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With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

Reader mode
Mr Zoat said:
"It's a joke, Kara." I ring the bell, though I'd be astonished if they didn't already know that I'm here. "And it's months, not hours. You've caused significant organelle die off."

"Oh, I-. Oh."
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Yeah, not such a smart idea now, was it, Kara?

"Oh. Um, sorry." What single non-arseholes of roughly the right age do I know? Gosh, it's all… Team members, Atlanteans she's almost certainly already met due to working at KordTech… The Sivanas? No. "If you-."
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Seriously, OL? Matchmaking? Or is this part of your therapy plan?

A nod. The gestures still doesn't appear to come completely naturally to her...
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Unnecessary plural here.

"These are a new design, different to anything she's built before. And we know full well that you visited Alstair shortly before she started. What are you playing at, Orange Lantern?"
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...Okay, that's fair. These things tend to happen in his wake. ;)

"We think she's planning a new attack on the Thanagarian Empire with the information you helped her get. If she does, millions of thanagarians will die."
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"...Oops?"

"Reasonable enough, but ask yourself this." I lean forward, smiling. "Do you really want me to be on Thanagar unsupervised?"
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I love how that's a viable threat these days.

Oh, this has potential to be such a trainwreck. What's the over/under on Thanagar getting some regime change by the time OL leaves? :D
 
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Mr Zoat said:
"Reasonable enough, but ask yourself this." I lean forward, smiling. "Do you really want me to be on Thanagar unsupervised?"

Her face goes a little blank, then she leans back into her house.

"KATAR! WE'RE VISITING HOME!"
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Well... Paul will still probably end up causing Ixthultu to be summoned via his general disbelief in religious warnings.

But at least you will be there to call him an idiot for it.
 
Old Knife said:
So who's coming? Katar, Hank, shaeyra?
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It looks like the reincarnations of Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl, the son of the GA incarnations, the Silver Age Hawkman and Hawkwoman (who do not appear to have children as yet), Kara, and Paul, though there may be others that I've forgotten, or that have yet to be mentioned as going (as well as some other Orange Lanterns, including at least Paran Dul, but they aren't coming from Earth, specifically).
 
Zeushobbit said:
Leaving Paul unsupervised is a bad ide
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Almost as bad as leaving him with nothing to do.

Chojin Patriarch said:
Seriously, OL? Matchmaking? Or is this part of your therapy plan?
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There is a certain personality type where, when presented with a problem of any kind, the automatic response is to try and fix it. Most people with it learn to control this urge after getting burned enough times. Most people do not have an orange power ring.
 
doug89 said:
I have a feeling Paul is going to be arrested or detained for that one time he made Nth metal while high on Ophidian.
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He has a lantern corps and the the Ophidian and they know about it, they literally cant arrest him for something he didn't do in their jurisdiction without declaring a war they cant really win.
 
Ngamer11 said:
Kara had no idea what she was doing to herself? Should Paul inform Batman at least of the effects of all Kryptonite variants so this doesn't happen again? I am especially curious about how he would take the effect of Black Kryptonite, or how Paul could explain him knowing its effects.
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Odds that Batman knew and was doing it deliberately to remove a "threat", or because he thought she'd be happier if she was "normal"?
 
Mr Zoat said:
I lean forward, smiling. "Do you really want me to be on Thanagar unsupervised?"
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img_0030.jpg


Saw this yesterday and thought it was appropriate lol.
 
nick012000 said:
Odds that Batman knew and was doing it deliberately to remove a "threat", or because he thought she'd be happier if she was "normal"?
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That seems both a bit too presumptuous and too assholish to be in-character. I think it's more likely that Batman gave her the rock assuming she'd know what it would do to her and to use it sparingly/when going out or something.
 
SpiritualSlacker said:
That seems both a bit too presumptuous and too assholish to be in-character. I think it's more likely that Batman gave her the rock assuming she'd know what it would do to her and to use it sparingly/when going out or something.
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I agree with you. Batman isn't a crazy paranoid lunatic, at least not yet. Besides, I think he already put Kara on his Contingency plan. But, he literally puts everyone he meets on there.
 
Chojin Patriarch said:
Oh, this has potential to be such a trainwreck. What's the over/under on Thanagar getting some regime change by the time OL leaves?
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Oh, a bet! I'm great at bets!
Over/under is a bet that a score will be over or under a value, so it doesn't really make sense I'm this case.
Unless you mean the number of regime changes :p
But I'd put the odds at about 9/1, that is, a 10% chance that we see a regime change go though. Essentially I don't think that Paul would bother hanging around if a regime change got started, the same as Renegade in the Mars case, and in that situation they were already in a revolt when he got there.
With all those juicy Chekov guns in that last conversation, though? I'd be quite surprised if Hyathis didn't show up, but I'd rather suspect Paul negotiating some sort of deal than an invasion. I'd put an invasion starting at about 2/1, or 33% (gambling odds are weird)
Edit: hopefully fixed the odds, I had them the wrong way around.
 
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"Reasonable enough, but ask yourself this." I lean forward, smiling. "Do you really want me to be on Thanagar unsupervised?"

Her face goes a little blank, then she leans back into her house.

"KATAR! WE'RE VISITING HOME!"
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Ok, my day has been made. This made me laugh out loud, mostly because I can picture her reaction.
 
Chaoswind said:
He can see her emotions, so she is telling him a lot even if she isn't asking/talking about it.

Sadly there isn't a light of despair Zoat can use to highlight in the dialog with color... I guess black works, but black is an expression of the anti-life and the black light, not normal depression.


Edit: Personally, this ship is also more interesting than the one with Cheshire. At this point, I am almost rooting for Desire and Eris to team up to make Paul life more interesting for them (the readers) by helping nuking Cheshire for existence...
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Actually there is some rumors at least about ultraviolet lanterns who use Guilty/Grief/Regret or some other backward facing negative emotion and are ninjas.
 
BR549 said:
This is Bat-dad, so it'd be the latter if anything. Earth-16 Batman is not full paranoia Crazy Steve.
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The same Bat Dad who left Zatanna to fend for herself without parental supervision? The same Not Full Paranoia Crazy Steve who punched an empty part of the air "just in case?"
 
Ganurath said:
The same Bat Dad who left Zatanna to fend for herself without parental supervision? "
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Part of me wonders if he suspected that Paul was 'up to know good' and turned a blind eye. He underestimated their potential, and they were able to kill Nabu. Originally, Batman hoped that they would be distracted long enough (ie, out of his way) to find a way to safely remove Nabu.

Then he was more angry with himself than with Paul or Zatanna because he "allowed" them to go on (yeah, like he could have stopped them. ha). Let's face it, he was more mildly annoyed with Paul in the Batcave.
 
Haven't done these in a while!
Mr Zoat said:
"Melainia, she's Melainia oh gods preserve me."
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As far as I can tell it's "Melaina" but I could be wrong.

Mr Zoat said:
naturally borne
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born

Mr Zoat said:
The Huntsman brings both of his hands up and grabs hold of the Demon slobbering at his forehead and there's a crack as space bends and the Praexis Demon is shredded. A moment later my pulse strikes the Huntsman in the chest. No noticeable effect, save that it's gone back to ignoring the Demons to focus on me. Okay, turn it up from crowd control to something a little more potent. My construct grows to anti-tank missile launcher size as I fire again. This time a thin cloud of blue wafts off his epidermis a fraction of a second before his green beam blasts through my construct barrier and pierces my construct gun, wrecking it.
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Inconsistent pronoun use for the Huntsman; sometimes you use "it" and sometimes you use "he".

Mr Zoat said:
"Maybe I just don't want to spend time around you."
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Someone remind me of where this animosity got its start.
 
What a fun chapter, thanks Mr Zoat! Posts like this make me salivate at the thought of Grayven and Paragon-Paul's eventual meeting. It also makes me nervous about when Blue-Paul will break his word on some technicality.

I hope Red Paul in the Titansverse hasn't gone off the deep end.
 
Wing and Dagger (part 5)
  • Threadmarks
    • 17th January
    19:02 GMT +1

    I look around the entrance to the Altdorf gnome warren, which is now an armed camp. The Swiss military do not dawdle when they're informed that the only thing preventing a dragon roasting their cities-. Ah, towns, was a group of teenagers. Not a single superhero in the country, but they have conscription of all able bodied men and a very high standard of training and equipment.

    And they're towering over the poor bewildered gnomes whose isolation has been permanently violated.

    To be fair, the soldiers aren't being dicks about it. Batman's message to their government was extremely clear that Karfang was responsible for the mutants, and that the threat of violence was what kept the regular gnomes in line. And they're accepting that as true. They aren't lashing out, they're being polite to the gnomes and now that they've firmly established that there isn't an ongoing threat they're scaling back the military presence and bringing in civil servants.

    But the reason why they're bringing in civil servants is that the gnomes are being issued with identity cards and all of the related paperwork that comes with modern nationality. Because while Greece can't claim Themyscira due to the threat of divine intervention, absolutely nothing was going to stop the Swiss claiming the interior of a mountain that is already part of their country.

    And while they're not blaming the gnomes for the dragon, they aren't exactly happy about nine hundred years of petty theft.

    I think there are citizenship classes in their future. Interestingly, I think this means that once they're finished Switzerland will have the largest official non-human population of any country on Earth. Certainly in terms of percentage of the total population they're leading by a mile.

    "Orange Lantern?"

    I look around as my escort approaches, trailed by an awkward-looking gnome. He's wearing breeches, a smock and pointy toed shoes, and is cringing, hands rubbing each other in nervous activity. His skin is a pale earthy-brown, wispy black hair sticks up from the top of his head, his ears are pointed and extend to be level with the top of his head and most weirdly of all his eyes are solid black.

    "This is Elmen. He's.. sort of in charge."

    "I'm not." The gnome straightens up slightly, though he's still only a metre tall. "It's just that everyone else is less in charge than me."

    "What happened to the gnomes who were in charge?"

    "The dragon ate most of them. The rest were amongst the first to be transformed and had longest to grow. Um. So you and the witch girl probably killed them."

    I nod. "I'm sorry for your loss. Our original plan was to sneak in, but Zatanna was affected by Karfang's breath and… The plan no longer seemed important. We also didn't know that Karfang existed until she showed herself, and we didn't know how to bypass her invulnerability until she'd already broken out of the warren."

    Elmen nods, still downcast. "No one knew what the dragon could do. If we'd known what she could do we wouldn't have woken her up. We remembered that she was strong, and forgot what her being strong meant for everyone else." He looks up at me. "The gnomes who survived fighting you said you healed them the instant they started turning back. A lot more would have died if you hadn't, so… Thank you. I'd be more effusive, but it's all just so horrible."

    "I'm sorry I killed as many as I did."

    "Were you affected by the dragon breath?"

    I shake my head. "No. But between what it did to my team mates and how powerful it made the.. mutant gnomes, I couldn't… Pull my punches."

    "Mutant?" He frowns. "Oh, drakunomes, we call them drakunomes." I nod. "And… They attacked you. I know they were.. powerful. I'm grateful that you could afford to leave any of them alive." He turns to look at the military camp. "What a mess."

    "Is there anything I can do to help?"

    "Can you turn back time?"

    "The best information I have is that altering time is a very bad idea. But no, not easily."

    "What do we do, what do we do?"

    He sniffs as if only just withholding his tears, and wipes his right hand across his eyes.

    "I understand that you generally haven't had much direct contact with humans to date. Is there an.. extra problem I'm not seeing?"

    "We can't… Cope with it. Laws and rules. Machinery. All the bits that make humans human and us not. We're creatures of flesh so wrought iron doesn't hurt us, but we can't understand… We've got piles of bottle caps because they're shiny and piles of credit cards because we like the colours. They're… Status symbols, not… Currency. And now… We can't live like gnomes-. We can't be gnomes any more. And I don't know what to do."

    "In the old days, when you lived under Karfang and her kin. Did you collect trinkets then?"

    "I don't know."

    "Did the drakunomes fight for the dragons?"

    "Yes." He looks a little puzzled. "You saw them."

    "But you regular gnomes didn't. If we assume that the drakunomes in the old days behaved a lot like the modern ones did, that's very different to regular gnomes. At some point in the past, your forebears stopped acting like drakunomes and started acting like gnomes."

    "Did they?" He slumps, shaking his head. "I suppose they might have."

    "So you know that your people are capable of change. Even major change."

    He looks a.. little less dejected. "Really?"

    "Believing that you can is better than believing that you can't, isn't it?" He nods uncertainly. "Do you have a concept of trade?"

    "We have a concept of making a trade. I-give-you-thing-you-give-me-thing?"

    "Can you make dolmen gates?"

    "Ah… Yes? Not just anywhere, but… Yes?"

    "Can you make big ones?"

    "It would take a while."

    "But you could do it?"

    "I've seen one big enough for a cart and two draught horses."

    "I believe that skill would be very valuable for humans. Would you be prepared to use it in exchange for other things?"

    "I couldn't make many."

    "I mean 'you' collectively. The gnomes of this warren."

    "I don't know."

    We look at each other for a moment. "I'm afraid.. finding things like that out is part of leading. Did the late leaders of your warren do things for the community as a whole?"

    "Well… Yes."

    "Then I'm afraid that someone needs to step forward, and since everyone else has stepped backwards, you need to get on it. The essence of trade is finding something someone else wants, and dolmen gates are valuable."

    "Okay, but… How does that work?"

    I nod, and generate a zeta tube construct.

    "Recognised, Dubbilex, A Six Zero."

    "I believe that my colleague can help you with that."
     
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