[ OPEN ] rebellion with a hint of violence

[burlyboy]

WHO: A BAND OF REBELS. (And Magnus.)
WHERE: A hidden bunker for a meeting of rebels.
WHEN: Before Apollo's BREAK-OUT
WHAT: A group of rebels gather to discuss liberating some of their imprisoned peers and plan their next attack - and, if you like, play out a couple of those attacks! This is for a particularly violence-prone group, but any rebel forces are welcome to say they heard about it through the grapevine and pop in. Feel free to contact me if you've got any questions! PM/Plurk @ wisdombitch as usual!
WARNINGS: Probable discussion of violence!



If the people here know Magnus - and several of them do - then it's of no surprise that this safehouse is in a little woodworking, out in a more rural part of town. It's nothing sophisticated, but classics are good for a reason, and a well made false panel leading into a bigger room where they can speak comfortably works well enough for their purposes, especially when it's hidden behind plenty of hidden equipment and dangerous, cumbersome looking tools that just so happen to be as good at disemboweling a man as they are at slicing through a big hunk of wood.

The room itself is just as humble, little more than a room filled with enough chairs for everyone to sit on, a massive desk at the front for drawing up plans, and a few smaller tables lining it because even co-conspirators need a snack every now and then - though because it's Magnus, it's mainly cheese, cured meats and bread.

This isn't an official meeting, per se, nor is it an official arm of The Resistance, though they're frequent bedfellows and don't mind working together; the group that Magnus has cobbled together has a chaotic approach to things, a violent approach to things, favouring what Magnus chooses to call direct action.

At the front, Magnus goes over the job: they're to infiltrate a government base where they're experimenting on metahumans, they're to free all of its victims, destroy anything that could be of use to their enemies and are absolutely not to hesitate to kill their foes where they stand. Once Magnus finishes going over it, a makeshift map laid out over it, he stands back to let the more strategic minded among them to have their say, and to let the rebels talk amongst themselves.

He'll also note that it's rare that they can all be at the same place at the same time like this and that if they need to collaborate for future raids, he sure won't stop you. Hell, he might even join you.

"People are suffering out there," he says as he winds things down. "Let's fuck 'em up."

Comments

magnus burnsides | ota

[burlyboy]

[ After talking, Magnus is content to sit back and let others take the lead. It's part of what makes him a good leader - he's charismatic enough to bring people in, but not so cocky about any skills other than fighting that he won't let others to do what they do best. He's the leader only nominally; he gets everyone through the door, makes sure everyone is here, and everyone's on the same page. It's a different beast from how he is on the battlefield, a spitfire of a man who rarely hesitates before, as he might describe it, cleaving a man in twain.

He sits his axe in his lap as he does so, his thumb rubbing against the dull side of the blade. Once there's a lull in conversation, he may glance over to see whoever's beside him. ] Got half a mind to burn the whole thing down, [ he says idly. ] Nothing good can come from a place like that.

[ Or he'll be quick to offer you a crust of bread, if you look like you could use it. Everyone's going to need their strength in the coming days.

If they want to talk shop for future raids or attacks, he's all for that -- or last, but certainly not least, he's also quick to ask, ] How are you doing with weapons? We've got plenty. If you go up close and personal, anyway.

[ Or, of course, you can talk about anything you like! This is a wildcard too, baby. ]

[rainbowbright]

[ Kanaya's leaned over the map, her hair tied back out of her face as she plans their entry. ]

If my intel's right about who they've got held here, [ She looks over to him, grinning wickedly. ] we might be leaving nothing but a crater behind.

I'm all set on up close and personal, usually, but that brings me to our first problem here. Do we know the range of their power jammers? That's not just the biggest factor in where we'll be coming out, but I lose my main advantage in melee without my powers.

We'll need someone to take them out first of all. I've got suppliers for ballistics until that's done.

[burlyboy]

[ Magnus' furry brows bounce up, nearing his hairline as Kanaya talks. He has an inkling of who's kept there - and an inkling of who he is to who's become his pet murderdog, though he'd never put it like that - but not what he's capable of. ] Shit, really? We could use someone like that.

[ It's not a kind way to think, to free someone underneath the expectation that they'll turn around to work for you, and while Magnus will let him go if he says he has no interest in the rebellion, he's not above knowing who makes for a good ally and who doesn't. ]

No intel on the power jammers. We might need to get some of us in first to fuck 'em up. I don't rely on my powers, so I'm a good option for that. Meeth could cook up some stuff for us too. Bombs, smoke, that sort of thing.

Might have to play dirty. Choke 'em out, even.

[rainbowbright]

You know me. There's nothing worth doing that shouldn't be done dirty.

[ Rules and fairness are for play, and this is no game. Any advantage they can get is worth taking. ]

Causing enough chaos to give us an opening seems like the best bet. Just fuck 'em all up while they're disoriented. The best part of the two-prong approach is they won't be able to catch their bearings while we look for the big guy. We don't want to let the smoke clear and then have to push through.

But yeah, I think we're all hoping he'll join up in some way. The one thing I'm sure of is he'll be very motivated to take his pound of flesh out of his captors.

[bestest_ladle]

I don't see why we can't do that after we get everyone outtie. [Meeth grins and taps her alchemy ladle in her other hand.] We'll be taking everything to piecies anyhow, why not just finish up with a nice fire? Make everyone nice and cozy.

[burlyboy]

Ah, [ Magnus says, clapping Meeth heartily on her back, ] a woman after my own heart.

[ In recent years, he's favoured a more explosive approach. His company hasn't hindered him in this whatsoever. ]

Just gotta make sure any innocents are out first. The whole block. That shit spreads. Don't wanna fuck up any of the supports of any buildings that don't deserve it.

[ Explosives can take down a whole city. He should know. ]

[bestest_ladle]

[wait wait magnus WAIT

meeth jumps back up and dusts herself off before giving him a bonk on the kneecap with her ladle.]

Magsie! Remember what I told you about 'center of gravity!' [She ponders.] So we need something small in scalie... fire's not the only way to bring down a building. Do you know about freezie and thawie?

head in a box;

[pillz]

[these days, joey kavinsky is most often a head in a box than an appearance in person, a necessary consequence of that high risk freedom fighter lifestyle. there are spies! some of them have microchips in their brains, shit like that.

he appears in the flatscreen now, his face momentarily zoomed in far too close to the camera, blurry and dark, before it recedes back into clarity. he shifts his eyes through the viewfinder. there's already a list of supplies that are en route -- 'screen sharing' -- off to the right.]

Your place never loses its soul, [he says, with something like wist in his voice. behind him, the samodiva looks bright and sparkly as ever, but high-tech -- the kind of place that changes all the time. a drone zipsby.] How's op planning, Mags?

[burlyboy]

[ Talking to people digitally has never been an approach that Magnus favours - he'd never known it back home, and he always does things the old-fashioned way, even after being here for so many years - but he knows when it's a battle not worth fighting, and that goes for a meeting of minds like this one. ]

What can I say? [ Magnus says, spreading his arms out on either side of him. ] Guess I never moved on from the first rebellion I led.

[ He mentions it sometimes, but only obliquely - it's known that he did in some town a long time ago back home, that he'd won, but at a cost. It's a cost that's led him to be more merciless than he'd ever been to start off with. ]

You should've come down, gotten a taste of it for yourself. But things are going fine. Looks like we've got manpower down. We got the old-school part of that down too. Some skulls are gonna get smashed together. [ Helpfully, pleasantly: ] And crushed!

[pillz]

[joey wrinkles his nose delicately, as if crushing skulls is somehow worse than the sort of murders and killing he's been party to. it definitely isn't, in a moral sense. but it is in a 'what if stuff gets stuck in your shoes and hair' sense. he's also been off the field for a long time, now. months.]

I'm glad you're having a good time, and not me.

I was going to send over some body armor for you and the vampire glowstick, [he says.] And an emergency GPS emitter just in case some shit goes sideways and we need to get you a pickup. New tech, the government won't be able to crack it in the next couple of weeks, anyway. Should I send that by? Oh, wait. Also--

[he wrote something on his hand, evidently. five tattooed piggies peek up at the bottom of the screen as joey checks his own arm for writing.]

We also got cookies. And a roast.

[c'est important. harry dresden's gifts to the resistance.]

[heliophilic]

[As usual, he had stood off to the side during while the axe man talked to everyone else. The axe man had suggested he stand next to the wall several times before, and he had been able to remember on his own this time to stay out of the way. It doesn't matter what they plan. The axe man, or someone else, will tell him what to do.

And then he'll kill people.

The talking finally done, he goes over to the axe man and takes the bread offered to him. Yes, he should probably eat.

At the question, he blinks, his free hand going into his tattered black coat where the inside voice, the real him buried beneath the static and the haze from his broken implants, tell him he'd find such things. He goes to say something... and the thought goes.

The axe man is looking at him expectantly. He wants something. He tries to remember what... and feels his fingers brush against the cold steel of a knife. He pulls it out.]

Here.

[He was giving it to the axe man, yes?]

[burlyboy]

Thanks, bud.

[ Magnus twirls the knife between his fingers. He didn't ask for it, but he knows that's M's way of being helpful. When other people lean in and ask him if he's simple, he never knows what to say. Sometimes he just says yes. It's easier that way. Other times, he tries to explain what happened, but he always falls short of the mark. A part of him knows that the kinder thing would be to find him some nice place to live, not take advantage of his numerous assets to do the same damn thing the other side would do for him, but...

There's a lot of buts. Can he say that he wants to keep him around as a friend and have that act as some sort vindication? That he's better off where Magnus can keep an eye on him? That there's nowhere to leave him anyway?

Nobody's asking him. The only person who worries about that is himself. And even he doesn't let himself worry too much. Too many other things on his mind. It is what it is. Hard not to think about it now, though, considering the mission in front of them.

He claps M on the shoulder. ] Eat. And chew. That's an important step of the process, [ he says jovially, as though he's talking to an old friend and not a hollowed out version of what he used to be. ] We're gonna save Apollo soon. That's great, isn't it?

[heliophilic]

[ He nods slightly as he munches on bread, remembering not to say anything until after. It's times like this where the inside voice is all but screaming inside him, drowned out by everything else.

It only gets louder at the mention of "Apollo", and something else deep within him stirs. The name is Important, but he can't remember why... and for the first time, he's perhaps afraid to even try. ]

Yes.

[ A monotone answer given quickly, as he can tell it's what the axe man wants him to say. Still... it is Important. That must mean it's good.

But he just can't remember. ]

It's Important.

[devilishly_handsome]

[After all the events going on, Anton was particularly eager to get in on some of the action, so when he heard about this, he just had to show up.]

I'd be all for burning it down as long as we're able to get all the prisoners out, first.

[He doesn't want some poor trapped meta-humans burning to death just because they were unable to escape captivity, after all.]

I might have some skills that are useful, though. Most of my combat training doesn't use my powers. I'm not sure how much help I'd be in actually getting the jammers offline, but I could definitely take the heat while more tech oriented types get in to take care of those.

[And he has no problem killing a few government agents on the way.]

[burlyboy]

[ Magnus nods emphatically along. ] We don't burn it down until everyone's accounted for. We're not gonna go along and be as bad as -- well, the bad guys.

[ Bad Guys Vs Good Guys may be a bit of a... reduction of affairs, but nobody has every accused Magnus of being particularly enchanted with the issue of nuance. ]

I'll be leading the melee. The human - uh, sentient - wall, so to speak. [ He claps Anton's shoulder. ] Stick with me, and we'll raise some hell while the others figure out the rest. There's plenty to be done with just clearing out the first wave of guards.

You know, uh, you know the whole spiel already, yeah? Drastic causes, drastic measures, super fuckin' dangerous, all that?

[devilishly_handsome]

[The 'good guys vs bad guys' was nuanced enough for the situation at hand as far as Anton's concerned. Sure, he might have a better sense of nuance than Magnus, but they people they're up against seem pretty solidly bad to him.]

Yeah, got the whole spiel. All that comes with the territory though, right?

[He might not be specifically part of Magnus's crew, but he'd been helping the resistance for years. He knows what he's in for.]

I'm just looking forward to getting out there and hitting things!

[Or rather, stabbing people, since his weapon of choice is a glaive, but something about saying he's excited to stab people just sounds so bad.]

Kanaya Maryam | ota

[rainbowbright]

[ Kanaya is a very busy bee. Much as she's made time to plan out this meeting, every now and then her watch will go off, and she'll excuse herself to pull strings in the air, dropping little notes to the earpiece she's wearing. When you're a big part of transit in the imPort Underground as a whole, it's hard to devote your full attention to any one thing for long.

Once most of the information has been discussed, she provides her own take on the plan. ]

Once we get inside, it's going to be a blackout zone. That's going to cut down our advantages, so we'll need a team to either infiltrate the control room or disable the generators. First on our list should be getting the jammers offline, so that we have all our powers inside. If we've got any volunteers, or anyone who knows their way around tech, I'd like to see some hands.

The rest of us are going through the cells, freeing as many prisoners as we can. Personally, I have intel on a priority target. I'm talking big guns, possibly some of the biggest. [ Not the definitive biggest, of course. Kanaya used to be friends with his daughter, and her memory isn't short. ] With the jammers offline and him free, this whole thing goes a lot easier.

[ Later, when the discussion's winding down, Kanaya's hardly what you'd call personable. This is probably one of her favorite groups in the Underground, but she'd hesitate to call them friends. She's not really sure she has many of those anymore, just plenty of colleagues and comrades. People she believes in and works with, but doesn't get close to.

In her downtime, she seems almost spacey. Maybe you'll catch her staring off into the distance, but if you try to get her attention, she'll wave it off, switch right back to business. ]

Oh, uh. ...Hey, sorry. Did you need anything for this next supply run?

[siriusly]

[speaking of transit, one of the ground runners is here! both him and his Mightyena. and while Kanaya may keep herself fairly distanced in both space and consideration of the people around, Manabu has little trouble crossing that distance to greet her. it's rare to see her versus just hearing her over the grapevine, after all.

before he can blurt a hello, it's business again, leaving him to hesitate and blink.]

Oh, ha--um, no! No, actually, I should be all set for the next stop. Just wanted to say hey!

[Scout did, too, with a soft boof and lazy wag of the tail.]

[rainbowbright]

Okay. Hey.

[ The years of being the major source of transport for the entire Underground has kind of worn away at her social skills. The way she thinks about herself and how she relates to other people, how she uses her time, how she should use her time, she feels a little guilty just hanging out. She should do something more than this.

Awkwardly, she reaches over to skritch at Mightyena's neck. ] Hey you, too.

So, how've you guys been holding up?

[siriusly]

[if it were someone other than Manabu, her halting, awkward delivery might be a sign to back off. but Manabu is Manabu, even and especially in weird times; that sort of atmosphere goes over his head until it's spelled out for him!

not for Scout, though, who is far more empathetic than his boss, and lets Kanaya scritch by way of scooting up next to her leg for easy access. pet a dog! feel better!]

Better, thanks to this break. [his eyes wince, despite the smile.] Sorry for the late drop-offs last week; I busted my bike so I've been having to do everything on foot...

[goldtoxicity]

No, but, I've got something for you?

[ it's an old arrangement between them at this point. your friendly neighborhood biokinetic has two very useful skills, and as it so happens, they happen to cross over in just the way kanaya needs it to.

he's not in his usual tactical gear. the dark stealth suit has been dropped for ripped jeans and a ratty t-shirt. There's a backpack slung over one shoulder which he pulls around and unzips just enough for her to get an eyeful of the blood packets inside before he zips it back up and offers it out.

they're all still very warm, still very much as close to living as they were when he'd drained the bastard they came from. life, death, two sides one coin. ]

This sounds like it's going to be a whole thing, so I figured... y'know, better safe than sorry, right?

[rainbowbright]

God bless you, boy! I've been just about dying lately.

[ She grabs the backpack hungrily, pulling a pack out. Then, she grabs a Capri Sun from her hoodie pocket and jams it in there. ]

This'll help keep my strength up, for sure. Better when I'm expected to perform. Though, if I'd gone hungry until the mission, at least I'll have plenty of feeding options there.

[heliophilic]

[He had just been staring too. It was a good spot, the one just past her shoulder. The patterns in the wood are easy to get lost in. Especially when everything else is so completely above him.

At her question, he blinks, tilting his head ever so slightly to the side.]

You should ask the axe man. He would know.

[rainbowbright]

[ She recognizes that look. If there's any kind of real solidarity she feels anymore, it's knowing there's someone here she can casually disassociate with. ]

What about the mission, then? If you know the rumors, I'd hope you have some thoughts about that.

[ I mean, not everyone gets to have their estranged lover come back from the dead. ]

[heliophilic]

[ His head tilts the other way. They keep talking to him like this. Like they expect him to suddenly feel something new. That this is more Important than the other missions. Part of him feels that way too, but it's the part that very rarely breaks through the surface anymore.

He wishes they would just tell him what they wanted. It's always easier that way. ]

I'll do whatever you need me to do. [ Which was true. It was what he was good for. ]