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With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

Discussion in 'Creative Writing' started by Mr Zoat, Jan 27, 2019.

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  1. Mquz

    Mquz Versed in the lewd.

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    Less than care about American politics. It’s not globally controversial.
     
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  2. RichardWhereat

    RichardWhereat Aia airëa Fëanáro.

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    And there are dipshits who claim The South Will Rise Again! still doesn't make it anything more than history. That said people can bring politics into anything, or be whiny about anything.

    Darwin?
     
  3. Threadmarks: Hoard (part 11)
    Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    11th January
    17:34 GMT +2


    Seven attackers, four of which survived their injuries and one of whom is conscious. Also worth noting that Zatanna is now strong enough to swing the Staff of Love hard enough to mash someone's skull. And not realise that she's done that until she tried neutralising their invisibility and the target body area was missing. Exercise, or arcane enhancement? I'll ask after the mission is over.

    And she's still on my arm for some reason, Ms Vadim's book floating in front of her. "Do you have any contact with the local gnome warren?"

    Ms Vadim shakes her head. "I don't even know where it is."

    Inspector Gherea sighs the long-suffering sigh of a police officer who knows he's in danger of falling down the rabbit hole but whose sense of duty won't let him break off. I've noticed that I've heard quite a few of those since becoming a superhero. "What is a gnome warren?"

    Zatanna floats the book towards him, and he nearly steps back before taking it. He looks it over quickly, then shakes his head. "As informative as the pictures are, I can't read Latin."

    Ms Vadim takes it from him. "Gnomes mostly live in large underground structures called 'warrens'. Some are thousands of years old, built of stone long before humans settled those parts of Europe. Others are more recent. Gnomes seldom live on their own. They can use their magic to prevent humans finding them."

    "And it could be anywhere?"

    "They prefer to live away from towns and cities. Their magic isn't strong enough to force thousands of people to ignore them." Her eyes narrow as she looks at our prisoners. "Usually. These are something new. Or possibly something old."

    "I don't know." Zatanna appears unconvinced. "It's just one picture. Didn't Anton Arcane-" Ms Vadim actually shudders, and her right hand makes a very small horns gesture. "-used to live in this country? If he'd gotten hold of a gnome, he might have turned them into something like this."

    I shake my head. "I've scanned unman biological material before. While I can't categorically say this wasn't him, it doesn't have any sign of the usual biological agents he used. And he seldom repeated himself."

    Inspector Gherea frowns. "Who is Anton Arcane?"

    "Romanian Nazi and biomancer. He's dead now, but his work still sticks around."

    "'Nazi' as in 'far right', or-?"

    "No, a proper Second World War, used to work in death camps Nazi. Hang on, I'll send Cranius a picture."

    Ring, scan. Message: Dear Doctor Cranius, recently encountered physiological abnormalities in Romania. Do not believe them to be Arcanian but would appreciate your confirmation. Yours, Orange Lantern.

    Message sent.

    The Inspector frowns, glancing at the maybe-gnomes. "Can they understand us?"

    "My scan of the one Ms Vadim stabbed suggests that they have the neural complexity to understand complex speech. As such, my rings ensure that they can understand me-" I make eye contact with the one I electrocuted, and his eyes widen slightly. Yes, not as cunning as you thought. "-but I don't know whether they speak English or Romanian or something else. Ms Vadim, can you think of any reason why mutant gnomes would be targeting you?"

    "The only reason I can think of is that I have heard of them, where most people-" She glances at the Inspector. "-are ignorant."

    "The Inspector mentioned that you had certain.. unusual contacts. I would normally respect your privacy, but if there's some sort of proxy conflict-."

    "No."

    "The thefts are happening over all of Eastern Europe. We were assuming that they were stealing for the value of the metal, but the other possibility is that they're looking for a particular artefact and only have an approximate description to work from. The United States has a deal with Atlantis for checking artefacts for magic before putting them in museums, but most places don't. If they're prepared to come after you in your place of business-."

    "Then I will contact people who can protect me."

    "Give them this." I take a bag of cloned, purple healing rayed blood out of subspace.

    "Why are you assuming they're vampires?"

    "The bite marks."

    Her right hand goes to her neck. "What.. bite marks?"

    I raise my eyebrows. "You really want me to say out loud?" Her eyes widen. "I used to work with John Constantine, and I'm still alive. When I'm invited to meet a dodgy street magician I do scan them first." I shake my head. Which she can't-. I switch back to my lighter armour and shake my head again. "Look, it's not a big deal for me. We sell this stuff to vampires in America, it's in the KordTech catalogue. I met.. seventeen? Back when we were testing it. They're all still… Animate, if not exactly alive."

    She nods a little nervously, and takes it. "That… Thank you. And I will ask, but I do not believe that my contacts are doing anything which would threaten gnomes."

    I turn to Zatanna. "Anything about the odd-looking gnomes in there?"

    "No, not really. The author says that the work they took the picture from said that these creatures served as foot soldiers for dragons, but… They don't seem to have been convinced that the older source was authentic. They met gnomes, and none looked like that or acted aggressively. Gnomes don't make good soldiers."

    "Dragons."

    "The last semi-reliable sighting of a dragon in Europe was in the twelfth century. I think if there was a giant fire-breathing lizard around then someone would have spotted it."

    "Inspector, does Bucharest do emergency evacuation drills?"

    "We have.. civil contingency plans for fires and terrorist attacks, but-. Are we going to be attacked by a dragon?"

    "If one hasn't attacked in the last nine hundred years, I'd guess not. If one was hibernating or something… I can't think of anything that's changed in the last few months that would have woken it up. Heck, we don't even know that the other thefts were conducted by these things." I frown. "Zatanna, these are the same creatures as-?"

    "It's the same magic, and they're roughly the right size and have the climbing ability. I don't know if it was these ones personally…" She frowns. "Hm." She releases my arm and walks over to where the blood splattered from the brain she crushed and kneels down, right hand on the staff and left hand touching the blood. Threads of violet light worm their way down from the star sapphire, along her right arm and down her left, flowing into the blood. A small violet model monster gnome appears floating just over it, and Zatanna's eyes unfocus slightly.

    "Zatanna?"

    "No. They came right here. They smelled her magic." She stands, the mini-monster fading and the blood on her fingers evaporating.

    I nod. "Would you please update Kaldur?" I turn back to my electrocutee and put my power armour back on. "I need to ask this one some questions."
     
    Last edited: May 23, 2019
  4. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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  5. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    Zatanna may just have to clobber him with her staff a couple times before he get's a clue...

    The rule with Nazi super-scientists is they aren't dead till you've seen the body.
     
  6. RichardWhereat

    RichardWhereat Aia airëa Fëanáro.

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    Hah! If an angel invasion didn't wake one up, nothing would.
    Until you've seen the body, ring scanned it for life, used Zeus' bondage cord to check for life, followed them to the afterlife, assimilated them, and hit them with the Sword of the Fallen.
     
  7. Sceptic

    Sceptic Critical Irrationalist

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    And probably not even then.
     
  8. Sockmonkey

    Sockmonkey I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Yet it's getting it's ass kicked by rabbits. Very little in nature is "tough" in a broad sense. It's usually a rock- paper-scissors kind of thing.
    They saw the body when it was getting it's ass kicked by Swamp Thing.
     
  9. FreeGod

    FreeGod If you see a God on the road fuck it!

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    No that seems to make them come back as a human.
     
  10. Mquz

    Mquz Versed in the lewd.

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    Bodies can be faked - especially by skilled biomancers. Though they have proof that he hasn’t come back for his creations. He might as well be dead, if he is still alive.
     
    Last edited: Mar 16, 2019
  11. Queshire

    Queshire Not too sore, are you?

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    Don't complain if you get bopped for it then.
     
  12. w34v3r

    w34v3r Versed in the lewd.

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    Yeah when dealing with Nazi Biomancers it's probably best to assume that dead requires something on the napalm to nuclear strike spectrum.
     
  13. RichardWhereat

    RichardWhereat Aia airëa Fëanáro.

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    We haven't seen that happen to anyone who was assimilated first.
     
  14. Ganurath

    Ganurath Apologizes For Nothing

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    What about if you know the people that ate it?
     
  15. Handlewithcare

    Handlewithcare Versed in the lewd.

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    The worst thing about Nazis and the like is that they already are.
     
  16. Dakkan Sall

    Dakkan Sall Random Encounter

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    "If one" I would presume.

    Really, Paul? REALLY?!!?
     
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  17. lancelot

    lancelot Grand High Poobah

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    Thankfully on this site it can all end in a threesome instead of tears, I'm pretty sure Cheshire was mentioned to be Bi in the comics so even odds on that later. She seems to be willing to wait a few years if needed.
     
  18. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    The sensible thing for someone who feels differently from me to do is to attempt to explain and justify their position, with the aim of changing my mind. The stupid thing to do, the thing which promotes an us vs them mentality, is label it to associate it with a more extreme position and ban it. Various people on the thread and later by PM attempted the former. The mods did the latter.

    For example:
    The statement that 'In the 1990s, in the US, HIV disproportionally affects gay men' is not homophobic. Aside from anything else, it's true. If you wish to argue against it you have to have better statistical evidence that the person arguing for it, but the lack of emotive language suggests that they would be receptive to the idea.
    Whereas the statement that ''Gay men are disease-carrying scum and should burn in hell' is homophobic. Once a person believes that there probably isn't much you can do, but I would respect someone who used statistics on rates of infection and demonstrated reasons relating to social practices and education to show that orientation itself wasn't the deciding factor.

    Thank you, corrected.
    It's not quite as bad as it looks. He knowns how she feels, but she hasn't been pushing it recently. He assumed that she wasn't going to.
    Cheshire 1 or Cheshire 16?
     
    Last edited: Mar 16, 2019
  19. Queshire

    Queshire Not too sore, are you?

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    Initially I presumed that you were referring to stupidity in general instead of the stupidity of the mods in particular. I don't really have much to say on that particular thing. Sure, looks like you got shafted.

    Looking at what you said as a general principle though, there's a couple things that I can't quite agree with.

    Primarily, I feel that the need for someone else to explain their position is only one half of the equation. It is also important for one to search out and learn under their own agency in order to get the most accurate picture.
     
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  20. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Sure, ideally, but how many people routinely check things that they know to be true without prompting? I believe the Earth to be in the shape of a slightly flattened sphere but I've never, for example, tried to send a camera to the edge of space on a balloon to check the claims of flat earthers.
     
  21. Queshire

    Queshire Not too sore, are you?

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    Well that comes down to the question of what is sufficient prompting.
     
  22. rkyeun

    rkyeun Cabbitus Maximus

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    The entire sky booming with golden fire and divinely rousing magical announcements of angels invading worldwide might have woken it up.
     
  23. Gantradies

    Gantradies Not too sore, are you?

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    *headesks*

    it.
    gets worse.

    see, the story you often hear is the Aussie army with machineguns lost vs emus.

    the thing some people left out, is the guy in charge had the brilliant idea of herding them together, and setting up in a CIRCLE around them....
     
  24. Old Knife

    Old Knife Not too sore, are you?

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    Sweet baby maritans. She can model people. 0_0
     
  25. Sceptic

    Sceptic Critical Irrationalist

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    You believe the Earth is an oblate spheroid?! That's crazy! Just because something is true is no reason to go believing in it. :p
     
  26. King of Frost

    King of Frost Wishing I was somewhere colder no doubt.

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    It was mentioned much earlier in the story that OL does know how Zatanna feels about him. He can see the violet light.

    She's also way, way too young for him, even if you take into account the age he's pretending to be. He'd still be a creep.
     
  27. Prince Charon

    Prince Charon Just zis guy, you know?

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    'Sounding,' in this context, is in the mind of the observer. While I have accepted that you were being weirdly and annoyingly pedantic, rather than my initial impression of actual bigotry (sorry about that), the mods et al on SV.com have already pre-judged you (hence the term 'prejudice,' if anyone reading this did not know that), and will automatically assume the worst regardless. With them, and people who believe them, you literally can't say that without sounding sarcastic and nasty. You may not even be able to say that you support people who want to become spacecraft without being assumed to be a sarcastic bigot, because far too many people (including transgender individuals and many who support them) don't have the first clue what 'transhuman' is, and would not necessarily accept it as valid if it were explained to them.

    (If the above is too close to politics, I'll happily remove it and PM Zoat instead - or remove it and not bother, if he's already read it.)

    Kobolds?
     
  28. Navi-Hank

    Navi-Hank An engine fuled by spite

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    Well yeah, we have people for that
     
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  29. Impatient_Quill

    Impatient_Quill I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Honestly, any good ninja training scheme includes at least nine semester hours on seduction, including same gender seduction. While that does not increase the chances she is bi, it does pretty much garrenty she isn't in denial about being bi if she is.
     
  30. Ngamer11

    Ngamer11 Experienced.

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    Mr. Zoat, off topic, but I was re-reading Pursuant, and it said in part 10 that Match would be fixed in three months, which would be around now in-universe. Are we going to see Paragon!Match become a member of the Team this or next episode? Or is he joining never gonna happen?
     
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