WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD - Mod Plot [Network Post | 1]

[letsgolegion]

[They get a transmission from the outpost orbiting the planet where new displacees appear, the battered remains of the planet Phelolu. It's a priority distress call, so the message is received by every Legionnaire and all major posts on Legion World.]

[The commanding officer of the response team is a Carggite, Dr. Trez. All three of her grey-haired selves look shaken. Behind her, the main viewscreen of the outpost is cracked and consoles are sparking. The outpost has clearly come under heavy attack.]

Mayday mayday, this is Legion Outpost Phelolu, we are under attack by a 10X10 threat! I repeat, it is a 10X10 threat. Do not send a response team. I repeat: do not send a response team! We'll leave monitoring equipment on for surveillance but all personnel is evacuating the outpost.

Over!

[And that is the only message they get. She quickly reforms into one self, and leaves the console, helping a crew member that's fallen. The entire command deck shakes once. Then again. Fortunately, all members of the team escape the command deck and the hatch to the threshold room closes.]

[By the time the hull rips open, it's plenty of time for them to have escaped through a threshold gate. It's hard to see what causes the breach. There is only a flash of silver and all of a sudden a chunk of it is gone. More of it gets ripped away, and there's a brief flash of something blue and sparkling. With another flash of silver, the whole deck explodes and the camera view is lost. The monitoring system shifts to an external camera as a default so that they can see the field of wreckage outside. There is only a small, barely functioning hunk of the outpost left. The rest is a debris field that's obscuring the view of the planet. Ice dust from the vaporization systems creates a huge cloud that the barely functioning lights reflect off in the void.]

[That's when they see it looming out through the debris field. It's an incomprehensible being, a force of nature, and each sentient's mind must try to make what sense of it that it can by assigning it some kind of image. To many humanoids, what they see is the face of an impossibly huge man.]







[Despite the fact that it should be impossible for any sound to vibrate through the void, they can hear him speak, his voice thundering impossibly loud. Everyone who hears it hears it in their native language, two simple words that spell out the doom of civilizations:]

"GALACTUS HUNGERS!"
[Silver and sparkling blue streak by again and they see now what the cause of the streaks are. One is a man that looks like he's made of liquid silver, riding a silver surfboard. The other is a ethereal and graceful-looking alien with a staff, who looks like she's made out of stardust. As they attack the last of the outpost with a wave of cosmic power, the feed cuts out.]

Comments

[ringslinging]

Okay, so we don't have the level of power to trip up something like that, I guess it's been established.

But that doesn't mean nothing in this universe does.

[leverageintceo]

Do they all have skin?

[Parker's eyes are narrowed, like she's concentrating on solving a puzzle.]

And is there a way to get me in close enough to touch it?

[ringslinging]

The one I'm thinking of...depends what he's been up to in the last thousand years, probably.

[iamresponding]

Surfer's...silver. Like his skin feels like metal when you punch it. I don't know if it's technically skin or not.

Stardust is an Ethereal. She's made of energy. I mean even calling her a "she" is on the iffy side. I'm pretty sure she's not even made of solid matter.

[wherenoonegoes]

This probably sounds crazy, but...is it actually metal?

[iamresponding]

I think so.

But with him being armed with the power cosmic, the chances of being able to stop him are slim to none. He's infinitely strong and last I heard he was pure energy inside the shell so it's not like a physical body under there.

You could manage manage to throw him once or twice with your powers if we caught them by surprise but I'm not sure how much else.

[wherenoonegoes]

Once or twice is better than not being able to do it at all.

[iamresponding]

[Rich's mouth twitches up into a small smile at Hiccup's daring.]

True enough. It's at least worth a shot.

[leverageintceo]

Hmm.

Does Galactus have skin?

Ferro, I need to borrow you for a second, where are you?

And do we know anyone else made of energy?

[iamresponding]

Does Galactus have skin?

God, this was so not what I thought I was gonna be doing today.

Yes? No? Maybe?

Probably not.

I mean, a lot of people see him as a giant man, but apparently Nick and Judy see him as a giant space shark. And I have no idea what that hell that means.

[googledox]

What do you mean a lot of people see him as a giant man? That's not what the entity looks like to me.

It's a - a monstrous techno-organic mass. A construct made of impossible geometry. Too many angles. That many angles can't exist.

[iamresponding]

...Okay, so you're seeing high octane, unfiltered Lovecraft.

See how hard this is? He's not really a man, that's just what some of our brains want him to be because that's all we can handle.

I guess Brainy's can handle something more complex so he's seeing some weird...dimensional thingy.

[legionnpcs]

Um, what is it you need, Ms. Parker?

[leverageintceo]

I need your skin. And it's just 'Parker'.

[A pause, as it occurs to Parker that she might also need to add additional information to her request. Progress!]

Your skin can still be attached to the rest of you.

[legionnpcs]

Okay. As long as that last part is definitely true.

I'll come find you.

[googledox]

Unfortunately, the only Legionnaire made of energy was Wildfire, and he's one of the missing Legionnaires.

And there aren't many sentient species in the UP for whom that's a natural state.

[leverageintceo]

Well, that makes things more difficult.

[googledox]

Unfortunately, the Legion doesn't have a positive relationship with any cosmic-level powers, seeing as we have to stop them from destroying all of existence so often.

The Time Trapper is only force we could potentially appeal to, given its nature of aiding us almost as often as menacing us, but if it wanted to be in contact with us over this disaster, it would've already showed its hand.

Truth be told, the last benevolent force the Legion encountered that had the capacity to destroy an apocalyptic threat was you, Jordan. During the Final Night. But you're no longer at that power level.

Did you have a particular one in mind?

[ringslinging]

Do we know what the Spectre's up to these days?

[googledox]

The Spectre? One moment please --

[He leaves the console screen he's at and stars rummaging around in his lab, pulling out a metal case, putting in a combination and pressing his finger against a biometric scanner, and looking through a pile of things in it that look decidedly not technological.]

[He picks up an ancient-looking tome and brings it back over to the console screen, flipping through it.]

I...may have caved and started exploring potentially magical options to find the Lost Legionnaires.

[His face flushes bright green. Ugh, so embarrassing. He stops on a page.]

The Spectre's location is currently unknown and has been for at least five hundred years, possibly more. There are no extent records of any appearance post-Cataclysm.

[Brainy shakes his head.]

However, there are some...leads. With the help of some of our allies on Sorceror's World, tracking the entity down is a possibility. A very slim possibility but a possibility nevertheless.

I have to question whether or not it'd be moral to do so. I'll admit that the records are sparse but what little I've read about the Spectre indicates it's almost as terrible a threat as Galactus. The whole "Spirit of God's vengeance" nonsense is obviously false, but it was still a being of immense power that, according to all verifiable records, was a lunatic that killed people it deemed murderers without due process.

[ringslinging]

I know what it's capable of, trust me. We have...history.

[ What a great track record with being the host for absurdly powerful forces you have, Hal. ]

But the other possibilities that come to mind aren't much better.

[relativityspeaking]

It's an option but if it means unleashing another uncontrollable cosmic entity on the universe, let's make sure it's our only one first.

[ringslinging]

Obviously. I'm not saying it's a good one. We had to let another cosmic entity out of the can to get the Spectre back to normal during the Blackest Night.

[ And normal for the Spectre still isn't great - it's just better than "Spectre is also a Black Lantern now." ]

But I can safely say that if it gets out, it will go straight for Galactus and it won't be satisfied with anything but getting it the hell out of here.

[deafleppard]

I kind of like the idea of using him to stop this Galactus.

Not a fan of the whole "lunatic" part, but... We at least have something?

[googledox]

It does have a high probability of working -- if he can be found.

He does have the power levels and it's unlikely that a being that's murdered whole worlds would escape his attention.

But there are so many variables in play...for all we know, we might only make the situation worse by introducing two destructive cosmic forces together. If they fight on Braal, the force of the conflict might destroy the planet anyway.

We have to consider this very carefully.