usedacrobatics | Dick Grayson 002 Ⓡ video

[The Pokegear snaps on, and Dick, in a nice waiter's shirt, slumps down against a wall and sighs.]

So this is, uh, ridiculously embarrassing.

[His hair's slicked back, too, and he's loosening a little bow tie with his other hand. Tugging at it with a little more force than strictly necessary.]

Exactly, um. Does anyone have any tips for how to... like, not go broke? How do people keep track of money? How do you not run out?

I plead lack of maturity, lack of understanding of the value of a... whatever the unit of currency is here, I don't even know.

And yeah, okay, if you all want a good laugh at my expense, my foster father is a billionaire, both through inheritance and being the CEO of a worldwide corporation. Go ahead, I've heard all the rich kid jokes and I don't really care, I'd just be grateful, in return, for a little--

[There's a voice yelling in the distance, something about not being paid to take breaks; Dick jumps up and shuts off the feed immediately. He does have a work ethic, okay, he was a circus performer until he was nine, but that money was all put in the bank.]

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Why, thank you. I think it's been advancing at a good pace, but I guess that would depend on the total number of species out there.

There's more than I remember from the games at home.

[Which he's behind in, admittedly, because he only ever played his cousin's games.]

So it sounds like it'll be time-consuming, too, if they just keep discovering more. I mean, they discover new species pretty regularly even in the real world, in the rainforests and the oceans and outer space... though they usually visit us first.

How unfair. The last time we got visited by people from outer space, they were normal humans.

[Normal humans with a hatred for Earthers and better weapons, but still.]

Ha. We have a Kryptonian and a Martian who joined an association of Earth's superheroes called the Justice League. They fly, shoot lasers out of their eyes, shapeshift, walk through walls, all kinds of stuff, and they do it to save the world.

[Granted, there's also the Thanagarians, but the public isn't entirely aware they're aliens...]

Our only Martians are the descendants of Earth colonists. No flight or eye lasers to be found there, I'm sorry to say.

[Except not, because their X-Rounders and superior technology are bad enough as it is.]

You colonized Mars?

What year?

Around -35 A.G. Almost two hundred years ago, though I'm sure they won't be celebrating that particular anniversary.

So it went badly. Did you say there were no native Martians? Or did something happen to them?

No natives at all. Considering the Mars Ray disease, it's not that surprising.

You're saying they were wiped out? Or the environment was too hostile?

Edited 2013-07-07 08:00 (UTC)

Too hostile. By itself the disease ended up wiping out a fifth of the colonists in less than twenty years.

Shades of the Black Plague.

But was the disease really of Martian origin? Whether viral or bacterial, a Martian pathogen's reaction to human biology should be more "how does that work?" and less "total annihilation."

I mean, I read "The War of the Worlds," but... fiction. Old fiction, even to me.

That's because it's not a pathogen. They miscalculated the strength of the magnetic storms there, and protected the colonies inadequately. It had... side-effects.

You mean, like fictional radioactive side effects, or...?

The affected people slowly weaken over months or years, with no chance of improvement. Towards the end they can't even get out of bed. It can start at any time, at any age, and no one who lives there is safe from it.

And moving the whole population back is a logistics nightmare.

If it's not a pathogen, it's not contagious, right? Does removing yourself from exposure help?

I'm not sure. I know that using cold sleep slows down the progression of the disease, but that doesn't help people much when they need to be woken up again. It's possible that moving affected people would have the same effect.

Is it too recent for it to be tested? [It seems like an obvious solution to him, so he's assuming there's a reason it hasn't been tested with at least one person.]

That's got to be a killjoy to the pioneering spirit.

...They might have tested it, but I wouldn't know. The only people wholeave the Mars Sphere these days are part of the army, and they're usually too busy shooting at Earthers to share scientific discoveries.

[Which also doesn't help the pioneering spirit.]

So your basic endless conflict while everything gets worse for everyone. I guess the war is priority one.

It's been priority number one for over sixty years. Most of us don't even know how a peaceful world would work.

Dick Grayson 002 Ⓡ video

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