legionworld | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Who| The Boy Who Would Be Agent North Dakota (and the man himself, occasionally)
What| mostly, a young man being either very responsible or very irresponsible, depending on the precise moment
Where| all over Legion World, see starters for details
When| for the duration of Time Ripples

we are young we run free
Within a handful of hours of waking up in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar house full of unfamiliar military-looking supplies, Gabriel's figured out more or less what the situation is. Sure, he spends a few hours at the beginning there creeping though the habitats with a paranoia-backpack full of weaponry and food, but hey. No one has to know about that. Once he's figured out that this superhero thing is actually apparently real, he can be found for several hours zipping around the habitat deck performing a series of increasingly hair-raising manuvers, really getting his flying skills down and testing the essentials, like how much speed assist you really can get from a freefall. Trying out the shield-bubbles is reserved for periods when he's catching his breath, and he spends awhile figuring out how big he can make them (surprisingly big), if they can move or not (they can, apparently, under certain circumstances), and at one point if he can use them to float on a body of water (he can, but trial-and-error shows the bubble definitely has to be big enough to be buoyant). It's not a stretch to see North's features in the lanky seventeen year old, though both his unruly fluff of white-blond hair and the silver ring curled around his bottom lip are outside his usual regulation standards.

you won't wanna be nowhere else
Once he's figured out his powers well enough - and once he starts grasping the actual scope of the situation - he takes to the full breadth of Legion World itself, a sort of patrol by way of fascinated sightseeing. He's back to the backpack, though with all the reports of actual kids running around, there's less in the way of weapons and more in the way of snacks and amusements. He doesn't know what he's going to do with anyone who de-aged to three but still has laser vision, but he guesses that with the bubbles and all, he's probably one of the best people to handle it. When he feels like taking a breather from all the novelty he ends up crashing at Taylor's place, which is both comfier and far less quiet than what's apparently his own house. Without his sister around, it's nice to have someone, and Taylor has a habit of bringing people back on a regular basis. It means he's making things to munch on pretty regularly, but all things considered, playing co-host to a bunch of his (apparently) similarly-afflicted teammates at least lets him pretend that this is kind of normal.

just leave your problems on the shelf
It's that same hunger for normalcy that leads him to post a quick sign-up for pick-up basketball outside of one of the sim rooms. And, in a few cases, offer unsolicited advice to likely-looking teammates that they should really consider signing up for a game.

Hey, it's a base full of super heroes. Who doesn't want to see that match?

(stay up late, we don't sleep)
It all makes a lot more sense when he's older - the hours when the ripples trough enough that he's suddenly North again, with years and years of memories behind him and all the old calluses and scars back where they should be, along with the jarring clarity of who he was beside who he is without those gradual intervening decades to soften the comparison. The first time he comes back Theta's all over him, and he spends a lot of his time when he's not a teenager doing what he did on the Mother of Invention, walking wherever his feet take him, reassuring the little nightlight flicker in the back of his mind that it's all right, that he's doing great, that it won't last forever. Sometimes he's talking apparently to himself, a low constant murmur, sometimes he's just humming a vague semblance of a tune. Sometimes he's quiet, metronome of his footsteps broken only by the occasional chuckle or hum. Rarely, there's a little flicker of purple and blue over his shoulder, though that blinks out the moment anyone else draws too close.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

After a few days of having little North hang around and help out at his place while they compile information and become ye olde hub for recovering time displacees- it's good to see his friend again. Full grown and talking to Theta and himself. Not fair, probably, to immediately take that time to wander close and headbutt his shoulder but-

He's been the responsible one for a few days. It's fucking exhausting. A break to whine feels overfuckingdue. "Goddamn I missed you."

Just. The solid, calm certainty that is North Dakota.

North tries not to be too much of a nuisance when he's doing this, and he's surprised when York tracks him down. Even if it's just rambling along the path between the house and the bar. He blinks at the insistent thump into his shoulder, then snorts a laugh, spurred on by the little flicker of empathy that sparks off of Theta.

"I'm gonna take that as a compliment, and not that teenage me was driving you insane," he murmurs wryly, obligingly remaining still and hooking an arm around York to ruffle his hair.

"Nah, he's great. But I'm the only sane man right now and I'm not used to that." So, so not used to it. He is not meant to be the only responsible adult type person keeping track of many damaged people, some of which threaten him with violence out of well earned paranoia. It's. Jarring. And draining. And exhausting. At least it's not all bad- keeping an eye on little Gabe is stressful but not in a way that'll kill him.

Mostly.

"Also you were such a little shit. Jesus. No wonder we get along so well."

"You think I was bad, you should've seen South at that age," he drawls, relaxing himself with the familiar weight of York against him, like his troubles are a weight he can let slip and tumble to the ground if he leans just a little more.

"What made you mellow out? Also: Rude, not telling me about being loaded or living in Germany." So rude. The most rude. IF he looked up Gabe could see he was deeply wounded by this.

"If I had to guess? It was probably the two decades of shooting and getting shot at." He chuckles at the gripe, giving York's shoulder a friendly pat. "Our family moved around a bit. We sort of split time between America and Germany. It didn't seem all that relevant to Freelancer business."

"Yeah, I guess. Still feel kinda weird finding out like this, though." Like there's any other way to find this shit out. He continues the lean, hands slipping up to loop a careless arm around North's waist. Just for a little while longer he can let North be the adult.

Then it's saddling back up and getting on with keeping everyone else settled and informed. Ish.

The woods that make up her biome are relatively peaceful. So the panicked chatter of birds and startled snuffling of nugs going for cover gets her attention first and foremost. Sliding out from under the cover of her tent, Marjara slinks into the brush and waits, staring outward for signs of whatever ruckus has come to 'her' corner of the station.

This place is supposed to be free of enemies, but old habits die hard. There's a spark of magic around her fingers waiting to be released, and depending on how quickly North goes zooming past?

He might see a pair of eyes staring from the shadows of the nearby foliage, gleaming unnaturally like a cat's.

The transition from open-air speed runs to slaloming through dense forest is enough to put the brakes on the more aggressive accelerations, and the first time Gabriel sends a cluster of birds winging is when he zigs instead of zags and goes crashing into the undergrowth.

Okay then. Check 'superhuman reflexes' off the potential superpowers list.

The next run goes slower, though he's still darting and weaving through the trees with a coltish newness to his flying, and he pulls up short at the remains of a crumbling arch with a huff of a laugh and turns to look back the way he'd gone. Then back at where he is. Which is when he finally sees a pair of luminous eyes fixed on him, too high up to be a cat or a dog, too close together to be a deer.

He yelps and wheels back on instinct, thudding to the forest floor as he loses his focus on levitating. In a same instant a dome-shield snaps up around him, summoned out of panic rather than intention, solid and a luminous pale blue.

Well that's an interesting sort of barrier. But she recognizes it as what it is, or what it appears to be. More than that, she recognizes the panic in his eyes.

So she steps free of the brush, her hand lifted in placation. "Easy there. I think we've both startled each other enough for today."

What was too high to be a cat or dog is still rather small in stature: a short, slender tattooed elf in what appears to be a mix of modern and ancient clothing, peering at him through the light of the shield. In the daylight? Her eyes no longer hold that eerie sheen.

"I don't mind you knowing, if it makes you feel any better." If he's being honest, York knowing things without North having to find a way to divulge them himself is actually nice, in a way. A little strange, mostly because he hadn't thought that was the kind of thing York would care to know. But nice. "Did you have any other burning questions, as long as we're baring our souls here?"

It all happens so quickly that awareness of the dome around him has barely set in before Gabriel sees the leaves rustle and reveal that those eyes belong to . . . a woman. He swallows drily, eyes flicking up and down, taking in superficial details that mark her as unfamiliar but still not as alien to his life-as-he-understood-it as things like flight and superpowers. It takes a moment's effort, but he dispels the shield, picking himself up and dusting off the seat of his pants.

"Ah- sorry," he manages, salvaging the one scrap of graciousness he can manage after the knockout combo of crashing through the woods, screaming, and finally falling on his ass, all in front of an awfully attractive person. "I didn't know anyone else was out here."

At that, she glances once at her campsite, then back to the young man now pulling himself to his feet, and she cocks an eyebrow higher. Alright. Probably hard to see going at the speed he was, but still.

"Luckily, no one else is. Not that I've seen. People don't pass through here a great deal," she remarks, lowering her hand. It might become obvious now that he's taking her in that she's only got the one. The other sleeve hangs knotted and empty at her left side.

"Oh. Is this all your- you know, your space?" he asks, gesturing vaguely to the ruin-dotted woods (and campsite, now that he's actually looking). He thinks maybe the term is 'habitat,' but that sounds so much like a zoo enclosure that he fishes for any other term that even halfway passes muster.

"I'd have doubts about calling it 'mine', but yes. They designed it for me."

Her nose wrinkles slightly as she cocks her head to the canopy above, the sunlight peppering down through what few gaps in the leaves there are.

"It's a little strange, isn't it? Anything that can create a piece of a world like this, out of nothing. Like they just dreamed it to life."

"It's amazing." He grins crookedly, following her eyes up and seeing an unfamiliar bird flitting back into their vicinity. There's something different about the place, and it's only when he starts looking at the details that he realizes how many leaves he's never seen with quite that shape, or birds with quite that coloration. "Where I come from it would take years and a fortune to grow something like this. Dozens of them-? No one would do it."

He glances back down, glance lingering on the point of her ear where it peeks through her hair, the one inescapable signpost that they can't come from the same place. "I'm guessing this is what the forest looks like where you live?"

"You could say that." The corner of her lip curled upwards. "My clan traveled a great deal, and we saw many lands. I think this was just one I was particularly fond of. A little less homesickening than the castle, anyway..."

She pauses then, squinting faintly at him, lines appearing in her inked-scrawled brow. "Have we...met before? You seem somewhat familiar," she murmurs, rocking back onto her heels and considering him with a cock of her head.

"Um. Maybe?" He laughs to himself awkwardly, reaching for his communicator and rifling through it for the training logs he'd dug up in his search for whatever his powers are. "Rumor has it that there's some kind of time problem and I'm actually supposed to be a lot older."

It feels weird to explain or even think of, the idea that he's supposed to be anything but what he is. But it's the best he has, and he finds a video and stills it on a shot of his older self rising from a shot, cheek just lifting off of the rifle. "Apparently that's me. Will be me?" He hands the communicator over so she can take a closer look. "It's weird."

Frowning thoughtfully, she reaches to take hold of the communicator, studying the face. "North," she remarks at last, her eyes lifting in realization. "We did meet, once. You showed me where these places were, how they contained places where plants might grow. You're the reason I found room for this."

And she gestures behind her to the table where she's been assembling her potion ingredients, for various concoctions.

So that really is what he goes by around here. North. It's strange to hear, and stranger to find himself a moment later hearing a compliment of something he hasn't done himself, something future-him did already. It flips his brain into the same twist thinking too long about the time disturbance usually does, and he tries to shrug it off, shaking his head.

"Thanks, but this is a giant area. I'm pretty sure you would have found it for yourself." It's a judgement call he feels perfectly confident in making - she carries herself steadily and moves with intention, and coming from his world, that and the missing arm read 'veteran' before 'illness'. It's a designation that doesn't quite square with foraging in the woods, though, so he blinks past her when she draws his attention to the table, stepping closer to get a better look.

"This?" He echoes, hoping for a little more explanation of what the entire setup is for.

Edited 2017-06-07 20:43 (UTC)

She trails behind him, before reaching forward to touch the cork at the top of each vial. "Growing the ingredients to make potions, tonics, grenades, all sorts of things really. I mean, the technology here is amazing, but it's not excuse to let myself fall out of practice."

The grenades are fairly obvious to the eye, in rounder bottles wrapped in leather cords for grip. Cool blues and greens sit in square bottles along the back. But by far the most numerous are the red bottles stacked three rows deep.

There's also a faintly acerbic, minty smell lingering over the table, and bits of ground plant still sitting at its edges.

The weirdest part, York's noticed, is that there wasn't ever any real warning. No shimmer of light, no flicker like a hologram, no visible ripple effect like in bad sci-fi movies. One moment a person was (and when) one way-

then then next? Older. Younger.

Head tipped forward like this the first thing to notice is Delta's chip. It goes from neatly embedded in the port nestled in York's too long to be regulation hair to sliding down the back of his neck, bumping against North's arm. Second: Too long to be regulation is shaved down to regulation longer top, shaved sides. York's posture shifts, somewhat uncomfortably, the arm looped around North gone from loose and casual to awkwardly stiff. His shoulders have more meat to them, a coiled tension, and his voice? Gone the playful drawl for the most part, tucked neatly away in clipped, even, commanding syllables. "Who are you and where are we?"

He doesn't step back that much, though he does lift his head to peer up at North with both of his eyes, a leaner angle to his jaw- wrinkles and scars gone. A quick glance at the surrounding area- night, Texas, dirt road- makes him frown. "...Am I on leave? The hell was in that beer Ramirez gave me- if the boys put you up to this-"

The ripples are disorienting, no doubt about that. Connie has fluctuated between a more...hopeful Freelancer and her current self over the past little while, and though her she doesn't appear to remember what she knows now when she shifts, she remembers everything that's happened when she's back to normal. It's unsettling enough that she's retreating to her safe house in her hab more often than not, building up a small campfire in outside of her cabin to sit and watch the flames.

If she didn't know just how much the Project had been risking them all and how broken it really was, she'd be envious of the apparent happiness of her younger self. Tugging the thick blanket Wash had given her tighter around her against the evening chill she leans back in her seat when the sound of someone approaching catches her ear.

Turning to the sound the faint glow of purple catches her eye, the shape and size similar to Delta's hologram. It's gone a moment later, but in its absence the firelight silhouettes a familiar figure walking through the trees.

"...North?"

At first, North hadn't realized that he'd wandered past the border of his own habitat. He'd just been following the stream away from his house, picking through the woods guided by the sound of running water and murmuring with Theta in the quiet. The smell of smoke had caught his attention first, confirmed moments later by the faintest glimmer when he'd scanned the distance with his heat vision.

After that? It was just curiosity who lived downstream of him and was out tonight with no apparent company apart from a little fire. He sees her outline first, warm umber tinged lighter where it faces the yellow-white of the blaze, and when she turns to him he blinks back into ordinary eyesight and stops cold.

It feels like a long time since he's seen her. Longer still since he'd seen her out of armor, a teammate rather than an ill-defined threat and target.

"CT." He draws up close enough for the light to show him, steps careful, ready for a response. He's been cagey enough with Wash, and he just left him behind. CT he hunted, him and the rest of them, and if she remembers - fuck, if she remembers-

He tucks his hands deeper into his pockets, taking a measured breath. "Been awhile."

It's been a cold comfort that out of all the Freelancers here, or the ones who had been here for any amount of time, Texas was the only one she hadn't been able to keep a step ahead of before the end. She had watched on the screens as her former teammates had systematically isolated and terminated the group she had defected to, but all she had to do was keep running at that point. 'Course, that didn't work out too well for her in the end.

"It has."

Connie eyes track the change in his posture, unconsciously feeling the tension in the pit of her stomach wind tighter as he stands there. She doesn't know what sort of new tricks he might have in this world, but this is her turf, and she's got plenty of ways to get out of a sticky situation if she needs to.

Letting out a soft sigh, she leans forward to reach for another log to throw on the fire as she gives the empty seat not too far from hers a tip of her head.

"Seat's free if you want to join me...clear the air a little."

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 3

(no subject)

Stay up Late, We don't Sleep

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

we are young we run free

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Stay up late, we don't sleep

no subject

no subject