Earth Field Trip [MOD PLOT]

[letsgolegion]

Who| Anyone who wants in!
What| A field trip
Where| New Metropolis on Earth
When| After the steampunk pirate meme.
Warnings/Notes| N/A

Earth is the multicultural jewel of the United Planets, a world known for its diversity and culture. It's a place where people can find almost anything: any technology, any food, any style of clothing from any world. It's also a place people can learn about other species, from the planetary cultural centers that can be found there -- where aliens engage in cultural practices from back home and share them with others, to theaters and entertainment venues where music and entertainment events, to stadiums where people can catch alien sports like Magnoball, to museums filled with all different works of art from myriad worlds.

And if there is a city that best represents what Earth has to offer, it's New Metropolis, on the North American continent, where both Earthgov and the UP Council are located.

[ooc: ooc info and requests are here!]

Comments

[iamresponding]

"Hell of a thing," Rich said, not really able to find any other words about the tragedy itself.

What else could he say about a tragedy like that? All that lost life, all those people grieving their loved ones -- their children. It was a sad thing, but he didn't dwell, couldn't dwell. He'd had to train himself out of thinking about the tragedies he hadn't been there to prevent, because of the war. If he thought about all the worlds devoured by the Wave while he was somewhere else, he'd have gone crazy.

"Basically, from what I heard after I came back a looong while after, the villains got in charge of things eventually. Naturally. Iron Man, the guy who spearheaded the registration business went on the run with the database of secret IDs in his head to keep it safe. Somehow they got rid of it, I have no clue how. Norman Osborn, the head honcho villain that got in charge of everything got exposed for...something and taken out."

Man, he really was out of the loop. He never stayed on Earth long enough to get everything explained properly.

"Thank God. Word was he'd once tossed an innocent girl off a bridge. Possibly someone close to Spider-Man, a close pal of mine. They hated each other. Archenemies."

Which made the fact Osborn had gained power mindblowing in its stupidity.

"Anyway, good ol' Cap, who'd been dead for a while, or lost in time, or something -- I never got that explained to me straight -- came back and led everyone to victory against all the villains."

He still had no idea what the hell that'd been about. Death? Time travel? Both?

"Then they got the law tossed out, decided a better way to deal with it all was training the young heroes better, and formed more superhero schools -- like they should've done in the first place," he said tartly, thinking of how the Avengers hadn't given the New Warriors the time of day back in the day, back when maybe they could've used a little guidance. "Robbie and my friend Justice, another former New Warrior, were teaching at one, last I talked to them."

He paused.

"Robbie said he wanted to teach the kids to not make his same mistakes. He was still blaming himself."

He hated that.

[ringslinging]

A huge mess, that resolved into slightly less of a mess, then.

There was something a little different in Rich's tone when he mentioned Robbie again - not blatant, but enough to give Hal pause, because that was clearly going from a difficult story (still told from a distance) back to something closer, more personal.

"After something like that, I can't say I'm surprised. There's a long road from knowing something rationally isn't your fault and actually feeling it."

Hal still wasn't sure how far up that road he was, himself. Farther than Robbie sounded to be, for sure. Sometimes he almost felt like he was there, but sometimes it felt like he never would be. (Did anyone ever get there? Or was it always just a few more steps ahead, no matter how far you kept going? He wasn't sure, and he wasn't about to let himself think about it that way, because Hal didn't believe in giving power to anything by considering it out of reach.)

[iamresponding]

"You know the worst part? See, me and you, we're grown ass men. Been through some stuff, survived some stuff. Got all that life experience to fall back on to cope -- but the Toothpick was only eighteen when it all went down. A pain-in-the-ass little small fry, barely old enough to buy cigarettes."

That was the worst of it. Being confronted by one of his best friends in that creepy suit, Robbie saying that Robbie Baldwin was dead, that Speedball was dead, asking him to hunt down other heroes. When Robbie was still a teenager and should've been worrying about college and asking out that cute girl in college comp I.

"They were calling Robbie 'the most hated man in America' for a while." Rich shook his head. "You should've seen him when we first formed the team. His powers distorted how he looked so he looked older. The first time he ever powered down in front of us we realized we'd accidentally picked ourselves up a kid brother. Rest of us were mostly college age and older -- he was the team baby. This twiggy, fifteen-year-old runt."

Rich finally figured out what he wanted to articulate.

"You can never really go home again. That's the thing it made me realize. Even Cap couldn't wave his shield around like a magic wand and set it all to rights." He looked up at the Superman statue. "I dunno, he looks like he could, though. Something in the jawline."

He grinned and looked down at the floor.

"Sometimes I think I should've been that guy. That grabbed both sides and shook 'em hard enough for the stupid to fall out. You ever worry about that? Like you're just not doing enough? Or not doing the decentest thing you should do? That one perfect thing." He gestured at Superman. "I can never figure it out but sometimes I wanna be him. Or Cap. Or better'n Cap. Not so everyone looks up to me -- been there, done that, in the war -- but I hate seeing it all go wrong like that and seeing that even Cap dropped the ball in some respects."

Because he had. Fighting things in an open conflict like that. Cap'd helped fix it later, thank God, but even he'd lost his way a little bit.

[ringslinging]

Clark did have a magnificent jawline, Hal had to admit as he looked up at the statue again.

"Everyone thinks that way about Clark. That if anyone can make everything okay, it's him. And even he can't do everything, but I think that's what people need - to think that it's possible."

Like you're just not doing enough. Or not doing the decentest thing you should do.

That one perfect thing.

"But I know I'm a long way from that." And he knew exactly what his problem was. "Too angry. I was always too angry. Half my family died not wanting to look at me because I was too angry to fix things with them. Parallax got into me through fear, but what I did - that was just him taking me angry and taking off the emergency brake."

And even now, after he'd realized those problems, come a long way towards overcoming them - even now, he knew anger was still a problem. When he arrested Sinestro on Earth, he'd known in his gut that if there was any danger left to his family, he would kill him on the spot. When Sinestro had killed Laira, and Hal had again been an inch from killing him, when the red ring had locked straight onto him.

(Really, when Atrocitus pointed out your anger management problems, you were at some kind of low.)

"...you know, when I came back? Back to life, back from Parallax - Superman never held it against me. Batman, though...it was a long time before Bats got past looking at me like he was expecting me to bug out and try to destroy the timestream again. And as much as I wanted to punch him for it -"

(Well, had, technically.)

"It made more sense to me. I don't know how Clark does it." Slow exhale. "But God, does knowing him make me feel like I have to try."

[iamresponding]

Rich didn't know what to say about Hal's family or what to ask. 'What the hell happened to your family?' was one possible (blunt) thing, but was it right to ask? Was it something Hal even wanted to get into? Did he even need to ask to really understand? So he took it all in, figuring he'd bring it back to his family later, if it seemed like he wanted to talk about it. Without asking, all he could give was the sympathy in the expression on his face, reflexive and unconscious.

And then when Hal got to the rest, he smiled.

"Oh no, now see that -- that I get," he said, looking around a little more at some of the pictures and video of Superman in action, somewhat in awe the more he looked.

Cap had these ways of taking your breath away, sure, but this man flying above, swooping in like some kind of caped angel, it really made him think. Made him wonder about the differences in their worlds. About that symbol on his chest that apparently others had worn, because maybe it meant something a little like Cap's shield but something a little different, too. There was definitely something larger than life about the man that was very Cap-like -- and yet different. Something in the way he carried himself.

"Like I said before, I run with a rough crowd back home and they got things like 'the destroyer' and 'the deadliest woman in the galaxy' and 'the accuser' as titles. They've definitely done some bad things. Even Starlord, my right hand man -- and my best friend up there -- he destroyed a whole colony taking out an entity that would've taken down a star system. Killed 350,000 people to save millions and then turned himself right into prison after. Hated himself for a long time for it."

Rich gestured wildly with his hands, spreading them out to show something more expansive. He twirled around a little as he did it, looking at all the little brightly colored images around him.

"But when it all goes to hell, when the entire universe is dying, they're there, ready to scream in death's face. And when Annihilus was destroying worlds, they were out there on the front lines, fighting, sacrificing, pulling my ass out of the fire, trying to minimize casualties, doing every single thing they could. And maybe some of it was survival and some of it was practicality and some of it was for their own goals, but still, sometimes they'd be the last ones off the battlefield, covering everyone else's exit, when they didn't need to be. Sometimes they'd wander out past enemy lines to scrape what was left of me off the ground after an orbital bombardment, so the medicos could regrow all the bits I'd lost. When everyone else would've left me for dead -- just like I'd ordered them to."

He turned back to Hal.

"Nobody can tell me there's no good in them. It's in most people, even some of the ones roughest around the edges, even the ones that've done lots of things wrong." Like Gamora. He would never stop believing there was good in her -- even if she couldn't seem to. He leaned against back one of the railings around one of the exhibits -- a recovered golden chunk of the globe that had once been on the Daily Planet.

Then he grinned. "Seeing that good ain't the hard part. Convincing people like that to stab the right things and to not get too stabby when when nothing needs stabbing? That's the hard part."

Rich pointed to Hal.

"Now, you. All it took was a few conversations and I can tell you're almost exploding out of your skin with how much you wanna keep getting out there again, being the hero that thing wouldn't let you be. Grimlord Edgebat must be blind if he can't see it. Too much time skulking in the dark."

[ringslinging]

"I won't argue that he spends too much time in the dark," Hal laughed quietly. "I lost count of how many times I pissed him off on missions with that - I don't do it here, but at full power, back home? I glow - force field's part of the package. I think you can guess how thrilled his stealthy ass was every time he had to team up with the six-foot-two lightning bug."

His expression sobered a bit, though, before he went on. "But that's what he's seeing. The dark. He spends more time staring into the darkness than any of us; Gotham's a magnet for that shit. And that's how he fights back - fire with fire. Or fear with fear, more like." He ran a hand through his hair absently - the right, the one that would've been wearing the Green Lantern ring, if it were here. The one now wearing the Legion flight ring instead. "A ring tried to choose him for a Yellow Lantern, once. He rejected it, thank God, but that's their criteria - the ability to instill great fear."

To be fair, if he had to trust anyone with a yellow ring, Bruce definitely would've been higher on the list than Jonathan Crane, but Hal was far from thrilled at the idea of anyone important to him wielding a color that wasn't green. He'd seen - felt - what the rest of the spectrum could do to your judgment.

"There were seven of us, when we founded the Justice League. Bruce and I were the normal ones, you could say. We had aliens and an Atlantean and an Amazon, and Flash may have started human, but if you get him talking about what it's like to perceive things in attoseconds or touch the Speed Force, you get pretty fast that he's not really seeing things the same way as the rest of the world, not anymore."

Hal rested his elbows on the railing in front of the statue, leaning forward. "You look at Clark, you see what we want humanity to be. How high we want to climb. That's easy. Everyone sees it. But after everything..." He shook his head. "You go that high, you've got a long way to fall. And humans are good at slipping. I think that's what he's been seeing."

And he couldn't say he didn't understand it. Hal might've built his life around rejecting fear, but that just meant it struck that much harder when it caught up to him, and after spending years wrapped in it, breathing it, being it, a reaction like that made far more sense to him than it once would've, as much as he'd like to simply dismiss it.

[iamresponding]

Rich grinned at Hal's description of himself as a lightning bug. He wasn't exactly built for stealth, either. Nobody rocketed into a situation shooting yellow energy out of their ass without getting spotted. That was part of why speed was important for him. He and his new Novas had once cleared a hostage situation with no casualties in 1.86 seconds.

Law enforcement at rocket speed.

"You can't get by in life looking at how far down the ground is, is what I think. People gotta keep looking up to see how high they can go. And if they do that, they're not fixating on who's fallen, and not worrying about who's going to fall next, and not expecting the people who've fallen to never get back up in the air again."

He stood next to him and leaned against the railing, too.

"Even Thrash figured that out eventually, for all his dark armor and rocket skateboards and angst over his dead parents. He had us and he wanted to see us rise to the top. Even that stupid show was about that to him, I think. It was a mistake, in the long run, because everyone started to get hooked on the attention and it got all about image. But he wanted to keep us in the air, and wanted to reach out to the people that needed someone, and wanted us to be seen the way he looked at us, when we'd kinda been a joke for a long time. And I think he wanted the world to see that they couldn't just kick people around and keep getting away with it because the Avengers' answering machine was full."

He shook his head.

"Weeks, they had to wait sometimes. Months. While those creeps were hurting people." He shrugged. "It didn't work out. But I don't think that's what Thrash had intended, for it to be about attention. I think he wanted it to be, like...a symbol. I guess. Looking around this museum and how some of your guys look, it seems like that they have that bit down."

That S seemed to be a legacy. It seemed to be something that gave people hope.

"The thing about seeing people as symbols is it's static. They can only be one thing, either good or bad. But people change and grow and they fail but they also reform. I kinda think people're more like movies. You know, there's a whatsitcalled -- a diegesis."

Congrats, Hal, with this conversation, you've coaxed him into using one of the biggest words he knows.

[ringslinging]

He was nodding along with all of that, because Rich's way of seeing it was a lot closer to how Hal thought, until they got to diegesis and his brain threw on the brakes and screeched to a halt.

"A what?"

[iamresponding]

"Oh. Uh, it's a term in filmmaking. Diegesis is the word for the world in the movie, like both what you see and don't see, that has its own internal logic and gives the movie depth. It also has to do with a style of storytelling that shows an interior view of a world, and in that, the details about the world itself and the experiences of the characters are revealed by showing rather than direct narration. If it's that way, it's diegetic storytelling."

A pause.

"Basically, it's the background depth behind the main narrative in a movie."

Depth, see? People were like movies with depth in the background.

He looked a little awkward now, like he thought he'd overstepped his bounds in trying to sound smart. What if he was using that wrong? Maybe it was a stupid comparison. It was probably a stupid comparison.

"I was a film major in college before I dropped out," Rich said awkwardly. "That's probably one of the only bits I even remember, mostly 'cause the example the professor always gave was the worldbuilding in Star Trek."

His cheeks even went a little pink, but there was probably never going to be a time that he didn't feel awkward when talking about school. When he didn't know something because he wasn't the book-learning type and had sucked at school, he got embarrassed. When he did know something, he also got embarrassed because he felt like he was probably using what he knew wrong. It made him feel like a fraud, if he tried to sound smart.

"I picked up a thing here and there but I wasn't ever the book learning type. You can shove something in my face like 'hey, you have to learn all this war strategy or the universe will die' and I'll learn it, but other than that, I'm not so bright."

[ringslinging]

Hal seemed utterly oblivious to Rich's embarrassment - or perhaps he did notice and just didn't care. He might be confused as hell by the word, but he got the explanation well enough, and he wasn't passing any judgment on Rich for actually knowing it.

"Is that what you wanted to do, if not for the whole space cop thing? Film?"

[iamresponding]

"Not really. Mostly I just picked it 'cause my parents wanted me to go to school for at least something and I figured something where I could watch movies would be easier than something where I had to read a lot of books. Or play with beakers in a lab. Or memorize laws."

He shrugged awkwardly, shrinking on himself, in way that many people found surprising when he did it. Especially when he was such a large and intimidating man. Not that Rich knew it, but it was something his friends had always hated, because it was what he did whenever he was down on himself.

And he was. Big damn hero space general, but he'd still never shaken away that doubt and self-consciousness. Not completely. It went away when he needed it to, when he had to step up, but the D-student sad sack inside him that felt stupid and useless had never really gone away entirely.

Over the years, he'd just learned to tuck it away when other people needed him to, when he had a job to do.

"My brother, he's the smart one in the family. The MIT genius. He bought my parents a house with some crazy patents on...I don't even know what it was. Computer programs, I think? He was one of my first new Novas and goddamn was he talented. Worldmind said she hadn't seen anyone manipulate gravity fields with that much finesse in six generations."

There was no bitterness in his voice, despite him feeling like his brother outshined him. Only pride.

"Like I said, unless lives are on the line, I'm not really that bright. Dropped out of high school, due to being up in space for the Xandar-Skrull war, and I guess I never really caught up. Eventually I got my GED and went to college but I flunked out of that. Truth is, being a supehero's all I've ever been good for. I don't really have a life back on Earth."

He smiled a little, and it was equal parts amused and embarrassed. He laughed a little, even if he was slightly embarrassed talking about this. He held up a finger.

"The funniest part of it, though, was I had --" he had to stop talking to laugh for a second "--I had these hoity toity generals and hardcore Kree soldiers and powerful warriors and kings and emperors and all that pledging allegiance to me --"

He did a little flourish of his hand and a little bow.

"They're pledging their undying allegiance and following me into battle, and the whole time I'm just thinking 'please nobody ask me what I used to do on Earth,' because it would've felt wrong not being honest -- and then they'd all have found out their big fancy head general flipped a mean burger."

He laughed some more.

"Sometimes -- sometimes they'd ask me for something, like, a supply convoy, and I'm just -- in the back of my head where I can't help it, I'm thinking, 'do you want fries with that'?"

[ringslinging]

Hal laughed, too - with Rich, not at him, because for all that he was a brilliant pilot and had that to turn to on Earth, he'd scraped the gutter a few times himself. Making your way in one life was hard. Trying to live two at once...well, some people seemed to balance it well enough, but Hal had never been one of them, and the fact that he couldn't just set things down in between nightly patrols to go pretend he was a normally functioning adult on Earth had a lot to do with that, he knew.

And it was nice to hear someone else straight-up say what a problem that was, honestly. His friends in the League might be sympathetic ears if he needed to gripe, they could share in some of the headaches of living a double life, but at the end of the day, they were still on the same planet, and when they dropped out of sight to be dead or whatever for a while, it was more of a big event than a constant pattern of calls to other corners of the galaxy that might take days or weeks at a time to resolve.

"Sometimes I think not having a life on Earth would make things a hell of a lot easier."

General Stone had found out about his identity, which had turned out not to be too bad - because it meant someone was covering for his absences; he surely would've been discharged long ago if not for that, and while Carol had offered to take him back, Hal couldn't help but feel that it was better not to take it. Things always got complicated when he and Carol were too close to each other.

That was the opposite of making things easier.

[iamresponding]

Rich shrugged.

"It does and then it doesn't. There is nothing more amazing than spending most of your days just cruising through the stars. I really get it now, how some of the more nomadic species love it." The ones that were nomadic by choice, at least, not the ones that were nomadic because war or other hardships had destroyed their homes. "And it means I don't have to worry about maintaining a job or paying the bills or any of those responsibilities. No responsibilities other than the job itself."

Which was...freeing.

"But you miss people. You scare people. My parents were always terrified that each time I went up it was the last time they'd see me, that I'd die alone, away from my family on some alien world, near some distant star..." He shook his head. "And I did. Even if whatever brought us here somehow brought me back. And it's a little different than dying on Earth. You know, because at least I could've spent more time with them. It was the distance than hurt them, too."

It was more than just his parents, though.

"And you just -- you miss so much. You're not there when people need you. You're not there when the world goes to hell and friends -- friends maybe you could've protected -- go and die. Or when they suffer and maybe you could've been the one to hold out your hand and pull them out of the pit they were in. You're not there when people make their stupid choices that maybe you could've talked people out of. And most of all, you don't even have a chance at the normal things. It's hard when you split your attention, it really is, but when you spend at least some time on Earth, there's at least a chance, you know?"

There would've been a chance he could've made a new life with Nita after pulling her out of the Fault, out of time itself, if he'd been able to settle, just a bit.

"You know what my biggest regret was, when I was dying? That I never got to have kids. I want some rugrats. I want, like, my own small army," he said with a little laugh. "I always had this picture in my head -- no idea if it'd ever come true or if that's what they'd look like or anything, but a bunch of little light-haired rugrats with wings on their feet like Nita -- because I always, always pictured it with her -- just running around and tearing up the place with superstrength, making our hair go gray early."

It was perfect in how imperfect it was, his little fantasy. To him, it seemed like a kind of chaos he could bask in for the rest of his life.

"But that's never gonna happen if I don't settle on Earth for good or find a way to split my time. That's what you lose. You get all those stars and you get to help people in big, big ways, but you lose everything else. All those little Earth things, all that time with family and friends -- and whatever future you could've built with them. It doesn't make it more simple or easier -- it's a trade. An exchange."

[ringslinging]

Hal was quiet for a good, long moment, turning that over in his head, because as much as it was something he tried to avoid thinking about, it struck home, hard.

You're not there when the world goes to hell and friends -- friends maybe you could've protected -- go and die.

Friends. Cities.

There was no proverbial gutter in his life that would ever compare to coming back and finding a crater where Coast City used to be, except, perhaps, the gutter that was everything that came after.

"I was never there when my family needed me before I had powers." He'd been too wrapped up in running from his own grief to consider what the rest of his family was going through. Missed chance after missed chance, and then finally he'd realized he was out of chances to fix anything. "All going to space ever changed was the scale. Being too late for seven million people instead of just one."

And even if he'd learned from all of it, tried to do better, fixed his relationship with his younger brother - that was better and worse. It felt good having an actual relationship with his family again, but then he considered the pure terror he'd felt when Sinestro told him Parallax was in Coast City with his family, for the millisecond before rage took over, and he thought of how many times he'd have to multiply that by, if he let himself get close to other people...of how impossible it would be to watch over everyone at once.

That was fear. He hated admitting it to himself, but he knew he had to. He'd spent so much of his life trying to convince himself that he wasn't afraid of anything, but he'd really just been chasing cheap thrills and pointless risks because that was easier to confront than the deeper fear that had wrapped itself around him since he watched his father's plane go down. He was afraid of losing people. Losing people wouldn't hurt you if you didn't get too close to them to begin with. And not being so closely associated with a superhero would mean less risk likely to wander into their paths, anyway. Safer for them, he'd told himself, because that was easier than admitting the core of the problem.

[iamresponding]

"Seven million?" Rich asked.

That was a lot. Not the most he'd ever seen die, not when the count was in the billions and billions. But a lot.

Just like eight million -- the population of New York City, give or take -- was a lot. His home city.

[ringslinging]

"It was after Superman died. He came back later, but I think you can imagine how chaotic things get when one of the pillars falls. I was cleaning up a few messes in space...and I got back to find my city nuked by Mongul."

He pushed himself up on his elbows, just far enough to grip the railing instead of leaning on it.

"...I still couldn't tell you for sure, because from my perspective, it always felt like me and not something else, but I think that's when Parallax started edging into the driver's seat."

[iamresponding]

Now it was Rich's turn to be gobsmacked.

"God."

Seven million. Almost the population of New York. Seven million. Even if he worked on a scale of billions that was huge.

"I'm sorry."

[ringslinging]

"We're kind of damned if we do, damned if we don't, aren't we?"

Hal exhaled slowly. He knew perfectly damned well that if he'd been there, other people would've died elsewhere. Even a Green Lantern couldn't be everywhere.

"Don't take the ring, and sure, I would've been there. Dead with everyone else, still wouldn't be able to do anything. Taking it means having the power to do something...but there's too many somethings that need you to do them, and never enough of you to be everywhere."

[iamresponding]

"That's one upside to having a whole Corps," said Rich. "Being in more places at once. That's why I was trying so hard to rebuild. We couldn't do it fast. It had to be bit by bit, you know? Worldmind lost it for a bit and kept recruiting while I was asleep -- too big, too fast. Some of them got hurt -- died because Worldmind tossed them head first into a skirmish after taking away the Nova Force from me. So once I got it back and helped Worldmind get it together and reboot, I sent them all home and kept only the most dedicated."

But that wasn't really what they were talking about. This was about the split between home and space, the millions above, out in the stars, and the millions below.

"But you know what I really wanna do? When I fought in the Annihilation War, after the old Corps was destroyed, before I started making my own, I sent a messenger drone to Earth, warning them about the Wave. They ignored it. Can you believe that? Chalked it up to a Kree border skirmish because they were all too busy duking it out with each other over that registration nonsense." Did he sound mad? He probably sounded mad. He didn't care, he was still mad. Forever mad. "The Wave was only three months away from Earth. Maybe less, because we'd been reduced to guerrilla tactics."

He was getting off track.

"So what I wanna do is, I want to organize a system. I want Earth to be less disconnected. When I get to go home -- if I get to go home -- I want to set it up so whenever the people in space need to put out the call, the heroes on Earth are organized, ready to send people up to prevent the end of existence or whatever nonsense is going on. You know, ready to divvy up duties to cover the people leaving the planet. And I want it to work in reverse. Once the Corps is restored, they can give us the call, instead of the Corps treating Earth like some backwater dirt rock. So when things go wrong, like the Skrull invasion, we're there."

Actual communication and cooperation.

"Someone needs to organize that crap. And of course I'm gonna be the only dumbass stupid enough to try 'cause the rest of those lazy idiots are gonna be too busy fighting over Iron Man Fuck Up number 501."

[ringslinging]

Hal snorted. "Stupid's a funny way to say with enough common sense to try. If your capes can't get their minds around the importance of getting something like that off the ground, I wish I could come over there and help you knock a little sense into them."

Nothing too horrible or unethical, of course. Just a few love taps with a big green boxing glove until they got the wax out of their ears and listened to a good idea when they heard one.

"It's not as bad as it could be, for us. I think having aliens, and then me, in the founding League helped set a precedent. They get why it's important, and I have enough pull that people are willing to take it seriously when I say they should be worried." (The fact that Hal had a reputation for being the guy who never worried about anything probably contributed, too.) "The Green Lantern Corps avoided Earth like the plague until I got my ring, but there are four human Lanterns now, and enough's been happening in our backyard that the Guardians can't afford to ignore it. We managed to pull together a good defense when Sinestro came knocking, even if he wasn't actually fighting to win."

Or rather, he'd been fighting to win a battle that nobody had realized he was fighting until it was already won.

[iamresponding]

"I wouldn't say no to some help, honestly," Rich said. "There's a lot of sense that needs to be knocked into a lot of heads."

He finally pushed away from the railing so they could finish looking around the Superfamily room and start moving towards other exhibits.

"I kinda like the look of your world. I know this is only the best of it but it feels like...like it has something mine's missing."

He looked at a photo of a woman holding what looked like a dead Superman near the corpse of a horrible monster. Other photos showed his funeral. They progressed along a wall, showing other heroes rising up in his place, a teenage boy -- Superboy -- and a man decked out in a steel costume. The pictures went on to show the man's miraculous resurrection.

Even in death, good sprang up from him in other heroes wearing the S.

Rich hadn't known that about Superman, that there'd been this whole...family. Yes, these comics existed in his world but it's not like he'd ever been a huge fan. Ironically, the ones he'd seen the most of were about the Legion.

"It looks just as dark, like there's just as much evil, just as many chances for everything to end. Just as many problems and mistakes, but --"

He worked his jaw slightly.

"I like the look of how you all seem to bounce back. My world don't do that anymore. Something bad happens and the heroes fight each other and things just get ruined, and people get broken and nothing gets as bright as it was. Even on the upswings, it never seems to get better for good. Like it just gets...tarnished."

He paused.

"Almost makes me wonder what the real estate is going for in your dimensional neck of the woods. Do you think they'd take Skrull energy crystals? Haven't got a cent of Earth money to my name, but I can get plenty of those. They're currency on tons of worlds."

[ringslinging]

Hal's eyes flicked across the pictures. Superman's death had hit hard for all the usual reasons, and for a few extra reasons, for him - but Rich was right. They did bounce back, and even when that seemed to be going against them, when Nekron had made it out to all be part of its plan - they still came out okay in the end.

"I think it's the legacies," he said, pausing in front of the door to the next room. "I don't know how big your world is on that, but practically all of the big names get handed down. Clark to Connor, Barry to Wally, me to Kyle...hell, Alan and Jay were being heroes as Green Lantern and Flash even before me and Barry, even if Alan wasn't actually part of the Corps." His powers came from a different place, but Alan had been the first one to tie the name to heroes on Earth, and he'd done so much to help the rest of them that even if he wasn't Corps, he might as well be an honorary member.

"I think it helps people feel like there's always going to be someone looking out for them...and it helps us remember that it's bigger than we are. We stumble, too, sometimes we get tired or jaded or lose the way for a while, but..."

It sounded to him like the heroes of Rich's world just had a little more trouble finding their way back.

"Kyle fought me when he had to, but he was still reaching out to me when nobody else would still try. Trying to find me in there. Without him, I know I wouldn't be standing here now." At best, he'd still be the Spectre, but Parallax had been clawing its way back to the top back then, too. At worst...

...well.

"And you know - I'm not familiar with Skrull anything, but I bet I can figure out the exchange rate." He grinned.

[iamresponding]

"I think that might be it. We react in the day to day -- we don't invest in the future. Vance and Robbie, last time I talked to them, they were teaching at that new superhero school, so that's good, but there's nothing really like legacies. Seeing superheroing as this honored tradition you hand down. A few heroes here and there, but it's rare and heroes don't always get to train their replacements. I think the Young Avengers are some of the first I've heard of and they apparently had to fight to get the Avengers to show them respect."

The X-Men trained their kids and sometimes passed down codenames but they were awful busy just surviving. They didn't have the luxury of being superheroes just to protect other people -- they were mostly trying to save themselves.

"Maybe all that's on an upswing but I dunno. 'We need to teach you not to screw up like us older heroes' seems to be the vibe, not 'we need to teach you what being a hero means.'"

Everyone back home thought he was dead and there was no telling how long he'd been gone before this place pulled him back together, so he wondered if he'd somehow have some kid imitator with similar powers pop up and take his place. If he did, well...first of all, he'd try to scare them off because no teenager should be getting into his line of work. But when that inevitably failed, he'd train the crap out of them, and in more than just how to fight evil.

Just like he'd chosen his first new Novas carefully and was training them equally carefully.

"There's this way the Corps used to look at who they chose that makes me...it makes me feel like it's the right kind of legacy for me to carry on -- and pass on. I mean, when you really think about it, I don't have to call myself Nova or keep using these powers for good or reform the Corps. But it's worth it for what the Corps represented. The Corps always chose average people from most planets. Not the super-geniuses, not the unique ones. Average people from average lives that are the best examples of their species."

His next words were clearly something he'd memorized, something that was recited.

"They bring no arrogance or pride with them, no self-importance or elitism. They understand the responsibility. They appreciate the trust. They embrace the duty. The're the honest bedrock of the Corps. Even my brother had some brains in his head but he never really thought of himself as special. He was the big MIT genius and he was jealous of me. Because he cared about people and was selfless and wanted to do so much more to help the world. So I gave that chance to him."

Now he finally had it figured out, what he thought about it all.

"I just think that's the real way of it, you know? That's what should be taught. Humility and responsibility and duty and honoring the trust. That's what it feels like everyone else is missing, with teaching those kids. It's not about 'don't screw up' it's about 'here's how you honor it.' The role, the responsibility, the trust, the people you're protecting -- everything."

They were in the Green Lantern hall now and he perked up and started looking around the moment they got through the door.

[ringslinging]

"I think you hit the nail on the head. It's more than knowing how to blast something without taking out your surroundings in the backsplash, you have to know when and why it's worth blasting something in the first place."

Somewhere, someone was probably laughing at the idea of Hal Jordan talking about when not to hit things, but even if he favored the direct solution, it wasn't like he hadn't learned there was a time and a place for everything, over the years.

"We don't pick Lanterns ourselves, usually - the ring does that when its old user dies, and it looks for one thing. The ability to overcome fear. Doesn't matter who you were or what you did before that, if you have the willpower to stand by the right thing no matter how bad it looks, you've got what it takes. But that leaves a lot that you still have to learn." He ran a hand through his hair. "When I got my ring, I was still angry and taking it out in all the wrong places. Sinestro, of all people, was the one who taught me how to get over that and start acting like I was worthy of wearing it."

That was always still a strange thought, and a bitter one. Kilowog had taught Hal how to use his ring, but Sinestro, more than anyone, had been the first one Hal had learned to be a good Lantern from.

(And then look where that had ended.)

"They used to have this territorial edict, you know? We were supposed to stay in our own sectors and not deal with each other at all. It was idiotic. I nearly got kicked out for telling the Guardians so, he threatened to quit if they kicked me out because I was right -" He shook his head. "I never would've gotten my shit together without the rest of the Corps to straighten me out. Everyone needs someone to -"

But then he cut off, taking a look around the room they'd just stepped into.

There were other things scattered around - a (scaled down) replica of the Central Power Battery, complete with internal lights to keep it glowing; a map showing the 3600 sectors, centered around Oa. But as with most of the other halls, at the center were the statues, and Hal walked up, zeroing straight in on one in particular and whistling appreciatively.

"Hey, why didn't anyone tell me I have such a great ass? Maybe I should be commemorating this with a selfie."

[iamresponding]

"See, that's exactly the kinda lack of humility that'd disqualify you for being a Nova," Rich joked. "You wouldn't see any of us Novas admiring our own asses."

A pause.

"Maybe each other's," he said, thinking of Samaya. "Discreetly. But not our own."