Non-responsiveuncle
Not too sore, are you?
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First thing I thought was imagine waking up after being beheaded only to be told your getting your pay cut because your blood stained the rug
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Cybershadowninja2
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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You would think that would be the worst part, but no it's the fact that your nose is itchy and you can't scratch it.
OZT
Versed in the lewd.
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Injuries count. Casualties are both deaths and injuries; it doesn't matter if they cam be easily recovered from.
M160
New
lost star
Connoisseur.
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The city was mostly quiet at the moment. It shouldn't have been. The fighting technically hadn't stopped. It was just that with a very furious Lilly on the field hunting nearly everything that moved, the mech pilots were simply too terrified to get nearby a very specific and very wide area. The only real movement was from the ships still dropping down from orbit.
Despite this, things weren't safe. Lilly wasn't sure if she'd ever feel safe on the planet, though really that hadn't changed much. Some part of her was always on the planet she'd grown up in, waiting for the next fight. She'd long since made peace with that aspect of herself. Her children would not have something similar happen to them.
"How are things?" Lilly asked Bolt over the comms.
"Quiet now. No deaths, but we'll need a medical professional here soon. The machines here can stabilize everything. They can't fix it." The designer reported before he continued in a more grim tone. "The guys that got through were strange. Weren't augmented with metal, and the swords are better than yer knife."
"My-" The woman paused. "Ah, I see. Psionics?" That was the word they had to use at the moment.
"Something like that maybe. Didn't know we had human practitioners." Bolt noted. "They were kinda pulped so I can't say more."
"That's fine." Lilly replied. "I'll handle the rest." She said as she closed off the comm.
The man that had triggered her paranoia wasn't quite in the city. The island they were on had him at a beachside resort area that was just barely out of the usual fighting. He was barely in sensor range if Lilly pushed Dowry's senses and relied on the more exotic feelings they both could parse.
Dowry crouched down and bounded through the city towards the new target. With everyone quiet and wary, she had the space to snip off this end. It was really the perfect time. No one would comment if one more person died. It neglected more than a few things like due process and the like, but Lilly had reached the point that she didn't care anymore. She approached the building in question on silent steps and then plunged Dowry's hand right into the building.
A normal pilot wouldn't have noticed it. She barely did as an expert very attuned to her mech. Somehow, someway the man had reacted to the mech hand. He'd turned in the second it'd ripped through the building, and he'd caught a clawed finger before it bisected him. More incredibly, he'd withstood the strike as it slammed him through the building and into the foundation. It was a physically impossible feat.
Further thought was rendered moot as Dowry's finger was wrenched to the side and almost torn off. Lilly pulled the hand back and glanced at the damage. That was again abnormal. The expert discarded what common sense said and readied herself to attack further.
The oppressive feeling that blanketed her senses suddenly made her pause mid movement. It was something hard to describe really. Like she was being pushed down by gravity, yet only in her mind. Almost like when she'd been in front of that expert as a normal girl so long ago but more oppressive. Some part of her wanted to drop down in awe.
She murdered that part before the thought really formed. Lilly would do what she desired. He will was her own. The expert sunk into her mech and clawed down again. Another finger was broken but she'd compensated for that. It was just a matter of positioning the hand just right.
On her list of things that would happen next, the building exploding wasn't one of them. Dowry was thrown back and the mech had to skid and fire boosters to keep upright. In front of her some strange transparent thing formed. It was a man and yet not a man. A monster of shadows and matter in the form of something man-like.
"When I rip your soul screaming out of your body, remember that you forced me to do this." The monster said and made a flat handed gesture.
Lilly dodged on instinct. One of her arms still went flying. Following her intuition she grabbed the limb before it flew too far and then skipped back while pressing the severed appendage to her body. She invoked her resonance and the arm started to reattach.
The monster paused and chuckled. "Well, I have needed some exercise." It surged forward.
She dodged the first strike of whatever the thing was using. It felt like a beam of some sort. The gestures to invoke it were strange and Lilly didn't have time to analyze it. She barely had time to stay alive, because the thing wasn't giving her any room at all as it mixed in fist strikes with the beams and other exotic attacks.
It was like fighting an expert but worse. Lilly was being manhandled and she didn't like it. Her few strikes back dug into the material the monster was made up of and did little. She couldn't even tell if she was doing actual damage really. Some instinct said she was, but not enough, especially with how outmatched she was.
Despite this, she felt happy. The rage was gone. The complicated feelings that had been boiling up around her were soothed. She had a goal and something to focus on, and that brought a clarity that she'd been missing since she'd gotten pregnant.
"Really, I have ta thank ya." Lilly said between breaths over the comm just as Dowry was thrown into a building by a strike that rattled her bones and almost killed her right then and there. Getting hit was doing her no favors at all.
"Oh?" The monster sighed. "You really do not understand. It's common enough for one like you." One large hand hovered over a nearby area. A small bunker containing people that had hid from the battle. "You'll learn." He grasped and something screamed as it was pulled out before he absorbed it.
Lilly observed it and nodded. "Ah, suppose I shouldn't be surprised." Bolt would be pissed at seeing something like that. "Just another monster that thinks he's better than people." She pulled herself out the building. "Another target." She growled out as she healed up again.
"We'll see how long that attitude lasts." The monster replied as it stopped playing around.
The pressure it was exerting increased. The thing grew larger and more solid. Lilly watched as it loomed over her and she focused her willpower. She was very outmatched here. She refused to fail anyway. The first step to winning was to stop playing by his rules.
She boosted back and away from her opponent. It followed her with a few beams, but none of them hit. She knew the timing now. Once that became apparent the monster switched to some sort of blast. The attack wasn't particularly subtle, but it was a wide area and it clipped her occasionally even when she dodged it.
They traveled away from the city and to the beaches. The seawater lapped at Dowry as she darted in and out of the waves and over the sand. The footing was a bit sketchy here, but she was able to compensate easily. Her opponent wasn't really hindered at all though. Which made the choice almost poor if one ignored how it got him away from people.
"Irritating." The monster growled out as it swatted at her again and again. "I will have to remember to slay any mechs with your abilities quickly in the future. This is taking too much time."
"Awww, is the little inflated puffball getting tired?" Lilly taunted back.
The monster paused and sighed again. "No. Simply lamenting the loss of my wine and the scenic view." It said without any care.
Lilly rolled her eyes and positioned herself just so. "That's all your fault."
"You underestimate the issue once more." The monster gestured up towards the sky. "Did you think beating me would do anything? Even if you could, my master would find you and the torment he would put you and your family through would make my plans a heaven. You have lost already! Just give up and I'll settle for just removing your piloting skills!"
The expert's eyes narrowed. He wasn't lying. She had no idea how to address that, but she would have to do so later. First she had to deal with what was in front of her. She darted forward.
By this point they knew each others tells. The monster shifted back slightly and readied itself to attack her as she got into range. Behind it the sand shifted more, and a hidden mech rose up. it didn't even notice, as focused as it was on her.
The giant crab mech, a locally made heavy mech, surged into motion. Lilly could see the sheer panic in the body language. It still moved one very large claw into place and brought the claws together in a movement that the pilot had likely practiced a thousand times.
Called the Big-Claw Hermit, the mechs were used by local police in certain areas. They had a series of taser-like weapons that they used to subdue things in the water or land when needed, and a singular large claw. It had two signature moves. One was to hide in water and sand. The other was to use the claw to dismantle a mech's legs. The massive thing could literally sever legs in a singular snip if it managed it. Unfortunately in his panic the crab missed the legs and got mostly the torso, right between the legs.
The monster flinched and howled as sympathetic pain hit it. It didn't drop, but it did lose enough momentum that Lilly could outright throw Dowry into it. She abandoned out conventional tactics. She dropped any sense of humanity. She bit and clawed like an animal. Dowry tore into the thing without a care for defense and was shredded as the enemy tried to destroy her in turn. The arms fell off. The armor burned. Her eyes were ripped out.
Yet the construct started to fade away. Dowry fell to the ground with her legs barely functional and almost nothing else. Something was stuck in her teeth. It struggled slightly before the jaws closed shut with a clack. Then things were still.
Lilly heaved out a breath and stared at the sky for a long moment. Then she tilted her head. That monster had said that something would be coming after him right? That would mean some of the ships already up there would be saying something?
There was none of that. Had he been good enough at lying that she'd been fooled? Were they late? Would it take some more time? What would his master be like?
Lilly got Dowry to her feet and looked for food. It wasn't time to rest yet. She could probably regrow the arms if she got enough. (She could, but the nightmares she caused doing so would last for decades.)
Despite this, things weren't safe. Lilly wasn't sure if she'd ever feel safe on the planet, though really that hadn't changed much. Some part of her was always on the planet she'd grown up in, waiting for the next fight. She'd long since made peace with that aspect of herself. Her children would not have something similar happen to them.
"How are things?" Lilly asked Bolt over the comms.
"Quiet now. No deaths, but we'll need a medical professional here soon. The machines here can stabilize everything. They can't fix it." The designer reported before he continued in a more grim tone. "The guys that got through were strange. Weren't augmented with metal, and the swords are better than yer knife."
"My-" The woman paused. "Ah, I see. Psionics?" That was the word they had to use at the moment.
"Something like that maybe. Didn't know we had human practitioners." Bolt noted. "They were kinda pulped so I can't say more."
"That's fine." Lilly replied. "I'll handle the rest." She said as she closed off the comm.
The man that had triggered her paranoia wasn't quite in the city. The island they were on had him at a beachside resort area that was just barely out of the usual fighting. He was barely in sensor range if Lilly pushed Dowry's senses and relied on the more exotic feelings they both could parse.
Dowry crouched down and bounded through the city towards the new target. With everyone quiet and wary, she had the space to snip off this end. It was really the perfect time. No one would comment if one more person died. It neglected more than a few things like due process and the like, but Lilly had reached the point that she didn't care anymore. She approached the building in question on silent steps and then plunged Dowry's hand right into the building.
A normal pilot wouldn't have noticed it. She barely did as an expert very attuned to her mech. Somehow, someway the man had reacted to the mech hand. He'd turned in the second it'd ripped through the building, and he'd caught a clawed finger before it bisected him. More incredibly, he'd withstood the strike as it slammed him through the building and into the foundation. It was a physically impossible feat.
Further thought was rendered moot as Dowry's finger was wrenched to the side and almost torn off. Lilly pulled the hand back and glanced at the damage. That was again abnormal. The expert discarded what common sense said and readied herself to attack further.
The oppressive feeling that blanketed her senses suddenly made her pause mid movement. It was something hard to describe really. Like she was being pushed down by gravity, yet only in her mind. Almost like when she'd been in front of that expert as a normal girl so long ago but more oppressive. Some part of her wanted to drop down in awe.
She murdered that part before the thought really formed. Lilly would do what she desired. He will was her own. The expert sunk into her mech and clawed down again. Another finger was broken but she'd compensated for that. It was just a matter of positioning the hand just right.
On her list of things that would happen next, the building exploding wasn't one of them. Dowry was thrown back and the mech had to skid and fire boosters to keep upright. In front of her some strange transparent thing formed. It was a man and yet not a man. A monster of shadows and matter in the form of something man-like.
"When I rip your soul screaming out of your body, remember that you forced me to do this." The monster said and made a flat handed gesture.
Lilly dodged on instinct. One of her arms still went flying. Following her intuition she grabbed the limb before it flew too far and then skipped back while pressing the severed appendage to her body. She invoked her resonance and the arm started to reattach.
The monster paused and chuckled. "Well, I have needed some exercise." It surged forward.
She dodged the first strike of whatever the thing was using. It felt like a beam of some sort. The gestures to invoke it were strange and Lilly didn't have time to analyze it. She barely had time to stay alive, because the thing wasn't giving her any room at all as it mixed in fist strikes with the beams and other exotic attacks.
It was like fighting an expert but worse. Lilly was being manhandled and she didn't like it. Her few strikes back dug into the material the monster was made up of and did little. She couldn't even tell if she was doing actual damage really. Some instinct said she was, but not enough, especially with how outmatched she was.
Despite this, she felt happy. The rage was gone. The complicated feelings that had been boiling up around her were soothed. She had a goal and something to focus on, and that brought a clarity that she'd been missing since she'd gotten pregnant.
"Really, I have ta thank ya." Lilly said between breaths over the comm just as Dowry was thrown into a building by a strike that rattled her bones and almost killed her right then and there. Getting hit was doing her no favors at all.
"Oh?" The monster sighed. "You really do not understand. It's common enough for one like you." One large hand hovered over a nearby area. A small bunker containing people that had hid from the battle. "You'll learn." He grasped and something screamed as it was pulled out before he absorbed it.
Lilly observed it and nodded. "Ah, suppose I shouldn't be surprised." Bolt would be pissed at seeing something like that. "Just another monster that thinks he's better than people." She pulled herself out the building. "Another target." She growled out as she healed up again.
"We'll see how long that attitude lasts." The monster replied as it stopped playing around.
The pressure it was exerting increased. The thing grew larger and more solid. Lilly watched as it loomed over her and she focused her willpower. She was very outmatched here. She refused to fail anyway. The first step to winning was to stop playing by his rules.
She boosted back and away from her opponent. It followed her with a few beams, but none of them hit. She knew the timing now. Once that became apparent the monster switched to some sort of blast. The attack wasn't particularly subtle, but it was a wide area and it clipped her occasionally even when she dodged it.
They traveled away from the city and to the beaches. The seawater lapped at Dowry as she darted in and out of the waves and over the sand. The footing was a bit sketchy here, but she was able to compensate easily. Her opponent wasn't really hindered at all though. Which made the choice almost poor if one ignored how it got him away from people.
"Irritating." The monster growled out as it swatted at her again and again. "I will have to remember to slay any mechs with your abilities quickly in the future. This is taking too much time."
"Awww, is the little inflated puffball getting tired?" Lilly taunted back.
The monster paused and sighed again. "No. Simply lamenting the loss of my wine and the scenic view." It said without any care.
Lilly rolled her eyes and positioned herself just so. "That's all your fault."
"You underestimate the issue once more." The monster gestured up towards the sky. "Did you think beating me would do anything? Even if you could, my master would find you and the torment he would put you and your family through would make my plans a heaven. You have lost already! Just give up and I'll settle for just removing your piloting skills!"
The expert's eyes narrowed. He wasn't lying. She had no idea how to address that, but she would have to do so later. First she had to deal with what was in front of her. She darted forward.
By this point they knew each others tells. The monster shifted back slightly and readied itself to attack her as she got into range. Behind it the sand shifted more, and a hidden mech rose up. it didn't even notice, as focused as it was on her.
The giant crab mech, a locally made heavy mech, surged into motion. Lilly could see the sheer panic in the body language. It still moved one very large claw into place and brought the claws together in a movement that the pilot had likely practiced a thousand times.
Called the Big-Claw Hermit, the mechs were used by local police in certain areas. They had a series of taser-like weapons that they used to subdue things in the water or land when needed, and a singular large claw. It had two signature moves. One was to hide in water and sand. The other was to use the claw to dismantle a mech's legs. The massive thing could literally sever legs in a singular snip if it managed it. Unfortunately in his panic the crab missed the legs and got mostly the torso, right between the legs.
The monster flinched and howled as sympathetic pain hit it. It didn't drop, but it did lose enough momentum that Lilly could outright throw Dowry into it. She abandoned out conventional tactics. She dropped any sense of humanity. She bit and clawed like an animal. Dowry tore into the thing without a care for defense and was shredded as the enemy tried to destroy her in turn. The arms fell off. The armor burned. Her eyes were ripped out.
Yet the construct started to fade away. Dowry fell to the ground with her legs barely functional and almost nothing else. Something was stuck in her teeth. It struggled slightly before the jaws closed shut with a clack. Then things were still.
Lilly heaved out a breath and stared at the sky for a long moment. Then she tilted her head. That monster had said that something would be coming after him right? That would mean some of the ships already up there would be saying something?
There was none of that. Had he been good enough at lying that she'd been fooled? Were they late? Would it take some more time? What would his master be like?
Lilly got Dowry to her feet and looked for food. It wasn't time to rest yet. She could probably regrow the arms if she got enough. (She could, but the nightmares she caused doing so would last for decades.)
Negation
Shameless Pervert
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Non-responsiveuncle
Not too sore, are you?
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Big man in the chair is probably pulling his hair out lmao like "how did this shit blow up so much she's a third rate pilot in a fourth rate mech for fuck sake" a lot of people about to be fired and I'm interested to see MTA reaction to this ( i wonder if eating a spirit mech will affect dowry cause she was already very spiritual)
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Tavarokk
Pursuer of perversion
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Uh. Highly spiritual devourer mech nomming on a cultivator that could fight it and win by himself will definitely have no consequences of note. Nothing to see here.
lurkingkraken
Experienced.
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On vacation planet, giant enemy crab hits you in the weak point for MASSIVE DAMAGE.
The existence of a police mech that has a specialty of hiding in the dunes is fascinating.
Because it implies the police often need to hide in dunes.
Smugglers on the sea? Illegal beach mech races? Covert security for sand-castle builders?
Evil cultivator also loses any pity he may have had by consuming the souls of bystanders. Accidentally killing die to collateral damage is one thing. Powering up by soul absorption is another.
The existence of a police mech that has a specialty of hiding in the dunes is fascinating.
Because it implies the police often need to hide in dunes.
Smugglers on the sea? Illegal beach mech races? Covert security for sand-castle builders?
Evil cultivator also loses any pity he may have had by consuming the souls of bystanders. Accidentally killing die to collateral damage is one thing. Powering up by soul absorption is another.
Simonbob
Really? You don't say.
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It's a freaking Heavy mech, too, not just a light one.
That's even funnier!
Cybershadowninja2
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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I would love to see what was going through that pilot's mind during all this.
I044
New
lost star
Connoisseur.
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The Five Scrolls Compact was an old organization. Older than the MTA and the CFA. Older than any human organization in the galaxy. It was a group that had once been a prominent ruler of all humanity. It held secrets and power in equal measure. It parceled them out like priceless gems, and it wasn't shy about using them to enthrall and entice the greedy. The best of them were also the worst of them. They had such lists of atrocities that it would take years to say them all.
Yet they were still human in the end. They made connections. It was just those connections were just as poisonous as their organization was. The master of the man Lilly had killed was one such person. He was one of the best in the FSC. He began his day with at least one murder of one of his followers. He ended his day with another one. This was on a casual day. (He wasn't as bad as one of their Holy Children. She literally bathed in fresh blood from abducted victims daily.) He actually didn't care much about the murder, but his protégé had been his personal student, and the death made him look weak.
Looking weak invited problems, so the best solution was to go and enslave and torture everyone involved in the damage as a warning. He'd parade their tormented bodies and souls around for a few years and forget about everything. It was an atrocity he'd done so many times it was mundane. It was so practiced that he simply arranged transportation and promptly put his mind to other things.
The masters personal yacht was a fancy beast of a ship. First Class, fitting for a master of the FSC, and yet concealed enough through various tricks that the MTA and CFA would identify him as some First Rate Scion with a propensity for travel. Any sort of identifying markers were completely absent. It was just a very fancy space ship with a higher than normal compliment of people on it. This wasn't abnormal in and of itself. Some First Class scions had behaviors that was sickening to even him, so nothing he could do on the ship would really arouse suspicion.
Regardless, having the yacht set course to the planet itself was easy. It would also be fast. He'd be there in a few days despite the fact he was a sector away from the incident. He'd handle the death of his student and then handle remaking the cells in the area. It was fairly obvious that his student's reports had underestimated the amount of rot in the area.
His fist indication of a problem was almost his last. The beam bisecting his ship was aimed right at him. Only a lifetime of betrayal and constant ambushes allowed him to avoid it. As the yacht disintegrated he accelerated his perception and then invoked the Primordial Manifestation. His Qi focused and shifted and then his body changed into something quite large and he shook off the remains of his very expensive ride. He was more irritated at the loss of time than the attack or the damage at the moment.
"Who dares?!" He shouted into the voice, allowing his Qi to convey intent.
A First Rate mech met his eyes and he sneered. The MTA was getting bold and arrogant. He didn't know how they'd found him, but sending just a mech? He flattened a hand and used the Void Severing Slice. Space warped in front of him as a thin section of reality was ripped apart. The First Rate mech darted quickly to the side to avoid it, and his sneer turned into a frown. The Void Severing Slice was a simple technique and avoidable technique yes, but only if you had seen it before. It was mostly invisible and a rather wide flat cutting line. As his usual opener it gave him a good indication of the enemy's experience.
The thing was he didn't recognize the mech or the pilot's Qi signature. If anything the pilot was oddly muted. The MTA's pilots almost always shone brightly due to them being the best of their field, or near experts if they weren't experts. Something was off.
His suspicion proved presentient. Two more mechs made themselves known and was forced to use his Diamond Soul Shielding technique to defend himself. Three First Rate mechs with identical configuration and pilots. It was bizarre enough that his intuition screamed there was a trap somewhere. He readied a few talismans as the mechs circled around him. Without his spaceship he was limited in mobility. He could survive in the void indefinitely, but he had a limited number of FTL and FTL adjacent treasures that could get him out of here. He was loathe to use any of them until he had more information and they were expensive even for him.
Perhaps it was time to escalate with another technique? Something more prominent. The Qi of the pilots was weak enough that the Violet Enslaving Demand would break their wills. That seemed like a good prod. He inhaled even though there was no air and spoke while flaring his Qi.
"Kneel and serve." He proclaimed.
Violet Enslaving Demand was mostly a method to coral chaff. It broke lesser minds and made them more pliable. It was sadly temporary, but accumulated. The master used it mostly to herd sacrifices and stop the crying when he wanted silence. Here it should...
The pilots weren't following his orders. In fact the mech eyes were starting to glow and their Qi was rising. Which made negative sense. Mechs were made of stolen secrets and physics. Even their organic mechs couldn't touch the spiritual side. The FSC had been supreme there for all of recorded history!
"Ye shall not speak." One of the mechs ordered in a voice filled with such rage that his soul trembled.
How?! The master demanded and then realized that his Qi speech hadn't worked. The first stirrings of panic hit him. That had been a Qi technique! He didn't recognize the pattern of it, but it had been one. Was this one of his rivals instead? He activated an escape talisman.
Nothing happened.
Shall not speak. Was that restricting his techniques?! It had to be limited, but the master knew that this was already a problem. He needed to do something else.
"Ye shall not see."
Blindness nearly effected him. The master fought it off with difficulty. The purity of the rage behind the command was almost as potent as the technique. What was this?! His vision was blurring, but not enough for him to be hindered that much. He couldn't see the mech anymore, but he could drop the expansion technique and focusing on dodging. He needed to survive long enough for the first order to break.
"Ye shall not hear."
There was no sound in the void. Yet the master found the rest of his senses blinded. His normally keen sensing techniques were useless now. Insidious. Very potent as a surprise. He'd commend them after he escaped and brought the full might of his wrath down on them. He shifted into a dodging pattern on blind intuition. He could feel the edges of the first command starting to drop. Just a few seconds and he'd be able to invoke one of his talismans. The Flash of Sunlight Talisman would turn him into light for a few seconds. Enough to get space.
He barely noticed the spike that impaled him. The impossibly fine needle of metal struck him through the torso and then injected a cocktail with a thousand separate compounds. Blinded and deafened as he was, he could still muster up a counter technique, but whomever had designed this hadn't taken any chances with the dosage. It was enough to kill armies.
No! He would not be ended here! He would...
In the distance the Three Monkeys evaluated the target. One of them placed the now unconscious man into a specific life support capsule. Capturing high ranking FSC operatives was difficult at best, and very frequently didn't get enough information to be worth it. Their psionic techniques made them impossible to interrogate, and they could hide things from even the most advanced technology.
The Three Monkeys were the most advanced technology available. They also carried old spirits. Very old spirits from very old warriors that had fought the FSC at the height of its power. They had their ways, and were very eager to use the new tricks to make those old tricks even better.
Yet they were still human in the end. They made connections. It was just those connections were just as poisonous as their organization was. The master of the man Lilly had killed was one such person. He was one of the best in the FSC. He began his day with at least one murder of one of his followers. He ended his day with another one. This was on a casual day. (He wasn't as bad as one of their Holy Children. She literally bathed in fresh blood from abducted victims daily.) He actually didn't care much about the murder, but his protégé had been his personal student, and the death made him look weak.
Looking weak invited problems, so the best solution was to go and enslave and torture everyone involved in the damage as a warning. He'd parade their tormented bodies and souls around for a few years and forget about everything. It was an atrocity he'd done so many times it was mundane. It was so practiced that he simply arranged transportation and promptly put his mind to other things.
The masters personal yacht was a fancy beast of a ship. First Class, fitting for a master of the FSC, and yet concealed enough through various tricks that the MTA and CFA would identify him as some First Rate Scion with a propensity for travel. Any sort of identifying markers were completely absent. It was just a very fancy space ship with a higher than normal compliment of people on it. This wasn't abnormal in and of itself. Some First Class scions had behaviors that was sickening to even him, so nothing he could do on the ship would really arouse suspicion.
Regardless, having the yacht set course to the planet itself was easy. It would also be fast. He'd be there in a few days despite the fact he was a sector away from the incident. He'd handle the death of his student and then handle remaking the cells in the area. It was fairly obvious that his student's reports had underestimated the amount of rot in the area.
His fist indication of a problem was almost his last. The beam bisecting his ship was aimed right at him. Only a lifetime of betrayal and constant ambushes allowed him to avoid it. As the yacht disintegrated he accelerated his perception and then invoked the Primordial Manifestation. His Qi focused and shifted and then his body changed into something quite large and he shook off the remains of his very expensive ride. He was more irritated at the loss of time than the attack or the damage at the moment.
"Who dares?!" He shouted into the voice, allowing his Qi to convey intent.
A First Rate mech met his eyes and he sneered. The MTA was getting bold and arrogant. He didn't know how they'd found him, but sending just a mech? He flattened a hand and used the Void Severing Slice. Space warped in front of him as a thin section of reality was ripped apart. The First Rate mech darted quickly to the side to avoid it, and his sneer turned into a frown. The Void Severing Slice was a simple technique and avoidable technique yes, but only if you had seen it before. It was mostly invisible and a rather wide flat cutting line. As his usual opener it gave him a good indication of the enemy's experience.
The thing was he didn't recognize the mech or the pilot's Qi signature. If anything the pilot was oddly muted. The MTA's pilots almost always shone brightly due to them being the best of their field, or near experts if they weren't experts. Something was off.
His suspicion proved presentient. Two more mechs made themselves known and was forced to use his Diamond Soul Shielding technique to defend himself. Three First Rate mechs with identical configuration and pilots. It was bizarre enough that his intuition screamed there was a trap somewhere. He readied a few talismans as the mechs circled around him. Without his spaceship he was limited in mobility. He could survive in the void indefinitely, but he had a limited number of FTL and FTL adjacent treasures that could get him out of here. He was loathe to use any of them until he had more information and they were expensive even for him.
Perhaps it was time to escalate with another technique? Something more prominent. The Qi of the pilots was weak enough that the Violet Enslaving Demand would break their wills. That seemed like a good prod. He inhaled even though there was no air and spoke while flaring his Qi.
"Kneel and serve." He proclaimed.
Violet Enslaving Demand was mostly a method to coral chaff. It broke lesser minds and made them more pliable. It was sadly temporary, but accumulated. The master used it mostly to herd sacrifices and stop the crying when he wanted silence. Here it should...
The pilots weren't following his orders. In fact the mech eyes were starting to glow and their Qi was rising. Which made negative sense. Mechs were made of stolen secrets and physics. Even their organic mechs couldn't touch the spiritual side. The FSC had been supreme there for all of recorded history!
"Ye shall not speak." One of the mechs ordered in a voice filled with such rage that his soul trembled.
How?! The master demanded and then realized that his Qi speech hadn't worked. The first stirrings of panic hit him. That had been a Qi technique! He didn't recognize the pattern of it, but it had been one. Was this one of his rivals instead? He activated an escape talisman.
Nothing happened.
Shall not speak. Was that restricting his techniques?! It had to be limited, but the master knew that this was already a problem. He needed to do something else.
"Ye shall not see."
Blindness nearly effected him. The master fought it off with difficulty. The purity of the rage behind the command was almost as potent as the technique. What was this?! His vision was blurring, but not enough for him to be hindered that much. He couldn't see the mech anymore, but he could drop the expansion technique and focusing on dodging. He needed to survive long enough for the first order to break.
"Ye shall not hear."
There was no sound in the void. Yet the master found the rest of his senses blinded. His normally keen sensing techniques were useless now. Insidious. Very potent as a surprise. He'd commend them after he escaped and brought the full might of his wrath down on them. He shifted into a dodging pattern on blind intuition. He could feel the edges of the first command starting to drop. Just a few seconds and he'd be able to invoke one of his talismans. The Flash of Sunlight Talisman would turn him into light for a few seconds. Enough to get space.
He barely noticed the spike that impaled him. The impossibly fine needle of metal struck him through the torso and then injected a cocktail with a thousand separate compounds. Blinded and deafened as he was, he could still muster up a counter technique, but whomever had designed this hadn't taken any chances with the dosage. It was enough to kill armies.
No! He would not be ended here! He would...
In the distance the Three Monkeys evaluated the target. One of them placed the now unconscious man into a specific life support capsule. Capturing high ranking FSC operatives was difficult at best, and very frequently didn't get enough information to be worth it. Their psionic techniques made them impossible to interrogate, and they could hide things from even the most advanced technology.
The Three Monkeys were the most advanced technology available. They also carried old spirits. Very old spirits from very old warriors that had fought the FSC at the height of its power. They had their ways, and were very eager to use the new tricks to make those old tricks even better.
Non-responsiveuncle
Not too sore, are you?
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Huh so the settings is mechs Vs space cultivators? I didn't realise It was straight up cultivators I don't know if that makes me more interested or less tbh
Pyro Hawk
Unsure if Phoenix or Kitsune
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The Milky Way's natural Qi generation's been crippled for... Well, I believe 'longer than current humanity has been a spacefaring civilisation'. Which means that there's three methods of Cultivation that are at all useful: Willpower, Faith and Demonic, though there is a tiny trickle of 'natural' Qi arising from various interactions. It's just too useless to really do anything with.
Everything's naturally generating a small amount of Willpower and Faith cultivation though for most it's practically ignorable because of how hard and complicated it is to make use of those as your Cultivation Base without being able to tap into Natural/Environmental Qi to supplement or act as an initial 'structure' for the Cultivation method to work with. Demonic Cultivation on the other hand is very good at harvesting those scraps and also doing such things as, oh... 'Converting blood and souls into Qi'. So you can imagine what the vast majority of species in the Milky Way were like before the MTA and CFA's creators decided to destroy the FSC, take control and 'aggressively protect humanity'.
As part of this of course is the creation of the 'great lie' of 'Psionics being a human power that Mechs tap into' and why some of the restrictions, known or not, are in place for Mech Pilots and Designers. This is specifically to make it so humanity doesn't 'fall off' the hard paths of Willpower and Faith Cultivation and return to the Demonic Cultivation that they used to also participate in under the FSC. Of course this means that when humanity in the Red Ocean Galaxy that is the latest expansion attempt which isn't a Qi Desert like the Milky Way relax standards a bit to make up for the fact their opposition are a lot stronger...
Well, issues start arising.
Pollyamorous
Please be patient, I'm horny.
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Three Monkeys: "We've lived for so long and both honed our pilots, and been honed by them in turn. The bonds we create go beyond the physical, beyond the mental, beyond the soul itself. We have reached the peak, and it's our only desire that some day we'll be able to-"
Bolts: *Makes the Heart System*
Three Monkeys: "Ah! How incredible! A Designer, a child at that, has finally done it! After eons of waiting, someone has created a way to interface with our essences! A way for us to continue to grow beyond our limits! What wonders will they create now? What ways to expand our-"
Bolts: *Makes the Heart Crystals*
Three Monkeys: "...Did he just make soul steroids? Okay, I think I can get behind that. I mean I want to see what other people can make too, but this is-"
Bolts: *Makes Valhalla*
Three Monkeys: "YEAAAAAAAH, THERE GOES MY OSHI, THERE HE GOES! WE LOVE YOU BOLTS-KUUUUUN!"
Aires Drake
Not too sore, are you?
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What a time to fully catch up on this story! I know absolutely nothing about this setting but man do I enjoy the HELL out of this story.
The fact that they have combat butlers and maids technically will never cease to amuse me as well!
Also, if you don't mind the correct, then:
I really enjoyed reading this latest update in particular as this monster got his karmic comeuppance!
One last thing, would it be possible for there to be an informational post with all of Bolt's mechs with their stats and such?
The fact that they have combat butlers and maids technically will never cease to amuse me as well!
Also, if you don't mind the correct, then:
Should be "corral" here, not 'coral'.
I really enjoyed reading this latest update in particular as this monster got his karmic comeuppance!
One last thing, would it be possible for there to be an informational post with all of Bolt's mechs with their stats and such?
Cybershadowninja2
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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Let's see. Non rats that are either piloting and/or are working with Bolt's mechs, some MTA official that is studying the Heart System, or seeing what Bolt's and/or Lily's friends are doing.
lurkingkraken
Experienced.
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In the introduction to the mech war on the vacation planet, you mentioned news organizations as one of the groups that could be expected to donate one or two mechs to a large fight.
So maybe a viewpoint from some reporter mech?