legionworld | (no subject)

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Who| CAPTAIN AMERICA and YOU
What| Doin' stuff.
Where| Legion World
When| Post plots.
Warnings/Notes| Shouldn't be any.

He's not a Legionnaire. Not yet. Not through lack of trying, however. More because of the simple reason that he's not been medically cleared for duty. The doctor working on him, not Gym'll but an assistant, insists that he must have some superpower if he's come in with everyone else. Apparently no one had ever come through as a normal human.

Eventually, he'd just gotten tired of it and walked out when he heard the alarms go off. It'd seemed like everyone was rather busy and he'd been stuck in the medical area for nearly a month while people argued about what to do with him. It had been a mess, but he slipped back aboard without much of an issue, other than some light burns, and decided that he'd rather stroll around a bit before finally reporting back to Medical.

Unfortunately for him, this means Medical is in full lock-down mode, total panic as they try to locate the puzzle, the man who broke the rules by arriving with no powers who'd vanished in the emergency. Meanwhile, he's taking in the sights. Taking care of some errands. Stretching his legs.

THE ATHRAMITES:

First stop? The colors had to be repaired. No one knew who Captain America was, and the people who recognized the name 'America' seemed more interested if he was married to someone who, he supposed, was a lawyer if her codename was any indication. No, he'd given that a shot and they'd both agreed that dating her when he couldn't imagine himself as anyone but Captain America had been unfair.

It had taken him a while, well over half an hour, to convince the little bug men that all he wanted were repairs to his uniform. No added seams for 'realism', no armored plates, no kevlar, and especially no chrome.

Still, they insisted, and so anyone dropping in for an alteration will be treated to the sight of Steve Rogers, stripped down to his y-fronts, reading through news reports from a datapad held at arm's length while being swarmed by the insectoids and their tape measures. Every now and then they'll make a request and he'll flex a muscle for them or shift his weight to a new pose, prompting more pleas to allow them to update. All, sadly, politely declined.

THE GYM:

Second stop? The gym. Not the fancy ones that the Legionnaires got to use. That one was restricted, and given his lack of access credentials... Well, it was unfortunate, but the regular employee gym worked out just fine for him. He'd stripped to the waist and done a few rounds of the machines and weights available, the ones he could figure out at least, and been fairly satisfied. And, unfortunately, attracted a bit of a crowd. But it didn't seem like anyone was in a hurry to call security, so he'd just gone about his business.

Sometimes he'd chat with people in snippets while jogging around the track at a brisk pace that allowed him to lap the bicyclers. Other times, discussing some children's schoolwork while they hung off the weights he was lifting. And at other points, simply being watched while gripping a pole, holding his body perfectly straight parallel to the ground, and doing sideways chin-ups.

The brief discussions were enlightening. And provided more information than he'd gotten locked up in medbay.

THE ESCAPED PRISONERS:

Unfortunately, in a crisis like Colu faced, there was always someone to take advantage. Looters to be shuffled around to the science police. The Legionnaires stored them while they could, but now was the time for the transfer.

However, as the group of them is being loaded through the Observation Deck, towards the T-Gates to be transferred to the real detention cells under the authority of the Science Police, three of them break loose. Utilizing a concealed laser wrench, a converted tetraspanner, and (in a move later decided to be mostly cheating by the other prisoners) a detachable prosthetic hand, three Coluans break away and rush through the halls. The guards call out after them, warning about there being no escape, but as far as Coluans were concerned? They just had to hide, get into the network at a later date, and get free.

Unfortunately, their path to illicitly gained freedom has a large obstacle in the form of a chunk of All-American Beefsteak named Steve Rogers. Blinking, taken by surprise by the sudden activity, he watches them approach almost in slow motion. Two of them move to either side, to slip past, but the other Coluan dips his shoulder and charges like he's going to plow through the good Captain. Steve's arm drifts out at lightning speed and almost lazily swats the man with the back of his hand, sending the alien flying off to the side, spinning through the air like a paper ornament.

He turns to watch the others flee, and pauses as he spots other costumed company. Well, it almost seems like it would be rude to snag the two fleeing criminals when they're right there. He doesn't want to step on any toes. But it would just take a snap of his shield to...

Cap narrows his eyes, spreading his feet just slightly to brace himself for action, and waits to see how the local heroes like to handle things. If they want help, he'll offer it without hesitation. If not, well. Best not to get in their way.

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It was hard to hide from Val once she knew to look for you, especially on a space station full of highly hackable surveillance. Fortunately for Steve, she also knew where her loyalties lay, and it wasn't with the medical staff and their tedious insistence that "cookies aren't a meal, Valeria."

Val waited her turn to chat, paying more attention to her datapad than the show--Cap was good but he was no Thing--until she made it to the head of the line.

"You're a wanted man, Uncle Steve," said the small girl in the white super-suit.

Steve had a remarkable way of gathering loyalties. Must be how he only occasionally chides people about their diets. That was usually best left to Jarvis.

It's not like the civilian facilities had the combat robots or the acrobatics section. Maybe if that were available, he'd be more interesting to watch. Then again, it's her Uncle Ben.

He glances aside to her and arches both eyebrows. 'Uncle Steve'? Did he even know anyone like that? It takes a moment for him to consider it. "I should have known the Fantastic Four wouldn't have been able to keep away from something like this." The colors were different, but the styling on the suit was familiar. And it helped that he'd met her when she was younger, as well as her mother, and an alternate universe version that might have been her or her sister a few years back. 'Valeria von Doom, the Marvel Girl', if he recalled correctly.

Either way, it was just like them to have a little girl that grew up three or four years since he saw her a week ago. "Are you going to turn me in, Valeria?" He doubts it, but she seems in a playful mood.

"Medical isn't offering a reward." Val's deadpan had been honed for years on lying to Sue. In other words, it was flawless. "If they want me to sell you out, they're gonna have to make it worth my while."

Mercenary, yes, but show her the preschooler who wasn't.

"You've been spending too much time around Johnny," he remarks drily. "Unfortunately, the best I can offer is a package of gum and some breath mints." Sure, they've been sitting in his belt pouch for about a month now, but it's there.

As long as she brushes her teeth.

He settles down on a bench and rests his elbows on his knees, watching the datapad. Honestly, there's absolutely no surprise that a child coming out of the Fantastic Four would be speaking so well at such a young age. "Is your mother around? I haven't heard anything saying 'yes', but I don't get a lot of news around here."

Blame it on Dr. Doom, really.

When Steve sat, Val climbed onto the bench next to him, because heck if she was going stand around like she was giving a keynote. It gave him a good view of what she'd been reading while biding her time in line--"Proceedings of the Galactic Symposium on Temporal Physics."

"It's just me." Val shrugged. "From our universe we have Nova Prime and another human Nova Corps member, Justice, and Speedball. Others have been in and out, including some from parallel timelines."

Note to self: Don't put her reading material in the same room as any scientists with particularly fragile egos. He considers the information for a moment, digging into one of his belt pouches to extract a stick of gum and offer it to her. He didn't usually bother with it himself, but you never knew when you needed to win someone with a sweet tooth over.

"Nova Prime?" He's guessing it's not Galactus' former herald. For someone who had the Surfer for years, he certainly went through replacements quickly enough. Not with the 'other Nova Corps' member. Unless the Nova he knew was the other one and Nova Prime was his boss. Either way, assuming one of them was the man he was familiar with, and assuming that the other was just as rash, whoever was in charge obviously had their hands full. Especially with Speedball tossed into the mix. "Well, I'll have to slip in and say hello to Justice at some point. If I can keep ahead of the doctors."

Like a bunch of men in coats could catch sight of Captain America if he didn't want them to.

Hopefully Vance was keeping an eye on Val. Steve's dealt with enough toddlers to know they can be a handfull, especially if they're smart enough to be reading those texts. Hopefully this 'Time Trapper' would have some sense and drop one of her family members in.

Edited 2017-09-20 00:08 (UTC)

"Richard Rider." He should have known that, and Val squinted up at Steve as she waved off the gum. This was business, and she was more of a Snickers kind of a girl, anyway. The obvious answer was, of course, temporal mismatch, and she sighed. "You're probably from upstream a bit. The Nova Corps was all but wiped out by the Annihilation Wave and he got a promotion."

Well, that would explain why she's older. Unless, again, alternate timelines. Sometimes it's hard to want to deal with the Four's particular brand of adventure.

Gum rejected, he just puts it back in his pouch.

Still. Not a great way to earn a promotion. Cap winces a little at the news and shakes his head. "I'm sorry to hear that." That's a lot of responsibility to thrust on someone. Regardless of their level of maturity. When he gets home, he'll have to keep an ear to the ground about this 'Annihilation Wave' thing. It might be an alternate universe issue, like all the times the X-Men said the mutants would be hunted to near extinction, but it never hurt to do what you could to keep the shades of other timelines from casting a shadow on your own.

Edited 2017-09-20 00:54 (UTC)

"Took out the Skrulls, too. They're basically finished as a galactic power." Val clearly thought that was no loss. Ask her about Secret Invasion sometime.

"Anyway, since you recognize me, the timeline isn't that big an issue." He couldn't be off by much, after all, given how long she'd been around. "Not to mention the scope of threat makes any temporal integrity issues secondary."

He frowns. Important information to know. The Skrulls were always going to be a danger. But...

"It might be a bigger issue than we think, once this wraps up." Still, some information wouldn't be that much trouble. He'll have to be careful when talking to her, either way. The Richards family tended to take a rather cavalier attitude towards information from the future, and it seemed like Valeria was carrying on a valued family tradition.

Time for a subject change. "So, this 'Legion' of theirs. What do you think?" He's not sure how objective a toddler can be, but someone from his own world might have a valuable insight that isn't the endless gushing the staff tends to give him.

Val recognized a subject change when she heard one, and let it happen. Filling in Cap on however long he'd missed would be dull, anyway. Vance could do it.

"Insufficiently diverse revenue stream, but since they're the only game in town as far as the current crisis goes, their funding isn't in danger in the near term." Val shrugged with the sublime indifference only a supergenius toddler could possibly conjure up for writing off an entire universe once she was done with it. Brainy could easily render the Legion self-sufficient, anyway, assuming parenthood didn't distract him.

"They genuinely believe in their ethical code, but they've relaxed the standards for us, which might bite them. Right now there are a few people wearing the Legion L I wouldn't trust in the dark." Val shook her head at the folly, as if she didn't run crying to Victor von Doom anytime something went wrong with her father.

There's a long, long pause. He blinks rapidly and gives Val a puzzled look. That... well, their funding was important, yes, but not exactly something he expected to be briefed on immediately. That was more Tony's territory, in any case. There's probably a reason Cap blew all of his money on setting up an emergency hotline staffed by kids.

The rest is good intel. The Legion was willing to compromise. Not always a good thing. Especially if there were untrustworthy people about. "Anyone I should keep an eye out for?" A toddler probably isn't the best judge of character, but any foundation is better than leaping into a blind situation. Who knows, he'd worked with scoundrels before. Frank Castle. Nomad. Nick Fury.

"Right now the strongest candidate for going seriously bad is Judge Rico Dredd, codename 'Arbitraitor.'" Val cleared the technical papers from her datapad to bring up a headshot of Rico, labeled so that Steve could see the worrisome pun in the name. "He's from a police state where the cops have judicial authority, and everything about him screams 'abuse of power.' I'm pretty sure he fooled whatever psych screenings they use for their Justice Department, because one of his colleagues is here too, and she's fine."

'Fine' as a descriptor was probably a bit strong for America, but Val, for all she was in favor of anarchy for herself, had no inherent objection to authoritarianism for society at large, as long as the authorities were competent and knew to stay out of her way.

He leans in to peer over her shoulder. "Neither of those names is particularly subtle." Still better than Captain 🕱🕱🕱🕱. "You make the two of them sound like Americop." Likely before her time. Still, an attitude like that on a team would be... trouble. He'd have to stay on his toes, though if Dredd lived up to his name, either of them, he wouldn't be the only one keeping an eye out.

...That's if they let him join the team. One thing at a time, Cap. "Is he the only problem on the team, then?"

"Americop? Pretty sure the Thunderbolts took him down." There she went with the future stuff again. "Anyway, Dredd yeah, Beeny no. She's gotten into a bunch of network arguments with people who don't like the idea of a police state, but everything she says is consistent with a public service ethos within that framework. Dredd's just a bully."

Val tapped at the datapad, and three pictures popped up: Junkrat, Roadhog, and Widowmaker. "Aside from Dredd, these are the ones to be aware of. All three are currently being kept in check by enlightened self-interest, but if the circumstances change, that will too. Junkrat and Roadhog are about as subtle as an Uncle Ben-Uncle Johnny tag-team, but keep an eye on Widowmaker. No passions--she won't fall for the sunk cost fallacy and do something stupid. She's dangerous." Which Val could respect, really, but Cap needed to know.

"There are a few more who are opportunists or idiots, but it's just the four I mentioned who I get the feeling would start killing for reasons other than defense of self or others if they got the chance."

He was surprised the Americop was still out there, but some people never quite knew when to quit. Like the Thunderbolts. His lips thin slightly at the name, and a little more at the descriptions Val gives him. He'd heard the situation was bad, and he'd teamed up with some nasty characters in his time for various reasons, but it was one thing when you knew that they were trying. Another thing entirely when it seemed like the team was overlooking their flaws because they needed the numbers.

Not that he couldn't understand. But it wasn't a position he liked to see anyone in.

"Thank you. That's good to know." Steve hesitates a little. The last time he'd saw Val, she was getting her diapers changed. Now... Well, at the minimum he could assume the world didn't get destroyed in the next few years. Not that this was a reason to slack off. He'd had enough time travel adventures to know that just because there's a future, it doesn't mean that there will be a future. "Is there anything else important, or was that everything?"

It's not going to stop him from digging around, but if Val's in a talkative mood... Hey. Let her talk about what she wanted to talk about. It was like he was meeting her for the first time all over again, so it was doubtful she was expecting any reminiscing over the time she burped up on her Uncle Ben.

Val drummed her fingers on the bench beside her as she considered how much to tell. Cap was being weird about timeline stuff--as if she didn't know infinitely more than he did about temporal physics--but, well, he was going to be blindsided by people's issues if he'd arrived from before certain high-profile events.

Well, maybe she could square that circle by means of infuriating vagueness.

"Does the town of Stamford, Connecticut signify anything out of the ordinary to you?"

There's a pair of noises, the ever-recognizable thwip of a webshooter firing, and the Coluans feet are webbed in place. The sudden adhering of foot to floor while still in motion causes the pair to fall face first onto the ground.

"Level with me here guys. You're in a space station full of superheroes. How far did you really think you were gonna get?" Peter says, crouching down near the captured Coluans. More concerned with them rather than anyone else, he doesn't quite registered Cap's presence.

Edited 2017-09-20 00:47 (UTC)

Even without the sound effects, it was hard to mistake the costume or the ready patter. Some slight differences are immediately obvious, but Cap was willing to brush them aside as an update to account for future materials and fashions.

As he approaches, his own escapee groaning in his grasp, dragged by the back of his shirt, a few other differences are more easily noticeable. Not the height differences, those are minor enough when someone's crouching but definitely the weight difference. The Spider-Man he's familiar with is... if he had to guess, roughly twenty pounds heavier. And definitely an older voice.

The only possible conclusion, then, is either more time travel or an alternate timeline entirely. More likely the second, looking at the webshooters. Spider-Man didn't have such clunky webshooters except for that brief period a few years ago. Hopefully it wasn't one where they were on bad terms.

This conclusion didn't take much time for Cap to reach. Maybe about halfway towards Spider-Man. Mrs. Rogers didn't raise a stupid child, and attention to detail was a lifesaver. "I think they've got the point, Spider-Man. Is that webbing going to be a problem when the guards catch up?" Who knows what differences there where when it came to that?

"Well, they can either cut it away, or pull these guys out of their shoes and make them walk barefoot to...jail..." Peter trails off as he finally notices who he's talking to.

"Captain America! Sir!" he exclaims, standing at attention almost unnaturally quickly. "Hi. Nice to see you again. Sorry about the thing in Berlin," he starts to apologize, before taking in the very different uniform this version of Cap is wearing.

"...unless you're from that universe all the people on board who know an older version of me are from, in which case nothing happened in Berlin. Ever. I don't even know what Berlin is."

He raises both of his eyebrows, then waves a hand. The 'At ease' goes unspoken. "The capital of Germany, son." Well, that answered that question. "Don't worry. This isn't my first time dealing with alternate realities."

The kid was definitely younger. The Spider-Man he knew was in his late twenties. Maybe even early thirties. It was hard to tell. But the age difference would explain the difference in height and weight, there.

Steve glances over his shoulder at the approaching security guards. They looked appropriately shamefaced over the trio escaping, but it wasn't exactly like the transportation situation was perfect. He makes a little gesture to Spider-Man. "It looks like the professionals have arrived. If you've got time, why don't we take a little walk?"

Just like the old days. A tank to hold the line, a big blocky meatshield, while she picks off the stragglers.

A hallway is a good place to block an escape route, with her powers. As the Coluans bolt, a wall of flame suddenly springs up in front of them, wide enough to see any further plans of heading in that particular direction...go up in smoke.

Well, at least she hadn't said it out loud. She's still smirking to herself as she darts up behind them, staff in hand.

"I don't remember you three getting a day pass. I suggest turning around and coming quietly." Maybe not the most intimidating, coming from a woman barely five foot in total and missing one arm. But the flames are clearly there at her bidding.

They really don't want to see what happens when she decides to attack in earnest.

He wouldn't have blinked at the puns. Not when he's dropped so many terrible ones in the past.

There's a small woman with flames on one side of them. And over six feet of patriotism on the other. It's easy to see the calculation in their eyes. And how few choices they're actually coming up with. The Coluans aren't stupid, just desperate, but even desperation only carries so far. Stuck between flames and a hard spot and not having superpowers of their own leads to a swift, but predictable, decision.

Silently, they raise their hands. Glowering doesn't even enter into it. The math doesn't support further resistance. Security is surely not going to dawdle, and the entire sequence of events was over in seconds.

"Well," starts Cap as he approaches, bringing his single capture along at a pace the dazed alien doesn't seem to have trouble keeping up with. "That ended a lot more neatly than it could have otherwise." He pauses, then glances down at Majara. "I'm assuming the fires are yours?"

"That would be a safe assumption, yes."

Her staff rests against the ground now as she straightens, eyeing the approaching man and his prisoner. Somewhere, she feels a twinge of something almost nostalgic that she pushes away very, very quickly. The Commander is a long way from wherever this place is.

"Don't misunderstand, you looked like you had things under control. But we could keep chaos to a minimum for one entire day, I think I'd prefer it." And the corner of her lips quirks upwards.

"Marjara, of clan Lavellan. Ember, if you like."

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