shitposting rave 5: discount rejects from every genre

"Mmm, yes," says Lissa, who is managing, but obviously new to this particular permutation. "Poles and scaffolds don't have this much give... though I did climb lots of curtains as a mischievous kit!"

 

I train a lot to be able to do this stuff. Most humans can't do any of this.

 

"That's for sure! You did things I wasn't sure humans could do!"

 

I may not be a teenager anymore but I never let myself get rusty. Just 'cause I'm not a meta doesn't mean I can't surprise the bad guys anyways.

 

Yes, but...

It's still impressive.

 

[He laughs, flipping into a different pose.]
Thank you, that's awfully sweet.

 

Well now you're just showing off!

-She 'laughs' with her wings.-

 

"You're not a what?" Lissa glances quizzically at him. She is hanging upside down on the silks, having got somewhat comfortable, although she does hope she won't make a fool of herself getting out of her current, fairly secure position.

"You guys keep saying that word. Ford probably even knows what it means, but I don't."

 

Naturally! I'm a showman, I can't help it.

Oh! Metahumans or metas for short are... well, people with abilities above and beyond what a human can naturally achieve. Aliens, techno-enhanced humans, people who got dosed up with experimental serums, magic stuff... there's many ways you can get classified as one. We can't use "Supers" or "superhuman" because that gets confusing really fast what with that being mostly the nickname of the local Kryptonian refugees.

 

"Interesting." Lissa thinks about this. "So...I would count, although I think I'm probably just very well trained, because I'm a catte? My sister teleports, sometimes, but I never have that I know of... at least not for sure," she amends herself, because of something Ford said once. "Valiska had piloting training, though. I wasn't thought to have the concentration for it."

 

The teleporting would definitely count. And well... you do have abilities slightly beyond humans. I've never seen someone who isn't a meta jump that high and far for example. I'm not stupid, I chose that spot to hang from deliberately, I would have been far enough away if you were human.
[He snorts.]
Aliens generally are classed as metas mostly because policy for dealing with potentially hostile metas is 'Be Careful They're Not Predictable'.

 

Man, it would get real weird real fast if my world and your world ended up crossing over.

 

Do another one, please?

 

"Only if you don't know anything about them. Any Talassani who's properly trained can jump that high--which isn't to say that all of us can," says Lissa. "Someone who's trained couldn't do it if she was pregnant or sick." Lissa sighs. "Our culture's very different from human culture, though. Human culture is ...honestly really weird to me, and I've been living in it more than twenty years."

 

Oh [Would she? Well, it's Sten's twin...] Sure I could do that? Though you wouldn't see much in the way of dancing that way since I can't dance in alt. [Dancing submarine would just look... weird. Rolling in the waves or something? Regardless, not as pretty as what she's come up with in her root]

 

Eh, I mean weird's what's for breakfast over at my place so really that'd be just business as usual? Unless you've got some really unexpected powers and power combinations in your metas?

[He laughs, switches positions again- and seemingly tumbles downwards through the silks. At second glance it's clearly a controlled 'fall', he is just unrolling the length wrapped around his middle that he had sneakily squirrelled away while moving through positions, but it looks quite impressive with the way he is arched and his fingertips outstretched as if he is desperately reaching for something to hold onto- And then it already ends and he swings his legs around to secure his seat again, straightening up.]

Well, yeah. We know about Kryptonian or Martian abilities too, But the Supers and the MMs are still definitely metas. The whole point isn't "What's normal for their place of origin" because then we would be bent over lists and spreadsheets for like a year reclassifying everyone. The point is 'Can they do things beyond what we can expect a baseline human to be able to accomplish?'. Because if we have an unidentified hostile who is confirmed to be a meta that means we gather intel first before swooping in and risking the team. 'Meta' is just a label that means 'read the intel file before you act'. At least for us! For civilians it usually means 'run away screaming', considering most of the metas that are on our side are very careful to pretend to be baseline human while in public. Secret civilian identities are very important to maintain.
[He shrugs.]

 

Oh man, now I'm torn. Oh man!

Haha, you're pretty cool.

 

Sort of the opposite, actually. Most metas are carriers or basically harmless-- if Susie Q can change her hair color on Tuesdays, it doesn't do much for her that hair dye wouldn't do for a human, you know? People like me or Queenie are pretty rare. [He hasn't got any of his gear, so he's not going to be climbing those silks, even if he's reasonably sure he could. Besides, this is a performance thing, right?]

It's one of the problems with the registry, honestly. No one's ID lists if they're a carrier or actually express the gene, so you get humans who treat metas like all of 'em are ticking time bomb when statistically speaking, some nutjob of a human is more likely to ram a car through the cafe than some meta going nuts of a soy latte half-caf.

 

Oh! Yeah I can see how that'd end up a problem. Is it like a thing you're born with then? We don't really have many minor superpowers like that because, at least most of the metas around where I work? They end up like that due to Science Gone Wrong things and apparently if stuff like that doesn't kill you it gives you ridiculous superhuman abilities and has a fifty fifty chance of also ruining your moral compass and/or emotional regulation abilities and/or ability to reason at all.
So what can you do aside from apparently make coffee?

 

Yeah, it's genetoc. They've got the gene isolated and everyone gets tested for it between ages five and seven-- it's a federal requirement and most public schools run free testing days for incoming student. They don't always bother running the blood samples though. If mom and dad are both half-wolf, everyone figures you'll grow up to be half-wolf too. I, uh, I got listed as human because the clinic was busy. It's... a bad city.

[He makes a face.] I can control blood? Or, I guess, all bodily fluids, but blood's the easiest. As long as someone's got even a small cut, they're, um, they're sort of fair game. We figured out that my blood can, uh, it can basically mutate and replace someone elses blood for a brief period of time? I can't remember the portions it needs though. So a uh, a friend of mine's been using it to help people with, uh, blood-borne illnesses mostly, and some cancers. My boyfriend used to be HIV+ until I, uh, needed him out of the way? And I've got a thing about killing people so mostly that's... just a thing. It happens a lot, apparently.

I have a really bad superhero name but once the papers get an idea in their head, they never let go. Queenie laughs at me every time he reads it.