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schizoauthoressTitle: Twenty-First Century Assimilation Club
Author: D.L.SchizoAuthoress
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: the canon playground I'm using today is Justice League Unlimited
Warnings: mild language, somewhat intolerant attitudes from being raised in older cultures
Prompt/Fill: any, any, I don't know where I'm going but I'm getting there fast
Word Count: 1818
Summary: Getting used to a new time period isn't easy.
Word of the Day: rutilant, adjective: Glowing or glittering with ruddy or golden light.
Note: I take all the background information I can from the Golden Age comics. Mostly because I can't resist the idea of Vigilante as a time-tossed singing cowboy from the 1930s.
Twenty-First Century Assimilation Club
Me and the twenty-first century got acquainted real quick... and real painful. Ya see, I got myself on the wrong end of Doctor Clocktronic and his Chronotron, otherwise I'd still be living out my days as the Prairie Troubadour back in the thirties. An' the forties and so on, I'd hope...
Don't worry. Most folks get confused when I mention that, too. My buddy Stuff gave me a look when I told him the guy's name, and I swear he never stopped 'til I got shot with the Chronotron. It was the kind of look that said, plain as day, 'Greg, what on God's green earth are you doin', fighting a man goin' around callin' hisself "Doctor Clocktronic"?' Fact is, times were changin' on me. Used to be, a body only had t' deal with the sort of slippery bastard who'd grease the right palms and slip outta the grip of the proper authorities. But even back then, it started to get more obvious that smart men weren't always good men.
Here's how it happened. It was 1937. We were in California, Hollywood to be precise, because Gene Autry had walked out on Republic Pictures and there was talk of the studio lookin' for a replacement. Now, this sorta thing would've put one hell of a damper on my work as Vigilante, but Greg Sanders couldn't just turn the opportunity down! There was appearances to keep up and all. Anybody in the superhero business with a secret identity knows what I mean.
Stuff heard the rumors first, when he was walkin' around as regular ol' Danny Leong. People talked, quiet and secret, about dead bodies found as warnings, and men you wanted to stay away from 'less you felt like joinin' the body count. The mysterious thing about these bodies, though, was how old they looked t' be.
Jimmie Thumbs, a low-level wise guy, was last seen five days before his body showed up, dumped on the doorstep of his boss. The body looked like it had been buried five years an' dug up before makin' the trip. Suzy Kwan, an old lady who ran a laundry service but refused to pay protection money... her family came home to her skeleton sitting in a rotten old chair -- one that her daughter swore up an' down was the twin of the brand new chair that sat across the table from where Suzy's body was found. Somethin' uncanny was at work here. That somethin' was mystifyin' the police, so I felt it was my duty as the Vigilante to get to the bottom of matters.
I sang for Republic Pictures in a screen test, then I slipped out the back without waitin' to hear what th' bigwigs thought of me. I had more important things to see to, and it was only a short walk to my hotel to change from Greg Sanders to the Vigilante. Then I met up with Danny -- Stuff, the Chinatown Kid -- an' we started our investigations.
Turned out that the trail led to the Norton Gang, a little group of criminals tryin' to get big. Either they hired Doctor Clocktronic to help them do that, or they was the unwittin' muscle to Doctor Clocktronic's operation, but either way, all of them had t' be stopped.
Me and Stuff broke in t' their hideout, real quiet, hopin' to find evidence linkin' them to the murders. Instead we found Doctor Clocktronic in the middle of an experiment.
Seems he never actually meant for his Chronotron to kill people. Sure, it looked like a miniature cannon with too many fuses and weird blinkin' lights along the barrel, but what he really wanted it for was to send people forwards and backwards in time. He went about this by tinkerin' with thing, aimin' it at one of th' people he had all chained up, and shootin' them with the beam of it for a handful o' seconds. Then he'd figure out how much they aged, forward or back. Or if they didn't age and their surroundings did, he'd look excited and make notes on it. His prisoners were a man and a woman and the way they cried and pleaded for 'im to spare the other, it was clear that they were sweet on each other. A couple for sure.
We watched for a little while, and I could tell just by lookin' at Stuff that this was makin' him sick to th' heart, like it was doin' to me. So I got out from my hidin' place and put a little swagger in my voice as I told Doctor Clocktronic that the jig was up, an' I was gonna put a stop to him.
I'll give him one thing. He was a weedy-lookin' little academic type, but the man was a fair shot with a pistol. Jus' too bad for him I'm a sight better than "fair", an' faced off with people almost as good as me, on a regular basis, too. But he was quick, and dove out of sight before I could aim a non-lethal shot. The ruckus drew attention from the Norton Gang, and they pinned me and Stuff down where we was, in the basement of their hideout.
We spent almost all our bullets split between keepin' the Gang at bay and keepin' Doctor Clocktronic pinned down where he was. It was a desperate situation, and I was a mighty desperate man, so when I saw the doctor loadin' his gun with some glowin' red bullets, I figured there must be somethin' special about those. Even though they shone outta the dark like a hot poker, he handled them like they were cool as ice. I didn't want him shootin' those things at Stuff or at me, so I jumped at him and punched him in the side of the head. He dropped his gun and the box of bullets, and I hit him again hopin' he'd stay down.
I reloaded with some of those glowin' bullets and fired twice at the gangsters. It was a rush job, and the shots went wide. Nobody was expecting the wall to explode when the bullets hit it, though. Knocked a sizeable hole in the outer wall, too -- an escape, if we could get to it.
I yelled for Stuff to make a break for it, said I'd cover him. He yelled back that he was gonna get the doctor's prisoners free first, and I better cover him for that, too.
Well, I had no argument against that plan, and we got the couple free. Stuff turned back to wave me through our escape route, and his eyes went big.
"Vigilante, look out!" he said. It was the last thing I ever heard him say. Because Doctor Clocktronic shot me in the back with the Chronotron in the next moment. The world went blue, then white, then faded away entire, an' the only sound in the whole world seemed to be my screamin'.
I don't know how long it was like that... sometimes I wake up from dreams that make me think it's still like that... but then I felt a jerk, like someone had a hook in my navel and was reelin' me in. The white faded away into blue, and purple, and then there was color again and I was fallin' forward onto one of those grey-green lino floors. I tilted so I fell on my side, and I holstered my guns right quick when I heard the hollerin'.
"He just came outta nowhere, Professor!" somebody was sayin', amidst all the 'oh my god' and 'what the hell' from ever'body else.
It took some doing, but I got them to believe that I was friendly, and human, and from more than sixty years in the past. An' it took me a while to come t' grips with the date, when they gave it to me.
****
"So y' see, Sir Justin, you ain't th' only one who's a little misplaced," I finished my tale, and leaned forward to grab my water glass off the table, taking a deep drink. It was a long story, and relating long stories is always thirsty work.
The knight -- an honest to God knight from King Arthur's court -- looked at me with a thoughtful frown. "Yes, I do see."
"An' y' realize that I been in this century a little longer than you have, even if it's only by a handful o' years?"
He nodded gravely -- he's the sort who does everything gravely -- and rested an arm on the table. Under the artificial lights of the Watchtower common room, the motion made little golden glints dance off his chainmail. I blinked away the after-images and set my glass back down.
"Then you know I can tell you what's most important for gettin' along with these future folks, don't you, Sir Justin?"
Sir Justin raised an eyebrow. I had a feeling that this series of questions was annoying him. Maybe he thought I was speaking to him this way because I thought of him as a twit. "Indeed I do, Gregory."
"Good!" I pointed out the items that our teammates had left on the table, for exactly this conversation. "Then you'll take my word for truth when I tell y'... the most important thing for comfortable future livin' is regular baths."
Sir Justin eyed the bottles of shampoo and conditioner, the bars of soap, the washcloths, and the scented body wash with accompanying ball of netting sponge thingie. I did try to tell the ladies to start slow when putting together their little hygiene basket, but they waved off my protests and said that this was an emergency.
"I can understand the... delousing," Sir Justin started. He made a face, as much as a stoic like him ever does, and I know I had a similar look on my face. I got so many anti-lice shampoos tossed on me in the first few days of arriving that sometimes I could still smell it. "But baths are a luxury and an invitation to sin and sickn--"
"On that last part, you're wrong, Sir Justin. Keepin' clean with handwashin' and bathin' keeps people from spreading sickness. Which is part of why the team is so concerned about your... old fashioned habits." I try to be a little bit tactful.
"I do not understand. Should not the fact that I am not pagan mean something?"
"No, Sir Justin, no," I answered, shaking my head. I can't help smiling a little. "Believe me. Also, we don't talk about people's religious beliefs here. They find that rude."
"Well." Sir Justin regarded the basket of toiletries again, still looking a bit skeptical. "You have yet to steer me wrong, friend..."
"Great!" I grinned. "Just ask J'onn about gettin' the how-tos planted in your head, and you'll be good to go."
*-*-*-*-*-*
Author: D.L.SchizoAuthoress
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: the canon playground I'm using today is Justice League Unlimited
Warnings: mild language, somewhat intolerant attitudes from being raised in older cultures
Prompt/Fill: any, any, I don't know where I'm going but I'm getting there fast
Word Count: 1818
Summary: Getting used to a new time period isn't easy.
Word of the Day: rutilant, adjective: Glowing or glittering with ruddy or golden light.
Note: I take all the background information I can from the Golden Age comics. Mostly because I can't resist the idea of Vigilante as a time-tossed singing cowboy from the 1930s.
Twenty-First Century Assimilation Club
Me and the twenty-first century got acquainted real quick... and real painful. Ya see, I got myself on the wrong end of Doctor Clocktronic and his Chronotron, otherwise I'd still be living out my days as the Prairie Troubadour back in the thirties. An' the forties and so on, I'd hope...
Don't worry. Most folks get confused when I mention that, too. My buddy Stuff gave me a look when I told him the guy's name, and I swear he never stopped 'til I got shot with the Chronotron. It was the kind of look that said, plain as day, 'Greg, what on God's green earth are you doin', fighting a man goin' around callin' hisself "Doctor Clocktronic"?' Fact is, times were changin' on me. Used to be, a body only had t' deal with the sort of slippery bastard who'd grease the right palms and slip outta the grip of the proper authorities. But even back then, it started to get more obvious that smart men weren't always good men.
Here's how it happened. It was 1937. We were in California, Hollywood to be precise, because Gene Autry had walked out on Republic Pictures and there was talk of the studio lookin' for a replacement. Now, this sorta thing would've put one hell of a damper on my work as Vigilante, but Greg Sanders couldn't just turn the opportunity down! There was appearances to keep up and all. Anybody in the superhero business with a secret identity knows what I mean.
Stuff heard the rumors first, when he was walkin' around as regular ol' Danny Leong. People talked, quiet and secret, about dead bodies found as warnings, and men you wanted to stay away from 'less you felt like joinin' the body count. The mysterious thing about these bodies, though, was how old they looked t' be.
Jimmie Thumbs, a low-level wise guy, was last seen five days before his body showed up, dumped on the doorstep of his boss. The body looked like it had been buried five years an' dug up before makin' the trip. Suzy Kwan, an old lady who ran a laundry service but refused to pay protection money... her family came home to her skeleton sitting in a rotten old chair -- one that her daughter swore up an' down was the twin of the brand new chair that sat across the table from where Suzy's body was found. Somethin' uncanny was at work here. That somethin' was mystifyin' the police, so I felt it was my duty as the Vigilante to get to the bottom of matters.
I sang for Republic Pictures in a screen test, then I slipped out the back without waitin' to hear what th' bigwigs thought of me. I had more important things to see to, and it was only a short walk to my hotel to change from Greg Sanders to the Vigilante. Then I met up with Danny -- Stuff, the Chinatown Kid -- an' we started our investigations.
Turned out that the trail led to the Norton Gang, a little group of criminals tryin' to get big. Either they hired Doctor Clocktronic to help them do that, or they was the unwittin' muscle to Doctor Clocktronic's operation, but either way, all of them had t' be stopped.
Me and Stuff broke in t' their hideout, real quiet, hopin' to find evidence linkin' them to the murders. Instead we found Doctor Clocktronic in the middle of an experiment.
Seems he never actually meant for his Chronotron to kill people. Sure, it looked like a miniature cannon with too many fuses and weird blinkin' lights along the barrel, but what he really wanted it for was to send people forwards and backwards in time. He went about this by tinkerin' with thing, aimin' it at one of th' people he had all chained up, and shootin' them with the beam of it for a handful o' seconds. Then he'd figure out how much they aged, forward or back. Or if they didn't age and their surroundings did, he'd look excited and make notes on it. His prisoners were a man and a woman and the way they cried and pleaded for 'im to spare the other, it was clear that they were sweet on each other. A couple for sure.
We watched for a little while, and I could tell just by lookin' at Stuff that this was makin' him sick to th' heart, like it was doin' to me. So I got out from my hidin' place and put a little swagger in my voice as I told Doctor Clocktronic that the jig was up, an' I was gonna put a stop to him.
I'll give him one thing. He was a weedy-lookin' little academic type, but the man was a fair shot with a pistol. Jus' too bad for him I'm a sight better than "fair", an' faced off with people almost as good as me, on a regular basis, too. But he was quick, and dove out of sight before I could aim a non-lethal shot. The ruckus drew attention from the Norton Gang, and they pinned me and Stuff down where we was, in the basement of their hideout.
We spent almost all our bullets split between keepin' the Gang at bay and keepin' Doctor Clocktronic pinned down where he was. It was a desperate situation, and I was a mighty desperate man, so when I saw the doctor loadin' his gun with some glowin' red bullets, I figured there must be somethin' special about those. Even though they shone outta the dark like a hot poker, he handled them like they were cool as ice. I didn't want him shootin' those things at Stuff or at me, so I jumped at him and punched him in the side of the head. He dropped his gun and the box of bullets, and I hit him again hopin' he'd stay down.
I reloaded with some of those glowin' bullets and fired twice at the gangsters. It was a rush job, and the shots went wide. Nobody was expecting the wall to explode when the bullets hit it, though. Knocked a sizeable hole in the outer wall, too -- an escape, if we could get to it.
I yelled for Stuff to make a break for it, said I'd cover him. He yelled back that he was gonna get the doctor's prisoners free first, and I better cover him for that, too.
Well, I had no argument against that plan, and we got the couple free. Stuff turned back to wave me through our escape route, and his eyes went big.
"Vigilante, look out!" he said. It was the last thing I ever heard him say. Because Doctor Clocktronic shot me in the back with the Chronotron in the next moment. The world went blue, then white, then faded away entire, an' the only sound in the whole world seemed to be my screamin'.
I don't know how long it was like that... sometimes I wake up from dreams that make me think it's still like that... but then I felt a jerk, like someone had a hook in my navel and was reelin' me in. The white faded away into blue, and purple, and then there was color again and I was fallin' forward onto one of those grey-green lino floors. I tilted so I fell on my side, and I holstered my guns right quick when I heard the hollerin'.
"He just came outta nowhere, Professor!" somebody was sayin', amidst all the 'oh my god' and 'what the hell' from ever'body else.
It took some doing, but I got them to believe that I was friendly, and human, and from more than sixty years in the past. An' it took me a while to come t' grips with the date, when they gave it to me.
****
"So y' see, Sir Justin, you ain't th' only one who's a little misplaced," I finished my tale, and leaned forward to grab my water glass off the table, taking a deep drink. It was a long story, and relating long stories is always thirsty work.
The knight -- an honest to God knight from King Arthur's court -- looked at me with a thoughtful frown. "Yes, I do see."
"An' y' realize that I been in this century a little longer than you have, even if it's only by a handful o' years?"
He nodded gravely -- he's the sort who does everything gravely -- and rested an arm on the table. Under the artificial lights of the Watchtower common room, the motion made little golden glints dance off his chainmail. I blinked away the after-images and set my glass back down.
"Then you know I can tell you what's most important for gettin' along with these future folks, don't you, Sir Justin?"
Sir Justin raised an eyebrow. I had a feeling that this series of questions was annoying him. Maybe he thought I was speaking to him this way because I thought of him as a twit. "Indeed I do, Gregory."
"Good!" I pointed out the items that our teammates had left on the table, for exactly this conversation. "Then you'll take my word for truth when I tell y'... the most important thing for comfortable future livin' is regular baths."
Sir Justin eyed the bottles of shampoo and conditioner, the bars of soap, the washcloths, and the scented body wash with accompanying ball of netting sponge thingie. I did try to tell the ladies to start slow when putting together their little hygiene basket, but they waved off my protests and said that this was an emergency.
"I can understand the... delousing," Sir Justin started. He made a face, as much as a stoic like him ever does, and I know I had a similar look on my face. I got so many anti-lice shampoos tossed on me in the first few days of arriving that sometimes I could still smell it. "But baths are a luxury and an invitation to sin and sickn--"
"On that last part, you're wrong, Sir Justin. Keepin' clean with handwashin' and bathin' keeps people from spreading sickness. Which is part of why the team is so concerned about your... old fashioned habits." I try to be a little bit tactful.
"I do not understand. Should not the fact that I am not pagan mean something?"
"No, Sir Justin, no," I answered, shaking my head. I can't help smiling a little. "Believe me. Also, we don't talk about people's religious beliefs here. They find that rude."
"Well." Sir Justin regarded the basket of toiletries again, still looking a bit skeptical. "You have yet to steer me wrong, friend..."
"Great!" I grinned. "Just ask J'onn about gettin' the how-tos planted in your head, and you'll be good to go."
*-*-*-*-*-*