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

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

[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.]

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Can't we just use those T-gates to move Galactus somewhere uninhabited if we're going to be going this route? Can we make them that big?

[It probably beats the giant robot suggestion.]

That would perhaps be possible. There are threshold gate projectors that can create gates that can move entire fleets. They're typically used during emergency situations or battlefield conditions.

Hey that's a good idea, too. There's gotta be some portion of the universe that's really remote and not full of life and civilization.

Maybe we can just dump him there and hope he never comes back here.

Like, ever.

No way would he stay put, but at least we'd have time to figure something else out.

How much time, though? I don't get the impression that this guy is governed by the same laws of physics as the rest of us.

I dunno how fast he moves. Most of what I heard about him back home was "be glad you're not fighting him."

[ She snorts, something like a bitter laugh and most unbecoming. ] That's almost impressively unhelpful. You'd think they'd try to prepare you with all the stuff they'd learned about him when they fought him.

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headinjuries - 2016-05-16 22:35 (UTC) - Expand

If we can find an area of space with several worlds of nonsentient life, he'll stay there. Not permanently but he tends to make a beeline for the next nearest world with abundant life instead of being picky. Stardust complicates that by purposefully looking for worlds with sentient life but if there aren't any immeditely around him, he will take the time to eat ones without sentients first before moving towards systems with occupied worlds.

I checked the starmaps [He attachs a copy so everyone can see.] And it looks like Braal's the next system over from where the planet we showed up on is.

That fits his MO.

What if we take out Stardust?

[If she complicates it, then what if they tried to un-complicate it...]

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iamresponding - 2016-05-16 18:38 (UTC) - Expand

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deafleppard - 2016-05-19 01:27 (UTC) - Expand

[ That's a well thought out idea, it really is, but Videl doesn't quite appreciate it enough. ]

That's all well and good for the short term, but what about next time? [ She ponders it a little more. ] Would doing that give us enough time to implement something permanent?

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iamresponding - 2016-05-16 18:39 (UTC) - Expand

I wouldn't say "lunatic" so much as I'd say...really, really disproportionate sense of retribution and black-or-white morality.

Which by some definitions I guess would still qualify for "lunatic."

That still counts.

On the bright side, hey, he doesn't eat planets?

The man's got a point.

Another factor to consider is that we're more likely to find a way to re-contain the Spectre with magic or artifacts native to our universe. Galactus is a threat from outside it.

Something in this universe managed to contain him in the first place, so there's got to be a way to slam the lid back on the jar later.

[Yes, good. This all sounds like it could maybe, someday, actually turn into a real plan.]

I'm guessing that our chances of taking out Spectre by ourselves are about as good as with big, loud, and hungry over there?

By ourselves, yeah, not likely. But even if it takes some work on our part, at least we know the Spectre can be contained. There are things even it's afraid of.

Well, I'm kind of sold on the idea. Using the lunatic strong enough to take down Galactus sounds like a solid plan to me.

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