thelegion | [Video] Superhero Morning Call

Entry tags:

[Video] Superhero Morning Call

[The video is just an extreme close up of a hand for a moment before the hand pulls away to reveal Sparkle Bright dressed in her superhero costume, with her makeup and hair both done up. She is smiling a very bright, very media-friendly smile.]

Good morning fellow Legionnaires! My name is Sparkle Bright, and before being brought here I was the co-leader of the Super Patriots, West Coast division.

[Her tone is as bright and cheery and sound-bite friendly as her smile. And for those who've interacted with her previously, a lot less hesitant and unsure than she's been before. This is PR stuff. She knows how to do this]

I know this whole experience has been very trying for all of us, but our hosts have been more than gracious in helping us all acclimate, don't you think?

[There's no pause for a response.]

I know at least some of you weren't superheros in your own timeline, but we're all expected to be so now, and really, it's the least we can do for our fine hosts, don't you agree?

[Still no pause]

So I was thinking, especially since so many of you are new to your powers that we should draw up a training schedule, so we can all get used to our powers and working together. We want to be a team after all, and that means knowing what each of us can do and how we can use our powers together in the best possible way. Since I've been doing the superhero thing since I was twelve, I've probably got the most experience, so if no one has any objections, I'll get together a list and put together a preliminary training schedule. So we can all fight for truth, justice and the [A beat] the Legionnaire way!

[Her smile brightens as she reaches to end the broadcast. Particularly observant folks may notice that the smile does not in any way reach her eyes.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You've been doing this since you were twelve?

[There are a lot of okay things in the world, and this isn't one of them.]

Uh, seconding this. Can I get a 'say what'?

[That is young. That is Power Pack young. The thing with Power Pack was that was a group of kids mostly sneaking around their parents' backs from the way Alex made it sound. He's hoping it's a similar thing and that these Super Patriots picked her up later when it was more reasonable, but there's something unnervingly...polished about her whole spiel.]

[The parts where she's talking up the Legion stick out. He's smart enough to keep his suspicions about them to himself until he can figure out if they're really as benevolent as they seem to be but he also wouldn't exactly be talking them up as fine hosts, either. He can't tell if this is meant to be a cover for Sparkle Bright holding her own suspicions or not. Or, more alarmingly, if she's just used to having to talk up authority.]

Edited 2016-01-17 10:20 (UTC)

[She gives a shrug to both of them.]

That was when my parents turned me over to the Super Patriots for training. You can't really have superpowered children running around, and the Super Patriots Inc are really the only people organized to offer that sort of training in my reality.

Don't worry, I had a very well rounded education as well.

[He's not wholly opposed to a team taking in very young members for training. He only wishes the New Warriors had gotten that kind of help from the Avengers. But he's having problems with the idea of a superteam being a corporation.]

You wanna explain that "inc" part? Since, unless I'm mistaken, that implies they're some kinda corporation.

[The Avengers are financed by the Maria Stark Foundation. Just like the Taylor Foundation funded the New Warriors for years, but the neither team is a corporation in and of itself.]

'Cause in my universe there are different charitable foundations that fund superteams but they're usually nonprofits and the teams themselves aren't a corporation.

[And for-profits nosing into superheroing are generally frowned on. Severely, severely frowned on.]

Well, yes. I mean if you want to have any real influence on governments, especially at the national level, you almost have to be a corporation of some sort. So the first three superheros decided to incorporate for their own protection and to protect the heroes after them. And there's a lot of stuff in raising and training heroes, especially young ones like I was that takes money. So it only makes sense for them to market what they can. It's how in my world superheros are an accepted part of daily life and don't have to hide their powers or worry about being hunted by the government or anti-superhero crackpots.

[He still doesn't like the sound of that.]

Corporations shouldn't have power over politics or other life-or-death things like superheroing at all. In my universe, most of the major super-teams have influence on the government because they have a government mandate and liaison to make the team and the government are cooperating. That way the team has to keep certain things in check but they also have someone to help them work with the government if they need anything, too.

[Not that it's perfect.]

That said, they could afford to do more training of young people. That was something my team was always disappointed in, 'cause they wouldn't give us the time of day. And that seems to be partly at the heart of a conflict that's been going on back home right now.

[It's not an unreasonable conflict to have, he just thinks all the heroes are total total asshats in how they've apparently handled it. Enough to make him retreat right on back to space.]

And yeah, they're having issues with figuring out what to do to hold heroes accountable but still, that's... there shouldn't be any profit in it. Corporations are beholden to shareholders. They gotta bring in the dough. [He rubs his fingers together in a "money money gesture."] That seems like a system that's way too conducive to abuse 'cause of people's greed.

If anything, it should be that teams and the government work together to find the right blend of training, autonomy, and accountability. And to pay for it all, there's plenty of ways to get that money through charity and charitable trusts -- there's a lot of independently wealthy superheroes back home that pour money into it.

We could probably fuel most of the major superteams for decades on what scientists like Hank Pym and Tony Stark make on their patents alone.

[And knowing the two of them, they probably would.]

[Sparkle Bright frowns at the screen and crosses her arms over her chest. On the one hand, she does agree with him. There's something seriously wrong with the Super Patriots Inc, even if she can't quite yet put her finger on what it is. But still, who does this man think he is to act like his world is so automatically better than hers?]

And who protects the normal people from the superpowered? What are the laws, the regulations on how powers can be used? Who helps draft the laws, helps represent the superpowered in court in ways that assure people there is still a fair trial going on? Who makes sure that when a young person's powers manifest, no one gets hurt? Or in the sad event that innocent people are hurt, who makes sure the families get reparations?

[She narrows her eyes, and a faint shimmer of dark violet starts spreading through her skin and hair.]

You condemn how my world does things, but listen to yourself. All those 'shoulds' and 'coulds' and 'issues'. It's not like your world sounds like it has things figured out any more than mine does. So I don't get why you think you have the right to talk.

Usually if a hero goes off the deep end, the entire rest of the superhero community will gang up on them and bring them in. And that includes if they hurt people by being negligent. And we have lawyers that work for the superhero community -- pro bono, at that. Some of them are superheroes themselves. One of 'em helped me out once when a fight went wrong and I accidentally killed my friend's husband when he came after her with an axe.

She was pregnant.

[She-Hulk and Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson were pretty great for doing that. Everyone knew if they got in a legal bind they'd have their back. Just like everyone knew if they were messed up in the head, Doc Samson would try to help them out (provided he wasn't running around as a Hulk or something.)]

I'm not saying it's perfect where I come from, either. But my world's at least started doing organized training that doesn't involve forcing people to give up their secret IDs or be conscripted into serving the government or a corporation or whatever. And they're still working out how to keep people accountable but they're working on it, trying to figure it out together.

[Even if, historically, they'd kinda screwed the pooch on that for a good while. It's still enough he's not keen on sticking around the planet, Avenger or no. At least not until they seem to have the last kinks worked out.]

And the money don't need to come from a corporation for that when so much can be done through charity and investing any donations into a charitable trust or foundation -- a way of making sure super teams are funded without having to worry so much about greed factoring in. There are always people willing to donate and even when there aren't, they make enough with investments from the people who do.

[His world needed work but they had...something. They had a spark that meant even when they got lost they always found their way and he had faith that would still hold true, even now. They'd figure it out. They'd find a better way.]

And I get the right to talk because there's right and there's wrong and I've been around the block enough times to at least be in the right ballpark about what each of 'em is. Enough to know what my world's done wrong and what they're doing better now.

Letting greed get into things...that's wrong. It always makes things go wrong. It twists things. That's how greed works. That's how the world works. You seriously telling me that corporation's never affected the way you do things as heroes? Ever? When you even started this conversation with a pitch perfect speech that'd make a PR department proud? How often did they drill you in that?

[It's a dangerous question. A personal question. And it's probably wrong for him to put her on the spot like that. But it's bothering him. It's a knee jerk reaction in his world to reject the idea of superheroing leading to profit and everything she's saying is setting off alarm bells in his head.]

Edited 2016-01-29 22:38 (UTC)

[There is a very long pause. Because he right, at least in part, and she knows he's right, and what he's right about are the same things that led her to help Vel. Led her to slip away and masquerade as Blacklight. But it feels too much like he's attacking her, not just the system that produced her. She can feel herself wanting to break in front of his verbal assault. Break down and cry and just run away until she can regroup and pull herself together. But this is a public broadcast. If she did that, everyone would see her. So it's easier, so much easier, to just fall back on the public persona the Super Patriots Inc worked so hard to craft for her.]

I made 'that speech' because I was trying to help people. Because for better or worse, we're stuck here for now, and we all took an oath to help protect this place. Since I have encountered more than a few of the people brought her who don't have any experience with either super powers or being super heroes, I thought I might be able to lend the experience I have to help.

[She lifts her chin slightly, and the shimmer of violet gets darker and more pronounced.]

I did not make it to have you question everything about where I come from. I don't know what makes you think you even have that right.

[Rich holds up his hand that isn't holding his omnicom in a placating fashion.]

Listen, I'm not trying to make this all accusative or nothin'. [Accusative is totally the right word to use here, sssh.] It's just sometimes you hear something and it rings some alarm bells, y'know?

The heroes in my universe -- we all just have...strong feelings about that kinda thing.

I'm not trying to criticize you personally, though. And, look, I do think it's fair game if you ever heard things about my world and thought they sounded off. At one point, the heroes were so bad at keeping things together that I high-tailed it for space after going home and seeing it all. Even if they did better after that. I didn't go back for a long while.

Like I said, my world's not perfect either and I got my criticisms over that, too.

[He's definitely a man that knows when to keep his mouth shut but he's usually only on top of that in life or death situations, or when he's commanding people. The rest of the time he's not the best at avoiding sounding like an idiot.]

Sorry. I mean, I just kinda tend to say whatever pops into my head, especially if something don't seem right.

[He's really not trying to be a jerk to her personally.]

[She sighs, and the color starts to fade from her skin and hair.]

I'm sorry too. I can be... defensive about things sometimes. And I really was just trying to help all of us.

The practice is a good idea. It sounds like we'll get some team practice in our hero classes but God knows we'll need more with such a ragtag outfit where most of the people have never superheroed before.

If you need any help with it I'd be glad to. [It's just as much a peace offering as him genuinely wanting to help.] I had a break from when I was 18 to 21 where I didn't have powers, but otherwise I've been at this since I was seventeen, and I've got a few years fighting stuff in space like the Legion under my belt. And some, uh, experience fighting a war.

[And leading in one. He's done a little bit of everything.]

They didn't have you on active duty that young, right?

[Hearing about that happening to someone else, someone he doesn't know, completely breaks him away from the conversation about training as a team. It's chillingly familiar.]

Well, obviously not until we knew what we were doing! And they didn't send the Junior Team out against any really bad guys. [Not intentionally. Or at least, not publicly]

[He nods, accepting the answer even as he files away the knowledge that something about it stinks. The official line always stinks, just like home. He's less inclined to chase the problem than Nova is, though. That's personal. It'd be hypocritical for him to go personal. This is enough for now.]

A training schedule will be helpful. Keep me posted. I'm willing to teach people what I know.

Oh, I hadn't even thought about teachers! At the Super Patriots Inc, there wasn't always someone else around with your power set, so we all learned mostly how to train ourselves. With guidance from Medical and Research of course, but still.

Thank you for the offer.

You're welcome. I might not be able to help with some of the weirder things people can do, but I can teach people to break out of a hold and immobilize somebody else without hurting them. Good skills for this job.

Um. Problem.

[Grif seems to be very serious, at least by tone and body language.]

See, my specialties are more in the not doing work department. I kinda don't want to go against that. I'd lose my edge.

[Really, Grif.]

Have you taking the Legionnaire Oath? Because I did and I'm pretty sure it included promising fight for justice and such. And if you can't fight as part of a team, then you become a liability to the people who are fighting as a team.

[She is very serious about this]

And the only way to become a team is by being willing to train as one.

See, I'm willing to forgo my specialty a bit for the good of everyone. Because I'm generous and everything.

[As he has been clearly demonstrating this whole time. Clearly.]

But I mean, I can only go into it so much before it starts having a negative effect on me.

Is this 'negative effect' going to be harmful to the team? [She doesn't actually make air quotes. They're evident enough in her tone]

Maaaaybe?

[Grif grins.]

I mean, what if I'm not at my peak performance when something important happens, huh?

[There are probably much more productive things he could be doing with this time. But here he is.]

That is what training is for. To keep you at peak performance. Otherwise you might get slow and fat.

[Her expression is still serious, but there is a bit of a smile in her eyes]

Okay, maybe I can take some time out of my busy personal not-doing-anything regimen to practice some of this other stuff.

Because I'm such a giver.

[He sounds truly pained and not like he's faking it for effect at all.]

That's like double training though.

[Aaand he's holding his omnicomm like a phone again. Here's hoping Sparkle Bright doesn't mind close-ups of someone's ear. Or the volume being a tad loud. Jason still hasn't gotten used to communications devices that aren't watches or telephones.]

Hey, West Coast? What part? I'm a California guy, myself.

[And now for the actual content of everything. There was a lot to talk about there, but it was probably best if he just took the last few bits.]

There's some training stuff going on already, but backup stuff can't hurt. I think some of us here haven't done a lot of this before, so there might be some catching up. But it might be better if we got to know each other first? You know, maybe go camping or something, some bonding exercises. I don't know of they still have s'mores here, but it'd be an awesome way to get to know everyone.

Well, I was born in the Midwest, but I moved to California when the Super Patriots Inc. took over my guardianship.

Sometimes the best way to get to know people is to train with them though. And I have this weird feeling we might not have the time to do things the slow way.

[Super Patriots Inc., huh? Well, he should have guessed people wouldn't be from home.]

I hate to disagree, but I don't think so. You might get to know things about them through training, like if they're hot-headed or nervous, but you don't really get to know them. I've taught martial arts classes and one of my students really came off as awkward and unsure of himself, but I wouldn't know how smart he was or much of a great guy he was if I didn't hang out with him apart from that, you know?

Classes and actual training are totally different. Especially when you've got equipment like here that can let people really let loose with stuff.

And you don't have to get along with teammates, just learn to work with them.

Okay, I can agree with your first point. But definitely not the second.

Teamwork is important, but one of the most important parts of teamwork is how well you gel with everyone in your team. If you don't know how to get along, you're just going to miscommunicate and trip over one another, rather than pull together when it's necessary.

Edited 2016-01-24 06:00 (UTC)

[She gives a small, derisive snort]

If liking actually mattered, the Super Patriots West Coast would have fallen apart years ago. But we're all adults and know how to put our personal feelings aside to deal with the real threats.

[He pauses and pulls the omnicomm away from his ear, giving it a bemused look. How do you even respond to that? It just felt wrong, but... Well, if it worked for her team, it worked for her. Jason shrugs and moves the omnicomm back to his ear, the video going dark as he covers the camera again.]

I guess I'm just used to things working differently.

[She shrugs]

That happens. You know, you don't need to hold the omnicomm to your ear to hear. The speakers are pretty good. And doing that means you miss the visuals.

[...Oh. That was awkward. And he'd just had a talking to from Kid Quantum about that.

Jason coughs awkwardly and pulls the omnicomm away from his ear.]

Uh. Sorry. I'm still getting used to phones that don't have cords. Baby steps, you know?

[Very small baby steps, in his case.]

Anyway. I'll let you go, I guess. Nice to meet you, Sparkle Bright.

[That much, at least, sounds sincere.]

Check your schedule. We've already considered the fact that you all might need training.

Because we're not morons.

[She crosses her arms over her chest and frowns.]

There is a difference between learning to use powers, especially powers people didn't have before arriving here, and learning to work as a team. I wasn't trying to step on anyone's toes, I was just trying to be proactive.

[The only move Umbra makes is to raise her eyebrows a fraction.]

I suppose I should be pleased that at least one of you shows the stirrings of leadership potential. Regardless, your training sessions will include both individual exercises and team exercises. Just because our Founders were lucky enough to be as compatible as they were in exercising their powers doesn't mean that we expect the same of everyone.

[That throws her a bit off her stride]

Well, um, that's good I guess. I didn't realize you all had everything so planned out.

Umbra, it's not too late for me to swap things around. This is the second time I've had to tell you to quit acting like a nasshead about this, don't make me go for a third.

Sparkle Bright, thanks for taking the initiative to set this up. If you and the others would like to do extra practice working together with your powers, feel free.

Odd that common perception is that I'm the asocial one.

["Superior intellect" though he may be, he's not above teasing his teammates.]

What's that, Brainy? You want extra sessions on Monitor Duty?

[Whoops, busted.]

...I've suddenly remembered pressing work I need to get to in the labs, good bye.

[He quickly hangs up.]

That's what I thought.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Video] Superhero Morning Call

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

whoops editing because I made a canon point mistake -- forgot Rich had a brief bout back on Earth

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

VIDEO

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject