It is A.D. 2072, and the Earth Union is under attack from all manner of monsters, aliens and murderers wielding dangerous technologies. The Defense Forces are on the backfoot, and the few incredible defenders already present need all the help they can get.
You are Major John Devin and you are charged with developing, training, and deploying the Earth Union's own Super Robots.
A quest about building the Earth Union's very own Super Robots running on nonsensical science to punch bad guys in the face. See the previous thread here!
It is the year A.D. 2072, and world peace is under threat.
The murderous, mad and malevolent kaiju continue to ravage the Pacific Districts under the unhinged direction of Dr. George Sheol. The attacks of the bioengineered monstrosities continue to expand in range and in scope, causing untold damage to cities and infrastructure and leaving hundreds, if not thousands dead or wounded. Many more are captured, and never heard from again. And more than just the mindless beasts they appear to be, there is a growing trend of intelligent leaders taking direction from Sheol and gleefully masterminding their own attacks.
The Westphalian Separatist Movement is still an ongoing threat, escalating their attacks with the aim of undermining confidence in the current world government and rewriting history to cast the selfish aims of the Red King and his lackeys as heroic. Worse yet, their armaments grow deadlier, with new experimental war machines and an uneven, but growing, standardization. Combined with their ability to strike and disappear, the geographical Districts remain on a knife's edge, wondering when the next boot will drop.
The KausenFree Brothers, led by the cunning criminal Tyrannous, terrorize the American Districts for their wealth of processed energy even as their warship theoretically allows them global reach. Beyond their base aims to amass wealth and energy, analysts still continue to puzzle over their ultimate goal - if it is not conquest or escape, why are they here? What do they want? And how far are the mechanical life forms willing to go before they are satisfied - if at all?
But the situation, while no less desperate, is no longer quite so dire. For years, Mercury V has presented the first significant threat to the kaiju, and has drawn the most attention of the vengeful Dr. Sheol as its pilot and creators refuse to back down. The stalwart Valiant continues to stand defiance where the Westphalians dare to harm the innocent, and contests the Red King's plans. Even the Free Brothers' own kin harry them and seek to bring them to justice, as the law enforcement paramilitary faction known as the Legio Galbinus, led by its noble leader Galbinus-R, cooperates as best it can with the Union to bring down Tyrannous and his band of thugs, regardless of the cost. Thanks to the efforts of these Super Robots, these combined threats have not gained a ruinous foothold. But their efforts alone will not be enough.
The Earth Union, while battered, has endured. Suffering from attacks both foreign and domestic, navigating through political divisions and inter-District differences and facing the first true test of the Defense Forces (EUDF), these challenges are not taken lightly and the Union has risen to meet them. The Union refused to simply beg others for aid - and having found themselves wanting, have forged their own Super Robots. And the Defense Force Research Institute (DFRI) has been the answer.
Disparaged, denied, and dismissed by its critics, the DFRI has regardless produced miraculous technologies that already promise to radically change life in the Union's future. Alone, its Variable Configuration technology has brought EUDF forces new advantages as it fights to simply hold ground with shapeshifting mecha. MAJ Johnathan Devin's preservation of kaiju tissue samples has allowed the eccentric minds at his disposal to reverse engineer kaiju biology to strengthen its champions' bodies, and the creation of Super Artificial Intelligence personalities has exponentially increased their productivity. But the debut of the Super Robot Beowulf, and with more on the way, has shown that while on the backfoot, the Union is clawing its way onto an even fighting ground.
As conflicts continue to rage across the globe, the Earth Union rouses all hands, every resource, and whatever tools are to hand. The Earth Union stands!
Hello and welcome to Super Robot Quest G! I'm Basarin, and this is a continuation and rework of my existing quest. The quest mechanics have been completely overhauled from the first thread - see this link here or on my signature - but please, go ahead and read it! I'll do my best to bring you all up to speed, but this thread continues to build up on all of the achievements and plot points we all have come across before.
What is Super Robot Quest? At its heart, it's a love letter to my favorite genre of anime growing up as a kid - Super Robots. If you have ever watched any of the Yuusha or Brave series of anime (such as GaoGaiGar), Transformers (both Generation One and the Takara universe), or watched old school anime such as Mazinger Z, Getter Robo, even the multiverse of Mobile Suit Gundam to a degree, you will see plenty of nods to them all in this story (I'm not exactly shy on showing where I draw inspiration from, just ask any of my readers). Transforming mecha, shouting your attacks, giant climatic battles against monsters and evildoers with fire in your blood and backed by the power of friendship and justice! The world is in a sorry state, but there is hope that it will get better, and only if we all put the work in for it!
What do we do in this quest? You are in charge of running a government agency charged with the creation, development, maintenance and deployment of Super Robots in order to combat the dangerous and escalating perils facing the world. You exist in a living world with other players involved, both other Super Robots along with friendly NPCs and enemy factions. Through scientific development, engineering and military management, it is your job to address the dangers facing you and the Earth. You all have collectively made quite a bit of progress, and you are a growing consideration in the eyes of many - for good and for ill.
Why is there a new thread for it? There's a lot of old stat blocks and systems that won't quite apply moving forward. Some systems the readers may be familiar with for dice rolling, but the outcomes and the purposes are going to be somewhat different. That said, the previous thread will always be there if you want to see how the systems worked, how it was debated, and how they impacted the story at the beginning. This new thread lets me make a fresh start of things.
Why the delay in updates from the previous thread? I had quite the corrosive mix of a toxic work environment and a series of high stress positions. Combined with the fact that I originally made this a game of stat blocks and number crunching, it became very difficult for me to keep going, and this quest has already had a few hiatuses that lasted months. This last one was for almost a year (not counting my attempted return back into the quest last summer) because I was in a bad spot. But I also loved the story the thread helped to make, I loved the characters, and it didn't feel right to leave an incomplete story. And, thankfully, enough of the readers have chimed in that they still want to read what I have to write. So here we are! And I couldn't be happier!
Why Super Robot Quest G? If you've ever played or seen any of the fantastic Super Robot Wars games, you'll notice a similar naming scheme across the franchise since the original Gameboy (!).
So how does the quest work? I will include more details moving forward, but in brief: this will be a primarily narrative quest with player decisions, with some dice rolling mechanics that influence the narrative in between battle encounters. When it is time for battle, aside from voting on certain directions the scene will take, the characters involved have their own temperaments and opinions and will do what they feel is best in order to meet your objectives. You can choose who to send and what to deploy, so think carefully about if you think they're the right individuals to send out.
All in all, I'm glad to have you with me for the ride if you choose to stay on. Be courteous, be polite, and be ready to discuss plans to punch every bad guy we meet.
The next few posts will be me reserving them in order to secure space for future Informational Threadmarks. Afterwards, we will continue where we left off:
Day of Destruction! Destroy Mercury V!
(Hey, I did say this was a love letter to Super Robot anime, didn't I? Enjoy the ride!)
1300, 22 November A.D. 2072
Outskirts of the Yukimura Institute
The Yukimura Institute. Established in the latter half of the 2060s by Dr. Yukimura Rin following the failure of his dissertation, for years it had been an idle curiosity in the idyllic shadow of Kyoto's many peaks. The grounds were kept crisp and clean, the air sweet and clear, the construction of the sky-blue building sweeping in graceful arcs reminiscent of some architects' visions of the far future from a century before. Aside from some small public grants from the Japanese government's programs and private investment outside of the District Administration's purview, it had stayed out on its own, researching, developing. Creating.
And when the dreaded Kaiju began to make landfall, Dr. Yukimura revealed Mercury V to the world with its victory over the Kaiju. The very first victory against a foe that had once seemed impossible, yet years of sacrifice and sweat had brought it about. Such a victory, however, came at a cost:
It has been a very, very long time since the Institute has been quite so idyllic.
"Hurry up! Hurry it the hell up!" Large boxy structures were emerging from the ground, the grassy patches revealed to be disposable astroturf that were shunted aside in great plumes of green and brown as hollow black cylinders protruded from inside their frames. The air around them seemed to chill with the mists of the early morning despite how late in the afternoon it was. "Cannon One, up!" The hollowed out cylinders began to glow a faint blue, and the mists around the base of the cannons began to intensify.
"Cannon Two, up!" Another of its fellows emerged further back, right along the driveway that would lead straight to the Institute in more peaceful times.
"Cannon Three, up!" More and more of the weapons jury rigged into firing platforms emerged across what had once been beautifully landscaped grounds. Components that had once been test beds for the weapons systems that were now carried into battle by Mercury V, now finding new purpose for one final test of arms. The whole ground seemed to hold the damp nature of the early morning, obscuring the sweeping arcs of the building behind a fog.
"Job's done!" The engineer, an older man with a scowl on his face, glared towards the direction where the kaiju were coming from. "Y'know these things ain't gonna stop the kaiju by chuckin' harsh language at 'em?" he demanded, his body already shivering slightly from the lowered temperatures around him as he hopped back into his truck alongside his crew.
"They're not supposed to," the voice on the other side of the line assured him. Crisp, professional - very likely some EUDF officer who had come in to help. "What they'll do is buy us some time until help arrives."
"Well, they'd better, that's all I'm sayin'," the engineer groused as the heavy duty tires squealed, the driver understandably wanting to put as much distance between themselves and the giant monster dinosaurs stomping their way towards them. Five other trucks around him in the distance were doing likewise, with tire marks undoubtedly destroying the painstaking efforts the landscapers had put in. They'd probably complain more if they were eaten. Probably also give the kaiju a big ass bellyache. The engineer glanced upwards, the strange Defense Force dropship - honestly looking more like what the old world war ships looked like - but flying - with gun turrets constantly scanning the horizon with those strange jets they'd brought with them. Nothing he'd ever seen before either.
"It'll do," the voice assured him. "Just - hang on." The voice cut off momentarily before she replied again. "You might want to swing towards the hangar side rather than maintenance."
"What for?"
"Infiltrators, and they're armed with guns."
1315, 22 November A.D. 2072
Yukimura Institute, Inner Reception
"If Sheol ever finds a way to arm the actual kaiju with guns, I'm going to complain," Keiko grumbled as she slid a fresh magazine into her rifle. "Violently." All around her, the sounds of spent shell casings clattering onto the ground, the oddly cheerful sound of a belt being fed into the one machine gun she was able to finagle out of her old contacts at Okinawa, and the reassuring sounds of mild swearing beneath her friends' breaths filled the room.
The slumped over figure of one of the infiltrators hung over the makeshift barricade of the knocked over desks and piled furniture. The skin on its' face seemed to almost hang loosely from its frame now, as if only the bare minimum required to put on a paper-thin disguise had been implemented, and a scaly, if now perforated, texture could be seen beneath the green-tinged blood that was leaking from the corpse. None of the defenders were getting too close to the blood stains - they all knew what happened with the big kaiju. Good enough to pass a casual inspection, but once their blood and anger got up their faces were nothing like an actual person.
They also shouldn't be allowed to tank assault rifle rounds without actual body armor. That just felt like cheating.
Keiko never saw action against the Westphalians in her time as GDF infantry, but there were some things you just never forgot. And if she was honest, the whole layout of the Institute made it oddly easy to conduct the fighting retreat like they have. Keiko would have thought that old man Yukimura designed the whole damned place from the ground up like this - she'd have to ask Hiroki about that sometime, even if Yukimura had contracted or cooperated with someone else to actually build the place. But for now, it made defending things easier.
And now they even had extra help.
"Ms. Hamakawa-"
"Told you, just make it Keiko," she grunted. Some of her fellow defenders were already sneaking forwards, a loose belt of explosives and grenades in hand as they proceeded to wire them in ways that she was conveniently looking the other way to notice too hard. "Thanks for the heads up, but I'm assuming we've got more, Diana?"
"Afraid so." The woman sounded as fresh as when she'd landed almost a day ago, yet there was that underlying fatigue beneath her voice that was unmistakable to anyone familiar with running perimeter defenses. She still seemed to work like a machine. "I'm sending you another fallback point - you can probably take one more engagement before you'll need to pull back. Dr. Yukimura's assistants have already evacuated to the center, so no risk of blue on blue."
"Good. What about your Super Robots?"
"They're approaching now. They're going to buy us some time until Dr. Yukimura can get Mercury online, along with the prototype weapons from the 'Grand' line."
"Music to my ears." Keiko cocked her head at the sounds of skittering footsteps echoing down the halls. "Better play our part too. Alright, everyone, safeties off, we've got more friends coming…"
1320, 22 November A.D. 2072
Outskirts of the Yukimura Institute
"Configuration engaged."
The thought ran through - echoed through? - Oscar's head as the Perseus began to unfold. As the torso rotated and the legs expanded, stomping into being he was - no, Zhang was - already running down the diagnostics list. The K-Circuits thrummed as they distributed power all along the giant's frame, with enough rhythm that it almost, almost, felt like a heartbeat.
'This Psychic Theater link is weird.'
'Could you keep it quiet? Still going through weapons pre-check.'
'And your voice is a movie theater box.'
'That sounds like a "you" problem to me.'
Oscar Tellison rolled his eyes at Xiu Ying Zhang's sass, but put his own portion of attention back to letting her get back to the pre-battle checks and his to the battlefield itself. The head unit of the Perseus - still scarred on one eye from a separatist shrapnel round - flared to life as its eyes glowed a deep green, and without missing a beat, two minds fed directly into the machine's thoughts - and in unison, both wills began to stretch the Perseus's arms, before one thick metal fist slammed into an open palm, the sound of metal on metal echoing like an artillery round. Immediately the tactical situation began to feed itself directly into his vision via the Man-Machine Interface. This technology would have been unthinkable just two years ago - yet four particularly crazy minds, and one or two particularly sane people who could recognize talent had made it all happen. Now here he was, in a pilot armor crafted from kaiju flesh and in a transforming robot that itself was only made possible through kaiju and alien technologies. Built like a mountain, and ready to crash onto someone like an avalanche.
On his feed, he could see the Seekers in the air. The Twenty-Fifth Marine Air Wing had volunteered months ago to be their particular guinea pigs for what Lana and Jiro were focusing on as a next-generation model. If the Perseus was a wonder of technology - and it still didn't quite hold a candle to the Beowulf - the Seekers were something else entirely. Triple-changing mecha, with the ability to wage a land, air and sea campaign on their own - and all were piloted by veterans who were falling in love with the technologies and daring enough to push their luck and their new frames to the limit.
It still didn't quite feel like enough as he stared at what was coming in the distance.
The two kaiju approaching seemed to be rapidly approaching mountains of their own. Both of them were four-legged, with thick, hardened scales readily apparent even from this distance. Entire patches of ground seemed to shake and disappear with each step they took, and dull roars from even this distance seemed to rock the Perseus's frame.
"Two kaiju…'standard' isn't the word I'd use for them, but they don't have anything obvious that stands out just yet." Diana's avatar appeared in between their consoles, her arms crossed and one hand tapping her chin. "Sheol isn't known for recycling his monsters. And I just don't have enough information on them yet. Dr. Yukimura's team is entirely focused on trying to get Mercury online."
'Do they have an ETA on that?' Zhang's thoughts 'spoke' even as she was still finishing the diagnostics, with a small list at the corner of Oscar's vision showing an almost completely green readout.
"Negative. This attack came at a really bad time since Mercury was undergoing repairs and upgrades." Diana looked incredibly frustrated - and for a moment, despite knowing she was sentient, Oscar forgot that she was a digital life form. "Stand by to-"
Diana was cut off as something exploded from the kaijus' direction. Scales and what looked disturbingly like the acidic blood splayed in all directions, mingling with a veritable cloud of dust. But rather than simply revealing the hopeful vision of the kaiju having suffered some catastrophic error in their biological programming…
"This is Chimera-One, I am reading ten…twenty…thirty…" The marine pilot's voice sounded strained as Oscar and Xiu Ying could see the readout for themselves as their entire screen began to light up with contact after contact, all emerging from the explosion. "...screw it. Lots of bogeys, all in bound. Permission to engage?" Even as he asked for permission, the hilariously outnumbered flying defenders were already charging forwards to meet the challenge - just thankfully without the 100% likelihood of death the old conventional machines would have guaranteed them.
What seemed like an entire murder of flying beaked kaiju were all screeching, creating a noise echoing across the battlefield that sounded like what crows must have sounded like in hell. Even as the fliers were streaking upwards into the air and practically blotting out the skyline, the two remaining ground kaiju were still trampling towards the Institute - and by extension, the Perseus. At a glance they looked considerably less bulky, but these were giant dinosaur monsters - and the defending forces were abruptly very, very outnumbered.
And they still had one more coming after these things.
"Chimera-One, this is Perseus," Oscar spoke out, having finally found his voice - and remembered to use it with people without the Psychic Theater link this time. "Objectives are the same - defend the Institute until Mercury V comes online. Here's the plan…"
'…that I'm coming up with on the fly, because how the hell do you have a plan for this?'
Notably, this time Xiu Ying had no sassy reply for his thoughts.
The Yukimura Institute is under siege, and is facing an existential Crisis. The city of Kyoto is being utterly wrecked by three kaiju sent by Dr. Sheol. One of them is of a larger class than any sent before, with two smaller but no less dangerous kaiju on par with what Mercury V has fought previously sent ahead in order to cause as much damage as possible to the Institute's infrastructure and delay or destroy any efforts to launch Mercury V.
Meanwhile, the Yukimura Institute itself is under attack by converted 'infiltrator' units sent ahead as an initial raiding force. Hamakawa Keiko, a friend of Hiroki's, and a cohort of her retired Defense Force fellows are cooperating with the Institute's staff to force a delayed fighting retreat, taking full advantage of the fact that this is far from the first time the Institute has faced attempted infiltration (though armed invasion is an unfortunately novel experience). Their objectives are fairly clear - fight towards Mercury V's maintenance bay while causing as much secondary damage to people and installation as possible.
Mercury V is undergoing emergency repairs, having already taken damage from a previous engagement. Hiroki is waiting impatiently in the Falcon Mobile, and is this close to just launching out and doing something to contribute to the fight, but both Yukimura and Hamakawa have overruled him - he's just as vital as Mercury V is and they can't risk him.
The Perseus is the second successful Super Robot deployed by the Defense Force Research Institute (DFRI). Utilizing the experience gleaned from the prototype and later production line of the Jackal, Lieutenant Wilde and Sergeant First Class Henry in cooperation with Dr. Sam Carlson retrofitted the Buckler-class Infantry Fighting Vehicle into the Phalanx line of mecha.
The Perseus itself is the logical progression to the Super Robot scale of class. Utilizing some of the latest in the DFRI's technologies, the Perseus was revolutionary at its inception, even though it has been somewhat eclipsed by recent developments. K-Class subdermal mesh reverse-engineered from kaiju tissue samples has been overlaid even more thickly beneath the metallic frame, allowing it to absorb damage that would even give the Timbewolf combined form pause. The Perseus is also able to deploy a shield on its left arm to absorb incoming projectile fire, though this has not been extensively tested in melee conditions. On top of heavy recoilless cannons mounted to its forearms, its primary method of attack is as simple as can be - blunt force trauma via its heavily reinforced fists. The experimental Arc Blade, made possible by Lieutenant Wilde and SFC Henry, it is a powerful weapon that projects high intensity electric energy which can be momentarily supercharged if the Spark Caliber battery unit is authorized for deployment - however, this greatly reduces the effectiveness of the Arc Blade afterwards.
The Perseus is a significant departure from the DFRI's current design philosophy, however, in that it utilizes a radically new technology: the Psychic Theater. A mindlink that connects both of its pilots via the Man-Machine Interface that is now standard in the DFRI's equipment, it theoretically allows both pilots to respond to any situation, along with heightening the power and response time of the Perseus itself. However, even by Dr. Carlson's own admission, this is not a fully understood phenomena - and if the pilots cannot agree on a course of action, the link is momentarily stalled, a delay that could be dangerous in combat.
The Perseus, however, has some drawbacks: compared to the Beowulf, the two pilots operating the Perseus are not quite as experienced, in addition to fielding new technology. Additionally, the Perseus, while incredibly durable, is also not particularly fast or agile. Despite the liberal use of the Anti-Gravity treatments, it is a miracle at times that it can move as it can. And due to the hurried nature of the deployment, longer ranged options are somewhat lacking.
Their pilots are also somewhat inexperienced, but only in regards to operating the Perseus. Lieutenant Oscar Tellison is no stranger to operating the CR-line of mecha, having been a Jackal pilot alongside Richard Callaghan in the DFRI's early days. Having only one combat experience with Perseus (and without its current technologies), Tellison is a capable leader, able to coordinate friendly units into rapid battle plans on the fly and does his best to ensure that each component punches at their weight class, if not heavier. Lieutenant Xiu Ying Zhang, however, is entirely new to operating mecha, but as a former infantry officer she is often able to spot quirks of the local geography that most others might miss, and use them to their fullest. Both pilots are defensively minded, which suits the Perseus in theory.
The Peagasus is an in-house developed solution of the Stork-class dropships used by the Earth Union Defense Force. Originally merely designed as both a worldwide transportation option alongside localized command and control, the engineers and science teams of the DFRI grew, by their own somewhat proud words, 'We were constructing a flying drop ship of doom and destruction from discount parts because we could.'
Resembling a flying version of 20th century seagoing warships, the Pegasus houses numerous technologies that make it viable as both a transportation and C&C unit as well as a fire support platform. Utilizing technologies bartered for with the Kausen Legio Galbinus, the Pegasus can boast five turrets that house experimental energy projector cannons. In addition, taking lessons from previous conflicts, the Pegasus also sports multiple hardpoints of anti-aircraft rotary cannons. It also can be almost entirely autonomously run, thanks to its ability to stream in its Super AI advisors from DFRI Headquarters.
The cannons, however, do not fire particularly quickly, having to spend considerable time venting heat out of the turret before it can be considered safe to fire again. And while it has seen some engagements in the past, it has never been fully committed to the frontlines. It is also the only unit of its class in existence, and the DFRI will not risk losing it if conditions prove to be too dangerous - it is the only escape venue for the Super Robot team if conditions grow dire.
The Super AI Diana operates the command and control unit of the Pegasus. She is no stranger to its operation, but while she can provide fire support, she is also multitasking in aiding the Yukimura Institute's defenders. Normally not a burdensome task for the Super AI personalities, but stress and mistakes are all too human phenomenons that the Super AI have been known to make previously.
Technically on loan from the Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF), the 25th, or 'Chimeras,' are all veteran pilots who had jumped at the chance to volunteer to operate new experimental weaponry. So far, they have not been disappointed. The CR-11 Seeker model is the most recent development from the DFRI's Engineering department, and it greatly expands on the Configuration technology pioneered by them.
Rather than simply one alternate mode, it now has two, effectively making it a 'triple changer.' The primary form is that of an air superiority fighter jet that had yet to see mass production, sporting the ability to contest enemy air assets with high velocity missiles and autocannons. Should it be forced onto low altitude operations, it can also shift into a ground buggy mode armed with a flak cannon - not nearly as potent but it allows the Seeker unprecedented flexibility in terms of mobility and maneuver. Finally, its mecha mode incorporates the weapons of both, allowing it as well the ability to fight in the air as well as on the ground.
But much like the Perseus, the Seekers are brand new - and the 25th Air Wing has not tested them in combat scenarios. They also are not here in full strength - one squadron of twenty-four are present, and much like the Pegasus, they will not be able to afford sustained losses. But these pilots are brash, and somewhat hotheaded - a personality trait that is as much of an asset as it is a hindrance, depending on the situation.
Welcome to combat! For those who have been following from the previous thread, you'll have some inkling on how things will work here from the discussions recently.
Combat is an entirely narrative affair. Under normal circumstances, you would have had time to prepare for an engagement in terms of developing and refitting your Super Robots, training your pilots, and maybe mustering in a support team. However, this engagement is one that was about to go underway from the previous thread, and I figured this would be a good view into how deployments and combat will go from now on.
Pilots will have their own mindsets, and while you can lay out a general objective, they are going to go about them in the way they think is best, and perhaps in ways you don't agree with! Oscar and Xiu Ying, for example, are rather mild in this respect - they tend to be a little more defensive in mindset, and will try to pick and choose their attacks unless things get desperate. But someone like, say, Jessica Satsuma, is going to charge and punch at the problem until it's no longer a problem. The players will have choices to make in between turns as well, but this is now going to be much more from the pilots or supporters' perspectives rather than a topdown approach as is traditional.
This is going to be a learning experience for all of us, so bear with me as I smooth out any wrinkles this new playstyle will incur!
One last note: the experimental cannons will fire of their own accord as the battle progresses, so there's no need to focus on them. Fixed defenses in Super Robot anime are never meant to last, after all!
What is your plan? This time, write in said-plan! Just know that there won't be dice rolls for this unlike the previous thread, they will act as they see fit.
1350, November A.D. 2072 The Siege of the Yukimura Institute
To the human staff helping to operate the bridge of the Pegasus, it looked as if nothing was amiss from Diana. Commands were continuing to be routed to different stations. Readouts of the swarm of flying kaiju 'fighters' for lack of a better word were still being fed into the tactical displays through which the staff could still route directly to the Perseus and the Seekers of Chimera Flight. To their unaugmented senses, she even looked as if she were still fully in motion, not having stopped a moment.
That would be flattering to know, but incredibly far from the truth.
"-Chimera Twelve, incoming bogeys, watch six 'o clock low-"
"-forward prototype cannons are focusing fire on target designate K-1, minimal effect-!"
Diana had thought she'd known combat. She'd dove through all of the engagements Lieutenant Callaghan and the rest of the DFRI had participated in. The defense against the Westphalian commander that attacked the DFRI grounds. The attack on New York City. She had even been there for the defense of San Francisco and the raid that saw the Kaus known as Bandit.
-the sounds of air being ripped apart as rapid fire rotary cannons tore through a pack of the shrieking, clawing monstrosities that tried to force their way to the bridge-
-the world was nothing but flashes of bright lights. Thunderous roars. Booming echoes as the sound barrier was breached by those around the ship-
-she winced as she felt the scrapes of the kaijus' claws as they scraped and grasped at her hull, only for her to reach out and force some of the point defense cannons to sweep the bits of the hull they were clawing against, like picking out a scab-
-the sight of the laughably outnumbered Seekers flying with a devil-may-care attitude, sometimes only visible beneath the swarms of scale and chitin by missile contrails and the flaring of their guns-
But she had never been directly involved. Never directly risked. And for the briefest of nanoseconds, too quick for the human staff to even realize, the Tactical Super AI known as Diana froze. Utterly transfixed by the beautifully horrible canvas being painted over and over again in front of her. Completely unable to even upload a single thought to the tactical database, a weakness that could have been fatal for someone of flesh and blood.
But just as quickly, Diana's subroutines kicked back into operation. She narrowed her eyes as she saw a particular cluster of the 'fighters' breaking off from the Seekers. Diana knew she had to use the gun batteries of the Pegasus sparingly - but this felt like one of those times.
She grouped that particular batch of targets and uploaded them into the targeting computer as a recommended firing solution. And then she turned her attention back to the battle - outside and inside of the Institute.
Diana sectioned off the part of herself that was terrified, and resolved to reconcile it later.
To the pilots of Chimera, this furball - and there was no other way to describe it - was an engagement that they could only dream of.
A Seeker frame shuddered as multiple claws forced its acceleration to a half - only for the frame to reconfigure into buggy form, slowed only by bits of kaiju having gotten crushed in between configuration hardpoints. Its tires were already screeching as they turned into impromptu buzzsaws against the relatively fragile kaiju trying to grapple it. Its flak cannon roared, coated in viscera and the occasional spray of acid, finding no shortage of targets around it.
Outnumbered, in some ways outgunned, and fighting for their lives in a Close Air Patrol. Engagements that were the stuff of traditions passed down to them from the proxy battles of the Unification Wars. From even the distant twentieth century.
"Chimera-One, be advised-crap!" The pilot reconfigured just at the last moment, the frame's wing just missing a spray of spikes from the pterodactyl-lites. "Bogeys have rocket pod analogues!" The mecha form fell into freeform for just a moment, before both forearms unveiled their gunpods. "Need a hand here!" As the pilot wrenched the controls, the frame spun about, feeling more of the spiked rockets slam into her frame as she aimed her forearms at the swarm bearing down on her, the Seeker's forearms shuddering as flak clouds erupted above her with each shot.
Were this engagement fought two years ago, they would have all died to the last pilot standing. But now they had something that could give them a fighting chance.
"Nine, punch out! Punch out!" Chimera-Nine's Seeker was in freefall, its thrusters gummed by acid and spiked rockets as it fell rapidly towards the Earth. Nine was not the first to meet such a fate - and more than likely, as distant smoking trails falling to the Earth could attest to, he wouldn't be the last.
"This is Nine! Punching out!" The Seeker's frame exploded as escape charges blasted apart the rest of the hull that held its pilot in place - and a smaller mecha form emerged from the clattering remains, spreading its arms and legs out in an impromptu imitation of a low altitude drop. Retrorockets fired downwards from its back mount, decelerating just enough for a parachute to unfurl, further slowing its descent to the ground below.
And they had far more tools than they could have ever hoped for.
"Pegasus, this is Chimera-One, Group Alpha is in the strike zone."
"Clear out, Chimera-One. Party gift's inbound."
The Pegasus dropship's turrets turned ominously towards one particular ball of fighters, their attention turned towards what the animalistic minds must have thought of as easier prey. With an echoing screech, they all barreled towards the dropship - a predator species that never once thought they could be herded like prey.
A brilliant pink blast of energy roared from the turrets and practically bleached the color of the world away from it, the energy blast blindingly bright and seemingly sucking all air around it out of its flight path as the balls of energy expanded. The cacophony of shrieks rose in volume and then abruptly cut off, only shadowy forms breaking into pieces visible even through polarized vision.
When the blast receded in the distance, only bits of bone and a cloud of falling ash could be seen, slowly descending to the ground like snow. "Chimera-One, confirm target impact."
"This is One - there's no target left to impact." Yet despite that congratulatory note, the ash cloud parted - only to reveal even more, bulging eyes and screeching mouths apparent even from this distance. "Don't think we're done yet."
And as above, so below.
A massive armored fist slammed into a shrieking mass of leather wings and now broken teeth, silenced only as the fist recoiled from the massive forward guns embedded above the wrist. In one smooth motion, the writhing corpse was then sent flying, a massive foot slamming into the twitching remains as it was hurled skywards into its oncoming fellows. More cannon fire was leveled to bear, yet the mass of flyers dispersed, spreading into different directions in order to seek some way into the Institute that didn't involve going around the massively armored giant on the ground.
The Perseus was disinclined to allow them this. Its eyes glowed a baleful green as its twin wills urged it forward, fresh shells already being racked into the firing chamber.
"Chimera-Nine, are you good?"
"This is Nine, just a little beaten up." The smaller entity's frame wearily rose to its feet. Perseus paid it no heed as one of the controlling wills was already sighting the great beasts' avenues of approach. "I can still fight-"
"Get inside the Institute," the first of the wills commanded. "Your weapons are infantry to light vehicle grade, and there's more enemies to take down inside. Link up with Four and Seven-"
Perseus turned its attention away from the lesser beings, its wills having the situation well in hand. It aimed its forearm slightly - then twitched to the right before firing, both wills indicating where the shot had to be led. A burst of flack erupted, shredding some of the more foolish creatures and rendering them nothing but dismembered limbs and impotent shrieking. More of the flying creatures had broken off from the flocks that swarmed the mother vessel fighting above, a sleek, metallic dagger piercing its way through even as Those-That-Seek were gradually being forced to retreat, one by one. Soon, even the flying horse would be forced to withdraw if things did not change.
And Perseus's eyes could only focus on the bigger prizes.
The emplaced defenses erupted in bursts of blinding blue cold as they fired upon the encroaching beasts - kaiju - running towards the Institute. Running towards Perseus. Rending claws cut apart the defensive cannons in clouds of circuitry and metal. Molten hot fire belched from their mouths as more metal and circuitry melted, the cold being forced to yield to the primordial flames as even the grass around them was set alight.
It was all too easy to see the divide, where the defenses lay and where the beasts prowled. A haze of blue, slowly giving way to a burning orange.
'You feel it too, don't you?' The second whispered.
'Yeah. Perseus wants to fight.' The first replied.
Its fists clenched at those words. A low rumbling snarl emanated from deep within its engines, circulating through its K-Circuits in a low building heat.
Perseus wanted to fight.
'Not yet, big man,' the second said. 'Let them soak up the damage. And the Institute has more tricks ready.' The various hidden infrastructure panels glowed alight in its tactical mind, tiny blips on its HUD.
'We'll get our chance. But we fight as a team.'
The Perseus backed down, begrudgingly. Another of the flying annoyances fell to its fists, stomped underneath its foot and its body left to the earth. It would hold.
But Perseus wanted to fight.
A shriek - and then an unhealthy sounding crunch echoed in the maintenance bay entrance as the infiltrator was mulched beneath the forklift's treads.
"C'mon, you overgrown lizard men!" The forklift slammed into the nearest group of overturned vending machines and shipping crates - and another trio of shrieks were soon followed by yet another crunch noise.
"This is my maintenance bay!"
The burly-looking man in the grease stained coveralls dove out of the forklift right as machine gun rounds pierced through the engine block, but that seemed to only make him more irate. Grabbing a nearby toolbox, he found a heft enough looking monkey wrench and rolled up his sleeves.
"I just had it set up the way I liked it! And you're messing it all up!"
From the corner of the man's eyes, he could see his team throwing themselves into the scrap too. Tenkawa, with a massive twenty pound fire extinguisher held with both hands over his head, was chasing after one unfortunate lizard man whose face was exposed from smacks to the face and its human face hanging off by a thread. Mikawa was cackling like a madman, the high pressure water hose he was controlling literally blasting more of the infiltrators back out of the maintenance bay and causing a slipping hazard to everyone involved. Even timid little Nijima was operating the huge maintenance crane, dropping the damaged components Mercury had come back with literally on top of their heads.
"Oi, old man." The radio crackled to life. "We're getting pushed back closer to the launch bay. Can you hold on your end?"
"What, you're saying ol' GSDF infantry can't hold the ground?"
"Yeah, screw you too, jarhead." Hamakawa's retort had no heat behind it - or that was the sound of assault rifle fire echoing in the radio. "Can you hold?"
Sendo Daichi grinned as his massive arm slammed down against one infiltrator trying to reach for a nearby pistol, knocking the thing unconscious with a vicious thwack. "Do your thing, Hamakawa. We'll hold and get Mercury fixed up right quick. Nobody messes with my maintenance bay but me!"
QM Note: It wouldn't be a show inspired by a Go Nagai production if there weren't a quirky group of surprisingly competent support characters.
Even as literally most of Diana was left to keep things running on the Pegasus, she had enough processing power to split off and keep helping with the fight inside. She was still trying to figure out how to explain the whole 'I'm a Super AI, nice to meet you!' part, as only Dr. Yukimura really knew, and there just wasn't enough time in the day to explain that.
Problem for future Diana, not current Diana. Future Diana can cuss me out all she likes later.
"Keiko, you've got a good chokepoint behind you. Mind the vents above, they might try something there."
"Dr. Yukimura, you have one attempted breach in the-nevermind, your engineers got them."
"Forward Cannons Five through Nine just went offline. They'll be within targeting range of the midline defense soon." Diana grimaced. It was all she could do to keep the flyers from just overwhelming the whole Institute but she was already starting to lose more and more of the Seekers. There were literally more of them inside the Institute joining the gunline Keiko had set up - or if they weren't, there were almost enough of them that she could probably set them up as an impromptu quick reaction force.
Detonate fire extinguishers in Hallway 15B. A small group of infiltrators were immediately forced back, the explosion and the resulting foam likely tricking them into thinking the hallway was defended by a grenade launcher.
Overheat kitchen ovens. The kitchen erupted - Diana blinked at just how much cooking oil was being used, and the resulting infiltrators rallying for another push against the gunline were coated in fire, cooking oil that set on fire, and…a surprising amount of boiling hot miso soup that did nothing to put out the fire. Glad I can't smell.
As much as she could, Diana created as many small distractions as her mainframe access allowed in the Institute, while hoping Captain Sasaki - or Major Devin - wouldn't be too upset at how much property damage she was causing. But how did Dr. Sheol have this many converted infiltrators? Where were they coming from - and why weren't they suffering the usual effects of shock on morale that all of her databases were telling her should be taking effect by now? Small bits of shock were enough to force them back, but they would come back. They were proving they were always coming back. And without a good look at their numbers, or even a notable command and control unit, she had no clue what the actual balance of the battle was.
Only that at this rate, they would be reduced to scavenging for whatever slapdash blackmarket weaponry the enemy were holding to keep going on ammunition-
Her attention was wrenched back to…the Mercury launch bay!? How did they get in there!? Diana nearly panicked - until she saw that most of those who made it in there were already dealt with.
An irate Matsumoto Hiroki standing on the gantry leading to the Falcon Mobile, his fists already slightly bruised, easily explained why. "Get the hell away from Mercury!" Another infiltrator, its eyes doing nothing to hide their reptilian nature, found its face caving in as it was knocked over the safety railings and tumbling downwards to earth. Another found an armored foot slamming into its ribcage, Hiroki having managed to spin around mid swing to ringout this one as well-
-yet one distant kaiju convert was aiming a rifle straight at the swirling mass of fists and feet. We can't have that.
With a single thought, the section of gantry the rifleman was perched on simply collapsed in on itself - and so focused was the wouldbe assassin on aiming down sights it simply fell, joining its fellows in the rain of kaiju men making interesting splatter patterns down on the ground below. "You missed one," Diana commented over Hiroki's helmet.
"Uh, thanks?" With one final jab, the last of the attackers was sent below. Hiroki paused to catch his breath, noticing that the gantry that collapsed was resetting itself. "Who's this?"
"My name's Diana. I'm the…" Diana thought about evading the question about her nature. "...oh screw it. I'm an artificial intelligence sent by the DFRI to help out."
"Oh. Cool!"
Diana blinked at the straightforward response, even as her avatar superimposed itself over his helmet's visor. "You and Dr. Yukimura both are taking this pretty well."
"I've got a super robot that punches dinosaurs in the face, and I get to fight literal lizardmen. Honestly, an AI's not too far off if you think about it."
This was...not at all how she envisioned these conversations going. She raised a finger, as if to try and raise a counter point, but it just sort of fell to her side. "...y-you...you're supposed to-"
"Eh, life's too short to worry about details." Hiroki paused, and tilted his head. "Are there more coming?"
Diana glanced over. "Afraid so. Keiko and the others are dealing with them though."
"And I'm stuck here. Joy."
"I wouldn't worry about that too much." A moment passed as both iterations of Diana synched together and shared information - and this iteration frowned at what she was seeing. "Those things are getting closer."
The two large kaiju are getting closer to the Institute. They only haven't arrived yet due to the deployment of the excess prototype weapons set up as impromptu cannons, but it is now clear they're not going to accomplish much more than that.
Both kaiju are of similar make. No longer carrying swarms of 'fighters' on their bodies - designated Pterawings by Diana until a better working name can be found - they are fast, strong, and can tear through the defenses in short order and have a fire breathing attack. They will be on the Institute - and Perseus - soon.
The Pterawings are still numerous - but there is a notable difference between when the engagement started and now. That said, in a straight up war of attrition, the odds are still well within the kaijus' favor.
The situation inside of the Institute is stable, but hard pressed. The engineers at the maintenance bay are delayed in installing the final parts to render Mercury V operational, but they are not at risk of being overrun yet. The Perseus pilots have also identified old unused pieces of infrastructure hidden on the Institute grounds that could prove to be of use.
The large kaiju - the one spotted on sensors and by scouting elements months before - has mostly broken its way through Kyoto, and will be within visual distance of the Institute. Estimated time of arrival is uncertain, as it is found to be somewhat easily distracted by JSDF and EUGDF elements spoiling its avenue of approach.
Perseus has seen some light engagement, but has mostly restricted itself to keeping guard over the Institute and preventing those few stragglers from getting inside or preying on the ejecting pilots. Its systems are showing some abnormal reactions, but the pilots do not seem overly concerned by this.
The Pegasus itself has taken some damage from the swarms of Pterawings. It is still in the fight, but it is being forced to give aerial space in order to prevent being completely swarmed like ants over a picnic lunch.
The 25th Air Wing are down approximately a third of their numbers. Thanks to the DFRI's insistence on installing their cockpit units as miniature mecha Steeds in their own right, there are no casualties - and the pilots have been redirected inside of the Institute to help bolster their defenses. The remaining Seekers are also being forced to rotate in and out of the Pegasus for refueling and hotswaps of missile and cannon ammunition. It can keep at this pace for now - morbidly made slightly easier due to less Seekers to resupply and refuel - but this is not sustainable for too long.
Orders? Remember to vote by plan.
[] Perseus
[] Send Perseus directly into the fray. There will be no point in keeping it held back if the kaiju manage to get within clawing distance of the Institute - and kaiju have been known to overly fixate on anything resembling a Super Robot.
[] Hold back and conduct a delaying action. The old infrastructure panels could be of use still in funneling these creatures.
[] Write-in
[] Pegasus
[] Plunge straight into the Pterawing swarm. As suicidal as it sounds, it's guaranteed to put a really big dent in that swarm.
[] Continue to pull back, and maintain the Institute's air space. Even if they've got more Pterawings than we have energy cells and ammunition - we can't risk losing the Pegasus.
[] Write-in
[] 25th Air Wing
[] Continue to fight a delaying action, even down to the last Seeker if need be, we need to buy Mercury V time!
[] Pull back, fighting only as Close Air Patrol support for the Perseus. We can't risk losing all of the Seekers.
[] Write-in
This took me a lot longer than I was expecting. But I hope it was at least entertaining enough to warrant the wait. Thanks for your patience!
1427, November A.D. 2072 Approach to the Yukimura Institute
"FINALLY!"
The pilot exhaled, letting go of the control interface to wipe some sweat off of her brow. The controls - and she was still grumbling at how Sheol tried to make the whole control scheme some freaky interface directly into the brain or something, ew! - were fairly cheap bioplastics, but she could put up with that. They were about as sturdy as a high quality arcade machine - at least she thought so - but they held up for now. They were probably gonna break at the end of the engagement, but, eh, it only had to last that long.
Then the Titanosaur could be put back to cruise control. The old man had some weirdass grand word for it, but as far as she was concerned, it was cruise control - she let the kaiju cruise, and she held control!
Her hand brushed past once pale skin that was now decidedly scaly in texture, and her eyes went back to viewing what was left of the final checkpoint leading up to the Yukimura Institute.
Not that there was much of it left.
The urban center behind the Titanosaur looked as if a kid had stomped through their building block set, with squat, blocky buildings tilting to their side and with a few on fire (she didn't remember setting anything flammable - must've been that tank she kicked like a rock for…one of them, she just didn't remember). A trail of wrecked military vehicles dotted her path like breadcrumbs on a trail.
Guntrucks torn in half, their guts belching fire and smoke to the open air in addition to ammunition cooking off randomly. Helicopters with their rotary wings bent at pathetic angles, guaranteed to never fly again as their windshields were cracked and caked with the blood of the pilots unable to get out. The tanks whose turrets were ripped apart from the hull entirely before being thrown as impromptu weapons.
All sights that warmed her shriveled little heart. Friggin' Union.
But one sight that made her frown…"Since when do the normies get to have giant robots that ain't Mercury?" she wondered out loud. One of the tanks wasn't a tank at all - it had turned into a giant robot with a big ol' gun on its arm and tried to take her head on. Still stupid, but it lasted a few more seconds than the rest of them did. She was sure its head was somewhere over the horizon - it might get to the Institute before she did.
Still a nasty surprise though. And as she let her consciousness slip into the kaiju's awareness - the one part of the interface Sheol didn't bother pretending to listen about - she could sense the other kaiju she had sent ahead. Not well, mind - she could only 'see' in terms of emotions and vague shapes this far away from them, but what she saw told her enough.
The sight of a flying dagger spewing fire all around, dragonflies circling around and preventing the swarm from devouring its prey-
-the great prowling beasts were clawing past exploding icebergs, chasing after the great beached whale-
-a man of metal, NOTMERCURY standing in their way as it reared its fist-
She winced as the connection severed, rubbing her forehead. "Ow," she complained. It always hurt when she did that - and she felt the impact of someone punching her in the face.
"Okay. That's it."
Both hands gripped the controls. The Titanosaur growled and huffed, as if trying to buck her control, but it yielded. As always. And its attention was turned forward.
Ozawa grit her teeth, multiple rows of fangs glinting in the natural biolight. "If you want anything done right…"
1436, November A.D. 2072 The Siege of the Yukimura Institute
Battle!
The impact of a charging kaiju slamming into the Perseus's raised guard sent bone-jarring impacts up Xiu Ying's arms. "Tch!" She bided her time until she could feel the momentum bleed away from the charge – and that took a frightening five seconds and deep furrows plowed into the earth courtesy of their legs. Oscar was already bracing their legs as she leaned forward, and Perseus's crossed arms swung forward, forcing the kaiju back.
Battle is joined!
Oscar was already unveiling the gunports in both forearms as Xiu Ying guided Perseus's right fist, already reared back for a punch. The kaiju was in the midst of trying to recover from the broken momentum of its charge as a concentrated mass of steel and kaiju mesh slammed into the creature's nose. Another impact shuddered up their arms, joined by another as the roar of the fore-mounted cannon echoed, granting an even bigger impact to the punch and providing enough recoil to bring back its fist.
The kaiju had just finally broken through the next to last layers of the ad hoc defensive weaponry, and had finally met the angry road block known as Perseus. That had been about five minutes ago. It was just a little bit ago. It was forever ago. Time began and then began again just as it was ending as Oscar's perspective overlapped with Xiu Ying's, one action bleeding into another as both consciousnesses fed into a single entity, a pulsing, shifting mass of metal and repurposed flesh.
The second sent a mental command through the mother vessel. Perseus felt a slight nod from elder sister, and the earth heeded their commands.
The second kaiju was mid charge when the massive infrastructure panel they were fighting besides raised forty-five degrees in a jittering rush of metal and hydraulics, emerging in a cloud of uplifted roots and dirt. Unable to stop its momentum, the kaiju was already sailing through the air, yet it was already attempting to brace itself to land.
"Gotcha!"/"Gotcha!" Two voices raised inunisonand tempo as both arms lifted to the sky, and cannon fire flashed brightly as high explosive rounds impacted the softer belly of the kaiju. A shriek of pain echoed wildly across the battleground as chunks of flesh and acidic blood fell to the earth.
It was Perseus. And its desire to fight had been fulfilled-!
Oscar hissed as the Theater's feedback fed him pain shooting up his left arm, as the first kaiju's teeth snapped onto the Perseus in a vicious chomp. A muffled roar was shaking up his limbs as the creature made its displeasure known, heightened only by the fresh burn marks pockmarking its face from the Perseus's weapons. "God, this thing's ugly!" This close to the Perseus's face, the maw of the burnt kaiju looked like an oversized crocodile sized up to what he imagined as T-Rex proportions-his eyes widened as he felt rapidly rising heat building up where their arm was serving as a chewtoy. "Zhang-!"
"-shield!"/"Up!" Perseus responded to its wills, and clenched its fist as its right foot braced against the impact. Before the great beast's maw could spew out its wicked flame, it abruptly found its jaw widen as its shield unfolded. Perseus felt a strange sensation as it heard the beast's jaw crack from the shield's expansion, and the stream of fire was blunted, the metal already beginning to char and crack from bearing the brunt of the heat.
Disconnect! It hoped its wills could comprehend, especially as the other kaiju was already scrambling to its feet, and charging at speed-
"Disconnect!"/"Right!" Small charges detonated along Perseus's left forearm as the shield began to disintegrate from the heat, and they yanked their arm back just before the creature's distended jaws slammed down, crunching through the shield like a stubborn jawbreaker. Even as they turned, however, they were too late to do anything about the second kaiju's charge.
Xiu Ying felt the wind knocked out of her gut as tons of like-sized angry lizard crashed into them, knocking them onto their backs and creating an impromptu irrigation ditch as the kaiju began to slam its claws into its chest. She forced their arms into a guard position – and she felt Oscar sluggishly catch up to him, just in time to catch the next blow with their forearms. Both of them winced as the kaiju's claws dug deep into the barrels of the left forearm cannons, leaving a jagged edge behind.
"Pegasus! I need a fire support mission!" Oscar yelled as both he and Xiu Ying forced the Perseus's knee upwards, jamming straight into the kaiju's gut. It didn't seem to faze it much, as despite the numbness creeping up their left knees, it only slowed the kaiju down a little. "Yes, damnit, on top of us-!"
A wash of energy screeched directly over them, slamming directly into the kaiju and forcing it off of the Perseus. Streams of the concentrated energy blast seemingly refracted against the protective scales, the kaiju practically rolling away almost like an armadillo to favor presenting its tougher hide, and tiny miniature beams curved all around it, digging small, sharp lines into the earth around them.
"I can't give you many more of those!" Diana's avatar momentarily appeared in the corner of their eyes, and a smaller display of the Pterawings – and a shrinking cordon of Seekers stubbornly holding the flying monstrosities at bay – forcing the Pegasus further and further back from their air space. The dropship itself was now sporting a hundred little gashes along its prow, and the bridge's reinforced viewport had jagged cracks running down the center. "They almost have Mercury online, but they need more time!"
"How almost is almost!?" Xiu Ying snarled. Another signal later, and the next charge by the kaiju was blunted by the timely raise of another infrastructure panel. Perseus was already backpedaling as fast as its bulk would allow, its remaining forearm cannons raised as claws violently scraped their way through the panel. Clearly the creatures could learn, which was unfortunate.
"Depends-" Diana's avatar flickered, and for a moment another silhouette seemed to merge with her. Then she resolidified, "-depends on if I can keep the infiltrators out of the hangar bay."
Oscar mentally nudged Xiu Ying, and with a nod, both of them willed Perseus to thrust its arm upwards, palm extended – just as an extended claw swiped forward, knocking the blow aside and forcing the kaiju to overextend. Perseus, almost ahead of their input, was already grabbing onto the creature's head in time to forcefully bring its snout directly against the knee with a bone-jarring crunch.
"Grab the pilots-!" With a lurch, Perseus leapt backwards, getting some distance between themselves and the somewhat battered kaiju, the hull momentarily glowing blue on their left side as one of the last remaining prototype cannons fired a dissipating stream of Aeon particles. Their left forearm was starting to spark and smoke, the gunbarrels all but useless, and the timer in the corner of their eyes helpfully reminding them that yet more was coming. "Get the pilots to lend a hand-!"
"-they already are-!"
"-with Mercury!" Xiu Ying finished. Both pilots glanced at each other, and nodded in mutual thought.
"They need time?"
"We'll get it to them."
They spoke as one. "ARC BLADE!"
The scabbard loosened from its back, and with a flourish Perseus brought its bright blade to bear. If one could have seen its face, its lips almost looked as if they were curled upwards. The sword forged of impossibilities would aid them through this.
"Let's cut them up, Perseus!"
With a sudden lurch, Perseus surged forward.
Perseus would not bow down so easily.
"Tritonium plates set!"
The corridor light up with rapid bursts of flame, the crew served weapons now healthily augmented by the additional dull roars of autocannons. One of the strange new machine armors the new additions had come in with all had some weapons on them. More had already run out - but they were clearly more than happy to lug around the big guns Keiko had managed to scrounge up.
Even as the infiltrators continued to press forward - and seriously, how many were there!? - they were now finding it incredibly difficult to make any ground. And that gave Sendo time to actually focus on finishing the repairs to Mercury. The familiar and comforting form of the black, white and blue giant was hunched over, but it already looked considerably healthier than the nasty surprise it had run into before.
"Capacitors One through Five, inserting now!"
Keiko grudgingly admitted that though they probably could have held, the Steeds the pilots had ejected with were making it more and more of a sure thing. Some of them were even managing to help install the parts into Mercury at Sendo's direction - she hadn't known he was a former maintenance chief in the MEF until mutually shared profanity between pilot and wrench guru asserted a rough rapport. The corridor couldn't also take everyone, so they were the ones hooked to elevation wires and inserting by hand the capacitors into Mercury where they would have been massively slowed down due to some of the maintenance machinery having been wrecked in the fighting.
So…they were very helpful.
Even if they were Marines.
"Doc!" Sendo yelled out. "Everything's set!"
"Understood, Daichi." Dr. Yukimura's voice came in quietly. "Begin Aeon Particle charge."
At once, the room's color seemed to bleach away, replaced with an overwhelming white and blue that bled into all corners of the hangar. The tall, hulking form of Mercury V seemed to slowly stand straighter, the dull blue plates beginning to glow brighter and brighter-
The lights began to spark, then explode one by one, arcs of electricity surging through the ceiling and raining shards of glass down onto the people below. "Abort, abort!" Dr. Yukimura ordered.
"We can't!" Sendo was already trying to rip out wires from the console, but was abruptly sent flying back as a nasty surge nearly cut up his chest. "Mercury's takin' everything we've got!"
"Ms. Diana-!"
"Roger! Engaging emergency power-!"
Red lights further down the corridor began to flicker to life, yet the hangar itself remained bathed in shadows. The Steeds were already switching on the high beams from their alternate mode, the hallway further illuminated by additional gunfire as they fought off another wave.
"Check right, check right!"
"Box them in! Don't let 'em among us!"
"I'm out! I'm out!"
"Changing!" Keiko was already slamming in a fresh box of munitions into the Steed's smoking chamber, stepping back as the mechanoid racked the charging handle and was already stepping forward to add its fire to the orchestra. I have to get me one of those. Discarding that thought, Keiko tapped her communicator. "Diana, Doctor, please give me some good news."
"...I have bad news, and worse news," Diana told her bluntly.
"Bad first."
"The Pegasus has been pushed back to just the airspace over you. We're fighting the Pterawings as much as we can, but-" Diana paused as she seemed to look over something. "-I'm down more of the Seekers and there's rooftop fighting at this point. I think there's less, but this is not sustainable and I'm having problems getting firing solutions against the ground kaiju." Diana's voice sounded a little tinny, as if she were speaking through two radios. "Until main power's restored, I also can't get you any tactical info."
"And the worse news?"
Doctor Yukimura responded. "The third kaiju is on approach."
Keiko's blood ran cold, even as the light flowing into Mercury brightened. "Sendo! Hurry it up!"
"I'm tryin'! Just make sure the punk's ready to go!"
"I wil-" Keiko paused. "...Hiroki's still at the launch pad, right?"
The resulting silence was more deafening than the gunfire right next to her ears.
"Hoooo yeah!" The Falcon Mobile was already corkscrewing its way through the flying kaiju-lites, and Hiroki's hand on the stick was already twisting ahead to bank right before the next flying mob could get on him. The nimble fighter was mostly known as the cockpit for Mercury-
-but it was still a fighter jet!
The Falcon Mobile's nose brightened as a stream of Aeon particles speared its way through one of the flyers about to chomp down on one of the weird jets. Another simply disappeared as he slammed through it, his cupola momentarily darkened by the various guts he'd just smashed through. And-
"Hiroki." Diana's avatar appeared, her arms crossed and looking rather…cross. "Why are you out there?"
"Hangar went dark, doors went open, and I was a sitting duck," he replied glibly. Pushing the stick forward, he forced the Mobile into a dive - and blinked as he saw another giant robot ramming its sword straight through the arm of one of the kaiju. "You all have another one!?" he exclaimed, a gleeful grin crossing his face. "Awesome!"
"Hiroki-"
"One sec!" Rockets let fly from the wingtips as they scattered around the second kaiju, explosive wisps of super-charged frozen air momentarily freezing the ground solid and slowing the kaiju's motions. Just enough time for the giant robot to yank its sword away and pull back from over extending. "What is that?"
"The Perseus. Now, can you pleasenot get shot down while another kaiju is approaching!?"
"You sound like Keiko, you know."
"She's also mad, by the way."
His face fell. "Aw, crap."
The two kaiju - currently designated as Crocalisks by Diana - are fully engaged in combat with the Perseus. Oscar and Xiu Ying have been able to fend them off surprisingly well, and both sides have already landed wounds against the other relatively evenly despite the numerical advantage. Xiu Ying has been able to utilize the infrastructure hidden beneath the earth to their advantage, but the kaiju are rapidly learning.
The situation in the air has become more grave. Though the Pterawing swarm seems to have lessened, the 25th Marine Air Wing are down to half strength - twelve Seekers - and are only able to maintain the Pegasus's own air space. The Pegasus in turn is no longer in a position to engage in fire support missions against the ground targets without risking hitting the Perseus.
Additionally, the third kaiju is on approach - and it massively towers over the Perseus, and by extension the two kaiju sent forward. Reports of destroyed EUDF and JSDF elements along its avenue of approach confirm its lethality, and there can only be one target on its mind.
Mercury V is almost online, despite the difficulties being faced inside. The Steeds operated by the downed pilots have been put to good use, in a mixture of assisting with holding the gun line and being drafted into helping with finalizing repairs.
One complication: Hiroki has taken off in the Falcon Mobile, and has joined the fight.
The Psychic Theater is proving its worth beyond a shadow of a doubt, though certain idiosyncrasies are already being observed. Yet despite having taken damage to its weapons and its hull, the Perseus - piloted by Oscar and Xiu Ying - are more than holding their own against the two Crocalisks.
There is no telling how long that will last against the third incoming kaiju. But even if withdrawal was possible, it would only allow ground to be given to the kaiju.
The Pegasus is keeping the majority of the Pterawings out of the Institute, but only around its immediate airspace. The Perseus is also too heavily engaged in melee combat to allow safe fire missions on its behalf, even if it is likely that they will request it anyway. It has also suffered damage to the hull - the bridge is holding for now, and morale is holding steady among the human crew, but there is no telling how long this may last.
Fire missions against the third kaiju, however, are another matter even if it may draw attention.
The Seekers have been reduced to twelve from an original twenty-four. Morale remains inexplicably high among the remaining pilots, and all survivors are engaged in defending from the ground or inside the Institute.
[] Perseus
[] Focus on the two remaining kaiju. They have their number, though there's no telling what effect the third kaiju will have on them.
[] Break off, draw the third kaiju's attention. We need to slow it down as much as possible at this critical juncture.
[] Write-in
[] Pegasus
[] Focus exclusively on the Pterawing swarm. This close to Mercury's activation, we cannot allow any interference.
[] Focus on fire support for the Perseus, even if there are risks involved with friendly fire.
[] Focus fire on the incoming kaiju, even if that may draw attention to the Pegasus.
[] Write-in
[] 25th Air Wing
[] Focus exclusively on the Pterawing swarm. This close to Mercury's activation, we cannot allow any interference.
[] Form up around the Falcon Mobile and protect the Mercury's pilot. We do not need to stress how disastrous losing him would be despite his enthusiasm.
[] Write-in
Sorry for how late this is, but it's still Sunday in my neck of the woods so I'm counting as sorta on time!
Also, if anyone has any feedback for this format is going so far, I'd welcome it!
Also, this is what the Falcon Mobile looks like:
I was able to commission another art piece. It will be unveiled next update. Stay tuned!
[] Kill Adds First
-[] Perseus
--[] Focus on the two remaining kaiju. They have their number, though there's no telling what effect the third kaiju will have on them.
-[] Pegasus
--[] Focus exclusively on the Pterawing swarm. This close to Mercury's activation, we cannot allow any interference.
-[] 25th Air Wing
--[] Form up around the Falcon Mobile and protect the Mercury's pilot. We do not need to stress how disastrous losing him would be despite his enthusiasm.
1601, 22 November A.D. 2072 Siege of the Yukimura Institute
Not tested, not quite ready, used anyway. If the circumstances were any different, Oscar Tellison would have been annoyed at Major Devin and the engineering team - but as it was, neither he nor Zhang wanted to even think about what would have happened if Perseus wasn't deployed here with a small team.
The Arc Blade crackled as the Perseus swung it in a wide arc, catching a burst of flame from one of the Crocalisks. The flames seemed to dull and arc their path on impact, but that was all - Oscar was already having to shift focus, trusting Xiu Ying to keep at it with the sword arm as he held out the right arm to hold the second Crocalisk at bay. One claw still dug deep into the Perseus's shoulder, with sparks and smoke wafting from the wound as Perseus's hand grasped the other claw. "Back off!" The remaining gunports on the right arm triggered, blasting the Crocalisk in the face and causing it to recoil-
-allowing Oscar to reunite his focus with Xiu Ying as their sword arm slashed downwards, biting deep into the Crocalisk's claw.
Oscar and Xiu Ying immediately yanked the blade away, but acid was already starting to seep into the blade's composition. Remnants of the Arc Blade's electric charge were fighting off most of it, but some damage was still going to linger. Didn't think that part through about fighting kaiju, and it's not like we can install the Spark Caliber. Still, the blade was still functional for the moment and they had one gun left.
Xiu Ying grunted, shaking her left arm around as if she had been the one to personally swing the Arc Blade. The movement was only slightly spoiled by the bulk of the K-Suit she was wearing. "One's still behind us," she grunted, "and one's down a claw."
Oscar's left hand was clenching and unclenching in a similarly sympathetic reaction fed into him by the Man-Machine Interface linked to his own K-Suit, as he replied, "Not looking in great shape ourselves."
"We can take them."
"Yeah, probably." Both pilots grinned, a mix of grim determination and confidence crossing both their minds. "We got this, don't we, Perseus?"
The engine revved in response, and Perseus was already taking a step forward just seconds before either pilot could give the command. As the chipped and worn Arc Blade flashed forwards, the skies above them flashed in fire and alien energies, lighting up the horizon like a fierce thunder cloud.
"All hands, this is the bridge!"
The skies in front of the bridge's display port were literally darkened by the masses flying on leather wings, brightened only by the tracers of the Pegasus's point defense systems. Engineering reports showed the last of the Shard ready reserves sliding into place for the gun batteries, readying for a final few salvos as the time to fire ticked down far too slowly for her liking.
"We are diving straight into the Pterawing swarm. Weapons free, and fire at will!"
Words that Diana never expected to hear herself say in her life. But here she was, leading a likely suicidal charge into what was left of the Pterawings. Which was still too damned many, but if Mercury wasn't online, then they might as well just give up now.
Diana's processes were running overtime, her field of vision jumping from point to point as positioning, speed and optimal targeting solutions were constantly uploaded to the human bridge crew's systems. Idly she could sense the onboard security preparing weapons, not taking the chances that the flying monstrosities outside didn't try to force their way aboard if they could throw enough of their spares into the line of fire as ablative armor - another precious microsecond was spared to provide recommended chokepoints and shelters to the brave souls. The point defense rotary cannons were swaying back and forth, no longer concerned with accuracy as much as simply getting something up into the air, shredding more of the Pterawings in droves. Yet despite the tangible difference they were making, there were still more.
'-Batteries 1, 3, 5, ready to fire-!'
Diana's attention fixed forward, seeing the latest rally of the swarm. "Batteries 1, 3, 5, prepare for snap shot volleys on designated targets. Fire!"
Bright red and pink lights flooded the viewport as the forward batteries opened fire, smaller spheres of destructive force shrieking outwards in staggered volleys. A significant number of the horde disintegrated, leathery hide and acid burning away before their very eyes as giant holes were torn through the once cohesive mass. One 'lucky' Pterawing seemed to have made it through that hell - until it collapsed directly onto the prow, one wing still burning as it tried to claw its way to Battery 1-
-until a familiar looking jet shrieked just above the turret, the backwash of its passing sweeping the Pterawing off of the prow and fluttering in irregular circles downwards to earth in a shriek that sounded far more annoyed than anything.
"Let's go, let's go, let's go!" This - this was definitely different from his usual experiences. Sheol usually never bothered with sending a whole damned army at them! Yet as he screeched past the Pegasus's top layer and sent one of the winged nasties down to earth, Hiroki had a grim grin on his face.
Diving down below the dropship, his radar pinged a bunch of signals - his expert calculation placed it anywhere from 'lots' to 'too many' - chasing after him. Well, fair enough - they had to recognize he was the pilot for Mercury to begin with. But if that was the case…
"Diana, about to try something," he radioed in. "Get ready!" He then accidentally-on-purpose cut off the communicator before banking left, making a large turn as he shifted a lever forward. "Maximum thrust!" The engines' whine took on a higher pitch, and the Aeon particles shone an even brighter blue as he then began to lead the flying kaiju on a merry chase. "C'mon, I'm right here!" he taunted them, seeing the Pterawings bunching up in a nice gaggle. Straightening out his flight path, he again turned on the communicator. "Now's a good time to-"
He immediately pulled the accelerator and twisted the flight stick right, forcing the Falcon Mobile into an incredibly sharp turn that the Ptero-pteri-whatever Diana called them couldn't catch in time - and another bright flash of pink and red light washed past him, momentarily triggering heat hazard warnings on his console as more of the creatures were blasted out of the sky. "A little more warning next time?" a stressed and slightly peeved voice asked.
"Hey, it worked!" Hiroki blinked as spines shot past the viewport. "Uh, mostly." Looking over his shoulder, he saw a few of the survivors chasing after him, probably about as pissed off at him as Diana was. "Give a sec-"
The flyers shuddered as gunfire shredded through them, and a trio of the jets screeched past. One of them was already reconfiguring into mecha form, its fist slamming through another flyer. More of them were forming up behind him, even as others were also momentarily perched on the Pegasus itself, lending their rocket and gunpods to the point defense's constant firing. "Uh, thanks?"
"They'll keep you alive," Diana grumbled, "if they don't get themselves shot down first."
"Oh for-!" Ozawa stared at the Yukimura Institute - which was noticeably still standing. Sure, parts of it were on fire, lots of the cannons and infrastructure looked like they were torn apart by the big eggs like they were supposed to, and she was seeing the wreckage of fighter jets and bits of flying warship around, so at least the unit behaviors were behaving like she expected them to.
But there was a distinct lack of burning and wrecked Institute itself! There was a big flying battleship thing, fighter jets (did some of them even have Aeon particles!?) and most of her flying units were dead! She even stepped on a few of them coming here!
And the freaking Falcon Mobile was up there too-okay, that explained the Aeon buildup there. For a moment, she was tempted to grab something and chuck it at the smug prick flying it while he dogfighted with the murders above, but she held herself back. Won't matter if we can actually wreck the Institute like we're supposed to.
Grumbling, she closed her eyes and grit her teeth for another update-
-the murder was greatly depleted, still hounding the flying dagger-
-giant mechanical monsters with big guns pushing their way out of the cordon-!
-and Ozawa gasped as the link was utterly severed. "You're kidding me. They got all of them!? What the hell are those things!?" Ozawa brought back a blurry image of the infiltrators' last collective memory before it all went pear shaped. Plenty of fleshy humans, sure, but there were these big ass power armor stomping around with crew served guns! The infiltrators would have been fine if those weren't there-!
Another shriek that abruptly cut off echoed loudly across the burning fields - and Ozawa felt another presence utterly severed from the neural network.
"You."
Another giant robot - this one looking similar to the ones she'd stomped with the Titanosaur. It was two-vs-one-ing the cracked Eggs, and even though it looked utterly beat up, with gouges deep in its plate and its funky headdress thing partially cut off, she had looked towards it just in time to see it charge with a sword of all things.
And watched as the metal stabbed its way through the Egg's throat. Ozawa could still slightly hear through the other Egg's link a gurgling sound emanating from its throat, the creature's death spasms still swinging wildly at its killer as fire fought with bleeding acid to pour from its maw. The giant robot tore away, pulling its sword back-
-well, okay. Ten percent of it back - the blade snapped with a great crack! as the hilt snapped away from the rest of it, leaving the blade lodged in the throat.
"This would have worked," Ozawa snarled, "if you weren't here!" She was going to have a long discussion with the boss about why she hadn't been warned about this - sure the surgery to improve her took like five years or something so it wasn't like she was keeping up with news but 'oh, by the way, the Union also has giant robots, so watch out for that' never came up in planning-!
She forced herself to calm down, exhaling sharply as she held up a finger. "This is fine," she growled, trying to repeat her words as a calming mantra, "this is fine. It doesn't bother me, it doesn't bother me-"
A scaled fist abruptly slammed into the side of the fleshy cockpit, eliciting an annoyed huff from the Titanosaur. "-IT BOTHERS ME A LOT!"
Her attention turned back towards the Yukimura Institute. Despite the distinct lack of power along most of the grounds, even those weird cannon things (she was sure that was what they were supposed to be, anyways) looked like they were starting to run out of juice. But…that was a lot of Aeon buildup over there…
"I don't have time to deal with you." The command interface momentarily flipped - and a holographic mouse and keyboard superimposed itself as she click-dragged what was left of her forces, right clicking on the EUDF robot. "So they will."
At once, she saw with satisfaction the remaining murder and the remaining Egg immediately began to turn their attention towards the EUDF robot. "Aggressive behavior, direct attack and then move-to-attack move, aaaaand that should do it for now." The controls then receded as the joysticks reemerged, with her scaly hands gripping them tightly. A puff of air from her mouth blew away a few strands of the hair that had managed to survive the transformation into a kaiju (hey, perks of being the old man's intern!) as she shifted the Titanosaur's direction to the real juicy prize.
And this time she received no guff from the Titanosaur as its genetically installed target laid in its sights. "We'll be killin' all the humans when we come!" The Titanosaur roared as Ozawa laughed in glee, as the footpedals spurred the Titanosaur into a purposeful stomp towards its target.
"Shit!"/'Shit!" The Perseus threw the remaining hilt of the Arc Blade at the Crocalisk's head, but it was already sprinting towards it. Perseus tried to move around it, but abruptly found the Crocalisk already moving to body block them, its mouth wide open and a blast of fire emerging from its throat. Both pilots instinctively raised the control sticks as Perseus guarded with its arms-
-only to be slammed into by Pterawings from behind. Perseus tried to shift its focus, but then felt its arms heat up significantly, even as more and more claws from above were beginning to slash against the Perseus's back.
Xiu Ying tried to find something, anything to use, but her radar was absolutely cluttered with contacts. "We need-" She winced as one of the swipes dug deep into their left shoulder, and a hydraulic cable was already dangling, spewing hydraulic fluid catching alight from the flames. "-we need a fire support mission-!"
"-we can't take the splash damage!" Oscar retorted. "We have to get clear-!"
"-there's nowhere to go!"
For the first time in the fight, Perseus was locked in place. Frozen. Uncertain as its wills, once united in purpose, could not agree on what to do. It could not move. It could not fight like this, not when it was surrounded by foes with little way to fight back-
Perseus's eyes flared brightly. It could not fight this way. And that was unacceptable. Not when the great prize was charging towards what they swore to protect.
Despite having tried it only once before, the Perseus pressed back against its twin wills. Those-That-Seek - surely they could lend aid-?
"-One! Chimera-One! Or whoever's out there!" Oscar wasn't sure where the idea had come from, but now he was going to kick himself later for not thinking about it when they were panicking. "Perseus needs a hand here! I say again-"
Both of them finally synched their movements as the fire died down, and with a mental command, Xiu Ying triggered the infrastructure panel they were standing on. The hydraulics shuddered to life, as what remaining power hadn't been sucked dry by the Mercury's reactivation sent a signal downwards-
-and Perseus was catapulted over the Crocalisk.
"Change!"/"Change!"
Perseus slammed against the ground once, then twice, before its body began to twist and turn, folding once again into a Buckler as its treaded tires squealed, digging into the remaining earth, fully intent on chasing after the giant kaiju. Its movement was sluggish, and it was not going to push its top speed anytime soon with the cut hydraulic and the damage they've suffered - but it was that or stay inside what was becoming a killzone.
"-say again, this is Perseus!" Xiu Ying continued as Oscar took over the wheel. "We need support!" Already, in the battered and cracked rear view mirrors, she could see the Crocalisk already chasing after them. "Any support!"
She also could have done without seeing the classic message about objects being closer than they appeared.
"Diana-!"
"Listening." It was taking more and more concentration for Diana to effectively hijack her way into letting Xiu Ying manipulate what few infrastructure panels were remaining in addition to nursing what little blaster energy or point defense ammo she had left, and her speech was probably a little more terse than she meant it to.
"I've got a plan I'm about to try." That would have sent warning bells blaring in Keiko's mind - but Diana didn't know that at the time. She was as pressed as anyone, and she didn't have the bandwidth to spare for new plans. "But I'm gonna need your help with the Pegasus."
"Will it work?"
"No idea, but it might buy the old man another minute."
Diana would bash her head in the AAR after this. But that was future Diana's problem. The Diana of right friggin' now needed something immediately. "...do it."
"Cool." Glancing quickly to the side, Hiroki found the communicator panel and adjusted the dial to the frequency Diana had fed to him. "Hey, pilots!" he called out. "Who wants to join me in doing something stupid?"
The cheers of the pilots as all remaining nine Seekers seamlessly formed up around him for another go was only matched by the exhausted and resigned sigh coming from Diana.
Oscar's hand on the wheel twisted left as the Perseus's Phalanx mode was thrown into a power drift, making a wide turn to the left as Xiu Ying was activating as many obstacles as she could find. Traffic blockers. Storm sirens. Anything to momentarily throw off the Crocalisk's chase - not that that would do anything for the damned Pterawings!
More and more of them were throwing themselves in the line of travel, with giant rows of teeth biting against them when they could make contact or diving slashing attacks with their claws. A few of them had even tried to gather enough of a critical mass to lift them!
Thankfully, they far outmassed the Pterawings, and at their present speed they messily found out what happened when vultures tried the same thing with normal cars. But it was growing harder and harder to maintain speed with the damage the Perseus had incurred - oil pressure still mattered, and while they had thankfully managed to 'cauterize' the leaking hydraulics, they were still slowing down-!
"Guys! Think fast!"
Both pilots blinked as they instinctively reconfigured back into the Perseus and presented their good shoulder. The next moment, the Falcon Mobile shrieked over them in the opposite direction, a bright burst of Aeon particles tearing its way through the Pterawings behind them. A moment later, all of the Seekers were right behind them, partially hidden by the stormclouds of contrails firing from their missile ports.
The Pterawings shrieked in anger and pain as more of them disintegrated or were outright frozen, collapsing to the ground and shattering like delicate ice sculptures-
-and suddenly there were no more Pterawings, as they all began to chase after the Falcon Mobile. Xiu Ying was certain she could spy glowing red glares of murderous intent from their eyes as they chased after their hated enemy, not even bothering to pay attention to the Seekers flying after them in mecha mode as they picked off the edges of them and keeping them herded.
"Just leaves this bastard."
Xiu Ying nodded. "We'll make this quick then."
The Crocalisk charged, but this time it was just one on one. And Perseus already knew it could win this one, near thing as it would be.
"What now-!?"
Ozawa blinked as she saw the murder flying away from the Union's robot. "No, no, nononononono!" Forcefully pulling the keyboard back up, she tried to redirect them. "You're supposed to-!"
-MERCURYMERCURYMERCURYMERCURY-
"-stopstopstop-!" She then looked up as the Falcon Mobile - she swear she could see the cheeky bastard inside!-fly past her along with the other jets. Then-
"GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" She didn't notice how the controls reverted as the Titanosaur brought its arms up, Ozawa's entire vision clouded by her own damned units! She couldn't see anything - just flying masses of leather and teeth and they were all screeching around her head! "Get-get away, you're getting in the way-!"
And then she and the Titanosaur felt pain.
Okay, more like a baseball landing on their head. A really, really solid and fast baseball that was bright pink and red.
The fliers all vanished as the light overtook them, and the Titanosaur roared in annoyed pain as Ozawa was forced to look away, the light blinding her momentarily. "Gah! Son of a-!" God, that stung! What the hell was-?
Her vision cleared - and she saw the damned flying battleship. "Okay, just for that-!"
The turrets were clearly preparing for another go - but they came too close this time. Wrenching the left control stick, Ozawa forced the Titanosaur's arm upwards into a massive backhanded swipe, intending on swatting the damned thing from the sky. "GO AWAY!" she roared as she turned her attention back to the Institute, ignoring the pattering of bullet impacts digging against the Titanosaur's skin. She was going to make something go damned right today!
"Committing hard turn to starboard!"
"All power to portside engines!"
"We're not going to make it!"
Diana grit her teeth from inside the mainframe as she saw the kaiju's massive arm hurtling towards them with a speed that still seemed somehow slow for its size. The human crew were doing everything they could, but unless something changed, they might well see the whole bridge swatted out of the sky-!
Initiate emergency burn - increase heading to 299 - divert remaining power from turrets to engine-
Diana did every little million and one things she could to help the human crew, but these were odds that a supercomputer could not calculate, not even in realtime-!
Just pray, child. Pray, and have some faith.
Doctor Ignatov's words echoed in her mind, almost incongruously - why would she be thinking about that now!? Yet despite that, in the microseconds that the memory played back before her, she was already subtly shifting from panicking at their oncoming death, to reckoning with the fact that they had objectively done everything they could to slow the kaiju down.
All of the kaiju.
Just one part of that memory bothered her. How do I pray-?
At once, her connection momentarily severed from the rest of the ship. Forcing herself to stay calm despite her processes running at a speed Adriana would have been envious of, she sighed in relief as her connection reasserted itself-
-and winced as she felt the massive arm just barely miss them, but for the sideswipe of its claws that had managed to slam into the rear-portside of the ship in its passing. The crew lurched, thankfully most of them having buckled themselves in or braced themselves against something, but if they were lucky they'd only have to deal with concussions or broken bones after this. The readouts of the ship were an angry, deeper shade of red, and the portside engine was already flickering, online only due to the raw amount of power shoved through its now leaking core-
"This is the bridge!" Diana called out. The crew seemed relieved to her hear voice - and given the sparking, mangled console where she normally appeared, she supposed she couldn't blame them. Yet she surprised herself with her next words: "We are back online - stay with me, and we will make it through this!"
Power to the lights cut off as a wash of emergency red lights flooded the whole of the interior, with firefighters and mechanics momentarily halting operations as they strapped themselves in or helped others who couldn't do so on their own power. "We are setting down for an emergency landing!" Diana would find time to ask Doctor Ignatov about what he meant later. The human crew were all pushing forward, working harder despite the horrible conditions they were in, and not knowing that success was possible anymore. Was this what he meant?
"I say again, all hands prepare for emergency crash landing..!"
"Resetting power now, Doc!" Daichi's voice came through the crackling radio. "Mercury's stopped hoggin' all the juice - I think it's as good as we're gonna get!"
"Thank you, Daichi." Rin Yukimura sighed, wiping off sweat from his balding head with a well worn handkerchief that had seen far too much use today. "Miss Diana, are you still with us?" Still waiting for her response, Rin nodded as some basic functions of the central computer began to come back online.
Launch bay: online.
Catapult system: online.
Mercury: 100% charged.
Facility Power: Onli-
At once, all of the lights flooded back into the Institute. The hangar bay surrounding Mercury's frame was…it was an appalling mess. "Good god, George," he muttered to himself, color fleeing from his cheeks despite the horrors he had been inured to by now. "What have you done?" The EUDF's mecha that had so bravely volunteered to help with the defense of Mercury were delicately picking their way through the charnel pit that the area had become. Once ordinary people had become bloodthirsty, mindless zealots controlled by whatever insane directives George had implanted into them, wielding everything from homemade weapons to stolen surplus, to even just newgrown claws or bits of sharpened metal.
And they had all - as far as he could tell at the moment - been killed in their mad charge. All so they could try to kill him. His staff. Keiko. Daichi and his team. Hiroki.
Once again, Rin forced himself to harden his heart, and remind himself that the George Sheol he once knew, and the George Sheol he was now fighting were not the same person. They never would be.
"Doctor!" Keiko's voice came through. "We're doing a sweep with the EUDF's mechs now! Generator is secured - just get Mercury out there!"
"...yes. Of course." Nodding, even though she couldn't see, Rin looked down at the camera interface - at least seeing through the cameras that hadn't been outright destroyed in the fighting. The sight of the EUDF's forces being whittled down, desperately fighting alongside Hiroki who had taken to the Falcon Mobile to buy him time, even knowing how much danger he had put the boy in-
The sight of the dropship by which they had come crashing into the earth, screeches of sparks and metal burrowing deeply against the earth, caused him to clench his fists hard enough to draw blood. "Miss Diana," he muttered, "you fight as hard as anyone of flesh and blood."
Turning towards his staff, he raised his voice, and all signs of frailty disappeared. "Prepare to launch!"
The creature was pinned beneath Perseus's foot. Writhing with enough force to shake the earth, it shrieked upwards in defiance, its throat still attempting to conjure more of the foul flames it had spawned into this world with.
With one final downwards motion, Perseus's right fist slammed directly down its maw, its final remaining rounds of ammunition sliding into place.
"GO-!"/"-DOWN!"
Despite already being eaten into by the acidic blood, Perseus fired its weapon one last time - and the resulting explosion disintegrated the kaiju's head, sending flesh and acid exploding around it. The corpse twitched a few more times - but ultimately it stilled, its corpse already beginning to seep more of its blood to disintegrate it.
There was no time to claim its husk as a prize, though.
"Shit. It's almost there."
"Has to be something we can use-!"
Perseus turned its head, one of its glowing eyes cracked and shattered from the fighting - but it could see as clearly as when they had begun. Its twin wills provided all of the vision it needed.
And the mangled remains of the Ones-Who-Seek was mostly dismantled nearby, save for-
"The missile pods! They're still intact!"
"That thing's not gonna feel that-!"
"Better than nothing, we might draw its attention!"
Perseus nodded, and was about to charge towards the fallen warrior, but then it paused, turning its attention to the fallen kaiju.
"Perseus, what-?"
It knelt down. If all they needed to do was to draw the great beast's attention, this one's corpse might be useful for one more thing.
Ozawa had suffered through the EUDF roadblocks, the JSDF adjacent roadblocks, the utterly bullshit arrival of new EUDF robots, and let's not forget, the flying goddamned battleship.
She was not happy.
But as the Titanosaur loomed over the Institute directly, well within range to finally stomp the damned nuisance into the ground, she grinned. She was finally, finally going to put these bastards out of business.
Which made her extremely happy.
"Alright," she hummed as she queued up some commands, "time to-"
And then she paused. She couldn't even call what she had just experienced damage, even if they were high explosive and had scarred the scale armor slightly. More like tiny pinpricks, or the feeling of someone who had just had a paper airplane flung at her from behind in the lecture hall.
She slowly turned the Titanosaur around, incredulity rapidly growing into something more visceral.
The EUDF robot stood, freshly fired missile pods being responsible for the pinpricks she had just felt. But in its hand, held high, was the remaining Egg. Or rather, the mangled remains of its head, still bleeding acid even as the robot held it up like a grisly prize.
Ozawa felt a vein pop in her head.
"GO AWAY!" The Titanosaur roared, and the sensation of lighting surging upwards through the kaiju's body intensified. The robot was already trying to dodge away - but the Titanosaur bellowed, and lightning blasted out of its mouth, slamming directly into the robot and forcing it to the ground.
The Titanosaur reached down to grab at the robot. It tried to rise to its feet, but the electric shocks still surging through it was interrupting whatever controls it had - and then the kaiju's claw was gripping tightly. She felt some parts of it give way, and she was fairly certain she wasn't imagining the sounds of something cracking and shattering outside.
"I am sick-!"
The Titanosaur slammed its fist into the ground.
"-and tired-!"
It slammed down again, and significant chunks of the robot's armor was simply crushed in the impact.
"-of you GETTING IN THE WAY!" In a final burst of pique, the Titanosaur's arm swung towards the Institute - and released the robot mid-swing. The robot crashed into the west wing of the Institute, in a crash of collapsing steel, concrete and glass as the building parted like a children's toy set.
"Okay, now where were we!?"
"-up. G…get…up!"
Oscar coughed weakly, his senses slowly filtering back to life. Through the normal way, not the Psychic Theater. He could vaguely feel Xiu Ying shaking at him, however weakly - and he could feel the huge gashes in the K-Suit, along with the bits of shrapnel that had once been part of the cockpit sticking out of him like a pinata. "I'm-" he coughed, feeling the distinct taste of blood in his mouth, "-I'm here. How long-?"
"Just half a minute. I think." Then Xiu Ying winced herself - Oscar could see her arm twisted in an angle the human body was not meant to have. "Since when could they do that?"
"Hang…hang on." The Perseus's Man-Machine Interface was already starting to reboot. Which was weird - they hadn't initiated the reboot sequence. But at that moment, the kaiju was still there, and was turning back towards the Institute. "Resynch…ready. You up for this?"
"Have to. I'll complain after we're done."
"Okay." It wasn't, but neither pilot were in a good position to worry about that. "Prepare to-"
The Yukimura Institute began to shake. The central hall began to unfold, the roof sliding outwards or just outright collapsing where the damage had been done as it extended towards the hangar. The Steeds still on the roof and still firing at the big kaiju had already reconfigured and were driving away to a safe distance.
Hiroki had nearly lost it as he saw the Perseus getting flung into the Institute like a baseball. Those pilots - even Diana - had gotten hurt badly just to give them this chance. But despite everything, that final bit of distraction had been just enough.
DOCKING LINK - ONLINE
And before the kaiju could do anything, an explosion erupted from the central hall -
- and Hiroki grinned as he saw Mercury's frame being launched into the air. They'd gotten the new catapult system working!
"Okay, Diana, Perseus," he growled, shifting the levers into docking mode. "You gave everything you all had for this one shot! Now it's my turn!" A severe, almost manic, grin crossed his face as his eyes narrowed and he lined up the Falcon Mobile.
"FALCON-!"
He twisted the Falcon Mobile one-hundred and eighty degrees, to the point that he was flying upside down. But he wasn't worried. He had done this so many times, he could do this in his sleep.
"-CONNECT!"
And he knew in his heart that Mercury wouldn't let him down.
The Falcon Mobile began to fold in on itself. The wings began to fold in on themselves and twist around, forming the face plate. The tail fins folded upwards, forming the head-crest that everyone on this battlefield knew. Hiroki felt the comforting sensation of the cockpit canopy twisting upwards ninety degrees-
-and then power surged in as his old friend's eyes blared to life.
"MERCURY!"
Powerful arms spread outwards, fists clenched, as the body flared to life, a bright blue light cut through the red of the burning fires around him.
"V!"
All at once, the soothing light of the Aeon particles flared across the battlefield. Hiroki's grin intensified as he felt power surge through his oldest friend's frame. Like everything was going to be okay again.
It was just up to them to make sure that was the case.
"Kaiju! Listen up!" Hiroki's voice projected loudly, almost as if he barely needed the PA system built inside the head. "You can pull all the dirty, underhanded tricks you want! You can hurt us, you can try to kill us! But!"
Mercury took a step forward, and its chest plates began to glow even brighter as the generator began to absorb the ambient Aeon Particles hanging in the air.
"You will never win! You hear me!? As long as Mercury V is here, as long as there's people who believe in Mercury V, you will never win!"
Once laid low by means most malevolent.
The Black Guardian of the Northlands once again rises to face the foul Devourer of the Depths.
Despite everything, despite the costs involved, the DFRI's primary objective has been met.
Both Crocalisks have been destroyed by the Perseus, and the remaining Pterawing murders have been reduced enough in number that they no longer present as a significant enough mass to pose the threat they once did. However, as a result, the 25th Marine Air Wing have been significantly reduced in operable Seekers, and the Pegasus has crash landed and is no longer mission capable. The Perseus has also taken a significant amount of damage, and even more after delaying the Olympic-class one final time.
The giant command kaiju - dubbed 'Olympic' by Diana shortly before the Pegasus crash landed - was just on the cusp of destroying the Yukimura Institute. But thanks to the sacrifices made by the DFRI's defenders, Mercury V is now online - and with it, a chance at victory.
The Perseus is badly damaged, having gone toe-to-toe with two Crocalisk-class kaiju and attempted to delay what appears to be the pack leader equivalent. The pilots are still alive - badly injured but still with the intent to support the fight.
The Pegasus has crash landed, its ammunition and energy stores utterly depleted. But its crew - and Diana, the Super AI leading and coordinating them - have punched well above their weight.
They have suffered two-thirds attrition, but not a single soul has passed. Morale is high - and higher yet now that the Super Robot has emerged thanks to their efforts.
[] Perseus - can still fight!
[] Not all of the prototype cannons were destroyed. Surely Perseus can still use one of them?
[] Focus on rallying the remaining Steeds on the ground. There's enough Seeker wreckage that something could be jury-rigged.
[] Withdraw to the Institute. It has done everything it could have been asked and more.
[] Write-in
[] Pegasus
The Pegasus has crash landed, and is in no position to assist with the battle further.
[] 25th Air Wing
[] Hunt down what remains of the Pterawings. There aren't many left, mind.
[] Assist the Pegasus. Perhaps they can at least get some of it back online in time for the battle.
[] Write-in
QM Note: The page is telling me I have a novella in progress at about 6k words. I think that's a first for me.
Oops?
Still, this was the scene that was bugging me during the time I was not able to fully write this quest. And now that it's almost over and we're at the end sequence for this fight, I feel so much better. I had a lot of fun writing this out and finally putting this to post - I hope you enjoyed reading it.
Also, credit for the artwork for Mercury V linked above goes to Filippo Angelotti.
[x] Perseus - can still fight!
-[X] Focus on rallying the remaining Steeds on the ground. There's enough Seeker wreckage that something could be jury-rigged.
--[X] Not all of the prototype cannons were destroyed. Surely Perseus can still use one of them?
[X] 25th Air Wing
-[X] Assist the Pegasus. Perhaps they can at least get some of it back online in time for the battle.
1620, 22 November A.D. 2072
Siege of the Yukimura Institute
"Chimera-One up - somehow."
"This is Five. Wing's a bust, ground mode's still up."
"Chimera-Twelve here, still mission capable."
So on and so on. The remaining Seekers of the Twenty Fifth were all chiming in, and by Oscar's reckoning they had accountability of about eight left. Everyone else was inside of the Institute - and whichever engineer decided to make the cockpit of each of the Seekers a Steed was seeing that decision validated, as nobody was dead. Just really injured.
It still wasn't enough to do anything to the Olympic-class. But as Perseus's vision narrowed in on the titanic battle taking place right outside of the Institute, he decided that it was probably a good thing the entire defense didn't fall on their shoulders. The Olympic's claw came crashing down onto Mercury's head - and for the briefest of moments, the blue light was diminished, covered by the enormous claw.
"HAIL STORM!"
Only for the claw to meet resistance - and then get pushed back, as what looked like a short-lived localized tornado, swirling violently kicked around air and shards of ice, erupted from Mercury's face plate. The Olympic was pushed back in a stumbling recoil, and even as the face plate was sealing itself back up, Mercury's back flared to life as Aeon-powered boosters propelled Mercury upwards, its fist reared back as a Tritonium-clad fist slammed into the Olympic's jaw.
The resounding impact echoed like a gong across the battlefield, and Mercury rode the creature's form down as it momentarily toppled onto its back, its fists already rearing for another punch. "That's not gonna hold it for long," Oscar muttered.
"So what's the plan?" Xiu Ying and Oscar were already linked back together via the Psychic Theater - she likely already could sense his thoughts, but she had to vocalize for the benefit of the Marine pilots. Her left arm was still horribly dislocated, and it was going to need treatment sooner or later. Perseus's HUD had very angry rashes of red splotching across its hull - and even though he wouldn't have minded taking the fight back to the kaiju, exposed bits of K-Mesh along the chest and the left leg were already just barely holding the internal machinery together, to say nothing of the hilarious lack of hydraulic fluids left inside after the Pterawing chase.
The other Seekers, functional or not, were also all sorts of beat up. Chimera-One's unit was lacking its head, yet the Seeker was absentmindedly undergoing its gun pod's functions check and ejecting spent casings from the chamber - admittedly it was fumbling just a little bit. More than a few of the others had giant gaping holes in the wings due to the 'rocket pods' the Pterawings were sporting. Chimera-Eighteen simply didn't have her right arm anymore - he tried not to look too closely at how her mecha mode had it casually slung over its left shoulder as if she'd used it as a bludgeon.
"We're not fighting that thing," Oscar declared. "Not head on, not in our current condition, and sure as hell not with the Pegasus mission killed like this." Perseus turned its head towards the crash landed form of their dropship. Smoke was billowing from the rear of the ship, but thermals were not picking up direct engine fires or anything - he had to trust until they got there that Diana could keep it under control.
The Perseus turned its head back towards the fight - and his HUD pinged the various wreckage of the other Seeker chassis that had crashed down to the battlefield. "Okay. Plan." It wasn't much of one, but a plan was better than no plan. "Chimera-One. You and three of the worst off are coming with us. We're going to get back to the Pegasus and see what we can do to get something back up and running." Turning his attention to the more intact Seekers, he then instructed, "Scavenge what you can from the other Seekers that crashed and rendezvous with us back at the Pegasus. We might not be able to hurt the damned thing right now. But we can distract it long enough for Mercury to land something a bit more permanent."
Even as he spoke those words, Mercury's form was already hurtling across the landscape, bouncing several times off of the ground before it regained its footing and already scrambling back up to its feet. The Olympic-class was already chasing after him, lightning blasting from its maw while in motion. Mercury's arms crossed together, absorbing the worst of the lightning that had so fried Perseus before shrugging it off and leaping into motion to meet the kaiju's charge.
We have so far to go yet.
"Scavenger team, you've got five minutes, then meet us back at the dropship. Those with us - reconfigure to ground mode and form up on us. Let's go."
Hiroki grimaced as the kaiju's tail slammed into Mercury's form. The frame shuddered, but didn't yield even as he was flung backwards again. "Okay, fine, that's not gonna get old or anything," he grumbled. Wrenching the control sticks, a targeting reticle overlaid itself over the canopy as Mercury's left forearm braced itself against the clenched right, and a low growl began to escalate into a high pitched whine of rocket engines.
"Eat this! GALE-!" The targeting turned green, and Hiroki depressed the button on the control stick. "-PUNCH!"
With a mighty kick and a roar, Mercury's forearm blasted outwards, screaming towards the kaiju in a shriek of rocket engines and displaced air. The kaiju looked up just as it was positioning itself for another attack when Mercury's fist violently made contact with its face, and a loud snap echoed loudly across the field as the fist rebounded, already flying back towards Mercury.
Hiroki was already breaking Mercury out into a dead sprint, only extending his right arm enough for its fist to reattach itself. "Aaaaaaand here's another one-!"
Mercury was already leaping off of one of the infrastructure panels that the maniacs in the Perseus had used as a ramp, and just as the kaiju's face was turning back towards him, Hiroki was already jamming the right control stick forward. With a mighty lurch, Mercury's fist smashed into the same spot the Gale Punch had just impacted against - and he had the satisfaction of seeing teeth shatter on his way down.
What he wasn't expecting was to hear a voice blare out at him.
"Oh for-gaaaaaah! This is such a pain!"
Hiroki blinked. "What?" It was almost enough to distract him from the spines that were blasting out of the kaiju's hide. Mercury spun to the side on its left heel, and Hiroki had a moment of de ja vu as some of the spines just barely grazed past Mercury's face. Flipping the PA system, he asked, "Since when do you all talk?"
"Since we decided someone with a goddamned brain needed to plan how to deal with you Yukimura bastards!" The kaiju reared its head back, lightning crackling around its battered jaw. Its eyes glowed an ominous yellow as a bestial growl was modulated oddly under the influence of the electricity building around its throat. "I had this all planned out perfectly! I was gonna personally stomp you and the old man into mashed potatoes!"
The growl escalated into a full throated roar as lightning erupted from the kaiju's throat, forking off into hundreds upon hundreds of different concentrated arcs towards Mercury. Hiroki forced its arms upwards to absorb more of the attack - the fresh Tritonium plates were holding up very nicely as the electric blasts scorched burns on the surface, even if lightning wasn't exactly what they were meant to deal with.
"But no! The friggin' Union just happened to be building giant robots and getting in the way! Now I have to deal with you the hard way!"
"Whine, whine, whine," Hiroki taunted back. "You didn't hear me the first time? Fine, I'll say it again!" Mercury once again threw its fists forward, meeting the rapidly descending claws head on. "I don't care how many dirty tricks you pull," Hiroki growled, Mercury's fists trembling due to the opposing physical force it was trying to match against. "As long as there's people out there who believe in Mercury V, we're gonna get right back up again to take you down!"
Hiroki's hands flipped open a panel to his left side, and his fist smashed against the button as the missile port on Mercury's stomach slid open. "STORM MISSILE! GO!" An enormous missile, almost more like an unguided rocket, barreled straight out of Mercury's stomach and slammed into the kaiju's exposed belly.
"Gah! Sonuvva-!" The resulting explosion forced the kaiju back. "JUST LAY DOWN AND DIE ALREADY!"
Hiroki snorted as Mercury's eyes began to glow a brighter blue. "You first."
"Damage to the hull isn't critical, but we don't have time for a battlefield fix-!"
"-shard generator is back online, but we're running on 65% efficiency-!"
"-leaks are being patched up, but we can't push the engines back to combat speed-!"
"-good thing some of the Seekers came back, we needed the help with heavy lifting-"
Diana grit her teeth at what she was seeing. On the whole, the Pegasus was doing alright. All things considering what it just went through. But combat with the Pterawings had seen a lot of damage build up in a million and one ways she just wasn't paying attention to in the heat of the moment. Getting swiped by the Olympic-class kaiju was just the icing on the cake that forced them all into a crash landing.
"-medical bay is reaching capacity-"
"-get damage control teams on Turrets Two and Four-"
"-fires have been contained near the starboard anti-air batteries-"
And the fight was still going between the Olympic and Mercury V. It was clear why Mercury had so much success - it simply would not go down. Attacks that had ultimately crippled the Perseus and the Pegasus were being shrugged off as inconveniences by the black and blue giant, and in turn it was returning what it received in equal measure. Lightning and claw met Tritonium alloy and Aeon Particles, and it was a rapid back and forth engagement for entities so large.
"And that's the problem," she muttered to herself. Mercury could take it and dish it back. But the kaiju was recovering just as quickly, with the added 'bonus' that its pilot - and that had surprised her to hear a sentient voice as the two pilots traded barbs - was incredibly annoyed. Hiroki was using that to his advantage, goading the kaiju into overreaching and landing devastating attacks - but the kaiju could recover quickly, and couldn't be pinned down long enough to land the knockout strike.
If she were flesh and blood, she might have just punched the wall out of frustration. They were knocked out cold - what could they do-?
"-ay again, Pegasus!" The AI 'looked' up, and a momentary pang of relief washed over her as she heard Tellison's voice. The Perseus was on approach, along with several of the Seekers. They were all reconfigured into ground alt-modes, all laden down with what looked like bits of scavenged Seeker wreckage. "Pegasus, this is Perseus. Please tell us you're alright!"
"This is Pegasus," Diana replied, "We have you on short-range now. A little on fire, but nothing we can't fix with time."
"Good." Zhang spoke up as well. "We're here to help get the ship online if we can. There's got to be something we can do-"
"Not unless we can get at least the turrets back online," Diana said with a grimace. "The wiring's still mostly intact, but the turrets took a beating and the Shard generator doesn't have enough juice for a sustained barrage."
"Does it have enough for one?" Tellison countered. Already the Seekers were reconfiguring back into mecha form, and were helping to offload the various satchels and wreckage slung to the Perseus's Phalanx mode. "We can't hurt the kaiju but we can at least distract it for Mercury to kill, right?"
"I thought of that," Diana remarked. "We have enough power for one strike, yes. But we need a weapon that can concentrate that power, we need something that can stand in for the turret, and-"
Diana's train of processes was thrown off as she saw another brilliant flash of blue pierce the battlefield. "CHILL GLARE!" Two brilliant beams of concentrated Aeon particles erupted from Mercury's eyes, clashing against another burst of lightning from the Olympic's maws. Incredulously, the two energies were canceling each other out, despite the fact that Ivanna would likely have a forced shutdown from how 'that doesn't work that way!' had she seen that. If only they could-
Her vision then landed onto the wrecked stand of a turret stand. One of the ones she helped to set up, in fact. It focused…Aeon…Particles…
The cannon was still intact.
"Tellison. Zhang." A moment later, an external signal was roped in as well. "Dr. Yukimura," she added. "I have an idea. Can Hiroki keep its attention on him for five minutes?"
Ozawa had to admit. Despite everything, even with overwhelming force, either Mercury was just that much of a stubborn little cockroach or it received upgrades at the right time. Either way, it just wasn't going down. Begrudgingly - begrudgingly - she could see why Dr. Sheol's earlier kaiju were having so many problems with the damned thing.
With a flick of the controls, she grouped what was left of the flyers - I should come up with a name for them eventually - and group attacked them onto Mercury, hoping to distract it for a little bit while she either could land a pinning attack or just skip him and go straight for the Institute anyway-
Several contrails of missiles erupted out of nowhere, and the remaining flying units were utterly shredded out of the air. At this point, Ozawa wasn't even surprised - she had just been comparing Mercury to a cockroach, but these little EUDF vermin were proving to be just as annoyingly persistent-
"GALE SPIKE!"
-and the Titanosaur winced as another of those damned flying punches slammed into its frame. An icicle spike had formed on the end of it this time, and even managed to puncture shallowly into the kaiju's scales before exploding, peppering the rest of the impact area with high velocity ice fragments as the fist returned to the little bastard. "Come on, is that the best you can do!?" The pilot was just taunting her now.
And damn her if it wasn't working. "I'm gonna turn you into paste!" The wider control scheme abandoned, Ozawa gripped at the now warped control sticks as she charged the Titanosaur at Mercury, determined to start stomping it into the ground. Repeatedly!
"I go best over pizza!" Hiroki taunted back, Mercury's face plate already opening for another Hail Storm. But he flipped the communicator open, and pulled up Diana's frequency. "Okay, she's pissed off at me more," he confirmed. "If you're gonna do something, make it quick!"
"Right on time," Diana confirmed. As she looked over the jury-rigged monstrosity she had ordered built, she winced at one thought. "Lana is going to defrag me for this," she muttered.
What they had created was something the Westphalians might have tilted their heads at. Perseus was in its mecha mode - but the Grand Mercury prototype cannon was fully strapped to its chest, its arms clenched tightly into hastily drilled handhold units. Some of the pilots running distraction duty alongside Hiroki had taken the initiative to ferry over some of Dr. Yukimura's engineering team - and once they had learned what they were about to try, they were all onboard for it. Wiring from the destroyed turret base had been run towards the Pegasus's shard generator, and all those wires in turn had been run straight into Perseus's engines.
The sad thing was, Perseus was already so cracked and damaged, it hadn't taken long for the human engineers aboard the Pegasus to remove enough of the plating to run the wires into. Which in turn led to another issue that Diana knew was going to come up eventually.
"Diana." Dr. Yukimura's voice was calm. "That armor meshing…I understand now is not the time. But in the future…"
"...the best person to answer your questions on that, Dr. Yukimura," Diana sighed, "is Dr. Sam Carlson. He is the one who helped make Perseus and Beowulf possible, and it was the Science behind this that helps make it even run."
"SCIENCE!"
Diana blinked. "Okay, who brought the interns with us?" she muttered. Dr. Yukimura just looked bemused, so she pushed on. "I'll bring it up with Major Devin, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind a discussion between you two if it helps put your concerns at ease."
"I would greatly appreciate it." That seemed to placate him for the time being. "I would press further, but…I would not be in a position to question it if it weren't for your assistance."
"One thing at a time, Doctor." Diana then glanced over at the readouts, and saw that they were as ready as they were going to be. Just in case, though… "Status check?"
"Aeon Particle…hookup…thing…good to go! As good as it's gonna get!"
"Shard generator running at 65%! Bridge, we have enough for one shot!"
"Aeon Particles are being routed to Perseus now. Stand by…"
Oscar exhaled - exactly at the same moment as Xiu Ying. Both of them glanced at each other and snorted, both trying to shake off the jitters as best they could. The big eff-all cannon that they had deployed had just been strapped to Perseus's chest. And if they understood this fully, they were about to be used as an impromptu turret to try and pin down the Olympic just enough to give Mercury a shot at finally killing it.
"This is Perseus!" Oscar called out. "Readouts look good, we're charging at 30% and rising." The outside of the cannon began to glow the telltale blue of an Aeon Particle buildup, with strands of barely perceived energy slowly coalescing inside the 'barrel' of the cannon.
"This is insane," Xiu Ying muttered. "But this whole day's been crazy carnival, hasn't it?" She paused. "'Crazy carnival?'" she then questioned herself. "That's something you would say."
"And you'd be saying something like…"
"废话." The phrase came from both their lips readily. Which was strange enough for Oscar, not knowing a single word of Mandarin.
"...I'm gonna bring that up with the ESP folks later."
"Same." Xiu Ying paused. "And what about Perseus?"
Oscar glanced down at the controls, then at an external camera showing Perseus's scarred, beaten face. Claw marks, a gouged out eye revealing only the camera unit beneath - the poor guy had been run through the wringer, and the glowing bright blue light and shadows of the cannon only emphasized the fresh war wounds it received. And yet… "It did good," he opted to say. "We'll bring up the…I don't even know what to call it. But Perseus is a scrapper. He's done good."
The engine thrummed just slightly. Almost like a growl of… "He sounds content," Xiu Ying commented. "Perseus never showed anything like this before."
"Well, either way." Oscar patted the console. "Welcome to the team, Perseus. You had one helluva debut."
The console blared back, and Oscar's attention turned back to the mission at hand. "Pegasus, this is Perseus. Cannon is at 81%!"
"Mercury V, this is Pegasus!" Diana's avatar had fully materialized back at Rin's console, and her form was leaning forward as if she were gripping at the rails. "Perseus is just about ready to fire!"
"She's not-!" Mercury shuddered as a scaly fist slammed into Mercury's face. Rin winced at the sight, but Hiroki spun right back around and slammed back at the kaiju. "-she's not exactly cooperating with the plan-!"
"Hiroki!" Rin called, clutching the microphone. "Grapple the kaiju's claws!" Ignoring for the moment Diana's questioning glance, he pushed, "Grapple its claws and initiate the Gale Spike protocols!"
"R-right!" It took a few more close engagements, but eventually, Hiroki was able to goad the kaiju into exactly what they were hoping.
"And if this works the way I hope it will," he muttered…
"Gotcha!" Ozawa grinned as the two claws finally managed to pin Mercury's arms, and slowly force them backwards. "That was a lot of energy you spent there," she taunted. "But you have to be running just a tiny bit low now, aren't you? Finally have you right where I want you!"
"Funny," the pilot replied. "Was just about to say the same thing!"
"What-?"
"GALE SPIKE!"
At first, Ozawa couldn't comprehend what he was doing. The attack couldn't work like that! There was no space for the attack to-
And then the Titanosaur reared back, trying to disengage. But it was too late - their arms were frozen solid together - and Mercury V was furiously wrenching all its strength to force it there. "What are you doing!?"
"Distracting you! HIT IT!"
"This is Perseus! We are at full charge!"
Diana's face held a grim smile. "Grand Cannon!" she called out. Her arm shot forward. "Fire!"
"FIRE!/FIRE!"
For the briefest of moments, Perseus's optics glowed a bright blue as Aeon Particle supercharged through its frame. Through all of its cracks and gouges, bright blue light spilled forth as the energies required flowed through it and into the cannon, as the barrel practically blinded everyone who witnessed it. The cannons were apparently never meant to produce this much power-!
Perseus braced itself one last time - and then there was light.
Luminous, blue energies screamed as a pillar of light speared through reality. This was not the simple volley of the cannons as they were - a pure, blue concentration of light slammed into the Olympic's back, bleaching all of the color from the world around in its immediate vicinity. Slowly, but then rapidly, ice began to form all over the kaiju's body, its scales almost growing brittle from frostbite as it tried to writhe in pain.
"Mercury, this is Perseus!" Oscar called out.
"Now's your chance!" Xiu Ying called out.
"FINISH IT!"
Hiroki grinned as the raw Aeon Particle buildup flowed back into Mercury. "I was waiting for this!" he cheered, his hands already moving in a dance and song that had been burnt into his mind for years. "Let's do it, Mercury V!"
The ice connecting Mercury's arms with the kaiju's snapped and shattered. Bits of the kaiju's arms simply fell apart with the ice, shattering into millions of pieces upon impact with the ground. Hiroki slid the dial forward, and a thrum of power began to cross Mercury's chest as panels began to glow ever more brightly, one by one.
"The killing strike!" Mercury's arms spread outwards, its legs braced as the kaiju was helpless to move anywhere. Even as the cannon's energies began to die down, it was far too late for it.
"BLIZZARD!"
Mercury V's chest panels pulsed rapidly, one last hint of what was to come.
"BLAST!"
Bright, blue energy erupted out of Mercury V's chest panels, slamming into the Olympic-class kaiju with enough force to send it recoiling. The light kept going, biting deep into the kaiju's chest before violent lights began to crisscross their way across the kaiju's form. The cracks began to grow brighter and brighter, as shards of ice began to burrow their way deep into the kaiju's body and organs-
-and detonate inside.
What sounded like the violent collapse of an iceberg echoed loudly from the kaiju's body as it exploded in segments. Its tail shattered from the inside. Its claws and arms soon followed, and it abruptly fell to the ground as its legs completely shattered from the knees and down-
-but the head abruptly exploded, and for the briefest of moments, a winged figure could be seen rapidly fleeing from the explosion-
-and the Olympic exploded, as bits and chunks of the once dangerous creature practically rained down onto the sky. Once the light began to clear and the colors of the world began to return, aught but a frozen, iced over crater where it once stood.
"You think you've won!?"
Hiroki blinked as he saw what looked like one of the Ptera…wings…things. But aside from the wings themselves, it looked like one of the infiltrators that had snuck into the Institute - but leather wings flapped, keeping the figure afloat while it cradled what looked like a computer panel.
"Fine, fine. Enjoy your 'w' while it lasts, scrubs. Old man Sheol's got more in the works anyway." With a rude gesture from her finger, the figure abruptly snapped away - and as she disappeared, the booming echo of something piercing the sound barrier followed.
And so winds down the Siege of the Yukimura Institute. There will be a vote on a post battle loot in the next post, but I'm a tiny bit under the weather, so I'll do my best to get that out to you all tomorrow.
I hope everyone has enjoyed the new format that combat takes place in - I definitely had fun hamming it up in the best Super Robot show style that I could.
I would have gone with a title referencing something about Canceling the Day of Destruction, but that was probably a bit too much on the nose.
1800, 22 November A.D. 2072
Yukimura Institute
"What a mess."
Hiroki sighed, looking over the pockmarked ruins that were once nice, grassy, and green. Most of it was now cratered dirt, with the old underground infrastructure jutting outwards as if it had become unearthed ruins from a long time ago, if it weren't still sparking and sputtering out the odd bit of fire.
Most of the fires along the grass had burnt themselves out by now - maybe the ashes would help feed the growth of some new trees when they got around to planting them - but Dr. Yukimura's place wasn't going to be winning any tourist attraction awards anytime soon.
Shame. That one tonkatsu place was talking about opening up nearby too!
Hunger fixations now focused almost entirely on the tasty pork cutlet dish, Hiroki guided Mercury over to where the Pegasus was still crash landed at. He could see Sendo's team combing over the hull, doing their best to help out with some of the immediate repairs. The Seekers - and smaller versions of them, it looked like - were also all over, lifting heavy pieces of equipment to help the smaller human teams weld on unsightly patches of metal, more like bandaids rather than actual repair jobs.
And then there was Perseus. It had long since been disentangled from the mess of wires that had rigged it to the Pegasus and the cannon, which was laying off to the side. The EUDF robot was still perched right along the ground, where a mobile repair station had been stacked up and already had servo arms hard at work fixing…whatever was in it. Should ask the doctor if we could make something out of cannon again, he thought. Still, he guided Mercury to kneel next to the hull, and Hiroki popped the canopy open, letting him grab the tethering wire and lower himself to the ground level.
"Watch your step there," a voice called out. "Kinda crater-y here." Hiroki looked over, and saw two pilots wearing what looked to be really, really bulky suits. The voice in question had a clean cut, but now very sweaty, matted mess of brown hair. The woman next to him was similarly clad, with longer black hair tied back into a ponytail. Her left arm was being looked over by technicians and a medic - and Hiroki winced, seeing just how badly her arm had been dislocated.
The woman saw his gaze, and shook her head. "Don't worry," she said. "It-" She winced as the technicians pried the armored sleeve open, leaving just her pilot fatigues underneath. "It looks worse than it actually is," she assured him.
"Fair enough?" Hiroki had seen worse than this one years ago - a dumb fight instigated by some punk wearing dark glasses - but it wasn't by much. "You two the pilots?"
"Yeah," the man responded. He raised a hand, and Hiroki reached out to grab it. "Oscar Tellison. That's Xiu Yin Zhang." Any attempt for the woman to introduce herself or initiate a handshake herself was cut off by the medics wrenching her arm back into place - Zhang hissed, but didn't complain as they then began to set her arm for future treatment. "And the big guy back there, well, you know him."
"Yeah." The armored giant looked like it had gone a few rounds with kaiju all by itself - because it had. "You guys fight hard, you know that?"
"Yeah, we do," Xiu Yin said. A crooked grin crossed her face. "We took down two while you were focused on one."
"Hey now!" Hiroki shot back. "That thing was worth easily three of the ones you guys were dealing with!"
"And we still had to help you with the big one," Oscar replied with a similar grin, which only grew wider at the exasperated look on Hiroki's face. "Still, glad you were able to launch in one piece."
"I wouldn't have been able to if you hadn't tanked them all for me," Hiroki acknowledged. "I appreciate it."
"You damned well better!" a voice huffed from the repair station. Hiroki jerked his head, slightly startled. "I don't believe this! First Ichiro, now Perseus! Are all the pilots trying to make me annoyed!?"
"...that-that's Lana," Oscar said slowly, as if unsure of how to introduce her. "She's-"
"If she's anything like Diana, then I get it," Hiroki waved aside.
"I am, and that's not exactly right, but I'm a little busy here."
"Still." Hiroki decided to leave her to it. "Owe you guys. Anytime you need a hand, I'm down. Just let us know."
"Appreciate it." This time, Xiu Yin extended her right fist, which Hiroki bumped back. "But one thing…who the heck was in the kaiju?"
"I really wish I knew." Hiroki turned his attention back towards the direction where the 'pilot' flew off. "But it sounded like she had something to do with planning today's attack."
"If Sheol is developing intelligent officers," Oscar said slowly, "then things are going to get worse before they get better…"
"...well. Sounds like you all had a hell of an engagement."
Diana nodded from her segment of the Institute's mainframe. In realspace, her avatar had materialized on the center of the conference room table - still intact, somehow, incongruously so when you took into account all of the bullet pockmarks and burns from the previous room to room fighting. Dr. Yukimura was seated behind her, and Keiko Hamakawa to his left and Daichi Sendo to his right. Almost like our own team, Diana thought wryly. Research, military and engineering.
Her avatar stood at-ease, her arms clasped behind her back and her legs at shoulder width. "That's correct, sir," she replied smoothly. "To sum it up: the Yukimura Institute was subjected to a multi-pronged attack. Human-sized 'infiltrators' armed with crude melee weapons and small arms attacked in human wave style rushes, while the kaiju - designated 'Crocalisks' - attacked from the ground while carrying 'Pterawing' flying units."
Holo images of each kaiju and attacker displayed on the screen as she presented the information. "In addition, the command and control unit, dubbed 'Olympic,' had likely come in expecting to just conduct mop up operations. However, Perseus, the Twenty Fifth Air Wing, and-" She winced at this next part, "-the Pegasus itself were able to delay it long enough for Mercury V to launch. We then cooperated to enable Mercury the chance to kill it completely."
Major Devin nodded, sipping from a thermos that Diana was convinced was growing larger every time she saw it. Caffeine didn't seem to work on him anymore, but he drank it regardless. Yet this was also the man who wrangled together the talent and the minds who made the Perseus even possible. Clad in a United States Army uniform with EUDF insignia augmenting it, dirty blonde hair obscured green eyes that had deep shadows underneath it - likely not helped by the time difference involved. Major Devin wasn't that old by human standards, but it was likely this job was going to prematurely age him. Much the same way that it seemed to with Dr. Yukimura.
"They've never worked on this scale before," Devin pondered. A few fingers were drumming a beat on his desk. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Doctor, but normally Sheol sends out one kaiju, maybe a pair, to destroy infrastructure and military bases without any followup."
"Correct. Much of it seems to be for the purpose of luring Mercury V into a battlefield of their choosing so that they might destroy it." Dr. Yukimura grimaced. "Or perhaps it is in the vague hopes of destroying public support and…surrendering to him. Not that this has worked at all, thankfully."
"So we're dealing with an unprecedented change." Major Devin wrote something down on a notepad in front of him. "And the intelligent 'pilot…'"
"If I'm reading into what we recorded of her dialogue earlier right," Keiko chimed in, "She probably had a hand in planning out some of the attack. Almost like an officer or leader operating independently of Sheol except for resources."
"Them infiltrators were different from usual too," Sendo added. "The last few times they swung by, they knew just enough to sneak in and try to claw your face off. These bastards? They all knew how to use guns. Heck, they even were trying to override some of the machinery, but we put a stop to that."
"Which means that Sheol realized at some point his previous approach wasn't working."
"A paradigm shift, if you will," Dr. Yukimura sighed. "Additional resources, more complex planning, and independent leaders to organize them."
"But you all stopped it." Diana was then taken aback by the next words from his mouth. "Diana…excellent work." Diana blinked at the praise. "Don't beat yourself up over the Pegasus crash landing. You aggressively fought your dropship, kept the kaiju from destroying the Yukimura Institute, and helped land us the biggest victory over Sheol we've had in recent memory. You and all of the pilots and crew have something to be proud of."
"I-" Diana almost stammered, before she forced herself to calm down. "I-Thank you, sir!"
"Don't thank me too soon. You still have to help with cleanup after all." Ignoring the crestfallen look of panic on her face, Major Devin turned his attention to Dr. Yukimura. "And I appreciate your understanding, and your discretion, about Diana."
"She fought as hard as anyone else," Dr. Yukimura responded. "Her digital nature is of no trouble with me."
"Still kinda weird." Sendo scratched his head, but shrugged. "Not sayin' it's bad, just sayin' it's gonna take some time gettin' used to. But you're alright with me."
"I was thinking you were a machine when you were giving me tactical readouts," Keiko huffed. "Didn't expect to be right, but you're still ahead of some of the officers I've had to work with before." She offered Diana a grin. "You definitely helped make our situation better down there. Thank you."
"That said," Yukimura continued before Diana could die of embarrassment from the praise. "I understand your machines work off of…"
"Reverse engineered kaiju materials." Major Devin was rather matter of fact about it. "I understand your concern, but I can assure you that it is perfectly safe."
"So far," Dr. Yukimura countered mildly. "Are you certain it will stay that way?" His eyes glanced over to the viewport overseeing the battlefield remnants, where many of the Seekers and their Steed counterparts were collecting various pieces of the leftover kaiju. "Sheol's creations have a habit of subverting even the best of intentions."
"It involves nothing invasive," Major Devin replied. "Diana has also brought to my attention your concerns. I will need to clear it with higher, but if it gets approved, I'm more than happy to have you visit Dr. Carlson to answer any questions you might have."
"That…that would help, I think." Dr. Yukimura still looked unconvinced, but he was mollified for the moment. "Sendo's team will help get your dropship air worthy again. But…"
"Can we get some of those Steeds?" Keiko leaned forward, a glint in her eye. "I would've killed for those in my active duty days."
"Wouldn't mind having 'em for my team too," Sendo added. "Would make patch jobs a helluva lot easier."
Major Devin seemed to have a thoughtful look on his face. "Again, let me make some calls," he said. "But I personally don't see why not." He drained the thermos of coffee, set it aside out of view of the holocall…and pulled a fresh thermos right back in.
"Sir, your coffee intake-" Diana tried to say.
"Is my problem and my concern," he replied. Diana just sighed, knowing a losing battle when she saw one. "And thank you again for letting us take the battlefield samples. If I get that trip approved, you can get front row seats on how we reverse engineer these things so long as you don't openly talk about them."
"NDAs. I am aware."
Major Devin grinned at the dry response, then turned his attention back to Diana. "For the record then, Diana. What did we get our hands on?"
"As you can see, sir," Diana began as holographic images of the battlefield salvage appeared. "Thanks to both the Aeon Particles freezing some pieces, and our ability to send the Seekers and Steeds out with the freeze containment units, we were able to salvage the following before they could self destruct in time."
QM Note: due to how the battle played out, you all are going to get a lot of salvage from the kaiju regardless. But this is your chance to highlight what specific qualities you were able to identify from a glance. What did you all specifically salvage from each Kaiju? See the following, and vote by plan.
[] Olympic (Pick Three)
-[] Some of the organs that seemed responsible for the lightning breath were able to be salvaged. Even while being frozen, there is a lot of static charge building up...
-[] The 'cockpit' of the Olympic-class was detonated by its pilot, but bits of brain matter were still semi-frozen. Sam might be able to make some use of it - if nothing else, to study the command and control 'structure' of the kaiju.
-[] The entire hind leg of the Olympic was still miraculously intact. Who knows what monstrous new invention Sam could concoct out of a full analysis of the kaiju skeletal and muscular structure of a limb?
-[] Teeth. Lots and lots of teeth were knocked out, and there's enough that we might be able to salvage them. Diana isn't sure what Sam could do with these, but...
[] Crocalisks (Pick Two)
-[] The Arc Blade was still wedged in the Crocalisk's throat, and the acidic breakdown had eaten away at most of the blade before the head itself was somewhat severed. The brain looks to be a wash, but the throat - and the fire glands - seem intact.
-[] Chunks of the Crocalisk's hide and scales were mostly intact enough to contain into freeze containment units. Diana is convinced those hollowed sections were where the Pterawings were 'carried' on - she's pretty sure Sam wouldn't mind getting a look at it.
-[] Claws - not quite the whole thing but enough pieced together from the two of them - could be salvaged. If past patterns are anything, they might be able to work some weaponry out of it.
[] Pterawings (Pick One)
-[] There is very little of the Pterawings left. But there's enough samples of the wings available to collect and study. How could something so large be easily kept airborne?
-[] Grisly as it is, the rocket pod analogues - the 'spike launchers' based on the clawed feet - were salvaged. The Build Team might be able to fashion some projectiles out of this with some study...
"Oooof." Adam winced as he looked at the returned Perseus. "That does not look any prettier up close."
"It's impressively worse," Henry added. A gust of wind blew past them, prompting him to place a hand on his beret. "But the combat data should do us some good."
"I mean, yeah," Wilde agreed. "But this thing is gonna be down for...what. A month? Two?"
"One," Henry replied confidently. A thoughtful expression crossed his face. "If the major doesn't mind us extending that to two, we could definitely start with upgrades now."
"We'd appreciate it." Oscar was still walking gingerly around the base, but only under supervision. "Perseus put one hell of a show out there, but...yeah." The pilot looked over the Perseus as it stood upwards, held up only by the support struts. Its shoulder plates looked as if it had been practically peeled open - which it had been - and torn K-Scale meshing was visible through the gaps. Even the eyes had been punctured, gaping and jagged voids peering through shards of dull green. It could have been Adam's imagination, but it was almost as if Perseus was sagging just a little bit, even as deactivated as it was.
"Well, we'll get 'im fixed up, Oscar," Adam replied cheerfully. "Make him good as new."
"What do you think?" Henry asked, the thoughtful look on his face having yet to clear off. "Could be time to get the Argonauts fitted for combination, if that's how the major wants to go."
"How about the C-Crystal?" Henry gave him a questioning glance, and Adam shrugged back. "Why not? Assuming the worst Oscar's ever done is run a traffic light, he should be fine-"
"-but the power output could be a bit too much, almost like a pressure washer in a camping tent-"
"-so let's give him some more weapons to vent it on, Perseus could use them-"
So caught up in the discussion, Adam Wilde never noticed Oscar slowly back away from the conversation.
1230, 1 December A.D. 2072 DFRI Commandant's Office
"Perseus is...?" You are Major Johnathan Devin, and you have yet another interesting development in a library full of them. "...sentient? Becoming its own mind? Something of the two?" You look at your resident experts, and make a questioning gesture. "Am I anywhere close?"
"We do not know." Dr. Boris Ignatov is running his hand through his hair, his eyes deep in thought. "We knew the Psychic Theater Link could have some side effects, but this is somewhat more extreme than I was anticipating."
"Mental thought bleedover, that part we sort of expected," Sam chimes in. "Picking up languages? I still have bits of French and sudoku puzzles stuck in my head. Haven't tested it personally for months, so it might not stick." You just choose to ignore that part as he continues, "But Perseus acting on its own?" He shakes his head. "That is new. Might have something to do with extreme emotions under stress. We get plenty of that here in lab conditions but nothing like an actual battlefield."
"And previous examples have just been the single pilot," Haruko adds. "1LT Callaghan has reported that it feels as if the frame responds to him, but at the time that was simply taken for metaphor or pilot affectation."
"And we never thought it was literal." You lean back in your seat and sigh, glancing up at the ceiling as if it held the answers.
It didn't. Just a spinning ceiling fan going round and round like a record.
"Either way, I want it looked at," you decide. "First, just make sure that it's not impacting either Tellison's or Zhang's mental health. Perseus isn't going anywhere while it's undergoing repairs, so just keep an eye on them and let me know if anything comes up."
Boris and Sam nod. "We will have a proposal on your desk soon," Boris promises.
"And plenty enough from my neck of the woods," Sam adds. "Considerable kudos to those two for everything they brought back. Kaiju studies is going to have a lot to do, and that's on top of the K-Fang."
You all exchange some more last minute administrative taskings before they're both out of the door. Once the door is closed, you just exhale sharply. "It's always something, isn't it?" you mutter.
"And always something new," Haruko replies in as glum a voice as your own. "Brigadier General Peters has sent us a note about the end of year evaluation."
"What about it?" you ask warily.
"That it won't quite be the same format and it will be more of an open discussion," came the cryptic but equally confused reply. "...this is rather different."
You just sigh, and reach for your coffee. "Lovely."
A Note About Advisors
They work a little differently than before (I'm going to be saying this a lot, but bear with me). Projects and availability are still a thing - you conduct projects after you assign a specific advisor team to them. However, each advisor can now be assigned two projects, letting you cover more ground (and this is my effort to try and avert the option bottleneck that existed before).
The rolling system will be mostly the same: each project will roll 2d6 by default. If you assign someone who you can be reasonably sure would do better at the job (say, Wilde and Henry with anything related to Variable Configuration or Max with Xenotechnology), you will add 1d6. I am not giving success thresholds anymore, as I am taking a new approach to that:
Your advisors are good enough that they will likely succeed at what they're trying to do. The difference now is degrees of success. There will be exceptions (liaison duties, for example, still will have some degree of failure states), but I will no longer cut off options the players want to try based on what they already have or newly discovered. Advisors performing projects where they would reasonably excel at will add 1d6 - those who don't do not get a bonus but can attempt it anyway.
Some restrictions still apply. Aside from Katarina, who still retains her ability to help out wherever she is needed, each advisor still remains within 'their lane.' Sam and Max will always be research, Wilde and Henry will always be engineering. But if the players can justify why someone should be able to cross over, make the pitch and I'll consider it - it just won't be available by default. If a project is also multi-turn, that one action will still remain locked with it until it is completed - but if they still have a free action, they can take on another duty.
This is something of a fresh start for us, so let's see how well this works!
Defense Force Options
Captain Haruko Sasaki
- No Projects Assigned
DFAI-01 'Diana'
- No Projects Assigned
DFAI-02 'Adrianna'
- No Projects Assigned
[] Reaction Force Monitoring: Kaiju
- [] Which Advisor?
- The kaiju have seemed relatively quiet after sieging the Yukimura Institute - but that's no reason to be lax.
[] Reaction Force Monitoring: Westphalians
- [] Which Advisor?
- If the Westphalians have proven anything, they will almost always find some way to strike where you least expect it.
[] Reaction Force Monitoring: Free Brothers Kausen
- [] Which Advisor?
- So far, Galbinus and his Legion have managed to keep the Free Brothers fully engaged. It wouldn't hurt to check for blind spots if they exist, though.
QM Explanation
The Reaction Force Monitoring action is the DFRI's method of finding and detecting problems before they have time to develop into Crises. You will always conduct a basic roll for each specific threat. However, by assigning an advisor to specifically monitor for a particular threat you have a greater than normal chance of finding something or someone and putting them on your radar earlier than if you had not been looking.
By assigning an advisor, you furthermore can have additional details of the threat revealed to you. Even if you find nothing, you will likely learn something additional about the threat in question.
[] Australia - The Weird and the West(phalian)
- Adrianna had stumbled across not just team Valiant - as a whole they also stumbled across something involving a complicated chain of submarine paths and probably Westphalian involvement of some kind. Erika Drake is set to get to the bottom of it. You can send help. Adrianna is keen to 'crack the case!' as she puts it, but with the Pegasus under repairs, the Thunderbolt remains your best option to send more direct help - and it wouldn't be a bad way to get Satsuma some experience.
QM Explanation
Deployments are exactly as they sound, and work much the same way. These are threats that you have identified in one way or another, and you may choose to deploy a Super Robot team to deal with it. These do not remain stagnant, however - leave something for too long, and it may develop into a full blown Crisis. Alternatively, one of the other defenders in the world may deal with it on their own - but at the moment, that is not a reliable method of risk mitigation.
SCR-03E Thunderbolt
NOTE: None others currently available due to lack of mobility
[] Liaison: General Li/GDF
- [] Topic of Discussion?
- You're not exactly close with the Ground Defense Force general, but there is no doubt that General Li greatly appreciated being the first to field the Centurions. It could be worth your while to follow up and see how they're doing, or if there's anything else that needs doing.
[] Liaison: Colonel Kim/FRC
- [] Topic of Discussion?
- The Jackals have by now become ubiquitous across the North American District, and more are being seen being produced and fielded elsewhere. Colonel Kim's enthusiastic endorsement of the frames were partially responsible for that - it could be worthwhile to check in, and see if he's uncovered anything that you can use.
[] Liaison: Colonel Bernard/MEF
- [] Topic of Discussion?
- It may be prudent to have a meeting of some kind with the MEF. The unofficial rumor mill in the wider EUDF is already abuzz about the Seekers. The 25th Air Wing performed fantastically, and providing a face to face evaluation of them to their senior boss wouldn't go amiss.
[] Liaison: Captain Dana Candler/NDF
- [] Topic of Discussion?
- Candler seems to have convinced enough of her superiors, and the Sergey Gorshkov is looking to become its own task force…which you have been hearing is now in dire need of reorganizing and reconstitution. At the moment, you also have a dropship that is locked down for repairs after the Kyoto operation - perhaps you could work out a trade?
[] Liaison: Dr. Yukimura/Yukimura Institute
- [] Topic of Discussion?
- Dr. Yukimura is somewhat busy with the cleanup right after the Olympic-class's attack on the Institute. He's very grateful for the assistance, but you may want to check back in with him later.
[] Liaison: Mander/MSS
- [] Topic of Discussion?
- Mander is well aware of Erika's gallivanting. If you choose to cooperate with Erika to take down the plot that's brewing down there, it might be prudent to open a dialogue out of courtesy.
- You owe them a favor from a previous operation.
[] Liaison: Galbinus-R/Legio Galbinus - [] Topic of Discussion?
- The DFRI and the Legion get on like a house on fire. After saving Cavalier, building the Enclave and helping them with Variable Configuration, you are as close as can be with Galbinus and his crew. Why not check in with your friends from the stars and see what else needs doing?
[] Liaison: Major Lenora Jenkins/Ground Pound
- [] Topic of Discussion?
- It's been about half a year since you've heard back from Jenkins. Assuming that the Fulgur Particles or the nanomachines haven't eaten them all just yet, it might be time to see what's changed since you checked in on them.
QM Explanation
These are the known personalities that are, if not friendly to you, at least neutral enough to be willing to discuss things with you. To initiate dialogue, assign an Advisor to the specified contact, and then write in a topic of discussion. This can be anything from floating ideas, to offering additional support, or even giving them information discovered through the Reaction Force monitoring that they can act on (which is usually welcomed). You can also try to work out a trade of sorts if you know they have something specifically that they can offer, but be ready to offer something in exchange if you do.
Engineering Options
'The Duo' - 1LT Adam Wilde & SFC James Henry
- Assigned to Beowulf Refit (Axiom-class Combination)
- One more project can be assigned
'Build Team' - Anthony, Greg and Kelly
- No Projects Assigned
Jiro Yukimura
- No Projects Assigned
EAI-01 'Lana'
- No Projects Assigned
Dr. Boris Ignatov
- No Projects Assigned
[] Construct Super Robot/Support Units
- [] Write-In Concept
QM Explanation
If you want to make additional Support Units or a new Core Super Robot, this is where you go. As straightforward as this sounds, I will explain further:
Core Super Robots are the basis for new Super Robots. The Beowulf, the Perseus, the Thunderbolt and Ichiro Banner are all examples of this. They can be modified later to stand alone, or be refitted into combination units.
Support Units is a much more broad category. This can cover everything from supporting Combination candidates, to a band of extra guns (such as the Seekers from the previous deployment). This is also a valid option for the creation and dissemination of a brand new frame for potential wider use across the EUDF.
Dropships also count in this respect - building a new Dropship is a much more time intensive endeavor, but the Pegasus has been proven to work as a concept so if you wish to invest your Advisor's time in it, this is where you go.
All of the above must be within your capabilities. You can only produce what you have already researched and developed. The more complex and powerful the idea, the longer it will take. I will promise that nothing will take longer than Four Turns but keep in mind your ideas vs how long it may take to make them a reality.
[] Refit and/or Repair
- [X] Perseus is currently undergoing mandatory repairs (One Turn). You may also designate additional technologies to be added at the cost of one additional turn of duration.
- [X] The Pegasus is currently undergoing mandatory repairs (Two Turns). You may also designate additional technologies to be added at the cost of one additional turn of duration.
- [X] The 25th Marine Air Wing is undergoing repairs
- [X] The Beowulf is undergoing finalized prototyping for the theoretical Axiom-class Combination.
- [] Choose which Super Robot will be chosen for an overhaul, and with which pieces of equipment.
SCR-02 Perseus (In conjunction with Repair operations)
Pegasus Dropship (In conjunction with Repair operations)
SCR-03E Thunderbolt
SAI-01 Ichiro Banner
The Argonauts (SAI-02 Charlie, SAI-03 Frankie and SAI-04 Iris)
QM Explanation
Refit - This is your chance to take newly developed equipment and bolt them onto the Super Robots. A fully repaired Super Robot will typically only take one or two turns at most to incorporate the new additions. This also includes modifying a Core and Support Unit to Combine.
Repairs - If a Super Robot or Support Units mostly comes back with minor damage, it will be abstracted as having been fixed up. More severe damage (such as Perseus's first major outing) will place them into varying states of repair - usually one or two turns. If you are willing to extend their repair time, however, for one additional turn you can also incorporate new equipment and designs.
Repairs will happen automatically. However, assigning an Advisor to prioritize the actions will reduce the time required - always by One Turn, and high results will reduce it further. However, they cannot reduce the duration below One Turn.
[] Experimentation - Practical Applications
- [] Select Technology Base/Equipment Base
– [] What do you want to try developing?
QM Explanation
As a reference, here is a link to your currently known technologies. You are rolling with a bonus based on the expertise of those involved. I am no longer going to restrict you all based on options I strictly provide. If you have the technology at least slightly figured out, then your engineers can run whole-hog with it.
For example, if you want to develop a new type of melee weapon with the K-Fang as a base, write in what you want to try making based off of that. Same for existing technologies - if you want to try refining something based off of Kausen Energy Blasters, write in what you want to attempt. Low rolls will not result in failure - at worst, you will get a mostly functional version of what you were aiming for with some caveats. At best, you will either get something truly spectacular, or something not quite expected. Go nuts. EXPERIMENT.
(I would say for science but this is the wrong department for that)
Previously attempted projects (which you may retry based on existing technologies)
Project Funnel
Technology bases: ESP Theory, K-Class
Project Pilebunker
Technology bases: K-Class
[] Super AI Development
- [] Base AI Personality
- [] Super Robot AI Personality
- [] Special Project
QM Explanation
The Super AI work slightly differently in this version of the new system. As before they all are active characters involved in the story. You still choose a human personality as a template, and then let them develop for a few months/turns before they are ready.
The Base AI Personalities no longer provide bonuses in the same way as the previous quest, but you can still assign them to projects as before. Much like normal advisors, they can provide slight bonuses to what they work on (Lana has a history with prototyping new units alongside Jiro, for example, in spite of/despite their bickering). Without spoiling anything, Base AI development will have more story-based purposes and reasons for developing in the future, but not at this time.
The Super Robot AI Personalities are exactly as they sound. They are tied specifically to a Super Robot Frame, and can be switched around and upgraded via Refit.
Previously attempted projects
Base AI Development
An initial candidate was identified within the Mainframe, but a baseline personality has yet to be chosen. This can be resumed at any time (write in).
Drone Support (based off of analysis of wrecked Free Brothers Drones)
Boris's study of the Drones has given him some ideas about potentially coopting the technology behind the Drones for the Institute's own ends. Naturally, he's not going to even think about going for the semi-lobotomized nature of the Free Brothers' hordes - Zulu is already an uncomfortable enough example of what that entails. However, could we create our own Drones with the added capacity to learn and grow? Not only could this lead to additional help, this may help ease the introduction of the Super AI concept to the wider Union with healthy, well adjusted citizens...or at least, as well adjusted as the DFRI allows.
QM Explanation
Any enemy wreckage or equipment you salvage from deployments will go here. Straightforward enough - look at anything unusual they left behind and figure out how it works. If nothing else, it will also show you just how far the enemy are coming along in the arms race this conflict has become.
SCIENCE! Options
Dr. Sam Carlson
- No Projects Assigned
Dr. Maximiliane Brand
- No Projects Assigned
SCAI-01 'Ivana'
- No Projects Assigned
Zulu
- No Projects Assigned
Dr. Mary McCullough
- No Projects Assigned
[] ESP Theory
- [] Write-In
- ESP Theory is at something of a standstill at the moment. After the dramatic successes of the Psychic Link and the MMI developments, there hasn't been much progress in this field. What else could be developed from this?
[] Mental Merger
- [] Which advisor?
- [] Write-In
- Perseus displayed some odd behavior during the defense of the Yukimura Institute. Both pilots seem mostly fine from the experience (physical injuries notwithstanding), but the mental bleedover and the odd independence showcased by Perseus is worth examining further.
QM Explanation
I am being much more free about how you all do your Science, as you can see from the Write-Ins. For the newly discovered samples, you can leave it as a generic 'what does this do?' or you can poke and prod at it for a specific purpose. For the existing technologies, experimenting with them will let you know the limits of what you can or can't do.
Go nuts, is what I'm saying. The worst I'll do is tell you to try modifying it slightly. I won't answer every specific question about where this leads, but I will give hints.
Special Projects
AI-01 'Katarina'
- Note: She can take on two projects of her own. She can split between different sections.
[] After-Market Special - Surplus Rocket Engines
- [] Which Advisor?
- [] Write-In
[] After-Market Special - 'Saddle' Cargo Helicopter
- [] Which Advisor?
- [] Write-In
QM Explanation
Special Projects are an exception to the Advisors restriction rules. If this option ever appears, anyone can pitch in and take it on as a project regardless of specialty.
Sorry for how long the post took. I'm still sure I missed something, so if I did, don't hesitate to point it out. I'm going to go relax now, let me know if you need anything.
Adrianna is slightly hyper in the leadup to the mission supporting MSS and Valiant.
Just slightly.
You ultimately decided to give the human operators manning the stations half-shifts, as Adrianna is constantly flitting around the consoles doing her damndest to try and find something, anything to nail down further potential Westphalian activity. Understandably, she's quite specifically looking around the Oceania District, and she's even been trying to cross reference the submarine traffic lanes she identified the other month ago. Without you asking, even. Katarina couldn't stop beaming in happy pride at that.
But unfortunately, despite her best efforts, she's found nothing beyond what your analysts have already nailed down. There is a Westphalian cell operating on the Australian coast, and there is enough evidence pointing to the fact that a cell of kaiju infiltrators similar to the ones the Pegasus and Perseus teams fought off in Japan are present. Which suggests that there possibly might be another 'officer' type independent enough running negotiations on Sheol's behalf, but that is just guesswork based on existing knowledge.
Diana, however, has had more interesting results. Her recent experiences have left her somewhat hyper focused in regards to the kaiju - and that was something you simply couldn't blame her for. With a newfound appreciation for the many different angles Sheol's creations were now displaying, Diana lent her processing power to Adrianna's efforts to try and find anything kaiju-related. Her efforts on that front were unsuccessful - after having expended that many resources against the Yukimura Institute, it seems that relatively small-scale operations like the Westphalian meetup are all Sheol willing to commit to.
Logistics: Which leads you to wonder just what Sheol's resource intake and expenditure must look like. Your own methods to refine K-Class materials are hardly the 'original article' as it were, but it takes you a good long while to get anything out of them. And this is after Sam and the Biotechnology team have more or less figured out the 'right' way to process and refine kaiju samples into K-Class - it's the work of months. In between everything else, one note manages to remain noticeable in your notebook - keep closer tabs on kaiju cells. Easier said than done, but it's something.
Diana, however, has had an interesting ping. The strange signal that seems to have been bouncing along the very edges of the defense outposts' perimeters seems to be honing in from the northeast, from the relative direction of Mt. Saint Helens. Diana has finally managed to isolate the signal - it is vaguely Kausen in nature, but it does not match any of the SAI personalities in the DFRI, and Patch had confirmed in a conference call that it was not any of the Legion's.
What's more worrying, however, is the fact that seismic activity is now being mentioned in the same breath as the signals. The perimeter outposts have started to mention vague tremors, enough to send various flocks of birds flying into the air and even sending some packs of ground wildlife running - but nothing literally earth splitting yet.
Diana, however, is confident that if the DFRI headquarters is hit, it would be accidental. She's fairly sure that it's after another target further north:
The Legion Enclave.
Liaison Results
"I wasn't expecting another house call."
Haruko just raised an eyebrow at Dana Candler, who in turn just returned the most gormless grin she had ever seen anyone make - and that was from both biological and mechanical lifeforms.
Candler raised her hands in appeasement. "Sasaki, learn to relax a little," she jabbed. "Your own advice even, or something along those lines." She glanced out the window of her office overseeing the flight deck of the Sergey Gorshkov - and as Haruko followed suit, a raw sense of satisfaction crossed her mind.
Various men and women, all in engineering jumpsuits, were crisscrossing the flight deck in what her superior would call 'organized chaos.' People were constantly getting in each other's way, reassessing work, losing things, finding them, promptly losing them again only to realize it was mostly where it needed to go. Pallets of ammunition skated across the deck on forklifts, while V-33 units - interestingly repurposed for cargo hauling duties in their VTOL form - were lowering tanks of AVGAS aviation fuel.
"The Naval Board finally decided to let me have an independent command." Haruko turned her attention back to Candler, who had a strained smile on her face - albeit one that was far more relaxed than the one she saw right after the launch ceremony. "The Unity Station inquiry reviews were starting to get to them, I think. I gave the suggestion of letting me try and literally write the rough draft on supercarrier doctrine - I think they wanted good progress so they could brief that to the Unity Station offices for a change."
"I'm glad to hear it, ma'am." And Haruko was being absolutely sincere. Between Major Devin and Major Jenkins, she had seen what having freedom of movement being constricted was like, to say nothing of having someone micromanaging you right at your shoulders even from a distance. "To that end, I have an opportunity to help you with that, and a favor to ask."
"Name it." Candler leaned forward, a curious expression on her face.
"Our own dropship was recently damaged last month," Haruko started.
"Yukimura?"
"Yes."
"Heard about that." Haruko would notice, for the first time in the conversation, that the wall behind Candler's desk was now populated with various mementos of her career. A plaque emblazoned with the Kanji for Yokosuka Naval Base was placed towards the top. "I didn't envy whoever had that job, but it sounds like the junior officer you sent had it pretty well handled."
Haruko decided to let that description of Diana stand. Candler wasn't wrong, per se. "She more than earned her victory," she opted to say instead. "The Marines too - my superior put some of them in for commendations. But that leads me to my point - we are about to follow up on a lead against a Westphalian operation in Australia, and we need a method of transport."
Candler 'hummed' at that, and her eyes momentarily went blank. Haruko recognized that look - the sign of a person whose focus was firmly on mental math. Her attention immediately snapped back. "As long as you don't mind us making a pitstop at Fleet Base East on the way back, I don't see why not," she allowed. "Manifest?"
Haruko brought up her data pad, and slid a copy of the data to Candler's. "One Super Robot and a support team," she replied, simply lumping Ocular along with the Argonauts for now. "Along with maintenance personnel."
Candler looked at the manifest herself - and nodded. "Send me your timelines when we're done," Candler said. "Time to let the old bastard fly."
Haruko's other appointment that month was not quite as successful as she had hoped.
Colonel Bernard Henri, formerly of France before being seconded full-time to the Marine Expeditionary Forces, expressed his regret that he couldn't spare more pilots to form another Wing as Major Devin had hoped. However, he was quite pleased to hear that in their first combat engagement with the new Seeker models - against the kaiju, whom he wasn't aware even had aerial assets like the Pterawings - had not only not lost a single pilot, but had performed superbly.
"I am, however, noticing a slight pattern here," Henri commented dryly. Haruko made a questioning gesture, and the colonel read off the citations. The glow of the datapad highlighted his weathered face, skin dried from years of exposure to the sun in field conditions contrasting heavily with the sharp and precise cut of the Troupes de Marine - itself a French Army formation technically, but Haruko was willing to bet Henri had seen off all potential attacks on his credentials long before today.
"'For suicidal bravery.' 'For reckless gallantry in the face of the enemy.' 'For displaying ingenuity via ground vehicular combat at high altitude conditions.'" Henri just lowered his datapad - and then snorted. "God help me if that doesn't sound like my pilots." Despite his clear bemusement, there was a touch of pride in his voice, even if it didn't show on the man's face. "I cannot spare you more men - but I can keep the Twenty-Fifth with you. For the indefinite future."
Haruko nodded in appreciation. Not quite what they wanted, but more than they dreaded. She would take it.
"I don't drive people this batty. Do I?"
Patrick remained dutifully silent. Erika's eyebrow twitched slightly at the insinuation - even when she knew Patrick didn't actually say anything. But the air of amusement around her old friend and mentor said volumes more than any amount of words could.
Erika just shot a withering glare at Patrick, and just huffed when he continued to stoically remain unwithered.
That digital girl - Adrianna. If no one had told her that she was AI, she would have thought her to be an incredibly young - and slightly annoying - woman who consumed far more sugar than was healthy for anyone. Hell, if they'd told her she was an AI anyway, she might have just dismissed the claim.
That was harder to do when she personally met one. And she was still slightly peeved that she hadn't caught on earlier.
'But I'm right here' indeed.
That said, she couldn't deny that Adrianna was incredibly helpful. Erika and Patrick had already started to isolate a few of the operatives of this cell from one another - and Adrianna, mostly unbidden, but timely nonetheless - had already foiled a few counter ambushes before they could even take place. Mostly by infiltrating their own databases and effectively neutralizing them in a feedback loop - 'Blue Screen of Death!' in her own words, whatever that meant - but it made their first few forays successful-
"Hello~!"
"Think of the devil and she'll appear, apparently." Erika had long since stopped jumping whenever Adrianna appeared, and just raised an eyebrow. "Morning, Adrianna. What've you got for us?"
"Good news - my boss is sending backup!" Adrianna looked and sounded incredibly pleased, whether it was with herself for delivering the news, or the news itself Erika just wasn't sure. "They're coming by soon, and I'll be facilitating the linkup!"
"Most excellent news, miss," Patrick stated, neatly cutting off Erika's snarky reply. "Have you had any success in penetrating the main cell's networks?"
"Eeehhhhh~no." The sunny disposition faded to mild annoyance. "After the first few times, I think they just ripped themselves out of the airwaves entirely and went analog. They're still emitting signals, nothing'll stop that, but aside from this-"
The image of the last remaining warehouse they had yet to attack was displayed, all with various vehicles 'parked' around it.
"-I've got nothing. Pretty sure they're circling the wagons now, though. You didn't even need to break out Valiant!"
"Considering what they're probably hiding in there?" Erika commented. She glanced outside, where Valiant laid dormant in the support vehicle covered in tarp. "Probably not going to last terribly long."
"We do have a run of bad luck with covert operations," Patrick commented. "Something to do with the fact that both sides' first method of resort tends to be giant robots."
"...when it's all you've got, I mean, why not?"
This time, Patrick had the decency to look sheepish alongside Adrianna as Erika glared at them. "This," she complained, "this is why we never get the covert bonus from Mander!"
Deployment Preparations
"Allll riiiiight!" Jessica just sighed in amusement at Charlie's cheers all the way to the drop ramp of the supercarrier. "Our first mission! Oh man, ohmanohmanohman this is gonna be great!"
"You don't have to be so loud." Iris's voice was much softer than Charlie's yet it carried all the further as a result. Her form was hilariously lopsided compared to the looming form that was Charlie - all three of them had just recently conducted a change to their new bodies. The slender, more agile form of Iris in its mecha configuration from the Steed chassis had to walk just slightly faster than normal to keep up with the idle, but large steps that Charlie's Phalanx chassis carried him in his enthusiasm. "And what did we say about being overconfident?"
"Slow and insidious." Frankie was adjusting his arms and shoulders - he was still getting used to the Shade's configurations. His particular form had been rigged for engineering - various tools, earthmover outlets, and more replaced the sensitive sensor suites that the Intelligence packages tended to have. "We haven't even trained with these yet. We were just in Jackals last month!"
"Guys, we'll be fine." Jessica stood on the gantries alongside the massive loading bay of the Sergey Gorshkov. "I'm nervous too, alright? I'm barely getting used to all of this." The C-Crystal hung along her neck, glowing faintly in the bay's lights. "And Charlie, try to calm down a bit? You're not supposed to advertise that-"
"-that I'm SAI-04, I know." Charlie thankfully reduced the boisterous body language a little, but he was still visibly shaking in excitement. "But, c'mon, Jessica! This is what we were made to do, y'know? I mean-"
A burst of sound and static interrupted Charlie's speech as Ocular landed on his shoulder. The beaked form of the mini-Kaus's head poked at Charlie's head before what sounded like record scratches and corrupted recordings emitted from his beak.
"Whoah, Ocular, chill," Frankie called from behind. "We get it, we understand." Another chirp of communication shot back. "N-no, but-"
"We will do our best." Iris's voice seemed to cut through again. "Jessica and Ocular will also do their best. So will Valiant and Adri. That's all there is to it."
Jessica just smiled as she saw Ocular and the Argonaut siblings bicker with each other. It was a different dynamic from the Legion's, but it had a familiar, comfortable feeling to it as well. She grasped at the C-Crystal as she glanced at the Thunderbolt, still being tied down by support crew in its gunship form to the loading elevator. "Let's do our best," she whispered to herself.
The C-Crystal glowed faintly.
Yeah, I think I'll keep the update results bite sized like this. This is already clocking almost 2.5k words!
Engineering rolls are just about done, but I will post those tomorrow.
The Beowulf, it seems, has one particular destiny in mind - it gets to test out all sorts of new ideas before any of the other SCR combat models. As a result, it perhaps is the most prototyped prototype of all of your prototyping developments. Even Wilde, the one who uttered that, started to get a slight headache thinking about it.
But he has a point. From effectively being the very first combat viable Jackal frame that proved Variable Configuration's effectiveness, to its incorporation of K-Class Materials and the MMI interfaces, the Beowulf in all of its shapes and incarnations has been the elder model that has seen it all, and tested a good deal of it personally. Perhaps it will never be quite as powerful as later models - but it is the symbol of the DFRI's successes and failures, the one that was always trailblazing the cutting edge so that all other models in the SCR line would benefit from future refinements.
It was the first to combine into a larger Super Robot. It still is technically the only one so far. But with this latest refinement, yet another path to future upgrades has been pushed through for its younger siblings.
Ultimately, the biggest stumbling block: the power source incompatibility issues. The MMI was ultimately able to reconcile two conflicting power sources when in the Foxhound and Timberwolf formations. However, three was beyond the MMI's safe capabilities - even if modifications were made, Boris made it very clear that the MMI's computer would start trying to tap into the human brain more to make up the difference during combat. Not only that, but even under controlled testing, Wilde and Henry discovered that the MMI could not safely manage the delicate balancing act.
Once Faedium entered the picture, however, the classic method of delegating a single point of contact became viable.
Taking valuable time to monitor the very first practical tests, Mary joined the Duo for observing how Faedium operated as a power unifying source. As a radical departure from previous incremental models of the Beowulf, the engine was rebuilt from the ground up. In something of a nod to old hybrid model automotive engines, a conventional engine directly fed into a precisely cut block of Faedium which slotted into the engine itself. The engine in turn would have ports that would connect directly to the V-33 TMU and the Shepherd, with ports that bypassed the engine to feed into the Faedium block directly as to prevent any overlap of the power inputs. As a result, the Faedium block would now serve as the primary source of power.
It took the team time to get the right density and proportions of the Faedium, but even in the failed attempts, the results were promising. And in this month of December, they finally got it right. The actual combination that followed was simple in comparison. The frames were always compatible - it was just making sure they didn't explode during use that was the issue.
The Beowulf stands in the hangar now, currently supported by engineering straps hooked up to the hangar's cranes as a safety precaution. Standing tall in its Timberwolf formation, the V-33's jet form has been split in half horizontally, with its top and bottom halves disconnecting while remaining connected via guidance wires. The top half with its wings spread upwards has been locked to the front of the Timberwolf frame's chest, while the bottom half with both its jet engine ports and its VTOL ports facing the ground. Sadly, the V-33 simply isn't powerful enough to keep the Timberwolf frame flying - but it is strong enough for making a giant jet powered leap in a single bound.
And best of all, the Faedium has been run in multiple tests, both in controlled environments, and in the Proving Grounds. Even during one close call due to a slight miscalculation from the MMI, the Faedium was able to contain the energy burst long enough for the MMI controls to catch up and stabilize and vent the excess.
The Duo are elated. Mary is content with this initial vindication of her life's work. And future combinations have been made that much easier with the prototype Faedium Block Generator.
But what to call Beowulf's new form?
Beowulf's Triple Combination is complete! What is its name?
New Equipment Unlocked - Faedium Block Engine!
Perseus Combination Compatibility
"Yeah, Richard's been workshopping that one all day." Adam Wilde grinned from his spot along the Perseus's frame as he connected the hose to the tank full of Anti-Gravity Solution hooked to the side of the Shepherd. Ever since Cavalier's emergency operation a few years ago, it amused him to no end that the support truck had become a mix of a gurney and an operating tool table. "He'll probably dig into, I dunno, the Brothers Grimm or go track down a runestone in Europe somewhere for inspiration."
"Wouldn't surprise me." Henry just shrugged as his Steed's hands sprayed down the K-Scale Mesh that hung loosely along Perseus's internals. This time, the taciturn NCO had just not even tried to buff out the scar along Perseus's face after the few new scratches along its eye refused to buff out either. "He's always been enthusiastic over that." He cast a discerning eye towards the K-Scale Mesh one last time, and reached out his Steed's hand and applied a shock - the materials were already curling up around the internal skeleton like particularly stubborn kudzu. "Good to go. How's the new generator?"
"Stress test done." They hadn't exactly told Major Devin that the engine was being replaced, but they had dragged Mary into the mix as well, and she had helped to narrow down the specific density required for a Phalanx-proportioned Faedium Block - though she was slightly annoyed at that particular name, she was mollified in just how much use they were already getting out of it. The Faedium was glowing a pale blue that seemed to verge on light purple, and Perseus's recast eyes were glowing a similar hue. "Conventional engine's already powered the Block, and…it's running purely off of Block power right now. Pretty good I think."
"Add that to the other things to make standard issue for us," Henry grunted. "Now…the hard points."
Adam grinned as he punched in a few controls from his console. "Okay, let's do a quick test!" The chest compartment folded back in on itself, hiding the glowing light of the Faedium as it closed. "First, we've got the Tetra-class." Perseus's arms and legs slowly began to fold in on themselves, until they themselves were more like giant mid-limbs than appendages, with plug in hard points ready to accept combined forms of forearms and boots. Even the back ports folded open slightly, revealing more hard points that could theoretically accept a backpack mounted unit of sorts.
"Tetra-class looks good," Henry noted. "Next, Axiom-class." Rapidly, the Perseus's legs fully unfolded back to their full length. However, this time, the arms fully folded directly into the Perseus's back, with its shoulder pauldrons simply rotating one hundred and eighty degrees back to reveal hard points along its shoulder joints. Clearly this was meant for a whole mecha to form the arm in some capacity.
"Both forms look good." Henry nodded, and Adam commanded Perseus's form to revert back to its standard form. None of the damage from before remained - there was just the solid mass of metal and kaiju-bits that had gone three-on-one with several kaiju and lasted long enough to get Mercury on the field to finish the job. "Now, what to actually give it."
"Shepherd's out," Adam said dolefully. "Perseus's a big boy and a liiiiitle too heavy for that."
"It already gives Beowulf more hitting and staying power anyway," Henry replied. "Perseus doesn't need that. It needs something to give it more options. I'd suggest the TMU, but it doesn't really give enough punch with its available weapon ports."
"I mean, some missiles wouldn't hurt, but yeah," Adam agreed. "We could try the Seekers?"
"If you're trying to make it fly, it's not going to happen," Henry bluntly replied. "But it might not be such a bad option for an arm or back unit."
"Maybe we could go to the Decommissions Yards and look for stuff?"
"It did work pretty well last time, didn't it?" Henry allowed. "Plenty of things from yesteryear that no one's really looking for anymore." He jotted some notes down in his notepad. "It's going to take longer if we want the change to actually reflect on the Perseus, but we might surprise the Major."
"Speaking of. What about the Saddle Major Devin's got lying around?"
"Strong enough for flight, but not much else." Henry and Adam shared a glance. "What about those new things…"
"The Sledders?" Adam scratched his chin for a moment. "Wasn't Lana working on those?"
New Phalanx combination proposals. Decision available next turn!
Phalanx Template for Combination
"...I swear that making a Phalanx form a human pyramid with these things made sense two hours ago."
Lana looked a little frazzled in her corner of the Engineering Bay. A factory standard Phalanx was parked off to the side in APC form, while various computer bays were running multiple sequences and projections. Interestingly, most of them had reached the same conclusions that they had. Adam looked at one, then brought it up to the main window display. "Heeeeey, you got the Faedium Block in there too!" he cheered. "Good call, it works."
"Oh, good." Abruptly, about fifty percent of the other simulations simply shut down and disappeared into the archives. "That saves me a lot of work."
"What's the end state of this?" Henry asked. "It's like you're stress testing to see how far this goes."
"That's the plan, yeah," Lana admitted. "So far, the Sledder on its own isn't great for combat. But if you use it as a combine component, it provides a lot of power. But." Various combat simulations, ranging from a Dragon-class kaiju to a Bandit-class Kaus played out - and the limbs that formed the Sledder almost inevitably were utterly wrecked after a full combat's worth of use. "Almost like the K-Scale. Great for defense and utility, but not to actually hit something."
"Almost fire and forget, right?" Adam commented. An amusing thought crossed his mind, and before he could even consider if he should try to stop himself, he was already speaking it. "Maybe we could make one transform into a giant drill and just launch it Shepherd style for a drill arm or something."
Henry just turned to stare at him.
Lana was also just blankly staring at him from her console.
Adam shrugged. "Just a thought," he said.
"...I am intrigued by your ideas and want to subscribe to your newsletter."
"She's doomed," Henry muttered.
New development idea for the Sledders - Weapons and Utility Deployment - available next turn!
New Insights into Phalanx combinations developed! Decision available next turn.
Two Turns Remaining.
Pegasus-class Construction
"Explain." You are standing in one of the newly constructed expansions of the Engineering Bay, so fresh that you can still actually make out some of the wall's model numbers before they inevitably get caked in soot and oil grease. Engineering must grow to continue supporting Engineering after all, or so the old joke went. But inspecting the state of the bay wasn't the reason why you were here.
No, it was the sheepish trio of the Build Team that was drawing your…ire? Interest? You're still not sure, and you haven't heard a reason why it should tilt one way or another just yet.
"I, ah, think it started with the accidental shorting on the engines," Anthony admitted. Behind him, the massive engine blocks that would have been powering the thrusters to the new dropship had a rather nasty looking fracture breaking right through the center. Anthony's own face was covered in soot and sweat, so he clearly had been busy trying to fix it. "So I was just wondering, until we can get this thing fixed, we could just make the damned thing walk."
"...and the tank treads?" you ask pointedly. Giant treads that are more fit for a supersized tractor - or maybe a superheavy command vehicle - laid stretched out running parallel to the main bay's operating area.
"If the walking bit didn't work, maybe this would help it to move if it ever crashes again?" You pause - then conclude that despite the execution of the idea, the idea itself was not a bad one…but why tank treads? "That and if it's that stable, we could probably upsize the main weapons a little bit…"
"That was probably when we joked about the spider legs," Kelly added, which immediately framed the tank treads as sounding more reasonable to you by comparison. Behind her, the unfinished frame of the new Pegasus-class loomed large, still hollow but structurally it was still intact. And then to her right was a pair of said spider legs - giant, enormous mechanical monstrosities that if you had to guess would fold up into the dropship's hull when not in use. "Stability is kindofanissuethough," she quickly concluded.
"So then," Greg concluded, "I asked Architect and Hotwire when they were over the other day if they had any retroboosters, rockets or the like that could help make the thing hover instead." You look at the last engineer, and thankfully, he didn't have the physical evidence of some constructed attempt around him. Plenty of blueprint sketches, though. "The Pegasus template probably won't work, but I did see what Wilde and Henry were doing with the Beowulf. I know it's not exactly ready, but we could try the Faedium Block…s? Faedium Blocks in a cluster sequence to give it enough power?"
"Why the booster idea then?" you ask.
"I mostly wanted to keep the idea of a flying dropship, not a land crawling video game boss stage."
You glance at all three engineers again, then at the odd, odd things they had requisitioned that had managed to find their way up to you, and why you were down here to begin with. "...has anyone discussed the idea of 'feature creep' with you all?" you ask.
"'Features waiting to happen.'" The response was unanimous from all three.
You just sigh. You suppose you could keep the original aim of the Pegasus-class, or you could try to incorporate one of the new…ideas the Build Team have come up with at the cost of time. "Just…just submit an official proposal for them before you try bolting things on willy-nilly."
Pegasus-class Decision available next turn! One Turn Remaining.
Seeker Wing Development
"I told you that was gonna raise eyebrows." Anthony's voice sounded slightly tinny through the vocal radio from the Steed he was operating. The model was stripped completely of any ability to Configure, and instead had been augmented with power loader servos. It was also painted a bright engineering yellow with black stripes, along with enough reflective tape to ensure anyone could see 'engineer working, stay clear.'
"Giant spider-walker dropship is a cool idea and you can't convince me otherwise." Kelly huffed from her position at the crane controls, waiting patiently for Greg to finish loading the next component. "It would work too! Once I figure out how to stop people from getting motion sickness."
"Gonna just agree to disagree there, Kelly."
"Engine up!" Greg called out.
"Loading!" Kelly yanked the lever, and slowly, suspended on a harness, the engines of the next Seeker began to lift upwards from the ground floor. Anthony waited until it was just at the right level, making a circular motion with the Steed's right hand to encourage it to keep going, until he abruptly clenched it into a fist to cease motion.
"Okay, good!" With that, Anthony lifted the first part of the engine and slid it into the unfinished Seeker, before banging his fist on the side to knock loose the wires that needed connecting. "I know some of these are gonna go to the Twenty-Fifth, but what about the rest of them?" he asked. "Heard we didn't get the pilots just yet."
"Something-something-not-available," Kelly shrugged. "You know how those go."
"You know, there is a way around that-" Greg started to say.
"AI again?" Anthony asked, sounding just a little exasperated.
"Now, just-just hear me out." Greg's voice was already going right back onto the argument that had been breaking ground for the last few days. "If we can't get the pilots now to operate the Seekers yet, why not make them AI instead to get them sooner? Just saying, we can do it."
"You just want to make everything a robot," Anthony scoffed as the engine roared slightly through its initial runtime diagnostic.
"And?"
"Well, it is kind of in our job description now," Kelly admitted. "And we've got Ichiro and the Argonauts running around, so…"
"I mean, it's just a thought." Greg shrugged. "What are the odds we're going to get that?"
Drone Support
"The odds are somewhat middling in your favor, I would say."
This was decidedly not the conversation that Greg was expecting to have in the chow hall. Having finished the day's batch of Seekers - thank you God for prefabricated K-Class hulls - he had gone to go grab some food, and was sitting down when he was abruptly joined by Dr. Ignatov.
"You're…using the Drone wreckage?" Greg asked, curiosity nudging him along.
Dr. Ignatov nodded, and set aside his tea as he withdrew a tablet. "The very same wreckage from the operation at Death Valley a few months prior," he explained. "We did not have time to thoroughly examine the wreckage, but much of the 'Drone' processors survived. Inert and with corrupted data to the point that even Patch had dismissed it, but it led me to think." Each 'processor' - effectively the Drone brain - were overlaid next to each other, in varying states of wreckage and disrepair. "It seems the Mekaen denizens do not construct their Drones to last. Relative to Kausen constructed bodies, they are cheap and 'throwaway' as it were. And yet."
Various equations and simulation charts were overlaid to the side, with a series of graphs showing data over time displaying. "In theory - in theory, mind you - with enough time and nurturing, the Drones actually have a remarkable potential for growth as individuals. We have even our own in-house example in Zulu. So what if we were to cultivate and grow our own Drones?"
"And…you want to put them in the Seekers?" Greg, mentally, was very much on board with this idea, but the engineer in him had to raise up one question of practicality as much as he hated to. "Isn't that a step too far for that though?"
"Consider it a test bed then," Ignatov replied. His voice was deep and calm, but there was a certain fire in his eyes at the idea. "Consider if you will. The Steeds have the proper processing power, which can then plug directly into the Seeker frame or any of the others we have or will have at our disposal-"
"-and we could keep them for defense," Greg added, not quite realizing a similar fire was in his eyes. "Even if not the Seekers, we could make them support units to get them started-"
"-with added processing power for true personality growth-"
"-or maybe they could combine into a larger personality and frame-?"
"-I would want to monitor that closely to prevent any longterm damage, but-"
Their chance discussion would eventually culminate into a combined proposal for the new Seeker wing on Major Devin's desk, just in time for the New Year…
Seeker Wing Development and Drone Support momentarily synched. New Decision available at next turn. One Turn Remaining.
Mega Blaster Analysis and Energy Blaster Miniaturization
"So." Jiro is briefing you in the safety of his office. In the corner of your eye, you can see Lana and Wilde discussing something with a lot of hushed whispers and intent, but you return your focus back to Jiro. "Decided to kill two birds with one stone. I was gonna start on miniaturization first, but I figured, why? It might not be the best attempt, but the Westphalians already kind of started for us."
You blink at him. "You call this-" You point at the 'mega blaster' recovered from the Brute-class super heavy walker, "'mini?'"
"No, but it's someone else trying to apply human style weapon concepts to Kausen technology," he counters. "Well, they tried. They clearly didn't understand how any of it worked before they tried welding all three together into a Bigger Gun." Video footage captured from Ichiro's perspective in the Brest operation shows the weapon glowing a bright, unhealthy red from the 'maw' of the Beast before it spewed concentrated blaster fire.
"Watch this," he instructs. The beam began to lose coherency, going from a concentrated beam to something much more scattered - and then abruptly cutting off as chunks of the weapon exploded outright. "Easy enough to track, but if we reverse time just enough-"
You immediately see as Jiro zooms in on it. "They're not all firing at once," you notice.
"Yep. I guess even they figured that out," Jiro says. "They tried to make it a rotational deal. Each gun fires into a central energy bank before it gets vented out in one go. They tried to take a safety mechanism and weaponize it." He shrugs, a wry grin on his face. "Kind of on brand for them, really."
"And the weapon itself?"
"Herald was over the other day, so I had him check it out," he confirms. "All three are standard handheld weapons the Legion and the Free Brothers use. Just with the ergonomic parts cut out since no one was going to hold it, and they probably cut out the safety features too."
"They just wanted something out there," you reply. "Wasn't a bad plan if they weren't dealing with Ichiro."
"I remember seeing him right after it hit him too," Jiro recalls. "Man, Lana was pissed. But." The mega blaster was dismissed, and Jiro pulls out drawings on blueprint paper. "I think whoever their engineer was had the right idea, but they didn't exactly have anything like, say, Faedium. Same idea, but I'm pretty sure Faedium has higher tolerances than whatever they used."
"Another heavy launcher."
"For now." He then brings up his other project. "I didn't even think about Faedium when I came up with these," he admitted sheepishly. "I couldn't exactly miniaturize the Kaus Energy Blast. Not in anything safe anyway. So…"
"...you made mecha sized grenades?" you ask. Incredulity and a hint of admiration color your voice.
"Warheads," he corrects, even as he has to fight to prevent a smug grin crossing his face. Considering you had to do the same with the Naval Board, you can understand where he's coming from. "Delivery system varies, but the payload is the same - cheap automatic tracking software and a one-shot capacitor unit will deliver a shaped charge blast towards the locked on target and the force of the blast will destroy the unit so it's self-sanitizing. Grenade launcher on the forearm, shoulder mounted launchers, even give them to the Seekers for air-to-air combat."
"...very well done," you congratulate him. "How soon can these be available?"
"I can sneak some into the Thunderbolt and company before they head out," Jiro boasts. "Should be a good field test."
"Let's hope they won't need it," you comment, even as you're pleased with what Jiro made. Not quite what you were looking for, but another nice tool for the belt.
New Option Unlocked from Mega Blaster analysis! One Turn Remaining.
Direct Charge Warheads developed!
K-Fang Spear
Whatever Lana was working on with Wilde seems to have concluded, because as you approach her work station, a weapons display is already rotating. "Look at this, sir!" she exclaims. Her avatar has her hands on both hips as she looked to be on the verge of laughing in glee. "Behold! The first K-Fang weapon design!"
"...it's a halberd," you note dryly.
"A useful one!" she counters. "At first, I tried to use the Dragon Horn for an acid attack, but! Behold!" A simulation shows the weapon - you blink as you recognize Kausen energy blast technology emitters along the base of the halberd's blade charge said energy through the blade - and the edge abruptly explodes into a directed shaped blast. "It can channel energy blasts!" she crows. "It can shoot! It can cut with the destructive force of Kausen energy! It can do both at once!"
The weapon then shows its ability to split in half, with the edge of the halberd fitting into the display Phalanx's back along with the other half of the staff. "The first one I've got is for Perseus," she explains, having calmed down some. "But with some tweaking, anyone can use it!...except the Steed. Uh, sorry. Too tiny for it."
"Fair." You blink - this is just a solid piece of work from Lana. "Approved. Get it built and ready for Perseus when it's finished repairing." You then think to ask, "What's it called?"
"...uh." Lana's triumphant air soon turns sheepish as she scratches her cheek, chuckling in embarrassment. "I hadn't thought that far?"
"...think one up later."
New Weapon Developed! What is it called?
Base AI Development
Your last round is to Ignatov…and you are already feeling a future headache form.
"You chose who?" you demand. The new Super AI, another counterpart to Katarina specifically, is compiling and already in the works. Truth be told, you had already earmarked this project for completion, but you've had a crazy year so some things fell to the wayside.
"I was short on candidates that had time available," Ignatov says with a shrug. "Thankfully, Dr. McCullough was available."
You distinctly recall how the Faedium researcher does not seem to stop for breath when speaking. Or how her brain seems to jump from one subject to another with speed, with ideas that were no less formed than any other. "...and…how's it coming along?" you ask.
"Mostly fine?" Ignatov shrugs. "She will likely not be quite as active as Adrianna is-" You thank what few lucky stars remain with you, "-but she might be somewhat hyperfocused. It is too soon to tell."
You simply nod, and leave it at that. You're going to admit that you're a bit afraid to ask about specifics - you might not like the answers you're going to get.
New Base AI almost online.
ONE TURN REMAINING.
QM Note: Not a bad turn for you all! I will flesh out what you have created in the information tab later when I get some time. For now, be sure to come up with names for some of the new goodies you've unlocked. Hope you enjoyed, and sorry for the wait! I will try to get the Science! rolls out this week.
