Chara floated up to the booth, hovering a few feet off the ground. Normally they distained crowds, which was why they'd kept their distance until now, but the thought of food was irresistible to the apparition.
"Do you have uncooked noodles?"
They rummaged through their pockets, placing a handful of gold coins on the counter.
"Though, I am not in possession of any human currency, nor am I aware of the proper exchange rate."
Ralph speaks up. "I have. But I do not know what similarities Rwanda from my world has with the one from your world."
@Mew@Romans
"There is a price for such power. By the time Those Others have it, they are constrained in how they may use it, and have been ... changed by the process. Make no mistake, their power is awesome and terrible do behold, but it does not make them wise and it certainly does not make them good."
The Drone stopped dead, the despair and confusion from the conversation back at the warehouse resurfacing.
"I didn't have a choice wether I was happy or not. I had a job, I did the job. I wasn't a soldier, or a bio-weapon, and was just a weapon. A gun. A sword. I got orders, and I carried them out."
The drone was getting angry. Previously, Dezzie didn't know she could get angry, but now a small part of her wished she would stop.
But the fact that Synn had just, without even realizing it, simplified her entire confusion, the question of her existence, of her being into "I hope you were happy as you were" struck a nerve. It was a beautifully simple solution, and horrendously under-complicated.
"I recieved orders, I carried out orders. Did I agree with those orders? It didn't matter. I had no say. If I was ordered to shoot down an evacuating jump-ship full of wounded soldiers then I...Then I..."
The railgun punched a hole straight through the defenseless drop-ships left engine. An enemy pilot, only half way through the fort and struggling to pull a wounded comerade on board, was dislodged and sent plummeting away as the stricken medivac ship listed sharply to one side.
It's engine burst into flame, which quickly found its way into the crew compartment as fuel-lines burst within the ship.
The wounded's last moments were spent in burning agony before the ship detonated.
"Oh my god..I..."
The drone stuttered down to the ground, shocked as several memories surfaced at once.
After hearing S-Dog's apology, Barkhorn looked him square in the eye for more then a handful of seconds, as if determining whether he was sincere, or bullshitting her.
Finally, she spoke.
"Just so long as you don't cause trouble again. As stubborn and infuriating as you are, your sheer hard-nosed conviction is something I wish some of my own allies would share..." her eyes a little off to the side as she said this.
"Just remember where you're supposed to point that conviction, Private. As for 'Gomer Pyle', we have people who can detect when such tampering of the mind has happened. You should be worrying more about your own comrades, Private. As it stands, many of them would rather leave you to die in a battle than carry you to safety."
And with that, F/L Barkhorn let the crazy one in the red armor go.
"Remember, Private! Form up with your Platoon on the barracks' Central Plaza at 1900 Hours! Full, Legion-issued battledress uniform! And make sure you actually wear the uniform this time! Leave your armour in your lockers for now, you won't be impressing anyone with that getup.
You are dismissed."
And with that, she about-faced and marched out of the garage quite by herself, to who-knows-where, leaving S-Dog with only the Titan, the Magical Girl, and the little girl Scientist the only other people around.
As the other PCs and in the group left, glasses!Hartmann moved the discussions from about their respective countries of origin to the current matter Northstar's repair and upgrade. Ever-curious, the normally-reserved Witch-engineer becomes a endless spring of questions when encountering the unknown, as any self-respecting scientists would. She has familiarity with engineering and computing concepts only up until the Cold War, and will attempt to pepper Patricia with questions and find out the underlying principles of technology and concepts more advanced than that.
The time as of then was neither breakfast, lunch, nor dinner. Neither was there any recently-returned force that had just come back from a grueling march or training exercise. Hence, all the booths for the dispensing of food unto one's divided tray for consumption were currently shuttered like a shopping mall in the dead of night.
All booths, that is, except for one. This one bore the name of "Uncle Huan's", and the smell of rice and noodles wafted from the booth's opening all the way to the noses of our PCs. If the PCs were to approach, they would notice a brightly backlit menu board hanging inside, facing the entrance.
Dishes
Fried Bee Hon - $1.30
Udon Noodles - $2
Fried Rice - $2
Pau(Chicken/Beef) - $1.30
Chicken Cutlet - $1
Plain White Rice - $1 Drinks
Milo(Hot/Iced) - $1.30
Bandung - $1.30
Teh(Hot/Iced) - $1
Kopi(Hot/Iced) - $1
Mineral Water - $0.30
As they approached the stall, they would also notice that the cookhouse wasn't completely deserted. Some of the PCs, such as Iowa, might recognise the FEN Thiassi sitting on a bench and table near the lone open booth, alongside another ship of her class, who had snow-white hair.
"Since it's neither breakfast, lunch, or dinner, the Cookhouse's technically closed. Food's technically for free here, but if you want to eat outside of designated meal hours, you gotta pay up." F/O Krupinski informed the PCs, jerking a thumb towards the booth. "But just this once, I'm treating you guys out of my own pockets! In return, why don't you tell me more about yourselves, eh? I wanna know just what kind of people Command has asked me to manage. Names? Hobbies? Reasons for joining? Hopes and dreams? Tidbits about your home worlds? What you did before joining the Legion? Anything is fine!" she said, cheerfully taking a seat on a bench in front of a long table near the open booth, right next to the two Destroyers.
Meanwhile Takumi, not sure what to do now after doing God knows what during this duration of time, walked into the restaurant. Noticing some familiar faces, Takumi walked up to the booth and ordered some plain white rice and hot Teh, pulling out a few gold coins from home, hoping they'll accept his currency.
Ralph speaks up. "I have. But I do not know what similarities Rwanda from my world has with the one from your world."
@Mew@Romans
"There is a price for such power. By the time Those Others have it, they are constrained in how they may use it, and have been ... changed by the process. Make no mistake, their power is awesome and terrible do behold, but it does not make them wise and it certainly does not make them good."
"As for Rwanda, there is no nation or planet called like that where I come from. Still, judging from the way you speak of it and how others react, I have a feeling it probably had to do with something terrible. I've seen some truly depraved sights in my lifetime."
She was contemplative for a while. "Many resent the living weapon species, where I come from. For 'taking away their self-determination', for being 'arrogant'. They are largely frustrated because the weapons fight threats so no others have to, not allowing their more destructive technologies into the hands of the common species. But... I have seen glimpses of what lies beyond the veil. And of how horrifying the misuse of such technologies could be."
She shook her head, looking down. "They mask greed and lust for power under moral indignation. Their resentment is not toward loss of self-determination but being denied weapons with which to commit genocide upon one another."
She was not sure what to say next. She felt like she had to say something else... but then, she got... distracted.
The Drone stopped dead, the despair and confusion from the conversation back at the warehouse resurfacing.
"I didn't have a choice wether I was happy or not. I had a job, I did the job. I wasn't a soldier, or a bio-weapon, and was just a weapon. A gun. A sword. I got orders, and I carried them out."
The drone was getting angry. Previously, Dezzie didn't know she could get angry, but now a small part of her wished she would stop.
But the fact that Synn had just, without even realizing it, simplified her entire confusion, the question of her existence, of her being into "I hope you were happy as you were" struck a nerve. It was a beautifully simple solution, and horrendously under-complicated.
"I recieved orders, I carried out orders. Did I agree with those orders? It didn't matter. I had no say. If I was ordered to shoot down an evacuating jump-ship full of wounded soldiers then I...Then I..."
The railgun punched a hole straight through the defenseless drop-ships left engine. An enemy pilot, only half way through the fort and struggling to pull a wounded comerade on board, was dislodged and sent plummeting away as the stricken medivac ship listed sharply to one side.
It's engine burst into flame, which quickly found its way into the crew compartment as fuel-lines burst within the ship.
The wounded's last moments were spent in burning agony before the ship detonated.
"Oh my god..I..."
The drone stuttered down to the ground, shocked as several memories surfaced at once.
Synn watched the drone's reactions. Its anger, its nervous breakdown. She approached her, not quite touching but standing nearby. "... are you alright?"
She had not intended to cause this. Seeing her like this... it was obvious that the path of this person was not the same at all. To speak of what she did, of having memories of such destruction and having them register like this now...
She was not sure what to say. Should she apologize? Try to comfort the drone? Would it change anything? Had she done anything truly wrong due to her ignorance and not wanting to insult a being due to its nature?
And as the operative reacted... the feline smiled more confidently. Her tone was oddly cold. "As for your guesses, all correct. Never meant to become an adult. Was born a scapegoat. Learnt to live with the freaky desire it creates. And yeah, while one might talk about the needs of the many, I refuse to believe that being born can be a sin worthy of a fate worse than death. Never. As for whoever did this to me? Well, there's a reason I use the past tense."
Chloe pulled herself away from the little pervert and looked towards Rachel, then headed up to Uncle Huan's, pulled out a ten-credit note and laid it on the counter. "I'll take a couple of Cokes - or Mountain Dews, if you've got Throwbacks." she said, and accepted the offered glass bottles of Coke. She brought them over to the table and handed them off to Rachel.
362 took the bottle from the other McKenzie and to a long swig from it. Then she took another lollipop from the pack in her pocket, and popped it into her mouth.
"As for Rwanda, there is no nation or planet called like that where I come from. Still, judging from the way you speak of it and how others react, I have a feeling it probably had to do with something terrible. I've seen some truly depraved sights in my lifetime."
362 grunted in response, and took another swig of Coke.
"Okay, so... Rwanda. Rwanda's this country in the African continent that used to be a colony of another country, called Belgium. Now, long before the Belgians had come in, there used to be two people living in Rwanda; the Tutsis and the Hutus. And they hated each other."
She took another swig, and continued, "The Belgians exploited this, and empowered the Tutsi minority to rule over the Hutus. Which they did... and rather brutally at that. But, eventually, Belguim lost the colony, and Rwanda became independent. Without the Belgians, the Tutsi lost power through popular vote, and then it was their turn to be ground under the oppression wheel."
"So," 362 continued, "Racial tensions were high. Violence against Tutsi was rising, and the government was allowing it to happen, when they weren't encouraging it. This, in turn, led to a bit of a civil war, which lasted a while before a ceasefire was agreed upon, which made way for an accord that the Hutus in power didn't want. The KND had a Sector and a Regiment in the country, but the Regiment had been gutted by the war, which meant that the Sector Leader, Numbuh 2201, was pretty much on his own."
"So imagine his reaction when he got wind that the Rwandan government is distributing vast amounts of weapons across the country."
"Now, when I say weapons, I don't mean bombs. Or gas, or even guns. I'm talking about machetes." She paused. "Just in case there's someone here who doesn't know what that is, a machete is a blade about this long," she said, holding her hands apart by two feet or so, "with a single edge. Heavy at the tip, and made from steel. Used for clearing vegetation, and general chopping stuff. Remember that later."
"Now... The year was 1994. I was part of Sector S at the time, and we'd just finished up a round of missions in Sarajevo." The Operative frowned. "Which... Had been pretty nasty, now that I think about it. But anyways, the call came in. Sector RW wanted some support for sabotaging the Rwandan Government's stockpiles, and we needed to wind down after the mess in Sarajevo, so we went in."
"And yes, I recognise the irony," she deadpanned.
362 fell silent for a minute, as she drank the rest of the Coke in one go. She was a bit pink from that, and then her drink order arrived.
"We were rendezvousing with Sector RW when it happened," she said, resuming her tale, "A plane was shot down by two missiles, fired from the ground. Inside that plane was the Rwandan president. The day after that, extremists within the Rwandan government killed any Tutsi or moderate Hutus in the government. And then the slaughter began. The genocide."
362 rubbed her face. She looked... Tired. Tired and much older. "I... I saw things. I saw streets covered in corpses... People killing their neighbours... Classrooms piled ceiling-high with the bodies of their students..."
She swallowed.
"And the people... They didn't die painlessly. Or quickly. They were killed with machetes and clubs; beaten and hacked to death by mobs. Mobs that had been perfectly normal people not a week before. Some were still alive when I found them..."
The Operative's breathing went a little funny then, but then she seemed to gather herself. This turned out to be a not-so-good-thing.
"And... If I'm honest... The genocidaires that ran into me didn't tend to end up much better than that. In fact... If I'm perfectly honest... They tended to end up worse."
There was something very, very dark about 362 when she said that. Something about how empty her eyes were and the ice in her voice that sounded wrong coming out of a ten-year-old, child soldier or not.
"The whole thing ended a hundred days later, when the rebels took over the country with the help of what was left of Sector RW and the local Regiment, The KND Intervention forces, and Sector S. By that time, something between 750000 and 900000 people died."
And then, the Ice was gone, and 362 was back to being... Well, as close to "normal" as she seemed to be capable of being.
"But... It could've been worse. I know, because us being there kept it from being worse. Thousands- no, hundreds of thousands lived because we were there to save them. To evacuate them, to take them to hospitals, to keep the safe zone safe and to hit and keep hitting the Rwandan Government where it hurt. While the adults of the United Nations did everything in their power to do nothing, the kids of the KND drew a line in the sand and shot dead every death squad and every machete-swinging lunatic that dared cross it!"
362 has been steadily raising her voice throughout that final speech and, a bit embarrassed, took a moment to calm herself down.
"I... I saw things and did things in Rwanda that will haunt me to my decomissioning day. I know that, and I've accepted it. But, if I had to... I believe that I would do that again."
"We were rendezvousing with Sector RW when it happened," she said, resuming her tale, "A plane was shot down by two missiles, fired from the ground. Inside that plane was the Rwandan president. The day after that, extremists within the Rwandan government killed any Tutsi or moderate Hutus in the government. And then the slaughter began. The genocide."
362 rubbed her face. She looked... Tired. Tired and much older. "I... I saw things. I saw streets covered in corpses... People killing their neighbours... Classrooms piled ceiling-high with the bodies of their students..."
She swallowed.
"And the people... They didn't die painlessly. Or quickly. They were killed with machetes and clubs; beaten and hacked to death by mobs. Mobs that had been perfectly normal people not a week before. Some were still alive when I found them..."
"And the people... They didn't die painlessly. Or quickly. They were killed with machetes and clubs; beaten and hacked to death by mobs. Mobs that had been perfectly normal people not a week before. Some were still alive when I found them..."
The Operative's breathing went a little funny then, but then she seemed to gather herself. This turned out to be a not-so-good-thing.
"And... If I'm honest... The genocidaires that ran into me didn't tend to end up much better than that. In fact... If I'm perfectly honest... They tended to end up worse."
There was something very, very dark about 362 when she said that. Something about how empty her eyes were and the ice in her voice that sounded wrong coming out of a ten-year-old, child soldier or not.
"The whole thing ended a hundred days later, when the rebels took over the country with the help of what was left of Sector RW and the local Regiment, The KND Intervention forces, and Sector S. By that time, something between 750000 and 900000 people died."
"Apologize to Chloe. Please. And don't do it again, or I won't be so forgiving."
Then he turned to the rest.
"Any Champion of the Gods of Light is seeing the best and the worst of people. We're seeing people who would give the clothes off their back to help a man in need, and we see the aftermath of Demon Breath's... worship."
He grimaced. "They use flaying knives, you see. And any High Priest of Sharnā is one as knows how to keep a man alive for hours and hours, in horrible pain. For their 'high holy days', one of those vile churches might sacrifice as many as ten people, and the worshippers join in the worst of debauchery. Rape. Cannibalism. All of it. They share in the flesh and blood of their sacrifices, and the climax of the 'ceremony' is where Demon Breath himself shows up to consume the very soul of the sacrifice. It's also how they summon demons, and bind them to their will, which is how I came to be in Himself's service. I irritated one of Demon Breath's worshipers, who happened to be a prince of a city that Sharnā was trying to get his claws into. See, I ran across him while he was busy raping a servant girl under his family's "protection", and beat him within an inch of his life for it. Unfortunately, he recovered, and ran to the priest of Sharnā whose 'temple' he worshipped at. They hatched a plan to kill me, starting with dog brothers, ah, the Assassain's guild, and worked their way up to a cursed sword empowered by a sacrificed virgin. I'm not knowing why Sharnā likes virgin souls so much, but there you're having it. There was a demon along the way, and I'd already recieved an offer from Tomanāk. And when I saw the demon, I knew I couldn't know things like that existed and not fight them. So I swore Sword Oath right there, and killed my first demon."
He sighed. "But as bad as all I've seen is, Wencit's after having seen the worst. You see, he's one of those wild wizards I mentioned, and he's old enough to remember the Fall of Kontovar. He's old enough to remember that once, my people, the hradani, were known as the most calm, peaceful people among the four Races of Man. I won't be getting into the details right now, but the Wizard Wars cursed my people with the Rage. You see, the Carnadosans saw our physical size and strength, and determined that we would make ideal shock troops. So they built great and terrible spells, and reached down into our very genetics, and twisted. They strengthened our link to the energy field, made us even larger and stronger, and cursed us with the Rage. And, in the bargain, they enslaved every one of us to their will. Made us beasts that remembered being more than beasts."
As he spoke, his ears drooped, and his voice was flat with ancient horror.
"In those dark, dark days after the Fall, my people wound up on the shores of Norfressa, another pathetic group of refugees, hated by all except Wencit, because he alone knew that we hadn't served the Dark Gods willingly, and though he tried mightily, couldn't convince anyone. So we wound up at the foot of the Wind Plain, in the lands no one else wanted. There, we fell back to barbarism for a time, and we've spent the last thousand years clawing our way out of it. Only a century ago, my Da finally managed to unite Horse Stealers and Bloody Swords. But you see, for a thousand years, our women were the only stability we had, because unlike us men, they don't bear the curse of the Rage. So they are our judges and our ambassadors."
He snorted. "Still, I suppose one good thing came from it. The Rage we have these days isn't the same Rage the Carnadosans cursed us with all those years ago. The old Rage is still around, and pity the man who loses control of it, but these days, if a hradani is summoning the Rage as his servant, it makes him faster, and grants him a clarity of purpose. It also tears any magic that comes near him to shreds, because the Carnadosans meant for us to be a weapon against the white wizards of the Council of Ottovar."
"Any road, that's the short and ugly version of it. If you like, I can ask Brandark or the librarian at the College of Semkirk in Belhadan to send some of the histories, if you want to know the details."
"Oh, I am DEFINITELY telling those interested all about that!" she said, winking at the operative. To be fair, she thinks this will help with morale. Many here came from worlds with incredibly difficult and nasty to defeat entities, sometimes to the point of looking omnipotent. The knowledge that divine-level beings are just as much a part of the eternal cycle as everything else might help with that. After all, even stars die.
...
Well, she WAS going to continue among those lines when the operative suddenly poured out her experiences, followed by Bahzell. She was silent for a while, losing her smile, arms crossed. Her tail was swaying slowly as she thought. Then, after a while, she uncrossed her arms.
"The Universe is filled with many things. Just as there are dreams, there are nightmares. I will not brag. I won't go into a contest of 'who has seen the most horrible fates' because frankly, it shouldn't be. Suffering isn't, and shouldn't be, a contest. So I won't bore you with that."
A slight pause. "So instead... I'll say that no matter who they are, no matter what they might do, may they be the most supernatural or the most shockingly mundane, they aren't the end. They aren't the middle. Life is not about suffering. The darker nature of beings is not their whole being. No matter what inane speeches insane monsters may give, they are not the norm."
Meanwhile Takumi, not sure what to do now after doing God knows what during this duration of time, walked into the restaurant. Noticing some familiar faces, Takumi walked up to the booth and ordered some plain white rice and hot Teh, pulling out a few gold coins from home, hoping they'll accept his currency.
The Drone, recovering and slowly rising back off the floor, spotted the new arrival.
"Ah, hello. I am happy to see you unharmed. But, if you don't mind me asking, where were you during the fight?" The drone shuddered, somewhat flustered. "I-I'm not calling you a coward or anything, I'm just...just curious."
"I'm fine." The drone said flatly. "Now if we're all quite finished reliving terrible moments from our pasts, I'd like to get on with watching everyone else eat."
The Drone, recovering and slowly rising back off the floor, spotted the new arrival.
"Ah, hello. I am happy to see you unharmed. But, if you don't mind me asking, where were you during the fight?" The drone shuddered, somewhat flustered. "I-I'm not calling you a coward or anything, I'm just...just curious."
Takumi raised an eyebrow while he drank his Teh, "Fight?" he asked, "there was a fight? I had no idea. When are where did this fight occur at...Northstar was it? Do you remember?"
Takumi raised an eyebrow while he drank his Teh, "Fight?" he asked, "there was a fight? I had no idea. When are where did this fight occur at...Northstar was it? Do you remember?"
The drone nods slowly.
"Yes, just an hour or so really, at the presentation hall. Are telling me you missed it? There was guns and explosions and everything!" She paused. "Were you sleeping?"
The drone nods slowly.
"Yes, just an hour or so really, at the presentation hall. Are telling me you missed it? There was guns and explosions and everything!" She paused. "Were you sleeping?"
Takumi raised an eyebrow while he drank his Teh, "Fight?" he asked, "there was a fight? I had no idea. When are where did this fight occur at...Northstar was it? Do you remember?"
The drone nods slowly.
"Yes, just an hour or so really, at the presentation hall. Are telling me you missed it? There was guns and explosions and everything!" She paused. "Were you sleeping?"
Tukson put down his book (which he had pulled out of seemingly nowhere during previous conversation) and decided to throw in his observations. "You're the guy with the bow, Takumi, right? If so, then you were most definitely there. Don't know how you forgot it, but you were there."
Tukson put down his book (which he had pulled out of seemingly nowhere during previous conversation) and decided to throw in his observations. "You're the guy with the bow, Takumi, right? If so, then you were most definitely there. Don't know how you forgot it, but you were there."
Takumi looked away from the two, appearing to be deep in thought. "That's...concerning to say the least. I've never had this problem before but..." he then sighed, "I don't know, I probably should just be glad that I only forgot that and not my entire identity. I'll get it checked out later."
"Oh, I am DEFINITELY telling those interested all about that!" she said, winking at the operative. To be fair, she thinks this will help with morale. Many here came from worlds with incredibly difficult and nasty to defeat entities, sometimes to the point of looking omnipotent. The knowledge that divine-level beings are just as much a part of the eternal cycle as everything else might help with that. After all, even stars die.
...
Well, she WAS going to continue among those lines when the operative suddenly poured out her experiences, followed by Bahzell. She was silent for a while, losing her smile, arms crossed. Her tail was swaying slowly as she thought. Then, after a while, she uncrossed her arms.
"The Universe is filled with many things. Just as there are dreams, there are nightmares. I will not brag. I won't go into a contest of 'who has seen the most horrible fates' because frankly, it shouldn't be. Suffering isn't, and shouldn't be, a contest. So I won't bore you with that."
A slight pause. "So instead... I'll say that no matter who they are, no matter what they might do, may they be the most supernatural or the most shockingly mundane, they aren't the end. They aren't the middle. Life is not about suffering. The darker nature of beings is not their whole being. No matter what inane speeches insane monsters may give, they are not the norm."
Phonos listened in horror as both 362 and Bazhell shared the worst aspects of their worlds. 362--a KND operative and a ten-year-old--was involved in ending the Rwandan Genocide?! Jesus Christ, what was next? Was she fighting al-Qaeda too?! Shaking those thoughts away, he chimed in, taking a seat at a nearby chair (the mess hall was full of them) and looking at Synn, Rachel and Bazhell.
"I would have continued this conversation by sharing one of the worst missions I've ever participated in, but Synn's right, we can't keep harping on the awful past. That's behind us now. Still, I would appreciate if I could find out how you killed that god." He said the last part looking at Synn before he noticed the can Igor had thrown to Bazhell.
@Omnimessiah
Then he turned to Igor, saying, "Dude, there's a Chinese food stand right there and Krupinski's paying, why are you tossing canned food at people when there's already food being ordered as we speak? For that matter, we're not in the Zone, we're on a military base with entire storehouses full of food. It's kind of a waste of potential rations to eat the food you brought with you."
Then he turned back on Synn, saying, "So, how exactly did you commit deicide?"
Okay, I'd like to ask you to follow a few guidelines when making your debut post:
-Please set the beginning of your post in your PC's setting, either expanding on how he/she ended up signing for the Legion, or just narrating their thoughts just before they plunge into the unknown
-ABOUT THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS: You can have your character come across the ad in a variety of ways: TV ads, posters, popups, word-of-mouth, etc. The only constants is that they'll end up in the actual recruitment offices hidden cleverly in the setting, asked to sign a modern-looking paper contract, and then given an address to go to a few days later(with bags packed), in a certain secluded address next to a road. Improvise and add as little or as much as you want within this framework.
-The characters board the same bus, in order of first post
At the end of whatever misadventure our prospective recruits went through to first sign-up for the Legion (which our talented Players might describe in the next few posts), the Recruits were then directed to some out-of-the-way location in their world, whether it be a narrow alleyway, a forgotten path through the wilderness, the ground floor of an abandoned apartment block, or a bus stop in the middle of nowhere, or some other location. Wherever that is, the Recruits would see an old Army Truck (with it's canvas cover rolled up) come rumbling down beside them. The driver, a young blonde lady wearing army fatigues and a cowboy hat, would wordlessly beckon the Player Character abroad with a megawatt smile and an open palm pointing towards the back portion of the truck.
This would be repeated for every Player Character she picks up. As for the crossing of dimensions, it would be almost unnoticeable. The scenery changed slowly enough that the fact they had traveled dimensions would seem a shock, just like a baby that changes into a man so slowly you just accept it, and yet quick enough that there was no more than 30 minutes between the arrival of each PC on the bus.
"The major difference here is that you're expecting to see servomotors, or hydraulics and pneumatics, but what you are actually seeing is synthmuscle. Specificially, this is an Ionic Electroactive Polymer, so when the carbon nanotubes are charged with positive Ions, they can be made to expand or rotate, which is what lets Northstar's chassis stay so compact. What that means is that we'll need some very high-accuracy manufacturing. I might be able to set up a water-assisted CVD fabricator for carbon nanotube forests, but then we'll need to interbraid them and match the pattern her existing artificial muscles have, and we have to leave pockets for the ion emitters and leads."
Stepping over to a discarded chunk of armor, she rapped on it. "This, though, just looks like a fairly simple Chobham-style semiceramic composite armor. We can improve on this, not least by using some of that carbon-fiber, and we can slap on applique ERA plates easy enough... oh, ERA being explosive-reactive armor. As the projectile hits an explosive sandwitched between two armor plates goes off, both neutralizing the speed of traditional armor-piercing rounds and placing new material and dead space in the way of HEAT rounds. Should be easy to retrofit all your vehicles with ERA if you haven't already. Other than that, it doesn't look like anything too unusual."
Ursula faithfully wrote down every letter of Patricia's explanation. "Very fascinating. The engineers we have here have already found or are developing polymers that respond to electrical stimuli. However, to apply it to the extent that it can be used to move a machine several times the height of a man..."
*scribble* *scribble* *scribble*
"I would also need more information on this Explosive Reactive Armour. How do you ensure that it does not damage the more conventional armour underneath it when it detonates? Or is it just an inevitable consequence of using this type of protection?"
"Yeah. Too bad most of that's sci-fi for me," 362 noted.
362 narrowed her eyes at Synn and sneered in an exagerrated display of superiority.
"Lightweight."
362 chuckled. "Yeah, the day I'm reduced to some sorta bureaucrat is the day I quit drinking soda," she quipped.
In a distant point in time and space, Supreme Leader Numbuh 362 sneezed, and grumbled as she went back to poring over the KND budget.
362 blinked at the crystal embeded in Synn's forhead. She looked at it for a good long while, noting that it seemed to be insert into her skin rather than stuck to it, and then formulated a statement.
"...That looks really uncomfortable," she said flatly.
"Maybe... But at least it's legal for you to buy Coca-Cola where you're from, right?" 362 asked, with not a small amount of bite to her voice.
She followed the rest of her interdimensional comrades into the mess hall. The smells from "Uncle Huan's" hit the Operative's nose, and she was reminded that she hadn't eaten all day except for a light breakfast in Moonbase. There had been a few places to buy food from in Omsk but... well, it was Omsk.
She was not eating there again.
362 lit up a bit when Krupinski offered to foot the bill (she did have some money, but wasn't sure if it would work here), and she started to pick out what she wanted to eat from the menu, hopping onto a seat near the two destroyers.
"Well, my name's Rachel T. McKenzie, but I prefer to be called 362, and I'm ex-KND Sector S... Special Forces, more or less," she introduced herself, deciding on a Chicken Pau and a tall glass of Bandung, "Think... SFOD-D or SAD/SOG."
A moment later, she realized that few people were likely to know what thos acronyms meant.
"Uh... Black Ops. Or Commandoes, basically."
Before she could say anything else, someone dropped from the ceiling.
362 didn't startle when she heard someone drop in in the most literal sense of the phrase. Her movements were smooth, fluid and quick as she turned to face the newcomer and seemed to screech to a halt. Anyone paying enough attention would've ween the way she tensed, going from relaxed and normal into something that was neither of those things faster than some people could blink. And anyone paying a little more attention than that would've seen the way her hands twitched as if reaching for the rifle on her back.
But, just as quickly, the stone-hearted soldier was gone, and the kid was back.
362 looked unsure as to how to respond to this situation for a moment... and then she giggled, before guffawing at Steven's predicament, followed by laughing when the smaller Witch joined in.
"Hey, what's so funny?" Lucchini said, indignant, as she pulled her head out to look at the offending giggler. "I'll have you know that breasties are serious business, you know!" she continued, waving a tiny pointer in the air.
"Breasts are love. Breasts are life. A nice pair of breasts is better than any pillow you can ask for! Laughing at breasts are like laughing at one's own mother!" she said, putting her hands on her hips. @Dalek Ix
Taking off her mask Eileen gives F/O Krupinski a wide smile, "thank you lass but its very rare when i've been able to buy something. So please allow me to pay, its somewhat a custom in my homeland for the eldest to pay when words are to be shared. And to put it bluntly I am most assuredly the eldest." Eileen say's chuckling a bit, before flipping coin to whoever is serving the food. It appears to be a gold coin of some kind with a strange design on it, the lines if you look long enough seem to move. Weird but nothing dangerous.
"I'll take one of everything food wise, and a couple waters please." She says before turning back toward the F/O, "anyways you probably don't want to hear some old lady talk your ear off. So i'll be sort, my name is Eileen some call me the Crow. The world i'm from is filled with blood, and you don't want to hear more. As for hobbies its honestly getting better at killing things, occasionally sewing. Also I've probably killed several towns worth of people easily, what about you lass??" Eileen says chuckling a bit her eyes shining brightly.
"Miss Crow, as much as I appreciate the sentiment, I doubt if the people here'll accept your currency. I'm pretty sure they only take Temasek Dollars here."
The stall keepers though, who were composed of one young man and one old man, huddled in one corner to discuss something after Eileen had given them her coin. After a few seconds, they returned to the front, with the Old Man shaking his head while the younger man saying "Auntie, only this one time, okay? Only this time this coin can. But next time, use Tem Dollars, can?"
"They're saying that they'll only be accepting your coin this one time, Ms. Eileen. But next time, you'll have to use Temasek Dollars, okay?" Krupinski told her. "There's a money changer-slash-pawn shop in the nearby civilian city that our soldiers frequent. Maybe I should take you guys there sometime. You probably won't even need use up your Leave time, I'll just write it off as 'needed Administrative Tasks', since your pay hasn't come yet, and while there's nothing you need to pay for to survive here, I'd think having a few of the local currency is nice enough to have, no?"
As for her question, she replied:
"If you wanna know my hobbies, it's pretty girls and alcohol. And poetry. If you were asking about killing, than I can't really tell. I've blown ground installations; transport trucks; more aircraft than I can possibly count; a whole lot of tanks, both with treads and with legs; and occasionally infantry if they happened to be nearby and had anti-air capability. It's not a pretty job, I'll be the first to admit it. But I do it all to protect my homeland and homeworld, which you should really visit sometime! Especially Europe. We've got all these great art museums and sculptures and architecture standing around. Those that haven't been destroyed by invaders, that is. I mean, sure, it's a touch lower-tech than the rest of our allies, but I don't think you'll be the type who'll care about that." she said, flasing a winsome smile at the old lady.
The Sheriff continued to sit on his bed, shotgun pointed at the door. Nobody had come through to bother him. Wise choice.
Zero was also sitting inside, but he had appeared out of nowhere and wasn't making much noise. And he spoke in poetry or something, so he was classy enough for the Sheriff. As long as he stayed silent he could stay.
Phonos didn't need food, but seeing as it was better to talk with people eating it than to wander the base alone, he went along without complaint. Also, there were even more young girls here, and even more pantsless ones at that! What the fuck, Fifth World!? Phonos understood that the Legion was desperate for recruits given how badly the war was going for them, and he could imagine that the overwhelming majority of their actually competent people had been killed or declared unfit for service by this point, but the sheer amount of child and teenage soldiers here was...concerning to say the least. And then there was the fact that apparently Erwin Fucking Rommel was a Field Marshall in this army! Again, what the fuck? Different universes had different standards, and it was a bit preposterous to think that the children of all universes suffered the same psychological effects from war as the children of his own world did. And of course, there was the fact that Rommel was a bit of a white sheep among the Nazis and that this was an alternate version of him to boot, so in his universe the Nazis as a whole might not have been as bad as the ones in his own world. He'd have to ask about it later. Seeing as some of these girls had never heard of the Nazis, it was safe to assume that this version of Rommel was a very different man than the history books claimed.
He had been recording since he got on the truck. The people back at OMEGA would hear about this eventually, but he still hadn't seen the Legion in action. He was supposed to evaluate not only if they had hostile intent towards his Earth (which they didn't so far), but if they could pose a threat should they become hostile, which was yet to be seen. He would report back what details he had acquired so far, but the report would be woefully incomplete without an evaluation of the Legion's weaponry, technology, and tactics.
Phonos' screen showed four emoticons: , , , . "I'm sorry that this was done to you. I do hope that whatever disgusting piece of shit made that monstrosity in your forehead at least got their comeuppance for it. But...pardon me asking, but if you've experienced dozens of curses and are a magnet for everything even vaguely evil or bad, then how are you still alive? You were an infant once, right? If that crystal was jammed into your forehead presumably from birth...how did you survive to adulthood?"
"And also, I do have to ask, what ramifications does the karma accumulator's existence carry for our platoons? For that matter what's it doing now, during the argument earlier, and what kind of stuff will it do in the future?"
Synn smiled acidly. "As I said, whoever did this to me got their comeuppance. As for childhood... well, that's the weird part. Ever saw movies about zombies, the undead, ghosts, what not? I spent my early life surrounded, and raised, by the undead. Given living with things like incontrollable hunger, having to continue hating or resenting something to keep existing, and other such things, they helped me learn how to cope with and control my condition."
"As for what it will mean... it means that I can feel every person that has died or more exactly, the regrets and pain they left behind. It's leaking inside me. This is actually a good thing. I can remove curses and appease the resentment of the dead and damned by soaking it up. In fact, if you plunged me into an especially bad karma-soaked place, I might even be capable of channelling it and expelling all that bad karma as magical power. Of course, that's situational but if we ever run into heavy duty supernatural places or people, I can neutralize and pacify it for the platoon."
She then burst into a fit of giggling at his reaction. "Oh please! That's all it took for you to reject me? Plu-please!" She then rebecame semi-serious. "I'm afraid my gem isn't quite like that. And while some here may be surprised, I can believe that you'd be a hybrid. I'm myself genetically flexible, which means that the species barrier isn't as absolute to me as it is to most beings. There's a lot of species like this all over the multiverse. So I don't doubt it."
Then as he shown off his gem and well... "It's alright. Not taking it against you. As I said though, I'm afraid my gem's a lot less cool. I also think yours probably feature powers other than karma manipulation."
As Dezzie proceeded to speak about what had happened and gave her whole speech, well, it reminded her of home, in many bad ways. She genuinely lost her smile for a moment. "Reminds me of my own world, in many ways. As for being a weapon... you shouldn't worry."
She smiled gently, crossing her arms. "Where I come from, there is a species of living weapons. No one knows where they came from and they're quite hard to understand for many people. Even saw many claim they're abominations because of the way they see life. Yet... when you really know them, they're among the nicest, most morally stable people you could imagine. Their sense of morality is in many ways, alien. Yet... they're people well worth remembering and interacting with. I just hope that you are happy being a weapon."
There was a brief thought on her side. "I should probably elaborate regarding my own position."
"First, a disclaimer. I'm actually not of a normal species. I am what is known as a 'kitty-cat'. If that sound overly cutesy and ridiculous, it's because it is. My kind was artificially created by a divine entity to live in an artificially created real life version of a cartoon for children under 3 years. Simply put, a place where everything literally is rainbows and lollypops and no one ever go hungry and can survive on candy and everyone is friends and all that nonsense. Of course, such a place can't logically exist normally, since conflict and entropy are normal, healthy parts of reality. So... the genius who made this place came up with a work-around."
"Every few generations, a newborn would be created with a karma accumulator, the Pulse of Death, that would soak up all of the pain, fear, hunger, entropy, and general bad karma that should have happened and then concentrate it into the thus created scapegoat. After a few years, the accumulated bad karma would eventually consume the scapegoat's sanity and motivate it to either kill itself or let itself die, at which point the Pulse of Death acts as cement shoes, sending the soul screaming to the single deepest and worst level of a local Hell no matter what the soul did in life. The soul could have lived the life of a saint and it wouldn't matter. Then, the soul suffer, for all eternity, to maintain the status-quo."
"This world exist right next to a Dead Zone, a sector of the galaxy where the line between life and death blurs. People usually steer clear of the undead and well, they get lonely once in a while. So they sometimes break in to that bubble world, kidnapping inhabitants and bringing them in. They do it in hopes of performing First Contact... but it always fail. When taken out, the inhabitants feel many things they never did, all in overwhelming ways. Pain, aging, hunger, fear, doubt, all of it in ways they literally could not conceive. They always go mad, followed shortly by dying."
She paused. "One generation, the dead took out a pair of kitty-cats. Their minds did not survive the transition to a world where adulthood is a thing. The dead did their best but they quickly expired. However, before doing so, they did manage to produce one kitten. Being born outside of that world and thus being affected by normal physics, she did not go mad and quickly adapted, and learnt to love life as it is for most beings. However, it seemed that fate was kind of feeling bitchy that day and the kitten turned out to be the current's generation scapegoat."
"I think you can all see where this is going." They could probably put two and two together regarding the scapegoat's identity, why her body was so odd anatomically, and how she ended up saddled with a Pulse of Death.
Synn smiled acidly. "As I said, whoever did this to me got their comeuppance. As for childhood... well, that's the weird part. Ever saw movies about zombies, the undead, ghosts, what not? I spent my early life surrounded, and raised, by the undead. Given living with things like incontrollable hunger, having to continue hating or resenting something to keep existing, and other such things, they helped me learn how to cope with and control my condition."
"As for what it will mean... it means that I can feel every person that has died or more exactly, the regrets and pain they left behind. It's leaking inside me. This is actually a good thing. I can remove curses and appease the resentment of the dead and damned by soaking it up. In fact, if you plunged me into an especially bad karma-soaked place, I might even be capable of channelling it and expelling all that bad karma as magical power. Of course, that's situational but if we ever run into heavy duty supernatural places or people, I can neutralize and pacify it for the platoon."
She then burst into a fit of giggling at his reaction. "Oh please! That's all it took for you to reject me? Plu-please!" She then rebecame semi-serious. "I'm afraid my gem isn't quite like that. And while some here may be surprised, I can believe that you'd be a hybrid. I'm myself genetically flexible, which means that the species barrier isn't as absolute to me as it is to most beings. There's a lot of species like this all over the multiverse. So I don't doubt it."
Then as he shown off his gem and well... "It's alright. Not taking it against you. As I said though, I'm afraid my gem's a lot less cool. I also think yours probably feature powers other than karma manipulation."
As Dezzie proceeded to speak about what had happened and gave her whole speech, well, it reminded her of home, in many bad ways. She genuinely lost her smile for a moment. "Reminds me of my own world, in many ways. As for being a weapon... you shouldn't worry."
She smiled gently, crossing her arms. "Where I come from, there is a species of living weapons. No one knows where they came from and they're quite hard to understand for many people. Even saw many claim they're abominations because of the way they see life. Yet... when you really know them, they're among the nicest, most morally stable people you could imagine. Their sense of morality is in many ways, alien. Yet... they're people well worth remembering and interacting with. I just hope that you are happy being a weapon."
There was a brief thought on her side. "I should probably elaborate regarding my own position."
"First, a disclaimer. I'm actually not of a normal species. I am what is known as a 'kitty-cat'. If that sound overly cutesy and ridiculous, it's because it is. My kind was artificially created by a divine entity to live in an artificially created real life version of a cartoon for children under 3 years. Simply put, a place where everything literally is rainbows and lollypops and no one ever go hungry and can survive on candy and everyone is friends and all that nonsense. Of course, such a place can't logically exist normally, since conflict and entropy are normal, healthy parts of reality. So... the genius who made this place came up with a work-around."
"Every few generations, a newborn would be created with a karma accumulator, the Pulse of Death, that would soak up all of the pain, fear, hunger, entropy, and general bad karma that should have happened and then concentrate it into the thus created scapegoat. After a few years, the accumulated bad karma would eventually consume the scapegoat's sanity and motivate it to either kill itself or let itself die, at which point the Pulse of Death acts as cement shoes, sending the soul screaming to the single deepest and worst level of a local Hell no matter what the soul did in life. The soul could have lived the life of a saint and it wouldn't matter. Then, the soul suffer, for all eternity, to maintain the status-quo."
"This world exist right next to a Dead Zone, a sector of the galaxy where the line between life and death blurs. People usually steer clear of the undead and well, they get lonely once in a while. So they sometimes break in to that bubble world, kidnapping inhabitants and bringing them in. They do it in hopes of performing First Contact... but it always fail. When taken out, the inhabitants feel many things they never did, all in overwhelming ways. Pain, aging, hunger, fear, doubt, all of it in ways they literally could not conceive. They always go mad, followed shortly by dying."
She paused. "One generation, the dead took out a pair of kitty-cats. Their minds did not survive the transition to a world where adulthood is a thing. The dead did their best but they quickly expired. However, before doing so, they did manage to produce one kitten. Being born outside of that world and thus being affected by normal physics, she did not go mad and quickly adapted, and learnt to love life as it is for most beings. However, it seemed that fate was kind of feeling bitchy that day and the kitten turned out to be the current's generation scapegoat."
"I think you can all see where this is going." They could probably put two and two together regarding the scapegoat's identity, why her body was so odd anatomically, and how she ended up saddled with a Pulse of Death.
The Erusian destroyer girls winced as Synn explained the so-called Karma Accelerator in her head and how she got it.
"Holy crap, I think that's more intense than anything we've gone through. And we were killed in a war!" Thiassi exclaimed.
Krupinski frowned in thought.
"There are quite a lot of super-skilled magic healers back in my homeworld. I think another Coalition world also has some pretty damn skilled magic healers too. If you look around, I'm pretty sure you'll find somebody who can remove that thing from you. It's just a guess though, I'm no expert in these kinds of things." she shrugged.
"I'm really dang curious, though." the orange-haired woman asked Synn. "One of the perks of serving in the Legion is that you can get citizenship in a Coalition nation after a certain term of service, if ya want. Given how you described you own little slice of the multiverse earlier, I'd assume you'd have no reason to go back to such a crappy place. If it ain't so rude to ask, any plans for the future?"
"Pizza buddies for life!" Steven announced heartily, pumping a fist in the air. "And I could never turn down a good plate of spaghetti."
Steven smiled at that. "That's good to know. It'll be strange, sleeping somewhere other than home for a while, but if it's comfortable enough, I think I can deal."
"Cheesecaaaaake~" Steven droned, his mouth watering at the mention of it. "Oh man, and cola too! I don't think I've heard of Afri-cola though. Is it like regular Coke?"
Steven listened raptly to her description of the other worlds she's been to. "Woah, that's amazing!" he commented excitedly. "The only other dimension I've seen so far is Lion's mane...uh, that one's kind of a long story," he chuckled. "But in my world, there's this alien race called the Gems who visited my home planet Earth thousands of years ago. They look kinda like humans, but they're a lot stronger and have powers that are like magic, and they live way longer too."
"When they first came to Earth, they tried to conquer it and make into a colony. Humanity and all other life would have been wiped out...but some of the Gems grew to care about Earth and humanity, and they rebelled against their own kind to protect it, naming themselves the Crystal Gems. The war ended a long time ago, and most of the Crystal Gems died in the fighting...but a handful of them survived and continued to protect Earth from the Gem artifacts left behind after the war. Their leader, Rose Quartz, is...was my Mom," he said with a slightly sadder tone, gently clutching his belly. "My Dad was human, so I'm actually half human, half Gem, and I inherited some of her powers. That's the reason the rest of the Crystal Gems eventually let me join them on missions. I think that was about a year and a half ago, and I've gotten way better at fighting and using my powers since then."
Steven blanched at that, looking up at Synn with faux disappointment. "Synn, I don't think we can be friends anymore. Diet soda is just...eugh."
"WOAH!!" Steven gasped. "You have a gem too?! That's so cool! That means we can be gem buddies!" he said excitedly as he lifted his shirt, exposing the large, round, pink jewel that was embedded right where his belly button would be. The transition between skin and gemstone appeared natural, like it was meant to be there despite the contrast between the two. "Uh, you'll forget what I said about the diet soda thing, right?" he asked sheepishly.
As Steven was eyeing the menu, he suddenly found himself scooped up and generously hugged by pantsless girl in uniform with light brown, nearly dark blonde hair. Steven found himself blushing profusely, taken by surprise at the sudden display of affection.
"Uhh, h-hi! I'm Steven..." he greeted bashfully, trying to roll with it as best he could as returned the hug gingerly, his voice slightly muffled by her sizeable chest. "S-Steven Universe."
"Universe, huh? That's a pretty cool surname." she said, releasing him from her grip. "Are everyone's names like that in your world? Or only your fam? 'Cause if it is, it must be a hell of a family!"
She held out a hand to him. "My name's Charlotte. Charlotte Yeager. But all my friends call me Shirley. Nice to meet you, Steven!"
@Mew
As Synn revealed the gem fused to her, Dezzie did her best to try to analyze it out of curiosity.
She immediately wished she hadn't.
The drone stuttered it the air, listing off to one side as Dezzie struggled to keep her balance. Whatever it was, it was wrong. It gave her so many conflicting readings it addled her cortex, and something about it made her sick in a way that she had only experienced once before, when she was placed in this body.
She did her best to avert her gaze.
Turning her attention instead to the food, Dezzie realized she had seen establishments very much like this one back when she was NorthStar, granted, from a much larger height.
However, this time was markedly different for several other reasons, mostly due to her new bodies increased perception. She could smell the food, feel the welcoming heat from the shop.
It was...comforting in a way, and Dezzie found herself floating closer too it. Not out of hunger of course, but simply to experience the feelings, the sensations.
It was different. But not in a bad way.
The question managed to tear Dezzie from the shopfront.
"I was a weapon." She said plainly. "I fought for the IMC, a large corporation that oversaw several systems in the Milky Way Galaxy." The drone preformed the approximation of a shrug. "I wasn't there at the beginning of the war, of course. I was only manufactured twelve years ago."
"A while back, a group of rebels calling themselves the colonial militia split off from the IMC, claiming that they felt that paying taxes to such a far away power was not fair. They wanted to rule themselves."
"Well, the IMC didn't like that at all. Brought their fist down and burned several rebel worlds, though they got burned in the process. Ugly buisness but, well...I didn't exactly have a say."
The Drone paused, its voice becoming softer. "I...I lost two pilots in my tour of duty. My memory of previous pilots is wiped after I'm bonded with a new one so I don't remember anything about them. I'm not sure I want to."
Mentally squaring her shoulders. Dezzie finished her story.
"After the loss of my second pilot, my Personality core began to malfunction. It was drawing far too much power, and damaging other systems. I was scheduled for recycling but...well, I came here instead."
Dezzie watched the scene for a moment, before speaking up.
"Miss, if you don't mind, but I think you are suffocating my comerade." She stated matter-of-factly. @BobTheNinja
Dezzie watched this scene as well, with equal befuddlement. After a moment she spoke up again.
"Excuse me for asking...but why do none of you wear pants? It may be a cultural difference, but I figured I'd ask."
"We're sorry for your loss." Herne said, upon hearing Dezzie's backstory.
In ragards to Dezzie's question about pants, Charlotte spoke up. "Oh, it's just us Witches that don't wear anything over our underwear. The Shipgirls usually wear skirts and pants (usually), and you guys already met the Tanker girls."
"You see, ladies, gentlemen, and assorted varieties therof..." she said, spreading her hands over the table. "Let me tell you a story of our world. It really happened, and all the old people back on our world can probably regale you with at least one tale of what they got up to during that time.
From our years of 1914, to 1918, the whole world was involved in a war. It was not like the wars of man against man had been waged before. No, it was a war of all the countries of humanity against an inhuman foe from beyond our skies, the Neuroi.
The Neuroi were not unknown to us before this, as we fought off periodic incursions for as long as we could remember.
But before this, they were mostly regarded as annoyances, at best. But this time, it was different.
On the 27th of July, 1914, a gigantic Neuroi Hive, large enough that an entire human city could cover it and there would still be space left-over, descended from the sky over the border between Karlsland and Ostmark. Before this, we didn't know where the hell these things came from. But now they had a definitive source. And on the next day, a large contingent of Neuroi fighters launched air-strikes on the Ostmark city of Sarajevo, killing hundreds (including the visiting heir-to-the-throne), and wounding thousands more. In response, all the nations of Europe mobilised against this existensial threat, thus starting the First Neuroi War. As the months passed, more and more hives appeared in various parts of the world, turning this conflict into one that spanned the globe.
And of all the brave men and women who fought for humanity in this war, one of the greatest of them all was Madel von Richthofen, the Red Ducchess, a famous flying Witch ace who gained the name by her distinctive bright-red jacket and flight cap, as well as painting her magic engine the same shade of bright, ruddy red. She was the leader of what is now widely considered the precursor to the Joint Fighter Wing Squadrons in our world, the Jagdgeschwader 1, better known as the "Flying Circus". It's called that because of it's members imitating their leader and also painting their magic engines in various bright colours, and also because the unit was transferred from one area of air activity to another - moving like a travelling circus in trains, and frequently setting up in tents on improvised airfields. Other famed Aces of the Circus include the Britannian Minnie Bishop, as well as the Gallian Renée Fonck.
But anyways, all you guys wanna know is why we wear no skirts or trousers, don't you? Well, this story's rather apocryphal, but it is said that the tradition of Witches going around with their underwear exposed began one early morning, three years into the war. Richthofen was one of those girls who sleeps in her underwear Before this, she would usually bother to put on a skirt before exiting her quarters. However, this time, it was a sudden attack! Neuroi had somehow managed to sneak up on a convoy of fleeing civilians at a nearby mountain pass, and people were already dying as news reached the Flying Circus. Her response was to hop on to her magic engine without bothering to put on below-clothes first. As she would put it later: "How could I possibly waste a precious few seconds preerving my modesty, when people are fighting and dying so close to us that the scent of their blood could be sniffed over the wind?"
And so she went, followed by the rest of her Flying Circus, many who also went with their underwear only. They probably saved thousands of lives that day.
Eventually, they made a habit of the whole "Not wearing pants" thing, and proceded to underwear-clad during the rest of her career, during which she saved many more lives, and was even the first Witch in our history to permanently destroy a Neuroi Hive. A feat that has only been replicated three other times. And it should be noted, those other times involve the Hive being nuked, and having a Witch give up all her Magic power and losing her powers to fuel a technique before they could be destroyed. This first Hive was at full strength, and wasn't even the intended objective! It was simply destroyed by the Flying Circus as collateral damage during a routine mission!"
Krupinski's expression suddenly grew sombre. "Unfortunately, she was finally shot down and killed in a massive enemy ambush near the city of Amiens, Gallia."
Her face lightened up again as she continued. "And to this day, many of us proud Witches wear... Well, don't wear anything over our underwear, as a symbol of heroism and valour, and to help honour the memory of one of the greatest Witch Squadrons to have ever lived. Huzzah!" she said, raising her glass forwards and upwards, before downing it's entire contents in one satisfied gulp.
"'Unrealistic'? What'ya mean? These babies were the ones the Good Lord above gave me." Shirley/Charlotte answered, crossing her arms underneath her breasts and pushing them up to accentuate her chest bumps.
Chloe watched the other woman walk away and resisted the urge to solve her current state of befuddlement with the proper application of violence, but only just. Instead she folded her arms under her perfectly acceptable chest and...
"Yeh're no great prize yourself, and thanks for the molestation." she said, and her head swiveled, looking around. "Where's the bloody Shore Patrol? Military Police? I need to report a sexual assault." she continued, raising her voice so all could hear, with venom and malice aforethought. Tart wants to play stupid games, she'll win stupid prizes the now!
Bahzell paused for a second, processing the sheer oddity of what had just happened, and then a hand shot out, prying the little pervert out of the orange-haired woman's cleavage by her shoulder, not excessively gently.
"Little miss. I sincerely suggest you apologize. Now." His voice rumbled, low and powerful enough to shake the furniture, and his expression was one of frigid rage.
Lucchini was initially annoyed by Bahzell's interruption, letting out a "Hey!", before she was faced with the true breadth of the Hradani's ice-cold rage.
Upon making eye contact, her irisis shrunk to more than half it's size, even as her pupils enlarged to the point of nearly completely encompassing the iris. She involuntarily switched into her Witch form (which entailed her sprouting the ears and tails of a Black Panther). Her tail stood on end, at a ninety-degree angle from her backside.
"Uwaah! I'm sorry, I'm really really sorry Mr. Big Scary Pointy-Eared Man! I promise I won't do it ever again!"
As soon as Bahzell dropped her, she scurried to hide behind Charlotte/Shirley.
"Ahahaha... Please forgive lil' Lucchini. She been usin' my tits as pillows for as long as we knew each other, so her views are a little... skewed."
She pulled the younger girl out of her hiding place, and set her in front of Chloe.
"Now Francesca, he isn't the one you should be apologising to..."
"I'm sowwy..." Lucchini said, bowing Japanese-style to Chloe, and her tail sweeping back and forth, as if the tail was desperate to escape somewhere before it could be torn to bloody pieces.
"... And I guess I should be sorry too. I've known her for long enough that I really should've seen this coming." Charlotte added. She held out her hand for a handshake, should anyone want it. "No hard feelings, eh?"
Iowa realized she was in a restaraunt too late to warn anyone of her appetite. And then her stomach growled loud enough to be heard from the seafloor near Ironbottom Sound from the water's surface.
Krupinski snickered. "Don't worry, we take care of Shipgirls here too." she said, turning to the one open food stall. "Hey uncle! Boy! Shipgirl incoming!"
But the old man and young man manning the stall were already on the job. They would give her the first item on the menu, and once she was done with that they immediately replaced it with the next item on the menu. It is clear that this isn't their first rodeo when it comes to massive eaters.
Double Post!
Doing his best to ignore the scent of the Mistrali food wafting over from the one open food dispensary, and ignoring the shenanigans involving the pantsless girl who dropped from the ceiling, Tukson made his way to the table where the CO's and shipgirls were sitting. "Is there a library or place where I could find reading material on base, or reasonably close?" He asked after sitting down. @Inter-VersaLoli
"Well, there ain't any out-and-out libraries or any other building dedicated to reading or all that. This is a military base, after all, not a school. But I recall there being more than a few books being kept at the Base Lounge, which is somewhere further East of here. It ain't more than a shelf full of dense technical manuals and unfunny joke books. I'm pretty sure the engies use that place as extra storage space for their books. If you want anything more than that, you'll have to wait until your first leave, sorry."
"My teammate Kanno has a bookshelf too..." Krupinski added. "Though I don't know if she'll let you use it. You'll have to ask her yourself, it won't work if I ask for you." she said to Tukson, a knowing smirk on her face.
Phonos had been so flabbergasted by Synn having her very own Magical Artifact of Doom and Despair (a registered trademark of Evil Shit Industries) embedded in her forehead that he completely overlooked the conversation! Specifically, he seemed to have completely overlooked a random pantsless girl PUTTING HER HANDS ON CHLOE'S TITS. Phonos approached the girl, who was currently hugging Steven with another girl in a very sexual manner, and said, "Listen, I don't know what the norms in your world are, but where I come from--and where Chloe comes from, for that matter--it's considered quite taboo to touch a woman's breasts like that, especially without their consent. Not only that, but in many parts of the world, that would be at least a civil offense, if not a criminal one. And also, I think you two are suffocating Steven."
Then he finally turned to Krupinski. "To answer your question, I'm Phonos. If you know your Greek mythology, then you know I'm literally named after a personification of murder. That's because I was created as literal killing machine, a robotic assassin whose services were sold on the black market by the corporation who built me, General Consumer Products. GCP is a megacorp, one of the 'Big Five:' massive conglomerates of thousands of previously-existing corporations that hold a monopoly on their local markets. Megacorps have so much power that governments tend to let them do whatever they want unless it's more convenient to crack down. With power of the government already in their grasp, megacorps turn on each other. Open war hasn't erupted yet, and technically they haven't usurped any major world governments, but all sorts of intrigue and backstabbing happens under the table, often literally. As such, I was ordered by my superiors to assassinate the head of the A.I. research and development division of the Japanese megacorp Akagi. Like a good little tool, I tried. And I utterly failed. When I was captured, the target decided he'd have some fun with me rather than kill me outright. So he had a modification installed that would not only give me emotions, but a sense of right and wrong, and calibrated it so that I would feel the maximum amount of guilt for my actions. What he didn't count on was that I became so pissed at him for making me feel negative emotions that I broke my restraints and tore off his head at the first opportunity. GCP was downright ecstatic that I had done my job, but of course I didn't feel the same way."
"It was then that a previously-unheard of organization calling themselves OMEGA twisted GCP's arm. They had dirt on GCP dabbling in assassination, and would release the information to the public unless I worked for them permanently. So i was stripped of my programmed restrictions and sent on my way. It turned out that OMEGA was a top-secret international paramilitary organization that--get this--was specifically formed to investigate and defend against alien threats. I was skeptical at first, and then I had to deal with a crashed UFO and a crew of hostile Zetas with disintegrator rifles. My skepticism faded pretty fast. During my time with OMEGA, I fought and killed hundreds of hostile aliens, and we slowly reverse-engineered their technology. We even had a few aliens working for us! Then, after a few years, the Legion's flyers started appearing around the base, and my superior officer had me join to investigate the supposed multiversal threats the flyer warned about. I have to say though, I'm kind of disappointed by the enemies I've seen so far.
"About my homeworld: my universe should by rights be a utopia. While we don't have magic, our technology is among the most advanced here, save for Synn and maybe Chloe's worlds. Biomodification--the act of modifying the human body by chemical, mechanical, or biological means--is now easier than ever before. Hell, not only can you get a prosthetic limb that's just like the real thing or an organ that performs vastly better, you can completely modify your appearance from the ground up, or even, with enough money, reverse aging with no side-effects. Virtual reality is so common that television is a thing of the past, and you can access the overwhelming majority of the world's information from anywhere on the planet via a wireless communications network called the Terranet.
"However, humanity has not evolved with the times. In fact, it's gotten worse. Entertainment is virtually devoid of artistic merit, with sports, movies and shows constantly upping the shock value to keep viewers interested, and in the case of the former, lives are often lost in the process. Naturally-grown food with no additives is a thing of the past except for the super-rich, with damn near everything you can eat being a cheap substitute for the real thing. Large portions of the world's population still live in crushing poverty, with food that's just as likely to kill as nourish and those hyper-advanced medical treatments I mentioned earlier being hoarded by local criminals. Overreliance on fossil fuels combined with rampant deforestation--not helped by the deep-pocketed oil industry's constant attempts to sow doubts of global warming's very existence--resulted in unchecked emissions of so-called 'greenhouse gases'--carbon dioxide, to name one example--that trapped sunlight in the Earth's atmosphere over the centuries, slowly heating up the Earth over time. That caused a whole host of environmental issues, including higher amounts of disease, more natural disasters, and a loss of much arable farmland, which largely caused most of the problems with our food supply in the first place. Robots like myself are common, and most of us have at least some degree of true sapience, as an overwhelming majority of us are based on the code of the first true A.I, Galatea Seven--who, incidentally, became sapient completely by accident and whose creation could never be exactly reverse-engineered, only copied. However, we're not recognized as human under international law and thus we have no rights. We're pretty much a slave race, despite in many cases being smarter, stronger, and faster than even extremely augmented humans. And on top of all of that, there are serious problems with UFO cults sprouting up in the wake of alien activity, and terrorists are an even bigger threat than the cults.
"My world is very, very flawed. The shiny tech might draw you in, but you don't want to go there. Trust me."
"Well, no place is perfect, I guess..." Shirley commented, ordering a drink. "My world just got the Dimensionet, that's what the folks in this corner of the multiverse call their network after several real high-tech worlds of their own networks together into one big one that spanned worlds, though we're not as well-connected as the other worlds are. It's mostly a curiosity there than anything actually important to our lives."
@samdamandias
"Elder Carrion Crow......I like that" she say's grinning ever so slightly. "And its nothing its custom, plus i'm starving and I'm sure that gold coin more then covers everyone."
@Mew
Eileen had been listening quietly a small twinkle in her eye. "You're smarter then most of the universe already then lass, where I'm from the gods are pitiful things misshapen and sad. They go about their lives trying to produce offspring, and in doing so they shape the world around them in less then pleasant ways......they are sad creatures who wield the power to shape worlds, I think they mean well. But to us mortal their help is often just the opposite unfortunately.............."
Seeming to space for a second she smiles ever so slightly, "well despite the meddling of these gods we both made it out alright didn't we deary." Eileen says chuckling to herself quietly.
"A lot of people on my world believe in Gods." Krupinski said. "Well, God. Singular. Polytheism is really uncommon these days among us, except for maybe the Fusoans and their Shinto."
She lolled her head this way and that, in thought, before continuing.
"I'm technically Catholic, but I'm not super devout. I can't even remember the last time I entered a church. It's more of something I was raised with, than something I kept.
One of my mechanic teammates is Orthodox, and she's way more into it than I ever was. I mean, she actually tries to attend mass every week. When she isn't too busy trying to fix our Strikers, that is.
And I think Lucchini over there is Catholic. Are you, little katze?" To which the younger girl simply nodded, still wary of Bahzell's wrath.
"... Well, to tell you the truth, despite all our worshipping, if our God really existed, she hasn't shown any definitive proof that she exists yet." Krupinski said, her expression growing darker and darker with each word. "And if she did exist, she probably doesn't care much for us. After all, where was God when my homeland was overrun by the aliens, and my people had to flee across the ocean and resettle on foreign soil, hoping vainly that one day, our cities and our pride, would be rebuilt."
From an objective point of view, it was interesting to watch 362's reaction to Synn's tale. As the cat lady told the tale of the gem in her head, the Operative's expression went from to interested, to confused, to curious, to flabbergasted, and very briefly to horror before going blank.
As Synn told the last of her tale to them, Rachel spoke. Her voice was calm, rational, and measured. Casual.
And it had enough ice in it to freeze the Mediterranean.
"That kitten was you," she said, "You were that bastard's scapegoat. You look wierd because your species wasn't designed to grow up in the first place. You learned to live with the death wish that thing put into your head because you grew up with people who had to live with something like that too."
She was silent for a good moment.
"I bet that "god" thinks he's clever," she said, "One person suffers... and in exchange everyone else gets to live a life of sunshine and rainbows... Makes sense. Sacrifice one for the good of the many. Except it doesn't work that way. It. Just. Doesn't."
She fell silent for a few moments.
"... Tell me that you royally screwed them over when you fixed that afterlife thing," she said, "Because otherwise... I'll have to find out if there's a way to make so-called "gods" wish they could die."
From the tone of her voice... it wasn't hard to picture 362 finding a way to do that.
362 chuckled mirthlessly. "Oh, trust me. I've seen much worse than shambling zombies."
The bodies were endless.
The stench was unbelievable.
H-how...
They were on the road, left there on the spot they had keen killed by the genocidaires. They lay in twos and threes, sometimes alone.
Why would they... why would anyone-...!?
Some of them were really small. Smaller than 362 herself.
362 tripped onto a little boy who could've been no older than her own baby brother. She pushed herself off the ground, and found that the little boy had been split open from the sternum down.
As she knelt on the ground, looking at the blood and viscera that now coated her front, she saw a tiny hand grip the cloth of her pants.
No.
It was the boy.
No, no, no...
362 felt as if in a trance as her gloved hand pulled the hand away and held it. The boy turned his head and looked into her eyes. He didn't say anything. He barely even breathed.
Please...p-please...
362 felt that she should say something, but when she opened her mouth it felt as try as sand.
The boy opened his mouth... and then, with a painfull shudder, finally went still.
With a trembling hand, 362 closed the dead boy's eyes. Then she looked around, at the hundreds of bodies all around her.
Then she screamed.
... Kill them. Kill them! Kill them!! All of them!! Monsters!! Animals!! They will all die for this, even if it takes my whole life to do it!!
"... Much, much worse."
She looked around. "Uh... Okay, who here has heard of Rwanda?" she asked out loud, "And can I get something fizzy with loads of sugar and caffeine? Because I do not want to tell this sober."
The Operative just smiled in faux superiority.
362 blinked, and then scratched her chin.
"... You know, I don't think I've slept "home" in five years..." she said, looking more than a little sheepish.
"Oh, it's not like that at all! I mean, it's still Coke, but they flavour's much richer than the regular kind."
Chloe pulled herself away from the little pervert and looked towards Rachel, then headed up to Uncle Huan's, pulled out a ten-credit note and laid it on the counter. "I'll take a couple of Cokes - or Mountain Dews, if you've got Throwbacks." she said, and accepted the offered glass bottles of Coke. She brought them over to the table and handed them off to Rachel. @Dalek Ix
The old man at the counter examined the note for a few seconds, before nodding and giving her what she asked for (they only have plastic bottles of Coke, though. No glass). @Shadows
Chara floated up to the booth, hovering a few feet off the ground. Normally they distained crowds, which was why they'd kept their distance until now, but the thought of food was irresistible to the apparition.
"Do you have uncooked noodles?"
They rummaged through their pockets, placing a handful of gold coins on the counter.
"Though, I am not in possession of any human currency, nor am I aware of the proper exchange rate."
With barely any shock over being approached by a ghost, the shopkeep simply took the gold coins offered, went to the back of the store, and then returned. He gave Chara a block of hard, uncooked noodles, curled open itself and wrapped in plastic.
He spoke a few lines of Cantonese and pidgin English mixed together, to which Krupinski turned in her seat and addressed Chara.
"He said he can provide hot water, a bowl, and utensils for just a single coin more, if you want."
The Drone stopped dead, the despair and confusion from the conversation back at the warehouse resurfacing.
"I didn't have a choice wether I was happy or not. I had a job, I did the job. I wasn't a soldier, or a bio-weapon, and was just a weapon. A gun. A sword. I got orders, and I carried them out."
The drone was getting angry. Previously, Dezzie didn't know she could get angry, but now a small part of her wished she would stop.
But the fact that Synn had just, without even realizing it, simplified her entire confusion, the question of her existence, of her being into "I hope you were happy as you were" struck a nerve. It was a beautifully simple solution, and horrendously under-complicated.
"I recieved orders, I carried out orders. Did I agree with those orders? It didn't matter. I had no say. If I was ordered to shoot down an evacuating jump-ship full of wounded soldiers then I...Then I..."
The railgun punched a hole straight through the defenseless drop-ships left engine. An enemy pilot, only half way through the fort and struggling to pull a wounded comerade on board, was dislodged and sent plummeting away as the stricken medivac ship listed sharply to one side.
It's engine burst into flame, which quickly found its way into the crew compartment as fuel-lines burst within the ship.
The wounded's last moments were spent in burning agony before the ship detonated.
"Oh my god..I..."
The drone stuttered down to the ground, shocked as several memories surfaced at once.
Meanwhile Takumi, not sure what to do now after doing God knows what during this duration of time, walked into the restaurant. Noticing some familiar faces, Takumi walked up to the booth and ordered some plain white rice and hot Teh, pulling out a few gold coins from home, hoping they'll accept his currency.
"Apologize to Chloe. Please. And don't do it again, or I won't be so forgiving."
Then he turned to the rest.
"Any Champion of the Gods of Light is seeing the best and the worst of people. We're seeing people who would give the clothes off their back to help a man in need, and we see the aftermath of Demon Breath's... worship."
He grimaced. "They use flaying knives, you see. And any High Priest of Sharna is one as knows how to keep a man alive for hours and hours, in horrible pain. For their 'high holy days', one of those vile churches might sacrifice as many as ten people, and the worshippers join in the worst of debauchery. Rape. Cannibalism. All of it. They share in the flesh and blood of their sacrifices, and the climax of the 'ceremony' is where Demon Breath himself shows up to consume the very soul of the sacrifice. It's also how they summon demons, and bind them to their will, which is how I came to be in Himself's service. I irritated one of Demon Breath's worshipers, who happened to be a prince of a city that Sharna was trying to get his claws into. See, I ran across him while he was busy raping a servant girl under his family's "protection", and beat him within an inch of his life for it. Unfortunately, he recovered, and ran to the priest of Sharna whose 'temple' he worshipped at. They hatched a plan to kill me, starting with dog brothers, ah, the Assassain's guild, and worked their way up to a cursed sword empowered by a sacrificed virgin. I'm not knowing why Sharna likes virgin souls so much, but there you're having it. There was a demon along the way, and I'd already recieved an offer from Tomanak. And when I saw the demon, I knew I couldn't know things like that existed and not fight them. So I swore Sword Oath right there, and killed my first demon."
He sighed. "But as bad as all I've seen is, Wencit's after having seen the worst. You see, he's one of those wild wizards I mentioned, and he's old enough to remember the Fall of Kontovar. He's old enough to remember that once, my people, the hradani, were known as the most calm, peaceful people among the four Races of Man. I won't be getting into the details right now, but the Wizard Wars cursed my people with the Rage. You see, the Carnadosans saw our physical size and strength, and determined that we would make ideal shock troops. So they built great and terrible spells, and reached down into our very genetics, and twisted. They strengthened our link to the energy field, made us even larger and stronger, and cursed us with the Rage. And, in the bargain, they enslaved every one of us to their will. Made us beasts that remembered being more than beasts."
As he spoke, his ears drooped, and his voice was flat with ancient horror.
"In those dark, dark days after the Fall, my people wound up on the shores of Norfressa, another pathetic group of refugees, hated by all except Wencit, because he alone knew that we hadn't served the Dark Gods willingly, and though he tried mightily, couldn't convince anyone. So we wound up at the foot of the Wind Plain, in the lands no one else wanted. There, we fell back to barbarism for a time, and we've spent the last thousand years clawing our way out of it. Only a century ago, my Da finally managed to unite Horse Stealers and Bloody Swords. But you see, for a thousand years, our women were the only stability we had, because unlike us men, they don't bear the curse of the Rage. So they are our judges and our ambassadors."
He snorted. "Still, I suppose one good thing came from it. The Rage we have these days isn't the same Rage the Carnadosans cursed us with all those years ago. The old Rage is still around, and pity the man who loses control of it, but these days, if a hradani is summoning the Rage as his servant, it makes him faster, and grants him a clarity of purpose. It also tears any magic that comes near him to shreds, because the Carnadosans meant for us to be a weapon against the white wizards of the Council of Ottovar."
"Any road, that's the short and ugly version of it. If you like, I can ask Brandark or the librarian at the College of Semkirk in Belhadan to send some of the histories, if you want to know the details."
"No, that isn't necessary..." Krupinski said, shaking his head and smiling softly. "Whatever terrible things you did before, or were done to, we do not pry. That ain't how we do things here. Whatever you were before, Bahnakson, I can see that you're a pretty cool guy now, and that you're pretty dedicated to staying cool. So that's good enough for me, and should be good enough for anyone else. And if anybody disagrees, then they're idiots who're too afraid to give anybody a chance."
"Aaand..." she continued. ""Your worlds can't be all doom and misery 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Maybe you could share what your hobbies are? Anything you like to do for fun?
As for me, pretty girls and alcohol are two of my greatest pleasures in life. Give me a lifetime supply of both, and I don't need anything else to die happy."
"I like to go fast." Charlotte contributed. "I actually held the land speed record on our homeworld for several years."
"Aaand also the first person to break the speed barrier! While in a bikini!" Lucchini helpfully added.
"Yes, and that too."
"I... I like to read Warship World magazines in my free time." Herne said. Upon hearing it, Thiassi turned towards her, blushing and stuttering.
"Um, err, Herne, I-I didn't know you were into that kind of stuff…"
"I... I read it for the articles." her sister replied, with a face that looked like it regretted ever admitting to such.
Takumi looked away from the two, appearing to be deep in thought. "That's...concerning to say the least. I've never had this problem before but..." he then sighed, "I don't know, I probably should just be glad that I only forgot that and not my entire identity. I'll get it checked out later."
In ragards to Dezzie's question about pants, Charlotte spoke up. "Oh, it's just us Witches that don't wear anything over our underwear. The Shipgirls usually wear skirts and pants (usually), and you guys already met the Tanker girls."
*Strike Witches exposition*
While eating, Iowa overheard part of the discussion about Witches. Getting up, she said, "Is that why you wear about as much as the Kriegsmarine shipgirls?" If anybody looked at her funny, she would reply with puffed up cheeks, "I'm being serious! The most conservatively dressed one I know of is the Prinz Eugen, and she was captured by America before being tested on during Operation Crossroads!"
"Well, there ain't any out-and-out libraries or any other building dedicated to reading or all that. This is a military base, after all, not a school. But I recall there being more than a few books being kept at the Base Lounge, which is somewhere further East of here. It ain't more than a shelf full of dense technical manuals and unfunny joke books. I'm pretty sure the engies use that place as extra storage space for their books. If you want anything more than that, you'll have to wait until your first leave, sorry."
"My teammate Kanno has a bookshelf too..." Krupinski added. "Though I don't know if she'll let you use it. You'll have to ask her yourself, it won't work if I ask for you." she said to Tukson, a knowing smirk on her face.
The Sheriff was in no way prepared for this event, but his mind whirled with possibilities. For others, time might have seemed to slow to a crawl as they entered a reflex mode, but he wasn't quite fast enough for that.
However, he did have some facts and logic. Fact 1: The abilities displayed are approximately consistent with a PID, or Portable Improbability Drive. Fact 2: He was told that such was previously dealt with via a shot to the head by shotgun before a later shot to the drive finished the job.
Fact 3: He was fed up with this nonsense.
Leaping up from his bed and jumping back away from the mysterious cow, he wordlessly turned and fired away with his four-barreled shotgun, aimed directly above the cow's head. A deafening roar could be heard as the weapon discharged four loads of buckshot, and by the time it had subsided, the Sheriff was already on the move towards his locker for more ammo. Fact 4: It was a cow, a large gun firing near it was probably going to scare it off, but he would rather avoid wounding it if it could teleport. That was just bad news.
Still, he wasn't going to stand for getting licked by a teleporting cow. It just wasn't happening.
Malastiki
--/--
Prison, she decided, sucked balls. Giant bloody shark balls. She kicked at the cold stone floor. Windward fucking Rock, what a name.
At least her crew was safe, she supposed. Silver lining. But she was going to the Middn Deep for life, watching her brethren falling into an endless black pit.
That's no life. She frowned. Could she escape? No.
But one day, a man in a uniform rattled the doors. Said he was recruiting. No one but her raised a hand.
Three days later, on the eve of her sentencing, some stiff Tal Verrar judge looked at the recruiting papers. "It-it seems that Prisoner Malastiki has exchanged her sentence in the Midden Deep for military service," she stammered out in rage.
Malastiki leaned back on her little bench and howled a long laugh. "Lashain Baronhood, your fucking Honor! Lashain Baronhood!" She choked out.
"Get this fucking worm out of my sight!"
-----------
She stood outside an alleyway in the darkest corners of the Portable Quarter. In the space of a half hours walk, she had punched three drunks, two Gazers, and one terminally retarded pickpocket who thought that 'clutch, then run' was 'hug, grope around, then waddle off."
Couldn't the place be in a better area? Either way, she walked in,signed the paper, and hopped on... whatever that thing was in the back. Looked like a metal cart.
She took a seat, closing her eyes. The vial of dreamsteel on her necklace was reassuringly cool.
Ursula faithfully wrote down every letter of Patricia's explanation. "Very fascinating. The engineers we have here have already found or are developing polymers that respond to electrical stimuli. However, to apply it to the extent that it can be used to move a machine several times the height of a man..."
*scribble* *scribble* *scribble*
"I would also need more information on this Explosive Reactive Armour. How do you ensure that it does not damage the more conventional armour underneath it when it detonates? Or is it just an inevitable consequence of using this type of protection?"
"It's a field of precise refinements. Once you have the theory down it's all up to manufacturing tolerance and miniaturization. As to ERA plating, you back It with standard armor, and that helps absorb the strikes, and additionally the charges are usually shaped to direct explosive force outwards. You can't use it on lightly armored vehicles at all. The more dangerous part is keeping infantry away. If an ERA detonates near them, they may as well be standing on a frag grenade. Allied infantry needs to be kept well back from any surface with ERA plates."
, 
, 
, 
. "I'm sorry that this was done to you. I do hope that whatever disgusting piece of shit made that monstrosity in your forehead at least got their comeuppance for it. But...pardon me asking, but if you've experienced dozens of curses and are a magnet for everything even vaguely evil or bad, then how are you still alive? You were an infant once, right? If that crystal was jammed into your forehead presumably from birth...how did you survive to adulthood?"
