legionworld | "The Reject Pile" [modpost/log]

Entry tags:

"The Reject Pile" [modpost/log]

Who| Closed to anyone who signed up
What| "The Reject Pile" log
Where| All over Legion World
When| After this post.
Warnings/Notes| Possession, possible mentions of child harm/death?

The contents of Brainy's Vault of Failed inventions in need of decommissioning pretty much highlight exactly how lucky the galaxy was that he was a good guy. They caused more damage by accident than most weapons caused on purpose.

The Legionnaires that were gunning for the Herald and his current host had a whole lot of terrifying rejects to wade through, and then an enemy to fight that was capable of going invisible. This wasn't going to be easy.

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Brainy's failed inventions and their byproducts were quite the hurdle to get around. Fortunately, Kid Q had sent them all a guide on them in the form of Brainy's notes, so they knew what they were, why they'd been consigned to being dismantled, and possible weaknesses.

The Herald had chosen a very good body to hijack to hide from the team. You couldn't go wrong with invisibility as a way of avoiding detection. Fortunately, there are more ways to find someone than sight.

That post of Lyle's - Bill Cipher's - was one hell of a monologue. Robbie had been gearing up for a verbal onslaught of ridiculousness, because, hey, someone who was already monologueing was generally dead easy to distract while better leaders than him came up with a good plan.

And then... he brought up Dipper, and all the terrible, cat-got-your-eye jokes in the universe weren't enough to keep Robbie on that track. Let someone else shout at Bill, Robbie just wanted to find Dipper. He wasn't expecting to find him alive, but he couldn't stomach the idea of the kid being discarded like trash.

If he did join what he suspected was the herd going after the Herald, he might try to stop one of the brasher Legionnaires from killing Lyle to take out Bill Cipher. Robbie wasn't sure which way would preserve the most life.

So, he watched the support staff scanning the space surrounding Legion World like a kid in an arcade trying to grab the next turn at Rampage. He volunteered before they even found him, and, when the sensors pinged - funny, how radar screens never seem to change - Robbie didn't wait to be told before suiting up. He's going.

Wash and Locus enter the firehouse to find Ray already strapping a pair of large tanks to his back, a pair of high-tech goggles perched on his head.

"Good to see you. Gear's on the table. Take your pick," he say with a little strain as he finally manages to buckle the slime blower to himself properly.

"You've got your basic proton pack, which fires a stream of highly charged protons that wrangle psychokinetic entities. The pack with the more rifle-like attachments is boson pack. It fires explosive boson darts, which come in handly when you need to weaken a ghost quickly. The smaller ones are the arm-mounted proton pack, the proton pistol, and the compact pack. They fire a weaker stream and tin the case of the compact pack also weaker boson dats, but they're better for close quarters than the normal packs. The ecto-goggles on the end there will allow you to see and track psychokinetic energy." He explains quickly. There might not be a lot of time, but Wash and Locus do need to know what's at their disposal.

"Whatever you do," Ray warns, with immense seriousness, "don't cross the streams. It's hard to do accidentally, since the positive charge of the streams will cause them to repel each other, but if you do manage it you'll probably vaporize yourself. And pretty much everything around you for miles. So don't."

Bunny rockets through the halls sniffing madly, ears twisting for the smell and sound of someone who isn't there.

It would have been handy if he'd thought to familiarize himself with all the Legionnaires' individual scents, but he hadn't anticipated possession as the first scenario with the Legion to worry about. Evil spirits were well within his realm of experience. Evil spirits in space hadn't seemed like a combination to expect, somehow.

Terrifying future inventions, though, he'd wondered about as a possibility, and ultimately, evil spirits are so well within his experience that this hunt is practically muscle memory. Dodge the horrors looking to kill him in mind-meltingly awful ways. Run flat out, pause and listen and smell for the odd sound and odd scent out for what's in the room. Find the demon first. Then beat the number of the airlock Bill shoved Dipper through out of him.

Preferably once the demon is out of Lyle. But whether or not that will be possible in the time they need to work to have a chance of saving the kid remains to be seen.

He skids to a stop by an alcove, dragging his claws on the ground for traction, hand hovering over the egg bombs on his bandolier as he inhales deeply, concentrating.

Edited 2017-08-15 05:49 (UTC)

Instinctively, he goes for the boson pack. May as well give that to the one of them with unerring aim.

"Will these creatures be able to detect someone under cloaking?" He refuses to call them ghosts outright, or anything of the sort. What they are doesn't matter nearly as much as what their weaknesses are, and how best to destroy them.

...might as well take one of those proton pistols as well.

"I think I found him!" calls out a tech. "I set a scanner pattern in a search radius outside the airlocks. The one outside airlock 43 pinged a small organic mass. Approximately 48 kilograms. Can't get a bead on a lifesign, though, but the sensors are still failing to calibrate correctly, so that doesn't - it doesn't mean anything. Uploading coordinates."

One of the other techs turns to Robbie, knowing what he's waiting for. Despite all the chaos, the staff is still trying their best, trying to support the Legionnaires as best as they can.

"There's a cruiser already prepped in hanger 76 down the hall, and we managed to get one of the decommissioned jetpacks up and running. That, a full medkit, and multiple backup transuits are inside. The coordinates will already be programmed in, and we can help course correct from here. Go!"

I think I found him! Robbie quietly forces a deep breath out. He hadn't been holding it, but he has to clear his lungs. Clear his head. Because the wording - the energy - is so frantic and optimistic that he can feel the swell of hope that's just going to burst if he gets too keyed up.

Yes, there it is. The check in the tech's voice, and Robbie can fill it what they're all trying not to say. There's no lifesign because Dipper is dead, because he was thrown out of an airlock way more than twenty seconds ago.

Robbie isn't going to be the one to say it. He knows that the techs care, and ordinarily he's jealous of the amount of public backup the Legion of Superheroes gets. Right now, he's just immensely grateful that they're here to run these scans, because Rob would've smashed a control panel what feels like lifetimes ago. He nods along with the instructions, concentrating on nouns and facial muscles. Cruiser. Jetpack. Medkit. Transuits. He didn't flinch, frown, or grimace at the mention of a medkit and additional suits, didn't discourage their hope.

"Thanks," he manages to say, choking the word past his heart or his stomach, whatever's trying to jump clean up his throat and out his mouth. Then, he sets off running down the hall, which becomes bouncing after three strides that he deemed too slow.

The cruiser should be more exciting. Robbie remembers his first time piloting a spacecraft, and it was incredible. This feels like Manhattan in rush hour, despite the utter lack of traffic, because he cannot get there fast enough. Adrenaline and nerves cause him to overshoot the coordinates, and the tech directing him does not laugh when Robbie explains that what he really needs the tech to do is to slap the front of the cruiser and shout 'Hey! I'm floating here!'

He doesn't try humor again. He resumes keeping things to as few syllables as possible while he maneuvers the cruiser to a stop. Robbie doesn't need to check the screens to know he's arrived - he can see the body ahead, spinning and drifting. Oh god. If there is still a God...

The figure seems whole, and he hates himself for how relieved he is at that. Like he should be spared seeing gore. He's caused worse than this, and that's how he keeps his hands from shaking as Robbie pulls on his transuit and follows the tech's instructions for the jetpack.

Then, he gets in the airlock. The harder that he tries not to think about Dipper as he hits the button that sets off the sequence of locking and unlocking doors, the longer each second feels as Robbie waits for the room to decompress and spit him into the void. Dipper waited this out. Was he conscious? Did he know what was happening? Did he try to take an extra breath right before the doors opened, like a drowning person about to go under?

The doors open behind him, and Robbie's sucked backwards, weightless. He has to wait to clear the doors before he can fire the jet pack safely. Just take off the suit. Breathe in the vacuum, there's already nothing inside, and get it over with so maybe this one won't be your fault...

But Colu rises over the edge of the spacecraft - or, more accurately, Robbie drifts out far enough for it come into view, and Robbie can't fight off the thought of how even such greenless planet looks beautiful from outer space.

He drifts further, and the angle changes. Dipper now is silhouetted against the planet's ocean. He's so small.

There's a creeping ache in Robbie's chest that threatens every ounce of his composure, but Robbie engages the jet pack and aims himself at the body. He shouldn't have to fight to detach the body he was approaching from Dipper. Clinical used to come more easily than this, and he misses it.

Edited 2017-08-18 01:59 (UTC)

It's been over an hour. Bill had chucked him out the airlock long before his confrontation of the team. He'd started his whole monologue right around the time the staff had started to notice Dipper wasn't responding to a summons for a mission on Colu.

Dipper's skin is pale and almost blue, and the skin of his face is slightly swollen, both from the moments in vacuum before he got his transuit on, and from the cold. But otherwise he looks no different than usual. His expression is peaceful, eyes half-closed like someone half-asleep.

As Dipper floats there, still slowly spinning, something slowly rotates into view, something that changes everything -

The armband of a transuit.

The transuits have a small screen on them, angled to be visible to the wearer, with an upside down readout, that has important information it. The screen is blinking an alarming red that shows the suit is past the optimal time of use, and the counter on it shows 01:12:55. It's been in operation for over an hour, over twelve minutes past the one hour limit, yet oddly... it's still operating when it should've run out of air and finally shut down. The screen is still lit and it's blinking the warning light instead of glowing the solid red that means the suit is totally used up.

The reason for that is what else is flashing on the screen. "MANUAL TEMP OVERRIDE: 10°C. WARNING: LOW TEMP."

And on the screen that shows vitals...there's a blip on the heart monitor. It takes far too long, but then there's another blip. His heart is beating, it's just much slower than it should be. A yellow warning alert blinks. "BODY TEMP DANGER: 31°C"

And then as Robbie comes close, his half-closed eyes suddenly flutter open and he reaches out a hand in clumsy gesture, a weak grasp for help.

Edited 2017-08-18 02:19 (UTC)

In any other circumstances, Wash would be beside himself with glee. An actual, honest-to-God proton pack? It's like his childhood dreams have all come true.

But there's a zombie apocalypse at hand, and dorito satan possessing one of the Legionnaires with the best chance of stopping said apocalypse, and Dipper out an airlock. He's nowhere near glee.

So he pulls on the proton pack and mounts the compact pack on his vembrace. "Got it." The goggles might be what they need to track Bill, but he highly doubts they'll work over his helmet. Then again, nobody ever said invisibility was immune to motion trackers either. He glances over at Locus. "You want to goggles or your motion trackers?" He's pretty sure he knows the answer, but it's worth asking.

The arm movement was so slow that Robbie didn’t recognize it for what it was. He thought it was just the drifting spin of a world without friction forever.

It’s the eyes that catch his attention. He's no Brainiac, but he knows about objects at rest staying at rest, in motion staying in motion. There's no force in space aside from the great sucking nothing. Eyes don't flutter in space.

He’s hallucinating, Robbie tells himself as he grabs onto the slowly flailing arm and pulls Dipper closer. The teen looks asphyxiated; the only other explanation for that color is X-gene manifestation - talk about a pipe dream.

There are mechanisms to attach a second person to the jet pack, for moments like this, and Robbie does his best to work them from memory. Even if he could radio someone right now, he wouldn't until he had solid answers for the questions he'd get.

Gripping Dipper's like an angry mother marching him out of the supermarket, Robbie tows him back to the space craft. "I got you. It's okay."

Since he doesn't believe what he's saying, it seems like a waste of breath, but... it's what you say.

They're in the airlock before Robbie notes that the lights on Dipper's transuit are still active. It's hard to miss, when he's carrying Dipper so the recompression and gravitization of the airlock doesn't drop him to the ground. The heart monitor blips a zig zag across the screen, and Robbie thinks his own quits beating at that point. The automatic door is slow, and he's through the retracting panels before they're even halfway open.

Robbie lays his teammate on the bench built into one wall, shoving the medkit out of the way and begins yanking off the overworked transuit with no pretense and not much more care. When Dipper's head and upper body are free of the contained, used-up air of the transuit, Robbie immediately rechecks Dipper's pulse. The old-fashioned way, of course, because putting two fingers against an artery is far easier to remember than the futuristic medical kit. He can't trust any of the technology right now.

It takes so long, too long, but Robbie feels the thrum of the carotid artery. "How the hell are you alive?"

"It depends on the the entity. But in Cipher's case I don't think it's likely. He hasn't displayed any abilities that make me think it likely he can see through cloaking." Ray replied, attaching the megatrap to his belt. It was somewhat larger than a normal ghost trap, but thanks to 31st century advances it was roughly discus sized and shaped rather than the massive device Ray and Egon had previously designed.

"Regardless, we still need to be prepared for serious resistance. He's on the lower end of being a Class VII, but he's still a Class VII. And there's no telling what Brainy's experiments are capable of. I'd say be on your guard, but something tells me neither of you will have trouble with that."

When he'd left the airlock, Robbie had wondered if Dipper'd taken one last gasp, like a drowning person going under. He hadn't then, but he gasps like that now. The moment the clear plastic is off his face, he's sucking in air like breathing is going out of style and he wants one last chance of being 2 cool 4 school before the trend changes to gills or something.

After those first few panicked gasps, his breathing slows again, though, because he's mostly doing it out of panic, and his heartbeat and breathing are still slowed down.

And then, outside of the cold temperature of the transuit, he starts shaking uncontrollably, full body shivering that's only a half step removed from being able to be called "convulsions." It's warmer in here and that means his body is no longer beyond shivering like it had been. He's warming up.

He's a little more alert now, too, eyelids flicking slightly more open. It takes him a moment of blinking before he answers, like his brain can't even process the question that quickly.

"Extrr," he slurs, the word barely sliding out over his tongue. He taps the little pouch on his sash, the little extra pocket where he sometimes keeps his notebook or extra supplies. Bill had taken his utility belt but hadn't thought to take that.

It was just one little pocket, right?

He tries to force the words out correctly this time.

"Extrr. Trrnsuit."

He hadn't gasped as he'd been sucked out of the airlock, no. He'd breathed out, because back when they'd been taught about surviving in vacuum in Legion classes, they'd been taught that breathing out was what you were supposed to do to keep your lungs from popping. Then he'd stayed focused and used his very few seconds of consciousness to put his extra transuit on.

Then, while he'd floated out there alone, instead of panicking, he'd thought very hard and figured out how to maximize his time past the one hour limit.

"Turnned temp low. Slowrr hrrtbeat. Breathing. Need less oxygen."

The slurring isn't because of brain damage or anything like that.

"Hypothrrmia."

Slower heartbeat and breathing meant his air had lasted just a little bit longer.

He liked reading about weird stuff. Back home, he'd read about induced hypothermia once, about how they were trying to use it in transplants. He'd read about people drowning in ice cold water and getting revived hours later. In the Legion's universe, he'd read about how they outright put people in cryostasis sometimes to cure or perform surgery on them later.

Being a creepy little know-it-all weirdo had saved his life.

"No. We won't."

Well, it will be worth to see if he can vanish and get the drop of him. Worst case, it doesn't work, and he's still at a proper range and vantage point to deal with him as best he knows how.

He shares a brief glance with Wash before eying the goggles. "They are unlikely to be of much use under my helmet. What is it they track, exactly? It's possible we may already have similar filters built into our HUD."

Here, Ray gets another look.

The gasping makes Robbie step back, to give Dipper space to breathe and move. Yes, okay, Rob knows that there's no chance of him crowding out the oxygen, but he thinks personal space might be preferred, until the presumed shock of it wears off.

The shivering and clumsy speech, though, that worries him. There's a blanket in the medkit - two, if you count the fire blanket - but one is specifically for warmth (and perhaps dramatically draping it over the shoulders or someone sitting on the bumper of an ambulance). Robbie throws it over Dipper with a snap and tucks the loose ends underneath him. "That was seriously smart, you Dippersnapper. You were born for this sort of thing. Just know that the next time, they'll expect you to have an extra transuit, so you better carry an extra extra transuit. Pretty soon you'll need an extra extra extra transuit. How extra."

While he runs through all that, he's digging through the rest of the medical supplies, sliding a clear bag of liquid into a cube-shaped device that immediately begins humming. After a few seconds, the saline bag pops up like a pop-tart to be fitted into a small medicuff that he clips around Dipper's arm unceremoniously. "I don't see anything else in here that's going to help you out right now. I mean, there's always this."

Robbie held up the small bottle of what looked very much like a potable alcohol. It could be whiskey, could be brandy. "But I'm kind of against underage drinking - be quiet for a sec, okay?"

He hits a button on the nearest comm panel. "This is Speedball - is this a secure channel?"

A staticky voice comes back quickly. "It should be, but we can't guarantee that. How'd the spacewalk go?"

Robbie hesitates and allows himself a moment of utter relief with a flash of a giddy smile, but he doesn't share the reason. "It's completed. Can you remote pilot the ship to hangar... three?"

Hangar 3 is nearest to the medbay. Robbie knows this, and so does the tech on Legion World. "Affirmative. No further response is needed."

Rolling the small bottle of alcohol in his hands, Robbie mumbles to himself. "I'd rather not get shot out of the sky now."

Dipper gets the whole of his attention from then on. "I know you can move your arm, but how's your fingers? Toes? Pins and needles, or no feeling at all? Can you wiggle them?"

Edited 2017-08-21 01:44 (UTC)

He wiggles his fingers, even if he does it clumsily, and wiggles his toes enough to move his boots. It's hard to tell what he's doing, though, since he's shaking so much in general.

Dipper isn't exactly the most alert but he notices that Robbie doesn't just outright say to the techs that he's alive. And Bill had been possessing Lyle, someone that had access to things like security channels and ...

And it'd make sense to keep quiet on him still being alive if Bill is still free.

The thought that Bill's probably still running around the ship wreaking havoc -- or worse, out there in the galaxy -- is more sobering than the warm saline now dripping through his veins.

"Bill. Lyle!"

He tries to sit up, even though he's too weak to even sit upright, even though there's nowhere for him to even go yet. He's just trying to slide off the bench to stand, trying to get ready to fight.

"You have to -- let me -- you have to --"

He can't seem to figure out what they have to let him do and actually say it.

"Take it easy, bro." Robbie's hand settles on Dipper's shoulder right now. He doesn't want to pin Dipper to the bench, but it's clear that the teenager's in no shape to even stumble around the craft. Staying put will be encouraged, physically if need be. "We know that Invisible Kid is being possessed by Bill Cipher, whoever that is, and you've told enough people about Bill Cipher that they are on it like Lance Armstrong on questionable supplements."

He glances over his shoulder through the window at the front of the ship. Legion World is still in the distance, but they'll be there shortly. "He monologues way too much, so he's not that smart no matter what super genius he takes over. Why are you such a threat to him, though?"

It's not a good idea to let Dipper fight. Robbie'll let him talk until he turns blue again, however, because Robbie is currently fantasizing about locking Dipper in a healing tank where he'll be safe until it's all over. Learning whatever Dipper knows in the meantime - that's just a solid plan. "And what was in that book he burned?"

"They track psychokinetic energy, so I doubt your helmets would be able to do already" Ray responds.

"Depending on what filters you have available and how sensitive they are, I might be able to rig them to do it. PKE's really just a shorthand for the unique interaction of several different forms of energy that's produced by ghosts and other psychic phenomena, so it wouldn't be too hard."

There's no way he can get up, and nowhere to go. He stops fighting. It's hard for him to do, to just...give up control and let other people handle it. But he has to. They're still outside the ship and he's shaking like a kitten left in the rain.

"Beat him. We...beat him. In Grunkle Stan's mind. And when he stole my body. And during the apocalypse. He's the one... the throne. I told you, when we first met. And on my Legacy. The nightmare throne."

He holds a shaking hand to his aching head, trying to clear his thoughts enough to talk.

"When the Yellow Lanterns messed with my head... the telepaths had to help me. To separate the real memories from the fake ones. I drew pictures all over the wall. In my Medbay room. From my real life. To sort it out."

The ones that some of the other Legionnaires came in and looked at with slack-jawed horror. The ones that made people sit down beside him and comfort him even though he was a stranger to a few of them.

"Some of what I drew was from...my Great Uncle Ford's journal. I can't --" he shakes his head. "I wouldn't normally be able...to draw it from memory. Not perfectly. But because the telepaths were bringing it all to the surface on purpose..."

All those drawings had been accurate, much more accurate than he could normally replicate on his own. Alongside drawings of some of the sights and monsters he'd seen, he'd successfully redrawn some of the arcane runes and alchemy circles from memory.

"In Medbay, they took pictures of the walls. As part of my medical file or whatever. I told them to delete them all. For privacy." He looks at Robbie with an almost embarrassed expression, but who wouldn't feel embarrassed about their craziness being spewed out all over the walls? "But I copied them first. Into my notebook. Just...just in case. I knew I wouldn't be able to remember them all clearly on my own."

He'd had the giant spell circle in there, the one that supposedly could destroy Bill. And the unicorn spell. Unicorns had to exist in this universe, too, right?

"I don't know if he works by the same rules here, but the stuff in my notebook...there was still a chance it could work." He shakes his head. "I can't draw it from memory, though. Not without help. I had notes, spell runes, a zodiac wheel..."

He tears up a little bit at the thought of his journal being burned. He'd put so much work into it, and it could've possibly even helped, but now it's all gone.

"Also, it was my diary," he blurts out. "But never mind, that's -- that's stupid."

He figured Bill'd probably taken some glee in destroying it just because it was something he cared about, even thinking he was dead. But that it was meant to hurt doesn't mean he should let it hurt.

He shouldn't feel like crying because someone burned a stupid diary, even if it had all his thoughts about the Legion's universe, even if it had what he wrote about the first time he met Pidge, or the thoughts he worked through after Robbie'd turned into a monster to protect him, or a physical picture of him and Wash from the stupid Space Mall kiosk.

~~Even if it had some things Mabel'd written in it without him noticing, while she was still here.~~

"If it's gone...everyone's on their own."

"Then it's possible the technology we have installed would be able to track that energy. If properly calibrated to know what it is looking for." Locus gives Wash another long, searching look, but thoughts aren't easily gauged through helmets.

"Very well."

With a click and a soft hiss, his hands flip the catches on his helmet, removing it and offering it over to the man with a stern look. "Do not mishandle it," he warns, just the once, but in a tone that implies that if Ray doesn't?

Locus will be very unhappy with him.

Wash had been about to suggest Locus stick to his motion trackers and grab the goggles himself when Locus just hands his helmet over to be adjusted. Wow, have things ever changed.

Wash nods at Ray. "If you think you can rig it quickly, great; otherwise, we'll just go with what we have. We don't have a lot of time."

"Give me 30 seconds." Ray replies, plugging the UNSC comm into the helmet and tapping away.

"I can definitely work with this Just need to tweak the settings here, and here, link the whole thing to the infrared camera's display system...And there ya go," passing the helmet back to Locus.

That was what happened when you stopped associating yourself solely with your armor, Wash. But that was a conversation for another time, if ever.

The process was brief enough to earn a raised eyebrow, but Ray was the scientist among them. With a nod, he drew the helmet back in, sealing it back into place. "You said there would likely be a trail of this energy to follow?"

They'd stood still for long enough.

Well. Damn, that's impressive. It takes about as long to get Wash's helmet taken care of in the same manner and for them to move out. "Where do we start?"

"Unfortunately, the science labs. It's both the last place he was seen and when he stopped bothering to hide his existence, so there shouldbe some strong readings there." Ray explains, a little apprehensively. "It's also the epicenter of the current batch of chaos, so you can understand why I'm not exactly enthusiastic about heading there, even if it is the best option."

"Those things will need to be dealt with eventually. We can allow them to hunt us, or become the hunters."

It's as simple as that, where he is concerned. There will be a fight, and better that Bill have as few of those things on his side as possible. Maybe they can't fight and beat them all, but one fewer is still progress.

"I'm pretty sure it's not the first time any of us have walked into hell." Wash rolls his shoulders and heads out. "We can handle it." There's something to be said about famous last words in there, but he's already inadvertently invoked dorito satan, so as far as he's concerned he's just about hit his narrative causality limit. "Let's go."

The question isn't whether anything will find them as they approach the labs; the question is what will find them first.

An orb of light bends the air in the middle of the hallway. Strange images flash across its surface of some other place, where a crowd of people mills around aimlessly. It looks warehouse-like in nature. The three Legionnaires don't have time to do anything to the orb, it immediately explodes in their presence and they find themselves in a...store?

It's one of those warehouse membership style supermarkets, except the rows are infinite instead of just looking infinite. The shoppers are all rushing around in the typical panic that comes before a snowstorm or other inclement weather, one of those moments where people want to stock up. They're all different species, some of them not even from the UP - the people trapped in this purgatorial realm are from all over the multiverse.

Signs all over declare that this place is called Costco. People crowd around tables of samples as their only form of succor. The food, if sampled, tastes almost but not quite like food, but it at least keeps them alive. They don't seem to think of eating any of their groceries - they haven't paid yet, after all.

The moment the three of them enter this realm they feel a strange and compelling urge to shop. A storm is coming and they have to prepare. With Chronoblivion bringing about the end, shouldn't they stock up on bottled water and canned food? Maybe some toilet paper?

Fortunately, the guide on Brainy's inventions that was sent to them all by Kid Q has an explanation for all this.

EXPERIMENT: 3265.2
CLASSIFICATION: 3265.2a (experimental byproduct)
STATUS: Failed
NICKNAME: The Infinite Costco
REPORT: My multidimensional fractional assay experiment failed spectacularly, creating an unusual fragment of unreality that appears to be a portal to a parasite universe. Upon the experiment's failure and accidental contact with the fragment, I found myself transported to a strange realm that, despite being indoors, seemed infinite in dimensions. It was a warehouse-like store of some kind that sold countless items in bulk. While food and various housewares that weren't altogether unusual could be found there, there were also containers of items that would be strange to buy at all, let alone in bulk, like pallets of boy bands that allowed you to buy five absurdly handsome pop stars for $99.99.

I immediately found myself under a strong compulsion to shop in preparation for some unknown impending catastrophe, with a shopping list that was in my handwriting despite the fact I didn't remember writing it. It took what felt like weeks for me to gather the very specific supplies required by the list, and several days to progress through the vast lines at the registers, kilometers long. I paid with a currency that was unlike any I'd ever seen, that I mysteriously found in my utility belt in place of the credit chips I'd had on hand. (I've since compared it to to the current and historical currencies of Earth and many other UP planets and have yet to find a match.)

After making my purchase, I pushed my cart out the door into a bright light beyond it ... only to find myself coming in through the entrance, with an empty cart, a new shopping list, and the currency replenished!

It was only then that I finally was able to register that something was unusual about my situation, and one of my tracks of consciousness was able to break free of the compulsion to follow the same behavioral pattern again. Attempting to use the entrances and exits as an avenue of egress proved fruitless, as I simply found myself coming back in the entrance each time, and attempts to escape through employee entrances always brought me to the same.

Now desperate to escape, I hypothesized that whoever was responsible for this horrific mayfly dimension might blanch at the idea of someone breaking up the delicate patterns of ordered disorder that were in play. I came to the conclusion that the best possible course of action was to engage in the most disruptive behavior imaginable to break up the fixed pattern I was expected to engage in.

So I asked to complain to the manager.

The cashier I spoke to seemed mystified at my reaction, as if no one had ever asked before, and tried to talk me out of it. Normally, I find the abuse of service employees to be petty and utterly loathsome, but since he refused my request, unfortunately my only recourse was to complain even more vociferously. Fortunately, this tactic proved effective. I heard him mutter under his breath that he was "getting getting paid more than min-wage, it's this or delivering Dominoes." He still refused to let me speak to the manager, claiming his job was on the line, but for my silence and cooperation, he gave me a discount on my purchase and told me to take an exit I had never seen before.

Upon taking this exit, I found myself back in the lab, where a mystified Lyle and several other Legionnaires were performing an investigation into my sudden disappearance. The reality shard that had absorbed me reappeared with me, and we were able to improvise a device to contain it.

Though I was only gone 32 minutes and 21 seconds according to the perspective of those on Legion World, and in depth bioscans indicated that I hadn't aged at all during my captivity, my omnicom's internal clock registered an additional 1 month, 2 weeks, 4 days, 21 hours, 43 minutes, and 12 seconds of extra time.

The fragment has been contained for now but until I can determine a way to deconstruct it, it remains an ongoing threat, an open gateway to a nefarious realm of mundane perdition.

On the upside, I did obtain an excellent deal on a bulk container of dried ramen.

But at what cost???

"Huh. An infinite dimension of bulk goods. Weird, even by my standards," Ray says, looking around. As he does so, his eyes unfocus a bit, as if he's not entirely present, mentally speaking.

"If time passes faster here than it does in the Legion's universe," he explains in a monotone, "there probably wouldn't be any shame in picking up a couple of things while we're here. I did want to grab a few gallons of Ecto Cooler."

With that, Ray starts wandering off further into the store, already entranced by the massive amount of savings.

"What are you doing?"

Locus, for his part, has just about had it with alternate, illusion dimensions and all the nonsense contained within them. He refuses to even give a second look -- although if he did, he might recall a certain hunger in his belly, a yearning to stock up, to have enough, the way that his family had had to scrape together during the Great War.

Now is not the time to be lost in memory, and he glances towards Washington with a jerk of his head. Well? How does he propose they handle this?

Rico stalks the corridors separately, at a fast clip but not rushed, a man on a mission. He's got to show these amateurs how it's done. He's got his infrared vision on his visor up, and scanning for any discrepancies in his surroundings. Unless this Invisible Kid is capable of masking his heat signature at the same time, Rico's got him.

Of course, it's a large base. And his search has led him here, where it looks like there's something else following the same trail as him. And while he's not distracted as such, there does seem to be somebody's escaped pet on the loose.

Scratch that. It's that thing. The one on the network a while ago. A pretty sick joke that it appears to be cognizant, if you ask him. He strides up to it, feeling just the slightest bit foolish as he does so.

"You. You looking for Cipher in his meatsuit?"

Robbie just listens, really, while Dipper talks his way through the details. He saw Dipper's episode of Legion Legacy, although he missed half of the video because he was too busy angrily pacing the room and scaring Niels every time he threw something. He'd heard all of it, and that was enough.

But that look when Dipper talks about being in the hospital and writing all over the walls, it breaks Robbie's heart because he's too young to have to cope with that. Too young to have something like that to be ashamed of. Robbie fusses at the emergency blanket, hoping to try to do something more for the cold.

"I had a diary," Robbie says gently. "It was more like a notebook. I used it to help me remember all the things I needed to fight somebody, too. Numbers and names and codes, and I just wrote them over and over so I wouldn't forget a single one when the time came. I had walls, too. I covered them with newspaper clippings and printouts and yarn. You know, with the pushpins?"

Doesn't everyone have a crazy wall?

He sat down on the bench beside Dipper. "Maybe you don't need it anymore either. You've got us, and you never had an entire team of crazy heroes before. More importantly, we've got you, and happy heroes hit harder. We'll check the security cameras in and around the medbay for a glimpse of the walls, and the Legion Legacy if we have to. If that fails - if you're up for it - maybe we get a telepath to bring it forward again. We can hold the fort until then."

Carefully, Robbie eases Dipper up into a seated position next to him, but he doesn't expect him to stay upright on his own. After a good, solid hug (complete with back pat), Robbie keeps an arm around him to make sure he doesn't slump over. The hug was to feel better, the half-hug is because Dipper is still freezing, and Robbie's a good temperature to leech warmth from. "You're not alone here, Dipper. The only one who's alone is Bill Cipher."

"Trail's hot! The little Dorito shaped lunatic is this way!" Ray calls back to Locus and Wash, while charging down the halls. He's got the scent, and he's never been very good at subtlety, especially when an entity has harmed a friend of his.

The Slime Blower is in his hands and loaded for bear, and Ray barely pays Rico and Bunny the slightest bit of attention as he hoofs it past them.

Subtlety is pretty much out the window with Ray at the lead (and honestly, nothing about any Ghostbusters has ever been subtle) - might as well double down. He's half a step behind Ray and keeping pace as they pass Bunny and the Mighty Chin. "You two, fall in!" If they're going to be facing down a Herald, they're going to need all the help they can get.

The urge to stock up hits Wash just as hard as it did his companions, only to run smack into a lifetime of being raised poor. They shouldn't be here - they can't even get a membership to one of these places - they can't afford this-

And that's enough to dislodge the allure of shopping, though Wash needs a moment to breathe and center himself. Right. Costco hell. Time to get out of here.

He reaches out for the back of Ray's collar and yanks. "Nope. We have a job to do." If that's not enough to snap Ray out of it, he'll whack him one - hard enough to surprise but not enough to hurt - for good measure.

This is not the time to comment on Rico's reference to another human being as a 'meatsuit,' but in the split second that Bunny takes to try and asses whether Rico could be useful against a demon after all, Ray and Wash catch up and pass them. Rather than waste valuable time that could be spent confronting Bill, he bolts away from Rico and catches up easily to Ray and Wash.

"Oi, you with the trail," he addresses Ray, loping beside him. "What're you following?"

If it's a scent he wants a sample. If it's a machine he wants to know how reliable it is.

Edited 2017-09-21 01:26 (UTC)

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"The Reject Pile" [modpost/log]

REJECTS

CIPHER HUNT

For Dipper

Ray, Wash, and Locus

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CW: Suicide Ideation

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"The Infinite Costco"

Re: "The Infinite Costco"

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