What is surely to be the first in a long series of bad decisions. (Open!)

[sofresh]

Who| Superboy (sofresh) and anyone!
What| Testing his powers (or lack thereof).
Where| Observation deck.
When| Afternoon.
Warnings/Notes| N/A!

Looking for Superboy? Probably not. But if someone happened to glance up over on the observation deck, that'd be where they'd find him, floating in the air a few feet above ground (not terribly high—eight to ten feet at most), arms crossed, with a contemplative look on his face. In retrospect, he probably should have done things differently—namely, he probably should have questioned his situation more when he woke up here. He didn't.

Look, even Superman made mistakes sometimes.

But that was in the not-so-distant past, and now, Superboy was trying to figure things out for himself. That'd be the reason why Superboy, casually floating a few feet in the air, slipped off his flight ring, just to see what'd happen. Needless to say, it went about as well as expected.

In other words, he landed, with a thud and a wince, on the ground, in a pretty ungraceful (and totally uncool) position.

"I'm startin' to think I might be defective or somethin'."

There was all this talk of gaining superpowers, except Superboy already had them, so he'd just tuned the rest out. No one ever said anything about losing powers (or, at least, not that he'd heard of), and honestly, he was not happy about it.

Comments

[whyarewehere]

Someone clapped sarcastically from nearby, and that someone was Grif.

"Alright, if people are going to do stuff like that then nobody is allowed to give me any shit for running into walls," he said.

It was entirely possible he could've made some cool, jerky cutting remark without mentioning his own most recent embarrassment, but that would've required him to think about it even a little bit.

Grif didn't do thinking.

[sofresh]

Aww, man. As if embarrassing himself wasn't bad enough already, he'd apparently accidentally validated someone else's embarrassment with his own. That just made it even more embarrassing!

Superboy sat up, rubbing his arm. Man, that hurt. It actually hurt.

"Hey, can it, buddy!" He totally thought this through, okay. Totally. "Doing what I just did doesn't even compare. Why would you try to run into a wall? In what universe is that a good idea?"

[whyarewehere]

"It was for science!" Grif replied, folding his arms in indignation as he realized exactly how badly he'd opened this. Crap.

"What were you doing?"

If he was lucky, he'd be able to deflect this back at the kid and avoid talking more about the wall problem. Play cool, Grif. Play cool.

[sofresh]

"...well," he frowned. "I guess it was also for science."

He wasn't too happy about agreeing with this guy, but it was basically the truth. He was experimenting. ...in public. Maybe he should have done this in his room instead.

"I mean, I'm Superman. I'm supposed to be able to fly without the bling, ya know? Thought if I went up high enough, it'd kinda just kick in on its own. Apparently not!"

[whyarewehere]

Grif would've tried to dig into this "science" (which was definitely in some way not on par with his), but a much bigger fact distracted him.

He snorted. "You're not Superman."

He'd watched way too many saturday morning cartoons as a kid to not know what Superman was supposed to look like.

[ringslinging]

It wasn't that Hal didn't realize someone was floating up there, but people tended to come up here to get away, so he wasn't always inclined to pay much attention unless he was given a reason to, and ten feet was plenty of clearance. So he was headed for a farther spot on the deck, on a route that took him right beneath -

- and the next thing he knew he was knocked flat on his back, underneath Superboy, and if he had any doubts about how hard that deck was, he'd just answered them by testing it out with his head.

"Ow. Damn. Did I just walk into a bad romcom or something? Don't I at least get Meg Ryan with that?"

[sofresh]

Oops. Okay, maybe he... didn't plan this out very well. All he'd been thinking about was his powers, so he honestly hadn't even thought to look below him first.

"Sorry to disappoint you, but if anyone's gonna be the romantic lead, it's definitely me." Even as he attempted to sit up (on... top of Hal, sorry) after doing something so embarrassing, he absolutely had to make it clear that stealing Hal's hypothetical Hollywood girlfriend was of utmost priority. Forget everything else. Only after the fact did he look over at him and mutter a sheepish, "Uh... sorry about this."

For colliding with him, that is, not being prepared to usurp his starring role.

[ringslinging]

"What, with a haircut like that? Get real."

Actually, haircut aside, he was definitely looking at someone familiar. Or he'd just hit his head harder than he thought. Not Clark, though -

"...Superboy?"

[sofresh]

"Actually, it's Superm—"

But mid-correction, he paused. The way he said that... Sure, he was a pretty recognizable guy, but that sounded like familiarity, not just recognition. And if it was someone who knew him, then it had to be...

"Green Lantern?" Definitely not Arrow, he thought. He had the right amount of green but not the right amount of beard. He'd have known for sure if he wasn't sitting on him. "Whoa, I didn't know you were around. What up, GL?"

[ringslinging]

If Hal ever tried to emulate Ollie's amount of goofy beard, someone had better just put him out of his misery.

"Oh, nothing much. Taking a breather, getting crushed by falling teenagers. All the usual." A large green pair of forceps materialized in the air above Superboy, dipping in to pick him up by the collar and deposit him several feet to the left. Hal sat up straight, brushing himself off nonchalantly.

[leverageintceo]

"You did just take off the gear keeping you suspended in mid-air while still in mid-air," opined a voice from above. A woman dressed in a Legionnaire uniform of black and dark gray eeled her way out of the ventilation shaft before replacing the cover and looking back down at Superboy, her blond ponytail dangling over one shoulder.

"But I understand that teenagers frequently do dumb things for no reason, so you might grow out of it."

[sofresh]

Still wincing, Superboy glanced up at the sound of the voice, and... woah. Did she just come out of the ventilation shaft? Neat. But even though what she said was none-too-kind, he responded with a pained smirk.

"Why would I wanna do that? Aren't these supposed to be some of the best years of my life?" Not that he'd know, since he kind of already missed half of them. "But it wasn't for no reason. I'm Superman."

...like that was supposed to just explain it?! He sure looked like he expected it to.

[leverageintceo]

The woman made a rude noise. "Maybe if you plan on dying before you hit your twenties. Everything gets so much easier once the hormones stabilize and you look like you're old enough to have an actual job."

She dropped down from the ceiling as though her flight ring had cut out, but pulled to a stop at her conversation partner's eye-level, her expression as bland as though she'd just walked across the room to get a closer look at him.

"I suppose that's fair," she agreed thoughtfully. "But there are less embarrassing ways to check if your powers include flight."

[sofresh]

"Well, I can only get more handsome from here, so I guess you have a point," Superboy said as he stood up, casually brushing off his clothes as well as her response. "Well, I'm like, totally open to suggestions. I got a whole list of other powers I still gotta work my way through."

Although, truthfully, he didn't hold very high hopes for too many of them. Even back home, there were a bunch of things he was supposed to be able to do but couldn't. He didn't really think that he'd be trading his flight for the heatvision he had yet to figure out. But, at the same time, his powers were really important to him, so he wasn't going to give up until he knew what he could do.

"So? Whatcha got?"

[leverageintceo]

"What other powers should you have that you don't?" she asked, cocking her head to the side. "Because the least embarrassing way to find out if you have them is going to change every time."

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Also, it's entirely possible that you have completely different powers now. It hasn't happened yet to anyone that I know about, but I don't think anyone who started out with powers back home has exactly the same ones here."

[captainbuzzkill]

The boy that approached Superboy was very short and looked young, especially since right now he was in his civvies. Despite that, he still had a Legion ring on his finger.

"Are you new to the powers thing? I'm new the powers thing. Mine stop working all the time."

It was annoying, to say the least, but it was better than not having any powers at all. Dipper felt a lot more secure now that he had them. Back when he'd been fighting Bill and his henchmaniacs and trying to reverse the apocalypse, the worst part was how powerless he'd felt at times. Now, for once in his life, he had the power to fight back.

Sometimes.

During the times he could actually control them, anyway.

[sofresh]

"Really?" That intrigued Superboy, even as he tried to move to sit in a position that didn't hurt too much. Ow. "I mean, I guess I'm kinda new to it. Like, I had powers before I got here, but I guess I was kinda new to those, too."

There were things that he knew he should have been able to do, but couldn't, and for the life of him (short as it was), he couldn't figure out why. Maybe they were in similar situations? Though, this seemed like it was probably a little more complicated than that. Still, he was definitely interested.

[captainbuzzkill]

"Mine are influenced by emotions," Dipper said flatly. He flopped down to sit on the edge of the observation platform next to Superboy, his legs dangling. "So I have this really cool telekinesis and when it works, sometimes I can blow stuff up with my brain."

He pointed to his temples with his pointer fingers.

"But instead of just having to worry about my concentration, it's super keyed into what I'm feeling, so if I'm angry it throws things around a room uncontrollably like there's a poltergeist, and when I'm really angry, it blows things up even when I don't want it to. And if I'm surprised or sad, sometimes it just...stops."

A pause.

"Not that I get sad. That often. Or anything," he said, slightly defensively.

What, him? Homesick a lot? And missing his sister? Neeeeveeeer.

"But that means I have to try to stay 100% totally and completely calm to use it, and that's on top of concentrating really hard to focus it and make it do what I need it to. It'll mess up even if I'm a tiny bit annoyed at something."

Staying totally internally placid and chill was not exactly an easy thing for a teenage boy. Especially in the middle of a fight. It was a natural thing for fights to make you angry or scared -- or even excited, if things were more cool than scary.

[sofresh]

"That sounds like a whole lotta work," Superboy said, thoughtfully. Having to control your emotions really didn't sound fun, especially for a teenager. Superboy wasn't too sure he could do it—he was all about following his heart, basically. He couldn't imagine living any other way. But at the same time... Well, there was something interesting about it. "But you know what? I think I got something like that, too."

It seemed like Dipper's powers were a whole lot more volatile than his were, but there was definitely something similar about them. He had been able to escape from the Cyborg's weird mechanical restraints just by kind of freaking out about it, after all—there was no way that was just a fluke.

"It's kinda weird, though. I think I could do it before I got here, but I also used to be able to fly, and I sure can't do that anymore. I wonder if they could be related...?"

That sounded a little too strange, though. How could they be related?

(He had no idea.)

[adifferentangle]

Hiro - wandering about in a new place as he's like to do - manages to catch the tail end of Superboy's little experiment, but at least he doesn't laugh? Instead he puts his hands in his pockets and walks over to him, crouching at least five feet away. "I wouldn't say defective?"

At least to him it doesn't seem so.

Superboy is attempting to do something with his powers, figuring stuff out and what not. Hiro is trying to avoid it all with a three-and-a half foot pole.

"You okay? Need a spotter or a few pillows to land on?"

[sofresh]

"A little late, I think," Superboy says through gritted teeth, sitting up and pressing a hand to his side. He winces. Ouch! "But thanks. I appreciate the offer. Might take you up on it next time."

Not that he was planning for there to be a next time, but hey. You never know. Maybe his powers would come and go?

(No, don't let him get that thought into his head.)

"I'll be honest, it hurt a little more than I thought I would, but I'm okay. I think."

[mirror_soldier]

At first, the sight of Superboy floating on the observation deck was so completely unexpected it didn't quite register. He'd almost ignored his presence, but when it did finally sink in, he froze up. The panic from the unplanned moment acting like a wrench being thrown into the gears of his mind. There was a moment where he considered running before he could be seen but then Kon-el removed his ring and plummeted.

So. He couldn't fly here without his Legion Ring. That was good to know.

Thad probably should have at least attempted to catch him. That was what a good hero would have done, right? But instead he just let it happen, and if he was being completely honest, it was oddly cathartic to see one of Impulse's closest friends hit the ground so clumsily.

And he could still turn back now.

This confrontation could be saved for when he'd had more time to think about how to handle it. Or at the very least, wait until a time when there would be other people around to stop them if either of them made this violent. But then, with how emergencies could crop up at a moments notice in the Legion, the next time they met might be while trying to save lives, and that would be just about the worst time to have this encounter. Whether either of them cared for it or not, they were both basically teammates now, so perhaps it would be best to just get this over with.

"In what way?" By his tone, it's hard to tell if he's trying to be snide. The cautious hand he holds out to help the other clone up indicates it might be an honest inquiry, but his slightly haughty expression and body language suggests otherwise.

[sofresh]

Even Kon, whose experiences with people were pretty limited at this point, kind of got the feeling that he was getting mixed messages here. But the outstretched hand is enough for him, so he doesn't think too hard about it. An offer to help was an offer to help—who was he to say no? So, without hesitation, he takes the other boy's hand.

"My powers are all weird," he says with a wince. Honestly, he'd been hurt before, but being sore was something he wasn't too used to. He wasn't enjoying it very much. "I guess that's normal here... But they were actin' all weird before I got here, too. I was starting to think those scientists screwed up makin' me or something."

Before, he'd just thought it was a matter of not 'remembering' how to use his powers, but coming here and finding even more of his powers missing? It was seriously suspicious. But the supposed 'truth' of their situation didn't make him feel much better, either, unfortunately.

He gives an honest answer, though, whether Thad wants it or not. He seems much more concerned with the pain he feels than whether or not Thad even really wants to be there. The fact that there might be a reason for Thad's wariness beyond it just being a personality trait of his totally goes over Kon's head.

[mirror_soldier]

That was...unexpected. No negative reaction. No shock. Not even a note of bitterness or distrust as far as he could tell. Had Allen never mentioned him to his team? He found that hard to believe. Allen couldn't keep a secret from his teammates to save his life, and why wouldn't he tell them? Did Kon think he was Allen? Or somehow not recognize him at all? He found that hard to believe as well. Superboy may be oblivious at times, but he wasn't that dense.

Had the Legion already informed him of his presence here? Perhaps he'd already adjusted to the idea?

As soon as the other boy was to his feet, Thad was quick to put a few short steps of distance between them, tensely folding his arms across his chest, watching him with a mix of curiosity and wariness.

"You'd lost your powers before you came here?" He knew that was meant to happen to the Superboy from his universe. He'd tried to aim for that point in time to make his attack on Allen, but events just hadn't lined up quite right. It likely would have happened shortly after he'd left the past.

[sofresh]

"Not really lost 'em. ...I think." He hadn't thought of it that way before, but now, he wasn't sure. Anything seemed possible at this point. "It's more like I just couldn't, like, figure them out?"

That was how he saw it, at least. (Of course, that wasn't quite right—his powers didn't work the way he thought they did. But with what he knew, it made sense.) There were all sorts of things he was supposed to be able to do, but he'd only been able to do half of them, and that was before he got here. It was weird.

"But since I don't have them here, I guess it doesn't really matter," he shrugs. He acts like he doesn't care, but he's actually really bitter about it. His powers were a big deal to him. "Anyway, thanks for the hand. I appreciate it."

His gratitude, too, is as honest and genuine as everything else he says. There's just no reason for him to do otherwise, especially here—they're all good guys, after all.

As it is, he isn't much better at keeping secrets than Bart.