"What? Ungh...."
Lewis rubs his eyes.
"Alright...first thing's first."
Open the Matchbox.
Inside the matchbox are three matches of unremarkable construction and appearance. Wow. Were it not for the fact that you definitely did not pay good money for this, you probably would like a refund, or at to least complain about the value for money or the utter lack thereof. Honestly, with all its elaborate fractal art, the box itself is worth more than its actual contents.
Well, at least you could just randomly ignite all of them and derive some happiness from it. Oh wait, the person who does that dies at the end of the story. Whoopsies.
Ao Shi
"I buy you two dinners and something nice! Assuming I can get my money back from my first corpse. Oh, and nice seat! Don't mind if I break it!" Ao shouts while running.
22 ed. If it works this time then use it against meat boys while keeping distance. Aiming eyes. Otherwise keep running towards the core, which IS behind next door. It must be. Will it to be.
"You seem to be really desperate for someone who is completely unharmed. Unless you want to become 'THE MAGNIFICENT PAINLESS MAN!' or something? I mean being painless can mean you die without warning. Poof and you're dead. Actually more of a sort of pop noise, or perhaps swearing followed by a gurgle?"[COMP: 6/6] A pistol appears in your hand, it appears to be a chrome .357 pistol with a thin extension on the front similar to a silencer but not quite large enough. There is an under-slung laser light and the chamber is a battery of roughly the same dimensions but hexagonal, the battery is vaguely similar to some of the high energy batteries you have worked with before all this at the maintenance facility.
[UTAR vs. MDEF: 6 vs. 6] You spin around mid stride and swing your arm around. The instant its barrel aligns with the glaring eye of the lumbering mass of meat in the center of their V formation, you pull the trigger. There is the distinctive crack of a gunshot, though without the muzzle flash as a bullet erupts from the gun. Reacting ahead of time, your target leans backwards and buckles their knees, sliding forwards as they dodge the shot by the barest of margins. Though it remains unscathed, its little stunt slows it down, resulting in the formation adopting the shape of a reversed V.
[TRAN: 6/5] ((What the hell, why are all the rolls for your turn 6s?)) The door wavers and flickers as you concentrate, as you open the it, the entire corridor flickers and vibrates before shortening from an infinitely long hall to a short corridor that ends with a large room filled with orange light. The walls are draped with horrific pink flesh and in the center is a glowing orange orb held by bone spikes. Two more meat monstrosities spawn and another different entity a large figure in the shape of a man. It's skin is black it has a lipless mouth filled with teeth and it is armed and armored in white bone that seemingly grows from its flesh.
"Sounds good. Anyway, about to try something that will either kill me, do something interesting or make me look completely stupid."
Try to nom a little on the coal.
If nothing happens, attempt to use "12" near the windows again. Hope the Dark Lord answers my prayers.
Failing that, remember that I can summon my rifle and just shoot the windows and the monoliths.
You, for whatever unknowable reason, decide to start nibbling on a shriveled heart of coal. You can only imagine that it makes for quite interesting viewing to whatever poor soul is tasked with watching the feeds of the cameras monitoring you. The coal tastes like, well, coal. It probably isn't too pleasant to consume, even in tiny nibbles.
[COMP: 4] Fizzle. Presumably, your prayer timeout was too high, guess it probably would have been a good idea to have gone and made a sacrifice at a coaligned altar first, but where the hell are you meant to find a convenient corpse at this hour let alone an altar to the Dark Lord? Well, at least you didn't get struck by lightning, or shot with a wide-angle disintegration beam.
Okay, allow me to put this into perspective. 09AIBRs do not have a selector for their firing mode. They have two - one selects the mode (whether or not it continues firing when the trigger is pulled), the other the rate (depending on the mode, this is either the amount of bullets fired per burst or the rate of automatic fire). This is because at the highest settings of the latter, it is utter overkill for anything that requires normal burst firing and discharges its magazine at such a rate that it becomes unsuitable for the suppressive fire that automatic fire is meant to provide. This setting isn't for those circumstances. This setting is for the situations where you need to fucking impale an armored van with four supersonic spears of white hot metal.
Now the thing is, that is all under the assumption that it has a finite amount of ammunition in each barrel. This does not apply to you.
Conjuring your weapon, you burst-fire with the highest rate setting sending what are effectively beams of metal across the store front, emulating some sort of ridiculous action hero that hates window dressings. A horrible, buzzing roar fills the air, soon followed by the shrill shrieks of the triggered alarms. The windows are shattered. The monoliths shredded, their now inert wires littering the floor.
"Alright, this is when I ask for help."
Arrow of Simurgh, go! If there's an obvious target, take a revolver shot at said weakpoint. If there's no weakpoint (or if shooting it is ineffective), just run past it. Focus more on getting past it than killing it completely.
Time seems to halt once more and the figure's visage is shattered apart as if it were glass. What remains resembles an X-ray image, revealing armor plates beneath their outfit, and a skeleton inside. The gaps in the armor, and the gaps in the skeleton both glow faintly, and near each shoulder where the points of weakness intersect, bright but not quite blinding lights shine.
A shame you don't seem to have any explosives on you. Those are fun. And useful.
Especially against this thing. It's a walking skeleton. Not especially durable (or original), even with that light plate.
Issue is, it's persistent, and very hard to kill. You could crush it's skull without consequence.
A few shots should blow off an arm. Though it can always just reattach it given enough time.
[UTAR: AUTOSUCCESS] A ghostly visage of yourself rushes forwards and brings a hand up. Within their palm, a revolver precipitates from nothingness, a series of lines, representing bullet trajectories inscribe themselves upon the frozen air, intersecting one of the points of weakness. As time comes rushing back, you retrace those simulated steps and expertly discharge three rounds into the shoulder of your oblivious foe, blowing off its right arm along with the baton grasped by it.
The figure halts and glances briefly at its severed arm. Then, with definite nonchalance it turns to face you as you race by its side, sightless eyes behind a sightless mask gazing upon you. The doors have already swung open in anticipation of your approach, revealing a carriage formed entirely out of what appears to be glass. The undead guard however, hasn't given up just yet. It sprints, speed matching yours as the critter riding it scrambles to its front, raising its buckler in your direction.
You are now hurtling towards the next carriage with a fashionably challenged skeleton (sans one arm) running alongside you.
He nodded. "Okay." He then got up, jogging off in the direction of his workshop. Navigating his way as necessary unless they were stopped by something. "I'm gonna go check my workshop, hope it still works.."
James nods, following Miaoko.
Now in the new and noticeable absence of soldiers who are liable to deliver bullet-ridden deaths to wayward engineers, the two of you are able to simply walk down to the main foyer and back to the workshop (after a short detour wherein a group of confused soldiers had to be given a brief explanation of why there is a rocket-propelled death chair lying around). Barring a few bullet holes of varying diameters and depths, it looks perfectly fine, except, for the fact that only the dull orange emergency lighting works for some reason. According to the PDA, the power got cut sometime after your daring escape, though the generator's still running.
"It'll probably take some time before my frame is repaired. Get some R and R. I'm going to take a walk." Beirus states to his squad before heading off into the facility.
"Jus, you know anything about what we'll be facing in that storm? Also, seems like I got some more resources. Mind telling me what I did so I can keep doing it?" He asks his handler after getting some distance from the rest of his squad.
Talky stuff.
((And now I can faff about in the facility. Yay.))
The storm is unnatural, I cannot predict it. As in, more unnatural than usual.
It was created from parts, ideas, things it shouldn't be made from.
Just continue fighting. You're a soldier after all.
The repair crew that came with the reinforcements start repairing and replacing the damaged parts of your squad's frames as you walk around the facility.
"Captain O'Greenahan, this is command. One of our bases has been destroyed in the city, we don't know what happened, one of the pilots was delivering supplies there and neither he nor the staff have reported in.
Be advised that the Lone Wolf protocol is active fully now, we'll be sending pilots such as yourself on solo reconnaissance missions. The more successful you are, the more resources we can send your way, admittedly part of which would just be salvage, but something is better than nothing eh?
Also we captured something, it took out a base, on its own. We had to deploy an ARES model to destroy it, you would think that it would be completely gone. We did too. It fully repaired itself within 6 minutes and 16 seconds.
We've been picking up some strange transmissions as well, they claim to be our people, and it seems to all check out. But they're, well, if they're to be believed, they're moving faster than they should. We don't know who these clowns are, but they'll be arriving earlier than our scheduled reinforcements."Time for a bit of background information that you obviously know already, being a soldier and citizen of the NEE, which you definitely did not just receive from a load of text being shoved in the general direction of the puppeteer who controls you and who repeatedly badgers godlike beings on your behalf.
The ARES model armor frame is a heavy type frame reserved for ship and exotic combat. They are each the size of an 8 story building and have extraordinarily powerful with armor made from a ceramic-tungsten composite in addition to shielding. They are all fitted with Alcubierre drives and many different support systems that can only described as nigh-blackbox technology. Their weapons are utterly irresistible, the most iconic weapon of an ARES is the Solaris particle cannon, a weapon that can turn an entire ship into burning radioactive slag from a single grazing shot. In atmosphere they use 60mm rapid fire Gauss rifles, and a variety of explosive weapons (since particle weapons tend to irradiate everything when used in atmosphere). Despite their size ARES are extremely nimble due to their neural interface being a complete control unit rather than balance assist, along with this, their thrusters are unnaturally strong allowing these war machines to fly at Mach 4 in atmosphere.
"I wish to join the game, if it's all fine with you."
>So it shall be.They gesture in unison and conjure an image before you.
It is entirely sable, its emaciated form reassembling a shadow granted some twisted mockery of life. Gaping maws unlike those from any creature gape hungrily from the beneath gaps in the ribbed chitin that covers the majority of its body. Radiators protrude from its back, connected to thick wires that trail back into its torso. It's head, lacking any recognizable sensory organs, seems to be a coiled mass of stingers, lined with barbs and serrated blades. Around its major joints are armored plates, covering
something, you can't really see what. Sheathed inside a scabbard seeming welded to the pipes that form its left hip, and hilt firmly grasped by its right claw, is the distinctive form of a katana.
>This is your target. It being transported aboard a ship nearing orbit.>We will insert you into the ship.>Find it and attach this to it.Something congeals in your palm, it looks like a military award with a pale blue and white ribbon. The medallion itself has a rose etched upon it.
>Do not get caught.And then, everything goes black. You can't see it, but you can tell clothing has changed, you can feel it cling tightly to your skin. You can hear a quite humming, and feel out your surroundings. You're in a very small space, there are some sort of pole-like implements near you, with soft, puffy ends. Mops perhaps? You quickly determine that in front of you is a door and that you can push it open with ease and leave.
"What, you don't think I can handle it? What have you got in mind? I might surprise you."
Ask the shopkeeper, but if he still isn't interested take my leave.
If so specifically head back in the way of the "large grassy plaza" and look around. On the way there keep an eye open for the location of any large sheds or structures. Specifically anything that could... I don't know... house some PUPPET (or any other kind for that matter) frames? 
It's always nice to have a backup plan.
They stare at you for a few seconds before responding with short, sharp sentences.
"Your weapon doesn't have ammo. You forgot to put your rank identifiers on. You asked me for errands. Menial tasks. Low risk. Unrelated to combat ability. Something anyone can do."They pause, scowling for a bit before their features soften and reverting to their usual tone.
"Okay, I'll humor you. You see the people here have some weird technology, namely they have these automated nature study units that - ah screw it.... Well long story short, I want you to go out, hunt down, and bring me back a robotic laser deer with as little damage to it as possible."Judging by their expression, this isn't some kind of strange, nonsensical joke.
"If you do that, we've got a deal. I won't stop you from accepting, but, I'd just like to remind you again that you have an empty gun and a rope horse. The robo-deer have lasers and more robo-deer."
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Topic: Perplexicon - Down the Foxhole - Raining Mecha (Read 179599 times)