dualislogs | i hope you're ready for a firefight ...

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i hope you're ready for a firefight ...

WHO: Open to all Dualizens
WHAT: Another Heart meeting, a warehouse raiding, a Travis-bot-napping.
WHERE: A different run-down warehouse on the outskirts of town.
WHEN: Jan. 15
WARNINGS: Please use these in comment subject lines if applicable!

It's been a solid four months since the last time the Heart made contact with our intrepid band of kidnapped adventurers - plenty of time to think over what was said at the last meeting, to see for yourselves what sinister plans the Head has in store for everyone, to gather your own information. The well-meaning but shit-at-acting group of revolutionaries promised they'd be in touch, and today, they've made good on that promise.

Around mid-morning, there's another mysterious text message sent from an impossible number, and just like the last time, there are a number of hoops to jump through to get to the message and security precautions to make sure the message is erased without a trace. The message this time invites you to a different run-down warehouse in the far north end of town, tonight, when the streetlights spark to life.

Shortly before sunset, it begins to rain. It's a steady shower, not a violent storm like the night the mechanical doubles attacked, but the rain is piercing and cold, not quite freezing but not far from it. Hope you remembered your umbrella!

This empty, dusty warehouse is also dimly lit inside by a few flickering overhead lights, and once the last stragglers have entered for the meeting, the lights shut off as a burst of loud electrical humming echoes through the warehouse. All electronic devices inside the perimeter of the warehouse - yes, that includes your phones! - have been temporarily disabled, and will remain so until the overhead lights come on again.

Buckle in, everyone - it's time for the shitshow to begin!

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Doc Yewll had every temptation to sass during the meeting, but to be honest everyone else seemed to have that covered. Most of the time she's just rolled her eyes, sighed, tried to find a moment in which they weren't both ass-kissing and being utterly unhelpful to ask about the mysterious virus (extremely relevant to her interests).

Before she has a chance there's yelling, there are people coming. There are warnings, but she doesn't know where to go.

"Hey! You know the way out of here?!" she asks the nearest person. Not just out of here, the way out of the area. "I can't do anything against these guys. I'm dead meat, and I'd really like to not be a corpse yet if I could avoid it."

He’s right; Nick knows he’s right. She isn’t a hero - how many times has she herself said as much? There are people here with actual experience, and she should leave the heroics to them and get gone.

There's nothing inherently virtuous in being killed. Bianca’s words, after they’d fought off the Null - or rather, Nick hid from fighting the Null. They push to the front of her mind. She was right, too, and what Nick said then still holds true: I don’t want to die.

She starts to go with him when Drifter tugs her by the wrist away from the fray, overwhelmed with how much he seems to care about whether she lives or dies tonight. He’s the first to ever express this kind of concern over her, and for a moment she can’t breathe, throat choked with every feeling she doesn’t have the time to explain to him. She blinks back the sudden and unexpected start of tears, inhaling a hard breath to keep her composure. She can’t have the luxury of falling apart right now.

A loud noise from inside the warehouse draws her attention back, a scream of pain as someone is electrocuted by an Iteration. She stops and looks back over her shoulder, then turns back to Drifter. She places her other hand over his on her wrist, not to pull them apart, just to call his attention.

“I do trust you,” she says, not for the first time since they met. “And I’m not a hero, I know that, but I - I can’t walk away from this.” She smiles weakly. “I don’t wanna die, but I don’t wanna see anyone else die, either. I couldn’t live with myself if I could’ve done more to stop all of this and didn’t.”

He grabs her hand then, with his other hand. The first firmly around her wrist still, not quite willing to let her go.

"Don't! Listen to me, please. It's okay to retreat. Your fight is done today! Nothing you can do will help these people anymore. Just get out the ones that got dragged into it, too."

He sees the emotion in her eyes, and he latches onto it. He tries to appeal to it. "Don't follow someone else's moral dogma. Come on, Nick. You'll die! They knew what they were getting into. They can't hide behind you and taunt the enemy anymore."

Which is what they've been doing. This bear-baiting bullshit ends tonight, and he knows that they'll plow right through Nick to make it happen. "I wanted 'em to win, too!" he at least adds in. He wouldn't have made them weapons if he didn't think they stood a chance at the time. But you know what? They don't anymore. "But it's over. Just take a good long second to look." A second might be all they have to do that.

"It's over." At least for the Heart, not for the other people in the room that need to flee. "Set the example for these new souls and run."

Edited 2020-01-21 00:36 (UTC)

It was for the worst case scenario that Tidus had come--that's what he'd told most of the people he'd let know he was going beforehand. And as true as it was for the most part, he was curious about the Heart, too. For all the warnings about them, he wanted to know what they were about. There had to be more to them than their apparent screw-ups, and maybe this was the chance to find out.

He's wearing a hoodie, trying to keep his head down while taking note of the people around, the exits; simultaneously aware of what a bad idea this is by the tension in his shoulders that's also kicking him into fuck it mode. No backing down now. Most people blur as faces he doesn't recognise, not intimately, except that looks like Harry other there.

--shit. Harry?

Which aptly describes the thought that comes with the double-take Tidus experiences, staring wide-eyed. He turns away, sneaks a look back, and he doesn't let the frown already set on his face find a new way to stretch out before he's striding over with his head ducked, weaving between the few bodies away until he can lift his chin and verify a certain protruding gut and softer facial hair that Tidus will never describe as such out loud.

It's the second feature that confirms everything, and also the initiated eye contact it prompts. Eye contact that flares with accusatory and worry on Tidus's side with no more room for doubt.

"Harry?!" He keeps his voice down to his best effort. Turns away from the others, while still facing the older man. "It's not safe."

Says the whippersnapper to the guy three times his age, but like that's going to stop Tidus from trying to stress it urgently.

Harry's busy rubbing at skin beneath his now-loose collar when Tidus rounds in on him. His hand freezes and he stands there staring back as their eyes meet. Somewhere in that cloud of panic and recognition, he feels he needs to justify his presence here, but—

REACTION SPEED — Uh...

His mouth opens, even if words don't come out. It's next to impossible to come up with something at such short notice. Especially when the truth (that he needs to be here because he was told to be by the garish necktie now floating around in the bottle of 98.7% pure alcohol sat snug in his pocket) sounds a little like the ravings of a raging lunatic.

AUTHORITY — AND WHAT'S HE DOING HERE?

"Yeah, no shit. Why the hell are you here?" Oop, there we go. The words finally tumble out as a low (aggressive) growl, all while he straightens up, sucking his gut in and jutting that chest out like making himself bigger adds weight to his words.

What is this adding ten pounds up top from the bottom macho intimidation act? Tidus's frown deepens, and though he takes a instinctive step back, it's still followed by a sharpened glare and a higher raised chin in defiance.

"'Cause, I've got something I need to do," he answers stubbornly, maybe a little more than necessary. Yet it takes only seconds for his features to soften at the edges, a more worried hold pinching his mouth.

"One of their guys got taken," he continues slowly, still keeping his voice down. "Anything he knew, the Head knows. And the Head's after the Heart."

He keeps his eyes on Harry, hoping he can piece together the pieces without much more. There was no saying anything would happen here tonight, but then there was the chance. How many people even knew the risk? Nothing about this felt right.

Harry deflates a little at that - not full on punctured balloon, but like someone let just a tiny bit of that hot air out. He breaks eye contact, then, worry creasing his brow as he appears to scan the room. And the people stood near them.

Fuck.

"I've got this thing," he mumbles, voice dropping down almost low enough to be lost in the general white noise of the chatter around them. "I get these, uh... these hunches."

Does the spreading of his hands carry forth the meaning he's trying to imbue into that gesture? He manages to engage pretty much all of his facial muscles to present a real powerhouse of a frown.

"This is all gonna go super badly, huh?"

A hunch. Was it a cop thing, or a magic thing? The question creases Tidus’s brow, but he doesn’t get to ask it. He shakes his head, letting out a long breath that does nothing for the rigid state of his shoulders, the slight agitated fidget of his legs.

“I don’t know,” he confesses, with all the defeated energy of someone who believes Yes. He opens his mouth to say more--argue maybe, say how he doesn’t want anything to happen, maybe it just feels all wrong because they’re meeting with a bunch of people being chased by the Head?; they're in a dinky warehouse in the pouring rain, of course everything feels wrong--but it takes a few doubtful seconds for Tidus to find anything.

“Your hunches usually that right?”

He aims for joking hopeful. Fails to get anywhere close.

He’s right about that, too - it’s over. After tonight, even if everyone manages to avoid being captured or killed (and they won’t, Nick knows they won’t), the Heart is finished. She’s not trying to hold on to ideals she never fully invested in to begin with. It’s not her responsibility to be their knight in tarnished armor. She’s not a hero.

But there is something else she can do. Not many among the Heart were trained fighters - Nick doesn’t even count herself as one, but she has power, and she’s always been afraid to use it. Right now, she has the chance to set aside her fear and use the Talents she’s been given to fight back.

And she needs to try. She can’t be the terrified girl hiding in the closet from her drunken, hateful mother’s violent rampage any longer. She doesn’t want to feel helpless anymore. She is a survivor, and she’ll be damned if she lets anyone - human or machine - make her feel like anything less ever again.

She huffs a weak, mirthless laugh and squeezes her eyes shut, pushing the tears she’s been holding back to slide down her cheeks. “So you do remember my name.” She looks back up at him with a thin smile; she’s never minded his nicknames, even gave him one herself, but the fact that he’s using her actual name now feels alarming - wrong, like ear-splitting tornado sirens droning in the middle of the night. Her topmost hand rotates up to clasp at his, a silent plea that she follows with words.

“Believe me, every instinct I got’s tellin’ me to leave right the fuck now, but I can’t. I got one more trick up my sleeve, and I’m gonna hit these fuckers with everything I got. And if that helps even one more person get away? Then it’s worth stayin’ behind a little longer.”

Her thumb brushes slowly across his knuckles, and she inhales a deep, steadying breath. “I’m not gonna die. Trust me.”

"I remember everyone's name but mine," he says curtly. And honestly, he won't accept any new name for himself.

But hell, why is she crying? Why is she crying but still gonna do this. He's the trained fighter here and even he can see that he'd just get captured. There's a pressure at the back of his head, too. It's distracting. There's pain around them, fear. Ur likes it.

Eir Ur Xol Yul Akka.

He's gotta get out of here. They've gotta get out of here but she won't come. He grunts. "Things worse than dyin'," he says, but resigns himself and finally let's go. Withdrawing his hand is necessary, because a ball of fire swells in his hand, fire spewing from between his fingers, a round shape that looks like a mini sun forming in his palm and clenched tight. It's burning hot, too, even at her distance. like holding a hand too close to a radiator.

He throws it at the staging area, streaking fire along the backside. If there's any evidence, he's burning that down. And she can use the fire for cover if she wants.

Without another word he pulls back and looks a little more for anyone he knows. He'll get out of here after that, go to her place, wait around he figures. See if she can avoid ending up on whatever chopping block the Head has planned for them.

It doesn’t feel like any kind of victory when he concedes and releases her hands. It just hurts, and at the present moment, Nick doesn’t have time to pick apart the whys. She watches him leave, and before she can shatter, she turns away and becomes the giant doll again. She can’t cry anymore; her eyes are glass, open and close on weighted hinges. She no longer has a heart to break, because she’s hollow inside.

A few lumbering steps forward, and she stops again, calculating the best path of attack. There’s a cluster of Iterations targeting a pair of people unlucky enough to still be stuck here, and she has a clear line of sight to them. She holds her hands out in front of her, about a foot apart, and a small cloud of crackling dark energy forms between her palms. Slowly, she pulls her hands apart, and the dark cloud grows bigger and bigger, until it’s as wide as she is. With a final burst of strength, she pushes the cloud in the direction of the Iterations. As it envelops the robots, they’re blown apart, pieces scattering backwards, and several rumbles of thunder can be heard from overhead.

Now she’s done - exhausted, barely standing as she switches back to her Facade form. Now she can leave. The fight isn’t quite finished, but she’s done all she can, so she slips out the back, narrowly avoiding the blaze Drifter set, and finds the entrance to the tunnels. She can navigate back to her apartment blindfolded, but she can only move slowly, stumbling here and there, one arm braced against the concrete wall for support.

She doesn’t allow herself to dissect her feelings about what’s just happened. All of her energy is focused on getting home. She can fall apart once she’s safely behind a locked door.

The tunnel exit leads her a short distance toward the bar, and she hauls herself up the stairs and through the door to her apartment. She locks the deadbolt behind her and collapses back against the door for support, face buried in both hands.

Harry only really has a week's worth of non-fuzzy evidence to go by, but based on that? Woof. His hunches have proven uncomfortably accurate, haven't they?

ENCYCLOPEDIA — And guess what? You've just remembered the existence of B-hydroxy-phenothiazine! Somewhere in the soggy remains of your factual memory, you know it's ten times stronger than diamorphine, and most commonly known as the Hunch!

You're welcome!

Harry's frown somehow manages to level up, deepening. His right hand starts tapping a quick little rhythm on his thigh: tap tap tap.

"I'd be very happy to be proven wrong, okay?" He's back to meeting Tidus's eyes with his own typically over-tired ones. They're looking a little more manic than usual, pupils blown wide. "I got a pretty good hit-rate, though," he continues, the uptick in his voice adding a false cheeriness to his words.

"This guy they caught... The Heart knows right?"

Because if not, this whole circus feels all the more ill-fated.

She'd given him the key and he'd let himself in. He'd just waited around, picked up a thing here and there, looked at it like it was a relic of a lost age. Even if here everything is perfectly sensible. He hears the door close and turns to it, and she doesn't notice him. Just slumps with her face in her hands.

Good news is she made it.

Bad news is they didn't.

So that's how it ends for them, huh? Not just dead, but a lotta closed doors. He'll figure it out. He always gets out.

His footsteps are loud, plodding, not at all as sneaky as they could be, and he crouches in front of her with his arms folded on his knees.

"Hey Darlin'."

For a moment, when she hears footsteps, she thinks maybe it's an Iteration that's been waiting here for her, and her heart plummets deep into her gut. This is it, then - she tried so hard and got so far, and in the end, it doesn't even matter. She's been found. And she's too tired to fight anymore, so she just ... waits.

But it's Drifter's voice that greets her instead of the robotic droning of the Hand's foot soldiers, and her hands instantly drop from her face. She laughs weakly, relieved, and blinks away a fresh wave of tears. "Hey, Trouble," she murmurs, then gasps a deep breath in while she wipes at her face with her sleeve.

"I thought you were mad at me." I thought I'd never see you again.

"People can get mad when they're worried, you know. People can get mad when you ain't lovin' yourself properly."

He looks tired, reaches over and brushes at her loose hair, then wipes her cheek with the pad of his thumb.

"They didn't make it, did they? Aside from you." He had no real attachment to any of them. But she bet that she really cared about a few of them. Now she might even see their faces out wandering around.

"I got rid of my chip. They cain't use me no more." He finally tells her. "I wouldn't ever say I'm trustworthy, but the Head ain't gonna make me do nothin'."

"No way they can't." Otherwise, how would he know? -- or so his logic tells him. But the answer is a temporary one while Tidus tries to recall the events that led to the guy’s capture, one side of his mouth askew, of which ‘how the guy got turned’ less as important these days next to 'how he can screw people over'.

"H told me," Tidus continues, looking off while racking his brain. Hopefully by deduction of the singular person they both knew, Harry knew who Tidus meant. "Another guy knew about it too." And then -- the lightbulb, a flicker of light across his face as it turns on. He looks back up at Harry, waving a hand in gesture. "The clones, when they turned the power off. They did it to get people to join them. Got a bunch of them released and attacking people."

“People can get mad and leave and never come back, too.” Which is what she thought would happen when he left her at the warehouse. Which explains the tears, at least in part. The other part can be explained by what she adds to that thought: “I never had anybody care so much about what happened to me. Not even - not even them.”

As the same time she admits this aloud, she realizes just how true it is, and she falls down into the dark hole of her own thoughts, lightly rubbing a hand over her mouth. Once again, Drifter was right - the Heart was using her. Nick knew that on some level, because she got used to being used and discarded as soon as her usefulness was used up a long, long time ago, but she hadn’t fully considered just how fine the Heart was with harm being done to her, either through use of her Talents or as a result of her association with them. Hell, she was the most out in the open of them all, wasn’t she? She was the one at most risk, talking to people in search of new recruits.

She shakes her head, shakes herself from her thoughts and answers his question. “I don’t think so. I saw Marie get taken off but they prob’ly got more of ‘em, too. I did what I could but it - it wasn’t enough.”

And that’s another dangerously dark hole she doesn’t want to fall down into right now. She’s too tired to fight with herself, too tired to beat herself up for everything she’s done wrong, and Drifter’s just dropped a bombshell. “You - your chip?” She frowns deeply. “But that would’ve killed you.”

Speaking of H, Harry makes a point of scouring the crowd again. So far, he hasn't actually seen anyone fitting Hank's description lumbering around... which either means his perception is dipping again (doubtful, considering the PREPTIDE) or the guy isn't here. At least not yet, anyway. Fingers crossed it stays that way, too. As much as it feels like shit is about to go down, now's the time where fewer friendly faces is a victory in itself.

"If they know..." He doesn't finish the sentence. An exasperated, nervy sigh lands instead. That thigh tap from before is still going at a strong, steady pace.

"You think there's gonna be another attack?"

“Here? There’s a chance,” Tidus admits with a shake of his head. He’s not shuffling so much on his feet, but there’s still a restlessness to his posture, folding his arms, glancing now at then at the other people he can see from his angle; sometimes peering over his shoulder.

“This guy they got’s their tech guy, he’s smart. If they’re lucky,” that is, the Heart, “they knew how to outsmart him. If not…”

Tidus spreads out his hands uselessly, a hopeless gesture. But as his arms fold back, there’s a tighter hold to them, a harder crease to his features.

“No one thinks they’ll listen if we tried to kill this meeting.” He sighs again, a sharp aggravated exhale; rolling his lips, stuck on what to say. “No one trusts these guys, and everyone’s got some kinda power. If things go bad, we have to do what we can.”

He says it like that’s that, because it really is. Either run or help each other, which also involves running. What else was there?

“If we’re lucky, nothing’ll happen and we might learn something.”

But it's a hollow offer, like a piece of hope to cling onto -- while they stand there, unravelling the threading themselves. He wants to just be paranoid (just like everyone else), thinking that something would happen when nothing does. Just like the Memorial Ball.

Let this be a waste of time at worst.

"Small price to pay for not bein' under yet another thing's thumb." He has no regrets. It just hurt a little. But, to the other subject.

"They shoulda learned to use the guns. Or got me the parts to make somethin' bigger. But looked like they were much more into talkin'." He wipes his nose. "Well, at least no one else got took. I don't think, anyway.

"Protecting themselves wasn't just on you. You ain't a gun with a mind! You ain't the fist they punch things with. They all had their own hands, their own eyes! An' I know you're the type to be feelin' bad over this kinda thing but Darlin', they fucked themselves all on their own.

"I think I told you about 'em. But back home, there's the Traveller's dogma... this belief you give people whatever they want, just be some Athenean explosion of knowledge, freely bestowed. But then there's the Sword Logic. That idea that people don't deserve to live if they can't force their way through life. Me? I think there's gotta be some sorta middle ground. I don't see the value in giving. I see it in sharin'.

"Darlin'. You gave more than you had in you. They didn't share enough." He brushes her cheek with his knuckles. "You more than did your best. And out of the lot of 'em, you're the one the Head's always gonna live in fear of, even if that red-head signed her name to it... or was it the squirt? Whichever. You get the point."

It's hard to help the frustration. Sure, picking on their masks isn't the smartest choice or what they should be focusing on right now. But there's no hiding themselves if the Iterations come; the masks won't matter if they show up. And The Heart know exactly who they are. They endanger every one of them every time they bring them all together for a lecture about how terrorism is the way forward.

He decides not to point out that there is at least one machine there, I the form of Connor himself.

"But a lot of us are here without any of that, and besides - it's not hard to figure out who you invited and where we all live. You put us in danger just by inviting us here." He stares at both Marie and Mello, unimpressed. "We don't have anything but your word, but you don't trust us with what we've got no choice but to give you."

He shrugs, making it clear he doesn't expect any answer.

"So what do you want to discuss with us? Did anything change since last time?"

Did anything the people gathered here said the last time they were gathered have any effect at all?

[He turns, barely.]

I know - I know, I can't do anything--

[He looks back at the door - they won't have sent one or two Iterations, it'll be more than any one person could ever hope to take down - then back to her.]

Except distract them for a few seconds - it might be enough.

Beneath all the alcohol and (mild) brain damage, Harry's still a fairly smart guy. There's a lot of knowledge buried in his head—he just... struggles to make the necessary jumps to pull it up and use it appropriately.

Dualis's tech is ridiculously advanced compared to Revachol's, so maybe he's missing another fundamental thing, but... Well, what Revachol does have is an incredibly bloody history of revolutions and take overs. The streets of Martinaise are riddled with bullet holes. The shore has craters from mortars that make the docks look like they were attacked by the limbs of some gargantuan sea-monster. Never would he recommend a revolutionary group all come together in a territory filled with the occupying force.

So, you know, watch him let that piece of hope float on by. The reason he's here is the reason he stood between the dock workers and the mercenaries: he wants to limit the damage.

Which, he supposes, is why Tidus is here, too.

"Look, I got a gun and worst comes to worst, something extra." He gestures towards Tidus. "I saw that little glow back in the alley. I'm guessing that's what you mean by power, right?"

It takes Tidus a second to realise what Harry means, but then he nods, raises his hands and the metal-knuckled covered gloves he's wearing. He lets the fingers flex, and a soft white light dances off from their tips.

"I've got a few tricks," --but probably the most oddest part of him to be note of is the lump around the back of where he's tied a chequered shirt to hang around his waist, mostly concealing something back there-- "but you can't tell what a person can or can't do by looking at them. Anyway, the thing is..."

Should he tell Harry? It's not like Tidus has any reason to distrust him, and he doubts there's even less reason to think he might do something like, what, stop him? His lips twist against one another, and he gives another look around them before continuing.

"We want their guy that turned. They wanna figure how to deprogram him -- he's less damage if he's with us."

Harry lets out a soft, surprised sound at the reappearance of the shifting light. Something that'd be a whistle if his mouth had found the right shape in time. He doesn't understand it, or know what is does exactly, but... it's cool. It looks cool. A kind of cool that makes his chest feel funny—like it did seeing the phasmid unfold.

His eyes flick up again as he listens, bobbing his head a little to show yes, he's listening and not totally distracted thinking about magic and cryptids and...

God, this is a ridiculous amount to try and process. He pauses for a beat or two. Let's the logical side of his brain catch up.

"And what? You think he's gonna be here?"

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Page 2 of 3

i hope you're ready for a firefight ...

Rescue the Tiny Woman

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closed to harry (hobocop)

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cw for drug mentions

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