2013.09.27 - Timetych 4: Maybe Time Is Blue

LEGION ROLL CALL: Booster Gold, Cos GUEST-STARRING: Skeets the Bot Wonder WHERE: The Mission Monitor Room WHAT: Someone is making this too complicated, and it's probably me.

So this afternoon, after Cos... uh, still hadn't been sleeping... Garth got hold of AMETHYST, PRINCESS OF GEMWORLD, to take her up to have a look at the hallway where Jaz disappeared. The theory was -- according to the Legion's current resident Braalian -- that if Lori was involved, and it's time travel? Then there's gotta be magic in there too.

Now? Now? Booster'll be done with work and hey look Rokk is back on the monitors and ... Imra's in the medlab with Garth fussing over her? And-- the way Rokk's situated in front of the monitor bank, his silhouette is stone still, hunched. Could be concentration. Could be sleeping sitting up. Could be a case of the sads or the worrieds.

"Dude." Booster approaches Rokk cautiously, just in case he is dead. Rokk is an older guy, and it could happen. Booster has a stick in his hand, something like a chalkboard pointer, which he uses to gently poke Rokk on the shoulderblade. "Are you alive? What's up? Is Imra okay? Trying to get information out of Garth is kind of a lost cause, you know how he can be."

Older, sure. Like by ten years, if that.

Except-- when Booster pokes his shoulder with that stick, and he turns around--

This is not the Rokk he was looking for.

On the far side of fifty, with salt and pepper hair and stubble and scars, with the bulkier build of someone who's spent years doing manual labor, he's still recognisably Rokk Krinn... but the tightly reined-in fury's a look Booster's not seen before. He's still only in the process of ironing it out into something more civilized when he faces Booster.

"She'll be fine. Psychic backlash from getting shoved out of a sort of weird magic vision journey with Amethyst, while she had me and Garth hitch-hiking. But Amy's gone. And there're at least two active players, neither of which is my wife--" A heartbeat's pause, and then rue, and the tension bleeds off all of a sudden, leaving the AARP-member visibly drained. "Either wife. Uh-- either me's wife, respectively. God, I hate this nass."

Well, it's a relief that Rokk isn't dead. Although... "Duuuude." Booster draws back, even takes a step back, and says, "You look... uh, have you... not been sleeping well?" This is a game attempt at recovery, but not a very good one. "I mean you look kind of..." He lifts his free hand palm-upwards during this awkward pause. "Yeah." Another longer, but still awkward, pause. "I think I need a little more information, here. I'm jumping to conclusions that probably shouldn't be jumped on."

"No, you've got probably a fifty percent chance of being right at least part of the way," allows the grizzly old Rokk, waving a hand around and slouching in the grav chair. "Amy found three signatures. One was -- blood sympathy, I guess. That could be Mordru or Glorith. One was half-technological, she said the user wielded magic like a tool, not a tradition. That one-- she showed us-- that one looked like the idea of lightning. Garth thought maybe a focus. And the third was a magical object, and when she looked to see what it was linked to, she got a gate to the Dreaming. And then--"

He coughs a laugh, shoulders sagging, and drops his face sidelong into his hand, elbow on the arm of the chair. "And then the Time Trapper showed up on the other side of the Dreaming gate, holding the bloody H-Dial. Which-- Lori has. And she reached out of the /mirror/, Boost, and grabbed Amethyst, and that was the last we saw before Imra fell down."

"I... don't think I'm the right person to figure out what those signatures mean," says Booster, who finally puts aside his stick. He originally had it with him so he could poke Garth, since wood is not particularly conductive stuff. "I only kind of know what the H-Dial can do, I mean I know it's powerful. So, was the mirror acting as a conduit? Or was it a portal in the way that the Mirror Master uses it, if you know who I'm talking about." He pauses then, hand to his chin as he looks upwards. Then, he returns his attention to Rokk. "Also, I mean... what happened to you? Did you jump dimensions or did you get hit with extra chronal energy?"

"Hell if I know. This kind of thing *always* sprocking happens to me when there's time-skullduggery. All I did was try to--" Rokk starts, and then stops himself. He holds up a finger, shutting his eyes, then hauls himself to his feet and gestures toward the door. "Let's go outside. I want to see the stars." He goes first, because-- something needs to keep him honest, and that something's gotta be trusting Booster at his back.

He /does/ keep talking, but it's easier /not/ looking at the football star while he tells him things. "I'm on reserve for the duration, because my-- the magnetism's gone. Doesn't matter why. Just lets me know where I stand for this thing. I'm still me, but I'm also another me I've been before. Do you /really/ want me to get into it? It gives /me/ a headache, thinking about it." He shifts his shoulders a little under the jacket he's wearing as they head lobby-wards, then toward the High Line.

"The important part is: we've got the H-Dial in the hands of an eleven-year-old professional chess pawn who's an alternate counterpart of Glorith, we've got Mordru, and we may or may not have a not-necessarily identifiable Time Trapper who may or may not be /in the damned H-Dial/. There's an /alternate/ Time Trapper, for GOD'S sake, who's trying to rebuild an unstable timeline about six universes to the left, but who /sends crap my way/. Because I need a hobby, apparently?"

Irritably, the old Legion veteran takes off, muttering, "At least this time I got to keep my sprocking flight ring."

Booster follows, looking thoughtful. "Actually, it makes sense to me. Alternate yous are still you. I mean, when you think about how many things can change in a timeline, if variants of you exist in multiple timelines that actually shows how elastic time really is. It tells me that some things are just... needed? Especially if it lets timelines re-collapse at certain junctures." He falls quiet after saying this.

Eventually, once in flight, Booster says, "I think what's confusing me... because I don't understand it... is the whole Time Trapper thing. Like... what's that all about?" he spreads his hands. "What's the goal of this person? Or...this identity, maybe, that might be a better way to think about it. I dunno."

"That changes," Rokk says grimly, still going up. Up and up, over the city, up and up. He wants to see the stars; it's overcast. "That changes depending on who's playing the role. The first role I was aware of was basically just-- a giant cosmic douchebag with a hardon for the Legion. Endless tests. Killing the best of us, sometimes. The next one-- the next one was even more obsessed with the Legion, not seeing us as a potentially worthy set of opponents to play against him-- but still pretending to be, while in the meantime, he saw the end of everything coming, so he split us off into two timelines, one which he kept in stasis. A backup Legion. He tried to keep Mordru from ganking reality; he was a balance, more or less. But he went nuts when he accidentally erased his own timeline-- back in the day when timelines could actually be /erased/. Then Glorith-- ate him. Took the power. But she's an idiot, and Mordru took her out like child's play. A lot of confusing things happened I'm not gonna get into, but needless to say, she made a crappy Time Trapper the first go-round. Second go-round, she was Lori instead and mostly kept her hand out of obvious things -- but she's responsible for getting Lori the H-Dial. All Lori wanted was to be old enough to be a Legionnaire, and to have the power to do it..."

He trails off as they shoot into the clouds, keeping his eyes shut, then flicking on his transuit to keep out the damp and the cold. From the misty dark, he continues his explanation. "A Superboy was after her, somehow; I'm still not sure how that one worked. Being Time Trapper entails dying a lot. Anyway: she seemed focused on relatively benign methods of self-gain, more or less, which was also meant to /help/ us. Prime-- that was the Superboy, he was from Earth-Prime-- was basically focused on *destroying everything* I'm not even kidding. He got taken out and the one before Glorith-- I'm not getting into that-- but he didn't want the job anymore, so he tried to shove it off on someone else who knew how to do it. That guy wasn't having it, and neither was his wife, and time and space were collapsing from the edges in, so she stamped her feet and basically said to hell with this and took over, kicking /everyone out of the universe/ into Hypertime, so she could fix the timeline without having to worry about anyone dying..."

And now Rokk stops, just above the carpet of moonlit cloud, and the air is clear and clean and cold and the night is bright, illuminated, and the stars are in the heavens. And the old man looks up at them, and he says pretty evenly, "I'm pretty sure you get where I'm going with this. The problem is, the Trapper we saw on the other side of the gate-- she had the H-Dial. She was blonde. And now Amy, who /really/ needs to stay away from Mordru, and Jazmin, who there was only ever one of until thigs began splitting again-- they're out there with a Lori who time-travelled them, and Mordru's signature's in the mix too. And just trying to catch Imra and Amy with my powers was enough to feed /this/ crap back on me. I wonder who the hell's brilliant plan /that/ was. Probably Glorith's. Because she's stupid."

"Okay, I kind of followed most of that," says Booster, who probably got at least half of it. "Ugh..." He rubs his forehead, shutting his eyes for a moment. "Well... one thing at a time, then. No pun intended. We need to retrieve our lost people, and we need to deal with someone who not only has time-manipulating powers, but who also has a powerful artifact. And of course, we also need to like..." He looks over at Rokk, and gives a vague gesture his way. "Restore you to your preferred state of being." Diplomatic.

The glow around Booster fades out, although his force field is still in place, keeping him warm. "The really big problem in this is that they're dimensionally removed, do we have anyone who can dimension-travel? Or time-travel? Even if we know exactly where they are, how do we even -get- them?"

"Well-- we've got you," admits Rokk, glossing over the reason for Booster's diplomacy. He certainly doesn't want to be himself right now. He glances aside at the blond, wry little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Something you said earlier struck me as potentially interesting. You said-- /look/ at the way the time paths diverged, the lines-- you got Garth a map that way. How did you do that?"

"Yeah but I came here in a machine, which I no longer have," Booster points out. "Anyway, it's just in the footage we took while in the time sphere. There are like, strands and stuff, and pockets. There's a lot of texture in the time-stream. The map was simple, you could probably do it with current-era computers, just picked out the 'lines' and kind of slapped on directional labels so you'd know which way was up." He falls silent as he thinks about this, then mindfully adds, "Not that there's really an up or down, it's like space, but you probably get what I mean."

"I didn't see anything like that. Is it something in your goggles?" Rokk asks, brow furrowing. This is interesting because he has late-middle-aged-dude eyebrows. "I mean-- I know what you mean from your description, but seriously, how did you see them to pick them out?"

"Eh..." Booster is giving Rokk a sidelong glance now, as if he were trying to figure out whether the older man is making fun, or possibly going senile. "I saw them with my eyes. Which is how I ...see stuff." Pause. "I mean, the goggles would probably help because they really refine my vision a lot. But I didn't wear them much in the sphere, because I spent most of my time getting my suit together." He gestures at himself with both hands, up and down, to indicate the shiny blue and gold outfit he is wearing. "I mean, maybe it's a thing like... you know, some people can't see certain colors or taste certain foods? But other people can."

"Uh--" starts Rokk, then squints at Booster, because he's pretty sure Booster's making fun of him. "No, that's not normal. Really, if anyone would know, it's me. I saw what you're talking about once, at Vanishing Point, through the Linear Men's special viewers-- not even /they/ can see those threads." He pauses, then starts grinning. "You can /see time/. Booster-- that's a *power*. And it's one we're gonna need if we're going to have a chance in hell at sorting this out."

He turns to face the younger-- much younger right now, okay-- hero, kind of unconsciously taking that pose that flying villains do in face-offs, arms crossed and feet pointed down, blah blah. But he's still grinning, and there's a wicked light of gleeful upcoming smackdown in his eyes. "Once we get the girls back, I think we might have exactly the jerry-rigged power combination necessary to see this through, make sure the stupid doesn't get on anyone else. Even -without- our big brains, man, we can still beat them! Come on, I need you to take another look at that hall, since we disturbed it again."

"I'm not sure that counts as a -power-," Booster makes a vague see-saw gesture with one hand. "I mean, it's kind of like having better than 20/20 vision... it's rare, sure, but it mostly means you don't need to wear glasses. I can't do stuff like Jazmin can. I mean, for all I know it's just residual from my traveling here. -But-." The vague gesture becomes more abrupt, as if he were pushing aside the semantics argument.

"Okay, so it might be helpful regardless of what causes it or where it came from," Booster concedes. "We still have the problem of how we'd get from here to there, you know? Just a sec." He turns his head away slightly and says, "Skeets, sorry, I know you were... resting, or whatever, but could you please meet me down the hall? I'll be back in the HQ in a minute." He then explains to Rokk, "Skeets is good at detecting and analyzing trace energy."

"Awesome," says Old Man Cos, with no irony whatsoever. He doesn't look a million when he's grinning, just over the hill. And that's all it is before he's rocketing back down through the clouds, beelining for that damn hall. "I might even," he calls back over his shoulder, "be able to figure out what the hell you're talking about, this time!"

"Psht, like anyone can ever figure out what the hell I'm talking about," Booster murmurs quietly, as he follows the senior Rokk down and back to the headquarters. Louder, he says, "I'm not really sure what I can even do in -this- situation, though, so don't get your hopes up. Seeing stuff inside the timestream is one thing, but I don't see anything like that when I'm just existing in the world. I'm just hoping that we can get some usable data out of this."

Not even bothering to land, Rokk does it old-school Legion-style and just swoops down through the entrance into the HQ, making sure Booster's caught up before taking the transport tube back up to the scene of the time. (Ah ha ha ha.) "Don't worry about what you think you can't do," he reassures Booster as the other man catches up, conversational volume. "Right now it's what you understand and can see, what Jazmin can do, and what Amethyst can do with that. And since that's the second person pulled out of the same hall, there's got to be a way you can get some kind of parallax." Pause. "I could probably have picked a different word, there."

It should not be possible for a robot to look sleepy, at least not the model of robot that Skeets is, but he manages to exude this attitude anyway. It is something in the way he hovers and holds himself. "Hello, sirs," he says. Then, he tips up and down as if he were getting a good look at Rokk, although he makes no comment.

"That's a good point," Booster says, when Rokk shares his theory. "Hey, Skeets," he greets the little robot. "We need to do another scan in here and compare it to the prior one we did. You know, energy traces and stuff."

Rokk just... /meets/ that judgemental robotic gaze. MEETS IT. And then he scowls and crosses his arms, thudding back to lean against the wall again. "And if you could-- I don't know. Make a projection of it somehow? Shift the, something, maybe the color of it. From octarine or whatever. Because maybe they're familiar patterns to me. Or maybe if I can see it while Booster's pointing stuff no one else can see out, we might be able to stop brick walling our heads."

"I mean... he'll have to, because I've got nothing here," Booster says, gesturing to empty air. "It's just kind of. I dunno. Clear. I guess air is clear, right?" He thinks about this. "Or blue, maybe. Because I guess the sky is blue."

Skeets ignores his boss as he gets to work, turning and tilting in place as he scans the hallway. Now and then the translucent area at the front of Skeets' form flickers with light, usually in red, sometimes in other colors. Finally, Skeets says, "You both are somewhat charged with chronal energy at the moment, and when you moved into the hall that affected the residue slightly. However, I'll give those their own colors rather than erasing them." After a moment, Skeets projects a three-dimensional display that fits into the hallway, showing different trails and traces of energy, as well as what must be debris or residue on the walls that has not yet been scoured away. A little key pops up as well, and the color used for remnants of magical energy is labeled with an '?'.

"There are three-- flavors, she said, more or less, of magical energy. If you can detect any difference in them, instead of just grouping them as magic, can you paint them three different colors?" Rokk asks, absently now-- because he's pushed off of the wall, and is stepping closer to the projection. He lifts a hand as if to touch, but draws it back, then stays still, not wanting to disturb the patterns any further with his excess chronons. "I know this is Lori's path," he points to one of the ? trails, "so that's definitely one flavor. And /that/," he points to the floor in the middle of what's practically a cloud of ?, "is where Amethyst was standing." He points backwards. "But that's the path she took, so, since there was another magic user interfering with her /there/," he points to the cloud again, "the trail from her path should be different than the combined mess /there/."

He sidesteps the cloud, tracking the Lori-magic-path to the front of Jazmin's door, then squints. "And-- I don't think the H-Dial time travels, so there should be another kind of magic /here/. But there's also a lot of that-- uh-- time stuff."

"It is not an energy source I am used to dealing with, sir, but it helps when you point these things out. I think I can extrapolate the differences from that," says Skeets, as the '?' areas now get tagged with their own shades.

"Yeah but," says Booster, who is trying to stay out of the way. "The H-dial is a thing that can give someone powers temporarily, right? I'm not totally clear on how it works. I'm just saying, it can give someone time-travel powers, can't it?" He spreads his hands in a shrug, then looks around. "I wish I hadn't left my stick in the other room..." So, he just tries to point with a finger without getting close to the projection, "See that bit there, where there's a kind of uh... convergence. Kind of like a cut but it's not actually cut? I'd call that a temporal line if we were in the time stream, although I... kind of think that's actually where it's gone into." Booster rubs the back of his neck. "If you can't see what I mean then I have no idea how to describe it better."

"It doesn't just give a power-- it turns the bearer into another entity for the duration of the effect. Which is an hour I think? They can shut it off at will, too-- but you're never 'yourself with superpowers'." Just idle talking, that, really; Rokk's peering at other lines, too. But then Booster calls attention to another bit, and the salty old retired superhero squints at it. "No, yeah, I get it. Okay-- so who do we know with a time machine?"

And that's why sixty-year-olds do not good Legionnaires make.