legionclubhouse | TEST DRIVE MEME

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test drive

TEST DRIVE MEME

Pick a scenario!

Scenario A: The Legion has been invited to a fancy reception with the United Planets Council because various public officials and dignitaries want to meet with the new Legionnaires. Even the older Legionnaires don't want to go, but they've been told that if they bring the rookies they'll get some funding and resources to work on their project of getting the newbies home.

So everyone's put on their best color-changing dresses and self-tying ties and are getting to work rubbing elbows and trying to pretend they actually want to be there.

Naturally, while some of the dignitaries are polite and genuinely interested in the plight of the interdimensional refugees, many of the dignitaries are downright rude in various ways, either by making the rookies feel as if they'll never measure up to the old Legion (as if being brought into this world is some fault of theirs) or by being condescending when hearing about their comparatively "primitive" worlds. ("Oh, you still use fossil fuels there? How quaint!") Some like the green-skinned Coluans are outright hostile, telling the rookies that by helping the Legion, they're betraying organic life because of the Legion's support of Robotica.

A fun time is being had by all, naturally.

Okay, that's a lie, but at least the rookies have each other to talk to, right? And there's no dearth of weird future fashion to quietly make fun off.

Scenario B: The reception is under attack! A Xanthan terrorist group has busted in and plans on taking some of the dignitaries hostage in exchange for some of their number being released from prison.

"Nobody move and no one has to get hurt!" the leader cries out, his gun pointed at Madame President.

Unfortunately for them, the Legion got a last-minute invite to this little shindig. Time to team up with one of your teammates to kick some butt and practice those quips!

REMINDER:

There are only 30 player slots in the game. We do want to remind players of that at each step towards game opening, just so they're aware during the reserve/app process that these slots might fill fast. We've also moved the opening of reserves a day to make it more convenient for the mods. Here are the current dates for upcoming events:

RESERVES WILL OPEN ON: 12/20/15 @ 5PM EST/2PM PST/10PM GMT
APPS WILL OPEN ON: 12/26/15 @ 5PM EST/2PM PST/10PM GMT
GAME STARTS ON: 1/01/16

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

"Well, only about a fifth of the atmosphere being breathable works well enough for humans, so there's room for variation in here, even if I haven't looked into what the exact mix we're looking at is..."

He pauses to take a bite of that fruit, tapping the rind with one finger thoughtfully as he looks around.

"I've hardly gotten to reading up on the biology I've missed out on. Started with the engineering and..." Headshake. "There's so much it's hard to decide what order to take it all in."

"A dozen..."

He sounded suitably impressed, despite the fact that they were standing in a room in a dimension far beyond that. It was the 31st century here, everyone expected things to be light years ahead. But the idea of a dozen functional and mostly sustainable space colonies not so long after his own time...

That hit a lot closer to home, literally.

"How big?"

"It's magic. Trust me on that. One of my archenemies that kept popping up every few years to be a pain in my butt like the world's most annoying whack-a-mole was the immortal court magician of some old pharoah." God, the Sphinx was a pain in his ass and the only thing that had ever made it worth the aggravation of dealing with him was using his time-meddling to pull the girl he loved out of the timestream so she never faced her death. "My world's chock full of it and even despite some of the smartest eggheads in my world studying it, it still can't be entirely understood. There's magic in this world, too, apparently, so we have that little joy to look forward to. Hooray."

He'd been reading up on some of the Legion's old adventures and apparently this world was no different than his in having magical enemies -- and heroes.

"How old are you, anyway? And how long you been at the hero thing?" A pause. "I figure it has to be a hero thing 'cause you don't exactly seem the mustache-twirling villain type."

[ Chuck had timed it just right, as Adrien was taking a breath to dig that hole just a little deeper and the diplomat in question looked on the verge of an apocalyptic meltdown. There was still a moment where the doctor looked like he was going to cut loose with his next insult, regardless of Chuck's attempt but in the end, he gave the diplomat a tight smile and let himself be steered away.

He didn't know Chuck well, but then Adrien didn't know a lot of his fellow teammates all that well. While he glared (really it was just his default facial expression) he still exhaled a sigh and admitted. ]

That escalated quickly. [ It was actually kind of a 'thank you'? ] I swear though, I've been running into that damn attitude all night.

"I mean, the dancing hasn't even started yet," Bobby said. "Can you really leave a party without a little, you know -" He flailed about for a moment and wiggled his hips. The move didn't last more than a couple of seconds, but it was likely long enough to mortify anyone in his vicinity. "Sorry, I'm not so good with the dancing. Also, people in the future dance really weirdly. The past future, I mean." Explaining this whole being from a couple of different time periods thing was a pain, he had quickly realized. "Never mind."

He scanned the crowd for anything else that may have needed an intervention, but there was nothing. A really cute guy, but Bobby quickly looked away from him. It was going to take some getting used to, being able to walk up to a guy and flirt with him.

"If you hang, I promise, I won't make with the barrage of snow-puns."

"Trust me, I get it," Chuck replied. "My superpower is turning into a giant rubber ball, so you can probably imagine how bad the first time I had to deal with these nassheads went."

The senior Legion members obviously didn't have very high opinions about politics.

"That still doesn't mean you should sink to their level," he admonished. "Yes, they are sprocking jerks, but you shouldn't let them get to you. They're politicians, they're paid to be socially maladjusted."

Edited 2015-12-17 05:54 (UTC)

"There's a lot," Oikawa said. "And there are better things to worry about. We don't have the luxury to learn every culture before hand. This is a hit the ground running thing."

He looked around. Though he had to admit, being able to know just who and what they would be dealing with would be helpful. "Still... It wouldn't hurt to do some research during down time. That's pretty much what I've been doing with the Legion's history. That and coming up with strategies to deal with some past enemies of the Legion. I could start studying cultures of other worlds..." He trails off, weighing his options. Both would be helpful, but he's leaning to battle strategies being more important.

Peter Quill had learned to control his temper over the years, which would shock most people who had only recently met him (it just went to show how bad his rage could be back in the day). Earth had its problems, but it wasn't the absolute worst rock in the space-time continuum, and to top it all off: he actually knew how to use some of the kinds of technology in this universe and time period. "Primitive," his flarkin' ass.

He tried to behave. He really did. When someone let something slip, he politely tried to steer the conversation somewhere else, despite the twitching of his eyebrow. He tried to bite his tongue and drown his words with sips of his drink, but finally the words had worn him thin.

A rather bratty young Coluan man ended up with a glassful of chilled blue liquor thrown right in his face. The immediate area around him went silent. Peter shut his eyes and then quietly walked off. Better to let it end there than start throwing fists, as much as his were shaking at his sides.

Considering Peter's previous "explosion," this was rather poor timing for the Xanthans. Their sudden barking of demands as they tried to take someone hostage set Peter's brain to ticking away the steps between himself and them, on the floor, unconscious at best. He glanced around 180 degrees, taking in where the terrorists were setting their sights. Peter took every glance away from him to back up behind a decorative pillar.

He had a scowl on his face, and he quietly removed one of his guns from its holster. He gave it a quick look over to make sure it was functioning properly and set on an ammo that would be non-lethal.

"Well, time to lock and load, sirs." Peter looked around the pillar to see where his next opening to drawn in close would be.

"I blame you."

When the terrorists had jumped in, there had been a lot of fuss. Jason's first reaction was to find a private place to morph, but there was little chance of that going on in a place so crowded. Besides, who knew if he could manage it in another dimension? So he'd decided to stick to the rules and flip a table, leaving him to use a mirror-polished platter to peer at the group from behind it.

Hey, it worked in the movies.

He glanced over to Peter and waggled the plate. "Never water little green men. You get weeds that way." Oh yeah, he'd seen the earlier bit with the Coluan there. And promptly pretended he hadn't.

Jason scowled, trying to count up the numbers with the platter. Xanthans didn't look too different from normal people, so he just had to go by who was waving guns around. Who knew if there were more hiding in a crowd? Well, maybe someone who knew Xanthans better than he did, all he knew was they had a few heroes hook up with the Legion. "I've got... Three over by the President, two on an upper level," which probably meant two more on the opposite side, "and three more gathering more hostages from the crowd, I guess? I can't really tell what they're doing." He lowered the platter and glanced pointedly at Peter's guns. "Got a plan beyond 'punch them really hard with bullets'?" The way the older man carried himself, it was pretty obvious he was used to nasty situations.

"Things intersect. Even when we were fighting back home, handling the science was always, well, my thing - but even if that was mostly engineering..."

Another bite.

"Terraforming, life support - biology intersects with engineering. Culture's going to intersect with everything else - politics, for instance." Not that they're particularly enjoying being stuck in a room full of politics, but the fact that they're here says it's something they're going to have to worry about. "We don't have time to get too in-depth on everything we come across, but if we can at least manage conversant, that's going to put a lot of things in better context."

His face scrunched up in what would've been wrinkling his nose, for anyone with an obvious nose, at the mention of that archenemy. "Ugh. I hope none of ours manage that."

Given what little they'd learned about the Pantheon so far, he wasn't expecting to be terribly lucky in that regard.

Still, that problem - as much as he'd like to deal with it - was dimensions away, and worrying about what he couldn't do anything about wasn't going to help anyone. Better to focus on what he could do to get himself back to it, first, and that? That meant smiling, playing nice with the politicians, and not doing anything to jeopardize their shot at getting more resources assigned to the Legion to keep up the research on getting them back.

(He really should've written down those coordinates that had sent them one New York in the wrong direction when they were test-driving the spatial transporter. Or rather, the ones that had gotten them back home from that.)

"I don't really go out of my way to be a hero, but it...just happens anyway, sometimes." It was just rational, as far as he was concerned - if nobody else was in a position to save the world from Krang, then why would he just stand back and let it happen? "But...all of that started not even two years ago, I guess."

It could be argued that things started long before that, but even if Donnie was much more accepting of all that reincarnation jibberish than he used to be, he didn't much like it as a defining point of where it all began. There were too many ways to take that further and further back - it started with Stockgen's experiments on the mutagen, it started with Hamato Yoshi's execution by the Foot, it started with whatever the Utroms were doing back in the Mesozoic Era...it was complicated.

As much as he enjoyed tackling the complicated questions, sometimes you just wanted a simple answer.

"Mutagen kind of messed with how fast we grew up, though, so the age question gets...kind of sticky."

And sometimes you didn't have a simple one to offer, but at least you could try not to give the really complicated one to a guy you met five minutes ago.

"Meeeh," Adrien grumbled.

It wasn't that he didn't understand what the senior Legionnaire was saying and it wasn't that he didn't appreciate the truth of Chuck's words. It was just the whole social niceties situation that didn't set right.

A safe distance from the (what had Chuck called him) nasshead in question, the doctor turned and looked out across the crowd, frowning.

"'Social' anything is maladjusted by it's very definition." Someone did not have a high opinion of parties. "Why in the hell were we dragged out to this in the first place?"

"Dancing is only strange if you're the only one doing it." She remarked idly. "If everyone was doing the same movements you were then it would seem perfectly acceptable." Though she made no motion to join him in his desperate attempts at making the most of a moment.

"I suppose if I leave you alone you'll find someone else to annoy. I'll bare that burden a bit longer then." It would behoove her to have some more allies in this universe and since he was making it so easy she might as well take advantage.

"My burden isn't so heavy," Bobby said lightly. "I'm like a hundred twenty-five pounds wet. I'd offer to let you test it out, but you know. I'm still cold, and the water could freeze." For someone who tried to appear to be so burden-free, he certainly did chatter on enough to make it seem like he was trying to not be alone with his own personal thoughts, didn't it? "But you get the gist."

Bobby snagged a canapé from a waiter passing by and popped it into his mouth without stopping to look at it. He didn't want to know what he was eating. The food here was different, and he didn't want to think about it too much. Besides, it tasted good, so bonus.

"I'm Bobby, by the way. Bobby Drake. Or Iceman, depending on the situation."

"Princess Azula of the Fire Nation." She returned the introduction as though he should know who she was. There was pride in how she said the word princess, clearly expecting the respect that the title demanded. "Though I suppose when on duty Blue Dragon is my preferred title. Does this count as on duty or not given what we just did?"

It was a fair question. Where was she allowed to draw the line between personal and professional with this group?

There was a moment where Bobby's eyes lit up during Azula's introduction, a moment where it seemed like he was about to make a pun.

It was a moment that he quickly quashed.

"We just saved the madame president lady, Princess," Bobby said. "Pretty sure that counted as duty." He busied himself with another quick snack before blurting out, "You know, if we teamed up, we could be called Fire and Ice. Please don't melt me, that wasn't an actual pun." Another brief pause. "Is there an Ice Nation?"

His immediate backpedaling saved him from her wrath, it wasn't exactly groveling but it would do for now.

"Yes, the Water tribes to the North and South have lived savage lives of a primitive nature. While the other nations rise up they are stuck living in houses of ice and snow, at constant odds with the very elements they choose to ally themselves with. It's a small wonder they haven't died off yet though not for lack of their own trying."

All things considered that was actually pretty moderate compared to how she really felt about them.

Fire & Ice though. It was going on Bobby's team-up bucket list.

He commanded cold, but was hot. She commanded heat, but was cold. Together, they fought crime.

Or something.

Wisely, he didn't bring up this little pitch to Azula.

"You're not a big fan of them, are you?" He was a mutant. One who was recently gay. He could tell when what he was feeling was negative energy emanating from a person. Azula didn't like the Water tribes much. Maybe because fire and water would always be at odds. Explains why Jean gets on my nerves sometimes, since she might be all fire-burn-ragey one day.

"I mean, I get it. There are people I'm not a fan of either. But, you know. Maybe they think they're doing good by staying with the ice? Keeping the ice caps all polar and everything."

"Oh they think that I'm sure." Azula sighed starting to relax despite herself. He may be bound with the powers of ice and snow but he wasn't making any attempts to threaten her with it so she could take it down a few notches...at least one.

"I'm sure they still think it's for the best to treat their females like secondary citizens as well. Not even allowed to fight alongside their brothers, husbands and fathers when danger looms. If they were a little less rigid in their belief about what is right perhaps they would not be so few in number anymore."

This was heading in a bad direction for her mood so she opted to turn it a different direction.

"Tell me of your home."

Bobby's mouth opened and closed. "That sounds terrible. And backwards." He wondered how people like him would fare in a society like that. Not mutants. I wonder if I would have survived there. Or if I'd made the same decision that future-me made.

He shrugged. "My home's a little more progressive than that on the female front. Not a whole lot - there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. But it's not quite so backwards sexist." Though his father probably would have thrived with the Water tribe, given the way that he tended to think. "Those of us with powers aren't much loved though. At least if the power is a genetic gift, like with me. If you were given your powers some other way - an alien wishing machine or a radioactive spider bite or whatever - people tend to worship you. It's really weird. Like, most of us look alike. How can you even tell, you know?" He looked back up at Azula. "You'd dig it, though. I think you'd be respected. We dig our kick-ass warrior princesses. Just ask Xena. I mean, you know. Except for where she's fictional."

While she didn't have too much interest in his home if she's honest with herself (She's much too self centered to honestly care about anyone else's home) but something he says catches her attention and she pauses to consider it.

"You'll pardon me for asking, but my world is not as advanced in some areas of science. Do you mean that some people from your world gain powers like yours by birth? From their parents? And yet the public, the powerless look down on it?" She sounded puzzled, annoyed and a little incredulous at the idea.

"I mean, not from birth? It usually kicks on at puberty," he explained. "Mine kicked in when I was on a date and this bully and his friends tried to attack us. I freaked out and froze him in a block of ice," he explained. "It's different for everyone. My friend Jean - she can lift things with her mind and read minds - her powers kicked in when a childhood friend of hers died. She actually felt her friend die. It's not always that traumatic for us, but you know. It's not always fun and games either." He grabbed a drink, took a sip, and wrinkled his nose. "Humans are scared because we - mutants - we're like the next stage in the evolution of humanity or whatever, so they have a fear of being wiped out. Or, you know, the unknown, I guess. It doesn't really make sense, but you know how it is? People will persecute you just for being different."

Rich wasn't far off and he looked amused as he leaned against a wall, arms crossed, keeping an eye on the whole room. Every so often he flexed the fingers of his robotic prosthetic slightly. He was still getting used to the thing and it had become something like a nervous reflex to keep moving his fingers experimentally, as if he was reassuring himself fingers of some kind were still there even if they weren't his flesh-and-blood ones.

Despite his vigilance, he was still far more relaxed than he'd ever been during or after the war. Part of it was him just quietly enjoying being alive again after that whole turning-into-a-dimensional-door-and-dissipating-into-energy thing. The other part was the fact he didn't have to worry about absolutely everything because he wasn't the boss man anymore. He wasn't even that guy that everyone looked to for cues on how to act despite not being the boss man.

He was just another cog in the machine now, and after dying and coming back, not having to worry about the things a leader had to worry about suited him just fine. It was like being just another Nova again, only this time it wasn't Worldmind trying to force him into it because he'd lost it and become a few fries short of a Happy Meal. This time the leader in charge was actually marginally competent.

He spoke to Peter in English instead of the Interlac that their telepathic earplugs defaulted to. It was just as much a small act of defiance in the face of the ethnocentric superiority of the people around them as it was to prevent anyone around them from understanding they were talking shit about them.

"You know," he said, "if I was the one in charge of this whole operation I'd be pissed you just possibly screwed up a very delicate diplomatic situation."

A pause.

"But I'm not, so --"

He laughed. It was a laugh that didn't pop up all that often, a boyish, mischievous one that had probably been far more common during his days with the New Warriors, before the war, before everything that made him almost want to never laugh again.

"And I thought the Rigellians were bad. Forget throwing a drink in his face, you should'a found a punch bowl to dunk him in."

The average Rigellian had all the personality of a block of wood, but these Coluans...

If someone could have an inverse of a personality, they had that.

Edited 2015-12-20 08:53 (UTC)

There was a tensing at the mention of freezing someone in a block of ice, and then a full on shudder when he explained how Jean could read minds. Having to deal with someone who could slip into her thoughts easily was even more unsettling to Azula then her recently developed hydrophobia.

"While I suppose I can see where the weaker less powerful might be afraid of that which they don't understand, it seems to me they should be grateful for your kind. Where I come from those who can manipulate the elements are considered blessed for having a gift. Most of them incorporate their talents into their day to day lives, their work, even military service. Having something special about you is simply gives you a leg up on life."

"At least you are aware enough to see it's only because they fear what you can do that they can't."

"Well, the funny thing is, they're okay with other people who get powers. Super-strength by serum? Oh hey, that's alright. Cosmic radiation? Sure. The way you're born? Oh nooo. There's something wrong with you." His eyes had darkened for a moment, and the air immediately around him had cooled by a few degrees as he spoke. "It makes no sense, you know?" He smiled a little wistfully. "It'd be nice to be somewhere that my particular abilities would be considered a gift, not a monstrosity."

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