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>>2451895

You are Meteor Showa, a Maverick Hunter with a very respectable service history. Your career, bouncing between units and headquarters, has seen you rise from a teammate to a squad leader to a solo Hunter. After many trials and errors, your Rank has advanced from a middling B to a very high A, with insinuations from your commander that you may be adjudicated an S-Rank in coming weeks.

It hasn’t been easy, but the need was great, and you’ve found (to your great surprise) that you’re actually pretty good at your job. It turned out that your pre-Hunters work history of underwater salvage and construction was easily repurposed toward wartime rescue and deconstruction.

With courage and determination you’ve cleared the last of your latest roster, only to learn that an opportunistic Repliforce battalion has taken a 12th Tropical Unit outpost where you used to work.

The Hunters are stretched thin, their heaviest hitters are busy, and navigation is tasked to capacity.

You’re going in alone.

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>>2451899

A red bolt from the yellowing sky strikes cracked pavement. The warp field around you expands back into honest everyday physics, leaving you to be greeted by an atoll covered by anti-air placements – most of which are currently destroyed and smoking. You make a quick assessment and spot a pair of patrolling Knot Berets with an entourage of Mettaur D2s noticing your presence.

As one, the round bronze grunts of Repliforce each snap a grenade off their sides. Two of the mets turn to engage while the third chatters in unintelligible signal noise, the little radio attached to its helmet blinking rapidly.

“Already?” You sigh, and prepare to blaze through them on your way to real targets.

>ARMAMENT:

>Meteor Melter: Your “core system” special ability. A WEAPON projector in your mouth can generate and eject payloads of burning nano-thermite once every two to three seconds, indefinitely, in either raw or grenade form. Ruins the day of anything insufficiently armored.

>Remote Koi: You are equipped with a drone generator, the test model for core systems in subsequent sibling units. Your left arm can produce and control up to two flying koi mechaniloids, each armed with a low-damage laser in the mouth. They can move independently yet follow instructions via your HUD.

>Charge Buster: You have a three-stage plasma buster installed in your right arm. Your VWES is routed to project from here, with one exception.

>High-Phase Saber x2: You have two high-phase beam sabers, less for protracted dueling and more for powerful single hits, fitted to quick-release mechanisms in your forearms. You tend to favor them for brutal scissor swipes, devastating when paired with a dash.

>Pick a weapon and get to work.
>Ignore them and dash past.

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Hello everyone! With the blessing of Hunter Command and CainLabs, here is a secondary Maverick Hunter Quest set some time after where MHQ is now.

>Is this another April Fool's quest?
Nope. Eight Mavericks, upgrades, final stages -- it's another text-based Mega Man X game.

>Why?
Because it's fun.

>Won't this contradict MHQ?
I have endeavored to ensure that it will not, and will continuously check against HC and CL's plans so as not to create a paradox.

>How is it like/unlike MHQ?
Same world, similar themes; different setting, different cast, different author. The scope is somewhat narrower, however, in that there is an endpoint planned from the outset.

MHQ can go on as long as HC wills it; Shooting Star will go until the end of the story, whether that comes at the planned conclusion of the narrative or the unplanned end of the protagonist.

Have fun.

>>2451903
>High-phase Sabers
The other weapons seem kinda overkill in this situation.

Also, hai Scarab. Good to see you take up the QM mantle!

>>2451903
>>High-Phase Saber x2: You have two high-phase beam sabers, less for protracted dueling and more for powerful single hits, fitted to quick-release mechanisms in your forearms. You tend to favor them for brutal scissor swipes, devastating when paired with a dash.
Take out the alarm mettaur first, then let a koi scout the area ahead while we mop up the grunts.

>>2451917
>>2451928

You roll your neck – it takes a second, as you have a lot of it – and whip your arms out to your sides. Your saber hilts eject into place and you launch forward in a burst of EAS dash, arms crossed before you, as the Knot Berets look a little nonplussed at their grenades missing you by a mile.

The mets seem surprised by the land speed of a fish as well, but your red-bladed sabers solve their every problem. One broad sweep of both arms hitting their marching order broadside takes out all four of them. You halt on a dime, engage your secondary dash and rocket back at the Knot Berets. Holding your sabers to either side neatly bisects them and they explode without a fuss.

Such a waste.

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>>2451981
You stow the sabers and pop a pair of Remote Kois from your left buster. One you send to the blasted gun encampments, the other to the beach.

“Meteor Showa, landed and engaged,” you comm back to… anyone listening in the 5th. It’s more than likely you’re speaking to somebody’s queue. “Defense atoll’s been slammed, just nixed the token presence. Smoke’s coming from the main island. Heading there in a sec. Out.”

You press on, the smoke from the broken guns dissipating. Back in the day, you knew a few of the old-model Steel Berets who would half-heartedly man the turrets against foes who never came. Your first koi isn’t reading anyone, hostile or otherwise, but you follow it just to make sure…

“Diggs? Goldie? Miranda?”

… only to find half a titular beret, broken uncleanly. Though pressed for time, you dip your head to it and clap twice.

At which point something smashes into your second koi, replacing it in your HUD with an unobtrusive DRONE LOST alert.

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>>2451982
As you leave the ruin and run to the beach, you try to remember more pleasant days spent here. Your brief stint in the 12th was practically a vacation. Now the sand crawls not with off-duty Hunters and day-tripping government officials but a band of armed intruders.

Two in particular seem to be waiting for you.

They’re Raiden ride armors – the agile, lightly-armored masspro brawlers developed by Repliforce, supposedly equal to any 14th officer in the right hands. One rider spots you and pounds his friend’s shoulder to get his attention.

“That’s her! The Fire Fish!”

“Jerks,” you mutter. “I made out on that beach…”

This may call for bigger weapons.

>VWES-4: Over many adventures, you’ve filled out your Variable Weapon Emulator System quite well.

>EXHALATION BEAM: Your strongest weapon, this powerful coherent beam of electricity (combining the DNA of Thundering Knossos and Lord Explosion Destroy) can strike continuously until deactivated. 8 seconds maximum, 1 minimum. Though “stored” in your buster, the beam is routed through your mouth projector for greater temperature control, thereby preventing the use of Meteor Melter while equipped.

>SMOKE SPIKE: Claimed from Ozone Osprey and manually upgraded to the fullest extent. Fires a spike device which emits a corrosive heavier-than-air gas after embedding in practically any surface. Betrays conventional cloaking for foes in range and weakens armor with persistent contact; danger close. 24 shots, 1 cubic meter per spike.

>STAR SALVO: Starcross Leonid yielded this rain of miniature mid-range missiles, each with a small yet bright blast radius. 18 shots, and each shot fires a pair of missiles. Can be charged to fire four or six missiles at once, at increased weapon energy cost.

>SUN THIEF: The simple yet effective stock weapon of Blacklight Raven, this frontal cone ray nullifies all but the very strongest plasma ordinance (such as buster rounds and beam sabers) by shredding their electromagnetic envelopes. As a tactical defensive weapon, it deals no damage to solid mass. 32 seconds maximum, 0.5 minimum.

>Use a special weapon and waste the ride armors.
>They aren’t the objective. Try to dash past.

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>>2451988
>Use a special weapon and waste the ride armors.

A few seconds of Exhalation Beam should clean them both up, if lined up right.

>>2451988
>>“Jerks,” you mutter. “I made out on that beach…”

Do we have a fish head or regular head? Because the former provides hilarious imagery.

>STAR SALVO: Starcross Leonid yielded this rain of miniature mid-range missiles, each with a small yet bright blast radius. 18 shots, and each shot fires a pair of missiles. Can be charged to fire four or six missiles at once, at increased weapon energy cost

Toss a pair at each them finish'em with sabers

>>2451988
>Use a special weapon and waste the ride armors.
>EXHALATION BEAM: Your strongest weapon, this powerful coherent beam of electricity (combining the DNA of Thundering Knossos and Lord Explosion Destroy) can strike continuously until deactivated. 8 seconds maximum, 1 minimum. Though “stored” in your buster, the beam is routed through your mouth projector for greater temperature control, thereby preventing the use of Meteor Melter while equipped.

>>2451988
>Exhalation Beam.
Seems best.

>>2451988
>Exhalation Beam
don't get close to the big, punchy ride armors

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>>2452010
Mugshots and such will come in the fullness of time, but until then have an example.

In short: fish head. And yes, that's quite a mental image, isn't it? Non-standard reploid models must make do.

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>>2451997
>>2452012
>>2452014
>>2452028

Right. The heck with this.

You equip your favorite enemy-eraser and brace on your back foot. Sparks flaring off the tiny barbels at the corners of your mouth are all the cue the Repiforce soldiers get.

To say you spit lightning is to undersell the thundering buzz of doom blaring from the white beam as wide as a quarter of your height. It treats the ride armors’ shields like wind and their light armor like fog. You don’t even need the full second, but you give it to them anyway.

The Raidens vanish in feeble explosions, littering the sand with smoking parts. That almost makes you madder than the attack itself. You were built for dealing with wreckage, true, but the world has quite enough of that already. Whoever’s leading this merry band needs to go down quickly, to spare you from having to make fewer lives and more litter.

Your first koi catches up, swimming in the air and placidly orbiting you, awaiting direction. You pet it, just because.

With the water stretching before you to the outpost’s core island, the only question now is which depth to take. Thinking back to the months you spent with 6th Marine, “heavies sink…” meaning there are likely to be stronger foes the lower you go. However, the idiom concludes “to dodge the birds,” meaning you’ll be vulnerable to aerial and surface foes the higher you go.

Either way, you’re on a roll with no intent of stopping. Unlucky Repliforce units between you and your goal are going to have to deal.

>Take a shallow route.
>Take a deep route.

And:

>Favor VWES
>Favor non-VWES

>>2452064
>Take a deep route.
Use Sun Thief and Smoke Spike liberally(if those work underwater), but stick to koi and thermite otherwise.

>>2452064
>Take the deep route
Fuck CAS
>Favor VWES
Stronger enemies merit it

>>2452064
>Deep route
>Favor non-VWES, but use them if necessary.

Try to save our weapons with limited ammo for as long as possible.

>>2452083
>>Favor non-VWES, but use them if necessary.
dude. Having cake and eating it.

>>2452064
>>Take a deep route.
You can't mention birds without expecting us to want to dodge them

>>2452093
I mean use VWES as a last resort, but don’t lead with it. We might get a little bashed up on the way through, but better that than hitting the boss with barely any weapons available.

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>>2452073
>>2452074
>>2452083
>>2452093
>>2452102
>>2452106

You run into the surf, drone and all, and sink under the bright sheet of sunset sea. Once you’re fully submerged, the series of micro-jets in your tail take over, giving you free-range three-dimensional propulsion. It’s a wonder that more Hunters aren’t equipped with it, you think as you produce a second drone.

You follow the sea floor down. It’s not terribly deep as open water goes, but you’re glad for it as a drone registers a Wave Chaser and a couple of Eagle ride armors not far above the surface – probably rushing out to intercept you. Hah.

Your flash of smugness evaporates when your second drone sees the three King Poseidons skimming the sea floor towards you. Repliforce sure came equipped. You call back the drones and sic them on the mechaniloid you name A, charge up your buster and engage his friend B, and let C close distance.

“Showa again,” you comm. “Meeting resistance. Anybody keeping a tally?”

Poseidon A makes a spike-shooting buzzsaw spin at your fish, but they’re too nimble, and the persistent cutting lasers in their mouths ensure his attention is on them. Poseidon B swats aside your charge shot with its trident as C lunges at you, but it’s nothing a high-class swimmer like yourself can’t evade. A swipe and a stab with your water-boiling saber takes care of C as B presses his advantage. You twist to greet him with a grenade lob – adding a ptoo for effect to amuse yourself – which he catches in the chest. Molten metal eats his torso and a plasma shot takes out the eye in his mouth-like visor. As his LIFE core fails, Poseidon A explodes as well, going down stabbing ineffectually at your drones with about as much success as punching bees.

“Ten me, one my drones. … Anybody? Atajo?” No response.

You jet along the sand, arms to your sides to decrease drag, when both drones alert you to multiple incoming missiles. You order them off and they speed past you. Flashes of bright lines in the darkening blue precede bursts of popped missiles making a brief constellation. In your HUD, fists break through the explosions and cut your contact.

DRONE LOST
DRONE LOST

Well well…

>>2452200
Two dark shadows clarify out of the distance. Yet more ride armors – Frogs? – no, wrong silhouette. Repliforce’s oceanic ride armors, Sea Lions: one arm a Raiden fist, the other a compact twin Frog-tier missile launcher.

You switch to your own missiles and meet them head-on. Star Salvo rains into their aggressive shots, blinding the amateurs to your approach with flash and shock. One missile tags you, but you take it in stride as you cling to the cockpit rim of the lead Sea Lion and unload six missiles into his lap. The resulting explosion kickstarts your own jet dash to the other, but he’s ready for you, and not even dash aquabatics can keep two missiles from flashing your shields.

It’s of little consequence as you introduce the pilot to your special weapon. You self-consciously hope his yell wasn’t out of disgust as you spit raw burning thermite, grenadeless, straight from your mouth projector. He flails as you kick off his armor’s hull, fire a last pair of missiles and shoot past, letting him erupt.

>Star Salvo:
11/18.
>Health:
Safely scratched, far from concern, all in the line of duty.

That seemed to be the worst of it. One more King Poseidon late to the party barely has time to get off a round of spike-spinning before a charged buster shot and a cursory double-tap dismisses him.

After a moment you catch sight of a corpse as the water starts to shallow. You’d know that reticulated seafoam armor anywhere: it’s Aqua Kelpie, workaholic former outpost commander, likely dumped unceremoniously given how many parts are missing.

The poor guy... his job was a sinecure, but gosh darnit he took it seriously, every single day. He didn’t deserve this. The Berets didn’t deserve this. The whole place didn’t deserve this. So much waste…

>There are no enemies nearby. Take a minute to send him off.
>Don’t. There’s work to do.

>>2452207
>There are no enemies nearby. Take a minute to send him off.
What great loss indeed

>>2452207
>Take a minute to send him off

>>2452207
>There are no enemies nearby. Take a minute to send him off.

We owe it that much.

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>>2452218
>>2452224
>>2452232
You generate a koi drone to keep a lookout, wait the requisite few seconds and produce another.

Reploids generally take their culture from humans, but rites for dead reploids vary immensely, even within the Hunters. Any sutra would sound insincere coming from you, but a secular moment of silence feels insufficient.

And so you rely on a few lines from a long-dead author you adore, respectfully edited a little for the sake of solemnity and an oral recitation.

“Flames died,” you begin. “Sound died. Light died. Anghammarad looked at his hands. There was nothing there except heat, furnace heat, blasting heat that nevertheless made the shape of fingers."

"‘I have lost my clay,’ said the golem."

"YES, said Death,” -- you try as best you can to speak in small capital letters -- “THAT IS STANDARD. YOU ARE DEAD."

"‘Then who is this doing the listening?’"

"EVERYTHING THERE WAS ABOUT YOU THAT ISN’T CLAY.”

Your koi drones, ever alert, still register that you’re safely alone. Which is good, because emotion creeps into your recital.

“‘Do you have a command for me?’ said the remains of Anghammarad, standing up."

"NO, said Death. YOU HAVE REACHED THE PLACE WHERE THERE ARE NO MORE ORDERS. Anghammarad sat down again. GENERALLY PEOPLE LIKE TO MOVE ON, Death hinted. THEY LOOK FORWARD TO AN AFTERLIFE."

"‘I will stay here, please.’"

"HERE? THERE’S NOTHING TO DO HERE, said Death."

"‘Yes, I know,’ said the ghost of the golem. ‘It is perfect. I am free.’”

You never had the cosmetic endo work necessary to shed tears, but you would weep if you could. You let silence have its moment, then pat the fallen torso. “Take care, Kelpie.”

… He has an awful lot of blade wounds, now that you look closer. Solid-mass blades, at that. Hmm.

You leave him behind, fists clenched.

>>2452342

You emerge onto the sand like evolution in a hurry. The main outpost lies ahead, just three stories on elevated ground. Between you and the front door are yet more mettaurs, Knot Berets…

And their leader.

A Standard Beret, naval class with the square pauldrons of higher rank, stands perched on a Sea Lion G: the kind with a big shield on the punching arm. Two snub-nosed shoulder cannons, nearly mortars, hang slung back from the officer’s epaulettes. He applauds your slow approach, the setting sun glinting off the secondary shield-projector crystals at the corners of his collar. There’s confidence in his face over a yellow – blonde? – chinstrap beard-plate.

“Well well,” he patronizes, “the Fire Fish of Veracruz.”

Banter? Why not. His men are only lining up shots.

“They call me a lot of dumb things,” you shout back. “And you are?”

He cracks a salute off his white cap. “Captain Decim of the Repliforce Navy! This outpost is now under my management. I’d tell you to get lost, but you’ve killed too many of us to let you go!”

“And you killed everybody I knew here!”

“The garbage of history,” he sneers. “Debris on the road toward a world for reploids.”

“Not the first enemy I’ve heard that from,” you growl back.

He laughs. “What, no Die, Maverick Scum? What sort of Hunter are you?”

“One who knows the difference between legitimate monsters and a marching band of terrorists who thinks they invented history.” You raise your buster and the smile vanishes from his face. “Stand down, Captain Decim.”

“For Repliforce!” He shouts, dropping into his seat.

>Act. (Specify)

>>2452345
We should open up with a salvo of smoke spikes

>>2452345
>Star Salvo the lackeys, dodge whatever the leader tries to throw. Deal with the riff-raff while getting a handle on the boss' capabilities/tactics.

>>2452345
>SMOKE SPIKE on the boss, force him to either disengage from the mech, or his forces to scatter.

>>2452345
>Star Salvo the lackeys, dodge whatever the leader tries to throw. Deal with the riff-raff while getting a handle on the boss' capabilities/tactics.

This sounds like a solid plan.

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>>2452345
Star Salvo barrage on the Berets, followed by thermite fireballs on the mettaurs. Take out the support first to shore up the action economy against you, and then figure out how to tackle Decim based on whether he moves to engage close or at range.

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>>2452398
>>2452439
>>2452463
>>2452492
>>2452500

Time for math. You: One body and two remote fish. Them: Half a dozen Knot Berets, two Mettaurs to each. Decim left himself a standard minion wall, probably to stall. Time to subtract them.

The barrage comes hot: buster fire from everything round, which on this field is almost everything. You send your drones high above it and Star Salvo the whole party – two, four, eight, a row of flash and bang, but three buster shots find their mark through it just by averages. To its credit, the platoon doesn’t scatter as wide as you’d hoped, but their numbers have gone down –

DRONE LOST
DRONE LOST

And so have yours. Decim lowers his Sea Lion’s missile arm from a high angle to a low and returns a rapid volley.

The field becomes a busy occluded mess of projectiles and explosions as you unload yours at his for interception. In all the light and noise you charge the mettaurs and spit a Meteor Melter grenade, followed by a quick switch to Smoke Spike. Two of the little hard-hats run around on fire before it melts into them with finality; the smoke clears from all the missile impacts just in time for it to thicken from four spiked ejectors shot in rapid succession.

The slow burn of chemistry aborts a broader buster barrage as the remaining mets scramble around in the fog, immersed in it. The Berets worry less, and you get tagged by a lucky one as you advance on him and take him down with a missile pair. You dash under the arc of a second one’s grenade and splash him with raw thermite, casting him down into the gas layer – which you just begin to feel nibbling at your ankles before you dash clear. The gas does erode a grenade held by the last Beret, setting it off along with him.

You barely have time to notice before more missiles come from the stationary ride armor. Decim means to erode you too, and a missile caught on your shoulder makes you worry he might.

The last poor Mettaurs explode in the lingering gas.

“So you’re worth your rank after all!” Decim calls out over the fresh smoky wreckage. “Try dealing with this!”

Decim, still sitting pretty in his seat, flips his shoulder mortars forward. They charge faster than any conventional buster has a right to…

>Exhalation Beam:
7/8.
>Star Salvo:
6/18.
>Smoke Spike:
20/24.
>Sun Thief:
32/32.
>Remote Koi:
Undeployed.
>Health:
A tactically significant loss; about two-thirds remaining.

>Act (Specify)

>>2452620
>>Sun Thief & get in close
!Tumult Shell, fire!
When close, sabers are a good counter to range-preferring mortars.

>>2452064
Oh man just got the pictitle.

>>2452620
>Sun Thief and advance
If we can produce more Koi while in the, ahem, shadow of the Sun Thief, do so and send them around either flank while we advance.

>>2452620
>Sun Thief and advance

That and HC's idea looks sound.

>>2452620
>Sun Thief and advance
Sounds good.

Brief administrative note:

Future threads will be announced on Twitter. https://twitter.com/5th_Comms

Also, I'm still getting a handle on timing and post pacing, but future ones will probably start later in the day and have more time between. An intro stage is for working the knots out, anyway.

>>2452662
>>2452690
>>2452722
>>2452727

(Things on my end just kept going. But now they’ve stopped!)

The quick ramp-up on the Captain’s cannons gives you plenty of time to switch to your catcher’s mitt. He seems to expect you to dodge and fires to your right and center-mass. Rather than dash right into the moment-delayed missile volley to your left, you stand your ground and emit a spreading ray of shimmering translucent darkness from your buster. Sun Thief does as advertised, nullifying the charge shot with an anticlimactic whiff as his other attacks go wide.

You dash straight into his lane, popping drones from your trailing left buster. He should work on his poker face – the panic is real, clearly not having gotten the memo about your full loadout. He hides behind his shield and you take the wide opening to dash to his right. Your drones sail up overhead, your mouth launches a grenade, and your buster sticks a Smoke Spike at his ride’s right kneecap.

“Dammit [i[dammit[/i],” he swears, wheeling on where you – aren’t, anymore. He cuts the chase-around short by circling the other direction. Your beam sabers snip the Sea Lion G’s launcher arm off at the wrist, and down it falls.

The ride armor must be custom, you assume, given that it’s holding up with moderate shield flash. You give him some distance, and a good thing too, as that shield arm lunges in with its gauntlet beam-blade ignited. Swing and a miss.

“Hey,” you call. “Favor the left.”

>>2453174

“What?!”

His armor’s right leg seizes up, rotting under corrosion.

“And your shield weighs down that arm. Buuuuut…”

The last bit of thermite from the previous hit breaks the bolts keeping it on. The shield clangs to the ground.

“Oh, also?” You point up.

Decim roars under flashing shields as your drones circle face-down, carving a circle around his cockpit and slicing into the inner workings.

“Are you just going to watch?!” He bellows to the sky.

“Always did like fireworks. Kelpie says hi.” You spit once more, just enough for insult. White-hot aluminum plinks into the hull.

That does it. Between Decim’s strobing shields and the rolling explosion under him, the Sea Lion goes off like New Year’s. He bails out, not quick enough to dodge the blast radius. The smoke clears off, leaving the Repliforce Captain on one knee, electricity sparking over his blast-scorched armor.

“You have no idea what’s coming,” he warns, defiantly.

“No,” you level your buster, “but I have a pretty good idea of who’s going.”

You fire, but he activates an emergency beacon and makes his escape in a column of warped mass.

“Shoot,” you curse, about as strongly as you ever do.

Now what was he calling in? Air support? Ship barrage? More ri—

Whirring. Helicopter. Behind!

You dash free in the nick of time. Two propellers, just propellers, buzzsaw into the ground and stick in place. Solid-mass blades. Lucky your old friend cued you to them.

“I saw your work, Maverick!” You shout at … nobody.

Huh.

Two more spinning blades pop out of thin air much too close. Your dash is still cycling.

>Try to evade.
>Try to shoot them down.
>?

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>>2453177
>Try to block them.

Throw the koi and whatever projectile has the most mass directly into them, and raise the hibeams crossed to block. Hope it's enough.

>>2453177
>>?
Hi-beam scissor strike on one of them; should give enough wiggle room to dodge the other if you assume destroying the first.

>>2453202
>Move towards the trajectory of one spinning blade, meeting it with sabers swinging.
>Have the Koi make the rounds with sweeping lasers. Zone our invisible enemy into somewhere we can grenade.

>>2453177
>>2453489
whoops

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>>2453202
>>2453304
>>2453489

There’s no evading something that close, not when you’re on dry land. You snap up your sabers.

You manage to correctly guess the rotational direction; the first blade shreds itself against two bars of high-intensity plasma, flinging off most of its mass. The second only nicks one, then carves between your left shoulder and your neck an instant before your shields fire and deflect it the rest of the way. Just how fast was that thing going?!

High-velocity edged mass, and with a high damage threshold, probably ceratanium… you order your drones to dip face-down and screen the area with their beams, scrawling marks on the ground and nearby walls to give you an idea of where your target isn’t.

You shout into comms, “New contact! Please respond!” They don’t.

A drone proximity alert – you look up –

Another blade pops into existence, bisects both koi, and pops back out.

DRONE LOST
DRONE LOST

Literally what?!

You strain to hear the phantom blade, judge the velocity at which it filleted your fish, make a guess on timing – and carve it apart the instant it reappears to carve you. Nice. The severed tips fly off the hub and break windows in the outpost.

“New contact,” you insistently comm, “stealth tech, high-velocity edged—”

You interrupt yourself at the sound of whirring. You twist and spit a grenade for blocking mass at – oh come on, two again?! – the first blade sprays your own thermite everywhere yet slows down enough from the impact to merely make your shields panic. You try to ignore it as you cut down yet another of the goshdarn things riding its draft.

Which is when your left hand falls by way of a non-spinning blade severing your arm at the elbow.

The bite of impact registers as solid mass. Your shields flare far too late to stop it. You see a – figure. Your mouth erupts a flash of molten metal at thin air as your target vanishes before your eyes, not into the shimmer of stealth but a mesh of green grid-lines lasting all of a millisecond.

Silence. Not even the shift of air at the edge of hearing that would suggest noise-cancelled footsteps.

Stealth nonsense. You hate stealth nonsense.

VWES:
>Exhalation Beam: 7/8.
>Star Salvo: 6/18.
>Smoke Spike: 20/24.
>Sun Thief: 30/32.

>Meteor Melter: ∞
>Remote Koi: [DISABLED]
>Health: Just below half. Left arm disabled.

>Bait your assailant and parry/counter.
>It’s not a ghost. Shoot everything.
>Keep hammering the comms.
>?

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>>2453546
Stealth Expert once revealed.

p.sure this is a holoprojection or cyberspace fuckery, not a stealth asshat.

>>2453546
>Fuck everything
>Smoke Spike the whole battlefield
He can't damage us before the shields turn up IF THE SHIELDS ARE ALWAYS UP

>Bait your assailant by using comms again and parry/counter.
he could be tracking us with that. We're gonna need to slow them down with sabers before exhalation beam could conceivably hit.

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>>2453546
>It’s not a ghost. Shoot everything.
Try to guess where it's going to attack from--so far it's had all the good angles, predict the vector.

>>2453546
>>?
Reposition to where there's only so many ways they get get line of sight to you. As-is, they can approach you from any direction. If you limit the angles, you can cover more and keep it flooded with covering fire.

>>2453546
>Bait your assailant and parry/counter.
"Weasels Ripped My Optics"

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btw:
>SMOKE SPIKE: Claimed from Ozone Osprey and manually upgraded to the fullest extent. Fires a spike device which emits a corrosive heavier-than-air gas after embedding in practically any surface.
>Betrays conventional cloaking for foes in range
>Betrays conventional cloaking for foes in range
>and weakens armor with persistent contact; danger close. 24 shots, 1 cubic meter per spike.

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>>2453614
Conventional, is the thing. Blinky wireframes aren't conventional.

Also, this feels fun, interacting as a reader. I can't wait for upgrade thread arguments.

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>>2453616
Fun is the objective!

>>2453546

Stealth Nonsense? Bait and counter. Definitely bait and counter.

>>2453546
It's a cyberspace attacker. We won't hit anything if we shoot everything, but...

Idea. Make a show of shooting everything, seemingly in a panick but actually as area denial. Try to relocate to a spot with a minimum of blindspots, like against a wall or in a corner. Figure out what the best angle would be for an attacker to "phase-in" and mess us up would be... And then fire there with our quickest weapon.

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>>2453579
>>2453582
>>2453587
>>2453604
>>2453641
>>2453650

You flick through your various vision modes. Heat, EM, radar, silhouette… nothing. What is he? What’s he using? Holoform projection? Something new? No, what he’s really using is you flopping in the open like an amateur. You dash to the building, have to get inside – and stop short of the door, letting a spinblade roll by right on cue.

He was timing that for the last instant. Which means he’s having fun. Well you’ll show him fun…

The lobby is empty, wrecked with sandy footprints and dangling elements of ceiling. Still open, still room for you to move, but less for him to. Good.

You hop onto the front desk, grimacing at the remains of a poor Steel Beret behind it. You fire Smoke Spikes all over the floor; nozzles from each hiss downward and in no time at all you have a fog-machine barrier filling the space. Your position is superior; you could hit anything in the room from this corner.

“Come on, come on…” You try to sound desperate.

The fog curls, quietly stripping color from the flooring and withering an artificial potted plant. Nothing but natural turbulence stirs it.

You slide your hand back out of your buster and raise it to your earcap.

“Fifth, please respond, I am cornered in engagement with a superior—”

There!

A thin green line at a hole in the ceiling is all the cue you need to unleash Exhalation Beam. No need for your buster on that one. You hit something – someone – long enough for a shield flash which disappears entirely, but your beam keeps going. You walk the lightning laser down the wall and sweep it across the main entrance with quick jerks of your head, melting wherever it hits. You do a worse number on the lobby than Repliforce could ever hope to, scouring the frontal 90 degrees side by side.

Your mystery Maverick takes the second bait in three seconds as the air shifts behind you. You’re quicker on the draw and feel the force resistance of saber versus high-grade shield. Tagged him again!

You turn your 90 degrees to 360, but he’s already gone – and on instinct you blast straight up, melting a hole into the second floor with your last second of beam. Handfuls of melted blade tips clatter down.

And so does your right arm.

Purely on reflex you vomit thermite at your right side. This time you see him – some sort of winged insect – before he and an oversized solid sword vanish with only a hint of flashing shields disappearing green wireframe mesh.

You huff for breath, your own shields strobing.

Between two flashes of your shields the shape of your assailant appears again, right in front of you. You spit on pure instinct, obscuring a clear view with your own flash of metal. All you see is the blade, striking through the refresh rate, cutting your neck exactly deep enough to sever the WEAPON projector in your throat and no further.

Through the pain you notice he’s gone. Again.

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>>2453878

It’s about time you got gone too. Your legs still work. No one would blame you for bailing.

Propeller blades spin down the walls into the corner. You dash-leap off the desk, but your superior foe isn’t having it. A winged shape flanks you in midair and clashes your shields, scraping not for disabling but damage. You land and you’re out the door by force of will.

You’re really, really tired of those blades, you decide as they sandwich you at the knees.

You tumble gracelessly like, well, a fish. A final blade from above spins straight into your tail, pinning it and you to the landing platform where you had summarily discarded so many Repliforce soldiers a lifetime ago.

You realize over the sirens screaming in every line of your senses that your enemy was going for disabling strikes. One by one. You’ve heard about live captures. No. This isn’t fair. What is he?! Too fast, too fast, this isn’t happening, this isn’t fair…!

A voice doesn’t speak so much as emanate from all around you. He enunciates with the edged precision of a racist professor speaking a foreign language better than a native.

“Ess-Ess-Kay-Enn twenty-seven, dash, Kay-Ess zero-four. Revolutionary Library Notorious Hunter number Vee Ay-sixty-one. Meteor Showa.” A deliberate pause. “Code name Volcano Roll,” he adds lightly.

Despite your throat wound, you can still crane your head around and speak, and you realize with chilling certainty that he wanted it that way.

“Mavericks call me a lot of dumb things. Who are you?”

“Just a ghost,” he smiles audibly. The wireframe cloak, if it even was a cloak, drops away to reveal a gangly dragonfly reploid with too many pairs of wings, delicately examining a boxcutter blade the size of a cartoon claymore. The tip is unmarred, but the next two segments are nearly melted through. He breaks them off with a swift backhand and the sword itself ratchets three replacement segments into place, generated from the hilt.

“You cost me three segments,” he observes. “Well done, Meteor Showa.”

You stare at him, trying to will your Meteor Melter back into working order. You could dash, but where to? And do what, kick at him? The goshdarn sword bug ghost? You send every distress beacon you can… come on, somebody, pick up…

“Oh, your communications are blocked,” the dragonfly comments, making a show of buffing his blade with the heel of his palm. “I am sure that someone will find you once I depart. But first, Meteor Showa, to conclude our business: you have something that I want.”

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>>2453886

You could hear him pronounce that colon. His icy self-assurance actually helps you settle into a sense of the inevitable.

“What.”

He lowers that stupid sword and raises his opposite arm. There’s no buster that you can see. Despite that, his forearm pulses with some sort of pink-purple radiation.

“Your soul.”

This is it, then. At least it’s got a view of the ocean.

You think of a lot of things. A lot of people…

You brace for the fuchsia fireball to blow a hole through you. It gently insinuates into your frame instead.

As reality bursts into kaleidoscopic knives from the inside out, you realize that your foe was being literal.

Sound dies. Light dies…

…

DYNAMIC NEURAL ARRAY SUMMARY, SSKN27-KS04 “METEOR SHOWA”
[CHASSIS]: >STRUCTURE COMPROMISED<
[FRAME]: >STRUCTURE COMPROMISED<
[WEAPONRY]: >DATA CORRUPT DATA CORRUPTACORDATARRUPT<
[OUTFITTED WITH]: >ERROR<
[VWES-4]: >DDDAATT T TPURROCATAD<
[HUNTER RANK]: UNASSESSED

...

>>2453910
[HUNTER RANK]: UNASSESSED
[HUNTER RANK]: UNASSESSED
[HUNTER RANK]: UNASSESSED

…

[HUNTER RANK]: >Yo. Don’t sweat it, we saved the good stuff. Or I did, anyway.

…

[HUNTER RANK]: >This field won’t change back to A-plus no matter how long you focus your attention routine on it, fishflake. Plus it makes my work harder if I have to fiddle around dedicated retrieval algorithms.

[HUNTER RANK]: >Just, think of something else. Like R&B. You still like R&B, yeah?

[MAYBE IF I DID THIS]: >you’d quit focusing just to spite me.

[I’M GOING TO]: > start transcribing musical notations for dubstep if you keep staring at this.

[MAYBE THIS WILL --]

… A sense. That’s all there is.

Not floating. Floating would require a medium. You’re not even sure you’re a small. You… just are, somewhere in the digital aether. And something with irritation and familiarity keeps talking to you through your own coded soul. You can’t think in images in this state, but you’ve become fractionally more lucid.

You become aware of more attempts at communication and you even recognize them as such, though it’s like receiving a cloud of shuffled sentences in glitter glue scrawled directly on your brain.

[OH GOD]: >I wrote that when I was drunk please disregard unless you experience this first in which case pre-disregard it

[THAT BASTARD ^What Got You WAS]: >A tall drink of piss called Meganeural Spectrod. Fella gets his genius on a new tool fresh out of beta and gets off on breaking spatial physics left and right. I’m angstroms from finding a way to crash Cyberspace just ‘cause of what he did to you, but Command and basically everybody in the 16th would pin me to a corkboard if I went and did it.

[SO HEY]: >While I’ve got the last shred of you that’s still demonstrably you, let me just reiterate how glad I am that you’re a sturdy ablative mass in every sense. Absolutely saved your life.

[THE BAD NEWS]: >I don’t know if we can fix everything I’m sorry Meteor

[YOU HAVE ^No CLOCK FUNCTION]: >by the way. Which is why this probably feels weird, temporally. But wow, let me tell you wow, did he ever break your goodies. You’ll be back to dancing in the continuity of existence just as soon as I get ten godDAMN’ned minutes under your hood by my lonesome.

[HUNTER RANK]: >what a mess

[CHASSIS]: >Thicker than a snickerssssssss

[THE GOOD NEWS]: >You’re a totally unique case study! The first case of near-enough-to-fudge-it Soul Erasure in, well, the number of months is classified but it’s a lot! Very exciting! You had Beams himself up in your everything just the other day, hammering around like a nineteenth-century dentist. But that’s bad news. Other good news, pregnant pause colon: You probably won’t die!

[RE: CLOCK]: >I literally have no idea when exactly in your stream of consciousness you’ll experience this message but if I’m right it should come last before—

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>>2453928
Sound. Darkness. Which means the capacity to tell what light is and where it isn’t.

Temperature. Paralysis. Which means a body you can’t move. Things are looking up.

You try opening your eyes and ten thousand alarms keep them shut.

“You disregarded it, right?” A Welsh accent whispers, its tone as androgynous as a chair. “It’s just that you might’ve forgotten how to ignore things and I needed to check. Also I might get fired if they find out I was texting comatose patients in their DNA again.”

You try to speak. Your words appear in silence on a screen out of your field of vision, if you could even see at the moment.

{Scatter Seelie I’ve come back to life just to tell you to please hush the heck up.}

“Missed you too,” it sounds like your friend grins.

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>>2453954

Time passes. How much, you can't tell without fuzziness at the edges.

Scatter Seelie, your friend in R&D, assures you that your internal clock is no longer giving you feverish simultaneity, so it must have been a few hours. So far the only parts of your body under your control have been your audio receptors and thought-to-screen tap, but that’s about to change.

“Now I’m about to hit the lights,” says a singsongy accent by your head, “so don’t try to cartwheel right away.”

{Like I ever could}, you submit to a screen you can’t see.

“Right, then. Three, two—”

The first thing you see is an unfamiliar ceiling.

The second thing you see is a fanning pair of moth antennae leaning directly into your field of vision. They bend back to lay on (and nearly blend into) a shaggy white pixie-bob hairstyle above big expressive purple eyes and pointed helmet-fin ears. The face between them is a cherubic picture of soft-edged glitter-freckled androgyny.

“Check check,” Scatter Seelie points at their cheeks, “how many geniuses am I holding up?”

“Ze-ee-ro-point fivve, Skittle,” your voice crackles. It’s hard for you, personally, to think of them by any other name.

“Bugger, hang on, lemme polish your speech center.” Skittle hops their four-foot-nothing self off their stepstool and flies over to a console, their pale green luna moth wings flapping behind in a blur. Their armor layer shimmers like oily opals, but purple and green and white seem consistent underneath the sheen.

You track their flight and notice someone else in the sterile-walled private room: a bulbous blue-gray cyclops in a lab coat, sporting the longest and thinnest mustache you’ve ever seen.

“Ocular motor skills seem fine,” says the you-guess-doctor. “Even that was in doubt for a while. Valence Proteus,” he cordially nods by way of introduction. “I’m given to understand you already know your dutiful medical technician.”

So that’s Proteus, the head of HQ2’s 16th Unit… a whole year in Veracruz hasn’t been enough for you to even lay eyes on every unit commander. “Yeah. I mean, yes sir. Nice to finally mmkkh—” your voice cracks into silence.

“Try again,” says Skittle, “should work now.”

“You stink.”

“Perfect!” They clap. Fine sparkles puff out on impact.

Valence Proteus clears his ancient throat. On closer inspection, his single big eye has a hexagon of pupils, independently focusing, probably seeing in modes you can’t imagine. “Adequate, Seelie. I think you can give more of her systems back to her now. What have you told her?”

“Not a lot, sir,” you admit.

>How long was I out?
>How bad was my damage?
>Where’s the guy who beat me?
>How’s the war going?
>Other (specify)

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>>2453977
>How bad was my damage?

Hello, Completely Best Supporting Character of All Time I Am Completely Objective in This

>>2453977
>Where’s the guy who beat me?
>How long was I out?

>>2453977
>Other (specify)
‘Soul erasure?’

>>2453992
Yeah, this Valence guy seems pretty neat.

>>2454044
>>2453977
Soul erasure indeed

>>2453977
>How long was I out?
>How bad was my damage?

>>2454044
>Other (specify)
‘Soul erasure?’

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>>2454064

>>2453977
>>2454064
>bulbous blue-gray cyclops
SHIT IT'S BLUE-GRAY DEVIL

DISENGAGE
DISENGAGE

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>>2454098

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>>2453977
>Did we win the game, coach?

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>>2453992
>>2454044
>>2454083

“Just what kind of shape was I in?”

Proteus walks past you and extends a hand to a console. Five fingers split into fifteen spindlier digits and manipulate a touchscreen in a complicated pattern. “Abysmal. Multiple solid-mass blade injuries. Catastrophic armor failure. Both arms missing. Legs and tail disabled enough to require a remount. But most intriguingly?”

A screen pivots so you can see it. The energy conduits between your LIFE core and the rest of your body are yellow, but everything else is fuchsia. Spectrod hit you with something of that color…

“Your Dynamic Neural Array was, for a brief time, all but empty. Your body was alive, and so were you, but in only the narrowest legal sense. It called to mind a covered-up phenomenon known as Soul Erasure."

"Right, Skittle mentioned that..."

"Did they." You can almost see the line of disappointment from Proteus's eye boring into your friend, who for their part whistles an innocent jaunty tune. "Well. I deem you worthy of knowing that your condition had key differences. Whereas victims of Soul Erasure had their in-use DNA remotely transferred via energies I can only describe as exotic, your DNA was copied and then everything short of your memories was forcefully returned to a factory setting. I named this effect Soul Format.”

You stare at the ceiling, absorbing all that. “Factory setting?”

“Happy birthday,” Skittle twirls a little finger in the air. “You’re a new you.”

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>>2453977
>>2454044
>Where’s the guy who beat me?
>"Soul erasure"?
>He's still out there, right?

>Now that I've been revived and rebuilt having come back from the very brink of death, should I start calling myself Meteor Heisei?

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>>2454258

You look at your hands. The fingers are a little more sensitive, the forearm plating a little thinner. Your will stipulated that every effort be made to keep you in active service, but given the parts that must have been needed…

“What’d it cost me?” You cringe.

“Tell me do, amoeboss,” Skittle chimes from their console, “is an arm-and-a-leg joke insensitive?”

“Yes, Seelie.”

“Right then. You’re Nebraska-flat broke. I actually had to chip in some of my own funds to see everything through to a kinda-sorta-worthy-of-you state. We’re even, by the way.”

Skittle presses a button. With a rolling shock through your body, you can feel your legs and tail again. They’re less armored than they were, and you can tell by the diminished power flow that your secondary dash is history. But you’re alive, and in one piece.

“Great. But what I really mean to ask is…”

“You are fit for duty,” says Proteus. “You’ll be cleared to resume combat operations in thirty-seven minutes. Keeping to schedule, you should be released from our care in seven minutes.”

“Thanks.”

“At Rank B.”

You might have leapt clear off the slab if Proteus wasn’t ready for you. For an instant you think you’re paralyzed again, but sensors tell you that you’re being held perfectly still. He stares into you, various pupils dilating and contracting, maintaining an electromagnetic grip that you suspect could increase pressure indefinitely.

“Please be calm,” the amoeba advises. “Your rank valuation is neither arbitrary nor punitive. Aside from your diminished armor and mobility, the effects of Soul Format have eliminated your stored Variable Weapon Emulator System data.”

“All of it?” You whine, despite yourself. “Even the beam?”

“Yes. Furthermore, your original left arm and its drone generator were nowhere to be found. Only your core weapon system remains unchanged. Seelie can cover the minutiae of your available loadout once you are cleared to resume combat operations in thirty-six minutes.” He pauses. “Thirty-five.”

You breathe. That’s about all you can do.

“Thank you, sir,” you mutter, and feel his grip melt away.

>>2454263
good bye fuckyou beam, We did not know each other long, but I will treasure the time we spent together

.....fuck, how do we beat Nightmare Us?

>>2454263
We'll never forget you, Remote Koi & Fuck You Laser.

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>>2454038
>>2454083
>>2454259

“So how long have I been here?”

Proteus’s northwest pupil dilates. “Between your retrieval and this moment: seven days, one hour, fifty-seven minutes.”

You jerk upright, less forcefully this time. “A whole week?”

“Coulda been never,” Skittle replies.

“Indeed.” Proteus waves his hand at you and a gentle yet insistent electromagnetic push presses you back on the slab. “Please refrain from excess movement.”

Thoughts of scrap-scattered sand flash through your mind. “But what about my mission?”

“Twelfth Tropical was able to reclaim their Bahamas outpost after you burned your swath through the occupiers. They’ve begun the process of rebuilding, all thanks to you.”

Well. That’s something.

“And the sword bug? Where's he?"

Proteus’s mustache undulates all the way down. “The whereabouts of presumed-S-class Maverick Meganeural Spectrod are unknown. It seems he took what he wanted and left. Now, I’m given to understand that you can keep classified intelligence to yourself?”

“Yes sir.” Oh the things you’ve seen.

“Good. I’m clearing you. Spectrod has no cloaking system. Instead he possesses the currently unique ability to locally enter and exit Cyberspace at will, without the use of a somatic layer transfer node.”

You blink. Cyberspace tech mostly goes over your head. “That’s bad, right?”

“Terrifying,” he dryly replies. “Even a recent agent of Repliforce did his damage entirely within Cyberspace, not between it and the conventional world. We are currently testing interdiction traps to corner Spectrod when next he shows himself.”

“Jesus Mary and her little lambs,” the fairy moth throws their hands up, exasperated, “isolation protocols are supposed to be the sort of thing you nail down before you set up a global warp-data network, but nobody ever asks the likes of me.”

“Maybe they’re intimidated by your charisma,” you joke.

“Ha! Givin’ ‘em too much credit.”

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>>2454133

“Okay, give me some news. What’s our status with Repliforce?”

Proteus’s eastern pupils contract. Skittle smirks.

“You want it upside the head or set out with tea cakes?”

“Hit me, Skittle.”

“Repliforce is finished. General’s dead. Colonel’s dead. Final Weapon’s a geostationary shipwreck.”

“You’re kidding,” you gasp.

“Not today. You slept through the end of the war, friendo. All that’s left is an apple crate of scrambling officers and affiliated grunts. It’s over.”

“But how?” You start to move, but Proteus gives you a Look. You stay in place, vibrating with interest both personal and scholarly, “On what fronts? How many engaged? How’d we—”

“Look,” Skittle pats the air in your direction, “I’m sure a history dork like you is just dying for more deets, but you can look that stuff up yourself, ‘cause, really? After the daily agita from bad news? I just do not give enough fractions of a damn. The Most Powerful Army in History is finally about as relevant to my daily life as Zero’s shiny green tits, and I couldn’t be happier.”

You can hardly believe it. Skittle is a lot of things, but not a liar. It’s over. It’s really over. The biggest news since Doppler, and you freaking missed it.

Oh well, what does it matter that you got it second-hand? Legions of reploids aren’t killing each other anymore. Seven billion humans on Earth and in orbit aren’t caught between the gears anymore. The world isn’t at risk of ending anymore. Maybe this time will finally be the last. You sigh with a smile… which melts under your annoying habit of realism.

“Who’d we lose?”

“In the last week? Many,” says Proteus. “Specific inquiries about the well-being of your comrades in the Fourth can be fielded by your chief Combat Analysis and Unit Analysis officers, and your unit commander can decide whether to clear you about information not publicly available. Ask them.”

You plan to do exactly that.

>Further questions? (Specify)
>Wait to be released

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>>2454318
I think we're good.

>>2454318
>So they have my DNA. What are the odds that I'm gonna fight me, or someone with my flavor of VWES? Can they impersonate me, speaking of which? I don't think the law accounts for an evil You running around while you're still alive.

>>2454318
>Wait to be released

>>2454318
>Wait to be released

>>2454339
That *is* a point we might want to bring up.
>So they have my DNA. What are the odds that I'm gonna fight me, or someone with my flavor of VWES? Can they impersonate me, speaking of which? I don't think the law accounts for an evil You running around while you're still alive.

>>2454338
>with progressive iterations and rebuilds, Sigma's chin becomes more garish and prominent until it's just a pair of metal testicles

>>2454318
>Wait to be released
I'm good

>"Well hey, it's a good thing we keep a local copy of VWES data stored at the range, right?"

>"... Please tell me nothing happened to the range."

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>>2454339
>>2454362
>>2454398

“One more thing…”

“Worried about an evil clone?” Skittle makes witchy claw fingers.

“Well yes? If they have a copy of my DNA…”

“The quality remains to be seen,” says Proteus. “You are, after all, still here. DNA resurrection is imperfect even with optimal resources, which Repliforce now frankly lacks, and what little intelligence we have on Spectrod suggests a mercenary disposition. We hypothesize that without his apparently-favorite client organization, he will either fence his stolen good or use it himself. Rest assured we have eyes on all marketplaces, and will track any instance of your data changing hands.”

“Okay,” you relax a bit. “Thanks. … One more one-more-thing?”

“Yes?” Proteus audibly rolls his eye.

“I really liked that beam. And my other stuff. Can I buy them back?”

“Yeeeeah,” Skittle cringes, thumbing at Proteus, “you know that Cyberspace agent he mentioned?”

“You’re going to tell me no, aren’t you.”

“I’m not gonna tell you not no…”

Proteus sighs, “In the postmortem it was discovered that Cyber Peacock replaced sixty percent of our Variable Weapon Emulator Library – including your entries – with malicious code which constituted an infinite recursion of some past-century musical video about fortitude and faithfulness.”

“Oh.”

…

“What was—”

“Rick Astley,” Skittle answers with what seems like solemn respect. “You know the one.”

“Oh.”

>>2454452

“And that’s it,” says Skittle, swiping one last item off their screen. “You can go acclimate, get caught up, whatever you like. See you in half an hour.”

That’s ominously specific. “You will?”

They flit up to eye level with you and hover there. “You’d best believe it, Meteor. Soul Format might have long-term problems even old Blinky can’t see, so you’re looking at your new handler.”

“Not entirely accurate,” Proteus interjects, entering something on a console. The outline of a door appears on the blank wall. “For a period of not less than four weeks, Seelie will be your attending technician and oversee any and all upgrades acquired. They will be at your disposal and submit weekly reports to me in addition to their other duties.”

“Whoopdee-doodle,” Skittle deadpans. “Week three, nicked wrists again, this time with plasma torch. Felt spicier than the knives.”

“Hush,” you flick their antennae, “don’t joke like that.”

“Sorry,” they fix their hair into a proper mess. “Habits.”

“Take care, Meteor Showa,” Proteus nods to you, gesturing meaningfully at the outline. “For the sake of your happiness, I hope we need not meet again.”

That’s… a weird way of saying good luck, but you’ll take it.

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>>2454463

The rectangle slides aside at your approach, and you exit into a hall so monochrome it hurts. The luminous white ceiling shines down muted gray walls into a vantablack floor. You turn to ask where to go, but the door is already gone, the wall smooth as slate.

A quick look tells you there’s only one destination, an open door at one end of the hall. You hurry to it to escape the brutalist geometry, getting used to your lighter frame with every step.

A teleporter pad lies inside. A sheet of legal-pad paper taped to the door frame reads, in shiny purple italics, "One Way." Thanks, Skittle.

You step on, and before you can even find a button to press you find yourself on the underused pad of the Commander Java Overlook Tower.

To your right, past the human-proof safety railings, lies the busiest shipyard in Mexico. To your left, its chief client: Maverick Hunter Headquarters Central America – HQ2 – a military campus larger in total area than HQ1 only by virtue of its waterfront. The line of docks and arched buildings is the primary seat of the 6th Marine Armada, HQ2’s largest tenant, from which you were transferred to the more multi-terrain generalists of the 4th a few months ago. Seeing it all sparkle at night hits you like a tidal wave.

The Gulf of Mexico rolls under the Milky Way, washed out of the best resolution by the light pollution of Veracruz behind you. You feel the much-abused world turning, shaking off the dust of the latest war with every roll of the waves. You know too much about history to really believe that things can never get so bad again, but at least civilization is better off than it was a week ago.

Progress. Hope. New leases on life.

You’re back.

And you have half an hour to fill before it’s back to work.

All at once, multiple message signals ping you, probably because you’re finally out away from R&D’s dead zone. It seems you’ve gotten a lot of messages this past week.

>Read them
>They can wait, head back to base
>Other (specify)

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And I'll pick things back up in the morning. Tomorrow will likely go slower due to work, but we'll see. I had today to spend, and spend I did. Hope you folks enjoyed it!

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>>2454452
>Cyber Peacock
Suddenly this image is appropriate

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>>2454474
Read 'em. Maybe it will be good news, and not death notices. Mayb

>>2454474
>Read them
Man, I was wondering why we were an already-kitted out nigh S-Rank Hunter. This sorts that out.

>>2454474
>Read them

>>2454492
Peacock has such a weird job. "Take over cyberspace just to make a huge training rig for X"

Well, could be worse. High beam sabers are mass produced and Showa has a lot of experience using them.

Probably gonna be what we end up relying on for most of the early missions.

>>2454474
>Read them
We ought to get caught up on things while we have the time.

>>2454481
I'm enjoying this a lot so far! Can't wait for more.

>>2454474
>Read them
I hate abiliteases so much.

>>2454474
>Read them
My autism prevents me from ignoring message notifications on my phone and I'll be damned if I let someone else ignore them on my watch

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>>2454474
>Read them

Never not!

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>>2454527
The first ten minutes of Shooting Star is about the first ten minutes of Metroid Prime.

Nowhere to go but up!

Also, good morning. At least one post forthcoming before work.

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>>2454521
>>2454527
>>2454531
>>2454758
>>2454798
>>2454803
>>2455196

You head to the elevator, select “Aggregator,” “Primary”…

>REPLIFORCE TAKES FINAL WEAPON
Hunter Command has acknowledged General’s seizure of Final Weapon. Preliminary reports indicate 11th Space has lost nearly …

>CRASH CORMORANT SLAIN
Famed member of Los Mortales Crash Cormorant has been declared KIA in a failed assassination attempt against Colonel in …

>OPERATION RAMA SUCCESSFUL, MAJOR SECUNDUS RETIRED
After days of fighting, the international force spearheaded by the Maverick Hunters has driven the Repliforce Navy from Sri Lanka. Among the …

>4th GENEVA DEFEATS REPLIFORCE POLAR, MAJOR QUINTUS RETIRED
Repliforce Polar Operations Major Quintus and his entire division have fallen in a climactic battle in the Sakhalins. Key to the operation was …

>COLONEL RETIRED
Legendary Maverick Hunter Zero has retired the field commander of Repliforce. At 16:00 Florida local time, Colonel launched a blitzkrieg offensive on …

>GENERAL RETIRED
VICTORY – VICTORY – VICTORY …

Gosh. You have some reading to do later.

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>>2455299

You hit the ground floor and take a walk outside. HQ2’s T-shaped main thoroughfare passes from the city down to this boulevard bordering 6th’s substantial share of the campus. If there was ever a celebration here, it’s long over. You can just imagine the parade.

You filter your messages for “Personal Contacts” and cautiously select “Read All.”

>SENDER: Deco
“METEOR WHAT HAPPENED”

>SENDER: Deco
“Oh no Mimi I saw your op site. I took my team out there personally and recovered what parts looked like yours. They tell me you’re being held for observation. Please get well soon.”

>SENDER: Deco
“What sort of news are you getting in there? They’re saying Sri Lanka was history’s largest amphibious landing! I know how excited you’d be to hear that. Here are some links about force size and contributing nations – well, what’s not classified, anyway.”

You bookmark them for later scrutiny.

>SENDER: Deco
“WE WON! Get yourself out of that bed so we can celebrate!”

>SENDER: Deco
“Goodness alive, I haven’t felt so light in months. I can feel the future spreading before us all, but until you’re back it won’t be as full. Be well, my friend.”

>SENDER: Deco
“The absence of so many is terrible, Mi. I can be clinical in the field, but then I come back and the silence around the lounge and in the office just weighs heavy. Brother’s helping me through it, but I wish you were here too.”

Aw, Deco.

>SENDER: Nouveau
“Meteor get yourself fixed right the hell now, Deco’s been… hugging. -N”

>SENDER: S.Asagi (Auto-Translated from Japanese)
“Hey. They just told us what happened. I’ve passed word home and around the school. We’re all pretty much of the opinion that you’re a damn hero and hope you get back on your feet just as soon as you want to. Take the enforced time on your back and catch up on sleep! Maybe then you’ll see how fun taking a break can be. Write back when you can, we’re all pulling for you. Love you, sis.
~from Chagoi, Kohaku, Tancho, & Kujaku, by way of Asagi (your favorite!!!)”

Heh. Good to know they’re all safe…

>SENDER: M.Turtle
“Speak to me in the command room when you’re out, Captain. You need to be caught up before I call a meeting. -Turtle”

>SENDER: Atajo (Auto-Translated from L.Spanish)
“Hey, heard my favorite fish is getting out of the cooler! Sorry was too slogged to nav on your Bahamas op. Sent your quarters a bottle of that sugary nonsense you like. Ever want a real drink, you know where to find me. -A”

>SENDER: V.Batteram
“Welcome back.”

Well then. That gives you some destinations. You could take your little sister’s advice and become very good friends with your frequent navigator’s drinkable gift, but your actual best friend would be beside herself to see you, and your unit’s second-in-command could clarify some of what happened while you were asleep.

>Head to your quarters
>Speak with Turtle
>Find Deco

File: Magma Dragoon rejects tel(...).gif (1.89 MB, 480x360)

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>>2455301
>Find Deco

We almost died. Let's be unprofessional, slightly.

>>2455301
>speak with Turtle

>>2455301
>Speak with Turtle

>>2455299
>4th GENEVA DEFEATS REPLIFORCE POLAR, MAJOR QUINTUS RETIRED
oh my, is Anode going to be present for this?

>>2455301
>>Speak with Turtle
I am concerned that he'll tell us some things that could be landmines when chatting.

>>2455301
>Speak with Turtle
Consummate Professional

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>>2455309
>>2455335
>>2455533
>>2455869

Much as you’d like a few minutes to settle into private decompression or absorb Deco’s perpetual unironic happiness, you really should get caught up. Work is work, and you have a responsibility. Nobody’s going to slow down for you – and you wouldn’t want them to.

The site of 4th Veracruz is still large as unit real estate goes, but it can’t compare to Geneva’s and especially not to the local 6th. A fat grove of stocky interconnected towers hangs over and around the Courtyard, a lake of pavement crisscrossed with right-of-way paint. A ride armor transport trundles across and down a ramp below your destination.

You make your way in, nodding to the busy enlisted who catch your eye. A couple of them lean to each other and whisper as you pass. Awfully nice of them.

Up in the command room, monitors display deployment maps. A brown and white sea turtle twice your width and half again your height looks up from the central holo-display. Blurry photos of dragonflies with too many wings fill the space.

“Showa,” her beak turns up at the corners. “So good to see you standing.”

“Good to be standing, Turtle. Those bugs look familiar.”

Minefield Turtle hits a button and the bad cryptid pictures blink to a slowly rotating Maverick Hunter insignia. “I’ll just bet. He made you miss quite a lot, so here I am to make up for it.”

“So I hear. But, um, shouldn’t this be coming from the commander? Is he deployed?”

Turtle’s duchess bulk suddenly shoulders extra weight. She shakes her head a little. “Oh dear. I shall have words with Proteus for not telling you. I’ve been promoted, on account of vacancy.”

You know exactly what she means. You wouldn’t exactly expect the 4th’s patient pillar of matronly strength to show grief openly, but scuttlebutt had it that she and Commander Earthquake Jaguar were… fraternizing under the radar. If she can hold up, then so can you.

“How did he go out?” You ask, gently.

“Valiantly,” she radiates distant pride. “When Repliforce hit Space Coast to link up with General, the Sixth was still deployed to Sri Lanka, so we were the first to respond. I took the sea, he the land. He discovered Colonel was in attendance, and… slowed him enough for Zero to catch up. Colonel was retired that day, thanks to him.”

“I see. I’m sorry,” you offer.

“I’m not. It’s exactly how Jaguar would have wanted it.” For a moment she examines the floor, hands behind her shell, before looking back at you. “Unfortunately, the line of succession isn’t how I’d like it.”

“Ma’am?”

“You’ve been demoted, Lieutenant.”


>Object strongly
>Accept grudgingly

Posting from work, so a different ID for the next few hours.

>>2455533
The only control I have over Anode is as a MHQ voter. It's possible he might have taken part in that mission... if he lasts that long... so we'd better make sure he does!

Also, funny that you mentioned landmines in relation to Turtle.

>>2455909
If it has to be one of these,
>Accept grudgingly
If we can write in then
>Request explanation
Dodo was a major at B, so that can't be it.

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>>2455952
The only Majors were Schwarz and Seven, if I recall. On checking my notes I've got Dodo as a Lieutenant. Broadly speaking, there are two rank requirements: Functions within the unit, and combat rating. Seven was a high-functioning A and got to Major, while Tanker was an S who did nothing but hunt, so he remained a Captain. Schwarz hit the ceiling at Major both due to politics of decisions he made, and because he was better served afield and everyone knew it.

>>2455909
>Accept grudgingly

>>2456024
Huh, thought Dodo was ranked higher. Guess that does explain it, then.

>>2455909
>Accept grudgingly
*Professionalism Intensifies*

>>2456039
Aha, knew I had a reason for thinking he was a Major!

>"Last specialist is Dash--Dash Dodo. Dash is fast attack and our desert environment expert, kind of a chip on his shoulder. He's technically third in line for leadership if Frog or Shark bite it--" You snort at his accidental pun. "--But that's pretty informal."

Mystery solved, I guess that was retconned some time past thread 2.

>>2455909
>>Object strongly
Loss of upgrades doesn't really impact Showa's ability to give orders if it comes to it.

>>2455909
>Accept grudgingly
We'll (hopefully) move back up pretty quick, and I can guess at the reasons for this decision besides the obvious.

>>2455909
>Object strongly

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>>2455909
>Accept grudgingly.

It sucks, but flipping our lid isn't going to fix it. We're back to square one, but at least we have experience. We'll get our fancy letters and stripes back in the fullness of time.

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>>2455952
>>2456024
>>2456052
>>2456159
>>2456439

Your fists clench.

“I was unaware that function and combat rating were paired, Ma’am.”

“They aren’t. Your demotion is about choices you made in your history with Decommissions. From which you are also relieved of duty.”

Your professionalism cracks. “But I loved Decomms!”

“I know. You had a very efficient and people-friendly approach, with which I can find no fault in and of itself.”

“But?”

“But, in the postwar assessment report released by Hunter Command just yesterday, it was noted that our branch of the Fourth was understrength for the entire duration of the war. Particularly with regard to ride armors.”

Now that’s just unfair. “I ordered our D-R-A series recycled and replaced because they were inefficient, heavy, and behind the curve of shield tech.”

“True, but then you convinced our Third and Eighth to follow your lead. Between us and them we finished dismantling the base’s entire ride armor fleet six hours before Sky Lagoon. It meant we entered the war on our back foot, or as Sloth put it, ‘a state of pronounced unreadiness which redounded in varying degrees to all wartime field operations.’”

Your thermal regulation helps keep your cool. No way are they pinning that all on you.

“As you’re well aware, Ma’am, I’m not responsible for other units.”

“True again, yet Decommission Officers Honeypot and Pangolin claimed their decisions were based in large part on an extensive presentation you put together. I understand cartoons were involved.”

“My sister likes to draw,” you mutter quickly, then resume loudly, “and those two have a lot more sway over the base than me.”

“Don’t try to shift blame, Showa, it’s unbecoming.”

You almost wish you had teeth to grind. “Yes Ma’am. But surely that mistake alone—”

“Furthermore. The Steel Beret issue.”

Heck. Okay, this one’s on you. “Their specs had nothing on the—”

“They may have been showing their limits, but Overland had more of them than any other unit. Removing them from service let our Requisitions department shuffle the third-gen down and replace their top tiers with Standard Berets. Seventy percent of whom ultimately defected to Repliforce.”

“Ma’am, I had no way of knowing—”

“And that isn’t all. You recall Sounding Humpback?”

You do, and you immediately see where this is going. “Don’t tell me she…”

“If you hadn’t refused, three times, to decommission her while you were still in the Sixth, perhaps she wouldn’t have had her combat specs when she went Maverick. Sloth and Plasmanta are both of the opinion that your choice reflects a specific yet acute lack of foresight, with which I agree.”

You feel dizzy. All right, if you’re being honest, all of that does kind of stack up to a demotion. Not that you have to like it.

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>>2456547
“Where’s Humpback now?” You ask.

“On your roster, Lieutenant,” answers a permanent frown striding in.

“Nouveau?”

A body made of contoured italics gives you his usual superior look from under a regal circlet designed after a holly wreath. His armor wouldn’t look out of place on an elf, nor would his unbound waterfall of blonde hair. “That’s Second-In-Command Captain Nouveau, now. And as my first act, I did you a favor. Sixth and Seventeenth both wanted Humpback, but I convinced them to let you clean up your mess.”

“I’m fine, by the way.”

He looks straight past you, his speech clipped, “Commander my office is done with everyone’s rosters if you’d like to call everyone in.”

“Any remaining business, Lieutenant?” Turtle asks you.


>Yes. (specify)
>No ma’am.
>No, and I hate this.

>>2456568
>No ma’am.

Right at rock bottom again. Well, things can only go up from here.

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Ouch.
>>2456568
>No ma’am.

>>2456568
>No, ma'am.
Never mind, we totally deserve that demotion. Daaaaaamn.

>>2456568
>No ma’am.
Holy shit, are we sure Showa isn’t low-key a Mav?

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>>2456568
>No, ma'am.

Time to shake off the dust and pick up the pieces.

>>2456635

She's not a bad person. She just had some significant bad luck.

>>2456707
Twist confirmed, despite Scarab playing koi, we're an undercover Maverick! It's the only explanation for her being so... fishy.

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(Also I have no idea why my ID keeps changing. Likely due to my phone's hotspot.)

>>2456584
>>2456588
>>2456603
>>2456635
>>2456705

“No, ma’am.”

“Very well.” Turtle touches a contact pad below the spinning insignia. “Fourth, active duty meeting, right now. Meet in the command room,” she orders politely.

You grump in a convenient corner. No koi drones, no VWES, lost upgrades, lost armor, busted down a rank and a Rank. This day – night – can only go up.

Turtle steps over to you, firm and calm as a governess. “I argued against your demotion, for the record, but I’m actually glad you’ve shed your extra duties. I need you back to your best as soon as possible, Meteor. Sitting at a desk and quibbling over the line between inefficiency and liability just doesn’t serve that.”

“But I like quibbling,” you pout, feeling a little helpless.

Turtle lays a broad hand to rest on your shoulder. “Don’t think of it as a step back. Think of it as having one less distraction. I truly am sorry they made me pass you over. Regardless of what the uppermost ranks believe, you’re still worthy of being second-in-command someday.”

“I know,” you lie. “Thanks.”

“Chin up, Meteor. I’m confident you’ll fight your way back to fitness in short order.”

And in short order, the other field officers of the Veracruz 4th enter. Both of them.

The first, Deco, smiles wide and stands at your side, her armor a graceful stack of artfully streamlined geometry with shield-projector crystals arranged as a permanent pearl necklace. Her helmet takes after a cloche. The other is the stoic and brawny Volt Batteram, who speaks all he needs with the short nod he spares you. As he enters, he seems to be shedding sparkles from behind…

“Skittle?”

Skittle flits out from behind the big ram. Their wings beat like a sugared-up hummingbird’s and cast a light show of sparkles just for the effect. They’re also loaded up with tool belts and pouches and a set of oversized goggles pressing their antennae into their hair.

“Yo.”

“Welcome, everyone,” Turtle greets. “Firstly, as you can see, Showa is back with us, though in a marginally diminished capacity.”

“Not diminished for long,” you promise.

“One can hope,” she smiles. “With her is our newest repair technician on loan from the Sixteenth, Scatter Seelie.”

“Skittle,” they correct. “Neutral pronouns, if’n you please.”

“Skittle comes very highly recommended, and will be available to each of you for upgrade consultation, though their priority will be monitoring Showa’s status for at least the next month.”

“That long?” Deco asks.

“I was really beat up,” you reply.

“Quite,” Turtle continues. “Much like Repliforce, at the moment.”

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>>2456733

She cues up an image: every single known Repliforce officer, arranged in squares of diminishing size by rank. General and Colonel sit in large horizontal rectangles at the top, smaller squares bearing the six Majors hang beneath, and a grid of lesser officers grows smaller and denser toward the bottom until you can barely see them. Diagonal red slashes mark over half of the faces, mostly toward the top.

“This is the grand tally as of an hour ago. Three Majors remain, and each headquarters is hard at work tracking them. That leaves the Captains, capitalized and non,” she gestures to the smaller squares, “and all below them. On each of your rosters you will find at least one of these fine faces. Orders from on high are to ensure that as many Hunters as possible each get a chance to whittle this list.”

Deco raises her hand. “We aren’t taking undue attention off the other kind of Maverick, are we?”

“Some will say that,” Nouveau scowls. “Ignore them.”

“We are Maverick Hunters,” agrees Turtle, “not Specifically-Repliforce Hunters. However…”

New images: wreckage, piles of Knot Berets, humans in suits pinning medals on reploids, and enormous flag-waving crowds. Most of the flags in the crowd shots appear to be Brazilian for some reason, even within frame of obviously non-Brazilian landmarks.

“We are still enjoying extensive and enthusiastic support from national militaries, above and beyond anything I can remember, for one reason: the world has seen what becomes of an alternative to us. They want it extinct, and Halcyon is torquing himself apart to make it happen.”

“How responsible of him,” you roll your eyes. Skittle snickers.

“Leave politics at the door, please. We only have one Commander at a time, and he is ours, until such time as he isn’t. And until that time, we give the world what it wants. Understood, Fourth?”

A brief wave of out-of-sync “Yes ma’am”s fills the room.

“UnderSTOOD, Fourth?”

“Yes Ma’am,” you chorus with the others.

“Then to work, everyone.” She cues up the globe map. Lights spark on a slew of targets. “And... do stay safe out there.”

You, Deco, and Batteram head to different terminals. Skittle follows in your shadow. Before you can filter for your new assignments, however, Nouveau crosses his wrists behind his back and strolls over to you two.

“The commentary on each entry is mine,” he says. “You might be a B on paper for now, but no damned Maverick can erase your experience. I wouldn’t have given you these if they were beyond you. Still, don’t overdo it.”

You nod. You’re as ready as you're going to get.

Time to see who needs you.

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>>2456742

ARC MORPHO (A-class, high)

>Known Weaponry:
Dancing Spark, Shining Spark, Photon Lance, Photon Glare, Falling Glass

>Personality:
Zealous SIGINT specialist, calculating and fond of misdirection.

>Commentary:
I remember her. She served the 0th Unit here until Repliforce poached her like so many others. She and her forces took over an antenna array in the Andes and are using it to intrusively broadcast propaganda on multiple bands while insinuating messages into normal media. Her public slanders are just annoying for now, but her rapid coordination with the rest of Repliforce is going to make battles worse for everyone until you shut her up. Hit her hard and often – she will absolutely see you coming, and I hear she has phenomenal shields.

>Available Support:
2nd Reconnaissance

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>>2456760

SOUNDING HUMPBACK (A-class, high)

>Known Weaponry:
Chorus Cannon, Shock Lance, Depth Note, Bubble Net

>Personality:
Protective, which makes her dangerous. She’ll pull no punches because she can’t afford to lose.

>Commentary:
Your old friend in the Sixth whom you had so judiciously refused to discharge despite her... controversial opinions. Literally the minute that we got word of Final Weapon going down, she and her team dropped all contact. Forty-one hours later they turned up in the company of a pirate crew on an old wave-farm rig in the South Atlantic. They’ve declared it the Free State of Light. Known criminals and ex-Repliforce are gathering there to enjoy her protection, but we can’t simply bombard it because, unbelievably, some of the scum is human. Sink Humpback and any pirates you can so that follow-up teams can save the humans from themselves.

>Available Support:
6th Marine Armada

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>>2456770

CHASER GIRTABOMB (A-class)

>Known Weaponry:
Clutch Bomb, Denial Vulcan, Beam Skate, Chaser Mode

>Personality:
Arrogant hotshot with the skill to back his mouth. Loves a good beatdown.

>Commentary:
One of my favorite Battle & Chase competitors, actually, until he turned Repliforce the minute the war started. Six days ago he and a sizable contingent took the Maracaibo Speedway and converted the neighboring automotive plant into a war factory. I have a handful of Hunters chomping at the bit to knock him out – apparently old fans of his too – but I picked you because you’re familiar with all the mechaniloids that place is producing. Air and sea assault is untenable due to the urban proximity and all the guns they put up, so you’re going in on his turf.

>Available Support:
1st Advance

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>>2456779

DEEPWELL ORANGUTANK (A-class)

>Known Weaponry:
Fracture Drills, Well Bore, Hydro Spike

>Personality:
Once a credit to the scientific community, now erratic and dangerously paranoid.

>Commentary:
Last month this renowned geologist sealed himself in his underground lab for fear of Mavericks coming to get him. We tried repeated contacts, even telling him that Repliforce collapsed, but he kept raving about how we’re all Sigma trying to trick him. His assistants swore they could get through to him, but now they’ve stopped responding, which makes us think he killed them all. To make matters worse, his lab is a Venezuelan cave complex where energen deposits are now harvest-ready. We need that resource to help rebuild, and if there’s a mad ape ready to attack anyone who goes down there… we can’t have that.

>Available Support:
None

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>>2456786

ARBOR ELK (B-class, high)

>Known Weaponry:
Arbor Wall, Logger Axe, Antlers

>Personality:
Strong, silent type. Clearly cares more for reploids than humans.

>Commentary:
Straightforward, this. Elk managed an artificial forest in the Ouachita Mountains until three weeks ago, when he killed every human worker and started taking in civilian Repliforce sympathizers. We were a little too busy at the time to deal with him, but now it seems he’s harboring Repliforce combatants, which makes him a priority. I nearly put him on my own roster, but you’re better suited to him and to his environment. You’re welcome. Just stay clear of his axe, if you don't want to come back hacked apart again.

>Available Support:
None

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>>2456799

HELLPIGS THREE (B-class, high)

>Known Weaponry:
Fire Breath, Stampede, Gore

>Personality:
Belligerent. Assume nothing else.

>Commentary:
Here’s one fresh from the inbox. Three giant boar mechaniloids used as high-level sport prey broke out of containment and killed twenty-nine people in the, I kid you not, ‘Happy Adventurer Hunting Experience’ in the middle of the Atacama Desert. The park’s owner ...

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>>2456814

... is one Corona Sphynx – with a Y. She's a sport hunter herself, a rare independently wealthy reploid, and a significant financial contributor to the Hunters. She has requested our assistance in this matter, specifically from someone who can “handle a little fire,” so it would be… impolitic to refuse her. Retire her safari pigs before they wander out of the desert and into somewhere important. And be polite. You probably can't afford somebody so well-connected having a bad opinion of you.

>Available Support:
None

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>>2456820

LIEGE ITERATTON (B-class)

>Known Weaponry:
Multiply Plague, Infection Legion, Command Thrall, Incisors

>Personality:
Megalomaniacal lunatic, presumed viral.

>Commentary:
This little freak used to be a C-class sneak thief, but during the war he went all Reploid Freedom Now. With Maverick assistance he incorporated Pararoid tech into his rat drones, which lets him control affected reploid bodies, and used that to take over an arcology and surrounding farm in rural Oklahoma. Every human worker is dead and every reploid and mechaniloid is enthralled. Furthermore, recent atmospheric tests show that the entire property is now unfit for human consumption and will have to be burned and demolished, so don’t hold back your fire.

>Available Support:
None

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>>2456827

FREEZER OSTENOPS (B-class)

>Known Weaponry:
Fluid Lockdown, Cold Breath, Fan Cooling

>Personality:
Erudite, not a trained fighter, so he's likely to go straight for weaknesses and bring in help.

>Commentary:
Disgraced academic. He was vocally supportive of Repliforce and got himself arrested, but the day Final Weapon fell, leftover Repliforce broke him out. With his help, they captured his old workplace – a deep-freeze bio-vault at the University of Larsen in the South Shetlands – and are holding it ransom in exchange for amnesty for all ex-Repliforce. They haven’t yet taken human hostages, so some idiot pundits think they’re sincere, but frankly an amnesty is never going to happen. Command wants every one of them retired, ideally with minimal damage to the vault.

>Available Support:
None

>>2456841

Everyone…

Select your first Maverick.

>ARC MORPHO
>SOUNDING HUMPBACK
>CHASER GIRTABOMB
>DEEPWELL ORANGUTANK
>ARBOR ELK
>HELLPIGS THREE
>LEIGE ITERATTON
>FREEZER OSTENOPS

(You will have the chance to seek further intel and clarify weaponry with Skittle before proceeding.)

First instinct is to take on piggus first, if we're lucky the kot will take us on as a charity case and help us upgrade to something like our pre-edgebug self. (If we're unlucky the kot sees we're a big fish and tries to eat us, which is bad, but still a funny mental image.)

>>2456742
>New images: wreckage, piles of Knot Berets, humans in suits pinning medals on reploids, and enormous flag-waving crowds. Most of the flags in the crowd shots appear to be Brazilian for some reason, even within frame of obviously non-Brazilian landmarks.
We Universal Century Gundam now?

>“We are still enjoying extensive and enthusiastic support from national militaries, above and beyond anything I can remember, for one reason: the world has seen what becomes of an alternative to us. They want it extinct, and Halcyon is torquing himself apart to make it happen.”
I thought the Repliforce incident lead to the Maverick Hunter commander resigning oh god he was named acting commander again wasn't he

>>2456868
>Deepwell Orangutank

>>2456868
I take it from the commentary on the last, live capture is out of the question.

Without our toys, back to basics, what does our profile look like? We've got the Melter, and I assume some sabers. No more secondary dash, not as much armor...

I'd say go in for one of the B-classes to test the waters. Freezer, Liege, Arbor, or Hellpigs.

Of those, Arbor and Hellpigs are priority, Arbor so the situation doesn't get worse and Hellpigs because we need the financial backing and don't need Hogzillas running rampant. Arbor can ripen for a turn, I think, before he attracts enough of the trash to be a much bigger problem... So, I vote Hellpigs.

Maybe Sphynx is entirely on the level. Maybe she's gone Zaroff, programmed the pigs, and wants a hunt of her own. Step carefully regardless. Ask for more information on Sphynx and this canned hunt of hers. Be discrete about it.

>>2456911
>live capture is out of the question.
Officially we aren't even cleared to make the attempt as a B, it's only A and up.

>>2456917
Ah, yeah. That's right.

>>2456868
I kind of want to go after Leige first, but am going to vote for
>HELLPIGS THREE
as our first target.

>>2456868
>HELLPIGS THREE

>>2456887
>I thought the Repliforce incident lead to the Maverick Hunter commander resigning

Patience...

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>>2457102

Man, all those bad command decisions? Sad Dremer is Sad.

>>2456814
Seems like the easiest when we're at our lowest.

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>>2457102
>we get to commit warcrimes on the humpback and ostenops missions and get Halcyon blamed for them

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>>2457258

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Can we get an idea of how the events around Repliforce's attempt at independence following the frame-up Dragoon shook out/escalated, at some point, at least in this continuity? Is the involvement of Sigma and his manipulations known at this point, or is it classified?

Repliforce must have had some distrust for humans from the word go, given how quick they were to create a separatist reploid ethnostate. If you go off of X4's English cutscenes, it might even be suggested that General was already preparing for independence and was rushed into it by getting fingered for Sky Lagoon. Did any officers defect from Repliforce before they went Maverick, despite the culture of militant duty that organization no doubt fostered and is evinced in game dialogue?

Is Halcyon's response of complete Repliforce annihilation an appropriate response to atrocities they committed (both perceived and real, because let's not kid ourselves, even if you go with the idea Jet Stingray didn't blow up a city but a weapons depot, Storm Owl wasn't just taking potshots at squirrels and Frost Walrus is a dickhead in any translation), or is he mostly doing damage control for whatever remains of his tattered reputation?

Well, at least we have 7 months before things go to shit again.

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Back at home, but I'll leave the vote to cook a while longer.

>>2457377

>Can we get an idea of how the events around Repliforce's attempt at independence following the frame-up Dragoon shook out/escalated, at some point, at least in this continuity?

Sure, I can hack some broad points out. Give me a bit.

>Is the involvement of Sigma and his manipulations known at this point, or is it classified?

It's known to the usual suspects, i.e. X and Zero and the uppermost Hunter leadership, and boy is it ever classified.

>Did any officers defect from Repliforce before they went Maverick, despite the culture of militant duty that organization no doubt fostered and is evinced in game dialogue?

Not many at all. The Russian Federation successfully poached Captain Viginti of Polar while Quadraginta of Disaster Response left to serve the JSSDF. Decim (no relation) of Special Operations became a Hunter in the Geneva 1st, and served with distinction despite rivalries with fellow Hunter officers. For the most part, however, Repliforce was known for steelclad loyalty and adherence to protocol. Mavericks within the ranks were even rarer, until of course the entire organization gained that label.

>Is Halcyon's response appropriate or self-serving?

That depends on your politics.

When Repliforce declared independence, they knew the reputation of their chief foes, and fought like they had nothing to lose. Atrocities such as Jet Stingray's assault on Charleston or Storm Owl's repeated flights over the United Kingdom were devastating in terms of lives lost and strategic assets incapacitated. The world did not want them gone for nothing.

However, Halcyon had quite a lot of ass to cover. He knew every hour of every day that the blame for Repliforce would land on his neck. He assumed, perhaps rightly, that the fewer Repliforce soldiers around when public opinion turned, the better off he'd be. For him, the entire war has been damage control.

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>>2456887
>>2456911
>>2456938
>>2457031

You think about it. Why not start with a familiar element? You've fought fire-breathers before. A flick of your finger on the Hellpigs entry results in:

ERROR: Unit Inactive; Mission Logged

What? ... You check the time. Oh. Proteus wasn't kidding. You still have a few minutes until you're "officially" back on the wagon.

"This little piggy went to market..." Skittle begins.

"Don't."

"Aw."

“C’mon,” they flit for the door, “let’s get you nice and dusted before your shakedown.”

“Ohhhh no you don’t,” Deco marches over on a mission of her own, all smiles, “don’t you even think of leaving this room without a hug, Meteor Showa.”

Her arms are around you before you can object and she lifts you clear off the floor. Your comrades and commander tactfully ignore the scene.

“MmmmmnnnNNG!” Deco sets you down, her frame belying her horsepower. “There. I was so worried for you! We all were, in fact, and I didn’t want you running out to another mission fresh from the slab without you hearing that.”

You roll a shoulder. “I think your hug said it all.”

Deco laughs merrily. There’s never a dark moment when she’s around. “Brother made me take down the welcome-home banners, otherwise you’d have known it the second you came back.”

“They were blocking cameras,” Nouveau snips.

“Oh pbbbth, letting our unit family know they’re valued is more important.”

“This is neither the time nor the place, sister,” Nouveau warns.

“It’s always the time,” Deco dismisses him with a wave. “Don’t listen to him, the place wasn’t the same without you. He just has no respect for how other people cope.” She takes your hand, platonic as a cube. “I know you like this part of the job, but don’t think you have to rush off to prove anything. We didn’t miss your A, we didn’t miss your seniority, we didn’t miss your record. We missed you -- who you are, not what you can do to Mavericks. Don’t forget that. Okay?”

That’s what you like about her. Combat Analyst and personality-reader extraordinaire. She might get overbearing sometimes, but she builds scaffolding under holes you didn’t even know were there.

“I won’t, Deco.”

“Promise?”

“Yes, Deco.”

“Cross your heart?”

“Nouveau, please wrangle your sister.”

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>>2458492

Deco giggles and backs off you, bending at the waist. “All right, all right. I’ll get my best staffers to follow-up your missions, so come to me after each one if you want to know how great you did.”

You nod and follow Skittle out.

“Nice girl,” they note. “So is she, like, broken or just deluded?”

“Don’t make fun of her,” you snap. “Some people can just be happy. There’s nothing wrong with them.”

Skittle razzes the idea. “If you’re that bubbly, you’re not paying attention. Now let’s get you kitted, yeah?”

Your moth-fairy friend takes you across a skybridge and down a few levels into a repair bay. Unoccupied Lifesavers walking by take one look and give them a wide berth for you to follow.

>I don’t know a lot of medics, how does R&D get along with them?
>Okay, Skittle, what did you do?

>>2458501
>I don't know a lot of medics, how does R&D get along with them?

>>2456868
>HELLPIGS THREE
If there's anyone who would appreciate experience without power, it'd be a sports hunter

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>>2458501
>Okay, Skittle, what did you do?

At this point even I don't know.

>>2458501
>>Okay, Skittle, was it you or was it me?

>>2458501
>Okay, Skittle, what did you do?

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>>2458542
>>2458550
>>2458566

“You seem popular.”

“Notoriety gets around. Hey Ay-one-thirteen.”

One of the Lifesavers turns away and finds something better to do.

“Notoriety for…?”

“Oh, just this one time.” They twiddle a pinky finger in their pointed earcap. “See, some G-class ex-Mossad hacker mav tried to copy Rho and make her into a viral propagation vector, but I thwarted them by copying her into my own DNA with warp recursion and a handful of oh would you look at your face!” They hold their gut and laugh, somersaulting backwards in midair.

You try to pull a Batteram and go stonefaced. “That would seriously be only the third weirdest thing you’ve ever done.”

“I know, right? But seriously, I saved the world once.”

“Uh-huh.”

Skittle crosses their arms and reclines in midair. “Cee-one-thirty-seven?”

A Lifesaver at a terminal jolts forward in his seat.

“Remind me, Cee, how many of you did Trapdoor Spinner’s little cyberworm get?”

“Everyone on this floor.”

“Yyyyoooouuurrr…” Skittle prompts.

“Your Highness,” C-137 groans.

“And it didn’t gnaw any farther through your ill-conceived global monoculture model becaaaaause?”

“Because you treated each of us individually.”

Skittle purses their lips, waiting.

“… After physically and signally isolating us from the Lifesaver network.”

Skittle rolls their wrist.

“… By teleporting this entire floor of the building into the ocean.”

They beckon.

The unlucky Lifesaver looks right at you. “After converting the power conduits in the ceiling and floor into a makeshift field dais array and routing our own infected LIFE cores through them to balance the mass equation and project the warp signal shell eight kilometers Due East. In ten minutes. From scraps.”

You absorb that. On further consideration, there was that unexplained renovation a couple months ago.

“Okay, maybe the second-weirdest.”

The light goes out behind C-137’s eyes. “It was full of stars…”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Skittle rotates back upright and flutters through a door.

“Uh, Your Highness,” A-113 calls, “that goes to the quarantine cells?”

Skittle’s voice carries surprisingly well over the clamor of rapid disassembly and the occasional equipment part thrown out onto the repair bay floor. “Right, the E-M restraints are supermax-quality. Can’t get a more stable power feed this side of the emergency beamout wing! I’ll hook ‘em up to some nice toys in a day’s time, all to serve the glorious Fourth and especially my good good buddy Meteor Showa.”

Every single Lifesaver you can see turns to you. Some are behind glass in adjacent rooms. At least two seem to pause their work on offlined patients.

Skittle peers around the corner, grinning with manic energy. “Don’t just stand there, c’mon in!”

You hurry to comply under the withering glares of at least a dozen identical faces.

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>>2459125

In a matter of seconds Skittle has already jimmied open a heavy sliding door and gotten to work removing floor panels within. It’s astonishing what they can do with a screwdriver.

“So tell me,” they tip their goggles down, “you like your body?”

“Uh?”

“Frame-wise. Feels lighter, right? I can fix that, or I can make it better.” They flick a setting on the goggles and the lenses go black. “Best to suss out your wants right now, so I can start pondering weapon balance.”

“Skittle, I’m broke.”

“I know you,” they tap their forehead and take out what appears to be a candy-striped bendy straw stuck in an orange, “you’ll be rolling in zenny before long. Since you’ve been cut to the quick, you can build out in a whole new way if you like. The choices boil down to armor, flex, and shields. So,” they squeeze the orange and a bright cutting torch spurts from the straw, “got opinions?”

You stare at your friend as they idly carve up floor panels with the most ridiculous tool you’ve ever seen. That’s par for the course with Scatter Seelie.

>Learn about armor
>Learn about flex
>Learn about shields
>Look, weirdo, you brought me here for weapons.

>>2459130
>Learn about Timed Hits

But actually, armor.

>>2459130
>Learn about flex

Armor and Shields sound simple enough, what the hell is flex?

I'm guessing dodging more than taking hits.

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>>2459130
>Learn about flex

I giggled like a... well, like Skittle, reading their own personal SO THERE I WAS.

>>2459130
>Learn about flex

>>2459125
I am now too afraid of Skittle to continue reading this quest.
Godspeed.

>Learn about armor
Was the stuff we were rebuilt with as strong as our old armor plating, or are we now made of papier-mache and soda cans?

>Learn about flex

so were those the stares of the "oh you poor bastard" kind or the "oh god their's another one" kind of stares?

>>2459130
>Learn about shields
Please tell me someone figured out a counter to those fuckfast blades.

>Complete redesign so that he doesn't even look like a fish

>"Suddenly, an elephant splashes out of the water and announces I AM METEOR SHOWA"

>>2459130
>learn about flex

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>>2459569
"Well shit, they took my trick and went pro."

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>>2459157
>>2459166
>>2459168
>>2459448
>>2459675

Skittle pauses their work and sticks a disc on the wall. They tap it twice, and a life-size holo of your chassis – sideways, of course – flickers an overlay emphasizing joints and various subdermal geometry. You take a step back to avoid it clipping through you.

“Flex Architecture. It’s wonderful stuff, highly recommended. Not only does it improve reflexes, it lets your body stay together under abuse.”

“So if I had this, I wouldn’t have come back as thrashed as I was?”

“Oh hell no, your particular thrasher would’ve sent you back in a crate full of little tins. Flex comes at the expense of sturdiness. Your armor’s what saved your life.”

You scowl. “Then why should I even consider anything else?”

“Because maybe if you had something else, you’d have left on your own two feet?” Skittle shrugs and returns to deconstructing the floor, revealing power conduits. “The fight definitely would’ve gone on longer, maybe given you a shot at escape, maybe let you dodge a few licks and get a few good ones in. On top of that, frames geared to Flex don’t typically fall apart until the LIFE core ruptures. You get ravaged again and you’ll – probably – keep your limbs on and working, depending on how much you put into it, right up ‘til you pop. Think of it this way. Armor protects your bits. Shields protect your bits. Flex? Lets you keep your bits.”

“Well good. I like my bits where they are.”

“Don’t we all.”

“Hush.”

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>>2459787
>>2459454

Skittle stows the welder orange, flits out the door with an armload of floor panels and makes a neat stack. You stay out of their way as they go back and forth like that for a moment.

“Shields, now, that’s what yours truly has. Thanks to the tech X keeps picking up from classified-knows-where, they’re better than they’ve ever been, and right now Barrier Extenders are all the rage. You can get a nice extra second or two on your invulnerability flash, plus faster cycling at each stage, if you invest enough.”

“That’s all? Can’t you make my shields… I dunno, harder? Or fire faster?”

Skittle laughs. “Oh, if you weren’t you… here, you even know how your own shielding works?”

“Of course I do!” You protest. “It takes the spike out of big damage and fail-safes your LIFE core when you take a fatal hit.”

“Good enough for an undergrad,” Skittle nods, not unkindly. “especially with how fast the war made the development curve move. I swear, some people don’t even know that much.”

“I could stand to learn more, if you’re offering.”

“Oh I’m giving, my friend.” They stick the projector on the ceiling, take out more conventional tools and start dismantling the quarantine cell’s thick walls.

“Let’s say that your LIFE output can be expressed as… the number Ten. It can’t be, but let’s keep that useful little lie. Your Shield Battery uses that base value of Ten as well, but it only activates if you get damage expressible as, say, Two. When you get hit worth a Two or above, it takes that number out of you and takes the remainder out of itself. So if you get hit for a Five, say, you only feel a Two, but your Shield Battery has gone down by Three. Get slammed with a Ten, your shields go down by Eight.”

Simple enough. “And if I’m hit with a for-the-sake-of-argument Twelve…”

“You done goofed.”

“Well yes, but shield-wise?”

“The bugger flips the table and quits, leaving you with nothing but your armor until you come home and get a recharge. However,” they buff their little fingers on their chest, “some of us aren’t built for armor at all. Let’s say my LIFE output is, compared to you, a Four. My shields go up to Eleven, and they flash at even a One’s worth of hurt. But see, they’re tweaked like that ‘cause I’m bareass naked otherwise.”

“Can my shields ever go up that high?”

They flit right up to your face and clip you across the nose. “You don’t want to put all your caviar in one basket. One hard counter and you’ll be worse off than you were last week.”

>>2459789

“That’s not a no.”

“It’s not a no,” they irritably flap a hand over their shoulder as they turn and yank a dismounted panel off the wall, “it’s academic. My level of haptic broadcast density swaps the outer armor layer for a silkscreen of projectors. It leaves the body with nothing else. And lest you’ve forgotten,” they turn on you again, “there are people out there who treat shields like fog. They can time their hits through the refresh rate. And not just big names like Zero or Rezador or that squat green maniac, but that Maverick who so deftly filleted you and slapped you on the grill!”

Skittle grabs hold of your face and stares into your eyes. An abyss opens up behind their own.

“Your frame’s already weak to edged ceratanium. If not for your armor I’d have bid you farewell, do you understand? There is no goddamned way I’m stripping you bare and throwing you to the seagulls with nothing but an energy skirt on.”

They let go with a push, cross their arms and flit backwards. “Barrier Extenders I can do if you want ‘em, ‘cause it gives even the swordy types [isome grief, but I’m not giving you a thicker field or a twitchier flash. They’re too easy to cheese. Don’t ask me again.”

“I won’t,” you quietly reply.

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>>2459791
>>2459154
>>2459206

“What about armor?”

“Looking to go back the way you were?” They settle down and tinker in the exposed wall, elbows-deep. “Can’t say I blame you. You had some nice hide.”

“And I’m sure you were entirely professional with it.”

“Wholly, Meteor, nothing profane.” They snap their fingers and your upside-down holo-schematic flicks back to the way you once were. “Solid Plating is your go-to, here. Reduces damage, absorbs shock…”

“Shock?” Your broad forehead scrunches a little. “My old armor didn’t do much of that.”

“Technology marches on,” they twirl a finger in the air. “You’re looking at a good twenty-five percent damage reduction for the first fitting, then thirty-three and fifty for subsequent, with commensurate increase in kinetic absorption. At the best, not only will you hurt less, but anybody who tries to knock you off your feet… won’t.”

Nice. “No drawbacks?”

“Well, none you don’t already know. Armor-piercing ordinance won’t take no for an answer, and favoring armor means expecting to get hit in the first place. Do try not to.”

“Didn’t plan on it.”

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>>2459794

“Now what’s left, what’s left…” Skittle fishes in one of many pockets. “Oh right. Catch.”

They toss a beam saber hilt your way. You snatch it out of the air. There’s glitter on it.

“Sabers come cheap, so that’s on the house. Try it.”

You snap the saber alight. It’s thirty centimeters of low-phase plasma, Easter-pastel purple.

“Nice.” You twiddle it in your fingers, adding a faint glow to the walls. “Just one?”

“Look, I emptied my month’s beer fund getting your tail back in swim-everywhere shape. You want more, or want that one upped, earn some dosh. Oh, and speaking of more, your buster was fried what good when Deco’s people found your right arm, so I had to toss it.”

“I don’t have a buster?”

“No no, you do. I had tons lying around, so I took the liberty of installing…”

>Rapid-Fire Buster: Two-shot plasma. Upgrade (10k): second-level charge for four shots, good for minions and mini-bosses.
>Charge Buster: Charge Buster: One-shot plasma, second-stage charge. Upgrade (10k): Third charge level, good for bosses.

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>>2459801
>Charge Buster: Charge Buster: One-shot plasma, second-stage charge. Upgrade (10k): Third charge level, good for bosses.

We don't want all our hard-hitting eggs in Meteor Melter's basket, we already had that disabled once before.

>>2459801
>>Charge Buster: Charge Buster: One-shot plasma, second-stage charge. Upgrade (10k): Third charge level, good for bosses.
now that we know how that mosquito works, more volume of fire wouldn't really be worth it

>>2459801
>Rapid-Fire Buster: Two-shot plasma. Upgrade (10k): second-level charge for four shots, good for minions and mini-bosses.
Right now we should try to just focus on having a balanced loadout, fancier weapons can wait until we can afford them.

>>2459801
>Charge Buster

>>2459801
>Charge Buster: Charge Buster: One-shot plasma, second-stage charge. Upgrade (10k): Third charge level, good for bosses.

>>2459801
>Charge Buster: One-shot plasma, second-stage charge. Upgrade (10k): Third charge level, good for bosses.

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>>2459808
>>2459812
>>2459827
>>2459884
>>2459981

“… one like you had before. Two-level charge-up, good for punching holes.”

“Then why can’t I feel it?”

“Tsk, knew I forgot something.” Skittle takes a datapad from behind their back and keys in something. A flash of data—

DYNAMIC NEURAL ARRAY SUMMARY, SSKN27-KS04 “METEOR SHOWA”
[CHASSIS]: Anthropomorph, fish (Cyprinus carpio)
[FRAME]: Titanium-X, standard
[WEAPONRY]:
>Meteor Melter
>Beam Dirk [give this to her later, me]
>Charge Buster [UNLOCKED]
[OUTFITTED WITH]:
>EAS-Alpha Dash System [UNLOCKED]
[VWES-4]:
>[UNLOCKED]
>[field empty, install ready]
[HUNTER RANK]: B

—hits you. You blink away the momentary disorientation.

“Unlocked?”

“Precaution, like. Lest you forgot, two wars ago we had the virus to worry about. You’re clean, though, don’t worry. Not only no trace of the old bad brain-bender, but not a twitch toward any predicted permutations. We know the Maverick Virus family up down and sideways now. I just, uh, forgot to unlock after I confirmed you hadn’t caught it off the swordbug. Sorry.”

Your heart nearly stopped for a second, there. “Good.”

“Right.” Skittle plucks the projector off the ceiling and joins you back in the quarantine hall. “So this junk can wait, I just needed my hands busy. Ready to go?”


>You’re coming with me?
>You are NOT coming with me.

>>2459996
>You are NOT coming with me.
We're about to meat a posh influential dude. I don't think sparkles will send the right impression.

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>>2459996

To be clear: You have the option of bringing Skittle on this first mission, and only this one, if you so choose.

They will be there to monitor you and assist in a manner not unlike one of your koi drones: limited tactical fire support when requested, mostly staying close yet out of your way, but also being another enemy target.

If they sustain too much damage, they will retreat, and high-quality future upgrades may require a brief time delay. Fortunately the Welsh fairy-moth is much, much more durable than your former flying fish were.

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>>2460003
>You’re coming with me?
Skittle was just hitting the limits of what their tiny frame could mount in our MHQgame present-day, but if they've been keeping up with the times, with the level of tech and access to it? Having a terror fairy SIGINT buffer might not be such a bad idea.

Though >>2460003 raises a good point; best behavior, dustmote.

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>>2459996
>You can come with me if you promise to be on your best behavior and not tweak our sugar momma on the nose.

>>2459996
>You’re coming with me?

>>2459996
>You’re coming with me?
I mean, I'm sure Skittle will be on their best behavior, but if worse comes to worse it won't be us that fucked up.

>>2459996
>Only if you're good

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Meanwhile, a partial answer for >>2457377 ...

>Can we get an idea of how the events around Repliforce's attempt at independence following the frame-up Dragoon shook out/escalated, at some point, at least in this continuity?

A nation needs a location.

Establishing an ethnostate for reploids had unique challenges, such as 1) a defensible position, 2) relatively free of existing human populations, 3) which could be occupied and fortified in a hurry, and 4) which would cause capital-P Problems if the Hunters fired Final Weapon anywhere near it.

General found the Russian Far East to fit his criteria. While much of Repliforce struck targets of strategic value from its existing bases (such as Yellowknife and Columbo), General personally led a full third of the organization and hammered the joints of the Russian Federation in preparation for establishing the Reploid Commonwealth.

The Russian military was powerful yet underprepared for the simultaneous blitz of St. Petersburg and Moscow, and for the first time in history, winter did not stop the invaders from advancing. The Battle of the Urals ended in unmitigated disaster. Russia was forced to swallow its pride and call on the Hunters and the international community for help, but by that point Repliforce had begun massing at the Sea of Okhotsk.

While Maverick Hunter Headquarters 1 and 2 were involved in incursions across the globe, HQs 3 (Japan) and 4 (USA) were primarily tasked with containing and combatting General’s force. However, the Most Powerful Army In History lived up to its name, and weathered all offenses.

And then the Shenzhou Army began to move.

Repliforce had gotten much too close to the Western Pacific Rim Convention for comfort, especially if unconfirmed reports of domestic strife are to be believed. Here on the WPRC’s doorstep was a legitimate threat to not only their regional power but their social order, and one drawing in global military and Maverick Hunter forces on top of that. China would not have it.

Repliforce suffered its first serious moment of pause at the hands of Shui Xuanwu and Jin Baihu, forcing General to personally take the field. The Battle of Magadan saw the Black Turtle slain and the White Tiger grievously injured, but General himself sustained significant internal damage. The Shenzhou Army soon retreated back to its borders and stayed there, leaving the Hunters and their allies to press the advantage.

General, at last aware of his own limits, advanced his campaign’s timetable and fled into space with little more than an honor guard. The neutral space colony Lemuria, where Repliforce sympathizers and spies had gathered, served as a stepping stone for a crippling surprise assault on the Maverick Hunter 11th Space Unit’s nerve center. The station was destroyed and its remaining officers driven either to far-flung outposts or down to Earth.

From there, Repliforce seized Final Weapon inside of four hours.

>>2460376
Illuminating. Thank you.

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>>2460023
>>2460024
>>2460028
>>2460067

You give them a long look.

“What? You’re a work in progress, right off what’s practically a reset. Something might go wrong with you, and Blinky wants to know when and whether. I won’t tag along on your every mission, though, nobody’s got time for that.”

“Fine. Just… don’t make a spectacle of yourself, okay? We’ll be working with a VIP.”

A Cheshire grin curls across their cheeks as they lift their goggles.

“I mean it, Skittle.” You count on your fingers, slapping each into your opposite palm, “No pranks, no insults, no maudlin observations, no turning coffee-makers into mortars, and absolutely no glitter!”

“Sheesh, Mom, you’re no fun,” they pout.

You mock them right back with a snooty lockjaw, “I will turn this mission right around, young enby, do not test me.”

“Heh heh.”

Your favorite mad scientist flits to your side, their always-peaked energy settling to a plateau as they link their fingers and rest them on your shoulder.

“Thanks for not dying. Despite, y’know, how our stuff played out, I like having you around, I do. Not a lot of people get me like you.”

“You never let a lot try.”

“Hey, if they can’t take my worst, they’re not worth me, full stop.” They push off and flit back into the repair bay. “See you at the pad.”

You watch them go, then take a moment for yourself in the quiet.

So much has happened so quickly. Back when you joined the Hunters, back when you had your first squad, your first horrors, your first dead comrade… all you could do was tread water and hope the sea was kind. But you adapted fast, fought the current, worked your way up -- and darn it you’ll do it again.

The alternative is letting people who need you go without. Wasting their hope. Leaving them to the mercies of chance. There’s quite enough of that in the world as it is. You can't help everyone, but you can absolutely make their world better one Maverick at a time.

A message ping lets you know what you already do: you’re officially back on duty.

You hold yourself high and march out.

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SHOOTING STAR: A Maverick Hunter Quest Game
Written by Scarab
With the blessing of Hunter Command and CainLabs
But not Capcom
Special Thanks to srps and guy_with_the_parrot
>A N D Y O U !


Next Time: Meteor Showa makes porkchops in the desert!

I'm still getting a hang of the time and length budget on /qst/ threads, but now I have a much better idea than I did going in. Hope you've enjoyed the first episode, everyone.

Questions, comments? There's plenty of thread space yet to go.

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>>2460658
Thanks for running. Looking forward to seeing more of pretty much everything.

I'll try to keep myself as available as possible wherever requested of me. As for questions, none come to mind, as I'm on my way out the door for travel in half an hour.

>>2460658
Thanks for running today!

Any idea on when you plan on running the next thread?

>>2460862

Possibly this weekend. I have things plotted out in a rough frame for every mission, but nothing pre-written quite so detailed and far ahead of time as this intro mission and setup.

I like prep.

>>2460896
That's fair, and I'm definitely catching the next one!

see ya next time

>>2459791
>or that squat green maniac
I see you trying to ensure that Em lives long enough to see this quest.
We all know he's going to kill himself or go mav before this though.
Damn shame I missed the end. I'm looking forward to the next thread.

>>2465905
oh, i missed that.

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>>2465905
>>2465945

Glad you liked it. As for references, call it hedging bets. Em lives? Then it was him. He doesn't?

"Oh, I just meant the hitherto-unknown S-rank Melee Marimo. That guy's crazy."

Also, while I'm here: the thread has been archived, and may be found with Maverick Hunter Quest proper.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Maverick%20Hunter%20Quest

>>2466042
Oh, for a second there I thought you were referring to OG Steel massimo.

>>2466042
You've got to link to the qst archive, not tg! People can't upvote from the tg archive.