[OPEN] mod plot | sacking of olympus: harbinger descends

[unplug]

CHARACTERS ▶ All characters opting in
LOCATION ▶ Olympus
SUMMARY ▶ The Zion Defense Grid with civilian relief corps arrive at 1100 6/18, and Commander Gwisin gives the orders for rescue, assault, and investigation. This log is player-run and includes The REAPER simulation option (1 of 3) in the Matrix, as well as rescue activity in the Real. Kill some zombies, save some abducted babies.
WARNINGS ▶ Violence and reference to human experimentation, possibly R.
NOTES ▶ This is Part II of the Sacking of Olympus plot. Questions/investigation here, for example, what happens when you shoot compartment x of the centipede

▶ Sacking of Olympus Part II

REAL: THE ZIONITE RESCUE OPERATION ◀

Gwisin's orders are terse over the comms, two hours before the fleet makes Olympus. Make contact and communication to the best of your ability, restore comms if possible. Provide emergency care, fire control, and evacuation, before the unidentified bogey arrives at city center.

Pandemonium reigns over the populace of Olympus, civilians trapped by fires, drones, and debris. Olympus’ forces have rallied but remain thin on the ground, and the Zionite reinforcements are direly needed. Electronic communications remain down except for the Matrix pirate signal, darkening the panic and despair that have descended over the city; REAPER drones harry every human or ship that tries the ground or air.

Organizing this wide-scale rescue in the face of explosions and still-unexplained abductions comes down to ingenuity and manpower.

REAL: HARBINGER DESCENDS ◀

Thirteen hours after the Zion rescuers arrive in Olympus, the Harbinger does too. The cavern ceiling, dead center, cracks, crumbles, boulders the size of hovercrafts hammering down on the city center. By now, thankfully, the heart of the city is empty of civilians, but as the Machine breaks through, it's instantly clear that isn't going to be enough.

Harbinger is massive. Digging mandibles up front could eat a squid whole, and have room left over to total a hovercraft; its name emblazoned on red on each segment. Scarlet optics glow against its black chassis, and drones flush out of the gasping ports in its sides the same way insects give birth in dozens. Ponderous but unmistakably powerful, the centipede-shaped robot crawls out into a dangle into empty air. Keeps dropping its head toward the city in neat, clockwork degrees, almost elegantly, to let itself down onto the rubbled cavern floor. Erratic gasps and comments sound off across the disrupted networks: the oldest of the humans, civilian or otherwise, have never seen a Machine like this in the Real.

But maybe you remember dreaming a monster like this, from another lifetime.

Pilots throughout the city gun their engines, preparing for a feat of comms-blind synchronization. The battle truly begins.

MATRIX: REAPER COMBAT FREE-FOR-ALL ◀

When the Harbinger arrives, the Matrix pirate signal augmentation doubles in strength. Triples. The operator reports start to come in, distorted from the REAPER signal jamming, but unmistakable. There's a simulation out there, like a bridge to-- what? The Matrix? The programming language carries unmistakable similarities to the Dowager's feed from Kitty Jones' call to the Atalanta, but there's nothing specifically like that strange, consuming pattern in the girl's neuro-output. At least, not on this level of the sim. Not yet.

Jack in, and the first thing you see is the cold belly of a spaceship. What you hear are the screams, bouncing echoes off catwalks and cold corridors. Next, figures coming in a wave of seemingly unstructured attack. In the vanguard, the Husks, screaming zombies-- sinewy, discolored flesh mingled with useless tech components and bioluminescence. Not far behind, the bulbous Scions with their single energy weapons. Bringing up the rear, the Banshees float in deceptively slow at first, only to accelerate into a dazing flash of teleportation, skeletal-faced, real death waiting in their razor hands.

One thing is certain: they're guarding something, though where in the recesses of this ship, the operator must largely guess.

Comments

(Open) Phoenix Crew + Guests

[sfoils]

Nice of the machines to label it for us. [ Wedge thinks aloud, counting each Harbinger emblazoned in each section. It's close to a super star destroyer in its attempt to demoralize through sheer size, but it's still not worthy of a cursory look at the size of that thing.

Even if Wedge wants to say it. Badly.

He'll have to give it to the machines: an insect-shaped machine is much more unsettling than a flying dagger (or, as someone in starfighter command pointed out, a flying pizza slice), doubly so when it wiggles its buggy legs facsimile to a centipede.

Wedge grits his teeth. ] Alright, civilians are out of the line of fire. [ At the center of the city, that is. Wedge can't make the call on the rest of Olympus. ] That segment, its left leg. [ Wedge points at the fifth segment from the head down, its legs the first that touch the ground whenever Harbinger stops praising its machine overlords or whatever the hell it's doing by lifting its torso and wiggling its legs into the air. ] We're shooting at it, and hopefully with that, cutting ourselves an entrance into the sithspawned thing.

[last_ofthe_jedi]

[For once Luke finally feels like he's in his element in this place, the Real, away from his powers and his friends (most of them anyway) and the Alliance. He's taken to the hovercraft like a duck to water and being back in the pilot's seat in a battle is giving him the confident, competitive edge he's been lacking since he arrived.

He guides the ship in clean arcs, controlled turns, but with the speed and grace of a seabird. It's not quite as agile as an X-wing fighter but Luke manages to get just about the best out of the Phoenix that it's capable of. His expression is utterly focused and eerily calm. The stress of the past two or three months has melted away and Luke has found his zen.

He passes under the belly of the beast to give the starboard-side guns an ideal angle, then tilts his head in Wedge's direction while keeping his eyes on the viewport.]

What do you think, Wedge? TRD?

[ex_paragon697]

[ Luke's smooth flying certainly makes it easier to see out from the bridge at the thing, Steve clutching a handhold less out of unsteadiness than a grim, well, steadying, the familiarity of the creature not lost on him. Yeah, he's seen something like this before. ]

And let's hope there's only the one.

[ This is to Wedge. Turning to Luke with a frown, he asks, ]

TRD?

( OPEN | MATRIX )

[scission]

[Thirteen hours of city defence is more than enough to have exhaustion wearing at the underside of Deuc's mind. War doesn't come with convenient breaks for rest, though, and this assault only remains a war through continued resistance - otherwise it would be simple to call it an annihilation instead (he tries not to think of the strange kidnappings too hard). So it is that there's no complaint as the matter of the pirate signal moves briefly to the fore, almost seeming like a distraction alongside the vision of the lumbering beast of a machine dropped into the city centre, but there can't be any coincidences here. And Deucalion is stronger jacked in.

The landscape of cold metal and darkness is disorienting after the heat of underground battle, the overflowing swamp of sensory input after the dullness of a human body. He takes a breath to steady himself, to stretch his spine up straight, feel the strength corded through this fake muscle and bone, the wolf stirring beneath his skin like an animal waking from slumber.

Something shrieks. Several metres away and closing, the lumber of fast, clumsy footsteps on metal. Another scream joins it, and another. This might be quicker with a pack, Deuc thinks, claws unsheathing with a flex of fingers as he moves to meet the enemy head on.]

[ex_paragon697]

[ The exhaustion is as universal as the shedding of it upon entering this false Matrix (false, as though the Matrix itself is any more real, but Steve is one who would argue in favor of the distinction). It doesn't completely reverse those hours of work, of continuing to move and fight because it's the only thing to do, whether or not your body wants to allow it. But plugging in mitigates some of the weariness in his head — with a different body, with familiarity. He knows how to keep moving wrapped in this code.

And so he does. After the first weeks of hard training, of relearning how to move and fight in the Matrix, without a good reason to be there his sim hours had dropped off significantly once he'd gotten the hang of it. This, though, is necessary, is a reason (a good excuse) to run unburdened by his own lungs.

Deuc will have plenty of time to tear through some of that initial wave before the shield cuts an improbable trajectory through a swath to his right, nearly decapitating the first few husks before it slows down enough to take down the rest in its path with blunt force. Steve follows it seconds later, a clean line now to retrieving it, flipping it up from the metal floor with his toe and into the chin of the husk it had stopped short of. Steve catches it out of the air before it can go high, too fast for — well — human eyes to follow, and turns to Deuc, stops only a little short to see his appearance, but after a moment he looks away to shove his arm through the straps of the shield. ]

Looks like I'm going your way.

[scission]

[Claws and teeth unsheathed, the changes to Deuc's appearance are not as significant as those to Steve, but notable all the same. His eyes are a red glow as he turns to follow the path of the shield through the air back to its master, taking only a moment to reconcile the features of the man in front of him with the slighter figure he'd met once back in Zion. It's fitting, almost, considering the fervour he'd had for finding a crew willing to extract his friend.

There's another shriek from further in, and Deuc's gaze cuts back to the walkways ahead. Already covered in sprayed and streaked layer of the noxious green fluid the creatures seem to have in place of blood, he has the feeling they'd meet a steady onslaught just for standing in the same spot. An extremely aggressive defence. And staying put wouldn't offer much answer on why.]

Before they pin us down again, then.

[He says, voice not as garbled as might be expected for the teeth filling his mouth. He moves forward, stepping over the fallen remains around him to head towards the next walkway, already picking up the sounds of more approaching. He flicks a spray of green off his claws onto the floor.]

We are most certainly not welcome here.

[lostsoldier]

[ Ask and ye shall receive.

As the shrieking horde reaches long grey fingers out to meet Deucalion's substantially sharper claws, a heavier set of boots comes up from behind. There's no hesitation his steps; recognizing Deuc and deciding to defend him happens in the same instant, on instinct. The soldier moves fast, metal plates clicking into place as he runs toward the enemy, knife drawn to catch one below the sternum. Its scream gurgles to a wheezing end as he forces the blade up through ribcage in an arc of blue ooze before he shoves it into the tide of them, a buffer as he shoulders forward.

But he gives a glance aside then, through his mess of scraggly hair. It isn't the first time they've been plugged in together, but from this angle, it's clearer this isn't exactly how Deucalion looked last time. ]

No weapon? [ he asks, almost rhetorically — almost because he has more than a dozen strapped to his person if the other man requires, actually, but, y'know. He gets the impression that might not be necessary. ]

matrix. closed to kate bishop and johanna mason.

[berserkergang]

[ Even if the linear dimensions of the space-age corridors were not easy enough to navigate, the operative known as 'Thor', which is a hell of a code name, has left something of a trail.

Look. This is the first time he's reunited with Mjolnir. He got excited.

The strange creatures of this world are already difficult to determine even before mangling. A confused mass of biotechnology and black and red gore and human features lies crumpled several feet away from their plug in point, crates strewn and broken where another was flung into it with force. There is a smear of sticky fluid the shape of a man's boot heel that steers around a corner.

And so it goes.

When they catch up, lightning makes strange, crackling shadows flung around the cavern, catwalks crisscrossing above them, with tongues of electricity charge snagging on metal. Thor, in his strange armor and red cape and Nordic countenance, is channeling lightning from the blockish hammer he has pointed before him, a human shaped monstrousity catching the brunt of it. In the next second, a shock of electrical explodes from the figure, lashing straight back at Thor and catching him off-guard, staggering back.

Above them, the shadowy figures of more husks are navigating down the walkways, leaping from ramp to ramp, descending. ]

[alsohawkeye]

[ Thor staggers back and a beam of energy lances through the husk that lunges after. It's neater than his lightning, more contained, quieter. Pink-er. It sears a hole into the creature that attacks him, severing a leg and sending it toppling off balance to the floor. Three more in quick succession hit the first ranks of approaching husks, picking them off one by one as they navigate the maze of catwalks ahead. ]

Wow, so when they said 'Thor cleared a path' they weren't kidding.

[ Kate is in purple, suit and headband, her bow a bright and glinting arc of white and gold in the shifting light. She hops down from the railing she'd climbed with a swish of dark ponytail, abandoning the vantage to jog up. There's gore spattered up her shins, smeared on a bare elbow. ]

Hawkeye. [ Is an introduction, the three fingers of her right hand encased in a black shooting glove tapped to her chest. ] You keep doing your thing, I'll cover you.

[axeyou]

Stop flirting.

[Johanna is close behind, and doesn't need to jump down from a railing or wear a cute costume to make an entrance. She's also badged with gore, and a more general sheen of sweat and blood. Somewhere, strapped to a chair, Johanna is clean and pale and full of holes. Here in the Matrix, she's gritty and bloody and happy. Her grin is all teeth, white in the smear. And very little of that blood is her own, by the way, and here's why: she's armed with two axes, which means she mostly has to get up close and personal, more physical than the vantage of a bow.

Briskly, she flicks her wrist. A spatter of blood hits the floor. That's as much of an effort as she's going to make toward cleaning her weapons here in the moment.]

I want to see him in action. It's been fun following behind, but I'd prefer a live event, you know?

[And here's the husks still approaching from above, anyways, getting close enough to start being construed as an actual threat. Johanna eyes them up, a quick headcount before she abandons the effort and picks out a target. Shadowed, still a little far off for even a thrown axe, and the angles are all wrong. Johanna turns her gaze forward instead.]

You heard her. She's covering you. Me too. So go ahead. Show off a little, big boy, let's see what you can do.

Horse | OPEN | REAL & MATRIX

[ambidextrosity]

THE REAL

[Stuff Horse does:

Jump off the crude granite rooftop of a home, tackling a drone to the ground in the massive arms of her APU,

Accidentally bounce off the nose of your hovercraft, APU and all, her reinforced alloy elbows winging sparks off your armor-plated windows as she scrabbles to upright again, yelling,] Good fucking catch! [without apparent concern about where she's going to go from here, never mind get down,

smash sideways into the side of a butchered barge, three drones piling up on her in rapid succession, screaming her head off while she rips off her automatic under her arm. That is, you know, until her magazine clicks on empty.] Sshh--ee-it—

[cart a toddler out of the smoking ruin of a REAPER drone. Screaming. At first it seems like she must be in pain or terror, but get close enough, and she's cheering them on, woop woop. The kid, the Vindemiatrix cutting agilely overhead, your ship coming in. It's like she's screaming for fucking joy, and it seems to have dazed the boy in her arms into a stupefied smile--

run rangily across tarmac, her APU long since destroyed now, grease on her face and eyes raw red from smoke exposure, lightning rifle in her arm. She's on her way to a drone. Not one of theirs, but man-made. Data drone. There's something coming up behind her; she swings down behind a blasted wall, eels into the shadows fast. Though not faster than Machines can see.

The drones are after her, perpetually, like they're after every man, woman and child. They dog her long-legged stride with red optics and clutching legs, APU-motorized or otherwise. Sometimes she's ahead by inches. Sometimes, they're nose to nose. Before long, she's bleeding from two or three places, but it's nothing a bandage won't keep together for the next long hour.]

---

MATRIX

This is your operator speaking.

War is going good up here, [casually, like she's reviewing the weather, and not the burning chaos that might cut your life from under you while you're asleep in your chair, fighting imaginary space aliens.] Think Phoenix is going for the robot armpit. Someone blew up the grainery. 'Nother ship radio silent. Pretty smooth, eh. [Under the veneer of crazy person calm, Horse sounds out of breath, but then, she wasn't in the chair the last time you were awake. It must be crazy out there, so many people and too much fire, stops to make then starts again, firing on the enemy then banking out of the way, hiding, people to board, people to disembark.]

But you have a big fucker coming at your six. [And cue the Banshee scream.]

idk i'm makin things up

[heda]

[ Horse swings down behind a wall just a yard or two ahead of the pursuing drone. She's quick into the shadows but the shadows vanish as a burst of lightning crackles past her, dropping the REAPER out of the air. More follow; more always follow.

The woman with the lightning rifle is soot-smeared, some of it intentionally dragged around her eyes by the look of it, sinking them deep into their sockets. It makes it difficult to tell how old she is. She's dirty and torn up and bleeding like everyone else, but her expression is an impassive contrast to Horse's shouts, fixed in concentration as she waits for a recharge and then blasts the next drone the second the gun is ready.

The third comes before she can muster up another bolt, and she puts down the rifle and draws an actual sword off her back, jabbing the blade up into sensors, hacking at twitching, spidering legs. It's completely insane, but she looks more comfortable with that hilt in her hand than the rifle, still recharging. ]

Re: Horse | OPEN | REAL & MATRIX

[metempsychotic]

[ There's little enough joy in the noises Bella refuses to make, yet which surge up her throat each time the air nearby is concussed by a projectile impact, or rent by an electric discharge. She stifles these would-be screams, first by clapping a hand over her mouth, then biting that self-same hand until she leaves deep red marks in her knuckles. It's not even that she's afraid of being heard - the drones have more means than that by which to find her - but to scream is to lose control. That she cannot afford, not even for and instant.

[ She's hurt, that much is plain - red spots the soot-smeared grey of her clothes - though not so badly that she cannot manage to scramble from wall to shattered wall. Indeed, what impedes her more than her injuries is the metal box she clutches to herself, with white knuckled intensity. Apparently unarmed, she avoids the fray as assiduously as possible, choosing the better part of valor at the first sign of conflict.

[ Thus even the sound of Horse's approach, crunch crunch across the rubble of crumbling Olympus, causes her to take cover at first. It is only after a considerable amount of huddling and a few furtive peeks that Bella raises an arm and flails it in the direction of the woman with the lightning rifle. ]

Over here!

open | matrix

[lostsoldier]

[ It feels like falling asleep. This isn’t his first time jacking in, but this time more than most, after a long day’s battle in the Real, as he leans back into the headrest and steps out into unfamiliar territory to face an oncoming horde with no more nuanced objective than get through them, it feels like going under. Meeting action with reaction, letting instinct guide hand and knife and gun without thought to consequence. Easy as breathing.

As the screaming, scuffling mass of reanimated corpses closes in around the Winter Soldier, an arc of submachine gun fire cuts them down like wheat. Shrieks spike and soften to moans under the whrrr-crunch of metal fingers ripping robotics from organics, spinning rotten flesh spatters up to his elbows, dripping brown and bioluminescent blue from leather gloves and shifting steel plates. Freed metal bones slam into bodies, fling dry and scraping to the floor in growing heaps to be crushed under boot-heel as he pushes right on through.

In the distance, though, beyond the Winter Soldier’s discreet circle of carnage, a long groan sounds as a bulbous blue mass lumbers forth from the crowd. An electric glow flares to life.

That can’t be good. ]

[last_ofthe_jedi]

[With his powers returned to him and his green-bladed lightsaber once more in his hands, Luke is a force to be reckoned with.

He can sense presences all around him, mostly of the odd, demi-organic army surging to protect something. They don't feel living but they're not quite inorganic either. They don't even feel like any cyborgs Luke's ever met.

Then there are the presences of other jacked-in people trying to fight through the horde. Luke knows a few of them but their presences are all unfamiliar to him. This is his first time feeling them through the Force.

Not too far away Luke senses a spike of danger and dread, someone about to be in trouble. His legs are already moving and he leaps without looking to see what it is. The Force tells him everything he needs to know. The green blade of his saber swings to cut cleanly through the Scion's body that was descending on Bucky, ready to fire at him.

It meets no resistance and the Scion crumples as Luke lands in a crouch in front of it.

He's breathing hard and he rushes forward to meet up with Bucky, briefly looking him over for injuries.] Hey, you alright?

[hacker]

[ She'd been trying to follow them back, figure out what these creatures were guarding that the rest of them needed to get close to. So far, there was nothing, but up ahead—

She slowed, staggered by the sound of ripped flesh as the behemoth of a man before her ripped one of the husks apart. If she thought she'd seen carnage watching Ward and May, this was a new level. Irritated by the now-unfamiliar distraction of her bangs, Skye pushed them out of her eyes and invited bioluminescent goo to smear across her forehead.

Advancing, she at least accepted that he was on their side. ] Hey— [ And then she heard the groan. She knew what that meant. Skye reached out to grab the metal shoulder. ] Company, get down!

[ She pulled him into a crouch just as the energy cannon went off on the scion's shoulder. Looking up at it, Skye pulled a gun from the holster on her hip, then turned her gaze towards the man she'd just met up with. It wasn't until that moment, looking at his face, that she realized— ]

Bucky Barnes.

please excuse my inevitable typos

[blind]

[ in a way, this was extremely simple. it shouldn't be, all things comsidered. there shouldn't be anything simple about taking on creatures like this with just his bare hands and a billy club, and yet here he is.

matt was no use in the real, but once he plugged in, he can rip things apart. that, more than anything else, is all-consuming motivation to do this again and again. matt wants to be needed. how much of that gets tied up in having his senses back ( back is a dangerous word, the wrong word, when according to everyone he never had them to begin with, but back is the word that comes immediately to mind. ) is hard for matt to say, but it feels unimportant as a husk shatters to pieces with a disgusting noise. matt grunts, spinning around to take in the field, find his focus and--

and oh, that sounds bad. ]

Move!

[ is the first thing matt does, shouting furiously right before he tackles bucky. old habits die hard. they hit the ground as the weapon goes off, sizzling unpleasantly through the air. ]

Come on. Before it gets any closer.

[ it sounds like a problem, weapon or no. matt resists the urge to crack his knuckles theatrically as he gets to his feet. ]

William Tsang | OPEN | Matrix (cw language)

[boffing]

[In this scenario, the Banshee has you by the neck. She's hoisting you up, her razor-edged hand pulling back, gnarled muscles cinched tight with violent intent and monstrous competence. Your eyes are watering and the over-spent air is beginning to burn in the bottoms of your choked-off lungs, but the heat of adrenaline, of knowing you're about to die-- that's infinitely worse. (Nearly as bad as this use of second person !!)

And then

bokk

the empty plastic crate bounces off the strange, twisty horns of the monster's head, and the scream she lets off then sounds nearly human. She twists her head to trace the path of the object's flight, and in doing so, the hand that grasps you drops slightly, brings you closer to the floor. Maybe you left something in there that's handy, or maybe the instant's reprieve, your toes brushing the cold metal floor, is enough to remind you of something else you had on you. Anyway.]

Get some cunts! [is the panicky yell from behind the pyramid of other disused crates, to the back of the Zion Defense Grid's jumbled personnel line. William is only a healer and that's important and all, but he's not terrible at throwing lightweight boxes. He has another one balanced awkwardly on his hands above his head right now, ready for a second go, and profoundly lacking in better ideas than that.]

open | matrix

[hacker]

Some people would call it luck, that she'd gotten aboard the Atlanta just in time to have jack-in experience in advance of the Olympus crisis. At the end of the day, though, it didn't make much of a difference. She was still green. Once she plugged in, she felt almost as if she'd never unplugged. Bangs brushed into her eyes, hair pulled up into a ponytail. Her hair wasn't long enough for a ponytail anymore, she knew, but here it was, and there was no one to tell her otherwise.

She tried to find and stick to high ground, pulling out a sniper rifle and leveling it on a rail along the upper deck of the ship. As she fired rounds off, picking scions and husks alike off in kind, she tried to get some idea of where they were moving, trying to track them back to what they're guarding. But it wasn't clear, and her bullets kept flying straight through the teleporting banshees.

It appeared she aggravated one, because it flew up to appeared up beside Skye in a flash, greeting her with the jab of a razor-sharp arm. Any slower, and she'd be dead. In the Real, she'd definitely have been dead, but muscle memory was a blessing, and she was trained by the Cavalry. Skye whipped out of the way with only minor cuts through her arm. She dropped the sniper rifle over the edge, abandoning it to pull her handgun. Before she could get even a single round off, though, the shaking started.

"No," she urged, looking down at the barrel. She tried to fire, but the pin wasn't lined up properly. The tremor had rattled just enough loose in her weapon, begun dismantling it, and it wouldn't fire. The banshee advanced. A panicked look struck her face, and she hurled the weapon aside, which fell into three main pieces the moment it hit the hard ship floor. The railing rattled in its holder, the metal plates of the floor vibrating with a loud, metallic hum.

And then, the catwalk ended. Or rather, the banshee lunged for her, and panic blew out from Skye like an explosion. She hit the floor, fingers grabbing for the edge of a metal plate. The banshee plummeted down, bleeding from—something. As if parts of it had exploded from the inside with the same vibrational burst from Skye that shook the railing apart, and left Skye dangling over the bottom level, ready to plummet down.

[dissent]

Until a long-fingered hand catches around her wrist, tight and firm and safe.

Anders isn't actually sure he can pull her up, but he had to try. A moment ago he'd been fighting his own battles, but watching Skye fall had prompted him to drop his staff and cross that distance fast, faster than anyone could in the real, the fabric of the virtual space tugged past him with his own will. It's not really a conscious decision: he needed to be there to grab her, and so he was. This is only his third time in the Matrix proper, but the feeling isn't so different to being in a sim, the knowledge that there are no real boundaries to what can happen.

He looks down at Skye, brown eyes bright with twinned worry and adrenaline, the back of his mind cataloging the minor differences from the young woman he's met in the real. For his part, he doesn't look so different, though he certainly feels it when there's magic crackling under his skin. "I've got you," he says, hoping that's reassuring. With his skinny arms, it's probably not. "I'm going to try and haul you up. On three."

real } mila gallo

[forcemageure]

[ Recently, Hawke a] got to make the Atalanta go very, very fast and b] in the process learnt a new and exciting slang term ("...step on what, exactly," he inquired of his captain at the time). What this has proven, if anything, is that while if pressed he could disembark and navigate the bare basics of the recoily mystery that is guns, everyone's probably better off if he just flies the ship for people with much more experience aiming much more ...bigger ones. ]

So!

[ He addresses Mila, because if he appears to take this seriously, while, in actuality, taking it quite seriously, he'd probably suffer some kind of sobriety-based embolism, and then where would they be. ]

Your menu options this evening appear to include both appetizers and one great bloody hulking entree. Does madam have preferences?

[ ...he means does she want him to go for the swarms of drones or the Harbinger. While the larger ship is obviously the greater threat, clearing out the drones improves the chances of anyone who is attacking it, so both possibilities have their uses. ]

[milagros]

Madam does not believe in putting dessert before the main course, ( is the immediate reply from mila, who manages not to inquire how you can have any pudding if you don't eat your meat because they don't have time for hawke to learn an entire song that she can't remember the precise tune of anyway on top of exciting new slang terms. this isn't the most ideal moment to introduce him to the collected works of pink floyd.

she is in the process of situating herself with their weapons as she manages a slightly clearer response; )

Line me up with those drones.

matt murdock / matrix, open.

[blind]

[ in the real, matt wasn't of much use when it came to combat. he was still too weak, still recuperating, trying to build back muscle, let alone relearn how to use it. but in the matrix, that's not the case.

plugging in is like stepping back into his old life. ( his old dream, matt corrects silently. ) he steps back into his old mask, takes a breath, feels the world around him humming to life, overwhelming for a brief moment before matt finds his focus. this, this is what he knows how to do. ripping husks apart with his bare hands and his billy club, that's something he's capable of.

something screams behind him, and matt straightens up, turns towards the sound as he tries to parse just what's making it, and if its something he should be heading towards. he gives himself a split second before launching into motion, billy club out, because plunging headlong into things is just what matt does. hope for the best, because that generally works out for him, dream or no, right? ]

( real ) open: seoraj allaway and sir not appearing in this log, the unconscious body of bill cage.

[ironwork]

( the sounds of combat come to seoraj as vibrations, first, rumbling through the twisted, broken metal of the nidhoggr and through that, his skin-- surface injuries that nearly don't stay that way, as he moves narrowly to avoid impaling himself. bill cage, not far away, is less lucky-- seoraj drags himself there and it takes almost too long to discern the heartbeat, the rise and fall of his chest. he almost leaves without him.

he does not. cage is over his shoulders when he emerges, his movements sluggish and unsteady, from the wreckage. he doesn't remember clearly what happened, or how - he remembers the ship joining the reinforcements, and he remembers impact, and then this: climbing out of the frying pan and into the fucking fire, blood and sweat tacking his clothes to his skin, the harbinger looming large and inexorable high above his head.

head for the ships or deeper into olympus? one will be the other, pretty soon. he wishes he had a weapon. adjusts cage's weight. tries not to die. )

[lostsoldier]

[ The drones, it seems, have different plans. In the settling dust of the Nidhoggr's abrupt descent, machines spill over the rubble of what used to be a marketplace and is now more of a smoking crater. Their spindly legs bend in half to retract and extend in quick, restless motions at the sight of Seoraj emerging from the wreckage. One zooms to close in.

And freezes, caught still in a burst of electric blue. Sparks explode from its body with a high-pitched shriek of twisting metal and overloaded circuits, until it drops to the earth with a muted clunk.

And at the other end of that electric arc is Mr. Chatty. Dust-covered, bloodied, and breathing heavy, he braces an energy gun between some kind of makeshift harness and his one good arm — which is looking at least a little sturdier than wet spagetti these days, though not much. ]

Hurry, [ he says, true to form. The harbinger's arrival had shifted his priorities, from herding civilians to getting back to The Phoenix before it took off, but he owes Seoraj more than to leave him to fend for himself. ]