"Captain Rogers! Pleasure to see you."
"Hello, Mr President. Have you met Etana?"
"She's your spymaster isn't she? Pleased to meet you properly. I take it your wife couldn't come, Captain?"
"Well, I wouldn't say that Sir. Etana, the President; Sir, Etana Rogers."
She nods slightly.
"Pleased to meet you. If I insult you, as Steve here will tell you, it means I like you. It's when I'm icily polite that you have to watch out."
"Pardon?"
"Etana insults people she likes. It's sort of her way of showing she thinks you're worthwhile enough to come up with an original insult for."
She shrugs. Then perks up.
"Nick! Hey Nick, you old one-eyed reprobate! Oi! Fuming-Face!"
She charges off towards Nick and I freeze for a second before smiling slightly.
"Yep, she gets on very well with Nick. He's one of the people with a personal nickname that you really don't want yelled out at state dinners."
"Where does she come from?"
"Er… She's… Well, lots and lots of places. Normally from places where there's just been a disaster and you need, in her words, 'someone with half an ounce of sense'. I despair at times…"
She's chatting furiously to Nick, arms waving about as she explains some amazing new plan of hers that probably involves a lot of gunpowder. She has a fondness for explosions that I've only seen rivalled in the X-Men's Gambit. One of her 'Rules' is 'If you can do something in more than one way, chose the one with the most explosions. It's more fun.' Her flare with fireworks is really rather worrying, although it means we always have amazing Fourth of July celebrations. It's rather funny to stay with the X-Men because they also get fireworks ten days later (French Bastille Day) and in November (British Bonfire Night) and about every other big international celebration that happens to involve fireworks, including New Year, Chinese New Year, Diwali or basically any excuse for Etana to go and play with gunpowder and powdered metals. About June the Twelfth, she goes and locks herself in her 'workshop' and refuses to let anyone in, coming out every now and then stinking of chemicals, eats a few bites then goes back in. And eventually comes out on the third of July with a huge box of fireworks for the FF, both X-Men teams, all three Avengers teams, the Avengers Academy and basically any team that expresses an interest. And it's worth it. Huge blossoms of colour, letters in the sky, all perfectly chorographed as lighting the first fuse is all you have to do before stepping back as she sets them up and they're all linked together, with slow burning fuses so they go at the right time. She's only allowed three other people into her workshop and that's Franklin and Valeria Richards and Jamie Logan. They came out three hours later with wide grins on their faces, streaks of coloured powder all over them and each holding one huge firework each. And they all talked about 'The Secret' which makes me think that Tan isn't making conventional fireworks at all.
She hurries over now, smiling broadly.
"Nick's just commissioned a fireworks display for next month! You know, SHIELD's big reopening! Oh, I have so many ideas! Would a huge flying eagle be tacky?"
"Does this mean I'm not going to see you for a month?"
"But it's fireworks!"
"Tana..."
