Can you just imagine that bit making it into the history books? That's up there with the war over a couple pigs....
Don't forget the "insulted by the crap they were feeding their troops" reason as well.
Devastation Comes In Big Packages [Planetary Annihilation/Multicross SI]
Can you just imagine that bit making it into the history books? That's up there with the war over a couple pigs....
Don't forget the "insulted by the crap they were feeding their troops" reason as well.
I am fairly certain that somewhere there has been blood over a misplaced "e"
75 – Solar Road Trip
75 – Solar Road Trip
So.
Me and Yuriko didn't do much of anything for a full week, based, I'll repeat as much as I need to, on her suggestion. For a trained psionic commando apparently she was perfectly fine spending a hefty amount of time doing not much of anything. Which to be fair I was fine with as well. We ate pizza, hung out with Dude, and sat out on a big couch I fabricated out to watch movies and shows on. The schedule was varied as Yuriko has long stopped having anything resembling a sleeping schedule and I didn't sleep at all. We made it through Scrubs, Psych, Parks and Recreation, and a few more shows that I'd watched.
Ah, the wonderful world of binge watching.
At one point she suggested we leave Earth behind a bit, and after a short argument that ended after she had Dude stare deeply into my eyes, I agreed. I cut my connection to my satellites, ordered them to remain in stealth mode and to not hit anything else in orbit, and then we set off. First towards the closest planet to the sun and then we would slowly head outwards until we hit Pluto. Yuriko, for her part, really enjoyed seeing the sun with through the specially polarized glass so that her eyes didn't melt on her when we got close enough. Yes, the glass was also UV resistant. I didn't want her to just randomly get skin cancer.
==================================
"Welcome to Mercury," I gestured to the planet the ship was now hovering just a few feet above the surface of.
"Wow."
I'm reasonably sure that the wonder in her voice was sincere. The planet itself didn't look to the naked eye at all like the pretty full spectrum images that I'd shown Yuriko beforehand but at the same time she was seeing Mercury not through a telescope but with her own eyes. There was a kind of sheer fascination with space that was somewhat universal amongst humans, even clones. She hadn't seen a thousand, thousand worlds yet so this one still enraptured her. And you know what? The look on her face was worth it.
"Obviously you can't just walk out there, you'd die pretty fast, but you can still mess with it with your mind," I tapped a finger against the glass.
Almost before I'd finished speaking a vast amount of dirt, dust, and rocks abruptly lifted off from the ground with only a few faint visible signs of Yuriko's powers at work. To someone who couldn't track the manifestation of gravity anomalies it would basically look like a giant creature rose up out of nothing from the surface of the planet. It was, in fact, pretty spooky looking. For a moment I just stared at it as Yuriko slowly lifted her hand in the air, her eyes narrowed in concentration, and then all of it crushed together into a solid shape.
It was…Yuriko, hairstyle and weird head holder thingies included.
"…huh. You even got facial features and all that. I thought you didn't do much precision work?"
She really didn't. Huge blasts of psychokinetic force which turned people around her into bloody giblets, yeah. Lift up and crush entire aircraft carriers, sure. Rip aircraft out of the sky, yeah. But a notable issue that she had was doing more individual things. Enough infantry could overwhelm her as I'd seen more than once through the satellites and despite her ability to psychically toughen their own flesh Yuriko clones would go down to enough firepower. But sculpting a to-scale replica of herself out of the detritus on Mercury's surface? I'd never seen her do it.
"I've been practicing," she murmurs, a hand pressing against the glass in a motion mirrored by the replica outside which places its own hand forward as well. "Did you think you could have me move around individual discs and books around like I've been doing for months now without learning how to narrow my focus?"
"Honestly? I hadn't really thought about it that much," I tell her truthfully, before drinking some hot chocolate. "Though I'll bet you've been practicing on the side as well."
Now that I'm looking, I can see it in the past footage of the time we've spent together. Small bursts here and there as she lifted small pots or carefully watered plants. Or, as I see her do when we were in Chiapas, Mexico, removing all of the spines on a cactus one by one while I was busy negotiating for an entire pig to cook over a fire. I'd just wanted to see if I could replicate a BBQ technique I saw on TV once. As it turns out I did not but we ate it all the same because it was definitely cooked enough to beat parasites.
"…yeah," she lets the replica turn back into its component parts again and it disappears.
Then she finds some bigger rocks, and starts messing around with them. I let her go for it, she hasn't really had a chance to use her powers for a while so I leave her to it while I watch.
===========================================
"This is crazy!"
"Yuriko, don't go too far," I called after her, but my heart wasn't in it.
Her response was to cackle and leap further along on Mars' surface within her customized astronaut suit. It was a combination of, well, quite a lot of tech from the past two universes I'd jumped through. I didn't want her first non-earth walk to be bulky and require a whole lot of jumping or whatever. Instead I'd crafted something that looked vaguely like the rocket angel suit minus some of the more superfluous ornamentation and had colored it a deep purple and black – her wishes, not mine. With the boosters already in it, the ones I'd added, and the quantum crystalline alloys it was made out of, it was powerful as all hell regardless.
"Hey, Guy! Guy-woah!"
She goes from about sixty to zero when she flies back over to me where I stand on top of Olympus Mons. The ship itself is above us, in the atmosphere, but the moment we'd come down she had begun buzzing around in excitement and interest at the various geological features that Mars had to offer. I suppose that is why she apparently missed the fact that while I gave her a supersuit that would give certain incarnations of Iron Man a run for his money I neglected to give myself any of the same protections.
"You-you're not-how are you doing that? Some kind of invisible environmental shield?"
I suppose I'll take it as a positive that she's comfortable and at ease enough to fly right up to me and get all up in my personal space. She wiggles her hands around trying to touch the nonexistent shield, and then flies backwards slightly with her hands on her hips.
"You aren't wearing a shield," and boy I can hear her scowl from here despite the full face mask.
"Nah."
At my words echoing in her helmet com system she jerks slightly, mostly due to the fact that my mouth didn't move when I did it. It's an affectation that I don't actually need so long as I have speakers, but…I guess this is just the first time she's noticed.
"You don't need to breath, or, I don't know, not die from atmosphere exposure?"
I shake my head, though I note that my false skin is certainly not weathering this very well. If I really was human I'd have died of suffocation several minutes ago but as it is my skin is turning a bit…blue? From lack of oxygen and exposure to a planet with very little atmosphere compared to Earth.
"If my skin dies, I'll fix it, but otherwise don't worry about it. Weren't you the one who was having fun buzzing around a few minutes ago?"
She wiggles mid-air and I realize that perhaps subconsciously she's taken up the posture that all Yuriko's do when they're floating about with their minds. Perhaps she is, if assisted by the suit.
"Well, yeah but…"
"Seriously, Yuriko," I wave my hand at her and try to take a sip from my hot chocolate but the liquid has gone all funky now that I'm down here. Eh, I can't be poisoned. "Go have fun. It's Mars, how fun is that? Hell, work on your sculpting if you like. We're just here to relax."
It takes a bit but after me raising an eyebrow at her she decides to take the admiral attitude of 'fuck it' and go flying off, zooming across the landscape fast enough to send up trails and make noticeable changes to the dust. Going supersonic isn't something that I gave her, for this suit at least, but she's going pretty fast regardless. Behind her a trail of rocks rise up and begin circling in a deadly little orbit but she's just having fun. I can hear her laugh through the helmet as she does so, merely exercising her mind and her suit without repercussions.
Speaking of which…
I teleport to one of the larger flat patches of ground, where one of our rovers would have gone someday if this planet's cradle of humanity had not been so inwardly focused for so long. For all that they have laser satellites and magnetic singularity satellites and all that sort of stuff they never…actually went to the moon. The Kennedy's never took to the American landscape like they did back home. If only because they weren't angry and anti-communist enough. It took a special kind of demagogue to win the Presidency here. There wasn't a Red Scare, mostly because the Allies hadn't stopped having their Red Scare. To the point that it became normalcy. Eventually it stabilized but…nnngh. Nope.
Relaxation week, not constantly harbor fear week.
Anyway, where Curiosity would have landed, I dragged over a giant slab of stone and in Mandalorian carved a relatively basic message. And I wasn't worried about anyone freaking out about copyright because Star Wars didn't exist here. Which was a shame…sort of, depending on one's interpretation of how the whole series had gone.
"Hello," I read it aloud…to Yuriko, really, "And welcome to our graves. For here, on this world, did two nations clash, and in the end, saw total destruction as the result. Peace was left behind. And so, here we died."
"A message of peace? Why here?"
"Because I can."
Yuriko was busy doing loop-de-loops over the north pole, but I saw her pause for a moment in thought.
"I suppose that isn't the worst reasoning."
===============================================
Yuriko's precision and multitasking abilities when it came to her powers increased as she went. You could literally trace her experience getting better as time went in a linear progression from Mercury all the way to Pluto. Now I'm not saying she went from kindergarten to Michelangelo, but she'd come pretty far. First she started just trying to shave stuff off with her mind, then she started using other rocks as tools, and then eventually I gave her some actual carving tools that could stand up to the environments we travelled in. Here, on Pluto, out of ice, she had made a pretty damn good giant goose.
Or a swan.
Or a very thin long necked chicken?
"Now, see, snow angels are a tradition in snowy areas," I said whilst doing just that, my skin having turned blue and black by now.
At first Yuriko freaked out about it but apparently watching someone be entirely nonplussed about it for a weak had greatly reduced her worry. In turn, she simply began making her own snow angels whilst in her protective suit which I'd had to keep fiddling with to improve its environmental protection. By now it was just a fair bit bulkier than the rocket angel suit but she didn't seem to care that much about it.
"I didn't know that. Do they make them in japan?"
"I assume they make them all over the world wherever there is snow."
"Huh."
Up, skin is falling off now, better get back up to the ship and reskin myself.
=====================================
Dude, of course, seemed entirely unaffected by our zooming about the solar system.
Seriously, when I'd stuck her in a personalized cow space suit and let her noodle about on Venus she'd just snorted and then gone to sleep after a few minutes of confusedly moving about. She was certainly getting quite used to me and Yuriko using her as a couch by now though considering that we'd been doing it after almost every excursion. After I'd reset my body of course, no need to flash freeze the poor girl with a body chilled to subzero temperatures.
Either way though…
"That was a good time," I admitted as I lay there.
"I should say so, though I feel a bit like I took advantage of you," Yuriko says from where she is freely floating about now.
Apparently so much time in her rocket suit had reminded her of moving about in the old manner she was accustomed to so now instead of walking around she was floating around. I didn't really care much either way, it was her body after all.
"Why's that?"
"I was the one who was really having fun, you just watched most of the time."
"I left freaky ominous messages on every planet!"
Yuriko snorts and does a loop de loop above me and no she wasn't wearing a skirt. Crew clothing was relaxed and casual, and she'd taken that to heart. Right now she was wearing an oversized pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt made for an obese man.
"Right, and that's about it. I was the one who was blowing up rocks, carving whole statues into being, and generally making a mess of things. You, on the other hand, carved message and mostly watched."
All right, she's got me there.
"Seeing you having fun is plenty fun," I say up to her, my head laying against Dude's back. "You're the only Yuriko I know who actually can smile and have fun these days."
That makes her stop circling for a bit and she slows slightly.
"That's…true."
Ah man. I hope that didn't just kill her good mood super hard.
"Sorry."
"It's fine," she waves a hand at me but I can pretty easily tell it's not just 'fine'.
"You sure?"
She shrugs mid-air, loops again, and then lands so that she's laying her head on Dude right next to me.
"They…aren't me. I've accepted that by now. You could try to save all of them, but…I only joined you because I was afraid and weak."
Invisible fingers of force clamp my lips shut when I try to open my mouth.
"I was, don't deny it. Sure, you got rid of the psychic dampener which kept a lid on my emotions, but the damage all of 'us' could do if you did it to every single one? Ones who weren't determined to be defective? The ones that were still loyal, still trusted the Empire?"
Her armor floats over to us, courtesy of Yuriko's mind, and slowly rotates above her.
"I've accepted that the Empire didn't want me on the battlefield, that I was nothing to them. They have nothing on me now. But the others…you can't expect the same circumstances from all of them, much less the Prime."
She's…still not letting me talk. I could, using the speakers, but I respect her decision here. She seems like she needs to get this out.
"I don't know what her experiences were. What she has faced in her life. I only know that I was born in a tube, and told to serve. Trained, sure, but with…," she shivers, "Methods that I know are…inhumane now. Now. Now that you've showed me. Now that I've looked and learned."
The armor orients and now begins to slowly gyrate itself in the air as she casually manipulates it.
"But so many, too many, are just weapons. Even if I tried to commune my mind with theirs, they wouldn't accept me. They would certainly try to reject me. That's part of the training too," she has the armor point to its own helmet, "Just in case someone else tried to create a psychic to use against us. Or in case one of the clones went rogue, or if the Prime went rogue and the clones were sent up against her, or who knows what else."
I know.
Izumi.
…yeah. She's on the list.
"So…I guess telepathically communicating with all of the clones at once and turning them against the Empire is out of the question?"
Oh! She let me speak!
"Pretty much," she has the armor nod, "That isn't even counting the ones who were strapped into the Psychic Dominators. Some, some," she says to you pointedly, "Might defect, but not to me or anyone else. They'd just…defect, try to leave and carve out their own lives."
"Not the worst thing," I grunt.
"Even if that means they mind control isolated villages somewhere into worshipping them as a goddess?"
Oh. Yeah. That'd be bad.
"Some Yuriko's showed greater propensity for bloodlust, some were better at sea, others were more timid, cloning the Prime was an imprecise process to say the least," she rolls her shoulders. "You don't know what it was like to wake up in the Sanitarium and hear all of their minds crying out, screaming, or were silent…"
How would the third one…what??
"The silent ones are the worst," she explains, apparently having seen my face, "They don't…they don't have minds, not like the rest of us. They're just drones. Good for combat, but they weren't…they were off," she shudders slightly, "And more often than not those were the ones that we didn't see again. Before, I thought they were just being disposed of. Now? I think we both know where the 'defective' clones go."
Either that or the weird healing stations. Eugh.
"It works 'enough'," I say before folding my hands behind my head. "Cloning and psychic powers are two of the most barely understood parts of the Empire arsenal but they shove them forward."
The only response she's got to that is a shrug.
"But..., if that is the case, your feelings on them I mean…"
"I don't care if you kill them," she interrupts me before I can finish. To my stare, she repeats her words only this time she's staring directly into my eyes. "I don't care if you kill them. I really don't."
Sometimes I forget she is a blooded killer of Soviet troops and a trained psychic commando. The look on her face isn't letting me forget right now.
"One of the main things focused on in our training is contempt and apathy for anyone not under 'our' banner, but I don't serve the Empire anymore. That doesn't even get into the fact that the Empire is the one responsible for the suffering felt by every Yuriko clone and the Prime."
Then she floats upwards again, this time without changing her posture at all so it looks like she's just risen from the bed like she's being abducted.
"I've seen what they've made of my kind, and the world, and I don't…like them," she twists now so that she's face down and thus facing me. "I've seen the world they call barbaric and that they want to 'fix' for their stupid divine destiny which isn't even really divine. It's just some old man's delusion, an old man that wouldn't even exist if some Russian's hadn't gone through the effort of changing time itself. So honestly? Fuck 'em. I don't have to worry about you being needlessly cruel killing them too, so...yeah. Fuck 'em."
She flips between the whole 'apathetic contemptuous psychic commando' and 'gleeful exploring teenager' thing pretty easily, which is a bit surprising to me but then again…
I do the same thing sometimes. I go from being the relaxed Guy to…I don't know. A mad Guy? Eh.
"I do want something though," she says as she floats past.
"Well, we've travelled the world, the solar system…and plenty more. What do you want now?"
"One," she does me the courtesy of raising a finger, "A gym. I'm getting fat eating like I do with you, and sitting around doing nothing. Those machines you stuck in my stomach are nice, but they don't do anything with me lazing around. Second, I want TV and radio – Earth ones, don't give me that look – so that I can actually see what's happening on the world."
That…request worries me.
"Are…you sure?"
She lands again, this time standing over me.
"I'm sure. It won't be pretty. I'll see bad things…but if you keep trying to coddle me I'll…I don't know what I'll do but I'm not a child."
"Technically-,"
"Technically I'm an adult now! Legally even! In a few more months I'll be twenty years old!"
…I could argue against this. But…
"You know what, sure, whatever."
Fuck it, right?
==============================================
For a moment, I examined my features in the mirror I'd bought.
"I clean up good."
That…was a lie. I hadn't changed my outfit at all but I definitely knew what I was doing next. It was a plan I'd hatched after first installing a huge TV platform on Yuriko's deck. A massive yet squat column of metal upon which were TVs and radios. It was a near ultimate surround sound and surround video experience that only Yuriko could float up to. Well…I could teleport in, but the point was that it was definitely hers. Each one could be tuned to different channels or stations and a few minutes after I'd finished putting it in she had begun watching several different news channels and shows from what might have seemed like every country that could broadcast. Amongst them were Allied nations, countries made up of the now rapidly crumbling and still leaderless Soviet Union, and even the Empire.
I will be fair to her. If she elects to re-defect after this, I'll…I'll let her go I guess. But I'm still squashing the Empire.
Because now we were back and boy could things change in a week.
Japan had bottled itself up after my little tantrum and now they had turtled fully. Of their four Floating Island Fortresses only one remained under their control, the other two being far enough away for the Allies to capture them. The Shogun Executioner lied in pieces in Mongolia, a large FutureTech facilitiy constructed around it. The Soviet Union had shrunk in size back to just Russia by itself, everything else having broken away entirely in violent fashion that the Allies were doing their best to quell. As for the Allies, the President was…gone, actually. According to the news it was a sudden heart attack and aneurism at the same time.
…a few minutes of hacking reveals that they'd conferred with the top intelligence echelons of the US and other nations and decided to just quietly get rid of the robot. Now the VP was in power and the guy seemed to hold to the same basic policies that the robot had but…eh. I'm not dealing with that right now.
Because I had a plan. One that I didn't really need to change
The Allies were slowly beginning to surround Japan. The Soviets were nearly gone. Their victory was assured. So soon enough it would be time for me to leave but for the fact that FutureTech might get some ideas in the post-war era. If they go unchallenged that is.
I'm a pretty good forger, these days. But I didn't need to do much. It wasn't like the Ukraine was a stupendously computer based society. Say some documents got lost, what remained were in their computers that they had, and all of a sudden there was a new company that had emerged in the immediate post-Soviet period for a country which was currently trying to smash down all of its former 'comrades' for resources and territory.
Hell, even that Ukranian commander had in the end chosen to go with her birth nation over the Union once she saw it fall like it had.
"Nova Industries, CEO," I said to the mirror, holding out a hand. "Heh, why yes I am an eccentric billionaire, that is why I get to wear this bathrobe and these sandals and socks instead of a suit.
Yeah. This should do it.
Look out FutureTech, I'm going corporate!
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Why do I think you could water Africa with all of Future Tech's immanent tears.
Massgamer
Advance toward the Future
- Location
- The Future
Dude is the real one in charge.
Also I have to say I really enjoyed the growth in Yurikos' character and the heart-to-heart with the Guy since it was very nice.
If I was a super rich CEO I would certainly do this.
This is one of the best bits to me since it's something most of us would likely do.
week
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Yes, but he gets to have a sexy secretary who can psionically melt people's brains as one of the perks.
76 - Recruitment Drive
76 – Recruitment Drive
My father was a lawyer. A woman once called him the Devil outside of the courtroom after he'd destroyed her – though to be fair she hadn't paid a lick of things that she owed. It had been the first time I'd really thought about the legal part of the 'repo' process, the physical part always interesting with people hunting down unpaid cars or what have you. Either way, I spent many a day during the summer in my childhood at his law firm and listening to the thing that lawyers speak about. Then, later on, I would watch plenty of shows and read more than a few books, and yet it was not until here, now, in the latter third of the year 1985, that I realized some things were universal.
For instance, if you gave a high powered firm enough money and pointed them at a target? They would get results. You can change the country, the language, and the culture, but give lawyers enough money and they'll work their brutal spooky magic on whoever you point them at. Especially if that target was in the midst of an area of the world under extreme instability that had just ripped up the papers or whatever it was that bound them to a collapsing Soviet Union. Especially if they had no liquid assets of their own, no legal protection that could be provided, no money, no protection, no real idea if in the next few hours the ongoing civil conflicts that had spread up across the various nations that had made up the Union were going to hit their offices.
The firm's name was unimportant, though they were in fact originally based in France and yet had branches throughout the Allies. Being offered the chance to set up within the Union as it was collapsing and thus scoop up real estate and all the influence they could get was just a bit more frosting on the cake that was their first paycheck. It wasn't like Cherdenko or Krukov were doing to be doing anything with that cash, so why not use it myself? I didn't really see anything going against it.
As for who I was having them target?
It turns out that despite the whole 'comrades in arms' thing, it seems that plenty of scientists and companies that were part of the Union were more than willing to jump ship. Traced calls and emails between various personages across Russia and former Union territory provides a wealth of information. Some are planning on going into hiding. Others are going to try and surrender to the Allies in return for leniency. Still others, loyal to the Union until the end, are actually in the midst of trying to create the devastator chemical cyborg trooper over in Omsk. I'll leave them be with that, honestly. I don't want any part in that right now.But you'd be amazed at how easy it is to buy real estate and buy out companies while the countries they were founded in either just ripped themselves free of the Soviet Union or are trying to support it as it crumbles. The sheer panic going on is amazing, riots everywhere and buildings burning across eastern Europe. While it is sad for me, the Allies are coming all the same so if I want to actually kitbash a company that could possibly rival FutureTech then I'm going to have to get moving pretty quick. Thank goodness for the fact that I can pull money that is going to no one to use for this.
Mostly because a lot of those who originally owned such accounts are dead or imprisoned, like Cherdenko and Krukov.
Anyway, the first target on the list. Kazminov Design Bureau, situated in the Ukraine. It wasn't too hard of a buyout, a whole lot of them had been expecting to be killed amidst all the chaos that the Ukraine was going through – loyalists to the Union and those who were now fighting for independence – and so when I showed up with paperwork and money they signed on quick. They'd lost people to the fighting already, some had run off, but the patents themselves for their various designs – the Sickle, the Bullfrog, and the Akula sub – remained in their vaults. Perfect for me. They collapsed in easy, were suddenly solvent again, and so had no problem falling under my umbrella.
Pro tip? Lawyers scare the shit out of me. I could watch and listen to them work, but for the life of me the measures of legality they leapt through still kind of boggled my mind. I didn't really understand much of it, but I didn't need to. I just needed to be able to read the fine print of anything I signed and understand what certain things meant. Either way consider the payouts I was giving them I didn't think my team of surprisingly vicious French lawyers were going to try and screw me. If they did? Well…I hoped it wouldn't come to that.
I wasn't planning on setting up a weak little company either. This wasn't the United States; this was a land that had formerly been fully communist. Communism means everyone working together, which means, to me?
Monopoly.
============================================
Vladimir shoved papers into his briefcase, cursing under his breath as the sound of gunfire boomed out from all across the city. Around him the rest of the scientists in his division did the same. Just because the Union was falling didn't mean that they were going to have to die with it! For Vladimir had a plan, a plan he'd shared with everyone else who was willing to listen, hadn't run off, or wasn't already dead. If they took everything they could with them and ran until they found some Allied division or another they could surrender! They could live.
"This is shameful," cursed one of his peers, Dr. Volkov, "We run to the Allies? After all this?"
"What are we to do," Vladimir hissed, "Die here?! Sversky Robot Works is dead! Our factories have been bombed to dust, the Ministry isn't responding to anyone's calls, and oh if you didn't notice the people of the city have gone mad!"
It was true. Conscripts shooting conscripts, tanks rolling around firing indiscriminately, people rioting and fighting everyone else! It was madness! The news that the Premier had disappeared and reappeared in Allied custody along with every other notable commander in the Union had shattered the illusion of strength and security that so many had fought so hard to maintain. Even now, in a small city close to Moscow itself, there was fighting going on!
"Well!"
They all jumped, badly, at the sound of a new voice coming from the doorway to the lab. There, standing there as if there wasn't a civil war just upstairs, was a man dressed in the most raggedy pink bathrobe that Vladimir had ever seen. He sipped calmly from a mug of some manner of liquid and rocked back and forth on feet covered in socks and sandals. The sheer incongruity of his manner and dress momentarily forced Vladimir to blink rapidly to ensure that he was actually present.
"Hello everyone! Is this partially bombed out building the final R&D lab of Sversky Robot Works? Inventors of the terror drone, and assistants on the tesla trooper and stingray vessel projects?"
"I-it is, yes."
Vladimir didn't see who spoke, for the man simply smiled again and drank from his mug.
"Oh good. The other ones had people still at their desks to talk to."
"Who the hell are you?!"
That was Volkov.
"I? I am the one who is here to offer you guys an opportunity," the man smiled again before reaching behind him and somehow pulling out a thick black briefcase.
Then he clicked it open, and Vladimir felt something in him shudder to a stop at the sight of the glittering gold bars within.
"A lucrative opportunity, that would likely involve you surviving, coming away from here, and being able to continue your various…scientific researches in peace."
Volkov opened his mouth before Vladimir stepped forward – he was the head of this division after all.
"I'm listening."
The man smiled again.
===========================================
So little overall loyalty to the Union itself.
Then again I was purposefully recruiting from people that seemed like they would be willing to leave things behind in the name of safety, science, and money. The more hardcore sorts were left behind or not really spoken to much at all. While Yuriko and I spoke occasionally, and while I pet Dude, I had my firm draw up just about everything I would need. Papers for a new company, communicating the merging and combining of numerous companies that used to have rivalries, so on and so forth.
Mikevich-Gurevoyan Aircraft Corporation, who developed the MiG fighter. Company headquarters was busy being destroyed by a combination of oncoming Allied tank divisions and Soviet forces who had given up on the issue of collateral damage.
Krasny Motory, which had outright gone bankrupt a few days before I showed up. Little military connections but they loved their cars and motor bikes. In the interest of reducing Soviet resistance forces I got rid of their massive mothballed fleets, but overall they were just grateful to have employment again even if it was under the mysterious aegis of Nova Industries.
Vodnik Rocket Arsenal, the premier rocket experts of the Union and the producers of the V4, whose headquarters were actually being attacked by some Soviet or another who was convinced that they were holding out on him for weapons that could somehow defeat the entire Allied military across Europe. They'd stopped being solvent a while ago, waiting on payouts from the government that would never come now that it was falling apart. They were a bit more resistant to my offers, but, again…money wins out. So too did my lawyers. Forcibly taking what wouldn't join me of its own free will.
Krasna Aerospace was actually a pretty synergistic acquisition after grabbing Vodnik, honestly. They weren't in nearly as dire straits as everyone else but for the fact that they were dying financially. I offered utterly massive packages to join me drawn out of Zhana and Oleg's accounts to the point of near zeroing them out, but they eventually agreed. The fighting – both Allied and civil war varieties – had not yet reached Moscow but they were more than willing to leave because they knew what would happen when it did come to Moscow. The fact that they dealt with the kirovs, twinblades, and launching satellites into orbit was pretty freaking amazing. I was also interested in the whole tesla fighter plane thing that they had tried to make a while back.
Those were just the big names. I sucked up smaller groups as well, reorganized them, and plenty more.
Gotta say, the reactions of people who are audibly agonizing over where they could possibly go considering how badly destroyed their city is when I show up in fabricated helicopters and offering them a way out?
Pretty encouraging.
Because Nova Industries is a family company. To the point that I was airlifting entire families out from all over the place over to Ukraine. The original KDB building was quite busily being expanded into a sprawling complex now. My various new employees of all stripes were probably stunned at how they'd all been forced to leave for a few days and came back to find a massive creation of concrete and metal. Where once there had been a slightly scuffed and grimy building which held the last remnants of a former Union-based company, there now stood a shiny and clean set of structures. One was for general office work, several were entirely research based wings and divisions, living quarters, a mess, so on and so forth.
Heh.
Fabricator bots do good work.
====================================
Hiroshi Yamanaka was just a low levelled employee of Kurikara Robotics, but even he knew that tensions were high in the Empire. It was so bad that everyone didn't just walk around anymore, they stalked. Food rationing had to be implemented after the unexpected and still unexplained return of every Imperial soldier outside of the country for few were willing to try and step out again in case whatever power had done it the first time did it again. Except that had even ceased being a thing several weeks ago when Japan began to be surrounded by a noose of Westerner ships.
He sneered at the thought as he bustled about in the depths of his company's building. It wasn't that he disliked his work, just that he knew his boss had sent him down here to look for a useless old piece of paper as punishment for making a joke about said boss's rather prodigious gut. Bah! So he couldn't work at his computer, so what? As long he got to go home to watch anime at the end of the day, things were all right.
Even if he had been vigilant at that moment, however, he would not have seen the invisible man walk past him carrying boxes of classified documents and files. Or how the man teleported into secure areas of the building repeatedly to steal patents, blueprints, and various other pieces of information that were all directly related to the creation of Kurikara Robotic's legendary King Oni warbot. Furthermore, how could he have seen money and accounts flashing through electronic spaces as the entire company found that it had suddenly lost every bit of money it had?
Or that the same thing had happened to Kanegawa Industries only hours before, the inventors of the wave-force artillery weaponry.
If he could have seen the man, as he went about his silent work, he would have been shocked at the man's casual attire. Or perhaps that the man was clearly not Japanese and yet was wandering about without a care in the world. Or maybe he would just not notice at all, for Hiroshi Yamanaka was not a lowly worker in his company in spite of some massive intellect or any other positive aspect.
In the end, it didn't matter.
By the end of the day, every major weapons manufacturer in the Empire of the Rising Sun had suffered catastrophic damage to their files, documentation, and accounts.
All save for the recently and rather desperately formed Ten-Shi Zaibatsu.
==============================================
I'm not afraid to admit it. I wanted the Giga Fortress. So I'd let the Ten-Shi Zaibatsu be until they created it. Or…I suppose, if the Allies ever decided to fully invade Japan. Their fleets had certainly swallowed up the open sea around them with multiple full ocean bases hanging around now outside of their major and minor ports. Hell I didn't know that they'd done it so soon but apparently the Allies were moving all three of their captured Fortresses out across the oceans to come help in the blockade of Japan.
There were no nukes, this time around.
Besides which, I don't think Yoshiro would surrender even if nukes were dropped. He was that certain in the 'divine destiny' of his Empire even though I'd forced them all back onto their islands.
Still. I had what I needed. The collected scientific and technological knowledge of the entire Empire, in both paper and electronic form, ready to bring back to Nova Industries. All mine now, courtesy of super corporate espionage that they just couldn't beat.
I stared out at Tokyo from atop the highest point of the Tokyo Tower, and drank some hot chocolate.
"Yuriko?" I spoke through the speakers on the ship.
"Yeah?"
"You wanna destroy the sanitarium?"
I watch her sit up like a gunshot from where she'd been laying on the couch on her TV platform.
"…yes."
"Are you sure?"
"…yes."
"All right. Get ready, I'll come and get you in a few minutes."
I took a moment then, on the top of Tokyo Tower, and took a coin out of my pocket. Heads for…well. Some stuff. Tails for other stuff.
…huh. Tails.
I felt the ship's fabricators activate, the body I was making in exact copy of my own flashing down a few minutes later. It stood ramrod straight, without a guiding intelligence inside of it. Which was the point. I'd done this…once per universe, I realized then. This would be the third. With an inward twist of my own mind I hooked every single inch of my being. Every part of me that was…me…and then pulled. Copied. Bounced over again and then redirected the rapidly emerging exact copy of me.
The Guy, the second Guy, blinked for a moment when he 'awoke'. The two of us looked at each other, and then just a hair off from one another we took a drink of hot chocolate. Good. Already differentiating.
"You gonna be good with this, man?"
The Guy shrugged at me, and I shrugged as well. Neither of us knew how things could really go.
"I mean, I'm not going to get to hang out with Yuriko anymore, cause I figure she'll go with you," he says with a sigh. "I'm going to have to get my own cow too. Maybe two cows. Hell maybe a whole farm."
"But you know the deal, yeah?"
He nodded, and then flicked his eyes to the sky.
"Yeah, they're your satellites too man."
Then he was gone.
The 'deal' of course, was perfectly simple…on paper. Nova Industries was going to be the eastern Europe and Asian version of FutureTech. Absorbing the mass majority of technological information from both the former Union and from the Empire, and then using it not just to become a powerful defense firm but a major humanitarian producer. With the knowledge that The Guy and I possessed, Nova Industries could have the medical knowledge of this Earth leapfrog forward generations ahead. The technologies too. FutureTech could stay with weapons as they liked. Nova Industries would be moving forward soon enough. If FutureTech started pulling some truly wonky shit, then The Guy would be there to put a stop to it, crush them, and expose the problems. Maybe even absorb some of their junk.
But…
I looked at the coin in my hand.
Hadn't I done enough here? The Union was falling, not just falling but falling apart. The Empire was fully surrounded and the Allies could easily keep them blockaded for quite a while. The Allies have, effectively, won. The only thing remaining is whatever remains at the sanitarium and while Yuriko might say that she doesn't care that much about it I'm pretty sure she still cares a little. It was where she was made. It has, hell I don't even know, a lot of stuff.
"…myeah. I'm teleporting you down now, Yuriko."
She shows up in the battle armor I made her, the latest edition.
The Shiro Sanitarium.
The X1 Future Tank.
The Giga Fortress.
…not much left now.
"I'm basically asking you if you want to do this on a whim, mind you, so if you decide you don't want to-,"
But then she's already flying around me looking for the sanitarium before she turns back and says something that actually makes me pause for a moment.
"Lemme see that quarter."
I do so.
"…heads. Yeah. Let's go."
Around us, Tokyo sprawls outwards. King Oni walk the streets, tanks patrol the countryside, and overall the entire nation seems as ready for war as it ever was. But in the distance, leaving Tokyo behind, is a very nasty little sanitarium.
"Yeah. Ok."
In the world that only I could see, I watched as The Guy introduced himself to the newly promoted or shuffled around Department Heads of his new company. They were bemused, confused, and a few of the Russian's boozed, but they all started paying attention real hard when he slapped down everything I'd taken from the Empire onto the table. I knew that Nova Industries was going to have teething issues, hell everything I do does…but The Guy was up for it. He was going to be one of the world's greatest philanthropists…I just know it.
Anyway, the sanitarium.
"Guy, look out!"
Hmm? Oh!
I lean back far enough to become almost ninety degrees when a car goes flying towards my face. We're on a building, who – how – oh.
Yuriko Omega rises up from beneath the lip of the building, her whole body shimmering with psychic power. She…doesn't look too happy.
"I can feel her," I feel the Yuriko I know whisper behind me. "That...that's no clone. That's her. That's Yuriko-Prime."
I'll give the original Yuriko this – she can make her voice really loud.
"Traitor! I could feel your mind the moment you entered Tokyo!"
Ah, fuck. I...wait.
I check the chronometers. Huh.
"Hey, Yuriko," I turn to my friend, "Happy Birthday."
This...seems to confuse the original one.
"What?" They both speak at the same time...eugh that's freaky.
"It's been twelve months since you got born inside the sanitarium, I checked the date. Happy Birthday."
For some reason beyond me, that makes the original Yuriko mad enough to send me flying.
This was not how I envisioned today going.
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- Location
- kentucky
- Location
- Viet Nam
The Battle Between New Yuriko and Old Yuriko. Will the New and in her prime version defeat the Old and washout version version. Find out next time Yuriko Z: The Return of Yuriko.
Yuriko-13's armor has psychic shielding, right? So she won't get ripped apart from the inside?
...wait, fuck-
...wait, fuck-
Shit, it probably doesn't.
Legion1771
The God
Do you smell it? That smell? A kind of smelly smell, a smelly smell that smells smelly. The smell of a traitor.Yuriko-13's armor has psychic shielding, right? So she won't get ripped apart from the inside?
...wait, fuck-
Shit, it probably doesn't.
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Obligatory music.
Naturally.
And I suddenly realize that we've yet to see Yuriko go anime on anything.
*Makes popcorn*
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- Location
- Pale Blue Dot
I wonder how long it's been since anyone told Yuriko Prime this, or anything similar?
If you have two psychics going up against each other, where both have brute force going for them, but one also has finesse? Well. Motivation would count for a lot too, but targeting Mr Bathrobe first probably did not do Yuriko Prime any favours when it came to motivating Yuriko 13.
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You unleashed the lawyers on them!
You monster!
Uh that is not the new company right? Right?
You monster!
Uh that is not the new company right? Right?
ouch. knowing your clone got hot chocolate while you just got hot asswhoopin? I don't envy Yuriko prime....
