legionworld | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who| Robbie Baldwin and you?
What| Robbie is 19 and what the IC anon meme would call an edgelord
Where| The mess, can be moved
When| During the Time Ripple
Warnings/Notes| Note: Feel free to read something over his shoulder. Warning: It is possible stuff will be warned about in threads. This will be updated as needed.

Robbie is in the closest thing to a dark corner that the mess hall has to offer, staring at a list on his omnicom. At least... it's technically Robbie Baldwin, but it will take someone who's really good with faces to recognize him. He's younger, about 19, and his head is shaved smooth. There's some scratches on his head and a sling on his arm, but he doesn't look too bad.

Whenever someone walks in, he watches them to try and figure out how to order food. While #6 on the list told him where to find food, Robbie thinks it left out how to operate the menus and how to pay. He'll catch on eventually.

He scrolls up on the screen, past #5 (who to ask for Niels' food) and #4 (yes, it's really Niels), to read through the list one more time. If the preamble (in essence: you're in the future, don't panic, your kindergarten teacher's name was Mrs. Brubaker, timeline hiccuping) is to be believed - and there was a couple of windows full of stars in his room to make it abundantly clear that it's true - then he should probably follow all of the advice.

It's easy enough to follow though. Don't tell anyone not to call you Robbie, don't talk to more people than you have to, and don't do anything stupid. After Nos. 7 (wear these earplugs so you can understand people), it gets a little too demanding, listing the appointments and classes he's supposed to go to. Yeah, well, he's not supposed to talk to people, so those aren't happening when he can just go back to his room and wait this out.

Where are the earplugs, anyway? Robbie sits up, suddenly thrown into an intense confusion, and he panics until he locates them deep in the pocket of his hoodie. He didn't lose them, that's good. He didn't want them, but he couldn't read the signs in the hall without them.

He gingerly sets them down on the table like they might explode. They are the realest things here - definitely more real than the green person he saw in the hallway or his old cat. Those are, respectively, tacky and predictable things to include if this is fake. But the earplugs let him read hieroglyphs. Robbie believes them as proof of being in the future a whole lot more than his teacher's name.

Honestly, he's been trying to remember his kindergarten teacher's name for an hour, and he's still not sold on it being Brubaker. The last thing on the list is "13. Don't worry. It shouldn't last long."

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It had been a little odd, waking up and NOT being eleven any more. He hadn't realized it was strange when it was happening, but having those memories now is just...a strange comfort, actually.

He heads to the cafeteria, still pondering the whole, strange situation. It's habit that makes him look around when he gets there, looking for either Rich or Robbie first, then other friends he's made here. However, Vance is looking for the Robbie he knows now. So it's not that surprising that he misses the young man with the piercings and the shaved head on his first look. After all, he hadn't really seen Robbie looking like that too much.

Still, he DOES notice him on a second sweep and pauses, taking in everything before he goes to the menus to order. And then puts in a second order. So that when he makes his way over to the table in the corner, it's with two trays. "Mind if I join you?"

The list of instructions is light on names. It numbers teammates in the dozens and inhabitants of the space station in the thousands, but the only names are those of the leadership and those with seniority. Robbie didn't think anything of that, at first.

When Vance walks in, he knows immediately that he has been bamboozled by his older self. He wouldn't have left his room if he'd known he might bump into an actual person, whose face has a name and a personality and memories that go with it. Vance is not as easily ignored as the others on Legion World. They fill a column of random others, and that's what he is to them.

But his old teammate isn't an unknown and can't be expected to politely ignore him. Despite slumping in his seat and crossing his arms as best he can, Robbie still finds himself reluctantly nodding that, yes, Vance can join him. Being friendly isn't on the list, but the whole thing basically spells out 'don't make waves.'

He realizes that the nod might be taken as 'yeah, I mind, so sit somewhere else.' After a couple seconds of toying with letting it play out that way, Robbie nods again and clarifies that it's a free country, or space station. "There's no one else sitting here."

Honestly, Vance will take what he can get. He didn't know Robbie very well at this time, with him having been in the hands of the Thunderbolts and the government for too long, but he remembered Robbie when they'd first met up again afterward. Remembered things that Robbie had said.

So when Robbie nods and says that nobody else is sitting there, Vance goes ahead and sits down. Sure, it's not actually an answer to the question asked, but whatever. He pushes one of the trays across, one with various favorites that Robbie likes in the cafeteria. "So. Got caught up in this mess, too?" he asks, before clarifying. "The mess of the time ripples, I mean."

The tray of food actually makes him lose his appetite. 'Eat something, where people can see you, at least once a day' had been on the list, and it's why he's here in the cafeteria, after all.

It's how it's just forced on him like that, like it's a habit and he's not even given a chance to show that he's compliant. Something so simple strips away whatever control he has in the meal, including what goes on his plate.

Robbie props his arms on the table, with his good arm beneath the sling. He manages to bump the tray with his elbow as he does so, nudging it subtly away.

It doesn't help that the food looks - well, great. Interesting at the very least. There's some sort of veggie burger and what could be sweet potato fries, and a glowing green drink stands between two pre-packaged snacks that Robbie can't identify because he's still not wearing the ear plugs. It's too much.

"Yeah." Setting the omnicom on the table shifts the tray even further to the side. He doesn't offer it to be read, as he would like to protect the privacy of his older self, but Robbie doesn't make an effort to hide the screen while he searches the message he left himself for the words Justice, Astrovik, and Vance. "They - I - said it was affecting everyone... you got old."

The fact that Robbie is nudging the food aside doesn't go unnoticed. But it's one of those things that Vance has learned to pick his battles over. "I can show you how to use the menus later," he says conversationally, sitting back and picking up his drink.

He smiles slightly what Robbie says, nodding slightly. "Well. I'm normally older than you. Though I did just stop being eleven again." He glances at the sling on Robbie's arm. "The doctors here could sort that out for you fairly quickly. Worked fine on me."

"Okay." The blatant bossiness of the instructions makes more sense now. Turning up in the mess is the bare minimum, apparently, and it's reading more like an unofficial guide to not suffer through sympathy. "I was trying to figure them out, I thought I'd watch people."

Robbie picks at the cuff of his hoodie and avoids looking over, distressed that he even has to ask how old Vance is. "I saw you on the tablet. You're... 20? Or did you turn 21?"

He can't remember. It shouldn't be so important, but Robbie can remember several hundred birthdays. Yet not Vance's. He doesn't know when he lost it, but maybe his brain needed the space. Yes. For more important dates.

At the mention of doctors, he tenses visibly. Robbie always has one doctor or another checking him out. He knows Vance means his arm, just his arm, but he doesn't want to go. "They already treated it. I don't know how the ripples work, but if I go home without a busted arm, they're going to have questions."

And Robbie's used up almost a day's worth of words on Vance already.

"More like twenty-four." Vance gave him a half smile. "You're a bit past twenty-one yourself, at least the you I'm used to."

Which is a slight difference. And maybe tells Robbie something about his future.

He wraps his fingers around the cup. "They don't work that way. You've not actually been taken out of your time period, you've just...been physically and mentally reverted back to your younger age." He makes a motion to his left arm. "I arrived here with a broken arm myself. But I still remember the arm being broken normally at that age." He pauses, then offers, "But. If you're not comfortable with having the arm healed, then that's all right, too."

"You got old," Robbie repeats. Well, it certainly confirms that Robbie's going to live a few more years, as if the video of his older self sporting a full head of hair didn't. He thinks it's a sign that he's somehow failed and gone complacent and looks faintly upset. He takes a sip of the drink on his own tray (it tastes like a funny iced coffee).

Mostly, he tries to get a better grasp on being reverted to a younger age. Robbie doesn't understand how the body can injured in reverse without help, and he's having trouble with the idea of not being taken out of his time period. "I was in Norman's office. That was an hour ago... or today, anyway."

It had definitely been today. "... if we're not being taken out and we're not 'arriving' -"

Robbie pauses to get his train of thought properly hitched up before he makes an attempt at this. "But we still had the injuries we were supposed to have, I'm not gonna risk it."

But he's staring at Vance's arm anyway. He refuses to ask how it broke and get into some tit-for-tat emotional sharing.

"Twenty-four is not old." Vance rolls his eyes a bit, but it's good-natured. Doing his best not to treat Robbie as the wounded kid that he actually is. It's not something that Robbie takes kindly to most of the time.

Still, he can't stop the slight curl of his lips at the mention of Norman Osborne. "Well, an hour ago and well over a thousand years ago, all at the same time. We got pulled into one of those weird, alternate universe things where we're trying to save all of reality itself."

The curl turns into a frown but he shrugs. "If you're comfortable leaving your arm like that, I'm not going to be the one to force you to go to the medbay to have it taken care of. It was an option, but not one you need to take."

Robbie shrugs in response. He'd shrug three times, but once gets the point across all the same. Arguing about whether or not 24 is old seems like a waste of oxygen, and Robbie's eyes open wider at the reaction to the namedrop before settling back down into droopiness. The Avengers were for this whole thing, weren't they? Iron Man was, and She-Hulk. And the Fantastic Four. They liked Osborne now.

"I can help, but I have to get back. I'm not done." There's a lapse in the conversation, and it's clear that Robbie's still trying to process how the temporal and universal displacement works. "... you said I'm not gone. Right."

He rubs at his arm, prodding at the swelling around the break. It wasn't that bad, and Robbie keeps the same slack, blank expression on his face the whole time. "I'm fine. I don't mind it."

Prefers it, actually, but he suspects Vance is the reason several of the list's points exist, and Robbie isn't so damaged to be completely unaware of social norms. He can keep his mouth shut and talk about something pertinent to the mission. "Who's the threat? Galactus?"

Vance doesn't miss the widened eyes, but he can't be entirely certain what it's about so he doesn't call Robbie on it.

"Yeah, you're not gone. And even if you were, the rules about this place seem to be that we get sent back to exactly when we're pulled from." But, Robbie wouldn't be here that long. Though he was being a bit stubborn about realizing that. Then again, that could be a function of what all his mind had been through at this age.

He still snorts and shakes his head. "Believe it or not, Galactus was...not exactly easy, but easier than what we're facing. Though we still had to release something more powerful than him to punt him home." And he's REALLY not going into that because Robbie really doesn't need to know about the actual Wrath of God running around this world at the moment. "It's something that's actually outside of things, something called the Chronoblivion and don't try saying that three times fast." Because that was difficult. And making jokes was one way to get through things. "This...seems to be something like a keystone reality and it's trying to feed on it and break it down. And when it does, all of reality will come down with it."

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