The Legion takes Chinatown!
WHO: Magno (i_am_not_cos) and Karate Kid (nowaxing)
WHEN: Tuesday, July 13th
WHERE: Outside Stark Tower to start with.
WARNINGS: Maybe some Legion injokes?
SUMMARY: Magno goes to meet Karate Kid, who's newly arrived in the City and still adjusting to the new sense the 'Porter gave him.
FORMAT: Prose.
An excellent sense of direction is one of the more convenient side-effects of a Braalian mag-field; Dyrk might only have arrived a short while ago himself, but he has no trouble at all finding his way to the spot where Val agreed to wait for him. In the interests of haste, he flew, so the first Karate Kid sees of him is from below as he glides quickly down to meet his fellow Legionnaire.
"Karate Kid, hey!" Dyrk calls, waving cheerfully as he touches down on the sidewalk outside Stark Tower.
--
Val has been in the Legion for a while, even if no one remembers him; thus, he is not unfamiliar with the idea of watching the sky as well as the ground for his fellows when waiting on them. In fact he is possibly more in the habit of watching the sky, as he tends to be one of a precious few Legionnaires who will do any sort of long-distance travel on foot voluntarily. He smiles as Dyrk approaches, although it is a muted smile, a little tight around the edges with some sort of stress that Val isn't actually speaking on, and lifts a hand to wave. "Magno, hello! Thank you for meeting me on such short notice."
Karate Kid's dark eyes trace Dyrk all the way down to the ground, but his expression is almost... distracted. As if he's trying to puzzle something out in the privacy of his own mind.
--
Dyrk laughs a little, shaking his head. "Come on, why are you thanking me? We're both Legionnaires, right? We're supposed to stick together. Especially when we get yanked back in time and dumped in a strange place or something like that."
He pauses for a moment, considering Val curiously. He's never really gotten a chance to meetsupposed to do it." Val offers, still sort of half-grinning at Dyrk. He folds his hands behind his back, then, and his eyebrows twitch downwards a little bit, the grin fading. "I'm a little... distracted. When you arrived here, was there anything...different? I don't mean about the world, obviously it is very different. About yourself."
--
"Huh?" Dyrk tilts his head curiously at the question. "No, not really..." He blinks once, a thought clearly coming to mind. "The 'Porter does change some people when it brings them in, though. It turned Gates into a humanoid. Maybe he mentioned already, he's pretty upset about it. Why do you ask?" The curiosity on his face quickly shades to concern. "Are you not feeling right?"
--
Val shakes his head a little bit, although he almost immediately looks as if he regrets the action. "He had not mentioned. He contacted me via a voice transmission, no video. I am not surprised to hear he is disturbed by the change." He lapses into quiet for a few moments, before he reaches out towards one of the walls of the Stark Tower, gesturing along some line that Dyrk won't be able to see. "I don't know how familiar you are with my skills, given you didn't actually work as my teammate. I've always had a particular talent for finding the weak point in things. Seeing patterns in everything; matter, body language, data. But now there are..." Val shakes his head again, imperceptibly, and pulls his hand back. "Lines. Maps of light over everything. I think I am seeing the flow of energy through things. It's fascinating, but I can't seem to keep it turned off when I want to, so it is very distracting." It looks like he's feeling a bit beleaguered by vertigo.
--
Dyrk's eyes widen at Val's description. "That actually sounds kinda like you're seeing mag-fields or something. Except we don't really see them, it's sort of its own sense." He lifts a hand, fingers twiddling in the air, a quick little tug on the magnetic fields around him. "But if it's making it so you can't see, that's a problem... maybe you should ask Brainy to have a look at you or something."
--
"I can still see." Val assures Dyrk quickly, with a quick dart of his eyes to the side, which is followed just as quickly with a wince. "I'm seeing more, not less." He takes a deep breath in, then, closing his eyes, seeming to concentrate for a long moment. When he opens his eyes again, the Kid seems a little more focused. "If I concentrate, it goes away. But when my focus slips, it returns. It is very strange." He glances over to Dyrk again, more slowly this time. "You are full of light." Outside of the conversation, it might have been a much stranger comment. "But that is why I want to find a chemist. For the headache. Gates suggested I try Chinatown."
--
The non-sequitur brings a quick smile to Dyrk's face. "Full of light, huh?" he echoes, flexing his fingers thoughtfully before his attention comes back to Val again. "Well, I don't know where a chemist would be, but I've done a bunch of exploring since I got here. I can show you where Chinatown is. Maybe someone there could point us at a chemist for you?"
--
Val nods again, a little more assuredly now, mostly watching Dyrk. He seems ready to take off if Magno wants to use his flight ring, or walk if his compatriot would rather that. "That sounds like a fine plan to me. I suppose in the mean time I ought to familiarize myself a bit more with where--or when--I am. Do you know what year it is?"
--
Dyrk seems content to set off at a stroll. Flying around here attracts attention, after all, and with Val not feeling quite himself, walking is probably the safer idea. "It's two thousand ten," he answers cheerfully. "Really something, huh? I talked to a guy on the network who said he originally came from the tenth century, too. Seems like this place gets people from all over the time stream."
--
"Two-thousand ten." Val repeats, almost speculatively. Strolling is indeed fine enough with the Karate Kid, but then as mentioned he seems to enjoy doing things the hard way. "That is quite a ways into the past indeed. Almost a thousand years." Not that Dyrk didn't already know this, of course. "That explains the discrepancy in technology, I suppose. This will be a learning experience, I don't know much about this time period."
--
"Me neither," Dyrk admits, not seeming too concerned about it, all things considered. "It's a good thing I had a translator when I got here, I barely speak any English. It's kind of wild, all the things that are different, but it seems like people are more or less the same wherever you go. Even if there are hardly any aliens around right now."
--
Val gives an expression that is rather inscrutable, tipping his head to the side. "I don't speak any English either. I mean to learn, however; I can't rely on always having a translator on me." As always, Karate Kid chooses to be self-sufficient. "Didn't you say that Gates had been forced into a humanoid body? Perhaps there are a great many of them and we can't see them. Besides, I think by technicality we are both aliens."
--
The reasoning gets an agreeable laugh out of Dyrk. "That's true," he allows. "It's not like either of us is from Earth or anything. Okay, so hardly any visible aliens around. Either we blend in, or the 'Porter makes us blend, I guess. But from what I can tell there's not even any reliable space flight - we're grounded while we're here, at least unless Brainy hacks something together that can get us into space. Not that there seems to be anything going on out there anyhow."
--
"There is always something going on out there, it just may be quite a long way from here." Val frowns, just vaguely at the edges of his expression. "But there are things here that need attending to, I think. In any case it may be easier for anyone looking for us to find us if we stay in one place. How is Brainy handling the level of technology, do you know?"
--
"I'm not sure yet." Dyrk continues ambling along, navigating the sidewalks with easy assurance of his direction that really isn't fair in a guy who's only been here a few days. "I kinda figured he was busy so I didn't want to bother him too much. I haven't gotten to meet the Brainy from our timeline yet... that team wasn't back from Twencen when I got yanked... but I've heard some stories, you know?"
--
Val laughs, then, and the sound may be unexpected--or perhaps not, as Dyrk hasn't had a great deal of time to come to the conclusion that Val isn't the laughing sort--his head shaking briefly. He seems to at least have enough faith in Dyrk's sense of direction, or maybe a certain fundamental lack of concern over getting lost, that he's willing to follow Magno's lead. "Ah, Querl Dox is...well, as most of the Legion, a singular individual. It is not uncommon for his lab to explode."
--
"Yeah." Dyrk grins back, not much startled by hearing Val laugh, if only because he doesn't know Karate Kid very well yet to know it doesn't happen that often. "That's kinda what I heard. Anyway, there's been plenty of looking around for me to do on my own so I didn't want to bug him just yet."
--
"He invited us to live with himself and Gates." Val says, as if that's relevant--but of course maybe it is, in the tangential way most conversations go. "You and I, I mean. I told him I would be happy to take him up on the offer. I think perhaps it would be better than living alone. Or at least more like what I am accustomed to. The Legion headquarters were many things, but rarely quiet."
--
Dyrk nods wryly. "You're not kidding!" He still sounds pretty cheerful about it, though. "I'm thinking I should probably look for some part-time work, maybe... we imports get a stipend, but since we're not going to be using the free apartments and all, it might not be enough." He really looks far too young to have any concept of cost of living... but he did grow up on Braal, after all.
--
"I don't require much." Val says, reasonably, considering Dyrk as they walk. "Just enough for food and clothing. Anything else I suppose I could give to Querl to help pay for the housing." Despite all of his travels, Val doesn't have a particularly good grasp on cost of living; as his is almost never very high. "But I think also I could find a job if I needed to. I wonder what sort of jobs are common in this time?"
--
"I dunno. That's a good question." Dyrk reflects on this for several yards. "There's got to be construction work or something like that that I could do. No matter what century it is, people have to build things, and I haven't seen any robot workers around. But I'm not sure what else might be out there. I guess we should ask around on the network."
--
Val nods, giving Dyrk the several yards for reflection without comment. "I am not generally very well-suited for construction work, but certainly there is something else I could do. I suppose I could instruct interested people in martial arts if nothing else." Karate Kid's mouth twitches downwards, towards a frown. "I am afraid my skill set is relatively limited."
--
"We should definitely ask on the network," Dyrk says. "In a place like this, I bet there are probably a lot of people who'd be up for learning a little of what you can do." He pauses a beat before turning a curious look alongside to Val. "Hey, are you hungry? I haven't had lunch yet."
--
Dark eyes slip to Dyrk, and for a moment Val seems to consider the question seriously, as if he doesn't know whether or not he's hungry. "I could eat." He decides after that moment. "Time travel is always a little confusing; have I eaten recently or not? I suppose it doesn't matter, really."
--
"Okay then." The reply seems to cement a plan in Dyrk's mind somehow; he nods decisively. "We're almost to Chinatown, I think, and I got my stipend for the week, so let's get something to eat and we can ask at the restaurant for a chemist or whatever it is you need. Sound good?"
WHEN: Tuesday, July 13th
WHERE: Outside Stark Tower to start with.
WARNINGS: Maybe some Legion injokes?
SUMMARY: Magno goes to meet Karate Kid, who's newly arrived in the City and still adjusting to the new sense the 'Porter gave him.
FORMAT: Prose.
An excellent sense of direction is one of the more convenient side-effects of a Braalian mag-field; Dyrk might only have arrived a short while ago himself, but he has no trouble at all finding his way to the spot where Val agreed to wait for him. In the interests of haste, he flew, so the first Karate Kid sees of him is from below as he glides quickly down to meet his fellow Legionnaire.
"Karate Kid, hey!" Dyrk calls, waving cheerfully as he touches down on the sidewalk outside Stark Tower.
--
Val has been in the Legion for a while, even if no one remembers him; thus, he is not unfamiliar with the idea of watching the sky as well as the ground for his fellows when waiting on them. In fact he is possibly more in the habit of watching the sky, as he tends to be one of a precious few Legionnaires who will do any sort of long-distance travel on foot voluntarily. He smiles as Dyrk approaches, although it is a muted smile, a little tight around the edges with some sort of stress that Val isn't actually speaking on, and lifts a hand to wave. "Magno, hello! Thank you for meeting me on such short notice."
Karate Kid's dark eyes trace Dyrk all the way down to the ground, but his expression is almost... distracted. As if he's trying to puzzle something out in the privacy of his own mind.
--
Dyrk laughs a little, shaking his head. "Come on, why are you thanking me? We're both Legionnaires, right? We're supposed to stick together. Especially when we get yanked back in time and dumped in a strange place or something like that."
He pauses for a moment, considering Val curiously. He's never really gotten a chance to meetsupposed to do it." Val offers, still sort of half-grinning at Dyrk. He folds his hands behind his back, then, and his eyebrows twitch downwards a little bit, the grin fading. "I'm a little... distracted. When you arrived here, was there anything...different? I don't mean about the world, obviously it is very different. About yourself."
--
"Huh?" Dyrk tilts his head curiously at the question. "No, not really..." He blinks once, a thought clearly coming to mind. "The 'Porter does change some people when it brings them in, though. It turned Gates into a humanoid. Maybe he mentioned already, he's pretty upset about it. Why do you ask?" The curiosity on his face quickly shades to concern. "Are you not feeling right?"
--
Val shakes his head a little bit, although he almost immediately looks as if he regrets the action. "He had not mentioned. He contacted me via a voice transmission, no video. I am not surprised to hear he is disturbed by the change." He lapses into quiet for a few moments, before he reaches out towards one of the walls of the Stark Tower, gesturing along some line that Dyrk won't be able to see. "I don't know how familiar you are with my skills, given you didn't actually work as my teammate. I've always had a particular talent for finding the weak point in things. Seeing patterns in everything; matter, body language, data. But now there are..." Val shakes his head again, imperceptibly, and pulls his hand back. "Lines. Maps of light over everything. I think I am seeing the flow of energy through things. It's fascinating, but I can't seem to keep it turned off when I want to, so it is very distracting." It looks like he's feeling a bit beleaguered by vertigo.
--
Dyrk's eyes widen at Val's description. "That actually sounds kinda like you're seeing mag-fields or something. Except we don't really see them, it's sort of its own sense." He lifts a hand, fingers twiddling in the air, a quick little tug on the magnetic fields around him. "But if it's making it so you can't see, that's a problem... maybe you should ask Brainy to have a look at you or something."
--
"I can still see." Val assures Dyrk quickly, with a quick dart of his eyes to the side, which is followed just as quickly with a wince. "I'm seeing more, not less." He takes a deep breath in, then, closing his eyes, seeming to concentrate for a long moment. When he opens his eyes again, the Kid seems a little more focused. "If I concentrate, it goes away. But when my focus slips, it returns. It is very strange." He glances over to Dyrk again, more slowly this time. "You are full of light." Outside of the conversation, it might have been a much stranger comment. "But that is why I want to find a chemist. For the headache. Gates suggested I try Chinatown."
--
The non-sequitur brings a quick smile to Dyrk's face. "Full of light, huh?" he echoes, flexing his fingers thoughtfully before his attention comes back to Val again. "Well, I don't know where a chemist would be, but I've done a bunch of exploring since I got here. I can show you where Chinatown is. Maybe someone there could point us at a chemist for you?"
--
Val nods again, a little more assuredly now, mostly watching Dyrk. He seems ready to take off if Magno wants to use his flight ring, or walk if his compatriot would rather that. "That sounds like a fine plan to me. I suppose in the mean time I ought to familiarize myself a bit more with where--or when--I am. Do you know what year it is?"
--
Dyrk seems content to set off at a stroll. Flying around here attracts attention, after all, and with Val not feeling quite himself, walking is probably the safer idea. "It's two thousand ten," he answers cheerfully. "Really something, huh? I talked to a guy on the network who said he originally came from the tenth century, too. Seems like this place gets people from all over the time stream."
--
"Two-thousand ten." Val repeats, almost speculatively. Strolling is indeed fine enough with the Karate Kid, but then as mentioned he seems to enjoy doing things the hard way. "That is quite a ways into the past indeed. Almost a thousand years." Not that Dyrk didn't already know this, of course. "That explains the discrepancy in technology, I suppose. This will be a learning experience, I don't know much about this time period."
--
"Me neither," Dyrk admits, not seeming too concerned about it, all things considered. "It's a good thing I had a translator when I got here, I barely speak any English. It's kind of wild, all the things that are different, but it seems like people are more or less the same wherever you go. Even if there are hardly any aliens around right now."
--
Val gives an expression that is rather inscrutable, tipping his head to the side. "I don't speak any English either. I mean to learn, however; I can't rely on always having a translator on me." As always, Karate Kid chooses to be self-sufficient. "Didn't you say that Gates had been forced into a humanoid body? Perhaps there are a great many of them and we can't see them. Besides, I think by technicality we are both aliens."
--
The reasoning gets an agreeable laugh out of Dyrk. "That's true," he allows. "It's not like either of us is from Earth or anything. Okay, so hardly any visible aliens around. Either we blend in, or the 'Porter makes us blend, I guess. But from what I can tell there's not even any reliable space flight - we're grounded while we're here, at least unless Brainy hacks something together that can get us into space. Not that there seems to be anything going on out there anyhow."
--
"There is always something going on out there, it just may be quite a long way from here." Val frowns, just vaguely at the edges of his expression. "But there are things here that need attending to, I think. In any case it may be easier for anyone looking for us to find us if we stay in one place. How is Brainy handling the level of technology, do you know?"
--
"I'm not sure yet." Dyrk continues ambling along, navigating the sidewalks with easy assurance of his direction that really isn't fair in a guy who's only been here a few days. "I kinda figured he was busy so I didn't want to bother him too much. I haven't gotten to meet the Brainy from our timeline yet... that team wasn't back from Twencen when I got yanked... but I've heard some stories, you know?"
--
Val laughs, then, and the sound may be unexpected--or perhaps not, as Dyrk hasn't had a great deal of time to come to the conclusion that Val isn't the laughing sort--his head shaking briefly. He seems to at least have enough faith in Dyrk's sense of direction, or maybe a certain fundamental lack of concern over getting lost, that he's willing to follow Magno's lead. "Ah, Querl Dox is...well, as most of the Legion, a singular individual. It is not uncommon for his lab to explode."
--
"Yeah." Dyrk grins back, not much startled by hearing Val laugh, if only because he doesn't know Karate Kid very well yet to know it doesn't happen that often. "That's kinda what I heard. Anyway, there's been plenty of looking around for me to do on my own so I didn't want to bug him just yet."
--
"He invited us to live with himself and Gates." Val says, as if that's relevant--but of course maybe it is, in the tangential way most conversations go. "You and I, I mean. I told him I would be happy to take him up on the offer. I think perhaps it would be better than living alone. Or at least more like what I am accustomed to. The Legion headquarters were many things, but rarely quiet."
--
Dyrk nods wryly. "You're not kidding!" He still sounds pretty cheerful about it, though. "I'm thinking I should probably look for some part-time work, maybe... we imports get a stipend, but since we're not going to be using the free apartments and all, it might not be enough." He really looks far too young to have any concept of cost of living... but he did grow up on Braal, after all.
--
"I don't require much." Val says, reasonably, considering Dyrk as they walk. "Just enough for food and clothing. Anything else I suppose I could give to Querl to help pay for the housing." Despite all of his travels, Val doesn't have a particularly good grasp on cost of living; as his is almost never very high. "But I think also I could find a job if I needed to. I wonder what sort of jobs are common in this time?"
--
"I dunno. That's a good question." Dyrk reflects on this for several yards. "There's got to be construction work or something like that that I could do. No matter what century it is, people have to build things, and I haven't seen any robot workers around. But I'm not sure what else might be out there. I guess we should ask around on the network."
--
Val nods, giving Dyrk the several yards for reflection without comment. "I am not generally very well-suited for construction work, but certainly there is something else I could do. I suppose I could instruct interested people in martial arts if nothing else." Karate Kid's mouth twitches downwards, towards a frown. "I am afraid my skill set is relatively limited."
--
"We should definitely ask on the network," Dyrk says. "In a place like this, I bet there are probably a lot of people who'd be up for learning a little of what you can do." He pauses a beat before turning a curious look alongside to Val. "Hey, are you hungry? I haven't had lunch yet."
--
Dark eyes slip to Dyrk, and for a moment Val seems to consider the question seriously, as if he doesn't know whether or not he's hungry. "I could eat." He decides after that moment. "Time travel is always a little confusing; have I eaten recently or not? I suppose it doesn't matter, really."
--
"Okay then." The reply seems to cement a plan in Dyrk's mind somehow; he nods decisively. "We're almost to Chinatown, I think, and I got my stipend for the week, so let's get something to eat and we can ask at the restaurant for a chemist or whatever it is you need. Sound good?"