Post by Tout-Perd on Jan 1, 2008 17:07:49 GMT -5
Berthold sighed, looking at himself in the mirror. He had donned the Obsidian Hearts uniform, not for the first time, and unfortunately, not for the last. He had let himself be trapped, in a sense, in exchange for his father's legacy. The mecha, Java Green, had been concealed beneath an abandoned warehouse in Detroit.
By the time that he managed to come home to claim it, though, the Obsidian Hearts had already had a team of legal experts rifle through his father's will and edit it to give them the mecha. Now, he was working it off. Ten years, in exchange for a prototype mecha worth millions... The boss had told him it was a deal... After the first four missions, he was doubting that.
--------
"Berthold, pleased to see that you're still with us. The most valuable pilot we have, and an engineering genius to boot," George said cordially, leaning across his desk towards him.
"Well, as we all know, I'm not allowed to leave. If I did, hunter-killer robots and your elite assassins would descend on me faster then I could blink. And that is not counting the orbital bombardments that would occur the moment I stray outside of a designated area," Berthold muttered, recoiling from George. He noticed a slightly plump girl with dark blue hair, slouched in an armchair in a corner. Her uniform was rather poorly arrayed, buttoned incorrectly and with the helmet's visor halfway lowered.
"Your new secretary is quite dapper."
"Oh, she isn't a secretary."
"Girlfriend, then?"
"Nope. In fact, she has very little to do with me. She's just a recent... Benefit we acquired in a deal."
"Say what?"
"She was reconstructed from genetic material for the ideal pilot, circa 1940, Nazi Germany," George said with his wild grin widening. He produced a pencil from his desk drawer, and threw it towards the girl. Instantly, her hand rose up, catching the pencil. She crushed it in her grasp.
"Beautiful, no? Conditioned from infancy to be able to pilot any device to maximum efficiency. It's a good thing we had as many mechs as we did. She alone defended the group that created her for three days without rest... Against the full force of our army, minus the elite group. If she hadn't been using a pitiful mecha with dirt-poor specs, we could have lost, or at least had to have sent some of you in," George chuckled to himself. The girl rolled over in the chair, ignoring the conversation.
"Why am I here? It's evident that I can't train her," Berthold said quietly, glancing nervously towards the young lady.
"We need somebody to supervise her during our training excercise with her and a new mecha... Somebody with a larger, more brutish mecha... Somebody who can subdue her if need be," George said, his voice easy and smoothe.
"So, me and Java Green?"
"You bet."
--------
"Do you talk?" Berthold asked to the girl, trying to enunciate as clearly as possible. They were headed towards the hangar for their mechas,
"Yes. I do," The girl stated, sounding cold and emotionless.
"Like a doll?" Berthold stared at her face, taken aback by the lack of emotion.
"Of course not!" The girl shouted cheerily, causing Berthold to almost fall over backwards. "You people always assume that I'm some kind of defective experiment. Like I'm just a piloting robot. You couldn't be farther from the truth." She grinned widely, and turned to Berthold.
"I was raised as a normal child, with only three differences. Firstly, from the age of five, I was taught that the Mech simulator was the utmost in entertainment, and that mechas were the coolest thing since sliced bread. Secondly, they did give me hormonal treatments to promote better reflexes and such... Thirdly, I was raised by a group of scientists, all of which who cared about me deeply."
"So, you're just a normal girl with an abnormal interest in mechas?"
"Basically. They had made it clear to me that they'd eventually have a psion copy my piloting technique to AIs, but that wouldn't harm me. They'd let me go on to lead a normal life at the age of eighteen. I keep acting like the cliché robot pilot just so that the heads of this place won't try to recondition me and make me loyal."
"And yet you can entrust me with this?"
"Yeah. You're just stuck here, like me."
"True, I guess. One other question... Why the blue hair? I thought you'd be blonde."
"'cause the whole German deal? Duh. I just dyed it because I wanted to try something new."
"Oh, okay. By the way, what should I call you?"
"My parents called me Experimental Project Data Type Seven-Five-One-Four, Bloodline Beta."
"Oh."
"I'm kidding! My real name is Lacianus Garrelcette, though you can call me Lacy," The group reached their hangar, opening the small, sturdy door. They clambered through, Berthold needing to duck slightly despite his average height.
"Berthold Verdigris. Never, ever Bert," Berthold responded, groping for the light switch. A moment later, the lights came on with a loud whoosh. By hangar standards, it was fairly small, barely fifty feet high and the length of a football field. Berthold's mecha, the apelike Java Green, had to slouch in order to fit into the structure. It was hunched at the entrance, like a gridiron football player ready to charge. Behind it hung another mecha, this one barely thirty feet high. It was a sheen of silver, with dozens of featherlike blades shimmering on its back, extending roughly ten feet beyond its shoulders. Its limbs were all thin and clawed, obviously designed for landing in rough terrain.
"Yours, I take it?" Berthold gestured.
"You bet. They call it the Weltschmerz. Say it can top Mach One in flight mode, though it peaks out at two-hundred and fiftyish in combat mode," Lacianus remarked with pride. "Yours ain't too shabby either. Custom make, eh?"
"Home made. Not much for speed, and can't fly, but powerful enough to manhandle almost anything in close quarters. Still, pretty low specs, I'm afraid to admit," Bethold said, blushing slightly.
"Shall we head out?" Lacianus asked, looking towards the ceiling.
"I guess we shall," Berthold said, getting ready for the training excercise in his mind.
--------
The sun was bright, and the sky cloudless as the Java Green trudged across the snowy field. Typical weather this time of year in Siberia... Berthold was toying with the heat output settings, trying to keep everything stable in the cold temperatures. Too little heat wasn't as bad as too much, but it did disable his primary weapon and forced him to expend valuable ammunition.
"This is the Weltschmerz. All systems green. Targetting systems actually are proving more responsive than the specs would indicate, oddly enough," Lacianus reported through the radio system. She was engaged in a mock dogfight with four jets, moreso practicing staying out of eachother's sights than anything else. Berthold was far below, but he could still see the elegance and precision with which the girl handled her mecha. Even in a weaponless practice, she had led the jets into almost colliding with eachother on three occasions. She wasn't merely a masterful pilot, but also capable of small scale tactics that could make many military maestros envious.
"Beautiful flying up there, Lacy. I'd fancy a match with you, but I know how it would end," Berthold remarked with a chuckle.
"Hey, we can't all be superhuman pilots!" Lacianus responded, dipping a wing towards him in a gesture that was barely visible.
"Weltschmerz weapons systems, activated," The computer beside Berthold droned.
"Lacy, what are you doing?" Berthold barked into the radio. There was no response to him. However, up above, the Weltschmerz seemed to vanish. A moment later, one of the jets exploded into flames, two halves plummeting to the field below.
"Lacianus!" Berthold shouted, banging on the armrest of his seat in disbelief. The Weltschmerz reappeared, and its arms went back, grabbing at a point on its back. It pulled free two of the smaller feathers, revealing them to be knives of some sort. Hurling one, its jets fired as it rushed through another plane without mercy. Another explosion later, Lacianus had pulled her mecha into a steep dive, catching the knife that she had thrown through a jet that had been far from the initial dogfight.
"Stop, now!" Berthold screamed, switching his own weapon systems on. The computer confirmed it verbally, its tone seeming almost cheerful.
"Boss, what's up?" The last pilot wailed, desperately trying to evade Lacianus as she toyed with his plane. "Why is she doing this?" He screamed, and was silenced as a knife was thrust through the cockpit of his plane.
"Don't ask me. I'm just a spectator," George's voice hissed through the radio.
"Bastard!" Berthold remarked, only to see the remains of the last jet hurtling towards his mecha. Quickly flipping various switches, he brought his grenades launchers to bear. With a single press on the joystick, he launched thirty large spheres of explosive force at the falling craft. The jet's remains were torn apart in a massive blast, buffeting the armor of Java Green. Berthold paused, hearing a beeping from his radio. He thought for a moment, trying to translate it.
"I... WILL... HAVE... FREEDOM..." The Weltschmerz dropped low, roughly twenty feet above the ground. It rushed him, kicking up a cloud of snow and ice as it roared along the ground, knives shimmering in the sunlight.
OOC: Feel free to jump in. These are both fairly low end mechas, so any medium power character oughta be capable of playing along. I will not object to anybody auto-scrapping any mechas, either (Please don't kill pilots, though. That'd be mean. Killing Lacy and Bert? Heresy!). Weltschmerz can take about as much abuse as a car, while Java is much harder to destroy, though easy to disable through tinkering/precision shots.
And after this scene, the power level should plummet down to Street/Human level, so about anybody should fit.
By the time that he managed to come home to claim it, though, the Obsidian Hearts had already had a team of legal experts rifle through his father's will and edit it to give them the mecha. Now, he was working it off. Ten years, in exchange for a prototype mecha worth millions... The boss had told him it was a deal... After the first four missions, he was doubting that.
--------
"Berthold, pleased to see that you're still with us. The most valuable pilot we have, and an engineering genius to boot," George said cordially, leaning across his desk towards him.
"Well, as we all know, I'm not allowed to leave. If I did, hunter-killer robots and your elite assassins would descend on me faster then I could blink. And that is not counting the orbital bombardments that would occur the moment I stray outside of a designated area," Berthold muttered, recoiling from George. He noticed a slightly plump girl with dark blue hair, slouched in an armchair in a corner. Her uniform was rather poorly arrayed, buttoned incorrectly and with the helmet's visor halfway lowered.
"Your new secretary is quite dapper."
"Oh, she isn't a secretary."
"Girlfriend, then?"
"Nope. In fact, she has very little to do with me. She's just a recent... Benefit we acquired in a deal."
"Say what?"
"She was reconstructed from genetic material for the ideal pilot, circa 1940, Nazi Germany," George said with his wild grin widening. He produced a pencil from his desk drawer, and threw it towards the girl. Instantly, her hand rose up, catching the pencil. She crushed it in her grasp.
"Beautiful, no? Conditioned from infancy to be able to pilot any device to maximum efficiency. It's a good thing we had as many mechs as we did. She alone defended the group that created her for three days without rest... Against the full force of our army, minus the elite group. If she hadn't been using a pitiful mecha with dirt-poor specs, we could have lost, or at least had to have sent some of you in," George chuckled to himself. The girl rolled over in the chair, ignoring the conversation.
"Why am I here? It's evident that I can't train her," Berthold said quietly, glancing nervously towards the young lady.
"We need somebody to supervise her during our training excercise with her and a new mecha... Somebody with a larger, more brutish mecha... Somebody who can subdue her if need be," George said, his voice easy and smoothe.
"So, me and Java Green?"
"You bet."
--------
"Do you talk?" Berthold asked to the girl, trying to enunciate as clearly as possible. They were headed towards the hangar for their mechas,
"Yes. I do," The girl stated, sounding cold and emotionless.
"Like a doll?" Berthold stared at her face, taken aback by the lack of emotion.
"Of course not!" The girl shouted cheerily, causing Berthold to almost fall over backwards. "You people always assume that I'm some kind of defective experiment. Like I'm just a piloting robot. You couldn't be farther from the truth." She grinned widely, and turned to Berthold.
"I was raised as a normal child, with only three differences. Firstly, from the age of five, I was taught that the Mech simulator was the utmost in entertainment, and that mechas were the coolest thing since sliced bread. Secondly, they did give me hormonal treatments to promote better reflexes and such... Thirdly, I was raised by a group of scientists, all of which who cared about me deeply."
"So, you're just a normal girl with an abnormal interest in mechas?"
"Basically. They had made it clear to me that they'd eventually have a psion copy my piloting technique to AIs, but that wouldn't harm me. They'd let me go on to lead a normal life at the age of eighteen. I keep acting like the cliché robot pilot just so that the heads of this place won't try to recondition me and make me loyal."
"And yet you can entrust me with this?"
"Yeah. You're just stuck here, like me."
"True, I guess. One other question... Why the blue hair? I thought you'd be blonde."
"'cause the whole German deal? Duh. I just dyed it because I wanted to try something new."
"Oh, okay. By the way, what should I call you?"
"My parents called me Experimental Project Data Type Seven-Five-One-Four, Bloodline Beta."
"Oh."
"I'm kidding! My real name is Lacianus Garrelcette, though you can call me Lacy," The group reached their hangar, opening the small, sturdy door. They clambered through, Berthold needing to duck slightly despite his average height.
"Berthold Verdigris. Never, ever Bert," Berthold responded, groping for the light switch. A moment later, the lights came on with a loud whoosh. By hangar standards, it was fairly small, barely fifty feet high and the length of a football field. Berthold's mecha, the apelike Java Green, had to slouch in order to fit into the structure. It was hunched at the entrance, like a gridiron football player ready to charge. Behind it hung another mecha, this one barely thirty feet high. It was a sheen of silver, with dozens of featherlike blades shimmering on its back, extending roughly ten feet beyond its shoulders. Its limbs were all thin and clawed, obviously designed for landing in rough terrain.
"Yours, I take it?" Berthold gestured.
"You bet. They call it the Weltschmerz. Say it can top Mach One in flight mode, though it peaks out at two-hundred and fiftyish in combat mode," Lacianus remarked with pride. "Yours ain't too shabby either. Custom make, eh?"
"Home made. Not much for speed, and can't fly, but powerful enough to manhandle almost anything in close quarters. Still, pretty low specs, I'm afraid to admit," Bethold said, blushing slightly.
"Shall we head out?" Lacianus asked, looking towards the ceiling.
"I guess we shall," Berthold said, getting ready for the training excercise in his mind.
--------
The sun was bright, and the sky cloudless as the Java Green trudged across the snowy field. Typical weather this time of year in Siberia... Berthold was toying with the heat output settings, trying to keep everything stable in the cold temperatures. Too little heat wasn't as bad as too much, but it did disable his primary weapon and forced him to expend valuable ammunition.
"This is the Weltschmerz. All systems green. Targetting systems actually are proving more responsive than the specs would indicate, oddly enough," Lacianus reported through the radio system. She was engaged in a mock dogfight with four jets, moreso practicing staying out of eachother's sights than anything else. Berthold was far below, but he could still see the elegance and precision with which the girl handled her mecha. Even in a weaponless practice, she had led the jets into almost colliding with eachother on three occasions. She wasn't merely a masterful pilot, but also capable of small scale tactics that could make many military maestros envious.
"Beautiful flying up there, Lacy. I'd fancy a match with you, but I know how it would end," Berthold remarked with a chuckle.
"Hey, we can't all be superhuman pilots!" Lacianus responded, dipping a wing towards him in a gesture that was barely visible.
"Weltschmerz weapons systems, activated," The computer beside Berthold droned.
"Lacy, what are you doing?" Berthold barked into the radio. There was no response to him. However, up above, the Weltschmerz seemed to vanish. A moment later, one of the jets exploded into flames, two halves plummeting to the field below.
"Lacianus!" Berthold shouted, banging on the armrest of his seat in disbelief. The Weltschmerz reappeared, and its arms went back, grabbing at a point on its back. It pulled free two of the smaller feathers, revealing them to be knives of some sort. Hurling one, its jets fired as it rushed through another plane without mercy. Another explosion later, Lacianus had pulled her mecha into a steep dive, catching the knife that she had thrown through a jet that had been far from the initial dogfight.
"Stop, now!" Berthold screamed, switching his own weapon systems on. The computer confirmed it verbally, its tone seeming almost cheerful.
"Boss, what's up?" The last pilot wailed, desperately trying to evade Lacianus as she toyed with his plane. "Why is she doing this?" He screamed, and was silenced as a knife was thrust through the cockpit of his plane.
"Don't ask me. I'm just a spectator," George's voice hissed through the radio.
"Bastard!" Berthold remarked, only to see the remains of the last jet hurtling towards his mecha. Quickly flipping various switches, he brought his grenades launchers to bear. With a single press on the joystick, he launched thirty large spheres of explosive force at the falling craft. The jet's remains were torn apart in a massive blast, buffeting the armor of Java Green. Berthold paused, hearing a beeping from his radio. He thought for a moment, trying to translate it.
"I... WILL... HAVE... FREEDOM..." The Weltschmerz dropped low, roughly twenty feet above the ground. It rushed him, kicking up a cloud of snow and ice as it roared along the ground, knives shimmering in the sunlight.
OOC: Feel free to jump in. These are both fairly low end mechas, so any medium power character oughta be capable of playing along. I will not object to anybody auto-scrapping any mechas, either (Please don't kill pilots, though. That'd be mean. Killing Lacy and Bert? Heresy!). Weltschmerz can take about as much abuse as a car, while Java is much harder to destroy, though easy to disable through tinkering/precision shots.
And after this scene, the power level should plummet down to Street/Human level, so about anybody should fit.