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

Entry tags:

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

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]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

It's been hard to catch her breath in the middle of the fight. So many people could use decoys and while she could provide a fairly good one, constantly producing doubles and focusing enough to keep them active was tiring her out. Stepping back from the latest mess of a heart-hole in the wall her head snaps up at the name. It's not hers, really, and the Montana she's familiar with was no where in this world- but she can't imagine who else it might be aimed towards, especially when the voice sounds so familiar.

She spins to stare at the figure on the ground and the monster above- and following their line of sight her eyes widen at the arcing descent of Lenny's head through the air. Shoving her knife back into it's sheath Connie jumps, disappearing from view at the height of it- and reappearing in the air just under the falling head's path.

Opening her arms she clutches the head to her chest, "I GOT IT!"

With a glance back down to the floor she blinks through the air and reappears just above the ground in a solid landing. Looking up at the monster she grins under her helmet.

"Come and get me, bright eyes."

And suddenly a dozen sets of brown armour break away from where she stood, each holding an identical Lenny head.

I don't wanna know. Any other time? It'd be a joke. Right now it's utterly sincere- the idea of anything worse is staggering to the mind and horrifying on more levels than he can begin to stand. But she's here, she's fine, Connie's roughed up but fine, Sombra's fine-

It's more than he can ask for. He's got half a mind to tell them to leave him with the walls closing in the way they are but-

He's been there before. Not long but long enough to be terrified of going back. The dark, the silence, the...nothing.

"You know me. Always dreaming." Lines from a familiar role that he can swing sometimes. Most times.

Please. I'm gonna throw up over her armor at this rate and she'll bitch forever if I do.

"I've had worse."

She replies as a corner of her mouth twitches into a tired smile, just a little sad as she takes his hand and gives it a gentle squeeze.

"How're you holding up?"

The second he does, there's a tense little sigh of relief from her.

She thought for a minute it might not work.

His mass is significant: there's no guarantee that without bracing contact that the translocator will teleport them both out — so she's quick to grab hold of him before he has a chance to slip or fall in the chaos. Braced against his weight with her own and it's mostly her fingers curled in the contoured edges of his armor like if he were to go, she could somehow stop it.

"Lo siento por las náuseas."

And it's just a tired murmur before they're snapped through time and space in a sickening flash, broken down at point a and dragged to the clearer passageway at point b where the translocator rests, so low on energy it hardly managed the jump at all. Unlike the main (now-collapsing core), other Legionnaires are passing through here quickly enough to take notice. Someone else can take it from here, if he can't.

There's a wall at his back, it's easy to let him slump against it, patting the dead center of his chest plate with a bloodied hand.

She has to go back.

And without anything more than a single glance, drawing away from that point of contact— she does.

"You wanted to protect him. But even with the best of intentions..."

Even meaning to do well, they could do serious harm. Delta had been closer to York than anyone, in a very literal sense. And even he could choose incorrectly, while intending to do good.

In that, at least, Locus could sympathize.

"It's not enough. To want to do good. Not for some."

True to her word, there's a swell of nausea the second they are transported, but there's nothing left to come up. Just a gagging reflex before he swallows it down, collapsing back against the wall. He feels heavy, far too heavy, and she's done more than enough.

More than he deserves.

His eyes rest on her as she pats what remains of his armor before darting back, before he allows them to fall shut again. He will never understand her, he thinks.

But there are worse things.

"Thanks, Cortana. Might be a good idea after we get him to safety."

Without the buffer of her helmet she can hear the sickening squelch of the fleshy walls mixed with the groan of warping metal more clearly, taste the blood and rust in the air slowly but surely closing in. With a few short, sharp breaths she's moving again, her footsteps transitioning form the soft sucking sounds of meat into the solid metal flooring of the ship.

"I suppose that's why we like you so much," Connie pants between breaths, her legs burning under his weight as she's forced to a slower pace before she falls over altogether.

Just get to the docking bay, just a little further now.

"Better now that I'm alone in my head." D's chip is in a storage unit on the adjacent bed- or. Well.

SHOULD be unless Locus has already come and collected him while he was dozing. Either way the unit is there and York doesn't find himself terribly concerned at the moment.

Connie shouldn't be surprised that York would pull him after all that's happened. She vaguely wonders when was the last time he did. Or could, rather, once they went on the run.

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more to help you both sooner."

For a second the memory of York dangling from the wires threaded through the ceiling and black coils around her throat flashes to mind- she fights back a shudder, shaking her head as her fingers tighten in his hand with a shaky breath.

"The path to hell is paved with good intentions. A human saying I have not understood well until..." Until it suddenly became applicable. Delta's helmet dips for a moment, hands flexing in his tiny gloves.

He meant well and nearly destroyed them both. Nearly killed their associates, their team.

Easier to focus on Locus than himself, truly. "You wish to do good, do you not?"

Grif squeezes his eyes shut in preparation to be gored, but it doesn't happen. The shambling monstrosity lunges after Connie instead. A tail woven from possibly-human spines whipsaws in the fetid air behind it, lashing Grif and knocking the breath out of him for a moment. He really didn't need the help there. Thanks for that, bullshit space monster.

The creature hesitates for a moment, apparently it does have some visual sense it's relying on, before it starts methodically chasing Connie's images one by one. It's relentless in its efficiency as it hunts out the real Connie and Lenny, stalking nearer and nearer with every slash of its beak.

It takes it way too little time for comfort.

Grif, in the meantime, cannot believe he's still in one piece. He's up again. Moving again. Trying to figure out what the monster already has: which one's real?

"Connecticut? I need to do some active pain management and that's going to take concentration. Yell if you need me." Cortana doesn't wait for an answer before turning her attention to York.

Mimicking Delta's trick from outside the implant takes skill--and, frankly, a good helping of arrogance to think she can waltz in and do just as well as York's long-term partner with a thorough understanding of his neural patterns and psychology.

Fortunately, Cortana's got plenty of both, and where York has been accustomed to green, now a blue light flows instead, running along nerve pathways and bridging synapses. Reaching in from outside, she's not everywhere the way Delta could be, but the blue shines brilliant where it does touch, and soon the pain fades, along with the sensation of her presence as she sinks out of his conscious mind and down to where the nerve impulses are uselessly signaling what everyone already knows.

It reminds her of slipspace navigation. Nowhere near the complexity or the intoxicating mathematical purity, but the organic fractals of the human brain have their own beauty, and managing the electrical signals presents the same sort of focused but ever-changing intellectual challenge as guiding a ship through slipstream space. Cortana's enthralled by her new toy, and doesn't make any effort to keep some of that happy serenity from bleeding through to York.

Of course it wouldn't be that easy. One by one the decoys disappear under the monster's assault until the last one flickers out of sight. Guess those extra legs aren't just for show. Losing whatever lead she'd managed to get with her trick she's running out of options. Can't fight with her hands full and she apparently can't outrun this thing. Spotting Grif's back up and looking their way she pivots on her heel, drawing back with Lenny's head and volley's it back over.

"GRAB 'EM!"

The momentum's too much for her to balance and she rolls to a stop as the creature finally bears down on her.

"We woke up in a pile of corpses. Her corpses." He doesn't really need to elaborate on that. "I'm not surprised D snapped."

Just the name had been a trigger from the get go- it's how he was broken. York's not surprised by the breaking-

Just that there was no word. No sign. No attempt at conversation. Just. A blank, horrible nothing leaving him half blind up till the change.

"You look like shit."

It's a friendly hello, by Grif standards. He didn't get to experience the Faceless's particular brand of bodyscaping personally, but he doesn't look all that great himself. Grif's uniform is stained with blood. Some is his, some is Dipper's, some just belongs to nameless corpse monsters.

...They weren't always nameless, but he's really trying not to think about that. Or anything at all, right now.

He's carrying two bottles of water.

"Here."

Grif sets one on the side table just within York's reach, the seal already cracked. He then plunks down without ceremony on the empty bed on the side York didn't throw Delta, not realizing he's probably dodged a conversational bullet.

Grif takes a long pull of water himself, then stretches out.

"Jesus Christ."

Edited 2017-01-18 06:10 (UTC)

"..." There's no informal or friendly 'fuck you' fired back, not so much as a flinch as York registers that yes, there is someone in the room and no, they aren't a threat. Just Grif. One person he hadn't seen in the middle of that mess.

One person Delta hand't tried to kill. So.

That's a bonus.

He blinks blearily at him for a moment before snorting and reaching out, trying to ignore the new aches and pains, the odd patches of scartissue that won't really heal properly just yet on his skin where the wires had been. "The fuck happened to you?"

The phalanx monster slashes at Connie with one oddly placed leg, knifelong talons scratching at her armor looking for purchase, then it stops.

The head is gone.

It gathers its too-many-legs under it and plunges off across the melee, plowing through anything in its way as it zeroes in on Grif.

Grif fumbles, falling into a wall in his effort to catch Lenny's head, and he has just enough time to breathe out an oh shit as the monstrosity comes galloping toward him. Off he goes again. He can barely summon real speed at this point, he's faster than a person should be but so is his pursuer. The monster uses its sheer size and many legs to drive him forward, cutting him off if he tries to break to the sides, and it nearly has him pinned against the corpse throne when Grif snaps the head back toward Connie.

...Actually, "snap" implies that it's in any way a good throw. Wash would be so disappointed in him, but luckily Wash isn't here to see it.

"All yours!"

This worked the last two times, and he's really hoping it's going to work again.

"I'm never running again. Nobody can make me. Fuck that."

It's... Grif. That's not an answer to that question. He settles his gaze on the ceiling instead of on York, it's more comfortable in more ways than one.

He seems to be done talking, but then he adds, "Me and Montana got the robot's head out of there. So."

Her name is absolutely, one hundred percent Montana.

76 is not in very great shape, all things considered--he doesn't have much self-preservation on a good day, to say nothing of his very recent stint as some kind of brainwashed murder machine. He'd come out the other side of this ready and willing to submit to medical attention. That's how he knows this was bad.

You know, beyond the whole 'stint as some kind of brainwashed murder machine'. He remembers all of it, because he's just that unlucky.

He knows it's not really his fault, of course, but he'll shoulder guilt anyway, because that's about all he knows how to do. He'd let this happen to him and been too weak to resist it.

The medics take care of any immediate issues and give him the clear, and all he really wants to do is wander off somewhere and hide--as he's sure Azúcar is trying to do in turn. 76 imagines she is not going to like this (he can recognize a desire to be left alone). Still, he's self-aware enough to know that if he doesn't talk to her now, when they're all stuck in close quarters on the ship, he never will, and she's been a surprisingly valuable ally so far. That's enough to convince him he should make an attempt to talk.

He's not wearing his tactical gear out of necessity, having had it swapped for a loose-fitting shirt and pants courtesy the medical team, but he's kept the visor on in a perhaps futile effort to preserve his identity. When he sits down on the bed opposite her, it's slow and a little pained.

"They'll clean you up, if you want."

Because sitting around covered in dried blood can't be terribly comfortable.

Edited 2017-01-18 07:08 (UTC)

After the day he's had, Victor would really have preferred not to have another vision that leave him trying to vomit up the contents of an empty stomach while kneeling in a puddle of blood. He's exhausted and terrified and covered in substances better not even thought about much less discussed.

But he doesn't want to die here and he's not alone anymore. Specifically, he's not alone with someone with whom he could do more than scream out warnings. He staggers to his feet and then kneels down so that a certain someone can climb onto his back.

"Let's keep the monsters off of everyone else!" he says, shooting a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure nothing's coming from behind.

Even when his mind is easily controlled, summoned, he knows that deep inside the sticky pit of miasma and smoke that he still resists being ordered around. Things are done his way, even if the outcome of it ultimately remains the same. Even as he oozes out from the pores of the closest wall, he's slow and seems to be purposely taking his time.

His favorite tactic is element of surprise. Flank the target, keep quiet as possible, then rush them when they least expect it. He stalks his prey, and tirelessly pursues them until their energy gives out and succumb to his attack. At least, that's the idea.

Reaper hadn't bothered to linger within the crumbling mass of the ship, seeing himself out of there as fast as his wraith form could carry him. A lot of things he'd seen and done are burned into his memory, but he doesn't let the weight of it cripple him. In some ways, his actions were none too different from what he'd truly wanted to do. It's not as if killing Jack is something he'd refrained from doing out of the goodness of his heart.

Some of it, however, forces him to feel remorse. He can still remember the face she made, the bare-bone hints of anguish hidden beneath the forcibly practiced ignorance of their affiliation. It's such a bizarrely small detail, something that should've been lost within the haze of his monster brain, addled with the instincts to just devour. And yet, there it is, rising to the surface like a pesky reminder of how he'd tried to kill his only ally.

He has all the time to just sit and rest, the regeneration of his wounds already taking effect as he strips off the ruins of his clothing. The equipment managed to stay in tact, but the leather will need to be replaced. Even his mask is removed, content to let what shows of his face completely dissolve into black nothingness, as he covers most of head and face with a t-shirt that one of the support staffers had tentatively handed it to him. His hands turn over, and the shine of the glowing blue glove is the brightest thing in this room.

"...fuck."

"I'm fine." Hollow words, breathed out with a raw shift in her stare towards him (he's put himself between her and the view she'd been slipping steadily into over time) but she isn't necessarily lying: the odds weren't stacked in her favor. The resources she'd carefully compiled as a safeguard against danger? Gone. Turned against her. She should have been dead or worse a hundred times over.

Normally that'd be a rush, knowing she survived— right now, all she feels are the ports along her spine and skull, aching where they've dug into her skin from impact, misuse.

Only after a few seconds does she realize the answer she'd given isn't what he'd asked, stepping in to correct herself. "I'll take care of it."

Eventually.

It's been a rough ride: including the painfully slow passage of time in a digital world— in someone else's head— Sombra can't remember the last time she was able to just...sit. Exist. Knits her fingers together and twists against the pull of gravity, staring right through him as if he was glass, unwilling to work up the willpower to pretend.

She doesn't even bring up Lena.

That, too, he feels more than a little. It's far easier to look at someone else's mistakes than your own, especially when the results stand so starkly in front of you.

"I did."

He's not sure if he meant to leave that in past tense, but. Well. There it is.

You heard the lady. Don't be rude.

The corpse on Locus's back snickers before yanking at the chains, and with a snarl Locus surges out of the shadows, suddenly visible and looming, one hand swinging for South's face.

She'd have a hard time hitting him in the face, however. Only his mouth remains exposed, hidden under large, plate-like growths over his face like secondary armor.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 4 of 14

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

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Victor & Miku - Screaming and Colliding With Monsters

spooky ghost appearing as himself but spookier

now just a tired old ghost man

no subject

no subject

no subject