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]

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.