ricochet.

Independent Mass Effect roleplay account for Miranda Lawson. Navigate for more information.

[dnamade]

WITHCERBERUS:

He raises both hands and stands. The voice is damnably familiar. He’d know Miranda Lawson, Cerberus’ traitor and humanity’s savior, anywhere. Kai Leng wonders if she would glean the same from him. Possibly. She’s always been a sharp one.

There are two options. He could attempt to activate his cloak, and vanish. But there’s the added risk that she could fire on him, damaging the data that he’d so painstakingly tracked down. He wanted, no, needed it intact. 

The second is to turn, play cooperative, and steal away with the data in tow the first chance he gets. There’s the added risk that she will know who he is even under the darkened helmet he wears. 

He chooses the second, turning to face her. 

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” he says. “I’m willing to share.”

        Miranda doesn’t know him from any other suited-up looter. There is an electric spark behind her stance, no need for a weapon drawn. In the decaying atmosphere of the room, any impact could be enough to rupture a suit, and her biotics are as sharp as they’ve ever been.

        “ You say that as if it’s yours to bargain with. ”

        That alone strikes a chord of suspicion, hesitation, and the tone that carries it flits around her mind like an echo.

        She knows this person.

        She knows him at the end of a blade, a puppet to a cause that betrayed its purpose long ago.         " It all makes sense now. Barring the part where I’m meant to take you at your word, Kai Leng. ”

[dnamade]

IAPUX:

He doesn’t take it. Not at first. He has always had a paranoia about taking medication from people other than his doctors, even if it’s just an Advil, a couple of blasted Tylenols, but when the pain throbs impatiently behind his left eye, he throws caution to the wind. He takes it and swallows them dry. 

“Your organization has menacing purposes,” he tells her. His throat feels tight. “I am a little confused you’ve made it as far as you have.”

Because how long have the Alliance tried to take them down? Not that Kron cares much for either side. But Cerberus watched and used him without him knowing it. He isn’t bitter. He’s sorely bitter.

        He isn’t the first hauled in by the scruff of their neck, and he won’t be the last. Miranda sees candidate after candidate; many of them don’t make it past the infirmary, lost in the shuffle of recovery. All he gains from his bitter chiding is the wheeling of a chair over the floor, placed near where he rests, and Miranda taking up the seat as her own. Another day at the office, after all.

        “ Then you know who we are, who brought you here. Unless you’d like to me elaborate? ”

        There’s a datapad in her hand, softly whirring as she inputs information -- presumably his. “ But first, we’ll need to test your cognitive function and awareness. Care to answer a few questions? You can decline, of course, but you’ll find you won’t get very far without them. ”

[dnamade]

ARIELSHEPARD:

SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE

There is no need for her to appear in person, she is everywhere & nowhere, within every gigabyte & terabyte of data, within every stream of Reaper code, in every note of ominous music. But there are a few people who have known her from the age before, that she will appear in person for.

Her cold & skeletal hands hold Miranda’s face, they cradle the image of the woman who she chose to reconstruct the body of human flesh she needed to continue her journey in the past age. That was the age when she was confined to an ill-fitting person suit, walking amongst organics as though she were one of them. Things are very different now. 

She smiles. It is deeply unsettling to bear witness to her sinister smiles, but how could she not upon seeing her friend in the white dress of a new & improved Cerberus. Black lips politely touch each of the woman’s cheeks.

❝ Miranda, I bless you. It has been a very long time. ❞

{ @dnamade }

        There reaches a point, in the confines of Miranda’s office, when even the pervasive hum doesn’t drill a hole into her skull quite the way it should -- not since the day of the visions, vast and strange and inexplicable, shadows at the corners of her mind. As unsettling as they were, they allowed her to understand the creature that Ariel Shepard would go on to be -- who she’d been the whole time.

        Knowing that fully, Miranda surprised even herself by being able to gaze into time and space unfolded and remade, to view her as someone who had, with not a shred of the pretense that the Emperor once wore, assisted Miranda without question, someone who helped save her sister.

        Miranda stands and bears the presence of that terrible smile, the prickling chill, and finds she needs not feign one in return. Whatever the Emperor’s nature, she is, after all, still that of a friend -- a dangerous acquaintance, but the same had once been said of Miranda, too.

        “ Too long. Here I was, beginning to think you’d grown too busy. ”

[dnamade]

IAPUX:

@dnamade

Cerberus. Human supremacists, terrorists, his new employers. His left eye throbbed and he reached for a plastic cup filled with three pills–chemical heaven–and knocked them against the cold linoleum floor. No depth perception, he reminded himself. He’d forgotten. He was half-blind now and the corner of his lips twitched as he inhaled the smell of sterilization, the pain nestled behind his left eye throbbing and growing until it rattled his skull.

There was a click where the door was. If he knew Miranda had just walked in, he didn’t show it.

        Her heels are sharp click-clacks on the tiling. If she means to disguise her presence ( she doesn’t ), she certainly does a poor job of it, striding over the fallen cup and the scattered medicine not to where Kron reclines but the medical station kept under lock and key. Another round of medicine is produced and in her grasp, extended as her footfalls come to stop beside him. She waits, expectant.

        “ The pain will subside. Try again. ”

[withcerberus-blog]

The station is dark. Quiet. Like the tomb of some ancient human, all of their servants sealed away inside to die with them. Bits of leftover debris hang in the absence of complete gravity control, even as something in the midst stirs them. There’s one final moment of low light, and then the flash from a helmet’s lights.

Kai Leng wouldn’t normally be picking through the remains like a scavenger desperate for parts. He had been Cerberus’ top operative before the end—never wanting for anything, truly. But he had learned to survive long ago, the blown out scars of cybernetics lacing his face, his body as a not so subtle reminder of his new station.

Things had not changed. He still didn’t trust the aliens to not monopolize on this moment to gain an advantage. He’d gathered what information he could, pulled strings from the dark, but it still wasn’t enough. His information led him to the base he currently rifled through, seeking to gain the information locked away.

He fumbles with the back-up power, cursing the gloved fingers of his environment protection armor. His voice carries, eerily. Kai Leng stops, then resumes his work.

@dnamade

[dnamade]

        From the moment her shuttle docks, Miranda knows something is wrong. The emergency seals that should be in place open before her, the reserves of power already rerouted to the central station. Someone else has been here.

        There’s no way for her to be certain how recently. Weeks ago? Moments? It puts a certain sense of urgency in her steps, however, navigating the half collapsed halls as quickly as low gravity will allow.

        The light of distant stars funnels through the protective viewscreen, catches the armor of someone very animated, very busy.

        Very irritated, a rasp against the comm systems of her suit.

        “ Consider this both your first and last warning. Step away from the console. ”

[dnamade]

        Test post. Tags pending, too.

        Regular. Bold. Italics. Both.