ya_assemble | [LN] Candy Mountain [locked to Molly]

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[LN] Candy Mountain [locked to Molly]

"So let me get this straight, you're gonna spread around on the internet that we're real to get kids to believe in us?"

Right now, Raph and Molly were seated on the floor of Jamie Bennett's room. In a rare show of trust, Nico had actually let Raph take Molly by himself, as her magic was needed on a mission. The caveat had been, of course, that they had to go to Jamie's house - which was warded all to hell and back - and come right back to the Pole after, but Raph still understood the signifance of it - and the unspoken threat of retribution that would happen if he didn't bring Molly back safe and sound.

Jack had arranged for them to talk to Jamie - insisted on it, in fact - since Jamie was the primary believer of all the new otherdimensional myths being pulled in. More than that, Jamie was the one trying to spread belief of them around so that they had more believers than him.

At the moment, he was trying to explain the nature of belief and what he could do for them - and what he couldn't do.

"How many kids that believe in stuff even use the internet?"

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Molly didn't know quite how big a show of trust it was, but she knew that if Nico was letting her go off alone with Raph that Nico must think she can trust him. Which meant that he was pretty much either going to be an evil vampire or awesome.

All in all, she bet he wasn't an evil vampire, just based on the fact that Jack and Bunny liked him okay.

"Probably a lot. I could google when I was seven! I wasn't allowed to, most of the time, but I could!" Molly seemed extremely proud of this fact.

Jamie nodded, pointing at Molly.

"Kids sneak on the internet all the time. There are even websites where kids talk about their stories with seeing Santa and the Easter Bunny. Also places like Club Penguin where a lot of the daily patter can act like a kids' grapevine."

He pointed to Raph.

"After you and your brother's little thing in Times Square, you already have a head start. I just have to turn things around from 'oh no, they got taken away by the Men in Black and are probably all ET in the ice cream cooler' to them thinking you got free. Fake reports of sightings. Stuff like that."

He pulled out a camera.

"I'm going to need pictures of you both to start with. Fuzzy ones at a distance, but I'm going to put up 'sightings' of you. You'll have to try to be your most visible and I'll have to try making them the worst shots ever. Grown ups need to still be able to deny you're real so they don't freak out."

Edited 2015-01-21 05:29 (UTC)

"Of course they do," Raph said bitterly.

People like him needed to not exist. Otherwise people might get uncomfortable.

"As long as they're really fuzzy," said Raph. "Last thing I need is even more people like those government goons on my case anytime I'm out -"

It was right then that Jamie froze, the camera still in his hand. In fact, the entire world froze. Even motes of dust in the air, lit up by the moonlight coming in through the window were completely still.

"Oh, this is so not good. What now?"

The only things that hadn't frozen were Raph and Molly.

Edited 2015-01-21 05:54 (UTC)

"I don't even know how to make myself visible," Molly groaned, and had a whole adorably sad pout ready to turn on Raph and Jamie for as much help as possible when-- everything froze.

Except her, and Raph. And that was... weird.

"I dunno," she said, and sounded a little scared, to be honest. This was not something she'd planned ahead for. She got up and poked Jamie gently. "M-maybe it's another myth around?"

"I thought Jamie's house was supposed to be warded all to heck and back. Nothing should be able to do this."

That was when reality started to crack. Literally. The world around them had the color fade from it and started to crack around the edges.

"Ah, sewer cakes."

Raph quickly drew his sais but his sais weren't going to do squat when the world disappeared from around them, making it so they started falling into a great white void. Naturally, as one did when the randomly started falling into a great nothingness, Raph screamed.

"Oh no..." Molly's eyes flicked from one crack to another, and she didn't even think twice about booting up her powers - she wasn't sure if she was going to be able to punch anything, but better safe than sorry.

And then the world disappeared, and she shrieked, terrified. Nico wasn't here, Bunny wasn't here, Kon wasn't here--

But Raph was. And Nico trusted Raph. So she immediately reached out, trying to reach him even as she fell. "RAPH!"

Raph put his sais away - because what was there to even fight? - and managed to reach out and snag her arm, pulling her in closer, protectively, as they continued to free fall.

Oddly, instead of falling faster as they went they started to slow down, and around them, the great void started to change, turning into a backdrop of infinite stars. Around them, the great cauldrons of existence, nebulas, churned out new stars and old stars died and went supernova. And endless cycle, meant to play out over billions of years went on around them in a few blinks of an eye.

"And now we're in an astronomy special. Okay."

They slowed more and more, eventually...stopping, as they landed on absolutely nothing. But that nothing was nice and solid under their feet.

"Stay close, kiddo," Raph said, keeping a solid hand on her shoulder, pulling a face as he looked at the nothing under their feet and the infinite cosmos beyond it. "We have no idea what we're dealing with here but I'd bet my shell that whatever it is, it's not good."

"Woah..."

Molly couldn't quite stay as scared, honestly, because it all looked so cool. This was the kind of view Karolina could've had forever out in space (said Molly's admittedly loose grasp of what had been going on with Karolina and Xavin out in space), and Molly was kind of jealous, honestly.

She wasn't completely unafraid, though, nor was she stupid enough to wander away from the ninja who was technically in charge of her safety, so she stuck close to him without argument.

"Where d'you think we are?"

"In the in between. You're lucky that we caught you. You almost fell between the cracks."

The voice came from behind them. It was a kind voice and when they turned around to face her, the woman who it belonged to looked just as kind as she sounded. She was dressed in a goth outfit that Nico probably would have loved and her skin was white as pale as bone. But her smile was warm and her eyes had a strange spark of life to them for someone as pale as death.

"We needed to have a talk with you." She tilted her head to the side and gave them a crooked smile. "It's so good to see you, Raphael. In almost every universe, you're one of mine and this version of you isn't going to be any different."

She tucked her hair out of her face, revealing an eye of Horus outlining her eye. At her neck, a silver ankh necklace reflected the light of the stars being born and dying around them.

Raph got between Molly and the woman, protectively, drawing out his sais.

"Listen, lady, I have no idea who you are but what I do know is I'm not yours. I don't belong to anybody. And whoever you are, you have no right to keep me and Molly here. Either put us back right now or explain what's going on in the next thirty seconds or so help me I'll -"

The woman was not alone. Behind her, more strange beings appeared, a pale, white-haired man in white robes, a woman with rainbow hair, a man (woman? man?) who was suddenly the most beautiful person Raph had ever seen... and more.

So many more. A massive being taller than a skyscraper with three rotating heads. An eternal being made of space itself. A strange being in a purple cloak who smelled of ozone and, somehow, time. Gods and devils, lords of chaos and order, cosmic beings, masses of sentient energy.

Not that Raph or Molly knew it but they had names like The Living Tribunal, the Time Trapper, Infinity, Eternity, the Man of Miracles...

If they had names at all.

They all suddenly appeared around himself and Molly, inscrutable gazes all fixed on the two of them.

"- or so help me I'll get squished by some kind of cosmic death gods or whatever you guys are," said Raph flatly, lowering his sais with a pitiful droop of his shoulders. "Oh boy."

Edited 2015-01-21 07:08 (UTC)

Molly peeked out from behind Raph as the other figures appeared, her eyes still shining pink. and... well, if she looked at the large disturbing ones, that would be no good, that would just remind her of the Gibborim, but the ones closest were mostly human-sized and human-ish looking.

And she focused on the first woman to appear, solemnly.

"You're not gonna hurt us," she said confidently, and came out from behind Raph to walk towards them. "Right? 'Cause you would've already. And anyway, you caught us instead of letting us fall, so that must mean you don't want us to get hurt or disappear or whatever."

She stopped right in front of the woman with the black hair and the ankh necklace. "You remind me of Nico. Are you good guys? How come we're in space but not exploding from vacuums?"

Edited 2015-01-21 07:17 (UTC)

"Got it in one, kiddo," the woman said, mussing the hat on Molly's head. "We're just here to talk. I was volunteered since not everyone else here has the most experience dealing with mortals. Their people skills are just a little bit lacking. They decided I'm the most cordial of the bunch."

She gestured to all the beings around them.

"Everyone here, every single entity here is powerful beyond all imagining. We're all from a variety of universes and multiverses. We're all aspects of the multiverse given form, or its shepherds, or even its creators."

She turned back to Molly and Raph. "Chaos and order, infinity and Oblivion, life -" She gestured to herself. "And Death. We're all very different but we have one thing in common and it's that we want existence to continue existing."

She added, "Even I do. When it all ends there's supposed to be something there so I can tidy up, lock up the door, throw away the key, and leave it behind me."

She gestured to the two of them with a gentle sweep of her hand.

"That's where you and your friends all come in."

Raph just stood there for a moment after she'd finished talking, staring, breathing in deeply and letting it out, as if he was trying to process everything.

He was talking to Death right now, if what she was saying was true. Death. And they were surrounded by cosmic beings. Gods. Possibly a few variations on Satan, judging from the look of them. Some creepy looking tentacle beings that Raph figured it'd be bad to look at for any serious amount of time.

What she said was creepy, talking about locking up the universe behind her. Was that how bad all this was? If Kuk won, would even Death be gone?

Hadn't some horror author written about something like that?

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.

So, they were talking to Death (who had been WAY too chummy with him) and a bunch of weird cosmic entities. This was serious stuff. Super serious.

"Yeah, whatever. What do you want? If it's to tell us to save the world from Kuk, because it's important, blah blah fate of the universe, we're already doing that."

"But if you're all so powerful and everything, can't you fix it?" Molly looked from Death to a few of the others nearest her. "Can you come back with us and help us save everything?"

It made sense to her, that they'd be able to. Why were they here talking about this if they're so important and powerful? Why weren't they already charging in to fix everything so the world wouldn't be destroyed?

She drooped a bit. "There's rules, aren't there? Magic rules and stuff."

"Not just any rules. Not the stupid rules where it's 'just because.' It's a matter of matter. We're all forces in the universe but so is Kuk. Kuk is the void. Kuk is emptiness. We may be powerful but we're also too intangible. We're concepts and aspects and ideas and pieces of nature. The more we touch, the more he'll absorb us, the more powerful he'll get and the looser reality will become. We'd destroy more than we could save. It's already so fluid in the world you just fell away from that our influences would make it fall to pieces."

She smiled at them both.

"But you. You're people. Human and otherwise. You're solid and real. And even though you think you're small, you have whole universes inside you without you even noticing."

She gestured with both hands at the infinite cosmos.

"When you shape the world it becomes more solid and real. After all, it's your ideas that shape so many of us. It's your actions so many of us have to watch over. You're the only ones that can fix this because when you touch any of it, you'll make it more solid and fixed than we ever could."

"Thank you for the very convenient explanation," said Raph. "So now what? What do you want from us? We already knew what was at stake. We already knew the odds. So why are we here, and where is here, and what just happened in Jamie's bedroom?"

He wanted to get this business over with.

"Yeah!" Molly agreed emphatically. "Is Jamie okay? The world didn't fall apart, did it? 'Cause Nico and Mikey and everybody were still there!"

"The world is still there," said Death, "but a shard of its reality splintered and fell off. The universe of the Guardians is so unstable right now a piece of the universe broke off and fell away. Because of your myth-hood, because the story is threaded around you, you were immune, but since you were at ground zero, you both fell through the cracks. We caught you just in time."

Or else they might have been lost in the in between spaces forever.

"If that piece of reality isn't returned to where it belongs soon, then that whole area of the world will disappear and so will everyone in it - and more will follow. Right now, it's several blocks of Burgess. If it keeps breaking, it'll be the whole town, then the whole state, then the whole northeast..."

Now her gaze was much more serious.

"Everyone in the areas that are swallowed up won't even die. They just won't be. That piece has to be returned and luckily any pieces that fall off won't disappear forever, they'll all fall into other universes nearby. Other versions of this world - other worlds entirely."

She went on, "If any of us try to return the piece, our meddling will just make reality splinter even more. But you can fix it. We can give you the power to trace any shards of the Guardians' universe to the other universes they fall into and the ability to return them - and yourselves - back to the Guardians' universe. I'd ask if you're willing to accept the responsibility but the truth is - you're the only ones that can do it."

Edited 2015-01-22 01:23 (UTC)

Raph threw his head back let out a loud "UUGH" noise.

"Are you telling me that alongside stopping Kuk and saving all of existence, we have to run around finding lost chunks of reality in alternate universes or the Guardians' universe will fall apart? As if we don't have enough on our plates."

"Of course we'll do it!" Molly said earnestly, totally stepping on the tail end of Raph's griping. "We're superheroes, right? We're supposed to help people, even if it's really hard. We'll do our very very best, I promise!"

Sometimes the cuteness and the earnestness was a bit put on, maybe. After all, by now, she was definitely 13. She had to be at least a little bit of a teenager under there. But sometimes... sometimes it was 100% honest true sweetness.

And even if her heroes failed her and turned out to be awful people, that didn't mean superheroes were a bad concept.

She was going to make superheroes worth trusting again, just you watch.

Death smiled at her, almost as if something she loved to see was liveliness.

Because it was.

You couldn't take something away without understanding the value of it and that was why she spent one day every century, living and dying as a mortal.

"I know this isn't easy," she said, mostly to Raphael. "I know it's a weight, when most of you are already carrying one. Worlds to save, invasions and supervillains to fight. But you're not alone. We are trying our best to preserve the edges of the universes in what ways we can and we can give you tools to fight the things we can't so that you have better chances."

"What tools?" asked Raphael. "And if you are giving us tools, you'd better not be giving them to just me and Molly. This sounds like an all-hands-on-deck kinda thing."

Especially since some of this might be dangerous. There was no way they were going to force Molly - or let her, given how willing she was - to go into dangerous situations all the time to fix reality falling apart.

Molly nodded agreement with Raph's all-hands-on-deck comment. "Yeah! There's loads of people back at the Pole that'll help! And anyway, Nico'll get really mad if I have to do universe-savey stuff that she can't help with."

Well, it's true.

"Check your hands."

Death snapped her fingers and all of a sudden a glowing mark appeared on both Raph and Molly's hands. They didn't hurt at all. At most, they felt just a little bit warm.

"Those brands on your hands are very special. Whenever one of the shards falls into a nearby universe, you'll be able to use them to open a door and track it down. They'll also let you open the door back to the Guardians' dimension. All of the Guardians and new Guardians have been given them too - you'll need to be the ones to explain what they are and how to use them. Anytime a new myth joins you, they'll receive one, too. They'll be invisible whenever you will them to be. And you can make them look like whatever you want."

Edited 2015-01-22 06:04 (UTC)

Raph looked at his hand, the sigil transforming to look like the symbol of Master Splinter's clan.

He practiced willing it to appear and disappear.

"Thank you for letting us personalize the thing we have to use to throw ourselves into even more danger, we appreciate it."

He gave Death a stony stare.

"So, what now? Reality broke, how do we fix it?"

Edited 2015-01-22 06:09 (UTC)

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