BTW, have you decided on all the picks for the Britain invasion game?
Yes.
I get the feeling that were Shinji still a regular human, that he would be sleeping on the couch at this point.
Quick question. How long as it been since the Birth of the Gods here?
Oh yeah. And about twenty-five years, although Warp screwiness with regards to time adds or subtracts a couple years for some people.
Also, I'm waiting for someone to realize the "Mwahahahahaha!" part of this chapter.
So.......Mislaato found the drifting capsule, and likely heard the last plea of the dying woman near it. Add, her own experience when she was just a child on Second Impact.
So she's the adoptive daughter and Champion of the Warp Goddess of Perfection and Sensation......truly fascinating......i will await eagerly the meeting with the TSAB task force....
By the way, what animal species did finally chose Mislaato as her avatar animals? I would bet on a feline species, no?
A devoted follower of the Chaos Goddess and her way.....
Buck Murdock: Oh, cut the bleeding heart crap, will ya? We've all got our switches, lights, and knobs to deal with, Striker. I mean, down here there are literally hundreds and thousands of blinking, beeping, and flashing lights, blinking and beeping and flashing - they're *flashing* and they're *beeping*. I can't stand it anymore! They're *blinking* and *beeping* and *flashing*! Why doesn't somebody pull the plug!
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
You know, I had taken that in a totally different mental direction, picturing Cobblepot on the Golden Throne. Probably because despite liking this story, I couldn't care less about most anime.
Chronological Incontinence: Time warps around the poster. The thread topic winks out of existence and reappears in 1d10 posts.
Out of Context Theatre, this week starring Darth Nostril.
-'If you really want to fuck with these idiots tell them that there is a vaccine for chemtrails.'
The mind of Tzintchi the Nine Fingered was a complicated thing, one that even the other gods had trouble working out at times. This was one of them. He had been moving his pieces about very carefully since the games had begun, often times failing to seize upon advantages that the others did not see because they would hinder him later. He had also subtly, and not so subtly, been moving the pieces of his peers to his own advantage.
For all of his swearing when the scoring had been added up, he had been the one moving Asukhon towards the construction of a Daemonworld. He had been intentionally goading her into coming up with something more clever than “Blood for the Blood God!” and had managed to get her to pull of something as brilliant, and as obvious as that.
Why? Because the division between the various realities was artificial and there was a barrier in space and time where the only breach point to the outside multiverse was the one where Haruhi reigned in ignorant supremacy. Someone had built a containment system for an entire branch of the multiverse.
And yet Ali’s story indicated that those living out there were ignorant of who had actually built the barrier. Tzintchi needed more data. He needed to learn more about those living on the outside. So he had moved Asukhon into sending up a massive “We’re here!” signal. If it came to violence, then she would be the best suited to the task while he could remain in the background and observe.
It was why he had begun the rebirth of the Tok’ra. They were born survivors who were good at keeping their ears open, and if it all went to hell in that universe, they would be the ones most likely to somehow make it out alive. And be indebted to him for saving their race. The Tok’ra were his back-up plan for data gathering.
Threads of fate were coming together as one into a complex pattern. Tzintchi could not see all of them, but he could see more than those travelling them. If he had done this right, the Ori should launch their full assault on the Milky Way right as the outsiders showed up. With Mislaato’s agent having been helping to upgrade the Lucian Alliance ships, the fight would be significantly more interesting than if things had been allowed to run their course originally. Also, the Tau’ri had managed to conserve a considerable amount of resources that they might have otherwise lost in the conflict due to the Ori reprioritizing.
Then again the Ori had also decided that maybe just four motherships might be insufficient for the coming campaign.
Tzintchi watched as the pieces on the board moved, and then a new one appeared.
“Do they honestly think that a black hole is going to hurt my Daemonworld?” Asukhon asked in disgust as the Ori collapsed the star that P4X K79 had once orbited.
“No, but it might power their shiny new supergate,” Mislaato pointed out.
“Ooooh! So they’re finally going to give me a real fight! This is going to be fun,” Asukhon said with glee, rubbing her hands together in anticipation.
“You may borrow my armies,” Reigle stated quietly.
“Half of them are already there, but yeah, making sure the important people aren’t swamped would be nice,” Asukhon said casually.
“I’m deploying the Lucian Alliance’s capital ships,” Mislaato said.
“Hey! It’s my world, you can’t just barge in,” Asukhon snarled.
“Technically with Toji and Ali there, something you agreed to, we all have a stake in that world. I am informing the Tau’ri and the Free Jaffa, if they don’t already know, about this development,” Tzintchi said while smiling.
Asukhon glared at him but shook her head and said, “I expected this when you proposed sending those two over there. Very well. Also, clever strategy, if a rather cowardly one. No matter what happens after today, you lose nothing.”
“What can I say? That I saw this coming and waited to develop up my own forces in that universe?” Tzintchi asked.
“You could have told us,” Asukhon groused.
“Oh where is the fun in that my dear?” Mislaato asked while chuckling. “We are playing against each other as much as against the locals. If Tzintchi had some advantageous knowledge in our game, why should he share it with us if he doesn’t want to?”
“Because it would be a nice thing to do?” Reigle asked.
Bursting out laughing, Tzintchi said, “Alright, just for that my dears I will let you see one of the cards in my hand. I have ensured that the Warp about Asukhon’s world is still relatively calm, unnaturally still in fact, even for that tame place.”
“I had noticed that, I thought you were just screwing with me somehow, but I couldn’t actually figure out what the point was so I let it slide. What are you doing?” Asukhon asked.
“If I’m right, we should get extra reinforcement right when we need it,” Tzintchi said enigmatically.
Asukhon looked at him, opened her mouth to say something, before shutting it and shaking her head. Eventually she said, “Forget it, I’ll just tell Toji to get ready for a planetary assault. I expect the Ori to have some sort of trick up their sleeve for this one.”
Tzintchi took another look at the way the strands of fate were twisting. This was going to be fun!
The journey out into Wild Space had been a long, difficult one, taking a full two weeks as the Eventide had been forced to dodge about the various interdimensional storms that had been kicked up in the already unstable region by the dislocation. For some, this meant many long, boring, tense hours of waiting. For those with combat profiles, this meant special training missions with Captain Nanoha.
Fortunately for the combat teams, the “White Devil” did not push them too hard as she did not intend to exhaust or injure them before the actual mission. Unfortunately for them, Nanoha knew very intimately exactly what actions would hurt someone or leave them excessively fatigued and could push them to their very limits and not one step further.
And now they were at the target location, sitting in interdimensional space in orbit above a world that had been shoved out of normal space by unimaginable forces. The surface of the planet was massively scarred, once green and brown plains and forests reduced to ugly black craters hundreds of kilometres across. The seas had also turned blood red with some sort of pollution, and the readings on the scanners were very strange.
For one thing, while they were picking up signs of activity on the planet’s surface, there were very few life signs… and whenever they tried to focus their scrying equipment on any of the life signs they did pick up, they only got white noise and static, as if something was jamming them.
There was no other option but to send someone down to the surface to try and make contact with the locals. The only question now was who to send?
Fat had considered for about half a second before glancing over at Nanoha and Fate and shrugging. They were diplomatic… enough… neither one of them had a tendency to start shooting anyway. Well, Fate more so, but still. The two of them should be able to handle a basic first contact scenario, and if things escalated out of control they had the best chance of getting away safely. Sending only two young women might not garner much respect depending upon the culture of the locals, but at least it wouldn’t panic them like a larger group might.
With any luck it would be Fate making the friends and not Nanoha, seeing as how no matter what happened, that would probably involve an international incident.
Shaking her head at the thought and reassuring herself that it would be alright, Hayate ordered, “Fate, Nanoha, I want you two to teleport down to the surface and begin recon and contact with the locals. See what you can find out.”
“Yes ma’am,” both of them said while saluting.
Hopefully this would go peacefully.
The three battlecruisers available to Earth at the moment, the Daedalus being in another galaxy, dropped out of hyperspace in a triangular formation, the Prometheus at the centre while flanked on either side by the Odyssey and the Korolev. Dropping out around them were almost two dozen Ha’taks from the Free Jaffa Nation rallied by Teal’c for the defence of the galaxy.
Almost immediately their sensors lit up with unknown contacts, a group of ten Ha’taks who they did not recognize. Shields had already been up and weapons hot, so in less than a second the entire formation had locks on the unknowns, but almost immediately a general message was sent out by the unknowns.
“Attention forces of the Tau’ri and Jaffa, these are the ships of the Lucian Alliance, and we mean you no harm. In fact, we come to offer you aid at repelling the Ori,” a somewhat glazed looking official announced.
“And how exactly did you know about the supergate?” Daniel asked.
“Lady Compassion told us that it was a mission given to her directly by the Goddess,” the man said with a somewhat vacant smile. He was almost certainly on something.
“Great, fighting religious fanatics with religious fanatics,” Mitchell muttered.
“Have you done anything to the supergate since arrival?” Carter asked.
“No, we only arrived shortly before you did. The Lady said that there would not be time to prevent what is coming, only to confront it,” the man replied.
Almost as if on cue the supergate energized and formed a version of the regular wormhole created by a Stargate only a thousand times greater. The man said, “And so the symphony of destruction begins. We attack the moment something emerges from the event horizon.”
The channel clicked dead as the Lucian Alliance ships began to move about, forming a roughly semi-spherical formation away from the other ships. There was a tense moment as nothing else happened, and then the nose of the first Ori ship poked out through the event horizon.
The rest did not make it.
As one all ten Lucian Alliance Ha’taks opened fire with all main guns on overcharge. With any other force, this would not have worked, but Lady Compassion had spent the last several months perfecting the systems and crews of these ships. Every single shot fired arrived within a tenth of a second on a spot about two metres in diameter, a tolerance tighter than the Tau’ri demanded in space combat.
The amount of energy was simply too much for the shields of the Ori mothership to take and they quite spectacularly failed. Within the ship the entire shield generator was turned to molten slag by its capacitors having their energy handling limits exceeded by an order of magnitude. Of course, it was a moot point as the remaining energy from the barrage flooded the bridge and instantly vaporized the Prior commanding the ship, as well as utterly destroying the main weapon system.
Half a second later, the next Ori ship, somehow not anticipating that their enemies would turn the gate into a shooting gallery for their ships, emerged and rammed straight into the drifting hulk of the first ship. While its shields handled the physical impact adequately, it also blinded the pilot to what was happening.
This ship took two salvos to destroy as the Ha’taks had not had time to bring their guns to maximum possible charge, with the first salvo knocking down the shields while the second completely removed the main part of the ship, leaving only the remains of the hoop-like rear drive section to drift in space in front of the gate.
The third ship exited into the debris field of the first two ships and the incoming fire from not just the Lucian Alliance but the Jaffa and Tau’ri ships as well. That many ships firing on a single target meant that the unnatural coordination of the Alliance ships was unnecessary as the last ship was simply overwhelmed and shredded by the relentless fire.
A fourth ship did not appear. Instead, the gate was quiet for a moment, a huge debris field drifting about it quietly while the defenders sat on the other side, waiting for something to come through.
It took several seconds for anything to happen, but after a short time of tense waiting the sensors on the Prometheus picked up dozens of fast moving and accelerating contacts heading away from the gate, hidden by the debris for the first part of their journey.
“Fighters, clever,” Colonel Penderghast commented. “Scramble all 302s in the fleet and get our rail guns ready for point defence. Move us to cover the Lucian Alliance ships; they’re the ones who know how to hit hard.”
In short order the Prometheus and the Odyssey, followed willingly by the Korolev, moved to provide anti-fighter cover for the Alliance ships, while Death gliders out on CAP were already engaging the Ori fighters.
As bad as it was though, every member of SG-1 pointedly refrained from questioning whether or not the situation could get worse. It could and would in the most unexpected way if experience had anything to say about it.
In another but nearby dimension on the world dubbed Bloodhaven, a young girl of perhaps age twelve on the outside, probably younger, was sitting on a blasted outcropping of rock that had flowed like liquid at one point. She was patiently waiting while Toji arranged the ground defences for maximum effect. She was waiting for their guests.
She was, to say the least, different looking. She had been born with a fair complexion and blonde hair, but circumstances had bleached her skin an almost ashen alabaster tone and her hair the finest platinum blonde. When set against the black cloth and leather of her outfit, these made her look even paler, which all added up to contrast quite strikingly with her irises, which actually glowed a little with the power bubbling up within her.
Grasped in one hand was a scythe that was somewhat oversized for her but that she would no doubt one day grow into. Crafted of adamantium and decorated with the long bones from a human, right at the joint where the blade met the pole portion there was a large purple crystal.
As a large yellow circle set with various magical runes sprang into existence on the ground in front of the girl. The crystal part of the scythe said in a disembodied female voice, “I know this mage…”
Standing up, Ali tried to look calm and serene as was befitting her honoured status while a touch of excitement started to enter her heart. Could the gods have been so great as to have granted her this opportunity?
In a flash of light two figures appeared in the centre of the circle. Both were young women, one brown haired and the other blonde. Ali’s eyes looked with the blonde haired woman and they evaluated each other. If one did not know the story they might think that Ali was a clone of the woman their features were so similar. The truth was of course much stranger.
Ali’s staff broke the silence when it said in a mournful tone, “Fate…”
Immediately brightening up, Ali cried out, “Little sister!”
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
And now things get even more interesting. Fate is definitely going to be a bit surprised. Also, I don't know about anyone else, but Tzintchi's actions make all too much sense from my perspective.
This is sickening... You sound like chapters from a self-help booklet! Prepare yourselves!
That's because I'm letting you seem some of his thinking. He knows that he can't really order the other gods around directly, so he relies upon secondary methods of control like convincing them that something was their idea all along. It was one of his abilities in Thousand Shinji, and while it has been amplified by several orders of magnitude and is still expanding, so has their resistance to such tricks. Of course, for a lot of things he does just ask or talk to them, but if they don't know what he's up to half the time it makes it harder for potential threats like the Old School Chaos gods from figuring them out.
Who do you think came up with an arbitrary scoring system for their conflict in the SG-verse?
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
Robo Jesus wrote:And now things get even more interesting. Fate is definitely going to be a bit surprised. Also, I don't know about anyone else, but Tzintchi's actions make all too much sense from my perspective.
Yep.....from the FIRST step of the TSAB Task Force, he will have them off-set, confused, and divided, and with Alicia there, he certainly it's introducing a potential rift, between Fate, and the others on the group.....add, that the Ori attack will have them too agitated to think clearly, something that allows far bigger chances for Tzintchi, or one of the others, to plants the seeds of Chaos on their souls and minds....
Also, it will be certainly WONDERFUL to see Fate's face when she hears about who's soul it's on the Daemon-Based ID(Intelligent Device) Scythe that Alicia uses as a weapon........
And Shinji's webs are growing, indeed.........
PS: Are you going to reveal or not what animal did choose Mislaato as her avatar one?
A devoted follower of the Chaos Goddess and her way.....
Buck Murdock: Oh, cut the bleeding heart crap, will ya? We've all got our switches, lights, and knobs to deal with, Striker. I mean, down here there are literally hundreds and thousands of blinking, beeping, and flashing lights, blinking and beeping and flashing - they're *flashing* and they're *beeping*. I can't stand it anymore! They're *blinking* and *beeping* and *flashing*! Why doesn't somebody pull the plug!
Fate stumbled back, her eyes wide with shock while she tried to regain her composure at this completely unexpected revelation, but her knees were as weak as if someone had just punched her the in the gut. She tried to get something out, but all that she said was, “What?”
Nanoha for her part could only stare on in shock at the incredible distress her best friend was going through, and the incredible, impossible reason for that shock.
“Fate…” the scythe said again. “I’m so sorry.”
“M-mother?” Fate asked, on the verge of breaking down in one form or another.
“Yes Fate, it’s Precia, and I am so sorry,” the scythe replied.
“Momma got a stern talking too over what she did to you,” the little girl who had been waiting for them stated.
“Why is she a scythe?” Nanoha asked in horror while Fate tried desperately to keep herself together. Precia had featured in her fondest dreams and her worst nightmares over the past eleven years. For her mother to just say she was sorry and that she loved her was one of her most desperately desired things in life.
“Technically momma isn’t the scythe, she’s just bound to it as punishment for what she did to little sister Fate,” the girl, Alicia said. “Oh, and to help look after me!”
Fate clutched at her head and stomach as she tried not to burst out crying or throw up. “This- this is impossible! You both died!”
“Only momma died, and even then, not fully. My stasis pod sheltered me in the Warp until the gods found us. They restored me to health and recovered momma’s soul,” Alicia explained.
“You can call me Ali!” The girl said proudly. “The gods sent me here to meet whoever came to find out about this world, and they sent me my little sister! They really want to meet you.”
“They truly are great beings. They made me realize that I had two daughters-” Precia began, but that was more than enough for Fate, who promptly screamed and collapsed to the ground.
“Little sister!” Ali cried out, rushing over to Fate, but a warding hand from Nanoha kept her away.
With a few quick gestures Nanoha immediately had Fate teleported away while requesting someone else to come down to assist. Looking at Alicia- Ali- she said, “I think your sister has had too much excitement for one day. She’s spent a long time getting over the fact that both of you died, only for you to both show up now.”
Ali frowned, but the disembodied voice of Precia said, “I understand. It will take time for her to understand what has happened. Just tell her that I have come to terms with my actions. I love both my daughters and wish that I could go back in time to fix the mistakes I made.”
Nodding, Nanoha said sternly, “She will appreciate that, although you should know that she has had an adoptive mother for many years who has already told her that.”
Precia was saddened for a moment before she said, “Then I wish to meet this woman and thank her for raising such a fine young girl.”
“Now could you tell me what is going on?” Nanoha demanded.
Ali nodded and was just about to speak when a different voice emanated from the staff, obviously as some sort of radio function. It was a deep, imposing male voice that said, “Ali, we’re going to need you to get airborne, something weird is going on.”
The Battle of the Supergate had been… it had been going. So far it was a stalemate as while the defenders of the Milky Way had prevented any more motherships from getting through, neither could they actually do anything to the ships on the other side of the gate, nor in fact do anything to the gate itself. So far the battle had degenerated into a delicate balance in the fighter combat. If enough fighters got through to threaten the Lucian Alliance Ha’taks, or even distract them from their overwatch, then the Ori could start shoving through more ships.
Considering that enough firepower to slag several continents had been poured into them, the fact that the Ori ships were debris and not expanding balls of diffuse gas spoke rather much of their defensive capacities. They probably had offensive abilities to match too.
So far the fast firing Tau’ri railguns had been reaping a fearsome toll on the Ori fighters, convincing them to stay well away from the trio of battlecruisers, but unfortunately Milky Way fighters were outnumbered ten to one, with reinforcements for the Ori arriving through the gate as fast as they took losses. With the Tau’ri providing close in defence for the Alliance, the Jaffa were putting up an impressive wall of flak about the gate, trying to destroy fighters as they came through. Unfortunately, sheer weight of numbers had already grounded the surviving 302s, all their munitions expended, including reloads from the ships, and the Jaffa were down to a scant few death gliders left, the rest having been shot down already. Only the Lucian Alliance’s death gliders were still putting up a good fight, their piloting weirdly synchronized and skilled while their weapons systems seemed to have all been upgraded for faster firing.
Still, it was a delicate numbers game, and all it took was for a single change in variables to tip the balance one way or another. The system almost immediately started to tip the instant PD turret #3 went silent on the Odyssey due to total ammunition expenditure. It wasn’t that that gun itself was particularly important, it was just that within the next thirty seconds 75% of the remaining railguns on the Tau’ri ships also ran dry, so that was the exact turning point.
When the guns went silent on the Tau’ri ships the Ori fighters immediately began to swarm in closer, firing bolts of bright blue energy that splattered harmlessly against their shields while moving in to harass the Lucian Alliance ships. Scores immediately died as the Alliance’s own PD turrets began firing, but the damage was done. Ha’taks were in many ways designed almost as inefficiently as possible, so a significant chunk of firepower that had been keeping the noses of the Ori from peeking out the gate was now diverted to swatting down fighters.
A new Ori ship surged through the gate before it was pummelled into oblivion. But with its death one ship managed to slip through unmolested and get off a shot with its main weapon, sending a brilliant beam of yellow-white light out to cut straight through a Jaffa Ha’tak with a single hit, immolating it in an instant. This monster was also brought down under the combined fire from the defensive fleet, but two more had already cleared the gate.
The Ori fighters had been almost completely cleared away, reinforcements having halted in favour of getting through more capital ships, but by now the character of the battle had radically shifted. Now it was a ship to ship fight and the Ori had the better ships. Still, whoever had command of the Alliance ships was skilled in the arts of battle beyond anything that had ever before been seen in the Milky Way. Fire continued to be concentrated on tiny points on the Ori ships, collapsing their shields. But as more and more Ori ships came through the gate and began ripping apart ships with their fire, the barrages could no longer take down the shields completely, merely overwhelm the energy buffers for a few seconds.
The Tau’ri however had copied the trick the Ori had used to get so many of their fighters through the gate by sneaking several of their naquadah enhanced warheads through the debris field and then turning off their motors. For a time the Alliance ships would knock down the shields and there would be a conveniently placed twenty gigaton warhead sitting next to the ship. Eventually though they wised up and started shooting any bit of debris that got too close.
Twenty Ori motherships had emerged from the gate by the time they stopped coming, but twelve had been utterly destroyed by the tactics displayed during the battle, as only at the end did the numbers turn in their favour. The necessity of using a Stargate meant that for a few seconds each mothership had to fight alone against such overwhelming odds that their technological advantage was useless.
But with each Milky Way ship that fell, the numerical advantage diminished and the ability to take down a single Ori ship became a more difficult task. Each ship lasted longer and more of its fellows could get past the gauntlet that was exiting the gate, allowing more of the defenders to be taken down.
Of the eight ships that emerged, four immediately broke off and headed towards the other side of the ruined solar system, while four lined up, weathering the remaining fire effortlessly, and took up a stance best described of as a firing line.
“What do you think, would right about now be a good time to kick up Warp storm about Bloodhaven and boot that ship into real space?” Tzintchi asked the other gods.
“You are such a bastard,” Asukhon groused.
The Eventide had thought that they were safe about the strange world trapped in interdimensional space, thinking from all the observed data that there was some sort ‘Eye of the Storm’ effect going on about it. So the sudden turbulence that began to occur caught them off guard.
“We have to stay close if we want to pick up Nanoha and Vita!” Hayate cried out as distorting space-time began to toss the Eventide about.
“We need to revert to normal space before we’re stuck, colonel! We’ll still be close enough if we remain within the same solar system,” the navigator announced as he put in the commands to the computer.
“Do it!” Hayate ordered.
“I think they should arrive… right here,” Tzintchi said as he manipulated space and time about the tiny warship.
The sudden appearance of the Eventide just under the firing line of one of the Ori ships as it was firing was a bit of a shock to all parties involved. The beam struck the frigate’s shields, splashing off the enormous seal that formed in open space for a second before punching through and clipping the top of the ship. Damage was superficial, but it still scared the crap out of everyone onboard and confused the hell out of the Ori.
“Who the hell are they?” Penderghast asked incredulously while getting his ship out of the way of the next shot. The first one brought against the Prometheus had nearly knocked out their shields, and if it hadn’t been for the sudden appearance of this mystery ship their shields probably would have failed completely.
Hiding behind the as of yet undamaged Korolev, the Tau’ri considered their options. They were out of ammo and had no way of actually hurting the Ori ships, but no one wanted to abandon the battle quite yet. For one thing, they were still able to evacuate many Jaffa with their Asgard transporters, and for another they did not want to abandon anyone to the coming slaughter.
The Ori for their part seemed content to figure out what exactly to do, seeing as they were in no real rush. Meanwhile the other four ships began to do something weird in the space where Bloodhaven should have been. The four ships arranged themselves in a square pattern in a potential orbit and then aligned their ships so that each one’s main weapon could fire through the rear hoop section of another. As one they all fired.
For a brief second a gigantic loop of energy formed in space, each ship adding to a superconductive cycle until finally a world began to ripple into existence within their ring. The Ori were going to draw Bloodhaven back into a place where they could get at it.
Asukhon finger the model that represented the Eva on Bloodhaven and grinned in a feral manner, showing off too many teeth. “Not today boys. Not fucking today.”
The Prior aboard the unlucky ship only vaguely saw his death coming as it rose out of the atmosphere; a dull grey spear bisected down the middle into two points. During the operation his shields had to remain down, but even if they had been up they would not have protected him from the phasing ability of a copy of the Lance of Longinus. The massive weapon impacted the ship right in the middle and ripped out its engine in a spectacular fire ball. The supercharged beam was also knocked out of alignment and flash vaporized the next ship in the formation before the entire cycle collapsed.
Two of the four ships tasked with cleaning up the remaining Milky Way defenders immediately broke off to assist in finishing the job while the other two decided to ignore the newcomer for the moment. It was small and the Ha’taks could still threaten them a bit if they all focused fire.
Meanwhile, the Ori took advantage of Bloodhaven being partially drawn into real space by deploying swarms of specialized fighter-bombers carrying payloads of ring transporters. Hundreds of them in fact. With the supergate properly oriented, they could beam through thousands of troops a second.
Ali had taken off in flight and Nanoha, joined by Vita in replacement for the now comatose Fate, had followed in an attempt to figure out what was going on. Of the two, Vita was the first to raise the subject when she said, “Where in the hell are we going?”
“Air superiority mission,” Ali said simply. “I’m currently the only air mobile unit in our order of battle capable of engaging the enemy. We would really love it if you two helped out though.” She then pointed high into the sky where numerous streaks from re-entry fires marked the strange, fragmented sky.
Pausing in her flight, Ali summoned forth an indigo circular seal to act as a firing platform. The sigils present on the flat disc of energy were a bizarre mix of Mid-childa script and other, stranger symbols, along with what appeared to be corruptions of Japanese kanji to Nanoha’s eyes.
Pointing her staff, her mother, at the oncoming streaks of fire, Ali’s facial expression changed from quietly innocent if somewhat unsettling to excessively enthusiastic. A quartet of smaller seals formed in front of her and bright blue points of light crackling with electricity coalesced at their centres.
“Lightning Flak Assault! Fire!” Ali cried out, and suddenly the four seals began spitting out rapid fire orbs of energy, which proceeded to do as the name suggested and created a wall of flak in the sky where the enemy fighters were incoming. Secondary explosions soon followed.
“What should we do Nanoha?” Vita asked nervously while she watched Ali marching her shots up and down the line of machines.
The question however was answered for them when the enemy began firing on their position and did not seem inclined to distinguish between the three of them.
“Defend ourselves and Ali too. I don’t think Fate would be pleased if we stood by,” Nanoha said while holding using a Round Shield to protect against the barrage of blue-white energy bolts hurled their way.
In short order pink and red fireworks joined Ali’s blue in blowing Ori fighters out of the sky. There were however, far too many of them coming in on two broad a front for the three of them to knock down every one of them and dozens got through to drop their pay loads on the barren ground below.
Taking a quick glance at what had happened Ali then let out a high pitched, psychotic cackle and cried out, “You should have brought bombs!” She then broke away from her fixed position while calling out, “Toji, they’re landing troops!”
The response from her scythe was a low pitched chuckle.
Nanoha and Vita shared a significant look at that.
For his part, Toji had brought along a company of his own personal chapter along with a company from each of the two successor chapters, the Bearers and the Reavers. That gave him three hundred marines, a few dozen daemons, an Evangelion, and a couple million plague zombies with which to fight an unknown number of enemy troops with air support.
Toji smiled. Unless the enemy ran right into the zombies that made the fight a massacre rather than a complete and utter curb stomp. Considering that only the Priors or the aircraft had a hope in hell of actually damaging his marines or the daemons, the bastards should have stayed off this world.
He was almost tempted to exclude the Evangelion from combat to make things from getting too one-sided, but he needed it providing cover against precision orbital bombardment, so it would be involved anyway. He would have preferred to just have it knocked the ships out of orbit, but unfortunately the hastily constructed copy of the Lance had not held up against the detonation of the ship it had destroyed.
Cheap Japanese knock-off Toji thought with intentional perverse irony.
The first order of business would be to prevent the solidification of the enemy’s lines by disrupting their staging area. There were two forces especially well suited to that: the Terminators from his Sons, and the assault squads from the Reavers. They had the speed to get in close before the enemy could formulate a defensive line, and the hitting power to prevent them from doing so.
Toji was so glad he had decided to wear his Terminator armour today.
Clamping down his helmet to secure him from the corrosive effects of the Warp, Toji ordered in a somewhat metallic voice, “All right boys, we’re fighting guys more fanatically than us. Let’s go teach them whose gods are stronger!”
That got a laugh from his men right before he activated the teleporters. There was a brief discontinuity as they were hurled through the Warp, but then with a bang of displacing air they appeared in the midst of the Ori staging area as hundreds of men in battle armour were pouring out of dozens of ring transporters every second. They were given a brief look at the war gods in their midst before the shooting started.
Storm bolters, heavy flamers, reaper autocannons, and assault cannons all combined together in an instant to create a circle of death where the Ori troops simply ceased to exist as men and began to exist as a fine mist of blood and ash.
Meanwhile, nearly across the horizon the Reavers began their assault, loading up into what was quite possibly the most insane device ever devised by man. Shortly after their founding, the Reavers had asked the question, “How do you do a drop pod assault without a ship in orbit?”
The result had been to build a mobile double barrelled rail launcher capable of hurling two marines at a time almost ten kilometres through the air before they fired their jet packs to slow down to a safe speed and land on top of their enemies. Even more insane, they had already scrapped the first production run in favour of a magazine type system and specialized capacitors that allowed them to -with proper preparation- put an entire squad into the air in about five seconds.
The Reavers had brought four of these monstrosities against common sense.
Of course, the only reason that they actually survived the acceleration involved was because their armour incorporated gravity and inertial dampers based off of Eldar flip belts, along with several other tricks.
While the Ori soldiers in the middle of the formation ran and screamed from the unholy, invulnerable beasts that had suddenly appeared in their midst, the ones on the outskirts only warning as to the doom falling upon them was the sound of jet engines firing and the whirring of chainsaws.
Oh, and of course the screams of “BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!”
Hayate had watched in horror at the battle around her and had made her decision. With the dimensional dislocation going on, they could not escape to interdimensional space, and when stranded in the middle of a fight with no way to escape, her only options were to pick a side or do nothing at all and hope no one shot at the Eventide.
On the one side, she had the hoop ships, who while she was willing to give the benefit of the doubt for damaging her ship due to her rather unexpected arrival, she had witnessed them destroying ships unable to do anything to them. On the other side, she had seen strange, pyramid shaped ships firing at the hoop ships, and blockier ships actively catching shots from their less well defended allies. Those ships weren’t even fighting back, just covering the retreat of the others.
Hayate had been given the key in her hand for a reason. That reason was to defend her ship, not to start wars. But she had a feeling that once these hoop ships finished off the others, they would come for her. She would make sure that they would not have that chance.
“Activate the Arc-en-Ceil. Target the hoop ships to prevent the destruction of the other side,” Hayate ordered as she inserted the activation key.
Outside, ahead of the pronged bow of the Eventide, large magical containment rings began to form, designed to channel the destructive power about to be unleashed in a focused manner.
One of the hoop ships paused in its targeting of one of the few remaining pyramid ships to consider the Eventide. The targeting of the Arc-en-Ceil had left the frigate pointed slightly between and below the plane of both of the ships, so a direct attack was ruled out. In fact, with the positioning of the containment rings, if they did not understand the magical technology at work they may very well have thought that the TSAB vessel was attempting to engage some form of propulsion.
Eventually the ship decided that they did not want them to finish whatever it was that they were doing, even if it was just escape, and began to orient to bring its main gun to bear on them. That solidified Hayate’s assessment in her mind and she turned the key.
The Eventide fired and a point in space simply buckled and folded in on itself. The distortions rushed out at the speed of light before tapering off a hundred kilometres from the epicentre. Matter was torn apart atom by atom, and the two Ori motherships simply stopped existing, reduced to a cloud of cold free atoms scattered about the remnants of this dead star system, to in time be consumed by the artificially created black hole powering the supergate.
As for the supergate, it abruptly shut off, the disruption of local space-time automatically tripping the safety overrides.
Every ship paused and gaped in horror and awe at what that little ship had just done. Across the system the remaining Ori ships ceased their action to draw Bloodhaven further into real space and instead turned as one to take care of this new and unexpectedly dangerous threat.
“We won’t be able to recharge before they get here,” one of the bridge techs reported. “And all of the ships are staying at least two hundred kilometres apart. A single shot from one of their guns will overwhelm our shields.”
“But not theirs,” Hayate noted with pride and awe as the battered defenders took up station about the Eventide, ready to defend them with their lives. They did not even have compatible communications protocols, and yet these people would protect them.
“Interesting…” Tzintchi stated while he let the Warp storm dissipate as quickly as it had begun. A star ship sized distortion cannon. He would have to ask the engineers about that one.
“Colonel! The dislocation is clearing up!” The sensor officer reported, surprised at the shortness of such an intense event.
“Begin charging the engines. I want us out of here as quickly as possible!” Hayate ordered. “I also want Nanoha and Vita back on board at the first opportunity.”
The entire character of the battle changed for Nanoha the moment that Ali took a glancing hit from one of the fighter-bomber’s cannons. It was a very slight hit that was mostly absorbed by her magic, but Ali had clearly taken some damage. But instead of crying out in pain, Ali had snarled in a fashion very out of place for a young girl. What she had then done had cemented the niggling feeling that what was going on was not right. The ground fighting had been brutal, but Nanoha was not adverse to lethal force and she understood that in war people died. She didn’t like it, but the fact that the people that Ali was working with were killing others did not disturb her.
What Ali did however scared the living fuck out of Nanoha.
Taking off in pursuit of the exact craft that had wounded her, Ali caught up with it and plunged her scythe into the front, peeling it open like a tin can to reveal the pilot inside and then causing him to tumble out of his rapidly disintegrating craft. Ali pursued him as he fell flailing and screaming from the sky, letting him look at the ground for a while before she buried her blade in his gut and then stopped, leaving him suspended from her scythe like a worm on a hook.
She then cried out, “Soul Stealer!” and a set of ugly sigils appeared around her right hand. Cackling loudly she shoved her hand in the struggling man’s chest and ripped out his heart. But that was not all she pulled out, for even as she ripped her scythe out of the now dead body and let the two halves tumble to the ground, a faint blue, transparent outline of the man remained, centred about the still beating heart in Ali’s hand.
She then bit down into the heart like an apple, squirting blood all over her pale face while the outline screamed in psychic agony and dissolved.
Nanoha and Vita watched all of this in mute, wide eyed horror while Nanoha clutched her chest in memory of eleven years ago when Shamal had stuck her hand through her chest to drain her Linker Core.
It was Vita who screamed out, “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO!”
Turning and looking at them in innocent confusion despite the still hot blood sticking to her face and hair, Ali then said, “Battlefield medicine. I ate his soul, and its energy healed me up. See?” She then pointed to the area where she had been hit and indeed she was healed.
“You’re insane!” Vita cried out.
“Why would you do something like that?” Nanoha asked in confusion.
“Because I can,” Ali replied with a shrug. “Now we have a battle to get back to.”
“I don’t think so! I suddenly wonder if maybe the people you are fighting aren’t the good guys here!” Nanoha announced.
Ali paused and then bared her scythe menacingly, flicking off some of the blood before saying, “You’re Fate’s friend, and you shouldn’t be saying things like that. You should be with us.”
“Ali, do not push the issue, they do not have all the facts,” Precia warned.
“No momma! No one stands aside, no one does nothing! Everyone acts! That’s Chaos! That’s who we are. Now pick a side!” Ali shouted out angrily before moving her scythe into a ready position.
“You killed a man and ate his soul! We can’t be allied with anyone who does something like that!” Nanoha replied while she and Vita took up their own guard stances.
“Then die!” Ali cried out, launching at them.
“With the charge time for their weapon, those people won’t be able to get off another successful shot, especially now that the Ori know what to look for,” Carter pointed out.
“So far they’ve saved two Lucian Alliance and three Free Jaffa Ha’taks, and the Korolev. I think that deserves a little more of our time,” Penderghast stated. So far only the Prometheus and the Odyssey remained, the other ships having already escaped to hyperspace once their battered drives were ready. If the other ships had not been given the breathing time from the destruction of the two ships and the shut down of the supergate, it was doubtful they would have escaped.
“Sir, the supergate is powering up again!” The sensor officer shouted out over the sound of the damage control crews suppressing fires on the bridge.
The four motherships remaining almost immediately turned back around to the planet they were working on getting back into real space.
“I’ve got a bad feeling that we’re about to meet something we won’t like,” Mitchell muttered.
Just barely clearing the bounds set by the supergate, this latest monstrosity was a good two or three times more massive than the other ships and significantly more solid, not having the large space wasting hoop at the back. Its main gun looked capable of one shot killing one of the smaller Ori ships.
“Always with the super weapons,” Daniel muttered.
“Okay, valour and honour are all well and good, but we can’t do anything against that. Helm, get us out of here,” Penderghast ordered.
On a somewhat more optimistic note at least the last thing they saw before leaping to hyperspace away from that monster was the unknown ship making a similar get away.
The fight in the air above Bloodhaven had turned into a three way brawl between the Ori fighters, the TSAB ‘diplomats’, and Ali. By far the Ori were taking the worst of it, as whenever they tried to take pot shots at the either of the other two sides they kept getting turned into atomic vapour.
And while Ali had plenty of raw power and tricks that no one from the TSAB had ever seen before, she was unfortunately outnumbered and ultimately outgunned. Against either Nanoha or Vita she might have been able to force a draw, but with both of them she was slowly being worn away. Worse yet, the cartridge system was something she could not counter.
So Ali changed the conditions of the scenario. She dived down out of the sky, breaking the sound barrier during the fall before abruptly flattening off, skimming about two metres above the ground in the middle of the slaughter occurring below as three hundred space marines tore through thousands of Ori soldiers. Not missing an opportunity, Ali let her scythe reap a grim harvest through the ranks of those who followed Origin, slowing down slightly until she stopped above a cluster of particularly gigantic marines, one of them squeezing an old man in his enormous fist until marrow squirted out of his bones.
Vita, being the close-combat specialist, was the one who fell into the trap while Nanoha could only watch on from a distance.
Ali threw out a hand and cried out, “Banshee Wail!” which caused an enormous outburst of sound and light that caught Vita completely off guard, blinding her senses.
The marines beneath her were not so affected though, their helmets and sensor suites quite handily filtering out the interference.
A single shot range out.
Graf Eisen hit the ground and skittered away while the one who had taken the shot caught the nearly bisected body with his enormous gauntleted hand, being careful not to crush the tiny frame.
“She lives!” Toji cried out to Nanoha. “I know not why, but she does… at my whim! Go, retreat from this place before your presence makes me change my mind!”
Tears running down her face, Nanoha began to line up a head shot on the giant, but he simply moved his hand so that one of the troops could point a massive flamethrower at Vita’s unconscious body.
“Do you think you can kill both of us without killing your comrade?” Toji asked. “If you leave, she will get medical attention. If you stay, we can wait right here until she bleeds out. Your choice.”
Nanoha hesitated and then ran.
“Thank you Toji, but are we really going to help here?” Ali asked with a sour look on her face. “She is our enemy.”
“You have much to learn little one. Especially one how to corrupt people,” Toji said before surveying the battlefield. The sky had been completely broken apart now, the dull red provided by the Warp replaced with a starlit sky faintly illuminated by the ring around the planet.
The ring transporters had gone silent, and Toji chuckled. “Clever, but not effective enough. Status report, how quickly can we get our forces within a one kilometre radius?”
Listening to his communication network, Toji smiled and said, “Perfect. Evangelion, I request you come to this location immediately. We’re getting out of here.”
“What? How?” Ali asked.
“A little trick we learned from one of the Angels. We can’t go very far, but fortunately the gods had enough foresight to establish a base within range of this move,” Toji said as the forces under his command assembled as he had ordered, especially the gigantic Eva.
Once he was satisfied they had everything they could recover, he said, “Commence Operation Leliel.”
In orbit the massive Ori dreadnought took up position in orbit above the battlefield, its main gun charging up to full power; superconducting rings about the primary emitter glowing white with the barely contained energy. Bloodhaven would trouble the Ori no more.
The dreadnought fired a massive lance of energy that stabbed down into Bloodhaven and immediately boiled off the atmosphere where it struck. The rock beneath the beam went from solid to liquid to gas to plasma in a few thousand seconds and immediately expanded outward in a massive pressure explosion that ripped up a continent sized hole. Still the dreadnought continued to fire, boring down towards the core. It did not make it before the capacitors gave out, but it did punch a hole thirty-five kilometres deep and five kilometres wide, although the eventual final crater would be much wider and shallower. Already the tectonic plates of the world were collapsing inward, ripping the surface of the world apart while ejecta from the blast and the sudden surge in volcanic activity was already darkening the skies.
The Ori let up their attack and settled into a brooding orbit about the star they had killed, not making much of a deal even when Bloodhaven once more sank into the Warp. They did not care. The planet was dead as it could be without detonating a ZPM on its surface.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
The seeds of self-doubt and self-recrimination are planted on Nanoha and Fate......
There it's also the point of Vita's "special nature", as a artificial Soul bound to the Tome of the Night Sky, given magically form and powers, alongside a Linker Core to sustain said form. This has a frightening potential......an offer from Asukhon to become a real being, free of the "slavery" to Hayate and the Tome, along with the chance to become a full adult in form, with all the benefits of a real life, like love and to have children? a way to corrupt the Tome of the Night Sky through the bond, and by proxy, the other Wolkenritter and Hayate herself? So many ways, and so many choices......(giggles)...
Vita it's now to the "merrier tenders" of Toji...although i think, that likely, with her personality, and fighting style, she's the poster girl for Asukhon's newest Champion...and after Nanoha's abandonment of her, the rage, betrayal and abandon feelings are fertile ground for Asukhon to convert her to her service.
the TSAB group it's likely to go into a likely emotional implosion, and Nanoha feeling the silent recrimination of the other Wolkenritter and Hayate, given that Vita was who kept her of dying on the incident what left her on recovery for an entire year.
It's a plus that with Graf Eisen on their hands, now they have an functional sample of a Belkan style AD(Armed Device) with an Cartridge System, something that will allow them to both upgrade Ali's Chaos ID Scythe device with their version of the Cartridge System, and by studying the Armed Device, simpler than the standard Intelligent Device, enable them to likely mass-produce that kind of devices for their forces, enabling Chaos Marines and Cultists with sorcery potential and Sorcerers to have a way to shoot out Warp Spells on a quick way, along with have melee weapons of a higher class.
It would be a plus for Asukhon's Berserkers, as they would normally not care for spells, if they don't include spill blood for their goddess on a very close way.
A devoted follower of the Chaos Goddess and her way.....
Buck Murdock: Oh, cut the bleeding heart crap, will ya? We've all got our switches, lights, and knobs to deal with, Striker. I mean, down here there are literally hundreds and thousands of blinking, beeping, and flashing lights, blinking and beeping and flashing - they're *flashing* and they're *beeping*. I can't stand it anymore! They're *blinking* and *beeping* and *flashing*! Why doesn't somebody pull the plug!
I think you're overestimating how quickly the TSAB group is going to fracture. They might, they might not. They have some very strong emotional bonds.
Also, Vita doesn't think of herself as a slave. She used to, but the "freedom from slavery" rhetoric is exactly the wrong kind of method for convincing her to leave Hayate.
Maniacal laughter seems all too appropriate for this chapter. I get the feeling that if the God Emperor Penguin were to meet Jack O'Neil, that many questions about when Monty Python had become a deity will appear. Of course, that’s not half as funny as the thought of the G.E.P. meeting the G.E.o.M.
Aranfan wrote:I think you're overestimating how quickly the TSAB group is going to fracture. They might, they might not. They have some very strong emotional bonds.
Also, Vita doesn't think of herself as a slave. She used to, but the "freedom from slavery" rhetoric is exactly the wrong kind of method for convincing her to leave Hayate.
Agreed. Using the bonds themselves is far more effective than trying to shatter them.
This is sickening... You sound like chapters from a self-help booklet! Prepare yourselves!
Aranfan wrote:I think you're overestimating how quickly the TSAB group is going to fracture. They might, they might not. They have some very strong emotional bonds.
Also, Vita doesn't think of herself as a slave. She used to, but the "freedom from slavery" rhetoric is exactly the wrong kind of method for convincing her to leave Hayate.
Yeah? Can you WIPE, the influence , and the memories of god knows how many centuries, serving master after master, being considered merely as a tool, without choice or freedom?
The memories are there, even if they are on the background......and the Chaos Gods are EXPERTS on manipulate, twist and influence the human psyche. Add, that Vita's nature its EXTREMELY easy to fall to anger and rage, if you push the right buttons, making her fertile ground for Asukhon....
Also, i said that it's only ONE of many options to the choice of Tzintchi and the others......corrupting Vita, given the nature of her existence, and by that slowly and insidiously corrupting the others, it's also a smoother option..
A devoted follower of the Chaos Goddess and her way.....
Buck Murdock: Oh, cut the bleeding heart crap, will ya? We've all got our switches, lights, and knobs to deal with, Striker. I mean, down here there are literally hundreds and thousands of blinking, beeping, and flashing lights, blinking and beeping and flashing - they're *flashing* and they're *beeping*. I can't stand it anymore! They're *blinking* and *beeping* and *flashing*! Why doesn't somebody pull the plug!
Aranfan wrote:I think you're overestimating how quickly the TSAB group is going to fracture. They might, they might not. They have some very strong emotional bonds.
Also, Vita doesn't think of herself as a slave. She used to, but the "freedom from slavery" rhetoric is exactly the wrong kind of method for convincing her to leave Hayate.
Yeah? Can you WIPE, the influence , and the memories of god knows how many centuries, serving master after master, being considered merely as a tool, without choice or freedom?
No, you can't. But those same memories, that same influence, makes Vita as fanatically loyal to her friends and Hayate as any Space Marine.
holyknight wrote:The memories are there, even if they are on the background......and the Chaos Gods are EXPERTS on manipulate, twist and influence the human psyche. Add, that Vita's nature its EXTREMELY easy to fall to anger and rage, if you push the right buttons, making her fertile ground for Asukhon....
Of course Vita can still fall to Chaos, but it won't be because Nanoha abandoned her.
holyknight wrote:Also, i said that it's only ONE of many options to the choice of Tzintchi and the others......corrupting Vita, given the nature of her existence, and by that slowly and insidiously corrupting the others, it's also a smoother option..
True, I think their best bet is to try to work though Fate. Although its going to be tough after Nanoha reports seeing Alicia eating someones soul and showing no remorse about it.
On a different tangent, I wonder what Chaos will make of Subaru?
Last chapter for a while, I'm going on vacation for a week.
Chapter Twenty-One: Meanwhile
The effects of Halloween night had far a far ranging impact all across the multiverse, most notably for a certain god of plotting who had not seen it coming. Tzeentch was still actually trying to figure out what had happened, as the event in question had not affected any of his agents, and he had yet to sink his claws into anyone who had. What was really annoying was that it was sending mortals out of their nice, predictable tracks and causing him some grief. True, Tzeentch always had a back-up plan, but sometimes the results didn’t come out as well, and an interlocking plan that took two thousand years to set up properly could come crashing down because a street urchin sneezed three seconds too early.
Of course, that was just the standard stuff. What was really bothering him was the fact that he had lost track of Leman Russ. Primarchs were not the sort of things a schemer could just lose track of; if they weren’t safely contained then they could do enormous amounts of damage.
The big, unsubtle, plan wrecking oaf was probably wandering the Webway somewhere. He’d done that a few times before, but each time Tzeentch had known the Primarch’s objective and destination and so could work around him. He would have to drop some hint to Ahriman next time the sorcerer was…
Oh… crap!
All things considered, Ahriman had been having a good day, leading his band of sorcerers and their attached armies of obedient, soul bound soldiers in shooting up the Eldar Harlequins and interrogating a few of them to try and refine the location of the Black Library further. It had been about average for that sort of thing, which of course meant that he gained little to no new information, but when your plans ran on thousand year time scales, it didn’t pay to be impatient about day to day affairs.
He was really starting to get irritated by the shadowseers though. Tricky bastards kept trying to get through his mental defences and confuse him with illusions and other such psychic shenanigans. While he felt quite confident in his status as the most powerful sorcerer in the galaxy, nay, the universe, Ahriman did have to admit that alien scum were skilled at what they did.
He was just better.
The problem was that they liked to layer their illusions, using multiple different physical, holographic, and psychic methods of hiding what they were really doing, so that getting to the core of what was really going on required peeling back multiple layers, with each successive layer designed to make you think you had found reality. It was exquisitely Tzeentchian, but still could get annoying when it came to actually fighting against the Harlequins.
Take for example the current situation. He had encountered a group of Eldar at a junction in the Webway running away very quickly. To him, that screamed ambush, but the question as always was in which direction? The obvious mind said that the ambush was set up down the path the Harlequins had followed, but truly any direction was possible, even from behind him.
The first step in deciphering this trap was to figure out what elements were real and which ones were false. The first element of course was figuring out if the Harlequins were real, which was not as simple as it sounded. Oh sure, he could just fire at them and see which ones dropped, but that often wasn’t a very good indicator and sometimes they wanted him to open fire. With a slight nod of his head as he sent his mental powers to unwind the strands of illusion, and abruptly about half of the Harlequins disappeared.
The gigantic warrior with the oversized two handed sword and the rhino sized wolves at his side was a new twist, Ahriman had to admit. Apparently they wanted him to think that one of those damnable Space Wolves had found their way into the Webway and was chasing them.
Now the question was whether or not this was an illusion meant to distract him or an illusion meant to conceal another force. Interesting dilemma, for if they timed it right they could potentially catch him off guard if he chose wrong. What to focus on?
The answer of course, was neither option, as getting caught in false dichotomies was an easy way to get killed. In a scenario involving two options, the Eldar invariably chose the fourth one, so Ahriman would have to pick the fifth to derail this entire thing.
Ah, of course, his back! The attack would come from the rear while he decided on…
All of this occurred in about half a second, at which point Ahriman suddenly considered that maybe, just maybe the Harlequins had been chased by a Space Wolf. The thought occurred to him as he was hurled through the air by the impact of the warrior’s sword on his armour. All things considered he was rather fortunate that the man had cleaved through two of his best sorcerers before striking him or he would have been bisected as surely as those unfortunate bastards.
Raising a hand, Ahriman tried to engulf the burly, hairy warrior in a storm of electricity, but unfortunately all that seemed to do was annoy the man and draw his attention, something that should have been impossible…
Unless of course Ahriman had just tried to attack a Primarch who had survived for ten thousand years in the Eye of Terror fighting daemons and traitor marines every step of the way and had a particular grudge against sorcerers of Tzeentch, in which case Ahriman was probably about to be obliterated body and soul.
Fuck.
Now that the traitorous scum had been eliminated, Leman Russ could go back to considering those foul xenos that had shot at him and drawn him into this place. Wiping off his sword, the last thing other than his Wolf Brothers that he had left since he had started his journey, Russ surveyed the location. He instinctively knew that he was in the Warp somewhere, but it seemed like he was just in some sort of tunnel made of stone.
“Thank you, Son of the Emperor,” a disembodied voice told him.
Growling, Russ spun about, weapon at the ready while he scanned out with all of his sense. He knew that the xeno that had uttered those words was around here somewhere…
“Please, we mean you no harm,” the voice replied.
“Lies,” Russ spat.
“It is true. We led you here because we desired you to remove that pest Ahriman of the Thousand Sons, something we knew you would do if we showed you in the right direction,” the voice said.
Snorting, Russ asked, “And do you expect some favour from me now for this service you have provided me?”
“On the contrary, it is we who owe you,” the voice replied.
“Forgive me if I don’t believe you xeno,” Russ said.
“Look at your feet,” the voice said. Glancing down with one eye while not taking his attention away from anything else, Russ noted that there was a small box at his feet. Gesturing to Freki, he let the wolf pick it up for him so that he would not have to stoop and lower his guard. Taking it from his brother, Russ flicked it open and discovered that it was an antique compass.
“What is this?” Russ asked.
“A most interesting device, nearly as old as your Emperor and from the same place. An artefact of your world, it is a compass that is as true as the heart of the one holding it. It will lead you to where you want to go, even if you do not know where that place is. Only your world it led men to treasures of all sorts, but when your kind began to explore the stars it truly came into its own. It is greater than an Navigator for it can steer you clear through any Warp current or storm, and it can even open up new paths,” the disembodied voice explained.
Russ considered the compass for a moment, and noted that it was pointing solidly in one direction, which was straight into a wall.
“So you’re saying that if I follow this compass it will lead me to what I want most?” Russ asked sceptically and incredulously.
“Eventually. It may lead you to the places you need to go to get to your final destination first,” the voice said.
“And where does it think I should go now?” Russ asked with a sneer.
“To find the world of Sunnydale where your brother’s soul fought,” the voice answered.
Surprised, Russ barked out, “What do you know of such things?”
“I know that I was there that night, caught in the same evil snare as your brother, although I believe he knew what was coming and chose to follow the path of the spell anyway simply to stop the Great Enemy from gaining an inch of influence elsewhere. I know that I helped him to end the spell by freeing many from the curse, and he repaid the favour by smashing my body to a pulp, as I had hoped he would,” the voice said.
Russ considered his words carefully before he tilted the compass so that it was pointing down. “And how will it help me when it is so limited?”
“Just follow where the arrow points,” the voice replied.
“What? Into the ground?” Russ asked.
“Sure,” the voice said with the verbal equivalent of a shrug.
Lowering himself, Russ was shocked to discover the ground begin to buckle and distort as he brought the compass closer. Tilting it away, the surface immediately ceased bowing inward like a piece of melting plastic suspended over empty space in the centre. It was only when the arrow pointed at the walls, floor, or ceiling did the affect occur.
“Follow it,” the voice prompted.
So Russ followed it, his wolf brothers following him, as he blazed a new trail into the Webway before it rapidly vanished.
Once Leman Russ had disappeared, the Harlequin who had been speaking to him detached from the walls, the illusion dropping while the rest of the troupe joined up. Peering down at the new path, they considered following, before deciding that giving the Primarch a better head start would be a good idea. A couple of hours.
Glancing about at the corpses of the Thousand Sons soldiers ripped apart by the ancient warrior and his wolf companions, the Harlequins upped the wait time to a day. Maybe two.
Seeing the broken corpse of Ahriman, ten thousand year old soldier who had slowly been closing in on the Black Library, and was now out of their hair forever, the troupe realized that a celebration was in order. One that would take at least a week.
Of course, they would need a good tracker for that. Maybe ask one of the Craftworlds or an Exodite colony to lend them a ranger or two. Then again, that could take a while. A month maybe. Still, there was so much to do that the delay seemed inevitable.
Across the galaxy every seer with at least some degree of long term power suddenly discovered that they had a rather large headache as lines of fate began to twist up and tangle as a key player vanished from existence. While in most places the changes were minimal and thus the headaches minor, for those like Eldar Farseers, the unexpected death of Ahriman was like getting a thunder hammer to the side of the head.
For one Farseer in particular, it was just the continuation of a months long headache. Ever since that night she had seen fate slowly spinning out of control. She understood how small changes could generate enormous results when allowed to continue long enough, and pretty much all the players in the game of fate knew how that could work for them or bite them in the ass.
But this was different. This wasn’t a butterfly flapping its wings at the wrong juncture, this was someone shelling the forest where the butterfly resided, and no one had noticed the bastard setting up the artillery, which was really more of a disturbance than the butterfly anyway.
And now that everything was falling apart, all the seers with precious little plans were running about in a blind panic because everything was going to hell, which was only adding to the damage. This was little c chaos and it was driving Big C Chaos nuts! Unfortunately, it was also driving the Eldar nuts!
Finally the Farseer had had enough. It was time to go find those Harlequin idiots and get them to show her what they had done. Somehow, she suspected that they had probably found a way to that bloody Mon-keigh world that had started all of this. And when she got there, she was going to introduce the architect of this headache to a new world of suffering.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
Academia Nut wrote:“Look at your feet,” the voice said. Glancing down with one eye while not taking his attention away from anything else, Russ noted that there was a small box at his feet. Gesturing to Freki, he let the wolf pick it up for him so that he would not have to stoop and lower his guard. Taking it from his brother, Russ flicked it open and discovered that it was an antique compass.
“What is this?” Russ asked.
“A most interesting device, nearly as old as your Emperor and from the same place. An artefact of your world, it is a compass that is as true as the heart of the one holding it. It will lead you to where you want to go, even if you do not know where that place is. Only your world it led men to treasures of all sorts, but when your kind began to explore the stars it truly came into its own. It is greater than an Navigator for it can steer you clear through any Warp current or storm, and it can even open up new paths,” the disembodied voice explained.
Now what compass is this? Is this the compass from Pirates of the Caribbean, the compass from The Golden Compass, the compass from the upcoming movie The Compass, or is this compass from some other series completely?
This is sickening... You sound like chapters from a self-help booklet! Prepare yourselves!
Academia Nut wrote:Finally the Farseer had had enough. It was time to go find those Harlequin idiots and get them to show her what they had done. Somehow, she suspected that they had probably found a way to that bloody Mon-keigh world that had started all of this. And when she got there, she was going to introduce the architect of this headache to a new world of suffering.
The only thing worse than an annoying, scheming asshole of a Eldar, its a PMS-ing, migrain riddled, bitching asshole of a Eldar female Farseer.......
Ahriman was WAY beyond boned there. Of the Warp Sorcerers and Traitor Legions that the Space Wolves and their Primarch hate with a passion, the ones on the first site, are the Tzeentch Sorcerers of the Thousand Sons Legion, of who Ahriman was one. I can guess that the only reason why Leman did dignate to hear the Xeno, was that he was rather mellowed by the great satisfaction of ripping apart the Thousand Sons's sorcerer band into itty-bitty bits along with his pack brothers.
Methinks that said troupe of Harlequin, it's going to take their sweet time to return to ANY of the Craftworlds, if they have any common sense.
Tzeentch, for once, must be cursing on several ways, about a certain SOB of a Primarch, and how he has no respect by the things so carefully groomed and situated by the Changer of Ways. Khorne, may for once bust his gut laughing to see the rather decomposed reactions of his fellow Warp God to losing one of his most cared-for pawns, and Kharn the Betrayer may organize a raid to celebrate the death of Ahriman.... Who knows what's thinking Gramps Nurgle, and Slaanesh?
..........the Dark Eldar are those of their race, what chose to sink into depravity in the face of their race's incoming doom, offering victims and the souls of them, in exchange by their own, in hope to appease the hunger of the Prince of Pain and Pleasure........some say that those on that a Dark Eldar has preyed upon, it's on a way tainted by Slaanesh.......it may mean nothing for Cordelia, or it may mean a way for Slaanesh to gain it's first devout follower on that plane...after all, to turn someone so horribly scarred like her, back into her perfect beauty, it's but a child's play for Slaanesh...
PS: Good luck with your vacation man...may you return back with the batteries filled, and with even more ideas for this fic.
A devoted follower of the Chaos Goddess and her way.....
Buck Murdock: Oh, cut the bleeding heart crap, will ya? We've all got our switches, lights, and knobs to deal with, Striker. I mean, down here there are literally hundreds and thousands of blinking, beeping, and flashing lights, blinking and beeping and flashing - they're *flashing* and they're *beeping*. I can't stand it anymore! They're *blinking* and *beeping* and *flashing*! Why doesn't somebody pull the plug!
Academia Nut wrote:“Look at your feet,” the voice said. Glancing down with one eye while not taking his attention away from anything else, Russ noted that there was a small box at his feet. Gesturing to Freki, he let the wolf pick it up for him so that he would not have to stoop and lower his guard. Taking it from his brother, Russ flicked it open and discovered that it was an antique compass.
“What is this?” Russ asked.
“A most interesting device, nearly as old as your Emperor and from the same place. An artefact of your world, it is a compass that is as true as the heart of the one holding it. It will lead you to where you want to go, even if you do not know where that place is. Only your world it led men to treasures of all sorts, but when your kind began to explore the stars it truly came into its own. It is greater than an Navigator for it can steer you clear through any Warp current or storm, and it can even open up new paths,” the disembodied voice explained.
Now what compass is this? Is this the compass from Pirates of the Caribbean, the compass from The Golden Compass, the compass from the upcoming movie The Compass, or is this compass from some other series completely?
At a guess, I'd say its the Pirates Compass. The Golden Compass is a little more complex than that, but I have no idea about the Compass movie.
