Sentry lands and takes directions from Maggie very carefully and literally taking the tasks very seriously. He follows the mood of the others smiling and focusing when they do.
He would emulate others eating, trying not to show that this would be the first time he actually feels himself chewing and swallowing. He concentrates of how his body changes in the course of having Maggie's hot meal, especially in his stomach.
Maggie is a gentle instructor. A natural big sister, she guides with firm correction and a massive amount of patience; some might notice that as she is focused on helping and teaching someone, her general anxiety wanes.
Aware of Sentry's incredible strength, she makes sure he relaxes enough with the knife he doesn't break it.
She asks him, softly, "You seem like Superman, but he grew up on a farm." Implying a farm boy would likely know how to chop a cabbage. "Where do you come from?"
The Sentry quietly follows the instructions well, even though the big sister guidance is new to him. He attempts to relax when directed, but does not really know what it means.
He looks at Maggie when she asks her question without a trace of guile, "I grew up on a farm in Smallville, Kansas with my adopted parents." He keeps their names to himself, because he wants to protect them from people who would want to hurt him.
"And you? Where do you come from?" He adds to make it a conversation instead of an interrogation.
Her eyes raise in surprise but she answers his question first. "I grew up in Hong Kong. I live with my adoptive sisters. Though we're in Japan now. Well, that's where I was..."
She nods at him. "I'm sorry. I assumed that someone from a farm would know a little about cooking. But I don't know much about farms, except what I've read in books. What was it like?"
The Sentry wonders what surprised Maggie and listens to her own origin. He shrugs at her question and replies, "I don't know. Like you would imagine, I guess."
He starts to wonder why he can't remember any cooking specifics or what a hot meal feels like.
Herakles stuffs the MRE feast into his bearded maw with much aplomb.
"Har! Verily a feast worthy of Hestia herself!"
At the mention of farms he chuckles, before offering an anecdote;
"Farms? Places of lifestock and grain! I can recall the stench of manure from the Augean Stables like it was yesterday! Nay... I shall leave the husbandry of such places to thine family Sentry! Give me a taverna or battlefield o'er pungent labour!"
The Sentry wonders what surprised Maggie and listens to her own origin. He shrugs at her question and replies, "I don't know. Like you would imagine, I guess."
He starts to wonder why he can't remember any cooking specifics or what a hot meal feels like.
"Don't you remember?" She blurts, puzzled. "I... I have some issues with my memory... " she adds, trying not to make him feel bad.
At Herakles' boasting, she smiles softly. It's odd to imagine the 12 labors being real... and the hero who performed them is really before her. And a brother of his she hasn't heard of! Somehow mildly-confused Superman and the Blue Beetle are a little easier to accept.
Doc steps forward to help if anything needs to be done. He is competent with a knife, more than competent, working like someone with culinary training. He also produces a bag of rice flour from his leather messenger bag. "I can manage some dumplings, I think. With some cabbage and some spam from the MREs, it should be passable. The SPAM will be plenty salty, and you have some hot sauce there. I have some soy sauce. I've learned in my trans-dimensional jaunts that soy sauce always goes a long way to providing some umami to various dishes."
"As for your memory issues, I do know who each of you are. The First gave me detailed briefings on you, and made it clear that I was recruiting each of you from a specific time and place. Sentry, I am sorry to be the one to break this to you, but those memories you are remembering aren't real. Just before we pulled you out of your home timeline, a group of teen heroes broke you out of a life support tube. You are not Kal El of Krypton or Clark Kent of Earth. You are a clone of that individual. On your world, a being known as Doomsday killed Clark Kent shortly after he began his career as a hero. Kent was a child of a planet called Krypton, sent by his parents to Earth when his planet was exploding. You are a blank slate Superman, ready to become whatever version of a hero this multiversal world needs."
The Sentry was about to reply to Maggie that his memories were cloudy like everyone else's, when Doc drops a proverbial bomb on him. He freezes while all eyes stare at him.
After an uncomfortable pause, he asks, "a clone? So, my memories of growing up on the farm in Smallville did not happen? And everyone's memories are not cloudy like mine?"
"So, my first true memory is waking up within the wreckage of that metal and glass cylinder and wooden crate?"
"I'm a blank slate?" He looks a little emotionally shattered.
Maggie's jaw drops as Doc hands him this harsh truth. She can't stop him. But her mind races to the moment she found the dossier on the Paper Sisters that told her the truth about herself and her sisters. Wendy had dropped the bomb on her specifically to harm her. To demoralize her. She assumed, still, Doc's intentions are good. But this was not the way to do things.
She lifts a hand, and if he lets her, she lays it on Sentry's shoulder.
"You're still real. You're here."
The Sentry looks down at Maggie when she lays her hand on his shoulder.
He recognizes the memories of the portal to arrive here and of the warehouse with the broken cylinder and crate from which he awoke are so much clearer than those of Smallville, whether the prom where he was dancing immediately before waking up or of the memories of cooking and eating a meal with his adoptive parents when he has no clear memories of how food feels when swallowing.
He replies, "I suppose so. Unless the machine feeding me memories has significantly improved." His sense of humor is wry.
Herkakles shakes his head at Senty's concern;
"Nay lad. I remember a milenna like it were yesterday... Unless thou do speak of Dionysus' infamous feasts... For there I would draw a blank! Hah!"
He chuckles as he wistfully recalls the excess...
"So thou are akin to Castor and Pollux? Twins but different? One a mortal, the other a god? Which are thee I wonder..."
The Sentry looks toward Herakles and asks, ”how do you know the difference between mortal or god?”
Doc looks embarrassed and horrified. "Don't take that to mean you aren't real. Out of nearly infinite versions of your story, you are the one The First chose for this team of heroes. Your choices are what make you who you are. You seem like you want to be a hero, so you just have to decide to be a hero. As for the difference between a mortal and a god, I have some ideas about that, but it might be better to wait until I can show you more clearly. For now, it might help to know that the energy of creation, the primal spark that creates reality, it flows through gods and mortals differently. You will see in time, but not until after we deal with our current problems."
In the lab, Abner flips some switches and the kitchen appears on some 90s style color monitors and audio from the conversation comes from small speakers. "No reason we can't be part of the conversation, Ted."
Ted ponders the conversation and feels it might be a bit heavy for him to contemplate right now as he is busy trying to build their weapon against the machines, instead he asks Abner something light in subject that will allow his mind to work on the problem at hand in the background as he carries on with some light conversation to distract him, "No, indeed. So tell me Abner, what do you miss about your old life?"
The Sentry pulls a small, folded piece of paper from a suit pocket in the small of his back. He holds it up and says, "my creator told me to be better than Superman, so I will try to do that based on the hazy memories that I have of Superman."
Doc nods and seems to think some deep thoughts, "On the Earth that I am from, Superman is just a comic book character. Well, I guess there was also a TV and radio show. But mostly comic books. He is an amazing hero. That is a lot to try to live up to."
Ted ponders the conversation and feels it might be a bit heavy for him to contemplate right now as he is busy trying to build their weapon against the machines, instead he asks Abner something light in subject that will allow his mind to work on the problem at hand in the background as he carries on with some light conversation to distract him, "No, indeed. So tell me Abner, what do you miss about your old life?"
Abner strokes his chin with his thumb and forefinger. "You are going to think this is crazy, but I miss the banter. Before the bombs dropped, I'd fight Spider-man, or Iron Man, or the Fantastic Four. And they would say these funny, quippy things. Right off the cuff. Skull-net and its Sentinels and Terminators are so serious, so incessant. And Tony has completely lost his sense of humor. I miss that back and forth. I lost most of those fights, but there was a connection, right? A relationship."
Ted smiles as he hears Abner's response, "That is funny. I know what you mean. Banter can make the action feel fun. I wonder ..." Ted drifted off into the recesses of his mind and started laughing to himself, "I remember once pulling this prank with my League members where I had our computer answer all the League's questions in a foreign language no one spoke. It was hilarious ... that is until a crisis happened and I had to revert the language back to English and reboot the system. It was funny for like a few minutes. This one guy, Guy, to be exact, lost his mind, well ... he might have lost it before that, but anyways." He laughs to himself remembering the incident.
Ted looks to Abner and says, "What if our hacking program uploaded a Banter Language and then switched the default Machine Language to our Banter Language. That would be HIL-ARI-OUS!" He just laughs to himself quietly for a few moments.
"I don't get out in the field too much these days, Conner says I'm too valuable to risk taking a plasma bolt to the noggin. So you are part of a league? Like professionals? I was part of a few teams, but I never found a group who respected me, so I usually ended up going it alone. It wasn't until after the world ended that I found a group that appreciated what I had to offer. Took a global nuclear holocaust to find my purpose in the world. Probably not worth it."
May I?" Maggie's hand approaches the paper that Connor holds up, curious about the handwriting and/or message.
"I've read a few Superman comics. What I know of him is I think he'd want you to be yourself. Not try to be him."
The Sentry hands Maggie the piece of paper and replies, ”My creator wants me to be better than Superman. Whatever that means.”
By the time Abner and Ted have put together the casings for their nano-bot rounds in a few different calibers, the smell of vegetables and hot sauce has filled the corridors of the base (but not the lab, it is well sealed).
Kyle, Kate, and Giselle eat slowly, almost tentatively, not quite sure how to take the dish in. Based on their looks, Kyle and Giselle are probably not old enough to remember fresh food, though Giselle is clearly a mutant or something, so who knows how she might age.
Abner digs in with gusto. He is old enough to remember creature comforts.
John mostly just pokes at his food, watching everyone, clearly evaluating his resources.
The Sentry is one of the last to sit down to eat, as he watches everyone else serve themselves and start eating. He emulates what they do and slowly swallows the food memorizing the all of the feeling trying to understand what a hot meal feels like. He also copies the reactions of good or meh and praises for the cook.
He is really just trying to fit in and not reveal to them how much that he has no idea what he is doing with this meal.
Doc seems to notice Sentry's discomfort. He catches the young man's eyes and makes his movements very deliberate, making clear how to hold the utensils, how to lift the food to the mouth. Me makes slightly slower and more exaggerated chewing and swallowing motions, and smiles when his student is successful.
If you are paying attention, it occurs to you that Doc might be more comfortable as a teacher than as a multiversal adventurer.
As the meal winds down, John draws the conversation back to the issue at hand. "So we have a weapon that can turn the enemy's foot soldiers against it. I say we take the battle to them. For the first time, we have the opportunity to gain air superiority. We have an aircraft and, I guess, a paper dragon, to get those of us who can't fly to the Helicarrier, and we have Sentry and Jason who can get there on their own. The Helicarrier will be in contact with the Skull-net core. From there we can figure out where our enemy is located and destroy it for good. I will lead a very splashy assault while Kate and Kyle infiltrate the communication center and locate the Skull-net core. We suspect it is here in Colorado in a hardened cold war military installation, but we haven't been able to find it. Either way, we need to take out Stark before we go after the core. Otherwise he will come in as back up and we will be overwhelmed. I don't know all of your abilities, so if there is something else you have to offer, this would be a good time to speak up."
The food is simple. Rice, cabbage, eggs, with hot sauce and soy sauce and some random MRE add-ins. It is as tasty as it can possibly be; she has managed to make a delicious meal with less out of necessity. It is hot, filling, poverty fare, uncomplicated and digestible. Though Maggie is not pushy, she gives Connor a stare when he pushes his food around, too ingrained by living poor to endure the thought of wasted food. "If you don't like it, give it to someone else. But if we are heading for a fight. You need all the energy you can get."
In her conversation with Sentry, Maggie blinks at Sentry. "Superman is... an ideal." She doesn't quite manage the connection verbally that trying to be better than an ideal makes little sense.
Some time passes before she sits down with him as they eat. "I don't know who your creator was. But you don't have to do as they say." She pauses, and speaks slowly, finding the words. "My sister was created in a lab. A test tube baby. Made by bad people. People who wanted to take over the world. I was given my powers... probably with the same genetic material used to make Anita. By other bad people. Both groups wanted to use us to hurt other people. Anita owes her creators nothing. I owe nothing to my former employers. We're still human beings who have to choose our own path. I can only hope your creator wanted good things for you. But it's still your choice to make, not theirs. Superman is supposed to be inspiring. Not a measuring stick."
Later as they make plans, John asks for understanding of their powers, Maggie offers:
"I can firm the molecular structure of paper, so that it is harder than steel while remaining paper thin. I can stop bullets. Cut through several inches of metal. I can telekinetically manipulate it and make simple shapes. I can alter what's on paper, including some forgeries. As long as I can concentrate, I can form a bond with the paper, pulling it together into an extension of my will--inhabiting it as my familiars. The giant origami marionettes. I can see through them. I can use them for transportation, infiltration, attack, and defense. In my... team... my role is support and defense." She pauses, blushing. "My aim is terrible, so I can't do ranged attacks. Though I can attack someone from a distance with a familiar." She spreads her hands. "I've tried to stock up on paper as much as I can. If I run out, I'm useless." The last part is probably not true, but she is reduced to merely being a resilient private detective/bodyguard with an eidetic memory.
Herakles leans back sated, having eaten his fill.
At John's plan he nods, then emits a hard chuckle when the heroes are questioned, before rising to his feet;
So... I trust my good Captain, mine own renown doth speak for itself!?"
With each decree he flexes, then smiles wryly before seating himself once more.
The Sentry listens to Maggie and Herakles introduce themselves. Meanwhile, the thought that Superman was an ideal and not real ran through his mind. If Superman was not real, was he really a clone? He remembered watching Superman on television responding to crisis, saving people, and battling supervillains. He looked real to him, but then again none of his memories were real.
After a comfortable pause following the boisterous introduction of Herakles, the Sentry steps forward and offers with his own wry smile, "I believe that I'm faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. I can hear very well and can see through things. And, I can concentrate my vision to be super hot. I think Superman can do other things too, but I don't know if I can do those."
He steps back out of the attention.
Kate takes in the responses, appraising the team,"I say we have Jason, Herakles, and Sentry attack, forming a beach head on the carrier. Then Blue Beetle brings his stolen flyer in once a landing site is secured. Maggie's dragon provides a backup if the Bug is destroyed before it can land. We don't have much hope for stealth, so we land and go guns blazing, hoping to covert some Terminators into allies. Kyle and I will get into the interior and find the communication center, and Abner will help us use it to find the location of the Core. Once we have completed our mission, we bail out and you 'sink' the helicarrier."
Abner nods, "While Ted was finishing up his special bullets, I managed to hack Maggie's phone and replicate it for the rest of us. It will allow us to communicate as long as we are in the same hemisphere. I used the old Avengers communicator tech. Stark uses the same tech as the old identicards, but the communicators were analogue. I think they will go unnoticed."
The Sentry accepts the communicator and slips into the pocket in the small of his back. "Thank you."
He does not have an opinion on tactics so just listens to the others.
Herakles nods at the plan with a wide grin;
"Hah! We will bestow upon them the Gift of Battle! Truly it will be glorious to witness!"
He then takes the communicator, eyeing the small thing with curiosity;
"During thine 2nd of World Wars I witnessed the use of "walkie-talkies" and other such communication devices. Truly this is diminutive in comparison..."
He watches The Senty stow his with an bushy brow raised... then shrugs as, bereft of pockets, he stows his shorts betwixt his taut buttocks.
"I thank thee also."
Ted thinks for a moment and says, "Do we want to go hunting for foot soldiers we can re-program first? Just to test out our new weapon? Maybe we can take a couple with us in the flying ship? Maybe do a Trojan Horse trick? Sneak ourselves into their Skull-Net facility and run amok in there." He was thinking that if they can infiltrate the main facility then they can do the most damage once inside.
Maggie nods at Blue Beetle. "That's a good idea. Do we have time?"
The team of natives all look to Conner. He nods, "We have all the time in the world. Skull-Net isn't going anywhere, and we don't have any assets at risk of imminent destruction. There is a an old supply depot 80 clicks west of here. It was another Cold War supply stash. We emptied most of the useful stuff a decade ago, but Skull-Net keeps an eye on anywhere resistance forces have been, so they will be paying attention to it. If you showed up there, it would certainly attract enough attention for you to test your weapon."
Maggie nods, ready to follow the group's lead. She had dispensed with her paper uniform for something appropriate with an apron while cooking, but reassembles the blue, black, and white battle outfit.
The Sentry wipes the warm meal from his face and stands up. "Shall we go?" He looks at the natives and his fellow visitors for consensus.
Herakles wipes his beard clean of any morsels and grins as he rises;
"Verily with full bellies and full hearts we shall win the day!"
The godling cracks his knuckles and readies himself;
"Does your chariot await friend Beetle!?"
Sentry doesn't see or hear anything that seems like trouble.
Kate and Kyle hang back to get some rest before the assault on the helicarrier. John will come with you.
Abner comes along in The Bug, but Giselle stays behind to keep things running in the mountain base.
It is a 15 minute flight at The Bug's cruising speed. Jason and The Sentry fly escort, Sentry scouting ahead. John briefs you as you travel.
"This place was a Cold War storage depot. It was full of food, spare parts, land vehicles, construction equipment, and all kinds of things. There is a lot of materiel there, but nothing that is all that useful to us. We pulled out the food long ago, the fuel is all spoiled. There are plenty of explosives. We will look like we are there to recover some supplies. Blue Beetle land by the bunker doors. There might be some guards that will automatically alert Skull-net. We might have to wait for an aerial unit to spot us and send something to investigate. The system will have logged you as having powers, so I expect its response will be intense..."
Maggie looks at Beetle. "What do you need for support?"
Into his communicator, the Sentry observes, "I don't see or hear any threats, yet."
Herakles, for his part sits, his normally jovial expression darkening as he begins to ready himself for the bestowing of "The Gift"...
The Rockies hold all manner of Cold War secrets. You fly through seemingly never ending valleys, mountains reaching up on both sides to 10 or 12 thousand feet above sea level. The ground here is covered in a thick layer of dirty snow, the result of 30 years of nuclear winter. The wasteland is not completely dead, but the river that once filled the valley below is choked with mudslides and ash.
The installation that is your target is a relic. Guard stations and metal barricades stand unguarded.
A dirt road winds through hills to a bunker built into a mountain. Machine gun and artillery emplacements still stand, but non one mans the weapons. Two massive steel doors cover the entrance to the bunker. They stand open, the interior dark and cavernous.
Once the specific bunker is identified, the Sentry disappears to fly into orbit for a satellite-eye view. He hangs there bathing in the rays of the sun watching for Skull-Net response.
When he is called on his communicator or sees a response from Skull=Net incoming, he returns at supersonic speed.
As they approach, Maggie sends her paper doll ahead of them about 40 feet to check for mines or booby traps.
Sentry finds that his low orbit is much less crowded than he would expect. There are very few satellites, and none functional.
As they approach, Maggie sends her paper doll ahead of them about 40 feet to check for mines or booby traps.
A deep red light, almost invisible, shimmers over the paper doll. Since the doll is paper, it doesn't trigger a response.
The Sentry enjoys the clear view in low orbit and unfiltered solar radiation, as he waits for the signal from his new companions.
"Infrared scanner ahead. Need a way to block our heat signatures." She looks questioningly at Beetle and Jason, whose abilities might be most useful here.