Lettuce+Rogue Bunny=Teaser

[Rieverre]

... ergo ... I spent the time I'd been intending to spend on writing more on revising and editsu of the stuff that I've already got. And 'lo, I sweatdropped when I found I've got somewhere in the vicinity of 200K of text invested in this project. I'll likely post the compilation sometime during the weekend. And yes, I've changed the bloopers. Jipang is now Zipang. And I'd found I'd messed up Remus and Romulus. Honestly? I blame myself. I wasn't recalling clearly and thought - okay, which is more likely the name of a country? The name of someone from old Roman mythology, or the name of the werewolf from Harry Potter? Shows what my seemingly logical reasoning brought me. Oh well, it's corrected in the compilation.
And now for some badly masked exposition ...

---

Turns out that Murphy got another one right.
Problems are pack animals.
Meaning that, when I finally got around to meeting Yamada this time, I was once again presented with a set of questions more voluminous than the set of answers.
To make matters more quaint, there seemed to be at least one set per person ...
For Juliet-ane-san, the fact that Artai seemed to be gearing up in a military way. From what Yamada told me, and no, I tend not to ask where or how he gets his information - I sleep easier that way, you see - leaves were being cancelled, reserves called in, and cadets were being rushed through training since ... well, around the last time I'd spoken with him.
Fortunately, she had about the same amount of patriotic loyalty as I'd ever had. With the added bonus that the memories she'd had of growing up there were not exactly rosy. She'd actually told me as much, as big a surprise as that was. The only things she was in any way loyal to was herself, for one, and some of the _people_ in Garderobe, for another. Count her little band of Jesters for a third and we're set.
And Yamada hadn't actually had to do very much in the way of research when I'd asked him if he had anything on the Ho noble house of Annan.
For Fujino-san ... we had strong suspicions what the supposedly jealously guarded Project Garm entailed. From what Yamada had managed to unearth, it involved high level Materialization research, with more than a dash of genetics thrown in for good measure. That alone wouldn't have been enough to tell us the results of said project were what I'd born witness to throwing it down with the Aswad in Aries a while back. The fact that Yamada had somehow managed to get hold of one of their actual field test reports, which mentioned Lutetia and Aries as the testing grounds ... I bow my head to the man ... and pay him double premium rates.
For ... well, for Ren, and by extension his cousin, because that was where it went in the end, were the reports of increased military activity in Cardair. I'd heard myself that Florence was going to be losing one of their Otome soon. The one to guard their king, to be exact. For all of Argoss' muleheadedness and ambition, the man who basically ran Cardair was nothing if not shrewd.
On Earl, Otome were the direct representation of a country's power. Even a single relatively fresh and unexperienced one offered an opening that could be capitalized upon by a sufficiently ruthless adversary.
Given that Aries was politically involved with those two, prehaps deeper lately than in the past fifty years or so because of their extended jockeying for fishing right contracts in Aries waters ... trivial as that sounds, it could very well turn serious.
And that wasn't even mentioning the bits and pieces of rumor that stated the Aswad had been visiting several times.
For myself?
Well, as it seems, Artai's representative in Windbloom, Yamada's longtime client, had been given a most curious order by his superiors. Or so, at least, I was interpretting what he was having Yamada and his other contacts do.
Old wounds. Old problems. Old matters.
Apparently, either dai Artai or his ... associates of the Black Letter were intent on finding the long lost princess of Windbloom. And they were sure the current queen wasn't it.
Honestly, I'd have thought it was just Nagi trying for a political coup, but ... something about that seemed to ring a false note.
A thought flashed past my mind, almost too quickly to catch, but I managed to reel it in with some effort.
Once upon a time, several months ago, there'd been a Slave summoning. And the first battle of Slave against Otome in the last fifty years of recorded history. The summons' target had been Mashiro blan de Windbloom, the then still princess about to ascend the throne.
I'd thought it heavy-handed, at first, for an attempted kidnapping.
Now, though ... they hadn't been trying to grab her at all. No.
Artai's dealings with Schwarz had begun only afterwards, and dai Artai hadn't shown any ill will towards Mashiro. Well, other than the few reports of him angling for marriage with her.
Maybe, just maybe, Schwarz had been trying to incite a search for the 'true' princess by killing Mashiro? And now? They were having dai Artai have his man conduct a more subtle investigation into the matter? Likely. Especially since he had first hand knowledge of what had happened fifteen years ago.
Major Sergei Wong. Studying here in Windbloom when the attempted coup and assassination of the king and queen took place, and Slaves strode through the streets ... keeping an eye on you seems like the thing to do right now. Fortunately, Yamada already has both of his doing that.

Why would they need her, though? Why could they need her? It wasn't that there wasn't an answer to those questions available. It was that there was more than just one.
Power? Likely. Schwarz usually preferred to work behind the scenes, but they did seek out means to obtain that which gave power directly.
I sighed, rubbed my temples, and kept walking. I thought better while doing so, and the streets of Windbloom's capital made for a pleasant enough trek, especially after sharing intelligence with someone as prone to dropping bombshells as Yamada was.
Wonder if this is how Yukino feels after our talks?

I was getting a headache now ... though it was less a physical one than merely mental exhaustion. No more revelations today, thankyou.
A break was in order. One involving snackage, preferably. The cafe I'd just passed by seemed like the place to go to for that, so I stopped, turned, and marched back to the entrance with determined strides.
Maybe some iced coffee would clear my mind.

---

Of course, with the way his day is going, you know just which cafe he'll end up going into.
Next? Fannishness.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[classicdrogn]

I'd just like to say, since oyu're nearing that time frame, that I'm hoping something... special... is in the works for those thugitos who went after Arika. I'm not sure why its so extreme, but rape and attempted are one of my special hot buttons, and while watching the series, my "how I would do an SI' list involves dropping in an hour or so before that incident in the original version of what became Guardiam 215, waking up in time to see that incident begin and perform some field expedient castrations, then deal with the slightly increased collateral damage (Arika stabbed) by giveing her a Silverseed (something that lookls like a rounded, chromed heart about an inch in diameter, you put it under your tounge and the nanites that make it up use the blood vessles there to enter the body. With a few weeks they start building a new unit in a subspace pocket ala guyver, but with existing nannies in place they can immediately lay on the healy goodness. Later, Ari-ko gives one to Erstine in the acid incident, since it can be re-formed under the tongue with a simple mental command once the process is well underway, and this leads to said girl losing her hand when she tries to summon a slave, but not her life when that slave would have been defeated - but she's got a Silverbullet, so who needs a wimpy-ass Slave anyway? And I've completely rambled on and gotten distracted from the rest of what I'd meant to say.
Well, blast. If I rmemeber anytime usefully soon, I'll try again.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
Dr. Akagi will recover. Observe, Rei smiled. Shinji-kun, are these your clothes?
Ritsuko shot up like a spring loaded meerkat. What? Shinji-kun is naked?
See, Anata? Dr. Hentai is alive and well. - Innortal's _I Do_
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Valles]

---

... ergo ... I spent the time I'd been intending to spend on writing more on revising and editsu of the stuff that I've already got. And 'lo, I sweatdropped when I found I've got somewhere in the vicinity of 200K of text invested in this project. I'll likely post the compilation sometime during the weekend. And yes, I've changed the bloopers. Jipang is now Zipang. And I'd found I'd messed up Remus and Romulus. Honestly? I blame myself. I wasn't recalling clearly and thought - okay, which is more likely the name of a country? The name of someone from old Roman mythology, or the name of the werewolf from Harry Potter? Shows what my seemingly logical reasoning brought me. Oh well, it's corrected in the compilation.

---

Be fair - Remus and Romulus were twins from old Roman mythology... it's just that one founded a city and the other didn't.

---

---

You've probably picked up by now that I'd done a lot of thinking about the potential applications of the various powers of the HiME and their Childs, and included my speculations in that packet of information that had gotten passed around while I was trying to get them all pointed in the same direction as the HiME-sentai. Some of those abilities were fairly straightforwards, and I hadn't been able to see how to do much with them... Natsuki and Duran as a case in point... but I'd had some thoughts about Mai.
In the show, she'd been depicted as having two real abilites - flight, and a sort of protective shield. it had seemed to me that, depending on the particular characteristics of that shield, it might have offensive uses as well as defensive ones. For instance, if she could specifically mold and shape it, then a bomb could likely be made by encompassing a volume of air and then compressing it down to some (hopefully) much smaller volume - between simple expansion and compressional heating, the effect should be pretty impressive. Using it effectively, though, would require being able to either open only one part of the containing 'marble' - the side pointed at the target - or maintaina seperate field to protect her from the backlash.
When that first Orphan jumped the picnic she, Mikoto and Shizuru had been having, it had apparently decided to call for help, first thing, which was why the other monsters had shown up so quickly when they had started out spreading out all across the campus. The fact that the largest of them could fly, and gave its lesser bretheren an airlift, helped too. While the other HiME were occupied with the groundbound ones, Mai had been tackling that Orphan.
It looked... lord, I'm hardly sure how to describe it. Cross a jetliner with a seagull with a catamaran with the front ends of four different cuttlefish and you might have something about right. It had two bodies, both with tentacles and suckered arms on either end, and a single great long wing that both connected the two and extended far off to the sides.
Mai had started out only trying to distract it from causing her friends problems, using the same cannonball tactics she'd applied against the Ecchi Monster, but, well, the reason I compare the critter to a squid rather than an octopus or something was that it had these pairs of especially long tentacles that it threw out like harpoons or something - they were quite thin, in scale, perhaps no thicker than your leg, but nearly twice as long as it was, and they moved fast. It couldn't hit quite hard enough to actually knock down Mai's shield, but even if it wasn't able to hurt her, the transferred force was still enough to knock her tumbling ass over bandstand every time it connected.
I'd told her to start wearing bloomers or swimsuits or something under those skirts.
The thing that broke the stalemate was the same one that had gotten me woken up - after the first Orphan incident, the JASDF had moved a fighter squadron to the nearest airbase and kept at least two planes ready to launch at any given moment. I'm given to understand that a goodly share of the collateral damage from that day's attack was actually in the form of the swath of shattered glass left by the wake of their supersonic sprint to Fuuka. They must have had people on the ground - maybe even the Public Security agents assigned to tail the HiME - because they split up and hit the two Orphans best equipped to threaten an aircraft as soon as they arrived.

---

---

---

Next? Fannishness.

---

Can't wait.
Ja, -n
(Hey, Drogn? The way you're talking, those nanite packets have more powers than just healing... I'm curious to know what they are. ^_^)

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Rieverre]

---

I'd just like to say, since oyu're nearing that time frame, that I'm hoping something... special... is in the works for those thugitos who went after Arika. I'm not sure why its so extreme, but rape and attempted are one of my special hot buttons,

---

Mine too, actually.
Add to that the fact that Miyu did indicate to him her concern and affection for the girl ...
... well, I'll let you draw your own picture until I'm at that segment.

---

Be fair - Remus and Romulus were twins from old Roman mythology... it's just that one founded a city and the other didn't.

---

I actually got my reasoning and references crossed pretty badly on that one, but it's been corrected now.

---

Can't wait.

---

Then you should not have to ^_^.

---

Important safety tip - never ever drink anything when even most remotely in the vicinity of conversing Garderobe students.
I'd assumed Juliet was the exception. She certainly seemed like the kind of person who'd have a downright no-holds-barred sense of humor. As I'd found out ...

It was bitter. It was hot - in an amusing twist, Black's analysts had actually come up with and patented, or should I say re-patented, the concept and design of a hotplate. Unlike the Frames or Rigs, this I'd had nothing to do with. I blame an incident involving power cells, a dismantled Frame micro-turbine, and Kobayakawa's outrage at finding her cup of java-substitute cold when she finally tore herself away from her work. I'd actually seen the emergence of the final concept back before I'd gone off on my little sidetrip to Lutetia, in said analyst/tech's workspace, though I'd failed to identify it as such at the time. But tangent aside - and it was what seemed to be the last of the pot. In short, I could be excused for treating this last bit of coffee like ambrosia come again.
"So, you going to need a change of pants now?"
It also nearly went and made sure I'd never smell anything again in the course of my life, because I nearly snarfed the mouthful. Damnit, she'd timed that line on purpose.
I glared at Juliet over the rim of the mug.
On the flipside, though, a snarky Juliet was better than a moody Juliet.

... add to that the fact that Fujino-san had just about smashed every bit of preconception I'd still harbored about her not a few minutes afterwards.
It was a supremely odd thing to realize that I seemed to share the same sort of sense of humor with her. Not quite as crass as Juliet's, but still a good deal more ... ribald ... than I'd expected from someone as poised as Shizuru.
Still, that had been exactly what the doctor had ordered to keep a night's worth of frantic research from becoming too mentally exhausting.
But now, here I was, having walked into a cafe in the city center, and ordered an iced ... well, the name seemed to elude me at the moment, I just knew that it was coffee. That happens sometime when I work on automatic, and the way I'd walked in and ordered I hadn't been much more than an automaton, really.
Which didn't stop me from catching and nearly choking upon hearing someone exclaim ... well, let's just say that when I recovered from the coughing fit this resulted in the only thing on my mind was to voice, in a half-disbelieving tone of voice:
"They're jiggly like what?"
That I did this in the faces of four suddenly attentive Garderobe Corals who, from their expressions, had assumed they'd had the cafe all to themselves was more instinct than anything else.
In my defense, I wasn't exactly thinking clearly at the time, and hey, how would _you_ react to somebody comparing a dessert to a pair of breasts. A female someone at that, and in a tone of voice I could only describe as extremely genki.
Well, alright, there was actually something more being said, but my brain had only tuned in for the: "Wow, it's so jiggly, just like Ers-chan's breasts!" bit.
Still, it was definitely a very WTF? moment.
A few moments later, when brains had caught up to words, there were five pretty embarrassed people in the cafe.
And then I realized that I knew two of these people, though I'd only seen the pictures of one, to tell you the truth. Miyu had mentioned the girl, after all, and she'd been ... caring ... about it, in her own way.
The other, I recognized from a different sort of situation. Also, from a picture I'd most recently seen in a folder Juliet had handed me, in the dead of night, after she'd snuck into my office-slash-apartment.
"Mister Schrdinger? Is that you?"
Hokay, what? This had not come from either of those two; Yumemiya Arika and Erstin Ho, respectively; rather, the glasses-wearing redhead who'd said the bit about the dessert had spoken.
"Wow! I wasn't expecting, I mean," the girl enthused, leaving me to stare in confusion as she carried on. "We've never actually met, but my dad took me along to the hearing you were speaking to the Technology Redevelopment Committee at back in Aries? Two years ago? He was one of the presiding Chairs. Robert Woods. I'm Irene Woods, and I'm very pleased to meet you! I was wondering if I could ... umm ... maybe ask you a few questions about the Inertial Navigation System you'd presented with the Frame blueprints back then? Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease?"
Le bwhah?

---

I'm currently having fun trying to envision what an already somewhat stressed Nao will react to being made a Pillar with.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[Florin]

Didn't Mai also have some kinda flame lash thing?--
Oh, what has science wrought? I sought only to turn a man into a metal-encased juggernaught of destruction powered by the unknown properties of a mysterious living crystal. How could this have all gone wrong?
--
If you become a monster to put down a monster you've still got a monster running around at the end of the day and have as such not really solved the whole monster problem at all. 

[Valles]

---

Didn't Mai also have some kinda flame lash thing?

---

Ermm... Oh, yeah, she used it in Ep... Two, I think? Actually, I'm thinking that that was what it looks like when you manifest a slice of forcefield rather than just a disk.
She could also leave sort of contrail things in the manga, but I think that that was just a visual effect.

---

---

I've already described how well the attempt went against the spike-throwing slug thing, but, unfortunately, the Flying Siamese Squid Monster had quicker reaction times. There was a parachute visible after the thing's tentacle had caught the plane as it went by, and since Mai interfered with the Orphan's attempt to finish him off the pilot even survived, but I don't think it was anything approaching a coincidence that the next time we went through this whole dance, the JASDF launched from a lot farther out, and used a lot bigger missile.
In the meantime, though, Mai's heroism had, as the practice, often does, cost her badly. Defending the pilot had forced her to slow down, almost hold still, and that gave the monster a chance to wrap a pair of tentacles around the outside of her shield and squeeze. There was a moment or two while she struggled to get free, jerking this way and that in its grasp but unable to drop the glowing spherical barrier it was holding onto for fear of its closing its grasp before she had a chance to slip through the gaps, and then it, well, swallowed her.
I had looked up in time to see that, and it just about gave me a heart attack.
The remaining jet came back around for another pass, and, evidently having learned a lesson from the earlier attempts' failure to make a serious impression, volleyed all of its remaining missiles pretty much at once. The catamaran Orphan shrieked and writhed under the onslaught, and several of its arms were actually blown completely free to tumble the hundreds of feet to the ground, where they landed with something somewhere between a slam, a splat, and a crash that knocked over nearly half a dozen fully grown trees. It made a couple of abortive attacks at the plane, then swung around towards the academy. It was looking pretty sorry by this point - between the craters in its flesh, the holes in its wing, and its missing limbs, the JASDF's attacks had obviously been far more effective than those old Toho films would have left you expecting against a giant monster - but at first there was no apparent cause for the way it aborted its attack run and started throwing what I could only describe as a major fit.
That mystery was resolved pretty firmly when one of its, er, 'heads' pretty much... well, exploded. Mai didn't have nearly as much control over her forcefields at that point as she'd develop later, but she was able to expand it pretty easily, pushing the thing's gullet apart from the inside out in the process.
At the time I thought that that would be pretty much the end of the matter, but the cloud of about an umpty-bazillion seagull-looking things that converged on the larger Orphan a moment later would thoroughly disabuse me of that notion.

---

---

Yes, this took a while. I've been a bit distracted. See various other threads around here for a large part of why.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Rieverre]

---

The irony of it all is that the girl, all of fifteen years of age, with whom I was talking right there and then, was likely a better engineer and technician than I could ever hope to become.
So, you're probably wondering how I could keep that from being obvious in conversation. Aside from supreme bullshitting, that is. I did a fair bit of that as well.
The simple answer would be, I cheat. Often. And well.
The more complete one? It goes back to when I was still animating an oversized hunk of steel and metal alloy. Back then, my mind was basically run by and running on an onboard computing network, and it had a lot of excess data stuck in there. Like the schematics of the Battlemover itself, information on actuators, power cells, combat tactics databases, the works. And the things that weren't there, I later added and integrated.
When viewed from my particular perspective, the concept of a modular mind is both awfully neat and potentially very scary. I hadn't dared to consider what the equivalent of a 'format c:/' command would have done to me. Brr.
Back there, back then, this didn't make me an exceptional and innovative engineer ... but with the amount of free time I had on my hands, because really, I was stuck in a freakin' garage for most of the time and without Syl' or Anri, or even Mori-baka and a few others later on, I would have gone insane. And there'd have been no 'slow and quiet' about it, just big explosions.
Still, I had a lot of free time, a lot of raw data and evaluation software, and a CAD shell I could run.
In short, it made me a pretty good hack. A damn corny one too, but I blame my waning mental stability for that.
Especially for the Type-Y optical camouflage. The mesh netting was an integral part of the design, damnit, and not some cheap attempt at ogling the 33-S models. I mean, I didn't even have any glands back then, for crying out loud.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Then I ... left ... and incarnated into this shell. The thing was, and I didn't really catch that bit until the 'me' who'd met Gabriel got roped into doing an actual sync test by the good Doctor Akagi, that the sort of mind I was stuck operating with now wasn't human either. It just pretended really well. The information I'd had access to when still mechanized was still there ... only more difficult to get at. As in, downright impossible to get at without a neural interface.
Hence my involvement in the development of the Direct Link System when on the previous leg of my journey. It was something of literally vital importance to me.
Aheh. Sidetracked. Pardon.
Be that as it may, I was surprised to find that the conversational back and forth the initial question about the navigation system had developed into was actually pretty much the most enjoyable thing I'd done all day.
Not exactly hard, what with the sort of heavy information Yamada had dumped on top of me, but refreshing nonetheless.
And the girl had good insight and an actual understanding of the technology involved that was almost ... instinctual. Haphazardly so, yes, but still ... that was a talent I knew some people would give their left arms for.
In all, it was also a moderately productively spent thirty minutes.
I'd found out the final Coral in the party was none other than Major Sergei Wong's adopted daughter. Amusingly enough, her name was Nina.
I wondered if it was the same Nina that the blond member of this group of Otome had been calling out for in the throes of fever induced dreams when I'd ran across her during my most recent visit to Aries.
It was also her who asked what I did and exactly how it was that Ms. Woods had recognized me. Quick one as well, since she managed to do it in a way that seemed incidential and offhand.
It's always a shame to find minds as sharp as that already on somebody else's payroll.
My reply was relatively honest, fortright, and ended in handing out calling cards, because you never know when and where you can get more business, and for one other reason ... the design of the card had Ms. Ho flinch slightly on seeing them.
Not the most subtle or accurate way of confirming information, but generally? Only a certain group of people flinches on seeing a black rectangle. It seemed rather like Schwarz's trademark at first glance, since the white script on the back wasn't immediately obvious.
The oddity of the day was the fact that Miyu's ... well, ward would be the best word, I think ... seemed uncharacteristically listless. At least, if one were to go by prior information and her friends' general attitude.
I said my goodbyes when I was done with my drink, leaving the Corals to whatever it was they did in their time off. Frankly? Longest time a single coffee ever lasted me that I could remember. Even an iced one.
I grumbled to myself as I walked.
There was a time when I formed an opinion about somebody quickly enough. It usually turned out to be the wrong one. I didn't do that anymore. Or at least wasn't wrong so often anymore. My Field gave me a certain degree of empathic ability.
Everything else aside, what I'd gleaned about Erstin Ho that way from the little snippets of conversation she'd added in here and there suggested that she wasn't simply an extremely good plant hiding her intentions. She seemed ... genuine. Hell, more than that. She seemed like an honest to goodness nice person, through and through.
Nope. I wasn't touching this matter more than I had to. I'd just confirm it to Juliet next time I saw her, and leave her to deal with it.
Looks like I'd have to find another Schwarz field agent to ... ahem ... interrogate.
Little did I know that events would actually give me a chance to do just that fairly soon.
There and then, though, I made my way back to the office without further incident. I was in the mood to tinker with something, so I figured I'd see how Kobayakawa was doing.

---

Damnit, I'd meant to do the actual conversation, but my dialog muse once again proved her existence by absence alone.
And setting up for the Slave attack of ep13. Also, some other stuff.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[Valles]

You want the cover by Die Krupps, not the Arthur Brown original.

---

---

By the time the tiny seagull-looking things had finished melding themselves into the Orphan, it had just about tripled its already-impressive mass, and most all of the new weight had gone into forming what looked like a giant nautilus shell tucked into the notch in the thing's wing where its two sweeping spans met. Between that, the googly eyestalks, and the new and improved array of suckered appendages, it was just about the ugliest thing I'd ever seen in person.
The remaining F-2 pilot took a look at what the monster had just pulled out of its hat and decided to bug out, and his plane swung away then darted off on a trail of blue-white flame from its afterburners. The Orphan let him go and went after Mai, lunging forward and leaving actual contrails - condensation, I guess - behind it. I don't know where she managed to learn to maneuver the way she did as she swung out of its way and spiraled out of reach, but all of its swings and shot tentacles fell uselessly behind her until, in the end, she swung to a halt out over the ocean...
Then arrowed back in as quick as a shot. From where I was standing it looked like she might even have been moving as fast as the JASDF jets had earlier, although I'm fairly certain that that that was mostly an optical illusion. The way she explained the orange fireball that erupted when she hit when we were talking about it later was that she had been gathering power as she flew and holding it in a deliberately fragile circular shield in front of the bubble that was protecting her from the monster's tentacles and the lash of her own slipstream. When she hit, her control over the frontal shield lapsed and all of its power was released - outwards - at almost the same instant that the harder, protective shell did. I'm not sure how much of that impact was transferred to Mai herself, but she was noticably bruised when the whole mess ended.
"'I am the god of hellfire,'" I murmured, seeing the way the flames seemed to sweep away from the reeling Orphan and drain into the hot golden dot swinging out and around for another pass. "'And I bring you... fire.'"
Fire, I'll take you to burn

Before she could attack, though, it brought itself back on balance and was able to swoop out of the way of her charge with far more agility than something its size should have been capable of. The explosion that its counterattack triggered was spectacular looking, of course, but apparently having her concentration broken like that didn't do Mai any real harm - I couldn't make her out as anything more than a spark of light at the distance I was at, of course, but she wasn't moving any differently after than she was before.
Fire, I'll take you to learn

The way it attacked was wierd - I'd talked about its 'shooting out its tentacles', and really that was exactly what it was doing. As far as I know there's no anatomical principle that would let a part of an animal's body... extend itself that way, but that didn't seem to slow the Orphan down any - its tentacles looked more like opaque versions of your classic sci-fi energy beam than any sort of actual physical object.
I'll see you burn!

The third time she tried to attack it was the proof that these monsters were far smarter than any of us would have liked - it was ready and waiting for her, and rather than directly striking back, it dove out of the way then, when she followed, actually snatched what looked like a tree out of the ground and threw it at her... surprisingly accurately, too, since it made a direct hit and made her lose control again.
You fought hard and you saved and learned,

but all of it's going to burn.

She was able to dive out of the way of its attempt to grab her while she was still blinded by the fireball, as well as keep - barely - ahead of its follow-up attacks, but it was obvious that it had the advantage, and, barring interference, was going to be able to hold onto it until, eventually, she dodged just a moment too slowly.
And your mind, your tiny mind,

you know you've really been so blind.

Duran is a crack shot, if you hadn't guessed so on your own, and he proved it that day - starting with the volley of Bronze Cartidges that staggered the monster and actually unbalanced it enough that one wingtip dipped low enough to scrape a long swath through the forest surrounding the Academy.
Now's your time burn your mind.

You're falling far too far behind.

I don't know whether it was just her taking advantage of an opportunity or an actual plan, but the Orphan's attemt to stop wheeling around the unexpected drag and claw its way back to a safer altitude were interrupted by what looked like an explosion of white bandages. Julia's attempt to bind the thing so it could be dealt with was aborted, though, when it caugh ahold of one of the strands and whipped her up into the air and around to try and slam her against the ground.
Oh no, oh no, oh no, you gonna burn!

The Child cut loose from her webbing at about the top of the arc and let momentum carry her up and away and free to land in the lawn under my window with a tremendous 'thud' that tore eight deep holes in the grass but didn't seem to do her any harm to speak of. In the distance, I could see the Orphan seem to suddenly flare like a small sun, or a spotlight aimed straight at your eyes.
Fire, to destroy all you've done.

What came next was another thing I'd needed explained - it basically waved its eight 'long' tentacles out around itself then made them... explode. The 'hands' at the end of them had looked noticably bloated from where I was standing, and all of that extra volume jet gave more surface area for the threadlike... needles, I guess... that it fired out at, apparently, nothing at all. In retrospect, I could see a bit of a heat shimmer out towards the ends of each of those secondary tentacles - it had been attacking Diana's spores, and no, I don't know how it detected them.
Fire, to end all you've become.

---

---

Yay, action muse!
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[drakensis]

> (has a sudden vision of a somewhat indistinct, male
> figure making like Yomiko Readman with a wheeled bag
> and brown trenchcoat, down to the store staf lining
> up to wave goodbye to their Very Important Customer)
I've been getting damn near that sort of reception at the local games/comic shop. They used the cunning sales ploy of giving me several books of vouchers for discounts back in December. They expire end of the month and it should take me the next year or so to finish reading and watching the various purchases. My staggering out of the shop, painfully heavy rucksack on my back is now a common sight and it pains me to think how much of my wages they have.
And, what with this thread plus the episode of Mai-Hime on the DVD in Newtype this month, I'm well and truly converted.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Rieverre]

---

And, what with this thread plus the episode of Mai-Hime on the DVD in Newtype this month, I'm well and truly converted.

---

I'd say 'our work here is done' then, but I'd be lying ^_^.

---

The next two days could only be described as ... hectic.
Oh, there were rewards, yes, but there was also a royal cock-up of a runabout.
For example, I'd found out that Kobayakawa's project ... well, my project that I'd set her and Tsujimoto on, to be precise ... had undergone a few changes because ...


"So, care to explain why there are two in the works, if not even one is ready yet?" I asked, eyeing the shapes critically.
About the only thing they had in common with a Transport Frame was the fact that two of those had served as parts donors.
Bigger, and not just when speaking of lenght and width but also bulk. It was also the result of not having enough resources on hand. And I didn't doubt for a second that the production process broke at least several international treaties and laws on the redevelopment of technology.
A lot of what was involved wasn't, strictly speaking, Earthen technology ... well, not from their Earth, but that was semantics at best.
Still, they were also pretty much impromptu work ... which was the reason I'd only wanted one to be built and eventual bugs to be worked out before anything more in that direction was done.
On second thought, I didn't even need to ask Kobayakawa about the 'why'.
Just the fact that one was purple and the other orange, with 'Unit 01' and 'Unit 00' written in white paint along their respective sides, told me enough.
'Well, now I know why so many people along the line wanted to strangle me at times,' I thought, before waving Miyuki's answer off and turning on my heel, intending to find the person responsible. 'She really does have my sense of humor.'


... the worst part of it was that I couldn't very well chew Fujino out because of it. Much.
Considering what she'd told me about the abilities of a HiME, this little project was about as close to an equalizer as she could get, short of trying for a GEM for herself. Which? So not an option.
Girl had been busy, since she also admitted to getting Tsujimoto to give her an ongoing crash course at Frame handling - not as simple as it sounds. Either of those.
By the time we'd gotten things straightened out again, it was late enough that I had to get going or else I'd have been.
Late, that is.

---

More later. I should know better than to set myself a deadline for anything. It never works.

-Griever
*now figuring out implications of latest ep*
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[Valles]

But instead, something I stumbled across on the web and promptly set as my desktop, even though it's the wrong shape.
i31.photobucket.com/album...4_1280.jpg
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Xenoproctologist]

---

But instead, something I stumbled across on the web and promptly set as my desktop, even though it's the wrong shape.
i31.photobucket.com/album...4_1280.jpg

---

Don't suppose you could point us in the direction of the full sized version...?

[Valles]

Here.

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Valles]

---

I'd say 'our work here is done' then, but I'd be lying ^_^.

---

It's always nice to be appreciated. Un!

---

---

"Boy, things sure aren't looking good for you, are they?"
I'll feel you burn!

Tokiha Mai dropped several feet before she could recover control through her surprise and look at the... boy... who'd seemingly popped out of thin air beside her, several hundred feet above the grounds of Fuuka Academy's campus. The distraction cost her badly, and she didn't really regain full conciousness until several moments later, lying on hard, rocky ground, in the dark. Far above, she could see the sky, and then a face leaned into view, peering down at her.
She'd never seen him before, but Yuuichi and Natsuki's descriptions had been clear enough, and the ache throughout her body and the gnawing worry at the back of her mind made it all too easy to go farther than she usually would have dreamed. "I wonder why?" she snarled, lunging up and wrapping one hand into his lapels.
He laughed and raised his hands. "Hey, hey! I had nothing to do with this! It belongs at the end of the dance, not the beginning." She glared at him for a moment, then blinked as his expression changed completely and his eyes became deadly serious. "But this is the time to commit yourself, Mai-hime. Are you ready for your role? Are you willing to risk that which is most precious to you?"
You've been living like a little girl,
in the middle of your little world.

'Ne, Oneechan,' Takumi had asked her once, when both of them were younger. 'What would you do, if you were a superhero?'
She had laughed. 'I'd beat up the bad guys! I'd save the world! I'd dump garbage in Yamashita-sensei's rose bushes!'
Yamashita Kaori hadn't actually been that horrible, at least to Mai, but that was only because of the measure of protection she won from the 'pitiful story' of her family. Everyone else in that homeroom who hadn't sucked up for all they were worth had paid the penalty and more than.
'I'd meet the Emperor! I'd walk on the moon! I'd...' she had paused, then grinned wickedly and launched herself over the couch's back towards her brother. 'Tickle an annoying little brother until he promised to do the dishes!'
And your mind, your tiny mind,
you know you've really been so blind.

'Don't worry about me, 'Neechan. With this body of mine, I might not be able to help holding you back... but I'd never forgive myself if that made you become less than you are. Even without all the rest of it, and with everything depending on you HiME, I'd take that risk in a heartbeat... to help you shine a little brighter. You've done so much for me, and never asked for anything. I can't do any less than as much as I can. If I'm at risk because of what you have to do... that's my choice, and I'd make it in a heartbeat.'
Watching his face as he said that, as she realized that her baby brother had changed for the better while she wasn't looking, realized she should be proud to call this man family... She'd never been happier - or hurt more.
Now 's your time burn your mind,
you're falling far too far behind.

"Hai."

---

---

Sometimes, you can feel really good about what you've just written. It makes all the rest worth it.

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[ordnance11]

I take it n-Tate left out this part of the story..for very good reasons. Of course, if it turns out to be a manga continuity..won't a lot of people be surprised.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Valles]

---

I take it n-Tate left out this part of the story..for very good reasons. Of course, if it turns out to be a manga continuity..won't a lot of people be surprised.

---

Hm? I don't follow your thinking - this last post was a jump out to close third person, and intended to show that, at this point, Takumi holds MIP status with Mai. She is, of course, aware of the possibility of that changing, but she's only known 'Tate' a little less than a week, at this point. There just hasn't been time.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[ordnance11]

Yes, Takumi holds MIP status for Mai right now...of course that's subject to change...I'm referring to the possibility that Takumi might be the container for Lord Glass-Ass himself.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Valles]

---

Yes, Takumi holds MIP status for Mai right now...of course that's subject to change...I'm referring to the possibility that Takumi might be the container for Lord Glass-Ass himself.

---

Hmmmmm.

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[WengFook]

oh no thats a plot twisty sounding "hmmmm"_______________________________
"We few, we happy few. We band of buggered"
_________________________________
Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.

[Valles]

Hm?
^_^

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Rieverre]

Staying Frost-y ^_^.

---

Sometimes, you can feel really good about what you've just written. It makes all the rest worth it.

---

I definitely agree with that. Good show.
I've always thought Mai's MIP went from Takumi, to Tate (once Takumi bit it), to Mikoto (once Tate bit it), and back to Tate (once he revived). It seemed to fit the feel I got from the series for her to still have someone important on the line, even as she lost the previous MIP.

Handwavium, ho!

---

Uneasiness. That's what it was. Took me a while to pin it down, to be honest, since I wasn't expecting that particular emotion.
After all, I'd bet any of those acquainted with Juliet Nao Zhang, in either of her personas, expected it from the girl ... no, young woman.
Once I took a metaphorical step back and looked again at the situation as it was at present, I couldn't really fault her.
I could probably fault myself for dropping all this on her, yes, but I'd gone into and past my angst and self pity phase way back when ...
... well, alright, maybe not gone past, exactly. More like dragged, kicking and screaming, out of it by Sylvie and Anri. Just another of the things I was still working on being able to pay her back for.
The last time we'd spoken face to face had ended up being a bit of an emotional crescendo on her part, and I knew well enough how meeting the other person after something like that can be ... awkward.
It was slowly edging towards evening, and the sky was lit up by both the glow of the lamps in the park and the strings of radiance winding their way across the soon to be starry expanse.
And yes, Earl did have a few peculiarities in its magnetic field that resulted in those, but most of them were minor and had come about as a result of ... well, the order or energies Otome used in battle against other Otome was along the lines of awe inspiring.
I'd actually checked out a few former battle sites, and there were still lingering gravitic anomalies there. It was a pity the data recorded directly in the wake of battle was so hard to get to.
As to how a technology that is, supposedly, based on Materializing photons - I was running with the solid hologram theory at the moment - was able to manage that? I figured the holos were used to direct and shape energy from quantum taps, and the data on those just gave me headaches.
Akagi would have laughed her ass off, I imagined, since from what I could recall Angel Cores did something similar. Or similar enough to pass for it ...
Argh!
Ahem.
Pardon. Tangent.
From what I could tell, Juliet and I showed up at roughly the same time, and ...
... well, looking around I could see why this would be a halfways decent meeting spot. What people, or rather couples, were already here were more interested in each other than they were in anybody else.
If I'd ever seen a reason to offer up a snide comment, this was it.
"If I didn't know better I'd take this as some sort of come on," I said, falling into step beside Juliet-ane-san in her customary street clothes.
No, I'd never asked why she and her gang considered striped shirts of that particular color something of an uniform, and why her usual outfit looked like a 'what if' of young Tom Sawyer. If Tom Sawyer had been in the habit of wearing crop tops, which I doubt. I suppose it was one of those 'you're better off not knowing' things.
Sexy suspenders, though.

Yes, I'm weird. Sue me.
"Mmm, so what if it is?" she smiled sweetly with the retort. Then I was forced to nearly double over, breath coming out in a wheeze.
"Damnit," I coughed, straightening with a wince. "That's some sharp elbows on you."
"You asked for it," she shrugged, unconcerned.
Alright, so maybe I did. Lightened the mood, though.
"More public than our previous meets," I said after a moment.
"Hey, I thought I could do with a change of pace," Juliet replied, then snickered. "Besides, what are the odds of someone from Garderobe being here?"
"Valid point," I conceded. And it was. On the other hand, "Don't jinx it."
This got me an odd look, to which I could only gesture helplessly in reply.
"Rrrrrright," she drawled, shaking her head.
"No second thoughts?"
"I haven't had any since I was sent here."
"Oh? If Artai were to, say, invade tomorrow, where would you stand?"
"Where would you? This is my life, not Wong's, or Artai's, or anybody else's," her eyes narrowed behind tinted glasses. "That wasn't just idle chatter, was it?"
"Sadly, no," I shook my head. "Would have been far easier that way."
"Hah!" the laugh was a short, sharp sound. "Is anything ever?"
"Well, not tomorrow, at any rate. Sources tell me they're gearing up for something, but it's still more a thing of gathering momentum. When they cut loose, though," I continued. "As likely as not, it'll be here. Things seem to be centered around this city, or maybe just Garderobe."
"Maaa ... how troublesome," Juliet groaned. "Your little brother's a conniving little piece of work, you know that?"
"For the last time, there in no relation," I retorted. Cripes, this was as annoying as being mistaken for Nagisa. And she knew it, the damn woman. I changed topics, rather than risk getting into an argument - she seemed to have way too much fun with those, just for the heck of it. "I ran into Blondie and a few of her friends today, actually."
"Oh?" didn't take her as much as a second to understand what I was talking about, and she gave me a level look. I nodded.
"Your call. Genuine, as far as I can tell, but still involved."
"Taking the easy way out?"
"Reminds me of someone," I replied. It wasn't really anything I could put a finger on, but she did.
"In a good way, or a bad way?"
Well, that was a question that went for the heart of the matter.
"A good person stuck in a bad situation," I said.
"Technically, I'd be meddling if I did anything," she sighed. I gave her a curious look. "Well, she's not my responsibility, really ..."
"Thus, the shouting at my place in the middle of the night," I shot back, mildly.
"Right, alright," she threw her hands up as she growled the words. "You've got me. I'll see what I can ..."
Whatever she'd been about to say was interrupted by a shriek of protest from somewhere within the treeline, freezing both of us in our tracks momentarily.
We looked at one-another.
"Damn," I sighed.
"Sounded ... familiar," she offered.
"Could be something."
"Could be nothing."
She didn't seem to believe that, and neither did I.
We moved pretty much at the same time, her vaulting the hedge on the side of the path without much effort and me using a bench to hop over it.

Jinx. Jinx. Jinx.

---

That was fun. I'm pretty much resigned to mangling Nao and pretty much everybody else, but I'm having fun writing this. Is that an excuse? Not really. Good enough for me, though.
Next? A walk in the park. *snickersnort* And some amusement ... at least, I think it is.
-Griever
*rant* who's stuck with dialup since he's in the Old Country for the rest of the week, and the company that was supposed to give the place an actually decent uplink seems to be lagging. Severely. Damnit, I'm pretty much resigned to having to wait until Saturday to DL anything that got subbed during this and most of the next week.*/rant*
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[ordnance11]

Could be worse...imagine meeting with Shizuru Viola and Shizuru Fujino on an almost daily basis.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[WengFook]

"Hello Shizuru and Shizuru."
and then a neat stereo effect as they reply
_______________________________
"We few, we happy few. We band of buggered"
_________________________________
Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.

[katreus]

Oh... you two are jinxing it so bad... =x (maybe this is your intent? ^^

[WengFook]

Lets see..... Hmmmmmmm _______________________________
"We few, we happy few. We band of buggered"
_________________________________
Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.