Amazing writeup, there, eraserman.
[X] MOAR SIMS! Basics are basics for a reason.
[X] Workout! You need to get fit to survive these things.
-[X]- sports; soccer (AKA football)
--[x] invite everyone else who wants to join. (eraserman's stunt)
[x] Hangout
-[x] Raj
Socialization:
[X] Dad and the Siblings.
-[x] Amina mentioned pressure on your siblings, that isn't happening, is it?
-[X] Additional Write in: See if you can use this call home to get dad to gather Sam and Vladimir in the same room for the video conference?
(schedules may conflict, but hey, trying to get cake and eat it too is a time honored tradition. Plus if they missed it, it's the thought that counts.)
Video Conference
-[x] How are they doing?
-[x] reassure them by talking about the training hours and the help you're getting from the experts
---[x] avoid telling them about the pain and Raj's simulated death, this will only pointlessly worry them
[X] Tang Ying
-[x] cheer him up, remind him that training occurs so mistakes don't happen.
[X] Raj
-[x] dude cheer up (eraserman's stunt).
Deployment
[x]Raj Rai
[x]Amina
[X] MOAR SIMS! Basics are basics for a reason.
[X] Workout! You need to get fit to survive these things.
-[X]- sports; soccer (AKA football)
--[x] invite everyone else who wants to join. (eraserman's stunt)
[x] Hangout
-[x] Raj
Socialization:
[X] Dad and the Siblings.
-[x] Amina mentioned pressure on your siblings, that isn't happening, is it?
-[X] Additional Write in: See if you can use this call home to get dad to gather Sam and Vladimir in the same room for the video conference?
(schedules may conflict, but hey, trying to get cake and eat it too is a time honored tradition. Plus if they missed it, it's the thought that counts.)
Video Conference
-[x] How are they doing?
-[x] reassure them by talking about the training hours and the help you're getting from the experts
---[x] avoid telling them about the pain and Raj's simulated death, this will only pointlessly worry them
[X] Tang Ying
-[x] cheer him up, remind him that training occurs so mistakes don't happen.
[X] Raj
-[x] dude cheer up (eraserman's stunt).
Deployment
[x]Raj Rai
[x]Amina
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In honor of the Year of Evangelion starting, the next Hathihul update should be up later today. PST, of course.
God and the Snake
A Swamp of a Human Being
Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
In an alternate Universe, we are all Tang
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
Not until the end of the year.In an alternate Universe, we are all Tang
And what better way to start the year than with giant robot action?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Month One
With your first simulator session finished, the rest of your day goes uneventfully. You start your classes properly, have an enormous amount of school supplies and textbooks delivered to your flat, deal with a couple of extra briefings, and then go to sleep thoroughly exhausted.
It's a rough start to your next morning. You're woken up just minutes before your alarm by an admittedly apologetic looking technician. Despite that, you can't help but wish you could somehow use your apparent robot wizardry powers to give him a stubbed toe (or something) as you pull yourself from the covers. You're signed in for a session of training, apparently a symptom of the training schedule that Umar handed you. Still, after yesterday, it's a little hard to argue that you don't need a bit of it. Maybe you didn't fuck up, but you definitely weren't over-performing.
And so, you climb into one of the lobotomized robot shells hung up in the Chamber, glancing through the instruments as the simulator sings to life like a gospel choir. You're tired enough to forget about proper start-up protocol, and the simulator blares the ungodly spawn of a Windows error tone and a novelty foghorn at you for your apparent negligence. A couple false-starts come and go as you work out which switch is flipped when, and the simulation begins in earnest. It's straightforward enough, a Ma'jooj materializes at a preset distance around you, you turn and shoot it. A little window in your peripheral vision grades you on how fast you respond, how long you take to aim, and how accurate you are. A little more complicated with every target downed.
It's a little like the time trial mode of Breakers Dozen, but the comparison makes you a little uneasy the more you think about it. You plug away for a couple hours, turning where your early warning system nudges you and pulling the trigger once your assisted aiming system locks onto a target. Bang. Pause. Bang. Pause. Bang. There is, evidently, no one else here to do it with, and an already dull exercise gains a thoroughly exhausting quality.
Then the simulation starts to phase in 'friendly' Maridas that you are, of course, not supposed to shoot to mix things up a little and you throw off the helmet. You figure that's probably enough simulator hours for today.
You hit a yellow button (helpfully titled 'MISSION CANCEL'), and the running lights around you cool off. The simulation disappears with a frank 'goodbye', and a series of graphs, time averages, percentages, and point grades replace it. You're almost certain if Amira or Dirk were here, they'd be mugging at the sheer mediocrity of your scores, though the curved graph tells you that repetition was at least doing its' job by the tail-end of the exercise.
Maybe.
You sigh, and pull the lever by your seat. The egg cracks open, and you take a blissful moment to breathe the real air. You catch Kim out of the corner of your eye now, apparently in the middle of leaving. Maybe she'd come in a little before you - you weren't exactly lucid enough to check if any of the pods were already occupied, maybe she came in a little late, it didn't really matter. You call out to her, and she pauses to look back.
"...oh," Kim says blankly. "Sorry, didn't know you were here."
Don't say anything about her dad.
"Yeah, uh, just training." You say a bit lamely.
Don't say anything about her dad.
"Same. I'm supposed to get a few more hours in."
Don't say anything about her dad.
"How were you doing?" You finally ask, having finally conjured a question that did not begin with 'what the hell' and end with 'is up with your dad'. "In the sim, I mean." Kim offers you a noncommittal shrug.
"I did alright." She says.
"That's good," you reply. "I think I did alright, too. Mostly."
"Mostly?" She asks.
"Yeah, messed up the start-up sequence." You admit.
"The start-up?" Kim snickers a bit, then catches herself. "Oh, uhm, sorry. It's... kind of tricky sometimes."
"No, no. It was, uh, it was kind of dumb of me."
You break into some small talk from there, though as the helmet fluid begins to dry on your hair, you both more or less agree to part ways before it gets too hard to wash out.
After your first week at Cairo, you've decided that Egyptian high school is a lot harder than American high school. Admittedly, part of that's probably because so much of your time is taken up with Simulator sessions and sparring and weapons training and stuff.
On your way to your room after classes you hear an argument. Or, perhaps more accurately, a rant, as it's rather one-sided. All of it is... well, it's Dirk. He looms over Tang Ying, his eyes narrow as he presumably tears into him. It's admittedly a little hard to figure out what exactly he's saying - he's speaking so fast that his accent is masking most of the actual specifics. It's really not hard to guess what this is about, anyways. You already told yourself that Tang didn't really deserve to get shouted at over it, and you're really not keen on letting Dirk get away with it. You get closer, and step in. "Dirk, just... stop."
He turns to meet you, and his eyes glance to your feet and your eyes, as if he's sizing you up. "I'm just telling him what I think."
"Just lay off." You say, exasperated. "I think the last thing he needs right now is what you think. Give him a break."
"A break." He guffaws. "You really think that he deserves one, after what he tried? That could have been any of us. At any time."
"He definitely doesn't deserve... whatever this is." You shoot back, glaring. You glance at Tang, who's standing there passively, letting his head hang. Dirk tilts his head towards him.
"Would you trust him with your life, with the world?"
You... well, no. You don't think you would, if you had to be totally honest. But every second you stay silent, Tang appears to shrink even more. Given that you can't really bring yourself to lie through your teeth to prove Dirk wrong, you settle instead for a withering glower. "Just... leave, Dirk. Please."
He stares at you for a few moments, and his eyes flick between you and Tang. "Whatever." He turns around, and disappears down the hallway's next corner. Leaving you alone with Tang. A part of you - actually, not an insignificant portion - really doesn't want to be here, and you quietly wrestle with the notion of simply parting ways, but you can't help but feel a bit guilty for Tang. It was obvious that he was doing a fine enough job beating himself up, and he didn't really deserve whatever Dirk told him. Besides, you left your last little talk on a... weird note.
"Yesterday, what I did. I did it in a game. And I saw it in, you know, a show. It..." he pauses. "It worked, then. Then I screwed it up."
It's not a fucking game. It's not a fucking movie. It's not a fucking comic.
That's what you want to say, and you do an admirable job in keeping a lid on that. Still, the sentiment is hard to leash up. "...stuff like that, it usually only works in games or shows."
"But I thought, maybe--" He sighs, apparently scuttling whatever he was about to say. "He was right," Tang declares miserably. "...I think everyone might be, um, better off if... I go home. Before I screw up again."
He... might not be wrong. Like, really. But that's probably not the right thing to say. The right thing is... well.
"...look, uh." That 'uh' lingers on your lips for a few moments too long. "Umar says I need a sparring partner, and there's the deployment that's coming up. We can pair up on both, if...that's alright?"
Tang's eyes light up. "You... mean it?"
"Yes," your chest tightens up as your second chance disintegrates. "I mean it."
To that, he offers you a thin, grateful smile. "Thanks." Quite a bit less halfhearted than it was yesterday. "You're not going to regret this."
He walks off, pointedly opposite the direction of Dirk, and you let out a breath that you didn't know you were holding.
Did you just make a terrible mistake?
You think you might have just made a terrible mistake.
On the fifteenth there's an attack on the east coast of Brazil. A Ma'jooj, codenamed Qarin, burrows out of the ground by the coast and escaped into the Atlantic during a running battle with Los Salvadores. It isn't major, but within a day Qarin has been added to the simulator and you're doing practice runs against him.
It's entirely different from the popup targets or simulations of fights with Ma'Jooj spawn you've run before. Qarin's titanic, covered in silver fish-scales, with giant forelimbs it uses to swat away weapon's fire. It spits gobs of lava, and even if you do wound it its blood's hot enough to burn holes in a Ma'Jooj.
The first time you ran a sim against it you were nearly roasted to death before Dirk grabbed you and pulled you out of the small river of burning blood you'd been thrown into. You now know what it feels like to be on fire; knowledge that you had really been doing just fine without, and sort of wish you still were.
That night, in the rec hall, Dirk catches up with you.
"You are alright?" he asks. He seems oddly genuine in his concern.
"Yeah, thanks," you say, "That...thanks for pulling me out of the fire. I owe you one."
"You-" Dirk catches himself mid-sentence, then continues in a tone that's more...him. All confident and dismissive and self-assured, "Should not thank me. It was my duty to protect you from your blunders, any proper pilot would have done the same."
You prepare to protest, then realize that you're not going to get him to concede on this one. Still, you'd like to be nice to him in a way he won't shut down...
"Alright," you say, "I've got a gap in my schedule. If you're free we could grab lunch and play Smash Bros?"
Dirk narrows his eyes, as if he expects this to be some sort of trap. "Alright," he says, "But I won't be going easy on you."
You're in your room after a training session when you get a Multicast ping. It's from Dad
-Hey Johnathan, how are you doing?
You pause for a second to look at the clock. It's currently 5pm on a Saturday here in the Cairo Fortress, which means that back in San Jose it's…. probably around 8am.
-I'm doing fine, is everyone else up yet?
-Your siblings are just finishing breakfast. You free for a call?
The second your dad responds, you press the video call button. It connects almost instantly, and soon your screen is filled with the back of your father's head as he yells for your brother and sisters to join him. You grin madly as they rush into view at varying speeds.
The conversation goes pretty well. Jess misses you greatly, you're pretty sure Jenn and James do too but they're not gonna admit it. Sam's helping your dad with stuff, mostly getting your siblings home from school. She's not here at the moment, though. Your friends are asking after you occasionally, though there isn't much your family can tell them as you haven't been calling, and your siblings' school years are evidently going a lot better than yours is. Jess is curious as to when you'll be visiting, and doesn't seem very interested in 'I'm probably not coming home for a while' as an answer.
You tell them how things have been going here, though you sanitize the details of the sims. And everything involving Qarin. They don't need to know that. You also tell them about the church you found, it's pretty nice and even has an English mass. Evidently it's largely English and American expats, refugees, and JANNAH staff. Then, when the conversation's winding down, you ask them something that's been bugging you since Amina brought it up.
"Hey, uh, have there been...issues at school, or with the community? Like, people pressuring bugging them about…" you trail off, "This?"
Your dad scans your brothers and sisters.
"Nah," says James, "I'm mostly just stuck with the girls all the time. Which sucks, don't get me wrong, but it isn't weird or anything."
"Jess? Jenn?" you ask.
"We're fine, John," says Jenn, "You're not really famous enough for most of the people here to care, yeah?"
"Alright," you say, "Just...if people start pressuring you to join JANNAH or asking weird questions, tell me or dad, alright?"
"Yeah, yeah, sure," says Jenn, "See you soon bro."
"See you later, guys," you say.
At the end of the month you, Kim, and Tang are due for your first deployment. It's not an actual fight, just a training thing to make sure they work basically like they do in the sim. It's your first time actually in your Marida instead of the simulator and, to be honest, you're a little nervous.
You get changed into your Pilot Suit, a mostly-skintight suit with a giant armored plate over your upper torso and a small, sleek helmet, then meet up with Tang Ying, Kim and Umar in a vestibule just outside of the hangar.
Umar looks your way as you enter the vestibule and you blush heavily underneath your helmet. "Johnathan! Good to see you," he says, his voice like honey, "I'm about to begin the briefing, if you would join the others?"
You nod silently and sidle over next to Tang Ying.
"Alright, this is a livefire exercise, but it's just a shakedown run," says Umar, "You'll be trekking to Lake Wamala, doing some live fire exercises, and then coming back. It's just to make sure you're used to being in an actual cockpit. Now, your exercises will be near that outpost you all had a stopover at on the way here. They're just some of the basic simulator tests, you've run through them a dozen times. No issue. There will be some VIPs watching from the outpost, but they're nothing to worry about, just bureaucrats who want to watch every exercise. Got it?"
"Yeah," you say. Kim and Tang follow suit.
"Alright, I'll see you all tonight," says Umar, "God be with you."
You enter the hangar, each of you ushered into your Marida cockpits by the bridge staff. It's different than the simulator. Where the simulator was blank and barebones, just a seat and the bare minimum of controls you needed, the cockpit is swanky. The walls are chrome and you're pretty sure that the seat is leather. Also, there are no controls that you can see. You sit down, slightly confused, and find that the chair is the single most comfortable chair you've ever experienced.
You go through the startup sequence and wait for your helmet to flood with Type-P. Then you realize that your helmet isn't flooding with the blue liquid, but the entire cockpit is. Your eyes widen as the stuff flows into your lungs, and then everything changes.
You are no longer Johnathan Alvarez, a seventeen year old human at just under two meters tall. Or...at least you're no longer just Johnathan Alvarez. You are Righteous Penitent, the entire, unbelievably massive machine. Its eyes are your eyes, its skin your skin. Things you controlled via keyboard and interface in the simulator are simply things you will. You can see the holographic readouts that are displayed across your cockpits, as well as the video-comm links to the Bridge and other pilots, but you also see through its ocular cameras, hear the beat of its impossibly massive heart, feel the souls of every single person in the hangar, and understand that, for all intents and purposes, you are the giant death robot.
Titanic racks of weapons spring up around you, and the bridge team calls for you to prepare for launch.
Pick One to carry personally, and one for refit during training
[X] 240 CM Mark 3 Assault Rifle
[X] Fiber Blade and Shield
[X] 440 CM Mark 1 Railgun
[X] Hyper-Exothermic Gauntlets
[X] Impact Gauntlets
[X] Fiber Spear
[X] H-Ex Knuckles
[X] Swarm Missile Launcher
[X] Payload Hammer
[X] Pilebunker Spear
[X] Tesla Sword and 300 CM Handcannon
[X] 300 CM Gatling Cannon
Note:
I've got a hold of the AdEva 3.0 beta and will be porting us over behind the scenes. This isn't going to be particularly important to you guys, but I figured it was worth noting.
With your first simulator session finished, the rest of your day goes uneventfully. You start your classes properly, have an enormous amount of school supplies and textbooks delivered to your flat, deal with a couple of extra briefings, and then go to sleep thoroughly exhausted.
*
It's a rough start to your next morning. You're woken up just minutes before your alarm by an admittedly apologetic looking technician. Despite that, you can't help but wish you could somehow use your apparent robot wizardry powers to give him a stubbed toe (or something) as you pull yourself from the covers. You're signed in for a session of training, apparently a symptom of the training schedule that Umar handed you. Still, after yesterday, it's a little hard to argue that you don't need a bit of it. Maybe you didn't fuck up, but you definitely weren't over-performing.
And so, you climb into one of the lobotomized robot shells hung up in the Chamber, glancing through the instruments as the simulator sings to life like a gospel choir. You're tired enough to forget about proper start-up protocol, and the simulator blares the ungodly spawn of a Windows error tone and a novelty foghorn at you for your apparent negligence. A couple false-starts come and go as you work out which switch is flipped when, and the simulation begins in earnest. It's straightforward enough, a Ma'jooj materializes at a preset distance around you, you turn and shoot it. A little window in your peripheral vision grades you on how fast you respond, how long you take to aim, and how accurate you are. A little more complicated with every target downed.
It's a little like the time trial mode of Breakers Dozen, but the comparison makes you a little uneasy the more you think about it. You plug away for a couple hours, turning where your early warning system nudges you and pulling the trigger once your assisted aiming system locks onto a target. Bang. Pause. Bang. Pause. Bang. There is, evidently, no one else here to do it with, and an already dull exercise gains a thoroughly exhausting quality.
Then the simulation starts to phase in 'friendly' Maridas that you are, of course, not supposed to shoot to mix things up a little and you throw off the helmet. You figure that's probably enough simulator hours for today.
You hit a yellow button (helpfully titled 'MISSION CANCEL'), and the running lights around you cool off. The simulation disappears with a frank 'goodbye', and a series of graphs, time averages, percentages, and point grades replace it. You're almost certain if Amira or Dirk were here, they'd be mugging at the sheer mediocrity of your scores, though the curved graph tells you that repetition was at least doing its' job by the tail-end of the exercise.
Maybe.
You sigh, and pull the lever by your seat. The egg cracks open, and you take a blissful moment to breathe the real air. You catch Kim out of the corner of your eye now, apparently in the middle of leaving. Maybe she'd come in a little before you - you weren't exactly lucid enough to check if any of the pods were already occupied, maybe she came in a little late, it didn't really matter. You call out to her, and she pauses to look back.
"...oh," Kim says blankly. "Sorry, didn't know you were here."
Don't say anything about her dad.
"Yeah, uh, just training." You say a bit lamely.
Don't say anything about her dad.
"Same. I'm supposed to get a few more hours in."
Don't say anything about her dad.
"How were you doing?" You finally ask, having finally conjured a question that did not begin with 'what the hell' and end with 'is up with your dad'. "In the sim, I mean." Kim offers you a noncommittal shrug.
"I did alright." She says.
"That's good," you reply. "I think I did alright, too. Mostly."
"Mostly?" She asks.
"Yeah, messed up the start-up sequence." You admit.
"The start-up?" Kim snickers a bit, then catches herself. "Oh, uhm, sorry. It's... kind of tricky sometimes."
"No, no. It was, uh, it was kind of dumb of me."
You break into some small talk from there, though as the helmet fluid begins to dry on your hair, you both more or less agree to part ways before it gets too hard to wash out.
*
After your first week at Cairo, you've decided that Egyptian high school is a lot harder than American high school. Admittedly, part of that's probably because so much of your time is taken up with Simulator sessions and sparring and weapons training and stuff.
On your way to your room after classes you hear an argument. Or, perhaps more accurately, a rant, as it's rather one-sided. All of it is... well, it's Dirk. He looms over Tang Ying, his eyes narrow as he presumably tears into him. It's admittedly a little hard to figure out what exactly he's saying - he's speaking so fast that his accent is masking most of the actual specifics. It's really not hard to guess what this is about, anyways. You already told yourself that Tang didn't really deserve to get shouted at over it, and you're really not keen on letting Dirk get away with it. You get closer, and step in. "Dirk, just... stop."
He turns to meet you, and his eyes glance to your feet and your eyes, as if he's sizing you up. "I'm just telling him what I think."
"Just lay off." You say, exasperated. "I think the last thing he needs right now is what you think. Give him a break."
"A break." He guffaws. "You really think that he deserves one, after what he tried? That could have been any of us. At any time."
"He definitely doesn't deserve... whatever this is." You shoot back, glaring. You glance at Tang, who's standing there passively, letting his head hang. Dirk tilts his head towards him.
"Would you trust him with your life, with the world?"
You... well, no. You don't think you would, if you had to be totally honest. But every second you stay silent, Tang appears to shrink even more. Given that you can't really bring yourself to lie through your teeth to prove Dirk wrong, you settle instead for a withering glower. "Just... leave, Dirk. Please."
He stares at you for a few moments, and his eyes flick between you and Tang. "Whatever." He turns around, and disappears down the hallway's next corner. Leaving you alone with Tang. A part of you - actually, not an insignificant portion - really doesn't want to be here, and you quietly wrestle with the notion of simply parting ways, but you can't help but feel a bit guilty for Tang. It was obvious that he was doing a fine enough job beating himself up, and he didn't really deserve whatever Dirk told him. Besides, you left your last little talk on a... weird note.
"Yesterday, what I did. I did it in a game. And I saw it in, you know, a show. It..." he pauses. "It worked, then. Then I screwed it up."
It's not a fucking game. It's not a fucking movie. It's not a fucking comic.
That's what you want to say, and you do an admirable job in keeping a lid on that. Still, the sentiment is hard to leash up. "...stuff like that, it usually only works in games or shows."
"But I thought, maybe--" He sighs, apparently scuttling whatever he was about to say. "He was right," Tang declares miserably. "...I think everyone might be, um, better off if... I go home. Before I screw up again."
He... might not be wrong. Like, really. But that's probably not the right thing to say. The right thing is... well.
"...look, uh." That 'uh' lingers on your lips for a few moments too long. "Umar says I need a sparring partner, and there's the deployment that's coming up. We can pair up on both, if...that's alright?"
Tang's eyes light up. "You... mean it?"
"Yes," your chest tightens up as your second chance disintegrates. "I mean it."
To that, he offers you a thin, grateful smile. "Thanks." Quite a bit less halfhearted than it was yesterday. "You're not going to regret this."
He walks off, pointedly opposite the direction of Dirk, and you let out a breath that you didn't know you were holding.
Did you just make a terrible mistake?
You think you might have just made a terrible mistake.
*
On the fifteenth there's an attack on the east coast of Brazil. A Ma'jooj, codenamed Qarin, burrows out of the ground by the coast and escaped into the Atlantic during a running battle with Los Salvadores. It isn't major, but within a day Qarin has been added to the simulator and you're doing practice runs against him.
It's entirely different from the popup targets or simulations of fights with Ma'Jooj spawn you've run before. Qarin's titanic, covered in silver fish-scales, with giant forelimbs it uses to swat away weapon's fire. It spits gobs of lava, and even if you do wound it its blood's hot enough to burn holes in a Ma'Jooj.
The first time you ran a sim against it you were nearly roasted to death before Dirk grabbed you and pulled you out of the small river of burning blood you'd been thrown into. You now know what it feels like to be on fire; knowledge that you had really been doing just fine without, and sort of wish you still were.
That night, in the rec hall, Dirk catches up with you.
"You are alright?" he asks. He seems oddly genuine in his concern.
"Yeah, thanks," you say, "That...thanks for pulling me out of the fire. I owe you one."
"You-" Dirk catches himself mid-sentence, then continues in a tone that's more...him. All confident and dismissive and self-assured, "Should not thank me. It was my duty to protect you from your blunders, any proper pilot would have done the same."
You prepare to protest, then realize that you're not going to get him to concede on this one. Still, you'd like to be nice to him in a way he won't shut down...
"Alright," you say, "I've got a gap in my schedule. If you're free we could grab lunch and play Smash Bros?"
Dirk narrows his eyes, as if he expects this to be some sort of trap. "Alright," he says, "But I won't be going easy on you."
*
You play Smash Bros together pretty regularly after sim sessions now. You're reasonably sure he's going easy on you.
*
You're in your room after a training session when you get a Multicast ping. It's from Dad
-Hey Johnathan, how are you doing?
You pause for a second to look at the clock. It's currently 5pm on a Saturday here in the Cairo Fortress, which means that back in San Jose it's…. probably around 8am.
-I'm doing fine, is everyone else up yet?
-Your siblings are just finishing breakfast. You free for a call?
The second your dad responds, you press the video call button. It connects almost instantly, and soon your screen is filled with the back of your father's head as he yells for your brother and sisters to join him. You grin madly as they rush into view at varying speeds.
The conversation goes pretty well. Jess misses you greatly, you're pretty sure Jenn and James do too but they're not gonna admit it. Sam's helping your dad with stuff, mostly getting your siblings home from school. She's not here at the moment, though. Your friends are asking after you occasionally, though there isn't much your family can tell them as you haven't been calling, and your siblings' school years are evidently going a lot better than yours is. Jess is curious as to when you'll be visiting, and doesn't seem very interested in 'I'm probably not coming home for a while' as an answer.
You tell them how things have been going here, though you sanitize the details of the sims. And everything involving Qarin. They don't need to know that. You also tell them about the church you found, it's pretty nice and even has an English mass. Evidently it's largely English and American expats, refugees, and JANNAH staff. Then, when the conversation's winding down, you ask them something that's been bugging you since Amina brought it up.
"Hey, uh, have there been...issues at school, or with the community? Like, people pressuring bugging them about…" you trail off, "This?"
Your dad scans your brothers and sisters.
"Nah," says James, "I'm mostly just stuck with the girls all the time. Which sucks, don't get me wrong, but it isn't weird or anything."
"Jess? Jenn?" you ask.
"We're fine, John," says Jenn, "You're not really famous enough for most of the people here to care, yeah?"
"Alright," you say, "Just...if people start pressuring you to join JANNAH or asking weird questions, tell me or dad, alright?"
"Yeah, yeah, sure," says Jenn, "See you soon bro."
"See you later, guys," you say.
*
At the end of the month you, Kim, and Tang are due for your first deployment. It's not an actual fight, just a training thing to make sure they work basically like they do in the sim. It's your first time actually in your Marida instead of the simulator and, to be honest, you're a little nervous.
You get changed into your Pilot Suit, a mostly-skintight suit with a giant armored plate over your upper torso and a small, sleek helmet, then meet up with Tang Ying, Kim and Umar in a vestibule just outside of the hangar.
Umar looks your way as you enter the vestibule and you blush heavily underneath your helmet. "Johnathan! Good to see you," he says, his voice like honey, "I'm about to begin the briefing, if you would join the others?"
You nod silently and sidle over next to Tang Ying.
"Alright, this is a livefire exercise, but it's just a shakedown run," says Umar, "You'll be trekking to Lake Wamala, doing some live fire exercises, and then coming back. It's just to make sure you're used to being in an actual cockpit. Now, your exercises will be near that outpost you all had a stopover at on the way here. They're just some of the basic simulator tests, you've run through them a dozen times. No issue. There will be some VIPs watching from the outpost, but they're nothing to worry about, just bureaucrats who want to watch every exercise. Got it?"
"Yeah," you say. Kim and Tang follow suit.
"Alright, I'll see you all tonight," says Umar, "God be with you."
You enter the hangar, each of you ushered into your Marida cockpits by the bridge staff. It's different than the simulator. Where the simulator was blank and barebones, just a seat and the bare minimum of controls you needed, the cockpit is swanky. The walls are chrome and you're pretty sure that the seat is leather. Also, there are no controls that you can see. You sit down, slightly confused, and find that the chair is the single most comfortable chair you've ever experienced.
You go through the startup sequence and wait for your helmet to flood with Type-P. Then you realize that your helmet isn't flooding with the blue liquid, but the entire cockpit is. Your eyes widen as the stuff flows into your lungs, and then everything changes.
You are no longer Johnathan Alvarez, a seventeen year old human at just under two meters tall. Or...at least you're no longer just Johnathan Alvarez. You are Righteous Penitent, the entire, unbelievably massive machine. Its eyes are your eyes, its skin your skin. Things you controlled via keyboard and interface in the simulator are simply things you will. You can see the holographic readouts that are displayed across your cockpits, as well as the video-comm links to the Bridge and other pilots, but you also see through its ocular cameras, hear the beat of its impossibly massive heart, feel the souls of every single person in the hangar, and understand that, for all intents and purposes, you are the giant death robot.
Titanic racks of weapons spring up around you, and the bridge team calls for you to prepare for launch.
Pick One to carry personally, and one for refit during training
[X] 240 CM Mark 3 Assault Rifle
[X] Fiber Blade and Shield
[X] 440 CM Mark 1 Railgun
[X] Hyper-Exothermic Gauntlets
[X] Impact Gauntlets
[X] Fiber Spear
[X] H-Ex Knuckles
[X] Swarm Missile Launcher
[X] Payload Hammer
[X] Pilebunker Spear
[X] Tesla Sword and 300 CM Handcannon
[X] 300 CM Gatling Cannon
Note:
I've got a hold of the AdEva 3.0 beta and will be porting us over behind the scenes. This isn't going to be particularly important to you guys, but I figured it was worth noting.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Whoops, shit, forgot to complete a section. Go ahead and vote, but I'll be editing a Dirk scene into the update.
Carry
[] 240 CM Mark 3 Assault Rifle
Refit
[] Tesla Sword and 300 CM Handcannon
I like the idea of having some degree of capability in melee, especially since Ma'Jooj aren't exactly mindless, so gaping weaknesses in capability aren't recommended. That said, all of Jonathan's Soul Powers synergize best with ranged combat. I'm against trying to ignore that entirely.
Edit: Looking back, we've been given advice before on what Righteous Penitent should be using in combat. We're specialized for range, not melee - one of the artillery options might be better as a secondary.
Refit
[] Tesla Sword and 300 CM Handcannon
I like the idea of having some degree of capability in melee, especially since Ma'Jooj aren't exactly mindless, so gaping weaknesses in capability aren't recommended. That said, all of Jonathan's Soul Powers synergize best with ranged combat. I'm against trying to ignore that entirely.
Edit: Looking back, we've been given advice before on what Righteous Penitent should be using in combat. We're specialized for range, not melee - one of the artillery options might be better as a secondary.
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LupineVolt
Now with 200% more Puns
- Location
- Michigan
Carry
[X] 240 CM Mark 3 Assault Rifle
Refit
[X] Tesla Sword and 300 CM Handcannon
[X] 240 CM Mark 3 Assault Rifle
Refit
[X] Tesla Sword and 300 CM Handcannon
So, we've got some nice bonuses to ranged weapons and the awesome mono-directional field, along with some sensory bonuses. We're overall a pretty good generalist though. Whereas last time we were paired with a melee specialist (meaning we should definitely use our ranged bonuses) this time it's a bit less good to do that since our partner's also somewhat specced for range. On the other hand, he also has some issues with collateral damage meaning we can't rely on him to help us if we get in a melee.
For now I think I'll go with the bandwagon plan. It gives us some very slight melee capabilities and it gives us some weapons that seem like they'll do well when paired with our allied heavy weapons specialist.
Carry
[X] 240 CM Mark 3 Assault Rifle
Refit
[X] Tesla Sword and 300 CM Handcannon
Here's hoping he isn't so nervous about hurting us that he goes with weapons that his robot is clearly not designed for. If he goes for small-arms as well, we might be in a bit of trouble.
edit: wait a second, 240cm rifle? Shouldn't that be 240mm or 24 cm? It looks like in the previous vote it was all 10x smaller.
For now I think I'll go with the bandwagon plan. It gives us some very slight melee capabilities and it gives us some weapons that seem like they'll do well when paired with our allied heavy weapons specialist.
Carry
[X] 240 CM Mark 3 Assault Rifle
Refit
[X] Tesla Sword and 300 CM Handcannon
Here's hoping he isn't so nervous about hurting us that he goes with weapons that his robot is clearly not designed for. If he goes for small-arms as well, we might be in a bit of trouble.
edit: wait a second, 240cm rifle? Shouldn't that be 240mm or 24 cm? It looks like in the previous vote it was all 10x smaller.
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If I'm not mistaken, Tang's rockets are blast weapons.
Which means being in melee with his target isn't good, but it's not a disaster - we can render ourselves immune to blast weapons.
There's a decent chance he might not go with the swarm missile launcher this time, of course - in which case, we'll have to worry about whatever weapons he does pick.
But we've got some degree of protection vs. teamkill.
PFFT
ALL LITTLE BABIES! WHAT ARE TEAM MATES FOR BUT FOR CLOSE QUARTERS! WE ARE SHOOTY GUY! SHOOTY GUY WHO CAN AIM! OUR JOB IS FIRE SUPPORT AND DPS! WE ARE NOT TEAM TANK!
Pick One to carry personally
[X] 240 CM Mark 3 Assault Rifle
Refit
[X] 440 CM Mark 1 Railgun
RAILGUN? MORE LIKE RAIL FUN! ASSAULT RIFLE GOOD FOR SMALL GIANT MONSTERS BUT FOR BIG BAD BOSS MONSTERS WE ARE WANTING BIGGEST GUN AROUND! WE HELP TEAM THAT WAY!
ALL LITTLE BABIES! WHAT ARE TEAM MATES FOR BUT FOR CLOSE QUARTERS! WE ARE SHOOTY GUY! SHOOTY GUY WHO CAN AIM! OUR JOB IS FIRE SUPPORT AND DPS! WE ARE NOT TEAM TANK!
Pick One to carry personally
[X] 240 CM Mark 3 Assault Rifle
Refit
[X] 440 CM Mark 1 Railgun
RAILGUN? MORE LIKE RAIL FUN! ASSAULT RIFLE GOOD FOR SMALL GIANT MONSTERS BUT FOR BIG BAD BOSS MONSTERS WE ARE WANTING BIGGEST GUN AROUND! WE HELP TEAM THAT WAY!
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Khadijah and Tang Ying both have edges on us when it comes to ranged DPS, and we've got both medium armor and some very nice defensive powers. (Of course, Tang Ying has heavy armor...)
Honestly, I think Righteous Penitent looks to be a generalist design - a jack of all trades type that can fill in any role the team might find itself lacking, but not excel in (any? most?) of them.
Which means we might want to be familiar with a whole lot of different weapons.
And I've just talked myself into changing my vote:
Carry
[X] 440 CM Mark 1 Railgun
Refit
[X] Tesla Sword and 300 CM Handcannon
Honestly, I think Righteous Penitent looks to be a generalist design - a jack of all trades type that can fill in any role the team might find itself lacking, but not excel in (any? most?) of them.
Which means we might want to be familiar with a whole lot of different weapons.
And I've just talked myself into changing my vote:
Carry
[X] 440 CM Mark 1 Railgun
Refit
[X] Tesla Sword and 300 CM Handcannon
Eventua
Just Me
Carry
[X] 440 CM Mark 1 Railgun
Refit
[X] Tesla Sword and 300 CM Handcannon
I'd argue that since Kim is focused on melee and Tang on range, we should go for a joint measure - assist Tang initially from range, and then join Kim in melee when Ma'Jooj hits the fan (does anyone really think things wont go horribly?).
[X] 440 CM Mark 1 Railgun
Refit
[X] Tesla Sword and 300 CM Handcannon
I'd argue that since Kim is focused on melee and Tang on range, we should go for a joint measure - assist Tang initially from range, and then join Kim in melee when Ma'Jooj hits the fan (does anyone really think things wont go horribly?).
Carry
[X] 440 CM Mark 1 Railgun
Refit
[X] Tesla Sword and 300 CM Handcannon
[X] 440 CM Mark 1 Railgun
Refit
[X] Tesla Sword and 300 CM Handcannon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You already know that Kim's melee specced and Tang's heavy weapons specced.
SirLagginton
Shadow Cabal Caerbannog Bun-Bun
- Location
- Arrrghhh
Pick One to carry personally
[X] 240 CM Mark 3 Assault Rifle
Refit
[X] 440 CM Mark 1 Railgun
Because railgun, anywa-
[X] 240 CM Mark 3 Assault Rifle
Refit
[X] 440 CM Mark 1 Railgun
Because railgun, anywa-
holyshitpsychicdeathbutterflykillitkillitkillitkillit