om_main | Willow - Backdated to June 2nd

Willow arrives in the Big Apple and gets her first taste of Oscorp.

The Oscorp building was big. They didn't have anything even remotely comparable in Sunnydale, and the Oscorp building wasn't even the biggest of the behemoths. Willow blinked up at the shiny face of the building before dragging her suitcase through the grandiose automatic doors. The atrium stretched up into the distance, flooding the room with light from the windows behind her. She tried and failed to not look starstruck as she slowly made her way across the large room towards the reception desk.

"Excuse me miss, are you Willow Rosenberg?"

Willow turned towards the voice and found a small man staring up at her. He straightened his hopelessly crumpled tie and cleared his throat, reminding her that he was still speaking. She focused in on him, unnecessarily tucking a long strand of hair behind her ear. The man was introducing himself as Mr. Wallace and saying that he would be showing her to her living quarters and then giving her a tour of the facilities. Apparently Mr. Wallace was also going to be her guide and see to all of her needs during her stay in New York. Willow, basically still in shock at going from Sunnydale to this gargantuan hulk of a city, nodded in all the right places as she tried to get her thoughts in order.

"Where is everyone else?" she asked, looking around the mostly empty area.

"It's just you, Ms. Rosenberg. This is an exclusive opportunity."

Willow looked around again and then back down at the man, "But I didn't even apply, they just invited me."

"Because we had heard of your excellent work, far above the others in your age range. Not to mention your father was a valued Oscorp employee. We thought you could benefit from learning what we do here, and if the summer goes well, you may well find yourself with an ongoing summer position which could very well lead to scholarships, research opportunities during college, and perhaps a job after."

It was all a lot to take in. She didn't want to be a charity case, but how could she pass up an opportunity to study with Norman Osborn or even the brilliant minds he had working for him. Their work in chemistry and engineering, let alone their advances for the pharmaceutical industry, had placed them on the world's radar. And they had only continued to improve and advance. There was so much knowledge in this building and they were offering it, or at least some of it, to her.

Not to mention how long it had taken her to build up the courage to come here and get permission from her parents. Granted it had taken longer to build up the courage than it took to convince her parents. Her mom had absently nodded while her dad, somewhat more interested, had smiled and said something vaguely good about the corporation and what he had done there before going back to reading his medical journals.

She returned her attention to Mr. Wallace and nodded, pasting a smile on her face before following him to the elevators. The company was going to house her within the building? She asked Mr. Wallace about it and he assured her it wasn't so unusual. Even Mr. Osborn had rooms in the building. Still in awe of everything, how shiny and efficient everything was, Willow didn't see the person coming out of the elevator. They collided and he dropped his binder and Willow's suitcase slid from her grasp. Almost without thinking she reached for it before it got too far and green energy briefly stretched from her hand and grabbed the bag, depositing it back in her reaching hand.

The whole affair had taken a few seconds and when she looked up, Mr. Wallace had a weird smile on his face, as if he were having trouble keeping his expression steady. She had messed up before she's even gotten in the elevator and he was mad at her, wondering how they could have picked such an idiot for this internship. And the man that she'd bumped into stared at her angrily. She thought he looked familiar but was quickly whisked away by Mr. Wallace before she could make the connection.

"Come on Willow, we have a lot to do," he said, still with the weird smile. "And this promises to be an interesting summer."

Just as the doors closed she realized that she had just bumped into Warren Mears in New York.