So you might as well have a good time

[ya_rpg_npc]

The elevator doors 'ding'ed open and Eli entered the Tower. He'd had a nice, long ...involved talk with his grandparents about being a super hero and being more polite to Captain America and how he was never allowed to scare them like that againNow his only question was where was everyone else

Comments

[cute_hats]

"That's good." She grinned. Molly hadn't thought this guy would ship her off, but you never knew... "You think they're full of it too? That's what my friends're always saying!! We should team up more, like a crossover or something! That would be totally awesome!"

At his question, she looked around. Naturally, the hallway was pretty empty. She hadn't seen any of her friends since she had gotten up; the Runaways quarters looked pretty deserted. Molly guessed that Victor had done his Magneto thing and gone out through the bent bars, but that was about it. The others could be anywhere. Well...almost anywhere. Karolina at least usually kept to a few main places...the bedroom, the kitchen, or outside. It wasn't time for food yet (she kept them on a pretty regular schedule when she could help it...Karolina was like a mom that way only way cooler), so that left outside.

"Well..I dunno. I think Victor left but Karolina is probably outside somewhere! She might be at the pool on the roof. I sleep to power up, but she's solar powered. I know Mr. Stark has a pool cause I saw it on Cribs. You wanna go find her?"

[kristoffv]

Kristoff refused to believe he was ever a child. He failed to understand half the things the girl was saying. He looked to Elijah. "What is 'Cribs'?" He asked quietly.

[ya_rpg_npc]

"It's a TV show about the homes of the rich and famous." Eli replied, resisting the urge to roll his eyes and ask Kristoff what rock he'd crawled out from under. Eli didn't even watch that much TV and he knew what Cribs was. Of course, they might not have it in Latveria, what with the rich and famous there pretty much consisting of Doctor Doom; so maybe it was just as good that Eli had resisted.

"Sure, that sounds good." he said to Molly. Maybe Karolina would know where his team had disappeared to.

"Doesn't what we're doing now count as a crossover anyway?"

[cute_hats]

Molly nodded quickly, still smiling. "Just lemme get my regular clothes on!"

As she started to go into the room, he responded to her comment about crossovers. She paused for a moment, considering. They were kinda hanging out and stuff. But..

"Maybe kinda. I just mean we need some kind of giant evil villain guy to work together on, but not some boring old second stringer. A big one, that we have to team up on. Like...Like...Dr. Doom!" Naturally, she had no idea that Kristoff was related to the supervillain in any way.

"I'll be right back!"

She disappeared into her room and it wasn't long before she popped back out, new hat and all. As she stood there, she looked down the hallway both ways, perplexed.

"Okay, I'm ready! But I don't know where the elevator is..."

[kristoffv]

Kristoff's face tiwtched. That allusion to fighting rattled loose some memories of Doom's.

"I doubt Doom would take an interest in a group of adolescents and a prepubescent. Unless I were to provoke him in some manner."

[ya_rpg_npc]

"You'd be surprised at the number of people we've managed to upset." Eli replied wryly. "We tend to stick with Avengers' villains though, so Doom may take awhile to get to. The elevator's this way." he added to Molly, heading back the direction that he and Kristoff had come.

[cute_hats]

"Cool Captain America is right!" Molly had established that Eli was cool merely by the fact that he wasn't all uptight and stuff like the old Captain America that smelled like Old Spice. "But me and my friends get mostly second stringers. Except for the creepy old gods that don't like us. And the Ultron that's no longer supported by Microsoft. But he pretended to be Dr. Doom!"

The elevator arrived and they stepped on it, riding up to the pleasant Muzak that was piped in through unseen speakers. Molly rocked back and forth on her heels, her hands shoved into her pockets as she stared up at the floor numbers changing. Then she remembered something Kristoff had said.

"You can provoke Dr. Doom? How?"

[kristoffv]

"I was his adopted son." Kristoff said curtly. He looked at the small girl. "Did you say you faced Ultron?" That was very hard to believe, given the Avengers had problems fighting against the robot.

[cute_hats]

Molly's eyes went huge. Kristoff was the child of a supervillain too?? And Dr. Doom! Nobody knew about the Pride (well, until recently), but eeeeverybody knew about Dr. Doom! He was like, universe level evil!

"You were adopted by Dr. Doom?? That's freaking awesome!! What was he like as a dad? Did he do evil dad things like make you clean your room? My dad made me clean my room every freaking day. It totally sucked."

She shifted her feet sheepishly when she started to respond to his question about Ultron. "Well, we kinda did. He was the older, used model without all the updates and stuff, and we still had to run away and leave him to Excelsior. But we fought him! He was Victor's dad and we were trying to save Victor from a life of evilness. Evil robots taking over the world is totally lame and overdone. We couldn't let Victor become a cliche!"

[kristoffv]

Kristoff ignored Molly's questions. People found it hard to believe that Victor von Doom had been an excellent father and Kristoff had learned much under his care, groomed as the heir apparent. It wasn't until after he had come to terms with the transfer of memories and thoughts into his own mind that Kristoff realized perhaps von Doom hadn't had Kristoff's best interests at heart, only his own.

"Ultron is Victor's father?" He believed he remembered this Victor person. Interesting.

[ya_rpg_npc]

Eli thought that he remembered Victor as well. A son of Ultron, huh? He'd have to run that by Vision, see what he thought about it. It might be nice for Vision to have some family that wasn't either dead, lost or a super villain.

Eli wondered how Iron Lad was getting on and curled his hands into fists.

The elevator 'ding'ed and stopped on the roof and he pushed those dark thoughts to a corner of his mind.

[burningpainting]

Tony Stark did, indeed, have a rooftop-pool. During most of the year it was encased in greenhouse paneling that retracted during nice weather. The structure had been almost completely ruined in the Skrull/Kree attack and, aside from sweeping up the debris, no effort had been made to repair it.

Karlina didn't mind. It was a balmy 78 degrees outside and she preferred her sunlight completely unobstructed anyway. It had been a long time since she'd simply basked without timing her internal power cells. The pool might not be safe to swim in (who knew what laserfire did to chlorine levels?), but the terra-cotta tiles were warm and inviting.

She spread a towel down pool-side and stretched out on her stomach. While clothing continued to turn up in their closets (she suspected Jarvis' hand in that), her slowly expanding wardrobe did not include a bathing suit, so she made do with a brief halter and cutoffs. She much preferred Nico's designs over the stuff that kept appearing, but she hadn't the heart to tell Jarvis; he was such a nice old man.

Karolina was half-dozing when the elevator announced itself. She sat groggily up on her elbows and shook her loose hair out of her face.

"Hey Molly," she called, "Making new friends?"

[cute_hats]

"Yep! He..um..he.." Molly scratched her head, thinking. "Well, I really don't know how he was made by Ultron and his mom. It's a bunch of weird scifi channel computer stuff, but I know about the birds and the bees and I've seen Ultron naked and he doesn't have a--"

The door dinged open and she was cut off by hearing Karolina call out to her. Her attention immediately diverted as she ran towards the older girl.

"Karolina!! That guy Eli is way cooler than Captain America! And the other guy is the adopted son of freaking Dr. Doom!!! He's Kristoff."

She looked over at Kristoff, something occurring to her. "Is your last name still Doom?"

[kristoffv]

"No, it is Vernard." At least, that was the one Kristoff preferred. He had many surnames he could claim.

Kristoff found it hard to take his eyes off of Karolina. After all, he was a 15 year old boy and she was showing a lot of skin, but he managed to reign in his hormones.

[ya_rpg_npc]

My life, Eli thought to himself, putting the concept of naked Ultron firmly from his mind, is so weird.

The roof was still a mess. He'd seen the live news reports in the hospital and he'd wanted to rush right over, but his grandparents had expressly forbidden it. His grandma had even threatened to have the nurses come in and restrain him before he ruptured his stitches. Not that he was likely to, what with the super soldier serum in his veins and all, but Eli suspected that his grandmother had the mutant power of inflicting guilt trips.

Eli had called and called the Tower for what seemed like hours before he'd gotten ahold of someone who could tell him what had happened.

He had a little better luck than Kristoff at keeping his eyes off of Molly's leggy, blonde friend.

[burningpainting]

Karolina sat up on her knees as Molly ran towards her like an excited puppy. She almost warned her not to run by the pool, but swallowed the remark just in time. Molly made her feel so old sometimes.

She squinted up at the two boys accompanying her friend and tried not to look as though she were appraising them. She'd never met either boy before, though she vaguely recognized Kristoff from the big brawl. Molly's enthusiastic introduction of Eli set off instinctive warning bells, but he wasn't old enough to be anything but a Young Avenger, and she'd seen how they looked out for their own.

Besides, Molly disliked the original Captain as much as the rest of them. There was no sense in creating any more friction between their two teams. She was already on decent terms with Teddy.

"Nice to meet you," she said amiably, completely unselfconscious about her state of undress. People walked around LA in a whole lot less every day. "Were you giving Molly a tour or something? The Avengers hadn't really given us much of a chance to explore."