trans_9 | What dreams may come [Open, bendytimed to before GTFO plot]

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What dreams may come [Open, bendytimed to before GTFO plot]

In her sealed, silent, sensory-deprived meditation room, Roxie is sleeping. It's a special sleep: for all dreams are connected, she knows, and by spinning her mind out along the web of thought, she might step into others...

[Roxie is dream-hopping, getting a look at the subconsciousnesses of the other people on the ship. So, how it works - if you're interested, go ahead and post with a dream your character is having, and Roxie will slip into it, subtle at first but more obvious as she tries to satisfy her curiosity. Just her being around will make the dreamer more lucid and more likely to remember the whole thing when they wake up.

Also, feel free to ask any OOC questions in a thread here, or poke me on AIM at 'anagramarye'.]

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Kon shrugs.

"They did it while I was still in the tube. Wasn't like I had a say in anything they did. No one gets to choose if they're born, or how they're born."

The fetus still growing in the tube in front of them has now grown into a little boy with black hair, eyes closed, all curled up and sucking his thumb as he floats there. He's maybe 2 or 3 now, and it's starting to become very obvious who he is.

Roxie leans forward a little, looking at the tube. The chakra points glow softly around/through the clothes she wears as she moves.

"Some people might, but not many people get the chance to make themselves."

"I've still had too many choices made for me though."

The boy in the tube is almost teenager now, smaller and skinnier than Kon is, a bit younger, but closer to his current age.

A man is standing there at the tube, in a lab coat. He has grey at his temples. Director Westfield. "You're going to be the next Superman, son! Our Superman!"

Then another scientist, Carl Packard, frowning at a readout. "The code words just aren't taking. He's resisting. If we have the change the entire structure of his unconscious to make the control words stick, then do it. He can't be allowed to have an individual mind--we need to be able to control him."

"But you must have made some of your own," Roxie suggests. It seems like an appropriate juncture. "If you hadn't, you'd just be..." She gestures over at both of the statues.

"Yeah, I've made a lot of my own choices."

It flashes to Kon wearing red and blue spandex, and a red cape like he was earlier, an S on his chest. A red-haired man is standing there--much like the bald statue, minus the bald. The same man, though, even though at the time he was pretending to be his own son.

"He's perfect," says the man. "It's been over sixteen days and its skin hasn't decayed into chalk."

A technician off to the side says: "That's because the human DNA is stabilizing the cellular structure. You're a genius, Mr. Luthor."

"Hm." The man called Mr. Luthor just stands there, staring, transfixed.

The technician sounds downright ecstatic that it's worked, that Kon hasn't degraded like all the others. It took Luthor's sneaky intervention to make it so. "He's special, isn't he?"

Luthor's voice is a low rumble of pride, pride for what he's accomplished himself in his creation, for the fact that his creation carries his own DNA, pride for the things he's very sure his son will accomplish, even if they're things that most wouldn't be proud of. "He's my boy."

"It's awake, Mr. Luthor." And the boy in the tube is, twitching and thrashing slightly, but unable to stop what's being done to his mind.

"And Dr. Westfield should be held up at the Lexcorp Medical Seminar for the rest of the day," Luthor intones smugly.

Another technician says: "Programming should be complete within the hour. Project: Superman, aka, Project: Luthor, is sixty minutes away from being successful."

"This project needs a name," Luthor says, still looking up at his "son." His creation. "...Lionel. Yes. Lionel Luthor. Because as my father always said in his drunken stupor, and smug arrogance--Vincere aut mori." He taps once on the glass, and looks immensely satisfied. "Conquer or die."

The scene around them changes, and rather than just watching it, now they're living it. Kon's there, still plastic, but his companion apparently doesn't see it. He's in the T-shirt and jeans getup, standing there on a rooftop with Robin.

"Now that Luthor's dead, you going to tell them?"

"I don't know. Maybe. And it's not your problem to worry about," Kon insists.

"I'm just saying..."

"Not a word. Not a syllable."

The scene changes again, to Kon in his room, just about ready to tell the Titans about where the half of his DNA comes from, finally ready to let someone help him deal with it--when his computer is hacked, and that same rumbling voice from before plays over it: "Vincere aut mori."

He goes rigid and walks out, and the rest--the rest is all stuff he'd rather not remember. His eyes blazing red, nearly tearing the Titans apart, hurting Cassie (he hurt her, he hurt her, he hurt her), breaking Tim's arm with a sickening crack.

Screaming from the inside of his own head, all because he was too cowardly to tell everyone what he was. He could've been checked out at S.T.A.R Labs, before Luthor took control.

The scenes flash faster and faster and faster, from different points in his life.

A red-haired woman caving a man's head in as Superboy watches, shocked, utterly horrified. ("You--! He's! ...You really did kill that cop, didn't you!?")

"TAAAAANAAAAAAA!" A young woman, falling, her head smoking as an explosive goes off at her neck

He and a beautiful black-haired girl, dressed up in a bat costume are chained up in a room filling with water, because he rushed off to play hero...

Impulse, stupid hysterical Impulse, one his scouts getting fried on Apokolips. Watching his best friend die because he had to fight with Robin to be the leader, he had to be the big man...

Asking Guardian to take down Shrapnel so he could rest, rather than taking care of it himself. "Go Guardian! Get busy~ Kickin' metal booty~" And coming back to base after the easy mission and being pointed in the direction of Guardian's helmet. Bloody. Gouged open...

And then after that blistering trip of sight and sound and emotion--and failure, so many mistakes--they're back where they were, between the two statues, as Kon sits there, still plastic, drawing up his legs.

"Lots of bad choices."

He looks up at the Luthor statue. "The one thing I wonder all the time is...is it evil if you just screw up too much? If people get hurt?"

"Stupid, maybe. But I don't deal in good and evil." Her voice trails off as she says that. It's true, isn't it? She frames it as good and evil, sometimes, when she deals with others, but...

"People aren't 'good' or 'evil'. They're people. There is no absolute. If there's something there, it's because you've put it there."

She thinks, glancing over at Kon. "When you do something, do you judge it as you're doing it? Or do you do it for some other reason?"

Kon thinks about it.

"I do a lot of stuff because I want to be good. Sometimes I do it for stupid reasons like pride. Because, I guess I try too hard."

He frowns, still looking at the ground, and then looks up at her.

"But most stuff I just do because it's right. Protecting people when you're capable of helping them is right."

As he says that, the plastic fades a little into flesh.

"If it was me, I wouldn't worry about it, but I'm not you," Roxie says, looking over at Kon and then back at the two statues. "I'd think about what I want to do in the world, not the kind of person I want to be. The latter comes out of the former, anyway."

"...That's kinda crazy-good advice from someone your age."

He sees you now, Roxie, but he's still caught up in the dream. He thinks he's dreaming her without knowing he's dreaming.

Roxie tilts the baseball cap back, but she keeps the sunglasses on. She doesn't feel quite comfortable without something to frame her eyes, even in the dreamlands.

"I do my job. It's my duty. If that makes me a bad or good person as somebody else sees it, I don't really care."

"I'm sorry, by the way," he says, after a moment of silence.

"Sorry for what?"

"Treating you like a little kid. I know how annoying that can be, when you've seen a lot of crazy stuff, and fought a lot, and don't feel like a kid inside, after all you've done."

He drops his chin on his knees.

"All you kids remind me of...me, I guess. Yuri's the only one of you that's careful. The rest of you aren't afraid of anything."

He tears out some grass and starts playing with it in his hands.

"I just...I don't want to see any of you have to learn stuff the hard way. Like I did."

It's then that he admits something he'd never admit in the waking world (because he's invulnerable. He's Superboy. And invulnerable people don't feel pain, inside or out. They have to be stone. Strong).

"It hurts."

And he doesn't want to see any of them get hurt.

"I can't be afraid of anything."

Roxie lets out what borders on a soft sigh, and leans back a little. "I'm part of a promise, to do my duty to my god. If I don't give it everything I have, then I'm breaking that promise, and I don't want to do that."

She almost, not quite, smiles. "What I do hurts, every day. But it's what I have to do if I want to live up to myself."

"Being used to it doesn't mean I want you to, though."

He doesn't like kids getting hurt.

He doesn't like anyone getting hurt.

"But I want to." Her face shifts subtly. "No. I don't want to, but I have to. And I don't want to give up what I do."

"I'm not talking about stopping you from doing what you have to," Kon said softly. "No one could've stopped me from being a superhero. Even when it got bad. I'm just talking about wanting. Haven't you ever wanted something good for someone even if you couldn't make it possible? Haven't you ever wanted to at least try anyway? That's what I'm talking about. I kinda wanna keep you munchkins safe. Even if you don't need it--and I know you especially don't need it. Just because I wanna try. Just because...I want the 'I have to' part to fall on me if there's ever any times it can fall on me instead."

"...Yeah," Roxie says, and there's something unfamiliar in her face. Almost--gratitude, hints of it around the edges even while her casual stoicism keeps it from showing more obviously.

But then her face flattens out again. "But it's not something you can really help with. The things I fight aren't safe for other people to even be around. They're... communicable."

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What dreams may come [Open, bendytimed to before GTFO plot]

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