(Untitled)

[waltsnothereman]

Though she had gone into things today with an open mind, Wanda's love/hate relationship with the bookshelf was strongly leaning towards the latter half of that equation at the moment. One would think that after so long, she'd have learned to just put any questionable materials back where she found them before they had the chance to completely mess

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[mendndefend]

"Wanda," says Heather slowly, cradling a cup of coffee in her hands as she steps out of the kitchen and into the rec room, a makeshift file tucked under her arm, brimming with papers. She looks over at her friend curiously, her brows drawn inwards as she tries to make out the title of the book from a distance.

"What are you reading?" She hesitates a moment, then adds, "And more importantly, what in the world is a 'Psyche FEAT Roll'?"

[waltsnothereman]

Automatically, Wanda shifted to move the book somewhere Heather couldn't see it quite as well, but gave up that endeavor after a second. There wasn't much point to it and besides, it wasn't as if she didn't have a right to see it. There was a cut-out character card for her in the back, too, even if their takedown of Justin Hammer had come before her days as Vindicator.

"How is that the more important thing?" she asked, the sheer absurdity of the situation apparently making her focus on the oddest things.

[mendndefend]

For a second Heather simply purses her lips in thought, unsure of why she'd latched onto that question besides the obvious: "It was the only part of what you'd read that made no sense."

The rest of it sounded suspiciously familiar, after all, if a little unflattering. They were all of them subject to their fits, though Wanda's -- or Walter's, rather, she supposes -- had resulted in significantly more property damage than everyone else's, making his a bit more notable in the grand scheme of things.

"Although the stuff about the points didn't make much sense, either. I wasn't aware you kept score."

[waltsnothereman]

"See, that's just it. I didn't. That honour seems to have gone to whoever was playing me. It's a game." Something like Dungeons & Dragons from the look of things, and for once, Wanda was thankful that she'd never given in whenever Bruce had tried getting her to go to one of his little nerd gatherings back in college.

"We're uh, we're in it," she slowly adds, making a face. At least Heather could do worse, stumbling across something like this instead of some comic featuring her and everyone they cared about laying dead in the snow.

[ahazardofhead]

"I heard that, but I could make no sense of it," Henry said, not caring that the woman who'd spoken was one he didn't know, or that she likely hadn't been addressing him. It sounded too strange not to be commented on, a few words coherent, but not much more than that. After months here, not being able to comprehend something was nothing particularly new for him, but he saw that as no reason to just accept it. "Health points?"

[waltsnothereman]

"Points to measure health by, from the sound of things," Wanda answered with an incredulous chuckle, looking up at the guy even as she kept paging through the book. "Given that it's supposedly talking about me, you'd think I'd be able to give you a bit more insight than that, but I really can't."

[ahazardofhead]

"I was unaware that health could be measured so," Henry replied, evidently confused. He could only assume that it was something they had begun doing in the future, even if this woman did not seem to know much more about it than he did. "Thou art in a book as well?"

He had read books in which he'd played a part, given to him by that man to whom he had spoken in the clinic, but he had been able to stomach little of the content. All of what had happened after the point of his death had seemed unpleasant, to say the least.

[waltsnothereman]

His manner of speech caught Wanda a little off guard, but no more so than anything else here, and she grinned, a little sheepishly. "I art," she replied with a shrug, flipping the book closed so she cold hold the cover up for him to see. "A picture book, even. I'm the big, orange, furry one, if you can believe it," she said, flashing him a wink.

[unextrordinary]

"The bookshelf handing out questionable and possibly inappropriate material again?"

It's a reasonable question to ask and the woman who was in the rec room reading something that didn't exactly look like a guide world peace might be able to fill me in on it. If I am going to get nothing but copies of Sweet Valley High then I want to know about it in advance.

Leaning against the pool table, I stare at the shelf. It's dangerous, that's what it is.

[waltsnothereman]

"Questionable, definitely," said Wanda, frowning at the book and somewhat welcome for the distraction, even if it kept her from piecing things together in a timely fashion. For once, she wasn't worried about that. "Inappropriate, only if you're not a fan of hearing one of the biggest traumas of your life summed up in dice rolls."

[unextrordinary]

"I can see how that would put a damper on the day."

It would definitely kill mine. I am pretty certain that despite being a really bad movie, nothing else has really happened when it came to the works that were my life. Unfortunately not everyone was as lucky as I was.

"Definitely a buzzkill in that nerdy way."

[waltsnothereman]

"And not even the fun kind of nerdy," Wanda agreed with a sigh. "These things never seem so simple when you're living them out, life's just not fair."