MHA #2 | Thursday Evening

[defenderofdesmoines]

Given that there were guests coming this weekend -- not to mention, like, the sheer stress of the last few, between woo girl transformations and boyfriends being imperiled and such -- it seemed like an ideal time for a night of dumb girly shit.

Nail polish had been dragged out, bottles boasting claims of collagen density appeared, and there were even a few little gold-and-white tubes scattered about from Annie's Wish line.

But, of course, the pièce de résistance was these sheet masks Annie had produced. They definitely didn't look weird, okay? They absolutely didn't look like a human face that you put over your own face. At all.

"These better be awesome for our skin," Annie decided, gently poking at the paper (?) to make it adhere a little more securely to her face.

Because it looked like she was wearing someone else's skin.

[for the space bestie!]

Comments

[thatwaslucky]

Rey had no problems with doing traditionally girly things, even if she didn't make them a habit. If someone said she should try doing something, she'd try it, why not.

This one gave her pause.

"Is this a Halloween thing?" Rey checked, eyeing her own mask still in her hands.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"No, but if you want to go as Sheet Mask Girl, I think it would be very effective," Annie decided, trying to widen her eyes inside her own mask like that would make her less weird and instead it just made it worse, in a way. "They're supposed to be --" She checked the label. "Clarifying. Beauty terms are dumb. I think that means it cleans."

[thatwaslucky]

"I'm not going to even pretend to understand how it does that," Rey said, trying to get the mask off of the paper, which was apparently a challenge.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Be careful of the tabs," Annie advised, reaching over to help a little. "They'll totally, like, drip into your eyes."

Annie, you were just making this seem more appealing by the second.

"We also have to take pictures once yours is on." And then send them to their boyfriends and laugh, probably.

[thatwaslucky]

"Are you sure about that?" Rey asked wryly, looking up at her.

She could see your face right now, Annie. It was scary.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I mean, we can do before and afters," Annie replied, and you were getting a scary masked wink right now Rey because Annie knew. "Look how scary we were, look how glowy and beautiful we are after!"

They damn well better be glowy and beautiful.

[thatwaslucky]

"We could," Rey said, trying to put the mask on when part of it kept folding over. "And then we have reminders of why not to do this if we're not... glowy and beautiful."

Or at least of why a scrub might be a better choice.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Who even knew how scrubs (or any kind of skincare anything) worked with super-skin, anyway. The perils of poor continuity.

"We look like papier-mâché," Annie decided, peering at herself in the mirror. "Which is a thing where people take wet paper covered in glue and make sculptures out of it."

[thatwaslucky]

"This really is very wet. Does it stay very wet?"

This is how you knew you were friends, Annie. Because she stuck a wet thing on her face for you.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I think so?" Annie replied, reaching for the packaging to check the directions. "If it hardens we won't be able to move our faces and that seems like a bigger issue?"

She wasn't wearing this if she couldn't drink and talk through it, okay? Even if it kept slipping because it was wet.

[thatwaslucky]

"I'm guessing you don't do these often?" Rey asked, trying to reposition the area around an eye.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Nope. These were in a swag bag I got," Annie admitted, trying not to laugh lest the mask slip worse. "Though if they're rolling any of these out under my brand, I'm gonna totally have a word with marketing or the lab or whatever to make sure they aren't slippery."

Probably not possible.

[thatwaslucky]

"What would a Starlight branded mask look like?" Rey mused. "That's a different kind of glow than these promise."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Probably yellow," Annie said sagely. "Maybe glittery. Maybe, like, turning from white to yellow or whatever over the course of the time you're supposed to wear it."

Also: maybe effective at clarifying, actually, but that was very much a secondary-or-tertiary concern for Vought.

[thatwaslucky]

"Masks can do that?" Rey said. "Why would masks do that?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"So you don't have to set a timer?" Annie suggested, shrugging. "Or like, just for the novelty of it. So they can charge more."

One thing that Vought had really helped with was teaching Annie about capitalism.

[thatwaslucky]

"It's surprising sometimes that this planet does this but doesn't have casual space travel," Rey had to admit.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I mean, for all I know, there's casual space travel where I'm from and my clearances aren't high enough?" Annie suggested thoughtfully. "But we're working on it. The guy who owns Amazon just went to space for fun or whatever. And where Diego's from, they don't even have cell phones, but his brother just got back from living on the moon."

It would never not be weird.

[thatwaslucky]

"I have a lot of questions about that," Rey said. "There's nothing on that moon. How do you even get supplies?"

Of course she went there.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I think their dad sent him stuff," Annie replied, a little uncertain but pretty sure that was how Luther had gotten food or whatever. "It was an experiment or something, I think? He was up there for, like, four years all by himself."

Annie, for her part, was sort of sad that Luther hadn't actually found anyone on the moon, both because she would have thought that was neat and also because poor Luther, of all people, probably hadn't benefitted from going four years without exercising those social skills.

[thatwaslucky]

"That sounds incredibly lonely," said the person who would know.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I think it was," Annie replied, and she softened a little inside her mask, there, because yeah, Rey would get that. "And yet no cell phones. Diego used to use an iPod. Which, like, those came out when I was like, six. If there's anything I've learned about the multiverse, it's that there is no rhyme or reason behind the technology available in various places."

[thatwaslucky]

"I suppose Jakku actually fits into that," Rey said, tugging her mask up on her forehead. "We had technology, some of it better than here, but it was forty years out of date back home, and there wasn't running water. I'm sure that confused plenty of people."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Oh my God, you're from, like, rural space?" Annie asked, having not realized that. Space was supposed to be shiny and, you know, full of spaceships? Even if Rey's space had largely been, like, kind of industrial-seeming to Annie, in terms of the robots and stuff. "I didn't even think about that. Is it because Jakku's, like, far away from other stuff?"

Like how Annie had to drive forty-five minutes to Target back home! Totally the same.

[thatwaslucky]

"I don't even know that I would call if rural," Rey said thoughtfully. "It's just a desert on a remote world, hardly anything in the way of resources. It was the site of the last battle of the war, so it's mostly just a ship graveyard."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Ugh, that sounds kind of cool," Annie sighed enviously. "We tour old battlefields here. There's one in Pennsylvania that you can walk around on and buy the bullets they shot there."

It was a little macabre, sure.

"Do you have anyone coming this weekend?" she added, totally just touching her forehead for normal reasons and not because this stupid mask was going to fall off.

[thatwaslucky]

"Whoever's not on a mission," she said. "I know someone is, but probably won't know who till they get here. What about you?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Queen Maeve agreed to come," Annie replied, trying to seem totally casual about it. "But I'm still trying to get her to visit as a civilian since, like, I'm not wearing my cape and making people call me Starlight all weeke -- oh my God do you think BB-8's coming?"

Hang on. Pressing issues afoot.

[thatwaslucky]

"He might," Rey said. "He probably will if Poe does. They're a package deal."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Oh my God." Cool, now Diego was going to spend his next twenty-four-ish hours hearing about how excited Annie was about a rolling droid that might arrive tomorrow. "I hope he does. Or Chewie. Or both of them."

Annie would be getting a Thor hug; she'd be okay if she didn't get a Wookiee one, this time.

[thatwaslucky]

"Last I knew Chewie was elsewhere, but now I think I should let Finn know that if they could spare BB-8 they definitely should."

Just for you, Annie!

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I mean, if he's doing important stuff, I don't want to bother him."

Important robot stuff. He probably had so many important jobs!

(Annie kind of thought of BB-8 the way she thought of guide dogs: adorable, but check whether they were working before offering affection.)

[thatwaslucky]

"Well, I want to see him, too," Rey pointed out. "I love known him longer than anyone else back home."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Really?" Annie asked, having to smile at that (and then mess with her mask so her smile didn't make it fall off.) "BB-8's your oldest friend, there?"

Maeve was not Annie's oldest friend on her team, since she'd met someone else before her, but she was the only one who was a halfway decent person and that was...something.

[thatwaslucky]

"I saved him from being scavenged and stayed the night with me before we ran into Finn," Rey explained. "Then that ended up being the last day I was ever on Jakku."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Someone was going to scavenge BB-8?" Um, Annie would kill these people? "It sounds like it was a really good thing you got out of there."

[thatwaslucky]

"Oh, BB-8 was very popular for a bit there," Rey told her. She had an itch and was afraid if she did anything about it she'd dislodge the mask. "Things just happened to line up well for us all to come together. The Force at work, probably."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"The Force works in mysterious ways," Annie replied, and was it a little blasphemous to misquote a hymn and attribute it to something else? Maybe. But Annie also kind of wondered if Rey's Force and her God were just different names for the same thing.

(Though her Christian powers could show up any day now, if that was the case.)

"Okay, picture time before these things fall off us," she decided, fishing around for her phone.

[thatwaslucky]

"Of course you remembered that part," Rey said, but she also knew to her closer for a good selfie shot.