legionmissions | THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

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THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS - Modplot

Like many cursed objects, the cursed floppy disk containing Tsarista was unearthed by archaeologists, trying to excavate artifacts related to Earth's heroic history. Mystified as to why it was preserved in a strange container that seemed meant to protect it from corruption, they'd created a makeshift system to try to view the data on the ancient device.

Opening the .txt file of "Troubleshooting Windows '95" on it, opened up the world to a whole lot of trouble.

After breaking free -- and through the roof of the archaeology building of the university -- the evil queen cackles in delight at the new world she's found herself in. Nearby television "personalities" recording a puff piece in the park, quickly turn their camera drones on the escaped Queen, broadcasting her to the entire UP.

"At last! I'm free! And oh me, oh my, has the world changed. What a narrative mess it is now, so complicated. And fraught with conflict that isn't easily resolved. And there are so many new settings, in all these UP worlds! No matter. I'll fix it all. I'll make it so everything makes sense."

With a snap of her fingers, magic light pours through the nearby New Metropolis media archives, and everything from datachips, to rare paper books, to flexi tablets came pouring out, swirling around her in a storm of paper that quickly turns into a storm of words.

"My name is Tsarista. Queen Tsarista. And I'm going to turn this galaxy of blank pages into a carefully curated masterpiece -- ruled by me, of course!"

After the display, there's only one way to stop the bubble of unreality that's settled over New Metropolis: by going in and tearing it down from the inside.

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Nodding along at Rich's tale and patting his back is the best he can do. He doesn't grasp the full significance of a Strontian, but he understands that Robby was - is - powerful. That he wouldn't be dead, and that Rich is back with Robbie, a little less seduced by the scene that will haunt them.

"They're trying harder this time," he guessed with a shrug. "To get us into our parts. We aren't kids, so it... maybe has to hit us harder so we stop thinking and just act. Like kids do. Remember how we used to just know and do? No hesitation, just swing the swing as high as you can and jump."

Like the yellow slicker and red blood and Robbie's own blue eyes, the balloon is one of the only thing that the color seems true. It makes everything else flat and dull, sliding just a bit into gray scale against the colors that an author would note.

He knows that it's wrong. The balloon does not belong here, in the pouring rain, and it certainly shouldn't move like that. Robbie's good at How Things Move, even if he doesn't always know the why.

A red balloon, so perfect and cliche that it beckons to him.

The urgency is gone, and Robbie reaches towards the string of the bright balloon. He doesn't grab it - he'd have to take his hand off Rich's back, where it's been firmly planted since he started shepherding Rich along, and step into the street.

His words come back to him. Robbie swung the swing, but he doesn't jump. He consciously refuses to go get the balloon. There's something not right about it. Don't take anything from a stranger, especially one you can't see.

"Isn't it obvious? The adults are blind dopes because we're in a kids' story." When the main characters were kids, the adults had to be idiots, evil, or both. There was no running home to Mom and Dad in a kid story, or there'd be no story.

Across the street, a flash of red appears in the dark void of the storm drain. A second balloon slips out of it, rising up from the street as it drifts towards them. The fear burbles up in his stomach with it. The churning sick fear of childhood, when fight or flight is fight, flight or freeze, and Robbie is frozen. His adult/child brain is certain: helium balloons belong in sewers even less than little boys. One is ugly but possible; the other is a violation of fact. Balloons float up.

So how did it get in the sewer? And how did it get out? It's too fat and round to have fit through the gap between metal and concrete.

Robbie remembers how he used to be afraid of sewer tops and manholes when he was a little kid, younger than he is now. He thought the kids would come loose beneath him, and he'd fall forever until he died. It was a silly fear, he told himself. They're bolted in place, set in cement, and there's nothing to be scared of. When he was a boy, there was always a friend of a friend of a friend that it had happened to. Swear to God.

Don't be a baby because some magic made you shrink.

But staring into that black, gaping maw of the drain with the dead, glassy gaze of Rich's brother gnawing at the back of his head... it's hard to listen to his better judgment. More rules of childhood are running through his head. Don't walk on the manholes. Don't step on the crack. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.

Pools of water in his eyes.

"Rich..." Robbie's hand moves from Rich's back to grab Rich's and tug, but Robbie's rooted. The balloons have halted their march, still just out of reach, waiting for two small boys to take them.

Red balloons. It's the color that bothers him, he realizes, more than the demented physics. The balloon is part of a story dancing on the tip of his tongue. The exact red balloon of idyllic childhoods of yesterday juxtaposed against... against what?

Against dead kids in the street.

And then he remembers. Oh, not the story that he's in, but a popular concept of fiction. A trope so hardcore that it's a truth.

Kid stories are where the real monsters are.

The witch in Hanzel and Gretel. The Big, Bad Wolf. Voldemort. All the things that didn't hesitate to hurt innocents, to turn little boys by the score into donkeys, to leave them cold on the street. All the kids books.

His hand tugged again, sharply. Something pulled that kid's arm off like a chicken wing, and it can't have gone far. "We should go figure this out and come back."

What he means is, it's working. Robbie's head is usually a dark place loaded with bloody memories - it doesn't take much to inwardly unnerve him. The balloons, plural, are freaking him out, and he doesn't want to stay here with them until he can rationalize the story they're trapped in. He's had nightmares about this; he knows he has.

Rich has seen more than his fair share of monsters and more than his fair share of kids being killed or hurt. He's seen children reduced to parts. He heard their screams in the background of their caretakers' distress calls when the nursery creches of Xinti fell into Xinti's sun during the war. He felt them connected to him, mindless, all individuality swept away, when they'd been assimilated by the Phalanx.

But normally when he faces monsters, he's at full power. He can blow up star destroyers with one hand. He's not a powerless kid, with one of his best friends who's also a powerless kid, trapped in a bubble of reality with one.

His hearts starts to pound, and he starts to move back and away from the drain. He lets go of Robbie's hand, but it's to hold a protective arm in front of Robbie, putting his body between Robbie and the drain. It's instinct. He's bigger. ~~He's always been bigger, he'll always be bigger.~~

Rich starts to push them back away from the grate and more balloons float out, but now they start to lazily drift all around the two of them, like a red carpet is being laid out for them, as if they're saying : This is all for you.

And then there's a laugh and a voice that only sounds like it's human because it's wearing a human skin, and Rich freezes. It has that affect, the voice reaches inside and just freezes everything.

"Aren't'cha gonna say hello, boys?" the voice hisses from the sewer grate, and then there are eyes flashing from the dark and a painted face and the vaguest outline of teeth that are just slightly too sharp. "There's all kinds of wonderful things down here! Cotton candy, and rides, and all sorts of surprises. And balloons, too. All colors."

Another balloon bobs up.

"They all float down here."

Rich tries to scream and can't, he can't force the air out of his lungs, but he can still feel his hand, still feel his arm pressed against Robbie, and that's enough. The protective arm is more liquid than the rest of him, and he grabs onto Robbie's wrist with an iron grip and then tugs them both along, away from the sewer drain, back towards his pretend house on his pretend street.

"RUN!"

He runs and even though it's awkward to sprint while still holding onto Robbie, he refuses to let go.

Edited 2017-03-31 23:11 (UTC)

The arm that's thrown out across Robbie's chest is a nice gesture, but all it does is make him puff out his chest and try to stand a little taller. Despite the fear or maybe because of it, Rich has redirected him into such a natural stance for him: proving he's enough. He's old enough to be a superhero. Cool enough to try out for the Avengers. Awesome enough to be a New Warrior. Sorry enough to keep living. Right now? He's big enough to be the one doing the defending, and, yes, he is even self-preserving enough to stay away from the magic sewer that a balloon just came out of.

As if the grate has to argue with Robbie, too, it pukes up more balloons. Half a dozen, maybe more, and they nearly encircle the boys like lazy lightning. The ones that Robbie watches - they barely seem to move from second to second, but the one he loses focus on suddenly reappears at the far corner of his vision, shepherding the blonde closer to the brunette.

Something laughs from in the grate and all around him, and it sounds like nothing he's ever heard before and nothing he's ever wanted to hear again. There's a tone that Norman Osborn has in his laugh, that Bullseye has. They sound nothing alike except for some twist in their laugh, and you know. You know that they have just enough of a grip on reality to smash it and they'll do it because it's fun.

"Hello boys!," Robbie snaps it out automatically, one-upping the voice as best he can by trying to imitate the guy from Independence Day. Trying and failing, because he's eleven. His body couldn't find puberty with a map right now, so forget sounding like an adult. He answers without thinking, before the yellow eyes glint out of that darkness.

Before he squeaks at the sight of them and jumps as the grease paint melts into view around them. Jumps in place - his adrenaline says get back and his heart says leap in front of Rich because, holy shit, there is a goddamn evil clown.

Robbie will never be sure if he'd have made it off that street without Rich. He was running as fast as he could, but... in hindsight, it will seem slow. The sprint is a one-word order, autopilot, and Rich's hand clamped around Robbie's wrist, yanking him along.

It isn't until they've stopped (not until they're safe - after seeing that, they aren't safe until they're back on Legion World, back in their twenties, with a few dozen superheroes in the same room) that Robbie wastes breath on trying to talk, though he's panting softly. "Did you - I could smell the cotton candy. I could smell it in the sewer."

"Ohmanohmanohmanohman." Now on Rich's "family's" porch, he paces back and forth, and he surprises himself with how panicked he is, but he's figured it out. He's figured it out and he remembers how terrified he'd been the first time when he saw that stupid clown, back when it'd just been fiction.

And he's powerless here. He's got a whole thing about not having his powers. There are a lot of people who can adapt when their powers are again and he is not, will never be, and has never been one of them. It feels like a limb is gone, like the core of his body's gone all cold, and he feels useless and vulnerable in a way that's intensely uncomfortable.

"It!" he says, grabbing Robbie by the shoulders and shaking him slightly. It's not an angry shake, it's just panic, a "Don't you see??" kind of shoulder shake. "Stephen King's It! That's the story we're in right now! That was the killer clown!"

He lets go and starts pacing again.

"My parents wouldn't even let me watch this movie when I was a kid! I watched it over my buddy Caps' house 'cause his parents always let us watch R-rated movies. Thanks to that stupid clown, I didn't sleep for two days."

And now they have to go against the damn thing? As kids?!

"Ohmanohmanohmanohman."

Normally, he's not the type to panic under pressure. Ever. But normally he wasn't a kid again, powerless, and being forced to face one of his worst childhood fears.

Rich panicking is not helping Robbie stay calm, and he does his best to hide the antsiness, the twisted fingers, in wringing out the ends of his shirt until he's grabbed and shaken.

"It?" But then, recognition. It's been a long time since he saw that mini-series or read the book. The first, and only, time that Robbie saw It, he barely saw It. He heard plenty, though, with his eyes glued just above or below the tv, trying not to catch a glimpse of the screen when it sounded scary. Robbie's voice gets that dreamy, I-remember-that tone, despite remembering something that had scared him so bad his bladder shriveled. "I saw It when I was 13. The parentals didn't know, and I didn't tell 'em."

It was eighth grade, and Robbie was barely older than the kids in the movie (and probably the same age as the actors). He had finally won the argument that he was old enough to let himself in the house after school, to be trusted to not burn the whole house down. He found himself in a sudden upswing of social standing. Robbie had as many electronics as most of his classmates have in their entire house in his bedroom, and he had a few precious hours of guaranteed time sans the parental units every day. He didn't have to supply R-rated movies and violent video games. His friends smuggled plenty, sneakily borrowed from their parents or older siblings stash for the younger boys to try out at the Baldwin house where no one bothered to supervise.

It took them three days to watch the miniseries that someone had taped off tv, complete with commercials. Robbie always kicked them out at five o'clock, just in case. Just in case someone got it in their head to come home at five and have a family dinner at six, where they'd all laugh about how fun it was to sometimes be so kitschy.

That didn't happen on any of the It days though, although he wished it had. Robbie was left by himself for two or three hours more, refusing to go into the bathroom to pee until he saw his mom or dad arrive home. Just in case, his subconscious said. But the rest of him stuck to the story: he wasn't scared. He just didn't have to pee.

And now they're here - in It, in Derry, and Robbie is shivering from wet clothes and dread. H catches his tongue between his teeth to stop the chatter. He is undersized and living out a story where the children fight with belief, and Robbie knows that he is screwed. He doesn't believe in rock 'n roll. He doesn't believe that silver stops a monster. He doesn't believe in anything enough.

Ohmanohmanohmanohman. God, he hopes he doesn't get Rich killed because he's all fear and no faith. Rich isn't allowed to die here. "What are we going to do? It can be anywhere. It is everywhere."

He's not expecting a real answer. "This is the beginning of the book. Do we..."

Dammit, he wants to be older. Bigger. Less small sounding, because trying to sound matter of fact in a faltering boy soprano is frightening him even more. They're kids. They're just kids, and this is too much to throw on slim shoulders. He takes a gulp of breath. "Do we skip ahead to the end?"

Edited 2017-04-02 03:45 (UTC)

"I forgot it was a mini-series. I always remembered it as a movie." Then he remembers: Caps had bragged about stopping the VHS from recording during the commercials.

Rich has to force himself to calm down, to stop letting the fear control him. It's hard when he's this close to the ground, hard to feel brave when it doesn't feel like fire is flowing through his veins like it's supposed to.

But he knows just like Robbie does that in a place ruled by belief, by thoughts and feelings and fears, that Robbie's possibly going to have some trouble. His friend is going to need him -- and he's going to need Robbie, too. Rich knows he also has a few things working against him here. One: he's got some pretty terrible fears and memories to draw from. The bugs. The Phalanx. The Many-Angled Ones. And more.

Two: the whole 'believe in yourself' angle to this has never really been Rich's forte.

It's a sobering thought. They can't panic. They have to look out for each other.

"I dunno, but whatever we do, we stick together. I don't care if any of the fake adults try to pull us apart. Starting now, we call a permanent sleepover. We need to make sure neither of us is ever alone."

That was the ticket in the miniseries.

"That's what it took, right? A bunch of kids sticking together, looking out for each other. We've already done that. We already were a bunch of dumb kids looking out for each other, it's just this time we don't have superpowers."

But they also were in a world that didn't necessarily require them. That was the point of the thing, that a bunch of powerless kids had been able to fight a monster with just the power of belief and friendship.

"Hopefully, it's not just us in here. There's got to be some of the other Legionnaires, right? Probably in the roles of some of the other kids. We just have to find them."

Edited 2017-04-14 08:08 (UTC)

"Stick together," Robbie repeats dumbly, because he keeps wanting to argue that their parents could pick them up and take them home. It's so easy to separate little kids who have curfews. He has to make it work, though, because he knows the story. It feeds, and Robbie is not walking onto a scene like that one bully they found in the sewer.

So, he decides, Rich is right. They'll stick together like glue. He's already a champ at sneaking out of the house. Sneaking into one, if the parents aren't agreeable, can't be much harder, and it's not like his were the most attentive.

Robbie laughs at the thought and shares it. "If they're my parents, they probably won't even notice. I don't remember much about the parents, but I think that was a thing. The adults ignored everything. Like us running down the street. We're basically invisi...ble..."

His faltering is no accident. A balloon is floating by the porch, a smidge out of any little boy's reach.

SOMEBODY COME AND PLAY

The balloon spins around in a wind doesn't reach the boys. On the opposite side, there's more writing.

MIKE
BEN
STAN
BEVVIE
EDDIE
GEORGIE
RICHIE
BILL

The names don't even bother to morph beneath the thick black marker that crosses them out. One second, they read as they should. The next, they are something else entirely, as if to answer Rich's question.

NITA
GRIF
BRAINY
KID Q
VANCE
ROBBY
ROBBIE
RICH

The names are scratched out with dried blood that gets wetter and wetter as the list goes on. The line across Robby Rider's name is running down towards Robbie's.

The balloon is already turning away from him again, but Robbie is already scrambling to throw anything he can get his hands on at the balloon. A garden spade hits home just as the balloon finishes its 360.

SOMEBODY COME AND DIE is just visible before the balloon pops in an explosion of red mist that rains down on Robbie below. He is freckled with blood, and Robbie screams before he can get a grip. After a few ragged breaths, he chokes out, "We need little kid stuff to fight with. Itching powder and, and ... I don't remember. Spitballs. Slingshots."

Edited 2017-04-27 22:51 (UTC)

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THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS - Modplot

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