unlawful | duplicity inbox / cw for nsfw shenanigans.

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duplicity inbox / cw for nsfw shenanigans.

TEXT / VOICE / VIDEO / ACTION
NOTE: felix generally responds to everything in text, even voice or video calls. expect 90% of his replies to be text-based regardless of urgency.

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[ Drowning's a painful way to go. The sergeant drowned, Ephemera thinks. If she was lucky, she was unconscious. Split her head open on the way down, her helmet lost in the struggle. If she was lucky, she didn't feel it at all when her armor dragged her under. But they've never been all that lucky, have they?

He hopes it hurt when Agent Maine died. He hopes it took a long fucking time. ]

always an angle if you work it. course here nobody stays dead so that's just fun.

[ He wonders if he and Carolina are going to do that dance. Maybe. Probably. But he doesn't know. It feels like he should. ]

not an ideal locale for us petty bitches is it

( or the perfect one. no theoretical reason they can't murder each other on eternal repeat until someone or something in the city makes them stop. sharkface is a broke bitch who doesn't have shit that he wants, and his business with carolina and washington and the moron simmies concluded on chorus. he's not picking a 1v1 direct fight with freelancer's top agent without an attractive incentive attached to the hit.

nah. it's fun enough needling her from afar, like prodding a cranky and sarcastic bear with a very long stick. )

speak for yourself. i'm not petty.

vindictive
manic
obsessed
try those on for size

sure.

[ It's not like this is a surprise. ]

but not petty. i got cause for the shit i do.

( mmmmmmmmmmmm weeeeeeeeeeeeeell )

sure.
i didn't work in a team so i can't say for sure what i'd do if someone blew them all to hell

they were my people and they died shitty fucking deaths. nothing else to say. somebody's gonna answer for it.

[ Not somebody. Carolina and Washington, specifically. ]

most people in this game die shitty fucking deaths, it's a prerequisite
but you do you dude

( like he cares. )

have you even scoped her out to see if she has her ai

[ There's really no point in going over it with Felix. Ephemera isn't in the mood to lay out all the brutal details, why it mattered. It's simple. It doesn't need to be anything else.

Only problem is, he hasn't killed Carolina yet. And he keeps wondering why. ]

she hasn't tossed him up as a project yet. doesn't mean anything yet.

[ He's stalked her a couple times, from a distance. Wasn't hard to do. All the new subs end up in the same places. ]

i don't know why the fuck she would when she knows you're here
you have the subtlety of a sledgehammer

if i wanted it subtle i would have hit her with a rocket launcher back on chorus and been done with it

[ Well. Subtle and quick aren't the same thing. And he wasn't looking for either. ]

this place needs different tactics.

even your definition of subtle is completely fucked
why i was expecting anything else from a guy who modded his rig for a surprise flamethrower is beyond me

( to be fair, neither locus or felix brought him on board for his subtlety. )

she's a bitch with or without her ai
a well-rounded bitch
a bad bitch, as the kids say
how are the laws here

you know why i use a flamethrower? because even the freelancers and all their fancy gear don't expect it. weren't trained to counter.

[ Somebody can have all the fancy gear in the universe, but you blast them with napalm and they'll flinch. Maybe not for long, maybe not for long at all, but it's always enough for an opening. It's something in the lizard brain, something deep and instinctive that shies away from fire like they've all gone primitive all over again. ]

tough when you go against a dominant. they'll fuck you over for that and make sure everybody sees it. people care less when it's subs, unless one's contracted.

[ Which he is. A complication. ]

probably because they never needed to learn how to counter it
they moved in a pack like well-fed wolves, look what happened when they split
picked off one by one, by one of their own

( and that makes carolina all the more enticing of a target, no washington on her six. )

easier to circumvent the laws when you have a clear outline
my very rough and early take is that the down is an ungoverned shithole abandoned to the vultures
nice and homey, massive advantage
except with the vultures comes the hawks and all ungoverned shitholes have some form of de facto jurisdiction marked by the territory
they've got some lame ass names too
bulldogs? fuck off

they turned on each other. no loyalty. no trust. of course it went that way.

[ Connie was the only one of them worth a damn and look what they did to her. ]

territory and protection rackets. step to them and they'll get involved and they've got numbers. home turf advantage. no armor, though. but cause too much damage and the powers that be come sniffing around.
can't have that.

[ This time, he really will have to be subtle. ]

budget spartans
guess that's what happens when you don't kidnap them at birth, rookie mistake

( and then the iiis who were cannon fodder sent to die, and the ivs who were the most human iteration out of all of them backed by a metric ton of advanced gear. most of them fucking insane, who lived and died for the cause no matter the cost or sacrifice.

the freelancers were completely human, prone to human fallacies and weaknesses. super soldiers in name only. )

there's really no way to get shit from back home?

( felix tucks his thumb into his helmet, sliding the picture into view. )

not like unit cohesion is hard. Just need to give a fuck.

[ Freelancer imploded. Its agents turned on each. They killed Connie like she was nothing. And across the city, Ephemera pivots and throws a knife at the wall. ]

aside from having it randomly show up, no. guess we’re stuck with what we’ve got.

[ And what they can make. Like his new rig. ]

unit cohesion also depends entirely on the personalities within that specific unit. you can try to make shit stick all you want but if someone's doused their body in oil while you're holding a lit match two feet away from them it's a little harder to not set shit on fire when you come together.
freelancer had carolina as their best and brightest but she was a fucking hothead
probably still is

( ruthlessly competitive, is what the reports said. she worked well with washington when facing off against felix and locus, but freelancer was years ago. enough time for her to come to jesus, realize her mistakes and move to correct them.

still. people like that don't ever wholly change. )

lowkey sucks ngl
for you mostly but where there's a will there's a way

point stands. they could've made it work if they gave a fuck. Connie was the only one worth anything.

[ Even now, he rages about that. Connie tried to do the right thing. She was a decent fucking human being. Swung sharp sometimes, paranoid, but she tried. And the captain was in love with her. Ephemera has a tattoo for her, a ring to mark the fallen. She wasn't one of them, but she could have been. And then she died, betrayed by her own goddamn team. ]

there sure is

( connie. connie. who — )

connecticut

( the defector, predating even agent maine. right. )

remember her in the reports
i was a heavy book nerd for a few months after washington showed up on chorus
read everything my sweet benefactor was kind enough to send me, all the juicy redacted shit i'd never have been able to get my hands on otherwise and everything else i squeezed from price when he was feeling chatty

( sometimes his chattiness depended on whether or not felix had him by the throat against an airlock. )

that experiment was a fucking trainwreck from the start

go fucking figure.

[ No surprises there. Despite all that talk about finding new ways to fight the war, nobody involved the project actually gave a fuck. It was all posturing and internal squabbling, petty to the end. And then there was Connie, and she wanted to do the right thing. To this day, Ephemera isn't entirely certain how she and the captain met. But she asked him for help and they came to back him. One last chance to do the right thing, try and make a difference in the world.

Just like every time before - with the Insurrection, with the mutiny - it blew up in their faces. Ephemera thumps his fist against his chest, redemption printed bold like a brand - and breathes out slow. They tried. Connie tried.

None of it mattered. ]

yeah. people did a lot of fucked up shit trying to end the war. no surprises there.

not me
all my fucked up shit came after the war

( except for that time he shot an unarmed pilot on reach, but he'd have killed a lot more to get ortez off that fucking planet in one piece. anyone in his way. a fucking spartan. a crying child. he'd have shot his own sergeant and fireteam leader if he hadn't already had his head blown open by a focus rifle in new alexandria, god rest his soul. felix was scooping his syrupy brains out of the collar of his uniform on the way out of atmosphere. )

two kinds of people i guess

we did a lot of evil shit. officers called it the greater good like it wasn't a numbers game.

[ They tried to have lines, his team. Shit they wouldn't do, wouldn't ever touch. Don't torture anyone. Don't shoot anyone who's surrendered. Don't kill kids. By the end, they'd crossed all but one and that -

Yeah. That didn't go so well, did it? Their mutiny, their act of defiance, what did it change? Three survivors to that mess, of them half-starved and wounded, wearing their parents' armor. An ugly, brutal business. And their defiance afterward didn't change nearly enough. ]

trying to do the right thing didn't go so well for us.

no good deed goes unpunished

( this is exactly why felix doesn't think or talk about the war, as if ruminating ever did anyone any good. the picture flutters back into darkness as felix lifts his thumb and rolls his helmet away from him, tipping the bottle to his mouth until his eyes burn.

he half-rolls onto his belly, thumbing his wet lashes and clumsily knocking the bottle of whiskey against the bedside table. the glass bottom finds the tabletop eventually, skidding out of reach. )

got a salve for that
go get a drink or get laid man jesus christ you're a killjoy

[ Yeah, no. ]

enjoy your hangover 🖕

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unlawful - 2021-08-07 17:07 (UTC) - Expand

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