Although Natasha had undergone brutal training and chemical enhancement, she was still no match for Valkyrie. Before long, Gin had pinned her to the carpet and mercilessly tickled her.
Only after laughing herself breathless and begging for mercy did she crawl out of Gin's clutches, panting heavily.
Su Ming looked at the carpet with some heartache. This was wolfskin brought back from Fenris, and today was the first time he had laid it out. Now it was soaked with spilled liquor.
"Go on, tell him. If you don't, he'll start interrogating you." Gin pulled Natasha back into her arms and smoothed her hair with her fingers.
"Honestly, I never expected this at first either." Black Widow's face was flushed, perhaps from the fireplace's glow, making her look considerably livelier. "We received an invitation from the Shi'ar Empire."
"Heh. What are those birdmen up to this time?"
Deathstroke braced his hands on his knees, grabbed the Cloak of Levitation beside him, and used it to wipe the carpet as he spoke coldly.
"I can't really say. Just take a look."
Natasha tapped at the Widow's Sting on her wrist, removed a miniature disk, then used the study's projector to cast its contents onto the wall behind her for the two of them.
The recording showed someone with a typical Shi'ar Empire hairstyle—a feathered mohawk—delivering an impassioned, long-winded speech in English with an African accent.
There was plenty of praise for the Shi'ar Empire and a lot of baffling pleasantries, but the general message was about something rather unusual.
"So he's saying that the Shi'ar Empire has some kind of luxury space cruise liner called the Space Princess, which will dock at Earth in seven Earth rotation cycles and take willing human applicants on an interstellar journey lasting one Earth orbit?" Su