Administrative Mishap [Supergirl/Worm]
- Thread starter OxfordOctopus
- Start date
- Crossover
SEASON 2 - EPISODE 13
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- She/Her
EPISODE 13
Kara's costume hung from the back of the door, freshly washed if still a bit damp. Little droplets of water collected around the skirt and fell into the strategically placed bucket below, into the small puddle. Normally, that would've been accompanied by the delightful ping of water meeting water, the wobbly sound of liquid, but unfortunately for her, the opposite was true.
Barenaked Ladies, an apparent favourite of the Danvers' household, blared without irony from the television, cranked up high enough that it could almost, but not quite, overwhelm the sound of Kara singing along with it, surprisingly on-tune all things considered. She was in where the coffee table normally was - but was currently shoved up against one of the walls - and was using the handle-end of a mop as a makeshift microphone as she sang along.
The windows were all open, undoubtedly broadcasting the raw extent of Kara's passion for a band that had fallen out of relevance as quickly as it had risen to it - which was to say, very quickly - and the fact that she had gotten side-tracked during her cleaning ritual once more.
Cleaning days were not something Addy was allowed to partake in, as it happened. She had, in good faith, offered her services to sweep the room clean of any pests, dirt, or grime, and upon being asked to clarify how, had been permanently banned from offering aid on anything cleaning related. She wasn't really sure why, even to this day, it wasn't like the bugs would be dirty - she wasn't so crass - but the judgement had stuck, especially after she had raised the issue with Alex, who had gone against logic and agreed with Kara on the matter.
Rather than cutting back on cleaning time from a few hours to maybe fifteen minutes at the very most, she was instead largely contained to the one chair Kara hadn't moved off to the side. She sat, cross-legged, with her laptop perched on her thighs, her newest project, as aided by June, spread across her screen.
She was teaching a simple intelligence to differentiate ducks from geese. One she had built herself, with lots of help from June in getting her started, but ultimately after she had begun understanding the logical loops basic patterned artificial intelligences went through, it hadn't been particularly hard to use her own knowledge to start making simple deductions from then on.
Why ducks and geese, exactly? That came more back to semantics. It had occurred to her, perhaps understandably, that the only type of goose most people recognized was the Canadian goose. Most of them did not even know that geese came in plenty of other colorations, and some that even looked remarkably similar - if not exactly identical - to ducks and other waterfowl, such as swans. It didn't help that, as with geese, ducks and other birds had a rather large variety of potential shapes, sizes, and coloration to work from, thereby complicating the matter depending on who and where you learned about geese.
So she was going to remedy that, and use this exact program as a shorthand to prove that people were wrong. She had also been working on a rudimentary Twitter bot to hopefully make this entire process automated, though working around the anti-spam features of the website was tedious if not particularly difficult.
"Woah! I thought I lost this completely!"
Turning her head towards Kara's voice, Addy watched as the woman in question hefted what looked like a messenger bag that had been violently assaulted by a bedazzler of some kind. The shimmering surface, split up into endless rows of what looked like fake rhinestones, was interesting visually, but even with her own tastes being as they were, seemed a bit... garish. Unnecessarily accessorized, perhaps.
Kara, however, quickly lost interest in the bag, let the dresser she had been lifting up tip back down onto four legs, and tossed it onto the pile on her bed that amounted to the rest of her discoveries. In the hour since Kara had started cleaning she had found, in no particular order: a stuffed rendition of Abraham Lincoln which appeared as though it had been dropped into a coal mine, two identical dresses with the exact same stain in the exact same place, which had been hurriedly shoved into place with a muttered nobody ever tells you spaghetti is so messy, a diamond the size of a fist that Kara had stared at for about five minutes before, silently, placing it in the sink, and what appeared to be a very old cookbook written in Classical Tibetan.
Suffice to say, a good deep-cleaning was certainly due for the apartment, but the way she was going about it was leaving something to be desired.
Without much forewarning, her phone started to buzz, drawing Addy's gaze away from Kara's continued blitz around the house with a soapy mop. She reached out, took the phone up in her hand, and unlocked her screen with the quick tap of her short, 12-character long password.
A text from Carol. Huh.
Carol: Hey Addy! Been a while. I'm texting to invite you down to Al's this evening to celebrate the passing of the law. I know that it's been a day since it actually became official, but understandably most of us are fairly wary of things going badly, and we were basically almost right anyway? No pressure, it's just been a while since we've last seen one another, and I think it'd be nice to see you around more often. If you do, come around at about 6:30-7:00PM.
p.s. You can bring along a friend. Even a human. Just let them know it's going to be a lot of aliens.
Addy blinked once, then twice; tilted her head to one side, just to think about the offer. There was truth in that comment, she had been rather absent from Carol's life since she'd acquired her new job, and Carol herself had gotten more occupied by Koriand'r. It also hadn't helped that, with everything going on, she hadn't really given the bar much of a thought.
Still, the opportunity was there, and it would be something to do, at least. The D.E.O. was currently on standby, sure, but it had given both herself and Kara the next couple of days off—thus the reason why she actually had the time to clean her suit, as it apparently was made out of materials that needed very specific soaps and conditions to not completely ruin.
Speaking of, actually. "Kara?"
Kara turned her way, reaching out to snag the remote from the foot of her bed and point it at the television. Blessedly, the sound of One Week by the Barenaked Ladies dropped from a shout to more of a murmur. "What's up, Ads?"
"I am intending to go someplace tonight," she began, watching Kara bob her head along in a nod. "It's a celebration, among friends, due to the passing of the Alien Amnesty Act. I was wondering if you would like to tag along?"
Kara stared at her for a few moments before, with another press of the button, muting the television entirely. "Is it the bar?" she asked, apparently quicker on the uptake this time around.
She nodded. "Going with me would likely mean outing yourself as an alien, if not necessarily Supergirl. There will be many aliens there who do not require sudden arrests, even if they may be doing something less than legal, such as imbibing alcohol which has not, technically, passed the food safety review boards."
That, again, got her another blank stare. For a while, Kara just kinda looked at her, eyes a bit distant as she gave it all a good thought. That was one of the better things about Kara, she might be impulsive in situations that called for it, but would always ultimately try to think it through when she was asked about things, or requested to do something. It was a good trait, one that would've given rise to a very level-headed person, had it not been somewhat undercut by her temper and impulsiveness.
"Can't I just pretend to be your human friend or something?" Kara asked at last, blinking out of her thoughtful stupor, eyes refocusing more directly on her.
"There will be telepathic people there who are used to sensing people by proximity, you will be fairly blatant when it becomes clear they cannot sense you," Addy pointed out.
"Well, okay, that makes sense," Kara said, trailing off a bit. She glanced around for a few seconds, before leaning over to prop the mop up against the wall next to her, gently walking over so that she could stand across from Addy, looking a bit ridiculous, surrounded by piles of furniture and whatnot. "Is it safe? I haven't really—you know, gone there before. Not that I'm stereotyping or anything, just, superpowers and rowdiness don't make a good pair."
"It's as safe as any other bar which mostly caters to those in the lower strata of wealth and morals," she pointed out, because it was mostly true. "Humans carry firearms, such as guns, and I cannot see how those are any more threatening than someone who can make you combust. I am immune to both of those things."
"...We're not immune to everything, Ads," Kara stressed, a touch testily.
"No, just the majority of things," Addy countered. "And as a direct consequence, that makes me fairly safe in most situations not involving kryptonite."
Kara opened her mouth, evidently about to rebuff that, but ultimately shut it. That, evidently, meant she was clearly right, and she was glad Kara was finally starting to see her way.
"You don't have to, I was just informed that I had been neglecting another friend of mine more recently, and figured it would be expedient to see them now." Carol had extended an olive branch of something like friendship, first and foremost, and ultimately Addy felt she had to repay that in some way. Even if it wasn't so cut and dry as she might prefer it to be. Emotions were always so messy.
"Y'know what?" Kara started again, at last. "I think I will. I'm on break, I haven't really had a chance to try to—well, connect with aliens, mostly because I didn't know most of them had communities like that on Earth. Why not enjoy myself?"
Late evening came with a dusky sort of sky. The overcast of the last few days - already a fairly rare occurrence in California, by her estimate - had cleared up, leaving the skies vacant and empty, letting all the colours of the setting sun wash across it like a canvas. Dark oranges made up most of the sky, transitioning into colder purples and, eventually, full night, the further one got away from the sunset proper.
Turning the corner, Addy stepped into the alleyway leading up to Al's entrance, Kara keeping pace behind her. The alleyway was, unsurprisingly, fairly packed, just not with the normal human-passing affair. Aliens of all shapes, sizes, and colorations stood around in mixed groups, milling casually, with a sort of flair that felt somewhat ill-fitting for a place so hidden and out-of-the-way as Al's. Al's normal collection of aliens were, yes, those who couldn't conventionally pass, but generally, most people wore concealment tech or came in from odd and hard-to-spot angles, such as from the rooftop, and few would run the risk of being spotted outside by someone.
It was a change, yes, but not necessarily a bad one.
There were still some humans around, or at least some people who resembled them closely enough. A small group of close-shaved - both in head and beard - men stood around a rather large pick-up truck of some kind, chatting among themselves in the lot just next to the alley, while a handful of human regulars stood closer into the crowd, chatting amicably with an eight-foot, green-scaled quadrupedal alien, who spoke in a rather thick Glaswegian accent.
Bypassing them wasn't going to be an issue, though making sure Kara didn't get sidetracked might be. Addy looked back, catching sight of Kara's eyes flicking between every alien present with a rather awe-struck look, though whatever else she might be feeling, Addy couldn't read. Kara had come, at her recommendation, in casual wear - she had initially wanted to wear a dress, and... you don't do that at Al's, it would be like wearing a dress to a recycling plant - which in this case amounted to a button-up flannel shirt, with sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and some roughed-up jeans and high tops. Her hair was, as usual, pulled back into a tight ponytail at the top of her skull, and her glasses were perched carefully on her face.
"Don't get distracted," Addy said, pitching her voice high enough to carry over the muted sound of conversation. Some people gave her a look, but either recognized her or didn't care to snap at her, and looked away not long after.
Kara's eyes drifted back to her, and she offered up a shaky, somewhat awkward smile. "Sorry, been a while since I've seen something like this. Last time was when I went to Starhaven, with my father."
Oh, memories. Addy could relate to that. She nodded, saying nothing more, and went back to weaving her way through the various crowds of people, listening for Kara's footsteps as she kept close behind. There wasn't a line when she arrived at the door, though more than a few people were milling next to it, not that she gave them much of a look before she walked up and rapped her knuckles three times against the door.
The slot opened, a familiar pair of gimlet eyes staring down at her. "Password?" Gregor, the doorman, less said, and more grunted.
"Pineapple juice," Addy recited back.
The slot latched shut, and the door, accordingly, was yanked open, Gregor keeping off to the side as he waved them through.
If the alleyway outside was packed and full of aliens, the interior of Al's was completely overwhelmed by them. Addy herself hadn't ever seen so many different types of aliens in one place before, in large part because they normally didn't come all at once. People forgot about it sometimes, but Earth's twenty-four-hour day-night cycle was not a galaxy standard. Nothing was. Home planets could have day-night cycles that ranged from equivalent to days on this one, to hours. Some didn't have them at all, even, in the case of tidally locked planets.
Altogether, that meant that most people had times they were predisposed towards going to a seedy, fairly dirty dive-bar, and would come in cycles. All of this was further complicated by planets that only abstractly had day periods, and aliens that were nocturnal or diurnal, or might otherwise have a different understanding of the passage of time.
Suffice to say, this was fairly unfamiliar.
It was noisy, to boot. The low murmur of conversation outside was far eclipsed by the dull roar of conversation on the inside. She wasn't a particular fan of it, but she could endure.
Peeking back behind her shoulder, just to be sure Kara wasn't getting lost again - and, thankfully, she wasn't; she looked about as shocked as Addy did, all things considered - Addy paced further into the bar. Most of the seats were already taken, including the one she usually sat at with Carol, but they'd figure out the seating arrangement later. The bar itself, as she grew nearer, was crowded as well, all the seats already packed with people wedged between them, grabbing their drinks or snacks and then departing, only for the seats to be quickly taken up by someone else.
The dull roar of the area grew to a fevered pitch as chatter rippled across the area, drowning out anything she could otherwise decipher from nearby conversations. After a few seconds of awkward, stifled standing-in-place, it receded again, back down to the point where Addy could decently manage to make out a word or two if it was shouted in her direction from at most five feet away.
A pair of seats opened up at just the right time, too, and Addy was waving Kara forward and taking up one of them before they could be stolen away again, slotting herself up onto the raised cushion and watching Kara do the same.
Megan, among the crowd of busy bartenders, broke away, a smile on her face as she wandered up and towards them. "Been a while!" She shouted as she neared, just barely audible as the noise grew and receded like some sort of torturous tide of sound. "Who's this with you?"
"Megan, this is my roommate and friend, Kara," Addy introduced, politely, pointing them at one another. Megan reached forward with one hand, and Kara took it, a firm handshake exchanged between the two of them.
Once their hands parted, Megan turned her focus back to Addy. "So, what do you guys feel like having?"
Addy looked towards Kara, rather than Megan, for the time being. She already knew what she was having - not alcohol, was what - and it mostly came down to what Kara felt she wanted.
Kara, to her credit, picked up on her silence quick enough, making a low humming noise in the back of her throat. "What do you have on special?"
Megan nodded, then looked her way. "You want your regular?"
She just nodded, not wanting to fight for prominence among the tide of noise.
Kara turned, staring at her. "You have a regular?"
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Megan wave down one of the local K'ol. K'ol were blue-skinned, approximately humanoid aliens, roughly about the same height as humans, just with a head that was more horizontal than it was vertical. They bore a slight resemblance to the alien from the movie of the same name, in terms of head shape anyway. The particular K'ol she was waving down was one Addy actually knew—Itnar, the guy who normally made her drinks for her.
As Itnar approached, his body shimmered slightly with fog where the air met his skin, not that he showed much. He was, paradoxical to the heat of a Californian summer, fully bundled up in layers of clothes to retain heat.
"Another drink for Addy!" Megan yelled towards him, Itnar nodding in turn as she looked away, walking towards the wall of alcoholic bottles lining the shelves.
Itnar wandered roughly in Megan's direction, only stopping to swipe a cup from the bar and hold it under the faucet, filling it half-way. Once that was done, he turned back to Addy, his face splitting into a bit of a smile as his hand started to glow. The water inside rapidly froze over, coating the glass in a layer of fog, and then twisted his other hand with a jerk. The ice inside cracked, then shredded under his telekinetic control—another part of the K'ol's abilities. Natural cryokinetics, but with some telekinetic abilities on things that were cold enough. The only problem was that if they grew too cold themselves - more than they already were, anyway - they'd die, which meant they mostly found homes on desert planets, or the places you'd be least likely to actually find water in the first place.
Itnar stepped forward with that done, placing the glass down on the table.
"Thank you," she said, and got another smile in turn.
"No problem." Itnar's voice was low, a gravelly sort of thing that reflected on what was likely a less-than-human voice box. It sounded an awful lot like something mechanical or fake, synthesized. "I'm just glad I can do things such as these, domesticity suits me, I believe."
It did, too. The thing about the K'ol, and why Addy only knew one - Itnar - and had learned most of what they were from him after spotting him freezing the air into intricate, if fragile ice sculptures, was that most of them were mercenaries. In a rather stark contrast to humans, the K'ol had sent their planet into a global ice-age due to disrupting certain parts of the environment and tectonic movement, and the diaspora had killed most, and the ones who hadn't died had picked up fighting as it was generally the thing they were the best at.
The thing was, as far as Addy could tell, that wasn't even particularly rare for aliens. Ecosystems and, more generally, climate, were terribly fragile things, and most alien societies dealt with the same hurdles that humans had to, and responded to it in roughly the same way that humans had: by screwing it up. The ones who didn't tend to end up being interplanetary empires by the end of it, and they weren't exactly relevant, considering how rural Earth was by both her own map of species her kind had visited, and by what Carol had told her about intergalactic diplomacy.
Bringing her glass of ice up to her mouth and ignoring the odd look Kara was shooting her, Addy shovelled some of the partially-shredded ice in, catching a big chunk between her teeth and crunching it.
Megan arrived back seconds later, waving Itnar off with one of her bottle-carrying hands. She turned towards them both, smiling gently, and raised the two bottles she had on offer, placing them down in front of Kara. She opened her mouth, and was thereafter promptly overwhelmed in volume by the tide of aliens in the bar once again.
After waiting patiently for it to fade off a few seconds later, Megan started talking again.
"The one on the right is Sorkanth Cider," Megan explained as loudly as she could, motioning towards it. The bottle itself was full of dark, rich amber fluid, and the bottle was shaped to almost be twisted or braided, a rather impressive act of glassworking. Motioning to her left, towards a more traditional rum-bottle-shaped bottle, which was full of a pastel-green fluid, with a tag covered in alien sigils that Addy couldn't read. "The one on the left is Morath Pale. Sorkanth Cider is, well, cider might not be the best word for it, it's just the closest English has, as it's technically made from an apple-shaped fruit from Omitax, and it's technically fermented in the same way, but it's heavy-duty stuff. Really potent. Morath Pale is a type of booze, or well, pale is a type of booze, brewed from Hydraxis hops, or the equivalent and—look, English is really restrictive. Moranth Pale is pretty fruity, like bananas, and a bit less heavy on alcohol. Sorkanth is much harder, but you know, I'm fairly certain you can..."
Megan trailed off, and Addy looked towards Kara, just to see why. Kara was staring at the bottle of cider with a lost look, something terribly distant in her eyes, like she wasn't entirely present.
Megan went quiet, and Addy couldn't find it in herself to say anything either.
A few more moments passed, and Kara's throat visibly worked in a swallow. "My father... he used to drink this," she explained, haltingly. "Kept it up on the high shelf because I always wanted to drink it, said we would share some when I came of age. I never really thought I'd see it again."
Megan's face, across from her, softened into something sympathetic and terribly, terribly warm. She pushed the bottle over with a smile. "It's on me, in that case. Don't worry. But drink it slowly, regardless of whatever species you might be, that's more equivalent to the human understanding of Vodka than it is actual cider."
Kara's head whipped up, an affronted look on her face. "I—you don't have—but, slow? I can hold my liquor."
"This isn't just liquor, this technically qualifies as a lethal poison for humans."
Kara's mouth pinched, drew in, and she considered for a moment. "...I'll have a glass?"
Megan smiled, wider this time, sweeping both bottles away. "A glass you'll have, in that case." She turned, handing the Morath Pale off to Itnar, who was quick to shuffle the bottle back into the rows of similar bottles slotted into the wall, before swiping a tall glass from the same place Itnar had sourced his and popping the cork off of the cider. She took a moment to let the bubbling die down before pouring it casually into it, filling it up to the brim and taking out a meaningful chunk of the bottle.
Turning back around, she placed it on the bar, sliding it closer to Kara. "Enjoy."
The look on Kara's face, by comparison, was something like confusion. Like she wasn't particularly sure what she should be feeling right now, a sensation Addy could eminently relate to. She felt like that a lot, honestly.
"Are you okay?"
Kara turned to look at her, reaching out to take the glass into her hands. She smiled, but only a little, the sort of restrained smile that she got when she was worried about something. "Sorry, I just... never thought I'd get to try it. The smell is still so familiar, so is the look of it. I always wanted to try some, and I guess I can, now."
Interested in the smell, Addy leaned away from her cup and towards Kara's, taking a bit of a whiff. It was, completely, alien, like nothing she'd ever smelled on Earth. The closest comparison she could find in her brain were some of those berries, Taylor's memories had called them snake berries, with a sort of fruity, chemical-y tang to them that made most kids shy away from them. Perhaps rightfully, considering that they weren't smart to eat.
Maybe it showed on her face how little she actually liked the smell, because Kara's laugh rang like a bell, if a bit of a jagged one.
"I guess I'll try it now, though," Kara said, her laugh dying off into something quiet and uncomfortable.
Addy blinked. "You don't have to." It felt obvious to say, but maybe it hadn't occurred to Kara.
"Yeah, I know." Kara looked at her, then, much closer than she had since they'd arrived at the bar. Her smile turned softer, a bit more sure of itself. "But I think I deserve it for once."
Kara swivelled, then, turning around in her seat with glass in hand and staring out into the crowd. Addy did much the same, pausing only to watch Kara shove her glasses a bit further down to her face and squint into the crowd, using her enhanced vision. After a moment, she adjusted her glasses again, and pointed off into the depths of the crowd, to a spot roughly next to the door. "Behind that one."
Addy nodded, dropping from her seat, with Kara doing much the same. Weaving through the crowds was, again, not the most pleasant thing, but they made good time by side-stepping a particularly rowdy bit of singing in a language Addy had never heard before, mostly led by a pair of gigantic, semi-translucent aliens, whose body had developed a scattering of shell-like growths across their more vital regions.
True to her word, the table they eventually ended up at was empty. A bit stained by something unspecified, and with two too many chairs for its size, but certainly workable.
Addy plopped down into one seat, dragging another chunk of frozen ice to be obliterated between her teeth, while Kara took up the one just next to her, setting her glass down and staring at it.
Then, with great care and focus, she lifted it, tipped it back, and brought it to her lips.
Kara lasted exactly one sip. The glass was back on the table quicker than what was possible, and Kara was coughing, waving a hand near her mouth. "No, no, I totally get what she and my dad meant now," she said, or maybe rambled, eyes screwed up as her breathing finally evened out. "That is a lot of alcohol. Yikes."
Which, well. What did she expect? Part of the reason why she didn't partake in liquor was because of its taste. Well, that and the inebriation, which had always seemed rather unpleasant for both the person inebriated and everyone around them. To prove a point, she slotted another chip of ice between her teeth and crunched away.
Kara, however, was not one to be deterred, bringing her glass back up to her lips to take another sip, this time with significantly more grace. She winced, still, and looked like she'd rather be drinking water from a muddy puddle, but ultimately managed to get a swig down. "Rao that—that just burns, it just tastes like a burn. It's like drinking gasoline."
Addy was, frankly, not about to ask how she knew what gasoline tasted like.
Rather than that, she glanced around, hoping to find Carol. This time, too, it wouldn't even be that hard to spot her among the crowd; most of them had foregone tech to hide their alien natures, and as a result, a short, twenty-something looking woman with reddish hair would look almost comically out of place.
Which, admittedly, was why she spotted Alex so quickly. Even locked eyes with her when it clicked that she was not looking at a random civilian, but rather Alex Danvers.
Alex Danvers, who was looking at them with something between horror and embarrassment on her face. Who was being accompanied by Maggie Sawyer, next to her, staring just as openly as Alex was.
"Kara," Addy said.
Kara, mid-sip - and why she was still drinking when it apparently sucked so much, she did not know - turned to look at her.
Addy merely gestured towards Alex, Kara's eyes following the motion.
She swallowed, roughly, and promptly started to choke.
Alex rushed over, Maggie on her heels with a bit of a confident swagger to her step, and arrived at Kara's side in record time. She reeled back and applied two solid claps to Kara's back before, with a guttered gasp for breath, Kara managed to actually swallow the contents of her drink, if at the predictable cost of the burn nearly driving her to tears.
"What are you doing here?!" Alex hissed thunderously, glaring daggers.
Kara flushed blotchily, certainly not helped by the tinge of tears at the corners of her eyes, which she quickly reached up to wipe away. "Addy invited me!"
Alex's head whipped back around to her, staring mutinously.
Not one to take threats sitting down, Addy crunched on another bit of ice. Alex grimaced, for whatever reason, at the sound of it. "Carol invited me, and I invited Kara."
"It could give away her identity!" Alex shot back, voice still a low hiss.
She just stared at her, because obviously? "Just that she is an alien."
"But if people know that she's an alien—"
"Nothing bad can happen anymore," Maggie interrupted, stepping closer. She reached over to clap Alex on the shoulder, who jerked a bit beneath the touch, but tellingly didn't move away from it. "It's legal to be an alien in America now, remember."
Alex tensed, relaxed, tensed again, then finally relaxed. She still seemed bristly, like a cat who you had recently offended, but was no longer about to lash out at something or someone, thankfully.
"...I suppose, but it was still a bad idea—"
"Yeah, well!" Kara interrupted, throwing her hands up, her glass left on the table. "Maybe I wanted to see Addy's friends! And anyway, why are you here?"
"Don't turn this back onto me!" Alex nearly shrieked, sounding utterly affronted by the notion.
"I invited her," Maggie, again, interrupted, preventing the back-and-forth from escalating. She had a softer smile on her face as she looked between Alex and Kara. "I wanted her to see what aliens could be like in a more communal setting, something more celebratory and happy. I doubt she gets many other chances to be around aliens in non-combat situations in the first place."
Addy took Alex in, then, and found something curious. Alex did look surprisingly relaxed, despite the bulk sum of her interaction with aliens being generally violent or unpleasant. She was wearing her casual clothes, yes, but a bit more put-together than they were during game nights. She also had make-up on, something she was fairly certain Alex didn't particularly pay much attention to by virtue of it being a hassle to do.
She had, evidently, made herself rather quite presentable. Almost a bit too much, considering the clientele of Al's.
Addy took another bite of her ice.
Alex, apparently seeing no path to victory in this situation, merely turned to Maggie and sighed. The sort of exhausted, but ultimately accepting sigh of someone who knew they had lost the fight, and would have to make preparations to ensure it wouldn't happen again. To whatever ends that might be, Alex chose the first step on that path by slumping a bit bonelessly down in her seat.
Maggie made an undignified snort at that, and took up the one just next to Alex, leaving the table half full. She turned, away from Alex and Kara staring at one another, and towards her, propping her chin up beneath her heel, and opening her mouth.
The roar of the crowd rather promptly drowned out whatever she was saying. A frustrated look prickled across her face as the group waited it out, this time lasting five seconds and approximately four more seconds than it had any right to.
"So," Maggie said at last, regaining her momentum. "I knew that I had seen you before. You hang out around Carol and Megan, right? Sometimes with that new girl—Kodi?"
"Koriand'r," Addy corrected, raising her voice.
"There you are!"
Addy turned, startled by the new voice, to find, as though summoned by name alone, Carol and Koriand'r squeezing their way through the crowd. The two of them looked in good spirits, and Carol wasn't in her uniform that she normally wore when tending to the bar, which meant she wasn't obligated to work today. That was nice.
"...with Officer Sawyer and two people I don't know," Carol finished, a bit haltingly.
"Carol," Addy began, if only to get this out of the way. "This is Kara and Alex, they are my family."
Carol glanced between the two of them, then back towards Maggie. "And Sawyer?"
"She was the one who invited Alex."
"Good to see you too, Carol," Maggie drawled, something in her voice that made Addy want to keep a healthy distance from the two of them. It was vaguely annoying in inflection, like she was intending to rile Carol up.
Carol, meanwhile, outright ignored her, turning her focus entirely back onto Addy. "Sorry about taking so long, I was a bit preoccupied when you arrived. Some guys outside are being difficult."
However, as Maggie was not one to be ignored, she evidently took that as a challenge. "You know, none of you are particularly bucking the stereotype about psychic people and cliques."
Alex choked on either air or spit, Addy wasn't about to check, and Carol merely sighed, rolling her eyes until they landed on Maggie's person with a loose, annoyed sort of stare.
"Does everyone know you're psychic?!" Alex hissed across the table, Maggie having given new life to a torch she had been responsible for putting out in the first place.
Carol turned her gaze onto Alex, looked at her a bit oddly. "It's... not something she can exactly keep a secret, Alex."
Alex just stared back.
Carol, evidently seeing a discussion as necessary, motioned towards Koriand'r before taking a seat, Koriand'r taking up one of the few remaining ones next to her. She shuffled in closer, propping her elbow up on the table, and turning her entire focus onto Alex, who seemed to almost squirm beneath it in discomfort.
"Addy's a bit like... well, hard to miss if you're aware of her. You know how it's not like, an actual physical thing that stops you from seeing the stars during the day? Just that it's the light pollution of the sun that makes them impossible to make out? It's a lot like that. Her psychic presence is so loud and vast that it's hard not to notice her, even miles away."
...That was certainly news to her. Why, exactly, had nobody informed her? At least J'onn could've, he was certainly psychic enough to be able to check.
"I will have to find a way to hide that," she said, at last, getting the words out being a bit harder this time around.
"You wouldn't be the first to want to, but nobody else even remotely on your level has found out how to," Carol explained, not unkindly, not that it lessened the blow any. "Most of the time it results in their head exploding. Or worse."
She wasn't particularly sure how one could experience something worse than an exploding head.
"And, wait, there's a stereotype about psychics gravitating towards one another?" Alex cut in, sounding almost curious, but tentatively so.
Carol turned to look at her, pursing her lips in a way Addy had come to associate with her being about to say something she either disagreed with or would prefer not to be addressing. "Most telepathic and psychic species have their abilities as a product of some primary need for them. Whether it's transferring information between different members of the species, or more along the lines of being able to project emotions as a way to inform others that something has gone wrong. But a lot of those... they came with a cultural habit of these species finding communal uses for them, things they could use to share amongst themselves."
Everyone had gone quiet as Carol spoke, even Kara, who was looking on curiously, if not particularly like she was learning. Did she already know about this? Kara had said she'd done rigorous study as a child on Krypton, and Addy was starting to wonder how far that went.
"In some cases, it's very... personal. Martians, as an example, used their psychic abilities to hunt, yes, but they also used them to share memories, entire life experiences, between each other as a sign of trust. Over time, a lot of those species tend to genetically trend towards the abilities only really being used for that purpose as the civilizations they build begin to become agricultural. It helps that most of them have been without the actual need to hunt for tens of thousands of years.
"As a direct consequence of all that, people with psychic abilities tend to associate said abilities with... home, community, culture, that sort of thing, and it's easier for them to communicate and feel comfortable around other people with similar abilities. Admittedly, Addy doesn't really do that latter part, she's honestly very powerful in psychic projection but, as far as I can tell, only somewhat powerful in psychic sensitivity, but it's still hard not to notice her and feel, well, kinda safe."
Everyone was looking at her, and now she felt rather mightily uncomfortable.
Kara, off to the side, finished off her glass with a final grimace, placing the slightly foamy cup back down on the table, apparently now fully done with that life experience.
"I still intend to find a way to hide my presence," Addy picked up, at last, because they ought to know. "If it's the case that everyone can feel it, and have ultimately merely decided not to inform me, it's giving those who may act against me an unfair advantage. I will fix that."
"...I'm fairly certain the only unfair advantage is how powerful you are," Carol said, a bit dryly.
Addy squinted at her, annoyance pulsing. "There is nothing unfair about that, it's not my fault others aren't up to my levels of power."
Carol opened her mouth to say something, but was once more drowned out by a sudden change in volume by the crowd. Just, rather than petering off, it grew. Louder and louder, until it felt like everyone was shouting, and showed little to no sign of stopping.
A raw, dull pulse of pain started to prickle along her senses, the early onset of a headache. Wonderful.
The noise grew more frantic, louder, and Addy just about felt her patience snap.
She glanced around, trying to find the source of the commotion, and found that most of the aliens were now looking out the entrance. Rising from her seat, and knowing better than to try to speak, she stared down the wall of aliens, who would be unlikely to budge, calculated the odds, and lifted off into the air, more or less completely done with the ongoing situation.
Kara and Alex shouted something she couldn't make out, though it sounded fairly aggrieved. She ignored them, otherwise, drifting over the crowd, ignoring the occasional scowl sent her way, and slipped through the open door to the bar, arriving out into the nighttime air, the loudness dying out now that the sound wasn't trapped completely within a small dive bar.
The space outside of the bar was much more packed than it was before, and not in a good way. The crowds of aliens were tumultuous, angry, and she could see why. At the far end of the alley were those same men she'd seen, all close-shaved, but now wearing full military gear—bulletproof vests and the like—as well as carrying alien guns. Obviously alien, at that, ones which had strips of glowing lights along their side, a bit utilitarian in construction, but ultimately obvious in purpose: combat. They were, rather conveniently, arrayed in a line, barring off the one conventional exit to the alley that led to Al's, keeping all the aliens packed inside and unable to functionally leave the alley.
Flying in a bit closer, but not so close that the people with the guns would get any moronic ideas, Addy let her feet touch down on asphalt and strode up closer. She was barely a few paces away when she heard it.
"We're just here to keep the peace," one of the guys was saying, his expression hidden behind a riot police-style helmet.
"Yeah," another one added. "We're concerned members of the community, and we just want to make sure nothing untoward happens."
She didn't even need to be all that great at understanding tone to realize how transparently full of shit it was.
The aliens weren't buying it either, evidently. There were about three aliens to one human, and most of them had long since lost their own patience. Whether it be because they were drunk - likely - confident - even more so - or deeply frustrated - almost impossible not to be - they had long since given up even the delusion of playing along. Many of them crackled with energy, fingers of light flickering along their person, while others with less energy-based abilities had started to pull themselves up to their full heights, towering imperiously over the squad of barely-six-foot-tall-morons.
"Addy! You can't just—"
A hand snagged on her sleeve, dragging her back. She turned, caught sight of Alex - the one who had just spoken and grabbed her - while Kara and Koriand'r were standing in the wings, watching. Maggie was there too, though still fighting her way through the crowd at the door to get closer.
"People who frequent here already know that Addy Queen is an alien in some capacity," Addy explained, tugging her sleeve free. "I opted to fly less rigidly than I normally did, my identity is safe."
Alex's eyes widened minutely, but they weren't looking at her. Rather, she was staring around Addy, off to her left side, and she turned to see what exactly was so interesting about the crowd.
The guy - the leader, by her estimate, considering how he was at the center of the line - had pulled what looked like a laser revolver from its holster, and was jabbing it into the face of a particularly pissed off furred alien, whose teeth had pulled back into a wide snarl of anger.
"Not so tough now, are you? Huh?! Without your freakish bullshit to give you the upper hand, you're not so strong!"
"Alright!" Maggie's voice interrupted, and Addy once again swung her head around to spot her. She was stepping forward, an absolutely thunderous look having replaced the soft smile she'd worn until now, marching with certain anger behind each moment. "Cut that shit out, now!"
She marched right on past them, too, evidently not about to keep to the wings like Kara and Koriand'r.
The line of militiamen turned to look at her, most of them adopting scowls.
The guy with the revolver, perhaps most of all, just glared at her. "And who the fuck are you, huh?" His gun never wavered, even as he looked away. "What do you have, huh? Eye lasers maybe, like the traitor who nearly killed the president?"
Maggie reached up for her shirt pouch, and that was unfortunately exactly the wrong thing to do.
The guy swivelled, drawing the gun towards Maggie and firing off a shot in an instant. A laser cracked from the barrel, a bright neon-green, and Maggie dropped away from it, barely avoiding it. The laser, instead, carved a bubbling gouge in the asphalt, nearly eight feet in length.
The aliens, most of them probably already aware of who Maggie was, surged in outrage. A burst of frost erupted from the ground, Addy spotting Itnar reaching out, encasing two of the guys with guns in a solid block of ice. Other aliens merely charged, large and heavy, shoving the line back as guys were drawn and pointed. The low hum of energy weapons lit up the street, barrels crackling.
A gunshot blasted into the air, cutting through the din.
It was Maggie, badge held up in one hand and a gun pointed up with the other. "No, I have a fucking badge. Get on the ground, or I swear to a god I don't believe in, we'll be having words."
"Aren't you supposed to be on our side?!" The leader spat, wrenching himself free from the grip of that same furred alien, who snarled back at him. "You're a cop! Why are you standing up for the fucking aliens?!"
"At this very moment?" Maggie said, voice tremulous and barely restrained, anger hot behind each word. "I'm trying to avoid people getting killed. Look around you, at the crowd, at yourself, did you really think this night was going to end peacefully? When you're acting like this? With those weapons?!"
To their credit, the remaining militiamen who weren't either pinned or frozen did glance around, and started to really realize the situation. Of the maybe ten they had, two of which already out of commission, there was a growing crowd of at least fifty aliens. Of those aliens, a solid three-fourths of them could likely mutilate them with little issue in a variety of horrifying ways, as developed by species living in some of the most foreign and hostile environments in the universe.
Whether they saw the hurt and fear among the aliens, well, Addy didn't know. But she did.
Still, fear began to flicker over the men's faces at that, and a few even started to stumble backwards, as though they might be able to outrun them.
"Now, get on the ground, and I won't consider the bullshit you just pulled resisting arrest," Maggie finished, her voice cooling, but not growing any nicer. It was icier, instead, harsher.
For a moment, Addy really wasn't sure if they'd accept that ultimatum. The guy with the revolver seemed infuriated by the entire notion, but one of them broke, dropped their weapon, and got down on their stomach. Then another, and then another, and then, finally, the leader stepped away, dropped his guns, and did the same.
"J'onn," Kara began, voice a bit of a slur. Addy glanced back her way to find Alex holding her up with one arm, visibly straining under the effort.
...Was Kara drunk? Wonderful.
"Is going to be so mmmmaaaaaddd."
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Whew! A bit more fluff with some introductions to the focus of the next couple of storylines: alien weaponry and technology being proliferated through human life. Hope you enjoy, and hope you're excited for, well, that.
- Location
- Argentina
Why?
No one died and a human Cop arrested the troublemakers. It went as well as it possible could go.
- Location
- UK
Gregor the Snail has a family?
He'll be soo happy!
- Location
- Earth, probably.
- Pronouns
- None/Any
If I were to guess it might be the fact that alien weapons have started finding their way into the hands of people who probably shouldn't be using human weapons.
- Location
- Argentina
And Kara is in no way responsible for that and they did knew it was gonna happen eventually.
Ratmor
F War
- Location
- Russia, Moscow
Well at least it's not the canon murder them all thing with a virus or whatever Cerberus cooked up. Medusa thingy?
edit: fuck I called Cadmus Cerberus, I know what is wrong with me, it's the reveal of ME Legendary
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Norr
Misophist
- Location
- Any chair
One big hint the Entities doesn't exist in this universe: these guys still exist as a species.
I would hope not, one Contessa is more than enough thankyouverymuch.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I don't think Kara was saying he'd be mad at her, more mad at the situation.
I'd kinda expect there to be procedure for identifying yourself as a cop before going for a possible weapon. It seemed very strange that she wouldn't do that here, especially when confronted with some who's carrying a weapon.
I mean, I'm from Canada, have never been worried about police as a white male, and I still verbally confirmed that I was going for my wallet when I got pulled over once. It's basic self preservation instinct. I don't *want* to get shot because someone thought I was pulling a weapon, so I took steps to ensure that the police officer knew I wasn't doing something possible hostile, and waited for confirmation before reaching for a wallet.
If I can do that, admittedly while calm, I can't see why she would not follow the same train of thought after being trained for this sort of situation.
- Location
- Argentina
And she was angry at the situation.
Even so hinting that you may be about to pull out a gun is quite dumb.
Prince Charon
Just zis guy, you know?
Addy can be hilariously savage at times.
Kryptonian problems.
If Maggie is sober and is supposed to be competent, she should have had her badge out before confronting him, yes. If she did foolish things like this in Arrowverse-canon, though, it's the show's fault. If she isn't shown to be a cop of lacking competence in the show and she isn't tipsy or drunk, then it's a problem with the writing.
EDIT: In regards to police in America:
1. Yes, training and qualifications vary, sometimes by a lot.
2. The bad cops are the ones most likely to do something that will make the news.
3. The main result of '2' is that you tend to hear little or nothing about the good or average cops.
4. A lot of the aforementioned bad cops are also pretty horrible people, rather than merely incompetent.
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Ratmor
F War
- Location
- Russia, Moscow
The cop thing in the USA seems pretty ridiculous from the outside (if we don't mention the obvious scary). Let me briefly explain why. Spoiler, it's not quite as brief as I initially intended.
I mean, you see, even in Russia there are specialized forces who go out to "protect" the demonstration from the demonstration. They aren't even trained as the police sometimes, they could be a part of the Rus-Guardians, like militia with patriotic ideology, I think. So they have the right to get you into the van but they don't paper-slap you after, other people do that and, in fact, they are the police.
I've been detained that way twice I think, and it was kind of okay, I wasn't actually scared for my life because I wasn't drunk and had no concealed weapons on me. First was when I forgot my ID at work and didn't have it. So I was detained, because all males, with face like they're haunted, are considered suspicious on central Metro stations. There were some terroristic attacks there after all. I better be detained once in my life and know that they care than get blown up.
And second when I was totally slamming with the demonstrators because it promised to be fun and I wanted to understand what people are talking about and if they're genuine at all. Demonstrators here don't go all out usually, no burning cars or breaking property, just breaking faces and sometimes shouting at the police (which warrants their retaliation so I consider it an unnecessary provocation)
So, there are very few cases in which you get special treatment, you are considered a traitor, you are being held by Federal Security Bandits, as we jokingly call them, or you fucked up someone in the police and they really want to kick your teeth in because of it. There's also being unlucky and getting detainment in the central part of Moscow, they really don't care and too politicised. I've been detained in peripheral facility so they could sort me out, and they didn't even cage me, just asked if I wanted some tea and why I was at the demonstration. I told them I'm a historian and wanted to see what I'm dealing with as a professional (and that wasn't even a lie) and they let me go with a wave and asked me to throw away the paper cup on the way out.
After what I see on the news about what happened in some states during those riots, I kind of have difficulties of imagining the same thing happening there. And I think I know why. We don't really have the possibility to buy weapons here. If I ever kill someone it would probably be with a knife and lots of gruesome shit. All the weapons are accounted for, and if they aren't in the base after the expertise, that warrants the investigation of federal proportions. It happened in the past. As I see it, the USA police is scared for their lives most of the time. And they are being taught to respond on people who are most likely armed.
We can't carry knives of any kind inside the official buildings, carry permit for weapons is really hard to get, and yes of course there are organized crime guys, who have their weapons regardless of what's written in the law. That's why the police guys who would be taking them won't be gently punching them in solar plexus and telling them that they're being detained, no, they would be shot repeatedly and with full approval of other people that aren't the police. Because noone has the real weapons in Russia except for not so many people in the base, like hunters and stuff, police and organized crime.
Of course, I was taught how to use weapon at school and I don't need it until I'm called to war, if such a thing ever happens. I have the knowledge, but I don't have an object that would warrant me being taken down violently. That's why I think that the main problem with american police is how ridiculous that noone inside the system gets why violence is normalized for them. They are being trained not quite to protect and detain unarmed people, drunk or not, violent or not, they are being trained the way they consider any twitch as a weapon concealment.
And I can't comprehend why you don't hear good things about your police, just recently the policeman in my part of Moscow decided to save a kid from a small battery the kid put in his nostril, so the dude put flashlights and got him and his parents into the hospital. There are policemen who are first responders on fires, that happens all the time, or when someone is drowning, or they make people stay alive before the ambulance is there. That's basic human decency with some good old training, and I doubt there are no policemen like that in the USA. I really don't get the situation there, because I don't live there, but why they aren't being shown as heroes they really are, most of the time? Why always show some bad shit? It's too much of it as it is.
I also read many times this thing about being white male and how it's not as dangerous, and that I don't quite get as well. Is that because black people tended to get unregistered weapons and get into gangs more often because of their home situations and lack of social/governmental support that white people had? Is that because people are plain racist? Or both? And there's also that thing I read all the time, that they tend to show victims who are white and female, more often and insistant than others. I don't get it as well, but I'm not gonna comment on that, cus I really don't understand how it could be logically explained.
All of that is just ridiculous. I rambled a bit, but you get what I mean, I hope.
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Because american cops have a long history of being bought and paid for by everyone from the mob, to racist senators, and then not being punished or even tried for blatant misbehavior.
There's just increasingly less trust between the people and the police, especially people who have historically been especially victimized by police malfeasance.
There's just increasingly less trust between the people and the police, especially people who have historically been especially victimized by police malfeasance.
Ratmor
F War
- Location
- Russia, Moscow
Our cops are considered corrupt as fuck, they were even being called something that means "junk" or "trashbag". There are huge problems with corruption in Russia, and we don't really like the police either, because in the 90th when the USSR collapsed some of them were tied to organized crime. Its obvious, there are fucked up people in the system. Nothing is perfect. But the point still stands, they can be corrupt all they want but they feel superior to those they detain, because they have a monopoly on violence, and we as citizens let them have it. There are people who use their position for their own personal gain, of course, but it usually financial crime, not murdering people of other skin color, race, whatever.
But still police in my country is actually kind of lenient to nationalists, they PROTECTED their recent public funeral of one of the known activists, so the visitors won't be able to carry concealed weapons on the graveyard. I saw it as a really good precaution against the visitors, but many saw it as protection of the neo-nazis. There are some sympathisers in the police, I'm sure, but that mainly depends on the region and it's diversity.
I'm from Caucasus, and the police is really corrupt here. My acquaintance was drunk as fuck while driving and just paid it off, I mean, how fucked up you have to be to let it fly? But I sort of understand them, big cities police get more funding and they have better salaries. Provinces aren't as lucky, even if the retirement plan is basic for the whole federation, their salaries are different from the megapolis salaries, so they tend to be more corrupt on basic level. Like, really small salaries. That's exactly why we have cameras in our cars. And now even police carries the cameras on them, so they would have their own proof in the court. It's quite a development from those horrible nineties.
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I found "figured" to be out of character. At first I wondered if maybe I should ask if it were the best term to use, but then I got to thinking about my perception of Addy's character and, well, now I am just curious about the wider questions of "what sort of terms is Addy likely to use" and "what sort of perceptions do people have of her vocabulary", and, well... Does anyone else have views on Addy's vocabulary?
- Location
- Somewhere.
I mean, "figured" is absolutely mathematically precise if you etymology long enough.
Ratmor
F War
- Location
- Russia, Moscow
If weapons are allowed, police would be like that, because they are human. If not - you would have less freedom but you won't get killed because someone is scared of being killed.