Work Text
The blinking led of his phone kept distracting Mute. He had hit a roadblock with his current project, and since his focus was wavering, maybe checking those notifications was for the best.
The first thing he noticed was the time. How was it already past midnight? The second thing that caught his eye was Dokkaebi's message.
Yesterday - 23:58
I can't believe what I just found 😱💀 Mute rolled his eyes at her usual dramatic style. She was typing again, and in a few seconds he read,
Today - 00:04
Seriously, it's freaking me out Okay, fine, he was intrigued now.
Today - 00:16
It's not Chul Kyung sleeping in the bathtub again, is it? He saw she was typing, the “...” flashing in muted gray. Then it stopped. Mute waited and waited, and just as he was about to switch off his phone, she sent a link. No explanation of what it was or anything.
To click or not click on it, that was the question. Did he trust Dokkaebi? Absolutely not. It could be a rickroll. It could be loss.jpg, or worse, a reminder that he just lost the game. It could be a virus just to mess with him. It could be a cute cat video. It could be important intel. Anything was possible when it came to stuff Dokkaebi sent to her friends.
Mute clicked on it, expecting the worst, but it just opened a site of… stories? What.
A cursory look at the titles and descriptions further confused Mute. These were stories about Rainbow operators. About him and his friends and teammates. Was this a diary of some sort? But all these seemed invented; Mute was pretty sure Bandit wasn't secretly swapping places with his twin brother for some missions. Ash and Mira got along better now but they didn't adopt a puppy together, and Maestro cooking a box of mac and cheese to woo Amaru was plain insulting. Recruit saving the day? That one was clearly satire. Nomad acting as Thunderbird’s bodyguard to prevent another incident with Nokk was plausible, yeah, and - Jäger’s gloryhole adventures?! What. The. Fuck.
Today - 00:27
WTH IS THIS GRACE “That was my exact reaction!” her voice came from somewhere beyond the glow of the laptop's screen, and Mute almost jumped out of his skin.
His knees hit against the table’s underside and he hissed, “Bloody hell! What are you doing here?”“You replied, so if you are awake it means you were still working.”So she saw his message and came all the way here just for a dramatic entrance instead of answering with another text. Yeah, that was something Dokkaebi would do.
“What is this shite you sent me?” Mute scrolled frantically up and down, noticing how many stories there were. It was a lot. Way too many. “And who the fuck is writing all this?!”“That's what I'm trying to discover.” Her tone of voice indicated she thought him a moron for not realizing that. “Have you ever seen this site before? I thought you took care of our security and knew everything going on in the system.”Mute could say without a doubt he didn't know this was here, which was worrisome. “How did you find this?”“So you don't know who made it then,” Dokkaebi sighed, disappointed. “That's fine, I'll get to the bottom of this. Let me know if you find anything.”She left as if she didn't just drop a bomb on his lap. People were writing stories about them under their noses, and nobody suspected a damn thing. Mute would bet Dokkaebi found the site by mistake, otherwise she would have bragged about how she was better than him for noticing it when he didn't. Shit, how was he supposed to go to sleep now?
He scrolled through the stories, hoping to find a hint of who was behind this. It was like browsing a tabloid, except it was about him and his friends instead of the Royal family or people he didn't know. His train of thought came to a screeching halt when he saw his own codename on the screen.
Neither the title nor the description gave much away, so he clicked on it. And read the damn thing. It wasn't too bad actually, but why did they have him pining after Smoke? C'mon, he had more self-respect than going after Porter! He was a bigger asshole than Mute was, and while he had been fun to hang with sometimes, he also got on Mute’s nerves quite often.
Maybe he should keep digging and see what else he found, for the sake of the investigation, of course.
Morning was a harsh mistress. Mute slept very little, scouring the system to try and find who made those stories. When he didn't get any answers, he instead scrolled through the titles with morbid curiosity until he fell asleep while still clutching his phone.
A buzzing and faint vibration against his face woke him up before dawn.
Today - 05:02
Rise and shine!
Breakfast in 20 to discuss The Situation 👀 Mute groaned and threw an arm over his tired eyes. He knew that hadn't been a question. Sometimes he wondered why he decided to befriend Dokkaebi. Not going would be worse, cause he had no doubts she'd come to drag him out of bed then. So in twenty minutes Mute was in the mess hall, already missing his bed.
It appeared that all the regulars from the workshop were here, the Nerd Club as Thatcher called them. Twitch, Jäger, Echo, all were Dokkaebi’s friends and regulars of the R&D department. He supposed the only reason Iana wasn't there was because she barely ever talked with them, despite Dokkaebi’s efforts. But it was more surprising to see Fuze sitting with them. He wasn’t part of Dokkaebi’s friend group.The group looked at Dokkaebi with tired eyes and different degrees of grumpiness, and Mute felt a little comforted by their collective disgruntlement at being called at such an early hour. A cup of tea would make this more bearable, but unfortunately Dokkaebi had just appeared and was telling Echo to sit down again.“You all know about the big discovery, and now it’s time to put our findings together to find the perpetrators.” Dokkaebi clapped her hands together. She seemed excited, in the twitchy way of someone who had too much caffeine and not enough sleep.”Wait, what are you doing here?”“I vas already here when he arrived,” Fuze replied, pointing at Jäger. “Then more people arrived and all sat here, vith us.”Right, Jäger was friends with him. Well, he was friendly to him and in turn Fuze didn't complain too much about his company. Dokkaebi looked at him and shrugged. Yeah, kicking him out now would be quite awkward.
“As I was saying, it's time to share our findings!”“I’ll go first!” Jäger volunteered, jumping to his feet. “I scrolled all the way back to the first story, and that's the book Monika was writing! It's really good, she mixed reality with science fiction and had us fighting against aliens. Well, not all of us, mostly her friends, but a lot of us are there! Not you, though,” he nodded at Dokkaebi, then looked Mute in the eye. “And you're mentioned a few times, but are MIA. Or maybe KIA, it's hard to tell.”That was a lot to process. The rest of the operators had similar overwhelmed expressions. It was Fuze who broke the silence. “Is this book club?”Both him and Dokkaebi answered at the same time, Mute with a sarcastic apparently, and her with a single no .
“So… Monika is the culprit?” Echo asked, ignoring how Jäger was talking to Fuze in hushed whispers while showing him something on his phone. “Why would she write all that?”“I doubt it,” Twitch yawned, unable or unwilling to hide how tired she was. The dark circles under her eyes could rival a raccoon’s. “Monika’s story is unfinished, and the next oldest one was published two months after her and the others left for Nighthaven.”Dokkaebi nodded, a bit too many times. “The creators are anonymous and when I tried unmasking them, all I got was the IP from our own server.”“Maybe we can gather more information from the times the stories are posted, to catch the person behind this,” Mute mused out loud. “When was the last one published?”“Last night. Two of them within minutes, by the way. So I think there's more than a single person writing these.” Damn, Dokkaebi just dashed his hopes.“I agree! Jules and I think that there are multiple people writing, the styles are too different,” Twitch said.
“You showed Nizan?!” Mute was upset about that. The idea of this knowledge spreading around the base was terrifying, he didn't want to imagine Thatcher reading those and his reaction to it, thanks.
“Dom and Elias did a dramatic reading of some of the chapters, it was so funny.” Jäger was oblivious to the increasing discomfort radiating off of Fuze, who clutched the German’s phone as he kept scrolling.
“I thought we were investigating this, people, not reading the stories!” Dokkaebi sighed. Then, a beat afterwards she asked, “Did you search for stories of yourselves, or…?”The grating noise of a chair scraping against the floor made everyone look towards the source of it. Fuze handed the phone back to its owner and stomped out of the room. Mute would bet he had searched for stories of himself and hadn't been happy with what he found.
In the next twenty-four hours, the knowledge about the stories slowly escaped out of their control. So it wasn’t too much of a surprise when suddenly the squad leaders organized a Rainbow wide meeting.
He blamed Jäger and Twitch for telling their friends. Rook was a certified blabbermouth, and the German had spilled the beans to two known jokesters and pranksters with no filter, and to Fuze. It was inevitable that sooner rather than later, the squad leaders would know of it.
The mess hall was the only place that could fit everyone, and the operators sat wherever they pleased, without a care to who belonged to which squad. A few people stood in a corner, arguing in hushed whispers: Zero, Hibana, Doc Thermite and Caveira.
Ignoring the voice in his head screaming that he was about to get blamed for not discovering and reporting the damned site sooner, Mute sat next to Vigil. At least he was the quiet sort, and wouldn’t grill him with questions or inane chatter.
Eventually, Hibana walked away from the small group to face the crowd. She cleared her throat, capturing everyone's attention.
“We are aware of the rumors regarding the appearance of certain stories featuring people from this organization.” She stopped, and Mute had worked with her enough to tell she was nervous, despite her calm demeanor. “After an investigation of the site, we can confirm it's an official Rainbow project.”Murmurs rose along the crowd, until Zero took a step forward. “It was one of Harry's ideas, to give people a creative outlet when tensions were running high, and hopefully something to bond over with others.” So, a distraction for when the conflict with Nighthaven was brewing.
“But can you find who is writing that stuff or not?” Ash asked.
“Does that mean anyone can publish stories then?” Ying sounded way too interested in it for comfort.
“Will you take down the site?” Jackal piped up.
All very good questions, yet Mute had a few of his own, mainly along the lines of who the fuck coded this cause it wasn't anyone he knew , and he had asked around. Extensively. Before he could voice his opinion, Zero addressed the crowd again. “As far as we can tell, the project is working as intended, as a space where people could create freely.”All hell broke loose. People complained and argued, some were actually in favor of it citing free speech. Mute wondered if Harry's vision included people writing about the supposed love life of their teammates, and more.
“Enough!” Thermite's yell broke through the chaos. “We will review all the material and then decide if to close down the site or keep it going.”“And who will be reading and deciding, huh?” Clash asked, and Mute knew how particular she was about fairness.
“Why, wanna give us a hand with that?” Thermite said, and while it sounded like a joke the American actually seemed serious.
“We'll create a committee and-” Doc was rudely interrupted by Kaid, who got up and slapped his hand on the table.
“That's not enough!” The old man was fuming, a vein throbbing on his forehead. “Those stories are filth and slander! I would never sleep with that Swedish mutt, no matter how good he might be at whoring himself out!”Oh boy. Mute snuck a peek at Fenrir, who had his hands steepled together and his face resting against them, eyes closed. He had the air of someone who dearly wished he could mentally check out from the situation, and for the first time Mute felt a pang of pity for him.
“Do you have a problem with it because it was Fenrir, or because it was gay?” Flores' words were inflammatory. Kaid charged against him, as did a few others, saying that was a leading question. To everyone’s surprise, Caveira jumped to defend Flores and soon
the situation devolved into an all out argument where everyone seemed to be fighting everyone else. And the few who weren't arguing, like Mute himself, were taking in the chaos and wishing for popcorn.
The only exceptions were Sentry and Striker, who were sitting quietly in a corner, observing everything with alarm while whispering among themselves. Hmm, he needed to get a little closer.“... calm, nobody can start acting weird or they’ll…”He took out his phone and sent a simple text to Dokkaebi. Today - 16:42
I have a possible lead
Wanna scare some rookies?
Cornering a couple of recruits to put the fear of Rainbow in them was harder than anticipated. They were slippery like greased pigs, either staying in group for safety or vanishing as if by magic as soon as training ended. In Mute’s opinion, that was guilty behavior if he had to bet on it.In the end, they managed after two days of trying, spotting two of them in the gym. Alone. Mute ran there as soon as he got the heads up from Dokkaebi, and they entered the almost empty gym with pleasant smiles that were perhaps a bit too toothy.“Striker, Sentry,” Dokkaebi greeted them cordially, before addressing Striker with an air of concern. “How’s the shoulder going? From the shield impact yesterday.”The girl looked at Dokkaebi with wide eyes. “T-that was Simone, ma’am. I’m Hannah.”“Don’t be silly, Striker,” Dokkaebi laughed. He never understood why it was funny to pretend all recruits were just two entities, Striker and Sentry. But bullying the newbies was a time honored tradition in the SAS, so he just rolled with it. “Now, what are you doing afterwards? What kind of hobbies do you indulge in to relax?”Neither of the recruits answered, both staring at them with frightened doe eyes and looking like they also wanted to somersault in the air like deer and run away.“We know you’re writing a lot in your free time,” Mute decided to brute force it, seeing as neither of the recruits was taking the bait. “Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”“And what is the easy way?” Sentry crossed his arms, to hide how he was fidgeting with his hands.“Glad you asked!” Dokkaebi said. “You can admit to it, and I’ll keep my mouth shut about your involvement, and stay out of the debate instead of pushing for the site to be closed. In exchange, you will never write about me with any guy. Ever. And you’ll write a little something for me, in a few days’ time.”Wait, what? “Grace what the fuck, this is not what we agreed on!”In truth, they didn’t agree on anything, he just couldn’t resist a good mystery. Mute could understand pressuring the culprits so there would not be any stories about them - although in truth he’d never been too bothered by it. But asking them to write at Dokkaebi’s whims, as if she was a renaissance patron? That was weird.“Look, I have an idea! People love correcting others, right? Especially when it concerns them. And Deimos already loves to rant about how current Rainbow is a disgrace. If we give him a tablet with nothing but access to the stories, and there’s one with a very distorted view about him, how soon do you think he’ll start to ramble about himself too? We could finally get some information out of him!”That was insane. Absolutely bonkers. He hated that he could see it working. “You bring this up to Ash and Zero, I want nothing to do with this madness.”“And the hard way, sir?” Sentry asked, paler than before. Apparently having to write something to anger Deimos wasn’t very enticing to him.“I think Kapkan wanted to have a chat with whoever was behind the stories,” Mute shrugged. “He’s been sharpening his knife collection daily.”Striker pushed past Sentry and extended her hand towards Dokkaebi. “I’ll do it. I’ll write your requests and spread word around about your other condition. And you will keep everyone from knowing Striker and Sentry are the ones writing.”Shit, were all the recruits writing in their free time? Twitch and Rook did say it was multiple people, and that seemed quite confirmed now. At least they were clearly labeling them as fiction. He supposed in that regard it was better than the old rumor mill.“Deal!” Dokkaebi and Striker shook hands, and Mute felt a morbid curiosity to know what in the world Dokkaebi wanted them to write about Deimos…
Hi, my name is Gerald Deimos Morris Chavez Way and I have a frightening mustache (that’s how I got my name) that reaches to the corners of my mouth and bottomless black eyes and a lot of people tell me that I look like the Grim Reaper (if you don’t know who that is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Ding Chavez but I wish I was cause he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a Rainbow operator but I’m also a renegade. I have dark skin. I’m also a terrorist and I’m detained at Rainbow base where I’m in a cell. I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love stealing from Nighthaven and I get all my weapons and supplies from them. For example, today I was wearing a black leather suit, black cape, black combat boots and my black mask. I was wearing my black .44 Vendetta revolver on the belt. I was walking outside Rainbow’s base to find Harry’s memorial. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of operators stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.
All things considered, Mute regretted asking Dokkaebi to see the story’s first chapter. But it was sure to enrage Deimos, no doubt.