capeandcowl | [video]

Entry tags:

valeria richards | n/a

[video]

[There is a blue-eyed child looking at you. She can't be more than three. She is, however, wearing a very grown-up expression of dissatisfaction. And some kind of superhero outfit with a big "6" on the chest.

Ordinarily, Val would be cagier about immediately going public in a strange place, but, well, she has A Problem. When she speaks, it's with fully adult syntax and no hint of a lisp or any other childish speech impediment.]

Hi. I'm Valeria Richards. Assuming no alternate timeline stuff--not a safe assumption, I know, but sometimes you gotta live dangerously--it looks like there are a few people out there who're friends of my parents. You've got a couple of hours to come get me before they [she turns the phone to show a pair of what are presumably social workers, looking simultaneously put-upon and patient] try to stick me in foster care and things get sketchy.

[Anyone who knows Val will know that's more for the prospective foster parents' protection than hers. No one wants her turning some unfortunate family's appliances into her robot escape army.]

...'Bye.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That's pretty much what my family does on Saturdays, you know. Cartoons, sugary cereal, visit the Cretaceous, get into a fight there 'cause Uncle Ben wanted to ride a T-Rex.... [Fantastic Four life]

I'm not worried. [Much.] I can leave whenever I want.

[Actual working lightsaber in her backpack.]

[ Of course she has a lightsaber. He wouldn’t be surprised if she’d turned up in an X-Wing for God’s sake. ]

Yeah, I remember how much you like giant lizards, believe me. There usually aren’t any here, you’re gonna be disappointed.

You probably have actual superpowers now though. That’s a plus.

[NO REFERRING TO THAT ON THE NETWORK HER DAD MIGHT SHOW UP AND THEN SHE'D BE IN TROUBLE

Ahem.]

...I don't need superpowers.

[ Is there ever a time when she isn’t in trouble because this is his entire experience of her... ]

Wow, okay, that’s great for you. I know you’re like, Einsteinette or whatever. It’s not my fault, I’m just telling you how it is.

[Sometimes Franklin or Johnny is the one in trouble.]

I'm much smarter than Einstein was.

[It's hard to tell if she's missing the point on purpose or not. Knowing Val at all, though, "on purpose" is the smarter bet.]

[ Val's being difficult, of course it's on purpose. ]

Yeah, but you get yourself almost killed way more often than he did, so it evens out.

[Julian really has no room to complain about someone else being difficult on purpose.]

Einstein never had to deal with Skrulls or the Negative Zone.

[She didn't choose the Fantastic Four life. The Fantastic Four life chose her.]

[ Hey he didn't say he disliked her for it. ]

Einstein could've been a Skrull for all you know.

If he'd been a Skrull, he would have tried to retard technical development. Matter-energy equivalence led directly to the atom bomb.

[Though...]

He was intransigent on quantum theory, and the delay in widespread acceptance of that affected the growth of computing technology. Still, he was hardly alone there.

[ He kind of just stares at her. ]

You think too much. Has anyone ever told you that? Because they should have, you think way too much.

And I was kidding.

Dad says there's no such thing as thinking too much. [Reed Richards would say that, of course.]

And counterfactuals are fun as long as you're aware of the limitations.

That's cause he's famous for thinking too much.

[ He's regretting this before he's even asked it. ] What limitations?

They hit up against some human cognitive limitations. When presented with a counterfactual, people tend to assess its truth value incorrectly and then reason from that bad premise. The counterfactual conditional is definitionally false, and confusing it with the indicative conditional is a problem.

[Obviously.]

[ Holy shit Val.

Ugh wait, it even feels wrong just to think swear words at her. ]

Right, that's exactly what I would've said. You know, maybe you should just go to the Xavier school. You can teach a class or something.

Does Dr. McCoy need a hand? I can cover any of his math or science classes.

[She teaches the Future Foundation math classes, after all.]

[ Of course she does. ]

Is there anything you can't do? Just for the record.

Get a popsicle out of the freezer without standing on a chair.

[At least until she makes a gravity gun or something.]

Cute. [ Said dryly, even if it's kind of true. ]

Imagine if you had to wait three times as long as you've been alive to be able to use basic amenities the way they were designed.

[Val's usually pretty good about not resenting that she's three feet tall and can maybe lift 20 pounds if she uses both hands, but sometimes it hits her how long it's going to take to grow up.]

I'm pretty sure I did have to. You aren't the only three year old alive who ever wanted to jack some ice cream.

[ A pause. ]

Anyways you could probably just make your own if you wanted.

[ Not that he would encourage such a thing.

There's a chance he might be a bad influence on her. ]

I can usually talk one of my uncles or Spider-Man into getting it for me, but that's not really the point. [He's reminding her that all the people who can understand how she feels are in another universe.]

...Ice cream is trivial. [And that's how Julian ended up with a fusion-powered ice cream maker in his room.]

[ Well at least Spider-Man is here? ]

You're like, three years old. Ice cream should be your reason for living.

Julian, I stopped being a normal kid when I developed the ability to do hyperspace calculations in my head.

[Not that she doesn't still like ice cream, mind you.]

Kid, are you really gonna have the conversation about what it means to be normal with a mutant?

[ Because honestly, not being normal makes him like you more. That's just how it is. ]

Well, to be perfectly honest, I don't think I would recognize normal if it opened a portal into the Baxter Building and said it needed to talk to Dad, so I'd be at something of a disadvantage there.

[What do you mean most people don't need black magic to make sure they're born alive?]