legionworld | Gone through this before

Rich was working out in the gym, which was empty other than himself at the moment. He'd made sure of that before he started working out. Mostly because his situation was embarrassing and probably would be for a while; he didn't really want anyone else to see.

Having the Nova Force diminished the way it was meant he'd lost the coordination he'd once had, just like the last time he'd lost the Nova Force. Instead of being able to turn on a dime at lightspeed, his limbs were clumsy and felt almost numb compared to the way they used to be.

It'd been a liability when facing off against the Lux, one the team couldn't afford, so he'd finally caved and gone to Medbay to get physical therapy to work on his coordination. Right now he was trying to do the exercises they'd told him to do, plyometric drills -- leg bounds and tuck jumps and those stupid little obstacle courses like stepping into rings.

Naturally, he was tripping all over himself while he tried it, just like during the physical therapy sessions.

Hence why he wanted to work on this while he was by himself, because it was pretty goddamn embarrassing. He'd gone from being one of the most powerful sentients in his neck of the galactic woods, with near perfect coordination to...this.

As Gwen peeked into the gym, she'd be treated to the sight of a very large and muscular man in a grey tank top and gym shorts tripping over his own feet while he tried floor exercises.

Tripping over his own feet annnd faceplanting on the mat. Hooray.

"Oof!"

He heard the door open as he went down so he looked up to see who was there, his expression embarrassed, pushing himself up slightly with his robotic right arm.

"Uh. Hey. Whoever you are." A pause. "Soooo, why don't we pretend you didn't just see me eat floor mat."

Honestly, it was kind of sad and tough to watch. This big, overly buff guy being beaten by... an obstacle course. Gwen could only imagine the kind of trauma this was causing him, and the sort of nightmares he'd end up having. Dreaming doing drills in his sleep, and falling flat on his face. Yeah, it looked that bad.

Especially that last faceplant. Yep, that one would be leaving a mark, or more trauma.

Probably both.

"You sure you don't want to talk about it? It can be our little secret. You know, between total strangers. Or cyborg and drummer if you want to get specific."

"It ain't no secret or anything," said Rich, turning over to flop pitifully on his back. "Would you believe it but I've been superheroing ten years? Fought in a big war in space and everything. But I took a hit to my powers getting pulled here, and because one side effect of my powers was having complete control of my body -- we're talking being able to do hairpin turns at near lightspeed -- now that it's been dialed down, I'm tripping over my own feet."

He lifted both arms just to flop them back on the mat in a display of the pitifulness he felt.

So pitiful.

"Which means physical therapy. And exercises. And tripping over my own feet trying to do those exercises. And feeling like a freakin' toddler because 'walk in a straight line' is juuuust beyond my grasp."

Wow, yeah. That was really... kind of pathetic just now. Although, she was more interested in the part where he had ten years of experience with the whole "being a hero" thing. Gwen herself was... much more new at this kind of stuff, comparatively speaking. She had a few multiverse wars under her belt already, but she still felt as though that wasn't quite enough. Gwen could do better, and more.

She had to.

"Hey, ten years, right? You got this in the bag, dude. Show that obstacle course that it's not the boss of you." Teach it a lesson it won't soon forget.

"Need a hand up?" She asked, knowing this guy probably weighted twice as much as her.

Rich smiled up at her with a big sunny smile. He was doing more and more of those lately -- that was at least one benefit to slowing down a little, right? A little less gloom and doom and Lovecraftian monsters and more time to...well.

To be happy?

He had time to think and just be around people in circumstances that weren't "let's figure out how to close off that gaping hole in spacetime that's spewing out ten thousand screaming nightmares."

It'd done wonders with making his disposition at least a little sunnier.

"Naaaah, this is my home. I live here now," he joked, patting a hand on the mat. "Why don't you pull up some mat, though? We only get new people every so often."

Ergo he'd figured out she was one of them.

He held out his flesh and blood hand but not to be pulled up, it was for shaking.

"I'm Rich. Rich Rider. I also go by Nova."

"Rent must be pretty cheap for you, other bills must be looking pretty good." Gwen always had time for humor, and puns, but mostly humor. And this guy seemed to be all for that as well so... hey, good company, at least.

She held out her own, giving his a good shake. "Gwen Stacy. I, uh... Hang on."

Setting down her backpack, she looked for, and dragged a mat to place right next to his. Once that was all done with, Gwen sort of just... plopped herself down.

"Okay, so, the whole... secret identity thing. Not that important here, I'm guessing."

"Nope. Not up here it's not. That's how it was in the circles I ran in back home, too."

He gestured vaguely around the room but was really gesturing vaguely around outer space.

"When you're neck deep in otherdimensional monstrosities with fifty mouths, nobody really cares about who you are. They just care about how long you can last. And the villains aren't going to bother targeting specifically your family when their goal is destroying all civilized life in the galaxy. Different atmosphere around the whole thing. Plus, I got my secret ID forcibly outed when some nasty stuff went down with my old superteam, anyway."

Thanks a lot, Carlton.

He twirled a finger in the air.

"And here it don't matter because the Legion's real official. Officially sanctioned by the government and everything -- even if they don't directly obey 'em. They, uh, seem to take most UP orders as just polite suggestions unless they really are in the best interest of the public. But being something official and not pure vigilantes means transparency."

The Legionnaires seemed to think it was fair and they weren't being forced into it, so...

She almost wanted to ask about those fifty mouths. Maybe another time.

"Huh. Good points on all fronts, really." Well, it all sounded nice and good. She could appreciate putting a universe's worth of distance between herself and a media empire running a 24/7 smear campaign on her. Really, her day just wouldn't have been complete without hearing Jameson or the police talking about bringing her in to face justice.

It was true, though. Being part of a team was less about who you were and more about how much butt you could kick in one go. And also spontaneous plans for food.

"As the drummer to a kind-of-famous band, I can appreciate marching to our own beat." Was she even still in the band? Gwen would need to check on that.

"How famous is kind-of-famous?" Rich asked curiously. "Are we talking 'got a deal with a small-time record label famous' or 'everyone in the neighborhood loved our performance out of a garage at the block party' famous?"

He was intensely curious because while it was a relatively normal thing, being in a band, it was a pretty cool normal thing. Just because he was Mr. Space Superhero General Guy didn't mean he'd ever stopped loving some of those little, normal, human things.

Hell, the fact it was so normal made it even cooler. Rich knew that that with the kind of life he lived, he'd never really get a chance to try to reach for some of those mundane-yet-awesome dreams some people had a chance at.

"I'm talking a TV interview..." Just the single one, even if she wasn't really present for it. "And opening for an act that's still more famous than us. So you know, that kind-of-famous." And Gwen was around for that, and the kind of mess it had turned into. Good times.

"A little bit longer and I'm sure they would've thrown even more numbers over how many downloads our song keeps getting."

Rich mulled that over for a moment.

"Okay, that's pretty cool," he acknowledged. "I mean. In a normal way."

A pause.

"That makes it sound like I mean it as not-special, but what I mean is that's cool in a 'it's on Earth and has nothing to do with weird cosmic crap' way. I barely spend time on Earth anymore, let live there long enough to become a rock star or something. There are lots of normal things I wouldn't even be able to try to do."

And he wasn't exactly proud of being on TV in the past. That had been a fiasco with really terrible results after he left.

"I was on TV for a while, though. A reality TV show that followed our team around the country while we helped out villain problems in small town. It was...not really all that glamorous and didn't end well after I left."

Understatement.

"Being a rock star sounds way cooler."

"I'm not... sure if I would go as far as calling myself a rock star." Though that was basically her dream. Her passion. "I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm an amazing drummer and anyone who tells you otherwise is just jealous, or a liar. And if I don't make it big in a band, my dad is going to have a really fun time telling me he told me so and how I should've been focusing on college all this time and uuuugh."

Yeah, that last part was important.

"But I, um... have some things to sort out with, first. You know, with myself. And it's kind of hard to juggle that with band practice."

She sighed, and scratched her head. "Like, come on, I was even late for our first big concert. This was the one that event got us that TV interview."

Rich laughed.

"You wouldn't happen to be late to things due to an unfortunate ability to not be able to fight in superhero fights and be in other places at the same time, by any chance?" he said. "Because that's part of why I'm barely ever on Earth anymore."

There was nothing there for him, if you really got down to it, other than friends and family he could visit.

"I was the king of bad time management. In the end, I screwed things up for myself so bad that the only job I could get was flipping burgers. That's part of why I just gave up and now I spend most of my time superheroing in space."

Superheroing was the only thing he really good for, as far as he was concerned.

"All of us struggle with it. Finding that balance."

Oh my god. Hearing him say it, it's like he knew exactly what it was like. Gwen's mind had just been thoroughly blown. "Yeah, yeah! Exactly like that. I don't know if it's like, some unwritten rule that's out there but, it always happens exactly when you have somewhere you actually need to be. Or something of varying importance to do."

It never failed, really. Needing to stop crime that the same moment when she had a big concert going on.

"I'll have you know that I was going to start a new part-time job at a convenience store. But you know, that's not happening anytime soon."

So much for minimum wage employment.

"It's always exactly the same time you need to be somewhere. Always. It's one of the unwritten rules of the universe. Like a law of physics or something."

It was almost like they lived in comic books and the writers made that happen for drama or something.

"The problem is crime and horrible stuff is always happening somewhere. And if there are only so many heroes around, or if you're the one that's closest, then it falls to you. That can be helped with a little organization, though. Do you have other heroes in your world? Or hero teams? Like the Avengers?"

Having a team or at least having a team you were friendly with was sometimes a lifesaver. Those connections were important. As much as the New Warriors had bitched about Vance and Angel leaving to join the Avengers, their Avengers connections had been handy sometimes.

"I bet that all the villains out there tell each other whenever we're trying to get on with our lives. You know, actually try to make something of ourselves outside of putting them in jail all the time. And they keep planning their things around that just to be extra spiteful." Yep, this made perfect to Gwen, who was willing to subscribe to this train of though.

"But if we're talking about other heroes out there, then yeah, there's a few. Captain America is one of the big ones. She's always been dad's favorite. Thing is, they uh, don't really like me all that much." And there's was a simple enough reason for that.

"It's, uh, a long story. But pretty much everyone thinks I'm a criminal. Makes me super popular with the police, too." Fun times.

Super fun. The most.

"Ooh, lemme guess, according to everyone, you're a masked menace, right? Got people in the papers calling for you to be arrested?"

With newspaper editors screaming that they want pictures! Pictures of Spider-Woman!

"Probably because of some accident that wasn't really your fault, or some situation that went down bad, sure, but definitely wasn't you being a criminal. That everyone looks at in the wrong light. Am I close?"

You could just hear the groaning coming from Gwen. He was right about everything, it hurt. Not in the literal sense but in the... 'you're-so-right-it's-actually-kind-of-obnoxious' sort of way.

"Got my own hotline and cash reward out and my dad's a cop, so that makes it even better."

"You try clearing it up with anyone? I know the cops would probably drag you in but I mean...that could be as easy as a masked youtube video saying your piece, recorded in a completely untraceably random part of the city, and uploaded to a dummy account with a burner phone."

Rich shrugged.

"You know, something that explains whatever really happened. Or does She-Hulk exist in your world? Or Nelson and Murdock? They're lawyers that handle superhero cases back in my universe. One time I got into some legal trouble -- and wow, this'll sound bad, but I accidentally killed my friend's husband. He was crazy, though. He thought because he saw us having lunch that she was cheating on 'im and so he went after her with an ax. She was pregnant at the time even and he was gonna kill her and the baby. The police weren't gonna get there fast enough so I had to try to save her, but my powers were on the fritz and I accidentally threw 'im too hard."

That was a long time ago and he'd long since gotten more comfortable with death -- and with being someone that caused it. But back then it'd be hugely upsetting.

"I'm not proud of it. Even if he was a rotten piece of work, up until then I'd always tried to make sure I never killed anybody. You know, did it all by the book, left the criminals sitting pretty for the police. But he was armed with a deadly weapon so it was covered under the self defense laws. Still, I had to clear it all up. The press and the police were calling for my head, so I lawyered up. I went to She-Hulk and she arranged for me to answer questions with the cops, to do it up all proper so they got their answers without them arresting me right off. Any chance you can maybe do that? If your dad's a cop he might know of a defense lawyer that's not a total scumbag. Whatever one's least rotten."

Edited 2016-05-03 06:18 (UTC)

"You're giving me way too much credit. There's nothing really left except my word against a 24/7 propaganda campaign and the entire police department. And between you and me? The other side really isn't interested in listening to my side of the story." All Gwen really had was her dad, but his own hands were tied with just how much she could do.

"There's just one problem with all that. Asking for help, I mean. There's pretty much nobody out there like that for me to reach out to." Actually, that wasn't true, there w as one person.

"At least, nobody I can ask. And I'm going to guess that you're talking about Matt Murdock, right? Sure, he's actually reached out to me. Recommended that I lawyer up and all that. Problem is... I can't stand the guy. It's more than just the sight of his face makes me want to punch him, and more along the lines of... He's literally working for the Kingpin. You know, Fisk? Murderdock's been asking me really nice to partner up with him, too."

"That's a shame. Sounds like he's crooked in your universe. In mine, he wouldn't be caught dead working for Fisk. There were even rumors for a while that he was Daredevil -- and Daredevil and Fisk are archenemies, everyone knows that."

Rich shook his head.

"But look, even if you can't clear it up like that, 'the other side' that you're working against -- that's the public itself, not just the cops or the news-people. And regardless of whether you think they'll believe you or not, they deserve to have trust in their heroes. When I went to the cops to clear things up, I was hoping it'd make my life easier, sure, but I wasn't expecting it to.' The reason I went was because people deserve knowing that people like us aren't going to just do whatever we want to the little guy."

He shrugged.

"Maybe most people still won't believe you. But these things, there's an ebb and a flow to them and you never know exactly what it is that's going to turn the tide. You have to start earning their trust somewhere and telling the truth is a start. Then even if they don't believe, later, when there's that inevitable moment where you're single-handedly saving the whole city from aliens or zombies or whatever supervillain is wreaking havoc -- when you're the one holding up a building so it doesn't fall on their heads -- that's when people start to believe in that truth. Not when you tell it, when you show them it's true. But you've still gotta tell it first."

Edited 2016-05-09 03:14 (UTC)

"I like the guy already." And Daredevil had a nice to ring to it. "Too bad mine's cozied up really nice to Fisk." That's how it usually went in the Multiverse, right? Different versions of the same person. Heroes and crooks would be flipped around, and so would the ones that are supposed to be alive and dead.

Oh yeah, she knew a lot about that.

"Telling the truth, huh?" The truth that she still got Peter Parker killed? That he died because he wanted to be like her? That he was the Lizard? They all loved Peter, they really did. Telling the truth would essentially be ruining everyone's idea of what Peter Parker was like. That he wasn't... the way everybody kept making him out to be.

"What if clearing my name comes at the expense of someone else's? What then?"

Rich mulled it over.

"Depends on how much it'll ruin their life. If it's just making them look bad for something, then...then if they're a good person, they'll accept it's the right thing to do. If they're a good person they'll want it. If they'd rather sit back and let you take the blame, maybe they don't deserve that good name."

He suddenly looked thought, as he considered another option.

"And if they're someone that's already gone, it's the same. Either they were a good person and they'd want the truth to eventually come out. Or they weren't, and it should anyway."

Edited 2016-08-22 08:18 (UTC)

It was a case of the last one, for her. Peter was already dead but still very much actively influencing her life. And there was the part where she practically thought about him every day. He brought up a good point, though.

Peter idolized Spider-Woman and died because he wanted to be like her.

What would he... really have to say if he could see that his hero had become public menace #1?

"That's... a really good point to make."

Coming out of a door and headed in the opposite direction, there's a bipedal turtle about five feet tall, poking at something on his omnicom.

Attack the problem from all directions, Donnie had figured. So whenever one direction started becoming more and more unfeasible, he'd been trying to come up with a new way of looking at it - which had led him to consider that last bout of cross-dimensional tomfoolery he and his brothers had gotten mixed up in, which had made him wonder if the tech that had gotten them back to their own New York last time was comparable to anything here, or if they were running on completely different fundaments.

Which was, admittedly, quite possible. Following anything the Ghostbusters had said about ghosts and all of that other supernatural stuff had been a headache, because it strained every rational and scientific muscle in his brain to accept it long enough to get the gist.

Some of the signatures from the power core might be comparable, anyway, but not all of them matched up, so trying to work it from that angle was going to take a little more research before he could even attempt it, and -

- and thankfully, he did look up from what he was doing, and stop before he accidentally managed to run anyone over. "Whoa, sorry. Almost missed you."

When you've traveled through the multiverse and at times hallucinated a talking pig with spider-related powers, the shock of seeing a walking turtle wasn't as much as you'd expect. Some surprise, definitely, comfortably at eyebrow-raising levels but... yeah.

"It's fine. I'm, uh, usually wired on caffeine and junk food by now." And god, she was really missing both right about now.

"Speaking of, you know where I can get something greasy, unhealthy, and with ingredients I'd be better off not knowing what they are? It's been that kind of a day for me."

Anything less than an ear-piercing scream was always a favorable reaction in Donnie's book.

"Well, not that way," he said, with a wave back at the door he'd just come through. "Engineering's through there, which is the wrong kind of grease entirely. But if you go through that one, take the first left, then the second right, then -"

...actually.

"...you know, I was done in there anyway, so it'd probably be a lot easier if I just showed you."

Yeah, heading into engineering would not be filling her stomach with questionable but delicious food products any faster. Might be worth checking out later, though.

"Sure, lead on."

Again, having a talking, walking, turtle acting as tour guide? Still not the weirdest thing she'd gone through. Besides, at least he wasn't a product of head trauma.

Or so she hoped.

"I'm Gwen, by the way."

"I'm Donatello, nice to meet you." He stuck out a three-fingered hand for a handshake, looked at it for a moment, and then sheepishly pulled back and wiped it on his arm. "Oh, ew. Sorry, wasn't kidding about the grease."

Sure, Gwen could shake the giant turtle's hand. No problem with that. "Hey, it's no problem. I literally just woke up in some other universe and almost died to what I'm pretty sure was poisoning, or heat. I'll take non-threatening grease any day."

"Well, if you can get over alternate timelines and almost dying that fast, I think you're pretty well equipped for being here." He waved his other hand in the direction they were going to be heading, and started moving once they'd both let go.

"I mean, a lot of us seem to have exciting enough lives that this isn't a huge adjustment, but there are a few people who seem really...normal, to get stuck with this."

"I've done the whole multiverse deal before. Would you believe that I've seen the same restaurant in a bunch of other worlds and it still tastes exactly the same? Now that was a shock that I wasn't prepared to handle." But she was ready to keep hitting up their chains.

Couldn't ever go wrong with tacos.

"And I'm also dead in literally every other universe I've gone to. So, you know, that's got me set up pretty well."

"Oh. Bummer." That was...awkward. "I went to one alternate future where future-me was noooot somebody I'd be proud of turning into, but I don't think that one can be my future anymore, since we wound up trashing one of the deciding factors."

No Shredder, no Shredder-ruled dystopia, hopefully no sole survivor and hopelessly jaded Donatello, even if there was no telling whether something else just as bad would potentially send him down that path. He couldn't really help but start pondering the probability of that, as unpleasant of a thought as it might be.

"But you know, from going over the data from previous dimensional displacement incidents in this universe, there's been a lot basically supporting that we're all tied to our own worlds on a quantum level. And it occurs to me that it's possible that those bonds extend to making us more likely to be displaced into worlds that have at least some base level of similarity to our original ones, excepting in really special circumstances like, well, whatever got us here. Like it's less of a stretch to go to a closer variation than to one that's completely different, if that makes sense?"

"You get used to it." Sort of. She put on a brave face about it, and would crack jokes like the one she'd made just now. It still kind of sucked, no doubt about it, but... She was alive and still kicking, sometimes literally, so there wasn't much sense in losing sleep over it. Besides, she had a bunch of other issues worth losing sleep over.

As for the rest of his explanation, she... had to play it through her head a couple of times. She was smart, but anything involving the word "quantum" was way out of her reach.

"It did after I played it in my head for the 5th time. If I'm the only one left standing, that just means that I'm special. Right?"

And wasn't that a loaded word for her.

"That's one way to put it, I guess. I was thinking more of the circumstances being. Like, with infinite possible universes, there ought to be infinite variations where you're alive and well, too. So what I'm thinking is -" He started gesturing with his hands. "The ones you've been to, they're closer variations to each other -" One hand waving to indicate a cluster of stuff over here. "And you and all the universes where things are going great for you, that's more like a cluster over here." Opposite hand wave.

"So whatever's gotten you to see the other ones, it's like it...picked you up from that group and dumped you to poke around in this one, say? Instead of you just tripping around the ones that are closer. I mean, the locational stuff is all completely a metaphor here, because there's no way the physics would actually make sense that way, of course."

So somewhere out there, there had to be another Gwen Stacy that actually wasn't already buried in a grave? Man, that sure was a novel thought to be having. It would make her wonder what the other Gwens would be like. If they had been drummers, too, or if they had gone through a completely different upbringing.

If they knew their own version of Peter.

"Here's a question. How did you learn all this? I'm pretty sure now amount of sci-fi movies could've ever gotten me to your level."

He ticked the points off on his fingers. "First, I was working with a couple of scientists back in my own world - mostly we were working on getting a stable teleporter that'd work within our dimension cobbled together, but we had a few...interdimensional mishaps, too. So I'd already done the background reading by the time I got here. And second...I've been looking at a lot more data on it since I got here, since, well." He shrugged. "Home's not gonna come find us."

Man, Gwen was now wishing she'd been brought there with her teleporter bracelet. Something like that could've probably helped him along. You know, considering how it was fully functional and let her travel throughout the multiverse. But nope, no bracelet at all.

Typical.

"I don't know if I'd go back home even if I could. These people, the one that brought us here... I mean, they seem pretty sorry about it all. Like, actually sorry. Which not everyone can pull off. And they did kind of save me."

"I'm not judging anyone with a reason not to go back, but I kinda...left at a bad time," Donnie admitted. "I like it here. A lot, honestly." The level of technology alone was a nerd's dream come true, and the fact that he could just be out there and not have to stick to the shadows was pretty great too.

"But I don't really like the idea of what happens if I don't get back there."

"I getcha, I really do. All I had to really worry about was my first day on the job at a grocery store." Which honestly? Gwen wasn't really mourning that loss at all. This was way cooler, and more important.

"And my dad, and the band. But they're both already... used to me disappearing on them like this."

"Used to you coming back, too, I guess?"

He could get that much - he didn't really think much of it if one his brothers slipped out for a night or two, usually, but it was when they didn't come back that it got really easy to assume the worst.

"You know how it is. One minute you're at a concert looking to rock out with the crew, and the next thing you know you're being roped into an interdimensional war against psychic alien vampires that think you're looking really delicious."

Just another day in the life of Gwen Stacy. Yup.

"Psychic alien vampires, creepy little squid-aliens in robot suits, it's all close enough."

Every now and then, it caught up with him all over again just how weird life had gotten.

Gone through this before

Training Gym

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just outside engineering

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