Devastation Comes In Big Packages [Planetary Annihilation/Multicross SI]
Alayne
The Reader
- Location
- Home of the Vikings
Don't worry! The Umbrella Corporation only wants to help!
Look! They even funded an entire community!
And they have their own security vehicles for if something goes wrong as well as mobile recruiting systems!
Yarudazuigu
Frostbyte's overlord.
- Location
- Poland
Yes, our development of zombie-plague is totally safe, honest!
Don't worry! The Umbrella Corporation only wants to help!
Look! They even funded an entire community!
And they have their own security vehicles for if something goes wrong as well as mobile recruiting systems!
Why don't you trust them? It's not their fault some movie used their name!
...
Ok I am calm.
Countdown till T-virus?
Reverse Google has failed me again. I am 90% sure this image has nothing to do with a Samsung Galaxy S Plus. Where is it from?
- Location
- Own World
OniAi.
77 – Can't Get No Satisfaction
77 – Can't Get No Satisfaction
I went flying…what, a couple hundred feet?
Definitely across the street below to crash into another building on the other side. My mug shattered, my bathrobe got torn up, and even as I was starting to get up I could hear both Yurikos going at it. The issue here, I realized as I watched Yuriko-13 get swatted out of the sky and slammed to the ground with enough force to kill a more regular human being, was that Yuriko-Prime was definitively stronger. The Empire had noted this multiple times in their reports. No matter what they did to tweak the cloning, the original Yuriko Omega was just a little bit stronger than her 'sisters'. The velocity at which Prime had flung me would have been enough to crumple the bones of a human being so I guess she was pretty much starting at 'kill'.
Well…fine then.
I wiped the dust and bricks off of me, straightened my bathrobe, and then teleported back. I've learned well at this point that psychic powers don't really seem able to detect my mind. My body, sure, but not my mind. Prime has lifted up a shattered King Oni – guess it got wrecked in the crossfire – to smash down onto Yuriko-13. So I guess she wasn't expecting me to appear on top of the wrecked robot and then pop down to backhand her hard enough to send her flying. Benefits of her psychic toughening training meant that she only got a surprised 'Nani?!' out before she hit the wall.
In the minute since this fight started the entire block that surrounds the two psychics has gotten pretty badly wrecked. All the windows have been shattered, their glass pulverized in one attack or another. Cars have been picked up and thrown either at other cars or at the one throwing them. Whole chunks of masonry have been torn out of their moorings to be used as ammo all the while the two of them shot near invisible lances of psychokinetic energies at one another. The weird little single person explode into giblets thing that both know how to do appears to not be a viable tactic against another psychic.
I don't really know.
"Hey, Yuriko!"
Both look at me, but my friend turns her head again when she realizes I'm looking at Prime.
"I've got a question for you…how long can you move in the frozen time?"
The anger on Prime's face is replaced only momentarily by confusion before she rises up again. Around us I can hear the Empire freaking the hell out, moving divisions and flying in air troops at the news of a 'rogue Yuriko clone' while cameras in the streets are openly broadcasting this. I look over the edge of the building we're standing on to see the Japanese citizens below and give a cheery wave to them and their cameras that are openly recording. Then I turn back to Prime, gesture for 13 to come closer to me – which she does – and then I raise my hand, palm out.
Surprisingly, despite my ability to use my satellites to dilate time forward or backward or even near halt it across this entire planet, I haven't said a very specific line.
Until now.
"Za Warudo."
Was it Prime somehow picking out something from 13's thoughts that caused her to have an expression of sudden fear on her face? Either way from one blink to the next I…well. I froze Tokyo. Not with cryo beams but in time.
"…you could have done that the whole time," Yuriko says from where she hovers next to me. "The whole time?"
"If I wanted," I lower my hand, "I could put this whole world in a bottle. But I will never, ever do that."
Outside of our bubble of real time, everyone else appeared almost completely frozen. More dilated, I'm sure that if we waited here long enough we'd see them blink, but I didn't see the point in that. We didn't come here to utterly wreck Tokyo, we came here to destroy one place and likely one man.
"Anyway, let's get to the Institute."
"…right."
In a flash, we move.
"Honestly, given the whole apathy to the Empire thing you had going on earlier, I'm surprised that you're up for destroying the sanitarium."
She shrugs in her armor even as we stare at the research facility in front of us.
"It's...there shouldn't be endless clones of us. Of anyone. It's…strange, and they haven't even really perfected the process. Too many girls are being made here who go insane later, or had issues that they didn't do anything to deserve. All for the war machine of an old man who wants to rule the world."
I release Tokyo from being frozen in time as I look at her.
"And…how does that make you feel?"
"It makes me…," I step back slightly as she clenches her fist and an aura of electricity forms around her for a brief instant, "…mad. That they force us to grow up in strait jackets, force us to train and fight and kill, experiment on us however they like, and…everything else that the sanitarium does."
"Uh huh. But, you know, earlier, you said you didn't care?"
She shoved me slightly, then, not with her mind but with her armored hand.
"Yeah. Well. I flipped a coin. You watched."
"I dunno if you should make major decisions based on a coin flip, Yuriko."
Her flat stare is, I feel, unnecessary as I teleport us into the facility.
===========================================
What to say about the Shiro Sanitarium, and the information I found in its files?
About the horrific surgeries that had killed dozens of Yurikos as they were dissected to try and find the secret of their psychic powers? The 'tests' which included live firing ammo which had created its own fair share of corpses as they tested the ability to psychically toughen one's body or maybe even create a shield? Asking Yuriko-Prime when she was still in her fugue state to mind control soldiers to kill their fellows, just to see if she could? The moment I entered the facility, I learned these things from terminals spread throughout the facility, from databanks secreted across the whole place.
I have to say, I probably could have picked a better place to teleport into but I'd wanted one that had less guards than the rest of the place and that turned out to be…the morgue. It just happened to be filled with a hefty amount of bodies, some in various states of autopsy, biopsy, and just some pretty gruesome stuff. I think they were trying to enhance the powers of the clones by studying them as closely as they could but the methods…guh. They were pretty Mengele-esque.
Fuck man, Shinji Shimada? You sir, are a fucking monster.
Yuriko didn't even wait for me. We landed in the morgue and about a minute later she had busted through the doors into the rest of the facility and began tearing things up. I could hear the screams of Imperial soldiers, tanks, walkers, and tengu on the radio as she blurred around. Going at the speeds that the suit I'd given her she was – based on the cameras before they too were torn from their places – creating some kind of unholy psychic slipstream tornado behind her to tear apart everything she passed by.
Which also included still incubating Yuriko clones. Those pods were torn out of their weird little conveyor belt things with ease.
"Jesus, Yuriko."
She wasn't yelling, or growling, or anything. She was just…silent as she unleashed her will upon the whole facility. So I suppose in the meantime I'll have to get what I can from their research here, fucked up as it is. They've already done it and if I want to ensure that Yuriko doesn't get smashed down by Prime again – if they should in fact fight – then she will definitely need some help. Which means finding the files on the various powers that the Prime can use but her clones can't…for some reason. Is it a matter of not trying? Not possessing the right gene in the right place?
Well, let's go find out I guess.
============================================
"I knew she would come back, but, but I thought that she was still serving in Tokyo!"
Shinji wiped his profusely sweating forehead as screamed reports were piped through to him from the rest of the facility above him. How could this have happened? They had only just created the first of the psychic inhibitors, they didn't have any more to protect them if Yuriko ever returned! But there she was, appearing out of nowhere from the morgue of all places and in a suit that he had never seen before. She tore apart everything from the groups of king oni and steel ronin trying to hold her back to the masses of infantry already present. Frantically he slammed his fingers down onto his keyboard, trying to pull up something, anything that could help in this fight. Ordering more nanocores for defenders to be put into place? Summoning every force within range to help? Activate some of the clones?
"I knew she would come," Izumi spoke from within her pod and directly into his mind. "She's coming for you Shimada. All you've done…you'll suffer in full."
"Be silent, Izumi! You think I don't know that you'll try to kill her as soon as she's done with me? She hates me, and she might even think she deserves to, but-,"
"Think??!" Izumi cackled in his brain, "I can't wait to see what she does to you. Will she rip your head off? Explode you from the inside? Or just throw you so hard that your stupid skull breaks on the walls?"
Shinji grit his teeth and shook his head.
"I don't understand, she didn't destroy our communication arrays, so how could she have isolated us like this! None of the distress calls are going through, I don't understand!"
"Oh, well," a new voice spoke up, startling Shinji to the point that he banged his knee on the computer desk as he turned to face it, "That'd be me, not her."
The scientist responsible for the concept of the psychic commando stared at the man in the bathrobe who stood there in the center of the room, calmly sipping from a mug. It only took a moment, Shinji was a genius after all, but he knew this man. Everyone in the Empire knew this man. He had been watching the broadcast when the stranger had shown up and then done…something to the rest of the Empire's forces across the world. After deciding to do it on a coin flip of all things! The seething fury in Shinji was entirely his own as he shouted for all the soldiers he had in the room to kill the man – before he realized that they had disappeared somehow.
"Y-you! You…you monster! Why are you here?! Why are you here?!"
He shrugged.
"Oh I was always going to come down like a hammer on this place, you fucking psycho. You insane sociopathic fuckhead, did you think you could just pull the shit you've done in this place without someone who would care enough to stop it to, you know, stop it?"
"I…I can't feel him," Shinji stilled as he heard Izumi's voice in his mind again, this time quiet and strangely subdued. "I can feel his body…but not his mind…"
The man didn't seem to notice, busy as he was waggling a folder in his hand.
"Seriously man. Look at this bullshit. Testing them against every weapon in the enemy arsenal to see how it affects their bodies? Who can survive what, what genetic 'enhancements' can be added to try and bridge the gap between the original and her clones?"
"You think you are the first to say such things to me," Shinji snarled at the foreigner. "I did it under the patronage of the Emperor's son himself, you dare speak against him?!"
Behind him, Shinji was hitting the button to call for reinforcements as hard as he possibly could.
"Oh, what, just because I'm not Japanese means that my opinions are suddenly less pertinent to you? You are a fucked up man, dude. Also, I can't believe you figured out a different way to lobotomize Yuriko. First the decimators, and now these…'trauma stations'. Like, yeah, healing things with sheer psychic energies are cool but did you have to cut up their brains and stick them in tubes of three for it?"
Izumi was never this quiet, Shinji noted in the back of his mind as the man dared to continue to spew his words.
"You know nothing, you filthy creature. You think I didn't figure it out? Your…abilities?!"
The man blinked.
"Oh?"
Shinji smiled, and then with a final press of a button let the only psychic inhibitor he had to rise up from the floor to surround the man in a great field of suppressing power.
"You're another psychic. That's how you do what you do."
The scientist smirked as he saw the shock on the man's face as he looked around at the red field covering him.
"But don't worry. As soon as I tear you apart, and figure out how you teleport, I'll ensure that your body is given the respect it deserves," Shinji sniffed. "How does it feel to be the first subject to be struck by the power of a psychic inhibitor?"
For a moment…the man just stared at him. Then he began to laugh. Shinji's smirk disappeared as the man laughed harder and harder to the point of doubling over slightly.
"Stop…stop that. You think you can laugh!? You have no powers, no-,"
"Ah man, that's funny," the man…Shinji wheeled to find the man somehow behind him. "Yeah, sure, you thought I was psychic. Clearly the only way that I can do what I do is because of psychic powers. Good job man. First time testing the machine? That thing only cuts out the more advanced shit, regular old standbys work just fine."
Shinji tried to say something, anything, but then the man smashed his mug across his face! He screamed as the boiling liquid sank into his skin, the ceramic shards tearing open parts of his face. The pain was excruciating but before he could scream further a kick to the head sent him into blissful unconsciousness.
================================
"Hello Izumi," I said to the crazy psychic stuck in her pod.
The inhibitors technology was actually quite fascinating to me, how they'd kind of pulled some star trek shit by producing an energy field based on particle patterns inverse from what happened to the world whenever Yuriko exercised her powers. But what amazed me was that Shinji thought that it would work by shutting me down completely – even if I had been a psychic. The first inhibitors he'd ever made were based on the nanoswarm shielding which surrounded Izumi's pod and her own psychic signature – but he'd never questioned the fact that she could still talk with her mind?
"Just so you know, you aren't going to be able to telepathically communicate with my mind. So…yeah. Anyway, here's my dilemma. You're crazy to the point that Shinji was trying to protect Yuriko over you. Apparently you 'crave power' though how that works I don't quite know. On the other hand, he's a total asshole. But on the other hand I know what you plan to do once you get Yuriko down here to kill the guy and free you."
Izumi, of course, didn't manage to say anything back. She couldn't. I didn't have a meat brain for her to interface with which I suppose is how psychics work.
"Also, the Yuriko up there isn't the original one. That one's back in Tokyo itself. That one, up there, is Yuriko-13. One of the earliest of all her kind, really. Especially now that this place is high up into the hundreds now of clones produced. She isn't as strong as the Prime, definitely not as strong as you. So…here's my thing. Do I keep you locked up like this? Kill you? I dunno. Not going to free you, sorry, see, because," I walk over to the asshole bleeding on the ground and purposefully step on him on my way to his computer, "According to all of his private diary entries – filtering out the weird perverted stuff – you were a bit of a complete and total monstrous bitch during training!"
I walked back over to the pod, my hands in my bathrobe's pockets.
"Yuriko had to be put into a fugue state with drugs and tech, that you broke her out of even if it was temporarily, but that was so that she actually fought and killed people! I've got reports here filed by people that Tatsu disappeared calling the training that she had to go through dehumanizing and horrifically traumatic experimentation. See, the problem with that," I wiggled my foot at her, "Is that you didn't need any of that. You were pretty much a sociopath from day one, took to the killing like a fish to water. I mean now, now Yuriko is fine with it, but they had to work to get her there. You? You liked it from the beginning…so."
I took a coin out of my pocket.
"Heads, I kill you. Tails, I let you live."
…huh. Did I see the faintest gravimetric pull coming from her? It's faint but she can manage just barely a tingle of it to make the coin land on the side she wants. I guess that really is all she can manage, the telepathy and faintest little twitch of her powers.
"Tails it is."
Then I teleported down the next two nanoswarm generators that I'd created in the ship, high above in the atmosphere. I don't know if Izumi could even sense them, but she couldn't precisely stop me.
"These nanoswarms that are even now surrounding you are not only based on the ones around you to keep you even more psychically contained, but to protect each other and the ones you started with. Cause I modified them with my own more efficient energy generators. Even if this whole facility explodes apart, you'll be safe down here. Contained."
The coin, in my hand, flipped over to heads without any bidding from me.
"Ah, see, well, too late. You already did the thing. So…later. If the real Yuriko ever shows up here, you can have fun with her…I guess."
=======================================
"Hey Yuri-woah."
She'd finally slowed down a bit inside the 'good' doctor's office, the hallways strewn with the blood of men who had been exploded into showers of naught but blood and gore and the wreckage of what must have been an entire tank division and several flights of mecha tengu.
"I found his computer," she looks up at me, her helmet having been popped off and sat on the desk perhaps just so I could see her furious expression. "He...he acts like we're his children, and yet he does what he does to us?!"
I don't actually see what she's looking at directly but whatever it is it's managed to really piss her off. Well, before she perhaps destroys it, I make sure to pull all the actually research related data off of it. A good decision considering that in the next instant she slams her armored hand through it. Then everything else in the immediate area goes flying all over the place and smashing into each other and the walls until they are shredded entirely.
"Uh-,"
"I tried to free some of the clones from the trauma stations that he set up," she whispered then, "But they…there was nothing in them. He'd cut up their minds, just as they activated their powers in 'just the right way' and then linked them together with…with…machines," she almost spits the word.
"Yeah. This place is pretty much a Big Shop of Horrors," I say as I come around the desk and pat her shoulder. "You want Shinji?"
"Eh?"
"Doctor Shimada," I clarify. "I found him. You wanna, like, hurt him or something?"
Her grin is, I will say, disturbing. She's definitely pulled a full 180 on the whole 'I don't care about the clones and this place' thing she was talking about earlier. I guess…she really had to see it to care about it.
"Yes."
In the next instant I have the guy on the broken desk, his face still bleeding and the man still unconscious.
"Sorry, I knocked him out earlier," I shrug at her look of confusion.
"That's fine. I don't need him awake."
Then she puts her hands on his head, and for the second time since I've met her she does that weird personal hand melty thing. Something not mentioned whatsoever in the games but I suppose a logical conclusion for a psychic commando to know how to do. Obviously they would want her to be the ultimate soldier with psychic powers so obviously she knows how to get information out of people. It's just that the open battlefield applications were the things that mattered in the 'campaigns'. Like how no one thinks about the Soviet company that makes the tanks from hammer to apocalypse. Or any of the other stuff like that. Not when they're busy RTSing it up I suppose.
Shinji screams for a moment before I watch him die, but then the deed is done and Yuriko is flying backwards slightly with her hands on her mouth. Tears in her eyes…? What – and now she's hugging me.
"Oh…god…"
I awkwardly put my arms around her, and try to pat her through the armor.
"Yuriko?"
"The things he's done…that he wanted to do…"
Ah.
I see.
"You wanna get out of here? We can break it all down and then just skedaddle if you want back to the Ukraine."
Silently, she nods, still hugging me. God, how fucked up was Shinji's head that she's reacting like this? What did he not put on his computers? I've read through every computer in this place, I have everything he ever had on all psychic research – a field that he pioneered in this world. We don't need anything else from here.
Right-o.
High above, I push three of my bigger satellites together as well as pull over more than a few Athena laser satellites and an empty Soviet station left to rust and be violently decommissioned at some later point. Yuriko doesn't react as I take her back to the ship. Beneath, I fire. Athena cannons, and some orbital bombardment that I can actually make much more concentrated without obliterating the area around the sanitarium. The surface levels of the facility burn almost instantly as tight turbolaser blasts come down from the heavens, with intermittent blasts from the Athena satellites. Finally, I push the Russian station down in a copy of what they've done throughout the war itself to have the wreckage rain down upon them.
At the very bottom, only the nanoswarm cores remain online, the rest of the sanitarium blasted into near oblivion.
=====================================
We didn't do much else after that for a few days.
We stayed in special quarters that I'd built before I created a second Guy, and Yuriko…well. She didn't sulk. But she wasn't happy either. I don't know what was going through her mind as she ravaged the sanitarium, and broke open the pods of her 'sisters'. Or what precisely she'd learned from the computers and from Shinji's mind. All I knew was that she had gone from caring very little for the sanitarium and those it made regardless to furious tears whenever the subject was broached. I don't know what changed for her in those moments, but after that for the next two weeks she was quiet.
Oh, sure, we ate. Metric tons of popcorn disappeared into us as we watched shows and movies, and during funny moments she laughed but during sad moments she cried quite a bit more than she used to.
Bit of a shitty birthday, that whole event was.
Still, I have to admit, something in me was just a bit worried at how quickly she was flipping between emotions and decisions. That kind of waffling doesn't seem like her and no I can't just decide to try and blame it on her being a woman, it being her 'time of the month' or anything like that. I mean she has those but it's not what was happening at that time. I know this because I would be able to tell what with my ability to scan her down to her individual cells if I need to. Actually…speaking of cells…would that be it?
She's sleeping right now so…hmm. I know that their cloning facilities weren't the most precise. Every clone was just a little bit off in one way or another. As far as I know only the Kamino folks were the true clone masters of the past few universes I passed through. They'd know exactly what to look for which means I should open up their database and look around. Because of course back when I was calling myself Theta I tore open every locked piece of knowledge or technology that I could reasonably get my hands on.
…hmm.
Yuriko and all her sisters were created as designated weapons by the Imperial military but does that mean that they would be made for long term warfare or short term? What is more 'efficient' to those assholes? The ability to make a bunch over time and throw them into the grinder for slightly less work and energy or the ability to make a lot of them and perfect them so that they can last for occupation and such of conquered enemy territory? That's the sort of fucked up question that one has to ask, really, given what was going on in the sanitarium.
Actually…
Yeah. I can check what I took from there, synch it with my Kamino information and I guess what I have on the Spaarti techniques.
It takes me, subjectively, a little while to look at her through them, because what's really confusing is how weirdly complete most of her is compared to the actual scans I have of the original Yuriko Omega. Who I can actually still poke at with my satellites which are above Japan. At all the remaining clones which are on Japan now which outside the ones who are in already deployed decimators across the coastlines and 'sacred' areas number only around a hundred or so. Some are unstable, some aren't, but overall it's kind of ridiculous how sophisticated the sanitarium's cloning is. Then again this is a world where a corporation have created an honest to goodness time-space teleporter, a gravity explosion thing with the vacuum imploder, energy shielding that can stand up to said imploder as well as at least in a different universe against nuclear bombs and even against psychic explosions.
So I guess them somehow having cloning technology that almost reaches the sophistication and completeness of Kamino and Spaarti isn't too out of the question.
Even though we aren't even out of the mid-1980's and a lot of their technology is somehow past first and second decade of the 2000's! Because that makes total freaking sense!
Gah!
Fuck it.
No, Yuriko isn't suffering from mental instability that would be wholly biologically based. Her body isn't in danger of breaking down. Some things are chemical and based in the brain but are all mental issues openly visible in the brain if you get the right scan going? It could be just some kind of personality issue. Trained as a psychic commando and then thrown in the exact opposite direction of indulgence and luxury based on food and travel could potentially be messing with her but she's seemed stable whenever she's vegging out on the ship. Maybe it's the fight with her progenitor. Or something else.
…eh.
Fuck it, for real though. If it becomes an issue…then I'll figure that out later.
In the meantime I can see parts of her brain that aren't quite correctly copied over from the original that I could in fact probably fix with my healing tech. Would that boost her powers a lot or would that change something about her inherently? Would she even go for it?
…that's something to talk about when she wakes up. For now, I'm just going to hang out with Dude.
Well... at least he's asking first? That's still an improvement, the Theta of old would've just went ahead if he was reasonably sure he wouldn't fuck anything up.
Yuriko-13 didn't find a single one of her clone sisters in the asylum that weren't completely insane or lobotomized?
Yuriko-13 didn't find a single one of her clone sisters in the asylum that weren't completely insane or lobotomized?
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yuriko is telepathic - try to imagine what visiting the sanitarium must be like for her. I don't think she was very discriminating anymore after the first few dozen attempts.
- Location
- Pearl of the Orient Sea
Apparently the Guy is finally starting to heal. Good to know.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
???
With Googles help:
... but I assume that's not what you meant ... (there's als an My EAP app ...)
It's not an abbreviation or something. Torroar just meant something like "Hmmm, yep".
78 – A Family Company
78 – A Family Company
It was a nice office. Bigger than some apartments, with fancy sculptures and paintings all over the place. Over by one of the walls there was even a fine selection of books in almost every major dialect spoken within the former Soviet Union and its partner nations. Which just so happened to include Cuba, funny enough. The entrance to said massive office were a set of gigantic oak doors, but immediately after you passed them you found yourself on a carpet that cost quite a significant sum simply to possess not just clean. Beyond that to one side lay a low table and four chairs surrounding it the purposes of which I just wasn't quite sure while on the other side was a rather large fish tank the contents of which were various exotic specimens from around the world.
At the far back, there last wall had been blown out entirely and replaced with a grand single pane of glass that had been specially treated against most forms of assassination or radiation. Also some shield generators that could surround the entire thing with stuff that could stand up to almost anything on the planet could throw up. In front of it and facing the doors was a gigantic desk made of mahogany and had a fancy computer screen which would rise up or slide down into the desk itself depending on the wishes of its owner. And a bonsai tree for some reason.
"It's a little…,"
"Over the top? Yeah," the second Guy said as he leaned against said desk, his head lolling back. "I got an interior decorator, one of the highest paid in the world, to do the work. Even after I got rid of all the little spy tech stuff that she secreted away into it-," he broke off at my look and shrugs, "- apparently Futuretech got to her, offered her a healthy sum to get some info on the new kid on the block."
"Huh."
I myself was standing as well, albeit leaning on one of the luxurious leather seats that had been brought in. Three of them, right in front of the desk for people to sit down on.
"So, anyway, I guess you must be really bored. It's only been a few weeks since Yuriko and you came back from Japan. She still not up for talking about it a lot?"
A simple shake of my head sufficed.
"Yeah, thought so. I watched the imperial news network on the sanitarium blowing up. They're calling you a barbarian for hurting such a 'noble facility' for those entrusted to the care of the Empire's top scientists."
I grimaced, I'd seen the reports too. They were practically calling me a terrorist even though everyone there was more than dedicated to the cause. Their security was pure military, protecting a military target. Besides which the things that went on in that sanitarium were nothing short of war crimes repeated again and again against literal teenage girls chronological ages notwithstanding. It still didn't help to see how the Japanese citizenry was reacting to it. Or how they were reacting to the current events at all. Despite how the Emperor kept calling for peace and stability people were freaking the hell out about how I'd teleported their entire military back onto the island itself – ships included.
"Yeah, I'm not here to hear about how the xenophobic racist war crime committing would-be-world-conquerors feel about someone actually hitting them in the face."
"Yeah, well," he drank from his mug – actual coffee instead of the hot chocolate I preferred even though neither of us were actually affected by caffeine, "Why are you here, then?"
I pointed out of the window and towards the brightly lit and sprawling complex that was Nova Industries first main…base? Home? I don't know.
"Wanted to check on how things are going with…you know, everything."
At that he actually smiles a little and brings up some screens in mid-air Tony Stark style.
"Firstly," he points to the screen themselves, "Check it out."
Huh!
"Yeah, dude, right?! I decided, hey if I'm going to run the company or at least be at the very top why not Stark it up, you know? So first thing I decided to do was break into the holo-industry. Or, rather, you know make it an actual industry."
On the screen he brings up holoprojectors, significantly downgraded to only exceed the current world's techbase by a tiny sliver, as well as a half dozen other projects. One thing chief amongst them was going to be the utter warping of the 3d movie industry. With projectors that could actually produce the images coming off the screens without any tearing or noticeable difference from real life images to the naked eye, the whole of the movie experience could change. That didn't even get into the more military options which we were definitely going to be cribbing just a little from the Imperial transports we'd ripped the tech from.
"Wow. You got all this made already? What was the point of hiring all those research divisions, engineers, and junk?"
He chuckled and swished the screens around to show…stocks and various other business-related information.
"We've got them working on plenty of stuff – I'm not just going to pull everything out of the hat for funzies. With proper facilities, food, water, living, the works, they are more than happy to keep themselves busy. Upgrading the iron curtain technology, improving rocket delivery systems and travel for potential extra-planetary applications, heck I've even got them working on applying the self-repair systems of the apocalypse tanks to more civilian level stuff to reduce things breaking down. I'm not going Apple on them, man, we're building for toughness and what not."
Interesting…wait.
"You acquired Arkhanglesk."
"A few weeks ago, yeah."
The developer of the hammer tank and the apocalypse tank…absorbed, their assets ripped up and their people shifted over from Russia over to Nova Industries and the Ukraine.
"I'm assuming you got rid of the die-hard Soviets amongst them?"
His shrug and smile then were a bit less cheerful than before and just a tad darker.
"Obviously. Some of those were their best and brightest but the rest are fine. Almost all of them just want peace and quiet to work on their projects, get paid, and be able to eat some relatively good food. Which we have now, thanks to grabbing a couple of would-be restaurantuers and moving them into the town."
"Speaking of that," I gestured to said unnamed village…town…thing, "That wasn't here when I built this place."
"Yeah, well, you know," he stretched slightly, "Food and sex, man. Better for them to be right there than not, you know?"
I…didn't quite sigh, but hell it was his company, not mine for all that I'd initially crafted it. We weren't the same Guy anymore, weren't from the moment I created him. One of the greatest examples of that is the fact that he wasn't just wearing the bathrobe anymore. He'd switched up to sweat pants and a t-shirt but it was just one more sign that he and I weren't exactly the same anymore. Not to mention that dreck that was coffee.
"I mean, I can cut short your questions, dude. I've grabbed guys from all over the Soviet Union which is, as of yesterday, not even all of Russia. They've got a bit of a civil issue going on there, not helped by the Allies steaming forward as hard as we told them to."
He stepped forward then, and then moved around behind his desk to hit some button or another.
"Natasha," he stopped when he saw my look and shook his head, mouthing 'not that one', "Could you call in Miss Winters, please?"
"Miss Win- oh, you poached her," I covered up my surprise by drinking from my mug and coughing for a second.
"Yeah. For all that she was part of the Allies, she was surprisingly open to having a big ol' paycheck shoved in front of her. Stock options, insurance and dental, a great big salary, a living space the size of a penthouse elsewhere in the building…"
Man. Lydia Winters. She only showed up in Uprising but she was canonically there for quite a while. The designer of the Athena Satellite Network herself, here, working for Nova Industries.
"Didn't it take the Futuretech commander whalloping her around the world a bunch of times to get her to do the whole 'are you looking for recruits' thing?"
"Eh," he wiggled his free hand in the air, "She was willing then, she was willing now. I mean…yeah I had to intercept her messages and little bits of spy work back towards the Allies for a while…but she gave up eventually."
"She…gave up."
"Once I made it obvious that I knew what she was doing, yeah. Now she's the head of our Aerospace division and-," before he can finish his gigantic doors are opened.
"Guy, you asked for…," Lydia comes to a slow halt as she stares at me.
Probably because I…haven't changed my clothing much.
"Lydia! Meet my twin brother," he gestures towards me and after a second she reboots and approaches, all smiles for a quick handshake.
"Hello sir," she nods to me but I can't really call myself the same name as the second Guy, can I?
"Just call me Guy," I smile at her near imperceptible twitch that would be otherwise impossible for a human to see. "I just came by to see what my brother was doing with the company, see what tech he was building up to release to the world, you know, stuff like that."
Silently, and entirely between me and him, did he send a frankly massive package of information. About how he'd swept through the remains of the Soviet Union for every major company they had that was involved in technological research of all kinds. About how he'd recruited experts across them. But also how he'd recruited people like Lydia Winters and a bunch of other actually business minded people who could help run things better than he ever would just by himself. How it was that he was a CEO who could not and would not be dislodge-able by any Board of Directors or stock buyers due to the way he'd written up the documents – this wasn't the US after all.
"Oh? Your brother," she flicks his eyes towards the second Guy, "Has already graced every division with his ideas and prototypes that he just…came up with in his spare time. New fighters, new tanks, new applications for magnetics technologies both military and civilian, all sorts of interesting things. Though recently he had me…perfect the interesting KA-3 Tesla fighter jet."
She tilts her heads then and purses her lips in a manner that I think is supposed to be seductive?
"Are you planning on doing the same sort of thing?"
"Yeah, actually. I want to see what we can do when we mix these," I grab a holoscreen of my own – thank you wireless connections – and display designs and information on rocket angel, mecha tengu, and skywing technologies, "With what we've already got going."
Her eyes are already wide and devouring the information streaming past on the screens.
"The-," she blinks again, "These are Imperial designs. How did you get…how did you get these?! These look like original file copies, blueprints and notes written by the creators themselves…"
"That," I smile before dismissing the holoscreen, "Is a secret. I can get the stuff sent to your division and the others in a bit. I just came to drop it off with my brother."
She's already busy thinking about things not related to seducing me or…whatever else it was.
"Thanks Lydia," he coughs into his fist for a moment, "I also wanted to ask you about…?"
I don't know what he's doing but hey, his company, not mine.
"Ah, right," she nods then, all business, "My…associates within the Allies have informed me that based on your demonstrations and our reclamation and building up of launch sites that they are…willing to negotiate a contract for sending up more Athena satellites."
Where he pulled the champagne out of, I don't know. That desk of his could have a cask in there for all I know. He still has three glasses and has popped it off and begun pouring.
"Excellent," he chortled as he passed out the now full glasses to each of us.
"At the same time," Lydia clears her throat after taking a sip, "I would warn you that Futuretech sent in…someone, I didn't know them, to walk into our meeting 'on accident' as I was touring their Amsterdam facilities. They are probably going to be a little concerned."
He sighed at that.
"We knew they would. We've gobbled up manufacturing projects and sites all across Eastern Europe at what the papers are calling ludicrous speed."
Which, to be fair, isn't hard so long as we're the ones making them.
"You still haven't told me how you do that, by the way," Lydia murmurs, drinking more from her glass. "Just one more proprietary secret to keep from me?"
"And from our competitors," he glances at her from over his glass.
I…feel like I'm intruding all of a sudden.
"I've told you that I haven't revealed anything to them, despite their questions, since Lyons," is her quiet return.
"Yes, well, Lyons was after Greece, which was after Moscow, which was after the first time you were in Amsterdam with me."
Uh.
Yeah.
"Well!" They both seem to jump slightly at my speaking, "I really must be going. Good luck on all your endeavors and all that," I nod to each of them, "I'll just…be going then."
Of course now that Lydia is there means that I have to walk out of the office, wave to his secretary who hadn't seen me come in, and then find a bathroom to teleport out of.
===============================================
"They're really doing it, then?"
It's a bit hard to understand Yuriko from all the popcorn in her mouth, but after a bit more chewing and swallowing she repeats the question.
"Yeah. Money talks, I guess. Him throwing it at all those people, dragging them into Nova, building up all over the place. Look at this," I create the picture holographically from the base of my hands where I decided to install projectors, "He's taking old stuff that couldn't work and making them work. The Tesla plane, the tesla tank which didn't make it out of testing before the Allies rolled them over, and a bunch of other stuff."
"You weren't a business man before you made him though," she mumbles through another handful of popcorn.
At this point she's moved to wearing sweats, t-shirts, and a snuggy as she burrows into the blankets of the bed in the apartment. She doesn't even leave unless it's to go to the bathroom or demand more food. It's probably not healthy but hell it's her body she can do what she wants with it.
"Obviously they're still much smaller than Futuretech, they don't have private flight schools and whatnot that Futuretech does but they're rising quickly. So long as he keeps a handle on them and most corruption than they should be able to bump up against them within a few years."
She's only really talking about it because I brought it up as we watch movies, but it's still nice that she's willing to engage on it. First few days after we hit the sanitarium and she wasn't doing much talking at all.
"Guy?"
"Hmm?"
She pauses the movie that was playing, some French drama about kings and queens way back in the past, and turns back to me.
"When the Union wasn't just Russia, one of their most devastating weapons on the battlefield was dropping down their many decommissioned satellites, stations, and probes. Are all of those still up there?"
"Uh…," I check, and…, "Yeah? There's plenty. A whole lot, though none of them are manned now. It's like they just threw those things up there without a care in the world for a good long while, honestly."
"Ok."
Then she's just sort of quiet for a few minutes.
"Can you drop them?"
What?
"What?"
"Can," she turns to look me in the eye, "You drop them? The Soviets had the codes to do it all the time. Can you not?"
The way that the entire room is dark except for the screen on her giant tv is making things kind of creepy here.
"I can, why?"
"I want you to drop them on the Empire. On every military target you can hit with them, to destroy them."
Woah now, that's…that's a lot of satellites I'd be dropping. A bunch of stations. Hundreds of space probes and only god knows why. Soviet excess taking itself up to eleven for practically everything probably.
"Um. Can I ask why-," and then she's sent everything in the room flying as a spontaneous psychic whirlwind erupts out of her.
"YOU DIDN'T SEE WHAT THEY DID!" she screams before abruptly calming. "You didn't see."
My hands are up, in hopefully surrendering and please-calm-down-fashion.
"I was there, actually. Remember?"
"No. I was in her mind. All of their minds. I could…I could hear them. The screams. The voids. Echoes of pain and surgery being the last things in their thoughts! You think those strait jackets and the drugs they put into so many of them were for show!"
She's yelling again now.
"All on Prince Tatsu's head! On all of their heads! I've seen the news, about how 'sad' it is that that place of horrors is gone! On the Emperor's behalf they've strapped people into those steel ronin suits, they've ravaged the very concept of morality!"
With a burst of her powers she's floating now, in a fashion eerily similar to how she would float around on a battlefield.
"They have to hurt. I want them to hurt. For what they've done. Will you or will you not drop the satellites!?"
"Yuriko," I grab her by the wrists and thankfully she lets herself drift to the ground, "There is a lot of Soviet space-trash up there. And this…yeah I couldn't see into their minds, but…this is going to be a pretty enormous attack on their homeland. Are you ok with that?"
"I…," she shakes her head and then bows her head. "Please. I want-I need them to hurt for what they did. For what they…they idolize."
Ah man. This is heavy.
"We could kill the Emperor, if you want," and there she goes, her head shooting up to look at me from its former bowed position, "We could walk into his palace, send it out on the line to every news service in the world, and have you tear him apart with your mind on a broadcast to every single person who has access to such things."
"We…we could?"
"It's not like he's actually divine," I lean forward and hug her, one that she returns. "But…listen. If you are absolutely, truly serious about it…then I can drop them. All of them – purely on military targets, mind you. I'm not really up for blowing up civilians if I can help it."
A slight shudder passes through her then and I'm pretty sure that she's forcing herself to not cry.
God what the fuck was in the heads of everyone at that fucking sanitarium?
"Please."
If anyone asks why every single Soviet satellite orbiting the planet redirected their rockets, clustered up, and then began dropping down simultaneously upon every major military base they had across Japan destroying vast portions of their military complex, coastal defenses, and even satellite bases they'd been forced to construct to house all their forces I'd teleported back within a single five-minute window three days later? Why the Empire suddenly lost a devastating third of their forces without warning? Why several magnetic satellites ripped up their vast majority of the Imperial navy including the battleship that the Shogun Naomi Shirada had once lived on was sucked up into space and then brought down upon Imperial shipyards in Tokyo Harbor before?
It was for a friend, all right?
Last edited:
- Location
- Own World
I was kinda dissapointed you didnt complete dio's combo. Yeah, great chapter and now Yuri13 is asking for a retaliation Guy hasnt done for awhile.
- Location
- Somewhere down the road~
A whole bunch of knives and dropping a roller on top of them, prolly.
Massgamer
Advance toward the Future
- Location
- The Future
Has to be done.
Totally understandable and human reason to do something.
I wonder how the world would react to the sanitarium and everything that happened within to become public knowledge?
Gotta ask: who 'pulled the trigger' here?
We all know Guy has the means adn the codes, but did he command all those satellites to drop on those bases, or Yuriko-13 did?
LastStandZiggy
Last To Fall
- Location
- Kingman, Az
No one did...
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>->
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They just 'malfunctioned' and dropped, understand?
What do you mean someone commanded them?
You calling me a liar?
