"I'm not that desperate for a leg up!" He taps an elongated right forefinger against his forehead. "Or am I?"
He shifts shape, expanding and contracting until he resembles a ridiculously buxom woman… But still with his original face.
And now I'm picturing Jessica Rabbit with Plastic Man's face and goggles. <urhg>
"If you made the effort to change colour-." He raises his eyebrows. "It would still be a 'no', but I'd be a little more impressed."
"If you're not looking for a rebound, why'd you mention the divorce?" He thrusts his disturbingly rubbery breasts in my direction. "Huh?"
Dude,
stop...
"I'm divorced from managing the scenario. I have no direct input. I know roughly what's going to happen, but not exactly what's going to happen. And -please- try to take this seriously."
"Yeah yeah, I'm just getting it all out of my system now where Bats can't glare at me. You ready to go?"
Well, we do know how intimidating the Bat-Glare can be...
"I-."
Wallace appears in a blur of yellow.
"Hey, Oh El."
"Kid Flash. What brings you here?"
Oh, boy, the peanut gallery is here.
I suppose it's so OL can explain things to someone. Every good mastermind needs an Igor.
"Can I spectate? On the Watchtower, if that's where you're doing this?"
"Um." I look at Mr O'Brian, who wobbles back into his usual shape and shrugs his shoulders. "I don't have a problem with it? Though you understand that doing so removes you from play."
Heh, he even factored in the Team's likely involvement. Planning!
"You were planning for us to join in?"
"If the 'villain' side can identify a Justice League member, they can launch attacks on their family as a distraction or for revenge. That includes you."
"Were you planning on telling me..?"
It's part of the job, Kid. You wear the mask, you wear the dangers.
"I got consent from all of the civilians. Ms Lane was actually quite interested to see what this exercise involves." Grudgingly. "But 'Kid Flash' knows that supervillains could target him, and he's trained to fight them off."
"Yeah, but this is you."
Oh, how telling that is.
"I've tried to keep my privileged knowledge out of it. The villain side only have access to publically available knowledge unless they can find out more." I glance at the zeta tube. "Look, you might as well come along for the full briefing that I'm going to be giving the League. Batman can just throw you off if he doesn't want you there."
"Okay." He smiles confidently. "Let's do this!"
I doubt Batman will feel it necessary. Means KF is less likely to blunder in and mess something up...
I nod, Mr O'Brian leading the way through-
2nd March
13:58 GMT
"Recognized, Plastic Man, two three, Kid Flash, B zero three, Orange Lantern, B zero six."
-the zeta tube and into the Watchtower and someone's been paying attention! The exit point is no longer in the meeting room, but in its own fortified chamber with… Yes, martian technology testing the mental state of the entrant.
About damn time, Leaguers!
I look in the direction of the camera, and clap
"Huh." Wallace looks around. "This is new."
Heh, well, the Team generally doesn't visit the Watchtower all that often, does it?
Correction: Missing Full Stop.
"This is overdue.
Resuming his natural form, Mr O'Brian strolls over to the exit and smiles at the sensor.
"Bats wanted this here when you showed up. Took him a while to get it all designed and installed."
I'll bet it did. Especially the Martian stuff.
"And my birthday isn't for another seven months."
I feel the slight automatic pressure in my mind as the martian biotechnology tries to make sense of my thought processes. Is it calibrated for me? I'm a little unique, but, okay. I relax my shields.
Probably easier than setting off the alarms.
"Kinda annoying for me, 'cause it can't read my mind at all. But-."
"Identities confirmed."
The heavy blast door slides open, granting us access into the main chamber. Which… Isn't unreasonable. There's only so much internal space here, after all. And the main defence of the League is the members of the League, not any automated systems.
True. Imagine busting through the door into a full meeting of the League. Like that one JSA/JLA Thanksgiving dinner where two magic-users busted in only to realise 'Oh dear, there's rather a lot of them...'
Wallace and I follow Mr O'Brian out. The rest of the League is already here, and Ms Thal gives me a glare as I approach the open end of the table's U.
Mr O'Brian finds his seat as Batman inclines his head very slightly towards me. "Orange Lantern. Please explain today's event to the League."
And the game begins. Prepare the Popcorn and Malteasers!
"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for taking part. Today -somewhere on Earth- a series of crimes will be happening. These will snowball until the training event's villain achieves their objective. Your aim is to stop the villain. You may do in whatever way you think best, but you will probably be gathering evidence from crime scenes and following up the leads you generate from them."
"Funny as.. last time was, none of you are patsies. However, the villain may attempt to subvert any of you during the event. Sometimes this will involve them using information or threats to blackmail you. If that happens and you don't accede to their demands, I'll mention the likely result in the summation at the end of the event. If they successfully mind control you… Then I'm going to ask you to play along because we're not using actual mind control technology."
And I find it hilarious he had to point that out.
"Once we start the event, not only will the villain start their attacks, they will also start gathering information on you just as you gather information on them. Again, I'll feed back on the consequences of that at the end, but you may find yourself being informed during the event that a particular person has been killed or a place has been destroyed. If someone actually dies we'll obviously call this.. whole thing off. Any deaths reported in that way are virtual, but please try to avoid interacting with a dead person without the aid of a necromancer."
A couple of quiet chuckles, but they're all very much motivated to beat me. They're focusing.
Good to see them all business. No fooling around here.
Good show.
"To keep you informed of events which are happening virtually, you will each be issued with one of these." A series of filaments flick out and deposit a bracer in front of each of them. "These will also feed back to me about where you are and what you're doing."
Guy nods. "So we don't wear them, got it."
He'd hardly pull something like that, Guy. This time anyway.
"No. As I was explaining to Plastic Man, I'm not going to be an active participant in the event. Ah, unless something goes very badly wrong, then me stepping in will be a sign that it's over. I'll also be on monitor duty just in case something real happens which requires the full attention of the Justice League, in which case I'll either deal with it myself or call the whole thing off. I'm also off the target list, so the villain won't try to retaliate against me."
Love his confidence about taking over for the League.
I focus on Batman.
"You can check it out if you want, but it's part of the mechanism by which this scenario works, so it's not intended to be a variable itself."
He nods, and removes his left glove to put it around his left forearm.
Trust, but Verify. Classic Batman.
"Ah, Plastic Man, Martian Manhunter, consider yourself free to take yours off while shapeshifting, but.. try and keep it close by if you can. If they get destroyed, I can issue you with a replacement pretty much immediately. Any questions?"
"Yeah." John Stewart frowns as he straps his bracer on. "Who are we up against?"
Now, now, do you skip to the ending of the murder mystery novels?
"You don't know. But I suggest trying to find out at the earliest opportunity." I pull a bleed fracture pulse receiver out of subspace and activate it, signalling to the 'boss' that we're about to start.
"Three, two-"
Batman's already out of his chair, calling up crime report and sightings of me for the last week.
"-one, go."
And of course Batman goes straight for the cheat codes.
