4927/Briefing the New Guy

Briefing the New Guy
Date of Scene:	15 July 2018
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Mon-El, StarDrake

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Mon-El has posed:
    Oh boy, can't wait to get to explaining to the new blood about all the trouble Lar has gotten himself and his friends into recently. But if Mikh is to be of any help, he needs to be brought up to speed on what's been going on as of late. So not long after Drakos officially joined, he's been asked to a meeting with Mon-El on the bridge of the Cruiser.

StarDrake has posed:
Star*Drake has arrived carrying actual cargo and supplies ordered on behalf of by the Legion in places which do not have the "pirates, rogues and riff-raff" label that's been attached to Knowhere in the nicer, shoe-wearing, napkin-using part of the Galaxy. Things that the Legion needs but cannot easily fabricate. Mikh detaches himself from the cargo-handling, shifting it to an AI copy of himself, and puts on his fancy spy-grade 'going to meet with people' chassis, the one that looks like a gold-skinned human, but not the one that doesn't have any weapons because this is the Legion, they attract trouble the way Cosmic Boy attracts iron filings.

"Greetings, Leader Legion," Mikh says in a Shikari accent, because Mon-el's reaction will show whether this universe will had that particular wrinkle. (Yes, will-had is a future-perfect tense. English needs to up its game.)

Mon-El has posed:
    When Mikh walked in, Lar was staring at a datapad or something while he was waiting but quickly looks up when he approaches the table in the ready room. "Oh stop it, just call me Lar, all right?" he chuckles, rebuking his teammate jovially with a shake of the head. "So uhm, how've you been?" he asks, starting the conversation with some small talk. "Run into anything you think should garner the team's attention?"

StarDrake has posed:
Gossip time? Because that's what couriers hear, and Mikh has taken to spending an extra cycle in-station when shifting cargo to pick it up, but it's been pretty much local stuff. Only a few bits of possible Legion-grade fun and games.

"Disturbing rumors from a Shiar scout about giant toadstools attacking a refugee ship in one of the Altair-APG-cent stellar group, which is close to Sol, but really nothing critical, as far as I know of. Never heard of sentient toadstools but stranger things have happened... Oh, and Asgard seems to have gone offline. Cosmo asked me to check it out if I get time, but not urgent. Thanagar is rattling their spears again, probably time for another mating season there."

Gossip Bot is remarkably low on good gossip, today.

"You heard anything good lately? I mean, I haven't been shot at in months."

Mon-El has posed:
    Lar arches a brow at the toadstools thing. "I think I heard about that." he chuckles. "Just when you think you've heard and seen it all, huh." he shakes his head. Asgard, hm. I know an Asgardian ship crashed on Earth recently. But the authorities are all over that already so I'm sure they have it well in hand. I do have connections in SHIELD so I'm sure they'll contact me if they think they could use my help."

    He sighs at that last question. "Well, the main reason I wanted to meet is to get you up to speed on all the uh...stuff that's been happening lately. If you see any disturbing reports about me from several months back, it's because I couldn't remember who I was. The Legion, Earth, the Phantom Zone--nothing. I don't know what happened, but I think Glorith might have something to do with it, because she kept showing up demanding I marry her or else she'll hurt people. Tried to use some kind of love spell on me, didn't work, made me go berserk, et cetera. Kidnapped one of my human friends and thankfully we managed to save him and defeat her but he hasn't been the same since. Just hoping she won't show up again...although thus far she hasn't."

StarDrake has posed:
"Human friends. Wait, Glorith? Right, note to self, see if the anti-thaumaton generator works in this u-frame."

Mikh engages three threads to think about this. He's not actually Brainiac-5 smart except in the very specific area of engines, drives, and materials, with relevant energy-field interactions, and not at all an analytical super-genius -- there's an app for that but it keeps trying to take over the brain as step one towards taking over the universe, and Mikh doesn't want that so he has it on lockdown in an unplugged external storage device. Anyway, three parallel consciousness threads doing integrated analysis, and he quickly realizes two things: Asgardian ship crashed on Earth, Notoriously bad Shiar scout navigational systems, Asgard offline, toadstools.

"OK, I think we should check out what's happening on Earth -- there's some coincidences I don't like. Also, why does Glorith want to marry you and ... I won't ask why she messed with your emotions, that's kind of her definitional psychosis, hooking up with powerful men and trying to control them or sprock them up. Is she even FROM this time period?"

Mon-El has posed:
    "Oh yeah, and what coincidences are you seeing, specifically?" Lar asks regarding the situation on Earth. "You don't suppose the reason the ship went down is because of these uh...screwed up mushrooms?"

    "Ugh." He mutters at the questions about Glorith, not necessarily directed at Mikh but just at the perplexing situation in general. "I don't even know which time period or universe or which version of her it is, I just know she's madly obsessed with me. There are other encounters I've had with her where she was just trying to marry me so that she could control me, but can't be sure if this one had the same goal. Fortunately I had a magic using friend present at the time so she was able to find a way to counter Glorith's spells." he sighs.

    "Anyway, on to item number two. Not long after we defeated Glorith a group of terrorists from Daxam calling themselves the White Triangle showed up demanding we give them the XY-4 serum. They managed to get their hands on it but of course it's specifically tailored to an individual's genetic profile so while it cured them of the lead allergy it also drove them berserk. We managed to take down two of them and lock them up but a third one is still at large. He attacked Nuala Duvall of the Nova Corps while she was investigating their crashed ship. Planning on transferring his friends to SHIELD custody; they're the ones best equipped to keep them sealed away right now. And maybe that'll draw him out...though by now he would've been exposed to far more yellow solar radiation than I should like."

StarDrake has posed:
"White Triangle? Wait, those dicks ... did you spend a thousand years in the Phantom Zone after taking mutated people to other worlds where they would be able to live without trouble? Because of the parallels I ran across, the White Triangle came from a universe where they practically worshipped you as the Seeder of Worlds."

Mikh does NOT bring up the "Monny MutantSeed" slurs used by the Church of Mongu for followers of Valorism. He got kicked out of that universe by the local copy of the Time Trapper anyway.

"Do they not have red-sun spectrum lamps? They should get some."

Mikh leans back and waits for the third shoe to drop.

Mon-El has posed:
    "It's not just mutants they hate, Mikh." Lar corrects, shaking his head. "It's anyone and everyone either not Daxamite or who sympathizes with anyone not Daxamite. I...imagine they respected me at one point, but they definitely hate the concept of the Legion. Technically they shouldn't have even existed yet in this time period, but..." he exhales, rubbing his head. "Maybe someone from the actual White Triangle in the future managed to send some of the radicalists back home a message or something in an attempt to change history in their favor."

    Again, he shakes his head at the red solar radiation suggestion. "Even if they did, it wouldn't work. The serum doesn't just make us immune to lead, it makes us immune to red solar radiation too. I gave them a sample of it and told them to come up with at least a temporary inhibitor. Since the White Triangle is still out there, and in case I--you know...lose it again." He shrugs. "I know not everyone trusts them, but I do. I mean, gotta trust -someone- with it. Someone not as close to me and thus not as likely to struggle with doing what needs to be done if it came down to it."

    "Right, then on to item number three..." This one seems to be the hardest one to talk about. He sighs heavily. "My parents showed up, trying to lure Kal into a trap by kidnapping Kara. Laurel and I and others who responded managed to rescue her and convince them to leave Earth. I guess...I don't completely blame them for being upset at Kryptonians, I expected them to be, but I think..." He sighs again. "I think the fact that they saw me kissing Kara just...pushed them over the edge. I know, I know, I should have known better. I knew it would infuriate them." He sort of stares off at a wall for a moment.

    "But we aren't seeing each other any more." He finishes, turning back toward Mikh.

StarDrake has posed:
"That's different from the ones I've known - the serum didn't do an all-spectrum unlock. It did improve retention time, but ..."

Priority interrupt to conversation management routine. Mikh, think like a human for a few minutes, or this will get weird. Processing ... Formatted. Print.

"OK. In order. SHIELD or Alpha Flight knows how to make serum suppressor? Good. I trust both of them, with reservations since SHIELD is susceptible to infestation by HYDRA in at least one of four timelines. Parents freaking over kissing a Kryptonian? What are you guys, Romulans versus Vulcans? Never mind, that's a fictional race from a completely separate and entirely fictional universe that does not have an instance that crosses over with every other universe anywhere. Kryptonians and Daxamites. You're the same people, from the same origin stock, just because you were separated for a few thousand years and there were colonization issues... Fine. Your parents are now properly chastised and you're not going to bring about the Great Reunification too soon. And why are your parents thinking they have any right to say what you do? You're an adult, Lar."

Grump grump. Robot is flustered. His skin ripples and pixelates and then pulls back in, similarly to a bird fluffing its feathers.

"OK, so you've brought shame upon the Legion with your antics, is what you wanted to tell me? Lar, I live on Knowhere and I regularly team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy, not the Oan ones, the lunatic ones. Remember, Cosmo sends me out to keep them from blowing up planets?"

Mon-El has posed:
    Lar nods in confirmation at the comment about the serum inhibitor. "Yeah. Well good, I'm glad -someone- trusts my judgment in that regard at least." he says with an air of relief, recalling how Laurel and Kara didn't seem to share the same sentiment in that regard. "Sure, they might get infiltrated, but like I said have to trust -someone- with it and I don't think it's any more likely to happen to them than to any other organization or person."

    He chuckles a bit at the acknowledgment of the confrontation with his parents. "'Chastised', sure. Yeah." A sigh. "That's what I tried to tell them, trust me. But they've always been very protective of me, even over my siblings. They even selected me to be heir to the throne over my older brother. So it's a responsibility to my people, or whatever's left of them anyway, which apparently according to them means they get to try to force me to do things."

    He nods at the question about Cosmo. "Yeah, you told me about that. But sometimes I feel like I've done nothing but cause trouble and maybe help fix trouble that I've caused." He shakes his head, scoffing a bit. "Can't forget when I first came back to Earth after losing my memories and accidentally wrecking some bar by putting some drunken idiots through the front windows. Lyle had migraines for weeks after that one."

StarDrake has posed:
Mikh files "Daxam has a throne" in the deviations section for this universe. Then he considers the rest of what Lar Gand has told him.

"Yeah. So here's the thing. In the trashier part of the galaxy, there's a term for instances of complete un-self-aware social blindness and screw-uppery, for 'sprocked beyond sprocking' and this is the Quill, named for Peter Quill, and referring to every situation where he tries to insist on being called StarLord. Now, you've achieved perhaps four Quills worth of humiliation, and while that IS a noticeable amount it's not nearly what I've seen over the course of ten days."

He pauses, and if he was human he'd take a drink of beer, but that's not actually a thing for him here.

"At least you try to fix the things you do."

Yes, Mikh did remove the adjective "terrible" from before "things" while the sentence was in his speech-output-queue, but the edit was so quick that it's not audible to most people.

Mon-El has posed:
    "Star Lord, huh? You know I think I met him. Yeah, I met him. On Knowhere. He helped me take down some assassin bots." Lar remarks. "He seemed to have a lot of complaints about being thrust into violent situations while still fully taking part in them as opposed to running away. Maybe he just enjoys making clever quips. And he drinks a lot." He smirks. "I...take it you don't like him."

StarDrake has posed:
"Peter's a friend. He resents that I have a better spaceship than him. It'd be easier to like him ifhe wasn't always," and Mikh grins since he has the facial construction that lets him do it without looking like COMPUTO on another rampage, "such a squeej. He deliberately acts out because he was raised by cannibal pirates, you know."

Mon-El has posed:
    "I see." Lar laughs. "Well, that's about all the um, news I had for you today." he says, relaxing a bit. "Never a dull day, I guess. Which is good. In some ways. Sort of."

StarDrake has posed:
"Well, I've finished offloading cargo and loading the outgoing. We should probably visit Earth soon to see what's up with those toadstool rumors and the whole "Asgard" thing," Mikh says. "But I have to finish this delivery route first."

He gives the Legion Salute, which is different from the weird L-shaped handshake thing that was apparently adapted from some ancient Masonic handshake that somehow survived the ages, and heads back to his ship.

"I should just leave a chassis here for emergencies," he thinks to himself as he slots the gold-skin chassis into its storage pod, then remembers that sometimes Brainiac 5 is aboard this cruiser and shudders. No. Just, no.

Star*Drake undocks and snaps off into the distance.