TimelordLucario
Professional Lurker
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Well at least Ingrid and Anderson will be aware of Syuen's bullshit before she frames Joe for treason or something.
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Only Human (Goddess of Victory NIKKE SI)
- Thread starter BakaSmurf
- Start date
Fragment of Serenity
Yu-Shan's Paperwork Ninja
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Syuen always struck me as someone completely unaware of her own mortality. Wonder if she's learn better in this world. Not like it would be a net gain if she suffered from a sudden case of the death.
Zam138
Salted Fish
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I feel like it's less "unaware of her mortality" and more "assured of her invincibility" with her, she's the CEO of a megacorporation that everyone in the Arc owes their survival to in one way or another and that lets her get away with a LOT of things, charging forwards confidently until she meets the brick wall of someone (you) that doesn't hold her as an untouchable figure, and the consequences that follow.
Chapter 22 - Preparations
BakaSmurf
Only Human, After All
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===
Chapter 22 - Preparations
===
"So, what's the deal?" Joe inquired a fair while later, leaning back in the desk chair of his office and personal quarters dimly lit by the desk lamp next to his personal computer, one of his three benefactors engaging in encrypted communications with him.
"To cut a long story short?" Ingrid replied, sounding more than a little exhausted. "I couldn't shut down Syuen. Not entirely, at least. From what I could gather, she intended to press-gang you into serving her. Last time she checked the registry was immediately before we had the relevant records altered to point to you having been sponsored by Elysion from the word go… She was more than a little suspicious that you were suddenly 'always' sponsored by Elysion, to say the least. I had to capitulate: which is to say, I got her to agree to an exchange of services, of sorts."
"And what exactly does that entail?" Joe asked, idly rubbing at one of his cheeks as he braced for whatever fuckery he was about to be party to.
"One-time access to one of the other company's Nikke squads," Ingrid declared. "Once, Syuen can call on Counters, a card she's cashing in right here and now, and I can call on Matis in turn; I'm sitting on that one, though."
"Matis?" Joe asked, moving to tap his fingers on the surface of his desk.
"Missilis' elite Nikke squad. You can look them up yourself if you're curious, they're one of the better known units in the Ark, so you'll be practically swimming in information from the smallest cursory glance. Point being," Ingrid clearly wasn't feeling up to informing Joe of this squad herself, so he'd just bookmark that name for later. "We couldn't afford to have Syuen pressing the matter, and this is the best I could do without risking seriously pissing her off and potentially causing a chain reaction of investigations into you by the Central Government we really can't be dealing with right now."
"So… ultimately, I'm still required suck it up and listen to the jumped-up little twerp?" Joe was getting displeased himself.
"Yes and no," Ingrid noted. "This will be treated as a joint operation, of sorts. And because you answer directly to me first and foremost, Syuen will at minimum have little option but to rein in her typical standards of behaviour while you're fulfilling her request. I made it perfectly clear that I'll brook no disrespect towards you, so while she will technically be your Commanding Officer for the duration of this little operation of hers, she won't be giving you a hard time if she wants you to actually be cooperative… Don't expect her to extend what little begrudging respect she'll pay to you to the Nikkes under your command, however. I can mitigate damage, not perform miracles."
Yeah, Syuen didn't exactly strike Joe as the most inclusive or sensitive individual… he'd just have to assure the girls that this was unpleasantness they'd have to grit their teeth and bear until they had the CEO of Missilis out of their hair. "And I don't suppose you know what that operation actually is?" Joe wondered aloud as he rose to his feet, ambling over to the window overlooking the Outpost - taking in the sights of significant construction work proceeding along under street lights at a pace which would be freakish for ordinary humans.
He knew better than to complain or whine about the treatment of Nikkes to Ingrid. They'd have to put up with it for now and perform their mission; simple as that.
"No, actually, I don't," Ingrid informed him plainly. "Much as I hate to admit it, Syuen has us by the metaphorical balls, though I wasn't so foolish as to show it, nor does she realise it. I was in no position to be pressing her for information. All I was able to get out of her is that the ultimate objective relates to some manner of Missilis research and the gathering of some kind of rare resource on the surface… which I seriously doubt necessitates press-ganging a particularly gifted Commander and his personal Nikke squad into service to accomplish."
"Meaning she's being disingenuous," Joe surmised.
"To say the least," Ingrid affirmed his observation. "She will have to provide you more information once you're in the field, just by virtue of the fact that you're the one that's going to be leading the operation and that you can't accomplish your goal without knowing what it is you're even trying to do. By that point, I'd wager that she'll attempt to bribe you into lying to me about her objectives."
"And obviously, I'm to refuse-"
"Don't be daft," Ingrid sharply cut him off. "Accept the bribe, and do exactly as she demands in turn. Don't tell me. Tell Andersen. Or Mustang, if she thinks to order you to keep the Deputy Chief Commander in the dark as well."
"...Ah, malicious compliance, exact wording," Joe let out a single chuckle. "Alright, I can work with that. Anything else?"
"In the event of things going FUBAR, you're to contact me, not the Central Government, you hear? Or, to be more specific, you'll trigger the pulsar I'll provide you. I'll spare you the technical details on how exactly it functions, but even in the likely scenario Syuen jams all outgoing communications to ensure nobody contacts Central, it will still alert us to your location, like a flare. We see it go off? We assume you need back-up." Ingrid directed and informed him. "Syuen doesn't want Central to learn about this. And neither do I. We are going over the Government's head here, which, while not technically illegal as CEO's of the Big Three, would rightly piss them off and necessitate some manner of retaliation, as you might imagine."
"Right, that'd put everyone but… Mustang, I suppose, in hot water, yeah?" Joe reached out and set his free palm on the glass pane, leaning on the window as he gazed out over the little settlement that was rapidly taking on something approximating a degree of budding life.
"Andersen would have to burn a lot of goodwill to avoid needing to throw you under the bus, given that he is your proper Commanding Officer, and he's supposed to be aware of and responsible for all of your doings. Syuen and I would get our feet held to the coals for overstepping the agreed-upon, if unspoken agreement that the Big Three will not go behind Central's back on matters of proper military operations, which all surface excursions legally count as. We'd survive, but having the leash tightened would make things all the more complicated for us, as you might imagine. Tetra Line wouldn't face any direct consequences, beyond doubtlessly being affected by whatever new regulations the Government would impose on us."
Joe nodded, despite Ingrid not being able to see him over their comms line. "And while you all could just blatantly ignore those regulations, that'd mean escalating tensions between the Big Three and the Central Government, which we want to avoid at this point in time."
"Precisely," Ingrid affirmed his conclusion. "Things get dicey enough with Syuen pulling off stunts like this constantly. We don't need the Government to think that Tetra Line is the only company not getting overly brazen about disrespecting the Government's authority."
"Alright, well," Joe clicked his tongue, nodding as he damn well did his best to remain calm and not experience an anxiety attack over being caught in the midst of this cyberpunk dystopia black ops cloak-and-dagger bullshit. "Sounds like we shouldn't have to worry about the Central Government finding out about this, if you've got a corporate death squad on call to fly in if shit hits the fan," Joe remarked as images of Trauma Team entered his mind. His glib description earned a sharp huff from the CEO, doubtlessly on account of how he chose to refer to her back-up unit. "You'll send an Elysion rescue team if things get hairy, then?"
"Absolute, to be specific," Ingrid informed him. "The company's most powerful squad, the elite of the Ark's elite. Nothing else compares, not even Matis, no matter how much Syuen caterwauls to the contrary. They'll remain on standby, ready to scramble at a moment's notice. God willing, you won't wind up needing them."
"Absolute… anything I should know about them?" Joe asked, watching a number of mass-produced Nikkes effortlessly raise and set the framing of what looked like a small residential unit with a speed that'd put any construction company back home to shame.
"They're Rapi's former squad," Ingrid declared. "Eunhwa, Emma, and Vesti. As I said, they're the best in the Ark, bar none. They'll do their job, and not let their personal feelings get in the way of the mission."
…Probably something he should ask Rapi about then, if Ingrid was jumping right to effectively assuring him that Rapi's former squadmates probably wouldn't swing at her on sight. "Understood. Anything else?"
"Your Tetra Line Nikkes should be arriving at the Outpost in a few days," Ingrid declared. "To my understanding, you'll be receiving the aforementioned mass-produced models Mustang previously promised you, officially considered a part of Counters proper from here on out… and some time later, the Carronades will also be permanently assigned to your command."
"The Carronades?" A name that hadn't come up before.
"I don't know much about them myself, only that they're a two-unit artillery squad," Elysion's CEO noted simply. "Ask Mustang for details if you want. Tetra Line Nikkes don't tend to fall under my purview."
"Got it," Joe would try to remember to fling Mustang a message asking after that. "Otherwise…?"
"You are under no obligation to march yourself or any of the Nikkes under your command to your deaths while doing this contract for Syuen," Ingrid pointedly declared. "If she ever issues you an unreasonable command, you have the right to refuse and call off the mission at any point, regardless of what she says to the contrary - doubly so considering she damn well knows that I have evidence of her having attempted to press you into an illegal operation. If she tries to get hostile over the matter, if it comes up, again, activate the pulsar. Syuen's stupid, but not so stupid that she'll try anything when she damn well knows that I'm peering over your shoulder the whole time. A corporate war isn't something she wants to have to deal with, especially not over a single Commander, rising star or no."
'Rising star.' That made Joe a little uncomfortable, being referred to as such. But, he'd seen the statistics himself, Commanders had a 70% chance to die on their first mission. That number only went up with each subsequent deployment. Most operations were cartoonish failures… and here, Joe had the destruction of two Tyrants, one of which was a very big deal associated with both of his initial deployments, with understaffed and under-equipped Nikke squads at that. There was a reason Syuen took notice of him, despite how much he'd like to believe otherwise.
If anything… that suggested that whatever it was she wanted to demand of Joe required the apparent skills of an unusually talented Commander. "Considering my reputation, I'm sure she tried to nab me because this mission of hers is a high-risk one."
"Not an unreasonable expectation," Ingrid agreed. "I doubt this mission will involve coming to blows with yet another Tyrant, but," she growled. "If she does put you in extreme danger and failed to relay that information to us ahead of time, there'll be hell to pay. And if it does come to that, to reiterate: you are under no obligation to die for Syuen's cause. The instant this operation crosses into the point of being unreasonable, abandon the mission and retreat. Got it?"
"Understood," Joe answered, "So, we have an ETA on when this'll all go down?"
"Within the next few days," the CEO declared. "Andersen wants to arrange for a meeting between him, you, Mustang, and myself at some point in the near future. Given our schedules, I wouldn't expect that to happen before the mission, though. So… just ready yourself. We'll get to discussing your history and the plan in time. For now, we just focus on dealing with our immediate problems."
"Okay," Joe let out a long breath. "I'll inform everyone and make sure we're prepared."
"There isn't much else to say, such as it is. So I'll let you go and return to my own duties. Keep Syuen placated within reason, Pholus. That's all. Good luck."
With that, the comms line cut, and Joe immediately slumped against the window overlooking the Outpost.
Fuck this life, man.
"You have got to be kidding me," Anis whined. The squad was currently occupying the impromptu armoury situated in the Command Centre. "We're going on a mission for Syuen, and Ingrid's approved of it!? What the hell!?"
While Anis complained, Rapi dutifully went about making sure her magazines were all squared away, while Neon pouted over being forced to pick and take a sidearm along with her - to say nothing of how mad Anis was that she was being made to 'get dressed twice in one day' - which was to say that Joe dictated that armour would be worn in the field. Minimal armour would be acceptable - so long as it was worn at all. Even being instructed to put on a soft vest was enough to make Anis act as though she was being tortured. To say nothing of how annoyed she was at being made to also carry a sidearm…
"It's a mutual exchange," Joe asserted. "Syuen gets help from us, and in turn, Ingrid can call on Matis. Considering this is supposed to be a simple 'resource gathering mission-'"
"Oh give me a break, like you believe that!" Anis whinged, leaning over and setting her hands on her hips as she did so. "If Syuen was just calling for a grocery delivery service, she would have issued a mission through the Central Government! Is this even legal, directly going to a Commander and making demands like this?"
"Yes," Rapi answered for Joe as she started going over her armour - minimal, hard greaves and bracers alongside a soft vest. She'd declared before that she preferred to not get hit in the first place, and had shown that she was skilled enough to actually genuinely dodge most dangers, so he trusted her to outfit herself properly for her own skill set. "There is no law that dictates that the Big Three cannot directly issue orders to Commanders without going through the Central Government… though doing so is frowned upon, to say the least."
Anis cast her arms out wide at that, beginning to cry out: "Then we should just tell the Central-!"
"So your plan is to directly piss off two of the Big Three's CEO's to avoid what's supposed to be a simple resource gathering mission, Anis?" Joe cut her off. "Ingrid has agreed to the operation, and has given me explicit permission to tell Syuen to go fuck herself if she ever tries to make an unreasonable demand. She's also giving me a big red button I can hit to summon Absolute to back us up and extract us at any point if need be." Notably, Rapi's otherwise mechanical motions hitched at the mention of her old squad's name, but she quickly continued as she was, scarcely missing a beat. "We're going to be fine, calm down and finish readying your kit for when we have to deploy."
"...Oh," Anis wound down really fast. "Ah, well, okay… Didn't expect we'd have Elysion's best squad on speed dial the entire time… I still think this is all super fishy, though," she asserted. "Seriously, Syuen's bad news!"
"Hence Ingrid taking precautions and making arrangements to give us boons, including the right to refuse unreasonable commands from Syuen," Rapi added bluntly, her tone as robotically flat as ever. "The mission is happening, Anis. You would be wise to prepare for it, as the Commander has instructed us to do. Like Neon is."
"Huh?" Neon looked up from her place at a repurposed lunch table, having been fiddling with… a pair of short-barreled shotgun pistols. Quad-barreled break-action. Aside from that, set aside was a cartoonishly large revolver that looked to Joe like it was gauged for full-sized shotshells. Points for considering carrying back-ups that would share ammo with her primary, at least… "Did somebody say my name?"
"You're doing good, Neon," Joe shot her a thumbs-up. "Keep up the good work."
At that, a big, satisfied smile found purchase on her features, and the firepower-obsessed Nikke immediately returned to her preparations, now with a bit more pep compared to her previous mood.
Anis just gave the three an aggravated look, eventually throwing her hands up and moving to comply with her instructions. "This is all going to go awful and terrible and we're all going to regret it, mark my words…!" But not without getting one last doomerism in.
Settling into her own little angry corner, Anis started fussing about with her own kit while Joe was left pondering his own set-up. Little about it had changed aside from a select few additions and changes. He carried all of his own important Commander shit alongside a new, ultralight, highly compact and suppressed AR-style carbine - strictly for self-defense against predatory animals - because fuck hoping a pistol would be able to stop a bear or tiger or some shit. He didn't put anything on it - because if he did use it, he'd be using it to stop a charging animal, not clearing rooms in the Middle East. An integrated holographic sight with back-up irons. No bells or whistles, no needless excess weight.
He'd also decided to bring along some spare magazines for the girls themselves, because why the fuck not? He couldn't use a Nikke's gun, but he could lug around some lead for them in a vest, at least.
At any rate, with his junk all squared away, Joe looked between the three gathered, Nikkes, and quickly gathered that attempting to talk to Anis would be pointless given how pissy she was being, deliberately set away from everyone else. Meanwhile, Neon was off in her own little world. So… he approached the little strawberry blonde. "Hey, Rapi?" He started.
"Yes, Commander?" she replied matter-of-factually, looking up from her arrangements blankly.
"Ingrid mentioned that you used to belong to Absolute," he began, having the sense to not speak up loud enough to catch the other two's attention. "She also mentioned that they'd… keep to their professionalism."
"As will I," Rapi flatly declared. "There's no need to concern yourself with my personal matters. I will act in accordance with the standards expected of a professional soldier."
A beat followed, and rapidly, Joe came to the realization that Rapi likely didn't want to talk about her previous affiliation with Elysion's elite squad. He didn't feel as though pressing the matter would accomplish anything, besides maybe overstepping boundaries with one of his subordinates.
The professional soldier promised to behave like a professional soldier. He'd have to just accept that, and assume that, in the situation where they had to call upon Absolute, whatever interpersonal issues they had wouldn't cause problems with the operation.
So, choosing to not push boundaries with Rapi, who was clearly not interested in discussing personal stuff, Joe simply returned to his own table.
That being said, continuing to prepare for the upcoming third mission to the surface, it was going to take a while to get used to how distant Counters could be compared to Marian.
Chapter 22 - Preparations
===
"So, what's the deal?" Joe inquired a fair while later, leaning back in the desk chair of his office and personal quarters dimly lit by the desk lamp next to his personal computer, one of his three benefactors engaging in encrypted communications with him.
"To cut a long story short?" Ingrid replied, sounding more than a little exhausted. "I couldn't shut down Syuen. Not entirely, at least. From what I could gather, she intended to press-gang you into serving her. Last time she checked the registry was immediately before we had the relevant records altered to point to you having been sponsored by Elysion from the word go… She was more than a little suspicious that you were suddenly 'always' sponsored by Elysion, to say the least. I had to capitulate: which is to say, I got her to agree to an exchange of services, of sorts."
"And what exactly does that entail?" Joe asked, idly rubbing at one of his cheeks as he braced for whatever fuckery he was about to be party to.
"One-time access to one of the other company's Nikke squads," Ingrid declared. "Once, Syuen can call on Counters, a card she's cashing in right here and now, and I can call on Matis in turn; I'm sitting on that one, though."
"Matis?" Joe asked, moving to tap his fingers on the surface of his desk.
"Missilis' elite Nikke squad. You can look them up yourself if you're curious, they're one of the better known units in the Ark, so you'll be practically swimming in information from the smallest cursory glance. Point being," Ingrid clearly wasn't feeling up to informing Joe of this squad herself, so he'd just bookmark that name for later. "We couldn't afford to have Syuen pressing the matter, and this is the best I could do without risking seriously pissing her off and potentially causing a chain reaction of investigations into you by the Central Government we really can't be dealing with right now."
"So… ultimately, I'm still required suck it up and listen to the jumped-up little twerp?" Joe was getting displeased himself.
"Yes and no," Ingrid noted. "This will be treated as a joint operation, of sorts. And because you answer directly to me first and foremost, Syuen will at minimum have little option but to rein in her typical standards of behaviour while you're fulfilling her request. I made it perfectly clear that I'll brook no disrespect towards you, so while she will technically be your Commanding Officer for the duration of this little operation of hers, she won't be giving you a hard time if she wants you to actually be cooperative… Don't expect her to extend what little begrudging respect she'll pay to you to the Nikkes under your command, however. I can mitigate damage, not perform miracles."
Yeah, Syuen didn't exactly strike Joe as the most inclusive or sensitive individual… he'd just have to assure the girls that this was unpleasantness they'd have to grit their teeth and bear until they had the CEO of Missilis out of their hair. "And I don't suppose you know what that operation actually is?" Joe wondered aloud as he rose to his feet, ambling over to the window overlooking the Outpost - taking in the sights of significant construction work proceeding along under street lights at a pace which would be freakish for ordinary humans.
He knew better than to complain or whine about the treatment of Nikkes to Ingrid. They'd have to put up with it for now and perform their mission; simple as that.
"No, actually, I don't," Ingrid informed him plainly. "Much as I hate to admit it, Syuen has us by the metaphorical balls, though I wasn't so foolish as to show it, nor does she realise it. I was in no position to be pressing her for information. All I was able to get out of her is that the ultimate objective relates to some manner of Missilis research and the gathering of some kind of rare resource on the surface… which I seriously doubt necessitates press-ganging a particularly gifted Commander and his personal Nikke squad into service to accomplish."
"Meaning she's being disingenuous," Joe surmised.
"To say the least," Ingrid affirmed his observation. "She will have to provide you more information once you're in the field, just by virtue of the fact that you're the one that's going to be leading the operation and that you can't accomplish your goal without knowing what it is you're even trying to do. By that point, I'd wager that she'll attempt to bribe you into lying to me about her objectives."
"And obviously, I'm to refuse-"
"Don't be daft," Ingrid sharply cut him off. "Accept the bribe, and do exactly as she demands in turn. Don't tell me. Tell Andersen. Or Mustang, if she thinks to order you to keep the Deputy Chief Commander in the dark as well."
"...Ah, malicious compliance, exact wording," Joe let out a single chuckle. "Alright, I can work with that. Anything else?"
"In the event of things going FUBAR, you're to contact me, not the Central Government, you hear? Or, to be more specific, you'll trigger the pulsar I'll provide you. I'll spare you the technical details on how exactly it functions, but even in the likely scenario Syuen jams all outgoing communications to ensure nobody contacts Central, it will still alert us to your location, like a flare. We see it go off? We assume you need back-up." Ingrid directed and informed him. "Syuen doesn't want Central to learn about this. And neither do I. We are going over the Government's head here, which, while not technically illegal as CEO's of the Big Three, would rightly piss them off and necessitate some manner of retaliation, as you might imagine."
"Right, that'd put everyone but… Mustang, I suppose, in hot water, yeah?" Joe reached out and set his free palm on the glass pane, leaning on the window as he gazed out over the little settlement that was rapidly taking on something approximating a degree of budding life.
"Andersen would have to burn a lot of goodwill to avoid needing to throw you under the bus, given that he is your proper Commanding Officer, and he's supposed to be aware of and responsible for all of your doings. Syuen and I would get our feet held to the coals for overstepping the agreed-upon, if unspoken agreement that the Big Three will not go behind Central's back on matters of proper military operations, which all surface excursions legally count as. We'd survive, but having the leash tightened would make things all the more complicated for us, as you might imagine. Tetra Line wouldn't face any direct consequences, beyond doubtlessly being affected by whatever new regulations the Government would impose on us."
Joe nodded, despite Ingrid not being able to see him over their comms line. "And while you all could just blatantly ignore those regulations, that'd mean escalating tensions between the Big Three and the Central Government, which we want to avoid at this point in time."
"Precisely," Ingrid affirmed his conclusion. "Things get dicey enough with Syuen pulling off stunts like this constantly. We don't need the Government to think that Tetra Line is the only company not getting overly brazen about disrespecting the Government's authority."
"Alright, well," Joe clicked his tongue, nodding as he damn well did his best to remain calm and not experience an anxiety attack over being caught in the midst of this cyberpunk dystopia black ops cloak-and-dagger bullshit. "Sounds like we shouldn't have to worry about the Central Government finding out about this, if you've got a corporate death squad on call to fly in if shit hits the fan," Joe remarked as images of Trauma Team entered his mind. His glib description earned a sharp huff from the CEO, doubtlessly on account of how he chose to refer to her back-up unit. "You'll send an Elysion rescue team if things get hairy, then?"
"Absolute, to be specific," Ingrid informed him. "The company's most powerful squad, the elite of the Ark's elite. Nothing else compares, not even Matis, no matter how much Syuen caterwauls to the contrary. They'll remain on standby, ready to scramble at a moment's notice. God willing, you won't wind up needing them."
"Absolute… anything I should know about them?" Joe asked, watching a number of mass-produced Nikkes effortlessly raise and set the framing of what looked like a small residential unit with a speed that'd put any construction company back home to shame.
"They're Rapi's former squad," Ingrid declared. "Eunhwa, Emma, and Vesti. As I said, they're the best in the Ark, bar none. They'll do their job, and not let their personal feelings get in the way of the mission."
…Probably something he should ask Rapi about then, if Ingrid was jumping right to effectively assuring him that Rapi's former squadmates probably wouldn't swing at her on sight. "Understood. Anything else?"
"Your Tetra Line Nikkes should be arriving at the Outpost in a few days," Ingrid declared. "To my understanding, you'll be receiving the aforementioned mass-produced models Mustang previously promised you, officially considered a part of Counters proper from here on out… and some time later, the Carronades will also be permanently assigned to your command."
"The Carronades?" A name that hadn't come up before.
"I don't know much about them myself, only that they're a two-unit artillery squad," Elysion's CEO noted simply. "Ask Mustang for details if you want. Tetra Line Nikkes don't tend to fall under my purview."
"Got it," Joe would try to remember to fling Mustang a message asking after that. "Otherwise…?"
"You are under no obligation to march yourself or any of the Nikkes under your command to your deaths while doing this contract for Syuen," Ingrid pointedly declared. "If she ever issues you an unreasonable command, you have the right to refuse and call off the mission at any point, regardless of what she says to the contrary - doubly so considering she damn well knows that I have evidence of her having attempted to press you into an illegal operation. If she tries to get hostile over the matter, if it comes up, again, activate the pulsar. Syuen's stupid, but not so stupid that she'll try anything when she damn well knows that I'm peering over your shoulder the whole time. A corporate war isn't something she wants to have to deal with, especially not over a single Commander, rising star or no."
'Rising star.' That made Joe a little uncomfortable, being referred to as such. But, he'd seen the statistics himself, Commanders had a 70% chance to die on their first mission. That number only went up with each subsequent deployment. Most operations were cartoonish failures… and here, Joe had the destruction of two Tyrants, one of which was a very big deal associated with both of his initial deployments, with understaffed and under-equipped Nikke squads at that. There was a reason Syuen took notice of him, despite how much he'd like to believe otherwise.
If anything… that suggested that whatever it was she wanted to demand of Joe required the apparent skills of an unusually talented Commander. "Considering my reputation, I'm sure she tried to nab me because this mission of hers is a high-risk one."
"Not an unreasonable expectation," Ingrid agreed. "I doubt this mission will involve coming to blows with yet another Tyrant, but," she growled. "If she does put you in extreme danger and failed to relay that information to us ahead of time, there'll be hell to pay. And if it does come to that, to reiterate: you are under no obligation to die for Syuen's cause. The instant this operation crosses into the point of being unreasonable, abandon the mission and retreat. Got it?"
"Understood," Joe answered, "So, we have an ETA on when this'll all go down?"
"Within the next few days," the CEO declared. "Andersen wants to arrange for a meeting between him, you, Mustang, and myself at some point in the near future. Given our schedules, I wouldn't expect that to happen before the mission, though. So… just ready yourself. We'll get to discussing your history and the plan in time. For now, we just focus on dealing with our immediate problems."
"Okay," Joe let out a long breath. "I'll inform everyone and make sure we're prepared."
"There isn't much else to say, such as it is. So I'll let you go and return to my own duties. Keep Syuen placated within reason, Pholus. That's all. Good luck."
With that, the comms line cut, and Joe immediately slumped against the window overlooking the Outpost.
Fuck this life, man.
"You have got to be kidding me," Anis whined. The squad was currently occupying the impromptu armoury situated in the Command Centre. "We're going on a mission for Syuen, and Ingrid's approved of it!? What the hell!?"
While Anis complained, Rapi dutifully went about making sure her magazines were all squared away, while Neon pouted over being forced to pick and take a sidearm along with her - to say nothing of how mad Anis was that she was being made to 'get dressed twice in one day' - which was to say that Joe dictated that armour would be worn in the field. Minimal armour would be acceptable - so long as it was worn at all. Even being instructed to put on a soft vest was enough to make Anis act as though she was being tortured. To say nothing of how annoyed she was at being made to also carry a sidearm…
"It's a mutual exchange," Joe asserted. "Syuen gets help from us, and in turn, Ingrid can call on Matis. Considering this is supposed to be a simple 'resource gathering mission-'"
"Oh give me a break, like you believe that!" Anis whinged, leaning over and setting her hands on her hips as she did so. "If Syuen was just calling for a grocery delivery service, she would have issued a mission through the Central Government! Is this even legal, directly going to a Commander and making demands like this?"
"Yes," Rapi answered for Joe as she started going over her armour - minimal, hard greaves and bracers alongside a soft vest. She'd declared before that she preferred to not get hit in the first place, and had shown that she was skilled enough to actually genuinely dodge most dangers, so he trusted her to outfit herself properly for her own skill set. "There is no law that dictates that the Big Three cannot directly issue orders to Commanders without going through the Central Government… though doing so is frowned upon, to say the least."
Anis cast her arms out wide at that, beginning to cry out: "Then we should just tell the Central-!"
"So your plan is to directly piss off two of the Big Three's CEO's to avoid what's supposed to be a simple resource gathering mission, Anis?" Joe cut her off. "Ingrid has agreed to the operation, and has given me explicit permission to tell Syuen to go fuck herself if she ever tries to make an unreasonable demand. She's also giving me a big red button I can hit to summon Absolute to back us up and extract us at any point if need be." Notably, Rapi's otherwise mechanical motions hitched at the mention of her old squad's name, but she quickly continued as she was, scarcely missing a beat. "We're going to be fine, calm down and finish readying your kit for when we have to deploy."
"...Oh," Anis wound down really fast. "Ah, well, okay… Didn't expect we'd have Elysion's best squad on speed dial the entire time… I still think this is all super fishy, though," she asserted. "Seriously, Syuen's bad news!"
"Hence Ingrid taking precautions and making arrangements to give us boons, including the right to refuse unreasonable commands from Syuen," Rapi added bluntly, her tone as robotically flat as ever. "The mission is happening, Anis. You would be wise to prepare for it, as the Commander has instructed us to do. Like Neon is."
"Huh?" Neon looked up from her place at a repurposed lunch table, having been fiddling with… a pair of short-barreled shotgun pistols. Quad-barreled break-action. Aside from that, set aside was a cartoonishly large revolver that looked to Joe like it was gauged for full-sized shotshells. Points for considering carrying back-ups that would share ammo with her primary, at least… "Did somebody say my name?"
"You're doing good, Neon," Joe shot her a thumbs-up. "Keep up the good work."
At that, a big, satisfied smile found purchase on her features, and the firepower-obsessed Nikke immediately returned to her preparations, now with a bit more pep compared to her previous mood.
Anis just gave the three an aggravated look, eventually throwing her hands up and moving to comply with her instructions. "This is all going to go awful and terrible and we're all going to regret it, mark my words…!" But not without getting one last doomerism in.
Settling into her own little angry corner, Anis started fussing about with her own kit while Joe was left pondering his own set-up. Little about it had changed aside from a select few additions and changes. He carried all of his own important Commander shit alongside a new, ultralight, highly compact and suppressed AR-style carbine - strictly for self-defense against predatory animals - because fuck hoping a pistol would be able to stop a bear or tiger or some shit. He didn't put anything on it - because if he did use it, he'd be using it to stop a charging animal, not clearing rooms in the Middle East. An integrated holographic sight with back-up irons. No bells or whistles, no needless excess weight.
He'd also decided to bring along some spare magazines for the girls themselves, because why the fuck not? He couldn't use a Nikke's gun, but he could lug around some lead for them in a vest, at least.
At any rate, with his junk all squared away, Joe looked between the three gathered, Nikkes, and quickly gathered that attempting to talk to Anis would be pointless given how pissy she was being, deliberately set away from everyone else. Meanwhile, Neon was off in her own little world. So… he approached the little strawberry blonde. "Hey, Rapi?" He started.
"Yes, Commander?" she replied matter-of-factually, looking up from her arrangements blankly.
"Ingrid mentioned that you used to belong to Absolute," he began, having the sense to not speak up loud enough to catch the other two's attention. "She also mentioned that they'd… keep to their professionalism."
"As will I," Rapi flatly declared. "There's no need to concern yourself with my personal matters. I will act in accordance with the standards expected of a professional soldier."
A beat followed, and rapidly, Joe came to the realization that Rapi likely didn't want to talk about her previous affiliation with Elysion's elite squad. He didn't feel as though pressing the matter would accomplish anything, besides maybe overstepping boundaries with one of his subordinates.
The professional soldier promised to behave like a professional soldier. He'd have to just accept that, and assume that, in the situation where they had to call upon Absolute, whatever interpersonal issues they had wouldn't cause problems with the operation.
So, choosing to not push boundaries with Rapi, who was clearly not interested in discussing personal stuff, Joe simply returned to his own table.
That being said, continuing to prepare for the upcoming third mission to the surface, it was going to take a while to get used to how distant Counters could be compared to Marian.
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Havictos
Know what you're doing yet?
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So now that we've seen what the legendary commander looks like from the new event what's everyone's theories? Mine is either Anderson has extended his life somehow and we're a clone or descendant or our commander and Anderson are both clones. I'm not willing to discount some kind of stasis either.
SixthRanger
Herrscher of Lewds and Power
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Anderson undergoing a cyberconversion is also an option, along with the Commander being a pure meat body that gained consciousness and wasn't used to give Andersen his meat back...
Fragment of Serenity
Yu-Shan's Paperwork Ninja
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I see Neon operates on the 'anything can be a shotgun if you try hard enough' philosophy. Impressive.
One of these days, Rapi and Joe are going to need to have a chat about life, death, and why just saying 'its fine don't worry about it' tends to do the exact opposite.
Anis, wear the damn armor. If only so you can hold more rounds of ammo.
Joe, I'd suggest a suppressor for your rifle, if simply to make your ears hurt less. Maybe an underslung grenade launcher. You know. For Armored Bears.
One of these days, Rapi and Joe are going to need to have a chat about life, death, and why just saying 'its fine don't worry about it' tends to do the exact opposite.
Anis, wear the damn armor. If only so you can hold more rounds of ammo.
Joe, I'd suggest a suppressor for your rifle, if simply to make your ears hurt less. Maybe an underslung grenade launcher. You know. For Armored Bears.
Chapter 23 - The Past Forgotten
BakaSmurf
Only Human, After All
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===
Chapter 23 - The Past Forgotten
===
"Capturing a Rapture…" Joe reviewed information on their target as the transport craft made its way to the city where they'd be doing their hunting, seated next to a window as the environment below zipped on by. "Would I be wrong in assuming that this isn't the typical third operation for the average Commander?"
"It is not," Rapi flatly replied from her own seat alongside Joe. Explosively expressive as ever.
"Most Commanders don't typically have two Tyrants to their name by the time of their third deployment to the surface either," the tall, dark-haired Nikke who had accompanied Syuen to the Outpost asserted as she lounged in her seat. She was, to Joe's horror, still wearing her BDSM gear, and little else. She had an assault rifle in addition to the… leash she wore, but no proper tactical gear. Not even a carry vest for her spare mags! Just a pair of… tiny little pouches that looked like they'd be buried under her chest most of the time anyways.
Instead, she had her magazines stored in dedicated pouches on her messenger bag. Which was… better than nothing, but not by much.
"So," the walking BDSM advertisement continued, reclining in her seat across from Joe and Rapi as she was. "Don't worry, handsome. I'm sure this will be a walk in the park for you."
A part of Joe wanted to balk at being casually referred to as 'handsome,' but, remembering that this Nikke worked for Syuen closely enough to be seemingly treated as her right hand, of sorts, he just brushed the doubtless barb off and got right down to business. "You two still haven't introduced yourselves," he declared.
"Oh, I suppose we haven't, have we?" the BDSM Nikke started as she smiled genially the rookie Commander's way. "I'm Mihara, and this cute little thing is Yuni," Mihara said as she reached over and gently stroked the flamingo pink hair of her much shorter partner, who looked notably bored as stared out the window with a childish pout. "We actually specialize in capturing Raptures, so with such an accomplished and esteemed Commander directing us for once, this should be a simple and easy mission. Syuen probably just wanted the extra insurance when she asked-" Anis loudly snorted derisively from the neighbouring aisle at the utterance of the excessively diplomatic word, arms crossed as she and Neon watched something on one of their phones. Mihara didn't seem to notice or care, "-for your support. 'Chatterbox' may be a new model, but that hasn't meant much when we'd go out to capture new Raptures before."
First 'Blacksmith,' then 'Gravedigger,' now 'Chatterbox.' The Ark sure did like attaching interesting names to Raptures.
Not party to Joe's internal musings, Rapi's brows furrowed, her rising suspicion at the woman's words worn plain on her features. "You 'specialize' in capturing Raptures? Suggesting that Missilis regularly brings Raptures into the Ark?"
"Well, I wouldn't know about that…" Mihara breezily replied, shrugging as Yuni pouted harder, beginning to fidget almost anxiously. "What Syuen does with the Raptures we capture is beyond our pay grade. I imagine that they're used for research, and disassembled for parts afterwards. Rapture Cores are worth a lot, after all, and Missilis has to maintain its edge over Tetra Line and Elysion somehow, right?"
"Commander," Rapi started, turning to face Joe as she did so. "This is highly irregular, and doesn't sound at all legal. I doubt that the Central Government would have approved of this operation."
"Ingrid said the same thing, yeah," Joe nodded in acknowledgement of Rapi's visibly mounting concern. "She did, however, also agree to the operation, and I'm sponsored by her, so, unless we aim to piss off two of the Big Three…" he shrugged apologetically.
Rapi didn't care for that, brow furrowing even more as she shifted in her seat uncomfortably. "...I don't like this, Commander," she said, a tinge of emotion actually seeping through into her voice. "It feels as though we're walking into the beast's maw here…"
Joe could see Anis begin to stare at Rapi out of the corner of her eye, which tracked. It was usually Anis that was the doomsayer between them, of course. "Which is why we came into this prepared. Don't worry, Rapi. I'm not going to let anything happen to any of you. Nobody is being marched to their deaths, not when I have the final say on how this mission plays out."
Rapi didn't seem entirely placated by that assertion, now staring ahead into the aether, visibly braced for something.
"The Commander is weird," Yuni, on the other hand, spoke up for the first time since they'd left the Ark. She was staring at Joe like he'd sprouted a second head.
"Yuni," Mihara interjected in a scolding tone. "Don't be rude."
"But he is, Mihara!" the little pinkette asserted almost petulantly. "Commanders don't care about Nikkes, so why is he pretending to?"
While Anis looked visibly put off by the assertion and Rapi gave Yuni an unreadable look, Mihara has the one to counter her. "And how do you know he isn't different, Yuni? He's already proven that he's not like other Commanders. He's beaten two Tyrants with just these three Nikkes, or rather, with the bigger two, the littlest one is new, or so I hear," she motioned over Counters for emphasis, "And look at how annoyed the two aware ones got when you said he doesn't care about them. Wouldn't you get mad if someone said that I didn't care about you and you knew it wasn't true?"
While Neon remained blissfully unaware of being overtly referred to as 'the unaware one,' Yuni gave the entire squad an uncertain look. The little pinkette looked warily to Rapi, asking, "...Does the Commander really care about you?"
Rapi was visibly caught off-guard, evidently not having expected to be the one to be addressed. Visibly bamboozled, after a few moments, she eventually replied with a wary, "...I think so." That struck Joe as pretty faint praise.
Yuni's eyes had become unto dinner plates, though. When last they'd met, she'd seemed interested given how he'd handled Syuen, though that was apparently the only reason she was curious about him. Now, she was looking at him with open wonder.
That… said a goddamn lot about the average Commander. That kept happening, hearing shit that pointed to how awful the Commander Corps was. No damned wonder Andersen was so blunt about the Central Government being their enemy, with the standards for their 'best' producing these kinds of expectations from Nikkes.
However, Joe's thoughts were cut off, and the pilots of the aircraft declared over comms that they were about to reach the deployment zone.
Thus, any pre-operation banter was cut short, and Joe simply directed everyone to prepare to land.
The next couple of hours passed by with little of note occurring. The squad, such as it was, encountered Rapture resistance that was of little ultimate consequence. Mihara was a rifleman, Yuni a rocketeer. Both contributed to the squad's forward progress effectively, and, more importantly, as they passed through what was once a park, lived up to their assertions of being specialized Rapture hunters.
"Hm…" Mihara observed the ground intensely, gently running her fingers atop the loamy earth upon which was inset a great footprint. Three forward toes, one at the rear. No sole contact with the ground. Additionally, the extraterrestrial creature, going off of the formation of the front-most prints…
"Does this thing have hands?" Joe wondered aloud as he peered over Mihara's shoulder. "It looks like it walks on its toes and knuckles. Almost like a primate."
"My, you're observant," the ravenette remarked approvingly, glancing back at the Commander before refocusing on the decidedly unique tracks. "Yes, I noticed that too. Tentacles, claws, even paws and pincers, I've seen Raptures have all of them, but hands? If Chatterbox is a humanoid, that would be quite the development…"
"...He's a big boy too, going off the distance between the limbs, and how deep the prints are inset into the dirt…" Joe also added. You could generally get a rough estimate of a creature's size by measuring the size of its feet, and measuring that against the length of its combined stride. The rear feet had a consistently short stride, with the hands being quite far apart in contrast. If this thing had hands… With the suggested top-heavy figure it'd probably have, it'd surely be capable of easily picking up a human, or even a Nikke and manhandling them like a goddamn ragdoll.
At that, Mihara turned about to face Joe fully, giving him a thoroughly interested look.
Though, it was Anis that spoke up first. "You seem really weirdly familiar with this sort of thing, Commander," the blonde observed with a dubiously wary look. "This is literally their job, and Mihara looks downright impressed by your observe… observications? Observitions? Observitions, your observitions," Anis confidently settled on an absolutely mangled rendition of 'observations.'
"Isn't it 'observitations?'" Neon asked, turning back to look at the group from where she'd been dual-wielding her fuckmassive shotgun revolvers on overwatch.
"It's 'observations,' you morons…" Rapi, meanwhile, noted in an utterly exhausted tone. The gremlin-esque duo of Anis and Neon seemed to actually get to her. Joe understood, given that she was apparently more used to working with professionals, rather than… well, Anis and Neon.
However, a point was made and Joe realized that, well, the average Ark citizen probably didn't have a whole lot of experience tracking animals in the northern Canadian wilderness. Hell, hunting was probably something that Ark inhabitants probably just… didn't experience at all, had never experienced.
He probably really shouldn't have been indicating that he knew how to track anything. Doubly so when that was apparently a skill unique to specialists.
"...Beginner's luck," was the best excuse he could come up with, leaning back away from the Rapture's tracks and hoping that nobody would press the matter of his inexplicable and likely impossible tracking abilities.
Rapi, luckily, didn't. Everyone else, on the other hand, wouldn't stop staring - well, Neon wasn't paying attention to him, but she alternated between being surprisingly attentive and being a gremlin, so…
"I imagine we'd make a great long-term team, Commander," Mihara noted with no small amount of intrigued approval.
"Mihara! I'm bored!" Only for Yuni to stomp over, interrupting and providing something of a save. Ergo, Joe was quick to retreat and suddenly hyper fixate on his drone cam footage, letting Yuni distract everyone as she rather childishly demanded attention.
Joe would have to be more careful about what sorts of capabilities he showed off. He probably didn't want people looking into his past, only to discover that he rather conspicuously didn't have one that held up to scrutiny…
Man, he wasn't qualified for this shit.
The team had spent the night on the surface, which was… an interesting experience, to say the least. It was the first time Joe had been able to see the real stars in… well, considering he apparently actually had amnesia and just didn't remember all the time he'd spent in this world, it was probably the first time in decades he'd slept under the actual night sky.
He hadn't slept all that well, needless to say. And while Rapi had noticed, she didn't bother him as she took first watch. Many thoughts had plagued him as he stared up at those hauntingly familiar points of light littering the inky blackness above.
When he had first awoken in that hospital, when he thought he'd undergone some sort of transposition, accidentally taken over the body of his alternate self… that carried with it a kind of comfort. He was gone, but everything else, everyone else was still back home, things would be just as they always were. Not a conscious assumption, but a comforting one, nevertheless. If he'd ever managed to find his way home, he'd might've lost a few years if it took that long, but, it'd still be home.
But he'd been here for… one-hundred fucking years. Everyone he knew had to be dead. Not even from horrors, not accidents or tragedy, just… old age, the cycle of life.
If he ever found his way back to his own Earth, somehow… functionally, he'd just be finding himself in another wholly foreign world again. A place where nobody knew him, where he'd have nothing.
2123. For Joe, he thought just a scant two weeks ago that it was still 2023. But for him, it was actually 2123.
The artificial sky of the Ark, and the cold, blank stone of the Outpost had been serving as a sort of shield, keeping his mind off of the world he'd left behind. But all that time spent staring at the stars, the stars that were identical to those he'd spent so much time gazing at back home…
For a few hours, when everything went quiet, when Rapi maintained her vigil with such intense focus that she practically faded into the background, everyone sleeping in the midst of an overgrown park with so much foliage that they could reasonably consider themselves hidden… It was too familiar. For a few hours, it was like he was back home again.
Everything he knew was gone, had to have been gone for decades. But… it was what it was, wasn't it? Life wasn't fair. The people of this Earth knew that damn well themselves. So… he just took several deep breaths, and gradually let sleep overtake him. It was an uncomfortable, fretful sleep, fraught with memories of a life long lost. But, he did sleep.
However fretfully.
"Commander, look!" the familiar, small, silver-haired Nikke called out to him, excitedly bouncing in place. "Look at what I did!"
Brow quirking upwards, Joe diverted his course and moved to approach the girl clad in white. Excitable as ever. A metallic report sounded out with every step taken. She was presenting a tablet to him, and proudly on display was… "You… wait, is this a game?" Joe asked, eyes going wide as he recognized the start screen for what it was.
"It's not a game!" the squad's youngest cried with a heavy pout, glowering adorably up at him. "It's a battle simulation, so that whenever we have nothing to do, we can simulate battles to better prepare for what comes next!"
"What genre is it?" Joe asked as he moved to poke at the start button, already curious given the pixel art style and chiptune music. The title 'Memory of Goddess' proudly displayed for all the world to see.
"It's like one of those old top-down shooters-" the little golden-eyed young lady started, before catching herself and redoubling her pout. "I mean- it's a simulator! Simulators don't have genres!"
"Right right, my bad, my bad," Joe chuckled, stooped over as the game responded to a poke and opened up a character selection screen, revealing a single unlocked character… "Starting out with the strongest character seems a little cheap, don't you think?" Joe teasingly asked.
The monochromatic Nikke balked and blushed at that, sharply withdrawing the tablet with a whine. "Commander, don't tease me, you know I'm not the strongest member of the squad…"
Cackling under his breath, Joe, regardless, took in the sight of the character selection screen. Everyone was accounted for - even himself and Andersen, for some reason. The whole squad, though with only this particular little lady playable at first. "Proper wiz kid you are, managing to whip up something like this out of the blue…"
"It's not that impressive," she was suddenly trying to hide the tablet, even though she'd rushed to show it off to begin with. Typical of the little nerd.
"Have you shown anyone else?" Joe asked, returning to his full height as he deposited his hands into the pockets of his familiar old olive drab fatigue jacket.
"Well, I was gonna go show Red Hood, since she's the only other one really interested in this sorta stuff," the excitable little golden-eyed teen said, before warily asking, "Would you… like to come with me?"
At that, Joe paused, doing his level best to not cringe at the request. "I don't think that's a very good idea, Snow…"
That statement visibly dumped the little Nikke's budding cheer. "...I don't get it," she all but whined. "You two are so alike, so why is she so…"
As the pair spoke, a fighter jet flew by the window, the distant Earth below gradually scrolling on by as predictably as ever. Joe didn't want the squad's youngest member to get caught up in these negative emotions when she should have been proudly showing off her accomplishments. Plus, he was sort of on his way to talk to Andersen… "You should go on. I was just on my way to talk to the Big Boss anyways, alright?"
A little amused smile managed to find purchase on the girl's face, and she chuckled, "He really shouldn't be so proud of such a dorky-sounding title. Still can't believe he tried to put it down on his actual officer's I.D.…" She was ambling off back down the hallway, regardless. "Okay, I'll talk to you later Commander, later!" With that, she about-faced and started bounding back down the hall.
With a small grin on his face, Joe turned to begin moving to meet up with Andersen again, only to hear another familiar voice calling out from behind. "Thought I heard a familiar little voice shouting all excitedly! What've you got there, Snow?"
"I'm not little!" the little Nikke petulantly cried out again. Joe glanced back over his shoulder to catch sight of the back of a blazing red set of hair, vertical black horns emerging from the young woman's crown. There, the striking figure stood before the girl he'd just been speaking to, having caught her emerging from yet another of the hallways littering the carrier. "And- Oh! Right, check it out, I made a-"
"Hey, is that a game? Hey! Is that you in it- holy moly, it's got all of us, doesn't it? Heckin' awesome! You're making games now too? You need suggestions for background music? You show anyone else yet?" Red Hood cheerfully asked, always eager to hype up the team's youngest Nikke that seemed to idolize her as an older sister.
"Well, um," the silvery young girl started warily. "Just…" she glanced Joe's way nervously.
"Commander?" The redhead began to turn around, her wild hair streaming about her like a crimson cataract. "Commander?" her face began to slip into view, and-
"Commander!" with a jolt, Joe jerked awake, and for a bizarre, disorienting moment, he swore that Rapi had practically neon red hair as she shook him awake, looming over him with her stern face. The optical illusion passed as quickly as it came, however. An artifact of his mind having still been halfway inside of a dream for a moment. "Are you awake?"
Taking a bracing breath, Joe moved to sit up, rubbing at his eyes. "Y-yeah, I'm up, I'm up… something happen?"
"You were tossing and turning and breathing irregularly," Rapi asserted as she withdrew her hand, kneeling beside Joe as she was. "It was concerning, you seemed intensely distressed."
"...Just dreaming," Joe asserted quietly. "You know how it is," he said, slowly taking in the events of said 'dream.' "I'm fine…" The sun was rising, and Mihara, at least, was awake too and preparing breakfast. Everyone else was still curled up in their sleeping bags - with Neon in particular looking like she'd been fighting her bag from within as she'd slept. "We all good?"
"Yes, Commander," Rapi nodded in acknowledgement. "There is nothing to indicate that we were spotted overnight. We should be fine to continue the operation as soon as everyone is up and ready."
"Okay, good… we'll eat and get a move on then."
"Understood, Commander." With that, the blonde returned to her full, if still diminutive height and marched off, seemingly to return to standing guard. Fastidious to a fault, that one.
Now, having a few moments to himself, the events of that dream came back to him. A young white-haired Nikke he called 'Snow,' a striking redhead he'd identified as 'Red Hood…' Andersen mentioned that he and Joe had served together in the Initial Rapture Invasion, a war that started an entire century ago… that wasn't a dream, was it? That was a memory. A memory from the time he was serving alongside Andersen, back when he still had his old trusty jacket even… so he was a Commander back then too, huh?
Joe couldn't be sure that it was actually a memory, not just yet, but… he'd ask Andersen, once they got back. If this 'Snow' and 'Red Hood' had actually served under his command at one point, alongside Andersen, he'd be able to confirm that quite easily.
But, for now, matters of the past were a secondary concern. For now, the present demanded his attention. Hopefully, capturing Chatterbox wouldn't prove to be too much of a challenge compared to taking on two full-on Tyrants.
Hopefully.
Chapter 23 - The Past Forgotten
===
"Capturing a Rapture…" Joe reviewed information on their target as the transport craft made its way to the city where they'd be doing their hunting, seated next to a window as the environment below zipped on by. "Would I be wrong in assuming that this isn't the typical third operation for the average Commander?"
"It is not," Rapi flatly replied from her own seat alongside Joe. Explosively expressive as ever.
"Most Commanders don't typically have two Tyrants to their name by the time of their third deployment to the surface either," the tall, dark-haired Nikke who had accompanied Syuen to the Outpost asserted as she lounged in her seat. She was, to Joe's horror, still wearing her BDSM gear, and little else. She had an assault rifle in addition to the… leash she wore, but no proper tactical gear. Not even a carry vest for her spare mags! Just a pair of… tiny little pouches that looked like they'd be buried under her chest most of the time anyways.
Instead, she had her magazines stored in dedicated pouches on her messenger bag. Which was… better than nothing, but not by much.
"So," the walking BDSM advertisement continued, reclining in her seat across from Joe and Rapi as she was. "Don't worry, handsome. I'm sure this will be a walk in the park for you."
A part of Joe wanted to balk at being casually referred to as 'handsome,' but, remembering that this Nikke worked for Syuen closely enough to be seemingly treated as her right hand, of sorts, he just brushed the doubtless barb off and got right down to business. "You two still haven't introduced yourselves," he declared.
"Oh, I suppose we haven't, have we?" the BDSM Nikke started as she smiled genially the rookie Commander's way. "I'm Mihara, and this cute little thing is Yuni," Mihara said as she reached over and gently stroked the flamingo pink hair of her much shorter partner, who looked notably bored as stared out the window with a childish pout. "We actually specialize in capturing Raptures, so with such an accomplished and esteemed Commander directing us for once, this should be a simple and easy mission. Syuen probably just wanted the extra insurance when she asked-" Anis loudly snorted derisively from the neighbouring aisle at the utterance of the excessively diplomatic word, arms crossed as she and Neon watched something on one of their phones. Mihara didn't seem to notice or care, "-for your support. 'Chatterbox' may be a new model, but that hasn't meant much when we'd go out to capture new Raptures before."
First 'Blacksmith,' then 'Gravedigger,' now 'Chatterbox.' The Ark sure did like attaching interesting names to Raptures.
Not party to Joe's internal musings, Rapi's brows furrowed, her rising suspicion at the woman's words worn plain on her features. "You 'specialize' in capturing Raptures? Suggesting that Missilis regularly brings Raptures into the Ark?"
"Well, I wouldn't know about that…" Mihara breezily replied, shrugging as Yuni pouted harder, beginning to fidget almost anxiously. "What Syuen does with the Raptures we capture is beyond our pay grade. I imagine that they're used for research, and disassembled for parts afterwards. Rapture Cores are worth a lot, after all, and Missilis has to maintain its edge over Tetra Line and Elysion somehow, right?"
"Commander," Rapi started, turning to face Joe as she did so. "This is highly irregular, and doesn't sound at all legal. I doubt that the Central Government would have approved of this operation."
"Ingrid said the same thing, yeah," Joe nodded in acknowledgement of Rapi's visibly mounting concern. "She did, however, also agree to the operation, and I'm sponsored by her, so, unless we aim to piss off two of the Big Three…" he shrugged apologetically.
Rapi didn't care for that, brow furrowing even more as she shifted in her seat uncomfortably. "...I don't like this, Commander," she said, a tinge of emotion actually seeping through into her voice. "It feels as though we're walking into the beast's maw here…"
Joe could see Anis begin to stare at Rapi out of the corner of her eye, which tracked. It was usually Anis that was the doomsayer between them, of course. "Which is why we came into this prepared. Don't worry, Rapi. I'm not going to let anything happen to any of you. Nobody is being marched to their deaths, not when I have the final say on how this mission plays out."
Rapi didn't seem entirely placated by that assertion, now staring ahead into the aether, visibly braced for something.
"The Commander is weird," Yuni, on the other hand, spoke up for the first time since they'd left the Ark. She was staring at Joe like he'd sprouted a second head.
"Yuni," Mihara interjected in a scolding tone. "Don't be rude."
"But he is, Mihara!" the little pinkette asserted almost petulantly. "Commanders don't care about Nikkes, so why is he pretending to?"
While Anis looked visibly put off by the assertion and Rapi gave Yuni an unreadable look, Mihara has the one to counter her. "And how do you know he isn't different, Yuni? He's already proven that he's not like other Commanders. He's beaten two Tyrants with just these three Nikkes, or rather, with the bigger two, the littlest one is new, or so I hear," she motioned over Counters for emphasis, "And look at how annoyed the two aware ones got when you said he doesn't care about them. Wouldn't you get mad if someone said that I didn't care about you and you knew it wasn't true?"
While Neon remained blissfully unaware of being overtly referred to as 'the unaware one,' Yuni gave the entire squad an uncertain look. The little pinkette looked warily to Rapi, asking, "...Does the Commander really care about you?"
Rapi was visibly caught off-guard, evidently not having expected to be the one to be addressed. Visibly bamboozled, after a few moments, she eventually replied with a wary, "...I think so." That struck Joe as pretty faint praise.
Yuni's eyes had become unto dinner plates, though. When last they'd met, she'd seemed interested given how he'd handled Syuen, though that was apparently the only reason she was curious about him. Now, she was looking at him with open wonder.
That… said a goddamn lot about the average Commander. That kept happening, hearing shit that pointed to how awful the Commander Corps was. No damned wonder Andersen was so blunt about the Central Government being their enemy, with the standards for their 'best' producing these kinds of expectations from Nikkes.
However, Joe's thoughts were cut off, and the pilots of the aircraft declared over comms that they were about to reach the deployment zone.
Thus, any pre-operation banter was cut short, and Joe simply directed everyone to prepare to land.
The next couple of hours passed by with little of note occurring. The squad, such as it was, encountered Rapture resistance that was of little ultimate consequence. Mihara was a rifleman, Yuni a rocketeer. Both contributed to the squad's forward progress effectively, and, more importantly, as they passed through what was once a park, lived up to their assertions of being specialized Rapture hunters.
"Hm…" Mihara observed the ground intensely, gently running her fingers atop the loamy earth upon which was inset a great footprint. Three forward toes, one at the rear. No sole contact with the ground. Additionally, the extraterrestrial creature, going off of the formation of the front-most prints…
"Does this thing have hands?" Joe wondered aloud as he peered over Mihara's shoulder. "It looks like it walks on its toes and knuckles. Almost like a primate."
"My, you're observant," the ravenette remarked approvingly, glancing back at the Commander before refocusing on the decidedly unique tracks. "Yes, I noticed that too. Tentacles, claws, even paws and pincers, I've seen Raptures have all of them, but hands? If Chatterbox is a humanoid, that would be quite the development…"
"...He's a big boy too, going off the distance between the limbs, and how deep the prints are inset into the dirt…" Joe also added. You could generally get a rough estimate of a creature's size by measuring the size of its feet, and measuring that against the length of its combined stride. The rear feet had a consistently short stride, with the hands being quite far apart in contrast. If this thing had hands… With the suggested top-heavy figure it'd probably have, it'd surely be capable of easily picking up a human, or even a Nikke and manhandling them like a goddamn ragdoll.
At that, Mihara turned about to face Joe fully, giving him a thoroughly interested look.
Though, it was Anis that spoke up first. "You seem really weirdly familiar with this sort of thing, Commander," the blonde observed with a dubiously wary look. "This is literally their job, and Mihara looks downright impressed by your observe… observications? Observitions? Observitions, your observitions," Anis confidently settled on an absolutely mangled rendition of 'observations.'
"Isn't it 'observitations?'" Neon asked, turning back to look at the group from where she'd been dual-wielding her fuckmassive shotgun revolvers on overwatch.
"It's 'observations,' you morons…" Rapi, meanwhile, noted in an utterly exhausted tone. The gremlin-esque duo of Anis and Neon seemed to actually get to her. Joe understood, given that she was apparently more used to working with professionals, rather than… well, Anis and Neon.
However, a point was made and Joe realized that, well, the average Ark citizen probably didn't have a whole lot of experience tracking animals in the northern Canadian wilderness. Hell, hunting was probably something that Ark inhabitants probably just… didn't experience at all, had never experienced.
He probably really shouldn't have been indicating that he knew how to track anything. Doubly so when that was apparently a skill unique to specialists.
"...Beginner's luck," was the best excuse he could come up with, leaning back away from the Rapture's tracks and hoping that nobody would press the matter of his inexplicable and likely impossible tracking abilities.
Rapi, luckily, didn't. Everyone else, on the other hand, wouldn't stop staring - well, Neon wasn't paying attention to him, but she alternated between being surprisingly attentive and being a gremlin, so…
"I imagine we'd make a great long-term team, Commander," Mihara noted with no small amount of intrigued approval.
"Mihara! I'm bored!" Only for Yuni to stomp over, interrupting and providing something of a save. Ergo, Joe was quick to retreat and suddenly hyper fixate on his drone cam footage, letting Yuni distract everyone as she rather childishly demanded attention.
Joe would have to be more careful about what sorts of capabilities he showed off. He probably didn't want people looking into his past, only to discover that he rather conspicuously didn't have one that held up to scrutiny…
Man, he wasn't qualified for this shit.
The team had spent the night on the surface, which was… an interesting experience, to say the least. It was the first time Joe had been able to see the real stars in… well, considering he apparently actually had amnesia and just didn't remember all the time he'd spent in this world, it was probably the first time in decades he'd slept under the actual night sky.
He hadn't slept all that well, needless to say. And while Rapi had noticed, she didn't bother him as she took first watch. Many thoughts had plagued him as he stared up at those hauntingly familiar points of light littering the inky blackness above.
When he had first awoken in that hospital, when he thought he'd undergone some sort of transposition, accidentally taken over the body of his alternate self… that carried with it a kind of comfort. He was gone, but everything else, everyone else was still back home, things would be just as they always were. Not a conscious assumption, but a comforting one, nevertheless. If he'd ever managed to find his way home, he'd might've lost a few years if it took that long, but, it'd still be home.
But he'd been here for… one-hundred fucking years. Everyone he knew had to be dead. Not even from horrors, not accidents or tragedy, just… old age, the cycle of life.
If he ever found his way back to his own Earth, somehow… functionally, he'd just be finding himself in another wholly foreign world again. A place where nobody knew him, where he'd have nothing.
2123. For Joe, he thought just a scant two weeks ago that it was still 2023. But for him, it was actually 2123.
The artificial sky of the Ark, and the cold, blank stone of the Outpost had been serving as a sort of shield, keeping his mind off of the world he'd left behind. But all that time spent staring at the stars, the stars that were identical to those he'd spent so much time gazing at back home…
For a few hours, when everything went quiet, when Rapi maintained her vigil with such intense focus that she practically faded into the background, everyone sleeping in the midst of an overgrown park with so much foliage that they could reasonably consider themselves hidden… It was too familiar. For a few hours, it was like he was back home again.
Everything he knew was gone, had to have been gone for decades. But… it was what it was, wasn't it? Life wasn't fair. The people of this Earth knew that damn well themselves. So… he just took several deep breaths, and gradually let sleep overtake him. It was an uncomfortable, fretful sleep, fraught with memories of a life long lost. But, he did sleep.
However fretfully.
"Commander, look!" the familiar, small, silver-haired Nikke called out to him, excitedly bouncing in place. "Look at what I did!"
Brow quirking upwards, Joe diverted his course and moved to approach the girl clad in white. Excitable as ever. A metallic report sounded out with every step taken. She was presenting a tablet to him, and proudly on display was… "You… wait, is this a game?" Joe asked, eyes going wide as he recognized the start screen for what it was.
"It's not a game!" the squad's youngest cried with a heavy pout, glowering adorably up at him. "It's a battle simulation, so that whenever we have nothing to do, we can simulate battles to better prepare for what comes next!"
"What genre is it?" Joe asked as he moved to poke at the start button, already curious given the pixel art style and chiptune music. The title 'Memory of Goddess' proudly displayed for all the world to see.
"It's like one of those old top-down shooters-" the little golden-eyed young lady started, before catching herself and redoubling her pout. "I mean- it's a simulator! Simulators don't have genres!"
"Right right, my bad, my bad," Joe chuckled, stooped over as the game responded to a poke and opened up a character selection screen, revealing a single unlocked character… "Starting out with the strongest character seems a little cheap, don't you think?" Joe teasingly asked.
The monochromatic Nikke balked and blushed at that, sharply withdrawing the tablet with a whine. "Commander, don't tease me, you know I'm not the strongest member of the squad…"
Cackling under his breath, Joe, regardless, took in the sight of the character selection screen. Everyone was accounted for - even himself and Andersen, for some reason. The whole squad, though with only this particular little lady playable at first. "Proper wiz kid you are, managing to whip up something like this out of the blue…"
"It's not that impressive," she was suddenly trying to hide the tablet, even though she'd rushed to show it off to begin with. Typical of the little nerd.
"Have you shown anyone else?" Joe asked, returning to his full height as he deposited his hands into the pockets of his familiar old olive drab fatigue jacket.
"Well, I was gonna go show Red Hood, since she's the only other one really interested in this sorta stuff," the excitable little golden-eyed teen said, before warily asking, "Would you… like to come with me?"
At that, Joe paused, doing his level best to not cringe at the request. "I don't think that's a very good idea, Snow…"
That statement visibly dumped the little Nikke's budding cheer. "...I don't get it," she all but whined. "You two are so alike, so why is she so…"
As the pair spoke, a fighter jet flew by the window, the distant Earth below gradually scrolling on by as predictably as ever. Joe didn't want the squad's youngest member to get caught up in these negative emotions when she should have been proudly showing off her accomplishments. Plus, he was sort of on his way to talk to Andersen… "You should go on. I was just on my way to talk to the Big Boss anyways, alright?"
A little amused smile managed to find purchase on the girl's face, and she chuckled, "He really shouldn't be so proud of such a dorky-sounding title. Still can't believe he tried to put it down on his actual officer's I.D.…" She was ambling off back down the hallway, regardless. "Okay, I'll talk to you later Commander, later!" With that, she about-faced and started bounding back down the hall.
With a small grin on his face, Joe turned to begin moving to meet up with Andersen again, only to hear another familiar voice calling out from behind. "Thought I heard a familiar little voice shouting all excitedly! What've you got there, Snow?"
"I'm not little!" the little Nikke petulantly cried out again. Joe glanced back over his shoulder to catch sight of the back of a blazing red set of hair, vertical black horns emerging from the young woman's crown. There, the striking figure stood before the girl he'd just been speaking to, having caught her emerging from yet another of the hallways littering the carrier. "And- Oh! Right, check it out, I made a-"
"Hey, is that a game? Hey! Is that you in it- holy moly, it's got all of us, doesn't it? Heckin' awesome! You're making games now too? You need suggestions for background music? You show anyone else yet?" Red Hood cheerfully asked, always eager to hype up the team's youngest Nikke that seemed to idolize her as an older sister.
"Well, um," the silvery young girl started warily. "Just…" she glanced Joe's way nervously.
"Commander?" The redhead began to turn around, her wild hair streaming about her like a crimson cataract. "Commander?" her face began to slip into view, and-
"Commander!" with a jolt, Joe jerked awake, and for a bizarre, disorienting moment, he swore that Rapi had practically neon red hair as she shook him awake, looming over him with her stern face. The optical illusion passed as quickly as it came, however. An artifact of his mind having still been halfway inside of a dream for a moment. "Are you awake?"
Taking a bracing breath, Joe moved to sit up, rubbing at his eyes. "Y-yeah, I'm up, I'm up… something happen?"
"You were tossing and turning and breathing irregularly," Rapi asserted as she withdrew her hand, kneeling beside Joe as she was. "It was concerning, you seemed intensely distressed."
"...Just dreaming," Joe asserted quietly. "You know how it is," he said, slowly taking in the events of said 'dream.' "I'm fine…" The sun was rising, and Mihara, at least, was awake too and preparing breakfast. Everyone else was still curled up in their sleeping bags - with Neon in particular looking like she'd been fighting her bag from within as she'd slept. "We all good?"
"Yes, Commander," Rapi nodded in acknowledgement. "There is nothing to indicate that we were spotted overnight. We should be fine to continue the operation as soon as everyone is up and ready."
"Okay, good… we'll eat and get a move on then."
"Understood, Commander." With that, the blonde returned to her full, if still diminutive height and marched off, seemingly to return to standing guard. Fastidious to a fault, that one.
Now, having a few moments to himself, the events of that dream came back to him. A young white-haired Nikke he called 'Snow,' a striking redhead he'd identified as 'Red Hood…' Andersen mentioned that he and Joe had served together in the Initial Rapture Invasion, a war that started an entire century ago… that wasn't a dream, was it? That was a memory. A memory from the time he was serving alongside Andersen, back when he still had his old trusty jacket even… so he was a Commander back then too, huh?
Joe couldn't be sure that it was actually a memory, not just yet, but… he'd ask Andersen, once they got back. If this 'Snow' and 'Red Hood' had actually served under his command at one point, alongside Andersen, he'd be able to confirm that quite easily.
But, for now, matters of the past were a secondary concern. For now, the present demanded his attention. Hopefully, capturing Chatterbox wouldn't prove to be too much of a challenge compared to taking on two full-on Tyrants.
Hopefully.
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Oh nice, integrating things from the latest gane event. Thanks for the chapter
ReignHopeless
Not too sore, are you?
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Memory of Goddess? Ya boi here is tolling against the challenge stage just to get the synchro device expansion. Anyone got build reccommendation? Im too lazy to grind for coins to fully upgrade characters.
Anyone interested in Nikke can join now since its having 1st anniversary celebration with lots of freebies including ssr nikke loli snow white.
Anyone interested in Nikke can join now since its having 1st anniversary celebration with lots of freebies including ssr nikke loli snow white.
Daniel K. English
Dr. Shikikan-Cubed
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It's sad that, with the exception of perhaps Rapunzel, the other Goddesses would likely not remember their Commander's identity due to memory degradation.Joe and Snow White's 1st words to each other is going to be "You look familiar, have we met somewhere before?"
Snow has gone through two Mind Switches, and Dorothy possibly one. Don't know how that affects memory, but I guess it wouldn't help.
Anyways, Red Hood hates Joe's guts? Considering their similar backgrounds I thought they'd get along.
BakaSmurf
Only Human, After All
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Grimms Nikkes don't suffer memory degradation, they just have to periodically manually delete chunks of their memory because, unlike modern Nikkes, they have a hard upper limit on memory storage space. Rapunzel states outright in the main story that she remembers her time in Goddess perfectly, because she considers that time important and goes out of her way to delete actually worthless memories instead; such as all of the time she's spent just wandering around empty wastelands and fighting Raptures.
She was capable of noting that Rapi fights identically to Red Hood, for example. Not something she could do if her memories were prone to failing her.
She was capable of noting that Rapi fights identically to Red Hood, for example. Not something she could do if her memories were prone to failing her.
Slamm-O
Versed in the lewd.
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Probably was Andersen given what we know.
palacesound
𩆖𩆖𩆖
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I'd think it's the extreme and continuous bouts of overwhelming trauma that would have them hesitant to make the connection, more than anything.
Slamm-O
Versed in the lewd.
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Eh Scarlet and Snow may recognise hin in a passing 'I used to know you.' Dorothy will probably remember him fairly well though she may point a gun a gun at him asking how he is still alive.
Rapunzel will give him a big hug and cry
palacesound
𩆖𩆖𩆖
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Making something that looks exactly like the original commander for the express purpose of controlling the og squad does seem like classic central government, so I wouldn't blame Dorothy for being paranoid.
Slamm-O
Versed in the lewd.
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I don't think anyone would at least until Dorothy had poked him with needles and run all manner of tests.
Though I stand by that Rapunzel would give him a big hug. Given how much of a warm and caring person she is.
Fragment of Serenity
Yu-Shan's Paperwork Ninja
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Well, he camped out and no one died. So... winning?
Dream sequence? Check. Laying out future plot? Check.
Drastic concern about a chick wearing BDSM gear, no armor, and little ammo refills? Check.
Good to know that Joe is hitting ALL of the boxes for the shit show to kick off in style.
Dream sequence? Check. Laying out future plot? Check.
Drastic concern about a chick wearing BDSM gear, no armor, and little ammo refills? Check.
Good to know that Joe is hitting ALL of the boxes for the shit show to kick off in style.
Chapter 24 - Slaughterer
BakaSmurf
Only Human, After All
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===
Chapter 24 - Slaughterer
===
"Mihara…" Joe started warily, taking in the sight before them.
"We may have made a miscalculation," Mihara replied, watching how Chatterbox's tracks approached a wall, leading to the Rapture clearly driving its limbs into the damned sheer plane to climb it, ascending up to the roof of the building in question, many stories above. "Raptures are supposed to be simple-minded, unintelligent, entirely reliant upon dumb muscle and overwhelming numbers to defeat Nikkes…"
"We're boxed in," Anis pointed out darkly, taking in the sights around them. They were in a clearing, some sort of city square - albeit one which had only a single way in and out. At a glance, the buildings surrounding the opening collapsed from sheer disuse and a lack of maintenance. But stopping and examining everything clearly, especially from the drone's bird's eye view… this was a fucking killbox. One they'd walked right into. "We've clearly been tricked into following Chatterbox into a damned trap!"
"Anis is right, Commander," Mihara asserted, readying her own rifle even as Rapi, Neon, and Yuni were on high alert, scanning their surroundings intensely with their weapons raised. "Normally, one would balk at the idea, but, clearly, this Rapture is a cut above the rest. I'd recommend we retreat and regroup in a more defensible area."
"Yeah, no shit!" Joe was quick to motion for everyone to form up and begin moving. "I'm calling this operation the fuck off! A Rapture smart enough to lure hunters into a trap is not what we signed up for! Back the way we came, people! Move it or lose it, we-!" His gaze snapped back to the tablet the instant its connection was lost. Whipping his head skywards, Joe failed to notice anything - save for the telltale, distant thud of something solid impacting with another building off in the distance. "-Chatterbox just took out the fucking drone with a rock," he matter-of-factually deduced as the severity of the situation just started escalating very quickly.
"Oh you've gotta be shitting me!" Anis cried, now whipping the barrel of her grenade launcher to-and-fro, scanning the rooftops ferociously. "I fucking knew it! I fucking knew that bitch Syuen was walking us into a deathtrap! But nobody ever listens to Anis, nobody, never at all-!"
"This is bad, thiiiis is definitely bad…" Neon anxiously mused aloud, constantly resetting her shotgun against her shoulder as she did so.
"Mihara…" Yuni whined, backing up to stand closer to her partner, rocket launcher weakly resting atop her tiny shoulder.
Raptures were supposed to basically be fucking animals as far as intelligence went - at most, displaying the same type of cunning one might expect out of a wolf pack. This was a step above that, to say the fucking least.
"Commander, we need to move!" Rapi asserted, rushing up to stand alongside Joe. "Lets-"
She was cut off by an object impacting her legs with such force as to flip her clean off her feet, face slamming into the ground not four metres from Joe's position just as the offending chunk of debris cratered the ancient, cracked asphalt they'd been standing upon.
Before Joe could even register that, the entire world around him seemed to quake at once, and the rookie Commander was thrown from his feet. In a blind panic, Joe rushed to scramble back up, instinctively raising his own rifle that wouldn't be able to so much as dent a Rapture's armour plating.
For an instant, it was like he'd set his face right in front of the mouth of a furnace. But the heavy, moisture-laden warmth that slammed into him like a blast from a bellows betrayed the origin of the fetid air.
"Well well well," the voice that emerged from behind teeth each easily the length of an entire human finger and twice as wide was impossibly bassy, rumbling, sending palpable vibrations through Joe's body with each syllable uttered. A hellish rictus, a sadistic grin of hatred foretelling suffering and the extreme exaltation the abomination would take in inflicting it. "My luck seems to know no bounds, to find among my pursuers such a high-value- nay, esteemed specimen among these hollow imposters…"
The great, gaping maw was ringed with metal, bone-white, angular, seemingly built to emphasize the predatory nature of the creature looming over him. Musculature which could only be described as a grotesque parody of the male ideal rippled with indescribable power, arms like those of a gorilla's flared out to the point that both limbs had to have as much mass as the rest of the body combined. Crimson veins popped from its arms, which themselves were a furious shade of red starkly set apart from the lifeless, artificial ebony of the rest of its body.
"Ah, but where are my manners? How boorish of me to barge in unannounced, even upon a guest who sought out my presence to begin with… though, my name is already known to you, etiquette demands a certain modicum of protocol be entertained, So…"
In some exaggerated, yet understated mockery, the great, humanoid Rapture lowered itself ever-so-slightly, as if to imitate a gentleman's bow.
"I am known to the Ark as Chatterbox. Though, in much the same way that you were already aware of such, so too, am I already aware of you. Yes, I know all about you and the reputation you have fostered, Commander Joseph Pholus. Yes, a figure as legendary as yourself, one would have to be beyond foolish to lose track of, no?"
Oh. Shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.
"My my, have I managed to leave the great Commander Pholus at a loss for words?" Chatterbox wondered aloud as it lifted one of its gargantuan hands from the asphalt, moving as if to grab the visibly shocked Joe. "I scarcely-"
The abomination was cut off and staggered back by a strike to the armoured face - a blur of black and red that rocketed in from the side before rebounding, landing and dragging Joe back even as the Rapture recovered from the unexpected attack.
"Wha- what the-!?" Chatterbox cried out, audibly caught off-guard before it spotted Rapi holding onto a thoroughly shocked Joe with one arm, the other holding her rifle steady in the crook of her shoulder, pointed right at it.
"Rapi…!?" Joe sputtered out, eyes snapping down in an attempt to catch a glimpse of her legs - indeed, one of them had been absolutely mangled by the debris Chatterbox had thrown at her, yet still, she'd been capable of launching herself at him with such force as to knock his fifteen-foot ass back with a kick. Holy shit, what a hell of a little woman.
"I have you, Commander," the little blonde assured him, firmly maintaining her grip on the much larger man, the threat of Chatterbox and its apparent intent to abduct Joe not going unheeded.
Now no longer right up in Chatterbox's face, Joe could make out more of the hellish beast - it was indeed digitigrade, just as he'd previously surmised. Moreover, it had a tail - incredibly long, winding, and seeming to be lined with dozens upon dozens of cutting blades that would make approaching the creature from behind a terribly perilous idea. Jutting out from its back were… four… spikes? With what almost looked like exhaust tubes - or barrels set beneath them. Worse yet, the beast's comically oversized fists were further augmented with what seemed to be integrated cestus - metal plates that would reinforce the hand and redouble the sheer striking damage it would be capable of with a punch.
Actually looking at it… Chatterbox almost looked the part of a combination of a werewolf and a gorilla, further augmented with terrifying cybernetics to create an abomination that would not have been out of place in fucking DOOM.
Moreover, it was clear that the beast had placed itself between the squad and the area's only real exit.
With genuine curiosity, Chatterbox lowly mused aloud in response to Rapi's virtual Red Comet Kick, "...For a mere imposter, you recovered awfully quickly from that attack, and to follow up with such a powerful riposte of your own, with such rapidity as to catch even myself off guard... The Ark has not been capable of producing such powerful Nikkes for quite some time. How did-" the Rapture paused, seeming to stare at Rapi for several long seconds before a hellish timber slowly rose from its throat, rapidly building into a full-on belly laugh. "Fortune smiles upon me this day! You, you are no mere imposter! No, I recognize you… a Grimms model. Red Riding Hood."
Rapi, at the beast's assertion, went pale. Though she maintained her vigil, the accusation had clearly struck her true in some manner. Considering the dream he'd just had, featuring none other than a Nikke titled Red Hood… Joe didn't know what it could mean, but if that dream/memory had been true to life, Rapi couldn't have been Red Hood: she gave no indications that she recognized him at any point, to say nothing of the fact that Red Hood had fluorescent red hair, while Rapi was a strawberry blonde…
Chatterbox had to be off-base. The declaration didn't make any sense…
"Shut up," Rapi demanded of the Rapture, her voice audibly and uncharacteristically shaken.
…So why would she be so taken off-guard by the beast's conclusion?
Leaning forward, the hellish monster tilted its head with a mocking sort of inquisitiveness. "You never, it seemed, strayed far from your Commander's side after all, did you-?"
With a blink, full awareness and control finally returning to him, Joe reached across his chest and ripped at the pull tab attached to the pulsar Ingrid had provided him. Nothing outwardly seemed to happen, though Chatterbox had clearly noticed the action.
The low chuckle that emerged from his lipless visage, if anything, indicated no small amount of amusement, rather than the expected annoyance or anger. "Ah, and here I was hoping to continue this little parlay for a while yet. But, if you aim to summon uninvited guests, to say nothing of how rare it is, to be faced with the opportunity to clash with among the greatest mankind has ever had to offer…" the monstrous beast turned to the rest of the present Nikkes, all frozen in varying degrees of shock and horror - presented as they were with a clearly intelligent Rapture - or rather, a new, intelligent, and startlingly well-informed Tyrant, clearly being so far outside of their expectations that it left them gaping in open horror and awe. "Then come, let us see how a lone Goddess and four lowly imposters fares against the Slaughterer!"
With a blood-curdling, hellish roar that shook Joe's very bones, seemingly even the Earth upon which they stood, Chatterbox charged.
Chapter 24 - Slaughterer
===
"Mihara…" Joe started warily, taking in the sight before them.
"We may have made a miscalculation," Mihara replied, watching how Chatterbox's tracks approached a wall, leading to the Rapture clearly driving its limbs into the damned sheer plane to climb it, ascending up to the roof of the building in question, many stories above. "Raptures are supposed to be simple-minded, unintelligent, entirely reliant upon dumb muscle and overwhelming numbers to defeat Nikkes…"
"We're boxed in," Anis pointed out darkly, taking in the sights around them. They were in a clearing, some sort of city square - albeit one which had only a single way in and out. At a glance, the buildings surrounding the opening collapsed from sheer disuse and a lack of maintenance. But stopping and examining everything clearly, especially from the drone's bird's eye view… this was a fucking killbox. One they'd walked right into. "We've clearly been tricked into following Chatterbox into a damned trap!"
"Anis is right, Commander," Mihara asserted, readying her own rifle even as Rapi, Neon, and Yuni were on high alert, scanning their surroundings intensely with their weapons raised. "Normally, one would balk at the idea, but, clearly, this Rapture is a cut above the rest. I'd recommend we retreat and regroup in a more defensible area."
"Yeah, no shit!" Joe was quick to motion for everyone to form up and begin moving. "I'm calling this operation the fuck off! A Rapture smart enough to lure hunters into a trap is not what we signed up for! Back the way we came, people! Move it or lose it, we-!" His gaze snapped back to the tablet the instant its connection was lost. Whipping his head skywards, Joe failed to notice anything - save for the telltale, distant thud of something solid impacting with another building off in the distance. "-Chatterbox just took out the fucking drone with a rock," he matter-of-factually deduced as the severity of the situation just started escalating very quickly.
"Oh you've gotta be shitting me!" Anis cried, now whipping the barrel of her grenade launcher to-and-fro, scanning the rooftops ferociously. "I fucking knew it! I fucking knew that bitch Syuen was walking us into a deathtrap! But nobody ever listens to Anis, nobody, never at all-!"
"This is bad, thiiiis is definitely bad…" Neon anxiously mused aloud, constantly resetting her shotgun against her shoulder as she did so.
"Mihara…" Yuni whined, backing up to stand closer to her partner, rocket launcher weakly resting atop her tiny shoulder.
Raptures were supposed to basically be fucking animals as far as intelligence went - at most, displaying the same type of cunning one might expect out of a wolf pack. This was a step above that, to say the fucking least.
"Commander, we need to move!" Rapi asserted, rushing up to stand alongside Joe. "Lets-"
She was cut off by an object impacting her legs with such force as to flip her clean off her feet, face slamming into the ground not four metres from Joe's position just as the offending chunk of debris cratered the ancient, cracked asphalt they'd been standing upon.
Before Joe could even register that, the entire world around him seemed to quake at once, and the rookie Commander was thrown from his feet. In a blind panic, Joe rushed to scramble back up, instinctively raising his own rifle that wouldn't be able to so much as dent a Rapture's armour plating.
For an instant, it was like he'd set his face right in front of the mouth of a furnace. But the heavy, moisture-laden warmth that slammed into him like a blast from a bellows betrayed the origin of the fetid air.
"Well well well," the voice that emerged from behind teeth each easily the length of an entire human finger and twice as wide was impossibly bassy, rumbling, sending palpable vibrations through Joe's body with each syllable uttered. A hellish rictus, a sadistic grin of hatred foretelling suffering and the extreme exaltation the abomination would take in inflicting it. "My luck seems to know no bounds, to find among my pursuers such a high-value- nay, esteemed specimen among these hollow imposters…"
The great, gaping maw was ringed with metal, bone-white, angular, seemingly built to emphasize the predatory nature of the creature looming over him. Musculature which could only be described as a grotesque parody of the male ideal rippled with indescribable power, arms like those of a gorilla's flared out to the point that both limbs had to have as much mass as the rest of the body combined. Crimson veins popped from its arms, which themselves were a furious shade of red starkly set apart from the lifeless, artificial ebony of the rest of its body.
"Ah, but where are my manners? How boorish of me to barge in unannounced, even upon a guest who sought out my presence to begin with… though, my name is already known to you, etiquette demands a certain modicum of protocol be entertained, So…"
In some exaggerated, yet understated mockery, the great, humanoid Rapture lowered itself ever-so-slightly, as if to imitate a gentleman's bow.
"I am known to the Ark as Chatterbox. Though, in much the same way that you were already aware of such, so too, am I already aware of you. Yes, I know all about you and the reputation you have fostered, Commander Joseph Pholus. Yes, a figure as legendary as yourself, one would have to be beyond foolish to lose track of, no?"
Oh. Shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.
"My my, have I managed to leave the great Commander Pholus at a loss for words?" Chatterbox wondered aloud as it lifted one of its gargantuan hands from the asphalt, moving as if to grab the visibly shocked Joe. "I scarcely-"
The abomination was cut off and staggered back by a strike to the armoured face - a blur of black and red that rocketed in from the side before rebounding, landing and dragging Joe back even as the Rapture recovered from the unexpected attack.
"Wha- what the-!?" Chatterbox cried out, audibly caught off-guard before it spotted Rapi holding onto a thoroughly shocked Joe with one arm, the other holding her rifle steady in the crook of her shoulder, pointed right at it.
"Rapi…!?" Joe sputtered out, eyes snapping down in an attempt to catch a glimpse of her legs - indeed, one of them had been absolutely mangled by the debris Chatterbox had thrown at her, yet still, she'd been capable of launching herself at him with such force as to knock his fifteen-foot ass back with a kick. Holy shit, what a hell of a little woman.
"I have you, Commander," the little blonde assured him, firmly maintaining her grip on the much larger man, the threat of Chatterbox and its apparent intent to abduct Joe not going unheeded.
Now no longer right up in Chatterbox's face, Joe could make out more of the hellish beast - it was indeed digitigrade, just as he'd previously surmised. Moreover, it had a tail - incredibly long, winding, and seeming to be lined with dozens upon dozens of cutting blades that would make approaching the creature from behind a terribly perilous idea. Jutting out from its back were… four… spikes? With what almost looked like exhaust tubes - or barrels set beneath them. Worse yet, the beast's comically oversized fists were further augmented with what seemed to be integrated cestus - metal plates that would reinforce the hand and redouble the sheer striking damage it would be capable of with a punch.
Actually looking at it… Chatterbox almost looked the part of a combination of a werewolf and a gorilla, further augmented with terrifying cybernetics to create an abomination that would not have been out of place in fucking DOOM.
Moreover, it was clear that the beast had placed itself between the squad and the area's only real exit.
With genuine curiosity, Chatterbox lowly mused aloud in response to Rapi's virtual Red Comet Kick, "...For a mere imposter, you recovered awfully quickly from that attack, and to follow up with such a powerful riposte of your own, with such rapidity as to catch even myself off guard... The Ark has not been capable of producing such powerful Nikkes for quite some time. How did-" the Rapture paused, seeming to stare at Rapi for several long seconds before a hellish timber slowly rose from its throat, rapidly building into a full-on belly laugh. "Fortune smiles upon me this day! You, you are no mere imposter! No, I recognize you… a Grimms model. Red Riding Hood."
Rapi, at the beast's assertion, went pale. Though she maintained her vigil, the accusation had clearly struck her true in some manner. Considering the dream he'd just had, featuring none other than a Nikke titled Red Hood… Joe didn't know what it could mean, but if that dream/memory had been true to life, Rapi couldn't have been Red Hood: she gave no indications that she recognized him at any point, to say nothing of the fact that Red Hood had fluorescent red hair, while Rapi was a strawberry blonde…
Chatterbox had to be off-base. The declaration didn't make any sense…
"Shut up," Rapi demanded of the Rapture, her voice audibly and uncharacteristically shaken.
…So why would she be so taken off-guard by the beast's conclusion?
Leaning forward, the hellish monster tilted its head with a mocking sort of inquisitiveness. "You never, it seemed, strayed far from your Commander's side after all, did you-?"
With a blink, full awareness and control finally returning to him, Joe reached across his chest and ripped at the pull tab attached to the pulsar Ingrid had provided him. Nothing outwardly seemed to happen, though Chatterbox had clearly noticed the action.
The low chuckle that emerged from his lipless visage, if anything, indicated no small amount of amusement, rather than the expected annoyance or anger. "Ah, and here I was hoping to continue this little parlay for a while yet. But, if you aim to summon uninvited guests, to say nothing of how rare it is, to be faced with the opportunity to clash with among the greatest mankind has ever had to offer…" the monstrous beast turned to the rest of the present Nikkes, all frozen in varying degrees of shock and horror - presented as they were with a clearly intelligent Rapture - or rather, a new, intelligent, and startlingly well-informed Tyrant, clearly being so far outside of their expectations that it left them gaping in open horror and awe. "Then come, let us see how a lone Goddess and four lowly imposters fares against the Slaughterer!"
With a blood-curdling, hellish roar that shook Joe's very bones, seemingly even the Earth upon which they stood, Chatterbox charged.
palacesound
𩆖𩆖𩆖
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Every one of Ingrid's OKed missions have been absolute disasters so far. Maybe he should hook up with Tetra instead of Elysion at this point lmfao
Nomad-117
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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Well... that could have gone better.
Though I wonder, why doesn't Ark produce ever improving models of Nikke?
It sounds like the older, earlier models are superior, did they forget how to build them that awesome?
Though I wonder, why doesn't Ark produce ever improving models of Nikke?
It sounds like the older, earlier models are superior, did they forget how to build them that awesome?
Krome
Getting sticky.
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You really gonna do that to us huh Baka? That kind of cliffhanger? Jokes aside. I love the chapter. But I feel the Red Hood reveal was a bit early. The Commander thing I can give a pass as Mihara and Yuni probably won't pick up on it, Anis and Neon definitely won't. But did Chatterbox canonically know that Rapi was a suppressed Red Hood? Haven't reached that far yet. I could be looking too deep but it looks like this Red Hood I'd romantically attracted to to our boy.
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Krome
Getting sticky.
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Too much of a resource drain most likely.
AldariSiradla
Spirit Boy, Police Girl
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Oh shit!
It's gonna happen...
It's actually gonna happen.
Time for memories to be unearthed...
And traumas to be revisited...
The enemy approaches...
Stand ready and may your aim be true...
Encounter!
It's gonna happen...
It's actually gonna happen.
Time for memories to be unearthed...
And traumas to be revisited...
The enemy approaches...
Stand ready and may your aim be true...
Encounter!
SixthRanger
Herrscher of Lewds and Power
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2017
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- 1,658
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Even back when humanity still had the surfaces, the Fairytale models were resource hogs, and the people with the necessary psychological profile were scarce.
Plenty of stuff was lost, and both materials and production methods were among them.
There are new Nikkes at about the same level of a Fairytale model done by reverse engineering one, but the true Fairitale models were made in pale imitation of the first Nikke.