I think it was mentioned that this explanation is not going to be used.
In The Grim Darkness Of The 41st Millennium, Nobody Beats G.I. Joe!
- Thread starter sun tzu
- Start date
- Crossover
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
Plus there's what I call "The Shattering Into Shards" that a couple primary and a few secondary sources talk about. Beyond survivors like that one Blackstone Fortress robot and the one who hijacked the voidsman's implants, or whatever the Emperor entrusted to the First Legion for the planned genocide of Mars, what the Admech calls Machine Spirits are the broken pieces of what once was an Intelligence. Code strings, files, executables, a borderline reality-bending god of the Materium torn into countless tiny fragments and used to patch together computational systems. When the ability to program anything more advanced than punch cards or understand underlying code disappears, the catch-all term Machine Spirits are what gets plugged in to replace it.
Iridium Flare
Cyborg Commando
- Location
- AC-130 Gunship circling overhead
It's also important to note that the Mechanicus was designed to be a religion, not just out of universe but in-universe too. After the fall of the golden age of man, the surviving population of Mars banded together and hammered out an organizational dogma designed specifically to preserve knowledge, a la A Canticle for Leibowitz. Religions are incredibly robust over an extreme timespan, and if you set it up correctly, you may even be able to lead into a new age of scientific ascendancy with them.
This did not happen in 40k, because the Heresy caused an internal civil war that fucked things up even further beyond how fucked they already were, this time with chaos involved as well.
Picture Mars as a great library in which the sum total of human knowledge is stored. You have humans and AI working together as librarians, and everything is hunky-dory. Now reprogram half of the AI to destroy all humans, and give them grenade launchers. The loyal AIs also have grenade launchers, so your library is now a warzone. Everything is digital, so everything is a battleground. One AI uses a printer to produce warbots to go blow up the server rack another AI is hiding in, along with every fleshbag along the way. Another AI has altered the schematics for their guns to make them explode when they pull the trigger, to sabotage the kill mission.
By the end of it all, the AIs have shredded each other into pieces, effectively leaving you with lobotomized AI shards in every computer, some of which are still actively malevolent and some of which can no longer recognize friend from foe. All of the schematics are fucked, most of the printers are sabotaged, you have an entire planet's worth of relics of the very heights of a galaxy-spanning empire and if you turn any of it on it will explode into ten billion volts of electricity, or etch cognitohazards onto anything it makes, or print off infinite legions of killbots - and even if you can find a fabricator that wasn't compromised, the schematics you upload into it might still be. Tanks that come off the lines and immediately start blowing shit up, cybernetics that infect the host body with nanomachines and subvert the original consciousness, power packs that wait for a preset combination of time passed, charge cycles completed, or total power draw to detonate and kill everything nearby.
That's the world that the post-DAOT Mechanicum was born into. That's when they set up the how-to-technology religion, and that's why there's such an extreme wariness of AI. Machine intelligences burned down their entire civilization, of course they're not going to trust anything even remotely like them.
So the survivors took the husk of their burned-out library, and slowly, painstakingly, began piecing together what fragments they could. They dogmatized their guidelines and laid the path for eventual resurgence.
And then the Heresy caused another civil war, the scraps of the once-great library were shattered and burned and infested with something worse than AI, and the guidelines that the original Mechanicum abided by, the guidelines that could have one day lead into a bright new future, a rebirth, a second shot at ascendancy, were thrown into a fucking office shredder and taped back together wrong, warped, changed. The schism damaged the Mechanicum so badly that it ceased to be anything like its former self.
The descendants of the original librarians have formed tribes and sects in the vein of Lord of the Flies. They are children, playing at science. Each of them craves understanding, but understanding is heresy because if you get it wrong, you get fresh new technological horrors, and it is so very hard to get it right.
TLDR: The Mechanicus was designed as a religion to preserve knowledge, which could have worked if the Heresy hadn't turbo-ultra-fucked it. Now it's a barely-recognizable cargo cult.
This did not happen in 40k, because the Heresy caused an internal civil war that fucked things up even further beyond how fucked they already were, this time with chaos involved as well.
Picture Mars as a great library in which the sum total of human knowledge is stored. You have humans and AI working together as librarians, and everything is hunky-dory. Now reprogram half of the AI to destroy all humans, and give them grenade launchers. The loyal AIs also have grenade launchers, so your library is now a warzone. Everything is digital, so everything is a battleground. One AI uses a printer to produce warbots to go blow up the server rack another AI is hiding in, along with every fleshbag along the way. Another AI has altered the schematics for their guns to make them explode when they pull the trigger, to sabotage the kill mission.
By the end of it all, the AIs have shredded each other into pieces, effectively leaving you with lobotomized AI shards in every computer, some of which are still actively malevolent and some of which can no longer recognize friend from foe. All of the schematics are fucked, most of the printers are sabotaged, you have an entire planet's worth of relics of the very heights of a galaxy-spanning empire and if you turn any of it on it will explode into ten billion volts of electricity, or etch cognitohazards onto anything it makes, or print off infinite legions of killbots - and even if you can find a fabricator that wasn't compromised, the schematics you upload into it might still be. Tanks that come off the lines and immediately start blowing shit up, cybernetics that infect the host body with nanomachines and subvert the original consciousness, power packs that wait for a preset combination of time passed, charge cycles completed, or total power draw to detonate and kill everything nearby.
That's the world that the post-DAOT Mechanicum was born into. That's when they set up the how-to-technology religion, and that's why there's such an extreme wariness of AI. Machine intelligences burned down their entire civilization, of course they're not going to trust anything even remotely like them.
So the survivors took the husk of their burned-out library, and slowly, painstakingly, began piecing together what fragments they could. They dogmatized their guidelines and laid the path for eventual resurgence.
And then the Heresy caused another civil war, the scraps of the once-great library were shattered and burned and infested with something worse than AI, and the guidelines that the original Mechanicum abided by, the guidelines that could have one day lead into a bright new future, a rebirth, a second shot at ascendancy, were thrown into a fucking office shredder and taped back together wrong, warped, changed. The schism damaged the Mechanicum so badly that it ceased to be anything like its former self.
The descendants of the original librarians have formed tribes and sects in the vein of Lord of the Flies. They are children, playing at science. Each of them craves understanding, but understanding is heresy because if you get it wrong, you get fresh new technological horrors, and it is so very hard to get it right.
TLDR: The Mechanicus was designed as a religion to preserve knowledge, which could have worked if the Heresy hadn't turbo-ultra-fucked it. Now it's a barely-recognizable cargo cult.
No wonder the Mechanicus view Belisarius Cawl as a heretek for his works, fearing something horribly wrong will happen at some point even when he had Primarch Guilliman and Big E backing him for the Primaris Marines Project.
So if Bifrost is Megan Williams, what's the status of Danny and Molly?
Will the Ponies eventualy make an appear 'on screen' so to speak?
Danny and Molly are in college and high school, respectively.
...Or rather, they were until recently. With the current crisis, they've become part of Project Ruby Slippers (the international "Dear God let's get out of this hellshit universe and back to our home dimension!"), where they provide some expertise on magical solutions. ...Nobody's expecting magic to solve the problem, but some believe it might solve some of the many technical hurdles involved.
There are currently no plans for pony appearances, but who knows?
- Location
- Malaysia
I've been meaning to ask about other Hasbro properties as well.
- Do the Joe ranks include some former kids who have experience going and coming back from other worlds? Maybe the former wizard is back on Earth as part of this Project Ruby Slippers, but if the others have become Joes, what kind of generic codenames are "Barbarian" and "Ranger" anyway?
- How likely is it for a current/former holographic pop star to either shift careers into G.I. Joe (given former model Cover Girl, anything's possible) or maybe even making her holographic technology available to them? Or would she just be back on home keeping morale high?
-- On that note, did the canon G.I. Joe cartoon have any holographic technology that was comparable to Synergy?
- Do the Joe ranks include some former kids who have experience going and coming back from other worlds? Maybe the former wizard is back on Earth as part of this Project Ruby Slippers, but if the others have become Joes, what kind of generic codenames are "Barbarian" and "Ranger" anyway?
- How likely is it for a current/former holographic pop star to either shift careers into G.I. Joe (given former model Cover Girl, anything's possible) or maybe even making her holographic technology available to them? Or would she just be back on home keeping morale high?
-- On that note, did the canon G.I. Joe cartoon have any holographic technology that was comparable to Synergy?
- Location
- parker colorado
No one let pinkie pie access the warp. She would become to powerful.
Oh, Presto is absolutely providing magic consultancy to Project Ruby Slippers.
I've never watched Jem and the Holograms, but she and the Misfits do exist on Organitron. No doubt CDs of both can be found among the Joes.
...Good question about Synergy.
G1 My Little Pony, not G4.
Yet.
Agreed. But then, I freaking love Leverage and Burn Notice.
Also, minor notes on Cavitus's epilogue-
One thing Rastapopoulos is very good at is war profiteering (you'll recall that, during the siege of the Zeta Pocket, he was using the food scarcity to drain the population of their life savings). By the end of the war, he'd accumulated assets worth billions and billions of Thrones. And since he was persuaded to invest that money in reconstruction funds under royal control, well, that made it trivially easy for his assets to be seized upon his arrest. ...Granted, that sort of money is a footnote for a Hive World, even a minor one, but every bit helps with the reconstruction.
Perhaps more financially meaningful, however, is the issue of the Cavitus Credit. Since G.I. Joe and Cortoban knew its value was going to spike when the Warboss bit the dust, they both bought as much of it as they could afford in the week leading up to the final battle - leading to them (or rather, to G.I. Joe and Cadencio Almadero) having far, far more Imperial Thrones by the time the dust had cleared. Which is another boost for Cavitus's economy, allowing Cadencio to push forth his reforms.
And while Cadencio's reforms are plenty busy with "rebuild the northern continent" + "improve education in the upperhives and lower hives" + "create a bill of rights and constitution to protect commoners" + "end slavery" + "reform the PDF into a non-joke" + "build a hive-city in the far north, incidentally giving a hundred million underhivers a better life as they work on building it" + "improve the planet's industrial base" + "hunt down the last remains of the Orks"...
...he is spending some moderate resources on the underhives. This has mostly taken the form of sending small contingents of the PDF and AdMech to the uppermost level of each hive-city's underhive, with the mission of killing roving beasts, taking down gangs, and repairing infrastructure - in short, reclaiming that uppermost level as part of the lower hive. It's a small step, and even that much is expected to take years... but once that level is reclaimed, the plan is to repeat the same procedure with the level beneath it, and so on. Since the whole operation is funded by the crown (...and the AdMech), the nobles in charge of those hive-cities aren't complaining.
One thing Rastapopoulos is very good at is war profiteering (you'll recall that, during the siege of the Zeta Pocket, he was using the food scarcity to drain the population of their life savings). By the end of the war, he'd accumulated assets worth billions and billions of Thrones. And since he was persuaded to invest that money in reconstruction funds under royal control, well, that made it trivially easy for his assets to be seized upon his arrest. ...Granted, that sort of money is a footnote for a Hive World, even a minor one, but every bit helps with the reconstruction.
Perhaps more financially meaningful, however, is the issue of the Cavitus Credit. Since G.I. Joe and Cortoban knew its value was going to spike when the Warboss bit the dust, they both bought as much of it as they could afford in the week leading up to the final battle - leading to them (or rather, to G.I. Joe and Cadencio Almadero) having far, far more Imperial Thrones by the time the dust had cleared. Which is another boost for Cavitus's economy, allowing Cadencio to push forth his reforms.
And while Cadencio's reforms are plenty busy with "rebuild the northern continent" + "improve education in the upperhives and lower hives" + "create a bill of rights and constitution to protect commoners" + "end slavery" + "reform the PDF into a non-joke" + "build a hive-city in the far north, incidentally giving a hundred million underhivers a better life as they work on building it" + "improve the planet's industrial base" + "hunt down the last remains of the Orks"...
...he is spending some moderate resources on the underhives. This has mostly taken the form of sending small contingents of the PDF and AdMech to the uppermost level of each hive-city's underhive, with the mission of killing roving beasts, taking down gangs, and repairing infrastructure - in short, reclaiming that uppermost level as part of the lower hive. It's a small step, and even that much is expected to take years... but once that level is reclaimed, the plan is to repeat the same procedure with the level beneath it, and so on. Since the whole operation is funded by the crown (...and the AdMech), the nobles in charge of those hive-cities aren't complaining.
jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
I can see why the Admech are funding this even if they don't care about the condition of the inhabitants. Ironhide showed that there are various bits and bobs of lost/rare tech down there just waiting to be found and restored/smuggled away to the temple to never be seen again.
And heck, repairing the Underhive is actually good for the nobles since that area is supporting the rest of the Hive. So making sure the structural supports holding up your house are properly maintained is very important.
The AdMech are contributing to this project because Cadencio said to, and even the Magi that don't like him don't want to piss him off. And he's not shy about making sure AdMech members who support his program (like Magos Castillo) get perks that help them in the intra-factional power struggles of the Cavitus AdMech. ("Why yes, Magos Castillo, I'd be happy to give you the funding you need to establish your own skitarii force!")
A minority of nobles see the underhive-reclamation project as a boon that will, in time, expand their domain, granting them additional lower hive domains and thus additional industrial capacity. Most nobles see it as the new King's bizarre, eccentric, but ultimately harmless vanity project.
Also also:
-Cortoban's royal harem were basically told "you can take jobs in the palace that don't involve sex slavery, or you can leave with a severance package that would allow you to comfortably retire in the upper hive. Either way, I'm not keeping a harem of slaves".
-There's a number of things in royal vaults that G.I. Joe considered interesting - such as the alien trophies. If nothing else, having a Tyranid corpse to autopsy (albeit one that died a fairly long time ago) is proving educational.
-Duke Almadero is in a bit of an odd position, being "merely" the Duke of the northern continent but also the father of the actual King. ...He's managing.
-The Cadencio administration is repeating until its blue in the face that Cadencio did not make any kind of deal with the Officio Assassinorum and that there is no proof that the Assassinorum killed his uncle and gave him the throne. The more he denies it, the less people believe the denials. Which, you know, is kinda the plan (plus he figures those denials will diminish his chances of actually ending up on the Assassinorum's shit list).
jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
Though I can see the Joes mostly helping the war effort by rooting out Genestealers and such issues. Because the tactics they used on the Orks (misdirection, trickery targeting logistics etc) don't really work on the swarm proper. Sure they can kill the Synapse creatures but any 'logistics centers' would be deep inside Tyranid controlled territory and you'd probably need things on the scale of tactical weapons to kill the various brood nests and other structure-organisms.
On further reconsideration, I think Ironhide is wrong.
The Imperium would eagerly sacrifice a million humans to kill a single human.
'Cause lord knows Istvaanism is a thing in 40k.
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The Imperium still kept the Warmaster title around even after it was tainted by its association of the Arch-Traitor Horus Lupercal after all.
Speaking of which, if G.I. Joe and their world showed up during the Great Crusade era, what would have happened?
They'd probably try the same kind of thing? And end up catching the attention of a Primarch from how absurdly out of proportion to their size their effectiveness is. Which... may or may not cause problems. Dependent on which one. Like... Vulkan? Might work out ok. Guilliman? maybe same. Angron? Bit more of a problem. Same with Lorgar.
Emps himself would probably just be like... Wait, what the actual F***? MLP is real! Holy shit balls how do I get them over to this universe to help fix things, because we NEED the Elements of Harmony over here and they literally turned to stone what amounts to their own God of Chaos, I WANT THAT.
Probably similar thoughts towards the Autobots and their ftl tech.
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Guardsman_Sparky
The Clueless Wonder
- Location
- Virginia
To be fair, sometimes that one human is a cultist who's trying to open a Warp portal that would swallow the planet.
I mean... big guy clad in gold and calling himself emperor shows up, demands absolute obedience? It would all feel pretty familiar.
General Hawk: "The entire purpose of G.I. Joe is to protect the world from men like you."
Emperor Of Mankind: "There are no men like me."
General Hawk: "There are always men like you."
My point is, Organitron would have tried to oppose the Emperor's galactic crusade of conquest. And in the 30K era, with superior FTL technology, they may very well have found morally palatable allies to share some of their Cybertronian tech with.
Interlude: The Home Front
Interlude: The Home Front
"Ah, Henry! Come in, come in. Always good to see you."
The Secretary Of State stepped inside the Oval Office. "You as well, Mister President. And allow me to once again congratulate you on your reelection."
"FDR was elected for four terms. I owed it to the nation to achieve no less - and God willing, I'll actually serve mine in full."
"God, and advancing medical technology."
"One good thing to come out of the past decade. I wouldn't be much of a President if I still had Alzheimer's."
The Secretary Of State frowned. "I'm certainly grateful for your health, but medical advances have been a double-edge sword. If AIDS hadn't been cured, this election wouldn't even have been close."
"I believe we would have won anyway. The American people love a winner, and I carried them through victory over the snakes, the toasters, and the reds. They wouldn't have repelled the 22nd," he grinned, "if they did not want me in charge."
"Just don't rest on your laurels. The midterms will be just as challenging as they always are, and if the imps decide to glass the planet, it'll all be for nothing."
The president nodded, and sighed. "It's a real shame, you know."
"Many things are, but what do you mean in the specific?"
"The imps. I've said once that, if we forget that we are a nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under. And that's one thing the imps will never forget. They have, for millennia, kept to a faith so pure, it has rarely been matched in the history of Western civilization… It's just a shame that they worship the wrong god. Were they only to give up their Man in the trappings of a God and embrace the God who took the form of a Man, they could be a force for good, rather than merely a force for survival."
"I do not recommend sending missionaries to the Imperium."
"No, of course not," the President chuckled. "Sorry, I'm probably boring you with the religious talk. Anyway, here's the latest report from Cavitus."
The Secretary took it. "Hm. Deployment of moderate PDF and Mechanicus contingents to the uppermost level of every underhive to eliminate predators, stamp down on gang violence, and restore infrastructure… with the long-term goal of fully reclaiming the underhives within a century."
The President shook his head. "He's from the government, and he's here to help," he said ironically. "Much as I wish I could congratulate the people of Cavitus on their newfound freedom, I fear they may have only traded an overt tyranny for a more insidious one."
"Perhaps. But the people of Cavitus aren't our concern. General Abernathy is."
The President winced. "Hawk is… a necessary evil. I don't care for the man, I don't care for how eagerly he worked with the reds against the snakes and the toasters, and I don't care for his soft touch, but I can't deny that he gets results on the modern battlefields. Until the crisis ends, he's irreplaceable."
"Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy," Henry said dismissively. "They become problematic when they start setting policy. And while Abernathy is… competent within his given field, he's also afflicted with a fatal case of idealism that even Vietnam failed to cure, and is surrounded by civilians in soldiers' clothing who represent a genuine threat."
"Like the Ukrainian lawyer? Fyodor was a very useful weapon against the Kremlin, but I trust him as far as I can throw him. We should have ended up with more influence in the Eastern Block after it collapsed."
"You shouldn't trust that scheming weasel. He thrives on being underestimated. It's why he dresses like a hobo. It's why he's still disbarred." He frowned. "And he's not even the one I'm most concerned with."
The President nodded darkly. "If it comes down to it, we have ways of pressuring Hawk. He is far too protective of his men… and far too forgiving. He'll fold if we merely threaten to remove some of the rot he's allowed into G.I. Joe in the name of expediency. And worst come to worst… the unit does have a number of true patriots whom we can rely on, come Hell or high water." He paused. "I realize they had stamped their ticket to Hell a dozen times over, but it's still a shame we had to execute Cobra Commander and Dr. Mindbender. The former would no doubt have had useful insight, and the latter would have been useful for Project Ruby Slippers."
"At least the Paolis and the Baroness are proving cooperative with their intelligence."
"Small mercies. It's a shame that Mindbender's daughter did not inherit her father's scientific inclinations."
The Secretary's frown hardened. "On this we're agreed."
A teenage girl hurriedly walked along the corridor, stealing glances through the window at the stars - far brighter than on Earth, and un-twinkling in the absence of an atmosphere.
My name is Watanabe Eriko, and I feel I'm in way over my head. To be fair to me, that's how almost everyone is feeling these days.
"Oh, hey Eriko!"
She turned around, seeing two college-aged men and one teenage girl. "Hey," she nodded.
Presto and the Williams siblings. They work here as magic consultants. Most of this project is about trying to save the world with technology, but every now and then, there's a magic trick that can resolve a persistent technical hurdle.
Presto looks silly in his green wizard getup and his actual honest-to-Merlin magical hat, but he and a bunch of his friends got stranded in an alternate dimension for over a year when they were even younger than me. A dimension full of monsters, sorcerous threats, dungeons, dragons, you name it. Magic kept him alive.
And apparently fantasy dimensions are a dime a dozen, because the Williams siblings - all three of them - have performed multiple visits to another one over the years. Danny and Molly here may not have become wizards, but they have experience dealing with magical phenomena, so they're still handy as consultants - which is why they got pulled out of college and high school, respectively, to advise the Project. Their older sister, Megan, apparently joined G.I. Joe in the latter part of the Cobra War, so, she's off-world now.
"We were just about to catch breakfast at the cafeteria," Molly smiled at her. "Wanna come with?"
"Sorry," Eriko said apologetically, "I gotta dash. I have to meet with… well."
"Ah." Molly's expression darkened. "Him."
"Ease up on the glares, sis," said Danny, "we're trying to find a way back home, not invent a freeze ray!"
Eriko resumed her rapid pace through the space station (given some of the experiments involved, it had been deemed safer to run the Project at the L4 Lagrange point). Doing so, she walked past several familiar faces.
The "Transmuter" is a somewhat misleadingly-named device capable dimensional shifting. Several members of G.I. Joe once used it to travel to a world where Cobra won the war (long story, which did not end well for parallel-Earth Cobra). So, when that… thing showed up to gobble the world, the transmuter was used as a desperation move, and that's why we're now in the Imperium's dumpster fire of a galaxy.
You'd think we could simply open a portal back. Except, no. Between the extremely minute differences in physical laws between our dimensions, and the passive influence of the Warp… well, to make a long story short, if we just tried to go back the way we came, we'd end up in some random corner of the multiverse. The odds of ending somewhere where the laws of physics even allow life as we know it are not encouraging. Heck, the risk of ending in a universe full of antimatter alone…
So, instead, we need to improve on the existing technology until we can get it to a point where it can reliably send us back to where we started. Which is why every country in the world, from the USA to my native Japan to Luxembourg, is currently dedicating a nontrivial chunk of its national budget to this. To Project Ruby Slippers. The world's last, best chance of survival.
Eriko walked past a white-bearded man, who was arguing with a man moving around with exoskeleton assistance for his legs.
"We can't sustain this kind of reaction until we have an unbreakable chamber," the older scientist argued, "and even adamantine isn't impervious to antimatter."
"You mean, you haven't figured out yet how to make it impervious," the younger one glared at him, "which hinders my schedule."
"How lazy of me to not provide a miracle in the span of a single month! I'll try to hurry it up," the white-bearded man rolled his eyes.
Professor Mulaney. Nobel Prize laureate, world's leading expert in high-energy chemistry, and the only scientist with the dubious honor of having been abducted by Cobra twice. The first time, after he invented a compound (mercifully requiring some very rare isotopes) of which a single drop could make a metric ton of water as explosive as TNT (I think that's what ended up destroying Cobra's Temple Alpha? Dunno, I was a kid when it happened). The second time, when he invented the nitrogen engine, AKA the reason jet planes no longer need to carry any fuel with them. He's a great guy.
Doctor Penser. Kind of an asshole, who also happens to be downright brilliant at antimatter tech. He once built a beam weapon that could induce matter-antimatter reactions in a distant target - for Cobra, and I'm not entirely clear if they kidnapped or hired him.
She kept walking, nodding in acknowledgement at a man in a baseball cap, arguing animatedly with another man who happened to be handcuffed and flanked by guards.
"No, see, you can't overspecialize the parts…"
"It's more efficient."
"Only until you need to replace something. By standardizing them, we become able to-"
Professor Braxton. Absolutely brilliant roboticist. He created a robot that was able to absorb smaller machines and use their parts to increase its own size. Which Cobra stole, and that's why a giant mechanical kaiju attacked New York City.
Scrap-Iron. One of the Cobra's best engineers, supposedly the main brain behind the Battle Android Troopers. Total weasel.
She glanced in the direction of a blonde woman and an Indian man poring over blueprints together.
"The energy density is just too high. I was hoping, with your device, we might be able to contain it."
"I believe so, although a few adjustments would-"
Doctor Winters-Jabal. Inventor of the plasma cannon. Naturally, she was abducted by Cobra and had to build them a plasma tank that caused some trouble in Alwaha. I think she's married to the ex-King of that country, and he's in G.I. Joe now? Dunno, when we talk it's about work.
Doctor Shakur. His magma manipulation technology was a huge breakthrough for geothermal energy, which Cobra decided to weaponize because of fucking course it did. Seriously, it's disturbing how many of my colleagues were abducted by Cobra at one point or another. Almost explains why Doctor Arkeville thought it was smart to throw his lot with the Decepticons.
She stopped in front of a door.
She took a deep breath.
Easy now. Steady.
And she stepped forward.
"Miss Watanabe. You're late."
"Good morning to you too, Destro."
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP-ybuoI2qY
"I will consider the morning good if it leads to progress with our current endeavor, Miss Watanabe."
"Then let's get to it," she said, moving closer to the man in the metal mask.
And thick metal mitts covering his hands.
And metal collar with listening devices and built-in taser.
And the large number of armed guards in the room.
Meet Destro. He's the worst.
Destro's family have been in the arms-smuggling business for centuries (also the sacrificing victims to an eldritch horror business, I'm told), and he managed to outdo all of his ancestors combined - he wasn't just Cobra's primary military hardware supplier, he was also the chief engineer behind a big chunk of their tech. The M.A.S.S. device - the weaponized teleporter that officially turned Cobra from a ridiculous paramilitary group into a worldwide threat? His creation. The Weather Dominator? Destro. The Photon Disintegrator bombs? Destro again.
Now, being a greedy bastard ready to engage in crimes against humanity for the purpose of world domination? That's not great. But on top of that, Destro's also a total douchebag with a long and storied history of utterly screwing over the people working for him.
So, when Project Ruby Slippers got launched… On one hand, he's brilliant and we need all hands on deck. On the other hand, one of the most dangerous people to ever draw breath.
So, he spends most of his time on a small cell in an extremely well-guarded prison in the middle of the ocean. Every morning (well, morning as we define it by the station's clock), they put the metal mitts on him so he can't actually build anything with his own hands, and send him here via the space-bridge. He doesn't touch anything, he just looks at the blueprints and offers advice and ideas.
And there's me. Watanabe Eriko, teen genius from Tokyo. I created my own programming language last year that's rapidly gaining popularity among software engineers (I almost called it "Python", but, snake-based names are unpopular these days). I impressed enough people to secure a position in Project Ruby Slippers.
But since I'm the youngest, least senior person here, I often end up being the one who gets saddled with helping Destro. Joy oh joy.
"I have considered the problem carefully over the past night," Destro spoke, not even looking at her. "The number of accessible dimensions is too vast to catalogue. Nonetheless, to have any hope of securing our return, we must calibrate the dimensional transporter, which will require experimental jumps. Since every such jump will require a dip into a potentially devastating reality, each test will have to be performed in the deep reaches of the interstellar void. However, this will require constructing extremely resilient probes able to survive the conditions-"
"Actually, we can gather data without sending any probe," she interrupted him. "We just need the Space Bridge."
"Pardon?"
"Well, you see-"
My name is Watanabe Eriko, and hopefully, me and the others can find a way home before G.I. Joe's luck runs out.
"You have to understand… My father, he means well, but he is… set in his ways," Horus explained. "It is difficult for him to accept how much the world has changed, that his war with my uncle Set is no longer the most important thing going on…"
"Or," said a very short, balding man with an amused expression, "that mortals may successfully decline the judgment of venerable Osiris and be ferried to his realm?"
"…Yes," the falcon-headed deity admitted, "G.I. Joe escaping the realm of the dead as they did deeply offended him, even if they foiled Set's plan as they so did. Nonetheless, the safety of the world must come above all else." He paused. "Why do you insist on this… diminutive shape, 'Dungeon Master'? I know your true form, Grandfather Of Dragons."
"In my experience, young one, 'tis best to accomplish with little that which requires not to be accomplished with much."
And for that, the entirely-mortal white-haired man present at the meeting was glad. Doctor March was considered a foremost authority on ancient Egyptian History, but his first time meeting its gods in person had been almost as bad for his heart as being abducted by Cobra. Fighting Sekhmet (for a generous definition of "fighting") was an experience he wouldn't wish upon anyone. Well, maybe Cobra Commander.
So he was grateful when the only other mortal (albeit decidedly non-human) in the room interrupted. "So long as the Great Ennead is both willing and able to provide this world protection from the Immaterium, none of us have room to complain," said the cyan-colored small pegasus.
…Doctor March had to really question where his life had gone through the looking glass, that the diminutive blue talking winged equine was his life buoy of normalcy.
"The Ennead will not fail its duties," Horus said. "The Sea Of Souls in this dimension… It is foul. A vile ocean of Murder, Treachery, Despair and Decadence. A barrier between it and the Earth must be maintained at all times, yet already, the fiends who inhabit it test our defenses. We are grateful," he nodded to Dungeon Master, "for the assistance of the gods of the Realm. Just as we are grateful," he nodded to the pegasus, "for the power provided by the Heart Of Ponyland."
"The Princesses say they are dedicating as much of that power to the barrier as they can without harming Dream Valley in the process," she replied, "so I fear that is the full extent of our contribution in the present moment and future both."
"Excuse me," Doctor March wiped some sweat off his brow, "but, Wind Whistler… the EDC wants to ask about the possibility of evacuating the Earth's population to either Dream Valley, or the Realm."
Wind Whistler raised an eyebrow. "Did we not already explain this months ago to the Earth Defense Command? The connection between our worlds is a spiritual rather than physical one, which is why it has remained despite the Earth's dimensional displacement. If forces from this galaxy with any degree of psychic sensitivity were to explore an empty Earth, they would easily discover Dream Valley and the Realm, which would not bode well for either. Furthermore, the souls of the billions of humans currently present on Earth contribute to the spiritual barrier, which would collapse in their absence. In short, evacuating to either of these adjacent planes of existence would save none of us, but rather condemn us all."
"I know that, and you know that, but I think they'll want it in an actual written report."
"Ah, understandable. I shall provide one post-haste. Are there any news from the Lady Of The Lake?"
"…None that I heard of. She's not the chatty sort."
As members of the Sami minority, Ella and Ante Savella had long had mixed feelings about their native Finland. They didn't regret moving to Anchorage to build a new life there, but that didn't mean they didn't miss the old country.
Thankfully, travel by plane was so much cheaper these days (something about nitrogen-powered engines). With Ella's health doing so much better, they were able to visit the old country - and receive a warm welcome.
"…Honestly, I still can't get over the fact little Solomon is now in G.I. Joe!"
"I know, auntie. We're both very proud."
"And now he's fighting aliens on the other side of the universe! That must be hard on you."
"It's… not easy. But it's not the other of the universe, auntie. It's not even as far as Cybertron, or at least that's what he said. And he calls home at least once every month, you know."
"That's lovely, but I do hope he gets back to Earth soon. At his age, he should be starting a family! Unless he's going to meet some pretty alien girl out there in space?"
"That's… unlikely, auntie."
"Phooey. Well, are they at least paying him well? You know how badly soldiers get treated when the war ends, dearie."
"Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about that. You see, he and this girl from G.I. Joe-"
"Ooh, a girl?"
"Auntie. I'm saying, he and this other girl who's also a genius with machines, they've been working together on this invention. A machine that helps surgeons. They've got lawyers negotiating the rights and stuff all the time, but, even with Solomon and the girl trying to keep the technology cheap, it's gonna make for some pretty nice money."
"Oh, that's good. Say, with that fancy Space Bridge, do they ever get to visit on breaks-"
In the deep darkness of interstellar space, trillions of miles away from the nearest star (approximately one light-year away from the Sun, to be precise), virtually impossible to detect, a massive installation was operating with thousands of humans on board.
"How's progress with the shipyards?"
"Good progress, sir. All five Flag-class ships are expected to be ready for deployment on schedule."
The newly-created Earth Defense Command was under no illusion that it could beat back a invasion of the entire Imperial Navy forces within the Serpentis Sector.
But Imperium ships, relying on Warp-based travel like they did, needed a long time to cover interstellar distances. If the masquerade maintained with G.I. Joe's assistance ever fell apart, and the galactic fascists sent a conquest (or extermination) fleet to Earth… it would take them a while to get there.
And hopefully, between the secret fleet the EDC was secretly building, the defense satellites armed to the teeth with cutting edge weaponry, and the massive number of fighter/bomber squadrons built on Earth, that first invasion fleet would bite the dust.
And hopefully, that would buy enough time until the second fleet arrived.
But if it didn't…
"And how are the civilians adjusting?"
"No new incident to report, though hydroponics are slightly behind schedule."
Well.
If all else failed, the tens of thousands of civilians whom the Space Bridge had brought to Ark Station may well end up the last survivors of the Earth.
The apartment was registered under the name of one Blaine L. Parker, but to his neighbors' regret, the man had been absent for a long while now - too busy off-world. As such, the apartment was rented to a nice little old lady called Miss Parker (no relation), who gave a friendly wave to the Smith family from the 2nd floor before she entered the apartment.
Once inside the apartment, having made sure everything was locked, she quickly removed the mask and the rest of the disguise, revealing the young woman underneath.
She stretched.
"The shit I do for this job," she muttered.
With the press of a button, music started playing.
"…truly truly truly outrageous!"
"Like hell," she muttered, changing the channel.
"…the Misfits, the Misfits, our songs are-"
"Better," she grinned.
With another press of the button, the holograms hiding the more high-tech corner of the apartment faded away, and she sat before the videocom device.
Her eyes ran over the registered numbers. Some work-related people… some emergency numbers… her mother, in the extremely unlikely case she ever needed to call her…
Well, she doubted that would ever happen. There'd been a thousand and one reasons she'd never made contact after running away from home. Her mother had let it slip who her birth father had been, and she'd almost immediately set off to find him.
She supposed it said something that she hadn't been discouraged by him being Zartan. Master of disguise, assassin, terrorist-for-hire, leader of the infamous Dreadnoks, and frequent contractor for Cobra.
Zartan had been surprised when she'd tracked him down, to say the least. Yet, in his own way, he'd taken her under his wing. Taught her a lot.
Then he, and uncle Zandar, and basically every Dreadnok other than aunt Zarana, had died in the Cobra Civil War. Fucking Serpentor.
Pushing some traumatic memories aside, the turned on the communicator.
"Hey kid!"
"Hey aunt Z. Hey Mainframe."
At least aunt Zarana was still alive, even if she was light-years away. And her boyo was… OK for a Joe, she supposed.
"How are things?"
"Still en route to Devoir. Can't show up too fast or it'll look suspicious," Mainframe chuckled. "You?"
"Can't complain. Did the job."
Aunt Zarana leaned in. "The disguise?"
"Flawless."
"The story?"
"Checked out."
"Hook?"
"Line and sinkers."
"You got the money?"
"Every little bit."
"And?" Mainframe gave her a level look.
"And I made sure they got it all back," she rolled her eyes. "I know, I know. Just practice to stay sharp."
"Well it does make perfect."
"Maybe it feels like a waste, Zan," her aunt said, "but just 'cause the Big S and the Big C bit the dust, don't mean there's a shortage of dangerous crazies left on Earth. Odds are, we need all the sane people we can get, and sanity can use some leverage."
So I understand Wind Whistler can't let humanity evacuate there, but what about sending them all of humanities combined knowledge for the ponies and their allies to use?
I... don't think most of it will translate well? Magic is too big a part of how everything works there.
Technology works just fine in Dream Valley. The Williams siblings brought some 1980s electronics with them, and they had no problem operating in that environment. And while most of the local villains were magic based, there was at least one instance of fighting mad scientists (in "The Great Rainbow Capper").
Yeah... but our knowledge of astrophysics seems rather silly when in use by someone who can control the SUN!