21 Questions: Guardians Edition

"Well... that's neither revenge nor murder, but plain self preservation. I shouldn't judge, but I just feel killing to survive is as natural as a lion eating a gazelle. It was just simply you or her. You or them. No, when you have the opportunity, the choice not to kill, but still choose to kill... that's when it gets hard. I That's what I think anyway. Nobody really knows what to say when you're forced into the deed." Shauna gave her two cents worth of opinion on Firefly's situation. She keeps the drinks to herself.

She downs another shot. "Just... Tijuana. Though honestly, I've learned fixating on your past changes nothing... and changing your past means changing who you are now, changing what you've learned, changing who you've grown into. But sometimes when you're all alone yeah... you can just sit there wishing it didn't happen." Shauna went to get herself a new glass before she ended up drinking both bottles.

"Hmmm. Question... question four...five... I think..." Shauna tried to think of something to lighten the mood. "If you were... a flavor of ice cream, what would you be?" She blurted out.

Annie laughed. "Strawberry, or course. Not too plain, like vanilla, but not too overwhelming, like chocolate. Just in between the two." She could see that Ms. Masters was feeling the effects of the alcohol starting to set in. The was swaying, stumbling with her words, her cheeks were getting red. Annie had a feeling that this game was about to get interesting. Very interesting. Annie admitted that alcohol was good at doing that, for better or worse. For fun, Annie decided to egg her on. Might as well.

"Just how well can you hold your liquor?" Annie asked with a smirk.

"Guess we'll have to find out." Shauna said, pausing from taking a drink after chugging a bit much. She was starting to recall lots of things, starting from graduation when her mother left earth for good- bequeathing onto her a sizable fortune with which to travel, go to school or be stupid. She looked which meant good, she was well on the way to blacking out. She thought of some more sentimental questions to ask, then looked at Firefly when she had another.

"Name something you've done during your super career that you are proud of." Yeah. Turn it into something positive before things go downhill again.

Annie pondered the question for a few seconds. Her hero career hadn't really taken off yet. Aside from stopping a few street crimes, she hadn't really left that much of a mark on the world yet. She was still the new one. The rookie. "Well, I suppose...escaping the lab. It made me realize that I could actually do something, instead of...well, just sitting there and watching things happen. It...made me want to go out and stop people like those scientists. I want to stop people from mistreating metahumans, so...yeah. Annie smiled, proud of how far she got in just a week.

"I believe I could ask the same of you, Ms. Masters. You must have something that you're proud of in your long and storied career."

Shauna looked at the liquid as it shimmered in her glass, not yet taking a drink. Was rebounding questions against the rules? Didn't matter. "Hmph. In my career it's hardly the big heroic stuff that you remember. It's the little people you help. I remember I used my powers to look into one of my old team mate's brain and was able to warn him about a aneurysm that was about to blow... so we got him to a hospital real quick. that was when I realized I could help a ton more people just using the much less spectacular power these eyes have."

Well, if she was telling all, she was telling all. "Are you surprised? I guess since everyone focuses on my laser eye beams, they tend to forget I have "x-ray" vision. It's not x-rays per se, and I really don't give people cancer by looking at them. Anyway, if you're feeling not too good, you can drop by ol' Shauna's clinic for a check-up, and I can take a look-see if something's wrong." She said with smug reassurance, letting the fact that Firefly was teaming up with someone who had the inexplicable power to violate everyone's privacy. It was a fun, fridge horror to allow to sink into new people she's met.

"Hm... we've talked alot about superheroing. But have you ever thought of doing something when you're not superheroing?"

Annie laughed. "I'll be sure to do that, Ms. Masters." She paused, a slow realization setting in. "Just...please don't go around telling the other members what color my underwear are, okay?" Annie said slowly, somewhat frightened of the possibilites that Ms. Masters had at her disposal. She made a mental note to remember not to do anything private when Ms. Masters was around. Annie shook her head and returned to the question asked.

"Um...I suppose I've wanted to try acting. The only entertainment I ever got in the lab was with a few movies, Iand I was always amazed with the art of transferring a character onto screen...but that's not really gonna happen. I'm a hero now. Full-time. I...can't let mundane things get in the way of that. Except...one thing." Annie had a goofy-looking grin for a split second, before shaking her head. "Anyways, you said you were a doctor. Where did you study?"

Full time? huh, there was a nice dream for the young hero types. Like crime and supervillainy would be up and about all day every day, everywhere. Shauna offered alternatives. "There's always going to be fighting, Annie. And you should consider doing something with your life if you ever want to skip out on heroing. It's not exactly the most hazard free job, or the best paying job, out there... I should get you a book about that." Shauna suggested, seeing Firefly was young.

Shauna finally took a sip from her shot glass. She grimaced slightly, letting her metabolism catch up. Well technically she went through a few schools due to moving but... "Oh, I took my physician exam after graduation at some out of the way place in Heidelberg, Germany. Rupert-Karls-University. Specialized there too. It was a world away from my superhero life back in America." A world filled with gunpowder, lead and explosives instead of lasers. No, she didn't need to know that yet. Shauna made peace with being a kid hero. Her time as a mercenary and cape killer... still needed alot of alcohol.

Shauna decided to go and attack that point with Firefly. "So... you want to learn how to act?"

Annie shyed away. "Well, perhaps...as I said, being a hero comes first. Maybe some day I could try it. When I'm old, and...can't do it anymore." Annie gave Ms. Masters a look.  "But, I mean...perhaps someday. But...not today. I don't want to be one of those..."super-famous" heroes like that Seagirl lady. If I do become a big hero, I just want people to know that I'm just a person. I'm just like them, only I can...fly, and...see through walls, and...shoot poison needles from my hands...look, the powers don't make you any less of a person. We're all still human." Annie smiled. Proud at herself for her own modesty.

"So, um...any lovers? Exes? We're both girls, you can tell me."

"Actually Fly, you'd be surprised at how useful acting can be for superheroes. I had to uh... have some acting chops to cut it as Black Tigress. But the real good ones I know? could pass off as henchmen and be serving some supervillain's coffee." She cited an anecdote of one of her acquaintances.

Shauna laughed heartily at Firefly's question. She decided to give her the summary of it. "Let's see... I went through a bunch of short term flings. There were a couple of older guys, trainers who turned me into Black Tigress... then a bunch of girls I got to leave the business... This Lion guy from Africa was the most decent of the bunch, probably because he was some kind of prince. Except, he really was part Lion." She avoided mentioning the bar brawls, gun fights, the talk with Lion Guy's parents.

"But, I guess only two couple of them stood out... One was Scarlet Sinclair..." Shauna said her name with hesitation. "Scarlet was... is... a Teleporter, and a trained assassin. Tachyon field lets her use a table knife to carve through power armor, or a katana through tanks. The most passionate redhead French woman I've ever met, one I almost ended up marrying, and I'm not even sure if I regret it or still miss her." Shauna had to take a drink thinking about that one.

"I don't regret blowing off an arm of hers for carving up my other friends though. Bitch. I bet she had super fall-in-love-with-me powers too. I still can't look at her civilian profile page without wanting to sift through it. So don't go looking at her." Shauna took a drink again. She omitted the part about a human on meta uprising, where she picked her human friends, where Scarlet had to be on the meta side.

"The other one's... a civilian. A fellow doctor I met at university, so I'm keeping him on the down low. Suffice to say there's no drama-lama with this one, save for the part where I'm in America and he's in Germany." Shauna said with a pleasant spring in her voice and a grin on her face.

"Anything you miss as a kid?" She asked.

"Wow, that's...quite a bit. Looks like you got around a lot, huh?" Annie giggled.

The next question. Annie had to really think about this one. She didn't remember a lot before the lab. The pain and suffering she went through had caused her to lose a lot of her early childhood. However, there were certain things. Things she remembered fondly.

"When I was little...my parents and I had...a nighttime ritual. We'd make tea, watch a movie, then my mum would tuck me into bed...then we'd say a prayer together.  Annie closed her eyes. "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." She opened her eyes again. "Of course, I eventually realized that organized religion is a load of bull. If God exists, then he certainly isn't here. The word is a crappy place." Annie sighed. "But...sometimes I do wish for that idyllic life again. A mum and dad to cry to, a warm bed at night...believing that some paradise awaits me in the afterlife...oh well. That's as best an answer as I can give you to that question." Annie took a sip of her tea, composing herself.

"Is there anyone you look up to? You know...who you aspire to be?"

Shauna listened to the familiar prayer, the Lord's prayer. Raised Catholic, Shauna knew the dissonance between the teachings and the people. "Don't sweat religion, kid. Like Gandhi said, I like your Christ, but I don't like your Christians, who are not like Christ. And it's always good to hold onto something, than to have nothing that makes you human."

Shauna looked at her glass again, like thinking to herself if she was going to drink or not. "I look... Looked up to my parents. Dad was The Luchador, the Shield of South America. Mom was the friggin Sun Queen- the real one, not some laser lass in a suit. No, I had to be the kid of the superhero of the twentieth century. And my grand dad was The Atom, the hero who fought... beat... the Ubermensch of the third Reich after they killed Captain Victory. It's not so much as look up to as feeling the pressure. It's why I stopped being a hero  a long time. I needed to be my own person, living in the shadow of such giants." Shauna took a deep sip. When she talked about it, she could feel like her mother and grandfather judging her actions in the present.

"What's the biggest, best meal you've ever had?" She said, starting to feel a little hungry.

Annie laughed. She sure did have certain....eating habbits. She was skinny, sure, but when she got food, she hard a hard time stopping. "This one time, the scientists at the lab...they let me out for a little bit. There was...someone I knew on the outside. Anyways, they got me this big container of pancakes. I wolfed the whole thing down in less than ten minutes. Annie smiled. "One of the most satisfying moments in my life." Annie smiled, remembering the memory fondly.

She snapped back to reality. "Um...how'd you choose your hero name? Not your current one, that's obvious, but your past ones?"

Shauna shrugged at the question. "I actually never picked my names. Dad just called me Laser Ladette as alliterative appeal. Then my squad mates assigned me Black Tigress. We had alot of 'insert color here' and 'insert animal here' call signs. Taking up Sun Queen seemed the most sensible name I've ever done... though I can't teleport entire factories to third world countries." She took a drink from her glass, then grabbed the bottle of vodka to refill. No more vodka. Shauna sighed and tossed the battle over her shoulder into the ice. She grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniels instead.

"What do you see yourself doing five years from now?" She asked something a bit more generic, though still provoked some thought. She poured herself some more drink.

"Well...probably still here with the Guardians, I guess. I might be more powerful, maybe. My only real plans I have for the future right now, are...training, stopping bad guys, and..." Annie suddenly cleared her throat, stopping herself there. "Anyways, yeah, I hadn't really given it much thought. A lot of this is still new to me. i mean, I guess a whole world of possibilities has just opened up. We'll just see where the wind takes me." Annie went to refill her teacup, but found that the kettle was empty. Seems that they were both out of liquid. She simply shrugged and put her cup back down.

"Anyways, what's your best childhood memory?"

Shauna's response time was definitely getting slower now. A whole bottle of Vodka plus a few glasses of Jack. She didn't have much to say on Firefly's last answer. "Hic... What? Oh me? I grew up in a Catholic community till I was 6 or 7. Right after training, Dad would take us for street ice cream or snow cones. Simpler times."

"If you had a million dollars. What would you do?"

"Hm....buy a house, maybe? A place to live? Nothing crazy. You can do a lot with a million dollars, so Iwouldnt be spending it on something stupid, like...I dunno, lifetime supply of soap. That'd be stupid. I would get something worthwhile. Something to...last me. Something that could do some good.

Annie had noticed now that Ms. Masters was on the far end of drunk. Looks like their little game would be ending soon.

"Um...is there anyone you hate? Who you just...want to kill? Just...wondering."