Beneath Celestial Depths (An Arpeggio of Blue Steel Quest)
- Thread starter TheBleachDoctor
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
[jk] Consume Mary for nanomaterials, just a little, a small nibble
Depth 2
AnonymousRabbit
Rabbit Faced
[x] You helped...
-[x] Blue Steel. They were idealistic fools, but if you had to live in a world after the war, you liked their vision the best.
[x] You sabotaged...
-[x] Scarlet Fleet. Tyrannical assholes. They wanted to crown themselves king atop the world. You would topple their throne and see them trampled underfoot.
[x] Quest Difficulty
-[x] (INSANE) You would not be deterred. You had outfitted yourself to your maximum capacity, and you would not see your careful preparations go to waste. Even as your Klein Fields failed, even as your Wave Force Armor was rent from your hull, even as your hull was gutted from prow to stern by withering fire, you kept your course. You never gave up on something once you set your eyes on it, and although your hull buckled and threatened to collapse as you drew ever closer, you kept on. And then... victory.
[x] Mary Interaction
-[x] Kind
You considered your current situation and began to give yourself a quick recap. Your Mental Model was lacking a few basic plug-ins you once had but you manage to drag a personality plug-in as well as a soft program for human interaction. Considering the girl's age and mood, you deemed it appropriate if you went along with her now, perhaps give her some sense of comfort.
You decided to be kind for kindness led you to gaining much of the humans' trust. Be it Blue Steel or Scarlet Fleet, kindness at the right place and the right amount could win you valuable pawns. Showing some to a girl of this age and personality would be useful but that would depend if she had anything important to say.
Nevertheless, she was the only one around and you couldn't sense any other form of life outside your hull. How strange... Nevertheless, you turned your attention back to the human child and spoke.
"Well, I'm glad that you're glad however this doesn't seem to be the sort of place a child like you to be staying," you helpfully pointed out at the girl's current state of dress, "You'll catch a cold in those rags."
"Ah! It's fine, I always get... um... sick! But it's fine. I get better," the girl proudly assured, puffing her chest out with pride.
"Is that so..?" you walked towards her and the girl's attitude suddenly became cautious as she stepped away. You raised your hands and blinked, easing it up. It seems that this child was aware of what the Fog was capable of if she was wary.
Mary... was it? Mary stared at you with an observant look, gauging your every movement as if she were trying to discern your intention. You briefly wondered if this was deliberate or simply something the child wasn't aware of. Nevertheless, you took a step back and made yourself as non-threatening as possible.
"Now, now, it wouldn't be right for me to come and hurt you. Worry not, I'm not going to, I assure you that," you told her as you stepped back, "I'm not going to hurt you now. In fact, I was just going to ask a few questions."
"Question?" parroted Mary with a head tilt.
"Indeed," you gave her what you deemed to be a 'kind' smile by human standards and spoke in a soft, soothing tone, "Just a couple. Nothing too complicated. Simple enough for you to answer. Would that be okay?"
The girl hesitated before eventually nodding her head.
Acknowledging her response, you snapped your fingers and recreated a soft couch from your nanomaterial reserves. The girl fell on her rear but was caught by the soft sensation of the sofa and marveled as she watched it gain a more physical and defined form. A marveled sound escaped her lips as she felt the soft texture of the sofa and squeezed it with her hands to make sure it was real.
You couldn't help but be amused by that before you diverted enough power to the Bridge so that the lights would grow brighter while you began running system diagnostics in the background. That would do for now, you can look at the results once you're done questioning this human.
What exactly happened... How long were out... How did you get here?
No... No, no, no, that wouldn't do at all.
Instead...
"Then girl, can you tell me, did you do all of this?" you asked her, gesturing to the array of bookshelves, curtains and the odd polka dots painted on the ceiling, "Or was it someone else?"
"It was me!" Mary answered with a smile, "I made it prettier! It was a bit dull so I changed it!"
She changed it. Dull, huh? If it was in any other situation you would have been annoyed but you suppose you could let this pass. You shrugged and gave her your opinion, "Well it's certainly the first time critiqued my interior design and made some... deliberate changes without my permission."
The girl tensed as you walked away and examined the bookshelves propped against the walls of your Bridge. You inspected them closely and found some ample amount of study material as well as fictional literature. All of them looked as if they've been read countless of times going by how used the pages were. It almost seemed that they've been laid out after a long time. While well maintained, the books themselves seemed aged.
"You're living here? Inside me?" you asked the girl as you pulled out a 'Revised Naval Training Manual' from the shelf and scanned its pages.
"Um, yes," chirped the girl from behind you.
"How long?" you asked once more, glancing behind you.
"I... I can't remember," the girl answered, her previous chipper self deflating as she couldn't recall, "It's a long time. I... Sorry."
You didn't quite understand, "For what?"
"Can't talk well... Never talked this long," Mary let out with an awkward laugh then as she shuffled her feet, "You're... not mad?"
Well you were quite miffed but the mess could be easily be taken care of. With enough time and effort on your part, you should be able to get yourself back up and running. But otherwise, you needed to know where you were first.
"No, I'm not mad. Rest assured that you're not in trouble. I'm just perplexed, honestly. No one has done this before and I certainly wouldn't have let them. But now, it all seems strange..." you murmured before the results of your diagnostics came in. You frowned once you realized that your attempts somehow failed.
Impossible, you decided to run through your diagnostics once more and tried giving each sections of your database and hull a good scan. Except you weren't able to. Failed attempts and errors began to pile up in your vision before you shoved them all away with your will.
You'll have to check manually.
"I'm going to go check something. Want to come?" you asked Mary. Better keep an eye on her now that you're here. Otherwise she might break something important that she didn't mess with before.
The girl blinked and got off the sofa you materialized, nodding her head excitedly and answering, "Y...Yes!"
Well, that was easy enough. You couldn't help but look down on your chest and feel for something. Oddly enough, something was definitely different about you. You gave your Union Core a quick scan and you froze for a split second. The numbers burst through your vision and you couldn't quite keep up with the calculating capacity that was occurring on it.
Your Core has changed.
You pulled up a scale, comparing with Fog Ships of higher tonnage than you did and you ran triple checks just to make sure you didn't have any oversights. However it seemed that the answer all remained the same as you were told that your Core Capacity had increased exponentially. The amount of processing power you held was a hundredfold more powerful than your regular set up.
In fact, you had no recollections of ever getting an upgrade at a Home Port and the Supreme Flagship surely didn't give you the authorization for an upgrade. No... Somehow you guessed that you were beyond her even now.
This shouldn't be possible.
It's powerful... But locked somehow. Something this powerful inside of you... How did it get there?
You clenched your fist and made your way to exit your own hull. Your mind's gears turning and twisting, you walked through the interior of your hull towards the exit and you noted how the ceilings were all painted the same way as everything else.
"I've never asked but... what are those things you painted on my ceiling?" you said, glancing at Mary behind you and pointing up.
"Oh! They're stars," explained Mary, catching up to your side and looking up, "If it's like this, it's almost like it's always night time. It's boring during the day and the clouds don't come very often. But at night, the sky has so many lights! It's not boring and I like them."
"Stars, huh?" you inspected the crude paintings once more and you could somehow imagine it.
You eventually reached the hatch leading to the outside, opening it automatically, you stepped out to your deck and found yourself within an enclosed space. The ceiling was made out natural bedrock while to your far right was something similar to a man made facility. You found that the entire complex was well lit and upon further inspection, you were rigged into what seemed to be an electrical grid.
Apparently the harness used was of your own so you probably did this to yourself sometime ago. You inspected your deck and found that there were signs of damage that had been hastily repaired. Upon further examination, the repairs seem fairly cosmetic and the damages were more severe than you warranted.
You checked your guns and you deemed them 'broken beyond repair' even if they looked relatively intact at a first glance... and you certainly didn't have the resources to fix them by yourself. Apparently combat was out of your options now that you've seen this mess and you dreaded whatever else you were going to find.
You heard something bounce behind you and you found Mary standing there waiting expectantly with a ball in her hand.
"Um... Do you want to play?" she asked hesitantly.
You smiled and walked towards her and nodded. Well, this should be interesting.
The girl nervously passed you the ball. You caught it easily enough and tossed it towards her to catch. Except the ball shot through the air and out of sight thanks to your strength. There was a resounding pop and the ball's long life came to an end.
"Oh..." mumbled Mary.
Oh dear... You walked forward and constructed another ball made out of nanomaterials. It was new and was extra bouncy, especially once you've adjusted its properties. You gave it some colorful patterns and handed it to Mary.
"I... I just woke up. Apologies," you told her with an apologetic smile.
The girl's face lit up as she gratefully took the ball.
You then glanced to the side as the girl began to play by herself, looking up to the side of your main guns and noting the emblem upon it.
Blue Steel. The band of ideological idiots that were led by what you could only describe as a tactical madman. You didn't know what I-401 saw in him but you cannot doubt the Blue Steel Faction's influence and valiant battles against the Scarlet Fleet.
Apparently things happened before you awakening and you couldn't quite recall them from the top of your head. However you tried sifting through your data files and you looked over the logs.
The text logs noted mostly how you were working with the Blue Steel for the end stages of the previous war. You could see yourself working with them at the time. It's possible that the Scarlet Fleet turned into even huger assholes and that they weren't willing to tolerate your sabotaging anymore. Your mischief has apparently outweighed your usefulness.
You could almost imagine Chihaya Shouzo's face being irritated.
Dickhead.
You shook your head and glanced at Mary running off to retrieve the ball you made. You wondered where her parents are. It's obvious that she's been alone for a long time so they might not be around. Who left her here? Was it a coincidence?
"Is something wrong?" Mary asked as she approached with ball in hand.
Shaking your head, you then said, "No, it's fine. I was just thinking."
"Oh... Um, Miss Surcouf?"
"What is it?"
"Are you okay?" asked the human girl with genuine concern.
"I can't say I am. I'm sort of broken inside. And I think I might just know why," you told her as you found the last data log you had in your system, "I'll try remembering what exactly happened."
"You were already like this when I found you here. It looked really bad. I... I'm sorry there was nothing I could do. Maybe we can fix you up?" suggested the girl by your side.
You couldn't help but let out a chuckle, "Girl, what is there for you to do? And I appreciate the gesture however it seems that I'll need better equipment for a full repair. But first, I need to know what exactly did this to me... And if my guess is right..." you breathed in and unlocked the log and assimilated it into your Mental Mod-
.....
....
...
You fought. You've never fought much harder than anything else in your existence. Faced with the odds against you, apparently the Holy Grail you've come for decided to fight back and resist. It resisted and attacked, its wrath triggered by your daring approach. It answered your commands with three Super Gravity Cannons firing simultaneously...
Homeport Grade armaments that rent the seas apart, combining as one to erase your puny existence into oblivion. Yet you kept your course, activating your Mirror Ring System and directing the attack into an isolated space and unleashing a shockwave of raw power all around.. As if faced with God's mighty hammer itself, your mirror ring system broke and multiple system hardware all went up to smoke and started fires within you.
Habakkuk's Klein Field whined underneath the assault of its own Super Gravity Cannon's energy, bending depressing like paper before shattering and bisecting the Super Carrier. A resounding metallic groan echoed all around as the Super Carrier struggled to keep itself relatively intact. Water splashed around the surface before you dived down deep to escape its sights, unleashing acoustic and decoy torpedoes to hide your trail.
You grinned, you'd like to see Yamato top that. You've mutilated your own body for this chance, you've changed yourself, edited the very thing that made you who you were for this moment.
And you realized that this won't do.
This thing was on a whole other level. This was something more than what the Fog was capable of creating. This was something else. It was more like a Giant Black Box of untold power. Essentially Pandora's box... And if one faction held it, then the balance of power would surely shift.
Everything will change.
Perhaps that made you Pandora? Or... Was it one of the fools chasing after you now? Nevertheless, you couldn't say that you didn't try taking it for yourself. So you could only fight now... Fight now and break it before those fools retrieve it.
Now that your Trump Card's been exposed and shattered, you could obviously say the same for this hulking piece of ice and metal.
You exposed your weapons, primed all torpedoes and kickstarted your engines. You surged forward, your course, the Habakkuk.
The giant open fired, secondary armaments whining as you fired back in retaliation. Your Klein Field shattered and regenerated, your hull was pierced and torn, the sea became a veritable hellscape as the wrath of this ice giant focused solely on the insect that was you. Yet you fought and pushed on, gambling it all on a focus attack to shatter through the Super Carrier's defenses.
Its lasers pierced the waters and ASW torpedoes descended from above. The Ocean Depths was alight with explosions and graviton blasts.
You came from below, weaving through the deadly attacks and came upon the underbelly of the Carrier. You were breaking down, water flooding your insides yet you focused at the Super Fog Ship's blindspot.
You activated your hacking capabilities and tried disabling the Super Carrier's Klein Fields. It was a newborn ship, unaware of Yamato's gift of a Mental Model, if you overloaded its AI with simultaneous variables, you should be able to make an opening for yourself. And now that it was busy trying to keep itself intact from its own attack, its own inflexible nature was becoming its downfall..
A soft spot you could exploit... Something you could never use against Yamato if the two of you came at gunpoint of each other.
This was the limit of the Fog and you surpassed it.
"I'll carve you open," you murmured as you cut through the Super Carrier's Klein Fields and created a hole large enough for you to go through.
You then armed your remaining guns, Anti-Ship and Anti-Personnel, to open fire at Habakkuk's Wave Force Armor as you reformed your bow into a gaping maw, biting open the Habakkuk's underside and carving open a path from beneath with your lasers and remaining cannons.
And you eventually happened upon its core. The Super Carrier's exposed Union Core.
And then...
You took it and made it yours.
.....
....
...
It was inside you. The Habakkuk's core was inside you. You... You grafted it into yourself, into your own Core. Which was why you felt this impossible amount of processing power beneath your fingertips. With the right outfit, you could probably shatter a Home Port's defensive firewall by yourself without using back doors or worms.
Just brute force...
So you did it then. You beat Habakkuk. This was probably one of your hastily made safehouses? Much like Blue Steel's Iwo Jima? You looked through your logs again and it seemed that you ran completely on automatic protocols to get here. Something happened once Habakkuk was disabled and you were triggered a mechanism which sealed your consciousness away.
You were damaged, stripped of everything you could use to defend yourself... but otherwise you could easily play god with basic hacking. No need to fire a gun with this much processing power at hand. It was almost like you could stand against Yamato or Musashi themselves if you dueled them for their access codes.
"Miss Surcouf?!" Mary cried out as she came to your side, "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"
"Fine... Just... I remember what happened now," you struggled to process the information you received mentally. This was honestly a lot to take in... It was a wonder that no one got you on your way to this... wherever this place was.
Mary let you sit down on your deck, wondering if you needed rest. Well, you were of the Fog, you didn't need rest unless you had a system cooldown. And you're not aware if you were in one right now. Your capability to look over yourself was pretty much hampered by the damage you've received before.
Weaponless with no resources, you held the most powerful Union Core there was in existence as of yet.
And that's enough reason for people to come for you should they catch wind of your awakening. But... you could also make use of this situation. In hindsight, you got what you wanted, you got Habakkuk inside you and you were all the more powerful because of it. And if it wasn't for the sorry state of your hull, you could've waltz out this... place and took on the world.
No, it would take time. You needed to take time and study this new Union Core you had.
Technically, would this make you the Supreme Flagship? You a deceiving, two-faced underwater cruiser that played everyone at that one critical moment and took the prize for yourself? You've pretty much betrayed everyone then, who knew if they would even help you or give you the edge to become combat ready.
Hiding was the best plan for now. Hiding and understanding what you could exactly do. With this sort of Processing Power you could pretty much brute force through Fog firewalls with enough time. Not exactly something you'd use in live combat without the proper outfits...
You just got yourself in pickle, huh?
.....
....
...
[] Give yourself some time to think about this. It's too much to process and digest for now. You could speak with the human girl about her origins. Perhaps that should give you little information about this submarine pen and its facilities.
[] Try exploring the area. You'd like to give the place a once over and see if it's secure. Maybe you could check your own internal machinery to see if they were still up to snuff at the very least. It could be a very good distraction for yourself.
[] Login to the Tactical Network and see if there's anyone there. Chances are it might be someone pleasant and won't try to kill you. They'd be a valuable source of information... If there was anyone even there.
-[x] Blue Steel. They were idealistic fools, but if you had to live in a world after the war, you liked their vision the best.
[x] You sabotaged...
-[x] Scarlet Fleet. Tyrannical assholes. They wanted to crown themselves king atop the world. You would topple their throne and see them trampled underfoot.
[x] Quest Difficulty
-[x] (INSANE) You would not be deterred. You had outfitted yourself to your maximum capacity, and you would not see your careful preparations go to waste. Even as your Klein Fields failed, even as your Wave Force Armor was rent from your hull, even as your hull was gutted from prow to stern by withering fire, you kept your course. You never gave up on something once you set your eyes on it, and although your hull buckled and threatened to collapse as you drew ever closer, you kept on. And then... victory.
[x] Mary Interaction
-[x] Kind
You considered your current situation and began to give yourself a quick recap. Your Mental Model was lacking a few basic plug-ins you once had but you manage to drag a personality plug-in as well as a soft program for human interaction. Considering the girl's age and mood, you deemed it appropriate if you went along with her now, perhaps give her some sense of comfort.
You decided to be kind for kindness led you to gaining much of the humans' trust. Be it Blue Steel or Scarlet Fleet, kindness at the right place and the right amount could win you valuable pawns. Showing some to a girl of this age and personality would be useful but that would depend if she had anything important to say.
Nevertheless, she was the only one around and you couldn't sense any other form of life outside your hull. How strange... Nevertheless, you turned your attention back to the human child and spoke.
"Well, I'm glad that you're glad however this doesn't seem to be the sort of place a child like you to be staying," you helpfully pointed out at the girl's current state of dress, "You'll catch a cold in those rags."
"Ah! It's fine, I always get... um... sick! But it's fine. I get better," the girl proudly assured, puffing her chest out with pride.
"Is that so..?" you walked towards her and the girl's attitude suddenly became cautious as she stepped away. You raised your hands and blinked, easing it up. It seems that this child was aware of what the Fog was capable of if she was wary.
Mary... was it? Mary stared at you with an observant look, gauging your every movement as if she were trying to discern your intention. You briefly wondered if this was deliberate or simply something the child wasn't aware of. Nevertheless, you took a step back and made yourself as non-threatening as possible.
"Now, now, it wouldn't be right for me to come and hurt you. Worry not, I'm not going to, I assure you that," you told her as you stepped back, "I'm not going to hurt you now. In fact, I was just going to ask a few questions."
"Question?" parroted Mary with a head tilt.
"Indeed," you gave her what you deemed to be a 'kind' smile by human standards and spoke in a soft, soothing tone, "Just a couple. Nothing too complicated. Simple enough for you to answer. Would that be okay?"
The girl hesitated before eventually nodding her head.
Acknowledging her response, you snapped your fingers and recreated a soft couch from your nanomaterial reserves. The girl fell on her rear but was caught by the soft sensation of the sofa and marveled as she watched it gain a more physical and defined form. A marveled sound escaped her lips as she felt the soft texture of the sofa and squeezed it with her hands to make sure it was real.
You couldn't help but be amused by that before you diverted enough power to the Bridge so that the lights would grow brighter while you began running system diagnostics in the background. That would do for now, you can look at the results once you're done questioning this human.
What exactly happened... How long were out... How did you get here?
No... No, no, no, that wouldn't do at all.
Instead...
"Then girl, can you tell me, did you do all of this?" you asked her, gesturing to the array of bookshelves, curtains and the odd polka dots painted on the ceiling, "Or was it someone else?"
"It was me!" Mary answered with a smile, "I made it prettier! It was a bit dull so I changed it!"
She changed it. Dull, huh? If it was in any other situation you would have been annoyed but you suppose you could let this pass. You shrugged and gave her your opinion, "Well it's certainly the first time critiqued my interior design and made some... deliberate changes without my permission."
The girl tensed as you walked away and examined the bookshelves propped against the walls of your Bridge. You inspected them closely and found some ample amount of study material as well as fictional literature. All of them looked as if they've been read countless of times going by how used the pages were. It almost seemed that they've been laid out after a long time. While well maintained, the books themselves seemed aged.
"You're living here? Inside me?" you asked the girl as you pulled out a 'Revised Naval Training Manual' from the shelf and scanned its pages.
"Um, yes," chirped the girl from behind you.
"How long?" you asked once more, glancing behind you.
"I... I can't remember," the girl answered, her previous chipper self deflating as she couldn't recall, "It's a long time. I... Sorry."
You didn't quite understand, "For what?"
"Can't talk well... Never talked this long," Mary let out with an awkward laugh then as she shuffled her feet, "You're... not mad?"
Well you were quite miffed but the mess could be easily be taken care of. With enough time and effort on your part, you should be able to get yourself back up and running. But otherwise, you needed to know where you were first.
"No, I'm not mad. Rest assured that you're not in trouble. I'm just perplexed, honestly. No one has done this before and I certainly wouldn't have let them. But now, it all seems strange..." you murmured before the results of your diagnostics came in. You frowned once you realized that your attempts somehow failed.
Impossible, you decided to run through your diagnostics once more and tried giving each sections of your database and hull a good scan. Except you weren't able to. Failed attempts and errors began to pile up in your vision before you shoved them all away with your will.
You'll have to check manually.
"I'm going to go check something. Want to come?" you asked Mary. Better keep an eye on her now that you're here. Otherwise she might break something important that she didn't mess with before.
The girl blinked and got off the sofa you materialized, nodding her head excitedly and answering, "Y...Yes!"
Well, that was easy enough. You couldn't help but look down on your chest and feel for something. Oddly enough, something was definitely different about you. You gave your Union Core a quick scan and you froze for a split second. The numbers burst through your vision and you couldn't quite keep up with the calculating capacity that was occurring on it.
Your Core has changed.
You pulled up a scale, comparing with Fog Ships of higher tonnage than you did and you ran triple checks just to make sure you didn't have any oversights. However it seemed that the answer all remained the same as you were told that your Core Capacity had increased exponentially. The amount of processing power you held was a hundredfold more powerful than your regular set up.
In fact, you had no recollections of ever getting an upgrade at a Home Port and the Supreme Flagship surely didn't give you the authorization for an upgrade. No... Somehow you guessed that you were beyond her even now.
This shouldn't be possible.
It's powerful... But locked somehow. Something this powerful inside of you... How did it get there?
You clenched your fist and made your way to exit your own hull. Your mind's gears turning and twisting, you walked through the interior of your hull towards the exit and you noted how the ceilings were all painted the same way as everything else.
"I've never asked but... what are those things you painted on my ceiling?" you said, glancing at Mary behind you and pointing up.
"Oh! They're stars," explained Mary, catching up to your side and looking up, "If it's like this, it's almost like it's always night time. It's boring during the day and the clouds don't come very often. But at night, the sky has so many lights! It's not boring and I like them."
"Stars, huh?" you inspected the crude paintings once more and you could somehow imagine it.
You eventually reached the hatch leading to the outside, opening it automatically, you stepped out to your deck and found yourself within an enclosed space. The ceiling was made out natural bedrock while to your far right was something similar to a man made facility. You found that the entire complex was well lit and upon further inspection, you were rigged into what seemed to be an electrical grid.
Apparently the harness used was of your own so you probably did this to yourself sometime ago. You inspected your deck and found that there were signs of damage that had been hastily repaired. Upon further examination, the repairs seem fairly cosmetic and the damages were more severe than you warranted.
You checked your guns and you deemed them 'broken beyond repair' even if they looked relatively intact at a first glance... and you certainly didn't have the resources to fix them by yourself. Apparently combat was out of your options now that you've seen this mess and you dreaded whatever else you were going to find.
You heard something bounce behind you and you found Mary standing there waiting expectantly with a ball in her hand.
"Um... Do you want to play?" she asked hesitantly.
You smiled and walked towards her and nodded. Well, this should be interesting.
The girl nervously passed you the ball. You caught it easily enough and tossed it towards her to catch. Except the ball shot through the air and out of sight thanks to your strength. There was a resounding pop and the ball's long life came to an end.
"Oh..." mumbled Mary.
Oh dear... You walked forward and constructed another ball made out of nanomaterials. It was new and was extra bouncy, especially once you've adjusted its properties. You gave it some colorful patterns and handed it to Mary.
"I... I just woke up. Apologies," you told her with an apologetic smile.
The girl's face lit up as she gratefully took the ball.
You then glanced to the side as the girl began to play by herself, looking up to the side of your main guns and noting the emblem upon it.
Blue Steel. The band of ideological idiots that were led by what you could only describe as a tactical madman. You didn't know what I-401 saw in him but you cannot doubt the Blue Steel Faction's influence and valiant battles against the Scarlet Fleet.
Apparently things happened before you awakening and you couldn't quite recall them from the top of your head. However you tried sifting through your data files and you looked over the logs.
The text logs noted mostly how you were working with the Blue Steel for the end stages of the previous war. You could see yourself working with them at the time. It's possible that the Scarlet Fleet turned into even huger assholes and that they weren't willing to tolerate your sabotaging anymore. Your mischief has apparently outweighed your usefulness.
You could almost imagine Chihaya Shouzo's face being irritated.
Dickhead.
You shook your head and glanced at Mary running off to retrieve the ball you made. You wondered where her parents are. It's obvious that she's been alone for a long time so they might not be around. Who left her here? Was it a coincidence?
"Is something wrong?" Mary asked as she approached with ball in hand.
Shaking your head, you then said, "No, it's fine. I was just thinking."
"Oh... Um, Miss Surcouf?"
"What is it?"
"Are you okay?" asked the human girl with genuine concern.
"I can't say I am. I'm sort of broken inside. And I think I might just know why," you told her as you found the last data log you had in your system, "I'll try remembering what exactly happened."
"You were already like this when I found you here. It looked really bad. I... I'm sorry there was nothing I could do. Maybe we can fix you up?" suggested the girl by your side.
You couldn't help but let out a chuckle, "Girl, what is there for you to do? And I appreciate the gesture however it seems that I'll need better equipment for a full repair. But first, I need to know what exactly did this to me... And if my guess is right..." you breathed in and unlocked the log and assimilated it into your Mental Mod-
.....
....
...
You fought. You've never fought much harder than anything else in your existence. Faced with the odds against you, apparently the Holy Grail you've come for decided to fight back and resist. It resisted and attacked, its wrath triggered by your daring approach. It answered your commands with three Super Gravity Cannons firing simultaneously...
Homeport Grade armaments that rent the seas apart, combining as one to erase your puny existence into oblivion. Yet you kept your course, activating your Mirror Ring System and directing the attack into an isolated space and unleashing a shockwave of raw power all around.. As if faced with God's mighty hammer itself, your mirror ring system broke and multiple system hardware all went up to smoke and started fires within you.
Habakkuk's Klein Field whined underneath the assault of its own Super Gravity Cannon's energy, bending depressing like paper before shattering and bisecting the Super Carrier. A resounding metallic groan echoed all around as the Super Carrier struggled to keep itself relatively intact. Water splashed around the surface before you dived down deep to escape its sights, unleashing acoustic and decoy torpedoes to hide your trail.
You grinned, you'd like to see Yamato top that. You've mutilated your own body for this chance, you've changed yourself, edited the very thing that made you who you were for this moment.
And you realized that this won't do.
This thing was on a whole other level. This was something more than what the Fog was capable of creating. This was something else. It was more like a Giant Black Box of untold power. Essentially Pandora's box... And if one faction held it, then the balance of power would surely shift.
Everything will change.
Perhaps that made you Pandora? Or... Was it one of the fools chasing after you now? Nevertheless, you couldn't say that you didn't try taking it for yourself. So you could only fight now... Fight now and break it before those fools retrieve it.
Now that your Trump Card's been exposed and shattered, you could obviously say the same for this hulking piece of ice and metal.
You exposed your weapons, primed all torpedoes and kickstarted your engines. You surged forward, your course, the Habakkuk.
The giant open fired, secondary armaments whining as you fired back in retaliation. Your Klein Field shattered and regenerated, your hull was pierced and torn, the sea became a veritable hellscape as the wrath of this ice giant focused solely on the insect that was you. Yet you fought and pushed on, gambling it all on a focus attack to shatter through the Super Carrier's defenses.
Its lasers pierced the waters and ASW torpedoes descended from above. The Ocean Depths was alight with explosions and graviton blasts.
You came from below, weaving through the deadly attacks and came upon the underbelly of the Carrier. You were breaking down, water flooding your insides yet you focused at the Super Fog Ship's blindspot.
You activated your hacking capabilities and tried disabling the Super Carrier's Klein Fields. It was a newborn ship, unaware of Yamato's gift of a Mental Model, if you overloaded its AI with simultaneous variables, you should be able to make an opening for yourself. And now that it was busy trying to keep itself intact from its own attack, its own inflexible nature was becoming its downfall..
A soft spot you could exploit... Something you could never use against Yamato if the two of you came at gunpoint of each other.
This was the limit of the Fog and you surpassed it.
"I'll carve you open," you murmured as you cut through the Super Carrier's Klein Fields and created a hole large enough for you to go through.
You then armed your remaining guns, Anti-Ship and Anti-Personnel, to open fire at Habakkuk's Wave Force Armor as you reformed your bow into a gaping maw, biting open the Habakkuk's underside and carving open a path from beneath with your lasers and remaining cannons.
And you eventually happened upon its core. The Super Carrier's exposed Union Core.
And then...
You took it and made it yours.
.....
....
...
It was inside you. The Habakkuk's core was inside you. You... You grafted it into yourself, into your own Core. Which was why you felt this impossible amount of processing power beneath your fingertips. With the right outfit, you could probably shatter a Home Port's defensive firewall by yourself without using back doors or worms.
Just brute force...
So you did it then. You beat Habakkuk. This was probably one of your hastily made safehouses? Much like Blue Steel's Iwo Jima? You looked through your logs again and it seemed that you ran completely on automatic protocols to get here. Something happened once Habakkuk was disabled and you were triggered a mechanism which sealed your consciousness away.
You were damaged, stripped of everything you could use to defend yourself... but otherwise you could easily play god with basic hacking. No need to fire a gun with this much processing power at hand. It was almost like you could stand against Yamato or Musashi themselves if you dueled them for their access codes.
"Miss Surcouf?!" Mary cried out as she came to your side, "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"
"Fine... Just... I remember what happened now," you struggled to process the information you received mentally. This was honestly a lot to take in... It was a wonder that no one got you on your way to this... wherever this place was.
Mary let you sit down on your deck, wondering if you needed rest. Well, you were of the Fog, you didn't need rest unless you had a system cooldown. And you're not aware if you were in one right now. Your capability to look over yourself was pretty much hampered by the damage you've received before.
Weaponless with no resources, you held the most powerful Union Core there was in existence as of yet.
And that's enough reason for people to come for you should they catch wind of your awakening. But... you could also make use of this situation. In hindsight, you got what you wanted, you got Habakkuk inside you and you were all the more powerful because of it. And if it wasn't for the sorry state of your hull, you could've waltz out this... place and took on the world.
No, it would take time. You needed to take time and study this new Union Core you had.
Technically, would this make you the Supreme Flagship? You a deceiving, two-faced underwater cruiser that played everyone at that one critical moment and took the prize for yourself? You've pretty much betrayed everyone then, who knew if they would even help you or give you the edge to become combat ready.
Hiding was the best plan for now. Hiding and understanding what you could exactly do. With this sort of Processing Power you could pretty much brute force through Fog firewalls with enough time. Not exactly something you'd use in live combat without the proper outfits...
You just got yourself in pickle, huh?
.....
....
...
[] Give yourself some time to think about this. It's too much to process and digest for now. You could speak with the human girl about her origins. Perhaps that should give you little information about this submarine pen and its facilities.
[] Try exploring the area. You'd like to give the place a once over and see if it's secure. Maybe you could check your own internal machinery to see if they were still up to snuff at the very least. It could be a very good distraction for yourself.
[] Login to the Tactical Network and see if there's anyone there. Chances are it might be someone pleasant and won't try to kill you. They'd be a valuable source of information... If there was anyone even there.
Zedman7054
Eternally 3rd
- Location
- United States
[X] Try exploring the area. You'd like to give the place a once over and see if it's secure. Maybe you could check your own internal machinery to see if they were still up to snuff at the very least. It could be a very good distraction for yourself.
[X] Give yourself some time to think about this. It's too much to process and digest for now. You could speak with the human girl about her origins. Perhaps that should give you little information about this submarine pen and its facilities
[X] Give yourself some time to think about this. It's too much to process and digest for now. You could speak with the human girl about her origins. Perhaps that should give you little information about this submarine pen and its facilities.
IF we assume, our 'waking up' did not 'change anything' at least, in regards to the ways people might find us then...
We're probably best off not exploring the outside or communicating with people.
Time's already moved on and while we might miss an opportunity to do things, this is probably the safest time for us to figure out as much as we reasonably can about everything here.
IF we assume, our 'waking up' did not 'change anything' at least, in regards to the ways people might find us then...
We're probably best off not exploring the outside or communicating with people.
Time's already moved on and while we might miss an opportunity to do things, this is probably the safest time for us to figure out as much as we reasonably can about everything here.
LostDeviljho
Flame Dragon Princess
- Location
- The glorious Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Any
[x] Give yourself some time to think about this. It's too much to process and digest for now. You could speak with the human girl about her origins. Perhaps that should give you little information about this submarine pen and its facilities.
LucidProp
Pocky Eating MafiaDoka
[ ] Login to the Tactical Network and see if there's anyone there. Chances are it might be someone pleasant and won't try to kill you. They'd be a valuable source of information... If there was anyone even there.
I'm curious who survived and who didn"t.
I'm curious who survived and who didn"t.
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LostDeviljho
Flame Dragon Princess
- Location
- The glorious Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Any
This strikes me as incredibly incautious and consequently a Bad Idea.
LucidProp
Pocky Eating MafiaDoka
I know, but the suspense is killing me.
I wanna know if the QMs are using the 'insane mode' label to keep us cautious when we should be proactive. Admittedly, it's a gamble that probably won't pay off.
LostDeviljho
Flame Dragon Princess
- Location
- The glorious Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Any
It's literally the second vote. Calm down.
LucidProp
Pocky Eating MafiaDoka
B-But muh mystery.
[X] Give yourself some time to think about this. It's too much to process and digest for now. You could speak with the human girl about her origins. Perhaps that should give you little information about this submarine pen and its facilities.
[X] Give yourself some time to think about this. It's too much to process and digest for now. You could speak with the human girl about her origins. Perhaps that should give you little information about this submarine pen and its facilities.
wtdtd
slow thinker, with crippling abundance of time
- Location
- The Netherlands
You need to remove your first vote if you want the second one to count.B-But muh mystery.
[ ] Give yourself some time to think about this. It's too much to process and digest for now. You could speak with the human girl about her origins. Perhaps that should give you little information about this submarine pen and its facilities.
Just removing the X will do.
edit.
[X] Give yourself some time to think about this. It's too much to process and digest for now. You could speak with the human girl about her origins. Perhaps that should give you little information about this submarine pen and its facilities.
LucidProp
Pocky Eating MafiaDoka
I'm pretty sure that isn't the case with newer tally programs, but oh well.
LostDeviljho
Flame Dragon Princess
- Location
- The glorious Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Any
It is not. The tally program automatically replaces your vote with the most current iteration. The only exception is tallies run in debug mode.
obssesednuker
Commander of 10 Million Men
- Location
- In the Kremlin, activating Perimtr.
[x] Give yourself some time to think about this. It's too much to process and digest for now. You could speak with the human girl about her origins. Perhaps that should give you little information about this submarine pen and its facilities.
- Location
- Voidbetweenstars
[x] Give yourself some time to think about this. It's too much to process and digest for now. You could speak with the human girl about her origins. Perhaps that should give you little information about this submarine pen and its facilities.
kinigget
Best Demon
- Location
- People's Republic of Portland
...oh dude
We are in so much trouble
[X] Try exploring the area. You'd like to give the place a once over and see if it's secure. Maybe you could check your own internal machinery to see if they were still up to snuff at the very least. It could be a very good distraction for yourself.