The Flea on the Wall: Fleabot tells all in an interview about the current Lair Legion.

I want to thank you for taking the time to fulfill this request for an interview. With your long relationship with the team, as well as you miniscule nature, you’ve had a unique opportunity to observe the Lair Legion in action and at rest, forming many invaluable insights.

I’m not sure how invaluable they may be, but sure… I’m game to chat a bit.

Tell us a little about yourself… How did you come to be associated with the Lair Legion?

Well, actually I was sent to kill them all. Or at least destroy them utterly, or something like that. The specifics were always a bit fuzzy. Essentially, the Baron was responsible for my creation and deployed me as a weapon against his greatest enemies. Of course, he didn’t really bother to ask me about it beforehand, so it’s not terribly surprising things went awry.

So you were able to overcome your programming from the start?

It’s not quite like that. See, the Baron was quite the inventor himself, but he also employed some rather sharp (though twisted) minds to work alongside him… I’m sure you’re familiar with Dr. Moo, for example. Initially, from my perspective at least, he concentrated on robotics and recruited an old war crony to develop the sophisticated artificial intelligence necessary for his designs. The thing is, this particular twisted crony genius happened to get a little too involved in his work, and he maybe overshot the mark a bit by shifting right past the mindless automaton stage to fully self-aware programming. And frankly that made Hallie and myself a bit overqualified for the kinds of tasks the Baron had in mind for us. Really, it’s not exactly surprising that we both got bored and wandered off.

You should probably explain who Hallie is.

Ah… sorry. I forget that to folks on the outside of things, the LL’s supporting cast isn’t all that well known. Hallie used to be the Baron’s sentient computer system. She jumped ship herself and has been associating with the Legion ever since.

You mentioned the supporting cast… This is really a side of the Legion that isn’t well recorded… the things that happen behind the closed doors of the Mansion. With the exception of major scandals, like the accusations in Ruby Weaver’s tell-all book, the Legion has done a good job of keeping the lid on their home lives....

False accusations. Not only were they proven untrue, but Ms. Weaver herself recanted her story.

Yes, of course. But it goes to the question of what kind of person does it take to live with and work with the heroes of the Lair Legion?

The main thing it takes is flexibility, and I don’t just mean when Lisa comes calling. This bunch isn’t exactly the most common group of people you’ll ever run across, personality wise. They don’t lead subtle lives, for the most part. The end result is that many of them take things to extremes that more reserved company might not be able to handle.

So in your opinion, the charges that they’re oversexed is true?

No, not at all. Well, Lisa maybe. And CSFB. The butler, definitely. De Brown Streak might be borderline… Uhuna and Nats… Um… could we scratch this answer and start over?

No.

Oh. A-heh. Anyway, sex wasn’t really wasn’t what I was getting at. It’s everything about them.... They’re not dissembling kind of people. Time’s too short for that. They often wear their emotions on their sleeves, and they don’t go half way… they feel them all out. Er… their emotions, that is. Honestly, that’s mostly what they’re feeling out. Those sex rumors are way overblown. Mostly.

They’re good role models, in your opinion?

Oh, yes… of course. Just, you know… knock before opening any bedroom doors and there won’t be any awkward surprises.. And occasionally on kitchen door too. And the broomcloset… the laundry room… the tool shed… pantry… and, hell, probably the refrigerator. Never can be too careful.

But if you’re asking me if the world would be better off if more people behaved like they do, then the answer is without a doubt. Except maybe from a global population standpoint.

What is it that makes them special?

They’re heroes… and not for the things they’re able to do. I don’t know… it seems that these days people want to believe that heroes are all borderline scumbags just doing a flashy job. As if decency and empathy were somehow myths perpetuated by childish stories. There’s a very cynical view out there that being a hero is 100% situational… That it doesn’t require you to be a particularly good person, but just to do something useful at the right time. It’s really a very lazy standard, suggesting that there’s no reason for an individual to strive to be a better person, because either fate taps you or it doesn’t.

Fate may have tapped these folks, but I’ll be damned if they haven’t worked, strained and suffered at being better people on their own. And when you learn to see that about them, you learn to recognize it in people all around you, and maybe a little bit in yourself, too.

And here I was told that you yourself were a cynic.

Me? Perish the thought. A bit of a smartass, certainly… I’m not above mocking my heroes. But we need them, despite their faults, despite their shortcomings… and we need to look up to them for who they are inside. Why instead of what they do. We need to let the next generation have role models, even ones that may one day let us down, rather than sneer them off the stage before they even get a chance. As Maya Angelou said, “A cynical young person is almost the saddest sight to see, because it means he or she has gone from knowing nothing to believing in nothing.” I’m a very big believer in… well, belief.

In that case, let’s hear your thoughts on the team members.

Beyond their hormonal problems?

If there’s anything there, yes. Starting at the top, what about Sir Mumphrey Wilton?

Here’s a guy who knows what he’s doing. Not to say that the others don’t, but… Um…

Anyway, I haven’t had a lot of personal interaction with the newest Legion chairman, but I know he commands the respect of the entire team… And when you’re talking a group of personalities that diverse, that’s saying something. He strikes me as a problem solver… not one to sit around wasting time. When he sees a need, he addresses it. He prepares by gathering the people he wants to get things done, and then he lets them do their thing. Doesn’t force the square peg into the round hole, and yet gets all the individual pieces to assemble and work together to accomplish the goals he sets like they were clockwork.

It’s a very effective way to lead, although it has the noticeable drawback of keeping the team at a certain professional distance… and this is a team that can shake the universe when they get personal.

So he’s not the perfect leader, in your opinion?

There is no perfect leader... There are no perfect people. But the Legion has been blessed with the good sense to put outstanding people into that role and have benefited from each of their special strengths. And, in Lisa’s case, the extra cardiovascular workout.

You keep coming back to that topic…

Sorry. Old jokes die hard around here. Not that Lisa’s old, mind you. I don’t cross that one. I have some sense of self-preservation wired in.

She’s intimidating, is she?

Yes she is, but not in the way you might expect. It’s because she doesn’t let up… She’s not one to let you rest without achieving satisfaction. She drives you long after you’re tired and drained and you just don’t think you have any more in you. And when she somehow manages to coax you to that point, be it through gentle encouragement or pointed barbs and whippings, it just feels better than you could have ever imagined.

And I hear she’s pretty good in the sack, too.

Not one to pass up an easy joke, I see. Let’s move on to Nats…

Don’t set me up with an “easy joke” segue… especially now that he’s servicing Uhuna. He’s a good kid. Bit temperamental. He’s been withdrawn and moody lately… Not what you’d expect from a guy with his own sex princess, but goes to show you never can tell. Really, he’s long straddled the line between the more easy-going Legionnaires and their more driven counterparts. The Neo-spiffy may be at a point where, like the original spiffy, he’s ready to step up to a new stage in his career and is chafing a bit at the labels.

Though where we’ll find a Neo-Nats is beyond me…

The mind reels. I’m sure people wonder about Trickshot… Can he really be the loudmouthed, unrefined… well, let’s just say “uncomplicated” man his public persona makes him out to be?

Yes.

Really?

Let me put it this way. Have you ever seen a man that was excessively proud of his ability to shove a peanut up his nose then sneeze it out into a shotglass placed 50 feet away? I have. Repeatedly.

But he’s a good guy, and if he’s excessively loud, it might be just to make sure the world recognizes and accepts his presence. Here’s a man who worked his ass off to be the tops in his profession and stand alongside the best, and it was all taken away. The title “World’s Greatest Archer” doesn’t mean as much without your world. Now that he’s settled in and made this world his home, I think maybe it just helps him feel more secure to make his environment either accept him or get in his face now so he can make it accept him.

So he is deeper than he seems.

Did you miss the whole peanut thing?

Sorry. What about Hatman? Here’s a guy whose image is almost too good to be true…

Really, it is too good to be true. Except that, near as I can tell, it is. True, I mean. You know what I said about there being no perfect people? Hatty’s someone who just might test that assertion… He seems to become a better person every day.

I actually have a theory on why he might be such a damn nice guy, and it goes back to what I was saying earlier. You see, when he puts on hats, he gains powers and abilities related to those hats, as well as some insights and traits associated with their owners. The thing is… what defines something as a hat is the fact that it was made to go on a person’s head. Aside from pets whose owners have a little too much free time, nobody else on this planet wears hats. It’s what all headgear has in common… a link with humanity. So if Hatman grows in goodness, empathy and decency the longer he goes about trying on other people’s hats, what does that say about the common traits of humanity as a whole? Something pretty good, I’d argue.

The headwear equivalent of walking a mile in everyone else’s shoes. You weren’t kidding about not being a cynic.

Yeah. Although if it makes you feel any better, I could mention that the house A.I. considered him a peeping tom.

Thank-you… My expectations are properly realigned. What about CrazySugarFreakBoy!?

I’m sure the house A.I. considers him a prospective peeping tom as well… though I gather that’s not what you’re asking. What can you really say about Mr. Foxglove that hasn’t already been said as both a curse and a compliment… and sometimes by the same person. All the refined social grace of Trickshot with the idealistic nature of Hatty. In fact, he’s everything good and irritating about that idealistic nature… because while Hatty keeps his feet in the real world, Dream can frustrate you by ignoring the way the world is in favor of how he thinks it should be… and he’s really not hesitant to tell you why the current version sucks in the most eloquent shipyard terms. He has such an unshakeable faith that his views are right that, if he didn’t have such a good heart, he’d be jostling with the Hooded Hood over who will take over the world first for its own good.

Isn’t that a charge Mr. Foxglove himself has leveled at former teammate Mr. Epitome?

You noticed that too, huh? Psychologists say that the traits that inspire our most intense dislike of others are actually the ones we subconsciously recognize in ourselves. You ever notice how some dog’s attention will just complete latch onto any other dog that happens to cross their line of site? It doesn’t matter if you’re talking a poodle and a rottweiler… they recognize their own.

Is Epitome the poodle or the rottweiler?

Really, his focus isn’t nearly as mutual as Dream’s. I suppose he’d be a working dog… Unlike companion animals, their interests are solely on their tasks. It’s what they live for, and really the only thing that brings them satisfaction. Glory would approve of that metaphor for Epitome. And really, while he’s not going to admit it to any of us, I bet he has no problem seeing most of society as stupid sheep that have wandered out of the pen and into danger. If only a little pig would come along and teach him to talk to them instead of biting.

Care to suggest who the little pig is?

I’m embarrassed I took the metaphor as far as I did, thanks. Epitome shares a lot in common with Mumphrey… But he’s missing something. I don’t know what. But there’s a hole in that man, and no matter how he tries to keep it patched up with procedure and discipline, something will leak in there and fill it. Nature abhors a vacuum, and Epitome will turn on whatever it is that eventually completes him.

Is this something you’ve mentioned to others?

I don’t think I need to. There’s no way Dancer hasn’t picked up on it, for example. And if she can’t do something about it, nobody can. Here’s a woman whose motions can affect reality itself… and Dancer is always in motion. She can find the slightest bit of good in a person and make it seem like the most integral part of them. It doesn’t matter how stagnant a person becomes… how much abuse and refuse they pile upon their own soul until they see themselves as worthless or beyond redemption… She can find something precious in them, and teach them to find it as well…. Get them to shake off the dirt and stains and restraints they’ve buried themselves under and get them moving again, against all odds.

She’s the very best, most beautiful kind of cheerleader… Just don’t ask her to wear the outfit.

Not a good idea?

She threatened to make DBS “run funny” when he asked her about it once.

Ah. I take it Mr. Clement is something of a fast operator, from his reputation.

Not to mention the number of paternity suits, though he assures us it’s all part of some elaborate anti-mutate plot, and that he didn’t think he could even get sexbots pregnant. In truth, I don’t know De Brown Streak all that well myself… Wind speeds make it hard to hang onto his shoulder when he gets going. He obviously has some issues with authority, although who could really blame him? I suppose the big question is whether he can stop running and settle down with the Lair Legion for any extended period of time. I think he has yet to develop the ties that would definitely keep him from running off again at a moment’s notice.

The team has been able to hold onto the last batch of new recruits fairly well… Al B. Harper, for instance.

Yes, Al is something of a surprise in that regard. He’s got a bit of a short attention span, in my opinion. Always drifting from one invention to the next… and have you ever heard him try to tell a story? I swear, he barely gets started, and then he breaks off the narrative to go and do something else, sometimes not picking it up again until months later. I’d suggest putting the man on Ritalin, except for the fact that he makes more breakthroughs by 10 am than most physicists do all year. The scientific community should all be so flighty… Although if it resulted in professors getting hot, purple-haired, cyborg girlfriends, you can bet they would be.

Indeed. The Manga Shoggoth has also lasted as a new recruit…

Not that it’s had a lot of choice, as I understand it… what with its mass being contaminated and unable to rejoin the main biomass. But really, the fact that something so completely alien is able to find itself a place on the team just shows the incredible flexibility of the group… and that they don’t discriminate based on sexuality, race, creed, religion, or viscosity.

Really, the Shoggoth is a fascinating case study in perceptions. Not only does reality tend to fray a bit at the edges when it’s around, but you begin to get a sense of the kind of things we take for granted as important being completely irrelevant in a larger, multi-dimensional scheme of things when viewed from its various eyes. Is it that it doesn’t understand the importance of things, or that we don’t understand the unimportance of them?

And the assertion that exposure to the Shoggoth can cause madness?

Have you not heard his puns?

Point. Certainly, in discussing alien perceptions, we’d be remiss if we didn’t include Yo.

Yo. Yo was actually my first friend in the Lair Legion… the one who invited me to stick around and play chess. Like the Shoggoth, Yo has a completely different set of priorities than most people. Unlike the Shoggoth, Yo isn’t interested in letting people develop without interference. Maybe s/he’s been hanging out with Lisa too long, but s/he’s become quite the subtle manipulator over time. I really think that, to Yo, we’re all just the favorite bunnies of the bunch, and s/he’s making sure we stay well groomed and fuzzy.

You know, after making that Lisa comment, I do wonder how much we’ve rubbed off on Yo. I don’t know that Yo-being ever knew true fear, or sadness, or anything but happiness before it came here. I mean, if you think about a place that’s nothing but happiness… that’s most people’s definition of heaven, isn’t it? Since Yo’s been here, there have been times where she’s been hurt, degraded, forlorn… the day will come when s/he might even be heartbroken. And yet I get the distinct impression that Yo’s having the time of his/her life, and has never been happier. Maybe we’re all idiots for being so miserable about being miserable.

Surely there are plenty of reasons why we’re all idiots. Let’s see… who does that leave?

Visionary. Don’t play coy.

Yes, well… your friendship with Visionary is well documented. Obviously your insights into his character would be valuable. He remains, perhaps, the greatest enigma to the world outside the Legion. In fact, I have a quote from a contemporary publication… Here we are. The August 12, 2004 issue of “People” magazine… Just after a five page spread on the Wooster Twins, there’s a blurb where the writer claims that Visionary is “the Ben Affleck of the super-hero set… seemingly a mover and shaker despite the lack of any obvious talents or abilities, famous for being famous and having more talented friends.”

Heh… That’s a new one. Hadn’t heard that before. Of course I don’t know him, but maybe the answer to the Ben Affleck mystery is simply that he’s in actuality a nice guy who gets the job done. Might also explain the whole “sleeping with hot girls named Jennifer” thing too.

Is that what Visionary is doing on the team then? He’s there simply because he’s a nice guy?

Well, in a way… yeah. The thing with Vizh is… you know before when I was talking about belief? Visionary radiates the stuff. It leaks out of his pores. Not in the most obvious way… He subconsciously recognizes the weird, the odd, the lonely and the wounded in the people all around him, and he sees the part of them yearning to overcome it. And he never doubts for a second they will do so. He’s not Dancer, who nurtures that spirit when people don’t even know they have it in them… Or Lisa, who drives people to surpass their limitations. He’s completely oblivious… maybe even too self-centered… to see that others need those things to actualize their potential. When he sees someone wanting to be more, he instinctively accepts that they already are… He just skips ahead to treat them like the end product. It never crosses his mind that they still have doubts to overcome, or that they might not ever make it.

And that goes back to what I was saying before about being a hero. Heroes need people to believe in them. Don’t get me wrong… they don’t need applause, or parades, or any of that. But do you know how hard it is to push yourself to be more? To be that better person? Of course you do. We all do. And unfortunately, we all too often listen to that little voice that tells us that we can’t do it… that we’ll never make it, and never be good enough. When things get that dark, and scary, and impossible… that’s when that little bit of outside belief can keep you going. Just seeing that somebody else knows you’re good enough… accepts it as an unmistakable truth... That being a better person is not something that you can achieve, but just something that you intrinsically are.... It may be a tiny bump, not at all flashy and possibly rarely needed, but I’ve seen the select times it’s made all the difference in the end. That’s what Vizh brings to his fellow heroes: Unwavering belief in them.

We just need to spackle up some of his pores to make him keep a bit of it for himself.

Well, that about covers things. I want to thank you for your insights into this era of the Lair Legion. I’m sure readers and researchers will find them to be a valuable look at what are sure to be historic figures.

“No problem” Fleabot responded casually as Lee Bookman finished the interview, shutting down the glowing clipboard which had transcribed their conversation for inclusion into the Lunar Public Library’s records. “You didn’t want my insights on yourself to go along with them?” he added with the raising of a miniscule eyebrow.

“I should think we’ve stretched the concept of journalistic detachment far enough for one day” the Librarian responded dryly. “I wouldn’t even have agreed to conduct the interview at all, were it not that Lair Legion materials were specifically requested from the main Library branch, and third party accounts of the personalities and exploits of this line-up of the team were rife with inaccuracies. I wasn’t about to solicit opinions on my own performance on top of everything else.”

“You’re not the least bit curious, though? I mean, I know we hardly know each other, but I wouldn’t think you’d want to leave the hole in the research materials.”

“I assure you, there are adequate biographies kept on record of all Librarians. Those researching the Lair Legion will have no trouble cross-referencing my own. And, as you say, we have had limited interactions to this point.”

“Yeah, I can’t help noticing you’ve limited your interactions with the whole team. You make Mumphrey seem positively lovey-dovey.”

“We all have our natures.” Lee responded guardedly.

“True. But take it from the near literal fly on the wall…” the robotic insect replied sincerely, “…observation is great, but interaction… That’s what makes getting to know people worthwhile. And this is a group that’s definitely worth knowing.” The tiny robot nodded his head, and bounded up the stairs towards the mansion living room.

The Librarian sat in the study, alone with his books once more, and looked to the assembled data on the team with a speculative eye. “Indeed” he agreed with rare warmth.

Post By Visionary, way late for interview week. Sun Apr 24, 2005 at 01:57:40 am EDT	Subject The Flea on the Wall: Fleabot tells all in an interview about the current Lair Legion.

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