legionclubhouse | TEST DRIVE MEME

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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

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Hiccup, by virtue of being from a society that hadn't entirely worked out how to make steel yet, was getting more than his fair share of the "primitive" treatment. It was taking a considerable amount of will not to point out that he at least had some grasp of basic social skills, unlike certain people here.

But, for anyone paying the slightest bit of attention, it was fairly obvious his temper was getting frayed. Someone would have to head him off before he snapped and chewed one of the diplomats out.

How about instead of someone stopping him from snapping, they cut him off at the pass by snapping first? Zuko had overheard the dignitary getting rude and being from a world these people seemed to think was "primitive" himself, he was automatically annoyed on Hiccup's behalf.

"For people that think they aren't 'primitive,' your manners are," Zuko said testily. "I've met people with more courtesy in prison."

Seriously, some of the prisoners in the Boiling Rock had better manners than these snobs.

"But I guess that's to be expected when most of you aren't even real nobility. You're just a bunch of puffed up, self-important bureaucrats."

Zuko did know how to speak to nobility, really he did. Despite being socially awkward, that still was the world he'd grown up in. The problem was these people weren't actually nobles, judging from their total lack of refinement, and that meant he just didn't care about what they thought of his own manners. It also didn't hurt that all his time in exile and the hardships he'd went through because of it had left him predisposed to doing away with social niceties in general.

The woman that'd been insulting to Hiccup squeaked out "My word!" and harrumphed before quickly rushing off, muttering, "The nerve of that boy --"

"Prince," he corrected, calling after her, and the moment he said the word she looked mortally embarrassed, but she kept hustling. "The nerve of that prince."

Yes, he was throwing around his title here. If they wanted to be all rude and insulting and make assumptions about the people they were talking to somehow being lesser than them, they could go right ahead, and he'd throw his title at their heads like a blunt object. He'd make it clear they were being coarse and crude to actual royalty and then they'd get to feel stupid for it.

Like the woman who was now rushing away, her purple face turning a much brighter purple. Ha!

Edited 2015-12-06 07:48 (UTC)

"Y'know, it's funny, but that was exactly what I was trying not to do." He'd been about to do it anyways, of course, but apparently Hiccup had a slightly larger tolerance for insults than Zuko did. He'd had to, after fifteen years of being insulted by everyone he knew.

"Thanks though. Honestly, I was, like, 20 seconds away from suggesting that if she was as smart as she thought, she should try to design and build a mechanical tailfin for a dragon with her bare hands. That would've gone over well."

Why not tell off someone ignorant to make them go away? It wasn't hard.

But okay, maybe this guy was non-confrontational like Aang was, where he didn't want to be mean to people. Aang would've tried to make friends with the people here and maybe found some other way of maneuvering them around to be more polite, by doing the social equivalent of Airbending, whirling things around before people realized they were being whirled. In any case, Zuko had defended the guy and now he was standing there, with a stranger, suddenly realizing that now he had to talk to him afterward.

Zuko wasn't really good at talking to people, hence why he'd so often gone silent in all his travels. That was why he suddenly went from confidently snobbish and regal to painfully awkward in about one second flat. He leaned against a nearby wall and crossed his arms just to have something to do with them.

Pick a subject, Zuko. Any subject.

Any subject.

"You have dragons where you're from?"

There! A conversational topic! His world had dragons, too.

Hiccup lit up. Zuko might soon regret having asked him, because he could go all day when talking about dragons.

"Yeah. Lots, actually. My best friend is a dragon. I made Toothless stay behind today though. Considering how some of these people are acting, I don't think he'd bite anyone's hand off, he's better behaved than that, but he'd definitely make sure they knew he could if he really wanted to."

Right. So they had dragons there and it sounded like a lot of them.

"We have dragons back home, too." A pause. "A couple of them."

Probably just the two.

"We used to have more. There aren't as many as there used to be because --"

Great, this avenue of conversation, like so many, led right down the road of 'I'm a prince that's done terrible things, of a nation that's done even more terrible things.' While he would've been the last person to deny that his actions and that the actions of his nation were awful, that didn't mean he wanted every conversation to revolve around it.

But it suddenly occurred to Zuko that it didn't necessarily have to always be about that, though. He didn't have to talk about where he was from, and not because it was some deep-seated secret he had to keep to prevent himself from being arrested by enemies in the Earth Kingdom, either. He could talk about it here without risk of getting arrested or killed. Probably.

No, he could just choose not to talk about it just because he chose not to and no one would know. No one would know anything about his world, or the war, or anything he'd done unless he talked about it.

When he looked up and saw some of the other people here, people that were heroes, people that spent their whole lives doing good things for other people, who were brave like the people in stories were, and had probably never made the kinds of mistakes he'd made...

When he looked at them he really, really didn't want to talk about the things he'd done or the stains on his nation's honor that he had to cleanse away.

"-- uh. Because there just aren't as many. As there used to be."

It wasn't a lie, really. It was just...not blurting out things. For lies he had to actually say something false, right?

Hiccup recognized that stutter, the sound of someone trying to avoid talking about something. He'd made it more than a few times himself. And he had a fairly good idea of what Zuko was trying to not talk about.

"You might as well tell me why. I promise I won't bite your head off even if it is I think it is. With what my people gave done, I don't have much of a leg to stand on." Hiccup raised his peg-leg for effect.

"...You seriously just said that."

He was just reaffirming that actually just happened. It was that kind of pun, one that made you doubt reality slightly.

Once they had that whole "yes, that just happened" thing out of the way then maybe he'd talk more to Hiccup about the dragons.

"Yes, I seriously just said that. What else is a missing foot good for except terrible leg puns?"

When one lost a limb, they either let the loss send them into a spiral of depression, or made stupid jokes about it and got on with their lives. Hiccup was firmly in the latter camp, having had Gobber as a mentor.

He wasn't used to seeing people joke about injuries like that. He never joked about his scar, after all. Even now, even after no longer thinking it was a mark of his shame, the experience behind it had been so traumatic he didn't like calling attention to it.

The other boy's comfort in his own skin made it easier for Zuko to be comfortable, though, and him saying "with what my people have done" made it clear that his own people had caused harm to their worlds' dragons, too.

"My people used to hunt them to prove how powerful they were," Zuko said, staring at the floor. "They killed almost all of them. My uncle found the only two that were left and spared them. He told everyone he'd killed them so no one would go looking for them. My friend Aang and I met them and they taught us about the true nature of Firebending."

Wanting to make it clear he'd never harm them himself, he said quickly, "We're going to keep their secret, too. So that they can live in peace." He paused as he realized he'd just technically revealed said secret. "Uh. At least back home we will. Where it matters. It doesn't matter if I tell you since you're here. And not there."

Edited 2015-12-10 04:14 (UTC)

"Don't worry, I won't say anything. Sounds pretty familiar, though. We never got that far before I figured out how to stop it, but it certainly wasn't for lack of trying."

And even though Vikings hadn't managed to hunt dragons to near-extinction, there were a few species that were close to dying out anyways. Toothless was evidence enough of that. They'd never run into another Night Fury no matter how far they flew.

"How I managed that is kind of a long story, though. But it might be more entertaining than anything else going on here, if you're up for it."

He was a little interested. This guy had already mentioned creating a tail for a dragon and it was sounding like maybe their different peoples had a few things in common. It seemed that his people had a penchant for violence, too, and both of them were being treated like primitives by the people of this world.

"You're already getting into bragging about things and I don't even know your name."

Yes, "bragging about things" was the way he worded it. Zuko didn't seem to care about how blunt he was.

He could see a good brag was possibly coming on but he was at least curious enough to stay and listen. Stories about dragons were bound to be less boring than the rest of this stupid party.

"My name is Zuko, crown prince of the Fire Nation."

He put his fist in the palm of his other hand and bowed politely.

Edited 2015-12-10 04:53 (UTC)

"Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, Chief of the Hairy Hooligans Tribe of Berk."

He bowed respectfully himself, before adding in a wry tone "Yes, I'm named after a bodily function, get all the jokes out of your system now."

"And it's not all bragging." He defended. "A lot of it makes me look like a suicidal idiot."

Edited 2015-12-10 05:06 (UTC)

"I'm bad at jokes, anyway."

He was pretty sure Sokka would have had plenty of jokes about Hiccup's name, because it was pretty stupid, but he wasn't Sokka and he was terrible at jokes. With shorter jokes and quips, they never really hit the mark and with the longer jokes, he never remembered the punchline. Or he only remembered the punchline and forgot the rest of the joke. He never managed both.

Zuko was very secure in the knowledge that being funny was not really in his wheelhouse. And he was also inclined to give more respect to other leaders. Weird name aside, it appeared that he was speaking to a chief -- albeit a very young chief. (He didn't look much older than Zuko.)

Zuko's mouth quirked slightly.

"Bragging about being an idiot is still bragging if you got away with it. But I'd still rather hear a story than talk to the pompous windbags we're stuck here with. So brag away."

Edited 2015-12-10 08:09 (UTC)

"Okay, there are two things you have to understand before I tell this story. The first? Is that, up until five years ago, Vikings and dragons had been at war for ages. They'd steal food, burn our houses down, kill us, and we'd kill them right back in even greater numbers. The other is that my father was pretty much the epitome of everything a Viking should be. Strong, confident, able to toss around carts filled to the brim with weapons with his bare hands. And I was scrawny, clumsy, and kind of the village screw-up. Not that that's really changed much since then, except I don't screw up as much."

And so began the tale of how Hiccup, in order to gain respect, shot down one of the most terrifying dragons in existence, befriend him instead of kill him, and everything that followed How they and Astrid eventually found out the reason the dragons were raiding them was because another dragon would eat them if they didn't bring back enough food. His initial, disastrous attempt at bringing peace, teaching the other kids how to ride dragons, and then he started getting into the fight with the Red Death.

"...so, we go into freefall, flip around, and Toothless started blasting at its wings and then set off the gas in its mouth with another plasma blast. The Red Death lost control, crashed into the ground, and exploded. Somewhere in the middle of it crashing, I got knocked unconscious by its tail, and part of my leg got taken off."

Which more or less explained why he wasn't so fussed about the leg. It'd been lost doing something stupidly heroic.

"After that, the raids stopped, and because the others and I proved it could be done, the rest of the village started befriending the dragons too."

Edited 2015-12-14 15:35 (UTC)

The Chief was slowly cruising the reception for just this kind of situation. It was enough to wear on anybody's nerves, especially if they'd never been shoved into a fancy party to pretend at playing nice with a bunch of strangers from another reality. He'd done it, and hated it enough to know to keep an eye out. The other reality had just never been this literal before.

"Excuse me." The Chief moved into the conversation with surprising ease for a man his size. "I need to borrow your friend here," he told the gaggle of aliens Hiccup had attracted. "Legion business."

He wasn't good at the maneuvering people expected at something like this, but he was good at sounding serious and formidable enough to get some tone-deaf socialites to back off.

"Thank you so much. I think if was stuck in that mess any longer I was going to fall back on Viking diplomacy, The peaceful version, not the one that involves axes."

Hiccup, thankfully, was not the type of Viking who decided weapons had to be a part of every conversation.

"Of course, the peaceful response to being insulted like that is insulting them, their parents, their grandparents, going back seven generations. So it's sort of like the verbal equivalent of an axe. Either way I don't think I'd be invited back."

Edited 2015-12-09 03:20 (UTC)

"In that case, I'm glad I could step in," the Chief replied. He was just glad he wouldn't have to hold Hiccup back from a fight, at least he didn't seem the type to dive back in.

"If it helps you, they think I'm a primitive. And we have a couple thousand years on any vikings, where I'm from."

The natives' snideness and the knowledge of how many people had died to steal the technology in his suit did not sit well together.

"We're not going to impress these people until we've done something."

"That reminds me. The you having a couple thousand years on Vikings thing, I mean. Your armor, what's it made out of? I mean, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Hiccup had noticed over the past week that the Chief seemed even tighter-lipped than the most taciturn Viking, "but I was an apprentice blacksmith, and I've never seen any metal like it. Though, that's not really saying much. We barely have access to steel, and that's only on accident. We call it Gronckle iron back home."

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