Disclaimers: See Chapter 1.

Janet Pym aka Wasp

While Janet was positive that she preferred to stay at the Avengers HQ in New York - aka Tony Stark's "summer home" - it was still nice to visit the Malibu house. In her opinion it was too big for just one person living alone or one person with two to three occasional guests, but it was just the right size for the seven people who made up the core group.

Jan stretched as she headed downstairs to Tony's work room since there was no one in the main section of the house and she could hear Jarvis talking through schematics; she figured that Iron Man must be reworking some fiddly programming thing and decided to go bug him. Yes, she was married to a scientist - and damn, she loved it when he talked shop, even if most of it went right over her head at times - and sometimes it helped those types to have someone other than an AI to babble to.

She stopped short as she reached the bottom of the stairs and peeked into the work room. Tony was there all right, along with Darcy and some blonde woman that Jan knew for damned sure hadn't been around last night when she and Hank arrived.

...come to think of it, Hank had left for the SHIELD labs pretty early this morning. He hadn't been opposed to a morning quickie, thank God, but he'd been heading for the shower while she was happily dropping back off to sleep for another couple of hours. Something about wanting to be gone before Loki "got started" or whatever. Maybe the mischief-maker was plotting some prank war and her husband had wanted to be out of the line of fire?

Jan sighed and pushed the door open, barely keeping from rolling her eyes as the other two women glanced up at her entrance. Darcy grinned and waved her cards - it looked like they were playing Gin - while the blonde offered a small, oddly familiar smile before turning her attention back to the game. Janet waved in response - anything else would be just plain rude, even if Tony should have had his conquest take off before friggin' noon - and walked over to where Tony was looking over a virtual diagram of his suit.

"Aren't you being rude to your guest?" she asked in a low voice, not wanting to draw the others' attention.

Tony gave Jan a Look before turning towards Darcy and Blonde Mystery Woman. He watched for a moment then swiveled his chair back around. "Darcy's fine, she entertains herself," he replied. "Besides, Jane and Thor would kill me if I let her borrow one of the cars."

"That sucks," Darcy complained, slamming down a card and trying to draw two; the blonde smacked her fingers and gave her a dirty look. "It's not like they're my parents or anything, and I won't wreck it this time."

Janet wondered if Tony was being dense on purpose. "I'm not talking about Darcy," she explained, tilting her head towards Mystery Blonde.

She was almost insulted when Jane's assistant cracked up.

"I would be insulted that you don't recognize me, what with how many times I've saved your ass," Blonde Woman said, her accent just as strangely familiar as her grin. Something not quite British and not quite human...

...and now she realized why the hell Hank took off before dawn. "Loki?"

Darcy responded with golf claps and Blonde Loki nodded with that same smile from before.

Janet sighed and rubbed her eyes. "Do I even want to know?"

"Tony's dull so me and Loki are gonna go have a girl day," Darcy said, bouncing in her seat and ignoring her cards. "We're hitting the MAC store and getting them to do our makeup then, like, only buying lip gloss."

Janet decided to just roll with it. "Mind if I tag along?"

Yeah, it was odd, but she'd been meaning to get to know her fellow Avengers better anyway. Besides, now she was going to have to ask Hank what Loki'd done the last time he was visiting to make him flee so fast. She'd almost wager it was something about snakes, he was such an ophidiophobe.

Notes: Ophidiophobia - fear of snakes. Obviously.