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

[captainbuzzkill]

His eyes widen with understanding.

And then he gets extra stubborn about it. Naturally.

Using his teke he puts all the magnets on the teleporter pad.

"Show me how to work it. I'll send you out first with the magnets. Even though you can't lift them, they'll at least be out of here, so you can go back to the checkpoint and get some people to help carry them. Just set the teleporter up so it sends you close to base."

He walks over to the console to stand with her, unsteadily, waiting for her to show him how it works.

"I'll just teleport myself after you, or...if it's something where someone has to work the controls, I'll hole up here and hold them off until you can come back with help."

...he says as blood streams down his face, wincing unconsciously with each metallic fist pounding against the bubble.

[isthisapidge]

"Teach you? Look at you, you can barely walk! Your shield is not going to hold up for the time it'll take me to do that!"

Unfortunately, Pidge can out-stubborn him any day and the zombies are closing in.

"You have to go! You're the only one who can do this!"

[captainbuzzkill]

"You don't have powers that'll let you shield yourself! I've got a better chance of holding out until you can bring back help! The second you teleport me out, they'll get into the room and that's it."

She's badass sure. She'd been amazing against Nuclon, but she was badass against a single powerful villain or a group. Her powers were not ideal for swarm tactics.

But it's more than that. His eyes widen and look almost wild with fear.

"I can't leave you here. I can't do it, because..."

Oh no, he said 'because' and now he has to actually follow it up with something.

So he says it. He says what he's actually thinking. When he'd been floating there alone in space, he'd told himself that if he survived, he wasn't going to let fear get in the way of things. He was just going to...he was going to go for it. For better or worse. Maybe it'd just blow up in his face but things had worked out with Wendy, right? They'd at least stayed friends.

So the words just start spilling out of him, the same way they did when Wendy was lying on the ground in front of him down in the bunker, looking like she'd drowned.

"Because I care about you too much. Like, as in...y'know. I like you." He winces. "As in I like, like you. And I know this is the worst timing ever to say it, but if I don't get out of here, I want you to know, because even if you don't feel the same way, you deserve to know you're cared about. And also so you can understand why I can't go first."

He shakes his head frantically, tears in his eyes, and takes her by the hand.

"I can't. I can't do it. Just...let me do this. Please. I've got a better chance of holding them off. And even if they get me, there's still a chance someone might figure out a cure, right? I survived losing myself once, I can survive it again. But I can't just walk away and leave you so that you have to go through that, too."

[isthisapidge]

Pidge's eyes also go wide.

He-

She had no idea-

That he could even feel that way is just-

The lump in her throat is almost impossible to swallow around. She feels tears prick the corners of her eyes. For just a few moments, all she can do is stand there agape.

Her awareness of time is as good as anyone's but it feels like an eternity as she takes what he actually just said to her, and as a few of her own feelings, feelings she had dismissed as just "good friendship," suddenly solidified into something...different.

Her heart twists in her chest. There's no way they can both get out of here. And there's no way they can get a cure without the technology they can salvage from this and...she doesn't believe him when he says he'll survive the turning. OK, true maybe he'll survive, but he'll never really be the same and she knows that.

If she thinks about this any more, she'll talk herself out of her plan, and they'll both be turned.

She pulls her hand away from his, and puts both of them on his shoulders. She can't look at him. If this is really how he feels, then he'll understand.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, and shoves him backwards towards the teleporter.

[captainbuzzkill]

Her putting her hands on his shoulders is what puts him off guard. There's that stupid internal, She's touching me! With her actual hands! On my shoulders! that happens, and he sees the tears in her eyes and wonders what she's going to say.

He doesn't expect to be shoved. (Even though he probably should have.)

"What are you s - aah!"

He tips backwards right over the console, and when he hits the floor, instead of landing helplessly on his back, he instinctually tucks into a backward roll, so that he manages to land in a crouch.

(Wash taught them well).

The thing is, that roll puts him right on the teleporter pad with the magnets. The moment he realizes that, he looks up at her, his stomach dropping. Tears prick his eyes, too, and they glow bright blue.

His teke is heavily tied into his emotions, and that's obvious now more than ever. Telekinectic energy whooshes around the room, the bubble curling protectively around her, his subsconscious trying to wrap her up and keep her safe. He reaches towards her with his arm, and a teke tendril extends past his hand, trying to reach her, trying to stop her from working the console.

"NO!"

[isthisapidge]

It's too late. She slams her fist down on the button and the teleporter whirs to life.

"Just go! Find the team! I can hold out here!"

Her cheeks are stained with tears and her teeth are gritted. Tears are OK, but she can't go farther. She needs Dipper to believe she'll be OK. Maybe she can settle for believing that she believes it.

Then, suddenly there's a force on her hand. Just for a moment, his teke surrounds her wrist, trying to pull her to him.

This isn't fair. It's not fair. It's not fair that he just dropped this on her now and it's not fair that she has to do this to him after he just told her and-

The connection breaks, and the last thing Dipper will see before he makes the jump is her bayard lighting up as she turns to face the horde...

[captainbuzzkill]

The light envelopes him and their salvage and then he's outside and can see the base in the distance.

He lets out a choked noise, the kind of anguished sound someone makes when they've been stabbed in the heart. But he doesn't stand there in shock for long.

Out here, there are no zombies and the soldiers and Roboticans are milling around on high alert, but clearly not under attack. That's all about to change because of the zombies spilling up through that lab, and Pidge -

He has to believe that she'll find some way to hold out, to break through them so she can take cover. She's smart. She's one of the smartest people he's ever met. If anyone has a chance of holding out against the zombies without having powers that are particularly good for it, if anyone has a chance to survive on brains and sheer grit alone, she does.

So he gathers up the magnets with his teke, holding them all in a sphere and rockets towards the checkpoint so fast that the wind from his wake almost knocks some soldiers over.

He dumps the batteries in front of the soldier they were supposed to hand them off to and looks for the nearest Legionnaire. To his relief, it's one of the ones he wants to see most.

He runs up and tugs Wash by the hand.

"They got behind the lines and into the lab somehow! They just started spilling out of the vents and penned us in and blocked off our comms. We need to go back! Pidge is still in there!"

His words kick off a sudden shift in the checkpoint as they realize the zone's been compromised. The soldiers and droids start mobilizing to head to the labs, with the Coluan officers yelling out orders with clinical calm. In just a few seconds, it transforms from a guarded area, behind enemy lines, into part of an active war zone.

[unrecovered]

It should've been a milk run.

That's about the only reason Wash didn't object when he'd heard Pidge and Dipper were on a mission together - they were in a safe zone, in an area that should have been completely evacuated and zombie-free. It should be fine.

(It never truly is, in his experience, but that's Wash's own luck more than it is theirs.)

Of course, it's that shit luck that comes into play the second he sees Dipper heading for him, blood on his face and eyes wild, and opens his mouth, and-

Fuck. Fuck.

For a moment, a part of him remembers a few hours ago, remembers how Connie looked when he took the shot, begs whoever is listening not to make him do that again-

In the next moment, he locks that part of him down and starts moving, gripping Dipper's hand and moving between mobilized Roboticans and Coluans. There's no time to deal with that part of him - there won't be any time until this is over - so he just has to keep moving.

He sends a quick message to Cortana - Paladin may be compromised. Be prepared to blow her comms. - and another to the Coluan field commander nearest him - Eyes open - we'll be coming in hot. "We need to move fast," he says to Dipper. "Bubble up and lead the way." And if Dipper can't manage a bubble, then Wash is hurling him right back into what's left of the safe zone and going in on his own. They may have already lost Pidge; they can't lose Dipper too.

[captainbuzzkill]

Wash isn't the only one that can lock parts of himself down and the way Dipper's face flips over from wild terror to something a calmer and emptier is something it shouldn't be able to do -- it's something it wasn't able to do before.

The longer he fights, the more easy it becomes to lock certain things away sometimes.

He bubbles Wash up with him and they rocket in towards the lab at a speed the Coluans and Roboticans can't even keep up with.

"She might have been able to rig the teleporter to send herself somewhere else but..." But if so, they would've seen her outside the checkpoint, right? She's not outside that or outside the lab when they get there. "I think they came up through...it looked like they'd gotten into the ductwork -- maybe through the sewers or something? It was like they were pouring up out of the ground in a few places, like they maybe found a way in underground."

Like something nasty floating up out of a backed up drain.

The two of them go in first, because they can, because they're Legionnaires, and that means they should be in front of a bunch of rank and file soldiers, inexperienced with actual fighting, anyway.

He leads him through the halls, on foot, but wraps them both in teke, staying close enough that Wash can take the lead instead if it turns into a fight. But he's the one that knows the way, and he leads Wash along as fast as they can safely move quietly -- eyes open, ears straining.

They don't run into any zombies on the way into the hall where he left her, but that doesn't mean anything. Quiet is never safe. Quiet is just what happens right before everything goes wrong.

He gets them to the right hallway quickly and Dipper can tell it's the right one because it's a complete wreck. The glass walls of both labs lay shattered on the floor and there's scoring in the ceiling and walls that look like it was maybe made with her bayard.

She fought and she fought hard.

He wouldn't have expected anything less.

There's also blood spattered her and there. Blood is bad. It's possible she got cut getting thrown against the glass but if their claws broke her transuit -- no. No, he has to believe it wasn't from their claws or teeth, that maybe something else cut through, maybe she was still able to keep them from touching her through the tears.

He gestures to the lab they were originally in. The glass walls are all shattered and it's even more wrecked inside than the hall is. There aren't any zombies inside, just a heap of broken equipment and furniture and the shattered casing of the teleporter.

"It was here," he breathes out. "She was here."

And now she's not. He starts pulling wreckage out of the way with his teke, as quietly as he can, but frantically, worried the ceiling might have collapsed on her or hoping to find something, some clue as to where she went...

[unrecovered]

(Dipper has a war face. Dipper has a soldier face. Dipper has a trauma lockdown face. That's something that should rattle Wash deeply - he knows it should - but he's too far into his own lockdown mode to allow that to sink in like it truly should. Instead, it gets filed away for later - end-of-the-mission later, at the earliest.)

"If she'd teleported herself out, she would've contacted us once she was out of jamming range." The fact that she hadn't speaks ugly volumes. Wash lets that settle, filing away the other theories Dipper provides with a note to suggest troops check and barricade the sewers.

Aside from the blip that is Dipper, his motion trackers are silent, and that worries him more than anything else. Either the technoforms are still and waiting for them to walk into a trap, or they're moving in tiny component parts too small for his tracker to pick up instead of as larger whole entities. Either way, it's a bad situation.

The scene in the hallway itself is even worse.

He'd been doing his best to hold out hope, but this much blood means a large transuit breach, which means infection. Pidge would've needed a miracle to avoid being caught and turned, and Wash had stopped believing in those a long time ago. He scans the room while Dipper claws through wreckage, trying to put the fight together. She would've started at the control console, or what's left of it - moved over here - shattered glass suggesting someone went straight through it - the blood starts here - there's more here and something green-

His brain stutters for a moment as he fully realizes what he's seeing: a blood trail leading to what looks like a casing for an older teleportation machine, and Pidge's bayard abandoned on the floor.

This is definitely a trap.

"Dipper. Eyes up." It's all the further warning Dipper gets to be ready for anything as Wash follows the trail cautiously, pistol out and ready. He gets close enough to grab the bayard and maglock it to his hip, then turns his attention to the casing, getting close enough to look in while still keeping enough distance to avoid being grabbed. There's something in there, all right, but it doesn't seem to be moving...

[captainbuzzkill]

Seeing her bayard makes the whole world snap. He just detaches, like he's watching it all from outside his own body.

He remembers feeling this way only once before, during the time everything had hurt the most, when the whole world was yellow. There were a few moments where he'd just disconnected and floated up like he was looking down on himself from above.

That hasn't happened again since then. Until now.

He gets too close, comes up right near Wash, just a step behind him, feeling like he's moving through water. And despite Wash's words, Dipper's eyes go to the ground as he sees something else, something that was left there, abandoned, like her bayard, glittering in the light.

The lenses are cracked.

Seeing her glasses has about the same effect as a punch to the solar plexus. He drops to one knee, without even realizing he's done it, and stops breathing, as he delicately picks up the wire frame and holds it between his fingers.

The blue light extended protectively around Wash and himself suddenly dims, and even though Wash is still technically standing in front of him, he's still down on one knee, completely exposed.

Gutted.

[isthisapidge]

The figure in the teleporter stirs, finally agitated by the light.

At first it simply rocks in place a bit, like someone trying to stand up while drunk. Then it bangs on the side, flat palmed. Once. Twice. It's hand slips, fumbling before it slides in between the glass and the rubble, and with a slow painful creek, it slides open.

The figure crawls out, dragging itself out of it's hiding place, twisting this way and that until it's finally free. The only other sound it's making is a horrible moaning breath, the sound of someone in deep pain.

And Pidge, or the twisted form of what used to be Pidge, fixes her eyes on them both as she claws her way to her feet. She hunches at the sight, metallic tongue flicking across razor teeth.

Organics.

She lets out a hideous screech, loud enough to rattle what's left of the glass walls of the lab, before lunging, claws outstretched, at the small weak wounded prey on the floor.

[unrecovered]

Wash immediately backs up at the first sign of movement, putting himself between the casing and Dipper. He's pretty sure this is bad fucking news, but he needs to know for sure. Deep in his gut he knows he's going to have to do this again, knows he's going to have to take the shot for the second time today, but he can't do it unless he's sure- he can't do it without confirmation-

And there it is.

He pulls the trigger twice as she- it starts to scream, putting two bullets straight through its head. That should have enough stopping power to buy them a little time, and that's all they need to get out-

And then his motion trackers come alive, radar filling with dozens of blips. That scream alerted every goddamn zombie in the vicinity and they need to move. He scoops Dipper up in one arm and sprints for everything he's worth back the way they came. "Move!"

[captainbuzzkill]

The tears start coming before Pidge's screech, trickling silently down his face and then --

BLAM! BLAM!

They don't know that head shots really kill them yet, but they do seem to keep them down and that means...

His screaming is almost as shrill as Pidge's when Wash picks him up like a football and starts sprinting.

"Why did you do that? Why did you do that?!"

But he can hear them all coming and that means they might get pinned down again, it means Wash might get infected like Pidge, because his powers aren't really shield-like, either, so Dipper looks around, sees the glass wall of a lab and the windows beyond, and before any of the mechanoforms have a chance to crowd in, he sweeps Wash up in telekinetic energy and smashes through the lab wall and then the window, getting them outside. The Roboticans and Coluans have already formed a solid defense line to back up the teams going in to clear the lab and he flies them over the line.

Zombies start pouring out through the window, too, chasing him and Wash, but it turns out to be helpful. The zombies pour out of the window like lemmings over a cliff, right into the sights of the Robotican turrets, which make quick work of them.

Safely on the other side of the line, with a wall of turrets and soldiers between them and the lab, Dipper releases his telekinetic grip on Wash. His eyes are glowing blue and his expression is wild. With tendrils of teke spiraling around him, he rounds on Wash, pounding his fists uselessly against the chestplate of his armor, one of them still gripping Pidge's broken glasses. He's holding onto them so tight that the broken lenses are gouging his palm.

"Why did you do that?!" he screams. "What if someone finds a cure, what if we could've changed her back?!"

[unrecovered]

Yeah. That's going to haunt him.

But there's no time or room to think about it, to answer a question that doesn't really have a satisfying answer, because the zombies are in hot fucking pursuit and he can't lose anyone else-

He locks it down, and runs, and then Dipper picks them both up and he flies, out the window and behind the relative safety of some very active friendly turrets. They land, and Dipper rounds on him, demanding answers.

There's still no time. There's still no room. But they're doing this anyway. Honestly, Wash should probably consider himself lucky that Dipper's chosen to go with ineffectual fist pounding instead of literally hurling him into the goddamn atmosphere or something ridiculous like that.

So he stands, and lets Dipper scream, and forces himself to be calm. He has to keep himself together. Nobody can afford for him to fall apart. After a few more seconds, he notices something in Dipper's fist flash in the light, and he grabs Dipper's wrist and forces his hand open, revealing Pidge's broken glasses, smeared with blood-

He plucks them out of Dipper's hand and slips them into his soft storage. He's fine. He's fine.

"It was the only way to get us both out of there. I think you know that."

[captainbuzzkill]

And he's right. Dipper knows he's right.

He also knows that it's his fault it was that way. Maybe if he hadn't let himself get so shaken, if he hadn't just dropped to his knees and dropped his teke field, Wash wouldn't have had to take the shot. Maybe they could've just knocked her back and run, so that at least she was intact, at least there was a chance she could be cured later.

It's his fault. She's dead because of him, because she gave up her life - her entire self - for him, and because he'd been too weak, too emotional, too careless, too slow...

He's never known this kind of hurt before. He and his sister's parents are young, their great-uncles are still hearty enough to go on adventures, both sets of grandparents are still alive. He's never lost anyone. Anyone. All of his family, friends, and acquaintances had survived Weirdmageddon, and even though Mabel had been zapped away from the Legion's universe by the Time Trapper, he knows she went back home, where it's safe.

The worst loss he'd ever felt before this was when he and Mabel had lost their pet fish, the Emasculator, named such a ferocious name because she was the one fish that survived when they "liberated" her and two others from an ill-kept decorative aquarium at a store behind the shop-keeper's back using empty sandwich bags.

After Emaculator died, they'd insisted on giving her a full Viking funeral at a nearby lake, because, in Mabel's words, "She was a warrior," complete with setting her tiny coffin-boat on fire. Then Mabel had insisted they had to wear black for a week at school in mourning.

A fish. That's it. That's the worst it ever got, just a stupid fish. Even all the other times he'd been hurt, it'd just happened to him. The worst thing that he'd lost had been himself, not someone else.

He wishes he'd lost himself again, wishes his mind had turned into some mutated monster thing, because it's still better than this, still would've felt less hollow. At least as he suffered and existed in anguish - again - he'd have gotten to be someone else while doing it. Way easier to dissociate that way.

He stomps away from Wash and starts to gasp like he can't breathe, like he's hyperventilating, but it's not just hyperventilating, it's the kind of sobbing that happens when someone can't seem to sob fast enough to keep up with how fast their heart is shaking to pieces. The sobs are almost like a clock ticking down, and what they're ticking down to starts to become pretty clear as blue energy starts to swirl faster around Dipper in wild tendrils, as little pebbles and debris start to lift off the ground around him like he's turned the gravity off.

Hal and Hiccup had seen him break down like this last time, during his mental breakdown after his torture at the hands of the Yellows. But this time, Dipper himself knows what's coming, this time he feels himself losing control. As the blue light sucks inward, compressing in, in preparation for the inevitable explosion, Dipper drops to his knees, lets out a grief-stricken scream, buries his head in his arms....

And then it all just...stops. The explosion doesn't come this time. The pebbles fall back down to the ground. The light just...flickers out. There's a tense moment where he just holds himself there, nearly ripping out his hair with white-knuckled fists, squeezing his head between his arms like the pressure is the only thing holding his skull together.

Then his arms suddenly drop, and his hand slides slowly down the side of his face, smearing blood as it goes because of the cut from Pidge's glasses. He looks at the ground for a moment, blinking as tears run down his face, and wipes at his cheeks with the back of his hand, sniffling slightly.

"Okay, I'm done," he says. He thinks he means he's done freaking out, but really he's just...done. Done everything. Done hurting. Done caring. Done.

He climbs to his feet again. "I'll report to Kid Q and tell her what happened. See if she needs me somewhere else, because I can't -" He waves vaguely at the fight nearby. He can fight, but he can't do it here.

"She'll probably want you to stay here on containment anyway. I'll let you know where she puts me, so you don't have to worry."

And that's it. The moment is suddenly over and he's acting like nothing just happened, like he just feels...nothing.