17634/We Change, Or We Die

We Change, Or We Die
Date of Scene:	13 April 2024
Location:	Delaware
Synopsis:	The Blob brings Lorna to a farm in Middle Of Nowhere, Delaware to experience a piece of his past, so Lorna can seek his wisdom and aid in preparing for the future.
Cast of Characters:	Fred Dukes, Lorna Dane

---

Fred Dukes has posed:
The venue is simple.

FAT RON'S BACKYARD CARNIVAL (NO KIDS UNDER FIFTEEN) (I FUCKIN MEAN IT WE DONT GOT INSURANCE)

The sign is huge and gawdy and beautiful. Fred Dukes is not a man for nostalgia or sentiment, nor does he have many pleasant memories to linger over. But by mutant Jesus he still loves a carnival. Nothing slick or ultra modern or corporate, just some desperate freaks lashing together a show to fleece the normies. It's what we have here, real just under a state fare as a set up. The centerpiece is a huge trampoline set that's been jury rigged into FAT RON'S REAL AMERICAN WRESLTEFIGHTS. Two men are wailing on each other awkwardly because they're on a damn trampoline.

One's 'Slick Ryan Gutierrez', trying not to choke on his blue satin cape.

The other is 'Pretty Mike Flanders' wearing the full face mask and breathing heavy.

As for Blob, he's munching on a tub of popcorn nearly as large as his head, sitting on a reinforced leather chair, and watching the fun. He can feel on the back of his neck that a conversation is coming, and he might as well get his enjoyment in first.

"Haw haw." Blob rumbles to himself, "Little shit's turning red. Breathe, dummy!"

Lorna Dane has posed:
Once, Lorna was dragged out to a community center in Albany to sit in an oppressively hot room out with maybe thirty other people and watch two very skinny men in very shiny, plastic-lined pants beat the everloving shit out of each other with forearm shots that neither had any business trying to throw. At the time, it was shocking; barbaric! Thrilling; unthinkable.

And most of all: utterly, thoroughly bizarre-- the kind of mild, but primary colored memory that easily falls through the cracks of one's psyche only to blare back to the fore at opportune moments.

"Jesus Christ, he's gonna kill him," she hisses beneath her breath, partially turned away because where human instinct tells her that she's watching something horrific and forbidden, that cloudy and colorful pearl of memory's there to remind her that it's just a show-- and only idiots think anyone's REALLY getting hurt.

(Excepting, of course, all the times when the performers DO, in fact, get hurt for real-- like the guy in the previous match who missed a bounce, fell out of the 'ring', and is now missing most of the evening leading up to that point. That gush of blood didn't come with a sliver of razor-sharp trickery just beforehand.)

A couple beats after her quiet outburst, she passes a look from the action all the way up to Fred himself, elated as he basks in amateur professional violence. The obvious question - 'YOU did THIS? For FUN??' - comes and goes without without quite reaching the tip of her tongue; of course he did.

And of course it was.

Otherwise, there's a great chance that she never would've learned about Fat Ron and his fights.

"... you've got a way with people," is what eventually comes out instead, soft but solid as she swallows the wince evoked by a thundering chop and gives Fred another look, "You're loud; memorable. Boisterous... you can't help but make a mark on others."

Another beat passes, giving him a chance to consider this before she continues:

"Especially among the Brotherhood," her voice falling another notch.

"Right?"

Fred Dukes has posed:
"We can only hope." Fred says, taking a loud, obnoxious slurp from his family sized YETI cooler he made the soda guy pour a part Dr. Pepper, a part Mountain Dew, and a part Vanilla Vodka directly into. "No these two ain't ready for that yet, they're still wet behind the ears. Masked guy's got a knack, though. Ron always could find 'em."

Something awful happens with Slick Ryan tries to climb the turnstile, but neither wrestler seems interested in stopping. There is no hint of a ref, just the nearly Blob sized Fat Ron holding court. "These are tryouts, you see. New talent Ron's gonna train up a bit and arrange an audition with the real movers. You gotta pick kids who can make it and kids who can prop worthwhile athletes up. If mask boy can get some confidence he might make a decent jobber in the professional leagues someday."

Another fistful of popcorn: despite a beautiful princess being right next to him, Fred has no real shame about how he eats. A lifetime of being the Blob gave him the choice of killing that part of himself or dying, and Fred Dukes will never let his power eat him. Not like Unus did.

Ah, Fred thinks, the meat of the matter. "I wouldn't call myself a charismatic leader type none." Blob drawls, "Ain't much for speeches or barking orders. Haw, truth is we never had our very own Summers-type, as much as we tried. When you live through enough break ups, Avengers beatings, and ends of the world I guess it counts for something though."

Blob sits back, not prompting. Lorna wants to talk and she will in her own time.

Lorna Dane has posed:
"No," Lorna agrees.

"You aren't--"

There's no hiding her discomfort when Slick Ryan boldly, foolishly decides that failing his high spot once means that he has to try it again. This is a tryout, after all: it's give Ron everything he's got, or go home a failure; of course he tries it again.

And hell, his balance is much steadier this time: not even a wobble as he straightens atop the turnstile and spreads his arms into a confident t-pose. The move itself is a thing of beauty, to boot: a shooting star press - a forward jump mixed with a backflip - sends him twisting so perfectly that time almost seems to stop--

-- only to reassert itself one violent split-second later, when it turns out that Ryan's perfectly executed press was poorly gauged to the point that he doesn't so much land on Pretty Mike as he grazes off the other man's body, bounces awkwardly off the trampoline, and flops right over the edge, smashing his ribs into solid metal on the way down.

(Later, Fat Ron will tell him this is the coolest shit he ever saw, on his way to giving his buddy over in Philly a call about Mike. This will be enough to encourage Ryan to come back a couple months sooner than he should for another shot at proving himself.)

"... but they know you," she finally exhales with a hand splayed over her chest. Much like Slick Ryan, Lorna gives herself a second to catch her breath. "And if you reached out to them - told them someone else wanted to steer the ship, even if it was into the storm, instead of running from it - they might listen," comes with a brisk, appraising sweep across the Blob's bulk, "because whatever you aren't, Fred, you are someone who shoots straight."

There's a momentary pause as Lorna meets his eyes.

Slick Ryan crawls back onto the 'ring' with some help from his opponent.

"I'm tired of pretending that we can charm them into leaving us alone-- that all they need to stop fucking with us is a warm feeling in their guts and a slap on the wrist here or there," the Queen of Genosha whispers.

"I'm not Him. I don't want to be Him... but I'm not a coward, either. I ended up in charge of a whole country of people like me-- I owe them more than playing nice with the ones who build things to kill us," only just slips into his ear when she braces against his arm, leaning up and in.

"Do you understand what I'm saying to you...?"

Fred Dukes has posed:
Oh hey, Blob thinks, as the acrobatics turn grim. A metaphor.

And let's not lie to ourselves folks: there is darkness in Fred Dukes's heart. He joined when it was the Brotherhood of EVIL Mutants and has never apologized for it. The big man watches these well built, handsome wrestlers humiliate themselves for the glee of a third rate con artist who's going to wind them up to be broken on a wheel of glory and cash and he sees himself, forever lashed to that wheel. Blob smiles at the crunch and the look of agony on the boy's face.

He'll be back. Blob knows a worker when he sees one: he can use a mirror, sometimes. Speaking of work.

Well at least it isn't Cortez, Blob thinks, leaning back a little. "I get the outlines, honey." Fred says, taking another long swig of soda-vodka. "You're drawing a picture. I thought it was about time we all got back to work. Thing is."

"Being a supervillain team ain't like running a country. Sure we all make jokes about the CIA, but it's a different gig, with different needs, and different goals. We learned that in Saolo Palo. Mastermind could dream up all the armies he wanted, we still needed to feed people." Fred says, before pulling.

Yeah that's like sixteen whoopie pies in an old Dairy Queen bag. Chocolate and buttercream. He offers Lorna one.

"That's what the old guard is treating this as, if that's what you really wanna know. A vacation. A time to relax and be fake legitimate while the pretty muties play 'Game of Thrones'." Blob eats the other fifteen, quietly gauging Lorna's reaction to the geek work before wiping his face with his shirt. "It's all fine and dandy to say you want to be proactive but this ain't the upper management of a New York City advertising firm. You need a concrete plan for these people to respond to. And you need to realize you are working with angry, hardened criminals."

"You want them to follow you, have something tangible. It's easy to say the world hates and fears us, and that it damn well should, but the world's too big a place for a lot of people to see in the ab-stract. It's too big. That's why leaders exist, cause they can handle the big picture."

Lorna Dane has posed:
"I'm not looking to run a supervillain team."

Lorna takes a buttercream without hesitation.

"... but I accept that that's where doing the work that needs to be done is going to lead," softly precedes a bite.

One and a half chews in, she stops cold at the sight of the other fifteen pies vanishing into the darkness of Fred Dukes' maw. It's not the scale of it that gets her, really - living on Genosha, in Mutant Town, surrounded by freaks for years at this point, Lorna has seen her share of strange biological functions.

It's the casual, shameless ease with which Fred indulges his needs. In the middle of a crowd, some of whom may well know him, he throws back pastries like popcorn kernels. On a lark, in the middle of advising her on the realities of governing the ungovernable, he inhales fifteen whoopie pies and keeps going.

There's beauty in the purity of it.

Terror lurking just beneath the sheer ease of it, before he transitions back to telling her that the old guard - the iron-fisted guard - sees the last few years of relative peace as a vacation to be endured.

"I'm not trying to rule the world; I don't even want to dominate them," she reiterates, soft but firm. "But I'm happy to give you things to hit, and take your frustrations out on-- and a place to breathe a little easier when you aren't. Easier than out here," comes with a sweep of her arm that extends far, far past Fat Ron's territory, "anyway.

"If you can bring them in-- the ones who're waiting for the vacation to end; the ones who want more than what Raven's offering them right now... I can give them something to believe in," Polaris swears, low and smoldering. "My therapist,"

Lorna takes half a beat-- watches, just to see how that lands, as weighted of a word as it can be.

"-- recommended something to me a few months ago-- a book called 'Beyond the Threshold', by a man named John Cumberland about what the 21st Century could look like. I think the idea was to help me work through some anxiety I've been feeling about... ... just, tomorrow," is accompanied by a brisk twist of her empty hand and closely followed by another bite. With her hand curled over her mouth for a little bit of cover, she takes a few moments to chew in the wake of those admissions. Ever since motherhood somehow crept its way into Lorna's world, the future's been a bleak and formless mass-- a promise of nightmares to come, to return, to swallow everything she knows and loves once more.

'Anxiety' is a small word for it, but it'll do.

"It was inspiring," she quietly adds, "at first, to see how hopeful someone writing from 1997 could be about today, the advancements he seemed so sure of-- the proliferation of Arc tech, post-scarcity societies-- transhuman consciousness and whole cultures of metahumanity-- how real it all felt. How possible, like he could see it hanging from a branch just out his reach..."

Ryan is - barely - standing under his own power, because the show must go on-- even if 'the show', at this point, amounts to a helpless swing through thin air, followed closely by a kick to his gut. Near his gut. Close enough, to his gut, to merit crumpling, clutching it, and letting himself be covered by Mike.

"... until I remembered what twenty years of progress from Cumberland brought us."

Cold, hungry, unfeeling steel that consumes progress and shits out death to anything that exists beyond the baseline of acceptable humanity.

"'We change, or we die,'" Cumberland said," Lorna whispers, "only he was convinced that we'd change. That it was inevitable, because self-preservation demanded it..."

Green eyes lid as the young monarch lets out a long, low breath.

"That's what I see for the Brotherhood, in the future-- that's who I think we need to be, what we need to remember.

"What we need to remind everyone else of, most of all: 'change or die.'"

Fred Dukes has posed:
The Blob chews. It's the Blob, right now, despite being out of costume and in a place where he's known and trusted. The real pros can switch facades on a dime. There's a serious, smoldering look on his face.

Then he's Fred again, burping outrageously. "Magneto teaches us that human limitations include shame, fear, and doubt. That these bedrocks of human society were flawed and impermanent because the sapiens creates systems to compensate for how evolution's failed them. Homo Superior has no need for such limitations because they are built in tune with nature instead of needing to conquer it out of fear. We are our own living one man civilizations."

"Then he sniffed after the latest depressed x-man in the Savage Land for like four months so." Blob shrugs, grinning nastily. "And Mystique's gave up generalship to shack up full time. Guess she wants more kids to neglect. None of my business."

"In other words, like I said. You have a place to go? People will go there. But only if you spend more time talking about what you want than apologizing for wanting it. And the truth, the actual truth of our people, is the strongest rules. Not powers, but will." Fred finishes his drink, and grins as calliope music starts running. "Oh hell yeah Lorna they're bringing out the killer clowns!"

Oh god someone's started a chainsaw. "Now this is gonna be WRASSLIN!"