I'm a fighter

It had been a pretty long night, once Annie and Diego had left for the hospital. And, ultimately, it had been a fairly uncomplicated labor in and of itself -- which, like, Annie was grateful for, but also people could stop saying that like it had been easy, thanks! -- and at the end of it all, mother and babies were all healthy and currently just sort of drowsy. (And, in Annie's case, sore in a way where she knew it was going to eventually be a lot worse, probably.)

Diego, on the other hand -- ha ha -- had an injury. That was, apparently, what supportive husbands got when their super-strong wives were busy pushing and not minding their strength, and Diego's brand-new hand fracture would apparently be healing in 4-6 weeks.

Which meant Annie was left to send out a text (along with a picture of two wrinkly little infants in little caps), once she was awake and lucid enough to think to do so.

Margaret (Maggie) and Benicio (Ben) Hargreeves, born early this morning (11/1/23). Everyone's okay, me included, just very tired. Diego's hand is also broken.

That seemed like enough for now, and Annie set aside her phone in favor of instead looking over towards the two bassinets in the room with them, and -- like, she hurt, but she'd also been on bedrest for forever, so she was tired of sitting around, and wanted to get over there to look at and hold her babies some more.

It just might, like, take a minute to get over there. She might not be pregnant anymore, sure, but Annie was not going to be moving fast again any time soon. (Which was fine. Babies, it turned out, had a pretty slow default speed.)

[feel free to say you got that text, and post is open for calls, texts, and broken-handed husbands!]

Annie could kind of get used to this, maybe.

Like, obviously, she could not, considering that the whole reason she was currently stretched out on a lounger next to her own private pool in her own private villa with their own private swath of jungle nearby was because she was less than three months out from giving birth to twins, and she was about to never be able to even think about going on a vacation again, probably. Like. She knew this.

But all the same, after a few days here, Annie had finally relaxed into being on vacation. She didn't even miss the opportunity to, like, take a machete to that swath of jungle -- partly because, you know, pregnant, but also because the vibe here kind of encouraged her to actually relax.

Which was probably the point, right? Getting pedicures and massages (check and check), eating well for the babies (check and like jeez, the food here), and...chilling out with her phone and a virgin pina colada that had shown up in an amazingly brief window after she'd ordered it from room service.

And like, maybe once the kids were old enough, they'd go on a machete vacation with them! That was a fun little daydream, in the meantime.

[for the husband and nfb for distance, natch!]

You know that stage of moving where your major furniture is all set up, and you can technically live in your home, and you're considering maybe just that your life is cardboard boxes forever, and maybe they're actually sort of cute? Cardboardcore. Start a new trend.

Anyway.

"What should we actually do with all of these boxes when we're done?" Annie wondered, opening up yet another box of books. For such card-carrying members of Team Himbo, they had, like, way too many of these. Kindles for everyone before the next move. "Make a fort in the backyard?"

Aww. They had a backyard now.

[for the husband!]

You know, Annie led a life of pretty unique experiences. But watching her husband's alternate-universe son try to dislodge the spear that had recently killed her apparently (and thankfully) immortal brother-in-law from the wall of a pretty ugly hotel suite, while the world was ending, was...definitely a new one.

"So, I think we all learned something about gun safety, and how you should never point any kind of gun at a person, right?" she offered, glancing from Stanley's efforts up to Diego. She didn't really want to cross the line into lecturing the kid herself -- it did not feel like her place, but this seemed appropriately...responsible-nearby-adultish to say. "We were really lucky this time."

Like, Stanley could have been hanging out with one of his other, much-more-killable uncles when the harpoon went off, to start.

[for the husband and the AU stepkid, and NFB for distance, obviously! ETA - also going NWS omg]

It was a Christmas miracle: an even tackier, way-too-early ugly sweater party.

With way, way too much alcohol, and a kinda ridiculous number of activities.

There were, of course, the ubiquitous plastic snowmen haunting (almost) every corner of the apartment, and one out on each of the Smokers' Balconies for good measure. There were strings of lights lining the ceiling, as well as tracing the edges of each window. There were cookies to decorate (and eat, because you definitely should eat, and there were moddable snacks aplenty as well.) While there was, of course, Christmas music playing, those with keen eyes (or at least, enough wherewithal to look around an apartment before you started potentially drinking heavily in it) might spot a karaoke machine that would come out later. One particularly tinsel-y corner had an abundance of Santa hats and reindeer antlers and wearable strings of lights to wear while taking photos, and in the guest room -- of course -- there was a much-fabled craft table, where you could make an ornament that didn't have to be in an immature shape, but definitely could be.

There was also, hovering slowly through the party, a drone with mistletoe dangling from it. A Mistle Drone, one might call it, even.

And, because this was the Christmas Rager, there was alcohol. There was so, so, so much alcohol. The kegs of Christmas ale had once been reordered, there was a Make Your Own hot chocolate and coffee bar, and while Annie would never argue that Summer's shot table wasn't the star of every party...this year was a little different. Mostly because of how they'd decided to serve Annie's punch: in a freestanding bathtub, just slightly off-center from the room.

Welcome to the third annual Christmas Rager. Hope you wore a sweater, because the hostesses both have glitter cannons in case you didn't show up festive enough!

[please hold for way too many threads and we're off! open to literally every single adult on the island -- students are welcome to attempt to crash, but they'll be busted.]

Given that it had been relatively clear out tonight, with no rain or wind in the forecast, Annie and Diego had finally made good on this idea of going back over to Baltimore for a little crimefighting date. And Annie, in turn, had made good on her long-told promise of getting leather pants -- they were tight, but she couldn't deny she looked really good. And like a total badass. Maeve would be proud. (And they were warm, which wasn't especially badass, but you spend most of your adult life fighting in a tulle skirt -- warmth becomes important.)

"I need to figure out how to fly without taking out an entire breaker panel," Annie was saying as she let herself back into the apartment and flipped on the lights. She wasn't still out of breath, exactly, but she was very pink-cheeked still from how fast they'd had to run away from their last set of criminals of the night -- she and Diego had spotted a couple of guys sort of...playing with a window, and while the fight hadn't taken especially long, they still hadn't wanted to be waiting there when the cops came. But this was one of those reasons why it was good to be in shape in their line of work! "How are your knuckles?"

Annie's kind of hurt -- lots of punching, since she hadn't wanted to attract a lot of attention with blasts -- but Annie also had super-skin. (And Annie was also clearly flying on a high of remembering she could do all of that. Even without the cape.)

[for that man she married!]

Twenty-four days.

Invitations were out. The alterations of Annie's wedding dress were nearly done. Their song list had been chosen and vetted and drafted and eventually turned in.

But today, they were working on making one last, incredibly important wedding-related choice, and while Annie was fairly sure which direction they were going, it still required further research -- which was why she was perched up on her kitchen counter next to the box of cake samples she and Diego had brought home with them, idly picking at a very rich, chocolate cube of cake. Had they just spent a couple hours trying cake already? Yes. Didn't mean Annie was, like, done yet.

"I feel like I'm gonna need a bib no matter what we go with," she commented.

But she was still gonna eat the hell out of this chocolate sample, even if she was kind of thinking no thanks on chocolate for the actual thing. Something lighter. Maybe layers of something lighter.

[for the fiancé! and on that note -- invitations have totally handwavily gone out, and if you think you were invited to this wedding, you totally were.]

When they got to the tower, and had followed Diego in through the Lamplighter Schoolgirl-Sneaking Entrance (ew), the group split up.

Diego was directed to the master tech controls for the building, where he'd have access to the PA system as well as any emergency systems that might be helpful in getting people out of the tower. Frenchie and Kimiko headed for the main lab, taking Hughie with them (for no reason other than that MM didn't want Hughie with him, right now.)

And that turned out to be a good call, since Annie and MM had made their way up to the upper floors and just had to follow the way the building shook to figure out where the action was.

( It all ends here )

[THE END. Most of this is taken pretty straight from 3.08, and warning for the (apparent) death of two NPCs, as well as quite a bit of descriptive violence. Preplayed with knife_bender, who talked me off several ledges throughout this, deserves some kind of medal, and is also taking a well-deserved bow as Homelander here. NFB, NFI, but OOC is very welcome, and I'm almost done with spam now!]

It had been tempting to try to sleep on the drive to Vermont, especially since MM had insisted on driving, but Annie had been way too full of nervous energy. She remembered the TNT Twins from TV growing up -- the TNT Smile-Time Hour had been on in reruns when she was little, and it had spawned the Vought Summertime Fun House spin-off that she, Supersonic and Gecko had all been a part of. But she'd never actually met the twins themselves.

She also hadn't wanted to sleep much after she'd asked MM a little more about what he'd said about Soldier Boy and his family, and MM had subsequently told her and Diego that the Supe they were after had casually thrown a Mercedes through MM's family's Harlem brownstone while deterring a pair of car thieves.

That brought a lot of stuff into focus about the guy they were looking for, yeah.

In any case, here they were now, outside an absolutely gorgeous house here in the woods.

"There's a lot of cars here," Annie observed idly as they headed up to knock on the door. Maybe the twins were having a party.

( She had *no* idea )

( Running into people you know at an orgy, normal things )

( Hughie, what the fuck is wrong with you )

( In which Annie makes an important decision, and an announcement )

[most of this is lifted pretty directly from, you guessed it, the cringily-notoriously-advertised episode 3.06, 'Herogasm.' NSFW, because this is an orgy, and while it is mostly comedy sex, it's still a lot of descriptions of a lot of sex (including some bestiality, I'm really sorry, but if it helps it is canonically consensual.) Anyway, preplayed with knife_bender, continued in the comments, and this one is VERY open for texts and calls -- particularly if you think your character follows Annie on social media and would have caught her broadcast. :)]

After the events of the night prior, Annie had barely slept.

It had taken everything to put her uniform back on today, because every impulse in her body was screaming that she didn't want to do this anymore. Hughie had said she had to stick in there no matter what, but this was a what that really pushed it too far.

"I don't know what we're going to do," she said aloud, probably not for the first time, as she sat curled up on her apartment couch, knees drawn up to her chin.

Other than, apparently, get married with Homelander as Best Man and Vought probably filming every second of it, possibly honeymoon included.

( A morning visit! )

( And then Annie makes a visit of her own )

[we are now on The Boys 3.04, 'Glorious Five-Year Plan.' Warning for Homelander being really inappropriate/gross/predatory/you name it, preplayed with knife_bender, and NFB for distance but if you would like to call or text Annie you can catch her here!]