text, un: hawkeye

[westcoasts]

so is pass and fail just a judgment on our performance, or do we reckon it's gonna come back and bite us in the ass in the future?

aurora said she missed us, by the way. ( those are not the words she used. ) she also said that she and eos are free to run their cities in whatever way works for the people under her care, as long as we're well-taken care of.

but, thing is, she gets to define that. says she gets to learn from her actions and inactions in relation to us.

which is something to keep in mind when we're acting as a group or not acting as a group and trying to get answers, or choosing which rules are okay to break and which rules are okay to stretch.

because between here and moorecroft, right now i'd say we've got the better end of the deal.

Comments

[westcoasts]

( ... )

you know hank?

[decohere]

[... oh wait, no, she very much doesn't like this.]

unfortunately.

[westcoasts]

the guy's made mistakes, but haven't we all? although if we're talking a different hank pym, i'm gonna claim ignorance on the nature of what those mistakes are.

how do you know him?

[decohere]

it's distressing to know there's more than one floating around out there, bothering those poor ants.

my father was a colleague of his at shield, but pym couldn't stand to be disagreed with and had him fired. set off a chain reaction that ruined my life. but we're fine now because his wife is actually quite lovely.

[and boy that's an oversimplification of the events.]

[westcoasts]

he's dead.

( or is he. )

and i have so many questions about shield in other universes.

( anyway.

skipping past the fact that there's no 'ex-' in front of that wife—. )

janet's amazing, you're not wrong.

[decohere]

[it's not quite guilt that has her backspacing out of 'good' as a response, she'll just leave that bit hanging.]

shield's dead. exposed as being infiltrated and run by hydra. global terrorists either way.

and janet's the only reason pym's not being scraped off the bottom of my boot

[as if she wasn't hours away from being atomically shredded out of existence, but whatever.]

[westcoasts]

no, it's just there's a whole lot of avengers who seem to have worked for shield. it's weird.

yeah, here's a tip i try and live by: don't trust anything, especially organizations, that's an acronym.

metaphorically or literally?

[decohere]

is it weird? mutually beneficial reinforcement of the american-centric power structure disguised as maintaining world safety, complete with merchandising deals. etc etc. but i never had any interest in being an avenger.

well maybe that advice would have been useful to me at age 6. but no i don't make a habit of trusting anything, especially not this entire set up.

yes.

[westcoasts]

little bit, yeah. never really been all that keen on their operating processes. kind of sits counter to what the avengers are supposed to be about.

and come on, most of the merchandise is cap and we all know that'd exist with or without the avengers.

great answer.

[decohere]

everyone was happy enough to surrender their privacy for a false sense of security, as long as they didn't have to know how the sausage was actually made.

and what are the avengers 'supposed' to be about, if not causing destruction resolving the problems that they caused in the first place? and lunch boxes.

bill always talked about what an irritatingly superior bastard pym was, but it didn't quite prepare me for finally meeting him.

1/2

[westcoasts]

"everyone", huh?

( but the rest of it earns a delay, a series of bubbles and dots appearing and disappearing before, finally, clint is TYPING— )

i don't think you're going to buy whatever answer i give you for that, but do you really think there'd be less problems without the avengers? it'd just be someone or something else, and i can promise you the grass is rarely greener. you don't like the avengers? that's fine, you don't have to. but if you didn't have them, maybe you'd have a bunch of guys running around being directed by norman osborn instead. or some asshole who thinks it's cool to wear a purple sock over his face.

the bad guys don't just go away if you get rid of the good guys.

[westcoasts]

but i don't know, maybe you ended up with a shit version of the avengers. every universe is different, right? and if you did, i'm sorry.

being let down sucks.

especially by people who are supposed to make a difference.

[decohere]

well fine no i didnt personally poll everyone given i didn't have a single outside contact, hard to get a gauge on public perception while confined to the basement labs of secret facilities. all i had was whatever twisted propaganda they were feeding me with to justify what was going on behind the scenes. and nobody seemed to care until it turned out it was the wrong guys doing it. that's the irritatingly hypocritical part.

turns out the avengers could barely stand each other, in the end. even they couldn't decide between them if what they were doing was right, or if they should have to be accountable to the rest of the world. fought about it at an airport they blew up, half of them got sent to the raft. they're all a bunch of incompetent petulant unprofessional self-centered reckless glory-obsessed idiots.

except scott. he's only half those things.

[westcoasts]

how was i supposed to know you were a prisoner?

no-one cares about propaganda until it's coming from the wrong people, that's just how it is. doesn't mean it's right, but... there's always something coming from somewhere, and no-one's gonna say that what they're selling is the same thing as the other guy just viewed from a different lens.

( "couldn't decide between them—". well, that's familiar, he thinks, before—.

"accountable".

it's not how it went down, not for them, but— )

wait

are you talking about the shra?

[decohere]

i wasn't. technically i could have walked away at any point.

[wasn't she? she's still not sure how much of it was by choice, and how much of it was not having much of an alternative as they made sure her survival was entirely dependent upon them. maybe she should have tried harder. been less naive believing that they actually intended to cure her.]

the what? no, the sokovian accords. named after the country the avengers destroyed after stark's failed robot experiment went rogue and decided to wipe out humanity. maybe it would have gotten along with whatever's running this place.

[westcoasts]

ultron wasn't stark

( typed, sent, wait—. "ultron was hank" probably isn't the response to have here. "wasn't it slorenia?" is probably also not great.

...nor, maybe, "I think that's more on the murderous robot than the avengers". )

we can probably chalk this one down to differences between universes.

sounds like yours got the short end of the stick.

[decohere]

stark and banner, thinking they could outsmart every single scifi movie that warns against the premise of messing around with ai.

it's fine. maybe by the end of this, mine won't be around anymore to worry about.

[westcoasts]

and what about the times when it works out? it's not like humans come out 100-0 on the "not megalomaniacal" scale.

...just double checking i'm reading that correctly, you don't want your universe to survive?

[decohere]

listen, i think robots are neat. it's the intentions and oversights of the people that designed them i don't trust. especially not a war profiteer such as stark.

that's coming to awfully strong conclusions. no. i just don't think it's my moral responsibility to ensure that it does above another random universe full of equally innocent people. but given how much it sucks, i wouldn't be entirely surprised that it doesn't make the cut. they plucked me out of it, after all.

[westcoasts]

sometimes you don't get a choice in it, you know? you end up with a responsibility you didn't choose, but what you do get to choose if you step up to it or if you close your eyes and ignore it.

and i really don't think it's as simple as 'there's only going to be one at the end of all this'.

[decohere]

step up? to what. advocating my world is superior to all the others just because i happened to originate from it? nothing heroic in that. self serving and selfish, actually. and while i am inherently invested in my own personal continued survival, i'm not qualified to represent billions of strangers. nor should i be.

and no, that's not what i think either. but if there's a limited number of spots, then each universe saved simply means another cannot be. so in the end roughly the same number of people and lifeforms will die, whether i pass or fail any of these tests. and so if my participation has no actual meaningful influence over the outcome of this unnecessarily drawn out and poorly constructed trolley problem, then i have absolutely no obligation to jump through hoops for the sick entertainment of the entity that designed this to fulfill their god complex.

but if it makes YOU feel better, by all means. just don't trick yourself into thinking you're better than me for it just because you're more attached to your home.

[westcoasts]

i don't want ANY worlds to get destroyed, and i don't buy that's what's going to happen. at least, i don't buy it's the only option we've got.

but that's exactly what i'm talking about, none of us are qualified to represent our entire worlds. ( eh, some less so than others, maybe, and it's not the first time clint's been told he's going to be JUDGED, but at least (question mark) echo's point of comparison is not a mailbox. ) but here we are. just because you don't LIKE it doesn't mean you get to pretend that's not what's happening.

and even then, it's not about being judged, not really. take that out of the equation and it's about whether someone else has the right to decide on the destruction/survival of entire worlds. if you ask me, that's not a question.

(and before you say anything, it's not an either/or. we can still be judged AND this can be a load of bull in the grand scheme of things.)

what are you gonna do while you're here? put your feet up and go around talking about how none of it's your problem because you didn't ask to be involved?

[decohere]

if the premise is true as proposed, then a certain number of universes will be selected for destruction with or without my active participation. that's not pretending it's not happening, it's simple pragmatism to accept that my personal wants and actions are so incredibly insignificant on this scale that they are not worth compromising my beliefs over.

and if it's false, and simply a scare tactic to control our behavior, then giving up my autonomy for a sense of security is something is something i promised myself i'd never do again.

so what will i do? that's none of your damn business. nobody controls me anymore.

[westcoasts]

( a long pause, and— )

hey, so what did you say your name was? since we got friends in common and all.

( ""friends"". clint barton: hank pym apologist. )

[decohere]

i did't.

and i don't have friends.

[a pause of her own, she means to leave it there. but. he's put up with her frustrated venting. she should probably offer him something in return.]

ghost.

[nice and impersonal.]