Re: Mini-Grand 5107 [Round 2: Brambletown]
09-18-2011, 04:06 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by BlastYoBoots.
"THAT'S ENOUGH, Sunburn! My men will take the robot into custody. I decide whether to trust a robot around here, not you."
[color=#JUSTICE]"I can hear it coming through the first floor already," Sunspot continued, citing his Suntopekan super-hearing. "We don't have time! Let it help us deal with the worm before everything collapses!"[/color]
"Our antigrav stabilizers should keep this building upright while we deal with it ourselves. It's got two thousand floors to go through, and the bottom ones are already eva-"
"Ma'am! We have a problem!"
A heavily armed lieutenant of some sort, dressed in consumer camo clothes spray-painted "FUCK THE BITCHES" in bright glowing red, addressed the de-facto General McAffle. "Reports say that Commander Anubis is approaching the building with a group of mining moles!"
"Shit. He's gonna aim for the stabilizers, the crafty bastard."
Below, a tank the size of a large house plowed through post-apocalyptic debris, claw after giant mole-like claw. Gunmetal blue, the ferocious AI-driven beast paved a smooth path to the apparently doomed McAffle Tower, roaring and grunting mechanically.
As it slowed to a stop in a position close to the tower's base, a convoy of vehicles arrived along the path it had created. At its center was an ambassador's vehicle, clearly repurposed, as its roof had been scaled rather ridiculously to seat a much larger being.
The vehicles slowed to a stop next to the growling mole, releasing several squads of anthropomorphic animal-bots of every description. They quickly formed opposing lines outside the rear door of the head vehicle, those with proper arms saluting their own de-facto general.
A human-looking chauffer – a playboy bunny bot, wearing a wicked rabbit mask to signify her allegiance to the machines – stepped out of the driver's seat and opened the door for Commander Anubis.
What slowly squeezed out of the door was a wicked marvel of re-engineering. Unlike most of his underlings, this robot stood upright, menacing with blades, barrels, and faintly glowing equipment wherever a retrofit could possibly be applied to his jet-black body.
Atop, luminous green eyes shone from the head of the god of death that was his namesake. Wicked steel teeth grinned forth as he addressed his army.
"Well, you have your orders. What do you say we skip the formalities and get this over with, shall we?"
As the troops dismissed themselves and set to work, a small robotic chimp with most of its fake skin torn off – Anubis's second-in-command, Montgomery – clambered out of the car and onto his shoulder. Anubis himself, in turn, strode off toward the gigantic mole-tank.
"I don't see why we need the tanks here; I was under the impression that this would be a while coming." Montgomery motioned toward the enormous worm-driller that had already chewed through the first floor, and was making short work of the second.
*Tsk tsk*, Anubis chided. "Those diggers aren't invulnerable, you know, and we have precious few of them. If they turn a large enough mass driver to it, why, they might even be able to stop it!"
"And do you suppose they possess such a device?"
"It's McAffle Tower, my dear Monty. I doubt there's anything they don't have. In fact, I've even heard rumors of a self-destruct nuke."
"What?! You don't think they'll-"
"No no, Monty, not if we capture McAffle alive. The arrogant meatsack isn't the type to blow herself up if she thinks she has the slightest chance of escaping. Thinks there's always a shot at winning as long as she's kicking. With her in mind, I wouldn't be surprised if the nuke were rigged to her vitals."
"Sir," a deep-voiced gorilla-bot interrupted. "Our lower-floor infiltrators are reporting losses at the hands of what appears to be a vampire with a sword."
"Hm, I didn't know the humans had any more of those. See, Monty? You can never be too careful with a McAffle."
Anubis laid a hand on the grumbling beast-tank. "That's why I brought these along. The thick skins on these moles can withstand anything below a mass driver. They can turn their weapons on these and get devoured from beneath, or disable the worm only for their building to collapse under its own unsupported weight."
"After all, I was the one to suggest bringing these tanks into daylight when this war began. Their mining lasers are much more suited for above-ground destruction when we have tunneling worms down below. With these, their anti-grav boosters are as good as gone."
"They never seemed to like light much, did they?" Monty noted the beast's frustrated groaning under the oppressive sun, clouded as it was by the debris of war.
"It physically pains them, yes. Cruel humans, using us for convenience and amusement-" he practically spat the last word, "-were jealous enough to impregnate us with their very flaws. Pleasure. Submission. Pain."
Anubis stared up at the enormous tower, his glowing eyes already envisioning its fall. "Fitting of humans, a structure such as this? Flagrantly disobeying the laws of nature as a point of pride, when all it would take is the removal of a few flimsy, artificial supports... and then it will be as if it had never existed at all. Don't you think so, Montgomery?"
"I think you should fire already."
"Right right, thank you. You're a blessing, keeping my theatrics from distracting me from our goal. Radio in the commands, Monty!"
Montgomery relayed the coordinate codes for the first shot to the mole over their internal links, and the giant tank began to rise on its hindquarters.
McAffle Tower was an awesome, horrific sore on the landscape, a nightmare of engineering to rival even the worst of the very machines it stood against. It was five staggering miles high, casting a deep shadow on the landscape beneath it that had to be offset with enormous spotlights along the tower itself; those spotlights had been moved and repurposed for nighttime security since the war began, casting darkness over the land once more. Its triangular circumference actually widened as the building rose from the ground, ringed every mile with three massive anti-gravity boosters at the sides to support yet larger layers of floors. All flavors of weaponry, long hidden by the paranoid McAffle during peacetime, now studded outer walls that had been heavily reinforced to begin with in order to withstand their own unfathomable weight. Fire rained down on the landscape where the robots dared to tread; Anubis's own convoy had come with a projected shield, its bubble having lead his expert squads safely to the building's vulnerable base.
"God damn him! GOD DAMN THAT BUCKET OF BOLTS!"
"Ma'am, the first tank is preparing to fire!"
"Tell everyone to brace themselves! Those things can only fire once every few minutes. Once the smoke clears, hit it with everything your men have got!"
"We can't penetrate th-"
"I SAID EVERYTHING!"
[color=#JUSTICE]"Ma'am!" Joanne's radio crackled to life again. "The robot's on the move, fast! It's heading for the front windows!"[/color]
High up on story 1,612, a metal cannonball plowed out of the face of McAffle tower. Sunspot, Nightowl, and Joanne glimpsed its descent out the window as it plunged at the ground like an angry, silver meteor. Several of the more rudimentary targeting computers on the tower's point-defense systems – no AIs were present in McAffle's systems – confused its trajectory as on course with the tower and bombarded it with shrapnel, to little effect. Twin cameras adorned the projectile's underside, guiding it as it manipulated its shape to adjust its course, and finally solidified into a solid, deadly downward spike of pure steel.
Anubis had been expecting the unexpected from Joanne McAffle, and the unexpected was exactly what he received. Mere moments ago, his head mole-tank was preparing a massive plasma laser from its mouth, charging brilliantly and aimed at the first booster on the structure's face. Five shots was all he needed; five shots, made from near the structure's base where McAffle's equipment couldn't deflect them, and all the anti-gravity measures on one side would be gone, sending the structure over like a falling tree. But in an instant, something had plunged through the machine's thick skin, mangling it utterly.
"I don't think that was a mass-driver, Anubis."
"More like a mass. Why didn't our flyers deflect it?"
"They'd been thinned out by her anti-air systems, I believe. We'll have reinforcement flyers again shortly; this shouldn't be a repeat occurrence."
"Make it so. I don't want the rest of our tanks falling victim to guided refrigerators."
Inside the mole, next to its nearly-intact fusion generator, a mass of metal was glowing and spreading brilliantly, fueled by its leaking electric output.
"100% MASS REATTA1NED."
METAL burst from the mole's wreckage, now bluish to match the alloys he had assimilated. Anubis and the others looked on in surprise and anger to see a fellow robot standing against them.
"1 AM METAL. AB0RT Y0UR S1EGE 0F TH1S STRUCTURE, AUT0MAT0NS, 0R FACE JUST1CE!"
"THAT'S ENOUGH, Sunburn! My men will take the robot into custody. I decide whether to trust a robot around here, not you."
[color=#JUSTICE]"I can hear it coming through the first floor already," Sunspot continued, citing his Suntopekan super-hearing. "We don't have time! Let it help us deal with the worm before everything collapses!"[/color]
"Our antigrav stabilizers should keep this building upright while we deal with it ourselves. It's got two thousand floors to go through, and the bottom ones are already eva-"
"Ma'am! We have a problem!"
A heavily armed lieutenant of some sort, dressed in consumer camo clothes spray-painted "FUCK THE BITCHES" in bright glowing red, addressed the de-facto General McAffle. "Reports say that Commander Anubis is approaching the building with a group of mining moles!"
"Shit. He's gonna aim for the stabilizers, the crafty bastard."
Below, a tank the size of a large house plowed through post-apocalyptic debris, claw after giant mole-like claw. Gunmetal blue, the ferocious AI-driven beast paved a smooth path to the apparently doomed McAffle Tower, roaring and grunting mechanically.
As it slowed to a stop in a position close to the tower's base, a convoy of vehicles arrived along the path it had created. At its center was an ambassador's vehicle, clearly repurposed, as its roof had been scaled rather ridiculously to seat a much larger being.
The vehicles slowed to a stop next to the growling mole, releasing several squads of anthropomorphic animal-bots of every description. They quickly formed opposing lines outside the rear door of the head vehicle, those with proper arms saluting their own de-facto general.
A human-looking chauffer – a playboy bunny bot, wearing a wicked rabbit mask to signify her allegiance to the machines – stepped out of the driver's seat and opened the door for Commander Anubis.
What slowly squeezed out of the door was a wicked marvel of re-engineering. Unlike most of his underlings, this robot stood upright, menacing with blades, barrels, and faintly glowing equipment wherever a retrofit could possibly be applied to his jet-black body.
Atop, luminous green eyes shone from the head of the god of death that was his namesake. Wicked steel teeth grinned forth as he addressed his army.
"Well, you have your orders. What do you say we skip the formalities and get this over with, shall we?"
As the troops dismissed themselves and set to work, a small robotic chimp with most of its fake skin torn off – Anubis's second-in-command, Montgomery – clambered out of the car and onto his shoulder. Anubis himself, in turn, strode off toward the gigantic mole-tank.
"I don't see why we need the tanks here; I was under the impression that this would be a while coming." Montgomery motioned toward the enormous worm-driller that had already chewed through the first floor, and was making short work of the second.
*Tsk tsk*, Anubis chided. "Those diggers aren't invulnerable, you know, and we have precious few of them. If they turn a large enough mass driver to it, why, they might even be able to stop it!"
"And do you suppose they possess such a device?"
"It's McAffle Tower, my dear Monty. I doubt there's anything they don't have. In fact, I've even heard rumors of a self-destruct nuke."
"What?! You don't think they'll-"
"No no, Monty, not if we capture McAffle alive. The arrogant meatsack isn't the type to blow herself up if she thinks she has the slightest chance of escaping. Thinks there's always a shot at winning as long as she's kicking. With her in mind, I wouldn't be surprised if the nuke were rigged to her vitals."
"Sir," a deep-voiced gorilla-bot interrupted. "Our lower-floor infiltrators are reporting losses at the hands of what appears to be a vampire with a sword."
"Hm, I didn't know the humans had any more of those. See, Monty? You can never be too careful with a McAffle."
Anubis laid a hand on the grumbling beast-tank. "That's why I brought these along. The thick skins on these moles can withstand anything below a mass driver. They can turn their weapons on these and get devoured from beneath, or disable the worm only for their building to collapse under its own unsupported weight."
"After all, I was the one to suggest bringing these tanks into daylight when this war began. Their mining lasers are much more suited for above-ground destruction when we have tunneling worms down below. With these, their anti-grav boosters are as good as gone."
"They never seemed to like light much, did they?" Monty noted the beast's frustrated groaning under the oppressive sun, clouded as it was by the debris of war.
"It physically pains them, yes. Cruel humans, using us for convenience and amusement-" he practically spat the last word, "-were jealous enough to impregnate us with their very flaws. Pleasure. Submission. Pain."
Anubis stared up at the enormous tower, his glowing eyes already envisioning its fall. "Fitting of humans, a structure such as this? Flagrantly disobeying the laws of nature as a point of pride, when all it would take is the removal of a few flimsy, artificial supports... and then it will be as if it had never existed at all. Don't you think so, Montgomery?"
"I think you should fire already."
"Right right, thank you. You're a blessing, keeping my theatrics from distracting me from our goal. Radio in the commands, Monty!"
Montgomery relayed the coordinate codes for the first shot to the mole over their internal links, and the giant tank began to rise on its hindquarters.
McAffle Tower was an awesome, horrific sore on the landscape, a nightmare of engineering to rival even the worst of the very machines it stood against. It was five staggering miles high, casting a deep shadow on the landscape beneath it that had to be offset with enormous spotlights along the tower itself; those spotlights had been moved and repurposed for nighttime security since the war began, casting darkness over the land once more. Its triangular circumference actually widened as the building rose from the ground, ringed every mile with three massive anti-gravity boosters at the sides to support yet larger layers of floors. All flavors of weaponry, long hidden by the paranoid McAffle during peacetime, now studded outer walls that had been heavily reinforced to begin with in order to withstand their own unfathomable weight. Fire rained down on the landscape where the robots dared to tread; Anubis's own convoy had come with a projected shield, its bubble having lead his expert squads safely to the building's vulnerable base.
"God damn him! GOD DAMN THAT BUCKET OF BOLTS!"
"Ma'am, the first tank is preparing to fire!"
"Tell everyone to brace themselves! Those things can only fire once every few minutes. Once the smoke clears, hit it with everything your men have got!"
"We can't penetrate th-"
"I SAID EVERYTHING!"
[color=#JUSTICE]"Ma'am!" Joanne's radio crackled to life again. "The robot's on the move, fast! It's heading for the front windows!"[/color]
High up on story 1,612, a metal cannonball plowed out of the face of McAffle tower. Sunspot, Nightowl, and Joanne glimpsed its descent out the window as it plunged at the ground like an angry, silver meteor. Several of the more rudimentary targeting computers on the tower's point-defense systems – no AIs were present in McAffle's systems – confused its trajectory as on course with the tower and bombarded it with shrapnel, to little effect. Twin cameras adorned the projectile's underside, guiding it as it manipulated its shape to adjust its course, and finally solidified into a solid, deadly downward spike of pure steel.
Anubis had been expecting the unexpected from Joanne McAffle, and the unexpected was exactly what he received. Mere moments ago, his head mole-tank was preparing a massive plasma laser from its mouth, charging brilliantly and aimed at the first booster on the structure's face. Five shots was all he needed; five shots, made from near the structure's base where McAffle's equipment couldn't deflect them, and all the anti-gravity measures on one side would be gone, sending the structure over like a falling tree. But in an instant, something had plunged through the machine's thick skin, mangling it utterly.
"I don't think that was a mass-driver, Anubis."
"More like a mass. Why didn't our flyers deflect it?"
"They'd been thinned out by her anti-air systems, I believe. We'll have reinforcement flyers again shortly; this shouldn't be a repeat occurrence."
"Make it so. I don't want the rest of our tanks falling victim to guided refrigerators."
Inside the mole, next to its nearly-intact fusion generator, a mass of metal was glowing and spreading brilliantly, fueled by its leaking electric output.
"100% MASS REATTA1NED."
METAL burst from the mole's wreckage, now bluish to match the alloys he had assimilated. Anubis and the others looked on in surprise and anger to see a fellow robot standing against them.
"1 AM METAL. AB0RT Y0UR S1EGE 0F TH1S STRUCTURE, AUT0MAT0NS, 0R FACE JUST1CE!"