legionmissions | TOTAL ECLIPSO THE HEART [modplot/log]

Entry tags:

TOTAL ECLIPSO THE HEART [modplot/log]

Apokolips was intimidating enough when it was bleak and dead but now it's even more of a living nightmare. As Eclipso, Catastrophists, and monsters menace the defense garrison, screams cut through the air the way they used to back when Apokolips' old ruler was alive.

Catastrophists toss themselves into the firepits in droves and smoke starts to rise from them. Somehow their sacrificial bloodshed seems to be doing something to the core of the planet. It groans and strains and the ground shakes as machinery under the surface starts to slowly get stoked back to life.

Some of the Catastrophists even rise into the air while wearing winged uniforms and clash with garrison members capable of flight - Apokolips' old parademon troops, reborn in a new form.

This world is a death engine, and if they don't manage to stop it it from restarting, Chronoblivion's forces will have an entire world to make war from.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I'm going to open you up and see what's inside," Eclipso hisses as she pins each of them down, traps them, transforms them. "Your deepest darkest fantasies of ultimate power. You will be my champion. My beast."

Black energy flashes.

"Witness the monster within!"

Dark light flashes over Ray's body. What darkness lurked in the heart of the he who hunts monsters was revealed as the light dissipated and Ray got to his feet.

"Was that supposed to do anything?" Ray asks, completely unchanged.

Edited 2017-09-23 15:47 (UTC)

"Not on the first date," Shepard manages to get out through gritted teeth before the dark energy (and not the familiar biotic kind, either) washes over her in a surge of irresistible power, and even her considerable self-control can't help her bite back a scream.

As Eclipso backs off to watch her handiwork take effect, the external change ripples across Shepard's Legion uniform, transforming it into a set of battle-scarred armor, dark gray and red and as ever displaying the elite N7 badge. And guns. Can't forget the guns. Anchored to her back are enough to equip a squad, the strange compact mass effect weapons of her home universe replacing the Legion-issued ones she'd had before.

After a disoriented moment, Shepard hops to her feet, rolling her shoulders as she looks down at herself, seemingly ignoring Eclipso. She holds her right arm up across her torso, almost like she paused a salute halfway, and around her hand and forearm springs up an elaborate construction of orange force fields forming a computer interface. Shepard makes a fist, and from the fields wrapping over the back of her hand springs a wicked-looking blade, almost two-dimensional and glowing white-hot.

"Heh." Shepard smirks at Eclipso as she she takes a couple of experimental swings with the omni-blade. "I guess you are good for something."

Realizing that this is just not going the way she planned, she reaches for the next nearest Legionnaire and grabs Rich, transforming him as well. When the black energy fades and he finishes the gruesome transformation, he turns to Shepard, breathing heavily, manifested into the perfect evil shape of...

Of himself. He hasn't changed into anything weird. It's just that he looks older, like his hair's just starting to get peppered with gray. His uniform looks a little less superhero-ey and a little more law enforcement..ey. He even has a big shiny police badge pinned to his chest now. By all accounts he looks like a highly successful and decorated commander of some kind of very successful police force. He's at least in his sixties, but he looks pretty good for an old dude.

"You almost made me spill my coffee. Blue Blazes," he says to Eclipso, frowning, trying to recover from said near-spill to calmly take a sip. The coffee is in a "Galaxy's Best Boss" mug.

After swallowing, he looks at Shep, and looks back up at the mystified ex-angel, and says, "You really didn't think this cunning plan through, did you." He turns to Shep, "She really didn't think this through."

"They never do." She shakes her head, turning back to Eclipso. "Do you honestly think everyone secretly wants to be sitting on a throne of skull--eh, stupid question, you probably do." As Shepard realizes she's giving Eclipso too much credit, her eyes start to glow with the blue-white of a powered-up biotic. "Let's find out just how immortal you really are."

Shepard has deep and unshakable principles, but none of them involve anything that might reasonably be described as pacifist.

Rich puts his mug down on some rubble because it'll probably get broken but he at least wants to try to put it off the side. (It's a good boss mug. It's got so much layered in coffee from never being washed that he could put hot water in it and just make more coffee out of it, which is a state of being all good boss mugs have.)

Then he turns to Eclipso with Nova force flaring up around each fist.

"Man, does it feel good to be at full power again."

He's powerful like this but all he wanted in his heart is what he used to have, nothing more.

He blasts Nova Force in Eclipso's direction.

"Rider, that mug is disgusting." Even under the glow of her barrier, Shepard's pursed-lip disapproval shows. Like all career military, she has Opinions about tidiness.

He looks like he's more or less got Eclipso handled, but she pulls a large sniper rifle off her back anyway, its barrel and stock extending automatically and its scope popping up as she readies the weapon.

"Don't insult my boss mug. It's a good mug. It's a mug that knows what it's about."

And what it's about is apparently holding onto the congealed remains of several thousand past cups of coffee.

"Why haven't you transformed into monsters?!" screeches Eclipso, clearly put out over this whole debacle and Rich punches her into one of Apokolips' strange structures. It collapses and falls on her. It takes her time to drag herself back to her feet again, which gives Shep a whole lot of leeway to take a shot.

"Do you really think the only kinds of power people want are the kinds that let them have power over others? Some people want power not because they want to hurt people, they want it so they can do good with it. They want it to use it protect people."

Edited 2017-10-11 02:51 (UTC)

"My deep, dark fantasy is my bosses listening to me for once," Shepard contributes dryly, her voice a bit muffled by the fact she's more or less talking into her rifle as she draws a bead. Even an anti-materiel shot won't do much here, she suspects, and she flips a setting to maximize knockback instead of penetration, squeezing off a shot aimed directly between Eclipso's eyes. Mass effect weapons make less noise than most, but they kick like a mule and hit like a truck, especially the ones that are supposed to be vehicle-mounted.

"Rider, seriously, when was the last time anyone washed the damn thing?" Don't think a battle against cosmic evil is going to slow her down, Rich. "Can you even taste the actual coffee anymore?"

Her sniper shot knocking Eclipso right on her ass gives him some time to argue back.

"If anything, it tastes extra like coffee. Every cup of normal coffee automatically turns into...espresso, I guess. Would be what you'd call it. Technically. It's sort of super concentrated."

It's supercoffee. A coffee that surpasses all other forms of coffee, dark as the dark matter of the infinite cosmos.

"Mm, that 'bottom of the pot at the end of a watch' flavor." She's in the Navy, Rider. She knows from lousy coffee, and being the boss means you never have to drink the gross sludge the commissary tries to pass off on the graveyard shift, or brew your own version of it in your disgusting unwashed mug.

Still watching Eclipso through the scope, Shepard clicks her tongue. "So how long you figure we've got until she wises up and undoes whatever it is she did?"

"See, now you're getting it."

Bottom of the pot flavor is best flavor.

As Eclipso gets up, her chest rises and falls in a way that's very alarming considering she doesn't actually have to breathe. She's sort of rage-panting.

"Probably about another ten seconds," Rich says quietly. "Get ready to ditch. She'll mop the floor with us the second we're depowered. We're best off sticking to the main plan."

Herding her towards the start of the trap, and getting lost in the battlefield, rather than trying to fight her all by themselves.

"Insects! I will not stand for your mockery of my power!" she crows.

She blasts them and suddenly all their extra power is ripped away. Rich goes back to being a young man again, the gray hair gone. Shep's weapons and extra power-ups disappear.

The mug vanishes.

"Aw. My mug. I was kinda hoping I could keep that."

He fires off a focused gravimetric beam at the same exact spot that Shep shot at and it briefly knocks her back.

Time to cut and run.

"I'm a Marine. I'll drink anything. Doesn't mean I'll fool myself into liking i--oops, there she goes." Her hands now empty, Shepard shrugs, then follows up Rich's attack with a biotic one of her own, slamming chunks of the destroyed building into Eclipso. Lord knows she's never not gone out of her way to piss off enormously powerful evil entities that have it in for her personally.

She jerks her head in the universal sign for 'let's bail,' at least for species with heads to jerk, and doesn't wait for an acknowledgement from Rich before displaying the better part of valor and running like hell.

Literally. She usually forgets about the flight ring.

Rico wears his darkest fantasies on his sleeve. He already partakes in them. But deeper than that, past the superficial sexual gratification and trappings of power and money, is something that he can't have but desperately craves.

What emerges from the chrysalis of dark energy is Rico, but different. He's kneeling, head bowed, wearing an elaborate golden eagle on his chest. The Chief Judge. The ultimate authority in Mega City One, the city he loved and owned. His shoulderpads catch the light of the fires of Apokalips, and reflect a strangely warm gleam. It's gold - he's covered in real gold, from his chain and badge to his shoulders, to anyone who would recognize it.

The most striking difference is that he looks older. More mature, more settled into his body but no less confident, and radiating an imposing presence that pulls heavy on the atmosphere around him. He gets up to his feet to face Eclipso, slight lines pulling at the corner of his mouth as he smirks, casual and languid in every hard angle of his body.

"How about you shut your drokking mouth, lady? I don't have to bend the knee to anyone. You don't own me. You didn't make me."

Slowly, consideringly, he turns away as he spits at her, waving a dismissive hand behind him in a deliberate show of careless disdain.

"I'm not just property anymore - I'm a person now. I don't jump for you. Not anyone, and not anymore."

He snaps his finger and points at the nearest legionnaire, his voice layered with an impossible authority.

"But you on the other hand... Kneel."

Zenyatta doesn't know Rico beyond the fact that they are on this mission together, but he saw Eclipso encase the man in dark energy. Something must be done. Not knowing a person never stopped him from aiding them.

"You be--" His words are forgotten at the sensation of Rico growing taller. But, that's not it at all. Zenyatta looks down at the ground beneath him, puzzled. It was as if gravity chose that moment to become stronger and caused Zenyatta to hover lower. The moment passes quickly. Zenyatta returns his normal hovering height. "You belong only to yourself, but this... this is not you. It is Eclipso."

"Can't always take a thing like that for granted. You're one to talk about belonging to yourself, droid."

Rico looks with a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, even as he's seemingly puzzled that he doesn't stay down. "Who do you belong to, I wonder?" he muses, drumming his fingers on his daystick in a patient rhythm as he comes down from his outcropping of rock to circle Zenyatta like a buzzard, his heavy tread shattering the earth beneath him with every footstep.

"This is the most me I've ever felt since coming here," he says as he spreads his arms wide open. The gold on his chest gleams in the light, against the wink of a ruby set in an eagle's eye, reflecting the obsessive spark in his visor. "This is who I'm supposed to be. Don't try to tell me that this doesn't feel right."

Zenyatta straightens, allowing Rico to circle him. His orbs still, and Zenyatta allocates some of his resources to imbue his orbs with more energy. Rico is more physically imposing, but Zenyatta steels himself for a battle of words and ideals. If he could touch on something, some connection, some common ground, then perhaps he could give Rico an Orb of Harmony to help pull him into balance. Right now, it probably wouldn't help and could escalate the situation.

"I belong only to myself. My soul is mine, and no one 'owns' me." The fight for omnic rights grew in the aftermath of the Omnic Crisis. The Shambali believe that omnics have a soul. This is a topic dear to Zenyatta, and no one can convince him that he is not a living being and not property.

"Tell me, what makes you feel 'right' as you are now? What has changed?"

"How can you say that?" Rico asks as he tilts his head to the side curiously. "You were made for something, surely? Made for a purpose? You were constructed, bolt by bolt, into the creation of somebody else's vision. You didn't have any kind of say in it. And I'm sure it's stamped into every part of you, somewhere." He waves a dismissive daystick towards Zenyatta's chassis. "In your construction, your vestigial programming, your history, whatever form it takes. You're property. A resource. And you say you belong to yourself?"

Rico laughs out loud, with real amusement, even as there's a thunderous crack of anger that rings out at the end of that statement. He halts in his tracks, seeming to collect his composure before turning his attention towards Zenyatta again.

"I'm the highest authority in Mega City One," he replies, tilting his chin up. "When I'm told to jump, I don't have to say how high. Neither Goodman or the Council have any say in how I live. What I do. What I am. I write the rules."

Rico exhales, eyes closed, content.

"That's what feels right."

Ah, this argument. How many times has Zenyatta heard this? Zenyatta mirrors Rico's head tilt but otherwise remains still, composed. His tone of voice remains even. "When a human is born, do they have any say in it? Are they not the creation of others, based on DNA? Do they not have instincts? Do they not grow from them? Become more than them?"

He straightens once more and doesn't falter at the laughter or the flare up of anger he senses. This is familiar territory. All his life, Zenyatta has heard these arguments, spent long days and nights at the monastery meditating on them. More than the lessons Mondatta has taught him, Zenyatta knows this through every fiber of his being.

"True self is without form. It does not matter how I came to be but what I do now. The same applies to you."

Then he motions around them. The fire pits cast everything in a red-orange glow. Shadows are long and dark. There are cries of pain and terror filling the air. Eclipso converts more Legionnaires over to her side. "You are forgetting Eclipso. This is not Mega City One, and I do not believe that she will let you rule over her. She will turn this world into a weapon if she is not stopped. She has claimed you as one of her champions to support her. Is that what you want?"

The thing is, Rico isn't necessarily talking about Zenyatta. Not really. This exchange is bringing out his more reflective nature, his quieter thoughts, but the faults and cracks in them have been magnified by Eclipso's magic. What he would never say normally comes spilling out, now that he has the power to allow it without repercussion.

"WRONG!" Rico shouts, and he cuts a sharp gesture through the air. "There's a difference between being born, and being made. Some are constructed for a purpose. Genetically engineered from the ground up. Every part of my flesh was once somebody else's flesh. My blood is his blood."

Like the kings of old, the Father of Justice born again. He starts circling Zenyatta again, but this time his stance is decidedly more predatory.

"And that purpose will always be there, whether you like it or not. Whether you choke on it or not. There's a difference. A human isn't drilled on applied violence until his hands are numb. A human doesn't drill a bullet through a skull and gets a pat on the head for it. Be violent, brutal, merciless. Reduced to what you do instead of what you are. I am what I am. I am what they molded me into. And I refuse to apologize for that."

Rico's breath is coming more erratic, his movements more jerky. He's clearly starting to lose his patience, and his control.

"And I think you're forgetting who asks the questions here," he murmurs. "Who gives the orders. Not you, not Eclipso. And even so, is it so bad to exchange one master for another?" He's joking, of course. He'd never. "This may not be Mega City One, but the universe could end and I'd die laughing. You tell me what's worth saving here. And you'd better have a damn good answer for me, or we'll see if I can't find that soul of yours in that tin can body."

The two Legionnaires share more than Zenyatta first realized. Zenyatta had no idea Rico was cloned from another, but to him, it changes little. Rico is still his own person. It gives him context, however. The anger directed towards Zenyatta is actually directed at himself.

Should Zenyatta be concerned for his safety as Rico circles like a hawk ready to swoop on its prey? Absolutely. Is he? No. He's calm. Steady. Still like a placid lake. He'll be the harmony to balance out Rico's discord. Zenyatta will not let himself be intimidated and fall into fear. That can come to him later during reflection and meditation. He files it away now.

"You are worth saving," Zenyatta says simply as a common fact like 1+1=2 or water is wet. If Rico desires the truth and no more questions, then he'll give it to him.

Zenyatta extends a hand toward Rico, and a warm golden Orb of Harmony forms. If allowed, Zenyatta will try to attach his Orb of Harmony to Rico. It will hover to and over his shoulder to provide him an emotional, mental link with Zenyatta; Zenyatta will bring to the forefront positive and calming thoughts in hopes of guiding Rico in that direction.

But if a fight is what Rico wants, then the Orb of Harmony will not connect. It will dissipate into nothing, and Zenyatta will prepare for a battle.

I am worth saving?

If only he knew how wrong he was, Rico thinks. He's saying it as if it's a fact, but Rico knows how empty a thing like that is. Anything can sound true with enough conviction in your voice. And if this was his answer...

The droid needs to be taught a lesson in kindness. Whatever that orb radiates, whatever that gesture means: Rico will reach out and ruin it. That's why he even allows it to come as close as it does. And if it's an attack, it's a poor one. Rico is confident in his ability to remain impervious to it, and doesn't otherwise react when Zenyatta sends the orb over.

The orb's light flickers and dims when it gets within a hand's span of him, and that's when he looks at it sharply like he's reconsidering allowing it in his presence. And for a second it almost looks like it might dissipate before it even touches him, but Rico stays where he is. He has nothing to fear anymore.

And miraculously, it stays.

There's a brief flicker of surprise when the Orb of Harmony connects and stays. He couldn't tell if his words had reached any part of him. He doesn't linger on that surprise, however. The milliseconds of it have their resources redirected towards his task.

Zenyatta focuses on encouraging the positive aspects of Rico's being, things that could shake off Eclipso's influence. He doesn't have to know what those are. Rico is the one who needs to realize his own strengths. Zenyatta is a guide with warmth, tranquility, and empathy. The blue lights on Zenyatta's forehead turn golden.

"Free your mind."

Rico may find the knots in his mind loosening. Thoughts might become clearer, and Eclipso's darkness could begin to recede.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

TOTAL ECLIPSO THE HEART [modplot/log]

PART 2: THE EVIL WITHIN

Re: PART 2: THE EVIL WITHIN

for Rich

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

OTA

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject