legionmissions | THE GONE-AWAY WORLD [modplot]

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plot: the gone-away world

THE GONE-AWAY WORLD [modplot]

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.

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"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.

Edited 2017-10-01 05:47 (UTC)

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.

Edited 2017-10-01 08:27 (UTC)

"Fear's just a tool." Declaring her to be the 'stuff of nightmares' just because she's calling him on his willing spread of life-destroying substances? Please. How dramatic could you get?

It's difficult to track him, but once she's locked eyes on him and thrown a leg over her Lawmaster, it roars to life and blazes after him, tearing through the desert terrain with ease. She watches the speedometer rise, not even flinching through the storm of exploding trees, and her mind drifts to the more important situation. The children? How would they know if they were headed in the right direction? Maybe if she-

The bike's proximity alarm cuts into her thoughts, and she glances behind her, spotting the problem. It's almost comic, like a rabbit chasing them, but it's coming in far too fast and seems far too huge for her tastes. On this planet, it was probably safe to assume that everything was hostile. America glances forward, wondering if the Easter Bunny had noticed, and then back. Drokk it. If this was a world of imagination, a world of will, then it was hers.

She focuses, slamming down a foot-thick steel wall into the earth in front of the tunneling thing. A split second later, another wall a yard away, and then filling the area between them with a glass case filled with a waxy, white substance. White phosphorus. Once the glass was shattered and it was exposed to oxygen, whatever was chasing them was certain to have a very bad day.

Adding to it, she starts spawning more Lawmasters and Judges, each of them peeling off into another direction to confuse the pursuit, offer as many false positives as possible.

Actually, considering it, why couldn't she just imagine up a map to the children, marking any further traps and opposition she'd come across? Maybe it'd work, or maybe she didn't know enough. Maybe if she just imagined it'd work, but would her own doubts create flaws in the map?

...Then she'd just have to shove aside her own doubts. They had no place in a Judge's mind anyway. That's why she wore tight boots. America glares down at the screen on her Lawmaster, mentally demanding a map, uncomplicated by anyone else's wishes, to appear. Here's hoping it worked.

Come to think of it, why couldn't she just teleport there? Because there might be traps. But if two strong-willed people managed it... She couldn't just let him test it, that would be animal cruelty. She clears her throat, activates her throat mic, and transmits to Bunnymund. "Easter Bunny. We're wasting time playing it their way. We should just focus on the children and create a warp gate right to them. Do it together so we can overwhelm anyone that predicted a tactic and set up countermeasures."

"-thanks." Always nice to have a heads-up. Even when it's after your partner cocoons you both in a potent and highly fatal bioweapon. He's at least aware enough of Cortana's basic sensibilities that the minute she mentions the importance of his helmet, he's switching over from ambient air to reserves.

That's about how long it takes for the vent grates to burst open, and he huffs a satisfied sound as the first wave goes down in a quivering carpet of scrabbling legs and chitin. The first one that doesn't go down brings the point of his rifle up, two quick shots to shatter it into immobility and three more just like it scrambling over the shards.

"All right, let's move!" He's on his way toward the door and ready to take up the rear, trusting in Cortana and Theta to pinpoint their directive and guide them there. He's on swarm control, and after the first half-dozen shots he's locked back the rifle and snatched a shotgun out of thin air instead, blasting a hole in the wave rolling towards them.

It's not the most creative thing, but if North wants to have an infinite weapons locker Cortana's not going to argue, and sticks close to his back. While he's shooting, an almost subliminal rising hum fills the air as she seeks the resonant frequency of the crystalline creatures. When she finds the tone, it crescendos in a monster- (and ear-) shattering blast, dampened in North's case by both his helmet and Cortana playing some acoustics tricks with sound waves cancelling each other out. She's a very considerate partner when she's not busy calling the human half of any given fireteam an idiot.

Meanwhile, Cortana muses on tactics. Right now the Legionnaires are only reacting, and that's bad. It puts them constantly a step behind, pure foolishness when they can do anything they can imagine. Playing this like a normal firefight with slightly cooler toys is playing to lose, especially against people with more practice at this game of fancies and the time to lay plans. Any half-bright criminal in the 31st century ought to have thought up countermeasures against teleportation, but moving themselves isn't the only way to negate defense in depth.

"North. Put up your shield. And maybe think up a Warthog or a Scorpion or something." In the time it takes his organic nerves and brain to process that--Theta can take over if things go too slowly--Cortana does the math and reaches out around them to fold reality like so much cloth. An AI capable of piloting through the 11 dimensions of slipspace has no trouble with the mere five or six it takes to loop their little patch of spacetime through a few exotic transforms and superimpose it on the place they want to be.

"Oh strewth -"

Unfortunately the image of something tunneling after him fired off too many associations for him not to give the matter of the world something to work with. He'd fought a grootslang only a few years ago, and remembered it like it was yesterday afternoon.

He clamped down on the thought, though not thinking of giant fire-breathing snakes was a challenge when in a desert surrounded by exploding, burning trees, but America had a point. This was a land of imagination and they were playing like they only had imaginations on par with the mortals who'd taken this place.

Well, he'd seen a lot more than a mortal had. That meant he could imagine a lot more terrible things to come after them, unfortunately. He had to beat them to the punch by imagining what could help them instead.

The phosphorous was a nice touch, and he skidded to a stop with his paws on the sand. Holding himself back from letting a trail of flowers grow in his steps, from replicating his warren in a superficial, decorative sense, was smart, but what good actually was holding back from reaching down into the heart of an uncultivated world, and showing it what a spirit of spring had cultivated of his?

He could make springtime on every continent. Maybe here he'd have to make a continent first, but that wasn't so much of a stretch.

"Fine, just pass it through the surface of the planet. I can imagine that better'n a warped . . . whatever you said."

His entire planet had a heartbeat and a life of her own, and she listened to his requests. She permitted him to take care of the mortals who'd appeared on her surface. This world could be as kind. This world could be as stable, as rich and welcoming. He held the image of Grandmother Earth in his mind, sank into the memories of crossing her surface in a day, knowing every cave and mountain and plain and forest that an entire planet could hold.

Listen to me.

He held the image of the children in his mind, the way he'd passed so quickly to so many other scared, stolen children, with the permission of his planet to reach them faster underground than anyone could find them above. The way the tunnels opened where he needed them to go, the way sound passed through earth and stone to reach his ears and lead him to the children who needed saving most -

Lead me to them.

He stamped the ground to open a tunnel, believing with all his might that the right one would open before the groot . . . the whatever it was reached them.

They both have their own idea of a way to the children so the hole in the ground combines them both. It opens up like the hole of a burrow but inside it is a swirlng warp gate large enough to accomodate American's bike. They can see a distorted image of what's on the other side - a group of criminals in a section of some kind of base, keeping guard.

Not far away, the creature hits the walls America left, then the phosphorus. There are explosions, shrieking, sand being thrown in the air, but it still only slowed it down. They don't have much time.

Between gunfire and the resonating sound the crystalline creatures start shattering to pieces, but Cortana is right in that they're mostly reacting. After the crystalline creatures start falling, strange amorphous living blobs start plopping out of the vents, stripping metal with their acidic noxious purple bodies as they slosh towards the two of them. They reach long sticky limbs in their direction as the drag themselves across the floor.

But reality folds and on the other side of it they can see a garrison of criminal guards, set up in some kind of stronghold.

The not-quite-people are still following, even with the Legionnaires being lifted away by the platform. They pile onto another platform that forms and starts floating not far below them. Then they pile onto each other, like ants creating a ladder out of their own bodies. As the pile gets higher and higher the ones up top reach upward towards the platform Barry and Locus are on.

Without hesitation, Locus reaches out to grasp the edge of the car door, hoisting himself inside before turning to sit, perched on the edge. It's not so different from hanging off the side of a Pelican.

He's taken shots from the side of a Pelican before.

Thinning their numbers is unlikely. So when he aims, it's towards the bottom of their makeshift towers, taking out weak points near the base to cause them to topple, rather than aiming for those near the top. And his aim is unerring.

"Go."

He's got their escape covered. Mostly.

"Hang on to something!"

Barry pulls away from the platform and, checking to see the time circuits are off because there's no need to tempt fate, floors it. The DeLorean peels off into the sky, towards the life signs the tricorder detected.

Shield - as soon as he hears the word it's up around them, the next wave plopping up against the walls of the dome. That and-

"-a what?"

"A Warthog!" Theta's already pulled up the dash of the vehicle, the wheel and steering column and the seat that materializes behind North at the knees and knocks him down to seated as his brain catches the hook and fills in the rest, chassis and wheels inward. The shield punches out to accommodate it in a whine and crunch of metal until the ship suddenly isn't and they're clunking to the ground in front of a fortification, still tumbling forward, Warthog inside the sphere rolling up to the walls and picking up speed.

"Gravity shift-?" Taking the Warthog and shield straight up the walls is the best he's got, but whatever they're doing it's going to happen soon, because the accelerator's just about on the floor.

Locus remains where he is, but locks one hand onto the edge of the car door, feet magnetizing to the vehicle as it speeds off, away from the threat. Presumably towards their goal.

That cannot be the end of it, not in a world built on will and imagination. It could not be so simple a thing, and his eyes remain on their path of retreat as Barry maintains whatever course he has set for them.

Damn. The decoys hadn't confused it at all. They were still being chased.

It would be so easy to just... let the monster, whatever it was, go through their shared tunnel, and that's what she imagined it as at his instructions, and kill them all. If she were home, dealing with a kidnapping gang that had just sicced it on her, she might even consider it poetic. Hoisting them by their own petard. The Legion wouldn't play things that way, though.

"Lower bike cannons to thirty-five degrees." She reaches down to snag a few grenades, willed onto her belt. It was nice to feel the full complement of equipment around her waist again. "Easter Bunny. Catch." She's not sure if he'll think of a similar option. Trapped eggs don't seem his style. Still, best to lob him a pair while she focused on controlling the Lawmaster. "Stun grenades. Standard issue. Loud bang, loud flash, disorienting sonics."

If she tells him the effects, it will help to make them more real. Layering those imaginations, counting on the fact that they've got to be better than the criminals.

"Just imagine you're immune to them and don't get between the bike and the targets." America snaps orders like she's used to being obeyed. Like she's done this before. Pretty close, but not exactly. "Once we're through, might be best to imagine the warp goes to the center of the planet in case something tries to follow."

It wasn't subtle, but the crooks already knew they were coming. Even if it wasn't the military-grade hardware she was slinging around, the cold fury and disgust that wrapped around her the moment she got her first glimpse of the people responsible for taking the children would've given her away instantly. Might not even need the reactive world for that.

Enough thought. Time for action. She guns her engine again, activating the turbo-boost before flying through the portal, and bellows to be heard over the noise of her engine. "I am the Law! Surrender or be Leporidaed!" The old 'Surrender or Die' schtick probably wouldn't work with someone like Bunnymund around.

She doesn't give them much time to respond, either. Not before opening fire. Non-lethal shots, aimed at the pelvis or the kneecaps. She expects they'll be resistant somehow, what fool wouldn't imagine themselves bulletproof? (Except maybe the kind who expects energy weapons.) But that's why Bunny had the stun grenades.

...Unless he decided to buck her plan for some reason.

If anyone asks, Cortana is going to claim she planned the hamster ball of death.

In the passenger seat, she braces against the dash--if anyone in the UNSC has ever worn a seat belt while riding in a Warthog, she hasn't heard about it--and reviews their options. As little as she likes to admit it, 'so stupid no one would think of it during contingency planning' does in fact seem to be a solid tactic...and will look brilliant in retrospect, instead of just the crazy it is now.

"Sure, why not? They might be expecting 'through the walls,' but I bet they haven't planned for 'up the walls.'" She looks at the opposition and runs a few scenarios while they pick up speed, perhaps a tenth of a second. "Just floor it and I'll handle the acceleration vectors."

No point in tipping their hand, and Cortana imagines a few stun grenades going off amidst the massed guards, solely to give them what they're expecting. Just a standard suicidal frontal assault by bleeding-heart Legionnaires, folks, nothing to see here. When the Warthog hits the right distance, she implements the equation she's been thinking of for at least 300 milliseconds. It's a beautiful one. She'll have to share with Theta later so someone can appreciate it for the aesthetics instead of just the effects.

Their personal gravity remains well-behaved, the force on the Warthog changing smoothly over just long enough to act like a ramp and turning the fortress wall into the ground as far as North's senses are concerned, while around them all accelerational hell breaks loose, random directions (but none of them useful ones) becoming 'down' for the guards at various gravitational pulls, some unfortunates slammed by 10 gees, some practically weightless in gravities so small as to be immeasurable...and none of them in a gravitational field that remains constant or even pointed in the same direction long enough to get their bearings.

That'll teach 'em to be organic.

It's just stupid enough to work. The problem with a world of imagination is that not all criminals actually have any imagination, especially not the mooks assigned to guard the outpost.

So no, they don't expect a military vehicle to just roll up the wall and into their base in a glorified hamster ball. They're also not expecting stun grenades and they're sure as hell not someone to play merry hell with gravity.

That means the two of them burst onto the scene fairly explosively, and mooks go flying or slam down into the ground due to suddenly now weighing 400 pounds. They have a clear shot at a massive door that leads inside into the main part of the outpost, but someone's imagined that it's made out of inertron, the hardest densest substance in the universe, so they're going to have to imagine their way through or around that.

They can see it in the distance, a massive sinister looking supervillain outpost. It's a little over the top in its design due to being imagined up by some really uncreative villains with a yen for Gothic architecture.

Their way there isn't unimpeded. Though their destination is in sight, something blocks their way.

It's a cloud of pigs, a massive swarm of pigs with wings. Most of them are pink, some are blue due to being a variant native to the planet Winath, but they're all definitely pigs and they all have wings, because apparently someone on this world said the phrase "when pigs fly" just a little too often for the laws of irony and absurdity to ignore it.

The pigs are all very friendly looking, at first. The lead pig stares at them.

Its empty eyes stare into their souls...

And find them wanting.

"SNRT SNRT SNRRTT SQWEEEEEEEE!"* It cries out a battle cry and then the pigs bare their teeth and attack, flying towards the Delorean. They start shooting lasers out of their eyes, trying to shoot it out of the air.

The pigs will defend their airspace. The two are not worthy by their piggy standards to pass.

*"Their souls are impure! Make their tummies into breakfast meats! DESTROY THEM!"

Edited 2017-10-05 05:31 (UTC)

"That is definitely not kosher."

Barry just barely manages to swerve out of the way of the laser fire, but it's a close thing. He's not an experienced pilot, and the DeLorean isn't exactly built for aerial dogfights. The only saving grace is that pigs aren't either.

"Think Barry, what works pigs?" He mumbles to himself. "Wolves! Wolves work on pigs!"

Another cloud flies out of the sky, this one made of winged wolves. Instead of laser eyes, they huff and puff and blow Godzilla-style atomic breath at the pigs.

This is without question the most ridiculous mission he's ever been on.

Yes, there's a time limit, a sense of urgency and danger, and yes, he'd do whatever he could to see it through, but looking at the flying, lazer-eyed pigs and the huffing and puffing wolves? Part of him is wishing he'd found another mission to take up.

No point in questioning it now. One of the wolves dives past, hurling its furry body at the main pig, while Locus takes a few shots of his own. Clipping their wings could help their prospects, perhaps.

Relying purely on imagination is still a work in progress, where he's concerned.

"Go low! Find a place to land." He turns back to look at Barry briefly.

"Working on it!"

The DeLorean dives underneath the mass of fighting pigs and wolves. Barry flies the car over the building, and lands it carefully on top.

While Cortana is busy making elegant origami out of whole reams of the standard accepted textbook of physics, North is focused on two main beliefs - that a Warthog is absolutely capable of rolling along a rigid sphere, and that the two AI on the team are capable of doing whatever they please, whether or not he could have even conceived of it beforehand. So the vehicle rolls right up the wall, down into the compound, and forward into the fray. The whole time, Theta's on the lookout for any remaining forces who look less than absolutely bewildered or panicked, pivoting the mounted gun at the rear of the vehicle and shooting through the flickering gaps in the shield that he's engineered countless times when the shield was still an armor enhancement entirely under his control. Per Legion rules, he isn't firing the standard-issue armor-penetrating rounds - instead, there's a full-auto barrage of miniature fireworks mortars bursting just close enough to their opponents' faces to take care of disorienting the ones still trying to struggle on through Cortana's attentions.

When they hit the ground - the actual ground, not a temporarily flipped point of gravitational pull - North pulls a hard turn toward the door, whistling a low slide of almost-admiration as he rolls up tapping the brakes. "Well okay then." A key, maybe. Or a really, really impressive explosion, though- hell, depending on how much further inside the kids are-

"No, it's okay!" He can catch the vague shape of the thought, the familiar patterns North's brain lights up in when he's thinking of how to take something down or take it apart, and he's just as sure that there's absolutely no need for it. Doors are made to be opened - and there's always a teammate, always a friend, right there and ready to get them inside so they can help finish the job. They're on a team - and that means trusting that there's someone there to handle the stuff that you can't do.

"It's gonna open."

Edited 2017-10-06 01:34 (UTC)

Between imaginary wolves and, you know, very non-imaginary bullets, the pigs are fended off enough for them to land on the roof of the ridiculously lairish looking lair.

But now they have to imagine a way in.

The roof isn't without its defenses, either.

Attack budgies.

Also with laser eyes.

(The kidnappers really went all in on this laser eyes thing).

Really? This is what's happening now? Imagination is one thing but this is...

"Unfortunate," growls Locus, before leaping down to the roof. Budgies are a smaller target than he's used to, but he could hit them all. Watch them splatter in a spray of colorful feathers.

But. That's not the point here, is it?

"Find us a way in!" As the more heavily armored of the two? He'll contend with the deadly laser-birds, drawing their attention, all the while pushing his focus to the edge of the roof.

One second passes, then two. Then a cat that could almost be Luna hops up over the edge, grooming itself fastidiously. Wonderful. Even imaginary cats take their time and do as they damn well please.

While Locus draws the attention of the birds, Barry zips toward a tower, smacking away any Budgies that come near him with an imagined tennis racket. It feels a little cruel, but they aren't real birds to begin with.

Once he reaches the tower, he slaps his hand on it and focuses on it as much as he can. "Open door to a stairwell, open door to a stairwell, open door to a stairwell..."

The entrance is created, and Barry nearly fall in as the open doorway appears.

"We're in!"

Because ~~your mod is an asshole~~ it just couldn't be easy, the inside looks like this:

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THE GONE-AWAY WORLD [modplot]

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