TOTAL RECALL - Mod plot

[letsgolegion]

Who| Everyone who wants to tag in, no signups required
What| Total Recall Plot/event
Where| Planet SL-174345b
When| After the ic anon meme and stuff
Warnings/Notes| N/A

Space might be the final frontier, but there was a lot of it, and some of it was inhabited -- or maybe inhabitable, depending on what one was looking for. The planet SL-174345b was on the outer edges of known space in what was still colloquially known as the Second Galaxy, had shown some signs of life to exploratory scans, but no one had been able to communicate with any life on the surface. Several scientists, prepared with transuits and various data collection devices, had taken a ship down to the surface of the planet to see if they could make contact with any native life.

When they failed to return or make contact at the appointed time, armed security agents followed them down. When they failed to make contact, they called in the Legion.

SL-174345b's atmosphere wasn't breathable by most species in the U.P., but that's what transuits were for. The scientists and the rescue team had both gone down with extra air, it was possible that some of them were still alive. The Legion's transuits provided eight hours' worth themselves, though hopefully it wouldn't take that long to find the missing sentients. From orbit the planet itself was mostly brown land and black sea, with white clouds swirling over head. A closer look on the approach didn't look all that inviting, primarily craggy stone and dark caves.

The ships of the parties they were looking for were abandoned.

The only spot of color in this bleak landscape were the crystals that grew over everything, in all shades of red and purple and blue. They seemed almost like they were growing through the earth itself, as if they were something separate from it instead of part of it. They weren't all connected physically, but they seemed to be made from the same substance.

Within minutes of disembarking from their cruiser, a woozy feeling came on for the whole team. Only a few seconds later, they lost consciousness, which meant they weren't awake to hear the subtle, crackling, glass-like sounds of crystal growing around them.

Their minds tied together in an indistinct crystalline dreamscape, they would find themselves falling from one mind to another -- sometimes having their psyches split several ways at once to visit the minds of multiple other people simultaneously. In this place, memories seemed almost as real as reality, and had a nasty way of pulling people in and dragging them down into the past.

[ooc: info page here]

Comments

[fourstars]

Gohan couldn't help but groan as he cracked his eyes open, bringing one hand up to rub the sleep from his eyes. The crystalline landscape completely unfamiliar to him, as he cast a bleary gaze all around his immediate area. One moment, he'd been stepping out of the cruiser to go about searching for the missing people, the next... he couldn't exactly remember. And yet, as much as that fact should've concerned him... he couldn't help but find himself amazed by the landscape instead.

Standing up straight, the first thing he noticed was the fact that he couldn't exactly... make anything out. Everything was crystalline, yes, but he couldn't tell what was the floor, what was the wall, or what was... anything, really. It felt a little like the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, in the sense that it just felt like a vast expanse of nothingness that didn't follow the normal rules of space and time. It just... was.

And it continued to fascinate him, much like the Hyperbolic Time Chamber had.

"... Hello?"

[ ooc: Different people will get different memories. I'll leave it up to you if you want Gohan to be a participant in his memories or a spectator. ]

[headinjuries]

Okay, that was one step closer to getting the band back together so they could figure out what the hell was going on. Sam sat up (over? upside down? who knew) from where he'd crashed, waving one hand to get Gohan's attention.

"Hey. Seen anyone else yet?"

Because there were definitely a lot more than two of them to be finding.

[fighting4afuture]

First time out, and he was already waking up after getting knocked out somehow. Great first impression. In case anyone with less-than-stellar motivations was waiting for him to show signs of waking, Trunks stayed face-down with his eyes closed to listen, only pushing himself up after he was satisfied no one was going to immediately kick him in the ribs.

So this was probably why the scientists and security patrol hadn't checked in.

He took a moment to wonder, then: who gets sent after the last group to get called in?

But only a moment, because there wasn't much time to be spent sitting idle. He gets to his feet, scanning the empty void for signs of anyone else.

[ringslinging]

Out of body experiences got easier to recognize, after a while. And when you'd been in the game for as long as Hal had, that was plenty of time to get good at it.

Not necessarily good at controlling what happened when you got there, but they did say knowing was half the battle.

So he could tell there was something weird and psychic going on here. That much was recognizable. But it left a glaring question: how did they disconnect and get out of it?

Nothing to do but start moving and see what happened, he supposed.

[wherenoonegoes]

As he wandered, the landscape became a forest, the weather cold and misty. Trees were torn down and the land had a large gouge in it, as if something large and heavy had suddenly crashed. And, at the end of the trail of wreckage was a very familiar dragon, unconscious and tangled up in rope.

[ringslinging]

Weird psychic forests.

Okay, cool. He could work with that.

Wherever the commotion was, that was probably the place to start, so he followed the trail, and at the end -

"Toothless? That you?"

[headinjuries]

"Wow. Trippy."

Sam wasn't sure if he meant the landscape or himself, after a few moments. Okay, sometimes you got a weird feeling when you touched down on a new planet; adjusting to gravity could do that kind of thing, and he'd been through plenty of that -

He went down hard, helmet smacking into one of the crystals with a loud clang.

And when he came to, he didn't move for a long moment - just stayed put, flat on his back, staring at the sky and trying to will the headache away. "Ow."

[whyarewehere]

The sky was a noncommittal shade of blue grey that threatened rain. It was a muggy and gross day.

"Kai, you gotta go to school."

"I don't gotta do anything you tell me, you're not my boss."

There were two voices arguing, somewhere. Children. A boy and a girl.

[headinjuries]

Sam sat up, finally, rubbing his head. It took him another moment to take a look around, but as soon as he did, he frowned.

The planet sure hadn't looked like this five minutes ago.

That, on the other hand, was a secondary concern when he heard the voices. Maybe someone knew what was going on. Or maybe he could at least espouse the virtues of going to school if you actually had the chance to, to whoever this kid was, because seriously, don't fuck up like him.

He got to his feet, still a little wobbly, and looked around, trying to pinpoint where they were coming from.

[sir_vancelot]

"Yeah. Oww happens."

Vance's powers were working, at least, which meant he was flying through the crystalscape. "You okay there, Sam?"

[headinjuries]

Oh. That was a little embarrassing.

"Yeah, it's all good." Sam pushed himself up to sit, one hand going to the back of his head. "I mean, it's not like I haven't been through way worse."

Which, considering some of the examples of that, was probably a vicious understatement -

- and the ground, such as it was, dissolved beneath him, the landscape shifting into something completely different. Desert below, the highway cutting through, traffic backed up in the distance, though where it led to wasn't clear.

Or, perhaps, what was more important was what it was leading away from: a commotion of some kind further down the highway. Crashes, yelling.

Screams.

[nerdninja]

The fact that he'd passed out almost didn't register for Donatello - there were so many things here that held his attention quite well, after all.

Everything was...weirdly fuzzy, like the world was only halfway defined, or like he was seeing it through a haze of painkillers. Which, of course, he wasn't, so any alterations in his perception he was experiencing had to be a product of the environment itself, and the transuits ought to filter out anything in the atmosphere that might be responsible, or any kind of contact venom present on the ground.

But what else would be able to get through?

If anyone else happened by, they'd find him closely inspecting one of the crystals around him, examining it from every angle and trying to take some scans with his omnicom.

[sofresh]

Okay, this guy (or... turtle, that was definitely a turtle—hadn't he seen this somewhere before?) looked like he was going places. At least, whatever he was doing seemed like a better choice than just wandering around, so Kon came over to see if he could lend a hand somehow. He wasn't sure if there was anything he could do to help (or if the guy would even want help at all), but it couldn't hurt to try. ...you know, assuming he was actually investigating and not just messing around in the first place.

"You find anything?"

[nerdninja]

"Maybe." Donnie didn't look up from his omnicom. "There's some really weird energy readings emanating from this stuff, but I'm having a hard time finding something to compare them to...I think I'm getting biometric readings from way deep down, but they're pretty unique compared to known species I've looked at."

He frowned, getting up from his crouch and dusting off his kneepads. "I think whatever life there is, it's down somewhere under the crystal layer. Underground-dwelling or something? That'd explain why nobody was able to make contact yet, but something still had to happen to all of those survey teams..."

Finally, he looked up from the crystal, to Kon. "Have you seen anything weird?"

[whyarewehere]

"I told you guys this was going to happen! I fucking did!" Grif yelled into the crystal void, swinging an arm in a gesture of frustration.

He hadn't. He'd actually just regurgitated the plot of Alien to them, and several people whose pop culture knowledge had synched up with his had a good laugh about it, and they'd moved on to do the stupid hero thing because they were stupid heroes and this is what they were for.

Some days, he really regretted agreeing to this gig.

Grif set out to try and find the rest of the team. So far nothing was moving, but the constant faint crackling of growing crystal was unsettling and he was definitely on watch for anything out of his childhood scifi nightmares.

[thethinzooline]

The echoing sound of children's laughter surrounded him. That wasn't creepy at all, right? But it wasn't just generic creepy laughter. Raised voices could be heard fighting.

"Quit it!" a young voice cried out.

[whyarewehere]

Could aliens that wanted to lay eggs down your throat and eat your brain sound like children to get your guard down? Grif put some serious thought into that as he approached the sound.

It was definitely not a member of the team, but he figured brain-eating aliens at least wouldn't be prepared for how difficult he could be to catch.

[iamresponding]

The crystal world suddenly gave way to a courtyard of a high school. There was a boy nearby, wearing a particularly tragic turtleneck, one that didn't really look distinct in any way. He was skinny and an average height for his age, and had the plain face many fourteen-year-olds had, still slightly round with baby fat. His eyes were just an average brown and his long, curly brown hair was so light it was almost blonde, like it couldn't decide if it wanted to be one color or the other. (Apparently, even his hair had average aspirations.)

Average average average. The boy barely had a passing resemblance to any of the Legionnaires. But everything about the memory made it look like it was set in the 21st or 20th century on Earth -- maybe the 90's, judging from the clothes -- so it couldn't have been the memory of one of the people the Legion was sent to rescue.

He stood at the steps of the school, carefully dodging away from the other students that were pouring out that were heading towards the buses or walking home, looking around fearfully as if he was trying to just get out of the school but expecting someone else to intercept him. At one point, when he thought he was in the clear, he ran for the gate, ran past the buses and managed to get around the fence before running into a black-haired boy who was waiting for him there with his friends.

"Did you really think you could sneak away without facing me? I told you, after class, 3 o'clock."

"I didn't do nothing to you!" the boy protested. "Come on, Mike, I just wanna go home!"

The boys both had strong accents that made it clear this was somewhere in New York, albeit perhaps not in Manhattan.

"You shoved me in the hall!"

"I got knocked into you! Our school's crowded, in case you haven't noticed."

"Well maybe I just don't like your face," said Mike, punching the smaller boy in it, knocking him back against the fence. "There, I just helped rearrange it. I bet it'll look better now -- it's not like it could look any worse."

The smaller boy balled up his fists like he was about to toss a punch at his bully.

"Awww," Mike went on, "is the widdle baby actually gonna try to fight me? For real? You don't have a chance. You're just a weakling."

"And you're a neanderthal, Burley."

His smart mouth only earned the boy a punch to the stomach that dropped him to his knees.

"You can't even pretend to be smarter than me. Not when I'm pulling A's and you're scraping for C's. Face it: no muscles, no brains -- you're nothing. Next time when you're walking down the hall, make like you're nothing and stay out of my way."

Mike punched the boy in the face again, leaving him with a split lip and he and his friends stomped away, laughing and jeering, leaving the boy kneeling there, wiping his sleeve against his lip and looking like he wanted to dig a hole in the ground and die there.

Then the boy got up and ran home, with Grif being dragged along in his wake. He ran up into his room before his mother could see him, and as soon as he and Grif were inside, he locked the door, then dumped his bookbag on the floor and dropped down to sit with his back against his bed.

His room was a nerd's delight, decked out with action figures and movie posters -- all of them sci fi. There were shelves and shelves of science fiction books. Some of the books were for tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons and Rifts. They looked brand new, largely because the boy hadn't found anyone to play with him.

"I'm not allowed to fight back," the boy said softly and despondently. "My dad says that I'm not supposed to act like a neanderthal and go down to his level. But I just -- I just wanna sock him right in the nose."

The anger deflated out of him and he wrapped his arms around his knees.

"Burley's right, though. I'm not strong. I can't do any sports. I'm ugly. And I'm not even smart. Maybe if I was smart I could be proud of that, but I just get C's even when I try real hard. I'm nobody."

[whyarewehere]

Time was different here, so was consciousness, and though Grif didn't know what exactly was going on, he was starting to figure out the feeling of being stuck in somebody's memory.

He wasn't here, not really. He was just an observer. But what he'd just seen made him shake his head. This was sad, depressing sad, seeing this kid.

Something about it raised a spark of old anger, and drove him to answer anyway.

"Then hit him," he told the memory.

It wasn't good advice, it had never worked out for Grif. But it's what Dexter, age 14, would have done.

"And fuck grades."

His had never been good either.

[sir_vancelot]

The first thing Vance did as he regained consciousness was check under his nose. Usually when he woke up this woozy, it had been because of either a crack to the head or because he'd overused his powers. He hadn't had to deal with the latter in a long time, but this was a new world and he knew that Rich's powers had been changed. Why not his?

Of course, it dawned on him a moment later that he shouldn't be able to FEEL his face, what with the transsuit. He shook his head, looking around the area. It was pretty much blank around him and he pushed himself to his feet with a groan. "Hello?" he called out, brow furrowing. "Anybody else here?"

((OOC: Vance has a history of abuse that may well come up in his memories. If you can't or don't want to deal with that, let me know. There are better memories, too.))

[sofresh]

"Hey, keep it down, will ya? I'm not awake enough for this yet..."

Kon had made an effort to sit up, but that was really about as far as he got. Finding out what had happened (or if either of them were even okay) would probably be the smart thing to do here, but he wasn't in any rush to get back on his feet. Harassing his new companion took considerably less effort, apparently.

He yawned.

Already off to a great start!

[sir_vancelot]

Vance raised an eyebrow and snorted, giving the kid a nudge with his TK. "None of us are awake enough for this. And yet, here we are."

It's only a moment before things change around them. A nice street in a nice neighborhood. Lots of two story houses that mostly looked similar but for differences in the paint jobs and where the trees were. The suburbs at their finest.

And a man who looked very much out of place in the area, eyes fixed on a pre-teen boy coming down the street, looking very much like he was on his way home from school.

And Vance, who had been there a moment before...suddenly wasn't.

[thethinzooline]

"I am, but I have no idea where 'here' is. Do you?"

Nick didn't like this. It felt like he wasn't physically, tangibly here, almost like they weren't solid. It was a bit like a dream.

"I remember us landing on the planet and then..."

Nothing.

[frickingguardian]

Woozy. Why was everything making him go woozy lately? Rocket muttered a string of curses under his breath as he came to and got back on his feet with a grunt.

He wasn't even sure what caused the wooziness, this time. That made it a lot harder to figure out who to blame and take his irritation out on.

"Somebody besides me better be up," he snarled as he began making his way through the crystalline landscape. So far, no luck in finding anyone either up or unconscious, but maybe he'd eventually stumble across somebody and get to kick them awake.

That'd make him feel better.

[thethinzooline]

"Well, there's up and there's up," said another furry figure sprawled out on the ground nearby. "Are we talking 'up' as in awake or 'up' as in vertical?"

He was only managing the one and he wasn't going to manage the other anytime soon. He was leading a very horizontal existence at the moment.