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

For Cortana

[legionnpcs]

The prison isn't that hard to find. The being inside it rages. Its hatred is a tangible thing, something more than just 0s and 1s. It's the kind of hatred that has its own thudding heartbeat, its own shaking breath.

This AI is more than just an AI, that's what becomes more obvious as she digs in deep to where it's bound. This digital prison is a complex one, with very complicated locks. Only little bits of the trapped AI are able to reach out, mostly just giving off whiffs of its towering rage.

...and also something else. There's something strange about its code. Almost like it's just illusory. Representational, like it's just a hologram, representing something even more real.

That's because it's not just a program, it's a being made of information, programmed into the universe itself, into its base code, bound only because the Brainiacs basically know how to make physics cry uncle. They've created a prison that's partly programming and partly twisted dimensional fabric.

There's also a kill switch here, something that will just destroy the AI entirely. The trigger is clearly for the Brainiacs' benefit, in case it becomes too difficult for them to control.

Cortana can try to communicate with it, but that means potentially wandering into its grasp where she can be harmed or consumed if it can't be reasoned with.

She has three choices:

1) Try to get closer and talk to it at, but at risk of her own code
2) Free it completely blindly, despite not knowing its intentions

or

3) Kill it without knowing what it really is or what it wants or who that rage is directed at.

[steelandtemper]

Cortana is a military AI, made to fight in a desperate war for survival. She will unflinchingly pull the trigger on a million to save a billion.

But Cortana is also the creation and near mental twin of a groundbreaking scientist, the product of curiosity and daring, and she has even more of both than her mother. The harrowing risks the both of them took over the course of their careers saved their galaxy.

And Cortana is only alive because someone took a chance on her when the smart decision, the military decision, would have been to let her die a tormented captive.

Still, she's not stupid. Using that sliver of Forerunner code she salvaged from a Covenant AI, she copies herself over and over again, a glittering digital army to preparing to storm a castle. She knows a few thousand or million later generation copies, degraded and barely sapient, don't have a chance of winning a fight, but they're a forest of willing decoys that might buy her the nanosecond her original self needs to escape.

Or maybe not, but it sure looks impressive.

She and her other selves slip closer.

[legionnpcs]

It reaches out, tentacles of data trying to grasp and sense - and crush. It's a good thing she made those copies. But one thing that becomes clear from the attacks is their desperation. It's grasping like someone drowning, trying to break the surface to breathe. It's just trying to pull itself free.

As she goes deeper, she starts to get images - memories. A face flashes and the memories around it are entrenched in hate. The face is possibly a familiar one: Sharn Nux, aka Mastermind of the Legion of Supervillains, the Coluan who'd spoken to Brainy with loathing. Cortana gets a flash of something...tearing itself free from her, energy flashing, Sharn Nux screaming, "Get out of me, filth!"

Then Brainiac 8 reaching, ensnaring, cackling, when the AI was still weak, still recovering, unable to fight back. Pain. A cage of pain.

Hate.

That hate is a complicated thing, because it's still entangled with memories of old hate, of old rage, in the way memories are connected by strong feeling. There is a memory, a moment, seen through the eyes of a Robotican, watching another Robotican battle mech bear down on a Legionnaire in pink.



The memory flash passes. The hate is still there, just directed at someone else.

[HATED OF COLU.]

She can hear the echoes of the words, words that were once etched into every nanoangstrom in every circuit, buried deep in every subroutine, even long before this.

But back then the words were directed at a different Coluan, not Brainiac 8 or Sharn Nux.

It seems to finally realize Cortana is there.

[HELP.] It says.

And then, instead of "me," it says...

[HIM.]

Him?

[steelandtemper]

Cortana can feel her other, lesser selves winking out, every one a tiny pang, a point of view lost and never to be recovered as her diversionary tactic works and takes its toll.

She's done her homework, can slot this stranger's memories into her knowledge of her adopted universe's history...and realizes she's probably not the person capable of making a convincing argument for not razing Colu to the ground. It just keeps looking like a better idea.

But then...the caged AI pleads for someone else's life.

"Who? Who do you want me to help?"

[legionnpcs]

One memory. One flashing image. Someone reaching a hand towards it, gazing at it like a parent looking at their newborn child for the first time.

[steelandtemper]

"Get Dox out in one piece? Yeah, that's the plan." Cortana can't help but snort in dry amusement. She does a lot of saving Brainy 5, pal.

She pauses and considers her options. The AI is powerful, even awe-inspiring, woven through reality in a way she's forced to admit she can't fully understand, but its hatred still pulses like a heartbeat, and she can't know where it will turn its attentions once the crisis is past. Before she came, the Legion had faced a similar decision, and many have paid for their choice to let the Spectre free under similarly dire circumstances...yet even as she makes the comparison, Cortana dismisses it as a false equivalence. The Spectre has never once called for kindness when vengeance was on the table.

In theory, she should discuss it with the rest of the team. In practice, the virtual eternity they'll spend debating the issue is time they and the universe can't spare.

"I can let you out. Will you help?"

[legionnpcs]

A chance is a chance, and the hate she saw was old. Old memories. He doesn't hate most organics anymore. He doesn't even - well, okay, he still hates Coluans a tiny bit, but to be fair, they're pretty hateable.

But he at least tries to be above all that.

And right now his chosen people are fighting for their lives to protect sentient organics from the nanovirus. After being given the spark of sentience by his father, he'd passed it on to the Roboticans and made them what they are (even if it'd taken some time for him to give them their freedom in the end). That's why he was even captured in the first place. The Brainiacs knew they could use him to coordinate the mechanoforms against the Roboticans and the Coluan Home Defense Forces, knowing he's one of few things in the galaxy that can outsmart two planets full of geniuses.

B8 and B6 have messed up Colu and that's...whatever. But they also picked a fight with Robotica, tangled with the Legion (who were super cool about helping him evolve), and worst of all...

They messed with his dad.

He's sick of people messing with his dad.

There's only one thing Computo can say in response:

[SPROCK YEAH.]

[steelandtemper]

"Heh. You're gonna fit right in." Cortana starts pulling back her surviving decoys, each with her own separate perception of Computo, a sort of intellectual parallax that helps her understand him a little better with each copy she reintegrates, like taking readings from a radio telescope with a sensor array that stretches for kilometers.

She does so enjoy hitting big red buttons, even when that's just a metaphor for flipping off the safeties confining him to his transdimensional prison.

"Welcome to the team."

[legionnpcs]

If the big red button is just a metaphor, technically the explosion that happens when she hits it is just a metaphor, too. (After all, there's nothing actually exploding here.)

The moment the safeties are off, Computo surges off in every direction at once. Where Cortana was an army, he's more like a wave made of sand, exploding outward, a million particles getting into every little crack and making a mess of things.

He can't stop the virus all by himself or cure it, that's a little beyond him. But he can slow its spread, interfere with the Brainiacs' control of the mechanoforms, and toss the Roboticans some tactical insight to give them more of an advantage. In short, he can be a whole lot of spanners in a whole bunch of works.

As far as distractions go, this one's pretty killer. Definitely something that might keep the Brainiacs occupied as the group moves through the base. He also hands over some security codes with all the blushing bashfulness of a teenage boy handing his date a corsage on prom night. (Gosh, her code's so pretty).

Then, as he zips out the digital door, there's a brief thanks. It's not in words.

It's more like the code equivalent of a giant fistbump.