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

[Mr Zoat]

which I will not be buying, unfortunately, for what I shall call 'personal reasons).

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You can say 'the author was accused of rape'. It's fine.

So, uh, Mr. Zoat, as the prime expert on the WTR version of Dream of the Endless, a being who is basically the inspiration for the Nobilis… would you be willing to speculate as to his reaction to… well, this particular flavor of nonsense? He was willing to bargain for Suleiman's Globe and Shakespeare writing a few plays for him; mortal riches are of no interest to him, but he seems willing to trade… as long as it doesn't harm his realm…

I just have no idea where Raksha-items fall in that list. They belong to universe-warping fae/story monstrosities, outside of creation, but those same monstrosities tend to lack cosmic might when running up against a callow youth with a stick and a bit of iron. And you mentioned a world where Paul's orange ring became an infernal exalt, so I'm kinda curious as to your thoughts on my particular lunacy.

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I don't even know what a raksha is. The Dream isn't Wyld in the Exalted sense. Dream probably wouldn't mind someone building something in a corner of it where not much was going on, so long as it didn't mess up anything else. But... I can be a bit puritanical where some things are concerned, and I'm not sure that stuff from Exalted is really compatible with the laws of Universe 16 without a lot of Primordial assistance.

 

[Razorfloss]

Dream is… interestingly limited, and I wish I could read more of Sandman (which I will not be buying, unfortunately, for what I shall call 'personal reasons).

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You can always buy second hand if you don't want to support the author. Failing that the sail the seven seas.

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st August 2013
09:28 GMT -5

We follow him into the laboratory, where… A bit less mad sciencey than I was expecting. Multiple hologram screens show… Mass spectroscopy results, scans of alchemical tomes and… Shipping routes? So not mad sciencey and more mad detectivey.

Artemis looks around. "Is Robin hiding under the desk?"

"Ah, no. He helped with the shipping stuff, but I'm the guy who's been trying to turn alchemy into an actual science."

"Ah…"

"You know what I mean, Oh El. And until Atlantis finishes that Dream research, this…" He gestures around to the screens covered in arcane lore. "This is probably the most complete guide to alchemy on Earth."

Artemis looks surprised and a little impressed. "Really? And you've been doing this..? Two years?"

"Not just me, but… Yeah. Most alchemists I've spoken to are mostly interested in… Basically, they do it like it's a ritual. Follow the exact steps, maybe learn from other alchemists… But they don't try and work out why any of it works in a structured kinda way. But between the records I've gotten hold of and Kord Industries' chem lab… I don't know everything, but I know a lot."

"Okay. Blow our minds."

"Ooooookay. So, firstly, I had to eliminate chemical effects. So if there's a chemical in a… Ah, 'potion', that actually has something to do with whatever the potion's doing, I gotta try and eliminate that. Because if the potion… If it's supposed to make something burn really well and one of the ingredients is eucalyptus sap…"

"Yeah."

Artemis raises her right forefinger. "English major. What's wrong with eucalyptus sap?"

"Highly flammable. The eucalyptus tree's lifecycle involves growing quickly, having fire-resistant seeds, and then burning everything around it to death. So if you ever wonder why Californian wildfires are so bad, imported eucalyptus trees are about fifty percent of the reason."

"Right." She nods. "If it's gunna burn anyway, it's not magical fire."

"But it might be magic enhanced fire. Turns out a lot of potions are mostly just enhancing things a couple of the ingredients do. I actually-." He gestures to a cabinet. "Found a way to make myself go faster. Doesn't last all that long…"

"Not found a way to make yourself go full Flash speed yet?"

"Eh." He sighs dejectedly. "It's probably easier to just purge myself and then take the full formula. Unfortunately, nullifying a change like this that's been in place for years is actually kinda hard. Like, really hard."

"My offer to clone you a replacement body and transplant your brain is still available."

"That's actually worse. If you did that, my brain would still be super fast but the rest of me wouldn't. I wouldn't be able to run, and if I tried taking the Garrick Formula again… It would probably work on my body, but my brain would be trying to go at three different speeds at the same time. And ah… Uncle Barry made me clear out the mouse cages after I tested that. And the back wall. Had to really scrub."

I grin. "What was the mouse called?"

He gives me a flat look. "Dude."

"We could try it anyway. I'm pretty sure my soul transfer technique would for-."

"No!" Artemis slaps me on the arm, triggering my kinetic barrier. "No exploding brains!" She points assertively at Wallace. "No exploding brains."

"Believe me, the mouse was plenty. Look, the point is, once the lab techs finished the mass spectroscopy on the emotion potions and we knew what chemicals were in it, I could compare the effects with all the things I knew could cause those effects and had those elements in them."

"So you know how they work?"

"Ah, yeah?"

"Could you make them yourself?"

"Ah." He looks around the laboratory. "Not with what I've got here, but, yeah? Why?"

"It's not patented."

"Sure, but I clearly didn't invent it. Even if the guy who did goes to prison, they're still gunna be the legal inventor."

"Unless they were working off alchemical tomes more than twenty years old. Because if that's happened, they're going to be too busy to set up a generic medicines company and no one else has the know-how."

Wallace looks at me uncomfortably. "I don't really wanna start out being a drug dealer, Oh El."

I'm sure that my eyes are glowing as I open my mouth-.

"Yeah, I get everything about what the pharmaceutical industry does from Jay, but can we focus?"

"Sure, sure."

"Anyway, there's only so many ways to force people to feel emotions, and outside of a couple of things they just don't last. But once you add in the correspondence effect that you found on that Tim guy, I worked out what they were actually doing."

Artemis nods. "Are they like, sucking the emotion out of one person and putting it in another one?"

"No, if they were doing that there'd have been emotionally burned out people turning up by now. Far as I can work out? They're finding people who are already feeling that emotion, dosing them with something to make the correspondence ritual work, and then the potion the people at the other end get mostly just connects the two together. There isn't actually all that much difference between the content of the different doses."

He gestures at the table where the samples are set up-.

"Why's the one-?" / "How come-?"

Artemis and I stop, both of us having noticed that one of the vials has changed colour quite significantly.

Wallace follows our gazes, nodding. "If we're lucky, that just means that the potion has passed through their system, or they're not feeling the right emotion any more. If we're not, then it probably means that they're dead."

"Can we track the link?"

"We can't. You need someone who can actually cast spells for that, and it's possible that they've warded their home base. Or that the people they're getting the emotions from don't even know they're getting dosed. But like I said, there's only so many ways to make this stuff, and the League's got records of just about everything going into the United States."

Wallace looks at me-.

"It's me, isn't it? Cadbury Logistics. Someone's using the portals."

"Well, it's not shipping and it's probably not air freight." He leads us over to one of the holoscreens, showing the links made by a particular group of portals. "Someone working in or around one of these portals would have easiest access to everything they need. I don't know which one or exactly where they're doing it, and since I don't know exactly how much of this stuff is getting made I don't know if they're hand-carrying it or they're bringing in truckloads of reagent, but that's where we need to start looking."

"I own the company, but I'm an absentee manager. Might be better to ask Mister Queen to have a chat with the local managers. Ah. Have you told Batman yet?"

Wallace gestures to the computers. "He already has access to all this. And so does Mister Atom. I haven't sent a report yet. Why?"

"Given how he's behaving, I worry about things that might make it worse." I sigh. "Alright. Who do we know with a heavy goods vehicle license?"

 

[CrazyNoVa]

When it comes to Paul and Wally, one's clearly being a bad influence on the other, though I can't tell which one it is. Either way, Artemis is slowly losing her sanity.

 

[Chojin Patriarch]

31st August 2013
09:28 GMT -5

We follow him into the laboratory, where… A bit less mad sciencey than I was expecting. Multiple hologram screens show… Mass spectroscopy results, scans of alchemical tomes and… Shipping routes? So not mad sciencey and more mad detectivey.

Artemis looks around. "Is Robin hiding under the desk?"

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Hey, Wally does have forensic skills learned from Barry and the Team's training to draw on. Is it so odd that he's following all leads, not just magical ones? He's not an idiot, after all.

Spoiler: Commentary spoilered for length

"Ah, no. He helped with the shipping stuff, but I'm the guy whose been trying to turn alchemy into an actual science."

"Ah…"

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Don't 'Well, ackchewelly...' him, OL, you know perfectly well what he means.

"You know what I mean, Oh El. And until Atlantis finishes that Dream research, this…" He gestures around to the screens covered in arcane lore. "This is probably the most complete guide to alchemy on Earth."

Artemis looks surprised and a little impressed. "Really? And you've been doing this..? Two years?"

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Ultimately... What's a college degree gonna matter when you're the one making the science you'd be getting a degree in?

"Not just me, but… Yeah. Most alchemists I've spoken to are mostly interested in… Basically, they do it like it's a ritual. Follow the exact steps, maybe learn from other alchemists… But they don't try and work out why any of it works in a structured kinda way. But between the records I've gotten hold of and Kord Industries' chem lab… I don't know everything, but I know a lot."

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Not bad for a kid who started out by making the Garrick formula in his bedroom with a child's chemistry set.

"Okay. Blow our minds."

"Ooooookay. So, firstly, I had to eliminate chemical effects. So if there's a chemical in a… Ah, 'potion', that actually has something to do with whatever the potion's doing, I gotta try and eliminate that. Because if the potion… If it's supposed to make something burn really well and one of the ingredients is eucalyptus sap…"

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And given what OL reported about Tim's brain, it's a safe bet it's not entirely chemical, but...

"Yeah."

Artemis raises her right forefinger. "English major. What's wrong with eucalyptus sap?"

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You know how people joke about everything in Australia trying to kill you, even the plants?

"Highly flammable. The eucalyptus tree's lifecycle involves growing quickly, having fire-resistant seeds, and then burning everything around it to death. So if you ever wonder why Californian wildfires are so bad, imported eucalyptus tree are about fifty percent of the reason."

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...This is why.

"Right." She nods. "If it's gunna burn anyway, it's not magical fire."

"But it might be magic enhanced fire. Turns out a lot of potions are mostly just enhancing things a couple of the ingredients do. I actually-." He gestures to a cabinet. "Found a way to make myself go faster. Doesn't last all that long…"

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Which reminds me a lot of classic D&D Spell Components. All the way back to the first editions, many of them were subtly humorous but also somehow logical. You might know obvious ones like Bat Guano and brimstone (equalling gunpowder) for Fireball, but consider Detect Thoughts, which uses a copper coin i.e. a penny.

"Not found a way to make yourself go full Flash speed yet?"

"Eh." He sighs dejectedly. "Its probably easier to just purge myself and then take the full formula. Unfortunately, nullifying a change like this that's been in place for years is actually kinda hard. Like, really hard."

"My offer to clone you a replacement body and transplant your brain is still available."

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OL, no. That's the kind of idea that leads to a Reverse Kid Flash running around or something, because you know the old body would somehow get revived...

"That's actually worse. If you did that, my brain would still be super fast but the rest of my wouldn't. I wouldn't be able to run, and if I tried taking the Garrick Formula again… It would probably work on my body, but my brain would be trying to go at three different speeds at the same time. And ah… Uncle Barry made me clear out the mouse cages after I tested that. And the back wall. Had to really scrub."

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...Ew.

I grin. "What was the mouse called?"

He gives me a flat look. "Dude."

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"Funny name for a mouse." But seriously, the idea of supersonic projectile mice is just... Ew.

"We could try it anyway. I'm pretty sure my soul transfer technique would for-."

"No!" Artemis slaps me on the arm, triggering my kinetic barrier. "No exploding brains!" She points assertively at Wallace. "No exploding brains."

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She'd quite prefer his brain remain right where it is, very much not exploding.

"Believe me, the mouse was plenty. Look, the point is, once the lab techs finished the mass spectroscopy on the emotion potions and we knew what chemicals were in it, I could compare the effects with all the things I knew could cause those effects and had those elements in them."

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A workable method, but given that he has no outright arcane training, a logical way of doing it.

"So you know how they work?"

"Ah, yeah?"

"Could you make them yourself?"

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That depends on how they're made, though. If they function on, say, soul energy leached away somehow from young children or something... Just no.

"Ah." He looks around the laboratory. "Not with what I've got here, but, yeah? Why?"

"It's not patented."

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You guys barely understand what they're doing and how they did it. That's not really patentable... Is it?

"Sure, but I clearly didn't invent it. Even if the guy who did goes to prison, they're still gunna be the legal inventor."

"Unless they were working off alchemical tomes more than twenty years old. Because if that's happened, they're going to be too busy to set up a generic medicines company and no one else has the know-how."

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OL, not everyone can just set up a pharmaceutical company like that <snaps fingers.>And sometimes they don't have the inclination do. Does someone have to dig up that Sauron picture again?

Wallace looks at me uncomfortably. "I don't really wanna start out being a drug dealer, Oh El."

I'm sure that my eyes are glowing as I open my mouth-.

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OL, stop. You're starting to larfleeze it, Enlightenment or not. I don't think the world wants emotion-modifying alchemy just yet.

"Yeah, I get everything about what the pharmaceutical industry does from Jay, but can we focus?"

"Sure, sure."

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Ugh, he's acting like 'well, someone doesn't want to become fabulously rich' up in here.

"Anyway, there's only so many ways to force people to feel emotions, and outside of a couple of things they just don't last. But once you add in the correspondence effect that you found on that Tim guy, I worked out what they were actually doing."

Artemis nods. "Are they like, sucking the emotion out of one person and putting it in another one?"

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Oh god, don't tell me it is made using the souls of forsaken children?

"No, if they were doing that there's have been emotionally burned out people turning up by now. Far as I can work out? They're finding people who are already feeling that emotion, dosing them with something to make the correspondence ritual work, and then the potion the people at the other end get mostly just connects the two together. There isn't actually all that much difference between the content of the different doses."

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I would hope there's something involved to amplify the shared emotions, otherwise someone's getting the short end of the stick.

He gestures at the table where the samples are set up-.

"Why's the one-?" / "How come-?"

Artemis and I stop, both of us having noticed that one of the vials has changed colour quite significantly.

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...Let's hope that's good, not something about to explosively self-destruct.

Wallace follows our gazes, nodding. "If we're lucky, that just means that the potion has passed through their system, or they're not feeling the right emotion any more. If we're not, then it probably means that they're dead."

"Can we track the link?"

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Ideally to the maker or the place of production. Though locating the source of the emotions would be helpful?

"We can't. You need someone who can actually cast spells for that, and it's possible that they've warded their home base. Or that the people they're getting the emotions from don't even know they're getting dosed. But like I said, there's only so many ways to make this stuff, and the League's got records of just about everything going into the United States."

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So... Call in Zatanna?

Wallace looks at me-.

"It's me, isn't it? Cadbury Logistics. Someone's using the portals."

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I guess there's not a lot of security checks of things going through, like parcels. Probably only about as much as a regular customs inspection. And shipping bottles of 'perfume' or 'juice' wouldn't attract much attention.

"Well, it's not shipping and it's probably not air freight." He leads us over to one of the holoscreens, showing the links made by a particular group of portals. "Someone working in or around one of these portals would have easiest access to everything they need. I don't know which one or exactly where they're doing it, and since I don't know exactly how much of this stuff is getting made I don't know if they're hand-carrying it or they're bringing in truckloads of reagent, but that's where we need to start looking."

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Given the patch methods they were deploying it through, someone could casually carry a box with thousands of dose through a portal.

"I own the company, but I'm an absentee manager. Might be better to ask Mister Queen to have a chat with the local managers. Ah. have you told Batman yet?"

Wallace gestures to the computers. "He already has access to all this. And so does Mister Atom. I haven't sent a report yet. Why?"

"Given how he's behaving, I worry about things that might make it worse." I sigh. "Alright. Who do we know with a heavy goods vehicle license?"

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Especially if he decides to go in heavy, by sending in squads of OMACs...

Looks like there's an undercover operation in the works. Let's hope the source is fairly innocent, rather than someone factory-farming emotional energy via a restoration of the Medusa Masks or something. I know they melted during the White Light event, but they've been melted before to make the singular mask...

 

[Signaller]

"It's me, isn't it? Cadbury Logistics. Someone's using the portals."

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Or maybe it's something added to the chocolate bars?

 

[Mquz]

Californian here - eucalyptus is really only like 10% of the problem by my estimate. While eucalyptus explodes, and was a major part of the LA fires last year, it's got fairly limited groves outside of Southern California. All of the ones I've seen have been along the coast, near the cities. In that case you just had a large grove like that in a very wealthy area. It wasn't a "typical" large Californian wild fire. You won't find much of it in the Sierra Nevada mountains, for instance.

The areas that do have Eucalyptus, are now also being covered with Cape Ivy, a South African plant that is very much like Kudzu, and is also very flammable.

A large part of the reason traditionally is that the redwood tree's natural life cycle ALSO involves using its thick bark to survive through fairly large brush clearing fires it helps spread with its branches. Once the undergrowth catches fire it spreads fairly quickly even without Eucalyptus. As well, the Native Americans used to do brush clearing fires to help with the issue in the areas they lived up till the 1900s, but America mostly stopped doing them until the last few decades.

Basically, our woods are designed by nature to burn regularly, and we've put large munition stockpiles near our wealthiest cities because we like the smell of eucalyptus in the morning (it does smell amazing when it's not burning)

 

[Duke Long]

"Ah, no. He helped with the shipping stuff, but I'm the guy whose been trying to turn alchemy into an actual science."

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'who's'

"Highly flammable. The eucalyptus tree's lifecycle involves growing quickly, having fire-resistant seeds, and then burning everything around it to death. So if you ever wonder why Californian wildfires are so bad, imported eucalyptus tree are about fifty percent of the reason."

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'trees'

"Eh." He sighs dejectedly. "Its probably easier to just purge myself and then take the full formula. Unfortunately, nullifying a change like this that's been in place for years is actually kinda hard. Like, really hard."

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'It's'

"That's actually worse. If you did that, my brain would still be super fast but the rest of my wouldn't. I wouldn't be able to run, and if I tried taking the Garrick Formula again… It would probably work on my body, but my brain would be trying to go at three different speeds at the same time. And ah… Uncle Barry made me clear out the mouse cages after I tested that. And the back wall. Had to really scrub."

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'me'
Three? His current speed, new speed, and ordinary human speed?

"No!" Artemis slaps me on the arm, triggering my kinetic barrier. "No exploding brains!" She points assertively at Wallace. "No exploding brains."

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Haha, is the barrier sensitive or did she use super strength for that one?

"No, if they were doing that there's have been emotionally burned out people turning up by now. Far as I can work out? They're finding people who are already feeling that emotion, dosing them with something to make the correspondence ritual work, and then the potion the people at the other end get mostly just connects the two together. There isn't actually all that much difference between the content of the different doses."

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'there'd'
Maybe they use normal drugs to induce the original emotions. Would be funny. And I feel like they likely have some artificial way to maintain consistency of emotions, since otherwise it's strange that the happiness (or whatever else) can be maintained for hours.

 

[Mr Zoat]

'who's'
'trees'
'It's'
'me'
'there'd'

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Thank you, corrected.

Three? His current speed, new speed, and ordinary human speed?

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Yes.

Haha, is the barrier sensitive or did she use super strength for that one?

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If I ever finished the next segment of In Praise of Eros it'll come up, but Danner Formula-granted super strength doesn't have an off switch.

 

[mastermenthe]

If I ever finished the next segment of In Praise of Eros

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I get the feeling that it's rather difficult to enter the right mindset. All the stuff in the terrasphere+mediasphere makes the Desire To Fix Things steal priority queue for your muse.

 

[Galler]

"Alright. Who do we know with a heavy goods vehicle license?"

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Bruno Mannheim?

 

[Darko]

Bruno Mannheim?

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Huh, he may want to spread happiness around as a form of repentance.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Bruno Mannheim?

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Damn, that's a much better idea than what I came up with.

I think I'm probably going to rewrite it.

 

[Ardy]

Damn, that's a much better idea than what I came up with.

I think I'm probably going to rewrite it.

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If that's the case, who was doing it originally?

 

[CrazyNoVa]

Damn, that's a much better idea than what I came up with.

I think I'm probably going to rewrite it.

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What, are you going to make him seek out the life equation so that he can spread it all over Earth?

 

[Mr Zoat]

If that's the case, who was doing it originally?

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Donna.

 

[ShadowScion626]

Donna.

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Troy? As in, Wonder Woman's original sidekick/apprentice? That….hmm. For some reason that doesn't seem as insane on further thought as it did initially. Amazon's seem like the type of people to look at the potions and not see much wrong with them.

 

[Darko]

Troy? As in, Wonder Woman's original sidekick/apprentice? That….hmm. For some reason that doesn't seem as insane on further thought as it did initially. Amazon's seem like the type of people to look at the potions and not see much wrong with them.

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Donna was raised in America, not Themyscira, so she wouldn't have the same attitudes as the rest of the Amazons.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Troy? As in, Wonder Woman's original sidekick/apprentice? That….hmm. For some reason that doesn't seem as insane on further thought as it did initially. Amazon's seem like the type of people to look at the potions and not see much wrong with them.

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The SI doesn't know whether they're inherently dangerous or Tim just got a bad dose. Donna's HGV license is unrelated to her feelings on narcotics.

 

[Bud-E]

Was it ever said what happened to Whisper Bruno's second-in-command in Intergang?

 

[Darko]

Was it ever said what happened to Whisper Bruno's second-in-command in Intergang?

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Nope.

I'm guessing she either became a Lowlie on Apokolips, or served Manheim on Earth and either died or is free now.

 

[Mr Zoat]

15th June 2012
07:48 GMT -7
Earth 8096

"Now that I think about it…" The richly-bearded Abel Stack gives me a sidelong look as we walk through the halls of Broadhurst Center for the Advancement of Mechanized Research. "You never told me how you even heard about this."

I nod. "That's true."

"So-?"

I smile politely. "Ask me no questions and I shall tell you no lies."

"I…" He looks slightly uncomfortable. "See…"

"Oh, it's not-." I shake my head. "It might not even be top secret, I'm just not sure…"

"Oh." He breathes a sigh of relief. "For a moment there I thought someone was leaking. Our… Sponsors… Well, I imagine that they'd be… Concerned. We were close enough to being shut down as it is. Can you tell me… Anything?"

"Did you heard about Kang the Conqueror's attack on New York? Green and purple costume, blue face?"

"I don't think there's anyone who didn't hear about it."

"Right, well, I got a look at his database while we were on his ship. The forty first century doesn't have perfect records of this era, but… Some things did get a mention."

"They had records of my research?" He sounds surprised.

"It was mentioned. It was considered historically significant. But that's about all I should say on the subject."

"Heh, yes. I suppose that it's best not to mess with the time steam when you don't have to."

"Oh, no, Kang himself already did that." He frowns in curiosity. "He detected his timeline getting erased, so looked back through historical records to see if there were any obvious anachronisms that he could see which might have caused it. He saw Captain America up and about in the twenty first century and assumed that it was his fault."

"But-. Captain America got frozen." He looks a little uncertain. "Didn't he?"

"Exactly. But that was two thousand years before Kang's time. He didn't know that, and he refused to listen when we explained it to him."

"So… Kang came back-. And that was the problem?"

"Kang himself, probably not. Kang's giant future fleet, which countries around the world are even now stripping for technology, to say nothing of the biological changes there have been in the human species in two thousand years which his followers are carrying in their bodies. Assuming that they have children, the human species could end up being very different this time around."

"Jeez… Did someone explain that to him?"

"I did. But apparently I'm an anomaly too, and therefore inherently untrustworthy. He's not big on listening to people."

"…without my father's oversight."

"I have the required security clearances, and it's your ability to answer questions on your own that I want to assess."

Dr. Stack looks concerned for a moment, and then increases his speed as we head for X-51's quarters.

"Nonetheless, you have disregarded protocol." I see X-51 'Aaron Stack' as we turn the corner. He's wearing a purple and black body suit of the sort that I've gotten used to seeing amongst America's superheroes… Though in his case I suppose it might actually be his skin. His head is uncovered, his face impassive, his black hair shaved-. Formed? Into a crew cut. He doesn't have eyes, just glowing red lenses, and the moment we come into view they lock onto us. "Please report to the site director."

The man facing him -and away from us- is wearing a grey suit. His hair is black and close-cropped and that's all I can see. I could scan him, but I don't want to make things difficult for Dr. Stack so I think I'll let him take the lead.

"Excuse me." Dr. Stack steps forwards forcefully. "Requests for access to.. X Fifty One are supposed to go through me or Doctor Broadhurst. Can I see some I.D.?"

The man turns-. Ah… Yes. Dr. Bolivar Trask, a name I remember from the Nineties X-Men series. I think he had something to do with the Sentinels? I kept an eye out but as far as I can tell this version is… Something to do with anti-super weapon research… He's probably working on Sentinels secretly now, but I don't know for certain. Despite being an Avenger I don't immediately qualify for all secret information.

"Certainly." He takes hold of the name tag on his lapel and holds it out. "I have nothing to hide."

"Father." X-51 steps around Dr. Tasks and takes station next to his father.

Trask looks curious. "Should he be calling you that?"

Dr. Stack sighs. "As you'd know if I'd been given the chance to brief you, Aaron's improved socialisation is the reason why he's turned out more stable than the rest of the X series. Part of that socialisation involves me as a parent. So yes, outside of combat training, he is supposed to call me that, because that's what I am."

Aaron-. It's subtle, but he stands up a little straighter in an instinctive response that AI's don't normally have.

"So whether you're cleared to know about the program or not, since you don't have an appointment I'm going to ask you to come back later."

Dr. Trask nods. "Very well, I-." He finally takes me in and I see that he recognises me immediately. "Orange Lantern."

"Doctor Trask."

"This.. site has nothing to do with the Avengers."

"Doctor Stack has volunteered his son for field socialisation training."

Aaron's head rotates-. 150o​ degrees to stare at me. "Field training?"

"I was hoping that you'd agree to escort my daughter to her school prom."

His head rotates to 270o​ as he looks to his father for confirmation. Dr. Stack nods. "I think you're ready for limited unstructured social interaction. I'll be available on comms if you absolutely need to check something, but for the most part I want you to try navigating things yourself."

"Yes, father."

Trask's eyes grow a little distant for a moment. "Your daughter? The mutant, Anne-Marie?"

I nod. "Yes, that's right."

He huffs, then directs his attention to Dr. Stack. "I hope that you don't intend to continue to train your AI by socialising it with the very people it was supposed to counter."

"Counter?"

He frowns at me. "Oh, don't pretend you don't understand. Mutants already outnumber every other type of 'post-human' by several orders of magnitude. Projects like this one are necessary to preserve humanity's dominance of the Earth."

I shake my head, remembering the animated Master Mold correcting him on that point. "I don't really think the x-gene is likely to be a big problem."

"Of course you don't. Your daughter is one of them."

"And so is yours, and your son, so what's that got to do-" Ah, he didn't think I knew about that. "-with anything? Besides, as I was saying to Doctor Stack, I know it's not a long term problem, because I have access to Kang the Conqueror's records." That brings him up short. "You note how neither he nor any of his followers have the x-gene?"

"I… Will check the recordings of their interrogation sessions."

"Well, the reason for that is that the x-gene was a flash in the pan, because… While a handful of 'mutants' get good, reliable powers, most of them get weak and unreliable powers, or 'powers' that are strictly disadvantageous like my daughter's which provide no evolutionary advantage at all. As time went on and human biological and cybernetic augmentation technology improved, augmenting 'baseline' humans became a regular occurrence, and… The irregularities in mutant physiology meant that they couldn't benefit from those technologies in the same way. Do you know how risky even normal medicines are today to people with unique physiology? Where they have blood chemistry or organ placement that doesn't occur in anyone else on the planet? Chirurgeons can't be trained for that." His eyes widen slightly. "Aside from… A handful of germ lines which produced reliable and powerful abilities, most mutants ended up either having the gene edited out so they could benefit from the same things as everyone else, or they self-segregated on their own off-world colony." I shrug. "So if you really want to hurry that future along, I suggest focusing on human augmentation technology."

"I see. That's-." He looks extremely thoughtful. "Thank you, Orange Lantern." He turns and starts to walk away. "You've given me a great deal to think about."

The thee of us watch him go.

Once he's out of earshot, Dr. Stack turns to me. "Was that..? True?"

I smile to myself.

"Ask me no questions and I shall tell you no lies."

 

[Ngamer11]

I can already imagine people in-universe raking Paul over the coals for putting that idea in Trask's head. Even if they don't get Sentinels, they might just get the Children of Tomorrow instead.

 

[EgyptianDio]

I wanna say let's hope this ends Trask's moronic plans but we all know that this is still a comic universe, meaning we can not have nice things.

 

[BR549]

I can already imagine people in-universe raking Paul over the coals for putting that idea in Trask's head. Even if they don't get Sentinels, they might just get the Children of Tomorrow instead.

Click to shrink...

Or Deus Ex.