( open )

[imaginate]

Characters: Kyle Rayner and you!
Date: Same day he arrives.
Location: All around Keeliai.
Situation: Kyle is exploring.
Warnings/Rating: None at the moment; will update if necessary.
Note: I wrote in prose, but [action] is more than welcome, as are multiple threads. For reference, Kyle's current Lantern uniform looks like this.

Comments

[littlecousin]

"...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.

[imaginate]

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

[littlecousin]

"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.

[imaginate]

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.

[littlecousin]

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.

[imaginate]

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.

[littlecousin]

"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."

[imaginate]

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?'

[littlecousin]

"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."

[imaginate]

Kyle hesitated. He still wasn't entirely convinced this wasn't a hallucination, but that wasn't any reason to be rude. 'Man, I thought this only happened in comic books.' Travelling the multiverse, he could deal with. Being trapped on a giant turtle with no way off? That was a problem.

[littlecousin]

Nita laughed. "Comics are based on real people. My cousin has a big stack of the ones with him in them from the war."

[imaginate]

Kyle smiled at that. 'Really? How accurate are they?'

[littlecousin]

"Um. Not really. He never dressed like that, and all the missions were classified, so the stories are all made up." Nita wrinkled her nose. "And they're super-racist."

[imaginate]

He grimaced. 'Yeah, I can imagine.' A pause. 'I'm an artist back home; I have my own comic strip.' Had was more accurate, since Kyle had quit his job months ago when he'd first gone into space, but it was related to the conversation and probably worth mentioning so he could ask where to get a job.

[littlecousin]

"Really? That's so cool." She leaned forward in her chair, hands clasped together. "What's it about?"

[imaginate]

'Oh, uh, a group of friends living in NYC.' Nothing as exciting as what Nita's family would be used to.

[littlecousin]

"Neat!" She meant it. While Nita had lived on the surface on and off for years now, it was still a foreign country, and 'slice of life' was more alien to her than the intrigues of the Atlantean and Lemurian courts, or the violent career of a superhero.

Remembering that her juice was there, Nita retrieved it and took another drink. "You know, Cap's an artist."

[imaginate]

He brightened. The comic strip was the only thing Kyle had been known for, by himself, rather than with the ring. He was always pleasantly surprised when somebody liked it. Of course, Nita hadn't read it yet, but that was a technicality. 'Really? Sounds like I should meet him.'

[littlecousin]

"You should!" Nita was ever-so-slightly biased and thought that everyone should meet Captain America. "I bet he'd like having someone he could talk shop with about something that wasn't superheroing."

[imaginate]

Honestly, Cap was sounding like Kyle's ideal person more and more. An artist and a superhero, with a name that commanded respect at least - maybe even admiration. 'I've love to!' Then, he added, 'If he doesn't mind.'

[littlecousin]

"He won't mind. He's really cool." Nita had something of a perception problem around people's relative degrees of coolness--she herself was so relentlessly friendly (and politically well-connected) that those who wouldn't give someone else the time of day would be willing to meet with her.

That said, Cap really was cool, by Nita's somewhat skewed interpretation of the word, anyway.

[imaginate]

'Okay uh- whenever you're both free, then.' Kyle didn't foresee much to do until he managed some employment. He couldn't really even be a superhero, since he had no idea whether his battery had been brought through with him, and if not, he had to conserve the ring's power for an emergency.

That said, another artist and superhero sounded like exactly the kind of person he'd get along with. And anyway he needed more friends than Jason Todd. (Not that Jason was his friend.) Starting here with Nita and people she knew seemed reasonable.

[littlecousin]

There were many people worse to befriend than Nita. Practically all of them, in fact.

"Nobody here really has that much on their plate, except maybe Mr. Stark and that Bruce Wayne guy."

[imaginate]

'Oh? What are they doing?'

[littlecousin]

"Running corporations." Nita rolled her eyes. She could think of several hundred things she'd rather be doing than that. "Well, I think Ms. Potts and Ms. Lawson do most of the actual running, really."