Bridging the gap? [video]

[iamresponding]

[Rich hasn't been very vocal lately. After Murderworld, especially after running into those bugs, he retreated into himself a little bit. It wasn't full moping, just thoughtfulness, and he needed some quiet time.]

[But he's got to speak up on this. He's got a perspective most don't and maybe that can help.]

Kid Q already got the lecture out of the way, so I'm not gonna do that. That isn't what this is.

In that last mission, some of us had disagreements about lethal force, and we had to sideline them because of the urgency of the situation, but it's something we still need to talk about, because those disagreements aren't going to go away.

Now, I occupy a unique position on this. I've been a meta-powered cop, a superhero, and a soldier. I've been to war. I've led an army in a war against omnicidal space bugs, and you can be damn sure I didn't have my soldiers hold back.

I didn't hold back either. I've killed more than my fair share of sentients, and when it came down to facing the intergalactic despot that ordered his army to slaughter billions, I pulled his guts out through his throat. And you know what, if given the chance to do it again, I'd do it ten thousand times over.

My point here is I get it. I've seen that side of things well enough to understand sometimes that's what it takes. The problem here is this is not warfare that we're facing. Right now, we're law enforcement. We have a mandate from this universe's government to follow their laws, and a responsibility to the public to follow their morals -- and they value life here -- and having also allied myself with some ugly customers for the sake of the common good, I know that even terrible people can sometimes find purpose and redeem themselves, so this universe valuing life enough to give at least some criminals a chance to reform ain't exactly entirely misplaced.

But whether any of us agree with that principle or not, the public trusts us to follow a certain standard and we ultimately serve them. When it comes to police work, there's levels of force. With a team of over thirty metapowered individuals, we're a small army. I don't know if any of you noticed, but even with non-lethal force we cleaned their clocks the other day, with no casualties, most of the villains detained, no civilians harmed, and minimal serious injuries.

Having that kind of power and the kind of numbers we have changes the entire ballgame, because it changes the nature of the conflicts we face. It means that villains can go to greater extremes -- extremes that in other situations would require fatal force to stop -- and we're powerful enough that we can handle those extremes. When you're a superhero, controlling battlefield conditions and preventing casualties is a lot easier than it would be without the metapowers.

I guess what I'm trying to do here is bridge the gap and try to help people understand why all this is the way it is.

Comments

[meanmonkey]

It's hard for me to understand the need to allow dangerous enemies to live. I will abide by that law, of course, but it seems reckless to me.

While redemption is possible, of course, to me it seems much more likely that we're simply allowing a threat to continue to be a danger to the people we're meant to protect.

Prisons are not impenetrable or inescapable, after all. On the other hand, death, with rare exception, is.

[iamresponding]

The ones here actually are pretty solid, is the thing. I've looked into that myself.

[He's not really the type to research things, but statistics aren't that hard to find.]

[He shares the links.]

Takron Galtos has one prison outbreak on record -- the Fatal Five. It was done by the Emerald Eye, which is pretty damn powerful and reforms every time it's destroyed, so killing it ain't even an option.

But as far as normal prison breaks go the UP has a good record. Way better than back home in my universe and time, where prisons practically have a revolving door. Before Takron Galtos, in past prisons, they had a low escape rate, too.

Their recidivism rates are also pretty good. There'll always be repeat offenders, but they have a high rate of rehabilitation. Lots of education programs, lots of support on reintegration back into society...

Crime rates in general aren't that bad. Rimbor's the only exception. It's the big crime hot spot and a lot of it is out of control but apparently the big issue is the planet was a mess before it was a UP world and crime is so entrenched in society there it'll take ages to fix it. But it's the exception that proves the rule.

[He props up his omnicom on the table next to the couch he's sitting on, and gestures with his robotic hand.]

So what kind of message does that send if we kill when we don't need to? 'Hey, your justice system has some hitches but otherwise works pretty well. We're going to ignore that and kill people we could possibly just arrest 'cause we're uncomfortable with putting them in prisons they probably actually won't break out of.'

[whyarewehere]

Can I put a PS on this?

[ Too late he's already doing it. ]

PS: Killing people is actually kind of hard. Me and some guys tried to do it once and it took forever. Save yourselves the misery, seriously.

[turntex]

seriously??
dude it is disturbingly easy what the fuck were you even doing

[goddamngrenades]

Gotta say, buddy, I am trying to imagining you...putting effort into anything violent and coming up empty.

[iamresponding]

[Rich also knows that Grif is talking about it being hard in general, not hard morally]

Grif, that's just 'cause while you're good at some things, you're also really, really bad at other things. Like leaving the rest of us chocolate Kreen cups in the 56th level vending machine.

[They all know that's you always clearing it out, Grif.]

[video]

[saltsweet]

Whether it's permissible for us to use lethal force is pretty key to whether or not the Legion is a true peacekeeping force or just another private army. Maybe my memory's fuzzy, but I didn't know this was a point of contention in the Legion.

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[iamresponding]

We're getting new people all the time, with all different backgrounds. I think we all had different thoughts on it, but recently it's started to become more of an issue.

[He shrugs.]

Which is natural when so many of us are being thrown together like this. The more of us there are, the more varied our experiences are gonna be, the harder we're gonna have to work to make sure we see eye to eye.

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[a_shadow]

I just got here so I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of the whole argument but I have a lot of experience with killing people and finding out they were the wrong people in the aftermath

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[legionnpcs]

[Ferro can't help but speak up here because Tex is completely on the nose and they all narrowly avoided that very situation -- killing someone who was the wrong person -- on the mission.]

That could've happened in the fight in the studio. Umbra is down at Earthgov Medicenter right now, talking to Dyrk's parents and the doctors, trying to figure out what happened to Dyrk. He's completely delirious and he's -- he never would've turned on us on his own. She said he even attacked a doctor, like he still thought he was in a fight, but talked about it like he thought he was protecting her from a bad guy.

It looks like they did something to him, to make him be "Cosmic King." Saturn Queen probably messed with his mind, so if any of you had assumed he was genuinely a bad guy and a traitor and had killed him...

He wasn't active duty anymore, but he's still got honorary membership. And he works for the Science Police. That means whoever did it would've killed someone who's both a Legionnaire and a police officer.

[whyarewehere]

[ Oh my god what is with this place and freelancers? Grif has the tiniest heart attack anyone's ever seen for about five seconds before he records a response. ]

Well, that makes me feel a lot better about some things.

[ It's nice to see the competent badass one admitting to fucking up. ]

[walkingballpit]

I get it, Rich. I do. I'm not judging anybody for things they did, but ... this is still the hill I'm going to die on. Because I don't know if I can trust people. Cue one of the old guard saying that makes me a weak link.

[unrecovered]

Okay, I'll bite: why do you think you can't trust us? Because we have killed, or because we see killing as a viable solution?

[As far as Wash is concerned, it'll always be a viable solution; the rules just dictate that it's the last one.]

[iamresponding]

Robbie, there's a middle ground here. I know you have a lot of reasons it sets you off when people are all gung ho about killing people on supposed peacekeeping missions.

I mean...y'know. My, uh, welcome home from the war sure was something. And you had to be side by side with that, in a way where you were all caught up and trapped in it.

[He keeps things vague because all the business with the Thunderbolts was nasty, and he doesn't want to make Robbie look bad. He also tries to make it clear that he doesn't blame Robbie for putting him through a truck and collapsing a building on him. Robbie was trapped, tangled up a whole lot of badness. And very lost at the time. He's trying to make it sound like Penance putting Rich through a wall was a bad thing that happened to Robbie, not a bad thing Robbie did to him.]

How you feel about it is understandable, and I agree that people need to at least get on the same page with why the Legion does it that way. But it also doesn't mean they're inherently untrustworthy, either.

I mean, I've killed bad guys, just like them. I've fought in a war just like them.

So how'm I any different?

[goddamngrenades]

Part of the new guard saying this makes you idealistic, not weak- but it does kinda limit potential matchups for fieldwork and that goes both ways. I got a pretty solid reason to not want someone at my back that doesn't trust me based on my life experiences and knee jerk reactions when I see my CO gett'n the shit kicked out of them on what equates to universal televised entertainment.

It ain't wrong, either side, but it does put a damper on post op chilling and shit.

[video]

[jonesiseverywhere]

I dunno man, I been running with deadly ninjas as a vigilante for years now and we never killed anyone. I don't get why you would except because they get in your way, and that's a total bad guy move. I mean, you can't be the good guy and do bad guy things.

Re: [video]

[gonebyebye]

Are they really deadly ninjas if they've never killed anybody?

I'm honestly curious here. I've only met four ninjas before. And they were giant turtles, so they weren't exactly your garden-variety ninjas.

[video]

[isthisapidge]

What I do back home is a war -we call it a war- and it's not that different from what we do here. It's hard to see where the line is when the universe values life and your enemy doesn't.

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[iamresponding]

It is. [He's not going to disagree with that, and his voice is gentle.]

In the war I fought, the enemy wanted to kill every other life that wasn't them, wanted to destroy every planet. Galactic civilization all but collapsed, billions died.

And me? I lost friends and allies. I sent men off to die and had to deal with the fact that the war was so bad that they were honored to die in a way that was tactical instead of pointless, like that was the best they could get. I even lost a leg. Had to get a new one cloned.

Mercy towards the enemy was a luxury. That's not true of every war -- sometimes you can take people as POWs, but it's true of a lot of 'em, especially the ones where you're outnumbered and outmatched.

But that isn't this situation. We're at war with Chronoblivio,n and with how powerful the Heralds are, with how powerful Chronoblivion is, I don't think it'll be much of a problem if we do what we have to.

But we're not at war with the rest of the universe. And what the people of the UP need from us isn't just survival.

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[unrecovered]

See, this is why people respect you.

[Let's talk about literally nothing Rich addressed in his speech!]

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[iamresponding]

Nah, I probably just sound like just some preachy yutz to some of these people. Especially after Kid Q already chimed in.

Robbie's one of my best friends and even he can't see it from the other side.

For good reason. He's...he's been through a lot.

Still, I just wish everyone could see it from both sides.

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[nofortunateson]

New guy here (with zero law enforcement experience but a lot of familiarity with lethal force) and thanks for putting this perspective out there. It's good to hear someone who's been on both sides. When you've just been on one it's hard to imagine the other, and I know that the idea of never killing an enemy combatant has been a lot stranger for me than suddenly having superpowers.

That said, what is there in the way of training? I don't mind plugging people with stun rounds all day, but minimal-damage conflict resolution isn't in my usual wheelhouse and a few pointers wouldn't go amiss. I can't imagine I'm the only one.

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[iamresponding]

Fortunately, there's a lot. They don't half-ass it by throwing us into this cold.

The native Legionnaires have us doing daily lessons and regular training sessions. Especially powers control, which is one of the most important things you can learn. With metapowers, the thresholds in your levels of force are going to be different. You can use your powers to have a lot more control over battlefield conditions so that lethal force isn't necessary as often.

For instance, if we're facing someone with a gun to a hostage's head, without powers, we'd probably need a sniper making a kill shot. But with powers, we could have one of our telekinetics freeze them in place so they can't pull the trigger, and just move them away from the hostage.

So they've got us all training daily on that stuff. Pretty heavily. Umbra handles the powers training, Karate Kid's on hand-to-hand, Timber Wolf does some field training when you're still new. Then alongside the lessons, there's regular group training sessions.

They also encourage us to train each other if we've got extra skills, combat styles, or experience to offer. For instance, some of us with similar powers train each other if one of us is more experienced with them. And others have experience with things like espionage or tactics that they pass along.

If anyone ever wants to pick my brain on the police stuff, they're welcome to. My experience wasn't exactly typical since the police force I was a part of was one of the casualties of the war, but I was starting to rebuild the Corps from the bottom-up before I got brought here, and it gave me a lot of perspective.

Our teammate, Hal Jordan, he's also done the space cop thing, with a very organized police force. He's a good source of information and wouldn't mind you asking questions.

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[superscholar]

... Honestly? I want to chime in on this, because I think I could help. But the fact of the matter is, I'm... not sure what to even say, or where to start.

[ a beat. ]

I guess I can start by saying that I've killed before.

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[iamresponding]

A lot of us have, at this point. Killing's easy. I think adjusting and trying to be well-adjusted is the hard part.

[ringslinging]

Well, I'm glad one of us is good at this.

[ Speeches are hard, punching is easy. ]

[iamresponding]

I would not say "good." Maybe "middling"?

I don't know how Cap managed to do it all the time.

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[fuckaccuracy]

Meh, I've lost count over how many suckers I killed back on Pandora. It was either that or wait for someone to make toothpicks out of my bones.

Or wear my face over their face.

And honestly, if it wasn't for the very real possibility of being sent to Space Jail over just one tiny little murder here, I would've done it already.

Sometimes you just gotta make a statement, you know?

[ anon ] text

[fantasmaniac]

Death to make a statement tends to get you labeled as a terrorist. Counter-productive here as a "hero".

[he's been there. not ashamed.]

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[turntex]

does no one know what the phrase last resort means
jesus christ how is this such a debate
just cause someone says theyre willing to pull the fuckin trigger if they have to doesnt mean theyre gonna go on a shooting spree for funsies
quit jumping down each others throats like theyve got a ballpit in there
goddamn
what happened to team spirit and all that shit

[kingtyrantranger]

People just refuse to see eye to eye. Maybe if everyone were a little more open minded and tried to understand where each other were coming from, that'd help. Get to know each others pasts a little without having to rely on Legionnaire Legacies to spill the beans in ways we can't control.

I'm pretty sure that anyone who's killed on this team understands that it's a no-go now unless it's seriously a case where there's no other option.

[resist_the_future]

Life is important, and should be protected.

[short and sweet.]

[whyarewehere]

Okay, but what about like...

[ Grif fishes for a terrible animal for a moment. ]

...Bats?

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[mylawn]

Half this team used to be civilians. Not sure why anyone's surprised there's a debate.

[vata]

some of us are still practically civilians.

I mean I don't want to kill anybody, you already know that, but sometimes it gets a little crazy out there you know?