Well, that isn't ominous at all, considering they're about to airdrop into a killzone straight out of Resident Evil.
Halkegenia Online Gaiden Story - Zero Hour -=COMPLETE=-
- Thread starter CowboyCapo
- Start date
Well, that isn't ominous at all, considering they're about to airdrop into a killzone straight out of Resident Evil.
uM13
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until Megido(13)++; Laughing Mad
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(Zero Hour Plus 363 days: The 30th day, Second Month, Year of the Founder 6342: Albion)
It had been such an excellent day for the six of them, working in the skies above Tristain to neuter Reconquista from their home. As they finished eliminating the last of another unfortunate group of mercenaries who only just then guessed the identity of their enemies, <[Laughing Coffin>] left one commoner alive, just as they had with the other small forces they had eviscerated over the past nine months.
It had taken the six of them so very long to figure out just which of them was the traitor, when finally one night, <[PoH>] had a bit of a brainwave. "With as long as we've been doing the voodoo we do so well, with none of us dead for it, including that time in Charlotesville hanging the noble by his entrails... I know which one of us Argo has turned." He looked out to his fellow murderers, a wicked grin on his face. "Noone. She expected us to play nice when the threat one of us could end the fun at a moment's notice hung over our heads, but the fun times we've had, any right thinking Fae would have fried us already." He chuckled, adding, "Argo played us all like a fucking violin."
They changed everything after they made a few kills on the deck of cards that Argo had supplied them with. On one side was a suit and card rank; on the other was as close a drawing as they could get for their target, along with as much information as they had. Every time they made a kill on the deck, they left behind a token of their appreciation, a little something picked up from an American: An ace of spades with the skull and crossbones in relief.
With each kill they grew wiser, with each new bit of wisdom they gained, they grew stronger.
This would be the last time they used this particular setup; with the four nobles on the Deck of 53 that they had put down, the other military targets they struck, they had ingrained into the consciousness of Albion's people a phrase from Iarel.
Must not sleep, clowns will eat me.
As they tied up the man that would survive, as they mocked the dying, the six horrible people prepared a scene straight out of a horror movie for the next unfortunate patrol to find, PoH and Hellebrone actually whistline while they worked.
"Holy fucking shitnickels, guys, get a look at this!" Peru held up a document pouch in one hand, an envelope in the other. The rest of Laughing Coffin groaned; the last time Peru had held up papers, it had turned out to be some truly tasteless interpretations of a more-way between the Fae Lords and Queen Henrietta, but PoH finally bit. "All right, what is it? It better not be the next volume of that shitty comic artist they have..."
Peru chuckled, before saying, "Sorry, but no. There's a general order out there for the capture of a Sylph with a titanic pair of..." A slap to the back of the head from Hellebrone stopped him short, to the amusement of the rest of the killer carnival. She picked up the dropped document, expecting to need some brain bleach after reading it.
Her eyes slowed as they worked over the fine print on the first page, went to the second, then the third before she took her time reading through the entire document again. "Well, fuck my life."
That whispered outburst caught PoH's attention, and he jumped over the human candlestick he had formed to stand beside his significant other."What is it, mission orders?" He knew Argo liked those; the only reason he gave a shit was because it got him that much closer to being able to intimately introduce Mate Chopper to Cromwell's pale ass.
As he read, PoH felt an unfamiliar cold heaviness settling in the pit of his stomach. This didn't change his mission, but if was was on those three pages had any hint of truth to them, then the War of the Fae was about to become so very much more complicated.
As the smile left his lips, his fellow killers looked up, as if sensing impending doom. "Well, shit." said he, looking around him. "This is a bounty notice for the live capture of a Half-Elven royal bastard these assholes think might be in Tristain."
He had their complete attention; at a gesture the last survivor was quickly ended. "If this is right, the girl's in the area north of Sylvain. We need to make a dead-drop, yesterday."
until Megido(13)++; Laughing Mad
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(Zero Hour Plus 363 days: The 30th day, Second Month, Year of the Founder 6342: Albion)
It had been such an excellent day for the six of them, working in the skies above Tristain to neuter Reconquista from their home. As they finished eliminating the last of another unfortunate group of mercenaries who only just then guessed the identity of their enemies, <[Laughing Coffin>] left one commoner alive, just as they had with the other small forces they had eviscerated over the past nine months.
It had taken the six of them so very long to figure out just which of them was the traitor, when finally one night, <[PoH>] had a bit of a brainwave. "With as long as we've been doing the voodoo we do so well, with none of us dead for it, including that time in Charlotesville hanging the noble by his entrails... I know which one of us Argo has turned." He looked out to his fellow murderers, a wicked grin on his face. "Noone. She expected us to play nice when the threat one of us could end the fun at a moment's notice hung over our heads, but the fun times we've had, any right thinking Fae would have fried us already." He chuckled, adding, "Argo played us all like a fucking violin."
They changed everything after they made a few kills on the deck of cards that Argo had supplied them with. On one side was a suit and card rank; on the other was as close a drawing as they could get for their target, along with as much information as they had. Every time they made a kill on the deck, they left behind a token of their appreciation, a little something picked up from an American: An ace of spades with the skull and crossbones in relief.
With each kill they grew wiser, with each new bit of wisdom they gained, they grew stronger.
This would be the last time they used this particular setup; with the four nobles on the Deck of 53 that they had put down, the other military targets they struck, they had ingrained into the consciousness of Albion's people a phrase from Iarel.
Must not sleep, clowns will eat me.
As they tied up the man that would survive, as they mocked the dying, the six horrible people prepared a scene straight out of a horror movie for the next unfortunate patrol to find, PoH and Hellebrone actually whistline while they worked.
"Holy fucking shitnickels, guys, get a look at this!" Peru held up a document pouch in one hand, an envelope in the other. The rest of Laughing Coffin groaned; the last time Peru had held up papers, it had turned out to be some truly tasteless interpretations of a more-way between the Fae Lords and Queen Henrietta, but PoH finally bit. "All right, what is it? It better not be the next volume of that shitty comic artist they have..."
Peru chuckled, before saying, "Sorry, but no. There's a general order out there for the capture of a Sylph with a titanic pair of..." A slap to the back of the head from Hellebrone stopped him short, to the amusement of the rest of the killer carnival. She picked up the dropped document, expecting to need some brain bleach after reading it.
Her eyes slowed as they worked over the fine print on the first page, went to the second, then the third before she took her time reading through the entire document again. "Well, fuck my life."
That whispered outburst caught PoH's attention, and he jumped over the human candlestick he had formed to stand beside his significant other."What is it, mission orders?" He knew Argo liked those; the only reason he gave a shit was because it got him that much closer to being able to intimately introduce Mate Chopper to Cromwell's pale ass.
As he read, PoH felt an unfamiliar cold heaviness settling in the pit of his stomach. This didn't change his mission, but if was was on those three pages had any hint of truth to them, then the War of the Fae was about to become so very much more complicated.
As the smile left his lips, his fellow killers looked up, as if sensing impending doom. "Well, shit." said he, looking around him. "This is a bounty notice for the live capture of a Half-Elven royal bastard these assholes think might be in Tristain."
He had their complete attention; at a gesture the last survivor was quickly ended. "If this is right, the girl's in the area north of Sylvain. We need to make a dead-drop, yesterday."
ecs05norway
Zenryoku Zenkai!
... Laughing Coffin. Working for Argo. Getting their jollies by killing bad guys in new and inventive ways.
Part of me is imagining this as a cracky Leverage fanfic.
And then I start getting images of PoH and friends dressed up in Nice Suits, a la Sinatra and the Rat Pack. And doing their thing.
Where is my brain bleach????
Part of me is imagining this as a cracky Leverage fanfic.
And then I start getting images of PoH and friends dressed up in Nice Suits, a la Sinatra and the Rat Pack. And doing their thing.
Where is my brain bleach????
ecs05norway
Zenryoku Zenkai!
You think that was funny?
Try imagining Argo joining the White Collar crew. She'd fit right in with Burke and Caffrey....
Try imagining Argo joining the White Collar crew. She'd fit right in with Burke and Caffrey....
Yeah, I'll admit, the last batch of character shorts have gone a bit on the cracky side, perhaps a bit on the sweet side.
Last of the shorts go up today; it features The Shiori.
Last of the shorts go up today; it features The Shiori.
There's something you should know. It's kinda bad etiquette to edit a TVTropes article of your own fic.
uM14
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until Megido(14)++; Fearsome Rescuer
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(Zero Hour Plus 364 days: The 31st Day, Second Month, Year of the Founder 6342: North of Sylvain)
Under any normal circumstances, the girl looking on at the field of corpses she had just made from Reconquista supporters would have made her smile at a good day's work. Not now, though.
Those bastards had stolen the one thing that had made her life worth living since crossing over in the Transition. That would not do; there could be no more delay. Anything standing between herself and the one who saved her from the monster she had slowly been turning into would have been wise to get out of her way, if doing so would spare them her wrath.
The day had begun like any other, with the crisp wintery wind ensuring the little ones stayed inside as much as they could, a fact that likely saved their lives when a ship had been force-landed within a hundred yards of the house she shared with them, and with Big Sister. Unfortunately for her, she could only feel a small bit of relief for the little ones right now.
The Reconquista-marked soldiers had swarmed both her and her first real friend in this crazy new world, her with weapons and killing spells, Big Sister with sleep poisoned darts and cantrips to trap and delay. The insinuation from the different uses of spells was obvious. Even as she tore through dozens of men, Big Sis was tied up and loaded onto dragon-back.
They were kidnapping her friend specifically. They must have figured out who she truly was; that was the only way the girl could explain it to herself, even as a thrown knife through the eye ended another man's life, as a sword cut through a man's heart, as an acid maw swallowed men to leave the burning remains behind like so much refuse.
Since leaving her sister back in that other world, there had been so much rage and spite and hate and she scared herself. Alicia might possibly not have made the best move by inducing her to rampage inside Albion, but in hunting the Necromancer Sheffield, she had been found by the well-endowed half-elf, who had saved her from becoming the killing machine she feared, and as she looked skyward as two of the dragons took flight, for the first time in a long time, her heart knew fear, not for herself, but for another. She would not fail her, not fail another!
One of her ran into the house, grabbed the tube and anchor. Alicia and the rest of the Fae Lords knew the full score, but the local garrison at least knew they were out by the house, knew what the sign of the rocket flare going up in the middle of the night would mean. Another pair of hands wrote quickly, in finely-spaced font to ensure that not one bit of her meaning could be mistaken. The last of her bodies finished up with their work on the field, slitting the throat of the last soldier before trundling an officer to the house, tied like a Foundermass hog. After all, TRIST might be able to beat some of the truth out of him, given time.
She did not have time. She could brook no more delay.
Pippin was the most darling little thing; the child approaching with the boxes holding her equipment from the basement, opening it up and separating it out into the gear each of her preferred when dealing with this sort of situation. A quick messing up of the child's hair to show her thanks later, the one made three pulled equipment on, sheathed weapons of horrible power, latched her field gear into place as she made ready for war once more.
Sharp Cait Syth eyes could still pick out the shapes of the fleeing dragons; as the Shiori stepped back out into the cool night air, they took flight, trying to gain height to better pursue the dragons trying to spirit Tiffania away.
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It had been the better part of three hours of pursuit; Fae from three different bases had spied the flares go up in order, had twigged to the need for swift pursuit. The past year had taught the Fae much, had turned impressionable young boys into hardened veterans of a war, and drawn the survivors ever closer together.
The light was beginning to fade as the Fae, now chasing from aboard the One-Sixth, continued to follow the kidnappers, watched helplessly as the dragons crossed the Germanian border, and looked on in shock as the Germanians attacked the dragons, driving one of them from the sky. Another force, this one in the black to be expected of a black operations group, struck in turn at the men of one duchy, even as forces from another duchy moved in.
She knew that what she was about to do would break multiple laws, that there would be utter hell to pay if she rescued Tiffania and survived. At that very moment, the Shiori dropped from on high, letting gravity give them speed for when they let their wings take over.
Shirotaka Akira would dive into hell for his/her/their sister, blood or otherwise. God might have mercy on those between the ninja catgirls and her friend, the one who brought her back to something resembling a life. The flying death factory known collectively as the Shiori would not.
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OK, let there be no more delay! Next up: terminate Oberon(null): The Red Devil of Izu!
until Megido(14)++; Fearsome Rescuer
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(Zero Hour Plus 364 days: The 31st Day, Second Month, Year of the Founder 6342: North of Sylvain)
Under any normal circumstances, the girl looking on at the field of corpses she had just made from Reconquista supporters would have made her smile at a good day's work. Not now, though.
Those bastards had stolen the one thing that had made her life worth living since crossing over in the Transition. That would not do; there could be no more delay. Anything standing between herself and the one who saved her from the monster she had slowly been turning into would have been wise to get out of her way, if doing so would spare them her wrath.
The day had begun like any other, with the crisp wintery wind ensuring the little ones stayed inside as much as they could, a fact that likely saved their lives when a ship had been force-landed within a hundred yards of the house she shared with them, and with Big Sister. Unfortunately for her, she could only feel a small bit of relief for the little ones right now.
The Reconquista-marked soldiers had swarmed both her and her first real friend in this crazy new world, her with weapons and killing spells, Big Sister with sleep poisoned darts and cantrips to trap and delay. The insinuation from the different uses of spells was obvious. Even as she tore through dozens of men, Big Sis was tied up and loaded onto dragon-back.
They were kidnapping her friend specifically. They must have figured out who she truly was; that was the only way the girl could explain it to herself, even as a thrown knife through the eye ended another man's life, as a sword cut through a man's heart, as an acid maw swallowed men to leave the burning remains behind like so much refuse.
Since leaving her sister back in that other world, there had been so much rage and spite and hate and she scared herself. Alicia might possibly not have made the best move by inducing her to rampage inside Albion, but in hunting the Necromancer Sheffield, she had been found by the well-endowed half-elf, who had saved her from becoming the killing machine she feared, and as she looked skyward as two of the dragons took flight, for the first time in a long time, her heart knew fear, not for herself, but for another. She would not fail her, not fail another!
One of her ran into the house, grabbed the tube and anchor. Alicia and the rest of the Fae Lords knew the full score, but the local garrison at least knew they were out by the house, knew what the sign of the rocket flare going up in the middle of the night would mean. Another pair of hands wrote quickly, in finely-spaced font to ensure that not one bit of her meaning could be mistaken. The last of her bodies finished up with their work on the field, slitting the throat of the last soldier before trundling an officer to the house, tied like a Foundermass hog. After all, TRIST might be able to beat some of the truth out of him, given time.
She did not have time. She could brook no more delay.
Pippin was the most darling little thing; the child approaching with the boxes holding her equipment from the basement, opening it up and separating it out into the gear each of her preferred when dealing with this sort of situation. A quick messing up of the child's hair to show her thanks later, the one made three pulled equipment on, sheathed weapons of horrible power, latched her field gear into place as she made ready for war once more.
Sharp Cait Syth eyes could still pick out the shapes of the fleeing dragons; as the Shiori stepped back out into the cool night air, they took flight, trying to gain height to better pursue the dragons trying to spirit Tiffania away.
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It had been the better part of three hours of pursuit; Fae from three different bases had spied the flares go up in order, had twigged to the need for swift pursuit. The past year had taught the Fae much, had turned impressionable young boys into hardened veterans of a war, and drawn the survivors ever closer together.
The light was beginning to fade as the Fae, now chasing from aboard the One-Sixth, continued to follow the kidnappers, watched helplessly as the dragons crossed the Germanian border, and looked on in shock as the Germanians attacked the dragons, driving one of them from the sky. Another force, this one in the black to be expected of a black operations group, struck in turn at the men of one duchy, even as forces from another duchy moved in.
She knew that what she was about to do would break multiple laws, that there would be utter hell to pay if she rescued Tiffania and survived. At that very moment, the Shiori dropped from on high, letting gravity give them speed for when they let their wings take over.
Shirotaka Akira would dive into hell for his/her/their sister, blood or otherwise. God might have mercy on those between the ninja catgirls and her friend, the one who brought her back to something resembling a life. The flying death factory known collectively as the Shiori would not.
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OK, let there be no more delay! Next up: terminate Oberon(null): The Red Devil of Izu!
Eh, didn't know. Whoops. If you care to undo my edits, go for it.
On a more serious note, I am at the same time pleased and a little sad that this shitshow is rapidly approaching its end; my first fanfic was meant to pose as a bit of a potential answer to a question I found way back in Thread 5 of Halkegenia Online. Once I wrote those first three chapters, though, the vorpal plot bunny of doom would just not let the hooks out of me until I wrote this out to its conclusion.
At this point, final fates have been locked in for everyone; the die is cast, so to speak, and every character in the final arc is now on the result of the dice save for the three mains and two big villains. Everyone else got a d20 rolled for them, kind of how Wildbow ran who was going to live or die during Endbringer fights.
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OK guys, next chapter is about half done. I can almost guarantee it's going to be at least the weekend before it's done, though.
The reason for that is due to the fact some... thing resembling a human being... chucked a kitten out his car window yesterday, with me out working in the yard. Unfortunately, I didn't get his license plate, but the kitten at least landed in the pile of leaves I had been raking up.
She is fine, full of all kinds of hell, and the local Humane Society is already looking for a home for the adorable little thing. I kind of doubt it will take long, dilute tortoise-shell calico manx kittens apparently hit a lot of the hot buttons for adoption. Shit like this almost makes me wish we had a local chapter of the other ASPCA. You know, the Associated Suits for the Provocation of Cruelty to Assholes.
After I'm done with the entirety of Zero Hour 1.0, I'll be doing something akin to Triggerhappy's Refactor. I like to call that project, Zero Hour 1.1: Sugou Will (Not) Survive.
The reason for that is due to the fact some... thing resembling a human being... chucked a kitten out his car window yesterday, with me out working in the yard. Unfortunately, I didn't get his license plate, but the kitten at least landed in the pile of leaves I had been raking up.
She is fine, full of all kinds of hell, and the local Humane Society is already looking for a home for the adorable little thing. I kind of doubt it will take long, dilute tortoise-shell calico manx kittens apparently hit a lot of the hot buttons for adoption. Shit like this almost makes me wish we had a local chapter of the other ASPCA. You know, the Associated Suits for the Provocation of Cruelty to Assholes.
After I'm done with the entirety of Zero Hour 1.0, I'll be doing something akin to Triggerhappy's Refactor. I like to call that project, Zero Hour 1.1: Sugou Will (Not) Survive.
V6C0
I find that, so near to the end of the path that I expected would kill me long before now, others confuse me for other things, would use what I have done as justification or argument for their own acts. That is why, when I expect to go into a battle I will not survive, to finally see the end of the bloody road I have traveled, that I find I must leave these declarations so that no one will be able to mistake my intentions throughout my life. Thus, I, Asada Shino, being of sound mind and body, acting neither under duress or influence, do hereby declare this document to be my Last Will and Testament.
From the Foreword of the Last Will and Testament of Asada Shino.
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When Sugou Nobuyuki heard through his sources that the SFPg, several pilots, and The Seven were meeting together with Rear Admiral Ijuin, it did not take a genius to know that it meant trouble was coming to the Ocean Turtle. An assassination attempt had already been made on him; he knew it would not be long before they came to stop him from forcing his way to Halkegenia, to be with his Titania. The timing was unfortunate, but he still had a trick or two hundred to play.
One of those tricks involved letting one of the undersecretaries in Japan's defense department know what was really going on at the Ocean Turtle under an assumed identity. After all, ghouls running rampant alongside robot soldiers alongside creatures from mythology would have been fantastical enough that anyone with a rational mind would instantly believe the person in question to be a crackpot, and in so doing ensure that others who might make the same claims would at least catch some of the paint from the same brush. It was a social technique stemming from inoculation theory; Vaduva had used it in previous cycles to great effect and to buy her more time, and had gone over those plans with Sugou in great detail. He was sure it would work.
He had no idea that one of the undersecretary's interns was working for the Chinese, forwarding anything that might look troublesome that crossed the office floor to his true masters in Beijing, with the caveat that he did not expect it to ring true.
Under normal circumstance, the Chinese would have labeled it as the purest of bullshit, but the coincidences kept adding up. The Chinese team sent to eliminate Ephialtes had worked alongside the Three Black Cats briefly, and that most lethal of men, Xue Rong, had planted cameras along the beaches he suspected might find use. His diligence brought forth a great reward indeed; one of the cameras had a ringside seat to the battle against the Old One, picked up on the Black Cat's possible inhuman origins.
Combined with the Covenant of Thorns devastating a military base with magic that would not have seemed out of place in some vengeful pagan god's toybox, and the connection that Chinese Intelligence had made between Duque Rodriguez and Asada Shino, the general who got the message shuddered; the coverup from that mess pinged so many of the man's warning bells that his mind could have been mistaken for a gong show.
A mistaken interpretation of the original report placed the cause of the 'zombies' as a necrotizing virus; someone had watched far too many zombie movies. It had indeed concerned the Chinese greatly that someone might be hosting a biological warfare center within easy striking distance of most of China's population centers, and that the Americans and Japanese would be adding more forces to the island.
A quick look at the public plans for the Ocean Turtle revealed an opportunity for vengeance by the Marshal overseeing the intelligence: The central access piping looked suspiciously like a ballistic missile silo. By massaging the information carefully, he could use it to bring ruin to those who had killed his son during the Daiyou Islands Conflict.
The Politburo found itself pressured to make a decision by the military under Marshal Dong's direction quickly, causing Sugou's little attempt at Maskirovka to go completely off the rails. Had they thought to try to look closer, it might have come out that the true goings-on with the Ocean Turtle had been hijacked by a madman with a vampire's hand stuck up his ass, making him dance. Had they sent missiles to pound the artificial island flat, they might have rendered the problem moot.
Instead, the Politburo, like so many other governmental organizations forced to attempt to think outside the box, chose the worst of all possible options on the table. They would send in their special forces to take and hold the island against all comers, and shoot down any aircraft that might be considered even a remote threat to that mission, to expose the Japanese for the monsters the politicians believed by their ideology that they were, just as Marshal Dong had planned.
In so doing, a calculated attempt to delay the assault on the Ocean Turtle ensured that thousands of lives would be lost on what was, in essence, a comedy of errors. With that one act, Sugou Nobuyuki would kill most of the invasion force by accident.
It would also give birth to the legend of the man who would be known as...
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terminate Oberon(null): The Red Devil of Izu
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(T-29:55 To Midnight: Aboard E-767)
The night watch aboard an EWACS aircraft tended to be an exceptionally boring thing.
There happened to be good reason for that. Boring is good; if an EWACS aircraft is having an exciting patrol around midnight, then it usually means someone has been naughty.
The radar operator, Lt. 2nd Class Matsuda, looked over his display with the same dead-eyes look as your average shark at rest, ready at a moment's notice to sniff out new prey, but content to move in the same way, resting. Of course, the industrial-sized thermos of coffee could explain his state as well.
Across the Sea of Japan, the crew of the KJ-2000 opposite them likely were suffering through the same mind-dulling boredom, as it should have been. Boredom was good.
That was why, when four blips showed up on his screen at a distance of 105 km, the radar operator jumped in his seat a little. "Major! I think we have contacts 4, unknown, heading... Wait. This can't be right..." He shifted the contents of his screen to the flight's commanding officer, who looked over the information quickly.
The officer, one Mj. Tatsumi, spied the point where the apparent aircraft had first been detected, looked over the direction they were flying, and quickly ordered an active search in that direction. Anything jumping up that closely to the aircraft as its first notice could not be normal, boring, good.
By the time he had ordered that, the enemy unknown had closed well within 100 km. A quick check of flying speed, apparent height, lack of IFF beacon that the Japanese could recognize... The fact that the path of the aircraft seemed to take them in a straight line from the last known position of the Peoples' Liberation Army Navy ('And what kind of a name was that,' a stray thought in the major's mine traitorously derailed) CVN Liaoning to almost directly toward the EWACS aircraft... "FUCK!"
It did not take a genius to be able to tell what was going on. "Get on the horn, I think we're under attack. Cease active search, prepare to commence radar jamming!. Keep an eye on those fighters, pilots, prepare for evasive action!"
As if his words were a signal to the unidentified objects, they began to climb rapidly, closing the distance rapidly as they did so. An active radar ping hit the massive EWACS aircraft based on the body of a 767, likely from the Chinese AWACS craft across the sea from them. "Additional contacts, 266 degrees, speed indicates helicopters, twelve count, coming over towards Izu from... They're launching off cargo vessels!"
Another operator, this one keeping watch on the incoming fighters, watched with his stomach trying to twist itself in knots as the aircraft closed within 80 km. "More contacts, sir, looks like... Shit." Each of the four aircraft had opened their missile bays, each loosing a JS-12 air to air missile. "INCOMING!"
The plane shuddered as the pilots did their level best to force it to turn, to try to take it out of the path of the missiles tracking the gigantic mass in the sky. Even with years of training, though, it would have taken a herculean feat of piloting skill to save the EWACS aircraft from one of the missiles, let alone all four. Instead of striking the wings and radar like it would have if the plane had kept its course, each missile slammed into the side of the ungainly aircraft, almost in a straight line.
The first part of the aircraft to separate was the tail section; it had been struck first, and the missile tore through it like it was made of paper. The middle deck was next, gutting the interior of the plane and sending the radar disc flying like a giant metal frisbee into a nearby fishing village, crushing several houses and rendering it unlivable for weeks. The third missile struck the wing, found all that delicious airplane fuel, and caused a massive fireball in the sky, making the fourth missile strike to the cockpit almost seem like a petty waste. The entire crew, of course, were less durable than the plane; they died almost instantly. It left Japan without sufficient air-based AWACS in the Izu area for fifteen minutes.
The black box recordings, when recovered two days later, exonerated Maj. Tatsumi of any possibility of wrongdoing or slackness in his command. It was of minimal comfort to the families of the first twelve casualties of the Thirty Minute War.
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(T-Minus 28:42 To Midnight)
Word spread that the first strike against Japan's ability to see the helicopters that would be taking off from cargo ships had worked like a charm; the Japanese Air Force had been caught with their pants down by China's first use of stealth aircraft in anger. The second flight of that squadron of J-31 stealth fighters began climbing in turn as their own mission went green; their target set was any transport aircraft in the area around the Ocean Turtle.
The pilot of the transport that had been carrying The Seven was an old hand at all the drills; at the moment the call went out that bandits were in the area, he took his transport as high in the sky as he could and dropped chaff and flares. The airframe shuddered from several close misses from the missiles, and they lost both sets of outer engines, but Cpt. Sakai was able to nurse his plane back to base, having already dropped off his cargo of walking death. (He would win a lottery later in life.)
The other C-2 pilot was not so lucky. The bandit warning came too late for him; his plane was struck dead-on as it was three quarters of the way through unloading SFPg soldiers from the command group. The fireteam's leader and second in command never made it off the plane.
As flaming debris and shrapnel fell, the number of those who would die before even reaching the ground skyrocketed as parachutes were sliced open, soldiers were struck and slain instantly, or were covered in burning fuel from the transport and lingered on until they finally made blessed contact with the water at terminal velocity.
It turned out that neither experience nor being superhuman was proof against the devastation caused by the transport's destruction, as Rear Admiral Ijuin found to his dismay. The sergeant at his side shouted, "Look out, sir!" even as the man veered off course. Looking around, then up, Ijuin saw one of the wings falling just as he felt something impact his chest. Trying to ditch his chute, he first tried the standard release, then when that failed, drew the line cutting knife to snip the cords holding him to his chute.
All that came out of the scabbard was the hilt and an inch of blade; whatever had hit him struck the blade, snapped it off. Looking helplessly at the tool, he saw the line, 'Made In China' on the small section of blade stub. "That figures." said he with an amused smile, shortly before being sucked into one of the falling but still very much operational jet turbines. The red trail left behind allowed no doubt as to that man's fate.
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The next targets in line for the Chinese were the transport helicopters, all so woefully slow in comparison to the fifth-generation fighters that were tearing into the skies above Izu. The jets slid in behind the formation, easily locking on to the four Black Hawk helicopters their radar spotted. For all it was worth, three of the helicopters might as well have been flying in place for the good it did them; one Japanese and one American helicopter simply disintegrated when the missile struck, while a third had gotten lucky, only losing the rear rotor close enough to the sea where the crew was able to crash land the helicopter lightly enough that the pilots saved the lives of everyone aboard, save their own.
The fourth helicopter, piloted by an evil old cuss due shortly for retirement, managed to use the shrapnel of one of the other helicopters to bounce the radar from the JS-12 missiles, to squeeze that last little bit of ability to duck out of the way of danger to pull through. Only a punctured fuel tank prevented that team from reaching the Ocean Turtle.
Stealth technology would rear up and bite the Chinese in the ass for the first time that evening. The fifth and sixth helicopters, carrying DEVGRU, used the features of the stealth variant used in the slaying of Bin Ladin more than a decade earlier. By the time the Chinese knew they were there, they had already landed.
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That was when the fighters turned about and began a shallow descent. That flight had one more set of targets to shoot down and a pair of missiles before they would need to return to the carrier to re-arm. Unfortunately for The Seven, Nanami's armor gave off a radar cross-section that a blind man miles away could have found, and though the Chinese wanted that technology in the worst way, she would have been one more complication for a ground mission by China's best; they simply could not leave someone that dangerous alive.
Four missiles slid into firing position. It was a foregone conclusion, it seemed.
Multiple unknown contacts appeared on the radar display as the missiles fired, popping up from around a nearby cliff; the jets began to turn about one last time. After all, if the Japanese wanted to send good materiel and pilots after bad, who were they to stop them? Each jet's final missile slid into place; helicopters did not belong in the same sky as fighter jets. The day's experience showed that without RADAR, Japan just didn't have the ability to hurt a stealthed...
The objects resolved in their radar, four Apaches and eight missiles headed their way. Flares fired off; the Stingers' IR seekers would not be able to defeat the baffled engines; it must have been a last, desperate move. The Apaches had blown their only anti-aircraft weapons at the first chance they had...
'Wait. How did he spot us in the first place?' thought the wingman, jinking hard right by instinct, breaking lock and shouting out, "Shit! They can see us!"
The squadron leader was so very confident in all the advantages his fighter granted him; these mud pilots were barely worth his time. Laughing, he turned into the space between missile groupings; they didn't have lock on him, they couldn't, not after that hard turn right...
His eyes narrowed, then widened even as he got tone to fire off his last missile. Pulling the trigger by instinct, he climbed as fast as he could. It was not enough.
The moment before he fired, the pilot noticed the one difference; Stingers would not have flown in a straight line as these did. He didn't know what was going on, safer to err on the side of caution, even with the quantitative advantages. The moment after he fired, he found out it was already too late.
Two of the CRV-7s' triggers fired off at the mental command of the man flying the lead helicopter. Each of the rockets, carrying the Flechette (General Purpose) warhead, sprayed eighty tungsten darts, turning the skies around them into a field of destruction, as if someone had whipped out an aerial shotgun.
The stealth jet was considerably less heavily armored than the light vehicles the round normally was used for. It, and the missile it fired, were ripped out of the sky.
"Command, this is Red Hawk 2, repeat Red Hawk 2. Splash one, rocket kill." Inside the modified NERVGear with an oxygen mask added, Hiraga Sasuke was grinning nearly ear to ear. Shirotaka's modifications to several sets of the helmets that had been the cause of death of almost four thousand of his countrymen had been placed into far more useful service to his country. Where once he would need to swap out multiple displays at once, now he could change them at the speed of thought, mix them together, and combine the minimal radar and camera feed returns his other little surprise could provide with wind speed charts and infrared, a comprehensive use of the entire sensor package available to him. He couldn't 'see' them with his sensors, but by putting it all together, he could see where they had been, extrapolate where they were going from there.
If he had that system during the Senkaku Crisis, Hiraga would have had far more than one kill.
The rest of the helicopters began to ripple-fire their rockets in order to try to keep the jets away from their charges. With the obliteration of their commander, the remaining three fighters had to take the helicopters seriously for the first time. The fighters climbed in an attempt to deny the helicopter flight an engagement they could win; they could simply dive and fire off their missiles, at least get three of them...
The dive intensified, and two of the fighter pilots got tone, pulled the trigger, and smiled as the missiles descended from above. The last of their number took just a little longer to lock on, only to look directly into the barrel of the 30mm cannon of the tail Apache as it somehow managed a barrel roll. Gennosuke snickered as he pulled the trigger, clipping the wing fuel tanks on the J-31 even as the pilot fired off that last missile into the last helicopter in Captain Hiraga's flight.
"God damnit all to hell." was all Hiraga was able to get out as the rest of his flight disappeared from his display; the empty emotion of loss turned to a cold fury as he calculated out where the jets would be heading. With a growl, he fired two more rockets by 'eye', watching as they simply flew, close to the ground, sneered as both lost engine power when the fuel ran out, and turned about for the Ocean Turtle.
"Keikaku dori, motherfuckers." whispered the Captain grimly, as his Weapons Officer trained an Avenger's entire supply of rockets and missiles on the fleeing pair. He took some small pleasure in seeing one more of the jets plummet into the sea. "Gotterdamerung Command, this is Red Hawk 2. 1, 3, and 4 are down, splash two, last bandit fleeing. Looking for instructions, over." Sasuke wished he could just simply huck the radio connection in his helmet out a window.
Then he saw the formation of parachutes continuing on their way down to the Ocean Turtle, spied far too few parachutes for the number that were supposed to drop by plane. "Gotterdamerung Actual, please come in, request orders, sir."
The one who responded was neither the general in charge of overseeing the mission, nor Rear Admiral Ijuin. Instead, it was a younger, female voice that responded. "I'm afraid he can not, Captain. General Yamamoto was aboard a 777 when it was hit; I've not heard back from him since. As for the Rear Admiral..." Shirotaka Nanami's voice began to shake as she said, "Sir, Rear Admiral Ijuin Hayato was killed in the line of duty."
It would be said in later years that Captain Hiraga's response was as eloquent as could be in the situation, which was polite conversation for the single word response he actually gave: "Fuck." He thought it through then, working his way down. "All right then, who has command of ground forces for Operation Gotterdamerung then?"
The response that came over the radio did not reinforce the pilot's confidence in the slightest. "Colonel Shinagawa was on the same plane as the general... Majors Horie and Yagami were aboard their individual helicopters... Captain Suriza was on the second transport plane when it was hit... I think that brings us to... Captain Kurosawa, I think? The one on the boat squadron, that we haven't heard from in the past five minutes..." She paused again, thinking as she continued to descend towards the Ocean Turtle. What she said next made him cringe. "After that, sir, you outrank everyone left; with Red Hawk Actual down, I believe you're the highest ranking officer in this operation left."
The need to answer that statement took a few seconds for Hiraga to think over. He was saved from actually needing to by contacts popping up on the radar he shared with the two drones his weapon operator had taken control of. They were slow, bearing none of the grace or speed of the jets that had left the battle area. "Contacts inbound, speeds..." He matched them up with what he knew about Chinese aircraft... "250 kph. Chinese helicopters, 12 count, 4 Z-8 transports and 8 Z-10 attack helis." He took one second to think it over before the thought came to him. He was effectively alone in this. "Moving to engage." Chutes were still in the air; if he was playing for the Red Team, he would have had his attack helis move to shoot down any chutes in the air. For damned sure they weren't there to wipe the Ocean Turtle off the face of the earth, not with transport choppers capable of transporting a full company between them.
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(T-Minus 27:02 to Midnight)
They had the numbers, the formations to keep him from being able to kill them easily, the transport helis protected while a flight of the Z-10s went looking for any targets on the ground or in the sea. A camera zoomed in behind the helicopters let him know what had happened to the Special Boat Squadrons, their wreckage lay behind the three flights of helicopters. It would have been an impossible problem for a single pilot to deal with.
It was a good thing for him that the Avengers were still over half full of fuel, that he had advance knowledge of them, that he had actual cover to hide behind in the form of the Ocean Turtle.
The four helicopters in the lead had closed to seven kilometers, they were as close as Hiraga Sasuke was going to allow them to get. As he just cleared the Ocean Turtle, one rocket fired from each pod, the faster CRV-7 rockets finding the point he was hoping for, right where the lead enemy helicopter would be at the moment he wanted to set off the flechette warheads.
The first warning the Chinese helicopter pilots had that something in the air lusted for their blood was when the closest incoming rocket failed to detonate, instead slamming into the cockpit of the Z-10, going through instrumentation, pilots, and engine before finally going up. A second rocket's flechettes clipped the tail rotor of a second helicopter, and chaos reigned as Hiraga's Apache closed in for the kill.
More Avengers reached the range of the Apache's control, and the weapons officer growled as she took control of them as well, weaving the drones in and out of position to spot the enemy helicopters, to give targeting data to Hiraga, and to get to work on the helicopters further back.
The Hellfire missiles and bombs were useless against helicopters, but as she began firing off the drones' rockets at the rearmost of the escort, she began working her way forward through the Chinese, hoping to squeeze them as her captain smiled.
The first hint of the helicopter squadron finding the lone Apache was the sound of a missile warning; Hiraga Sasuke cursed as he saw three missiles pop up in his radar 'display'. Thinking quickly, he mentally triggered the firing of four more rockets, before triggering them halfway there. Four blooms of blazing white heat erupted as the WP rockets blew, sending the guidance on the missiles haywire.
"My turn, assholes." Swinging his helicopter side to side, bobbing the nose up and down, Hiraga emptied the entirety of two pods into the night sky around him, giving his opposite numbers way too much raw data to have to deal with, too many potential guided missiles to need to worry about.
While the Z-10 pilots tried ducking and weaving around rockets that would have needed a direct hit to actually cause injury with, the Apache fired off its Stingers at the two furthest Z-10s in range. The last Z-10 had tried closing in to solve the problem; the two helicopters engaged in a gun duel, the two rotating around each other, trying to slide into position to finish the other.
Hiraga had needed to weave, slide around as the other helicopter finally reached the superior position of right behind him. More warning signals blared in his mind as he dove, losing altitude and another AAM in the process, and giving the Z-10 pilot time to get closer, closer as the two helicopters flew close to the burning exterior of the Ocean Turtle.
He had been maneuvering for the past minute trying to force a mistake, and as he cleared the peak of the Ocean Turtle, Hiraga dropped twenty meters in a half second, arrested forward flight, and watched with a smile as the Z-10 overshot him, tried to overcorrect by trying to climb.
"Oops. You blew it." The captain smiled, mentally 'depressing' the trigger of the M230 30mm cannon under the Apache's nose, elevating the gun as much as possible and walking the rounds right into the main body of the Z-10, coring the engine and causing the attack helicopter to detonate quite satisfyingly.
[Corporal, status on the remaining four Z-10s and the Z-8s?] canted to his Weapons Officer, making a quick check of his Apache's loadout. 'Hrm... Rockets, 32 (8 HEDP, 2 FAT, 4 General Purpose Flechette, 10 SAPHEI, and the 4/4 mix of ARM and Laser-guided Fuck Off version), 842 rounds of ammo.'
His weapons officer sighed in the backseat. [The Z-10s were cooked to Medium Rare, just as you like them, but I held off on the Z-8's, the Avengers I got control over are pretty close to Winchester.] 'said' the corporal, indicating the drones were low on ammunition. [I've still got line of sight on them, full camera feed, but they aren't going to be able to do much more than light them for you.]
Hiraga thought on that for a second, nodding to himself. [Can you get lasers on them? I've still got four PGs with that package left.] He mentally flexed his metaphorical fingers, letting the communion of man and machine guide him as the Apache closed to the four kilometer 'ideal' range for his rockets.
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(T-Minus 25:33 to Midnight)
As he calmly sat back against the uncomfortable bench on the Z-8 transport helicopter, Zue Rong closed his eyes as he listened to the mission's ground commander, an excitable young major that happened to be the son of a member of the National People's Congress, yammer into the radio, begging for any kind of anti-air assistance he could get. It was almost funny, listening to the man almost fourty years his junior losing his shit over what was, in the end, such a minor thing.
The boy (he really couldn't think of the officer as anything else) had somehow expected that the Japanese would simply roll over and die for the fighters they had sent out in support, that if there were any ground threats that the attack helicopters would be able to deal with them. Like so very many other children of China's government, the captain was considered Politically Reliable, thus perfect to the task of riding herd on a Special Forces unit, as opposed to the Actually Reliable that Zue would much rather have served under. At least that latter group did not needlessly spend the lives of their men, and tended to survive around him that much longer besides. He had served under two of them.
The plan was supposed to be simple enough, with so many different options to turn to even if a catastrophe occurred to one of the invading forces. The Chief Sergeant First Class shook his head at that; if he had been running this operation, he would have used boats launched off a cargo ship. It would have been subtle, so much quieter than the plan the generals had arranged.
Zue had bet the planning officers were fans of Michael Bay movies. His men had agreed with him.
He was also far more politically astute than his commanding officers often gave him credit for; he had known where this mission would be going when he saw the plans. Both the President and Prime Minister were aggressive nationalists with expansionist tendencies, as the Daiyou Conflict proved, but they weren't stupid enough to start a shooting war with their neighbors across the bay unless there was something to gain from it above and beyond the costs of the Americans getting involved, or unless the life-ending virus he had been warned about during the briefing actually existed.
Zue had to hope it existed, and that someone would get to it. As his commander worried on about rockets falling like rain from the skies and wiping out their escort, he just suspected it would not be him. His mind went back more than forty years, to the soothsayer he and the rest of the boys from his village had consulted just before entering the military. Her other predictions had come true...
"You, Zue Rong, child of one from a far away time and land, will be truly great in a way your friends can not be, for you shall be the man of three legends. The first legend shall be of those weaker heroes whose legends you conclude, the second legend shall be the one you build on the corpses of your nation's enemies. The final legend shall be the one of the devil who shall lay you low in this world, but even so, when you die, it shall only be after you are full of years beyond man's reckoning, with descendants stretching across that world."
He only still had the one son, the one grandson, and a month ago, a great grandson, but they were all still in China; he was still a month shy of sixty, so it seemed that the fortune-teller had been wrong with him alone. Eyes still very much sharper than normal picked out the little speck in the distance as he looked out the window, spied the slightest flare as more tiny dots began to head his way.
"Pilot. Take evasive action." said Zue, calmly, and the pilot side-skidded, losing altitude in the process.
The major was incensed, and angrily shouted, "Sergeant! Those are my orders to give; we must make all speed for the Ocean..."
The sound of three exploding helicopters, all struck by rockets, silenced the major even as Zue's smile widened. As the major looked between Zue and the pilot in shock, the aged but still lethally dangerous man of a hundred campaigns turned to look to the officer. "Something tells me, sir, that if we make it to the Ocean Turtle at all..." The sergeant looked out the front windshield, so very close, less than a kilometer away, spied the parachutes that even then began to settle to the ground atop the helicopter pad they had planned to take, "We are going to need to swim the rest of the way."
That was the moment they heard the deformed, reverberating boasting over the open radio channel, one that sounded like something from the deepest pits of Hell itself. "Hey, choads, this is <[Hellgain>]. Send some more of those pilots! The last ones tasted GrrrrrrrrEAT!!! I'll kill them all, and fuck all..."
The Apache had come closer by that time; Zue could see the gun underneath, sighed as he saw the gun flash. The 30mm rounds, rated to kill two inches of RHA, would finish the disaster the day had been for the Chinese Special Forces unit; Zue had enough time to say, "At least I will not need to listen to you babble anymore..." before the rounds were walked over the helicopter from the top, shearing the rotor shaft off through the engine and sending the helicopter into the sea.
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(T-Minus 25:05 to Midnight)
"Command, this is Red Hawk 2, splash 4 more. I am Bingo Ammo, returning to base for refuel and rearm. Valkyrie, I'm afraid air cover is gone." Hiraga Sasuke knew he was likely in no small amount of trouble for letting his mouth get ahead of his brain, of using the software aboard the helicopter for the straight-up puerile taunting over the radio, but he couldn't care much at that point in time. Those fuckers had started a shooting war with his country; he had exactly one pico-fuck to give, and decided that it wasn't time to let go of it.
[You know, they're going to crucify you for your radio shenanigans, sir.] canted his Weapons Officer, even as the helicopter flew away over the funeral pyres of their would-be attackers.
Eyebrows arched under the helmet, Hiraga sighed. [Yeah, I know, Rei, I fucked up. I guess I really am my father's son after all.]
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(T-Minus 24:54 to Midnight)
"Affirmative, Red Hawk, thanks for the cover time you gave us." Shirotaka Nanami looked around herself from the pinnacle of the Ocean Turtle, the helipad atop the floating pyramid, looking to the rest of the Seven, to the six SFPg survivors of the ill-fated air drop, and sighed.
When the four missiles had been heading their way, Endou had been quick to hijack control of the Avengers nearest them, to get a camera feed on them as they sped in. With that feed, Shino had been able to triangulate the best point at which to attempt point defense, and Nanami had turned carefully, spooling the Vulcan to full speed as the missiles came dangerously close.
The first had gone down almost immediately, hit skin-on-skin by one of the HAVoK rounds she had been saving for the ghouls, following Shino's pathing from there. The second missile blew a kilometer out; the third detonated a hundred meters closer, too close for comfort.
She only clipped the fourth; it spiraled out of control until it made contact with Nui's parachute before detonating, causing the blonde to fall rather than descend. Only a quick bit of knifework saved Shino and Greta from the same fate as the line pulled on them; as she fell, <[Torōru>] drew a serrated blade, ran it over the nylon line quickly, over and under the connection to her pack, before slicing the top of her parachute straps off, shrugging out of it as she approached terminal velocity.
Green wings erupted from her back a hundred meters from the sea, turned a fatal fall into a quick glide as the Sylph leveled out, low enough where only the most careful camera shots would have been able to spy the difference that saved her life. She circled around the Ocean Turtle once before climbing, to land before the rest of the Seven touched down.
The SFPg had been nowhere near as lucky. Almost half their number had died when the transport detonated, either from still being on board, or from the falling debris. Ripped parachutes and slashed lines accounted for others, it hadn't been the fall that killed them, but the landing. One last unfortunate man had missed his landing, found out just how sharp the antennae could be, when he impaled himself on them. The ranking SFPg member on the ground was a buck sergeant, Kuribayashi.
Even so, the command team was still in better shape than the other Japanese teams. At least they had gotten to the LZ. There was yet another problem. The ranking officer on the ground was...
"Shirotaka-Shuyōna, your orders, sir." Kikouka's jest, eleven months back, had come back to bite Nanami squarely in the ass one more time. In order to justify her presence in the RATH program on the military side (and keep her out of prison) after the death of the man who brought her in, she needed to be billeted as an officer of the rank to be able to hold an advisory position, that of Brevet Major. Originally not in the standard line of command, upon joining the Order of the Golden Kite, the command she had never wished for, never dreamed of, fell to her, the political falsehood turned into truth by her actions and consequence.
A strong part of her wanted nothing to do with it, to let the Sergeant take command, but Shirotaka Nanami could not, would not allow herself to fail her nation.
A bitter laugh escaped her lips, was broadcast out of the head of her suit. "I've never been good with this kind of thing, speeches have always been <[Roberto>]'s schtick." muttered she under her breath.
"Everyone! Gather round and listen up!" the four meter tall robot shouted as it stood to its full height, broadcast by secure radio at the same time. "Today..." Her voice wavered for an instant before Nanami buckled down on her shakiness,"Ijuin Hayato looks upon us even now, even in death, as we go forth on this most dangerous task." She turned about, looking at each member of the strike team. "At the end of this road, we find in ourselves the final ward against evil men who would murder or enslave us all, who would burn the hopes and dreams of entire peoples for power."
Her metal hand closed into a tight fist. "You are the best, brightest hope of Japan against monsters that would make our nation a grim, dark land! We choose to fight, not just for ourselves, but for each other!" A small smile crossed Nanami's lips as she continued, "I could ask of no better comrades than you to march into Hell with! Today we ruin the plans of monsters in man's image..." Her voice rose in surety and volume, "Today we cancel Sugou's Apocalypse! I'm canting groups and missions to each of you. Let's make the Rear Admiral proud."
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Strongly influenced by Stacker Pentacost's speech in Pacific Rim.
Next up: The real opposition begins.
From the Foreword of the Last Will and Testament of Asada Shino.
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When Sugou Nobuyuki heard through his sources that the SFPg, several pilots, and The Seven were meeting together with Rear Admiral Ijuin, it did not take a genius to know that it meant trouble was coming to the Ocean Turtle. An assassination attempt had already been made on him; he knew it would not be long before they came to stop him from forcing his way to Halkegenia, to be with his Titania. The timing was unfortunate, but he still had a trick or two hundred to play.
One of those tricks involved letting one of the undersecretaries in Japan's defense department know what was really going on at the Ocean Turtle under an assumed identity. After all, ghouls running rampant alongside robot soldiers alongside creatures from mythology would have been fantastical enough that anyone with a rational mind would instantly believe the person in question to be a crackpot, and in so doing ensure that others who might make the same claims would at least catch some of the paint from the same brush. It was a social technique stemming from inoculation theory; Vaduva had used it in previous cycles to great effect and to buy her more time, and had gone over those plans with Sugou in great detail. He was sure it would work.
He had no idea that one of the undersecretary's interns was working for the Chinese, forwarding anything that might look troublesome that crossed the office floor to his true masters in Beijing, with the caveat that he did not expect it to ring true.
Under normal circumstance, the Chinese would have labeled it as the purest of bullshit, but the coincidences kept adding up. The Chinese team sent to eliminate Ephialtes had worked alongside the Three Black Cats briefly, and that most lethal of men, Xue Rong, had planted cameras along the beaches he suspected might find use. His diligence brought forth a great reward indeed; one of the cameras had a ringside seat to the battle against the Old One, picked up on the Black Cat's possible inhuman origins.
Combined with the Covenant of Thorns devastating a military base with magic that would not have seemed out of place in some vengeful pagan god's toybox, and the connection that Chinese Intelligence had made between Duque Rodriguez and Asada Shino, the general who got the message shuddered; the coverup from that mess pinged so many of the man's warning bells that his mind could have been mistaken for a gong show.
A mistaken interpretation of the original report placed the cause of the 'zombies' as a necrotizing virus; someone had watched far too many zombie movies. It had indeed concerned the Chinese greatly that someone might be hosting a biological warfare center within easy striking distance of most of China's population centers, and that the Americans and Japanese would be adding more forces to the island.
A quick look at the public plans for the Ocean Turtle revealed an opportunity for vengeance by the Marshal overseeing the intelligence: The central access piping looked suspiciously like a ballistic missile silo. By massaging the information carefully, he could use it to bring ruin to those who had killed his son during the Daiyou Islands Conflict.
The Politburo found itself pressured to make a decision by the military under Marshal Dong's direction quickly, causing Sugou's little attempt at Maskirovka to go completely off the rails. Had they thought to try to look closer, it might have come out that the true goings-on with the Ocean Turtle had been hijacked by a madman with a vampire's hand stuck up his ass, making him dance. Had they sent missiles to pound the artificial island flat, they might have rendered the problem moot.
Instead, the Politburo, like so many other governmental organizations forced to attempt to think outside the box, chose the worst of all possible options on the table. They would send in their special forces to take and hold the island against all comers, and shoot down any aircraft that might be considered even a remote threat to that mission, to expose the Japanese for the monsters the politicians believed by their ideology that they were, just as Marshal Dong had planned.
In so doing, a calculated attempt to delay the assault on the Ocean Turtle ensured that thousands of lives would be lost on what was, in essence, a comedy of errors. With that one act, Sugou Nobuyuki would kill most of the invasion force by accident.
It would also give birth to the legend of the man who would be known as...
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terminate Oberon(null): The Red Devil of Izu
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(T-29:55 To Midnight: Aboard E-767)
The night watch aboard an EWACS aircraft tended to be an exceptionally boring thing.
There happened to be good reason for that. Boring is good; if an EWACS aircraft is having an exciting patrol around midnight, then it usually means someone has been naughty.
The radar operator, Lt. 2nd Class Matsuda, looked over his display with the same dead-eyes look as your average shark at rest, ready at a moment's notice to sniff out new prey, but content to move in the same way, resting. Of course, the industrial-sized thermos of coffee could explain his state as well.
Across the Sea of Japan, the crew of the KJ-2000 opposite them likely were suffering through the same mind-dulling boredom, as it should have been. Boredom was good.
That was why, when four blips showed up on his screen at a distance of 105 km, the radar operator jumped in his seat a little. "Major! I think we have contacts 4, unknown, heading... Wait. This can't be right..." He shifted the contents of his screen to the flight's commanding officer, who looked over the information quickly.
The officer, one Mj. Tatsumi, spied the point where the apparent aircraft had first been detected, looked over the direction they were flying, and quickly ordered an active search in that direction. Anything jumping up that closely to the aircraft as its first notice could not be normal, boring, good.
By the time he had ordered that, the enemy unknown had closed well within 100 km. A quick check of flying speed, apparent height, lack of IFF beacon that the Japanese could recognize... The fact that the path of the aircraft seemed to take them in a straight line from the last known position of the Peoples' Liberation Army Navy ('And what kind of a name was that,' a stray thought in the major's mine traitorously derailed) CVN Liaoning to almost directly toward the EWACS aircraft... "FUCK!"
It did not take a genius to be able to tell what was going on. "Get on the horn, I think we're under attack. Cease active search, prepare to commence radar jamming!. Keep an eye on those fighters, pilots, prepare for evasive action!"
As if his words were a signal to the unidentified objects, they began to climb rapidly, closing the distance rapidly as they did so. An active radar ping hit the massive EWACS aircraft based on the body of a 767, likely from the Chinese AWACS craft across the sea from them. "Additional contacts, 266 degrees, speed indicates helicopters, twelve count, coming over towards Izu from... They're launching off cargo vessels!"
Another operator, this one keeping watch on the incoming fighters, watched with his stomach trying to twist itself in knots as the aircraft closed within 80 km. "More contacts, sir, looks like... Shit." Each of the four aircraft had opened their missile bays, each loosing a JS-12 air to air missile. "INCOMING!"
The plane shuddered as the pilots did their level best to force it to turn, to try to take it out of the path of the missiles tracking the gigantic mass in the sky. Even with years of training, though, it would have taken a herculean feat of piloting skill to save the EWACS aircraft from one of the missiles, let alone all four. Instead of striking the wings and radar like it would have if the plane had kept its course, each missile slammed into the side of the ungainly aircraft, almost in a straight line.
The first part of the aircraft to separate was the tail section; it had been struck first, and the missile tore through it like it was made of paper. The middle deck was next, gutting the interior of the plane and sending the radar disc flying like a giant metal frisbee into a nearby fishing village, crushing several houses and rendering it unlivable for weeks. The third missile struck the wing, found all that delicious airplane fuel, and caused a massive fireball in the sky, making the fourth missile strike to the cockpit almost seem like a petty waste. The entire crew, of course, were less durable than the plane; they died almost instantly. It left Japan without sufficient air-based AWACS in the Izu area for fifteen minutes.
The black box recordings, when recovered two days later, exonerated Maj. Tatsumi of any possibility of wrongdoing or slackness in his command. It was of minimal comfort to the families of the first twelve casualties of the Thirty Minute War.
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(T-Minus 28:42 To Midnight)
Word spread that the first strike against Japan's ability to see the helicopters that would be taking off from cargo ships had worked like a charm; the Japanese Air Force had been caught with their pants down by China's first use of stealth aircraft in anger. The second flight of that squadron of J-31 stealth fighters began climbing in turn as their own mission went green; their target set was any transport aircraft in the area around the Ocean Turtle.
The pilot of the transport that had been carrying The Seven was an old hand at all the drills; at the moment the call went out that bandits were in the area, he took his transport as high in the sky as he could and dropped chaff and flares. The airframe shuddered from several close misses from the missiles, and they lost both sets of outer engines, but Cpt. Sakai was able to nurse his plane back to base, having already dropped off his cargo of walking death. (He would win a lottery later in life.)
The other C-2 pilot was not so lucky. The bandit warning came too late for him; his plane was struck dead-on as it was three quarters of the way through unloading SFPg soldiers from the command group. The fireteam's leader and second in command never made it off the plane.
As flaming debris and shrapnel fell, the number of those who would die before even reaching the ground skyrocketed as parachutes were sliced open, soldiers were struck and slain instantly, or were covered in burning fuel from the transport and lingered on until they finally made blessed contact with the water at terminal velocity.
It turned out that neither experience nor being superhuman was proof against the devastation caused by the transport's destruction, as Rear Admiral Ijuin found to his dismay. The sergeant at his side shouted, "Look out, sir!" even as the man veered off course. Looking around, then up, Ijuin saw one of the wings falling just as he felt something impact his chest. Trying to ditch his chute, he first tried the standard release, then when that failed, drew the line cutting knife to snip the cords holding him to his chute.
All that came out of the scabbard was the hilt and an inch of blade; whatever had hit him struck the blade, snapped it off. Looking helplessly at the tool, he saw the line, 'Made In China' on the small section of blade stub. "That figures." said he with an amused smile, shortly before being sucked into one of the falling but still very much operational jet turbines. The red trail left behind allowed no doubt as to that man's fate.
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The next targets in line for the Chinese were the transport helicopters, all so woefully slow in comparison to the fifth-generation fighters that were tearing into the skies above Izu. The jets slid in behind the formation, easily locking on to the four Black Hawk helicopters their radar spotted. For all it was worth, three of the helicopters might as well have been flying in place for the good it did them; one Japanese and one American helicopter simply disintegrated when the missile struck, while a third had gotten lucky, only losing the rear rotor close enough to the sea where the crew was able to crash land the helicopter lightly enough that the pilots saved the lives of everyone aboard, save their own.
The fourth helicopter, piloted by an evil old cuss due shortly for retirement, managed to use the shrapnel of one of the other helicopters to bounce the radar from the JS-12 missiles, to squeeze that last little bit of ability to duck out of the way of danger to pull through. Only a punctured fuel tank prevented that team from reaching the Ocean Turtle.
Stealth technology would rear up and bite the Chinese in the ass for the first time that evening. The fifth and sixth helicopters, carrying DEVGRU, used the features of the stealth variant used in the slaying of Bin Ladin more than a decade earlier. By the time the Chinese knew they were there, they had already landed.
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That was when the fighters turned about and began a shallow descent. That flight had one more set of targets to shoot down and a pair of missiles before they would need to return to the carrier to re-arm. Unfortunately for The Seven, Nanami's armor gave off a radar cross-section that a blind man miles away could have found, and though the Chinese wanted that technology in the worst way, she would have been one more complication for a ground mission by China's best; they simply could not leave someone that dangerous alive.
Four missiles slid into firing position. It was a foregone conclusion, it seemed.
Multiple unknown contacts appeared on the radar display as the missiles fired, popping up from around a nearby cliff; the jets began to turn about one last time. After all, if the Japanese wanted to send good materiel and pilots after bad, who were they to stop them? Each jet's final missile slid into place; helicopters did not belong in the same sky as fighter jets. The day's experience showed that without RADAR, Japan just didn't have the ability to hurt a stealthed...
The objects resolved in their radar, four Apaches and eight missiles headed their way. Flares fired off; the Stingers' IR seekers would not be able to defeat the baffled engines; it must have been a last, desperate move. The Apaches had blown their only anti-aircraft weapons at the first chance they had...
'Wait. How did he spot us in the first place?' thought the wingman, jinking hard right by instinct, breaking lock and shouting out, "Shit! They can see us!"
The squadron leader was so very confident in all the advantages his fighter granted him; these mud pilots were barely worth his time. Laughing, he turned into the space between missile groupings; they didn't have lock on him, they couldn't, not after that hard turn right...
His eyes narrowed, then widened even as he got tone to fire off his last missile. Pulling the trigger by instinct, he climbed as fast as he could. It was not enough.
The moment before he fired, the pilot noticed the one difference; Stingers would not have flown in a straight line as these did. He didn't know what was going on, safer to err on the side of caution, even with the quantitative advantages. The moment after he fired, he found out it was already too late.
Two of the CRV-7s' triggers fired off at the mental command of the man flying the lead helicopter. Each of the rockets, carrying the Flechette (General Purpose) warhead, sprayed eighty tungsten darts, turning the skies around them into a field of destruction, as if someone had whipped out an aerial shotgun.
The stealth jet was considerably less heavily armored than the light vehicles the round normally was used for. It, and the missile it fired, were ripped out of the sky.
"Command, this is Red Hawk 2, repeat Red Hawk 2. Splash one, rocket kill." Inside the modified NERVGear with an oxygen mask added, Hiraga Sasuke was grinning nearly ear to ear. Shirotaka's modifications to several sets of the helmets that had been the cause of death of almost four thousand of his countrymen had been placed into far more useful service to his country. Where once he would need to swap out multiple displays at once, now he could change them at the speed of thought, mix them together, and combine the minimal radar and camera feed returns his other little surprise could provide with wind speed charts and infrared, a comprehensive use of the entire sensor package available to him. He couldn't 'see' them with his sensors, but by putting it all together, he could see where they had been, extrapolate where they were going from there.
If he had that system during the Senkaku Crisis, Hiraga would have had far more than one kill.
The rest of the helicopters began to ripple-fire their rockets in order to try to keep the jets away from their charges. With the obliteration of their commander, the remaining three fighters had to take the helicopters seriously for the first time. The fighters climbed in an attempt to deny the helicopter flight an engagement they could win; they could simply dive and fire off their missiles, at least get three of them...
The dive intensified, and two of the fighter pilots got tone, pulled the trigger, and smiled as the missiles descended from above. The last of their number took just a little longer to lock on, only to look directly into the barrel of the 30mm cannon of the tail Apache as it somehow managed a barrel roll. Gennosuke snickered as he pulled the trigger, clipping the wing fuel tanks on the J-31 even as the pilot fired off that last missile into the last helicopter in Captain Hiraga's flight.
"God damnit all to hell." was all Hiraga was able to get out as the rest of his flight disappeared from his display; the empty emotion of loss turned to a cold fury as he calculated out where the jets would be heading. With a growl, he fired two more rockets by 'eye', watching as they simply flew, close to the ground, sneered as both lost engine power when the fuel ran out, and turned about for the Ocean Turtle.
"Keikaku dori, motherfuckers." whispered the Captain grimly, as his Weapons Officer trained an Avenger's entire supply of rockets and missiles on the fleeing pair. He took some small pleasure in seeing one more of the jets plummet into the sea. "Gotterdamerung Command, this is Red Hawk 2. 1, 3, and 4 are down, splash two, last bandit fleeing. Looking for instructions, over." Sasuke wished he could just simply huck the radio connection in his helmet out a window.
Then he saw the formation of parachutes continuing on their way down to the Ocean Turtle, spied far too few parachutes for the number that were supposed to drop by plane. "Gotterdamerung Actual, please come in, request orders, sir."
The one who responded was neither the general in charge of overseeing the mission, nor Rear Admiral Ijuin. Instead, it was a younger, female voice that responded. "I'm afraid he can not, Captain. General Yamamoto was aboard a 777 when it was hit; I've not heard back from him since. As for the Rear Admiral..." Shirotaka Nanami's voice began to shake as she said, "Sir, Rear Admiral Ijuin Hayato was killed in the line of duty."
It would be said in later years that Captain Hiraga's response was as eloquent as could be in the situation, which was polite conversation for the single word response he actually gave: "Fuck." He thought it through then, working his way down. "All right then, who has command of ground forces for Operation Gotterdamerung then?"
The response that came over the radio did not reinforce the pilot's confidence in the slightest. "Colonel Shinagawa was on the same plane as the general... Majors Horie and Yagami were aboard their individual helicopters... Captain Suriza was on the second transport plane when it was hit... I think that brings us to... Captain Kurosawa, I think? The one on the boat squadron, that we haven't heard from in the past five minutes..." She paused again, thinking as she continued to descend towards the Ocean Turtle. What she said next made him cringe. "After that, sir, you outrank everyone left; with Red Hawk Actual down, I believe you're the highest ranking officer in this operation left."
The need to answer that statement took a few seconds for Hiraga to think over. He was saved from actually needing to by contacts popping up on the radar he shared with the two drones his weapon operator had taken control of. They were slow, bearing none of the grace or speed of the jets that had left the battle area. "Contacts inbound, speeds..." He matched them up with what he knew about Chinese aircraft... "250 kph. Chinese helicopters, 12 count, 4 Z-8 transports and 8 Z-10 attack helis." He took one second to think it over before the thought came to him. He was effectively alone in this. "Moving to engage." Chutes were still in the air; if he was playing for the Red Team, he would have had his attack helis move to shoot down any chutes in the air. For damned sure they weren't there to wipe the Ocean Turtle off the face of the earth, not with transport choppers capable of transporting a full company between them.
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(T-Minus 27:02 to Midnight)
They had the numbers, the formations to keep him from being able to kill them easily, the transport helis protected while a flight of the Z-10s went looking for any targets on the ground or in the sea. A camera zoomed in behind the helicopters let him know what had happened to the Special Boat Squadrons, their wreckage lay behind the three flights of helicopters. It would have been an impossible problem for a single pilot to deal with.
It was a good thing for him that the Avengers were still over half full of fuel, that he had advance knowledge of them, that he had actual cover to hide behind in the form of the Ocean Turtle.
The four helicopters in the lead had closed to seven kilometers, they were as close as Hiraga Sasuke was going to allow them to get. As he just cleared the Ocean Turtle, one rocket fired from each pod, the faster CRV-7 rockets finding the point he was hoping for, right where the lead enemy helicopter would be at the moment he wanted to set off the flechette warheads.
The first warning the Chinese helicopter pilots had that something in the air lusted for their blood was when the closest incoming rocket failed to detonate, instead slamming into the cockpit of the Z-10, going through instrumentation, pilots, and engine before finally going up. A second rocket's flechettes clipped the tail rotor of a second helicopter, and chaos reigned as Hiraga's Apache closed in for the kill.
More Avengers reached the range of the Apache's control, and the weapons officer growled as she took control of them as well, weaving the drones in and out of position to spot the enemy helicopters, to give targeting data to Hiraga, and to get to work on the helicopters further back.
The Hellfire missiles and bombs were useless against helicopters, but as she began firing off the drones' rockets at the rearmost of the escort, she began working her way forward through the Chinese, hoping to squeeze them as her captain smiled.
The first hint of the helicopter squadron finding the lone Apache was the sound of a missile warning; Hiraga Sasuke cursed as he saw three missiles pop up in his radar 'display'. Thinking quickly, he mentally triggered the firing of four more rockets, before triggering them halfway there. Four blooms of blazing white heat erupted as the WP rockets blew, sending the guidance on the missiles haywire.
"My turn, assholes." Swinging his helicopter side to side, bobbing the nose up and down, Hiraga emptied the entirety of two pods into the night sky around him, giving his opposite numbers way too much raw data to have to deal with, too many potential guided missiles to need to worry about.
While the Z-10 pilots tried ducking and weaving around rockets that would have needed a direct hit to actually cause injury with, the Apache fired off its Stingers at the two furthest Z-10s in range. The last Z-10 had tried closing in to solve the problem; the two helicopters engaged in a gun duel, the two rotating around each other, trying to slide into position to finish the other.
Hiraga had needed to weave, slide around as the other helicopter finally reached the superior position of right behind him. More warning signals blared in his mind as he dove, losing altitude and another AAM in the process, and giving the Z-10 pilot time to get closer, closer as the two helicopters flew close to the burning exterior of the Ocean Turtle.
He had been maneuvering for the past minute trying to force a mistake, and as he cleared the peak of the Ocean Turtle, Hiraga dropped twenty meters in a half second, arrested forward flight, and watched with a smile as the Z-10 overshot him, tried to overcorrect by trying to climb.
"Oops. You blew it." The captain smiled, mentally 'depressing' the trigger of the M230 30mm cannon under the Apache's nose, elevating the gun as much as possible and walking the rounds right into the main body of the Z-10, coring the engine and causing the attack helicopter to detonate quite satisfyingly.
[Corporal, status on the remaining four Z-10s and the Z-8s?] canted to his Weapons Officer, making a quick check of his Apache's loadout. 'Hrm... Rockets, 32 (8 HEDP, 2 FAT, 4 General Purpose Flechette, 10 SAPHEI, and the 4/4 mix of ARM and Laser-guided Fuck Off version), 842 rounds of ammo.'
His weapons officer sighed in the backseat. [The Z-10s were cooked to Medium Rare, just as you like them, but I held off on the Z-8's, the Avengers I got control over are pretty close to Winchester.] 'said' the corporal, indicating the drones were low on ammunition. [I've still got line of sight on them, full camera feed, but they aren't going to be able to do much more than light them for you.]
Hiraga thought on that for a second, nodding to himself. [Can you get lasers on them? I've still got four PGs with that package left.] He mentally flexed his metaphorical fingers, letting the communion of man and machine guide him as the Apache closed to the four kilometer 'ideal' range for his rockets.
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(T-Minus 25:33 to Midnight)
As he calmly sat back against the uncomfortable bench on the Z-8 transport helicopter, Zue Rong closed his eyes as he listened to the mission's ground commander, an excitable young major that happened to be the son of a member of the National People's Congress, yammer into the radio, begging for any kind of anti-air assistance he could get. It was almost funny, listening to the man almost fourty years his junior losing his shit over what was, in the end, such a minor thing.
The boy (he really couldn't think of the officer as anything else) had somehow expected that the Japanese would simply roll over and die for the fighters they had sent out in support, that if there were any ground threats that the attack helicopters would be able to deal with them. Like so very many other children of China's government, the captain was considered Politically Reliable, thus perfect to the task of riding herd on a Special Forces unit, as opposed to the Actually Reliable that Zue would much rather have served under. At least that latter group did not needlessly spend the lives of their men, and tended to survive around him that much longer besides. He had served under two of them.
The plan was supposed to be simple enough, with so many different options to turn to even if a catastrophe occurred to one of the invading forces. The Chief Sergeant First Class shook his head at that; if he had been running this operation, he would have used boats launched off a cargo ship. It would have been subtle, so much quieter than the plan the generals had arranged.
Zue had bet the planning officers were fans of Michael Bay movies. His men had agreed with him.
He was also far more politically astute than his commanding officers often gave him credit for; he had known where this mission would be going when he saw the plans. Both the President and Prime Minister were aggressive nationalists with expansionist tendencies, as the Daiyou Conflict proved, but they weren't stupid enough to start a shooting war with their neighbors across the bay unless there was something to gain from it above and beyond the costs of the Americans getting involved, or unless the life-ending virus he had been warned about during the briefing actually existed.
Zue had to hope it existed, and that someone would get to it. As his commander worried on about rockets falling like rain from the skies and wiping out their escort, he just suspected it would not be him. His mind went back more than forty years, to the soothsayer he and the rest of the boys from his village had consulted just before entering the military. Her other predictions had come true...
"You, Zue Rong, child of one from a far away time and land, will be truly great in a way your friends can not be, for you shall be the man of three legends. The first legend shall be of those weaker heroes whose legends you conclude, the second legend shall be the one you build on the corpses of your nation's enemies. The final legend shall be the one of the devil who shall lay you low in this world, but even so, when you die, it shall only be after you are full of years beyond man's reckoning, with descendants stretching across that world."
He only still had the one son, the one grandson, and a month ago, a great grandson, but they were all still in China; he was still a month shy of sixty, so it seemed that the fortune-teller had been wrong with him alone. Eyes still very much sharper than normal picked out the little speck in the distance as he looked out the window, spied the slightest flare as more tiny dots began to head his way.
"Pilot. Take evasive action." said Zue, calmly, and the pilot side-skidded, losing altitude in the process.
The major was incensed, and angrily shouted, "Sergeant! Those are my orders to give; we must make all speed for the Ocean..."
The sound of three exploding helicopters, all struck by rockets, silenced the major even as Zue's smile widened. As the major looked between Zue and the pilot in shock, the aged but still lethally dangerous man of a hundred campaigns turned to look to the officer. "Something tells me, sir, that if we make it to the Ocean Turtle at all..." The sergeant looked out the front windshield, so very close, less than a kilometer away, spied the parachutes that even then began to settle to the ground atop the helicopter pad they had planned to take, "We are going to need to swim the rest of the way."
That was the moment they heard the deformed, reverberating boasting over the open radio channel, one that sounded like something from the deepest pits of Hell itself. "Hey, choads, this is <[Hellgain>]. Send some more of those pilots! The last ones tasted GrrrrrrrrEAT!!! I'll kill them all, and fuck all..."
The Apache had come closer by that time; Zue could see the gun underneath, sighed as he saw the gun flash. The 30mm rounds, rated to kill two inches of RHA, would finish the disaster the day had been for the Chinese Special Forces unit; Zue had enough time to say, "At least I will not need to listen to you babble anymore..." before the rounds were walked over the helicopter from the top, shearing the rotor shaft off through the engine and sending the helicopter into the sea.
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(T-Minus 25:05 to Midnight)
"Command, this is Red Hawk 2, splash 4 more. I am Bingo Ammo, returning to base for refuel and rearm. Valkyrie, I'm afraid air cover is gone." Hiraga Sasuke knew he was likely in no small amount of trouble for letting his mouth get ahead of his brain, of using the software aboard the helicopter for the straight-up puerile taunting over the radio, but he couldn't care much at that point in time. Those fuckers had started a shooting war with his country; he had exactly one pico-fuck to give, and decided that it wasn't time to let go of it.
[You know, they're going to crucify you for your radio shenanigans, sir.] canted his Weapons Officer, even as the helicopter flew away over the funeral pyres of their would-be attackers.
Eyebrows arched under the helmet, Hiraga sighed. [Yeah, I know, Rei, I fucked up. I guess I really am my father's son after all.]
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(T-Minus 24:54 to Midnight)
"Affirmative, Red Hawk, thanks for the cover time you gave us." Shirotaka Nanami looked around herself from the pinnacle of the Ocean Turtle, the helipad atop the floating pyramid, looking to the rest of the Seven, to the six SFPg survivors of the ill-fated air drop, and sighed.
When the four missiles had been heading their way, Endou had been quick to hijack control of the Avengers nearest them, to get a camera feed on them as they sped in. With that feed, Shino had been able to triangulate the best point at which to attempt point defense, and Nanami had turned carefully, spooling the Vulcan to full speed as the missiles came dangerously close.
The first had gone down almost immediately, hit skin-on-skin by one of the HAVoK rounds she had been saving for the ghouls, following Shino's pathing from there. The second missile blew a kilometer out; the third detonated a hundred meters closer, too close for comfort.
She only clipped the fourth; it spiraled out of control until it made contact with Nui's parachute before detonating, causing the blonde to fall rather than descend. Only a quick bit of knifework saved Shino and Greta from the same fate as the line pulled on them; as she fell, <[Torōru>] drew a serrated blade, ran it over the nylon line quickly, over and under the connection to her pack, before slicing the top of her parachute straps off, shrugging out of it as she approached terminal velocity.
Green wings erupted from her back a hundred meters from the sea, turned a fatal fall into a quick glide as the Sylph leveled out, low enough where only the most careful camera shots would have been able to spy the difference that saved her life. She circled around the Ocean Turtle once before climbing, to land before the rest of the Seven touched down.
The SFPg had been nowhere near as lucky. Almost half their number had died when the transport detonated, either from still being on board, or from the falling debris. Ripped parachutes and slashed lines accounted for others, it hadn't been the fall that killed them, but the landing. One last unfortunate man had missed his landing, found out just how sharp the antennae could be, when he impaled himself on them. The ranking SFPg member on the ground was a buck sergeant, Kuribayashi.
Even so, the command team was still in better shape than the other Japanese teams. At least they had gotten to the LZ. There was yet another problem. The ranking officer on the ground was...
"Shirotaka-Shuyōna, your orders, sir." Kikouka's jest, eleven months back, had come back to bite Nanami squarely in the ass one more time. In order to justify her presence in the RATH program on the military side (and keep her out of prison) after the death of the man who brought her in, she needed to be billeted as an officer of the rank to be able to hold an advisory position, that of Brevet Major. Originally not in the standard line of command, upon joining the Order of the Golden Kite, the command she had never wished for, never dreamed of, fell to her, the political falsehood turned into truth by her actions and consequence.
A strong part of her wanted nothing to do with it, to let the Sergeant take command, but Shirotaka Nanami could not, would not allow herself to fail her nation.
A bitter laugh escaped her lips, was broadcast out of the head of her suit. "I've never been good with this kind of thing, speeches have always been <[Roberto>]'s schtick." muttered she under her breath.
"Everyone! Gather round and listen up!" the four meter tall robot shouted as it stood to its full height, broadcast by secure radio at the same time. "Today..." Her voice wavered for an instant before Nanami buckled down on her shakiness,"Ijuin Hayato looks upon us even now, even in death, as we go forth on this most dangerous task." She turned about, looking at each member of the strike team. "At the end of this road, we find in ourselves the final ward against evil men who would murder or enslave us all, who would burn the hopes and dreams of entire peoples for power."
Her metal hand closed into a tight fist. "You are the best, brightest hope of Japan against monsters that would make our nation a grim, dark land! We choose to fight, not just for ourselves, but for each other!" A small smile crossed Nanami's lips as she continued, "I could ask of no better comrades than you to march into Hell with! Today we ruin the plans of monsters in man's image..." Her voice rose in surety and volume, "Today we cancel Sugou's Apocalypse! I'm canting groups and missions to each of you. Let's make the Rear Admiral proud."
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Strongly influenced by Stacker Pentacost's speech in Pacific Rim.
Next up: The real opposition begins.
Ooh, the PRC is gonna have a ton of egg on their face if word ever gets out that they threw their men into a meat grinder to stop a multi-national ANTI-TERRORIST assault to take down the bitch who had her finger on the detonator for enough nukes to turn the Ring of fire from figurative to literal.
Not just that. The entire mission was set in motion by Sugou trying to be smart. In their zeal to try to prevent a bioweapons threat from Japan, they've just assisted Sugou and Vaduva in weakening the assault force considerably. And that's not even including all the shit they've shot down that isn't on screen.
If Sugou had arranged that on purpose, he'd be a magnificent bastard. Instead, he just accidentally a war.
When that little tidbit comes out, it'll cause a Category 5 Herpicane. Or shitstorm. Take your pick.
Technically speaking, the only nuclear equipment that Vaduva and co. have access to is the reactor in the Ocean Turtle, which is supposed to be a simple Thorium reactor. The Hellstones, corrupted Firestones, that she's had placed, are not nuclear.
You know, in the same way the MOAB isn't. Same end effect, different cause.
Stupid aside moment: When I was rolling up what would happen to each character involved... Ijuin was the victim of four rolls of 1 on a d20 in a row, a 1:160,000 chance. That d20 did not like the Cool Old Guy. Hence his rather intricate demise.
Ouch, God wanted to make damn sure Ijuin didn't survive. Murphy's Law in action, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Well, if you're gonna go, might as well drop a deadpan snark in death's face, and leave as little of a corpse as possible so you family/friends/allies dont have to deal with something nightmarish. He did all of the above.
ecs05norway
Zenryoku Zenkai!
Daaaaamn. It's too bad, really, the Admiral was a pretty cool guy. And now the Cats have lost a major sponsor.
...Oh, that's adorable. You actually think they're going to need (or be able to use) sponsors after this shitstorm makes landfall.
The same die that hated on Ijuin loved Hellgain; I think I've burned both the good and bad luck out of it.
The same die that hated on Ijuin loved Hellgain; I think I've burned both the good and bad luck out of it.
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
C
Yeah, they shouldn't have an inch of trouble, even if they screw up by the numbers. Just taking the risks of trying to stop someone like that, with what's at stake, and most governments would gladly support them. Maybe not officially, maybe not ever, but they would support the Cats.
Considering that they're engaged in an assault on someone that's harboring the equivalent of a couple thousand nukes (and more then likely, a few ACTUAL nukes), with extremely limited reinforcements, and the person they're after isn't exactly on the right side of the sanity line.....
Yeah, they shouldn't have an inch of trouble, even if they screw up by the numbers. Just taking the risks of trying to stop someone like that, with what's at stake, and most governments would gladly support them. Maybe not officially, maybe not ever, but they would support the Cats.
Precept the first: There is a phrase, just five simple words, that I have lived my life by since Laughing Coffin's joke fell flat, since a quirk of fate placed me up against the mad killers of a criminal organization, and I gained the true strength, the ability to lay men low.
It is known by every armed force that is worth its salt, proven time and again by those with the power to make conflict, to invade or to dig in and make the enemy flee or die. That deepest, darkest of the legitimate tools of state has been in use, if the archeologists are to be believed, for over fourteen thousand years. Those states that have subscribed to the theory presented by those five words, first given voice by the Romans but in use long before them, have at least had the chance to survive; the states that act out Neville Chamberlain's infamous 'Peace At Any Cost', on the other hand, are destined for suffering as human nature combines with the willingness to survive in more fit nations, bringing about national destruction and slaughter.
I too have taken up those five simple words; even where I was not entirely ready for battle, Laughing Coffin had burned away my unwillingness to fight and kill rather than die. Those five words have seen me through battles that should have killed me, pushed me forward into the fray in this darkest hour.
Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you would have peace, prepare for war.
From the Foreword of the Last Will and Testament of Asada Shino.
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terminate Oberon(einz): Descent
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(T-Minus 23:02 to Midnight: Apex of the Ocean Turtle)
"Knock knock!" The speakers in Nanami's 'head' boomed out a sweet-sounding greeting, even as the cannons attached to her arms swung back, to leave her hands free at the top entrance to the Ocean Turtle, the doors closed, locked, and welded shut before her, as if to bar the way to any would-be invading force.
The iron bars that ran across the doors might, under normal circumstances, caused the team to look for another entrance; the breaching charges they had brought along on their trip down either landed early and at speeds far too great for future use, or had landed in the drink, as all four of Team One's demolitions crew died in the conflagration above. If it had not been for the inclusion of the other member of the strike force with the ability to break down such obstacles, the team would have had to look for another way in.
A pointed protrusion poked perilously out from just above where the middle finger would have gone were she flesh and blood; Shirotaka Nanami sped forward at all speed, slamming the tips of the pair of pointed shafts into and through the doors, before two loud explosions added another noise to the night's cacophony, as exhaust gasses blew out through her mighty steed's elbows, and as the pair of pilebunkers sheared through two inches of hardened door, popping several of the welds and bending the inferior steel used to barricade the door to uselessness.
As the rods glowed a cherry red, Nanami's arms yanked in different directions, forcing the door wide open as she said in a sickeningly cheerful voice, "Girl Scouts calling!"
To say that the reaction of the robots behind the door was less than gracious would be a minor understatement. Weaponry slid into place with casual ease as the Shi-EMOMs that had been waiting on the top floor finally were allowed to move into the ready position. Firing their weapons as rapidly as possible, the 5.56 NATO rounds slammed into the only threat they could fire at.
The latest rifles in general use with Japan sprayed rounds that would, to any normal opponent, would have been exceptionally lethal, and the grenades they fired as the chaser to the bismuth-tungsten alloy would have shredded any special forces soldier unfortunate enough to be in their forward arc.
To say that the Type 118 rifles, previously kept in the small armory on the Ocean Turtle, were woefully inadequate to the task of doing more than scratching Nanami's paint job would have been overly generous. As it was, when the shooting was done, the Golden Kite of Nippon shook her head sadly, sighed, and slid her weapons back into place in a fashion that would have been sloppy at best under other situations.
The moment her Vulcan was back in place, Shirotaka Nanami looked over the robots in front of her, her creations turned to a purpose completely opposite what she had designed them for. "My turn."
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(T-Minus 22:31 to Midnight: RATH Administration Room)
"Damnit, Sugou, you dumb fuck." Vaduva had been looking down at her very own personal curse as he lay there, locked in to the white-and-gold admin SRAIGear. He had been immersed in that alternate reality for the past two hours since whatever stunt had trapped his mind in the alternate reality that had been feeding life energy to the Bloodstone Accumulator for the past year.
Two hours ago, she had been sure that even with having to leave earlier than the moment the stars were just right, that Sugou's plan to lock three particularly annoying cats down to be put to sleep before turning them would actually work; they had been logging in from Shino's home, together. It was so simple, so easy, even a fool could do it.
The fool in question this time was not the man lying in a chair below her, but instead the one she would look at in the mirror if she could. Those three had baited Sugou into spilling the entirety of his plans, and had backup plans within plans for being able to screw over her entire chance at ascension.
Given time to reflect on it, Vaduva might have had a light chuckle at the goings on; usually she was the one whose plans, even if they failed, still had some other element succeed. Now though, so close to the time when Sugou could first pull the pair of them back to Halkegenia to repeat the entire damnable cycle yet again, she felt nothing but an all-consuming rage fill her being, the fire of her anger burning in the direction of Sugou, of the Three Black Cats, and oddly enough, at herself for being as stupid as her partner by letting him take part.
The warning sirens began to pump out the most obnoxious noise in the universe, and Vaduva briefly considered popping on a SRAIGear of her own, to personally direct the robots to make the best use of them alongside her ghouls, but she dared not trust the equipment now, not after what was happening to Sugou. Whoever had him locked in was more than just a professional; it reminded her oddly enough of Kayaba's work. "To hell with this. Winchester! Take over the robots; X'rphan, I need you protecting the generator, and your whelps to assist Winchester in protecting the robotics lab. I'm going to unlock the ghouls and terminate Project Feuerschwing before they have a chance to find her."
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(T-Minus 22:12 To Midnight: Ocean Turtle Access Shaft, 12th Deck)
It was an easy thing, the force pushing its way through the entryway, planting the radio beacon for another nasty little surprise for those inside the Ocean Turtle. The Seven and the surviving members of Team One had policed a few of the assault rifles from the robots, stripping ammunition from the other robots present, before closing in on the elevator shaft that would have led them down to the depths of the Ocean Turtle where they needed to go.
It took just a little time for Shino to open the door of the first elevator, to slip inside, force the ceiling panel loose, jump up, and climb onto the maintenance area, before clasping a little bit of a rust brown paste onto the cables holding the elevator up, on the safety brakes. From there, she slowly worked her way around to the next cable, jumping to the next set of elevator's cables and doing likewise with them. It was only when Nanami forced the last elevator's doors open that Shino leaped clear onto the elevator access.
"This wreck, going DOWN!" Endou waited until the pair were clear, behind another set of doors before she mentally triggered the thermite charges that had been saved for denying rapid access up or down. The elevator car that had been on the same floor as the attack force dropped as the cables holding it in place failed, as the car was saved for a brief moment by the brakes before they ignited as well, the car plunging down twelve decks, all while metal cables snapped, whipped, and made an awful racket inside the elevator shafts. The first step to retaking the Ocean Turtle was complete, Shino's work had gone well, she had welded one of the cables into a loop to allow rapid descent to everyone not named Shirotaka Nanami, but the Great Enemy's forces looking to get at them would have to take the stairs.
"First step complete." Once the cable had fully cooled, Nanami began to descend the stairs to hold them against all comers as she slowly stepped down the narrow stairway on her way to the Robotics Lab on the 8th Deck. "Command, this is <[Valkyrie>], acting Jay-Six. The beacon should be active, upward mobility is hampered per the plan, please advise, over."
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(T-Minus 20:48 To Midnight: Battleship Iowa)
"Jay-Six, this is Iowa-Six." A man with shoulderboards full of gold smiled thinly as he looked down on the massive 18-inch guns that had just finished firing on one of the major bad actors on the field of battle, a pleased smile as he answered. After all, his command had just proven the efficacy of RAP projectiles in a modern war beyond any possible doubt.
He was watching an enemy vessel, the Chinese Aircraft Carrier Liaoning, begin to list to port on video. Six rounds of RAP had been guided in by laser, the massive shells slamming home with all the gentle loving caress of a hurricane. A deep tear in the hull of the other vessel signified, if not its sinking, then at the very least complete loss of use for a good long while. One of the other men on the bridge looked to him, and when the admiral nodded twice shouted out, "Fire for effect, two volleys."
The Chinese had seen fit to send their aircraft carrier dangerously close to Japanese waters to launch their jets. The crew of the Liaoning would pay for that poor planning on the part of the Chinese admiralty, and the Iowa would finally get to rack up its first ship to ship sinking. "This is Iowa-Six-Actual. Affirmative on the beacon, we're reading it loud and clear." The admiral sighed, looking at the countdown on the mission board. If the teams sent in failed to make it back out, his orders were to use a nuclear Tomahawk to blow the Ocean Turtle out of the water. It had already been signed off on by National Command Authority. "Be advised, mission timer is at thirty minutes; you have that long to call back here one way or the other."
The voice of the young teenaged girl came from the radio. "Affirmative, check in times of half hour. Status of American assets?"
"Team One is KIA, Team Two is RTB for RnR, DEVGRU should be on station in less than three." The admiral sighed; thirty of America's best, wiped out by an attack no one had seen coming. "Any more aerial attacks will come from the mainland, the Liaoning is at fifteen degree list and looking to capsize. Please note, DEVGRU will land on the helipad to go for the Engine Room, you are clear to Floor 3."
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(T-Minus 20:24 to Midnight: The Elevator Shaft)
There simply was no way for Nanami to make her way down the elevators; even if the assault force had left any of the cars intact, none of them were rated to hold machines that competed closely with APCs in weight. The rest of the team would have to do without unless and until they got to the bottom floor.
Asada Shino really didn't have time to think too much about it as she descended down the shaft to the eleventh floor. As she waited for the soldiers just below her to jam the steel rod that would allow them to open the doors, one wise soul stated, "Eleventh floor: Gym gear, zombies, and lingerie!"
Here and there, a snicker reached out for the oppressive silence, to punch it in the face. "Jiro, you funny fuck, not the time for it." One of the younger soldiers said that bit seriously, before adding, "Not like they have any Victoria's Secret in your size anyway."
It brought a true smile to Shino's lips. Here, where death waited around the corner to punish any mistake or run of bad luck, her comrades, human and superhuman alike, were cracking jokes. Nanami was right; if anyone had to go into that infested pit straight out of a zombie movie, she was glad that she had these soldiers by her side.
The doors cracked open after a few seconds; whoever had control of the facility had not had the time to lock the doors down fully. Wedging the door in place with a piece of rebar, the Seven And Twelve had time to look into the lobby.
It was not a pretty sight.
Several of the civilian members of the Ocean Turtle's crew had apparently been caught out in the open when the artificial island went off the air; bullets had penetrated most of them, though here and there one could find a corpse riddled with bites instead. All jesting ended, as the Seven got down to the dirty work at hand. First checking for life signs, after finding none Kyuzi and Endou, Shino and Nui, Hana and Greta, would break the spines of each of the corpses, or snip it, or simply cut the head off. There would be no attack from behind.
It was eerie. There was no sign of the enemy they had been warned about.
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(T-Minus 19:52 to Midnight: The Stairwell)
Meanwhile, Nanami was walking her suit down the open-air stairwell, taking her time on the steps that had been made not for machines like herself, but instead for people. Twice she had begun to stumble, twice a quick slide with the wheelies in the heels of her feet allowed her to keep from smashing into the ground. She was already down to the tenth floor, not stopping to take care of whatever business might need attending to on the floor above.
She had her own job to do, make sure nothing would be able to sneak up on the other team unannounced. Pulling another mine from the dispenser on the left leg, she slapped it up against the wall, feeling to ensure the stakes went in and held it in place. She moved on then, triggering the timer before the mine went live by thought, before entering the doorway to that floor.
"All right. Entering the Tenth Floor. Be advised..." Her pilebunkers extended out at once as monsters that might have looked at home in a Romero movie jumped up at her, kebobing them on the long metal spikes before flinging the undead monstrosities away at speeds sure to crush limbs and ruin flesh. They would most assuredly not be back, at least not in time to do anything useful. "Ghouls have been sighted on Floor Ten."
She found it more than a little odd. Where was the weaponry? Where were the robots? Had they truly achieved surprise against Vaduva and the Sock Puppet?
Nanami would not find the answer to that question on the Tenth Floor, it seemed. She spotted more ghouls as time went on, but they were facing exactly the wrong opposition to spread their curse.
There was no weak flesh to infect; no heartstrings to tug anymore. Shirotaka Nanami looked to the massive hordes of undead, the former researchers and workers on the Ocean Turtle, and could only sigh in disdain as she speared a ghoul that might have been attractive in life, stepped on a twenty-something hipster, picked up, crushed, and tossed aside an intern like it was just another day in the office.
Shirotaka Nanami had jested that there was no way war could be a machine in the past; it was too inefficient, too liable to blow up in the face of those using it as a weapon. As she turned bloodthirsty crowds of unfortunate trapped souls into red ruin, though, she could no longer doubt that she most certainly was a machine: Cold-hearted, ruthless, efficient, a perfect killer.
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(T-Minus 19:05 to Midnight: Deck 9)
It was too easy, the top two floors. As the main team continued down the shaft past the deck where Nanami was working her magic, they spied the imprint of a human body in the door itself. There was no way to enter that floor, not with the inability to close the door back up again. From the sound over the radio, it seemed their leader needed no help anyway.
As they descended further, Endou began to feel a little oddly as the door began to open, feeling a twitch on her shoulder blades, then at her spine, and back again. The sensation began to thrum with power the further down they got; the combination of that and the lack of an actual fight left her on edge, even as the door to the lower Residential Deck opened up, and their luck hit rock bottom.
The old jumpmaster, Jiro, had looked to the side for the briefest moment as he stuck his head around the door to the elevator. "Oh, SHIIII..." was all he had time to get out, before he was pulled away from the elevator, where the team heard the sound of his bones snapping bouncing off the elevator walls, the man's last wails of agony cut short in a gurgle.
It was Sergeant Kuribayashi that was fastest on the ball then. Reaching for her belt, she slid one of the special smoke grenades that Nanami had made off, caught the pin on a hinge on her webbing, and tossed the contraption around the corner Jiro had the misfortune to be pulled around. There was no other sound than the tube rolling for four... three... two... one...
A hiss slowly escaped the smoke grenade as the surviving members of the team waited patiently for a response, anything that might tell them the colloidal silver grenade was going to do anything. A groan was the response, the sound increasing in volume as the spray made its way around the hallway, ghouls hitting the ground and covering their faces as what amounted to chemical warfare against the undead had been unleashed. Wet thumps struck the floor as the groaning came closer to the elevator, as the SFPg prepared their sidearms for fire.
As the first set of ghouls cleared the open elevator door, they turned into a hellstorm of pistol fire. "Fire discipline! Fire discipline, damnit, don't waste your ammo!" screamed Kuribayashi as she held her own fire, but the JSDF soldiers had already turned the first unfortunate ghoul into a fleshy colander at that point, even as the next ghoul crawled forward, flesh melting off from where the aerosol silver made contact with skin.
Shaking her head, Endou simply held her free hand out, pointing at the next ghoul. "Se Zan." intoned the teenager, and a bolt of blazing white light shot out, catching the ghoul and blasting it out of existence. "Nothing personal, just you're the ugliest fucking thing I've ever seen." muttered she, waiting on the word to descend down to the door. "Shino?"
Eyes narrowed to pick out the finest detail, the catgirl in human flesh sniffed the air, turned an ear to the door. "No movement. Tororu, Hansel, Gretel, be ready to go in as soon as I poke around the doorway." Sliding down around Nui and the twins, Shino swayed on the cable gently, balancing her own weight against that of those above her carefully, building up momentum before launching herself through the portal. Drawing her pistols as she flew through, Shino rolled along the floor as she looked for anything moving.
The grenade, effectively a chemical weapon for use against the undead, had worked better than advertised. Where once corrupted flesh existed, now only puddles of diseased puss flowed along the floors, leaving the skeletons intact, that and the ruin that was the body of their jumpmaster.
Jiro had several large chunks simply ripped out of his body by the teeth of the monsters that had ripped him from his place on the line, including the gaping hole that used to be his throat. Even then, he still moved ever so slightly, getting up slowly. A groaning wheeze escaped his throat as he began to limp towards Shino.
"Shit, Jiro. You deserved better than this." Shaking her head, the girl holstered her pistol before drawing the hatchet from over her shoulder, turned it about, and threw it casually between the eyes of her former comrade, returning him to the slumber eternal. "Rest in peace; I'll get your justice for you."
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(T-Minus 17:34 to Midnight: Skies over the Ocean Turtle)
"Well, fuck my life. Look down there, <[Vector>]!" The overly-excitable SEAL with the callsign of <[Jester>] beamed as he spied a man actually swimming towards the bulk of the Ocean Turtle. "Looks like one of our guys made it out alive after all! We got time for a flying pickup, boss?"
Sighing, Gabriel Miller shook his head as the two helicopters continued flying. "Pilot, drop him one of the self-inflating buoys, it's the best that we can do at the moment." Getting on the radio himself, he contacted the Iowa. "Iowa Six, this is Vector. I have some good news and some bad news..."
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(T-Minus 17:16 to Midnight: Sea of Japan)
He had stopped his progress when he heard the sound of the helicopters, but as they continued flying past him, Zue Rong felt some small relief as he continued to swim. After all, part of his mission briefing was that none of them were to allow themselves to be captured alive; even without most of his equipment, he could still prevent that from happening. For the moment, though, the helicopters did not seem intent on catching him, instead moving on to the Ocean Turtle at full speed.
Some unknown instinct caused him to look up as he swam forward; the last survivor of the Chinese assault team stopped swimming, kicked back as he saw the lighted object fall from on high. He had no idea if it was a bomb, or some kind of equipment, but it would likely not do to have it land on him before he could find out whatever it might be.
When the package struck the water, his breath caught, as the object rapidly expanded, the rubber raft just the right size for a crew of three, not that he would need it. Zue Rong was the last member of the assault team alive; the sharks had gotten the rest of them, hunted down due to their lack of awareness of the gray fins in the water. Where his team (and that arrogant prick of a major that he had been saddled with) had proven not up to the task of survival, he had spied the predatory fish, had his knife ready, and added shark blood to his list of things that he no longer needed to taste before he died.
'And the answer to that one...' The most dangerous man in the water snarked internally as he pulled himself into the life raft, 'is like shit, only less tasty.' As Zue Rong sighed in relief, he pulled the paddle out of the cubby in the bottom of the raft floor. "Well, no use for it. Onward! To Destiny!!!"
"Oh hell, that just sounded so fucking corny." Laughing as he rowed, he shook his head, following the helicopters by eye... "Wait. Is that a fucking dragon?"
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(T-Minus 16:56 to Midnight: Skies over Ovean Turtle)
Unfortunately for the crews of the helicopters, it most certainly was. X'rphan had sired many young upon making his way to this new world, and one of his brood peered at the two helicopters from atop the radio antennae as the insect-like aircraft approached. The blue dragon shook her head as she unwound from around the cool metal, unfurled her wings, and prepared to take flight.
Her father had been adamant about how close any kind of helicopter was allowed to get to the Ocean Turtle: Not at all.
The lead helicopter pilot had seen a lot of strange things over the years, but as the dragon leaped into the sky, flapped her wings to gain height, he froze for just a moment. That hesitation did not kill him, though. Instead, as the dragon opened her mouth, the machine gun on the rear helicopter began its steady beat, the rounds tearing into the fleshy region of the young dragon's mouth, spoiling the shot.
Breathing a sigh of relief, the lead pilot flew in quickly, hoping to land and offload his lethal cargo before whatever the hell that was had time to come around for another pass. That rapid action placed the helicopter close to the underside of the dragon, and the scaly beast smiled wickedly despite the pain of the several dozen furrows carved down the inside of her throat. She stopped flapping her wings, gliding down into the helicopter with claws extended.
The rapidly spinning rotor made contact with one of the claws, and while the dragon received some much needed spa treatment with its overlong claws, the rotor blades sheared off from being stopped in place; the engine seizing up and the shaft snapping. The falling aircraft did make contact with the Ocean Turtle before it skidded off the side of the deck, dragging each of the men on board into the sea with it.
"PILOT! SWING US PERPENDICULAR TO THE DRAGON!" bellowed Essex as he reached for the handle of an AT-4 anti-tank weapon. The SEALs around him wondered what he was thinking for a second or two, before making a path between the two doors of the helicopter, one man ready on either side to open up.
As the dragon came back around on her second pass, she opened her maw once more to draw in the air she would need to breathe out a burst of cold on the unlucky helicopter. "OPEN THE DOORS, BACKBLAST CLEAR!!!" screamed out the massive black man, the Swede-designed missile launcher up and ready to fire as the doors opened.
The dragon's eyes opened wide upon spying the rocket launcher lined up with her head, Essex pulled the trigger, the anti-tank rocket shot out as the flame went out of the exhaust port and out the opposite side. Even so, the dragon was almost fast enough to close her mouth before the rocket struck.
Almost.
The 84mm HEDP round made contact with the back of the dragon's throat. The effect was as spectacular as it was lethal, as the scales that would have made such fine protection for the dragon's head served instead to channel the blast inward. As the dragon fell from the sky, its neck bent at the wrong angle for it to have survived, and liquid seeped out of the ears.
Jester could only shake his head, looking to Gabriel as the helicopter flew onto the deck of the artificial island. "Um... So, you want to tell the admiral the good news?"
Fixing the concealed Puca with a stare, Gabriel Miller cleared his throat, making a sound akin to a Murloc getting caught in a trash compactor as he did so. "Iowa Six, this is Vector Six. Helicopter 1 is down, but I see men in the water. I'll leave a line for them to get up while we get underway." At Jester's continued pestering, the team leader sighed. "Do I really have to say this? All right, if it'll shut you up. Essex recorded a Smaug Kill, repeat Smaug Kill." Looking back to Jester, he said, "I hate you."
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(T-Minus 16:29 to Midnight: Research Deck 8)
It had taken the non-mechanized portion of the Seven and Thirteen six and a half minutes to make their way to the eighth floor, the Ocean Biology Lab. From the briefing, the two teams had expected to find the experiments used as a cover for the Ocean Turtle's true purpose. After all, the civilian scientists needed to have some place to work to make it look good, and Nanami had memorized the sticking points for their part in the farce.
When one of the doors next to the two teams suddenly burst open before anyone had a chance to scout it out, the running thought was that this was it; they would be trapped here and picked off one at a time.
So it was that, when the combined group of robots and ghouls began trying to rush towards one of the laboratory sections in plain view and with easy access to the attackers, the first thought had been to hide in place, until the first human scream pierced the ears of the members of the team.
They could have waited for all the screaming to stop. There shouldn't have been anything on this floor of interest to the anti-terror force.
Whatever their other faults might have been, the Twelve were soldiers. They did not borrow trouble when they did not need to, and at that moment, the loss of a few lives was the right military choice.
Despite her training, Shirou Endou was not a soldier. "Setto wilnachik vethleka chimu jan!" she screamed out, the glowing golden script wrapping around her like a comfortable old coat. One outstretched hand spread wide open, releasing the hundred blazing white and gold bolts into the backs of the robots and ghouls, rage etched onto her face as she stepped forward, hammer in the other hand. She had been feeling odd ever since entering the Ocean Turtle, but as she watched the bolts strike home, watched as they homed in on their targets like so many micro-missiles seeking the flesh and metal of her foes, she felt the not-so-tender burning sensation of Fae blood in her nostrils. Gritting her teeth, Endou gripped her hammer in both hands, slamming it home into a robot that had survived the onslaught of the Fae-touched girl's danmaku barrage and sending the head through the torso of the nearest ghoul.
"Fuck... Spyder, what the HELL did you do that for? They know we're coming now, and where we are!" Kuribayashi's glare at the teenager bore the kind of intensity that, had it been able to be harnessed as a weapon, would have struck the eldest member of the Seven dead on the spot.
Endou turned her head slowly, so as to try to disarm the social situation as quickly as possible. The blazing red in her eyes, however, told rather more of her feelings than she allowed herself to otherwise show. "They have a Fae in there, Sarge... They're running fucking experiments on fucking Fae..."
Shaking her head, Shino sighed as she walked around, over, and in a few cases through the mortal remains of the ghouls and robots left behind as the collateral damage from Endou's temper tantrum. "Well, now that she's fucked it for us, it's time we un-fucked it. Let's see if we can salvage anything from this shitshow before we hit the next floor..." Leaving Roberto, the twins, and Nui to cover the door, Shino led Endou and the SFPg into the room their foes were heading into.
Laying asleep in a metallic cradle was a short-haired, tanned redhead. She was wearing monitoring electronics, restraints, a red Psych Ward SRAIGear, and not much else. More of the same type of cradles lay along the rest of that bulkhead; all of them looked recently used.
"Oh damnit." stated one of the soldiers, "That shitbag Sugou really is looking to end up in a tenth layer of Hell..." Reaching out for the helmet, he pulled it off, while the other soldiers began looking around, to find anything that would speed up their little detour.
With the helmet off, a pair of sharp-pointed ears were revealed, and as the soldier began breaking the restraints, the young woman awoke, bright blue eyes looking out at the laboratory. "What... Where... Where am I? This doesn't look like Glocken... Or like the hospital..."
The soldier offered the girl his overshirt, turning his head to one side as he did so. Looking down, the girl noticed her lack of clothing, drew in a sharp breath, and let out an ear-piercing scream.
"That went well, I think." said Endou, sighting down the hallway with her rifle.
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(T-Minus 16:07 to Midnight: Research Deck 7)
Looking through Endou's eyes for a brief moment, Nanami was startled for a moment, before matching up the girl's new appearance to that of someone she had remembered from way back when the ZO attacked. It didn't take her long to find it.
"Shit. I think I know who she is, or was, team. Facial recognition puts her face, minus the Salamander Tan and ears, as one Takemiya Kotone, the girl that lived longest from the train after the Shingawa Station Disaster... I dare say she survived a great deal longer than anyone suspected." Nanami could not keep the contempt out of her voice, as she continued, "We were wondering who pulled the trigger on that little stunt; I think we can pin that atrocity on our targets now too."
She had just forced open another door, and as she slowly walked into the Upper Robotics Deck, only to spy more of the mechanical mooks walking out of storage cradles, a few here and there picking up steel scrap that had the right heft to make for an improvised weapon of some use. "Oh please... Don't tell me that Sugou cheaped out on the guns for you guys..." Nanami began to laugh, even as the robots in the Seventh Floor Foyer leaped at her.
"Obviously the dumb shit has never played any kind of a strategy game before..." A fist reached out to grab an outstretched leg, swung the robot around in a circle in order to clear the area before her suit raised a leg and brought it down on the unfortunate robot's head. "Oh please. I built you tin cans, I know how to end you, just like..." Her Vulcan spooled up, and as it began to fire, Nanami finished grimly, "This."
Robots by the dozen were turned into very expensive scrap by the dozen, unprepared for dealing with a foe that matched them strength for strength. "Come on! Give me a challenge already!"
Even as the words left her mouth, she heard the hiss of a pair of animals behind her. Spinning quickly, she took the first tail-slap on the hardened chest armor, as a blue-scaled dragon turned about in the tight quarters. Its partner opened a mouth with long fangs wide, and breathed out.
The cold was intense. Nanami could feel a chill, even in her environmentally sealed cabin, and felt her control over the suit begin to grow sluggish, even as her reaction times sped up from the computer being supercooled. Tertiary pipes began to freeze and expand when the dragon's breath began to peter out.
Even looking over the damage reports and feeling the machine's pain, Nanami's smile widened further, until it threatened to take in her head. "FOR ME! THANK YOU!!!"
Switching to full wheel drive, Nanami closed the distance between the two drakes quickly, making use of the production machinery to provide cover as she darted from place to place, keeping the dragons guessing where she might fire from. The closer one thought it had a shot at the robot's back, when suddenly Nanami twirled with grace no one should have expected of a four meter tall robot, facing the dragon, even as a fist cocked back.
That dragon had been more worried about the massive cannon strapped to the robot soldier's arms. It should have worried more about the fist. The right hook smashed into the side of the dragon's head, even as Nanami's left foot lined up to knee the dragon in the jaw. She had aligned the blow perfectly. When the dragon's head jerked up to avoid the oncoming strike, the scaly monstrosity placed its eyes right in the path of Nanami's descending pilebunker.
"In the name of Christ, Saint Michael, and the Chrysanthemum Throne, I say unto thee, go back to Hell." The pilebunker, which had poked out an eye, fired and went the rest of the way in. The dragon shuddered once, then dropped on the spot, dead.
The other dragon, seeing its mate slain, reared up on its back legs in an impressive display of threat, horns poking into the ceiling. It hissed at Nanami, and bellowed out, "Impudent human... You die screaming!"
Laughter was Nanami's response. "Oh please. Your whatever the fuck it was just died at the hands of a girl. I doubt you'll do any better, chump." Her pilebunkers extended and crossed as she said in an even tone, "The Kite of Nippon is my name." As Nanami's cannon began to swing back into place to deal with the other real threat on that deck, she added ominously, "Slaying the wicked to soothe my pain."
It is known by every armed force that is worth its salt, proven time and again by those with the power to make conflict, to invade or to dig in and make the enemy flee or die. That deepest, darkest of the legitimate tools of state has been in use, if the archeologists are to be believed, for over fourteen thousand years. Those states that have subscribed to the theory presented by those five words, first given voice by the Romans but in use long before them, have at least had the chance to survive; the states that act out Neville Chamberlain's infamous 'Peace At Any Cost', on the other hand, are destined for suffering as human nature combines with the willingness to survive in more fit nations, bringing about national destruction and slaughter.
I too have taken up those five simple words; even where I was not entirely ready for battle, Laughing Coffin had burned away my unwillingness to fight and kill rather than die. Those five words have seen me through battles that should have killed me, pushed me forward into the fray in this darkest hour.
Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you would have peace, prepare for war.
From the Foreword of the Last Will and Testament of Asada Shino.
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terminate Oberon(einz): Descent
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(T-Minus 23:02 to Midnight: Apex of the Ocean Turtle)
"Knock knock!" The speakers in Nanami's 'head' boomed out a sweet-sounding greeting, even as the cannons attached to her arms swung back, to leave her hands free at the top entrance to the Ocean Turtle, the doors closed, locked, and welded shut before her, as if to bar the way to any would-be invading force.
The iron bars that ran across the doors might, under normal circumstances, caused the team to look for another entrance; the breaching charges they had brought along on their trip down either landed early and at speeds far too great for future use, or had landed in the drink, as all four of Team One's demolitions crew died in the conflagration above. If it had not been for the inclusion of the other member of the strike force with the ability to break down such obstacles, the team would have had to look for another way in.
A pointed protrusion poked perilously out from just above where the middle finger would have gone were she flesh and blood; Shirotaka Nanami sped forward at all speed, slamming the tips of the pair of pointed shafts into and through the doors, before two loud explosions added another noise to the night's cacophony, as exhaust gasses blew out through her mighty steed's elbows, and as the pair of pilebunkers sheared through two inches of hardened door, popping several of the welds and bending the inferior steel used to barricade the door to uselessness.
As the rods glowed a cherry red, Nanami's arms yanked in different directions, forcing the door wide open as she said in a sickeningly cheerful voice, "Girl Scouts calling!"
To say that the reaction of the robots behind the door was less than gracious would be a minor understatement. Weaponry slid into place with casual ease as the Shi-EMOMs that had been waiting on the top floor finally were allowed to move into the ready position. Firing their weapons as rapidly as possible, the 5.56 NATO rounds slammed into the only threat they could fire at.
The latest rifles in general use with Japan sprayed rounds that would, to any normal opponent, would have been exceptionally lethal, and the grenades they fired as the chaser to the bismuth-tungsten alloy would have shredded any special forces soldier unfortunate enough to be in their forward arc.
To say that the Type 118 rifles, previously kept in the small armory on the Ocean Turtle, were woefully inadequate to the task of doing more than scratching Nanami's paint job would have been overly generous. As it was, when the shooting was done, the Golden Kite of Nippon shook her head sadly, sighed, and slid her weapons back into place in a fashion that would have been sloppy at best under other situations.
The moment her Vulcan was back in place, Shirotaka Nanami looked over the robots in front of her, her creations turned to a purpose completely opposite what she had designed them for. "My turn."
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(T-Minus 22:31 to Midnight: RATH Administration Room)
"Damnit, Sugou, you dumb fuck." Vaduva had been looking down at her very own personal curse as he lay there, locked in to the white-and-gold admin SRAIGear. He had been immersed in that alternate reality for the past two hours since whatever stunt had trapped his mind in the alternate reality that had been feeding life energy to the Bloodstone Accumulator for the past year.
Two hours ago, she had been sure that even with having to leave earlier than the moment the stars were just right, that Sugou's plan to lock three particularly annoying cats down to be put to sleep before turning them would actually work; they had been logging in from Shino's home, together. It was so simple, so easy, even a fool could do it.
The fool in question this time was not the man lying in a chair below her, but instead the one she would look at in the mirror if she could. Those three had baited Sugou into spilling the entirety of his plans, and had backup plans within plans for being able to screw over her entire chance at ascension.
Given time to reflect on it, Vaduva might have had a light chuckle at the goings on; usually she was the one whose plans, even if they failed, still had some other element succeed. Now though, so close to the time when Sugou could first pull the pair of them back to Halkegenia to repeat the entire damnable cycle yet again, she felt nothing but an all-consuming rage fill her being, the fire of her anger burning in the direction of Sugou, of the Three Black Cats, and oddly enough, at herself for being as stupid as her partner by letting him take part.
The warning sirens began to pump out the most obnoxious noise in the universe, and Vaduva briefly considered popping on a SRAIGear of her own, to personally direct the robots to make the best use of them alongside her ghouls, but she dared not trust the equipment now, not after what was happening to Sugou. Whoever had him locked in was more than just a professional; it reminded her oddly enough of Kayaba's work. "To hell with this. Winchester! Take over the robots; X'rphan, I need you protecting the generator, and your whelps to assist Winchester in protecting the robotics lab. I'm going to unlock the ghouls and terminate Project Feuerschwing before they have a chance to find her."
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(T-Minus 22:12 To Midnight: Ocean Turtle Access Shaft, 12th Deck)
It was an easy thing, the force pushing its way through the entryway, planting the radio beacon for another nasty little surprise for those inside the Ocean Turtle. The Seven and the surviving members of Team One had policed a few of the assault rifles from the robots, stripping ammunition from the other robots present, before closing in on the elevator shaft that would have led them down to the depths of the Ocean Turtle where they needed to go.
It took just a little time for Shino to open the door of the first elevator, to slip inside, force the ceiling panel loose, jump up, and climb onto the maintenance area, before clasping a little bit of a rust brown paste onto the cables holding the elevator up, on the safety brakes. From there, she slowly worked her way around to the next cable, jumping to the next set of elevator's cables and doing likewise with them. It was only when Nanami forced the last elevator's doors open that Shino leaped clear onto the elevator access.
"This wreck, going DOWN!" Endou waited until the pair were clear, behind another set of doors before she mentally triggered the thermite charges that had been saved for denying rapid access up or down. The elevator car that had been on the same floor as the attack force dropped as the cables holding it in place failed, as the car was saved for a brief moment by the brakes before they ignited as well, the car plunging down twelve decks, all while metal cables snapped, whipped, and made an awful racket inside the elevator shafts. The first step to retaking the Ocean Turtle was complete, Shino's work had gone well, she had welded one of the cables into a loop to allow rapid descent to everyone not named Shirotaka Nanami, but the Great Enemy's forces looking to get at them would have to take the stairs.
"First step complete." Once the cable had fully cooled, Nanami began to descend the stairs to hold them against all comers as she slowly stepped down the narrow stairway on her way to the Robotics Lab on the 8th Deck. "Command, this is <[Valkyrie>], acting Jay-Six. The beacon should be active, upward mobility is hampered per the plan, please advise, over."
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(T-Minus 20:48 To Midnight: Battleship Iowa)
"Jay-Six, this is Iowa-Six." A man with shoulderboards full of gold smiled thinly as he looked down on the massive 18-inch guns that had just finished firing on one of the major bad actors on the field of battle, a pleased smile as he answered. After all, his command had just proven the efficacy of RAP projectiles in a modern war beyond any possible doubt.
He was watching an enemy vessel, the Chinese Aircraft Carrier Liaoning, begin to list to port on video. Six rounds of RAP had been guided in by laser, the massive shells slamming home with all the gentle loving caress of a hurricane. A deep tear in the hull of the other vessel signified, if not its sinking, then at the very least complete loss of use for a good long while. One of the other men on the bridge looked to him, and when the admiral nodded twice shouted out, "Fire for effect, two volleys."
The Chinese had seen fit to send their aircraft carrier dangerously close to Japanese waters to launch their jets. The crew of the Liaoning would pay for that poor planning on the part of the Chinese admiralty, and the Iowa would finally get to rack up its first ship to ship sinking. "This is Iowa-Six-Actual. Affirmative on the beacon, we're reading it loud and clear." The admiral sighed, looking at the countdown on the mission board. If the teams sent in failed to make it back out, his orders were to use a nuclear Tomahawk to blow the Ocean Turtle out of the water. It had already been signed off on by National Command Authority. "Be advised, mission timer is at thirty minutes; you have that long to call back here one way or the other."
The voice of the young teenaged girl came from the radio. "Affirmative, check in times of half hour. Status of American assets?"
"Team One is KIA, Team Two is RTB for RnR, DEVGRU should be on station in less than three." The admiral sighed; thirty of America's best, wiped out by an attack no one had seen coming. "Any more aerial attacks will come from the mainland, the Liaoning is at fifteen degree list and looking to capsize. Please note, DEVGRU will land on the helipad to go for the Engine Room, you are clear to Floor 3."
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(T-Minus 20:24 to Midnight: The Elevator Shaft)
There simply was no way for Nanami to make her way down the elevators; even if the assault force had left any of the cars intact, none of them were rated to hold machines that competed closely with APCs in weight. The rest of the team would have to do without unless and until they got to the bottom floor.
Asada Shino really didn't have time to think too much about it as she descended down the shaft to the eleventh floor. As she waited for the soldiers just below her to jam the steel rod that would allow them to open the doors, one wise soul stated, "Eleventh floor: Gym gear, zombies, and lingerie!"
Here and there, a snicker reached out for the oppressive silence, to punch it in the face. "Jiro, you funny fuck, not the time for it." One of the younger soldiers said that bit seriously, before adding, "Not like they have any Victoria's Secret in your size anyway."
It brought a true smile to Shino's lips. Here, where death waited around the corner to punish any mistake or run of bad luck, her comrades, human and superhuman alike, were cracking jokes. Nanami was right; if anyone had to go into that infested pit straight out of a zombie movie, she was glad that she had these soldiers by her side.
The doors cracked open after a few seconds; whoever had control of the facility had not had the time to lock the doors down fully. Wedging the door in place with a piece of rebar, the Seven And Twelve had time to look into the lobby.
It was not a pretty sight.
Several of the civilian members of the Ocean Turtle's crew had apparently been caught out in the open when the artificial island went off the air; bullets had penetrated most of them, though here and there one could find a corpse riddled with bites instead. All jesting ended, as the Seven got down to the dirty work at hand. First checking for life signs, after finding none Kyuzi and Endou, Shino and Nui, Hana and Greta, would break the spines of each of the corpses, or snip it, or simply cut the head off. There would be no attack from behind.
It was eerie. There was no sign of the enemy they had been warned about.
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(T-Minus 19:52 to Midnight: The Stairwell)
Meanwhile, Nanami was walking her suit down the open-air stairwell, taking her time on the steps that had been made not for machines like herself, but instead for people. Twice she had begun to stumble, twice a quick slide with the wheelies in the heels of her feet allowed her to keep from smashing into the ground. She was already down to the tenth floor, not stopping to take care of whatever business might need attending to on the floor above.
She had her own job to do, make sure nothing would be able to sneak up on the other team unannounced. Pulling another mine from the dispenser on the left leg, she slapped it up against the wall, feeling to ensure the stakes went in and held it in place. She moved on then, triggering the timer before the mine went live by thought, before entering the doorway to that floor.
"All right. Entering the Tenth Floor. Be advised..." Her pilebunkers extended out at once as monsters that might have looked at home in a Romero movie jumped up at her, kebobing them on the long metal spikes before flinging the undead monstrosities away at speeds sure to crush limbs and ruin flesh. They would most assuredly not be back, at least not in time to do anything useful. "Ghouls have been sighted on Floor Ten."
She found it more than a little odd. Where was the weaponry? Where were the robots? Had they truly achieved surprise against Vaduva and the Sock Puppet?
Nanami would not find the answer to that question on the Tenth Floor, it seemed. She spotted more ghouls as time went on, but they were facing exactly the wrong opposition to spread their curse.
There was no weak flesh to infect; no heartstrings to tug anymore. Shirotaka Nanami looked to the massive hordes of undead, the former researchers and workers on the Ocean Turtle, and could only sigh in disdain as she speared a ghoul that might have been attractive in life, stepped on a twenty-something hipster, picked up, crushed, and tossed aside an intern like it was just another day in the office.
Shirotaka Nanami had jested that there was no way war could be a machine in the past; it was too inefficient, too liable to blow up in the face of those using it as a weapon. As she turned bloodthirsty crowds of unfortunate trapped souls into red ruin, though, she could no longer doubt that she most certainly was a machine: Cold-hearted, ruthless, efficient, a perfect killer.
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(T-Minus 19:05 to Midnight: Deck 9)
It was too easy, the top two floors. As the main team continued down the shaft past the deck where Nanami was working her magic, they spied the imprint of a human body in the door itself. There was no way to enter that floor, not with the inability to close the door back up again. From the sound over the radio, it seemed their leader needed no help anyway.
As they descended further, Endou began to feel a little oddly as the door began to open, feeling a twitch on her shoulder blades, then at her spine, and back again. The sensation began to thrum with power the further down they got; the combination of that and the lack of an actual fight left her on edge, even as the door to the lower Residential Deck opened up, and their luck hit rock bottom.
The old jumpmaster, Jiro, had looked to the side for the briefest moment as he stuck his head around the door to the elevator. "Oh, SHIIII..." was all he had time to get out, before he was pulled away from the elevator, where the team heard the sound of his bones snapping bouncing off the elevator walls, the man's last wails of agony cut short in a gurgle.
It was Sergeant Kuribayashi that was fastest on the ball then. Reaching for her belt, she slid one of the special smoke grenades that Nanami had made off, caught the pin on a hinge on her webbing, and tossed the contraption around the corner Jiro had the misfortune to be pulled around. There was no other sound than the tube rolling for four... three... two... one...
A hiss slowly escaped the smoke grenade as the surviving members of the team waited patiently for a response, anything that might tell them the colloidal silver grenade was going to do anything. A groan was the response, the sound increasing in volume as the spray made its way around the hallway, ghouls hitting the ground and covering their faces as what amounted to chemical warfare against the undead had been unleashed. Wet thumps struck the floor as the groaning came closer to the elevator, as the SFPg prepared their sidearms for fire.
As the first set of ghouls cleared the open elevator door, they turned into a hellstorm of pistol fire. "Fire discipline! Fire discipline, damnit, don't waste your ammo!" screamed Kuribayashi as she held her own fire, but the JSDF soldiers had already turned the first unfortunate ghoul into a fleshy colander at that point, even as the next ghoul crawled forward, flesh melting off from where the aerosol silver made contact with skin.
Shaking her head, Endou simply held her free hand out, pointing at the next ghoul. "Se Zan." intoned the teenager, and a bolt of blazing white light shot out, catching the ghoul and blasting it out of existence. "Nothing personal, just you're the ugliest fucking thing I've ever seen." muttered she, waiting on the word to descend down to the door. "Shino?"
Eyes narrowed to pick out the finest detail, the catgirl in human flesh sniffed the air, turned an ear to the door. "No movement. Tororu, Hansel, Gretel, be ready to go in as soon as I poke around the doorway." Sliding down around Nui and the twins, Shino swayed on the cable gently, balancing her own weight against that of those above her carefully, building up momentum before launching herself through the portal. Drawing her pistols as she flew through, Shino rolled along the floor as she looked for anything moving.
The grenade, effectively a chemical weapon for use against the undead, had worked better than advertised. Where once corrupted flesh existed, now only puddles of diseased puss flowed along the floors, leaving the skeletons intact, that and the ruin that was the body of their jumpmaster.
Jiro had several large chunks simply ripped out of his body by the teeth of the monsters that had ripped him from his place on the line, including the gaping hole that used to be his throat. Even then, he still moved ever so slightly, getting up slowly. A groaning wheeze escaped his throat as he began to limp towards Shino.
"Shit, Jiro. You deserved better than this." Shaking her head, the girl holstered her pistol before drawing the hatchet from over her shoulder, turned it about, and threw it casually between the eyes of her former comrade, returning him to the slumber eternal. "Rest in peace; I'll get your justice for you."
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(T-Minus 17:34 to Midnight: Skies over the Ocean Turtle)
"Well, fuck my life. Look down there, <[Vector>]!" The overly-excitable SEAL with the callsign of <[Jester>] beamed as he spied a man actually swimming towards the bulk of the Ocean Turtle. "Looks like one of our guys made it out alive after all! We got time for a flying pickup, boss?"
Sighing, Gabriel Miller shook his head as the two helicopters continued flying. "Pilot, drop him one of the self-inflating buoys, it's the best that we can do at the moment." Getting on the radio himself, he contacted the Iowa. "Iowa Six, this is Vector. I have some good news and some bad news..."
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(T-Minus 17:16 to Midnight: Sea of Japan)
He had stopped his progress when he heard the sound of the helicopters, but as they continued flying past him, Zue Rong felt some small relief as he continued to swim. After all, part of his mission briefing was that none of them were to allow themselves to be captured alive; even without most of his equipment, he could still prevent that from happening. For the moment, though, the helicopters did not seem intent on catching him, instead moving on to the Ocean Turtle at full speed.
Some unknown instinct caused him to look up as he swam forward; the last survivor of the Chinese assault team stopped swimming, kicked back as he saw the lighted object fall from on high. He had no idea if it was a bomb, or some kind of equipment, but it would likely not do to have it land on him before he could find out whatever it might be.
When the package struck the water, his breath caught, as the object rapidly expanded, the rubber raft just the right size for a crew of three, not that he would need it. Zue Rong was the last member of the assault team alive; the sharks had gotten the rest of them, hunted down due to their lack of awareness of the gray fins in the water. Where his team (and that arrogant prick of a major that he had been saddled with) had proven not up to the task of survival, he had spied the predatory fish, had his knife ready, and added shark blood to his list of things that he no longer needed to taste before he died.
'And the answer to that one...' The most dangerous man in the water snarked internally as he pulled himself into the life raft, 'is like shit, only less tasty.' As Zue Rong sighed in relief, he pulled the paddle out of the cubby in the bottom of the raft floor. "Well, no use for it. Onward! To Destiny!!!"
"Oh hell, that just sounded so fucking corny." Laughing as he rowed, he shook his head, following the helicopters by eye... "Wait. Is that a fucking dragon?"
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(T-Minus 16:56 to Midnight: Skies over Ovean Turtle)
Unfortunately for the crews of the helicopters, it most certainly was. X'rphan had sired many young upon making his way to this new world, and one of his brood peered at the two helicopters from atop the radio antennae as the insect-like aircraft approached. The blue dragon shook her head as she unwound from around the cool metal, unfurled her wings, and prepared to take flight.
Her father had been adamant about how close any kind of helicopter was allowed to get to the Ocean Turtle: Not at all.
The lead helicopter pilot had seen a lot of strange things over the years, but as the dragon leaped into the sky, flapped her wings to gain height, he froze for just a moment. That hesitation did not kill him, though. Instead, as the dragon opened her mouth, the machine gun on the rear helicopter began its steady beat, the rounds tearing into the fleshy region of the young dragon's mouth, spoiling the shot.
Breathing a sigh of relief, the lead pilot flew in quickly, hoping to land and offload his lethal cargo before whatever the hell that was had time to come around for another pass. That rapid action placed the helicopter close to the underside of the dragon, and the scaly beast smiled wickedly despite the pain of the several dozen furrows carved down the inside of her throat. She stopped flapping her wings, gliding down into the helicopter with claws extended.
The rapidly spinning rotor made contact with one of the claws, and while the dragon received some much needed spa treatment with its overlong claws, the rotor blades sheared off from being stopped in place; the engine seizing up and the shaft snapping. The falling aircraft did make contact with the Ocean Turtle before it skidded off the side of the deck, dragging each of the men on board into the sea with it.
"PILOT! SWING US PERPENDICULAR TO THE DRAGON!" bellowed Essex as he reached for the handle of an AT-4 anti-tank weapon. The SEALs around him wondered what he was thinking for a second or two, before making a path between the two doors of the helicopter, one man ready on either side to open up.
As the dragon came back around on her second pass, she opened her maw once more to draw in the air she would need to breathe out a burst of cold on the unlucky helicopter. "OPEN THE DOORS, BACKBLAST CLEAR!!!" screamed out the massive black man, the Swede-designed missile launcher up and ready to fire as the doors opened.
The dragon's eyes opened wide upon spying the rocket launcher lined up with her head, Essex pulled the trigger, the anti-tank rocket shot out as the flame went out of the exhaust port and out the opposite side. Even so, the dragon was almost fast enough to close her mouth before the rocket struck.
Almost.
The 84mm HEDP round made contact with the back of the dragon's throat. The effect was as spectacular as it was lethal, as the scales that would have made such fine protection for the dragon's head served instead to channel the blast inward. As the dragon fell from the sky, its neck bent at the wrong angle for it to have survived, and liquid seeped out of the ears.
Jester could only shake his head, looking to Gabriel as the helicopter flew onto the deck of the artificial island. "Um... So, you want to tell the admiral the good news?"
Fixing the concealed Puca with a stare, Gabriel Miller cleared his throat, making a sound akin to a Murloc getting caught in a trash compactor as he did so. "Iowa Six, this is Vector Six. Helicopter 1 is down, but I see men in the water. I'll leave a line for them to get up while we get underway." At Jester's continued pestering, the team leader sighed. "Do I really have to say this? All right, if it'll shut you up. Essex recorded a Smaug Kill, repeat Smaug Kill." Looking back to Jester, he said, "I hate you."
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(T-Minus 16:29 to Midnight: Research Deck 8)
It had taken the non-mechanized portion of the Seven and Thirteen six and a half minutes to make their way to the eighth floor, the Ocean Biology Lab. From the briefing, the two teams had expected to find the experiments used as a cover for the Ocean Turtle's true purpose. After all, the civilian scientists needed to have some place to work to make it look good, and Nanami had memorized the sticking points for their part in the farce.
When one of the doors next to the two teams suddenly burst open before anyone had a chance to scout it out, the running thought was that this was it; they would be trapped here and picked off one at a time.
So it was that, when the combined group of robots and ghouls began trying to rush towards one of the laboratory sections in plain view and with easy access to the attackers, the first thought had been to hide in place, until the first human scream pierced the ears of the members of the team.
They could have waited for all the screaming to stop. There shouldn't have been anything on this floor of interest to the anti-terror force.
Whatever their other faults might have been, the Twelve were soldiers. They did not borrow trouble when they did not need to, and at that moment, the loss of a few lives was the right military choice.
Despite her training, Shirou Endou was not a soldier. "Setto wilnachik vethleka chimu jan!" she screamed out, the glowing golden script wrapping around her like a comfortable old coat. One outstretched hand spread wide open, releasing the hundred blazing white and gold bolts into the backs of the robots and ghouls, rage etched onto her face as she stepped forward, hammer in the other hand. She had been feeling odd ever since entering the Ocean Turtle, but as she watched the bolts strike home, watched as they homed in on their targets like so many micro-missiles seeking the flesh and metal of her foes, she felt the not-so-tender burning sensation of Fae blood in her nostrils. Gritting her teeth, Endou gripped her hammer in both hands, slamming it home into a robot that had survived the onslaught of the Fae-touched girl's danmaku barrage and sending the head through the torso of the nearest ghoul.
"Fuck... Spyder, what the HELL did you do that for? They know we're coming now, and where we are!" Kuribayashi's glare at the teenager bore the kind of intensity that, had it been able to be harnessed as a weapon, would have struck the eldest member of the Seven dead on the spot.
Endou turned her head slowly, so as to try to disarm the social situation as quickly as possible. The blazing red in her eyes, however, told rather more of her feelings than she allowed herself to otherwise show. "They have a Fae in there, Sarge... They're running fucking experiments on fucking Fae..."
Shaking her head, Shino sighed as she walked around, over, and in a few cases through the mortal remains of the ghouls and robots left behind as the collateral damage from Endou's temper tantrum. "Well, now that she's fucked it for us, it's time we un-fucked it. Let's see if we can salvage anything from this shitshow before we hit the next floor..." Leaving Roberto, the twins, and Nui to cover the door, Shino led Endou and the SFPg into the room their foes were heading into.
Laying asleep in a metallic cradle was a short-haired, tanned redhead. She was wearing monitoring electronics, restraints, a red Psych Ward SRAIGear, and not much else. More of the same type of cradles lay along the rest of that bulkhead; all of them looked recently used.
"Oh damnit." stated one of the soldiers, "That shitbag Sugou really is looking to end up in a tenth layer of Hell..." Reaching out for the helmet, he pulled it off, while the other soldiers began looking around, to find anything that would speed up their little detour.
With the helmet off, a pair of sharp-pointed ears were revealed, and as the soldier began breaking the restraints, the young woman awoke, bright blue eyes looking out at the laboratory. "What... Where... Where am I? This doesn't look like Glocken... Or like the hospital..."
The soldier offered the girl his overshirt, turning his head to one side as he did so. Looking down, the girl noticed her lack of clothing, drew in a sharp breath, and let out an ear-piercing scream.
"That went well, I think." said Endou, sighting down the hallway with her rifle.
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(T-Minus 16:07 to Midnight: Research Deck 7)
Looking through Endou's eyes for a brief moment, Nanami was startled for a moment, before matching up the girl's new appearance to that of someone she had remembered from way back when the ZO attacked. It didn't take her long to find it.
"Shit. I think I know who she is, or was, team. Facial recognition puts her face, minus the Salamander Tan and ears, as one Takemiya Kotone, the girl that lived longest from the train after the Shingawa Station Disaster... I dare say she survived a great deal longer than anyone suspected." Nanami could not keep the contempt out of her voice, as she continued, "We were wondering who pulled the trigger on that little stunt; I think we can pin that atrocity on our targets now too."
She had just forced open another door, and as she slowly walked into the Upper Robotics Deck, only to spy more of the mechanical mooks walking out of storage cradles, a few here and there picking up steel scrap that had the right heft to make for an improvised weapon of some use. "Oh please... Don't tell me that Sugou cheaped out on the guns for you guys..." Nanami began to laugh, even as the robots in the Seventh Floor Foyer leaped at her.
"Obviously the dumb shit has never played any kind of a strategy game before..." A fist reached out to grab an outstretched leg, swung the robot around in a circle in order to clear the area before her suit raised a leg and brought it down on the unfortunate robot's head. "Oh please. I built you tin cans, I know how to end you, just like..." Her Vulcan spooled up, and as it began to fire, Nanami finished grimly, "This."
Robots by the dozen were turned into very expensive scrap by the dozen, unprepared for dealing with a foe that matched them strength for strength. "Come on! Give me a challenge already!"
Even as the words left her mouth, she heard the hiss of a pair of animals behind her. Spinning quickly, she took the first tail-slap on the hardened chest armor, as a blue-scaled dragon turned about in the tight quarters. Its partner opened a mouth with long fangs wide, and breathed out.
The cold was intense. Nanami could feel a chill, even in her environmentally sealed cabin, and felt her control over the suit begin to grow sluggish, even as her reaction times sped up from the computer being supercooled. Tertiary pipes began to freeze and expand when the dragon's breath began to peter out.
Even looking over the damage reports and feeling the machine's pain, Nanami's smile widened further, until it threatened to take in her head. "FOR ME! THANK YOU!!!"
Switching to full wheel drive, Nanami closed the distance between the two drakes quickly, making use of the production machinery to provide cover as she darted from place to place, keeping the dragons guessing where she might fire from. The closer one thought it had a shot at the robot's back, when suddenly Nanami twirled with grace no one should have expected of a four meter tall robot, facing the dragon, even as a fist cocked back.
That dragon had been more worried about the massive cannon strapped to the robot soldier's arms. It should have worried more about the fist. The right hook smashed into the side of the dragon's head, even as Nanami's left foot lined up to knee the dragon in the jaw. She had aligned the blow perfectly. When the dragon's head jerked up to avoid the oncoming strike, the scaly monstrosity placed its eyes right in the path of Nanami's descending pilebunker.
"In the name of Christ, Saint Michael, and the Chrysanthemum Throne, I say unto thee, go back to Hell." The pilebunker, which had poked out an eye, fired and went the rest of the way in. The dragon shuddered once, then dropped on the spot, dead.
The other dragon, seeing its mate slain, reared up on its back legs in an impressive display of threat, horns poking into the ceiling. It hissed at Nanami, and bellowed out, "Impudent human... You die screaming!"
Laughter was Nanami's response. "Oh please. Your whatever the fuck it was just died at the hands of a girl. I doubt you'll do any better, chump." Her pilebunkers extended and crossed as she said in an even tone, "The Kite of Nippon is my name." As Nanami's cannon began to swing back into place to deal with the other real threat on that deck, she added ominously, "Slaying the wicked to soothe my pain."
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OK guys, just a heads up. I've come across a section I've got a pretty bad case of writers block for. I think I have a way around it, but I'm still working out the details.
In the meanwhile, I've been working over the other remaining chapters, getting a bit of a head start on them. I've already written out the last few pages of the last chapter of this arc; I promise Sugou's end is going to be fucking classic.
That being said, it's now a bit past the one year anniversary of this story; I plan on being finished with it long before the second.
In the meanwhile, I've been working over the other remaining chapters, getting a bit of a head start on them. I've already written out the last few pages of the last chapter of this arc; I promise Sugou's end is going to be fucking classic.
That being said, it's now a bit past the one year anniversary of this story; I plan on being finished with it long before the second.
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
...Yeah, that fits pretty well, actually.
OK, I'm going to try for a Sunday release, I think I've got my block figured out. On the plus side, final chapter before the ephilogues go through is more or less done, requiring only editing.
I may actually wrap up the main story sometime before Christmas.
OK, I'm going to try for a Sunday release, I think I've got my block figured out. On the plus side, final chapter before the ephilogues go through is more or less done, requiring only editing.
I may actually wrap up the main story sometime before Christmas.
V6C2
Precept the Second: Asada Shino is dead, slain in the same depraved murder games that claimed thirty teenagers, the act of which caused the body of that unfortunate girl to be the host of some unholy rampaging vengeance spirit that turned around and slew the immediate causation of so many deaths, the unlamented Laughing Coffin, before moving on to those behind that organization, Tono's unfortunate Yakuza syndicate.
I used to believe that. It was the only way I could somehow justify my continued existence, hollow as it seemed to be. That I attacked evil men alone was luck, or if Nanami is to be believed, providence. If I had allowed myself to continue to believe that, then I almost certainly would have died for real. I used to believe that it would have been better if I had passed entirely from this Earth back then, in my confusion.
That was all before a terrorist attack turned hundreds of students into potential victims, before those potential victims turned upon those who planned to use their lives as a sacrifice to the mouldering corpse of their political doctrine rose up as one enraged organism, to protect one another from the monsters in human form. It drove a gifted few from the comfortable embrace of a normal life, pushing them forevermore into conflict with those who would hurt friends, family, countrymen.
The words of one of those exceptional teenagers touched my heart. Before, I fought only for revenge, a shallow and petty rationalization drawn from just how much it hurt. Kyuzi's inspiration, believing Death Gun to be a force for good, accepting a killer like me with open arms, showed me the beginning of a better way. I would use my gifts to defend those less able than myself, innocents who should not need to learn how to fight at so young an age.
The events of that day, tragic as they were for so many families, forced me to take a long, hard look at myself. I would not allow myself to take the easy way out, to drown myself in the blood of those I deemed less worthy of life than myself.
Death Gun. Sinon. Hecate. All are one and the same. It was that day that Asada Shino was truly born.
From the Foreword of the Last Will and Testament of Asada Shino.
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terminate Oberon(zwei): The Stand
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(T-Minus 15:56 to Midnight: Research Deck 6)
As he watched from the eyes of three dozen robots of Shirotaka origin and Father's modification, the young man sighed as he felt viewpoint after viewpoint being snuffed out, one after the other. Mother warned hem not to take direct control of any of the mechanical killers, and he knew why: Someone had the grenade-sized titanium testicles to hack a Bloodstone-connected device, and the skill to somehow hide his life force from the two of them.
Proof of that was easily obtained; all that he needed to do was try a keyboard login from any device in the facility hardwired in to the Bloodstone Accumulator. When he had tried, the device had not given him a failed password warning.
The screen lit up with a variation of the Jolly Roger, and it was laughing at him, all while flipping him off with alternating skeletal hands. The hack had kept Father trapped in the virtual realm, worried Mother to the point that she was not thinking in a fully rational manner, and both amused and intrigued the young man.
"Ahh, Mother... If you had just let me retrieve them when we had the chance..." He smiled sadly as he pulled his coat off of the chair he had lackadaisically laid it on, slid the backpack into place, the pair of gyros locking in place, the ammunition for his own weapon locked and loaded.
He would have much preferred to strike earlier, before any of the seven of them had the opportunity for the party he was soon to invite himself to. No, if he had his way, Nanami would have been hired directly by Father, brought fully into the Family. Such genius should not have been allowed to wither on the vine. He would have extracted Shino just after her battle with Old Scratch; someone of that skill needed to be watched, and Mother would not need to face her like this in order to fledge the savant of slaughter. In grabbing the other two, he would have learned of Endou, taken the young woman out of circulation. The other four would have fallen into place, just as he had planned out, ten months ago.
Now, as Winchester Vaduva-Sugou prepared himself, he could only blow out a sigh at all the wasted chances, grab his hat off the top of the one monitor, and walk out the door into the room that, if he planned correctly, at least would remove one of the Three Black Cats from play.
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(T-Minus 15:08 to Midnight: Deck 3)
"Valkyrie, this is Vector. DEVGRU is about to enter the Ocean Turtle, please be advised. Make sure to turn your IFF on if it isn't already." Gabriel Miller, Vector, sighed as he felt the magic energy flowing even outside the pyramid; that much energy boded well for exactly no one on his side. "We are at half strength, with possible reinforcements on the way later, but for right now? We're en route to the primary target for our team."
Sugou (or more likely Vaduva) had been a particularly clever little snake. Miller had already seen the results of the dive team that descended to the ocean floor at those points where the Ring of Fire was at its most easily breached earlier, to see if they could somehow suss out the point at which any explosives might have been placed. What they found instead were a series of red stones that lay on the floor, carefully arranged so that any attempt to handle them would break them. It did not take much in the manner of thinking to be able to tell that would have been a bad thing, especially seeing as how the stones all glowed hotter in the infrared spectrum. The tiny red stones stretched on past the ability for the divers to see; whoever had laid down the firestones had been at this work for some time.
From the schematics provided by some helpful soul, all that the firestones required to set them off was the correct initiator. Moving them might trigger one or two in a row, an unfortunate chain reaction that would kill their divers, cause havoc on the islands around them, but it would take a more powerful device to cause the entire line of them to go up at the same time, to have the effect Sugou was so helpfully explaining for them.
One thing that might be able to provide that would be a Thorium Beta decay-based particle beam, a solution seeking a problem. The reactor present on the Ocean Turtle could provide some of the materiel needed by an enterprising little psychopath, but other important needs had to be met to be able to run the beam.
A fun little factoid popped up shortly after Sugou ended up on the CIA's radar: Companies doing business with Belsoft had contact with the technical personnel needed for that particularly foolish endeavor. They were visiting the Ocean Turtle, supposedly to be able to test out the effects of the Fukushima Disaster on the plant and fish life. It made for several uncomfortable moments for the on-site team.
Now, the SEALs were working with the Japanese to stop the threat the island nation had allowed by sloppy vetting. Even if the rest of the mission failed, though, the SEALs would still have a final solution available in the 10kt yield suitcase nuclear bomb that Jester was carrying at that point in time. If it looked like the mission would soon fail, they had orders to deploy the bomb.
As another Ghoul popped its head up to growl at a rapidly passing Essex, the large man spun around like a ballerina, pistol out and barking twice, watching as the undead thing was returned to a full and proper deceased state. "Good one, Essex." sait Miller, drawing his own weapons as the party began to heat up, just a little bit, even as his own MBR slid into place onto the man's shoulder, argus eyes looking down the scope, and a quick twitch of the trigger finger sent a robot to digital hell. "You know the drill, boys, watch your shots, watch your partners, don't be a jackass." A grin with all the warmth of an arctic winter crossed his lips, "That's the enemy's job."
Looking around to the others on the deck, he saw more men beginning to climb over the lip. Survivors of the other DEVGRU helicopter, they began looking around quickly at the machines that had ceased moving, to grab their weapons. It was not ideal, but it was at least a gun for those men who had to leave their own behind in the hurry to get the fuck out. Looking at his men moving about on the ball like that, Gabriel Miller chuckled as he used one of his favorite old tricks to help morale.
"The sorry sack of horse shit with the fewest dropped bodies by the time we take off from here gets to buy the first round of drinks." Chuckles here and there held less tension, just the tiniest bit more readiness. They were good, skilled kids; Miller hoped he had not jumped the gun somehow.
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(T-Minus 14:55 to Midnight: Deck 5)
Nanami had skipped over the other Machine Deck, thinking over quickly the possible things that could be holding her teammates up there, but all of them were registering green at the moment. "Eyes open, guys, I do not want any SEAL hunting going on by accident."
As she opened the door to the deck, she peeked around, then spun away, her heart hammering like a drum. Dozens of still living people had been manacled to coroners' tables, screaming in agony as the ghouls fiddled around with their innards, seeming to look for one specific thing. Here and there, a man's body would finally give up the fight, the corpse gaining the same pallid tone as its killer. There, a scream of agony gurgled out.
Ten meters away, Nanami growled, her rotary cannon beginning to whir in its bass hum, before she turned the corner again, that time spitting true death into the moving corpses.
Her wrath temporarily spent, she scanned the room for more ghouls, more machines, but the only thing still moving under its own power then was her. She looked over the bodies on the gurneys, sighed as she looked down at people she once knew.
The ghouls had just butchered the entirety of the team that Kikouka had once headed up. "Sugou is tidying up loose ends, everyone. If it isn't sucking blood, oil, or ass, they might be neutrals. Watch your shot selection." Looking down at the shivering form of Koujiro Rinko, her wrath began building up to a righteous fury again.
The nurse had incisions up and down the length of her body, claw wounds, knife wounds... "Rinko... I'm so sorry. I didn't get here in time..."
Looking up with wildly distorted eyes, the nurse wheezed out, "It's not your fault, Nanami. It's all on Sugou... Just please... Don't leave me like this. I do not want to end up like Higa-san..." Her body began to twitch out, seize up, and she begged, "Please... Let me die as a human..."
Closing her eyes, Nanami nodded, though the gesture would seem off with her robot's head as high up as it was. She reached out with one giant metal hand, almost delicately around the older nurse's neck, and squeezed until she heard the 'POP!' of broken vertebrae. "Do not worry, sensei. You die free." Sighing, she worked her way down the line. She couldn't save any of them, so she would do the next best thing, ensure they would not hurt anyone else.
It did not take her long to finish her grisly work; she walked into the next lab with weapons forward. She was not prepared for what she would find there.
In a cradle in the air, a robot was held, arms crossed over knees in the classic embryonic state. It was anything but newborn, though; the robot seemed a perfect replica of a teenage girl, save for the spine shunts hanging out of the back. The degree of articulation was greater than any of the robots she had designed for the EMOM project, coming closer to her own original prostheses in true humaniform shape.
The robot bore a likeness Shirotaka Nanami knew only too well. Somehow, Sugou had someone place the likeness of the Flash, Yuuki Asuna of the Knights of Blood, onto one of her creation's descendents.
It all fit together at that very moment for Shirotaka Nanami, and utter horror clouded her thoughts, as she put what she knew from Shino and Endou's passengers, mixed with what Lisbeth had seen, to assemble the puzzle for her in exacting and disgusting detain.
"SUGOU! I'm going to rip your intestines out with my bare hands, and strangle you to death with them!" Nanami howled out loud, over the radio, into the nearest wireless connection she could find.
The robots that had been patrolling the area, the ghouls that had been left nearby, turned their heads as one towards the death machine screaming at the top of her lungs.
They did their level best to stop the rampaging walking tank. Here and there, a rifle would fire, hit, ping off the thick armor. Here and there, a spark might be seen where a bullet flaked a tiny bit of the thick armor plate away.
It did not save them. Nanami picked up a steel I-Beam that had been exposed when a section of the wall blew, strode forward to bring ruin to robot and undead hellbeast alike.
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T-Minus 14:10 to Midnight: Deck 3)
It had been an easy path from the main deck entrance for the Americans; the members of DEVGRU that could still function on the battlefield found that the robots arrayed against them up top were not as coordinated as they has feared. Something or someone had cut off the controls used to keep them working as a seamless whole, prevented the artificial life from being able to rise up as one to bury them in a tomb of humanoid steel.
That was just as well. The ghouls on that floor were getting organized, no doubt as their mistress became more aware of the threat to her. They moved in a fashion to cover each other, get out of the way of oncoming ordnance. It was as if someone had flicked a switch on the undead, quickly turning them from mild annoyance to the well-trained men into a real threat.
It had been a close thing for some of Vector's men as they spread out, to cover all the passes to the hard water reactor. One squad rounded a corner without looking to the vent pipes. Only the sharp eyes of one of the men caught the movement behind the vent; a sharply shouted, "FUCK!" alerted the rest of his section to the danger as a ghoul burst out of the air circulation system. It had been a reminder to DEVGRU that they needed to watch for everything in the facility; the price of spooked men (and a few rare drops) was a cheap price to pay for the warning.
It was all the warning they got before a Sergeant Anderson walked through a doorway. He checked the vents, rapidly swapped out thermographic and night vision modes to spot walking corpses, covered all the potential approaches to the room, before calling out, "Clear!" to the rest of his section. They approached by twos, each pair covering the next as they moved about the room.
The last pair had just begun to move forward in turn when a pair of blazing clawed hands reached out from underneath the metal floor plating, melting through steel, leather, flesh, and bone like butter as a scaled humanoid tore its way up through the plating. The same clawed fists spun round quickly as the red-scaled hellspawn twirled like some pyromaniac ballerina, reducing another SEAL's head to utter ruination. As the beast completed its spin and looked upon the men in its domain, its visage looked sad, the red-slitted eyes crying black blood even as it howled out its anguish.
It just wanted someone to play with.
Similar scenes played out for the Americans all over the accursed artificial island. Inside, humanoid creatures rose up from the shadows left behind by members of a fireteam passing by dim lighting. The team had been completely aware of their surroundings, but when the creatures reached out from the shadows of those unfortunate men, the SEALs were dragged kicking and screaming into their own shadows, which turned a dark crimson shade the further in that a shadow's originator was pulled in.
The screaming from that room could be heard for almost ten minutes, with not a soul in sight.
Outside, the few SEALs who were waiting their turn to climb the rope up felt an odd electric sensation. Looking about them in the water, the three men still in the water to help the last of their injured comrades up found that their determination to leave no man behind had consequences, as humanoid shapes began to swim around them like a pool of piranhas might. To their dismay, they found that whatever else the muscular pale forms under the water might have had, they bore the same sharp teeth as their close relatives. The wounded men still in the water were the targets of a feeding frenzy, even as the rescuers were pulled apart limb from bloody limb.
Further up the line, SEALs continued to climb, hoping that whatever else the monsters below might have been, fast climbers they were not. They were right. The humaniform sharks were not that fast out of the water. They didn't need to be.
A few forms dove down from above, green wings of some fae energy carrying them along their path. They harried, struck, and electrocuted several of the SEALs out on the deck, before one worked her way over to the ropes DEVGRU had been using to evacuate the other helicopter. Looking down, the beaked mouth cooed out loudly, even as a knife began to cut into the ropes, one by one. As each nylon line gave way, she would wave to the soldiers on the line before her, before they plummeted.
The fish men ate well that evening.
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(T-Minus 13:15 to Midnight: Deck 4)
At the same time that the monsters were making new openings for personnel to fill for DEVGRU, the Japanese team was finishing up with cleaning up on the robots on the fourth floor. It had been far too easy for them to that point; the ghouls were slow and loud, while the robots seemed oddly confused compared to the results that Nanami had shown to the Japanese Military earlier in the month. It was almost as if all communication between them had been shut down, and they were left to continue on their last orders only.
One of the technicians among the SFPg heard a door open to one side, and twisted quickly to put eyes on whatever might have come through the door.
He made eye contact with a heartrendingly beautiful woman, long, straight hair of a shade of black so dark it almost seemed violet blowing to a breeze that should not have been able to exist, her form slowly sauntering into the cleared room as she slowly made her way to the man. Long pointed ears and sharp fangs did not distract him from the vision of loveliness' most distinctive feature, a pair of smoldering red eyes. The man finished turning, stood still with a smile wide on his lips, even tilting his neck helpfully for the woman who held his attention.
He never even made a noise as she embraced him, licked his neck, and bit in.
More of the dark-haired beauties, men and women both, poured in behind the first one through the door, catching the attention of other soldiers one by one with wide smiles that hinted at pleasure and promised undeath to those unlucky enough to be tasted by the fangs of vampires.
It was only then that the remaining soldiers were allowed to turn, the soporific essence of the last being to enter the room turning their gazes as one to him, ignoring the demise of their teammates, friends, comrades. That last man, ruggedly handsome with wet raven black hair, seemed to own the room and everything in it the instant he stepped foot inside; a black drakeskin coat sat upon broad shoulders, left open so that all might gaze upon the perfection of his physique, chest left bare while his legs were covered by a pair of tight leather pants. As his underlings continued their feast upon the unfortunate soldiers, he tilted forward slightly before running his hands through his hair, tilting his head back, and smiling winsomely as red eyes opened upon The Seven.
"Ahh, Mother was so very right to worry about you, I can see, and why she wanted you all so very much." He chuckled even as two of the Three Black Cats, the entirety of the Four Norsemen, looked upon him, luxuriated over how all but two froze in awe (and in several cases, lust) before the last of them, Shirou Endou, noticed the blank faces of her friends. "Oh shit. Vampires." Reaching for her pistol, she almost had it aimed at chest level.
One of the Twins slapped the firearm away from the vision of perfection before them, defending their master. The other tackled her knees out from under her, knocking her to the floor. Following that, Roberto straddled her chest, punching once, twice, thrice before rolling away to allow Shino to roll her over, take the proffered ziptie to keep Endou from doing anything foolish to their new master, even as the twins finished tying Nui up with her own chain.
"Ahh, sister... How nice it is to finally get to meet you, after so many months of anticipation!" A pleasantly deep baritone voice escaped the man's lips, as he gripped the top of her shirt, lifted her off the floor by it casually. Two of the vampires looked up, nodded, and strode in quickly to restrain her as she regained full awareness of what was going on, stopping her struggling against them in iron grips.
Endou looked him in the eyes, hate crossing her face the instant she worked those words around in her head... "The fuck? Who the hell are you?"
A pleasant laugh escaped the man's lips, as he snarked, "Please, sister, it is not quite time for that yet; we will have plenty of time to get to know each other in Halkegenia." Placing his broad chin into one hand, elbow resting in his other hand, he seemed to contemplate for a moment. "Oh, but where are my manners! I have not been the most gracious host... I am Winchester Vaduva-Sugou, and I will be the proctor of the test that determines your fate, little Maeve."
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(T-Minus 13:02 to Midnight: Deck 3)
As the DEVGRU command team ran down the corridor, Gabriel Miller was cursing under his breath.
He knew the mission had been going far too easily against a threat that by any sane reckoning, should have inflicted casualties already. Even being trained to the point of near-instant reaction had not been enough for a third of the men he personally led into the Ocean Turtle, it seemed, not against this new wrinkle that Vaduva had thrown into the mix.
Combined with the losses of two SEAL Teams, that night was already looking to be murder on the American Special Forces community. Vector already suspected that the butcher's bill would require his use of the contents of the briefcase Jester currently slung over his shoulder.
The command team rounded the corner, looking all around for any potential threat. Not one of them found signs of life, but the runes that had been burned into the length of the wide passageway to the center of the man-made island were unnerving enough as it is, speaking back to a darker time of blood sacrifice to the commander of DEVGRU. "Aww shit. That looks painfully like..."
He never had the chance to finish before a claw as large as a Gnome burst through the wall, just short of the runes, right into the rearguard of the fireteam. A noisome draconic roar accompanied the sound of tearing steal, as Miller watched two men being sliced to ribbons before the dragon found its mark.
"BENNIE!" As the dragon snatched the Puca up, Vector aimed at the snout of the massive white wyrm. "Let him go, you son of a bitch!"
Muffled laughter erupted from the dragon's throat. "That is so precious! It's rare to see grown men care so much for each other these days!" The dragon looked down at Miller with barely concealed amusement, gradually tightening his claws around Jester and waving the Puca back and forth. "It's been a while since I have tasted the blood of a Fae... At least two hours, anyway..." As Jester screamed in pain as the claws bit in, though, X'rphan allowed an amused smile to cross his lips. "But I'm in a good mood today! It's a glorious evening outside, and soon, I'll be back where I am the prince of Dragonkind once more! So... I'll let your comrade..." The fingers on the dragon's hand opened gently, before throwing the unfortunate Fae into the wall hard enough to smash every bone in Jester's body. "Go."
Closing his eyes, X'rphan sighed contentedly as a massive claw slammed into the briefcase, ripping it in half before he flung the remains down the hall, near the runes.
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(T-Minus 12:33 to Midnight: Floor 4)
Looking over the six surviving SFPg members, the six teenagers , Winchester loosed a sigh. "It's a shame, really. If Mother had allowed me to do the dirty work instead of the incompetent boobs she forced into her service, all of you would already have been useful to her cause, but that is her curse, I am afraid." At that, he looked down at the twelve still-living people in the room, chuckling at the irony.
"All right, kids. Helmets off, if you please." Winchester kept the same wide, trustworthy smile on his face the entire time, more than a little amused by the turn of events. The main part of the invasion force, stopped dead in their tracks merely by his presence? Mother would either laugh or cry at the absurdity of it all.
Looking over Endou, he simply said, "Kars, Jan, I think it's time for the guest of honor here to find out what her true purpose is going to be. To the synchronization chamber with her!" Screaming and shouting at him from his half-sister, and laughter from the two vampires, assaulted their ears on the way out of the room, before a piercing scream escaped the teenager's lips through three sets of doors.
"Ahh, she's so much quieter like that. Next up, we have you, Miss Asada." Winchester slid behind Shino, running his hands through her hair. Instead of the lethal response she would normally had unleashed upon him, though, she closed her eyes, leaning into the searching hands as she purred in delight. "...Aren't you just the most adorable little pussycat. Unfortunately, pet, right now Mother needs to talk with you, something about a family reunion, but I'll make sure that after she's done with you, that we will get to play together later. Luke, Carmilla, let us not delay such a joyous occasion any longer!" The two vampires nodded, flanked Shino as they took her to one of the elevators down to the lowest floor, opened the door, and took their purring little package inside.
As he tilted his head to one side gently, Winchester allowed a throaty sigh to escape. "So adorable, so very moe..." He thought about it for a moment, as comprehension came to him. "That's why Mother didn't want me after the three of them, she was afraid I'd ruin them for her..." The vampiric monstrosity chuckled as he turned to Sergeant Kuribayashi, looking her up and down with an appreciative eye. "A woman as beautiful as you, with a body like that..." He sniffed the air once, twice, thrice, "Yet still a virgin... You will be a rare treat for me! I can not tell you how rare virgin blood is these days!" His smile narrowed slightly as he saw the sweat that was pouring off of her. "Not a Faeblood, and yet even still attempting to force the Glamour out of your mind..." Winchester's lips whispered right into the human's ear, "I think I'll take my time fledging you, slave. It is a rare human indeed with that will."
"And that brings us to the rest of the Faeblooded. Indeed, you are lucky indeed that none of you are quite adult enough yet for me to want to fledge you just yet. After all, now that I know that the Faeblood make for perfect targets of the Embrace, that moment of perfect union of blood..." His voice lowered dangerously as he began to speak in a conspiratorial tone."When I drain Salamander blood, I get not a ghoul, but something more akin to their namesake, lizards capable of tremendous carnage. When I suck dry an Undine-blood, the result is akin to the unholy mating of a mermaid and a shark. Puca that fall to my teeth become Banshees, capable of slaying men with their voices."
Turning to Nui, his lips curved suggestively, "When I enjoy that sweet Kirigaya blood of yours, you will turn into the Harpy I know you to be underneath all of that very attractive flesh... But not yet, not until you've ripened a bit more." His eyes turned to the twins, and he chuckled. "I simply have no idea what the hell the two of you are, but I plan on studying you until you properly come of age. I would not want to waste such an opportunity for advancement of my kind, after all..." Finally his eyes alighted on Roberto, "And as for you, young man, future fledgeling, future brother... Any Imp-blood I drain, regardless of whether or not they've fucked a bitch yet, they become true-blood Vampires; they are the holy grail for us! Imp-kind will not long survive in Halkegenia; a new order shall arise as I throw off the shackles of petty morality that bind you! I will make of you all terrors to rip apart the night!"
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(T-Minus 11:58 to Midnight: Deck 3)
As he looked around himself, Gabriel Miller knew despair.
The surviving members of the command team, those who had weathered the wyrm's first assault, had been forced back further into the hallway, towards the stairwell. They had tried to retrieve the briefcase nuke twice; the halls were being painted slowly with the remains of the four soldiers who failed to make it back.
The incessant commentary from the white wyrm had not helped at all; the dragon had kept asking if they had any more crimson red or bile green. Apparently, though, from the maddening one-sided discussion the dragon had been having with them, the cold scaly monster had far more than enough crap-your-pants-brown, using the remains of men, soldiers, comrades as a twisted form of paintbrush upon a canvas of human flesh.
More worrying still for the American were the rumbling sounds coming down the stairs. The sounds of flesh being torn apart, of machinery working to brutal effect, had added those last few touches to make the Ocean Turtle worse than any battlefield Miller had ever been on.
They could not advance; that way lay the Dragon. They could not retreat; that way lay failure at best.
Several explosions punctuated the situation; no doubt those were the last of their claymores, expended in order to buy the team just that tiny little bit more time to try to get to the nuke.
The noise behind them cleared up for the briefest moment, before a constant THRUM THRUM THRUM came through the stairwell. Miller knew it was only a matter of time.
"Hey Essex... Looks like this is it, man." said he, rifle pointing in the stairwell's direction as he watched warily. The best they could hope for at that point was the nuke going off, if it even could any more.
The big black man nodded, sighing. "Well, looks like we finally picked that one battle even we can not win... So, any last words, you son of a bitch?"
Miller nodded, chuckled. "Yeah, just one. Your sister is an incredible woman."
As he turned around, Essex looked at Miller oddly. "No. No. There's no way, you sick fuck..."
Looking up and chuckling, Miller said, "Eh, yeah, you're right man, she's way higher class than I'll ever be. Just needed to lighten the mood before we do this shit, you know... One last time, for Jester."
The laugh from the man across the hall from him sounded hollow, as Essex readied his machine gun. "Yeah, one last time, for Jester indeed, you funny fuck."
The sound behind them drew closer, louder as dust fell from the ceiling, as something caused the doors to shudder, as if something was trying to rip them open. They saw the doors bend, ripple. They spied the two metal bunkertips burst from the door, cherry red glow and all... "Wait, what?"
The door ripped apart, as Shirotaka Nanami walked onto the engine floor, leaving a massive robot-sized hole in the doorway. "Oooh yeah... That's gonna leave a mark." The robot head turned back and forth, spying the SEALs pinned down, looking further down to notice the blue-white scales of the massive dragon that looked at her quizzically as she left the doorway, holding its ground but coming no closer to her.
"Um... Hey. This is really, really awkward, I've been thinking of the right way to say this... Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright..." Nanami began running closer; there was no cover in any direction, and she was fairly certain that the twenty-two rounds of ammo she had left would be insufficient to kill the dragon in front of her. She would have to get up close and personal to seal the deal, down right and dirty.
As the dragon continued to wait for her, she reached back, for what she had been keeping in one of the ammo containers now that it was empty. As her hands came back forward, they held a pair of dragon horns that the massive wyrm would recognize easily. "Your brats all died without a fight."
An enraged roar was the dragon's response, it charged directly at her, rage seeming to cloud his thoughts as he ran forward. Nanami had been prepared that time for the ice breath, but that was only the wind-up, as X'rphan grabbed the frozen robot, swung it to the side, then flung it much further back.
As she stumbled, twisted, and fell from the force of being thrown at six times of gravity, Nanami's left foot made contact with the tactical nuke. Tiny particles of dark gray metal escaped the fission chamber of the bomb, floated around, and made contact with the inscribed runes on the wall.
"Wow... Sounds like you aren't much of a fan of... Uh-oh." As the runes began to glow a bright green, Nanami noticed a rapid rise in the beta radiation output in the surrounding area beginning to increase rapidly, noticed the dragon turn, look at the runes in fear, and run off. "That can not be good."
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(T-Minus 10:41 to Midnight: Deck 4)
"Ahh, there you are, Kotone... It wasn't nice of you to hide like that, making your friends and I have to search for you..." As Winchester looked the minimally-clothed woman over, he licked his lips. "Delightful as always. I so enjoyed the way you moved in GoGO, plaything. Your resourcefulness, at least, is worthy of your continued survival as my thrall." He looked Kotone directly in the eyes as he poured on the Charm, grinning wickedly as she rose to look him in the eye. "So, anything to say for yourself before I put you on this desk and drain you dry?"
Kotone suddenly looked so incredibly vapid, dreamy-eyed, and Winchester wondered if he had used too much of his gift to womankind on her, even as she stepped closer to him willingly. A wide smile made the vampire wonder if she were already turned, even as she ran her hands along his broad chest. "That can only be answered by a question of my own, love..." her sultry voice drew him in closer to her, ear to her lips even as she traced her fingers around. "Where did the pencil go?"
Winchester's head tilted back, just a little, in confusion, before the hand that had been tracing sweet nothings on his chest punched forward. The vampiric machine suddenly felt a sharp stabbing pain in his heart, looked down to where the redhead had a number 2 pencil sticking out through his left pectoral muscle, and suddenly had trouble staying upright.
His prey wasted no time, slipping a foot behind his and shoulder-checking the monster straight to the floor. "Fuck me stupid, that old superstition was right!" shouted she in vindication as her bare foot went atop the pencil. "You always called me pet, or plaything, or slave there, when you had me at your mercy for months, you sick fuck..." As Kotone's eyes flared with rage, she glared down at Winchester, stepped down, and said, "As you go to Hell, remember the name: Phillia."
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Holy shit, this took the longest time to get to a publishable state. I was embarrassed by the previous drafts; they were all pretty shit. I'm not really happy with this one, either, but if I didn't publish it, I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever get any further with this story. With it being so close to the end, it would suck donkey if I ended up letting it die after so long. So, here we are.
Winchester is a skeevy perv. Considering his parents, no huge surprise there.
Faeblood getting drained, a fate worse than death, but sucks less than human ghouls.
Exit stage left Koujiro Rinko, Aki Natsuki, Higa Takeru, and Benjamin 'Jester' Ramierez.
And please welcome Phillia to the cast; I've been trying to write it in for a while, but Best Girl is finally here.
I used to believe that. It was the only way I could somehow justify my continued existence, hollow as it seemed to be. That I attacked evil men alone was luck, or if Nanami is to be believed, providence. If I had allowed myself to continue to believe that, then I almost certainly would have died for real. I used to believe that it would have been better if I had passed entirely from this Earth back then, in my confusion.
That was all before a terrorist attack turned hundreds of students into potential victims, before those potential victims turned upon those who planned to use their lives as a sacrifice to the mouldering corpse of their political doctrine rose up as one enraged organism, to protect one another from the monsters in human form. It drove a gifted few from the comfortable embrace of a normal life, pushing them forevermore into conflict with those who would hurt friends, family, countrymen.
The words of one of those exceptional teenagers touched my heart. Before, I fought only for revenge, a shallow and petty rationalization drawn from just how much it hurt. Kyuzi's inspiration, believing Death Gun to be a force for good, accepting a killer like me with open arms, showed me the beginning of a better way. I would use my gifts to defend those less able than myself, innocents who should not need to learn how to fight at so young an age.
The events of that day, tragic as they were for so many families, forced me to take a long, hard look at myself. I would not allow myself to take the easy way out, to drown myself in the blood of those I deemed less worthy of life than myself.
Death Gun. Sinon. Hecate. All are one and the same. It was that day that Asada Shino was truly born.
From the Foreword of the Last Will and Testament of Asada Shino.
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terminate Oberon(zwei): The Stand
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(T-Minus 15:56 to Midnight: Research Deck 6)
As he watched from the eyes of three dozen robots of Shirotaka origin and Father's modification, the young man sighed as he felt viewpoint after viewpoint being snuffed out, one after the other. Mother warned hem not to take direct control of any of the mechanical killers, and he knew why: Someone had the grenade-sized titanium testicles to hack a Bloodstone-connected device, and the skill to somehow hide his life force from the two of them.
Proof of that was easily obtained; all that he needed to do was try a keyboard login from any device in the facility hardwired in to the Bloodstone Accumulator. When he had tried, the device had not given him a failed password warning.
The screen lit up with a variation of the Jolly Roger, and it was laughing at him, all while flipping him off with alternating skeletal hands. The hack had kept Father trapped in the virtual realm, worried Mother to the point that she was not thinking in a fully rational manner, and both amused and intrigued the young man.
"Ahh, Mother... If you had just let me retrieve them when we had the chance..." He smiled sadly as he pulled his coat off of the chair he had lackadaisically laid it on, slid the backpack into place, the pair of gyros locking in place, the ammunition for his own weapon locked and loaded.
He would have much preferred to strike earlier, before any of the seven of them had the opportunity for the party he was soon to invite himself to. No, if he had his way, Nanami would have been hired directly by Father, brought fully into the Family. Such genius should not have been allowed to wither on the vine. He would have extracted Shino just after her battle with Old Scratch; someone of that skill needed to be watched, and Mother would not need to face her like this in order to fledge the savant of slaughter. In grabbing the other two, he would have learned of Endou, taken the young woman out of circulation. The other four would have fallen into place, just as he had planned out, ten months ago.
Now, as Winchester Vaduva-Sugou prepared himself, he could only blow out a sigh at all the wasted chances, grab his hat off the top of the one monitor, and walk out the door into the room that, if he planned correctly, at least would remove one of the Three Black Cats from play.
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(T-Minus 15:08 to Midnight: Deck 3)
"Valkyrie, this is Vector. DEVGRU is about to enter the Ocean Turtle, please be advised. Make sure to turn your IFF on if it isn't already." Gabriel Miller, Vector, sighed as he felt the magic energy flowing even outside the pyramid; that much energy boded well for exactly no one on his side. "We are at half strength, with possible reinforcements on the way later, but for right now? We're en route to the primary target for our team."
Sugou (or more likely Vaduva) had been a particularly clever little snake. Miller had already seen the results of the dive team that descended to the ocean floor at those points where the Ring of Fire was at its most easily breached earlier, to see if they could somehow suss out the point at which any explosives might have been placed. What they found instead were a series of red stones that lay on the floor, carefully arranged so that any attempt to handle them would break them. It did not take much in the manner of thinking to be able to tell that would have been a bad thing, especially seeing as how the stones all glowed hotter in the infrared spectrum. The tiny red stones stretched on past the ability for the divers to see; whoever had laid down the firestones had been at this work for some time.
From the schematics provided by some helpful soul, all that the firestones required to set them off was the correct initiator. Moving them might trigger one or two in a row, an unfortunate chain reaction that would kill their divers, cause havoc on the islands around them, but it would take a more powerful device to cause the entire line of them to go up at the same time, to have the effect Sugou was so helpfully explaining for them.
One thing that might be able to provide that would be a Thorium Beta decay-based particle beam, a solution seeking a problem. The reactor present on the Ocean Turtle could provide some of the materiel needed by an enterprising little psychopath, but other important needs had to be met to be able to run the beam.
A fun little factoid popped up shortly after Sugou ended up on the CIA's radar: Companies doing business with Belsoft had contact with the technical personnel needed for that particularly foolish endeavor. They were visiting the Ocean Turtle, supposedly to be able to test out the effects of the Fukushima Disaster on the plant and fish life. It made for several uncomfortable moments for the on-site team.
Now, the SEALs were working with the Japanese to stop the threat the island nation had allowed by sloppy vetting. Even if the rest of the mission failed, though, the SEALs would still have a final solution available in the 10kt yield suitcase nuclear bomb that Jester was carrying at that point in time. If it looked like the mission would soon fail, they had orders to deploy the bomb.
As another Ghoul popped its head up to growl at a rapidly passing Essex, the large man spun around like a ballerina, pistol out and barking twice, watching as the undead thing was returned to a full and proper deceased state. "Good one, Essex." sait Miller, drawing his own weapons as the party began to heat up, just a little bit, even as his own MBR slid into place onto the man's shoulder, argus eyes looking down the scope, and a quick twitch of the trigger finger sent a robot to digital hell. "You know the drill, boys, watch your shots, watch your partners, don't be a jackass." A grin with all the warmth of an arctic winter crossed his lips, "That's the enemy's job."
Looking around to the others on the deck, he saw more men beginning to climb over the lip. Survivors of the other DEVGRU helicopter, they began looking around quickly at the machines that had ceased moving, to grab their weapons. It was not ideal, but it was at least a gun for those men who had to leave their own behind in the hurry to get the fuck out. Looking at his men moving about on the ball like that, Gabriel Miller chuckled as he used one of his favorite old tricks to help morale.
"The sorry sack of horse shit with the fewest dropped bodies by the time we take off from here gets to buy the first round of drinks." Chuckles here and there held less tension, just the tiniest bit more readiness. They were good, skilled kids; Miller hoped he had not jumped the gun somehow.
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(T-Minus 14:55 to Midnight: Deck 5)
Nanami had skipped over the other Machine Deck, thinking over quickly the possible things that could be holding her teammates up there, but all of them were registering green at the moment. "Eyes open, guys, I do not want any SEAL hunting going on by accident."
As she opened the door to the deck, she peeked around, then spun away, her heart hammering like a drum. Dozens of still living people had been manacled to coroners' tables, screaming in agony as the ghouls fiddled around with their innards, seeming to look for one specific thing. Here and there, a man's body would finally give up the fight, the corpse gaining the same pallid tone as its killer. There, a scream of agony gurgled out.
Ten meters away, Nanami growled, her rotary cannon beginning to whir in its bass hum, before she turned the corner again, that time spitting true death into the moving corpses.
Her wrath temporarily spent, she scanned the room for more ghouls, more machines, but the only thing still moving under its own power then was her. She looked over the bodies on the gurneys, sighed as she looked down at people she once knew.
The ghouls had just butchered the entirety of the team that Kikouka had once headed up. "Sugou is tidying up loose ends, everyone. If it isn't sucking blood, oil, or ass, they might be neutrals. Watch your shot selection." Looking down at the shivering form of Koujiro Rinko, her wrath began building up to a righteous fury again.
The nurse had incisions up and down the length of her body, claw wounds, knife wounds... "Rinko... I'm so sorry. I didn't get here in time..."
Looking up with wildly distorted eyes, the nurse wheezed out, "It's not your fault, Nanami. It's all on Sugou... Just please... Don't leave me like this. I do not want to end up like Higa-san..." Her body began to twitch out, seize up, and she begged, "Please... Let me die as a human..."
Closing her eyes, Nanami nodded, though the gesture would seem off with her robot's head as high up as it was. She reached out with one giant metal hand, almost delicately around the older nurse's neck, and squeezed until she heard the 'POP!' of broken vertebrae. "Do not worry, sensei. You die free." Sighing, she worked her way down the line. She couldn't save any of them, so she would do the next best thing, ensure they would not hurt anyone else.
It did not take her long to finish her grisly work; she walked into the next lab with weapons forward. She was not prepared for what she would find there.
In a cradle in the air, a robot was held, arms crossed over knees in the classic embryonic state. It was anything but newborn, though; the robot seemed a perfect replica of a teenage girl, save for the spine shunts hanging out of the back. The degree of articulation was greater than any of the robots she had designed for the EMOM project, coming closer to her own original prostheses in true humaniform shape.
The robot bore a likeness Shirotaka Nanami knew only too well. Somehow, Sugou had someone place the likeness of the Flash, Yuuki Asuna of the Knights of Blood, onto one of her creation's descendents.
It all fit together at that very moment for Shirotaka Nanami, and utter horror clouded her thoughts, as she put what she knew from Shino and Endou's passengers, mixed with what Lisbeth had seen, to assemble the puzzle for her in exacting and disgusting detain.
"SUGOU! I'm going to rip your intestines out with my bare hands, and strangle you to death with them!" Nanami howled out loud, over the radio, into the nearest wireless connection she could find.
The robots that had been patrolling the area, the ghouls that had been left nearby, turned their heads as one towards the death machine screaming at the top of her lungs.
They did their level best to stop the rampaging walking tank. Here and there, a rifle would fire, hit, ping off the thick armor. Here and there, a spark might be seen where a bullet flaked a tiny bit of the thick armor plate away.
It did not save them. Nanami picked up a steel I-Beam that had been exposed when a section of the wall blew, strode forward to bring ruin to robot and undead hellbeast alike.
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T-Minus 14:10 to Midnight: Deck 3)
It had been an easy path from the main deck entrance for the Americans; the members of DEVGRU that could still function on the battlefield found that the robots arrayed against them up top were not as coordinated as they has feared. Something or someone had cut off the controls used to keep them working as a seamless whole, prevented the artificial life from being able to rise up as one to bury them in a tomb of humanoid steel.
That was just as well. The ghouls on that floor were getting organized, no doubt as their mistress became more aware of the threat to her. They moved in a fashion to cover each other, get out of the way of oncoming ordnance. It was as if someone had flicked a switch on the undead, quickly turning them from mild annoyance to the well-trained men into a real threat.
It had been a close thing for some of Vector's men as they spread out, to cover all the passes to the hard water reactor. One squad rounded a corner without looking to the vent pipes. Only the sharp eyes of one of the men caught the movement behind the vent; a sharply shouted, "FUCK!" alerted the rest of his section to the danger as a ghoul burst out of the air circulation system. It had been a reminder to DEVGRU that they needed to watch for everything in the facility; the price of spooked men (and a few rare drops) was a cheap price to pay for the warning.
It was all the warning they got before a Sergeant Anderson walked through a doorway. He checked the vents, rapidly swapped out thermographic and night vision modes to spot walking corpses, covered all the potential approaches to the room, before calling out, "Clear!" to the rest of his section. They approached by twos, each pair covering the next as they moved about the room.
The last pair had just begun to move forward in turn when a pair of blazing clawed hands reached out from underneath the metal floor plating, melting through steel, leather, flesh, and bone like butter as a scaled humanoid tore its way up through the plating. The same clawed fists spun round quickly as the red-scaled hellspawn twirled like some pyromaniac ballerina, reducing another SEAL's head to utter ruination. As the beast completed its spin and looked upon the men in its domain, its visage looked sad, the red-slitted eyes crying black blood even as it howled out its anguish.
It just wanted someone to play with.
Similar scenes played out for the Americans all over the accursed artificial island. Inside, humanoid creatures rose up from the shadows left behind by members of a fireteam passing by dim lighting. The team had been completely aware of their surroundings, but when the creatures reached out from the shadows of those unfortunate men, the SEALs were dragged kicking and screaming into their own shadows, which turned a dark crimson shade the further in that a shadow's originator was pulled in.
The screaming from that room could be heard for almost ten minutes, with not a soul in sight.
Outside, the few SEALs who were waiting their turn to climb the rope up felt an odd electric sensation. Looking about them in the water, the three men still in the water to help the last of their injured comrades up found that their determination to leave no man behind had consequences, as humanoid shapes began to swim around them like a pool of piranhas might. To their dismay, they found that whatever else the muscular pale forms under the water might have had, they bore the same sharp teeth as their close relatives. The wounded men still in the water were the targets of a feeding frenzy, even as the rescuers were pulled apart limb from bloody limb.
Further up the line, SEALs continued to climb, hoping that whatever else the monsters below might have been, fast climbers they were not. They were right. The humaniform sharks were not that fast out of the water. They didn't need to be.
A few forms dove down from above, green wings of some fae energy carrying them along their path. They harried, struck, and electrocuted several of the SEALs out on the deck, before one worked her way over to the ropes DEVGRU had been using to evacuate the other helicopter. Looking down, the beaked mouth cooed out loudly, even as a knife began to cut into the ropes, one by one. As each nylon line gave way, she would wave to the soldiers on the line before her, before they plummeted.
The fish men ate well that evening.
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(T-Minus 13:15 to Midnight: Deck 4)
At the same time that the monsters were making new openings for personnel to fill for DEVGRU, the Japanese team was finishing up with cleaning up on the robots on the fourth floor. It had been far too easy for them to that point; the ghouls were slow and loud, while the robots seemed oddly confused compared to the results that Nanami had shown to the Japanese Military earlier in the month. It was almost as if all communication between them had been shut down, and they were left to continue on their last orders only.
One of the technicians among the SFPg heard a door open to one side, and twisted quickly to put eyes on whatever might have come through the door.
He made eye contact with a heartrendingly beautiful woman, long, straight hair of a shade of black so dark it almost seemed violet blowing to a breeze that should not have been able to exist, her form slowly sauntering into the cleared room as she slowly made her way to the man. Long pointed ears and sharp fangs did not distract him from the vision of loveliness' most distinctive feature, a pair of smoldering red eyes. The man finished turning, stood still with a smile wide on his lips, even tilting his neck helpfully for the woman who held his attention.
He never even made a noise as she embraced him, licked his neck, and bit in.
More of the dark-haired beauties, men and women both, poured in behind the first one through the door, catching the attention of other soldiers one by one with wide smiles that hinted at pleasure and promised undeath to those unlucky enough to be tasted by the fangs of vampires.
It was only then that the remaining soldiers were allowed to turn, the soporific essence of the last being to enter the room turning their gazes as one to him, ignoring the demise of their teammates, friends, comrades. That last man, ruggedly handsome with wet raven black hair, seemed to own the room and everything in it the instant he stepped foot inside; a black drakeskin coat sat upon broad shoulders, left open so that all might gaze upon the perfection of his physique, chest left bare while his legs were covered by a pair of tight leather pants. As his underlings continued their feast upon the unfortunate soldiers, he tilted forward slightly before running his hands through his hair, tilting his head back, and smiling winsomely as red eyes opened upon The Seven.
"Ahh, Mother was so very right to worry about you, I can see, and why she wanted you all so very much." He chuckled even as two of the Three Black Cats, the entirety of the Four Norsemen, looked upon him, luxuriated over how all but two froze in awe (and in several cases, lust) before the last of them, Shirou Endou, noticed the blank faces of her friends. "Oh shit. Vampires." Reaching for her pistol, she almost had it aimed at chest level.
One of the Twins slapped the firearm away from the vision of perfection before them, defending their master. The other tackled her knees out from under her, knocking her to the floor. Following that, Roberto straddled her chest, punching once, twice, thrice before rolling away to allow Shino to roll her over, take the proffered ziptie to keep Endou from doing anything foolish to their new master, even as the twins finished tying Nui up with her own chain.
"Ahh, sister... How nice it is to finally get to meet you, after so many months of anticipation!" A pleasantly deep baritone voice escaped the man's lips, as he gripped the top of her shirt, lifted her off the floor by it casually. Two of the vampires looked up, nodded, and strode in quickly to restrain her as she regained full awareness of what was going on, stopping her struggling against them in iron grips.
Endou looked him in the eyes, hate crossing her face the instant she worked those words around in her head... "The fuck? Who the hell are you?"
A pleasant laugh escaped the man's lips, as he snarked, "Please, sister, it is not quite time for that yet; we will have plenty of time to get to know each other in Halkegenia." Placing his broad chin into one hand, elbow resting in his other hand, he seemed to contemplate for a moment. "Oh, but where are my manners! I have not been the most gracious host... I am Winchester Vaduva-Sugou, and I will be the proctor of the test that determines your fate, little Maeve."
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(T-Minus 13:02 to Midnight: Deck 3)
As the DEVGRU command team ran down the corridor, Gabriel Miller was cursing under his breath.
He knew the mission had been going far too easily against a threat that by any sane reckoning, should have inflicted casualties already. Even being trained to the point of near-instant reaction had not been enough for a third of the men he personally led into the Ocean Turtle, it seemed, not against this new wrinkle that Vaduva had thrown into the mix.
Combined with the losses of two SEAL Teams, that night was already looking to be murder on the American Special Forces community. Vector already suspected that the butcher's bill would require his use of the contents of the briefcase Jester currently slung over his shoulder.
The command team rounded the corner, looking all around for any potential threat. Not one of them found signs of life, but the runes that had been burned into the length of the wide passageway to the center of the man-made island were unnerving enough as it is, speaking back to a darker time of blood sacrifice to the commander of DEVGRU. "Aww shit. That looks painfully like..."
He never had the chance to finish before a claw as large as a Gnome burst through the wall, just short of the runes, right into the rearguard of the fireteam. A noisome draconic roar accompanied the sound of tearing steal, as Miller watched two men being sliced to ribbons before the dragon found its mark.
"BENNIE!" As the dragon snatched the Puca up, Vector aimed at the snout of the massive white wyrm. "Let him go, you son of a bitch!"
Muffled laughter erupted from the dragon's throat. "That is so precious! It's rare to see grown men care so much for each other these days!" The dragon looked down at Miller with barely concealed amusement, gradually tightening his claws around Jester and waving the Puca back and forth. "It's been a while since I have tasted the blood of a Fae... At least two hours, anyway..." As Jester screamed in pain as the claws bit in, though, X'rphan allowed an amused smile to cross his lips. "But I'm in a good mood today! It's a glorious evening outside, and soon, I'll be back where I am the prince of Dragonkind once more! So... I'll let your comrade..." The fingers on the dragon's hand opened gently, before throwing the unfortunate Fae into the wall hard enough to smash every bone in Jester's body. "Go."
Closing his eyes, X'rphan sighed contentedly as a massive claw slammed into the briefcase, ripping it in half before he flung the remains down the hall, near the runes.
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(T-Minus 12:33 to Midnight: Floor 4)
Looking over the six surviving SFPg members, the six teenagers , Winchester loosed a sigh. "It's a shame, really. If Mother had allowed me to do the dirty work instead of the incompetent boobs she forced into her service, all of you would already have been useful to her cause, but that is her curse, I am afraid." At that, he looked down at the twelve still-living people in the room, chuckling at the irony.
"All right, kids. Helmets off, if you please." Winchester kept the same wide, trustworthy smile on his face the entire time, more than a little amused by the turn of events. The main part of the invasion force, stopped dead in their tracks merely by his presence? Mother would either laugh or cry at the absurdity of it all.
Looking over Endou, he simply said, "Kars, Jan, I think it's time for the guest of honor here to find out what her true purpose is going to be. To the synchronization chamber with her!" Screaming and shouting at him from his half-sister, and laughter from the two vampires, assaulted their ears on the way out of the room, before a piercing scream escaped the teenager's lips through three sets of doors.
"Ahh, she's so much quieter like that. Next up, we have you, Miss Asada." Winchester slid behind Shino, running his hands through her hair. Instead of the lethal response she would normally had unleashed upon him, though, she closed her eyes, leaning into the searching hands as she purred in delight. "...Aren't you just the most adorable little pussycat. Unfortunately, pet, right now Mother needs to talk with you, something about a family reunion, but I'll make sure that after she's done with you, that we will get to play together later. Luke, Carmilla, let us not delay such a joyous occasion any longer!" The two vampires nodded, flanked Shino as they took her to one of the elevators down to the lowest floor, opened the door, and took their purring little package inside.
As he tilted his head to one side gently, Winchester allowed a throaty sigh to escape. "So adorable, so very moe..." He thought about it for a moment, as comprehension came to him. "That's why Mother didn't want me after the three of them, she was afraid I'd ruin them for her..." The vampiric monstrosity chuckled as he turned to Sergeant Kuribayashi, looking her up and down with an appreciative eye. "A woman as beautiful as you, with a body like that..." He sniffed the air once, twice, thrice, "Yet still a virgin... You will be a rare treat for me! I can not tell you how rare virgin blood is these days!" His smile narrowed slightly as he saw the sweat that was pouring off of her. "Not a Faeblood, and yet even still attempting to force the Glamour out of your mind..." Winchester's lips whispered right into the human's ear, "I think I'll take my time fledging you, slave. It is a rare human indeed with that will."
"And that brings us to the rest of the Faeblooded. Indeed, you are lucky indeed that none of you are quite adult enough yet for me to want to fledge you just yet. After all, now that I know that the Faeblood make for perfect targets of the Embrace, that moment of perfect union of blood..." His voice lowered dangerously as he began to speak in a conspiratorial tone."When I drain Salamander blood, I get not a ghoul, but something more akin to their namesake, lizards capable of tremendous carnage. When I suck dry an Undine-blood, the result is akin to the unholy mating of a mermaid and a shark. Puca that fall to my teeth become Banshees, capable of slaying men with their voices."
Turning to Nui, his lips curved suggestively, "When I enjoy that sweet Kirigaya blood of yours, you will turn into the Harpy I know you to be underneath all of that very attractive flesh... But not yet, not until you've ripened a bit more." His eyes turned to the twins, and he chuckled. "I simply have no idea what the hell the two of you are, but I plan on studying you until you properly come of age. I would not want to waste such an opportunity for advancement of my kind, after all..." Finally his eyes alighted on Roberto, "And as for you, young man, future fledgeling, future brother... Any Imp-blood I drain, regardless of whether or not they've fucked a bitch yet, they become true-blood Vampires; they are the holy grail for us! Imp-kind will not long survive in Halkegenia; a new order shall arise as I throw off the shackles of petty morality that bind you! I will make of you all terrors to rip apart the night!"
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(T-Minus 11:58 to Midnight: Deck 3)
As he looked around himself, Gabriel Miller knew despair.
The surviving members of the command team, those who had weathered the wyrm's first assault, had been forced back further into the hallway, towards the stairwell. They had tried to retrieve the briefcase nuke twice; the halls were being painted slowly with the remains of the four soldiers who failed to make it back.
The incessant commentary from the white wyrm had not helped at all; the dragon had kept asking if they had any more crimson red or bile green. Apparently, though, from the maddening one-sided discussion the dragon had been having with them, the cold scaly monster had far more than enough crap-your-pants-brown, using the remains of men, soldiers, comrades as a twisted form of paintbrush upon a canvas of human flesh.
More worrying still for the American were the rumbling sounds coming down the stairs. The sounds of flesh being torn apart, of machinery working to brutal effect, had added those last few touches to make the Ocean Turtle worse than any battlefield Miller had ever been on.
They could not advance; that way lay the Dragon. They could not retreat; that way lay failure at best.
Several explosions punctuated the situation; no doubt those were the last of their claymores, expended in order to buy the team just that tiny little bit more time to try to get to the nuke.
The noise behind them cleared up for the briefest moment, before a constant THRUM THRUM THRUM came through the stairwell. Miller knew it was only a matter of time.
"Hey Essex... Looks like this is it, man." said he, rifle pointing in the stairwell's direction as he watched warily. The best they could hope for at that point was the nuke going off, if it even could any more.
The big black man nodded, sighing. "Well, looks like we finally picked that one battle even we can not win... So, any last words, you son of a bitch?"
Miller nodded, chuckled. "Yeah, just one. Your sister is an incredible woman."
As he turned around, Essex looked at Miller oddly. "No. No. There's no way, you sick fuck..."
Looking up and chuckling, Miller said, "Eh, yeah, you're right man, she's way higher class than I'll ever be. Just needed to lighten the mood before we do this shit, you know... One last time, for Jester."
The laugh from the man across the hall from him sounded hollow, as Essex readied his machine gun. "Yeah, one last time, for Jester indeed, you funny fuck."
The sound behind them drew closer, louder as dust fell from the ceiling, as something caused the doors to shudder, as if something was trying to rip them open. They saw the doors bend, ripple. They spied the two metal bunkertips burst from the door, cherry red glow and all... "Wait, what?"
The door ripped apart, as Shirotaka Nanami walked onto the engine floor, leaving a massive robot-sized hole in the doorway. "Oooh yeah... That's gonna leave a mark." The robot head turned back and forth, spying the SEALs pinned down, looking further down to notice the blue-white scales of the massive dragon that looked at her quizzically as she left the doorway, holding its ground but coming no closer to her.
"Um... Hey. This is really, really awkward, I've been thinking of the right way to say this... Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright..." Nanami began running closer; there was no cover in any direction, and she was fairly certain that the twenty-two rounds of ammo she had left would be insufficient to kill the dragon in front of her. She would have to get up close and personal to seal the deal, down right and dirty.
As the dragon continued to wait for her, she reached back, for what she had been keeping in one of the ammo containers now that it was empty. As her hands came back forward, they held a pair of dragon horns that the massive wyrm would recognize easily. "Your brats all died without a fight."
An enraged roar was the dragon's response, it charged directly at her, rage seeming to cloud his thoughts as he ran forward. Nanami had been prepared that time for the ice breath, but that was only the wind-up, as X'rphan grabbed the frozen robot, swung it to the side, then flung it much further back.
As she stumbled, twisted, and fell from the force of being thrown at six times of gravity, Nanami's left foot made contact with the tactical nuke. Tiny particles of dark gray metal escaped the fission chamber of the bomb, floated around, and made contact with the inscribed runes on the wall.
"Wow... Sounds like you aren't much of a fan of... Uh-oh." As the runes began to glow a bright green, Nanami noticed a rapid rise in the beta radiation output in the surrounding area beginning to increase rapidly, noticed the dragon turn, look at the runes in fear, and run off. "That can not be good."
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(T-Minus 10:41 to Midnight: Deck 4)
"Ahh, there you are, Kotone... It wasn't nice of you to hide like that, making your friends and I have to search for you..." As Winchester looked the minimally-clothed woman over, he licked his lips. "Delightful as always. I so enjoyed the way you moved in GoGO, plaything. Your resourcefulness, at least, is worthy of your continued survival as my thrall." He looked Kotone directly in the eyes as he poured on the Charm, grinning wickedly as she rose to look him in the eye. "So, anything to say for yourself before I put you on this desk and drain you dry?"
Kotone suddenly looked so incredibly vapid, dreamy-eyed, and Winchester wondered if he had used too much of his gift to womankind on her, even as she stepped closer to him willingly. A wide smile made the vampire wonder if she were already turned, even as she ran her hands along his broad chest. "That can only be answered by a question of my own, love..." her sultry voice drew him in closer to her, ear to her lips even as she traced her fingers around. "Where did the pencil go?"
Winchester's head tilted back, just a little, in confusion, before the hand that had been tracing sweet nothings on his chest punched forward. The vampiric machine suddenly felt a sharp stabbing pain in his heart, looked down to where the redhead had a number 2 pencil sticking out through his left pectoral muscle, and suddenly had trouble staying upright.
His prey wasted no time, slipping a foot behind his and shoulder-checking the monster straight to the floor. "Fuck me stupid, that old superstition was right!" shouted she in vindication as her bare foot went atop the pencil. "You always called me pet, or plaything, or slave there, when you had me at your mercy for months, you sick fuck..." As Kotone's eyes flared with rage, she glared down at Winchester, stepped down, and said, "As you go to Hell, remember the name: Phillia."
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Holy shit, this took the longest time to get to a publishable state. I was embarrassed by the previous drafts; they were all pretty shit. I'm not really happy with this one, either, but if I didn't publish it, I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever get any further with this story. With it being so close to the end, it would suck donkey if I ended up letting it die after so long. So, here we are.
Winchester is a skeevy perv. Considering his parents, no huge surprise there.
Faeblood getting drained, a fate worse than death, but sucks less than human ghouls.
Exit stage left Koujiro Rinko, Aki Natsuki, Higa Takeru, and Benjamin 'Jester' Ramierez.
And please welcome Phillia to the cast; I've been trying to write it in for a while, but Best Girl is finally here.
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Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Just curious, but how are you going to go about integrating both the elves (as in the SAO ones) and the Fae, into Japanese society considering that cabinet level leadership knows who they are now? Assuming of course anyone survives the next couple of hours. Although even then, the JSDF, among others, would have to be literally sleeping at the wheel as to not grab blood/DNA samples from the girls prior to the assault. Its cold, callous, ruthless (to say nothing of immoral), but they'd have to be insane not to want to grab any advantage if possible, for the future, if the girls don't come back alive.
I was under the impression that the high-level movers & shakers have known for a while and that the Fae are secretly embedded in the military in a Black Project sorta way. Let us not forget that the admiral who's been a major supporter of Death Gun and Nanami in particular is himself a Fae, IIRC his mom was an Undine.
Funny you should mention all that. At this point, the only ones the JSDF know for sure about are Shino, Endou, and Ijuin, with vague guesses about the rest of The Seven; the Admiral was VERY good at covering his trails. It was for good reason that he was desperately casting about for a successor.
The captain and lieutenant that were his adjutants on the same transport? Fae. The leaders and select members of men on the helicopters and in the boats? Fae. The only reason there aren't more Fae boots on the ground is because the Chinese did Sugou and Vaduva a fuck-huge favor by killing most of the assault force in transit; Japan will be feeling the hit in their Special Forces units for years after this.
Kizmel has been brutally efficient in hiding her very existence; the woman is a freaking ghost, which is to be expected when dealing with one who has been trained by Argo. On some level, the Japanese government know about Roberto, but that is more due to their family being doers of deeds for the Japanese government since WWII; there is something just not right with the entire clan. After all, where their hair doesn't have that purple sheen, there's a hint of blue instead, not to mention their freakish agility. Both the head of House Nishizuma and Kirigaya Riful are Princes of the Covenant of Thorns, which the Japanese, American, and most importantly Chinese governments all know; one does not lightly mess with the affairs of the Covenant, for they are easily amused at your suffering.
The Valmar Twins... The fucking Valmar Twins. Sofia and Shizuka did a horrible, horrible thing when they artificially conceived those creatures, genetically modified them in an artificial womb, all to make them the most lethal pint-sized powerhouses they could ever be. The sustained body of Louis Valliere could have more protectors, but not much in the way of more dangerous ones, once the twins finish growing up.
Of course, the Americans also know about the Fae and their assorted relatives. President Katrina Morticia Nordstrom knew long ago about them, and has worked alongside Vector, Essex, and the late Jester among others in the Special Forces community. The American Fae population is mostly due to Fae having a good sense of self-preservation where it concerned the Second World War and knowing they wanted as little part of it as possible. Though there were Fae involved in WWII, their numbers were small enough that, aside from Hitler's assassination by two crimes against nature, physics, and morality who shall not be named, and certain highly compensated removals by the original Black Cat, the visible impact they caused was minimal.
The existence of such superhumans had been known for some time by any government that was a player in the greater game for some time, whether it be the Fae, Frankensteins, the Brimiric Mages that assisted both Great Britain and Nazi Germany, and all the Vampires. In the modern age, things that go bump in the night are, if not common, then most certainly not unknown to the powers that be that seek to yoke their strength.
It's just that the monsters of the night have had long practice in being independent by practicing a form of the Masquerade, keeping themselves from the public eye so that they might be able to do their work in (relative) peace. For those governments that push too hard on them, well, the Covenant of Thorns is always hiring.
What Jumper said.
Of course, all that being said, all the blatantly magic bullshit being thrown around is likely to take the Masquerade out into the courtyards of various nations, expose it for the world to see, violently execute it, and urinate upon its corpse. There will be a lot of unhappy citizens in the very near future.