if I'd ever been dumped maybe I'd feel more -- uh." He does not supply a terminal adjective, here; he's following Kitty's gaze and sitting up just a little straighter to afford her better hiding spot. "If I had to guess he's here to wish Jax a happy birthday, same as -- well," he's wry, amusement bubbling through his voice, "a solid three percent of the crowd was tonight. Probably a minimally-explosive conversation." Fury is looking only slightly worse for his evening of (mostly) reluctant revelry as he comes away from grousing at Ryan's staff, eager for them to be packed up and gone. He settles heavily on a bench at the edge of the grove and watches the cleanup effort as though suspicious it might stop if he doesn't keep a weather eye. From somewhere inside his duster he produces a flask and drinks deep, presumably as a safeguard against sobriety sneaking up on him unawares. Perhaps he is guarding too well in that specific direction, because in his relief he heaves a long sigh and closes his eye -- just for a moment. Just for a moment is long enough to find himself lightly burdened by the languid drape of an arm, the languid drape of a Tessier against his side. Matt is suddenly upon him for the second time tonight, come up from behind Fury and leaning down over the older man to pluck at his flask, familiar and uninvited. Quiet, pitched in just a low murmur by the other man's ear: "It looks like my secondary power is catching you with guard down." It's not Fury he's looking at but the roof's latest arrival, though, while he drinks. Deep. And puts on a bright and familiar smile as Lucien approaches: "-- You never told me what a brilliant dancer the Director is. I can't believe you were keeping this man's charms all to yourself." The party is near wound down, so perhaps it's fine that Lucien is dressed down, stage-door casual in his cream poplin button-down and camel twill trousers. There's a package under one arm, light and flat and slender and wrapped in heavy matte-textured black paper with brilliant metallic sunbursts exploding across it. The ribbon has been tied in a simple bow, and tucked in the knot, a sunflower blossom and sprig of lavender preserved in gold. The envelope tucked beneath the flowers reads only, for Jackson, in elegant calligraphed script on its front, and clearly it's that headache of Fury's that he's come here seeking, but almost instinctively he's drifting -- towards Matt? Towards Fury? His steps slow but do not stop entirely, when Matt(?) drapes himself against Fury, murmurs in his ear. There's a ripple and a tightening across his mind, brief, and even more fleeting, a small press of lips, a very small exhale. He keeps his usual soft cadence as he drifts to a stop on Fury's other side, though, thumb tracing light against one gilded petal-edge. "-- Ah. I see you two have been getting better acquainted." Fury tenses, going very still at Matt's touch. His hand reaches stealthily beneath the other flap of his duster, then just as stealthily withdraws when he realizes who has snuck up on him unawares. He does not relax, though. "Mister Tessier," he says, with an air of tremendous forbearance that admirably covers his nerves. "We are both drunk, it doesn't mean anything..." He trails off, following Matt's sightline to Lucien. This time his "Mister Tessier!" is at once relieved and flustered, and somewhere in between his accent is slipping back toward his native Southern Appalachia. "Oh, your brother here was just..." What was Matt doing, anyway? "...bein' hospitable. For which I'm of course very much obliged." "I'm a gentleman," The Other Mister Tessier says, wide-eyed, as he sips again at Fury's flask and then returns it to its owner. "I wouldn't take advantage. Not until you're sober." He's pulling himself up, remarkably steady on his feet for all the drink-fuzzed warmth layered into Matt's voice and Matt's bright eyes. "I was enjoying the Director's hospitality. Not quite up to your snuff, my dear, but it's been an --" His eyes are tracking one of the boxes of brilliantly sun-themed decorations before it vanishes through a portal. "Enlightening evening all the same." Inside Lucien's mind a further tightening, hard and twisting itself into knots. His eyes lower to the present he holds, finger still drawing slow against the flower -- before, abruptly, snapping back up to -- not Matt. "My brother," he says, lighter but sharper now than before, "was just leaving. This party or that --" He looks the other up and down, quick, "body or both, before I cast you out like some unwanted demon. Goodness, but I hope he hasn't been giving you too much trouble, Director." Fury gratefully reclaims his flask and takes a swig, only barely not choking on it in the process. "I ain't been no kinda hospitable since your client done sprung this --" He breaks off and waves in the direction of the staff members packing up nearby. "You said it was gon' be a 'birthday party'," he says reproachfully, walking his accent back toward the coast, "that's talkin' out the side'a your mouth's what that is." Whatever curmudgeonly bluster he was working his way up to deserts him at Lucien's threat. "Whoa, now, hold on just a minute." He rises -- not quite so sure on his feet, especially when his eyes track too quick from one Tessier to the other. "He surely been a pain in my ass on Mister Holland's account, but he ain't done no real harm." The Not At All Matt is touching fingers to his chest, eyes open wider in wounded affront. "Daddy musta been a glassmaker, way you see right through me," and it's not Matt's voice now but Fury's gruff one, The Other Tessier's skin darkening, hair receding, thin form filling out so tall and so broad it actively pops several of the buttons on his green shirt. And though it's still Fury's voice, it's Matt's lilting cadence that jarringly delivers, now: "Was that not party enough for you, Director?" His broad hand trails lightly against the actual Director Fury's shoulder as he saunters off, past a knot of agents perhaps goggling at seeing Fury In Vivid Color, for once -- and then disappearing through a portal. Lucien's broad shoulders relax, just fractionally, and he slumps down into the seat Fury had just vacated, looking a bit wistfully at the older man's flask. "After all this time spent around Jackson I should think it a given, Director. In this crowd, around this company, it does not always suit to believe your eyes." His head is rolling back, and though he doesn't watch Mirror head off, a ghost of a smile trails over his face when they've gone. "Your birthday is coming up, no? If this was not party enough for you, I am confident they can outdo themselves." "Is that minimally explosive, shapeshifting in front of the Head World Cop seems a little explosive." Somewhere in this tomfoolery Kitty has peeked up over Ryan again -- just to make sure No Tessiers are heading her way, at first, though it subsequently devolved into some more unabashed people-watching. There is tension leaving Kitty's shoulders as she leans -- drapes, really -- her arms and head across Ryan's lap again. "When do you think Fury's birthday is, anyway?" Ryan's shoulders are shaking as he watches Mirror head off, though he's stifling his laughter fairly thoroughly. His hand rests lightly on her shoulder, fingers drumming lightly in idle thought. "You telling me this motherfucker's a Cancer?" A little light incredulity, there. The smile he turns down to Kitty is broad. "Whenever it is, best believe we're going show him what a birthday party can be."