RP [Strays] SLUG WAR

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

RP Date

ye 45.7

RP Location

GG-X44 "Lome" System, Quarantined planet "Richards World IV"

The Avatar of Clang drifted perilously close to Richards World IV at a cruising speed of very fast the instruments read when the ship finally came within dropping distance of Richards World IV. Having entered the system a month prior the makeshift battlecruiser had been chased away from the planet by the colossal satellite "Richards Satalite II" the size of a space station itself and fashioned into the imposing form of an ovaloid resembling a cracked egg from which the many facets of long-range gigawatt lasers focussed.

Richards World IV was a quarantined planet after all. At first to keep any trespassers from interfering with the oligarchs planet-sized ant farm filled with generations of backwards once-nepleslian settlers having been purposefully regressed to laser-age meets iron-age steampunk the oligarchs family had imposed on the world as nothing more than an expensive pet project to amuse themselves as Richard, his sons and daughters, and his many relatives would cruelly toy with the various nations they built on Richards World IV and goad them against one another like sponsors for gladiators but with death tolls in the hundreds of thousands.

The project had continued for over two centuries before Richard and his family line simply disappeared one day without a trace.

Without the advanced sponsors aiding them, technological growth settled to a crawl and manufactured rivalries were no longer enflamed the planet of Richards World IV grew to a semblance of peace amongst the various nations for a whole century.

And then the Ji'voli arrived on a meteor the still active trespassing satalite had ignored and deposited the alien menace onto Richards World IV.

Fifty years since the arrival of the Ji'voli and word finally got out after a free-captain was shot down by Richards Satelite II but managed to land well enough on the planet and after years became something of a unifying king, bringing technology and unity to Richards World IV's nations against the multiplying alien threat.

It also helped his name was Captain Richard...

It took years for his distress signal to carry at the speed of light to any vessel that would help.

Even longer than that for someone to care enough to brave the weapons of the ancient but still functioning satellite.

That is where the Clang came in. Pushing a sizeable asteroid just large enough to block its profile from the laser the Clang had drifted for weeks into the system and close enough to Richards World IV. Plotting a path to slingshot around the planet on the other side of the satellite it drew closer and closer until.


With explosive bolts releasing them two massive drop pods released from the ship which quickly burned away before Richards Satelite II came about the other side of the planet. Within an hour both pods were on the ground and the Strays were now loose on Richards World IV.

One Week Later.

"Lord Chips I must protest!" The fancy-dressed clown-man in his fancy red and yellow striped tunic with his funny floppy hat with all its feathers and face painted white with lead-containing cosmetic paint honked at him through his painted lips and powdered wig.

"This is highly irregular!" He noble squee'd with his annoying voice.

"Yhup." Chips made a pecking motion at the funny nobles who liked to dress like clowns.

"So whyyyy?" The noble, Jaques-something or whatever his name moaned as one of the AAP drones took another armful of swords and carried them towards the temporary workshop where the metal would be fed into the fabricators.

"'Cause," Chips made another pecking motion with his beak as the man flinched, "Aint hardly any metal worth salvaging to build the drones out of. All your armor and them steam rifles are made from..."

"From a carbon-poly organic recyclable matter harvested from-"

"Yhup, that stuff you make out of crab spunk or whatever that hardens."

"Yes but we will need all the arms we can bear if we are to-"

"Oh look, Captain Roger is waving at you from the castle!" Chips suddenly pointed as the Noble man gasped and turned about.

"Where? Are you sure he was waving for me?"

"Yhup. Gotta be you he was looking right at ye. Just missed him going back from the window you better hurry!"

"Your Captainship!" The Noble started flailing his arms gayly as he pranced back towards the keep, leaving chips to sigh in exasperationn.

"Her grace, these people's backwards..." Chips sighed before walking back towards the temporary hangar constructed out of crab-spunk and canvas tarps that the half-dozen mechs were arrayed across from each other in. Walking back inside the open structure and through the hustle and bustle of strays, R&D, and AAP drones all scrambling on the assembly line Chips took a moment to appraise the slowly assembling drones and their armaments as another drone came online as a fairy inhabited it.

"How did the requisition go, Chips?" A commander-type drone asked, inhabited by one of the pledias; Clotho. "We are seven hundred and thirty kilos of durrandium short of fielding a full company." The child-voiced fairy intoned with cute seriousness.

"Not well. King- Captain Roger is throwing a hissy fit. He wants us to take him, his harem, and all the gold they can carry 'an just skedaddle on off planet 'for the slugs reach the city by nightfall."

"Regretable cowardice." Clotho nodded. "But Lachesis will not be in a position to pick us up for at least another fourty-eight hours at most."

"Yeah, Shani is with him now 'workin her magic on him but regardless we've scraped just about everything we can find made of metal. These folks, even their forks are made of crab-spunk and all we can find is old family relics, some coins, and paperweights."

"Very well," Clotho sighed despite having a mouth. "We will simply have to dismantle what remains of the plating of his ship. See to your lance."

With a salute, chips stood off and made his way over to the line of mechs where in the middle of the hangar was a massive banquet table made of crab-spunk in the offputting yellow with blue specks the material seemed to settle into as the pseudo-feast taking place was being enjoyed by all present as the carcasses of boiled crab, steamed crab legs, fermented crab eggs, fried crab stalks, crab-shell soup, crab-loaf dinner rolls, and salted crab crisps were strewn about the table.

The strays had been fed like kinds every day since they arrived. The entire staple food of the last kingdom on Richards World IV was some kind of land-based crab which had gotten old fast, but the sheer amount of food each meal had been generous to make up for it. Taking a bottle of wine made from Richards Purple Grapes and fermented inside the shell of a Richards Lowland Crab, Chips threw himself down in one of the crab-spunk chairs and poured a generous entire bottle of the wine into his beak and right down his gullet.

Giving a contented sigh, He picked up a massive crab leg and pecked at some of the exposed flesh before settling back down after a moment and appraising the group of his pilots at the table.

"Tonight's the night, mutants." He finally announced before taking the crab-spunk shortsword off his belt he had acquired from one of the locals and brought it down to cut the crab leg in half.

"Tonight, We dine on slug." he declared dramatically before one of the mutants raised a hand.

"That ain't another type of crab, is it Chips?", getting a laugh from a couple of the other mutants.

"Nah. They's slugs true and true not a lick of crab in em." Chips answered, bringing the sword up and taking a nibble of some crab meat stuck to it. "So fore we go see lady Shani and the Captain-king guy; Why dun you tell me what you lot been able to manage with ye mechs and their loadouts 'case Shani wants to know."

 

[Anno nano]

Charlotte was quietly wolfing down as much of the crab and crab related foodstuff she could fit on her plate when Chips arrived, not even looking up as she stayed sat cross legged on her chair. As a relatively fresh recruit for the company, straight out of the slums of Funky City, she hadn’t been eating food that actually tasted of something for long enough for the novelty of actual real meat to wear off as quickly as it might’ve for some of the more veteran members, despite that meat all being the same type of crab. Her ears did prick up at the announcement however, the brunette fox girl mutant listened attentively; even as she picked some gristle out of her teeth with a finger in a most unladylike manner.

In response to the question, Charlotte piped up, although having seemingly forgotten about the mouthful of food she was chewing on it came out as “Mmphfgg!” instead. As she swallowed it down with a large gulp of water, trying not to choke as she practically inhaled the half chewed mouthful of food, Charlotte realised she should probably introduce her name as well as her loadout; after all she’d be one of the newest members of the team and had certainly not fought alongside them until now.

“I’m Charlotte, ermm… Sir?” She ended with a questioning tone and a slight tilt of her head, not quite sure how to address Chips but having watched a few military action flicks, figured it was probably the right thing to say. She pointed over to her mech, a ‘Mean Machine’ type, squatted low to the ground thanks to being turned off. A rather vulgar shade of bright yellow spray paint alongside a stencil had been used to write ‘Long Way Home’ down the largest flat surface, in this case the front left leg’s outer surface. “That’s my girl, scouting and uhm…” She tried to think back to what the mechanic had said when she requested the loadout, something about it being “suicidal to drive a light mech into close combat deliberately”. Aha, that’s it! “Close combat specialist. Nice to meetch'a all!” She finished proudly, a beaming smile on her face, before she went to take another bite of the crab on her plate. She did look up briefly, to see if anyone was waiting for her to say any more that she’d forgotten to mention, but quickly got back to eating her fill.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

"Yeah, that's all very interesting, stray." Chips waved Charlotte down as his head bobbed rather comedically as the mutants lack of teeth made him have to visibly flex food down his beak and gullet. After that he took another gulp of the local wine before sitting contentedly back and giving the hangar a good once over.

There were a handful of other, mechless strays there by default on the off chance they could assembly a mech in the field but for the most part the hangar was busy with the goings on of the various AAP drone soldiers either walking patrols, feeding the rare metal they could scrounge into fabricators for weapons to even arm the automated troops, or in some cases just sitting or standing in place, idle, as their Fairy AI controllers were inhabiting other devices.

"So just to go over what we already know..." Chips began as he explained once again his grasp of the local situation;

Rogers world, essentially a oligarchs family playground a century or more later was all kinds of 'ass backwards' as Chips described it. Trade was at least the only language planetside but the people were so inbred and technologically and educationally backwards that for the past century had lost most all grasp of advancement or progress.

There were few architects and all the homes were decades old and made from the same nearly metal-hard crab fluids that harden with prolonged exposure to UV rays. Because of this most of the population of any of the dozen kingdoms were homeless and lived in essntially tent shanties while more wealthy families could be deemed as such by simply keeping control of one of the already built homes that would likely outlast them.

There was virtually no industry. Most literally anything was made through pouring crab material into already existing moulds for everything from swords and forks to wagon wheels and doorknobs. With the severe lack of trade skills and education there was almost no innovation to such designs other than to simplify them as much as possible with a dwindling artisan class.

There was no intelect in the populace due to a lack of poverty, inbreeding after centuries, and classism with there being no actual written languadge and the locals using pictures on signs to convey businesses and most trade happening through either barter or in rare cases through trade of square gold coins each of which long since in circulation and to precise measurements now lost that could be placed on rods and after filling an entire rod roughly equalling some metric of being worth something such as cents did to equal a DA.

Of the once twelve kingdoms of Rogers World IV, each once being the faction belonging to a family member of the rogers dynasty only one, the terminal Dutchy-Union of Rogerscourt which they now presided in still remained. After a meteor disposed a xeno-fauna onto the planet years before and began to spread the Slugs as the locals described them had overwhelmed the spunk-age swords and slingshots of the Rogerian kingdoms as well as all life the came across in a never-ending tide of hilariously slow carnage.

Things only changed with the arrival as chips made literal air quotes before correcting it to crash of Captain Rogers almost five years back. The former free captain had been shot down by the orbital satellite and being stranded on the world had used his limited on-hand technology, his ship, and literally having the name of Roger to take the vacant position of Captain-King of the Dutchy.

"That means the land is supposed to be ruled by a Duke. Even I know that one!" Chips laughed before continuing.

The duchy, being situated in a natural valley was widely protected by the slug hoards by a single fortress in a mountainpass for the past several years allowing it to thrivew and even prosper as it took in the regugees of the other kingdoms to swell its ranks and the captains coffers. But the slug horde eventually overtook the fortress when, and chips sighed very heavily when explaining how; Someone left the gates open.

Now the slugs were in the valley as of a few months ago and pushing ever deeper as the dutchy militia slowly retreated to the capital city they now presided in which was now considered the last bastion of roger-kind.

"Thats where WE come in, Strays!" Chips audibly squawked.

"With our advanced technology and well-trained troops- and a couple nukes- we can 'mop up this hoard for a few days while little Clotho squeezes ol' Rogers purse strings for all that gold they been sittin on. Hold the city a while with out mechs lookin over the walls and burning bugs till Lachesis brings the Clang back around in a week or so and sends down a few more pods; With more troops we can retake and perminately garrison an AAP company in that fort long-term for Roger to rally his troops if he don't want to go broke payin us and start taking back his world with some well-paid help from the Strays!"

"Easy money for a month or two work if I do say so meself!" Chips said so himself. "So soon as ye get done eatin get yer kit together cause we gotta meet Lady Shani at the big castle where she's workin' that mutant-magic charisma on the Captain-King who wants to show us one o' these slugs we been waiting nigh on a week now to even get a glimpse at his men caught and dragged back a few days ago. If ye got any questions now let em rip, otherwise you got a moment to get any last minute prep or fixins 'fore we head out!"

 

[club24]

Emmathyst had been poking and prodding her crab themed meal for some time before working up the guts to try it. Surprisingly it wasn't half bad and the Saurian followed Charlotte's lead wolfing down as much food as possible before their next mission. The mining-born gal listened to Chip's little exposition piece a little, honestly she wasn't too worried about the politics as much as exactly what it was they would be doing down there.

The last mission had nearly ended her with such a close shave, not something Emma was in a hurry to repeat this time.

"So, these slugs s'pose t'be dangerous to us in mechs or not? Cause I for one dun wanna be getting shot at with rockets'gain."

Emma looked over and nodded as the newbie introduced themselves, "Sup newbie, what rig you driving?"

 

[Anno nano]

Charlotte listened to Chips’s little rundown attentively, well as attentive as she could while stuffing her face with crab. It was a little amazing just how much of the bland same-y meal the relatively small mutant could put away, although the cheapest fast food would probably be fine dining to someone that grew up as a street rat in Funky City. “Sounds easy enough. Dunno how a place like this has the money to pay for much more than a couple of rifles though,” She shrugged her shoulders as she continued “Although I suppose that’s not a problem for us to worry about.” She said in reply to Chips, between mouthfuls of her meal.

At first Charlotte didn’t respond to Emmathyst, the newbie busy picking at her teeth as yet another piece of meat got stuck. However, when no one else replied she turned to the Saurian with a cheerful grin on her face; obviously happy for the chance to talk to some of her new co-workers. “I’m in the mean machine.” She pointed her thumb back over her shoulder, towards the squat looking quadruped mech she’d indicated to Chips earlier. “What’re you in?”

 

[Commissar Farzi]

Luk hadn't really been paying attention, devouring his servings of crab with a gusto that could only be described as 'ravenous.' As he crunched through the thick shell, Wayfinder made her self known. "New mech is in Luk; hopefully things go better than last time." The giant lizard paid her little mind, save for the briefest of glances before returning to his meal. The fairy sighed; Luk was plenty cooperative and easily motivated, but his limited intelligence gave him more or less a one track mind when came to a great many things.

And if you put food in front of him, you may as well forget about getting his attention until he was finished; though the definition of food to him was highly...subjective.

Seriously, who tries to take a bite of a reactor? While it's still on! Still, the components she'd grabbed for his machine would come in handy, especially if they ended up wrecking it again...

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

"Slugs' is just some kind of hoarded animal. They aint shoot no shit except shit." Chips bobbed his avian neck comically to Emmas statement. "They like Locusts or something but just bigger is all. Moving about eating everything they can eat to make more of themselves in some self-fulfilling cycle of eating to get the mass to make more slugs. Anyhow clean up we gotta go meat with Shani and the captain-king-duke-butthead in their fancy palace."

Chips nodded back to Charlotte as he did, putting a four-fingered hand up to one of the larger mechs in the bay.

"Me' Highwayman, same as always. Some strays jump about machines but I prefer the one I got; Sunk a lot of salvage into keeping it running and gunnin these past couple o' years."

The 25-foot tall medium mech was crouched ready to accept a pilot. With its array of three hyper lasers, two heavy lasers, four mega-micro missiles, and other assortments chips highwayman-class mech was built for unleashing its heaviest weapons in a single salvo for absolute damage all at once against other mecha or hard targets while the battery of three hyperlasers might as well be a torrent of unending laser fire like a discount Laser Storm canon made of three smaller weapons.

Of the medium-class mechs fielded by the corporation, it was one of the most purely offensive of mechs for its class while most others were generally ballanced like the Skirmisher or had some specific role or quirk like the others.

"Snacks," Chips intoned, summoning the avatar of his Fairy who appeared from the mirage nanites dispersed by his power glove to flutter around him with her tinny, bell like voice too high to understand it was going so fast as he waved at the fairy for a moment like swatting a bug only to dissipate and then reform the nanites as his hand passed through them.

"Run another diagnositc run on me' mech," Chips ordered, "We're off to see Shani but I want to be able to sortie at a moment notice."

With that, Chips rounded up the various Strays as they started the two mile long walk to the palace from the hangars the corporation had stored its garrison and mechs near the wall.

Accompanied by three MKI drones and a single MKII sentient fairy-controlled drone for security and escort they were also joined by the token honorguard of six practically underage soldiers of the royal militia. Practically kids in ridiculous roughspun trousers the color of mustard with red and gold trimmed tabbards and each wielding 12-foot long pikes that would maybe work against an ancient cavalry charge but nothing else the local troops took the lead as they shooed off and in some cases even beat back locals in the street who were choking up each thoroughfare as a hundred thousand refugees and more all homeless lines each sidestreet in shanty tents and small cloitsters to gawk, beg, or shout questions who to them were strange alien foreigners in even stranger uniforms each stray wore let alone the very uncanny drone soldiers with them.

The smell accumulated by hundreds of thousands of unwashed bodies, trash, and literal experiment and filth was abundant even as someone opened up a second story balcony to throw a literal buckets worth of awful out the window and onto the heads of some of the refugees bellow who already sat on the gutter of a river of literal bodily waste that made each of the strays grateful for the toilets and running water they had at their makeshift base.

The palace was the only structure above four-stories in the entire city and was uphill as the city slopped up to always have the castle in view. Made of the same white crab recycled material with mint-green specks in it the structure didnt actually have walls like one thought of for a castle but instead was seven-sided structure where the building itself lacked windows except twenty-foot off the ground and ramparts surrounded it to dip down to its base making it even higher to any possible entrance. The front of the castle, however, was flanked by two six-story towers lined with murder slots for arrows and were each topped with a large ballista facing out towards the road. Between the two towers was a massive set of oaken doors ten foot tall and banded with some of the rare metal that was likely iron that nobody had yet argued for stripping down or had yet been unsucessfull.

And hanging above that grand entranceway was a fourty-foot tall banner hanging off the gate of crimson red depicting, obviously, a giant ivory-white crab with two claws raised in defiance with a golden crown on its head and with the background of what might be a rising sun or a six-foot diamiter coffee stain since the local sun was yellow and not yellow-brown...

Arrayed around the fields surrounding the castle where row upon row of tents as the captain-kings army trained, polished spunk-swords and spears, drilled, or just lazed about any number of hundreds of cookfires. A contingent of them lazed about the gate in a weary vigil while A single Commander-type AAP drone that could only be the Pledias Clotho and three MKII commando drones with her moved to meet them, all visibly armed with Laslocks like usual but not held alertly, just armed for the sake of being armed.

"Chips." The commander drone nodded, its facial features more painted on than actually moveable as the childlike voice greeted them from the imposing drone body.

Clotho was one of the Pledias. One of seven of the oldest and most competent of the fairys she took on the role as one of the corporations occasional military leaders for one of its AAP companies. Unlike Abigail who was often accompanying Shasta in her iconic maid dress, while Clotho and all the others once in a while played the part of seven maid-dressed bodyguards for the mad-mutant she took up an unadorned form when in command to have as little obstruction as possible other than a gray-speckled cloack she wore over one shoulder despite the fact that as she was the commander type body was not impeded by rain or the elements.

"Lady Shani is inside attempting to persuade Rogers. The king is being..." She paused, the voice of the young fairy drawing off, clearly searching for the word.

"A prick?" Chips offered, as Clotho moved her fingers like a snapping motion which then turned into a point of recognition to chips despite the fact the drone bodies fingers couldn't actually make the noise of a snap.

"Difficult, yes. He is adamant in fleeing the city on Lachesis as soon as possible but will not accept that my sister is not in a possition to do so for several days."

"We can't get paid if we just high-tail it out of here!" Chips hissed comically, needing to open his beak and actually exhail to do so like a goose-hiss but with added tongue-wiggle.

"That is Lady Shastas ' concern. That and all of the refugees left behind she find unacceptable. We must add a united front to compelling the captain to back us fully and I will be relying on all of you for that."

With that, they moved inside, guided by a steward barely into puberty. The castle was not large as one might suspect, Being mostly barracks and the facilities to maintain the castle itself like a donjon, kitchen, halls, silos, stables with actual horses, servants quarters, a small forge and foundry with not a soul about it, some kind of garden, and the like it was only a single building that despite being only three stories and built like a large A-frame the guide called a tower.

Inside was little more than a large meeting hall for the king and his nobles to hold court, a few side rooms for meetings, the kings dormitories, and a wine cellar. When they entered through the doorless arch it was into a large meeting hall fourty-foot across and twice as much long with several stone pillars each ensconced with actual torches and a far-off bay window letting in sunlight to illuminate a wide carpet of red and white trim to which either side was gatherings of a half-hundred nobles and twice as many courters each silently conspiring to their fellows but never so much as stepping any closer to the Dais for which a large throne of crab-spunk was made and sitting on it was a middle-aged Nepleslian man in a worn and patched together spacers enviorment suit with a bomber-jacket over it, and a very gaudy crown make of actual gold with cliche gems the size of eyeballs set into it.

To either side of him rested a crab. Each were the size of a Maximus tank and likely weighed five-tonnes each. Brown-green colored shells they sat on their haunches to either side where claws large enough to sncompass and crushed powered armor flexed or was held up to their mouthes to be cleaned and were held by spunk-chains and cradles restricting their massive biological weapons and were held like reins by crab-riders who sat in wicker-chairs almost like flight-seats woven into sadles on the crabs backs.

Before the captain-king was an assortment of less impressive guards in almost-full spunkplate armor with sheathed greatswords made of the same who were there more for show.

Off to the side as well were close to nine very heavily pregnant women, some with children already on their hip or nursing as they took up a place near the captain-king that was no doubt his harem of local women.

And before even them, the only one on the carpet was none other than the Mad Mutant herself facing off against the king.

Wearing a very strange for the location compared to tunics, Shasta was dressed in a pair of knee-high brown leather boots, a pair of high-riding denim hotpants for which her large wolf-like bushy tail swished out the back, a sunflower yellow tang-top that only covered her chest for which her sports-bra was poking out the bottom and a crop-top length hazard-orange colored jacket that only covered her shoulders, upper back, and arms to expose her lower back and midriff and which the word Concrete was written in Yamataigo on the back.

Mid-argument with the king they came into earshot to hear above the ambient sound of arguing nobles.

"Do it." Shasta swished with her hands on her hips side to side.

"I can't just give you every spoon and nail in my castle, Mutant." The king pressed a hand to his brow in irriation as the Mad Mutant continued.

"Just do it tho." She countered, tilting her head to the side in a jaunty pose as the nobles around them started whisper in excitement as if this where 4d-chess style politics.

"What more your damn robots have started stripping my ship."

"Yeah but just do it though~" She continued. "We can make the drones or the weapons but not booooth"

"Well perhapse instead of making tin-can soldiers you can use that instead to mass produce those rifles of yours. Even a tenth of my troops armed with rifles is more than the under a thousand you've made in your weeks here."

Arriving behind shasta, Clotho strode forwards to continue on as the most famous mutant in the sector turned to give them all a nuclear smile and throw herself around Luk with a big hug that actually had her briefly hang off his neck with her legs off the ground before stepping back.

"Hey guys!" Shasta greeted before just as quickly turning to chips.

"Roger! Why didn't you tell me your birthday is next month? We need to plan a party!" She gushed, putting two hands on the smaller avian mutants shoulders and looking down to him not only by being taller but the sheer force of her personality and presence as the smaller mutant started squawking in response excuses about never celebrating.

"How old are you now though, roger? You're real old now, right?" She asked, flashing her pearly-white canines as she laser-focussed on him.

"Seventy-three, Shani." Chips Squawked again as she gasped in clear excitement no doubt a massive cake with seventy-three candles planned in the future.

There was some more small talk as she made her way around the group to beat down Luk with her sheer charisma, dote on Emma, share a few worlds with Yamog about some spiritualist spacer seance she saw and some of the leftover ritual candles one of them left on some machines she would send her way, and finally to Charlotte who she enveloped in a massive hug, rubbing her long hair, wolf like ears, and cheek on the woman in affection while her massive fluffy tail beat like a broom.

"You're gonna have a lot of fun with Chips," She told Charlotte, "All the strays get to go on cool adventures but him and Rhindol are my favorites!"

With that, some agitated shouting took presidence as the captain-kings argument with clotho got heated.

"Well if you can't recall your ship then instead of stripping mine you can fix it. The powerplant and one vertical thruster are all it needs and your fabricator-"

"Lacks the materials to make superconductors and the cobalt needed for the ion coils. Even if we where to dismantle and recycle all of our mechs we wouldnt come close to getting your powerplant running. Our only option is the one we agreed on; The Strays will offer you military assistance in exchange for compensation you promised in the form of one company of AAP drones and a single lance of mechs. Even if you were to expand the agreed upon amount it would take at most a month for my sister in the system to mine the material in the local asteroid field to field another company or lance let alone send down whats needed to fix your ship. We have at most two days from my scout's predictions of the hoard of heat sources heading this way."

"So i'm stuck with you. But as I said if you arm some of my men..." The captain proposed.

"We havent the adequate time to train them in the use of a laslock. It would be easier to teach them to take a picture with a datajockey than how to train them to propperly wield a firearm. I will continue manufacturing the arms for my sisters first and the secondary ordinance for our mecha to re-arm and repair them."

captain-king rogers fumed at that for a long while, casting sour gazes on everyone present from the mutants to his own noblemen.

"I know what you are." He started a new train of conversation. "The inbreds here might think you're something special but I'm from Nepleslia, same as you. I know what marines can do, know what the star army can do. And you aint them. You aint fooled me once that you're nothing but imbecile muties in machines that woulda been out of date twenty years ago." He accused, his tone icey and hostile towards them.

"Yeah, and?" Shasta put her hands on her hips, right above the laslock pistol on one side in a holster and the little killer in one on the other hip. "Better than your stuff!"

"My point," Captain Rogers stated, nodding to one of his guards who shuffled off through a massive set of doors and then said nothing more for two minutes as he kept glancing that way in iritation right up until there was the sound of commotion and he continued as if the pregnant pause had'nt happened.

"My point is you aint seen what we're dealin with yet." He stated as guards pulled open the double doors and a third massive crab scuddled in sideways. In one of its claws was a creature. Six foot long, white and red in the pattern of toothpaste was a slug.

Except it also wasnt. It had ten legs on either side thinner than a mans but with three joints that ended in boney stud-toes that could almost look like spearheads and its boneless body ended in a lamprey-like mouth of a circular pattern of three rows of shark-like teeth while three black, beady eyes on either side looked about with a just barely lighter than the rest of the eyes gray iris as the slug thrashed about trying to pull from the crabs grip as it gnawed on the crustaceans carapace to no avail.

It made the sound of a strangled weasel as it gnawed and had to weight close to three hundred pounds.

"THIS!" Rogers pointed at the strange creature. "Is what we're up against! They get even larger than this and there are millions of them coming this way. What can under a thousand robots and not even six mechs do against that?!"

Nearby, one of the noblemen put the back of his hand to his forehead and dramatically faited with a loud gasp at the sight of the slug.

"Aint no slug." Chips noted, "Slugs is slimy and slow like. Does salt even work on them?" He asked.

"NO." Rogers shouted, as the crab gripped tighter to keep its hold and would have otherwise crushed a creature with bones.

"Learn what you can now." Clotho ordered, examining the not-slug from afar. "Any weaknesses, their capabilities, first hand accounts. Ask now or figure out what you can because Rogers isnt wrong that it's going to be a tough fight."

 

[Anno nano]

“Urgh….” Charlotte let out a groan and held her hand to her mouth, as the small group passed by the shanty town of haggard looking tents and somehow even worse looking people. It took all she had to not have the rest of the strays meet the huge meal she’d just eaten for a second time; the kitsune mutant pinched her nose and hurried her pace, as her sensitive sense of smell picked up every tiny detail of the awful stench around her. She’d managed to get used to the interesting aromas at their camp at least, but this was on a whole other level.

Upon arriving in the castle, Charlotte was far too busy doing a few breathing exercises and trying to quell the uncomfortable swirling sensation in her stomach of being juuust on the edge of barfing everywhere; hence why she didn’t really hear much of the conversation between the “King” and her boss and why she jumped slightly in response to the energetic mutant’s hug. Her bundle of fluffy tails curled upwards under her ever so slightly, displaying a slight discomfort with the sudden unexpected invasion of her personal space; although upon realizing who it is she awkwardly struggled to think of what to do for a few moments, before she resolved to rescind the hug with a slightly wooden movement. “Nice to meet you too boss…” She replied, nodding her head in response to Shani, as the movement caused her tall fox-like ears to bounce back and forth for a moment. Under other circumstances Charlotte might have been a bit more personable; but the combination of her first mission, hell probably her first time meeting Shani, with her still not entirely settled stomach had her being a little standoff-ish.

When the “slug” was brought out, Charlotte brought a hand to her chin in deep thought. While she was hardly a tactical genius, she had seen more than her fair share of trashy zombie flicks and one thought did come to mind after remembering a few where the liberal use of fire was used. “We know how they do against the uhmm…. Spicy paint?” She was tactful enough to not just outright say ‘the highly radioactive paint we tend to use liberally and indiscriminately’ when in the presence of the locals, but the question hopefully got across. After all, if they could spray a nice thick line of star paint across the advancing slugs, it’d cut down the area they’d have to actively defend to just any breakthroughs that happen. Then again, there were just as many movies about alien creatures getting stronger after being exposed to radiation so who knows really?

 

[Primitive Polygon]

"...Oh, a horrid thing, for certain.~" Yamog cast an offended hand in the slug's direction, like casting invisible dirt- Though the light tone of their raspy voice carried more like magnanimous amusement. She passed a goblet of wine from another hand to a third, then sipped it with consideration. She wasn't just embracing the local way of carrying oneself- The gloomy desaturated atmosphere itself seemed to make their skin read as dusky gray, and the sclera of their singular eye faintly glow an onimous green-yellow. She had traded clothes for an oversized, black gothic dress somewhere along the way, complete with a pair of hooded local peon-children to hold up her train as she walked about. "How doth it even gander at one's surroundings?"

Yes. Yamog hadn't been at the last crab-feast, because they had been outside of their camp dealing with locals personally. Their fear and awe complemented her self-image nicely... Though if she was honest, the short spider-creature found it all a little disappointing, for a debauched medieval gladiator planet built for entertainment. Where were all the weapons made from skulls and bones? Where were all the screaming mad death cults? This place should have been drowning in foreboding books and cursed parchments galore.

The giant crabs were pretty cool, she guessed, but they had Luk, so...

Hand number four played with Shasta's gifted candle, turning it in place, against the glimmer of light coming from this system's diminutive sickly star.

"Paint is a fine clue, though I fear we carry narry enough ammo." A slightly theatrical sigh upwards at Charlotte, probably the first time the two of them had actually made eye contact. "Do we have enough time to lace our missiles with some kind of nano-weapon?... A more macabre use for the nanites, perhaps, 'urm?... Already swapped out my bullet projectors for lasers, but... Hurm, welding spikes to our mechs... would have been a fitting course of action..."


"-OH!" A delicious idea, creating the number 8 with their facial features. "Perhaps some of this planet's desidens are those delightful little parasite crabs. That would be quite a fitting punishment for the invertebrate invader."

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

Castle

On being prompted, Clotho reached her drone bodies hand down to a small cup-pouch and pulled out one of the very makeshift grenades; A pipe-bomb at best with an electric trigger, and unscrewed the cap before dumping out a piece of explosive like material block and then pulling out a small plastic capsule that glowed so strong a bright yellow-green that in the slightly dim hall illuminated her hand and cast a shadow about her body as she squeezed and broke the small capsule as the thick star-paint covered her hand.

walking towards the massive creature she approached it from a blindside only to get kicked several times by its flailing legs. Getting underneath it as it was already lifted into the air she slapped the underside of the creature several times; Each leaving a splatter of the glowing material on its surface before the commander slid back out and stepped back, waiting expectantly.

The slug did nothing new beyond continually thrashing and gnawing about until Rogers spoke up.

"So, Does it do anything?" He demanded, clearly anticipating something.

"We will know within one to three weeks if tumors form on the expect timeframe." Clotho declared as if it was perfectly reasonable time to just stand around and wait when the fighting was likely days away.

"Riiiight" The captain-king groaned as more experiments were performed.

As this went about two more of the AAP drones joined the rest of the group with their ward in tow as Joanna O'Brian joined them having been escorted all the way from the Shasta No Sekai makeshift base. Comming in late she missed most of the early goings on only to come in to several of her fellow mutants shoving a lit candelabra into the side of a massive xeno alien while Chips Roger, the avian mutant and lead pilot of the lance was throwing handfuls of salted nuts at it from a bowl and a nearby AAP drone with a fairy-controller inside of it was hanging from one of its legs clearly trying to yank it off while, to top it all off, a ten foot tall crab that likely weighed almost as much as her mech with a man riding it was sitting in the middle of the room with the alien in one of its giant claws.

Being on the planet for a few weeks with the rest of the strays she was used to the overt crab-motifs of Rogers World IV, and by the context of their mission here that the massive xeno was one of the Slugs they were here to purge despite the fact that it looked like a slug... In practically no way at all and more like some kind of spider-lobster or crab hybrid.


Shasta; Shani to her friends, and everyone was her friend in the corporation she ran and beyond was present as well as the Mad Mutant herself practically bobbed about as she cheered on her employees in a way that only the aloof source of controlled chaos that she embodied could.

Captain-King rogers was present too, their current contract-holder for the operation and was as angry as ever even as he noticed her and gave at most a scowl this time without vocalizing his displeasure of mutantkind despite them all being there to pull him and his planet from a horde of these creatures they called slugs.

As Joanna watched, the boneless body of the slug in the crabs pinchers thrashed and wiggled and it didnt take a genius to notice as it slowly pulled most of its rubber-like body out of the crabs grasp as screams and shouts errupted from the noble courtiers present and the guards as visibly at least four noblemen and women raised hands to their foreheads and fainted dramatically as the slug managed to flop out of the crabs grasp and to the floor where it flopped onto the drone that had its leg and burried its toothy and eyeless head onto the drone who screamed with a childs voice as it was torn apart despite not feeling any pain or the fairy being in any actual danger.

"Guards! Guards!" King rogers shouted, the slug between him and his array of spunksword weilding guards who quickly surged inwards towards the slug only to recoil back as it launched to its feet and tackled one of them, its mout closing in on the mans spunkplate as it crumpled and cracked like it was subject to a vice as the man screamed and the alien creature speared into his legs and sides with its legs as all bedlam broke loose.

"Someone do something before it gets blood on my fooking carpets!" The captain-king shouted, pulling deeper into his throne in concern as his shouting drew its attention and the slug sudenly took off on all legs up the dais and towards the last king of Rogers World IV.

"Execute!", Clothos, one of the Pledias and the commander of the corporations military forces ordered as the some six AAP drones present raised their Laslockes and everyone in the dim halls vision exploded with sunspots as six bright red-purple lances of energy sounded with the sound of extended whipcracks.

Vision returned to most even if the screaming of nobles and women did not cease as they blinked away the bright spots to reveal at the feat of the captain king the now very dead slug practically touching his boots with six neat holes each the size of a fist burned through its body and two of them the back of what might be considered its head as the lances of energy passed right through it to leave sizzling and bubbling cauterized holes that showed the green flesh underneath its leathery skin as the smell of mint mixed with sour milk rose from the corpse eliciting another nobleman to dramatically spin and collapse into a neighboring courtier's arms with a surprisingly loud gasp.

"Shut! Shut you dolts!" Chips shouted as he took a step to the side where he had shielded a now excitedly yipping-Shasta as he sheathed the spunk-sword he had drawn but not before waving it threateningly at the continually useless locals.

It took several minutes of shouting to get everyone under control as the kings guards carefully dragged the slug corpse away from the feet of their ruler who was suddenly and very pointedly using his cape to cover a wet spot he had failed to hide in time on the leg of his environment suit.

"As you can see," He nodded towards the dead slug. "These creatures are not to be taken lightly. We should flee while we can!"

"Laslocks did them good enough." Clotho pointed out, one of her shots being of the two headshots. "My sisters each have one. And they pale compared to even the lightest of our mechs weapons; We will continue with what was agreed upon in the contract."

There was arguing at that by the cowardly king for a moment before the drone commander held up a hand to silence him.

"I am in contact with one of my scouts as we speak. The heat mass of this slug-swarm is at most two days for the very most forward elements to reach this city; Three for the bulk of the swarm. We will continue to prepare our machines over the course of the next two days and build bodies and arms for as many of my sisters as we can manage in that time and will engage on the third day when we can effectively engage the mass of the swarm without depleting our mechs energy and ammunition on stray outriding enemies when the swarm itself is our objective. Unless, of course, foster-mother has any objections?" She asked the last part to Shasta whose tail from the excitement of the brief fight was still throwing itself back and forth with the force of a sweeping broom even as she patted the metal head of the drone commander who leaned in to accept her masters affection.

"Nope! I trust you, Clotho. It's gonna be a real good fight I can feel it!" She bobbed in anticipation as the captain-king began cursing them again and the strays casually ignored him as they made their way out as Chips scooped up the dead guards spunksword and added the crab-semen hardened blade in its scabbard to his belt alongside the other of its kind.

FOB

Returning to the base most of the drones accompanying them broke off to go to their stations leaving only the pilots, the commander-type Clotho, and Shasta who found their way to one of the many tables under one of the erected mech hangars that cast shade as they converged.

"So what do we know?" Shasta asked curiously, pulling out a datajockey that she began to fiddle with.

"Weak enough to energy fire," Clotho began in observation.

"Think they see by some sound of scent," Chips followed up before continuing for context. "Its a bug so of course it sees by smells. But it also attacked rogers once he got real loud; We can jerry-rig some speakers on the mechs."

"Mostly boneless, some kind of cartilage i'd guess. Crushing them might work or might not." Clotho observed again.

"They're really fast too. And Mr.Rogers said they even get bigger." Shasta yipped as she recalled. "Are we gonna be able to make enough troops in two days, Clotho?"

The Drone commander stood stoically, lacking the face to show emotion as she very clearly pretended to not hear the question as she turned to her men.

"We have two days at the least before first contact and one more after that. We need to keep building and assembling drones but i'm putting your mechs as first priority, Chips. Arm them however you want but make sure they are ready; Batteries for weapons, rounds, missiles, you name it I want them on your machines in the next two days just send me the list and i'll have it done.

And, foster mother?" Clotho concluded, turning to Shasta.

"Yeah?~" She yipped, straightening up expectantly.

"As for Rogers ship outside the city if you're interested-" The two began scheming as Chips took the attention of his pilots with the slapping of his palm of the table.

"You heard little-Clotho. Go see to your machines the vacations over, Joanna I dun know what spunk-covered rocks they got here you been hidin under but that goes dubble for ye! Get them warmed up and have your fairys run diagnostics while you put them through their paces; I want each machine up and running by tomorrow. Just... Don't step on anyone in the city this time." He ended that part making it sound like he had not been the one to crush a male refugees legs under his Highwayman as it strode the streets of the city a week prior.

"Dismissed, Strays!"

 

[StrikeWyvernX02S]

Joanna's bunny ears jerk upward upon hearing them mention about the shipwreck just outside the city, she wants to take this opportunity to ask for something that she wants to do so she quickly pulls out her mechanical pencil and excitedly starts writing down on the paper in her clipboard.

After the dismissal of the briefing, Joanna stands and walks up to Chips with an enthusiastic smile, her clipboard on hand. She reaches her hand out, showing him the paper she wrote on earlier.

Written on the paper is a proposition for a mission to "explore Captain King Roger's ship's wreckage" and below that is the list of equipment she wants on her mech for this mission. Just a simple loadout of a pair of light autocannons purely for self-defense. She is nervous to hear his answer to this proposal, but she remains hopeful that he will accept it.

Her bunny ears remain perked up into the air the whole time while awaiting his answer.

 

[Commissar Farzi]

Luk being Luk was simply too stupid, to put it politely, to understand exactly what Shasta was attempting. Sheer charisma had little effect on him, and he simply crunched into another crab-or would have he had any left; so he settled upon simply devouring the plate; and taking a good chunk out of the dining room table. As the massive crab held on to the wriggling, multilegged thing, the big mutie felt drool slowly trail down his front-he was contemplating taking a great big bite out of it. Unfortunately, before he could he was whisked away to where they'd arrived-his stomach still gurgling.

----

"I've got a loadout of energy weapons on our mech Luk," Wayfinder reported as Luk stood; he hadn't been really paying attention to what bird man had been saying, instead picking his sharp, pointed teeth with is claws-a piece of crab shell had gotten lodged between them-it hurt, and getting it out was proving to be more effort than he'd thought. Wayfinder sighed and face palmed; it was the same laser and missile set up as their first mission-she just had to keep the big mutie alive-she loved watching him just to see what he'd try to stuff down his gullet-and he was easy enough to motivate-show him food and he moved.

 

[Anno nano]

After the rather… Embarrassing display of her idea, the kitsune mutant just tried her best to disappear into the background as much as possible as she simply watched the rest of the experiments; cheeks burning slightly in embarrassment as she did so. Thankfully, the escape attempt of the slug brought some excitement to the room, hopefully enough for everyone to have forgotten her rather ill thought out idea by the time they left the room to head back to the FOB.

—-------------------

After only half listening in to the conversation, the rest of her attention diverted to touching up the lettering on the side of her mech after it got scraped up a bit during landing, Charlotte almost didn’t realise that Chips was addressing the assembled pilots. Still, upon realising he was addressing her, Charlotte’s ears perked up and swiveled slightly; listening intently to the instructions. “Charlotte,w…we’re swapping off the shotguns to something longer range, right?” A quiet, shaky voice spoke up to Charlotte as she finished up her work; her fairy AI Artemis having always been quite insistent on trying to get the close combat enthusiast pilot to swap over to an artillery mech. “Nah we’ve not even gotten to shoot em yet! They’re brand new.” Charlotte replied, a twinkle in her eye as she lovingly stroked a hand along the barrel of the underslung plasma breaker under the quadrupedal mech. “Reckon we’ll want a full set of cluster missiles though… Unless there’s some kinda super slug out there we won’t need the armour penetrating ones we’ve got loaded.” There was a slightly tinny sounding sigh from the speaker built into her glove as Artemis sent the armament request over to her higher ranking sisters. “Can you at least p..please run the full diagnostics procedure then?”

Charlotte nodded before heading up into the cockpit of her mech to run through the full diagnostics procedure; sure, Artemis might have been a coward, often asking for long range mechs or to just be taken off combat duty entirely. But Charlotte would’ve been remiss to not defer to the fairy, when it came to her areas of expertise with the operating and maintenance of the mech, after all they were partners.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

Three Days Later

Three days had passed. Three hectic days of mad dashing for repairs and readiness.

Chips had barely glanced at Joannas note other than to squint at it and rub his beak a bit before giving his ascent so long as she "Bring back the computer core. Rogers don't need it on a ship that cant fly and the Fairys like to download and pull apart whatever code and AI they got in them; Kinda like eatin' em or learnin from em' or sumthin."

And with that, Joanna had been off to the ship just outside the city. Rogers ship was barely that; At most a megashuttle converted into a makeshift utility vessel for salvaging it was barely forty meters long and a quarter that wide. Grounded with blown electronics and damaged main thrusters the Strays and Fairys in their drones were already half dismantling the vessels outer plating to convert into useable metal for drones and mech parts, while a grander initiative led by the Mad Mutant herself had been mid-weld on making a large plow-shaped device on the front on the vessel when Joanna arrived to find most of what she needed already taken out and piled about in neat sorted piles ranging from copper wiring all the way to gold stripped from electronics and fissile material and nudie-mags with the latter making an actual sizeable pile that included a concerning amount of gravure models of Kodian women in professional attire such as sexy fire-bear and endoscopy assistant ursine gal.

It took a day for her to bring her haul back with her mech, a sled of some shuttle plating, and some of the drones help but did garner a bit of attention right up until the second day when an armed part of the kings guard arrived at the mech bays with orders from the king to return his computer core and a list of other seemingly valuable pieces of salvage.

Not wanting to argue and waste time, Chips himself had sauntered over to Joannas cart of salvage and taken a large blown fuse, and tossed it to the lead guard followed by a single semiconductor and a large magnet while feining outrage at having lost such valuable technology for the war effort!

With the guards heading the way back to the ship to have the strays on site re-install the items it took only a single fairy to send a message to one of her sisters on site at the ship to make sure they were returned to their propper place.

The rest of the days went by uneventfully but for grease a lot of grease, a small electrical fire, and a single casualty when a several hundred pound armored plate fell on a stray who had been lounging under the suspended armor to use as a sunshade.

Midway through the second day the AAP Drones had mobilized on Clothos orders and only the bare minimum had been left to guard the hangars as hundreds and thousands of soldiers and pressganged civilians turned pike-militia and camp followers had passed the streets by them like a day-long parade as the kings army sallied out to meet the first slugs on crab-back and the sole company of drones used their insufficent numbers to man the most forward walls and tend to the Wasp-hives the corporation errected like defense barriers.

The day was peaceful after that though the morning of the third day brough distant laslocks from the walls a mile away and a concerning amount of savaged and wounded soldiers and militia littering the already unsanitary streets on stretchers or laid against walls with more than a few sporting deep gouges, some missing limbs, and terrible wounds with hollow looks in their eyes.

Now, nearing sunset of the third day was the Strays getting ready to deploy as, unhurried they assembled at their meeting table with papers, dataslates, and tools strewn about while their pilot suits looked all the stained and worn for wear.

"Aight." Chips began, as the mirage nanites in the base coalesced into a holographic form on the table resembling his Highwayman Mech

"Ah didn't need to do much." He began, having spent most of the past couple days sleeping or lounging about or scamming locals as he outlaid his normal loadout that hadn't changed since the last engagement on freehold.

Three Hyper Lasers all on one arm of the mech for nine-barrels of hyper-automatic laser fire.
A single Heavy Laser on the other, Claiming that slugs or not heavy firepower was important.
Two Rotary Cannons to compliment his already street-sweeper build for light weapons
A single 12-count missile pod of Devils Doorbell RPGS.
And finally, the medium-missile pod of his mech that was replaced with the sole Devils Deathbell tactical missile the corporation had brought with them for the bug hunt.

"The usual loadout, Aint done me wrong sept' for the nuke. I usually like to carry some mega-macros but carrying the big stick for once aint so bad if ye get me. What the rest of you been up to the past three days; And I better not see you been wastin your time building some hair-brained scheme of a MacGuffin you think will be savin the day right in the nick' o' time just for me to pat you on the back in the end cause it works!

It aint gon' happen a seventh time!"

 

[Commissar Farzi]

Wayfinder had opted to 'help' Luk out by upper armoring his Dynamiteon by up armoring the hell out of it from the salvage taking from the mecha they'd knocked out. Reinforcing the joints and ensuring it wouldn't be taken out of action from a few hard knocks given how bad the mutie's piloting was even with her help. She'd also opted for the same loadout as last time; HE Marcro missiles; 12 in total, and the triple micro lasers, though the Macro lasers had been swapped out for a Plasma Shotgun.

All in all, a good choice for clearing out the massive hordes of slugs they'd soon face; she'd turned in her gauntlet, looking on as Luk tried and somehow succeeded in getting a rock twice the size of his head in his mouth-where it promptly got stuck. The dim-witted creature blinked slowly, shook his head-and blinked again, more frantically as he backed up, his head shaking wildly. Something he couldn't eat? Interesting...the AI watched the scene as the muscles in his neck bulged, his jaw straining before there was a great cracking sound followed by the rock splitting, then shattering-sending gravel everywhere as he ground the remaining amount in his mouth down before swallowing it.

Was there nothing he couldn't eat?

 

[Anno nano]

"Ah boss! Yup, been busy getting the ol' girl ready!" Charlotte slapped the side of her freshly painted with racing stripes mech, in the process having made the thing much less camouflaged than its dull vaguely dusty paint scheme gave it beforehand. But now, now there was no doubt that she intended to go fast! "Yes, we've... Unfortunately decided to keep with the previous close range loadout" The shaky, constantly on the edge of tears voice of her fairy piped up as Charlotte went to lovingly apply some more polish to the tips of the three huge Super Mega Macromissiles sat in their launcher, each one armed with a cluster warhead. "Hey c'mon bug hunting ain't fun if you aren't close enough to splatter em on the windscreen!" Charlotte's voice was muffled by her then clambering into the cockpit to run some last minute checks, although her enthusiasm still shined through. Artemis's only reply was a deep resounding sigh.

"Anyway sir... I'm sending over the file with the loadout. All double and triple checked of course! Also I've taken the liberty of attaching my resume, I hear head office got a new coffee machine and I think I'd like to take the job of being it's AI steward." True to her word, Artemis's file was remarkably well formatted and organised, alongside details of the diagnostic checks she ran on each piece of equipment. Unfortunately for her, that work ethic was the main reason her transfer requests were never accepted; perhaps some part of her only sending them because she knew they wouldn't be accepted.

-------------------------------

• 2x fusion shotguns on the fixed forward facing light mounts on the body of the mech.
• 1x SnS Plasma Breaker on the fixed medium mount located under the body of the mech.
• 1x medium Shasta no Sekai Missile Launch Systems mounted above the cockpit with a capacity of 11 'Mega' Macro Missiles. Loadout: 11 cluster warheads
• 1x Laser Guided Laser on the rotating turret medium mount.
• 1x large Shasta no Sekai Missile Launch Systems mounted on the turret with a capacity of 3 SnS Super Mega Macromissiles. Loadout: 3 cluster warheads
• a large number of smoke, chaff and flare launchers spread across the mech.
• 6x nanite canisters for use with the Mirage camouflage System.
  
  What followed was a detailed list of tests performed, percentages of safety parameters as well as a few design suggestions Artemis thought pressing to send to the RND team. As well as a several page long resume and a list of 50 internal vacancies she'd like to have applied for.

 

[StrikeWyvernX02S]

With not enough time, all the modifications Joanna could add to her mech are just a group of boosters cobbled together from the Attitude Control Thrusters that she salvaged from King Roger's ship, an extra battery bank, and a strut on the rear right of the torso as an extra medium weapon mount.

Joanna's bunny ears lay down as she sighs while holding up her clipboard, upset at the lack of time to finish the modifications, but she will have to do with what she has for now.

a small, glowing, floating figure forms beside Joanna, it is her Fairy, which she named Ilayd. "Well, you could always finish it once you come back, ya'know?", Ilayd said with an assuring tone. Joanna nods back in response. "You should probably start working on your loadout" the little pixie followed up.

After a moment of sulking, she raises her head with a stern look, her bunny ears rise up as well, and starts writing on her clipboard. She turns towards the mechanics that work on her mech and walks to them, handing them the paper that she wrote on.

The loadout she requested is as follows:
x1 Plasma Breaker on the right side of the torso
x1 OI-M1-W3110 Gamma Ray Vulcans on the left side of the torso
x12 Sunburst Missiles for the Macromissile launcher on the right leg
x1 Hyper Laser on the extra mount

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

Mech Bay - Day Three

The bay was eerily silent now lacking the machinery whirring or all the drones or mutants hurrying about save for the chatter of the lance' pilots and the hum of overhead lighting as dataslates and the relivant information was passed about as those that could read gave a skim as if the weapons themselves were each larger than they were and bolted onto the machines in plain sight unlike fancy mecha with retractible weapon bays.

They were ready, time never quite being the factor it initially could have been.

The company of drones were on the wall. Rogers men were already long since deployed. They just had to wait for the signal to deploy which was only...

Six hours away...

Ten long minutes passed of small chit-chat and finger tapping on the table before Chips stood up out of his seat in clear boredom and frustration and then opened his beak with a finger raised-

"Hey guys!" Shasta sidestepped around the wide frame of Luk; Somehow having hidden behind him despite being taller than him as she looked about from the mechs to the table and finally Chips who had not at all made a squawking sound of suprise at her sudden arrival.

"You guys bored too?" she asked, no longer dressed to impress as the Mad Mutant herself was wearing the combat uniform of the strays unlike their pilot suits with the addition of a Laslock pistol on one leg and her Little Killer in the other overshadowed only by the larger Laslock rifle slung on her back.

"Oi," Chips poked her in the side, eliciting her to make an eep noise before sliding away from his jab, "Shani what're you doin ere' alone, a lass like you aint should be out by ere'self."

Cocking a head and giving a wry smile, A thumb pointed behind her at a large group that looked very much like a mob with makeshift weapons and even a pair with obligatory pitchfork and torch loitered in the compound and were currently distracted by the awe and majesty of a bugzapper as it sparked with the fresh kill of a thumbnail sized biting fly.

"Im not alone, Yamogs friends are here." She pointed out, snatching a dataslate to look over some of the mechs.

"Cripes!" Chips shouted in annoyed anger. "Not these looneys again, Luk go take care o' em before one of them sticks their fingers in the generator and knocks out the AC again!"

At the shouting a group of several of the mob broke off and started to make their way over. Mostly of military-age men they carried everything from table-leg clubs, to makeshift spears, and even a single spunksword held in an older clearly ex-militia members grasp though lacking a scabbard. Some even had some kind of makeshift armor made out of signs and leather.

The most notable thing about all of them, however, was the blue facepaint they all wore that knowing the backwards technology of these people likely still contained lead. The group of five approached before each of them taking a knee that just so happened to be in a puddle of hydraulic fluid and coolant not yet absorbed by the ground as the older and clearly ex-military of the group raised his head to show a look of fiery determination.

"Dame Versanti-" The man began, the concerning look of serious devotion in his eyes as he looked past them all to the cyloptic mutant as he and his men rose to salute with chair legs and swords to Yamog. "My name is Karl Breddenberknit and we have come to answer your call to arms. With me are two hundred and twenty armsmen and women ready to take up your banner and-"

The lights flickered several times accompanied by screaming and then silence.

"Two hundred and nineteen stalwart souls here to accompany you and your comrades in arms to the bulwark as Lady Archeletta has suggested to appraise the foes battle set-"

The man continued to blow smoke as Shasta leaned in to the group to conspire.

"I made that up. I got bored and wanted to go see the bugs and ran into these guys who got really excited to meet you guys and figured maybe they could tag along~"

"Guess we can go a bit early," Chips exceeded as he looked to his team.

"Mount up, Lets go squish some bugs!"

Bulwark

It took two hours to cross the very simple lone mile to make it to the bulwark wall at the edge of the city. Refugees and wounded militia flooded the streets and it became a near-battle as Yamogs Knights Of the Glittering Eye moved ahead of the mechs to literally beat back the unwashed massed and none too gently pick up litter of wounded soldiers to toss them to the wayside and more than once in the running drains of filth to give them passage.

The wall, being somwhat a higher elevation than the compound made it so the mechs couldn't see over it but could hear and occasionally see the laser fire from the occasional drone be it an AAP drone, heavy flight capable, or the smaller wasp drones.

More often were bands of soldiers either comming to or from the wall. Thousands of pikemen held makeshift barricades while slingers and archers stood on rooftops while their number and scores more manned the walls 100:1 compared to the drones all shooting arrows, bolts, and slinging stones down the other side of the wall.

They were in range of the wall with their weapons the moment it came into sight but for the most part it allowed them to see through their optics even hundreds of meters away the first slugs. Occasionally one of them would manage to scale the wall and either throw itself against the pikemen and armsmen on the wall, or more often fall or jump down the other side into the city where militia were quick to swarm it like angry bees as with considerable efficiency men would drive pikes and spears into the not-bugs from all sides and pin them to the ground while men with swords or axes would start cutting off their legs or into the beats necks.

Other than that the army inside the city seemed rather bored themselves... Many laid about though still with weapon in hand, played cards or knucklebones, slept, or ate right until the mechs began to stomp their way slowly down the road with their now army of close to five thousand who had began to follow along behind carrying anything they could weild and by the way things were going more would filter in as time went on.

Making it to within a hundred meters of the wall the buildings stopped and opened up into large open areas of muddy land the army occupied between them and the wall. Parking the mechs in a long row like solitary knights awaiting the hoarde to cheers all around chips lowered his highwayman first and let it shut down as he slung himself out of the cockpit.

Im gonna go find a gate or somethin we can pass through else we'll have to blow through the wall to get out. The rest of you go up topside and get a look at what we're up against..."

Wall

The wall itself was actually hollow and considerably wide. A small ecosystem in its own right it had rooms, barracks, and all kind of amenities to a besieged army as hundreds of men packed together at the base of stairs waited their turn as men at arms signalled and occasionally troops filtered up onto the wall and into the screaming and yelling above.

Carl Breadbasketmiddleman , a former man at arms himself led their way as he casually shoved a man to the side off a set of stairs where he fell into a crowd of others intop a pile of flailing arms and legs as the blue-faced man waxed poetic about glorious deeds and meeting the foe head on to look him in the eye.

When they got up top it was pure chaos as men ran about between towers breaking the wall into segments. The segment they found themselves on was three hundred foot long and ten foot wide and clearly enough as ten men pushed a wheeled ballista down the length of the wall and between heavily clumped together soldiers all should to shoulder shooting arrows or stabbing violently at what they could now see...

An Ocean of pink and blue and green like a fleshy mass of bubblegun had formed for close to five hundred from the base of the wall and out into the fields outside the city as tens of thousands of centipedal-slugs climbed over one another to get to the wall sometimes five or six deep while every second more poured out from the landscape as for miles all any of them could see was the distant mass of slugs on the horizon arriving in groups of hundreds.

There were bigger slugs too. Ranging from the size of a car all the way up to bus and even the occasional shuttle-sized slug would drag itself along on their too-fat bodys that took on more blue and green shades as they crushed their smaller siblings and in some cases ate them in passing with some of the largest in the distance looking to weigh more than all but maybe Chips mech.

One such slug the size of a large truck came up to speed as it neared the wall, bulldozing its smaller cousins out of the way only for arm-thick ballista bolts to slam into it like pins into rubber the way they stuck out of its face and sides. It got to within a hundred feet before enough ballista bolts into its head stopped it for good and it sank under the tide of the other slugs who, from the looks of things, began to tear into and eat their bigger brother before it was even fully dead.

It was not one-sided either. Eventually piling up enough ontop of one another a Slug was able to hook some of its legs on the buttress and pull itself up onto the wall where men swarmed it. The kill was eventually secured but close to six men had been savaged in the process just to kill one in close combat as they were dragged away and a man at arms signaled for replacements who quickly ran out and were guided to fill in the holes...

The lone AAP drone on the wall was not as active as the soldiers, either. She loitered about walking the length of the wall only to slide into the line of combat every now and then as the simpler MK-I drone lacking a sapient fairy shouldered its laslock to shoot a slug that broke through the men in the side before continuing its patrol.

 

[Anno nano]

Charlotte let out a low whistle as she looked at the ocean of alien beasts in front of them through a pair of binoculars, grinning slightly as she zoomed in on one of the truly huge ones further into the distance. “Whew, get a load of that ugly mug!” She said, before offering her binoculars to anyone nearby interested in looking at the truly titanic slug dragging itself towards the wall. “Gotta wonder what’ll happen first, them all dying or our mechs overheating and melting into slag…” She mused to herself; before her thought process was completely broken as she watched the ballista bolts pepper the truck sized slug, the dark haired fox girl letting out a cheer as it collapsed to the ground.

Meanwhile, Artemis was already working on the data she’d picked up on through the binoculars, the fairy having created a heat map of the densest sections of the wave of slugs where their limited supply of missiles could make the most impact. When done, she sent the data package around to the fairies in the other mechs.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

"...If the city dies, our mechs will be marching out yonder, in that empty world of slugs..." Yamog spoke with a foreboding tone, slightly to the rear left of Charlotte. "...As stabby as those things are, they narry seem that fast... So for that factor, I shalt say we likely survive the first of the threats, if our honor fails..."

The cobalt, mono-eyed mutant always seemed to have a flair for the dramatic, during the brief run-ins with the lithe fox girl... But today seemed a little different.

"Not you to worry." A forced smile. "We have the command structure. It will be fine."

Then they just turned away, and uncorked a fresh bottle of wine. Clearly jaded now, bordering on morose and disheartened, looking for a way to hide it.

It tasted weirdly fleshy and clung to the tongue, like all the food products of this planet did. But the numbness was welcome.

She'd spent all this time gathering up a willing militia. But instead of adoring cultists... It seems she'd only attracted an untrustworthy horde of hangers on. Simple, sycophantic soldiers of fortune, only looking for a way off this rock, before they'd probably stab herself or Shasta in the back.

Them being luddites was actually a bonus, free minds uncorrupted by modern Nepleslian society, as she saw it. Yet, their motivations were apparently still exactly the same.

It was too humbling. She didn't need it. To be seen as a sewer creature, a demon, a walking cartoon character, a mutant- No trace of the idolatry she craved, that which Shasta had, and Yamog had not.

"They... aren't pure at all..." A concealed whisper loosed, accident from a spiteful drunk.

And, looking down at her freshly modified mech... The spider wondered exactly what they'd do about that.

--------

A hackjob based on the Pathfinder. It was rusted factory silver, endemic of something rushed through production, and then badly stored for emergency backup use. But it would do the job. With the main sniper cannon removed, and a borrowed fighter nose cone covering the gap, everything else was a rearrangement of commonly available parts, creating a lean and fast missile boat bristling with small gun-tubes;

Above arms; 2 x 4 Macro Lasers.
Main arms; 2 x 6 Devil's Doorbell RPGs.
Side arms; 2x 4 Medium Missile Pods (Borrowed from the All-Terry Class Mecha Tank).
Below arms; 2 x 4 Macro Lasers.

A saturation fire machine, pure and simple. A light exterminator that could keep Yamog at arm's reach.