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systemcritical2015-06-21 10:45 pm
unplug) wrote in systemcritical2015-06-21 10:45 pm
[OPEN] mod plot | sacking of olympus: 3x3
CHARACTERS ▶ All characters opting in
LOCATION ▶ Simulation, technically Olympus
SUMMARY ▶ "to climb above the flames you must stand each foot on the shoulder of a crewmate. should you succeed, this will change the course of limitless tomorrows." —The Oracle
WARNINGS ▶ Violence and reference to human experimentation, possibly R.
NOTES ▶ A guide to RPing this portion of the Sacking of Olympus is available here; Part IV will consist of the final, mod-run portion of the firewall adventure. The original plot post is here, and questions/investigation for general events in the plot should be submitted here.
LOCATION ▶ Simulation, technically Olympus
SUMMARY ▶ "to climb above the flames you must stand each foot on the shoulder of a crewmate. should you succeed, this will change the course of limitless tomorrows." —The Oracle
WARNINGS ▶ Violence and reference to human experimentation, possibly R.
NOTES ▶ A guide to RPing this portion of the Sacking of Olympus is available here; Part IV will consist of the final, mod-run portion of the firewall adventure. The original plot post is here, and questions/investigation for general events in the plot should be submitted here.
▶ Sacking of Olympus Part IIITHREE BY THREE ◀They say it'll come through your headjack, fast as death-- but Hell, you've been dodging death all day.
They say Lizzie's neuro-kinetics went haywire. They were talking about it on the comms, on and off, sporadically, nervously, for hours before you jacked in; a broken burst of Dowager data here, a terse confirmation there. They say she's in a coma. Enough fragments of the girl's vital stats have made it through the Grid's ships that the operators will know what to look for, but it's probably still unnerving as the last Husk falls and the simulated doorway looms. The operator says the REAPER signal is pretty strong through there. The signal that put her down.
Lucky you, it turns out, it's just an engine room with a glowy core and shut-down console. Easy.
JK.
Closed to Isabella Sheridan & Garrett Hawke
Iron Man dives from the ceiling, swinging his feet up so that the propulsors on his boots slam the Banshee in the face, just she rematerializes from her short-range teleport. As a result, the spoopy she-alien doesn't get to stab him! Additionally, Tony goes rocketing across the knock-down, drag-out battle, and catches the redhead in a princess carry, his shoulder up to buffer her against concussion and whiplash thanks to superhero tricks of physics that only really exist in his universe; it doesn't really occur to him that they might not exist in hers.]
Hi, I'm Iron Man.
[He carries her another forty, fifty feet before banking in the air just above LARPER guy's head. The gold-plated front of his helmet looks rather grim, fairly impassive, but,] Openitopenitopenit, [probably conveys a certain amount of urgency when he
begsrequests Hawke do the thing.The Banshee's straightening again. She looks mad about the concussive whoom to the face. He thinks they should get away.]
Re: Closed to Isabella Sheridan & Garrett Hawke
[Not that this makes her any less appetizing a target for the berserk cyber-converts that swarm all over this simulation. For a time she's held her own, thanks in great part to the smooth metal spheroid she holds, regal-orb-like, in her right hand. A wire coils from the orb's lower hemisphere, plugging into an uplink in her wrist - some sort of cyber interface or other - serving to focus and channel a narrow set of anomalous abilities. This served her well against the swarms of husks, using directed gestures to alternately freezes them in place and incinerate them with the routine purposefulness of someone initialing paperwork.
[The appearance of the Banshee, heralded by its mind-wrenching cry, troubles her composure. She already has developed a pain just behind her eyes, throbbing discomfort softly and steadily. The monster and its terrible howl cause a white hot flash of pain to temporarily blank her vision. She recoils, fear-numbed fingers nearly dropping her precious orb. For an instant, the terrified survivor in the hovership and the pristine woman in the simulation share a much more immediate resemblance.
[In the next instant she finds herself lifted off the ground, expression of alarm reaching comic levels as she fumbles with the orb. She clutches it tightly to her chest as her feet kick out into thin air and the wind whips around her. It takes a second or two before she turns her head to squints at her… rescuer?]
You don't say... [will have to do for introductions. He's Iron Man- that much she now knows. That she's Grateful to Be Alive Woman needs no explanation at this particular point in time. She does not make so bold as to claim she 'could have handled it'. Instead she huddles within Tony's metallic embrace with zero appearance of self-consciouness. As they bank on the approach to Hawke, she peeks out to get a glimpse of the anachronist with the fancy stick.]
Does he know what he's doing? [seems like a fair question, considering the disparity between the tech levels of this place, and what Hawke's getup would indicate about his own home technotemporality. That doesn't mean she's about to hop down to take over, however. As the Banshee looms back up to its full height, the air crackling and lensing around it, Bella blanches.] Oh sweet Jesus-
[Her hand tenses around the orb, a blue-green display light glowing into life as the air around them begins to shimmer with refraction effects. She's putting up some sort of barrier, though how well it can hold up against the mechanical malice of the Banshee is anyone's guess. Bella's own half-frantic expression does not inspire confidence on this point.]
Any time this Quarter! [is probably not an offer made in earnest.]
no subject
Irrelevant, since that's happening to oh, everyone here, but he'd like it noted for narrative posterity regardless. On the bright side, it's turned out that like most forms of life, a lot of these things die if set on fire! Or at least they leave you alone, which seems like a pretty good compromise.
He is not, amongst his many and varied talents ('talents') blessed with super hearing, so he misses the musing on his competency, and would probably have focused on the extremely urgent instruction coming out of the giant metal face anyway; if it wasn't a distinctly human voice, it's entirely possible he would have just reacted out of instinct, which is, approximately, at this point, 'oh shit.'
The fact that Iron Man isn't dropping Grateful to Be Alive Woman into a pit of spikes or anything helps too. All of this takes place in seconds, because thoughtful deliberation on 'now now now' has not served Hawke well in the past. He doesn't actually use his fancy stick to do this, just whips out a closed hand like he's dragging something through the air at eye level, or slicing it, and the door flies open with probably considerably more force than necessary.
He can't kill a Banshee alone, and the brilliant suggestion of just getting on the other side of the door appeals much more strongly, but between GtBAW's force field and another sharp gesture that smashes pure concussive force through the air and knocks her back a few precious feet, Mister Metal Face up there should have time to like ...fly (and don't think that isn't sort of disturbing) through, or maybe even descend and walk!
Either way, they should probably all do that running thing. As one does in a good action movie, probably while yelling 'go go go!!!!!'
Once they're all on the other side Hawke slams the door in their erstwhile companion's face, rudely, and slouches with comic deflation against the closest wall. ]
Well. Let's not do that again unless we really have to.
[ We? Sure! What is this if not a Choose Your Party pedestal. ]
no subject
He then pops his mask. To the revelation of no one, but maybe the slight relief of everybody involved anyway, there's a nice regular person-face underneath. You might have even seen him around Zion once or twice before, his facial hair groomed just so, the same in the Matrix as it is in the Real.] Agreed. Leet hacks, son of Gondor. We make it back to Zion, you graduate to the class on Visual Basic. [When he starts to walk, the tiny servos all up and down his legs make little swizz swizz noises.
He's walking into what looks an engine room. Big glowing orb trapped in a column of thick glass in the center, intensely luminous with what characters from all genres will readily recognize as Some Form Of Energy. Consoles with flat, plain bench seats ringed around it. The controls include some glowy holographic stuff the way that Tony likes it, but some bulky grey stuff with lights and push-buttons that seems familiar to Bella too.]
But maybe you should leave this part to us. [He flashes Hawke a grin over his shoulder, which lasts one or two insufferable moments before a twinge of a headache aborts it into a grimace.]
no subject
[ She alights upon the reactor room floor with the syncopated percussion of low heels on metal. The orb in her hand ceases to glow, the refraction effect fading, and she rolls it idly in her palm as she assesses surroundings and companions both. Tony's face is processed with a cool blue gaze held long enough to cross-reference with memory. He is at the very least familiar to her, Zion being just small enough both in dimensions and demographics, plus they share some hobbies in the Real. Reputations can spread quickly in small circles within circles.
The tin man suit is unprecedented, however. A digitally plucked brow arches at Tony's quips. ] Visual basic? [ she echoes ] Isn't that some late 20th century relic? Don't fill the poor boy's head with cobwebs. [ The smile she offers Hawke is indulgent. She doesn't recognize him, not with the same pertinence as Tony at least, but she'll not forget him after today. Daring escapes have a way of sticking in memory. ] Whatever talents he has are translating well enough into the context. The thing you did with the door- what was that? Kinetic redirection?
[ Interested though she may be, this is not a seminar. They have work to do- Bella knows this. She makes her way along the line of consoles, searching for the familiar and the significant. ] Cyberjack- cyberjack- cyberjack... [ she mutters to herself, naming what she seeks, because nothing is as delightfully matryoshka-esque as logging into a simulation within a simulation. ] What is this place- some sort of pastiche? What could the function of such a sensory construct be? [ She sounds as suspicious as she is curious, and she is plenty of both. Thus absorbed, she fails to notice Tony's twinge, though a pain still throbs behind her own eyes as well. ]
Keep an eye out, would you- [ she asks of Hawke ] -while we prod buttons and cross wires? I don't really trust that this place is what it appears to be. [ This, presumably, even by the standard of illusoriness prevailing in all Matrices. ]
no subject
He just skips over bristling at what he could easily process as condescension in about a dozen directions, mostly because it annoys him to lack competence in any area, but even he knows he can't actually acquire proficiency in everything the glorious dystopian future has to offer in less than half a year. Like, really, he just learned CPR a couple weeks ago.
So the optimum response is to find something to lean on - a wall? sure!! - while yes, also keeping an eye out for Maker knows what. ]
I'll try to contain my insatiable urge to smash everything.
[ This to Tony, in such tones as to suck all the available moisture out of the room, kill every available pan, etc. Not that there are pans, but you get the point. Because he's nothing if not a multitasker he offers Isabella the sort of faintly absent response one does when both persons are focused elsewhere, although he certainly wants to come back to whatever that orb is himself. Given his background he can't process it as anything but magic even with the objective awareness that's probably not how it operates as far as she's concerned. ]
Magic. [ More dry. ] Is what we've always called my particular talents. But if I might boldly assume kinetic means you're talking about energy, then yes, more or less.
[ Narrative is choosing to blatantly ignore the fact that the description of said spell tree would indicate Thedas has the concept of gravity somehow when its science is as advanced as humours. Hawke's concept of energy, despite its also inherent adherence to that field, is much more mystical, even if magic itself has building blocks and embedded equations. ]
You know, [ and this, to wind up, is to himself as much as it is to the room at large, but it does have some real significance ] in my quaint little Matrix it'd be a demon doing this. Sensory construct--illusions. And their purpose is to give you what you think you want. At unimaginable cost, naturally.
[ Hrm. ]
Considering all my advanced knowledge [ har ] says now they were probably very clever AI...well. No, I wouldn't trust anything in here.
im catching up to your obnoxious tag lengths
Or they're working real slow. [Tony inevitably sounds more distracted than concerned, naturally, which is easily interpreted as dismissive. And probably is. He stoops down to tap a ghostly key again, and this is approximately the instant that he starts to hear voices.
Fortunately, said voices are pretty quiet to begin with. Ring in his ear like an intimately placed whisper, just a peripheral distraction that nonetheless makes him clap a hand over his own ear and glance in Hawke's direction a little suspiciously. He looks back at the computer, frowning harder now, doubly rethinking the wisdom of stepping out of his suit even though he usually prefers going into software mode in jeans. Shaking his head, he stoops down to tab over the next display, when
another massive, armored arm clanks down on his shoulders. He startles immediately of course; Bella and Hawke had been twittering around all the way over there, and the space around him had been clear. Now, though, out of nowhere--]
Hello, Tony, [says Obadiah Stone. His voice is very pleasant in that cheesy menacing way, the sort of veiled threats made by two-bit mobsters in low-rent movies. In real life, Obadiah Stone had been a better liar. But his face, and the Iron Monger helmet framed around it, and the Iron Monger armor stacked up huge and hulking with the promise of power below it, has Tony's eyes going big in his head. He had appeared out of nowhere. This, more than the possibility of violence, stays Tony's hand despite that his initial instinct is invariably to shoot it in the head. Maybe Bella's weird rhetoric about whyyys and whatforrrrs is catching up to him. Obadiah says,] We need to talk. Well, you shut up; you need to listen. Have a seat.
[Obadiah winks in Bella's direction and his eyes skim over Hawke. His massive gloves set down on Tony's shoulder and push. It's hard to say whether he meets any resistance, considering the ridiculous difference in sizes between the Iron Man and Iron Monger suits. Suffice to say, Tony plunks down on the computer bench.
And by the time he does, it's a puffy synthetic-leather couch underneath him. Discreetly designed seatbelts here or there, which makes sense because there is blue sky through the small windows on either side and you need to be able to buckle up if there's turbulence. Instead of a computer console, Tony observes poles descending from the ceiling, and then a thin-hipped flight attendant steps out, lifting the hem of her uniform, as colored lights start to bob over the cabin walls. Tony's eyebrows go up; he decides he has gone insane, and turns to check if he's managed to hallucinate Bella and Hawke out of existence.
Lucky for his two companions, however, they're right here with them! Each has a beverage of their usual preference, but in a martini glass. Each is subject to the flight attendant's butt wiggle when the music starts. Iron Monger is moving around to sit beside Tony. It's pretty weird.]
i'm so glad we're challenging you, it will make you a better person
[ It also makes one wonder about the differences. ] 'Harry Potter?' [ is said in the inverted-commas tone of someone who has never heard of whatever-that-is, and immediately we know Bella's Matrix to be a culturally impoverished place. Before she can inquire any further, however, things…
…get weird.
Because suddenly Bella has a martini in hand, filled with a simulation of ice-cold gin, murky with simulated olive brine and two simulated olives, speared on a plastic sword and listing like a sunken ship against the slanted side of the glass. It is all she can do, after a short but longing examination, not to take just one sip. She's on the job- no CNS suppressors allowed.
She doesn't feel at home, exactly, but this is still a context she recognizes. Executive excess is unmistakable to someone raised in a corporate culture. The wiggle of the flight attendant's ass gets the most cursory of acknowledgements, before Bella's gaze homes in on the dude in the enormous metal suit. His face she doesn't recognize, though the wink - in abstraction - is not unfamiliar.
So close on the heels of the invocation, she has to ask: ] That's not Harry Potter, is it?
or at least more long-winded
Meanwhile he's wildly bemused by this turn of events, but given the conversation they were in the midst of, less surprised than he might be. The contents of his glass are no more complicated than really good beer, which a] tells us all exactly what kind of dude he is, and b] is just more bemusing, considering the martini was not so much a thing in the medievalissance, let alone special glasses for it. ]
Hold that thought. [ Erm. ] The 'psionics' one, not whoever Harry Potter turns out to be. I'm sure it'll still be interesting when the world isn't insane.
[ Assuming that ...ever happens. Not if any of you keep hanging out with Hawke, probably.
Although he recognizes few of the trappings, the atmosphere is certainly familiar, having spent some time playing badly at nobility and being introduced to every second daughter in Kirkwall. Excess is excess no matter where you go. He, like Bella, eyes the glass in his hand with longing, but puts it down on the closest possible surface not because he's on the job, so to speak, but for the aforementioned reasons of not trusting anything in here. ]
Are we due for a lecture of some sort? I can't imagine anything more productive under these circumstances than sitting still. Or that you can't find someone more your own freakishly large size to pick on.
[ Directing that to Iron Monger (not that Hawke knows to call him that, he's more thinking 'huge fucking golem' ) is, weirdly enough, coming to Tony's defense in some fashion. Big guy crushing little guy doesn't sit well. For all the reasons obvious to narrative but no one in this room. That he can still continuously quip through a rapidly metastasizing headache he erroneously assumes is caused by the sudden change to their surroundings is ...certainly a feat of some kind. ]
* not that he'd know Adam from Adam
no subject
His head really hurts. Way beyond tequila hangover levels of hurt. Some of the pain leaks into his voice, despite his silly boy bravado.]
No, [Iron Monger agrees.] This isn't Harry Potter. You know, it's really time for you to grow up. Time to take-- [Tony spills his drink all over the lovely upholstery seats and tries to push the bigger robo-man's face away around this point, but Obadiah simply closes his visor. His voice only gets louder with the digital filter, which is peculiar for Tony, mostly, because the ambient buzzing noise is still way louder.] --some responsibility for your investors. [Tony hits him a few times in the face, but Iron Monger simply hooks a power-armored headlock around him.] I've been carrying this company on my back for your whole Goddamn life, squirt, and I need you to start.
Definitely a lecture, [Tony adds. Ostensibly, he's doing a pretty good job ignoring the creature, which, much like a teenager, he immediately recognizes is part of the objective. But it's getting to him, evidently, because he finally points a glove over his shoulder and cuts a burst out of his repulsor. He succeeds in knocking Iron Monger's head
Through the roof.
The cabin depressurizes immediately. Sends the vessel's alarm system into deafening alert, serious klaxons, an octave below the flight stewardess' shriek of dismay as she grabs onto the nearest pole.
At the present time, the hole is too small to fit an adult human through. However, it proceeds to do its best to suck Bella, Hawke, and everything else out of it with dismembering force.]
no subject
Spilled milk at this point. And right now Bella has more immediate concerns. She dives for the same dance pole as the stewardess, seizing hold of it with one hand while the other rains blows on her pole-mate - fist to face and elbow to throat - in swift, pitiless motions that only desperate panic and the fact that the stewardess is probably not human can justify. As it is, though, Bella is not about to compete with an algorithm for space, nor life.
From the way her jaw is moving, it looks like Bella might be barking something at Tony, or at Hawke, or maybe even at the lumbering Stone- that something might even be helpful, but it's moot- all her words are swallowed by windy maw. ]
no subject
Speaking of unfathomable calamity, even though everyone in this room has an unsettling amount of experience with that, certain things - such as whatever is happening now, because 'cabin depressurization' means absolutely nothing to Hawke - just obliterate a person's ability to think. In Hawke's case he's busy being unceremoniously hurled across the cabin and much, much closer to the destabilizing rip than he would like (which is to say anywhere near it), progress halted by slamming spine-first into the wall. Fortunately, he also has an unsettling amount of experience not thinking in these situations, which means lack of thought doesn't lead to anything like lack of action.
To wit: since slapping gravity in the face has worked out pretty well so far, here's more of that, as solid a chunk of metal and creepy psuedo-paternal rhetoric as he is, Hawke claws a path through the atmosphere all sucking the wrong direction, and at first with painful slowness, then abruptly a great rush of blatantly physic-defying energy, hurls Not Harry Potter end over end skyward (...although that's any direction, at the moment) to seal the hole in the cabing with uh, him...self.
It's someone else's turn to Do Things now, by the way. And use random capitals. ]
no subject
Hawke ends up with a lap full of upside-down stripper, in the least fun imaginable meaning of that term you can think of. If it makes him feel better, though, she's about to fall straight down to the floor.]
Cooperate, [Iron Monger says, amid arrhythmic wrang clonks of his really preposterously huge, alloy-gloved hands coming down on Tony, who's reaction is mainly to go flying in the opposite direction of the blows. He does get out of the way on purpose once or twice, but it's hard to do that when there's a war of pressurization going on in your head, ongoing, even though Hawke has conveniently put his butt in the cabin hole.] And you get your life back. [Iron Monger's voice is getting louder.] Don't you miss this?
Don't you miss her?
I told you, I need an Aspirin before we talk corporate, [Tony answers. He raises his glove and the repulsor in his palm starts to glow, fiercely. His aim is terrible; Bella can see him weaving from where she's crouched. They don't have enough Hawkes to plug more holes than they've got, have they?]
no subject
Stop! Tony- stop! [ Because she does know his first name. She knows it because Iron Monger said it, because Iron Monger seems to know it. Come to think of it, this place knows an awful lot about Mr. Stark. All this personal information, this decidedly personal address from a figure he obviously recognizes - someone with a startlingly similar suit design, even. And who is this her? Cherchez la femme!
It wouldn't take a trained troubleshooter to figure out that the problem here is Tony, in a way that is deeper than but not unrelated to the simple fact that he is the one punching holes in this high-velocity tube. And just who is piloting this thing anyways? ]
Slow them down! [ Bella shouts at Hawke, as she regains her footing and begins to scramble across the cabin interior ] both of them- before they get us killed!
[ Borne by panicked momentum, Bella barrels through the doorway into the cockpit. With a two-handed swing, Bella knocks the pilot- ] Excuse me, ma'am, but you can't... [ -out cold, dumps him into the ground, and then slides into his now-vacant seat. The corner of Bella's right eye makes a micro-muscular twitch as she contacts the Real via her neural interface- Bella is as like to use a cellphone as a carrier pigeon, plus it's against FAA regulations to use a phone aboard a craft in flight. ]
Operator - I need to know how to fly an early 21st century commercial jet airliner. Not sure exactly what kind. I think a Boeing? Maybe?