[voice]

[mayormacfuckyou]

[MacCready spent his entire life not having any contact with the outside world. Or rather, not having much contact with the outside world, so he's not used to being able to just...communicate this easily. Sounds great and convenient and all, except the ease of it just makes him uneasy. You could say he actually misses being isolated from the rest of the world. Quite frankly, the rest of the world sucks.

But he ain't the mayor anymore. Well, he is, but he's not anywhere near his town to be a mayor. Besides, even if it was far sooner than he anticipated, he always knew there had to be a day when he would leave Little Lamplight and make a life for himself. Granted, he plans to get the fuck back, but right now that ain't a possibility. He has to get his shit together.

Tell you one thing; shit like this is making him consider getting his affairs in order as soon as he gets back home. He's not going to be twelve forever.]

So, there's always one poor bastard stuck at the head of a group, right? Be honest. Which one of you is it?

[It would be good information to know. There's always someone unofficially in charge, or they act like it. To him, it's just common sense and an easy question to answer. The way someone answers will tell him plenty anyway.]

More importantly, what's a guy gotta do to get some explosives around here?

[This is also a totally normal and perfectly reasonable question to him okay.]

Comments

[Video]

[detectivedwloki]

By explosives, you'd better mean fireworks.

[The man on screen looks stern and serious.]

[Video]

[mayormacfuckyou]

[Oh no he didn't just take that tone. Not that he's surprised, but it always pisses him off regardless!

He's going to switch to video just to give an obviously mocking and exaggeratedly stern look.]

By explosives I fucking mean explosives.

[Video]

[detectivedwloki]

[Hmm. As he suspected, the speaker looks like a kid.]

How old are you?

[Video]

[mayormacfuckyou]

[He can't help but notice the serious lack of explosive talk!]

Twelve. What of it?

[Video]

[detectivedwloki]

How long have you been here?

[This might be twenty questions - but since there's been a recent incident of people changing ages, he can't be sure if this is a new arrival or somebody transformed.]

[Video]

[mayormacfuckyou]

You're asking a shit ton of annoying questions and none of them is the one I asked, mungo.

[Video]

[detectivedwloki]

Unless you've got a job as a demolitions expert, you don't need any explosives, kid.

[lonewolfatha]

Good question. We should know who we're dealing with.

[ Well, at least somebody has the right priorities around here. Not so much with the explosives, but figuring out who's in charge is important! ]

[mayormacfuckyou]

[Hey, explosives are extremely important! Don't undervalue the benefit of a landmine or two.]

Bingo. [Thank you for being reasonable.] Better to find out up front than be surprised by some jackass showing up and trying to boss you around outta nowhere, you know?

[lonewolfatha]

[ They have their uses, but essentials come first! ]

Exactly, we need to know who to avoid. We don't know the lay of the land, yet.

[ There's nothing worse than ending up in some gang's territory, and ticking off the boss! ]

[mayormacfuckyou]

[Sometimes it's essential to blow some assholes up.]

And shit ain't as obvious out here as what I'm used to. Normally you can tell where you are by the bodies or the gunfire, and from that you can usually guess who's in charge, but everything's different here.

[And this is why he prefers to live underground.]

Not that I can't take some fuckers out, but I'd rather save the ammo.

[lonewolfatha]

[ You know what, fair point! ]

... Everything's intact. It's weird.

[ That's not even the most startling difference, for Wolf. No mutants, way too many people, no gigantic animals lurking around every corner... this place is seriously creeping her out. ]

[mayormacfuckyou]

[Finally someone gets what the fuck he's talking about!]

Yeah, really weird. And there's way too many people and they aren't armed or nothin'. Going a whole damn day on the surface and not getting shot at or chased by a ghoul don't feel right.

video

[by_candlelight]

[ Never mind the fox ears, there's a teenager on the video reply. Though it was hard to place the exact age since she looked small, and the fact she had some hollows due to a real lack of food for a real long time didn't help that. All the same, she seems confident enough. ]

There isn't any one leader. There are a few different groups though. Like the Justice League, the Aegis Force, and IMPACT.

Blue Beetle and Batman are the leaders of the Justice League. I think Darin is the leader of Aegis for the moment. Apollo should still be the leader of IMPACT. You can send them private messages by looking them up on the network. It's worth mentioning that there's some particularly weird stuff going on right now, so they may not be themselves right now. Possibly literally.

Those are the hero groups, and they're full of people the community generally looks up to, at least in their upper member ranks. Any other groups around here are probably mostly social, at least the ones people will talk about publicly, and the ones they don't talk about publicly are a mystery to me.

[ Mostly. She's heard some whispers. ]

video

[mayormacfuckyou]

[Teenagers are a weird spot between "maybe I can trust them" and "too close to mungo" territory, but she's actually being helpful so he won't immediately give her a hard time.]

All of this shit sounds like it's out of a comic book. [Seriously, Batman? Blue Beetle? Is that anything like the ANTagonizer?] Anyway, none of these groups are warring with each other or nothing?

And what the fuck is a social group supposed to be?

[He has so many questions.]

Re: video

[by_candlelight]

[ And she's content to answer them for now. She doesn't seem even vaguely put off by his tone. ]

I mean, yeah. It does. It's so weird. But also I've been here for a year and it's all really happening. None of these groups are warring with each other. I mean they have some differing ideals, but they're not coming to blows over it. At least, if they are, I'm not hearing about it. Which, I mean, I'm a trainee in the Justice League so I'm pretty sure I'd know something that important. [ She gives a little laugh. ] My boss is kind of a worry wart and tries to make sure we don't get ourselves in over our heads.

As for social groups, they're just groups that get together over shared interests. If there isn't an imPort book club, I'd be surprised. And some people get together to spar I think, though I'm not sure if that's an official thing or just people finding others they like to spar against and sticking to them.

[mayormacfuckyou]

[MacCready scrunches his face.]

I'm callin' bullshit. No way there's not some kinda battle for power going on. You must be missing something.

[It just doesn't happen that way. Or doesn't not happen that way, whatever.]

[by_candlelight]

[ That earns a snort. ]

Not any literal battles. Again, I'd notice that. Probably a lot sooner than the average person around here considering my background. Ideological battles? that's another thing.

Aegis tends to be in favour of wide-spread registration, and working directly with the US Government to the point they're at least in part funded by them. IMPACT is against registration, and works in spite of the government, because it's illegal to do what's seen as hero-work while not registered. The Justice League works within the laws, meaning all official members or trainee members that are on the field need to be registered, but they don't have an official stance on registration itself and don't take government funds last I heard, which means we have more freedom to act as we deep appropriate than Aegis, but also are less likely to get jailed after saving a city than Aegis is.

There's probably a battle on the field of public opinion, but that sort of thing is done on social media, or by way of interviews and stuff. That, well, I admit I don't keep up with that all that much - I'm here to keep as many people alive as I can, not get involved with what's usually petty crap I can't do anything about anyway.

What we - any imPort in any of these three groups, and a lot of imPorts who don't have an official group but still want to help - are usually fighting against is stuff like super villains, or crime. We also lend our aid in other ways during times when things go south. Aegis and The Justice League tend to focus on the safety of civilians the most, while I hear Aegis tends to focus on taking down the threat before they focus on anything else. That said, our work overlaps fairly often, so we've worked together a fair number of times.

Most villains work on their own, or with only one or two people, and aren't an official group. Criminals are sometimes a part of organised crime, but organised crime tends to be less 'actual battles' and more 'tracking the dirty money, and then maybe going in to arrest them all', but I've not really been involved with that yet. I mean, outside of the occasional fight against someone in a gang, but that's still more of an individual instance than a battle. I'm not going to pretend that a fight between less than ten people total even begins to count as a battle, you know?

[mayormacfuckyou]

[Well that was a whole lot of fucking information.]

Jesus christ — look, all I'm saying is if they haven't fought somehow yet, they're gonna. That's what people do. That's why big stupid groups do. Always be prepared for them to start ripping each other's throats out. None of what you just said really changes my mind on that.

Voice

[walkontwolegs]

[ The voice on the other end is of a young girl, a very soft-spoken girl. ]

Um... Why would you need explosives?

[ She sounds almost afraid to ask. The last week or so has been... Something else. ]

[mayormacfuckyou]

Why does everyone keep acting like that's weird? It's like when you carry a gun. For protection.

[Surely that clears everything up!]

[walkontwolegs]

[ Oh now there's a little gasp. ]

But guns are dangerous! In my world we have pokemon with us to keep us safe on adventures, but most of the time we don't need to protect ourselves as long as we don't go into pokemon habitats without a pokemon ourselves.

[mayormacfuckyou]

Of course guns are dangerous! They'd be fucking useless if they weren't.

[God he is never going to get used to this, is he?]

And what the fuck is a pokemon? Some kind of mutant animal or something?

[walkontwolegs]

But you can shoot yourself on accident! Or a friend! And guns are likely to kill!

[ This girl is so, SO very innocent... ]

Pokemon are creatures from my world. Um, like in this world there are horses, and in my world there are horse pokemon. They both share a lot of features, but in my world they have abilities, like being on fire.

[mayormacfuckyou]

What? I ain't dumb enough to shoot myself or anyone not a target on accident. I know what I'm doing.

[Fucking CLEARLY. She reminds him a little bit of someone. Maybe he should watch his language. Maybe.]

So what, they're like mutants? Mutant animals? We got some of those.