Fustercluck

[letskicksomeice]

As far as Jack and Bunny could tell, they'd gathered up all the people they would find tonight. They'd have to sweep by in the coming days just to catch any possible stragglers.

Jack looked somewhat awkward as he stood in front of the group. A leader he was not, and public speaking wasn't something he was used to since being seen by the public was a whole new thing for him.

Still, he gave it his best shot.

"Okay, so most of you have gotten an explanation of who we are and why we think you're here, right? If you have any more questions about that, you can ask 'em. Then we need to talk about where you guys wanna stay. We have a few places in mind that are safe - and trust me, with Kuk's minions running around kidnapping any myths It thinks is a threat, you'll need somewhere safe - but you should have some say in where you live, so we want to see what works best for everyone."

[ooc: Clusterfuck thread! Always tag the most recent comment near the bottom.]

Comments

[hellofhisown]

"If there's one ancient incredibly powerful evil," Al says to Jack, "there could be more things on the same power level. Of course, in my experience, they either just don't care or they can't be assed to help directly. But we might be able to convince them to give us something worthwhile."

He shrugged. The gesture seemed almost comical coming from the massive, grim looking figure.

"Just my experience. I don't know how this world works, but that was the way mine did."

[letskicksomeice]

"Like gods? But not the smaller myth ones like us? No, we don't have those. Not big creator deities." Jack shrugged. "At least as far as we know."

[mywarrenmyrules]

"Look, I don't think you get the reason you're here yet. It's because there is no one else."

Bunny was starting to get frustrated.

"If Kuk has an equal OR an opposite, the only place I'd look for it is among the Ogdoad, but there's no reason to assume any of them would be helpful to us, or even safe to contact. They might be as bad for the world as Kuk, just in different ways."

His frustration was actually getting the best of him. How could it not? His oldest friends, some of the strongest myths the world had to offer, had already been taken, and this supposed cavalry was already scrabbling for reinforcements.

"You think we haven't already gone looking for help? All the reinforcements fell through before you got here. You're the only fixes we've got."

He directed his frown at Spawn and Sam.

"If you two wanna tag-team on investigating the Ogdoad, I won't say it's a dead end. Maybe something from the other side could help us pull Kuk back through, but there's nothing on this to help us with the shoving. We're all we've got. We need to shove Kuk back where it came and close the door behind it. That's our hope, and if I were you, I'd focus on it."

[letskicksomeice]

"Bunny, cool it," Jack said, nudging the rabbit's arm. He paused, and added, "No pun intended. Obviously."

Gesturing at them, he said, "They're new, they don't know this world, they don't know all of this, okay? Some of them aren't even fighters. They don't know the situation or what we've tried yet or who got taken."

Realizing something, he said, "I know you're mad that we're where we're at, and Manny dropped this on our lap like they're our last great hope without any explanations or help, but that's not their fault. Be mad at the situation, don't take it out on them."

[mywarrenmyrules]

"Some of them won't be fighting," Bunny snarked back. "Anybody here isn't prepared to push back, they should stand back now."

The truth was, there wasn't any shame in that. Not everyone in the world needed to be a warrior with the mettle to stare down the primordial evil of the cosmos.

The point of their world was to be safe for the people who weren't. And the point of the Guardians - at least, as the Guardians were before most of them were captured, before Manny chose these new ones - was to keep it that way.

Not everyone in the new group needed to be one, either, since clearly, not all of them were. They certainly weren't going to ask Howard to step on any kind of battlefield, at least.

"I don't deal in false hope, Jack. We HAVE a way to stop this, and that way is to put Kuk back where he came from."

But if they could have already done that - if SOMEONE out there could have already done it - then the world wouldn't already be short as many heroes as it was. He wouldn't already be missing so many friends.

Jack had a little more patience for people who didn't understand that, so Bunny stood back, crossing his arms, to let the Frost Spirit speak.

[letskicksomeice]

"Yes, we do," said Jack, looking amused, "but they're going to have questions about what's possible and we've tried so far, Cottontail. As far as they know, we're characters from hokey stop-motion Christmas specials."

He turned back to the others.

"Any other questions?"

[guardianofawesome]

A hand raises.

In the back.

[letskicksomeice]

"You there in the back. The guy who wasn't standing there before. Because...we must have missed one," Jack said, standing up straighter.

[guardianofawesome]

Tony puts his hand down.

"Alright, you can see me? That's great. Finally."

He's being extremely casual about this, considering he's been somehow abducted to god knows where and made invisible to most people.

"Now, exactly how long do you think this is going to take?"

[letskicksomeice]

Jack sucked in a deep breath as if he was going to launch into a long explanation of the possible lengths of time it might take, but he decided on:

"We have no idea."

[guardianofawesome]

He sighs. Pointedly. It is a sigh that is loud with oh my god do you have any idea how much stuff I was doing right now.

"Okay," he says, thinking. He speaks with an arm and finger raised.

"So. We're here to be fairytales fighting a hopelessly doomed magic war with a mysterious evil entity that wants to... take over the world? Destroy everything? Punt kittens? Something along those lines?"

He looks for someone to confirm this, tilting his wrist a little to swing his finger around the group in the hopes of indicating somebody who will say yes.

[spellitonce]

One of them has a very different response than he was hoping for.

"Oh Hell no," Nico shouted, shoving Molly behind her. "I was willing to put up with a bitchy, holier-than-thou giant rabbit, but Tony freaking Stark?! No, screw you! SCREW YOU!"

Keeping herself between Molly and the rest of the group, Nico began backing away from the group, her Staff still trained on the new guy.

[guardianofawesome]

Tony frowns.

"Hey, I'm not as bad as the rabbit," he protests.

[letskicksomeice]

Jack started mouthing 'Bitchy, holier-than-thou-?' but then he saw things had the potential to be violent, rolled his eyes, and flew up in the air, landing between them. He didn't point his staff at either of them, but held his hand up in a placating gesture towards Nico.

"You wanna explain what's going on here? Obviously, you two know each other."

[guardianofawesome]

Tony backs off, holding his hands up defensively.

"Hey, she started it!"

[spellitonce]

"You want to know why there's so many kids here?" Nico snarls, eyes flicking to Jack briefly before landing on Tony-freaking-Stark again. "Why don't you ask him? He's pretty big on recruiting child armies these days!"

[letskicksomeice]

At that, Jack turned back to Tony, wordlessly raising his eyebrows, as if to say: Explain.

[guardianofawesome]

His attention is stuck on Nico.

"Except for the part where I'm not. What tabloids have you been reading, kid?"

Tony is actually kind of sad he hasn't seen that one yet. He likes to keep tabs on the completely out of left field crap that gets made up about him. It's cheap entertainment.

[spellitonce]

"How about the one where you and your SHIELD cronies showed up in my home with guns because we wouldn't register our powers with the government and join your stupid Initiative?!" Nico retorted. "Oh, ooh, how about the one where I had to break into your government facility and rescue my friends and a couple Young Avengers from getting experimented on, that was fun!"

Heart thundering in her chest, she glanced around briefly for something she could use to scratch herself with. Annoyingly, the area was distinctly lacking in thorny plants.

[animalhats]

"Yeah!" Molly chimes in from behind Nico (where she doesn't want to be, gosh Nico, she can take care of herself!), her eyes glowing pink. "We hadta run away and move and I liked that place! Gert lived there with us, and there were pictures of her and everything!"

She glares at Tony around Nico's arm, then wrinkles her nose.

"You used to be taller. When'd you shrink?"

[letskicksomeice]

Taller? How could an adult shrink?

That was when Jack's eyebrows raised again.

One afternoon, not long ago, he'd sat on Jamie's desk, listening with great amusement as the boy ranted for a full half hour about how the "big event" comics were ruining everything and how the movie versions were superior to the comics because of something called "adaptation distillation."

Jamie's favorite topic to rant about (because it was his favorite comics movie character)? Iron Man.

That left Jack with a little more knowledge to work with in this situation than he had for all the other people pulled through. (Sometimes it just didn't pay to not be pop culture savvy.)

"I think I know what's going on here. Mr. Stark, was the first big bad guy you ever fought your business partner?"

[mywarrenmyrules]

Bunny had started to mouth "holier-than-thou?" back to Jack, because bitchy at least he could accept. He was well aware he was not the cuddliest bunny in the world.

But Nico's talk of the new guy recruiting child soldiers cut that exchange straight to a halt. If the man had appeared an iota more menacing, and Jack hadn't appeared to recognize him, Bunny would have already had a boomerang out. He stayed where he was, light on his feet, ready to race between the new guy and the kids if he had to.

"Jack, who is this guy?"

[amazing_amazon]

Diana immediately understood what was going on, seeing as to how she'd recently met another version of herself, one who was older than Diana, from a different world, and led an entirely different life than the one Diana had led.

She'd taken up a defense position, her glowing lariat at the ready in case anyone needed to be caught, but for the moment, she said nothing. Emotions were running high, that she understood. Sometimes, they needed to run their own course.

[guardianofawesome]

Tony had opened his mouth to say something cutting about lies, slander, libel, etc so it was a good thing Jack had spoken up to distract him.

"What? Yes. Obediah Stane. It was all over the news."

He has no idea how this is relevant.

[animalhats]

"Nuh-uh!" Molly almost looks insulted - she might not the actual first person that Iron Man fought, but she knows some of the bigger names. "It was... the Mandarin, I think. Or the red iron man guy from Russia!"

She stomps her foot a little and narrows her eyes suspiciously. "Stop lying!"