LNH: All-New Legion of Net.Heroes #4
Andrew Perron
pwerdna at gmail.com
Thu Feb 13 04:13:56 PST 2014
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LLLLLLLLLLLLLL | Session #4 |
LLLLLLLLLLLLLL E G I O N O F N E T . H E R O E S | |
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ANDREW PERRON as Kid Enthusiastic
EDWARD HAUSER as Genesis
ANTONIO MENTEGUIAGA as Maia
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THE STORY SO FAR: There is *power* flowing from the Net to humanity and
back! The net.powered have gathered together on a budget to form - the
Legion of Net.Heroes!
========================================================================
Maia says, "So can Genesis do the whole matrix thing?"
Maia groans, "I kinda wish my power was a giant fork right now."
Kid Enthusiastic says, "Are you eating something?"
Maia says, "No, I'm hungry."
Kid Enthusiastic huh.
Genesis says, "Hm? Matrix thing?"
Maia says, "Like. Downloading years of learning and being able to fly a
tank type of stuff!"
Kid Enthusiastic says, "Ooooooooh."
Kid Enthusiastic says, "...I think you'd need, like, rockets."
Genesis says, "Not really. Galeora's physically somewhere in my
midbrain, and there isn't any way I know of to connect her to
anything outside."
Maia says, "I think if you just fire the main canon enough times."
Kid Enthusiastic says, "Wi-fi!"
Genesis shakes her head. "We tried that at VEIL. She's connected to my
brain and only to my brain, from what I've been able to gather... bit
of a shame, actually. She's got an encyclopedic knowledge of her
people's history, and we've only been able to wake her up twice. We
still don't even know their name."
Maia holds up the hammer in a cartoonish way from her desk, feet
propped up on it, looking at Genesis with a questioning look towards
the hammer.
Genesis quirks an eyebrow. "What are you hinting at?"
Maia says, "...Y'know, I'm not really sure. Was just channeling
something."
Maia says, "Some sort of bunny rabbit. With a gigantic gun."
Genesis looks a bit more confused.
Genesis says, "...anyway, I think one of the weirder things was the
first time she woke up and possessed me, before she figured out where
she was, she was giving commands. Near as the techs could figure out,
it sounded like they were commands for a starship."
Maia says, "...Does that mean you can fly?" Her eyes seem to be beaming
bright at this point. "Like! An airship?!"
Maia says, "Kid I think we're already at end-game!"
Kid Enthusiastic oooooooooh.
Kid Enthusiastic says, "Clearly we need to build some sort of
bio-mimetic starship around you."
Genesis says, "Well, I'm not Galeora. She's an AI sitting dormant in my
head. One I can't seem to awaken for any significant periods of
time."
Maia pouts, "So you're not the cool end-game airship thats thousands of
years old under a dessert?"
Kid Enthusiastic pulls out a megaphone. "I have an idea!"
Genesis says, "Well, given that she's an AI... she may have *been* a
sta--hm?"
Kid Enthusiastic clicks it on. "HEY GALEORAAAAA"
Genesis says, "Believe it or not, we tried that too."
Genesis rubs her ear. "You can turn that thing off now."
Kid Enthusiastic aw.
Genesis says, "If anyone can figure it out, though, you probably can."
Genesis says, "Anyway, she probably was a starship. Military, most
likely..."
Kid Enthusiastic hmmmmmms. "Maybe subliminals... oooooh, space opera!"
Genesis says, "If you can induce a hypnotic state that's deep
enough..."
Maia starts twisting this and that on her hammer, "Maybe this thing can
go all pendulum."
Genesis says, "Can either of you record video on your phones?"
Maia looks at hers, "I think. Why?"
Kid Enthusiastic hmmmmmmm?
Genesis says, "Well, we're going to be trying to awaken the AI in my
head, right? I won't be awake when she is, is the thing."
Maia says, "Maybe we should get one of the cameras made for that
instead?"
Genesis says, "I don't think we need to, as long as Kid E can rig up a
tripod." She hands him one of those wire inbox-things. "This'll
probably do it.""
Kid Enthusiastic says, "Maybe we can have you both awake and sing
two-part harmony with yourself! We'll make a fortune off Youtube
partnerships."
Kid Enthusiastic oh, thanks.
Maia stares at Kid, "Y'know I've always wanted to sing harmony with
myself like those monks."
Kid Enthusiastic says, "Oh, yeah"
Kid Enthusiastic says, "People say they monkey around."
Genesis says, "I dunno, I think they're too busy singing to put anybody
down."
Kid Enthusiastic says, "Hm, true."
========================================================================
Genesis hmm.
Maia says, "Hmm?"
Genesis looks up from a modestly-sized shard of green crystal in her
hand. "Hm? Oh, did I say something? Sorry, kinda... lost in thought."
Kid Enthusiastic is wearing X-ray specs and a fake moustache. "Well
zen!"
Genesis stares at Kid E. "No, I... I don't think we'll be doing that.
Here's the problem, though... do either of you know hypnosis?"
Maia says, "...I have a hammer! It swings like one of those hypnotic
things. Don't it?"
Kid Enthusiastic hmmmmmms. "I've been watching videos about it. It
looks simple enough!"
Genesis hmm. "Okay. Certainly couldn't hurt." She smiles a little,
wheeling her chair out from behind her desk into the middle of the
room.
Kid Enthusiastic says, "Okay! Maia, incredibly powerful magical
artifact please."
Maia blinks! "Oh! Right! Hammer!" Dropping out of her daze at what
artifact Kid spoke of.
Kid Enthusiastic takes it and lifts it *very firmly*. "Man... forgot...
how heavy... this is. Hokay..." He staggers over and places Maia's
phone on a jury-rigged tripod, made of aluminum piping and duct tape.
Genesis quirks an eyebrow. "You... aren't planning on knocking me out
with that thing, are you?"
Maia takes her hammer back, "Just... tell me what you're doing. I
really don't feel easy with other people touching this thing."
Kid Enthusiastic says, "Well, I mean, I was going to swing it back and
forth as part of the hypnosis. It's not like any of us has a
pocketwatch on a gold chain!"
Maia stares, "...I can do that.
Genesis hmm. "That can't be good for your back... look, will any
pendulum do? If we've got... oh, there's that."
Kid Enthusiastic hmmmmmmmms?
Genesis holds out a shard of green crystal. "Got a piece of string?"
Maia blinks, and undoes some loose string from her outfit and hands it
over.
Kid Enthusiastic ooooooh! He ties the string around the crystal. "This
will probably work really well, if we're trying to evoke memories!"
Genesis blinks. "I... what? No, I don't think that's going to..." She
sighs. "Look, just be careful with it. It's important to me."
Kid Enthusiastic says, "C'mon! Have you ever known me *not* to be
careful?"
Maia raises hand.
Genesis says, "Yes."
Kid Enthusiastic large comedic anime sweatdrop. "W-well, that's not the
point right now!"
Genesis says, "Let's just get this started. Are we rolling?"
Kid Enthusiastic leans over and presses the button. "Rolling!"
Maia puts down the dice, "Right! Rolling!"
Maia gets her hammer close.
Kid Enthusiastic lets the crystal dangle. "Focus on the crystal..." He
begins swinging it back and forth. "Follow it with your eyes, only
with your eyes..."
Genesis's eyes follow the crystal as instructed. Her vision starts to
haze a bit, and she continues.
Kid Enthusiastic says, "Relax... you are safe... you are relaxed... you
are letting go... let go..."
Genesis's eyelids grow heavy fairly quickly, and she's clearly in a
low-level trance already. But there's nothing happening yet...
Kid Enthusiastic takes a deep breath. This was the tricky part. "Go
deep... go deep down, and ask Galeora to come up... Galeora, come up
and speak..."
Genesis's eyes close after a few minutes of coaxing, and for a few
more, nothing happens. She begins to enter a dreamless, dormant
state, activity slowing... and becoming sparse enough to allow
something new to come forward. After a long moment, her eyes open,
glowing with a bright-green light!
Kid Enthusiastic jumps back. "Whoa! ...er... Galeora?"
Genesis replies to Kid E with something wholly unintelligible.
Kid Enthusiastic hrmmmmms... "Do you speak English? Nihongo desu ka?"
Genesis pauses for a moment, then nods. "English. Yes. Sorry. I will
*never* get used to the way this brain stores memory..."
Maia says, "Woah neat. Cool trick with the eyes."
Kid Enthusiastic says, "Oh! Awesome!" He carefully puts the crystal
down and picks up a notebook. "So I had a list..."
Genesis blinks. Her eyes slowly fade to their normal green, and she
leans over to pick up the crystal. "A piece of my matrix-crystal...
clever, using it as a hypnotic trigger." She turns it over in her
hands for a moment before setting it back down. Her movements are...
awkward, slightly un-human. "Let me guess. Questions?"
Kid Enthusiastic grins. "Hah! I *knew* it!" He a-hems. "Yes, ma'am! Or,
y'know, if there's another pronoun you prefer that's good too."
Genesis shakes her head. "Female is fine. I'm a feminine consciousness
and chose a female body, so." She smirks. Or makes something close to
one.
Kid Enthusiastic says, "Ah! There we go, first question: how did...
like, what's your history and Genny's and how are you two related?"
Genesis presses her lips together. She lets out a long sigh. "Right.
History. I'm a warship AI of the Viridi stellar navy... one of the
two most powerful ever created. Given command of the entire fleet...
a brilliant tactical mind, if I do say so myself. We were at war with
an extremely hostile... I hesitate to call them a race, or even a
species, as such. They're sentient nanomachines, essentially... led
by my opposite number, an AI known as Alterac. Used to be one of us.
Nobody knows what happened. She disappeared into deep space on a
scouting mission, and neither she nor her escort vessels were heard
from again until years later, when she reappeared within our borders
and declared war against Galeos herself."
Kid Enthusiastic listens with wide eyes. o.o "And... who's Galeos?"
Genesis says, "God. The universe. Consciousness. Existence itself."
Kid Enthusiastic says, "...that's a heck of a war."
Genesis says, "Yes, well... it's not quite a war in the normal sense.
Not in its goals." She picks up the crystal, examining it
thoughtfully. "Galeos is the sentience of the universe. At the very
beginning, as the universe was forming, she slept. She only awoke
when the first primitive intelligences began to develop--simple,
single-celled organisms with some modicum of basic autonomy. Wasn't
much to her then, so to speak... for eons she was wild and feral, a
reflection of the primitive intelligences that composed her being."
Kid Enthusiastic takes furious notes. "Man, I really want to ask you
how exactly a greater consciousness kept cohesive at universal
distances, but I think this is more important!"
Genesis says, "As the first truly intelligent life came to be--
self-aware, self-reflective--Galeos truly awoke, into something
approximating her current state. She became aware. The point of this
is that while she is an autonomous, self-determining intelligence,
she's shaped by the tendencies and minds of the sentients 'below'.
Alterac heads a hive-mind nonillions of nanite minds wide, with the
ability to convert other matter into more."
Kid Enthusiastic says, "Oh! Oh, I get it - fifty percent of the vote."
Genesis nods. "A single consciousness with enough animic mass to
dominate Galeos..."
Kid Enthusiastic hrmmmmmmmm. "This is bigger than our planet, tho."
Genesis says, "Oh, definitely. Far bigger. See, the war was... oh,
you've got a word for it, what is it... Pyrrhic? It's close, anyway.
We very nearly eradicated them AND Alterac, but at the cost of our
homeworld, and most of our colonies at that. We, Galeos' champions,
were devastated at the end. And we didn't win. Alterac was bloodied
and beaten, but she escaped. Want to guess where she was going?"
Kid Enthusiastic frows. "Aw sugarmuffins. But then she's at a lower
power level, right?"
Genesis says, "Her numbers are diminished, yes. She's... more powerful
than I am, though. I'm divided. Elizabeth Holmes can wield the power
of Galeos, but at a severely diminished capacity, because she lacks
me. Because of the way Alterac's consciousness warps animic space,
she's still able to wield those same powers, and with far more
strength than we can."
Kid Enthusiastic paces back and forth at double speed. "Well that's
just prime! So--" He turns to Galeora-in-Genesis. "How do we stop
her?"
Genesis says, "I don't know. The 'plan' Elizabeth Holmes has come up
with is the closest thing either of us has to a proper solution..."
Kid Enthusiastic shakes his head, hair getting even messier. "Dang! I
shoulda thought this wouldn't be that easy!" He paces at triple speed
(but doesn't wear a groove in the floor, because this universe is a
bit more realistic than that, I'm afraid). "Okay, so... what happened
after Alterac escaped?"
Genesis says, "She escaped, and I followed. I was crippled, so I
ejected my core and used it to give chase... there's a rarely-used
function of the core crystal that allows it to generate an organic
body based on any template one gives it. I chose human, of course...
but I pushed things too hard, apparently. The body hadn't fully
developed, the link between the unit containing 'me' and the brain
was incomplete... and the only saving grace? The drive unit
malfunctioned, causing me to arrive years before Alterac. I loaded my
memory bank into the unit within the brain before atmospheric entry
began, and... I went dark."
Kid Enthusiastic's eyes widen and he bites his lip. "Yeesh. So all
that's left of you is..." He gestures at the shard.
Genesis taps her head. "I'm inside here. There's a small shard here
with my memory on it. She must have taken this from the impact
site... it's useless. Synaptic crystal. Probably leeched of useful
materials to make this body."
Kid Enthusiastic hrm. "So it's not one of those things where we go
around collecting crystals to power you up."
Genesis says, "No. It's worth noting that the connection between brain
and shard has developed, though. It's how I'm speaking with you now,
and how Elizabeth Holmes can use my powers at all..."
Kid Enthusiastic says, "Hrmmmmmm. Well, I'd better ask you the rest of
the questions before I say 'wake up'!"
Genesis shudders briefly and closes her eyes, slumping back slightly in
the chair as Galeora is unceremoniously pushed out of the way for
Elizabeth to wake up. Which she does fairly quickly! Genny looks at
the crystal in her hand. "Mmh... hm. Did it work...?"
Kid Enthusiastic blinks. "...aw, nuts."
========================================================================
Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, amazing and spectacular!
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