Full of broken thoughts [Part 3]

[iamresponding]

Who| Everyone who signed up
What| Part 3 of "Blargh Fhtagn"
Where| The Cancerverse
When| Not long after part 2, before "After These Images" and "Body Snatchers"
Warnings/Notes| Lovecraft, possession, body horror/transformation

They work quickly. While several already-awake members of team had deployed in response to Grif's call for help, several Legion staffers had gotten to work waking up more to potentially be deployed. While wating for them to get briefed and arrive, Brainiac had gotten to work on the stargate that the squids had converted into a portal to the Cancerverse while puppeting Rich.

Brainy doesn't use the stargate itself but the technology grafted onto it by the squids is something he quickly reverse engineers for his purposes and before long a strange-looking array has been built around the forcefield bubble currently containing Rich.

Inside it, Rich hugs himself and rocks in place. Every time tentacles start to sprout from his body, he fights them, drawing them back in. But it's a losing battle. His face is that mottled purple again and he's slowly losing control.

Rich is glad that Robbie and Sam have been sent back to Legion World and don't have to see it. The former because of his injuries, the latter because Rich put his foot down on Sam being remotely close to any of it.

"Brainy, we're running out of time," Rich huffs out, sounding pained.

"It's finished," says Brainiac, and he waves for everyone who's coming on the mission to move closer. "We need to get ready to deploy. Richard, I know you don't want to go back to the Cancerverse, but this --" Brainy holds up a device that looks like a shoulder-mounted laser of some kind "-- phase resonance modulator can destroy the bond between you and the Many-Angled ones. But it'll work if deployed on you when you're within its confines."

Rich closes his eyes tight and his body trembles.

"So I have to go back," he says.

"Unfortunately, yes," says Brainiac. "Equally unfortunate: the dimensional shifter I've reconfigured from the devices created by the Many-Angled Ones will randomize our placement in the Cancerverse. We'll all be placed there, with a functioning portal home, within a ten mile radius, but we'll have to find each other again, and while I believe our omnicoms and will have limited functionality and that the trackers in our flight rings will allow us to reconvene, their flight capabilities aren't configured for the conditions there. The probe I sent through made it clear that Valorium won't have the same effect there."

"So I have to go back, we'll get split apart, and nobody will be able to fly."

"A ten mile radius is manageable," says Kid Q, "especially if your trackers still work. They'll find you, Rich, they'll find each other, and then you'll all find the way out."

It would be "we" but since Kid Q's powers involved altering the universe on a fundamental level - and given it was a world with different physical laws - Brainy had decided it was too risky since there was no telling how her powers might work there.

"Okay," Rich breathes out. "Okay. Just...hurry."

After everyone is ready, Brainy lines them all up in a circle around Rich's containment bubble, turns off the shield, hits a button, and then reality rips with a sickening tearing sound and they find themselves separated - sometimes in pairs and groups of three - in a waking nightmare, a place made of flesh, and cracking stone, and too many eyes. The ground gives when they walk, as if it's made of flesh. The sky is black, filled with hazy red mists, and yet somehow the world is filled with purple-red light, despite there not being a sun. In the sky above there is a moon that looks down on them with unblinking eyes. In the distance there are shrieks and inhuman cacophonous noises.

There are things waiting for them in the dark, waiting to grant them the endless gifts of this realm, unceasing lives that come after endless, repeating deaths.

Comments

Finding Each Other

[iamresponding]

They start off in groups and small pairs and have to find each other. Fortunately, Brainy was right about the trackers still working. Their flight rings sync up with their omnicoms and can project small holoscreens with tracking maps that they can use to find each other and detect where the portal exit is.

But first they have to fight their way to each other first.

And in this land of unblinking eyes and endless gaping mouths even the ground itself can be an enemy.

[ooc: Pick a buddy or buddies and set up a thread. Please note who will be in the thread in the subject of the first comment so the mods know when everyone has tagged in, and please note which kind of enemy you'd like to fight as well: squids, Revengers, or both.]

Wash & Danny; Squids then Revengers

[unrecovered]

There's no time to be relieved when Rich turns the ship around and comes back to let the Legion help him with his calamari infestation. They don't have a lot of time - not with the hold the Squids already have on Rich - and so it's a midnight mission to the goddamn land of Cthulu to solve the problem. Wash has just enough time to swap his stun ammo for live ammo and have half a cup of coffee before they're ready to set out. (He owes the staffer with the foresight to bring coffee to the briefing room a favor, that's for sure.)

It's not long before the air itself tears open and deposits them into the Cancerverse. For a moment, all Wash can do is stare. He spends the next moment taking a deep breath, and the next being damn grateful for the air scrubbers in his helmet, because fuck this entire dimensions.

"Well," he says blithely, after those few moments have passed and he has the wherewithal to find words again. "This is hell."

He does a quick sweep, and the only person even remotely near him is...Danny. Twenty feet away. According to the tracker in his ring, they have a hell of a walk ahead of them, and with it just being the two of them, it's bound to be awkward and tense.

He hopes it is - it's better than it being horrifying and violent, which is a goddamn guarantee in this dimension if even half of what Rich told them is true. Awkward and tense is a best-case scenario.

He sets out for Danny (it's like walking on a living bouncy castle, and somehow that comparison just makes it worse), blithely putting a bullet into an eye that forms near his feet. The thing in the ground screeches, and Wash keeps going - he will deal with these brand-new awful memories later, once all of this shit is over. "We should get moving," he says when he's made it closer to Danny. "I don't want to be here any longer than we need to."

[ordinarily]

The air itself tearing open all around him was definitely a new one. Not totally surprising, given his own experiences with the Ghost Zone, but... not something he was really prepared for. It was... disorienting, and Danny straight up landed on his ass the moment he ended up in the Cancerverse.

At least, until the moment he heard a mouth sickeningly snapping at him. From the ground. Just beneath his ear.

It caused him to immediately snap to his feet, and all but jump away from that spot. And finally, he saw it. The Cancerverse, in its entirety. It looked more like a giant tentacle monster's skin than actual land, the air itself stale and gross. It was surreal, sickening, and fascinating all at once.

And it reminded him so much of his first visit to the Ghost Zone, that it gave him that same exact feeling of wanting to go right back home the moment he set foot in it.

The entire thing was so distracting, he couldn't even be bothered to stay mad at Wash right now. He felt so sick to his stomach, that he just nodded idly, and followed behind him without a word. He wanted to look away, but he was too captivated by the entire place to really do it. It was like a train wreck of a dimension, the teenager swallowing the lump in his throat, as he idly muttered:

"Well, I'm never eating sushi again. Like, ever."

[unrecovered]

In Wash's experience, shitty humor in the face of a horrifying situation usually means that, on some level, whoever's making the jokes is at least somewhat functional. It's when the humor breaks down and the screaming starts that the problems begin.

So, humor is good. Better to think about sushi than the fact that a mouth ringed with teeth opened up in the fleshy ground right where his foot had been moments ago. Mouth-creature can stay for all Wash cares - he doesn't have enough bullets or fucks to spare to take care of it.

"Forced veganism is looking really good right about now, huh," he comments, falling in step with Danny and accessing the tracker in his flight ring, which pulls up a small holographic screen with several blinking dots on a grid. "Looks like the portal's in that direction - with any luck, we'll reach it soon." On the one hand, soon could mean just about anything; on the other hand, it didn't look like they were the full ten miles away from the portal home. Small blessings.

[ordinarily]

Yeah, Danny was starting to like the idea of not eating meat now. Just the thought of eating anything that was alive was starting to make his stomach turn. Idly, he had to wonder if this was how Sam felt when she saw meat, if this was why she was a vegetarian.

Because if so, he was definitely not gonna make fun of her for it ever again.

"You know, on the one hand, I kind of wanna throw up." He admitted out loud, his gaze still locked on the landscape. The wave of nausea persisting, even if the weirdness of the whole situation was finally starting to fade. "On the other hand, if this was a lot more green, I could totally buy this being a lair in the Ghost Zone."

A lair for the freaking Kraken, but still.

Ray and Vance, Revengers

[gonebyebye]

Ray hadn't been up and ready when the first call had gone out, but once Rich had been stopped and they had a better idea of what they were dealing with, he'd strapped on a boson pack and headed out.

He marches through the Lovecraftian wasteland, blasting anything that seems likes it's even thinking about attacking him. The scientist in him is fascinated, but not enough to stay around any longer than he has to. Hell was bad enough, this was worse. If only due to the fact that Satan had been willing to let them go, and they had a good idea of the way out. Ray had no such reassurances here.

"Justice? Can you hear me?!" He shouts, vaporising a tentacle that gets just a little too close for comfort.

[sir_vancelot]

The ring at least gives Vance a map of where everyone is. Which means that everybody else can see it. So he's not surprised to hear Ray shout for him by name.

While the map is good on the X and Y axis, though, it's not nearly as good on the Z. Not here, at least. Still, given power sets and everything, it's probably not surprising that Vance comes from the sky, aiming a few blasts of telekinetic force at some of the tentacles before wrapping a TK bubble around Ray. "I may actually be the only Legionnaire in the air at the moment. May as well take advantage."

[gonebyebye]

"Sounds like a plan." Ray replies, venting his pack while he has a spare moment.

"Keep an eye out, though. I've never seen a flying Shoggoth, but if any place would have them it's here."

[sir_vancelot]

"Oh, you just HAD to go and give them ideas." Not that Vance sees one right now, either, but that doesn't mean that they haven't heard it. "This place needs a sign that says, 'Lovecraft was right'." A pause. "I'm not planning to stay long enough to be the one to make it."

He checks his ring and turns toward where the marker for Rich is. "You should be able to shoot out of the TK field. Though that's likely going to feel a bit funny."

Rich alone

[iamresponding]

He'd forgotten the smell of it, rank and disgusting and fleshy. And he'd forgotten the sound of it, the endless howls and guttural sounds and screeches echoing in the distance.

He squints as his eyes readjust to the the eternal twilight, and feels his heart squeezing in his chest.

Alone. He's alone again. In the Cancerverse.

Only this time he's even more alone because this time he doesn't have Worldmind. This time, he's got the Cancerverse under his skin, trying to wriggle its way out and wriggle in even deeper at the same time. This time he's becoming a part of the place, melting into it as it melts into him.

But this time he also has the team. This time it's not just him and the voice in his head against a world.

Maybe it'll be enough. Maybe.

There's a flutter of something inside him and it's not the things wriggling under his skin.

It's hope.

That hope is enough to keep the monsters at bay for now. The tentacles withdraw under his skin, and his flesh looks alive as he he pulls up the holo-tracker through his flight ring, looks for the nearest red dot and starts walking. He drags one foot after the other, listening and watching for the things that are always there, waiting to tear him apart.

[toldyouso]

Pete never wanted eternal life in the first place, much less a version of it set in a Lovecraftian nightmare with only his own company. Or that of the Revengers, but on balance he prefers to go slowly insane without the evil space squid version of Giant-Man stepping on his head.

What the hell kind of superhero name is 'Giant-Man,' anyway? Almost as dumb as calling yourself Star-Lord.

He doesn't bother to get up from the rock where he's sitting, or even to be surprised at the sight of Rich not looking like as much of a Robinson Crusoe mess as Pete does. Truth be told, he doesn't bother with much of anything anymore. Hope only ever makes things worse.

"Gotta say, buddy, if you're a hallucination, you're in pretty poor taste...but I guess I'm past the point of being picky." Pete shrugs. Might as well talk to himself. "How've you been, Richie? And where the hell'd you find a razor around here?"

[iamresponding]

Rich's eyes go wide and he takes a step back, his body shaking.

"No."

He's not particularly emotional when he says it. It's more a rejection of reality. This isn't real. He's going crazy because of what the squids are doing to him. It's a hallucination.

...A hallucination of Peter assuming Rich is a hallucination. But that doesn't mean he's real. It's just the hallucination being in character.

"This is a trick. Squirming through my head. Making me see things. Just like how they made me do things."

They made him do things that could've plunged existence into an endless nightmare. They almost made him kill one of his other best friends. If they could do all that, of course they could mess with his head like this.

He edges around Peter keeping his distance, planning on just staying away from him while he keeps on his way.

"No, you're not here. I saved you. I sent you and Drax home." He breathes out, "I was the door."

[toldyouso]

"'I know you are but what am I?' Yeah, sure, you're the infuriating kid brother I never had, but that's a bit much." Pete sighs and brushes his hair back from his forehead. "There was a huge explosion, I got knocked out because only one of us can take a hit from a Cosmic Cube and shrug it off, and when I woke up it was just me and one of your arms."

He does stand now, rolling his shoulders and stretching his neck like a battered fighter trying to psych himself up for one final round, though there's no aggression in his bearing at all. "Not that I don't appreciate the thought, but this is the first time I've seen the rest of you since our big heroic charge. Your arm was terrible ☠☠☠☠☠☠☠ company, by the way."

He tugs his tunic into slightly better arrangement, whatever high-quality engineering the Kree did to make the uniform having kept it mostly intact all this time despite being covered with various stains in a rainbow of unappealing colors.

"Besides, you know damn well I'd have pushed you out."

Free-For-All - this part will require communication between everyone on who goes when

[iamresponding]

The others all arrive at Rich's signal marker at about the same time, and what greets them is a strange sight.

The area is swarming with squids and some of the Revengers, all bearing a strange starlike red growth that looks a little like the star on Rich's helmet. A floating spherical flesh-monster looks down from above, bearing the same mark.

And there's another man here, brown-haired and bearded, who looks like he's spent a very long time in this place, wrapped in tentacles and pinned to the ground.

Rich is wrapped in tentacles, too, thrashing, calling out to the sphere-being above them, pleading.

"Worldmind, it doesn't have to be like this! We have a way out of here! You, me, and Peter, we can finally leave." He begs him, "Let me make this right."

[legionnpcs]

The voice resonates through them all, and comes out of the mouths of all the Revengers present.

||No, Richard. I refuse to subject myself to any more suffering. The Cancerverse is the answer, the only way to fix the multiverse, and end all its pain. Now we'll never lose anyone ever again.||

Worldmind's mental voice gets slightly more emotional.

||Now I'll never lose you again. Through you, I'll spread the Cancerverse so that every world feels its embrace. And you'll be back with me, where you belong. Nothing will be able to harm you, and nothing will be able to take you away from me again.||

[iamresponding]

The tentacles start moving.

"Worldmind, stop! Stop! Let me help --"

Before he can say another word, before anyone can help, the tentacles ram themselves down his throat, making him gag and choke. They do...something, wake something up and give it new life. The tentacles holding onto him let go and he staggers back, turning away from the others. And then...he changes, but this time it's worse than before. Tentacles sprout from his body again, until he seems to be entirely made from them, eyeballs sprout all over.

When he turns back to face them all, there's barely anything left of the man he was. Only scraps of his armor, acting as a framework for his writhing, hideous new body to cling to.

The thing that used to be Rich screeches an inhuman screech and then rushes them all, intending to tear them apart to get them out of its way. If it can reach the portal, that's it. Game over.

[ordinarily]

Danny could've made a lot of jokes about this. About Planet Skynet up there, Rich's relationship troubles with it, and the fact that this was all happening in what was basically the Kraken's hellscape of a dimension. There was plenty of material for him, and for a moment, he was gonna crack a joke at Worldmind's expense.

But then the tentacle got shoved into Rich's mouth, and any prospect of joking got shoved right out of Danny's mind's at the sight of Rich transforming him into an actual monster.

"... Alright, you know what? No." Danny blurted out, tightening his hands into fists. The teenager gritting his teeth, as the sight started bringing up bad memories. "I'm getting really tired of my friends being turned into bad guys for whatever crazy thing feels like taking over the world this time." Sam being turned into a dragon. Tucker being given ghost powers by evil ghosts, twice. Valerie being Vlad's ghost-hating puppet. Literally everything involving Freakshow. It just piled on and on, and it was starting to get to him.

Because it was always his friends. Always his friends. Even in another dimension, without ghosts being involved, it kept happening. Rich, literally the first person he was kind of okay talking to about his ghost powers... and now this was happening.

"I'm DONE with this!"

His body immediately turned translucent, and he took off. Running right in the direction of Rich, and completely ignoring everyone else. He didn't even bother dodging and weaving, he just kept running, intangible, figuring the monsters would either avoid him, or just explode. Focused solely on the tentacle monster that was Rich Rider, getting closer and closer...

And diving right in. Right into his body.

The Escape

[iamresponding]

After Danny's out of his body and falls down and starts throwing up, there's nothing to stop Rich from throwing up, too, which he does for a minute or two.

(Poor kid. That had to be miserable. Rich owes him one.)

||Why must you fight me, Richard?|| asks Worldmind.

"Because you've lost your goddamn mind, just like when you were possessing Ego and started to get corrupted. And that's why you're coming with me right now."

||You cannot tell me what to d --||

"Right now," Rich demands, like he's admonishing a small child. "Worldmind, you are going to put this hell dimension back where you found it, and come with me, or so help me..."

||I will not watch you die again, Richard.||

"Then watch me live," Rich says softly. "I've got my friends again. New friends, too. I've got a team again. Until this happened, until I got dragged back into the Cancerverse, I was rebuilding my life. So don't watch me die; come watch me live."

Worldmind hesitates now.

||I... Am I truly acting irrational, Richard? Is it like before? I cannot...I cannot see it.||

"I can safely say that you're a couple French fries short of a Happy Meal right now, Worldmind. So get out of that diseased body, get back into me where you belong, put yourself in self-repair mode, and reinstate Ko-rel as your personality interface. She'll get you through it."

||But -||

"Now, goddammit."

||... Fine.|| It's a little sulky, but he listens. Finally.

A golden spark flutters out of the massive diseased fleshglobe, and floats down to Rich, letting itself get absorbed into his chest.

The crackle of Revenger Thor's thunder comes from not far away.

"That would be our cue to leave!"

[icanwait]

"Yeah, you guys need to hit the road, but don't worry about the Revengers. They've got bigger problems than you now."

No one sees her arrive, but the woman--barely more than a girl, really--is impossible to miss once she's there. Short and slight and dressed head to toe in black, no color touches her anywhere, her skin pure white and the sweep of her raven hair blending into her clothing, even her eyes a soft gray. Around her neck hangs a silver ankh pendant that shines in the uneasy light of the Cancerverse, and beneath her feet, something impossible is happening: the diseased flesh that makes up this nightmare world is crumbling to lifeless dust.

"Thanks for the assist, by the way," she adds, looking at Danny and not seeming to care or even notice he's on the ground tossing his cookies.

[iamresponding]

"Who -"

No, wait. He understands.

She's a stranger and yet not. Despite looking different, despite being from a different universe, the feeling is the same. The slight chill down his spine.

And the slight thrill that comes of being in her vicinity while still breathing.

He'd seen the other her more times than most people did, despite still being alive. The other version of her had been waiting there for him, close but not close enough, that last day of the Annihilation war.

'Better luck next time,' he'd said, blood in his mouth.

The ground under her feet especially gives it away. It's the same effect the other Death'd had on the Cancerverse.

He's probably one of few people here that actually does understand - Danny's not open with most about the "half-ghost" thing. But it makes sense, the way the squids couldn't stand Danny's touch. He'd hidden death in living flesh, and let her walk in among them.

His brain goes full nerd and he remembers something he read a long time ago.

'The way is shut. It was made by those who are Dead. And the Dead keep it. The way is shut.'

"Okay, that's definitely our cue to leave," he says, hauling Danny up by the upper arm. "Run!"

You did not fuck around when one of the abstracts got involved.

[ordinarily]

Danny wasn't done throwing up. God, he hadn't even eaten anything before coming here, and he still wanted to keep throwing up. His mouth tasted absolutely vile, to the point where he just wanted to grab a bar of soap and chew on it for fifty years. But eventually, he managed to stop...

Only for Rich to grab his arm, and haul him away.

"H-Hey, what're you--" He started, before covering his mouth. The suddenly motion triggering another wave of nausea, which he valiantly tried to force down. "S-Stop moving, before I--" Nope, his stomach was hurting again. The teen closing his eyes tight, as he tried really hard to force the bile down. God, please, not in front of everyone.

He opened his eyes again, gazing at the lightning in the distance. Until finally, his eyes landed on the girl.

"Hey, who's--"

And the familiarity hit him, like a truck. A familiarity he couldn't place, that stopped the bile dead in its tracks. His stomach felt heavy, like he'd just swallowed a rock. Every muscle in his body going tense, as a chill shot up his spine, and made him shiver.

He glanced down at his mouth, expecting something to happen. But even if the sensation was familiar enough... nothing. Nothing happened.

His ghost sense just went off. But also didn't.

And he couldn't understand why.

Home Free

[googledox]

Brainy makes sure he's the last one through, forcefields ready to drop into place to prevent any denizens of the Cancerverse from crawling through the portal. Rich tries to be but Brainy just shoves him through the portal with his forcefields.

He doesn't have to worry about any of the monsters slithering through, though. Some of them try, but the gray rot that's consuming the Cancerverse swallows them up first and turns them into dust.

The creatures here simply should not be and only exist because death was dead. Now, with death returned, the entire dimension is withering and dying as its long unlife comes to an end.

Brainy comes through the portal and doesn't have time to shut it off until Death is already there at their doorstep. Rather than doing something stupid or dramatic, he simply backs away, slowly and respectfully.

"Do we need to shut down the portal or can you - ?"

He has to turn away and avoid looking directly at her. He doesn't seem scared, but he's clearly seeing something different from the rest of them.

To others, she exists in a form that's familiar, like someone of the same species. To him, she has many forms, all existing in the same space. Simultaneously. None of those forms are particularly frightening, but she still is something just a touch...impossible.

[icanwait]

Death glances over at Brainiac, then snorts in amusement. "Whoops, sorry." If he decides to risk it again, she'll look like an impossibly pale human for him, too. A girl gets a little distracted mopping up an entire universe and might forget something like locking down her physical manifestation for the supergenius in the room.

"I'll break the connection on my way out," she says with a wave of a hand and a quick shake of her head. "No offense, and I really do appreciate the foot in the door, but I don't want you guys touching anything else."

Nothing about her bespeaks anger--the Legionnaires are innocent in this--but they're still messing with things beyond their comprehension, even Brainiac.

[googledox]

Brainy simply nods respectfully, leaving it to her.

Beyond the portal, an entire universe dies, but he has trouble mustering any regret over it.

[toldyouso]

Pete's been (uncharacteristically) quiet through all this; multiple broken bones and a lot to think about seems to be the combination required to shut him up. Take notes.

"Not to interrupt the metaphysical proceedings I couldn't possibly hope to understand or anything like that," he says, interrupting the metaphysical proceedings he couldn't possibly hope understand, "but when you're done, could you take me--" he holds up a hand to Rich to forestall the protest misinterpreting him would cause "--back to my home universe?"