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legionclubhouse2015-12-05 11:17 pm
letsgolegion) wrote in legionclubhouse2015-12-05 11:17 pm
Entry tags:
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
no subject
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.
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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.
no subject
"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.
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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.
no subject
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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
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."
no subject
He settled in to lean against the wall again, arms crossed.
"That doesn't mean everyone in this universe thinks like them. Even aside from the people in this 'verse like us that see how big and weird and terrible and wonderful the universe is, there's all the little people that don't always think so little. That maybe don't notice how much is out there but still have big things to care about, like their families and friends and the people around them."
He grinned.
"Trust me, in any place with people like this, there are still always people that have their priorities straight or that see the world for what it is. It's just trying to find a politician with a soul is like looking for a nun in a casino -- it only happens in whacky 90's comedies."
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As much as the concept of souls is far enough outside of science to make his inner skeptic itch uncomfortably, between the Fugitoid and having been a robot for a while, he's become considerably more accepting of the possibility.
"Maybe there's hope for even politicians."
A beat.
"I don't know about all the ones here, of course."
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"Hey, I know too many perfectly decent robots to let you get away with comparing 'em to politicans, kid."
Rich believed in souls but he'd seen too many strange, otherworldly, and sometimes mystical things in his relatively short life to believe they didn't exist. There was also something to be said about his own soul -- he was here, wasn't he? After he'd dissipated into energy, had his molecules scattered across the cosmos in one last sacrifice, one last heroic act that had turned him into electric fire.
But something had been there, something had existed that could be collected back together again, humpty dumpty style.
"So, talk of souls, robots, and it sounds like maybe aliens? Sounds like you come from a life about as colorful as mine." A pause. "Also, you're a talking turtle-person. How's that working out for you?"
It wasn't said in an insulting way. His voice still sounded just as playful as it had this whole time, making it clear he had no problems at all with Donnie's turtley-ness.
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He leaned towards crazy, most days.
And some days, like the night they'd fought in the Gauntlet, even crazy seemed too nice to describe everything that went down.
"Being a turtle is probably one of the better parts, sometimes." Sure, not being able to walk down the street was inconvenient sometimes, and he had to do a little creative wiring of his own to get their home rigged up with internet that remotely approached being decent, but on the other hand?
Having the shell could be a life-saver (literally), and that only really had to happen once to make up for wiring his own intertubes.
no subject
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."
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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.