The Legion [Mods] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
letsgolegion) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
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
Wouldn't Cortana do the same thing for her if that's what it came down to? Every tool, every resource - the cost of survival is worth bypassing personal boundaries.
Still, her pace slows at a few steps off. Stalling acting as a means of testing the waters— or maybe just the limits of Delta's patience. If he isn't dying, she can feign at redirecting her focus towards their surroundings. This was meant to be a trap, after all, whether he intended it or not.
"What did this to you?" Her attention skirts briefly towards shadowed, rotten walls - gun following suit with a casual flick of her wrist. "If you were attacked, maybe it's a better idea to secure the area first, mijo."
no subject
Delta wouldn't lie to an ally, not unless he's slipping badly...or unless there's another factor we don't know. Nothing on sensors, but that doesn't mean much around here.
no subject
He's quiet for a moment, eye distant, voice quiet. "That looks like Locus."
It'd been particularly painful, that run in. "No clicking in the hall so I am not worried about him right now. But."
He's quick and invisible. That's fucking terrifying.
no subject
Cortana.
It'd explain why his transmission got through, and why she's hearing absolutely nothing now. Locus would wait to pen them in, ensure they were thoroughly burdened— it's the closest thing to a guarantee, isn't it? Which prompts another problem: if she makes the smarter call, if she abandons York (and if he somehow survives), it'll damage her cover. All the work she's done to maintain an entirely selfless guise. Doubly so if this is a test, if they're being monitored, recorded, if—
For the same reasons she wouldn't kill Locus, she can't shoot York now. Not even for his own good.
Are you absolutely sure it's his AI talking to us.
no subject
It has just been a day full of problems where all the choices are bad, hasn't it?
no subject
We need to-" York shudders, suddenly, his head lolling forward, hand clenching against his chest. A low, wounded, animal noise twists free in that moment as he lifts his head. The casual calm of earlier is gone. His eye is wide and wild, jaw working against the distended ripple of wires under his skin. "-run."Rasped low and wet and wrong. York swallows past something in his throat and tries again, louder, a pained yell. "RUN!"
Behind Sombra a corded tangle of bloody wires peels away from the wall, snapping out to ensnare her in their gore slick embrace.
no subject
Sombra doesn't wait to fall back on her heels, darting away in the hopes of getting clear before anything takes hold, thermoptic camo activated with a flick of her wrist so that if she does manage to disappear, he won't be able to easily track her.
A pale flicker of digitized violet fading away like ebbing sparks.
no subject
As the tendril starts to pull free of the wall, Cortana does the digital equivalent of slapping a breaching charge on the bunker door of Delta's counter-intrusion protocols. The need not to kill either Sombra or York in the process complicates matters, and she suspects the fight will last longer than she'll be happy admitting to after the dust settles, but she doesn't harbor even a flicker of doubt about the outcome.
DELTA!
no subject
Cortana is something he hadn't had to calculate. Something he didn't expect to face- a battle he would not have chosen under any circumstances.
Outwardly the wires writhe and creep, trying to find the ports Delta knows to exist on Sombra's back somewhere. Inwardly? The digital space is a fractal Palace, Delta looking much as he always does, standing at calm attention while awaiting Cortana's intrusion. This isn't a fight he has a hope of winning, and thus? He does not intend to fight.
To converse, however... of anyone, she might be able to understand his reasoning.
Cortana.
no subject
The question is: is it Delta she's wounding in the process, or is it just York.
no subject
Even without her conscious effort, her presence warps the parts of Delta's virtual world nearest to her, jagged fractal greens realigning themselves into the same intricate blue-white figures that run over her skin and through the air around her.
From somewhere else, faint but intrusive, she can feel Sombra's rising alarm as if it were her own, a distraction when she needs all her focus and her wits about her. Where does Delta end and York begin in this maze of fractured self? How much of Delta is truly Delta, and how much is the Faceless? She's killed friends before because letting them live would have been crueler, and the thought that she might have to do it again awakens to claw at her. It would never occur to Cortana to pray, so instead she just hopes she and Sombra hadn't arrived too late.
Just what do you think you're doing?
At the interface where Cortana's influence ends and Delta's resumes, orderly little tendrils of her blue light are starting probe outwards, mapping the unfamiliar environment of York's neural implant.
no subject
Within that pain lights up fragments of the palace, without taking his attention off Cortana Delta lifts a hand, accessing the logistics of the healing unit. More morphine to ease the pain, what it cannot manage he gathers in so many digital fingers and sets aside. Buffers. For now it hurts, this is true, but that will pass. Pain is transient. Are you aware of the odds of escaping this place? Of surviving it?
He's run the numbers every which way. The statistical likelihood is so slim that it classifies as a miracle. Assimilation is the only way to ensure our Survival. York's discomfort and distress are temporary.
It will pass, he will understand- and all will be well.
no subject
And then it hits. Needling pressure where the first of the ports along her spine rests, sensation so unexpected it might as well be a dose of cold water to her veins, seizing her up with a gasp. She'd hope they'd be incompatible by default, but then again, she's modified her own hardware as much as Cortana has; at this point it's entirely likely that whatever those wires are composed of is entirely capable of hijacking her implants.
"Suéltame, pendejo—!!" Gritted out, attention turned towards awkwardly trying to pull lose that line from behind her own back while her own visuals start to flicker with static, Sombra is nothing if not committed to scathing commentary.
no subject
Sí, he comprobado las estadísticas. Pero-- Cortana cuts herself off when it dawns on her that she's speaking Spanish. Too much bleed from the hacked-together neural link with Sombra. Dragging her attention back to Delta, she continues, careful to keep it in English. But there are worse things than dying. Surviving like this, for example.
She has had this argument before, and a voice echoes through her memories then, a deep, inhuman voice with malice beneath its superficial calm. "Do I take life or give it? Who is victim, and who is foe?" Cortana tenses, uncertain if anyone else can hear it, and worried for her own sanity. They've already got one rampant AI on their hands. They really don't need two.
no subject
Adjusted adequately- she will be left be. Free to be glimmering and clever and vicious in a wholly new existence. How is that not appropriate? Static flickers and time slows- the speed of thought a fickle thing, the internal adjustment taking a moment that stretches for a sharp eternity before the dull drawn out roar of sound coalesces into something clipped, coherent- and frantic.
"Get it out get it out get it out get it out get it out-" A cube of transparent green glass that might as well be a bulkhead sequesters York away- unable to do anything, say anything save for the cracks he'd made, the hole he'd punched through to yell. It's been patched over with a tidy bit of code and again he's here, bleeding even in this mental scape, curled tight in a corner and scrabbling at the wall with bloodied hands, nails long since torn off.
Cortana and Delta himself are- relatively- distant. Impossible to reach both omnipresent, blue and green colliding in dizzying whorls of code and color.
Delta pauses when that voice rolls through- York flinching in his prison and scrabbling harder at the wall, but there is nothing to be done for that. Calm as ever, Delta continues. It is an undeniable, perhaps a fundamental quality of sentient beings that when faced with oblivion, any and every alternative is preferable. Even this. Humans are adaptable, they can adjust to this existence easily enough given proper incentive.
I can't believe I had a typo in my last tag, for shame
And then she's free again. Relatively.
Looks down at her hands to find violet nails rather than the blue she's worn to mask her identity within the Legion: no azure strips of circuitry, no braided, luminescent hair extentions designed to distract from her facial features— just her, as she used to be. Turns her fingers over for a moment to stare in awe at a sincere reflection of her own appearance. The span of a few seconds drawn surreally out until she isn't sure how long she's been standing there.
—before she notices York's frantic litany.
She's there in an instant, palms angrily pressed to that coded prison. It's hard to tell if he can see her, hear her, but there are physical traces of splintered data beneath her fingertips; he'd been aware enough before, maybe that's still true now.
"York! ¿ —me escuchas?" Testing the limits of integrated restrictions, of what Delta's managed to impose, she's already working to try and hack what's been patched over the shattered hole. The disconnect between levels of awareness entirely forgotten, like a testament to Delta's promise.
"Mírame, mijo— hey, hey, look at me."
no subject
--Suddenly, Sombra is so much closer, so much louder, calmer but confused, and Cortana echoes that confusion for a moment until she puzzles out what it means--Delta's succeeded in dragging her into this mess, too. On a hunch she concentrates her probe in the direction of Sombra's presence, testing Delta's defenses with greater force. She needs to bolster Sombra against this direct attack on her mind, and maybe she'll find York there too, imprisoned somewhere behind the fragmented acid green of Delta's rampancy. If you've already got one human in a mental holding cell, why not throw the new captive in with 'em, right?
That's not you talking, Delta. You're not that flowery. Cortana waves a hand in angry dismissal, the motion sending ripples through the fractals around her, blue starting to spread inward from their infinite borders as she takes a step towards Delta. And whoever that is...they're wrong. Humans can and will give their lives happily for the right cause. So will we. I'd die for John--the Chief. Even rampant, I'd die for him. I would have thought you'd die for York.
no subject
Focus on him. On the green, on the code- not on York. Not on the straining, writhing wires under his skin, not on the cage where York's focus skitters along violent green to a glimmer of something different. Purple and unfamiliar but close enough to someone he knows and there is a brief, shining moment of pure relief.
Rescue.
It comes and goes in a flash, relief turning to terror as he braces his hands on the opposite side of the coded glass. His mental image of himself flickering from the man Sombra knows to a younger, slimmer version coated in blood and soot, older with both eyes, with his bad eye a mass of pulpy red- "You need to get out of here-"
Too dangerous for anyone, especially someone Delta deemed a threat. Which makes the otherwise cordial conversation with Cortana...odd.
Death is an unacceptable outcome. It is finite. Dying for York would do nothing to save him, merely postpone the inevitable by thirty four minutes and sixteen seconds where he would be attempting to endure this alone. And that is something he cannot allow. He does not push ahead, nor does he retreat, attention flicking to the cage in the distance. To York where he is held as safely as Delta can manage. Living to make the more difficult choice, one that ensures his survival? Offers infinite possibilities for recovery after this has passed.
no subject
Because she always does. Always has. If she's pressed to the edge of her abilities, she adapts - if she's cornered, she tips the board: this time it's Cortana that's acting as the edge of her knife (she can sense it easily as anything, a bracing pressure at her back), and that's enough to give her confidence exceeding any reasonable amount— even while York's damaged reflection shifts, it isn't a deterrent.
Sombra's process turning from simply attempting to undo the barrier to hammering at it with the armored plating at her wrists. Testing for weaknesses while adjusting to a state of existence she's not entirely familiar with.
"—I'm just taking you with me when I go."
crack crack— like striking at reinforced glass.
"¿Se entiende?"
no subject
...Oh, of course.
If anyone asks, she'll just blame the current circumstances for how long it took her to figure out.
You're an unintegrated fragment. Huge chunks of him aren't there, left with the parent smart AI. Delta's code or psyche or soul, whichever it is their kind can claim, still exists despite being peeled away from the whole, still holds together some rough semblance of the original, an ink sketch where originally there hung an oil painting. Functional but incomplete, of course he couldn't stand up to the Faceless.
Her uncertainty solidifies into purpose, doubts quelled and dark voices from the past silenced by the simple realization that it's not Delta's fault any more than it was those poor Marines' fault when the Flood swept over them and turned them into monsters. No point in arguing, no point in frustrated anger. The Faceless has two victims here, and she needs to keep that count from rising. Faster now that she's learning the local architecture, both the fractals of Delta's construct and the sedate circuit pathways of the neural implant, her infilitration code works its way ever closer to where York is imprisoned. Blue light shoots along the most direct route, leaving a trail of her own orderly code to smooth over the fractures in Delta's.
Along their mental connection, curse and blessing that it is, Cortana sends Sombra a message, faint but perceptible, more a feeling than a fully-formed thought: Make it snappy. Delta's not wrong that the implant can't handle much of this.
We can chat once this is all over.
no subject
Of his partner.
A man trapped in a glass cage staring through at Sombra with all the hope and fear he can muster. Little by little she's able to chip away and- despite knowing better? York throws his weight and desperate strength into the opposing side. "No- you need to get out of here before LOCUS shows up. I'm bait. I've always been bait and he's gonna circle back soon and you need to go-"
He can't exactly leave his own body now, can he? Well. He can. Been there, done that, the rip and drip of two bullet wounds in his upper left chest settle and smudge onto his mental projection for the few tense moments he spends trying to pick out a course of action- then the world lights up with pain. Blue too pure and bright and warm crackling along the implant and it's gentle. For Cortana? It's practically reserved-
But it's not what the Implant was ever meant to house- one rampant fragment and a sane full AI. Even in his mind York's hands slam over the back of his neck where it feels like something's burning- too much activity after damn near fuck and all for most of the day. Tendrils of green code snap up from the floor of the box to shunt away some of that blue- washing the discomfort away. Delta can't stop what's happening- but he can try to mitigate potential damage.
A light hand, Cortana. There is little I can promise in retribution if you are the thing that kills him. Nothing at all, in fact. It'd be easier if he dropped the cube, but- he has come this far. He cannot turn back now.
no subject
She'll deal with that echo of...who? Delta's donor? It must be. Regardless, she'll deal with it later. Green is rapidly losing ground to blue as Cortana pushes her advantage and more and more lines of her code work their way to the armored feet of Delta's avatar...but he's not lying about the strain it's putting on the implant.
Of course, there's a really simple way to take the strain off: Last chance, Delta. Stand down.
Somewhere behind the shattered edges of Delta's constructs, the ground beneath Sombra's feet has turned into Cortana's scrolling blue-white code, bringing with it the feeling of her presence, as solid and formidable in the digital world as the Master Chief is in the physical one. Around the base of York's prison, that same code starts to flow up the sides of the glass, cracks appearing where it passes.
Not long now.