03 | Text

[khajidont]

[This is Jaime's first post to the network as Blue Beetle, and the name displayed on the tablet has changed accordingly. For any hackers out there, it can't be linked back to him as he's not actually using his tablet; he's posting directly from his armour.]

Hey. Blue Beetle here.

I know that after all this, the last thing we're thinking about is the UE's soldiers, but something's been bugging me. Everyone who was on the distraction team with me, you must have noticed the new soldiers, right? They didn't have anything like them on Elmer's world, and I'm pretty sure that war was an all-hands-on-deck sort of deal.

The normal soldiers were really well equipped as it was, but these ones must have been metas. They were stronger, and faster. It was so busy on the field that I don't know whether or not I was seeing ones with different powers or if they all had the same skillset going on, but the ones I noticed could fly and had elemental powers.

And they were small. Like children.

[Which is deeply off-putting.]

I'm not sure what their deal is, but consider this a heads-up for what the UE's got in store, and the kind of technology we might find on them. For some reason, I don't think an army full of tiny meta-soldiers is something they just managed to find one day. If any of you ran into them too, I think it'd be good if we could get some sort of list of how much they can actually do.

Oh yeah, one last thing. Since we don't exactly have space suits around here yet, if there's any maintenance that needs to be done outside the base, let me know. I'm guessing we don't have a whole lot of people who can breathe out there, and my suit's built for space travel.

Comments

[crocodilesmiles]

Meta?

Um, but -- what kinds of things were those kids doing?

[khajidont]

Humans, but with something extra. Like superpowers.

Mostly? They were fighting us with everything they had.

text.

[motherofnemesis]

like metahuman powers

[ she's done this one before, okay. the two and two she automatically puts together is one she hates. ]

how small? what age range height do you think?

text.

[khajidont]

Yeah, exactly.

Four feet-ish, give or take a few inches. I couldn't get a great look at any of their faces with their armor on but the age range for that height is probably around 7-9 yrs.

reaction;

[velveteened]

( he sees this from an idle scan of the network, pausing to give it a proper read-through that he instantly regrets. project chimera, that scientist had said, only possible because of you.

he clicks off his tablet before even contemplating responding. )

Text

[icy_heavens]

[Hitsugaya is of course not the least bit disturbed at the idea that these new soldiers appear childlike. Because . . . well. If you could see him, that'd be pretty obvious.]

I've heard it said that they've copied the abilities of those Transports that had been taken.

Text

[khajidont]

[That's terrible news.]

Seriously? I guess that's a possibility. And another reason why we should get a list going.

But that doesn't explain why they used kids.

text;

[originalgaangster]

Meta?

What's meta mean?

text;

[khajidont]

It's a word for people with superpowers where I'm from.

text

[infiltrative]

[ comm ID just simply reads as RUSH. ]

If this UE is as big and bad as I heard, those were probably artificially created. Genetic engineering's not that hard.

text

[khajidont]

That's starting to look pretty likely. Those poor kids.

Do you know much about genetic engineering?

[firstroar]

They were suffering.

[khajidont]

[And then Jaime makes the world's most tragic face at his tablet.

He really wishes this place could just give him a person to punch. That would make things so much easier.]

Everything about this is wrong.

[But he's not speaking Jaime now, he's speaking as Blue Beetle, and that means he needs to actually think about this.]

Could you tell if they were drugged like the normal soldiers were, or was it some other kind of control?

text

[anklets]

"like children"

text

[khajidont]

They had armor and masks on so I couldn't tell for sure. But it looks like that's exactly what they were. Cloned children.

( anon ) text / encrypted

[gevurah]

They've never deployed metas before.

Perhaps that was a trial run.

[khajidont]

It's looking that way. If their cloning tech worked out, they might have doubled their numbers by the time we see them again.

text

[vaccination]

what the fuck is wrong with these people? they better just have soldiers with stunted growth not kids.

text

[khajidont]

They're willing to do anything to win.

It's looking like those were kids. Cloned kids, but still kids.

voice;

[acemedium]

[..Blue Beetle? What is that, some kind of superhero name? It's a little dorky.]

[...Well, anyway]

Is that why we were there....?

permatext!

[khajidont]

[Excuse you, Maya, Blue Beetle is a very cool name. Everyone knows that the mere presence of beetles strikes fear into the hearts of criminals everywhere!]

You were there too?

[Damn, new roomie. That sucks.]

But yeah, it's looking that way. That's why they'd bother in the first place.

[text]

[troublemancy]

[He has a lot of questions, mostly about the jargon that's going over his head, but this one first.]

Why did they look like children?

[text]

[khajidont]

Because they were children. It's looking like they were clones.

text;

[getoffmyearth]

One day someone is going to have good news about this whole flarking situation. One day. It has to happen.

And there are more space people around here than you might think.

text;

[khajidont]

They've got coffee up here. Which I don't actually drink, but a lot of people look pretty happy about it.

[...Small victories, hey?]

There are space people where I'm from and I'm not one of them. I've just got the tech for it. Can you breathe in space too?

text

[hyanaimne]

When you say elemental powers, are you referring to magic or this "meta" you speak of?

text

[khajidont]

That's a good point. I was thinking meta, but there was definitely some magic mixed in there too.

[clinical]

I encountered rapid-healing and immortality, a broad range of elemental magic, abnormal speed, telekinesis, shape-shifting, flight, and resurrection of the dead.

Setting aside the moral bankruptcy of their cloning ethics, allowing them to keep this advantage will be a serious problem in the future. It may be prudent to hinder their ability to produce more and/or their ability to have created them in the first place.

[He really hates the ethics of time travel warfare and the idea of uncreating so many clones is disgusting to him. But.]

[khajidont]

Resurrection of the dead? They can resurrect their dead now?

[Well, crap.]

Okay yeah. We need to make sure they can't create any more of these guys. For the clones' sake too. Blue says they're suffering.

permavoice;

[taijiya]

[She's still really glad for that text-to-speech button.

Not so much when she actually hears the content of Jaime's post. Not that she hadn't noticed the similarities between the abilities of some of the miniature figures and the things she's seen from Transports. And not that she didn't realize how diminutive in size the supersoldiers were, though perhaps she's been banking on them being something less... awful.

Mostly because child soldiers immediately brings Kohaku to mind, which would be bad enough already even if she hadn't been shooting at the few she'd had to face. Fabulous!]

Are you positive they're children? They may have looked like it, but...

[But fuck the UE, that's what.]

permatext

[khajidont]

[Sorry, Sango. He'd use voice as well, but for something this public... he might be a bit too recognizable.]

It looks like they're clones.

Clones are basically copies of people. They've mimicked the meta and magic abilities of the Transports they kidnapped, so that means they've taken their genetic material (that's skin cells, hair, blood, saliva, etc.) and used them to create new versions of them.

They're made, not born. But that doesn't mean that they're not still children.

[voice]

[highfrequency]

Like children?

permatext

[khajidont]

Yeah.

Cloned children.

video;

[bittertears]

They have no right to use children in such a manner! Those vile...[this is a touchy subject for Alice.

you might wanna say something before she flips out.]

text

[khajidont]

I know, it's awful.

We need to try to do something about this too.

[She won't be getting any arguments here. UE, you are super shitty.]

video;

[collectedloot]

They were... using kids as soldiers?

text

[khajidont]

Yeah. It's looking like they're cloned children, but... they're still just kids.

video; hope you don't mind the late tag :<

[fintastic]

Like children? Are you sure they're not just really short humans?

[ Please don't be children, she was way too distracted with just getting out to notice for herself, but she can't stand the thought of children being used like that-- again. ]

text; I never mind late tags! c:

[khajidont]

I really wish I could say that they were. But they looked and sounded like kids. From what we know, our most likely bet is that they're clones.

permatext.

[duty]

Would the UE be so desperate as to do something to their own children?

[khajidont]

They were desperate enough to nuke us.

We don't think that the children existed until the UE made them. They were probably clones.

[text] LATE TRAAAIIIN

[anotheryosuke]

..youre not actually noamed blue beetle are you

[You really have no way to be sure around here....]

do the little ones really have superpowers or somethin they looked pretty borig
just sorta stood there and walked around a bit man are you sure theyre kids even
maybe they just wanted them for a beter line of sight??

[text] ALL ABOAAAARD

[khajidont]

It's more of a code name.

A better line of sight. What, you think they wanted a better view of our knees?

[trustycrowbar]

Like children?

I encountered something like that down in the lower labs when we were storming the facility to get those transports out. Broken tanks, with small footprints in the fluid leading away.

From the looks of the rest of the lab around it, it looked like the UE hadn't gotten around to actually figuring out how to keep them under control, either. It wasn't pretty.

[khajidont]

Oh man. Seriously?

Okay. That definitely changes things. What sort of things did you see in there?

[voice]

[oldsoldiersneverdie]

Hell. I thought they might have been trying to run cloning experiments with our genetics, but I wasn't sure if they'd go from-scratch or try grafting on to an adult.

Guess I know now.

voice --> private

[khajidont]

Yeah. Sorry to break the bad news. Um, if you've got any other questions about the clones, I've been trying to get as much info on them as I can... but if you've got a sec, I actually wanted to ask you a question, Mr. Summers. You've done this whole time traveling thing before, right?

[imperfectness]

[Where to start?]

Apologies, I didn't read all of the responses here yet, but it seems that the current theory is that these smaller soldiers were lab-created?

[khajidont]

Yeah. I'm almost certain that they were. Are.