another time, another place

[ringslinging]

Who| Hal Jordan and whoever wanders in
What| That good old new arrival confusion.
Where| Observation deck.
When| After Whistling in the Dark.
Warnings/Notes|


Hal thought he'd been having a bad day. Week. Month. Whenever the last time he'd been able to take his ring off and not think that the world was going to end if he tried to get a catnap. When trying to keep Larfleeze out of trouble in Las Vegas was the easiest task on the to-do, that was never a good sign. And yet now he'd take a hundred Larfleezes in as many capitals of rampant debauchery, because that had still made a lot more sense than finding himself in what was, apparently, a good ten centuries ahead of his own time, with no idea how it had happened or when he was going to be able to get back and get the job done.

It was the things that were familiar, not the things that weren't, that made it all so awkward.

Half of what he'd heard so far had been in one ear and out the other - probably not really helped by the fact that he should've taken a little longer to sleep off the concussion, but when Hal Jordan decided he was done staying in bed, good luck keeping him in one place. He needed to think, and he needed to not do it there - so he'd made his way out, wandered the corridors, and when he'd spotted a sign marking the way to the observation deck, he'd taken it.

Stars changed, he knew. But not as fast as everything else, and not so dramatically that he could look at the sky in front of him and know what was wrong, unlike everything else in this picture. The second question he'd gotten out was where are the other Lanterns?

(The first, of course, had been did I win?)

And the answer only brought more questions - questions that needed to be asked, whether he was going to like the answers or not. The words were on the tip of his tongue to just ask his ring before he caught himself, sighed, and pulled the omnicom out of his jacket pocket. There was still a ring on his finger, but he wasn't sure he was going to be able to start thinking of that Legion flight ring as his ring.

Only one ring got that title, and it was gone.

"Where's Oa?"

The voice that answered him from the information network wasn't the one he was trained into expecting, either. Wrong pitch. Different tone. Not right.

"No current data. Last recorded entry on planet Oa dates to..."

A long damned time ago was all he could really hear in those numbers. Heavy sigh. He slumped against the rail, eyes still on the stars.

"Okay. Let's try something easier. Where's the best place around here to get a beer?"

Comments

[leverageintceo]

"Probably the commissary," answered a female voice from above Hal's head. The speaker was a blond in her mid-twenties, wearing a Legionnaire uniform of black and not-quite-black and casually floating upside-down in mid-air. "Or the cafeteria or whatever it's called. Maybe a couple of the lounge areas, that seems appropriate. There isn't any in the brew pub in the Habitats."

[ringslinging]

He straightened up from a slump against the railing to a casual lean - not guiltily, more at a speed that suggested he meant to do it all along, and he certainly wasn't feeling awkward at being caught in a brief mope, no problems here - and looked up.

"Your best guess, or the voice of experience?"

He'd follow it either way, granted, but it'd be nice to know ahead of time if he ought to expect whatever he found to be any good. You really never knew, once you got off Earth.

[leverageintceo]

"Best guess, except for the brew pub," the woman answered, still hanging upside-down. She seemed largely oblivious to his state of mind. "I don't like drinking alone and none of the people I drink with are here."

She cocked her head to the side, braid twitching like a cat's tail. "Voice of experience can tell you that this is the predominately-vegan space-future, so you will have to be specific about your food and drink orders. You do not want to bite into a soy burger when you're expecting meat. That ends in disappointment and making rude faces."

[ringslinging]

His mouth was open and the obvious reply to that first part was on its way out - I seem to be without my drinking buddies too, maybe that means you and I should work on finding new ones -

- but did she say vegan?

Oh, god, she seriously said vegan.

"Please tell me you're kidding."

[leverageintceo]

She blinked, a frown puckering her brows for a moment.

"No, it's usually fairly obvious when I'm kidding." Something clicked into place behind her eyes. "But you were probably asking rhetorically. Was it about the food? Because you definitely don't want to accidentally bite into a soy burger when you're expecting delicious animal flesh. But they've figured out how to grow meat in a lab without it being prohibitively expensive, so if you remember to specify which menu you're ordering off of, you should not have to deal with surprise non-meat."

[ringslinging]

"Test-tube cheeseburgers only sound like a marginal improvement...but I'll take what I can get."

Okay. He was the first Earthling on Oa. He survived Greet's efforts over time to figure out how to cook for humans. He's got this, right?

...right?

[leverageintceo]

"I can't taste the difference," the woman answered with a shrug. "My palate isn't particularly refined, but I've gotten used to food that tastes good. If it tasted weird, I'd stick with cereal."

[ringslinging]

"Well, that's slightly more reassuring."

Of course, given things he'd heard some people claimed tasted good, he was reserving final judgment for field testing.

[leverageintceo]

The woman finally righted herself, though she eschewed standing in favor of sitting cross-legged in the air.

"I'm Parker," she said, without extending a hand or any other physical form of greeting. "Or 'Payback', I guess. Who are you?"

[ringslinging]

He'd been through the buzz of being newly able to fly and float at will, so he wasn't about to judge anyone who suddenly found standing on the ground to be way too boring.

(People who didn't shake hands, eh. He was an ill-mannered dick enough of the time that he didn't have much room to judge that either, right?)

"Hal Jordan. Or Green Lantern."

[iamresponding]

"There's a little joint down in New Metropolis that's supposed to be good. Or at least one of the support techs told me so. Haven't had a chance to head down myself. She said to give a beer called Silverale a try."

The other man that had joined Hal was about as tall and muscular as he was, and carried himself with a certain rigidity that suggested a law enforcement or military background. The costume hinted at it, too -- blue and gold were great colors for a cop's uniform and the fact he had the urge to wear it during his downtime suggested that he liked being prepared.

Rich had come to the Obs deck for a quiet moment. After that business with the Lux he needed a little breather -- not because of the tumult but because the tumult had ended. After getting all revved up and ready to fight, the whole thing had ended relatively quickly and now he was trying to get his brain to quiet down.

After each battle back home, he'd always rocketed to yet another world in trouble, but he couldn't do that here. He couldn't be a human rocket. He had to hunker down and wait for the next threat to crop up.

"You're definitely new. What's your name?"

[ringslinging]

The posture, the uniform - none of that was lost on Hal. It took one to know one, after all.

"Silverale, huh. I'll remember that."

He straightened up, though only long enough to turn to lean back on the rail instead of forward, and folded his arms across his chest. Military posture came easily to Hal, but so too did the tendency to buck it just enough that his inner hotshot shone right through. #justpilotthings.

"New. Or maybe just fossilized, by this era's standards." Because it was definitely the right dimension, or something pretty close, but the reaction he'd gotten to asking them what was up with the Lanterns, with the Justice League - he wasn't exactly an anthropologist, but he figured it had to be a damned long time to go from history to legend, and he was getting a distinct vibe of the latter.

(What would it even take to bring an end to the Green Lantern Corps?)

(A nasty little voice in the back of his mind couldn't help but amend that question - again?)

He stuck out his hand to shake. "Hal Jordan. Or Green Lantern, when I'm actually dressed for the occasion." Fixing that situation hadn't yet made its way to the top of the priority list. Take a breather that doesn't end in someone getting punched was still occupying the first position.

[iamresponding]

Rich reached out to shake his hand, his arm prosthetic whirring quietly. If his movements were slow and cautious, it had nothing to do with suspicion or anything of the like. Mostly, he was worried about accidentally squishing the other man's hand.

"Rich Rider. I also go by Nova." Or 'Nova Prime,' but the 'Prime' had no meaning here. Back home in his universe it marked him as the last Nova, the one that had started to rebuild the Corps anew. Here it was just a fancy title nobody really understood or needed to hear.

He let go of Hal's hand. Fortunately, he'd only squished it a little.

"Green Lantern, huh?"

It was a name that called out to him from a very nerdy childhood. Not that he'd ever read his comics but when he'd gone to the comic shop for his sci fi comics, he remembered occasionally seeing a green-suited champion of justice staring back. He'd never been interested enough to pick them up. He'd liked sci fi but cops in space had never really appealed.

(Now there was some irony for you.)

He said nothing, same as with Donnie. This whole thing was weird enough without making people question their existence or something.

"Now there's a superhero name if I ever heard one." He liked the implications of it. "People eat that stuff up. The names that make it sound like it's all about lighting up the dark."

Everyone seemed to find his own pretty appropriate. What could brighten the darkness more than an exploding star?

"This your first time at the rodeo or do you got experience like I do?"

[ringslinging]

He definitely felt that handshake, but Hal resisted the urge to shake it out and pop his joints once they let go. Couldn't let his image go to hell that quickly, could he?

"You think the name says light, you should hear the oath." The oath laid it on thick enough that you either found it fantastically inspirational or you found it ridiculously over-the-top.

(Hal was more than a little biased in belonging to the former category, of course.)

"Pushing two decades, by now." He was never sure if putting a number, even a rough one, to it made it seem longer or shorter. The sheer number of things that had happened in all that time, the changes he'd seen in the world, the universe, the Corps...

Himself.

[iamresponding]

Rich grinned slightly.

"I was lucky I wound up a Nova Centurion mostly by accident. They never formally swore me in and teeechnically that meant I wasn't actually beholden to any Command decisions. Technically."

He squinted at Hal curiously, leaning back against the railing of the Obs platform. He crossed his arms.

"'Green Lantern' doesn't scream military -- too hopeful. And you don't carry yourself like you're just a superhero, like the kids running this whole outfit."

They were good at what they did, for sure, and it was definitely clear that they trained extensively, but they still didn't carry themselves like soldiers or cops.

"You're a cop, aren't you."

He seemed quite pleased with the idea of that.

[ringslinging]

"Pretty good for only having five sentences and a once-over to work from." He didn't seem surprised by the conclusion, regardless - because he was pretty sure that even without the verbal subtext, whatever vibes Rich was picking up from him were exactly the same ones Hal was getting from the other direction. And the unspoken but obvious approval of his observation only drove it home.

He liked this guy so far.

[iamresponding]

"Well, you know how it is. The Thin Blue line, right? Or I guess it's the Thin Green Line for you. It's never that hard sussing out that someone's one of your own."

Rich beamed now, turning around and leaning his elbows on the railing, taking a nice, long look at Earth below. It was a comforting sight even if it wasn't his Earth or even his time period. The continents had this great habit of staying exactly where they were supposed to be.

"The Xandarian Nova Corps, which I was a member of while there was still a Corps -- that I was the only member of for a while -- is my universe's intergalactic peace-keeping force." A pause. "Was. Is."

Another pause.

"It's complicated."

God, was it ever.

"Anyway, I've been a Nova Centurion since I was seventeen, minus a year or so in there where I lost my powers. Not necessarily a good one for most of that time, but a Nova nevertheless."

[ringslinging]

"Depending who you ask, I'm either one of the best Green Lanterns ever or the absolute worst, so I get that. It's always complicated."

For him, though, probably more complicated than for most of his comrades. If Rich had been the only one for a while...it sounded like he'd gotten the bulk share of complicated in his universe, too.

Maybe less like Hal and more like Kyle, though.

[iamresponding]

Rich just grinned at that, a little smirk of mutual understanding.

"Yeah, well, two decades, you said? That's plenty of time for a whole lotta 'complicated. Sometimes I can't believe I'm only a bit past my first. Bet I'll have just as many stories to tell as you when I hit my second."

A pause.

"If I live that long. I'm not really banking on that."

It was said in a strangely casual way, and it was probably not a sentiment many Green Lanterns held. After all, how could their rings even work if they were already that defeated?

But that was just how some people were. Live fast, die young, live a good-looking corpse, that was how the saying went, right? Rich knew he couldn't even bank on the last one. Look at how he'd died the last time -- dissipated into energy. They didn't even have anything pretty to bury.

He'd pretty much forgotten it wasn't normal to talk that easily about dying, though. He and his friends and allies had gotten awful maudlin and prone to black humor during the war. It took him a second to realize that was a little bit of a dark place to go and he tried to recover.

"Not that I plan on kicking it anytime soon, but I've seen or been part of a statistically improbable number of eleventh hour miracles. Sometimes you wonder when your luck's gonna run out." He looked down at Earth and thought about some of what he'd said to Donnie, about the possibility of something with intelligence bringing them all, something powerful -- and not necessarily benevolent. "And with our whole situation, well...to quote a legendary space smuggler of some renown: 'I've got a bad feeling about this.'"

[lightcatcher]

"The world which you hail from is known to this system?"

The sense of distress that this man is emitting, coupled with his unhappiness about a legionnaire ring, at least suggests heavily that he came here in a similar way as himself, even though Fëanor has not seen him before.

[ringslinging]

"The world I work from. Home's Earth, and from what I'm hearing, that's still around and doing fine, but..."

A brief scowl flashes across his features as he jams the omnicom back in his pocket. It'll still be there whenever he's alone again and still in need of a good drink, but people take precedence over machines.

"Oa was known. So long ago that nobody can tell me much of anything about it, now. So I doubt Earth's going to look much like home when I get there, either."

[lightcatcher]

"...A whole world vanished between then and now? That must indeed have been a long time." Strange, though not stranger than to be in an universe that is different to an even greater extent, where some of the the basic laws of how it is built and functions are not the same anymore.

[ringslinging]

"About a thousand years, from what I've gathered." A slow sigh. "I've heard people talking about old friends of mine like they're...mythological figures. It's crazy."

Him, too, to be technical, but that was easier to write off as somebody else. He was far from the only Green Lantern that had existed.

[lightcatcher]

"Mythological figures?" He raises a brow in question, the translators of no help with the description as it is no concept that he can attach any meaning to. He's born too early on into the existence of his world, been close with too many of the highest ranking beings of reality, to know of larger-than-life beings from olden times.

[ringslinging]

"Yeah, you know -"

Hal pauses. He's been to a lot of worlds, talked to a lot of people with completely different frames of reference, so while this concept in particular hasn't been a problem before, it doesn't take him long to realize -

"...well, maybe you don't." How to put it... "So, you get people telling stories from a long time ago - like, a ridiculously long time ago. Before there was much in the way of recorded history at all. Thousands of years down the line, there's no way of knowing just how much changed or got exaggerated from people telling it like a long game of telephone, right?"

(God, does this guy know telephone? Whatever, Hal, just press on.)

"End result is that you have these stories from forever ago, about people who might've lived but might not've, because nobody really knows, and that have probably been blown up to something bigger than the truth originally looked like - except they might not've, because once again, nobody really knows. That's mythology."

And it's weird as hell to think about it in conjunction with someone you go out for beers with.