[video]

[smarterthandad]

[There is a blue-eyed child looking at you. She can't be more than three. She is, however, wearing a very grown-up expression of dissatisfaction. And some kind of superhero outfit with a big "6" on the chest.

Ordinarily, Val would be cagier about immediately going public in a strange place, but, well, she has A Problem. When she speaks, it's with fully adult syntax and no hint of a lisp or any other childish speech impediment.]

Hi. I'm Valeria Richards. Assuming no alternate timeline stuff--not a safe assumption, I know, but sometimes you gotta live dangerously--it looks like there are a few people out there who're friends of my parents. You've got a couple of hours to come get me before they [she turns the phone to show a pair of what are presumably social workers, looking simultaneously put-upon and patient] try to stick me in foster care and things get sketchy.

[Anyone who knows Val will know that's more for the prospective foster parents' protection than hers. No one wants her turning some unfortunate family's appliances into her robot escape army.]

...'Bye.

Comments

[xuffasch]

Why? They won't be, soon enough.

[smarterthandad]

Escalating's easy. Deescalating's hard.

[xuffasch]

It hardly matters if you're just going to leave, in the end.

[smarterthandad]

I have no way of know whether or not this will my only encounter. The solution for the iterative prisoner's dilemma is different than for a single trial, and this scenario has enough similarities to the continuous case to make me suspect the solution space is similar.

[English, Val.]

...I'm not burning any bridges until I know I don't need 'em.

[xuffasch]

Take my word for it: you don't.

[smarterthandad]

What's your word worth, Robin?

[This ID thing with the phones could prove to be a problem, but Val's already thinking of ways to circumvent it.]

[xuffasch]

Probably more than "Valeria Richards'."

[smarterthandad]

[Valeria lies like it's her job, so yeah.]

Well isn't it lucky I'm not the one making assertions, then?

[xuffasch]

That's probably where your luck runs out.

[smarterthandad]

You've got the wrong build to be Bentley, but he would totally say something that corny. Is this the part where you tell me I need to come with you if I want to live but don't offer any supporting evidence for the claim?

[She might be genre savvy.]

[xuffasch]

No.

_{( Flatly. Why would he want you to come with him?? )}

I was merely stating a fact. There's nothing lucky about ending up here.

[smarterthandad]

[That makes her laugh.]

I've been worse places.

[xuffasch]

How do you know? You've barely been here.

[smarterthandad]

I've been to the Negative Zone.

[Duh, Robin. Duh.]

[xuffasch]

And what would that be?

[smarterthandad]

The negative matter universe. [That her father keeps a portal to in his lab a couple floors away from her bedroom good job Reed.]

[xuffasch]

Tt. And you're so convinced nothing could be worse?

[smarterthandad]

No way. Hell's worse.

[She's looking at Damian like she thinks he's not very bright.]

[xuffasch]

And you've been there, too?

_{( Maybe that's where she's from. 8| )}

[smarterthandad]

[He's just jealous there's another kid here more unpleasant than he is.]

No, but my brother has. My uncles, too.

[Man, Unthinkable was a bad arc.]

[xuffasch]

_{( He considers this a moment. He doesn't really set much store in the afterlife, and conceptualizes Hell as just another place. He shrugs. )}

This isn't Hell. Or anything like it.

Places like that don't matter, when you can't really die.

[smarterthandad]

[Given how the F4 approach things, it more or less is.]

Yeah, okay. You plan on clarifying that, or should I just roll my eyes at you and get someone else to explain?

[xuffasch]

I meant exactly what I said, and if you were as smart as you act like you are you could figure that out.

If you die--no matter how, no matter what--that machine can bring you back as if nothing's happened. You just reappear, there, completely fine.

[smarterthandad]

[Insults directed at her intelligence have absolutely no effect on her, because she knows Val Is Smartest One There Is, so she entirely ignores Damian's first sentence.]

"Can" and "will" are different.

[Besides, she's used to the afterlife having a revolving door.]

[xuffasch]

How about "does?"

It's only in the rarest instances that the dead don't come back, and that might be because they aren't in this world at all, anymore.