Video, after Babadon't

[wherenoonegoes]

Appearing onscreen is a tall, gangly man who already looks fed up with this entire situation. He's not happy, and for that matter neither is the dragon behind him.]

Hi. Figured this is as good a place to introduce myself as any. I'm Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, Chief of Berk. The dragon behind me is my best friend, Toothless.

Just to get it out of the way, yes, I have heard every possible joke you could make about that. None of them are funny.

Normally this would be the part where I'd say I'm happy to meet all of you, but my wife gave birth to our daughter two days ago. So while I can certainly think of worse possible times for all this, this one is still pretty high up there.

[LOCKED]

If there are any Legionnaires here, however? Disregard that. I [Toothless nudges Hiccup] We actually are happy to see you.

Comments

Locked to Hiccup

[googledox]

[Brainy is actually smiling.]

You must be from slightly in our future. I haven't heard about a wedding registry or a call for baby gifts. Congratulations are in order for both, I should think.

Please try not to cause a paradox, if you don't mind. We'll have to figure out the exact timeline cut off when it comes to discussing events.

[He's not too worried about Hiccup being able to show discretion, though.]

The timing is certainly unfortunate and I'd much prefer other Legionnaires be safely at home rather than stuck in these circumstances, but I can't say I'm not glad to see another familiar face. It's just Robbie and I so far.

Which, by the way, means none of the Freelancers recognize us, nor does Tucker. Dimensional alternates.

Re: Locked to Hiccup

[wherenoonegoes]

Huh. Not sure what that does to my whole Time Trapper theory.

How much does Jorgmund know about the Legion, anyways? I kind of threw saving the multiverse in the interviewer's face, which I feel was entirely warranted after they kept shocking both me and Toothless-

[Toothless nods in agreement. If he could've gotten away with setting that guy on fire, he absolutely would have.]

-but I didn't mention you guys.

Re: Locked to Hiccup

[googledox]

Very little. They may put two and two together from the flight rings - or at least the replicas they made. They're definitely not made of Valorium.

But for now we can perhaps play off your comment as bluster and pretend we're not that effectual.

[He grimaces slightly.]

They do, however, have at least a small sense of my own capabilities. When I first arrived, I didn't see Robbie was here and thought I was the lone Legionnaire. So I triggered an explosion and a fire that made them evacuate the labs, rewired the door panel to let me in, and tried to use the technology there to disable the internal shock collars.

Unfortunately, we're in the stupid ages compared to the 31st century and I would've had to invent entire technologies from scratch, which I couldn't do in the time I had.

So it didn't quite work out as I'd hoped.

I've been banned from the labs ever since.

Re: Locked to Hiccup

[wherenoonegoes]

Sounds like keeping my metallokinesis under wraps was a good idea, then.

[He'd been waiting for a better lay of the land to bring that trick out. Especially since something felt the slightest bit off about it.]

Of course, keeping me away from scrap metal is a lot harder than keeping someone out of a room, but it's still probably for the best they don't know about it.

[googledox]

[Brainy perks up at that, his expression brightening even more.]

They let you loose in a rig made mostly of metal with no knowledge of the fact you can manipulate metal.

[He sounds very proud of him for his discretion.]

Oh, well done.

[wherenoonegoes]

I have to admit, I'm pretty pleased with myself too.

[It hadn't really been that hard, though. Despite his tendency for drama, Hiccup was pretty surreptitious with his powers back home. Obvious usage would have invited comparisons that he really didn't want to deal with.]

Although don't count on me doing anything too crazy with them, though.

I mean, you can still count on me doing something crazy other ways. My powers feel weaker, though. Best guess without actually testing it? About as much as I can physically lift.

Which I can still do a lot with. Just, y'know, don't expect me to be tossing the Silver Surfer around again any time soon.

[googledox]

My own powers have shifted to a new power set, which is irritating.

Now I understand what some of the others went through, the displacees that had their powers changed.

My forcefields are gone. I now have a form of empathy, both receptive and projective, and a strange ability to animate objects but only if they have a humanoid shape. Haven't the faintest clue why it's those particular things.

[wherenoonegoes]

[Hiccup paces a bit, thinking it over. It's not a pressing question, but it is an interesting one.

He doesn't really have any insights about the empathy powers, but the object animation does make a little bit of sense when looked at from the right angle.]

The Roboticans. Obviously it's not exactly the same thing since you're not actually bringing anything to life this time. It would definitely look that way from an outside perspective, though.

[googledox]

[Brainy opens his mouth slightly in dawning comprehension.]

Perhaps you're right. The Stuff reacts to thought and when it does alter us it likely is drawing from something in our personal history.

[He explains.]

The empathic ability make sense in a way that you displacees likely wouldn't understand because of when you met me. When I was younger and far more damaged I had great difficulty empathizing with others. My sense of empathy was later artificially broadened by contact with an unquantifiable spatial anomaly.

It didn't introduce anything that was completely impossible for me, but I later realized it stripped my psychological defense mechanisms away by force. Later, I had to...reassemble them to a certain degree, but I was able to eventually allow such a change to happen more naturally.

I assumed the empathic power was echoing that.