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

[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."

[leverageintceo]

"Green Lantern, huh?" Parker's expression shifted slightly and she looked him over with a more assessing gaze. Hardison had talked her ear off more than once about Green Lanterns, but their names had never stuck. If Hal was one of them, it was probably rude to mention the comic books. After all, she wouldn't want to know if there was a TV show about her and her team. It was bad enough on that job where they'd had to dodge that creepy filmmaker, she didn't even want to think about a year or five of that.

"Cool," she said instead. "But I'm guessing your power doesn't turn you into a giant flashlight or anything like that."

[ringslinging]

"It did back home, but that's more a side effect. Doesn't seem to happen here." Which, he knew, meant he was probably going to have to be a little more careful about blocking moving objects with his head, because without his force field to soak up part of the impact, that would...probably not be fun.

An oversized, bright green flashlight appeared in the air next to him.

"Making one, on the other hand..."

[leverageintceo]

"Ooooh," Parker said, brightening (non-literally). "You make stuff! Cool! Can you make lock-picks? Or cold?"

She leaned forward to poke the flashlight, testing it's solidity. Having a guy who could just make stuff around could be very useful indeed!

[ringslinging]

"Cold, not so much. But if it's something you can pick up and handle and you don't mind that it's glowing bright green? Sure."

A set of lock-picks appeared in front of her, hovering patiently as though waiting their turn for handling.

[leverageintceo]

"Well, I guess you can't have everything."

Parker plucked the picks out of the air, handling them with the ease long practice.

"Do you have to understand how something works to make it, or does your power just fill-in for you?" She waved the picks around. "Like, if you made a lock, could I pick it with these, or would it just be hollow or solid on the inside of the keyhole?"

[ringslinging]

"Stuff seems to fill itself in without too much trouble. Batman's never complained about my microscopes, anyway. On the other hand, John's constructs always looked a lot more complex under the hood than mine, so I'd say it's more that it'll function as intended but not necessarily with every nut and bolt that the real thing would have, unless I try to put them there."

He usually didn't think too hard about why it worked. He just thought about it working. But that was probably the reason for how a lot of the difference in how his own constructs came out, right there.

[leverageintceo]

Parker pursed her lips.

"So I could probably only pick it if you wanted me to be able to pick it," she concluded, narrowing her eyes. "That would be annoying. Can your constructs be broken? Or exploded?" She paused, then brightened. "Are they flammable?"

[ringslinging]

"You know, I've never taken a flamethrower to them that I didn't make myself, so that might skew the data a little."

People finding out what he could do usually didn't get so detailed or creative in trying to figure out how to undo it. But that, honestly, was a lot more interesting than ooh, wow, you can make anything! as reactions went. And potentially more useful than but who needs a giant green eggbeater?, since he didn't spend much time thinking about his own weak points.

"My powers are a function of willpower. It's possible to break them, but it all comes down to how badly I want to keep them up."

[leverageintceo]

"So you can make things that can produce heat or cold, you just can't produce heat or cold on their own?" Parker asked, turning the information over in her mind. It sounded like, if she were a bad guy who needed to get around Hal's constructs, the best way would be to disrupt his concentration somehow. It would be a Grifter or a Hitter job, depending on his answer to her next question:

"Are you easily flustered by attractive women? And/or men?"

[ringslinging]

"Get one in here and let's find out," Hal grinned.

[leverageintceo]

Parker considered his answer for a moment.

"That sounds like something my hitter would say, so I'm going to assume you style yourself a 'player'," she said. "Can you maintain something when you're unconscious, or do you have to be awake and alert and thinking clearly?"

[ringslinging]

"I think that's the most clinical response to a pick-up line I've ever heard in my life."

[leverageintceo]

"Yes, but I didn't stab you either." Parker beamed. "Progress! No-stabbing is not just for Wednesdays. So, head trauma is a problem, yes or no?"

[ringslinging]

"What, so instead of stabbing me you're thinking about giving me a concussion?"

[leverageintceo]

"Obviously," Parker answered with a huff. "Your skin looks pretty normal, so I imagine that you're not immune to stabbing. Getting stabbed or shot can make it easier to focus, at least in the short term, so I'm really more curious about the effect head trauma has on your constructs."

She said all of this as if she were talking about something as inconsequential as the weather. She cocked her head to the side.

"Would it help if I explained that I am a criminal mastermind and it's my job to find the holes in both my team and our targets?" she asked. "Because I am not currently planning on giving you a concussion; I just want to know what happens when you get one so that I know how to prepare for that eventuality."

[ringslinging]

"Well, considering that I'm a known head injury magnet as it is, I guess it's not like it's much of a secret." He was pretty sure just about every member of his rogues gallery had managed to pull one over on him at least once, but that could be irreparable memory damage speaking. He'd managed to give himself head injuries.

"It's a disruption, at best. I've soldiered through some of them without completely dropping constructs, but sometimes I don't hold up so well. And if I'm knocked out, forget about it."

He'd managed to stay on his feet through a lot of hits to the head; boxing was great for getting a guy used to trucking through potential brain injuries. But sometimes he got clocked hard enough to drop like a rock. (Sometimes, that was even a result of his own actions and not someone else's. Sigh.)

[leverageintceo]

"You don't have a reputation here yet," Parker said reassuringly. "Maybe you can be a magnet for a different kind of injury!"

She drummed her fingers against her thigh. "Okay, so we need to keep you conscious. Good to know. And you do have skin, so anyone who has powers like mine should be kept at a distance. I think I can work with that. Do you frequently work with criminal masterminds?"

[ringslinging]

"The robbery, hijacking, general mayhem type? Not really. Fascist would-be space dictators, sometimes, when there's no way around it."

It was the potential death of the universe, he had a good excuse.

[leverageintceo]

"I haven't met many would-be dictators, and none from space, but I'm pretty sure that most regular criminals are easier to work with than would-be space dictators," Parker said. "Criminals are mostly in it for money, dictators are power-hungry jerks."

[ringslinging]

"They probably are. If I knew any who had the level of firepower we needed to save the universe that time, I'd take a dozen of them over one team-up with Sinestro."