The Revolution

Iovai

MatrixRefugee wrote:

Chemuel wrote:
((This is brilliant, but I really can't stop laughing every time someone's weapon ejaculates.))
((No better pr0n than gun pr0n, non?))

((I think that rhymed. *CENSORED*. We should stop spamming this thread before Vanil ejaculates somthing on us.

Wait, WHAT?))

**Vanil**

**MatrixRefugee**

Hmmm... riddles wrapped in enigmas and tucked inside mysteries...

Green = Matrix code? Neo's RSI code?

Gold = Seraph's code?

Reclaim the Holy Place = ?

**Vanil** · 10/04/2007 13:22:07

Pitch black.

It was all one could see within these ancient, forgotten tunnels and sewer systems; systems that allowed humanity and worse things to hide themselves from the ever-watching crimson beam of a Sentinal's optical sensors. Nothing dared disturb the old recesses of this old maintenance tunnel, and, for a time, there was not but perpetual, pitch black.

A slow rumble them, as if the metal were shaking dust from its own rusty boughs, begetting the tumbling of some sort of giant beast from the hanging abyss, like an oily maggot from its rind. The rumble grew louder, and with a distant crackle of blue lightning, the telltale flare of hover pads bit through the gloom like eyes of deepest white-azure. The vessel slid forth then, and the bulk of its hull glinted dully as it soared its way from the darkness, its purpose readily evident to those on board.

Or, at least, to one of them.

Her palm slapping the aft thrusters of the Schrodinger's Cat forward once more, Chemuel allowed her eyes to gaze out of the viewing port that sat at the head of the cockpit, set against the rest of the vessel like a single eye of glass amongst a sea of steel. It was out there, somewhere, in that endless, underground field of earthen-caged darkness, Chemuel knew. That terrible and awesome vessel the girl had once willingly placed herself upon and dwelt with its sycophantic, psychotic Operations program routine and mad crew in an effort to serve its Captain with all of her heart, body, and mind. Even now Chemuel tried to tell herself that clawing her way up to the pinnacle of the Masquerade and into Vanil's absolute favor had been a mistake, but the girl knew that she did not think so. She would never forget the groan of that powerful, invisible vessel as it had swum its way through the bleakest recesses of the Earth's core, dodging human patrols and Sentinals alike and eluding even those who had dedicated themselves most fervently to finding and destroying it. For the vessel that shared its name with the Masquerade was to have been as the one who had ordered the vessel's resurrection and refitting at one of the first he had swayed to his will. It was to have been untouchable.

Chemuel would never forget that ship.

And she could never, ever forget its Captain. She never wanted to.

"It is down here somewhere; I know it..." Chemuel said to herself quietly, as she often found herself apt to do these more recent nights. Sometimes the girl would have entire orations in her mind, or whole conversations with herself in the privacy of her quarters; where she could be alone and yet not alone, for that was the way it was to be now. The crew of the Schrodinger's Cat had noticed, but they hadn't said anything. Several of them had shared Chemuel's time with Vanil as Masques themselves, and they had all been witness to the all-too horrors of what the Prince of Darkness was truly capable of unleashing when he believed them to suit his designs, and some of them had even born said horrors on their own shoulders, and the weight of having carried out such things was a heavy weight indeed. And so they said nothing.

Aoide was one of them. She shared this cockpit with Chemuel on occasion, and, like the others, Aoide didn't say anything either. Unlike the others, however, this had always been Aoide's way, even during her brief brush with Cypherism in her service to Vanil's Masquerade. But even here, among the certainly more comforting confines of Chemuel's band of Merovingian operatives, Aoide was quiet still.

There was only one person Aoide had ever truly spoken to; had ever laid bare her soul to, and she had left him behind when she couldn't do the horrible things anymore.

"Hey. You with me, Therese?" Chemuel turned and asked Aoide, her young features creased inquisitively.

The older woman stared out of the observation window at nothing for a while longer before nodding slowly and moving her dark lips in response. "Yes, Captain, I'm with you."

Chemuel looked Aoide over for a moment before gesturing with her own nod of acknowledgement and reaching over to flip a set of switches that adjusted one of the pressure valves on the port hover pad synchronization units. "Okay. Just wanted to make sure, you know? I know you're tired. We're all tired," the girl said as she drew her slender fingers back and smoothed her currently grease-laden hair back behind her, "but I know it's down here. It's where Tam would bring the ship if things got bad. I remember..."

"So do I, Chemuel," Aoide interrupted with a soft, cool succinctness that she was ever so adept at infusing her words with. "I was there."

"Yeah," Chemuel acknowledged as she turned back to the viewport, her eyes glossy with sleep deprivation and her hand finding the throttle again.

"Yeah, you were."

---

Darminian turned in time to see Vanil tumble from the ceiling.

Truth be told, the Neonate had only barely been holding his own against those two Masques that had assailed him at their Captain's order, and though Darminian had fought countless battles over the years both in service to Zion and to himself, both Ekizeba and LinksLife were astute operatives in their own right; the former having served E Pluribus Neo as well before her betrayal, and the latter having acted as debutant and agent of the twisted and enigmatic Merovingian executor known as the ‘Great Wyrm,' and so both were, Darminian had quickly found, a match for even his formidable ballistic combat subroutines.

So it was with only mild elation that Darminian saw the Blood Drinker be blasted from his upside down perch. Phrack must have been able to force him from it at last, Darminian quickly considered as he swung his SMGs, hot in his hands, numb from having discharged so many rounds during the battle, and sprayed several bursts at the two Masques as they attempted to leap back together and bring their guns to bear once more.

Dodging the oncoming fire as well as he could be expected to, LinksLife threw his Berettas forward and responded, the paired weapons retorting loudly as Ekizeba tore past him, the black leather of her glossy fighting dress fluttering behind her slender, rushing form as kicked off her heels and into the air. Exercising a focus of will as Dezreki had shown her, so long ago and insignificant now, it seemed, and knowing with all her being that the impossible was as nothing to her as her new master had taught her, time wove about her tumbling, airborne form in rushing, temporal waves of invisible digital confusion as she stretched her body out like a snake's and pointed her handguns straight down below her as she reached the apex of her dizzying display of impossible acrobatics. Time slowed even further, and Ekizeba seemed to suspend herself in space as her weapons blazed, their barrels discharging again and again, their bullets swimming down towards the Neonate below her, their leaden tips glinting in the dark as they left trails of brief, digital coil behind them.

Turning his gaze to the pockmarked concrete ceiling of the subway station and the sailing, whipcord black dragon that was Ekizeba, Darminian's eyes widened as he did the only thing he could and launched himself forward and straight into LinksLife's line of fire, the danger only briefly registering to Phrack's most trusted ally as he allowed his SMGs that led his way to erupt in a fiery torrent of bullet-laden death. He hadn't thought that Ekizeba, or any Neonate from the corner she had once called home, for that matter, possessed tactical subroutines that advanced or impressive.

But, Darminian quickly remembered, that corner was her corner no longer.

LinksLife made a frustrated noise, slightly muffled by his ever-present black bandana as he backpedaled quickly and rolled to his right to avoid Darminian's wild rush. They weren't the deadliest enemies he had ever encountered, Darminian remarked to himself and he spun with the Merovingian's retreat and attempted to draw a bead on him, one SMG extended and rattling after his retreating figure, kicking up a long, wide trail of showering dust and debris in its wake, but he would be damned if they weren't like bloody specters. Indeed, not even the most deadly of Merovingian assassins had access to these sorts of embedded tactic routines, which could in turn mean little other than one thing.

Vanil had done something to them.

With a crash and a shattering of concrete, Ekizeba landed gracefully, her arms held out to her sides like a pair of emaciated wings as her gloved fingers slid the spent magazines from her Beretta pistols and slid fresh ones into their places almost immediately. Her wild black hair spinning with her, the girl's glistening black leathers, lined with wicked silver studs and tiny spines, billowed out behind her, caught in the ballistic updraft of her recently-finished aerial assault like a black sail.

Gritting his teeth, Darminian spun out of her line of sight and rammed his last magazines into his weapons.

Now it would get rough.

~V

**Vanil** · 10/07/2007 16:26:48

**Vanil** · 10/07/2007 19:02:51

Both Phrack and Vanil had engaged themselves in a staggeringly violent ballet of death, and neither looked to be ready to give way first. It was readily clear that both human and Exile were remarkably skilled operatives when it came to the utilization of those combat subroutines they possessed, and it was difficult for one to follow them with one's eye without sincere and devoted concentration, so fast had the two of them become. Having been shot from the ceiling in a brilliant and daring maneuver on Phrack's part, Vanil slid fresh magazines into his pistols and spun one way as Phrack did the same and spun the other, their fabrics and leathers blurs of indistinct and sprayed color and lack of color. Debris and bullet casings from their nearly identical weapons spun about them in whirlwinds, as if prompted to do so through sheer force of digital momentum brought on by their rapidly-shifting and swerving Residual Self-Images.

In his dark corner, having dropped to a crouch and bringing his assault rifle to bear, Mechanical had carefully attempted to target Phrack's blurred form with little success, and the Masque's long weapon lay, for the moment, silent and still in his gloved grasp. He couldn't fire now, and so he waited for the moment Vanil would no doubt give him by somehow forcing Phrack into one single position. All it would take is a fraction of a second, or rather, the fraction of that which Mechanical would perceive to be a second passed in this place.

Breathing slowly and evenly, Mechanical freed his mind.

The passage of time seemed to vortex around the two combatants as both Vanil and Phrack launched themselves at each other at precisely the same moment. Almost as soon as it had made itself known, the vortex of the mind gave way, and both of them stood at their tallest in front of each other, one arm to their sides and the other raised out before them, their two guns each to the other's forehead.

The slightest movement; the slightest twitch; a single pull of the trigger, and both would die.

"I tried to tell you," Vanil said conversationally, his gun to Phrack's skull, "but you wouldn't listen. How pitifully predictable; how like you humans. I always win in the end. It is inevitable."

"I tried to make you see," Phrack replied evenly, his jaw tight and his own weapon opposite the Blood Drinker's, "but you wouldn't understand. I should've known better, Dante. If you think I won't die for this thing," he continued, a finger rising to click the hammer of his Desert Eagle back, "then you're dead wrong."

Phrack pulled his trigger.

With a deafening bang, Vanil was blasted back off his feet, a fountain of glistening red blood spraying from where his face had been. At that same moment, another gun cracked from the shadows of the subway station, and Phrack shouted as felt his right shin shatter and fell onto his hands, his weapons still clenched in his fingers. Breathing hard, the Neonate glanced slowly to his right and saw the almost invisible form of Mechanical as the remaining Masque slipped from his hidden corner, the barrel of his rifle smoking where it had discharged its payload only moments before into Phrack's leg.

His brow furrowing in understanding, Phrack looked back to where Vanil had stood to see the master of the Masquerade rise laughing, the gaping wound in his forehead having almost sealed itself, leaving the jagged black lines of digital binary decay that inched their way up his neck and cheeks the only thing to mar his smooth, cold flesh. "Still so small," Vanil was saying as he holstered his weapons and straightened his gloves. "Still so naive." Pushing his shades up his pale nose, the Exile glanced about Phrack expectantly, searching for that which he sought, until his eyebrows raised slightly in understanding.

"Clever, human, to hide what I've come for in plain invisibility, but not clever enough. Nothing escapes me here, and soon, I will see more than you can begin to imagine," Vanil said idly as he extended a black glove, palm upturned, and closed his eyes quickly, drawing the image of Phrack's fallen figure in his mind's eye. He was defeated, and Vanil knew, in his heart of hearts and mind of minds, that he had what he had come for was in his grasp.

"Unexpected," Vanil said with a small, cruel smile. "But not disappointing."

---

Darminian stepped out from behind his pillar, his weapons raised and the last of his bullets ready to fire in time to see the faint, golden aura flare about the darkness of the subway platform. His eyes narrowing behind his shades out of a lack of understanding, they followed LinksLife and Ekizeba as they, for all intents and purposes, disengaged from him and flitted from pillar to pillar for their Captain and the remaining Masque that had stepped out to aid him.

Finally, Darminian's gaze came to rest on that which Vanil held in his hand, and his eyes widened in understanding. "Son of a b*tch, no!"

~V

**MatrixRefugee**

((YAY! Another section of this! And awesome stuff, too!))

((Hey, mind if I post a bit with a Sieges/Morraeon conversation about all that's been going down?))

**MatrixRefugee**

The screen of the terminal in Sieges's personal construct hummed with code as she sat typing numbers and letters through an array of translators, trying to crack a batch of code LinksLife had sent her, the better to find the root of this mysterious Algorithim Black she'd heard so much and so little about.

Permission to, ah, express myself? Morraeon asked in the back of her head.

"Well, that's new, you actually asking me instead of bugging me until I let you out?" Sieges replied.

Need t' talk t' yah, face to face and yer a bit too busy to go lookin' in the mirror.

"All right," Sieges said, and pushed her chair back from the desk, letting the second RSI flow from her body. The mass of code resolved itself first into a cloud of red eyes in a black mist, then into Morraeon's lean but shapely form. The Exile crouched beside her staring at the screen, then looking at her, the symbiote's crimson eyes narrowed. "Yah think it's all connected?"

Sieges stopped typing for a moment. "What's all connected?"

Morraeon wagged her head toward the screen. "The Black Algorithim. Dragon-Guy coming back. Swotty-Fang's little stubbed-toe. Little bro actin' weeeeird. The toxin and yer plans to get free of it -- and me."

"Well, you know as well as I do that I believe everything's connected," Sieges said, studying the printout of an email Links had sent her and typing the next line of code.

Morraeon's black-gloved hand came down on the piece of paper and she thrust her pale face close to Sieges's. "The question is: *HOW* is it connected, mmmr?"

"I'm working that out myself," Sieges said. "The Algorithim is probably some sort of ghost in the system trying to give itself a way of expressing itself... much like you trying to get your own shell."

"Mmm, except *I* think it's somethin' that makes Pops at his worst look like Casper the Friendly Ghost." She reached into the decolletage of her black leather gown and took out her cigarette case, opening it to removed a clove-scented cigarette. " 'Bout time people got it through their heads that there's worse things than an Exile that noshes on trash code that's overstayed its welcome."

"We both might be right, we both might be wrong, time will tell," Sieges said, turning her attention back to the terminal.

Morraeon flicked one talon against another, creating a tiny flame with which she lit the cigarette. "Which brings me back to the two jackasses who somehow think the Boss's people revolve around *them*. How much yah wanna bet it ends in a zero-sum game, hmmmrr?"

"That would depend on one of them actually trying to cancel out the other, and so far, I haven't heard they've even been in the same airspace," Sieges said, copying a line of translated code.

Morraeon blew a cloud of smoke into Sieges's left ear. "Yeah, but yah know it's gonna happen: Swotty-Fangs used the Little Pet to take a swing at Dragon-Guy, so the writin's on the wall for those two to slam heads sooner or later. Might get us out of both of yer stupid bargains. You sellin' me down the river was one thing, but t'other one was just as stupid. I t'ought y'd kissed and made up with Swotty-Fangs, mmmr?"

Sieges turned to look at Morraeon. "I forgave him, but that didn't mean I'm forgetting what he did to me. Remember what happened the other night when Tranque wanted to run that scan on me and I flipped out."

Morraeon growled under her breath. "Yah don't have to remind me. I was the one tryin' to get yer heart to stop racing *and* cut the adrenalin flow." She paused, taking a thoughtful pull on her cigarette and letting it trickle out through her ears; Sieges copied another line of code and keyed the translator.

The Exile vaulted onto the corner of the desktop, leaning over Sieges, her lean face leering. "So, what if the main variable of yer other stupid bargain goes through, mmmr? Who's it gonna be? T'ought you had yer heart set on the Fancy Foreign Feller bein' yer baby-daddy, if he'd ever get his head in one place. Yah know there's two humans that are liable to kill that monster. One of 'em's mortified at the idea and you didn't cotton to it either, since yah see him as a brother. And t'other... well, yah really want yer kid to look like *THAT*?!" Morraeon's form phased back into a cloud of black mist, and reformed itself to resemble Sieges's "perfect enemy", looming over her with a smirk crossing the fearsome yet familiar visage.

"Remember that *you* were the one who was crushing on the guy when you were young and stupid," Sieges said, unperturbed by the Exile's shape-shifting.

The Exile growled and resumed her usual humanoid form. "I bet yah caught that bug from me."

"Maybe. Now, get back in my head where you belong," Sieges said.

Morraeon scowled. "I ain't finished talkin'."

"Morraeon Silbersbane, get back into my head, I command you," Sieges ordered. At that, the Exile sighed and dissolved her code, letting it sink back into Sieges's being, leaving her to finish her work in relative peace.

**Vanil** · 10/14/2007 20:50:41

It was beautiful. That was the first thing that came to Vanil's mind. Odd, he reflected mildly. He hadn't thought that about something, or, more specifically, a band of code, for quite some time so quickly that it overrode everything else. After all, what was beauty if not an ephemeral concept; a construct of the human mind, and therefore unduly unnecessary?

But no, the Exile considered evenly and just as quickly, it was not unnecessary. Or, at least, not as unnecessary to him as he had considered it to be, and therefore as it had been. Beauty did not exist in the Matrix beyond one's conceptualization of the idea itself and the connection such an idea drew between one thing and another; nothing did. As cold as the feeling of understanding was as it crept up Vanil's spine and into the darkest corners of his mind, he knew that perspective worked in such a manner in both directions, meaning that, while one could reduce something like beauty to nothing; force it to descend to the nether-level of conceptualized importance, one also had the equal power to supplant such corrosions of disbelief and revulsion and raise beauty and those other connections like it to the highest pinnacle upon which such a thing could be placed.

After all of this time, Vanil knew as he held the Fragment between his fingers, its yellowish glare in his lenses, that it was all a matter of choice. The illusion of choice; the Reality of choice.

Vanil had chosen this. He had chosen to take this. He understood that choice now.

The sanctified digits curled and ran in his palm, as if imbued with a life of their own, and, like the rest of the Matrix itself, they perhaps were, in a sense. They equated and shifted about themselves for a moment or two before becoming regimented by some unseen and all-seeing force and coiled around their neighbors into the semi-distinct pattern of a tiny, rotating double helix. This was also unexpected, but no less mildly interesting, Vanil allowed himself to notice silently as the Fragment shivered with static and continued to fill the shadowy subway platform with its pervasive golden glow. The Captain of the Masquerade had expected but a single helix; two was nothing short of unprecedented. It was as if there were, in unreality, two Fragments, bonded with all intention and out of absolute purpose.

It was duality given digital form, rather than singularity.

Vanil grinned in spite of himself, his fangs glittering in the firefly-glow, the black veins that heralded his now rapidly oncoming death visibly crawling up his neck and cheeks, lending the Merovingian executor an almost manic appearance, the double helix of the Fragment of the One reflected in his pitch black shades. "At last..." he said to no one in particular, his hidden eyes still following the static of the code in his upraised glove.

Quickly then, Vanil raised his gaze from the Fragment to the distant metallic rumble of the subway cars as they made their way ponderously towards the rubble-strewn platform, the distant glare of the forward car's running lights becoming less and less distant by the second. "Right on time," the Blood Drinker whispered with barely-contained glee as he glanced at from Phrack's prone form to his Masques and nodded in the direction of the gaping edge of the station platform, his fingers closing around the shifting static of the Fragment, the golden light that dripped from the sets of equations creeping from between his gloved digits in glittering shafts. "It's time for us to leave."

With a growl, Darminian stepped out from his corner, training one of his guns on the Merovingians as the subway squealed to a halt, its doors remaining shut for the moment, obviously having fallen prior victim to the artificial power drain throughout the platform itself, and the windows, so plastered were they with dirt, filth, and graffiti, that the only sign of habitation were the amorphous silhouettes of figures on the other side, their appearances and intentions both unknown. In response to his motion, the only female Masque; Ekizeba, turned on her stiletto heel as she put the other one to Phrack's dusty, blood-spattered back, her Beretta trained on the Captain's skull without the barest hint of hesitation. With a practiced flick of her finger, the wild girl clicked the hammer of her weapon back threateningly, the sound echoing throughout the whole station, even above the steamy roar of the subway cars.

"Don't try it," Ekizeba said evenly, her eyes staring into Darminian's from behind her shades, and, slowly, knowing that Phrack's death could be just as damaging as Vanil's escape from here and after quickly having weighed his meager momentary options, the Neonate lowered his gun. There would be another time.

Satisfied, Ekizeba turned away from Darminian and her hostage with a dramatic swirl of her fighting dress in time to see her Captain take his place in front of the waiting subway doors, the Fragment of the One clutched lightly in his glove. A victorious smirk on his face, it widened on Vanil's lips as the doors opened...and then, just as quickly, turned downwards once more.

"Found you," Ookami snarled darkly from the open doors, a legion of Dire Lupines at her back.

~V

**MatrixRefugee**

((Woo! very well done! ...and oy, another cliff-hanger. :: Laughs gently:: ))

**Vanil** · 10/17/2007 18:53:17

"Ookami," Vanil started as he quickly glanced behind him and saw his three Masques assembled in acceptable positions behind him, "this is an unexpected pleasure. We are...honored by your presence."

"Hrrr, you sought to rob me of my prize, Vanil," the Lupine replied evenly and with a canine growl as she extended her arms out to her sides and gripped the edge of the car entrance, her long claws squealing softly as they ran along the rusted, corrugated metal. "You sought to rob the Merovingian of his prize," the Exile continued as she put one razor-edged heel in front of the other and stepped from the confines of the subway train, the click echoing emptily throughout the dusty air, the eyes of her fanatical warriors burning from the darkened interior behind her.

"My dearest Ookami, I think that's quite the overstatement," Vanil replied swiftly, his own foot taking a single step back as Mechanical, LinksLife, and Ekizeba watched the exchange between the master of the Masquerade and the Lupine-Mistress in silence, their weapons at their hips. "Perhaps your auguries made a logistical error."

"THERE WAS NO ERROR, HRRR!" Ookami screamed, all semblances of minimal humanistic impersonation now slipping away from her in a rush of what a typical program might construe as the connection of rage, no matter how simulated or mathematical said connection might be. "You lied to me, ‘dracul!' Hrrrrrrrrr, you lied about the Fragment being where we struck and came here to where it and this human filth," the female Lupine spat venomously at Phrack and Darminian, the ladder of which had taken to a crouch beside his fallen comrade, "were. Hrrr, there was no error here, Vanil," Ookami continued dangerously.

"No error...but yours!"

Ookami lunged, and the platform once again burst into pandemonium.

Vanil threw himself back on his heels and jammed the Fragment into his coat. His pistols slid once more from his sleeves as he brought them to bear on the charging Lupine-Mistress, and there was the faint buzzing static of running Information as he pulled the triggers with a reverberating series of booming flashes. The rounds caught Ookami full in the face, who faltered in her wild attack and leapt back on all fours howling loudly with a shower of blood, her perfect digital flesh marred by tracts of black blisters, the wounds in her arms and sides smoking and hissing loudly.

Silver bullets. ‘Thank you, Tamur4,' Vanil thought to himself as he whirled around to face his Masques in the brief period of respite he had bought himself. Though he had managed to catch Ookami by surprise, the Blood Drinker knew the Lupine well, and knew well that in a straight battle, he would not be able to match her speed or power. "LinksLife, take Ekizeba and Mechanical and leave at once."

"What about you?" LinksLife responded immediately from behind his black bandana, the urgency of the situation evident to even him.

"I will leave myself in due course," Vanil snapped back in that accent of his. He could already see Ookami picking herself out of the corner of his eye as she forced the malefic silver bullet algorithm from her Residual Self-Image, her bleeding wounds closing on their own. "Now, go! At once!"

LinksLife knew better than to waste his Captain's time. With the briefest of nods LinksLife turned and launched himself towards the far steps out of the subway station, Ekizeba at his side.

Mechanical made to follow until he felt the Dire Lupine smash into his back. With an audible grunt, the remaining Masque hit the rubble-strewn floor of the platform as the Exile that had leapt the length of the station from the confines of the train raised his glittering claws to bury them in the human's back. Gritting his teeth, Mechanical curled his leg around his prone form and smashed the heel of his boot into the back of the Lupine's skull, sending the program flying forward with a canine yelp. Kicking himself back onto his feet, Mechanical raised his assault rifle and pumped a series of rounds after the Exile, sending up showers of concrete and red gore.

His attacker dead, Mechanical turned back to the stairs and saw that the Dire Lupines had poured from the now derelict subway cars and moved to block the exit. The leader of the pack splayed his dark talons out at his sides and flexed them menacingly, murder in the Exile's eyes. Racking his gun's slide, Mechanical raised the iron sights and pulled the trigger.

The weapon clicked. It was empty.

The Dire Lupines howled and charged.

---

Vanil saw that LinksLife and Ekizeba had both managed to escape, but the Dire Lupines had now surrounded both Mechanical and the Neonates. The flashes and cracks of gunfire could only mean that all three were fighting back in their own ways, but it also meant that Vanil was alone, face to face, with the Lupine-Mistress Ookami, who was one of the oldest and perhaps the most violent of Exiles alive.

Ookami was obviously beyond words. As the last of the silver bullets slid from her skin and clattered to her feet, she screamed like a banshee and was on top of Vanil almost before he could react. As the two of them flew back in a heap, the Captain of the Masquerade jammed one of his Eagles against Ookami's corset-wrapped stomach and fired again and again, blasting silver rounds through her at point-blank range, and showers of blood and innards burst from her back in spraying gouts.

All it seemed to do was encourage her.

Her yellow eyes wild with fury, Ookami picked Vanil off his feet and smashed her talons across his face, now more marred than ever with the black veins of binary decay. With a loud hiss, the Blood Drinker stumbled back; nearly dropping his guns so great was the pain. His pale flesh ran red, and a series of four great gashes ran the length of his face. His crimson cat-eyes burned hotly, his shades having been knocked askew by Ookami's counterattack. Slowly, Vanil raised one of his pistols and pointed it Ookami's way, his glove slick with the blood of them both.

"Hrrrrrrrrr!" Ookami snarled nasally, her fur-lined corset soaked with gore as she closed again on her prey, her long claws flashing and glistening with trailing blood in the dark. "I'll see that beautiful body of yours eviscerated beneath my feet, traitorous snake! You will not escape here alive, Vanil!"

A brief silence followed as Ookami continued to close the distance between the two of them, until Vanil spat a line of crimson from between his fangs and lowered his slippery gun, a chuckle that rang with finality coming from deep within him.

"No. I won't."

At that, Vanil's feline pupils rolled back into his skull as his RSI shivered with coils of disruptive static and disseminated as it fell to the floor, and Ookami's eyes widened, filled with surprise and hate, as her long,braying howl echoed throughout the subway tunnels that now crawled with Dire Lupines; all searching for the one thing none of them would find.

~V

**MatrixRefugee**

(( :: Her lower jaw is in her lap:: ))

**Vanil** · 10/19/2007 18:13:26

Ekizeba brought the phone to her pale ear, snapped the shutter open with a solid click, and pressed her gloved fingertip to the speed dial. "What happened back there?" she asked after a moment over the line, the vestiges of emotional concern blanketed by the cold, calculating efficiency that was expected of her as one of Vanil's Masques.

"I'm not entirely certain, duckling," came Tamur4's tinny reply from the other end. The Masquerade Operations program spoke quickly and succinctly, each syllable of every word laden with purpose. "There's a great deal of residual digital interference throughout the subway lines in this District, and I'm having difficulties pinpointing much of anything at the moment."

"'For now, we see but through a glass, darkly'," Ekizeba responded quietly. LinksLife shot her a quick glance from the driver's seat as they turned the next corner, but his features remained, hidden though as they were from behind his bandana, as composed as one could expect them to be. He had heard the quote many times, but never applied so accurately. It was exactly how the both of them felt at the moment, LinksLife knew as he glanced in the rear-view mirror and made a subtle lane change, the tires of their boxy black sedan trolling gently over the pavement that wasn't truly there.

"It would seem that way, wouldn't it though..." Tamur4 replied from her place in the Masquerade Mainframe that lay far beyond the Matrix and in the deep recesses of the tunnel networks of the Real.

"Is Vanil alright?" Ekizeba asked quickly, cutting the program off before she could finish.

There was a brief pause, but it seemed like an eternity to the girl. "Yes. He's moving, although I don't know where to," came Tamur4's reply at long last, her voice hinting at measured degrees of uncertainty. "For a reason that has thus far eluded me, Lord Vanil's movements have become very difficult for me to read accurately as of late. Note to self:" Tamur4 added to herself out loud over the phone line, "investigate possible tangent causes and effects of decoding difficulties with regards to Lord Vanil's pattern of traversal throughout the Primary Construct."

LinksLife glanced Ekizeba's way again from his seat. "What about Mechanical?"

"What about Mechanical?" Ekizeba repeated for Tamur4, so that the program could hear the question clearly.

Another pause followed before Tamur4 replied once again. "I'm unable to pinpoint his trace signal," the Operations program said, "which may in part be due to the residual uplink interference I referenced earlier, no doubt generated by the chaotic nature of Lord Vanil's chosen attack stratagem, but, for whatever reason, my trace programs are unable to locate him at this time."

Ekizeba exhaled slowly and glanced out the passenger side window at the Blues that crowded the sidewalk, even this late at night. Perhaps it was a matter of the District itself; Ekizeba herself was so far beyond such mundane, unreal matters now, even more so since choosing to serve Vanil as a Masque.

God, they were dropping like flies. Maybe she had been wrong after all. Maybe Vanil had made a mistake this time; a mistake that none of them might live to see through to the end.

Ekizeba composed herself quickly. Now wasn't the time for doubt. Vanil would disapprove, the girl knew. Now was the time for doing what had to be done, and Ekizeba would do so no matter the consequences or aftereffects. "Fine. Links and I need an exit."

"My dear, sweet Ekizeba," Tamur4 said in that funny little way of hers, in spite of the costly nature of their mission's success, "exodi are my specialty. I've one ready for you. The corner of Wabash and Wacker." Ekizeba could feel the small, crafty smile in the program's words, even if said program lacked even a Residual Self-Image as they knew of one at the moment, confined as she was within the Mainframe onboard the Masquerade in the Real. "We'll be waiting for you."

"I'm sure you will be," Ekizeba replied with a small upturn of her own lips before clicking the shutter of her cell phone closed with an audible snap and slid it into one of the many metal-rimmed pockets of her glossy black fighting dress. Running a pair of fingers through her wild black hair, the girl glanced out at the Blues and dark, damp city blocks as they sped past the window of the car.

"I'm sure you will be."

LinksLife said nothing. He just kept driving.

---

It is raining, and hard; she knows this for certain. She hasn't seen it rain like this inside the Matrix for a long time. The thunder is deafening, the lightning blinding. She squints and turns her eyes to where the stars should be and is met with only the gloom of gray-green digital cloud. She's dripping from head to toe in rain water. Her croc skins will be ruined. It doesn't matter, she remembers quickly, though, because there are no croc skins.

The gunshots bring her eyes back down to earth; to the pavement.

And she sees him die.

Chemuel awoke with a start. Her skin was drenched with cold sweat. Her thin sleeping linens were soaked with it, and the damp fibers clung to her flesh like a veil of dead human skin. The feeling chilled her to the bone. She raised a shaking hand to her eyes and rubbed them hard as her brain told her to steady herself. ‘You're losing it, Dylan,' half of her brain said. ‘Bonkers. Nuts. Out of your God damned mind.'

But then the other half replied. ‘Keep it together, Dylan, and don't listen to that skank over there. She's got no appreciation for perspective."

Jesus, maybe she was losing it. God she needed a jack and a smoke.

The intercom next to her mattress was buzzing insistently. It sounded almost like...rain falling; spattering wetly all around her against the...but no, Chemuel banished the thought almost as swiftly as it tried to come to her. Not here; not now. Not while she couldn't afford it. Groggily, the Captain mashed her small fist against the speaker box until it found the response tab. "What is it Therese; I'm really tired," Chemuel said in her best professionally sane voice.

"I think you had better get up here, babe," Aoide's voice crackled back over the intercom. "I think we've found it."

Chemuel's hand started shaking again.

"Chemuel?" Aoide asked after a brief period of silence. "You there?"

The buzz of the active speaker was the only reply either of them got. All Chemuel could think about was how much it sounded like rain falling; spattering wetly all around her against the blood-streaked pavement.

---

The tremendous metallic bulk of the Schrodinger's Cat slid slowly over the lip of ancient corroded steel, the residual lightning that buzzed about the vessel's hover pads lashing between the two surfaces briefly with a cacophony of bright azure-white flashes. As the ship righted itself, its forward running lights swept the looming darkness below, their penetrating beams of luminescence revealing a tremendously deep pit-like trench in the monolithic sewer floor below. Slowly, each lamp played its way through the gaping black abyss, searching for the one thing it had come all this way to find.

There it was. One of the searchlights swept over it and swept back, and the others quickly followed suit until the outline of the thing could be seen in relatively plain view. The derelict hovercraft was smaller than the Cat, and had been nestled between two towering outcrops of melted and twisted iron refuse, it's short and slender hull, like that of a dagger, lined with its own menagerie of hover pads that sat silent and derelict in the dark.

Aoide watched from her pilot's seat in the cockpit of the Cat as it hovered high above the other, hidden vessel, and knew, with a small smile, that they had found the Masquerade.

~V

**Vanil** · 10/30/2007 17:08:23

"Then we have a deal, Mr. Foxo?"

"I've told you. It's ‘Dr. Foxo.' My contributions to the Blue community will not be overlooked, least of all by you."

Agent Gray pursed his lips but said nothing. This human that sat across from him had proven to be one of their most efficient and effective collaborators amongst the flocks of humankind in the past, and the dry-witted sentient program had little doubt that he would prove anything but in this newest case. But that still didn't change the fact that Walter Foxo, oftentimes referred to by his Handle of ‘Iovai', could be somewhat...eccentric at times, and it was all routines like Gray could do to analyze and adapt for the operative's all-too human consistent inconsistencies. If only his directives had seen fit to send Agent Pace in his stead, Gray calculated silently as he studied the man before him. She was always more adept at dealing with and communicating between these creatures, for it was her primary purpose. Gray was a hostile disposal sequence, not a gregarious diplomatic processor.

And Agent Gray still had very little idea as to what Iovai really was, beyond useful.

"A proper doctor deserves proper recognition," Iovai reiterated after the silence had passed. "It's only proper. Only logical."

Logic. Finally, common ground, Gray reasoned quickly. The program placed his suit-jacketed elbows against the dazzling white table cloth that was spread out before them both and gestured with his fingers in acknowledgement. "Of course, Dr. Foxo. Whatever you want."

"Whatever I want..." Iovai said to himself in that atypical, self-considering tone of his. Even the good doctor couldn't deny, even out of his unending and selfless service to his fellow man through his collaborations with their Machine overseers and jailors, that there were at least some things he did want very much.

Agent Gray withdrew his elbows from the table as their dinner was served, but the program made no move to even prod at it. He hadn't come here to eat, and, aside from that fact, there really was no food anyway. The mousy, slick-haired maitre d' stood at Gray's shoulder and held up a corked bottle of expensive liquor. "Wine, sir?" the small man asked in a voice that was obviously self-doctored to sound as elegant as possible in spite of the unrealities of his current lifestyle.

Gray glanced over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow, as though the human had just offered him a plate of pigeon feces.

"No."

"I would appreciate some," Iovai said from across the way as he smoothed the gilded napkin that lay in his lap out for what seemed to Gray to be the thousandth time since the two had sat down for their discussion. The doctor was obviously a perfectionist; a quality which the Machines more than appreciated in their human collaborators.

"Of...of course, sir, at once," the maitre d' replied quickly, still slightly off-put by Gray's almost threatening response to his offer and scurried around to the other side of the table and tipped the bottle expertly, allowing the pungent red liquid to cascade gently downwards until it splashed and swirled easily at the bottom of Iovai's crystal wine glass. "If you need anything else sirs, do not hesitate to flag either myself or one of my waiters," the maitre d' recited as professionally as he could. With a short bow and a mechanically added "enjoy your evening," the small man smoothed his long white coat and strode from their table, glad to be away from Gray's icy, domineering presence.

Iovai took his glass between his fingers and swirled his wine slowly before taking a test sip. "Whatever I want," he repeated simply, his lips pursed in contemplation, but whether it was over the taste of the wine equations or what the man wanted was beyond Agent Gray's reckoning. Humans could be so absurdly tedious sometimes.

Finally, and after another sip, Iovai gestured with his thin, delicate glass for emphasis. "You know what I want."

"The end of the war," the Agent replied in stride, his iconic System shades glinting in the soft candlelight, as if to emphasize his words. Both human and program knew the extent of what those words implied, and what they would mean for the future of the Matrix.

"That is correct," Iovai nodded as he took his silver silverware in his fingers and speared the glistening, scaly skin of his spiced and pan-seared salmon. Slowly, anticipating the numerous flavor subroutines that would ensue from the fish's consumption, the doctor raised his laden fork to his stubble-bordered lips.

"That can be arranged," Gray interrupted.

Iovai pursed his lips again. "I believe it," the operative replied before sliding the salmon onto his tongue and into his mouth. It was perfect. Like everything else was, Iovai thought himself with a content smile as he chewed the pliant, red aquatic flesh slowly, savoring the taste. Savoring the perfection. "But what you are suggesting," Iovai continued after he had finally swallowed, "is an exceedingly risky venture."

"But worth the end of the war," Agent Gray said almost too quickly.

Iovai paused, another speared bit of salmon hovering just inches from his open mouth. It was as if Gray were picking the exact and most inopportune times to respond, so as to make dining as difficult as possible. "Yes," Dr. Foxo said, a mild undercurrent of irritation now evident in his already oddly-inflected voice. "It would very much be worth that. But to send Blues into that Construct, of all Constructs, would be extremely volatile to say the least," Iovai went on as he slid the salmon into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. "We have little way of knowing how this venture of yours would affect their neural kinetics or Systemic interfacing routines, and we might have to unplug them entirely to prevent the collateral damage that might ensue." Iovai was already shaking his head as he finished his quick analysis. "No, no, no. Sending Blues into there would be the equivalent of uncertain murder. We can't. You can't."

If Agent Gray was not depending upon his human compatriot's acquiescence to this operation, he might have laughed out loud. ‘You can't.' It was prime material. "You know that, were we to send human operatives of our own, their fates would be unacceptable," Gray said instead, his dinner still entirely undisturbed. "That would be...certain...murder."

Iovai could do nothing but shrug and down another bit of his wine. He felt the warm, baroque liquid run down his throat, tingling against his digital esophagus gently. "Yes. That's true, I suppose."

"Remember, Dr. Foxo," Agent Gray said slowly in reply, his head tilting to one side so as to emphasize his perspective and the perspective of his directives, the candlelight casting a long, warped shadow of the sentient program's exposed and wired earpiece across the dreadfully clean tablecloth. "The end of the war."

Iovai said nothing. Instead, the doctor watched the flickering ambient glow of the restaurant shine through his wine glass. It reflected in his tired eyes like flecks of fire. Absent mindedly, he extended a finger and dipped it into his wine, wetting the tip, and placed it on the crystal lip. Slowly, his outstretched hand circled the glass, drawing a long, low hum that sounded crystal clear against the respectfully quiet ambience of the restaurant. It was all the response Gray needed. "Then we have a deal, Mr. Foxo?" the program asked again.

"Dr. Foxo," Iovai replied immediately as he ran his finger around the other way, his wine glass humming the whole while. "And yes. Yes, I suppose we do."

"Kill Mr. Nihilson," Agent Gray said as he stood from the table, his food lying cold before him, "and you will save the lives of countless members of your species." The sentient program turned, adjusted his earpiece, and said to his back. "Kill ‘Vanil', and you will have what you want." Gray began to stride from the table to leave Iovai to finish his dinner alone.

The humming stopped him. His eyes narrowing behind his System shades in a connection of curiosity, Agent Gray turned on his heel.

Iovai was running his forefinger along and around the edge of his crystal glass in a long series of flowing, graceful patterns that drew a veritable symphony of sound from the simple and delicate edifice of code. Gray could calculate the old equations he had known his entire existence thrum with new life and purpose as the human circled the glass with his fingertip. Perhaps the good doctor had written such a symphony himself; the Agent had no way of truly knowing, for it was not his purpose. Had his purpose been to find connections of beauty in such things, Gray would doubtless have done so. But it was not his purpose, and so the program simply stood and watched without emotion or appreciation until Iovai finished his impromptu ballad of singing crystal.

With another shrug, Iovai withdrew his finger from the wine glass, grasped it with his other hand and took another sip before using it to gesture to Gray's uneaten dinner.

"You weren't going to finish that, were you?"

~V

**MatrixRefugee**

((I... did not see that coming.))

Morraeon: Verdammte, got cheated out of havin' a poke at Swotty-Fangs. Ah well, I can watch. :: Sits back to watch with a box of Demon Army goon nuggets::