Uri 1
"Alright,
mein liebling, let us start from the top once more." Kyoko said through Uri's earpiece from her place in the laboratory's control center.
Uri rolled his eyes at his mother's rather condescending term of endearment, the action hidden behind his suit's full-face helmet.
The boy cut an imposing figure; already standing at an impressive six foot tall in his stocking feet, the prototype suit of K44-C Powered Armour he wore added about half a foot to his height and gave a high tech flair to the mythical air that surrounded the Dragon-Blooded.
As he was now, Uri was the very picture of Dragon-Blooded super-soldier from NERV's propaganda, an unstoppable hero empowered by the elements, armored and armed with the very cutting edge of human technology and magics, sworn to defend mankind with their lives.
At the moment though, this relentless defender of humanity was actually getting pretty tired.
The sterile white featureless room he stood in the center of was two hundred meters squared exactly, down the smallest centimeter, a sign of his Mother's near obsessive craving for exacting precision. The eldest of the Soryu children took a steadying breath of air, its taste made metallic by the environmental suite, and gave his mother a thumbs up that tried and failed to be gaunty, the scientist returning the gesture with a worn smile.
"Mother, do we have to?" Uri complained even as he went through the motions. "We've been at this for over four hours now and I'm getting tired."
"One more go Uri, I believe that Maya and myself have,
finally, figured out the power distribution problem that has been plaguing your suits sub-modules for past month." Kyoko stated firmly, leaving no room for any argument from the boy.
"Yes, mother." Uri sighed, defeated.
"Very good, let us begin."
Uri nodded in understanding and tapped at a few buttons on his wrist, and the armor came alive.
Data filled his visor; giving readouts of the suits power supply, the status of its various different modules, the projected drain that they would be on the system if they were active the probable drain if they were inactive, the current temperature within and even the purity of the air outside.
"The diagnostic systems are working fine so far." Uri reported, eyes following the data as it flowed out of the Armour's on board computers.
"Good, very good…"Kyoko voice mumbled though his earpiece "What is its draw level at Maya?"
"The diagnostic systems are using 0.5% of the armor's power cells at this moment, well below tolerance levels."
"Alright, now turn on the Combat-Visor, last time it was too draining on the other systems to be useful." Kyoko said, "It even drained your suits servos, you burned a
lot of Essence just moving."
Uri did as he was told, the jumble of armor system information fading to the back ground as the H.U.D came to life.
This interface was different than the one before, designed with combat in mind, rather than system information.
A counter sat in the top right of his view that showed the percentage of power that was left in the suit's batteries, a reticule sat in the middle with an ammo counter beside it as it interacted wirelessly with the heavy pistol held in the holster strapped to his thigh.
Targeting rectangles highlighted Uri's mother and Ms. Ibuki, painting their silhouette green for friendly through two meters of hardened steel, displaying information on their total distance relative to himself, the likelihood of his pistol hitting them at this range as well as their vital signs like their heart-rate and estimated stress-levels.
He made a note to call it a night after this test was done, no matter how much mother protested; she and Maya were running on fumes as it was.
"A total drain of 5.5%, a little above what we predicted, but it is within operating parameters." Maya said, the sound of clicking keyboard audible through the connection.
"Alright,
Mein Liebling, keep the visor active and try the stealth systems."
"A-Are you sure, mother?" Uri questioned hesitantly, "Of all the sub-modules I've got, that one has
never worked, not for anything smaller than a light-mecha! Even Asuka doesn't think you could do it, and she's the smart one!"
"Don't argue with me, Uri!" Kyoko snapped, "Just do as I say."
"Yes, Mother…" Uri dejectedly, taping another series of commands into his wrist computer.
With a flicker of static, Uri's armour began to turn translucent. The Exalted watched, awe struck as his gauntleted hands began to fade out of view with only a faint outline visible.
"Holding steady at 33.45% power drain." Maya said. "So far it is 13.24% above the estimated level and the power distribution program has deactivated the environmental systems and reduced the power of the servo systems to less than 20% capacity."
"Ah…" Kyoko sighed in defeat, "It appears, for the nth time today, that we have failed to overcome the Size/Essence Barrier. If you were to attempt to move, the cloaking device would sap all of the power from yoru servos again and you'd be burning prestigious amounts of your own Essence just to
walk."
Uri grunted in annoyance, all that time spent
wasted, before he jabbed his fingers at his wrist computer and the cloak faded away to leave him a visible elementally empowered six foot tall super-soldier.
"Well that was a fantastically worthless waste of time." Uri spat, "How about next time we try to break one of the largest bottlenecks in Essence technology, we do it at a reasonable hour."
"Don't be sassy!" Kyoko snapped, glaring at him though the reinforced glass hard enough to make him flinch and step back, before she groaned and began to rub her temple in a rather vain attempt to sooth her own raging headache.
"Let's just give the rest of the systems a going over and we'll call it a night, everyone agree?" Kyoko asked.
"No problems here, Dr. Soryu!"Maya replied cheerfully.
"Thank
Gott for that…"
Over the next half-hour, the pair of scientists and the one teenage super-soldier painstakingly tested the armor's various systems, from filtration baffels with various gases to the various different vision modes and the suit's strength multiplying artificial musculature.
"Mother, may I ask you something?" Uri asked hesitantly as he moved to his head to look at various shapes to test the IFF and targeting systems.
"Hmm? Yes, of course you can
Mein Liebling." She said as she poured over the data on the display screen.
"Well, you've been very… proactive in testing my equipment and training as of late." Uri said, deciding that calling her behavior obsessive would be counter-productive no matter how accurate. "I've been wondering why, exactly."
"Oh, well that's simple; you're aware that NERV has spends a lot of time and money trying, and more often than not failing, to regulate greater Tokyo's spiritual ecology?"
"Yeahhh…"
"Ugh, Asuka knows this, Uri, your fourteen year old non-elementally empowered sister knows this better than you and she isn't even a part of
NERV!" Kyoko scolded.
"Sorry, Mother…"
"
Anyway," Kyoko went on, "Recently some of the more powerful and troublesome spirits have been either driven out of their territory or destroyed outright. The abundance of Yomi-Wan aspected Essence, and the evidence of human manufactured weaponry, suggests that the Kuei-Jin are responsible."
"Okay, but I thought they were on our side, nominally at least."
"The amount of Essence this
entity was pumping out would have left all but the oldest and most powerful of those Youki-Spawn either dead or maddened with hunger." Kyoko explained, looking up to look her son, her pride and joy dead in the eyes. "We… We believe that an Elder Kuei-Jin has awakened and it s killing these spirits to secure its own territory and to cow the Dharmas in the cities into submission. The Kuei-Jin agree, and are doing their own operations into the Umbra."
"Fuck!" Uri swore violently, "I am I going to be deployed soon, aren't I?"
"Yes, the Dragon-Blooded have the best ability to enter the Umbra with anything approaching ease. Not even the Kuei-Jin or the Kindred can do it as well as you and the others can. NERV Command wants a full team of Dragon-Blooded for the scouting operation." Kyoko admitted worriedly. "Uri, this
thing can move in and out of the Umbra, dead and alive, quicker and smoother than even a full team of Dragon-Blooded working in concert."
"I'm scared for you, Uri."
Whatever Uri was going say, to reassure his mother, was cut off when Maya shrieked at the top of her lungs.
Uri didn't think; flames exploded out from under him as he jumped, blackening and buckling the steel plate beneath him, he slid his gun out of its holster and fired off a brilliant shoot of pure flame that reduced the glass between him and mother to half melted putty.
Crashing through the molten glass, Uri rolled across the floor and levelled his pistol at the door to the room.
What stood there made his stomach rebel on him.
The abomination that stood in the door way had mouths, human mouth with lips and teeth that smiled at him, upon its feminine body. Its too long finger were claws made of bone, viceria and silver light and atop its long and serpentine neck with feathers and scales of every color was the head of a pretty girl.
Her brown hair was done up in two pigtails and she was smiling at him in the same way as the mouth on her body were and a pair of red glasses framed her pretty green eyes that were friendly looking, with a certain sense of energy to them that made him think of his sister during her more hyper moments.
Without even the slightest moment of hesitation he put two rounds into her skull, putting this deformed monster out of its misery.
"Mother, are you alright!?" Uri asked as he turned his back on the things corpse as it tumbled to the ground.
Which proved to be a massive mistake.
One its arms stretched out to an impossible length, the limb turning in some kind of razor mouthed worm, and it wrapped around him and flung him into the wall opposite the melted window.
"Ooph!" Uri breathed as his ribs bruised from the force of the impact.
"Oh~" The girl-thing said as it slunk in to the room, its neck stretching out so that the pretty face it wore was right up to his visor. "I'm starting to like you~" It said as it smiled madly at him, a thin tongue flicking out to lick him on the face.
"Let's have
fun!" It pronounced, before it lunged at him.
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Mari's
here~
