thelegion | VIDEO; two ways of causing a scene

Entry tags:

VIDEO; two ways of causing a scene

1: like your grandmother discovering snapchat for the first time only worse

[For starters: this is not a live broadcast. It's a video file dumped onto Legion World's "public" server from whatever default settings it is that would allow omnicoms to do that and sent, accidentally, to everyone.]

[That it's accidental is instantly clear from the part where it is a video clip that starts aimed at the fascinating sight of the top of someone's head. All that is visible is black hair and the wooden slats of a roof above said hair. The other obvious clue, though -]

Tch. I don't have the first clue how to use this. [She speaks soft, and low, but her voice is rough. It's the sort of voice that sounds exhausted from screaming before you ever hear a word spoken above a murmur.] You! ... what is it called? "Everything window"? Om-nee-kom? [She pronounces the word so hesitantly and carefully even the translator can't disguise that she mangles the precise consonance of the word. The feed shakes, obviously because whoever's holding it is manhandling it to get a closer look - at least, if the sudden closeup of a single wide golden eye is any indication.]

[Now the video clip is pointed, out of focus, at her chin.] You can tell me things? Like a searching spell. [Her mouth downturns in a sharp snarl.] What powers your magic? [The screen gets a shaky look at her face - and then at the rustic, old wood of a table - as she turns it this way and that, getting a good look at it.] Nothing great, I expect. It's always the same with people who think they know what's best for everyone ...

Doesn't matter. I have to use what tools I've got, it's not like it's my problem anyway - and you. You're a tool for searching things. That's what I need.

[She goes silent for a time. Trying to think of a net wide enough, with holes small enough, that she might be able to use a program she doesn't even know how to use in the first place to learn anything about.] I want you to tell me everything you know about dragons. Dragons that can suck the life out of planets.

[There's another shakycam pause.] Eh ... how do I actually make it do that ... "send all"?

[CLICK. The video clip ends.]

/////

2: it's like dirty laundry, except actually the exact opposite

[Not long after that last video missive, however, HEY LOOK IT'S A LIVE FEED THIS TIME IT'S THE MAGIC OF FUTURE SKYPE AT WORK and also the magic of someone who comes from a setting where computers, even magical computers, to say nothing of magical handheld communication devices, are at least a few thousand years in her future, messing around what-does-this-app-do style with her magic mirror tool.]

Still nothing ...? I suppose that's to be expected.

[A deep sigh, and then a loud clunk as she sets the omnicom down on what looks like a shelf, propped up against the siding.] I'll leave it on just in case. [She thinks shutting down the screen will turn it off, isn't that cute?]

[And she finally steps away from an unshaking omnicom long enough to give anyone a good look at her - and she's a sight. If it's not the hair she's let grow so long that if not for the loose tie of old gauze near the base it would be sweeping the ground, it's the tattered assembly of haphazardly belted- and pinned- and poorly-stitched-together rags she's mistaken for "clothing" - the threadbare nature of her kit only exposed further once she swings the oversized but equally ragged greatcoat on her shoulders off them and tosses it across a wooden beam just out of frame. On her right arm rests a dented, silvery gauntlet of some kind, which she slowly unbelts and lets drop on the shelf out of view beneath the omnicom with a rattle and clank that suggests something quite heavier than it looked on her wrist. A bandage wraps the entire length of her left; she does not remove the bandage.]

[She does a slow pivot, taking in the cabin. Her boots tink and clomp against the hardwood floor.]

... just like I remember it. I suppose I should be proud of myself. [But there's something unsettled and wild in her expression; it hadn't sunk in, what she was making for herself, until she was standing inside it, realizing it was really real. She's no longer sure whose capacity for handling what she asked for she's actually putting to the test anymore.]

[She shakes her head.] A good home needs a good cleaning, even if it's a temporary one. I'd better get started.

[And, after grabbing a broom tucked away in the corner - right where she remembers she'd always leave it - unless anyone interrupts her, because of some awkward reason, I don't know, like having turned her omnicom's webcam equivalent on while she does it - she's going to do just that.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No. [It's a simple answer to a simple question. She doesn't see it as that complicated. Who signs up to help people they've never met before?] I told you. I'm shy. [Your humble narratrix would have an easier time of it if Velvet would stop saying such ridiculous things with such a straight face.]

[She shifts, an awkward half of a shrug as she settles her shoulder against the frame of one of her cabin's many shelves.] Confusing. Your ... leader, Mister Brande - [she says it testingly, as much to see what his reaction is to her calling him such as it is her own awkward uncertainty over the exact whos and whats of her current situation] - offered me a place to stay here until I could get my bearings; it seemed like a bad idea to turn it down. I'm not embarrassed to admit it - I really don't know anything about this place.

Again with calling me a "hot topic". Does every guy in space like to watch that much, too? [She moves to the side, just off the edge of the screen, while continuing to talk, her attention caught by something; the sound of fiddling with containers on shelves can be heard. She leaves the armguard to rest within view, on the shelf beside where she's just set the omnicom.]

It was a gift from A- ... a friend of my family. It's helped keep me alive, certainly ...

[Her tone is fairly easy to read - if, probably, alarmingly strange to a stranger: from her point of view, there's a lot more threatening things about her than a pigsticker with some precious memories tied up inside it.]

Edited 2017-03-10 16:17 (UTC)

That's really nice of him. From everything I hear, RJ's a good dude.

[ Robbie, for starters, gladly signed up to help, and the rest of the team has as well. In many cases, this isn't their first rodeo either.

There are a handful of instances where the Time Trapper Got It Wrong and brought in someone who wasn't a hero, cop, or soldier, so it wasn't impossible that she's what she said. Just shy. After the blade, however... 'I'm shy' isn't quite cutting it, and that's way before she says it keeps her alive.

Robbie's mouth flattens into a thin line, and he tells himself that he can't go around being too hard on people like her because he's recently had it out with half the ex-soldiers on the team. There's a lot of reasons why someone would say that.

Besides, he can argue about other stuff for awhile. ]

Do you have the sound on that turned up enough? I said "That's not from Hot Topic." Not "you're a Hot Topic" or "Hey Hot Topic, nice coat." Try a Q-tip sometime before you go around implying that we're all a bunch of pervs. Hot Topic's a store that sells a certain style of clothes. You look like you got tackled by a bunch of its mannequins, but other than that? Not a comment on you.

[ And while his mouth is running on autopilot... ]

I don't buy shy. Shy wouldn't ask me if guys like to watch.

[Still off-screen, though the noises cease after a moment. Eventually it becomes clear that her lack of visibility within the view of the omnicom's camera is a deliberate choice; just out of view, listening, her counsel kept to herself.] I didn't call you a pervert, I called you a man. Men are never that complicated to read.

[She really doesn't sound like she's being rude or insulting about it. It sounds more like something she's never really given much thought - Men Are Like This, Women Are Like That, Good Girls Should - and has chosen not to bother herself with having an actual opinion about how any individual person chooses to take that logic unless someone makes her have to bother with it, rather than interrogate where she might have gotten the wrong idea about any of this.]

... a "q-tip".

[Something else she doesn't know about and will have to ask someone or something about later, coming right alongside an answer to a question she didn't know needed asking. Velvet, who has never bought a pair of clothes she couldn't make or take, files that information on the meaning of "Hot Topic" away with all the respect that one gives a piece of information about something one does not know in a universe full of things one does not know and can't be sure which might come back to haunt them later. She's not really enjoying thinking about all the ugly surprises she might have coming she doesn't even know to brace herself for yet.]

[It doesn't mean she isn't trying to provoke him with what she says next. She likes to know what she's dealing with, after all. But it puts more hostility under her words than he actually earns. She is who she is - and she'd like to think she doesn't have to do it again, but ... she could live with herself if she declared war on the whole universe, if she thought she had to. She always sounds meaner than she realizes, when she's reminded that she could.]

Tch. You don't buy "shy" ... Mannequins, huh? And if I told you they were corpses instead, what would you say to that?

[ Unfortunately, Robbie's reacting to the nonchalance of the assumption - how this is simply how it is, with pervert and man being lined up as not very different words - as much as he is the content of the assumption.

Being rude about it would at least make it feel like an argument. Being blasé implied that this is how it always was, would be, and Robbie just has to accept it.

It's to the point where he's thinking of all the risque jokes and asides he's said in the past five, ten years and wondering "but... am I?"

So he's a little distracted, when he answers, although there's an air of pissed off about the whole thing. ]

A Q-tip's something you clean the wax out of your ears with.

[ He's still trying to work up a response to the bad definition of man that Velvet's working with, when she hits him with that last comment. Robbie gets this half-smile on his face, when she repeats that he doesn't buy shy. It's like confirmation, that he shouldn't, and, yeah, he's smug about being right.

The expression slowly drains off his face as she continues though. Where is that coming from? Has she looked at his history on this network? No, that's stupid. She doesn't even know how the omnicoms work; she's not digging through everything. It's not about him - or if it is, it's only for shock value and she'd do it to anybody. ]

I'd tell you to take it down a notch, Velvet. This is our downtime. You don't need rhetoric to be en fuego when we're all trying to chill and get to know the new girl.

Corpses don't belong anywhere near a punch line. Try to remember that.

[There's a slightly longer than is comfortable pause on Velvet's end before she replies. The information about q-tips she files away in the same place she's left her thoughts on Hot Topic, but at least she has a frame of reference for something like what he means, this time. She just has to remember that's what they're called here.]

It wasn't a joke. But thanks for the warning. I'm not trying to get in trouble with the joke police.

[Her sense of humor picks some really unfortunate ways to confront the world with its presence.]

[She can't see his face, so she misses all the play of responses across his face to anything she's said; it's the price she pays for giving him the same inaccessibility to her own. Her raggedy clothes shift with a clink of buckles and a rustle of stiff fabric as she moves herself back into frame. Her golden eyes are sharp and cautious, but not angry; her jawline isn't the tight set of hard angles it would have been a moment ago, when her teeth were clenched shut in thought.]

[There are reasons why she's "shy". She chooses her next words at a steady pace, considering what scrutiny she invites from whoever's listening in, considering what scrutiny she wants. Velvet doesn't do dissembly - doesn't lie, period - very well, and she's not about to master it in a minute - but she's at their mercy here, all of their "mercy", and being completely honest to a recklessly dangerous fault won't get her very close to anywhere she might want to be right now.]

It's ... nice of you, to believe that. That wouldn't be the assumption most ... - [the word comes out uncertainly, a carefully phrased shot in the dark] - humans, who think like you, would've made.

[ The frustration at being constantly, slightly misunderstood begins to build, but Robbie can't spot a way to clear things up without backtracking to go over the points again. That would feel like a lecture - and a public one. He doesn't want to go there. All she's done, he thinks, is brush him off. His feelings aren't bruised. ]

I'm not the joke police. I'm the one they're usually after.

[ That's enough to abate the urge to defend himself, and he managed to do it without referencing the Hamburglar, the Cookie Crook, or the monkey from Dora. After having to explain Hot Topic and Q-tips, Robbie thinks the jokes would only add to his frustration and her weird stiffness.

He thinks it's due to her recent arrival, some sort of conflict of universes, but she is strange. She jumps to the worst conclusions about men, turns mannequins into corpses for some bizarre challenge, chokes on the word human. It's like she's deliberately trying to agitate. ]

What assumption? You're the one assuming I'm human - I am, but I prefer 'superhuman'. The word around here is 'sentient beings', because a lot of the people that look human aren't.

[Perhaps he's more right about what Velvet's after than she would think he is, if she knew what he was thinking. She's giving him so many opportunities to let her down painlessly.]

[She doesn't know enough. This is a strange place. She keeps telling herself not to fall back on first guesses. The world she finds herself in could be a better place. Just because it looks like the Abbey all over again doesn't mean it is. Good people don't have to only exist in her dreams.]

[Standing here in her childhood home, exactly as she remembers it, is a challenge to herself. She'd told Eleanor once, that there was a part of her that wanted to try and give the world something worth hoping for. Then she slept; she dreamed of a world she thought was worth hoping for. And then -]

[She woke up choking on an alien world, woke up again in a strange bed - she had a rough introduction to this universe, this Legion World. She can't say she understands why they would extend her the offer and the consideration they've given her already, under the circumstances in which she tried to "greet" this Brande fellow the first couple times they spoke.]

[It's stayed her hand, stilled her usual rejections before she can finish thinking them. She doesn't trust any promises this Legion or the Science Police beneath them can make, except the one they didn't say - that they intend to keep the universe under their careful control - but the man she met who called himself RJ Brande didn't act like the kind of man who'd make such a force on purpose.]

[Give them a chance, he'd said. The same chance you deserve. Velvet would like to see how easy he would find it to trust him at his word in her shoes, thinking about how much immensely present power this place takes so casually for granted about itself. She's not foolish enough to let a good speech sway her in the face of the obvious reality of the thing.]

[She'll give them enough rope; it's up to Brande's "Legionnaires" to decide if they take the invitation to hang.]

[That - "I'm the one they're usually after" - gets a smile out of her, though. It's a little rueful, and thin, but the sincerity of the expression is hard to argue, for once. It's like the universe throws amateur comedians at her.]

[She's not surprised he missed the actual joke she was making - a Magilou and her annoyingly thorough grasp of a cynic's bag of bad jokes this guy isn't. That's probably for the best.]

[Her smile deepens, turns inward. There's regret around the edge of her eyes, and resignation in them. A little fierce pride quirking the corner of her lips and twinkling in her eyes.]

Your assumption that I'm nothing to be afraid of.

[ She'll have to pardon his laughter, or not. Robbie's not about to apologize for the unrestrained laughing he's doing in the face of that response.

It eventually tapers off into giggles laced with heaving "whoos" of breath, because she's so intent about it. ]

Because you've got some power? Yeah. We all do. It's kind of our deal.

[ Robbie sobers somewhat, because it's not an entirely joking matter. ]

We're all something to be afraid of. What matters is you, not what you can do. It's your choices and how you handle your powers - that's what can make people afraid. But you're new, and I don't scare so easy.

[ He shrugs. ]

Don't rush to make yourself an other. It sucks.

[Internally she revises her opinion of him a little. He may not have the cynicism, but he's got the irritating laughter down pat. If she actually sticks around these people it's sounding like she's traded a four alarm fire for a simmering frying pan.]

Who's rushing? [Her tone is matter-of-fact. It's Just The Way Things Are, again, and it's not her wont to believe it when someone selfishly insists they believe it otherwise.]

I'm a bedtime story, and not the one parents tell their children as a warning not to turn out like. I'm the one they scare their kids with - keep in line or else I'll show up and eat them for not keeping their noses out of trouble.

[She looks askance, unfussed, accepting. There's a morbid humor in her eyes, and she smiles again, without malice but certainly much more distant than she was a moment ago.]

I can't blame them for it. If someone really was looking for that kind of trouble that they'd have come after me, it's entirely possible I would.

[Her voice is thick with fatalism and resignation, but not anger and not resentment. She might like it to be different. It isn't going to be and she knows herself too well to think she's in a position to ask for it to turn out otherwise. She, of all the people in world who could, is not the one who gets to make that call.]

[But she looks up, taking in a breath, her eyes set careful and serious, no dissembly on her face whatsoever.]

I ... don't want any trouble. [The phrasing there is telling; it's not like it's obvious that she means 'she doesn't want to deal with any trouble from them', but she did just say people looking for trouble tend to find her like they're often synonymous concepts.] You all seem nice enough. But even if you really are what Brande says you are, I'm not sure I'm the kind of ... person your organization has room for. I've made enough horrible choices in my life to prove it.

Uhhh, you are?

[ The clueless Mallrats tone is definitely played up, but come on. She's can't be that dumb, although he has no idea why she'd be so obtuse about obvious fact. ]

I've seen rhinos that stampeded less often. You're charging over everything to turn everyone against the new girl - that'd be you.

Nobody's causing trouble. I told you, Dave's just Dave. You get used to him.

You aren't the only person here who's made some epic bad choices. You might not even break the top five, so why are you setting yourself up like this? I don't get it. Everybody keeps getting handed the same fresh start, and everybody's turning themselves inside out to not grab the opportunity.

[ He's bothered by it, and the more he talks about it the more defeated he sounds. By the end, Robbie just sounds... sad. ]

Look, if you don't eat anyone, you'll be fine. But nobody here gets judged on what happened before they popped into this universe.

[His reaction throws her. She visibly stutters on a blink, a sort of dazed double-take, as a wry grin twitches at the edges of her lips.]

[She shuts her eyes and leans against a wooden beam, taking a long moment to collect herself - reflexively - then, by the look of the tightness of her posture that follows her having done so, almost stopping herself from giving herself any space to breathe, emotionally or otherwise, before ... deliberately forcing herself to take some time to do so.]

[Eventually, she shakes her head, a small smile playing on her face. It even crinkles her eyes.]

... hah. Maybe ... I am misunderstanding the situation I'm in, a little. You actually sound like you mean that.

[She takes a long breath, lets it out, settles herself back against her shoulder.] You'll have to forgive me. I don't trust easily.

Especially not when I'm surrounded by constant evidence that I'm at the mercy of people with enough power at their fingertips they could probably disappear me without a trace, if they wanted to.

[He seems sincere. She's taking a risk putting that thought out where everyone can see it besides Robbie, but she figures his reaction's about as important here in terms of defining what they will do about that as anything she just said.]

Anyone ... including me ... can put effort into sounding kind. It doesn't mean you are.

[ Like Sisyphus I am bound to hell. He's going to have this conversation, and all variants of it, over and over again. Of who really wants to be a hero, a Legionnaire, who's too violent, who's too new, who doesn't understand because he can't stop getting involved. Inevitably, he screws it up, because nothing ever changes. No one ever really listens. ]

Because I did? I don't know what your world's like, but nobody sticks around this long to argue it out in mind without meaning it.

The Legionnaires - the original ones, too - they get really bent out of shape when someone suggests that they'd wreck your life. Or worse, if you suggest they'd let someone else do that. [ Robbie raises a hand sheepishly. ]

That one was me. Turns out you're not the only with trust issues either, and - I'm starting to believe them, about how they wouldn't do that.

[ At her last statement though, he smiles. It's half-sarcastic, and half-warmth. ]

I think the effort's better spent on being kind.

[

[She no-sells the question of kindness. The fact of the matter is, she's neither good at acting kind or being kind, personal problems of hers she figures should become readily apparent once anyone gets to deal with her at any length.]

I'm not one for long and boring discussions on things I don't care about, either. I doubt I'd be bothering with this one, normally ...

[She lights her arms up and stretches, thinking, idling in one place.] But ... your Mister Brande makes a good salesman. It's not his fault I've met idealists before. Plenty will stake their lives on causes they believe in. That doesn't mean their beliefs are true.

You're not an idealist, though. [It's not a question. It's an observation. Even if he didn't go ahead and confirm it about himself just now, it's something coming across anyway.]

So how did they win you over?

[ Robbie raises his eyebrows at her summarization of him, and, then, he shook his head slowly. ]

They didn't have to convince me. I am an idealist. I can think like a realist, and sometimes I act like one. But when reality doesn't match up with my ideals, with how I think it should be? I don't let them go so easy.

[ Or... ever. His ideals have morphed with time, but Robbie has been struggling to live as he should and not as he can for a long time. ]

But... I know a lot of people wouldn't stake their lives on anything. I'd rather they be upfront about it than fake it. See? I can do realist.

Hah.

[Velvet's face toys with a faint smile. Idly picking up the bracer and fiddling with it without popping it open, just to give her hands something familiar to be doing. The fact that this winds up giving her next words an ominous air honestly doesn't occur to her. Much like Legal Eagle, she's a victim of circumstance and bad humor: this is what happens when she tries to lighten the mood.]

Don't take this the wrong way, but the last man I met who was that sort of idealist, I killed.

[ Okay, that's one answer. Robbie had been upfront in his response - he wasn't trying to play both sides, in his eyes. He believes that it's possible to yourself and others to a high set of morals and to act as best as one can in a situation. He's not amused.

I'm going to have to call you out on that, 'cause I don't see a right way to take that.

[She's nonplussed (moreso because she's got no idea what "call you out" means, hysterically enough), but she rolls with it easily - though maybe not kindly. Velvet is difficult to rattle easily or for long, having adapted to the horrors she's seen (and inflicted) with too much careless ease. The world is what it is. And so is she.]

[It's going to take a long time to shake her out of it.]

[All of which is a long way of saying her sense of humor is broken and it doesn't win her many friends easily, as evidenced by her response to this being a an overly and obviously casual deadpan:]

Don't tell me you've never killed anyone before.

[ That's a level of cavalier that Robbie is ill-prepared to deal with, especially this close to actually talking - well, typing, about Stamford where the other Legionnaires can see it. He doesn't think that she should have researched his activity on the Network and known the answer. He thinks she shouldn't have said it at all, and he's not even going to bother responding. With as little motion as possible, he cuts the feed. They can talk again some other time, about something else.

He's not being drawn into the topic of killing for a third time in public. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

VIDEO; two ways of causing a scene

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

no subject