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Jun. 28th, 2017 09:41 pmUser Name/Nick: Ryann
User DW: cornichaun
AIM/IM: cornichaun cornichaun cornichaun
E-mail: CORNICHAUN
Other Characters: none
Character Name: Rip Hunter
Series: DCTV’s Legends of Tomorrow
Age: 30s
From When?: This question becomes bizarrely complicated when applied to time travelers. But: early second season, after the Waverider absorbs a nuclear blast intended for New York circa World War II. Rip escapes the ship by making physical contact with the time drive, something that could easily have killed him.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Rip is manipulative, ruthless, and singleminded to the point of tunnel vision in pursuit of a particular goal. When the ends are important enough to him, he will destroy anything in his path, use anyone he can, to get what he wants. Though he struggles with this part of himself, and works hard to try and follow rules of ethics and responsibility in time travel, all his training goes out the window when his emotions are involved. Of course, even when he does follow the rules, does stick with his training, he does so with the same ruthless disregard for individual life. Ends justify the means. Always.
These two conflicting impulses aren’t irreconcilable. A warden would be able to help him use emotions and training in concert, not in conflict. If he could manage to overcome his own pain and do this, he’d be a better person and a more effective guardian of the timeline.
Item: n/a
Arrival: Rip was brought from the moment that he made physical contact with a time drive, a move that’s about as stupefyingly risky as it sounds. In canon, he ended up in 1967, with amnesia, as a temperamental and moody science fiction film director, sublimating his suppressed memories into fiction. Instead, here, Rip will end up on the Barge.
Abilities/Powers: Rip is physically human. He is, however, a Time Master, meaning that he’s been extensively trained in protection of the timeline. He works with extremely advanced technology regularly, invented the Time Sphere (a mini time traveling device), and is well versed in temporal physics. He also has historical expertise, tactical training (hand-to-hand and weapons-based combat), and he’s an excellent liar.
Personality: Rip Hunter was once an orphan cutpurse named Michael, a ruthless little bastard quick with a knife. He always had to struggle for life in a world that wanted to grind him down to nothing, and he always had to cling with every tenacious scrap of his being to hold onto anything, whether food, possessions, or emotional connection. As a young child, Rip had nothing, and fought for everything, and he never fully let that aspect of himself go.
As an adolescent, he was deemed to have a minimal or nonexistent effect on the timeline by the future organization of the Time Masters, and, as such, he was removed from his personal timeline, raised in an orphanage, and later trained to be one of the Time Masters himself. The orphanage was the first time Rip formed genuine, secure emotional connections, and he still adores Mary Xavier, the woman in charge of the orphanage and the one Rip considers to be, in all the ways that matter, his real mother. For a street urchin denied all of that security, all of that connection, this experience was earthshattering. Rip learned to form deep and lasting connections with people, and this changed his future completely.
Rip’s emotional connections cause him no end of trouble. He had a forbidden affair with another Time Master in training, causing her to resign, sacrificing her career for his. Later, he married her and had a son, though the Time Council deeply discourages such relationships. He formed a deep friendship with bounty hunter Jonah Hex in the old American West, leading him to go off-mission and stay in history. These all ended in pain: Miranda’s resignation, the destruction of the old West town of Calvert (which Rip had to abandon to bandits in the region), and, eventually, the brutal death of Miranda and Rip’s son Jonas at the hands of a violent dictator. And yet. And yet Rip persists. Put it this way: Rip has an absolutely insane budget of fucks to give. He has millions of fucks. Billions of fucks. Vastly more than any person raised in the security of emotional connections. And you know that phrase "don't spend it all in one place"? He spends it all in one place. He spends it all on his people. Oh, he might leave five or ten fucks left over to spend on things like justice, protecting the timeline, helping people, etc etc., but the vast majority of his fucks to give are spent on his people. When his family is killed, Rip discards everything that he previously valued, ditches his position as a Time Master, steals a ship, and goes to fuck up history in order to save them. Rip's pain is out of control and wild, and, coupled with his training and experience, quickly makes him the most notorious and effective time criminal that the timeline has ever seen.
In pursuit of this goal, he gathers up a team he can control. And he lies to them, he teases them with what they always wanted, he manipulates them, and he gets them on his team to take out Vandal Savage. And he does a really good job, because every time his lies and manipulations are revealed, after the team yells at him, after they get mad, they always come back. This isn't because Rip is several steps ahead -- it's because he always knows what to say in the moment. Rip can switch gears in an instant: after spending much of an episode all but ordering Sarah Lance to kill another member of the team if that team member was captured, Sarah doesn't do it. In an abrupt about-face, Rip then tells her, quietly and inspirationally, that she didn't do this because it was her humanity, and that she did the right thing -- exactly what Sara needed to hear. But, if she had killed that team member, odds are Rip would have been there doing much the same thing: telling her that she saved millions of people by sealing the deal, that she did right, that she is better than she used to be. It looks like inconsistency in Rip, but it's not. He can switch gears on a dime, but that's because he don't give a fuck what gear he's in. He's the one who's got his hands on the steering wheel, after all.
He's not a chessmaster (despite how often the team turns to him for a plan on what to do next, which he never actually has); he's never had to be. Rip is too accustomed to everyone else on the board (to stretch this metaphor) playing a different game than him -- and since he rarely has an opponent who's working directly against him for directly opposing goals, he doesn't have to think more than a step or two ahead. So he's manipulative, he's tactically intelligent, but it's usually in an improvisational way, which means he gets cornered way too often when someone on the opposing side is actually thinking about how to counter him.
I mentioned an attitude that the "ends justify the means", up in that inmate section. This isn't entirely accurate. Rip flat-out doesn't process "ends" and "means" the same way. He's a time traveler -- his perspective has to take the broader consequences into account. A time traveler must, every day, make choices that individually are morally wrong, because of the overall consequences. Any time traveler that couldn't would just fuck things up right and left (see: pretty much all of the Legends all the time forever). Someone living in an ordinary, linear timeline has to live with their own actions in a world where the long-term consequences are never clear. Rip knows the long-term consequences, and therefore must discard the small-scale judgments in order to stay sane. He's been well-trained not to give a fuck on anything but the big stuff.
For example: the Legends get stranded in one possible future, at one point. One of them wants to stay and fight A Big Battle where she could help the thirty-years-along version of her friends. Rip nearly loses his goddamn mind, because not only does that risk his overall mission, it's stupid -- this timeline isn't real, no matter how real it seems. That Legend goes anyway. Predictably, Rip ends up coming along behind to help her out, and it's played off as Rip Deciding To Do The Right Thing. That's absolutely not what happened: Rip made the choice to go save one of his team, risking himself and the others in a selfless way to, once again, make his more selfish goals easier to achieve. He lets the rest of the team think what they want about his motives.
Selfless selfishness is a theme with him. At one point, when she asks, he outright tells Sara Lance that he would probably sell out the team for a better chance at getting his family back. When she, understandably, balks at his leadership, he takes the next chance to throw himself in front of an energy bolt for a member of the team, later saying that he couldn't have his team thinking he didn't care, could he? Again: it's played as Rip doing the right thing, but it's not. Rip's actions, selflessly risky, accomplish the very selfish goal of putting him right back in the team leadership position.
Which isn't to say that he's purely ruthless. Rip's one, enormous, overpowering weakness bites him in the ass here too: he likes these people. He forms connections with them. They become his family, too, in the process of him trying to save the people who matter most to him. And so, in the end, he is able to accept the temporal inevitability of Miranda and Jonas's deaths, and he survives, physically and emotionally -- once he and his team kill the shit out of Vandal Savage and he has his rev, because he's found a new place to invest his give-a-fucks. See, he likes this team thinking that he's making good choices. Much of Rip is performative: he acts one way because he wants to be perceived that way, even to the point of fooling himself.
So this all brings us to how Rip is now. He's not healed. While the end of second season, when he accepts the temporal inevitability of his wife and son's deaths, looks like a measure of redemption, it solved nothing. He's kept his pain, but replaced his family with the Legends.
In second season (after his canon point, but still shows insight into Rip's psyche), Rip gets brainwashed by the Legion of Doom (yes, really) and starts fucking with history. Rip, it turns out, is still Rip. Still himself, in some very essential ways. He takes a violent joy in manipulating people, in his power to change the timeline. He's unmoored from any sense of moral responsibility, any restraint. And yet, when describing his attitude on the preservation of the timeline, he says -- history is suffering, history is disease, history is "holding a dead child in your arms." Turns out the best way to make Rip evil isn't to work on his emotions, but to cut out the spare fuck-change in his fucks-to-give budget: once he really forgets his feelings on everything but Miranda and Jonas, he turns into an absolute amoral bastard who cares for nothing at all.
Barge Reactions: I don't think much on the Barge is going to be a big deal. Rip deals with magic, mad science, and time travel; he's at least familiar with the concept of dimensional travel, as well. The existence of the Barge will be an initial surprise, but won't come anywhere near shattering his worldview.
He will, however, get his boxers in a twist over Captain Cold and Mick Rory being wardens, while he's an inmate.
Path to Redemption: Often, the problem with inmates on the Barge is some version of "the ends justify the means" -- losing track of the meaning of individual choices when there's an overall goal in mind. That's not really Rip's problem. His version of "ends justify the means" makes total and perfect sense; he's a time traveler. Keeping the timeline intact requires getting your hands dirty. That's the greatest good for the greatest number.
The problem is when he ditches all of that to save his family. It's absolutely stunning how much Rip puts at risk on his vendetta. The team sees a new dire prediction of the future practically every episode! By dragging the untrained and inexperienced Legends in, Rip not only risks them (seven people, for the price of Rip's wife and son), but also lets future technology fall into the hands of terrorists, nearly causes the Soviet Union to win the Cold War, accelerates Savage's rise to power, and gets several people permanently killed, including two members of the team. Rip regularly shows moral qualms, but he always seems to get over them real fast, and just keeps on keepin' on. If Rip had fully adopted the persona and priorities of a time traveler, ruthless as it sounds, he would be morally in the clear, because he wouldn't have dragged all these people into trouble for selfish reasons.
So this makes him being on the Barge pretty interesting. The Barge is very good at making people develop connections and deep friendships and letting that shift the priorities of inmates, especially villains. That thing in particular would just perpetuate Rip's overall problem: being a needy, clingy orphan who became a cold-ass time traveler.
Rip needs to more carefully budget his fucks to give, and remember that broader perspective. He can do it without losing touch with his humanity. It's just a matter of someone who can guide him through the necessary balancing act and bringing him out intact on the other side.
Deal: n/a
History: http://arrow.wikia.com/wiki/Rip_Hunter
Sample Journal Entry: http://tlvgreatesthitsdw.dreamwidth.org/81801.html?thread=19075465#cmt19075465
Sample RP: There are times Rip has been trapped in smaller spaces than this.
The Waverider, for example. He's been stuck within those walls. And he's traveled within those walls, stayed purposefully disguised and quiescent in wait for time pirates of various stripes. The Waverider is spacious, for one person, but it's not endless. The entertainments do run out, and isolating madness starts to set in.
The Barge is different. It's rather larger. There are more people here, crammed in a bit tighter than Rip's strict taste. There's the Enclosure. The deck, with its view that Rip believes will never cease to be stunning. And yet -- and yet, frustration is still setting in.
His efforts to escape have only been low-level, thus far. The greatest potential for leaving would come with a rescue -- the others being plucked from their stranded times, taking the Waverider, and coming to find him. It may take a while. He must be patient.
In the meantime...
His cabin is a fragment of the Waverider. Interesting, the sorts of choices that show up here. They're usually something of home. And Rip would have thought that the house he shared with Miranda and Jonas would be more likely to show up. Or maybe one of the rooms he had at the Refuge. But, no; it's the Waverider, his library and his cabin, disjointedly connected with one another.
But -- empty.
Not in the sense of possessions. In the sense of Gideon.
The silence is echoing and penetrating. Which is strange, because Gideon doesn't speak much when she is there. But something about that silence is reassuring -- as though there's a just-inaudible hum of activity, a gentle presence always on watch. Gideon is always there. Always.
Except for now.
Gideon makes any confinement easier to take. But not this one.
Rip runs his hands through his hair, breathing out a long breath. And he turns towards his cabin door. No point in staying in here. He accepted the Admiral's "deal", such as it was, because there's no way Rip Hunter would ever voluntarily choose death, with nothing at stake. Doesn't hurt to give his end of the bargain a fair swing while he waits for the real Waverider.
Special Notes:
When Rip touches the Time Drive, he has in his possession 1/4 of the Spear of Destiny, an artifact used to kill Jesus Christ, which, in this universe, has unimaginable powers to rewrite reality.
I'd like him to keep it.
First off, 1/4 doesn't actually do anything on its own (if you put it in fire, it shows words; you can use it to point temporally and spatially towards the other spear fragments, also, but none of its reality-rewriting powers are present). Second, Rip won't be trying to use it -- it requires special rituals, none of which he knows, and his main goal is to just keep it out of the hands of anyone nefarious. It could potentially be used for plot later on, but for now, Rip is just going to very studiously hide it in his cabin.
Since it's not dangerous, and since Rip would be much reassured knowing that it's not floating around in the multiverse, I'd like him to keep it. It's not Crucial To His Mental Wellbeing or anything, though. If y'all think it has too much powerful potential.
I would also like him to arrive in a small temporal explosion, if that's cool, as though the Time Drive flung him straight to the Barge. It could generate some decent opening threads. Again, not a crucial thing, it just might be fun.
User DW: cornichaun
AIM/IM: cornichaun cornichaun cornichaun
E-mail: CORNICHAUN
Other Characters: none
Character Name: Rip Hunter
Series: DCTV’s Legends of Tomorrow
Age: 30s
From When?: This question becomes bizarrely complicated when applied to time travelers. But: early second season, after the Waverider absorbs a nuclear blast intended for New York circa World War II. Rip escapes the ship by making physical contact with the time drive, something that could easily have killed him.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Rip is manipulative, ruthless, and singleminded to the point of tunnel vision in pursuit of a particular goal. When the ends are important enough to him, he will destroy anything in his path, use anyone he can, to get what he wants. Though he struggles with this part of himself, and works hard to try and follow rules of ethics and responsibility in time travel, all his training goes out the window when his emotions are involved. Of course, even when he does follow the rules, does stick with his training, he does so with the same ruthless disregard for individual life. Ends justify the means. Always.
These two conflicting impulses aren’t irreconcilable. A warden would be able to help him use emotions and training in concert, not in conflict. If he could manage to overcome his own pain and do this, he’d be a better person and a more effective guardian of the timeline.
Item: n/a
Arrival: Rip was brought from the moment that he made physical contact with a time drive, a move that’s about as stupefyingly risky as it sounds. In canon, he ended up in 1967, with amnesia, as a temperamental and moody science fiction film director, sublimating his suppressed memories into fiction. Instead, here, Rip will end up on the Barge.
Abilities/Powers: Rip is physically human. He is, however, a Time Master, meaning that he’s been extensively trained in protection of the timeline. He works with extremely advanced technology regularly, invented the Time Sphere (a mini time traveling device), and is well versed in temporal physics. He also has historical expertise, tactical training (hand-to-hand and weapons-based combat), and he’s an excellent liar.
Personality: Rip Hunter was once an orphan cutpurse named Michael, a ruthless little bastard quick with a knife. He always had to struggle for life in a world that wanted to grind him down to nothing, and he always had to cling with every tenacious scrap of his being to hold onto anything, whether food, possessions, or emotional connection. As a young child, Rip had nothing, and fought for everything, and he never fully let that aspect of himself go.
As an adolescent, he was deemed to have a minimal or nonexistent effect on the timeline by the future organization of the Time Masters, and, as such, he was removed from his personal timeline, raised in an orphanage, and later trained to be one of the Time Masters himself. The orphanage was the first time Rip formed genuine, secure emotional connections, and he still adores Mary Xavier, the woman in charge of the orphanage and the one Rip considers to be, in all the ways that matter, his real mother. For a street urchin denied all of that security, all of that connection, this experience was earthshattering. Rip learned to form deep and lasting connections with people, and this changed his future completely.
Rip’s emotional connections cause him no end of trouble. He had a forbidden affair with another Time Master in training, causing her to resign, sacrificing her career for his. Later, he married her and had a son, though the Time Council deeply discourages such relationships. He formed a deep friendship with bounty hunter Jonah Hex in the old American West, leading him to go off-mission and stay in history. These all ended in pain: Miranda’s resignation, the destruction of the old West town of Calvert (which Rip had to abandon to bandits in the region), and, eventually, the brutal death of Miranda and Rip’s son Jonas at the hands of a violent dictator. And yet. And yet Rip persists. Put it this way: Rip has an absolutely insane budget of fucks to give. He has millions of fucks. Billions of fucks. Vastly more than any person raised in the security of emotional connections. And you know that phrase "don't spend it all in one place"? He spends it all in one place. He spends it all on his people. Oh, he might leave five or ten fucks left over to spend on things like justice, protecting the timeline, helping people, etc etc., but the vast majority of his fucks to give are spent on his people. When his family is killed, Rip discards everything that he previously valued, ditches his position as a Time Master, steals a ship, and goes to fuck up history in order to save them. Rip's pain is out of control and wild, and, coupled with his training and experience, quickly makes him the most notorious and effective time criminal that the timeline has ever seen.
In pursuit of this goal, he gathers up a team he can control. And he lies to them, he teases them with what they always wanted, he manipulates them, and he gets them on his team to take out Vandal Savage. And he does a really good job, because every time his lies and manipulations are revealed, after the team yells at him, after they get mad, they always come back. This isn't because Rip is several steps ahead -- it's because he always knows what to say in the moment. Rip can switch gears in an instant: after spending much of an episode all but ordering Sarah Lance to kill another member of the team if that team member was captured, Sarah doesn't do it. In an abrupt about-face, Rip then tells her, quietly and inspirationally, that she didn't do this because it was her humanity, and that she did the right thing -- exactly what Sara needed to hear. But, if she had killed that team member, odds are Rip would have been there doing much the same thing: telling her that she saved millions of people by sealing the deal, that she did right, that she is better than she used to be. It looks like inconsistency in Rip, but it's not. He can switch gears on a dime, but that's because he don't give a fuck what gear he's in. He's the one who's got his hands on the steering wheel, after all.
He's not a chessmaster (despite how often the team turns to him for a plan on what to do next, which he never actually has); he's never had to be. Rip is too accustomed to everyone else on the board (to stretch this metaphor) playing a different game than him -- and since he rarely has an opponent who's working directly against him for directly opposing goals, he doesn't have to think more than a step or two ahead. So he's manipulative, he's tactically intelligent, but it's usually in an improvisational way, which means he gets cornered way too often when someone on the opposing side is actually thinking about how to counter him.
I mentioned an attitude that the "ends justify the means", up in that inmate section. This isn't entirely accurate. Rip flat-out doesn't process "ends" and "means" the same way. He's a time traveler -- his perspective has to take the broader consequences into account. A time traveler must, every day, make choices that individually are morally wrong, because of the overall consequences. Any time traveler that couldn't would just fuck things up right and left (see: pretty much all of the Legends all the time forever). Someone living in an ordinary, linear timeline has to live with their own actions in a world where the long-term consequences are never clear. Rip knows the long-term consequences, and therefore must discard the small-scale judgments in order to stay sane. He's been well-trained not to give a fuck on anything but the big stuff.
For example: the Legends get stranded in one possible future, at one point. One of them wants to stay and fight A Big Battle where she could help the thirty-years-along version of her friends. Rip nearly loses his goddamn mind, because not only does that risk his overall mission, it's stupid -- this timeline isn't real, no matter how real it seems. That Legend goes anyway. Predictably, Rip ends up coming along behind to help her out, and it's played off as Rip Deciding To Do The Right Thing. That's absolutely not what happened: Rip made the choice to go save one of his team, risking himself and the others in a selfless way to, once again, make his more selfish goals easier to achieve. He lets the rest of the team think what they want about his motives.
Selfless selfishness is a theme with him. At one point, when she asks, he outright tells Sara Lance that he would probably sell out the team for a better chance at getting his family back. When she, understandably, balks at his leadership, he takes the next chance to throw himself in front of an energy bolt for a member of the team, later saying that he couldn't have his team thinking he didn't care, could he? Again: it's played as Rip doing the right thing, but it's not. Rip's actions, selflessly risky, accomplish the very selfish goal of putting him right back in the team leadership position.
Which isn't to say that he's purely ruthless. Rip's one, enormous, overpowering weakness bites him in the ass here too: he likes these people. He forms connections with them. They become his family, too, in the process of him trying to save the people who matter most to him. And so, in the end, he is able to accept the temporal inevitability of Miranda and Jonas's deaths, and he survives, physically and emotionally -- once he and his team kill the shit out of Vandal Savage and he has his rev, because he's found a new place to invest his give-a-fucks. See, he likes this team thinking that he's making good choices. Much of Rip is performative: he acts one way because he wants to be perceived that way, even to the point of fooling himself.
So this all brings us to how Rip is now. He's not healed. While the end of second season, when he accepts the temporal inevitability of his wife and son's deaths, looks like a measure of redemption, it solved nothing. He's kept his pain, but replaced his family with the Legends.
In second season (after his canon point, but still shows insight into Rip's psyche), Rip gets brainwashed by the Legion of Doom (yes, really) and starts fucking with history. Rip, it turns out, is still Rip. Still himself, in some very essential ways. He takes a violent joy in manipulating people, in his power to change the timeline. He's unmoored from any sense of moral responsibility, any restraint. And yet, when describing his attitude on the preservation of the timeline, he says -- history is suffering, history is disease, history is "holding a dead child in your arms." Turns out the best way to make Rip evil isn't to work on his emotions, but to cut out the spare fuck-change in his fucks-to-give budget: once he really forgets his feelings on everything but Miranda and Jonas, he turns into an absolute amoral bastard who cares for nothing at all.
Barge Reactions: I don't think much on the Barge is going to be a big deal. Rip deals with magic, mad science, and time travel; he's at least familiar with the concept of dimensional travel, as well. The existence of the Barge will be an initial surprise, but won't come anywhere near shattering his worldview.
He will, however, get his boxers in a twist over Captain Cold and Mick Rory being wardens, while he's an inmate.
Path to Redemption: Often, the problem with inmates on the Barge is some version of "the ends justify the means" -- losing track of the meaning of individual choices when there's an overall goal in mind. That's not really Rip's problem. His version of "ends justify the means" makes total and perfect sense; he's a time traveler. Keeping the timeline intact requires getting your hands dirty. That's the greatest good for the greatest number.
The problem is when he ditches all of that to save his family. It's absolutely stunning how much Rip puts at risk on his vendetta. The team sees a new dire prediction of the future practically every episode! By dragging the untrained and inexperienced Legends in, Rip not only risks them (seven people, for the price of Rip's wife and son), but also lets future technology fall into the hands of terrorists, nearly causes the Soviet Union to win the Cold War, accelerates Savage's rise to power, and gets several people permanently killed, including two members of the team. Rip regularly shows moral qualms, but he always seems to get over them real fast, and just keeps on keepin' on. If Rip had fully adopted the persona and priorities of a time traveler, ruthless as it sounds, he would be morally in the clear, because he wouldn't have dragged all these people into trouble for selfish reasons.
So this makes him being on the Barge pretty interesting. The Barge is very good at making people develop connections and deep friendships and letting that shift the priorities of inmates, especially villains. That thing in particular would just perpetuate Rip's overall problem: being a needy, clingy orphan who became a cold-ass time traveler.
Rip needs to more carefully budget his fucks to give, and remember that broader perspective. He can do it without losing touch with his humanity. It's just a matter of someone who can guide him through the necessary balancing act and bringing him out intact on the other side.
Deal: n/a
History: http://arrow.wikia.com/wiki/Rip_Hunter
Sample Journal Entry: http://tlvgreatesthitsdw.dreamwidth.org/81801.html?thread=19075465#cmt19075465
Sample RP: There are times Rip has been trapped in smaller spaces than this.
The Waverider, for example. He's been stuck within those walls. And he's traveled within those walls, stayed purposefully disguised and quiescent in wait for time pirates of various stripes. The Waverider is spacious, for one person, but it's not endless. The entertainments do run out, and isolating madness starts to set in.
The Barge is different. It's rather larger. There are more people here, crammed in a bit tighter than Rip's strict taste. There's the Enclosure. The deck, with its view that Rip believes will never cease to be stunning. And yet -- and yet, frustration is still setting in.
His efforts to escape have only been low-level, thus far. The greatest potential for leaving would come with a rescue -- the others being plucked from their stranded times, taking the Waverider, and coming to find him. It may take a while. He must be patient.
In the meantime...
His cabin is a fragment of the Waverider. Interesting, the sorts of choices that show up here. They're usually something of home. And Rip would have thought that the house he shared with Miranda and Jonas would be more likely to show up. Or maybe one of the rooms he had at the Refuge. But, no; it's the Waverider, his library and his cabin, disjointedly connected with one another.
But -- empty.
Not in the sense of possessions. In the sense of Gideon.
The silence is echoing and penetrating. Which is strange, because Gideon doesn't speak much when she is there. But something about that silence is reassuring -- as though there's a just-inaudible hum of activity, a gentle presence always on watch. Gideon is always there. Always.
Except for now.
Gideon makes any confinement easier to take. But not this one.
Rip runs his hands through his hair, breathing out a long breath. And he turns towards his cabin door. No point in staying in here. He accepted the Admiral's "deal", such as it was, because there's no way Rip Hunter would ever voluntarily choose death, with nothing at stake. Doesn't hurt to give his end of the bargain a fair swing while he waits for the real Waverider.
Special Notes:
When Rip touches the Time Drive, he has in his possession 1/4 of the Spear of Destiny, an artifact used to kill Jesus Christ, which, in this universe, has unimaginable powers to rewrite reality.
I'd like him to keep it.
First off, 1/4 doesn't actually do anything on its own (if you put it in fire, it shows words; you can use it to point temporally and spatially towards the other spear fragments, also, but none of its reality-rewriting powers are present). Second, Rip won't be trying to use it -- it requires special rituals, none of which he knows, and his main goal is to just keep it out of the hands of anyone nefarious. It could potentially be used for plot later on, but for now, Rip is just going to very studiously hide it in his cabin.
Since it's not dangerous, and since Rip would be much reassured knowing that it's not floating around in the multiverse, I'd like him to keep it. It's not Crucial To His Mental Wellbeing or anything, though. If y'all think it has too much powerful potential.
I would also like him to arrive in a small temporal explosion, if that's cool, as though the Time Drive flung him straight to the Barge. It could generate some decent opening threads. Again, not a crucial thing, it just might be fun.
