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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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)

Molly stuck her tongue out a little, and made it look like a unicorn, then a rainbow. But, despite... well, a lot of issues with the X-Men, she finally settled on the X-Men's logo, for now, at least.

What? Wolverine might be a jerk, but they were still her heroes in a way.

"How do we open up doors with them?"

"You have to think up a happy thought and click your heels together."

When she saw Raph's flat look, she laughed.

"I'm joking. Just give it a good think and a door will open where you need to go. The shard can look like anything but the brands will help guide you in the right direction. Once you find it, you just have to make it back to the door and it'll snap back into place. The good news is no time will pass while you're gone. The bad news is time will still pass where you are. The brand will give you hunches on how much time you have left. If you don't return the shards in time..."

"Then everything goes some variation of 'boom.'"

Raph held out his hand and an intricate door suddenly appeared and opened. Light spilled in from beyond it.

He fixed a look at Death and then looked around at the many strange entities staring down at them.

"No pressure or anything."

"We can do it, just you watch!" Molly said, then grabbed Raph's hand, tugging him to (and through) the door. "We'll save the world Miss Death, we're superheroes!" She called over her shoulder.

And then they were through the door and gone, into whatever world awaited them.

"I don't doubt it," Death said with one last smile and then the door clicked shut.

It was still there, though, so they had a way out to return to.

Raph was very glad they had a door out. So glad. Immeasurably glad.

Because the world they'd just walked into was made of candy. It was a multi-colored riot of confectionary delights, from the lollipop trees to the hard candy blades of grass to the peppermint cobblestones.

The marzipan birds on the lollipop trees were singing. Not bird song, actual singing.

"Tra la la lally! We love our sweet valley!"

Raph stood there, an eye twitching.

"I'm going back to the empty nothingness between universes," he said, pointing at the door. "You've got superstrength, you got this."

He made no move to actually do it, though. All jokes aside, he wasn't leaving Molly alone.

Molly laughed gleefully, hands clasped under her chin as the magenta glow left her eyes. The singing marzipan birds, and little gumdrop-like butterflies fluttering over flowers made of spun sugar, and the smell of sugar in the air.

It was sugar. Rush. HEAVEN.

"This is so super cool!" She squealed and bounced a little, then tugged on Raph's hand, more gently without her powers active. "Come on, doofus, we've gotta find the universe piece!"

Raph rolled his eyes skyward and then clamped a hand over his face, shaking his head.

"Fine. But I refuse to be delighted by anything."

He still held her hand though, not really wanting to let her get too far. For all they knew, they were going to get attacked by giant licorice wasps any second now.

His experience with alternate worlds that had cute things in them had told him that cute sometimes could be deceptive. Very deceptive.

As deceptive of sugar-sweet smiles and bunny rabbit hats, sometimes.

"It's okay, you don't have to like it. Chase wouldn't, either. Do you think they're really alive, or if it's just magic?"

She peered into flowerbeds and down at a stream full of cola (that they crossed via a bridge of shortbread) and at basically everything surrounding them as they followed the draw of their new brands down the path, fascinated by the fact that literally everything seemed to be actually made of candy and sweets of some sort.

And she didn't even try to let go of Raph's hand.

Of course, it didn't take long before she got a little bored and started thinking something other than the candy she was entirely sure Raph wouldn't let her eat.

"Are you in love with Nico?"

If Raph had been drinking something (like said cola in the cola stream) he'd have sputtered it out all over himself.

"What? No!" he declared, waaaay too defensive about it. Technically, the 'no' was true. 'In love,' was such strong, strong wording. "We're just, you know, friends. Really good friends."

Friends that hung out every day, lounged around half-cuddling, and stole away different places to talk about their feelings well into the night.

He was just her friend...who sometimes stared at her when she wasn't looking like his heart was full to bursting.

"Come on, you're her friend, right? You and her and your friends are like a little family. She's easy to be friends with."

Molly rolled her eyes dramatically.

"Older kids are weird," she declared. "I don't get it. Also she's kind of mean sometimes if she doesn't know you." So no, Raph, she wasn't just easy to be friends with.

"Anyway, she likes you and you like her, and I guess that's cool. Just, the last time she got smoochy with somebody, she ended up crying a lot."

She slipped her hand out of Raph's, but didn't go running off or anything, just laced her fingers behind her back. She was very very innocent, she just didn't like Nico crying, right? She was just saying she was worried Nico might cry again, right?

"Ooo! Did you know?" she started, turning to walk backwards, facing Raph. "That one time we were fighting some bad guys, and one of them hurt Nico? And I punched him so hard he landed a block away!"

She beamed at him a bit.

It was totally unrelated, honest!

"She is totally easy to be friends with - it's just you have to not be a terrible person."

As for her liking him? Eh. As a friend, sure, but there was no way she dug him in any other way than that. No way. But before he could ask Molly anything about it, she mentioned Nico crying and dropped that little line about hurting Nico.

Raph narrowed his eyes.

"You just threatened me."

Had Molly just gone along acting all cutesy forever he might not have gotten suspicious at all of her general cheer and adorableness. But he was a naturally suspicious person, raised to be cunning and tactical, and while Leo was better at it on the whole, Raph was the one that was the least naive and the best at figuring out deception.

He'd been suspicious of Karai all that time, hadn't he? And even when she had Leo convinced, he knew she was planning on betraying them - and he'd been right.

Now, he'd been hesitant to let that suspicion go when it was finally time to, but he'd given it up in the end, and been willing to help save her from Shredder and willing to search for her after he'd been mutated. But his intial instincts at the time she was most deceptive had been right on the money.

So, it was with the kind of suspicion that one needed when fighting the masters of deception that ninjas were that suddenly fixed itself on Molly.

"How old are you again?"

He hadn't really ever been around little kids but he'd been one himself and his brain was feverishly working its way backward, trying to remember what he and his brothers had been like at various ages.

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