"... Oh, wow," Zoey says in performative wonder. She removes her glasses and shines them with the microfiber cloth she keeps in her pocket, then holds them up to the light. She then advances sharply on Ana and plonks the frames onto her face, turning the distant objects in her vision into a blurry haze of colors. She grins. "Yep, there's no doubt about it, these glasses are turning rose-tinted in your presence!"

"Oh boy." Frank rolled his eyes and rubbed the side of his face. This wasn't going to go well. "Can we dial back the sarcasm?"

"Throttle's stuck at full, capt'n~!"

"Its not about what you want, its about what they want.  Who is going to decide which targets you're going to go after?  Who's maintaining that list of 'dangerous' mutants, and what criteria are they using?  It's not transparent, and not only is it going to be abused, it IS being abused"  The Legion stopped to look at Frank:

"Please don't tell me you believe that all inmates that ended up in Nomans Land were criminals, because if you do, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. They locked people up just for giving the government trouble, even if they never committed a single act of violence"

"And every person just doing their job in Avengers Tower when it was destroyed was such a hardened criminal, right?"

"And no, I don't believe that the inmates of Noman's Land were all criminals," Frank agreed. "I have a lot of moral and ethical problems with how that day went down. But letting them loose would have been a disaster, too. A bigger one, with a higher body count. "

Zoey fades into the background a bit as it seems things are taking a turn for the serious. She can't stay in the background for long though.

"I spoke to Senator Kelly," she adds. "He claims to be pushing for greater transparancy, but his own employers aren't being transparent with him about things he needs to know to do his literal job. Did you know that he was given the exact same line as the public was about the incident on that forsaken island? Totes all the Bruthas' fault, yo. No secret prison, no inmates cut up and laid out like slabs of meat at market. The guy's head of mutant affairs and they didn't tell him shit."

"Maybe his security clearance isn't high enough. I don't know. I am trying to find more answers to what happened on that island, though."

"What does this have to do with anything?" the Legion raised his eyebrow at Ana
"I didn't have anything to do with the attack on Avengers tower.  It all happened before I was ever born"

"But the Brotherhood did, didn't it? You probably have a shared memory about some of the planning behind that, right? So don't pretend like the Brotherhood can really claim any sort of moral high ground."

Danny sat back quietly, listening to the conversation.
For now, he seemed happy to hear the throughs of others spoken aloud, than chime in.

"But I'm not with the Brotherhood.  And besides, whatever they are doing doesn't excuse your own actions.  That's not how it works" not a coincidence they were sitting with the one Legion clone that had reservations about the way the Brotherhood were doing things.  That's why he agreed to help them to begin with.  Or more precisely, help them so he can enlist the help of Captain America.

"It's fine; suit yourself.  I'm not counting on you anyways"
This message was last edited by the player at 13:57, Mon 27 Sept 2021.

"Dude, you were with the Brotherhood two hours ago." Frank didn't want to berate the guy, but his claims of innocence were somewhat disingenuous. "If we hadn't convinced you otherwise, you'd be with them right now.

"And you were there at Noman's Land, even if this body is new. You've got memories of that... all the way back to childhood, I'll bet."

"I might have the memories, but I'm not the same guy.  I wasn't there" The Legion outright refuses to accept any responsibility for whatever happened at Nomans Land, or any other crimes his ancestors committed for that matter
This message was last edited by the player at 14:25, Mon 27 Sept 2021.

"So, let me get this right. One of you commits a crime. Then that one splits into two, both of which can then claim they aren't the original that committed the crime. So you can do whatever crime you want and you're always innocent. I don't accept that, and I doubt the courts will, either; and I'm saying this from the standpoint of someone who has argued in favor of one of your clones being innocent."

"Well, obviously, the one that created the duplicate should be held accountable for the crimes he committed.  But how is the new duplicate guilty of anything?  He was only brought into the world.  I don't see why you should judge me only on account of me remembering doing something awful.  Something I would never do myself.  It's not fair"

He shook his head

"And it gets more complicated than that.  When we merge, our memories do as well.  Sometimes we find out one of our clones did something reprehensible only after we absorbed him. Once we are one, we can no longer tell which memories came from where.  Should we be held responsible for memories we absorbed?"

The Legion phrased his objection as a question, because, to be honest, he was quite confused about the entire thing also.  And having that PHD in philosophy only served to make things MORE complicated, if anything.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:36, Mon 27 Sept 2021.

The helicopter arrived to Stark's warehouse before the group concluded their discussion.  Like everything Stark, the 'warehouse' was unnecessarily grandiose; a massive high-tech installation made of hardened concrete, right on eastern bank of Sylvia Lake.

As they approached the helipad, the man watching their descent stepped out of the tree line.    Dressed in black and purples, he was holding a longbow, of all things, complete with a quiver of arrows strapped to his back.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:39, Mon 27 Sept 2021.

Ana Sofía keeps going as they arrive. "If you choose to drink and you get so wasted that you black out and kill someone while driving a car, you'll have no memory of doing something terrible that you probably wouldn't have even done. Yet you're still responsible for killing that person.

"Meanwhile, the rest of the world won't be able to distinguish between an original and a clone. I'm not sure that's even correct. Is it really an original and a clone, or is it one splitting into two? In biology we certainly know of fission. Is that just what happens with you? Of course you want your get-out-of-jail-free card, where you can do anything by just creating a new clone, having it commit a crime, and then reabsorbing it. So of course you'll just argue laws don't apply to you. But, if you haven't figured it out, most people won't think you alone should be above the law."

But she's pretty sure he won't accept anything short of him being above the law, so this isn't likely to lead anywhere. Meanwhile, she and Frank need to get back to the City soon. Ana Sofía gets out when it's her turn and follows along with the others.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:53, Mon 27 Sept 2021.

In reply to Legion (msg # 31):

"I played this video game a while back. Fun little indie roguelike, called Heat Signature. There's a faction called the Glitchers that use teleportation technology, fully understanding and making this whole cultural point about what it means to destroy yourself and create an identical copy halfway across space. There's this big conversation in the game about what happens when the tech fucks up and the original doesn't get destroyed. It really got me thinking." Zoey bites her lip. "A lot of it came down to treating the pattern as the individual, rather than any specific instance. But Legion's replication demonstrates considerable value drift with each iteration, so not much of that applies. He's right in that it would be unethical to judge any specific instance for the sins of his progenitors. But even accounting for value drift, claiming complete innocence seems... exploitative."

Zoey is quiet for a moment. "Frankly, Leagie-boy, your power scares the shit out of me. I would be scared of creating a version of me that is better than me. Or... more motivated. More extreme. I already barely trust myself; how could I possibly trust a weird permuted variation of me?"

---

Zoey eyes the weird bowman. She isn't one to judge one's weapon preferences; she herself carries a sword, and there were a lot of reasons in this weird fucked up world to use archaic weapons. Arrows beat ballistic armor, they might be more effective against certain powers too. But if this is one of the Good Guys she doesn't recognize him. She raises her hand, fingers poised to snap, and glances to Happy. "Friend?" she inquires.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:39, Tue 28 Sept 2021.

Frank had fallen into silence as Zoey had mostly taken over the debate with Legion as to the nature of his powers. He had also fallen into step with Ana Sofia and the others as they exited the helicopter and headed indoors.

Then Zoey was pointing to the guy with the bow and arrows. Frank had assumed that he was friendly based on two facts: one, they were on what had to be one of the most secure properties on Earth, and two, he wasn't actually shooting the arrows at anyone. But as long as she was raising the question, Frank certainly wanted to hear the answer.

"I dunno.  I might be the more extreme version of the original Legion, if he even goes by that name.  We know there are some of us that never create a duplicate, or that are unwilling to merge back.  But it's sort of like natural selection - if they refuse to perpetuate themselves, they become an insignificant minority, or go extinct"

The Legion waited until the helicopter landed, and for the rotors to stop spinning them, before he disembarked.  The archer has closed the distance by then, waiting just outside the cockpit for Captain America.

"What happened to your shield?" the archer inquired as he shook the Captain's hand

"Long story.  Hawkeye; I'd like you to meet Freedom Force, and friends" The Captain quickly cycled through their names, or callsigns, as the case may be

"And this here - " he tapped the archer on his shoulder "Is the bravest man I know" The Captain wasn't jesting.  Hawkeye, the least renowned member of the Avengers, didn't have any supernatural powers, or a high-tech suit of armor.  All he had was grit, and lots of it.  For Captain America, that was all which was required.

"Guess everyone uses hero names here. Hi, I'm Windtalker, with Freedom Force." Ana Sofía smiles at Hawkeye pleasantly. She nods toward the Legion clone. "This one here is actually an informant, a clone of the ones who attacked today."
This message was last edited by the player at 23:45, Tue 28 Sept 2021.

Zoey lets her hand fall. Definitely friend. Probably friend? That definitely looks like friend body language. If Captain America says Hawkeye's a brave boi then she's inclined to believe him. Of course she'd be inclined to believe anything he says. Inside her head a miniature effigy of her is bouncing around doing a fangirl dance. Fortunately no one can see it; it is very embarrassing and not chill at all.

"Zoey," she fills in for the Captain when he momentarily falters. "Civilian."
This message was last edited by the player at 02:03, Wed 29 Sept 2021.