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thelegion2017-02-05 12:47 am
legionnpcs) wrote in thelegion2017-02-05 12:47 am
Legionnaire Legacies: Dave Strider [video]
[The Legion World staff maintains a feed of all Legion-related media so Legionnaires can be kept abreast of any reporting that's done on them. Two women appear on the screen, sitting at a desk, their appearances altered by glam filters so that one is all pink hair and skin and sparkles, and the other is all in blues. They look pretty flashy and tacky but this is the future. Reporters don't exist anymore; they're "personalities" now.]
Shellee: I'm Shellee Star! [That would be the pink one.]
Tammee: And I'm Tammee Tim! [That would be the blue one.]
Shellee: We're here today to bring you another episode of Legion Watch: Legionnaire Legacies! Today we'll be covering a Legionnaire that seems to provoke widely-varied reactions from fans. You either love his sense of humor and laid-back attitude, or think he's a bit too laid-back and highly unprofessional.
Tammee: Known for an apparent obsession with the color red, those ever-present shades, and a groan-inducing punny codename: Justin Time!
Shellee: Ladies and gentle-beings, we would like to warn you that today's episode of Legion Watch has some content containing extreme violence that may be considered graphic and disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.
Shellee: Raised by an eccentric guardian, Justin Time -- a.k.a. Dave Strider -- was trained from childhood for the trials that would await him in his future.
[A panning shot of a city, which text at the bottom of the screen labels Houston, Texas. Earth, 2009. Zoom in on one particular apartment building, and then to the roof of it, where a fight is happening. Or perhaps it's sparring. Really, it's more of a beatdown. The Dave here is younger than the one in the Legion by several years, still a child even by spacefuture standards. He's thoroughly scuffed-up and brandishes a sword against a tall, leanly-muscled man in pointed shades. The man also wields a sword, and doesn't have a scratch on him. Text across the screen identifies him as Dirk Strider.
The man -- Dave's guardian, evidently -- makes a slight movement, and Dave darts to the side, either a preemptive dodge or an attempt at a counter. It's a vain attempt, whatever it was. When the man moves, it's so fast he's barely visible. Suddenly he's behind Dave and slamming him to the paved rooftop with an elbow.
The scene shifts before we have to see any more of that fight. Inside their apartment, which is littered with strange plush dolls and puppets, DJing equipment, and various weapons. Standing in the kitchen, its counters covered in knives and throwing stars and whatnot, Dave opens the fridge, only to have to jump back with a curse to avoid the jumble of blades that comes clattering out of it. He frowns just faintly at the mess of shitty swords before closing the fridge and retreating to his room -- also a mess, but without the puppets and with far fewer swords. He instead retrieves a bag of chips from a small stock of snacks at the back of his closet before settling in at his computer. There are already messages on his screen on some instant messaging client, text in bright green and blue and purple.]
Tammee: The trials in question would take the form of a video game, one that turned out to be the harbinger of the planet's -- and the entire universe's -- destruction.
[Various shots of locations around the world being pummeled by meteors of various sizes.]
Shellee: There would be no way to save the world from this apocalypse. Only playing the game as intended offered any chance of escaping the destruction.
[Cut back to the roof, Dave and his guardian squaring off for another match. This time, the city behind is in flames, the occasional meteor rocketing down out of the hazy Texan summer sky to impact elsewhere in the city.
The fight is as one-sided as the previous. His guardian doesn't even seem to be taking it seriously at first, manipulating a particularly unsettling puppet with his crazy speed and attacking with that instead. It isn't even that Dave seems unskilled, but against this foe he appears outmatched. After a stretch of fighting, Dave makes an attempt to flee, only to be cut off and forced to put up his sword again. A flurry of blows, and the man flashsteps in with the puppet to slam him down a staircase. Dave staggers back up and hurries back up to the roof after a few minutes, and it's a quick fight after that. In one strike, the man shatters Dave's sword and tosses him across the rooftop.
Dave remains where he slides to a stop, bruised and battered and winded, and eventually a shadow hovers just briefly over him. A pair of CD sleeves are dropped onto Dave's chest, and then his guardian is gone.
Groaning, Dave summons a smartphone to his hand -- that's how it looks, anyway, and the thing just suddenly appears there. He shoots off a quick message before picking himself back up, grabbing the discs and hurrying back to his room to install the game on them. Outside his window, the world seems to be on fire.
A cut to Dave in his room on his computer. It looks at first like he could be playing the Sims, except, the house and person on his screen are very much real and live. Just barely visible on his screen is a blonde girl dashing about a modern-looking house while outside her windows fires and storms rage. Dave maipulates her environment in real time, dropping strange machines from an inventory on his screen right into various rooms of her home, building stairs up to the roof for her with a few clicks of his mouse. Cut to Dave on his roof in front of one of those machines, a glowing orange bird with a sword impaled through it hovering before him. Cut to some fussing around with a different machine, where an orange egg the size of Dave's head suddenly appears. The bird darts forward to snatch it up before Dave can get near it, and he only frowns slightly before pulling his phone out to message someone while the bird gets cozy with the egg up in a nest made of random garbage atop a large antenna.
Cut to an upward shot of the antenna atop the apartment building. Dave climbs the structure with grit teeth, while in the background small meteors crash down all around. Above, the sky darkens as an enormous meteor suddenly breaks through the thick haze of smoke above, aimed squarely at Dave's building. The camera zooms in on a figure that appears to be...standing on top of the meteor? A closer look reveals Dave's guardian, raising a sword and swinging it down on the meteor. With a great cracking sound, it splits it half, the halves falling to either side of the building. The force of it knocks Dave's grip loose and he falls--
--but it was just enough bought time. A shot of the egg cracking, and then suddenly a wide shot of the whole building glowing before the whole screen goes white.
Cut to a very new location. An ocean of lava stretches out in all directions under a black sky, structures of metal peppered across it. Giant gears grind and spin all around, as additional structures, as channels for waterfalls of lava, as stepping stones and platforms across the fiery sea. Text appears at the bottom of the screen to label this place Land of Heat and Clockwork. In the center of it all, the top of Dave's apartment building it set atop a structure of metal beams.]
Shellee: This began a harrowing journey for our hero and his friends. In Dave's case, he was forced to face himself, quite literally.
[Cut to a scene on the rooftop. Dave stands in front of the glowing bird ghost...thing, the remains of his brother's puppet in one hand while he types on a smartphone with the other. Suddenly, and with an echoed ticking sound, another Dave appears in front of him. This one is faintly thinner, hair slightly longer, and wearing a snazzy white suit. The chill manner is just the same, though.]
Other Dave: Hey, I'm you from the future. Tell John not to go or he'll die.
[A beat, and Dave simply nods, cool as can be.
He goes right back to typing on his phone. After a few moments he purses his lips with faint frustration and future Dave joins in on the instant messaging with what looks like a voice-to-text function on a screen displayed directly on his shades. He mutters to his shades for a bit before nodding, closing the program, and unequipping all his gear -- he crouches and several stacks of colorful cards appear in front of him at the same time his clothing suddenly swaps to the same simple tee and skinny jeans the comparatively-past Dave is wearing. Then, smoothly, he backflips right into the glowing bird ghost thing.
A flash of light, and they seem to have fused. What remains is a feathery, ghostly glowing orange Dave with wings and a sword through his chest.
Yep.
A cut to a new scene some small amount of time later. Dave is decked out in a plush-looking red suit and come back into his room to find a broken window, and his own dead body. The corpse is so thoroughly blood-splattered that it's hard to tell what killed him, but a helpful zoom in on the body makes a stab wound in his chest clear.
At the bottom corner of the screen, a counter labeled DEATH COUNT appears and ticks up to 1 with a little ding. Dave stares at the body a long moment, expression stiff and unreadable, before he wordlessly grabs it under the arms, drags it to the broken window, and unceremoniously shoves it out. The camera shifts to an outside view to show the corpse fall several stories before disappearing into the lava below.]
Tammee: The game they played was that reality's mechanism for the culling of universes that had reached the end of their lifespan and the creation of new ones. [As she speaks, links to more in-depth explanations and analyses pop up over shots of Dave fighting off strange monsters that burst into gemstones upon death.] In a standard session, the players would progress through the game, create the seed for their new universe, and achieve victory after defeating the final boss, at which point they could take their place in the new universe as its creator-gods.
Shellee: However, due to some rather complicated circumstances, our hero's session of the game became unwinnable. The final boss, unbeatable.
[A cut to the ghostly winged Dave fighting alongside his guardian on in a flaming landscape. The enemy is humanoid in shape but all black, covered in a smooth exoskeleton. It has wings and tentacles and wields a sword, and uses all of these to fend off the brothers' attacks. It's a hectic fight, but they seem evenly matched.
Then, a pause, as the carapace-man hunches over, convulsing as it morphs. Its face becomes canine, its hands clawed, and it seems to flicker with a bright green energy.
Suddenly, it warps.
Appearing behind the feathery Dave, it slashes downward straight through a wing. That Dave cries out and turns to face it, only to receive a vicious swipe across his midsection. Glowing yellow blood splatters across the stone beneath them, and the monster turns on Dave's guardian.
Mercifully -- or perhaps not -- the scene cuts instead to the aftermath. The flames have died down, the carapace-dog-thing is gone, the ground is littered with orange feathers and yellow blood, and the normal Dave stands over his guardian's body. The corpse is pinned to the earth by his own katana, impaled straight through his chest.]
Tammee: The story quickly became one of tragedy and difficult choices. Fortunately, the players of this session were aided by those of another, a group of Trolls, whose session was ruined by the same being. [More links popping up, leading to articles on the Troll species based on what was learned from the Thresh Prince and the station's research into Dave's past.]
[Dave's face is stony and unreadable as he speaks out loud to narrate for the voice-to-text feature in his computerized shades. Helpfully, the screen cuts between him and the obnoxious text on his shades that he's responding to.]
GC: DONT B3 SO M3LODR4M4T1C
Dave: Whoops, ok, in the future I'll try not to pitch any sort of dramatics while brooding over the cadavers of slaughtered loved ones.
GC: D1D YOU LOV3 H1M D4V3?
Dave: No.
[Cut to a temple of red stone, an altar-like slab set in the middle of it. The slab is marked with the same red gear symbol Dave wears on his chest in the outfit he uses as his Legion costume. He stands over it, a sword in hand, while on it lays...another Dave, this one in a bright green suit and soundly asleep. The not-sleeping Dave appears to be speaking to the same obnoxious text person again.]
Dave: Why wouldn't I be concerned about that? If we make mistakes then dead Daves start piling up. And dead Daves are the enemy, remember? ...Says the sword-holding guy who's about to add one to the pile.
GC: 1M JUST S4Y1NG
GC: 1T 1SNT 34SY FOR 4NYON3 TO F4C3 TH31R OWN D34TH
GC: 3V3N 1F TH3 CONS3QU3NC3 1S TO TH31R B3N3F1T
[The conversation appears to go back and forward a good while longer, but the producers don't make their viewers watch through all of that. They simply skips to the end, where the not-sleeping Dave vanishes his sword and turns away, decision made. A pair of vinyl records atop large red gears appear under his hands like floating turntables, and with a deft spin and a ticking sound Dave disappears from the scene.
The scene doesn't end there, however. The footage speeds up to the moment the other Dave wakes. He sits up, frowns with confusion, and gets up off the slab.]
Dave: Well, that was apparently pointless. Now what? ...Hello? Terezi?
[Space warps behind him with that ominous green crackling energy again. The doomed Dave spins to look just in time to see the dog-carapacian teleport in and immediately slash right through Dave's throat with its sword.
At the corner of the screen, the counter ticks up. DEATH COUNT: 2.]
Shellee: We could make a drinking game out of this, honestly.
Tammee: Shellee! [But she giggles despite the attempt at a scolding tone.]
[Cut to a new landscape of swampy greenery dotted with patches of snow, all of it steaming as it melts and rapidly evaporates in the heat of the volcano bubbling in the background. Text appears along the bottom of the screen to dub the area Land of Frost and Frogs.
A dark-haired girl with glasses in a sparkly dress that looks completely inappropriate for the environment crouches to catch a bright red frog, seemingly unconcerned with the possibility of getting mud on her pretty dress. Dave approaches carrying another two brightly colored frogs, and the girl turns to him with a bright smile. That smile fades at the sight of something over Dave's shoulder. He glances behind him to see the now-familiar silhouette of the winged dog-carapacian warping in just above the volcano. Both Dave and the girl draw their weapons from nowhere, a great red sword for him and a rifle for her.
What ensues is one hell of a fight. Dave abuses his time powers to great effect, frequently chronologically jumping around to avoid attacks and gang up on the enemy with multiple Daves at once. The dark-haired girl takes expert shots from a distance, cycling through a variety of guns. At one point Dave falls back and shoves the girl in front of him as a human shield, and for some reason this actually gives the beast pause. At another, Dave and the girl flank their foe on either side and hit it with some kind of powerful if incomprehensible powered attack, the whole scene going red, vibrating and crackling with energy as the monster is frozen solid and entire galaxies seem to flash by.
Despite it all, the fight is lost. The girl fires on the carapacian-dog-thing with an assault rifle, and it flickers with that green energy. Space warps through itself and directly behind Dave, and her bullets all strike him instead through the back. Dave drops, his white shirt heavily peppered with bulletholes and bloodstains, and with a little ding the text in the corner ticks up. DEATH COUNT: 3.
The girl's face is horrified as she abandons the fight to run to his side, and fortunately the beast seems unwilling to attack her even with her guard down. It simply stands nearby, watching with ears mournfully lowered, as she hesitates a few moments before lifting his head to kiss the bloodied corpse.
The scene cuts to a street in a dark city of deep purple buildings, the text at the bottom of the screen conveniently naming the setting Derse. A Dave dressed in what kind of looks like purple pajamas with a moon printed on the chest suddenly wakes up, sitting up in the middle of the empty street.
Mostly empty. Behind him stands another purple-garbed figure, one that's almost mistakable as another Dave for a moment. But no, this one has slightly longer hair and dark makeup, and no shades, and also breasts.
Another cut to a red tower room, a view out the window showing a small planetoid completely covered by a dark purple city gradually growing smaller in the distance. Dave and the girl who is so clearly his twin stare each other down in the middle of what seems to be an argument, judging by the agitation and distress visible on Dave's face despite his shades. His twin, however, appears solemn but determined.]
Dave: But I don't want you to die.
Rose: Help John and Jade.
Dave: This isn't right.
Rose: Then I'm not going to help you wake you up. I'll stall some more.
Dave: [Briefly, he appears angry, but it quickly gives way back to distress.] So you admit you were stalling with all that bullshit.
Rose: I said not entirely.
Dave: What do you mean?
Rose: It's going to be a long ride through all this nothingness. Maybe I just thought some company would be nice. Before it's all over.
[That appears to shut Dave up a moment, though the sorrow doesn't leave his face. They seem to talk a bit more, but the scene fast forwards a bit to the pair of them looking to the window with surprise as a carapacian climbs in. Not the winged, dog-headed monster, just a regular carapace man wielding a spear. But that's certainly bad enough, as it jabs forward with the spear while Dave and his sister are still caught off guard, catching Dave right through the chest.
Ding. DEATH COUNT: 4.
Cut back to those darkened, empty streets, where Dave once again wakes up, truly alone this time. He looks up to see a purple dot in the black void of space slowly growing smaller, mutters a curse and what sound like Rose under his breath, and launches himself into space to fly after it and his sister, a broken sword in hand.
Here the commentators decide to jump back in, giving some quick exposition over the footage of Dave flying desperately after Derse's hijacked moon.]
Tammee: As part of a complicated plan to overcome the unwinnable nature of their game session, a suicide mission was planned to blow up the Green Sun, source of the boss' powers.
Shellee: Depressing, we know. But it only gets worse! [She sounds way too upbeat. Pick up on the mood lady, goddamn.] An outside force tricked them into creating what they'd gone to destroy in the first place!
[A cut forward to back inside the tower room. Dave and his sister stand side by side over the decapitated body of the carapacian, Dave's broken sword bloodied. Together, they fly out the window and down to the center of their moon, through a tunnel leading deep into its core. They come to a great hollow, chains drifting idly from the core's walls, and at the center of that space float a pair of slabs like the one Dave had considered killing his alternate self on some time ago. One is his red slab with the gear symbol, and the other is orange and marked with a sun. The twins give each other an uncertain look before landing atop their respective slabs, and from a card they deploy The Tumor: a giant spiked ball of two halves, black and white in the shape of a yin-yang sign. Upon deploying, the halves fall apart, and what remains is a bomb.
A pair of tubes are connected to a large mechanism with a countdown displayed on it. Red and blue...something fills the two tubes respectively. At first glance it appears to be liquid, but the camera zooms in on them and they suddenly seem full of stars and space and entire galaxies. An entire universe in each tube.
The countdown is a painful wait, even just the last bit of it the viewer has to see. Dave and his sister look at each other from atop their slabs, both their expressions anxious and fearful. They hold that eye contact, neither looking as the timer hits zero and they're both wiped out in the grand detonation.
DEATH COUNT: 5.
What follows is the image of an enormous green sun forming while Shellee narrates.]
Shellee: In this endless void of space outside all universes, a space known as the Furthest Ring, temporal and spacial factors are far less constant. Paradoxically, the newly-created Green Sun has also always existed to power the boss. And because the Furthest Ring exists outside all universes, bordering the edge of every game session, travel between separate sessions and universes becomes possible if one has some way of navigating the void.
[The camera zooms back in on the surface of the Green Sun, where a pair of figures emerge dripping with the sun's molten substance, flickering through through a rainbow of colors as they revive. The process complete leaves the twins floating in the light of the sun, Dave now wearing the red clothes and cape he's known for in the Legion, his sister in orange garb with a hood over her eyes.
Before them, as if waiting for this moment, float a pair of trolls, the female in front wearing the same red and symbol as Dave.]
Tammee: Their troll friends from an alternate universe's session of the game, for instance, were able to use the nature of the Furthest Ring to bridge the gap between their sessions.
[Before greetings can even be offered, a yellowish glow appears in the distance, rapidly growing larger as its source flies near. It comes to a halt before the sun, and is revealed to be an asteroid with gray buildings built into the surface of it. On the roof of one of the buildings is a cluster of trolls, looking up as they notice this other group waiting for them by the sun. It's a motley crew, to be sure: a corpse on laid out on the roof covered in mustard-colored blood; a female troll with glowing white skin; the troll viewers would recognize as the Thresh Prince a.k.a. Karkat Vantas; a female in red glasses staring in slightly the wrong direction; and a female in orange to match Rose's, standing over a tied-up male troll in clown makeup.]
Shellee: All finally gathered together, the players of two different sessions set forth through the Furthest Ring on course to a different universe and game session entirely, where they would reunite with the rest of their friends and that session's own players, who would be familiar in their own way.
Tammee: But first, they had three years of traveling ahead of them!
Shellee: And what a three years those were. [The commentators share a delighted look, eager to share a part of the story they just know certain fans will be very excited about.] That's a lot of time for people to get to know each other, if you know what we mean.
[What follows is a brief montage of mostly, thankfully, happy scenes. Rose and the glowing ladytroll seated close together on a couch, conversing pleasantly. Two of the other female trolls arm in arm, laughing over something. Dave and Karkat seated with a little carapacian dude, chilling and drawing on the walls while the carapacian stacks cans. Dave and Karkat leaning over a book together, failing to stifle their giggles while doodling on its pages. Dave and Karkat sitting together in a pile of pillows, shoulders pressed together and deep in conversation. Karkat laughing at something Dave said, smiling for once, Dave smiling back for a moment before he seems to have been struck by some realization and absconding the fuck right outta there to Karkat's obvious confusion.
Dave barging into what must be the room Rose has claimed for herself, flopping face-down onto her bed with a distressed groan. For her part, Rose doesn't appear surprised at all by the visit and simply continues knitting as she had been.]
Dave: I think I'm gay? [His voice is small at first, anxious, but it grows in volume slows as he appears to get distracted from the anxiety by his own babbling.] I mean. Not gay. I know I had a thing for Jade and I figured we'd have something once we meet up with them again and I thought Terezi was into me and that was gonna be a thing and I was down for it, hell, Karkat was giving me shit way back over it and saying she was probably aiming for some sloppy interspecies makeouts so I was kind of anticipating it to be honest, but I guess she's more interested in hanging out with Vriska these days? And that's cool, whatever, it's totally her prerogative to hang out and date or not date whoever she wants, just--
Rose: Dave. [Mercifully, she cuts him off, setting her knitting aside finally to lay a comforting, sisterly hand on his shoulder.] Bisexuality is a thing.
[The scene cuts away before we have to witness the rest of that sibling feelings jam, thank god, to Dave and Karkat again sitting in the meteor's Can Town, much more built up now. They're not really drawing this time, just kinda sitting with chalk in their hands staring at half-finished murals and pretending that drawing is totally was is happening here. The little carapacian dude is missing, so luckily he doesn't have to experience this awkward conversation.]
Dave: So. [Is this the middle of a conversation, or is Dave just going for it point-blank? The editor has evidently decided to leave that up to interpretation.] I think. I have feelings for you...?
Karkat: [He certainly appears caught off guard, stunned and cheeks flushing just slightly red.] I thought you weren't... I thought you didn't like boys? We literally had this conversation maybe a week ago, what the actual fuck.
Dave: Yeah, I. Uh. Might be having a bit of a crisis about that? [From the slightly hysterical edge in his voice, it's probably somewhat more than "a bit".]
[Karkat, for once, appears speechless. And the viewers are again saved from whatever other awkwardness ensued there, as the scene cuts to the two boys some time later, curled up together watching a movie. Just so you know it went well in the end, of course. At some dramatic point in the movie, if the swell of music is anything to judge by, Karkat slips his hand into Dave's and Dave's face goes so red in the flickering light of the movie they're watching that it looks like he might explode. He absolutely does not let go, though.]
Shellee: Well, the fans called that one, huh?
Tammee: We all did, Shellee. Anyway, for once a plan went as intended, and everyone was reunited in the new session. Just in time, too, since it seems like a bunch more endgame bosses sprang up for the final showdown! Wow, this episode is getting long.
[Images of the various bosses in question are briefly shown. One human boy against a whole mob of green aliens. Dave's sister and her troll girlfriend, along with a pair of other humans, all taking on an Amazonian adult woman woman, her horns very long, her body generously decorated with gold jewelry, and her hair enormously long and thick and somehow never seeming to tangle as she beat down the whole group of kids. That dark-haired girl who once shot Dave full of bullets by accident, warping around cheerfully with the carapacian-dog-beast and a taller white carapacian-dog-beast, the black and white versions trying very hard to kill each other. One of the troll girls from the meteor trip, leading an army of trolls with empty eyes against a green, hulking monster with a skull-like head.
Cut to a rooftop on a new world entirely, the text on screen labeling it Land of Tombs and Krypton. The sky is greenish and the planet's surface far before the roof of this building is obscured in a thick haze of gas. Dave sits at the edge of the roof, and next to him is...huh. The guy wears a maroon outfit with a heart symbol on the chest, and appears about the same age as Dave. But in everything else, from the way his pale hair spikes out in the back to his distinctive pointed shades, the guy is clearly Dave's guardian. Just...younger.]
Shellee: This new session of the game came from an alternate version of the same universe our hero originally came from. And the players of this session were the alternate universe versions of the original group's guardians, their genetic predecessors.
[Dave and Dirk sit in silence for a minute or so. It's not super comfortable, but it's not uncomfortable either. It feels like a great deal has just been said, far more than this news segment has time to go into. After a long pause, Dave breaks the silence, shoulders hunching up slightly.]
Dave: Hey. Sorry about this.
Dirk: What?
Dave: [Awkwardly, Dave leans over -- too far over, they're not sitting close enough together for this but it's too late, he's already doing it -- and wraps his arms around his brother(?).] For what I'm doing now. This bullshit right here.
Dirk: Oh. Wh...
Dave: It's. It's really fucked up of me. What I'm presently doing. So...sorry about that.
Dirk: [This younger Dirk, at least, seems to understand. Whatever feeling this is that's being communicated. And evidently they speak the same awkward language, because he nods.] Oh, y-- Yeah. Man. This is some fucked up shit alright.
Dave: I know.
Dirk: [With only a little hesitation, Dave's brother returns the hug.] But it's cool. Don't worry about it.
[The scene shifts forwards a short while, the same rooftop, but the brothers have been joined by the troll girl with red glasses, and the three of them stand with weapons drawn, eyeing down the two figures hovering overhead.
They're...both the carapacian-dog-thing. But not. It's the same carapacian, but minus the dog and wings and tentacles and whatnot. One version of it is dressed like a mobster and wielding a large golden staff, half its body replaced by robotic parts. The other is splattered in bright red blood from what look like fresh impromptu surgeries, one leg replaced with a golden peg and both eyes swapped for pool balls that rapidly shift in color and number.
Whatever they are, a fight ensues. And it's a messy thing to behold. The brothers and the troll girl appear to be fighting both of the carapacians at the same time, and the carapacians are fighting them back, but mostly they seem intent on fighting each other. Dirk is at one point shot thoroughly full of bullets by a gun pulled out by the mobster-carapace, but Dave and the troll girl do some kind of combo technique that invokes a rewound ticking sound, reverses everything that had occurred, and sets them both up to better defend the no-longer dead Dirk. At another point, a section of space appears to shatter as a fridge wrapped in chains is thrown through it, and all the combatants are temporarily confused and stunned as a giant green alien chases a ghostly red troll dude through the same hole in space and nearly tramples everyone trying to take a swing at him before they disappear back through the same hole, leaving the fridge behind.
In the battle's final moments, the bloody carapacian lands a hard swing up Dirk's jaw with a crowbar, and in the human's dizziness, catches him from behind with the crowbar wrapped around to trap him in. Dirk gets his sword up in time to keep the crowbar off his throat, but he's weakened and trapped. And upon seeing the other carapacian left open for attack, the mobster version leaps in to catch his alternate self around the neck with the golden staff.
It's a hell of a setup. Dirk appears frazzled for a moment, but his face smooths over into a stony resignation, and he gives Dave a meaningful look. Across the rooftop, Dave catches that look with a stunned expression before steeling himself. He sets his jaw, and launches himself forward with his sword drawn.
With one slash, he cuts through all three necks at once. Three heads roll.
None have the time to make it to the ground, though. With a rush of ticking, a pair of Daves appear to catch his brother's head and body before quickly disappearing, and the original Dave snags the troll girl before doing the same, just as the bloodied carapacian's head explodes like a nuke and takes out the greater mass of the planet with it.]
Tammee: Against all odds, all their enemies were defeated.
[The aftermath the scene cuts to next is remarkably cheerful. Dave lays his brother's body and head out back on a platform floating in a black abyss of space, and a girl in beige looks horrified only for a moment before frowning and coming over to press hands glowing with a blue light to the seam of head and shoulders. The skin appears to stitch itself back together under her hands, Dirk suddenly jerks with a drawn breath, and after a moment Dave is helping him sit up with a relieved smile. Friends and family reunite on that platform, rushing each other for relieved hugs. Dave throws an arm around Karkat's shoulder, grinning as the troll begins telling him about something.]
Shellee: And somehow, three broken sessions of the game were overcome in order to claim a victory, a create a new universe.
[In the midst of all these reunions and revivals, a red wall vaguely shaped like a house stands at the back of the platform. It flashes a few minutes into the celebrations, seems to spin, and suddenly turns white, a door appearing in the middle of it. The whole group turns to the girl who'd kissed Dave back to life way back when (who now has white dog ears, go figure). In her hand floats a shrunk down planet covered in water. Dave lays a hand over the top of it, and with a ticking sound the planet seems to rapidly rush forward through its own timeline by millennia. Plates shift, earth rises again from beneath the waves, greenery grows. In minutes, the planet's conditions resemble Earth.
Their planet prepared, a boy in blue grins and turns to the door, reaching for the handle. The screen goes white...and cuts back to Shellee and Tammee at their desk.]
Shellee: I've gotta say, Tammee, when it came to this particular newbie Legionnaire, I wasn't expecting a story like this.
Tammee: I know what you mean, Shellee. From dying repeatedly to terraforming planets and creating universes, that was quite the backstory! But was it heroic enough? We'll leave that for you viewers to decide!
Shellee: For more Legion action, be sure to keep tuning in! This is Shellee Star!
Tammee: And Tammee Tim!
Both: And this was Legionnaire Legacies!
Shellee: I'm Shellee Star! [That would be the pink one.]
Tammee: And I'm Tammee Tim! [That would be the blue one.]
Shellee: We're here today to bring you another episode of Legion Watch: Legionnaire Legacies! Today we'll be covering a Legionnaire that seems to provoke widely-varied reactions from fans. You either love his sense of humor and laid-back attitude, or think he's a bit too laid-back and highly unprofessional.
Tammee: Known for an apparent obsession with the color red, those ever-present shades, and a groan-inducing punny codename: Justin Time!
Shellee: Ladies and gentle-beings, we would like to warn you that today's episode of Legion Watch has some content containing extreme violence that may be considered graphic and disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.
Shellee: Raised by an eccentric guardian, Justin Time -- a.k.a. Dave Strider -- was trained from childhood for the trials that would await him in his future.
[A panning shot of a city, which text at the bottom of the screen labels Houston, Texas. Earth, 2009. Zoom in on one particular apartment building, and then to the roof of it, where a fight is happening. Or perhaps it's sparring. Really, it's more of a beatdown. The Dave here is younger than the one in the Legion by several years, still a child even by spacefuture standards. He's thoroughly scuffed-up and brandishes a sword against a tall, leanly-muscled man in pointed shades. The man also wields a sword, and doesn't have a scratch on him. Text across the screen identifies him as Dirk Strider.
The man -- Dave's guardian, evidently -- makes a slight movement, and Dave darts to the side, either a preemptive dodge or an attempt at a counter. It's a vain attempt, whatever it was. When the man moves, it's so fast he's barely visible. Suddenly he's behind Dave and slamming him to the paved rooftop with an elbow.
The scene shifts before we have to see any more of that fight. Inside their apartment, which is littered with strange plush dolls and puppets, DJing equipment, and various weapons. Standing in the kitchen, its counters covered in knives and throwing stars and whatnot, Dave opens the fridge, only to have to jump back with a curse to avoid the jumble of blades that comes clattering out of it. He frowns just faintly at the mess of shitty swords before closing the fridge and retreating to his room -- also a mess, but without the puppets and with far fewer swords. He instead retrieves a bag of chips from a small stock of snacks at the back of his closet before settling in at his computer. There are already messages on his screen on some instant messaging client, text in bright green and blue and purple.]
Tammee: The trials in question would take the form of a video game, one that turned out to be the harbinger of the planet's -- and the entire universe's -- destruction.
[Various shots of locations around the world being pummeled by meteors of various sizes.]
Shellee: There would be no way to save the world from this apocalypse. Only playing the game as intended offered any chance of escaping the destruction.
[Cut back to the roof, Dave and his guardian squaring off for another match. This time, the city behind is in flames, the occasional meteor rocketing down out of the hazy Texan summer sky to impact elsewhere in the city.
The fight is as one-sided as the previous. His guardian doesn't even seem to be taking it seriously at first, manipulating a particularly unsettling puppet with his crazy speed and attacking with that instead. It isn't even that Dave seems unskilled, but against this foe he appears outmatched. After a stretch of fighting, Dave makes an attempt to flee, only to be cut off and forced to put up his sword again. A flurry of blows, and the man flashsteps in with the puppet to slam him down a staircase. Dave staggers back up and hurries back up to the roof after a few minutes, and it's a quick fight after that. In one strike, the man shatters Dave's sword and tosses him across the rooftop.
Dave remains where he slides to a stop, bruised and battered and winded, and eventually a shadow hovers just briefly over him. A pair of CD sleeves are dropped onto Dave's chest, and then his guardian is gone.
Groaning, Dave summons a smartphone to his hand -- that's how it looks, anyway, and the thing just suddenly appears there. He shoots off a quick message before picking himself back up, grabbing the discs and hurrying back to his room to install the game on them. Outside his window, the world seems to be on fire.
A cut to Dave in his room on his computer. It looks at first like he could be playing the Sims, except, the house and person on his screen are very much real and live. Just barely visible on his screen is a blonde girl dashing about a modern-looking house while outside her windows fires and storms rage. Dave maipulates her environment in real time, dropping strange machines from an inventory on his screen right into various rooms of her home, building stairs up to the roof for her with a few clicks of his mouse. Cut to Dave on his roof in front of one of those machines, a glowing orange bird with a sword impaled through it hovering before him. Cut to some fussing around with a different machine, where an orange egg the size of Dave's head suddenly appears. The bird darts forward to snatch it up before Dave can get near it, and he only frowns slightly before pulling his phone out to message someone while the bird gets cozy with the egg up in a nest made of random garbage atop a large antenna.
Cut to an upward shot of the antenna atop the apartment building. Dave climbs the structure with grit teeth, while in the background small meteors crash down all around. Above, the sky darkens as an enormous meteor suddenly breaks through the thick haze of smoke above, aimed squarely at Dave's building. The camera zooms in on a figure that appears to be...standing on top of the meteor? A closer look reveals Dave's guardian, raising a sword and swinging it down on the meteor. With a great cracking sound, it splits it half, the halves falling to either side of the building. The force of it knocks Dave's grip loose and he falls--
--but it was just enough bought time. A shot of the egg cracking, and then suddenly a wide shot of the whole building glowing before the whole screen goes white.
Cut to a very new location. An ocean of lava stretches out in all directions under a black sky, structures of metal peppered across it. Giant gears grind and spin all around, as additional structures, as channels for waterfalls of lava, as stepping stones and platforms across the fiery sea. Text appears at the bottom of the screen to label this place Land of Heat and Clockwork. In the center of it all, the top of Dave's apartment building it set atop a structure of metal beams.]
Shellee: This began a harrowing journey for our hero and his friends. In Dave's case, he was forced to face himself, quite literally.
[Cut to a scene on the rooftop. Dave stands in front of the glowing bird ghost...thing, the remains of his brother's puppet in one hand while he types on a smartphone with the other. Suddenly, and with an echoed ticking sound, another Dave appears in front of him. This one is faintly thinner, hair slightly longer, and wearing a snazzy white suit. The chill manner is just the same, though.]
Other Dave: Hey, I'm you from the future. Tell John not to go or he'll die.
[A beat, and Dave simply nods, cool as can be.
He goes right back to typing on his phone. After a few moments he purses his lips with faint frustration and future Dave joins in on the instant messaging with what looks like a voice-to-text function on a screen displayed directly on his shades. He mutters to his shades for a bit before nodding, closing the program, and unequipping all his gear -- he crouches and several stacks of colorful cards appear in front of him at the same time his clothing suddenly swaps to the same simple tee and skinny jeans the comparatively-past Dave is wearing. Then, smoothly, he backflips right into the glowing bird ghost thing.
A flash of light, and they seem to have fused. What remains is a feathery, ghostly glowing orange Dave with wings and a sword through his chest.
Yep.
A cut to a new scene some small amount of time later. Dave is decked out in a plush-looking red suit and come back into his room to find a broken window, and his own dead body. The corpse is so thoroughly blood-splattered that it's hard to tell what killed him, but a helpful zoom in on the body makes a stab wound in his chest clear.
At the bottom corner of the screen, a counter labeled DEATH COUNT appears and ticks up to 1 with a little ding. Dave stares at the body a long moment, expression stiff and unreadable, before he wordlessly grabs it under the arms, drags it to the broken window, and unceremoniously shoves it out. The camera shifts to an outside view to show the corpse fall several stories before disappearing into the lava below.]
Tammee: The game they played was that reality's mechanism for the culling of universes that had reached the end of their lifespan and the creation of new ones. [As she speaks, links to more in-depth explanations and analyses pop up over shots of Dave fighting off strange monsters that burst into gemstones upon death.] In a standard session, the players would progress through the game, create the seed for their new universe, and achieve victory after defeating the final boss, at which point they could take their place in the new universe as its creator-gods.
Shellee: However, due to some rather complicated circumstances, our hero's session of the game became unwinnable. The final boss, unbeatable.
[A cut to the ghostly winged Dave fighting alongside his guardian on in a flaming landscape. The enemy is humanoid in shape but all black, covered in a smooth exoskeleton. It has wings and tentacles and wields a sword, and uses all of these to fend off the brothers' attacks. It's a hectic fight, but they seem evenly matched.
Then, a pause, as the carapace-man hunches over, convulsing as it morphs. Its face becomes canine, its hands clawed, and it seems to flicker with a bright green energy.
Suddenly, it warps.
Appearing behind the feathery Dave, it slashes downward straight through a wing. That Dave cries out and turns to face it, only to receive a vicious swipe across his midsection. Glowing yellow blood splatters across the stone beneath them, and the monster turns on Dave's guardian.
Mercifully -- or perhaps not -- the scene cuts instead to the aftermath. The flames have died down, the carapace-dog-thing is gone, the ground is littered with orange feathers and yellow blood, and the normal Dave stands over his guardian's body. The corpse is pinned to the earth by his own katana, impaled straight through his chest.]
Tammee: The story quickly became one of tragedy and difficult choices. Fortunately, the players of this session were aided by those of another, a group of Trolls, whose session was ruined by the same being. [More links popping up, leading to articles on the Troll species based on what was learned from the Thresh Prince and the station's research into Dave's past.]
[Dave's face is stony and unreadable as he speaks out loud to narrate for the voice-to-text feature in his computerized shades. Helpfully, the screen cuts between him and the obnoxious text on his shades that he's responding to.]
GC: DONT B3 SO M3LODR4M4T1C
Dave: Whoops, ok, in the future I'll try not to pitch any sort of dramatics while brooding over the cadavers of slaughtered loved ones.
GC: D1D YOU LOV3 H1M D4V3?
Dave: No.
[Cut to a temple of red stone, an altar-like slab set in the middle of it. The slab is marked with the same red gear symbol Dave wears on his chest in the outfit he uses as his Legion costume. He stands over it, a sword in hand, while on it lays...another Dave, this one in a bright green suit and soundly asleep. The not-sleeping Dave appears to be speaking to the same obnoxious text person again.]
Dave: Why wouldn't I be concerned about that? If we make mistakes then dead Daves start piling up. And dead Daves are the enemy, remember? ...Says the sword-holding guy who's about to add one to the pile.
GC: 1M JUST S4Y1NG
GC: 1T 1SNT 34SY FOR 4NYON3 TO F4C3 TH31R OWN D34TH
GC: 3V3N 1F TH3 CONS3QU3NC3 1S TO TH31R B3N3F1T
[The conversation appears to go back and forward a good while longer, but the producers don't make their viewers watch through all of that. They simply skips to the end, where the not-sleeping Dave vanishes his sword and turns away, decision made. A pair of vinyl records atop large red gears appear under his hands like floating turntables, and with a deft spin and a ticking sound Dave disappears from the scene.
The scene doesn't end there, however. The footage speeds up to the moment the other Dave wakes. He sits up, frowns with confusion, and gets up off the slab.]
Dave: Well, that was apparently pointless. Now what? ...Hello? Terezi?
[Space warps behind him with that ominous green crackling energy again. The doomed Dave spins to look just in time to see the dog-carapacian teleport in and immediately slash right through Dave's throat with its sword.
At the corner of the screen, the counter ticks up. DEATH COUNT: 2.]
Shellee: We could make a drinking game out of this, honestly.
Tammee: Shellee! [But she giggles despite the attempt at a scolding tone.]
[Cut to a new landscape of swampy greenery dotted with patches of snow, all of it steaming as it melts and rapidly evaporates in the heat of the volcano bubbling in the background. Text appears along the bottom of the screen to dub the area Land of Frost and Frogs.
A dark-haired girl with glasses in a sparkly dress that looks completely inappropriate for the environment crouches to catch a bright red frog, seemingly unconcerned with the possibility of getting mud on her pretty dress. Dave approaches carrying another two brightly colored frogs, and the girl turns to him with a bright smile. That smile fades at the sight of something over Dave's shoulder. He glances behind him to see the now-familiar silhouette of the winged dog-carapacian warping in just above the volcano. Both Dave and the girl draw their weapons from nowhere, a great red sword for him and a rifle for her.
What ensues is one hell of a fight. Dave abuses his time powers to great effect, frequently chronologically jumping around to avoid attacks and gang up on the enemy with multiple Daves at once. The dark-haired girl takes expert shots from a distance, cycling through a variety of guns. At one point Dave falls back and shoves the girl in front of him as a human shield, and for some reason this actually gives the beast pause. At another, Dave and the girl flank their foe on either side and hit it with some kind of powerful if incomprehensible powered attack, the whole scene going red, vibrating and crackling with energy as the monster is frozen solid and entire galaxies seem to flash by.
Despite it all, the fight is lost. The girl fires on the carapacian-dog-thing with an assault rifle, and it flickers with that green energy. Space warps through itself and directly behind Dave, and her bullets all strike him instead through the back. Dave drops, his white shirt heavily peppered with bulletholes and bloodstains, and with a little ding the text in the corner ticks up. DEATH COUNT: 3.
The girl's face is horrified as she abandons the fight to run to his side, and fortunately the beast seems unwilling to attack her even with her guard down. It simply stands nearby, watching with ears mournfully lowered, as she hesitates a few moments before lifting his head to kiss the bloodied corpse.
The scene cuts to a street in a dark city of deep purple buildings, the text at the bottom of the screen conveniently naming the setting Derse. A Dave dressed in what kind of looks like purple pajamas with a moon printed on the chest suddenly wakes up, sitting up in the middle of the empty street.
Mostly empty. Behind him stands another purple-garbed figure, one that's almost mistakable as another Dave for a moment. But no, this one has slightly longer hair and dark makeup, and no shades, and also breasts.
Another cut to a red tower room, a view out the window showing a small planetoid completely covered by a dark purple city gradually growing smaller in the distance. Dave and the girl who is so clearly his twin stare each other down in the middle of what seems to be an argument, judging by the agitation and distress visible on Dave's face despite his shades. His twin, however, appears solemn but determined.]
Dave: But I don't want you to die.
Rose: Help John and Jade.
Dave: This isn't right.
Rose: Then I'm not going to help you wake you up. I'll stall some more.
Dave: [Briefly, he appears angry, but it quickly gives way back to distress.] So you admit you were stalling with all that bullshit.
Rose: I said not entirely.
Dave: What do you mean?
Rose: It's going to be a long ride through all this nothingness. Maybe I just thought some company would be nice. Before it's all over.
[That appears to shut Dave up a moment, though the sorrow doesn't leave his face. They seem to talk a bit more, but the scene fast forwards a bit to the pair of them looking to the window with surprise as a carapacian climbs in. Not the winged, dog-headed monster, just a regular carapace man wielding a spear. But that's certainly bad enough, as it jabs forward with the spear while Dave and his sister are still caught off guard, catching Dave right through the chest.
Ding. DEATH COUNT: 4.
Cut back to those darkened, empty streets, where Dave once again wakes up, truly alone this time. He looks up to see a purple dot in the black void of space slowly growing smaller, mutters a curse and what sound like Rose under his breath, and launches himself into space to fly after it and his sister, a broken sword in hand.
Here the commentators decide to jump back in, giving some quick exposition over the footage of Dave flying desperately after Derse's hijacked moon.]
Tammee: As part of a complicated plan to overcome the unwinnable nature of their game session, a suicide mission was planned to blow up the Green Sun, source of the boss' powers.
Shellee: Depressing, we know. But it only gets worse! [She sounds way too upbeat. Pick up on the mood lady, goddamn.] An outside force tricked them into creating what they'd gone to destroy in the first place!
[A cut forward to back inside the tower room. Dave and his sister stand side by side over the decapitated body of the carapacian, Dave's broken sword bloodied. Together, they fly out the window and down to the center of their moon, through a tunnel leading deep into its core. They come to a great hollow, chains drifting idly from the core's walls, and at the center of that space float a pair of slabs like the one Dave had considered killing his alternate self on some time ago. One is his red slab with the gear symbol, and the other is orange and marked with a sun. The twins give each other an uncertain look before landing atop their respective slabs, and from a card they deploy The Tumor: a giant spiked ball of two halves, black and white in the shape of a yin-yang sign. Upon deploying, the halves fall apart, and what remains is a bomb.
A pair of tubes are connected to a large mechanism with a countdown displayed on it. Red and blue...something fills the two tubes respectively. At first glance it appears to be liquid, but the camera zooms in on them and they suddenly seem full of stars and space and entire galaxies. An entire universe in each tube.
The countdown is a painful wait, even just the last bit of it the viewer has to see. Dave and his sister look at each other from atop their slabs, both their expressions anxious and fearful. They hold that eye contact, neither looking as the timer hits zero and they're both wiped out in the grand detonation.
DEATH COUNT: 5.
What follows is the image of an enormous green sun forming while Shellee narrates.]
Shellee: In this endless void of space outside all universes, a space known as the Furthest Ring, temporal and spacial factors are far less constant. Paradoxically, the newly-created Green Sun has also always existed to power the boss. And because the Furthest Ring exists outside all universes, bordering the edge of every game session, travel between separate sessions and universes becomes possible if one has some way of navigating the void.
[The camera zooms back in on the surface of the Green Sun, where a pair of figures emerge dripping with the sun's molten substance, flickering through through a rainbow of colors as they revive. The process complete leaves the twins floating in the light of the sun, Dave now wearing the red clothes and cape he's known for in the Legion, his sister in orange garb with a hood over her eyes.
Before them, as if waiting for this moment, float a pair of trolls, the female in front wearing the same red and symbol as Dave.]
Tammee: Their troll friends from an alternate universe's session of the game, for instance, were able to use the nature of the Furthest Ring to bridge the gap between their sessions.
[Before greetings can even be offered, a yellowish glow appears in the distance, rapidly growing larger as its source flies near. It comes to a halt before the sun, and is revealed to be an asteroid with gray buildings built into the surface of it. On the roof of one of the buildings is a cluster of trolls, looking up as they notice this other group waiting for them by the sun. It's a motley crew, to be sure: a corpse on laid out on the roof covered in mustard-colored blood; a female troll with glowing white skin; the troll viewers would recognize as the Thresh Prince a.k.a. Karkat Vantas; a female in red glasses staring in slightly the wrong direction; and a female in orange to match Rose's, standing over a tied-up male troll in clown makeup.]
Shellee: All finally gathered together, the players of two different sessions set forth through the Furthest Ring on course to a different universe and game session entirely, where they would reunite with the rest of their friends and that session's own players, who would be familiar in their own way.
Tammee: But first, they had three years of traveling ahead of them!
Shellee: And what a three years those were. [The commentators share a delighted look, eager to share a part of the story they just know certain fans will be very excited about.] That's a lot of time for people to get to know each other, if you know what we mean.
[What follows is a brief montage of mostly, thankfully, happy scenes. Rose and the glowing ladytroll seated close together on a couch, conversing pleasantly. Two of the other female trolls arm in arm, laughing over something. Dave and Karkat seated with a little carapacian dude, chilling and drawing on the walls while the carapacian stacks cans. Dave and Karkat leaning over a book together, failing to stifle their giggles while doodling on its pages. Dave and Karkat sitting together in a pile of pillows, shoulders pressed together and deep in conversation. Karkat laughing at something Dave said, smiling for once, Dave smiling back for a moment before he seems to have been struck by some realization and absconding the fuck right outta there to Karkat's obvious confusion.
Dave barging into what must be the room Rose has claimed for herself, flopping face-down onto her bed with a distressed groan. For her part, Rose doesn't appear surprised at all by the visit and simply continues knitting as she had been.]
Dave: I think I'm gay? [His voice is small at first, anxious, but it grows in volume slows as he appears to get distracted from the anxiety by his own babbling.] I mean. Not gay. I know I had a thing for Jade and I figured we'd have something once we meet up with them again and I thought Terezi was into me and that was gonna be a thing and I was down for it, hell, Karkat was giving me shit way back over it and saying she was probably aiming for some sloppy interspecies makeouts so I was kind of anticipating it to be honest, but I guess she's more interested in hanging out with Vriska these days? And that's cool, whatever, it's totally her prerogative to hang out and date or not date whoever she wants, just--
Rose: Dave. [Mercifully, she cuts him off, setting her knitting aside finally to lay a comforting, sisterly hand on his shoulder.] Bisexuality is a thing.
[The scene cuts away before we have to witness the rest of that sibling feelings jam, thank god, to Dave and Karkat again sitting in the meteor's Can Town, much more built up now. They're not really drawing this time, just kinda sitting with chalk in their hands staring at half-finished murals and pretending that drawing is totally was is happening here. The little carapacian dude is missing, so luckily he doesn't have to experience this awkward conversation.]
Dave: So. [Is this the middle of a conversation, or is Dave just going for it point-blank? The editor has evidently decided to leave that up to interpretation.] I think. I have feelings for you...?
Karkat: [He certainly appears caught off guard, stunned and cheeks flushing just slightly red.] I thought you weren't... I thought you didn't like boys? We literally had this conversation maybe a week ago, what the actual fuck.
Dave: Yeah, I. Uh. Might be having a bit of a crisis about that? [From the slightly hysterical edge in his voice, it's probably somewhat more than "a bit".]
[Karkat, for once, appears speechless. And the viewers are again saved from whatever other awkwardness ensued there, as the scene cuts to the two boys some time later, curled up together watching a movie. Just so you know it went well in the end, of course. At some dramatic point in the movie, if the swell of music is anything to judge by, Karkat slips his hand into Dave's and Dave's face goes so red in the flickering light of the movie they're watching that it looks like he might explode. He absolutely does not let go, though.]
Shellee: Well, the fans called that one, huh?
Tammee: We all did, Shellee. Anyway, for once a plan went as intended, and everyone was reunited in the new session. Just in time, too, since it seems like a bunch more endgame bosses sprang up for the final showdown! Wow, this episode is getting long.
[Images of the various bosses in question are briefly shown. One human boy against a whole mob of green aliens. Dave's sister and her troll girlfriend, along with a pair of other humans, all taking on an Amazonian adult woman woman, her horns very long, her body generously decorated with gold jewelry, and her hair enormously long and thick and somehow never seeming to tangle as she beat down the whole group of kids. That dark-haired girl who once shot Dave full of bullets by accident, warping around cheerfully with the carapacian-dog-beast and a taller white carapacian-dog-beast, the black and white versions trying very hard to kill each other. One of the troll girls from the meteor trip, leading an army of trolls with empty eyes against a green, hulking monster with a skull-like head.
Cut to a rooftop on a new world entirely, the text on screen labeling it Land of Tombs and Krypton. The sky is greenish and the planet's surface far before the roof of this building is obscured in a thick haze of gas. Dave sits at the edge of the roof, and next to him is...huh. The guy wears a maroon outfit with a heart symbol on the chest, and appears about the same age as Dave. But in everything else, from the way his pale hair spikes out in the back to his distinctive pointed shades, the guy is clearly Dave's guardian. Just...younger.]
Shellee: This new session of the game came from an alternate version of the same universe our hero originally came from. And the players of this session were the alternate universe versions of the original group's guardians, their genetic predecessors.
[Dave and Dirk sit in silence for a minute or so. It's not super comfortable, but it's not uncomfortable either. It feels like a great deal has just been said, far more than this news segment has time to go into. After a long pause, Dave breaks the silence, shoulders hunching up slightly.]
Dave: Hey. Sorry about this.
Dirk: What?
Dave: [Awkwardly, Dave leans over -- too far over, they're not sitting close enough together for this but it's too late, he's already doing it -- and wraps his arms around his brother(?).] For what I'm doing now. This bullshit right here.
Dirk: Oh. Wh...
Dave: It's. It's really fucked up of me. What I'm presently doing. So...sorry about that.
Dirk: [This younger Dirk, at least, seems to understand. Whatever feeling this is that's being communicated. And evidently they speak the same awkward language, because he nods.] Oh, y-- Yeah. Man. This is some fucked up shit alright.
Dave: I know.
Dirk: [With only a little hesitation, Dave's brother returns the hug.] But it's cool. Don't worry about it.
[The scene shifts forwards a short while, the same rooftop, but the brothers have been joined by the troll girl with red glasses, and the three of them stand with weapons drawn, eyeing down the two figures hovering overhead.
They're...both the carapacian-dog-thing. But not. It's the same carapacian, but minus the dog and wings and tentacles and whatnot. One version of it is dressed like a mobster and wielding a large golden staff, half its body replaced by robotic parts. The other is splattered in bright red blood from what look like fresh impromptu surgeries, one leg replaced with a golden peg and both eyes swapped for pool balls that rapidly shift in color and number.
Whatever they are, a fight ensues. And it's a messy thing to behold. The brothers and the troll girl appear to be fighting both of the carapacians at the same time, and the carapacians are fighting them back, but mostly they seem intent on fighting each other. Dirk is at one point shot thoroughly full of bullets by a gun pulled out by the mobster-carapace, but Dave and the troll girl do some kind of combo technique that invokes a rewound ticking sound, reverses everything that had occurred, and sets them both up to better defend the no-longer dead Dirk. At another point, a section of space appears to shatter as a fridge wrapped in chains is thrown through it, and all the combatants are temporarily confused and stunned as a giant green alien chases a ghostly red troll dude through the same hole in space and nearly tramples everyone trying to take a swing at him before they disappear back through the same hole, leaving the fridge behind.
In the battle's final moments, the bloody carapacian lands a hard swing up Dirk's jaw with a crowbar, and in the human's dizziness, catches him from behind with the crowbar wrapped around to trap him in. Dirk gets his sword up in time to keep the crowbar off his throat, but he's weakened and trapped. And upon seeing the other carapacian left open for attack, the mobster version leaps in to catch his alternate self around the neck with the golden staff.
It's a hell of a setup. Dirk appears frazzled for a moment, but his face smooths over into a stony resignation, and he gives Dave a meaningful look. Across the rooftop, Dave catches that look with a stunned expression before steeling himself. He sets his jaw, and launches himself forward with his sword drawn.
With one slash, he cuts through all three necks at once. Three heads roll.
None have the time to make it to the ground, though. With a rush of ticking, a pair of Daves appear to catch his brother's head and body before quickly disappearing, and the original Dave snags the troll girl before doing the same, just as the bloodied carapacian's head explodes like a nuke and takes out the greater mass of the planet with it.]
Tammee: Against all odds, all their enemies were defeated.
[The aftermath the scene cuts to next is remarkably cheerful. Dave lays his brother's body and head out back on a platform floating in a black abyss of space, and a girl in beige looks horrified only for a moment before frowning and coming over to press hands glowing with a blue light to the seam of head and shoulders. The skin appears to stitch itself back together under her hands, Dirk suddenly jerks with a drawn breath, and after a moment Dave is helping him sit up with a relieved smile. Friends and family reunite on that platform, rushing each other for relieved hugs. Dave throws an arm around Karkat's shoulder, grinning as the troll begins telling him about something.]
Shellee: And somehow, three broken sessions of the game were overcome in order to claim a victory, a create a new universe.
[In the midst of all these reunions and revivals, a red wall vaguely shaped like a house stands at the back of the platform. It flashes a few minutes into the celebrations, seems to spin, and suddenly turns white, a door appearing in the middle of it. The whole group turns to the girl who'd kissed Dave back to life way back when (who now has white dog ears, go figure). In her hand floats a shrunk down planet covered in water. Dave lays a hand over the top of it, and with a ticking sound the planet seems to rapidly rush forward through its own timeline by millennia. Plates shift, earth rises again from beneath the waves, greenery grows. In minutes, the planet's conditions resemble Earth.
Their planet prepared, a boy in blue grins and turns to the door, reaching for the handle. The screen goes white...and cuts back to Shellee and Tammee at their desk.]
Shellee: I've gotta say, Tammee, when it came to this particular newbie Legionnaire, I wasn't expecting a story like this.
Tammee: I know what you mean, Shellee. From dying repeatedly to terraforming planets and creating universes, that was quite the backstory! But was it heroic enough? We'll leave that for you viewers to decide!
Shellee: For more Legion action, be sure to keep tuning in! This is Shellee Star!
Tammee: And Tammee Tim!
Both: And this was Legionnaire Legacies!
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[SON BOY IS ALSO MAD WOW MOM COME BE MAD WITH HIM.]
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[ WHAT THE FUCK??? ]
If it is stolen, why have they not been detained? Why has it not been retrieved? The power to do this is dangerous, why is the Legion not trying to recover it and bring these people to justice?
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They're claiming that because it's not the original stolen machine that they're legally allowed to own the device, and have fabricated proof that it was invented by someone else besides myself.
I've filed a lawsuit to prohibit further use of my intellectual property without my express permission but these things take time. I have to prove in court that I was the original inventor, and that the designs are too similar for the version Neutrino News has in their possession to have been invented by someone else.
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For a purportedly advanced civilization, I find this place to be extremely backwards in its thinking at times.
Why can your design and theirs simply be compared side-by-side? If they will not produce it for comparison, they admit their guilt, and are imprisoned and the stolen property removed from their possession.
And how is it "legally acceptable" for them to invade the privacy of people's lives without their consent? They should be shut down and punished for that, even if the device is not cause enough.
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As for their intrusions, it's murky legal ground due to the nature of the events taking place in entirely different universes.
We're working on it, but I foresee an exceptionally long case, if only for the fact that explaining the mechanics behind the devices in a way for a judge and jury to understand will be time-consuming.
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And if we are fighting for these people and this universe, I do not see how anyone who claims to be in any way good or fair could consider us fair game simply because we come from somewhere else. We risk our lives for them. One of our number has died for them. Why should they get the right to dredge up our secrets and tell them to the galaxy?
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It complicates everything. Makes it more involved, means that people making accusations must furnish the appropriate proof. If this was an instance where I was making a false accusations, removing the machine based on my word alone would potentially be unfair.
That isn't the case here, and we may be able to pursue an injunction that can shut things down until trial, but the law attempts to strike an even balance between accuser and accused and it's very...imperfect.
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[ She lets out a sharp breath, and rubs her temples, as if she's fighting off a headache. ]
I apologize for my tone. I'm angry, but not at you. I trust if you could - within the constraints of your position - retrieve the device, you would. I am... protective. And, to be frank, not eager for them to focus their sights on me.
With the exception of the past fraction of my lifetime since I met Hanzo, I doubt my past would endear me to any of their viewers.