taalismn wrote:With the sound of a derailing freight train screaming out of the sky the massive metal tower appeared, a crash, earth-shuddering shockwave, and fall of dirt and debris announcing its landing in the heart of the city.
Where before only the urban high-rises and business towers of New Hakone stood, now a two-thousand foot-tall megalith stood gleaming, four implacable metal faces atop it gazing down with cold dead eyes on the city below.
"There goes the neighborhood...."
"Oh well, we were due for a curbstomp..."
"Who is it this time?"
"I think...necromongers..."
All over the towering edifice, thousands of sally ports were opening, fighters powering up and launching, to rain death on the city below, destroying all resistance, and paving the way for the army to follow to eliminate the unfit among the breeders, and find those who would be converted to the cause.
Or so the plan usually went.
Instead the fighters launched full power out of their hangars...and ran into an barrier of orange scales of light that appeared, wrapped around the Conquest Icon. Massive explosions peppered the side of the tower as fighters impacted into the barrier, exploded, and sent shockwaves and shrapnel to their sides and back. The former bounced on the barrier's curved walls and back towards the tower and other outgoing fighters, while the latter slammed back into the still-open launch cells and into the structure itself. Within seconds, fratricide obliterated the entire fighter arm, and a column of smoke and fire shot up over the tower, funneled by the glowing wall, while glowing hot debris rained down around the base of the tower. When the smoke cleared, it revealed the tower chewed up and battered, but still standing, smoke pouring from blasted-open launch bays.
Doors opened in the base of the tower, and armored Necromonger infantry poured out. They immediately ran into obstacles...the still burning remains of their fighter force, piled high around the invasion ship, still live ordnance exploding like popcorn. The outgoing invaders were shredded by shrapnel, inundated in flames, or simply buried under shifting wreckage.
And when the pain-numbed killers cleared that barrier, diminished by the trek through the impromptu obstacle course of their late comrades, they ran into a second, more directed wall of fire, as the combined civil defense forces, police, and local army garrison, plus quite a few armed vigilante tourists, opened up on them. Gravity guns fired back, but ran into the same glowing barrier that now seemed to extend down to street level, stopping the energy blasts cold. The INCOMING fire, on the other hand, flaming form what seemed to be every window, door, manhole, and from every piece of available cover facing the landing site, had no such problems crossing the barrier and scouring the Necromonger ranks like flamethrowers over moths. Necromongers caught fire, shriveled, vaporized, flew apart, died by the hundreds.
Then the enormous Mark VI Evangelion, which had generated the PPAT-Field wrapped around the invading Icon, stepped into view, its many weapons tracking up and down the Icon. Though only two hundred feet tall and thus dwarved by the giant Icon, it moved forward with a relentless confidence that frankly daunted those Necromongers watching its approach. It stomped right through the milling mass around its feet, taking as little heed of them as a man does of harmless garden ants, and drew a massive blade from its back. The blade seemed to bend light around itself as it described a graceful arc at the end of the EVA's arm...and into the side of the Icon. slicing into it as effortlessly as a machete into a pineapple, carving off armor, revealing the compartments within. The giant humanoid warmachine starting cutting away at the tower like a lumberjack, finding a cadence to its sword strokes.
Above, the Necromonger force commander screamed curses against his enemies, orders to his troops, and ultimately a plea to the distant Lord Marshal.
"Ascension Protocols!"
"Asuka? You want to hurry it up there? We're reading a big power build-up and it's not propulsion. Looks like some sort of planet-killer."
"Killjoys. Okay, I'm on it."
The red EVA unit stopped its slicing to stand back, look up, then bend its knees and JUMP straight up. Up, up, up, the entire length of the giant Icon, before finally arcing up between two of the giant heads at the top, towards the center, where a giant glowing ball of energy was starting to emerge. The EVA, still arcing in its leap, drew its blade as it descended towards the ominous glowing orb, and speared it end-on.
World-blasting energies suddenly met cosmic string singularity and were warped and pulled into the blade. PPAT-field condensed and wrapped around the sphere of energy, imploding it, squeezing it into a bar of light and plasma that was sucked into the now blacker-than-black shape of the giant katana. The sphere deformed, then drained, and disappeared.
The EVA now completed its leap, standing astraddle the opening the energy ball had emerged from.. Now it slammed the sword down, and a fraction of the absorbed energy fountained back as a beam of plasma energy, coring the massive icon. flames shooting down and out its entire length...
"Okay, that's going to be a mess to clean up."
"No worse than an Angel battle."
"Than an Angel battle USED to be. WE've now got a two thousand foot mess of scrap to take down and remove from the center of the city!"
"Not my problem."
"That much hasn't changed from the old days. You killed the damn thing and WE clean up the damn mess left behind."
"Yep, love it that way. Say, don't these guys come in numbers?"
"Already being taken care of."
Deep in space, a fleet materialized from the ghostly wake of an artificial comet. Warships and transports began to descend towards the planet below...
On the natural satellite behind them, mountains moved...giant mountains of metal on tracks. Hellbores and Hellrails raised and targeted.
From the space behind the fleet, a giant gray humanoid form, cyclopean eye gleaming. powered up. Its pilots had listened to the battle of New Hakone as it happened, No way the Langley-Sterling girl was going to beat THEM for combat honors. Now to show them how to REALLY deal with an invading horde.
IN the space between the planet and the incoming enemy fleet, hundreds of individual orbital platforms activated and rotated to bring their weapons to bear.....
And on the massive Necromonger flagship, in the Necropolis within it, the Lord Marshal, half-dead, suddenly felt a shudder through what remained of his physical form and through his spirit, already one foot in the Underverse, and wondered what it meant....
Man, I miss these. As always, you do great work! Hope to see more of these in the future soon!
SRoss wrote:Meanwhile in orbit around the local gas giant...
Alecia: (Watching the carnage) "I think we'll hide in this nebula and wait to see what happens."
Megarea: "Um ... When did this solar system get a nebula?"
V'Ger: "Indeed."
taalismn wrote:SRoss wrote:Meanwhile in orbit around the local gas giant...
Alecia: (Watching the carnage) "I think we'll hide in this nebula and wait to see what happens."
Megarea: "Um ... When did this solar system get a nebula?"
V'Ger: "Indeed."
I was about to say..."It WAS formerly the Visitor invasion fleet' and then my mind went into reverse gears at the V'Ger.
day, when you care send the very best, etc. )
The question that stared it all! Wow, it's been over 6 years now!
Sorry, yes I've seen all of Babylon 5, its just been a long time since I've seen it. But, ya, I remember now.
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