Diagnostics

[prettycoolguy]

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.

Comments

[iamresponding]

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."

[prettycoolguy]

"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?"

[iamresponding]

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."

[prettycoolguy]

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."

[iamresponding]

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."

[prettycoolguy]

"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.

[iamresponding]

"'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.

[prettycoolguy]

"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."

[iamresponding]

"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."