[MINGLE] Scout's Honor

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: Hot Springs
WHEN: 21 Sept, after sunset
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Please warn in your subject line as needed
NOTES: Details found here

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It's been a strange, rough couple of months for our intrepid villagers — Bunkers, superpowers and clones, oh my! Perhaps the Observers are sympathetic to their plight, or maybe they just have a peculiar sense of humor. At any rate, they've set up a gathering space chalk full of summer camp goodness, no strings attached. Not that anyone knows that part.

Just before sunset, a cheery message pops up on wrist devices all across the settlement and beyond. The instructions seem simple enough, although one does have to wonder at what dubious gift awaits them all after everything is said and done.

Marshmallows are on the house, so grab yourself a stick, strap on a sash and get to roasting, villagers. Skinny dipping, sing-alongs and friendship bracelets optional.

Comments

[3ofswords]

"Huh," he says, like the guy just described his favorite place to grab lunch, instead of the plot of several old school comics. Possibly in relation to the joint he takes a thoughtful draw on, settling in on a log left as seating by the fire.

"My shit was hereditary," he offers, more than he's told anyone but Mark in the last two years. Duress was involved, but it wasn't unrelated. "If it's a clone thing, I don't see how that translates. Maybe the whole reason you don't have it is because they couldn't mutate you again."

Which--who is he to say, the capabilities of the powers that be? "At the very least, if they did it to anyone else--fuck, maybe even if they did it to you again, why would you get the same personality? There was a woman who got mine, started having visions, weird dreams. She was getting headaches, losing memories--I never had that problem. I got it back for a week, still no weird side effects. But, you know, I'll pass the info to Mark. We'll be prepared."

[notsoangry]

"I had that same thought if it's cloning. I've done a lot of tests to try and counter the mutation over the years, and it's very unlikely it could be duplicated the same way." Unlikely but not impossible. Bruce knew in science there were very few things that were fully impossible, at least in his experience. He is a walking talking impossibility most of the time. Kira's calm response is noted and comforting, although he knows most of the time hearing about the Hulk and witnessing him were two different things. "Then again, cloning me exactly but removing all of the radiation poisoning and mutation would be difficult too."

Bruce tilts his head thoughtfully. "It's not that surprising, to get the same powers but it to adjust to a body differently, there are too many factors as to why it works in one body this way. Originally our plan was to replicate an experiment that created a super soldier, and even in that original experiment, someone using similar technology and science went wrong chemically. The person in charge of it theorized that a good person would become better, and a bad person would become worse." There were science explanations of what he'd been saying, so it was a simplification at best. Did Steve turn out a success because he had a good heart?

"Mark?"

[3ofswords]

"Let me guess, the guy with good person genes was blond and blue eyed?" Kira takes a long draw and puffs a short cough, in lieu of rolling his eyes. He's doesn't have the degrees to make a call on what is and isn't genetic, but he knows where that kind of thinking gets people.

"Mark's in the house with me, just past the storehouse and the school. Winds up at the head of a lot of projects, will probably have more to say on shit than I do. Or just more applicable shit to say, I don't mind opening my mouth when I have no idea what I'm talking about."

[notsoangry]

"Oh, so you've met Steve." It seems like an easy leap to make, since Steve is here and has been long enough to possibly befriend other people. Blonde, blue eyed, and the super soldier they tried to replicate. "Much of the research that went into his project was lost with the scientist behind it. He purposely didn't write it all down for anyone to use on their own. Of course that led to people like us trying and failing to get it right." Science was always going to try to make bigger and better, and people in power were always going to try to use that for their own reasons.

Bruce sighs. "It was always a bad idea, working on the project. I didn't get into my field hoping to create super soldiers for the army. I wanted to help people." It was a sharp right turn, but at the time it made sense. It was with Betty, and her father was very persuasive, back when he would've done anything to impress him. "Curiosity doesn't just kill cats. It leads to super powered monsters." And murder bots. He really had to never create anything again.

"Oh! Maybe I'll come by some time, if that would be allowed?" Bruce is always uncertain of his welcome. He's not good at 'swinging by' and thinking he can. "I think most of us don't know what we're talking about here."

[3ofswords]

Kira rolls in his lips and lets his cheeks puff, a bit, a little smoke rolled and left in the exhale. "No offense big science guy, but it sounds like some bad turn of the century eugenics that we didn't really need the full notes on."

The fact that he'd been right, well, they have people from zombie outbreaks and genocidal purple aliens, so. Win some lose a lot of others.

"But I guess if you're not raring to recreate that experiment, yeah, sure. People come through all the time: Mark studies local plants and I give haircuts. And we grow the weed there."

[notsoangry]

Bruce is startled by the eugenics reference, but instead of denying it, he considers the point. It wasn't strictly the same, but it could have very easily turned that way. "Point. The Nazis actually stole the technology and planned on using it for exactly that reason." Among just generally using their soldiers to destroy everything in their path. For Bruce it's always the puzzle that draws him in, and he has a dangerous habit of not thinking through to the end of the consequences.

"No, not at all. I am officially out of that business." He didn't have the equipment to do it here. He did want to do some biochemical research on all of them there, but that was something to bring up another time. And in better wording than what made it sound like they'd be lab rats. The last thing Bruce wants is to make anyone else feel like a lab rat here. He glances to Kira curiously. "Is that what you did before? Give haircuts?'

[3ofswords]

Kira's more than happy to shift conversation away from super soldiers: every time they get one of these guys, science and superhero types--the place makes a little more sense. One day, one group of rats is going to solve the maze, and it's just going to be more people on the other side.

Of that much, he's always been sure.

"Not professionally, but I'm decent at it." It had been a favor to do for friends and family, something to make up for the rest of him. "It's more useful than reading people's cards, around here."

[notsoangry]

It hasn't escaped Bruce's notice that there's a high volume of formerly super powered people there. He has thoughts about that, but they branch off into about ten different directions. Some day they might actually get their answers, but until then.

"Cards, as in tarot cards?" He would guess poker if he hadn't said reading the cards. That's a specific wording. "Supernaturally or a natural talent for it?"