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

[steelandtemper]

"Ha!" Cortana's bark of laughter comes over the comms, sharp-edged and approving. "Not bad for the new guys."

Her hologram is standing right at the edge of the two-meter limit she'd indicated before, hands on hips. "Take a look at the projector, would you? I need to see if it's reparable."

Now that the defenders are down, the panel that's been ripped from the wall is obvious, as is the knife someone stuck in a cluster of wires leading into a device that is presumably the hard light projector.

[nofortunateson]

"I can take a look, but I'm not exactly the tech expert," he warns, trotting over and taking in the damage at a glance. "-apparently, neither were these folks."

Theta overrides the HUD just enough to give a little ticker-scroll of Cortana's most important identification details under her name, piping up helpfully. "It's okay. She can see it too."

"Huh." AI. Full comms access. He wrestles the knife out, hopefully giving a more unobstructed view of the damage. He's unruffled by the revelation that Theta's giving access to his visuals - if anything, he's bemused and a little proud of him taking the initiative like that. "Well that makes this easier."

[steelandtemper]

As long as nothing's on physical or metaphorical fire, Cortana solidly respects the International Dibs Protocol when it comes to human partners (if nothing else), so she accepts whatever limited feed Theta's providing without pushing for more.

"They missed the power main. That's almost a shame. It would have taken care of at least one of them." Generating physically tangible holograms pulls a lot of power, and having that trying to get to ground from a hand down through the soles of the feet is the sort of thing that leads to death certificates reading 'cardiac arrest secondary to electrocution.'

"Okay, steal the line out from the camera and swap it for the one they cut. The connectors are standardized." In North's HUD, if Theta chooses to pass it through, the proper cable and where to reconnect it is highlighted. It would take a sim trooper to screw it up.

[nofortunateson]

"Just can't kill 'em ourselves, right?" North muses appreciatively, unhooking the segment of cable as directed, working to patch it in while Theta hums along in the background.

It's a learning process, feeling out what Cortana needs to do her job (less than he would have thought for basic operations, more than he would have thought for optimal functioning) and what he can let her hitch onto (a whole, whole lot more than he had ever realized), and fast as he picks up on it in human time, on AI time he's obviously still very much learning. But he's focused, multitasking between opening the incursion-locked elements to Cortana and watching the ground around them for any sign of a hostile stirring.

[steelandtemper]

"Stupid RoE, but what're you gonna do?" Cortana says, and behind the two of them, her hologram shrugs. "The civilians around here think war is something that happens to other people."

In digital space, Cortana's not quite all out, but she's working hard, her demeanor not nearly so relaxed as her hologram's, and her personal presence flickers in and out of Theta's awareness as she re-prioritizes her attention from nanosecond to nanosecond across all her ongoing tasks. It's going to take North something on the order of seconds, maybe minutes to finish the repairs, and she has things to do besides wait around for humans. Her connection to the armor never wavers, but from moment to moment it could be Cortana herself, or merely one of her dumb subroutines quietly passing data back and forth. The overall impression is of someone fully capable of kicking in Theta's door, but who simply isn't bothering...or, more charitably, of a busy supervisor only occasionally checking in.

[nofortunateson]

Between being surrounded by stunned enemies and having Cortana flitting in and out of his processes, Theta's working harder than he ever has while not taking active fire, and he almost misses the shape at their eight o'clock that shifts, groggily lifting its head and-

"North!"

"Got it." Rifle dropped from tucked under his arm to his hand, and he lazily puts two stun rounds between the shoulders at point blank range, scanning the rest and putting one more in the side of another who chooses a particularly poor time to groan. Then he's back to the panel, murmuring to Theta in the tense quiet of working as quickly as he can through the unfamiliar routine of swapping out wires. "So is Cortana patched in to my armor now?"

"Is that okay?" He has an idea of how little North actually understands what Cortana is, so even when he smiles and shakes his head, he frets.

"It's fine, Theta. You're doing great, but I'll take all the help I can get right now." He hooks up the last connector and gives it a scan, watching the play-along on his HUD blink green in approval. "How's that?"

[steelandtemper]

"Let's find out." Simultaneously to human senses, one Cortana disappears and another pops into existence at North's side, though this one is lower resolution, looking much more like a standard insubstantial hologram than the other construct had. "Pipe's a bit narrow," she says, inspecting her hands critically. "Oh well, no harm to anything but my vanity."

As Cortana's speaking, more hard light forms are appearing around them, simple white ones with no fancy detailing, and in short order, everyone North took down is thoroughly and professionally restrained. Depending on their powers, it might not hold them for long when they wake up, but at least she'll know instantly from the feedback of the holograms being destroyed.

"Damn, these things are useful," she says, looking down at the prisoners, or more specifically, their bonds. Being able to influence the physical world without cajoling a human into doing it is a new experience for her particular brand of AI, and she likes it.

"Thanks..." a brief pause only Theta will notice as Cortana checks something with Delta "...Hardball. You too, Theta."

[nofortunateson]

Just like that, everyone's pinned down. A few swapped cables into a projector and the have control over this corridor, and North can't imagine what kind of idiot he'd have to be to not see the advantage in that.

"Any time, Cortana." He lifts his hands in a lazy salute, picking his way back the way he came. He has a perimeter to keep prowling.

"I'll leave our comms channel open in case we can help again!" Maybe not the most probable, but it's possible, he and North already helped Cortana once and maybe they're get to work with her again.

"See you back at base?"