Lan-daki: Siiiiiiiiiis! <(o.o<)
Lan-daki: I totes need your help!
Lan-daki: Plz! orz
Galatea: Shopping help or shooting help?
Lan-daki: Shooting
Lan-daki: there's a totes cute item I need
Lan-daki: but all my friends are busy t_t
Lan-daki: I got someone to help
Lan-daki: but I need a +1!
Galatea: As good a chance as any to give the ZW-Messer a test drive.
Galatea: OMW.
Lan-Daki: YEY!
Entering the hangar through the door,
Galatea was greeted by a room easily four times the usual size and abuzz with activity. Players clustered in little groups at the feet of their suits, a dozen berths stretching out at either side of her. Surprisingly enough, today it wasn't another serving of generic anime slop blobs. From the
trio of Mad Max JJBA rejects from the globulin galaxy being loud in every sense of the word to an
MHA extra to
three escapees from Journey to the West, everything was looking pretty colourful! Even so, Lan-Daki wasn't exactly hard to miss. Squirrelled away at the very end of the hall next to the last empty berth or not, the fretting swirl of gold and hot pink stood out like a sore thumb.
Which of course meant that, by ancient Warframe tradition, Galatea was duty-bound to bullet jump all the way over to her. Didn't even take dipping into Warp Speed to make it in a single leap, either! All that sparring with Cheese was paying off.
Had he been here, he almost certainly would have shouted at her for being a show-off, just like a fair few were doing right now. That or those were shouts of surprise and confusion, but the wind in her ears made them hard to parse. People were definitely ducking down by pure reflex to try and avoid her though– even if she all but flew at waist height of their mobile suits. Come on now, she may have a fat shark tail right now, but it'd take someone built like a Scopedog to get smacked by it.
Hitting the floor next to Lan-Daki with a perfect Tenno landing broke the japanese girl out of her funk, "Wah!?" aaaaand made her jump almost as high as her in surprise.
"Didn't take you for a Takodachi." The leggy bottle of fish sauce chuckled, idly bringing a pair of fingers up to her ear. A little fuschia mandala over it that was entirely for show and she had a line to her stewardess, "Guernica, send down the Zwei Messier to my coords, please and thank you."
'
Very well,' A soft, painstakingly polite voice spoke in her ears,
'Please standby for Teleportarium activation, O' Champion Mine.' With a flurry of blue blocks, Galatea's new MS manifested inside of the gantry. It was a
Messer, if with a fair share of modding.
For one, the paintjob was completely different. What had been brown-pink on the original frame was now a deep abyssal black, and the reds were changed to a striking imperial purple. The only exception was the T-shaped chestplate, staying black like the rest for the sake of its decal. A stark white skeleton, missing everything below its rib cage other than a few trailing vertebrae, covered most of it. Its open maw made it look as if it was either laughing or ready to take a bite out of his foes, the head overlaid with the panel on the upper part of the chest. The ribs framed the cockpit assembly while the arms, crossed over its chest, ended with the suit's air intakes, giving the impression of massive, skeletal hands. Coiling around either arm were purple decals of a snake and a centipede, their heads ending on the armour panel on the back of their respective hand. Finishing the look– and somewhat at odds with the rest of the pirate-ish inspiration, a crown of finely modelled fuchsia
flowers rested on the MS's head.
She'd had half a mind to make a bass relief of the whole thing, but this suit was ultimately just a fieldtest for some of the Sarcophagus' loadout. Still, she'd be damned if it wouldn't look pretty on her shelf once it got mothballed in a month or so.
Gone was the beam rifle, replaced by two crystal blades made of what
looked to be amethyst which protruded from just under the wrists. Integrating them had been a
pain to get right, thankfully Cheese had walked her through it. The man might be a smug fuck when it came to making custom gunplas, but he'd managed to help her fit an entire Gouf whip and then some in each of the arms. It would let those blades lash out like the animals decorating her arms before returning, nevermind how she could also 'lock' the whip in place to form daggers… or a tripwire as he'd pointed out when she was done. She was a bit dubious on that one, but they'd see.
Meanwhile, as her only ranged option aside from some head vulcans, four large funnels hung in the small of the MS's back. The very same that she'd earned against the boss that she'd fought with Lan-Daki's friends, "First– Ina is suuuuper cute, second. New suit?" Said gyaru asked Galatea with little stars in her eyes, "Your outfit's perfect for it!"
"Yup. It was supposed to just be a testbed for this big kitbash I'm working towards, but. Well. You know me." The shark chuckled, rubbing the back of her head sheepishly. "I figure I may as well give it a damn good time since it won't be around for a long time."
"Oh yaaa, I think you mentioned it before. Well, my Prydwen's still the same" The gyaru gestured to her own MS. Sure enough, it looked to be almost the same as before– except that upon closer inspection, the golden filigree seemed to be actual gold, rather than the gold paint than it was the last time that Galatea had seen it, "I just gave it a little tune up."
"Looking good." The chimaera said with an appreciative hum, a hard nail ringing the chin of her golden mask, "I need to give the Fishbone a tuneup of its own at some point, to be honest. The paint is off in some spots and so are the sculpts, first kit ever and all. But that's for after I'm done with all my other projects."
"Aw, but I like how it looks now," She said with a pout, "But you do you sis! So… do you know anything about this event? I did kinda just spring it on you."
"Not a clue." Galatea chuckled, shaking her head. "I've been pretty out of the loop with GBNO proper, what with the Warhammer rabbit hole devouring my soul."
"Okay, soooo it's an extermination competition," Pulling out a flyer from an inventory screen, Lan handed it over to her friend, "There's, like, a ton of NPCs and mobs in a suuuuuper big map. And we got to murder them all!" Humming, she tapped her chin with one of her perfectly manicured fingers, "The bigger and badder, the more points you get… what else? Oh ya, it's all done in teams of three, the team share the point pool, and PvP's enabled. If you get destroyed, you're put in time-out for a while and the guy that killed you gets 'bout 10% of your team's points, if you get killed when you don't have any points, you can't respawn until someone on your team earns a point."
"I assume every team starts far away from the others, so nobody can just alpha strike some competition right out of the event." The fuckable glob of worcester nodded as she squirrelled away the info. A quick glance at the flyer told her that the event had no lore or even a vague premise, it was just something fun to do. Disappointing, but not surprising.
"Yep~! The spawns are seeeeeecret~. And there's some defences to avoid spawn camping too?" Pulling out another flyer, Lan-Daki looked through it, "Riiiight, if you get killed too close to your spawn, you give way less points. Barely 3%, so it's not super worth I don't think?"
"Ya, only good for spite plays and I doubt anyone would go that far." This may not be the Warframe community, but it was pretty alright all things said. Raging assholes like that were few and far in between. "Anyways, what're you trying to add to your wardrobe?"
There were a
lot of accessories as rewards. Some guns and sensors too, sure, but four in five of the rewards were cosmetics.
"Iiiiii… want
this~!" Paging through the trophies, the gyaru slapped her finger down on… the participation reward. A tiny little SD gundam keychain that you could print out in a shop, "It's missing from my collection… Oh and also if you get 10th and above, you get outfit commission tickets. Which is like, totes cool and all. I mean, you can have one of the coolest designers make you an outfit. But also, I don't know what I'd ask for?"
"Oh, neat. I've been having some trouble making this one dress come to life for that viewing party I mentioned, so this could help." Galatea mused, suddenly a whole lot more interested in the event. Sure, she had zero doubt she could get the damn thing hammered out with her own two hands in time for the party, but she would gladly take that ticket.
"Nice! That makes one of us three that wanna win," Lan-daki chuckled, "And I don't feel as bad dragging you into the event too. So it's win-win~."
"Who else'd you drag into this, anyways?" The chimaera asked with an exaggerated tilt of her head. Had to project your body language when you wore a mask.
"Oh uh, a guy named Hiroto. He's a weird gunpla mercenary," Lifting a hand, the Landschenk started to look around, "He's kinda known, but he doesn't care about rewards for some reason. He just wants to visit places on GBNO that he's never been to before."
"Valid." The purplette nodded, even as a roll of her wrist silently asked where the man was. The way Lan-Daki was looking around wasn't exactly encouraging.
"Oh! There he is," Lowering her arm, the other girl pointed to… one of the most
painfully generic avatars that Galatea had ever seen, "By your gunpla!"
Sure enough, El Generico was standing at the feet of her mech, staring up at it.
"Penny for your thoughts?" The tall bottle of fish sauce asked as she sidled up to the man, all too happy to have someone to prod for feedback.
"Hm?" Turning towards her, the boy looked at her like a piece of sunken flotsam would look at the fishes swimming around it: Blankly and seemingly without a single brain cell. Which was more than a bit disconcerting after spending months as a literal work of art.
Everyone stared at least a little, even if they were more ace than Monarch, "Not really," He told her, turning back to the Messer, "...the flowers. They are rhododendrons, aren't they?"
"Yup. Good eye." She praised with a smile, satisfied that at least one of her works was being paid attention to. "I kinda tripped over them the second I started doing a bit of symbolism research and they just slotted in perfectly."
"Oh. They have a meaning?" It was worded as a question, but Galatea got the feeling that it wasn't one. Pulling his gaze away from the mech, he turned to her properly, "I just knew the name because a friend told it to me. I'm Hiroto. Your suit is a close range harasser with limited range capacity isn't it? Use the funnels to pressure the opponent, then use the openings to get a hit in with the whips?"
Well, expecting him to be invested in flower language was probably a bit too much. So onto business talk! "Pretty much, with a side of locking someone in a duel. Testbed for a much bigger build I've been theorycrafting with a friend, gotta make sure it's actually viable and fun to play before I commit to a mega-kitbash."
"Hm," Hiroto nodded, "A good gunpla, but it could be better. Your underlying design idea seems solid, but the execution's lacking. Your friend is a more experienced builder that pushed you to make something that's not quite at your level yet, I think. I can see conflicting building styles in how the whips were set up– the same person did the whole kit, but the way they are mounted looks a bit
off, like someone following instructions without really understanding why. You'll need to be careful about that, the game will read it as the whips being a weakpoint. Someone might be able to cut them off, or tear them out with enough strength."
"Yeahhh, I've been practising with in-game kits here and there, but most of my work this past month has been on minis and sparring." Galatea admitted freely with a sheepish chuckle, giving a one-arm shrug, "Thanks for the head's up, though. Definitely going to spend a few weeks just building and pulling apart kits ingame until I know exactly what I'm doing every step of the way when I kitbash the big boy."
"That makes sense… There's just…" He frowned as he looked back at the Messer, "It feels there's something else to it. I don't understand the psychoframe daggers. I'd call it an aesthetic choice. But the rest points to it not being one."
"Uh…" Lan-Daki interrupted the discussion by blinking owlishly at him, "That is the most I heard you talk since I asked you for your help. That's pretty prim'! I can't tell any of that by looking at her gunpla! 'Cept that it looks totes adorbs~."
"Hah! You're spot on!" That was all the cue Galatea needed to grasp the fabric of space with her hand, a practised flick of her fingers ripping a burning fuschia line through it. Reality split into slats, sliding open like the maw of a great beast, sweet fog and strobing lights shielding all onlookers from the sights within.
From it, six forms were disgorged… "Hooo EM GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" If the witch's little show wasn't enough to draw attention, the gyaru's weapons-grade squeals of joy certainly got everyone's attention. "You have a horsey!" "Neeeeigh?" "And a bleeper!" "Mlem."
Flitting around the daemons, Lan-Daki couldn't contain her excitement and started petting them all, "Oh man, that's such a cute feathered snek too~!" "Sssssss~." "Aw, and goats too!?"
"Blaaaaaaaah." ".haaaaaaalB" "I don't think goats bleat like this…" Hiroto mumbled as he narrowed his eyes at Phyr, who stared back with the same mindless intensity as he did. Both of them engaged in wood-to-wood combat, determined to see which one would win…
"Who cares~? Look at all the cute little animals!" She told him, burying her face in the incredibly fluffy feathered collar of the smug-looking J'pai. At least until she noticed something moving along Galatea's shoulder, "Oh wait what's this on-" "
tchzickickcick" "..."
"You're oddly clingy today, M'll." Galatea commented mildly as she affectionately stroked the gigantic centipede skittering across her body, chuckling at the way her friend had turned paler than a ghost. She could almost see her soul coming out of her mouth.
"That's a giant centipede." Hiroto stated, losing his duel with Phyr by shifting his attention away from the goat. A statement quickly followed by him slooooooowly backpedalling away from Galatea's menagerie, "Why do you have a–"
"Nnnnnntada!" The last member of the little circus shouted, interrupting him in the process. The witch's muse finally coalescing under her hat– and immediately pushing it up above their heads with a shout, "I'm here too!"
"Meet Ariel and the Eleutherian Roustabouts." The pirate chuckled as she scooped up her familiar, not wasting any brainpower pondering why they'd all decided to take animal form today.
Daemons.
"Hi?" The boy hazarded, not sure of what he was looking at.
In the awkward silence that began to form immediately after his greeting, "Oi!" Came a shout followed by snickering, their source lost in the crowd, "This is GBNO! Not a petting zoo!"
"Obviously, otherwise they wouldn't have allowed an orangutan like you here." Galatea's voice, subtly boosted with sorcery, cut right through the crowd's noise.
"OOOOH BURNED!" Another voice shouted in response. Immediately after, a DM pinged her, [DOOMcaste: NTR protag with a crummy Xamel
]
[Galatea: He's lucky I didn't make him chicken dance with Pavane of Slaanesh.] The shark sent back a moment after, simply thinking the DM into being. Turning back to her menagerie like nothing had happened, the Galatea gave them a crooked grin, "Aight, girls, you've had your fun. Battle stations."
Nodding, the various animals clopped, slithered, crawled and padded towards the Zwei Messer, earning a raised eyebrow from Hiroto. As they approached it, their bodies began to shine and dissolve into warp particles that quickly flowed into the machine.
Those that formed J'pai and M'll rose towards the crystal blades and settled into the psychoframe weapons, their surface shimmering as if it had been powered up– faint shadows in the shape of their animal forms coursing across it. The other four, Lamu, Gand, Phyr and Al' all formed an arc around the suit, before entering the four funnels.
"That–" Generico frowned as he watched it all happen, "You're using the sub-AIs of virtual pets to control your funnels?" She could see gears spin in his head as he tried to parse the implications, "It'd reduce the strain of controlling them directly. But it's completely overkill… a system meant for more advanced support units in the future? But then why in the whips as well?"
"Oh, they're much more than pets." The shark chuckled cryptically behind her mask. If the girls wanted to keep people guessing, who was she to ruin their fun? "As for the whips… I'd call it an experiment, but it's more of a shot in the dark. We'll see how it goes."
The Avernus crowd didn't touch GBNO much, nevermind trying to blend things like she was doing here, so nobody had any idea what'd happen. Galatea was hoping, though, especially with the psychoframe helping things along.
"Ah." He nodded, as if that explanation made absolute sense to him, "We should prepare for the event," Turning to the still frozen Lan-Daki, he gave the girl a flat look, "Any idea, or…?"
"Ya, don't worry." Galatea huffed, chucking a ballistic daemon at the landsnerkt's midsection.
The impact from the squealing missile earned a big "Oof!" From the gyaru, her arms immediately snapping around the muse and squeezing them, "wu-? Wh-where is it!?"
"M'llpa't is on the left blade." The shark reassured, fidgeting slightly in place, "Sorry about the scare."
"Right– Right," The girl relaxed slightly, but didn't let go of the squishy Ariel as she sighed in relief, "I– sorry. Ph-phobia. Used to run around the neighbourhood's park and pick up mukades as a kid– it was funny to scare people with them… Then I got bit by three of them."
"Ouch." Galatea winced behind her mask. Japanese bugs didn't mess around with their toxins. Maybe introducing her to M'll's real form would help? Something for later, though, "Well, let's bury that under some business talk. What's the plan, o glorious leader?"
"Uuuuh… Get out there and wiiiiin?" It appeared that she had absolutely no plans.
"My Mobile Suit is a generalist," Thankfully Hiroto seemed to have one, "I can support from range while you engage in melee."
"Oh, yeah that works!" The gyaru tried to nod, only to prickle herself on Ariel's new horns, "–ow! What?"
Tapping on his system screen, Hiroto created
a map for all of them to see, "The event will take place on this field,"
"Those are new." "Its an island with multiple biomes."
"Mistress made them for me on stream!" "NPCs are spread all over the area. But they are concentrated in the ruined cities."
"She streams!? Oh man, I gotta find those VODs~!" "The purple marks indicate a special boss NPC that gives out an increased point payout."
"Generalist, tank, melee… probably best to stick to the northern half. We'll work best with a bunch of cover,
especially if the whips work like I intend them to with my girls in 'em." Galatea mused, nodding to herself, "Even if they don't, the daggers and funnels will work just fine in close quarters."
"Hm," The boy nodded, "I have some traps, Aszam leaders, that could be useful as well."
"What're Aszam?" Galatea asked after a few moments of wracking her brains and turning up all of nothing on the topic. At least it reminded her of something that'd come up in the thread, "By the by, either of you mind if I record and upload the event proper on youtube?"
"I don't mind!" "Adzam leaders are flying drones. They deploy electrified wires in a cage pattern. I modified them to serve as mines and cameras." He explained, adding, "And… I suppose I'm fine with it? Plenty of other people will."
As he said this, Hiroto gave a quick nod towards the rest of the crowd. More than a few haros were hovering in front of rather colourful (and not so colourful) players, a blinking red dot on their front indicating they were recording.
"Huh, guess I'll need to make a good showing if there's this many streamers." Galatea mused quietly, before shrugging, "Aight, I assume you were already told what Pryd can do, so nothing else to plan out until we got our boots on the ground. Ariel, you know what to do."
"Yes mistress!" The daemon hopped to it, turning into the same warp stuff as the other girls and flowing into the Zwei Messer's chest.
"Wh– Hey! I was hugging that!" Bereft of her huggable plushie, Lan-Daki was quick to complain.
"Behold the depths of my cruelty~" The pirate laughed as she stepped back into the suddenly lowered hand of the Messer with a bow, allowing it to carry her into the open cockpit.
"Cuuuuuuurse yooooooou!" To which the landsknecht responded by shaking her fist in anger as she entered her own suit.
As for Hiroto, he simply pressed a button and vanished, "She acts as a Haro helper?" A video-feed appeared in her cockpit immediately after.
"Yep! The AIs from minis are really versatile, can't recommend them enough." Galatea said as she settled into her chair. She much preferred the immersive cockpit to the default blank room, it wasn't like having to deal with different control setups and screens mattered when she had decent sync with the MS. "Alright, let's get this bread!"
"Hell yeah! Time to show them why landsknecht were the coolest of mercenaries!" "Your MS's a knight…" "DETAILS!"
AN: Not the biggest chapter. But here it is!
This one and I'd say the next two (depends on if everything can fit in one or not) will be a small break from all the 40k stuff. Hopefully I'll be able to focus enough that there wont be any wuh-ohs for release next week. But who knows!
Current plan involve finishing the current 40k campaign, doing another one that has army stuff, one or two other things, and then moving into Eldora and the re:rise plot proper
