S&S: The Nightmare
Title: The Nightmare
Characters: Fin, Primalis, Will Lennox, Fig, Epps
Summary: Fin typically doesn't need to be made any more deadly than he already is. When he does needs it though, he already has an ace in the hole. There's just one problem: his past makes him unwilling to use it when everything about it reminds him of the Nightmare.
Notes: The Awesome Beta for this chapter is aughoti who helped me make this chapter so much better than my first conceptualization of it. ♥
This ficlet spans from when human Irregulars start popping up (before they realize that they're facing aliens instead of more virus-infected AIs of an unknown, but still Earthly, origin) to just before the Panama base is attacked.
It's kind of funny, but I realized that I'd accidentally included a facestealer!Prime joke/reference in this only after the fact.
"Are you ever going to use your -?"
"No," Fin said flatly.
"You know, now would be a really good time to -"
"No, Primalis."
"Okay," Fin said, "Got any bright ideas?"
"You could -"
"No," Fin cut off the suggestion before Primalis could even fully voice it. Fin already knew what he was going to suggest and didn't want to hear it.
"Infinitar."
"I said no!" Fin didn't care if he sounded like a whiny brat over the comm. He was not going to use that powered armor, no matter what Primalis said.
"Are you done being bull-headed about this yet?"
"Not yet," Fin replied stubbornly as he viciously stabbed another Irregular, this time through the braincase to put the infected human out of his misery. They couldn't even be Ghosted after being infected because the virus corrupted the parts of a cyberbrain that allowed the transfer of a person's self into a disembodied mind that existed as pure data, a "Ghost.” All their attempts to recover infected individuals had instead left them with sick, twisted facsimiles of the people they had been before or mere scattered data that not even the best minds could reassemble into a thinking, feeling person.
Irregular humans were becoming more and more commonplace and that didn't settle well with Fin at all.
He thought that they had fixed this virus, damn it!
"Why do you hate it so much?" Primalis asked in frustration as he leaned against the railing.
Fin huffed, glaring at the thing in question. He crossed his arms, "If I have to rely on a thing like that..."
"So it's pride then?" Primalis shook his head, "That's just..."
Fin turned his glare towards Primalis, "Do you even realize what it looks like?" He flung his arm towards it, not seeing how Primalis couldn't see what was wrong with it. It was staring him right in the face.
Primalis just looked at him blankly.
Fin threw up his hands and stormed out, leaving Primalis to look at what was supposed to have been a gift but had instead turned into a point of contention between them.
He drifted closer to it, before he stopped, eyes widening in horrified realization.
Oh.
Oh.
He shuddered, looking upon his creation with fresh eyes. He hadn't looked at it that way before but... No wonder Fin had rejected it if he looked at it and saw that instead of...
Unfortunately, no matter how much Fin might hate being reminded of that - of the Nightmare, as it was referred to these days - there was a reason that there was a resemblance. No matter how unfortunate a connection in Fin's mind, this powered armor was still the best fit for his fighting style.
In the course of designing the powered armor for Fin, Primalis had incorporated as many of the features that made the warrior such a deadly fighter into it as possible. He might not have included anything expressly for the purpose of intimidation - like the Nightmare's oversized pauldrons, plumed crest, odd cape-thing, or the numerous spiky projections - but his attempts to make a powered armor that would assist Fin rather than slow him down had finalized into a design that was what the Nightmare would have been without the intentionally psychologically threatening additions that Fin neither needed nor wanted.
The armor was tall - much taller than conventionally made power armors and roughly the same height as the Nightmare had been - but Primalis worried that it was barely going to be big enough to go up against the large Irregulars that had begun appearing out of nowhere while still keeping Fin's reflexes from being more damaging than helpful when the wrong buttons got mashed.
The reason Primalis' final design ended up with a blank face was because under the polished surface, it offered Fin much more visual information over a greater spread than binocular optics would. Most armors intended for use in combat had similar sensory centers, since having an articulated face in a fight was just asking for it to be shot, smashed in, ripped off, or otherwise destroyed. The Nightmare hadn't had that excuse and instead used its facelessness as more of a psychological attack than anything else.
This powered armor had horns because Fin had horns on his helmet and he liked them. Not to mention that it allowed Primalis to have additional redundant communications antenna, ensuring that Fin would get even better reception in combat zones. In retrospect, Primalis was just glad that the Nightmare hadn't had horns - as odd as it was that its designer had let an opportunity to invoke still-lingering devilish imagery pass by - because would have been another point against it.
Primalis had taken his cue to include the long, six meters of "hair" that fell down the armor's back from that very odd system Fin had. It might have been one of the madman's more... bizarre ideas, but it definitely worked for Fin. The fact that the Nightmare had a crest, useless as it had been, hadn't even crossed his mind.
The claws?
Of course Primalis would include those. Using them was part of Fin's very basic and very violent set of pseudo-instincts. It didn't matter that most of his higher-level thinking preferred to use a sword in melee, it would still be like declawing a cat and equally counterproductive. Where a cat without claws might resort to biting to defend itself, Fin had... something much worse to fall back on that was even more dangerous than when he was reduced to the level of an unrestrained, frenzied, and violent animal. Primalis no longer feared the animal that Fin had been the first time Primalis had laid eyes on him so long ago, not since it had eventually gentled itself under his hands and Fin had come back at Primalis' call. Nightmare or no Nightmare, Primalis would have included the claws even if they had been the only part of the powered armor Fin had protested.
"Not going to suggest I use it?" Fin asked sourly as Primalis caught him on the way out.
"It's your choice," Primalis said.
"You're... not going to nag me?"
"No," Primalis said, shaking his head, "You've made your point."
"That's... good," Fin said slowly.
"Just..."
"What?"
"You're not the Nightmare. You protect people. What you use to do that doesn't matter, whether that's with your sword or... a powered armor." Fin stiffened and Primalis knew he'd hit the nail on the head. The android sighed, "Just keep it in mind. And... I am sorry." For not seeing it before went unsaid.
Fin gave an unhappy nod, and muttered a short, "Fine."
"Thank you."
"Where is our backup?" Fin snarled.
"Still fifteen minutes out," Primalis said, ducked behind a ragged plate of metal and out of the direct line of fire. He was busy focusing on the comm channels rather than dodging, after all. If Fin didn't want to join him there then that was his prerogative.
"Damn it," the android growled, even more feral sounding than usual, "There's too many of the blasted things."
Primalis remained silent. There was something that Fin could do to even the scales, but if he suggested it out loud then the stubborn android would probably say no on principle. "We could switch places if you need a break," he said instead, lifting his PDW slightly.
"Hell no," Fin snarled, "You have no armor, no thermoptic camo, and are armed with a crappy personal defense weapon. You are out of your peace-loving head if you think I'd let you. You're mine to protect." His frustration levels were visibly rising as the deceptively decorative strands of blond hair began to move against the wind. "This is my fucking planet," he growled, flecks of Irregular red appearing in his normally black irises, "When you fuck with my planet, you fuck with me. I'm going to show them what happens when you do something so fucking stupid as that.”
Primalis quieted. Well, he thought with resigned annoyance, there goes the neighborhood.
The sudden possessiveness of Fin's speech and behavior clearly revealed which particular set of protocols were currently the most prominent in Fin's mind.
Primalis lowered his PDW as Fin gritted his teeth and seethed, struggling with his temper. "You do realize that if you used the powered armor you probably wouldn't have had that trigger switched?" Primalis half asked, ignoring the red-marred glare Fin sent his way. The would-be pacifist sighed, "Go. Just don't come back to base before you calm down. And for goodness sake, at least try to remember that a few of your people are out there as well."
Honestly, if Fin would accept and use the "preventive medicine" that came in the form of the powered armor, then he wouldn't have to deal with this unfortunate quirk of his madman-created psyche. Probably. You never knew when it came to that man. They were still turning up relics of his attempts to take over the world centuries after the fact. For the moment at least, appealing to Fin’s possessiveness in this mode by reminding him there were people that “belonged” to him still on the battlefield made it less likely he would to just go ballistic and kill everything in sight.
"My people," Fin muttered, "Right. Don't want to kill my people." He blinked, eyes refocusing from the half daze he had been in while kicking around a few unfortunate aliens even as they had been having their conversation. Fin's autopilot was a scarily efficient fighting machine, even if it didn't have anything on the real Infinitar. Fin leapt nearly straight up and forsook his sword entirely as he clung to the closest alien's chest with extended claws. He wrenched the plates apart as it screamed, trying to knock him off only to fail as tendrils of seeming-hair whipped out and sliced off its hands. Fin reached into the revealed cavity and, drawing a tortured cry from his... prey, he ripped out the dim and flickering core and tossed it aside.
Fin was moving onto his next victim before the first even hit the ground.
Primalis looked away when horrible, sadistic laughter rose up over the din of pained and angry alien shouts. Fin was going to feel terrible when he was back in his right mind again. He hated it when he lost control like this.
Primalis accessed the comm once more with a resigned, "Belay that backup, would you? Fin's got it... handled... now."
"Are you sure?"
An unholy alien shriek made Primalis cringe, "Very sure."
"...I see. Rescinding deployment of reinforcements," the spotter’s disturbed tone told Primalis that the background noise had been clear enough for him to hear.
Primalis closed his eyes in relief, "Thank you." He closed the comm and rose to his feet, heading for the loudest source of shouting and screaming where Fin was sure to be. Just because Fin wasn't completely berserk wasn't a good reason to let him wander around in this kind of state without someone keeping an eye on him. It was dangerous... Just not to Fin, not physically anyway.
"What the hell is that?" Will asked as Fin scaled the obviously specialty-made body, jumping from the floor to the knee, to forearm, to shoulder and came to rest on an armor pauldron.
"Heh," Fin chuckled halfheartedly, "This old thing? Powered armor, of course."
"Old thing?" Will glared, "You've had that hidden away this entire time and never said a word about it?" Not even for a spar? his plaintive tone asked.
"Well... Yeah," Fin shrugged, "I don't really like it. If we didn't need it now... Bad memories, you know." He shrugged uncomfortably. "You, uh, mind helping me hook in?"
Will blinked up at where Fin was perched on the large armor with an uncomfortable set to his shoulders and kindly didn't ask. "Sure," he said instead, "So... How does this work? You do realize that I've never known anyone who actually had one of these things, much less gotten them decked out, right?" The strictly versapiens tech worked quite a bit differently than it would for swapping out a human braincase to a more advanced body.
Fin quirked a smile, "First we've got to open it up." Duh.
"Oh come on," Will rolled his eyes.
Fin laughed at him.
"Well?" Will asked.
Fin obligingly placed his hand against what looked like just another piece of armor, but after a few moments, Will could hear the hum of the powered armor’s internals begin to come online. After a few more moments, armor began to move, plates sliding back and away from the torso, resembling ribs being pried apart in a disturbingly macabre way. .
It was a sight that Will, personally, would probably never get used to, no matter how many times he saw a fellow soldier's braincase pried out of their frame for a full-frame maintenance appointment, switching frames, or... death.
Fin made a humming noise as Will crouched to join him and peered inside the unusually spacious cavity.
Then again, considering that Fin's entire body - as opposed to a human's braincase - was supposed to fit inside, it was actually extremely cramped.
"What?" Will asked. Was something wrong? Will honestly wouldn't know. It wasn't like they gave Powered Armor 101 lessons to humans besides the obvious: they're big, strong, are versapiens-specific tech, and you should stay out of their way. No, Hunter-Killer or not, you don't get to play with these toys because you have a puny human brain and can't drive the hardware.
Fin flapped a hand at him, "One second." He leaned inside the cavity and felt around inside it. With a sudden aha! expression, he leaned back, pulling a few cords with him. "Here's the fun part," Fin said brightly, "You get to stick me with a bunch of wires." He waggled them at Will, "You know you want to."
Will snorted, "Are you propositioning me?"
"Is your name 'Fig' now?" Fin asked as he laid the wires down and pulled off his helmet. Will raised an optic ridge at that, and it only rose higher when Fin removed the tie that kept his hair back.
"I don't know," Will said, watched as Fin ran a hand carefully through his hair, "Is there a reason you're primping like a fluff-brained civilian's idea of proper lady?"
Fin froze, directing an appalled expression towards Will. "What?"
"Well?" Will snickered at the look on his face.
Fin twitched then shuddered, "Ugh. Don't even go there." He parted his hair and shifted it over his shoulders. The quick change in hair style managed to make Fin suddenly look bizarrely feminine to Will, reminding him that Fin really would make a weirdly attractive woman. It was just the versapien’s androgynous "I don't care to make myself look like some burly manly man because I am compensating" attitude coming through at an awkward moment. No one sane was going to call Fin "girly" to his face if they knew anything about him, not when he was a tried and true badass.
"Those," He jabbed a finger towards the handful of wires, "go in the jacks in my spine." He hitched his thumb over his shoulder. "I've got another one that's at the base of my head, which is why I was 'primping,' as you oh so kindly put it, but I'd prefer to get that one myself, thanks," he added dryly.
"Okay..." Will shrugged, watching as Fin methodically removed his chest armor, revealing the black underskin. He carefully picked up the array of laughably tiny cables in his hands, "Which one goes where?"
Fin made a face and turned around, exposing his unarmored back.
The sight made Will sober up. It wasn't every day, or to just any person, that someone like Fin would trust someone else with his back. Fin probably could have managed to do this by himself, even if it would be quite a hassle, but was letting Will assist him anyway.
Fin started from the top and began naming what went where in the bored monotone of someone who had a set of instructions drilled into their head over and over again until they could probably repeat them in their sleep. Or recharge in the case of versapiens.
Will connected each cable as Fin walked him through it until Fin looked like some sort of tentacle monster with the number of connectors spouting from him and there was only one left to go. Fin turned back around, careful not to jostle the connectors, despite the fact that they were all set very firmly. It probably wouldn't be a very nice feeling to have any of them yanked out unexpectedly.
"Hey," Fin said, annoyance spread across his face, hand held out, "Are you going to give me that or are you going to keep standing there, staring at me with that idiotic expression on your face?"
Will blinked and handed over the cable wordlessly.
Fin tilted his head forward and slid the cable home. He blinked, shuddered, and closed his eyes. He lowered his arm gingerly. The why was obvious when the powered armor's arm twitched slightly, jostling Will. Fin's eyes cracked open slightly, "You should probably get back."
Will, no fool and remembering the human version of Powered Armor 101 quite well, took several hurried steps backward.
"Thanks," Fin said and closed his eyes once more. After a mere second or two, the powered armor's hands moved with surprising smoothness to cup Fin as it rose to its full height. "This is actually kind of weird," Fin commented randomly, "You're shorter than me now."
Will snorted, watching as Fin's eyes opened again and he eased himself into... what was effectively himself. Once the smaller-Fin was tucked away, the gaping hole in the larger-Fin's chest began to close, ribs sliding together to form the strong latticework of armor and hiding the more familiar frame from sight. After a moment, Fin carefully rolled his shoulders and he shook his head, sending long strands of gold swishing through the air.
Fin moved cautiously as he got used to the differences of the body he had never used. The smooth, black face glimmered as it reflected the lights overhead.
Will watched as Fin flexed his massive, three-fingered, claw-tipped hands. Something, some odd feeling that Hunter-Killers were notoriously lacking in, shivered down his metallic spine at the sight of his friend with all his predatory instincts laid raw and bare. Something about Fin had always been different, not to be talked about, but noticeable if you got to know him. Fin wasn't the same as other versapiens. But this was Fin, his friend. Was he actually... afraid of him? No. That couldn't be it. It was probably anticipation or something.
Fin bent down and claimed the sword that had been built to the same scale as the armor. With a flick, Fin ignited the blade in a shimmer of green. It was the same shape as his favored blade.
Will noticed the odd way that Fin relaxed at that, even if he didn't understand it. Had he been expecting something different? "Everything checks out? We didn't make any mistakes or anything?" Will asked.
The blade powered down, energy flickering as the weapon dimmed to nonexistence once more. Fin turned his unnervingly featureless face toward Will, "Looks like. No problems."
"Spar?" Will asked.
"Sure you want to?" Fin asked, raising his sword. The long, thick golden cords that fell smoothly from the back of Fin's pseudo-helmeted head coiled in the air in a distinctly gravity-defying and unnerving way that had Will wondering if the hair on Fin's normal body was the same, rather than being an odd sort of vanity from the usually strictly practical versapiens, because weaponized hair? Just... Hair? Really?
Then again, weaponized hair would make sense for Fin, even if it occasionally led to him being called "she" before people had the chance to hear him speak.
Will grinned despite the reversal in their heights - the armor had given Fin a meter-plus on him - the fact that Fin's claws were even less qualified for the title of "hands" than Will's own, the weirdness of the whole... hair thing, and all the odd reactions Fin had about the weaponized body. "Definitely."
"It's your funeral," Fin said, and something in his voice told Will that those words weren't entirely spoken in jest.
He nearly said "I'd like to see you try." but something stopped him. Will shrugged instead, "We've got to get you into the swing of things somehow, don't we? Wouldn't want you to be all rusty when we’re out on the field."
Maybe Will could try to get Fin more comfortable in his own skin, as obsolete an expression as it was, before that happened, First willing.
Will, of course, had no idea how ironic that particular thought was, since the person who had been known by that title was the very person who had the powered armor crafted and attempted to cajole Fin into accepting and using it in the first place.
"Holy shit," Epps said, elbowing Fig, "Fig. Look."
"What?" Fig turned around and saw, "Fuck. Fin?"
"Hey," Fin said, giving a nonchalant wave before he casually wedged himself between the two stunned Hunter-Killers to sit at the table with them rather than on the table like he usually did.
Will was grinning as he sat down opposite of them.
"The hell," Fig exclaimed, "When did this happen?"
"A few hours ago," Fin said.
"Fuck that," Epps said, "When the hell did you get a powered armor?" He prodded Fin's heavily armored forearm, "And it's a custom design too, or I'm a Natural."
Fin snorted, "And you would know that... how?" He ignored the first question entirely.
"Hey," Epps said, "I might not be able to use them, but I know powered armors. That? That is not a standard design by a long shot. Don't even try to tell me that it is."
"Alright, alright," Fin conceded, "It's custom."
"Whose?" Epps asked, "Seelie? Artificer?"
"Primalis, actually," Fin admitted.
"Damn," all three Hunter-Killers breathed.
"Primalis?" Fig finally asked, aghast, even though he was just as stunned by Fin's answer as Will and Epps were, "Your Primalis? The Civilian Coordinator, I-hate-fighting Primalis? He knows powered armor design?"
"Actually, it was more a Primalis who was interested in damage control," Fin said. They didn't need to know that part of the damage control he was talking about was Primalis attempting to keep Fin from going off like a loose thermonuclear warhead at the wrong moment. Primalis had told him that tidbit of information a while after he had given up trying to actively convince Fin to use the armor.
"You didn't say that it was Primalis who designed it earlier," Will managed to get out. It was actually rather disturbing that someone so... calm, polite, and peaceable could design such an unnervingly perfect weapon to bring out all of Fin's lethality.
"Well he did," Fin shrugged.
The three Hunter-Killers looked at each other, "We weren't exactly sure what it was that had you two so buddy buddy around each other, but if he knows something like that, then no wonder."
"You think...?" Fin's featureless face stared at them. He planted his hands on the top of the table, "No. That isn't it at all. I like the fact that he's... Primalis." Fin floundered quietly, wondering how to put what he felt about Primalis' Primalis-ness into words, even after knowing him for so long.
After a beat, the three Hunter-Killers shared another glance before they quietly started snickering. Epps patted him on the shoulder. "It's okay, Fin," he commiserated, "We completely understand. It happens to the best of us."
"That's why Fig doesn't count," Will added with mock severity, as he gave Fig a playful shove over the tabletop.
"Hey!" Fig protested but he didn't stop grinning.
"What?" Fin's head tilted slightly, which only made the humans laugh harder at Fin's obvious puzzlement, "What are trying to get at?"
"Don't worry about it," Fig said with a broad grin, "You'll figure it out eventually, you poor bastard."
Fin growled lowly. Obviously, he was being conspired against. They didn't deserve to understand Primalis better anyway, he thought peevishly as he glared at the Hunter-Killers.
Fin fingered his sword for a moment before he let his hand fall to rest on the gun. Some of the guys had cobbled it together for him from an old defense turret they had found in one of the store rooms. Sometimes they were the best buddies an android could ask for simply because they came up with some of the coolest random toys out of nowhere.
"Warning! Warning! EXTE forces are closing," the cool voice over the base-wide comms announced, "Prepare for a White Nova burst and initiation of ECM protocols."
Buried deep beneath layers of still uneasily worn armor, Fin smirked.
Bring it.