TEST DRIVE MEME

[letsgolegion]

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

Comments

A

[nerdninja]

The setting is already enough to make Donatello feel horribly out of place - fancy anything is pretty far down the list of things he has experience or interest in, and getting ready for the evening was a nightmare in figuring out appropriate formalwear that would fit over his shell without feeling ridiculously restricting. And unlike that time crashing the Science Expo, these are the kinds of people who'll lord up their more advanced technology without actually showing any appreciation for what got it for them in the first place.

You don't just tell a scientist that everything his world's been working on is quaint.

But flipping out and losing his temper over something minor would be so...so Raph, really. He can do better than that.

Logic.

"Well, sure, we've got a long way to go," he says, striving to keep his tone as light and conversational and free of the intense annoyance this guy's existence is causing him as possible. "But there's still a lot of hard work and innovation that went into just the level of technology there now. Seeing what you all have here, and knowing that's still ahead if we keep moving forward - knowing I could be part of getting us there...I mean, with so much room for improvement and so many possibilities still ahead...doesn't that make knowing how many people are going to keep innovating and improving to get here even more exciting?"

Crickets chirp.

"...no?"

Tough crowd, huh.

Maybe now's a good time to go scope out the refreshments for the ninth time tonight.

Re: A

[stillshinigami]

That looked painful. In the same token it looked like a great time for a tactical retreat as far as his conversation with an alien enginner who was starting to press him on questions after he casually mentioned space colonies. The conversation was already a 'smile and nod' game, and he was growing weary of the condescending tone coming out of this guy. So he excused himself as politely as he could and made his way to the refreshments which was an adventure of it's own.

"Hey man." He sidles on over to Donatello by the table, not quite making eye contact, but surveying the food or drink available. Still not sure if he's brave enough to try anything yet.

"Give yourself a little credit. You're at a party thrown by folks thinkin' we're slack jawed, cave dwelling barbarians. Still the smartest thing I've heard all night." Duo turns to him and offers his hand.

"Name's Duo. You?"

[nerdninja]

"I could even take a little condescension if it came from people who actually had anything to do with making these kinds of advances in the first place," he says wryly, looking up from the plate of hor d'oeuvres he's returned at least six of those nine times to contemplate again. (The presentation is...weird? Which doesn't mean the taste will be, to be fair, and it can't be as bad as Mikey's daily attempt at eggs, but -)

He turns to meet that handshake. "Donatello, nice to meet you."

[stillshinigami]

"I dunno about that. Arrogant scientists aren't exactly somethin' I'm too fond of." Not to say that Professor G and the others were arrogant. They were twisted old fools, but they weren't arrogant about their achievements. If they were, that was a scenario Duo didn't really want to put much thought into.

Yeah dude, unless he can figure out what counts as a finger sandwich or cocktail sausages, he'll figure out what to eat later.

"Likewise." He replies, glancing over his shoulder briefly. "So what's your story? Can't say I've ever talked to a turtle before." In all honesty he's never actually seen an actual turtle before, even during his time on Earth he'd never seen one.

[nerdninja]

Arrogant scientists...well. They might not always be the most pleasant types, but Harold was somehow tolerable despite his misanthropic tendencies, insistence that he was the smartest person in the room, and felonies against proper grammar. Maybe Donnie was inclined to go easy on him because he'd been one of the first (and only) friends outside of his family that he'd been able to make, or maybe it was just that the whole "helping to stop the Technodrome and save the world" thing proved Harold was pretty decent at heart, but...

Yeah, he couldn't deny that the guy was kind of a pain in the neck.

"Most people haven't, even where I'm from." Though in a place like this, probably best to clarify that - "New York, Earth, early twenty-first century. I'm a mutant, hence the...talking."

And the size (even if he was still kind of a shortie). And the ninja skills. And the everything.

[stillshinigami]

New York, one of the places he never really got around to when he was on Earth, but it wasn't a pleasure trip anyway. Far as he knows at least one of the L2 Colonies drew architectural influence from the 'Big Apple'.

"Yeh'don't say?" He says, then chews on his own answer a minute, as he wasn't exactly clear on the exact date when the calendar changed from AD to AC.

"23rd century if I had to guess. We got another calendar system back home. It's After Colony 199."

[nerdninja]

Calendar changes usually meant huge world changes, and a calendar with a name like that gave a pretty big hint as to what, exactly, the changes must've entailed.

And doing the math in his own head, putting it to a change that wouldn't be that far off from his own time...

"What's the Colony it's after, then?"

...his science senses are tingling.

[stillshinigami]

"After establishing the first space colony in Earth's orbit. That's what." So basically some substantial advancements in space technology.

See, already Donatello is better company than most of the dignitaries walking around this joint.

"I'm used to the living in space, nooot so much the interspecies diplomacy."

[nerdninja]

That was about the answer he was expecting, but it doesn't make the idea any less exciting.

"Self-sustaining? Or is it still dependent on supplies from the planet?" And wait, he said first - "How many are there now?"

[iamresponding]

"Don't mind them. It's like a rule that if a culture breaks the FTL barrier they all automatically get to be snobs and pretend their people were always that advanced," said the man standing behind Donatello, leaning against a wall.

Donnie'd probably seen him around even if they hadn't talked, but Rich was hard to miss. To start with, he was over six feet tall and two hundred pounds of pure muscle. Then there was the whole prosthetic arm thing, since most of his right arm was gone.

The prosthetic was pretty nice. Since he had to remove it to fight to avoid frying it with his powers, it wasn't attached like a true cybernetic would've been, and that meant he couldn't use synth-skin to get his sense of touch back, but the technology was advanced enough that he could still move it with a thought, since it read the nerve impulses in what was left of his shoulder.

Oh, and then there was the fact that unlike most of the others he was absolutely adamant about not getting all dressed up. He was still in his superhero uniform as if he was just waiting for trouble.

There was a twinkle in his eyes that didn't diminish as the people Donnie was talking to started looking offended.

"Yeah, yeah, you heard me."

[nerdninja]

It was definitely hard not to notice a guy that tall, when one barely broke five feet himself. That shadow had to be coming from somewhere.

And it was getting hard not to grin too much at the uncomfortable murmuring from the people around them, but he could at least make a token attempt to keep his amusement from getting too blatant. "If people in the twenty-first century can barely function when you take their cellphones away, I guess people are only going to take even more for granted this far down the line."

He might be a little guilty of that himself, at least in that he got way too fidgety when stuck in a place with no internet, no computers, and not much of anything, but that kind of thing just made him appreciate what was there all the more.

[iamresponding]

Boy, he was bitty. Rich had never imagined the ninja turtles would be bitty, but then anytime he'd imagined himself meeting them he'd been, like, ten. Ten-year-olds tended to imagine all their heroes as larger than life, and when you were ten, teenagers were basically just slightly-cooler adults.

Now he was twenty-nine and had fought in a war and teenagers were just kids in his eyes.

Since Donnie was one of Rich's childhood heroes, he wasn't the only one trying not to grin too much. Rich didn't want to draw attention to the whole 'You're fictional in my universe' business. He was pretty sure it was probably some kind of many-worlds theory 'everything has to be real somewhere, including universes where real people are fictional' thing, but that was still a surefire way to send someone sprawling head first into some kind of existential crisis, and he didn't want to be the cause of that. So he kept his trap shut.

On that subject, at least. He was perfectly comforting saying things to make the rude dignitaries uncomfortable.

"You know, in some of our worlds we still have surgeons, but apparently, the people here are so dependent on robot surgeons they don't even train that many actual people to do it anymore. Because I guess the power never goes out and tech never, ever goes down and there's never any risk at all it might." A pause. "Except for the times they fend off big alien invasions or what have you. And then it does. Y'know, they're reliable until that happens."

He was a man that liked to know the cosmic landscape and that meant he was slowly pouring his way through the Legion's case files and villain database, to see what challenges they'd faced before. Alien invasions and the total collapse of automated infrastructure had just been the icing on the cake, apparently.

Now the people they were speaking to were insulted enough to start leaving the conversation and Rich gave them a big grin as they went.

[nerdninja]

The many-worlds theory would probably sit well enough - he'd probably dive into it rather eagerly, all things considered - but maybe avoiding an existential crisis was a good thing for someone who'd so recently had one of a slightly different sort by getting his mind temporarily uploaded into a robot. It was an interesting intellectual paradox, but it was also incredibly relieving to just feel like himself again.

"Must be a good thing for them, knowing there are so many of us here to stop that kind of thing from happening," he agreed, his tone just a little too innocent to be genuine.

So maybe don't insult the people who stop alien invasions before your robot surgeons short circuit, being the obvious implication, delivered with a cheery nod to the dignitaries who were beginning to bail on them.

[iamresponding]

He liked this kid. Already. And no, that wasn't the childhood nostalgia talking, he was clearly...

Well, it wasn't like in the cartoons. He was a kid. An actual flesh-and-blood, mutant teenage boy, one that wasn't spouting catch phrases. So Rich went at this thing like he would've for any green, mutant teenager (and he'd met quite a few mutant teens in his life to draw from experience) and held out his hand.

Realizing it was the prosthetic one, which he was still worried about controlling correctly, he switched over to his left.

"What's your name, kid? Don't think I caught it yet." Acting like he knew it already would be creepy, "I'm Rich. Rich Rider. I also go by Nova."

Anyone willing to help him with subtle (or less-than-subtle) digs at alien dignitaries was okay in his book.

[nerdninja]

Catch phrases are so 1987. (Though sometimes even the combined force of three brothers and their best "you've got to be kidding me" glares weren't enough to stop Mikey.)

Noticing that switch, Donnie went ahead and met the handshake with his own left, to keep things from getting too physically awkward. (There was no getting around his own hand being three-fingered and not quite shaped like a human's, but Rich, at least, seemed well used enough to this kind of thing that that much probably wouldn't make a difference.)

"I'm Donatello."

Having a superhero name at all, let alone handing it out, was something he still wasn't at all used to.

[iamresponding]

The three-fingered hand was really nothing at all strange to Rich. He'd shaken appendages with way weirder individuals than Donnie. That was what happened when you rubbed elbows with all kinds of mutants and aliens (some of whom had tentacles) and were friends with intelligent, telepathic, Russian cosmonaut dogs. (Cosmo really did love to shake paws).

"Don't mind any of these morons. If being one of the only 'lowly pink apes' at all the big space shindigs back home has taught me anything it's that every species wants to think they're the biggest fish in the pond -- and there's always something bigger out there."

He nodded to the rest of the party.

"I've met celestial beings that'd see all these people as just...bugs. Big ol' bugs. If that. You deal with heavy hitters like that hoping you don't give them enough of an itch that they pay attention to you."

He held out his hands slightly.

"There's a whole scale." He paused. "But rather than that meaning nothing matters as far as what people get up to in advancing themselves, I think it's the opposite. The ones that never look at other people like they're lesser -- or like they're bugs -- they're the most advanced. Doesn't matter what level of tech they have, either, what matters is what they do with it."

That was his working theory, anyway.

[nerdninja]

"I hadn't met many, before I got here, but..." He watched the dignitaries splitting off, reforming in new conversational groups, the furtive (and general unimpressed) looks many of them were giving the new Legionnaires. A rainbow of infinite diversity in infinite combinations, but still somehow missing something important, even if it was hard to describe exactly what.

A sense of wonder, maybe. This was all so old to all of them that they didn't seem to have much appreciation for just how amazing the universe they lived in was. There couldn't possibly be anything new for these recruits to bring to the table, so what did it matter?

"The most brilliant scientist I ever met was light years ahead of what's being done on earth, but he was still willing to walk straight into the lion's den to try and save not just his people - but us. He was willing to trust us to be able to catch up with a handful of his research notes, enough to shut down a threat most people back home would never be able to get their heads around." That had been a job and a half, translating the notes into something understandable, figuring out how to synthesize the more exotic components, getting the teleporter finished and test driven and fine-tuned before the Technodrome went operational, but -

"We managed. Somehow." (And he'd nearly gotten killed for his efforts, but that was beside the point.) "These people...it's like they've forgotten what it's like to have to push yourself to accomplish something, because society's done it all already."

[worthlesspride]

"Don't worry about them," Oikawa says holding up a plate of fruit for Donatello. "If they can't be motivated to get off their butts to protect themselves, they aren't worth actual conversation."

That was what he was doing. Did he mind helping people? No. Well, okay, sometimes he did. But he usually hated those people. But this was different. This wasn't teaching an annoying brat volleyball- this was protecting people from danger. That was different. That he didn't mind doing.

"Just smile, nod, and say 'yes' and then they'll leave along. Oh, also compliment them a lot."

[nerdninja]

"I don't know if I have enough sarcasm in me to pretend I've got anything to compliment about these people."

(Believe in yourself, Donnie.)

He reaches over to snag a piece of fruit with a nod of thanks, his hand stopping halfway to his mouth so he can stare at it. It's...glowing? Kind of? Which gets him glancing up to the lights nearby, at least one of which looks to be black, and -

"...is this fruit fluorescent?"

He sounds utterly delighted by the idea.

[worthlesspride]

"It is!" Oikawa beamed, taking a piece himself. "And tasty too. Hopefully not poisonous."

But he doubts it would be.

"Anywho, you've got to be a least a little bit more confident, otherwise they'll never respect you."

Oikawa Tooru rarely holds back his punches, even when giving advise. He does however, give Donatello an encouraging smile. "Just think of me when you need extra confidence!" Because obviously he has it spades.

[nerdninja]

"I know I'm smart. If they think otherwise, I want to see what they do when an alien terraforming device from another dimension comes knocking on their door." A lack of confidence in his own intelligence is probably less Donnie's issue than the fact that having to explain or prove it to people gets tedious, especially to people who lack the sense to recognize the difference between potential wasted and potential that simply hasn't had the potential to be properly tapped. "Ignorance isn't the same thing as stupidity, but I'm seeing a lot of the latter from somewhere in this room."

Hey, at least the snacks are pretty good.

"I'd assume they screen for that kind of thing before they serve it at a party with this many species in attendance, but..." Warning, nerd tangent incoming. "On the other hand, they're not used to having all of our species around to worry about. But that depends on how different we all are at the genetic level, and..."

Oh. Oh, man. He's getting that look.

"I wonder if everyone here is even a carbon-based life form to begin with?"

[worthlesspride]

"I would expect the majority would be." Oikawa looked around. "And most seem to breath oxygen."

Yeah, most of what Donnie said went over Oikawa's head. He's smart, but he's not a genius. Besides, physics was more his deal. Helped in volleyball.

"I think there's a silicon based life form over there. I don't remember what they're called but there was one in the legion. Quite the hero."

[nerdninja]

"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."

[worthlesspride]

"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.

[nerdninja]

"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."