"Recognised, Overgirl, B two three."
I walk a little closer to him and smile.
"Hello, Nylor. Keeping busy I see."
Try not to take
too much pleasure in this, OL. Eyes on the goal.
"Khhhhrk. Khhhhrk."
"Oh, knock it off. Your neck's as tough as the rest of you, and she's from Krypton."
Kind of pleasant to imagine him pretending to choke, kicking his legs as she floats him a foot off the ground...
"Why am I here, criminal!"
Nylor holds his arms out to the side, and I swiftly denude him of anything that looks even vaguely threatening. Neru jacket, gone. Runic bracers, gone. Radio, gone. Radio implant, removed.
Ow. Hopefully that wasn't anywhere
important. Not that OL couldn't heal him, if he felt he
needed to...
"Hey!"
"Recognised, Supergirl, B two zero."
Armoured undershirt, gone. Charms and pendants-
Boy, Truggs was expecting trouble, eh? Or is he simply
properly paranoid? After all, if someone
is out to get you...
"Ow!"
-one of which heats up when a construct makes contact, reddening his skin where it touches.
Tough titties, cowboy. Wonder if that was some kind of counterpart to OL's spell-eater ward, but tuned to
emotional energy... Let's hope it was a one-off, or the Lanterns could find themselves having
difficulties someday.
"If by some dark miracle you're acquitted, all of your possessions will be returned to you."
"'Dark' miracle? I don't move in those circles. You look better when you're not fat and horny."
Says the man working with at least one Lord of Hell and, previously, a Lord of Chaos that committed mass murder of children... You have
no moral high ground here, Truggs.
"Recognised, Kara Zor-El, A four five."
"Thank you. I definitely prefer the full beard you have now to the moustache you had when we first met."
If anyone was wondering:
Nylor Truggs. Also found
this, about his sole listed comics appearance:
Superboy (v2) 50: Dial V for Villian.
Thirtieth Century fashion,
huh?
Pretty sure his 'Lois and Clark' appearance wore a beard, too... Whoops, got the
time-travellers confused. Still, I bet Truggs looks a
lot like that guy now....
New Kara turns her head and gives me a puzzled look.
"It's a British thing; full set or clean shaven and nothing in between. So Nylor, mind telling me what you were doing here, with special attention to anything that I need to stop while you are absent?"
And make it quick, I wouldn't count on Supergirl's
patience...
"Ah, I plead the fifth?"
"You can do that, but I will warn you that it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court."
An actual part of the British '
Right to Silence warning.' Equivalent to the Miranda warning in the US.
"Ah, pretty sure this is America."
"Well, they say that jurors shouldn't make any inference from someone pleading the fifth, but do you think that's what actually happens?"
Yeah, there's a big gap between 'should' and 'do'. After all, they're only human.
I look over to where Angelika is investigating some… Slightly worrying looking cylinders. The outer casing is armoured and coating with runes both for evading detection and… The promotion of good health? The general design is worrying reminiscent of Kon's pod.
Interesting.
Might want to ask about this right quick, OL. Especially if any are in
use.
"Recognised, Supergirl, A six five."
"Overgirl?"
"You weren't joking about the Supergirls. Ah, or should I call them Superwomen?"
Only if they ask you to. A
surprising number of distaff counterparts to Male superheroes
rarely do, whereas those who started out
independent are
nearly always 'Woman'... And when a 'Girl' hero
does change to 'Woman' it's usually a
big character moment.
"I'm pretty sure that Overgirl is the only one out of her teens."
Noriel pauses in she study of Nylor's amulets to glare at me.
Eh-hem! Million-year-old angel's mind, thank you.
"Physically. Overgirl? Feel like becoming Overwoman?"
"I do not like what it would imply about my relationship with Overman. Also, I do not look old enough. Nillor Trugs, why do you have cloning tanks here?"
And there's one of the reasons few distaff heroines
do step up to 'Woman'. Especially if they're
much younger than their male hero.
"They're not just cloning tanks." He tries to twist around, but New Kara has a firm grip. "You can do all kinds of biological research with those."
"Would you care to elaborate?"
"Biomods! I gotta make money somehow. So I was working out how to share my improvements with people."
Admirable. No doubt you planned to charge a
fortune for them, of course...
"Are they occupied right now?"
"No. Okay, it's technically illegal t' do what I was doing with them, but I'm sure you've done worse."
Oh, yes. But usually
not on Earth.
"Much worse, but I have to say that in your case I'm minded to throw the book at you."
"Hey." Old Kara picks something up from a workbench. "Recognize this?"
"That's a H-dial."
Well, now! The same one he acquired previously, or a replica, then?
Nylor slumps slightly in Kara' s grip. "That's the H-dial."
"Are you telling me that it didn't explode?"
The original model, then. No luck reverse-engineering it, I suppose?
"Of course it didn't explode. That was before you rewrote time. It had t' survive in the past for me to pick it up in the future."
New Kara looks at it in fascination.
...He has a point.
Damn temporal mechanics. Still, now OL can get some people studying it himself...
"What does that do?"
"If you dial the letters 'H', 'E', 'R' and 'O' in that order, it gives you random superpowers."
Which may or may not be
stealing drawing them from increasingly bizarre alternate universes, of course. Best not to fool around with it.
"It completely reconfigures your body in a way which fits your requirement. You literally aren't you for a while. The last person I saw use it started as a man. When he changed he became a woman who was super strong and tough, could fly and threw lightning."
Nylor awkwardly nods. "Which is better than ninety percent of the powers it gives out. One time it turned me into an airing cupboard with a face."
Here's a selection of the forms some other users have held:
Robbie Reed (under Notes.)
Chris King (under History.)
Victoria Grant (under aliases!) Try to guess the powers! Your guesses will probably be
far more useful than many of them.
Dana walks over to look at it. "What happens if you dial 'E' 'R' 'O'?"
Nylor looks away. "Absolutely nothing. And before you ask, 'R' 'O' 'E' doesn't make it fire a stream of fish eggs either. And 'H' 'E' 'R' doesn't turn you int' a woman."
Watch out if you dial 'HORROR', though, depending on the dials. Though I bet in the '
In Praise of Eros' universe, ERO would have...
Interesting results.
"Good to know. Dana, is there any chance that the Legion will go away if we give that back to them?"
"How?" She shrugs. "You changed time, didn't you? Even if they went to the future, it wouldn't be their future, it would be your altered future. Unless you've changed your mind about losing."
...May as well as the Earth to turn
backwards.
"I'm still not convinced that I can change time like that, but… Okay. We could… Probably find a way to send them back to their future. I mean, it's effectively just another parallel universe at this point. Even if all we did was send them to their me-free now, they could just stick themselves in suspended animation for a few centuries until they reach their time."
"Ah." Nylor looks at me. "Or you could just use the H-dial. It always gets you something you can use."
Sure, Nylor. Don't forget, his comics counterpart guy tweaked his
original dial to ensure anyone who used it would obey him... I wouldn't be surprised if this one managed it, too.
"Excuse me for not taking anything you say on face value. Or using an already unreliable that's spent months in your workshop."
"Of course. But you know I want the same things that you do, including not going back to my Earth."
Don't be too sure of that, Truggs. OL's
Wants have likely
changed since last you met... It's called
living.
"I wouldn't mind going back to my Earth. It has a great many problems I could fix very easily."
"T' stay?"
If nothing else, you could find out if life exists out there...
"No."
"Get the Legion people here, get one of them t' dial up a power and you're done. Can she put me down yet?"
You can dangle a bit longer, Truggs.
Don't want that
eel DNA kicking in and letting you
slink off when something inevitably
explodes...
