I'm stuck at home because someone decided to use the road as a mud bog. So, you guys benefit from my misfortune today.
Another 1000 words.
As a note, all previous mentions of the 'Specials' have been replaced with 'The Irregulars' due to the fact that I was misremembering the title
I wanted to use for the group. (I had been remembering the full title, not the nickname.) I wonder if I'm a little too wordy here, telling more than I
should have other people say later. But I find myself crawling around in our heroine's head as she crawls around in the dark.
With a sudden burst of speed that belayed his size, the man reduced the distance between himself and his sister to essentially nothing and attempted to hands
upon her in order to send her back down to the ground. His expression was one of silent approval when his student wasn't where he initially aimed for and
he shifted his stance in preparation for the counterattack that he knew was coming.
Once again, in the present, the woman was standing before a door that had a rather interesting motto inscribed above it. Her Latin was virtually nonexistent,
her Tuscan was naturally even worse. She was fairly certain that she knew where the phrase "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate." came from,
though. On the face of the door itself was the sign of the Order of Black Knights, the central spike through the middle split by the split in the door.
On the keypad next to the door, the woman inserted not one but two keys on opposing of the pad while keying in a code to the pad. One key appeared to be a
stylized, golden sword with a broken end from which projected an antiquated USB port. The other key seemed evocative of a wing, its own port concealed within
the 'feathers' of the wing.
The keypad let out a quiet chime after several moments, as the number sequence that the woman entered was quite extensive, and the symbol of the Black Knights
parted down the middle. There was a burst of old, stale air from within the room beyond, and an echo in the distance of the mechanism that opened the doors.
The doors began to close behind her as she pulled the two keys free from their interface slots, forcing her to hasten her passage into the darkness beyond.
As the doors closed behind her, a figure in stark contrast melted out of the gloom, wrapped entirely in gray and white with a cloak cast around it's
shoulders. A featureless mirror mask regarded the black door and gray seal in a void of passion for a moment before shrugging one shoulder, a hand coming up to
the keypad.
On the cloak the figure wore was a red variation of the Black Knights' symbol.
The woman in black stole across a catwalk overlooking what she presumed, when illuminated, was a hangar complex of some sort. There were probably concealed
exits to the surface somewhere in the infrastructure of Chicago itself. In her mind, she could hear her brother going over the details of the facility,
"According to our ancestor's notes, Empress Nunnally had never particularly liked the climate of Ares," the Britannian capital city on the East
Coast, once the Prime Minister's seat of power it had ascended to greater importance after the destruction of Pendragon, closer to the central empire's
physical center. "As both she and Zero aged, they moved to Chicago's Winter Palace so they could, in her words 'Watch the seasons change
properly.'"
"You make it sound like they were a couple. Didn't Zero kill her brother?"
"People are complicated," was her brother's reply to the question, "You honestly don't think that Emperor William was a virgin birth, do
you?"
Her voice in her memory stumbled, "Well.. I..."
"We don't have to have The Talk again, do we?" There was a bark of laughter after that.
The lack of proper lighting was a problem. Passive light amplification wasn't really enough to work in the pervasive gloom within the base. All the lights
were out thanks to primary power being down. There were no heat sources in the facility besides her own for the same reason. Active IR imaging might set off a
trap, for Zero was known to be paranoid for many very valid reasons.
She'd finally resorted to using a technology that hadn't been around in any applicable form in Zero's time to navigate. Echolocation wasn't the
thing of science fiction in his time, but the use of it in anything smaller than a Knightmare Frame had been the stuff of fantasy. The optics set into her mask
provided a crude outline of the world in monochrome black and green as she moved, the sound of her own footfalls providing the sound required to define the
world around her.
The hangar bay beyond the catwalk was completely empty.
Having no map to go on and no real idea of what exactly she was looking for, she decided to explore the facility in a methodical fashion. If the Shinkiro, or
anything else, wasn't in the hangar, logically it shouldn't be too far away. She found a stairway down after a little extra searching and made her way
to the floor of the hangar, eventually finding a door next to what she presumed to be a hatch into deeper parts of the facility for heavy equipment, and went
through.
There was a strange feeling, somewhere deep in her guts, something she really couldn't quite fathom. She'd felt it rarely in her life, on occasions
when she visited the family cemetery in the southeast. Her ancestors had, ostensibly, been land owning nobles with a certain fondness for citrus cultivation on
their land. There was the legendary Lord 'Orange' Gottwald, of course, who had stood out in the family for his military service and the lengths medical
science had gone to to keep him alive. He was also the last actual Gottwald to bear the Gottwald name, as all his kin had perished during the War of Two Kings
and he, himself, was unable to sire children due to how little of his original body remained.
FLEYJA-generated radiation had ensured a similar fate for his wife.
This was not to say that one of the most implacable men to serve the Britannian Crown since Bedwyr The One-Handed and his Japanese bride had not passed their
knowledge, and names, on before their passing.
Visiting his crypt on the anniversary of the Devil King's defeat, the year before, had a strange effect on her. It had been as if she could feel the
presence of the old soldier's cybernetic husk within the tomb. She had been able to tell that he was, in fact, buried much deeper than the sarcophagus
suggested.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead
Another 1000 words.
As a note, all previous mentions of the 'Specials' have been replaced with 'The Irregulars' due to the fact that I was misremembering the title
I wanted to use for the group. (I had been remembering the full title, not the nickname.) I wonder if I'm a little too wordy here, telling more than I
should have other people say later. But I find myself crawling around in our heroine's head as she crawls around in the dark.
With a sudden burst of speed that belayed his size, the man reduced the distance between himself and his sister to essentially nothing and attempted to hands
upon her in order to send her back down to the ground. His expression was one of silent approval when his student wasn't where he initially aimed for and
he shifted his stance in preparation for the counterattack that he knew was coming.
Once again, in the present, the woman was standing before a door that had a rather interesting motto inscribed above it. Her Latin was virtually nonexistent,
her Tuscan was naturally even worse. She was fairly certain that she knew where the phrase "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate." came from,
though. On the face of the door itself was the sign of the Order of Black Knights, the central spike through the middle split by the split in the door.
On the keypad next to the door, the woman inserted not one but two keys on opposing of the pad while keying in a code to the pad. One key appeared to be a
stylized, golden sword with a broken end from which projected an antiquated USB port. The other key seemed evocative of a wing, its own port concealed within
the 'feathers' of the wing.
The keypad let out a quiet chime after several moments, as the number sequence that the woman entered was quite extensive, and the symbol of the Black Knights
parted down the middle. There was a burst of old, stale air from within the room beyond, and an echo in the distance of the mechanism that opened the doors.
The doors began to close behind her as she pulled the two keys free from their interface slots, forcing her to hasten her passage into the darkness beyond.
As the doors closed behind her, a figure in stark contrast melted out of the gloom, wrapped entirely in gray and white with a cloak cast around it's
shoulders. A featureless mirror mask regarded the black door and gray seal in a void of passion for a moment before shrugging one shoulder, a hand coming up to
the keypad.
On the cloak the figure wore was a red variation of the Black Knights' symbol.
The woman in black stole across a catwalk overlooking what she presumed, when illuminated, was a hangar complex of some sort. There were probably concealed
exits to the surface somewhere in the infrastructure of Chicago itself. In her mind, she could hear her brother going over the details of the facility,
"According to our ancestor's notes, Empress Nunnally had never particularly liked the climate of Ares," the Britannian capital city on the East
Coast, once the Prime Minister's seat of power it had ascended to greater importance after the destruction of Pendragon, closer to the central empire's
physical center. "As both she and Zero aged, they moved to Chicago's Winter Palace so they could, in her words 'Watch the seasons change
properly.'"
"You make it sound like they were a couple. Didn't Zero kill her brother?"
"People are complicated," was her brother's reply to the question, "You honestly don't think that Emperor William was a virgin birth, do
you?"
Her voice in her memory stumbled, "Well.. I..."
"We don't have to have The Talk again, do we?" There was a bark of laughter after that.
The lack of proper lighting was a problem. Passive light amplification wasn't really enough to work in the pervasive gloom within the base. All the lights
were out thanks to primary power being down. There were no heat sources in the facility besides her own for the same reason. Active IR imaging might set off a
trap, for Zero was known to be paranoid for many very valid reasons.
She'd finally resorted to using a technology that hadn't been around in any applicable form in Zero's time to navigate. Echolocation wasn't the
thing of science fiction in his time, but the use of it in anything smaller than a Knightmare Frame had been the stuff of fantasy. The optics set into her mask
provided a crude outline of the world in monochrome black and green as she moved, the sound of her own footfalls providing the sound required to define the
world around her.
The hangar bay beyond the catwalk was completely empty.
Having no map to go on and no real idea of what exactly she was looking for, she decided to explore the facility in a methodical fashion. If the Shinkiro, or
anything else, wasn't in the hangar, logically it shouldn't be too far away. She found a stairway down after a little extra searching and made her way
to the floor of the hangar, eventually finding a door next to what she presumed to be a hatch into deeper parts of the facility for heavy equipment, and went
through.
There was a strange feeling, somewhere deep in her guts, something she really couldn't quite fathom. She'd felt it rarely in her life, on occasions
when she visited the family cemetery in the southeast. Her ancestors had, ostensibly, been land owning nobles with a certain fondness for citrus cultivation on
their land. There was the legendary Lord 'Orange' Gottwald, of course, who had stood out in the family for his military service and the lengths medical
science had gone to to keep him alive. He was also the last actual Gottwald to bear the Gottwald name, as all his kin had perished during the War of Two Kings
and he, himself, was unable to sire children due to how little of his original body remained.
FLEYJA-generated radiation had ensured a similar fate for his wife.
This was not to say that one of the most implacable men to serve the Britannian Crown since Bedwyr The One-Handed and his Japanese bride had not passed their
knowledge, and names, on before their passing.
Visiting his crypt on the anniversary of the Devil King's defeat, the year before, had a strange effect on her. It had been as if she could feel the
presence of the old soldier's cybernetic husk within the tomb. She had been able to tell that he was, in fact, buried much deeper than the sarcophagus
suggested.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead