legionmissions | TOTAL ECLIPSO THE HEART [modplot/log]

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TOTAL ECLIPSO THE HEART [modplot/log]

Apokolips was intimidating enough when it was bleak and dead but now it's even more of a living nightmare. As Eclipso, Catastrophists, and monsters menace the defense garrison, screams cut through the air the way they used to back when Apokolips' old ruler was alive.

Catastrophists toss themselves into the firepits in droves and smoke starts to rise from them. Somehow their sacrificial bloodshed seems to be doing something to the core of the planet. It groans and strains and the ground shakes as machinery under the surface starts to slowly get stoked back to life.

Some of the Catastrophists even rise into the air while wearing winged uniforms and clash with garrison members capable of flight - Apokolips' old parademon troops, reborn in a new form.

This world is a death engine, and if they don't manage to stop it it from restarting, Chronoblivion's forces will have an entire world to make war from.

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Zenyatta's role in this mission has been mostly support. When Legionnaires start falling under dark influences, he uses an Orb of Harmony to guide them back the other way. He has similarly healed wounds and tried to stop as many of the Catastrophists he can from tossing their lives away. Where the Orb of Harmony fails, an Orb of Destruction (or sometimes the orbs themselves) to the head does the trick. They cannot throw themselves to the fire if they are unconscious.

He also keeps an eye on Washington. Zenyatta wants to help the man to come out of this mission in better condition than the last. He's not babysitting Wash, merely checking in from time to time and offering his aid when needed.

"Washington, be wary. I sense something approaches us." It could be the heat of the fires that cause the air to shimmer and swirl in the distance, but it could be something else entirely as well.

Wash is pretty damn certain Zenyatta is keeping tabs on him, even in the middle of the chaos. On one hand, he feels like he should be offended, because he can damn well handle himself; on the other hand, he sure hadn't been acting like it when he'd met Zenyatta, and he can't exactly blame the guy for making sure a teammate comes out the other side of a mission in one piece.

"It's Freelancer in the field, Avatar." No better time to test terrible nicknames that may or may not work, right? "And this place is playing hell with my motion trackers. Do you have a direction?" Between the shifting scenery and the aerial combat, his motion trackers are false flagging so badly they're just about useless to him.

"My apologies, Freelancer." Maybe at a later time, Zenyatta will comment and ponder on the name he was just called. (He also files away the need to learn everyone's heroic name after the mission.) However, he's more concerned about the disturbance he feels. The shimmering becomes more pronounced, and it appears to grow larger. Or... is it coming closer?

"The location is at your 5:00." Zenyatta opts for that directional instead of saying South South East, hoping it would be understood quicker and accurately. "I believe it is coming nearer or growing larger." Both?

At your 5 is speaking Wash's language, and he turns to face the- the-

His brain stutters a bit trying to categorize the entity rapidly approaching them, and after a moment he gives up and bypasses that process entirely. He'd like a fucking week where he doesn't have to deal with a brand new horror movie monster trying to kill him. Is that too much to ask?

That question's not going to do anything for him now, and he dodges out of the creature's path, turning to take a shot with stun ammunition-

That does nothing. Great. "Any ideas?"

The disturbance gains focus into a bundle of nerves twisting into a helix shape. Nerve tendrils reach outward. A Figmented swirls with its nerve tendrils reaching towards the two Legionnaires. If anything, the Figmented has fully noticed their presence due to Wash's shot at it. It wants to know; it wants the information contained in their minds. Could they do what it wants? Yes, yes. It will have them.

Zenyatta's orbs spin around his neck and take on a brighter glow, and that says more than he needs to. Pulses of discord travel up and down his wires. His soul sense danger and steels itself for a fight.

But discord isn't evil. It is pain and sorrow, and Zenyatta senses something else within it. Something buried deep. That something gives Zenyatta pause. He doesn't launch a volley of energy at the Figmented and allows it to draw closer.

Great. It's hell's DNA, and as far as Wash can tell, they have its attention. He backs up, trying to put some distance between himself and the double helix of death, and-

And evidently Zenyatta does not have the same idea. He looked battle ready half a second ago, and now he's just letting the thing approach him-

Yeah, no, this isn't happening. Wash fires another shot at the creature - it won't do any damage, but it might distract the thing long enough for Zenyatta to get out of range. "What the hell are you doing? Get away from that thing!"

The second shot makes the Figmented pulse then spin furiously. Arms whip at the air around it as it pulls back and starts flies straight towards them.

"Something is not..." The bright glow in Zenyatta's orbs fade as he returns most of the energy to himself. He's made up his mind. Fighting did not need to be the answer for this encounter. Even if self preservation protocols try to influence him, Zenyatta purposely ignores them. He places himself between Wash yells, "Freelancer, stop! Do not fire at it further."

The Figmented stops its charge as if it is surprised that one of the targets is stopping the other from firing at it a third time. Then it throws tendrils at Zenyatta. It's easy to attach them to his cranium, wrapping tightly around the gaps within his frame to stay secure.

Zenyatta and his orbs plummet from the air and crash to the ground. A surge of commands run through his brain. He's accessing memory after memory, bit after bit of information. There are errors messages flashing in his consciousness. His sensors are rapid firing, but through everything being accessed, Zenyatta hears something that feels outside of his own head.

"You are staying. Yes. Help. Yes. I will kill you. Help. Your knowledge, give it to me. I will take it. You could help. Help. Help. Help. Kill. Yes. Stay. Help. Kill me. Nothing. Empty. Kill. Death. Fill me with nothing. Experience oblivion. Help. Kill me. Help me."

Zenyatta's voice is thick with popping static as he struggles to speak. Aloud, in his head, he's not sure which. "I... un... der... stand..."

He jerks back and holds his fire for now. It's possible that Zenyatta knows something he doesn't - maybe he's able to sense it or something - and so he waits.

He doesn't have to wait long, as the creature wraps its tendrils around Zenyatta and the omnic hits the ground. He's never seen Zenyatta not hovering, and it looks for all the world like he's short-circuiting, and-

Yeah, no. Wait time's over.

"You've got to be kidding me," he snarls as he draws his knife, dodges around the downed Zenyatta, and tears through the hellbeast's tendrils with the blade. There's a time and a place for pacifism and this is obviously not it.

There is a brief respite in the overload as Washington cuts some of the tendrils. Unlike the shots, these are doing something to it. Zenyatta senses, feels the pain the Figmented goes through in the discord, and anger bleeds into it. A tendril tries to grasp Wash's arm, but Zenyatta reaches out and intercepts. It wraps around his arm instead.

"Freelancer! I can help it. I know how." His body jerks, and his voice fills with static once more. "Peace."

But he doesn't know if his words were understandable enough for Washington. Zenyatta wills himself to rein in his attention, force stops as many non-essential processes (even a few more essential ones) and chooses breathing as his focus. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breath out. Close a few more processes that had been reactivated due to the Figmented. Breath in. Breathe out.

The Figmented's tendrils begin to slow in their movement.

Well, that does something. At least Zenyatta is able to move again, if only a little. He ducks out of the way of the searching tendril, only for Zenyatta to grab it instead, like he's not dealing with enough already - and now he thinks he can help it?

"That's great," Wash grinds out, taking another swing with his knife and severing a few more tendrils in the process, doing his best to free Zenyatta from their grasp. "How about I keep it from killing you in the meantime?"

Zenyatta's mind goes calm despite all the chaos going on outside. A number of his processes are paused; he is concentrating on his breathing. Even the Figmented seems to ease its attacks. It doesn't thrash as much as Washington slices through more tendrils, and fewer tendrils try to attach themselves to Zenyatta.

The Figmented dissolves into mist, and Zenyatta swears he hears "Thank you" before there is nothing. Zenyatta's lights flicker before returning to steady. He waits a moment on the floor, restoring the processes he stopped one by one, before he rights himself and returns to hovering. He starts a scan of his systems to access any damage.

He gives a long, humming sigh before speaking to Wash. "I thank you for your concern." The gratitude is genuine even if Zenyatta still thinks attacking the Figmented was a bit much. "It is now at peace and will not be a danger to anyone. Even itself."

There's a time for respecting a colleague's wishes, and there's a time for saving said colleague's idiot life, and as far as Wash is concerned, this is definitely the latter. He tears into hell's DNA until it dissipates entirely; only then does he stop to take a breath and offer Zenyatta a hand up, not that Zenyatta needs it. At least he's functioning again, or acting like it - Wash doesn't know him well enough to tell which it is yet.

"You're welcome." It's edged - it's been a very long time since Wash has fought alongside someone who was willing to lie down and die in the face of an enemy, and he's none too thrilled about it. (Suicide by monster may not have been Zenyatta's intent, but pacifism in the middle of an active battlefield has about the same result, as far as Wash is concerned.) "You really need to not let enemies get that close to you, especially if you're not planning on fighting them. There won't always be someone there to pull your ass out of the fire."

Wisdom of the ages duly imparted, he turns towards the nearest firepit with the intent of stopping any Catastrophists that plan on bungee jumping without a cord when what the fuck is that cloud in front of him-

In the brief moment before the shimmering mass of air subsumes him completely, he thinks of Reaper - that asshole would probably laugh if he saw Wash go out like this, a victim of Reaper's second cousin twice evaporated.

In the next moment, he can't breathe. Never mind that his armor is sealed well enough to withstand the vacuum of space, or that he's got a transuit on over it; the Unmolded Ones don't work on that particular wavelength, and Wash might as well have been wearing tissue paper for all the protection his armor gives him now. He crosses his hands over his throat - is it still the universal sign for choking even across dimensions? - and-

-suddenly goes slack as the Woe infiltrates his mind, slipping past the barriers he'd constructed to keep Epsilon's memories separate from his own and easily dragging them to the surface. He's screaming without air, choking on memories that aren't his but are still inescapable, all while a small voice in the back of his mind whispers for him to free himself.

He doesn't recognize that voice. It doesn't matter. It's not like he'll live long enough to figure it out anyway.

Edited 2017-11-12 04:54 (UTC)

Under different circumstances, Zenyatta would gently say that such an attitude would be difficult on his path, but he would thank Washington for the wisdom and the determination to follow through upon his own morals. He can respect that. Especially since that is what Zenyatta is doing. Zenyatta will lay down his life if it helps another obtain peace... and in this case, he was certain that he would have been all right.

However, that conversation never arrives. Another mass shimmers into existence. Washington has hands over this throat. Then he falls.

"Freelancer!" Zenyatta dashes over to his side. He calls upon his Orb of Harmony and attaches it to Wash, hoping that will help stabilize him. Zenyatta can't do CPR or mouth to mouth resuscitation. A human cannot survive long enough without air for Zenyatta to bring the man to another Legionnaire or have one come to them. He goes to turn Wash on his back to help keep his airway open when he senses a similar discord to the Figmented he helped lay to rest. It's filled with a deep sorrow and pain, and it covers Wash like frost over grass. The Woe wants to trap Wash in his own memories.

"Freelancer, come towards my voice. Let the Iris guide you back to this side." This is an instance of going towards the light being the right direction. "Do not remain where you are."

He's done this before, a thousand times. He's fought through Epsilon's memories, clawed his way out of the sucking binary-coded abyss and back to his own identity. He should damn well have this down to a science by now.

It's never been like this.

Usually, he's immersed in the memories as the Director, or as the Alpha, or - on very few occasions - as Epsilon himself, watching through eyes that aren't his and inputs that his human brain simply cannot process, a passenger helpless to change the events unfolding in front of him - or, more often, directly to him. They're memories; they're set in stone, further back in the past than he could ever reach, and the only thing he can do is move forward, remind himself who he is until it jolts him out of the nightmare of someone else's past.

This time, it's not a single memory; it's an ocean of them, as though the floodbanks had been removed from the fragments of Epsilon still partitioned off in his mind, allowing the roiling madness to flood out of its vault and sweep him away completely. Flashes of memory batter him - don't say goodbye i hate goodbyes it's Allison she's not coming back who was it who died im sorry im sorry im sorry - until he can't see straight, until he doesn't know which way is up anymore, until he's too tired to fight and he still can't breathe, and all the while that same whisper insists that he needs to free himself because it will free them both-

And then a beam of soft golden light shines down, the sun through the storm. It speaks, soft but insistent, and the words don't register but he knows that voice, he knows someone is trying to help, and he pushes towards it, fighting through memory after memory, because it's his way out and he has to get out of here-

And his body jerks and struggles to draw breath. He's not giving up just yet.

There!

Through the despair, Zenyatta finds a pulse of will that wants something other than to be lost to dark memories. Zenyatta tries to grasp with all his soul to that feeling of Washington reaching outward. The Orb of Harmony glows stronger. He will focus on that for as long as it is there. Zenyatta will not give up.

"Washington, I have you. Come follow the warmth of the Iris. Embrace it." Zenyatta will accept any scolding from Washington for using his name instead of "Freelancer." To scold means he has regained himself. It would be a good sign. He needs Wash to react to him, Zenyatta, and not the Unmolded One. It'll strengthen their connection.

And once he's sure that Wash is free, they are going to get out of this place and meet up with the rest of the Legionnaires.

There's something there, something in the light cutting through the hell that is his memory-sodden mind, and Wash struggles towards it, fighting off memory after memory - all the pain and sorrow and fury and madness that doesn't belong to him, and then, as he gets closer, all the pain and sorrow and madness and fury that does.

He falters and starts to sink as the memories bear down on him, actions he'd committed and consequences he'd brought on himself, and he can't deny any of them - every friend he'd hurt; every person he'd lost; every mistake and shortcoming and fuckup were all his - he'd shot South - he'd lost Delta - he'd betrayed people who'd helped him - he'd made so goddamn many mistakes - he'd hurt so many of his friends - he'd shot Connie - he'd shot Pidge-

And Connie and Pidge were going to be fucking furious with him if he didn't come back from this.

It's that golden-edged thought that spurs him back on again towards the light, shoving memories away and struggling towards it until he recognizes that voice, until he can hear exactly what that voice is saying-

It's Freelancer in the field, he thinks, just this side of delirious from exhaustion and overload, as he finally manages to stagger into that golden warmth-

And his back arches and he gasps for breath, back in his body instead of locked in his mind. The shimmering mist rises off of him as he finally breathes again; it hovers for a moment, then dissipates completely.

He should feel relieved - after all, he's just survived being dragged through his own personal hell. Again. He really should have a punch card at this rate. Instead, he's just dizzy from oxygen deprivation, and he's not doing a damn thing until he can manage to catch his breath. "Fuck," he manages between gradually slowing gasps, "that."

Whatever memory or thought Wash uses to pull himself, Zenyatta encourages it. He feels the connection strengthen, and it's easier for him to harmonize with Washington's spirit. When the Woe vanishes and Wash gasps for air, Zenyatta tries to steady him. He's relieved that Wash was able to break through in time. He doesn't know the whole of it, but this was a battle of the mind with the body as hostage. The Woe disappearing (hopefully finding peace like the Fragmented) is also a relief.

The orb remains attached to Washington, trying to heal any residual damage done and continuing to soothe his spirit. However, Zenyatta eases on his near solitary focus on it. A few processes that were redirected to aid Washington have also returned to their normal priority.

"Not entirely the first words I thought I would hear from you, but they are welcome nevertheless. Can you stand?"

For whatever it's worth, he's starting to feel better. The darkness and the agony and the panic are all fading from his mind, faster than he'd normally be able to recover from a memory attack of that magnitude, and that's odd. He blinks and focuses and-

Oh. It's that orb again. Zenyatta's been here the whole time. As much as he gives the Omnic grief over his methods, Zenyatta has probably - no, definitely - saved Wash's life here. He'd never have been able to pull himself out of those memories otherwise.

So while the dizziness fades and Wash remembers how to breathe, he reaches up and grasps Zenyatta's hand tightly. He can't quite manage a thank you yet - too busy catching his breath - but God damn if he doesn't owe Zenyatta some gratitude, and this is the only way he can think of to show it right now.

(And it's nice to be able to hold on to someone after all of that. It warms some small part of his soul that the orb hasn't managed to reach just yet - not that he'll admit it.)

His breathing eases and evens out, and he lets go and pushes himself to his feet. "Yeah." And because he can manage words a little more consistently now: "Thanks."

Zenyatta closes his fingers around Wash's hand to help ground him. It's another unexpected response from Wash, but it is not unwelcome. A physical gesture can do just as much as comforting words and do better at times.

The sense of the darkness within Washington seems to fade back into something more akin to "normal." Normal for Washington at least. There is discord within Washington's own heart, but now is not the time to reflect on it.

"You are welcome. Let us reunite with the rest of our team. Let's go, Legionnaires!"

No, that was completely the wrong time to say that; that should have been yelled from the start of their mission, but perhaps, that's exactly why Zenyatta decided to say it now.

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TOTAL ECLIPSO THE HEART [modplot/log]

Soldier and Healer vs Woes and Fragmented

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it's only been a literal month 8DDDDD

Coin has spoken (link for ease of finding the info again)

You are the best

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