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+--- Thread: Human Revolution [There Are No Lines] (/showthread.php?tid=7242)
Human Revolution [There Are No Lines] - Hiro Protagonist - 02-04-2018
There was a curious smoky haze of pink and blue in the skies above Coruscant, highlighting the artificial sun hanging in the air above the gleaming spires. He nodded to the troopers manning the check-in station, his identity recognized and flashing an all-clear to the border guards. It was one of the most highly guarded gates in the Omniverse, and aside from a few high-profile slip-ups (most likely due to bureaucratic issues), it continued to remain so. Just walking onto the streets of the Tiered City made him feel safe and at home.
Maybe not safe, employmentally speaking, but the place he was heading to would address that minor issue .
Quote:An apartment complex. Valtheim Towers. Tier 2 of Coruscant. Central Avenue. Apartment 5-E. Drop by at your earliest convenience. If I am not there, or...otherwise indisposed, ask for Joline. She will pass the sword to you.
Remembering the bike he'd stashed in storage what felt like months agos, he took the short ten minute walk to the private parking lot, fished around in his wallet for a heavily creased stub, and was greeted with a surly look from the attendant. "EPD, eh? No charge." And the sleek, wide wheeled black and cyan blue cybercycle was wheeled out.
Soon he was on the move again, wind whipped through his dreads, the comforting sight of advertisements, points of interest, EPD bulletins, and headline news outlining the zooming street ahead of him. The fast travel lane on Tier One was a fringe benefit, and one he enjoyed greatly. It also meant that the EPD had monitored his re-entrance into the city, and reinstated his privileges from the central agent database. Most likely to facilitate his speedy recovery of the package.
It was purely the logical decision of a mostly unfeeling tactical and totalitarian regime, but Hiro couldn't help but feel appreciated. He'd go grab the sword, head home and freshen up, and then go to R&D looking his absolute best.
The hacker blew past a column of stopped cars, the highway light red for them but green for his fastlane access. Showing off, he even jammed the gyrobrake on the cycle and rotated a full 360 degrees through the intersection, drawing a few looks from tourists who clapped politely and then went back to window shopping. They knew who he was, apparently. Not many Primes in the EPD Lane with bikes like this.
Nothing at all like Camelot, where the dusty peasants gave him looks like he'd sprouted a second head. And he'd saved their verse! Of course, it was with help, but still. Who'd choose dung and greenery over steel abd glass? Bumpkins, that's who. Hiro had a nagging feeling that eventually things would come to a head between the two realms, but for now he had teo thoughts in his head. A kickass weapon and getting some cool new upgrades. Maybe they'd issue him some of that fancy tech he'd seen the Space Marines touting about. Or some experimental programming research. He loved the mini-computer on his wrist, it had served him well, but tech was an ever evolving field. He'd had it since he first popped into the Omniverse.
It was time for an upgrade.
RE: Human Revolution [There Are No Lines] - Hiro Protagonist - 02-04-2018
The silicon samurai cruised to a stop on the elevator to Tier 2, sipping on a large, carbonated beverage. He'd made a short pitstop for some refreshment, surprised at the amount of Imperial Credits still in his account. He'd apparently been drawing a salary while on vacation, so he'd splurged on the "Turbocharge Special. Crammed with nutrients, vitamins, and organic stims, he was feeling refreshed and quenched. He'd also picked up a pack of his favorite cigarettes, Sunshine Slims. Turquoise smoke drifted lazily up into the exhaust vents as the elevator descended downward.
The journey down took less than a minute, and Hiro knew his progress was being monitored by the many camera. Good. He was making good time, which was sure to read well on his re-entry approval. As a small point of civic patriotism, he spotted a routine patrol of troopers about to begin their shift. Throttling the bike's whisper-quiet engine, he coasted behind them for a few blocks as an honor guard as they proceeded further into the Tier. Compared to the hustle and bustle of upstairs, it was almost quaint. He followed them for as long as their paths coincided, then pulled off onto a side-street. The EPD Fastlane wasn't an amenity down here except for main roads, so he pulled in behind a bright yellow cabbie.
Still, this was above Tier 4, so traffic was a non issue. Just a constantly moving line of maglev vehicles and hovercars, politely gliding forward about their business. One perk of the regime on the upper levels. Safety in a place like the Omniverse was precious, and if being part of the system meant you got the leeway he'd been given, then Hiro was A-Ok with being an "Imperialist" as the Camelot folk had called him. He'd seen the other side of the coin, and it was not fun.
Pulling up in front of the apartment complex, Valtheim Towers, he was bemused to see it was almost an exact copy of his own complex. As he walked in, the droid greeter turned from the desk and nodded politely. "Mr. Protagonist. Welcome."
Hiro paused momentarily. "How do you....oh, I see. Networked with the other droids in the system, right?" The droid nodded. "For regular tenants, yes. However, your identity profile comes from the EPD database. How to serve our Empire if you do not recognize it's agents? Indeed." The droid pressed a button, and unlocked the elevator. "Please go right up, sir. I will notify 5E you are en route."
They knew his destination, too. Eh. Not too different from back home, not at all. It was comforting. Hiro had been used to constant surveillance, although back there it had been used to constantly push products and services on him. Here, the advertisements were regulated, highly personalized, and overall relatively unobtrusive. The surveillance in this case only had the purpose of making his job easier. Perfectly agreeable.
".....am I a fascist?" Hiro said out loud on the way up, before adjusting his goggles in the shine of the polished chrome. "......nah." He decided, just in time to see the elevator doors open into a hallway. Proceeding down the door, he adjusted his rather worn clothing and tucked in the EPD badge he had pinned to his shirt. Raising his hand, he knocked three times on the door.
"Colonel? Or other occupant? It's Hiro Protagonist. I'm here to collect the package."
RE: Human Revolution [There Are No Lines] - Albert Wesker - 02-07-2018
The knock received no immediate response. There was a brief, silent pause, which stretched for nearly half a minute. Then the slow, measured footfalls of someone exceedingly heavy could be heard, steadily approaching the door. Another moment passed in silence, before the door was finally beset by the sound of being unlocked, and it was pulled open. Framed in the doorway stood the soldier navi, Colonel.EXE, staring down at his visitor with the same impassive, hard to read expression he always wore.
"...mister Protagonist," he greeted after a brief pause. If he had any reaction or opinion of the hacker's condition, he didn't voice it or give it away. "I apologize for the delay. I was informed you were coming, but I was in standby mode to rest." He seemed...ever so slightly displeased about something; either the equivalent of disgruntlement from being woken from a nap, or about being caught napping in the first place. It was just a flicker, there and gone, before he was back to being cold, expressionless and all business again. "It is good you finally came by, however. The...package has just been collecting dust since I retired here." He turned away. "Please wait, I will retrieve it." The same slow, methodical pace carried him out of view of the doorway. It echoed and faded away, presumably down a hallway, before slowly returning. In one hand he now carried a sealed case, held by a pair of straps. Sturdy and reinforced, from the looks of it. He held it out without further ceremony, presenting it to Hiro. "The care of weapons is not my forte, so I kept it sealed to minimize chance for the need to keep it maintained. The sequence to open the lock is 2-0-9-5-3-6."
When the case was taken, the cyber soldier merely gave a nod. "I hope your future endeavors treat you well, and it is of some use to you."
RE: Human Revolution [There Are No Lines] - Hiro Protagonist - 03-01-2018
Hiro reached out with both hands, and took the sealed cylinder. He gazed at it for a moment, then looked back up at Colonel. "Thanks again. I'll....put it to good use. I hope you enjoy your retirement." The gruff bot nodded, and without any further niceties, clomped back into his nice, dark, quiet apartment. Which reminded Hiro. God, he wanted a shower.
Ten minutes later he was cruising down the road with the rest of the traffic, one of the Omniverse's most bloody artifacts strapped to his back in a nondescript black case. He was excited to test the blade out, given that he hadn't held an actual metal katana since he came to the Omniverse. It'd be good to see how he handled the subtle differences between this and his glass blade.
Hiro soon arrived at an apartment complex that looked exactly like the one he'd left. As he parked his bike in the garage and walked into the front entrance, he noticed a bright yellow van parked outside that said "T2 Pest Control - You Call, We Kill" . Next to it was a man in a yellow jumpsuit arguing with another man in a business suit, most likely the building manager.
"You just flushed the lower levels, you didn't think they'd relocate further up?" The manager asked incredulously.
The exterminator sighed and pulled out a piece of paper. "Look, your building insurance covers cursory extermination. If you want the full service, you've gotta pay full price. And it only covers pests up to half a kilogram. Bigger costs extra, and porgs definitely cost extra!"
Hiro passed them by without a second thought. Nothing that concerned him in the slightest. He didn't even know what a porg was.
The greeter droid buzzed him in with a chipper "Welcome home, Agent Protagonist", and Hiro boarded the elevator in high spirits. Reaching his floor, he got off and fumbled in his pockets for his keys, unlocking the door to his apartment and blinking as the automatic lights started to rise again. He didn't even wait for the lights to come fully on before taking the cylinder with the sword in it off and setting on the coffee table. Peeling off his battle damaged clothes and lamenting the loss of yet another trenchcoat, he stepped into his bathroom and turned on the hot water. A cloud of steam started to coalesce in the room, and as he slipped into the shower and started to relax, he had a thought.
"It's good to be home."
RE: Human Revolution [There Are No Lines] - Hiro Protagonist - 03-02-2018
As the samurai showered off the grime and blood collected through the business of verse-saving, he relaxed under the hot water. Enjoying the simple pleasure of something that hadn't been available in the medieval verse of Camelot, he was reaffirmed in his belief in the superiority of Coruscant. Suddenly, he heard a wet thump near his foot, and reached down to pick up what was surely a dropped loofah.
"Squuerrk!"
Down below on the ground level, the exterminator and the building manager paused their negotiation. "Did you hear that?" The super said. The exterminator nodded slowly, and sighed, opening the back of his truck. "Sounded like a scream." The man in the yellow jumpsuit nodded. "Yep, that'll do it. Full service then?"
Hiro threw the squirming, slippery thing against the shower wall with a wet splat. "What the FUCK?!" The ronin yelled, watching it flop pitifully in the water. It looked like some sort of a cross between a guinea pig and an owl. "Squeeerk..." It blurted pitifully, before expiring. Hiro turned off the water, and stepped out of the shower to grab a towel. He dried his hair and fastened the towel around his waist, just in time to see another of the things pop out of his toilet with a splash and a chittering cry. "Fuck! No! No fucking way!" He moved quickly, slamming the toilet lid shut on it's head before it could leap out onto the tile. Even faster, he dashed out of the bathroom and saw....oh no.
Now that the lights were on, he could see the whole apartment illuminated fully...and absolutely covered in the fluffy pig-things, squarking and squeaking in the light. Even on the coffee table, clustered around the new addition he'd dropped on it. They'd even managed to work it out of the cylinder, clever little bastards. And wait....what was that white stuff all over the shiny new blad-
"Motherfuckers!" Hiro darted forward and smacked one of the wide-eyed little pets off the blade, which it had just finished desecrating. "Computer!" The samurai barked. "What the fuck are these things?"
He picked up the dripping sword by the thankfully untouched handle as the things stared at him and chirped, the apartment's servant-intelligence answering. "The creatures currently infesting this hab are known as Porgs. Porgs are a non-native species to Coruscant, originally from a sea world in the far corner of-"
Hiro cut the computer voice off as he stalked around the table, heading to the kitchen to grab a paper towel to wipe off the blade. "I don't give a fuck where they're from, why are they shitting on my stuff?!"
The smooth monotone voice went on. "Summoned here by a Prime, Porgs took to the relatively clean sewers of the upper tiers as a natural aquatic habitat. They have been recorded as purged no less than three separate times, but experience resurgences in times of population flux."
Hiro facepalmed and swung the now cleaned Chidori Blade around the kitchen, eyeing the scurrying little things. "Computer, call up for a cleaning bot. Please. There's going to be a mess."
"Certainly, sir."
The silicon samurai stalked forward in nothing but a towel, raising the blade. "Shit on my stuff, will you, you little rats with wings?"
"Fweeeerk?"
-schlick-
"You better believe you're fweeerked."
****************
After the cleaning robot had mopped up all the porg carcasses and detritus, not to mention the piles of feathers and nests they'd had the opportunity to establish in his vacant apartment, Hiro sat down on the couch. He'd swabbed his new weapon with a disinfectant and started to test out the balance and weight of the steel. He was a little more than surprised to find that if he really concentrated, the metal became ensheathed in a crackling corona of electricity. Impressive. And useful. He was currently using the electrified blade to slice pieces of bread off of a loaf, resulting in perfect instant toast.
He'd gotten redressed in a more casual outfit, figuring he'd take some time to relax and watch the TV. Besides, he wasn't in a rush to get back to work. Even though he'd been on vacation, it had felt like work. As saving the world should. The ronin wondered if this brought his total "saved the world" count up to two. As he was busy pondering, and deciding that the Empire wouldn't mind if he waited until tomorrow to bring them the sword for analysis, he was proven wrong.
By a knock on the door.
A very forceful knock on the door.
THWUMP
The door was flung open and a squadron of Stormtroopers could be seen securing a perimeter. Through the door walked a man in a long black trenchcoat, studded with metal rings and Imperial insignias, with a thick flak jacket on over his chest. His hair was swept back into a ponytail, and his right eye was replaced with some sort of ocular augmetic. Seeing Hiro frozen in surprise on the couch, he gestured to the troopers behind him. "Secure the Artifact."
Hiro stood up, but turned the sword on it's side, before voicing his complaints. "You know I was going to come down to HQ as soon as I'd settled in right? Uhh..." He looked for a name and rank insignia, but there was none. The stormtrooper took the Chidori Blade from him and slide it into a plastic containment cylinder. "Besides, where's Commander Caasjuun? She knows how I operate, and she knew I was ba-"
The man interrupted him before Hiro could get another word in. "The Commander is temporarily reassigned. And you are by no means reinstated quite yet, Mr Protagonist." He flashed the ocular implant over Hiro's body with a blue light. "Your reinstatement is contingent upon the decision you make in the next five seconds. Come with me on your own recognizance or be dragged out of here."
The samurai was aghast. "And who the fuck are you?"
The man held up a gear-like badge.
"Department Head Cawl Kaelvala. Direct subordinate to Doctor Gero...."
The next words filled Hiro with a cold dread he couldn't explain.
"And Chief Engineer of the Android Project."
RE: Human Revolution [There Are No Lines] - Hiro Protagonist - 03-07-2018
The ride through Tier 2 was filled with sullen silence, Hiro sitting in the back of a trooper van with 6 other soldiers. However, these weren't the normal white armored EPD patrol, but rather the sleek black troopers he'd only ever seen in groups of one or two. Never standing still either. Always proceeding and hurrying towards some objective. Science Troopers. The martial wing of Imperial R&D.
No jocularity with these fellows either. Every attempt of Hiro's to lighten the mood was met with impassive silence, and so he too lapsed into brooding. Commander Caasjuun had mention remedial training upon his return, but this couldn't be what she meant, right? The Android Project?
DH Kaelvala was up front with the driver, and had provided Hiro with a dataslate about his department and the Android Project as a whole. Or at least what Hiro was cleared to know about. Apparently, they wanted to study his combat tactics and techniques in order to develop new cybernetic augments and technologies for field use. Still, they could have been a bit nicer about pulling him in, instead of literally kicking in the door.
When they arrived at their destination, Hiro was pressed in the center of the formation of science troopers and hustled along towards a large glass building, pyramid shaped, that he'd seen numerous times in the distance but never visited himself. The dressed down samurai was sped through a dizzying maze of corridors, lab bypasses, and turbolifts before the mass of troopers around him parted and he stepped forward into a harshly lit laboratory.
DH Kaelvala stood by another person, a woman in a tan labcoat wearing glasses and a bright smile. She addressed Hiro directly, while Kaelvala moved to the side and began working at a massive computer bank, bringing up schematics. "Agent Protagonist, wonderful. I'm very glad you're here." She gestured to a long table, padded and teal. "Would you please lie down so we can do our preliminary scans?"
Hiro almost immediately bristled, but then shrugged and resigned himself to what he had been expecting the moment he heard the words "Android Project". The schematics Kaelvala was inspecting only confirmed it. Apparently the man thought he was ignorant or just a gormless simpleton. Goddamn stuffed suits.
The samurai laid down with a heavy sigh and looked up at the doctor. "I know what you're going to do me, you know. I'm not an idiot." She smiled down at him. "Wonderful. Then we don't need the restraints." She turned away and prepped a syringe with clear fluid in it. "Let me drop the pretense then. I promise you, you won't feel a thing. We have a special method of anaesthesia that I'm sure someone with your background will appreciate."
The needle sunk into his forearm, and he felt a numbing warmth spread though his body. The doctor went on. "Look at it this way. You'll be even more effective as an agent afterwards. You'll be a living example of what the Empire can achieve technologically. And you'll be even more powerful. Omni giveth, and the Empire addeth."
Hiro rolled his eyes as his vision started to fade, one last quip mumbled from his mouth before he went out completely. "Just don't cut off my d-"
************************
"...ecision, and I told him when he made it. But you know Da5id, am I right?" The crowd laughed, a mass of friends, acquaintances, and family gathered at round tables. He had a champagne flute raised upwards, standing at the podium as he continued his speech. "So, to Da5id and Juanita, I wish you both the very best. Many happy years....and maybe a couple kids, eh?" Another burst of laughter, and clapping as Hiro stepped down from the podium.
Da5id stood up and took the microphone, the short brown haired computer nerd beaming like the sun. "Hiro Protagonist, ladies and gentlemen. My best friend. Now..." He pulled out a small cylindrical tube, and clicked it. Music began pumping into the room, and the tables slowly pulled away to reveal a dance floor underneath. "Let's really get this wedding started!"
People started to file out and dance as Hiro drained his champagne flute. Hard to believe, his ex and best friend getting married. All of his friends were starting to age and settle down. Meanwhile, here he was, single again.
Scanning the crowd for pretty faces he could ask to dance, something started to make the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He ignored it. For some reason, he couldn't recognize anyone in the crowd.
Then it hit him.
This hadn't happened. He had never been here.
He'd spent Da5id and Juanita's wedding nearly naked in a public park, getting drunk on Hennessey and slicing leaves from trees. He'd wound up in the drunk tank.
The tuxedo melted from the confused hacker's body and the scene shifted to a park at dusk, the breeze chilling his bare skin as he clung to a bottle with one hand and the hilt of his sword with the other. "Wait, this isn't right either. This happened already." He slurred, the alcoholic haze creeping over him.
Hiro wasn't any of these places. These were just memories. And his body...didn't feel real. It felt like he was merely piloting it, rather than actually inhabiting. But the last time he'd felt this sensation...
The silicon samurai stood up with certainty, and the scenery began to melt away as his kimono jacket and other clothing formed on his body.
He was in the Metaverse.