legionworld | another time, another place

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?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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

"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?"

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

"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."

"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.)

"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?"

"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.

"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."

"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."

"It's not always a matter of power," Parker said. "Sometimes it's just a matter of setting up the situation so that the bad guys run headlong into their own downfall. My team once thwarted a multi-city biological terrorist attack, and that was the three of us a fancy van we stole from the government. I saved Washington DC with a blow-torch."

"We got a cosmic fear entity out of the way with a painting once, but the slugfest while that part of the plan got into place was still pretty nasty." He didn't have anything against the subtle approach, exactly - it wasn't his forte, but you did what got the job done.

But sometimes what got the job done still involved a lot of punching it.

"Oooh, which painting?" Parker asked, eyes brightening. "One from Earth? Or was it from space? I should totally visit a museum or something while I'm here, I bet they have a lot of really interesting art hanging around the place!"

It probably hadn't been what Hal was hoping she'd focus on, but once an art thief, always an aficionado.

"I don't think it was anything well-known." He paused, rubbing his chin and trying to remember what it had even looked like. "Something Kyle's mom used to have in their living room, I think it was? The important thing wasn't really the painting, it was what it meant to him."

"Ohh, the heart con." Parker nodded. "They're good when they work, but you have to handle them extra carefully. When they flame out, they flame out big."

She thought for a moment. "Okay, I'll bite. How do you trap a cosmic fear entity, whatever that is, with a painting?"

"Bait, mostly. It was the push we needed to get the guy he was possessing to kick him back out so we could put him back in the magic lamp."

Figuratively. They did put him in their lanterns, but Green Lanterns did not do magic. Except Alan.

"What did you do with the lamp after?" Parker asked. "I hope you slapped a warning label on it, because people never do that when they seal things away and it always ends poorly."

"Well, technically more like four lamps, since we figured even if the wrong person got ahold of one, they wouldn't get all four. Which we were right about, incidentally."

Which wasn't to say it didn't get back out, but only because they chose to let it.

"Smart!" Parker said approvingly. "Not everyone is going to be stymied by the inconvenience, but it should put off the casual lookie-loos."

"If anyone can get through four Green Lanterns to get at it, I'm almost tempted to say they deserve to get it. But only almost."

Parallax was a dick and the universe didn't deserve that, after all.

Parker pursed her lips thoughtfully, considering Hal for a moment.

"I assume you didn't announce it like that," she said, "because some people might take that as a challenge."

"Of course not. We didn't announce it at all."

He did say almost, after all. They were more careful than that.

another time, another place

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