The Legion [Mods] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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legionmissions2017-01-03 12:57 am
letsgolegion) wrote in legionmissions2017-01-03 12:57 am
Entry tags:
SILENT HORIZON - [Part 1: The In-Between] [modplot]
Who| Everyone who signed up
What| 2 spoopy
Where| In The In-Between, the pocket dimension inside the Silent Horizon
When| After Valor's Day. Mission starts shortly before "No Sanity Clause" and runs simultaneously in game time
Warnings/Notes| Potential warnings for EVERYTHING. This is a horror plot that may tread a lot of ground. Please keep in mind that you can stumble on disturbing stuff in almost any thread. We advise all players to put warnings in the subjects of threads when they lean towards cut-worthy stuff.
The mission was simple. The team had to board the derelict Silent Horizon, a ship with an experimental stardrive, after it finally reappeared in UP space, many hours after it was supposed to reappear, during its first field test. No life signs were aboard, but the presence of several Roboticans on the crew -- who were undetectable by bioscan -- meant that the ship had to be boarded to make sure the Robotican crewmen were gone, too.
The United Planets government, concerned about the loss of the crew members, asked the Legion to step in, in case the threat on board was of a metapowered nature. Due to the massive danger implied by an entire starship crew going missing, the response team sent on the mission was relatively large, more than enough to handle any hostiles. None of this "we'll just send one tiny team to go alone into a giant starship against an unknown threat" business. No, if there was a hostile force on the ship, the plan was "let's drop 25+ Legionnaires on its head." Safety in numbers.
It was a good idea. In theory. In most cases, it would've given them the edge that would've let them face something very nasty without succumbing to it themselves. But in practice, it just meant that it was a much larger team that suddenly went missing after watching the last video log of the previous crew on the command deck.
Screams poured out of the screen the moment it started to play -- automatically -- when they entered the command deck. Onscreen, they saw the original crew murdering each other, tearing each other apart in a blood-soaked rampage.
"Wait, stop! What's wrong with everyone? Why are you --?" cried out one of the Robotican crew members, clearly immune from whatever was causing the madness, but his cries went unheeded as one of his Coluan crew-mates bashed his head clean off with a chair.
After the video played, the darkness swept in, wrapping around the whole team of Legionnaires, making them feel frozen all the way down to their bones and stealing consciousness away from them. When they woke again, they all found themselves separated, waking up in a realm of nightmares.
The halls breathe here -- at least in the places that have walls. They flex in and out, like the passageways inside the lungs. Sometimes the walls give way to open nightmare-scapes, remote and foggy, or bright and alien and exposed. The landscape bends and shifts around them, reacting to their thoughts and fears. And every so often, far off, there is the pitter-pat of something strange moving through this place. Like the sound of many feet -- or hands -- slapping against the ground or flesh-walls.
At some point, there is always a voice that each of them hears, tinny and robotic and distant, warning them of a being called the Faceless, that rules this realm. They're told not to feed from his blood, that if they do they'll be made a part of this place. If they accept his offer, and change forms, they'll eventually bleed to death, and if the Faceless isn't stopped before they die, those that die in their mutated forms will belong to him forever.
It's not the only voice they'll hear, though. This is a land filled with whispers. And screams. And the sounds of begging sometimes, too.
And for some of the Legionnaires, the In-Between speaks to them, touches something deep and dark inside them -- and it's calling them home.
What| 2 spoopy
Where| In The In-Between, the pocket dimension inside the Silent Horizon
When| After Valor's Day. Mission starts shortly before "No Sanity Clause" and runs simultaneously in game time
Warnings/Notes| Potential warnings for EVERYTHING. This is a horror plot that may tread a lot of ground. Please keep in mind that you can stumble on disturbing stuff in almost any thread. We advise all players to put warnings in the subjects of threads when they lean towards cut-worthy stuff.
The mission was simple. The team had to board the derelict Silent Horizon, a ship with an experimental stardrive, after it finally reappeared in UP space, many hours after it was supposed to reappear, during its first field test. No life signs were aboard, but the presence of several Roboticans on the crew -- who were undetectable by bioscan -- meant that the ship had to be boarded to make sure the Robotican crewmen were gone, too.
The United Planets government, concerned about the loss of the crew members, asked the Legion to step in, in case the threat on board was of a metapowered nature. Due to the massive danger implied by an entire starship crew going missing, the response team sent on the mission was relatively large, more than enough to handle any hostiles. None of this "we'll just send one tiny team to go alone into a giant starship against an unknown threat" business. No, if there was a hostile force on the ship, the plan was "let's drop 25+ Legionnaires on its head." Safety in numbers.
It was a good idea. In theory. In most cases, it would've given them the edge that would've let them face something very nasty without succumbing to it themselves. But in practice, it just meant that it was a much larger team that suddenly went missing after watching the last video log of the previous crew on the command deck.
Screams poured out of the screen the moment it started to play -- automatically -- when they entered the command deck. Onscreen, they saw the original crew murdering each other, tearing each other apart in a blood-soaked rampage.
"Wait, stop! What's wrong with everyone? Why are you --?" cried out one of the Robotican crew members, clearly immune from whatever was causing the madness, but his cries went unheeded as one of his Coluan crew-mates bashed his head clean off with a chair.
After the video played, the darkness swept in, wrapping around the whole team of Legionnaires, making them feel frozen all the way down to their bones and stealing consciousness away from them. When they woke again, they all found themselves separated, waking up in a realm of nightmares.
The halls breathe here -- at least in the places that have walls. They flex in and out, like the passageways inside the lungs. Sometimes the walls give way to open nightmare-scapes, remote and foggy, or bright and alien and exposed. The landscape bends and shifts around them, reacting to their thoughts and fears. And every so often, far off, there is the pitter-pat of something strange moving through this place. Like the sound of many feet -- or hands -- slapping against the ground or flesh-walls.
At some point, there is always a voice that each of them hears, tinny and robotic and distant, warning them of a being called the Faceless, that rules this realm. They're told not to feed from his blood, that if they do they'll be made a part of this place. If they accept his offer, and change forms, they'll eventually bleed to death, and if the Faceless isn't stopped before they die, those that die in their mutated forms will belong to him forever.
It's not the only voice they'll hear, though. This is a land filled with whispers. And screams. And the sounds of begging sometimes, too.
And for some of the Legionnaires, the In-Between speaks to them, touches something deep and dark inside them -- and it's calling them home.
1, a
He was trying to stay calm. He'd thought that if Mother were there to advise him, she'd have told him to stay calm. But it was work. Nothing in her stories had prepared him for this. Some of his own life had prepared him for this - but not nearly well enough.
When he spotted another Legionnaire at the top of this bend in the path, the obvious visual cues that something was wrong with Roland didn't stop Kubo from climbing into view. He'd come across a creature once who'd been twisted into something no longer human, and that creature had protected and taught and loved him as he'd always hoped his father would. It took more than the warp of transformation to make Kubo afraid of a friend after he'd met his own father in such a twisted state.
"Hey," he called, his voice soft, yet carrying with his showman's projection. He kept his back near a wall as he moved. "Over here - are you all right?"
Relief at having found another Legionnaire was already relaxing him by fractions.
no subject
He hasn't noticed yet. He's studying the figure. The figure of the new person, whoever this is. The urge to kill is there, waiting, and so a part of his study consists of a search for weaknesses, weapons. But the urge to kill has always been there. He's spent the whole of his adult life getting practice in controlling it.
"All right," he repeats, but slowly, as if the words are part of some foreign sentence. The entire concept of all right is foreign. He's forgotten the phrase, forgotten that people say it.
Nevermind all right.
"Child. What the hell are you doing? You've got no business here!"
no subject
"- maybe not. But . . . we're both here, and we're both alive. That's good, right?"
Kubo smiled, trying to project encouragement to the transforming man. He hadn't reached for his shamisen yet, and it was the only thing on him that looked even remotely like a weapon.
"Have you seen anyone else we know?" he asked, stepping slowly closer. Have you seen my mother? Is my mother still alive too? was the question screaming at the back of his mind, threatening to break him down when he didn't have a safe place to break down in. If Roland had seen anyone they knew at all, that would be miraculous itself. He had to find out first if the man himself was all there, or if the magic was taking his mind along with his body.
no subject
Still, the question sends him combing through his memories. What remains of them. There are bits, pieces. The fact that he can not match together an honest answer out of any of those pieces disturbs him and the frown on his sloping, misplaced lips deepens.
"Does it matter?" As his words dismiss the question his body does, too. His feet spread wider into a less casual posture. His spine straightens. His hands hang at his sides, the better to reach the guns which, he has forgotten, now contain something much less fatal than bullets. "No sense in looking. Perhaps you're too young to see that, but you'd best try. And sooner rather than later, child. For your own sake."
no subject
"for your own sake."
- as if he didn't already know what he would do if the last moment he'd seen his mother was the last moment he would ever see her, as if he didn't already know how heavy the weight of that pain was. How he would stand up beneath it anyway, what he would have to do to go on living. As if this would only be the first time, not even the second, that he'd carried that weight.
As if he hadn't already known before this what it was to be alone in the world, and to have to decide what choices to make when no one lived anymore who could teach him how to be a good human in a world he had only ever half come from.
As if he was still a child at all - and not a very, very young man, grown up overnight and before his time.
He'd taught his grandfather to be human. He could surely help this man remember how to be.
"Yes," he responded, with no hesitance at all. He did pause, considering his next move before asking "What's your name?"
Did the man still have his name? Or was it lost, like his father had lost his? His father had still been full of hope and enthusiasm when he and Mother had found Hanzo in his transformed guise. This man had given up on those things. Easy to do, in a place like this.
"My name is Kubo. We're in the Legion of Superheroes together. Do you remember that?"
no subject
"The Legion. Pretentious fools who've spent too long in the light. Pretentious enough to insist I use my title. I remember. They sometimes remind me of-"
Why'd he been about to share that? The fact that the Legion sometimes reminds him of of his home is just as needless as the boy's questions. It's not a part of him that particularly needs airing, in any case.
"-of things past. If you'd call me anything, you might as well call my title. Gunslinger. For all the good it'll do you here. Do you think you'll find a question that'll do anything more than prolong all this? What sense is there in asking?"
no subject
He cast around for something else to say, some other way to pull the transforming man away from the void.
"You can tell me who they remind you of," he prompted, gently. "I'll listen."
no subject
"And what then?" Roland sounds annoyed now. He looks annoyed, too - his hand on the butt of his gun is unnecessary, functionally he gains nothing from the move in terms of speed. It is necessary, though, as a message, an animal with its hackles up. Step back. Cry off.
"You wouldn't be the first to listen. Would listening set you off from these senseless questions? Would you listen until even the light and order of this reality crumbled down around us? What are you here for truly, child? If that's what you are? Here to waste my time?"
no subject
His blood chilled a little at how vulnerable he'd let himself become. He would be slower at drawing his shamisen from his back than Roland would be at drawing his guns, slower than his father would have been at drawing a bow. That was no good - his weapon ought to come to him fast since it was one, ought to have already been out. Something to work on if - after he survived.
He was not going to die here, not while his mother might be alive to find. But if she were becoming a monster too -
So he went casual. He shrugged. He scratched his neck, bringing his hand closer to where he could reach his shamisen, if his words continued not to work.
"I guess I don't know."
I'm here to find out what's happening to you, and try to draw you out of it. But he was not someone Roland would expect to achieve that. Maybe he wouldn't, but he'd try.
"I'm just a kid."
In the meantime, he'd play this story to Roland's perception.
"If I'm not here to hear a story, what am I here to do?"
The musing bought him time to consider what would work. And to wonder what Roland had glanced down into the darkness at.
no subject
Maybe after he's finished here, he thinks, thinking over just what the child might be here for, looking down at the figure hanging beside him like a still and silent doll from the railing.
"Maybe after," he says, out loud this time because this is an answer, isn't it? And the child had asked. "Once this has played out the way- in truth, I think, the way it was always going to. Then I'll be free to deal with you. There's something I'm here for. Odd that I've forgotten. It was either to help you, you super heroes, or-"
He pauses again, searching through his memory, his goals, his intentions for whatever that other option might be. He feels it gathering in him, but isn't sure of the name for it. Finally he decides his wording and when he resumes with it his voice is heavier, flat and featureless. "Well, to help you. In one way or another."
no subject
The question was which ones, and how many, Kubo would ask before the hand on the pommel of Roland's guns shifted towards more aggression.
Kubo shifted gently as he held his silence, only the corner of his eye on Roland's own movements. He lifted his shamisen strap over his head as lazily as he could, trying so hard to embody only the child pulling a beloved instrument into his hands for entertainment and comfort, and not to embody the young man drawing his own weapon. His pulse thudded in his ear.
"Um -" he kept his eye on the blackness beyond the gunslinger. "What's out there? In the darkness, beyond you? You keep looking."
no subject
"What-"
Oh. Yes.
"Cry pardon. Should have mentioned. Sensible to fear the darkness, but here's nothing for you to worry over. It's no monster. I think once I leave this cave it'll-"
He shudders.
"-go from here, anyway. Then we can finish. You and I. Once he-"
"-once this is done I'll be able to move on to where it is I need to go. So will you. Dangerous for a boy on his own, if that's what you are. Or maybe-"
"-safer, after all. Depends, I guess, on where you're headed. Never did tell me. You're not here because you're meant to be. There was only one here, that time." It's not an outright question, just what it is the child's here for, but neither is Roland trying to hide his suspicion. After all, he knows it: this talk, this postponing of the inevitable, that is not how this was meant to be. The inevitable, after all, is called that for a reason. Silly, isn't it, to want to keep it waiting.
no subject
"What is it?"
What story was he in?
no subject
At one end of the cavern a pinprick of light appears, grows. Once it's large enough to look like an exit, to cast its light on everything behind Roland, it stops, the humid air gives one of its gusts and the end of the railing near Roland's feet swings wildly, sways out at an angle where Kubo can see: a small body, perhaps smaller than his. Blonde. Calm and quiet.
"I'll ask you to keep that silent, though. I'll have to listen to hear the way Jake's stopped calling out for me. At a time like this, do you really think music is appropriate?"
no subject
"Who is he?"
His name is Jake, Kubo recognized, but who was he to Roland?
And what was he? A surviving crewmember, a Legionnaire Kubo didn't recognize, a memory made flesh? Could that place do this? Make terrible memories real?
Kubo's heart chilled at that thought.
"We - we could reach him, together - we can pull him up."
It might not have been what Roland wanted to hear. Maybe not even what he needed to hear. But it burst out of Kubo, the only thing he could think to do, seeing another person dangling over the edge.
no subject
"I believe I do remember you," he says, after a moment. "A little. On the way- somewhere. The Legion was going somewhere. You and your mother. She must be your mother. You reminded me-"
Again, he gazes down. The child down there is still silent. Of course he is silent.
"I wondered what was in her mind when she brought you along. Did she know what was in store, sitting there with you? Must've known, at least a little. That she could have stayed back. Stayed where it was safe. Settled somewhere."
"May be cruel to ask a boy this of his own mother, but I suppose I'm asking anyway. Of course I'm asking anyway. Boy- Did you give your name? Don't quite recall. Mm. What was-"
He searches for the scattered edges of his thought, finds them.
"Ah. Yes. Child. Do you think she knew?"
no subject
But he couldn't tell what he and his mother reminded Roland of. The first response that came to his mind was the truth - that settling somewhere safe had not saved his mother's life, or spared him any pain, that she was an ancient and terrible power whose stories he'd never hear the end of. That he'd looked at her face after the monitors had gone black and not seen fear, but readiness to go to war. That he was her son, and the son of a samurai, and he was not born to hide from horrible things. Even if he had tried, even if they had both tried to once.
He bit back on saying those things. This was not his story that Roland was in.
"Did you?"
He paused, wondering what he'd guessed already, what he was misguessing about the boy below them. If that was a figment, then this was all right, but if it were a Legionnaire he couldn't recognize, he could be wasting valuable time needed to save a teammate -
"With Jake? When this - first happened?"
He edged closer, fingers still on the strings, trying to get a closer look at the boy's face.
no subject
"Of course I didn't," he says absently, still focusing mostly on trying to follow the line of Kubo's gaze. Nothing down there but Jake. Jake. Fair of face, blue of eye, strange clothes rarely - if ever - seen on anyone in or around Legionworld. His expression is absent, patient. Very patient, looking up at Roland, not quite focusing on him. He doesn't seem to see Kubo at all. The skin of his hand, tight as the grip is, is not reddened, and his muscles do not tremble. He shows no sign of stress, awareness, or strain. "A single boy, even a lifetime with that single boy, in exchange for the whole of reality? Even before I knew of the great worm the Legion fights the stakes - my stakes - were the same. To abandon it all, that would have been-"
"Foolish," he finishes deliberately, decisively. His head snaps up again to look at Kubo. His eyes are set lower in his face than they were a moment ago. In the cavernous shadow where his chest used to be, something rustles. "As storytelling, now, is foolish. Is that why you've been asking all these questions? Looking to root out my story? The time for storytelling is over, you know. The fewer of our stories we remember, the better off we'll be. Why don't you understand that? The sooner you accept that, the less it's going to hurt."
no subject
He'd seen how forgetting hurt his mother, as she drifted away in their cave. He remembered that pain even on his cheerful father's voice, when they found him in a cave, too changed even for his mother to recognize him.
But they had beautiful lives to miss, Kubo remembered, suddenly, regretting his conviction of a moment ago.
Maybe Roland only had moments like these, of watching a child about to fall, in his past.
"Forgetting here isn't going to spare you any pain," he insisted, though, not ready to give up on that thread. He'd hesitated, he'd inquired, he'd unraveled as much of the story as he could and now he might be at the end of Roland's patience. Now he might be at the end of the Gunslinger's humanity. But he'd found ground to stand on.
This was not the place. This was not the way to fall out of your own life.
"That's not foolish. That's just true. Even if your life was full of hard decisions, giving it up here isn't a good one."
no subject
"What good has remembering ever been? I do what needs to be done. That's all. That's all there needs to be. I see that now. That's the only part of me which has ever really moved forward. The rest I drag behind me, tie it around my neck and pull. If all that rest of me is somehow left behind - well, what price is that to pay, in exchange for becoming something which can put an end to all this? Something which can save our universes once and for all? Imagine it. Imagine winning through at last at last and setting all those worlds, all those homes, back into the light, healthy and alive for a little while, and for such a small price. My own universe might as well crumble now, I suppose, but yours, a billion others - that's the problem with you Legionnaires. You've walked so long in the light that you're the ones who've forgotten. Losing what you hold most dear - it won't kill you. Not so long as there's work to be done."
"You don't see that, truly? It may not be a good decision, boy - Kubo isn't it? Yes. Kubo. But it is the best one. It's a heavy decision to make so young, but- well, perhaps that's why you were brought here. So I can spare you. Can't spare you the life of one such as us, but I can spare you the terrible choice which comes with it. Wouldn't that be something?"
no subject
Remembering . . . didn't seam to give his mother or father peace either, but it was the closest word he knew to how his father had smiled at him, when they both knew who he was.
"But how do you know this is right? This . . . this solution. It could be a lie. What proves it isn't? That it's hard?"
He wanted to step away. He wanted so much to step back. But wanting something . . . did that make it right?
He stepped forward. One foot.
"Maybe it's easier to walk in the light with us? But that doesn't mean it's wrong."
no subject
He gives it a second, feeling the wind blow his hair over his shoulders, listening inward to hear any chords that concept might strike in him.
Finally he huffs, looks back up. "You're very brave. But fairly young yet, I think. You'll learn."
His hand is a blur. Headshot, he thinks, almost dispassionately. It'll be over quickly.
He registers the noise, a terrible crunch beneath his boot, in the split instant between drawing and firing. It's the first time in a very long time that the usually seamless process of killing has been interrupted. Roland hardly notices.
It's perhaps the last hesitation Kubo's going to get, this moment where Roland stares down, horror stretching over his face, at the small and broken fingers under his boot. It's the last best chance Kubo might get to run, that endless, seconds-long moment when the remaining small fingers curled around that railing begin to slip very quietly off from it.
no subject
He'd tried, and he owed it to his mother not to die here.
The easiest song that came to his fingers was still the one by which he told his father's stories. He struck the strings as Roland's hand moved.
Paper flew at Roland's eyes, sharp folded darts opening to cover his eyes. More sheets flew from Kubo's pack, floating in a solid wall obscuring him from the gunslinger. On the other side of the paper, Kubo was already running, counting on his thin shields to give him time between pursuing shots to pick a direction.
no subject
The paper moves around him in a cloud of quiet rustling. The boy - the other boy - his footsteps move echoing across the cave walls. Something reminds Roland that those footsteps will be going further every second he fails to act. His own footsteps are silent; his boots stay where they are.
He knows without thinking about it that once those other footsteps quiet he'll still be here, still able to do nothing but listen to the boy who escaped him. Listen for the boy who didn't.
The silence settles around him, so thick and choking he forgets he ever meant to pursue at all.