Butterflies
Jan. 27th, 2013 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moonshadowsTurns out, there's a lot of downtime between missions. After a day and a half of nothing but silence and darkness in the "public" area, I retreat to my room and start going through archived security footage.
Requisitioned items get left in the storage area that Reaper likes to lurk in, the one with the door under his room. And I do mean lurk - he just stands in a corner, staring, although I have no idea what he's looking at because every time I've found him doing that, the lights have been turned out. But once I've figured out where my things are going to be delivered, it's easy to intercept one of the rank-and-file as he's wheeling a stack of boxes into the vast storage room. He tells me that at least once or twice a month, someone about has a heart attack because they opened a closet or unused office and there's Reaper, standing there like a horror movie villain about to kill the idiot teenage protagonists. He never moves. He never says anything. Even if the poor mook that found him takes a few minutes to calm down and then reaches past him for the broom, or whatever they went in for, he doesn't react. And because he's always wearing that mask, no one knows what he's thinking.
I ask about the costume, while I have someone willing to talk. The mask, the hooded cape-jacket, the spiked gauntlets, the whole shebang. No one's ever seen him without it. That makes me wonder why, in the long quiet hours when Widowmaker's sitting motionless in her room or in the furthest corner chair and Reaper's off standing in a closet or stalking angrily through the halls and occasionally just blowing the brains out of someone dumb enough to try to talk to him. What does he look like under the mask? Is he famous, is he horribly disfigured? Does he have metal plates holding his skull together, and biotic eyes? Was he burned? (A giant of a man, from a 75th anniversary movie marathon: "Why do you wear a mask? Were you burned by acid or something?" The man in black, answering, making the audience giggle: "Oh no, it's just they're terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.") Whatever the reason, I'm not going to ask. If he wants to suffocate under that thing all day, that's his choice.
There's a room he goes to once or twice a week that no one else enters. There are no cameras inside, so I set an alarm to go off when the door is opened and then monitor the network activity to try to figure out what he does in there. Finding the head of Talon is one of my goals, after all, and someone has to tell Reaper about new missions. But he doesn't meet with anyone in the flesh, or even make a phone call to wherever Talon HQ is. Whoever he talks to, he does so via holographic projection and the projector is isolated from the base's systems. There's no way to piggyback without getting my hands on the hardware; as soon as it hits the first satellite, it's gone. Dead end. But he does get mission information from whoever-it-is, and he reports after the missions. It takes a bit of meticulously checking old security footage, but I do confirm that the unfortunate Talon goons who get casually splattered by my constantly-irritated gang boss were probably telling him that his boss wants him to report, because after he cleans their clocks he stalks off to that one room.
Interesting. Either he just doesn't like being told what to do by the rank-and-file, or he has some beef with the higher-ups. If it's the later, then why is he here? What does he get out of it? Something else to keep in mind, in case it becomes relevant or useful later.
In the meantime, because I still have to go slow in my investigations, I'm bored.
Despite Tarkin's younger lookalike implying that I would be confined to the suite with Reaper and Widowmaker, no one bothers to enforce that. No one checks on us through the cameras, there's no guards stationed by the door, and no one stops me when I walk purposefully through the halls towards the Garage of Inconspicuous Vehicles. It only takes a few seconds to convince the system that I have a valid ID badge to scan and permission to take a dark, unmarked sedan out into the city.
Being out in the colorful crowd, in the hot sun, where I'm not the only linksignal within sensing range, is like being home again. You don't appreciate how dreary it is to live in a warehouse with no omnics nearby and no real social interaction until you go to a busy market on a sunny day. I wander for a while, soaking up sun and sights and scents, and steal a tourist's wallet so I can do some inconspicuous shopping. Clothes first, so I blend in, and a bag to carry what I had been wearing. Then I take the cash and hand the wallet to a hungry-looking local kid. More wandering, taking in the energy of the market and the casual presence of omnics in the local linkweb, before I spot a display of hairclips shaped like butterflies. The wings are curved bands of silver, thick outlines studded with ovals of crystal and smaller crystals filling the empty spaces. There's one with purple crystals. I start haggling.
In the end, the best price gets me two clips. On a whim, I point to the one with black crystals because the thought of it clipped cheerfully to Reaper's hood makes me giggle. Then, with a purple butterfly glinting from my hair, I make my way back to the car and drive back to base without bothering to change out of my new clothes. No one stops me as I stroll back to what I sarcastically think of as our private suite. Reaper and Widowmaker are doing that stare-vaguely-at-the-news thing when I enter, and neither of them react as I saunter over and lean on the back of the couch. Casually, I reach out and clip the black-studded butterfly to the front edge of Reaper's hood and admire the contrast of silver and glittering black to the softer matte black of the material.
Three seconds later, the entire back of the hood erupts into black smoke and Reaper growls, "Sombraaaaaa...."
He stands and turns to face me, slow and menacing, but the butterfly actually looks good and I can't help grinning. The black smoke pouring from his hood and shoulders drifts down to his biceps and a few leak out from his chest. I should probably make my escape. "Looks good on you, amigo," I chirp and then activate stealth and dart, in my soft-soled shoes, up to my room.
When I check my cameras, Widowmaker is staring at Reaper. Or, more accurately, at the hairclip he's awkwardly removing from his hood. Maybe I should have tried to haggle for three, and gotten her one, too. After all, I think with a bit of guilt, being nonverbal and almost completely unresponsive to outside stimuli doesn't mean nothing's going on inside her head. I mean, I used to think omnics were quiet, before I got enough augmentation to hear the omnic channel.
Next time...next time, I'll bring back something for Widowmaker, too.
Requisitioned items get left in the storage area that Reaper likes to lurk in, the one with the door under his room. And I do mean lurk - he just stands in a corner, staring, although I have no idea what he's looking at because every time I've found him doing that, the lights have been turned out. But once I've figured out where my things are going to be delivered, it's easy to intercept one of the rank-and-file as he's wheeling a stack of boxes into the vast storage room. He tells me that at least once or twice a month, someone about has a heart attack because they opened a closet or unused office and there's Reaper, standing there like a horror movie villain about to kill the idiot teenage protagonists. He never moves. He never says anything. Even if the poor mook that found him takes a few minutes to calm down and then reaches past him for the broom, or whatever they went in for, he doesn't react. And because he's always wearing that mask, no one knows what he's thinking.
I ask about the costume, while I have someone willing to talk. The mask, the hooded cape-jacket, the spiked gauntlets, the whole shebang. No one's ever seen him without it. That makes me wonder why, in the long quiet hours when Widowmaker's sitting motionless in her room or in the furthest corner chair and Reaper's off standing in a closet or stalking angrily through the halls and occasionally just blowing the brains out of someone dumb enough to try to talk to him. What does he look like under the mask? Is he famous, is he horribly disfigured? Does he have metal plates holding his skull together, and biotic eyes? Was he burned? (A giant of a man, from a 75th anniversary movie marathon: "Why do you wear a mask? Were you burned by acid or something?" The man in black, answering, making the audience giggle: "Oh no, it's just they're terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.") Whatever the reason, I'm not going to ask. If he wants to suffocate under that thing all day, that's his choice.
There's a room he goes to once or twice a week that no one else enters. There are no cameras inside, so I set an alarm to go off when the door is opened and then monitor the network activity to try to figure out what he does in there. Finding the head of Talon is one of my goals, after all, and someone has to tell Reaper about new missions. But he doesn't meet with anyone in the flesh, or even make a phone call to wherever Talon HQ is. Whoever he talks to, he does so via holographic projection and the projector is isolated from the base's systems. There's no way to piggyback without getting my hands on the hardware; as soon as it hits the first satellite, it's gone. Dead end. But he does get mission information from whoever-it-is, and he reports after the missions. It takes a bit of meticulously checking old security footage, but I do confirm that the unfortunate Talon goons who get casually splattered by my constantly-irritated gang boss were probably telling him that his boss wants him to report, because after he cleans their clocks he stalks off to that one room.
Interesting. Either he just doesn't like being told what to do by the rank-and-file, or he has some beef with the higher-ups. If it's the later, then why is he here? What does he get out of it? Something else to keep in mind, in case it becomes relevant or useful later.
In the meantime, because I still have to go slow in my investigations, I'm bored.
Despite Tarkin's younger lookalike implying that I would be confined to the suite with Reaper and Widowmaker, no one bothers to enforce that. No one checks on us through the cameras, there's no guards stationed by the door, and no one stops me when I walk purposefully through the halls towards the Garage of Inconspicuous Vehicles. It only takes a few seconds to convince the system that I have a valid ID badge to scan and permission to take a dark, unmarked sedan out into the city.
Being out in the colorful crowd, in the hot sun, where I'm not the only linksignal within sensing range, is like being home again. You don't appreciate how dreary it is to live in a warehouse with no omnics nearby and no real social interaction until you go to a busy market on a sunny day. I wander for a while, soaking up sun and sights and scents, and steal a tourist's wallet so I can do some inconspicuous shopping. Clothes first, so I blend in, and a bag to carry what I had been wearing. Then I take the cash and hand the wallet to a hungry-looking local kid. More wandering, taking in the energy of the market and the casual presence of omnics in the local linkweb, before I spot a display of hairclips shaped like butterflies. The wings are curved bands of silver, thick outlines studded with ovals of crystal and smaller crystals filling the empty spaces. There's one with purple crystals. I start haggling.
In the end, the best price gets me two clips. On a whim, I point to the one with black crystals because the thought of it clipped cheerfully to Reaper's hood makes me giggle. Then, with a purple butterfly glinting from my hair, I make my way back to the car and drive back to base without bothering to change out of my new clothes. No one stops me as I stroll back to what I sarcastically think of as our private suite. Reaper and Widowmaker are doing that stare-vaguely-at-the-news thing when I enter, and neither of them react as I saunter over and lean on the back of the couch. Casually, I reach out and clip the black-studded butterfly to the front edge of Reaper's hood and admire the contrast of silver and glittering black to the softer matte black of the material.
Three seconds later, the entire back of the hood erupts into black smoke and Reaper growls, "Sombraaaaaa...."
He stands and turns to face me, slow and menacing, but the butterfly actually looks good and I can't help grinning. The black smoke pouring from his hood and shoulders drifts down to his biceps and a few leak out from his chest. I should probably make my escape. "Looks good on you, amigo," I chirp and then activate stealth and dart, in my soft-soled shoes, up to my room.
When I check my cameras, Widowmaker is staring at Reaper. Or, more accurately, at the hairclip he's awkwardly removing from his hood. Maybe I should have tried to haggle for three, and gotten her one, too. After all, I think with a bit of guilt, being nonverbal and almost completely unresponsive to outside stimuli doesn't mean nothing's going on inside her head. I mean, I used to think omnics were quiet, before I got enough augmentation to hear the omnic channel.
Next time...next time, I'll bring back something for Widowmaker, too.