Chojin Patriarch
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Which is why the 80's fear of a Japanese-led corporate future, so central a foundation of things like Cyberpunk, never came to pass: Their economic bubble popped. Though I have no doubt the local 'non-indigenous sophonts' took full advantage of the recession and falling prices.8th June 2000
22:57 GMT +9
"Kill them! Kill the interlopers!"
The Japanese economy has had its ups and downs, and right now it's in a major down. I'm not exactly certain why it happened, but the summary I read in The Times made it sound like the Wall Street Crash of 1929: people put too much money in a class of investment that lacked the underlying strength to sustain it. But the collapse in demand and the desire of those banks which had repossessed property to sell them for desperately needed cash meant that a lot of property became available and a fraction of their original value.
Thought so. No doubt in the guise of Yakuza, who do trade in legal real estate deals.
Ah, and there they are. With quite illegal guns, you'll note, as Japan has quite severe gun control laws.They also had a line in buying slave labourers from North Korea and dosing them with watered down vampire venom to keep them compliant, which is-
Fire from yakuza security guards hits my shield and loses all of its kinetic energy as I advance on their position.
So, did she go for the figure-skating outfit, the gothic lolita outfit or something practical? A Rider suit, perhaps?-how they've been able to make a huge profit on manual labour intensive work. They don't need to pay them and they won't ever complain. I think they paid for them in more watered down vampire venom, but we haven't really investigated that end of the trade.
Behind me, Peisinoe sings a hypnotic song to keep the workers entranced. It costs them what little sense of self-preservation they have left, but it's the only reason why they haven't tried swarming us when their boss ordered them to.
Heh. Not really necessary to go in for melee, but with all the lead flying around, someone might get hurt...The thugs before me duck back to reload and I take the opportunity to storm forward, truncheon construct at the ready. One spots me and drops his gun in favour of drawing a knife, but my superior reach makes it child's play to smack his hand and force him to drop it. He backs off, but my second strike hits him in the diaphragm and adds electrocution to blunt force trauma.
Ah, the tanking job. Not easy, often maligned, but always needed.The second has been reloading while backing away and aims his gun at my vision slit. Since I'm wearing construct armour rather than metal armour the 'slit' isn't actually either a hole or a weak point, but I'll give him marks for situational awareness. slam the truncheon into the head of the one on the ground and then leap at the one shooting me. I don't try to evade; bullets missing me might hit someone else. He switches to one handed firing as I cross the intervening space, trying to open the door behind him without looking around.
Heh. Nice little mythic shout-out there. Leaning on their mythological similarities, I see.It does work, but does allow me to concuss him with a body slam.
"Useless ingrates. Shuten, get down there and deal with this!"
...Bit of an awkward name there. Though I can see the mythological synchronicity.I tap my communicator. "Peisinoe, I've dealt with the last of the guards. Start bringing the prisoners up. The police should be here in a few minutes."
"You're supposed to call me 'Nure' when we're playing at being superheroes."
Might have to get Percival to check the language sub-routines, then. Surely you can run the Ring through a stack of multi-lingual dictionaries, failing that."None of us speak Japanese." Hm. I put construct restrains around the guards and open the door, striding out of the warehouse and onto the dock. Might as well carry-.
Dodge!
...That would be Shuten, then.I throw myself towards a nearby mooring as the concrete around me explodes! I land on my face, scrambling back onto my feet and trying to see through the resulting concrete dust. There's a… Large shape, and… I need to keep its attention to stop it from going for Peisinoe and her charges.
...Goddammit, Zoat. You really did give us a muscle-girl Oni. ...And damn if that description doesn't sound like Princess, from 'Kill Six Billion Demons'. Damn good taste, sir!An energy pulse hits its centre of mass, to no apparent effect as it strides out of the dust. A… Woman? Seven feet tall and made of solid muscle. And then her image inducer glitches out and I see an… Oni-like figure, but with red skin, a crest of five separate horns and… Eyes scattered apparently at random across her head, torso, arms and legs almost at random. She? The hologram blinks back in, showing a body that the greatest Viking-descended female bodybuilder in the world would envy. The actual body only wore a pair of tight denim shorts, any breasts that she might have merged into the oversized pectorals. The illusion wears a vest and denim trousers, as well as metal-studded leather bracers and quite a lot of piercings.
And maybe some soap, since she seems the sort to have a potty mouth..."Green Knight!" She points at me, grinning. "I will eat your brain!"
Hose.
Man, she telegraphed that punch so much, she'd have been better off mailing it.I stick a green pipe into the ocean waters behind me, taking in as much as I can-.
She leaps at me, mouth open and grinning and right fist pulled back. I dart into the air and then expel the water at pressure, slashing the stream across her body!
Hey, if you have what looks like an obvious weakpoint all over you, of course someone's gonna try to poke it.She grimaces slightly as she lands, crushing the peer under her feat before jumping back onto the dock.
"My eyes are just as tough as the rest of me, foreigner. Which is a lot tougher than you!"
...Oh, hell. She's casting 'Summon Bigger Fish', isn't she?"Tough? Maybe, but can you fly?"
She puts her hands on her hips, and-.
Whoops, that's not good. Don't panic, Emerald Knight!Fzzzzap!
The hit knocks me into the water, down to the bottom of the bay and then deeper into the silt! My construct armour's cracked and leaking water, and I-.
...Well, at least she pulled you out of the water. So not drowning now."BLOOBBLOBLOBBB!"
A hand grabs me and throws me, and I'm back in the air and flying into-.
And this is why you have armour under the armour.OOF!
The side of a warehouse hard enough to dent the metal. Armour!
Honestly, having a Blue Ring show up would be a bonus to your combat capabilities..."We're a space-age species, Knight!" Shuten pulls herself out onto the dock, still grinning as her image inducer glitches in and out. "You think we having put anything in orbit?"
"I had hoped."
Time for the Knight to cast 'Summon Even Bigger Fish'."No such luck! But I've got an offer for you! Stay on the ground and I won't use it! They hardly ever let me have a good fight! And get your sword out!"
I pull myself out of the wall and drop to the ground, marking the location of the satellite weapon.
...Don't tell me he actually looked up the translation of 'It's Clobbering Time!' Because that is pretty damn close. ("It's time to destroy!" according to Google Translate.)And as Shuten advances I tap my communicator twice.
"Hakai no jikanda!"
I half expect someone to ask later 'So, which of you is Number One?' on the assumption they're numbered like Sentai.Our sub-orbital support falls from the heavens and slams into her, Chauf having left behind his plasma cannon because he didn't want to 'besmirch the name of Ben Grimm'. Which probably has something to do with why he's wearing a blue jumpsuit with a number 3 on it. The two of them roll along the dockside, wrestling for supremacy.
"Peisinoe, you might want to take the back door?
At least all human eyes will be on the big show they're putting on out front."Yes, I worked that out for myself."
I generate a palisade shield and a pair of rocket boosters and set off for space, a brilliant trail of superheated exhaust washing over the struggling pugilists as I head towards the orbital weap-.
And why do I get the feeling that Emerald Knight will hit Enlightenment sooner or later through sheer bloody-minded determination... Unlikely as it is that he'd ever need it.It hits my shield and as it maintains the beam I'm painfully aware of what something like that could do if it was actually aimed at a city. I can't dodge it. I've got to tank the whole thing and hope that it melts or empties its capacitors before my construct finally breaks down.
My shield will not break down. It will endure. I will endure.
And I hope that wreckage is heading out to a splashdown far out at sea, or someone is going to have a bad day.My shield does break as I leave the atmosphere, the… Particle beam? Trying to burn through my armour next. I can feel it giving, melting, cracking and failing but too bad for them because I can see the satellite! Energy pulse!
The shot slams into the gun, punching clean through and shutting down the beam. It also sends the satellite into a spin, giving me a clean shot at the power plant on the opposite side. The whole assemblage explodes in a viscerally satisfying way and I take a moment to appreciate it before heading back to the surface.
No wasting time getting down to business for the Mighty Three, I see. ...Heroic Team Xeno-Rangers? They really do need a couple more hands for a good team, though the Japanese might find it odd that Green is their leader. Let's hope they never need a giant mecha, though. I bet the media will have a field day with all this, though, since it's a little hard to cover up orbital laser strikes on the shoreline of what I assume is a coastal town.