"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
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Maa... not long. A few months.
[ Making it clear that he's one of the displaced, not just a native Morningstar agent. ] You?
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Month, maybe? [Hasn't been counting. Cain leans against a nearby wall.] Whose blood is that?
[Then he holds out the water bottle, an offer. Hope you don't care about secondhand kissing or germs.]
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Some of it's mine, some of it belongs to four different friends of mine... and some of it's from a guy I just met. [ So that's how his day is going. Noctis pauses briefly, however. ]
I'm okay, though. Healed up. Are you good too?
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[Nothing that won't heal, mild in comparison to bullets. He has that image of Peggy in his mind, crumpling - or Fitz, slammed up against the cabinets, blood everywhere.
Cain rubs the bridge and reaches in his pocket for the pen vape, not caring if it looks uncool. He's stressed.]
All four friends? [What a social butterfly. Cain can't relate.] They just bad at taking cover?
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Ah-- [ Now it's his turn to sift through the memories, through Jason yelling at him, through Aranea's body broken and bloody on the ground, through Markus bleeding out from a bullet wound while Connor panics... ]
Yeah, I guess so... Pretty sure that applies to a lot of us right now, though, if that's what we're blaming. [ A pause. ] What is that?
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A vape. [He laughs, more of a dry huff, air locked in a tight chest; it takes effort to relax his body against the wall, to breathe again. Too wired still to sleep, he'll have to find it later.] Not that surprising we got shredded. Those guys were way beyond our abilities, and they had more advanced tech.
Wanna try it?
[Cain extends the small device out.]
matrix dodges that question via edit
He takes it anyway, however, pinching it between his fingers as he twists it to view it from different angles. ] ... it's too bad. If most of us were at a hundred percent, we could take them. A lot of us ended up way weaker when we were brought here, but I guess you've probably already figured that out.
good it was so generic. pushing drugs is better
Yeah, heard that. You had some crazy powers too? [He reaches to tap center-chest in the general area where that mysterious glow emanates.] Not me. This shit's almost an upgrade, except for how bizarre it is.
Put your finger on the button there, [points to the silver 'S' of the vape pen's brand along the slender side,] and then inhale off the tip. Tastes like bubblegum.
[And... nicotine.]
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What'd you get?
[ Noctis keeps the questioning casual as he attempts to look like he knows what he's doing, pressing the button before taking a slow inhale--
That he very quickly makes a face out, immediately breathing back out. ] What kind of bubblegum are you chewing?
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The kind with nicotine in it. Guess I should've warned you.
[No, it was worth it.]
Some spatial thing, I can move shit around. Little stuff, but it's useful.
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Then... wait, this is like a cigarette? [ His hand stretches out jerkily like he's going to shove it back into Cain's hands, but something stills him. He pulls back again, brow furrowing as he stares back down at this little physical representation of rebellion that's doing a great job of sparking his curiosity. ]
... that sounds cooler than a lot of the other powers anyway, you're lucky.
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[Someone did research before he bought one of the shiny pens. He lets Noctis go through the indecision and leans casually back against the wall, hands tucked into pockets.]
What's yours, then?
no subject
Sleep. I can put people to sleep or I can control my own, I guess.
no subject
[Hit it or give it back someday, Noctis. He wants some. Meanwhile, he'll drink from the bottle of water, glad to feel less dehydrated after hours of exertion.]
And that sounds useful as fuck. Can you keep yourself awake? Got a time restriction, or side effects?
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Well-- I'm not saying I haven't been offered or anything, just never said yes. [ This is a blatant, obvious lie. No one has ever offered the crown prince cigarettes. ]
I'm keeping myself awake right now, aren't I? I get a headache, I guess, but that's eye strain I think.
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New experiences are what life's worth living for. [Not exactly an element of his own belief system, but still the point remains.] How does it work, using it on someone else? Could you do it on me?
[Cain's imagining it like a shot of adrenaline. As he accepts the pen, he takes his own lazy drag, exhaling the opaque white cloud in the opposite direction of their conversation, so a hot breeze carries it away.]
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Hah? [ His eyes go from "subtly" watching Cain, ensuring he'd done it right himself, to glancing up to meet his gaze. ]
No.
[ ... ]
... Or I dunno, anyway. [ more accurate ] I mean I doubt it.
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[He's new to vaping, but the essentials are easy. Press the button until it glows and inhale. Not as satisfying as the feeling of a papery cigarette between his fingers, but it's all he's got.]
What, can't you just wave your hand and wake me up a little? Can't be that hard.
[Like he knows shit about powers.]
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[ It's been ten seconds and already he needs another hit. ]
Whatever... are you another person that's from Earth?
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Gotta try shit to know. [A hand passes back the vape -- not sensing Noctis needs it, but because that's what he does when he's sharing. Then he's leveling a dubious squint.]
No. Not from Earth. What do you mean 'another'? You aren't, either?
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Yeah, I guess... maybe later. [ He reaches out to take the pen with far less hesitation this time, carefully relocating the button and adjusting his hold for another quick little draw off of it. He does feel more relaxed, honestly, but who's to say if that's imagined or not. ]
Hah? You actually aren't? No, I'm from Eos.
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Eos? So like that chatty blond kid. You guys know each other?
[It interests him, every time, learning there are people who come from the same place and (maybe) time.]
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[ He is not about to try to argue against Prompto being called "chatty". ]
But that's you asking more questions without telling me about yourself first. Where are you from if not there or Earth?
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... A colony. [It's not like this is news, at this point. He's told enough people. It's pretty harmless.] Mars. They've got one like it here, but. Different universes. Still, people go out there to work, have families, whatever.
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Mars... Ah, right, I actually heard about that from somebody. He said he was from there as a joke, but I guess it wasn't that funny if there really are people that live there in other universes.
... it'd be pretty cool to see it some time. Mars, or just space as a whole. I heard it's pretty expensive to go, though, so I'm gonna' have to save up.
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stop flirty icon matching me
UNINTENTIONAL
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i'm sorry
i'm living
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