TOTAL ECLIPSO THE HEART [modplot/log]

[letsgolegion]

Who| Everyone who signed up
What| "Total Eclipso The Heart"
Where| Apokolips
When| The same time as "The Ninth Gate" and "The Gone-Away World"
Warnings/Notes| cw: suicide, due to the Catastrophists MO


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.

Comments

[thebioticwoman]

"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.

[iamresponding]

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.

[thebioticwoman]

"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.

[iamresponding]

"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."

[thebioticwoman]

"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?"

[iamresponding]

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.

[thebioticwoman]

"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?"

[iamresponding]

"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.

[thebioticwoman]

"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.