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The Major is so done with your shit. (origami_cranes) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-07-15 16:30:00

Pain is red, your voice is purple...
Who: Motoko and Canaan
What: A date. Kind of. Involving reaper forces, guns and cranes (we’re slow? XD). And the first manifestations of Canaan's unusual power.
When: July 5thish
Where: Around OC
Status: Complete
RAting: PG-13 for violence


Motoko slipped out if the shower, grabbing a towel to dry herself off. She grabbed her phone and called Canaan, sitting down to get comfy while she waited.

Canaan had just finished up her own shower when the phone rang. She toweled her hair dry with one hand while she picked it up with the other, "Am I late?"

“If you don’t hurry you will be. All the good seats will be taken,” Motoko replied, as she looked through the outfit that was laid out on her bed.

"Well we wouldn't want that," Canaan replied, casually. She tossed her towel over the shower rod and headed over to her own bed, which already had a sniper rifle dismantled and packed away for transit. Her pistol and several extra clips were also laid out, extra rifle rounds, and a few knives, too.

She liked being prepared, "I'm almost ready to go. I just need to suit up."

With a breath, Motoko pulled on the outfit from her dreams. It was a military jumpsuit and thank god not the sexist monstrosity she’d worn earlier on in her dreams. She loaded her weapons and headed for the door. “Meet you there?”

"Done and done," Canaan replied. She hung up without further ado, and got herself dressed. Standard BDU's, combat boots, and tank top for her. She tossed a green cap on her head and a candy cigarette into her mouth, then headed out for the night.

This was going to be a lot of fun.

Twenty minutes later, Motoko was crouched on a rooftop overlooking a square. It seemed quiet and peaceful, but she was certain that wouldn't last. It's why she was here. She could have a lot of fun for once, without breaking jurisdiction!

"Canaan?"

Jurisdiction was for other people. Canaan liked that she worked outside of normal rules and regulations. She waved at Motoko with her free hand as she walked up, crouching next to her to look out over the city, "This should be fun."

Motoko hated jurisdiction. It got in the way of nailing bad guys. But if she didn’t follow it, the bad guys got away anyway. It was a frustrating fact of life for the woman. At least the new duds were comfortable and offered some protection. She felt herself, as she checked her gun again. She was all business. “I hope you can keep up. I’ve got some new tricks.”

"I've been parkouring," Canaan replied, with a nod. Her own gear was all secured on her back and she tended to pack as lightly as she could anwyay. She could run around rooftops and jump from place to place with a good amount of ease, in most cases. It wasn't the same as having a synthetic body, but it would do in a pinch.

Motoko flipped over the ledge, spinning through the air and landing twenty feet into the ground. She smashed into a husk, flipping around and shooting another point blank in the face.

From the rooftop, a shot went off, and a third husk hit the ground behind Motoko. Canaan couldn't jump down twenty feet and expect to stay standing, but she flipped down off the roof soon after, ran along a window ledge, flipped over a sign, and bounced from there to a low rooftop sticking out in front of the building nearby. With her hand, she pointed towards another swarm of husks heading their way.

Motoko had to turn off the part of her body that wanted to respond to that, so she could focus on the task at hand. That was...actually a pretty handy feature, she decided. She wasn’t easily distracted to begin with, and now she started taking out husks with a single-minded focus that was a little disturbing to behold.

Or not that disturbing, depending on your point of view. Siam had taught Canaan long ago to focus on the task at hand. Worrying about anyone - even the partner with you on the job - was a weakness. It put you and your people in more danger than it prevented, and could be exploited.

Of course, that's also how he'd died. But you didn't throw out a philosophy just because it failed to work once.

She picked off the husks that threatened to flank Motoko, then slid down the building, jumped over a railing, and started fighting beside the woman. Back to back, they were stronger.

She pressed her back against Canaan’s, her eyes moving across the battlefield as she picked off husks one at a time. “I really need an assault rifle. Remind me to purchase one. Your country is good for that.”

"I can hook you up with something," Canaan replied. Her words were punctuated by gunshots. The husks weren't really much of a challenge for people as well trained as they were, but this was no time to get cocky, either. She'd seen a few of the bigger ones out there.

“I’d like that. If this is going to be the kind of thing I’m dealing with, I’ll need one. If my own dreams come true, I’ll really need one.” Nothing on an apocalyptic scale, but she’d had enough shoot-outs to know when she needed some automatic firing.

"My own dreams seem tame in comparison," Canaan replied, casually. They reflected her real life, for the most part. Aside from the very weird way that she saw the world. A way that seemed really... extremely helpful for targeting at times. The her in the other world was the kind of fighter Siam had only dreamed about, here.

She reached a hand behind herself, into her pack, and quickly switched out a clip. Without much of a pause she went back to shooting.

"I'm used to more human combatants. The occasional cybernetic criminal. A tank every once in awhile." Most of Motoko's dreams had been of the decidedly more suspenseful variety with a dash of science fiction. "Dreamed of a war, though. Ended up recruiting a sniper for my team, who was on the other side."

"I dreamed about a man, mostly. He raised me. We were family," Canaan replied. Siam hadn't seemed much different in the dream world, though there was the tattoo that he'd had, and she'd copied. There was no such tattoo in the real world.

"I think we were mercenaries. There was a war, but we were on the edges of it."

The ground began to shake a bit, and she forced herself to focus again. One of those bigger monsters might be right around the corner.

Motoko nodded, reloading her clip as she turned to face the direction the shaking was coming from. The creature that emerged was like something from a nightmare. Motoko lifted her gun and started firing. It was ineffective. “We need a plan.”

"One that works slightly better than 'keep firing at it'", Canaan replied, with a nod. She sped down the street a bit, deciding it was a good idea to put some distance between the thing and them. Bullets obviously weren’t the answer here, not with the armor that thing had on it. She randomly wished she had a grenade or two, though she disliked their general lack of subtlety and precision.

Motoko kept up easily, sprinting to catch up and then leaping over a car. The brute followed quickly, knocking cars out of the way as though they were lincoln logs. She pointed. “What if we dropped that crane on it?”

"I think that would only piss it off, but I'm willing to try anything," Canaan responded. She dodged around a phone pole and headed towards the crane, which at least had size and weight going for it. Though that also meant she wasn't going to be much help with tipping the thing over.

Unless maybe she acted as a counterbalance while Motoko pushed...

"You push, I'll be a counterweight," she shouted out, as she leapt up onto the thing and started nimbly climbing it.

Motoko cracked her knuckles, and got behind the crane. Her feet started to crack the ground as she pushed at the crane. With a mighty groan, it twisted and started to tumble towards the brute. The creature had only a moment to look up, before it was crushed.

Canaan had climbed and then swung on top of the crane as it began to tip over, pushing down with her feet and then even jumping a bit while hanging onto it with one hand. It wasn't the safest thing to be doing in the world, but she was confident in her abilities, most days.

There was a satisfying crunch noise when the crane hit it, but that's when things began to be a problem, at least from where she was sitting. The noise of it didn't seem to calculate right, like it was a smell or a taste or a color all around them instead of a sound. And then, out of nowhere, she was watching herself fly through the air. With her ears.

She yelped in pain as she hit the ground, and decided that pain was red.

Running over, Motoko pulled Canaan to her feet. “Are you all right? You had all the grace of a two legged cat.”

The other woman groaned and staggered a bit. Her nose was bleeding and she felt like her head was going to explode. She really kind of wished things would stop making noises that were colors and... everything else.

One of her hands pressed up against one of her ears, "Pain is red, your voice is purple..."

Motoko didn’t blink. She lifted Canaan into her arms, and started to run full speed to the nearest hospital.

Whatever was going on was as exhausting as it was painful. Her eyes sank shut and she let Motoko carry her, only opening an eye once to look up at her. It flashed red, and Motoko looked like a stream of colorless light.

"You... have no color..." she whispered, and then let herself sink into darkness.