I suppose I can write an unofficial, quick and dirty ending to Vanya's tale. I don't remember where I left off last time, but what I had in mind went roughly as follows - at least, as far as what I can remember.
After the big showdown with Tames and all that - the stuff I mentioned in the last thing - Vanya gets sent back to Spearbreakers, where she and Mr Frog promptly inform everyone of the timewar and the differences in technology. They also explain that Spearbreakers is at the epicenter of the attacks of Parasol, Ballpoint and Eris, and then go about trying to reform the spearbreakers army. Vanya holds a few classes teaching dwarves the basics they'll need to know about electrical tech and such, while Mr Frog works on crafting more weaponry. Jack Magnus at this point is already in a mechanized suit of armor, as is Gearbox (the mech from the Parasol/Ballpoint battle on the blood plains), so Spearbreakers is already somewhat ready for the revelation that there's a lot more advanced tech out there than they're used to dealing with.
Around then (Spring), the Elves attack, apparently spurred into it by Ballpoint, who they have allied with. Vanya joins in the fight alongside the dwarves, battling druids, living trees, and everything else elfy - she's completely past being an elf by this point, and in her mind, she's just as much a dwarf as any one of them. The dwarves emerge victorious, and although not without casualties, they don't suffer many losses thanks to the new Frogtech. With the elves taken care of, Mr Frog cobbles together a couple more mechs with imported Parasol goods, and while Fischer begins training everyone in the military to use the new weaponry, Vanya sets out to the Mountainhome, intending to request military assistance in case Spearbreakers is attacked. That goes amazingly well - they let her stay a whole day or two before kicking her down the steps. Meanwhile, she also gets to meet her grandfather a second time - the man she used to be afraid of - and at this point she's simply not scared of him any more (yay character development \o/ ).
Back at Parasol, Vanya's sister, Salaia, is helping Wari, Drakonik and some of the other scientists figure out more about Eris based on Salaia's buried memories. Urist is there too, teaching Parasol's scientists about the underlying secrets of the DF world, as Urist used to be in an important position and knows that kind of stuff.
And around this time - the mysterious "Sally" from the beginning of the entries is revealed to be Salaia, although she declines to explain to the narrator exactly how she came to be in the future, and says she's waiting for something.
Vanya returns to Spearbreakers and continues teaching the allotted dwarves how to understand and deal with electronic circuitry. Before much longer, though, Ballpoint forces bring a giant army to Spearbreakers and demands that they open their gates, under threat of death. The dwarves, being dwarves, hold firm, feigning ignorance of "those metal magicks the foreign soldiers have". Fischer rallies the army, and Vanya prepares to help fight as well... up until the point when she receives the urgent message that Parasol is under attack; specifically the city (which I can't remember the name of) where her sister is held. She flees through Mr Frog's portal to Parasol, and finds the city in ruins, with troops marching through the debris, capturing civilians and killing anyone that puts up a fight. After managing to surprise a group of Ballpoint soldiers with explosives, Vanya quickly forms a sort of rebel group with a number of civilians, showing them how to hold the Ballpoint weaponry, and they begin pushing forwards through Parasol.
They do eventually find Salaia - she's been wounded by a Ballpoint kill-switch dart. (You may remember that Ballpoint employees have a neurological "kill switch" that activates when certain chemicals are input into the bloodstream.) Time is short, and on finding that Parasol has no counter to the Ballpoint technology, Vanya - in desperation - sends her sister to the future through a portal.
"And that's how I came to be here," Salaia explains to the second-person narrator - both of whom are beginning to form an attraction to each other. She explains that Future Parasol had an effective antidote in stock and was able to neutralize the poison before it could do any harm. Unfortunately, this also meant she was kept out of the war -
- which was still going on. As everything went down at Parasol, Ballpoint made a two-pronged attack. They more or less briefly teleported everyone in their army to Parasol's home planet, caused a lot of mayhem before anyone could stop them, and then teleported back immediately to begin the attack upon Spearbreakers, leaving only a few elite reserve troops behind. This split Parasol's forces in two as they tried to both control the damage on their planet, and defend Spearbreakers, and gave Ballpoint a massive advantage.
Back on Parasol, Vanya continues fighting through Parasol, looking for Urist - whom she cannot find - and she then makes her way towards the Parasol megaportal with her civilian squad. Along the way, she meets Scheck Kenzon, who is carrying Katie's wounded, unconscious form - Vanya tries to offer help, but he angrily tells her to get away and stay out of his life - he reveals that Vanya is Katie's grandmother, in the future - Vanya's daughter with Urist was Kiera, and Kiera disappeared somehow because of her - something she changed - and he doesn't want the same to happen to Katie. Kenzon leaves with Katie, which leaves Vanya to attempt to process what she's just learned.
When Vanya finally reaches the megaportal, back in the lobby - the same one mentioned previously in her story - Joseph contacts her, gloating about how she should've joined him, and offering her one last chance to surrender Spearbreakers to her. He says he can save her friends, but only with her help. He says he can trick Ballpoint and Parasol into only attacking each other, which will save Spearbreakers, although it will doom both Ballpoint and Parasol - which is what he's intended from the very beginning - but he needs her to persuade Mr Frog to join him, as she's the only one that can - and if Mr Frog joins, then Splint will as well. He also warns her that if she does nothing, they will both be destroyed, but Spearbreakers will be as well. In effect, he's asking her to hand over Spearbreakers. Vanya, hardened by her experiences (more plot development), wastes no time in refusing, and then sets the return portal home not for Spearbreakers itself, but for the nearest portal exit above Spearbreakers - and steps through.
During all this, Ballpoint is desperately pressing against Parasol in an attempt to destroy Spearbreakers, thus ruining Parasol's hold on Everoc, and eliminating Armok all at the same time, which will give their gods the foothold they need to give their troops proper support, and win them the battle in general. Parasol (notorious for their shields) have shielded Spearbreakers from aerial attack with their ships, which they have portaled in as well. There are large masses of armies going at it against each other on the ground between Ballpoint and Parasol, and Fischer rallies the dwarven troops... "There are things out there... things dwarfkind has never seen. They've destroyed our homes... killed our families... burned our towers. Now they sit outside our gates. We cannot let that stand. If we must die today... then let us make the world tremble! Let them know that we are dwarves, and THIS IS SPEARBREAKERS!!!" The dwarves rush out, chainswords and sawpikes in hand, backed by steely mechs, and begin crushing the unsuspecting armies of Ballpoint (which are indeed sitting right outside their gates as they mess with Parasol). Of course, Ballpoint being more technologically advanced than Spearbreakers, the tide begins to turn.
During all this, Vanya appears in the megaportal of one of the massive flying ships of Ballpoint, high above the Spearbreakers battleground. After applying a quick and liberal application of of stealthy knifey knife stealth to the nearby ballpoint soldiers, vanya looks over the situation and decides the ship needs to go down. So she starts it headed in that direction. (This is another part I unfortunately didn't write out all the plans for - in many places, I simply assume I'll solve them when I come to them, and if not, I'll think of something else to substitute it with). Vanya manages, one way or another, to severely damage the engines of the battleship, and it begins exploding and other cool stuff, beginning to fall from the sky. As all the Ballpoint dudes and dudettes panic, Vanya does the same, as one of the explosions has inadvertently knocked out her portal home, which she didn't plan for. In desperation, she rushes for the exit and leaps to her death, feeling as though her death is at least justified in unbalancing the battle between Parasol and Ballpoint, to thwart Joseph's plans.
...or what would've been her death, if Urist hadn't been stationed aboard that very vessel as a spy. He's followed her silently throughout most of her little adventure in the battleship, and before she's fallen far at all, she feels Urist gently grab her from behind. There's a tender moment for Vanya and Urist, and then a heartwrenching one as Urist explains that he's flying using Wari's hand-mounted portaljets (which I had another name for, but can't remember). Before she can stop him, Urist straps them to her own hands, tells her he loves her, and to never forget him, and activates the portaljets - which sends her upwards, as he begins falling away to his death.
She drifts there for a moment, stunned as she tries to process what just happened, and has a Special MomentTM. "All I've ever done is leave everything I know and love behind me... Not this time." She says a little prayer to Armok, says her "guiding wings" spell, and for the first time, it works - really works - and she begins jetting downwards towards Urist. The sky is thick with fighters, artillery rounds, flying battleships, etc - she carefully maneuvers to avoid them, her eyes on Urist, barely scraping the top of ships, barely missed by crossfire and laser blasts - and then, only a few thousand feet from the ground, catches up with Urist. He's completely surprised, and is warning her the thrusters won't have the power to slow both of them down, and certainly not the battery power after how much she used them getting down there to him, but Vanya ignores him, using her Armok-granted wings to slow their descent while firing the thrusters full blast, as Urist clings to her, warning her that there's no way they can slow down enough if she tries to carry him -
- and he's right. Urist and Vanya both plunge to the earth in the middle of the battlefield, just moments after the Parasol shields protecting the fortress finally reach their breaking point and die.
Vanya, stunned and shaken, gets painfully to her feet, and notices Urist's crumpled form - at which point she realizes she survived (mostly) unharmed because he let go of her at the last moment. She rushes to his body, and soon learns that he's merely unconscious - and just then, a Ballpoint mech tries to crush them both; she leaps upwards (Parasol sleeper agent abilities triggered by her desire to protect someone) and attaches the thrusters to its canopy, which tosses it backwards after she activates them. This is where it sinks in that they're in the middle of a battlefield - and behind Ballpoint's ranks, no less. This becomes Serious Business, and she crosses her Godzilla Threshold as the Ballpoint troops around her begin to rush towards her, threatening to kill Urist - and she grabs a gun, which is a big thing for her, because she's always loathed them, but she's willing to use one if it means protecting Urist, whom she loves.
The fight scene is epic, with multiple enemies rushing in from all angles, including Ballpoint's mutants, Elves and misguided dwarves - Vanya goes full River Tam on them, managing to hold out until Fischer and Jack Magnus reach her - Fischer is pure epic, leaping up onto a battlemech to plunge her sawpike through its canopy, while Jack Magnus is equally so, tossing the Ballpoint troops around like like ragdolls. Things still look grim, but at this moment a massive human army shows up from one direction, under the leadership of Lord Reudh. Warmaster Kythraka'l Scylk shows up, too, bringing along his Scythod warriors to defend Spearbreakers - and after a massive battle, Spearbreakers emerges victorious - although the bodycount is high. Feeling tired, but glad, Vanya goes back to find Urist and get him medical attention - but all she finds is an unrecognizable, pulpy smear. She breaks down, falls to her knees and cries.
When she finally gets up the strength to walk back to the fortress, she finds Mr Frog, who is not happy about the success, but upset about the loss of Salaia, because it means that there's no way for them to attack Eris - which means Eris will attack them, now that Spearbreakers has no defenses - and likely soon. It's at that moment that Vanya has an idea - she takes her journal and writes down the exact time and dimensional coordinates of Mr Frog's laboratory.
In the future, our second-person narrator, Dr. Jones, reads the coordinates aloud. Salaia urges him to help send her home, and for her sake, he agrees. With the help of another ally in Parasol, they circumvent the Parasol guards, do some fighting, and manage to get to the portal just long enough to set it to the appropriate settings -
- and Salaia appears in Mr Frog's laboratory beside Dr. Jones, just as Vanya finishes her entry. With Salaia there, Mr Frog hurriedly traces her memories to find the exact coordinates of Eris, and a plan is hatched hurriedly in the little room with Drakonik giving orders to Parasol troops via interdimensional communicators - and the plan is set in motion.
While Parasol distracts Eris by storming the main portal, Vanya, Mr Frog, Salaia, and Hans enter the complex through a quieter point revealed by Salaia's memories. This is another point where things get vague. There's much panic, and much stealthy fighting as they try to keep a low profile - but Mr Frog eventually comes face to face with his original, not-cloned-Frog, who has long since decided to serve Eris. He tries to kill clone-frog, stating he's nothing but a clone - but Vanya and Hans intervene, killing the original, though Salaia is critically wounded in the fight. Hans opts to take Salaia home so she can receive immediate medical attention, under Vanya's urging - she doesn't want to lose her sister again. Mr Frog okays it and then hacks into Original Frog's computer to discern the link to Joseph's own private dimension, and after commandeering a portal, they enter.
They find themselves in a room filled with screens upon screens upon holoscreens, with Joseph's desk at the center. Mr Frog spits some epic one-liners, and Joseph reveals he's a master at weaponry, and there's an intense combat scene as Joseph keeps up with both of them at the same time, dancing about the room with knives and guns and shields and just - well, all around epicness. The duo finally manage to corner Joseph, who mentions that they'll never be able to defeat him - he has too many clones on too many worlds, and he'll be back to finish the job. "Not while I still breathe," Mr Frog says, and Joseph meets his end.
On returning to the ashes of Spearbreakers - the shattered halls bombed by artillery shells and lasers - as she walks about the dwarves that begin picking up the pieces, Vanya cries silently to herself over the loss of Urist and the deaths of so many people that meant so much to her. Wari is gone, and Scylk, and many of the original Spearbreakers crew - but Urist means the most to her. She climbs to the top of what's left of the towers that Ballpoint had built a couple years before during Splint's second reign, and looks out over the battlefield... crying... and that's when she feels a hand upon her shoulder. She turns around - it's Urist - and they embrace fiercely. Urist vows to never leave her side again, and Vanya vows the same - and the curtain falls.
edit: Holy carp, you guys have ninja'd me four times.
Ahhh, I'm quite pleased you joined.
Welcome! For whatever value "welcome" holds to someone who's been here for a while, anyway.
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Topic: [34.11] Spearbreakers - It shudders and begins to move (Read 2282207 times)