SILENT HORIZON - [Part 2: Facing the Faceless/Escape] [modplot]

[letsgolegion]

Who| Everyone in Silent Horizon plot
What| Fighting the Faceless, a perilous escape, and a chance to have a breather
Where| In the In-Between, the Silent Horizon, and then the Legion Cruiser
When| Chronologically, only hours have passed in the outside world from when the team disappeared, but it's up to players whether their characters perceived it as being hours or days
Warnings/Notes| Gore, blood, body horror, all the usual


They hear the voice again, calling out to them. Not the Faceless, not the dark whispers of this world. It's the same tinny voice that warned them, that told them not to give into the Faceless' offer. It's the voice that told them their Phalanxed teammates can still be saved if the Faceless is killed in time before they die.

It calls out again. Wherever they are, whatever the landscape is doing, they can hear it.

"I know you have no reason to trust me. I know you've been probably hearing lots of voices in this place, telling you all kinds of things. But I'm trying to help you. There's a way to end this, to stop the Faceless. Just follow my voice. My language synthesizer is broadcasting in the telepathic range like telepathic earplugs and I've managed to reconfigure it to broadcast through the entire In-Between. You should be hearing it wherever you are and you should be able to use its broadcast strength to navigate. I think I've managed to secure it from the Faceless and his Phalanx but there's no way to be sure."

How loud the voice is changes as they get closer or farther away. They can use it to navigate, albeit very crudely. And now that it's clearer, it's far more recognizable: it's the voice of the Robotican in the horrible footage that played before they were taken -- the one that had his head knocked off.

"My name is N-45LEN/Keth Series. My organic crewmates call --" He pauses, and sounds distraught. "--called me Lenny. I was a crew member of the Silent Horizon. This entire dimension is called the In-Between. It's made up of the body of the Faceless and I'm currently trapped at its core. I can see you Legionnaires from here through...what appears to be some kind structure for processing what equates to ocular stimuli for the Faceless. If any of you get lost, I can see enough to guide you here."

If they need it, they'll find that he can give them individualized directions, no matter what the landscape does, and he can give them to multiple people simultaneously. Having a complex processor for a brain has its perks.

"My organic teammate and I managed to discover the core of the Faceless and its nature, but I'm currently incapacitated and Bob...he just lost it. He nearly destroyed what was left of me and ran off before we could stop the Faceless. I saw him eventually accept the Faceless' offer and turn. If you make it here where I am, you may be able to destroy the Faceless' body enough to kill him, save your teammates, and destroy this dimension once and for all."

A pause.

"And if you could maybe take me with you when you leave, uh, I would appreciate that. Like, a lot."

[ooc post here]

Comments

[isthisapidge]

"Ah! Sorry! I totally spaced the customs, I really didn't mean to make you uncomfortable!" That was one of the important things about diplomacy and she wasn't even an alien. Pidge's face goes red for a moment, but Miku seems to be pushing forward so she can follow suite.

"Um...before Legion? I was piloting one fifth of a giant robot." Yeah, that doesn't sound crazy. "It's a long story."

[short_changed]

Connie glances over when they're about halfway there, eyeing the gore still splattered across South's armour and across the visor of her helmet.

"Y'know, they'll probably clean your armour if you ask. Not that you don't rock the blood and all."

[i_got_this]

She looks down at her helmet as Connie mentions it, swiping her thumb almost absent mindedly over it and then whoops now she's got gore on her thumb oh well.

"Yeah ... I'll probably do that. Better them than me.?"

[short_changed]

"They've probably got some super efficient space shower thing that'll get it all off," sooner they get South to a bed the better it seems. If South's too out of it to sass back she definitely needs some sleep.

[i_got_this]

"Hm, good. Less work for me, the better."

South is now running 'Sass Lite'; Low Sass, Low Sodium! Doesn't quite taste the same, though. She trudges along next to Connie, quietly grumbling to herself about her various hurts as a way to ignore the deeper psychological scarring.

"You got cleaned up alright."

[goddamngrenades]

"You are some kinda special." And not the good kind. But.

It gets his mind off of everything. Which is not all that bad all things considered. He'll take the distraction for what it is. "If anyone tells you about Tex, correct 'em. She was really Nevada."

[fantasmaniac]

There's a faint hint of a smile, laced with the usual bitterness. The difference between then and now, is that they can much more candid about their feelings. No red tape, no bureaucratic nonsense, just two old soldiers that just won't stop fighting for what they believed in, no matter how much they tried to mask that with a cold sense of obligation. Or in some cases, indifference.

"Still as stubborn as ever, boy scout."

But he's not going to tell him, and 76 can remain angry at him for what Talon did to Ana. If that's what it takes, then so be it. Even as some still-human part of him sags in defeat, wishing he could simply succumb to the way Jack had looked at him earlier (something like solidarity of world-weariness), he's been nothing but steadfast in his ways.

Still stubborn as ever.

Feeling like he's a the end of his ropes here, at a stalemate, he heavily considers walking away. He's not above distancing himself from Jack. So he slowly straightens up, popping stiff joints before pushing slowly off the bed, mattress groaning from the weight.

[short_changed]

"'Cause I put their people sized car wash to good use. Still need to check over the weapons though, make sure they don't get jammed."

Connie gives her half a smile, nudging South's arm lightly with her elbow.

"I can clean yours while you get some rest."

[ghost_bait]

"A giant robot? Like..." Miku tips her head back, in thought. While there were lots of toys she remembered other children playing with, it wasn't really in the Hinasaki parenting to allow them in the house, considering her mother was a staunch traditionalist. "Gundam?"

[isthisapidge]

"Uh, close." Pidge's toys were almost all robots, sure, but they tended to be in the "brightly colored plastic caterpillars you could program" variety.

"It's called Voltron. Five robot lions that connect to form a giant man. I'm the left arm."

[mylawn]

"Just about the only thing I've got."

He isn't about to let Reyes forget that. If he can make his stubbornness the bane of Reaper's existence, so much the better. Jack is under no illusions about his own bullheadedness, and he aims to make it his greatest asset in the 'get through to Reaper' department.

But he knows when a conversation is over, and he's too tired to delve deeper into Talon. When Reyes stands and makes to leave, Jack doesn't stop him.

"I know it was bigger than both of us. Maybe you really did try to kill me, but I don't think you meant to blow yourself up, too."

[ghost_bait]

"Oh!" Miku clasped her hands together. "That must be amazing. It sounds much bigger than a gundam, though."

She laughed, a little softly. It sounded a little rougher since she'd been doing quite a bit of screaming with Victor. "Where... when I'm from, it's all... science fiction, not science fact." She looked down, "Honestly, I'm still a little overwhelmed by everything."

[isthisapidge]

"Heh, it stands about 60 meters tall so...yeah, quite a bit taller."

Talking quietly is OK with Pidge right now, especially now that she's about to admit: "I...kind of wish I had my lion right now."

She does manage a chuckle. If she knows about Gundam than she probably means she's at least from an Earth, right? "That may depend on what year you're from. In my time humanities wee making expeditions to Pluto even before I even heard of Voltron."

[ghost_bait]

"Nineteen-eighty-nine. I feel like I am behind just about everyone here." She smiled, "But it also makes me feel a little glad, too? To see how far everything's come." Not that she was 100% down with all this technology, but then, she was the same person who turned down a dishwasher and a microwave.

"What is your lion like?" she asked. One didn't speak to someone who rode around in a giant robot every day! It would be important to know.

[prettycoolguy]

"The Gravemind?" he asks. Because he's going to have to be the one to drag it out into the open and shine a light on it. Telling her knows means she doesn't have to pretend otherwise for him. He understands. It's not going to shake his faith in her.

[isthisapidge]

Ooooh, OK. That explains a few things.

"Oh. Oh, yeah I can see where you might be feeling a little primitive." If Pidge was the type to register how insensitive the things she said were before she said them, well, she wouldn't.

"Well, she's a giant and green. And flies. I modified her with invisibility too." She's not sure how she'll explain having a psychic bond with a robot lion, so she won't. "She's got her own personality, really inquisitive. Sometimes she points out things to me while I'm piloting her."

[ghost_bait]

"Sounds a little like Ruri, my cat," Miku explained. "Though I doubt you need to tell your lion to get off the counter, or away from dinner."

Or out of the dark room, or figure out how she got into a closed closet, or...

Miku smiled. "It must be nice to have a bond strong enough for her to point things out like that."

[isthisapidge]

"Well, not yet, but you know cats. I've always been more of a dog person, but I haven't figured out a way to break it to my lion." Silly jokes are welcome in the circumstances.

She guesses that, yeah, that is part of their bond, isn't it? "Well, the Lions know all their own functions, they keep revealing them to us as we prove ourselves worthy?"

[ghost_bait]

"That does sound like a cat." Miku agreed and laughed again. "Ah, my throat still hurts, I guess I'll be talking even less when we get back." Nothing hot tea and sleep (if she could sleep, after everything) wouldn't fix.

"Dogs aren't very common where I lived, but I think they're cute, too. There's a lot of folklore for them, surprisingly."

[i_got_this]

South gives her a look, it's a crooked smile but there's the ghost of trauma underneath it.

"Rest? Nah, don't think it's going to be too restful for a while. I got the carwash."

[short_changed]

She snorts softly under her breath, "I meant afterward that, when the med techs get you the good stuff 'n knock you out. Or loopy, if you're anything like Tay."

[fantasmaniac]

He pretends that the pause in his step is because he's still tired, aching from the regeneration overtime.

"Sharp as a tack, Jack," he says, rolling his eyes without actually doing it. It sounds like he's just mocking him at first, but his tone grows somber. "Who knows, maybe you'll all figure it out. If you make it off this moon alive."

Coming from him, it probably sounds like a low-key threat, but it's hard to tell for now as he slowly walks away from him. He obviously can't leave the cruiser, but anywhere away from here will suffice.

[steelandtemper]

There's a pause, just barely perceptible, which means Cortana is taking her sweet time answering.

"It was looking for weak spots, Chief." So that's a yes, then. She sounds...not defeated, not exactly. Just mortally tired, alarming from an unsleeping AI.

"Azúcar was knocked out for almost an hour right at the beginning. It only took a few minutes for the thing to start in on me."

An hour represents a virtual eternity in AI time, alone with a familiar and unwelcome voice echoing in her head, Cortana's perfect computer memory a fearsome liability. Though the sensation had faded when Sombra came to, standing vigil over her sleeping partner in the lonely darkness had struck a little too close to home. Despite the knowledge it wasn't the Dawn and rampancy would no longer end her life, the fear that she would never see John again had still crept over her, icy fingers around the throat she doesn't have.

"I...didn't have a lot to keep me busy."

[mylawn]

He's not sure what he expected--certainly not a straight answer, but Gabriel's blasé response, said like he knows so much that Jack doesn't only serves to make him angry. He springs to his feet, faster than he should. Gabriel isn't going to stop, but Jack isn't going to let him have the last word on this.

"What do you know?"

[fantasmaniac]

Didn't you know? Asking more questions just sets Gabriel up for the last word again. Not that he's interested in keeping this up all day, but with Jack suddenly getting up like that? He has no problem with fighting back. If he has the energy to spare, he sure as hell won't back down.

"Why ask when you know the answer?" He snaps, turning back on his heel to meet Jack's sudden response. He raises two fingers, bringing them together and pointing at Jack, almost like a warning.

Don't fucking push me.

"I'm two steps ahead of you, always have been, and always will. It didn't turn out this way from sharing intel."

Helps to have a genius hacker on your side, too. One of his greatest weapons, and greatest liabilities. Sometimes you just had to sacrifice a little (or a lot of) comfort to get that extra edge in the on-going war of national security.