Post by CAPT Issac R. Madden on Aug 25, 2012 9:56:50 GMT 1
And here we go. I'll give my muse credit: when she decides to be inspiring, she does a good job at it.
Take a deep breath, Kyle, the young mech pilot thinks to himself as he adjusts his goggles and runs his gaze over the orange glow of his heads-up display for what seems to be the hundredth time. You’ve trained for this. You’re ready.
“Listen up, recruits,” a clipped male voice says over the radio, breaking Kyle’s reverie. “Your objective is simple: clear the area of all enemy MTs. If you can do that, you’ll be fully registered as Ravens. Remember that this is your only shot: don’t blow it.”
“Hah! No problem,” Kyle’s fellow recruit, a brash hot-headed loudmouth who has quickly gotten on Kyle’s bad side says smugly, his voice dripping arrogance. “Hey, do I get extra points if I bail out that hunk of junk Shorty here calls an AC? Seriously, that thing is like a walking scrapyard.”
Knowing it’ll get under his rival’s skin, Kyle keys his microphone. “You know,” he starts, his tone dry. “I was having a hard time naming my AC. Now I have one less thing to worry about.”
“Cut the chatter, you two,” the evaluator says sternly, although something about his voice is saying that he’s sort of amused by the exchange. “We’re two minutes away from the drop zone.”
“Acknowledged,” Kyle says, taking another series of deep breaths to calm the fluttering in his stomach as he watches the countdown to drop off tick away on his chronometer. Ten seconds… five…
“Let’s do this,” he says over the comm link as the transport’s bay door opens and he pilots his AC out onto the deserted city where the test is taking place. “AC Scrapyard engaging,” he says, flipping a quartet of switches above his right shoulder to activate the mech’s weapons suite.
“Combat system: engaged,” the computer’s mechanical female voice says as the targeting system and weapons come online.
“AC Skullcrusher engaging,” his rival responds, as he takes off, lighting the boosters on his mech: a near clone of Scrapyard in that it’s a basic no-frills AC with a standard humanoid layout: a left shoulder-mounted radar, an entry-level rifle and beam saber on the right and left arms respectively, and a small missile launcher only capable of single-fire on the right shoulder. The main difference is Skullcrusher looks brand-new off the factory line and has uprated boosters and electronics while Scrapyard is covered in rust, has equipment onboard that dates back to some of the earliest ACs ever developed, and overall looks like it shouldn’t even be able to stand without a crane supporting it.
“My radar’s showing eight contacts,” Kyle says, going airborne so he can get a better view of the operations area: a structually sound, but completely abandoned urban area. Landing on one of the abandoned office buildings, he gets a quick feel for the area, noting where his radar is picking up the enemy MTs.
“Don’t worry, I’ll let you pick up my scraps,” his rival says smugly, diving in head-on, rifle blasting away at anything that moves.
Deciding on a more subtle approach, Kyle maneuvers his way over the rooftops to the enemy’s flank before launching his own attack. Dropping from his vantage point, he ignites his AC’s beam saber and slices the nearest MT, a small bipedal vehicle with a centrally mounted rifle and rocket launcher, cleanly in half before turning his rifle to a nearby pair of identical MTs and opening fire. By the time the MT pilots realize what’s happened, they’re down to half their strength and are clearly about to panic as their movements lose any kind of cohesion in their unit as Kyle’s rival smashes his way through their ranks.
“Last one!” his rival crows as he charges the remaining MT.
Kyle is just about to charge in himself, but he stops when he notices a new blip on his radar screen. Keying his mic, he reports: “Unknown contact. It appears to be some kind of transport.”
Immediately, the evaluator answers, “I see it too. Looks like he’s dropping off some more MTs. This isn’t part of the test, but go ahead and take them out.”
“Copy, engaging,” Kyle replies flipping a pair of switches above his left shoulder before hitting a lit red button he’d labeled “Hold on to your ass” with a piece of masking tape and black marker. Hearing the familiar whine of turbines spinning up, he braces himself just before two massive boosters on the back of his AC's core light up and sends the vehicle speeding at over five hundred kilometers per hour across the combat area to the enemy drop zone. Cutting out the over boosters before they overheat, he flips another switch, arming Scrapyard’s missile launcher.
“Come on, come on…” he mutters to himself, waiting for the fire control system to lock onto the target: one of three heavily armored MTs carrying bazookas and thick shields. When he gets the lock, he fires a small missile and starts strafing around his targets, picking away at them from a distance while they try to draw a bead on him.
“You’re sure taking your sweet time,” his rival taunts, diving into the throng as he had before, rifle blazing… at least initially. “Fuck! I’m out of rifle ammo!” he shouts, trying to use his beam saber to cut his way out of the pack.
Snickering at his rival’s brashness backfiring on him, Kyle switches back to his rifle and closes in, firing as quickly as can, destroying two of the MTs while his rival finishes the third. “Might I recommend a new FCS for your AC?” Kyle asks in a deadpan tone. “Firing two hundred rounds for little effect makes one wonder if your AC is truly up to spec.” Pausing for a beat, he continues. “Might I also recommend a new paint job? It seems you got scorched a bit in there.”
“Shut it, small-fry,” his rival sneers.
“I hate to intrude on your conversation,” the evaluator says over the radio, a smile in his voice. “But mission accomplished. You both performed well. Welcome to an elite few… Ravens…”
“Just you wait, you little shit,” Kyle’s rival starts, clearly pissed-off. “I’ll beat your ass in the arena.”
Deciding to just ignore him, Kyle switches his AC back to normal mode and heads for the waiting transport. An hour and a half later, he’s sitting in a bar called “The Nest”; a bar that caters to Ravens and is run by Global Cortex: the firm that acts as a middleman between the Ravens and their clients. Sipping at his beer, he endures the back-slapping congratulations some of the more friendly veteran Ravens have been extending to the newest inductees in their order.
“So, what do we call you?” a tall and lanky pilot with longish tan hair, a slightly cocky grin, and an adrenaline junkie personality who goes by the callsign “Cascade” asks the diminutive new Raven.
“Still haven’t figured that one out,” Kyle answers honestly as he adjusts the gun metal grey glasses that he wears when not piloting Scrapyard, knowing that the Ravens rarely, if ever, go by anything but their callsigns when among one another.
“Be careful,” Cascade answers. “If you take too long, we’ll come up with a callsign for you. Maybe let Fixer or Doral come up with it.”
Great. An asshole or a joker, Kyle thinks taking a long drink from his beer as he thinks. Thinking back on his mission, how he’d stalked his enemy before pouncing on them and how fiercely he’d fought when an ambush wasn’t an option. “Call me… Lynx,” he decides, bracing himself to be ridiculed as he realizes how cheesy it has to sound.
“Ehh, it’s better than nothing, I suppose,” Cascade says as he knocks back a shot of Liquid Cocaine. “You gonna buy yourself a new AC or what?”
“Not right now. I spent too many months rebuilding Scrapyard to just throw her away. Besides, she acquitted herself well during my test,” Kyle answers.
Shrugging, Cascade reaches out and grabs the smaller man by the back of his grey, grease-stained coveralls.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” Kyle asks sharply, trying to break loose.
“Tradition,” Cascade explains smugly as a pair of Ravens, a brother-sister pair of fraternal twins who go by the callsigns “Twinhead-W” and “Twinhead-B” respectively, saunter over with a pair of cheap costume wings they’d spray painted flat black. “You’re a new Raven so you gotta wear the wings.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Kyle answers, still struggling, but to no avail.
“Come on,” Twinhead-B says, her voice deceptively sweet in comparison to the mischievous grin on her face. “Don’t be a spoil sport.”
“Yeah,” Twinhead-W adds, his expression amused. “Or we can always do to you what we did to Strasbourg: get you drunk, wait til you pass out, and then we really screw with you. Your pick.”
Muttering a string of curses, Kyle stops squirming and says “Give me the damned wings,” holding out his hand for the embarrassing accessory.
Looking like she’s trying not to bust out in laughter, Twinhead-B hands over the wings. Scowling in annoyance, Kyle shrugs into them, feeling like a fool.
From across the bar, several Ravens start cracking up, their raucous laughter echoing off the walls. “I can’t fucking believe he actually did it,” a large, burly man who goes by the callsign “Grand Chief” manages, almost doubled over from laughter.
“I get the feeling that this ‘tradition’ is a new one?” Kyle asks with a glare at Cascade who is nearly in tears from laughing so hard.
“You could say that,” the former street racer answers between gasps for breath. “You’re the first one,” he manages before completely losing it.
Fuck this noise, Kyle thinks, about to rip the stupid wings off.
“C’mon, Lynx,” Twinhead-B says, draping a slender arm over Kyle’s shoulders. “Lighten up a bit. Everyone in here gets pranked every now and then. Tell you what: your next beer’s on my brother.”
“Hey! Why me?” Twinhead-W asks in protest.
“As you’re so quick to point out, brother, you’re the one at the top of our class,” she counters, sounding slightly bitter about Twinhead-W’s success. Leaning in to Kyle she whispers, "By the way... your rival, Reaper? He's got it worse. Seems someone replaced his usual motorcycle with a frilly pink scooter..."
“Whatever,” Twinhead-W answers, acting like the disparity in rank is an old issue between him and his sister.
Allowing himself to be steered over to the main crowd, Kyle feels something that he hasn’t felt in several years: like he actually belongs to a group instead of being an outsider.
Take a deep breath, Kyle, the young mech pilot thinks to himself as he adjusts his goggles and runs his gaze over the orange glow of his heads-up display for what seems to be the hundredth time. You’ve trained for this. You’re ready.
“Listen up, recruits,” a clipped male voice says over the radio, breaking Kyle’s reverie. “Your objective is simple: clear the area of all enemy MTs. If you can do that, you’ll be fully registered as Ravens. Remember that this is your only shot: don’t blow it.”
“Hah! No problem,” Kyle’s fellow recruit, a brash hot-headed loudmouth who has quickly gotten on Kyle’s bad side says smugly, his voice dripping arrogance. “Hey, do I get extra points if I bail out that hunk of junk Shorty here calls an AC? Seriously, that thing is like a walking scrapyard.”
Knowing it’ll get under his rival’s skin, Kyle keys his microphone. “You know,” he starts, his tone dry. “I was having a hard time naming my AC. Now I have one less thing to worry about.”
“Cut the chatter, you two,” the evaluator says sternly, although something about his voice is saying that he’s sort of amused by the exchange. “We’re two minutes away from the drop zone.”
“Acknowledged,” Kyle says, taking another series of deep breaths to calm the fluttering in his stomach as he watches the countdown to drop off tick away on his chronometer. Ten seconds… five…
“Let’s do this,” he says over the comm link as the transport’s bay door opens and he pilots his AC out onto the deserted city where the test is taking place. “AC Scrapyard engaging,” he says, flipping a quartet of switches above his right shoulder to activate the mech’s weapons suite.
“Combat system: engaged,” the computer’s mechanical female voice says as the targeting system and weapons come online.
“AC Skullcrusher engaging,” his rival responds, as he takes off, lighting the boosters on his mech: a near clone of Scrapyard in that it’s a basic no-frills AC with a standard humanoid layout: a left shoulder-mounted radar, an entry-level rifle and beam saber on the right and left arms respectively, and a small missile launcher only capable of single-fire on the right shoulder. The main difference is Skullcrusher looks brand-new off the factory line and has uprated boosters and electronics while Scrapyard is covered in rust, has equipment onboard that dates back to some of the earliest ACs ever developed, and overall looks like it shouldn’t even be able to stand without a crane supporting it.
“My radar’s showing eight contacts,” Kyle says, going airborne so he can get a better view of the operations area: a structually sound, but completely abandoned urban area. Landing on one of the abandoned office buildings, he gets a quick feel for the area, noting where his radar is picking up the enemy MTs.
“Don’t worry, I’ll let you pick up my scraps,” his rival says smugly, diving in head-on, rifle blasting away at anything that moves.
Deciding on a more subtle approach, Kyle maneuvers his way over the rooftops to the enemy’s flank before launching his own attack. Dropping from his vantage point, he ignites his AC’s beam saber and slices the nearest MT, a small bipedal vehicle with a centrally mounted rifle and rocket launcher, cleanly in half before turning his rifle to a nearby pair of identical MTs and opening fire. By the time the MT pilots realize what’s happened, they’re down to half their strength and are clearly about to panic as their movements lose any kind of cohesion in their unit as Kyle’s rival smashes his way through their ranks.
“Last one!” his rival crows as he charges the remaining MT.
Kyle is just about to charge in himself, but he stops when he notices a new blip on his radar screen. Keying his mic, he reports: “Unknown contact. It appears to be some kind of transport.”
Immediately, the evaluator answers, “I see it too. Looks like he’s dropping off some more MTs. This isn’t part of the test, but go ahead and take them out.”
“Copy, engaging,” Kyle replies flipping a pair of switches above his left shoulder before hitting a lit red button he’d labeled “Hold on to your ass” with a piece of masking tape and black marker. Hearing the familiar whine of turbines spinning up, he braces himself just before two massive boosters on the back of his AC's core light up and sends the vehicle speeding at over five hundred kilometers per hour across the combat area to the enemy drop zone. Cutting out the over boosters before they overheat, he flips another switch, arming Scrapyard’s missile launcher.
“Come on, come on…” he mutters to himself, waiting for the fire control system to lock onto the target: one of three heavily armored MTs carrying bazookas and thick shields. When he gets the lock, he fires a small missile and starts strafing around his targets, picking away at them from a distance while they try to draw a bead on him.
“You’re sure taking your sweet time,” his rival taunts, diving into the throng as he had before, rifle blazing… at least initially. “Fuck! I’m out of rifle ammo!” he shouts, trying to use his beam saber to cut his way out of the pack.
Snickering at his rival’s brashness backfiring on him, Kyle switches back to his rifle and closes in, firing as quickly as can, destroying two of the MTs while his rival finishes the third. “Might I recommend a new FCS for your AC?” Kyle asks in a deadpan tone. “Firing two hundred rounds for little effect makes one wonder if your AC is truly up to spec.” Pausing for a beat, he continues. “Might I also recommend a new paint job? It seems you got scorched a bit in there.”
“Shut it, small-fry,” his rival sneers.
“I hate to intrude on your conversation,” the evaluator says over the radio, a smile in his voice. “But mission accomplished. You both performed well. Welcome to an elite few… Ravens…”
“Just you wait, you little shit,” Kyle’s rival starts, clearly pissed-off. “I’ll beat your ass in the arena.”
Deciding to just ignore him, Kyle switches his AC back to normal mode and heads for the waiting transport. An hour and a half later, he’s sitting in a bar called “The Nest”; a bar that caters to Ravens and is run by Global Cortex: the firm that acts as a middleman between the Ravens and their clients. Sipping at his beer, he endures the back-slapping congratulations some of the more friendly veteran Ravens have been extending to the newest inductees in their order.
“So, what do we call you?” a tall and lanky pilot with longish tan hair, a slightly cocky grin, and an adrenaline junkie personality who goes by the callsign “Cascade” asks the diminutive new Raven.
“Still haven’t figured that one out,” Kyle answers honestly as he adjusts the gun metal grey glasses that he wears when not piloting Scrapyard, knowing that the Ravens rarely, if ever, go by anything but their callsigns when among one another.
“Be careful,” Cascade answers. “If you take too long, we’ll come up with a callsign for you. Maybe let Fixer or Doral come up with it.”
Great. An asshole or a joker, Kyle thinks taking a long drink from his beer as he thinks. Thinking back on his mission, how he’d stalked his enemy before pouncing on them and how fiercely he’d fought when an ambush wasn’t an option. “Call me… Lynx,” he decides, bracing himself to be ridiculed as he realizes how cheesy it has to sound.
“Ehh, it’s better than nothing, I suppose,” Cascade says as he knocks back a shot of Liquid Cocaine. “You gonna buy yourself a new AC or what?”
“Not right now. I spent too many months rebuilding Scrapyard to just throw her away. Besides, she acquitted herself well during my test,” Kyle answers.
Shrugging, Cascade reaches out and grabs the smaller man by the back of his grey, grease-stained coveralls.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” Kyle asks sharply, trying to break loose.
“Tradition,” Cascade explains smugly as a pair of Ravens, a brother-sister pair of fraternal twins who go by the callsigns “Twinhead-W” and “Twinhead-B” respectively, saunter over with a pair of cheap costume wings they’d spray painted flat black. “You’re a new Raven so you gotta wear the wings.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Kyle answers, still struggling, but to no avail.
“Come on,” Twinhead-B says, her voice deceptively sweet in comparison to the mischievous grin on her face. “Don’t be a spoil sport.”
“Yeah,” Twinhead-W adds, his expression amused. “Or we can always do to you what we did to Strasbourg: get you drunk, wait til you pass out, and then we really screw with you. Your pick.”
Muttering a string of curses, Kyle stops squirming and says “Give me the damned wings,” holding out his hand for the embarrassing accessory.
Looking like she’s trying not to bust out in laughter, Twinhead-B hands over the wings. Scowling in annoyance, Kyle shrugs into them, feeling like a fool.
From across the bar, several Ravens start cracking up, their raucous laughter echoing off the walls. “I can’t fucking believe he actually did it,” a large, burly man who goes by the callsign “Grand Chief” manages, almost doubled over from laughter.
“I get the feeling that this ‘tradition’ is a new one?” Kyle asks with a glare at Cascade who is nearly in tears from laughing so hard.
“You could say that,” the former street racer answers between gasps for breath. “You’re the first one,” he manages before completely losing it.
Fuck this noise, Kyle thinks, about to rip the stupid wings off.
“C’mon, Lynx,” Twinhead-B says, draping a slender arm over Kyle’s shoulders. “Lighten up a bit. Everyone in here gets pranked every now and then. Tell you what: your next beer’s on my brother.”
“Hey! Why me?” Twinhead-W asks in protest.
“As you’re so quick to point out, brother, you’re the one at the top of our class,” she counters, sounding slightly bitter about Twinhead-W’s success. Leaning in to Kyle she whispers, "By the way... your rival, Reaper? He's got it worse. Seems someone replaced his usual motorcycle with a frilly pink scooter..."
“Whatever,” Twinhead-W answers, acting like the disparity in rank is an old issue between him and his sister.
Allowing himself to be steered over to the main crowd, Kyle feels something that he hasn’t felt in several years: like he actually belongs to a group instead of being an outsider.