legionmissions | To Hell and Back [Player Plot]

Entry tags:

To Hell and Back [Player Plot]

Who Aku, Valeria Richards, Megatron
What In exchange for unlimited power, Aku signs a contract with Neron and suddenly lands himself a spot in Hell.
Where Hell
When Pre-AI Retrieval Plot
Warnings/Notes Based on the following nixed mod plot: "The demon lord Neron is stirring trouble in the underworld and beyond. After making deals for the souls of several villains, they run rampant through the UP thanks to their trades. While some of the team handles that, Neron also tempts some of the Legionnaires to sell their immortal souls for rewards. If any take his deal, they'll be sent immediately to hell and their teammates will have to go to hell and back (literally) to destroy their contracts and rescue them."

Until now, Aku had been certain he did not possess a 'soul'. Certain enough that he thought he could fool Lord Neron into granting him the unlimited powers of a god in exchange for nothing. But things didn't go according to plan. After signing the contract with the single character of his name ' 悪 ', Aku was very surprised when a fiery portal suddenly opened up beneath him. It was then he realized his mistake but it was too late to go back on the deal for he had already been sucked through the portal and into the Underworld.

"CURSE YOU, LORD NERON!" he screamed but to no avail. The portal to Hell had already closed up behind him.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

After one of the villains has been captured and interrogated, findings reveal that the demon lord Neron is behind the latest scourge of villains on the UP as well as the disappearances of a certain Legionnaire. It turns out that a contract with Neron means an eternity in Hell... unless the contract is destroyed. Knowing Aku, it doesn't take a super genius to figure out what happened and where he might be.

Megatron isn't usually of the superheroing type, but he supposes that invaders from hell trashing your space station is the type of call to action that he was expected to respond to. That is how he ended up with this particular pair of viciously thrashing, fire spitting fellows clutched in each hand. Demons were hardier than your garden variety organics, thankfully, so he had less to worry about when literally squeezing them for information.

More than that, this looked like the handiwork of a far more powerful demon he had gotten a visit from. One holding intriguing promises about bringing new life to his homeworld. Tempting, certainly. But he's dealt with enough traitorous Decepticons to find the offer too convenient to be true. And what was the point of victory if you had to accept the help of some outsider, anyway?

So instead, through a little interrogation of Neron's minions, he finds himself at the hell portal from which they originated.

"You've outlived your usefulness," he says, not really specifying to which demon he was talking to. With an angry shriek from the lucky candidate suddenly being swung through the air, the demon gets unceremoniously chucked back into the portal like a stone being skipped across a lake. Megatron then looks at that hand, covered in some kind of viscous fluid and still-burning flames. Absolutely disgusting.

"When will I find an organic that doesn't leak?"

"'Organic' isn't strictly correct for demons manifesting on this plane," comes a small voice from the vicinity of Megatron's feet, where Val is sitting to one side of the portal. Tech components lie strewn on the floor in front of her like alphabet blocks in front of a normal child, and she's using a hand-held torch to weld bits together. "But close enough, I guess."

She finishes whatever she's doing and holds the piece up to oblique light to check the integrity of her alterations. "Anyway, glad to see someone's smart enough not to cut a deal with a demon."

He looks down, down, down, eventually finding that small human he had met in the docking bay now on the floor and piecing together technological parts. For Megatron, the strangest part of the image here was seeing a human interacting with technology far more advanced than what was on the Earth he knew. That was going to take some getting used to. They were certainly adaptable little creatures, weren't they?

"Accepting the gifts of some mystical wish-peddler isn't what I find particularly satisfying, even if it were an honest trade."

The remaining demon in his hand seems to take offense at that, growling before letting out a string of furious obscenities. Something something about how his efforts were useless, how they would swallow his soul as his companions suffer in torment, et cetera. Megatron tosses the other demon inside the portal to allow them both some peace.

"Heh." Val laughs at his attitude and casual demon-tossing, though she doesn't glance up from her work. "You remind me of my godfather." She means it as a compliment, regardless of Megatron's feelings on organics.

"You think you can hold the portal for a while?" She slots the card she's just finished into a housing, and the whole thing comes to life with the telltale glow and hum of high tech. "I was gonna set up turrets, but this would be way faster and I wanna hit while they're still gloating and not expecting a retaliatory strike."

He looks briefly puzzled the compliment. Megatron doesn't know who Val's godfather is, so it's not as if he has a frame of reference here.

As the human's project comes to life, he recognizes the object she had been constructing. No Cybertronian worth their salt would miss the familiar shape and parts of a ranged weapon. So she was planning on going in by herself, was she?

"You believe you can handle this alone?"

There is no question that he could guard the gate, but humans weren't usually as hardy as his own kind, and she would be going to their house to start knocking doors.

"Yeah." Val sights down the scope of her rifle, frowns, and starts making adjustments. "It's not ideal, but the Legion's got almost no magical expertise. There aren't many people here I trust not to say something stupid that gets them trapped for eternity and to stay out of my way."

Her cute but disturbingly efficient way. Satisfied with the rifle's alignment, she gets to her feet, picking up the backpack that had been sitting next to her. It's shaped like a flower in cheerful shades of pink and yellow, and slightly too big for her. Whatever's inside clanks together like metal as she settles it on her shoulders.

"There's some pretty steep time dilation involved, so it'll probably only be a few minutes on your end," she says, slinging the rifle. The barrel sticks up a considerable distance past the top of her head. "If I'm not back in a couple hours, bring in Dr. Stantz. Ghostbuster on the roster."

Deep in the catacombs of Hell, Aku is having a Hell of a time and not in the good way. Which is funny because with all the fire and demons and such, you'd think he'd feel right at home here. In fact, the fire doesn't bother him at all but what does bother him are the chains that hold him down. He's chained up in his own little isolated pit of despair where he can't even see or enjoy the flames of Hell. The shackles around his wrists and neck have an ethereal white glow and not only do they prevent him from using any of his powers, but they're a constant source of burning and pain. He's tried pulling and clawing at them but all it does is melt his fingers and cause more agony.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity of fighting against his restraints and getting nowhere, Aku curls up on his side and seems to accept his humiliating fate, at least for now. It would be a long time before he could figure a way out of this prison and he can't imagine anyone coming to look for him. There's no doubt in his mind that most of the Legion has realized he is not of heroic standing and would probably agree that this is where he belongs. It would be up to Aku to somehow get himself out of this mess. Exhausted, the Yokai closes his eyes and tries to meditate past the pain long enough to find even the tiniest bit of solace.

Valeria can't be sure they didn't confiscate Aku's flight ring and so doesn't try to track him that way, but the quantum scanner she's using to follow his unique signature is proving a bit finicky in a realm that runs on magic. Hell gets treated to the novel spectacle of a small child sitting cross-legged on a rock outcropping, calmly recalibrating a sensor while she considers the situation.

As far as Val's concerned, hell is being forced to go outdoors and ride a bike, so the torments of the damned make less of an impression on her than you'd think. They probably all got stuck here by being dumb, anyway. There are a zillion afterlives. Why hang around a lousy one? They can't all have signed contracts they didn't read.

Still, no one deserves to be tortured, even idiots. At least not for eternity. She should do something about that, after they sort out the Chronoblivion mess.

"Note to self: conquer Hell."

Despite the relative purity of her intentions, Val does pause and look around furtively in case anyone heard her cursing, since she's not quite sure the argument that it's the actual name of the place she's in right now would fly with her mother, and likewise not quite sure Susan Richards can't spontaneously develop universe-hopping powers to scold her daughter.

What Val finds a little surprising is that no demons try to start anything with her. She's pretty sure Uncle Doom's wards don't mean anything here, so it must be something else. The idea that any demon choosing to manifest as an adorable three year old girl must be powerful enough to get away with it doesn't occur to her, just as the possibility that it's actually an adorable three year old girl wandering among the damned doesn't occur to anyone she passes. That she's floating on an invisible disc of force rather than walking probably doesn't hurt.

Hell's variable geography proves more an annoyance than an outright hindrance, and soon enough she's drawing up on Aku's Pit of Pain or whatever. This seems like the kind of place that throws around capital letters. She kneels at the edge, peering in to see what the situation's like.

"Hey. You awake?"

The small voice that rings out above him breaks his concentration but it does more to make him forget about his despair than any meditative state possibly could. When he blinks open his eyes, Aku cannot believe what he sees. It's a Legionnaire! A tiny Legionnaire but a Legionnaire no less. He might have thought this was one of the demons come to play tricks on him if it weren't for her human scent. His chains clank and drag as the yokai attempts to sit up in a more dignified position. But such a position is hardly obtainable while chained to the ground. Aku hates looking weak, even in the eyes of children.

"Child? How did you—" His teeth clench and he winces in pain while the shackles scald him once again. "What are you doing here?"

Though an evil overlord and a supervillain he may be, even Aku seems to know that hell is a dangerous place for a three-year-old.

Technically not a Legionnaire, since even a universe that lets 14 year olds join their superhero team balks at throwing toddlers, no matter how super-intelligent, into danger. That somewhat-commendable line in the sand doesn't seem to have mattered in this case, though Val doesn't feel particularly endangered. She's a terrible judge of that kind of thing.

"Rescuing you." The 'duh' is unvoiced, but floats there among the moans of the damned nonetheless. Why else would she be in Hell, dummy?

"Rescuing me?" he says with a clawed hand held to his chest as if to make sure that it's him she's speaking to and not some other prisoner in this otherwise empty pit. Aku really is just that shocked. Confused, even.

Regardless, he's in no position to question who sent the help or why the help is so small. He's just glad there's any help at all and he isn't about to pretend he's too proud to accept. In some ways he's almost thankful his rescuer is a child and not some human abomination (like Dredd.)

"Yeah, yeah, you're a jerk. A jerk who doesn't read the fine print." Judging by her expression, the latter is the far greater sin. "But you're on the team."

And that, as they say, is that.

Her scanner is taking up most of her attention as she pokes at the controls to change what it's tracking. She's found Aku, so now she can trace the magical connection that binds him here back to its source. Assuming her tools cooperate, that is.

"I don't suppose you know where they keep the contracts. I had to redesign the sensors in this thing on the fly and lab-grown monocrystal sapphires are not a perfect replacement for the magical ones." Who even has time to go down to the Mines of Moria and answer Sphinx riddles and defeat the Minotaur in single combat or whatever it is you do to get magic rocks, anyway?

Edited 2017-12-11 05:11 (UTC)

Don't forget the elemental spirit guardians. Even Aku didn't have time for that and he's immortal. Magical jewels have always been more trouble than they're worth, in his own opinion. Aku slumps, almost resigned to the continuous burning of his shackles. He's just so tired. Too tired to be cranky over her jab at his own stupidity. He merely rumbles unhappily in the back of his throat.

As for the contract: "I do not know its whereabouts but I do know that it is infused with my essence and must be destroyed." Who knew giving away such an infinitesimal part of himself could lead to all this?

"I know how magical sympathy works." Jeez, what kind of lousy education do you think she's had? "I have plans, but this dimension is functionally infinite, so unless I want to wander until I'm old enough to vote, I need a bearing--ah, there we go."

The hum from her not-quite-magical toy changes to a lower pitch, one that seems to rattle Aku's bones, insofar as a shapeshifting master of darkness has bones. "Okay, got it. Be back in a bit."

Val disappears back out of Aku's line of sight, leaving him to bide his time wondering what a human child can possibly accomplish that he couldn't. Within the hour, or what passes for such in the lands of the damned, he gets his answer: A heck of a lot. Whatever's in that cute backpack of hers causes a thundering boom that rolls across the plains of Hell, momentarily drowning out anything else, and Aku's chains melt away.

Now. Is he going to leave a tiny girl to fight her way out of here alone?

(Because she'll probably manage it and then be really annoyed.)

Aku hadn't thought Val was helpless but he'd resigned himself to a very long wait. No amount of time in Hell is easily spent but it goes by a LOT faster than what he was expecting. The explosion rouses him from the nearly mindless haze he's fallen into but what really shocks him is when the chains melt away into a smoldering smoke, taking all the pain and the drain on his energy with them.

Suddenly, FREEDOM! With his energy and his flight ring no longer suppressed, he explodes out of his pit of despair with great (and unabashedly evil) laughter.

"BWHA-HAAA HAAA HAAA HA HA HA HA!! AT LONG LAST I AM FREE!" he crows with talons curled skyward.

Now that he's risen from the depths, he can see smoke billowing from the site of the explosion and legions of demons moving in toward it. He knows that's where he'll find his tiny helper and, hopefully, a way out of here. Aku wastes no time at all forming himself into a giant ball and steamrolling his way over an army of demons, flattening them as he barrels toward his destination.

The contracts have been destroyed, even those made by the villains and now they're about to find out that a deal with the devil has some devastating consequences.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

To Hell and Back [Player Plot]

opening the portal

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

welcome to hell

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

not today, satan