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

...Goddammit, OL... :rolleyes: Just ask Batman if he could manage to channel fear for a bit.
Too late, he's already made an assumption and decided on an alternate plan that makes almost no sense given all he actually needs is someone capable of blasting out Yellow Light.

Personally I would have just gone down to Mexico and picked up a random guy who plays a Lucha Libre villain.

Or maybe gone down to Hollywood and asked Wes Craven to do it.

Either is better then a random super villain from the evil universe of uncertain loyalties.
 
I don't know. Surely there's something he's afraid of. Irrelevence, perhaps.

The Joker, when done right, is certainly afraid of something.

He's afraid of not being funny.

The Joker's whole point (and the thing a lot of modern interpretations miss) is that while his routine is the absolute blackest of black humor, it's still humor. And his audience laughs with him, not just out of 'it's the Joker' fear, but because he tells good jokes. You'll feel horrible for laughing afterwards, of course, but you still laughed.

So when Jack Napier isn't able to be funny - he's literally a comedian without a punchline. Which (yes, bearing in mind that Joker-16 bragged in universe about having a multiple-choice past) was what he was before he fell into the vat of chemicals that fateful night. So he's terrified of winding up back there - and when you can leverage that like Terry McGinnis did...
 
What else... The Lincoln Memorial's locked portal to the heartland. The missing angels and Themyscirans. Negative Lex and his assignment to whip up anti-anti-life attitude adjusters for the big Mannheim fight. Scott Free.

Also the Snake Cult had their prophecy about the world being at it's worst and then beginning on a glorious recovery led by the Snake chosen so... seems fitting they can get involved here as well.
 
"So you're..? Abandoning fear as a tool?"

"I think the Earth has seen enough fear."

Well… That's a… Problem. I mean, who's my backup option? Crane? I-.

Wait. Power Ring -16. He could do it, and he owes me, and apparently he's up to something with his version of Supergirl, so... Okay. Okay. Not a complete disaster

You could just ask him to use it one last time.

Call it one final hurrah before he retires.

Giving a yellow ring to a guy of extremely questionable morality and ethics, who will also be able to perfectly use it, is a very, very bad idea.

Like Rogal Dorn said, it might be the worst idea.
 
Not like he has to worry about Lex learning his real identity. But still, being a bit free with - admittedly anonymous - personal details.

Lex already knows their identities after the New Year mind control.

What, he's not going the Adam West-era route, running around in broad daylight in light-grey and blue? :p

The world is going to need a lot if cheering up.

Huh. I guess he really is going a bit more noble-bright.

Well Paul told him his skills as an administrator may be more useful, and the world is going to need to be pulled back together.

Goddammit, OL... :rolleyes: Just ask Batman if he could manage to channel fear for a bit.

I clicked the show ignored content on the screen and saw Vaermina's post to this comment.

I hate to do this. Despise it really, but I agree with them.

Crane is honestly the better option.

Still a horrible one, but at least Paul knows him and his personality profile.

He's know Power Ring for less than an hour.

Better the devil you know.
 
Lex already knows their identities after the New Year mind control.



The world is going to need a lot if cheering up.



Well Paul told him his skills as an administrator may be more useful, and the world is going to need to be pulled back together.



I clicked the show ignored content on the screen and saw Vaermina's post to this comment.

I hate to do this. Despise it really, but I agree with them.

Crane is honestly the better option.

Still a horrible one, but at least Paul knows him and his personality profile.

He's know Power Ring for less than an hour.

Better the devil you know.
Why not the horned gal in Hades's domain, the goddess of nightmares? Or... hang on.
Is Paul unable to get to the underworld while the Themyscira staircase is missing?
 
I nod. Kadabra would probably be most useful, but I need him here to operate the ship. Eiling is the most disciplined, so I should leave him behind to take charge of the others. Standing Bear isn't in any mental shape to enter an Anti-Life infected region. That leaves Mahkent and

Truggs! Alright it's time for... What's the opposite of buddy cop?

"Trust me I'm sure I got all the traps in the hall. You go first"

"You are doing, great just let them shoot you in the head sixteen more times and I will be in position"
 
It's not like Batman can't use the yellow ring even with this 'revelation'. I'm not understanding why Paul thinks he has to find someone else.
Bruce was always a solid mix of green and yellow at equal measures so he could semi-function as a severely fucked up hero.
After giving up yellow, I imagine he's all green now. Probably can't even think in a yellow-ish way after his revelation.
 
The Joker, when done right, is certainly afraid of something.

He's afraid of not being funny.

The Joker's whole point (and the thing a lot of modern interpretations miss) is that while his routine is the absolute blackest of black humor, it's still humor. And his audience laughs with him, not just out of 'it's the Joker' fear, but because he tells good jokes. You'll feel horrible for laughing afterwards, of course, but you still laughed.

So when Jack Napier isn't able to be funny - he's literally a comedian without a punchline. Which (yes, bearing in mind that Joker-16 bragged in universe about having a multiple-choice past) was what he was before he fell into the vat of chemicals that fateful night. So he's terrified of winding up back there - and when you can leverage that like Terry McGinnis did...

EXACTLY!! He is supposed to be trying to be funny even if his jokes end up being very much not funny because he is a murder clown.
 
Prep Time (part 6)
15th February 2013
17:16 GMT -5


Tuppence looks distracted as we walk through the old headquarters of the All-Star Squadron. While the old Justice Society headquarters in New York is a museum these days, this place just got repurposed by some part of the labyrinthine mess of the United States's defence imbroglio. The meeting room where the greatest superheroes of their generation met up is now a lecture theatre, and the gymnasium is now a canteen.

"You doing alright?"

She recognises what she was doing and tries to cover it up. "What is this place?"

"This is where the superheroes involved in World War Two used to be based. Blue Lantern showed me around once."

He didn't think much of the place. The Trust running the Justice Society's museum makes sure to leave the structure pretty much as it was, just upgrading the lights and wiring. The Defense Department -or whoever runs this place- didn't do that, so there isn't really anything he could point to and say 'I remember when'. And I got the impression that he wasn't too keen on the War Department in general.

"So?"

"Just making conversation."

The place is empty now, unlike the Pentagon which is in full operation. Mannheim might have full control but he still needs a command structure and logistical management. I wonder if they evacuated, or followed orders that moved them somewhere else? Or if they were all killed. No obvious blood stains on the lino floor, and enough dust that I doubt that anyone is still coming in to clean it. The heating is still working but that's all automatic.

"Y'all think that mask thang is in heer?"

"No, almost certainly not. But this building is shielded enough that the people outside shouldn't be able to detect our teleportation. And I was sort of hoping that there might be a few holdouts."

"Dun look lahk it."

"I don't know. We haven't checked the entire building yet."

She rolls her eyes. "Jus' have Atom do it, so's we can do somethang else."

"Mister Atom's drones don't have the capacity of a power ring, so I'm sorry, but you'll have to put up with it for now." Because while my ring scans say that they're telling me everything, somewhere like this, I can't assume that's actually correct. "Though well done for adapting to the use of drones in warfare."

"Beats doin' ev'rythang mahself."

Management offices are a dead end. Rune stone doesn't glow, no 'unscannable' spaces or suspiciously effective automated defences. The safes that were still closed only contained normal secret documents. A couple looked like they'd had their contents burned, but that's no use to me. I take scans of the surviving documents and D.N.A. traces, just in case it turns out to be useful.

So down we go.

Tuppence is still frowning, but now she's frowning at her environment. "Where'd alla the people go?"

"I don't know. If I had to guess, they stayed at home. Or they were Anti-Lifed, and Mannheim had no interest in this place."

The next floor has offices, meeting rooms and the aforementioned lecture theatre. I can't detect anyone-.

Hm.

I float up to a ceiling-mounted camera and use a construct knife to remove the housing. Heh. There's a ward on the interior, and now I can scan it properly I can see the more advanced sensors that it has in addition to the simple digital camera. I don't recognise the design, but it's easily good enough to detect me using my ring. The camera feed is going to the server in the basement, but the other sensor-.

There's a puff of smoke as it burns itself out. Why did-?

Oh, I see. That part of the spell is designed to break down if the cowling is removed. That's some surprisingly sophisticated arcane technology for America.

"Someone spa'ing on us?"

"Since we're in their building, it's not really 'spying'."

That suggests LexCorp to me, but it doesn't prove it. And of course ninety five percent of LexCorp's work is perfectly legal and another four percent is legalish. Nothing strange about wanting a better security camera.

So much I don't know.

I restore the circuits as best I can and then replace the cowling. Probably won't work, but at least it should make it easier to replace the enchantments. Then a whole lot of fairly generic rooms that match with what I saw last time. Nothing registers as magical, nothing has the wrong internal dimensions and there aren't any people.

"This is borin'."

"That's life, I'm afraid."

I lead the way down the stairs to the ground floor. Garage, shooting range, gym and canteen. The range is our best bet for finding anything odd, and I've seen seven more cameras modified like the one I first identified. Most of them are normal. Not sure why only some are altered or why it's those ones in particular; none of them were in particularly significant locations. Maybe the aim was to get complete coverage of the building? That should be possible, but… It's not like this is a fortress or anything.

Or is it?

I stick a construct probe through an interior wall, then an exterior wall. And then a few more of each. I examine the samples while Tuppence ducks down so that she can look out through one of the exterior holes.

"Y'all not like windows?"

"I was wondering whether or not this building had been covertly fortified. If they'd lined the walls with armour panels of something exotic. Doesn't look like it. It's just normal brick."

I repair the walls, to Tuppence's disgruntlement. Then I enter the range, bypass the lock on the armoury door and take a look at some of the weapons. There are a few LexCorp pieces, but various parts of the US government have been putting contracts for next generation weapons out to tender so that isn't strange either. And there's a WayneTech version of the stun gun Guy's been using ever since he found out he was allowed a sidearm. High reliability, low lethality. Maybe that's what they were doing-

"Can ah jus' take these?"

-here.

"Actually, yes. This gun is very unlikely to kill-."

I turn and see the plasma cannon she's picked up.

"That gun is very likely to kill anything you hit with it, it's relatively fragile and we don't have any way to reload it. And we're supposed to be sneaking around, so-."

"Put it in youwer ring… Pocket.. thing."

"You really want it?"

She aims it in the general direction of the-.

"No, no." I tether it with a filament and send it into subspace. "Okay. I'll carry it." Ah… I grab the maintenance handbook and subspace that as well. "Maintaining it will be your job. I hope you enjoy reading technical documentation."

She shrugs. I hadn't realised that she acted up when she got bored, but in retrospect perhaps I should have considered that possibility. I also hadn't considered whether or not Danner enhanciles could get foetal alcohol syndrome, but as far as I know their mother didn't start drinking until after they were born.

"Alright, we just need to check the basement and then we can start canvassing-."

The intercom clicks.

"Orange Lantern. What are you doing here?"
 
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15th February 2013
17:16 GMT -5


Tuppence looks distracted as we walk through the old headquarters of the All-Star Squadron. While the old Justice Society headquarters in New York is a museum these days, this place just got repurposed by some part of the labyrinthine mess of the United States's defence imbroglio. The meeting room where the greatest superheroes of their generation met up is now a lecture theatre, and the gymnasium is now a canteen.

"You doing alright?"
What's the bet it got snaffled up by SHADE or the DEO? Not that OL would be able to tell without either a deep-dive in top-secret military databases or finding some stationery in one of the offices. And someone has to look after the impounded super-villain stuff anyway.

She recognises what she was doing and tries to cover it up. "What is this place?"

"This is where the superheroes involved in World War Two used to be based. Blue Lantern showed me around once."
It's okay to gawk a little, hun. A place like this has history, even if it doesn't show on the surface.

He didn't think much of the place. The Trust running the Justice Society's museum makes sure to leave the structure pretty much as it was, just upgrading he lights and wiring. The Defense Department -or whoever runs this place- didn't do that, so there isn't really anything he could point to and say 'I remember when'. And I got the impression that he wasn't too keen on the War Department in general.

"So?"

"Just making conversation."
Empty places like that are eerie as hell, aren't they? No sound of people nearby, so sounds of work or play. Just the silence of adandonment...

The place is empty now, unlike the Pentagon which is in full operation. Mannheim might have full control but he still needs a command structure and logistical management. I wonder if they evacuated, or followed orders that moved them somewhere else? Or if they were all killed. No obvious blood stains on the lino floor, and enough dust that I doubt that anyone is still coming in to clean it. The heating is still working but that's all automatic.
Though no doubt those in charge are enjoying the sudden freedom of operating with whatever budget they like. As much as they can enjoy anything in their Justified state, anyway.

"Y'all think that mask thang is in heer?"

"No, almost certainly not. But this building is shielded enough that the people outside shouldn't be able to detect our teleportation. And I was sort of hoping that there might be a few holdouts."
After a month and a half? Unlikely, OL.

"Dun look lahk it."

"I don't know. We haven't checked the entire building yet."
Not worth expending the energy to do the 'swarm of eyes' thing, eh? Just in case the scans and the physical don't match up?

She rolls her eyes. "Jus' have Atom do it, so's we can do somethag else."

"Mister Atom's drones don't have the capacity of a power ring, so I'm sorry, but you'll have to put up with it for now." Because while my ring scans say that they're telling me everything, somewhere like this, I can't assume that's actually correct. "Though well done for adapting to the use of drones in warfare."
No doubt this place is just laden with Scry Wards, because why would they not leverage an anti-espionage trick?

"Beats doin' ev'rythang mahself."

Management offices are a dead end. Rune stone doesn't glow, no 'unscannable' spaces or suspiciously effective automated defences. The safes that were still closed only contained normal secret documents. A couple looked like they'd had their contents burned, but that's no use to me. I take scans of the surviving documents and D.N.A. traces, just in case it turns out to be useful.
Chances the burned contents included lists of any exotic weaponry and technology kept here? Probably quite high...

So down we go.

Tuppence is still frowning, but now she's frowning at her environment. "Where'd alla the people go?"
Hopefully not seeing any really odd things, like cups of coffee abandoned in place, or rotting food in the cafeteria... That would make it just that much more creepy.

"I don't know. It I had to guess, they stayed at home. Or they were Anti-Lifed, and Mannheim had no interest in this place."

The next floor has offices, meeting rooms and the aforementioned lecture theatre. I can't detect anyone-.
Which would be foolish, if it really did hold any useful materiel.

Hm.

I float up to a ceiling-mounted camera and use a construct knife to remove the housing. Heh. There's a ward on the interior, and now I can scan it properly I can see the more advanced sensors that it has in addition to the simple digital camera. I don't recognise the design, but it's easily good enough to detect me using my ring. The camera feed is going to the server in the basement, but the other sensor-.
No doubt sourced from Lexcorp, perhaps?

There's a puff of smoke as it burns itself out. Why did-?

Oh, I see. That part of the spell is designed to break down if the cowling is removed. That's some surprisingly sophisticated arcane technology for America.
Huh. Maybe not Lexcorp stuff. Maybe whatever agency used this place had access to better magicians than the norm.

"Someone spa'ing on us?"

"Since we're in their building, it's not really 'spying'."
Good thing no-one's here to prosecute you two for breaking and entering. :p

That suggests LexCorp to me, but it doesn't prove it. And of course ninety five percent of LexCorp's work is perfectly legal and another four percent is legalish. Nothing strange about wanting a better security camera.

So much I don't know.
Dangit, OL, you should know better than to give us openings like that... ;)

I restore the circuits as best I can and then replace the cowling. Probably won't work, but at least it should make it easier to replace the enchantments. Then a whole lot of fairly generic rooms that match with what I saw last time. Nothing registers as magical, nothing has the wrong internal dimensions and there aren't any people.

"This is borin'."

"That's life, I'm afraid."
It can't all be desperate fights for survival and punching holes in people, Tuppence...

I lead the way down the stairs to the ground floor. Garage, shooting range, gym and canteen. The range is our best bet for finding anything odd, and I've seen seven more cameras modified like the one I first identified. Most of them are normal. Not sure why only some are altered or why it's those ones in particular; none of them were in particularly significant locations. Maybe the aim was to get complete coverage of the building? That should be possible, but… It's not like this is a fortress or anything.
Perhaps someone inside planning a heist of their own that got deflected by the Anti-Life outbreak?

Or is it?

I stick a construct probe through an interior wall, then an exterior wall. And then a few more of each. I examine the samples while Tuppence ducks down so that she can look out through one of the exterior holes.
Better patch those up when you're done, OL, or the owners will have to bill your for repairs. :p

"Y'all not like windows?"

"I was wondering whether or not this building had been covertly fortified. If they'd lined the walls with armour panels of something exotic. Doesn't look like it. It's just normal brick."
...How depressingly normal.

I repair the walls, to Tuppence's disgruntlement. Then I enter the range, bypass the lock on the armour door and take a look at some of the weapons. There are a few LexCorp pieces, but various parts of the US government have been putting contracts for next generations weapons out to tender so that isn't strange either. And there's a WayneTech version of the stun gun Guy's been using ever since he found out he was allowed a sidearm. High reliability, low lethality. Maybe that's what they were doing-
Not that he's needed it most of the time. Until someone nobbles his Ring, anyway.

"Can ah jus' take these?"

-here.
Do you want to upgrade to Burglary, Tuppence? Good thing you guys are getting pardons after this is over...

"Actually, yes. This gun is very unlikely to kill-."

I turn and see the plasma cannon she's picked up.
Tuppence, the big guns are more Eiling's style. And so, so 90's...

"That gun is very likely to kill anything you hit with it, it's relatively fragile and we don't have any way to reload it. And we're supposed to be sneaking around, so-."

"Put it in youwer ring… Pocket.. thing."
...On the upside, it means he can avoid giving it to her unless the situation is dire enough to use it.

"You really want it?"

She aims it in the general direction of the-.
Whoa, girl. Learn how it works first before you go pointing it at anything...

"No, no." I tether it with a filament and send it into subspace. "Okay. I'll carry it." Ah… I grab the maintenance handbook and subspace that as well. "Maintaining it will be your job. I hope you enjoy reading technical documentation."

She shrugs. I hadn't realised that she acted up when she got bored, but in retrospect perhaps I should have considered that possibility. I also hadn't considered whether or not Danner enhanciles could get foetal alcohol syndrome, but as far as I know their mother didn't start drinking until after they were born.
Not sure if a Danner Enhancile with ADHD would be better than one with mental deficiencies or not...

"Alright, we just need to check the basement and then we can start canvassing-."

The intercom clicks.

"Orange Lantern. What are you doing here?"
Ah, there is someone here. Or at least watching the building.

So, it seems someone has been keeping an eye on the place. Who that might be, I'm sure we'll learn soon. The question is why? If there's anything exotic here, are they watching over it, or casing the joint in anticipation of acquiring it for themselves? If either of those is right, then why did they let the place get ransacked? So many questions that will hopefully get answered.

... just upgrading he lights and wiring.
... just upgrading the lights and wiring.
It I had to guess, they stayed at home.
If I had to guess, they stayed at home.
 
We keep telling the Americans that, but it doesn't stick.
Why, how do you pronounce it? Not "leftenants"? I don't think any English dialect actually pronounces it as written, so I don't get why you would single out Americans for being weird about it.

At least we Germans pronounce it based on our own (mostly) consistent spelling rules, even if the particular rules in this case are dumb.
 
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Too late, he's already made an assumption and decided on an alternate plan that makes almost no sense given all he actually needs is someone capable of blasting out Yellow Light.
Fridge moment: he probably can't. Not lightly.

Asking Bats to wield yellow, would be asking an ally to go against their wants, and that's probably pretty antithetical to Paul's identity - which he had to reinforce just moments ago.
 
"Jus' have Atom do it, so's we can do somethag else."
'somethang'
I repair the walls, to Tuppence's disgruntlement. Then I enter the range, bypass the lock on the armour door and take a look at some of the weapons. There are a few LexCorp pieces, but various parts of the US government have been putting contracts for next generations weapons out to tender so that isn't strange either.
'armoured door'? or 'armoury door'?
'next generation'
 
Why, how do you pronounce it? Not "leftenants"? I don't think any English dialect actually pronounces it as written, so I don't get why you would single out Americans for being weird about it.

At least we Germans pronounce it based on our own (mostly) consistent spelling rules, even if the particular rules in this case are dumb.
American English would pronounce it as "loo-tenants." The actual correct French pronunciation would be more along the lines of "leeuh-tehn-ahn," given the nasal sounds that French represents as (vowel)n in writing.

So really, the American pronunciation is closer to the way the original French word that English borrowed* than the British pronunciation, given that "U" has a different pronunciation in English than French, and liasing a non-English I into an English U ends up with an "eeoo" sound.

And that's one thing I do love about languages that aren't English--they are generally much more consistent in their spelling rules, meaning that if you can see how it's spelled, you can probably pronounce it. (My parents both had degrees in German and spent three years living in Berlin in the late 60s; they were, at the time, good enough in it that Dad finished out his tour in the US Army as a German language instructor at the Defense Language Institute. They would regularly switch to German if they were discussing things they didn't want us kids to know about yet, like upcoming birthday and Christmas presents, resulting in my having a fairly good ear for Hauptdeutsche pronunciations... though I have had to ask a few clarifications at times, like how the hell "äu," as in "Mäuschen," is pronounced.) Even Japanese is relatively easy to deal with, so long as you have the hiragana or katakana instead of just the kanji (in which case may God have mercy on your soul), since, again, the pronunciations are consistent with a very few exceptions (like the particle "wa" not being written with the "wa" hiragana, but rather with the "ha" hiragana, as an artifact of... something).

English is pretty damned natural to me, but only because it's my native language, and there are still places where I'm not entirely sure what the correct pronunciation is. (Example: Is the word "deleterious" four syllables, or five? I would tend towards five, but I've heard others use four...)

* As many have noted before, English does not borrow words from other languages. English sneaks up behind other languages in dark alleys, knocks them out, and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary.
 
No such thing. Mr Zoat has not crossed over with Shadowrun or Earthdawn. I was just putting it forward as an alternative destination to warhammer fantasy.

I'm afraid that I'm not familiar with either of those settings.

This scenario is a pretty good way to show a green shadowrunner the ropes. Camera lesson, viability of blowing out walls/windows, basic weapon pros and cons... Tuppence might have trouble with the Face lesson of "don't punch your boss in the face" though; Johnsons tend to have excellent weapons.
 
Bruce was always a solid mix of green and yellow at equal measures so he could semi-function as a severely fucked up hero.
After giving up yellow, I imagine he's all green now. Probably can't even think in a yellow-ish way after his revelation.

Red.

Batman's no killing rule, according to DC, is because he wants to murder people so badly he can taste it. He wants to make the Punisher look like Mister Rogers.

There's a world in which he killed the Joker for killing Jason, and then he proceeded to kill every single supervillain as dessert, from Brainiac to Condiment King.
 
There's a world in which he killed the Joker for killing Jason, and then he proceeded to kill every single supervillain as dessert, from Brainiac to Condiment King.
And as a result the world has no supervillainy, and not that much regular villainy. Canonically, murder worked.
 

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