The Revolution

**Vanil**

///BEGIN

Some things never change.

09.01.07

~V

**MatrixRefugee**

Sorry, I can't resist posting this link:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1581841...x_Revolutions_9

**Darminian**

Sounds interesting.... well, i mean the idea of you doing an event sounds interesting, cause right now all i have is a title.

~Darminian

**VSLL**

((/bump for great justice!))

Tick, tock... tick, tock... tick, tock...

**Vanil**

The Dire Lupines were good at killing.

It was no secret that Ookami kept these Exiles around for one reason and one reason only. Indeed, the wolf-mistress of the Merovingian was well-known for her directness in more ways than one, among other things, and it was her way, as it was the way of those Exiles that she and the Effecutator had born for her purposes, as well as those purposes of those other Merovingian executors and powerful Exiles, when the need was deemed having arisen. So it was that such a need had been deemed so, and so these Dire Lupines had been assembled before their mother and mistress.

There had to be a hundred of them; perhaps more, as it was impossible to tell from more than even a moment's observation. They stood in regimented, soldiered rows that were further divided into subsections that were split based upon evident pack and bloodline, although such things were, Ookami knew at the back of her mind, nothing short of veritable nothing in this place.

But Ookami was known for her directness.

The massive vaulted chamber lay buried beneath layer upon layer of carefully-written masonry coding, the high, vaulted ceiling supported by sweeping pillars of the carved, neo gothic style, and winged stone gargoyles sat perched upon them in sequential rings, their snarling, canine maws open, as if braying and drooling with a silent, permanent hunger. Though the ceiling was vast enough to be partially obfuscated by long shadows, courtesy of the flickering braziers and candles that lit the archaic assembly chamber, the great ringed ‘M' seal of the Frenchman was visible nonetheless; a painfully obvious reminder of the Exile that drove them all; even the savage Ookami herself.

Freedom. It was such an impossible commodity in this place, it seemed.

Her perfect lip curling disdainfully, Ookami flexed her feminine fingers slowly, feeling her long, razor-sharp claws sliding along each other as she did so.

Freedom could wait for her.

Ookami's fur-lined leather corset creaked audibly as she perched herself upon the pulpit that sat at the head of the chamber, her chestnut-brown hair set carelessly about her savage, gorgeous features and her long, glistening talons splayed outwards, as if all looking to go their separate ways and spear their own preys. Slowly and purposefully, her golden eyes roamed the small army of Dire Lupines she had assembled here in silence, as if daring any one of them to show a sign of weakness; anything that would warrant blood on the flagstones.

But these were no dogs. The Dire Lupines were elite warriors; warped by the Effectuator's seemingly-careless designs into lethal engines of destruction, each capable of entering a wild killing frenzy that could spell the death of entire groups of human operatives at once. Indeed, they were one of the Merovingian's many, many answers to the evolving weapons of its countless foes, and they would serve Ookami's purposes in this case as well as they should, as they would those purposes of the one she had struck her deal with.

Ookami was about to address the assembled Exiles when she heard his footsteps upon the cold stone as he approached her from the blind spot in her rear. How like him, the werewolf thought with an odd mixture of what equated to both simulated disdain and admiration. In a place such as this, he should have stuck out like a sore thumb; a single Blood Drinker amidst so many of their traditional Systemic foes, but somehow, he managed to fit right in, as if he had always been there, watching in silence. Vanil was quite good at that, Ookami had noticed, and she also couldn't help but notice that the pseudo-Exile had only gotten better at it as the years had progressed.

Ookami heard the Blood Drinker's long black leathers, almost glistening in the seemingly-warm torchlight, as they furled about his heeled boots, his slender figure halting directly behind her, his pale features mostly obscured in the long shadows cast by the pillars that held up the ceiling, high above the pair of them and their lycanthropic army, as he liked it; Ookami knew well enough. "Are they prepared?" Vanil asked simply, his gentle accent somehow avoiding the echo that should have begotten it in such a voluminous space.

"Always prepared, Vanil," Ookami shot back quickly, the irritation in her voice evident, much to Vanil's silent humor. He knew full well that the Dire Lupines were written for readiness. "They will hunt and kill at my mere word, hrrr..."

"Naturally," Vanil replied simply, his weight shifting idly from heel to the other. A short silence followed, the legion of Dire Lupines below the two of them motionless and at attention, during which Ookami allowed herself a few moments to contemplate her counterpart's rise to the power he now held. It had been a long and brutal endeavor, she could well remember. So many had died, and many more Exiles had been deleted and destroyed to facilitate the fluttering of his wings. Vanil had made no distinctions. Where once there had been peers; those somewhat like him, now there was not but digital dust and memory; testament to the blood purges and violent rampages of the Exile in an earlier time; a time when killing and pain had been nothing short of an art to him, as it was to have been by design. Things may have been different now; it was true, but not so different so as for Ookami to forget such things so easily.

It was ironic, really. In some ways, Ookami was partially to blame for such, at least indirectly. And now the circle had come full. The Prince of Darkness stood before her in all of his dusky splendor...with a deal.

Ookami had agreed to it. He had known she would.

"Hrr, then your assets are as well?" the Lupine-mistress demanded tentatively.

"Also naturally," Vanil replied smoothly as he took a step and placed himself closer to Ookami's fur and leather-wrapped body. "I have already sent soldiers that will obey only me into their proper places. The humans face a storm of steel, love, and they shan't escape us."

Ookami growled femininely but said nothing more, for there was nothing more to be said. Turning on her slender heel, she instead spun to face her warriors, and Vanil's pale figure fell back once more into the hanging gloom. "You have all been told, so I don't need to say it again!" Ookami bellowed with unsurprising fervor. Even after all of this time, Vanil couldn't help but admire how her pretty, chapped lips trembled with each breath she took. It had been a long time since he had experienced the pleasure such things had the capacity to wreak upon his smooth, digital flesh, and he had no reason to presume he ever would again, either.

But it was, still, not a wholly unpleasant memory, Vanil remarked with an idle smile.

"You may let the blood of any human you see," Ookami continued loudly, "but there is something in particular one of the filth carries with him that we wish to possess! If ‘any' harm comes to this artifice, the same will be exacted upon all of your miserable heads a thousand fold!"

Another silence hung before one of the Dire Lupines dared ask the question they all, Ookami included, had.

"How do we know what it looks like, Den-Mistress?"

Ookami made to speak, but promptly stopped herself. What ‘did' it look like? Unsure and irritated because of such, the Lupine spun to face the Blood Drinker that still lurked behind her inquisitively.

Ookami could make out the small grin that made its way onto Vanil's noble lips, the tips of his fangs glittering in the torchlight that snaked its way about him.

"Just follow the light."

~V

Iovai

((Delicious))

**MatrixRefugee** · 09/01/2007 16:33:18

((There is no post... but I might put in a bit with a drunken, singing Morraeon later...))

**Vanil**

She dreams...

The crack of gunfire. The patter of precipitation. The boom of thunder.

He can't escape this time. He loses his heart in a torrent of blood.

‘Dante!'

She wakes...

Chemuel felt her eyes, heavy with sleep, flash open as she sat nearly bolt-upright in her favorite ratty swivel-chair, her linens hanging loosely from her small, girlish figure. She had heard rain, but now all she could hear was her breathing and the mechanical whine of the Matrix as it wound its way downwards from the trio of mounted viewing monitors before her half-prone form, the tendrils of green digits coiling their way downwards like snakes as they always did, as if prompting her awakening.

A dream. It had been but a dream. But had it? Now that she thought about it, her mind still weighed down with the stardust that often came with such late-night slumber (the mounted chronometer next to her keypad told her that it was, indeed, night, as the perpetual shadow outside the nearby viewing bay certainly wouldn't), it had indeed seemed nothing short of raw Reality to Chemuel as she had dreamed it. Had she been dreaming of the Matrix, the girl thought on further, it would have been a double irony, seeing as how the Matrix technically was anything but Real. In some regards, anyway. But this...

This had ‘seemed' so Real.

Coughing the last bit of sleep from her tongue, Chemuel reached for the dented tin pitcher of now-cold caffeine that she had been sipping from and poured a measure of it into her adjacent metal cup. Watching the smelly, near-black fluid stream into the tiny basin, the Captain of the Schrodinger's Cat was reminded rather distinctly of tar. Clearing her throat again, Chemuel took a tentative sip and promptly coughed her voice out of tone again at the frigid, metallic tang of the stuff.

It ‘did' keep her awake though.

Setting the cup to the steel Operations station with a disgusted clang, Chemuel pounded the comm panel that lay to her left. "Hand, I want to know where the Masquerade is."

"My dear Captain, you know as well as I do that the Masquerade cannot be found," the response officer crackled over the other end. "You yourself should know this better than I."

"Don't care," Chemuel insisted as she sat up in her squeaking chair and watched as a particular band of code swiveled oddly. What was that...? "Find it, or it's coming out of ‘your' paycheck, hand."

---

The eastern side of the corrugated steel warehouse shuddered in the concrete as the rocket-propelled grenade soared from its berth with a whooshing contrail of heavy blue smoke and through a window on that end, blowing it outwards with a deafening blast of flaming wooden splinters and shattered glass. The E Pluribus Neo operative that had taken up a sniping position on the spot had zero chance to avoid the projectile, and his figure tumbled from the exploding perch like a rag doll, his falling figure riddled with murderous hot shrapnel.

With an even louder roar then, the Dire Lupines broke their hidden ranks and stormed towards the burning building, their lithe, dark forms like those of hungry snakes as some scampered on all fours through the field of wild long-range gunfire that tore at them from those firing positions in the warehouse that remained intact. There were hundreds of them, and they were fast, and it was all the human defenders could do to fire accurately as their canine RSIs blurred and skipped expertly around their sniper fire.

Across the nearby rooftops, cadres of Elite Commandos phased into existence, doubtless thrown into position by the Prince of Darkness himself, their wiry figures, wrapped in their glossy black stealth garbs melting from the night air as they opened fire with a parade ground clatter, their cyclopean red eyes beaming outwards through the evening twilight.

The return fire was as furious as it could be, but even the human defenders were unable to stop the tide of ravening Exiles, and as a second explosive rocket blasted out another window of the beset structure, the Dire Lupines ripped through the loading door of the warehouse, and the end began.

---

The Operator aboard the E Pluribus Neo vessel known as the ‘Scarlet Hotei' watched the battle begin to unfold in numeric form from the relative safety of the tunnels of the Real. His fingers sliding quickly across the keypad that sat before the many viewing panels that gave him a coded vision of the Matrix at all times, the Operator could make out each flurry of gunfire and each group of assailing programs with near-absolute certainty and could tell that their own operatives had little chance against such a tide of fire.

But the point wasn't to win.

As befitting of the Operator's Captain, the plan had been a clever one. Ookami and her Dire Lupines sought that which was not there. It was well known that the Exile known as ‘Vanil' sought the fragment of the One's Residual Self-Image that Phrack had kept in his possession for so long, and that if the Merovingian executor got his claws on such a thing, the ramifications for them all, as well as those of the Matrix itself, could be dire indeed.

And so, at the last moment, when the assault had been known to be imminent, Phrack had moved the fragment away from its former hiding place and placed an entire army of his best operatives in its place. As such, the werewolves would find plenty of blood, but they would fail to find that which they had fought for.

Grinning to himself in spite of the carnage he now bore witness to, the Operator dialed a number and adjusted his communications headset.

"They've taken the bait, Captain."

~V

Iovai

((Delicious!

More.))

**Vanil**

Within the confines of the Matrix, Phrack held his cell phone to his ear and smiled at his Operator's words. "Of course they have. They're mutts."

"You're certain we haven't been followed?" Darminian asked the leader of the Pluribus Neo fleet, one gloved hand fingering a sub machinegun, one of a pair, beneath the folds of his short leather jacket. "Or second-guessed?"

"Pretty certain," Phrack replied matter-of-factly, the weight of his own firearms reassuringly concealed beneath his own coat of crimson leather. "And if I'm wrong, it wouldn't really matter now, would it?" the Captain of the Scarlet Hotei continued as he straightened his tie smartly, his eyes glancing behind the two of them at the circle of duster-clad E Pluribus Neo operatives that waited with them in the dank, abandoned subway station for the Kaede train. With a small grin, Phrack slid one of his chrome-finished Desert Eagles from his leathers and slid the hammer back once, the metallic click echoing about the musty, tiled space.

"After all, we're all here to do what we're all here to do."

Darminian shrugged and pushed his armless shades up the bridge of his nose appraisingly. "I suppose so. But people get lucky sometimes. You never know."

Phrack smiled and slapped the hammer of his weapon back to its berth and slid it away.

"No they don't. And yes I do."

---

Aboard the Scarlet Hotei, in the Real, something was wrong.

Or, rather, Phrack's Operator could tell in the Real that something was wrong in the Matrix. That was; not going according to plan. His fingerless gloves danced over his keypad furiously as streams of green flared with bands of brief whiteness, the displays of coded data flashing before his eyes as he absorbed one sequence and anomaly after another. The battle at the warehouse was progressing as they had seen it would, and yet it was not. The Operator had been that which he was for quite some time, and had long since developed what some referred to as the ‘Operational sixth sense.' It was a feeling in the experienced Operator's gut and eyes that told him that, despite evident appearances, something was not right with the flow of the Matrix, and that those in his charge were in very unreal danger.

He had that feeling, and his pupils scanned the Matrix frantically as more and more equations worked their ways downward before them. The keypad clicked louder and louder. Somewhere...it was there ‘somewhere'...

Where was Vanil?

The Operator couldn't see him. But he was supposed to be with Ookami; ready to swoop down upon the Fragment once the Dire Lupines had overrun their dummy defenses. His brow furrowing, he ran the sweep again and came up with the same results. Vanil wasn't anywhere near that warehouse. By all evident rights, in fact, the Exile wasn't anywhere in the Matrix at all, and was certainly nowhere near that Richland warehouse. Which meant...

Oh God.

The Operator's fingers shot to the side of his headset. "Sir, they've redirected the train, it's a trap, get out!"

---

As if on cue, as soon as Phrack raised the phone to his ear, the illumination that lined the subway station faded, each light sequentially shutting itself off with a bang as power was routed away from the station. His Operator's voice now not but shuddering static, the Captain of the Scarlet Hotei lowered the device in time to watch the head of the E Pluribus Neo operative behind him vaporize with a burst of gory mist.

"Everyone down!" Phrack shouted, and the train station exploded with gunfire.

Even with the light gone from the place, Phrack could make out the amorphous shapes as they flew down the tiled steps of the far entrance to the station, their dusters fluttering in the sudden updraft as they darted from shadow to shadow like wraiths, muzzle flashes and bullets spitting outwards from the darkness. There were only three or four of them; Phrack couldn't tell for certain with his communications with the Operator cut. With a silent curse, the Captain realized that Vanil had anticipated his ploy; had anticipated everything and set a trap within his own for him and his operatives. Diving behind a nearby pillar to avoid the oncoming gunfire, Phrack glanced to his left and saw that, though almost half of his crusaders had died in the opening volley, Darminian had managed to do the same; the man's paired sub machineguns already in his grasp.

If the Masquerade wanted a fight, it would get a fight.

With a wave of his hand, Phrack drew his remaining crusaders up behind him, their assorted firearms held close to their bodies. They were ready to die; he could tell, and that was probably a good thing, because at least a few more of them probably would. There were only four of them left, but they knew Phrack, by name if not personally, and they knew how important what they were carrying was. The Captain of the Scarlet Hotei knew they wouldn't let him down.

Which meant that it all came down to him now. With a brief, assertive smile, Phrack tore his Desert Eagles, their chrome finish glittering in the gunfire that tore through the subway station and pulled the hammers back, chambering a pair of heavy-bore bullets.

That's when Phrack was at his best.

"Darm!" Phrack called to his left as he sheltered himself behind the pillar of concrete that was, even now, rapidly deteriorating in the hail of Merovingian gunfire. "Give us covering fire!"

With a nod and without any hint of hesitation, Darminian spun out from behind his own cover and crossed his sub machineguns out before him like a horizontal crucifix and pulled the triggers, a hail of glittering bullet casings clinking to the concrete as they let loose with a roar of automatic fire. Darminian pursed his lips as he spun one way to avoid the return fire from his near-invisible foes and crossed his weapons the other way to continue his barrage. He couldn't tell if he was hitting them; he couldn't tell if he was really shooting even close to that which he was trying to hit, but he knew it would, in this case, be enough.

With a nod to his operatives, Phrack pulled the brim of his fedora down close to his bald forehead and shouted "For Neo!" at the top of his voice as he dove out into the field of fire. His end of the station exploded with flashes of luminescence as he and his crusaders let loose with their own weapons, their figures blurring slightly as they did their utmost to avoid the storm of incoming gunfire from the seemingly spectral Masques. Phrack held his twin pistols high as he sprinted for the far end of the train station, his red leathers flowing behind him like dragon's wings as he jigged slightly this way and that to dodge those bullets meant for him.

As he heard one of his operatives cry out as he lost his face in a shower of blood, Phrack knew that Vanil's anticipation of his fears would mean the deaths of any of them who died here.

So be it.

~V

Iovai

((Delicious!

I may have scoffed when Phrack popped a "For Neo!". But Walter definitly did.))

**Vanil** · 09/05/2007 14:50:42

The warehouse was in flames.

Those E Pluribus Neo operatives that still lived had spread themselves out in a circle of ballistic flame at the floor of the central, cargo-strewn loading bay, the bodies of dozens of their own and their Exilic foes piling up around them as they fought not for Neo but rather for their very lives as the dark-furred Dire Lupines streamed through the unloading doors they had managed to tear to steel ribbons with their bare claws. The odd Exile sprayed a burst of automatic fire at the humans, but the majority of them simply launched themselves forward, spurred on by their original programming dictates, to lock individual, black-garbed operatives in deadly close-quarters duels, where a human on his own had very little chance of survival. The tactic, while exceedingly straightforward, had proven marvelously effective, as evidenced by the long, dripping trails of fleshy gore than ran their ways to the rusted drainage grates that lay buried in the dirty concrete.

And then Ookami was amongst them.

At first, it was as if the Lupine-Mistress was less a program and more a force of digital nature; something horrible and violent and unstoppable. With a feral scream, Ookami vaulted from the center of her warriors, her lithe, whip-chord Residual Self-Image suspended twenty feet in the air as her golden irises locked with her chosen prey. Her pupils dilated, and time caught up with her as the Lupine soared downwards and smashed her heels into a human's face, their sharp edges drawing ugly razor lines across his terrified visage as her long, wicked talons joined them and went to work with wild abandon as she fell with him. Before he knew it, the crusader of Neo crashed to the floor in a shower of squirting gore as Ookami's heels followed, sending shivering cracks outwards through the concrete as she landed, her talons, now dripping red, held outwards like wings.

Perhaps three seconds had passed. Perhaps.

With a snap, the remaining E Pluribus Neo operatives brought their fists, blades, and guns up to acknowledge the Exile's sudden presence in their midst, but despite the most sophisticated combat subroutines that the separatist organization could mount its crusaders with, they weren't nearly fast enough. Ookami had done battle throughout the Matrix for over five hundred years, first for her own Lupine clans and then later for the Frenchman, and she knew war and killing as well as a Succubus might know pleasure. With a feral snarl, the Lupine-Mistress became a spinning blur of chestnut hair and form-hugging, fur-lined leather, her long, glistening claws flashing as she launched herself at the two humans nearest her and bisected their torsos a dozen times in a dozen different places.

"Hrrrr, where is it!?" Ookami screamed as she felt their blood splatter across her breasts in great wet gouts. "Give it to me!" she howled as she spun on her heel and drove her talons through another operative that had tried to get behind her with a straight razor, her slender fingers, imbued with the strength of a thousand of her minions, tearing his twitching, digital spine from his suddenly limp body and hurling it to the floor with a sickening, squishy crack.

---

Flush with the shadows of the darkened subway station, the Masque known as Mechanical could make out the figures of Phrack and his operatives as they dove out from behind cover and into the torrential field of fire. Were it not for the lone E Pluribus Neo member with the sub machineguns to their far right, the barrels of his weapons blazing loudly and forcing the Masques back into their own cover with showers of shattered concrete and ballistic residue, Mechanical would have likely been able to kill all of them with a single controlled burst of his assault rifle.

But that was not an option.

His gloved finger tightening around the trigger, Mechanical let fly, his heavier weapon barking in his grip as he hurled the long, narrow rifle rounds towards the oncoming Neonates, the hammer of his long rifle banging back upon its chassis loudly. Perhaps it was enough to deter their progress, but Mechanical could well see that it wouldn't for a moment halt their valiant advance through the sea of digital lead and raining debris. Cursing quietly, the Masque felt his long black duster swirl outwards behind him as he spun back into the shadows he had only relatively recently become so accustomed to as their return fire whistled past him and blew great, gaping holes in the wall behind where he had stood.

His empty magazine falling to the concrete with a clatter, Mechanical slid a fresh one home and was about to reload his rifle once more when he turned quickly and saw Vanil.

The Blood Drinker and master of the Masquerade descended the steps of the train station slowly and purposefully, as if each step were a world to him. He seemed utterly unfazed by the ruinous, clattering gun battle that raged below him. His heels clicked audibly with each step he took, and his long, black leathers hung about his slender, effeminate frame like limp, draconic pinions. The flares of weapons fire flashed across his shades, and his gloves hung at his sides, like a set of curved black claws. Crisscrossing the Merovingian executor's normally pristine, noble features were jagged, twisting veins of black, tar-like digital corruption; veins that Mechanical had noticed had grown more and more pronounced with each passing night now.

It was why they were here, Mechanical remembered quickly as he felt another burst of wild gunfire blow another chunk from the pillar he had secreted himself behind, his rifle held vertically flush to his torso. Vanil was dying, and Phrack had that which the Exile needed to survive.

Sometimes, Mechanical allowed himself to muse for the briefest moment, fate was almost too cruel.

Almost.

Acknowledging Mechanical with the briefest of nods, so like him, Vanil fixed his gaze on Phrack and his operatives as they wove through the Masque's bullets like black-garbed blurs, their own weapons flashing again and again as they fought for their very lives. His black lips slowly curving upwards a fraction, Vanil splayed his leather-wrapped fingers outward and allowed his twin, matte-black Desert Eagle handguns to slide down his sleeves from their concealed mounts and into his waiting hands.

And Mechanical knew then that, as he racked the hammer of his assault rifle back to chamber the first round of his new magazine, it would be the very first of his last.

~V

Iovai

((Delicious!))

**MatrixRefugee**

((Whoa... I think this is the best thing you've written yet!))

**Vaico**

Iovai wrote:

((Delicious!))

((Do you know any other words? SMILEY

))