5356/Failure To Communicate

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Failure To Communicate
Date of Scene: 06 July 2017
Location: Overwatch Earth <OWE>
Synopsis: Reaper and Sombra have a heart to heart about her recent pranks.
Cast of Characters: Reaper, Sombra


Reaper has posed:
An operation had been run - and with every operation came the debrief. It was a common thing that Reaper did, a way to wind down, to go over what happened, to think of ways to do it better next time. To address problems between fellow soldiers, get those issues dragged out into the light where they could properly wither. It was, in essence, a hold over of military technique adopted for a brand new multiverse. And as usual, Sombra's calendar chimes with the prompting to join the debrief on the operation in Numbani. And as usual, the location is a 'blank room', drawing power from an internal generator, sound proof and white-noise bubbled. Holographs slowly rotate in pause, showing an overlay map with color pinpoints - incomplete as of yet, based on eye witness accounts and camera work more than Sombra's far more prolific data gathering. The most unusual thing about this debrief, however?

No one else was invited this time.

Nothing to worry about, right? The usual canter of Gabriel's chili-laced chocolate 'Mayan Mocha' steams quietly on a table, the Reaper having found long ago that things worked out better if the more 'living' members of any debrief were alert and caffeinated. It was a boring thing, after all, rehashing old details and nit-picking, but the alternative was having no plan next time stuff like this came up. More unusual? Gabriel - Reaper - isn't here first. Although his mask sits upon the table as well, staring accusingly upwards. Bits of it cracked, the whole thing bent in half with groves where fingers squeezed. Didn't think it got THAT damaged by Jack, right? But enhanced soldiers will be enhanced soldiers. Bending metal was the least of their ability.

Sombra has posed:
    Of course there's a debrief. It's something she's gotten used to now, with Reaper always scheduling these things. But still... why didn't he invite the others to this? Might be because Septette isn't a member of the Concord, and the Flotilla are still getting their membership finalised. But Tesla is a member, and still... she's not invited. It's easy enough for her to check that she's the only person who recieved this invite. Hmmm.

    The hacker is clad in her usual getup, walking into the lone room as she peers at the screens with the info she supplied. Still, it's weird that Reaper isn't here yet, he's usually one to be here early and ready, eager to growl out constructive criticism in order to make sure the next mission will go better. A sigh leaves her, and Sombra sits down in one of the chairs, pouring herself a cup of Mayan Mocha. As she does so her glance falls upon the mask, and she leans forward to pick it up. Curiously she turns the mask around, studying it without a word. Even if she has seen the face behind the mask, it's a bit strange that he left this here, isn't it...?

Reaper has posed:
There is no loud thump of boots. No growled, reverberated bass of a voice on the edge of yelling. No hiss of annoyed breath. Not a whisper of sound - save the soft surrusus of metal shavings poured down silk, or sand across plastic. An echo's echo, faint tickling at the back of the neck. The holographic image flickering briefly, before there is a large CLUNK from the doorway. A soft, chirping alert as hydraulics hiss, the chamber slowly sealing itself shut. Once the edge of the door has thumped against the interior, aligned dove-tails slide out while a pneumatic wheel clanks - turning in an automated process. The material of the construction preventing signal chatter in or out - to keep debriefs and stage planning from being intercepted, of course! Time to begin the debriefing, then?

    And still, even as lights dim and the holograhpic image brightens, there's no sign of Reaper. At least, until the faint indraw of breath from the left as he forms - and a screech of the power conduit being pulled from the wall in a sudden shower of sparks. Lights clunk as they die, the holographic image flickering out. Red blinking led diagnostics lights keep the place from being -completely- dark, like lost, dying stars along the wall - although, in reality, they just highlight precisely how little can be seen. A silouette pacing slowly pacing away from the last few flashing sparks, disappearing once more. The faint warning warble of atmospheric alerts - it is a sealed area, after all. One can even hear the fans along the vents climbing down as their revolutions seize.

".. Glad you could join me, chica." Comes Gabe's voice. It's -wrong-, as always; Whatever you call that -thing- he makes sounds from now. But more importantly? She's still got his mask in her hand. His broken words are practically -purring-, rather than the usual growl and snort of his normal mannerism.

Sombra has posed:
    The faint echo catches Sombra's ear, and she turns her head slightly, purple locks bouncing around her shoulder. The flickering holovid casts a shadow over her face, her eyes narrowing faintly. Why is the room sealing itself...? This feels wrong.

    Turning in her chair, she looks around... only to turn her head sharply to the left, all while the room goes dark.

    "Que...?!"

    Abruptly rising to her feet, Sombra stumbles back from her seat, eyes wide as she studies the sinister silhouette. Her hand grips the mask tighter in its grasp, and she swallows as she begins to open communications. But alas, the jamming signal is already there. Can she even work around it if she can't focus? Because right now, her attention is all on the Reaper in front of her.

    A nervous smirk crosses her lips as she backs up against another chair, her free hand gripping at it. "Gabe...? What are you doing?" He... sounds non-angry. Which does not fit this scenario at all. And despite the smirk on her lips, she looks tense.

Reaper has posed:
"Considering."

Comes the broken voice again, sounding curiously thoughtful. The figure only briefly sillouetted as he crosses in front of slowly pulsing red diagnostic lights. Well call it a 'face' as he's looking down, before his chin rises. In the next pulse, he's no longer there, his voice coming from the other side of the small, small chamber now. Slowly working his way closer. A red splash across a smirk, like blood on .. well, we'll call them 'lips'. I mean, it's pretty close. Sort of. "Thinking about how much you've benefited Talon. And me, amiga. We've worked together quite well. You're the best in our world.." Metal claws lift. One hand dips beneath the other - a faint *click*. Metal dropping away, to clank to the ground. "Eh. But we're not in our world anymore, sabes? Lots of talent." The other gauntlet drops to join its brother. The sound of joints popping, a faint sigh of relief like the exhalation of a long buried corpse. Well, we use the word 'joints' loosely as well. There's just something not quite right in how anything fits together. Bad angles. "Makes me start thinking about all the little jokes. Makes me think.. maybe, I'm losing my effectiveness, having to switch focus so much. Reputation, verdad?"

A foot stomps down - the toppled chair a blurr in the brief pulse of red light as it rights itself, 'hands' gripping the top. Gabriel turning it about, straddling it for a moment. The Flesh Lives. His voice still purring, dark and unsettling and -wrong-.

"Hey, relajte. Take a -deep- breath-" Even as the fans whirr to a clunking stop. No more oxygen. "-.. and just think. What's the worse that could happen to you? Really?" Something like lips split. "What's the absolute -worst-?"

Sombra has posed:
    Sombra stands still as she watches Reaper, staring up at the face she's seen once before. The first time she saw it, there had only been curiousity on her face. Without doubt, the hacker has seen a lot through her years as a member of Los Muertos, then as a Talon agent. While she has a calm expression, it doesn't quite reach her eyes. Her hand is tense as she grips the back of the chair behind her. When Reaper disappears in his usual smoky fashion, she jumps, eyes darting to and fro. There. A nervous grin plays across her lips as she turns and begins backing off again slightly. "Heh, you know me, Gabe... best of the best," she states, even as she watches him take off his gloves. Is it merely symbolic, or...? When he hints to her not being the best in the multiverse when it comes to what she does, she swallows. "Even out here, you know nobody can hack like I do." It's true. It has to be true.

    Otherwise, she's in big trouble.

    Surely she knew he was annoyed at her jokes. The doors, windows, vents, the nicknames... but they always worked well together. Right?

    The stomp makes her jump slightly again, stepping back behind another chair. Relaxing is rather hard right now, especially when he acts like this. It's easier to handle him when he's angry, when she knows how he will react. This? This is new. Her eyes are hard as they peer down at him where he's taken a seat on the chair. The moment the sound of the fans cease, Sombra's eyes widen. Mierda! Without turning her head, she glances to the side. "This isn't funny, Gabe," she mutters, all while she moves her hand, pointing it towards the fan. It's digital, she can get it working again... she hopes. Purple lines extend from her fingertips as she begins hacking... all while keeping an eye on Reaper.

    "The worst that could happen to me? You don't even know, so I couldn't explain it to you." If she were found by /them/, then that would be it for her. Except Reaper doesn't know. The global conspiracy...? He wouldn't understand.

Reaper has posed:
The fans respond - flickeringly. The real trouble is they're dying. There's no power, see? Backup powercells are missing. Well, 'missing' - no doubt Reaper knows precisely where they are. No power, nothing to hack. Oh, she could no doubt do a few fancy shenanigans to draw power off the diagnostic lights and get the fans running for a few more minutes - at the cost of absolute darkness - but that stale taste on the back of the tongue means this room wasn't precisely built with long term life support in mind.

Welcome to Analog.

"Hm? Es broma, chica." States Gabe, voice shifting in tone, fingers drumming on the back of the chair as he leans forward. Leaning his weight on the back of the chair, crossing his arms - smoke leaking from the brief breaks.

"Best of the best." He almost seems to taste the repeated phrase, tilting his head. Sillouette of shadow in the slow pulse of blood red lights, a dead thing half way between existing and not - save for the eyes. Oh, those are definitely alive. All of them. "Yeah. Well, you'll have no worries here. This is your safe place, Sombra; Nothing in." A broken grin. "Nothing out. Not until the doors rust off. But you won't be around that long." Either a comfort or a threat, it's really hard to say. Chin dips again, and in the next darkened moment he's gone once more. A whisper of sand. A hiss of metal.
"Let's talk about mission focus, si? Keeping your heart .... " A pause. "..on the job."

Sombra has posed:
    An annoyed 'tch' leaves Sombra when she realises just why the fans aren't working. And then there's the fact that he doesn't need to breathe either... How much time can she buy with just absolute darkness? A minute or two? So be it. Immediately Sombra points her hand towards the lights, hacking them to direct the power to the fans. Keep them running on low, change settings... as low as possible, just to buy herself time.

    Inwardly she curses herself for not leaving a translocator outside the area. But then again, she /never/ imagined that it would come to /this/.

    The room plunges into darkness, the only light coming from Sombra's lightshow as she hacks the powercells. Then she summons a screen, typing away as her fingers never stop moving, her eyes on Reaper where he sits. The screen allows enough light so that the room isn't completely dark, but still... It does cast an eerie light over the place. Her other hand finally drops the mask, and it clatters against the floor. The very next second, she's drawn her submachine gun. "Open the door. Now." Her tone is serious.

    Then he disappears again, and Sombra frowns, a drop of sweat running down the side of her face. How long until the power runs out to the fans? "I'm not the one who wasted time brawling with old friends while we managed to get the primary and secondary targets of /my/ operation, Gabe!" she hisses, turning around with the screen following suit as she types away, the text running across the screen. Where /is/ he? For now Sombra is tense, ready to act...

Reaper has posed:
Laughter, slow as a pendulem's swing. Darkness descends as the fans whirr back to a creaking life of sort - one can almost feel the cool air brushing a forehead. The sweet scent of -outside- on the tongue, albeit tainted with the faint rubber of hoses. Strange how loud the fans sound after having gone silent for so long. Nothing but the dull pop of interior metal shifting as it heats up slowly in the sunlight. The soft whisper of metal fillings down silk, shifting from side to side. When her screen's light comes up, the entire floor is shifting. A faint black smoke that bubbles and churns on itself - the broken, bent mask no where to be seen. Nor are the gauntlets. And then it pulls itself almost back together again, a damned spectre, halfway in and out. Bits and pieces peeling away only to reform with the whole, holding that remade mask. Always returning to the one moment of death.
"..Why don't I give you a few hours to think on things?" He states, turning the mask about to peer at the interior, a sillouette of mist. The cast of light by her screen giving his gaze almost a socket apperance - that, or his eyes have gone missing again. All of them. "Breath deep." The mask is brought back to his own face, head tilting up to accept it as he solidifies for just a few moments. The faint *crunch* of bone as the screws whirr, sealing it against his flesh. His voice recognizable as his own, now, the growling reverberations.

".. And my name.. is Reaper."

Dissolving. Sliding out along the vents she had just opened with her few precious minutes of power. And air.

Sombra has posed:
    This isn't funny...! The hacker moves towards the wall, trying to hack the door open while Reaper isn't near her. She hopes. Paranoid glances are thrown around the room, all while she tries to find something digital. But no, analog. Damnit, who designed this place?!

    The sight of the spectre reappearing makes Sombra tense, and she pulls away from the door again, pointing her submachine gun directly towards Reaper's face. "OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!" she barks, though her eyes aren't as calm as they have been before. The oxygen levels are turning low, her respiration rate has increased. It's getting harder to breathe...! The moment he solidifies and puts the mask back on, the hacker grits her teeth... and fires, the rounds barely missing due to the fact that Sombra's arm is shaking. Aim is Widowmaker's deal, after all. Then, he's gone, slipping out of the vents. Leaving her behind in the darkness

    "BASTARDO!"

    Her voice is not as much yelling as shrieking, and she turns, beginning to slam on the door with the arm she's holding the submachine gun with. "GET BACK HERE NOW! EL COMANDANTE WON'T STAND FOR THIS!" No, this... this isn't happening! Hyperventilating at this point, Sombra slams against the door, wincing. The fact that her head is starting to spin too, that's bad. If she passes out now, then it's all done for. Even with the information she's written down, this... A near feral scream leaves her, though she stops to gasp, one hand moving to her throat. Legs shaking, she falls to her knees. The fans... how long has it been since Reaper left? A minute? Right before the fans died down. Rasping, the woman reaches out towards the door...

Reaper has posed:
There's an interesting aspect to asphyxiation that not many people know, and that's the moment when the lungs start feeling bloated. Suck in as much as you can, and it's still not quite enough - so you try to draw in more. Work the diaphram, which gets warmer and stretches further than it usually has too. The thin taste of copper when stress starts pushing capillaries out. The dizziness, of course, something that works from the center of the skull and seems to drape weakness across the frame.

All the secrets in the world won't buy another breath of oxygen. At least, not until there is a jerked 'CLUNK'. The wheel of the hatch squealing as its forced through a spin, jerking slowly as the dovetails retreat. It shudders, fresh air feeling as cold as a refrigerator as it seeps into the hot box of a dead 'blank room'. Slowly forced up by virtue of enhanced soldier's strength, the bottom of a black cowl whipping with the exchange of molecules. Precious, precious air.

"Death comes for all." Growls a sterile bone white mask. ".. But not today. Remember to remain more useful than distracting, Sombra..." The door is swung all the way open, metal gaunlets creaking as they flex.

"Because we're not talking about this again." A vague threat or a confirmation of trust? Honestly, it's always hard to tell with The Reaper. True, he'll never get her to a debrief again without her translocator somewhere far out of his reach - or as anything but remote presence - but that's a bridge to burn later.

Sombra has posed:
    The pain isn't like anything she's felt before. In addition to the physical symptoms, there's also the fact that a lack of oxygen has other reactions. Like panic. Rasping, the hacker tries to get more oxygen into her starved lungs, but each breath does her no good. This... is it. Not the way she thought it would end. What a waste...

    When the clunk sounds, she's nearly passed out, lying on the floor with her eyes half closed. As fresh air is drawn in however, brushing against her sweaty and pale face, Sombra can't help but tense, a hungry and loud raspy gasp drawing precious air through her mouth and nostrils. Weakly she glances upwards, heaving for breath as Reaper speaks. Her arms and legs shake as she struggles to get back up to her feet, scrambling out of the room on all fours and past him. Falling onto her hands and knees she continues heaving, sweat dripping down her forehead, running down her chin. "... c-cabron..." Her voice is weak, lacking the usual strength and flair that she usually has. If she had the strength, she would lash out at him.

Reaper has posed:
Metal boots turn, the Reaper leaving Sombra to her fresh air and clawing for life. Although he does pause, cowled head turning slightly. The edge of that sterile bone white mask shown. "No." He begins.

"Me llamo Reaper."

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