legionmissions | MURDERWORLD [mod plot] [Reunion/Rescue]

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MURDERWORLD [mod plot] [Reunion/Rescue]

Who| Everyone who wants in
What| The reunion/rescue of the folks in Murderworld
Where| The Temperate Zone
When| Day 3, at the very end of the arena
Warnings/Notes|

Thanks to the heroes that broke into Arcade's control room, the arena was officially over, and now that the Science Police and Legion had been contacted, people were being gathered up in an area in the temperate Zone and being extracted by portable threshold gates. A first aid station had been set up to triage those who needed immediate emergency care and patch up what injuries they could to hold people over until they got home.

Grief counselors were already on standby to help the Legionnaires and Harrubian dissidents and their families deal with the crisis they had just faced.

Arcade had already been taken away by the Science Police to face trial for multi-murder, and while some of the raw footage of the arena had already been uploaded to the UP internet, the Legionnaires had made the best of a bad situation.

The fact of the matter was every Legionnaire that had been kidnapped had survived. Arcade had been stopped. Almost all of Arcade's "Tributes" had been killed or detained by the Legionnaires and some of the Harubbian dissidents. The arena had ended on Day 3 instead of Day 30, which had saved dozens of lives. And the upload of the raw footage had been stopped mid-stream so that only a few people would have to deal with their ordeal becoming public knowledge.

Now it was time for friends and teammates to reunite and for everyone to head back to the safety of Legion World.

[ooc: Anyone can start a thread, regardless of whether they're a Legionnaire that was in the arena, or a Legionnaire outside the arena checking up on their friends.]

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Vance had an ice pack.

To be honest, that was the second thing he'd gone looking for once they'd been rescued and brought to a central location. The first had been more hydration gel or whatever they had available because he was definitely dehydrated after three days of intermittent nosebleeds. He hadn't even bothered to clean his face off yet, so there was blood around his mouth and on his shirt.

All of that could wait, though, because he was laid out flat on the ground, once ice pack over his forehead, one behind his neck and an arm thrown over his eyes. And enough left in the tank that, while he didn't move when he felt someone approach, he did at least quirk a half smile. "Anybody able to tell yet when we'll be getting off this rock?"

Once all of the missing Legionnaires had been accounted for, Robbie immediately violated what felt like half a dozen sub-rules and ignored everything else to find his friends. He wanted to see for himself that they were still breathing, and then he'd be able to breathe.

He must've made too much noise when he snuck up on Vance though. Maybe he bit his lip so hard at the blood that it made a sound. Who knows? It meant he'd be slower finding the others. "Soon. I think everyone's all keyed-up with adrenaline, and nobody's thinking straight. You know that moment when you smash through the door and they've already saved themselves?"

Robbie laughed a little, and, yeah, it was that tight, high pitched laugh when your blood and head are buzzing and there's nothing to do except rummage around for something to help with the blood. The only thing keeping him this calm - keeping the laugh from sounding crazed - was that Vance had an ice pack. An ice pack meant he was fine. Nobody's going to bleed to death with ice pack. No triage station would waste an ice pack on a lost cause. "That's me, right now. Times four."

"Excuse me if I don't sit up. It just makes the headache worse."

And yes, he's already been given the good drugs for it. But even in this far-flung future, they take time to kick in. Which is why he has the ice packs.

He does take his arm from his eyes, squinting up at Robbie before offering his hand. With the intention of pulling his friend down to his level. Or, at least, to sit down. "I get it. Adrenaline crash big time, right?"

"Don't get too comfy. I'll pick you up before I get you a bed pan."

Vance with a headache, with blood on his face. Robbie doesn't have to think too hard to come up with overextension, but... Vance was a considerable badass lately. Robbie would prefer it if someone clocked his friend for being rude.

However, Vance apologized for not sitting up. Who does that anymore? Besides Captain Clean-Cut Supertights, who remains the boy-next-door-circa-1940. Vance was more likely to spontaneously turn into cotton candy.

Robbie let himself get pulled down, taking a seat next to Vance. "Yeah. All dressed up and no place to go. I didn't make the kidnappee cut. They're all scared of me."

"I can get to the bathroom on my own, thanks." Vance grimaced in his direction before settling back for a little longer. If they weren't moving yet, he wasn't going to stand up yet. Especially now that Robbie was sitting down.

"Maybe. Or maybe they couldn't figure out a good way to dampen your powers down." No, Robbie couldn't fly, but the way he bounced around was almost as good. "I think you would have thrown off their power calculations by...a lot."

"Good thing, too, because I meant it. Awkward." Robbie had returned to looking around for something to help get Vance cleaned up. From the floor, it meant a lot of craning around, but he eventually spied what looked like a medkit. He had to stretch to reach it.

"Too bad they didn't know someone else did it for them. They would've had an easier time with me than an omega-level mutant, pick your Nova flavor, or Nita." Finally, he came up with a sealed, sterile towel. If he squinted, he could almost see the Interlac written on it for what it was, and not what his brain said it was. Robbie pushed the packet at Vance. "Here, you open it. I don't want to add my germs to the mix."

Vance was only slightly better with Interlac, honestly. Or, rather, with letting the translator override what he thought he was seeing.

"You're still pretty unpredictable. At least, to villains like Arcade. He prefers known quantities that don't know how to bend the laws of physics to their whims." Omega-level mutant or not (and Vance tended to lean on the side of not -- powerful, sure, but not that powerful, was he?). "Though I'll admit that he was an idiot to pick on Nita. She's still annoyed that coming here clipped her wings."

He finally pushed himself to sitting, wincing a bit as he did but it was easier to wash his face while sitting up. "It's not like there's an open wound, Robbie. Or if there are, they're pretty high up my nose and I'm not sticking this there, thanks." But he did give his friend a small smile of thanks as he opened the packet up to start wiping the dried blood from his face.

"Vance, you're telekinetic. Bending the laws of physics is kind of what you do." For that matter, it was also what Rich, Sam, and Nita did. Robbie never used to put Vance that highly on the power spectrum, but - considering the whole 'flying through a death wave' event and everything that followed - it seemed only fair to rank him thusly.

"You really pick the worst arguments. I'm not actively bleeding, except for where you can't see it, so buck up, Champ." He does feel less strained, but it had more to do with seeing his friend pull off an effort. "I'm glad you're okay. Again."

"Yeah, but my kind of bending the laws of physics can be dampened down a lot." Mutant gene. People in their own world had figured out how to do that a long time ago, after all. "I'm just assuming that Arcade or whoever was behind the tech used had trouble figuring you out. Really rude of them to split up the team like that."

He did manage an almost glare at Robbie before snorting. "No, I'm saying that you getting your germs on the towelette wouldn't make a difference in this case. Because it's not like there's anything they could have gotten into." He reached out telekinetically, jostling Robbie's shoulder companionably. "Yeah. I'm glad I'm okay, too. Glad you're okay, too."

Robbie rolled with the touch, and rolled his eyes.

"A, if they didn't leave me home, he'd have dropped someone else. I wouldn't put it past Arcade to have cameras following the rest of us too, so he could get double the jollies as everyone realized Timmy'd fallen in the well. B, Everybody and their kid sister once removed from the alt future has tele-something. I'm a special snowflake 'cause I'm yellow." Because talking about the oppression and suppression of mutants wasn't going to make anyone feel better, seriously. Let's make pee jokes instead.

Oh wait, that would mean Vance cracking a joke. He's not due for another year, by Robbie's count. That "time to face Justice" pun maxed out his quota for a long time. "C, I have space germs now, dude. You could hatch a lizard in your nostril tomorrow. You don't know."

"That's assuming that there was some limit on the number of people he could have pulled and that pulling you wouldn't just have meant one more person in with us rather than a straight swap." Though he couldn't dispute the second part of that because, yeah, it's entirely possible that Arcade COULD have done that.

The 'yellow' thing made Vance make a face. "Remind me to tell you about this mission that happened not long before you showed up," he said after a moment. "I think guys in primarily yellow outfits are going to give me the creeps for a while." Which wasn't Robbie. Would never be Robbie, even if his outfit ever was mostly yellow. "And, also, I'm not going to hatch a space lizard out of my nose. The medics already looked me over. Just didn't get cleaned up because the headache was more important."

"You have to ruin everything with logic, don't you? I can't have a joke or three." Vance was right, naturally. There wasn't anything preventing Arcade from taking Robbie as well, 'collecting the set', but Robbie assumed that there was always one person left out of everything, to suffer.

He doesn't miss that expression though, and goes two shades paler with a far away look. Mentally cataloguing everyone he knows who wears yellow. Angelica and Selah keep coming up, but they don't fit. Vance would never say that about them. A.I.M. X-Men. Wolverine.

Way too many people wear yellow. It could've been here, too, so that means an infinite choice. Robbie wasn't sure he'd remind Vance. Sometimes, it was better to not know.

"I said I have space germs, and I got here after the medic. Ergo, we can both be space lizard daddies tomorrow. I don't know why I bother. Explaining the joke ruins it. I'm not going to try anymore. I mean, I will, but it won't be the same." He doesn't bother with a delicate segue. "I guess I thought you were from when I'm from, so the blood and the headache... it's not what I expected."

He caught that look and reached out, placing a hand on Robbie's forearm. "It was here," he told him. "Some assholes from a version of this one, only in the past. Turns out their world has people who get their powers from color coded rings that correspond along the emotional spectrum. Yellow is fear and they're really assholes. I didn't see the worst of it, but some of it was bad."

At least there was that. He hadn't been in the muddle of that one. Not that part, at least.

He tilts his head to the side. "I am from when you're from. Or close enough. Telling Cap and Stark where they could stick wanting the New Warriors folded in under the Avengers, the whole "tainted brand" bullshit. Dealing with the Eternals." He shrugged. "This? This is all from Arcade dialing down my powers. I strained myself trying to do more than I could right now. In time, I might have been able to get used to it again. Just as glad that I don't."

He felt relieved at that, and dirty for it. Yes, okay, he could be happy that it wasn't anything to do with Angie or Selah, but the full explanation didn't negate any of the terribleness. It only kept some of his friends out of it. "I didn't know. I'm sorry I wasn't here."

Because maybe it would go down better than the automatic response of "I'm sorry [for you]". It had the benefit of being true - he's sorry his friends had to deal with that without him.

Robbie was pleased when he didn't react to the "tainted brand" reminder. He'd huffed a laugh and given Vance a half-smile at where the Avengers could stick it, and he hadn't faltered at the rest. "Sounds about right, and... I volunteer Sam to help you test out your powers and make sure they're back up to snuff."

"Holy cats, Vance, you look like you were staked out for the tides."

So that was a "no," then. Or possibly she hadn't even asked anyone.

Nita, none the worse for wear if her chipper tone was anything to go by--and it wasn't, always--dropped to the ground to sit next to him. If Vance deigned to glance over, he'd see that, characteristically, she'd shed most of her clothes and had been wandering around barefoot in a t-shirt for who knew how long. Also, at some point, she'd come into possession of a trident, which she had balanced across her crossed legs. And she was looking a little damp.

So, situation normal with the New Warriors' Atlantean representative.

"Can I get you something? I think I have some gumdrops in my pack still."

Vance grunted slightly, moving his arm a bit so that he could look over at her. Without moving his head much because, yeah, that still hurt. "I've forgotten how much of a pain in the ass the TK was back when we started. The blood's because I kept trying overextending myself."

Because Vance could take a blow from some of the strongest guys out there now. Had gone toe to two with Zuras, had taken a hit straight to his shields from one of the strongest entities in the known universe and hadn't flinched. He'd have adjusted soon enough. If he'd had time to do so.

"Gumdrops would be good. I've got a couple of hydration packs that are helping a lot, too." He hadn't lost a lot of blood, but that didn't mean it wasn't having an effect on him.

Last Nita remembered, Vance hadn't been that strong--lots of potential, but not that strong. She didn't comment on it because she didn't want to think about it. Instead, she dug around in her pack and came out with a big handful of gumdrops wrapped in a bit of plastic that looked like it had been torn off something (largely because it had been.)

"All yours. I never want to be anywhere near sugar again."

It had been a few years since they'd last seen each other and a few years more since Nita's skin had been this color. So, in a way, it was understandable.

He took the gumdrops and raised an eyebrow in her direction. "Spent a lot of time in the candy zone?"

He's not calling it "Candy Mountain". He'd been shown that video on YouTube by one of his students and, really, he's just not going to go there.

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MURDERWORLD [mod plot] [Reunion/Rescue]

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