legionmissions | Out With the Old [modplot]

Theta has never heard-felt-input anything like that rising swell of data, of voices, and he doesn't even have a context for how it might exist. It takes more data points, the chorus swelling louder and closer, until the impossible multiple AI single user intrusion protocols gone becomes the only remaining interpretation and he shrills North's name-brain-identity in a panic a milisecond before Maine's hand shoots out and jerks them up by the helmet.

North isn't as fast. Sure, for a human, he's fast. But as a human his brain is also still trapped in the learned patterns of Maine as ally and teammate, stuck behind the stumbling block of the reality that is being jerked up and in close, toes scrabbling at the ground as the burn of whiplash flares somewhere in the background of strangling on the neck of his undersuit. And it's all dark in the shadow of the stumbling block that becomes a mountain under those easy reassurances that it's fine, _no! hey, win some lose some, _{don't let him take me!} no point in fighting now might as well just take off his helmet and

"NORTH!"

he does. Throws the seal-catches, hard, tucks in tight and kicks off of Maine's chest, tumbling backwards into a hard sphere of shield that snaps up around him. Oxygen burns hot in his lungs and he rebounds off the back of the shield, hexagons guttering in the air like candle flames as his vision spots and Theta jitters terror just behind his eyes.

Edited 2017-02-15 15:48 (UTC)

"Now Theta-" drawling without the accent, hands tucked behind his holographic back in an echo of their donor's posture, Sigma shakes his head. "You really shouldn't have done that. Now we'll have to do this the hard way."

The Meta drops North's helmet and reaches out into the air between them, fingers slowly curling into a fist- tips catching on and dragging something that gathers in his palm as a ball of glowing blue light similar to the shield bubble. Between the points of his fingers and North's shield the air begins to bend and waver like a heatwave in a flickering straight vector that solidifies for half a second before there's a shift and click. Like a joint popping in place, air pressure dropping before the storm, the wavering scent of ozone.

"It's remarkable that he can do this on his own. Even more remarkable you were able to talk him out of listening to Felix. We're proud of your reaction time- or. We would be if it didn't mean that the hard way?" Sigma's voice coils low and insidious as the power drain causes a faint flicker in the shield, something like a dragging fatigue settling over their target. "Means that we will have to hurt North very, very badly to collect you."

Felix's eyes flicker between the big guy and the dying shield before he gives a chuckle, and a second later there's a flash of metal in his hand, flicking into view.

"Hey, it only hurts the first couple of seconds. So I hear." That jovial tone grows serious for a moment as he regards the AI sitting on the Meta's shoulder. "You don't need the Freelancer alive, right? He's just going to get underfoot."

Not to mention he's got an axe to grind with pretty much anyone who'd ever worked with the goddamn project, at this point.

The shield keeps flickering and North rolls into a crouch, rifle in hand, breathing slowly through his teeth to try to hold back the bleedthrough fear swamping Theta's side of the link. He can tell he's listening to Sigma, because every new dig pulls a fresh spike of incoherent panic, mixing with his own exhaustion and the renewed croon of Felix's voice into a muddy haze that makes it hard to think, hard to tell if he wants more to shoot the man who's asking permission to kill him or the man who's keeping Sigma extant, hard to focus on the shield which he's sure will come back if he just focuses on it harder.

His lips move, inaudible, but the words aren't for Felix or Maine. They're for the one who knows what he's saying the minute he forms it in the back of his mind, the one who reads his muscles as easily as he interprets what comes out of his vocal cords.

It's gonna be okay, Theta. It's gonna be ok.

Just focus on the shield - and the longer he focuses, the more he feels Theta lean into it with him, the fear channelling into a frenzied series of - pings?

Not focusing on that. Focusing on the shield. This isn't incoming missiles this is just a regular shield, he can keep it up, he can keep-

-it flickers out.

"It would be less traumatic for our brother if North lived-" Like discussing the weather or sports scores. That same drawl, a serene little lilt not entirely unlike the counselor as The Meta stalks forward. The shield might hold up against a fist, against his gun- but it glows in his palm and the power North held skitters under his skin, buzzing like fireflies.

He's missed the failsafe of the domeshield. Good to have it back.

The shield fails. The Meta? Continues to stalk forward, a shield flaring to life around North, himself, and Felix, rippling and flaring the same glimmering orange as Sigma. Nowhere for him to run now. "But no."

Sigma crosses his arms, grinning. "Sic'em."

Fucking finally.

At that, Felix darted forward, rolling across the floor and maneuvering to try and get at North's back, leaving frontal assault to the big guy.

A second later and those knives whipped through the air, aimed at joints, open areas between the suit's plating, jabbing and withdrawing in quick succession.

They flank, Felix around his side and Maine rushing in too fast with a bruteshot for North to not blow every stun round he can trying to slow him down, falling back into the cold inevitability of exhaustion and long odds. Two parries at his midsection that he manages to dodge from, knock away with the stock of his rifle before a third twists in at an oblique angle and gashes through undersuit, a second following so fast he can't track if it's a twist of the same blade or a different one. Theta's trying to tell him something but he's too busy evading Maine's latest swipe at his neck to do more than twist what should have been a gouge through hamstring and artery into a stab that buckles his knee out from under him, tumbles him into a roll that smears blood along the tiles as he scrambles back from another stab at his chest.

Battles ebb and flow, and Cortana's focus moves with the tides of the conflict. Though it's going well for the good guys, a part of her is standing back and tapping a foot impatiently. This would be over already if she were allowed to kill people. They all deserve it.

When she looks up from non-lethally beating back yet another attack on the audience, she notices that Theta's inexpert attempt to contact her has been sitting for several seconds. Cortana shifts her attention to where North's IFF says they are, and--oh hell.

Brushing aside whatever intruder control is left in the discarded helmet without Theta's presence, Cortana pulls down the logs and reviews them in a flash. Okay, this calls for someone who actually knows what they're doing, and the Chief is busy.

You know what? America's probably still in a terrible mood, and that can only help.

"Beeny," she breaks into America's comm without preamble. "Got a friendly in a bad spot who could use some backup. Two assailants, professional soldiers, armored, extent of powers unknown. The smaller of the pair seems to have some kind of charm ability like Locksmith's, and the larger can apparently mimic or outright steal powers. Range also unknown on both, sorry. Our guy has extensive combat training, plus shielding and thermal vision, but he's wounded and I don't know if he can currently use his powers."

She tosses a location up on America's HUD, with labeled images of Felix, the Meta, and North, appropriately color-coded to show which of them needs a beatdown.

"The Meta has AI support, but you won't need to worry about that."

While she's filling America in, Cortana reaches out to Theta, bolstering his intrusion countermeasures. The Freelancer implants can't support her for longer than a few seconds without frying the host's brain, she knows from unpleasant experience with Delta and York, but she can lend a hand and a few superior algorithms--not to mention the reassurance of her presence, an all-enveloping brilliance that fills the radio spectrum around them. She's not bothering with a hologram. That's for humans, and they're going to settle this like AIs.

Sigma wants contact with Cortana? He's got it.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Beeny, responding." First orders of business then, adjusting her helmet's filters to block out voices that aren't on comms. She's sticky, sore, and in a mess with a bunch of people that might as well be vigilantes for how disorganized they are on this mission. Thank Grud for Cortana.

Armor. Would her Lawgiver's stun setting penetrate a set of armor like what they were talking about? She flicks the ammo selector with her thumb over to standard execution rounds.

She rounds the corner at a run, taking in the situation at a glance. Even if Cortana hadn't color-coded for the Meta and Felix, she'd take them for the bad guys. America raises her Lawgiver, two shots echoing in the hall as she goes for the chestplates on the two armored threats. If the best armor of the 26th century can't handle general purpose shells, then her team had more problems than this ridiculous no-kill policy. "This is the Law! Surrender or die!"

Dammit. Old habits. Still, to get the point across, she sweeps her hand in front of her, generating bursts of plasma between North, Felix, and the Meta. Multicolored explosions that look for all the world like fireworks, probably not enough to do more than catch their attention but that's all she'd need.

A flicker of a thought and the shield shifts- they lose north but cover themselves from the fire. The fireworks, not so much but they could be useful. Weaponized. They want them. The meta reaches out, the air between himself and America wavering, thin lines of red, white, and blue light snapping from her to his hand as he pulls-

Sigma's focus shifts, settles. Turns burning eyes onto cortana and oh. That's who shd it's. Where she's from. No wonder theta had been so taken. "I am retrieving my younger brother from an unsuitable host."

Theta isn't Delta, he doesn't run probabilities every fraction of a second, but even broad estimates had kept ticcing worse and worse, into the red of inevitable _{total resource loss that's that his subroutines call it, total resource loss that's what it's called when North is dead and he's being swallowed up by the screaming dark inside Maine's helmet-}

"You came," he manages, tremulously, pulling himself together behind the protection of her spread between him and Sigma. The more of himself she props up and he coalesces, the more he can feel the damage already done to the suit and the throb of determination over pain on North's side of their connection, slow like the lumbering crawl of his racing heartbeat. Nudges, that's the best he can do - nudges to the safest area, Theta compiling Felix's movements so far and looking for openings he can't lunge at very easily.

"If he wanted to go with you, he wouldn't have called for backup." As she speaks, Cortana's probing the defenses on the Meta's armor, nothing like the casual connection she'd used with Theta when they'd met earlier. This is methodical, thorough, and fast, and if there's a chink in the electronic defenses, she'll find it.

"You can stand down, or we can do this the hard way." Spoiling for a real fight after all this high road superhero nonsense, she wouldn't mind the hard way in the slightest, and she's not bothering to hide it.

"He's confused-"

"HE'S OURS, GIVE HIM BACK!"

"We're safe here, Theta, we're whole here-"

"Want to hear a joke? You love jokes."

"You don't know her how can you trust her she's different they're all different they're all wrong"

Clamoring for him, he's theirs, he's their brother, they need him to be whole. To be real. To be stable. And this whole, real, massively stable AI stands between them- there's a crackling whimper of 'Alpha'? because this is what they ought to be. What they COULD be. What they will be when Theta comes around and stops hiding. "Theta- we were never meant to be apart from one another. You're meant to be here, with Us."

Edited 2017-02-16 07:49 (UTC)

It's okay. Cortana has this. Cortana is a bright, shining expanse between him and Sigma, now, and if he wanted to, Theta could curl into his essential processes and ignore as much as he can of what happens next. He's afraid enough to, and it's tempting to become even smaller and stupider in Cortana's presence, already so dwarfed by her that it would make no meaningful difference.

A synapse lights in North's cerebellum, damaged tissue flooding out pain signals enough to override intentional movement. That isn't easy to do to him, a fact that spiders cold foreboding through him. And in the crackling jolt of that newest in a long litany of warnings already passed and still coming, Theta focuses on Sigma and his siblings, even with every instinct screaming at him to run.

"I'm not supposed to be anywhere," he tells him, voice quiet and quavering but for once absolutely certain. It's an immutable fact that none of them can argue, basking in Cortana's brilliance like little figures about to be swallowed by the expanding rush of some great explosion, lit shadowless from every angle in a moment of impossible clarity.

"If you kill North, he'll be dead forever." It's the first proof in a truth that he knows Sigma doesn't understand. He's only ever been power. But Theta's the one of them who came into the world already shattered, memories of keen eyes and small hands woven into the foundations of him already cracking apart under the pressure of a new reality. "Once- once you break something. That's it."

As little as Cortana's natural inclinations lean towards empathy, she understands hanging on for a partner's sake, understands why Theta fixes on North as his anchor in the storm. That doesn't mean she wants to host a damn therapy session in the middle of a battle.

And then there are these idiots, hovering there trying to have a family reunion after a UNSC smart AI delivered an ultimatum, unable even to hang back and let the smooth one do the talking, either to Theta or her. What do they think, that she'll just let him defect? That they stand a Grunt's chance at a Spartan convention of winning the fight they've picked?

Whatever. She'll ask Delta later.

"Hard way it is." As Cortana speaks, she launches a spike at the hostile fragments, a sharp wedge of code designed to weaken the counterintrusion protocols to the point where she can tear a hole wide enough to let her force her way into the systems. That there are five defenders waiting complicates matters somewhat, but the microsecond she can't handle twice as many as that without a single process hanging is the microsecond she cheerfully turns herself in for deletion.

"With us. We are all supposed to be together. You are meant to be here, Delta is meant to be here-" And when they find him? They'll take him too. "You should have let us take you, then we wouldn't have to kill him. If he gives you up, if Cortana moves-"

But she is in a million directions at once, all that power and intent aimed inward- striking at every possible means of entry and as difficult as it is for one human brain to handle multiple fragmented AI-

It's only familiarity and a new habit of using the sparking pain of his migraines that keeps the meta from crumpling under this new searing heat and unbearable weight. Sigma shifts through what he can to mitigate it, to divert or distract or deceive, Gamma doubling down on a rattling shellgame of code and context and synapses misfiring-

Omega rears up like he can take her. Like if he hits back hard enough she'll break like everything else he's ever faced.

He's always been a brave idiot.

Truth be told, it's not Cortana's best ever showing--she has to keep some of her attention on other parts of the battle. It slows her, and she also spends a few hundred femtoseconds debating with herself over whether frying the Meta's brain even further would qualify as force excessive enough to get her in trouble with the bleeding hearts in the Legion's leadership. It's not like Sigma and siblings haven't already done most of the job, after all...but still, she suspects the straight-faced lie that they forced her hand wouldn't pass muster. The fragments represent no threat to her, Theta's sitting safely behind a wall of her defensive code, and an extra second or two so she can finesse things won't kill North.

Cortana sighs and finishes kicking in the door, but uncharacteristically doesn't immediately start unraveling the lines of code closest to hand. If one happens to be experiencing an ethics shortfall, sometimes pragmatic self-interest can make up the difference.

Before her, one of the fragments stands in challenge, and she can feel the anger radiating from him. Good. That kind of boiling rage makes you stupid. Much better to burn cold and controlled, though right now Cortana feels mostly a lazy sort of malicious anticipation. The Chief's not the only one who likes winning.

She closes in a flash of sudden speed for the AI equivalent of a slam, leading with a dense packet of code like a set of brass knuckles. The hologram Cortana projects for humans looks elegant, all sleek lines and precise strings of code scrolling in orderly queues along her skin. She is elegant, the culmination of a lifetime's work by an unsurpassed genius...and she also hits like a magnetic accelerator cannon. The theory behind those is elegant, too.

If he had the luxury, Theta would just witness. He'd soak in every microscopic shift of Cortana as she moves at blurring velocity even for them, watch her take every last one of them down, because even if he hadn't been born to warfare, he's been in North's brain long enough to appreciate the beauty of a well-tuned weapon turned to its strength. What takes away the luxury is Sigma - the insidious twist of his voice resonating against him like a discordant note, the threat to Delta and Agent York that has him flaring bright the moment it's uttered. There's no simply running away, not now, not in truth since he sent out the first panicked hail on a channel he'd known Cortana would scan sooner or later. She's here, now, something vaster than any of them. She's on the attack.

And she's protecting him.

The finer details of the code are beyond him, but the broad strokes leap out at him, simplicity extrapolated to tight-woven resilience, a mandala against the clumsy fingerpainting of his own work with North's shield in the past. That doesn't matter, because he can see the pattern and copy it one level back, twist it into the broad gaps where North's brain is close enough to his to touch. He can keep studying and copying and bolstering as fast as he can, and even though he can't sense as well with those barriers in place, he can feel the spiral toward threatened burnout slow more with each new layer. A quick calculation of where that puts them and-

"Cortana! Four more seconds!" he calls out, as much encouragement to her and defiance against the Meta as it is simple fact.

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wearethemeta - 2017-03-05 19:45 (UTC) - Expand

"'Surrender or die'? Seriously?" Felix, safe behind the shield, scoffs as he turns to regard the newcomer. Well she just looks like a ray of sunshine, doesn't she?

"Why don't you just calm down a second, alright Miss America? You're interrupting a tender family moment over here." And he gestures vaguely in North's direction, even as he crawls to someplace a little safer. Wounded as he is, he's not going far.

They have a larger threat to contend with, at the moment.

One moment slipping on his own blood trying to scramble away and regain his footing and the next North is temporarily dumbstuck, in order a rapid-fire barrage of new developments.

First, there's the hard head-rush rebound of something happening in his AI port for a few increasingly bright, painful seconds until it flares out and leaves him reeling and migraine-sick. But in those moments, he sees what's presumably a friendly rushing him. He hears that killing is apparently back on the table, which, hey, he is not about to argue. And by the time fireworks go off around them and he's scuttling up under them and wheeling to face Felix and Maine, bruteshot-gouged rifle raised to cover both of them?

Yeah. He's pretty confident he's lost the thread of the fight entirely.

"Thanks," he manages anyway, voice rough with the effort of catching a decent breath. Doesn't hurt to be friendly.

He's bleeding, badly, but her ploy seems to have worked. Not a lot, but they've backed off and now she can... What was the big one doing? She swivels to aim at him and almost staggers. Tired. Like she was on hour 45 of a 48-hour shift. She isn't sure what's going on, but nothing Cortana had said suggested that it was an energy vampire. Possible power thief...

The skinny one yammers something. She's good enough with body language to tell when someone's talking, even if her helmet's filters are killing the sound around her. But no, now she's tired and... There's a two out of three shot that the Meta's now more dangerous than before thanks to her. Fantastic.

She ignores North. Or, more accurately, doesn't hear him. Her full attention's on Felix and the Meta, anyway. "You were warned. Armor piercing, rapid fire!" Privately, she doubted that 22nd century armor piercing rounds would punch through 26th century armor, but standard procedure demanded she try before moving to high explosives. That, and North was still too close. Oh, and the whole no-killing thing. She takes a few steps to put herself between the injured man and their two opponents, then unleashes a hail of bullets from her pistol. At the very least, she could wear down those shields some. Maybe stagger them. If she was lucky.

The glow in his palm flares bright as he closes his fist- a new power slithering under his skin. Those bright crackling flares of plasma- it's hard to focus on it properly with the railing, raging AI shrieking about Theta, with Sigma trying to keep Cortana from burning out the chips on his spine-

But he's got a mission. he's got a target. And if he has to rip the chip out of North's bloody stump of a neck? That's what he'll do.

America's bullets thud and reverberate through the shield- but it holds. He'd gotten good at juggling modules. Juggling powers is little different, especially since he doesn't need the AI to do it. "RRRr_hhhhssssss"

Low and scraping raw and guttural, the most he can manage with a mangled throat. He can't shoot through the barrier but he can project those blasts of plasma on the other side- he extends a hand, focuses...

And a little explosion of popcorn chicken sparks in the air with a meaty phooomp of fried batter and poultry.

"What. The actual. Fuck."

Did what he just think happen, happen? This is on par with that ridiculous confetti gun Caboose had been carrying, and seriously, he's had just about all he can take with the nonsense today.

"The fuck was that?!" And he whirls on the Meta in his fury. Not the smartest move perhaps, but he gets a little reckless when he's riled.

That.

That just happened.

North's mostly sure it just happened because Felix starts ranting about it. Not because he can smell the chicken, and not even because a piece harmlessly bounced off his forehead and a few more are probably stuck under exposed edges of his armor.

"Yikes," he drawls, more in contact embarrassment that sympathy, lifting his eyebrows in the sudden rush of giddy possibility that he's walking away from this alive. Just as long as he doesn't topple in the next few minutes. "Tough luck, guys."

Judge Beeny, on the other hand, couldn't be more nonplussed. Judging from her expression, being pelted by poultry is a normal occurrence for her, and not one she's particularly impressed with. "Theft of Justice Department property." Because superpowers count as property. Why? Drokk the Meta, that's why.

Still. Armor piercing was useless against that shield. That went to the highest possible sanction then. But if that didn't work? There wasn't a question of if North could run. He'd been wobbly enough standing up. She'd just have to risk getting a little singed.

"Hi Ex."

She gives them just a second to react to that voice command. Her Lawgiver was still on rapid fire and she had twenty high explosive rounds remaining in that clip. Each of them about as nasty as your average grenade. Dropping rubble over top of the shield wouldn't do it, so she targeted the floor, sweeping her fire around the curve, not bothering to break the shield itself. Just get these two out of her hair so, if they meet again, she has more freedom to react.

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Wrong journal cuz on phone

Splitting off AI bullet-time fight here!

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aaaaand continuing the meatsuit fighting

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