Thursday - Futuristic
Jun. 3rd, 2010 10:34 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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comment_ficWell, we're coming to the end of the week and our last theme is... the Future! No, no, I don't mean a week or a year from today. I'm talking the Jetsons, or Firefly, or even post-apocalyptic "damned dirty apes" future. Think you can handle it? Show what you think is going to happen hundreds or thousands of years from now with your favorite characters/pairings.
As always, follow the rules:
Remember, please be kind and gentle to our codemonkeys by prompting correctly. (see above Planet of Apes reference? We do not want that on our hands. ;-) ):
As always, if you don't see anything that captures your interest please take a look at our lonely prompts.
theme=futuristic
As always, follow the rules:
* No more than three prompts from one fandom
* No more than five prompts in a row
* Keep spoilers out of the prompts until a week after air-date
* If your prompts get answered feel free to leave new ones
* Have fun and be nice! Remember to thank you ficprovider should your prompt get answered!
Remember, please be kind and gentle to our codemonkeys by prompting correctly. (see above Planet of Apes reference? We do not want that on our hands. ;-) ):
Leverage/Firefly, the team, "To the black"
Criminal Minds, Reid/Morgan, the hovercraft seems to be on the fritz again
As always, if you don't see anything that captures your interest please take a look at our lonely prompts.
theme=futuristic
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Team Free Will (1/2)
Date: 2010-06-04 01:44 am (UTC)------
This was a job for Gabriel. Infiltrating close-knit cells required finesse and arrogance and an easy smile. Gabriel was the best at it. He knew the government militias better than any other agent at HALO Strategies, Inc. because Gabriel had lived on the outside under deep cover, pretending to be one of the aimless masses.
But Gabriel had done his job too well. He learned too much about the people he was supposed to be monitoring and grew too close to them, grew fond of them. Gabriel went off the grid three months ago, abandoned HALO, his garrison—his brothers and sisters, really—for the working class "mud monkeys" outside the compounds.
Castiel found himself overwhelmed by the task before him. He had never been outside the dome of the main HALO compound. Those fifty square miles had provided everything he ever needed—clean water, acceptable food, and even better than a job, HALO offered him a purpose.
Languages, and the symbols of communication, had always come easily to Castiel. He enjoyed the puzzle of figuring out correct syntax or learning how the precise order of brush strokes could change the meaning of ancient Chinese characters. These skills did not go unnoticed. Teachers tipped off HALO executives who recruited him into service of the company. They talked of preserving the HALO way of life, of protecting the outside world from itself. The lure of doing something noble, for the greater good, had appealed to him even at twelve.
Training had been intense. His fellow recruits became like family. Gabriel and Uriel, the pranksters. Anna, the studious one. Raphael, the troublemaker. Castiel had been the quiet one. He used this to his advantage. In the sparring ring, Raphael consistently got in painful blows, but never could anticipate Castiel's fake with the right. Because he never expected it from “the quiet one.” While Uriel used both size and bluster to intimidate opponents, Castiel found silence to be just as useful.
It was the human part of intelligence gathering that Castiel avoided. His superiors encouraged this, too. Every HALO agent was trained in the basics of each intelligence collection operation, be it human, signal, imagery, or other. During training on how to collect human intelligence, Zachariah continually reprimanded Castiel for staring. For speaking so gravely. For not using colloquialisms and idioms. Zachariah said in order to get information out of the "mud monkeys" one had to get close to them and to get close to them, one had to be able to relate to them. Zachariah said Castiel could never relate to the "mud monkeys." It was that assumption on Zachariah’s part that had Castiel outside, in field, among people he was finding to be very different from himself.
After Gabriel’s defection, the garrison’s intelligence gathering success had faltered. Which meant Zachariah was under pressure from his bosses to produce or prostrate himself at the altar of Michael. Without Gabriel, the garrison lost their most valuable asset in tracking the militias. Following their communications and deciphering their codes and encryptions only worked when Castiel knew where to look for them.
The government militias had gone quiet. They knew HALO was watching, Gabriel had likely told them. Had likely told them how exactly to go unnoticed, how to avoid HALO-operated broadband, and which virtual meeting rooms were not as underground as the militias had been led to believe.
Until Castiel had picked up a local cell’s trail. One of their members had received travel documents using government-encryption on a wireless hub run by a HALO front company. It was the best lead Zachariah's team had received in months.
Team Free Will (2/2)
Date: 2010-06-04 01:46 am (UTC)At first, Castiel had felt out of place on the outside. He had expected to always feel out of place on the outside. The air was thicker, warmer too. Streets ran haphazardly into each other at odd angles. Buildings had no cohesion. He expected, too, that he would be treated like an insider. He found that instead he was treated like everyone else, no better no worse.
His task was to find the mark, the person who had the HALO network to download travel documents. Castiel had decrypted the documents quickly and traced the mark back to the speakeasy. He was a regular, though not so regular that Castiel had seen him in nearly eight days of waiting.
Zachariah had assumed that because Castiel had never met the mud monkeys—the outsiders—and that because their background and upbringing was so utterly different from his, that Castiel could not empathize with them. After all, he could not even affect the necessary ticks needed to relate to them. As with many other things, Zachariah had underestimated Castiel.
When Castiel's mark finally walked into the speakeasy, Castiel put his training to work, trying to relate to the outsiders the way HALO thought they must be treated. But he tripped over the basics of informal greetings, and stared a little too long. The mark didn’t seem to mind.
The mark smiled at him. "Gabriel told us you were," he paused, "different."
"Oh,” Castiel said, dejected. "So you know I’m--“
“An angel,” he said, then winked.
Castiel hated the word, the epithet the outsiders used for HALO agents. “What are you going to do to me?” The man was bigger than Castiel, but could be easily handled. Assuming his friends were not waiting with stunners nearby.
"Do to you?” The man laughed. “I’m going to recruit you.”
Castiel stared. The man did not seem deterred.
“If it helps, we all also hate Gabriel. He’s a dick. But he says you’re the one we need. The one HALO would never suspect.”
“What makes you think I would join you?”
“Because. Gabriel says your just like my brother—you like thinking too much. When was the last time HALO let you think for yourself?”
Castiel was still staring. But he could feel himself losing this battle of wills to the man. He had, after all, lost the battle within himself long ago. Unlike Gabriel, he had let the fear of the outside keep him loyal to HALO. Zachariah had been right about one thing, Castiel could not relate to the outsiders. Because Zachariah had never given him the chance. Until now.
“I'm Dean.” He held out a hand. “Welcome to Team Free Will."
Re: Team Free Will (2/2)
Date: 2010-06-04 04:58 am (UTC)Re: Team Free Will (2/2)
Date: 2010-06-04 05:06 pm (UTC)Re: Team Free Will (2/2)
Date: 2010-06-04 10:34 am (UTC)Re: Team Free Will (2/2)
Date: 2010-06-04 05:07 pm (UTC)