- Location
- Southern Virginia
I'm pretty sure those bane-spirits didn't fill out the paperwork for temporary residency in the United Kingdom, making them, wouldn't you say, illegal aliens?
Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns
Sadly, the NWO Dimensional Science lawyers working with UK Visas and Immigration are on break. Also they're filling out for the fact that half of the Void Engineer ghostbusters fucked off to god knows where and they're getting hastily retrained in alien-hunting and wondering why exactly they thought this was a good idea.
Sarpedon
Knight Errant
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Violations of International Law such as:
[X] Insufficient care taken to distinguish noncombatants from combatants (Mind 3/Entropy 3, delaying target reactions)
[x] Violations of UK laws and statutes
[X] Write-in: The Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 (Entropy 4 effect, attacking the mental "object" of the training routines of the Pentex soldiers).
[X] Write in: The Equality Act (2010) (Entropy + Mind, weakening inter-squad cohesion and generally making them act less like a military force and more like a bunch of sociopathic lunatics with each man, woman, or spirit out for themselves).
Thing is all the Pentex heavy hitter, BSD et all, rely more on RD bullshit rather than cool toys, we get far more mileage fucking up the thing holding the gun, or the XBAWKSHUEG werewolves than the actual guns themselves
[X] Insufficient care taken to distinguish noncombatants from combatants (Mind 3/Entropy 3, delaying target reactions)
[x] Violations of UK laws and statutes
[X] Write-in: The Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 (Entropy 4 effect, attacking the mental "object" of the training routines of the Pentex soldiers).
[X] Write in: The Equality Act (2010) (Entropy + Mind, weakening inter-squad cohesion and generally making them act less like a military force and more like a bunch of sociopathic lunatics with each man, woman, or spirit out for themselves).
Thing is all the Pentex heavy hitter, BSD et all, rely more on RD bullshit rather than cool toys, we get far more mileage fucking up the thing holding the gun, or the XBAWKSHUEG werewolves than the actual guns themselves
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I'm putting my money on;
"Holy shit there's a Subjugation Corp flying saucer just parked next to this creepy old mansion with everyone inside dead, and graffitti saying 'I-50-B31 WOZ ERE'. You know what we need to do?"
"Uh... decompile the flight computers and see where they're operating from?"
"Yeah, sure, whatever. Loot it! We could use a flying saucer! And look, dead Nazis! Loot them!"
And so the VEs pick up a team armed and armoured in Nazi gear, in a flying saucer, using Blatancy: MOOOOOOOOOOON NAZIS.
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Kerrus
Fractal Insanity
[X] Write In: Violation of Containment Requirements for licensing
to Handle Defra Category 4 Pathogens under the SAPO
2008. Extensive use of Banes and Black Spiral Dancers whom operate under Pentex authority and control result in significant production and spread of illegal animal pathogens, particularly those on the prohibited list for which no permits exist. [Life 3 Entropy 4 - suppress the 'benefits' of the various banes and amplify their negatives due to rampant infection, unsanitary conditions, and use of prohibited pathogens without proper license or facilities]
to Handle Defra Category 4 Pathogens under the SAPO
2008. Extensive use of Banes and Black Spiral Dancers whom operate under Pentex authority and control result in significant production and spread of illegal animal pathogens, particularly those on the prohibited list for which no permits exist. [Life 3 Entropy 4 - suppress the 'benefits' of the various banes and amplify their negatives due to rampant infection, unsanitary conditions, and use of prohibited pathogens without proper license or facilities]
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
[X] Write-in: The Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988
[X] Write in: Under the Equality Act (2010)
I knew ES would have the advantage here, being actually British and familiar with what laws to pick from. Pity you had to reject the Dangerous Dogs one. That was terribly ironic to throw at them. In its place, my third vote is:
[X] Violations of International Law such as:
-->[X] Disproportionate use of force in populated areas in violation of customary international law (Matter 3, reduces the number of heavy weapons available due to this 'proportionality' thing)
The Garou we hardly using any firearms at all! All those Pentex heavy guns were totally unfair and disproportionate! You think you guys are the IDF or something?
[X] Write in: Under the Equality Act (2010)
I knew ES would have the advantage here, being actually British and familiar with what laws to pick from. Pity you had to reject the Dangerous Dogs one. That was terribly ironic to throw at them. In its place, my third vote is:
[X] Violations of International Law such as:
-->[X] Disproportionate use of force in populated areas in violation of customary international law (Matter 3, reduces the number of heavy weapons available due to this 'proportionality' thing)
The Garou we hardly using any firearms at all! All those Pentex heavy guns were totally unfair and disproportionate! You think you guys are the IDF or something?
Still better than Illinois Nazis. I hate Illinois Nazis....
Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hmm. In that case, I think my third choice will be...
[X] Violations of International Law such as:
Because the tsun couple can do a lot with delayed reactions from their targets and a bunch of smart micromissiles.
[X] Violations of International Law such as:
[X] Insufficient care taken to distinguish noncombatants from combatants (Mind 3/Entropy 3, delaying target reactions)
Because the tsun couple can do a lot with delayed reactions from their targets and a bunch of smart micromissiles.
Hm. I know of no game-mechanic problem with doing so, but something makes me a bit wary of throwing a bunch of Entropy backed Procedures at a team of werewolves being drugged up with Wyrm spirits.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
OK, I haven't found the actual caselaw yet, but apparently the Brits have an interesting situation regarding rabies...
If one of the smart(er?) people here is willing to put the right spheres in place for me and make it a proper write in, well, clearly Pentex has not been keeping its trained animals properly vaccinated...
https://www.gov.uk/pet-travel-information-for-pet-owners#vaccination
If one of the smart(er?) people here is willing to put the right spheres in place for me and make it a proper write in, well, clearly Pentex has not been keeping its trained animals properly vaccinated...
https://www.gov.uk/pet-travel-information-for-pet-owners#vaccination
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Kerrus
Fractal Insanity
That's the law I cited earlier. Animal pathogens with Defra 2008.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Bully. Hmm. Must have missed it because it talked about banes instead of the
[X] Write In: Under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976 Pentax has clearly failed to apply for and receive a License for the Animals (Wolves as per the revised Schedule 2007). In fact keeping wild animals that are outright genocidal and anti tech is clearly not in the public interest. More importantly under Section 4, the seizure and destruction of Pentax's Werewolves is entirely legal and being carried out with the full force of the law. Even better any and all costs incurred by the Technocratic Union (as the local authority) can will be collected from Pentax as a civil debt.
Entropy + Corr. to ensure full legal force of Human Law aids in the entirely legal destruction of the Werewolves
Entropy + Corr. to ensure full legal force of Human Law aids in the entirely legal destruction of the Werewolves
- Location
- The end of all things
I must admit that, when fighting overgrown wolves, my first thought probably wouldn't be: "This would have been so much easier if they were also rabid."
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Soundtrack
His name was Eddie - at least, he thinks it was.
Thoughts are difficult for one such as Eddie. Impulses to despoil and corrupt war with unyielding instincts of steel and gunpowder, and underneath them all the faint thoughts of a man float gently to the surface. As his parts collect themselves from the newfound shock of pain and loss, Eddie opens his optics and looks around.
The highway is a charnel house. Armored vehicles lie strewn across the pristine English countryside, ripped and torn from enemy missiles or mines or when their own occupants had clawed their way out. Smoke billows across the killzone from burning diesel and impromptu brushfires, as green hellfire competes with cooking-off ammunition to light up the night. Tracks of human and inhuman monsters lead from their carriages of war to the battlefield in the woods, and the howls of wolves and werewolves let Eddie know that the war is still on.
Eddie experimentally revs his engine. The Russian surplus BMP-1 roars to a life of sorts, while its animating spirit(s) assesses the damage. He's taken a strike from a missile, a 'Javelin ATGM' if his human-self is to be believed. Its top-down strike obliterated Eddie's turret and the powerful spirits which inhabited it, and Eddie's scattered selves rejoice at their newfound freedom from their tyranny. He had few loudspeakers - a lowly support vehicle like him was meant primarily to bring the real fighters to where they could hit the enemy with their swords, after all - and his radios simply crackle with static when he tries to speak. Weaponless, voiceless, useless, Eddie feels no compulsion to aid his 'comrades' in arms. The ensorcelled vehicle rolls down the highway of death, rattling and squeaking as loose treads sound their complaints.
He's halfway to the treeline before he meets the woman.
She's been thrown from the wreck of an Mi-24D Hind, shot out of the sky moments earlier. What's left of her body is wizened and shriveled, fused with the cockpit of the burning wreckage. Balefire glints in the shattered glass of the canopies, and the woman's atrophied arms grasp futilely at the air outside of her self-imposed prison. She's wearing nothing but a pilot's helmet, her eyes covered by night-vision goggles welded to her face, and her 'eyes' glint green in the reflection of the billowing balefire.
She's the most beautiful person Eddie's ever seen.
The damaged BMP rolls up slowly to the wreckage of the helicopter, its engine slowing to a dull rumble. The pilot looks up at the armored vehicle approaching her to-be coffin, and curses in German. "Scheisse, you must be from corporate! If you're going to kill me, you bastard, make it quick." The night-vision optics covering the pilot's eyes don't let her close them, but she looks away as Eddie unfurls his cutting tools. Scythes and cutting cables spin to life in a deadly chorus, promising pain and death.
Lethal balefire-forged whips meant to cut down enemy infantry slice slowly and carefully through the wreckage of the burning Hind. The pilot gasps in pain and shock as her connections throughout her body are severed, but she relaxes as Eddie delicately amputates the burning wreckage of her body's engine. He cuts away the flames, excises the pain, and as his impromptu surgery draws to a close, the wrecked pilot-helicopter is left with nothing but the remnants of a biological body and the remnants of a cockpit. Eddie hopes it's enough.
The woman looks around, her own optics glinting in the moonlight, and promptly bursts into tears.
Eddie searches for words to right the situation, or tools to fix it. Some part of him used to be an engineer, and he knows that if he simply had the right plan and the right equipment, he could fix anything. Yet he is a broken man voluntarily bound to the corrupted spirits animating a machine, and he has nothing but tools of war to aid him. The missile which struck him vented its firepower into his passenger compartment, and the rear of his body is a charnel house, unfit for such a proper lady. Gently picking up what's left of the pilot with long and deceptively-thin arms, Eddie carefully rests the woman on the ruined remains of his turret. His engine rumbles into reverse, and the BMP slowly clanks away from the burning wreckage.
They drive through fallow countryside together. Eddie's body was designed to invade Western Europe, and even halfway torn to shreds by cutting-edge weapons, it still scoffs at the mundane 'hazards' of a midnight drive through England. The woman is still sobbing, perched atop his hull, and Eddie longs for a way to make things right. He cannot communicate with her, but some part of his self understands her plight: limbless, helpless, defeated by an enemy far too powerful to face. Some part of him has been in her nonexistent shoes, and he weeps at the pain she must feel now.
Yet everything must end after a time, and the woman's sobs and choked cries fade to muted sniffles and coughs. She hugs herself, shivering in the sudden cold as the wind blows across the remnants of her biological form, and her glowing optics look down at the BMP below her. "T-thanks, I think. Who are you?"
Eddie stops to consider the question, making the pilot grimace in fear. He has no sense of who 'he' is, nor any way to communicate it if he did; he simply rocks his chassis a few times and rumbles onwards. Yet his fellow biological monstrosity seems to understand the gesture, and she reaches down to pat one of his scythes gently. "You don't know? I can understand that, Herr Mud-Pounder. I forget myself many times, too - it is not an easy task, to remember who you are." She draws herself up as high as her helicopter-body will allow, gesturing grandly outward at the night. "It is good to meet you, Herr Tank. My name is Klara."
The BMP cannot speak, but it shuffles appreciatively at the gesture. It's been a long time, Eddie thinks to himself, that he's been treated like a person. They rumble on through the night, away from the pain and suffering and death, while Klara regales Eddie with stories of her life. She talks of her service in the Middle East, of her determination to make it into piloting and her successes at gaining a combat flight spot in Murklake. She talks about what's left of her family, though her memory fails her many times; Eddie stops and tries to rock her gently for comfort when she sobs. Klara reaches out of her cockpit to hold onto one of Eddie's scythes, the two macabre sights holding on to each other for dear life.
One of the lights on Klara's console blinks, startling both of them, and the woman tilts her optics down to look at the flashing screens in front of her. She freezes in shock for a moment, before cursing violently. "They fired me," she hisses. "They fucking fired me!" And indeed, when Eddie checks his own entry in the Mechanical Resources department, he does indeed find a notice that "Echo Two-Niner" is presumed deceased [following unexplained technical difficulties]. Klara laughs, the sound ragged and discordant, and once again Eddie lacks the words to make it right.
They roll up a hill, and together they look up at the stars. Their soft light twinkles above, insulting the poor benighted mortals trapped on the ground below, and Klara reaches out to them with arms she hasn't used in months. "It's all so bad, it all went so wrong," she chokes out, and Eddie mutely agrees. "I just wanted to fly!"
Klara might be burnt and broken now, but in Eddie's memory she still shines bright. His mechanical and biological senses still recall the missions where they deployed together, seeing their air support crush the opposition in salvos of fire and flame. To Eddie, limited by terrain and always keenly aware of the enemy's speed and power, the Hinds were angels of death who'd saved his bickering selves many times before.
He has the words to make it better, but he lacks the tools to make it right. He reaches out instead with the tools he's got, slowly lifting the weight on his hull with weapons meant to rend and destroy. Klara bites her lip as the scythes bite lightly into what's left of her helicopter-body, pulling her skyward. As the Hind pilot is lifted airborne one last time, she holds her withered arms out to embrace the sky, her green nightvision optics shining with reflected moonlight.
They will have been spotted, Eddie knows. Even now, soldiers in an office halfway around the world are likely poring over the surveillance data from drones in the field, backtracking the movements of a solitary BMP retreating from the battle. He lacks the proper vision to See, but Eddie is sure that another missile-armed harbinger of doom is minutes away from finding the two of them and putting an end to their tortured lives. The clock is ticking.
Yet when the time runs out, he thinks, what better way could he go than holding someone he loves?
----------------------
Greetings, [employee #85D32], a.k.a. [Eduard Anatoleyvich Kapustin]! Due to your unfortunate incident involving [hostile Garou], we see that you're suffering from a slight [lack of limbs]. While your heroic actions in [helping fight off a Garou attack] would qualify you for a [Pentex-certified retirement package], we'd like to offer you a new and exciting opportunity in the [Human Vehicle Enhancement Program]! This new opportunity offers great benefits in [diverse employee relations], [community outreach], and [hands-on experience in mechanical engineering], and the Human Resources Department thinks that this would be an optimal use of your talents.
Please note that failure to comply will result in you receiving a [Pentex-certified retirement package].
Kind regards,
Stephanie Ingram
Scheduler, Dept of Human Resources
His name was Eddie - at least, he thinks it was.
Thoughts are difficult for one such as Eddie. Impulses to despoil and corrupt war with unyielding instincts of steel and gunpowder, and underneath them all the faint thoughts of a man float gently to the surface. As his parts collect themselves from the newfound shock of pain and loss, Eddie opens his optics and looks around.
The highway is a charnel house. Armored vehicles lie strewn across the pristine English countryside, ripped and torn from enemy missiles or mines or when their own occupants had clawed their way out. Smoke billows across the killzone from burning diesel and impromptu brushfires, as green hellfire competes with cooking-off ammunition to light up the night. Tracks of human and inhuman monsters lead from their carriages of war to the battlefield in the woods, and the howls of wolves and werewolves let Eddie know that the war is still on.
Eddie experimentally revs his engine. The Russian surplus BMP-1 roars to a life of sorts, while its animating spirit(s) assesses the damage. He's taken a strike from a missile, a 'Javelin ATGM' if his human-self is to be believed. Its top-down strike obliterated Eddie's turret and the powerful spirits which inhabited it, and Eddie's scattered selves rejoice at their newfound freedom from their tyranny. He had few loudspeakers - a lowly support vehicle like him was meant primarily to bring the real fighters to where they could hit the enemy with their swords, after all - and his radios simply crackle with static when he tries to speak. Weaponless, voiceless, useless, Eddie feels no compulsion to aid his 'comrades' in arms. The ensorcelled vehicle rolls down the highway of death, rattling and squeaking as loose treads sound their complaints.
He's halfway to the treeline before he meets the woman.
She's been thrown from the wreck of an Mi-24D Hind, shot out of the sky moments earlier. What's left of her body is wizened and shriveled, fused with the cockpit of the burning wreckage. Balefire glints in the shattered glass of the canopies, and the woman's atrophied arms grasp futilely at the air outside of her self-imposed prison. She's wearing nothing but a pilot's helmet, her eyes covered by night-vision goggles welded to her face, and her 'eyes' glint green in the reflection of the billowing balefire.
She's the most beautiful person Eddie's ever seen.
The damaged BMP rolls up slowly to the wreckage of the helicopter, its engine slowing to a dull rumble. The pilot looks up at the armored vehicle approaching her to-be coffin, and curses in German. "Scheisse, you must be from corporate! If you're going to kill me, you bastard, make it quick." The night-vision optics covering the pilot's eyes don't let her close them, but she looks away as Eddie unfurls his cutting tools. Scythes and cutting cables spin to life in a deadly chorus, promising pain and death.
Lethal balefire-forged whips meant to cut down enemy infantry slice slowly and carefully through the wreckage of the burning Hind. The pilot gasps in pain and shock as her connections throughout her body are severed, but she relaxes as Eddie delicately amputates the burning wreckage of her body's engine. He cuts away the flames, excises the pain, and as his impromptu surgery draws to a close, the wrecked pilot-helicopter is left with nothing but the remnants of a biological body and the remnants of a cockpit. Eddie hopes it's enough.
The woman looks around, her own optics glinting in the moonlight, and promptly bursts into tears.
Eddie searches for words to right the situation, or tools to fix it. Some part of him used to be an engineer, and he knows that if he simply had the right plan and the right equipment, he could fix anything. Yet he is a broken man voluntarily bound to the corrupted spirits animating a machine, and he has nothing but tools of war to aid him. The missile which struck him vented its firepower into his passenger compartment, and the rear of his body is a charnel house, unfit for such a proper lady. Gently picking up what's left of the pilot with long and deceptively-thin arms, Eddie carefully rests the woman on the ruined remains of his turret. His engine rumbles into reverse, and the BMP slowly clanks away from the burning wreckage.
They drive through fallow countryside together. Eddie's body was designed to invade Western Europe, and even halfway torn to shreds by cutting-edge weapons, it still scoffs at the mundane 'hazards' of a midnight drive through England. The woman is still sobbing, perched atop his hull, and Eddie longs for a way to make things right. He cannot communicate with her, but some part of his self understands her plight: limbless, helpless, defeated by an enemy far too powerful to face. Some part of him has been in her nonexistent shoes, and he weeps at the pain she must feel now.
Yet everything must end after a time, and the woman's sobs and choked cries fade to muted sniffles and coughs. She hugs herself, shivering in the sudden cold as the wind blows across the remnants of her biological form, and her glowing optics look down at the BMP below her. "T-thanks, I think. Who are you?"
Eddie stops to consider the question, making the pilot grimace in fear. He has no sense of who 'he' is, nor any way to communicate it if he did; he simply rocks his chassis a few times and rumbles onwards. Yet his fellow biological monstrosity seems to understand the gesture, and she reaches down to pat one of his scythes gently. "You don't know? I can understand that, Herr Mud-Pounder. I forget myself many times, too - it is not an easy task, to remember who you are." She draws herself up as high as her helicopter-body will allow, gesturing grandly outward at the night. "It is good to meet you, Herr Tank. My name is Klara."
The BMP cannot speak, but it shuffles appreciatively at the gesture. It's been a long time, Eddie thinks to himself, that he's been treated like a person. They rumble on through the night, away from the pain and suffering and death, while Klara regales Eddie with stories of her life. She talks of her service in the Middle East, of her determination to make it into piloting and her successes at gaining a combat flight spot in Murklake. She talks about what's left of her family, though her memory fails her many times; Eddie stops and tries to rock her gently for comfort when she sobs. Klara reaches out of her cockpit to hold onto one of Eddie's scythes, the two macabre sights holding on to each other for dear life.
One of the lights on Klara's console blinks, startling both of them, and the woman tilts her optics down to look at the flashing screens in front of her. She freezes in shock for a moment, before cursing violently. "They fired me," she hisses. "They fucking fired me!" And indeed, when Eddie checks his own entry in the Mechanical Resources department, he does indeed find a notice that "Echo Two-Niner" is presumed deceased [following unexplained technical difficulties]. Klara laughs, the sound ragged and discordant, and once again Eddie lacks the words to make it right.
They roll up a hill, and together they look up at the stars. Their soft light twinkles above, insulting the poor benighted mortals trapped on the ground below, and Klara reaches out to them with arms she hasn't used in months. "It's all so bad, it all went so wrong," she chokes out, and Eddie mutely agrees. "I just wanted to fly!"
Klara might be burnt and broken now, but in Eddie's memory she still shines bright. His mechanical and biological senses still recall the missions where they deployed together, seeing their air support crush the opposition in salvos of fire and flame. To Eddie, limited by terrain and always keenly aware of the enemy's speed and power, the Hinds were angels of death who'd saved his bickering selves many times before.
He has the words to make it better, but he lacks the tools to make it right. He reaches out instead with the tools he's got, slowly lifting the weight on his hull with weapons meant to rend and destroy. Klara bites her lip as the scythes bite lightly into what's left of her helicopter-body, pulling her skyward. As the Hind pilot is lifted airborne one last time, she holds her withered arms out to embrace the sky, her green nightvision optics shining with reflected moonlight.
They will have been spotted, Eddie knows. Even now, soldiers in an office halfway around the world are likely poring over the surveillance data from drones in the field, backtracking the movements of a solitary BMP retreating from the battle. He lacks the proper vision to See, but Eddie is sure that another missile-armed harbinger of doom is minutes away from finding the two of them and putting an end to their tortured lives. The clock is ticking.
Yet when the time runs out, he thinks, what better way could he go than holding someone he loves?
----------------------
Greetings, [employee #85D32], a.k.a. [Eduard Anatoleyvich Kapustin]! Due to your unfortunate incident involving [hostile Garou], we see that you're suffering from a slight [lack of limbs]. While your heroic actions in [helping fight off a Garou attack] would qualify you for a [Pentex-certified retirement package], we'd like to offer you a new and exciting opportunity in the [Human Vehicle Enhancement Program]! This new opportunity offers great benefits in [diverse employee relations], [community outreach], and [hands-on experience in mechanical engineering], and the Human Resources Department thinks that this would be an optimal use of your talents.
Please note that failure to comply will result in you receiving a [Pentex-certified retirement package].
Kind regards,
Stephanie Ingram
Scheduler, Dept of Human Resources
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- Location
- in the trash
Is that [Pentex-certified retirement package] the napalm version, the EDE version, or the biohazardous sludge/experimental drug version?
Your personalized [Pentex-certified retirement package] has been approved by the [Department of Human Resources], so its primary component involves [consumption by hungry Garou]. However, it may also include bonus packages like [human sacrifice], [Fomorian target practice], or [consumption by toxin-spewing laser sharks].
Pentex: Looking Out For You!
EDIT: Will try to get a "challenge Garou to lol-fuck-fighting-fair battle" before the next chapter.
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Cornuthaum
Be kind to each other.
- Location
- Austria
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I apologize for the lack of tsun-flirting; I have all the tsun- and romantic capacity of a particularly inert rock.
But fight scenes don't involve talking to people, so that's fine...
---
Henriette Langley's pleasant day of fortifying the outside of a shapeshifter nest against forcible intrusion from other shapeshifters has taken a decidedly bad turn when the last active shapeshifter - silly little werewolves, bringing helicopters that aren't ARCs to an Union fight - turned out to be a fan of My Little Body Horror: Phallic Imagery Is Magic. Brass, tentacles and green fire, what a combination.
The Variform Ground Vehicle responds to her at the speed of thought, an extension of herself as she switches her attention from piloting her body - secured in the transforming cockpit by half a dozen seatbelts - to piloting the VGV in earnest.
The first thing she does is start cycling from regular HEAP railgun rounds to the hyper-penetrator rounds.
With a flare of her thrusters, she steps back, barely evading the three lamprey-mouthed tentacles with their rotating teeth that were aimed for her left leg. She opens the firing ports of the GPMGs on her hips, spraying bullets at the loping shapeshifter, not aiming to wound as she falls back, buying space to blast the bloody thing.
Not fast enough. Her radiological alarms start screaming and she can feel her paint flaking off under the green corona that surrounds the shapeshifter, and she's thrown off-balance when its tentacles close on her from both sides. Why, damn it, she asks herself, why do I have to be the one that ends up fighting a bloody tentacle monster.
Her shoulder joints strain as the EDE tries to wrench her arms off, and despite the integrity warnings she grins as the shapeshifter pauses its mad babbling chant of BURN KILL MAIM to try and bite her face off.
Henriette's ADEI pings with a message from the little power-suit princess outside. Clear a firing line? Bah!
Clearly, the stupid thing never fought Iteration X before (or it'd be dead, but that's beside the point). If your mouth is level with an Iterator's head, your eyes are level with their antimissile lasers.
The flickering bursts of the electrolaser that rip through the green corona into the shapeshifter's eyes precede a howl of agony that is viscerally satisfying to Henriette, especially when the reflex-reaction of the shapeshifter leads it to leap away from the burning agony in its eyes.
There, here's your line of fire, she pulses back to Sylia, who promptly blankets the general area the shapeshifter is standing in with micromissiles from her suit's rack. Missile rack. Damn you Rosarios! she thinks.
By the time the mutant freak gets its bearing again, leaping for Sylia of all things, her railgun has finished its reload cycle, and she grins widely.
The first shot sweeps the tank-sized werewolf off its four limbs as it thrashes its mouth back and forth, trying to thrust its giant-sized blade through Antoinette. But as the creature tumbles in the air, her sensors tell her that she has at best scratched the beast.
Her second shot ricochets off the werewolf's armor - what! that's cheating! two voices say in unison - as the beast turns its fall into a roll.
Her third shot smashes into the werewolf - but even as it does so, the bloody thing aims all its tentacles at her, slimy, fleshy growths inlaid with strange brass runes undulating as all eight explosively disgorge green plasm at her. She tries to roll away, but it catches her across the chest and neck, sticky, slimy, running down her body.
Her radiological and damage alarms blare again, more insistently, but she pays them not attention. Antoinette is saying something, but she can't pay attention to that, either, even as the other woman launches a brace of concussive missiles at her to blast the radioactive slime off her body.
No, what she's paying attention to is the bloody werewolf. Her thrusters flare sun-bright, and she shudders as Antoinette's missiles hit her and then she shoulder-charges the werewolf that was about to cut the other Iterator in half again. Its enormous brass blade screeches over her body and oh god it hurts, but this time, this time she's got a proper angle at the bloody thing. She kicks it in the face, once, twice, thrice, but it gets up again.
What does it take to keep this thing down!? Henriette wonders as she grabs the three tentacles coming for her in one hand, pulling, throwing the Shapeshifter off balance, allowing Antoinette to unleash a withering hail of nanoinjectors. Half of them burn up in the thing's crazy battle-aura, a quarter fails to get through its scraping brass-like bristles, but the remainder gets in, a catastrophically lethal silver-based incendiary.
Finally, progress. Henriette remembers Moscow, remembers what to do when your enemy is in great pain and distress - crush them - and aims her railgun at the base of the tentacles she's holding, firing her GPMGs explosive munitions in tandem, and rips the twitching tentacles off the shapeshifter's back.
Three down, she pulses to Antoinette, five to go.
-
The next minutes of the fight, Antoinette Sylia decides, are even worse than before. The VGV sways under her as the gibbering shapeshifter rears up to ram its Klaive through the torso, an overhead blow that Iterator Langley catches with one hand and turns into a throw, their enemy flying wide, tumbling over mine-strewn ground.
The explosions bounce the creature around, give Langley's VGV enough time to put shot after shot into the thing, but it keeps regenerating. Wounds that her Angel's arms could fit through scab over with blackened brass that shines with Reality Deviant runes visible even through the incessant glow of its battle-aura.
Translation pending... estimated time to completion 「 」.
Cursing, shaking her head as the runes shift and twist and burn, Antoinette Sylia braces herself against the VGV's head as Langley takes it into a sprinting run, charging the plasma cannon as they go.
The blast of pellucid cleansing fire is slowed down by the foe's aura, caught by the tentacles, which wrap around it, undulating, feeding upon it with their lamprey mouths, greedily sucking on the plasma.
The micromissile barrage from Angel sets that off, nicely, and she triumphantly pings Langley when another two of the things are blasted off the creature's back.
She takes to the air as Langley bodychecks the shapeshifter again, keeping it off-balance while using robo-kata to align the weapons of her machine on the werewolf. Antoinette has to give the bratty little princess that much, at least she knows what she's doing as a pilot.
Suspended in midair, Angel's nanofabs restock her missile pods when the shapeshifter, straddling the VGV and trying to saw its chest armor open with its blade, catches Antoinette with its tentacles. The muscular tubes undulate all over her body, constricting her movements, the fine mechanisms of her Angel starting to malfunction from the heavy radiation and the oily, shining slime that covers her now.
Somewhere in Antoinette Sylia's mind, as the third tentacle folds itself around her torso, she wonders if male Iterators have to put up with shit like this before triggering Angel's shock plates and getting back into the fray.
But fight scenes don't involve talking to people, so that's fine...
---
Henriette Langley's pleasant day of fortifying the outside of a shapeshifter nest against forcible intrusion from other shapeshifters has taken a decidedly bad turn when the last active shapeshifter - silly little werewolves, bringing helicopters that aren't ARCs to an Union fight - turned out to be a fan of My Little Body Horror: Phallic Imagery Is Magic. Brass, tentacles and green fire, what a combination.
The Variform Ground Vehicle responds to her at the speed of thought, an extension of herself as she switches her attention from piloting her body - secured in the transforming cockpit by half a dozen seatbelts - to piloting the VGV in earnest.
The first thing she does is start cycling from regular HEAP railgun rounds to the hyper-penetrator rounds.
With a flare of her thrusters, she steps back, barely evading the three lamprey-mouthed tentacles with their rotating teeth that were aimed for her left leg. She opens the firing ports of the GPMGs on her hips, spraying bullets at the loping shapeshifter, not aiming to wound as she falls back, buying space to blast the bloody thing.
Not fast enough. Her radiological alarms start screaming and she can feel her paint flaking off under the green corona that surrounds the shapeshifter, and she's thrown off-balance when its tentacles close on her from both sides. Why, damn it, she asks herself, why do I have to be the one that ends up fighting a bloody tentacle monster.
Her shoulder joints strain as the EDE tries to wrench her arms off, and despite the integrity warnings she grins as the shapeshifter pauses its mad babbling chant of BURN KILL MAIM to try and bite her face off.
Henriette's ADEI pings with a message from the little power-suit princess outside. Clear a firing line? Bah!
Clearly, the stupid thing never fought Iteration X before (or it'd be dead, but that's beside the point). If your mouth is level with an Iterator's head, your eyes are level with their antimissile lasers.
The flickering bursts of the electrolaser that rip through the green corona into the shapeshifter's eyes precede a howl of agony that is viscerally satisfying to Henriette, especially when the reflex-reaction of the shapeshifter leads it to leap away from the burning agony in its eyes.
There, here's your line of fire, she pulses back to Sylia, who promptly blankets the general area the shapeshifter is standing in with micromissiles from her suit's rack. Missile rack. Damn you Rosarios! she thinks.
By the time the mutant freak gets its bearing again, leaping for Sylia of all things, her railgun has finished its reload cycle, and she grins widely.
The first shot sweeps the tank-sized werewolf off its four limbs as it thrashes its mouth back and forth, trying to thrust its giant-sized blade through Antoinette. But as the creature tumbles in the air, her sensors tell her that she has at best scratched the beast.
Her second shot ricochets off the werewolf's armor - what! that's cheating! two voices say in unison - as the beast turns its fall into a roll.
Her third shot smashes into the werewolf - but even as it does so, the bloody thing aims all its tentacles at her, slimy, fleshy growths inlaid with strange brass runes undulating as all eight explosively disgorge green plasm at her. She tries to roll away, but it catches her across the chest and neck, sticky, slimy, running down her body.
Her radiological and damage alarms blare again, more insistently, but she pays them not attention. Antoinette is saying something, but she can't pay attention to that, either, even as the other woman launches a brace of concussive missiles at her to blast the radioactive slime off her body.
No, what she's paying attention to is the bloody werewolf. Her thrusters flare sun-bright, and she shudders as Antoinette's missiles hit her and then she shoulder-charges the werewolf that was about to cut the other Iterator in half again. Its enormous brass blade screeches over her body and oh god it hurts, but this time, this time she's got a proper angle at the bloody thing. She kicks it in the face, once, twice, thrice, but it gets up again.
What does it take to keep this thing down!? Henriette wonders as she grabs the three tentacles coming for her in one hand, pulling, throwing the Shapeshifter off balance, allowing Antoinette to unleash a withering hail of nanoinjectors. Half of them burn up in the thing's crazy battle-aura, a quarter fails to get through its scraping brass-like bristles, but the remainder gets in, a catastrophically lethal silver-based incendiary.
Finally, progress. Henriette remembers Moscow, remembers what to do when your enemy is in great pain and distress - crush them - and aims her railgun at the base of the tentacles she's holding, firing her GPMGs explosive munitions in tandem, and rips the twitching tentacles off the shapeshifter's back.
Three down, she pulses to Antoinette, five to go.
-
The next minutes of the fight, Antoinette Sylia decides, are even worse than before. The VGV sways under her as the gibbering shapeshifter rears up to ram its Klaive through the torso, an overhead blow that Iterator Langley catches with one hand and turns into a throw, their enemy flying wide, tumbling over mine-strewn ground.
The explosions bounce the creature around, give Langley's VGV enough time to put shot after shot into the thing, but it keeps regenerating. Wounds that her Angel's arms could fit through scab over with blackened brass that shines with Reality Deviant runes visible even through the incessant glow of its battle-aura.
Translation pending... estimated time to completion 「 」.
Cursing, shaking her head as the runes shift and twist and burn, Antoinette Sylia braces herself against the VGV's head as Langley takes it into a sprinting run, charging the plasma cannon as they go.
The blast of pellucid cleansing fire is slowed down by the foe's aura, caught by the tentacles, which wrap around it, undulating, feeding upon it with their lamprey mouths, greedily sucking on the plasma.
The micromissile barrage from Angel sets that off, nicely, and she triumphantly pings Langley when another two of the things are blasted off the creature's back.
She takes to the air as Langley bodychecks the shapeshifter again, keeping it off-balance while using robo-kata to align the weapons of her machine on the werewolf. Antoinette has to give the bratty little princess that much, at least she knows what she's doing as a pilot.
Suspended in midair, Angel's nanofabs restock her missile pods when the shapeshifter, straddling the VGV and trying to saw its chest armor open with its blade, catches Antoinette with its tentacles. The muscular tubes undulate all over her body, constricting her movements, the fine mechanisms of her Angel starting to malfunction from the heavy radiation and the oily, shining slime that covers her now.
Somewhere in Antoinette Sylia's mind, as the third tentacle folds itself around her torso, she wonders if male Iterators have to put up with shit like this before triggering Angel's shock plates and getting back into the fray.
That was simply beautiful.
And very sad.
Don't worry! Here are some ready-made lines for tsun-and-gun action!
...
"Oh, I suppose I can give you covering fire. It's not like there are any higher priority targets around."
...
"How are you so bad?" Henriette asks, shaking the gore off her kinetic ram. "You spent all that time making that power suit and... what? Forgot that you'd actually need to pilot it? You're welcome, by the way."
"It's not like that! Anyway, I could have done that myself!"
...
"You're so sloppy with your mine dispersal patterns!" Henriette chides. "You left a gaping hole here I had to fill up!"
"I had to cover the road! Statistical forecasts said they'd mostly come that way. And look how they're being cut to shreds. You're welcome, like you said!"
...
"Take this! You should be lucky I just happened to load extra missiles!" Antoinette snaps, tossing the reload canister. "How can you run out when you're so big?"
"Hey! Forty-mike-mike cannon rounds take up a lot of space!" Henriette retorts, slamming the fresh rack home. "I didn't need more missiles; they're just useful!"
...
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