ultron_junior | Room 401, Thursday Noonish

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Room 401, Thursday Noonish

It seemed to be a relatively quiet day -- no work, no classes, and no island drama to take up Victor's time.

Obviously, this meant he needed to sleep in. Once he'd finally gotten up, showered and dressed, it was late in the morning. Like the geek he was, he decided a good way to make use of the rest of his day was to organize his stockpile of comic books chronologically by title. They were jumbled together in a milk crate near his bed, which wasn't exactly the best solution.

If taking the comics out of the milk crate to sort them had turned into a marathon Ratman back issue reading session, well ... it wasn't like the project had a deadline.

[OOC: Open post, cracked door.]

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Victor had been socialized by humans, which made it the only remotely reliable yardstick Liara had.

"No," she admitted. "I-- I am sorry. I simply thought it would be proper if you knew that I knew."

She glanced away. "Perhaps we should close the door."

"Right, yeah," Victor said, sounding slightly miserable about it as he pulled the door shut. People knew about Ultron and Victorious, sure, but they were his people. The fact Liara both had been told and clearly thought it mattered ... it wasn't exactly a great addition to his lazy day.

He sat on his bed, hands on his lap. "Guess I should feel grateful you trust me enough to close the door." It was sardonic, a little bitter, but not entirely a lie.

Liara was not exactly a leading expert in the field of sardonicism. She blinked. "Should I not?" she asked, genuinely confused.

Victor blinked back at her. "Bad joke. Of course," he said. "I'm not evil. I never want to be -- what Karolina found out I could be."

He was jumping ahead a few steps, but it seemed a reasonable thing to surmise.

Liara crossed her arms. "She said they discovered that a future version of you would become a... supervillain."

If she sounded skeptical, it was because she was still not exactly on board with the concept of 'supervillains', 'supervillainy', or any equivalent thereof. It sounded like something from a bad Justicar serial, frankly.

"In one universe. Which they changed when they found me." Victor was defensive on this point, mostly because he needed to continue believing it to stay sane. (However, he found the concept of supervillains as a whole entirely unremarkable.) "I'm my mom's kid. Not Ultron's. I'm not going to do what he wanted me to do."

"I did not think you would," Liara hastened to add. "I merely thought-- well, perhaps I was mistaken-- you may not want to be ignorant when other parties-- find out. It seems like the whole matter would have caused you some distress."

Admittedly, it was still possible his AI would become somehow corrupted. She just chose not to take that as anything approaching a certainty.

"Okay." And now Victor felt a bit more like he could breathe, now that he felt more confident Liara wasn't here to attack him or anything.

"Yeah, I'd -- rather know when other people know. 'Some distress' is the nice way to put how I feel about the whole thing, y'know? So ... thanks?"

That was a very tentative thanks.

"You are welcome."

That was a very certain 'you're welcome'.

"Will Karolina be all right?"

That slipped out before she could stop it from doing so.

"She's fine," Victor said, and tilted his head at her. "There's a rough patch, coming up, but she gets out of it okay."

He scratched a hand through his hair. "Feels weird telling you stuff she's never asked me about," he added apologetically.

"Oh! I am sorry," Liara said quickly. "I-- did not mean to pry into the details. It is just that I have been concerned-- irrationally-- and you seemed to know about, well-- issues, and..."

"No, no, it's fine," Victor reassured her, just as quickly. "If it were my friend telling me what Kar's telling you, I'd be worried too. But, this may be me being thick, but -- what kind of issues do we mean?"

"Being in California," Liara said, "Fighting criminals."

Those were pretty big Issues.

"California's not scary."

Victor couldn't say the same about the other Issue, though.

"And the criminals --- she's good at it. Really."

Liara rubbed at her forehead.

"Did you join them?" she asked.

"Yeah," Victor said, surprised it was even a question. "They wanted me to, and I wasn't in any shape to think about other choices. If there even were any."

He still wasn't sure there had been.

"And... then you came here," she plowed on carefully.

"Right, but not the next day or anything," Victor clarified. "I was with them most of a year before some personal stuff went kerflooey and I needed some space."

"I see."

An awkward silence ensued on Liara's end. She was terrified of somehow offending him.

If there was an awkward silence, Victor was going to be generous and fill it with babbling. "Not -- evil supervillain kind of kerflooey," he said. "The ... boring, normal, 'I like this girl but I'm dating someone else and then they both dump me' kind of kerflooey. Anyhow. I needed a change."

He looked sheepish as he spoke; he was fairly certain Liara didn't care about his girl drama.

Liara tilted her head. "Ah," she said, with a vague hint of distance. "Human dating practices are-- interesting. In some respects."

"You guys figured out a way around relationship drama?"

They were getting a little far from the topic of Victorious, but Victor wasn't exactly eager to dive back into those waters.

There was not terribly much to ask about Victorious, was there? She did not know Victor terribly well, and the whole concept still seemed-- outrageous.

As for this concept - Liara just blinked. "Should there be drama?"

"I think you're really lucky if there isn't," Victor said hesitantly. There hadn't been a whole lot of drama with Olive once they got started, but that was -- special. "It's emotional. Sometimes people do dumb stuff. Not so much where you're from?"

"I would not know," Liara admitted. "I have never dated anyone before."

And she wasn't exactly a social superstar even on Thessia.

"Oh." So ... that was awkward.

Victor shuffled his feet along the ground, looking for something more to say. "Well ... maybe it's easy for some people."

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Room 401, Thursday Noonish

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