THE NINTH GATE - [modplot]

[letsgolegion]

Who| Anyone who signed up
What| "The Ninth Gate" plot
Where| It starts on Rimbor, moves to Earth
When| The same time as "Gone-Away World" and "Total Eclipso the Heart"
Warnings/Notes| Lots of really fucked up suicide cult stuff.

It's not that difficult to get a lead on where the Catastrophists are recruiting, but so far the survival rate of undercover Scicops is...bad. As in, none of the undercover cops that have been sent in have come back. So with the rise in Catastrophist activity and losing several of their top undercover officers, the Science Police has actually asked for the Legion's help for once. A few tips from their contacts have made it clear that something big is coming, a terrorist attack of sometime, and time is running out. They need to get someone on the inside that actually survives, and they're hoping the Legion can do what they couldn't.

Fortunately, there's an easy in to at least start the undercover op.

The Science Police has long since determined that the Universal Brotherhood is just a front for the Catastrophists, largely due to the references to Apokolips and Darkseid they keep dropping. Science Police specialists and Legion intelligence officers handle the initial contacts, creating fake personas that they chat out as getting duped into embracing the Catastrophists' cause. They even donate enough credits to make it seem like the personas are emptying out their modest bank accounts to support the cause.

The next step is a very thorough briefing given to the Legionnaires going undercover on this mission, so they know every possible detail about their fake personas, and have access to all the chats they need to pretend to remember having.

Then, they're armed with very advanced technology to use to infiltrate the group. Super advanced subdermal hard-light hologram generators, sensor emulators that give off biosigns that fit their personas, advanced psi-blockers that even allow them to project surface thoughts that fit their cover. They have all the knowledge they need to infiltrate the group - now they just have to survive initiation.

They're sent in three pairs to sign up for recruitment in a shady bar on Rimbor, at separate times so them showing up together doesn't seem suspicious. Rimbor is an urban world that's just layers and layers of city on top of older cities. They're all led underground, to abandoned under-levels that used to be on the top levels of the cities only a few hundred years before, but are now that are deemed uninhabitable even by the lowest dregs of Rimborian society.

Once they're in, there are only two ways out: through surviving initiation or in body bags dropped in Rimbor's massive trash incinerators.

Comments

[legionnpcs]

"Yes," says Brother Maynard, his third eye glowing brighter. "Such despair. Such magnificent despair. Betrayal - the Daxamites were supposed to be allies to the rest of the UP. Loss. You understand, don't you. The universal truth. I can feel it."

He nods to the other cult members.

"Stay here. I will go speak to our masters," he says, and he and their guide leave the room to go talk to...somebody, presumably. The guards stay, with their weapons trained on the two of them.

And they're just...left there.

[brisance]

It's hard not to turn and look at Kyou directly when his voice cracks. She doesn't think he's being a part of them - it's just a bit of concern, something she makes sure to stuff down deep before Maynard can feel it.

Thankfully, everything seems to work out for this part, and so she just watches Maynard walk away. Sitting still isn't too hard, although the temptation to look at each of the guards in turn is there. But instead she stares forward.

It's just like being in the military, yes? Trying to see what they'll do. But she makes sure to pull up more feelings of misery as she stares dully ahead. Just because Maynard left the room doesn't mean this isn't a second part of his little empath test somehow.

[letsgohurtpeople]

Now that Brother Maynard isn't actively scanning them, it's a little safer for them to be themselves. Slightly. A teeny bit. (They do still have guns trained at their heads, after all).

The telepathic earplugs give them a safe avenue to talk, especially with the psiblockers, as long as they're very careful in how they school their expressions and what they say out loud. The holograms help but they're still linked in to the real expressions they make.

They're trying to make us sweat, he thinks at Carolina. It's a head game.

He says it like he has quite a bit of experience with those.

Normal people roped into this would just be confused about the hold up and not sure what's going on. Guilty people, like undercover cops, would start to get nervous. Maybe panic.

A pause as he considers that he may be preaching to the choir. It wasn't like they'd gotten more than some cursory information about each other before the mission. Mostly they'd all been briefed in what they should know about their own and each other's personas, no who their partner actually was.

Uh. I mean...you might know that. I figured I'd point it out just in case you don't.

[brisance]

Carolina tilts her head forward a little bit when he speaks. She hasn't exactly forgotten the earplugs - just wasn't used to using them. Thankfully, she keeps staring forward, her expression one of tiredness. Hopefully they'll take a nonreaction as too tired to get confused.

I figured, she thinks back, not considering how short it might come off - but a moment later. But I appreciate it. Thanks. How long do you think they'll draw it out?

Her gaze drags over one of the guards with the blaster, still just looking tired and morose.

[letsgohurtpeople]

Probably just a few minutes. Wait too long and even normal people would start freaking out, even with the guns. They only need to press us until twitchier people would fold.

He looks around the room but makes sure his expression is schooled in a normal amount of nervousness.

Still, if they don't come back in a minute or two we should probably playact a low-key tender sibling drama about bravely walking into our new life - of dicking over the rest of the universe because we had a sad.

The sarcasm is cloying enough to be transmitted by thought.

It's sick enough these freaks drag grieving people into this, but it's still just as sick that grieving people agree to it. They just jump right in on their chance to drag everyone else down with 'em. His disgust is palpable. They're weak.

[brisance]

Sibling drama wouldn't be a bad idea. At least because sitting here quietly is gonna get suspicious enough after a point.

The comments about people being weak make it hard for her to not turn and stare. She gets it - this is way too extreme, joining a cult to kill others and end the world. But there is a point where you just stop caring about everything else - and she'd been there before.

When you're hurting like that, when you've lost everything else, it sounds like a good idea. But what these people need is help, not a cult that tells them the rest of the world needs to end because that's how they feel, she finally projects. They're preying on their emotions.

[letsgohurtpeople]

Yeah, no shit.

The words are harsher than the actual feelings and thoughts behind them, but thanks to the link, for once, instead of coming off harsher than he really means them, they come off as gentle as they're meant to sound. There's no malice being projected behind them.

It's easy, after you've lost someone and seen the worst of people, to want the whole world to hurt. That's how it fel - aagh, I hate this telepathic link thing.

It's hard not to just...blurt.

I just mean that I understand it like...mentally. I don't understand it like - um, just imagine me thumping a hand to my chest because I can't actually do it right now.

He doesn't understand it on an emotional level. In his gut. He doesn't understand how it could...progress, from just the normal pain someone felt to action, to enough hate to destroy the whole world. He has plenty of hate in him and even he doesn't have enough hate for that.

That's not how I dealt with it, comes out in the smallest whisper, one that wasn't even meant to be thought aloud, let alone projected. Next comes the whisper, ohgod I hope she didn't hear that.

[brisance]

All right, that's actually the hardest moment she's had. Trying not to laugh when he 'stumbles' over his mental words.

Hey. It's okay. I get it too. I didn't do anything like this, but I wanted to make everyone hurt like I did for a while. But after a point you take responsibility for it. You don't make it someone else's.

With that, she finally turns. Her hand has an affected tremble to it as she reaches out for his. Sorry, Kyou, but she's going to play this up.

"Do you think they're going to let us help?" She asks, her voice a hushed whisper - but not so quiet that it isn't perfectly audible and therefore not suspicious.

[letsgohurtpeople]

Now he's curious, but they don't exactly have time to sit here and chit-chat about their respective angsty backstories. They're on a mission. The conversation has to wait - and maybe he can ferret more details out of her as they go. Not that he really feels like she owes him any, just like he hates sharing any details of his own. It's just...

It's just it sounds like maybe she gets it.

The hardest moment he has is finding the right way to react to the hand on his. Until these last sixth months, after he met his friends in Remedial, he'd gone a very long time without being touched. Like, sure, he fought people a lot and had other ninjas gun for him, but nice touching, like hugs, or shoulder pats, or even hand touches ... well. It'd just been a while.

So he has to figure out the normal way to react, the human way to react, that isn't just staring at her hand with an outraged expression that says, 'Whyyyy is someone touching me?' He thinks back to the times when his father and siblings were still alive, back even farther to when his mother still was...

His fingers gently tighten around hers and though the holograms are in the way, it still feels like holding hands. With somebody. It's normal human contact and it's nice. For a moment it briefly reminds him of one of his big sister's hands in his one of the many things he needs to not think about to get through each day.

"I hope so," he answers, shaking his head slowly. He digs down deep to find words that he can say with any measure of sincerity. They have to sell this. "We need to help end it all. End the pain."

It's just that the pain they have to end isn't the cosmic suffering of it all - they have to end the pain these monsters keep trying to cause people, that they keep exploiting.

[brisance]

It was his suggestion, but Carolina could have easily just turned to him. Giving him a form of human contact just felt like the thing she should do.

He squeezes her hand back and ironically - it helps settle her nerves too. No, he's not one of her team mates from home, but he's just as here to stop this as she is, and while she's still wary of putting unknowns at her back? She's pretty sure she can trust this guy.

"We can do it," she tells him, and she means it - though what she means it for is, of course, the mission. "Soon, we won't have to endure the pain anymore. It'll all be over."

She manages to make that sound like a good thing.

[letsgolegion]

The guide and Brother Maynard return. Clearly, they've seen what they wanted to see.

"Come," says the guide. "You're ready to move onto the next phase."

He gestures for them to follow and leads them into a room that has two hooded cultists.

"The next step is an offering of pain. To serve us and to serve the one true way of the universe you must be willing to give up everything, and that may mean giving up your lives. It may entail untold suffering. But this price is one that will bring us all closer to the oblivion we rightly deserve."

He gestures to each cultist. Both of them are wearing alarming black masks.

"Sister Ellora is a Rezmutan. She has the ability to call forth your most painful memories and bring you to the absolute heights of emotional pain and despair. Brother Rellick is a Triilk, capable of using his powers to tap into the pain centers of the brain of most sentients."

Each of the cultists nod in greeting.

"You may each choose the nature of the pain you're willing to endure, physical or mental, but you still must choose. Those who can't endure aren't fit to join our ranks."

[letsgohurtpeople]

Hooray, he projects to Carolina.

"Physical pain," he says almost instantly. "I'll go with the physical pain."

He looks at Carolina, his expression concerned. This is pretty intense and they can't exactly bail, but he's sort of hoping maybe she has an idea to try to get around it.

Because he sure doesn't.

Any chance you have an idea about how we can get around this?

[brisance]

Carolina has emotions she would rather not drag to the surface again. But physical pain? She's been through torture, shot and stabbed more than once.

"Every day I suffer a weight on my soul from this world. But I will prove to you I can handle the physical as well." It's dramatic, but almost boastful - very Carolina.

She looks forward, when Kyou looks at her, her expression intense. But the feelings she projects to him are worried.

The quickest way through is forward. If we try to find a way around they either turn us down or get suspicious.

[letsgolegion]

"You will go one at a time," says the guide. "You may comfort one another during the ritual, if you choose. Our paths to the end of days are not something we'll all face alone. We'll all walk together hand in hand to the peace of oblivion. "

He gestures for one of them to lay down on a soft mat in front of Brother Rellick.

[letsgohurtpeople]

Kyou steps forward first and lays down.

"I'll go first."

I've got a healing factor. If it turns out it's actually something that's actually fatal I'll hopefully be able to survive it and warn you. He adds, Not that it'll help much since we'd have to fight our way out of a room filled with people able to cause two different types of inhuman agony, but whatever.

Brother Rellick gestures for Carolina to kneel next to her "brother" if she wants, hissing something in some strange and otherworldly tongue that doesn't translate via the telepathic earplugs.

Their cult guide reaches out to nearby table and pulls out a strip of a leather-like material, kneeling and holding it out for Kyou to bite down on.

"Uh, exactly how long do we each have to do this?" Kyou asks the cultists, eyeing the leather strip nervously.

"Only five minutes," says their guide. "We don't want to drive our recruits mad after all."

This is going to suuuck, Kyou thinks at Carolina, biting down on the leather. But I know I can take it. I'm used to -

He doesn't get to complete the thought because Brother Rellick starts without warning. Even though he's someone used to constant pain, used to healing from endless terrible injuries (because that's how healing as a power works), it's still completely overwhelming. It's not just that every nerve is on fire. Since Brother Rellick is activating the pain center of his brain, it feels as if every nerve is singing with every possible type of pain at once - stinging, cutting, aching, cramping, burning. His back arches off the floor, and his hands flail from him barely resisting the urge to try to mangle the one responsible for doing this to him.

He screams but it's not just through the piece of leather. He can't stop his mental screams from transmitting over the earplugs, too. His physical voice is naturally gravelly, and his mental voice usually carries a jaded cynicism with it that makes it sound almost the same, but his mental screams are different. They're raw and uninhibited and that means over the earplugs, right now he sounds a lot more like the teenage boy he is.

[brisance]

Good idea, Carolina thinks to Kyou when he suggests the healing factor. Let me know if we need to get out rather than fight, though.

She settles down next to Kyou, her legs folded under her. She doesn't expect to have to actually do much beyond be there, maybe hold his hand because pain does suck - but it's like flicking a switch.

One moment Kyou is normal, if nervous, and bragging, and the next there's screaming - through the leather and in her ears. She flinches, and she hopes it passes off as being surprised by what she can hear and not what's in her head. Because there's no way to stop him from screaming, short of taking out the earplugs.

She immediately reaches out, gripping his hands. "It's okay, I'm here. I've got you," She tells him, her voice trying to be soothing but it's shaking a little.

He sounds like Eta, and Iota - when they realized who Tex was, when they screamed in her brain and made her pass out. Just raw pain, and young, too.

She draws her brows down.

Kyou - focus on me. Focus on my voice. Don't think about what they're doing to you. You can't ignore it - but you can rise above it.

[letsgohurtpeople]

He's crying and he has just enough wherewithal to be ashamed of it but is in too much pain to do anything about it. But it's all enough to make him hold onto her hands with a death grip when she grabs them, despite how he'd never hold someone's hands otherwise. She may be practically a stranger but she's a caring stranger and he'll take comfort where he can get it.

And then he starts to go quiet and his grip loosens slightly as his brain starts going Away. It hasn't happened this badly in years, his mind having to go somewhere else for him to survive something, but it still knows how. Something just...disconnects and the pain is somehow a separate thing, even though he's still feeling it. He's two people at once, one part of him floating away, and the other part, the part of him that hurts knows how to hurt, it's good at hurting. It exists just to hurt. Surviving being hurt is all it ever does.

Silence replaces the mental screams. When his mental voice comes again, it's hazy and distant and slightly delirious.

Always...telling...me what to do.

It quickly becomes clear that he thinks she's someone else. The way she's talking reminds him of someone.

Rina bean...nagging queen...

It's the kind of teasing sing-song someone would reserve for a sibling.

[brisance]

If anything, the quiet is more terrifying than the screaming.

At first, she thinks they've killed him somehow. The death grip loosens, he goes a little limp, and she looks up at Brother Rellick, her expression thunderous and she's not really able to control it. She still has a tight hold of his hands.

"What have you done-" she gets out, her tone furious before Kyou talks again - and this time his voice is different.

She moves one hand to cup the side of his cheek, to cover how she looks reflexively down when he speaks to her.

I'm - I'm not a nag. Her mental voice stumbles and she knows she's not who he thinks she is, but she'll work with it to get him through this first.

[letsgohurtpeople]

Are too.

It's childish, but reflexively so. This is old patter, old teasing.

Fortunately, it's over. It's a five minutes that felt like an eternity but it wasn't actually one. Brother Rellick finally stops and withdraws his hands from where they'd hovered near Kyou's head. When the pain stops, he's still looking up at Carolina, expression fuzzy, but his eyes clear just slightly.

"Ow," he understates, and then panic sets in, his brain freaking the fuck out over being hurt so badly. Unburdened by distraction since the pain is now gone, he shoots upright, and gasps down breaths now that just breathing doesn't feel like exhausting agony.

His one hand is still holding hers and his grip tightens again.

"Stop stop stop stop stop," he rambles, even though it already stopped. "Stop."

Where...am...my whole brain is crying.

He's seriously disoriented.

[brisance]

You're gonna be okay. Carolina's voice says instantly, and she's trying to be calm. We're on a mission for the Legion, remember? That asshole just put you through some serious pain.

Pain that it is going to be her turn to go through in just a moment. She flicks her gaze to them again.

"Give me a moment to calm my brother," she asks, and moves in a little closer. She doesn't pull her hand out of Kyou's.

Deep breaths. Don't say anything out loud, okay?

[letsgohurtpeople]

I can take it. I can take it.

The words come out like a mantra, like it's something he has to tell himself too often. But he manages to calm himself down. Her comfort does actually help. Ever since his family died, he'd had to face terrible shit like this alone. Meeting his friends at school had changed that, but after leaving them behind due to being drawn to the Legion's universe, he'd figured that it'd be right back to having to look out for himself.

Maybe he was wrong.

"I'm okay. I'm okay."

And he actually is now.

Thanks for the breather.

"This pain, this suffering, there is so much pain like it in the universe. This is our truth," says the guide. "And this truth is what fuels our every action."

Kyou has to hide his expression, which clearly says, 'If you say another word of cultish gobbledygook I'm going to smack you in the mouth.' He does it by turning towards Carolina and putting a hand on her shoulder, using it to move so she can take his place, and making it look like he's trying to give her some support to brace her for what's next.

I really hope we get a chance to knock his teeth in before this is over.

"Your turn. I know you're strong enough for this, sis."

If we do, you can have the first punch.

By Kyou's standards, this is a gracious gift that he's offering, in exchange for her having his back as a teammate.

"Prepare yourself," says Brother Rellick, gesturing for her to lay down in Kyou's place. The guide moves the bite guard that'd fallen out of Kyou's mouth halfway through out of the way and offers Carolina a new one.

[brisance]

Carolina sends that it's no problem when he thanks her, letting him switch their places when the cultist waxes poetic about pain. She feels the same way, but she keeps her face straight - slightly nervous but determined, as she's actually feeling.

Thanks, she thinks (and also says out loud) at him as she lays down, projecting a little mental smirk - a burst of warmth. Pretty sure the thought of knocking his teeth in is going to keep me going.

She takes the bite guard and places it in, laying back.

Just imagining it now-

She never finishes her thought, since Rellick starts without telling either of them. The scream that she gives is muffled behind the bite guard, what it's there for, and her fists ball up. Her back arches while her legs kick out, bending and then flattening.

She's been through torture. She's been in a frozen lake with AI ripped out of her mind, she's starved for eight days straight - and still somehow nothing compares to it feeling like she's going through all of it at once. She has to breath through her nose or risk spitting out the guard and splitting all their ears with a shriek.

She squeezes her eyes shut, digging her fingers into the ground under her. It hurts - but she has to keep going. She has to shoulder this.

I can do this. I can do this - I have to do this.

She doesn't realize she's sending it to Kyou, a desperate mantra that she has to do this, that it'll be over. Somehow, she manages the five minutes, even though by the end her throat is raw and there are tears in the corner of her eyes.

[letsgohurtpeople]

This. Blows. Chunks.

I was bad enough going through it himself but watching someone else go through it makes him want to force them to eat their own intestines.

Yeah, sure, Kyou kills people. Like a lot. But he makes it quick and usually those people suck anyway, so who cares? But this, forcing already broken people through stuff that's meant to break them more? What the hell.

He can't do anything about it, though. He can only watch, like she did, and be grateful they didn't walk into this as messed up as the people that sign up to the Catastrophists for realsies. Even though he's a little awkward about it, he holds her hand through it, too, the way she'd held his, and gives her the same comforting words, the focus on my voice stuff. It's the least he can do.

Then it's all over.

I've got you, he says, quietly, helping her sit up and making it so his arms can keep her upright for however long it takes it her to steady herself. Take your time. It's almost like an out of body experience. Took me a few seconds to make my brain connect with my body again.

It causes one hell of a feeling of dissociation but he doesn't know the technical word for it.

He stalls the way she did. "Just let my sister catch her breath and then we'll be ready to face what's next."

[brisance]

She feels like a raw nerve - scraped open and exposed, for some reason. Not as bad as if they'd sorted through her worst memories - therin lies the things of nightmares.

But her breathing is ragged when it stops, as it takes her to feel like she can feel the rest of her body again. There's grime under her nails where she scraped the ground and she takes deep breaths, focusing on Kyou's voice to help ground her. It helps.

That's one hell of a way to describe it, she tells him, finally able to get her legs under her.

"I'm fine," she says out loud - shaky, but true. Someone determined, hopefully, in the Brotherhood's eyes.

this will be a short exchange

[legionnpcs]

"If you're both able to stand, it's time for your next and last trial," says the guide, gesturing for them to follow him.

He gives them time to stand, understanding they might be wobbly and when they're ready to follow he leads them into a massive circular room.

Now this one looks...ominous. They're in an indented circular area, an ampitheater. Standing above them, around the circle, are masses of cultists.

About twenty other conscripts, still in normal clothes like them are standing in the circular area. Some have hazy expressions of uncaring nihilism. Some look scared. A few look bitter, as if they resent their treatment slightly. (After that pain trial, who wouldn't?)

The door slams shut behind them and the guide stands on a metal disc on the ground. He extends his hand and reveals himself to be a Braalian by levitating the disc and himself up above them.

"Conscripts, now is your final and most important trial," he says. "You have proven your sincerity. You have shown us your endurance of pain and how it's given you conviction."

He smiles and it's not a nice smile.

"Now you have the generous gift of having a chance to demonstrate your utility."