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The Main Six - A Story about Reckless Ladies in Power Armor

Discussion in 'FanFic' started by DaRedOne, Mar 20, 2018.

  1. DaRedOne

    DaRedOne Morat Warrior Philosopher
    Warcor

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    Good morning everyone! I mentioned a while back that I might step off from writing about Morats for a while to try my hand at writing for Nomads. And I did have some good ideas for it, so here we are. This is centered aroung a group of Riot Grrls and taking a page from @Danger Rose I decided to start with a description of each main character to help people get a feel of who they are. These are my Riots, the Main Six:


    The Main Six


    The Main Six are a Riot Grrl squad composed of a group of unlikely friends brought together when Tabitha ‘Twilight’ Tejano got involved on a protracted firefight in an Ariadnan bar.

    Originally, miss Tejano was doing security detail for a Bakunin relief force in the USAriadna borders during the Dawn conflict when a stray comment about the Beauvoir module’s inhabitants and their brainpower provoked a half hour long filibuster from the young woman. Said filibuster turned into outright hostilities with the local rough riders before Twilight could finish her demonstration of superior intellect by dissecting every Desperado in the room and their freudian motivations.

    During the ensuing shootout, Twilight got helped by Rhona “RD” Dmitry and Felicity “Pinkie” Ventura, who joined the fight just because they saw someone in full Riot Grrl armor getting shot at by several drunk cowboys. Later on they were further bolstered by Cintia “Jewel” Goldstein when a stray shot tore through her makeup mirror and enraged the young woman into violently obliterating whatever was left of bar by then.

    The four women did not pay for the damages they caused, but volunteered to help the locals against an Antipode invasion later on. They were tasked with reinforcing a local farming community where they rescued the sole survivor from one of the ravaged farms, one miss Jackeline “Jack” Applebuck, who asked to join them after witnessing their particular brand of reckless heroism. The fight against the Antipodes later that night took a severe toll on the five women team, and if not by the intervention of the meek yet extremely competent Daktaris doctor Jane “Butterfly” Tiembo they would have been overrun. Miss Tiembo was nearly press ganged into joining the team by a combination of RD’s sexual advances and Twilight’s rhetoric.

    Thus fully formed and christened ‘The Main Six’ by RD’s very small modesty, the group returned to the Beauvoir Module on Bakunin where their rowdy, brutal yet effective fighting style gained popularity with the command posts due to their high success rate despite the equally high collateral damage rate. These high numbers attracted the attention of a particularly unorthodox Taskmaster Officer, miss Eleanor “Celeste” Vega, who managed to browbeat the rowdy ladies into working for the Jurisdictional Command under her and her sister’s tutelage.

    The Main Six


    Tabitha ‘Twilight’ Tejano

    “Okay, girls, let’s try and do this by the book this time.”

    Age: 28
    Birthplace: Beauvoir Module, Bakunin
    Eye Color: Purple
    Hair Color: Purple with a pink streak down the middle
    Height: 1,68m (5,6ft)
    Weight: 58kg (128lbs)
    Favored Weapon: Boarding Shotgun

    Twilight is the De Facto leader of the group, no matter how much RD will yammer about the contrary. One of the few ladies in the Beauvoir Module to take their mission 100% seriously, miss Tejano is a staunch feminist, historian and scholar, preferring to spend her time studying and writing long, complex manifestos on the follies of man than taking to the field inside a powered suit. That being said, she is still just as capable as any of her friends, and when push comes to shove, she can be relied on to be the closest to the enemy, where she can properly fill them with molten lead.

    Twilight often is accompanied by her custom tinbot, affably nicknamed ‘Spike’, who acts as a buffer against hacking attempts on the team and as a storage unit for Twilight’s thousands of files on pretty much anything. Smart, reliable and consistent, the young woman is the first one in, last one out in any operation the Main Six take part in.


    Rhona “RD” Dmitry

    “Hey babe, you doing something later tonight?”

    Age: 25
    Birthplace: Vaudeville Module, Bakunin
    Eye Color: Green
    Hair Color: Red, Yellow, Blue and Green streaks
    Height: 1,78m (5,10ft)
    Weight: 72 kg (158,7lbs)
    Favored Weapon: MULTI-Rifle

    Rhona is a badass. Or at least that is what she will say if one asks her about her exploits. It should be clear that of all the Main Six she has the highest number of confirmed kills and takedowns, including of enemy Tactical Armored Gear and Heavy Infantry units. RD is a bona fide troublemaker and rabble rouser, always looking for the next face to put her fist through. Of her close knit group of friends, she was the first to don the Riot Grrl suit despite being younger than most of them.

    However, she has an ego larger than her track record, and fancies herself a ladies’ woman despite evidence on the contrary. RD is the most likely to get into a fight, for any reason or no reason at all, and her constant and more often than not unwanted sexual advances on other ladies have led her into incarceration so frequently that she’s on first name basis with half the Moderator corps. RD is still staunchly loyal to her friends and won’t hesitate in taking a bullet for them, or more likely putting several more bullets into the enemies shooting at them.


    Felicity “Pinkie” Ventura

    “Owkay! Let’s paaaarrrrttyyyyy!”

    Age: 26
    Birthplace: Vaudeville Module, Bakunin
    Eye Color: Pink
    Hair Color: Bubblegum Pink
    Height: 1,62m (5,4ft)
    Weight: 56kg (123,5 lbs)
    Favored Weapon: Spitfire

    It has been said that miss Ventura is insane and employing her as a Riot Grrl is a war crime. It has been said that her Spitfire light machinegun has a modified 500 rounds drum, and yet she still goes through several of those over the course of any operation. It has been said that her manic disposition and absolute disregard for enemy fire or cover comes from reality bending powers. It has been said that her armor is not pink, that’s just dried blood on the white suit. Some of the above sentences are actually true.

    Pinkie has been friends with RD for as long as the two can remember, as the bubbly lady is one of the few people who can stand RD’s overly dramatic and boastful behavior. As crazy, loud and obnoxious as she can appear, Pinkie is a competent fighter, excellent support gunner and is amazing at baking homemade pastries. Her cheerful disposition and love for making people happy has proven to be a great asset both in and out of the battlefield.


    Cintia “Jewel” Goldstein

    “Knives to a gun fight? How uncivilized.”

    Age: 31
    Birthplace: Neoterra, unspecified city
    Eye Color: Blue
    Hair Color: Blue with purple highlights
    Height: 1,80m (5,11ft)
    Weight: 61 kg (134,5 lbs)
    Favored Weapon: Blitzen

    Jewel is, as her callsign suggests, Precious, Perfect and Unique. The woman is not only drop dead gorgeous, but also has flair and elegance to match her nearly perfect hair and always impeccable speech. Miss Goldstein is allegedly the scion of a stupidly rich NeoTerran family, who stole half her Father’s fortune before moving to Bakunin and joining the Riot Grrl corps after seeing their gorgeous armored suits. Her suit in particular is kept in near pristine status with constant maintenance, as the diva learned with the best of the Vulkanja armorsmiths how to build and maintain the suits.

    Her tech savviness paired well with Twlight’s smarts, and the two women share a close bond over their intellectual prowess, while her tactical eye and drive for nothing short of perfection ensures the squad always survives to fight another day. Although Jewel will often prefer not to engage the enemy directly if she can be helped, once provoked her ‘battle rage’, as the other girls have come to call it, has produced some truly legendary moments.


    Jackeline “Jack” Applebuck

    “Alright dahlin’. You tag ‘em, Ah smash ‘em!”

    Age: 29
    Birthplace: USAriadna, classified Province
    Eye Color: Hazel
    Hair Color: Blonde
    Height: 1,85m (6,1ft)
    Weight: 81 kg (178,6 lbs)
    Favored Weapon: Missile Launcher

    One glance at Jack makes it clear she was not born in the Nomad Nations. Tall, muscular and well fed, the blonde farmgirl would have rather stayed back home growing wheat and apples for the Force as her family had done since the early days of Dawn. However, one fateful night had her farm be completely overrun by Antipodes, with Jack as the sole survivor, tearing through the vicious aliens with nothing but a break action shotgun and a big knife.

    Later that same night, Jack would witness a group of four heavily armored, heavily armed women in glowing neon armor obliterate the Antipode swarm in a loud, violent ambush that had the canine aliens shredded into so much bloody pulp. Impressed by their reckless yet effective protection of the local community, Jack nearly begged to join the team, and was accepted with open arms when it was clear she had nowhere else to go. She quickly revealed herself to be a crack shot with single shot, high powered guns, and her unflinching courage became an inspiring rally point for her newest friends.


    Jane “Butterfly” Tiembo

    “Ah dear, c-could you please stay still? I’m-I’m trying to save your life here.”

    Age: 28
    Birthplace: Agrimodule, Corregidor
    Eye Color: Pink
    Hair Color: Pastel Pink
    Height: 1,70m (5,7ft)
    Weight: 63kg (138,9lbs)
    Favored Weapon: Medikit

    Despite being as official a member of the Main Six squad as one can be, Butterfly is not a Riot Grrl, but a Daktaris doctor. She was part of the same relief force that saved Jack’s community as a member of the medical detail dedicated to helping the droves of refugees after the mass antipode attack that anihilated their farming community. Unlike most Daktaris, Butterfly is almost unable to raise her voice or say a single bad word. However, she displays a brand of relentless bravery in combat that means she will never flinch in the face of her duty, and her medical skills can be matched to the best of the human sphere.

    Butterfly is a pacifist at heart, which clashes hard with the overly violent style of her friends. She understands that fighting means violence which means death, but makes her job saving lives and not ending them. Unlike most combat medics, she takes into battle carrying no lethal weapons at all, and will only fight in self defense, never as an aggressor as her friends do. Despite being meek and seeming helpless, Butterfly has proven time and again that her place in the Main Six was well earned.


    The Caretakers


    The Caretakers are two Taskmaster sisters who have taken a deep interest in the Main Six. They work as support, field commanders and mission control for the Six rowdy women, and help keep them in line before they cause more damage than it’s worth for Bakunin.


    Captain Eleanor “Celeste” Vega

    “You lay one finger on my girls, and I will end you.”

    Age: 42
    Birthplace: Classified, Bakunin
    Eye Color: Green
    Hair Color: Blond with white streaks
    Height: 2,20m (7,2ft)
    Weight: 102kg (224,8lbs)
    Favored Weapon: Heavy Rocket Launcher

    Celeste is an odd woman. For starters, she’s clearly a chimera, despite her inhuman height, muscle density and enhanced senses making her far less exotic than the average Bakunin chimera, she is nevertheless an enhanced woman whose modifications give her a distinctly intimidating look. Strong enough to run through a brick wall and lug around her heavy weaponry even before donning the Super Heavy Taskmaster suit, Celeste is an example of what a SWAST Officer should be: Smart, quick witted and charismatic.

    Where she differs from other SWAST Officers is that she is willing to eschew standard tactics in favor of indirect approaches, and while she is keen on employing assets like morlocks and remotes, she does not treat them as expendable, instead taking a lot of care to keep her underlings alive and well. She originally browbeat the Main Six into work directly under her after reading over their record a few times and liking what she saw. However, after much influence from her sister, she has taken a liking to the girls and is slowly stepping into a more benevolent mentor figure for them.


    2nd Lieutenant Luciana “Luna” Vega

    “What do you want written on your gravestone, punk?”
    “‘Death of old age’, ma’am! We surrender!”


    Age: 36
    Birthplace: Classified, Bakunin
    Eye color: Green
    Hair color: jet black with blue and silver streaks
    Height: 2m (6,56ft)
    Weight: 92kg (202,8 pounds)
    Favored Weapon: Sword and Pistol

    Luna is the kind of Taskmaster that makes most criminals piss themselves in fear. She even changed the color of her battle armor to midnight black and blue as opposed to the usual white and orange of Bakunin law enforcement. The woman is brutal, short with words and absolutely violent in her pursuit of justice. Legend holds that she managed to subdue three of the Main Six during their ‘recruitment’ process. According to the story, Jack, RD and Pinkie attempted to take Celeste down, but were swiftly dispatched by her younger sister, despite the three younger women being fully armored while the two SWAST Officers were in civilian clothing.

    If one meets her out of the suit, they will find that Luna is playful, easily excitable and very cheerful, despite her slightly deep voice being as intimidating as it is commanding, Luna can be surprisingly approachable and friendly to her fellow Bakunin denizens. That doesn’t mean she is not the most brutal and ruthless of the duo, she just has a jovial air about it.
     
    #1 DaRedOne, Mar 20, 2018
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2018
  2. jherazob

    jherazob Well-Known Member

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    Oh gee, these gals feel somehow familiar :P
    Paging @Kathara_Khan :D
     
    Golem2God likes this.
  3. DaRedOne

    DaRedOne Morat Warrior Philosopher
    Warcor

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    Edit: Broke down the lines into better paragraphs for easier reading

    First Contact


    “So, are you sure this is the place, Twi? I mean, it looks pretty much not like a Hexaedron safehouse to me”

    RD groaned as she lowered her visor, the soft glow of her suit’s sensors showing she was actively scanning the run down building just a few hundred meters away from their position. The two fully armored women were huddled inside another run down apartment block, one that offered a nice view of their target across the street.

    “Yes. I’m sure. I didn’t spend two weeks getting info on these guys for nothing, RD.”

    The dark skinned woman next to the rainbow haired one growled while her own visor shone with the same information streaming in front of her friend’s. They were watching what looked like an old Yakisoba shop, the stand was closing for the day yet it still managed to look oily and dripping with old fat even from a distance.

    “We’re looking for a specific guy. Tall, bald, bigass implant on the neck like an old voicebox.” Twilight talked in muffled tones, transmitting to the other team members by a secure channel.

    “Ah think Ah have a visual, dahlin’.”

    Sounded the thick accent of Jack on her ear, and Twilight chuckled at how the blonde still hadn’t lost that atrocious USAriadnan drawl even after spending an year without stepping on her home planet.

    “Yup. Ah got him. Look, down tha street, he’s got a remote taggin’ behind him.”

    “Yeah! I see him too!”

    Another voice chimed in, and Twilight had to put her hand to her ear to manually adjust the sound settings of their communicators before her ears started to buzz from that high pitched, excited tone.

    “Tone it down, Pinkie. He can’t figure we’re here yet.”

    The purple haired leader scowled while scooting back, off her watchpost. She stopped to tap the rainbow haired one next to her, letting RD know she was on her own now. Twilight crawled on her belly, making almost no sound as she descended the staircases that would take her to street level. As she started making plans and counterplans, she choked back a sigh, already imagining how nothing was going to go the way she had planned.

    “Okay, girls, let’s try and do this by the book this time: Jewel, you’re on point, tag the drone with an EM round. Maybe we can recover the chassis later. Pinkie, I want you ready to suppress the guy, if he tries to escape you drive him back to us or you make him dead. RD, as soon as that remote is down, you take the shot. Stun rounds. Stun. Rounds. Let’s please try not to kill this one. Jack, keep watch, let’s try not to blow anything up this time. Butterfly, keep your Medipack ready, he might try to off himself the moment we spring the trap and if he buys it I want his Cube. Sound off, ladies.”

    “Affirmative.” Said a meek, shy voice on her ear.

    “You got it, sugah” That silly drawl sounded quite confident.

    “Stun rounds ready, he won’t know what hit him” RD’s raspy, cocky tone was quite reassuring.

    “Locked and loaded!” Oh, how she wished Pinkie would learn to speak any volume other than Loud or Louder.

    “On your mark, darling.” Jewel’s husky contralto was very much the odd one out of their group.

    It was a simple kill zone scenario. Her team was posted on all three known accesses to the shop, with Jack and Pinkie on the longer, wider street that led back to the Pleasure districts, while Jewel and Butterfly watched the alley that led to the back of the Yakisoba stand, and finally RD and Twilight herself stood watch over the narrow pass that came down from the upper Market district and into the currently nearly empty street. In fact, the street seemed way too deserted for someone to make a food stand in.

    Their target had taken the access way down from Pleasure District 097-C. He was carrying a bag of groceries, and a four legged, crab-like remote tailed him while supporting another bag full of food on top of its smooth, domed chassis. The only thing odd about that scene was the remote itself: it was too smooth, too sleek, its long legs moved with an elegant, almost casual gait... It was definitely a Pan Oceanian model. In itself, that wouldn’t be an issue, as buying an expensive drone was quite easy if one had the credits for it. The problem was how things added up: very few people would be seen with a Pan O drone in a poor, run down Yu Jing district, let alone one that looked pristine and new.

    “Twi, he’s goin’ ‘round tha corner now. Almost within Jewel’s fire arc”

    Jack was so calm. Of all the six of them, she and Jewel were the only ones with no tension in their voices. That made the young leader smile for a second, as she herself was shaking in a mix of anticipation, tension and, if she were honest, fear.

    “Go!”

    Twilight gave the order while her suit powered up, and all across the street her friends and squad did the same. There was a faint whir of high powered actuators coming online and the neon glow of visors lowering down as Twilight’s purple suit leapt out of an already broken window, the armored woman running across the street, crouched down and keeping her shotgun held close to her breast.

    Behind her, RD’s cyan suit moved like a feline, leaping across a catwalk and grabbing onto a ledge that she heaved herself onto with the same grace of a gymnast. Riot Grrl Power Armor was made for acrobatic movements, trading durability for speed. RD’s visor glowed a faint green as she turned around, ear sensors pinging out as she could see the target’s heat signature through the walls, the taller woman thumbing her rifle’s shot selector to ‘stun’ as she ran across the rooftop.

    Across the street, hidden under a camouflaged tarp, Jewel carefully aimed her own rifle, the underslung EM launcher primed and extended, her white armored fingers gripping it with steady, easy practice. The shot made almost no sound, just a little ‘fhwump’ of disappointment before the drone suddenly choked and sputtered, dead on its tracks.

    No sparkling lights, no shocking arcs, just a little puff and it went dead. It all happened in such a short time, as the man walking by it stopped on his tracks and turned around, confused and alert. He had a split second to look up and see the glowing green lights of RD’s visor as she braced her foot against the roof’s edge and aimed down her rifle’s sights, her suit’s visor correcting her aim slightly...

    And then she was gone under a hail of gunfire.

    High powered shots racked RD’s former position, chewing up the metal and plaster of the building’s edge and completely obliterating where she had been standing just a second ago. In her place there was only a large, wrecked gap left on the building’s roof edge, a massive hole forming as something caved in and swallowed the cyan armored woman whole.

    “SNIPER!”

    Jack called out from her position as the barely visible form of a Hexaedron operative appeared on a rooftop directly across RD’s former position. The man wore thermo-optical camouflage, and until he revealed himself he had been all but invisible in his nest. Even now, after he had shot at their way too cocky friend, it was almost impossible to see his silhouette as he braced against a parapet, a light machinegun on his hands and murder on his glowing visor’s eyes.

    “Fuck! RD!” Twilight screamed, pressing herself to a wall to lower her profile as several shots racked her position too “RD, report!”

    She barked on the comms, her grip only getting harder around her shotgun as the whole alley erupted in gunfire. The cacophony of shots forced her to scream to hear her own voice.

    “Jewel, get to the target! Pinkie! Jack! Kill that Pano fucker!”

    Her words were a bit too harsh, but if there was one moment to be potty mouthed, this was it. Twilight didn’t wait for her friends to acknowledge her orders, she just started running, boosting her suit’s servos as she made a mad dash across the open field, daring the Hexa operative to shoot at her.

    When one said Riot Grrl armor was built for speed and not resistance, they often failed to consider how fast those suits were, even if they were still classed as Heavy Infantry. Twilight could almost see the bullets scream past her in slow motion as she banked, dodged and rolled in between them.

    She turned to the side as a bullet cracked the pavement next to her, then jumped forward, rolling on her arms as another burst wracked her last position and exploded a trash bin behind her. Crouching down, she boosted herself to leap up and crash through a window under RD’s last position even as the Hexa tried in vain to keep up with her accelerated form. By the time she reached the safety of cover, her suit was streaked with neon purple fibers, showing the artificial musculature stressing out to keep its wearer safe.

    On the other side of the street, Pikie raised her hand to manually lower her visor, then casually checked the drum magazine on her own Spitfire light machinegun. It was a ritual, something she did to center herself, to make sure the gun was ready for the nth time before the shootout. Spare drums hung on her waist for easier access, and her armor lit up with neon pink striations as enhanced musculature and armorweave worked together to turn a small, slightly pudgy woman into an unhinged killing machine.

    “Alrighty then! One dead Hexa, incoming.”

    She leapt out off cover, gun already blazing before the contact even lit up on her visor, the faint red and blue heat signature slightly blurred despite her armor trying its best to pinpoint the enemy location for her.

    Spitfire shots chewed up the metal and plasteel boards all across the street as she racked her gun back and forth, suppressing the barely visible sniper. Pinkie waded out of cover without fear, laughing out loud almost as if she couldn’t even understand the concept of danger or keeping a low profile. Return fire exploded around her, but failed to connect as she saturated the air around her with bullets, her gun’s muzzle glowing bright red as it made a steady, whirring buzz, each individual shot impossible to distinguish by sound alone.

    “I’m here! Hit me!”

    She called out over the loud report of her blazing gun, her high heeled, armored boots digging in as she kept firing on and on. The ammo counter on her visor dropped faster than her eye could register. It had started at 500 shots, but now was close to 200 and going down in a blur. The deluge of hot, caseless ammo forced the Hexa to lower his head behind cover as the metal parapet of his nest rattled under the steady gunfire coming from that pink armored bitch.

    “Jackie! Your turn!”

    Pinkie laughed as her ammo counter hit zero, then rolled to the side to eject the drum and slam a new one home. She hit a wall just as the smoky trail of a missile came off one of the buildings to her left, and impacted the sniper’s nest, detonating in a shower of metal, splinters and chunky meat.

    “Yup. It’s not a party if there’s no confetti.” she giggled as she came out of cover again, gun held up to her shoulder and trailed over the wreckage they were causing. “Who’s next?!”

    As if to answer the Neon Pink girl’s call, the Yakisoba stand began to buckle outward. It had a large sliding door on the outside, but one of Pinkie’s shots had destroyed the lock and forced it shut, so whatever was inside was now steadily punching its way out, and whatever it was, it was big.

    “Jack! Big metal thing!” she called out, backing off but still looking at the bent door as another missile streaked out and slammed into it.

    Metal buckled inwards as the missile hit it head on, the heat building up to scorching levels, molten steel dripping onto the ground like rain. Even Pinkie knew to lower her head at that searing blast as the metal screeched and tore under the explosive force.

    Whatever was inside the metal hut had been wounded, but not killed. It tore out, three meters tall, armored to the gills, bulky and heavy with the shape of a metallic, muscular man. It was an Uhlan Tactical Armored Gear, a tankhunter TAG made to destroy other heavily armored targets. Its missiles were rated to punch through the armored plates of alien war machines, so Riot Grrl suits wouldn’t stand a chance.

    “Oh. Fuck.”

    Pinkie’s deadpan tone did not match her frantic scramble for cover as the Uhlan lowered its right arm, the missile launcher on its shoulder coming forth and firing a pair of armor piercing micro-missiles. Smoke trailed off the launcher as the pink armor lit up, enhanced muscles going to full power and allowing the small girl to bank to one side, then jump forward, diving between the streaking missiles to dodge both shots.

    “JACK! KILL IT!”

    “Ah’m tryin’, sugah, but ya gotta clear from it ferst!”

    The blonde put her head up from her nest on the other side of the street, gesturing with her own missile launcher. Unlike the micro-missiles of the TAG, Jack’s tube launcher was made for uncontrolled damage. With Pinkie so close to the machine like that, she would wreck both it and her friend with a single, explosive shot.

    However, the Tactical Armored Gear was more than a missile launcher mounted on an humanoid metal chassis. It heaved up, holding a long, high powered machinegun. It was a high caliber monstrosity as long as Pinkie was tall, its own drum magazine sporting a transparent case so the pink armored girl could see the large bullets lock into place as the TAG raised it up.

    “Get down!”

    Pinkie squealed loudly as her armor lit up again, allowing her to jump to the side and hug a wall to keep herself from being pureed by the high impact bullets. Even then, her hiding place was actually shaking from the steady gunfire hitting it, plasterwork and metal flying off the chewed up wall.

    Jack tried to line up a shot, loading an armor piercing round into her launcher and grunting as she lined up the ironsights with her visor’s enhanced aiming systems.

    “Twi, dahlin’, we could use some help here.” She said as she squeezed the trigger “They got a Tankhuntah Tag”

    Her missile streaked off, hitting the machine on its armored chest and embedding in before detonating in a shower of sparks and shrapnel that did little but make the Uhlan switch its attention to the blonde with the big gun.

    Moving with the kind of unhurried precision only a machine could, the TAG raised its machinegun and aimed at Jack’s sniper nest, racking her position with high impact projectiles. The whole parapet she had been perched on rattled and started to come apart under the stress, forcing the amazonian blonde to jump off it.

    Jack’s suit lit up, glowing yellow fibers enhancing her USAriadnan physique and allowing her to jump off the second story window. As her former position was annihilated under steady gunfire, the blonde landed on a roll, breaking into a dash to quickly find cover before the TAG realigned its aim.

    “Twilight! We’re getting killed out here!”

    Pinkie tried to squeeze off a few shots, just enough to make the TAG turn to face her and allow the tall blonde to reach another piece of cover. Sure, they were much faster and more agile than the Uhlan, but it had better weapons, and PanOceanian TAGs were the best of the best when it came to aiming and precision. The Riots could evade it for a while, but the longer the battle went the lower their chances of survival got.

    Inside the battered building RD had fallen back into, Twilight scowled behind her visor, her stomach churning and knotting up at the idea of her friends getting chewed up by that metal beast. But despite the emergency, the cyan armored lady had the best weapon to kill the TAG and Twilight needed either RD or at least her gun to finish the fight. She was getting steadily angrier as time mounted on, and so did her vocabulary.

    “Rhona? Answer me, you bitch!”

    “Over here, Twilight!”

    A cyan armored hand shot up from under a mound of rubble, its glowing artificial muscles shining bright green in the lightless room. Apparently, the shots from the hidden Hexa gunner had taken out a support beam and the ground had collapsed under RD’s feet. She had been buried under rubble, but while her suit was dented and the sensor suite was busted, she was alive and breathing.

    Twilight ran towards the rubble, her suit glowing again as the artificial muscles strained to allow her to lift up the metal beams pinning her friend down.

    “Rhona! Thank Mary you’re fine.” the purple haired girl actually crossed herself as she began digging her friend out of the wreckage “They have an Uhlan TAG.”

    As squad leader, Twilight had access to the viewpoints of every lady under her command, and could still see their frantic scramble for survival even as she kept digging the rainbow haired one out of the debris.

    “Say no more, babe.”

    RD’s own suit powered up, and after some of the rubble was cleared she could push her way free of the wreckage, her enhanced musculature emitting a greenish glow as the suit improved her already athletic, strong body to superhuman levels. RD was the youngest of the squad, but only Jack had her beat in sheer physical prowess, and after that ridiculous outing she was eager to prove her worth again. Picking her MULTI-Rifle up, the rainbow haired Riot managed a wicked grin as she boasted.

    “I’m gonna wreck him.”

    The Vulkanja made, slender, elegant, ER67 MULTI-Rifle was a versatile weapon of war, its long, simple design belying the sheer power of the weapon. With one thumb RD switched from Stun to Armor Piercing rounds, then from single shot to full auto.

    The punk was hurt, but at the moment the pain only made her more eager for a scrap. Her lip was split, her eyebrow bleeding, and the stud on her nostril had been torn out, bleeding profusely and tainting the armored viewscreen of her visor red. She had to raise her hand and pull her visor up manually, as the busted up sensors and stained viewscreen made her sight blurry and confused.

    There was a whirr of powered up muscles as RD’s cyan suit tore through the battered walls of the building she had been stuck inside for most of the shootout.

    “Over here, big guy!”

    She called out, grinning and spitting a wad of blood onto the ground. She didn’t have to run through the wall, but she knew doing a little show off would attract the TAG’s attention faster.

    Once more the Uhlan lowered its shoulder and fired two micro-missiles, the dumbfire projectiles flying off, streaking white smoke as RD’s knees hit the ground, sparks flying as she skidded across the street on sheer momentum. She bent her body back, the back spines of her suit dragging behind her as she slid on, firing from the hip while sliding across the hard pavement. The missiles flew inches above her head, detonating harmlessly on a wall behind her as she passed under them.

    She came to a halt between the TAG’s legs, her gun jammed up into its crotch as she screamed “Death to the Patriarchy!” and held the trigger down. The heavy rifle bucked hard, but her enhanced strength kept it in position as armor piercing round after round tore through the soft underbelly of the armored machine, chewing up cables, circuits, actuators... After a few seconds the Uhlan finally sputtered up and died, falling on its back as RD kicked it so she could get up.

    “Did ya really have ta say that?”

    Jack’s eyes narrowed as she came out of her hiding spot, long gun stowed on her back and a pistol on her hands. The blonde was a giantess next to RD’s punkish looks, and the two women looked into each other’s eyes as Rhona grinned a bloody but satisfied grin.

    “Yeah, that was kinda dumb”

    Pinkie said as she walked over, her gun held casually at her hip but her eyes dashing around, keeping vigil in case there was another ambusher waiting for them.

    “I had to give the pilot something to remember. Let’s cut him out of that thing and get Butter-”

    “It’s not piloted. It’s a PanOceanian TAG”

    Twilight said as she came out of the ruined building, her gun held at the ready too, her still professional and militaristic stance matching Jack’s own, but clashing with RD and Pinkie’s casual stances.

    “There’s no one inside that suit.”

    “Speaking of suits…”

    Jewel came out of the alley, walking as if on parade. Her white suit was faintly glowing too, with bluish streaks showing where artificial muscles were being put to work, and her knuckles and chest were covered in blood.

    “What the blazes did you do to MY suit, Rhona?” the gorgeous, blue haired diva jammed a bloody finger towards RD’s still grinning face “That’s one wrecked sensor suite, a new visor, and I’ll have to realign and repolish the back and knee plates, not to mention recalibrate-”

    “Relax, Jewel. You can chew her for it later.” Twilight smiled at the haughty armorsmith being more worried about the hardware than their friend’s wellbeing “Where’s the target? Please don’t tell me he got away.”

    “He didn’t”

    Behind Jewel’s armored form, the meek, pink haired medic looked really out of place. Butterfly was a Daktaris doctor, but unlike most Daks she was not a foul mouthed, genetically enhanced cat lady. Instead she looked like a meek, shrinking human woman with fair skin and long, flowing pastel pink hair. In fact, if it were not for the gross amount of blood on her skirt and chest, one wouldn’t think she wasn’t a fighter at all.

    “We had- We had to extract his Cube though. Here.” She handed Twilight a bloody little chip.

    “Okay, that’s-that’s better than I expected after that Hexa ambushed us. Come on, let’s get out of here. Jewel, can you scavenge that TAG for useful parts then rig it to explode? I don’t want to leave breadcrumbs.”

    Twilight stored the bloodied chip into a thigh compartment as she jammed a thumb towards the broken down war machine.

    “Because the TAG is the problem.”

    Jewel scoffed sarcastically, throwing her hair over her shoulder in an indignant mood before stomping her armored heels over to the destroyed machine, crooking a finger at Jack to get her to come over and help. The two women ripped a few parts off, including that oversized machinegun, and then used one of Jack’s missiles to improvise a bomb.

    While the the former USAriadna farmgirl and the former NeoTerra Countess worked on the dead TAG, Butterfly attacked RD’s face, trying and failing to clean her wounds and administer some healing gel to the cuts, especially the nasty one on her nose that would leave a scar. Butterfly was quiet and frail looking, but she couldn’t see one of her friends bleed and not worry about it, even if the cyan armored woman did get a little too touchy for her tastes most of the time.

    By the time the Main Six left the burning Yakisoba stand, they had demolished two buildings and condemned another three. However, Twilight was satisfied they had gotten at least half their objective: the Cube inside her thigh would make their Caretakers happy.
    __________________________________________________________

    A few days later, the Swollen Tit bar was as crowded as it could be. Swollen Tit was one of the many bars in the Beauvoir Module that catered to the needs of rowdy, easily angered women, especially the Riot Grrl Corps.

    The Main Six only went to the Swollen Tit because Pinkie and RD were friends with Viola, the owner. At the moment, Pinkie’s poofy, bubblegum pink hair was bobbing up and down as she chatted up the dark skinned, bionically enhanced bar owner, talking about some new cupcake recipe that used Vodka in it. At a table, Jack and RD were arm wrestling a pair of women from a different squad, all four of them out of their armored suits, so Jack could show off how much more muscular one grew when they came from a place with actual gravity.

    Twilight, Jewel and Butterfly all shared a single table, next to their friends but keeping away from their rowdy entertainment. Butterfly was watching the girls and their competition intently, eyes glued on the bulging, rippling biceps as she stood silent, yet focused. She would later say she had been watching so she could jump in and help if someone sprained something, but a keen eyed observer would have noticed how she payed more attention to Jack’s flexing USAriadna Flag tattoo than the actual competition.

    Jewel couldn’t care less for the brutes and their games. She still wore her suit, if only because the visor helped her see the minuscule, complicated circuits she needed to focus on to repair the damage on RD’s banged up armor, and she liked how the artificial musculature allowed her hands to stay firm, yet delicate. The former NeoTerra noblewoman had a tool kit open in front of her, and was bent on top of RD’s cyan visor and sensor array with a furious, focused scowl on her haughty face.

    Twilight too had a furious and focused scowl on her face as she typed away on a computer screen. She had an actual solid screen laptop for her research, the purple haired lady preferring a solid screen over holographic ones on the fact the solid screen offered much more privacy, and solid drives could be disconnected from the Arachne net to keep hackers away. She was working on decrypting that Cube data her friends had extracted from the now dead Hexaedron spy a few days before, the data streaming through her screen and forcing her to use her suit’s enhanced senses to keep up with it.

    In summary, it was a pretty normal evening. Or it would have been had the large, sliding doors of the bar not opened up to show two tall, large women standing at the threshold. They were in civilian clothes, but their stance and intent looks made it very clear they weren’t the average Beauvoir denizen, their gender and enhanced strength notwithstanding.

    Twilight closed her laptop screen and cursed, touching Jewel’s hand to call her attention

    “They’re here. The SWAST hags.”

    She said as she nodded towards the two newcomers. One of them, tall and dark haired, broke off to the side to go join the arm wrestling table. The other, even taller and blonde, came over to sit with the three of them, smiling as she looked at Twilight then waved a hand to make Jewel go back to working on that cyan suit.

    “Tabitha.” The blonde smiled as she called Twilight by her actual name, somehow managing to make the mere name sound like a threat.

    “Celeste” Twilight answered with the blonde’s callsign. “You’re not supposed to come over until we finish cracking the Cube.”

    Straight to the point. As soon as the cops were out, the better. Nothing was keeping one of the more violent women in the bar from recognizing the two Police officers and deciding they had a beef with them.

    The blonde raised her eyebrow, looking past the brown skinned hacker and watching as her dark haired sister had locked hands with the muscular USAriadnan.

    “You’re taking too long, dear. Besides, I would rather have that now. Before your Hexaedron friends find you...”

    That got Twilight’s attention, and she widened her eyes while ejecting the Cube from the reader device and quickly handing it to the SWAST officer in front of her.

    “What?!”

    She reeled from the tiny chip as if it was contaminated with some deadly disease.

    “You girls fought a Clawsewitz Uhlan. That machine doesn’t have a pilot inside it, but it is piloted. And that pilot was on a ship orbiting Yu Jing while you airheaded bitches were shooting up a poor Japanese neighborhood. One of you, allegedly one with..” she raised her hands, doing finger quotes “Red, yellow and green hair, like some punk child who painted her hair with crepe paper”

    The blonde lieutenant had a massive grin, nodding towards a bored looking RD that had her arms folded as Jack and the black haired police officer continued to struggle against each other.

    “Screamed ‘Death to the Patriarchy!’ before shooting the TAG down. Really? I mean, really? I thought you girls were smarter than that.”

    Twilight’s shoulders sunk as she let out a long sigh, massaging her temple with one hand as the implications started to dawn on her more clearly.

    “RD was taking the piss. She doesn’t even know what the word ‘Patriarchy’ means and the implications of the Pan Oceanian economic and social model for the lives of their women-” Her purple eyes met the officer’s green ones, Celeste’s expression nothing but boredom “You don’t care, do you?” The girl sighed again “I knew it was not piloted, I just didn’t know it had an operator. So… the Hexaedron has been tailing us all this time?”

    It was hard for her to mask the fear in her words as her hands began to shake slightly. Thankfully it seemed Celeste had a plan, as she lowered her gaze to give the younger woman a mischievous, violent smirk.

    “Sorta. They’ve been trying to infiltrate Beauvoir for a while, but our Observance allies have been keeping them in the dark for now… However… I’ve decided we’re striking first. I don’t like PanO mucking about in my ship, and that’s where you and your merry band of overly excited, armor plated harpies come in.”

    Jewel raised a finger. She had been listening to the conversation, but her attention was very far away from it, her focus on the busted up sensor suite she was still trying to fix.

    “For the record, our armor is much more elegant and just as effective as that sluggish thing you trundle about in, Miss Vega.”

    Eleanor Vega, callsign Celeste, was an accomplished Captain in the Bakunin Special Weapons and Suppressive Tactics Corps. She had never said her name to any of the Main Six, or any Riot Grrl for that matter. That little word startled her more than any gun ever would, and the split second when the blonde hesitated was enough to make both Twilight and Jewel smirk wide.

    “You’re not the only one with spy friends, Celeste” Twilight said casually as she tapped her purple plated fingers on the table “But you’re right, I don’t want PanO mucking about in our ship either. Give us the target.”

    If anything, Celeste was impressed. But the sight of her black haired partner slamming Jack’s arm on the table made her actually happy, as her sister beating one of the Main Six, without armor even, was a little moral victory that she was more than willing to take right now.

    “Okay, Twilight” There was a new respect on her voice now “Here’s what we’re going to do, listen up”

    As they began tracing their plans, Celeste looked at her triumphant sister. The original plan had been to press gang the rowdy young women as enforcers, but perhaps they would be even more useful. They had brains. Well, some of them had, but hopefully the smart ones were enough to rein in the careless ones and make them into a finely tuned fighting crew.

    END
     
    #3 DaRedOne, Mar 20, 2018
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2018
  4. stevenart74

    stevenart74 Well-Known Member

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    Awesome stuff and very entertaining to read. . .

    Did the squad be loosely based on the rather venerable "Knight Sabers" of Kenichi Sonoda's "Bubblegum Crisis" or there are some other more recent inspirations too. . .??

    I'm currently preparing some Nomads-related Illustrations for a big R.P.G. Project that I'm involved, and some of these had to be heavily customized Mobile Brigadas from Corregidor. . .

    While slightly different Nomad Tech the female Brigada's Suit is almost identical in basic frame at the Riot Girl Heavy Infantry Armour (in the manner that many Pan-O Military Order suit are rather almost ORCs and Bagh-Mari with "Paladin Robes" added on). . .

    Also I found the "Superheavy Infantry Suits" of the Taskmasters a very cool concept and this would give Me an excuse to try to draw them in a properly done "Action Poses". . .

    Would You like some Art Rendition of Your Characters, first in B.W. then coloured in Photoshop. . .??

    Let Me know about it. . .​
     
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  5. DaRedOne

    DaRedOne Morat Warrior Philosopher
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    I actually never read or watched 'Bubblegum Crisis', so yeah, the reference is a lot more recent :D

    As for drawing the ladies out, yes! I'd love it if you did that, I would be very glad for pictures. If you send them to me PB I can even see if I get a friend to color them for us. Really glad for your offer, mate!

    If you need any help, any further descriptions or whatnot, let me know!
     
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  6. jherazob

    jherazob Well-Known Member

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    Too bad my backlog is already somewhere between absurdly big and terrifying, as i'd like to actually see these girls on the tabletop (and hopefully i'd procrastinate much less on this than on my version of Kathara Khan's TAGs of Avalon group given that this would be at most one or two boxes and a blister at most (which i suspect i already have somewhere on the horrifying Unpainted pile), rather than a sizeable group of TAGs i don't have yet plus a number of civilian pilots that even now i'm not too sure where to find so that they'd fit with all it's influences (but that you can freaking bet i'll get to someday, just you wait! *shakes fist at the air*), so smaller and quicker to handle).

    Also, I think it's less than Bubblegum Crisis influenced this, than it influenced many tropes of the genre since then, and trickled down into Infinity itself. And coincidentally just this weekend i started watching it, starting from the original series from 1987, so 80s! (I blame Kathara Khan too :P)
     
  7. Kathara_Khan

    Kathara_Khan Capricious and Whimsical

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    What's this? My Little Pony? In my Infinity? Heresy!... I approve! :P
    This should be interesting.
     
  8. stevenart74

    stevenart74 Well-Known Member

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    @DaRedOne. . .

    I think that Your descriptions are all that I need, so I could proceed as well; maybe when the B.W. Roughs will be finished then I will aks further details for the specific palette of colours and "Custom Markings" that Your characters will have. . .

    So is not Bubblegum Crisis that is the starting basic inspiration, but I will anyway try to port some of the uniqueness of these Manga / Anime "All Girls Warband" in the facial drawings of the Squad (even if I'm far more partial to Masamune Shirow's style rather than the one of Kenichi Sonoda) as I have a lot of source material. . .

    Will be quite attentive to avoid the worse illogical errors of that relatively vintage Serie (such as illogical Armour Attachements and the absurdly "Powersuit High-Heeled Fetish") and stay consistent with the excellent level of details of Infinity Official Concepts. . .

    Also if it is "My Little Pony" the basic origin of the Character's personality and style, then at least the Cartoon characters (that I was constrained to saw when doing Babysitting of My two little nephews,the daughters of My brother !!) have a distinctive "Mane-as-Hair-style" that could be easily ported and used to further define the characters personal touches. . .
     
    #8 stevenart74, Mar 21, 2018
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2018
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  9. DaRedOne

    DaRedOne Morat Warrior Philosopher
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    Thanks for the love, everyone! I'm happy it was enjoyable.

    It should be noted that Riot Grrl armor in specfic does have High Heels and I think it is important as it makes part of that Bayonetta-esque ridiculous yet awesome style they have. I attached the dossier to the end of my post for reference.

    As for facial markings, tattoos, etc, I'll try to describe them more as the chapters come, but a rundown of their faces would be:

    Twlight: Brown skin, almost black but not quite, long, smooth hair. Wears simple earrings.

    RD: Short, punkish hair, fair skin, has a bunch of ear piercings and a small stud on the nose.

    Pinkie: Round face, slightly tanned, poofy pink hairdo.

    Jewel: High cheekbones, fair skin, kinda looks like a supermodel, really. Wavy, slightly curly and long hair. Wears diamond earrings and a single loop piercing on her left ear.

    Jack: Round face, very tanned skin, long hair but usually held in a practical ponytail.

    Butterfly: Fair skin long hair, usually enough she can hide her face behind it if necessary. Wears large, dreamcatcher style earrings.

    Celeste: Beach tanned, long hair, but held in a verybusinesslike bun.

    Luna: long hair, usually in a single braid.

    Phew, long post. That's it though. Hope I was helpful.
     

    Attached Files:

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  10. stevenart74

    stevenart74 Well-Known Member

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    Very helpful post, the extra details will perfect the uniqueness of the Characters. . .y C.B.

    The High Heels of the Official Concepts bare sensible enough (I have seen women fight easily with Leather Boots of similar size / shape !!); is the one of Bubblegum Crisis that are totally absurd and negate any notion of logical anathomy and phisical sense (Kenichi Sonoda drawn them in that fashion because He confessed to be a "High Heeled Fetishist" !!). . .

    About further body features, the Little Pony have all those weird "Cutey-Marks Magical Tattoos"; while You had yet described one of them sporting some ink, as in "Apple Jack" sporting a U.S.Ariadna Flag (that I will be careful to draw in detail with 51 Stars, as the "Americans of Dawn" regard themselves the last remaining "Home of the Brave, Land of the Free" !!) perhaps is best to have the "Magic Symbols" somehow painted in a satyrical way on the Armour Shoulderplates. . .

    It could also be a sort of remind of the nastyness of Riot Grrls when provoked, such as Pinky with "Pinky Pie" kind of Party Balloons, BUT with the ballons with scary faces or even stylized skulls. . .

    Or the symbols could also hint at important part of the charater's psyche as You described, with maybe "Rainbow Dash" in the Cloud + Raimbow sporting also Three "Venus Greek Symbols" intertwined as a sort of Celtic Triskelion, to signfy that not only She is happily Omosexual, but also extremely promiscuous and free to adventure with any other Woman that is passingly interested. . .

    Also was thinking about other little personal touches, still inspired by the Cartoon, such as Jack sporting a tough "Cowlady Stetson Hat" to signify the cultural origin roots of the Character; also thought for Her to carry, even in civilian clothes and "Shore-Leave" a Teseum Edged Bowie (or Marine Corps Ka-Bar) and maybe a rugged, practical "Colt 45 Semiautomatic" (as a typical Usariadnan Revolver is the trademark of yet one different character, the Taskmaster Luna). . .

    Also while You described in detail the Weapons that the Miniature carry as W.Y.S.I.W.Y.G. I think to further define what other "Sidearms" they will carry, such as a compact S.M.G. for Celeste when the Rocket Launcher is inappropriate, along with Assault Pistols and Light Shotguns (brutal, useful weapons for close encounters and good for the mindset of a Riot Grrl); even the pacifist Medic "Butterfly" (Fluttershy ??) I envison carry some sort of Nonlethal Option for defending Herself (maybe a Sawed-Off Shotgun Pistol with "Plastic Bean Bag" ammo and a ligher version of the Epoxy Glue-Grenadier when in a pitched battle). . .

    I always think in terms of R.P.G. Character as expanding what is just permitted by the Tabletop Rules to have for a typical Miniature. . .

    Also while the Riot Grrls could be relatively broke, with all of their "Ill Gotten Gains" expended in Ammunition, Suit Repairs and Booze for Parties, the two Taskmaster Officers should have enough clout to own (or at leasts periodically obtain) some sort of Flying Craft to carry the Heavy / Superheavy Infantry Squad around. . .

    I'm currently developing (for My big R.P.G. Project) some Nomads-made Orbital Shuttles that are almost similar to the Pan-O made "Dolly Dagger" Dropship employed by the Character of the Outrage Manga, but sufficiently sturdy to be able to take off and reach Stratosphere (along with easily survive Atmospherical Re-Entry) from the relatively primitive Airstripes of Planet Dawn. . .

    Was thinking about a sort of Mini-Space Shuttle, but clearly a Paramilitary Vessel, that the "Girls Gang" could further personalize as "Mobile Homebase" when on the run, and that can help also when on Bakunin Mothership (while Corregidor is designed to allow flight of small Spaceships even in the interior structure, I fear that Bakuni is more cramped, but they could dock at Beauvoir Module and disembark, or fly around the Mothership to avoid navigating messy Praxis / Vaudeville corridors). . .!!

    Have also You thought about customizing and personalizing the "Hexa Nemesis". . .??

    Maybe a sort of dark Pan-Oceanian spymaster lady that resemble "Nightmare Moon" or the "Evil Dragon Lady" of the Cartoon. . .??
     
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  11. DaRedOne

    DaRedOne Morat Warrior Philosopher
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    I love some of these ideas, but it's important to be careful not to let the reference overtake what could be a good story on their on. I thought about them sporting cutie marks on their suits, but decided against it for the Riots (the Taskmasters do have a sun and moon mark on their respective shoulders, but that works as both a reference to the show and a 40k pun so I think it's good).

    I do love the idea of Pinkie having skull faced balloons either as a tattoo or as suit markings, though, so I'll think about how to incorporate that.

    Jack definitely carries a large bowie knife and wears a hat when not inside the suit, as it helps her think of home. I had already planned on showing both in the next chapter.

    RD does have lightning bolts tattooed on her thighs (it's a 'thunder thighs' pun), and I wanted to have her sport some kind of pride tattoo, but I'm not sure what yet, so I'll do some research (edit: found a really beautiful one here: https://rayselia.deviantart.com/art/Pride-Tattoo-181739937 that I think matches the character perfectly and is just gorgeous to look at) before describing it on the next chapter, that will show them in their day to day lives.

    As for their gear, I do have thought about it, and how they all probably have slightly customized stuff. Twilight definetely has a regular hacking device, probably with the Sucker Punch and/or Trinity programs too to defend herself. Jewel is an engineer, as already established as she is the group's armorsmith, and Jack definetely carries a huge ariadnan bowie knife and maybe a sawed off shotgun. Butterfly also only carries nonlethal weapons, so she might have adhesive grenades, that sounds like a good idea.

    I'm not sure about the Taskmasters having custom gear, though, as the Taskmaster suits already have a truckload of weapons (seriously, they have guns for everything. Even the Heavy Rocket launcher packs a light shotgun, heavy pistol and pulzar for close encounters). I am enternaining the idea of Luna having dual pistols and celeste packing a heavy flamethrower insted of the pulzar, though, to keep with her fire and light theme.

    I also love the idea of them having some kind of personal shuttle/small freighter to cart the team around and serve as a mobile base and home, and it matches my original ideas for them, so I will definetely incorporate some stuff like that in the future, just have to think of more details.

    As for antagonists, I actually do intend on making some of them be references to the show, but at the same time I really don't want this to become too self absorbed in references that people who don't know or don't like it can't enjoy the story on its own merits. That's why I gave them names that are references, not straight up ripoffs as that would be beating the point of having them stand on their own as characters.

    A good example for where I'm coming from with these ladies is Senor Massacre. He is definetely not Deadpool. but everyone can get the reference to Deadpool in him, so if you like the comics it's funny, but if you don't know them you're still left with a wisecracking luchador mercenary that's a cool character on his own. My Main Six I hope to get to the same level, so people who don't know the show can still enjoy the adventures of these badass ladies on their own. (Incidentally, I'd like if you refered to them by the names in the story, if possible :D)

    Thank you so much for your interest, mate. This talk has given me many great ideas!
     
    #11 DaRedOne, Mar 21, 2018
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2018
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  12. stevenart74

    stevenart74 Well-Known Member

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    The "Pride Tattoo" that You selected is quite beautiful indeed, and will be more that appropriate; will try to integrate it in the Drawings when I have time to properly plan them. . .

    Will anyway try-out the "Celtic Pride Triskelion" that I mentioned beforehand; just that they could be somehow useful for any kind of future use (in many Variable Iterations, from Straight to the more "Rainbow Hued"). . .

    . . . . .

    Why some kind of "Pride Art" is important for Me, it is clearly statted in the more recent posts that I put in "Kempeitai Name Is Insensitive" thread, recently moved to the Off-Topic English Subforum. . .

    . . . . .

    Also while You clearly hinted that obviously R.D. is a "Lady Womanizer" that will gladly date any XX Chromosome that breathes, there is ample space for further define some other of the "Space Feminist Amazons"; as for the "Black Furies" Tribes of All-Female Werewolves of the venerable "Apocalypse R.P.G." by White-Wolf there is also the possibility of one (or more) of the "Sixers" being a Woman 100% Straight-As-An-Arrow that could find a worthy Male as a steady, reliable Companion if it is the kind of Person that will regard with TOTAL EQUALITY the Riot Girl in question. . .

    And also whatever "Gray Shade" that You will put in the middel (unless they are "50 Shades", in that case. . . . ."KILL IT WITH FIRE ! Purge The Unclean Book !!" :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye::stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye::stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: ). . .
     
    #12 stevenart74, Mar 21, 2018
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2018
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  13. DaRedOne

    DaRedOne Morat Warrior Philosopher
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    I just read your answer in the Kempeitai thread, and while I don't want to clutter the fic thread with another discussion on tangent topics, I'm really, really grateful for your support. Recently I've been having way too many discussions about these topics with my friends and family, and it's been an uphill battle to get my local community to be more supportive and accepting of LGBT people.

    That you are part of the comunity and have enjoyed my little production so much is something that I appreciate a lot, and I really hope to hear more about your opinion on it. I look forward for hearing from you again.

    as for this, I want to keep any romantic liasons the charactes have to the background, as the story is mainly about action and intrigue and that's where it will be. However, this is Nomads we're talking about, if there's not a wide spectrum of characters, orientations and looks, I'd not be doing the faction right. So yeah, wait and see :D
     
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  14. stevenart74

    stevenart74 Well-Known Member

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    You wrote some very interesting Fiction about well-rounded characters and I like to discuss about "Important Things". . .

    Be they just simple disagreement between a Game Character's Background, the Ramification of Socio-Political and Cultural Issues in "Multi-Media Entertainment" (such as Infinity is) or the very fundamental "Uncompromising Stances" on Rights and Beliefs, as it had become an Hot Topic in many Threads. . .

    . . . . .

    And besides whose Characters more than "Anarco-Punk Warrior Women" like Riot Grrls could be a bold statement for Illustrations and Game-Related Fiction. . .!!!

    "Death To The Patriarchy !!" indeed (and I'm not joking, I discussed a College Exam on these issues in Modern Contemporary Society !!). . .
     
    Danger Rose and DaRedOne like this.
  15. DaRedOne

    DaRedOne Morat Warrior Philosopher
    Warcor

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    Hi guys! New chapter up a lot earlier than I thought I would make one. This is fairly long so I split it in two parts for better reading:

    Civilian Lives - pt1

    The purple haired girl walked alone into the church, head lowered and heels making a steady ‘toc toc’ on the wooden floor. It always marveled her that the floor paneling and benches were wood, honest to goodness, actually from a chopped down tree, wood. Each of those large, gleaming ebony benches with their sculptured, baroque imagery was a relic of a time she had only read about, of a world she had only visited in VR enhanced dreams.

    It all added to the oppressive yet humbling atmosphere of the Observance Module. Even the ever present figures of the Sin Eaters patrolling the upper walkways only made it feel like God himself was watching over her as she strode across the bow of the church in short, respectful steps. Above her shirking frame, pictures and sculptures of Saints and their achievements looked down on the girl as if she were already being judged, adding to her growing feeling of inadequacy.

    Eventually, she reached a confessionary and sat down inside it. She adjusted her dress skirt, smoothed her hair down, then took a deep breath to center herself before finally knocking on the window a few times and waiting in silence for an answer. The dark wood paneling of the confessionary matched her skin color, and that simple realization made her smile, feeling more at home, at least until that window opened up. On the other side, a hooded, featureless mask regarded her with eyes that glowed an icy blue, penetrating into her very soul.

    “Bless me mother, for I have sinned.” she said in solemn respect while crossing herself.

    “You are blessed, child” Said the motherly, masked woman behind the screened window, her eyes glowing brighter “How have you sinned?”

    Twlight swallowed, putting her hands to her lap and holding her Rosary between them, the cross pressed to her palms as she gathered the courage to say what she had to. She had to fight back the shivers before doing it, eventually averting her gaze from the Reverend’s cool, inscrutable glowing eyes.

    “I have led my sisters into a trap. In my haste to complete my mission I have given the Devil a way into our land.”

    The masked face behind the window went silent for a moment, processing what was said. In the silence Twilight whispered a little curse to herself, then paused and blushed at her harsh words inside a Holy Place. She sucked her breath in and held it, waiting until the motherly voice of the Reverend spoke again.

    “That is a serious sin, child.”

    The tone was clearly judgemental, an emphasis put on the word ‘is’ to make sure Twilight would understand the gravity of her situation. However, the stern words slowly became warmer, as the voice of the Mother Superior lowered down to an almost conspiratorial whisper.

    “But… Have you done so by ignorance or by malicious intent, my dear?”

    “By Ignorance!” Twilight almost jumped at the chance to absolve herself.

    If eyes could convey a smile, the glowing blue eyes of the masked woman behind the confessionary screen looked very happy as she made the sign of the cross. Twilight herself released a breath she hadn’t even realised she was holding back, deflating visibly and allowing her shoulders to sink lower as her dress rustled against the wooden chair. She sometimes thought those chairs were uncomfortable on purpose, and right now she was nearly sure of that.

    “If that is the case, then you are forgiven.”

    The reverend sounded very much like the mother Twilight had never met. The silence between them went on, yet the purple haired girl did not leave the confessionary. It didn’t take much for the Reverend to realize something was amiss.

    “However, I see you are still worried, child. What troubles your mind, my dear?”

    Looking down again, Twilight thought for a moment, once more sucking her breath in as she looked at her shivering hands. She blinked, and saw them covered in purple, neon glowing armor plates for a brief second. They still shivered, even with the enhanced muscles, they still shivered.

    “I’m still getting the shakes.” she finally settled on. “Nobody else has them. It’s been one year since I put on the suit for the first time, and I still get the shakes.”

    Behind the window, once more the Reverend looked to the side, putting one gloved hand to the smooth chin of her white, featureless mask. She hummed, thinking deeply on the question, then finally raised a finger in explanation.

    “Have you ever been to a race track, my dear? Or perhaps watched the pupniks fight?”

    The Reverend spoke in an oblique tone that was just what Twilight needed: a riddle for her mind to focus on. Her answer took a while as she tried to think of something better to say, but failed.

    “No. I haven’t”

    “They shake. They shiver with tension.” That soothing, motherly voice made Twilight smile “They know their challenge is at hand and they have been prepared for it, yet they shake in their pens… It is not fear that grips them. When they shake, they are not afraid, they are eager for the challenge.”

    And with that, the Reverend waved her hand, dismissing the purple haired girl with a glint of her blue eyes.

    “Go, say the Hail Mary thrice, and the Lord’s Prayer twice. May your sins be purified and your path made clear. You are blessed, my child.”

    Twilight stood up, still smiling as she bowed gently, and then left the confessionary. She walked across the church, once more under the watchful gaze of the Saints, all the way to a little alcove on the side. That was the niche where the statue of Saint Mary of the Knife stood, her sword held at the ready.

    Holding her Rosary in both hands, Twilight kneeled in front of the statue and began praying.
    _________________________________________________________

    Vulkanja had been Jewel’s favorite Module since day one. Most people would think the spoiled daughter of a Neoterran count would prefer Vaudeville’s glamour and opulence, but as far as the blue haired diva was concerned, Vaudeville could go eat a dick. Vulkanja, on the other hand, with the steam valves, the hot engines, the clangor of metal on metal… It was the closest to heaven she could ever get.

    She had a smile on her face as she waded through the cramped corridors with a skip on her step, her armored heels springing lightly, suit barely glowing. The exception was her right arm, which shone with pulsating blue energy as it held a huge, heavy looking bag that drooped with its own weight. The diva had become easily recognized both by her gleaming, polished suit and the fact she was the one responsible for keeping it that way, so as she waved at every other armorsmith she passed by, many returned the greeting with a welcoming cheer.

    A pair of ladies were struggling with the actuator on a heavy trawler machine, and Jewel casually walked over to help them. Her enhanced strength made lifting the machine’s hydraulic shock absorbers a much easier task, and she had the expertise to figure out that the actual issue was the transmission fluid, not the hydraulic socket as they had been thinking.

    After helping the two fellow engineers solve their problems, she bade them goodbye and moved on, eventually stopping again to help a young girl properly fit the magazine into a combi-rifle. That quickly became an explanation on how to correctly slot the scope on the overbarrel railing, then adjust the gun optics...

    “Jewel, my girl!”

    Someone behind her called out as the blue haired woman raised the newly fit gun to her shoulder and checked the alignment of the sights. Safety protocols meant Jewel’s finger was extended along the trigger guard, to keep herself from shooting by accident. So when her friend greeted her from behind, the diva could safely return the gun to its owner and turn around to greet a very familiar face.

    “Miri! I was looking for you, darling.” Jewel hugged her fellow armorsmith, squeezing a little too tight.

    “Hey! Nice-unf!” Miri squirmed under the armored hug, her tiny frame not able to endure being bear hugged by a powered suit “Jewel… I need… I need air!”

    “Oh my gosh! I’m sorry” she let the small armorsmith go, laughing as the tiny, brown skinned girl caught her breath.

    A few years past, when the blue haired diva had arrived in Bakunin, Miri had been the one to teach Jewel how to fix and build a suit, and while they had become good friends, they eventually went their separate ways. Jewel was a Riot Grrl, and had specialized in their own brand of light powered suits, while Miri worked with much larger, heavily armored and equipped Tactical Armored Gear.

    “I have something for you.” Jewel nodded towards the oversized duffel bag laying on the ground next to her feet.

    “Ooh, let me have a look!”

    The bag was as big as Miri was, and she had to kneel down to open it, nearly vanishing inside before letting out a pleased squeal and digging in deeper. For a long moment Jewel just watched her friend rummage into the bag, checking the equipment and laughing hysterically at everything inside. After maybe five or six minutes, Miri got up, grinning wider than a child in a candy shop.

    “Holy shit! How did you get that!? That’s-”

    “Yeah, it is.” Jewel smirked “The aiming optics are a little damaged, though. RD kinda shredded them from inside out.” Her smirk turned awkward when she remembered the scene.

    “Not a problem! Do you know how much I can get us for those PanO optics? Nevermind the huge gun.”

    As Miri rubbed her palms in excitement, Jewel leaned forward and smiled at the girl, raising her hand to shield her own mouth as if to tell a secret.

    “Actually… I don’t want to sell those.” She giggled “I was thinking… Do you still have the Ursa?”

    Miri’s excitement shot through the roof, pierced the hull of the mothership, and caused a catastrophic failure that killed every single person in it. Or it would have done so if it was solid. The small engineer vibrated, her eyes widening and narrowing in a sudden flex of her enhanced optical nerves as her excitement overtook them.

    “YES! Come on! I’ll show her to you!”

    Miri grabbed Jewel’s armored hand and pulled the girl on, leading them back to her workshop as fast as she could drag one armored lady and her oversized pack behind her tiny frame.

    The Ursa was an old, busted up Anaconda TAG that Miri had salvaged from after a Druze party had been forcibly expelled from the ship by the Moderator Corps. That had been a good two years before, back when Jewel was still learning how to build a suit and Miri was still able to sneak stuff off the battlefield. She had kept the TAG in her private workshop and was slowly rebuilding it whenever she found the parts and time for it.

    The Ursa was opened up as if waiting for a pilot, standing on a lowered platform inside the cramped looking workshop. The pilot cockpit was missing a seat and half of her left arm was missing too. Many armor plates had been too damaged and had to be removed, and without replacements available yet, the junked TAG looked more akin to a metal skeleton than a war machine.

    “We can cannibalize the optics and improve her aiming systems.” Jewel said as she hopped down to stand in front of the open cockpit “Then we retrofit the gun, I think we can make some custom bullets the right size for it, yes? Mmmn… And perhaps we can salvage the arm frames too. The plates are busted, but the basic structure is solid... Gosh, I would kill for a fresh, clean Stingray to work on.”

    Atop the platform, Miri stood on a raised dais, surrounded by monitors, all connected to the Ursa’s systems. She nodded while booting up the systems for the salvaged TAG, watching as her friend began to work her magic in a much more direct way. Jewel had learned a long time ago how to leverage the precision and enhanced strength of her powered suit to help her build and maintain other similar gear.

    It was marvelous to look at, a sculptor and her craft, working with the kind of care only someone truly passionate about it could have.

    Between the two of them, Jewel and Miri could spend hours working on a project, and while they wouldn’t finish the Ursa that day, she would be a few steps closer to seeing the battlefield again sometime soon.
    ________________________________________________________________________

    Lower Vaudeville wasn’t really a part of Vaudeville. It wasn’t even called Lower Vaudeville officially, but most of its denizens referred to the Module as just that, as it was a way to remind each other that as much as Bakunin was a melting pot that accepted anyone and everyone with open arms, some inequalities were just natural to humanity, no matter where or when.

    RD liked Lower Vaudeville a lot more than the actual Vaudeville, though. Her boots stomped through the metal corridors as she walked past food stands and drug peddlers, taking a moment to buy a pair of burgers that looked very much like they were made of rat meat. Ratburgers were awesome, or at least she thought so.

    She held the bag with the two burgers on one hand, the other fishing around her jacket’s pocket for a pack of cigarettes as she made her way through the crowded module. Holding one of the slender cigarettes between her lips, she stowed the pack back inside her pocket and pulled her lighter out just as she got to the local skateboard ramp.

    RD lit her cigarette up with just one hand, taking a puff while looking around for someone specific. She took a while to find the girl, but when she did, it was hard not to smile at the sight of a young girl pulling a perfect handstand at the top of one of the ramps.

    That young, rat faced, punk haired little thing was RD’s closest family aside from the Main Six. Brown faced, purple haired, sporting a lazy mohawk and torn clothes, the girl was very much like Rhona herself had been at the same age, only way better at skating. RD watched that little squirt spin back, the wheels hitting the paved ramp perfectly where the older, rainbow haired punk would have crashed for sure.

    “Yo! Scoots! Get your ass over here!” She called out, flicking her lighter closed while finding some place to sit.

    Ana Maria “Scooter” Santiago was barely out of her teens, full of piss and vinegar. Her clothes mirrored RD’s own in so many ways, as they both wore jackets and boots, and they both had torn up shirts underneath… But Rhona had her fists bandaged and bloodied, as well as a big patch over her still torn up nose, while her young doppelganger showed only slight bruises on her knees and elbows from all the eventual crashes and stumbles from her skateboard.

    “Hey RD! Looking hot-”

    “Stow it, Scoots.” RD raised her hand, making the smaller girl stop talking “You’re like, my little sister. Don’t be gross.”

    Scooter sat down next to her older sister, sulking and huffing as the food bag was pushed onto her lap. She opened it up and pulled out the juicy looking ratburger, chuckling at it.

    “What’s this?” She laughed while holding the burger up, looking at it as if it was a puzzle.

    “It’s food, you little twat. I bet you haven’t eaten yet” the rainbow haired Riot Grrl hugged her sister with one hand, ruffling her hair with the other “How’s it going?”

    “It’s going… Fine”

    Scoots opened the plastic bag and took a bite off that oily burger, struggling with the rubbery meat, but at least the taste was good.

    “Hey!” Her eyes widened, as she turned to look up at Rhona’s own green orbs “is it true you and the girls wrecked a Cutter TAG back in Yu Jing?” Scooter’s grin was so wide, it was cute, really.

    “Nah” RD pulled her cigarette from her mouth, blowing smoke in the air “It was like, a Uhlan. And I didn’t do much to it, just shot at it a bit. Jack’s the one who killed it.”

    Rhona mimicked her left hand shooting out to hit her splayed out right palm.

    “Ssssh, boom! Just like that. Missile to the face.”

    RD smirked. She could have said the truth, but if she had done so, her little sister would have called it bullshit. Now, by playing the modesty card, she had ensured the girl would construct an epic narrative in her mind that was probably a lot more interesting than what had really happened.

    “You’re so cool, RD!” Scooter meant it, taking another huge bite off her burger while she talked “I wish I could join the corps too. Think they’ll let me?”

    A loud sigh came out alongside the tobacco smoke now, as RD lowered her head while shaking it. She took her jacket off, both so her little sister could see the scars on her arms and because it was a lot hotter in Lower Vaudeville than she remembered it being.

    “Fuck, no.” she growled, then made a point of looking into the eyes of the eager young girl “I don’t want you inside a suit, Scoots. I do it because I’m a fucking thug, I only know how to punch, shoot and fuck shit up. You got brains” she tapped the little girl’s forehead “Are you studying?”

    “Of course I am!”

    “Then don’t be a Riot. If you want to help the ship, sign up with the Moderator Corps, get a desk job”

    Scooter groaned at that, but while she sulked her shoulders, digging into her ratburger and thinking of a good enough retort, a group of people approached them. The two sisters were sitting together just a little off the main crowd around the skating ramp, so when three people broke off in their direction, it was obvious they were coming specifically for the two of them.

    RD knew a gangbanger when she saw one, and those three coming over to her had very familiar colors. The all wore bomber jackets emblazoned with the image of a bird of prey on their shoulders, and the mere sight of that eagle made the rainbow haired woman growl in absolute, livid rage. The three were not visibly armed, though, and one of them had a small bag in his hands.

    “Yo, Scooter.” He said as he tossed the bag towards the younger punk “Gil sends her thanks for your help” The ganger had a wide, wicked and crooked grin.

    RD could dodge bullets, she could twist and weave out of the firing range of plasma bolts and even dive in between the shrapnel blast of a claymore. Catching a flying piece of plastic enveloped in a small bag was so easy she did it without any of the other people around her having the chance to react to it.

    “What the fuck?” She opened the bag, and inside it there was a credit card, its serial numbers filed off “What. The actual. Fuck?! You motherfuckers want to recruit my sister like this? Bitch, I should break your legs on principle.”

    The man leading the little ganger posse raised his arms in a mocking gesture of peace. Doing so spread his jacked, and RD could see his gun half hidden in an internal holster. She could have dashed in and pulled it out, shot him three times before he hit the ground, but his words gave her pause.

    “Relax, RD! We ain’t here to recruit, just delivering the little brat’s payment. Chill the fuck out.”

    She was the very opposite of chilled out right now, her muscles tensing back as she balled her fists and tossed the card back to the three of them, hitting the leader hard enough to make him take a step back. His eyes went wide as he struggled to catch the card, holding it with trembling hands and wide, panicked eyes.

    “Tell Gil we don’t need her cash. And next time she calls my sister to do anything, I’m coming down to her place and putting her ugly mug through a wall. Got it?” She waited for a nod of confirmation “Now scram, assholes!”

    One stomp of her foot had the three gangers scurrying away, and RD grinned at how even though she hadn’t walked those streets for a while now, her reputation was still enough. Then she turned to her little sister, who had shrunk behind her burger like she was trying to use it as a shield.

    “Damn, Scoots, why didn’t you tell me Gil’s been bothering you?”

    Scooter sighed, lowering her food and simply wrapping it back up, her hunger completely gone. A pregnant, heavy silence stood between them, growing longer as RD’s cigarette burned out, the rainbow haired woman waiting impatiently for an answer.

    “She… She didn’t call me. I went to her. I figured if I-”

    “Are you crazy?!” RD had to remind herself not to scream “Gil’s a fucking psycho! You could have gotten shot or worse! Why did you go to her?”

    “I needed money…” Scooter couldn’t raise her eyes and meet her older sister’s stern, angry gaze.

    “For what? I pay your school, I pay your food, hell, I pay your rent. Do you need-”

    “I don’t!” Scooter finally looked up, purple, young eyes meeting green, angry and disappointed ones “I don’t need anything, RD. That’s- that’s the fucking problem. You pay for everything. I can’t… I can’t ask you for a new video game or a new pair of shoes or a new board, because I don’t need that shit and you already give me everything I need.” She sulked, looking down “It’s just not fair to you.”

    RD smirked, and took a moment to put her cigarette out on the bench next to her, flicking the stub into a trash bin. Little squirt was adorable, misguided, yes, but adorable. She hugged her little sister tight, and tried to kiss her forehead in what she thought was a motherly way but still felt as awkward as it could get.

    “Fuck, Scoots… That’s-That’s pretty cool that you want to have your own money. I can’t fault you for that. But, hey, don’t go working for a ganger. I have some friends on the Moderator Corps, I could get you a job.”

    Scooter groaned, rolling her eyes as she kicked at the pavement in frustration.

    “Sweeping streets? Cleaning air vents? Fuck, that’s boring, RD.”

    RD groaned right back. She mock punched the stubborn girl, slamming her bandaged fist on Scoot’s shoulder and pushing slightly until the young punk leaned over.

    “Better than doing something that could end with you getting shot. And it gives you money to buy your own shit.”

    “Your job is getting shot at. Why do you worry about me doing the same thing?”

    That nearly had the rainbow haired Riot slapping her little sister, and she had to grip the bench beneath them to hold herself back from doing it. It took Rhona a long moment of mulling words over before she reached down, grabbing Scooter’s brown chin and raising her eyes up.

    “I get shot at so you don’t have to.” RD was as serious as she could get “So every time you put yourself in danger, you both risk your life and make every time I risked mine into a pointless waste. Do you like that, Scoots? Do you want every time I get hurt or nearly killed to be pointless?”

    “No”

    “Good. Then go sweep streets or clean air vents until you learn how to do something more productive or more fun.” she slapped the back of Scooter’s head, hard enough to sting but not to actually hurt. “Ya dope. Now get up. Pinkie’s making us cookies for Aristeia! night.”

    RD got up, swinging her jacket over her shoulder and extending her hand for her little sister to take. Scooter accepted the offered hand, and held her skateboard under the other arm as they began walking towards one of the lifts.

    “Hey, Rhona?”

    “What?”

    “Could you really take Gil’s whole gang on your own?”

    RD thought for a moment, then decided she was allowed to boast a little this time, smirking while letting Scooter’s hand go to grab another cigarette.

    “Scoots, I could do it without the suit.” She laughed, her sister laughed. It felt good.
    ___________________________________________________________

    “I need ten units of blood, stat!”

    Doctor Tiembo yelled at a nurse as she pushed the trolley carrying a screaming, struggling alien on top of it. It was a Morat, a huge, beefy, red skinned man-monkey so heavily laden with muscle mass that she could see the metalwork bend under his writhing and kicking out form.

    Krakots, they were called Krakots. A bunch of aliens had escaped from a prisoner ship shot down in Paradiso a while back and then quickly spread themselves across the Human Sphere, acting as mercenaries and guns for hire. Bakunin had accepted a few of them, the red faced brutes finding a lot to do amongst the ship’s organized chaos. Not to mention the fact a few red faced monkey men looked so casually common in the ship that most people didn’t even realize they were actual aliens and not just modified humans.

    The one kicking and screaming on her trolley was called Torak. Tiembo already knew him from a few weeks ago when she had installed his internal combat drug injector. Now a bullet had punctured the very same injector, spreading an uncontrolled and highly volatile cocktail of chemicals into his system, tainting several internal organs. By the time he arrived to the hospital, his kidneys and bladder, or whatever Morats had that served the same functions, were burning from the inside. The doctor didn’t blame the bulky monkey for screaming like a baby at it.

    “Err… Torak, dear?” She spoke to him, one hand gripping his broken left horn “It’s- It’s me, Jane. Remember me? The- I’m the pink haired human you said looked like- like... “ it took her a moment to remember the name “An Izorak Bird.”

    Jane giggled at the comparison. According to the alien, an Izorak was a kind of bird that had a very pretty song, a kind of lullaby that lured prey into lowering their guard so it could peck their eyes, then their throats out. He had said Jane was the same, with her cute human face and light pink hair, nobody thought she was as dangerous as she could be.

    After another loud roar, the Morat fugitive came to his senses. He shook with constant pain, and growled while blinking tears off his bloodshot eyes, his white beard matted with spittle, blood and bile as he tried to talk.

    “Hello doctor. Nice seeing you”

    His voice was gruff, and his English was so atrocious he sounded like he was gargling stones. However, the doctor would take anything that could make him stop struggling and making her job even more difficult.

    “Ah dear, c-could you please stay still? I’m-I’m trying to save your life here.”

    She sounded meek, weak even, but her stony gaze towards the nurses meant they were supposed to restrain the humongous alien while she distracted him. They snapped to work, two heavily enhanced men needed to hold the Morat’s oversized, muscled arms and legs and strap them to the gurney as she kept talking to him, distracting the humongous beast with her sweet voice and delicate touch.

    “I in much pain, doctor.”

    Morats were alien warriors, brutal, violent, absurdly hard to control. But the ones that managed to eke out a living in the Human Sphere tended to be at least marginally sociable. Torak was a sweet pea, or at least Jane thought so. Maybe it was his grin, large and boisterous, but missing one tooth.

    “It’s okay, dear. Hey, you- you never told me how you lost that-” she pointed at his mouth, then at her own, making a fanged smile and motioning at one of her teeth that matched his missing one, more or less “Your tooth. How did you lose it?”

    “Ah! Ahaha. Is- arhg- Is funny story, doctor. I were hunter, see? Killer of beasts.” he spoke with a pained smile, but the important thing was that he wasn’t fighting the nurses.

    “Did you hunt Izoraks?” She giggled at him, looking at his wound and finally starting to work on it.

    “Oh, no. Can’t eat Izorak. Too bony.” He coughed and hacked, spitting a wad of blood mixed with snot straight onto her chest. “Oh. Sorry doctor”

    Looking at that large, greenish red splotch of bodily fluids on her coat, other Daktaris would have launched into a string of curses that could make a sailor blush, but Miss Tiembo just let out a tiny ‘Eek!’ before waving a dismissive hand. As long as he kept talking, she could handle a dirty coat.

    The surreal fact of a Morat apologizing seemed to fly over her head as she focused on her work, opening his lower abdomen and surveying the damage. His liver, or what looked analogous to one, was half melted, but she managed to salvage enough of it to send to the flash-cloning vats before hooking up the buff alien to a portable life support unit.

    One of the greatest advances of medical science was the ability to simply clone replacement organs. Most of the Human Sphere could do it, but very few had the tech to do it in minutes. Usually, that kind of advancement would only be found in Bourak, the Haqqislamite homeworld, but the Nomad Nations had their way of acquiring that kind of tech, usually from ‘borrowed sources’.

    With only a culture of stem cells, a DNA sample and some patience, the Hospital could produce a replacement liver within minutes, so the real challenge was keeping the humongous alien both alive and not in a violent rage while they worked their technological miracles. Besides, Doctor Tiembo quite enjoyed the conversation, her bloody gloves and dirty coat notwithstanding.

    “It’s okay dear. So, what-what did you hunt?”

    “I hunted Gurlanak. Those - arrngh!- those is good eating. Meaty, thick. Good for body.” he hacked and coughed again, but now he couldn’t struggle and kick at her or the nurses.

    “Sounds nice. Did one of them knock your tooth out?”

    Torak looked offended at the idea. The thought that he was so miffed by her assumption that he forgot he had his whole belly split open in front of her made the doctor smile a shy, barely there, smile. She was cleaning his insides, surprised at the fact most of his organs seemed fine. Well, they were utterly burned and damaged, but compared to what a similar situation would have done to a human, they would at least recover.

    “Oh, no. I am good hunter.” He closed his eyes, howling in pain for a moment before continuing his story “I had partner, see? Her name- arhg! Her name was Ehr’jek. Good girl. Strong, would have made good whelps.” he laughed another pained laugh.

    “Oh dear.” the doctor giggled at him, putting two and two together “I guess Miss Ehr’jek didn’t like it when you asked her out, Torak?”

    They shared a laugh. A honest, generous laugh that allowed the nurses around the massive alien to sigh in relief. It wouldn’t be long until the freshly cloned replacement liver was delivered and the doctor could quickly begin making the transplant. The worst had passed.

    “She hated it!” He seemed proud of it, though “Punched my face, knocked my tooth out! What a lady!”

    His hearty laugh contaminated the nurses holding him down, and allowed the doctor to finish the transplant before stapling his abdomen back up and sealing it with healing gel. There was blood and fluids everywhere, but the danger had passed, and they could unstrap the humongous alien from the protesting gurney.

    “There you go, dear.”

    Jane caressed his bulging, still quivering in pain, muscular arm while helping Torak get up from the bed. She was smiling, looking him in the eyes as she finished her instructions.

    “But you gotta stay at home for a couple weeks, okay? Let your organs recover and don’t use the injector, okay?”

    The Krakot growled at his lingering pain, adjusting his spine and feeling every muscle in his body spasm in phantom pains. As he turned to look at the doctor, he had to lower his gaze to look at her. The woman was barely as tall as his chest, but her tiny smile somehow mirrored his wide, boisterous grin.

    “But doctor, I-”

    There was another surreal moment when a tiny, meek looking woman grabbed a warrior alien from a species known for burning planets and yanked him down by his remaining horn. She did it less by actual strength and more by sheer surprise, and the hospital security actually went on alert should the alien mercenary attack the Daktaris.

    “But nothing, you big red brute! You will stay at home, you will eat healthy food and not drink any distilled drinks or use your injector. Got it?”

    She stared down a Morat, glaring at him with fiery, potent eyes. She stared the beast down, and the beast acquiesced.

    “Yes, Doctor.” He said reluctantly.

    “That’s good.” Once more she rubbed his huge arm while helping him find his way out “I’ll come over later in the weekend and check you out, Torak. We’ll play Scrabble.”

    The Krakot left the hospital with a smile on his red face and a cramped, painful looking walk. The hospital staff watched on, half awed half amused, while Jane Tiembo, also known as ‘Butterfly’ in the Beauvoir module, watched his muscular back ripple with every step. She let him disappear into the crowd before turning around and looking at her staff.

    “Look alive, people! We have lives to save!”

    Her angry stomp was more cute than intimidating, but it sent her staff scattering back to work, and Butterfly took a moment to clean her hands and change gloves before going after the next case. The day had barely begun.


    CONTINUES NEXT POST
     
    #15 DaRedOne, Mar 26, 2018
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2018
  16. DaRedOne

    DaRedOne Morat Warrior Philosopher
    Warcor

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    Civilian Lives - part 2

    Jack groaned, putting the crate of tomatoes onto the loader in front of her and smiling as she wiped her brow clean. She had a massive smile on her lips, feeling so satisfied despite the tiredness creeping onto her muscles.

    “Phooey, that was a good one!”

    She took her hat off, the wide brimmed hat serving no function considering the artificial lights of the Ship. However, the former farmgirl liked to wear it while working on the crops, and at the moment it made for a nice fan. Hydroponics were nothing like working with actual soil, but growing crops was growing crops, and it made the blonde amazon think of her old home, which in turn made her smile some more.

    “Finished for the day, Jack?”

    A huge man came after her, carrying one crate on each shoulder. Huge didn’t even began to describe him, his chest was wide and his arms were as thick as if someone had built him around a double decker closet. Mac was the nicest guy Jack had met on the AgriModules though, and his huge, pearly smile was so contagious she often thought that Bakunin should weaponize it and end all wars in the Human Sphere with that great big toothy grin.

    “Ah ain’t finished yet…” She laughed, then looked at the tomato plants and realized there was no fruit left to pick “or maybe Ah am.” her grin was awkward, yet delighted.

    “That’s cool. Wanna grab a beer? Haven’t seen you in a while, and you look like you need to drink something.”

    “Ah’ll take that, Mac. But not the piss water yer Bakunin folks call beer, Ah want sum’ real stuff, gimme sum’thin’ like, like an actual stout beer.”

    The humongous man adjusted the two tomato crates he had been carrying onto the loader, then smiled at all the stacked boxes before nodding at the blonde USAriadnan next to him. Jack was an amazon, at least a head taller than every person she knew… And Mac was a head taller than she was, making him one hell of a giant.

    “Sure thing, sugar.” He laughed at her, “I know a place that serves some good stuff.”

    It wasn’t that good. The bar was a tiny corner joint, built into a space that was so small the two giants had to sit with their heads lowered or risk bumping on the ceiling lamps, and Jack had to pull off her hat and leave it on the table as it kept getting snagged off every other minute. The beer was atrocious too, it was a knockoff brand from Yu Jing that tasted good going in but then left a horrible bitter taste on the mouth, and an even worse, packed and heavy feeling in the stomach.

    It was just like home: horrible. And Jack loved it.

    “Yeah, Ah like this place. Why didn’t yer tell me about it before, Mac?”

    The huge man shrugged, holding a beer bottle that looked tiny in his humongous hand. Anything would look tiny in his hands.

    “Oh, I only found it recently, Jackie. Couple months ago at best.” he took a swig, then looked at her “And it’s not like it’s easy to find you, Miss Badass.”

    She scoffed at his words, groaning and taking a long, loud gulp from her beer. Of course, he meant the fact she wasn’t really a regular worker at the hydroponics farm. She came over every now and then, and whenever she was around she helped as much as she could... But her real ‘work’ was back in Beauvoir, drilling with the Main Six or getting deployed to some battlescape on the Human Sphere to rescue, protect or, more often than not, kill someone.

    “Ah’m sorry, Mac… It’s jus’, someone has ta take care of Tabbi and Rhona, those two are way too reckless fer their own good.” Her grin lacked mirth.

    “Yeah, right” the huge man nodded again, pointing at her with the beer “And shooting that big gun makes you feel good too, right?” His scoff was playful, but it rubbed her the wrong way “I know you USAriadna folks are all about them explosions.”

    Jack regarded him with a poisonous look. For a few seconds she just stared at him, then decided the joke was just that, a joke, and snickered. Her snicker became a giggle when she remembered the Fourth of July celebrations, and the giggle became outright laughter when she remembered the time she blew up an outhouse when she was little more than a teenager back home.

    “Ahahaha. Yeah. Actually… Yeah. We do like them explosions” She stuck her tongue out, then took a swig “You Nomad folks can’t say anythin’ much, though. Y’all live in a place with limited oxygen, yet ever’ other military unit Ah meet is slingin’ a flamer.”

    That made her stop and look at the huge man, tilting her head to the side as she regarded him. His sheer size made her think of the two Taskmaster sisters, the big women would still look small next to her friend, but so would a refrigerator. And he did have the charisma to become a leader. Her next question was honestly just curious.

    “How come yer never served, thinkin’ of it? Ah can see ya rollin’ around in one of them Taskmastah suits.”

    Mac shook his head vehemently. He put his empty bottle down and signaled the waiter for another pair of beers while lowering his head, his voice almost a whisper.

    “Just between the two of us? I’m a wuss.” he laughed “I can’t even think about a gun firing and I get the shakes already... And the last time I saw blood, I fainted.”

    His laughter made it hard to believe him, but at the same time it would make sense. Jack did chuckle, as she felt it was impossible for her not to be contaminated by his endless mirth. It took a while of laughter, but eventually his next words jarred her back to reality.

    “How about you, big girl? I know about your beef with the Antipodes, but how does that become mixing it up with them Beauvoir harpies?”

    “They ain’t harpies, Mac” Jack narrowed her eyes for a second, but a grin from the huge man disarmed her “Okay, some of them are. Twi ain’t… Pinkie can be... Jewel… Sometimes she is. RD is definitely a harpy too.” She sighed “Ah ain’t helpin’ mah case, am Ah?”

    Mac shook his head, but said nothing else, he just nodded at the blonde to let her keep talking.

    “To be honest, Ah like farmin’, Ah even thought about stickin’ to tha AgriModule and just do what Ah’ve always done… But... “ A swig of that horrible beer gave her courage “Yer right when ya say tha suit and gun are fun, but it’s not-It ain’t like what RD does when she’s all crazy and yellin’ stupid shit. It’s more… When Ah come here, Ah remember mah home. It feels good, but it hurts too.”

    As the blonde sulked back onto her chair, the huge man nodded in understanding. He put his hand to his stubbly, square jaw and caressed it in a long, pensive silence. He looked up, watching the dangling lights in the ceiling, then looked back at her, and then said thanks to the waiter as new beers were brought.

    Silence went on as bottle caps were popped open and gullets were filled with bitter stout. He could have let the silence drag on for eternity and it would have been enough. Sometimes, just the company was more than satisfying, and both of them knew that, especially after a long day at work.

    “Eh, I think I get it, actually.” He gestured with his beer, and let the blonde decide whether to continue to conversation or stop it.

    “You get what?”

    He spread his arms, trying to encompass the whole ship with his wide gesture, and for a moment it felt like he really could.

    “You come down here, help us grow stuff on fake soil and enriched water... It is good, but it definitely is not the same as growing stuff on actual dirt and with real, not recycled water. It’s not the same. It reminds you of something you liked, but it is not what you liked, it’s not the same.”

    Jack’s mouth twisted, half frowning, half puzzled at his words. Mac spoke while leaning back to put more thought into his speech, his voice slowed down both by the ideas running through his mind and the beer weighing down his gut.

    “But then you go and mix it up with them Beauvoir girls. That’s not like anything you did before, is it? Sure, I bet every USAriadna home has a bunch’a guns in it, but you didn’t go around kicking down doors and putting high explosive shots into people’s faces. That’s brand new. Can’t compare with anything you used to do back at Dawn. Am I right?”

    Jack nodded, taking a long gulp as his words started to make more sense.

    “Yer right. Ah was never a fightin’ type. None of mah family was.”

    “If they were like you, I think they missed their call” Mac chuckled “But you, you got a chance. You can come down to the Agrimodule and can pretend it’s the same as back when you were at Dawn, and that’s gonna feel nice and cozy but it’s also gonna hurt like a motherfucker because this is not Dawn. This is Bakunin, with strobing lights and fancy names for everything.”

    He let the silence go on again, mostly because his gut was churning with that drink starting to fight his stomach for dominance. On her side of the table, Jack let out a loud burp, and it seemed she was having the same problem. After a moment where they both wordlessly decided not to drink anymore, he finally opened his mouth again.

    “But with the girls… It’s new, right? Different. Doesn’t hit close to your old home, because it’s nothing like it.”

    Jack groaned, then let another loud burp, rubbing her stomach in a mix of satisfaction and regret. Eventually she settled on something, despite having to fight back a burp before she could say it.

    “That’s surprisin’ly thoughtful of ya, Mac.”

    “Eh, I try. Just one thing, Jackie…” he leaned forward, lowering himself to look her in the eyes “We might not be the same, but we can be your home too, you know? Give us a chance, big girl.”

    She raised her empty bottle to click with his, nodding and getting up.

    “Yer right.”

    She would have said something else, something more suitably poetic, but a sudden memory came to her thoughts, and all she did was widen her eyes as her brains decided to think of something completely unrelated.

    “Wait, it’s Aristeia! night! RD will bring Scooter over ta watch it! Ah better get goin’!”

    Jack put her hat back on, waving at her friend as he waved back. She quickly stopped by the counter to pay her part of the bill, leaving the huge man on the booth as he struggled to get off it without ripping the table off its bolts. Watching him struggle made her chuckle inwards, and she left the bar with a warm feeling of satisfaction to herself.
    ______________________________________________________________________

    Heavy metal rocked the house, loudspeakers at maximum volume. The extreme, intense bass guitar could shake a person’s rib cage. Drums sounded like the call of war, and the raspy vocals were the song of the Devil herself…. And the Devil sung about how she was going to throw one hell of a party.

    Pinkie slid down the staircase railing, laughing as she landed on the living room. Her vacuum cleaner hit the floor with a nice, muffled thud before sweeping around the room, then it went under the couch, swept across the main room one more time before being pushed under the Holoscreen stand. The bubbly, pinky haired lady giggled as she shook her butt to the song, whipping the cleaner round and round as if it was her dance partner.

    She laughed as her dancing knocked a book off a table, and in a single, arcing move she bent backwards and caught it before it hit the floor. A quick look at the cover showed it was one of Twilight’s old treatises on toxic masculinity, and Pinkie cast it back to the table with a careless huff. Spinning around once more, she spread her eyes as a little ping reached her ears despite the booming heavy metal shaking the whole house.

    A single flick of her wrist stopped the music as she dashed over to the kitchen, sliding on her knees until she came to a stop in front of the oven door. The cake inside was finished, and its savory scent had already started to waft all over the kitchen. Pinkie had a huge grin on her lips as she swept her finger across the door and it popped open, the cake sliding out on a tray, ready for her hands.

    Putting on the oven mitts, she pulled the cake out, taking a moment to smell the delicious, warm vapor coming off it. It made the mouth water, and she imagined the smiles on her friends’ faces when they saw it. Then, with a quick move, she pushed a tray of cookies into the oven where the cake had been.

    Every single function of the kitchen was stored and programmed on her Comlog, and a single swipe of her hand was enough to make the oven ping close, while a snap of her fingers was all it took to set the right bake time for the cookies. She huffed in satisfaction, pulling the mitts off and dropping them carelessly on the kitchen table.

    Pinkie looked towards one of the kitchen speakers and did a finger gun at it. “Bang!” she laughed, and the music resumed, loud, violent, energetic and surprisingly happy despite the guttural singer. She thrust her palm forward, her Comlog opening up in front of her, a holographic screen that quickly turned to show the automated vacuum cleaner routines.

    Her bright, poofy pink hair bobbed as she programmed the cleaner to sweep the kitchen, making sure it would go over it once, then sweep the living room again before returning to the kitchen for an once-over. Clicking ‘start’, she closed the Comlog with another snap of her fingers, and scampered upstairs to check on the rooms.

    The corridor had three doors on each side, and she just had to point her finger at one to make it slide open. Twlight’s room was the first one to the left, and it slid open to show a dark, purple lit room with way too many computer screens turned on.

    “Ah, Twilight, you nerd.”

    Pinkie giggled as she bounced into the room, but averted her gaze from the codes streaming on the screens. As she grabbed the basket of dirty laundry next to the bed, she noticed Twilight’s tinbot was huddled behind it, struggling to move.

    “Hi Spike!”

    The bot had fallen on her belly, and a heavy blanket had pinned her down, making the child-like machine struggle under the weight. She was purple and green, her stubby arms and legs too weak to push up from under the blanket without getting entangled on it.

    “Chuuu-ey” Spike thrummed under the impossible weight.

    “Sure, I’ll help you!”

    Pinkie reached down, pulling the blanket off the tinbot’s struggling little body and sniffing at it before she threw the dirty blanket into the laundry basket too, groaning at its smell.

    Once she was freed, Spike stood up. She wasn’t even a meter tall, and her round belly and big head made her gait very similar to a baby that had just learned how to walk. The bot wobbled over to the many monitors and began typing in, her big green eyes shining as she absorbed the data streams.

    “You okay, girl? Call me if you need anything!” Pinkie patted the bot’s head before leaving.

    “Prosh-dosh” The bot answered, eyes focused on her task.

    Shrugging, Pinkie closed the door and turned to the next one. Jewel’s room was impeccable, even the posters lining the walls, all of them depicting many different types of armored suits and their schematics, were perfectly aligned.

    There was even a logic to the alignment: on the top there were the super heavy suits, a stolen Fasid schematic first, then a half complete image of a Taskmaster, and after that a Yan Huo Invincible, and finally a Kriza Borac schematic that had been sketched over to resemble a Sogarat from the Combined Army.

    After the super heavy schematics, there was a row with what Jewel called ‘Standard Battle Armor’. An ORC trooper from PanOceania, a corregidor Mobile Brigada, a Yu Jing Shang Ji, a Haqqislamite Janissary, all lined up. There was also a second Mobile Brigada that had been sketched over to mimic a Suryat Assault Armor from the Combined Army.

    The last row was the light powered suits, and the only one Pinkie recognized was the Riot Grrl armor on the far left. She figured two of them were Samurai suits, and another was a Pan Oceanian knight of some sort, but the last Yu Jing suit she had never seen before. Or most likely had, but had been too busy shooting at the time it to remember it later.

    Pinkie chewed on her lower lip, looking at the numbers and symbols sketched on the posters and shrugging as her knowledge of that stuff rendered it all as legible as black magic. The dirty laundry was what she wanted, and it was inside a basket next to the bed, all neatly folded and separated in coloreds, blacks and whites. Jewel made things easy.

    Leaving the room, the pink haired girl dumped Jewel’s neatly organized clothes in with the mess she had taken from Twilight’s room and dusted her hands. Next was RD’s room, and Pinkie pinched her nose when the smell of tobacco and sweat assaulted her as soon as the door slid open.

    Aside from the horrible smell, it was actually quite tidy. The ‘vintage’ risqué poster on the wall was a bit too much, but at least it was stylish. Pinkie quickly grabbed the dirty laundry from the basket, fished for dirty socks under the bed, then used a pair of pliers to pick them up, groaning at the scent. She even stopped to spray some air freshener on the room before closing the door on her way out.

    Jack’s room was pretty tidy too. Pinkie just stopped to grab the USAriadna made acoustic guitar the blonde had left on her bed, pretending to play a wicked solo on it that mimicked the music still rocking the house as loudly as the speakers could be. Eventually, the poofy haired lady put the guitar back where it should be, then left the room carrying the dirty laundry she had gone in to retrieve in the first place.

    Butterfly’s room didn’t open. Pinkie stopped, cursed at it, then flicked her Comlog open. The holographic screen projected from her wrist showed she did not have the access codes to that room. Apparently someone had changed the codes and not given her the new ones. She sighed, shook her head, then opened a text chat session with the doctor:

    PINKIE: Jane, I need ur room key

    It took a moment for an answer to come.

    DRSCARY: What for?

    The pink haired girl growled and huffed in annoyance while writing back.

    PINKIE: Its laundry day

    DRSCARY: I’ve done my laundry.

    PINKIE: Bull.

    PINKIE: I checked the washer

    PINKIE: Send me th key or u can go wash ur cloths urself

    Once more the answer took forever, and Pinkie stood there, dancing idly while waiting for the screen to pop again with the codes.

    DRSCARY: Fine. Don’t touch anything, okay? Sending the code now.

    Another groan and the pink haired woman managed to swipe the door open, her eyes widening as she saw what was inside the room. Butterfly’s room was a total mess, with scattered clothes everywhere and dirty underwear left piled on her computer chair. The only thing marginally clean was the bed, and even that had an auspiciously empty liquor bottle tipped over it.

    Giggling, she picked up the clothes from the ground and piled them with the others, swiping the door closed and stopping to send a message back to her friend. It was a simple “U need sleep” to the doctor that went unanswered as the poofy haired girl entered her own room for the rest of the dirty clothes.

    At the end of her little journey, Pinkie was lugging a packed full, swollen, nearly spilling open laundry basket. Somehow she managed to slide down the staircase railing even while carrying it. Maybe it was the power of metal.

    The laundry room was next to the Armor Workshop, and that was not a place Pinkie was willing to enter without Jewel or Twilight. She did enter Scooter’s room, the only one in the ground floor, to pick up the young punk’s laundry too.

    After lugging all that weight to the service area of their shared house, Pinkie took a moment to separate the clothes by coloreds, blacks, whites and underwear. Then she threw the pile of coloreds into the washing machine and waved her hand at it to make it start the specific laundry routine for colored clothing she had already programmed on it a long while ago.

    Pinkie snapped a pair of gloves on, then threw the underwear into a basin full of water. She swirled it with her gloved hand, enjoying the cold water while mixing it up with the soap and stain cleaner. Scrubbing these would be easy later.

    Pinkie raised one hand, and her Comlog opened up again, showing the table of chores. Originally, Twilight had wanted to make it a shared thing. But in practice, Pinkie had long decided she would do all of them and quietly worked in the shadows to make sure she was the only one to get any chores. So far nobody had called her out on it, and she suspected they hadn’t even realized it yet, which made her even happier.

    Every chore had her name in front of them, and the only one not checked was Laundry. Pinkie hit her nose on the hologram, and the check appeared in front of the Laundry entry. Giggling, she continued shaking her hips to the song while scrubbing the clothes, enjoying the touch of the foam as it bubbled out of the basin.
    _______________________________________________________________________

    Later that day, Pinkie was sitting on the floor. She had changed out of her laundry and cleaning clothes into a more relaxing dress, and was now munching on her fresh cookies while watching HoloVids. ‘Las Flores del Destino’ was about to start, and as far as soppy soap operas went, she liked this one.

    She wouldn’t be able to enjoy the episode, though, as the main doors hissed open and a raspy, high pitched voice sounded out.

    “Come on! It’s Aristeia! Night!”

    “Woohoo! Aristeia!”

    Pinkie was tackled by a young, purple haired lady that hugged her way too tight as the HoloScreen changed channels to the Aristeia! Transmission. The pink haired lady had to push Scooter off her, ruffling the young punk’s hair while her older sister took her seat above the two of them.

    “Hey Scooter! Careful there! You’re going to knock the cookies down.”

    “Cookies!”

    Scooter fished around for a cookie as her stomach growled with hunger. Eventually she found one of the little discs of delicious chocolate and baked wheat, and shoved it whole into her mouth, chewing loudly and spreading crumbs on the freshly cleaned floor.

    “Fhanks, auntie Phinkie!”

    “Don’t speak with your mouth open, Scoots!” RD slapped her on the back of the head while leaning down to grab a cookie herself.

    “There’s cake in the kitchen too.”

    Pinkie could have been angry. She wasn’t. She loved the sight of her friends enjoying their food, and as far as she was concerned, the only function a clean floor served was getting dirty again.

    The pink haired Riot opened her ComLog and set it to record the next episode of ‘Las Flores del Destino’. She knew there was no sense in arguing with Aristeia! Night. However, there was one person in the house who would do just that, and said person had just stomped through the main door, smiling wide and spreading her arms to greet everyone.

    “Ah, hello darlings!”

    Jewel spread her armored arms and threw her head back, inhaling the scent of freshly clean house and freshly baked goods before a look at the HoloVid made her nose twist up and her smile become a frown.

    “What? No! You girls are not watching that barbarian-”

    “Maximus is fighting tonight!”

    RD interrupted with the only thing that she knew could make the diva change her mind. And it worked like a charm, as Jewel quickly slipped into an armchair, only stopping to take off her visored helmet and leave it on the table before sitting down.

    “Please tell me he’s using the classic armor and not that silly spartan outfit.”

    “Yup. It’s classic Max. Look at that Tikbalang suit.”

    Jewel chewed on her lower lip. Maximus was a perfect example of a man: muscular, square jawed, cropped hair. Ladies loved him. Jewel couldn’t care less for his cookie cutter looks, but his suit, his suit was nothing short of perfection. It was a heavily modified armor that had the appearance of a Stingray, but added pieces from several other high tech PanOceanian armors and TAGs. Watching that thing trundle about was a dream.

    “Is that- Is that Aristeia!? Is Baller fighting today?”

    Jewel had been so absorbed in watching that suit move, that she didn’t even notice the doors slide open again to allow Butterfly’s tiny form to walk in. The pink haired doctor slinked into the couch, sharing it with RD while Pinkie hugged Scooter to her lap beneath the two of them.

    “Yeah. EightBall is in too. Looks like him and Max are gonna go at it again. And wow! Who’s the huge chick?”

    Jewel scoffed at the massive, power armored blonde woman coming into the screen. She wore a PanOceanian suit too, but with all the nordic imagery Jewel couldn’t be sure if it was a Swiss or Aquila Guard suit.

    “Ugh, I don’t know. But that blue lipstick is horrible.” The diva groaned “And the pelt is so tacky! She’s ruining her look.”

    “Heh, I like it.” Pinkie said with a giggle.

    “I think she’s hot.”

    “Rhona, you would think a stool with breasts was hot.”

    “So what? She’s hot. And I don’t get the fuzz with her lipstick. You used to wear blue lipstick.”

    “Bite me.”

    “Is that a request-”

    Butterfly hit the rainbow haired woman with a cushion, smothering her face to keep her from saying anything else. The sight of RD struggling against the tiny doctor made the ladies all around her break out in laughter as the Daks huffed in annoyance. Butterfly slapped the punk a few more times to make sure she would get the message, then turned to glue her eyes to the screen.

    “Shush- shush you two! Baller is coming in.”

    Jane ignored every word coming out of her friends’ mouths as a muscular panda man came in, his huge smile drawing a pop from the live crowd around the Hexadome. The Daktaris had her eyes all over him, enjoying the sight of his shirtless pectorals as he waved to the crowd. He was dreamy, large, muscular, with that big, charismatic grin and the fuzzy fur that made him look so huggable...

    And then someone had to break the moment.

    “Howdy everyone! Ah brought-”

    Jack got hit with a cushion right as she stepped in, Butterfly beaning her with it without taking her eyes off the screen. One had to wonder why she hadn’t become a sniper with such great aim.

    “Shut up and take a seat! Baller is fighting today.”

    Jack scooted over, sitting next to the doctor and passing beer cans around while Butterfly laid her head on her lap. The blonde looked down, but seeing her friend get comfortable she just shrugged and decided not to disturb the small lady. Butterfly would remain silent until 8-Ball’s entrance was over, and only after that would Jack be able to make her next question.

    “So, who’s fightin’ tonight?”

    “It’s Gata, Baller, Musashi and Hexxer versus Maximus, Valkrye, Massacre and Major Lunah.”

    Scooter answered while RD took the beer can from her hands before she could take a drink.from it. She groaned, but Jack quickly passed her a new can. Thankfully the USAriadnan amazon had brought in a large pack, but had not been able to say anything about it earlier.

    “Wow, Max and Massacre on tha same team? This should be fun.”

    Jack laughed while taking a cookie from the tray Pinkie offered her, then looked around and realized they were missing a certain purple haired hacker.

    “Wait, where’s Tabbi?”

    “She went to church”

    Pinkie answered before stuffing her face with cake. She had ran to the kitchen and grabbed a tray while the other ladies were busy ogling fighters. Thanks to the poofy pink haired girl they now had plenty of refreshments for the entire night.

    “Probably gonna take a while too. You know how she is with this religion stuff.”

    Jewel fanned herself with one hand. She had not taken her suit off and was occupying a whole armchair on her own while her friends huddled together on the couch. She raised a hand, opening her ComLog and reducing the AC temperature with a slide of her finger.

    “Ugh. What does she do at that church?”

    “I think she’s boning one of the Reverends”

    “Rhona!”

    RD got another face full of cushion, the wallop coming from Pinkie this time. The rainbow haired punk tried to fight off the attack, pushing the fluffy weapon away with one hand while realiating with a cushion of her own.

    “What’s wrong?! Have you seen how the Moiras dress up? They’re hot! If you have a penguin fetish.”

    “Rhona, shut up. Shut up or so help me God I will fucking staple your lips shut!”

    Butterfly joined Pinkie in smothering their rainbow haired friend, and the two of them still had trouble trying to subdue the punk. They wrestled on the couch, hitting each other with cushions and trying to shut RD up, who resisted valiantly, or at least she did so until the commercials ended and the show resumed.

    Jack laughed while watching Rhona struggle, as three adult women were needed to stop RD’s overly descriptive speech about the virtues of the Observance Module and its caretakers’ asses. Jack didn’t care, she just looked at the HoloScreen and sighed as she realized Twilight would miss the fight night. Shame too, it wasn’t the same without Tabitha analyzing the match and predicting every move before it happened.
    ______________________________________________________________________

    Twilight finished her prayer, then smiled as she bent down again. Her forehead touched the feet of the statue of Saint Mary of the Knife, showing reverence to the saint and bringing the young woman to a low huddle in front of it. As she felt the cold touch of the statue, her fingers caressed the marble plinth beneath it, sliding down, under the dark, smooth stone.

    Beneath the plinth she found a tiny compartment and clicked it open with her thumb, hooking her index in to pull out a flash drive. It was barely as big as her pinkie finger, landing on her palm before she slid the compartment closed again. She held the drive close to her Rosary, her hand closed firmly around it.

    Crossing herself, the brown skinned hacker stood up, bowing one more time at the statue before she left the oppressive church. Above her, the Sin Eaters watched, and behind her, the Saint watched. But no one saw her stow the flash drive into her dress.

    And the Hexaedron wouldn’t see her coming either.


    END
     
    #16 DaRedOne, Mar 26, 2018
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2018
  17. stevenart74

    stevenart74 Well-Known Member

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    @DaRedOne. . .

    Excellent Stuff, the "Slice of Civilian Life" really, Really, REALLY fleshes the Characters and give an excellent Personal Opinion on the "Cyberpunk Sprawl, In Space" that is Bakunin Mothership. . .

    It also give new and improved perspectives on the Characters that I will strive and try to port in the Art that I'm preparing. . .

    Checked the "Mane" styles of the inspirational "Equine Cartoon Characters" and also their various "Visible Quirks" that will try to incorporate in little details in the Art. . .

    Could as well prepare some idea for the URSA T.A.G. by trying to "Cross" an Anaconda Frame with the salvaged Uhlan stuff, even if it will be just "Background Scenery". . .

    Also had some idea for a "Unit Badge" of the Six, with a stylized Horsehead with perhaps an Unicorn Crest and little Pegasi Wings, and a motto that could souns something like "Riot Friendship Is Grrrl Magical Power" or something similar (You'll decide). . .
     
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  18. DaRedOne

    DaRedOne Morat Warrior Philosopher
    Warcor

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    Actually, the Ursa is just because with StarCo I really want an Anaconda now :D But you know, Chekov's gun and all that stuff.

    Anyhow, as for a Squad Badge, I'd go with something suitably hilarious yet badass, like this:
    [​IMG]

    As for the Squad's motto, I can't think of an individual one that I like for all of them, so I might have to think up one for each of the ladies, which might take a while. I'll come back to it later.
     
  19. stevenart74

    stevenart74 Well-Known Member

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    I was thinking something a little more "Martial" like a sort of redo of "Dark Horse Comics" logo with reversed colours, but still could be good. . .

    Planning also a "Total Leisure Relax" snapshot image of each Grrrll in "Her Personal Space" of the Room, based on the excellent, amusing and detailed description You provided (R.D. seeing "Girl-On-Girl" Arachne Youporn JUST when the little sister came knocking in; Butterfly busy analizing Morat / Chimera anathomical prospections, Jack cleaning Her "Ariadnan Irons" and so on). . .

    Keep up the good work. . . . .!!!
     
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  20. Danger Rose

    Danger Rose The Wrecking Belles

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    So sorry to intrude, but I had to add my praises to your writing and the fleshing out of your character. I thoroughly enjoy your Morat Stories and now I'm also a huge fan of your Main Six. Looking forward for more.
     
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