"High noon" still has a resonating historical significance not lost on the people of New Amsterdam. Old cowboy movies, complete with John Wayne standing in a dusty, old street are imprinted upon people's memories, helping them recall a simpler past where grudges could be settled with guns. By 2511, these movies have been remade countless times over with different set pieces, but nostalgia continues to be an ever-present factor. It's not nostalgia that drives the UNA soldiers and Morningstar agents into position during this hour, but the time itself serves as a reminder. A call to a different time and a different past.
Outside, the sun burns bright, but people sleep soundly, shades drawn securely over their windows to create a false darkness. This is why the UNA strikes at noon: their targets will be vulnerable, comforted by the presence of daylight only a drawn shade away,
Across town, Morningstar's agents are preparing for their own strike. One of them makes a joke about the non hour. He's told to shut it. They have fifteen minutes. Is everyone ready? Their uniforms are black, tightly fitting. Each of them pulls their mask over their faces. Up ahead, there's a wall to scale.
Fifteen minutes and the plan goes into motion. Each agent knows the costs of this mission. Their last one ended up with numerous dead – lost – with no reward. UNA soldiers are far more threatening than the armed guards Morningstar faced on that day, but the reward is more sure. Worth the risk. They're secure in what they need to do.
Then it's time. Across the city, the UNA soldiers descend in perfect unison. Separate but thinking with one mind, one goal. Eliminate a festering problem, one that only stands to grow in a world haunted by chaos and trauma. It's their job to set things right. To restore order to a world that is currently without.
About forty five minutes in to the widespread assault, El sends out a message to everyone in the safehouse. This time, zeir communication is immediate, without the steady scrolling of text. Prepared in advance:
Hey, so. Emergency everyone. Come to the safehouse ASAP. Morningstar agents are in trouble, including a number who have helped you behind the scenes. Gaby will tell you more once you get there.
Once everyone shows up, crowded inside the part of the safehouse with the cots, Gaby gives everyone the rundown. The risk. The place where the rest of the agents are – this last bit of information being shared with an uneasy edge, arms crossed and body language giving off her discomfort. There are other people at risk, people who can't fight, who try to undermine the corporations with their regular lives, doing their best to keep the people they care about safe from their rebellious activity.
After she hands out the gear, she insists that it must be returned. But Gaby isn't stupid. Her desperation is inherent in her decisions, in the information that follows: exposing most of the inactive safehouses, giving away the addresses of the people likely in danger. Every Morningstar contact in New Amsterdam is likely at risk. So far, agents in other megacities aren't being targeted – yet. But this operation could be a model for future UNA efforts to eliminate the Morningstar threat.
The safehouses are spread across the city. Typically present in disheveled and forgotten pieces of real estate, there will be squatters and homeless alike taking up space as they move inside with the agents. This may prove a risk, and they may need to be bribed to go elsewhere, offered food and supplies. Other safehouses will be beneath bars, convenience stores, and through the storage room in less expensive apartment buildings – businesses and buildings owned by long-time Morningstar agents, kept ready in the case of an emergency like this one.
None of the safehouses will be prepared for living with the exception of cots and communal restrooms ready for use. This is a problem, but not a priority. She'll ask that everyone get out there and save the lives of the agents. Bring them and their families in safely – the rest can be figured out after that.
> RESTORING ORDER
Given the limitations over real estate and space even in a city as large as New Amsterdam, every citizen lives in an apartment building. The great majority of them were meant to be built quickly, similar layouts and designs behind them. A quick bit of research will get anyone the floor plans for these places – they're publicly available, ready for potential tenants. Most of these places are no dreamhouse, however: small and contained, they show the lifestyle of the typical Morningstar agent.
Any of the agents with a child – and there will only ever be one per agent, with the restrictions on childbirth – will have a roomier place, with better furnishing and more space for a child to run and grow up. These places will afford the family within better privacy, and many of them have drones and advanced robotics to help maintain the household, even caring for their child and keeping the door locked as the UNA soldiers move inside.
Where it's viable, the majority of UNA soldiers will move through the front door of these buildings. Never numbered over five, these soldiers will take the endless staircase up, erasing what little chances there are to run into anyone along the way. The knocks are just a cover to soothe the close-packed neighbors. Not all are fooled, and that's where the calls to the NAPD come in – though the UNA is prepared for this, too. Ready to assert their jurisdiction. Rather: their bosses are prepared. These soldiers have their orders and beyond that, only follow their orders with their formidable physicality and swift training.
But they are physically assertive: most of them are tall, seemingly without gender within thick black, metal armor. Despite their size and their robotic carapace, they are human underneath. Their extensive armor doesn't slow them down, instead seeming to propel them forward in a fight, letting them predict their enemies' moves as the mask they wear provides diagnostics and likely attacks on the fly. They carry extensive weapons and supplies, all to wear down any opponents. When they fight together, their actions are perfectly complementary.
They won't start a fight, but as soldiers, they are prepared. Though they enter through the front door, they intend to leave through a window, into a large flying vehicle outside, ready to hold the targets and bring them to a temporary dropsite. They don't expect any assailants, anyone to provide trouble – but they wouldn't be very well-trained, well designed if they couldn't expect or deal with the unexpected. They won't shoot unless someone forces the matter. Their training means their stature should be enough to put down most threats.
> A WELL-LAID TRAP
Confident and well-trained, the Morningstar agents have the plan ahead of them all mapped out. They know the shifts, the patrol patterns, especially at hours like this one. Fewer, right now, but they aren't nonexistent. Several strike teams spread out, ready to move to dismantle the UNA soldiers on site as needed. These are combat-trained agents, but five versus three UNA soldiers, or two, or even one still leads to odds where they don't win. Morningstar knows these soldiers intimately, has studied and discerned their few weaknesses. But these UNA soldiers are formidable opponents.
UNA Soldiers en route to Morningstar's goal will be handled with an eerie lack of follow-up. No reports of reinforcements incoming. The swift-moving Morningstar agents are too focused on their goal, which is close now, to worry about the implications. Besides, their information told them most agents would be away on training exercises. Reinforcements being delayed is no surprise.
Each agent has their own reason for being here, for believing that Morningstar needs to be more proactive, more forceful in fighting back. They aren't career soldiers, but people who thought that they could wield a gun and change a world that hides its problems under false promises and shimmering gloss. Many are impatient, frustrated: they were given a lead on weapons in June. They weren't mislead then, at least not intentionally, but what they got instead was a bus full of disoriented people. This cache is real, verified, and vulnerable, housed here temporarily before being moved for some unknown operation.
Once the Morningstar agents are all inside, the concealed UNA soldiers left at the base line up in formation. Perfectly tailored for the fight ahead, they move onto the site. Any agents on lookout duty will see the UNA moving in, ready to lay waste to anyone in there. This is a trap, they message frantically. The very real weapons inside are meant to mock with false hope.
The UNA aren't worried about Morningstar making off with their toys. After all, this is just as planned.
> INTERLUDE
Numerous officers pass by the holding cells in the NAPD's twelfth precinct, talking softly about what can they even do, muttering to themselves. Others pop a squat nearby and call it a well-earned day off. Let those soldiers take care of whatever mess they're cleaning up. That's not their job.
It's around this time that a third, unidentified group, takes advantage of the chaos. Well-dressed despite what is a late hours right now, they head into the precinct to take care of a dangling loose end. They show credentials that link them to New Beijing's governing body and personal security, they claim the men temporarily known as Tak and Alexei. As they're brought out of their cells, they're injected with the same compulsory drug as always, leaving them veritable walking zombies at first, leaving them unable to speak or act as they're given orders that tell them to do otherwise.
The records of these men will disappear with this action, the two of them swept away into the back of an expensive four-door sedan. The whole incident erased. Two somehow anonymous men didn't kill semi-innocent bystanders during the festival. As long as the records can be trusted, that was a fantasy. A whimsy.
Morningstar cameras will see this sedan stop near the current safehouse, near the typical entrance, and order Hei and Jake out. "Stay here. Sit down. Don't do or say anything until someone comes to retrieve you. It'll be a bit – they're tied up right now."
The man in the passenger seat in the front rolls down his window, leaning forward on his arm. His face is concealed, utilizing technology that's not the same but not dissimilar to what Morningstar has at their disposal. "Try not to do anything else too stupid, will you? The cops are gonna have a bug up their asses about you idiots."
And then the sedan rolls away, lifting up and passing through the city. Morningstar cameras will spot a specific – or perhaps the more apt word is "suspicious" – lack of license plate.
> MEDI-UNITS
Each of the safehouses were designed for the worst case scenario. There is a medi-unit in all of the safehouses, a large and complex machine that can heal most ills, but given the expensive nature of their design and the risk of using them, they're not used lightly.
The medi-units are reserved for the direst of needs. come into play. Dependent on a person's time of death to bring them back to the living, they need the exact time so that someone can clock it in and prepare the restoration process correctly. There are many risks in lacking that information – someone may come back damaged, unhealed, hurt in some way. They may not live for long. Assuming that a body is brought in with a time of death, they'll be directed to a safehouse with a free unit.
The person is kept in a medically induced coma while the machine repairs their body. What dreams someone experiences will be at the end point – which can be between 48 and 60 hours – as they slowly surface, starting to return to the world of the living. As they surface, their mind will be encumbered by images of bright blue lights glowing, swirling, communicating – but language seems thoroughly out of reach.
Once the medi-unit opens, the person inside will be thirsty. Desperate for water. But there will be no other signs of the wear and tear on their bodies.
> FINAL OOC NOTES
Please refer to the OOC EVENT POST for this event for all OOC info, including suggestions for directions on how to engage with the event and the questions thread for any questions regarding this event. The outcome for this event will depend upon character plans and actions developed in both this OOC post, and any additional plots brought to the moderators. Please feel free to submit any game-changing plans to us under the questions thread – but we will be reading all comments on the post!
The Operation will continue until September 11, IC time. An aftermath wrap up post will be made on January 26 which will detail the resolution and fallout of the event.
As a reminder, there is one power level up available for this event. This will be granted for a thread of at least 5 action/log comments containing your character utilizing their power in some way. They will need to reach the 5 comments required by FEBRUARY 23 to be eligible. Submission will be handled on the wrap up post.
Our Activity Check will be posted tomorrow, January 20, at 9 PM UTC. It will run for seven days and close on January 27. We will not post a warning list.
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meadowlarklogs2019-01-19 09:58 pm
no subject
but, ah, leopold. jason isn't the only one whose name carries weight — a familiarity earned and understood before it finds a home in someone's mouth. fitz is one-half of fitzsimmons, representative of life with jemma and family at SHIELD. leopold, on the other hand, is HYDRA, rotted by the way she said it. 'course it's a stupid bit for the lads, one that malone and loki both seem to enjoy (to say nothing of their other shared interests and traits). annoying. harmless. his fingers still pause for a moment, gloved hands preventing emotional exposure. ]
[ dry. ] I get that a lot.
[ back to work, then. a flicker of his gaze downward to meet the topsy-turvy face, younger up close (without his towering height advantage). from here, the wear and tear of fitz's own encounters becomes more obvious (fierce bruising on his cheek and at the sligh opening of his shirt, torn open at the shoulder, but the dried blood flecked up his neck, matted in his short curls, and trailing a thicker coat down the front of his shirt is more striking, born a spectacularly gory UNA kill). his features only betray concentration, biting the inside of his cheek, mouth tugged to one side, as he finishes by slipknotting the sutures. ]
[ hummed approval, there. ] A savvy approach. [ and a sentimental one: after the kids, not the agents. like daisy, his mind supplies, indicative of a better person than himself. fitz moves to jason's front, beginning the process anew, cutting away fabric around the wound. then, mildly. ] But will you be going it alone?
no subject
it's not fitz's fault, and bitching at the person taking the time to stitch him back up sounds counterproductive. maybe next time, when he's on less of a schedule, when there aren't people in danger right outside the goddamn door and their numbers and resources are a little too low to expect to get to all of them in time.
they're going to lose people today. but like hell is jason going to give up on them yet. )
Savvy, ( he says instead, mimics fitz's accent. snorts under his breath after the word rolls off of his tongue. ) I am. Ain't got enough time to wait for reinforcements, and given how a lot of these people like to approach shit--I'm better off without 'em.
( there are a few who jason would trust to work beside him--but he doesn't want to stop and think about them right now. about damian's corpse, dick who's off doing god knows what, jason doesn't want to ask. his very brief team-up with kaldur'ahm that ended with another idiot dying on him. the moment he lets himself get caught up in that here of all goddamn places is the moment jason stands himself right back up and marches out to shove his fist into a few others regardless of how much it'd cost him.
he's keeping it together because jason isn't thinking about it. isn't talking about it. ruining that--well. )
Better at this shit on my own.
no subject
he doesn't have the sort of relationship with jason where he can call out the bullshit, however. the lad's already left a conversation with him during a mission. why wouldn't he do the same now, if pressed too hard? ]
Perhaps. [ neutral, as ever. ] You'll be faster. Cleaner. [ on the whole, they're a reckless, inexperienced lot without regard for their safety, or how bold plays may injure others, either. ]
[ opening another window in his implant interface, fitz plots the points that jason gave him on another map, quickly charting the various paths between each stop (marking entries to the tunnels beneath them, which he traversed hours earlier on supply runs) and flagging the nearest safehouses. only two of three in the area have medics, including their present location.
the rapidly sourced and collated intel pings back to jason's implant. no further comments. then, fitz flattens his palm against jason's collarbone, steadying him as he tears another stubborn piece of fabric blocking the wound. he reapplies gauze with antiseptic quickly, bundling the pain of clearing and cleansing the laceration together. a reassuring squeeze at jason's arm, as if to say you're doing good without having to put it into words. ]
Would you keep me updated? [ softer, features loosening. it's a request, not a demand. ] I'm needed here, but I can be online for you. [ a beat. ] And the kids.
[ should they require any medical attention, fitz will know where the queues are longest and supplies, lowest; as one of few agents coordinating on strange's triaging strategy. for the most part, fitz has gone invisible on the network, deactivating mass notifications and rescinding contact permissions in an attempt to soundproof his whirring brain (far too loud, even on good days) and prevent himself from stumbling. needs of the many outweigh the few. no time for personal calls.
time for this one, though, when jason might become hurt on his own. ]
no subject
nobody has time for that right now. there's a message that scrolls across his line of vision and jason opens up the map, sees the points fitz marked on the map. it's useful. but fitz hadn't said anything before he ripped fabric off and he's not saying anything about it now, jason won't give it any response. he'll use it to his advantage, trusts fitz enough not to lead him through tunnels that only lead to dead ends. )
Fine, whatever. ( fitz's voice is soft, concerned is the word jason's head supplies. wants to make sure he's not getting into shit but isn't ordering him around. ) If I need anything, I've got your number.
( er. his name. network ID, which is basically the same thing. he knows better than to say no even when it is a request like this; saying he won't bother reaching out, refusing to comply with it only makes people worry even more. causes more stress. fitz knows dick, damian. knows who jason associates with, would know who to call if he refused help and ran off on his own to shove him back down.
better to avoid that than encourage it. and it's not as if he's promising to check in. that'd take more time than he has. )
no subject
an emergency call is all fitz hoped to secure here — 'cause he doesn't have time to babysit and, contrary to his patient's loud network persona, jason doesn't need it, either. fitz knows that, only offering additional support in line with SHIELD protocols. the first rule of organised espionage is that you must always have somewhere to go. as long as jason has an exit route, a safehouse stocked with medical supplies at the end of the line, and a plan(or a person) for the worst case scenario. the rest comes down to this: don't die out there, mate. ]
Much appreciated. [ a twitch at his mouth that might be fond, sure. there's a familiarity to jason's reluctant agreement. all field agents are the same, regardless of their training or background. ] Might even liven up my night shift, y'know.
[ his all night, all day, all week shift, unlikely to end even when the battle itself concludes. it's not as if they can send people off to the hospital with suspicious injuries. ]
[ wait. ] An update, not a — it obviously wouldn't be good if you were injured again, I mean. That would be — well, bad, it would be bad.
[ oh fitz ]
no subject
but he knows from conversations with dick, the deflections he's gotten, that he and fitz are relatively close. it stirs something unpleasant in his gut, thoughts that all this bullshit is just some fucking excuse to keep tabs on him--but fitz is smarter than that. directs jason down roads dick would be pissed to hear about. this isn't about dick, regardless of whatever shitty, twisted feelings of jealousy the idea of that brings up. it isn't that. there's no need for jason to get pissy over something so stupid.
so he swallows it down. offers a small, toothy grin, even if it looks mix-matched considering how much fucking pain he's in. the furrow to his brow, the way his jaw stays clenched. )
Aw, Leopold. You do care. ( mocking, always sassy in some shape or form. it's a coping mechanism, even if it's a shit one. ) I'll check in.
( has dick and kate running on half hour check ins. he doesn't need it, but promising now will save him bitching time. )
Any other requests, while you've got me at your mercy?
no subject
fitz keeps focused, humming, as if absentmindedly thinking over the teasing, but the only thing that comes to mind was already flagged, as soon as jason said leopold. ]
Try Leo, in future. [ he clips the final suture, right at the centre. ] I have my reasons for preferring it.
[ a genuine request — though he keeps anything but dryness out of his tone. whether jason listens or not in future will be noted; that's all. his tools are quickly discarded, and he starts peeling off the bloody gloves. next patient's already waiting. ]
Those will dissolve. [ gesturing between them with his ungloved hand. ] Check-up in a week or so and you'll be sorted in double that, given the tech. [ a rolling motion, and rattled off, quick: ] Watch for twitches, tremors, that pins and needles feeling in the arm and hand — any signs of damage to the brachial plexus, which controls the nerves there. [ a tip of his head this way and that, scrutinising his handiwork as jason recovers. ] Should be fine, but adrenaline could delay the warning signs. [ a beat. ] And do try not to get shot again. I find that helps.
no subject
You got it, Dr. Fitz.
( the same playful tone. bandaging it up can wait a bit. there are more pressing matters to attend to, and jason has plenty of gauze and shit on him if he truly needs it. the paleness to his skin hasn't faded any, but jason's back up on his feet. he's steady enough. he can handle a few more rounds before he really needs to call it a day. with lives on the line, he doesn't have time to pause for himself. )
And for the record? Jay isn't my name. ( it's a nickname. one a lot of people tend to use. but it's also one he's only given to a few people; and he knows where the leak came from. ) You can use it, just keep it off the network.
no subject
and he is a doctor, what with the phds, so thanks. ]
Done. [ no hesitation. still interesting that he gave it to daisy, and she flippantly passed it along as part of joke. not a name, but something more comfortable. significant, maybe, if it bothers him that it was shared in the first place. it's not nothing, to be given it now. ]
Good luck out there.
[ a little two-fingered salute where he'd normally clap someone on the back, given jason's injuries. ]