Battle Action Harem Highschool Side Character Quest (No SV, you are the Waifu)
- Thread starter Avalanche
- Start date
- Original
Alphaleph
The Firstiest of First
We should build a prison in the middle of the ocean with a decent internet connection and then lock Avalanche in it so hr can write all the timeeee~
- Location
- Australia
Argh, that movie! Designated hero ftl.
- Location
- The Grandcypher
We should build a prison in the middle of the ocean with a decent internet connection and then lock Avalanche in it so hr can write all the timeeee~
With a decent internet connection he would just play WoWs. His connection needs to be crappy but still good enough to upload his stuff,
Alphaleph
The Firstiest of First
Half-decent internet connection, awful ping.
Let's relocate him to SEA.
Alternatively, just give him laptop/PC with crappy spec. Good enough for writing, but would blow up for playing things with higher spec than Solitaire.
- Location
- UTC -6
Why all the scheming? As long as the update drops by the first half of June he's kept to the every-other-month-or-so schedule he's had since I've started reading. If you need more updates than that write your own side-story or something.
What I find unbearable is when it's been written but the beta-readers are sitting on it. Waiting for that has me wanting to break out the whips.
What I find unbearable is when it's been written but the beta-readers are sitting on it. Waiting for that has me wanting to break out the whips.
Alphaleph
The Firstiest of First
We're bored and there's nothing to do.
Strictly speaking, last 'update' was at the end of 2015.
- Location
- Illinois
And I'm just laughing because I literally c/p'ed the lyrics into a text doc and then wrote a bunch of sad stuff about characters in between each line in a way that mostly fit with the lyrics, then edited it to make sure nothing conflicted (and there WERE direct contradictions in there before editing. Stuff like saying everyone was dead and there were other people with durga). And then the thread starts arguing about whether the lyrics are an important part of the omake. Rofl XD.
That said, I'm not a fan of songfics or anything similar, and I 100% skip lyrics if they're written -- even if they're important to the meaning, as is the case here (with the lyrics, it's extremely sad, as practically every line is highlighting the fact that nobody will ever "hear Durga's/Anna's last goodbye", or tell her story. Without, it's just "noes poar durga noes anna is ded noes"). But hey, I was effectively high and I wrote the thing in an hour and a half!
Last edited:
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
Well played, kitty. Well played.
DaLintyGuy - Humanity thanks you for your sacrifice
Something I thought up. It is important to note that this doesn't think that this is canon, it's just an idea I had that is basically a spin off of Avalanches setting.
====
The ramp dropped down and muted sunlight swept into the hold, causing visors to polarize automatically to prevent vision loss among the personnel seated on the impromptu benches welded onto the attachments that had previously been used to secure cargo. The sudden reveal of eighty more or less identical faces hardly phased the cargomaster, which was no surprise as it was a treaded loader drone rather than an organic officer. Wordlessly scanning the transponders of each officer in turn, the unit pointed to one side of the entrance.
"Volunteers are to report to the staging post." It said simply and trundled off as the prerecorded message was ending. No doubt it was going to a newly arrived VTOL to repeat the same message.
Releasing the restraints attached to his armor, Jaren Hasque slowly stood from his seated position. All around him other officers were doing likewise, disengaging the locks that had kept them in place during the trip north from the Greenwood Settlement. While not a true arcology, and in fact was in the process of moving to the Johannesburg megastructure as the front fluctuated closer over the last year, it was still home to over five hundred thousand people. And by UN law, it had kept a reserve of trained personnel. Mainly for civil duties, such as fire, medical, and other issues requiring level headed responses coupled with the presence of powered armor. But there was another purpose: in case of unforeseen events, those units of UN infantry would serve as a first layer of defense against Antagonist infiltrators or attackers, and that was why the group had been let off on a subsaharan grassland far from home.
Three hours previously, a concerted Antagonist push had developed. At first it was contained by several rapid response units, and the threat level dropped. Then a Type Zero, or two as Jaren wasn't privy to the details of such things, had made their appearance and broken the reserve force in almost minutes before members of the Three Hundred had forced them off. Before the line could be rebuilt a second wave of Ants had pushed through the splintered front line, some going east and west to prevent an easy link up and to tie down units that could have responded to the incursion. So when the situation had been made clear, someone in STRATNET had made a hard decision and the call had gone out for nearby volunteers. The fabricators for hundreds of miles around had gone into overdrive for this, so at least the infantry would be able to have a dozen bots apiece for fire magnets and an expansive arsenal for the fight to come.
Following the rest of his patrol as they debarked the VTOL, Jaren looked around at the impromptu staging point. While the situation was desperate on the tactical level, it wasn't a complete rout. Several Army units had linked up to the local command center already, including a unit of armor and a plethora of aircraft. Even on the way, his suit's communication suite had picked up the strobing pulses of interference that was indicative of High Yield Weapons being used, each of which undoubtedly spelling the deaths of hundreds of Ant units.
But it was telling that they were still needed regardless.
The staging point was a mess of tents, prefabs being a luxury they couldn't afford at this point as combat units and supplies took priority. The point that the volunteer infantry were assigned to was a tan tent with the word 'Volunteers' scrawled on it in red ink.
"Isn't this a good point in a movie?" Someone noted wryly on Jaren's squad channel. "Just before the desperate last stand."
"Yeah, I wonder who's going to be paired with Whyren?" Some joker cracked, referring to the above average woman in the squad. "A last meeting before the Final Hour-"
"Observe channel silence except for official matters." A weary, foreign, voice injected into the conversation. "If you wish to converse among yourselves, there is currently no chemical contamination noted in the environment."
Several members of the squad gave confused looks at each other, but no one followed through with the suggestion of cracking their visors. The patrol (the somewhat informal designation for a platoon among the more civil support oriented branches of the military) filed into the tent among the members of several other patrols from Greenwood. Exchanging nods with the men and women from the Lex Blocks, Jaren's squad found the seats marked with their numbers and sat down. Quickly, the tent began to fill up. Almost three hundred troopers had entered before the stream stopped. A cursory check of the TACNET gave the answer as being 274 individuals in UN armor in the room, not counting the Intel personnel near the front of the room. More volunteers than Jaren had expected, actually.
Despite the numbers in the room, there was almost none of the typical pre-meeting chatter. Even gallows humor had been choked off by the recognition that, within next few hours, half of them were projected to be dead. And that was even including the intervention of the 331st Armored Division and uninterrupted air support.
The briefing was primarily concerned with the raw realities at hand. Namely, the need to stop the Ants from pushing south in time to catch the evacuation as it happened. In flight the transports would be safeguarded by several Flights of Valkyries, but only four of the arcanotech warriors would be on the front lines. Jaren couldn't help but nod at the sensibility of that decision. The last stand could hardly be expected to even slow down any aircraft and even one among the transports would be a slaughter, while the presence of Types on the battlefield would be okay so long as it didn't threaten a serious breach in the lines: a single Flight would be enough to ensure the enemy bogged down in the ground forces for an hour or more. Enough to keep the population out of danger until actual units could arrive on the scene. The briefer actually even pointed out how long until other friendly units entered the AO, which Jaren thought was a nice touch. Somewhat necessary to make sure no friendly fire happened, but knowing when it was possible to start pulling out was something everyone wanted to know.
After being dismissed, the UN troopers had equipment practically thrown at them as soon as they exited the tent: extra plating for their armor, the software to allow them to control their coterie of combat drones, shoulder fired rocket and missile tubes, different ammunition types for their rifles, a plethora of heavy weapons, and more. And then, the unit was on the march.
=====
Growling slightly in annoyance, Jaren stood and looked over his armor. A few scuff marks were in evidence, but nothing worse than that had happened during his short tumble.
"Hasque! You alright?" An interrogative question came from the raised path next to the river: his sergeant checking up on him, while the rest of the unit kept pace with the handful of vehicles that had been loaned to them.
"Yeah, I just overbalanced with all the material I was carrying." Jaren replied, disgusted with himself. They were already on a time limit, and this delay was looking to cost him minutes in the race to the choke point they were tasked to defend. "Go on, I'll catch up."
Catching his sergeant's reply, Jaren swept the shore for fallen equipment. A rocket tube returned to his back, and was swiftly joined by a case of charges.
"Stupid, I should have made sure the things were secured." Jaren absently berated himself, dropping down to one knee to tug on a partially buried piece of metal on the river bank. I was when the object resolved itself as a corroded piece of armor that Jaren realized that nothing he had dropped should have been covered by sediment. Glancing back at the receding column, Jaren chewed his lip and triggered one of his armor's sensor systems. Within a few minutes, he pulled out what was certainly a leg piece: the way he knew it was that it still had the femur inside.
"Now, who were you to end up here?" Carefully excavating more of the armor found him what had used to be a helmet. The cause of death for whoever had worn this armor was fairly obvious: from where the nose would have been on up was entirely burned through with the sides of the helmet still present, if twisted from heat and impact. Double checking, Jaren pressed his forearm to the less damaged side and let his suit scan the wreckage for surviving data. After mulling it over, it sent out a ping to the STRATNET and was quickly rewarded with a match.
Private First Class Andrand Metevich, MIA 3 PI, UN Valkyrie Corps
Almost reverently, Jaren laid the helmet back on the ground. Three years Post Impact would mean that this was one of the civilian Valks that had been the first things to meet the Ants on even footing. They had probably been less prepared than himself, to be honest. He at least knew some of what to expect from the enemy, while they had been thrown into the breach in a desperate bid for time; to predictable results. Still, the least he could do was mark the remains. Ejecting one of his guantlets, Jaren lifted a shattered breastplate. Actually, it was the rear one, but it was a trauma plate for the upper body. A piece of debris fell off the inside, and Jaren picked it up and turned it over in both hands. A slight reflection on his bare skin caught his eye, and he looked doubtfully at the blackened and corroded metal that was revealed when he flipped the piece over.
A sequence of sonic booms brought him back to the situation at hand and he hastily reattached his armor piece and began jogging to rejoin his unit, but not before sending a more comprehensive report to STRATNET about what he had found.
The poor girl deserved a heroes burial after all, not to be forgotten in some back of beyond river.
====
The ramp dropped down and muted sunlight swept into the hold, causing visors to polarize automatically to prevent vision loss among the personnel seated on the impromptu benches welded onto the attachments that had previously been used to secure cargo. The sudden reveal of eighty more or less identical faces hardly phased the cargomaster, which was no surprise as it was a treaded loader drone rather than an organic officer. Wordlessly scanning the transponders of each officer in turn, the unit pointed to one side of the entrance.
"Volunteers are to report to the staging post." It said simply and trundled off as the prerecorded message was ending. No doubt it was going to a newly arrived VTOL to repeat the same message.
Releasing the restraints attached to his armor, Jaren Hasque slowly stood from his seated position. All around him other officers were doing likewise, disengaging the locks that had kept them in place during the trip north from the Greenwood Settlement. While not a true arcology, and in fact was in the process of moving to the Johannesburg megastructure as the front fluctuated closer over the last year, it was still home to over five hundred thousand people. And by UN law, it had kept a reserve of trained personnel. Mainly for civil duties, such as fire, medical, and other issues requiring level headed responses coupled with the presence of powered armor. But there was another purpose: in case of unforeseen events, those units of UN infantry would serve as a first layer of defense against Antagonist infiltrators or attackers, and that was why the group had been let off on a subsaharan grassland far from home.
Three hours previously, a concerted Antagonist push had developed. At first it was contained by several rapid response units, and the threat level dropped. Then a Type Zero, or two as Jaren wasn't privy to the details of such things, had made their appearance and broken the reserve force in almost minutes before members of the Three Hundred had forced them off. Before the line could be rebuilt a second wave of Ants had pushed through the splintered front line, some going east and west to prevent an easy link up and to tie down units that could have responded to the incursion. So when the situation had been made clear, someone in STRATNET had made a hard decision and the call had gone out for nearby volunteers. The fabricators for hundreds of miles around had gone into overdrive for this, so at least the infantry would be able to have a dozen bots apiece for fire magnets and an expansive arsenal for the fight to come.
Following the rest of his patrol as they debarked the VTOL, Jaren looked around at the impromptu staging point. While the situation was desperate on the tactical level, it wasn't a complete rout. Several Army units had linked up to the local command center already, including a unit of armor and a plethora of aircraft. Even on the way, his suit's communication suite had picked up the strobing pulses of interference that was indicative of High Yield Weapons being used, each of which undoubtedly spelling the deaths of hundreds of Ant units.
But it was telling that they were still needed regardless.
The staging point was a mess of tents, prefabs being a luxury they couldn't afford at this point as combat units and supplies took priority. The point that the volunteer infantry were assigned to was a tan tent with the word 'Volunteers' scrawled on it in red ink.
"Isn't this a good point in a movie?" Someone noted wryly on Jaren's squad channel. "Just before the desperate last stand."
"Yeah, I wonder who's going to be paired with Whyren?" Some joker cracked, referring to the above average woman in the squad. "A last meeting before the Final Hour-"
"Observe channel silence except for official matters." A weary, foreign, voice injected into the conversation. "If you wish to converse among yourselves, there is currently no chemical contamination noted in the environment."
Several members of the squad gave confused looks at each other, but no one followed through with the suggestion of cracking their visors. The patrol (the somewhat informal designation for a platoon among the more civil support oriented branches of the military) filed into the tent among the members of several other patrols from Greenwood. Exchanging nods with the men and women from the Lex Blocks, Jaren's squad found the seats marked with their numbers and sat down. Quickly, the tent began to fill up. Almost three hundred troopers had entered before the stream stopped. A cursory check of the TACNET gave the answer as being 274 individuals in UN armor in the room, not counting the Intel personnel near the front of the room. More volunteers than Jaren had expected, actually.
Despite the numbers in the room, there was almost none of the typical pre-meeting chatter. Even gallows humor had been choked off by the recognition that, within next few hours, half of them were projected to be dead. And that was even including the intervention of the 331st Armored Division and uninterrupted air support.
The briefing was primarily concerned with the raw realities at hand. Namely, the need to stop the Ants from pushing south in time to catch the evacuation as it happened. In flight the transports would be safeguarded by several Flights of Valkyries, but only four of the arcanotech warriors would be on the front lines. Jaren couldn't help but nod at the sensibility of that decision. The last stand could hardly be expected to even slow down any aircraft and even one among the transports would be a slaughter, while the presence of Types on the battlefield would be okay so long as it didn't threaten a serious breach in the lines: a single Flight would be enough to ensure the enemy bogged down in the ground forces for an hour or more. Enough to keep the population out of danger until actual units could arrive on the scene. The briefer actually even pointed out how long until other friendly units entered the AO, which Jaren thought was a nice touch. Somewhat necessary to make sure no friendly fire happened, but knowing when it was possible to start pulling out was something everyone wanted to know.
After being dismissed, the UN troopers had equipment practically thrown at them as soon as they exited the tent: extra plating for their armor, the software to allow them to control their coterie of combat drones, shoulder fired rocket and missile tubes, different ammunition types for their rifles, a plethora of heavy weapons, and more. And then, the unit was on the march.
=====
Growling slightly in annoyance, Jaren stood and looked over his armor. A few scuff marks were in evidence, but nothing worse than that had happened during his short tumble.
"Hasque! You alright?" An interrogative question came from the raised path next to the river: his sergeant checking up on him, while the rest of the unit kept pace with the handful of vehicles that had been loaned to them.
"Yeah, I just overbalanced with all the material I was carrying." Jaren replied, disgusted with himself. They were already on a time limit, and this delay was looking to cost him minutes in the race to the choke point they were tasked to defend. "Go on, I'll catch up."
Catching his sergeant's reply, Jaren swept the shore for fallen equipment. A rocket tube returned to his back, and was swiftly joined by a case of charges.
"Stupid, I should have made sure the things were secured." Jaren absently berated himself, dropping down to one knee to tug on a partially buried piece of metal on the river bank. I was when the object resolved itself as a corroded piece of armor that Jaren realized that nothing he had dropped should have been covered by sediment. Glancing back at the receding column, Jaren chewed his lip and triggered one of his armor's sensor systems. Within a few minutes, he pulled out what was certainly a leg piece: the way he knew it was that it still had the femur inside.
"Now, who were you to end up here?" Carefully excavating more of the armor found him what had used to be a helmet. The cause of death for whoever had worn this armor was fairly obvious: from where the nose would have been on up was entirely burned through with the sides of the helmet still present, if twisted from heat and impact. Double checking, Jaren pressed his forearm to the less damaged side and let his suit scan the wreckage for surviving data. After mulling it over, it sent out a ping to the STRATNET and was quickly rewarded with a match.
Private First Class Andrand Metevich, MIA 3 PI, UN Valkyrie Corps
Almost reverently, Jaren laid the helmet back on the ground. Three years Post Impact would mean that this was one of the civilian Valks that had been the first things to meet the Ants on even footing. They had probably been less prepared than himself, to be honest. He at least knew some of what to expect from the enemy, while they had been thrown into the breach in a desperate bid for time; to predictable results. Still, the least he could do was mark the remains. Ejecting one of his guantlets, Jaren lifted a shattered breastplate. Actually, it was the rear one, but it was a trauma plate for the upper body. A piece of debris fell off the inside, and Jaren picked it up and turned it over in both hands. A slight reflection on his bare skin caught his eye, and he looked doubtfully at the blackened and corroded metal that was revealed when he flipped the piece over.
A sequence of sonic booms brought him back to the situation at hand and he hastily reattached his armor piece and began jogging to rejoin his unit, but not before sending a more comprehensive report to STRATNET about what he had found.
The poor girl deserved a heroes burial after all, not to be forgotten in some back of beyond river.
- Location
- Illinois
Ooooh, very good point. Totally never thought about presence of human artifacts in AG territory, but it's probably littered with them, isn't it?
Considering it used to be human territory, complete with settlements and cities? And then humanity did a fighting retreat back across it? Yeah, I'd say that there's a lot of stuff lying around, as the Ants never really struck me as things that would go around landscaping their territory.
Renu - Pillow fort Anna lives on
- Location
- Lost amidst hungry sheep
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Have you forsaken us, lord Avalanche? Has our hubris in expecting updates without offerings offended you?
Please, accept my devotion and this humble offering and come back with your guiding light, the promised update.
Anyway, sad Anna in a pillow fort.
Please, accept my devotion and this humble offering and come back with your guiding light, the promised update.
Anyway, sad Anna in a pillow fort.
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- Location
- Illinois
Have you forsaken us, lord Avalanche? Has our hubris in expecting updates without offerings offended you?
Please, accept my devotion and this humble offering and come back with your guiding light, the promised update.
Anyway, sad Anna in a pillow fort.
The AGs took my friends... My family... My humanity...
I'll never let them take my fluffy pillows.
Highwind
To Rise From The Ashes
- Location
- Brazil
Those eyes, man. So sad... They make me want to reach out into the screen to give her a hug. All the hugs.Have you forsaken us, lord Avalanche? Has our hubris in expecting updates without offerings offended you?
Please, accept my devotion and this humble offering and come back with your guiding light, the promised update.
Anyway, sad Anna in a pillow fort.
Outstanding work, Renu!
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
My heart! *HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNGGGGG!!!*Have you forsaken us, lord Avalanche? Has our hubris in expecting updates without offerings offended you?
Please, accept my devotion and this humble offering and come back with your guiding light, the promised update.
Anyway, sad Anna in a pillow fort.
Islanderninja - The lopter Incident
- Location
- Ninja Island
So I got inspired to make this little thing. Just assume that this comes out after everyone's back story is known.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scene opens up to the squadron fighting an unknown Type.
Koujiro's voice: There's a saying...
Koujiro unleashes his version of static wave.
Koujiro's voice: That the more things change...
Type unleashes an attack that manages to meet static wave head-on before something akin to a breach opens around them and swallows both parties.
Koujiro's voice: The more things things stay the same.
Koujiro: Nee-sama?!
Yukari: Just what the hell is going on?
Next scene reveals Shuri looking at the bathroom mirror. She slowly raises her hand towards her face when she realises that her eye is normal instead of being cybernetic and she doesn't have any injuries.
Another scene shows Anna making her way down a corridor before an instructor spots her.
A series of scenes appear next: the Rokusabe siblings walking together, Shuri trying to escape from her fans for being the Ace that never took a hit in battle, Anna meeting her family and childhood friends again.
Screen now shows Setsuna looking through the school archives. Afterwards she confronts the rest of the group.
Screen now shows Sandra in a facility with a one way mirror separating her from some scientists.
Screen fades to black.
The following text now appears on the screen:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scene opens up to the squadron fighting an unknown Type.
Koujiro's voice: There's a saying...
Koujiro unleashes his version of static wave.
Koujiro's voice: That the more things change...
Type unleashes an attack that manages to meet static wave head-on before something akin to a breach opens around them and swallows both parties.
Koujiro's voice: The more things things stay the same.
Next scene shows Coke Zero's back as he wakes up in his dorm room in a sweat.
Koujiro: One hell of a dream.
Bathroom door opens and Setsuna steps into the room and screams when she sees Koujiro. Camera now shows Koujiro's face which appears older.
Next scene shows Koujiro and Setsuna talking about the battle against the new Type. Knocking is then heard from the door. Koujiro answers it to reveal a younger Yukari.
Next scene shows Koujiro and Setsuna talking about the battle against the new Type. Knocking is then heard from the door. Koujiro answers it to reveal a younger Yukari.
Koujiro: Nee-sama?!
Yukari: Just what the hell is going on?
Next scene reveals Shuri looking at the bathroom mirror. She slowly raises her hand towards her face when she realises that her eye is normal instead of being cybernetic and she doesn't have any injuries.
Shuri: How is this possible?
Another scene shows Anna making her way down a corridor before an instructor spots her.
Instructor: Hey, Cadet Sanchez! Slow down.
Anna: I am sorry but I am in a hurry.
Instructor: Don't worry. Your family and friends won't be here till another few hours so take it easy.
Anna suddenly stops and turns around with a shocked expression.Anna: I am sorry but I am in a hurry.
Instructor: Don't worry. Your family and friends won't be here till another few hours so take it easy.
Anna: What did you say?!
A series of scenes appear next: the Rokusabe siblings walking together, Shuri trying to escape from her fans for being the Ace that never took a hit in battle, Anna meeting her family and childhood friends again.
Screen now shows Setsuna looking through the school archives. Afterwards she confronts the rest of the group.
Setsuna: Have any of you seen Sandra?
Screen now shows Sandra in a facility with a one way mirror separating her from some scientists.
Screen fades to black.
The following text now appears on the screen:
Studio Avalanche Proudly Presents.
Project Valkyrie Core: The Loptr Incident.
Project Valkyrie Core: The Loptr Incident.
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Avalanche
Atypical Netizen
- Location
- Australia
Liked that omake DaLintyGuy, very subdued and down to earth compared to how techno-colour this quest gets.
If only I could claim that my pretty waifu demanded haitus and that I was only giving you the authentic negima experience.
Nah she ain't sad, she's just resisting the urge to lie back, snuggle in and sleep.
- Location
- Leeds
Should be Studio Gilgamesh.
*salutes smartly*
It's mostly planned to go places, but I do want to emphasize some of why humanity needs crushing numerical superiority to win against the Ants in the absence of Valkyries (and even then, in some cases...).
DaLintyGuy - Humanity thanks you for your sacrifice - 2
Still just playing in the world Avalanche has provided.
=====
The battle was winding up when Jaren reached the appointed spot. In the planning stages of this operation, it had been recognized that a few hundred infantry, some thousands of drones, and an armored division were hardly enough to win a set piece battle in the open even against this small of a Antagonist force. With the forced objective of buying time with lives, the location chosen for the nearly doomed battle was a pre-Impact city located on a river crossing. Here, it was hoped that the Ants' advantages in individual quality would be made up for with force concentration by the human forces.
Making his way into the ruined city hadn't been easy either. The mission briefing had included a warbook of the common Antagonist 'strains', and had almost always noted that a single soldier would be eclipsed by an Ant unit. As a lone soldier himself, Jaren had been on a hair trigger since he had crossed the city limits. Fortunately, he didn't shoot the first human drone he saw and had assimilated into that unit for lack of options. The TACNET wasn't the robust network that Greenwood had had, or what he expected a UN Task Force would bear. Instead, it was a swarm network between all the human forces in the city, with the occasional data burst from the 331st Armored Division making it through the electronic snarl of the battle outside. What they sent was mostly bad news: the front was collapsing back through the city, and would eventually start infringing on where Jaren had forted up along with another platoon of volunteers.
The first action the group had was covering the retreat of half a dozen volunteers as they fled from a now defunct defensive emplacement. Ant 'spiders' were on their tails, three of the infantry analogues emerging from the rotting building in pursuit of the nearly routing soldiers. Weapons began to chatter in response to the hostile intrusion, and Jaren watched the spikes of nearly a dozen human rifles converge on one of the spiders. Sparks flew in abundance as metal deformed and superheated from friction, but the construct was only mildly damaged. A different soldier in the fortification had a better idea and instead of firing a rifle used an antitank missile to completely eradicate a different hostile, sending shrapnel spraying back into the building that the spider had emerged from. It was only when reloading that Jaren realized that he had been shooting military police rounds.
And from there things only became more frantic and got worse. Occasionally another depleted unit of volunteers would arrive to take the places of killed soldiers, but more often it was another handful of Ant troops. Once an enemy tank had taken a crack at them, but a multitude of preplaced explosives ripped it's chassis asunder and it was finished off with several anti-armor rockets.
Acting mechanically, Jaren punched the ejection button on his rifle and retrieved another magazine from the pile beside his position. Retraining his sights on the street he unleashed a horizontal hail of armor piercing munitions into a spider, punching through several of it's leg joints and smashing the lens on it's 'face'. A separate spider let out a shriek, an after effect from it's weapon firing and super heating the air, and the beam messily cut down a soldier. Seeing another shape come over the ruins of what had once been a building, Jaren glanced at his suit's readout as it compared the sensor returns to the downloaded warbook. A pop up distracted him from his analysis:
Warning! Higgs Particle Reaction detected!
=====
High above the ruins of the city turned battlefield, Enlisted First Grade Militsa Iltchenko coldly watched as the Type Five descended towards the ground. The flying wing shaped elite aerospace fighter was cracked nearly in two, and had oddly colored flames streaking the sky behind it: a confirmed kill.
The rest of her Flight was hitting hot spots as they developed, coupled with engaging anything that directly attacked them with extreme prejudice. During the preflight briefing where they had learned the details of this operation, Militsa had wondered at the rules of engagement. In a sense, they were not allowed to get bogged down in this fight as they could be required elsewhere at a moment's notice: if the evacuation came under threat, if another prong of the attack started enfolding the 331st's mobile forces, if a half dozen things happened they had to be ready to disengage. No matter the cost to the people on the ground. And she... Was okay with that. The soldiers had all volunteered for this job, either when they had been enlisted and told bluntly that they would someday be required to die for other or an hour previously when the true scale of the breakout forces became clear. They had their jobs and she had hers. And right now, that was to kill Types threatening to break the cordon.
Reviewing her map of the area, she noted the locations of heightened Higg Particles inside the city. Some of them were were a particular Type 16 that had been briefly appeared a handful of times, while another was the resting place of the just destroyed Type 5. There were two new and unaccounted for blooms on the map, however. Instead of immediately checking one or the other, Militsa tapped into the network of the infantry below, boosting the weak signals into something usable. Waiting for something to give her actionable intel was hardly how she wanted to spend time inside a battle, but it did give her time to regenerate some more of her impeller field.
"Flight Lead, requesting assistance!" One of her Flight members cried out, and her attention was immediately diverted from the ground fight. Another Type 5 had joined the battle, it seemed.
=====
It might have been an effect of the stims and adrenaline he had been running on for at least fifteen minutes, but the lanky humanoid was in the slightly fortified wreckage the humans were holding almost faster than Jaren could register. It's arrival was announced by way of two spontaneous existence failures: a shattered drone and two halves of a person. In the hyperaware state he was in, Jaren noticed the now legless soldier was still firing, even as Jaren himself faced the newcomer. And the newcomer was obviously something special: smooth almost insectoid armor curved over it's limbs, while it'd head was occupied by two armored domes that were presumably eyes. A second slash annihilated another drone before rounds started skipping off of a surface several feet from it's body, and that was when Jaren realized he was about to die.
The Type almost negligently brushed off an incoming rocket, hurling the projectile away with it's field and smiting one of the few buildings that was still standing. Hopping to the side, another volunteer was split shoulder to hip and the Type turned as if to leave. At the last moment, it slipped back under another trail of projectiles and flew towards Jaren.
=====
"And it's down, thanks Lead." The other Valkyrie hung in her Frame. Bubbles and char indicated how close she had come to being killed by the enemy flier. Militsa looked her over, judged her current impeller strength and what needed to happen on the battlefield. While the men below were unable to withdraw in good order, a Valkyrie was a different matter entirely.
"Return to base, you'll be no further use to us here." Militsa ordered tiredly. The other Valkyrie's head fell, but she nodded in acknowledgement. Turning away from the departing Valkyrie, Militsa reviewed the ground situation again. Suddenly, she cursed viciously. That bastard Type! It had taken advantage of her distraction and was ripping into one of the rear positions!
Stooping into a dive, Militsa laid down fire onto several Antagonist tanks that were pressing other sections of the line, destroying them in passing to give the ground forces some breathing space while she wasn't watching them. Her attention remained focused on the Type 16, however, and as soon as she saw it, about to kill another of the troopers, she bracketed it with hypervelocity fire in an attempt to force it away from the trooper. The Type gracefully slid back with the impact on it's already heavily depleted impeller, but in a bizarre and suicidal move the trooper followed it!
And then Militsa noticed something that had previously been occluded by the Type's own Higgs trail: inter impeller reactions.
This... Was absurd. Every child in the UN was tested for Core Compatibility so how was a trooper, in standard armor with a couple slap ons, matching a Type in close combat? Taking shots where she could, Militsa realized something: this Type had already been degraded by exchanges with her Flight previously in the fighting. It's impeller was already degraded to the point where even conventional forces could take it down in short order. It's agility remained mostly the same as when it had started to fight, but without the discretionary power in it's impeller to use for breaking physics over it's knee it was limited to something that could be matched by a similar construct. In this case powered armor.
The Type seemed to realize this as well, as it threw whatever it had left into a sprint straight away from the enigmatic trooper on the field. This did, however, allow Militsa to get a carefully measured firing solution and drill spikes through it's torso.
The soldier seemed to be in something of a daze, and instead of turning to the rest of the fight they staggered over tot eh fallen Type and begin hammering on it some more, evidently uncaring that it was already dead.
STRATNET suddenly came through with a transmission announcing the arrival of additional forces into the AO and within seconds a flight of ground attack VTOLs decelerated a few miles away, the sonic booms overlapping with the first explosions among the lines of Antagonists now making it through the city and heading south.
AN: So... Yeah, this is kinda my idea. A retrieved Core from a Valkyrie downed during the opening shots of the war (or near enough) hangs onto the first person who finds it, and then that person is introduced to a completely new culture. And giving something of a look at what it means to be on the ground level of a fight with the Antagonists. Is it a terrible idea? Maybe. But Cores aren't very well understood so it's possible. Plus, story.
=====
The battle was winding up when Jaren reached the appointed spot. In the planning stages of this operation, it had been recognized that a few hundred infantry, some thousands of drones, and an armored division were hardly enough to win a set piece battle in the open even against this small of a Antagonist force. With the forced objective of buying time with lives, the location chosen for the nearly doomed battle was a pre-Impact city located on a river crossing. Here, it was hoped that the Ants' advantages in individual quality would be made up for with force concentration by the human forces.
Making his way into the ruined city hadn't been easy either. The mission briefing had included a warbook of the common Antagonist 'strains', and had almost always noted that a single soldier would be eclipsed by an Ant unit. As a lone soldier himself, Jaren had been on a hair trigger since he had crossed the city limits. Fortunately, he didn't shoot the first human drone he saw and had assimilated into that unit for lack of options. The TACNET wasn't the robust network that Greenwood had had, or what he expected a UN Task Force would bear. Instead, it was a swarm network between all the human forces in the city, with the occasional data burst from the 331st Armored Division making it through the electronic snarl of the battle outside. What they sent was mostly bad news: the front was collapsing back through the city, and would eventually start infringing on where Jaren had forted up along with another platoon of volunteers.
The first action the group had was covering the retreat of half a dozen volunteers as they fled from a now defunct defensive emplacement. Ant 'spiders' were on their tails, three of the infantry analogues emerging from the rotting building in pursuit of the nearly routing soldiers. Weapons began to chatter in response to the hostile intrusion, and Jaren watched the spikes of nearly a dozen human rifles converge on one of the spiders. Sparks flew in abundance as metal deformed and superheated from friction, but the construct was only mildly damaged. A different soldier in the fortification had a better idea and instead of firing a rifle used an antitank missile to completely eradicate a different hostile, sending shrapnel spraying back into the building that the spider had emerged from. It was only when reloading that Jaren realized that he had been shooting military police rounds.
And from there things only became more frantic and got worse. Occasionally another depleted unit of volunteers would arrive to take the places of killed soldiers, but more often it was another handful of Ant troops. Once an enemy tank had taken a crack at them, but a multitude of preplaced explosives ripped it's chassis asunder and it was finished off with several anti-armor rockets.
Acting mechanically, Jaren punched the ejection button on his rifle and retrieved another magazine from the pile beside his position. Retraining his sights on the street he unleashed a horizontal hail of armor piercing munitions into a spider, punching through several of it's leg joints and smashing the lens on it's 'face'. A separate spider let out a shriek, an after effect from it's weapon firing and super heating the air, and the beam messily cut down a soldier. Seeing another shape come over the ruins of what had once been a building, Jaren glanced at his suit's readout as it compared the sensor returns to the downloaded warbook. A pop up distracted him from his analysis:
Warning! Higgs Particle Reaction detected!
=====
High above the ruins of the city turned battlefield, Enlisted First Grade Militsa Iltchenko coldly watched as the Type Five descended towards the ground. The flying wing shaped elite aerospace fighter was cracked nearly in two, and had oddly colored flames streaking the sky behind it: a confirmed kill.
The rest of her Flight was hitting hot spots as they developed, coupled with engaging anything that directly attacked them with extreme prejudice. During the preflight briefing where they had learned the details of this operation, Militsa had wondered at the rules of engagement. In a sense, they were not allowed to get bogged down in this fight as they could be required elsewhere at a moment's notice: if the evacuation came under threat, if another prong of the attack started enfolding the 331st's mobile forces, if a half dozen things happened they had to be ready to disengage. No matter the cost to the people on the ground. And she... Was okay with that. The soldiers had all volunteered for this job, either when they had been enlisted and told bluntly that they would someday be required to die for other or an hour previously when the true scale of the breakout forces became clear. They had their jobs and she had hers. And right now, that was to kill Types threatening to break the cordon.
Reviewing her map of the area, she noted the locations of heightened Higg Particles inside the city. Some of them were were a particular Type 16 that had been briefly appeared a handful of times, while another was the resting place of the just destroyed Type 5. There were two new and unaccounted for blooms on the map, however. Instead of immediately checking one or the other, Militsa tapped into the network of the infantry below, boosting the weak signals into something usable. Waiting for something to give her actionable intel was hardly how she wanted to spend time inside a battle, but it did give her time to regenerate some more of her impeller field.
"Flight Lead, requesting assistance!" One of her Flight members cried out, and her attention was immediately diverted from the ground fight. Another Type 5 had joined the battle, it seemed.
=====
It might have been an effect of the stims and adrenaline he had been running on for at least fifteen minutes, but the lanky humanoid was in the slightly fortified wreckage the humans were holding almost faster than Jaren could register. It's arrival was announced by way of two spontaneous existence failures: a shattered drone and two halves of a person. In the hyperaware state he was in, Jaren noticed the now legless soldier was still firing, even as Jaren himself faced the newcomer. And the newcomer was obviously something special: smooth almost insectoid armor curved over it's limbs, while it'd head was occupied by two armored domes that were presumably eyes. A second slash annihilated another drone before rounds started skipping off of a surface several feet from it's body, and that was when Jaren realized he was about to die.
The Type almost negligently brushed off an incoming rocket, hurling the projectile away with it's field and smiting one of the few buildings that was still standing. Hopping to the side, another volunteer was split shoulder to hip and the Type turned as if to leave. At the last moment, it slipped back under another trail of projectiles and flew towards Jaren.
=====
"And it's down, thanks Lead." The other Valkyrie hung in her Frame. Bubbles and char indicated how close she had come to being killed by the enemy flier. Militsa looked her over, judged her current impeller strength and what needed to happen on the battlefield. While the men below were unable to withdraw in good order, a Valkyrie was a different matter entirely.
"Return to base, you'll be no further use to us here." Militsa ordered tiredly. The other Valkyrie's head fell, but she nodded in acknowledgement. Turning away from the departing Valkyrie, Militsa reviewed the ground situation again. Suddenly, she cursed viciously. That bastard Type! It had taken advantage of her distraction and was ripping into one of the rear positions!
Stooping into a dive, Militsa laid down fire onto several Antagonist tanks that were pressing other sections of the line, destroying them in passing to give the ground forces some breathing space while she wasn't watching them. Her attention remained focused on the Type 16, however, and as soon as she saw it, about to kill another of the troopers, she bracketed it with hypervelocity fire in an attempt to force it away from the trooper. The Type gracefully slid back with the impact on it's already heavily depleted impeller, but in a bizarre and suicidal move the trooper followed it!
And then Militsa noticed something that had previously been occluded by the Type's own Higgs trail: inter impeller reactions.
This... Was absurd. Every child in the UN was tested for Core Compatibility so how was a trooper, in standard armor with a couple slap ons, matching a Type in close combat? Taking shots where she could, Militsa realized something: this Type had already been degraded by exchanges with her Flight previously in the fighting. It's impeller was already degraded to the point where even conventional forces could take it down in short order. It's agility remained mostly the same as when it had started to fight, but without the discretionary power in it's impeller to use for breaking physics over it's knee it was limited to something that could be matched by a similar construct. In this case powered armor.
The Type seemed to realize this as well, as it threw whatever it had left into a sprint straight away from the enigmatic trooper on the field. This did, however, allow Militsa to get a carefully measured firing solution and drill spikes through it's torso.
The soldier seemed to be in something of a daze, and instead of turning to the rest of the fight they staggered over tot eh fallen Type and begin hammering on it some more, evidently uncaring that it was already dead.
STRATNET suddenly came through with a transmission announcing the arrival of additional forces into the AO and within seconds a flight of ground attack VTOLs decelerated a few miles away, the sonic booms overlapping with the first explosions among the lines of Antagonists now making it through the city and heading south.
AN: So... Yeah, this is kinda my idea. A retrieved Core from a Valkyrie downed during the opening shots of the war (or near enough) hangs onto the first person who finds it, and then that person is introduced to a completely new culture. And giving something of a look at what it means to be on the ground level of a fight with the Antagonists. Is it a terrible idea? Maybe. But Cores aren't very well understood so it's possible. Plus, story.
If only I could claim that my pretty waifu demanded haitus and that I was only giving you the authentic negima experience.
>.>
Dat burn.
Anyway the update speed went from days, to a week, to multiple weeks, to months, to multiple months...
I do not like that train of progression
I am worried. We might age even slower than Xander Quest!
- Location
- Illinois
>.>
Dat burn.
Anyway the update speed went from days, to a week, to multiple weeks, to months, to multiple months...
I do not like that train of progression
Stop talking about how progression is slow and slowing down and!
Ahhh! If you keep talking about stuff like this I'm going to have to post things and there's no benefit from that! I'll just get everyone's hopes up when there's still a chance that nothing will happen! So, be more positive, dammit!
samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
What? No reading is faster than listening. (Or at least it is among people who read a lot)
FTFY
Maybe I should do another Signal Bounce Omake. Maybe not from the -5 world though.