The Revolution
105 posts · 2007-08-20 18:02:58 to 2009-03-07 16:57:20
Sounds interesting.... well, i mean the idea of you doing an event sounds interesting, cause right now all i have is a title.
~Darminian
((/bump for great justice!))
Tick, tock... tick, tock... tick, tock...
It was no secret that Ookami kept these Exiles around for one reason and one reason only. Indeed, the wolf-mistress of the Merovingian was well-known for her directness in more ways than one, among other things, and it was her way, as it was the way of those Exiles that she and the Effecutator had born for her purposes, as well as those purposes of those other Merovingian executors and powerful Exiles, when the need was deemed having arisen. So it was that such a need had been deemed so, and so these Dire Lupines had been assembled before their mother and mistress.
There had to be a hundred of them; perhaps more, as it was impossible to tell from more than even a moment's observation. They stood in regimented, soldiered rows that were further divided into subsections that were split based upon evident pack and bloodline, although such things were, Ookami knew at the back of her mind, nothing short of veritable nothing in this place.
But Ookami was known for her directness.
The massive vaulted chamber lay buried beneath layer upon layer of carefully-written masonry coding, the high, vaulted ceiling supported by sweeping pillars of the carved, neo gothic style, and winged stone gargoyles sat perched upon them in sequential rings, their snarling, canine maws open, as if braying and drooling with a silent, permanent hunger. Though the ceiling was vast enough to be partially obfuscated by long shadows, courtesy of the flickering braziers and candles that lit the archaic assembly chamber, the great ringed ‘M' seal of the Frenchman was visible nonetheless; a painfully obvious reminder of the Exile that drove them all; even the savage Ookami herself.
Freedom. It was such an impossible commodity in this place, it seemed.
Her perfect lip curling disdainfully, Ookami flexed her feminine fingers slowly, feeling her long, razor-sharp claws sliding along each other as she did so.
Freedom could wait for her.
Ookami's fur-lined leather corset creaked audibly as she perched herself upon the pulpit that sat at the head of the chamber, her chestnut-brown hair set carelessly about her savage, gorgeous features and her long, glistening talons splayed outwards, as if all looking to go their separate ways and spear their own preys. Slowly and purposefully, her golden eyes roamed the small army of Dire Lupines she had assembled here in silence, as if daring any one of them to show a sign of weakness; anything that would warrant blood on the flagstones.
But these were no dogs. The Dire Lupines were elite warriors; warped by the Effectuator's seemingly-careless designs into lethal engines of destruction, each capable of entering a wild killing frenzy that could spell the death of entire groups of human operatives at once. Indeed, they were one of the Merovingian's many, many answers to the evolving weapons of its countless foes, and they would serve Ookami's purposes in this case as well as they should, as they would those purposes of the one she had struck her deal with.
Ookami was about to address the assembled Exiles when she heard his footsteps upon the cold stone as he approached her from the blind spot in her rear. How like him, the werewolf thought with an odd mixture of what equated to both simulated disdain and admiration. In a place such as this, he should have stuck out like a sore thumb; a single Blood Drinker amidst so many of their traditional Systemic foes, but somehow, he managed to fit right in, as if he had always been there, watching in silence. Vanil was quite good at that, Ookami had noticed, and she also couldn't help but notice that the pseudo-Exile had only gotten better at it as the years had progressed.
Ookami heard the Blood Drinker's long black leathers, almost glistening in the seemingly-warm torchlight, as they furled about his heeled boots, his slender figure halting directly behind her, his pale features mostly obscured in the long shadows cast by the pillars that held up the ceiling, high above the pair of them and their lycanthropic army, as he liked it; Ookami knew well enough. "Are they prepared?" Vanil asked simply, his gentle accent somehow avoiding the echo that should have begotten it in such a voluminous space.
"Always prepared, Vanil," Ookami shot back quickly, the irritation in her voice evident, much to Vanil's silent humor. He knew full well that the Dire Lupines were written for readiness. "They will hunt and kill at my mere word, hrrr..."
"Naturally," Vanil replied simply, his weight shifting idly from heel to the other. A short silence followed, the legion of Dire Lupines below the two of them motionless and at attention, during which Ookami allowed herself a few moments to contemplate her counterpart's rise to the power he now held. It had been a long and brutal endeavor, she could well remember. So many had died, and many more Exiles had been deleted and destroyed to facilitate the fluttering of his wings. Vanil had made no distinctions. Where once there had been peers; those somewhat like him, now there was not but digital dust and memory; testament to the blood purges and violent rampages of the Exile in an earlier time; a time when killing and pain had been nothing short of an art to him, as it was to have been by design. Things may have been different now; it was true, but not so different so as for Ookami to forget such things so easily.
It was ironic, really. In some ways, Ookami was partially to blame for such, at least indirectly. And now the circle had come full. The Prince of Darkness stood before her in all of his dusky splendor...with a deal.
Ookami had agreed to it. He had known she would.
"Hrr, then your assets are as well?" the Lupine-mistress demanded tentatively.
"Also naturally," Vanil replied smoothly as he took a step and placed himself closer to Ookami's fur and leather-wrapped body. "I have already sent soldiers that will obey only me into their proper places. The humans face a storm of steel, love, and they shan't escape us."
Ookami growled femininely but said nothing more, for there was nothing more to be said. Turning on her slender heel, she instead spun to face her warriors, and Vanil's pale figure fell back once more into the hanging gloom. "You have all been told, so I don't need to say it again!" Ookami bellowed with unsurprising fervor. Even after all of this time, Vanil couldn't help but admire how her pretty, chapped lips trembled with each breath she took. It had been a long time since he had experienced the pleasure such things had the capacity to wreak upon his smooth, digital flesh, and he had no reason to presume he ever would again, either.
But it was, still, not a wholly unpleasant memory, Vanil remarked with an idle smile.
"You may let the blood of any human you see," Ookami continued loudly, "but there is something in particular one of the filth carries with him that we wish to possess! If ‘any' harm comes to this artifice, the same will be exacted upon all of your miserable heads a thousand fold!"
Another silence hung before one of the Dire Lupines dared ask the question they all, Ookami included, had.
"How do we know what it looks like, Den-Mistress?"
Ookami made to speak, but promptly stopped herself. What ‘did' it look like? Unsure and irritated because of such, the Lupine spun to face the Blood Drinker that still lurked behind her inquisitively.
Ookami could make out the small grin that made its way onto Vanil's noble lips, the tips of his fangs glittering in the torchlight that snaked its way about him.
"Just follow the light."
~V
((There is no post... but I might put in a bit with a drunken, singing Morraeon later...))
The crack of gunfire. The patter of precipitation. The boom of thunder.
He can't escape this time. He loses his heart in a torrent of blood.
‘Dante!'
She wakes...
Chemuel felt her eyes, heavy with sleep, flash open as she sat nearly bolt-upright in her favorite ratty swivel-chair, her linens hanging loosely from her small, girlish figure. She had heard rain, but now all she could hear was her breathing and the mechanical whine of the Matrix as it wound its way downwards from the trio of mounted viewing monitors before her half-prone form, the tendrils of green digits coiling their way downwards like snakes as they always did, as if prompting her awakening.
A dream. It had been but a dream. But had it? Now that she thought about it, her mind still weighed down with the stardust that often came with such late-night slumber (the mounted chronometer next to her keypad told her that it was, indeed, night, as the perpetual shadow outside the nearby viewing bay certainly wouldn't), it had indeed seemed nothing short of raw Reality to Chemuel as she had dreamed it. Had she been dreaming of the Matrix, the girl thought on further, it would have been a double irony, seeing as how the Matrix technically was anything but Real. In some regards, anyway. But this...
This had ‘seemed' so Real.
Coughing the last bit of sleep from her tongue, Chemuel reached for the dented tin pitcher of now-cold caffeine that she had been sipping from and poured a measure of it into her adjacent metal cup. Watching the smelly, near-black fluid stream into the tiny basin, the Captain of the Schrodinger's Cat was reminded rather distinctly of tar. Clearing her throat again, Chemuel took a tentative sip and promptly coughed her voice out of tone again at the frigid, metallic tang of the stuff.
It ‘did' keep her awake though.
Setting the cup to the steel Operations station with a disgusted clang, Chemuel pounded the comm panel that lay to her left. "Hand, I want to know where the Masquerade is."
"My dear Captain, you know as well as I do that the Masquerade cannot be found," the response officer crackled over the other end. "You yourself should know this better than I."
"Don't care," Chemuel insisted as she sat up in her squeaking chair and watched as a particular band of code swiveled oddly. What was that...? "Find it, or it's coming out of ‘your' paycheck, hand."
---
The eastern side of the corrugated steel warehouse shuddered in the concrete as the rocket-propelled grenade soared from its berth with a whooshing contrail of heavy blue smoke and through a window on that end, blowing it outwards with a deafening blast of flaming wooden splinters and shattered glass. The E Pluribus Neo operative that had taken up a sniping position on the spot had zero chance to avoid the projectile, and his figure tumbled from the exploding perch like a rag doll, his falling figure riddled with murderous hot shrapnel.
With an even louder roar then, the Dire Lupines broke their hidden ranks and stormed towards the burning building, their lithe, dark forms like those of hungry snakes as some scampered on all fours through the field of wild long-range gunfire that tore at them from those firing positions in the warehouse that remained intact. There were hundreds of them, and they were fast, and it was all the human defenders could do to fire accurately as their canine RSIs blurred and skipped expertly around their sniper fire.
Across the nearby rooftops, cadres of Elite Commandos phased into existence, doubtless thrown into position by the Prince of Darkness himself, their wiry figures, wrapped in their glossy black stealth garbs melting from the night air as they opened fire with a parade ground clatter, their cyclopean red eyes beaming outwards through the evening twilight.
The return fire was as furious as it could be, but even the human defenders were unable to stop the tide of ravening Exiles, and as a second explosive rocket blasted out another window of the beset structure, the Dire Lupines ripped through the loading door of the warehouse, and the end began.
---
The Operator aboard the E Pluribus Neo vessel known as the ‘Scarlet Hotei' watched the battle begin to unfold in numeric form from the relative safety of the tunnels of the Real. His fingers sliding quickly across the keypad that sat before the many viewing panels that gave him a coded vision of the Matrix at all times, the Operator could make out each flurry of gunfire and each group of assailing programs with near-absolute certainty and could tell that their own operatives had little chance against such a tide of fire.
But the point wasn't to win.
As befitting of the Operator's Captain, the plan had been a clever one. Ookami and her Dire Lupines sought that which was not there. It was well known that the Exile known as ‘Vanil' sought the fragment of the One's Residual Self-Image that Phrack had kept in his possession for so long, and that if the Merovingian executor got his claws on such a thing, the ramifications for them all, as well as those of the Matrix itself, could be dire indeed.
And so, at the last moment, when the assault had been known to be imminent, Phrack had moved the fragment away from its former hiding place and placed an entire army of his best operatives in its place. As such, the werewolves would find plenty of blood, but they would fail to find that which they had fought for.
Grinning to himself in spite of the carnage he now bore witness to, the Operator dialed a number and adjusted his communications headset.
"They've taken the bait, Captain."
~V
((Delicious!
More.))
"You're certain we haven't been followed?" Darminian asked the leader of the Pluribus Neo fleet, one gloved hand fingering a sub machinegun, one of a pair, beneath the folds of his short leather jacket. "Or second-guessed?"
"Pretty certain," Phrack replied matter-of-factly, the weight of his own firearms reassuringly concealed beneath his own coat of crimson leather. "And if I'm wrong, it wouldn't really matter now, would it?" the Captain of the Scarlet Hotei continued as he straightened his tie smartly, his eyes glancing behind the two of them at the circle of duster-clad E Pluribus Neo operatives that waited with them in the dank, abandoned subway station for the Kaede train. With a small grin, Phrack slid one of his chrome-finished Desert Eagles from his leathers and slid the hammer back once, the metallic click echoing about the musty, tiled space.
"After all, we're all here to do what we're all here to do."
Darminian shrugged and pushed his armless shades up the bridge of his nose appraisingly. "I suppose so. But people get lucky sometimes. You never know."
Phrack smiled and slapped the hammer of his weapon back to its berth and slid it away.
"No they don't. And yes I do."
---
Aboard the Scarlet Hotei, in the Real, something was wrong.
Or, rather, Phrack's Operator could tell in the Real that something was wrong in the Matrix. That was; not going according to plan. His fingerless gloves danced over his keypad furiously as streams of green flared with bands of brief whiteness, the displays of coded data flashing before his eyes as he absorbed one sequence and anomaly after another. The battle at the warehouse was progressing as they had seen it would, and yet it was not. The Operator had been that which he was for quite some time, and had long since developed what some referred to as the ‘Operational sixth sense.' It was a feeling in the experienced Operator's gut and eyes that told him that, despite evident appearances, something was not right with the flow of the Matrix, and that those in his charge were in very unreal danger.
He had that feeling, and his pupils scanned the Matrix frantically as more and more equations worked their ways downward before them. The keypad clicked louder and louder. Somewhere...it was there ‘somewhere'...
Where was Vanil?
The Operator couldn't see him. But he was supposed to be with Ookami; ready to swoop down upon the Fragment once the Dire Lupines had overrun their dummy defenses. His brow furrowing, he ran the sweep again and came up with the same results. Vanil wasn't anywhere near that warehouse. By all evident rights, in fact, the Exile wasn't anywhere in the Matrix at all, and was certainly nowhere near that Richland warehouse. Which meant...
Oh God.
The Operator's fingers shot to the side of his headset. "Sir, they've redirected the train, it's a trap, get out!"
---
As if on cue, as soon as Phrack raised the phone to his ear, the illumination that lined the subway station faded, each light sequentially shutting itself off with a bang as power was routed away from the station. His Operator's voice now not but shuddering static, the Captain of the Scarlet Hotei lowered the device in time to watch the head of the E Pluribus Neo operative behind him vaporize with a burst of gory mist.
"Everyone down!" Phrack shouted, and the train station exploded with gunfire.
Even with the light gone from the place, Phrack could make out the amorphous shapes as they flew down the tiled steps of the far entrance to the station, their dusters fluttering in the sudden updraft as they darted from shadow to shadow like wraiths, muzzle flashes and bullets spitting outwards from the darkness. There were only three or four of them; Phrack couldn't tell for certain with his communications with the Operator cut. With a silent curse, the Captain realized that Vanil had anticipated his ploy; had anticipated everything and set a trap within his own for him and his operatives. Diving behind a nearby pillar to avoid the oncoming gunfire, Phrack glanced to his left and saw that, though almost half of his crusaders had died in the opening volley, Darminian had managed to do the same; the man's paired sub machineguns already in his grasp.
If the Masquerade wanted a fight, it would get a fight.
With a wave of his hand, Phrack drew his remaining crusaders up behind him, their assorted firearms held close to their bodies. They were ready to die; he could tell, and that was probably a good thing, because at least a few more of them probably would. There were only four of them left, but they knew Phrack, by name if not personally, and they knew how important what they were carrying was. The Captain of the Scarlet Hotei knew they wouldn't let him down.
Which meant that it all came down to him now. With a brief, assertive smile, Phrack tore his Desert Eagles, their chrome finish glittering in the gunfire that tore through the subway station and pulled the hammers back, chambering a pair of heavy-bore bullets.
That's when Phrack was at his best.
"Darm!" Phrack called to his left as he sheltered himself behind the pillar of concrete that was, even now, rapidly deteriorating in the hail of Merovingian gunfire. "Give us covering fire!"
With a nod and without any hint of hesitation, Darminian spun out from behind his own cover and crossed his sub machineguns out before him like a horizontal crucifix and pulled the triggers, a hail of glittering bullet casings clinking to the concrete as they let loose with a roar of automatic fire. Darminian pursed his lips as he spun one way to avoid the return fire from his near-invisible foes and crossed his weapons the other way to continue his barrage. He couldn't tell if he was hitting them; he couldn't tell if he was really shooting even close to that which he was trying to hit, but he knew it would, in this case, be enough.
With a nod to his operatives, Phrack pulled the brim of his fedora down close to his bald forehead and shouted "For Neo!" at the top of his voice as he dove out into the field of fire. His end of the station exploded with flashes of luminescence as he and his crusaders let loose with their own weapons, their figures blurring slightly as they did their utmost to avoid the storm of incoming gunfire from the seemingly spectral Masques. Phrack held his twin pistols high as he sprinted for the far end of the train station, his red leathers flowing behind him like dragon's wings as he jigged slightly this way and that to dodge those bullets meant for him.
As he heard one of his operatives cry out as he lost his face in a shower of blood, Phrack knew that Vanil's anticipation of his fears would mean the deaths of any of them who died here.
So be it.
~V
((Delicious!
I may have scoffed when Phrack popped a "For Neo!". But Walter definitly did.))
Those E Pluribus Neo operatives that still lived had spread themselves out in a circle of ballistic flame at the floor of the central, cargo-strewn loading bay, the bodies of dozens of their own and their Exilic foes piling up around them as they fought not for Neo but rather for their very lives as the dark-furred Dire Lupines streamed through the unloading doors they had managed to tear to steel ribbons with their bare claws. The odd Exile sprayed a burst of automatic fire at the humans, but the majority of them simply launched themselves forward, spurred on by their original programming dictates, to lock individual, black-garbed operatives in deadly close-quarters duels, where a human on his own had very little chance of survival. The tactic, while exceedingly straightforward, had proven marvelously effective, as evidenced by the long, dripping trails of fleshy gore than ran their ways to the rusted drainage grates that lay buried in the dirty concrete.
And then Ookami was amongst them.
At first, it was as if the Lupine-Mistress was less a program and more a force of digital nature; something horrible and violent and unstoppable. With a feral scream, Ookami vaulted from the center of her warriors, her lithe, whip-chord Residual Self-Image suspended twenty feet in the air as her golden irises locked with her chosen prey. Her pupils dilated, and time caught up with her as the Lupine soared downwards and smashed her heels into a human's face, their sharp edges drawing ugly razor lines across his terrified visage as her long, wicked talons joined them and went to work with wild abandon as she fell with him. Before he knew it, the crusader of Neo crashed to the floor in a shower of squirting gore as Ookami's heels followed, sending shivering cracks outwards through the concrete as she landed, her talons, now dripping red, held outwards like wings.
Perhaps three seconds had passed. Perhaps.
With a snap, the remaining E Pluribus Neo operatives brought their fists, blades, and guns up to acknowledge the Exile's sudden presence in their midst, but despite the most sophisticated combat subroutines that the separatist organization could mount its crusaders with, they weren't nearly fast enough. Ookami had done battle throughout the Matrix for over five hundred years, first for her own Lupine clans and then later for the Frenchman, and she knew war and killing as well as a Succubus might know pleasure. With a feral snarl, the Lupine-Mistress became a spinning blur of chestnut hair and form-hugging, fur-lined leather, her long, glistening claws flashing as she launched herself at the two humans nearest her and bisected their torsos a dozen times in a dozen different places.
"Hrrrr, where is it!?" Ookami screamed as she felt their blood splatter across her breasts in great wet gouts. "Give it to me!" she howled as she spun on her heel and drove her talons through another operative that had tried to get behind her with a straight razor, her slender fingers, imbued with the strength of a thousand of her minions, tearing his twitching, digital spine from his suddenly limp body and hurling it to the floor with a sickening, squishy crack.
---
Flush with the shadows of the darkened subway station, the Masque known as Mechanical could make out the figures of Phrack and his operatives as they dove out from behind cover and into the torrential field of fire. Were it not for the lone E Pluribus Neo member with the sub machineguns to their far right, the barrels of his weapons blazing loudly and forcing the Masques back into their own cover with showers of shattered concrete and ballistic residue, Mechanical would have likely been able to kill all of them with a single controlled burst of his assault rifle.
But that was not an option.
His gloved finger tightening around the trigger, Mechanical let fly, his heavier weapon barking in his grip as he hurled the long, narrow rifle rounds towards the oncoming Neonates, the hammer of his long rifle banging back upon its chassis loudly. Perhaps it was enough to deter their progress, but Mechanical could well see that it wouldn't for a moment halt their valiant advance through the sea of digital lead and raining debris. Cursing quietly, the Masque felt his long black duster swirl outwards behind him as he spun back into the shadows he had only relatively recently become so accustomed to as their return fire whistled past him and blew great, gaping holes in the wall behind where he had stood.
His empty magazine falling to the concrete with a clatter, Mechanical slid a fresh one home and was about to reload his rifle once more when he turned quickly and saw Vanil.
The Blood Drinker and master of the Masquerade descended the steps of the train station slowly and purposefully, as if each step were a world to him. He seemed utterly unfazed by the ruinous, clattering gun battle that raged below him. His heels clicked audibly with each step he took, and his long, black leathers hung about his slender, effeminate frame like limp, draconic pinions. The flares of weapons fire flashed across his shades, and his gloves hung at his sides, like a set of curved black claws. Crisscrossing the Merovingian executor's normally pristine, noble features were jagged, twisting veins of black, tar-like digital corruption; veins that Mechanical had noticed had grown more and more pronounced with each passing night now.
It was why they were here, Mechanical remembered quickly as he felt another burst of wild gunfire blow another chunk from the pillar he had secreted himself behind, his rifle held vertically flush to his torso. Vanil was dying, and Phrack had that which the Exile needed to survive.
Sometimes, Mechanical allowed himself to muse for the briefest moment, fate was almost too cruel.
Almost.
Acknowledging Mechanical with the briefest of nods, so like him, Vanil fixed his gaze on Phrack and his operatives as they wove through the Masque's bullets like black-garbed blurs, their own weapons flashing again and again as they fought for their very lives. His black lips slowly curving upwards a fraction, Vanil splayed his leather-wrapped fingers outward and allowed his twin, matte-black Desert Eagle handguns to slide down his sleeves from their concealed mounts and into his waiting hands.
And Mechanical knew then that, as he racked the hammer of his assault rifle back to chamber the first round of his new magazine, it would be the very first of his last.
~V
((Delicious!))
((Do you know any other words?
))
Ookami's lips tightened visibly as she heard the same news she had been hearing ever since the last of the humans had been rounded up and killed. It wasn't here. It wasn't there. It wasn't anywhere.
The loading bay lay in utter ruin. The bodies of dozens of dead humans and Exiles alike littered the pockmarked concrete in great bleeding heaps that the surviving Dire Lupines had taken it upon themselves to attempt to burn to digital ash, with only varying degrees of success. It was as if they didn't want to burn; as if they were merely content to sit hunched and mocking, their glassy, lifeless eyes watching the Lupine-Mistress receive this same report from her warriors over and over again.
It wasn't here.
Ookami flexed her long, still-wet claws irritably, a long, slow growl quietly escaping her feminine throat. "Hrrrrrrrr, then you are not looking hard enough, fool. We know it to be here. We have been told it would be here, with these humans." The Exile spat the last word with thinly-veiled contempt as she jabbed a black-garbed body that lay prone to the messy floor adjacent to her with her long, vicious heel. "Vanil said that..."
Vanil had said it would be here, hadn't he.
Her yellow, canine eyes narrowing with sudden, rabid suspicion, Ookami whirled about to face the Dire Lupine that had come to deliver her the news, his matted black fur caked with gore. "Where is Vanil, warrior? Why is he not here with the pack, as we had agreed upon?"
The younger Exile shifted uneasily, his urge to drop onto all fours readily apparent. "I do not know, Den-Mistress. He and his Masquerade have not yet made contact with our auguries."
Ookami's lips curled back from her fangs in slow, rippling rage, her desire to cleave her fellow program in two obvious. "Then find him, or I will tear your eyes from your skull and make certain you look where I wish you to."
---
His run complete, Phrack dove into the shadows that the Masques had been using as a shroud from whence to kill his soldiers and reloaded his heavy chrome pistols with a practiced, subroutine-driven snap-click. Only two of the crusaders that had driven out with him into the Merovingian's oncoming fire were still alive with him, and he could tell that they both knew that their likelihood of surviving for much longer while within the cold steel jaws of Vanil's subway trap was a very small one at this point.
His fingers tightened around the carved grips of his pistols. They were to be commended greatly for having fought so far, Phrack knew with that which could most closely be equated to pride in his atypical, Machiavellian mind.
With a nod to his operatives, Phrack glanced out from behind his new pillar and saw Vanil. The Blood Drinker was flanked by two of his Masques; one male and one female. The first eyed the shadows that wrapped their way about the train station as if they were about to jump at him, his face concealed by a black cloth bandanna, while the second had wild, black hair that hung about her pale, made up features in wild, unkempt locks, and her slightly off-kilter eyes shifted constantly, and Phrack couldn't help but wonder what sort of creative horror Vanil had shown to her in her service to him as he noticed the way her fighting dress of black leather and silver clasps draped from her slightly emaciated-looking Residual Self-Image. Both held matching pairs of Beretta handguns that glittered in the hanging darkness, and the Captan of the Scarlet Hotei had no doubt that the both of them would take a bullet meant for their master in a heartbeat.
There were not many things Phrack and Vanil had in common. But there were some things.
A sudden, deafening flash of gunfire broke Phrack from his reverie. Darminian had fired at the three Masques now that they had emerged from their shroud of darkness and concrete. Throwing his gloves up to shield his pale face from the sudden shower of stone that sprayed his way as the submachine gun round tore past him, Vanil spun to face the origin of the audacious attack in time to see the Neonate disappear behind another pillar that held the ceiling of the station aloft in the black. With a small, dismissive frown, the Exile gestured to his guards.
"LinksLife. Ekizeba. Kill him." His black leathers furling about his slender body, Vanil turned to face Phrack and those two Neonates that still stood with him.
"I will deal with Phrack myself."
Their only visible acknowledgement was that of the joint clicking of the rounds of their weapons being chambered, the two Masques stepped away from their Captain and towards the cover Darminian had taken, and all Phrack could do was have faith in his old comrade's ability to hold his own against two fully-armed and dangerous Merovingian operatives as Vanil spun his own handguns once in his hands and strode forth to address him.
"I told you that no one could oppose me, human," Vanil called out, that distinct, just-off accent of his echoing against the spurts of gunfire that still wracked the subway platform behind him. The eyes that those shades of his hid settled on the Neonates that flanked Phrack, and a slow, cruel smile split the black veins of viral decay that writhed beneath the pale flesh of his Residual Self-Image.
"Not even you."
That confident grin of his crawling onto his own lips, Phrack slid his fedora from his bald head and let it fall to his right, his thumbs clicking the safeties on his guns back and forth in anticipation. "They say that seeing is believing, Vanil."
The Exile's painted lips curved back, the fangs of his existence baring themselves brazenly to his human foe. "We'll see, Neonate."
An age passed in a moment then. The debris that had been loosed during the fierce duel between the Pluribus Neo operatives and the Masquerade drifted in faint clouds of hanging dust past the two opposing figures. Phrack cracked his knuckles against the handles of his Desert Eagles, while Vanil relaxed his own against the grips of their darker brethren. For that moment, the only sound was the distant crack of weapons fire and the breaths that the both of them took.
The two crusaders that had flanked him were dead before they could react. As their RSIs fell to the concrete of the subway platform, a bleeding wound in each of their foreheads, Phrack leapt and kicked himself forwards off a pillar and into the air just in time to replicate Vanil's own maneuver.
Time froze to a near standstill and human and Exile lay suspended in space, their faces inches from each other and their hands and wrists grappling as their handguns emptied their magazines past the two operatives' ears.
~V
((In the immortal words (word?) of Smith in Reloaded: "Mooorrre..." ))
((What she said.
In conclusion, some of you should go Machine (OR CYPHERITE) so the orgs can be somewhat balanced, and everyone can have more fun!))
((Owch. We barely have enough good Mervs as it is right now....))((What she said.
In conclusion, some of you should go Machine (OR CYPHERITE) so the orgs can be somewhat balanced, and everyone can have more fun!))
Iovai wrote:((I blame Dezreki.))((Owch. We barely have enough good Mervs as it is right now....))((What she said.
In conclusion, some of you should go Machine (OR CYPHERITE) so the orgs can be somewhat balanced, and everyone can have more fun!))
MatrixRefugee wrote:(( Channelling the Oracle, Chem? You just read me mind. :: laughs:: ))Iovai wrote:((I blame Dezreki.))((Owch. We barely have enough good Mervs as it is right now....))((What she said.
In conclusion, some of you should go Machine (OR CYPHERITE) so the orgs can be somewhat balanced, and everyone can have more fun!))
Chemuel wrote:((Well you don't 'all' have to go Machine. We could use some Mervs.))MatrixRefugee wrote:(( Channelling the Oracle, Chem? You just read me mind. :: laughs:: ))Iovai wrote:((I blame Dezreki.))((Owch. We barely have enough good Mervs as it is right now....))((What she said.
In conclusion, some of you should go Machine (OR CYPHERITE) so the orgs can be somewhat balanced, and everyone can have more fun!))
And so Darminian would do what he always did; what he always had to do. He would fight.
With a grimace, Darminian threw himself out into plain sight and pulled his triggers. The blinding muzzle flares in his shades, the Neonate could only just make out LinksLife and Ekizeba as each dived to one side to avoid the storm of digital lead, massive showers of chipped mortar and concrete thrown up behind them as Darminian crisscrossed his guns in an attempt to follow their fleeing forms with a suitable measure of ballistic lethality.
But the Masques were fast.
As if rebounding from the walls of the platform itself, LinksLife and Ekizeba both dove back together, raised their pistols; a line of four shimmering tips of dark metal, and returned fire. The brass bullet casings shone sharply against the looming black of their apparel coding, and time seemed to crawl as Darminian willed himself to perceive the bullets that were too fast for any one person to perceive. Weaving expertly, the Neonate angled himself around the corkscrew-contrails of the oncoming projectiles, dodging them with uncanny precision. Spinning in place as might a dancer, Darminian brought himself onto one knee and let loose with his automatic weapons again, raking the field of fire with burning projectiles and sprays of debris.
Though they had obviously seen it coming, it was still no less of a challenge for the pair of Merovingian operatives to dive to the floor as the hot hailstorm passed above them, their figures prone to the concrete and their own guns extended as they fired back again and again, trying to force their enemy back into cover.
Again Darminian saw the counterattack coming. Exhaling deeply, the E Pluribus Neo operative denied the gravity that was not gravity and sprung from his crouch, the passage of time a figment of perception as his legs did the splits in midair, allowing the Masques' bullets to pass beneath him harmlessly and perforate the neon ad-laden wall that lay behind where he had perched with sprays of sparks and shattered plastic-glass.
As Ekizeba and LinksLife leapt from the floor with a swirl of black fabric and leather, Darminian sprayed a few bursts of fire in their general direction as he dove back behind the nearest pillar.
He could only hope Phrack was faring this well.
---
The passage of time was as nothing for the two of them. Both knew it to be so, and so it was for them and them alone in this realm of perception relative to one's own belief in the nature of ‘Reality.' In such a way, the two combatants were frozen and yet not frozen in digital space, their weapons held beside each other, side-by-side, in a subtle, ballistic mimicry of the nature of the two; human and Exile alike. It was more than a duel or battle. It was a work of art. The two powerful operatives were but painters; their guns their brushes, and their canvass the Matrix itself.
Phrack felt his surroundings warp back into what was by the Machines to be considered acceptable human focus as he and his opponent landed with their stomachs to the floor of the train station, the still barrel of his Desert Eagle against Vanil's pale, black-veined temple.
"You're empty," the Blood Drinker snarled softly.
Phrack could feel the cold black metal of Vanil's own handgun to the side of his own head and said that which he knew with that small, sure grin of his.
"So are you."
~V
Two weeks earlier....
A late summer night on the roof of Camon Central Church; Sieges sits there cleaning her guns and watching a group of EPN and Machinists rough-housing below. Watching the futility of it all leaves her so distracted, she almost does not sense the odd feeling that someone watched her from behind, until Morraeon rouses herself and sets off an alarm in her brain
Behind her stands a figure completely encased in the shadows of the late evening. All that is clearly visible of him is the glittering leather hem of his black leather coat, but the voice was unmistakable. "I have something to tell you," Vanil said.
She keeps herself from gathering her body defensively, the better to keep him at bay with a sense of false security. "Something like... what?" Her voice is guarded and suspicious, but strangely free from anger, which startled her deep in her heart."
A gentle breeze catches his leathers, sending curling out before him like wings. "I'm sorry." he says, almost as if the words took a supreme act of the will to enunciate.
A momentary pregnant silence passes as she stares at him. "Say that again?" she asks, incredulous, finding the words far too good to be true.
"Hmph. You heard me," he grunts, almost impatient, and starts to turn away.
She catches herself. "I'm sorry... I'm just a little in shock here," she says, as if she's finding it too good to be true. "I just..." she fumbled for the right words to say before opting to take the line of simplicity. "Thanks... that's all I needed to hear from you..." Something ticks in the part of her brain she can still claim as solely her own. "But on that footing, I have to confess, I've been plotting my revenge on you all this time..." she says, with definate remorse, and despite a momentary protest from the Exile sharing her head. "I can forgive you now, but... can you forgive me?"
"I can..." He inclines his head, and his face comes partially into view. His normally beautiful pale flesh is cross-crossed with wicked black veins that run up the side of his neck below his ears, then after a moment's consideration, he adds, " ...do that."
Seeing his face so distorted and disfigured, she cannot help emitting a small sound of pity, even empathy. Much as she hates him for his crimes against her, she cannot help appreciating the beauty of his face and form. Then she reaches out and closing the gap between them, gently touches the side of his face with her right hand.
His skin feels colder than death, even through the leather of her gloves. His fangs hang over his open lips. "I know how it feels. To suffer such a thing."
"It's all right... all debts are cancelled," she says, even though the words cause Morraeon to roil with indignation in her head. "What... what's happened to you?" she asks in something close to concern.
"The Exilic sequencing that they bound to my Residual Self-Image is rotting at it faster than it ever has. I haven't a great deal of time, unless I take that which I seek," he says, not telling her much, but at least giving her the roughest idea of just what is happening to cause such an effect in his appearance.
She feels herself wince with more than empathy: the effects had a certain consonence with her. She swears she feels the dull burn of the sentient toxin at the points of entry on her back and thighs, a pain memory she had hoped time had filed the edges from. "That's dreadful..." she says, with genuine empathy. "I'm not saying this lightly, but I have an idea how you feel." Shs gazed toward the skyline and the dim outlines of the aquaduct between Richland and International. "You know what tomorrow is?"
"No," he says, the monosyllable touched with an air of "how could I?"
She pushes back an all-too-familiar pain memory. "One year ago tomorrow was when I got hit with that poison... I still don't know who did it and why, but in someways, it put me where you are now."
Smirking just a little, he adds, "Did you choose your poison?"
She shakes her head. "No... but apparantly I chose to put myself in its path... and I chose the antidote for it, though that sometimes feels as bad as the disease." Morraeon, objecting to this remark, roils in her head for a moment, then sinks back into her post-prandial half-slumber.
"I see." he says, and adjusts his footing, his coat shifting again. "You were always the naieve one," he observes. "But perhaps not so naieve as those of us who deceive and manipulate and position. I don't know."
She smiles a little at this near-complimenting comment. "I like to think of myself as the innocent one... I haven't lost my innocence, but in other ways, I've grown much more wise through experience."
"Mm." He turns to leave, but stops himself and looks back at her. " My name is Dante Nihilson. I became aware of the Simulation at the age of twenty-one through Self-Substantiation, and was indoctrinated into the Merovingian syndicat four years hence. There wasn't any going back. There still isn't."
She takes this in silently, with her usual quiet, childlike attentiveness. Then a compassionate impulse rises in her heart and she approaches him, reaching out and laying a hand on his arm. "Come here a moment..." she said, her voice soft.
He flinches, as if terrified of physical contact, but does as she says. Almost as nervous as he, in case he should try attacking her again, she leans in closer and gently kisses his cheek. Finding it isn't dry, she reaches into her dark red silk blouse and takes out a red silk handkerchief, using it to blot his cheek gently. "Maybe our past hasn't always been the most peaceful, and the future is always gonna be uncertain..." she says, gazing past him as if into the shadows of the past, "But we've got the present, and at least for now, there's no debts between us." She couldn't say for certain if the pain memories would return and upset her present equilibrium. "You're lucky my worse half is asleep tonight, she'd be snarking up a storm..." she said, half-trying to jest.
She wonders if she only thinks she sees a smirk in one corner of this mouth. "I may die. Someone should know." His shades hide his eyes, but something tells her that they're utterly impassive behind those lenses. "You have to; do you understand? Once you do something so unforgivable and terrible, you have no choice but to continue. There is no escaping causality...no escaping what you do and what that makes you."
She wags her head, not dismissively, but weighing his statement against her knowledge. "No... you can always choose to change. You just have to let yourself be more than the ones and zeros that make up your code, or the chemical reactions in your body... That's why I've been able to keep Morraeon out of the worst trouble."
His lips tighten. He's obviously in pain, both physically and otherwise. "If you killed a child, could you wake up the next night? Could you bring yourself to accept that death as being entirely your responsibility and keep walking?" he asks
She opens her mouth to ask him what he meant, then decided it was better that she did not find out the particulars. "I haven't killed a child... but I'm partly responsible for killing an Exile who had children, leaving them without a father... The best I can tell myself is that at least he was an old program and his time had come," she says thoughtfully, thinking of one of Morraeon's early hunting expeditions.
"Have you never wondered why the Machines don't try harder to remove me? The human collateral is too much for them." He smiles coldly, as if half-pleased with himself.
She senses Morraeon rousing herself for a moment, and she knew a hint of crimson flickered in her left eye. Her left hand starts to curl itself into a claw-like shape, threatening to wipe that smile off his face, but that soon fades away as the Exile settles down, too contented and sated to disturb her own slumbers over the bore. "All I can say is, we've all got the potential to be more than that, we just have to find that way. Even you do, if you let yourself."
He weighs that. "I suppose. It's not as if my induction into the Merovingian syndicat was entirely voluntary... ...but perhaps it was. I can't say anymore."
She smiles at him sadly. "You don't have to. I'm the one who's the open book," she says, laughing gently at herseld
He smiles and tilts his head one way, the rivulets of pseudo-black standing out of his pale neck. "True. Betrayal, torture, and violation hardly makes for a lovely subject. And I feel as if time is running more quickly now...so much more quickly."
She looks away, trying to hide the ambiguous look that crossed her face, the right side of it saddened and empathetic, the left betraying a nasty smirk in the corner of her mouth.
"I was once 'fascinated' with my regenerative capacities. I enjoyed seeing how hard I could push them myself...hmph. She asked me to stop, though," he says. She knows instinctively he refers to Mataru, their mutual friend. "No; pleaded."
She eyes the black rivulets under his pale skin, wondering just what had caused them. "I guess I don't have to ask if you've tried to regenerate..." she said.
"It all comes back. It always has. ...until now." He turns away swiftly, his fangs clenched tightly as he retches as quietly as he can manage, a trickle of black, digital tar expelling itself from his thin lips. Clearing his throat, he turns back to her. " No matter. It won't matter for much longer. Phrack can't hide it forever, and I'll kill anyone who gets in the way."
Hide what...? she wonders. She adds, "I'll pray that you don't have to." She genuinely means it: with the Truce fallen, the last thing they needed was more pointless, senseless violence, and both halve of her were beginning to tire of his displays.
"I won't." He turns on his polished heel and strides back the way he came, the dusk swallowing him once more, as it always has.
She lets him go and lets the feeling of shock and relief return...
Vanil laughed and, with an upward leap that seemed to defy what he should have capable of, his heeled boots took to the ceiling and stayed there.
"I will have it, human!" Vanil shouted arrogantly, upside down, as he extended his own weapons in a reversed mirror of Phrack's own attack. "Whether you are dead or alive, I will have it!" With a pair of deafening bangs, his own black Eagles let loose, their massive rounds blasting Phrack's world apart and forcing him behind the nearest undamaged pillar, of which there were by now very few.
"So you keep saying!" Phrack called back as he let his spent magazines fall to the concrete with a metallic clatter and slid a fresh pair into the grips of his pistols. "But seeing is believing...and all I see is an Exile with his shoes stuck to a ceiling!" With a toothy smirk, Phrack leapt out from behind his tower of mortar and dove to the side, his handguns extended and firing the whole time. Hissing, Vanil returned fire as best he could and cart wheeled the opposite direction of the soaring Neonate, his heels catching the darkness of the ceiling once more before he spun in place and spat a barrage of ballistic fury at his foe, blowing apart chunks of stone that lay only inches from Phrack RSI.
With a grunt, Phrack allowed time to weave around him as he flipped himself upright and dodged away from the oncoming mirrored streams that were the Blood Drinker's bullets, in time to see his foe shuffle along the ceiling to a more advantageous position, his black coat hanging down past his pale face like the fluttering wings of a bat. "Maybe you should be looking harder than you are, then, human!" Vanil retorted as he mimicked Phrack's earlier maneuver and reloaded with guns with practiced grace. Phrack could see the dim, glittering silhouettes of the empty, smoking magazines as they fell the distance between the shadowed ceiling and the debris-laden floor. "Your soldiers and dead, and you seem to have...missed your train!" the Exile continued with obvious relish. "Perhaps it's time you gave me the Fragment and ended this pointless charade!"
"Oh, I ‘don't' think so," Phrack whispered to himself as he lunged forwards along the floor suddenly and raised one of his handguns. Time was nothing once more as the human carefully chose his target and fired.
Not having anticipated his opponent's attack, Vanil was startled when one of his footholds gave way with an explosion of chipped concrete and coils of musty dust. With a frustrated, serpentine snarl, the Exile quickly adjusted his footing and latched his suddenly loose heel onto another acceptable grip in time to feel his other foot give way with another loud, mortar-ridden bang. Phrack was trying to force him from the ceiling.
"Impudent fool!" Vanil shouted angrily, his glistening fangs bared as he cart wheeled over himself along the ceiling, pulling the triggers of his weapons again and again, his muzzle flashes searing-bright to his sensitive eyes, even hidden as they were behind his pitch black lenses. "Do you honestly believe you can escape here alive!?"
Tossing his guns into the air, Phrack leapt forwards onto his hands to avoid the barrage of deadly incoming fire, his feet in the air before flipping himself forwards again to right himself in time to catch his falling weapons, raise them, and spin their shining barrels back upon the wild, upside down Merovingian executor.
"Absolutely and with all my being!" Phrack called back with a smile, his weapons ejaculating what was left in their magazines.
~V
It's important to ejaculate your weapon on a regular basis less it should misfire when you need it most.
~Darminian
((This is brilliant, but I really can't stop laughing every time someone's weapon ejaculates.))((No better pr0n than gun pr0n, non?))
Chemuel wrote:((This is brilliant, but I really can't stop laughing every time someone's weapon ejaculates.))((No better pr0n than gun pr0n, non?))
((I think that rhymed. *CENSORED*. We should stop spamming this thread before Vanil ejaculates somthing on us.
Wait, WHAT?))
Hmmm... riddles wrapped in enigmas and tucked inside mysteries...
Green = Matrix code? Neo's RSI code?
Gold = Seraph's code?
Reclaim the Holy Place = ?
It was all one could see within these ancient, forgotten tunnels and sewer systems; systems that allowed humanity and worse things to hide themselves from the ever-watching crimson beam of a Sentinal's optical sensors. Nothing dared disturb the old recesses of this old maintenance tunnel, and, for a time, there was not but perpetual, pitch black.
A slow rumble them, as if the metal were shaking dust from its own rusty boughs, begetting the tumbling of some sort of giant beast from the hanging abyss, like an oily maggot from its rind. The rumble grew louder, and with a distant crackle of blue lightning, the telltale flare of hover pads bit through the gloom like eyes of deepest white-azure. The vessel slid forth then, and the bulk of its hull glinted dully as it soared its way from the darkness, its purpose readily evident to those on board.
Or, at least, to one of them.
Her palm slapping the aft thrusters of the Schrodinger's Cat forward once more, Chemuel allowed her eyes to gaze out of the viewing port that sat at the head of the cockpit, set against the rest of the vessel like a single eye of glass amongst a sea of steel. It was out there, somewhere, in that endless, underground field of earthen-caged darkness, Chemuel knew. That terrible and awesome vessel the girl had once willingly placed herself upon and dwelt with its sycophantic, psychotic Operations program routine and mad crew in an effort to serve its Captain with all of her heart, body, and mind. Even now Chemuel tried to tell herself that clawing her way up to the pinnacle of the Masquerade and into Vanil's absolute favor had been a mistake, but the girl knew that she did not think so. She would never forget the groan of that powerful, invisible vessel as it had swum its way through the bleakest recesses of the Earth's core, dodging human patrols and Sentinals alike and eluding even those who had dedicated themselves most fervently to finding and destroying it. For the vessel that shared its name with the Masquerade was to have been as the one who had ordered the vessel's resurrection and refitting at one of the first he had swayed to his will. It was to have been untouchable.
Chemuel would never forget that ship.
And she could never, ever forget its Captain. She never wanted to.
"It is down here somewhere; I know it..." Chemuel said to herself quietly, as she often found herself apt to do these more recent nights. Sometimes the girl would have entire orations in her mind, or whole conversations with herself in the privacy of her quarters; where she could be alone and yet not alone, for that was the way it was to be now. The crew of the Schrodinger's Cat had noticed, but they hadn't said anything. Several of them had shared Chemuel's time with Vanil as Masques themselves, and they had all been witness to the all-too horrors of what the Prince of Darkness was truly capable of unleashing when he believed them to suit his designs, and some of them had even born said horrors on their own shoulders, and the weight of having carried out such things was a heavy weight indeed. And so they said nothing.
Aoide was one of them. She shared this cockpit with Chemuel on occasion, and, like the others, Aoide didn't say anything either. Unlike the others, however, this had always been Aoide's way, even during her brief brush with Cypherism in her service to Vanil's Masquerade. But even here, among the certainly more comforting confines of Chemuel's band of Merovingian operatives, Aoide was quiet still.
There was only one person Aoide had ever truly spoken to; had ever laid bare her soul to, and she had left him behind when she couldn't do the horrible things anymore.
"Hey. You with me, Therese?" Chemuel turned and asked Aoide, her young features creased inquisitively.
The older woman stared out of the observation window at nothing for a while longer before nodding slowly and moving her dark lips in response. "Yes, Captain, I'm with you."
Chemuel looked Aoide over for a moment before gesturing with her own nod of acknowledgement and reaching over to flip a set of switches that adjusted one of the pressure valves on the port hover pad synchronization units. "Okay. Just wanted to make sure, you know? I know you're tired. We're all tired," the girl said as she drew her slender fingers back and smoothed her currently grease-laden hair back behind her, "but I know it's down here. It's where Tam would bring the ship if things got bad. I remember..."
"So do I, Chemuel," Aoide interrupted with a soft, cool succinctness that she was ever so adept at infusing her words with. "I was there."
"Yeah," Chemuel acknowledged as she turned back to the viewport, her eyes glossy with sleep deprivation and her hand finding the throttle again.
"Yeah, you were."
---
Darminian turned in time to see Vanil tumble from the ceiling.
Truth be told, the Neonate had only barely been holding his own against those two Masques that had assailed him at their Captain's order, and though Darminian had fought countless battles over the years both in service to Zion and to himself, both Ekizeba and LinksLife were astute operatives in their own right; the former having served E Pluribus Neo as well before her betrayal, and the latter having acted as debutant and agent of the twisted and enigmatic Merovingian executor known as the ‘Great Wyrm,' and so both were, Darminian had quickly found, a match for even his formidable ballistic combat subroutines.
So it was with only mild elation that Darminian saw the Blood Drinker be blasted from his upside down perch. Phrack must have been able to force him from it at last, Darminian quickly considered as he swung his SMGs, hot in his hands, numb from having discharged so many rounds during the battle, and sprayed several bursts at the two Masques as they attempted to leap back together and bring their guns to bear once more.
Dodging the oncoming fire as well as he could be expected to, LinksLife threw his Berettas forward and responded, the paired weapons retorting loudly as Ekizeba tore past him, the black leather of her glossy fighting dress fluttering behind her slender, rushing form as kicked off her heels and into the air. Exercising a focus of will as Dezreki had shown her, so long ago and insignificant now, it seemed, and knowing with all her being that the impossible was as nothing to her as her new master had taught her, time wove about her tumbling, airborne form in rushing, temporal waves of invisible digital confusion as she stretched her body out like a snake's and pointed her handguns straight down below her as she reached the apex of her dizzying display of impossible acrobatics. Time slowed even further, and Ekizeba seemed to suspend herself in space as her weapons blazed, their barrels discharging again and again, their bullets swimming down towards the Neonate below her, their leaden tips glinting in the dark as they left trails of brief, digital coil behind them.
Turning his gaze to the pockmarked concrete ceiling of the subway station and the sailing, whipcord black dragon that was Ekizeba, Darminian's eyes widened as he did the only thing he could and launched himself forward and straight into LinksLife's line of fire, the danger only briefly registering to Phrack's most trusted ally as he allowed his SMGs that led his way to erupt in a fiery torrent of bullet-laden death. He hadn't thought that Ekizeba, or any Neonate from the corner she had once called home, for that matter, possessed tactical subroutines that advanced or impressive.
But, Darminian quickly remembered, that corner was her corner no longer.
LinksLife made a frustrated noise, slightly muffled by his ever-present black bandana as he backpedaled quickly and rolled to his right to avoid Darminian's wild rush. They weren't the deadliest enemies he had ever encountered, Darminian remarked to himself and he spun with the Merovingian's retreat and attempted to draw a bead on him, one SMG extended and rattling after his retreating figure, kicking up a long, wide trail of showering dust and debris in its wake, but he would be damned if they weren't like bloody specters. Indeed, not even the most deadly of Merovingian assassins had access to these sorts of embedded tactic routines, which could in turn mean little other than one thing.
Vanil had done something to them.
With a crash and a shattering of concrete, Ekizeba landed gracefully, her arms held out to her sides like a pair of emaciated wings as her gloved fingers slid the spent magazines from her Beretta pistols and slid fresh ones into their places almost immediately. Her wild black hair spinning with her, the girl's glistening black leathers, lined with wicked silver studs and tiny spines, billowed out behind her, caught in the ballistic updraft of her recently-finished aerial assault like a black sail.
Gritting his teeth, Darminian spun out of her line of sight and rammed his last magazines into his weapons.
Now it would get rough.
~V
In his dark corner, having dropped to a crouch and bringing his assault rifle to bear, Mechanical had carefully attempted to target Phrack's blurred form with little success, and the Masque's long weapon lay, for the moment, silent and still in his gloved grasp. He couldn't fire now, and so he waited for the moment Vanil would no doubt give him by somehow forcing Phrack into one single position. All it would take is a fraction of a second, or rather, the fraction of that which Mechanical would perceive to be a second passed in this place.
Breathing slowly and evenly, Mechanical freed his mind.
The passage of time seemed to vortex around the two combatants as both Vanil and Phrack launched themselves at each other at precisely the same moment. Almost as soon as it had made itself known, the vortex of the mind gave way, and both of them stood at their tallest in front of each other, one arm to their sides and the other raised out before them, their two guns each to the other's forehead.
The slightest movement; the slightest twitch; a single pull of the trigger, and both would die.
"I tried to tell you," Vanil said conversationally, his gun to Phrack's skull, "but you wouldn't listen. How pitifully predictable; how like you humans. I always win in the end. It is inevitable."
"I tried to make you see," Phrack replied evenly, his jaw tight and his own weapon opposite the Blood Drinker's, "but you wouldn't understand. I should've known better, Dante. If you think I won't die for this thing," he continued, a finger rising to click the hammer of his Desert Eagle back, "then you're dead wrong."
Phrack pulled his trigger.
With a deafening bang, Vanil was blasted back off his feet, a fountain of glistening red blood spraying from where his face had been. At that same moment, another gun cracked from the shadows of the subway station, and Phrack shouted as felt his right shin shatter and fell onto his hands, his weapons still clenched in his fingers. Breathing hard, the Neonate glanced slowly to his right and saw the almost invisible form of Mechanical as the remaining Masque slipped from his hidden corner, the barrel of his rifle smoking where it had discharged its payload only moments before into Phrack's leg.
His brow furrowing in understanding, Phrack looked back to where Vanil had stood to see the master of the Masquerade rise laughing, the gaping wound in his forehead having almost sealed itself, leaving the jagged black lines of digital binary decay that inched their way up his neck and cheeks the only thing to mar his smooth, cold flesh. "Still so small," Vanil was saying as he holstered his weapons and straightened his gloves. "Still so naive." Pushing his shades up his pale nose, the Exile glanced about Phrack expectantly, searching for that which he sought, until his eyebrows raised slightly in understanding.
"Clever, human, to hide what I've come for in plain invisibility, but not clever enough. Nothing escapes me here, and soon, I will see more than you can begin to imagine," Vanil said idly as he extended a black glove, palm upturned, and closed his eyes quickly, drawing the image of Phrack's fallen figure in his mind's eye. He was defeated, and Vanil knew, in his heart of hearts and mind of minds, that he had what he had come for was in his grasp.
"Unexpected," Vanil said with a small, cruel smile. "But not disappointing."
---
Darminian stepped out from behind his pillar, his weapons raised and the last of his bullets ready to fire in time to see the faint, golden aura flare about the darkness of the subway platform. His eyes narrowing behind his shades out of a lack of understanding, they followed LinksLife and Ekizeba as they, for all intents and purposes, disengaged from him and flitted from pillar to pillar for their Captain and the remaining Masque that had stepped out to aid him.
Finally, Darminian's gaze came to rest on that which Vanil held in his hand, and his eyes widened in understanding. "Son of a b*tch, no!"
~V
((YAY! Another section of this! And awesome stuff, too!))
((Hey, mind if I post a bit with a Sieges/Morraeon conversation about all that's been going down?))
The screen of the terminal in Sieges's personal construct hummed with code as she sat typing numbers and letters through an array of translators, trying to crack a batch of code LinksLife had sent her, the better to find the root of this mysterious Algorithim Black she'd heard so much and so little about.
Permission to, ah, express myself? Morraeon asked in the back of her head.
"Well, that's new, you actually asking me instead of bugging me until I let you out?" Sieges replied.
Need t' talk t' yah, face to face and yer a bit too busy to go lookin' in the mirror.
"All right," Sieges said, and pushed her chair back from the desk, letting the second RSI flow from her body. The mass of code resolved itself first into a cloud of red eyes in a black mist, then into Morraeon's lean but shapely form. The Exile crouched beside her staring at the screen, then looking at her, the symbiote's crimson eyes narrowed. "Yah think it's all connected?"
Sieges stopped typing for a moment. "What's all connected?"
Morraeon wagged her head toward the screen. "The Black Algorithim. Dragon-Guy coming back. Swotty-Fang's little stubbed-toe. Little bro actin' weeeeird. The toxin and yer plans to get free of it -- and me."
"Well, you know as well as I do that I believe everything's connected," Sieges said, studying the printout of an email Links had sent her and typing the next line of code.
Morraeon's black-gloved hand came down on the piece of paper and she thrust her pale face close to Sieges's. "The question is: *HOW* is it connected, mmmr?"
"I'm working that out myself," Sieges said. "The Algorithim is probably some sort of ghost in the system trying to give itself a way of expressing itself... much like you trying to get your own shell."
"Mmm, except *I* think it's somethin' that makes Pops at his worst look like Casper the Friendly Ghost." She reached into the decolletage of her black leather gown and took out her cigarette case, opening it to removed a clove-scented cigarette. " 'Bout time people got it through their heads that there's worse things than an Exile that noshes on trash code that's overstayed its welcome."
"We both might be right, we both might be wrong, time will tell," Sieges said, turning her attention back to the terminal.
Morraeon flicked one talon against another, creating a tiny flame with which she lit the cigarette. "Which brings me back to the two jackasses who somehow think the Boss's people revolve around *them*. How much yah wanna bet it ends in a zero-sum game, hmmmrr?"
"That would depend on one of them actually trying to cancel out the other, and so far, I haven't heard they've even been in the same airspace," Sieges said, copying a line of translated code.
Morraeon blew a cloud of smoke into Sieges's left ear. "Yeah, but yah know it's gonna happen: Swotty-Fangs used the Little Pet to take a swing at Dragon-Guy, so the writin's on the wall for those two to slam heads sooner or later. Might get us out of both of yer stupid bargains. You sellin' me down the river was one thing, but t'other one was just as stupid. I t'ought y'd kissed and made up with Swotty-Fangs, mmmr?"
Sieges turned to look at Morraeon. "I forgave him, but that didn't mean I'm forgetting what he did to me. Remember what happened the other night when Tranque wanted to run that scan on me and I flipped out."
Morraeon growled under her breath. "Yah don't have to remind me. I was the one tryin' to get yer heart to stop racing *and* cut the adrenalin flow." She paused, taking a thoughtful pull on her cigarette and letting it trickle out through her ears; Sieges copied another line of code and keyed the translator.
The Exile vaulted onto the corner of the desktop, leaning over Sieges, her lean face leering. "So, what if the main variable of yer other stupid bargain goes through, mmmr? Who's it gonna be? T'ought you had yer heart set on the Fancy Foreign Feller bein' yer baby-daddy, if he'd ever get his head in one place. Yah know there's two humans that are liable to kill that monster. One of 'em's mortified at the idea and you didn't cotton to it either, since yah see him as a brother. And t'other... well, yah really want yer kid to look like *THAT*?!" Morraeon's form phased back into a cloud of black mist, and reformed itself to resemble Sieges's "perfect enemy", looming over her with a smirk crossing the fearsome yet familiar visage.
"Remember that *you* were the one who was crushing on the guy when you were young and stupid," Sieges said, unperturbed by the Exile's shape-shifting.
The Exile growled and resumed her usual humanoid form. "I bet yah caught that bug from me."
"Maybe. Now, get back in my head where you belong," Sieges said.
Morraeon scowled. "I ain't finished talkin'."
"Morraeon Silbersbane, get back into my head, I command you," Sieges ordered. At that, the Exile sighed and dissolved her code, letting it sink back into Sieges's being, leaving her to finish her work in relative peace.
But no, the Exile considered evenly and just as quickly, it was not unnecessary. Or, at least, not as unnecessary to him as he had considered it to be, and therefore as it had been. Beauty did not exist in the Matrix beyond one's conceptualization of the idea itself and the connection such an idea drew between one thing and another; nothing did. As cold as the feeling of understanding was as it crept up Vanil's spine and into the darkest corners of his mind, he knew that perspective worked in such a manner in both directions, meaning that, while one could reduce something like beauty to nothing; force it to descend to the nether-level of conceptualized importance, one also had the equal power to supplant such corrosions of disbelief and revulsion and raise beauty and those other connections like it to the highest pinnacle upon which such a thing could be placed.
After all of this time, Vanil knew as he held the Fragment between his fingers, its yellowish glare in his lenses, that it was all a matter of choice. The illusion of choice; the Reality of choice.
Vanil had chosen this. He had chosen to take this. He understood that choice now.
The sanctified digits curled and ran in his palm, as if imbued with a life of their own, and, like the rest of the Matrix itself, they perhaps were, in a sense. They equated and shifted about themselves for a moment or two before becoming regimented by some unseen and all-seeing force and coiled around their neighbors into the semi-distinct pattern of a tiny, rotating double helix. This was also unexpected, but no less mildly interesting, Vanil allowed himself to notice silently as the Fragment shivered with static and continued to fill the shadowy subway platform with its pervasive golden glow. The Captain of the Masquerade had expected but a single helix; two was nothing short of unprecedented. It was as if there were, in unreality, two Fragments, bonded with all intention and out of absolute purpose.
It was duality given digital form, rather than singularity.
Vanil grinned in spite of himself, his fangs glittering in the firefly-glow, the black veins that heralded his now rapidly oncoming death visibly crawling up his neck and cheeks, lending the Merovingian executor an almost manic appearance, the double helix of the Fragment of the One reflected in his pitch black shades. "At last..." he said to no one in particular, his hidden eyes still following the static of the code in his upraised glove.
Quickly then, Vanil raised his gaze from the Fragment to the distant metallic rumble of the subway cars as they made their way ponderously towards the rubble-strewn platform, the distant glare of the forward car's running lights becoming less and less distant by the second. "Right on time," the Blood Drinker whispered with barely-contained glee as he glanced at from Phrack's prone form to his Masques and nodded in the direction of the gaping edge of the station platform, his fingers closing around the shifting static of the Fragment, the golden light that dripped from the sets of equations creeping from between his gloved digits in glittering shafts. "It's time for us to leave."
With a growl, Darminian stepped out from his corner, training one of his guns on the Merovingians as the subway squealed to a halt, its doors remaining shut for the moment, obviously having fallen prior victim to the artificial power drain throughout the platform itself, and the windows, so plastered were they with dirt, filth, and graffiti, that the only sign of habitation were the amorphous silhouettes of figures on the other side, their appearances and intentions both unknown. In response to his motion, the only female Masque; Ekizeba, turned on her stiletto heel as she put the other one to Phrack's dusty, blood-spattered back, her Beretta trained on the Captain's skull without the barest hint of hesitation. With a practiced flick of her finger, the wild girl clicked the hammer of her weapon back threateningly, the sound echoing throughout the whole station, even above the steamy roar of the subway cars.
"Don't try it," Ekizeba said evenly, her eyes staring into Darminian's from behind her shades, and, slowly, knowing that Phrack's death could be just as damaging as Vanil's escape from here and after quickly having weighed his meager momentary options, the Neonate lowered his gun. There would be another time.
Satisfied, Ekizeba turned away from Darminian and her hostage with a dramatic swirl of her fighting dress in time to see her Captain take his place in front of the waiting subway doors, the Fragment of the One clutched lightly in his glove. A victorious smirk on his face, it widened on Vanil's lips as the doors opened...and then, just as quickly, turned downwards once more.
"Found you," Ookami snarled darkly from the open doors, a legion of Dire Lupines at her back.
~V
"Hrrr, you sought to rob me of my prize, Vanil," the Lupine replied evenly and with a canine growl as she extended her arms out to her sides and gripped the edge of the car entrance, her long claws squealing softly as they ran along the rusted, corrugated metal. "You sought to rob the Merovingian of his prize," the Exile continued as she put one razor-edged heel in front of the other and stepped from the confines of the subway train, the click echoing emptily throughout the dusty air, the eyes of her fanatical warriors burning from the darkened interior behind her.
"My dearest Ookami, I think that's quite the overstatement," Vanil replied swiftly, his own foot taking a single step back as Mechanical, LinksLife, and Ekizeba watched the exchange between the master of the Masquerade and the Lupine-Mistress in silence, their weapons at their hips. "Perhaps your auguries made a logistical error."
"THERE WAS NO ERROR, HRRR!" Ookami screamed, all semblances of minimal humanistic impersonation now slipping away from her in a rush of what a typical program might construe as the connection of rage, no matter how simulated or mathematical said connection might be. "You lied to me, ‘dracul!' Hrrrrrrrrr, you lied about the Fragment being where we struck and came here to where it and this human filth," the female Lupine spat venomously at Phrack and Darminian, the ladder of which had taken to a crouch beside his fallen comrade, "were. Hrrr, there was no error here, Vanil," Ookami continued dangerously.
"No error...but yours!"
Ookami lunged, and the platform once again burst into pandemonium.
Vanil threw himself back on his heels and jammed the Fragment into his coat. His pistols slid once more from his sleeves as he brought them to bear on the charging Lupine-Mistress, and there was the faint buzzing static of running Information as he pulled the triggers with a reverberating series of booming flashes. The rounds caught Ookami full in the face, who faltered in her wild attack and leapt back on all fours howling loudly with a shower of blood, her perfect digital flesh marred by tracts of black blisters, the wounds in her arms and sides smoking and hissing loudly.
Silver bullets. ‘Thank you, Tamur4,' Vanil thought to himself as he whirled around to face his Masques in the brief period of respite he had bought himself. Though he had managed to catch Ookami by surprise, the Blood Drinker knew the Lupine well, and knew well that in a straight battle, he would not be able to match her speed or power. "LinksLife, take Ekizeba and Mechanical and leave at once."
"What about you?" LinksLife responded immediately from behind his black bandana, the urgency of the situation evident to even him.
"I will leave myself in due course," Vanil snapped back in that accent of his. He could already see Ookami picking herself out of the corner of his eye as she forced the malefic silver bullet algorithm from her Residual Self-Image, her bleeding wounds closing on their own. "Now, go! At once!"
LinksLife knew better than to waste his Captain's time. With the briefest of nods LinksLife turned and launched himself towards the far steps out of the subway station, Ekizeba at his side.
Mechanical made to follow until he felt the Dire Lupine smash into his back. With an audible grunt, the remaining Masque hit the rubble-strewn floor of the platform as the Exile that had leapt the length of the station from the confines of the train raised his glittering claws to bury them in the human's back. Gritting his teeth, Mechanical curled his leg around his prone form and smashed the heel of his boot into the back of the Lupine's skull, sending the program flying forward with a canine yelp. Kicking himself back onto his feet, Mechanical raised his assault rifle and pumped a series of rounds after the Exile, sending up showers of concrete and red gore.
His attacker dead, Mechanical turned back to the stairs and saw that the Dire Lupines had poured from the now derelict subway cars and moved to block the exit. The leader of the pack splayed his dark talons out at his sides and flexed them menacingly, murder in the Exile's eyes. Racking his gun's slide, Mechanical raised the iron sights and pulled the trigger.
The weapon clicked. It was empty.
The Dire Lupines howled and charged.
---
Vanil saw that LinksLife and Ekizeba had both managed to escape, but the Dire Lupines had now surrounded both Mechanical and the Neonates. The flashes and cracks of gunfire could only mean that all three were fighting back in their own ways, but it also meant that Vanil was alone, face to face, with the Lupine-Mistress Ookami, who was one of the oldest and perhaps the most violent of Exiles alive.
Ookami was obviously beyond words. As the last of the silver bullets slid from her skin and clattered to her feet, she screamed like a banshee and was on top of Vanil almost before he could react. As the two of them flew back in a heap, the Captain of the Masquerade jammed one of his Eagles against Ookami's corset-wrapped stomach and fired again and again, blasting silver rounds through her at point-blank range, and showers of blood and innards burst from her back in spraying gouts.
All it seemed to do was encourage her.
Her yellow eyes wild with fury, Ookami picked Vanil off his feet and smashed her talons across his face, now more marred than ever with the black veins of binary decay. With a loud hiss, the Blood Drinker stumbled back; nearly dropping his guns so great was the pain. His pale flesh ran red, and a series of four great gashes ran the length of his face. His crimson cat-eyes burned hotly, his shades having been knocked askew by Ookami's counterattack. Slowly, Vanil raised one of his pistols and pointed it Ookami's way, his glove slick with the blood of them both.
"Hrrrrrrrrr!" Ookami snarled nasally, her fur-lined corset soaked with gore as she closed again on her prey, her long claws flashing and glistening with trailing blood in the dark. "I'll see that beautiful body of yours eviscerated beneath my feet, traitorous snake! You will not escape here alive, Vanil!"
A brief silence followed as Ookami continued to close the distance between the two of them, until Vanil spat a line of crimson from between his fangs and lowered his slippery gun, a chuckle that rang with finality coming from deep within him.
"No. I won't."
At that, Vanil's feline pupils rolled back into his skull as his RSI shivered with coils of disruptive static and disseminated as it fell to the floor, and Ookami's eyes widened, filled with surprise and hate, as her long,braying howl echoed throughout the subway tunnels that now crawled with Dire Lupines; all searching for the one thing none of them would find.
~V
"I'm not entirely certain, duckling," came Tamur4's tinny reply from the other end. The Masquerade Operations program spoke quickly and succinctly, each syllable of every word laden with purpose. "There's a great deal of residual digital interference throughout the subway lines in this District, and I'm having difficulties pinpointing much of anything at the moment."
"'For now, we see but through a glass, darkly'," Ekizeba responded quietly. LinksLife shot her a quick glance from the driver's seat as they turned the next corner, but his features remained, hidden though as they were from behind his bandana, as composed as one could expect them to be. He had heard the quote many times, but never applied so accurately. It was exactly how the both of them felt at the moment, LinksLife knew as he glanced in the rear-view mirror and made a subtle lane change, the tires of their boxy black sedan trolling gently over the pavement that wasn't truly there.
"It would seem that way, wouldn't it though..." Tamur4 replied from her place in the Masquerade Mainframe that lay far beyond the Matrix and in the deep recesses of the tunnel networks of the Real.
"Is Vanil alright?" Ekizeba asked quickly, cutting the program off before she could finish.
There was a brief pause, but it seemed like an eternity to the girl. "Yes. He's moving, although I don't know where to," came Tamur4's reply at long last, her voice hinting at measured degrees of uncertainty. "For a reason that has thus far eluded me, Lord Vanil's movements have become very difficult for me to read accurately as of late. Note to self:" Tamur4 added to herself out loud over the phone line, "investigate possible tangent causes and effects of decoding difficulties with regards to Lord Vanil's pattern of traversal throughout the Primary Construct."
LinksLife glanced Ekizeba's way again from his seat. "What about Mechanical?"
"What about Mechanical?" Ekizeba repeated for Tamur4, so that the program could hear the question clearly.
Another pause followed before Tamur4 replied once again. "I'm unable to pinpoint his trace signal," the Operations program said, "which may in part be due to the residual uplink interference I referenced earlier, no doubt generated by the chaotic nature of Lord Vanil's chosen attack stratagem, but, for whatever reason, my trace programs are unable to locate him at this time."
Ekizeba exhaled slowly and glanced out the passenger side window at the Blues that crowded the sidewalk, even this late at night. Perhaps it was a matter of the District itself; Ekizeba herself was so far beyond such mundane, unreal matters now, even more so since choosing to serve Vanil as a Masque.
God, they were dropping like flies. Maybe she had been wrong after all. Maybe Vanil had made a mistake this time; a mistake that none of them might live to see through to the end.
Ekizeba composed herself quickly. Now wasn't the time for doubt. Vanil would disapprove, the girl knew. Now was the time for doing what had to be done, and Ekizeba would do so no matter the consequences or aftereffects. "Fine. Links and I need an exit."
"My dear, sweet Ekizeba," Tamur4 said in that funny little way of hers, in spite of the costly nature of their mission's success, "exodi are my specialty. I've one ready for you. The corner of Wabash and Wacker." Ekizeba could feel the small, crafty smile in the program's words, even if said program lacked even a Residual Self-Image as they knew of one at the moment, confined as she was within the Mainframe onboard the Masquerade in the Real. "We'll be waiting for you."
"I'm sure you will be," Ekizeba replied with a small upturn of her own lips before clicking the shutter of her cell phone closed with an audible snap and slid it into one of the many metal-rimmed pockets of her glossy black fighting dress. Running a pair of fingers through her wild black hair, the girl glanced out at the Blues and dark, damp city blocks as they sped past the window of the car.
"I'm sure you will be."
LinksLife said nothing. He just kept driving.
---
It is raining, and hard; she knows this for certain. She hasn't seen it rain like this inside the Matrix for a long time. The thunder is deafening, the lightning blinding. She squints and turns her eyes to where the stars should be and is met with only the gloom of gray-green digital cloud. She's dripping from head to toe in rain water. Her croc skins will be ruined. It doesn't matter, she remembers quickly, though, because there are no croc skins.
The gunshots bring her eyes back down to earth; to the pavement.
And she sees him die.
Chemuel awoke with a start. Her skin was drenched with cold sweat. Her thin sleeping linens were soaked with it, and the damp fibers clung to her flesh like a veil of dead human skin. The feeling chilled her to the bone. She raised a shaking hand to her eyes and rubbed them hard as her brain told her to steady herself. ‘You're losing it, Dylan,' half of her brain said. ‘Bonkers. Nuts. Out of your God damned mind.'
But then the other half replied. ‘Keep it together, Dylan, and don't listen to that skank over there. She's got no appreciation for perspective."
Jesus, maybe she was losing it. God she needed a jack and a smoke.
The intercom next to her mattress was buzzing insistently. It sounded almost like...rain falling; spattering wetly all around her against the...but no, Chemuel banished the thought almost as swiftly as it tried to come to her. Not here; not now. Not while she couldn't afford it. Groggily, the Captain mashed her small fist against the speaker box until it found the response tab. "What is it Therese; I'm really tired," Chemuel said in her best professionally sane voice.
"I think you had better get up here, babe," Aoide's voice crackled back over the intercom. "I think we've found it."
Chemuel's hand started shaking again.
"Chemuel?" Aoide asked after a brief period of silence. "You there?"
The buzz of the active speaker was the only reply either of them got. All Chemuel could think about was how much it sounded like rain falling; spattering wetly all around her against the blood-streaked pavement.
---
The tremendous metallic bulk of the Schrodinger's Cat slid slowly over the lip of ancient corroded steel, the residual lightning that buzzed about the vessel's hover pads lashing between the two surfaces briefly with a cacophony of bright azure-white flashes. As the ship righted itself, its forward running lights swept the looming darkness below, their penetrating beams of luminescence revealing a tremendously deep pit-like trench in the monolithic sewer floor below. Slowly, each lamp played its way through the gaping black abyss, searching for the one thing it had come all this way to find.
There it was. One of the searchlights swept over it and swept back, and the others quickly followed suit until the outline of the thing could be seen in relatively plain view. The derelict hovercraft was smaller than the Cat, and had been nestled between two towering outcrops of melted and twisted iron refuse, it's short and slender hull, like that of a dagger, lined with its own menagerie of hover pads that sat silent and derelict in the dark.
Aoide watched from her pilot's seat in the cockpit of the Cat as it hovered high above the other, hidden vessel, and knew, with a small smile, that they had found the Masquerade.
~V
"I've told you. It's ‘Dr. Foxo.' My contributions to the Blue community will not be overlooked, least of all by you."
Agent Gray pursed his lips but said nothing. This human that sat across from him had proven to be one of their most efficient and effective collaborators amongst the flocks of humankind in the past, and the dry-witted sentient program had little doubt that he would prove anything but in this newest case. But that still didn't change the fact that Walter Foxo, oftentimes referred to by his Handle of ‘Iovai', could be somewhat...eccentric at times, and it was all routines like Gray could do to analyze and adapt for the operative's all-too human consistent inconsistencies. If only his directives had seen fit to send Agent Pace in his stead, Gray calculated silently as he studied the man before him. She was always more adept at dealing with and communicating between these creatures, for it was her primary purpose. Gray was a hostile disposal sequence, not a gregarious diplomatic processor.
And Agent Gray still had very little idea as to what Iovai really was, beyond useful.
"A proper doctor deserves proper recognition," Iovai reiterated after the silence had passed. "It's only proper. Only logical."
Logic. Finally, common ground, Gray reasoned quickly. The program placed his suit-jacketed elbows against the dazzling white table cloth that was spread out before them both and gestured with his fingers in acknowledgement. "Of course, Dr. Foxo. Whatever you want."
"Whatever I want..." Iovai said to himself in that atypical, self-considering tone of his. Even the good doctor couldn't deny, even out of his unending and selfless service to his fellow man through his collaborations with their Machine overseers and jailors, that there were at least some things he did want very much.
Agent Gray withdrew his elbows from the table as their dinner was served, but the program made no move to even prod at it. He hadn't come here to eat, and, aside from that fact, there really was no food anyway. The mousy, slick-haired maitre d' stood at Gray's shoulder and held up a corked bottle of expensive liquor. "Wine, sir?" the small man asked in a voice that was obviously self-doctored to sound as elegant as possible in spite of the unrealities of his current lifestyle.
Gray glanced over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow, as though the human had just offered him a plate of pigeon feces.
"No."
"I would appreciate some," Iovai said from across the way as he smoothed the gilded napkin that lay in his lap out for what seemed to Gray to be the thousandth time since the two had sat down for their discussion. The doctor was obviously a perfectionist; a quality which the Machines more than appreciated in their human collaborators.
"Of...of course, sir, at once," the maitre d' replied quickly, still slightly off-put by Gray's almost threatening response to his offer and scurried around to the other side of the table and tipped the bottle expertly, allowing the pungent red liquid to cascade gently downwards until it splashed and swirled easily at the bottom of Iovai's crystal wine glass. "If you need anything else sirs, do not hesitate to flag either myself or one of my waiters," the maitre d' recited as professionally as he could. With a short bow and a mechanically added "enjoy your evening," the small man smoothed his long white coat and strode from their table, glad to be away from Gray's icy, domineering presence.
Iovai took his glass between his fingers and swirled his wine slowly before taking a test sip. "Whatever I want," he repeated simply, his lips pursed in contemplation, but whether it was over the taste of the wine equations or what the man wanted was beyond Agent Gray's reckoning. Humans could be so absurdly tedious sometimes.
Finally, and after another sip, Iovai gestured with his thin, delicate glass for emphasis. "You know what I want."
"The end of the war," the Agent replied in stride, his iconic System shades glinting in the soft candlelight, as if to emphasize his words. Both human and program knew the extent of what those words implied, and what they would mean for the future of the Matrix.
"That is correct," Iovai nodded as he took his silver silverware in his fingers and speared the glistening, scaly skin of his spiced and pan-seared salmon. Slowly, anticipating the numerous flavor subroutines that would ensue from the fish's consumption, the doctor raised his laden fork to his stubble-bordered lips.
"That can be arranged," Gray interrupted.
Iovai pursed his lips again. "I believe it," the operative replied before sliding the salmon onto his tongue and into his mouth. It was perfect. Like everything else was, Iovai thought himself with a content smile as he chewed the pliant, red aquatic flesh slowly, savoring the taste. Savoring the perfection. "But what you are suggesting," Iovai continued after he had finally swallowed, "is an exceedingly risky venture."
"But worth the end of the war," Agent Gray said almost too quickly.
Iovai paused, another speared bit of salmon hovering just inches from his open mouth. It was as if Gray were picking the exact and most inopportune times to respond, so as to make dining as difficult as possible. "Yes," Dr. Foxo said, a mild undercurrent of irritation now evident in his already oddly-inflected voice. "It would very much be worth that. But to send Blues into that Construct, of all Constructs, would be extremely volatile to say the least," Iovai went on as he slid the salmon into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. "We have little way of knowing how this venture of yours would affect their neural kinetics or Systemic interfacing routines, and we might have to unplug them entirely to prevent the collateral damage that might ensue." Iovai was already shaking his head as he finished his quick analysis. "No, no, no. Sending Blues into there would be the equivalent of uncertain murder. We can't. You can't."
If Agent Gray was not depending upon his human compatriot's acquiescence to this operation, he might have laughed out loud. ‘You can't.' It was prime material. "You know that, were we to send human operatives of our own, their fates would be unacceptable," Gray said instead, his dinner still entirely undisturbed. "That would be...certain...murder."
Iovai could do nothing but shrug and down another bit of his wine. He felt the warm, baroque liquid run down his throat, tingling against his digital esophagus gently. "Yes. That's true, I suppose."
"Remember, Dr. Foxo," Agent Gray said slowly in reply, his head tilting to one side so as to emphasize his perspective and the perspective of his directives, the candlelight casting a long, warped shadow of the sentient program's exposed and wired earpiece across the dreadfully clean tablecloth. "The end of the war."
Iovai said nothing. Instead, the doctor watched the flickering ambient glow of the restaurant shine through his wine glass. It reflected in his tired eyes like flecks of fire. Absent mindedly, he extended a finger and dipped it into his wine, wetting the tip, and placed it on the crystal lip. Slowly, his outstretched hand circled the glass, drawing a long, low hum that sounded crystal clear against the respectfully quiet ambience of the restaurant. It was all the response Gray needed. "Then we have a deal, Mr. Foxo?" the program asked again.
"Dr. Foxo," Iovai replied immediately as he ran his finger around the other way, his wine glass humming the whole while. "And yes. Yes, I suppose we do."
"Kill Mr. Nihilson," Agent Gray said as he stood from the table, his food lying cold before him, "and you will save the lives of countless members of your species." The sentient program turned, adjusted his earpiece, and said to his back. "Kill ‘Vanil', and you will have what you want." Gray began to stride from the table to leave Iovai to finish his dinner alone.
The humming stopped him. His eyes narrowing behind his System shades in a connection of curiosity, Agent Gray turned on his heel.
Iovai was running his forefinger along and around the edge of his crystal glass in a long series of flowing, graceful patterns that drew a veritable symphony of sound from the simple and delicate edifice of code. Gray could calculate the old equations he had known his entire existence thrum with new life and purpose as the human circled the glass with his fingertip. Perhaps the good doctor had written such a symphony himself; the Agent had no way of truly knowing, for it was not his purpose. Had his purpose been to find connections of beauty in such things, Gray would doubtless have done so. But it was not his purpose, and so the program simply stood and watched without emotion or appreciation until Iovai finished his impromptu ballad of singing crystal.
With another shrug, Iovai withdrew his finger from the wine glass, grasped it with his other hand and took another sip before using it to gesture to Gray's uneaten dinner.
"You weren't going to finish that, were you?"
~V
((I... did not see that coming.))
Morraeon: Verdammte, got cheated out of havin' a poke at Swotty-Fangs. Ah well, I can watch. :: Sits back to watch with a box of Demon Army goon nuggets::
"Need help?" Zdn1 offered, the electro-lamp in his hand bobbing as he spoke from Chemuel's side, the steady blue glow of the thing swaying like that of a will-o-wisp around him, turning the shadows that crowded all around them to crawl and writhe, as if the Masquerade were giving birth to silent, dancing monsters.
"You have no idea how the Hell to do this in the Real, Z," Chemuel replied, perhaps a tad quickly, as she fooled with the wires again, the thin copper filaments of the things slipping through her slender fingers. "Just keep the d*mn lamp up. I can barely see a thing."
"Might be best to try faster, babe," Aoide said from her other side, the bulky and awkward silhouette of her lightning gun hanging at her slender, shapely hips. "We're this far down, but depth won't stop Sentinels."
"No Squiddies down here," Chemuel answered as she chewed her lips as she so often did these nights. A single click sounded from the interior of the access port. "I think I got it...!" Chemuel called out with sudden, desperate elation, her fingertips working another pair of loose wires together. "I got it!" she shouted again, louder this time, and her voice echoed throughout the endlessly vast recesses of the monolithic sewer tunnel. Her mirth was short-lived, though, and the Captain of the Cat had to raise her palm over her freckled face to shield her eyes from the ensuing shower of electrical sparks.
"F*ck!" It was a blunt outburst on her part, and Chemuel smoothed out her insides with a single deep breath, hoping that her operatives hadn't noticed. They had. "I don't think I have it." She turned quickly to Aoide and Zdn1, the heel of her heavy boot scuffing through the refuse and metal shavings beneath their feet. "Any ideas?"
"Enter the password?" Zdn1 suggested with a shrug, his lamp bobbing eerily again.
"Brilliant, Holmes," Chemuel snorted in response as she turned back to the access port and slammed the thing shut with a clang. "Have it on you, by chance? No? Neither do I."
A rustle sounded from Chemuel's other side, and Chemuel turned to see Aoide sliding the frayed bracing strap of her awkward-in-appearance weapon over her slender shoulder and moving to take her Captain's side. The girl could make out the older woman's eyes glinting, even in the looming gloom. "May I?" She didn't wait for a response; she knew Chemuel would never have said ‘no' in any case. Irises and fingers dancing as one, Aoide reactivated the panel and began entering sequences, Chemuel tapping her foot and looking over the woman's shoulder and Zdn1 tapping the glass side of his electro-lamp as it flickered dangerously.
Chemuel was about to suggest they retrieve the explosive charges from back on board the Cat when, with a loud clang and a long, drawn out, shuddering hydraulic hiss, the locking latches gave way with a series of bangs and the Masquerade's wide riveted boarding ramp swung downwards slowly before coming to rest against the floor of the tunnel with a heavy metallic thud. Aoide grinned coolly and glanced back at Chemuel and Zdn1 as she hefted her lightning gun once more.
"After you, Sinners."
Chemuel took a deep breath, steadied herself as best she could, took another deep breath just for good measure, and placed the sole of her boot to the steel of the ramp. Her companions followed suit, and together, the three of them slowly trod upwards towards the waiting metal maw that was the entryway to the interior of the Masquerade. To Chemuel, it felt as if the thing were rearing to swallow them; as if it was not they who drew closer to it, but rather, it that crept closer to them. Boarding the Masquerade has always been a slightly unnerving experience, the girl could remember, but never like this. The hairs on the back of Chemuel's neck stood on end, she could feel , and if the other two Merovingians were experiencing the same, she noticed, they were hiding it well. Maybe she really was losing her mind.
How had Aoide been able to do what she had not? Chemuel couldn't help but question as she eyed the small of the woman's back as she climbed the ramp ahead of her Captain. Aoide was like a sister to Chemuel. The girl had no doubt that she was close to the older woman in many ways. They were similar in so many ways, and in the ways they were not, their differences meshed like fine wine and cheese, though neither Chemuel nor Aoide had ever truly tasted such. Chemuel loved her as one might love a sibling and friend, and that was important to the both of them, no matter what either of them might display on the surface when dealing with their enemies, both hidden and otherwise.
But Chemuel was also a suspicious girl; a careful girl. She would ask Aoide. Just not here. Not now.
"You alright?" Zdn1 asked from behind her, the glow of the electro-lamp more comforting than ever as the trio reached the top of the ramp.
"Fine," Chemuel lied as the darkness of the Masquerade swallowed her, and not for the first time.
~V
Two Years Before
Fourteen Nights Prior to the Betrayal of Anome
Vanil was leaving Ookami Batsu.
The word had come down from the Pack’s command structure, and before that from the master of the fleet itself.The Exile that had destroyed the dissident Blood Drinker Houses and joined those few that remained beneath his Merovingian banner, the Blood Noble that had been the eminent Gothique’s agent of political power and mayhem before her disappearance and assumed deletion, the monstrously ambitious master of the Batsu fleet and the chosen servant of the Lupine-Mistress Ookami herself, was leaving his charge.It no longer suited him, they whispered, and others whispered that the Packmaster’s designs had grown so grandiose and vile of late that they could no longer be contained beneath the flag of the Batsu without drawing tremendous criticism of the fleet from the rest of the syndicat.
Of course, none of them really knew the truth of the matter, which is why they were all here this night.All operatives of the Ookami Batsu fleet that could make it had made it, under orders to do so from Vanil’s advisors and seconds-in-command, and they were gathered together in the center of the great, vaulted chamber of coded stone that would, almost two years later, serve as the gathering ground of an army of Dire Lupines that would be sent by Ookami herself to retrieve a Fragment of the One’s Residual Self-Image.Things are slow to change within the Matrix, however, and so the monolithic hall of the syndicat would appear and be largely the same when that came to pass as it did now, the very same canine gargoyles perched upon their towering spires of data and the great ‘M’ seal of the Merovingian presiding over it all.The Wolves, as these operatives had come to be called, spoke in hushed tones amongst each other, their various decadent garbs and murder leathers rustling about as they awaited the fleet master’s arrival.One amongst their number; a girl, no older than perhaps eighteen years at most, stood aside and let two ritually-scarred Batsu death twins, their smooth, masculine figures encased in little more than black, muscle-clinging leather straps and their digital flesh painstakingly covered with kill marks, pass her by.The girl worried for a brief moment what a pair like that might try when confronted with her in a more private arena, but such worries were baseless, she quickly realized, and tossed them aside as easily as she might have tossed the crimson fur scarf that encased her slender, freckled neck behind her small back.The girl knew well the reputation of such death twins, and knew that the bond that was shared between two such individuals was skin deep.Very, very literally skin deep.
After all, Chemuel had not risen to her place amongst the Pack without knowing very well what few true allies she might find here.It had been the former Siren’s luck, or perhaps fate, though she doubted this very much, that Lord Vanil had taken interest in her, and had personally seen that her induction be both swift and efficient.And though Chemuel was more used to a professional environment that was characterized by overwrought perfumes rather than loping, sadistic death twins, she had done quite well for herself here, and if Vanil’s rumored departure was to be the truth of why the Wolves had been gathered here, the girl doubted not that she would continue to do so, either amongst these murderers or elsewhere.
Chemuel felt the rush of silence that fell upon the crowd about her as Vanil stood upon the monolithic pulpit that overlooked the assembly.Draped in the customary red leathers of the Packmaster, his raven-hued mane of black stood out against his ensemble like a cancer that threatened to spread, and his eyes were, as always, hidden beneath those shadowy lenses.What digital flesh of his that was visible was as immaculately pale as always, and Chemuel couldn’t help but admire the burgeoning perfection in the older man.The Exile practically oozed human charisma, and an air of charm that seemed to cling to him like a stockade of presence.Vanil would lose both and far more in the following years, but there was no way for either him or Chemuel to know this now, and for the moment, Chemuel had to stop herself short of being enamored with the Blood Noble’s powerful persona.
As Vanil began to speak; to outline his designs for the continuation of Ookami Batsu in his absence, Chemuel silently made note of the two figures that stood at his sides.To his left was a small, cautious looking man garbed in a dazzling white trench coat inlaid with Eastern symbols and bound at the front with a series of metallic silver clasps.His bird-like features were beset by a tiny pair of circular green lenses, which only served to enhance his avian and reasonably unattractive image, and Chemuel recognized him as Urael.Also called ‘the Spymaster’, Urael supposedly at one point had controlled a vast network of shadow informants and clandestine operatives that had answered only to Gothique and himself, and when the woman had disappeared, the Spymaster had decided to offer Vanil her place at the head of the group.Chemuel had no idea as to the current strength of the network, or even if it still existed at all, as did none of her fellow Wolves, but she did know that Urael was not a man to cross.
To Vanil’s right was Agamem.Chemuel wasn’t quite certain what she should make of the Spymaster, but by contrast, she knew exactly what to make of this man.She saw him as a simpering yes-man, something that Vanil carried around as one might carry frivolities in a briefcase, and she had little doubt that, once the Packmaster’s sheltering wings abandoned the big, dumb man, it would not be long before, like sharks drawn to the bead of blood, he would quickly be evicted from his offices at best and butchered at worst.Such was Ookami’s way, Chemuel knew well enough.
Letting the two obviously distraught flankers be, Chemuel let her gaze settle back to the overwhelming persona between the pair of them.Perhaps that’s why the two of them were there, the girl considered.Perhaps Vanil had placed them at his sides to simply enhance the grandeur Chemuel knew he was capable of so well projecting.
Well, it was working, Chemuel acknowledged with a quiet, drawn-out sigh of surrender as she clung to every word of Vanil's. Whatever he was up to, evanescence was only the beginning.
---
Few knew of the catacombs that lay below the audience chamber, which is precisely why Vanil had chosen them to depart through. He had placed the remaining assets into the hands of his coterie and instructed Urael with providing them with that which he had provided the Exile. Vanil had his suspicions that the Spymaster had lied to him with regards to their agreement, but in retrospect, Vanil found that he didn't really care one way or the other.
Did it all really mean so little to him now? As one heel followed the other, his crimson blood leathers furling outwards behind his figure as he retreated through the torch-lit darkness of the damp tunnels, Vanil considered all that he had built since Gothique perished, and all that he had done to solidify his massive power base throughout the syndicat. He had started with very little, but those who had held the assets he now did had been weak and frivolous, and it had taken only aggressive politicking and oppressive bloodshed to take it from them. His rise had been swift and merciless, and so many had flocked to the wave of violence and freedom that the Batsu banner had apparently provided; his banner.
And now, it meant nothing. Vanil laughed shortly to himself.
Oh yes. There was much more, he now knew. There was so much more.
"You seem rushed." The cold, feminine voice stopped Vanil in his tracks, his stride coming to a standstill in the shadows of the catacombs. "As if a wolf were at your very heels."
"I owe you nothing, Ookami," Vanil said in reply as he turned to see the Lupine-Mistress' ever-voluptuous figure slink his way from the corner in which it had laid in waiting for his passing.
"Hrrr, you owe me EVERYTHING, Vanil," Ookami growled dangerously as she drew closer. Though the light in this place was scarce, Vanil could make out the faint glint of the older Exile's infamously deadly talons, and he knew well that, though she daren't do it here, Ookami could rip him to pieces without batting either of her dark, beautiful lashes with them. "You are mine, as are your Wolves," Ookami continued, her heels clicking menacingly as they echoed ever closer.
Vanil laughed, and the sound of it nearly brought Ookami to her own bout of stillness. It had always been an aloof and subtle thing, but there was something else there now, something that had not been there previously. An edge of the most silent and creeping of cruelties. Vanil had changed, and though he had once been a sword, Ookami knew then that this blade would probably lie best abandoned before she fell upon it. "I will serve him because I must, Ookami," Vanil said simply. "But our arrangement is complete. Stop me, and the Merovingian will have you locked so far away in Blackwood, you will see nothing for the rest of your timeless existence, my dear."
Ookami said nothing, and instead stepped closer until she stood face to face with Vanil, her perfect tanned nose scant inches from his own pale one. Slowly, the Lupine-Mistress raised both clawed hands and took the Blood Drinker's cold cheeks into her palms and planted a long, slow kiss upon his lips; one that hinted at endless volumes of threat.
"The first mistake you make," Ookami whispered to Vanil as she broke the kiss, "and I shall butcher you in your sleep, Vanil."
Vanil smirked again, the same hints of burgeoning cruelty that had shown themselves before making themselves known once more. "Then I shall sleep awake." With a scuff of his boots, Vanil turned on his heel and strode down the tunnel once more and away from Ookami.
~V
"I want you both to search the whole ship from the cockpit all the way down to the reactor coils," Chemuel was saying as she, Aoide, and Zdn1 stepped over the steel lip of the Masquerade's lowered access ramp in the Real, their heavy boots clumping loudly over the surface of the riveted metal. "It's not too big, so if there's anyone onboard, you'll find ‘em. I'll take the cockpit and upper chambers. Aoide, you search the central sections and main deck. Z, get yourself down to the engineering area and lower deck..." The girl stole a quick glance at the thick hanging darkness of the vessel's looming interior before adding, "...and while you're down there, Z, see if you can bring the power back online."
"What do we do when we find them?" asked Zdn1 hesitantly, the buzzing, azure glow of his electro-lamp the only source of illumination in the shadowed loading bay. "The Masques, I mean."
"He's right, babe," Aoide said evenly as she adjusted the firing frequency of her lightning gun to optimum close-quarters levels. "They may recognize you, but these ones are fresh into the fire, and may not recognize either me or Z."
"Make them, then," Chemuel replied matter-of-factly, her bright eyes continuing to quest the shadows around them. "We need them if we're going to find V."
Nodding with only a shade of hesitance, Zdn1 and Aoide parted ways and slunk off to those corners of the ship they had been directed to, leaving Chemuel alone in the loading bay. Squinting against the sudden gloom, the girl remembered that she had sent Zdn1's lamp bobbing down to the engineering section, and promptly unclipped the small floodlamp that hung from her belt and lit it with a click, letting the beam of white it projected play across the small loading bay and the corridors that led off of it and towards the forward sections of the ship, sending shadows crawling and skittering from her presence like black night crawlers.
In fact, she could almost hear them, Chemuel reasoned silently. Crawling along the deck plating like so many tiny little spiders, their red eyes blinking like Vanil's own, their mandibles clicking like tiny little knives...
A loud metallic clang sounded behind her, and Chemuel almost fell over as she swung her floodlamp around. She saw that a stack of rations crates, bathed in sudden illumination and stenciled with the red tag and serial number that signified their packaging at the Outpost Styx of the Devil's Advocates fleet, had been piled up against the far wall of the bay, and that one had fallen and come to rest against the deck plating with the crash that had startled her. Doubtless, her and her companions' passage had disturbed the crates. That was all.
Doubtless...
Suddenly, Chemuel felt an all-consuming urge to leave; to turn to the still-open loading ramp and sprint back down it and bolt for the distant running lights of the Schrodinger's Cat and leave this ship and anything that might be lurking inside. Chemuel knew it was just a feeling, and one she couldn't afford at the moment, and she also knew that the Masquerade had always given her this feeling when she had served aboard it, even familiar and fully-lit, but still...
‘No', Chemuel told herself. She and her Crew were here for a reason, and they had to do what they had to do. Biting down that chill that was creeping up her spine and making the hairs on the back of her slender neck stand on end, the girl turned back to the hatch she was reasonably certain in the gloom led to the upper areas of the wretched ghost ship.
They were here for a reason.
Chemuel started walking, into the recesses of the Masquerade, and didn't stop when the remaining ration crates crashed to the floor to join their missing brother.
~V