tushanshu_logs | ( open )

"It's kinda retro, yeah, but he's from World War II. ...Guess which side he fought on." She shrugged, then smiled. "He leads the Avengers."

'Cool.' Admittedly, it was a much cooler name than the Justice League. Kyle would have liked to Avenge something. 'So, how long have you been here?'

"A bit longer than five months." Which might as well have been eternity as far as Nita was concerned, but it wasn't like she had anything important going on back home.

She shook her head. "It's mostly okay, when no one's trying to kill you." That happened all the time where she was from, though, so it wasn't like that was a change.

'Kill us? What do you mean?' No villain in their right mind would have come here, or he hoped none of them had been brought here. People wanting him dead wasn't really a shocker anyway. Being a Lantern tended to paint a massive target on your back, especially if everyone from space came to Earth to hunt you down. He almost wished space kept to the cruel and ironic themes that the JLA's enemies had. It made the quips easier.

But that was the Lantern, and Kyle right now was trying his best to remain under the radar.

"There's totally something weird going on that they're not telling us about." She looked around at the incurious Water Sector kedan going about their business, apparently uninterested in the two foreigners.

Apparently.

"Look, you want to come back to my place where it's harder to eavesdrop? I don't think anyone's listening, but the kedan are all shapeshifters, so it's hard to tell."

'Sure?' He followed her gaze and suddenly the kedan didn't look quite so unassuming. He blamed Guy for one too many horror movies.

"I can fly us, if you want? It'll be faster." People had a tendency to react badly if you just picked them up and flew off with them.

'Okay, then.' He smiled sheepishly.

He was kinda cute. Under other circumstances, ones where she wasn't still recovering from the largest trauma of her life, she'd be hitting on him. Nita wrapped her free arm around his waist and suddenly they were airborne, rising above the rooftops so she could take a straight line to the foreigners' block.

"Tell me if you want me to slow down." She kept it to a sedate 30 knots or so, the better to not freak Kyle out on his first flight. Water was one of the smaller sectors, and they were soon setting down on the stoop of one of the three-story apartment buildings.

"It's not Central Park West, but I like it."

Kyle had rarely ever flown without his forcefield. The wind in his hair and face was fresh and he enjoyed it. Once they landed, he admired the view. 'I lived in New York too, for a couple of years.' When he'd started out. He'd long since left, but it had a good time, while it lasted. He missed Radu a little - actually, a lot. 'Wood Sector has cooler houses, I've gotta say.' You couldn't really beat treehouse.

"Yeah? It's where I live when I'm on the surface." Namor hadn't invaded in years. Nita stepped inside, gesturing over her shoulder for Kyle to follow her. "The tree houses are cool, but I need the water. Plus, the kedan around here are super laid-back."

She disappeared around a corner into the kitchen to put her market haul away, raising her voice to be heard. "Just make yourself at home!"

Like all Water Sector suites, Nita's would blend in perfectly if plunked on a Fiji beach, with warm woods and bright, patterned fabrics. A neater housekeeper than her attitude would suggest, she kept the place uncluttered, with decorative touches from the other sectors, the only incongruous thing a bolt of cloth that appeared to have been tossed onto a couch and forgotten.

Kyle followed her inside, looked around the room, and soaked in the atmosphere. He was appreciating all the water as well - it was soothing. Her apartment reminded him of California and he briefly wondered if there were actual beaches. Probably not, since they were on a turtle. He looked around for a place to sit down but his curiosity got the better of him and he ended up wandering over to the couch to look at the cloth.

Nita reemerged from the kitchen with a pair of glasses, and offered one to Kyle. "Just juice. Unless you don't want it to be, in which case I'll go get the local equivalent of vodka."

She followed his gaze to the bolt of cloth, dark green with golden threads woven through it. "Oh. Let me get that out of your way." By which she apparently meant 'move it to another, more out of the way chair,' because she set her glass down on an end table and proceeded to do just that.

'Juice is okay, thanks.' He accepted the glass and waited for her to straighten up and sit down first before he did so himself.

"Sorry about that. Left over from the Masquerade." She plopped down with more of a thump than one would expect from someone of her not-especially-notable height--Atlanteans were dense.

"Cheers!" Nita held up her drink in Kyle's direction, making no effort to get close enough that they could actually clink glasses.

Hm. Just like him to miss the really good parties-- not that he liked parties. Things tended to happen at parties. The last time he'd been to one he'd hightailed it out of there with Jenny as soon as he could. 'Cheers,' he replied, holding up his own glass in turn and taking a sip. 'Hey, this is good. What do you call it?'

"...Juice? I don't know. The fruit it comes from is green and lumpy. Water's the only place I've seen it." Nita held up a hand, palm up and cupped around an imaginary fruit to indicate the size of the thing she was talking about. "I point and say 'that one' a lot when I'm shopping," she said with a shrug.

Huh. Weird. 'They didn't tell you what it's called?'

"They probably did. I just wasn't paying attention early on." Her eyes flicked to one side before returning to Kyle's. It had been a bad few weeks for her after arriving.

"Everyone in Water's so mellow they don't care about stuff like asking for the 'ugly green fruit' instead of what it's really called. I think the one at the stall where I get them finds it cute.

That part of Water Sector, he could get behind. He finished half the glass and set it on the table. 'Okay - do the ones with murderous intent come with labels? Costumes? Or guns?' He's a little more confident than ordinary civilian would be when discussing the possibility of being violently attacked, and he hopes she'll think it's because he's used to superheroes rather than being one himself.

Kyle had never been good at subtlety.

Fortunately for Kyle's secret identity, Nita was the trusting sort, and he'd have to slip more than that for her to get suspicious.

"Okay, storytime." She set her glass beside his. "After the first batch of us washed up there was a Welcome Festival. Total Mardi Gras, right? Or at least as much like that as this crew can manage. It rotated from sector to sector, and on the last day there was a huge parade. Everybody loves foreigners!

"Except not. Right at the height of festivities, one of the kedan gangs grabbed Favrielle" Nita jerked her thumb at one of the connecting walls to indicate Favrielle's suite "and Yue, who's not here anymore, and were going to murder them onstage as a demonstration. The police commander of the kedan got there first and killed the bad guys on the platform--and then there was city-wide rioting. They deputized foreigners to keep the place from entirely boiling over, and it turns out the kedan are stronger and tougher than normal humans.

"That wasn't the only incident, but it's the one that tipped us all off to the fact that there's something screwy going on here. And now the palace is just kind of acting like nothing happened." Nita threw her hands up in disgust.

It all sounded... very par for the course, actually. He'd seen similar things happen across the galaxy. He thought of Daxam - that rookie Sodam Yat's homeworld. They were even more brutal towards foreigners.

'But the Emperor brings us here, right? What for?' He hadn't received any satisfactory answers to that question and he was beginning to think there wasn't one.

"The lead rebel kedan at the festival was talking about how the Emperor expected us to save them. From what, he didn't get to before Evandau turned him into fine red mist." Nita shook her head. "Evandau's speedster fast. He was on the stage before I made it halfway, and then there wasn't anyone left to ask questions."

Kyle didn't really have an answer to that and it showed in the surprise on his face. He genuinely hoped he never had to see something like that in person, it was always harrowing. Speedsters were not people you wanted to go up against, even with the most powerful weapon in the universe on your side.

He just reached for his glass and drank a little more juice. 'Are there a lot of superheroes?'

"There's a bunch from my world. And from alternate timelines where history's different but the people are still recognizable, like that Cap who's younger than I am." Nita was just just not okay with that. "Plus there's another really similar set of timelines that I don't know, with supers with names like Superman and Batman."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject