Nova Prime / Rich Rider (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iamresponding) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
legionworld2016-06-03 06:21 am
iamresponding) wrote in legionworld2016-06-03 06:21 am
Entry tags:
Words people don't hear often: Grif was right [open]
Who| Open to Rich and anyone who might happen to swing by Medbay
What| Rich being not-dead! Visitors welcome! New characters can possibly meet him during their own Medbay stays
Where| Medbay, on the main floor instead of a private room
When| The day after Galactus plot, and after Rich's message on the network, but before Rocket shows up
Warnings/Notes| N/A
Rich felt like death warmed over. Because really, he kind of was death warmed over. After his lungs had kicked out an embolism when he was in the healing tanks, he'd apparently had a pretty close call on the operating table.
But then they got him breathing again, back into a tank, and the riskiest part of the twenty-four hours had safely passed on by. Now they'd gotten him into a normal bed on the Medbay floor and he was mostly out of the woods. Mostly.
Still feeling it, though. You didn't get an arm shoved through your chest without feeling pretty miserable the day after. Luckily, they had some real good pain meds in the glorious robot future. The part that was the most miserable was mostly just that he was so short of breath.
He was at least used to this. For someone who had invulnerability back home, he'd found himself in a Medbay bed being tended by medicos more than once. War was hell, after all.
At least this time nobody's gotta grow me a new leg.
Also: pudding. The Medbay had good pudding. He could barely tell it was made from soy. Their combat support hospitals during the Annihilation war never had pudding, just the usual protein paste and dehydrated carb rations. He was pretty much demolishing a new cup of it every other hour. Anyone that visited him would probably find him mid-pudding cup. Always chocolate.
What| Rich being not-dead! Visitors welcome! New characters can possibly meet him during their own Medbay stays
Where| Medbay, on the main floor instead of a private room
When| The day after Galactus plot, and after Rich's message on the network, but before Rocket shows up
Warnings/Notes| N/A
Rich felt like death warmed over. Because really, he kind of was death warmed over. After his lungs had kicked out an embolism when he was in the healing tanks, he'd apparently had a pretty close call on the operating table.
But then they got him breathing again, back into a tank, and the riskiest part of the twenty-four hours had safely passed on by. Now they'd gotten him into a normal bed on the Medbay floor and he was mostly out of the woods. Mostly.
Still feeling it, though. You didn't get an arm shoved through your chest without feeling pretty miserable the day after. Luckily, they had some real good pain meds in the glorious robot future. The part that was the most miserable was mostly just that he was so short of breath.
He was at least used to this. For someone who had invulnerability back home, he'd found himself in a Medbay bed being tended by medicos more than once. War was hell, after all.
At least this time nobody's gotta grow me a new leg.
Also: pudding. The Medbay had good pudding. He could barely tell it was made from soy. Their combat support hospitals during the Annihilation war never had pudding, just the usual protein paste and dehydrated carb rations. He was pretty much demolishing a new cup of it every other hour. Anyone that visited him would probably find him mid-pudding cup. Always chocolate.
no subject
He added, "Was. Emphasis on the past tense. That's how I died. Real messy breakup, and then Thanos was talking about mass murdering -- everyone in our universe. So Starlord and I kept him pinned in the parasite dimension -- we'd been trying to keep from invading ours. We got trapped there as it closed off. I died getting Starlord and Drax back to our universe."
It was still a weird thing to talk about that in the past tense. 'I died.'
"They're called Cosmic Abstracts. Cosmic beings that big and strange. I don't think we're supposed to be able to really understand 'em. I don't think we can. One exploded near me once and I was caught in the psychic backlash -- and whenever I try to remember what it was I saw--"
He stopped for a moment. Just stopped. For about two or three seconds. Froze in place and stopped talking. Then he started moving again.
"--that happens. Whenever I try to remember it. Brain just blanks out and shuts down for a few seconds, like a CD skipping. Freaky, ain't it?"
no subject
Having a memory gap or something, okay. Sam had suffered enough concussions in his life to know that that was a thing. But it wasn't just that Rich couldn't remember whatever he saw - it was the way he stopped.
It was creepy as hell.
no subject
Even as big as all this was, it wasn't so big that it couldn't be overcome.
"Beings like that may be bigger. Or more powerful. Or infinitely omnipotent. But I've seen plenty of fights -- against cosmic powers where the little people won."
He shook his head.
"We've still got a tough fight on our hands, though. I almost wish Surfer could've stayed -- even if Galactus had to go. He'd have been handy against this Chronoblivion thing."
Yes, he wished the guy who put a hand through his chest had stayed. He basically didn't have any hard feelings. At all. Or if he did, he just had priorities.
no subject
That had nothing to do with threats to the universe, or their goals in the mission, or doing what they had to in order to save Braal and every other planet in the UP. It had everything to do with the fact that nobody was just going to nearly kill a Nova and get away with it, even if he'd been pulling punches just enough not to actually finish Rich. Nobody.
Sam dealt with enough at school. He was used to hitting back, and even if he'd heard a million lectures about how violence wasn't the answer, there was no changing the fact that sometimes, it was just really satisfying to get in a good wallop before someone had to be responsible and break up the fight.
no subject
"Yeah, well," he said, in mimicry. "Sometimes it's not a bad thing -- to let off a little steam. And, uh, Surfer's definitely someone -- that can take a beating -- and just walk it off."
After Rich watched the footage, he really doubted that they'd actually caused much lasting damage at all.
"I'm gonna be fine." He looked awkward, as if he was afraid he was assuming too much in thinking Sam was at least a little mad at Surfer on his behalf. "It could've been a lot worse, what he did. And it was good he at least listened and moved him. That fight with the Spectre could've shattered Braal."
no subject
You could almost hear the air quotes around "complications."
"But I mean. There are like a zillion ways that could've gone totally wrong."
no subject
He scooted and held out his flesh and blood arm, singling for Sam to come up and chill out next to him. Kid looked like he at least needed a hug or an arm around the shoulders or something.
"This is how it's gonna be -- with the kind of stuff we're facing. Lots of close calls. Yeah, they're scary, but what matters is how they end. When something gets broken, doesn't matter that it got broken, what matters is if it can be fixed. And up here in the cosmic big leagues -- a lot of stuff gets broken."
no subject
"Stuff gets broken, or people get broken?"
Because there was a world of difference between fixing a blown-out engine and regrowing a lung.
no subject
He could think of people that had been hurt so badly that they were still struggling, like Robbie, but part of why it was so bad for him was that he felt he'd made a mistake. Feeling like you'd failed people was sometimes harder to bounce back from than being hurt yourself.
"And even when they have trouble -- sometimes they still manage it anyway. People are resilient like that. Stronger than you'd ever imagine."
He'd seen it, during the war. So many broken societies and yes, some had fallen to darkness and chaos, but he'd seen just as many that worked together to try to evacuate their worlds. He'd seen people sign up with the United Front to fight back after losing everything, refusing to just lay down and die or give in to despair.
no subject
He wasn't actually sure if he wanted an honest answer or a reassuring one.
no subject
Maybe more like the Cancerverse.
"But not Annihilus bad. The worst part about the War was that I sent for help and nobody came. Sent a probe to the Fantastic Four, telling them about the Wave, and to get Earth ready, and to ask if anyone could be spared. They were all too busy fighting each other over that stupid registration law to work together. Galactic civilization all but collapsed, Earth was three months from an extinction-level invasion, and Iron Man said they waved it off as a Kree border skirmish."
And that left it in the hands of a lot of people that weren't used to working together. They'd done as well as they could for a wildly disparate army of many species, but he sure could've used someone like Cap at his right hand.
It still left a bitter taste in his mouth.
"The Legion ain't like that. The Legionnaires from this universe know how to pull it together, and slowly but surely, all us people from other universes are doing it, too. That's what the fight with Galactus proved. That's what makes the difference between an omnicidal space war or a superhero space battle."
no subject
"I thought Iron Man was supposed to be smart."
no subject
"Smarts and common sense don't always go hand in hand."
That was the best way he could think of putting it.
"One thing you're going to learn is a lot of the other heroes are..." Rich paused, looking for the right word. "Stupid. Even the ones with genius IQs. Sometimes people get all caught up in their own drama or their own pride and they lose sight of what's important."
It wasn't like they turned evil or anything, it was more...
"They're not bad people, and the rest of the time they're decent and selfless, and they do the right thing. But it's like sometimes they get lost." His voice went a little quieter. "I guess they maybe they just don't have...perspective."
Like the kind you got fighting an omnicidal space war. Like the kind you got when you saw a world die around you.
Like the kind you had when you were pulled into another world and had to save all of existence.
no subject
Not that there wasn't plenty of big stuff that came knocking on Earth's door - that had been why Sam got dragged into it in the first place; the Chitauri had wanted to take Earth out of the picture because of humans' annoying habit of showing up at just the right time to interfere with everything big that happened on the galactic front.
But if there was one thing that was hard to forget, every time he flew out of orbit - space always made Sam feel small. When there was nothing around you but stars in every direction, and you had a helpful database telling you just how many of those had their own planets, some even bigger than your own - how could anyone not?
no subject
It made it a little harder to get a big head, to get all caught up in your own little world.
"On Earth, as scary as it gets, it's easy to feel like the good guys will win every time -- because we usually do. Up there, you can see how scary it really is. How easy it is for a whole world to die, or a whole species to get wiped out. Or more than one."
Wow, that sounded depressing, but that's not what he meant.
"So we care about worlds. And we care about people. And we have what we need to make sure that's what we always care about the most."
no subject
"It's just...it's kind of overwhelming. To think about something that big, and it goes on forever, and - you have a planet with like billions of people, and that's just a snack for a guy like Galactus..."
no subject
He held his fingers a hair's breadth apart.
"For just one tiny little person, in one tiny little town, in one tiny little country, on one tiny little continent, it'd be worth it. Fighting back against monsters like that. Never mind the billions and billions."
They had to be able to taken in the bigness without losing sight of how valuable the small was.
no subject
If that was what they were for, that seemed about as daunting as contemplating the size of the universe itself.
no subject
Rich gave him a big reassuring smile.
Sam was a good kid that tried his best and learned from his mistakes -- and that was enough. That was more than enough, really.
"You don't exactly strike me as the kind of person that'd get so caught up in your own drama that you'd stop caring about innocent people getting hurt."
no subject
And by the time the Hulk came knocking (or smashing, as it were), he hadn't even stopped to think about himself at all.
no subject
Come on, Sam.
"I didn't become a superhero until I was seventeen, and even then, I didn't get my priorities 100% straight until life went all Starship Troopers on me." It'd taken way too long. "You're doing fine."
A pause.
"Geez, people really did a number on you with making me out to be some paragon of virtue or something, didn't they. Or else you'd know you were already ahead of the game." No way would Sam be fussing over rookie mistakes if he knew that Rich himself had been a world-class screw up through huge chunks of his superhero career. "You wanna talk collateral damage and terrible priorities? I spent most of my twenties worried more about getting famous than civilians. When I got back from the war, most people could barely recognize me, 'cause I stopped tooting my own horn so loud that everyone around me went deaf."
no subject
Blaze of glory, noble sacrifice. Saved the galaxy. Blah blah blah. He'd heard plenty about the hero, plenty about the martyr...but not really much of anything about the man. Which, admittedly, made a lot of sense; people had that tendency to blur over the bad things when they were talking about the dead.