legionmissions | Out With the Old [modplot]

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.

It's not something they can hold up against- Omega drops, stunned, leaving the remainder scrambling to throw together a familiar scenario for another Smart AI they'd known. But her pattern and persona is unfamiliar- there's no well mapped routes to breaking or disorientation. The best they can manage is a packet of shell games while trying (failing) to wait out this luminous beam of Fuck You in glowing blue wrath.

Gamma balks, the coward, Sigma cannot spin any lie, any scenario long enough, strong enough to divert Cortana's attention. Joy and terror wail and rail behind The Meta's eyes as a familiar migraine kicks in and adjusts his focus just enough for him to pull in the wrong place.

To grab the wrong thing from Beeny.

A strategic retreat is impossible with so pervasive an invading force- the only opportunity for survival? TO retire. Shut down and leave The Meta on his own. Floundering.

"Next time, little brother." A promise as the fire sputters and dies- if only for the time being.

"'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.

"Rrrr-" Okay, they can still use this. His focus shifts, flexes- and more meaty phoomps of Chicken explode around their prey. If he can BURY THEM in the stuff maybe it'll make shit easier. Build a wall of fried poultry.

A stray hot dog appears- a few burger patties. A spattering of bacon as he figures out what he can and can't do- the sloppy joe slurry is probably the least dignified thing but at this point? he doesn't care. It's a tool and one he can and will use to lethal effect-

As soon as he figures out HOW.

Amidst the meat slinging and the shield holding- the floor buckles.

They don't have flight rings and the Meta? Isn't small, isn't light. He staggers, arms flailing, little explosions of fried chicken and bacon filling the inside of the shield sphere now-

"TURN IT THE FUCK OFF YOU ASSHAT--"

Felix by this point is just a ball of incandescent rage, unable to escape the shield bubble as the ground shifts beneath them, and so unable to attack past it. Instead, he's attempting to swat away the various meats flying around them, even as what appears to be a chain of sausages whaps him in the back of the head.

With a snarl, he tries to make his way towards the Meta, but a flurry of popcorn chicken smacks against the front of his visor, and a second later the floor under his feet cracks and tips him forward.

"Son of a bitch!"

If you'd asked North, three days ago, what a domed energy shield slowly filling with a rising tide of meat looked like, he would not have been able to imagine it in this kind of loving detail. It's bizarrely transfixing, a rack of ribs splatting into the side of the dome as he stares, the explosions courtesy of his mystery rescuer almost a comfort compared to the surreality of the sheer volume that Maine is putting out in there.

The hall is starting to smell really, really good, even with the air thick with the tang of spent rounds.

One of the explosions sends his discarded helmet bounding and skittering along the floor toward them, and he limp-sidesteps to pick it up, still watching as the floor cracks and the shield stutters at what had been its border. A ham steak slides under the gap, flopping mournfully down into the yawning crevasse that goes down at least one floor, and North finally glances back at his presumed ally.

"I'm uh. I'm guessing this is where we retreat?"

America wishes this was the strangest thing she'd ever seen. Watching the dome fill up, she can't help but wonder if this was what an eating contest looked like from inside a fatty's stomach. In the red corner, Fastbelly Frank. And in the blue corner, Expanding Ernie. What a waste.

She spares North a glance. "Only if you don't have any grenades to drop in after them." Sure, she's got more hi-ex rounds in another clip, but she doesn't exactly want to poke her head down there for those two to take a potshot or two.

"We should probably get your top off and put on some bandages, though." She holds out an arm, silently offering to support him. "Putting some distance between us and them takes priority, though." Especially since that shield held up under her explosive rounds. If she ever meets the big guy again, she's gonna need more gun.

"Hah. If only." Rifle maglocked to his back, helmet to his hip and he thinks he has everything. Even Theta, who's silent and humming along in a pitch he doesn't quite recognize, but there all the same. That's all that matters.

"Appreciate it." He wince-grins and takes the offer of support gratefully, gritting out a tight, pained sound as he holds onto her shoulder and shuffles them into the fastest gait he can manage. Not even a jog and it still leaves him panting, and he thinks distantly that he is going to be irritated if he dropped a lung because of that little snake.

Edited 2017-02-21 20:27 (UTC)

"Can't have everything, I guess." She hasn't holstered her Lawgiver yet, but at least that's a one-handed weapon. No point in going completely defenseless.

If she had been on the team for longer than a few days, America would have suggested using the flight rings instead. It would be faster and save North Dakota a lot of effort. Unfortunately, she's used to hoofing it, though she'll take whatever weight he feels like dropping onto her without complaint. That said, given the amount of fire-suppressant foam that's been dumped on her, his gauntlets will likely be sticky after.

But that, like introductions, can wait until they're in a safer space.

Fortunately, a studio can't be too open. By design, there are all manner of little hidden areas behind the scenes - like the dressing room where North finds himself flopping down onto a chair just as his legs are starting to go shaky, the adrenaline of the fight wearing off and threatening him with the rising swell of pain and confusion. He props his rifle up within easy reach before he goes to work at the catches of his armor, gloves predictably gummy with the foam that's somehow melted down to a viscous slick in patches.

"That was some great timing back there," he comments, making conversation mostly to distract himself from the way those dozen-plus slices and jabs are layering with the pounding in his head into a nauseating muddle he has to fight to keep thinking through. "Thanks."

"Thank Cortana. She spotted you and asked for me." America doesn't remove her helmet. She's routed her comms through it out of habit, rather than purely the flight ring. Something she'll adjust later. "Judge Beeny. She must've been in a hurry, didn't catch your name."

No handwashing stations. A pain, but she can just peel off her gloves and slip on a pair of personal search facilitators from a belt pouch. At least those were sterile. The first aid kit is next. "This won't be pretty work, by the way. I haven't gotten whatever passes for a kit in the future yet." Stapler, sewing needle and thread, some coagulant foam, anti-rad cream, spray-on skin, bandages... The basics. She watches him disrobe and, in a pretty convincingly sincere voice, says "Sorry."

Out With the Old [modplot]

Wrong journal cuz on phone

Splitting off AI bullet-time fight here!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

aaaaand continuing the meatsuit fighting

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)

(no subject)