THE GONE-AWAY WORLD [modplot]

[letsgolegion]

Who| Those who signed up
What| The "Gone-Away World" plot
Where| The planet Tezeram
When| The same time as "The Ninth Gate" and "Total Eclipso"
Warnings/Notes| child endangerment

The Legion cruiser breaks apart upon entry to atmo. It just can't fight its way through the warped reality of the planet, through the willpower of the many criminals on Tezeram willing its destruction. But the Legionnaires own willpower and thoughts factor in, from the moment they're close enough to the planet to start influencing the "stuff" that makes up everything on Tezeram's surface.

So even though the ship rips apart, they don't die. Instead they find themselves down on the planet, separated into pairs that have to find their way towards the criminals behind all this, and find their way to each other. If they try to will the Legion cruiser back into being, they'll find it's impossible. They must defeat the criminals responsible for all this, and join together to will the cruiser back into being at the same time.

Comments

Bunny and America

[letsgolegion]

Bunny and America's starting place is a combination of things taken from their subconscious minds. It looks almost like The Warren, the place where Easter eggs go into production and get painted for the holiday, but instead of it happening with beautiful flowers and a whimsical dye river, America's influence has made everything cold and soul-less.

The eggs are rolled along on mechanical conveyor belts and are stamped with standardized Justice-department approved decorations: eagles, badges, and guns. Over the Warren, The Statue of Justice looms.

[thedreamisdead]

Words can not begin to describe how much she'd rather be with North or Cortana. Or even Locus, but she'd much rather have the AI or the Freelancer at her back. Knowing them, North was mooning at her behind her back while Cortana worked up her god complex.

No. She had to land with the drug dealer. In his very den of inequity. Her lip curls in distaste as she stands, shoving away the pain of the rough landing, and takes her bearings. This wouldn't do. Not at all. Bad enough he fed children chocolate, but to make it in this? Hadn't he heard of health and safety regulations?

America hooks her thumbs into her belt, not heeding how the shadows around her grew darker and, with her chilly feelings about this place seeping in, colder. "Did you manage to land in one piece?" Hopefully she wouldn't be dragging around an injured rabbit this entire time.

[bringinghopewithme]

The feeling is mutual, even if it's for entirely the opposite reason. Bunny's own expression of distaste consumes his entire being as he looks at this mockery of his home, his beautiful home where life glows in every blade of grass and beauty floats in every mote of dust.

"What the bloody heck -"

Machinery? In his Warren? His offense sprouts around him in thorny vines, rich and lively and glistening with thistles. Warmth expands around him, counterbalancing America's chilly influence, but it's warmth that has the harsh edge of direct sunlight at 40 degrees Celsius.

Still, this isn't actually his home, and this isn't the time to fight over differences of taste, opinion, or the horrifying, creeping memories that a breath of chill air in something close to his home sends winding up his spine.

"All together as I ever was," he responds, though his disgusted expression hasn't budged an inch. "You?"

He resists the urge to ask if she got the soul knocked out of her on the way down - but it is a hard urge to resist.

[thedreamisdead]

She eyes the vines. He's feeling prickly. Of course. Like he wasn't the one stuck with a chocolate dealer, with evidence of the lack of sanitation that such addictions could bring lying all around them. She manages not to sneer, but there's still a little distaste that she can't quite shove out of her voice. "I'm uninjured."

She glances around. Flexes her hands. A world shaped by willpower and imagination. Could she will the Public Surveillance Unit into being? Track down the children faster? How would she go about doing that? She glances around at their surroundings, takes a breath, and... pulls everything in. The chill, the machinery, even the Statue of Justice. Locked away. No leaks. All that's left is a combination of fear with a slight tinge of hate and resentment that she usually feels directed at herself. She's a Judge. The Boogeyman. When parents tell their children to behave, it's because she'll come to take them away. She's not even aware that her expectation of that is filling the area around her, it's not something she needs to imagine. It's just fact.

She spares a glance at the Bunny. "You should probably do the same for your... Facility." Ugh. "We don't know who's watching or how much we're standing out. If we're going to rescue those children, anything that's out of place won't be an asset." At least until she figured out what the 'usual' for this patchwork world was.

[bringinghopewithme]

He almost cringes - the vines around him actually do, thorns sprouting thicker. "Why would you call it that?"

The small space of shadows around America is closed in by the growing green, the bright sunshine, and where the hate and resentment she keeps around herself touches the edges of his influence, it takes a form he recognizes - glittering, oily black sand, floating and reshaping itself according to the fears America gives it to work with.

Bunny eyes the sand, then America, then the sand again, skepticism and suspicion in his glance. He reaches out with a hind paw to tap it with one claw. At his touch, the sand ripples from black and sticky into glittering gold, shimmering and flowing in graceful and delightful shapes, the stuff of nightmares transformed into the stuff of sweet dreams.

She definitely left her soul behind for this mission, if she hasn't had it carved out of her body already.

As for restraining his influence - it's already spreading far, streaming out from him in widening circle. As America withdraws her influence, the vines and flowers grow that much thicker, tulip-like blossoms opening and depositing eggs onto the ground. Even the dew that drips from the leaves and petals is dye, splashing on the white shells in little bursts of color.

This world is desperate for cultivation, and he is a cultivator. His will, for centuries, has been bent to the cultivation of a world less malleable than this, to making a world for mortals better by existing in it. The matter around him, stripped of its information, soaks up purpose like he is a fountain.

His urge to keep projecting this bounty upon the world, to quickly fill the void with a purpose that is shining and providential, can only be reigned in by America's reminder that they might need the element of surprise. A healthy, beautiful environment might be out of place enough here to tip off their enemies to a nature spirit's presence.

Horrifying as it is not to give this world the influence of being what he wills it - and he'd will it to be something beautiful, all right - the kids are most important. Bunny closes his eyes, and clears his mind with a deep breath. The green ceases to spread, the flowers pausing in their growth, and the dew that drips from the leaves loses its color. Eggs vanish in the undergrowth, the unique little things that mark the signature of Easter vanishing into the green that remains. That, at least, stays where it is. Bunny might be able to will it away, but he isn't doing it - grass and flowers, after all, don't have his signature on them the way Easter eggs and dye rivers do.

"Let's go figure out what's in place, then," he says, loping to the edge of the greenery for a look.

[letsgolegion]

What's immediately beyond the little section of world they've created is a desert. The sands are a bright orange that's just a touch too bright to be natural. There's a petrified forest of black trees peeking out between the sands.

The trees don't have leaves. Where the crowns of leaves should all be there's just fire. They're all burning, but despite the desert sun, the air is cold.

[thedreamisdead]

America gestures at the area, now showing no signs of magic, only (admittedly gorgeous) nature. "You create packages children would love and find attractive, then fill them with one of the most addictive substances known to man." Her lip does curl here, and she practically spits the word. "Sugar."

She's not petty enough to just annihilate everything here. Crush it with her own iron will. What would be the point? She doesn't deal in idle cruelties. As he moves off, though, she follows, and continues her speech. "Do you even care about what that does to juves who get hooked on that junk? And here you are, using magic to just... grow it out of the ground. You might as well have a factory to create the horrors you spread. What other term is there for a place like that?"

Her spiel is stopped short by the desolate landscape. She grunts. "Looks like the Cursed Earth, all right. That would fit with the nuclear hearts of those Go-Away Bombs we were briefed on." She could practically taste the radiation from home. America glances back at Bunny's faux warren, and bites her tongue. An oasis like that definitely stands out, but if that was an extension of him... Well, leaving it standing couldn't hurt too much.

Just how much control did she have, she wondered? America stretched out her arm, fingers splayed commandingly. "Bike. To me." And, almost like it was being built piece-by-piece, a massively oversized motorcycle built itself in front of her. She opens up the seat compartment and pulls out a pair of ponchos, tossing one towards the Easter Bunny. "Rad cloaks. Not sure I'm going to be able to stop thinking about radiation. We use these back home during Cursed Earth radstorms, and something physical to hold on to might help."

[bringinghopewithme]

"Excuse me?"

Of the things Bunny's been accused of, being a drug dealer is not one of them. Defending his practice, especially when it comes to caramel, is nothing new, considering one of his closest friends is the Tooth Fairy. But Toothiana only ever accused him of promoting tooth decay, never recklessly hooking kids on an addictive substance.

This is not an argument he ever expected to have, and the depth of the accusation is bewildering. This is actually what a rational adult thinks a once-a-year gift amounts to - ?

Well, maybe not a rational adult after all.

"No wonder you've got black sand comin' off you. You are the stuff of nightmares." He answers her sneer with a snarl of his own. Insulted fury has him nearly hopping in place, but he still catches the radiation poncho and growls at it, pulling it on before pointing one short, clawed finger at America. "This conversation isn't over, but it's on hold until this mission is done."

His reputation is slandered and that is infuriating but there are children to save, and he can't bicker thoughtlessly and easily with America the way he could with Jack, or Tooth, or North. This is a distraction the children they're seeking can't afford.

The desert itself is much less horrifying than his mission partner at this point, but to be fair, he's as at home in a desert - even a desert that's somehow both cold and on fire during the day - as he is in a forest.

"I'm scouting out the bush," he announces, dropping from two legs to four in his runner's crouch. "Good luck keepin' up on that paddock basher."

He bursts off at the top speed that crossing dimensions has left him with. For once, the slowness compared to his previous speed didn't frustrate him - this was a world of will and imagination, and he didn't need to imagine being fast enough to cover the world in a day. Maybe here he could achieve something more like his normal level of power.

[letsgolegion]

As they get closer, the flaming desert trees start exploding. It's not really that unusual, though, more similar to the way they might explode from the sap inside them being reduced to steam during a forest fire.

It's mildly dangerous but as long as they stay away from the trees it won't cause any harm.

But it quickly becomes clear the threat isn't the trees themselves.

They're just the warning system.

Now that they've both been detected dust kicks up in the distance. Something is upheaving the sand and racing towards them, like something is tunneling underground towards them at rapid speed.

Cortana and North

[letsgolegion]

The area they find themselves in is definitely a military setting. It looks like UNSC Command mashed together with the interior of the Mother of Invention, all metal bulkheads and command rooms and glowing viewscreens. But the place is only partly sketched out. Some of the hallways lead to nowhere, or taper off into foreboding darkness, as if they're a physical representation of the hidden secrets of both places, not meant to see the light of day.

Due to Cortana and Theta's influence, reality keeps unraveling and turning into streams of flowing data and then back to matter again.

Also, there's a random skateboard ramp. That's entirely Theta's doing.

[nofortunateson]

Well. No one ever said this was going to be easy. And while the ship blowing apart was definitely inconvenient, what's a little more troubling is his imagination giving the assist to dump him into a not-quite-right version of a gigantic ship that his subconscious is very sure is floating in the vacuum of space.

"Is this shades of home sweet home for you, too?" he asks, glancing at Cortana en route to one of the viewscreens, sparing the focus back from her to squint at the shimmering semblance of a computer until it at least briefly coalesces from scrolling code to solid metal and glowing monitor. Theta's already flickering up, close to the terminal, so naturally expecting all of the basic functions of a ship's mainframe that one obligingly exists for him the moment he looks for a point of connection.

[steelandtemper]

"The Covenant glassed my home," Cortana says. Insofar as she ever had one, anyway. Maybe Reach hadn't been home so much as the idea of home--familiarity, stability, security. All turned to ash and glass in the Covenant's endless, misguided holy war.

The thought of it calls its ghost into being, a bulkhead melting away to an impressionist sketch of high mountains with vast pine forests, all burning. Even a phantasmal holocaust carries a whiff of burning resin across to them, and Cortana catches herself quickly. She never smelled Reach burning, only watched through the Pillar of Autumn's sensors.

With a conscious act of will this time, she thinks of construction specifications. Marathon-class heavy cruiser. Two solid meters of titanium-A armor plate between them and any memories. The bulkhead snaps back into existence, for the moment as real and substantial as they are.

"Do me a favor." Cortana reaches up to the back of her body's skull, pulling out an AI datachip. "Slot this into your helmet."

[nofortunateson]

The planet itself isn't familiar to North, but that doesn't matter - for a moment, even in vague shades, it's truth boring through the hull of the plate. The impossible smell of a world on fire, incense and camping played in the wrong key, reaches him before he can remember that he's in a helmet with filters, and that nothing comes through that crisp and vivid. But by then the ship is a ship again, and Cortana's back to business, and even Theta is redirecting his attention from the display to the schematics he'd been pulling up, giving a soft 'woah' when the layout of the ship snaps into focus on a much larger scale than he'd been expecting. But a flicker of a moment to process and Theta's's back to work, willing into place the infrastructure, cameras and security measures and all the other on-ship particulars that will lock any hostiles into a maze he and Cortana can control and twist around on them.

"On the second date?" He tries for levity, after that. It's the best option he's got - while he doesn't except he'll really amuse her, compassion or pity aren't even options. Not with Cortana. "You're gonna ruin my reputation, Cortana."

Not that that stops him from holding out his hand, the other already working to click open the appropriate port in his helmet.

[steelandtemper]

Loss is simply a fact, entropy the foreordained victor in all things, and the best anyone can do is avoid thinking about it. As far as Cortana's concerned, the half-formed vision of Reach was a slip, something that won't happen again. In the background of her thoughts the blueprints of the cruiser rotate around its center of mass and reform themselves into an exploded view, collapse to unity again, rotate another along another axis, fly to pieces again...a machine mantra to make sense of a world of illusion.

"I couldn't fit in the implant even if Theta weren't already there." It should be banter, but her tone is too flat as she drops the chip into North's gloved hand. "This will just give me a place to jump if the body gets destroyed."

[letsgolegion]

Proximity alarms start beeping, indicating there's...something moving towards them, something that's bypassing doors and walls. Rattling sounds start echoing through the vents, along with the sounds of something...growling.

[nofortunateson]

He slots the chip into place, making sure the helmet seals back around it securely. "Good to see we're looking out for the unlikely- shit." His best efforts at dragging her into a back-and-forth, away from that unsettling stillness, cut off cleanly with the sound of alarms as he turns his head toward the most likely sound of the noise and brings his rifle off maglock. "Theta-?" he calls under his breath, already blinking into thermal vision to try to get a glimpse of whatever's coming at them.

"I'm looking!" And he is, though he's still trying to focus on willing the ship into keeping its shape as well, hoping to at least make whatever wall has to be torn through as solid and unfriendly to rip open as possible.

[steelandtemper]

"Don't crack your helmet," Cortana warns.

Then she thinks about a molecule. It's organic, mostly carbon and hydrogen with a phosphorous group hanging off one side. Not too complicated, really. Humans have known about the family for a good six hundred years, even if this particular cousin is a recent addition: VX7 nerve agent, lethal in doses measured in micrograms.

She fills the air around them with it...and as an afterthought, triggers the chem-bio warning on North's HUD.

Locus and Barry Allen

[letsgolegion]

Locus and Barry's starting point looks mostly like the heavily mechanized Capitol City of Chorus, Armonia, but Barry's influence is threaded into the nature of reality itself. Illusory soldiers of both the New Republic and the Federal Army of Chorus can be seen going about their daily business - but are frozen in place.

Actually, it's not that they're really frozen - careful examination shows that they're moving but their movements are so slow as to be barely noticeable, as if the Legionnaires are perceiving things so fast the rest of the world is at a standstill around them. In few places, random lightning arcs between buildings.

Re: Locus and Barry Allen

[rushing_by]

"Well, this is a new one." Barry says, looking the area over.

"I'm not exactly used to people moving at a standstill when I'm not running."

[agnominal]

Locus seems less amused. His eyes trail briefly over the soldiers surrounding them. Chorus's ghosts are going to haunt him for the rest of his life, he's accepted that, but it wasn't as if he needed this stark a reminder.

"Something in this place is drawing things from our minds. Possibly useful in the future, but pointless now." His gaze lingers on a set of soldiers in the distance before turning his back abruptly, that eye-less mask now on Barry.

"We should move."

[rushing_by]

"I'm not sure it is pointless" Barry says, thinking hard. If the world is already already being changed by passive thoughts, then it should be easy to actively create something.

"We don't know which way to move in. Or, at least, we didn't." He pulls the Starfleet tricorder he's imagined out from behind his back, and shows it off to Locus before flipping it open.

"If I did this right," he explains as he clicks away at the buttons, "it should detect life signs and lead us to them. Got it. Life signs are fairly spread out, but we should find somebody if we head out...thataway."

[agnominal]

Movement is better than none. Imagination has never been his strongest suit, but it's given them streets that are somewhat familiar. And familiar terrain is an advantage, at the very least.

With a silent nod, Locus hefts his rifle and moves forward, in the direction Barry seems to have indicated. "Are these...illusions? Or do they live in truth?"

NPC tag

[rushing_by]

"It doesn't look like they're alive." Barry says, checking the tricorder.

"Either that means they aren't, or they're just moving too slow to register."

[letsgolegion]

They aren't alive but that doesn't mean that they're not capable of being...guided. The frozen mannequin-like beings detect the presence of the two and suddenly blur, heads all twitching to look at them.

Then, even though it's stilted and jerky, they start to move. It's in quick jerking movements. One second they're in one place, then shifted closer by several feet, then shifted closer by another few feet, with no movements in between. Barry and Locus have the advantage of freely moving among them at a much faster speed, but they can still give chase in halting, fleeting movements.

[agnominal]

Enclosing around them. And there are many, too many. Faces hidden behind their helmets, jerking towards them as if pulled on invisible strings. "Move," he utters, before turning to push towards the nearest opening, before they get too close. If these people aren't alive, then there's no killing them. There's only escape, and leaving them behind.

This is a battle not of bullets, but of minds. If they can shape objects, then perhaps there is a way to divert their pursuers. Focusing his mind, he chooses something else from Chorus. Remember. Remember. The last vivid memory he has of this place was--

As he does, the ground around them seems to break into tile-like fragments, some rising and others dropping away, sinking to reveal a floor of jagged, crystalline spikes beneath them. Locus quickly steps onto one of the rising platforms, nodding for Barry to do the same.

It's only a small detail in the landscape. He's not sure how it will mesh with the others, where the platform will take them, or if those...things will follow. But he's fighting back.