capeandcowl | 013 [ Video ]

Entry tags:

julian keller | hellion

013 [ Video ]

[ Good morning, City. This is your lucky day. Julian Keller's face is on your Network. These days that usually means that he's pissed about something, and today is no exception, but he's not here to talk about that. He's speaking with an easy drawl and acting like everything's rosy. Because it is, right? It's not like one of his best friends is dead or anything.

Those who know the place might recognize the hallway he's in as belonging to Jenny Quantum's Carrier. ]

So you know what I missed? The Doors on this thing. You never appreciate being able to teleport anywhere in the City until you can't do it anymore. That was a bitch. But I guess this means the Carrier's open for business again.

It's about freaking time. Half of my shit was still up here, including these. There was no chance in hell I was bringing them out the civilian exit. [ The crumpled remains of what used to be Julian's robotic gauntlets are floating in front of him, and they rise up in view of the camera now. They look more like balls of scrap metal than actual hands now. ]

Hey Jeffries, if you're watching this? This crap was Vulcanus' fault. You think you could fix 'em? It ain't like I need them anymore, but hey. I'm not gonna say no to an extra pair of hands floating around the place.

[ He can think of a lot of uses for those, okay. ]

Anyways, there's no reason to stay here. I'm back in my old apartment. If I ever get the bright idea to move up here again, someone please just fucking shoot me.

[ The message appears to end here, but shortly afterwards - when Julian has teleported back to the City - the following gets sent to Miss Martian's comm. ]

hey MM. ive been thinking about what you said
if you still want to get a group together im maybe up for that

everything here is done so. moving on is the way to go. let me know what you got in mimd.

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Yeah it was, it happened at the Masquerade, but when our powers started doing damage Jenny brought us all to the Carrier. [ There’s a little pause here, because Jenny…

She’d saved them. His powers could’ve hurt or killed someone totally by accident, and she’d made sure they didn’t. She did that for their whole team.

Now look what’s become of her. ]

Then she left, because her powers were as bad as ours. She sent herself to deep space, and got Bond and Klarion to bring the cure for us. I was here when the hands were totalled. The room she had us in got the same treatment. That’s what happened.

Sorry, I suppose I wasn't paying much attention to the outside world during that time. Too busy working on that cure...and I had some hand troubles of my own.

[He pauses, considering that name a minute.] You were close with her?

Edited 2013-03-02 03:56 (UTC)

You had your own problems. Everyone did.

[ He isn't holding any grudge about that. At least not towards other ImPorts; they're all on the same side, as far as he's concerned. No, his Venezuela-related grudge is aimed squarely at Vulcanus' head. He's putting the blame where it belongs.

At that last question, he lets out something that sounds like it wants to be a laugh, except that it doesn't quite have the energy. ]

Yeah. You could say that. She was only our team leader.

[He doesn't know quite where to go with that answer. He wants to ask Julian what he thinks of the whole thing, but it may be the wrong time, with the recent news. His response certainly tells him he should handle it delicately.]

I'm sorry to hear that. With how everything turned out.

It’s done now. Like I said, there isn’t anything left.

[ She’d chosen to leave. He’d tried to make her stay. He’d gone after her, he’d gone to Southwest Phoenicia, he’d tried to talk her round and nothing had worked. It should’ve been different, but she’d made her choice. No one had made it for her. ]

They don’t even know where she is. [ Where her body is. If there is one. ]

[Hank hadn't known her, there's nothing he can do for her. Maybe if he tried earlier, but it's too late for that. He does know Julian, though.]

And how are you doing, after all of it?

[ That's the question he doesn't know how to answer. How is he supposed to be doing? He's not good at that stuff. It always makes him feel like he's losing control. ]

Why should I care, right? She made her bed, she's lying in it.

If I'd stayed with her like Terry did I could've helped her. [ Maybe he made the wrong call. Maybe he should have stuck with her. Believed in her. Instead he'd told her she was wrong and he'd left her there. ]

But she was still your friend, and that's never easy to go through. No matter how you may have disagreed, there's always a helplessness in watching a friend go down a dark path, a guilt in being unable to keep them from it.

There are often only two places to direct those feelings, either towards them or against yourself. Neither is a particularly sound option.

[The first is obvious, resulting in discouragement, self-loathing, depression. The second makes you petty, vindictive, and bitter. Hank knows way more about this than he'd like to.]

[ Petty, vindictive, bitter. How many people would have used those words to describe Julian? People at home, for sure. A lot of people at home. There's a reason behind everything, behind every piece of anger and hatred. He's never once dealt with this kind of thing well. ]

She didn't see it that way. She thought she was doing everything right. She thought she was made for it, and who the hell am I to say she wasn't? She was fifteen and she took over a country, maybe she was made for it.

She thought she was making a difference that was more important than staying alive. She never got how...how stupid that is.

I suppose it may have been an ambition of posterity, leaving something behind when you're gone. We don't know how long any of us will be here, Julian, and I can understand the desire to have some lasting effect on the world.

Though I would hope what legacy most of us leave is more unambiguously positive.

It's not unambiguously negative, either. [ Not every report about Jenny's regime has been bad. There's things she's improved in Southwest Phoenicia.

But even Julian knows that people couldn't do what Jenny had done and expect to get away with it. That was why he'd been afraid she'd be killed. ]

She made people's lives better. That's what they'll remember.

Maybe. [Assuming that reporting is even objective, or if outside reporters were even allowed in. In a situation like this, neither can be taken for granted.] A new regime can often be terribly fickle to the one that came before.

Yeah, but I mean...that was why she went there. She wanted to make things good, not bad, she just went too far.

[ There’s a little pause, while he thinks about what that means. Is that always how it is? Do dictators come to power thinking they’ll do good, only for history to remember them as dicks? He’s never thought of it like that before. Stubbornly: ]

She was trying to help.

[There's a lot he could say about the roots of imperialism, some long lecture about the etiquette of aid and where it crosses the line. Instead, all he has is:]

I know. That's usually how it begins, but it rarely ends quite like that.

[ There's a little pause. It's brief, but during it he switches this feed to private. This is bothering him, a lot, and Hank's one of the few people he trusts enough to talk openly about it. ]

So what happens if she comes back? We don't even know if she will. No one could find her. But if she does, where does she go from there? Is the there a way she comes out of this without looking at the inside of a cell for the rest of the century?

[He gets a hint at what the fact that he's the one being asked could mean, but it all kind of blurs under the weight of just what that question entails. This has all been just too big for him.]

I don't really know, it's difficult to say. I can tell you it won't have gone away just because she's been overthrown.

It isn't really in our hands anymore. This would go all the way to the World Court.

[ He doesn't argue, or say Hank's wrong. If anything he just looks more serious. ]

If it did, what would they do? It isn't like it would do any good to kill her again. That already happened once.

For most people a death sentence is enough.

I don't know. They'd probably find some way to strip her of her power and put her away for as long as she remains here.

[He's already had someone ask him how to do the first, after all.]

[ A dead silence, just for a few moments.

And then, sharply: ]

Could they do that? Permanently?

I couldn't speak to permanence, but I do know that conditional methods already exist. Even the Sentry couldn't overcome the dampeners installed at NOHoPE.

[ Well, shit. The Sentry had beaten Jenny before. ]

How would that even be legal when she's already died?! One execution ought to be enough.

[So they do know for certain that she's dead. Curious.]

Because the purpose of an execution is sullied when the convicted will only return. It's to permanently remove an individual from the world when they've been deemed too dangerous to remain. [And not a sanction he particularly agrees with, either.] Assuming that punishment was even legal to begin with.

[ That depends on who you mean by they. It sure isn't common knowledge, but Hank isn't a person that Julian would see the need to hide it from.

He scoffs out a bitter laugh. ]

Like anyone cares how legal it was. Other people can get away with doing shit that's outside the law. It's just people like Jenny who can't, cause they don't have friends in the right places. Same old story.

[ He will never not believe that Bradbury going after Jenny hadn't been sanctioned by Mitch. It had to have been. Bradbury works for him, and they seem close besides that. Mitch had to have known what he was doing. ]

I'd like to think even the those in the highest places will eventually face justice, but sometimes it's in our own hands to bring karma into balance.

[One abuse of power doesn't justify another, after all. If they're going to strive to be better than their enemies, they have to see it all the way through.] It's only a matter of how.

Edited 2013-03-26 07:33 (UTC)

[ It’s in their own hands. Unsurprisingly, Julian likes that way of talking. ]

And the how is the important part, right? Especially when you’re talking about someone that people like, that they trust.

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