America Beeny (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thedreamisdead) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
legionworld2017-12-08 06:35 pm
thedreamisdead) wrote in legionworld2017-12-08 06:35 pm
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Who| America
What| Freedom
Where| Wherever the eagle soars
When| Pre-AI Retrieval Plot
Warnings/Notes| Brushes against, but doesn't specify, animal cruelty.
America's used to catching fifteen minutes in a sleep machine. It gives her the benefits of a full night's sleep in a fraction of the time. Unfortunately, for ethical reasons, sleep machines aren't a thing in the Legion's world. So, to free up as much of her day as possible, America's adjusted her sleep schedule.
Rather than the full eight hours at once, she sleeps for twenty minutes every six hours.
Rarely, she doesn't make it back to her room in time. On these occasions, she's often spotted dozing at a table, usually in the library. Most people know well enough to leave her alone, but there's always someone who thinks this is a good time to take a selfie with her, or try to grab a souvenir. They don't consider her training.
And that's when situations like this happen, with America snoozing peacefully while her hand has some poor staffer's throat in a vise grip. They're turning an unhealthy-looking shade of puce, one hand trying to peel her fingers off of their throat, while the other holds up a camera so they can livestream the entire event. God, they're even giving the camera duckface. Someone might want to get involved there.*
When America isn't training or studying, her free time is spent assisting the Science Police. While they disagree, often and vocally, on methods, none of the officers she's worked with over the past few months will deny that she's been a valuable asset. Whether it's her practically dissecting a suspect's alibi, working in the field with them, grinding away for hours to sort through evidence, or bringing a comparatively 'low-tech' viewpoint to forensics. Sometimes undercover.
The Science Police are good, very good. But only the veterans have her level of skill and experience. Surprisingly, they work well together, though the argument about what's effective vs. what's acceptable is everpresent. Especially once they learned that she was serious about literally blowing open doors with limpet mines. Given the amount of downtime they have, given her freakish sleep schedule, she spends more time working with them than any other member of the Legion. After all, she'd meant it months ago when she said they spent too much time sleeping and relaxing between missions. There was always work to do, and the Science Police team that'd been assigned to her appreciated that. You could almost call them friends.
Which was part of what pissed her off so much when she figured out that several of them were dirty. That the reason the witnesses they'd been protecting had ended up missing was because a trio of them were in the employ of a gangster going on trial. She'd dropped by, undercover, to check in and walked into an... unfortunate situation. Which probably explains why she's out of uniform now, clicking her way through the halls in an outfit more suitable for clubbing than handling crime. The entire way to the mess hall, she's shedding accessories. Rings, bangles. several necklaces, just tossing them aside. When she finally gets to the hall, she's removing her earrings and letting them drop.
"Everybody, leave." Now there's a tone that not many on Legion World've heard. Along the same lines as Surrender or die. Authoritarian, crackling with violence, but not loud or vicious. For a moment, no one stirs. "Now." And there's something there, an underlying authority that America hasn't seen fit to pull on the civilians here yet. It works, though, even die-hard Legion fans who'd refuse an order to evacuate a burning building if it meant watching a Legionnaire in action abandon plates, glasses, everything in the rush for the door. Except for her intended targets. She doesn't glance around to see if there's an audience. She just assumes they're all gone.
There's a moment's hesitation among the three crooked cops as they realize the jig's up. One of them stands, starts to brush past her, and she simply picks him up and slams him through their table. And, with that, there's no chance of a non-violent solution. The other two stand, one hurling her chair at America while the other goes for his gun. She sweeps under the chair, ducking around to put the tosser between her and the gunslinger, and stepping forward to close the distance. To the side, the first Sci-Cop is groaning and working his way to his feet.
Unarmed, she could probably take all three and be fine. But, out of uniform, she just walked in, cleared out the cafeteria, and then started beating on a trio of police officers. The question is, who would you trust and immediately back up? Your teammate or the legal authorities?*
There's target practice and then there's target practice. While the other Legionnaires who express a fondness for firearms train in urban environments and the like, their displays aren't usually so... Flashy. Then again, their weapons don't have six types of bullet and a separate stun setting. Heatseekers, white-phosphorus incendiaries, rubber-coated titanium ricochet rounds, hi-explosives, metal-penetrating armor piercing, and the mainstay standard execution. And when a Judge enters a firing range, it's as much to test their accuracy as their ability to determine the appropriate round used.
Anyone stepping into the viewing area, complete with a computer tracking her score (and, somewhat unnecessarily, comparing it to a 'J. Dredd'. Whoever he is, the computer's scoring considers him about two percentage points under perfect, while she's about four points below him.) She's been marked off for several non-lethal shots when the kill shot would be safer, being a little too slow on the draw at one point, three outright misses, and one case of 'invalid round choice', using a standard execution round without realizing that there was a pane of bullet-proof glass between her and the target. All in all, one hundred rounds fired. Twenty civilians saved, one wounded, and seventy-five perps dead or injured. Total elapsed time, thirty-five minutes.
She makes a face on reviewing it. "I sped through that too quickly. I should randomize the course and do it again. Take things slower." There's a brief pause and she glances up. "...Or did you want to take over the range? If I go again, I'm going to go out of my allotted time."* America, by now, has a well-earned reputation as a sim room hog. There are only so many rooms available, but she gets so wrapped up in them that she often eats into other people's times without realizing it. Not out of malice, she just loses track of time, but it does lead to some people needing to walk in and tell her that she needs to wrap it up.
It's not that she's living out her greatest fantasies or training or something. She's just... investigating crime scenes using the Anywhere Machine. Mega-City One is a city of a hundred and fifty million, four hundred before the Day of Chaos. There's only a few thousand Judges, and as efficient as they are, that's still millions of unsolved crimes a year. Robberies, assaults, murders, and worse, slipping through the cracks simply because there isn't enough manpower to cover it all. And so America uses the Anywhere Machine to recreate cold cases and record evidence of who did what, where they went after, and what scraps of evidence might have been left behind. It's a long, painstaking process, but she's managed to solve hundreds of unsolved crimes in her time since joining the Legion.
Anyone walking in now will see her in the middle of one of these. She's in what's clearly an animal testing facility, with the creatures frozen in time. Cages recessed into walls, filled with hissing cats, running guinea pigs, leaping mice, simply stopped in the middle of their actions. The horrifying experiments are laid out on the table in the middle of the room. America sits off to the side with the only thing she's allowed to move in the room, the compute, and she's copying down faces and names from an employee roster with one hand, reciting them into a recorder with the other. "-Gonne, residing at 1486-B Ingrid Newman Block. Prior citations for aggressive newslettering and... Criminal flatulence? That's no crime. Make a note to investigate who altered his record. He'll break once I get him in the chair for smuggling and pet theft. Look in on where he got them, possible unlicensed pet ownership by unknown citizens if-" She cuts herself off, belatedly realizing she has company. She blinks lowering her recorder, and looks up. "I'm sorry? Did I run overtime again?"
That seems to be a 'yes', America.* Even a machine like America Beeny needs to eat now and then. Sitting in the mess hall, she's spearing tostones with a toothpick to eat one at a time, an empty bowl of what was once soup at her elbow, and reading complex engineering reports. To be quite honest, it's all above her head. But, if she can memorize the gibberish, then it could be useful when she got home and could relay it to some actual scientists.
This means, of course, that almost her full attention is on the reports, and people pass her by without her so much as acknowledging their presence unless they get too close.*
Wild Card: Anything else? Pop it up here if there's something you want to do that just doesn't fit in here.
What| Freedom
Where| Wherever the eagle soars
When| Pre-AI Retrieval Plot
Warnings/Notes| Brushes against, but doesn't specify, animal cruelty.
America's used to catching fifteen minutes in a sleep machine. It gives her the benefits of a full night's sleep in a fraction of the time. Unfortunately, for ethical reasons, sleep machines aren't a thing in the Legion's world. So, to free up as much of her day as possible, America's adjusted her sleep schedule.
Rather than the full eight hours at once, she sleeps for twenty minutes every six hours.
Rarely, she doesn't make it back to her room in time. On these occasions, she's often spotted dozing at a table, usually in the library. Most people know well enough to leave her alone, but there's always someone who thinks this is a good time to take a selfie with her, or try to grab a souvenir. They don't consider her training.
And that's when situations like this happen, with America snoozing peacefully while her hand has some poor staffer's throat in a vise grip. They're turning an unhealthy-looking shade of puce, one hand trying to peel her fingers off of their throat, while the other holds up a camera so they can livestream the entire event. God, they're even giving the camera duckface. Someone might want to get involved there.
When America isn't training or studying, her free time is spent assisting the Science Police. While they disagree, often and vocally, on methods, none of the officers she's worked with over the past few months will deny that she's been a valuable asset. Whether it's her practically dissecting a suspect's alibi, working in the field with them, grinding away for hours to sort through evidence, or bringing a comparatively 'low-tech' viewpoint to forensics. Sometimes undercover.
The Science Police are good, very good. But only the veterans have her level of skill and experience. Surprisingly, they work well together, though the argument about what's effective vs. what's acceptable is everpresent. Especially once they learned that she was serious about literally blowing open doors with limpet mines. Given the amount of downtime they have, given her freakish sleep schedule, she spends more time working with them than any other member of the Legion. After all, she'd meant it months ago when she said they spent too much time sleeping and relaxing between missions. There was always work to do, and the Science Police team that'd been assigned to her appreciated that. You could almost call them friends.
Which was part of what pissed her off so much when she figured out that several of them were dirty. That the reason the witnesses they'd been protecting had ended up missing was because a trio of them were in the employ of a gangster going on trial. She'd dropped by, undercover, to check in and walked into an... unfortunate situation. Which probably explains why she's out of uniform now, clicking her way through the halls in an outfit more suitable for clubbing than handling crime. The entire way to the mess hall, she's shedding accessories. Rings, bangles. several necklaces, just tossing them aside. When she finally gets to the hall, she's removing her earrings and letting them drop.
"Everybody, leave." Now there's a tone that not many on Legion World've heard. Along the same lines as Surrender or die. Authoritarian, crackling with violence, but not loud or vicious. For a moment, no one stirs. "Now." And there's something there, an underlying authority that America hasn't seen fit to pull on the civilians here yet. It works, though, even die-hard Legion fans who'd refuse an order to evacuate a burning building if it meant watching a Legionnaire in action abandon plates, glasses, everything in the rush for the door. Except for her intended targets. She doesn't glance around to see if there's an audience. She just assumes they're all gone.
There's a moment's hesitation among the three crooked cops as they realize the jig's up. One of them stands, starts to brush past her, and she simply picks him up and slams him through their table. And, with that, there's no chance of a non-violent solution. The other two stand, one hurling her chair at America while the other goes for his gun. She sweeps under the chair, ducking around to put the tosser between her and the gunslinger, and stepping forward to close the distance. To the side, the first Sci-Cop is groaning and working his way to his feet.
Unarmed, she could probably take all three and be fine. But, out of uniform, she just walked in, cleared out the cafeteria, and then started beating on a trio of police officers. The question is, who would you trust and immediately back up? Your teammate or the legal authorities?
There's target practice and then there's target practice. While the other Legionnaires who express a fondness for firearms train in urban environments and the like, their displays aren't usually so... Flashy. Then again, their weapons don't have six types of bullet and a separate stun setting. Heatseekers, white-phosphorus incendiaries, rubber-coated titanium ricochet rounds, hi-explosives, metal-penetrating armor piercing, and the mainstay standard execution. And when a Judge enters a firing range, it's as much to test their accuracy as their ability to determine the appropriate round used.
Anyone stepping into the viewing area, complete with a computer tracking her score (and, somewhat unnecessarily, comparing it to a 'J. Dredd'. Whoever he is, the computer's scoring considers him about two percentage points under perfect, while she's about four points below him.) She's been marked off for several non-lethal shots when the kill shot would be safer, being a little too slow on the draw at one point, three outright misses, and one case of 'invalid round choice', using a standard execution round without realizing that there was a pane of bullet-proof glass between her and the target. All in all, one hundred rounds fired. Twenty civilians saved, one wounded, and seventy-five perps dead or injured. Total elapsed time, thirty-five minutes.
She makes a face on reviewing it. "I sped through that too quickly. I should randomize the course and do it again. Take things slower." There's a brief pause and she glances up. "...Or did you want to take over the range? If I go again, I'm going to go out of my allotted time."
It's not that she's living out her greatest fantasies or training or something. She's just... investigating crime scenes using the Anywhere Machine. Mega-City One is a city of a hundred and fifty million, four hundred before the Day of Chaos. There's only a few thousand Judges, and as efficient as they are, that's still millions of unsolved crimes a year. Robberies, assaults, murders, and worse, slipping through the cracks simply because there isn't enough manpower to cover it all. And so America uses the Anywhere Machine to recreate cold cases and record evidence of who did what, where they went after, and what scraps of evidence might have been left behind. It's a long, painstaking process, but she's managed to solve hundreds of unsolved crimes in her time since joining the Legion.
Anyone walking in now will see her in the middle of one of these. She's in what's clearly an animal testing facility, with the creatures frozen in time. Cages recessed into walls, filled with hissing cats, running guinea pigs, leaping mice, simply stopped in the middle of their actions. The horrifying experiments are laid out on the table in the middle of the room. America sits off to the side with the only thing she's allowed to move in the room, the compute, and she's copying down faces and names from an employee roster with one hand, reciting them into a recorder with the other. "-Gonne, residing at 1486-B Ingrid Newman Block. Prior citations for aggressive newslettering and... Criminal flatulence? That's no crime. Make a note to investigate who altered his record. He'll break once I get him in the chair for smuggling and pet theft. Look in on where he got them, possible unlicensed pet ownership by unknown citizens if-" She cuts herself off, belatedly realizing she has company. She blinks lowering her recorder, and looks up. "I'm sorry? Did I run overtime again?"
That seems to be a 'yes', America.
This means, of course, that almost her full attention is on the reports, and people pass her by without her so much as acknowledging their presence unless they get too close.
Wild Card: Anything else? Pop it up here if there's something you want to do that just doesn't fit in here.