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Showing results for tags 'Special Operations'.
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Oakley Canyon Mynderis - 3185 TAGS: Military, Special Operations Wilhelm, still helping MANTIS yet still wearing Kawashita colors in case anyone was watching, argued dryly with the MANTIS scouts. They didn't want to believe that the Awesomnium vein was where he said it was, so he brandished the E-paper map he'd stolen when he'd defected. He pointed to a spot in the complex series of canyons, passes, ridges, and valleys. The scouts were sceptical anyway, and insisted on checking and rechecking it. Wilhelm was already impatient, but now he was getting angry. He didn't like being out here in the open. Oakley Canyon did not have as much cover as he would have liked. And he was right to be worried. Kawashita colors or not, Wilhelm's defection was well known among Kawashita Operators. Koro should know, since he was the one who'd discovered it for himself back on Aeristus. Koro leaned back on the rocks of his perch. He dug in his sidepouch for a special round, but he held off from loading it into his rifle. "The intel was good, Narbilu-sama. It looks like he's trying to help some scouts find something. My guess is mineral deposit." "Good work, Koro. You're sure it's Wilhelm?" "It's his armor. No one else in Andromeda dresses quite like that, right? All that paint..." "Obviously we need more than that to go on." "I pinged his helmet, which has a heavily modified friend-or-foe system. One of a kind in Andromeda. It's him, sir." "And I have a shot..." BUILDER'S NOTES: -I understand the sensitivity of potentially killing off another player's character, even if the character has been replaced with a new one. Because of this, I am leaving Wilhelm's ultimate fate (for now) a mystery until or unless Goliath reappears and clarifies his plans for the character. It could be some kind of tracker bullet Koro is about to load, and anyway he doesn't take the shot that we see and I made this choice because I think it would be mean for me or anyone to decide what happens to Wilhelm beyond a certain point. At the same time, I made the decision to contextualize Goliath's change of companies and characters as at least partially a defection from Wilhelm (because that makes interesting story possibilities, as you can see in the two builds I've made in reaction to it). Basically, I'm making this note to make sure everyone understands that I'm just trying to tell an interesting story and not looking to hand out ultimate fates to anyone's characters without their permission or anything like that!
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Mastiff Valley Terrial Minor - 3185 Tags: Spying, Special Operations, Military, Vehicle Jackson knew his grin probably made him look foolish, but he didn't care. He'd gotten away with it. No one had noticed his gambit at KD-11. Even the bomber pilot hadn't suspected that the orders were fabricated. He'd been paid to remove all traces of the Dust Demons from the sector, now that Kawashita was getting close to discovering the truth behind all the shell corps and proxy agents. Jackson had no problems betraying Kawashita when the money was good. All he needed now was to reach the rendezvous point in his Series 7 Skip-Speeder. A gift to himself that he'd been able to afford after the MANTIS money came through the network. They were paying well these days for any advantage over Kawashita, but Jackson didn't care about the politics now that he could also afford to get out of the galaxy back to somewhere more civilized. He thought about all his future plans while taking a few moments here and there to enjoy the smooth glide of the Skip-Speeder. What Jackson didn't know was that it was exactly the purchase of the ostentatious all-terrain vehicle that attracted the notice of the one individual in all of Kawashita that you absolutely did not want to notice you, and certainly not if you were selling secrets to MANTIS or helping them cover up their connections to the various pirates and mercenaries that operated on the fringes of Andromeda's escalating tensions. "Koro. I don't have long, but I was hoping you'd have a report on the integrity of KD-11." "Way ahead of you, Raven. I'm pretty sure I found the mole." "That's good news. Are you close to him?" "You might say that." BUILDER'S NOTE: This was my attempt at doing some of the cool colors for vegetation. I like these dark blue cactuses but wish I had more pieces of this color in a wider variety. I'm not 100% happy with the effect, but I'm actually pretty pleased with the speeder and the angle of the shots on this one. C&C always welcome, of course.
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Site 51 Aeristus - 3185 In the initial flyover, Koro surveyed the lay of the land. He could see the bizarre... void... where an ancient awesomniumgenerator from a vanished and ancient civilization had once stood. Koro was tasked to track MANTIS movements after a (short) time recovering and adjusting to his new prosthetics. But he had never expected to find this. He'd read the report Aeralure and Operative Q had filed about the lab they'd discovered underwater on Sorn. Everything in their description, especially the weird tile pattern marking the terrain, checked out with what he was seeing. He had to conclude that MANTIS was studying the site, trying to figure out how an ancient alien generator had disappeared on one planet and appeared several sectors away, on an entirely different planet. Koro didn't like thinking about the implications. Quantum Physics made his robot brain need beer. He landed the Zero mk II "Less Than Zero" a distance away from the MANTIS base and decloaked it. He could only keep it cloaked for short periods of time, and thankfully he'd been able to avoid any MANTIS patrols thus far. He could see their patrol fighters and heavy-duty ATVs crawling over the place, appropriately insect-like. He emerged from the LTZ in his brand-spanking-new Spy Suit and decided it fit pretty good and probably made him look cool, too. "Hey Narbilu-sama... thanks for the new threads. I look awesome." "Koro! Have you reached Aeristus?" "Of course!" "Then never mind how you look. Those credits weren't spent to make you look amazing and heroic like some kind of super space ninja. They were spent so you could get a closer look without MANTIS knowing." "Right. Gomen nasai! I'll get right on it, Narbilu-sama." Koro focused the Spy-Eye in his suit's sweet ninja hood, and zeroed in on the far away MANTIS landing pad. He noticed the Type 8 Aphid gunship... he noticed the two heavily armed MANTIS troopers... he noticed Wilhelm handing something to some MANTIS guy he'd never seen before... "WAIT WHAT!?" "What is it, Koro?" "I think I found Wilhelm, sir. He's... he's handing off a data packet to a MANTIS agent." "Well. That explains some of the security leaks we've had lately." "But this means he's betrayed us, Narbilu-sama." "Koro, don't get distracted from your mission." "But... honor demands that I---" "Wilhelm's day will come." "Sigh..." "Find out what you can about the Site and whatever MANTIS is learning. Then get out of there." "I could cut his head off and no one would know..." "Koro..." "Sigh... okay, okay. Wilhelm's day will come. Koro out." Builder's Note: So I hope the subject matter of this build doesn't step on any toes, but I felt like it was appropriate to not forget about Wilhelm as a character in spite of his player's... switch in loyalties. To have him as a traitor to Kawashita makes the most sense, but I'm leaving his fate open-ended until it's clear what Goliath's intentions are for him (if he has any, that is). In any case, Kawashita has to respond to a defection as being essentially a double-cross due to the sensitive information a defector has access to. Because this is a game, there are no hard feelings, but it does present an interesting opportunity for some solid RP drama and this build/story is simply an attempt to capitalize on that in the spirit of the game. Hopefully there are no objections to this. Thanks for looking!
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Meiji Belt The Fascini Cluster - 3185 Luckily for Koro, the mobile Logistics Station, Goshi Junction, happened to be in transit a relatively short distance from Arium Major. Even though it was a peaceful station, the privateer ships tasked to it for protection might be taken the wrong way if any other Company had people in the area. After recovering the data and getting too much of himself ripped off in the process, he could only hope that The Mechanic was on the station like she was supposed to be. Famous around Kawashita's Operators, The Mechanic was who you went to when any of your cybernetic prosthetics needed an upgrade, a retrofit, or a page one rewrite. Unlike most, Koro's body was mostly machine and that made The Mechanic his best pal. Well, he liked to think so anyway. He just hoped he was getting her on a good day... So he walked into her workshop, holding his old broken arm in his good hand and trying to look cheerful. He was not getting her on a good day. "What the quasar have you done to yourself?" Koro tried to focus on the soothing mechanical whir of the robot arm that held his... robot arm. Unfortunately, his eyes slid back to the whatever-it-was that The Mechanic was holding and pointing at him. It looked almost like a welding torch. He really hoped it wasn't that. Anything but that. "Hey, there's no need to use that kind of language. Besides, it wasn't my fault this time." "I suppose some giant creature from a wild planet just happened to come across your path." "Yes! That! How did you know!?" "Give me a break, Koro. Now hold still while I apply some of this softly glowing yellow fluid to that sorry excuse for a chassis." "You're not going to do any... any welding, are you?" "It would serve you right! But no. You might have noticed those yellowish tendons that came flying out of your body when your arm got ripped off? Well, that's conductive fluid. This is more conductive fluid." "So you're saying my blood is... yellow?" "Sigh... did you even read the manual I gave you? Your blood isn't quasaring yellow, you ninny. You don't even have blood. I swear, if I weren't around you'd come back just a sad little head one day." "I could survive being decapitated? Whoooooaaaa..." "What? No. What!? Uggggh. Let's get on with it. This won't hurt. Probably."
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Somewhere in the equatorial ocean... Arium Major - 3185 Having hit a dead-end on Lesser Direstan, Koro was called back to his safehouse on Orinshi to receive new instructions. The brass have issued a recall of all planetary probe memory chips from certain unclaimed planets such as Arium Major, [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]. Some kind of IT slip-up had [REDACTED] and left the chips with a [REDACTED[ sensitive [REDACTED] , and are thus considered military [REDACTED] to be recovered by operators with extreme priority. Looked like the Dust Demons and their mysterious Commodore would have to wait. Of course, it wasn't like Koro was going to have it easy. His HUD pinged in the equatorial ocean and he piloted Less Than Zero to a safe place before navigating the treacherous rocks that may once have been some kind of island. Suddenly, the signal was moving rapidly toward him and he got a funny feeling. "This better not be another trap." And that's when he saw the giant water worm, rising up out of the ocean like, well, like a giant water worm. Koro crossed his fingers and said prayers to anyone listening, but it was useless because that pinging was definitely coming from the inside of the water worm. Of course. And of course, now is when Narbilu would message for a status update. "Koro. Please report." "Narbilu-sama. Are you aware that the memory chip has been ingested by one of the local fauna?" "That doesn't sound so bad. Can you retreive it?" "Uhhh... I can try?" "You'll do just fine, I'm sure. Narbilu out!" "Sure. What could go wrong?" Koro, being a loyal servant of Kawashita Group, did his best to attract the worm's attention. It must have been hungry, because he didn't have to try very hard. It dove at him, its tendrils tasting the air for the unfamiliar, but surely delicious new prey. Koro's last thought before it swallowed him was that he hoped he gave the beastie indigestion... ... ... ... ... ... ...some time later... Because Koro did in fact give the beastie indigestion, it thrashed around with a great deal of ferocity as he sliced up its innards, searching for the memory chip's signal. Finally, he got his hand around it just as the creature tore its flank open on the same spike of rock Koro had been standing on. This left him, rather worse for wear, deposited on the broken shards. He was assessing his line of work and life choices when he heard a familiar tone in his ear... "Koro. Please report." "Narbilu-sama. I'm here. More or less." "You recovered the chip?" "Yes. Remind me to tell you about it sometime. It was a lot of fun." "You sound... a bit strained. Everything okay?" "Everything's great. I lost some fabric, a sword, my dignity, and an arm." "Oh. Sounds like you'll need to see The Mechanic. I'll make him aware that you'll be visiting. Can you make it to your extraction vehicle?" "I guess I'll have to. But... Narbilu-sama?" "Yes, Koro?" "Please stop trying to kill me, Narbilu-sama." END. BUILDER'S NOTES: -The lengthier story and injection of more humor is definitely owed to MANTIS's team and their tendency for funny, story-heavy builds. You guys are stepping up everybody's game. -This is my first time making a "tire-beast" but I've seen a lot of them out there on Flickr and this is my take on one. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. -Had a lot of problems with light this time. Hopefully it didn't mar my photos too badly. -Oh look, first look at Koro's hair! -Can someone tell me why, on Eurobricks, hitting backspace after enabling bold or italics causes my cursor to bounce back a bunch of characters and otherwise behave oddly? Been an issue for a while. Getting sick of it.
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Dust Demon Base (Alleged) Lesser Direstan - 3185 Koro's infiltration of the base on Greater Direstan yielded plenty of actionable intel, and he was told that it was instrumental in foiling the interference of this mysterious "Dust Demon" force. However, there's no rest for the wicked and honor doesn't grow on trees. Not in Andromeda, anyway. So Koro barely had time to sneak back out of the base before he was tasked to pursue the Dust Demons to a secondary base on Lesser Direstan. Hopefully this would bring him closer to their leader, of whom all is known is his "Commodore" callsign. Still, it seemed easy enough to sneak into a second base. Why not? Well, it was a trap. That's why not. Just as Koro cleared a tunnel and emerged out onto a grassy plateau, he realized that he'd been lured here to this very spot... "Uh oh..." ...and awaiting him was a camouflaged gundrone. An extremely dangerous adversary. His pistol wouldn't do him any good against its armor, so Koro decided that the only school was the old school. BUILDER'S NOTES: You'll probably spot the BURPs used here. I've never experimented with BURPs in a MOC before and I actually think this turned out good. The mech is based off the Desert Runner drones from Appleseed Alpha, a really pretty but kind of shallow CG anime adaptation that came out last year. There's a bunch more pics of different angles for the build on Flickr. Thanks for looking!
