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

iamnuff · Dec 9, 2022

Wolverine and his kin's 'immortality' is handled weirdly in comics.
Like, they'll regenerate from anything and have indestructible bones, but it does nothing to protect soft tissue so you could probably still kill them pretty easily if you put in a bit of effort.
Even just chucking him into a big furnace would probably kill him.
But comics rarely seem to actually acknowledge that.

For Sabertooth, rather than a railgun, I'd have thought that some kind of Maser would be preferable. Simply evaporate all tissue until he stops regenerating. No flesh, no blood, no grey-matter. Just a metal skeleton. One that wouldn't even be connected together because all the ligaments would have burned away.

So it's really more of a pile of metal bones, I guess.
Which you then encase in concrete and bury several miles below the surface of mars.

Problem solved.
Forever.

Chojin Patriarch · Dec 9, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
8th February 1992
09:32 GMT -5

"…which is all completely legal."

Mr. Schultz doesn't look like he believes me. Though I only know that because I used my ring to look under his mask.

Ah, Lantern showing as much consideration for the cape community of this Earth as OL did for Earth-16, eh? Still, he's got enough sense not to let on that he knows these things. I would also have assumed Shocker's name would be a matter of his criminal record, since he's been arrested before...

"Okay, but how does that matter to me? Not like I can sell it."

"No, it turns out that the police actually like it when career criminals earn money legitimately.

To be fair, when you develop a vibratory-based energy projection weapon, it does seem a bit foolish to use it to rob banks. Unless he enjoys that...

The Bar With No Name isn't actually the only bar with that name, a name which causes me to metaphorically bite my tongue whenever I hear it due to the inherent contradiction. But in both locales I know about, it serves as a join drinking den and labour exchange for low to mid-tier supervillains. And it does breakfast, which is nice, because I skipped breakfast in my pre-wedding related… Confusion.

And none of the kitchens in the Genoshia resort were open, for obvious reasons.

Heh. Been quite the busy day, hasn't it.

"Heh."

On the other side of Mr. Schultz, Mr. Myers smirks at his colleague's discombobulation. Mr. Schultz jerks his head around, trying to work out if he actually heard the now innocent-looking Mr. Myers say something that he might feel the need to remonstrate about. Best keep things polite.

Ah, one of many minor villains that get dragged out to show how badass the new hero or super-bad-guy is during their debut... By beating the ass of a guy who throws boomerangs...

"You wouldn't even need to show up in person. You designed your gauntlets yourself, didn't you?"

He jerks his head back around. "Yes."

...He feels a lot like Marvel's counterpart to Captain Cold, doesn't he? Older brother turned parental figure, multiple loser who built a super-tech weapon in prison, something of a punch-clock villain, surprisingly popular despite being a career criminal...

"Well… Honestly, you could just apply for a patent and wait patiently. Once you've got the patent, anyone can use it if they pay you a percentage. You don't need any further investment so you don't need to negotiate up front investment. On the other hand, if you want me to show your designs to people I know who might be interested, I can do that."

"I don't know. This sounds suspicious."

Plus, he has a criminal record which kind of puts him at a disadvantage in the US...

"Shocker, if I was doing something suspicious, I'd just scan the gauntlets you're wearing now and replicate them myself. I'm suggesting this because I… Think that your talents are wasted in supervillainy when you could make more money legitimately."

"I don't think that's… Plausible."

Plus, if Shocker found other people using his tech, he might not be as likely to come after them as some, but he wouldn't be happy.

"Nah, mate." Mr. Myers nudges him with his elbow. "You can do it. I believe in-"

The door bangs open-

Well, someone's in a mood...

"Two steaks, raw and bloody!"

"-you."

...And has worked up an appetite.

-and a man in an orange leotard storms in and doesn't get laughed out of the place, because he would quite cheerfully kill all of them. Most of the criminals here aren't murderers. To be fair, I'm not sure how many of the people he's killed were murder-victims, in the sense that it's not a crime if the government does it.

The barman fishes a plate out from the back shelf and puts it on the bar in front of Mr. Creed Senior. Then he opens a grease proof paper package and uses metal tongs to move the fresh steaks onto his plate.

Oh, yes. Early-Nineties Sabretooth wasn't exactly the best-dressed supervillain in the place. But it's still a step up on his debut outfit...

Mr. Creed doesn't bother with utensils, and I'm not sure how much of that is an act.

I take out a card with my contact details on it and slide it over to Mr. Schultz. "Give me a call if you're interested, alright?"

Well, sometimes he's a lot more feral than others. Especially if he's been healing up a lot lately.

He just shrugs, but takes the card and slides it into one of his costume's pockets. I swallow the last of my bacon, put my knife and fork in the at rest position, pick up my briefcase and walk-. I ignore the frantic head-shaking of Mr. Myers and walk over to the stool next to Mr. Creed.

"Mister Creed."

Ah, poking the tiger while he's eating. I expect a lot of the guys here are thinking he's either suicidally brave, suicidally stupid, or really, really powerful.

He stops… 'Eating'.

"You don't smell of anything. No heartbeat. I don't like robots." He turns his face towards me, blood and meat juice covering his mouth and chin. "And it's Sabretooth."

Then where are your tusks?

Besides, there are far scarier mammals than sabertooth tigers...

I nod politely. "I apologise. Sabretooth. And I'm not a robot; my force field prevents scent and sound escaping."

He turns his face back to his meal, opting to watch me from the corner of his eye.

No doubt tempted to test the limits of said force-field. And contemplating whether Lantern will be tastier than the steaks he's gobbling down.

"What d'ya-" He bites a chunk out of the meat and I hear bone crunch. "-want?"

"I want to-" I lift up my briefcase and put it on the counter. "-give you ten thousand dollars in non-sequential bills."

And that's a decent amount of cash in Nineties money, too.

"Oh yeah? Who and when?"

"What?"

...I mean, it does come off as you hiring him to kill someone. Though I suspect he'd do Grayden Creed for free. ("Hello, Junior. Give your pappy a hug...")

He smiles. "Oh yeah. 'What?' Like you just wandered up to me with no idea? Just stick the dossier on the bar and get lost."

"I'm not trying to hire you as a hitman. It would be far easier for me to just kill them myself. This is an anti-invitation."

Ha! That might be one way to prevent wedding-crashers. Pay off the least psychotic offenders to not show up.

"What?"

"I want you to not be in a certain place at a certain time, and I'm offering you ten thousand dollars to agree. You can be literally anywhere else in the world, just not there."

Of course, if his interest is piqued, he may well stop by to take a look anyway...

"Did Wolverine put you up to this?"

"No. But I know that you hate him, and might decide to turn up to try and get the drop on him while he's distracted. Thus…"

...'Hate' is an insufficient term for their relationship, I think.

I tape the case with my right forefinger.

"What's the occasion?"

Oh, nothing you'd enjoy, fluffy.

"My wedding."

"Hah! You're one of the X-Brats?!"

A surprisingly astute deduction, given his talk of Wolverine. People tend to forget that Creed is no idiot. It takes a devious mind to find new ways to fuck with Logan every year, after all...

"No, no X-gene. I'm just a student. So? How about it?"

He chomps down the last of that steak, and then turns fully around to face me.

I mean... If someone paid him better to show up...

"And what happens if I say 'no'?"

I take a sharpened iron oval four inches long out of subspace. "Then I shoot you."

"Do take note of your real name, inscribed on this bullet."

"Suuure."

I wiggle it towards his right eye.

Seriously, it would be the last thing you see, Creed...

"Right through the socket of your right eye. Where there's no adamantium protecting you. It will then go through your brain to the back of your skull, where it will rebound off the adamantium plating and go back through your brain at a new angle. And because adamantium doesn't really bend, it'll keep doing that until your brain is reduced to mush and dribbles out of your empty eye socket. Now, I don't know that you couldn't regenerate from that, but I'm pretty sure that it would completely destroy your short and long term memory. You would have to relearn how to speak. How to control your bowels and bladder."

Presumably a quick scan told Lantern about the crunchy Adamantium lining, eh? Not every Sabretooth has Adamantium bones. Sometimes it's just his claws.

"And how exactly are you going to do that?"

Ring? Railgun.

The true great equaliser.

The barrel forms over my left shoulder, and keeps forming. I reach up and slide the oval into the end of the barrel and there's a quiet hum as the magnetic field draws it in.

Mr. Creed's eyes fix on the end of the barrel as a cluster of supervillains behind me move out of the way of the now six metre long barrel.

Good plan. A railgun that big has quite the splash zone.

"To be fair, if I hit bone with a gun this big, it would probably liquefy your flesh with the shockwaves alone."

I smile.

"So how about you just take the cash?"

Honestly, the adamantium bones would be a bonus for cleanup. If not for them, they'd need a mop and a small bucket to clean up the remains.

'Speak softly and carry a big stick' indeed. I suspect even Sabretooth at his most feral, or dickish, can take the hint. And hopefully pass on some sage advice if any other Villains come looking to recruit him for some party-crashing. Though, certainly, while the X-Men's roster isn't at its most powerful, anyone with ill intent would find themselves facing a bit of a beatdown anyway.

Vaermina · Dec 9, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
but I'm pretty sure that it would completely destroy your short and long term memory.

And you would be completely wrong about that.

iamnuff said:
Wolverine and his kin's 'immortality' is handled weirdly in comics.
Like, they'll regenerate from anything and have indestructible bones, but it does nothing to protect soft tissue so you could probably still kill them pretty easily if you put in a bit of effort.
Even just chucking him into a big furnace would probably kill him.
But comics rarely seem to actually acknowledge that.

For Sabertooth, rather than a railgun, I'd have thought that some kind of Maser would be preferable. Simply evaporate all tissue until he stops regenerating. No flesh, no blood, no grey-matter. Just a metal skeleton. One that wouldn't even be connected together because all the ligaments would have burned away.

So it's really more of a pile of metal bones, I guess.
Which you then encase in concrete and bury several miles below the surface of mars.

Problem solved.
Forever.

Wolverine regenerated from a nuke that left him a smoldering skeleton in the comics.

Cuchulin · Dec 9, 2022

Chojin Patriarch said:
'Speak softly and carry a big stick' indeed. I suspect even Sabretooth at his most feral, or dickish, can take the hint. And hopefully pass on some sage advice if any other Villains come looking to recruit him for some party-crashing. Though, certainly, while the X-Men's roster isn't at its most powerful, anyone with ill intent would find themselves facing a bit of a beatdown anyway.

Sabertooth arguably is an Idiot given some of the choices he has made in his life, however he isn't stupid and at least used to be a highly trained Black Ops agent. Thus, with some exceptions, he knows very well when to backdown.

KaiKolo · Dec 9, 2022

Vaermina said:
And you would be completely wrong about that.

I think the idea here is that while the brain itself would heal, the neural connections that make up Sabertooth's memories wouldn't easily be recovered like what happened to Wolverine (at least in some iterations of the comics).

But then again there could always be a comic book ass-pull of a reason why Creed could retain his memories after regrowing his brain.

Sockmonkey · Dec 9, 2022

Someguy Somewhere said:
Creed didn't get the adamantium bonded to him in most 'verses I know, at least not at the same time Logan did.

Yeah, the one in this iteration is just flesh, and would die quite readily if decapitated.
Alternatively, you could shove chunk of something into his heart or brain and keep it there long enough for the flesh and bone to heal around it.
In Wolverine's case, just dump him into the ocean. He needs to breathe, has metal bones, and a low percentage of body fat.

Bud-E · Dec 9, 2022

I'm pretty sure Sabertooth would take the money and show up anyway. He's a sociopath that hates being told what to do if you really don't want him there you should make someplace else more interesting for him to be.

Darko · Dec 9, 2022

Chojin Patriarch said:
He feels a lot like Marvel's counterpart to Captain Cold, doesn't he? Older brother turned parental figure, multiple loser who built a super-tech weapon in prison, something of a punch-clock villain, surprisingly popular despite being a career criminal...

An enemy that has a habit of being quippy.

Chojin Patriarch said:
Plus, he has a criminal record which kind of puts him at a disadvantage in the US...

Not to mention how corporations and governments behave in Marvel.

Fellow · Dec 9, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
. "You can do it.

Eyyy, I remember this! One of the first good fics I found back when I used to prowl around fanfiction.net. Man I wish the author made more stuff, he had a knack for writing really good characters. Or I guess putting a lot more soul into pre-existing characters.

Vaermina · Dec 9, 2022

KaiKolo said:
I think the idea here is that while the brain itself would heal, the neural connections that make up Sabertooth's memories wouldn't easily be recovered like what happened to Wolverine (at least in some iterations of the comics).

But then again there could always be a comic book ass-pull of a reason why Creed could retain his memories after regrowing his brain.

Er... In this universe it was Weapon X's brainwashing that messed up Wolverine's memories...

NightmareWarden · Dec 9, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
"No, it turns out that the police actually like it when career criminals earn money legitimately."

Aww, I wanted to link that story. Oh, it is an 18+ fic, maybe don't read it in public. More people would read fanfiction if fans spread the news of good stories like this.

Because it amuses me, have a quote from the fic's protagonist-

"It's so adorable when you go all Luke Cage on me," I say, finally coming up with a somewhat witty response. Those (color removed) eyes narrow. He smells like woodchips, cotton and pepper. It's actually pretty nice.

Who do you think is described here?

Coltsguy · Dec 9, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
"Right through the socket of your right eye. Where there's no adamantium protecting you. It will then go through your brain to the back of your skull, where it will rebound off the adamantium plating and go back through your brain at a new angle. And because adamantium doesn't really bend, it'll keep doing that until your brain is reduced to mush and dribbles out of your empty eye socket. Now, I don't know that you couldn't regenerate from that, but I'm pretty sure that it would completely destroy your short and long term memory. You would have to relearn how to speak. How to control your bowels and bladder."

"And how exactly are you going to do that?"

Ring? Railgun.

The barrel forms over my left shoulder, and keeps forming. I reach up and slide the oval into the end of the barrel and there's a quiet hum as the magnetic field draws it in.

Mr. Creed's eyes fix on the end of the barrel as a cluster of supervillains behind me move out of the way of the now six metre long barrel.

"To be fair, if I hit bone with a gun this big, it would probably liquefy your flesh with the shockwaves alone."

I smile.

"So how about you just take the cash?"

I can't prove it, obviously, but I think this just gave my 67-year-old dad an erection between all the laughter.

Signaller · Dec 9, 2022

Bud-E said:
I'm pretty sure Sabertooth would take the money and show up anyway. He's a sociopath that hates being told what to do if you really don't want him there you should make someplace else more interesting for him to be.

The obvious counter is to tell Creed to not be at location Y, when the wedding is actually at location Z.

Mr Zoat · Dec 9, 2022

Coltsguy said:
I can't prove it, obviously, but I think this just gave my 67-year-old dad an erection between all the laughter.

...

Yay?

Prince Charon · Dec 9, 2022

Part of the fun here is that Shocker and friends, along with everyone else in the bar, are listening in on this conversation. Paul leaves quite an impression on people when he's taking things seriously.

BR549 · Dec 9, 2022

Chojin Patriarch said:
Good plan. A railgun that big has quite the splash zone.

With a barrel of twenty feet in length, the splash zone is probably just a smidge more than the first three rows...

Tzeentch · Dec 9, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
"I'm not trying to hire you as a hitman. It would be far easier for me to just kill them myself. This is an anti-invitation."

"What?"

"I want you to not be in a certain place at a certain time, and I'm offering you ten thousand dollars to agree. You can be literally anywhere else in the world, just not there."

Now what Paul going to pay and/or threaten The Juggernaut with, I wonder.....

Mr Zoat · Dec 9, 2022

Tzeentch said:
Now what Paul going to pay and/or threaten The Juggernaut with, I wonder.....

Nice gem. Shame if something happened to it.

Stsword · Dec 9, 2022

iamnuff said:
Wolverine and his kin's 'immortality' is handled weirdly in comics.
Like, they'll regenerate from anything and have indestructible bones, but it does nothing to protect soft tissue so you could probably still kill them pretty easily if you put in a bit of effort.
Even just chucking him into a big furnace would probably kill him.
But comics rarely seem to actually acknowledge that.

Because Wolverine's immortality by canon doesn't stop just because he's dead. He duels the angel of death to come back to life.

Wolverine's healing factor was also established to be adaptive kind of like Doomsday's- The harder you hurt him the faster he'll heal, and his regeneration slowly makes him more resistant to whatever damaged him.

For example, bad guys once built cancer bullets to take out Wolverine- the idea was to overload Wolverine's healing factor by giving him 26 or 7 types of cancer to fight simultaneously. He's now immune to cancer.

Which is a handy no prize style excuse for all those inconsistencies like Old Man Logan dying of old age while in another timeline Wolverine lives on for another 1000 years, or Vampire Wolverine being a thing somewhere while on Earth 616 Wolverine is immune to vampirism.

And note that you die when you become a vampire so when Wolverine stopped being a vampire he came back from the dead.

Wolverine has survived atmospheric reentry, which can reach 3000 F, by the by.

And Wolverine's healing powers probably use Pym particles to violate conservation of mass- He was once trapped for 6 months. He survived by auto cannibalizing himself.

It's drowning that Wolverine fears. Metal bones don't make for great buoyancy, and he does need to breath.

KaiKolo said:
I think the idea here is that while the brain itself would heal, the neural connections that make up Sabertooth's memories wouldn't easily be recovered like what happened to Wolverine (at least in some iterations of the comics).

But then again there could always be a comic book ass-pull of a reason why Creed could retain his memories after regrowing his brain.

It was established that Deadpool can in fact regenerate memories in Agent X, but it was also established in that same series that Deadpool's healing factor is in fact a psychic power.

So no reason to believe that's the case with Logan or Creed's healing factor.

It was established that part of Wolverine's memory issues is that his healing factor will erase his traumatic memories for his mental health, in fact.

Ngamer11 · Dec 9, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
Nice gem. Shame if something happened to it.

Would X-Men!OL be able to use that as a power source? Or would he instead draw the attention of Cyttorak?

Mr Zoat · Dec 9, 2022

Ngamer11 said:
Would X-Men!OL be able to use that as a power source?

No.

Or would he instead draw the attention of Cyttorak?

Ohh, yes.

Ngamer11 · Dec 9, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
No.

Ohh, yes.

In that case, I hope he's ignorant enough to try it.

Stsword · Dec 9, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
No.

Why not?

The gem can do more than turn people into Juggernauts, Stevie Wojciehowicz was able to use it for magic powers when he got it- like reflecting Jim Hammond's fire blasts, animating wax statues, teleportation gates, energy blasts.

Little shit tried to use the gem to steal Captain America's shield for show and tell at school.

Mr Zoat · Dec 9, 2022

Stsword said:
Why not?

The gem can do more than turn people into Juggernauts, Stevie Wojciehowicz was able to use it for magic powers when he got it- like reflecting Jim Hammond's fire blasts, animating wax statues, teleportation gates, energy blasts.

Little shit tried to use the gem to steal Captain America's shield for show and tell at school.

I can only assume that Cyttorak found that funny.

Stsword · Dec 9, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
I can only assume that Cyttorak found that funny.

Well he is a demon, that sounds about right.

Although Cyttorak thought that Colossus was a great avatar, so heroically smashing stuff pleases him just as much as villainously smashing stuff, so I could see an alt.Paul powered by the Ruby of Cyttorak.

It's not like there's a shortage of stuff that deserves smashing in a Marvel universe, or that power rings are bad at smashing stuff.

"The Quist are trying to invade Earth again, I'll go have a good talk with them, explosions will be involved."

Tzeentch · Dec 9, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
Nice gem. Shame if something happened to it.

JUGGERNAUT: ....Okay, gotta respect you there. I'll take the Ten Grand.

PAUL: Smart man.

rkyeun · Dec 9, 2022

There are many problems in Marvel that can be solved by firing specific items or people into deep space at speeds that take them over the cosmological event horizon.

Stsword · Dec 9, 2022

Actually this got me thinking that a Juggernaut alt.Paul could work as a Grayven equivalent for Marvel universes.

Superstrong New God of Conquest via transformation by Fatherbox, Superstrong demon avatar of Destruction via transformation by mystic gem, I can see it.

But I thought I'd put it to the zeitgeist here- Any other villainous Marvel mantles that seem like fun Grayven equivalent?

Bud-E · Dec 9, 2022

Stsword said:
Actually this got me thinking that a Juggernaut alt.Paul could work as a Grayven equivalent for Marvel universes.

Superstrong New God of Conquest via transformation by Fatherbox, Superstrong demon avatar of Destruction via transformation by mystic gem, I can see it.

But I thought I'd put it to the zeitgeist here- Any other villainous Marvel mantles that seem like fun Grayven equivalent?

My first thought is an alt-Paul whose basically Doctor Doom combining magic and tech while fighting against the status quo of a world that never uses its advanced tech for anything meaningful. That has Paul written all over it.

Vaermina · Dec 9, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
Nice gem. Shame if something happened to it.

*watches Paul beat on a gem that's very specifically known for being indestructible in amusement*

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

Connoisseur.

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Well worn.

Versed in the lewd.

Know what you're doing yet?

I trust you know where the happy button is?

Stand up so I can push you down!

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Versed in the lewd.

Colts fan. Anime fan. Breast and back fan.

Know what you're doing yet?

Dedicated ragequitter

Just zis guy, you know?

This is filth! FILTH!!

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Experienced.

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Experienced.

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Versed in the lewd.

Cabbitus Maximus

Versed in the lewd.

Stand up so I can push you down!

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