Action: Open.

[vagabond_code]

Who: Clint, Kate, and Kara || OR YOU
Broadcast: No broadcast.
Action: Iskaulit.
When: Tonight.

(CLOSED TO KATE AND KARA)

[When Kate Bishop says, 'I want to introduce you to a friend', get suspicious. Have a beer, find a pack of cards from where it had been stashed behind Varric's bar, deal yourself a few hands of Solitaire and park your butt. Dress in your best purples. They'd recently been discussing their respective romantic prospects, so he was primed for one of two equally unpleasant scenarios. Had Kate found him a date? Had Kate found someone for her own dating purposes? Was this some sort of weird thing where she wanted Clint to like the guy? A permission thing? Have another drink, consider upping and leaving, check the time like a billion times.

But they're weren't late, not yet. He was early. Because, what if he wanted to make a good impression? You only get one chance.]

(OPEN TO EVERYONE)

[Before this anxious meeting, and probably after it, Clint will be on what he has come to think of as the ship-with-the-bar-on-it. Hit him up there, or bump into him while he gets bored and takes to broadening his understand of what this place has to offer. Expect him to be nervously fiddling with a pack of cards - performing feats of accuracy that defy the laws of fluid dynamics. In the gardens chopping off the heads of this or that flower with edge of a rapidly spinning card or curving another one gracefully through the air from one end of the hallway to another. He even stands for a fair while looking at the mural. Anywhere else, he'll at least pop his head in.]

Comments

[vagabond_code]

[What were the taboo conversation-topics when socializing in space? Politics? Religion? Those were pretty standard. How about the Atroma? Their ceaseless facade concealing an inescapable captivity that the members of the fleet neither asked for nor wanted? Ugh. He glanced across the table at Kate for some sort of sign, but came up empty. Then Kara spoke, and things got easier.]

That's right. Katie's like -- my apprentice or something. That is, if apprentices were already really really good at the job they were doing when they signed up for it so...

[He gestured dismissively. He clearly wasn't complimenting Kate when he spoke. He didn't check for her response or wait for her to interrupt or act humble.]

I'm starting to think there isn't a good word for it.

[Should he just go ahead and let Kate take the beer? He should have taken a generous gulp of it right off the bat is what he should have done. At least the mojito doesn't look any less drinkable now that it's his mojito. Still delicious. He takes a sip.]

But yeah she's the employee of the month. Every month. I mean, it's just us two.

[ladybro]

Employee of the month? [ she cringes. ] That makes it sound like I work for you. Not with you. [ she lays a hand on kara's elbow, ] I absolutely work with him. The with part is important.

[ or it was, until recently. but clint isn't privy to that information. ]

Clint works with a larger team, too. Some of the time. Don't let him make it sound like it's really just us two on every mission.

[takingkarabusiness]

Would that be such a bad thing? But it sounds like you both have a good thing going. Have you had a lot of exciting encounters?

[ superhero adventures seems like a reasonable smalltalk topic ]

[vagabond_code]

What do you think? Clown-guy?

[This to Kate. Conferring. The assassin-Clown had a gimmick at least, and he was fresh in Clint's mind, but when he tried to explain this to Kara...]

Wore white face paint and had a tear-drop under his eye right here. Trench-coat, the whole bit. Kind of a weird guy we've been bumping in to lately - in the exciting he-keeps-killing-people-we-like sort of way.

[Yeah no that's not very interesting. More of a morbid and unsettling series of stories now that he's replaying them in his head. He can feel Kate's burning disapproval without at all needing to look -- or maybe he's imagining it? -- but either way it's enough to drive him to try for a joke.]

Out-stayed his welcome.

[Real cool action-movie sort of one-liner it is, too, but unfortunately it's a joke that excludes Kara and it's probably too gruesome to explain at a first meeting so Clint moves on quickly.]

Most of the real exciting stuff is with the other team Kate's talking about. Then you got your shrink rays and time travel and psycho-genocidal-robots-level stuff.

[ladybro]

...There's always Madripoor. It's a little less tragic than, uh, clown-guy.

[ kate scratches her neck, and looks down at a beer label she doesn't recognize. space. the truth is, she doesn't really know how to loop carefully around kazi. she'd not realized precisely who he he'd been until after the fight at the apartment had cleared out. finished. ]

The concept of Madripoor alone is worth a telling. Kara, it's like -- it's like a city of sin amped up to a thousand. Forget Vegas. This is a tiny island nation near Malaysia -- one that has no extradition arrangements with any other countries. Perfect haven for your bigger than average baddie.

[takingkarabusiness]

How does that even exist?

[ she shakes her head slightly ]

This seems like a pretty heavy topic. We don't have to go there.

[vagabond_code]

Madripoor? Why? Madripoor's great. You can get anything you want there, and there's always crime going on. It's like a pirate kingdom, what's not cool about that?

[ladybro]

...Don't listen to Clint. Madripoor's not great. It's a sleazetown filled with sleazeballs. But -- it is impressive in its own way. I was there trying to bust up a super-villain auction.

[ that's right. i. she ain't claiming this as some kind of joint effort, clint. ]

[takingkarabusiness]

It just doesn't really seem like my scene.

What were they auctioning?

[vagabond_code]

[i?]

A tape. A bootleg.

[He rushed to answer before Kate - and he didn't lie. Not exactly. There were multiple copies.]

[ladybro]

[ luckily, they didn't have to delve into too much detail about the tape's contents. kate just dovetails her answer smoothly with clint's: ] Sensitive information. Not the kind of stuff you wanted in bad guy mitts.

[takingkarabusiness]

Got it.

Well, it sounds like you're a good team.

[vagabond_code]

That's right, we put the 'team' in 'good team'.

[Don't think too hard about it. Clint clearly wasn't. He was going through his drink pretty quickly. Maybe it was a good thing it wasn't the slightest bit alcoholic.]

Kate said you do -- the news? What's that like?

[ladybro]

-- Right. [ you know what? she's just gonna let kara field that misunderstanding. do the news, indeed. ]

[takingkarabusiness]

[ wow kate. way to be a friend ]

I work in media. I'm a personal assistant for a powerful woman.

[ she doesn't really want to talk about her day job, though. she's just gonna take the plunge ]

Actually, I'm an alien. I just live on Earth.

[vagabond_code]

You're an alien.

[He's talking to Kara, but looking at Kate. It could be some sort of weird joke-thing he wasn't getting, or maybe he misread a news-people jargon-word. There was a fair amount lost in translation with the lip-reading and everything, but he was better at reading Kate's lips than anyone's. Either way whenever any conversation took a sudden weird tangent, his first assumption was that he'd screwed something up eyes-wise.]

[ladybro]

Don't look at me. [ kate shoots back. ] She's the alien. With cool alien powers, to boot. [ ... ] Don't worry; she's not a skrull.

[takingkarabusiness]

I come in peace, promise.

Kate didn't want to keep secrets from you, but I wanted to meet you. Tell you myself, you know? But I'm a superhero at home.

[vagabond_code]

Yeah?

So...

[Shit. He lowers his voice, because, let's be honest, they could all be speaking quietly besides him right now and he'd never know. Clint does have at least one ounce of tact.]

The news thing is a secret identity.

[Being secretly alien and secretly super, that had to be a lot to juggle.]

Some of my best friends are aliens. Plus we're in space.

[So, you know. No big deal.]

[ladybro]

[ -- she's so proud of you, kara. getting all indulge-y like that. and it's a weight off her shoulders, certainly, for clint to know that there are other capes around than simply the ones he sorta-knows from home. ]

Hawkeye, [ she tries this again. quietly. ] Meet Supergirl.

[takingkarabusiness]

[ sticks her hand out to shake his! she's gonna do it all formal-like ]

Unfortunately, just taking the name of my older, more established male counterpart wouldn't have worked for me.

[vagabond_code]

Lemme guess. Superguy?

[Hey, it'd be symmetrical wouldn't it? He was trying. And even though they'd already shaken hands, he shook again.]

[ladybro]

[ superguy. kate laughs -- that's such a clint thing to guess. a little underhanded, and a lot calculated. ]

[takingkarabusiness]

[ she laughs too ]

You know, I'm going to start calling him that. Actually, it's Superman. My boss at work named me Supergirl, without knowing it was me, of course. I thought it was kind of childish.

[vagabond_code]

It's not so bad. We have a guy called Hulk, and then some Red Hulks and She-Hulks came along, and then a guy started going around calling himself Hulkling just a little while ago. Point is, that's just how it goes sometimes. And it could be a lot worse. At least they don't call you Superling. Or She-Superman.