Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Dr. Vahzilok     The light level in Atlas Park is dimming as the sun sets, but the glow of the War Walls and electric lights in various buildings turning on, one by one, and then in groups, lends illumination. Despite being one of the safest of the zones in Paragon City, there's still trouble to watch out for. More of it than ever, it seems like. But Cory Conley, aka Cortex, is seated on the edge of a roof top, just watching the lights, rather than the streets below and what might be happening on them.

    There's a kind of faint smile on his face. An almost child-like look to him, as he watches spotlights turn on and begin to sweep back and forth across the night sky. The burning glow of neon signs, such as down by that pawn shop, or that Image Inc. outlet. Individuals and families turning on their lights in their apartment buildings as they prepare dinner, or switch on their televisions to hear what has been going on lately. What heroes have saved whom and which villains have gotten away with what.

    It takes him back. But when he recalls all the towers that aren't there anymore... The gleaming, futuristic buildings that have been replaced with far inferior construction projects... And realizing that what used to look so WRONG to him in comparison to what he remembered is now easier to remember than the 'real' Paragon City of his childhood... Well, it's an undesirable metaphor for his own mental state. Disordered, knowing it isn't how it should be, that there is something wrong, but no longer being able to properly recall how it should be. There isn't enough of the old Cory left to identify the problem.

    Eventually, he'll probably be unable to remember why he thought there was a problem at all. That's life though, isn't it? No one is who they were the day before. This just feels... Different somehow. Like he's not just changing, but actually losing himself. All that matters to him now... Is the dream he has, that was strengthened by Demetrios's father. That even a nobody can become a hero.

    That's becoming central to his entire life now... And as he winds everything about himself around this central pillar of 'being a hero', tighter and tighter, he's risking something snapping under the tension. It may already have begun, infact.

    He kicks his feet back and forth, first one, and then the other, as they dangle over the edge of the roof. Cortex's hands rest in his lap. He takes in a breath, and lets it out as he looks up at the Spirit of Freedom flying by high overhead.

    What's 'being a hero' really mean anyway?
Revan After the destruction wrought by the first invasion by the alien Rikti, Paragon City was still rebuilding. There were still the stark differences between the city's zones, between the affluent and less-affluent places, though rebuilding projects sprouted up frequently in both.

     In a way, it reminded Lowri Revan-Shan of Taris.

     Atlas Park in particular reminded her of the Upper City, though fortunately the lack of a Lower City where aliens and the impoverished were largely confined to and Undercity where the undesirables were basically imprisoned made Paragon City far preferable. True, there was the occasional violence of superpowered gangs...but there were all manner of heroes to put an end to their bad behaviour. Her own galaxy could stand a few places like it.

     That did raise the question of who would keep the peace, she mused as the Guardian passed by the business fronts. It was telling that few gave her a passing glance, dressed as she was in her customary Jedi robe, lightsabers affixed to the belt. The people were well-used to heroes patrolling the area at all hours, and Lowri's attire notably lacked the usual flash one would expect of a superhero. Of course, as an offworlder she wasn't /technically/ one, but for all intents and purposes, the Jedi Knight was considered one.

     Not that she felt particularly heroic many times, she silently admitted, her mismatched eyes flicking up to the War Walls looming beyond. Her past was shrouded in both mystery and darkness, something she could only remember in brief flashes...and what she had seen had not been pleasant. Now, she simply did what she considered right, with the added responsibility of keeping to the Light as much as possible. Not that she was particularly good with /that/, either; Revan had submitted to a test some time ago in an abandoned temple and admitted that, in reality, she was Grey. Being pure Light would have seen her meditating in some temple no matter what happened in the multiverse. That was something she had never been good at.

     Out of the corner of her eye, the pale-haired Jedi noticed a shadow up on the roof above her. Her martial instincts would have otherwise warned her to take a defensive stance, but there were no warnings through the Force that the figure intended anything aggressive. Likely a hero out on patrol, she mused until she got a better look. And then recognised who the shadow belonged to.

     A faint smile crossed her face as she raised her hand in greeting up at the young hero, though she took care not to call out.
Dr. Vahzilok     Cortex seems to sense a presence before he notices the waving, though that's not something that happens with everyone. Unlike with the Force, he doesn't detect all presences. Only those with whom he is familiar. When he sees Revan, his expressions brightens a bit. "Hey," he calls out, as Revan declined to. "Out on patrol? Or were you looking for me?" He should be patrolling himself, but he's just... Not.

    And someone to just talk to, and get some things off his mind, sounds very appealing. Doubly so if Revan is the one he's talking to.

    "We're less likely to block traffic if you come up here, though I could come down there if you like."
Revan Revan had reflected on the strange yet beneficial phenomenon of the Force seeming to follow her -- as well as other Force-sensitives -- into the multiverse. As far as they've been able to discern, it only seemed to natively exist in the various versions of her native galaxy; not even Elites were able to draw upon its power and guidance unless they had come from one of these galaxies prior to Unification. Yet, those who came from one such galaxy found that they retained their powers and preternatural senses outside of it. It had been a relief to discover; being without her Force senses would have been no different from being blinded. While Lowri could function without such senses -- having done so at one point -- it made things more difficult than they otherwise would have been, relying on its subtle guidance to find her way through a universe which had become infinitely larger overnight.

     The Jedi Knight shook her head. "No, I'm not patrolling....well, not officially. I had the feeling I was supposed to be here for some reason."

     Or, as a Jedi Master who didn't mind confusing others might say, 'The Force led me here." Revan had learned even before Unification that non-sensitives tended to tune out Jedi-speak when it wasn't explained clearly.

     "What about you?" she asked out loud with a smile as she easily and agilely drew on the Force to leap up to the rooftop. Even then, the civilians didn't so much as bat an eye; heroes with 'Super Jump' abilities weren't exactly uncommon....even if they weren't drawing on the Force to do so.

     "Fortunately, heights don't bother me," she quipped.
Dr. Vahzilok     They may be using some kind of mystical or metaphysical 'force' to perform their leaps, but highly doubtful the same thing that Revan does. Gravity manipulation, 'Chi control', psychic power like Cortex uses, magic spells... Or simply really strong legs. The possibilities are nearless endless for how it's accomplished. So while he may be mildly surprised that Revan can leap up there, it isn't as big of a shock as it could be, regardless of how it's done.

    He answers the question after several moments of thought (and after Revan joins him). "Trying to find clarity among familiar surroundings. Sadly, the city isn't as familiar as it used to be. If that makes sense."
Revan The Guardian perched on the ledge, folding her long legs up beneath her. At only a few inches under 6', she tended to tower over a lot of people...though less-so in a city filled with wall-to-wall superheroes.

     "More than you might think," Lowri replied. "It's hardly uncommon for Jedi who become -- I suppose you could say world-weary -- to return to the Academy on Dantooine to meditate. Without getting into a long story, most of us who are found to be Force-sensitive are taken at a young age to be trained at the Academy, so for many years that becomes all we know. Add in the fact that Dantooine is an isolated farming world, there aren't that many distractions. Sometimes they remain there to teach new students or oversee research, but others go back out into the galaxy to continue the fight against the Dark Side."

     Lowri appeared to study one of the newer buildings, though in truth she was mulling over his words and comparing them to what she had seen not long ago. Cortex had matured, but there was something else...something she was quite familiar with, and those changes weren't necessarily good ones. "Change /is/ part of the natural order," she admitted. "It's hard not to be swept up by its current."

     Mismatched eyes flicker to the hero momentarily. She had enough insight to understand that he likely wasn't talking exclusively about the city. "But there are some things which remain unchanged, regardless. There's a character to places and people which remain no matter what happens. New buildings rise...sometimes people forget their past and something else replaces what they were before only to find that nothing has really changed."
Dr. Vahzilok     Cortex seems to be thinking about what Revan is saying. The toussled blonde hair sticking out of the top of his mask moving slightly in the night air as he squints up at the sky line. He isn't looking at her, but he's paying attention. Trying to unravel his own thoughts and feelings, and match them up with what's being said. But in addition to all the turbulence within, there's... Something else. Some feeling he's keeping under lock and key. That part of himself, at least, he knows. And he knows it's better not to let it out.

    "So how do you know which parts were always there, and which parts came after? And what if I don't like the parts that remain? Like... I want to believe that I was always meant to be a hero. That there's just something within me that wants to help others, and to save them when they're in trouble. But what if that's not actually inherently part of who I am, and that's what gets changed?" he shrugs helplessly, his gaze drifting down to the street. "What is a hero? I know you probably don't see things in terms of 'heroes and villains' like we do here... Where you're from... I gather it's a bit different."

    A Hellion and a buddy of his are watching from across the street, in an alley way, as an old lady approaches, toddling along with her purse. That's where Cortex's gaze rests now. Upon the 'villains'.
Revan That there are things about himself that Cortex isn't sharing is clear enough. But even if he wouldn't be able to sense peeking into his psyche, Lowri had determined long ago that she would no longer do so...not even to enemies. Such things were well within her abilities, but they were a quick trip down the Dark Side. While there might be semantics involved when it came to enemies, she had committed herself to not taking such chances. Apparently, Darth Revan had done such things quite frequently.

     "Short of a mind wipe? Well, it's a little more difficult, but not impossible. Meditation is the most common way where I'm from, but I think even simple self-reflection will do. Sometimes it involves some pretty hard questions, but you have to look at your answers honestly. A lot of times, we might just be over-thinking a lot of things."

     The Guardian shifted, drawing one knee up to her chest and resting her forearm on her knee. "You're right...we don't have quite the same definition of 'heroes' and 'villains' where I'm from. You don't have to be a Jedi Knight to be a hero...it typically involves saving people or defending the Republic. Villains aren't something we recognise, but most of us can recognise evil when we see it."

     She frowned thoughtfully for a moment before continuing. "There are the Sith, which I suppose you could call them something of a dark mirror of the Jedi. Not all of them are necessarily aligned with what we call the Dark Side, but that seems to be a cornerstone of their philosophy. But they're not 'villains' as you would know them...most of them are what we would call evil, but it's more complicated than that."

     Her shoulders lifted slightly in a shrug, keeping watch over the Hellions below, though her eyes flick back to the young hero. "The big danger in our line of work -- both heroes and Jedi -- is losing sight of what our task truly is. We try to become vigilant in our defence of the powerless that we take the fight to the enemy, those who would harm those we're protecting. We think that if we can just stop them /before/ they attack anyone, we'll have prevented evil before evil even has a chance to act."

     She lets her otherwise cheerful demeanour drop, and the weariness, sorrow, and pain of what she had been through during her fight against her former friend-turned-apprentice is finally revealed. "It's a heroic way of thinking, but that's the problem right there. Too long, and we start forgetting what it is we were fighting /for/ in the first place."
Dr. Vahzilok     "So they could be on the other side, affiliated with this 'Dark Side' even, and even be considered 'evil'... But they still might not be 'villains'. That does sound pretty complicated. Hopefully we don't seem too backwards here when you're used to such complexity." The Bloodbrothers step out of the alley way, and accosted the old woman who lets out a yelp of surprise as she is surrounded on either side. One of the bandana-masked men starts trying to struggle with her for her purse.

    Cortex remains where he is. Making no motion to rescue her. "You've fought with your own darkness," he says. "I can tell it hasn't been easy for you, getting to where you are now. My problems may seem petty by comparison. I have so much to be glad for. My best friend is... Alive. I have a job. I get to help people just about every day. I won that World Martial Arts Tournament and helped a lot of people via Dr. Vasilikos's charity. I have powers that a completely normal person might never know. I can fly through the air whenever I want. Do you know how many people literally dream about being able to do that? What right do I have to complain? Why am I wasting time worrying about myself when I could be spending it helping others? What does that say about me?"

    The old woman is struggling still, being harrassed while one of the Hellions stands on guard, watching for heroes or police. And Cortex does nothing. He knows the desire to help must be there. Probably for both of them. Even if the struggle to stop evil may be endless, allowing it to continue unchecked is worse than having to fight against it eternally. He should be down there RIGHT NOW. Two Hellions? Either one of them could take them down easily. Non-lethally, even. The old woman would be on her way before she has a heart attack, with whatever she owns safe and sound.

    Instead, he turns to face Revan finally, the smile on his face faked, his eyes wide and scared. "Stay with me?"

    The lady below continues yelling for help as fellow citizens run in fear. Even coming too close causes one of the Bloodbrothers to draw a gun and start brandishing it.
Revan "Nah," Revan replied with a smile tinged with a sardonic edge. "Even if things might /look/ simple here, they're really not. Nothing is when the emotions of sentient beings enter the picture. That's probably why the first part of the Jedi Code goes, 'There is no emotion, there is peace'."

     The pale-haired Guardian chuckled softly. "Of course, you've seen that I don't really follow that part /exactly/ the way I'm supposed to. I try to stay as calm as I can, but I don't try to pretend I don't feel anything. I just don't let it cloud my judgement. Not any more, anyway."

     With a slight shake of her head, she tried to allay his doubts. "We all have our demons to fight...none of them are really worse than any others in the grand scheme of things. They're all obstacles in our individual journeys...mine is just a little farther along considering what all I've been through."

     What the Jedi does might surprise him; it would certainly surprise old Jedi Masters. The only ones who might not have been were the friends she had made on her quest to stop Malak and a certain Imperial-turned-Rebel. The one-time Dark Lord reached up and lightly ruffled the hero's already-tousled blond locks. "Of course. I'd be a failure as a friend if I didn't. Jedi eschew attachments, but that's one place I vehemently disagree with. I wouldn't have gotten very far without the support of my friends. The least I can do is stand by my new ones. Especially when they're struggling."

     Friend. Not Jedi, not elder, not fellow hero.

     It's only when the thugs act that the Jedi does. Reaching out her hand, she lifted a nearby barrel through the Force and attempted to hit the purse-snatcher with the makeshift projectile. However, she didn't immediately attack the others, her mismatched eyes flicking to the psychic hero. "What do you want to do, right now?"
Dr. Vahzilok     Revan acts first. She doesn't hesitate like Cortex. She doesn't feel the fear and uncertainty... Or maybe she does, but he can't tell, too blinded by his own terror. And he doesn't even know anymore exactly what he's afraid of. He's felt it skittering around in his head since his got opened up by that giant flaming tiki monster. Maybe it was a bit before that or a bit after? He doesn't recall anymore. All he knows is there's this deep fear, and instability growing within him, and no matter what he tries to do to come to peace with it, it keeps clawing away bits of himself.

    After what Cortex saw at Vasilikos Laboratories... He doesn't know what's right or wrong anymore. Good or evil. How can he be a hero when he doesn't know what he's supposed to do? Who he's supposed to fight? Who REALLY deserves his protection? Can anyone take away his fear? He thought maybe Revan could.

    But as the Bloodbrother is nailed by a barrel and hurled into a wall, and his companion lets go of the purse shoves the old woman down on the ground while reaching for his own gun, the choice of whether to act or do nothing is taken from him. He reaches out reflexively, the moment he sees the weapon being drawn and aimed at Revan, wrenches it from the man's grasp with his mind. Then he proceeds to have it smack the Hellion in the face repeatedly, driving him back with his own firearm, and answers Revan's question.

    'What do you want to do, right now?'

    Right now? The answer he would have given if she'd asked him BEFORE using her powers the way they should be used would have been 'I don't want to be afraid anymore.' The answer he gives the moment the life of someone he cares about is threated? The moment he sees someone's grandmother sprawled on the ground, possibly injured?

    He stands up on the edge of the roof and answers, "I want to be a hero."

    Then he dives down through the air, as his target finally swats the gun away and draws a knife, and the first one pulls out a baseball bat after he manages to get to his feet without tripping over loose barrels.
Revan Lowri can sense the fear roiling off him as the Force carries those currents of strong emotions. It would have been enough to make the usual kind of Jedi uneasy at best, given that much of their near-lifelong training involved suppressing or avoiding such emotions. The Dark Lord she had once been had even manipulated this weakness, apparently; HK-47 had told her of her own sardonic amusement over the fact that, with their strong emotions, only a human being was capable of killing a Jedi. Yet, she refused to believe that, even now, those emotions led to the Dark Side. They were, after all, what made human beings -- not to mention countless other sentients -- what they were. People might was well be droids if they stop feeling.

     Or not even droids, she reflected. Even droids had feelings, programmed or otherwise.

     "At the risk of sounding like the kind of stick-in-the-mud Master I hoped I'd never become, I can sense your fear. Here's where I depart from the usual Jedi line, though; I don't believe that fear itself leads to the Dark Side. It's a natural response to danger, a self-preservation strategy of the most basic sort. Without it, our ancestors would have been so reckless that they would have died before starting families."

     Even as she talked, Revan drew her lightsabers and incinerated whatever bullets came her way. "Where fear becomes a problem is when you allow it to rule you, to blind your more logical side and paralyse you to the point where you can't even act. True courage is not a lack of fear, but rather, moving forward in spite of it."

     After the young hero moved, the Guardian followed suit, though she allowed him to finish the clean-up. It was clear that he needed this. After all was said and done, she continued. "I think the point when you stop being afraid is when you should be concerned," she added. "I don't think there are any heroes who stop being afraid. I've certainly had my share of good scares, both before my galaxy Unified and after. But if we didn't do what we do, who would protect those who can't protect themselves? I think that, more than anything else, is what makes a hero."