warandpeace | (no subject)

(no subject)

WHO: Various
WHAT: Fallout / Metal Gear AU
WHEN: In the Fyooter
WHERE: New Vegas / Outer Heaven
WARNINGS & NOTES: TBA

[War. War never changes.]

[Except sometimes war changes.]

[Thirty-two years after the end of the NCR and Legion conflict in the Mohave, New Vegas is under a new regime. Nine years ago the Courier died, leaving behind her son, and a legendary hero that stepped in to take her place. He proposed a new order, one where the ideologies of the Legion, the NCR, the Khans would no longer matter. One where all of their soldiers would be freed of the shackles of their past. At first, he was embraced as he built his new nation. But then life ended as it had existed. The Mohave no longer was a place where dreams could be realized and children could grow up healthy. Now, the casinos are no longer lights that beckon the hopeful in the night, but symbols of military strength. A new order has risen, and what was once New Vegas has become Outer Heaven.]

[The Vaults have become homes for tribes of warriors, private forces that are constantly at war. Civilian life is nearly impossible, and only nomads, traders, are permitted any lack of affiliation as they travel from one vault to the next, exchanging their wares, taking surplus weapons from one to the next to maintain the constant lifestyle of war. War without purpose. Raiders are the only ones that remain truly free of this way of life.]

[The son of the Courier is a motivational figurehead, but a pawn of the two men behind the curtain. Determined to make up for his guilt over his mother's death, he leads in the hope that he will find peace in their constant war, but lives in bitterness at what the Mohave's new hero has cost him.]

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[Elle can't say she really... understands what the Think Tank have been up to. Not like that's exactly new, but at least she can find something among all of the chaos to grasp. What she does understand is this: The Think Tank figured out time travel.

Mobius isn't happy with this, understandably so. It took forever for Elle to talk him down from bringing the roboscorpions back out. She promised him she'd keep an eye on them, promised she wouldn't go back home until she figured out how to take it away from them. This is a lot harder than it sounds like, because in order to keep them from trying to figure it out all over again, she has to make it look like it doesn't work, or like something broke irreparably, or turn it into some big scary thing that they don't want to mess with.

It's going to take some time. Or... It was supposed to, anyway. She doesn't really get a chance to decide on a plan for action before the Think Tank declare that they need to send Elle into the future to stop something terrible from happening.

To prevent someone making the same mistakes the Old World did.

Maybe other people would assume that the Think Tank were trying to trick them into playing guinea pig. But Elle knows the Think Tank well enough by now to know they really are scared. And she takes the time to double-check their findings with Mobius, to show him their calculations, their technology. And when Mobius agrees with the Think Tank on something...

Elle gears up best she can, makes sure she's packed to the brim with ammo and food and water. She pulls on Randall Clark's armor and holsters Joshua's pistol at her hip, and... into the future she goes.

Once the blue-white light fades, and her eyes adjusts, Elle finds herself back in the Mojave. She almost can't tell that she's in the future. The desert looks like it always has. And the lights of Vegas look the same as they always have. But the date on her Pip-Boy reads the year as 2314, so... She'll just have to take their word for it. She sticks her thumbs under her backpack's straps and starts walking. She doesn't know where to start, but home is as good a place as any.

Freeside is the first clear sign that this isn't the present Elle knows. It's... cleaner. Busier. It makes it easy for her to slip into the crowd and go unnoticed. Things overall seem a lot more... organized, too. Militaristic, even. She isn't sure what to make of it. It's... bizarre. This isn't what she imagined Freeside to look like thirty years from now.

... er... from... when she... was half an hour ago. Or... However the hell this works.

Elle is halfway to the Strip when she realizes she hasn't seen any Kings. It hits her when the giant sign is... different. It's a logo she doesn't recognize. It stops her dead in the street, and she stares at it with wide eyes. This... This really isn't what she imagined for Freeside. She'd always wanted the Kings to stay, to get stronger, to have more resources to continue doing good for their people. But here, they're just... gone?

Someone runs into her roughly, and she stumbles out of the way. Right... right. It's... There are a lot more people here. She can't just stop in the middle of foot traffic. She picks her feet up and starts moving again. She'll talk to Yes Man. Yes Man will be able to bring her up to speed.

The Securitrons at the Strip gate don't stop her. The Lucky 38 opens its doors to her, just like it always has. Inside, things have clearly been cleaned up -- the dust doesn't hang as thick, the chairs and tables no longer look like they've never been rested at, but it still... smells the same. It still smells like home. The Securitrons continue to not react to her as she walks past them to the elevator.

Her thumb hovers over the button for the penthouse floor. She should, she really should, go straight to Yes Man. But... She wants to know. She needs to know. She inches her thumb down and selects the presidential suite.]

[There's a blond man standing in the room where she used to live, rifling through a file in his hand. And when Elle steps out, he stops and stares at her. And stares. And stares.]

[He works his mouth, like he's trying to figure something out, and then heads in her direction quickly.]

Did they do it to you, too? [He looks at her, angles in, stares with a furrowed brow over NCR glasses. Not all that different from the ones Boone wears, and a black beret with a patch on it.]

No... No they can't do this. What would be the point?! [He sounds furious, accusing, as he walks away from Elle. Not at her, though, the rant is directed at thin air. He's not going to put up with this, if Ocelot has done what he thinks he's done, well... he's going to make damn sure he doesn't do it again.]

[The man slips a gun into his holster and puts down the paperwork; all of it perimeter reports, and heads for the elevator Elle just came out of.]

[Oh. There's... someone here she doesn't recognize. That shouldn't be a surprise, she supposes, but she does wonder who he is, why she decided to bring him here. She must have trusted him, though, if he's here -- and that's all that she really needs.

Still, when he... stares at her like that, all she can do is stare back, entirely bewildered. She doesn't move as he leans in, other than blinking even more rapidly. But then he's stomping away, and he's pissed, but she has... no idea... why.

Whoa -- Wait, he's leaving. On reflex, Elle reaches out to touch his arm, though she catches herself just in time, and instead her fingers catch the edge of his coat instead of making direct contact.]

W-Wait -- Who did -- What?

[It hurts, and it's obvious it does. He winces at the sensation of the hand on his real arm, posture stiffening as delicate, metallic fingers stretch and work.]

[He turns to her and puts his hands on her shoulders, fixing her with an earnest look. His eyes shine behind his glasses, catching light with some sort of damage. Mostly hidden by the tinted lenses, but it's impossible at this distance. And for all that he's angry, there's loneliness and compassion and worry as well. A complicated expression, full of weight.]

It's me. Kazuhira.

[And then it's obvious he's watching for a reaction. Anything. Whatever he can find.]

I'm the son of Elle Days.

[But he says it as though he sincerely doubts that this is Elle Days. And he lets go of her shoulders.] I'm not letting him do this to me again. People aren't just replaceable.

Edited 2016-09-03 08:41 (UTC)

[Elle stares at him. She stares at him for what feels like a very long time.

Her... son?

She has a son?

She's going to have a son?

... he's so tall. And he looks so strong.

She just met him, she doesn't even really know him, she hasn't fully processed who he is to her -- but she's already proud. Kazuhira...

Elle reaches out to touch him again, although she immediately chastises herself, remembering the way he flinched when she did it the first time. This time, when she catches herself, it's before she can make contact.]

I still don't understand. What do you mean, replaced? Who are you so angry at?

[There are still other questions here, but those are the ones that are the easiest to address, the ones most immediately relevant. She needs to know why he's talking to her like he doesn't think she's really herself.]

[He doesn't notice the staring because his heart is pounding with an angry heat. A redness that meets his face, a flush of rage across his cheeks, behind his glasses.]

I'm sorry that he did this to you. [That's his explanation for now. He had been tolerating that man's existence for everyone's own good. As long as Miller maintained some element of power he could occasionally respect his soldiers as human beings, where as they had become tools against what Big Boss felt would be an inevitable securitron insurrection.]

[But if they were going to paste the image of his own mother on someone this time...]

You probably just think you're Elle Days. [He says apologetically, before she can fall too deep into an illusion.] I can explain later. But I have to take care of the man responsible. He's done it before. I won't let him do this with the people I cared about again.

[Cared. Past tense. Elle Days was gone. Not that it's surprising, considering the Wasteland, and the fact that Kazuhira himself is in his late thirties. The elevator ride takes forever. But at least he's just going to another floor of the casino.]

I... Huh? [Elle says intelligently, staring at Kazuhira, utterly baffled. But he's apparently going to go confront someone, someone who hasn't actually done anything wrong -- well, this time, anyway, from the sounds of things -- and she should really try to... explain herself. Before things get even more complicated.]

Uh... Look -- I am Elle Days. The reason why I'm here is a long story, but there's, like, time travel involved. I know that sounds crazy, but it's the truth. So whoever you're about to go yell at, um... This totally isn't his fault. I, uh. Don't really have anything to prove the time travel claim, I guess, but is there anything I can do to prove I'm really me?

[He seems to consider it in the elevator, before he pulls out his holstered gun. Joshua's gun.]

You know this?

[Question one. An item, given to him by his mother long ago. A trusted gift he's used more than once. Sometimes for not the best causes; bullets into the backs of heads of kneeling men. "Traitors". Hard to say who is a traitor now, though. He knows that. His doubts grow by the day.]

My mother would know this.

[Elle can't quite help herself. She gasps quietly and covers her mouth the moment she gets a look at it -- even before she gets a good look at it. She knows the very shape of that gun by heart.

The side facing up reads, καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει

She starts to reach for it, but then catches herself and reverses her motion.] That's... Y-Yeah. Yeah, I... know it. That's... [She draws the pistol off her own hip, holding it up so the inscription on the other side is showing.

καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν

It's the same. It's the very same gun.]

A Light Shining in Darkness, [Elle says, voice quiet but quavering.] A... A gift. From someone who I... someone who matters a lot to me.

[Kaz squints hard. Looks at his gun, hers, and back to his. Then wrinkles his nose a little. How? How the same gun?]

Joshua.

[He knows the name. The gun is holstered again.]

"If war doesn't change, men must change, and so must their symbols." [Something he's remembered when standing under the flag with a skull. A new symbol. An extention of the same war. A war that he feels did change.]

You know who told you that?

[... he has Joshua's gun, knows Joshua's name, when Elle tried to avoid talking about him around her friends after the first argument that happened when she got back from Zion. And he knows Ulysses' words, obviously knows Ulysses' name if he's asking this, and Elle didn't share that holotape with anyone. She started talking about symbols, after she returned from the Divide, started talking more like Ulysses sometimes, and she had to reassure everyone that Ulysses was her friend now, despite having lured her into the Divide with the intention of killing her. But she never talked about how they became friends. She never talked about the impact he'd had on her -- or that she'd had on him. That holotape was a personal message, meant just for her. And she held it close to her chest accordingly.

And Kazuhira knows it. He knows all of it.

Elle hadn't doubted it when he told her, but... Now, it's really starting to sink in. He really is her son, isn't he?

Elle should put Joshua's pistol -- the one in her possession -- back in its holster, but she finds herself rubbing her fingers over the engravings, a habit she'd developed after she came home from Zion.] Ulysses, [she says, her voice even more soft now. She catches herself fidgeting with Joshua's pistol, and she quickly puts it away.]

[She looks like she's coming to a conclusion at the same time he is. He can see it on her face. So far, she knows things Ocelot couldn't have. Private things that couldn't have been passed on. Whatever this is, it's not a conventional copy (if it is a copy).]

What about Micah?

[The last test. A bear that his mother didn't remember recieving, but it came from her father. It's meant for a child that Kazuhira doesn't think he'll ever have. But he keeps it in his desk, just in case. Maybe one day, he'll find someone to pass it on to.]

[It's something only his mother would know about, though. Absolutely.]

[... he really is her son. He really... He really is. Elle's hands tremble slightly, and she starts fidgeting with the lace of one of her gloves.]

A teddy bear... that I had with me in my -- in my gra -- When I... woke up in Goodsprings. He's really old. His name's on the tag. [He belonged to my father, she should say. She knows that now. She's incredibly grateful to know it. But... It's too difficult right now, for some reason. She thinks if she says it, she'll probably... start crying. A teddy bear, passed down from father to daughter, and then... from...

From mother to son.

This is real. This really is...

She has a son.]

[The elevator dings, and Kaz sighs heavily out his nose. He seems to be considering his next course of action.]

[It seems like she is his mother. She knows things only his mother could know, even young looking as she is. At least something odd is going on here, something he should ask around about, get to the bottom of. But...]

[He pulls out Joshua's gun and his face settles behind his NCR glasses. Something dark and angry over-taking him.]

I think I'll kill him anyway.

[And he steps off the elevator, with some men gathered around a craps table, working out military strategy on it. It's a man with white hair and a mustache that starts to turn towards the ding, and starts being kicked back by several shots. The other soldiers are too startled to pull their guns at first, but they're working on it.]

What? But -- W-Wait --

[When he fires the first shot, Elle lets out an uncharacteristic yelp. It's not exactly she isn't used to gunfire, even with the noise echoing in the elevator. But it doesn't make any sense to her -- One moment, it's really sinking in that this is her son -- And the next, he's using Joshua's pistol to kill someone before she can even have a chance to talk him down.

And now there are other men who are about to try to kill her son.

It occurs to Elle, suddenly, that there are no Securitrons here. It's the penthouse floor -- Why aren't there Securitrons? She can't call on them to put an end on this. ... but then it also occurs to her that the reason why she wants to call on them is so she doesn't have to kill these people herself. Selfish. And it's not like it'd matter; she'd give the order, it'd be the same thing.

She starts swearing under her breath and she draws her own Light Shining In Darkness to start dropping soldiers before they can hurt Kazuhira.]

[Kaz ducks and rolls, dodging the first round of fire and then taking out two of the men. There aren't a lot. Between him and Elle, they're already down before they can even get shot. Kazuhira is aware he might be signing his own death sentence, but damn if that didn't feel good.]

[He strolls over to the body of the white haired man, not yet dead and trying to rise, and he rolls him over and takes his gun away.]

You're not using her if she's the real thing! I know you. I know what you do. And if you made her, if you made her, like you did him...

[That last bit, Kaz chokes out. The sound of a wounded man, one with his heart broken, and this person is partially responsible for it.]

Fuck you [the other man spits out. Blood on his lips.] He'll kill you for this...

[Kaz wrings his hands into his collar, determined to watch the blood drain from him. Wanting to see death take him.]

[... oh. Oh, god, that man is still alive. And now, her son is going to -- ]

Don't! [Elle is rushing forward, reaching for Kazuhira's shoulders, to try to pull him back.] Kazuhira, no --

[Elle doesn't know anything about this man she's trying to save. She understands Kazuhira trying to protect her, understands trying to protect someone from being used. But even if he is a threat -- even if it is best for him to die, and Elle doesn't know, she just doesn't know -- then this isn't the way it should happen.

If only for Kazuhira's sake.]

You don't know what he's done! He brainwashed and surgically altered someone to be like the man I loved. They made a decoy. And now that decoy is locked away and he should be here... He should be here!

[It's rambling and confusing, but finally he moves back. He gives space, enough for the strange man to try and sit up, catching his breath.]

He hypnotizes people. That's why I thought...

[But now the stranger's eyes are fixed on Elle, like he's stunned. No, she's definitely not Ocelot's fault.]

It doesn't -- [She stops herself before she says, "it doesn't matter," because she knows how it would sound.] Killing him like that isn't -- This isn't the way. Okay? It isn't the way. We don't have to do it like that. ["We," not "you."

Except Elle still feels uncomfortable with the idea of killing this man, whose crimes she barely understands, while he's on the floor like this. But they can't just leave him free, otherwise he'd undoubtedly try to retaliate. The idea of tying him up so that Elle can get more information before she decides if he should die or not... It makes her skin crawl. She doesn't want that kind of... no. She doesn't want that, either.] Let's -- I don't know. It's not my place to decide whether someone lives or dies, but -- I don't know. He shouldn't die like that. Not for his sake. [For yours.]

We have to. We have to-

[But even as he's trying to confirm that they need to kill this man, Ocelot's bringing up his other gun, hidden in his boot, not to aim at Elle but at Kaz. Because Elle is still valuable.]

[At this point Kaz yanks Elle out of the way, unwilling to see her die again even if she might (by some possibility) still be a fake. It was hard enough the first time; and besides, he's already proven his ability to get attached to fakes.]

[Elle barely has time to register the second gun, and doesn't have the time to internally swear at herself for putting them in this position. But then Kazuhira is jerking Elle away from the man, and Elle knows he wasn't aiming for her in the first place.

There isn't time. There just isn't time, and in this split second, Elle knows what decision to make.

She snaps Joshua's pistol up and double-taps, aiming directly for the center of the man's forehead.]

[It's so gratifying, that last moment, and unfortunately Kaz doesn't get to watch it. Instead he just turns to see the aftermath. The body of Ocelot slumping to the floor.]

[Kaz slowly lets his hands slip from Elle, then, approaches the body. Looks down at it.]

[Everything about his face is the expression of a man who's not sure this is real. If it's some sort of bizarre... fulfillment dream? Maybe.] ...Guess maybe you're who you say you are. [His mother wouldn't allow her son to be shot.]

[Certainty bleeds out of Elle as silence takes the penthouse suite. No more men coming out of the wings. No Securitrons rushing in. Not even the hum of Yes Man's terminals. It's so quiet. The only thing that she can hear is her breathing, the rush of her blood in her ears, Kazuhira's footsteps, his words.

... she's trembling a little. And starting to rub her fingers on the engravings on Joshua's pistol.

Slowly, she comes to stand next to Kazuhira, staring down at the man she just killed. Kazuhira seems... happy. In shock, but... happy. And if this man is responsible for what Kazuhira said he is, then... She guesses she can understand that. But mostly, she just feels rotten. Even though she had been defending someone who... is family. She still feels...]

Who was he? [she asks, voice low. After a moment's hesitation, she holsters A Light Shining In Darkness and kneels. She needs to check the man's pulse. She needs to make sure he's actually dead.

She knows what happens to someone if they don't die from two shots to the head.

... her hands tremble slightly.]

Felis Fera. Otherwise known as "Revolver Ocelot." [He gestures loosely down at the man with his own gun.] Legion born, intended to be the successor to Vulpes Inculta one day. Master hypnotist, dangerous warrior. Right hand man to Vegas's new Big Boss.

[He rubs the back of his neck.]

Dead.

[No, he hadn't been thinking. Just operating off emotion and anger and ten years of being under this man's bootheel.] It doesn't matter. Not right now. I'll tell you later.

[After Elle has frisked him over, Kaz grabs Ocelot's feet and starts to drag him across the floor, closer to a deactivated securitron. There he starts stripping him of items. Including those stupid cowboy boots, which he kicks across the floor as if those are the most offensive of all.]

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