Whistling in the Dark - Mod Plot [Log Post]

[letsgolegion]

Who| Everyone who signed up!
What| Whistling in the Dark Plot. The gang has to deal with threats around Legion World and the possessed
Where| Everywhere!
When| After Ferro's post on the network
Warnings/Notes| N/A

Everywhere around the ship things start to fall apart. Aside from the juddering as it shakes, lights start turning off, life support starts failing, the artificial gravity starts malfunctioning, and strange bursts of energy from the ship's engine causes electronics to stop working. And that's not all: it seems like every possible system that could be acting up is acting up.

In short, Legion World is a mess. And all they know so far is that some of the support staff may be responsible and that they're also possibly possessed by some kind of alien infestation that occasionally makes their eyes flash black.

It's time to get answers -- something that will be difficult with all the threats they're facing on the ship. Not only do the Legionnaires have to survive, the support staff will occasionally need rescue, too.

With the rate that systems are failing, the odds are not in their favor, especially since these malfunctions caused the escape pods to automatically launch without any crew in them. They'll have to work fast to stop the threat before everyone on Legion World dies.

Comments

Team 1 - Donatello and Nova

[letsgolegion]

[iamresponding]

Rich yanked his helmet from where it was folded and clothlike, tucked in his belt, popped it open so it hardened into actually effective head protection, and popped it on his head.

Couldn't do the hero thing without the ol' bucket.

"Yeah, not good," Rich said to Donnie, yanking off his prosthetic and leaving it on a random console. The transuits were created to allow them to fire off powers without destroying them. Rich suspected they were made of unstable molecules or something, just like a lot of people's uniforms were back home.

His prosthetic? Not so sturdy. With them unable to clone him an organic arm that wouldn't explode if the Nova Force ran through it and also unable to create a prosthetic that wouldn't do the same, he was limited in options. Fortunately, he'd figured out a workaround in the Sim room. He figured out he could form a very crude arm...tentacle thing out of the Nova force in the place of his missing arm. It was clumsy and really only good for gripping and hitting things but it was better than nothing. (If only he had his brother's fine control over gravimetric fields, maybe he could've managed enough nuance for some precision.)

In any case, that was all he had to work with so off the prosthetic went and then he was stuck with the task of working the transuit over his uniform one handed -- no easy task when the limited Nova Force in his body had left him so uncoordinated with what body he had left.

The ship shuddered again and the lights started flickering.

"Even less good."

At least Brainy had given them a heads up on what they might face but that wasn't going to make this any easier.

[nerdninja]

Despite his own slightly awkward anatomy, Donatello was having a much simpler time getting his own transuit on. Clearly, the thing was designed with an eye for adapting to physiology that had things like big honking shells to worry about it.

(Whatever might be wrong with being stuck centuries and realities away from home, he really couldn't complain about the marked decrease in human-centric everything.)

Even as he finished pulling it into place with one hand, he was already reaching for a nearby console with the other - not really even tapping buttons. One touch was good enough for his powers to kick in, and while the flow of information was a lot to sift through at once, he'd been getting plenty of practice at it before now. He could feel where everything in the ship was working; it was just a matter of looking at where it was working from. The fans and air filters scrubbing waste gases into breathable air, the heating, the gravity generators...everything linked back to a main conduit for power, and if one followed that back -

"We're five levels down from the power controls for this section. If those go, we'll be losing a lot more than lights."

[iamresponding]

Nova finally got his transuit on and nodded.

"Lead the way, kiddo," he said, taking to the air with his flight ring.

It was much better that they prevented the damage than got bogged down with Donnie having to fix it while the saboteur ran off to break something else.

"Here's hoping these things are nothing like the last few creepy aliens that possessed people that I ran into."

Before this, it'd been Harrow, who possessed people on the worlds Galactus fed on, causing pain and torture and death to enhance the suffering of dying innocents because he fed off it. Before that, it'd been Abyss and his crazy space zombies. And before that, it'd been the freakin' Phalanx and their techno-organic virus -- something Rich'd fallen victim to himself.

"I am so goddamn sick of alien possession."

[nerdninja]

Donnie followed suit, his own flight not quite as sure as Rich's as he took to the air, but still well controlled and reasonably confident. He'd had a lot of things to try and split his attention between - just about all of the technology had been fascinating enough that he could've dedicated himself to that alone and still found plenty to occupy himself - but no ninja worth his training would allow himself to be too much of a klutz in the face of learning a new way to move.

"You know, the fact that you've apparently done this enough to be sick of it..."

...actually, he wasn't going to finish that thought.

"We might shave a couple minutes off if we get into the ducts instead of taking the corridors, but I...uh. Don't know how well you'd fit."

Team 2 - Feanor and Zuko

[letsgolegion]

[failbender]

"Ugh!" Zuko cried out in frustration as he watched people milling around in a panic, racing to the places they were supposed to be. He envied them. He had no idea what he was supposed to do.

He looked to the man nearby, one of the only ones that wasn't support staff.

"How are we supposed to know what to protect? I didn't understand half of what Brainiac 5 said!"

He'd at least gotten the transuit on like he was supposed to, though he had his doubts that it could actually protect him from not having air. How could such thin, strange material do something that complex?

Of course that begged the question of how they could even be here in the dark void beyond a world in the first place, somewhere where there was apparently no air.

All of it was beyond him and that made it frustrating because he wasn't quite sure how to react to it. How was he supposed to protect anyone or fight their enemy if he didn't understand what it was, didn't understand what it was targeting, didn't understand how it was causing all this damage, and didn't understand how they were up in the stars in the first place?

[lightcatcher]

At first, the panic around him is intoxicating in the worst way possible, contagious, threatening to pull out the legs under him and wash him out into the ocean of fear, being pulled under the waves of emotion, and he can feel anger rising within himself. But he manages to fight it back by pushing away other, much more recent imaginary (darkness, and confusion, and everything breaking apart, himself as a man drowning and having nothing to hold onto) and pulling up that of bygone times of panic less dire, serious still but one that he could easily rule and control. Panic that wasn't as much out of his grasp.

When his eyes come back into focus and the rigidity of his body softens into simple tension, and he looks at Zuko, he has drawn from the feelings that a fire in one of his son's rooms once caused. Terrible, but something that could easily be understood, to which they knew the answers and solutions, that was only a matter of reducing damage once all people were accounted for.

There seems to be a simple answer here, too, if he understands it correctly.

"I think not that we must know what to protect to do so; it seems that knowing whom to keep from damaging it should be enough." The questions is how to find those people, but they at least know that they seem to be speaking strangely. "If all who are possessed speak and act such as this man, we might be capable of recognizing them even without knowing how they would behave at another time."

[failbender]

"I guess that's better than nothing," said Zuko, not happy with that being their only option.

But Zuko was rarely happy with anything anyway.

He started to move, looking around them at the people that were running around all over. As much as they all seemed alarmed, a lot of this seemed rehearsed, as if they'd had some training on where they were all supposed to go.

That meant if one of the...things were there they'd probably stick out by behaving differently.

A sudden choom noise sounded nearby and a vibration passed through the area they were. The telepathic earplugs emitted a loud ringing sound in his ears and then it stopped.

Before the pulse, he could catch snippets of what the people around him were saying. Now? It sounded like nonsense.

"[Something just happened! Can you hear that? Everyone's words sound like gibberish!]" he said to the other man in a language that would possibly sound completely alien.

Team 3 - Hiccup and Saralegui

[letsgolegion]

[enthraller]

Ferro's warning was appreciated and all, but the danger it warned of was so foreign and enormous that for a moment Saralegui just sat staring at the screen, terrified and for once feeling helpless. It wasn't the kind of threat he could control, nothing he could twist around to his own advantage. A ship he knew nothing about falling apart around them, and an empty void waiting outside it.

But if there were people responsible, that he could actually do something about.

He was never the type to be content just sitting quietly and doing nothing. If only to feel more in control, he had to at least try something.

Saralegui bolted down a random hallway with no set destination in mind. It wasn't like he'd been here long enough to know his way around anyway. All that mattered was finding people -- someone acting strange or suspiciously, someone he could sink his mental teeth into and tear information and solutions from.

[wherenoonegoes]

Toothless bounded down a corridor, Hiccup behind. They passed by a different hallway just in time for Saralegui to run smack into several hundred pounds of fish-eating lizard. The resulting pileup caused Hiccup to trip over Toothless a second later.

"Ow. You guys okay?"

[enthraller]

Saralegui was not a particularly large or dense guy. He didn't stand a chance, really. Suddenly there was a mass of scaly black in front of him and he hit it like a brick wall with a yelp and a smacking sound.

The wind knocked out of him, he didn't even notice Hiccup tripping into the fray at first.

"Ugh."

Not the most eloquent or intelligent response. Saralegui took a moment to regain his bearings and catch his breath before looking up to finally spot Hiccup.

"Ah...forgive me." The response was automatic at the point, and he got back to his feet with a distracted frown, mind still several yards down the corridor. And then he was looking back to Hiccup again, suddenly thoughtful and alert. "You. What can you do?"

No sign of Jerem's symptoms and so not what he was looking for, but Saralegui was never one to pass up a potentially useful tool. Especially a superpowered one.

Team 4 - Jason Scott Lee and Pash Cracken

[letsgolegion]

Re: Team 4 - Jason Scott Lee and Pash Cracken

[kingtyrantranger]

Explosions blossoming nearby. People in a panic, using well-practiced evacuation routes and emergency procedures. Some weird monster on the loose with powers they don't understand yet.

Just another day in Angel Grove.

Except this wasn't Angel Grove. This was Legion World. And something told Jason that this kind of thing wasn't supposed to happen. One of the techs had to help him with the trans-suit. He just hadn't had the time to get it down to the minute maximum that some of the Legion said they'd have.

He wasn't getting much of a ping off of his powers. Understandable, really. He might be wearing the belt, but he wasn't really Legion yet. But, morphed or not, he was still a Power Ranger. Fortunately the evacuation routes were mostly obvious, but whatever the invaders had done was messing with the anti-fire systems. And, worse, the doors.

Jason ground his teeth together, straining as he slowly pulled one of the hatches open, pushing at the other side with his foot. The thing wanted to close on him and, despite his good condition, he was beginning to tremble from the effort. "Come on, get on through! I've got a leg up, so you'll need to crawl, but hurry! You know where to go!"

At least the trans suit kept him from breathing in too much smoke, but all the fresh air in the world wouldn't help him keep that door open for long without help.

[crackentwist]

The odd emergency drill in deep space was nothing new, from Pash's perspective, but he'd never thought much of them back home - mostly because that kind of systems failure on any ship in the fleet, more than likely, was going to happen in the middle of a combat zone, and if they were in the middle of a combat zone, he would more than likely be in his A-wing, where he belonged, and not trying to outrun a catastrophic breach of atmosphere.

Emergency procedure, for him, should be an ejection seat.

He spotted the struggle with the hatch down the hall from a distance, and picked up his pace as he came in close -

- and phased right past Jason, through the solid section of wall next to the hatch, only to revert to being solid on the other side and slam into the hatch with his shoulder.

Pushing something open was usually easier than pulling, in his opinion.

[kingtyrantranger]

...He's going to have to get used to that, isn't he? Just when he thought that life was getting weird enough, someone threw him onto an artificial planet with some kind of space ghost.

No time to question it. He could be privately freaked out on his own time, when people weren't depending on him.

Jason grunted and turned his shoulder into the door. It was a lot easier when he could plant both feet on terra firma and push. It was a bit of a strain, but he managed. He spared Pash a glance and nodded. "Thanks, man. I'm not sure how much longer I could've kept that open."

A good thing, too. The bulk of the crowd was already through, but there were still a few stragglers finding their way through the heat and the smoke. The flames, however, were getting oppressive. Pretty soon, if there was anyone left in that section of the planet ship, they wouldn't be in any shape to rescue.

After a few long moments, with nobody else passing through, Jason raised a hand to catch Pash's attention. He held up all five fingers, rocking his hand forward. When he pulled it back, he curled a finger, starting a countdown of five seconds before he'd be moving and letting the door close.

Team 5 - Sparkle Bright and Tadashi

[letsgolegion]

Re: Team 5 - Sparkle Bright and Tadashi

[the_civilian]

Tadashi barreled down the hall, over the heads of the evacuating staff, pulling on the transuit one-handed as he let the internal sensor mapping program Brainiac 5 had 'ported to his omnicom guide him toward danger. He could feel his pulse pounding in his throat, and it felt like he might choke on his next breath at any minute, but nothing seemed to be on fire yet. Hopefully, he could stop anything from catching on fire when he got there.

He hadn't had to dodge anyone yet, and it made sense that the hallways were build to allow for both foot-traffic and flight. Still, he was taking the corners a little faster than was perhaps prudent...

Re: Team 5 - Sparkle Bright and Tadashi

[nomoresparkle]

Normally, Sparkle Bright was good at flying. She'd been doing it naturally for practically ever, and since arial acrobatics always made good news footage, the Super Patriots Inc had always encouraged her to be showy in her flying.

But here she'd lost her natural flight ability and had to rely on the flight ring which was not quite the same. Close enough for her to sometimes forget though. Like now, when she'd zoomed down a hallway towards the supposed danger. Normally, she could stop or change direction practically faster than thought. But having to rely on the ring made the reaction just a hair slower. Not a problem normally, but now she wasn't able to stop before crashing into Tadashi.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry!" she said, trying to disentangle herself and get back into the air. "I'm not used to flying with this thing, I couldn't stop"

Re: Team 5 - Sparkle Bright and Tadashi

[the_civilian]

"No, my bad, I was going faster that I should have been," Tadashi said, doing what he could to help untangle the two of them. He flashed the young woman nervous grin. "It's good to know that I'm not going to be handling whatever this mess is alone this time."

Once they were untangled, he resettled his helmet and took to the air again.

"You're the one with some experience in this sort of thing, right? Sparkle Bright? Any tips for a total newbie?"

Team 6 - Brainiac 5 and Parker

[letsgolegion]

[googledox]

Fortunately, Brainy got the engineering team out of the damaged section and they successfully turned off the plasma flow to the plasma conduits. Then he managed to manually trigger the fire suppression systems.

"Get Nikels to Medbay, I can handle the damage on level 433 on my own!" he directed the technicians.

Fortunately, they'd had no fatalities but he didn't want to take any chances when Nikels looked like they possibly had a concussion.

"Mr. Five, you should go to the Medbay, too; you're bleeding all over --" said a technician, Mr'tik. Brainy reached his hand up to his face and looked down at his uniform and realized that his streaming nose was still dripping all over his front.

"It's fine. A minor case of epistaxis -- it doesn't even feel broken." He was totally lying through said possibly-broken nose. "Now move!"

"Yessir."

With that squared away, he turned and flew to the nearest hatch to get in the service tunnels to get down to level he needed to. Now was no time to trust the service lifts.

[leverageintceo]

Parker blinked in surprise on the other side of the hatch.

"Oh good, I was concerned that I was going to get there and end up just looking at a bunch of electronic junk I didn't understand," she said, recognizing the green skin and messy hair of Brainiac 5. "Come on, come on, come on, and try not to hit your face on anything else, El-- my hitter says that you can get bone shards into the brain that way."

She couldn't set it for him, and anyway, they had important life-preserving things to do besides deal with Brainy's face and his cool alien blood.

[googledox]

"I'm heading to level 433," Brainy said, starting to fly through the vent shafts. Much faster than crawling. "There's damage there that indicates that a saboteur may still be present."

Try to keep up, Parker, because he's zooming along fast.