ya_assemble | [LN] He flies through the air with the greatest of ease

"That's the best we can do," said Kon, floating back down towards Nightwing. "Which sucks but we're still working out how to go proactive with this thing. I mean, we do patrols, but there are so few of us..."

He didn't land, which wasn't surprising. Anyone that knew Kon well knew he spent most of his life in the air, often floating or flying when even other fliers might have walked. Probably had something to do with the fact that unlike a lot of heroes that'd gotten their powers later, he'd been "born" with the ability to fly, so that it was just as natural to him as walking.

And now that he was free of Project: Gladiator - where he'd been kept completely grounded and sometimes powerless in the red rooms when he wasn't on missions - he spent even more time in the air.

"I'll give you the tour. Over there's the lounge." He pointed at an area with lots of comfy couches and chairs. There were also big screen TVs and a multitude of game systems hooked up. "That's where a lot of us hang out. That way's the kitchen. Don't ask me where the yetis get the groceries, none of us know."

The floating doesn't bother Dick in the least. After all, it was just sort of something that Kon did. Dick was used to it. So were most of the people who hung around Kon very much.

He followed along, taking mental notes of the places that Kon was pointing out. "Probably better not to ask, honestly. Though, to be honest, I'm a little surprised at the yetis." That wasn't part of the Santa Claus myth that he knew of back home.

"Apparently the yetis make the toys and the elves just test them." He leaned down enough to whisper, "They're not very bright."

Case in point, nearby, one of them accidentally electrocuted himself by chewing on some Christmas lights several elves were decking a small tree with. He got up, dazed and a little charred, but mostly fine afterward.

"They kinda think like little kids? Really, the yetis do all the work. Which, I know it looks like a house-elf Harry Potter situation, like they're slaves or something, but they legit just like building crap. Phil says it's just their culture. They like building crap and they like doing it for the kids." He added, since it wouldn't be immediately obvious, "Phil's one of the yetis in charge."

Kon started to lead Dick down the stairs to the first of many workshop levels.

Dick couldn't help but wince at the one that was electrocuted, though it didn't seem to bother the elf much. Shaking his head, he followed Kon down the stairs. "This is all just seriously trippy. You're sure I haven't been hit by something the Scarecrow cooked up?"

Though, really, this wasn't something that was in Crane's usual repertoire. There wasn't anything scary, just...weird. "Maybe Hatter."

"Nope," he said. "And it's not Mysterio, either."

A pause.

"Who's a villain you haven't met. Yet. That, uh, brings us to the 'what happened back home' part of explaining things I still need to get to."

Which was kinda huge.

"About two odd years ago we had another Crisis back home. A huge one. It involved our universe and another universe - with another version of Earth filled with superheroes. We won but reality was so damaged the only way to save both universes was cram them together. So now Earth is this giant melded mess and the population doubled overnight. Gotham, Philadelphia, both New York Cities, Metropolis - they're all part of one giant megacity now, that takes up a huge chunk of New Jersey and New York. Bludhaven's going to be part of it soon - the way they're rebuilding, and the way Gotham shifted, means they're going to start overlapping. Already Bludhaven's overlapping with Atlantic City a bit."

At least Bludhaven was rebuilding at all. He knew that was something Nightwing might like hearing.

Admittedly, he didn't want to admit that the reason it'd finally gotten cleaned up was because of Luthor's actions as president. A lot of the US had gotten cleaned up and relative order had been restored thanks to Luthor - a demonstration of how absolutely idiotic he was for being a supervillain and using his position of power for evil when he could be off curing cancer or stopping world hunger or whatever.

And that? That was a LOT more to take in than even the earlier information about this world.

Dick paused, leaning against the nearest wall to take it in. And, honestly, was feeling a bit more exposed than normal for having his domino off. Still, he was good at keeping his expression controlled. It was necessary more often than not.

He drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "Okay, wow, that...that's good. I mean, the bit about 'Haven. The rest of it is kinda...yeah, a lot to take in." And he would absolutely agree about Luthor. A great mind that could have been doing so much more had he been willing to let everything with Superman go by the wayside. "Is Cassie from the same time, then?"

"Yep."

He tapped his temple

"The weirdest thing of all was once it happened, we remembered we'd all met the heroes of that other world before. A whole bunch of times! Cosmic crap messed with our memories and there's this guy named Access whose job was keeping the worlds apart and making us all forget. He was able to travel between the two of them - he helped us all during the Crisis. A lot of our memories of what happened are fuzzy but I remember that much."

He went on, "But there are these two cosmic beings that are like, the living embodiment of each universe, and they're brothers or something, who didn't want to be separated. And apparently our world's been close to merging with the other one for ages. We teamed up to hold it off a bunch of times and just forgot after - but most of us remember every time we met each other now."

"Huh."

Dick shook his head, mouth twisting slightly. "I'm not going to ask for specifics. This is still in my future, after all." Then he paused and looked up at Kon. "You wouldn't tell me if I died or anything, right?"

Not that he knew that Nightwing hadn't been spotted in that other world yet. But, then, the Bats were always doing things strangely.

"Far as I know, all of the Bats are fine. Not everyone's fallen back from the Crisis yet but that's more a time dilation thingy. As far as we can remember most of the heroes got through it." A pause. "Hell, some people that were dead are back. There was a weird time distort-ey thing where people were pulled from all different points in their personal timelines. So a lot of them got yoinked from when they were alive without messing with causality. Like Ted Kord."

A pause.

"That might be the only reason I've stayed around despite the future being changed. The Legion had Starman take my body and put it in Superman's chrysalis thing in the Fortress of Solitude. It was there for a thousand years before the three Brainiac 5's managed to revive me and Bart and then we traveled back to the past. So right now, I'm alive and my body's dead under the Fortress at the same time. That future's probably never going to happen now - which means that version of the Legion might not exist or might have splintered off into an alternate dimension or something."

This crap was confusing. He'd have to ask Brainy about the implications of that.

That got even more of a grimace out of Dick, though he was glad to hear that everybody seemed to be fine. And the bit about people who had been dead coming back was even better.

"I think we should find something different to talk about. This sort of thing is definitely more Tim's territory. Not sure my brain can keep up."

Which was bullshit and he knew it. But the self-deprecation was just a thing, part of the mask that he used around those who didn't know him as well as the original Titans or any of the other Bats. And he knew Kon could probably see through it, too. But it was more his way of signaling that he'd had about all he could take of the current infodump.

"Yeah, well, it's, uh. Not really something to look forward to. Luthor's president again and pretty much thinks he can get away with murder, and..." He paused as he realized he was talking more because he was angry than because Nightwing really wanted the information. "I'll stop."

His gaze went a little odd and distant for a moment, like the light suddenly went off behind his eyes.

It lasted just for a moment, as if he'd forgotten Dick was there, and then the lights were back on again and he grinned and started to fly down the stairs.

"Just wait until you see the workout room. There's these weird clockwork robots and magic constructs that shift around and stuff. And platforms you can flip off of."

Yeah, he really didn't like the way that Kon just switched there. He followed, though, nodding. "Gee. I don't know why you'd go and mention those platforms. Though if there's a gym somewhere..."

He walked over, looking at the kid. Who...wasn't really much of a kid anymore. "Hey. I didn't mean that I never want to hear about what's happening back home. I'm just reeling a lot right now and I need to get myself centered better before I can take more of it in. You don't need to shut it down like that."

Kon worked his jaw for a moment, trying to figure out what to say. On the one hand, Nightwing was apparently overwhelmed by it all which meant explaining why he'd shut off for a second would just add to the pile.

On the other hand, he knew it looked weird. His head just...went away sometimes. Occasionally he found himself drifting and Cassie sometimes had to snap her fingers to draw him back out of his own head when he blinked off.

"It's not - it's -" He didn't really know how to explain.

"Some bad stuff happened," he said, his tone of voice going strange and flat all of a sudden. "Sometimes when I think about it my brain switches off for a second."

And there it went again, a troubled gaze off into the middle distance before he snapped to attention again, perkiness filling the vacuum.

"Don't worry about it. We can get into that later." He tried to make it sound like it wasn't a big deal. "I think we'll hit the sleigh room next - you should see the sleigh, it's like the mystical equivalent of a muscle car. There's even a button you can push that's like firing off some magical nitro. The thing goes at like a kajillion miles an hour. Way cooler than the Batplane."

Edited 2015-05-28 10:23 (UTC)

Eventually, Dick had every intention of getting to the bottom of that look. It worried him, seeing his friend that way. He just couldn't do it now because, contrary to popular belief, the Bats were just human. Even Dick could get overwhelmed by too much information.

"Nothing is cooler than the Batplane. Ask Tim sometime." And he managed to flash Kon a smile, even if it was a little wan. He was getting there. "I'm assuming that our physical states being somewhat amplified now is what keeps bad things from happening when it's going that fast?"

"I know how cool the Batplane is. One time Tim let Bart -" A pause as he realized what he was admitting to "- know. About it. Because he talked about how cool it was. With the Titans."

The Titans totally didn't convince Tim to sneak the Batplane out for a joyride, nope. And they definitely didn't let Bart drive. And they absolutely did not pick up Kon by running the plane into him. Just like they never ever threw any parties in the Fortress of Solitude where Batgirl was sick all over the bathroom because she was a lightweight.

"Mostly it's just magic," Kon said, balancing on the railing as they made their way downstairs, seeing how much he could walk on it without flying. He did a fairly good job of balancing without using his flight or teke, which was a bit more of a challenge for him than some, given he was so top-heavy. "Anything here that should be impossible or something? Magic. We're magic, the world's magic, all our gear is magic or tech fused with magic - I'm amazed Brainy hasn't blown a blood vessel by now, he hates when he can't explain stuff with science."

Edited 2015-05-28 11:06 (UTC)

It took a moment to remember what Kon might be alluding to, but once he did, Dick broke out in a wide grin. "Sure. Told you about it. As happens in Titans' Tower." He remembered very well what it was like, being part of the group when you were that young. And, honestly, it wasn't like the original Titans had never done anything of the sort.

The 'magic' had Dick grimacing again. "Be glad Batman isn't here. I think he might be one of the few people in the world who hates magic as much as Brainiac 5." If there had to be a Brainiac there, at least it was a good one.

"One of many, many reasons I'm glad he isn't here," Kon said dryly, before remembering that, you know, that it was rude as hell to diss other people's mentors.

But his dislike of Batman had only grown in the years since his brainwashing by Luthor. Having the people at Project: Gladiator parrot a lot of the same things Batman had said about him in the past had only made that dislike crystallize into something more concrete and solid.

Like that he was a machine. A robot. A weapon. Something that needed to be controlled. All things he'd heard out of Batman's mouth partly due to the visions of Raven's soul-self - and some of which he'd even said to his face. And while he was sure he'd gained some of Batman's respect after his death and revival, it wasn't like the guy had even apologized once.

Now that he was getting older, he wasn't as easily intimidated - or impressed - and the fact that his death had happened in no small part because most of the heroes had been occupied with Brother Eye had only added to the big heap of reasons to dislike him.

"...that was rude." You didn't diss other people's mentors lightly. "Sorry."

Edited 2015-05-28 11:37 (UTC)

The laughter that Dick had been holding back earlier came out in a snort and a half smile as Dick shook his head. "I'm pretty sure I've said worse about him."

It was more difficult when the mentor was also the father. But it wasn't like Dick didn't know Bruce's shortcomings. Had called him out on them on several occasions as well. "It's okay, Kon. Bruce can definitely be an asshole."

Tim wasn't quite as on board for Kon dissing Batman. He usually understood when Kon did it and sometimes had misgivings himself over some of Bruce's choices but he still had a bit of that whole looking-up-to-him thing.

"I know Tim looks up to him, even if he's pretty aware of his flaws and stuff but he's been nice to me like a grand total of one time and it was only because I was was strapping myself to a nuke," Kon said. "And he was rotten to me after Luthor brainwashed me. Called me a machine. You weren't there for that."

Nightwing had kind of stormed off from the Outsiders after everything had gone done, after Shift had killed Indigo.

He hadn't been there when the League showed up to help clean up the mess and taken Kon away, in shock and shaking, for tests at STAR Labs, to the Watchtower where J'onn had examined his mind and helped dismantle the infrastructure and trigger words in his subconscious.

The arguments among the League had gotten heated, loud enough that Kon had caught them in the Medbay of the Watchtower with his super-hearing. He'd heard the arguments, how some of them wanted him locked away, alone in the Fortress. Batman had been the loudest proponent for it, saying all kinds of nasty things.

"Then I go and die saving the world, come back, and does he say 'I'm sorry I called you a machine, Kon'? or 'good job saving the world, Kon, I was wrong about you, p.s. glad you're not dead'? Noooo." He added, "This little saving-the-world jaunt is better off without him. Especially when a lot of what we have to do is embrace the whimsy. So much stuff runs on hope and faith here."

"Which is why, when they wanted a Bat from our world, I got dragged in." Might be the first one. Either Tim or Stephanie would be good choices, too. Or, at least, Stephanie would have been a good choice. "Robin's always been more about hope than Batman ever was."

Dick knew Bruce's shortcomings. And would voice them more easily than Tim would, generally. Partly because he'd known Bruce so much longer. "I wouldn't hold your breath on the apology, though. It took a few years for him to apologize for forbidding me to be Robin anymore, after all." And even then, other people might not have considered it much of an apology. "But, just so you know. I'm really glad that you're alive. And not just for Tim's sake."

"If I held my breath for as long as it'd take Bats to apologize I'd be dead again," Kon said cheekily.

But the rest just made Kon flash Dick a smile as he walked down the stair-rail, carefully balancing as they made their way down.

He hadn't forgotten it, everything that'd led up to the end he hadn't known he'd come back from. Him and Nightwing making their way to the Pole, talking about Superman and Batman, Wally and Babs, Tim and Cassie. It had reminded him of everything they were fighting for. And then they and Cassie had made a three-person last stand against the apocalypse.

He remembered how much easier it'd made it. It was the worst fight of his life, they'd been outmanned and outgunned until they freed the others from the tower, but they'd held together and even though he'd died, it had made it so much easier and more peaceful knowing they were there. It had made it so much easier to die when one of the last things he'd seen through blurred vision was Cassie and Nightwing frantically throwing wreckage aside to find him.

"I'm glad I'm still alive and kicking, too." A pause. "But even if I hadn't come back..."

Despite the fear, there had been a pervasive sense of peace because he hadn't been alone. And as he'd slipped away, he'd been secure in knowing how much he'd be missed. As hard as dying had been, it would've been a whole lot harder without the two of them.

"I never really, uh, said this to future you. A lot of time had passed when I came back and -" He paused again, awkward, because he was about to make this into a Moment. "But it wasn't as long ago for you so it makes a lot more sense to say it now."

The smile brightened even more.

"Thank you for being there. I didn't know I was going to come back. And we all fought for each other - Titans together, right? If I had kicked it then, for good, everything you did and said leading up to it, seeing you and Cass tearing through the wreckage to find me - it made it easier. Less scary. I wasn't alone."

That had made it so much more peaceful.

"I guess it's me and you and Cass up against the end of the world again, huh? At least we've got practice. I'll try to go at this thing with a little less dying this time."

Edited 2015-05-31 01:07 (UTC)

"You and me both," Dick replied with a shake of his head. "Or...not dying, on my part, but I came pretty close."

A lot closer than he ever wanted to admit to, even to himself.

"But. You should know that I was proud to be there with you and Cassie. Though I definitely agree, if we're doing the world saving thing again, less dying all around is definitely a good plan." Because he didn't want to think about what might happen back home if they died here. It probably wasn't good.

"Well, here's the place to get even better at that not-dying thing," said Kon, as they reached the bottom floor, the slightly snowy recesses of the sub-basement of the Pole. It was cold enough here that the snow didn't melt but their mythy-ness made it tolerable.

He opened a massive door there to show Dick the training room, in all it's magic, muteable glory. It was much warmer in there, set at a nice temperature for working out that wasn't too hot and wasn't too cold.

"It's nice and flexible. The platforms can do a lot of things, the robots can do it a lot of things, you can set the floor to whatever level of padded you want - or don't want. The magic can also do things like simulate laser beams and stuff. You can mess with the settings over there." He pointed over to a panel with a lot of bottoms and magical holographic screens. "And - most importantly for people like me and Cass - whenever something gets wrecked it just magically rebuilds itself."

Edited 2015-06-02 05:34 (UTC)

"That part, I'm probably not going to have to worry about too much." Though Dick was already looking at things with an interested expression. "Yeah. I think I like this. Too bad we can't take this back to our world. It could be useful in Titans Tower or for the Out..." He paused, then cleared his throat. "The Outsiders."

Yeah, that wasn't one of his shining moments, was it? "Actually, the worry I have at the moment is that I'm going to run out of my usual items." The stuff he kept in his boots and gloves. Because he didn't wear a belt any more.

"The yetis can take care of that. They can make just about anything. The toy thing is just because they like helping Santa make the kids happy."

Although...

"Speaking of the usual things from home, there's, uh, somebody here you should probably know about."

This was gonna be awkward.

[LN] He flies through the air with the greatest of ease

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

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)