[closed] Speaking Softly (The Big Stick Comes Later)

[iamresponding]

Who| Rich and Grif
What| Rich tries to talk the Silver Surfer into leading Galactus away from Braal, before they try any plans. It doesn't go well.
Where| Braal
When| Right when Silver Surfer and Stardust reach Braal but before Galactus arrives
Warnings/Notes| Severe injury/gore

They managed to threshold in pretty close to where the heralds were last spotted by the Science Police. They could see them floating up there over the planet, near the rust-colored clouds, looking down on the terrified people of Braal.

They'd explained the situation to the Kwai navigators and the one that had agreed to take them had agreed to do it despite the danger. To make it so the heralds couldn't go through the threshold gates straight to Legion world, they went to a threshold hub outpost first before thresholding to Braal. If they were followed, they'd only find a skeleton crew of volunteers at the otherwise evacuated hub, not Legion World itself.

Now all that was left was for Rich to talk to the heralds and hope that Surfer would pull seniority and agree to take Galactus elsewhere despite Stardust.

And if that didn't happen, the only other thing they could hope was that they could at least walk away.

Because of the risks, Kid Quantum had agreed to Rich's demand that he go without a full squad. That meant it was just him, their navigator, and Grif, of all people.

"I know Kid Q told us that you were coming along to make an extraction if you can, if something goes wrong, but you better damn well pay attention to the 'if you can' part," Rich said sharply to Grif. "If I go down and you can't grab me safely, you and Kraylo here need to leave me behind and run."

Comments

[whyarewehere]

"You motherfucking cockbite!"

Grif had exactly one thing going for him in this entire universe: he was goddamn fast.

Time slowed for Grif with more than just adrenaline as he surged forward to grab Rich's bod- Rich. Not a body yet dear fucking Jesus-

Then Grif arced up, straining with every fiber toward the kwai and the Threshold gate.

He almost forgot to slow a little as he hit poor Kraylo, shoving the kwai through the gate ahead of them.

"Shit shit shit shit shit!"

[legionnpcs]

The Silver Surfer watched as Grif grabbed Nova Prime at superspeed and powered through the gate.

After the gate closed, he used the power cosmic to tap into the comms of the medicos in Legion World's Medbay, even though Legion World was systems and systems away.

"This is the Silver Surfer. I have injured Richard Rider. With your level of technology, you have fifteen minutes to save his life. Nova Prime is a friend. Don't give me a reason to be disappointed."

And with that, he flew back up into the air, to survey the newest target of his Master's hunger.

[iamresponding]

Their Kwai navigator performed admirably, clearly taking every shortcut he could while leading them through the twisted trails of D-space. When they reached the threshold hub, Kraylo called out, "Close the gate to Braal down now! And open the one to Legion World! We have a Legionnaire down!"

Seeing the clearly injured Nova, the techs worked to close down the Braal gate as quickly as possible.

"Surfer--" Rich choked out, a hand clasped in a death grip on Grif's arm. "Could've -- glckt -- killed me. Instant...ly."

Rich knew the Surfer. He knew what this was. This was the Surfer trying to spare him, trying to force him to stay out of the way. If Rich was injured, he wouldn't try to stop Galactus, and the Surfer wouldn't have to harm him. In its own sick way, this was his way of trying to keep him out of harm's way.

"Would've -- kcckt -- listened. Without...Stardust. Would've --"

As soon as the Braal gate blinked off, the Legion World gate blinked on.

"Legion World gate's open!" called out one of the techs. "Go go go!"

[whyarewehere]

Grif was angry and scared, and angry about being angry and scared, and it was forming a feedback loop going way too fast for him to even try and deal with constructively right then.

"I fucking warned you!" he snarled as he charged through the gate to Legion World.

"I told you!"

None of it mattered now, he just needed to get Rich, the goddamn idiot, to medical before he bled out.

Grif wasn't remotely equipped for any of this hero crap, but for now being fast was enough. He ran full tilt straight into Legion World's medbay, blessedly close to the hub just for this sort of occasion, where other people who were trained and capable and knew what they were doing could take over and maybe fix what he hadn't been able to prevent.

[iamresponding]

"Had to -- kkct -- try --" It was his job. "F'r. Every -- kt -- one. In...case."

In case it'd worked.

He'd had to try. Because now that he had, now that just asking them to leave was off the table, it meant everyone had to fight them instead. At bare minimum, they probably had to try taking down Stardust.

He'd had to try to avoid that. For Vance, one of the last of his friends left alive. For Sam and Gwen, still relatively new at the hero thing. For Gohan and Videl and Kid Q and Brainy, who'd clearly seen some shit and had still been shaken by seeing something as huge and terrible as Galactus.

For all of them.

And for Grif, too

After that, Rich couldn't talk anymore. His lungs were too full of blood and he couldn't stay conscious. His eyes rolled back in his head.

[legionnpcs]

Fortunately, the staff in Medbay had taken the Surfer contacting them very seriously and already had a stretcher prepped, hovering there, with techs and nurses holding life-saving equipment also hovering nearby.

"There they are!" said Dr. Gym'll. "Is surgical suite one prepped?"

"Yessir," said a tech. "What about the organ-cloning lab, sir?"

"Rider's body is resistant to cloned organs due to alteration on a molecular level, we have to repair what's already there."

"Ah, grife," said the tech, making it clear how much harder that would make things.

The technicians took Rich away from Grif and got him up on the stretcher. Holo-displays of his vitals suddenly flared to life and the immediate flashing red warning messages, irregular heartbeat display, and warning beeps made it clear that his condition was not good.

They took his helmet off and cut open his transuit and uniform with laser shears, and started attaching tubes and masks and inserting IVs and doing everything they needed to do, with Gym'll shouting out instructions every step of the way.

"Move move move!" said Gym'll, and they started to run him towards the surgical suite.

One of the nurses, a pink Ralmusian, put her hand on Grif's arm.

"Are you injured, Doubletime?" she asked.

[whyarewehere]

Grif startled at being touched, moving back a step before figuring out that nothing bad was happening to him.

"What? No! No, I'm good."

He forced his face into an extremely unconvincing grin.

"I just... am fine. And good."

It wasn't like an alien demigod thing had almost killed him.

Pull it together, Grif, it's not you bleeding.

"What was that about his organs?"

He was hoping he hadn't heard that right.

It was really a shame Rich was such an idiot. He was a nice guy. Then again, Grif had long since decided that idiocy was an essential part of niceness.

[legionnpcs]

The nurse was clearly hesitant to explain because of patient-client privilege, but Gym'll had practically shouted it...

She opted to explain in general terms.

"Most patients are capable of having organs selectively cloned to replace any that are damaged beyond repair, but our cloning technology isn't perfect. Certa meta-powered individuals that don't match their species baseline sometimes have a genetic or molecular makeup that makes it so we can't successfully clone a replacement. Their bodies would just reject any cloned organs -- sometimes technological replacements, as well. For them, all we can do is try to repair the damage and save the original organs."

Something that was a lot harder to do, even despite all their technology.

[whyarewehere]

"...And he went out there knowing that."

Grif knew it. Goddammit.

"I'm just... going to go find somewhere to sit down," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. The panic that had gotten him here had faded. Now, Grif's body was cheerfully reminding him that he was not in the shape necessary to pull off stunts like that without paying for it later.

God save him from caring about what happened to brave, heroic jackasses with no sense of self-preservation.