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

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Honestly I expect Paul will get a call sometime in the next few days from Mercy asking if he wants to go out on a "date".

During which they will have a pleasant but unremarkable time and she will slip him a flash drive.
 
Vaermina said:
Honestly I expect Paul will get a call sometime in the next few days from Mercy asking if he wants to go out on a "date".

During which they will have a pleasant but unremarkable time and she will slip him a flash drive.
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No, she'll ask to get her arm upgraded. She won't be slipping him any data until she can be sure she doesn't have any tracking implants.
 
Mr Zoat said:
17th April
15:12 GMT -5

Lex is swivelling his chair around as I approach his office window, his right hand held up slightly to forestall any action from the security team who are charging through the outer doors. I wave my left hand and then raise it to my ear.

Ring, dial.

Compliance.

Lex smiles slightly as the phone on his desk rings. Not that I can hear it from out here. He doesn't pick it up though. Instead, he negligently holds his right hand out to the side while continuing to observe me.

"Lex Luthor's office."

"Ms Graves, pleasure to hear your voice again. Orange Lantern two eight one four here."

"Good afternoon, Orange Lantern. If you can wait a moment I'll see if Mister Luthor is available."

"You know I can see him through the… Never mind." Huh. "Actually, while I've got you." I turn to my right, looking out across the city. And making it harder for anyone inside the building to read my lips. "Have you given any more thought to the cybernetic upgrade I offered you? I've acquired a few new options since I first made my offer."

"Thank you, but I am quite happy with the arm I have."

"But you could be more than happy. And that's what I'm all about: wanting stuff. I mean, look at your boss. He's rich beyond the dreams of ninety nine percent of the world's population, is in charge of a huge multinational company, but does he stop wanting stuff?" I realise that I've floated out of sight to the people inside the office and turn around to float back the other way. "Does he ever say 'okay, I've got enough now, time to spend the rest of my life playing golf'? No, he doesn't. There's always something new to want, and you can want a better arm."

No immediate response.

"Come on." I turn my empathic vision up a little. "I can see how much you'd like to never have to feel that slight.. pull you get when you wake up in the morning and-."

"Orange Lantern, are you trying to buy off my staff?"

"No, Lex. No. I'm trying to give a gift to an attractive single woman. Nothing untoward going on at all."

"Perhaps you could try to do that out of office hours?"

"Oh, please. She takes as many days off a year as you do."

"Amusing as this is..?"

"Right. Would you mind if I came in? I've got something rather serious-" I stop outside his window and turn to face it again. "-to talk to you about."

"By all means. I had the window redesigned to slide open after Superman's first unscheduled-" I phase and float forwards, passing through the window. "-visit. Ah." I lower my left hand and he puts down his phone as I walk around to the 'guest' side of his desk. He swivels his chair back around to face me. "What can I do for you?"

"Had a… Spot of bother yesterday."

"Yes, I heard. Giant.. Starfish aliens? Were you able to destroy all of them?"

"No. Most, but… A few of the smaller ones got away. We're looking, but I'd honestly be surprised if we located them by anything other than pure luck before they choose to reveal themselves."

"That's a little concerning."

"If you know a better way to find them, I'm all ears. But that's… All really tangental to why I'm here. Last time the League encountered these creatures, a scientist by the name of Stirling Roquette was crucial to us developing a way to immunise people against the form of mental control they were using. After the thing in Gotham I went to see her again, and… She had an early nanoforge prototype."

"I'd.. heard about her research. I hadn't realized things were quite that advanced."

"I hadn't either. To be honest, I'd rather stopped thinking about her. She's agreed to meet up with some other inventors of my acquaintance for a brainstorming session. You know, cross fields, see if they can help each other."

"I assume that this will be happening in KordTech?" I nod. "LexCorp wasn't developing anything in the weather control field, so I don't have to try downplaying the significance of his most recent product launch. I was actually quite impressed."

"It's like I told you when we first met. Tiny amounts of magic can improve conventional technology in so many ways… Thing is… I like Ted Kord. I like him a lot. But he's… He's a good engineer. A good scientist. I've seen him in action as a salesman and it's inspiring. He conveys his genuine enthusiasm for the product brilliantly and keeps his spiel to a technical level the audience can understand. He'd be a good project leader. But as a manager? As the head of a company? He's terrible. He's basically had to appoint someone to do the actual CEO work because as soon as something 'cool' comes in he can't resist heading down to the workshop to play with it himself. He tries to micromanage rather than letting the extremely capable people who work for him get on with it…"

Lex looks politely puzzled. "I'm not sure that I can help you with that. Unless you're.. trying to jump ship from your own creation?"

"No. That's the sad thing. I'm not." I sign. "Because you'd be perfect for it. I look at you and I can see -I'm talking literally here- your desire to use all the tools of capitalism to strengthen the Human species. You're a far better manager than he is… I'd like to be able to give this to you. But I can't."

"Because your peers disapprove of me?"

"Because you're a member of the Light."

Four seconds pass as he regards me. "I'm afraid that I don't know who or what that is."

"Lex, if I could prove anything I'd have brought the police with me. I can't. There's no way you don't know that they exist, and if you weren't a member they'd be a threat to you and you'd be feeding me the information I'd need to destroy them. So you're a member. Maybe the leader, maybe not. Maybe they don't have one." I sigh. "But Savage is a member, and he was involved in that Ice Fortress thing last year. Which means that any technology a Light member gets their hands on would most likely end up getting used for something puerile rather than something productive. The sheer waste of resources used in a failed assassination attempt which -even if it had worked- would only have provided them with a marginal benefit… And I know they were studying Star Conquerors, and it looks a lot like they suffered a fairly critical containment failure. And as a result, we've got a species that the Green Lantern Corps had trouble with loose on a world ill equipped to handle them."

My eyes drift away slightly. "On my home parallel, there's a television series. It doesn't exist here. It's called 'Avatar: the Legend of Korra'. In the setting, there are people who can manipulate the classical elements: earth, air, fire and water. Each of the four ethnic groups have an affinity for one element, and the skills and modes of thought required to use it define their culture. Now, when I first saw it, I thought that anyone from the right tribe could learn to manipulate their element, just by studying the signature martial art. So, everyone had the same potential and it was just a matter of spending the time and effort. But by the time Legend of Korra started, it was clear that that wasn't the case. People were born with the ability or not. Those who had it could learn to improve it, but if you didn't have it, tough luck. So in the city the series is set in, there's a element manipulating criminal syndicate and the police force only recruit element users of one type. And unsurprisingly, that causes a great deal of resentment."

"The main bad guy in series one is the leader of the anti-elementalist movement. He's a water manipulator himself, but his hate is genuine and he can use his abilities to permanently remove the element control abilities of others. Thing is, it never occurred to him that he could use the exact same ability to give element control abilities to people who didn't have it. Assuming they didn't resist, it would only have taken him about thirty seconds a time. If he'd done that, everyone would access to all the things that the elementalists could do, and if they chose not to develop those abilities… Fine. But he was too busy hating himself and encouraging other to hate that he never stopped to consider the alternatives."

I return my attention to Lex. "I want the Earth to be able to stand on its own two feet in the galaxy. I don't want it to be dependant on superhumans any more than you do, not ultimately. So; please. Tell me who the Light are. Tell me where they are. I'll go after them immediately. I'll destroy the whole organisation root and branch and destroy any evidence linking them to you. You won't be implicated at all. And then we can work on this objective we share together, without any of those short sighted idiots undermining it the whole time."

"Please."

Lex's eyes shift momentarily to his desk, and then return to me. "I'm sorry, Orange Lantern. I really can't help you."

I nod. I really shouldn't have expected him to… "Okay then." I stand. "Thank you for your time."
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OL uses empathic vision to see the who the Light members are.

"We could have done this the easy way. Now, you don't get to walk away."
 
It probably is uncomfortable to him to have had someone who respected him lose that respect not because he is a Villain but because the organisation he is working for is incompetent and self-destructive.

Like in a couple months Paul turns the wheels of a magi-tech revolution while the Light have instead caused numerous catastrophes.

I'm surprised he isn't checking the numbers and jumping ship.
 
Mizu said:
Think Lex's momentary eye-shift means something?
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If so, I'd guess his empathetic vision would have picked it up, if it's sharp enough to pick out particulars of Mercy's mornings.

Hope, desire and will as he responds to the speech (though I think the Korra example was a bit too long). Anger and a trace of fear directed at the desk. Then a flat-out lie when he rejects the offer - and he knows Paul has empathetic vision.
 
So The Light is Cerberus.

Okay.

At least Paul can be secure in the fact that he tried.

Is this not what Lex wanted? Instead of Superman turning away the hand of friendship, he shakes Lex's hand. And Paul did shake Lex's hand during the peace conference in Taiwan, on international television, no less.

But if Lex is not willing to make that effort on his own side, Paul now has to harden his heart and go all the way. No hesitation.

EDIT: Rereading the conversation again, Paul said unequivocally he would cover up evidence of Lex's misdeeds if Lex rolled over on The Light. And he still says no.

Is it the power inbalance? An actual red herring in the hands of a Lantern who could decide to change his mind at the point of Lex revealing his neck to fuck him over for good? It's a trust thing.

And Lex is probably certain he's the only member of The Light Paul would approach like this. Would Lex save this conversation for a rainy day when Lex was now certain The Light was a sinking ship?

"Sorry, Lex. That deal was good. Five years ago."
 
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Honestly I think OL knows the light were watching and gave Lex a plausible reason to distance himself from light operations since OL will supposedly be "keeping an eye on him" in the future when he goes after the rest of them.
 
HanEmpire said:
Scry Wards don't stop emphatic vision I believe.
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I think part of the reason for assuming there's something deeper going on is that Lex would have to be functionally retarded to think that the Light is a better bet for helping humanity at this point; OL isn't just offering better possible dividends, he's been actively repurposing the Light's supervillain bullshit to do tangible good for mankind. The Light, at the moment, is still trading in hopes and somedays, and trusting in the promises of people like Savage over an open offer of joining an already-extant movement to uplift the human race is just a boneheaded move, to the point where it just seems out of character for this version of Lex.

JLA Luthor might be psychotic and petty enough to stand on a sinking ship out of sheer spite, but the YJ Luthor we've seen is much more rational and collected in his behavior.
 
I'm pretty sure that the Light is the sort of organization you only leave posthumously.

I suspect that Lex is still trying to play both sides, especially as he likes to put layers of plausible deniability between him and any overt super-villainy.

He may well think that it's safer to wait and see what happens; he may be confident that even if OL does smash the rest of the Light he'll still be able to evade any real consequences, while if the rest of the Light actually defeats OL he won't have put himself in an untenable position with them. But if he picks OL and OL loses Luthor's screwed.
 
I suspect that at this point, the Light have set up a way that ensures Lex dies and can't be brought back and probably suffers in a bad afterlife in such a way that the League and OL in particular can't stop it if he betrays the rest of the Light, perhaps due to OL inspiring earlier rhetoric against some of their previous plans, only for some of the Light members to reveal that their goals aren't nearly as compatible with his own and the supposed purpose of the organization, especially given the ties of Vandal Savage to Darkseid. At this point, Lex isn't a true member, but basically a slave whose control mechanisms the League and OL in particular can't detect. They may have even used the Anti-Life formula on him, at least to a small degree.
 
The problem I have with luthor, is that he's a stupid genius. Literally. Fucking stupid genius.

He wants humanity to become great, good for him. Hate that humanity relies on aliens to be there heroes, understandable. Tries to kill and or manipulate people into virtual slavery, used biological and radioactive weapons, and used hostage and no win tactics like assassination and god only knows what. That's where this shit falls through.

If you don't like the hero; find, make, or (god forbid) be a better hero with your stupidly bullshit super science. Don't be a manipulative high school bitch with a death ray.

Lex luthor is an irrational and spite little man who hates the fact that batman does everything he claims to want and not only hates him for it, but actively avoids replicating his success.

A perfectly good waste of a level 7of intellect.
 
johnwedd said:
The problem I have with luthor, is that he's a stupid genius. Literally. Fucking stupid genius.

He wants humanity to become great, good for him. Hate that humanity relies on aliens to be there heroes, understandable. Tries to kill and or manipulate people into virtual slavery, used biological and radioactive weapons, and used hostage and no win tactics like assassination and god only knows what. That's where this shit falls through.

If you don't like the hero; find, make, or (god forbid) be a better hero with your stupidly bullshit super science. Don't be a manipulative high school bitch with a death ray.

Lex luthor is an irrational and spite little man who hates the fact that batman does everything he claims to want and not only hates him for it, but actively avoids replicating his success.

A perfectly good waste of a level 7of intellect.
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This is actually a perfect roast of the Luthor from JLA and JLU; Luthor-16 doesn't quite deserve that level of vitriol.
 
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