Nova Prime / Rich Rider (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iamresponding) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
legionmissions2017-10-22 08:09 pm
iamresponding) wrote in legionmissions2017-10-22 08:09 pm
Upon my liar's chair [BLARGH FHTAGN] [player plot] [part 2 and 3] [closed to signups]
Who| Rich Rider and those who signed up for Part 2 and 3
What| Stopping the squids from opening a rift to the Cancerverse and saving Rich
Where| At a derelict stargate station and the Cancerverse
When| An IC Day after "Game of Throne"
Warnings/Notes| Lovecraftian squid-monsters, body horror, attempted suicide by black hole
It's time.
They take over and do whatever they have to do, say whatever they have to say to disentangle Rich from anyone that'd get in his way.
The seed was planted a long time ago and what started as a little sprout of life within him grows and blooms within him now, rolling under his flesh, taking over his eyes so that he sees the things that should not be seen. Reality's edges roll away and reveal everything to him, the sickness that is Chronoblivion clinging to the edge of the world and the half-finished worlds and realms beyond.
He can see the Cancerverse and the beings within, staring at him whole universes away. Deep inside himself, his soul thrashes and spasms, and he's lost in a cage of endless rotating fractal visions of the many possible nightmares to come.
And then They push up his sleeves, move his limbs, and and get to work.
Their mission is holy. They will fulfill the Legion's mission and save existence. Chronoblivion's own bloated form will become their new Galactus Engine, they will touch every universe with their gift and life will reign eternal.
That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.
What| Stopping the squids from opening a rift to the Cancerverse and saving Rich
Where| At a derelict stargate station and the Cancerverse
When| An IC Day after "Game of Throne"
Warnings/Notes| Lovecraftian squid-monsters, body horror, attempted suicide by black hole
It's time.
They take over and do whatever they have to do, say whatever they have to say to disentangle Rich from anyone that'd get in his way.
The seed was planted a long time ago and what started as a little sprout of life within him grows and blooms within him now, rolling under his flesh, taking over his eyes so that he sees the things that should not be seen. Reality's edges roll away and reveal everything to him, the sickness that is Chronoblivion clinging to the edge of the world and the half-finished worlds and realms beyond.
He can see the Cancerverse and the beings within, staring at him whole universes away. Deep inside himself, his soul thrashes and spasms, and he's lost in a cage of endless rotating fractal visions of the many possible nightmares to come.
And then They push up his sleeves, move his limbs, and and get to work.
Their mission is holy. They will fulfill the Legion's mission and save existence. Chronoblivion's own bloated form will become their new Galactus Engine, they will touch every universe with their gift and life will reign eternal.
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Bringing up the Silver Surfer incident feels almost oily, way too familiar for the creature his friend has turned into. Because it's still his friend in there. He knows that, and maybe this would be easier to deal with if he weren't.
"Then what the fuck is it?!"
Grif can't make it sound cool, he's scared. He's stuck here. Speed will keep him clear for a while, but he'll get tired. He can be trapped. People have lain traps for him before.
He's never pretended to be an optimist. It's all down to how fast the other Legionnaires get here, and if it's not fast enough? He knows how this ends.
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Dying over and over...
"Life, Grif. That's its gift. In the Cancerverse, life never ends. No matter how many times I died, I came back."
He peeks around a piece of equipment, looking for him.
"Even when I left, I carried some of that life with me. The Many-Angled ones put a tiny little piece of themselves inside me, a tiny little seed of the Cancerverse. The Time Trapper locked it and all the memories away - but the seal got damaged in that fight with Evil Superman, and now... now they've shown me the Truth."
Tears drip from the corners of his eyes, as his body floods with endorphins and fills him with joy.
"The Many-Angled Ones can win this fight. They're one of the only things powerful enough to defeat Chronoblivion. They just need help getting into this universe first, but once they do, it'll be over. No more missions, no more sacrifice... they'll be able to stop It and then use Its body to spread their gift to every universe out there - yours, mine, the universes of all our friends..."
He wheels around another piece of equipment, looking for him.
"I'm doing this for the team. For you. I'm trying to give you eternity, Grif."
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"How about screw that?!"
It's not going to fly, and he knows it isn't. He takes off into the maze of derelict machinery, breaking line of sight. The closing in has to happen soon, the monologuing can't last forever.
And dodging through the striped shadows of the abandoned facility means he's busy. He doesn't have to see Rich's face moved to tears by alien monsters.
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He's said it before, to explain why he had to risk himself, why he had to make a sacrifice. That's what they're using as ammunition here, to let his personality loose a tiny bit but still control him.
Him wanting to protect everyone. His love for others.
Love is in his voice now.
"Don't make me fight you, Grif." He floats up in the air, trying to get a better view over the equipment. "I was hoping you'd...you'd be there. At my side."
He says it like it's something he's wanted without realizing he wanted it. Like it's something he's felt but didn't have the words for.
"If you help me, you won't have to be afraid anymore. You won't have to fight so hard all the time, or work through so many awful things. You can finally just...chill. All the time. Because death will just be a distant memory and in a world without death, there's nothing to be afraid of."
Except, y'know, for eternal suffering.
"And I'll make sure nobody ever treats you like you're disposable," he spits out the word angrily, "ever again."
He thinks he sees him hiding behind something and he floats along slowly, trying to get a better angle.
"The UNSC were monsters for thinking your life wasn't worth something. And if you help me, everyone will see that. Everyone will appreciate what you did for them. No more stupid jokes about how lazy you are, about how much of a slob you are. Finally, everyone will see what I see."
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This is what happens when you let people know things about you: Someone will use it to hurt you. Somehow. Always. And, apparently, doing that while wearing a friend like a suit is also on the table.
Rich can see him. Shit.
"Nope! Nuhuh! Not doing this!" he barks, breaking from one cover to search for the next. He has play this out as long as he can. The stargate may already be charging, but people are coming and they have to be able to do something. Keeping Rich and the things riding him busy is all Grif can do to hope.
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Around each corner, just out of sight, he lays down traps, fields of gravimetric energy that will put Grif in traction.
"You can't keep running. You have to decide. Either you're with me or against me."
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It's a lie. They both know it's a lie, but defiance is Grif's trademark. He has limits, and he's already started panting.
"You're not Rich and I am never siding with you!"
It's easier to completely deny that Rich is in there. Just like it's easier to run for an opening than it is to vibrate through this junk.
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"You can do this all day, huh?"
Just a little bit of his usual humor is in his voice.
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Screw flying, this is the real cheating here. The thought races, part of a giddy and delirious panic as all his limbs report that yeah, he is well and truly stuck. There's no getting out of this. Grif's head is pinned to the floor, the angles of his helmet propping it up just enough to watch as Rich and the things-that-are-not-Rich approach.
This is it. It's over. This is why you don't volunteer for shit, this is why you don't be a hero, this is why when adventure calls you need to tell adventure to get out of your yard and go fuck itself before you call the cops.
It's now that heroes think noble and brave things, like "I hope everyone makes this count" or "This is how I'd want to go", but Grif?
At least Sarge doesn't get to see this.
He's going to die pinned to a floor, killed by his best friend who has alien brain squids, getting petty satisfaction out of how sad it's going to make his goddamn former-CO. It's a weird, stupid end to a weird, stupid life.
Grif wishes he felt anywhere close to noble or brave.
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His arms transform into purple tentacles again and slide around Grif's body, but there's no chance of Grif vibrating through them to escape -- Rich reinforces his grip with bands of Nova Force energy that Grif can't vibrate through.
One of the tentacles slides off Grif's helmet so the two of them can look eye to eye, and a tentacle settles around Grif's neck, gripping it tight, but not so tight he's choking yet -- hinting at what's about to come.
Despite the tentacles, Rich's eyes and face at least stay normal this time. His expression is plaintive.
"I can't let you get in my way. What I'm doing is too important. But it doesn't have to be this way. Stop being so goddamn stubborn. If you want, you don't even have to help me - you just have to stay out of my way. That's all I'm asking for. Don't be a hero. Would that be so hard?"
His voice is pleading, desperate, but filled with all of Rich's usual warmth.
"C'mon, Grif, what do you say?"
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While Rich's expression is plaintive, Grif's is hard, marshaling a lifetime of well-tended bitterness. The facade breaks around the eyes though. The fear is too open. There are tears in the corners. This is the best Grif can do.
"Sorry," he chokes. "But I can't let you down."
The Many-Angled-Ones overplayed their hand. Grif is afraid of pain, Grif is afraid of death, Grif is afraid of failing the multiverse, and Grif might even be afraid of how he'll be remembered, but disappointing Rich?
He knows what Rich thinks of him beyond anything the monsters can possibly twist, and Rich thinks his stubbornness is great.
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Rich freezes in place and for a moment he can only look at Grif, like what Grif just said needs time to tunnel inside him until he can finally comprehend it - and it reaches what it's tunneling for. It reaches something deep, underneath the creatures crawling in his skin and through his brain.
He does love Grif's stubbornness, because it's not just stubbornness for the sake of stubborness anymore, it's stubbornness in the face of things that are wrong. Say what you will about him, but when something terrible's going on, Grif doesn't know when to quit.
If Rich is coming up against that stubbornness right now...what does that mean about him? What does that mean about what he's doing?
Screaming.
There are tears in Grif's eyes and Rich's eyes brim with tears to match. Somehow, his arm reforms out of that tentacled mass, the tentacles holding Grif shifting so they're coming out of Rich's shoulder instead. He reaches up his very normal human hand to cup Grif's face, and almost thoughtlessly his thumb brushes away the tear in the corner of Grif's eye.
Why aren't you screaming?
"Why aren't I... Why aren't I ...?" he breathes out.
Everything feels so good. He knows his place, he knows who he is, know's what he's doing is right. He's more confident than he's ever been in his life.
...which means something's wrong. He's struggled with a massive inferiority complex since he was a teenager, and now it's gone all of a sudden? Now everything feels perfect and he feels complete? It feels just like... just like ...
"The Phalanx," he breathes out, eyes going wide. "Just like..."
He looks at Grif dangling in the tentacles and for just a moment he sees Ko-rel there instead, bleeding, dying in his arms after he helped Gamora kill her. His very first Nova, dead, all because he couldn't fight off the Phalanx infection fast enough.
No. He's not letting it happen again. Not this time.
Not again.
Not to him.Why aren't you screaming?
It's his own voice. The strange voice that sounds like something other is actually his voice, reaching through all the muck the same way it did once before.
Why aren't you screaming, Richie? he asks himself.
"I... am..." he grinds out between his teeth.
Attaboy.
He screams and tosses Grif aside, away from himself, before the things inside him have a chance to take control and hurt him. It's good that he did it because as soon as they start losing control, they try to take over again by force, try to shove his mind down deep where it can't reach the surface again. Tentacles sprout out from all over his body, and his face turns that sickly purple again, his eyes glowing purple. The tentacles accidentally knock off his helmet and he crouches there, gripping at his head like his hands are the only thing keeping it from exploding.
But he's not giving up without a fight this time.
"Oh no you don't, you monsters! You screwed up! I know you're in there now and I can see you for what you really are!" He starts ripping tentacles off himself, trying to get them out of his skin, weeping as years of painful memories pour back in without the rosy filter the squids had placed over them. "Did you really think you could make me forget everything you did to me?! Did you really think after stopping you from taking my universe that I'd just lay down and let you take this one? That'd I'd sit back and let you take the multiverse? Like hell."
He isn't going to make it easy for them.
"Grif's not the only one that's stubborn."
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"...Rich?"
Rich either can't hear him or can't listen, he's too busy snarling at what's going on in his own head, but he's alive and fighting in there. Grif shouts as he's thrown, but there's hope in it. He hits the deck with a thump that knocks the breath out of him, but then he's using a gantry to drag himself up onto his shaking legs.
"C'mon, Rich!" he yells. "Kick their asses!"
He's helping. Maybe. Hopefully. Fuck it, if there's even a chance it's useful, he's going to yell.
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Kid Q is in through the door first.
"Whoa. Okay, fan out, we're going to need to keep him here, but not so close that whatever that is gets grabby for hostages. Nova, help Grif stay on his feet. Brainy, get that portal shut down before we have another life-changing field trip to a different galaxy, please."
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He’s not far behind Kid Quantum, and he doesn’t have to ask for an order. If Nova is getting Grif and Brainy is closing the portal – that’s funny, he thinks, he was talking about interdimensional portals yesterday – then both of them could use cover. Distraction duty is a go.
“Hey, Rich!” he called, deliberately using first names to avoid the Nova/Nova Prime confusion. Robbie made his way forward cautiously, no bouncing until he finds Rich. “If it’s the purple thing throwing you, nobody judges people off the beige-brown spectrum here! And purple doesn’t mean you’re a bad guy! Lots of Legionnaires wear purple!”
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Vance goes high, flying up toward the ceiling. Part of it just getting eyes on what's happening and being able to direct people in to where Rich and Grif are at. The other part is because, when it comes to containment, he's probably one of the ones best suited to it. Telekinesis was useful that way.
"Robbie, he's to your left and forward about fifty or sixty yards. Sam, Grif's about twenty feet away from him."
Things may be awkward between himself and Robbie, but he's not giving it any thought. It doesn't matter right now. They all have the same goal here: make sure that Rich gets back in one piece.
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In a less desperate moment, Sam might've balked at the fact that he's clearly got the easy job here, but they've got way bigger things to worry about than his stupid teenage insecurities, and while it can't always be said that Sam's rational, he at least has the sense to clamp down on it.
The easy job, after all, is still pretty important.
It doesn't take him long to make it to Grif, grabbing one arm to pull over his shoulders and keep him upright. "You're not gonna like, puke or anything, are you?"
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"Copy!"
He's moving as quickly as he can, moving closer to Rich and putting distance between himself and his teammates. He doesn't know if he'll need his power nuke, but the last thing he wants is for anyone but Rich to be caught in it.
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Grif hates it.
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Then something else starts to push its way in, mouths gaping, tentacles grasping.
Primal fear floods the room, radiating out of the portal like heat. This...thing isn't meant to exist in the material universe. One of its tentacles reaches out and grabs Brainy, waving him in the air. When he forms a sphere of shields around himself, more tentacles wrap around the field and squeeze, trying to break them.
Rich himself is clearly still struggling for control. The purple keeps washing over his skin, making it pale and wrinkled and dead, and then it keeps turning back. His eyes flicker back and forth like a broken street lamp from the usual blue they glow when he's using his powers to a sinister purple-red light. As fast as he rips tentacles out of himself, causing them to wither and die on the floor, new ones form and start waving dangerously, trying to grab at them all.
Rich screams again and cringes, tears squeezing out through his eyelids as the squids dump years of suffering back into his brain. Still, even as they lay him bare, they make themselves vulnerable. The more they open him up to them the more they leave themselves open for him to see.
"Brainy, they don't want you to touch something called a 'entropic regulator.' I think if you mess with it, it'll let you shut down it down fast enough -- !"
The squids cut him off by using the tentacles sprouting out of his body against him. One of them wraps around his face like a gag, and another warps around Rich's neck, squeezing. Just because he's their host doesn't mean they'll need him as one for long. He's just a tool for them and one they won't need anymore if the portal is able to do its job in time.
As he struggles with being strangled, he starts to lose control, and since his mind has been laid bare to them - they know any weaknesses about the others that Rich knows. So tentacles whip out, wrap around Speedball's torso, and squeeze, until something cracks. Then fast enough to be difficult to stop but slow enough that the damage can't be considered concussive, they press him back into a pile of broken equipment filled with sharp fragged metal.
Rich lets out an "MMPH!" a hand extended towards Robbie.
Then they hijack Rich's powers, too. His arms start flailing wildly of their own accord and Nova Force energy fires out of his hands wildly.
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"Freelancer, take out his powers!" Even if that doesn't hurt the squids, it'll keep them from using his powers against them. "Nova, help me lay down cover fire to free Brainy. Justice, take care of Speedball."
Doubletime, I'm giving you your orders over the earplugs so they don't see you coming. After Wash downs his powers, I need you get in there and destroy the tentacles that are strangling Rich. she says over their connection via the telepathic earplugs.
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Another eye on the it reaching through the portal, all eyes and too many teeth for something that isn't on XBox.
He can hear Grif and Sam somewhere nearby - Robbie thinks he should spare an eye for them as well, try to clear a path, but then Brainy's under attack in the edge of his field of vision.
There's too much to keep track of, and Robbie prioritizes distracting the squid in the portal from Brainy, if he can, and hopefully keep it from noticing the other new arrivals. Energy bubbles are very good at annoying hell spawn.
... but there really was too much going on. When Robbie moves to launch himself at a spot near the portal, planning on an explosion of bright bubbles on impact, he takes that eye off Rich.
Stupid. He thought Rich was fighting it well enough, and that Vance is a better anti-tentacle wrap helper. Now, he's worse off than Brainy, because the tentacle's squeezing hard, and Robbie isn't even remotely succeeding in pulling the appendage off of him. "Rich, buddy, you need to ease up on the hu-"
Crack. It's a double crack, actually, matched with a sharp pain. The pressure feels worse, or maybe the pain feels worse against the pressure. Robbie really can't tell, because his head feels fogged with the sensation.
It's funny, in a sick way, that he realizes that being in pain hasn't made him short of breath in years, no matter how badly he was cut, just as the jagged, twisted edges of metal pierce his back. It shouldn't hurt this bad, if he could just relax and breathe through it; he should be used to this. But he can barely breathe shallowly, and he's never been skewered before.
Then, the tentacle pushing him into the debris rots to death around him, and he's falling and landing on a bubble that's not his - it almost sends him bouncing, but he manages to get a hold of himself, figuratively, and slid to the floor. Literally, too, as his hand pushes against the one exit wound on his stomach to slow the bloodflow. He can feel more running down his back. Damn Time Trapper stealing powers - pain used to be worth it.
"I hate... portals." He weakly bats a stray energy bubble at Rich. It's the principle of it.
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In his nightmares, though, it's all in slow motion. Things that Vance should be able to deal with and can't because he's frozen in place. Here, though, there's no chance to react because it's all just going down too quickly. There's hardly a moment for him to even start getting his brain in gear before Robbie's bleeding on the floor.
He knows that, tactically, giving up the high ground is a bad idea. Up here, he can see everything and may have a better chance of reacting next time. (Because he'd done so well so far.) But it's clear that Robbie's wounds need to be attended to before he can be moved.
Which is why Vance drops down beside Robbie, reinforcing the TK shield around them, extending it even into the floor as protection against the tentacles. He winces as one slams down over his head as hard as it can, but turns his attention back to Robbie, doing a quick scan to see how bad the injuries are.
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Still, maybe it's a good thing Grif is half slung over him, because that's enough of a reminder to Sam that he can't just jump straight into the middle of things without thinking (the way he'd almost certainly be doing otherwise). He needs to move in the other direction.
"Hang on, dude."
Why limp across this mess when he can just blast them in the other direction, right?
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While motherfucking Cthulu somehow isn't at the very top of that list, he's still going to have nightmares about this for a good long while.
But right now, in this moment, none of that is important.
He snaps his attention back to Rich in time to just barely dodge a blast of Nova Force and sets off his power nuke. "Done!" It'll take care of the Nova Force for the next two minutes; if he's lucky, it'll affect the tentacles as well.
(He's long since stopped putting stock in being lucky. That's York's job.)
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cw: suicide
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