legionworld | Diagnostics

Entry tags:

Diagnostics

Who| The Chief and anyone
What| Checking the armor
Where| The labs
When| The day after getting out of medical
Warnings/Notes| -

The MJOLNIR suit lay on the table like a patient for autopsy as the Chief picked over it. They’d released him from medical and told him to take it easy for a few days, and after he’d slept and ate and confirmed (four times, with four different and increasingly exasperated people) that there was absolutely no way for him to communicate with Command, he’d immediately run out of activities that felt worthwhile.

This was as close as he could get to feeling productive and, given the alternative was just letting his thoughts spin, he’d take it.

The array of tools the Legion had at hand were beyond his imagination and, if he were honest, his comprehension. Someone would have to explain at least some of it to him if he were going to keep at it, but that was a bridge to cross when he’d gotten through with assessing the suit’s condition and seeing what actually needed work.

After cataloguing all the new surface damage, he took a step back to just look at this heap of metal. The Chief wasn’t a sentimental person about his equipment, or at least he didn’t think he was. Even so, standing here in another world with another unknown struggle yawning ahead, he realized just how much he appreciated the familiar machine that had kept him alive.

Something had changed. His perspective, maybe.

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"Hey Brainiac, you in here? I wanted to see if you could tweak something with my prosthetic."

Nope. Didn't look like he was in here. Which wasn't a surprise. The impression Rich had already gotten of Brainy was that he was lab rat but also pretty hands on with the heroing, too.

Instead, there was a man in here who -- wow, he was tall. Not the tallest person Rich had ever seen, but still pretty tall. At 6'1," not many people were taller than him, and those that were, well, they were some heavy hitters, like Cap, Ronan, Thor, and the Hulk.

This guy...this guy looked like he might be a bit of a heavy hitter, too. And that armor...

"Nice exosuit. That thing looks pretty heavy duty. Looks like it's seen some action, too."

So did the man he was talking to, judging from those scars.

Rich was sporting a few of his own that would be pretty telling to the man. A long scar on the right side of his face and, of course, the missing right arm, replaced by a shiny new prosthetic. The way Rich carried himself made it clear he was a soldier, as well, upright and stiff, like there was a coiled spring at his core, all wound up so he was ready to go.

The Chief looked up for a moment when Rich came in looking for Brainy, but didn't respond until addressed.

He hadn't met this man before, but had spent too much time around soldiers not to recognize another. Especially given the scarring, and the arm. For a fraction of a second, he remembered James.

James-005 had lost his left arm on Sigma Octanus IV in July and had still been right there with him at Reach in October.

Four years ago, he reminded himself. October four years of cryo ago.

It still didn't feel real.

"MJOLNIR mark six powered assault armor," he said. Pride of the UNSC, or at least the skunkworks.

"Suit's about two months old." And four years. "It's broken in, now."

It was a joke, but his tone and expression left the armor's obviously battered state as the only clue.

Really, it was probably broken in the first time he rode the thing from orbit.

"Looks like it's been active two months," Rich agreed, as if it was perfectly normal for a suit to have that much battle damage after such a short time.

Truth be told, he'd seen worse, though he got the impression it wasn't in a worse state not because the man he was talking to hadn't seen a lot of action; he suspected it was more because he was good enough to not get hit as much as other soldiers might've.

He held out his hand, starting with the prosthetic but quickly switching over to the flesh and blood one, making it clear that the loss of his limb was relatively recent. (He still was getting the hang of the prosthetic and he was iffy on how much pressure to apply to things sometimes.)

If the arm and Rich's thinking the suit looked properly worn didn't make it clear Rich had seen a lot of action, how he introduced himself did.

"Rich Rider. I also go by Nova. Formerly General of the United Front." A pause. "Which means absolutely nothing here, but you know how it is."

Habit. It all snapped back into place when you were meeting other soldiers.

Edited 2016-01-08 11:14 (UTC)

The Chief's handshake was solid, simple, not a challenge like some people treated them.

"I do," he said. "Spartan-117. Master Chief Petty Officer, UNSC special forces."

He dodged the real name because he always dodged the real name. He wasn't prepared to be "John" to anyone.

"They're just calling me the Master Chief, here. It's what I'm used to."

He was the Master Chief by default, after everything that happened. He just hadn't realized how used to it he was until landing here, somewhat anonymous again. On Legion World, the Chief was just a new weirdo in a pack of other new weirdos.

It was kind of a relief, to be honest.

"So tell me about this thing," he said, looking at the suit. "I always loved seeing what the RnD gearheads came up with. It was shame that kind of ingenuity had to happen during wartime but it was still impressive."

He also wanted to know because he had all the experience he did and that meant he'd probably wind up the leader of some team or another at some point. He was already taking stock of what everyone else could do.

Edited 2016-01-12 08:47 (UTC)

The Chief was being weighed as an asset. It's what he would've done himself. It was practical and useful to know what your team could do.

"It makes me hard to kill," he said. "It's shielded. Then there's the plate. Then there's the life support systems. Air filtering, radiation shielding, biofoam injectors, oxygen, that sort of thing. It'll hold in a vacuum."

Or at least it should. Again, he was reminded he needed to check the integrity of the seals. Even if the Legion had those thin suits that were near enough to magic by his standards, he liked to know his own equipment was in order.

"Otherwise, it makes me stronger and faster by about three times, and keeps me linked into the battlenet."

Rich let out a long, low whistle.

"We'd've killed to have these during the Annihilation War. But we were down to working with scrap before long." That was what happened when your enemy could take out whole planets. "We had hardly any sources of production that hadn't been destroyed by the Wave. At most, we could only scavenge from wreckage and refit as best as we could."

He picked up a small piece of it and judged the weight of it. "Heavy. I imagine the suit partly handles the strain of the weight of itself, but still has to be taxing on your body."

But judging from the size of the man he looked...well. Like he'd perhaps been augmented to handle it. He wasn't sure if saying anything about that would be considered rude so he opted to talk more about himself.

"Not that I'm one to talk. God knows mine can't handle a thousandth of what it could when I was at full power. I lost some of what augmented me when I came through to this universe."

Edited 2016-01-17 08:14 (UTC)

"Heavy and expensive," The Chief confirmed. "There were only a few of us, and a suit like this is no good to regular troops. It enhances the force you apply, whether you can stand it or not. One of these will break bones if they're not reinforced."

Which means that his bones are reinforced.

"Everything with me is coming up green so far," he said, "but then, I'm standard compared to a lot of you." People like him didn't make fire, or have super speed, or fly, or do most of what he'd seen Legionnaires doing. Being a Spartan was possible: Years of rigorous training with surgical augmentation for the push beyond human limits. There was no magic, no fate, no chosen one. There was just a war, and people needed to fight it.

Rich had seen a war too, and one that had a name beyond just "the war". Fighting the Covenant had been "the war" to the Chief for most of his life, and three days wasn't enough to start being specific about it yet.

"'The Annihilation War'," he repeated thoughtfully. Dramatic. Grim. But not explanatory. "Who were you fighting?"

Edited 2016-01-22 04:56 (UTC)

Rich noted that, the implication of augmentation and briefly wondered what kind of process that might entail. He didn't say anything about it, though. To say something about it would mean prying and he didn't want to show disrespect by doing that.

But he did notice and file it away to mull over later.

"There was a universe adjacent to our own called the Negative Zone that gave our universe trouble for years. But usually the incursions were just by a handful of particular supervillains. One of 'em was an insectoid despot named Annihilus and most of his attempts at domination or destruction got stopped by the heroes of Earth."

Mostly by his friends the Fantastic Four.

...Well, his friends Sue Storm, Ben, and Johnny and former friend Reed. As far as Rich was concerned, after Reed ignored the beacon he sent asking the heroes of Earth for help, he could go rot.

"At some point Annihilus decided that he needed a proper invasion force so he bred billions of bugs. Huge insectoid drones and soldiers, brain bug queens, you name it. Then he started an invasion of our universe that was several billion strong."

Rich's eyes went back to the suit because it was just easier that way.

"It wiped out whole planets. Billions and billions of people. Galactic civilization all but collapsed. Annihilus' forces even managed to capture and weaponize a cosmic being that eats worlds. We managed to stop him in the end. The Wave was only three months out from hitting Earth when we did. Maybe less."

The Chief gave his head a slow, deliberate shake at that. What a goddamn mess.

"I think our colonization wasn't as far out as yours when we hit trouble. Fewer planets. We were fighting the Covenant. It was slower, much slower, but they did reach Earth at the end. We kept them off for years by wiping the nav computers wherever they showed up. Better to lose ships than give the Covenant a map."

He paused, then backed up a bit. It was strange explaining this to someone. It had always been just given.

"There was a massive alien empire spanning the galaxy thousands of years ago. There are still bits and pieces of their technology around, and the Covenant worshiped them. There were over half a dozen different species united under a religious hegemony, and they found one of our colonies while looking for artifacts. They decided we had to go. All of us."

He put his hand on the scarred helmet. "They had numbers, but mostly it was firepower. We only had a few of these suits, and they're based on what the labs learned from tearing apart Elite combat harnesses. Most Covenant species are man-sized or smaller, but the Elites were the warrior caste. They average two and a half meters high and outweigh me by fifty kilos."

The Chief could stand toe to toe with something like that, and had the marks to prove it. But an unaltered human marine...

His eyes settled the readouts from one of the computers someone had left running a simulation as he sorted his thoughts. It was easy to avoid someone's gaze when it was mutual.

"The Covenant navy had better Slipspace maneuverability, plasma cannons, and full shielding. Once you had a couple capital ships in orbit, that was it. They'd turn the surface of the planet to molten glass. We could hold a ground war for a while, but as soon as it went to the air, there wasn't a lot we could do."

His fingers tensed a little on the ridge of the helmet's visor.

"They didn't even want those planets. They destroyed them just to kill us, wherever they could find us. And we still don't know why."

Rich listened. It always did other people good when you just...listened. Sometimes it was all you could do.

When Chief spoke of them reducing worlds to glass he just nodded slightly, a quiet 'Yes, I've been there, I've seen it.'

When they finally made their stand, they'd lost a few worlds to orbital assaults, even when they'd won the war on the ground -- at least until they adapted and learned to fight better in three dimensions. After they'd figured that out, conscripted the former heralds of Galactus to fight in orbit, then they'd started having a chance.

...until the enemy weaponized Galactus. Then it'd been over. Down to guerilla tactics.

"Sometimes the why don't matter," Rich said thoughtfully. "Most of the bugs were sentient. They thought Annihilus was a god and they we were willing to throw their own lives away for him. After a while I guess he thought he was one, too. Even after one of my team helped free Galactus -- the world-eater -- so he'd turn against Annihilus --" good ol' Drax, making sure everything worked out even after killing Thanos "-- even after that, he was still crowing on about how powerful he was, how he was unstoppable, how he'd regroup and keep coming. Utterly delusional."

Rich's eyes went sharp and hard like diamond as he inspected the armor.

"He kept on with it right up until I realized the gap in his armor was his flappin'yap and ripped his guts out through his mouth. That shut him up quick."

"Cut off the head, the snake dies," the Chief replied, one of the oldest truths he had. Agreement on it was the best solidarity he could offer to Rich's bitterness. It was a weird sort of communication through experiences, but it still boiled down to something basic and human. I've been there, and it's terrible.

"I don't know how many of the Prophets survived the last battle, if they did they ran. The warrior castes started killing each other and still are four years later. Gives us some time to decide what to do when they finish."

There'd even been diplomatic efforts with Sanghelios. If you'd told him that ten years ago, he would've... well, not laughed, but still.

"It's over," he said finally, only mostly for Rich's benefit. The armor's scars from the battle of the Ark were only days old for the Chief, but if he kept saying it perhaps those four years would start to feel real.

...In time for him to find his way back and keep hunting Forerunner constructs, probably.

It was over, and it would never be over.

Edited (if i edit the tag 3 times then clearly i will be satisfied with it) 2016-02-04 04:44 (UTC)

"'Cut off the head and the body dies' was pretty much the pitch I made to the others to convince them to go on the suicide mission to take Annihilus out. Word for word."

Chief saying his own war was over was to Rich's benefit. He'd have been left feeling a little morose if he thought a war like that was ongoing. One of the only saving graces to Annihilation War was that it hadn't gone on longer, especially with how many had died in such a short time.

...And that the Wave had been stopped before it had hit Earth. Call it selfish when so many other worlds had died, but it'd still been a relief.

"Here's hoping this stays a superhero gig while we're here," said Rich. "Watch, with our luck, we'll be dragged into another war."

He shook his head. "The hero stuff is always better. Sometimes the choices are just as hard but even the wrong ones seem to have better endings than if it was wartime."

And it felt good to save people, to protect. War was about saving people but you had to do it by destroying the enemy first. Facing things like, say, Galactus, was terrifying, but at the end of the day you could make it so billions could walk away alive.

"I'm not a super hero," he replied. Something about that didn't sit right with him, it never had. People admired him, they saw him as a symbol for something and it was all based on a fundamental lack of understanding what he was. It felt dishonest to claim the label.

"I respect what the Legion is doing, but that's not what I am."

"There's different types of superheroes," said Rich, honestly. "I'm a superhero. I also led a war and ripped my enemy's stomach out through his throat."

The two weren't mutually exclusive, him being a superhero and being a soldier. Even after the war, he was still a soldier, fighting against the very big, very bad oogeties out there in the void. To be a superhero in space he almost needed to be a soldier, too.

"Sometimes all a superhero is, is someone that's what people need them to be when they need them to be it. If you can do that, you're set."

That wasn't all of it, though, but he wasn't so sure that Chief was incapable of the last element.

"They're also people that bring others hope. Maybe falsely -- God knows there were plenty of people that thought I could save 'em and I couldn't in the end." He drew in a deep breath. "But my point is you'll probably be able to at least fake it as long as you need to. And you might not even need to fake it. You might end up being one by accident--happens more than you'd think."

Setting up shop in a new place was always a bit of a chore.

In a future far beyond Donatello's own, of course, even chores became a lot more interesting, and he'd been finding plenty of value just in looking at what all was available and deciding what he was going to want right at hand in the corner he'd staked out for himself, and what he could leave to be sought out and brought over as needed.

But of course, a good pair of magnifying goggles was non-negotiable, and while there was a pretty good pair available to start with (with all kinds of exciting scanning functions! that he had barely started playing around with and deciding how to customize!), the built-in lighting was tuned for a species that clearly wasn't seeing in quite the same range as he was, which meant time for modifications (which sounded like a lot more fun than just asking if they had something tuned a little closer to his visual range, anyway), and there was a circuit board he wanted to change out while he was mucking around in there...

So he'd been making a fair number of runs to various corners of the lab to pick up the things he hadn't thought of yet, in short, but that wasn't really a terrible chore either, since it meant he was passing by a lot of interesting things he had better manners than to try and touch, but nobody said anything about not being able to look at.

Like the suit of armor lying on the table, which to his (extremely biased) gaze easily overshadowed the man towering over it.

"Does that outer coating..." Good a time as any to test those goggles, clearly; he flipped them down and zoomed in - "...refract laser attacks?"

He sounded utterly delighted by the idea.

The Chief turned to look at the young alien (because this was clearly an alien) and hesitated. Did he have clearance to answer that?

...Then he remembered that he was impossibly far from home in a world centuries ahead of his in technology.

What could it hurt to tell him?

"Yes," he said. "A bit. It's mostly designed to keep plasma from slagging the plating when the shielding fails."

When, not if. He had entirely too much experience with what happened when the shield broke.

"Our enemy used few ballistic weapons. Most of what we saw was plasma, and this suit is partly built on their anti-plasma tech that we scavenged."

"Is the shielding self-contained?" Okay, so this guy had to be from somewhere similarly advanced to this dimension, or at the very least a lot closer to that end of the scale than Donnie's world, because it was hard to picture a particularly effective shield made that portable out of anything his own world had to offer.

But even considering that the essential components were probably downsized a lot by this time...

He leaned in a little closer, eyeing the suit, doing a few quick numbers in his head (pure estimates, granted; it wasn't like he had material densities memorized, but -) "How do you move in it? This has to weigh at least...hundreds of pounds, doesn't it?"

Okay, so the guy stood about two feet over him, and that had to help, but even so!

The Chief didn't smile, not really, but some of the hard lines of his expression slackened. How old was this kid? He had to be a kid still, even if it was hard to tell exactly given the species. There was something disarming about his enthusiasm.

"It is. Emitters are in a couple places," he said, tapping several unassuming ports across the length of the armor. They were high on his list of things that needed looked over, he'd noticed some guttering in the field even though the status lights were still running green.

He hefted one of the bracers to demonstrate the weight. "With me in it the whole thing's about half a ton, but it's a powered suit." He might not have been able to explain some of the more complicated theory behind it, but he understood how his equipment worked in basic terms.

"It taps into a neural interface to pick up motion signals as you think them, faster than the muscles. You move the armor and it amplifies the force, moving you."

The Chief looked back over at the young alien.

"You really want to know this?" he asked, still a little surprised.

"Is the interface invasive, to get that kind of tap into neural signals? Or is just putting on the helmet enough without an internal connec-"

Okay. Deep breath, slow down.

"Er, sorry, but - yeah? This kind of tech is all way ahead of what my world's been turning out, so it's really fascinating to actually see it in use."

The Chief nodded, accepting this explanation.

"It's come pretty far even within thirty years. When we had first contact with the Covenant, we barely had a chance. Humanity survived because we're adaptable. The Covenant was running on technology they'd picked up from a dead species. They either thought it was sacred or didn't know how to change it, sometimes both. We improved on what we stole from them."

He paused, then added, "And it's invasive. Neural implants are standard issue, mine's just specialized."

Which, come to mention it, explained the little flash of metal just visible on the back of his neck.

"What's it like, where you're from?"

He wasn't sure how far "way ahead" was, and it seemed that some of the people around here were from times and places that hadn't even left the Sol system.

...If they were even in the Sol system to begin with, anyway.

Oh. Neural implants being standard for soldiers was...uncomfortable, he thought, and that was after he'd literally been a robot for a few weeks. Maybe getting something installed was less weird than having your entire mind put into something else, sure, but the idea of everyone having to do it as a matter of course, regardless of personal feelings on it...

Then again, there wasn't much about the military lifestyle that sat well with Donnie to begin with. Taking orders from Leo had been bad enough at first, even if they'd come to a better understanding among themselves - Leo listened to objections, worked with them when they weren't unfounded.

Taking orders without question from who-even-knows? Totally not his style.

"Well, I'm from Earth, circa the early 21st century - if that means anything." His tone said he wasn't expecting it to. "So...manned space travel is a thing, but not any farther than our moon. AI is pretty basic compared to what I'd guess you're used to; full AI's still a goal but some narrow AI is pretty decent. Combat's still mostly ballistics, rules of engagement usually discourage nukes or chemical or bio-weapons..."

"26th century here," the Chief supplied. "But if you're from Earth, I can already tell you it's different from where we came from."

Because. Clearly a teenaged alien.

"Before the Covenant showed up, we were more concerned with getting around faster than finding new ways to blow each other up. Better engines. Slipspace travel. AIs smart enough and quick enough to do all the calculations to make that safer. Things were starting to get rough out in the colonies, but getting around faster would solve part of that anyway. People don't like it when the government making decisions about them is a couple months' travel away. Big surprise, never happened before."

He didn't smile, because "the Chief didn't smile" was a statement of general fact, but there was a brief flicker of a joke in his eyes. The Chief was no historian, but he knew the American Revolution should be near enough in memory for reference. Most of his education about the past had been strung between long-gone wars, landmarks in time all the way back to Sparta and the soldiers that had given his unit its name.

"It might not be as different as you'd think. I'm...the kind of exception that almost nobody knows exists." And while he was reasonably sure there were a lot of pretty far out variants on Earth that had to exist - and statistically, it was almost certain that everyone here came from different ones - Earth did seem to follow some pretty predictable patterns.

Patterns that fit pretty well in with the one he knew, where most thought mutants were the stuff of science fiction, nothing more.

But that was said more as an aside, almost as if he were waving that thought out of the way as he said it, because hearing about the future was a lot more interesting than having the yes, I exist but no, you weren't supposed to know about it conversation. "How far out have you colonized? Slipspace sounds like that's how you're getting around the lightspeed problem, right? So...other systems entirely?"

~*~so cool~*~, you could practically see the stars in his eyes.

"I won't ask if you're not at liberty to talk about it," the Chief replied. His instinct said either classified, or just unlucky. Either one would be reason enough to want to let it go.

Talking about how landmark technological breakthroughs worked was easier than getting into identity on anyone's side.

"Slipspace is..." The Chief considered, then held out one hand flat, palm up.

"You need to get from Sol to Epsilon Eridani." He tapped his palm near the wrist, and the tip of his middle finger. "Problem is, that's over ten lightyears in normal space. But with a Shaw-Fujikawa drive, instead you punch through into Slipspace."

He curled his fingers in to close the gap.

"Slipspace is... crunched up compared to normal space. Things are closer. A physicist could tell you better, it's not my field."

"So you jump to Slipspace, travel a shorter distance, then when you're where you need to be you jump back."

He opened his hand again.

"That could still take you a couple of months, so you put most of your crew in cryogenic suspension and wake them up when you get there. We had over eight hundred planets along the Orion Arm, before the war. Would've been impossible without the drive."

The Chief eyed the rest of the lab speculatively as he let his arm hang again. "I'm sure these guys would think it's all pretty crude."

Like the suit of armor on the table. Like him.

"That's their loss."

He rested his elbows on the edge of the table and leaned in - still keeping enough distance to clearly not touch the suit, because even science wasn't enough to completely airlock his sense of respect for other peoples' property.

"Even if something's not as advanced as what you're used to, if you start thinking of it like nothing...that's just forgetting the entire point of science."

The point of science being that everything is awesome.

"They may think it's pretty basic, but they also got to stand on a lot of peoples' shoulders to start this far ahead of us."

"Enough centuries will do that," the Chief agreed. To be fair, it was almost impossible to imagine life before things they took for granted like electricity. It must've been the same for these people looking back.

He noticed Donatello's restrained eagerness, and finally arrived at a snap decision.

"You can touch it. I could actually use some help with these diagnostics, if you wanted."

Then he realized there was a question it was probably polite to ask by this point...

"What's your name?"

"For real?" If there was already something bright about the way Donnie was eyeing the suit, being invited to touch it was enough to make him light up like a Christmas tree.

...ah.

But they were forgetting something, weren't they.

"I'm Donatello, nice to meet you."

"Likewise. Officially I'm the Master Chief," he said, "but 'Chief' is shorter. It's what I'm used to." It was weird not introducing himself by his full UNSC designation, meaningless as it was to the people here. Even then, he'd still hung onto the rank anyway. It was more of a name to him now than anything else had been.

That done, he nodded to the suit. "Yes. I could use a hand getting this thing back in order, and if you want to have a look anyway, you can pay me back by helping this to quicker."

That and there was just no reason not to encourage a kid who clearly loved technology. He didn't seem the type to break anything. It couldn't hurt.

It was a little unusual, but it wasn't like Donnie was in the position to judge about weird names when his dad was called Splinter.

"Gladly. So - are you up to diagnostics yet, or still checking on the surface condition?"

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