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)
legionmissions2017-11-10 03:13 pm
iamresponding) wrote in legionmissions2017-11-10 03:13 pm
Full of broken thoughts [Part 3]
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.
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.
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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."
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He needs that to be what really happened.
He grimaces.
"I accidentally let Thanos out." He'd tried to keep him in but... he wasn't there when Rich had come to. "And - and - years. Years of - of them." He gestures to the landscape with a shaking hand. "Breaking and cutting and burning. But it was worth it because at least I saved you."
He jabs a finger in Peter's direction viciously.
"You're not supposed to be here, Peter!" He yells it at Peter like it's Peter's fault. "You need to get to the right goddamn place -- which is not here!"
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He lets the accusation roll over him without comment, without even seeming to notice. Guilt has been the background noise of his life for so long that Rich being angry at him, even for nonsensical reasons, barely registers. Tell him something he doesn't know, buddy.
He's silent for a long moment--they have infinitely many of them to spend, after all--looking past Rich, out over the ghastly vista the Many-Angled Ones raised up from their diseased conception of beauty.
"You know that legend about the gods giving Pandora the box with all the evils of the world in it because they knew she was too curious not to open it and let them out? And you know how she slammed it shut just in time to catch hope? You ever wonder why hope was in the box with a whole bunch of bad things?"
Pete doesn't. Not anymore.
"You still haven't given up," he tells Rich with a lopsided smile, his voice filled with affection even through the fatigue. "Figures, you enormous Boy Scout."
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Rich still doesn't understand what it is that he does that makes people look at him that way. He probably never will.
He throws up his hands.
"Then who did I let out?" he asks, confused. His eyes go wide. "...Oh God, what did I let out?"
If that wasn't Peter then it was...something that'd quickly formed to look and act like him while the real Peter was out of sight. It was something inhuman that he'd let out of the Cancerverse and into their world.
"Drax was out cold, and I left him with it. Jesus."
He presses his knuckles against his helmet, trying to wrap his head around all of this, which is no easy feat when there are things squirming in it.
He just has to hope that Drax killed the crap out of whatever it was.
As for the hope...
"You have to come with me," he says, and he tries to explain, rambling it all out rapid-pace, manic. "I got out, Peter. There was this fight in another dimension against this monster trying to destroy all of existence - something just like the squids - and the Time Trapper, this cosmic being, he pulled me out of the Cancerverse to fight against it. Some of the new Warriors were there. Reed Richards' kid even showed up. And other people. Friends. I made friends."
He holds a hand to his chest.
"The Time Trapper locked it all away. The memories. I remembered the fight with Thanos, and getting you and Drax out, but I thought I'd died right after. He even...he took my arm, even though it grew back, since the last thing I remembered was losing it."
Rich's lips tremble.
"But...but they put something inside me. A seed. And he locked that away too but the seal broke and it all came back. The memories of the Cancerverse, everything. And they're in here - they're under my skin." His voice goes high and thin as he says it. "They're trying to use me as a door, but my friends, Peter, my friends are here."
He holds up his hand, which has a gold ring on it, over the glove, one that he'd never worn while Peter had known him.
A holo-screen springs from the ring, showing several glowing dots. Each Legionnaire is marked by the symbol that's usually on the Legion mission board back in Legion World, and there's alien writing next to each dot in a language Peter's never seen before.
One of the dots is stationary. It's green. The portal.
"We had to come back so Brainy could zap me with something that'll get them out. We got separated, but we just have to find them, and then Brainy can get them - get them out of me, and we can leave. We can leave, Peter."
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"Guess that explains the belt buckle." Peter Quill might be a self-loathing disaster, but he's very observant. "There's no way the local authorities would come up with something that ridiculous, and if I've finally gone completely insane, at least it's a refreshing change."
With that resounding vote of confidence, he glances from the holo display to the environment around them and back again, and draws one of his pistols. "You told your new friends that anything they kill is just gonna get back up again and be holding a grudge, right?"
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Rich slowly reaches towards Peter and then pokes his shoulder twice, as if double-checking that he's real.
"S'really you. Isn't it. You're here."
He...he really needs him to be here.
He wants him to be here just like he wanted him to be there for the Heralds, and Galactus, and the Lanterns, and Murderworld and...everything. It's not that he wanted him to get hurt by it all, but all the horribleness that the multiverse had thrown at them would've been a lot easier to take on if Peter'd been there the way he always was when the world went to hell back home.
"I was alone. Just...Worldmind and -- and then I was with all of them and they won't...they won't leave me. And now you're here, too."
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Even without being able to read Interlac, he's figured out the map Rich's flight ring is projecting, and jerks his head in the direction of the portal. They can have emotions later, when nothing is on metaphorical or literal fire, or at least when someone else is standing a firefighting watch. "C'mon. You clearly can't fly right now, so you can try to explain everything in a way that makes sense while we walk. It doesn't even have to make a lot of sense. My standards are low."
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Then he starts walking.
"Something's trying to eat the multiverse," is what he opens with.
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"Yuh huh. Which is exactly what we need, right?" he says, his voice shaky and a little hysterical. "It's called Chronoblivion. It's a sentient universe -- don't ask me how that works -- that attaches itself to other universes and sends in Its agents to destabilize their defenses. Once they're enough of a mess that any forces within them can't fight back, it devours them. It calls Its agents Heralds, just like Galactus."
Which is why the Time Trapper had even thrown Galactus at the team - the prepare them for something similar.
"The Heralds are damn near impossible to kill, and good at turning people within a universe against each other, infiltrating governments, enabling supervillains to do their worst, things like that."
Standard fare for them. Annihilus' forces had engaged in some divide and conquer tactics during the war, like making a deal with the House Fiyero so that the merchant house colluded with the Wave, even as it was killing Kree soldiers by the bucketful.
"It picked this other world filled with superheroes to devour, and it's gotten so strong that if manages to consume that universe, it'll be strong enough to finally consume them all. That's it. Game over. But that universe is more advanced than ours - it's the 31st century there - and even with their big cosmic superhero team losing most of their members in an attack that trapped them in a pocket dimension, they're still holding strong."
Fortunately, they didn't have to hold out alone.
"And they got even stronger because the Time Trapper starting kidnapping people from other universes to help them. Like me, and some of the other heroes from home. And some solders, superheroes, paranormal investigators, cops... people that've dealt with danger and weirdness from all different worlds. He even gave some of them superpowers - or messed up the powers of people who had them to try to make them gel onto the team. I lost a bunch of a mine, probably so I wouldn't fly off and try to fight it all on my own."
That kind of explains most of it.
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Then Pete stiffens at the last revelation, stopping short.
"Richie, I really don't like hearing they put a child lock on the Nova Force." Obviously it's not killing him this time, but being able to tap the full magnitude of one of the cosmic powers had always come in very handy for them, and Rich being dialed down to Centurion or worse cannot be considered a good thing. "What does Worldmind have to say about it?"
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"Worldmind's gone," his voice is a little ragged as he says it. "And I don't know what happened to him."
He tries to rack his brain.
"I don't know if the Time Trapper did something or if - if he somehow got left behind. He was with me in the Cancerverse, though, so I know he's not safe in our world, and the last time I remember seeing him was -"
Oh God.
"I lost it. I found the burnt out cosmic cube again and I was - I was considering charging it with the Nova Force - with all the Nova Force, which would have... But I never got the chance, because I think that's when I got poofed to the Legion's universe, and I don't know where he went."
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The voice rises up all around them - and so does the ground. It erupts into a circle of monsters, suddenly penning them in.
A spherical shape rises in the air above them - one with a strange, jagged star shape on it, a twisted organic version of the star on Rich's helmet.
Many of the creatures that erupt forth seem touched by the red star themselves, corrupted.
||The being that took you left me behind. Not that it would've mattered; even if it hadn't, you were about to abandon me.||
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Even now, mingled in with the outrage and anger, there's affection and admiration.
||As for me, I've only known death. Millennia of death. Xandar. The entire Nova Corps. You. I felt every single one. And it hurt. You cannot comprehend how much it hurt.||
The words resonate with pain.
||But I'm like you, Richard. I survived. I adapted. And now I'm much more than I ever was.||
Now he has a hold here.
||And you are much more than you were. The seed was planted in you when you left. And now it's grown. You're the door. You're the way I'll bring the gifts of the Cancerverse to the multiverse beyond. Life eternal.||
Tentacles start reaching through the air, grasping for Rich, viciously attacking Starlord.
no subject
"Huh. Forgot I had it set to explosives."
It would have made a pretty good set of last words, if anyone in the Cancerverse could speak last words. No sooner is the comment of Peter's mouth than another set of tentacles behind him ensnare his legs and slam him prone. They snake upwards, wrapping around his arms and squeezing until there's the sound of cracking bone and a hissed oath as his pistol falls from a badly fractured hand.