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

Oh boy, and without his ring to deaden the pain, I do think Paul will feel that for a while.
 
Military personnel don't personally work on every bit of gear they use. They have technicians and mechanics that do that. OL has Io and Sephtian for any magic-based gear. He does in fact use such things as mage slayer rounds and spell-eater amulets regularly.
You'll note that both of your examples of his magic gear are only used as amply as he does because he found a way to automate them enough that even low-level Atlantean apprentices could produce them in bulk with the arcane forge. Meanwhile, magic metals can currently only be produced by one able blacksmith and her Gods (one of which is fucking off planet and the other which is stuck as new top dog of his pantheon), essentially.

Think about it like this : If he pulled Io and Sephtian from all their research projects currently, he could probably make lots of already molded parts of a superpowered metamaterial armor and just assemble them on the fly everytime they get damaged in his fights, at the cost of utterly gimping his ring reserves and long term projects. Or he could use substantially easier to repair, mantain and produce armor that he can do it himself, costs basically no ring energy to subspace and is only much less effective in a very specific situation (where his ring is turnt off and he cannot retreat for one reason).

How? He's not a supergenius.

Or even a regular genius.
And trying to become Stark is basically a fool's errand for Paul, anyway. If he really needs more raw power he can just focus on becoming a better Lantern and that's a much better investment of his time, comparatively.
 
And trying to become Stark is basically a fool's errand for Paul, anyway. If he really needs more raw power he can just focus on becoming a better Lantern and that's a much better investment of his time, comparatively.
Is it?

He's pretty close to hitting the cap for Power Rings.

He's also started running into the problem that all big Lanterns run into, IE enemies who can just shut his power ring down.
 
Feasibility Study (part 20)
21st November 2012
After


PSHOOM!

"K-!"

PSHOOM! PSHOOM!

Interceptor drops gun, kicks them in the head. Eyes close, screaming stops.

"Lantern, you alive?"

"Ex-external. Yes. In pain. Injured."

"Life-threatening?"

"Probably not. Can't tell. Destroy the power suppressor and-. Andandand I'll be fine."

"Can you get out?"

"Mechanism's jammed, and I've lost power. If you can point me at the hole and- Stick the gun in my hands-. Hand, I can do rearguard duty. Otherwise, I'll just play dead."

"Hand?"

"The left one. Right's gone. Wound partially cauterised. Hope the ring's still there. Blue Lantern reports that other high caste have pulled out."

"I'll make this quick."

Gone.

Ow.

Take stock. Legs… Fine. Left arm some pain. Probably mild burn. Torso feels fine, but…

Ugh.

Fuzzy. Concussion? Blood loss? Shock?

Try moving again.

Oxygen shortage? Environmental purifier is… Left chest. Think fine, but brain impaired.

"K-k."

Dominator eyes open, twitching. Hand opening and closing. Stunned.

"K-k to you, too."

Dark going? Shadows-.

Wholeness Rightly Assumed.

Ah…

The shadows recede, my armour knits itself back together, and after a moment I take a distinct pleasure in flexing my fully functional right hand.

"Ah, div-work."

The dominator soldier sticking its head through the.. inelegant hole I made in the bulkhead just sort of sags in place as it sees me come upright.

"No, it's okay, we're allowed to accept the surrender of unarmed military personnel. All you have to do is drop your gun and grenades."

"And… The Exalted?"

An orange thread connects me to the stunned dominator's forehead, and reduces the size of the red circle.

"What Exalted?"

"I will take that."

He pulls himself through the hole, holding his gun by the power pack. He then steps aside from the hole and sets the gun down on the ground. Next, he unbuckles his grenade belt and puts it down next to the gun before straightening back up.

"Thank you. Orange Lantern to prison team. Do you need assistance?"

"Captain Henderson responding. Got injuries but nothing critical. We were holding them off, then the lights came on and Power Girl wrecked the sorry bastards. We're back to prepping the captives now."

"Good work. Continue with the mission."

I create a replacement layer of armour over the hole, move the dominator soldier's gun and grenades into subspace and take a look at the high caste who took a shot at me. No sense making someone suffer. Ring, repair the circulatory system but leave the bones broken.

Compliance.

And deal with the concussion.

The dominator's eyes widen for a moment, but stay staring ahead. Then their head snaps to me.

"The Guardians would not attack us. You do not work for the Guardians. We have had dealings with Qward."

"You have one chance to answer fully and accurately before I modify your mental network to be more compliant. Were you involved on the attack on Earth, where the test subjects came from?"

The dominator's mental networks aren't anything particularly strange. Strange to me at least. Having seen psion and Weaponer and Sivana thought processes it's almost old hat. Memories flicker as they're triggered. No. This one is too young.

"No."

"Have you worked on the subjects?"

"Not directly. I have been using data gathered from the experiments in my own work. I am not a biologics specialist."

Looks true, though it's pretty clear that this dominator-. That she didn't hold off for moral reasons or anything silly like that.

"Did you turn on the power nullifier?"

"Yes. I designed it to fulfil this purpose. The test was surprisingly successful."

I see-. Obsidian was… Connected to the Shadowlands, and she managed to manipulate the connection. Made him the core of a machine. Having her alive would-.

Two red beams lance through the dominator's head, incinerating it.

I turn towards Interceptor. "What was that in aid of?"

"That was a dominator scientist. They're on the target list."

"That was the one who turned Todd Rice into what he is now. We could have gotten useful information from her. Loot, then burn."

Interceptor exhales sharply in frustration, but nods.

"Commander Scott?"

"I'm fine." He walks back in, green light flowing around his body as he floats the whole machine through with him. "And don't worry, Interceptor. I wouldn't trust anything we got out of her brain anyway. Commander Scott to everyone. Get ready to pull out."
 
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So she sees a nominal ally talking to an enemy that dropped their gun, and instead of asking literally anything about the situation, just... guns them down?

That's some superhero-grade stupid right there.

And "I wouldn't trust anything out of them" means far less when you have a guy that can literally just rewrite their desire to be "Un-do that thing I did".
 
21st November 2012
After


PSHOOM!

"K-!"
Ooh, that's gonna sting something fierce. I don't think this Dominator is going to be having a fun time anytime soon, now that Interceptor's got her hands on them... Let's hope she leaves something to interrogate.

PSHOOM! PSHOOM!

Interceptor drops gun, kicks them in the head. Eyes close, screaming stops.
Hopefully just unconscious, not dead. After all, they may know something useful.

"Lantern, you alive?"

"Ex-external. Yes. In pain. Injured."
Yes, I rather expect he's in a lot of pain right now.

"Life-threatening?"

"Probably not. Can't tell. Destroy the power suppressor and-. Andandand I'll be fine."
Assuming it didn't drain the rings instead of blocking them. Then he might have issues recharging.

"Can you get out?"

"Mechanism's jammed, and I've lost power. If you can point me at the hole and- Stick the gun in my hands-. Hand, I can do rearguard duty. Otherwise, I'll just play dead."
Seriously hope you'll be redesigning the armour after this. It's shown itself to be less than effective when entirely shorn of Ring support. Perhaps work with Dox or the Corps' armourers?

"Hand?"

"The left one. Right's gone. Wound partially cauterised. Hope the ring's still there. Blue Lantern reports that other high caste have pulled out."
On the upside, the cauterisation probably means it's not hurting nearly as much as if the nerves were intact.

"I'll make this quick."

Gone.
Oh, you better hope there's no other enemy troops lurking in here, lady...

Ow.

Take stock. Legs… Fine. Left arm some pain. Probably mild burn. Torso feels fine, but…
So used to the ring reporting damage, then repairing it, aren't you?

Ugh.

Fuzzy. Concussion? Blood loss? Shock?
All of the above, probably, given the damage you took.

Try moving again.

Oxygen shortage? Environmental purifier is… Left chest. Think fine, but brain impaired.
See, this is where a separate helmet would have been handy, but no, you had to go for the enclosed cowling.

"K-k."

Dominator eyes open, twitching. Hand opening and closing. Stunned.
Best guess at a translation: "Owww..." :p

"K-k to you, too."

Dark going? Shadows-.
Huh, well, Interceptor moved quick. Was the device literally in the next room or something? :D

Wholeness Rightly Assumed.

Ah…
Okay, rings not drained, merely suppressed. Commander Scott will probably be back on his feet in a moment too.

The shadows recede, my armour knits itself back together, and after a moment I take a distinct pleasure in flexing my fully functional right hand.

"Ah, div-work."
And translation is back online, it seems. I'm guessing that's the Dominator equivalent of 'Well, shit."

The dominator soldier sticking its head through the.. inelegant hole I made in the bulkhead just sort of sags in place as it sees me come upright.

"No, it's okay, we're allowed to accept the surrender of unarmed military personnel. All you have to do is drop your gun and grenades."
And any other weapons you might be carrying, if any. No smart soldier would carry only one gun and a couple of grenades.

"And… The Exalted?"

An orange thread connects me to the stunned dominator's forehead, and reduces the size of the red circle.
Oooh, demoted! That'll sting.

"What Exalted?"

"I will takes that."
Ah, no need to fight to the death for an Exalted high-caste now, then.

He pulls himself through the hole, holding his gun by the power pack. He then steps aside from the hole and sets the gun down on the ground. Next, he unbuckles his grenade belt and puts it down next to the gun before straightening back up.

"Thank you. Orange Lantern to prison team. Do you need assistance?"
Given they have a psuedo-kryptonian? Not any more. :p

"Captain Henderson responding. Got injuries but nothing critical. We were holding them off, then the lights came on and Power Girl wrecked the sorry bastards. We're back to prepping the captives now."

"Good work. Continue with the mission."
Good to hear. Nice to see that little interruption didn't really slow them down much.

I create a replacement layer of armour over the hole, move the dominator soldier's gun and grenades into subspace and take a look at the high caste who took a shot at me. No sense making someone suffer. Ring, repair the circulatory system but leave the bones broken.

Compliance.
Let them have some object lessons in what being defiant gets you, eh?

And deal with the concussion.

The dominator's eyes widen for a moment, but stay staring ahead. Then their head snaps to me.
Heh, like an instant headache cure. Now, let's see how willing to play nice they are.

"The Guardians would not attack us. You do not work for the Guardians. We have had dealing with Qward."

"You have one chance to answer fully and accurately before I modify your mental network to be more compliant. Were you involved on the attack on Earth, where the test subjects came from?"
Both sides already fishing for information, I see.

The dominator's mental networks aren't anything particularly strange. Strange to me at least. Having seen psion and Weaponer and Sivana thought processes it's almost old hat. Memories flicker as they're triggered. No. This one is too young.

"No."
Under fifteen, eh? Not that I think they're any kind of child. If they're not simply vat-grown to adult spec, the Dominator species probably grows fast anyway.

"Have you worked on the subjects?"

"Not directly. I have been using data gathered from the experiments in my own work. I am not a biologics specialist."
So, not complicit in the torture, but benefiting from it. Still in an iffy moral position.

Looks true, though it's pretty clear that this dominator-. That she didn't hold off for moral reasons or anything silly like that.

"Did you turn on the power nullifier?"
I doubt Dominators give much thought to differences between gender.

"Yes. I designed it to fulfil this purpose. The test was surprisingly successful."

I see-. Obsidian was… Connected to the Shadowlands, and she managed to manipulate the connection. Made him the core of a machine. Having her alive would-.
Ouch. Hopefully Interceptor didn't just shoot the machine until it broke.

Two red beams lance through the dominator's head, incinerating it.

I turn towards Interceptor. "What was that in aid of?"
Bad form, lady. Shooting a compliant prisoner? During the interrogation, no less?

"That was a dominator scientists. They're on the target list."

"That was the one who turned Todd Rice into what he is now. We could have gotten useful information from her. Loot, then burn."
Hopefully you can find her notes, though. And I'm sure there's enough super-scientists working for the JSI that they can unravel the tech, notes or no notes.

Interceptor exhales sharply in frustration, but nods.

"Commander Scott?"

"I'm fine." He walks back in, green light flowing around his body as he floats the whole machine through with him. "And don't worry, Interceptor. I wouldn't trust anything we got out of her brain anyway. Commander Scott to everyone. Get ready to pull out."
Well, at least they've got the machine in hand.

So, raid more or less successful. Now to get their asses home. And OL at least learned something about his gear thanks to that little incident. Now, what fallout will they be facing from it, though? I'm sure the Leadership got some sort of alert out, so they may have to watch for a Dominator fleet turning up at Earth, ready to slap down some 'upstarts'...

"I will takes that."
"I will take that."
 
I wonder if they will call out LePaul for going in without doing any real recon.
 
So, does Paul have to go capture yet another ring to keep his matching pair?

At the very least, he'd probably want to make sure all the pieces are gone/inert if the one on his dismembered hand really was broken if just so no one he doesn't approve of finds and studies the bits later on.
 
Lets hope he remembers to fetch his missing Ring, otherwise i suppose he could go hunt down this universes version of Larfleeze to get a replacement.

I'm kinda curious where this world Paul is hiding. I mean, we have him in Young Justice, Teen Titans, DCAU, DCAU pilot, Arrowverse, Naziverse, Alignment swap verse.

I'd have guessed he was captured shortly after his appearance, but then JSI should have been aware of orange rings. Captured by villains? JSI preferred to not mention? In prison for illegal asteroid mining? Maybe some wierd time stuff happened and he is not here yet?

Now that I writing that, Paul definitely knows there's infinite versions of him. Why doesn't he try to find his alternate versions? I can understand Hell and Nazi, not a lot of chances to find his versions alive, but here it's quite plausible.
 
I'm guessing Interceptor doesn't care about war crimes that much, which is worrying. But hey, power's back. Which... what it means for Todd is concerning.

I'm kinda curious where this world Paul is hiding. I mean, we have him in Young Justice, Teen Titans, DCAU, DCAU pilot, Arrowverse, Naziverse, Alignment swap verse.

I'd have guessed he was captured shortly after his appearance, but then JSI should have been aware of orange rings. Captured by villains? JSI preferred to not mention? In prison for illegal asteroid mining? Maybe some wierd time stuff happened and he is not here yet?

Now that I writing that, Paul definitely knows there's infinite versions of him. Why doesn't he try to find his alternate versions? I can understand Hell and Nazi, not a lot of chances to find his versions alive, but here it's quite plausible.

Did he have enough time to really look for his alternate? Especially considering his alternate can't use a last name, 'Paul' is pretty common if he's able to get that name across, and doing a search for discrepancies might tip off the JSI?
 
Under fifteen, eh? Not that I think they're any kind of child. If they're not simply vat-grown to adult spec, the Dominator species probably grows fast anyway.

I don't think that would literally mean that this Dominator is under fifteen. That just means she's too young to have participated during the campaign 15 years ago, so she could be the equivalent to 30 in Dominator years, or something like that.

Did he have enough time to really look for his alternate? Especially considering his alternate can't use a last name, 'Paul' is pretty common if he's able to get that name across, and doing a search for discrepancies might tip off the JSI?

Why would he look for himself by name? He can just make a DNA search, no? Or just a comparative search of "an individual that looks like me or close enough".

I'm still weirded out that he didn't at least look for a possible copy in the Naziverse. In the Earth Hell practically anything could have happen, mostly bad, including the total incineration of his body. But I feel he kinda left his Naziverse doppelganger to dry for no reason, not even a thought.

Maybe it's just me, but if I met or was aware of the possibility of another me, and one that might be in a bad spot, I would try to help that me. If only because I should, as a healthy individual, have at least enough sympathy for myself.
 
Maybe it's just me, but if I met or was aware of the possibility of another me, and one that might be in a bad spot, I would try to help that me. If only because I should, as a healthy individual, have at least enough sympathy for myself.
If a version of you was hiding in the cupboard, you probably shouldn't draw Nazi attention to them.
 
21st November 2012
After


"That was the one who turned Todd Rice into what he is now. We could have gotten useful information from her. Loot, then burn."

Interceptor exhales sharply in frustration, but nods.

"Commander Scott?"

"I'm fine." He walks back in, green light flowing around his body as he floats the whole machine through with him. "And don't worry, Interceptor. I wouldn't trust anything we got out of her brain anyway. Commander Scott to everyone. Get ready to pull out."
I love the quote especially because it is perfect in this situation.
 
Did he have enough time to really look for his alternate? Especially considering his alternate can't use a last name, 'Paul' is pretty common if he's able to get that name across, and doing a search for discrepancies might tip off the JSI?

I guess you can cursory scan for non-standard power ring. Powerful artifact that may be found with passive scan. And JSI is a competent organization. Our heroes were spotted barely minutes after their arrival.
It's hard to believe they didn't detect sudden arrival of a ring user, but maybe, if he arrived outside of active scanners, used ring to find/make a breach and just hid there, he is still under the radar. We actively monitor our sky for deadly meteors for a long time, and yet nobody noticed Chelyabinsk meteor, so I guess it's plausible.

If a version of you was hiding in the cupboard, you probably shouldn't draw Nazi attention to them.

In general, yes. In that particular case, SI saved their world, and was on a good terms with Overman. Polite "I saved you world, can I relocate my other self" should be fine. Major inconvenience from the story perspective, sure, so I didn't think much about that. I don't t think JSI-timeline Paul cameo can hurt, though.
 
I don't think Dominators are protected by Earths various laws concerning war crimes.
They're called Human Rights and you ain't human.
*BLAM*


How? He's not a supergenius.

Or even a regular genius.
By following the advice of Howard Stark, Get someone smarter to do the legwork

He knows both Blue Beetle and Hardware I forget if John Henry Irons is also around.
Paul farms the work out to the Super Genius's he knows.

Just not the Sivanas since they might use paul as a guinea pig.

Interceptor is a loose cannon who needs disciplinary action.
Well Time to get the Paddle.

Hey now, this is the SFW section.
Fine I'll put the paddle away.

Then Paul should stop mind-raping people and finger-banging teenage girls.
Kara and Zatanna wouldn't mind some of the second.
Paul's technique is highly rated by the spider guild.
 
OL isn't a miracle worker, he works with what he has. He can't use metamaterials because he can't mantain them and having armor you cannot repair is just stupid, and having a backup armor so elaborate that it gets turned off by power nullifiers or people that can make reality stable just defeats the point.

It's telling that the few better armors we've seen are all metamaterials like Kon's Nth metal fullplate, New God tech (which uses the owner's Godhead as its energy), Diana's new fullplate armor, the Anti-Monitor fragment from Devlos, etc. Paul has already basically hit the softcap of non-enchanted materials and non-exotic energy features; Anything else is far too much excessiveness for a backup designed only to let him retreat from a nullifying threat imo
I really can't buy that, the idea that in this universe of schizo tech the best possible suit of power armour that doesn't depend on exotic technology is a clumsy flying fridge flailing about is ridiculous. Even Rocket Reds armour is better than that
The Sivanas could make him better armour, certainly. But could they make him better armour that counted as 'conventional'?

Yes, but only by a little.
I struggle to believe that between the Sivana's, Dox, Hinon and Kalmin there isn't someone that could design a much better suit that doesn't use exotic technology

The idea that this clunky heap of junk is the near the best that can possibly be built is absurd especially when the JLI had cyborgs running about that seemingly functioned fine with the power nullifier
 
Thank you, corrected.
Then Paul should stop mind-raping people and finger-banging teenage girls.
I don't believe that the Queen's age has been stated.
I really can't buy that, the idea that in this universe of schizo tech the best possible suit of power armour that doesn't depend on exotic technology is a clumsy flying fridge flailing about is ridiculous. Even Rocket Reds armour is better than that

I struggle to believe that between the Sivana's, Dox, Hinon and Kalmin there isn't someone that could design a much better suit that doesn't use exotic technology

The idea that this clunky heap of junk is the near the best that can possibly be built is absurd especially when the JLI had cyborgs running about that seemingly functioned fine with the power nullifier
I really don't know where you're getting this 'heap of junk' thing from.
 
I really don't know where you're getting this 'heap of junk' thing from.
I mean, it really didn't perform impressively at all

The entire thing just felt like OL was flailing about in a heavy slab of metal that wasn't really helping at all outside of having crumblers in the gauntlets
 

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