[open] I'll edit this to something clever later

[steelandtemper]

Who| Cortana and whoever
What| Cortana is wandering around the computer systems doing Important AI Stuff (ie, being kind of a creeper)
Where| Various locations on Legion World
When| Not super-relevant
Warnings/Notes| Probably nothing, will edit if that changes

As much as she'd deny she's been behaving like a cat whose owner has just returned from a long trip...Cortana has been behaving like a cat whose owner has just returned from a long trip. Of course, the Master Chief hasn't exactly tried to peel her off, either, but even he has to sleep occasionally. (The rumors that Spartans sleep in their armor standing up with their eyes open are almost entirely unfounded.)

Humans are, it turns out, pretty boring when they're asleep. Legion World is a safe zone, so instead of keeping her usual unblinking watch, Cortana tasks a process to alert her if the Chief wakes up. She'll be back before his eyes finish opening. Meanwhile, she sets off through the vast station's equally vast computer systems, getting the lay of this strange new 31st century land. Occasionally her course takes her to a peripheral node, a boundary where the digital can interface with the slow, analog expanse of the flesh-and-blood world, and she takes a peek out.

Occasionally, she finds something interesting.

NOTE: Cortana's an AI and has no body, so any logs will have to be in a place where she can manifest a hologram or at least use a speaker. If you'd like me to write a starter for you, I'm happy to do so. Drop me a PM or a PP and we can come up with a scenario.

Comments

for Reinhardt

[steelandtemper]

Some people's parts of the Hab Deck represent the so-called great outdoors. Those sections are boring, an opinion that is less sour grapes about Cortana's inability to get to them without commandeering a drone or the Chief than you'd think. A created creature, she finds little of interest in wilderness. Billennia of evolution? She can model that in minutes.

Intentional construction? That means something.

She jumps to the computer systems in one sector, a small, primitive-looking spaceport built into a rock face. The network tells her it belongs to Crusader. Slightly odd choice of name, given what a mess the Crusades had been...but she's well aware she doesn't have much room to criticize on that score. Hmm, apparent rock composition not inconsistent with the Mediterranean, either.

She's probably reading too much into it. If there's one thing most humans don't do, it's think.

Oh, would you look at that. Crusader's home, and wearing that baffling power armor of his. Given that there's functionally no security on the computers here--not that they really have anything worthwhile on them--Cortana sees no reason not to pop up. If he hadn't wanted visitors, he'd at least have put up the digital equivalent of a "Do Not Disturb" sign, right?

Cortana is very good at rationalizing decisions she was going to make anyway.

"Hello."

[unrecovered]

Monitor duty, as it turns out, is boring as hell. It's the last of Wash's extra shifts - the ones he'd picked up as a result of his knock-down drag-out with York - and he's all too ready for it to be over. He's got one eye on the screens - absolutely nothing has happened over the past few hours - and the other on the clock. Five more minutes. C'mon.

for Locus

[steelandtemper]

Even though she's constitutionally incapable of feeling guilty about spying on anyone, Cortana doesn't even have to pause to rationalize spying on Locus. He carries himself like a soldier, constantly alert, no hint of a slouch. From what she can tell, he takes off his helmet about as often as a Spartan. Everything about him screams "lifer."

Anywhere there are humans there will be war, she knows that much. It's not remarkable that Legion World boasts soldiers. But this soldier? Is her business. He's wearing a variant of UNSC-issue armor, and his IFF uses UNSC-standard protocols. His section of the Hab Deck is a facsimile of a UNSC base.

Well, now it's even more authentic, because in addition to a UNSC soldier, it has a UNSC AI in it.

She pops her hologram into existence on one of the handy AI plinths, hand on her hip.

"We should talk."

[legionnpcs]

A base as big as Legion World's requires a lot of mechanical upkeep. They may have a small army, a cyborg, and some supergeniuses about, but there's never something that doesn't need repair or debugging. Especially with people from the Dark Ages wandering about, downloading things willy-nilly without considering that malware is a thing that can happen. Or that not using a coaster when using terminals can lead to liquids getting into the interiors and starting a fire.

Really. What sort of barbarian didn't use coasters?

That's where Babbage can be found. Plugged into a computer, with one set of processes working to debug it, another constantly running tests to see if everything's connected, and most of the rest of his attention on gutting the terminal and replacing the fused wiring that came about when someone's grub juice dripped somewhere it shouldn't have.

Most. Not all. Apparently he's keeping an eye on digital presences as well as physical ones. Once he senses the regular data flow to this node being interrupted, there's a pause perceivable only to mechanoids before he sends out a small greeting package. One undoubtedly designed to be followed up with a sledgehammer of countermeasures if the reply isn't something he'd expect to find in Legion World.

[vata]

She digs from the comfort of her own Legion-given home on the Habitat Deck: that gritty, abandoned industrial complex filled with junk, scrap, and whatever network-aligned tech the Legion let her ferret away to hoard - barely furnished, peppered with signs of life. Compared to some sections of Legion World it isn't a brightly burning beacon in the technological dark, but for all the work Sombra likes to pull from behind a screen it comes as a sort of distant fleck of brightness far, far off the map.

Eventually, she gets tired. Easy to do when you're reading through entire (publicly accessible) databases using hardware that's fused to the nervous system under her skin. With a yawn, Sombra climbs to her feet, away from her desk, digging through a heap of opened food packages (all laid out on an old, beaten couch, mixed in between piles of laundry) to try and separate what's been eaten and what she's abandoned and forgotten.

Her right hand, unburdened by snack scavenging, flicks lazily through the air as she scrolls absently through data without looking, directing the computer at her back from a distance.

Eventually something interesting will come to the surface.

[mylawn]

Despite giving himself a perfectly serviceable safe house in the habitat deck, 76 doesn't spend much time there. He busies himself with other things--in training rooms, on the gun range. Trusting the Legion is still a long shot for someone like him, but in the meantime, he's going to take full advantage of all their stuff. Best not to get rusty, not when he's constantly expecting things to go south sooner rather than later.

He's vaguely aware of the fact that most areas are probably monitored, but he's not particularly concerned about whatever entity that may or may not be there watching him shoot a gun.

76 is practiced, efficient. He unloads on each target with pinpoint accuracy, resets them, reloads, and goes right back to it. Perhaps interesting to observe the first couple times, but then one has to wonder how long he's going to be at this.

[fuckaccuracy]

So Gaige is currently in the engineering bay, mostly just scoping the area out. Though she's an engineer herself, she's not really looking to help out with any of the ship maintenance. She's a more of a murder-y kind of engineer, after all. But yeah, being here is giving her all sorts of ideas. You know, if she's ever allowed to build another robot, or if she's able to bring Deathtrap all the way out here.

God, that would be such an awesome upgrade for it.

Anyways, she's just sort of browsing through the screens and monitors...