Out With the Old [modplot]

[letsgolegion]

Who| Everyone who signed up
What| The rescue of the NPC Legionnaires
Where| A movie studio in New New York
When| Takes place the same time as "Books of Magic"
Warnings/Notes| N/a

The studio where the Legionnaires are being held is swarming with supervillains. It's a trap, of course. But that doesn't mean they have to walk right into it. They have a plan, and now it's time to put it into action.

The Legion of Supervillains are expecting the non-native Legionnaires to be pushovers. They're about to discover just how crushingly, devastatingly wrong they are.

Comments

[nofortunateson]

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."

[steelandtemper]

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.

[wearethemeta]

"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.

[steelandtemper]

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.

[nofortunateson]

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.

[wearethemeta]

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.