The Legion [Mods] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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legionmissions2017-01-03 12:57 am
letsgolegion) wrote in legionmissions2017-01-03 12:57 am
Entry tags:
SILENT HORIZON - [Part 1: The In-Between] [modplot]
Who| Everyone who signed up
What| 2 spoopy
Where| In The In-Between, the pocket dimension inside the Silent Horizon
When| After Valor's Day. Mission starts shortly before "No Sanity Clause" and runs simultaneously in game time
Warnings/Notes| Potential warnings for EVERYTHING. This is a horror plot that may tread a lot of ground. Please keep in mind that you can stumble on disturbing stuff in almost any thread. We advise all players to put warnings in the subjects of threads when they lean towards cut-worthy stuff.
The mission was simple. The team had to board the derelict Silent Horizon, a ship with an experimental stardrive, after it finally reappeared in UP space, many hours after it was supposed to reappear, during its first field test. No life signs were aboard, but the presence of several Roboticans on the crew -- who were undetectable by bioscan -- meant that the ship had to be boarded to make sure the Robotican crewmen were gone, too.
The United Planets government, concerned about the loss of the crew members, asked the Legion to step in, in case the threat on board was of a metapowered nature. Due to the massive danger implied by an entire starship crew going missing, the response team sent on the mission was relatively large, more than enough to handle any hostiles. None of this "we'll just send one tiny team to go alone into a giant starship against an unknown threat" business. No, if there was a hostile force on the ship, the plan was "let's drop 25+ Legionnaires on its head." Safety in numbers.
It was a good idea. In theory. In most cases, it would've given them the edge that would've let them face something very nasty without succumbing to it themselves. But in practice, it just meant that it was a much larger team that suddenly went missing after watching the last video log of the previous crew on the command deck.
Screams poured out of the screen the moment it started to play -- automatically -- when they entered the command deck. Onscreen, they saw the original crew murdering each other, tearing each other apart in a blood-soaked rampage.
"Wait, stop! What's wrong with everyone? Why are you --?" cried out one of the Robotican crew members, clearly immune from whatever was causing the madness, but his cries went unheeded as one of his Coluan crew-mates bashed his head clean off with a chair.
After the video played, the darkness swept in, wrapping around the whole team of Legionnaires, making them feel frozen all the way down to their bones and stealing consciousness away from them. When they woke again, they all found themselves separated, waking up in a realm of nightmares.
The halls breathe here -- at least in the places that have walls. They flex in and out, like the passageways inside the lungs. Sometimes the walls give way to open nightmare-scapes, remote and foggy, or bright and alien and exposed. The landscape bends and shifts around them, reacting to their thoughts and fears. And every so often, far off, there is the pitter-pat of something strange moving through this place. Like the sound of many feet -- or hands -- slapping against the ground or flesh-walls.
At some point, there is always a voice that each of them hears, tinny and robotic and distant, warning them of a being called the Faceless, that rules this realm. They're told not to feed from his blood, that if they do they'll be made a part of this place. If they accept his offer, and change forms, they'll eventually bleed to death, and if the Faceless isn't stopped before they die, those that die in their mutated forms will belong to him forever.
It's not the only voice they'll hear, though. This is a land filled with whispers. And screams. And the sounds of begging sometimes, too.
And for some of the Legionnaires, the In-Between speaks to them, touches something deep and dark inside them -- and it's calling them home.
What| 2 spoopy
Where| In The In-Between, the pocket dimension inside the Silent Horizon
When| After Valor's Day. Mission starts shortly before "No Sanity Clause" and runs simultaneously in game time
Warnings/Notes| Potential warnings for EVERYTHING. This is a horror plot that may tread a lot of ground. Please keep in mind that you can stumble on disturbing stuff in almost any thread. We advise all players to put warnings in the subjects of threads when they lean towards cut-worthy stuff.
The mission was simple. The team had to board the derelict Silent Horizon, a ship with an experimental stardrive, after it finally reappeared in UP space, many hours after it was supposed to reappear, during its first field test. No life signs were aboard, but the presence of several Roboticans on the crew -- who were undetectable by bioscan -- meant that the ship had to be boarded to make sure the Robotican crewmen were gone, too.
The United Planets government, concerned about the loss of the crew members, asked the Legion to step in, in case the threat on board was of a metapowered nature. Due to the massive danger implied by an entire starship crew going missing, the response team sent on the mission was relatively large, more than enough to handle any hostiles. None of this "we'll just send one tiny team to go alone into a giant starship against an unknown threat" business. No, if there was a hostile force on the ship, the plan was "let's drop 25+ Legionnaires on its head." Safety in numbers.
It was a good idea. In theory. In most cases, it would've given them the edge that would've let them face something very nasty without succumbing to it themselves. But in practice, it just meant that it was a much larger team that suddenly went missing after watching the last video log of the previous crew on the command deck.
Screams poured out of the screen the moment it started to play -- automatically -- when they entered the command deck. Onscreen, they saw the original crew murdering each other, tearing each other apart in a blood-soaked rampage.
"Wait, stop! What's wrong with everyone? Why are you --?" cried out one of the Robotican crew members, clearly immune from whatever was causing the madness, but his cries went unheeded as one of his Coluan crew-mates bashed his head clean off with a chair.
After the video played, the darkness swept in, wrapping around the whole team of Legionnaires, making them feel frozen all the way down to their bones and stealing consciousness away from them. When they woke again, they all found themselves separated, waking up in a realm of nightmares.
The halls breathe here -- at least in the places that have walls. They flex in and out, like the passageways inside the lungs. Sometimes the walls give way to open nightmare-scapes, remote and foggy, or bright and alien and exposed. The landscape bends and shifts around them, reacting to their thoughts and fears. And every so often, far off, there is the pitter-pat of something strange moving through this place. Like the sound of many feet -- or hands -- slapping against the ground or flesh-walls.
At some point, there is always a voice that each of them hears, tinny and robotic and distant, warning them of a being called the Faceless, that rules this realm. They're told not to feed from his blood, that if they do they'll be made a part of this place. If they accept his offer, and change forms, they'll eventually bleed to death, and if the Faceless isn't stopped before they die, those that die in their mutated forms will belong to him forever.
It's not the only voice they'll hear, though. This is a land filled with whispers. And screams. And the sounds of begging sometimes, too.
And for some of the Legionnaires, the In-Between speaks to them, touches something deep and dark inside them -- and it's calling them home.
no subject
Both hands lift into the air, wrenching back with rolling clicks as the gear whirls, releasing to let them swing down in a forceful blow that, even if it misses her, resonates through the flooring.
no subject
It's a split second delay, long enough for her to grab her translocator and—
It knocks the breath out of her when her footing slips underneath violent reverberations, certain in her ability to dodge and caught entirely unawares in how the flooring gives way, as though assisting her assailant. Adrenaline dulls the sting of it as her vision's temporarily flecked with spots, digital overlay briefly (forcefully) divested from reality.
She might have hit her head; she's too dazed to be sure.
But the recovery is instinctive, gun raised protectively in front of her to ward him off.
no subject
She's only helping to ensure that inevitability.
One hand slams down against her wrist to pin it against the ground, that face looming closer...and even now, with that mass of bone and tissue covering most of his face, it segments in a way that almost calls back to that very familiar scar/paint pattern...
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Then one of her alerts screams CHANGE IN CARRIER CONSCIOUSNESS, and Cortana drops everything to switch her attention back to the real world.
...Thirty seconds, Sombra. She'd been gone for thirty seconds.
Organics are all but frozen when an AI stops pretending its speed is as limited as theirs, and Cortana considers the still life with monster from the omnicomm sensors and Sombra's internal system, replaying the fight so far in a nanosecond flicker.
Superior size and strength. Pain is not a deterrent. So. Treat it like an Elite or a Hunter. The pistol is too small to deliver a kill shot directly--note to self: get the Chief to teach Sombra how to use something bigger--but everything has weak spots, humanoids especially.
Like knees. Knees are terrible. Whose idea were those?
Kneecapping is out of the question right now, so Cortana instead highlights a small section of the shoulder joint with a targeting reticule. In under the clavicle, and maybe they'd nick the subclavian or brachial artery. Regardless, they can wreck the joint, if Sombra can make the shot.
She can't with her arm pinned, of course, and Cortana turns her attention to the translocator. Too close for a clean escape, but being even a meter to one side will free Sombra's weapon...assuming she can pull herself together enough from the head injury and disorientation of the teleportation to fire. Big assumption, sure, but Cortana will deal with being wrong when it happens. With even a little luck, their ugly friend will be just as disoriented from its prey disappearing out from under it.
Well, not much more to do here. Cortana triggers the translocator, and in the microseconds before anything happens, wonders not-so-idly why this creature is striking her as familiar.
Oops, there they go.
Cortana speaks directly into Sombra's mind--thinking is faster than physical speech. Sombra. Shoot now.
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Only she doesn't.
Won't, can't— a side effect of being so dazed, as far as outside assumptions go, might be the most likely cause. Still, with her finger hovering uselessly over the trigger, it's enough of a pause to potentially give Cortana the AI equivalent of a heart attack.
"...Soldado?"
It can't be him. Wouldn't be— doesn't look a thing like him except for that scarring, and she swears, peering off across the aiming reticle of her gun, that she can make out the rough shadows of his armor between flesh and sinew.
no subject
Click-click-click goes the gear in his back, chains rustling against one another as they pull and shift, puppeting his twisted limbs forward, and perhaps now she understands. He is once as she was. She can be as he is now, stronger. Surpassing the agony this place holds.
Stop running. Surrender. Become one with the In-Between. It's the only way, the only way...
The monster rumbles, some thick dark liquid foaming up between his teeth and dripping to the ground. Blood...or something worse.
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Soldado. Locus? It matches. Powers, fighting style...accounting for the physical transformation, at least.
Why isn't he pressing the attack?
"We exist together now, two corpses in one grave." That gravelly voice would haunt her nightmares, if she slept, and with the memory of that implacable, eons-old hatred pressing on her, suddenly everything solidifies into a horrifying clarity, the data not so much interpreted as crystallized.
Sombra. Run.
no subject
Her gun stays raised and at the ready, a tempered precaution just in case his slow strides take a turn towards aggression again; she's measured the distance at her back to the nearest scaffolding (not far, maybe less than thirty seconds if she climbs - two using the translocator), already pulling back on her heels to close the distance when the echo of Cortana's memories sink in under her skin. A puncture wound to her sanity.
As soon as the command's given, she bolts.
Quick as lightning, arm reeling back in a wind up to throw her translocator and get them the hell out of dodge. If he can't be helped, staying here won't change a thing; if he can, the bottom line still stays the same. They have to go. Now.
no subject
No.
Fury wells quickly to the surface as the suffering monstrosity that used to be Locus suddenly barrels forward once again, determined to catch up to her. A second later, it winks out of sight.
But oh, she can still hear it. Feel the floor rumbling, the indentions made when it swings, and the rapid 'clack-clack-clack' of the gear spinning in place, wheeling him forward.
no subject
He doesn't want to kill you. He wants to assimilate you. And probably Cortana as well, if she were to give an external sign she's there.
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"Gracias por el recordatorio, amiga, but I'd really like to not think about that right now!"
Ahead the path cuts sharply right; she can see it on the display Cortana's brought up, hovering just at the corner of her vision, shaking occasionally alongside the vibrations of Locus' frenzied pace.
no subject
She can run, but there's no more outward sign of him being there, or being in pursuit. There's the soft clicking that says he's there somewhere, but it echoes. It could be coming from anywhere.
He will not outrun her. He needs to surprise her before attempting again.
no subject
One possibility: the size suggests his armor's still there underneath all the growths. If I can get in, I can lock it, but it's going to take most of my attention. The EM environment around here is like a hurricane.
Time is siding with Locus right now, so after explaining the plan, Cortana withdraws from Sombra's mind rather than risk arguing about it, her quicksilver presence flowing back to her chip and its faster, greater processing power.
She reaches out into the howling gale around them, invisible to human senses but turning the EM spectrum into a maelstrom. It won't be easy, but you don't throw Cortana at the easy problems.
no subject
Too late, she can sense the shift as soon as Cortana flits right out of immediate contact, breath catching between her teeth to hiss out a slight noise of frustration. Slowing down isn't in her best interests, but with visuals null and void, analysis entirely unuseable and the nightmare working against her, speed alone might not do the trick.
So instead she veers off— just for a moment— as insurance: heads for the railing of the catwalk and throws her translocator out towards the deck below without any intention of teleporting to it directly.
no subject
Almost like the sound of a gun hammer cocking. It's unhurried now, the rustle of chains muffled. Not in front of her, not behind her, but within earshot. And then they fade again as he goes still.
Catwalk. Metal railings, with cords and wires like blood vessels thrumming behind gratings and broken glass. A pipe nearby lets out a stream of gas that sounds like a rasping breath.
Whose nightmare are they in, now? His? Or hers?
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Which is why she doesn't bother to wait and confirm his position in that locked pause before she starts to sprint again; the more distance she can effectively put between herself and her translocator could make for seconds— minutes of bought time if she and Cortana succeed. He won't dissuade her from it.
This nightmare isn't hers.
no subject
Literally.
The mangled remains of a spaceship appears to be what she's just escaped from. She can re-route, head back inside, or pursue this stretch of barren, desolate rock and hope there's somewhere to hide amongst the cliffs. The sky overhead is tinged red, as though the sun were only just setting or rising...but there's a strange, almost veiny film over the expanse of it, as though the whole thing were contained inside the organs of some massive creature.
And there are, of course, bodies. Littered everywhere.
Would she take up back inside the claustrophobic hallways, or take her chances out in the open? Regardless, it's only a matter of time before that clicking noise catches up to her.
no subject
High ground. She'll aim for that first.
The bodies are stepped over, ignored largely aside from passing glances designed to try and identify where they're from - what might have happened. It's been a process of understanding, following the intermittent shifts in landscape: more often than not, she's learned, it's specific. Targeted.
Is this Locus' reflection?
A question she mulled over as she clambers up the nearest cliff face, darting deftly across ledges until she's perched atop its plateau, exhaling once with a long glance outwards - committing it to memory. Truthfully, his odds (even with her unwillingness to kill him) don't seem good. Transformed as he is now, stopping the nightmare might not come quick enough to help him, might not save him at all; if he dies here, this— the memories she's kept, the data that she's stored— is the only evidence of his suffering that'll exist.
Considering that they were friends, that she was close enough to even consider letting him join Talon, Sombra supposes she owes him this much. A personal confession that has her glad Cortana's too absent to hear. It isn't weakness; she isn't so compromised. Just...
Sometimes you have to pour one out over your losses before you move on.
"Lo siento, Soldado." The nail of her thumb catches as she scuffs it absently across her lower lip. "You should have been stronger."
If it sounds cruel, it isn't meant to be.
no subject
A planet's worth of dead under her feet.
Sometimes with arms outstretched, pleading, sometimes cowering away or trying to flee. Most are military but there are others. Civilians. Women. Children. They seem to line the path Sombra's taken, some riddled with bullets, some burned almost beyond recognition as human by explosions. The landscape itself seems cruel, bent inward, the cliff's edges ragged and blade-sharp, if she isn't careful with her step and grip.
And there's one more body when Sombra reaches the relative safety of the plateau. An angled helmet with a broken visor, blood-shot eyes staring up accusingly, and mangled armor streaked with accents of orange. At first, it just seems to be staring upward.
But if Sombra looks away, the next time she looks back, the corpse is looking at her.
no subject
But her intelligence, for how deftly she employs it, is a luxury. The fact that her family was lost to her so early on that the memories don't exist, that Los Muertos, in spite of their rougher than ragged edges and criminal ways, treated her as their manita— their blood, is another. Always a buffer between her and the world and every soul or threat in it, which means she's never known this kind of pain.
Which means she's not as effortlessly resilient as she imagines, only less wounded than the company she keeps.
And here is the proof, though she doesn't recognize it. Broken, bloodied. Slack and unblinking, there's something about the armor that demands attention, carefully patterned as it is. A contrast to Locus' duller palette.
Only when she glances back from a precautionary assessment of her surroundings does she stop warily in her tracks. This place screws with you. It's meant to. Keeping that in the forefront of her mind, she forces her own breathing to stay even despite the initial skipped beat of her heart on wary instincts. If the ship wants her to give up the advantage of high ground over a corpse, it has another thing coming.
Her SMG's flicked up, aimed at its head. A coarse dare for it to move - every bit the chosen course of action from a girl that's a street thug at heart. "Asústame, panteón."
A beat. Two. Nothing.
"Pft." Sombra's shoulders drop, free hand settling critically on her hip. "Thought so."
no subject
It starts to wrench itself upwards, armor twisted and dented but intact. It's the strange twist of the limbs within it that need to snap back into place when it pulls itself upwards, a strange, breathy little laugh echoing from inside the helmet.
Better think again, then.
Is that distant clicking in the background? Can't be. Must be the wind, too soft to hear distinctly.
no subject
How is it moving? How is it real?? She hadn't seen him amongst the Legionnaires during either the briefing or the trip here; with armor like that, left abandoned in the span of a place like this, he can't have been part of the ship's crew before them.
Can he...?
Whatever. Screw it. She doesn't have time to burn on figuring out the details. As those damaged limbs start to snap sickeningly into place, her retreat no more than a few steps backwards to carry her well out of the range of his blade, Sombra drops the line of her gun, lip curled back into a scowl. "Didn't anyone tell you, amigo."
click — snap— Metal on metal, cocked and level.
"Never bring a knife to a gun fight."
And then, unceremoniously, she opens fire - aimed right at the fractured center of his helmet.
no subject
And that head cocks to the side with a grating crack, as though to say 'really?'
You didn't think it was gonna be easy, did you?
The shield drops a moment later, and with surprising agility, the corpse leaps at her. He's still a ragged mess of broken limbs and torn joints, barely held together by metal armor and Kevlar, but that just seems to give him additional flexibility. His movements are at odd, disjointed angles, but he's quick.
A second knife has materialized somewhere along the path, arcing towards Sombra's throat at the first opportunity. And the second. The third? Is a cheap shot aimed for the kidney.
no subject
Even so, keeping pace in close quarters— dodging the knives he's flicked outwards— while trying to play into momentum to keep from buckling in blocking armored limbs is a tense, tense bet. Pushes her easily to the limits of her abilities. Key strikes: predict them, avoid them, if it costs her a spare hit or two in the process of pulling away from a cut to a major artery it's fine. Negligible. Mechanical thought processes running in parallel with the anger and the adrenaline.
The third knife's barely dodged. She's too slow to recognize the break in the pattern until it's been arced outwards towards her, and she stumbles off-balance in the process, twisting against gravity (and mirroring Gabriel's habitual movements) to slip behind her adversary. Pulls the trigger on her SMG without aiming to clear space in the process. To catch her breath.
And more importantly, to ask, panting heavily:
"Who are you??"
Severity of that question only tempered by the realization that she's bleeding from a graze at her throat, her hip. Damp heat without pain, severity measured when she sets her palm against her neck and draws it away a second later.
Lucky shots.
no subject
Still, it pauses long enough to consider her question, before...
I'm you, but stronger.
He manages to keep a serious tone, even holds that serious bent for a second or two longer before snickering, a noise that sounds garbled. Neck injury? It's likely, along with everything else. Heh, sorry. Couldn't resist, you going all serious on me. You wanna know who I am? You should ask my partner.
One knife tips, pointing just over her shoulder.
Who's right behind you, by the way.
The way he says it, there's no reason not to believe it.
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