I was wondering why the Cybers put Wave Convoy so high on a martial arts skill ranking system, when he/I have none, really. Then, this popped out... it slots nto both my earlier stuff and the Crystaql Osaka attack, and so must be considered poen to big revision depending on how that eventually gets writen, but the only real requirements it imposes are
A: The big robot used for smashing the doe was a repro Epyon from Gundam Wing, built hella tough on Gnarlycurl before being stolen
B: It gets away from the on-site defenders relatively intact
Anyway, here's the file written offline:
----------------------------------------------------
This looks at first like a setting breaker, but just bear with me to the end. If consensus is that it's really too powerful, I'll trim it back a bit.
------------------------------
Dateline: The tail end of the Crystal Osaka attack, after the repro Gundam Epyon that breached the dome is driven off by the valiant Cyber defenders. Wave Convoy and KITTEN have sortied ahead, desperately racing to get there in time to do something, anything, to help, Gnarlycurl following at its poky best speed to deal with the injured and displaced. They're almost too late, but catch up with the fleeing Boskonian just outside the atmosphere...
Surfing With the Alien 5(?):
MAXIMUM OUTPUT
by ClassicDrogn
"KITTEN, I assume you've also done a high-res scan of the bogey. What do you think?" Wave Convoy's voice was tense over the com channel, only the faintest hope weighing against the worst suspiscions.
"Obviously they've changed the IFF, but there's no mistaking that bod, C. It's our boy, all right," the two-tone Trans Am's AI replied, South Boston accent giving it a sensual purr even through a thick layer of anger. "If that's not one of the assholes that offed Duo and stole his shit, he knows 'em. I'm startin' to reconsider that rebuild you offered, as long as it comes with a bonus hatchet or two. Hell, I'll settle for a stake, worked well enough back in Beantown and the 'Dale."
Wave Convoy made an acknowledging hum as he transformed, continuing gravely, "The Boskone must be stopped... no matter the cost. One shall stand, one shall fall... and that one will be YOU!" The Epyon's pilot had ignored all calls for surrender, or even to identify himself, but the time for talking was through as far as Convoy was concerned.
Riding in KITTEN, Marcel "Micheal" LeChevalier gasped as he saw the gravitational shear readings from the self-proclaimed Autobot spike off the chart, resolving after it recalibrated to a whopping 150 gravities accelleration for half a second, shooting the giant mechanoid forward to tackle the fleeing enemy unit. A visible glowing fog began to form around the green and grey giant as he tore into into the Boksone who'd done the critical damge to Crystal Osaka viciously. The giant Cybertronium blade they'd worked on for weeks to sharpen after the Seibertron handwavium finished converting it from plain fiberglass went flying as the arm holding it was severed at the elbow by a savage knife-hand blow, glowing fluid-state energon gushing from ruptured conduits.
"Please tell me you're recording this, K," he pleaded, the shear graph spiking with each strike, all but ignored in favor of the incredible display going on outside.
The softly glowing nimbus only kept growing stronger as Convoy struck again and again, growling over the short-range channel, "Dan Maxwell came to my ship with A DREAM!" The heavy armor of the Epyon replica, easily the equal of Wave Convoy's own, began to deform and crack under the blows. "He wanted to build his FAVORITE EVER MECH!" Spinning blurringly fast, he built momentum for a roundhouse kick that folded his opponent over at the waist like a cheap stuffed toy, then blurred again to catch it in a bear hug before it could slip away. The unit's remaining arm was crushed into uselessness before the raging Autobot turned it loose. "Even though it was a DAMN GUNDAM, I helped him! WE HAD THE SAME DREAM!" more punches and kicks battered the Gundam, the thruster pack mounting the wings falling away to explode after repeated impacts sheared away the waved steel bolts holding it in place. "AND YOU! YOU TOOK HIS DREAM, AND USED IT TO ATTACK THAT CITY! TO KILL ALL THOSE PEOPLE!" The torso armor had begun to shatter and break away, plumes of escaping air from the cockpit setting it tumbling gently even as it drifted back toward the planet, powerless. "BASTARDS! BURN TO SLAG IN THE PIT!!"
The was one last gravity spike as Wave Convoy blurred forward once more, delivering a massive, two-handed overhead smash to the floating wreck, which spiralled away to fall back into the high upper atmosphere, the heat of reentry turning it into a glowing cherry dot before being swallowed by the sulfuric acid clouds. Hanging motionless at last, he watched it for a moment, still shrouded in an eldritch purplish glow, before calling tiredly over the open channel, sounding suddenly as old as his role model, Optimus Prime. "KITTEN," that quiet voice sounded, weighed down by enough remorse for millenia, "I'm going to need a tow back to the ship. Entering stasis mo-..."
The signal ended with the crackle of a lost carrier, and the watching man and AI suddenly realised what had happened - the glowing energy field wasn't some kind of secret weapon, some Dragonball-like power up he'd kept concealed, it was energon, spraying in a fine mist from practically every joint or gap in Convoy's chassis. However he'd produced the gravity spikes that had delivered such stunning force, and enabled moving at speeds starkly incredible for such a huge construct, it had done grievous harm to his own systems.
"FUCK! We better slap a grapple on him before he hits air, M!" KITTEN exclaimed, darting forward on her speed drive. "Gotta admit, though, bossman was seriously hardcore there. Not like the asshole didn't deserve it."
--------------------------
So, I can hear the cries from here, "WTF!? Why is this here, now?"
It occurred to me to wonder why in the universe the Cybers would rate Wave Convoy so high in their combat rankings - granted, he's big and tough, and moves with speed that looks human in scale with his frame, but he/I have no martial skill at all, really, just a lot of time spent watching kung fu flicks and mecha anime. Then I remembered that I'd designed the grav-jump system as a distributed node network with generators all through his body, and realized that driving it at overload could easily result in a "hyper mode" sort of deal, using the accelleration-drive movement at the limb segment level to deliver terrific force. Of course, there has to be a price, some reason he doesn't just do it all the time and clean house - so the crazy gravity fluxes rip up his "circulatory system" even as the overspeed on the joints wrecks his actuators - basically, he'll be needing total replacement of them all after this, and even as it happens he's losing "blood" like Hyatt in the last episode of Excel Saga. On top of that, his own hands have been completely destroyed by the force of the blows, and even the "cuff" joints that flip them out from inside the arms when he transforms are damaged beyond repair, as are the ankles from landing those spinning power kicks. The Panzerkunst evaluation of him as "watch, might exceed Kreiger" would then be based on this rather impressive Seinerweisen, and the stated intention to (re?)construct the sword and unarmed art of Metallikato from Transformers fiction and exsting martial arts as appropriate for his joint and body structure. Though they did retrieve the Epyon's leaf-shaped blade (made in the shape of the anime Epyon's plasma blade and painted a similarly bilious green before being 'waved) it's not the one he uses, however.
Yes, I drasically compressed the time it should take for the wreck to fall into the atmosphere in the name of drama. Sosumi.
And, I know this is out of order, that I've only posted SWtA 1a, 1b, and 2 - 3 is actually going up at the same time as this, introducing the last of my human regulars, and 4 is going to be SOScon. I may change this to 6 if I think of something to show how they'd been operating before it, but unless there's another set of PCs who bust up themselves or their gear and need major fixin' before Crystal Osaka gets the axe, there's not a wole lot of excitement to describing the operation of a mechanic garage. The rewrite of Part One is looking like having three parts now, as well, in order to intersect as intended with the Miranda plotting - basicaly what's there will be adjusted for continuity, and details will be added when they arrive in orbit instead of a quick wrap up.
So what sets him off? As the characters sort-of say above, the mecha in question was built aboard Gnarlycurl, using mostly "cybertronian" methods despite the Gundam Wing styling. It took months, during which time Wave Convoy and Dan "Duo" Maxwell (his real name, but who had none of the look except wearing a long braid, BTW) bonded over the similarity of their quests to build what each considered the ultimate mecha of thier dreams. A few weeks after it was finished, Dan's ship was found wrecked, him messily dead inside it, and the Epyon missing. The obvious conclusion that such a sweet piece of gear was now in Boskone hands was bad enough, but what they used it for... and here I thought I'd made a character without major hot buttons, but just the thought of it when it occurred to me had me shaking with anger IRL, and I knew it was too rich in character development to pass up. Why is he feeling so guilty at the end? Because however you look at it, in the final analysis it was Convoy and his people who built the weapon that punched through Crystal Osaka's dome, making him, in a way, an accessory to the attack. If this is where The Beginning ends, then it's time for him to become serious about the fight, instead of just picking up the peices after battles, when the slow-moving Gnarlycurl arrives.
I'll add a link to here from the SWtA thread so it's easy to find the storybit later. I meant to do it before, since it has RP with WC in it - I intend for anything involving him to be linked in SWtA for ease of reference, instead of having to try to hunt down half-remembered threads months later to check details or make adjustments.
- CD
ETA: And could we get a "+RP/story" or something added to the thread title, so it's easier to find later on? SOmeday I'll ahve access on a machine that suports "save link as" again and will save off all the story threads... I keep thinking I should collect the messageboard links, correlate them to the timeline and add a post on there, too, but that one's even further away.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
A: The big robot used for smashing the doe was a repro Epyon from Gundam Wing, built hella tough on Gnarlycurl before being stolen
B: It gets away from the on-site defenders relatively intact
Anyway, here's the file written offline:
----------------------------------------------------
This looks at first like a setting breaker, but just bear with me to the end. If consensus is that it's really too powerful, I'll trim it back a bit.
------------------------------
Dateline: The tail end of the Crystal Osaka attack, after the repro Gundam Epyon that breached the dome is driven off by the valiant Cyber defenders. Wave Convoy and KITTEN have sortied ahead, desperately racing to get there in time to do something, anything, to help, Gnarlycurl following at its poky best speed to deal with the injured and displaced. They're almost too late, but catch up with the fleeing Boskonian just outside the atmosphere...
Surfing With the Alien 5(?):
MAXIMUM OUTPUT
by ClassicDrogn
"KITTEN, I assume you've also done a high-res scan of the bogey. What do you think?" Wave Convoy's voice was tense over the com channel, only the faintest hope weighing against the worst suspiscions.
"Obviously they've changed the IFF, but there's no mistaking that bod, C. It's our boy, all right," the two-tone Trans Am's AI replied, South Boston accent giving it a sensual purr even through a thick layer of anger. "If that's not one of the assholes that offed Duo and stole his shit, he knows 'em. I'm startin' to reconsider that rebuild you offered, as long as it comes with a bonus hatchet or two. Hell, I'll settle for a stake, worked well enough back in Beantown and the 'Dale."
Wave Convoy made an acknowledging hum as he transformed, continuing gravely, "The Boskone must be stopped... no matter the cost. One shall stand, one shall fall... and that one will be YOU!" The Epyon's pilot had ignored all calls for surrender, or even to identify himself, but the time for talking was through as far as Convoy was concerned.
Riding in KITTEN, Marcel "Micheal" LeChevalier gasped as he saw the gravitational shear readings from the self-proclaimed Autobot spike off the chart, resolving after it recalibrated to a whopping 150 gravities accelleration for half a second, shooting the giant mechanoid forward to tackle the fleeing enemy unit. A visible glowing fog began to form around the green and grey giant as he tore into into the Boksone who'd done the critical damge to Crystal Osaka viciously. The giant Cybertronium blade they'd worked on for weeks to sharpen after the Seibertron handwavium finished converting it from plain fiberglass went flying as the arm holding it was severed at the elbow by a savage knife-hand blow, glowing fluid-state energon gushing from ruptured conduits.
"Please tell me you're recording this, K," he pleaded, the shear graph spiking with each strike, all but ignored in favor of the incredible display going on outside.
The softly glowing nimbus only kept growing stronger as Convoy struck again and again, growling over the short-range channel, "Dan Maxwell came to my ship with A DREAM!" The heavy armor of the Epyon replica, easily the equal of Wave Convoy's own, began to deform and crack under the blows. "He wanted to build his FAVORITE EVER MECH!" Spinning blurringly fast, he built momentum for a roundhouse kick that folded his opponent over at the waist like a cheap stuffed toy, then blurred again to catch it in a bear hug before it could slip away. The unit's remaining arm was crushed into uselessness before the raging Autobot turned it loose. "Even though it was a DAMN GUNDAM, I helped him! WE HAD THE SAME DREAM!" more punches and kicks battered the Gundam, the thruster pack mounting the wings falling away to explode after repeated impacts sheared away the waved steel bolts holding it in place. "AND YOU! YOU TOOK HIS DREAM, AND USED IT TO ATTACK THAT CITY! TO KILL ALL THOSE PEOPLE!" The torso armor had begun to shatter and break away, plumes of escaping air from the cockpit setting it tumbling gently even as it drifted back toward the planet, powerless. "BASTARDS! BURN TO SLAG IN THE PIT!!"
The was one last gravity spike as Wave Convoy blurred forward once more, delivering a massive, two-handed overhead smash to the floating wreck, which spiralled away to fall back into the high upper atmosphere, the heat of reentry turning it into a glowing cherry dot before being swallowed by the sulfuric acid clouds. Hanging motionless at last, he watched it for a moment, still shrouded in an eldritch purplish glow, before calling tiredly over the open channel, sounding suddenly as old as his role model, Optimus Prime. "KITTEN," that quiet voice sounded, weighed down by enough remorse for millenia, "I'm going to need a tow back to the ship. Entering stasis mo-..."
The signal ended with the crackle of a lost carrier, and the watching man and AI suddenly realised what had happened - the glowing energy field wasn't some kind of secret weapon, some Dragonball-like power up he'd kept concealed, it was energon, spraying in a fine mist from practically every joint or gap in Convoy's chassis. However he'd produced the gravity spikes that had delivered such stunning force, and enabled moving at speeds starkly incredible for such a huge construct, it had done grievous harm to his own systems.
"FUCK! We better slap a grapple on him before he hits air, M!" KITTEN exclaimed, darting forward on her speed drive. "Gotta admit, though, bossman was seriously hardcore there. Not like the asshole didn't deserve it."
--------------------------
So, I can hear the cries from here, "WTF!? Why is this here, now?"
It occurred to me to wonder why in the universe the Cybers would rate Wave Convoy so high in their combat rankings - granted, he's big and tough, and moves with speed that looks human in scale with his frame, but he/I have no martial skill at all, really, just a lot of time spent watching kung fu flicks and mecha anime. Then I remembered that I'd designed the grav-jump system as a distributed node network with generators all through his body, and realized that driving it at overload could easily result in a "hyper mode" sort of deal, using the accelleration-drive movement at the limb segment level to deliver terrific force. Of course, there has to be a price, some reason he doesn't just do it all the time and clean house - so the crazy gravity fluxes rip up his "circulatory system" even as the overspeed on the joints wrecks his actuators - basically, he'll be needing total replacement of them all after this, and even as it happens he's losing "blood" like Hyatt in the last episode of Excel Saga. On top of that, his own hands have been completely destroyed by the force of the blows, and even the "cuff" joints that flip them out from inside the arms when he transforms are damaged beyond repair, as are the ankles from landing those spinning power kicks. The Panzerkunst evaluation of him as "watch, might exceed Kreiger" would then be based on this rather impressive Seinerweisen, and the stated intention to (re?)construct the sword and unarmed art of Metallikato from Transformers fiction and exsting martial arts as appropriate for his joint and body structure. Though they did retrieve the Epyon's leaf-shaped blade (made in the shape of the anime Epyon's plasma blade and painted a similarly bilious green before being 'waved) it's not the one he uses, however.
Yes, I drasically compressed the time it should take for the wreck to fall into the atmosphere in the name of drama. Sosumi.
And, I know this is out of order, that I've only posted SWtA 1a, 1b, and 2 - 3 is actually going up at the same time as this, introducing the last of my human regulars, and 4 is going to be SOScon. I may change this to 6 if I think of something to show how they'd been operating before it, but unless there's another set of PCs who bust up themselves or their gear and need major fixin' before Crystal Osaka gets the axe, there's not a wole lot of excitement to describing the operation of a mechanic garage. The rewrite of Part One is looking like having three parts now, as well, in order to intersect as intended with the Miranda plotting - basicaly what's there will be adjusted for continuity, and details will be added when they arrive in orbit instead of a quick wrap up.
So what sets him off? As the characters sort-of say above, the mecha in question was built aboard Gnarlycurl, using mostly "cybertronian" methods despite the Gundam Wing styling. It took months, during which time Wave Convoy and Dan "Duo" Maxwell (his real name, but who had none of the look except wearing a long braid, BTW) bonded over the similarity of their quests to build what each considered the ultimate mecha of thier dreams. A few weeks after it was finished, Dan's ship was found wrecked, him messily dead inside it, and the Epyon missing. The obvious conclusion that such a sweet piece of gear was now in Boskone hands was bad enough, but what they used it for... and here I thought I'd made a character without major hot buttons, but just the thought of it when it occurred to me had me shaking with anger IRL, and I knew it was too rich in character development to pass up. Why is he feeling so guilty at the end? Because however you look at it, in the final analysis it was Convoy and his people who built the weapon that punched through Crystal Osaka's dome, making him, in a way, an accessory to the attack. If this is where The Beginning ends, then it's time for him to become serious about the fight, instead of just picking up the peices after battles, when the slow-moving Gnarlycurl arrives.
I'll add a link to here from the SWtA thread so it's easy to find the storybit later. I meant to do it before, since it has RP with WC in it - I intend for anything involving him to be linked in SWtA for ease of reference, instead of having to try to hunt down half-remembered threads months later to check details or make adjustments.
- CD
ETA: And could we get a "+RP/story" or something added to the thread title, so it's easier to find later on? SOmeday I'll ahve access on a machine that suports "save link as" again and will save off all the story threads... I keep thinking I should collect the messageboard links, correlate them to the timeline and add a post on there, too, but that one's even further away.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows