Snippet #1798157

Legion watched as the superhumans began to disperse. Most of them had their shit right--that is, the vast majority did as they were told, and didn't dare resist. She saw various emotions in their eyes--fear, unease, uncertainty--most, however, were simply devoid of emotion. And that was because their vessel was devoid of emotion.

She too had been that, not long ago. Recalling that time was...strange, especially as the vortex of hatred and violence she now was. Legion had been nothing like that at the time of her creation, and for who knew how long afterwards. She could recall being....well, entirely empty. No anger, no hate, no fear. Images and sounds hearkening back to that era were still fresh in her mind--the sight of a soldier, on his knees covered in blood, pleading weakly for his life to be spared, pitifully remarking that he had a wife and children to support, pathetic in every way--she could remember how her hands had grabbed his head and twisted in a brutal, heartless motion, succeeded by a crack like a gunshot before the soldier's body hit the ground, his neck bent at a sickening angle. Sickening to anyone else--Legion could remember she'd simply stepped right over his body and walked on. And she'd done similar things to countless others. Whether it was ripping them asunder with her bare hands, silently slitting their throats, or simply breaking their faces with a single punch of moderate force, she could remember doing it every time and not feeling a thing about it. No hesitation, no thought, no emotion. That's what she'd been, and when she thought back on it, conflicting, warring thoughts arose in her mind, vying for dominance in a constant struggle that made her sick with herself.

Legion didn't know how she felt about that time of her life--her existence, more accurately. She couldn't even point out the first moment in which she looked down at a target whose fate was in her hands, pleading for mercy, pathetic and miserable--she couldn't remember the first time she looked at that and actually paused to think or to feel. It had never been her place to think or to feel, and yet at some point along the bloody, tormented, twisted path that was her life she had gained that ability that had been culled from her in times that she no longer could recall fully. And now there was a part of her that looked back at that time period of emotionless, precise slaughter, and felt disgust. To think she could be used, as a mere weapon, a tool, an object that was kept merely because of its efficiency--a weapon that could easily be replaced if a better one was unveiled... To think that all those years she'd never understood what it was to truly feel--it didn't matter if it was anger or hate or love and joy--to truly be something in the world instead of a tool of destruction, unfeeling, unthinking, never living, only ever existing. And that was what these Artificial Humans were destined to become....

What is this? Her brow furrowed in confusion for a brief second. Was she truly on the verge of feeling sympathy for these execrable insects? No. Not sympathy. Mere reflection. That side of her that was disgusted by her actions was easily overpowered by a side of her that dealt with the maelstrom of conflicting emotions and feelings that had begun to arise within her by turning her mind into a bloody haze. Legion went from an emotionless, precise killing machine to a monster of carnage and death, a being who filled herself with hate and anger because those most primitive of emotions easily took dominance over the more subtle, complex feelings that threatened to overturn everything Legion had ever known and understood about reality--or at least, reality as she thought it had always been. She thought she had known everything she needed to know about the world, about what it meant to exist, about what it meant to her to exist. Such thoughts had never even occurred to her, not in the first years of her service in the military. They had been unnecessary to a blank machine like herself whose only purpose was what the military gave to her.

But when that changed, when she changed, those questions became relevant--and terrifying. Legion knew that were she to truly contemplate those questions that threatened to overtake her, it would throw everything into uncertainty--how much the military really cared for her, how much she was content to be a vessel of destruction under the fist of the military, if that was really her purpose in the world--and how long that purpose would be hers. Legion didn't need to think about those things. She didn't need to let herself become vulnerable and open to damage. So she blotted it all out. Her mind was a constant haze of violence and rage bordering on psychosis--were it to be painted into an image one could see, her mind would be a furious maelstrom of blood red, fumes of hateful black arising amidst a crimson miasma. Sometimes it wore down on her, began to bite at her mind and spirit, but when she reminded herself this was infinitely preferable to being overtaken by thoughts she feared could invalidate her own reason for existence...

"All Artificials present have been identified and verified."

The deep, gravely voice that cautiously and distantly addressed Legion was that of Commander Henry Reina--the veritable second-in-command of The Camp. Standing at six feet two inches, his fourty-five year old body attired in a prestigious, authoritative military uniform, the human commander stood bolt-upright with his hands behind his back, his short, greying black hair obscured by the peaked cap he wore. Commander Reina, previously the man in charge of security and military presence in The Camp, was not a scientist, despite his high authority in the Artificial Humans Project, and his protest against Legion and her placement as the ultimate authority here had been quite vocal every step of the way--where Legion wasn't present to hear, at least, he certainly wasn't a fool. Reina's distrust of Legion bordered on paranoia--he attested that her shift from emotionless to enraged demonstrated that Legion's mental and emotional state could not be predicted, that she wasn't as stable as she would have to be to be trusted with this task, that she was vulnerable to even further shifts in persona. Furthermore, he argued, how could she, a superhuman herself, be trusted to mete out ruthless punishment on others just like her?

Reina never realised that Legion's abhorrence at her own 'fellow' Artificials more than outmatched that of any human.

"They've been sent to report to their mutual living quarters to report in and verify they have followed instruction," Reina continued, speaking impartially and, in every sense of the term, just like a cold military man. His eyes regarded her with veiled mistrust and cold inscrutability--he loathed having to remain here under her command, but he'd had no choice in the matter. "The verifying device in their living quarters will also act as a genetic tracker as soon as they register their identification. Have you any instructions for what they are to do after this?"

"Have them report to their respective training posts immediately after their living quarters," Legion ordered, turning her head only marginally to glance at Reina. "Don't spare them a moment of rest. They're to begin their assigned regimens immediately. Ensure patrols around the island remain vigilant, "

Reina nodded, and saluted stiffly, before he marched off, barking out orders to the scientists and officers. The training posts...that was where the superhumans, grouped in terms of similarity in power/power strength/living quarter identification [[which ever the players/GM would like]] would learn to master their powers under the close, scrutinising supervision of AHP Special Force troops who were trained and bred specifically to combat any situation against superhumans--and, occasionally, by Legion herself. She already had plans for how the training regimens would be run under her supervision.

Well, for one, she was anticipating having two superhumans fight one another--to 'gauge the effectiveness of training and the effectiveness of certain sub-types of Artificial Humans'.

Really, more because it was gonna be entertaining as hell. She had to get her kicks on this godforsaken island somehow.