Shroomie's Shorts: Epiphany

[Shroom Man 777]

____________________________________

- June 15, 2561 -
- West Hampton, Coalition capital world Borealis -
____________________________________

“Motherfuckers,” muttered Officer Duncan A. Lincoln. He stomped on the brakes and reached out for his autoshotgun. “Second time this month.”

Thirty meters away was an ambulance that had been dispatched to retrieve a pregnant woman in labor. It was still on its way, sirens still blaring, but its path was being obstructed by an unruly mob of hoodlums – a youth gang, with members as young as ten years old.

“Shitstains,” cursed Officer Duncan as he loaded a magazine full of nonlethal bullets – pepperchalk disintegration rounds – into his shotgun. His blood was boiling, but he took solace in the fact that the precinct had finally decided to do something about these underage criminals. “Little shits, don’t even read your Bibles no more. I’m gonna have to teach you punks some respect.”

He pulled back the shotgun’s lever and armed it.


“Homie, check that out, a cop!” Angelito squawked. He tapped the shoulder of his ‘homie’, who was busy throwing a brick at the trapped emergency rescue vehicle.

Paulo de Jesus, the ‘homie’ in question, turned his shaved head to the direction Angelito was pointing at. He smiled and dropped the brick he was just about to throw. “So what? He can’t catch all of us,” he stroked his triple-pierced ear that was still bleeding. “Let’s just get out of here.”

“I’m with you, bro. Hey, homies, let’s scram-” before Angelito could finish, a ‘chalkshot’ round pulverized itself on his chest, bruising his sternum and smearing his jersey and shorts with stinging, acrid powder. Soon, he continued his sentence with his screams, as his eyes caught the substance and as he accidentally inhaled the stuff.

“Shit!” Paulo cursed. Until now, the cops have never done a thing to their gang. “Shit! Shit! Sh-”

He too had his curses converted into agonizing cries of anguish and pain as his face was covered in pain-inducing powder. He flailed blindly and tried to run, holding up his loose jeans as he did so. He tripped and fell face first to the ground, his eyes and nostrils still burning like fuck.


“Run you little shits, run!” Duncan yelled as he fired off another round. Kids or not, those punks deserved it, Duncan thought to himself. He laughed. “Run like pussies, you little shits!”

[Shroom Man 777]

____________________________________

- July 4, 2557 -
- Somewhere in Wild Space -
____________________________________

Conscript Van-Kyrsk was fidgeting excitedly with his longrifle B-11 KAR. He was with nineteen others; jam-packed inside a battle bunker right on the frontlines. Fifty minutes ago, the constant screams of artillery rounds descending into the insurgent city in front of them had stopped. Immediately, their sergeant left the bunker and ran to the nearest post with a radio. Now he was back and was bringing news.

“Listen up you incompetent effeminates,” the sergeant yelled. It was completely unnecessary, the deafening noise of detonating artillery rounds had stopped, but Van reminded himself that the sergeant had a hearing deficiency which was the result of an incident last week involving a hand grenade. “The bombardment has stopped and they’ve let loose the Skiravics.”

That meant only one thing; they were going to have another push. That they were going to be forced out of their bunkers and over the trenches in order to purify the city of any and all insurgent activity – killing anything and everything that did not bear the Imperial Sigil.

“That’s right, the Imperator has finally had enough of them and wants us to kill everything in that city. Men, women and children. All of them!”

Beneath his breathing apparatus, which was necessary because of the extremely caustic and allergenic black smoke that saturated the battlefield, Van smiled. This was what everyone had been waiting for, especially him. Less than a year ago, he was exactly like the people on the other side, the ones inside the city. He was a criminal, a violent one, but in the penitentiary, they had put the fear of the Imperator inside him – they reeducated him and taught him how to be, once again, a Citizen of the Empire. They also gave him a second chance, and a purpose. And now it was finally time to carry out that purpose. Van was excited, like a child doing something for the first time.

“Line yourselves up!” the sergeant barked. He was the only one in the bunker who wasn’t a conscript, he was a volunteer, and because of that he was automatically given command over those drafted from the cities and provinces or assigned to the military by the reeducation camps. To Van, it made perfect sense. In the penitentiary, they did things to his head and because of that, he wasn’t as smart as he used to be. It was worth it, though.

As they lined up, the sergeant grabbed a bag and took out a long pen-sized object tipped with a sharp spike. It was an injector filled with a concentrated dose of artificial adrenalin. The bag had one for each person, to be used in occasions like this. The sergeant walked to the nearest soldier and stabbed him in the gut with the injector. The spike, a quarter of an inch thick, effortlessly penetrated the soldier’s trench coat and injected its contents with a very audible hiss. Van was next, and he steeled himself as the sergeant jabbed the injector into his gut. There was a moment of pain, but the flood of manufactured adrenalin easily took care of that. This was a special moment for Van; it was his first time – and probably his last, too. Before he could ponder though, the sergeant made yet another proclamation: “Soon, you will all have to get out of the bunker and make the push. If you turn back, you will die. The mines will be armed and the razor wire electrified, so even if you make it to the bunker, you will be blown up. Non-conscripts will be on machinegun emplacements to make sure it won’t have to come to that.”

Such a thought would never occur to Van, and he thanked his reeducation for that. Those who were just drafted from the cities and provinces did not have the luxury of reeducation though, so to Van the sergeant’s most recent proclamation also made perfect sense. If it came to that, Van would also shoot those who would try to run back to the bunker.

“Bring the extra decon-filters you’ve bought from the commissary, you’ll need them,” the sergeant stabbed the soldier beside Van and then continued on to the next conscript. Van wondered how many of them would make it, and how many would be killed like dogs for trying to run back. “And arm your bayonets – you don’t want to waste bullets when you kill the women and children.”

Van did as instructed and pressed a button at the side of his longrifle. A retractable blade with serrated edges popped out with a snap. It gleamed, reflecting the light from the bunker’s fluorescent light bulbs. As for the extra filters, Van had already stored them into his trench coat.

“After this, just sit down and wait. It will take a short while for the drugs to have their maximum effect. When they do, it will probably be time for the push.” After the injections were finished, Van went to an ammunition box to take a seat. He knew he would not have to wait long for the purge; it would soon be time for the traitors to be judged, and their treachery punished.

[Shroom Man 777]

____________________________________

- May 29, 2553 -
- Neo Tokyo, Sovereignty capital world Earth -
____________________________________

He would not loose her, not this time.

Kaede ran up the flight of stairs, his exhausted body going on by force of will alone. His body ached and his lungs burned, but he forced himself to go faster.

There was a flicker of white, just round the corner.

Nearly falling on his face, Kaede pushed himself forward despite the painful protest of his exhausted physique. He gasped for air, grabbed hold of the railing and went onward.

It would not happen again.

He rounded the corner and staggered, his feet painful after what seemed like an eternity of running up the starscraper’s stairwell, but he did not relent.

He could not bear loosing her.

Slamming open the door to the scraper’s topmost open-air observatory level, Kaede walked forward – trying his best to stop himself from falling – and was met by a blast of frosty wind that rippled his clothes and forced him to step back. Kilometers above the ground, the wind was not as serene.

Ten meters in front of him, standing near the edge of the scraper’s peak, was an immaculate figure of white, completely unaffected by the rippling wind, placid.

She turned to face Kaede.

“Don’t leave me!” Kaede cried. Contrasted with the immaculate female in front of him, he was a ragged mess, exhausted and beaten, battered by the wind.

Her face, pale and beautiful, was sad. The placidity that engulfed her died down, somewhat, and her silver hair began moving as if picked up by a gentle yet nonexistent breeze. “I have to…”

“Why?!” painful emotions swirled inside Kaede, forming a piercing cold that was worse than the frosty air blasting him. “Why?!” he repeated himself, desperate.

“You… won’t understand,” she replied, her eyes, very blue yet very warm, staring at him… into him.

Her inaudible attempt at comforting him was not successful, and Kaede nearly broke down. “Please, don’t leave me! I don’t want to loose you again - I can’t!”

“I’m sorry…”

“No!” Kaede pleaded. His eyes now filled with tears.

“I have to go now…” she said. A tear streaked down one of her eyes as she slowly began to fade away, growing transparent. “Don’t worry Kaede… I’ll be waiting for you…”

“No! Please don’t go!” Kaede screamed, his legs buckled and he fell to his knees. He reached out for her, but within seconds all traces of her existence had disappeared. He sobbed. “Please don’t…”

[Shroom Man 777]

Star’s End

General Txaxil stared intently at the LCD screen, watching the machinations of the invaders from beyond.

Seventy hours ago, they had arrived inside their ship – a massive multi-kilometer tower-shaped monolith of a vessel. The craft hovered above the outskirts of a city on the southern continent and disgorged nine entities, featureless bipeds seemingly made out onyx-colored liquid steel. As the entities hovered thousands of feet above the ground, the vessel deployed yet another object – a machine that was not quite as exotic as the ship’s onyx sentinels, but far larger. The sentinels guided the machine to the ground, and seismic activity, intense enough to be detected on the other side of the world, followed shortly after its touchdown.

The military leaders of the world, Txaxil included, panicked. They had been watching anxiously, preparing for any aggression while hoping to communicate. The vessel and its guardians did not respond, but what they did with their machine was immediately met with retaliation.

The attack destroyed the machine, but the spaceship and the sentinels were unharmed. The second the atomic fireballs dissipated, eight of the nine sentinels were dispatched to annihilate the armies that had gathered around the spaceship’s vicinity. In barely a day, all of the worlds’ militaries had been shattered, and none of the eight had been injured in the slightest.

The ninth stayed behind. Currently, long-range probes and satellites were transmitting its activities into Txaxil’s submarine bunker. Several hours had passed with it hovering idly underneath the spaceship, but recently, activity had been reported.

On the screen, several grey objects, vaguely similar to the seismic machine that had been obliterated, floated from the bottom of the spaceship – which was, itself, a pillar of bluish chrome steel. The ninth sentinel guided the object’s descent and began gesturing with its arms, ‘commanding’ the objects to merge with one another. The unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicle zoomed in its camera, and Txaxil could see the grey objects more clearly. Some of them were blocks while others resembled giant bolts and a few looked like tubes. The largest ‘component’ was a giant cylinder; the modules began attaching themselves on various places on its surface.

Txaxil stared on as the process completed itself. With a gesture of its arm, the sentinel then guided the new machine to the irradiated ground. The machine made contact, and then buried the first third of itself into the ground. Parts of the machine, most notably the parts that slightly resembled circuits, began glowing in a light blue sheen.

“Sir, energy spikes are off the roof!” reported a nearby science officer, briefly distracting Txaxil.

“Seems like they’re trying again,” Txaxil said, mostly to himself.

“No, it’s not the same-” the techie was cut off. He directed his attention to another monitor, one that was beeping.

“What?”

“Sir, we’re receiving a transmission.”

“From the President?”

“No… from… it.”

Txaxil’s eyes widened. He turned back to gaze at his LCD screen and was shocked to see that the image of the alien machine had been replaced with several dozen strings of green figures, alphanumeric symbols intermixed with glyphs totally unfamiliar and alien to Txaxil. More strings of green code filled the screen, until it was filled with a crawling stream of green light. The streams stopped, and Txaxil could hear a slight noise emanating from the screen. Then a face, vague and more like an apparition, with two eyes and a mouth, materialized.

It spoke it a neutral tone that was not loud yet not silent either: “Our intention was the swift and unobtrusive collection of information locked inside your planet’s crust with our seismic probe. You have destroyed it, and have forced us no alternative but to initiate protocol. Your world will be digitized, the entirety of its atomic structure transmuted into raw data. All relevant information shall be stored; information that is non-essential or redundant shall be deleted. That is all.”

The digital apparition disappeared, and the green code dissipated, replaced by the image of the alien machine that had imbedded itself onto the planet’s surface. Txaxil could say the only thing he could think of at the moment: “Get me the President…”

[Shroom Man 777]

____________________________________

- August 16, 2258 -
- Somewhere in pre-Imperial Bragulan Space -
____________________________________

Darvyl gazed around the room, surveying the cluttered mess that was Balexarn’s abode. On a nearby table were several phones, an empty box of fast food half-covered by a mess of papers and file folders, and a bulky computer – one of the latest models capable of holding several hundred gigabytes of data. For a while, Darvyl wondered at what was in the machine – but one look at the wall behind the table rendered the question moot. The wall was covered in numerous posters and was dominated by a chart of news clippings linked together by red strings and thumbtacks. The clippings were about a great many things (all of which were interconnected by a sinister agenda, Balexarn would later insist) that included reports on political developments, military activities, scientific breakthroughs and even tabloid articles on celebrities. The posters that surrounded the chart of seemingly random clippings were no more coherent – they were magnified images of all sorts of things, from weird landscapes and structures to spacecraft to abstract and archaic symbols to mugshots of long-deceased people Darvyl recognized from his history classes.

Near the wall, beside one of the larger posters – which depicted a red-eyed member of the Apexai, a mysterious alien species that Bragulankind had come into contact a century ago, (though this was the only picture of a red-eyed, possibly albino, Apexai Darvyl had seen) – was a bookshelf that contained scores of encyclopedias, almanacs and magazines.

Darvyl sighed and sat himself down on a cushioned chair that was, like most other furniture in Balexarn’s home, covered in plastic. He remembered what his best friend, Viklyov, had said when they were still at the house’s doorstep, about to ring the doorbell.

“Balexarn is insane, I don’t even understand why you want to visit, or why I am even dropping you off here. It’s all conspiracies with him!”

With that, Viklyov went on about his own business, which he conducted a safe distance away from Balexarn’s residence. Soon afterwards, Darvyl rang the doorbell and Balexarn almost instantaneously answered the door. He had been listening, and retorted (a bit lately) by saying: “Not conspiracies. Conspiracy, singular.”

“I couldn’t find anything aside from water,” Balexarn announced as he entered the room and handed Darvyl a bottle of mineral water. Balexarn had them in droves, as he never drank tap water.

“Thanks,” Darvyl said as he glanced at an oddly misplaced item on Balexarn’s wall, which was, like everything else inside the building, overcrowded. It was a framed embroidery, entirely made out of gleaming silver fabric, save for the two golden circles that merged at their sides, forming a horizontally aligned ‘8’ symbol. “Did you make that?”

“No, I didn’t make the rest of them either,” Balexarn gestured to the other adornments of his wall. “Except the chart. I compiled that all by myself.”

“Ah yes, about the news clippings-” Darvyl was about to ask about Balexarn’s complicated chart of events, which would inevitably lead to his rather eccentric theories – which Darvyl found to be both amusing and intriguing because of its incredibility and its consistency. But Balexarn interrupted him.

“Yes, they illustrate part of the question whose answer you seek.” Balexarn, oddly enough, sounded sagely, although it was no surprise to Darvyl that he already knew the reason for his visitation. Balexarn reached back to grab a chair, the type with wheels on its base, to sit on.

“Yes. Would you mind telling me about it?” Darvyl knew the answer to this, as Balexarn was visibly delighted with his presence, perhaps even proud to have a visitor into his little asylum.

“The question? Of course I wouldn’t mind,” Balexarn placed himself on his chair and took a sip of mineral water. ‘The question’ was probably what he called his theory. Not theories. Theory, as in singular. “And I doubt I would have to simplify it by much, since you seem rather intelligent. I read your credentials from the university.”

Whereas most would find that rather odd, even perturbing, Darvyl didn’t even think much of it. In fact, it would’ve been surprising if Balexarn hadn’t bothered to check him out. “They are available to the public, in any case,” Darvyl shrugged. “Now… the question.”

“Yes,” Balexarn said as he readied himself. He began. “Ever since the apex of early civilization, when we were still confined to Bragule, there has been a single cabal of powers subtly manipulating the course of Bragulan history to further their own agenda. I take it that you already know of this, correct?”

“Yes,” Darvyl replied, humoring him. If Balexarn knew that Darvyl was doing so, he didn’t show it.

“At every point in history we can see their illusive influences, and if we look enough, we can even see the signs of their intercession – which have had very profound influences on Bragulan civilization,” he paused for a second, and continued. “Did you know that fluoride, tropically applied, does not actually prevent the decay of teeth? That it actually makes them detectible to spy satellites?”

“Erm, no,” Darvyl said, surprised at this sudden revelation. Then he remembered a question that he had wanted to ask ever since the beginning. “When did it start, and who started it?”

“When did it start? I don’t know, for sure. With them, it’s very difficult to know. The same applies for the latter question – nobody simply knows for sure, not even me. I believe that whoever started it though, could not have had the foresight to have done this much unless there was outside influence.”

Unsure of what that meant, Darvyl asked: “The Apexai?”

“No, no. They have just entered the game. Whoever started it was definitely not Apexai, nor Bragulan. Whoever they were, whatever they were, what they accomplished through the years, the decades, the centuries, is simply incredible.”

“How do the Apexai figure into this matter?”

“Only recently, some time before the First Contact, did they started playing – whereas the entire conspiracy began centuries ago. I believe that they too are like us, being manipulated by them. You see, the most visible players are only a factor for several decades, a century at most. Then they are discarded, unraveled, or simply faded away – although some traces of them remain.

The Apexai have been working with the Regency, the largest and most powerful empire, for decades now. Secret weapons, nanotechnology, artifacts from worlds beyond the Periphery, research into alien technology, mentallics, splicing metabragulans, chronomanipulation. And this is just at the surface, I believe that through the Regency, the Apexai are spreading their influences to the rest of Bragulankind, serving as proxies for them.”

“And the ever increasing political upheavals are the signs of this attempt at intercession?” Darvyl asked.

“Partly,” Balexarn said. “With them, it becomes clear only after it has happened. That is what makes them so dangerous. Which is why I am here, hiding.”

Darvyl spotted something on Balexarn’s chart of news clippings. “I never knew the Regency Youth Brigade was the reason for those crop deformations…”

“But you’ve never been one of them, have you?” Balexarn asked. Whether he was serious or joking, Darvyl couldn’t tell. Probably both. He sighed. “In any case, Darvyl, I believe that we are in very troubled times. I believe that there is no thing such as fate, that we are the only ones responsible for our destiny – that they, no matter how much power they wield, cannot preordain. You are a smart boy, Darvyl – and soon, you will find the answer to the question.”

[Shroom Man 777]

____________________________________

- August 8, 2562 -
- Death Valley, Coalition frontier world Lazarus Prime -
____________________________________

The Preacher, a gaunt and ragged man in a tattered trenchcoat, beckoned the Duke of Death: “The Lord God has commanded me to take your miserable and sinful life, son. Draw your pistol, so that you may meet your Maker.”

“What?” was the Duke’s simple response to his challenger. He placed his hands above his holstered handgun, his trusty Colt M2411.

“I said draw your pistol. You have a bounty on your head, Aurigan Bob. You have been guilty of many a transgression, and I am obliged as a Servant of God to punish you for your numerous moral failings.”

People began forming a crowd around them and the small parcel of street they were on, though they were careful to keep their distance and keep to the sides – away from where the bullets would be flying to. One of these persons, these gunmen, was going to leave relatively unhurt while the other one would be placed in a bag and carted to the nearest morgue. The Duke and his challenger knew that – and so did everyone else.

The Duke narrowed his eyes. There was a good fifteen meters between him and the soon-to-be dead man. Far enough.

He reached for his gun. But the Preacher was faster.

The Duke registered with his cold, lifeless eyes the barrel of the Preacher’s revolver light up, then he heard the shot, and then he felt it.

Felt the blood splatter on his neck as his earlobe was reduced to a bloody flap of nearly torn-off flesh courtesy of the Preacher’s hollow point. He flinched, and then pulled out his handgun.

The Duke of Death was not the fastest draw in the galaxy, far from it, in fact. But he was widely regarded as godlike in his shooting abilities, often remarked as being ‘like Jesus with a pistol’. This was not because he was fast, but because his aim was perfect. His dead eyes and his stern hand would, at a relatively unrushed, calm and leisurely pace, methodologically aim his gun, line up the sights, and fire off a single shot that was guaranteed to kill whatever it was aimed at.

The Duke’s pistol was at level with his hips, but it was inclined in an angle that gave its barrel a straight line to the Preacher’s skull. He squeezed the trigger.

The Preacher gaped, surprised at his fatal error, and the last thing he saw was the blue-white muzzle flash of the Duke’s pistol.

The tungsten-cored thermoelectric round disintegrated the bone between the Preacher’s eye sockets and erupted rather bloodily from the back of his head. The gunmen fell backwards, and in no time, there was a puddle of blood and brains cushioning his perforated head.

The Duke holstered his pistol, turned back and went on his own way. He touched his maimed ear and muttered: “Got to go to the Doctor and get me a new one.”

[Shroom Man 777]

____________________________________

- September 9, 2550 -
- somewhere on Bragule -
____________________________________

Trysta was awed at mere presence of the giants. They were metabragulans, supersoldiers artificially grown from DNA refined by eugenics, virtual demigods enhanced with radio-chemical treatments and biomechanical implants. Hybrids of the Imperator’s undeniable will and bleeding edge Consortium nanotechnology. They were supercommandos of the Emerald Guard. And they were watching her.

“Good morning, Comrade Instructor,” the tallest of the metabragulans greeted.

“Good morning, Yvanek,” Trysta replied. She tried her best to avoid stuttering, which was hard, considering that Yvanek was almost seven feet in height and had thrice her body mass. If he was so inclined to do it, he could break her into two. And then eat her. “I presume that you had already taken your cryo-stimulants?”

When Emerald Guard metabragulans were not in battle or in training, they were often refrigerated in order to preserve their quality and prolong their lifespans. When this state of suspended animation was recalled, a psychic-adept would help re-activate their minds as they de-frosted, while chemical injections were required to stimulate their other bodily functions.

“Yes we have, Trysta.”

Despite their remorseless efficiency in combat and their ability to kill anything and everything the Imperator wished dead, they were rather friendly outside the battlefield. It was very paradoxical to Trysta, especially as her anxiety slowly began to ebb away. Maybe it was because of their artificial nature, or the mental-conditioning that made them absolutely loyal. “Good. Today, I will demonstrate to you a new weapon. It was developed by our scientists in the Guard’s research and development unit, using technology obtained from the Consortium.”

As Trysta pulled out a remote control from her pocket, Yvanek and the rest of the supercommandos diverted their attention to the large television screen that comprised one of the room’s walls.

“Is it a derivative of Contagion-9?” Yvanek asked. Contagion was a self-replicating defoliant. Highly corrosive and toxic, it used the nano-chemical technology the Consortium shared with the Empire. As of now, there were nineteen variants. All of them lethal.

“Not this time,” Trysta replied. She pressed a button on her remote control and the television blinked to life. It displayed a black-and-green monochromatic outline of what seemed to be your average weapon – a thick blockish thing with a stubby tube on one end, a tube that was probably meant to be pointed at enemies.

“So, we have finally decided to use plasma weaponry?” Garrek, one of the other metabragulans in the room, commented. “Does it shoot bolts, like the ones used by the humans, or is it more like a Consortium plasma caster?”

“Actually, it shoots a beam, but its not a plasma weapon,” Trysta answered. “It’s an atomic disintegrator.”

“A what?” Garrek asked.

“An atomic disintegrator,” Trysta pressed her remote again and more details on the machine could be seen on the television. “Basically, it emits tachyonic particles that destabilize the bonds that hold subatomic particles together.”

“A what?” Garrek repeated himself.

Trysta sighed and continued. “It’s a very powerful weapon, more lethal than anything short of a tank-mounted plasma cannon, and is capable of dematerializing a hole through almost anything – tanks, buildings, even shield armoring. And the beam travels faster than light, too.”

Content with the lack of any barely-humorous side comments, Trysta pressed another button and the television showed an outline of the massive powersuits used by the Supercommandos – the ones powered by miniature fission reactors.

“There are only two hundred units in existence, though in time there will be more. All of the existing units have been integrated into modified powersuits and have been shipped to this facility for testing. As your instructor, it is my duty to see to it that you will be familiarized with these weapons, because very soon you will be using it.”

With another click, the outline of the powersuit was replaced with a more detailed image of its arm-unit. “Anyway, the disintegrators have been built-into the forearm of the modified powersuits. Because of this, as well as the problems of aiming an arm-mounted weapon, an additional targeting mechanism has also been integrated into the gauntlets, a simple dot-laser-”

“Excuse me Trysta,” Yvanek interrupted.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering, what about the disintegrator’s power consumption? If it can effortlessly shear through tank armoring, and even the Terrans’ CESA armoring, then it must consume a lot of energy. Will that not impede the performance of our powersuits?”

“I was just getting to that, thank you, Yvanek,” Trysta replied. “Yes, because it consumes so much energy, the atomic reactors inside the powersuits have been extensively modified. They now generate three times the energy and are, consequently, three times larger. This increases the infrared signature of the powersuits, and even then, this is just barely enough to power the disintegrators. Prolonged use can deplete them very quickly, and as you have noticed on the previous schematic diagram, a disintegrator-armed powersuit cannot sport a jump-jet. And neither can it sport a wrist-mounted forcefield projector.”

Trysta continued: “In any case, for now you will learn the mechanisms of the device and how to operate it. We have several Terminator tanks captured from the Sovereignty, as well as several Zigonian battle tanks, the ones with the unpronounceable names.”

Yvanek’s eyes lit up with excitement. “Will we test the disintegrators now?”

“Indeed. Follow me.”

[Crazedwraith]

Yay Super Brags with phasors!

Also I'm liking the preacher vs Duke shot. Nice high light of the "being fastest means nothing unless you are ableto hit some thing" concept.

[Shroom Man 777]

____________________________________

- March 23, 2550 -
- Wild Space world Tannenhaus -
____________________________________

I stood surrounded by a scene of death and carnage. Everything was on fire. Everything around me was dying. Dead. Men, women and children, their corpses and entrails scattered throughout the streets of Tannenhaus. Nuclear wind blowing their ashes into my eyes.

I stood there, nearly naked. My body armor was gone, I took it off. I was only wearing my body glove, torn up, most of it melted onto my skin.

Black smoke burned my eyes, but I could see it all nonetheless. The immolated corpses, they screamed silent screams as their vocal cords were transmuted into embers. I could smell it. I could taste it.

I cried. The smoke from the radioactive fire burned my eyes. K-residue burned my flesh.

I screamed.

I screamed with them. I screamed with them because I could see them screaming, crying out as the fire licked the flesh off their bones. As the flame boiled their eyes and snaked into their eye sockets. They flailed around as they were engulfed, as they were consumed. They writhed as their burning forms dropped to the ground and turned into cinders.

It was ethereal in its horror. Beautiful, even.

I laughed.

My eyes were wide in shock and madness, and I laughed. At first it was more of a cough. Hard to laugh when the air was full of cremated people. But then I started to chuckle, and then I laughed out loud at the blasphemy I beheld. I laughed as I cried. Laughed as I burned.

I fell to my knees and started clawing at my body, tearing off the melted bodysuit and ripping off clumps of my own hair while I laughed. I saw the corpse of a young girl, half her face turned into a charred skull by the neutron bombs we used, and somehow I couldn’t help but snicker out loud. Her dress, colored pink, was still on her, but it was smoldering.

I got back to my feet and started walking around in a daze; my eyes were still wide open. I was still crying yet, at the same time, I was giggling. I started walking around the ruins, barely keeping my balance. I tripped a few times, tripped on a few corpses, and I found that extremely funny. I laughed madly. Then I suddenly screamed and thrashed, hot tears streaking down my face. I stepped on a skull and it turned into a powder, then I stopped screaming and started snickering again.

Somehow, as I ripped off the last of my hair, I suddenly caught fire. I still walked on, though. With a smirk on my face, snickering, giggling, laughing. Crying. I fell on my back and I screamed. I started tearing off my face.