ic Bolt from the Blue [OPEN]

[Thevshi]

Timeout

 

Lawrence had given Consuelo a slightly puzzled look when she mentioned a robot girl from the past in her dorm room and then saw Vueriz give him a strange look. Then Parker had steered the discussion towards Lawrence and Consuelo had turned to him to ask about possibly blocking time travelers.

The blond teen decided not to correct the green haired girl about some of her misunderstandings she seemed to have about his powers and instead gave her a small smile. "No, I am not from the past."

 

"But to answer the more pressing question, yes, it is possible to set up some safeguards against temporal incursion. But, in my experience, no system is full proof." Lawernce stated.

 

After a moment's pause, he figured it was probably a good idea to more fully explain. "Both of my parents have, at different times, been kidnapped by time travelers and removed from this timestream. That is in addition to a number of other encounters with time travelers. So, when they got engaged and had me, they were very concerned about the threat of time travelers and did what they could to guard against them. With my mom being a member of the Freedom League, they were able to get assistance from Deadalus, Miss Americana and a few others to set up some systems at their homes."

"I was ten years old the first time a time traveling entity breached those systems, sending simulacrums resembling my parents to try to kidnap me. It was only because of the two Claremont students who were babysitting me that the attempt failed, but even then, we were transported to a space station twenty-five thousand light years away. It was only due to the intervention of some members of the Praetorians, an intergalactic super team, that the entity was driven off."

"Needless to say, when we got back to Earth, my parents had Deadalus and Miss Americana work to strengthen those systems. But two years later, Quirk showed up for the first time, bypassing them as if they were not even there. I was under the impression that at the start of the school year, similar systems were added to the already extensive countermeasures around the school."

"Obviously, still was no deterrent for Quirk last month."

[Poncho]

Michael nodded along as the others talked for a bit. Even when Lawrence started talking he started off just by nodding his head along slowly. But his nods got slower and slower as Lawrence kept talking, and he started looking at the british teen like he had grown a second head, until he was just staring at him.

 

"Lawrence, what do you mean you went to space!? That's incredible!" he almost yelled he was so excited. "The amount of things you just said is enough that I don't even know where to start to pester you for more questions about it!" he was so excited he might as well be vibrating. But then again it was Michael, so he actually was vibrating, so hyped up that his cells were barely audible as they buzzed.

"Tell me about the Praetorians! Are they like some sort of intergalactic Freedom League? Are they as strong as your Mom and Gaian Knight and Gabriel and all of them? Do they have to protect the entire universe? Are they all like, aliens? What are their powers like? When you're an intergalactic superhero do people still have a secret identity or is it kind of difficult to have, since you're having to fly around everywhere in the galaxy. And wait let's go back to that other thing; so if you can go back in time does that mean we could meet like, ancient historical figures? I have a report on Alexander the Great, can you take me back in time to meet him? Wait we wouldn't speak the same language would we...I guess that wouldn't work, he wouldn't be able to answer my questions. And it would probably mess up the time stream or something...but what about going forward in time? Could I like meet my future self? That would be awesome too, I'd get to see what I'll be like in the future. Have you done that? What are you like in the future?" Michael wasn't near as fast as Lawrence was, but he was pretty quick and fast, and he was using all of that enhanced speed to pepper his peer with questions.

 

It was a pretty big departure from the calm and collected prep he had been just a few seconds ago, but it was something his friends had obviously seen before, it might be more surprising to someone who had just met him, though. Then, as fast as he'd done that, he turned back to Vueriz and was the prep again.

 

"I'm sorry you've had such trouble. While I can't help you personally, it sounds like Lawrence and Parker are going to be fighting over who gets to give you a hand, so you should be fine. And if you're smart enough to accidentally knock yourself into another galaxy, I'm not sure you'll need any help with studying either. But if there's anything else you need, Earth Customs explained or bullies told to back off or anything like that, I'm always avaliable to lend a hand."

[RocketLord]

Spaceman

 

Parker just stares at Lawrence with how casually he talks about time travel, going to space, famous super heroes just showing up to set up time travel proof defenses like its some kind standard security... It's not like Parker has lived a normal life, not with parents' like his, and he has seen his fair share of super advanced technology and weird places, but even then, it was always something special, and Lawrence? It's just Tuesday. Again, when Quirk is mentioned, something about him bothers Parker, but he is not sure what exactly.

 

"... You've lived a very strange life, my friend," he finally decides on as his reaction, while Michael is getting all excited about, well, everything that Lawrence just said.

[Huckleberry]

Rot

 

"Huh," Consuelo responds to Lawrence's revelations. "I guess I'm from the past, technically. Well, I guess everyone is from the past, actually . . . " She scrunches up her brows and scratches her head.

 

"Hey! I've got an idea! Could the girl that popped up in my room have bypassed the defenses because she was coming from, uh, within the defenses? Like, I think she was maybe a Claremont student from a few years back - Eira or something? I think she's also a robot-lady superhero that dates, uh . . . Santa's elves . . . in the future, which is now . . . . "

 

Consuelo trails off, becoming less sure that anything she is saying makes any sense. 

[Kaede Kimura]

Blue Bolt 

 

Vueriz looked between the four of them, starting to wonder if she was being messed with. She had been warned that weird things happened near superpeople, but what. Especially as Michael started popping off and Consuelo started getting existential, and talking about the 'robot girl' that she was becoming less certain wasn't real dating the servants of a gift giving spirit. 

 

And then suddenly Golden Boy was all goody two shoes again and her head was set spinning. "Uh, yeah sure." Maybe her mask was leaking oxygen into her air supply and she was just hallucinating? That would explain it. (Not particularly) Surreptitiously she started poking at her mask. 

[Thevshi]

Timeout

 

Lawrence could only smile at the others’ reaction to his abbreviated recounting of his and his parents’ experiences with time travelers. At Parker’s comment, the blond teen gave his friend a faint smile, one in particular that Parker had come to recognize as Lawrence trying to avoid talking more about a subject.

 

With all the questions before, him, Lawrence decided to start with Michael's first, in something of reverse order. "Yes. I can in fact go forward and backward in time, but, for a number of reasons that is probably too long of a discussion for right now, doing either is not something to be done lightly. My most significant experience with it thus far was the first time I met Quirk, and he sent my foster sister, her boyfriend and I to several different points in the past."

 

He then turned to the initial questions. "As for the Praetorians, I suppose you could say they are like an intergalactic version of the League, they tend to have a dozen or more members, but usually operate in smaller teams on missions and primarily within Lor or Coalition space, though sometimes further. Their powers are wide and varied, and while most of them are aliens, they have had some humans as members. In the six years since my first tip out there, my mom and I have spent a couple summers on CoVic Station, so I have gotten the chance to meet most of them, also when I learned to speak GalStandard."

 

"The original Praetorians were actually the guardians of an ancient empire that controlled much of this region of space over two thousand years ago, and after spending two millennium in suspended animation, were revived a little over nine years ago. As to whether or not they are as powerful as my mom or other members of the League, that also varies somewhat. They certainly have several members that are pretty close, some less so. Their leader, Paradigm, was one of the ones that came to help protect me six years ago. I do not know what I could say about her, other than she is perhaps the closest thing I have ever seen to matching the stories about Centurion."

 

With that comment hanging in the air, Lawrence then turned back to Consuelo and her follow up questions. "You mean Angelic? I don’t know her particularly well, but we have traveled in some similar circles, just at different times, including spending time on CoVic Station and with the Praetorians. She was a student here, in the same class as my foster sister, who was friends with her. Not sure the fact she was here before alone would be enough to easily bypass any temporal counter measures, but, having a focus for the temporal incursion inside the defenses could certainly help in overcoming them."

[Poncho]

Michael turned back to Lawrence like his head was on a swivel, immediately engrossed in what the British Viscount was saying with absolute focus; he was a dog who someone had just held a ball out for and was promising to throw it. He nodded intensely at every single word coming out of the teen's mouth and then clenched his fists tightly.

 

"I guess it makes sense you can't really mess with the time stream...that's probably more like a thing that villains do instead of heroes. If you already knew how everything would turn out it'd probably make you jaded and convinced there was no way for anything to change, but if you don't know, then you could succeed at anything...yeah, you're reight. I don't want to meet my future self. That'd defeat the whole purpose of the journey." he decided in an instant, nodding intently to himself. "...But it'd still be cool to see...maybe. One day. Just to know I'm going the right way. But no, not appropriate for heroes." he shook his head again. Then he continued to focus on what really had his attention.

 

"There's a Standard Galactic Language? You've got to teach me that. If I go to space I want to be able to talk to all the people too. There must be so much interesting stuff out in space...seeing all those different aliens and all their unique abilities...it'd really be something special. And to think, an entire league up there in space, doing Superhero stuff for the entire Galaxy. And they're super ancient but have just woken up? That's so...interesting. It must be hard to adapt to changes in the world if it's been that long...I almost feel bad for them." he sighed and, for some reason, looked up towards the sky as if he could see through the roof, though he definitely could not. Then he thought about it a bit more.

 

"A Space Centurion, huh? They must be incredible. I mean, there's great Heroes on Earth, obviously. But someone like that out there in the Stars. Huh." he keeps staring up at the ceiling after that, lost in thought.

[RocketLord]

Spaceman

 

Parker does notice Lawrence's expression, but he starts explaining to Michael anyway. Honestly, Parker would be lying if he said it wasn't interesting and exciting, but on the other hand, he also knows how much Lawrence would much rather just be a regular student. Well, as regular a student can be here, and Vueriz obviously looks like she is starting to get overwhelmed too.

 

"Michael, slow down, please?" Parker asks. "How about we actually get around to showing Vueriz around the campus?" He looks to Vueriz. "If it's alright with you, Vueriz?" 

 

Hopefully, it'll get some of the attention off Lawrence, and they can, at the very least, actually do what they're supposed to do, and if anything, Consuelo has the chance to talk to Lawrence about her robot problems without everyone jumping in.

[Huckleberry]

Rot

 

"Oh yeah, let's do a campus tour! I've never done like an official campus tour before. We can, like, see all the boring stuff, and then I can show you my dorm room, Vueriz. Hey, do you think you could use your alien technology to make me an indestructible bed? I have this problem where I accidentally disintegrate whatever I'm sleeping on. I usually just sleep on steel pans, and change them out every so often. But if you could like make me an invincible bed.  . . . " Consuelo appears lost in thought for a moment. 

 

Thought apparently having completed, the green-haired teen returns to the conversation. "So do you, like, eat normal people food? Or do you have to have special alien food? Wait!" And Consuelo freezes in place with her hands held out. "Do you even sleep?"

[Kaede Kimura]

Blue Bolt 

 

Vueriz was very glad about Parker's interruption of the train of whatever that was. She nodded gratefully at the offer of a campus tour, perhaps some walking would make things make sense.

 

She looks up at Consuelo as the train of questions begins, finding the comment about disintegrating beds rather concerning, but at this point not really discounting anything. "Well how do you disintegrate things? If you're breaking Atomic structures that's very different than if you're reducing the strength of the Nuclear Forces."

The questions of biology are something she's much more ready to field, having been expecting such things much more than... whatever had happened for the last few minutes. "I can eat human food, but it is hard on my stomach and I need to supplement my diet with Fluorine to keep in good health. I sleep. Too much if you ask my brother." She jokes, but feels a pang as she is reminded of the cosmic distance between her and her family. 

[Huckleberry]

"Uh, yeah I guess kinda break and reduce like, uh, all the forces . . . .?" Consuelo seems pretty unsure about her claim regarding how her disintegration works, and she makes a little grimace. But then she perks up. "Oh hey, maybe we could do, like, a science experiment together to figure out how my disintegration works! I could really use some extra credit in Earth Science . . . Or would that technically be space science if you helped? Hmm. Well, whatever."

 

Consuelo listens as Vueriz talks about her dietary needs. "Hmm. Okay. Well my first piece of Planet Earth advice is: DO NOT eat the school pizza! It's . . . not natural . . . "

 

Somehow, through the semi-garbled jumble coming through Vieriz's universal translator, Consuelo manages to pick up on the sour note surfacing when the blue extraterrestrial talks about her brother. "You've got a brother? That's cool. Can you, like, call him on the space phone or whatever?"

[Poncho]

"You're right, you're right." Michael said, holding up his hands in submission at Parker. "I'm back on track. Sorry Vueriz, and everyone else as well." He smiled. Admittedly, he never should have gotten off track, but it was far from the first time that most of these people would have realized that the golden boy wasn't perfect, no matter how much he tried to be, so it was probably no surprise to watch him do something like that, but also not really a surprise to see him immediately try to fix it.

 

"Come on, let's go for a walk, Vueriz, everyone'll show you around while we talk to you, there's plenty to see and no reason to just hang around in here all day." he said, gesturing down the stairs and out into the wide world of Claremont. "We're basically pretty close to the middle of campus as it is, so we'll have quite a few possibilities of where to go."

Edited February 26 by Poncho

[RocketLord]

Spaceman

 

"The burgers are pretty good..." Parker tries, even if he doesn't know if it matters at all, given Vueriz's potential dietary concerns.

 

Michael calms down a bit, at least, but then already throws more questions at Vueriz, while she is still going with Consuelo.

 

"How about you just pick a direction and go there, Michael?" he asks. "It's not like Vueriz knows where anything is, anyway."