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Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Active: 1/25/2007
Posts: 80 |
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Technodrive by Kurra...
--This is a slightly fixed edited version of a story that might be nice to finish sometime this life. This is still really rough and unrefined, goodness....If there is one thing I could ask for help with in this, is please crtique/comment as to whether this story makes you easily visualize the images and scenes in the story or not. I wanna improve in that area, and if I don't do well lemme have it please please  --
--Except for Sawtooth, I can't think of any good names for my characters, so I'm just using the names of 'Mechs from the MechWarrior games. ^^; maybe some peeps from LD5 would wanna be them --
Our explorers set forth on an expedition to survey and identify an archaeological ruin on a distant mountain range. The team was formed of all young scalies, whose attitudes and physical condition were perfect for the job. This survey would be one that they would always remember for the best reasons.
__--==Characters==--__
Masakari - A dragon and the oldest of the team, but not the leader. Masakari's a he, with great strength and endurance. He can lift nearly three times his own weight off the ground. However, he doesn't really do much more than heavy work. Over 4 meters tall, at a full run he can make the ground tremble around him. He is currently gaining experience fastest with this team.
Ryoken - A raptoress. The fastest, most attractive, and nearly youngest of the team, she is very individualistic. She customizes everything around her to best multiply the effectiveness of her skills and abilities, sometimes at the expense of others' comfort. She is gaining experience slowest on the team, partly because she does her best alone.
BushWacker - Our intrepid leader--an allosaur. BushWacker has seen it all, and has the many small nicks and scars of life scattered on his hands and muzzle for proof. He is always learning, seeking to know more about everything around him and himself. BushWacker seems to have grown up ahead of the game(and everyone else), which explains his speedy rise to leadership.
Avatar - Avatar is an athlete as well as dragoness. A smart, multi-sport athlete-dragoness. She's learned Earth's best techniques to effective physical and mental readiness--as a result, she keeps herself in excellent condition and performs well even in terrible conditions. Kinda intimidated by others. Avatar's senses of sight, sound and hearing are very sensitive as well. She is the youngest and least experienced of the team.
__--==The Story Retold==--__
Prepping
Satellite photos in infrared, visible light, and false-color broad spectrum forms were flying through the air from a satellite to BushWacker's thin laptop, downloading on a stump 200 kilometers away from the ruins. Each image was about 15 to 33 MBs, taken at very high resolution so that the leader of the expedition could zoom in without any pixellation. The dawning sky was blaringly red and orange, making everything else the same colors, except for a bluish light coming from the thin screen. BushWacker sipped his steel mug of coffee, clicking his handclaws, and tried to find a better position to simultaneously relax and see his laptop better. From the two tents, there was stirring, the sliding of scales and low rumbling--the dragons awoke. Then--the unmistakable hiss of a raptor followed by a rip of a sheet by a toeclaw--Ryoken was up. It put a toothy smile on BushWacker's muzzle to know that strange little unconscious ritual that she did every morning to announce her waking. The three came out completely naked(and completely normal) and took their first breath of the day outside the tents. They put their bare soles on the moist ground, their claws catching some dirt and leaving perfect footprints. ^^ When they saw their breath condense in front of them, they stretched, yawned, and padded back in to put something warm on.
Travel
Now it was mid-morning, and by following a not-very-straight path, our team has covered 79 kilometers and is 144 kilometers away from the edge of the ruins. It was strange, that the sky seemed so red still to Avatar. Ryoken was piloting the machine, a graceful 250-ton robot painted with eye-catching faded green and spots and stripes of yellow. Just like the Tyrannosaurus rex, the robot had a tail with which to balance and maneuver even more beautifully. By the way, every now and then the robot sprinted and leaped into the air to conquer an obstacle, assisted by ion jets mounted behind its legs and wings. Yes it has wings. Well, actually they're heatsinks that provided some wing lift, but really they were there to make the thing look so darn sexy and keep it cool. It had a name too: Sawtooth, the codename for an extinct species of computer, christened by Ryoken. Sawtooth was awesome to behold. A mechanized yet living huge draconic thing of beauty. Anyone who saw it would say they'd frickin' marry it, if it could cook. 31 meters tall standing, It pounded ground on its powerful, artificially-muscled legs, and those on two wide feet with 4 razor-sharp claws to each. It was designed with gleaming chromed toeclaws, a sickle claw for each inside toe, and a suprisingly soft sole--artificial skin, a development of recent technology. Every dinosaur and dragon and scaled one couldn't help but touch the smooth soles, even lick them, imagining all the potential they had for mass stomping.
A ravine to cross. Ryoken caressed the right button to fling Sawtooth, the team in the cockpit, and their cargo up and over the ravine. And over the ten trees beyond it. And land into a crouch, stomping out two muddy perfect footprints, and then a majestic stride to the ruins. ^^
Observation
Some time later, but before noon, the team of allosaur, raptor and dragons perched on the shoulders of Sawtooth. Sawtooth was sleeping in a kneeling pose, but still towered twenty meters above the soil. Wings fanned sraight back, Sawtooth itself perched just inside the ruin boundary. Yet our team perceived the ruins to be nearly surrounding them, they were so expansive. Their four strong tails twitched, swayed, and sometimes tapped on Sawtooth's back for their owners' balance. BushWacker's GPS very accurately gave the team's position in relation to the terrain, confirming that the earth's many GPS satellites still worked. Avatar sweeped the scene with her heightened vision: she saw indiviual leaves on trees hundreds of meters away....the shambles of buildings were nearly completely built of steel, or some metal, made evident by glinting of the sun on a few relatively sharp corners at about 500m, 1.5 km, 2.5 km...the places where those structures once stood seemed laid out in a strange fashion....Avatar made a mental note to ask BushWacker later if there was any information on what might be underground. Masakari looked too, but not with the same vision. He had work to do. Unload Sawtooth, maintain it, clear out an area to call home.
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The symbols were scratched, worn, missing, gouged, unreadable, dirty, *filthy*, and blocked by rubble. But they were engraved in either metal or a familiar-feeling hard plastic. Our team was familiar with the sight, now that they had been cautiously creeping in various structures and cleaning away millenia of decay. But the problem was with the symbols--the ancient language. There weren't many different ones, they repeated many times, and every so often, interrupting them, there was a diagram with exactly ten or thirty stripes, all vertical. Each stripe had a triangle somewhere between its ends. Many diagrams showed the triangles on the stripes in many configurations, forming smooth hills or valleys, some with more sharp curves to the leftmost stripes. In this particular room, there were four diagrams whose stripes had their triangles exactly in the middle. Later we would find out that nearly all the rooms contained exactly two or four diagrams whose stripes and triangles were oriented in the same way.
BushWacker: "Hell. What a mystery."
Ryoken: "It's so amazing. It seems so familiar...from somewhere."
Avatar was bounding thirty meters above BushWacker and Ryoken in a section of the ruins that was cleared to explore. Though all this was made of metal and plastic, metal rusted, and there was a lot more metal than plastic, and no one was in that much a rush to injure themselves just to see the sights. Well-calculated jumps, pulls, and twists by Avatar allowed her to climb anywhere easily.
Avatar: "It's more of the same up here, maybe a little more plastic, and fewer symbols."
Masakari shamelessly rattled the whole place with his mass, happy with himself as he gave a stomp forward, clearing more areas to explore safely.
Masakari: "Here's good. And here. And beyond, all the way to some opening almost at the top and side, BushWacker."
BushWacker: "Whoever made all this wasn't very imaginative. We're not even a tenth done, and it all looks the same. What do the symbols and diagrams mean??"
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The accident was a major setback. We were kinda never supposed to be here in the first place, though not too many others missed us--or Sawtooth, surprisingly. But we almost gave up pretty quick when BushWacker broke his arms, and ryoken smashed her right forepaw trying to keep him from breaking anything else.
SCREEEET! SCREEETCH! Our leader looked up to identify the source of the ten-times-worse-than-claws-on-a-chalkboard whine of metal on metal. Bushwacker instinctively raised his hands and dropped everything else to attempt to catch the tons of ruins that were crashing down on him.
A muffled blood-curdling scream of pain mixed with panic filled the ruins from the ship to the campground.
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So we were possibly a quarter done. The campsite was truly our home now, at the edge of the ruins, and we practically forgot what our permanent homes were like. Sawtooth was watching and recording all we did from 850 meters away, obedient to Ryoken. This was the initially scary-to-hell, then very-fun day that we still talk about.
Masakari: "...boom-tk-tsss, boom-tk-tsss, boom-tk-tsss, boom-tk-tsss....ah-ah-ah...."
*Got trance in his head again...I wonder if he knows he's sounding the beat,* thought Avatar. Avatar padded her feet out one corridor, out of sight, only to appear in another leading back to the large room. There were plenty of pathways into and out of here, no doubt. Masakari was into whatever mix was playing in his cranial sound system, head bobbing and all. BushWacker stayed home today to sleep in after a hard day's night, so to speak. Poor 'herp was massaging all the data they collected since day one of the trek on his laptop. Nearly broke the screen by falling asleep sitting up and teetering dangerously close to his machine...well, there were no noisy neigbors for thousands of miles to torture him now.
Masakari: "....tk-t tsss, tk-t tsss, tk-t tsss, tk-t tsss, BOOM-tk-tsss, boom-tk-tsss, boom-tk-tsss, boom-tk-tsss...."
Masakari touched a smooth, cold, half sphere in the middle of this cleaner, larger, room. *y'know the ceilings are way higher here...* mused Masakari, presently turning down his bobbing head to see his hand on the cool plastic dome. Funny how it kinda caught the scarce light in here. A brilliant light and and a massive BOOOOOM!--
Masakari: "WHOA-SH...!!!"
Sawtooth on radio: "I felt a wave of heat."
Avatar, that lively young creature, lunged into the large room to find Masakari stunned, looking alternately at his hand and then the plastic dome. Ryoken, observing the outside of this building, responded mainly because of Sawtooth's declaration. Ryoken instinctively crouched her legs and exploded forward to sprint inside at maximum speed. She saw pretty much the same thing as Avatar.
Ryoken: "What happened? Did you make something work? Sawtooth, what did you see?"
Sawtooth on radio: "There was not much change in video. Audio picks up a low frequency noise: (Sawtooth played it back once). A sudden radiation of heat occurred at the same time, 1300 meters from me, and 410 meters from you."
Ryoken and Avatar got on their radios to wake up BushWacker at camp at the same time, but Avatar beat Ryoken to the punch and hit the transmit button.
Avatar: "Wake up, BushWacker! We got something here! I think Masakari did something to power up the ruins!"
Masakari: "...hey, you know I'm not even sure that was me--" Ryoken and Avatar glared at the doubting dragon.
Bushwacker on radio: "...whaf...rrrg...whadja do?" He was trying to get his sleeping bag and blankets out of the way.
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BushWacker took to foot to see what happened. It wasn't too hard--the distance was pretty short and the route well-known.
BushWacker: "So it works when...you have music...in your *head*?" he asked to Ryoken.
Ryoken: "Yeah, and techno at that. it seems that the ancient race developed a power that responded to one's internal rhythm. Most other music doesn't make the ship react."
BushWacker: "Can you do it again?"
Masakari: "Um, I guess. You want...?"
With that Masakari placed his hand again on the plastic dome, took a nervous deep breath, and pulled up some very basic techno to play. *flash!* There was the light again, but no sound. He kept his hand on though, concentrating further.
BOOOOOM! The whole area rocked gently.
Sawtooth on radio: "I felt another wave of heat, more constant, from three new sources, at 630 meters, 110 meters, and 350 meters from you. There was seismic activity: 1.5 on the Richter scale."
Ryoken: "What did you see now?"
Sawtooth on radio: "Video shows a slight change in most structures. They are smaller. Audio picks up a low frequency noise: (again it played the sound, which was identical to the first one)."
It would only be later that we would understand what Sawtooth meant by "smaller." When the ruins shook, much of the dirt of millenia crumbled off, and that reduced their apparent size, fooling the robot into seeing smaller ruins.
Avatar was silently watching the whole scene. She saw that the flash came directly from the dome. She heard the boom and already played the memory of that low sound back in her mind several times, picking out subtle sounds within the boom. She also felt a bit warm; whether it was the situation or the "sudden radiation of heat" she couldn't tell. out of the corner of her eye, on a wall, some symbols glowed dimly, next to a ten-stripe diagram....
Avatar: "Hey look at this!" She pointed a shiny claw at the illuminated symbols. "Did we just turn this on?" BOOOOM! the loud noise came again, but a little sooner than the last one. The ten-stripes, though metallic, lit up softly. Everyone click-clacked with their footclaws as they walked over to Avatar. Just they got there, everything blinked off. Masakari had taken his hand off from the dome.
BushWacker: "Masakari, stay on the dome. I'm going back for Sawtooth. We need a high vantage point here and its sensors to record everything that happens. Try to get that thing going again. Masakari, where do you keep your music?"
Masakari: "It's all stacked up just inside my tent, the one next to the power generator!" He raised his voice as the allosaur leader ran farther away.
BushWacker stared turning for a corridor that led out.
Avatar: "Yo, what do we do?" she callled to BushWacker.
"I can't imagine the whole ruins are run from just one spot. Find other places that might do the same thing as what happened here." the leader was shaking just a bit, trembling with anticipation about what Masakari might have found.
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It was evening, the stars were just coming out, and the sky was the dimmest shade of red possible before nighttime. Halogen lights on stands lit up the building, foot paths circled around with many dino footprints, and Sawtooth loomed in the area. Sawtooth was awake and standing tall on its toes in front of the same building. It turned its alloy neck periodically to check its surroundings for anything unusual, sometimes shifting its feet. Every time someone walked by, he or she couldn't help but walk intentionally close to the massive feet, passing a hand down the length of the smooth arch. Or if someone was carrying a heavy load, to stop and rest on the wide toecrotches. Everyone always seemed to be looking in Sawtooth's direction. ^^
Masakari had his massive music collection scattered around the dome; Avatar had brought her sound system to hook up with Masa's (nickname) many music players. Various speeds and forms of beats wafted out from the ruins, apparently the two were experimenting with different music to make the ruins do whatever it was it did. Oh, one more thing: those booms happened roughly once a minute, but only while someone had their hand on the dome, and only when they were thinking a pretty fast rhythm in their mind.
Avatar: "It's hooked up, Masa. Go!" A moving mix of electronic music thundered as everyone started to unconsciously bounce their heads to the rhythm.
Masa was accustomed to the dome now. Flash, boom, good. Let's see if anything new happens this time. He let the beat take over him. Two minutes and two booms, but nothing new. The symbols and stripes glowed, but nothing else did.
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Tuning
The regular camp was pretty much abandoned because we were all staying next to the ruins. Avatar and Masa would go and come for supplies and hunt the wild animals that tore up things there, but that was about it. Nine days after we discovered the dome and it's powers, and nothing new *at all*. Well, it's about time something new happened today.
Avatar: "mmm...what time is it?"
BushWacker: "no...time to get up."
In the other tent, Ryoken: *hiss* *rip* "...not again...." Her blanket would need replacing soon. ^^
Masakari: *arrruuuughhhh....* "Time to work," he mumbled to no one in particular.
The four crouched or sat on a stump or a log, eating breakfast, but all were in silence. It's a given that they were all sick of anything with a techno beat. The four had gotten plenty of rest the night before, and awoke well after sunrise, yet they felt that ugly feeling of both wanting to sleep again and wanting to get up.
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Help Wanted
The cycle of clearing out ruins, inspecting them, interpreting them, and documenting them had become tedious by now. All had been fascinated by the news of these austere and ghostly ruins, and they all thirsted for discovery and adventure, and those were pretty big motivations for signing up. The pay wasn't great, as the governments and archeological organizations that chartered Masakari, Ryoken, Avatar, and BushWacker did not know what kind of good(if any) the study of the ruins would yield. But that's why you sent people out--to find out, right? And anyway they said they were all thirsty for adventure and those lines young people always say, right? But initial excitement gave way to routine and even boredom over time. Everyone refocused the day Masa figured out the on switch (read: dome) for most of the ruins, but that bit of revelation grew into a brick wall that seemed impossible to break through. Now that they roughly knew that brain activity, focused with a strong stimulus (read: techno music) and delivered by touch turned over the engines on this colossal structure, what could they do with it? There's a difference between starting a vehicle and piloting it away.
BushWacker: "I want us to all have a few words together," said the allosaur. "We've all been working like hell here, and we done good. Very good." He paused to lift his face to the sky, then leveled it again to his team. "But, do any of you feel the same way I do--that we're finding a lot o' new stuff but not understanding what all that new stuff means to us? Oar to the rest of the world? "
Avatar: "What do you mean, finding and understanding?"
BushWacker: "I mean, what good are we doing here? We are basically cleaning house in a milennia-old mega-mansion. Look behind me--" BushWacker uncrossed his arms to point a claw at the main ruins behind him momentarily-- "and all around me, and even in front--" he swept his pointed claw to cover the lesser but still gigantic ruins and structures around the team-- " We could spend all our lives here and never finish."
Masakari: "So what, we call for help? Get some others to relieve us? Nah, I'm sure we discover something else soon..." Masakari appealed to Ryoken and Avatar.
BushWacker: "I don't think we need replacements. Just helpers. But a lot more helpers. Hell, I'm curious about he ruins now. I wanna know what it's all about, and if we stick together, and unlock The Key To Everything around here, maybe we'll get famous..." he smiled. "But I *know* we'll never find anything at this rate. If we find something, yeah, we'll split the credit and resulting wealth with the extra teams present, but it's better than having no one else here."
Avatar: "So we call the arcs and carts?" (By this, Avatar referred to archaeologists and cartographers.)
Bushwacker leaned back on a boulder and found it quite cold. He answered, "Yes. They tend to keep interest the longest. The government already has most of what it wants of us: detailed topography of a few previously uncharted lands. People always want to find out about new things even if they don't help civilization at all. And arcs and carts make what we're doing profitable for themselves. They may make it profitable for us too."
Ryoken: "Let's call some help in." She stretched out her legs. And curled her toes. "It's getting lonely here." Just after saying that, her eyes went wide in realization of her unintended insult. "Um, I mean that--well I have the three of you with me, but--I mean not that you're not getting boring...ah..." Everyone else got the point, so they softened their harsh stares and she stopped talking.
BushWacker: "I'll set up the antenna on Sawtooth. Avatar, can you config the computers to connect to a satellite?"
Avatar: "Gotcha boss. It will be good to have a few more friends helping us." She smiled, let her center of gravity fall backward, and converted the falling motion to a trot toward the camp storage tent. It was slightly strange to everyone else how Avatar always played with gravity like that.
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Sawtooth Versus the Ship Defenders
A while back before the ship-ruins had been launched, Avatar and Ryoken had taken Sawtooth all over the ruins to scan every structure in every imaginable way. X-rays predictably didn't work on the metallic areas, but they did reveal many previously unknown entrances to the structures. Sawtooth's expensive thermal vision system finally unveiled the exact location of the four sources of heat that were intially "felt" the day Masakari chose to mix 170 beats per minute with alien technology. And a very special creation of Avatar's, an infra-radio wave camera, did see through just about everything, for hundreds of meters into the ground. Bushwacker plotted the data into his laptop, amazed at the shape and depth of the ruins.
So it came to the day where Map 4416 was fully triangulated, scanned and ready to be explored. It consisted of three charcoal black structures. They were not easily identifiable because they did not reflect light. Even on a cloudless day the sun did not make any reflections on the structures' surfaces. They did look like whopping half-buried slices of orange, or solid gigantic billowing sails--except they were darker than charcoal black. And as far away as they were from the campsite, they still dwarfed Sawtooth.
Sawtooth: "Four objects are approaching. Tactical system on. Ready Ryoken?" it asked without emotion.
Ryoken: "Yes," she hissed.
Why? From where? why now to them? Did it matter? One round of the projectiles went wide and disintegrated a tower of the ship that was lined with meter-thick alloy. Sawtooth was a light, fast weapon for its size, but it didn't have nearly so much armor to it as that hit tower. Anyway, Ryoken sweated bullets inside the unemotional Sawtooth as the rest of the team took refuge at the old main camp. BushWacker was sending terrain data by laptop and GPS for the brave raptoress fighting the four smaller but tough machines. Each one was 9 to 11 meters tall, with a massive cannon in one hand and a hatchet or similar close-range weapon in the other. They looked like parasaurs, but more vicious. Sawtooth let loose a synthesized roar from between rows of shining teeth. Ryoken was trying to keep enough distance between herself and the 'paramechs', trying to build a strategy to kill 'em off. The paramechs just kept closing the distance and firing their exploding projectiles, spraying red-hot ammo fragments into the bushy hills. Sawtooth had to run for now, but as soon as the opportunity came up, Ryoken would unload on them with Sawtooth's massive particle projector cannon....
BushWacker on radio: "Eight o'clock low! One is trying to flank you!
the connection from to robot to laptop was pretty fast normally, but at a range of nearly two kilometers, the map window took a while to update, resulting in a lot of held breath as the computers attempted to reestablish connections.
The fight was about half an hour, with a lot of shooting from the machines and mostly leaping by Sawtooth/Ryoken. In the end, the four paramechs were shot, stomped, and crunched. However, Sawtooth didn't win unscathed. Matter of fact, Ryoken would coax the limping Sawtooth back to camp barely in one piece. *My robot...oh, how much time and materials it's goin' to take to refit it...*
Detail: The Fight
Sawtooth activated ion jets to rise above the long shot the flanking paramech took. The round flew past, and just over the other three machines. They ducked as quickly as their ancient processors could calculate. Sawtooth landed--THOOM!--on higher ground, whipping around fluidly to scan the four machines together again, and still closing. Sawtooth backed up, turned around, and began into a sprint away from the enemies. On radar, the four machines held back while Sawtooth kept running. Ryoken didn't notice this until she had two kilometers between them...Why did they stay back? *What's going on Sawtooth...?* Ryoken tapped a screen for a zoomed-in image of the four machines. Each faced her about 20 meters apart, all hatchets and rusted swords down, all cannons aimed at Ryoken. Well, I dont think you can hit me from there. As for my beautiful weapon, however...
Avatar on radio: "What's happening now?"
Masakari on radio: "How's your condition? All four are still out there!"
Ryoken: "They just stopped. I can see them, they're all targeting me, but they aren't moving." *Take the initiative! A stopped enemy is a dead enemy! Go! Go!* Instincts screamed in Ryoken's mind as she triggered Sawtooth's weapon. Pure blue-white energy came from out it's mouth, pointed to the left center paramech. The ions fried it's systems, ate away at its armor, and burned off most of it's sword arm. It collapsed backward. The other three didn't move, but they did raise their arms a little, then they flashed with a yellow light--parabolic shots! arcing up for more range! Sawtooth sidestepped to the right and took aim at the extreme right paramech--the three remaining machines began closing again--Ryoken didn't quite get out of the way. Pinging all over Sawtooth could be heard, the parabolic shots landed over a wide area, kicking up dust. Ryoken fired back a straight beam but it went wide.
Ryoken on radio: "I'm gonna claw these guys to death!! RRRAAAHHH!"
BushWacker: "Don't lose your cool!"
Avatar: "Smashem good!" she yelled hopefully, looking at the four blips on the GPS coming to the big white blip.
One tiny slip-up of whatever or whoever programmed these machines was that they revealed a pattern. When any paramech had turned and run and aimed a certain amount, it momentarily stopped and straightened itself up. For such heavy things, they did this little ritual pretty quickly. Ryoken regarded the paramechs. At least they didn't straighten up over the same time interval each time. But, it wasn't her fault they would fall by that little ritual of theirs, now, was it? One paramech would never tell the difference, as it vaporized under the scorching fire of Sawtooth-ions (tm).
Ryoken on radio: "One down, two and a half to go!!"
Masakari: "come on, drop 'em now, you can *do* it, Ryo," he pleaded to the laptop screen.
Avatar on radio: "Isolate the damaged one! It'll move slower than the other two!"
Ryoken on radio: "I can't do much about that! I--AAAHHH!" She avoided a very good shot--"They're smart--using the damaged one as bait...I'm CQ-ing these guys!" The radio clicked off at the campground end and the white blip on the laptop started creeping across the screen to the two closest red blips to lay down some hurt.
The two paramechs raced right up to Ryoken/Sawtooth and split to the right and left just a few feet away. Both got great shots up and down the front and sides of the giant winged robot. Ryoken spun her mechanized dragon to follow the one to the left. Sawtooth almost predicted the command: The metal heat-sink wings sweeped to the right, the legs gave way into a sprint, and jump jets fired, to blast the dragon up over, and down from nearly 110 meters above on top of the poor enemy. It was trapped, squirming under Sawtooth's massive right foot. Helplessly it lifted up one toe, then another, but it could not push up the whole leg bearing down. Sawtooth emanated an electronic rumble as it bore down on the machine. Ryoken could feel the fight being smashed out of the machine. Then it shifted and freed it's hatchet arm--!
Ryoken: "NOOOO!! Arrr--!"
She flipped on jump jets and tipped the exhausts to thrust down harder on the paramech. The sensors and cameras on the paramech shattered one by one as Ryoken hissed in excitement. Sawtooth seemed to like it too, apparently watching the thing watching back from between two toes, until the struggle was over. Slowly, the enemy let the hatchet slip, and destroyed itself in a fiery explosion that sprayed all sorts of blunt objects up in the air.
Ryoken: "*pants* Get up, Ryoken, just keep MOVING--" She steered left to engage the one good enemy and the damaged enemy. Radar showed they paired up at 440 meters away, probably to maximize odds of victory, now that they were at less than half strength. Well Ryoken steered anyway, but yelled as she toppled over with Sawtooth and cursed at the warning messages and lights popping up all over the cockpit:
Sawtooth: "Severe damage to right foot and wings. Heatsinks are leaking coolant; reservoir will be emptied in seven minutes. Armor perforation detected throughout head and arms."
Now the strategy changed. To Very Chaotic. The radar blips started getting closer to the center of the screen. Ryoken glanced between the radar and the controls, rushing to get her machine up before the enemy got her--
Too late! The good paramech slammed down with a heavy sword on the cockpit, delivering devastating damage to Sawtooth's head, as the damaged one covered with prickly fire. Now Ryoken was sweating high-yield explosive shells. "Aw, SHOVE IIIIT!!" she raged, allowing blind bloody battle fury to posess her completely.
Masakari: "Wow, she just threw the little blips almost off the screen. Shoot I'd hate to get her pissed at me." Masa pointed to the furthest one. No one else said anything.
Now Ryoken had the damaged paramech in the deadly jaws of the toothy one. It didn't put up much of a fight, but the jaws DID put thousands of tons of pressure on the afflicted...
Ryoken had a neural input to feel what Sawtooth was doing. She held a pose with muzzle in the air, jaws wide open. *Oh, I'm not going to eat you...* She shook her head back and opened even wider, then closed her jaws tightly on the neural resistance on her tongue. Outside, the one machine was slipping to the back of the other machine's mouth. *I'm just going to give you dragon breath!* She snapped her jaws shut, and closed her eyes in ecstasy. Sawtooth energized it's particle cannon, and at less than point-blank range, the blast out of its mouth launched charged particles of paramech into orbit. *Now, what about that good one left? Ah, putting much ground between us? Smart. But no help at all. C'mere, I still got one good foot left. And it is in fact the left one.*
The machine was frantically searching its memory for a winning strategy. It had to settle for one with a 35% odds to win rate. To the raptoress nearly a kilometer away, it looked like indecision! She shifted the heavy weight of Sawtooth's right leg and started for the last enemy. The enemy took one step forward and stopped. Then it walked up a bit and stopped. Now it began stepping back. And all Ryoken could do was limp closer and closer to the last paramech for a strangely slow kill. *FWISSSHH!* A stream of white energy flew out of Sawtooth's mouth, covered the now 800 meters to the robot, and almost hit. Ryoken looked away from the radar to see the enemy in a stance of evasion. *FWISSSHH!* Another close call. She knew she'd miss a lot at this range, but it was important to keep the pressure up. *You never know when you can swing the battle to your favor...* Another good evasion and a return of projectile fire from the machine 690 meters away. Ryoken tapped the throttle some more.
Sawtooth: "Warning, right leg yield strength exceeded. I have a joint dislocation." At the same time, Sawtooth shuddered and metal grinded on metal below.
Ryoken on radio: "I'm barely moving, BushWacker. Any terrain or structures I can use?"
BushWacker on radio: "I don't see much..." he tapped on his laptop to zoom out. "Hell, the machine's in a valley, and you're gonna run out of high ground soon. Some old forest near the foot of the hill you are going down will slow down the machine a lot, though. An equalizer?"
Ryoken on radio: "Sure. And Sawtooth here can shoot though trees like shooting though tissue paper," she said with confidence. The end of the transmission was punctuated with the pinging of armor and swish of an ion charge.
The enemy had increased its aggression as it sniped from among the wide trees. Sawtooth lifted off and barely jumped over the first few trees. It landed on its left leg, wings spread for maximum braking. With high-strength claws, it ripped out a path to the machine. Effortlessly, the enemy calculated a jump back would be the best evasion--but in mid jump it analyzed a new opportunity. It raised up its spear-wielding arm and lifted off again--
Ryoken knew it was coming and braced as best she could--
WHAM!! the spear was thrust completely between Sawtooth's left shoulder and neck. Crimson hydraulic fluid squirted onto the cockpit glass. It caused a processor restart (read: panic) in Sawtooth's computers. Outside, the paramech clenched the shoulder, attempting to drive the spear further in. Reflexively, Ryoken ripped the spear back out. More fluids gushed out and the machine lost its hold on Sawtooth. It fell on its back, and again Ryoken responded reflexively. She shut off connection valves to the left arm, saving precious coolant and power. Next she commanded Sawtooth to stomp down its left foot with all its might on the machine, before it got up again. Sawtooth spoke all manner of warnings, but there was no time for it now. It ended here! The mechanized dragon's jets lit up and thrusted down even harder, belting out a deafening roar as the enemy gave in to the pressure. Sawtooth's toes were splayed out. No arm was freeing itself this time. No matter how hard the paramech squirmed, it could not bring any weapon to bear. Finally, its sensing devices were crushed, and Sawtooth gave a final strain, blowing up the enemy under its huge clawed foot. Jets fizzled out, and the rage was gone. The 4 on 1 fight was finally over.
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Sawtooth: "I'm damaged all over. Right leg is severely damaged. Right arm is severely dam--"
Ryoken: "Yes I know, you've been saying the same thing the whole way back here," she grumbled with annoyance, more to herself than to the 31-meter weapon.
At the building camp, mouths dropped open at the sight: Masa sighed and frowned at the thousands of bullet holes--well, not bullets exactly, but just as damaging; BushWacker got icy chills thinking about what might have happened to his brave pilot had she taken just one more shot; Avatar strode up close to view the sparks fizzing out from some larger gashes on the legs. Ryoken gave the three a shaky thumbs-up and gave a half-smile, half frown from the cracked cockpit. As for Sawtooth, the sight was pathetic: it had fragmentation holes everywhere, coolant and other fluids were bleeding from its head and chest, and the heat sink-wings were pinged all over from shrapnel. At least it's tail was mostly good. Like every living warrior, Ryoken never turned her back to the enemy. She believed that if you did, then you deserved to get shot down through your back. Everyone predictably looked at the normally awesome green and white feet. This was the worst. The left leg had it's paint job scraped off, revealing sparking electronics under destroyed armor. The right foot was bleeding fluids all over. Dirt, plants, and some small animals had been stomped and were shoved up in its toecrotches 'cause Sawtooth was too hurt to lift that leg. All unconsciously felt a sympathetic pain for those once-perfect feet.
Everyone: "D'oh!"
Sawtooth: "I don't understand. Repeat comman--"
Ryoken: "Aw, shut up. Go to sleep..." she groaned. What a day.
Sawtooth strained to obey. It shuddered to a stop, powered down all its electric systems (the ones that were still working, anyway), then shuddered again as it tilted slowly forward... it recovered its balance with its damaged right leg, then finished going to sleep. Standing up.
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LDU Swim Team Head Coach: contact for training
"Get ready for Beijing 2008--The Next Summer Olympics" |
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Forum Administrator
Group: Forum Members
Active: 6/18/2018
Posts: 1,755 |
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| Damn, what's all this about "unrefined" or whatever? You're crazy! And Sawtooth is HOT! -------------------------------
Dinosorceror, Administrator
Lava Dome Five Enterprises |
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Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Active: 1/25/2007
Posts: 80 |
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Well Dino, I've got like 2.5 stories like this. And yes they are unrefined. By this I mean, the stories need purpose, a core, an ultimate plot and reason to tell them. And I need to make them funner And they need to be finished.
Glad you like Sawtooth, even if the origins of its name you might boo... 
EDIT: Oh CRAP, I just realized that I posted the story with all its different plot pieces DISASSEMBLED... *facepaws and turns BRIGHT red...* I swear, the story has flow, it's not supposed to be all disjointed like that! Eeeep!
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LDU Swim Team Head Coach: contact for training
"Get ready for Beijing 2008--The Next Summer Olympics" |
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 Posted 10/1/2006 12:35 PM |
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Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Active: 3/22/2011
Posts: 152 |
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I really actually kinda like the nonlinear feel to the thing that is there presently, whether you intended it or not.
As for the names... I don't find them particularly anything... but I think that names like Bushwacker and Avatar strike me a little bit more like callsigns, rather than actually 'so your mother really named you Redship?' Or whatever.
You said you want your text to be immersive; you've got really good concepts and stuff, but I don't think that there's enough vivid description to quite achieve the effect that I think you want... the text reads like a slightly embellished mission report... lots of technical details and explanation, without very much feeling and atomospherics.
The occational sentence is just plain confusing, like this one:
"Avatar was bounding thirty meters above BushWacker and Ryoken in a section of the ruins that was cleared to explore. Though all this was made of metal and plastic, metal rusted, and there was a lot more metal than plastic, and no one was in that much a rush to injure themselves just to see the sights. Well-calculated jumps, pulls, and twists by Avatar allowed her to climb anywhere easily."
The thing with Ryoken ripping the sheet every morning was funny... I think you should include more details like that within the story, not necessarily funny stuff, but just quirks and little events that happen, rather than just the big picture the whole time.
One thing that's not quite believable about this story is that you don't include any of the side-dialog. Obviously, there are few stories that include all of it without transforming into full-fledged novels, but there needs to be more to spice things up and show the actual dynamics of the individual characters themselves.
The little list of chars at the top was cool, and I was interested pretty promptly to see what you were going to do with the learning curve thing that you mentioned... that different members of the team were improving as team-members at different rates, but you didn't really run with it as I'd hoped you would.
You would think, that if Ryoken wasn't learning to be a team-member as quickly as everyone else, that would cause more trepidation or concern for/about her, but it didn't, really.
In Ender's Game the author shows how the main character observes how quickly others learn in comparison to him, and how he learns and observes things himself. That type of thing spices things up in the reading, and gives insight into the characters... and helps you as an author develop them.
I somehow don't think that you did enough character work in comparison to the progression of the plot... everyone is really calm about the fact that these ruins aren't yielding anything new. Now, you established in the text that it was frustrating, but since you wrote in third person, the characters aren't affected by the statement, and I think you should establish that one or more of them are actually getting really ticked that these ruins are stupid, and that they haven't found anything for so long.
I also kinda wanted to see more description of how Sawtooth was constructed. Yes, I know that it's a dragony thingy with some wings and some toz™ and some new-fangled robot-skin, but you should go into more detail about how that's helpful to the machinery, and how it functions physically, and, most of all, simply what it looks like.
As for the writing style itself, I think it's a little verbose, if you'll pardon the irony of my word-choice just now.
The length of sentences, I find, is reasonable, but it would help your flow to be more concise to put more common words in there, and only pull out the big guns when necessary, rather than just using them when you happen to use them.
Yeah, that's all the critiquing that I have in me right now... hope you enjoyed the bashing. | |
Something more important than Patch's sentiments: SAVE the goddamned INTERNET! |
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