Cutting Room Floor 2023 (part 2)

 Cancelled Plot: The Shadow of Evil

• This was a secondary plot to be run alongside and complementary to One World, One Ocean. It would have served as a final wrapup for Ultraman Trigger's story and been an alternative end for Cleve Sharpe as a villain.
• The idea was, instead of Rahab, the merfolk would have worshipped Ghatanothoa, the final boss monster and true villain of Ultraman Tiga. Ghatanothoa was the insane spawn of Cthulhu and the dark god that the Giants of Darkness, with Trigger's unwitting help, reawakened to destroy the original Ultra civilization of Agama and claim dominion. They were foiled by Tiga, Trigger's father, who destroyed Ghatanothoa's physical form at the cost of his own life, but a Shadow, the disembodied intelligence of the monster, remained in the spot where he was killed - the oceans off the coast of Whalestrand.
• As One World, One Ocean progressed, signs that all was not well would make themselves apparent. Giant monsters would rise out of the ocean and into the city, neccesitating the Kobbers pull out their big guns to drive them away or kill them. Dark visions would afflict many of the populace - Valério and Trigger most of all. The merfolk would, in fact, be praying to Ghatanothoa - either the captive merfolk or the outsider pod would be responsible.
• It would also transpire that the pearl of Sharpe's collection was an artefact he'd ignoranrly dubbed the Eternity Core. It was, in fact, Ghatanothoa's heart, sundered from his body when Tiga sacrificed himself to destroy the evil god. Through the Eternity Core, Ghatanothoa would influence many monsters and villains through the Whalestrand season.
• By the climax of the story, Sharpe would attempt to escape by boat, taking the Eternity Core with him. Passing over the Shadow as he sailed, Sharpe's body would be hijacked by the Eternity Core, with the Shadow taking control of this new form. This humanoid form of Ghatanothoa, dubbed Megalothoa, would turn its insane wrath upon Whalestrand, seeking to restart its dark conquest of Earth, but would be destroyed for good by Ultraman Trigger and the Kobbers.
• In truth, the more I thought about this, the less enthused I was for it. In my mind, Trigger's story was done. He'd already faced his demons several times in the Agama years and there wasn't really any more I could drag out from him. Having him face the original monster that bested him and killed his father might have been an interesting angle to attack his character, recalling Agony's words about how futile the Ultranian species' battle against evil seemed to be on the surface. But I didn't really fancy going through what I felt was the same motions over and over from those years. Trigger had been through enough trauma, in my mind. It was time to let the boy rest and enjoy his hard-won peace.

Cancelled Storyline: The Other Vent

• This one's... weird. It came about shortly after I decided to have Sharpe send an assassn after Vent. I'd been musing on Vilfred's attraction to Vent at the time, because while I was fully aware that it could only end badly, I didn't really... want it to end badly, per se? The way Aqualand plot was shaping up at the time, I felt that the inevitable conclusion was that poor Vilf would be out of a job due to Sharpe firing him - which technically did happen, if you count a Stand punch to the jaw as a firing notice. So I wanted to give the poor guy some form of happy ending.
• The general idea was that Vent would end up having his own Easter, of sorts. But while Easter's development was due to convoluted multiverse stuff I still don't understand, Vent's was... a different matter. The plan was, following the assassination attempt, Vent would begin constructing a backup body in case something like that happened again. While he's normally against making backups of himself, as he sees it as making light of the experience of living, he would soon realize that, on a practical level, it would be a neccesary evil.
• Unfortunately, something would happen to the backup body. That was all I had down in my mind - something would happen. Either it would be stolen, or something would go wrong when Vent tried to download himself into it. The end result was that the body would go walkabout in some fashion. The Kobbers would have to track it down and recover it. Beyond these steps, I didn't really have any idea for what would come in the middle, although thinking about it now some ideas begin to take shape.
• Whatever the intervening steps, the end result was the creation of a 'second' Vent, seperate from the original. Bearing some of Vent's memories, but having a personality closer to the canon Mega Man ZX version of the character. He would use the MEGA system from that game as well, and would eventually hook up with Vilfred as a sort of apology for the original Vent putting him through all the trouble of facing up against Sharpe.
• This new Vent would have also needed a new name to differentiate himself. I was thinking either 'Thomas', meaning 'twin', or Valentine. Because Easter.
  
  ...actually, 'Valentine Twain Cosine' does sound like a JoJo name.
• If you noticed that this looks like me trying to have my cake and eat it, then congratulations, you've figured out why I dropped this! I ruminated on this idea for a month, including up to and after Vent's actual assassination and the battle with Tomas 'Smoke' Vrbada. But at that point I was starting to get turned off by the whole 'Vilfred's hot for Vent' thing, which I suspected was starting to raise eybrows. and I knew that me trying to pull this off would definitely raise some eyebrows. So I quietly shelved the idea and never made any hints or steps towards it.
• On a side note, I considered Kamen Rider Shinobi instead of Smoke as Vent's assassin. But then Mortal Kombat 1 was announced, and... well, there it is!

Cancelled Plot: Tall Tales

• This one actually came about during the second Agama season. I hung onto it for the entire year to see how I felt when the Whalestrand season came around, but decided to drop it in the end as I'd completely lost interest and it didn't really seem fitting for the setting.
• The plot would revolve around characters who were descendants of figures from American folklore and tall tales, banding together as a sort of motely crew united by their shared heritage. The crew would consist of:
• Captain Jennifer Stormalong. A talented sailor and able to communicate with sea life. She was the leader of the group and spoke in a sterotypical Boston patois.
• Peter Bunyan. A quiet and mild-mannered young man, only seven or eight feet tall compared to his giant of an ancestor. Very strong and good with an axe.
• Jolyne Magarac. Able to turn her skin into solid iron and heat up her body. Loud and scrappy.
• Ronnie Appleseed. Lover of nature, but not in a spaced-out granola guy way. Could control plants. Was probably in a relationship with Peter.
• 'Eagle-Eye' William The direct descendant of Pecos Bill and Slue-Foot Sue. Owned a magic lasso which could tame anything. The only sane member of the group.
• The entire conceit of their story was Jennifer assembling her crew in a bid to try and find adventures comparable to their ancestors and write their name in the history books. But in the modern world, even with the kind of strange things that Kobbers face, there just simply isn't enough untamed wilderness and fearsome critters for the kind of impossible feats that Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill etc. But Jennifer would keep dragging her crew into more and more dangerous adventures in a bid to make a name for herself.
• Eventually, the other members of the crew would turn on Jennifer and tell her to stop living in the past and that the world has no more room for big folkloric heroes like themselves. Crushed and full of injured pride, Jennifer would steal Eagle-Eye's lasso and try to prove them wrong by fighting a dangerous monster on her own, eventually becoming the villain through her bllody-minded determination to become a legend. 

Cancelled Plot: The Ocean Hunter

•  I don't want to give too much away about this one. Basically, if you ever heard me talk about that old light gun game The Ocean Hunter, the general premise was similar to that. The Kobbers would help the main characters of that game protect Whalestrand from the Six Great Monsters attacking ships and shore:
• Kraken, a giant octopus
• Leviathan, a megalodon
• Charybdis, a giant anglerfish
• Karkinos, a giant and highly agressive crab,
• Ahuizotl, an elamosaurus
• Midgardsorm, a huge worm. This thing's boss battle would involve it swallowing the Kobbers, nd you'd have to journey through its body cavity and fight its sentient heart.
• There would be character development between the lead characters, of course. Chris, the Player 2 character, would grow resentful of Torel, the Player 1 character, for hogging all the spotlight and treating ocean hunting like a game. Perhaps Chris would have been the one becoming Kamen Rider Poseidon...
• Mini bosses from the game would have made appearances, too. Naga, Vlitra and Kaliyah the oarfish would have shown up, as would the shark triplets Kerberos, the giant jellyfish Medusa and Umi-Bozu the octopus.
• I don't wanna spoil too much, but... I didn't pick the name Rahab out of a hat. You'll just have to sit and wait for 2024 to find out more on that account.
  

Cutting Room Floor: One World, One Ocean (2023)

The following is a list of stuff that got cut from my 2023 plot. To spare myself from doing huge reams of text, for the sake of my own sanity, I'm trying to condense this into a bulleted list. Any further questions will be answered in the comments. Note that some of this may be reworked into plots for next year, depending on my mood - I won't say which, but you'll know which ones it'll be when/if I do them.

Rejected Plot: The Last Cult

• My initial plot idea for this season was in direct reference to Gorillaz' new album, Cracker Island. Essentially, a book called "The Book of MAN" would appear in stores around Whalestrand, with people who'd read it acting oddly as a result. In turn, strange events would happen on an offshore island called Cracker Island, prompting Kobber investigation.
• It would be revealed almost immediately that Murdoc and the rest of Gorillaz were starting 'The Last Cult' on Cracker Island as a means of spreading the band's (well, Murdoc's) personal philosophy and to promote their upcoming album. Unfortunately, their efforts would face a pincer attack of complications - the actions of the Forever Cult next door and Russel's upcoming predictions of 'The Rupture', an apocalyptic event.
• The Book of MAN would also be revealed to be an acronym - Book of Murdoc Alphonce Niccals.
  
• By this time, the characters would be much older and match their current incarnations.
• Noodle and Stephen would have broken up due to the latter not being able to handle the reality of dating a member of a highly popular and scrutinized band, with Murdoc's decision to start a cult being the straw that broke the camel's back. As a result, she would be much more dour and less talkative than usual.
•  2D would have started getting a big head due to being named the 'Chosen One' of the Last Cult, slipping into something closer to his more arrogant Demon Days persona. He would have gotten quite friendly with the female leader of the Forever Cult next door - a bad decision.
• Russel would have essentially become a non-entity due to being completely whacked out from staring into TV static trying to divine the secrets of the universe. Maybe the Kobbers could have scooped him. He would have been running around in the background trying to prepare for the 'Rupture'.
  
• Murdoc would still be Murdoc, obviously.
  
• Scenes planned include: Visiting Murdoc during a mass of the Last Cult, Murdoc trying to pitch his 'Essence of Murdoc' bathwater at people and rescuring 2D from the Forever Cult, who would turn out to be the actual villains.
• By the end, Stephen would have returned and reconciled with Noodle, although wherever they would rekindle their relationship was up in the air. Murdoc, rather than bailing and leaving his band to get arrested, would take the blame. The Last Cult would be disbanded and all copies of the Book of MAN recalled and destroyed. The Rupture would turn out to be nothing at all since Russel read the clues wrong, disappointing him but snapping him out of his trance. The album would be a success, however. And maybe a Smirnoff cocktail party would follow.
  
• The ultimate lesson of the plot would be 'Utopia is what U make it'. Tomorrow comes today and it's the same as yesterday. So rather than chasing the impossible, work hard now with what you have so that tomorrow can be a little better. Also, don't drink Essence of Murdoc.

I dropped this plot because I realized there really wasn't anything going on with it. There weren't really any things for Kobbers to do that I could think of, besides investigating and possibly a battle with the Forever Cult. It wasn't so much a plot as it was a series of happenings, and there wasn't much reason for Kobbers to get involved in any way outside of a final battle. Also, I didn't feel comfortable writing stuff involving a cult, or subjecting people to the unhappy revelation of Stephen and Noodle breaking up.

Plot Events Overall

• There were plans made for if any of the Kobbers decided infiltrating Sharpe Manor was in order. It would have been revealed that Sharpe would have had a bunch of supernatural security to keep his mansion safe, including a pet that had a Stand akin to Pet Shop from JoJo. Any Kobber infiltrating this mansion would have faced this pet.
• More artefacts from Sharpe would have been present or made appearances. 
• Plans were drawn up to include the Ruinous Quartet from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, who would have been artefacts bought by Sharpe for his collection and would be awakened by Sharpe's ever increasing greed, needing to be captured or subdued.
• The mezzotint is a reference to the M. R. James story, and at one point there would be an actual event where somebody got trapped inside it with the ghost and needed to be rescued.
• Other artefacts from M. R. James stories planned to appear include the whistle from O, Whistle And I'll Come To You, My Lad, the papers of Canon Alberic, the wood carving from The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral and the cursed crown from A Warning To The Curious. I was in an M. R. James mood during that time period :P
  
• The ghost of the Beast of Gévaudan would have stalked the grounds and become an obstacle for the Kobbers to fight.
• Stand Arrows, Majora's Mask, a piece of a Dalek and various Sentai/Rider artefacts were planned to appear.
  
• Following the Brawl, the plan was to have another pod of Merfolk make their appearance. Led by the son of Boreal aka Heartful One, this pod would have been highly aggressive and distrustful of humans, becoming a secondary antagonist alongside Sharpe as they tried to influence humans into releasing the Merfolk inside Aqualand. The Kobbers would have had to face them in order to prove that they could be trusted.
• Rahab was going to be a much bigger presence in this plot, possibly tied to the second Merfolk pod, but with the focus shifting towards Sharpe as the main villain, this couldn't be worked in.
• The second part of the Mermaid Rescue was going to be much different. It would have been an actual raid on Aqualand and not a different facility. Knaggs would have played a vital role, and it would have ended with one of the Merfolk dying due to Knaggs' actions. This would have infuenced Vilfred's character development, briefly shattering him but increasing his resolve to fight Sharpe.
• I was planning to use a lot more music from Endless Ocean. Unfortunately, I listened to a whole bunch of it, which made me realize that, as fitting as it was, I didn't like a single instance of it. So I stopped using it after the one moment.

Heroes

• Vilfred and Vent's first meeting was planned to be slightly different. Vent would have startled Vilf into falling into the tank, wherupon Vent would try to fish him out, only to fall in. Both would be rescued by Blue, establishing that, unlike the other captive merfolk, she was recognizing the potential good in humans.
• Speaking of, Vilfred's attraction towards Vent would have spanned the entire season and formed a major crutch of his character development. His idolization of Vent as a model Kobber, while played for laughs at first, would have eventualy started to affect his judgement as he went out of his way to try and impress his new mentor, not knowing about Vent's own marital situation despite idolizing him. There might have even been a moment where Vilfred impulsively kissed Vent, causing their working relationship to crack a bit and leaving Vilfred wracked with guilt enough for Sharpe and/or Knaggs to get the drop on him. I pulled back on this entire thing and ended it prematurely because I was starting to get the nagging sensation that people would think the entire thing was weird and kinda creepy.
• On the other hand, the plot was originally heaving much harder towards Vilfred and Blue having an attraction to each other, with a scene planned where the two of them, ah... re-enacted The Shape of Water, if you get my drift. If I had gone through with my plans of offing Blue, it would have left Vilfred heartbroken and driven by vengeance, which leads to...
• Vilfred was originally intended to have the ability to completely understand Merfolk language, which I hinted at early in the beginning. As a result, he would have have nightmares of Rahab's approach as he heard the despairing cries of the Merfolk. This would culminate in Rahab trying to influence Vilfred to take vengeance for the suffering of the trapped merfolk, which would eventually manifest as Vilfred becoming an actual Kamen Rider - Kamen Rider Poseidon, controlled by Rahab's will.
• Of course, none of that went in because there was literally no time anymore and the focus was now completely on Sharpe as a villain. Not to say that the threat of Rahab is gone, however...
  
• Grey was planned to be a lot more anti-heroic, threatening staff members and actively killing one. I dropped this one like a hot potato because it was too close to the plot's overall inspiration.
• Kaydence's character development would have taken a lot longer than what it turned out. She would have dropped training with Julia when it became too hard and, following the Brawl, would have tried to use martial arts braindances and other VR sims to cheat her way into becoming stronger. This would have developed into an addiction, which would then spiral into actual cyberpsychosis that needed a healthy dose of Kobber fist to shake her out of it.
  
  As you all saw, I began to regret sending Kaydence into the Suspense when I did because then it looked like I was skipping too much of her character development, that she hadn't had the time to show off what she could do on her own and that the opportunity for stuff like this would be lost. Of course, that's all been worked out and I'm generally okay with what I have now, but I still kind of regret not going through with it to begin with and I wish I'd taken more time on her development. That said, nobody's perfect - people do backslide into bad habits and ideas sometimes...
  

Villains

• Sharpe being descended from DIO was a last-minute addition. He was intended to originally be just a human, albeit with good fighting skills as a Bartitsu/cane fighting practitioner. He would have also interacted with the Kobbers in public more, trying to win them over by being his usual smarmy self.
  
• Knaggs was going to be involved a lot more in the plot, being much more of a backstabbing prick than he ended up being. In the final raid on Aqualand, he would have shown up and, identifying that Vilfred had feelings for Blue, would have held her hostage and threatened to kill her and/or the entireity of the Merfolk population unless the Kobbers backed off. The ensuing scuffle would have killed Knaggs, but also resulted in one of the Merfolk (possibly Blue or Grey) dying.
• The Jyamato were thrown in to give Del something to do with his Geats Riders. Needless to say, it didn't work out :P
• There would have been more to do with the Cyberpsychoes and a bigger examination of what causes the condition. Kaydence would ultimately admit that becoming a cyberpsycho is one of her greatest fears - she's terrified of the idea of not being in control of her mind, having already endured living in a world where she had little control of her own life.
• I was gonna have a brief moment where Arktos, the villain from the German film Tabaluga, showed up as a one-off fight solely because he was voiced by Benedict Campbell, aka King K. Rool. I didn't go through with it because I imagined the responses would have been a collective "Wait, who?"
  

Skinny Ape Part 2 (ft. Cornwind Evil)

~The Teapot, Again~

There were more people here than Kaydence was expecting. Vent was here, of course - he seemed to be a de rigueur appearance in these kinds of scenarios. But there were others here that she didn't recognize. A pale woman with black hair tied in a long braided ponytail. A man in a trench coat with silver hair and what looked like a metal arm - the technopath was struggling to tell if he was a 'borg or not. And a giant of a man, dark-skinned and with hair that rivalled Kaydence's own for outrageous colour combinations.

They'd been introduced to her as Julia, Gene and Cypress. The former was apparently the 'professional' that Dawn had mentioned when Kaydence had started her job - she didn't know anything else about the others. And considering the looks they'd given her when she'd slipped into her native lingo, they were as confused by her presence as she was by theirs.

Things were cleared up when Dawn started speaking.

"You may remember, Kaydence," she said, "that I once said the people behind your home city at least had some benevolence mixed in with their obvious greed."

Kaydence nodded. "Yeah, I do."

"I may have spoken too soon."

With those words, Dawn flicked on a screen. It showed a piece of coastline, and a settlement close to that coastline. But, to even Kaydence's own surprise, it wasn't any place she'd seen on any of the maps of Earth. It was one from her home planet - she recognized the outline of the coast, sweeping north and westwards in a great curve to form a sort of bay. And the town's layout was awfully familliar.

"...that's New Brighton," she blurted out, before she could stop herself.

"Yes." Dawn nodded. "One of many coastal settlements on Spero, your home planet. Land is actually more of a premium on this world than I first suspected. Much of the prime territory on the mainland is under corporate control - UES being the main contender, obviously. Those independent settlers that got in late or weren't bought up were forced to take up space on the western coast of the main continent - which, as you hinted to me earlier, is suffering from major erosion problems. Most of them are at major risk of crumbling into the sea within a decade, at the very least."

Cypress snorted. "Typical. Scumfucks take up all the good shit, leave everyone else with the scraps."

"Actually, Cypress, not this time. Because it turns out, the owners of New Brighton got lucky where none of the other independents did. Without even realizing it."

Dawn pressed another button on her remote. A new picture came up - a 3D scientific diagram of some sort of stone or metal, dull grey but streaked with yellow. She turned to Kaydence, who was staring at the screen with fascination.

"Know anything about this, Kaydence?" she asked.

"Brontonium?" Kaydence shrugged. "Only what I learned in the academy. It's formed when lightning strikes a particular kind of metal-rich stone and it's preem at storin' a charge. Why?"

"Because," Dawn went on, "despite the efforts of alternative energy campaigners, Neo Manhattan runs almost solely on Brontonium. The city infrastructure, heating, public transport... almost everything depends on this mineral. It's one of the greatest superconductors in the universe. ANY universe - one chunk, the size of my fist, could power the entire Teapot for around twenty years, and that's a comfortable estimate. And UES has kept that fact a secret from its entire populace in order to hoard as much of it as it can for their pet project."

"I know where this is headed." said Julia, speaking up at last, albeit in a calm almost whisper like tone.

"And you'd be right."

The screen was switched back to the satellite map of New Brighton. Except you would be hard to make it out - the map had become a monochrome patchwork of blues, dark and light. Some sort of geological scanning map, Kaydence guessed. Cutting through the middle of it, and the town itself, was a great streak of yellow like a lightning bolt, running along the length of the coastline.

"New Brighton's owners, by sheer chance, built their city on one of the richest deposits of Brontonium this planet has to offer." Dawn's finger helpfully traced the yellow line for reference. "The entirety of this vein could keep the whole planet's electricity grid running for centuries. Of course, even if they had known it beforehand, they don't have the technology to extract it from the earth. At least, not without collapsing the entire coastline.

"But United Everything Services and House of Pancakes does, right?” Gene said.

“Correct. And, credit where it's due, they did try to buy the land that New Brighton sat on. They tried to do it by the book. Except, of course, the people living there weren't keen on leaving the homes they've had for nearly twenty years or more. And once they realized what they were sitting on, they demanded a higher price for their hidden treasure. Higher than UES was willing to pay, perhaps. Or perhaps they just didn't want to deal with the hassle of paperwork and legal issues. Either way..."

The map changed again.

"...they've come to evict the squatters."

The bird's eye view of the coast was now a thermal one, primarily black tinged with purple. Portions of New Brighton shone orange fading into dull red to indicate the heat from houses, or bodies walking around. But now the assembled watchers could see what was surrounding the settlement. A military encampment on the far borders, speckled with the bright orange-yellow dots of patrolling soldiers.

But what caught Kaydence's eye was what was ringed around the landward side of New Brighton. The hulking figures of combat vehicles, six-legged and squat like deformed toads. What looked like equipment for broadcasting or uploading, connected to terminals that buzzed in anticipation. Some form of mechanical exo-suit, their steel framing glinting in the floodlights set up at intervals. And the rifles they clutched looked more advanced than what a standard military or defence force ought to be carrying...

"...those shouldn't be there," she said.

"Indeed." Vent's eyes narrowed. "A concerted effort to drive the settlers out by force. Typical strongarm tactics-"

"No, I mean all that tech!" Kaydence was nearly out of her chair, pointing an accusing finger like a detective finally fingering the culprit. "The Luggers, the terms, the exo-frames! Even those irons! All that shit's from the Two-Month War! Last I checked, all that shit was deemed illegal and either zipped up in a vault or melted into slag to build more Tebbies! So why the fiku am I seeing it here?!"

"I suspect it’s obvious." Cypress took a swig out of a bottle - he'd been doing that on and off during the whole thing. "They have a military wing under them. Or at least a military contractor willing to hide all their dirty war secrets. Why throw away what they can still use? And I'm hazarding a guess New Brighton's owners don't have anywhere near the resources to fight back an attack on that scale."

“They come in," Julia continued, like she was describing how an engine was put together. "They literally chase the settlers out, or arrest them on some trumped-up charge or another. They flatten the city and set up their mining operation. They rake in more profit than ever before to keep this Neo Manhattan running for however long they want and at least a hundred people have to either leave the planet or find homes elsewhere. Or worse.” Her tone belayed a voice that had seen this before. Maybe far too many times for anyone’s good.

Gene snorted. “Everywhere ya go, assholes. Money, money, money above all else. Bet they wouldn’t front the cost of moving those people they, uh…moved, either. If they even bothered.”

“Certain… historical comparisons spring to mind,” finished Vent. He didn’t elaborate, yet the look Dawn gave him as she nodded said everything that needed to be said.

Kaydence swallowed. She was shaking, and was shocked to notice that. But it was a mere inconvenience compared to what she was seeing on the screen, what she was seeing in front of her.

She'd always suspected that something was wrong with Neo Manhattan and the people that ran it. It was a suspicion that had run deep in her guts for a long, long time. But she hadn't been able to prove anything beyond the fact it was a gilded cage designed by privileged assholes. People shrugged and said ‘what can you do’, or laughed at her, or told her to stop making a fuss. And she thought that was as bad as it got. Men in suits swirling glasses of expensive sea wine, looking down on their model train set.

But now, there was proof, in front of her. There was an actual crime in front of her. Actual blood on the hands of the greedy corporate fucks on the reigns of this wretched enterprise. And she could have slapped herself into a pulp for not seeing it earlier.

They own everything. Even guns. Even the land under your feet. You just don't know it yet. And the only way you know is when they call in debts you didn't know you owed, because they charged you behind your back. And when you can't pay, because of course you can't, they push you out, because they don't care. They're so big, they'll never take the fall for what the right hand does without the left one knowing.

But... I've lived there for so long. I used their tech. I drank their drink, ate their food, slept in their bed and worked at their job. And all of what was provided for me by forcing people who had so much less than I did from their homes, or worse. Who's to say that my love for Burger Factory didn't lead to somebody in the jungles, somebody I didn't even know, getting a bullet in their-

"Kaydence."

She blinked. The flashes of ones and zeroes running up her arms, the ones she didn't even know were there, flickered out of existence like St. Elmo's Fire. She took a breath that shuddered as it rushed down her throat and into her lungs. Julia was looking at her with a tilted head and no expression. Gene and Cypress both looked wary, Vent looked alarmed.

A small blob of black on Julia’s shoulder was eating a hamburger. The sheer sudden randomness of the sight helped shock Kaydence back towards facing reality. It spared Dawn from having to shake her, the woman-robot’s hand on her shoulder. And, once she could actually note its presence, she also noted, in the back of her mind, that it was as warm and comforting as the real thing.

"It's alright. It isn't your fault. You didn't know. They kept this secret for a reason. The reason being, it was wrong and they knew it. And they knew that if the average person on the street knew, nobody would want to live in Neo Manhattan anymore.”

“Probably excess goodwill there, madam, but who knows.” Cypress took another swig. Clearly, he thought that plenty of people would still want to live there even if they knew.

“But now we know. And we're going to do something about it. I was testing out x’s and o’s with you until now. If this hadn’t come up, you would have gotten what you asked for. As it turns out…well, the stars also provided. Or flipped you off. One of the two."

Kaydence swallowed and nodded. "Y-yeah. Yeah, preem. Thanks, boss." She sat down and took a few breaths, trying to get her nerves under control.

"I assume," mused Vent, after a pause, "that this 'something' will involve direct combat."

"Which was why I specifically chose you all." The screen zoomed in on the military encampment as Dawn spoke, highlighting a few important details. "This will be simple. Get in, do as much damage as possible, get out. Cripple them to the point that the idea of an attack at all becomes completely unpalatable. We need to send the message that they will never, ever get away with something like this. Ever."

"Kobber involvement," put in Julia, her tone indicating that she thought this could be a problem. "Kaydence is already a known quantity thanks to your hand in getting her out of there. Cypress isn’t known, but if they know Kobbers, they might know me, and my reputation is not unfounded. And as for Vent, well..."

"She has a point, mother," Vent added. "They can't be wholly ignorant of Kobber business. We're practically multiversal in our fame. We can't give them a reason to think that we had anything to do with this, or we'll have another megacorporation to take care of on top of everything else in Whalestrand. And, quite frankly," he added with a roll of the eyes, “ZAIA is the last one I ever want to deal with.”

"And that," said Dawn, "is the catch. No powers. No Kamen Rider belts, no Stream, no digimancy... nothing. And no fancy costumes, either. Stick with conventional weapons and military clothes. As far as they'll know, you were just a group of mercenaries who were paid to disrupt their operation."

Cypress shrugged. "Sounds good to me. When do we leave?"

"As soon as I answer one question."

Perhaps as a calming mechanism, Kaydence had retreated back into her phone, half-listening to the conversation. It took too many idle swipes on her screen before she realized that people’s attentions were now all directed at her, and she looked up to find that everybody else in the room was, in fact, looking at her. But especially Dawn, who was wearing a particularly piercing, analysing expression on her face.

What she asked next didn't quell the nervous feeling in Kaydence's stomach.

"How good are you with guns?"

Kaydence blinked. "Um... my dad took me to the firing range once. He was a lawman and had to qualify every year. Why?"

Quiet.

“I can work around that.” Julia said.

“Me too.” Cypress.

“I got some REAL guns.” Gene flexed, and then slumped a bit when clearly no one cared.

“Well Kaydence, I don’t know if your world had a certain film...” Dawn flicked open her thumb and pressed the button.

The hologram promptly filled the room, as Dawn replicated a certain scene from the Matrix. Guns. LOTS of guns.

“But I can work around that too.”

-------

~Much Later~

“Okay… lemme sum up what just happened.”

Kaydence wasn’t particularly in a cheerful mood. She was back on Spero, a place she’d been more than happy to see the back of. She was wearing her special new jacket from Dawn, although it felt like a flimsy shower curtain around her body at this very moment. She was holding a gun - she couldn’t remember the make and model, and it was starting to look more and more like a peashooter in her mind. It was dark, cold and wet, and she suspected she had a stone in one of her boots.

But worse still was the fact that she and everyone else were in cover as enemy soldiers surrounded their position. And it was her fault.

“I do a quick trainin’ sim,” she hissed between her teeth. “Pick out some irons - based on the boss' thumbs up, of course. We go down to the planet and try to sneak in. But, in case you haven’t noticed, I ain’t built for that kind of ninjutsu shit. I trip an alarm that somehow even my techno ear doesn’t pick up-”

“Eliru, eliru!” somebody shouted.

“That means ‘come out’,” she translated. “And now, here we are. Entire job down the shitter because my tits are too big for stealth. Did I miss anything?” she finished, looking over at the others.

“Yes.” Julia said. And that was it, as she looked at Vent.

Thankfully, Vent didn’t comment on any of that. He shared a glance with Julia, then shifted so that his voice would carry over the wall they were crouched behind.

“Listen, representatives of Armstrong Industries!” he shouted. “I don’t wish to be a bother, after the bother we’ve already caused! But I would like to point out that you and your company of soldiers are violating several of your society’s laws via your current actions! Your intent to attack and occupy the settlement of New Brighton is in direct contradiction to at least five of them before we even start to list them all! So please, consider withdrawing your forces from this area, or else we shall be forced to-”

He was cut off by a chorus of harsh, mocking laughter that rolled like waves on a shore. None of it was pleasant, and made shivers of disgust roll down Kaydence’s skin. Then a voice responded - obviously that of the commander in charge. It spoke in rough, condescending tones, as if somebody like Vent wasn’t even worth the effort to respond and doing so was an annoyance.

“Laws? Society?” they barked. “The fuck do you know about that, you crawling little leech?! We’re motherfucking Armstrong! The sword of UES! The union that brought prosperity to this planet! We won the Two Month War and quelled the Two Week Terror! So don’t go mouthing off to us about laws and society, because without us, there wouldn’t be any!”

A rousing cheer from the soldiers that echoed in the night air like the roar of a beast.

“We own you! We own the mud beneath your dirty little boots! We own the clothes on your backs, the guns in your hands! And we own what lies under New Brighton! If those dirty little squatters won’t play fair, than why the fuck should we?! Either they join us and become part of the greater whole or we send them packing like the rats they are! UES Forever! Prospero per unueco!”

And the reply came back from all mouths that could repeat it: “PROSPERO PER UNUECO!”

Kaydence shot a glare at Vent that said a whole lot of things she didn’t dare voice aloud. The fuck was he even expecting?! Armstrong Industries had been one of UES’ first acquisitions, back when it was still called Osmond & Sharpe. They’d been on the frontlines of the war to claim the majority of the continent and pioneered many of the military-grade cybernetics that had helped win that war. None of that had happened because they let little things like ‘society’ and ‘law’ get between them and whatever they felt needed a bullet in the head!

“Well,” said the Reploid, with no small amount of irritation. “Let nobody say I didn’t try.”

“We can provide you with some cover, Kaydence, but once things cook it’s going to be akin to a storm of blades and fire everywhere out there. I done this, my read, keep moving. This won’t be a good place to bunker down.” Cypress said. Kaydence had been distracted by the Vent and commander exchange, and now noted that both he and Julia had gone from carrying a small arsenal to actually equipping themselves with it, Cypress slotting a massive drum of shells into his weapon. An AA-12 shotgun, though Kaydence didn’t know the details.

“Three problems with that, choom,” Kaydence hissed. “One, the moment we leave cover, we’ll get zero’d before we can blink! Turned into fucking coleslaw! Two, the only way we’ll survive that is if we use our powers, which is exactly what we can’t do! And three, those yono’s are gonna be chucking grin’s - grenades - in here any minute now, so either way, we’re pretty fucked!”

She nervously adjusted her grip on her guns and huffed through her nose. “Oh, but listen to me. I’m no better. I had to fuck up the ninjutsu before we even-”

“Quiet now, please.” Julia said, as she snapped one last item into place. Kaydence hadn’t been paying attention, and realised the woman was wielding some sort of heavy machine gun AND a flamethrower, locked together. “We green?”

“Earbuds in, Kaydence. We’re green.” Vent said, as a small item popped into his hand. A small…detonator.

“I do make mistakes, Kaydence. The Kobbers will regale you with the stories of them. But I do like to think 7 out of 10 times I get it right. Yes, the primary plan was to stealth in. But, as you said yourself, no plan survives contact with the enemy. So the team did have backup plans in case certain things went wrong. Like someone futzing up the stealth. Could have been anyone, even you.

“I said no powers. In obvious, overt combat. But what they couldn’t SEE…”

Kaydence did remember, later. How often Julia slipped into the shadows and returned as the group tried their stealth insertion. She’d thought with some irritation that Julia was passive-aggressively commenting on her slowness. No. Instead, Julia had been moving into position so Ardent could carefully put little gifts at all sorts of highly inconvenient places all around the Armstrong camp.

“They can’t prove.”

Later, Cypress would talk to her about some of the finer details. How the most important part of such a battle was misdirection, confusing the enemy to their numbers and location. One of the best tactics for that was a false pincer, the planted idea that you were being attacked from behind out of nowhere. The rest, however…

War was hell.

The commander had been making one last threat before the explosives to drive the Dawn group out or kill them outright would have been thrown in. He never got to finish it, as Vent pressed the button.

And a completely different set of explosions began going off. Bombs planted in fuel depots. In armories. Anywhere where a small explosion could rapidly turn into a REALLY BIG FUCKING EXPLOSION.

Sadly, some of New Brighton had to go with it. The good news was, Armstrong had already chased out all the residents here to set up their little camp. That left nothing to destroy except a bunch of empty buildings…and all the setup of the Armstrong PMC.

Gods, the NOISE. She thought she’d tempered her ears. Loud music, jumpscares in videos…but even with her earplugs filtering it, it was a whole different level of loud. Vent was yelling something, probably “GO!” and pointing for the group to break cover and attack.

So they did.

Yet MORE noise slammed into her ears, Julia’s gun a roaring, throaty rapid chatter while Cypress’ more of an explosive, high repeating drumbeat. There was fire, and smoke, and men, and they were being cut down, trying to pinpoint where the attack was and exposing themselves, and then Vent was throwing a grenade into a clear spot and there was another blast, and another, and Gene had run across the field and literally ripped the arm off one of the Exo-Frames before throwing it like a javelin into another…

“CYBERPSYCHO!” somebody bawled over the sound of battle.

It didn’t help, as the man who’d shouted it found himself on the wrong end of Cypress’ gun before he could even draw a bead.

“How is THAT not a use of powers?!”

“Could just be high grade cyborg tech. Your world has that. Far more conspicuous if you’re shooting beams out of your eyes or lifting cement trucks with your brain.”

“....there’s a Kobber that can do that?”

“...my records aren’t fully complete, so, maybe?”

And behind them all, Kaydence. Wide-eyed, panting, surrounded by chaos. Her technopathy was no good here - she had an idea of where some tech was, like helmets or head’s-up displays, but she couldn’t rely on it. Every sense was blotted by gunfire and smoke and shouting and explosions. She just followed in the wake of the great destroyers in front of her, occasionally turning to pop whatever straggler was left behind or whatever moron got it into their heads to try a sneak attack.

But those people in front of her… it was like nothing she'd seen before. They moved and fought like demons, like this was completely natural to them. They didn’t flinch as they cut down swathes of soldiers who didn’t move in time, or tore down gunning towers with well-placed shots. They had every idea of what they were doing, moved to make it happen and then it just… happened. Like they’d practised this a thousand times before. And here she was, disoriented and panting, heart threatening to burst out of her chest, doing all she could to simply keep up.

This felt an awful lot like her first time in an online MMO guild. Surrounded by far more experienced punks who ate terror for breakfast and polished it off with mild peril. And then, as now, she felt particularly vestigial and useless, like a cupholder on a sloth. Contributing about a gnat’s fart in the grand scheme of-

She saw the man step around the corner too late. But she definitely saw his weapon, a chunky slab of polished white metal the length of his own arm, as it snapped open and crackled.

Her hind brain said, that’s the Dragunov MK II. The one that punches holes through tanks and can decapitate even at the end of its range. But the rest of Kaydence was too slow. There was a roar like an angry dragon and an impact like a giant fist against her torso, knocking the breath out of her. The technopath flew backwards, lifted off her feet by the sheer force of the weapon firing, and felt her guns leave her hands in the same movement. But lamenting their loss was a luxury she couldn’t enjoy before she hit the ground hard, tumbled ass-over-teakettle for a further six metres, then slid to a stop on her back.

She wouldn’t wonder why her head was still attached until much, much later.

Winded and dazed, ribs singing with pain, she barely managed to lift her head from the ground, squinting past the haze in her vision. The soldier was approaching, cocking his rifle, boots thudding into the dirt on every step. His face was obscured by the helmet and its visor, but his teeth were bared in a feral snarl.

“Little bitch,” he growled. Heart thudding in her ears, Kaydence scrabbled for her sidearms, but she was too slow, she knew she was, she wouldn’t be able to beat him, he was lifting the end of the rifle too fast-

BLAM

The soldier’s head ceased to exist in a cloud of ceramic and gore, his body crumpling.

“I know you are, but what am I?” Said a voice that Kaydence didn’t recognize. It wasn’t Julia’s, as she kicked the corpse away, racking the shotgun she was now holding, having lost her machine gun flamethrower, Julia tossing the gun down as she knelt down by Kaydence, her hand flicking over the woman’s torso.

“Ribs are okay. Breathe, Kaydence.” Julia’s head darted around, before snapping fully behind her as she stood up. “Shit. Kaydence, hand me clips! FAST!”

The bright firing light of the Dragunov had drawn some attention. Actually, a lot of attention, all heading their way, bullets already ripping up the ground around them, as Julia withdrew a large handgun.

Funny how things could randomly slow down. Kaydence wanted to yell at her; you’re using THAT? Against all of THAT?

Well, half of her did. The other half had somehow fished a clip out of the ammo package she’d dropped and…

Bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang. And more bangs, probably, lost in it all as Julia emptied the clip in less than two seconds, Armstrong soldiers falling before her, as she ejected her clip, grabbed the one Kaydence was offering, and slapped it back in in less than a second. 

Bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang. How Kaydence managed to get another clip to offer in the insanely short timespan Julia fired, she didn’t know.

Bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang.

Bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang.

Like a damn machine herself. Not just firing and reloading, but aiming. While being shot at. All the noise, the heat, the chaos…and she stood, unyielding…

At least until the Exo-Suit appeared before them, and Julia finally blinked, a flash of concern over her face. Even she realised the handgun wasn’t going to cut it.

So she hooked her foot under the fallen Dragunov, kicked it up into her hands, aimed, and fired.

She’d been going for center of mass. The sights were off (plus, of course, the whole firing a gun she’d never fired before literally two seconds after she’d picked it up), so she got the robot-suit in the hip instead. The recoil also slammed her backwards; she’d clearly not compensated enough, or properly, or both, the woman falling sprawled on the ground.

“Fek!” Kaydence had recoiled as the Dragunov went off - those things were like flashbangs if you were dumb enough to look at them directly when they fired. She’d been standing behind and to the right of Julia, so it was a miracle that the other woman went sprawling past by a hair’s breadth instead of slamming into her and taking her down too. Had that happened, it might have been worse for both of them.

Except she didn’t feel that way, watching as the Exo-Suit quickly regained balance. Sparks shot from the ruptured hip, but a staccato buzzing in the back of her head told her that hadn’t been enough. Like all Armstrong tech, it had been built tough - even a rail rifle wouldn’t slow it down. Behind the reinforced glassteel canopy, she saw the triumph in the face of the soldier at the controls as he beheld his prey on the ground in front of him, along with, he assumed, a defenceless and easy target. With a whirring of stressed gears, it began to step forward.

Kaydence’s heart hammered in her chest as the flames roared higher.

“Did I do this?”

The road felt like cold sandpaper under her skin, but the heat of the inferno washed over her hotter than anything she could remember. Silhouetted against the fire, his implants glinting in their hellish illumination, he lumbered slowly towards her, grinning crazily, head cocked like a rooster in the instant before the crawling grub feels its razor beak in its flesh. Something sticky dripped from one hand and she couldn’t tell if it was oil, blood or a horrible cocktail of both.

“Hey, kid. Tell me I did this.”

The thud of the thing’s foot hitting the earth snapped Kaydence out of it. Something caught her eye, and she looked down.

Her guns.

The same ones she’d dropped.

She didn’t think. The memory resurfacing, at such an awful time, had galvanised something in Kaydence Roberts. She darted forwards, putting every ounce of energy she had into a lurch that neither her brain nor her still-aching ribcage was prepared for.

It was apparently something the Exo-Suit’s controller wasn’t expecting. He gave a yell of surprise from behind the canopy, the suit jerking backwards as he swung one of the arm-mounted cannons towards her. But Kaydence had long stopped caring about what he was doing. She could hear servos straining and commands running up and down the length of the entire thing’s body, its primitive computerization chattering to itself like a zoo full of gossiping chimpanzees. And that was all she needed to know that it was an outdated, ill-maintained piece of shit dragged out of a shady garage somewhere for a job it wasn’t fit to be doing anymore.

That meant that, in a race of reflexes, she would beat it. She was going to fucking win.

She saw the cannon glow, but she was quicker, whipping out her pistol and firing. It felt like a plastic toy in her hands by comparison, but it worked. The shock of the bullet’s impact made him jerk back again - and as she dropped the searing reddish-purple plasma bolt, aim completely thrown off,  flashed over her head, heat washing over her. She ignored it, feeding just a tiny bit of her digimancy into herself, expelling it from her back and shoulders to propel herself skidding along the ground towards her attacker. Shit, they already thought they were dealing with one cyberpsycho already - what was one more?

Her hands reached down as she slid and snatched up her guns. By the time the Exo-Suit’s pilot realised what had happened, she’d already shot between its legs and was rolling back onto her knees, twisting around to face it. He tried to turn, but the decades-old motors and servos couldn’t get it up to the speed he so badly wanted. There was a series of twin cracks, and both of the knees were torn to shreds, the bullets ripping through the exposed wiring and cabling they found like so much old paper.

The mechanical hulk dropped to its artificial knees, its metaphorical achilles tendons torn. With another burst of stored digital force, Kaydence rocketed into the air, turned several flips and landed on top of it, straddling its shoulders with the man’s head visible between her thighs.

He looked up, wide-eyed, to meet her guns pointing down.

“Suĉu, hundino!” she screamed, and pulled both triggers.

Once more, she’d fed some of her digimancy into her weapons. Ones and zeroes, morphed by their own code into kinetic energy, gave momentum and force to her bullets even before they left their chambers. There was a blinding burst of chromatic aberration as Glassteel that hadn’t been re-tempered in nearly twenty years crumbled like a biscuit liferaft. The pilot was nearly sliced in half down the middle by bullets carrying more power than they were designed for, tearing through his body and out the bottom of his vehicle like the avenging fist of an angry demigod.

The Exo-Suit, now looking like the victim of a lightning strike, jerked and wobbled. Deprived of its pilot, the simple AI inside it floundered, unable to react without commands.

“WHOOOOO!” Kaydence screamed and punched the air. “How do you like that, you corpo-sponsored, jackboot-wearing-”

Except for the emergency shutdown, which turned off everything. Including the internal gyroscope used to keep the entire assembly upright.

Several tonnes of ruined metal pitched forward like a dying oak tree, carrying Kaydence with them.

“-shiiiIIIIT!”

It hit the ground with an almighty wham, throwing her off as it did so.

Cypress caught her with one arm. He did have VERY large arms.

“Good work. Practice the landing some more. Helps.” Cypress put her down, before he tossed the upright-once-again Julia her machine gun/flamethrower. “They’re broken. Running.”

Yet ANOTHER series of explosions went off, the shockwaves rippling over the trio. Julia went with it, taking a little side step, before she calmly slapped a fresh clip into her gun.

“Four o’clock, Cypress.”

The large man turned, withdrawing a throwing knife from up his sleeve, and snapping it off.

It…missed the man coming in with his own machine gun. Cypress’ eyes widened.

“FUCK!”

He yanked Kaydence in front of him, putting his massive back to the soldier as the man’s own gun spit fire, Cypress snarling and staggering as several bullets impacted on his back, nearly falling over and squashing Kaydence like the mech suit had previously threatened to do.

Julia caught him, or rather put a hand on him to brace him, and leaned around. One burst of fire, and the soldier was on the ground. His armor wasn’t as good as Cypress’.

“Ow, fucking…ow.” Cypress said. Suddenly, all the mystique was gone. Not a demon, or a god. Just a guy, with skills and tools and practice, but mortal. Fallible. Moreso than Julia seemed to be, as she moved around and was patting the large man on the back, though for a moment the mask slipped for her as well, concern etching her face as she did…whatever she was doing that let her check for wounds.

“Didn’t penetrate. Deep bruising likely, I’d say.”

“Gonna be fucking sore tomorrow.” Cypress finally fully regained his feet, letting out a few harsh coughs and spitting to the side.

“I’m with you all the way, choom.” Kaydence swept her guns around, just in case anyone else thought a surprise attack was still a good thing to try. “Bastardo Dragunovs… I can still feel my fucking spine trying to escape my back. And those irons aren’t even the worst thing Armstrong’s ever made, if you can believe that. They did this-”

“LESS TALKING MORE HITTING!” Gene yelled as he dashed past, before he literally uppercutted some sort of heavily armored soldier, not quite in an exo-suit but not just themselves either, literally right out of his mechanical boots.

“You move sixteen tons…” Cypress mused, as he extracted another ammo drum from within his own coat and snapped it into his shotgun, before he aimed and blew up another gun tower.

The most extreme drama, it seemed, was done. There were more explosions, more gunfire, more death, but it was all…winding down. Kaydence was partially dragged along by the pair from Weav, until it was clear that any target that was not neutralised was no longer interested in fighting.

Julia broke off from the trio, vanishing for a minute. When she returned, she was dragging…someone, by the collar, or his shoulder, before she dumped him at her feet.

“Commander…actually, I didn’t get your name. Doesn’t matter.” Julia produced another handgun, cocking it and aiming. “Put us through to your employers, please.”

The man glared at her, looking like he dearly wanted to say something in return. But he was covered in dirt and bruises, one eye was swollen shut and blood was leaking from the side of his head where a bullet had grazed him. Kaydence could only guess at what other injuries he had, but they must have been enough for him to reconsider whatever rhetoric he felt like spitting.

So he lifted one arm, pulled out a walkie-talkie and handed it to Julia. He grit his teeth as he did so - his arm had been badly sprained.

“Thank you. Vent?”

Vent had emerged from a side alley, wiping his forehead. He looked like he’d taken a dive through a chimney - his hair was a mess and he was covered in dust and ash. But he dutifully took the walkie talkie and, after a moment of fiddling with the dials on it, lifted it to his mouth.

“Am I speaking to whoever hired this contingency of Armstrong Industries to carry out the raid on New Brighton?” he asked.

There was a crackle, and a voice came through it, barking in Esperanto. Kaydence winced, knowing full well that whoever was on the other side wasn’t happy.

“Who we are,” said Vent, translating in his own head, “is not important. What is important is this. We have your commander. And he can confirm the details of what I am about to say. Of your encampment, which consisted of a battalion of about one hundred and twenty men total, we have killed or injured around two third of them. We have also destroyed all mounted gun emplacements, destroyed at least three of the ten Exo-Suits you have bought and cut off all twelve of your supply luggers from reinforcing your front line. 

"We have also completely destroyed your forward encampments, including the broadcasting equipment you intended to use to beam illegal military-grade computer viruses into the systems of New Brighton, crippling them and cutting them off from contacting any other independents outside of your sphere of influence. And if need be, we are fully capable of CONTINUING to destroy what is left until there’s nothing left but scrap and corpses.”

He held the walkie talkie up to the commander. The man seemed to hesitate, but a nudge from Julia’s gun prompted him.

“...it’s true,” he muttered, voice thick and low. “What ain’t dead is bleeding. What ain’t destroyed is beyond repair. The men are either surrendering or running like hell.”

“And that,” Vent went on smoothly, “seems like a massive expenditure on your part. Something to the tune of… oh, I don’t know the maths off the top of my head. But I can confidently say that it would be quite the chunk cut out of your coffers. Enough, I think, that your fellow investors would be asking questions on where exactly their cash went. And enough that, even if you wanted to, there is no way possible for you to keep this little land grab plan indefinitely. Especially as we now own this land and the settlement on top of it.”

It took a while for the speaker on the other end to respond. When they did, their voice was suspicious but cautious, in the same way one is when approaching a potentially hungry tiger.

“Simple, my friend. You have two choices. You can keep trying. You can keep wasting money and resources and human lives on this venture, risking bankruptcy, the ire of your investors or being discovered with illegal War-era tech on your hands. Probably all three, at worst. Or you can leave and stay out of here. If you really want this brontonium that badly, we will be happy to negotiate for its extraction and transportation. And trust me, whatever premium we charge will seem like pocket change compared to how much you pay your friends to get hold of those prohibited weapons and technologies you used today.

“Learn a lesson from this. Or don't. We'll see who bleeds out first."

Vent clicked the device off and casually tossed it to the ground, wearing a look of triumphant satisfaction on his face.

“Fuckin’ preem work,” was all Kaydence could say, looking at the Reploid with a new respect.

“...the fuck ARE you people?” The commander said. There was a small hint of genuine confusion. Like he honestly couldn’t understand their behaviour.

“We could tell you, but you’d never understand.” Julia said, and thunked the man upside the head with the gun, the commander promptly collapsing into the dirt.

“Mother’s already sending in medical and extraction. All carefully camouflaged to suggest it’s part of a small company of which we are the weapon.” Vent said. “She can handle the rest, the diplomacy and the business and the extraction of the brontonium. Let’s get home, get treated, clean up, and then sleep for a week.”

“La domo sur la sabloj.” Said the black blob on Julia’s shoulder.

--------

“How many fucking bullets?!”

Kaydence was holding up her new coat in front of herself as the disbelieving cry came out of her mouth. Her shock was not unfounded - the aforementioned garment was riddled with dents and scratches, as if it had been attacked with a gritting machine. All of them marked places where a bullet from one of Armstrong’s guns had met its mark, with the vast majority of them, she knew, coming from the Dragunov that had caught her off guard.

The more the technopath stared at it, the more the dents sat there, refusing to budge. And the more an ice-cold realisation settled into her chest.

Holy fuck, I could have actually died.

“Thirty-seven. About nine in vital areas. Coat worked better than I expected, if you didn’t even notice. Then again, adrenaline is a distraction.”

Kaydence didn’t bother to dispute this. Mostly because she was still churning the reality of it all over and over in her brain. Thirty-seven… any one of those, had she not been wearing this, might have actually hit her. Might have done some actual damage, or worse. Part of her began to count just how many times, outside of the nine Dawn had just listed, she might have actually been killed or mortally wounded. And then she immediately told it to not think about that anymore.

And yet she hadn’t thought twice about throwing a fist at Mallus, or punching a hole in a spaceship to fight whatever was on it. Those had been… fun! Exciting! She’d relished the chance to do something wild and dangerous like that! But in that battle, she’d been panicking and just trying to keep up. And the discovery that she’d been practically made a bullet pincushion was… scary. In a way that facing the herald of an eldritch monstrosity hadn’t been to her mind.

She didn’t know if she should feel ashamed of that or not. It felt like betraying the overstimulated, reckless vidiot she defined herself as.

What was different, she wondered? Was it because it was real men, with real bullets? Was it because it was happening in her own home planet, and not someplace she’d basically gone to on a shitty vacation to get away from it all? Or…

She put the coat down and breathed in through her nose, deeply. Her scattered thoughts buzzed like agitated cicadas in her head.

“...what I said,” she said, at last. “The whole ‘dud bill of goods’ thing. I, uh… I wanna take that back, boss. And if I ever say it again, well… you get free reign on that one.”

“Well, you weren’t WHOLLY wrong. Maybe I was being over-cautious. And maybe I did throw you into the deep end because you insisted you could swim, to a small degree. I actually wanted you there because I was concerned that those men might have a very large backup unit that consisted entirely of unmanned drones. Turned out it was incorrect, but if it had been, you’d have been highly useful in combating those, with your tech sense. The rest, I compensated and put the best armor, beyond the coat, around you that I could get at such short notice.

“All in all, it’s good to get an idea of limits, isn’t it? That is something you can struggle a bit with, I’ve noticed. Not that that’s a failing. It’s the downside of your life. Your world failed you, so I’m trying to compensate. And when you’re grown, it’s harder to learn things. But far from impossible. So what have we learned, do you think, these last few months, Miss Roberts? Speak freely, no need to hold your tongue in any way.”

Kaydence thought about those last few months. She thought about how she’d basically stumbled onto Dawn Cosineau’s Thread, which had been keeping tabs on her ever since she’d shown up. She thought about being taken to Earth, the arrangements made to keep her there, renouncing her citizenship of Spero. She thought about the jobs she’d done - the easy stuff, hanging out with the extended circle of family and friends the Cosineaus had. She thought about playing the Dawnling’s video game, carrying the puppy, screaming and shouting as the worst movie she’d ever seen finished and left her with no answers and too many questions-

"Hey, kid. Tell me I did this."

The memory flashed through her mind like ice-cold lightning. It took her a moment to push that memory away, and to find words.

“...a lot. Let’s put it that way. I’ve learned a hell of a lot. About how the Kobbers work. What it’s like to swing between peace and chaos at a moment’s notice, without warning. That you’re a… weird person to work for, but I’d rather have weird than boring or strict. No offence meant, boss, truly. But the things I've been learning the most have been about... well, about myself.

“I think the main thing is that… well, I kinda always thought of myself as a badass? A punk fighting against The Man, rebelling against the system, taking a stand against everything Neo Manhattan stood for. And then I get out there, and… I’m not. I ain’t the hot shit I thought I was. A head full of Braindance stunts does not a badass make. I only speak the lingo because I got into a forum for tryhard hackers and thought 'shit, I'm in'. I’m a little fish in a big pond, and I don’t even got that much bite.”

She turned to look Dawn in the eye. For a moment, her expression was akin to a child lost in a mall. Overwhelmed, almost, by the hugeness of everything, of how small she really was.

And then her grin was back.

“But that don’t mean I ain’t gonna be a badass soon, right? Just gotta keep on trying! I mean, it’s only uphill from there, surely! Like I’ve said before, anything - even what I’ve been through these last few months - beats out stewing in boredom in that corpo showroom. And if I get anywhere close to who I wanna be, working under you, then it’ll all be worth the scrapes and mishaps.”

“...there’s a lot to work on, I agree.” Dawn nodded. “But yes, you’ve definitely learned perspective. And you’ve got a goal to aim for. One that isn’t just ‘marinate in your work routine’, at the very least. I can’t promise you’ll meet that goal, obviously. As we just saw, things tend to… come up, without warning. But you’ve definitely proven you're committed to the work, whatever it is. And I can promise, that, sooner or later, you’ll get the ‘serious solo work’ you’re after.”

“Lookin’ forward to it, boss.” Kaydence nodded, then swung her coat over her shoulders, putting it straight back on. The fact that it was still covered in dents and scratches from the bullets didn't seem to bother anymore.

“Now, if you excuse me,” she said, “I’d love to stay and chat, but I gotta delta.”

Dawn’s expression didn’t flicker. “And why is that, Miss Roberts?”

Kaydence’s expression, by contrast, morphed into a smirk that even the most sly of foxes would shudder upon seeing.

“Because, boss, I got a whole bunch of downtime to use up. And I know just how to use it~”

And she strolled out, pointedly not elaborating on a single thing that she’d just said.

--------

As stated before, the coat was padded in certain areas, primarily the stomach, back and chest. This was supposed to be protection from the damage that Kaydence would have sustained in that battle. At least, Dawn had designed it that way. But, as also stated previously, Kaydence had taken particular notice of said padding around the chest area. And once she'd done that, the slope into using that resource for... other means was slipperier than a greased-up eel.

She found Cypress in a bar - not the Kobber one, a local dive. He'd been sitting by himself, drinking alone - just what she'd been hoping for. She sat next to him and ordered the same as he was having. 

Their talk was brief. About this and that - the job they'd just done, what working with Dawn was like. But it was fairly obvious that neither was interested in talking. Her eyes kept wandering over to his arms and chest, and... well, it was fairly obvious where he was looking. She liked to think she was making her intentions quite clear, but the padding definitely helped in that regard.

Fortunately for her, he picked up the signals she was sending out very quickly, padding or not. And it turned out that he was more than interested.

As the old saying goes, one thing lead to another.

--------

Several hours later, Cypress did, in fact, talk to her about some of the finer details of the operation.

It wasn’t very good pillow talk. But after the performance he’d given, Kaydence was in no mood to complain.

Skinny Ape Part 1 (ft. Cornwind Evil)

Don't be sad for me
I'm a cartoon G
And my intent is to breathe in a new world
Don't be sad for me
- Gorillaz, Skinny Ape

~The Teapot, Now Semi Repaired And Located Near The Pearl, Earth ZF-001~

"I have a present for you, Kaydence," was how Dawn opened up the conversation.

It had been some time since Kaydence Roberts had agreed to work for Dawn Cosineau and leave the confines of Neo Manhattan. And quite a lot had happened in the interim between then and now. Among them was Dawn acquiring a flat for her new employee to live in on Earth, introducing her to the rest of her family and other employees, ensuring that she had her necessities - laptop, workbench and so on - and various other sundries.

Some of said sundries, however, required Kaydence to personally come to the Teapot to collect. And so, here she was, earbuds in and one hand flicking through social media already.

Kaydence, upon hearing Dawn's words, couldn't restrain a smirk. "C'mon, boss, you've done enough for me already. The flat, the rig, the workbench? Real preem stuff. No need to keep butterin' me up." Once more, the streetslang of Neo Manhattan leaked into her dialogue - old habits died hard, and Kaydence's linguistic quirks seemed determined to cling to life with the stubbornness of a limpet on shoreline rocks. And that was before you got to the livestreaming, the social media scrolling, the trashy music and the near-constant tinkering.

It was the latter that always made trips to the Teapot a little... difficult. Her technopathy was singing a full orchestra in her head - everything about Dawn's base was a symphony of calls, responses, packets and processes, rushing back and forth and layered over each other. It was like being caught in a swarm of particularly upbeat dragonflies. And the urge to just touch things, to fiddle and see how something ticked, or to try and make it tick that bit faster or louder... it was a childhood instinct that, much like everything else about Kaydence, refused to let go.

"Never been accused of that before," was the reply from Dawn, who was sitting in a chair opposite Kaydence at that moment. "Usually my, ah... employees have been a little less flattering with their comments about me. Though not always through any fault of my own."

"Yeah, I getcha." The youth's thumb casually reposted a hilarious meme without her eyes even glancing at her screen. "First casualty of any battle is the plan."

"Something you find out once you've worked long enough." Dawn turned back to her desk. "But that's something we need to discuss more. Specifically, the fact that a lot of the work I'll send you on... it can be very dangerous. Lethal dangerous, I might add. Dangerous on the level of 'I have a professional on standby, who is not only superpowered but also extensively trained, in case things go south'. That sort of dangerous."

A cackle from Kaydence. "Have a little faith, boss! You miss the part where I took a punch from Mallus and lived?"

"That, as we have established, was mostly down to your powers." Dawn was typing away at her desk as she spoke. "You were fortunate enough to have absorbed enough power, and that you were quick enough, to raise a protective barrier to dull the impact of Mallus' attack. Not to mention your subsequent impact with the street below. You might not always have that luxury. Especially in a sudden moment of crisis."

"Never underestimate a girl with an entire library of martial arts BD's on her shelf!" Kaydence struck a pose that might have been accurate to one of ten fighting styles in the known omniverse, if you squinted and let your sense of disbelief go out of focus. "A proper solo's never defenceless! I eat sudden moments of crisis and shit danger!"

That was another quirk of Kaydence's - the way the younger woman viewed their working relationship. In the mind of the technopath, it wasn't so much 'employer' and 'employee' as it was 'fixer' and 'solo'. Terms, she'd explained, that referred to a sort of well-connected problem solver-come-information broker and their network of paid agents-come-thugs. Except, as the android pointed out, fixers apparently didn't take the trouble to have their solos sign an official work contract, which implied some rather nasty things about the profession.

Not that it was a bad way to look at it. Just one that needed a few codas on the end.

"We can only find that out," said Dawn, referring to Kaydence's boast, "by trying. And this present I was talking about, I made specifically to ensure that, worst comes to worst, you can actually back that claim up."

She hit a button. A panel opened up, and something slid out on the end of a rack that extended outwards like a curious stick insect.

It took a moment, as well as turning off the awful eurodance track playing on her phone, for Kaydence to properly absorb what she was seeing. And when she did, her jaw dropped.

"Holy fuck," she breathed.

On first glance, the thing hanging up on the rack didn't immediately warrant such a comment. It resembled nothing fancier than a dark black jacket or trench coat, ankle length and made of a material that might have been leather. Yet it took an eye for detail as keen as Kaydence's to note that the leather... wasn't leather. Leather wasn't covered in minute, smooth hexagons that interlaced like the scales of some ancient reptile, nor did it shimmer in a vaguely metallic fashion. It also looked to be oddly padded in places - the shoulders, arms and chest especially.

Kaydence looked over at Dawn. For the first time since she'd seen her, the android was... well, smiling wasn't quite right. A satisfied smirk of a job well done was perhaps more appropriate to describe the expression on her face.

"I'm not going to go into detail about how this thing works," said Dawn. "All you need to know is that it's a lot tougher than what you're wearing right now. Try it on for size, at least."

She'd barely finished speaking when the bright yellow jacket, which fit in nicely with the eye-searing "CYMK" theme Kaydence carried like a neon sign, hit the floor. A mere few seconds after that, the technopath had yanked the new jacket from the hanger and thrown it over herself. The tails of it swished through the air in a manner that, had it been filmed at the right angle, would made for a dramatic moment in cinema. As there wasn't, and only Dawn was present to witness it, it just made Kaydence look like she was trying too hard to impress.

She definitely seemed to be impressed with herself, however. A mirror had unfolded alongside the clothes rack, and the young hacker took the time to admire herself in it, turning this way and that to get the full effect of what she was wearing. She couldn't help bot notice that the chest padding seemed especially prominent - although part of her wondered if that was just her natural endowments at work.

"Nice," she announced at last, smirking. "Pretty nova stuff, boss. Now I feel like a proper punk!"

"Wherever or not it passes your rigorous fashion standards isn't really the point," was her employer's reply. "I designed this thing specifically to provide you with a modicum of extra protection against things your abilities wouldn't cover. The material is meant to dull the impact of whatever hits you and spread it over the surface, minimizing the damage. The last thing I want is for you to come home riddled with bullets or broken bones because you got it into your head to practice your half-learned movie martial arts at the wrong moment."

Kaydence gave another cackle. "Boss, all you're doin' right now is threatenin' me with a good time. Any job you give me's better than bein' cooped up in your own conapt with an ankle monitor on." She turned to face her employer, and her coat swished in just the right way to match the level of badass she'd reached in her own head.

"And speaking of jobs... when do I get to work?"

Dawn seemingly permitted herself another rare smirk.

"Right now, if you're ready."

"Bitch, when am I not?"

"I didn't know you were, until you just said. But, as you're new, let's start simple, shall we?"

Two Months Before

If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing.
- HP Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu Part I. "The Horror in Clay"

Somewhere off the coast of Whalestrand
March 1st, 2023

It was not yet Kobber season. Not by two months yet. But even so, Whalestrand was making preparations already. Long-term hotel stays were being prepared for, local tourist traps were gearing up. Even local law enforcement and military bases were gearing up, ready to assist and/or detain when it came to the more destructive habits of the transient superheroes. Almost everyone in the city was on high alert, waiting for the excitement that came with the Kobbers.

So the crew of the research ship søhest weren't too surprised when a Kobber appeared before them and made a request. After all, they'd been expecting something like this. Plenty of science-minded Kobbers would have wanted to take a look at the ocean surrounding their temporary new home, just in case it was hiding some nasty secrets. Money was no object - they'd been promised handsome compensation for their trouble. And, in any case, it was their job to do whatever it was

What did give them a moment's pause, however, was where the Kobber wanted to go.

They'd asked if he was correct, and he insisted. One of them - only one - objected, although not very strongly. Dark things were said to have on that stretch of water, he said. No fishermen cast their nets there, no sailboats crossed it. No divers ever went near it, and those who did swore off the place the moment they came back. If they ever came back - two people had vanished and one had washed up on the beach two days later, mutilated in a manner like nothing the coroner could describe. It was, in summary, bad luck to go near that place.

But as it wasn't a very strong objection, and since they were scientists who had been paid a healthy sum, they saw no real reason to refuse. So, in a week's time, the Søhest sailed out one grey, foggy March morning, with the sun struggling to come through, towards the spot.

And when they went, the hestesko, or "horseshoe", came with them, as it always did. The modified triton submersible, only big enough for one, was a constant companion. It had helped in mapping out the shoreline, in charting the health of the reefs and in retrieving important specimens from the floor of the sea. But now it was going to go somewhere it had never been before - a sheer abyss, the drop of the continental shelf that formed a solid wall of rock facing out into the open ocean. It had never gone as far as this, nor really dived as deep as had been requested. And now was that time.

In moments, the Kobber had climbed inside the hestesko. The entrance lid was shut and screwed tightly, the instruments checked and the engine turned on. With a shout from the captain and a whirring of gears, the craft was hoisted out over the open water, then dropped into the rippling grey sea. And in a matter of moments, in a whirring of motors and a flurry of bubbles, it had begun its long descent into the depths.

But as the crew watched their monitors, glancing out occasionally across the iron, rippling ocean, they were desparetly trying to put something out of their minds. And that something was the reason why this place, far out from the shores of Whalestrand, was sometimes called helvedes mund.

Or, translated from the local tongue, "the mouth of hell".

Busted and Blue

I was asked by a computer, a shadow on the wall
An image made by Virgil to rule over us all
To amplify the sirens and to find real amends
I'm through the echo-chambers to other worlds away
- Gorillaz, Busted and Blue

It had been over a month since the incident at Burger Factory. And it had not ended well for Kaydence.

Crime was, by the very design of the city, difficult to do in Neo Manhattan. Oh, people tried all the time, but between the digital and physical surveillance, the AutoCops, financial incentives and citizens more than willing to snitch on each other, criminals tended to last as long in this city as spiders in a bath. The most criminal one could be here was in cybercrime - picksocketing, theft of data, creation of illegal braindances, virus-based vandalism. And even that carried the risk of having armed AutoCops kicking your door down at three in the morning.

But it happened enough that a legal system existed, even on this planet. One that, much to her own surprise, Kaydence had ended up being dragged through.

Valley of the Pagans

Welcome to the land of the permanent sun
Where the flowers are melted and the future is fun
- Gorillaz, The Valley of the Pagans

Our story begins not on Earth. It begins elsewhere. Very, very much elsewhere.

Many years ago, long before Zoofights Corporation took off to the stars, there were thise who had given up the Seanet~ravaged Earth as a bad job beyond saving. This meant that other corporations, rising out of the ashes, were all making the big space race, hoping to snag whatever pieces of galactic pie they could grab. And while there were many failures, there was one group that, in the background, was quietly - almost insidiously - succeeding. Formerly known as Osmond & Sharpe, it would eventually grow and gain influence over the planet Spero in almost the same way as ZF Corp influenced Earth, slowly assimilating almost every kind of service into itself as it swelled like a bullfrog on helium.

By the time of the completion of the planet's new captial city, Neo Manhattan, they'd undergone a rebrand. Partly because the "Sharpe" of the original name had left under mysterious circumstances, but primarily because, in the course of the city's development, they had become the sole provider of almost everything anyone could ask for. They hadn't allowed any competition - with no regulation, any potential rivals were snapped up like chicken nuggets in front of a shark. Food, technology, entertainment, living space... it was all under their thumb, though under many different brand names.

And thus did they become United Everything Services - or UES, for short. Founders and sponsors of Neo Manhattan. And it is in this city, ruled by one brand, that our story begins...