"They're suspicious as fuck. Too bad that we have a patrol to finish."
Continue the patrol.
You arrive at the next waypoint of your patrol, the military base AFH29, a spire-type facility with a small exclusion zone of about 30m between the base of the building and 10m high concrete walls tipped with the gold spines of shield generators that leave a telltale shimmer of superheated air around the building. The building itself is constructed of cast concrete cubes with two opposite ends missing and stapled together with iron I beams. These form long concrete tubes of dimensions 5m x 5m x 10m which can hold two LUPI and their support crew, it is a design employed in urban spaces where every meter is extremely valuable. There are 10 stories of these tubes which are placed in alternating directions in pairs allowing up to 40 LUPI to be held there at once, though there are often as few as 15. You hurry inside and see a System League squad consisting of a close packed group of about 4 PUPPETs armed with pairs of sub-machineguns, they are just sitting outside the other gate still. On the other side of the shield from them are two LUPI with heavy cannons ready to intervene if necessary.
Winston scratched his head. "So just string words together? Do I just pick one from each section, like say..."
44 a5 sabb -M
[COMP: 14/7] As you focus on the words, the rest seem to fade, not fully disappearing but becoming hard to focus on, like memories just outside your recollection. So to does the rest of your mind, your own thoughts, for whatever brief instant dimming to the edges of your consciousness as the spell expands. And then, as abruptly as it began, it ends. Your thoughts and the rest of the grimoire come rushing back into your mind. Huh, nothing happened.
No, you don't need one from each section, any number of words in any order will work. Generally, the more words you use, the harder it is to cast.
"Are you, feeling okay sir?"The barkeeper begins to back away from you slowly, his hands reaching into his pockets.
"You're not making a lot of sense..."A small UAV hovers along the ground outside, one would be forgiven to assume that it were child's toy, though no child would be around in the smog of Floor 1, especially not in the current circumstances. The design was quite skeletal, presumably due to weight considerations, it consisted of what appears to be a bulbous camera array with four 'arms' arranged in a cross-shape, each terminating with a set of rotors. A distinct lack of landing skids seemed to indicate that it was designed to remain in the air at all times, rather odd considering that with that many cameras, it's battery life should be quite short.
It didn't look like something used by your side, they had plenty of security cameras in the colony already, but it also didn't look like something the System League would use, they usually preferred actual operatives and signals intelligence. The fact that an indistinct figure formed of some sort of transparent figure abruptly appears and smashes through the window seems to be even more conclusive that it isn't something used by either side of this little war of yours.
As glass and fog cascades into the bar, a flanged obsidian mace proceeds to fly head-first out of your left shoulder, smashing into the wall.
Ao Shi
"Oh. Wow... I don't suppose you can tell me what each word will do? And I must question the reason why I was granted this, I'm certain people already familiar with magic could make much better use of this."
"Wait... I am one of the most professional... Are you saying there's others with equivalent or even greater access? Please do not tell they are enemies..."
Talking. Also tell Red to find safer location because I'm about to crush this thing.
Tell engineer buddies to detach generator from chamber and get into safety in case a lot of rubble will fo flying soon.
Prepare to disable the enemy frame the moment they finish breaching the wall. Then curb-stomp enemy infantry.
Talk to them while waiting.
"We do have backup generators, this is not some amateur workshop, you know that? But you broke that as well. Or some other party did. Ha, maybe there's three-way fight going on! That would really suck! Hey, you are not going to kill or rob us non-combatants, right? Will you ensure our safety?"
"Something's been interfering with us, even if I tried telling you, the words won't reach you. There aren't any well there are and aren't, personality is a large part of choice in candidates, so there are people better than you but there is only one.... you? I guess? I dunno never really paid any attention to some of the rants on statistics, it was really depressing.
You have the most access possible, but yes, there are System League units with as much access in fact..."She trails off and begins counting on her fingers, though evidently more as a gestural embellishment than as a necessity.
"Uhhh, think one of them's in this building/area right now~? One of Tzi's (a friend if you were wondering). You'll be fine, she's a really nice lady, makes a great butterscotch pudding, seriously bribe her with something cool and she'll make you some, I'll be per~fectly fine here.
In fact I think I'll sit down and see how you handle things."She proceeds to sit down. On a nearby wall. Entirely perpendicular to the floor.
The engineers frantically detach the jury-rigged cables and rush into cover at the rear corners of the chamber. The electrical warnings are gone.
"If there is, then all the better we all get out of dodge ASAP. We can ensure your safety assuming we get you the hell out of that room before it gets caught in crossfire or some hot head makes the autos murder everything in here, us included. So yeah, we're kinda on a tight schedule if you haven't figured that out yet, we wouldn't have time to kill or rob even if we wanted to. Not that any of us want to of course, you know shit is these days, foes one day, friends another. We'd rather not waste our bullets shooting people we could be fighting alongside next week for all we know."The barrier finally falls and the door swings open. Issue is, the frame hasn't actually breached the wall above, it just cut downwards through it, meaning it's still intact. One of the soldiers, a figure clad in full ballistic body armor with the mixed grey hues of urban camouflage, walks in assault rifle in hand.
"Either you guys are real damn fast, or I call bullshit on that mess." After a few seconds, he finally looks up, horrified gaze meeting the camera array that serves as the eyes of the LATRANS.
"Oh fuck me." He proceeds to throw his rifle, grenades and magazines away and raises his hands.
"...shit. Okay, okay, you've got us. We're putting down our weapons, no need to do anything to hasty... No need to worry about the frame back there, it's an auto, so as long as we don't tell it to do anything, it won't hurt you" That statement seemed almost, like it was prepared in advance. Rehearsed even. You think you also hear someone nervously remark in a sing-song voice
"Told you so."The rest of the squad walks in, hands up and noticeably relieved of their armaments
"Just a heads up, a few buddies of ours have a few buddies of yours at gunpoint, now look, we don't want any trouble, but we kinda need to make sure you guys don't just kill us all. No offense.""I WILL KILL THEM ALL!"
If I have enough control to fire the autocannon while approaching, do so. If not, just close as fast as possible and rip them apart. Focus on mobility and dodging incase of attacks.
[TRANS--: 7/5] The feeling begins to fade, reality, oh so clear, oh so loud crashes back to you. Realizing that you are running headfirst into an enemy squad and soon-to-be shrapnel storm, you quickly stop and backpedal a bit. A fifth shell explodes above, creating a large cloud of smoke, switching to UV cameras you see through the smoke as if it were but a large wisp of steam.
[UTAR vs. SDEF: 11 vs. 3, 3, 3, 0, 2, 2] BANG. BANG. BANG. And the PUPPETs are gone! The spindly frames evaporate into shrapnel which shreds several storefronts after the next four shells, fragmentation ordnance land amongst them. Looks like you didn't need to do much, aside from stare sheepishly.
"...hmm so that is the power of the cursed frame. You back with us O'Greenahan? Anyway now to mop up the infantry proceed into the main compound ahead. If you need artillery support, try and lure them out of the facility, there'd be too much collateral if we tried bombarding our own infrastructure.""..Uh. Well.. We could.. Armor up the thruster? Maybe get it to be steerable with the gimbal. Or we could just surrender." Miaoko looked over at the thruster, then he looked up at the gantry, watching for any movement. And try to hallucinate the grimore.
You see the squads of soldiers grouping above occupied work cubicles and dropping grenades into them, judging by the distinct lack of explosions and the objects in their hands, they can use remote detonators instead of timers. They are approaching your position and will arrive within 1 minute.
Grimoire hallucinated.
Derek uses Bio Scan on the area outside the door, where the enemy soldiers say they will breach. Meanwhile he shouts.
"Get the Hydraulics on, and hook the electricity onto this terminal! Prepare for a breach!"
"There are four of them, two there-ish,"She points towards the door seem.
"aaaand two sorta there-ish"Her point shifts rightwards.
"I've detected a spike in Neuropeptide Y and Cortisol levels. Considering the minor needle wounds in their legs, they're probably raw recruits who've just
taken NPY doses."She speaks with a bored monotonous voice.
"Since you don't have a clue what I just said, Cortisol is a stress hormone, NPY suppresses the stupid urges that stress drives such as attempting to breathe water while drowning. Important in preventing mental problems, and naturally causes a drop in Cortisol. Increases survival rate but doesn't really raise actual combat skill - in short it makes you not dumb, you understand?"Her tone remains quite patronizing.
"Other than the usual gut flora, non-aggressive thyroid cancer and a case of... oh for god's sake how? ugh~, they're also carrying some pathogens foreign to this planet. You should be fine though, you're inoculated against them already, well probably unless they got some super virus that turns you to jelly if you aren't used to it. Doubt it though."Good thing the System League were allies a few years back. When two factions are at each other's throats for a long time, or just withholding vaccination data from each other, wars tend to get rather, messy. Soldiers can end up becoming walking biological weapons with payloads of diseases that their foes lack sufficient immunity to. Granted, half the time it's just influenza (the infuriatingly persistent phallic thorn that perpetually sodomizes humanity's sides), but even that can be lethal when it gets in the way of not getting shot.
"What do we power it with?""The chamber! We can reroute the power-supply!""Are you fucking kidding me, that is not going to work.""Shut up and help me with this damn cable, if it doesn't we're dead."Uh, it seems to be done. Emphasis on "seems". It's hard to tell whether or not the chamber's power-supply is actually sufficient to power the entire frame, after all you aren't in the cockpit and it isn't actually on right now.
With a roar, the breaching charges tears through a section of the wall just right of the barricade. Thick smoke billows through the newly formed entrance followed by the same gruff voice, emanating now from somewhere within the haze
"Halt and surrender, or we start shooting.""Their bluffing for now, the idiots forgot to put on, or don't have goggles - I can sense their eye irritation... deeefinitely newbies,"She assumes the tone of a patronizing mother.
"Now play nice with them, no unnecessary extreme violence. Have fun dear!"I should probably start looking around for any baddies to shoot at. That's my thing.
You head outside of the bar into the street, when you leave the stinking bar you are greeted with the stench of off-food and something... slightly musky, like fur? The "street" barely qualifies as such, with the entrance of the bar lying on the T-intersection of two alleys barely wide enough for two cars to pass, and a thin sidewalk on one side. The buildings are made of brick, stained black by the soot from the factories, each about five stories, above them, smog sits thick and impenetrable. It seems that both extension cords are outside as well, trailing off into the distance.
Amongst the refuse of newspapers and garbage surrounding the driveways out of the blue-collar housing is something large, furry and moving. It appears to be a distressingly large brown bear, it's ears prick up at the sound of your movement and proceeds to slowly amble towards you. Your head is only at it's shoulder level and it becomes distressingly apparent that its eyes have an azure glow to them. Once it gets near you the stench of alcohol becomes overwhelming and it becomes quite apparent that its lumbering steps are the results of heavy intoxication.
It gets close and begins licking your pants and hands, barking occasionally like an excited dog although in a much deeper tone.
Another strange thing happens around the same time. A quadcopter with a large array of cameras and sensors jammed into its central node flies past quite
rapidly and smashes through a window into the bar below, you smell a faint whiff of something sickly sweet before the smell of the alley rushes back to you.
A loud bang and the sound of something shatter follows shortly.
The bear looks at it briefly before continuing to lick the alcohol stains off of you.
Um... study the area?
You are inside a engineering room with another male human and a deskchair attached to a rocket. There are four walls and no ceiling on the room, the walls are made of scorched iron that is able to withstand high temperature. Approximately 20m above you are several crisscrossed gantries and a large number of interconnected tracks for the mechanical arms to roll along, on the gantry you can see what look to be soldiers they are moving in groups along the gantries and gathering in certain positions. You can correctly deduce that they are locating active cubicles and taking control of them, via the tested strategy of dropping
grenades into them and demanding surrender. It is likely that you will face the choice between grenade explosions and capture within the next minute or less.
-time's up-
An explosion.
Stones shift, squealing and crackling.
They tumble, scraping down along the colony walls.
More explosions, reverberating throughout the colony.
Gunfire. Detonations. They must've hit a munitions stockpile.
Several thousand dollars, up in smoke.
Lights out.
The lights of the lamps perpetual no more.
Darkness. Several seconds long. Eviscerated by the return of light.
Normality does not return with it.
Third Floor.
Thunder. Indoors. In the colony. A frenzied rumble.
It surges. It screeches. It continues without end.
Temperatures fall. Cold winds rush forth.
A tempest has come.
First Floor.
Alarms. Sirens.
Evacuation order. Now mandatory.
Retreat to the center it says.
Retreat to the center it cries.
They are here.
You can start screaming now.
Author
Topic: Perplexicon - Down the Foxhole - Raining Mecha (Read 177101 times)