RESISTANCE IS FUTILE - [modplot/log catchall]

[letsgolegion]

Who| Everyone who signed up
What| "Resistance is Futile" plot catchall
Where| All over the place, but mostly Colu
When| After the network briefings and deployment.
Warnings/Notes| cw: zombies, body transformation (probably). If your subthread has something triggery pop up, put it in a subject of the one of the comments.



The entire planet Colu is a sprawling urban mess, one of the worst environments to fight zombies. Yes, the cities are clean and impressive and yes they're meticulously planned, but they're planned for elegance, efficiency, and ease of transportation -- not defense. While Colu had suffered under the yoke of various oppressors in the past, that was over a millenia ago, and they've grown complacent, thinking their world untouchable due to their technological superiority.

Now they're paying for it. Robo-zombies swarm through the various mega-cities, spreading their disease by touching or wounding their prey. Due to the many walkways, hover-lift tubes, maintenance tunnels, and sewer systems, there seems to be no way of stopping them.

When the Legion first arrives, it seems hopeless. The Coluan Home Defense Forces aren't used to combat and are struggling to set up defensive zones. But then something unexpected happens.

Pods drop in all over Colu from orbit. The CHDF regard them with suspicion and disdain, but they have their orders, and the civilians regard them with fear, despite word starting to spread about who's come to help.

Kid Q's voice comes over the comms and while it's hard to hear it through the crackling, she sounds absolutely delighted.

"Look alive, folks, we just got a miracle. It took some negotiating with the CHDF, but they finally relented on accepting some help from others beyond us."

The pods all burst open and Robotican combat mechs start rolling and marching out, spreading out over all of Colu.

"The Roboticans haven't been able to translate it to a cure because the virus was meant to interact with them differently than organics, but due to their disaster preparedness, they were able to develop a block to the Brainiacs' virus and only suffered a few casualties. Robotican leadership says they're eager to have their chance to make reparations to organics by defending them from this threat -- and that they're honored to stand with the Legion."

It's not a magic fix. It'll still be a deadly struggle. But at least they've got more than the inexperienced CHDF at their backs.

"Let's make the most of it, Legionnaires."

[ooc: This will be used as a plot catchall, but you can make your own log posts in Legion Missions set in the plot if you like. All major plot parts on Colu will be set up here, with "The Reject Pile" part set in the Legion World comm (with an accompanying network post). That said, if you'd like to set individual plot threads on Legion World, you can also start your own Legion World posts in legionworld.]

Comments

[whyarewehere]

And with that, Rich has officially put more thought into Grif's zombie plan than Grif has. It's fine though, because it all just validates what Grif already knows: That he's a genius.

As for the zombies, Grif himself has been cleaning house at high speed with a metal bat. He's taking a moment to catch his breath, and it breaks up the delivery of his grousing a bit.

"It was such a good plan! But no, now they're robot zombies and I'm in space!"

Alright, there. He's good. He makes a "wait one" gesture, then charges off for another round of zombie bashing. They crumple one after another in a smooth line as Grif loops around and ends up back next to Rich again to pant drop a new plan.

"I got it: we go all Kevin Costner and find a water planet."

[iamresponding]

"Nah. We don't know if these nanites can just spread through contact with the water. Even if they couldn't, it's not like the mechanoforms can drown, right? They could probably just bundle together like a little floating zombie bomb waiting to touch something and go off, like colonies of ants during floods. Nasty."

Grif had gotten the zombies all lined up nice and pretty, and bonked the stragglers, so Rich vaporizes the entire front few lines of robozombies with Nova Force, something that definitely attracts the attention of most of the main horde.

Then he starts running, occasionally turning and sniping as he runs, to throw the horde off balance. Grif is here to just grab him and book it if he needs to, but the point is actually to go a little slow - not slow enough to get caught, but at least slow enough to keep them all following. They need to make sure a solid arm of the main horde is extending where they need it to, rather than just a small group breaking off.

"I bet you there's a planet where everything floats. Islands in the sky, that kind of thing. That could work, 'cause they'd have trouble coordinating well enough to fly something onto one. We could commandeer our own island, put all the stuff we need on it, gather together some hover ships and some crews, do supply runs wherever we need to go..." He grins. "Two words: sky pirates."

Rich is definitely the type that can actually make a billowy, half-unbuttoned shirt work.

[whyarewehere]

"Oh c'mon, they'd have to short out eventually and you know it."

That's how robots work, that's always how robots work. Water is a good plan. As they break away from the horde, though, Grif's back to riding herd on the edges of the zombie mass. He's fast enough to pick off overachievers here and there that are getting a bit too ahead of the rest, helping to keep them more or less in a controlled shape. He can be hard to talk to when he's whipping around like that (and it's hard for him to hear at speed), so Rich hits him with the new idea between runs.

There is an eyeroll, but it's conveyed with an upward toss of Grif's chin. He has a helmet on, he has to telegraph it.

"Don't get too excited, who are we gonna pirate from if everybody's zombies?"

And who, pray tell, is he gonna charm with his devastating sky pirate looks if everybody's zombies? It is a bleak potential future full of wasted opportunities, to be sure.

[iamresponding]

"What I figure is other people will probably get the same idea as us, right? To be pirates? Except they'll probably steal from innocent people. So we'll pirate the pirates. We can steal their ill-gotten gains, keep what we need to survive, and give some of it to innocent people that need supplies, in exchange for teaching us any skills they've got that are good for survival."

You will take his pirate plan from his cold, dead fingers, Grif. If the apocalypse happens, he's going to wear that flowy shirt and you can't stop him.

They make a quick turn, then another, and then it's just a dead sprint towards the end of a barricaded street.

This part of things is the most dangerous, because the street widens, making the line of zombies they have to defend against wider. Rich stops to do one wide, sustained blast to thin the herd and knock the crowd back and then he bolts.

[whyarewehere]

"Zombie-fighting sky pirate Robin Hood?" He has to clarify. This is where they're going with this? ...That could be okay, really.

But they'll have to work out the details later. They're running out of breathing room. Even with Rich's energy blasts and Grif adjusting the line, the numbers are finally telling in the open.

Fortunately, they don't have much farther to go.

"C'mon!" Grif yells. He grabs Rich and makes the final charge, hauling him straight up the wall with all the momentum he can pull. Oh god, his legs are on fire, his chest hurts, he regrets everything, but they reach the top. Once they're over the lip, Grif lets go and flops gratefully down. Dignity, for the moment, can suck it.

[bachido]

The zombies converge towards the center of the city, to a tall building where Kubo has been fiddling with several machines, tapping out various rhythms on the body of his shamisen, while fellow Legionnaires engage the zombies. Rich and Grif's race has pulled them into bottleneck after bottleneck, and the chase has given Kubo all the time he needs . . .

To prerecord his percussion lines.

Surrounded by a circle of looper machines, microphone clipped to the collar of his robes, Kubo raises his bachi. He's been given a job only the Legion Bard can do - and he's about to do it to the best of his considerable ability.

He strikes the electrically charged strings of his shamisen. A wave of sound slams into the zombies, rippling out through the city, a physical and powerful force, perfectly pitched.

"If you must blink!"

Kubo's voice fills the city.

He raises his bachi, holds his foot over the pedal of the first of the loopers. He doesn't need to save his voice for this performance. He'll only need it just this once. And no zombie in the city must be left without knowledge of where to come to be eliminated.

He howls at the top of his lungs.

"DO IT NOW!"

The initial note when he brings his bachi down again strikes the robo zombies, pushing them back as before, resolving suddenly into a riff familiar to those who know classical Earth music.

He engages the first looper's prerecorded percussion and the cover really gets going.

[iamresponding]

It's working. That one arm Rich and Grif had drawn away with their harassment was successfully peeling away from the education creches being evacuated, and now they were all pouring in. Roboticans with energy shields and turrents were protecting the drop at their backs, knocking any strays down before they could sneak up the wall behind them.

Which meant the main force on the wall could deal with the seething crowd in front of them, that was trying to scale the wall at the dead end of the bottleneck. They had a perfect little killzone down there, with a safe perch above.

"Alright, people, we can't keep them down for good, but lucky for us, we don't have to! We just need to keep knocking them down long enough to keep them distracted until the evac teams get those kids out of there."

He starts blasting down at the surging mob below, reducing them to tiny pockets of nanites that have to regenerate all over again into full robozombies.

"Light 'em up!"