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

mutantkind!"

 

The funny thing? He's actually wrong this time.

The "Alien Biologist" thing was just a Celestial smokescreen to cover up the natural evolution of humanity under the effects of The Horde.

 

Huh? I think I remember him explaining to her the ring when he explained how he could help her.

Also, good on him for heading of that whole Genosha fiasco early on.

Also, he should probably not try to hard to find evidence for the Celestial's meddling. Iirc, unearthing that buried Celestial causes all kinds of trouble.

 

I kind of want to see a short Cable follow through on that. Paul is someone he doesn't know but Genosha was handled far more smoothly than Cable's history says it was. He slides back into his future, but it's no longer wartorn with Apocalypse controlling knock off Terminators. Paul handled En Sabah Nur ages ago in the present so Cable's future is relatively quiet.

 

they're

 

I see Paul both notices that the Acolytes don't belong and is able to cut off Fabian Cortez's ranting short. It seems he'll have to act as one of, if not the only, voice of reason here.

I'm guessing Cable is going to do what the Legion of Super-Heroes did and assume Paul is a fellow time traveler he needs to scope out. I can't wait to see how everyone is going to react to Paul knowing things he shouldn't despite not technically being a time traveler.

 

Thank you, corrected.

 

I believe she's referring to the engagement ring that Paul was about to look for to propose, before they were interrupted by the Genosha Gestapo. I think, anyway.

 

THIS IS A SUBTLE HINT.

I AM SUBTLY HINTING ABOUT YOU GETTING A RING AND MARRYING MORE THAN ONE WOMAN, ONE OF THEM BEING ME.

 

Ah, skipping over OL's touching base with NEMO and getting a detailed briefing. At least it's in favour of more X-Men '92 Lantern. And the clues and comments place this as during 'Slave Island', midway through season one...

Spoiler: Commentary spoilered for length

Heh, Lantern about to use a term that likely hasn't even become common in gaming culture...

Sadly, the few such characters that do exist either came about long after the show, or simply didn't appear in it (Such as a Morlock healer.)

Honestly, I'd be looking into reports of 'miracle healers'. Sure, many would be evangelical stage tricks, but just maybe...

To be fair, evolution doesn't acknowledge things like tool-use in heredity. And rapid self-healing would be extremely useful.

Heh. I take it this is a long-running in-joke between him and the team...

As a team leader, she does have to set an example, after all...

Ah, his gaming terminology again. Remind me, do they know he comes from a future period ( the distant future of 2011!) And does he use that as an excuse occasionally when he uses slang or pop-culture references they don't know?

It's a relative thing, of course. She gets knocked around more to show how powerful a bad guy is, since she's the tank of the team. Same reason Wolverine gets torn up regularly in the comics, despite logically being skilled enough to avoid most of the attacks he takes...

In case anyone doesn't remember, that's Henry McCoy, the Beast, who spends the season in prison following the events of the pilot episodes.

Yes, it's a very big target for anti-mutant sentiment. And having more people around makes it more risky when some supervillain comes a-knocking...

Making an early-bird appearance, it seems, since they officially don't appear until season four, over thirty episodes after the first appearance of Genosha... I guess they had to starts somewhere.

Cue level stare from Lantern as he points out the very, very angry young man giving a very racially motivated speech...

Really, half of the problems they've had over the years can be traced back to their terminology, really. 'Mutants' just sounds kind of... Icky, to the average person. Rather than evoking an image of 'natural-born super-being'... Sadly, some of the attempts to change it weren't much better.

I mean, the 'Mutant name' thing is sort of a Professor X/Magneto thing. Pride in yourself, that sort of thing. Many of the Acolytes likely weren't exposed to either man's philosophy before they declared themselves for Magneto.

Heh. To most people, Lantern probably seems like one of the lucky mutants who won the super-power lottery...

Well, Genosha did advertise itself as 'mutant-friendly' in order to lure the enhanced there, before capturing and press-ganging them... The comics version wasn't above kidnapping them internationally in secret... Dirty pool all round.

And to be fair, Cortez always did come off as a young man trying to overcompensate for... Something? So him coming here looking to foment an uprising in the name of Mutant Power isn't all that improbable.

Welp, Cortez isn't listening. Just watch out if he starts spraying spittle.

Something seen often, frequently in relation to Genosha. For a while, just before the comics re-aligned to be more like the movies, the UN gave it to Magneto in hopes that it'd distract him.

Honestly, I'm amazed his super-charging power doesn't include some sort of passive sense of a person's 'mutantness' before he touches them...

Heh. The voice of reason winning out over the voice of hatred. I suspect a night in a warm bed, plus showers or baths, is looking very appealing right now to many of the former captives.

Heh, Cortez looks like he's smelt something nasty. Lantern's non-enhanced nature throwing a wrench in his 'Human versus Mutant' narrative, perhaps?

...I'm sure Genosha has many fine jewellery stores you can approach, Lantern. And I suspect proposing after freeing a group of enslaved people is going to be more memorable than during a simple holiday.

Heh. Bound to be many wrenches and butterflies in motion whenever Lantern is involved. I wonder if Cable's future era has record of him, or if he seems to be as big an outsider as the Askani hero. At any rate, Lantern might be a little more concerned about soothing his lady love's temper than all the potential threats he's noted today...

 

Not to mention the whole "homo-superior" was maybe not the best idea.

 

Hey Zoat, are Hades and Persephone still partially mind-wipped to help with their dead marriage, or have their memories been restored?

If they're restored then what was the outcome?

And please don't just say that the SI doesn't know.

After what happened to the Green, Persephone now has some leverage to having more support in getting that divorce.

If I remember correctly it was mentioned that she revitalized plants during the spring, so that may be useful in restoring the Green.

 

Good job with this one, Paul really has a talent for diplomacy. I am curious though, are you familiar with Magic the Gathering? If so, if there was to be an alternate Paul who was a Planeswalker would power his ring with Black Mana and what adventures would he get himself into?

 

The SI-.

Still partially mind-wiped. They can still do their jobs, they just don't remember their shared history.

I've got a cupboard upstairs full of folders of magic cards. The cupboard to my left as I write has a shelf covered in completed decks.

If he was a planeswalker... Oldwalker or newwalker? In either case, he'd probably focus on using magic. He wouldn't have any particular connection to black mana.

 

I was thinking he could use Black Mana to power the ring as I believe avarice is an emotion closely connected to Black mana and it's philosophies. If Paul weren't to have any particular connection to black, what colors would he use and which era of MTG would he get involved with, the war against the Phyrexians, the time just before the Mending, everything from 2007 to war of the spark or what comes next?

 

Yes, but...



It's not necessarily a healthy use. And it would require the SI to get close enough to black mana that he could manipulate it. The SI managed as well as he did with the orange ring because he wasn't particularly avaricious. Black mana doesn't have any truck with hesitancy.

Blue/White, probably. The first deck I ever actually planned out used Shifting Skies and a lot of Protection from Red stuff, so that tracks.

Not the Phyrexian war, because Urza would just use him to fuel a manabomb. I've been thinking about writing something happening at roughly the same time as Odyssey, set on Aerona, but it wouldn't have been an SI thing.

Probably an entirely novel plane.

 

Mr Zoat any plans to see a Paul in Batman Brave and the Bold cartoon? With how light-hearted the show is I'm not sure how Paul would react/adjust.

 

I wasn't aware of the card but I believe you.

Interesting

I'm sure you could think of something and I will admit I am hoping to see an alternate Paul who is an MTG Planeswalker.

 

I think the most likely option would be using the ring as a generic mana source. Either way, it would be an artifact that probably uses charge counters in some way to fuel a wish effect if you were giving it game mechanics.

 

I'm going to guess that https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Joshua_Foley_(Earth-616) hasn't been born yet on this Earth, the stupidly strong, Useful and Broken Life Minipulator.

Paul hasn't thought of using Bobby to fix the ice caps, something he could do as easy as Breathing.

Convince Pryo that he could make stupid amounts of money with his Fire Manipulation in the Industrial sector for a few countries or working for Dooms Country.

It's sad that the most useful Mutants only really use their Powers for Unga Bunga

 

5 Island
5 Plains
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Flooded Strand

3 Circle of Protection: Red
3 Counterspell
4 Shifting Skies
2 Idyllic Tutor
1 Worship
1 Teferi's Moat

4 Tidal Visionary
4 Devoted Caretaker
4 Crimson Acolyte
4 Galina's Knight
4 Silver Knight
4 Silver Drake

The original version has simpler land and a slightly different composition. I'm still kicking myself for not taking it to an Extended tournament when Goblin was running rampant.

 

If you do make a Planeswalker Paul, are you planning to have this deck as the basis for his abilities?

 

Or his powers haven't manifested yet.

Nice idea, but relying on one guy to fix them all the time isn't exactly efficient or reliable.

Assuming he wants to.

Pyro may not be all that stable.

Granted, I mostly know his Evolution self, so I could be wrong.

 

Assuming he unlocks his full potential, he might be able to do it. Until then though, it would be a waste of time.

 

I have no idea what Green Arrow is talking about here. What is half right and why did he decide that this is a good time to get a tattoo?

I also don't get why Connor Hawke would be the person to talk to about enlightenment. Then again, I didn't even remember Connor Hawke appearing in this story before.

Do you mean that he doesn't know currently after the Anti-Life crisis started or that he didn't know the roster before that happened either? Does that mean Paul doesn't really talk to his former team mates anymore? Not even off screen? I would have thought that they would remain his for pretty much the foreseeable future, at least on the periphery.


Something else: I didn't quite understand what gives most (all?) of the Justice League the ability to cope when most baseline humans don't seem to. And why there isn't any mention of other superpowereds outside America that weren't members of the Alliance either. Like the various superfunctionaries in China and Russia for instance.

 

I'm guessing the tattoo is some kind of magical protection.

It's possible that he's just been too busy.

The League is made up mostly if people that have various exotic abilities or aren't human.

Even the ordinary humans are extremely resilient people that have dealt with a lot of unique situations, like mind control, so they may have developed a resistance to it.

Most people don't have exotic abilities and they haven't dealt with mind control.

And I think Mist mentioned talking to other heroes about acting like New Gods, so there's your other heroes.

 

Either fishing for engagement or...... An oops incoming.
I wonder if that counts as "Suddenly, Ninjas explode!"

 

it literally took decades to melt them as they are now, (even then it's not all that unnatural that they melt even as much as they have on a geological scale) Bobby always has access to the full potential wether he know about that potential and uses it is something else entirely (Emma was able to know how strong he was as soon as she was in his body) using Bobby would solve the problem for more then long enough for Reed, Doom , Tony, Banner, or someone else to build devices that can do it.

They only need Bobby to get it done Fast the smart people can handle it long term

 

Since I'm not...

Ah...

He'd probably use whatever spells the people around him did. Developing a personal style is a very long-term thing.

That's the issue. A device can be replicated. Relying on one person is a bad idea.

Evacuating everyone, yes. Bombarding the planet, no.

He's been mentioned a few times. He's a Buddhist who grew up in a religious commune, if I remember correctly.

He talks to the ones he knows, but he doesn't keep up to date on the roster unless one of them mentions it.

Determination, focus, and being a little crazy.

 

What exactly did you mean by you are not? You are not planning on using that deck as a basis or there isn't going to be a Planeswalker Paul? It's not as clear to me.