milliways_bar | (no subject)

Once Kara got out of the cells and only kind of bolted for the Door, she couldn't get back to the Bar for a few days. She was sort of surprised she missed it, but hey, here it is. Coolness.

First things first - she leaves a long overdue note with Bar.

I turned myself in and did cell time for the fight in the woods. You don't have to, because I worked that out with the girl who took me in, so I'm hoping that you're satisfied with that.

I know it probably won't matter to you, but I am sorry. I hope you're doing okay.

- Supergirl

After that, Kara heads outside to study for Claire's math quiz. One small, blonde, cross-legged levitating girl in an entirely seasonable crop top and shorts is hanging out by the lake as she pours over her mostly borrowed notes.

This, she reflects, would probably be easier if she'd ever taken a test she could remember before that didn't involve hitting things with cars or identifying the silhouettes of weaponry.

Distractions will bring her grade down, but she'll be grateful anyway.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I don't know if it really is a rule," YT muses. "At least you don't think I'm living in hell or something. Most of the other people here who I've told about my world think that the government collapsing is the worst thing ever."

"Well, I don't know," Kara says mildly, "I've never actually gotten along so great with most governments. A lot of the rules are kind of dumb, and the ones that aren't are set up pretty badly and don't actually work most of the time. So, if not having one works for your world? Then hey, whatever, that's cool."

"Not the whole world, just America. And actually, I don't know if it would've worked out that way in any other country. You've gotta have a pretty schizoid culture and enough ambitious people to make it work."

Kara laughs.

"America is crazy," she says, cheerfully, "But I like it. It's - I mean, it's so messed up but it's fun. It's like - I don't know, everyone is just so - something! I don't know. I just like it."

YT grins widely. "Maybe because it was the first experiment with democracy, y'know? Well, modern democracy. It's still an experiment. Even if the government's gone in mine, I'm not gonna say it's a failure, because without it we wouldn't have the stuff we've got now." She rolls her eyes. "Maybe it's some weird mutated result or something, I don't know."

"Like - it got irradiated or something. Supersociety? Probably hard to say, but when you introduce a new stress like that into a system it has to adapt or die, and I guess you just lucked onto an adaptation that wasn't hellish weirdness." Kara says, illustrating something with her hands. She likes to gesture.

"Yeah, we just got garden-variety weirdness," YT says. "We've got some stuff in our 2007 that I haven't heard about anywhere else - the Metaverse, for one, and the Rat Things. Virtual reality internet and cybernetic guard dogs, basically. Closest thing any other Earth has to the Metaverse, far as I know, is this game thing called Second Life, and you can't even goggle into it." YT rolls her eyes, clearly indicating that this is one of the most lame and backward things she's ever heard of.

"Ooo," Kara says, suitably impressed, "Like, a Matrix kind of thing?"

"I'm assuming you don't mean the big green dude with a false eye. Otherwise, I have no clue." In a world with a Metaverse, the Matrix is not high-concept enough to be worth an astronomical sci-fi movie budget, so it never came out in YT's world.

No bullet time? Oh no!

"Um, it was sort of like this movie about people plugged into a virtual reality. I liked the slow motion scenes - I kind of made one of my friends watch it so she could get superspeed a little better, even if it's not actually totally right."

YT cocks her head and furrows her brow thoughtfully. "Plugged in? Do you mean really plugged, or is that just a name for it the way it is back home? Mostly we call it being goggled in, because we use, y'know, goggles."

"Really plugged in," Kara informs her, not without relish, "It was kind of gross, actually."

"Grotendous," YT agrees. "But there's a bunch of bitheads who'd do it if they could. If it let them touch and smell and taste the Metaverse too, instead of just seeing and hearing it. Me? I'm good with the goggles."

"Some people just don't know when to quit," Kara says, sagely, "But, you know, too much of a good thing? Not so fun."

"That's how you get gargoyles," YT agrees. Then, realizing that Supergirl's not going to get this: "Umm, they're geeks who wear portable computers. They're goggles in all the time, have the Metaverse overlaid on Reality, or at least a statistical display of whatever it is they want to know. My friend Hiro says they're annoying because while they're talking to you they could be checking the credit history of some dude across the room, for all you know. Although he's kind of gone gargoyle himself." YT rolls her eyes.

"Ew," Kara says, wrinkling her nose, "That's like, worse than those people who wear their headphones while you're trying to talk to them."

"I just pull 'em off anyone who does that to me," YT says. "I mean, it gets them kind of pissed but they don't expect it, and then if I say whatever I'm trying to say to them they're too busy reacting to it to be really mad. It's also a great way of getting control of the conversation," YT adds with a grin.

Kara brightens and grins back. "That's an awesome idea! The next time I get into a situation like that, I am so trying that out."

"Yeah. You got enough nerve, you can get away with stuff like that." Of course, Supergirl's got...well, she's Supergirl, so who would be dumb enough to argue with her about it? Of course YT can't say that without getting into the whole fiction issue.

There are lots of people dumb enough to argue about it. Most of them have red hair, too, so Kara's developing a theory connecting insanity to hair color. Like any good scientist, she leaves herself out of the equation.

"Nothing except supervillains are more annoying than people who can't take out their stupid earbuds so you can talk to them. I mean, it's like one of the most incredibly rude things ever, you know?"

"Damn straight. I'm one of the rudest people I know and even I don't do it. Mostly 'cause it's not a good survival strategy. If there's some sounds going on that you need to know about, it's a good idea to listen to them."

"You have no idea how many people I've had to rescue just because they weren't paying any damn attention, so, yeah, total word."