The Legion [Network]

[The young man that shows up on screen looks infinitely younger than his adultier self, despite only being just a few years younger. The Annihilation War had aged him, made little lines and wrinkles appear on his face. For someone in his late twenties, Rich could sometimes look like he was in his thirties, especially when he scowled.]

[But the Rich that shows up on the screen has only fought in one war, and most of his darker memories of the Xandar-Skrull War have been locked up tight by the Xandarians and are yet to be recovered. He doesn't remember Epyrus-7 or the way he mercy-killed both sides after they started to disintegrate. He doesn't remember the fall of Xandar, or watching Quasar get ripped apart in front of him. He's only just old enough to legally drink.]

[All the scars are gone -- figuratively and literally. His right arm is flesh and blood. The scar over the right side of his face has been replaced by perfect skin. This isn't even his ponytail phase, where he was scruffy and impulsive, but had a heart of gold. This is him at the time where he was at his most shallow, fame-obsessed, and insufferably cocky. ]

[He pops up on the screen, practically buoyant with boyish enthusiasm.]

My more-of-an-adult self left me a letter explaining this time weirdness thing that's going on. Blue blazes, I can't believe it took winding up in another universe to hit the big time, but at least it finally happened! This team is basically like the Avengers of this universe, right?

Does older me get all the babes? I bet he gets all the babes. Heck, I was looking at that anonmeme thing and it said not only did I work things out with Namorita, there were also rumors I was with a bunch of other people, too! So I guess I've just got that animal magnetism or something.

[He waves a hand vaguely at the screen.]

Now that I'm a little less grizzled than stumpy, older me looked? Please, all of you, try to restrain yourselves?

[Yes, he seems serious. 100% dead serious, like he completely believes everyone of a certain age will clearly want to jump his bones.]

And I saw him -- me -- talking about being some bigtime space war hero, too! A general! Finally, I'm not stuck with the New Warriors in the bush leagues, practically in traction.

[Yes, he's trashing his superhero team as being beneath him.]

So, tell me, does this Legion thing come with any other perks? Like, aside from getting paid? Like, can we sell rights for movie deals or something? Or get our appearance licensed for the equivalent of Happy Meal toys?

Ooh, ooh, did older me tell any cool stories about the space war? He -- I -- mentioned that it was giant evil space bugs in the letter. I bet that was all like Starship Troopers, except, y'know, cooler. On account of superpowers and actually being able to beat them and stuff. And not being anti-war satire.

[He squints at the letter, which is on the screen next to his comm display.]

Uh, the letter I wrote to myself also says "Tell Robbie to take your omnicom away" but I don't know what older me was even thinking with that. Toothpick, if you try to steal my comm, I'm gonna wedgie you at lightspeed. It also says "stay away from Grif," whoever that is.

[A pause.]

Also...Sam, is it? I guess older me let you go by Nova and he was going by Nova Prime but that's not how it works with kid sidekicks. So you're "Kid Nova" now. Don't worry about changing it, I already told the tech people that handle the roster to fix our superhero names.

[Someone steal his comm and save this man from himself.]

[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.