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HUnewearl_Meira
Nov 26, 2002, 11:03 PM
Well, the wait has taken a bit, but here it is, folks. The sequel to the Recollection of Meira. I can honestly say that the delay is directly related to the release of PSO Episodes I & II. You'll find that the style of writing is subtly different, but as it should be. This time, we take a look at Pioneer 2's local life from the perspective of a FOnewmn. So, without further adue, I am happy to present, The Recollection of Crankshaft: Chapter 1.



Chapter 1

I suppose that to keep some measure of formality in this document, I should start by introducing myself. My name is Professor Crankshaft R. Differential. I have a Ph.D. in chewing gum, and I'm a professor of Mechanical Physics at the University of Pioneer 2, otherwise known as UP2. We're a modest school, and we don't accept anyone outside of our city. Mostly because our city is the only unit of civilization on the ship. We're also the only accredited college on the ship. Our Science Department is booming, and our Athletics program is moving along quite well, because, being the only college on the ship, all of our teams win by default. Both of them. Of course, some day, someone's going to figure out that we can pit our Men's Lobby Ball team against our Women's Lobby Ball team, and then our Athletic department is going to be in trouble.
I am not a hunter, nor do I play one on the glowing box. I am, however, a really tall Newman. I stand at a gangly six feet and two inches, and my spiky blue hair sometimes catches the top of a door, especially when I'm wearing my platform shoes, which add another good four inches to my overall height, making me just two inches shorter than the standard door size. Most Newmans wear platform shoes because they're short and they want to look taller. I wear them because I'm tall and I like to scare the sweet cream out of my freshmen students. It's funny how a bold High School Senior can become a timid College Freshman in a mere couple of months.
I'm writing this story, because I feel that in my goofy platforms, I have literally stumbled over something that others should know, and probably don't. This is knowledge that's mostly reserved for high-level government officials like Principal Tyrell and the Council, but it's mostly information that's been retrieved by Hunters. I'd sum it all up right here, but then that would make the story itself rather anticlimactic, and this entire book would be rather unwarranted. I can see it now. The book reviewers are all saying, "This book by Professor Differential is great! You only need read the first three or four paragraphs, and you're as good as finished!"
Well, I'm just gonna have to hold you in suspense for a while, and make you earn it. In the mean time, I'd better pick an arbitrary date to start this from. It all started one day when I was talking a stroll down the street, but I was strolling down the street for a very precise reason, so I suppose I need to explain that part first.
Being a young, taller professor at the most prestigious college a resident of Pioneer 2 can hope to go to, and in fact, a professor at the only college that a resident of Pioneer 2 can go to, I often receive letters. Big ones, small ones, ones with good grammar, ones with bad grammar, and ones with grammar like mine, which often defies explanation, even though it may very well need it.
So anyway, yeah, I get letters. Some are on official business, some are from my local worshipers, and some are from raving college women that want a piece of Crankshaft. Well, maybe not as many as I would like, but it's happened once or twice. Much to my dismay however, I've yet to receive one from one that appeals to me. I'm not going to say that I've ever gotten a letter from a beached whale, though I might consider suggesting that I've gotten one from a beached octopus. That was one MEAN octopus, too.
So, yes, letters. Must attempt to stay on topic. It's funny how receiving things here and there can complicate your life. One day, an undisclosed number of months ago, I received a letter from a former student. It was full of questions about machinery and photons, and so forth. So, I'm reading this letter, and preparing in my cortex, ideas for a reply, but then someone walked through my office to get to the bathroom and totally ruined my train of thought, which, strangely enough, caused me to drift off in thought about sandwiches, and the amount of energy it takes to gnaw on one, depending on the staleness of the bread. Or maybe I was thinking about where I was in the letter. Could be either, I suppose. On the other hand, at some point I figured out that with just the right balance of staleness and wholesome goodness, you can eat a sandwich and burn more calories than you're consuming.
So anyway, I got off on some tangent, so I decided to put the letter down, and go have a stale sandwich. Luckily, I didn't have to go far, because I just happened to have one already prepared for me by some admiring person, who I'm quite certain must've been myself. Ah yes, that's right, I had prepared the sandwich for lunch, and forgot to eat it. So this, being around mid-morning three days later, on a Monday morning in fact, I decided that it was time to make good on the eats.
It was a good sandwich, but the bread was stale. Given this, my reaction was to go to my mini-fridge and extract some preserved milk. The expiration date was about a week after Pioneer 2 left Coral, but I took a hint from our mode of transit, and tweaked the fridge with a strange combination of home-built particle accelerators and exotic refrigerants, all stuck together with chewing gum. And duct tape. In any case, in addition to keeping things cold, the refrigerator also keeps things in a temporal pocket, so every second of time in there is something like ten years to my time. Milk was my test subject for this.
Of course, my first thought on testing it, was to stick my head in, but then I thought about what would happen if I were to stick my head in and activate it, and I realized that I probably wouldn't like that very much. So instead, I rigged the light switch to my little customization unit, so that it shuts on and off, depending on whether the door is open. My only problem is that I then had to choose whether the light was to stay on or off. When it occurred to me that, the difference between it being on or off was immeasurable because of how slow the power drain would be. It's interesting to think though, that the life expectancy of the bulb in my refrigerator is about ten years, but then, ten years from the day that I installed my customization, it will only have been about three seconds. Well, plus the time that I had it open. Then again, the mini-fridge was twelve years old, already when I customized it. So by my calculations, the bulb could've blown up all over my milk any nanosecond now.
So anyway, I got some milk, and I poured it into what I'm supposing was a clean glass. Now that I had my milk, I took a drink, then dipped my stale sandwich in it. The drink was obligatory of course, because well, I had to make sure that it wasn't soured. I at least knew that it was still liquid, because I was able to pour it out of the carton. It had been in my fridge for ten years, after all. So I dipped the stale sandwich into the milk, and decided that a thought that was in the back of my mind through all of this was indeed right. That thought being that a bologna and cheese sandwich probably wouldn't be very pleasant when dipped in milk. It was malleable now at least, so I figured, the heck with it. It would do.
It eventually hit me that I'd be better off to go and get buy something to eat, rather than crunching on this milky sandwich. This determination came to me when it dawned on me that a person with my high metabolism doesn't need to worry about eating stale sandwiches to burn more calories when they eat, because in theory, I could power a nuclear mini-fridge for a month with just a single meal.
So my associate comes out of the bathroom as I'm making a funny face while trying to consume this rock, and she says, "Crankshaft, why don't you go out and buy a fresh sandwich?" My associate, Laya, is a well-dressed blond woman, by the way, always with her fancy dresses and big hats. She is a professor of Technical Physics, of course.
At this point, I dropped my sandwich and bizarrely yelled, "No, I will not go on a date with you!" Which, I sometimes do when she speaks to me, simply because it disturbs her so much.
"I told you to buy yourself some edible FOOD, Crankshaft! Go!" She pointed at me accusingly, and made a mean face. Though as hard as she tries, she really does have difficulty looking threatening. Not like me, and the way that I tower over short people like a really tall person over a vertically impaired midget. As opposed to a vertically gifted midget. You know, the kind that plays professional sports, laughs at short midgets, and smacks his forehead on countertops when he gets in a rush and walks without looking.
So I decided that I needed some food, which therefore lead me to the cafeteria, where you can get stale food that convincingly portrays itself as fresh food, but your stomach just might tell the difference. Actually, I'm rather certain that all the food is indeed fresh, at least once a week. The rest of the week can be debated on. I have to say though, nowhere else have I ever seen preservatives injected into an otherwise untainted apple.
I stared at the selection for a while. It was the first day after a weekend, so the food, as far as I can guess, was fresh, at least. The hot stuff was still hot for reasons other than the microwave lights, at least. Still, for some reason, deep fried butter sticks and the many variants offered in the cafeteria weren't seeming very appetizing to me at the time. Maybe I was a little woozy after eating so much of that stale bologna sandwich dipped in milk, or maybe the food is just genuinely bad there. But then I remembered that it was only mid-morning for my personal sleep schedule, so I therefore didn't need to eat anything to begin with.
So I started to wander back to my office, when a student stopped me in the hall to ask about the test I had given on Friday. Typical questions about whether or not I'd graded it yet, and my typical answers that consist of things like, "Yes. You got an F." or my personal favorite, "Uh... My dog ate it!"
This made me think of when my next class was, which I recalled wasn't until the mid-afternoon. So I thought I would take a walk. I hate it when I get an idea to go somewhere, though, because then I'm faced with the task of deciding where to go, even though I have no urgent need to go anywhere. Besides, I still hadn't gotten anything to eat, even though I didn't need anything.
Forgoing the decision to figure out where I was going to go, I decided to just leave, and I took a stroll down the street. The streets are always interesting. They're full of an odd mixture of intelligent people, and people who have peculiar accents that make them sound like they flunked their language classes beyond any measurable level. These people tend to be the most dangerous though, because in light of their failings, they often turn to crime to make a living. I think. Maybe I'm wrong, and it's all just a ruse by the intelligent people, who are all secretly out to get us.
I strolled down the street and did some window-shopping. Staring at windows for an extended period of time, though, tends to get boring. I never understood the premise. Glass isn't that interesting. Sometimes the stuff behind it is, though. So I looked at that instead. Why is it that clothing shops out number even food shops? I can't walk down the street without seeing half a dozen clothing shops for every half of a different shop. Shops like Gilbert's Outpost, Hilda Blue and The Space dot the urban plane like clothing shops in a mini-mall. It's absurd. The thing that bothers me most is that the variety isn't even that expansive. Admittedly, though, I see what some of my female students wear, and I suppose I shouldn't complain. Why, if it weren't for stores like these, the eye candy jar would run dry before too long. Either that or we'd all wander around nekid, but I think I can appreciate clothing stores for being present not to allow that in some cases.
I eventually saw a huge, tank-like android wander by with a young, pointy-eared woman. They were talking and joking as they wandered along, and seemed an auspicious couple. Pretty short she was, but well-endowed indeed. They stopped for something to eat at a cafe across the street from an electronics store, which made me remember that I hadn't gotten anything to eat for this new meal that I had invented for myself.
Having my fill of looking at stuff that I do not own and shall not buy, I decided to walk further down the street, and maybe I'd be lucky enough to find that cafe that the android and the young woman had wandered to. I had its entrance in plain site, after all. As I approached the shop, I noticed something moving through the crowd quite swiftly.
I stood and blinked for a moment, then saw what it was. It was another tall Newman guy, much like myself, but he was running, desperately trying to get away from something else that was running through the crowd like a big oppressive group of people or something.
So this guy, keenly dressed in green and meticulously maintaining balance on snazzy platform shoes to accelerate his height to new levels of intoxication, pushed his way through the flowing crowds of the streets, careful not to knock anyone down, but certainly bumping into things. He seemed pretty well quicker than the big group of strangely oppressive individuals that wanted to probably beat him goofless, but watching someone be chased by a HUmar and a couple of RAcasts is like watching someone be tracked by a couple of rangers and a hunter. Sooner or later, the rangers are just gonna give up and shoot, and the hunter's gonna catch up and lay down the smack. I suppose that goes without saying, though.
So I'm watching this guy rampage through the crowd, desperately fleeing the group of oppressive individuals who seemed like they wanted to do something rather unpleasant to the guy that was running. I would imagine that each one very well may have had many curse words of great variety and varying vulgarity running through their heads at sporadic intervals. I think, at least. I can't imagine that someone would remain cool and calm, whether they were the hunter or the hunted. Or the ranger or the ranged. Whichever is more correctly applied to the described situation.
For some reason, through all of this, I was just standing there with a peculiar expression on my face, which I would describe had I actually seen it. Finally, after what seemed like paragraphs of time and information, this other tall Newman in snazzy Newman-like style clothing, likely purchased at one of the innumerable clothing shops in the city, came running toward me, and by chance, clunked into me. Perhaps this was deliberate, perhaps it wasn't, but I'm rather inclined to think it was, as he then looked me in the eyes, and thrust a couple of articles into my hands and said, "Take these, I'll find you to get them back at another time!" Or something to that effect. At this point, he madly ran in the direction he was headed in, and I calmly sidestepped the unwitting group of strangely oppressive individuals who were chasing the other guy.
So now, I had these objects. One was a large token-like object, designed to be placed in a proper receptacle, which would be worn, and it would light up slightly. I later figured this out to be a Section ID. I am as of yet, rather unclear of the exact identity of this Section ID, though all things considered, for a layperson non-hunters' guild member such as myself, such things are of little concern. Also in my hands, was a key and some manner of compact disc, which I was unclear of the purpose of, but figured that it probably contained some sort of vital information that I would eventually find had no purpose but to be of no purpose to me. Mind you, this was not a technique disk, which is considerably different in design. This was, rather, a data disc of some variety.
So that is how everything began. That is what started my whole involvement in this loopy ordeal, which I shall attempt to describe in the coming chapters of this writing.



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Toyzferall
Nov 26, 2002, 11:34 PM
LOL! That was so awesome! I VERY rarely laugh out loud at text... It's just not that funny. But this was great! I've read something else by you, I believe... And it was good, too. Really good stuff! I wanna learn that, dress up like a FOnewm, and give it as a speech to my drama class! Of course, you wrote it, though... Anyways... Good! I'd love it if you'd chec kout my fanfic, and at least write a chapter on it. It's a group thing. So far, noone has even approached me on the topic of doing it. But enough ranting. For the last time, this was good! Can't wait for the rest...

HUcastAndroid888
Nov 28, 2002, 11:32 AM
Must...have...more.
Is this going to have any references to the Recollection of Meira, or will they be two completely different stories?

AzureBlaze
Nov 28, 2002, 08:59 PM
I like the story so far!
It's a nice change of pace, for being both humorous and written in first-person. The professor is eccentric and hilarious in his wandering description of what's going on. I can't wait to see what happens next, keep this up,

Kupi
Dec 3, 2002, 07:55 PM
Once again, your verbal artwork never ceases to amaze me, Meira. You've got a humorous quality that I love about written stories! ^_^

BTW, are you on the Gamecube version? We need to run into each other sometime if so!

HUnewearl_Meira
Dec 12, 2002, 02:47 AM
Heh... Crankshaft is indeed a wordy individual, isn't he? My attempts at defining his personality through context have already succeeded in annoying my fiance who nonetheless insists on a desire to hear the story out. I apologize to those who loved Meira and hate Crankshaft, but Crankshaft does move along a bit more quickly in Chapter 2, but not without the obligatory anecdotes that define the way he thinks. Also, to answer HUcastAndroid888's question (for others who are wondering, as I answered the question already via private message), if you're attentive enough and you remember The Recollection of Meira vividly enough, then you'll notice that Meira and Zeirom have already made a cameo.

And just so that everyone who is interested is aware, I do indeed have the GameCube version of PSO, but alas, I have no modem or BBA. I am, however, awaiting a BBA ordered directly from Nintendo, so in theory, as soon as Nintendo restocks, I shall be running around online. If Nintendo's website is to be assumed as honest and otherwise correct, then I should be online by New Year's. Hopefully. Maybe. Urg...

All right, so anyway, here comes Chapter 2. Brace yourself for more of the absurdity that is Crankshaft.


Chapter 2

Laya is a lovely young woman. Being such, she also has lovely hands, which are adorned with lovely knuckles. These knuckles, I have, from time to time, had momentary opportunities to study, as they bent, being the joints they are, to ball her lovely hand into a fist, which would then be thrust roughly toward my nose at an accelerating pace, as if she wanted me to get a really good look. These study sessions generally don't last very long, however, as they are generally terminated after those lovely knuckles have strayed too close to the body of my nose, and have caused nasal ruptures to appear in a logically random arrangement.
Don't get me wrong, I have no particular feelings for Laya, though I find that as a colleague, she is rather pleasant to be around. That and she's very intelligent. Even though, she still seems to take my compliments the wrong way. Many studies of her knuckles have begun with phrases being emit from my vocal cords, such as, "You have a very large hiney." And, "You smell very fragrant, today."
Nonetheless, it is because of these random studies that I generally like to carry tissues on me. Not that carrying a package of tissues has anything to do with anything; I just thought I'd throw that out there, because I would therefore have an opportunity to express the behavior Laya sometimes exhibits around me.

When I returned to my office, I was confronted by a glass of milk and a stale bologna sandwich, which wished to rival the hamburger and cola I had purchased at the cafe down the street. I placed my new food next to my old food, and sat down to watch the stare match occur between the two. My arms folded on my desk, my chin on my arms, I watched. The combat would be between a larger hamburger filled with ground meaty goodness and a variety of condiments, with its sidekick being a tall frosty glass of cola, and a hardened bologna sandwich with the stank of ages on its side, with its war companion, a glass of 7 year old milk.
It was a fierce competition, but fortunately for me, this battle was a beauty contest, and not a trial of sentiment. The milk was promptly dumped down the sink, and the sandwich disposed of in a wastebasket, which would hopefully be emptied before the mayonnaise on the sandwich developed its own self-awareness, and choose to eat me.
As I sat in my chair at my desk, leaning back, and displaying my really tall shoes to all the world that would happen to see into my office, I looked around. My desk is in the middle of the room, and it's more or less, a medium sized desk. Nothing fancy like they have in government offices. There's no sleek titanium or laconium edges, and my desktop does not have a computer console built into it. It's more old-fashioned, made out of wood, and naturally, there are papers scattered all about.
Most of the papers are tests or homework that have been graded, or are in the process of being graded. I tend to eat at my desk, which I would imagine, is why my students sometimes complain of having grease spots or ketchup stains on their returned homework. Since they started complaining about the ketchup stains, I try to compensate for the inconvenience, by smudging them into a smiley face before it dries.
There are three doors into my office. One enters from the hall, one enters from Laya's office, and the other enters from the restroom. If your point of entry is from the restroom, then my first question when I see you may very likely be, "How long were you in there?" Most considering that if you enter from the restroom and I never saw you enter, then I really have no idea how long you've been in there, and if I've been around for a while, then I may expect the answer to be truly absurd.
I have many shelves in my dusty office, all of which are cluttered with more papers, assorted junk, old mechanical experiments, and a variety of tools. The shelves are not an aesthetic type. They are purely for function. The frame is bare metal, and the shelves themselves are bare wood. The whole thing is adjustable. And they work. Though, I had to move one so that now the door out to the hallway doesn't open all the way, because Laya was complaining to me that she couldn't get to the restroom with the shelf right in front of the door to her office. That conversation, of course, broke out in an incident of me yelling, for everyone to hear, "No, I will not go on a date with you!" The conversation ended, of course, with a study of Laya's lovely knuckles. Which figures, I suppose. We were in the middle of the cafeteria at the time, during a lunch break, no less.

After the problem of having food to eat, that has not yet been eaten was finally solved, I developed a profound desire to examine what I had gotten stuffed into my hands. First came the section ID. The symbol itself was a bright shade of blue, while the background was a very dark black. The whole thing was made from some manner of polymer, so it had a very high-gloss finish to it, making it shiny and smooth and all high-glossy. The symbol was made of a polymer as well, and was semi transparent, while the black part it was embedded in was most definitely a finished and dyed metal of some variety. There were also four gold prongs lined up on the back, offset to one side from the center. They were spring loaded of course, so they could be pushed in, and they'd come back out. This is where this device plugs into an ID slot and can therefore be powered to light up the symbol, and also, to store data concerning gate passes and such. There was a name engraved on the side. "Fender Clutch", it said. I shrugged, having finished my analysis of that, and moved on to the disk.
The disk was small. Perhaps three and a half centimeters in diameter. The data area wasn't very large either, but it used a high-density storage format, and it was also re-writable. The evident storage size was considerably larger than what is publicly available, which leads me to believe that it probably came from a research facility of some sort, which I do suspect, that the crew of Pioneer 1 indeed did set up several research facilities on the surface. Well, one at least. Possibly two, I suppose.
It was while I was studying this, and just getting around to examining the label, that I noticed Laya looking over my shoulder. "What are these things?" she asked.
"They're homework papers. I hand them to students, they fill them out, then return them to me an--" I was interrupted from my glorious explanation, when Laya got annoyed at me.
She yelled in my pointy ear, "I mean the things on your desk, you blue-haired freak!"
"The homework papers?"
"No!"
"The... Papers with homework on them?"
She shook her head, as she crossed her arms and brought up her hand to rest her forehead on her fingers. A loud aggravated sigh came from her mouth.
"You're not talking about the computer terminal screen floating over the corner here, do you? Laya, I'm disappointed in you. You should know this stuff by now. How do you access your BEE messages and simple mail?"
Her eyes closed, and looking rather tense, she slowly iterated to me, "Why do I even bother asking you questions?"
"But isn't that another one?" I asked, then quickly turned to look thoughtful and continued, "But then, I suppose that you may not have been projecting the question at me; except that you referred to me as 'you' which indicates that you indeed were talking to me. So indeed, it would be another que--" I stopped only because she grabbed my face with one hand.
She then snatched the section ID with the other held it up and yelled to me, "What is this?? And the disc you were looking at, what is that??"
By now, I was more clear on what she was inferring about, and therefore able to answer her. Removing her hand from my face, I said, "Oh! If you wanted to know about THAT, you should've said, 'What's that section ID' and 'What is that super high-density data storage device mini-disc', instead of, 'What are those things on your desk', you see? Sometimes it helps to be more specific." My next thought was, "Oh, she's giving me another study of her knuckles." The rest was pretty foggy for the next couple of beats.

As I came to, I sat up, and checked my upper lip for blood. Evidently, she'd missed my nose, but successfully crammed her fist into my cheek bone. This explained rather effectively, why my cheek hurt so much. With my vision returning to me, I looked around, and saw that Laya was examining the section ID.
"So where did you get this? And who is this Fender guy?" she asked.
"Well, you see," I replied, "I took your advice and went out to get some food. After being mildly distracted by looking at windows, then briefly distracted by looking at the items behind them, most of which were clothes, as there are a lot of clothing stores in this city for some deranged reason..." I paused, trying to remember what I was talking about, but continued, "What was the point that I was making? Oh yeah! So, I got distracted on my way to get food, but then carried on by following the lead of a large android and a somewhat short, pointy-eared woman who was breastily gifted, and got to a cafe, but was distracted again when I got to the front of the cafe because another tall pointy eared guy, not unlike myself, came running through the crowd, chased by a couple or three mean looking guys, that made me think of an oddly oppressive group of aggravated individuals." Mind you, I left no affliction at the end of that sentence to indicate it was finished, not for the purpose of annoying Laya, but because I honestly couldn't think of where I was going with it, and I think it may well have been an incomplete sentence, but yet, with the properties of a run-on sentence.
"And?!?" Laya demanded of me.
"And uh... Hmm.... So... He smacked into me, then looked at me for a moment, shoved those in my hand, said something about finding me later, then took off."
"So he just gave you his section ID and a mini-disc?"
"Yeah. It gives me the notion, which I should probably ignore, that I should use it to go down to Ragol and have a look around. I hear they have cake down there."
In retrospect, I believe I was correct. I should've ignored that notion. Unfortunately, where ever I am involved, there is a new law of mechanical physics that must be applied to everything that I do. And that law can be summed up in one simple equation: Notion = Motion. This, of course, means that as soon as I finished the class I was teaching that afternoon, I headed for the lobbies on the Hunters' Deck.

The lobbies are a dramatic departure from the streets. Primarily because, wandering around in the lobbies, there are no shops, and I'm fairly confident that if I anger someone, they can, and probably won't hesitate to pound me into a gooey mush on the counter. As I entered the first lobby, I looked around. Fairly drab, but there was a nice view of Ragol out the window.
The usual variety of Hunters were wondering about. Some seemed intelligent, some didn't. One group of muscle-bound men seemed to be making a point of hitting on every pointy-eared woman that came through. The rest of their time seemed to be spent grunting at each other, and posing dramatically.
I was intimidated by these HUmars, as their dramatic posing skills far exceeded my own, so I quickly made my way to the counter, snapping the section ID into a proper receptacle, that I had purchased on the way.
Standing at the counter, I looked at the lady standing on the other side for a moment. With a blank stare on my face, she looked back at me, waiting for me to say something, naturally, with an absurd smile on her face, which looked mostly fake, but was obviously part of a job requirement. I really wasn't sure what to do here, but there was a console in front of me.
"Can I help you, Sir?" she finally asked.
My blank stare persisted, and after a moment, I finally figured out the most proper response I could make. I pointed at Ragol out the huge dome-ish window and said, "I want to go there."
"Sir... Do you have a party waiting, or are you planning to create a new team?" When I heard her ask this, I stared blankly again for a moment. "Sir?" she asked.
I pointed again. "There. Send me there."
"All right, Sir..." she said. "If you would just type a name on the console in front of you, I can send you to the Hunters' Guild, where you will be able to go to the surface."
"A name?"
"Yes. It can consist of anything."
"So, I can give it, say, some variety of curse words of great complexity?"
"We'd generally prefer that you keep it polite, Sir."
"So what if I just give it my own name?"
"That will be just fine."
"All right, now you're makin' sense!" With that, I promptly typed in, "Pencilneck", and let the woman behind the counter take care of the rest.

Before I knew it, I was standing in the Hunters' Guild. There was a large thing in the middle of the room, with some sort of hologram spinning around inside. On the other side of that, was another counter. There was also a large window with a view of the planet, and on the same wall as the teleporter back to the lobby, there was a door that lead out into the plaza. I didn't know that it lead out into the plaza at the time, of course. My natural inclination was to go to the counter.
Standing in front of the counter, I stared at the woman on the other side for a while. This time, I didn't see her face at first, though. This time, my attention was instead attuned to the strangely low-cut of her uniform. From my elevated position, I could've sworn that I was looking down upon a crevice large enough to hide some absurdly large vehicle in. I could've gone on staring at this, but she soon asked me, "Can I help you, Sir?" A perfectly generic phrase, indeed. This time, I didn't say anything. I just pointed out the window.
She looked out the window, then back at me and said, "Sir?"
Without changing the expression on my face, I continued to point and said, "I want to be there."
She looked again, then back at me and said, "Would you like to commission a quest, or would you like to take up a quest, Sir?"
I dropped my arm. "I don't need no stinking quest. I just want to go to the surface."
"Then all you need do, Sir, is go out that door, and take a right at the large door in the wall," she replied. I stared blankly at her again for a moment, then turned around, and started heading for the door that she mentioned.
The door opened as I approached it. Simple enough, seems like most doors on Pioneer 2 are automatic. As if it would kill someone to have to turn a knob every now and then. Just imagine all the cases of carpel tunnel syndrome that would be reported. Our medical centers would be flogged with people complaining of nasty door knob turning injuries. Then door knob companies would get sued for medical bills, and of course, pain and suffering. I suppose the principal would eventually have to step in, and tell someone to stop complaining. I think he should administer a big, disrespectful man-slap to one of those whiners. I hate those people.
Door knob injuries, indeed. In my day, we didn't HAVE door knobs! We had to open doors with our teeth! Well, we would've if I were really old. And it would explain why I wouldn't have any teeth at an old age. Except that I'm young now, and I have all my teeth, as far as I know. Can you imagine trying to open a solid titanium door with your teeth? The dental industry would be booming. People would be getting mechanical prosthetic teeth left and right, and it would probably be up to me, the university's Professor of Mechanical Physics, to design them, because I'm all smart like that, and I've got a reputation in mechanical matters, plus I've got a Ph.D. in chewing gum.
So I stepped through this automated automatic door, which automatically opened for me. Directly in front of me, a distance which I don't want to bother estimating, was the door into the local medical center. Very important for hunters, is a medical center. They use medical centers quite extensively, because they have very significant medical needs. They're even worse than Diabetics. Great Light forbid that there should be a diabetic hunter. Egad, that would be a bad thing. Poor diabetic hunter. I should buy him some insulin.
Off to my left, there was a bit of a corridor, or rather, maybe a bridge. It was a foot-street, if that's a valid descriptive word. There was a small shopping district over there, and a checkroom for hunters to put what they buy down there. At this point, I made the reasonable assumption that weapons could be purchased at this location, and being the logical, albeit easily distracted fellow that I am, I proceeded in that direction.
The shops themselves are a neon extravaganza, with big neon signs containing neon lights that cast neon light on everything around them. It's interesting what happens when a little bit of electricity is run through a sealed tube containing a gas consisting primarily of neon. The interesting thing here, is that the neon gas, even though it's a gas, and not solid matter, will conduct electricity just enough that it will travel through it. The result of this conductivity, is a light spectrum starting in the ultra-violet range, which is what causes the glowing effect. The exact color of the light is determined by the color of the glass the tube is constructed from. The neatest thing about a neon light tube though, is what happens when you put one lengthwise in a hydraulic press, and crush it. Glass flies all over the place. Looks even neater when there's an electrical current running through it.
So in any case, after a moment or two of standing around and grunting with the clerk behind the Weapons counter, I purchased a simple cane. More or less just a stick, but it had a fairly blunt photon surface on one end, which made me think it might be fun to go and smack something upside the head for no good reason. I fear this sort of thinking may be exactly why many hunters become hunters to begin with. Perhaps it's a hypnotic effect of the photons, that it just makes you want to go out and plague something with severe photon burns.
In an excited manner, using the most exaggerated movements I could scheme up, I dashed out the door, and narrowly maintained balance on my over-emphasized PLATFORM SHOES, only to leap halfway across the foot-street, and pose dramatically as I landed, facing the big door to the room with the teleporter to Ragol in it. I hummed some random tune as I pointed my shiny new cane toward the door, attempting to formulate something that would sound like the theme of some comic book super-hero, though the exact details of my success are sketchy at best. I think I more or less just ended up humming the theme from my personal favorite prime-time show, The Guild.
The Guild is an interesting show. It's a Hunter Drama about a group of Hunters' Guild members who go and solve mysteries down on Ragol. It stars Kelley Murphy as the HUmar known as Infurno. Great show. One time our hero, Infurno, cornered, with no way other way out, missing one mechgun, took a rolling dive and shot down the Barbarous Wolf that had him cornered. It was almost poetic. Most consider that episode to be a classic. Well, that and the episode when he had to confront his evil twin half-brother. That was quite dramatic, as well. Shoot, if I'd been there, I woulda gave him a mean punch, right in the nose, myself. There is not a curse word with the proper degree and variety of vulgarity to properly describe that individual.
Anyway, I was standing there posed dramatically, with the few civilians that were wandering around staring at me like I was some sort of deranged freak. At which point I broke my pose and yelled at everyone, "What?? Haven't you ever seen a dramatic pose before???" It was like they were sheltered or something. Gosh.
At this point, I remembered what I was here for, and I approached the large door at a jogging pace. As I got to the door, it started to open. I figured this was good. I believe that it had a motion detector, as well as an RF signal to read gate pass information from section ID storage devices, as well as a wearable computer terminal signal. I figure on the terminal signal, because a menu popped up on the terminal device I had hanging from a belt strap around my waist.
Given that, as I stepped into the teleporter pad, I observed the menu on my terminal. There was a list of four sites available to me. Forest, Caves, Mines, and Ruins. Knowing what I know now, evidently my good friend, who's not actually my friend, but is in a figure of speech, Fender Clutch, had really been around. Nonetheless, I chose the forest because it just seemed like a good idea at the time. I wanted to see what the Forest was really like. Plus, I figured it would be a pleasant place to start exploring. It's nice to see the sun every now and then.




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HUnewearl_Meira on 2002-12-11 23:52 ]</font>

Hikosaka
Dec 12, 2002, 03:44 PM
I really like how it's going so far. Well written and humorous as well. I'm looking forward to the next installment. http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif

Kupi
Dec 14, 2002, 09:37 AM
I honestly don't think I've read a non-professional work that has been this funny. O_o I actually laughed aloud at this (in a good way), which kinda disturbed the guys in my computer class... >_>()

Keep up the good work!

HUnewearl_Meira
Jan 14, 2003, 09:19 PM
Sorry it took so long to get this next chapter up, folks. My computer's been down lately (just getting back up... and with a massive new hard drive at that), so I haven't really had readily available internet access, but even more of a stunt to the growth of this fic, I keep forgetting to take my disk to work with me to bring the file back home (I generally work on it during lunch). Oops. Oh yeah, and my BBA came in, so I'm online with the GameCube now, too. I'll be around, so I hope to meet many of you online! In any case, good news, I've got a good chunk of chapter 4 written already, so hopefully I'll have that up within the next week or so. Hope you all enjoy!



Chapter 3

Teleporters are interesting devices. When teleporting, you feel a slight tug for a moment, and then you find yourself at your destination. The technology behind the device is based on the concept of taking a point in space in one location, and dragging it to a point in space in another location. The effect is very much the same as the Ryuker technique, but using computers and the necessary mechanical components, the results can be much more exact, and as a result, pin-point locations can be teleported to, instead of just a generalized, familiar location, like, say, a deck on Pioneer 2.
The exact function of the teleporters is even more interesting, however. At some point in the history of our culture, a study of the technique of Ryuker was done, and it was found that is is indeed very similar to the archaic series of Gra techniques. The Gra series, however, has not yet been written to technique disks, as it is one of the most difficult series of techniques to learn, and even more difficult to describe, as it deals with the direct manipulation of gravity. A Force that manages to master the Gra series would not be far from mastering other neat techniques such as Telekinesis, which it is said, some varieties of Force did at one time have mastry of, not to mention the ability of Telepathy. Some old legends even speak of an order of Forces, the leader of which, at the end of his life span, would seal all of his memories in an artifact, so that the next generation of leadership could adopt them. This tradition may still exist, but I really can't say.
Oh yeah, I was explaining the Teleporters. All right, well, see, Ryuker is accomplished by more or less, causing a gravity spike between where you are, and where you want to go. It's quite localized, and there are actually a great variety of ways to do it. The Ryuker technique, relies mostly on the user's force of will, but telepipes use a broad spectrum of sound waves to accomplish the job. More telepipes now contain digital components that keep the gravity spike pointed at the location where it's going to go, however, a Telepipe can never lay a gravity spike where one end is in a vacuum. The actual teleporters, however, use the most efficient method.
The method that the teleporters use is powerful enough to send a party from one location at Point A, to another location at Point B as far as ninety thousand lightyears away. There are two types of teleporters on the Pioneer 2. Personal teleporters, and the big teleporter. The difference between them, is the power source, but they still operate on the same principle. The method is to heat a number of spinning ceramic disks within a magnetic field, to generate a large amount of anti-gravity. This anti-gravity is then reflected into a spike to the destination, by a very sharp magnetic field. This happens all in an instant, as all that is needed is the gravity spike, so the occupants of the teleporter don't even feel it. Once the spike is made, the location in space is pulled to the teleporter, and the occupant of the teleporter is tugged to the other location in space. Once the teleporter has been cleared, the magnetic mirror is dropped, and the gravity spike is therefore destroyed.

So, tangent asside, back to business and down the straight and narrow, I got down on the surface of Ragol using this teleporter. The first thing to greet me was a butterfly floating about. After a moment of flinching at it, I realized that it was harmless, so I marched onward.
Proceeding from the small room that I was in, onward through a laser gate, I came to a larger room, where three chubby yellow fowls fell from the sky, stood, and approached me. There were, in fact, quite cuddly-looking creatures, and they did in fact, seem to be qutie friendly, as they were approaching me in a fashion that did very much reminded me of marshmellow peeps.
As they surrounded me, I had visions in my head of myself as the magical Rappy Master, with beams of holy light all around me, and as I knealed down to pat the head of the one in front of me, my vision was suddenly shattered when the obscenely misguided thing jumped up and bit me. It BIT me! I suppose that this is the first important point I wanted to make about Ragol in this document. Ragol has these huge chubby birds that will BITE you! They BITE! They will peck and nibble you to death, if you let them!
My first reaction to this, was, of course, shock. If I were to wear contact lenses, they surely would've been ejected from my eyes when they popped halfway out of their sockets that day. So I just stayed there for a moment, knealing, my eyes more open than I'd ever experienced them being open before (well, accept for maybe the time when I stuck my hand in my toaster and found something fuzzy in there, but that's a different story altogether), and finally, after a moment of this, I jumped and yelled something which was very likely some obscure obscenity that isn't necessarily existant in any known language other than perhaps the language of Holy-cow-oh-my-god-what-the-heck-was-that-I-don't-know-what-it-was-but-holy-cow-oh-my-god-that-actually-rather-hurts-like-some-obscene-thing-that-grabs-you-and-makes-you-feel-pain-for-a-while-because-it's-mean-and-it-friggin'-HURTS.
After that moment, I was playing golf, using my cane and some giant marshmellow peeps. Some jumping up and down, grunting and yelling ensued, but soon stopped as a group of very large dog-like creatures appeared. Savage wolves, indeed. To summarize what happened after they showed up, I ran around in circles while they chased me, until I eventually jumped a closed gate and found a teleporter to the next area of the forest. I sincerely hoped that the next area wouldn't be quite so hostile.
Much to my own dismay, I spent a good amount of time running around in circles again in this second area of the forest, which is indeed, a garden in front of the Central Dome. First, I ran in circles whilest trying to escape the wrath of giant bipedal gophers of DOOM. Then, I ran in circles whilest trying to escape the bite of giant basketball-sized vampire mosquitoes. The mosquitoes, however, I was able to subdue, after finding a group of devil-birds, and batting them at the mosquitos' nest. I also ran around in circles from more obscenely large dog-like things that wanted to eat me. Barbarious creatures, they are.
Soon enough, I found myself running from a massive fire-breathing ape of severe bruising, and I ran and ran and ran around in circles from this thing, screaming at the top of my lungs. Just as I thought I was going to be out of breath, though, something astounding happened. I ran into the back of the ape, and promptly fell over. As I looked up, the monster wobbled, and fell forward. Evidently, I had made it dizzy.
Wasting no time, I jumped up and posed dramatically for a moment, before taking my mighty cane, and jumping up and down on the monster, occasionally thunking it on the head. I laughed maniacally, and yelled taunts consisting of things along the lines of, "Ha-HA! And you thought I was just running away! Mwa-ha-ha-ha! This was my plan all along!! Joo will phear the wrath of Crankshaft The Almighty!!!"
I soon moved to just thunk it on the head from in front, and laughing maniacally, but this was slowed to a gradual stop, followed by a loud gulp, as the beast lifted itself from the ground, and looked at me. I wiped mud from its fur and said, "Isn't that a lovely coat you have there? I have one just like it, at home. Wonderful designer brand, I think. Isn't... it?" Thus, running in circles and screaming was re-commenced, until I was snatched from the ground and waved around in the air, as the thing howled.
For a moment, I thought I was doomed to have my head slammed and rubbed into the ground like a king-sized crayon in the hands of some derranged giant toddler. Luckily for me, however, a ranger-type person just happened by and blew a hole in the beast the size of a watermelon.

He was a goateed man. Blue head band. His blue garb reminded me of some military-type person. I looked at his very large handgun, and determined that he must have been a RAmar. He approached me, and helped me up out of the thing's hand. "Are you okay?" he asked.
I looked at him for a moment, then manually checked to make sure that everything was in the right place, and promptly nodded, "Yes. Everything seems to be in working order."
"Good," he said. "First time down here?"
"Nah, nah, I come down here once a week to get a work out. See, I had that blasted horned giant monkey right where I wanted him when you came in," I replied.
He looked at me strangly. "Then... You were trying to commit assisted suicide?"
This I had no answer to, so I just made a strange face.
"Anyway, I heard screams, so I came to help."
In a valiant attempt to salvage my pride, without missing a beat, I said, "Those were the screams of my female travelling companion."
The ranger looked around, then back at me and said, "Then... Where is she?"
Another quick reply was necessary to maintain my poor cover, "The thing ate her."
The ranger looked at me funny then replied, "The Hildebear ate her?"
"Yes. The Hildebear ate her."
"And that's why you were screaming when I came in?"
"Well, no, I was screaming the whole time because I was being chased around in circles by a rabid moose-ape that wanted to fold me into a mangled pretzel and wear me as a hat."
"Ugh... You certainly need help. Why were you running from it? Surely you at least know Foie," he said. He confused me.
"Foie?" I asked. Hey, I teach Mechanical Physics, not Technical Physics. Honestly, I've never even so much as set foot in Laya's classroom.
The ranger smacked himself on the headband. "All right, all right... You clearly need help. This is your first time down here, after all."
I jumped at the chance to jump at his assumption. "HA!" I said, "How do YOU know that this is my first time on the surface of Ragol?!? I DID tell you that I come down here often for a workout, did I not??"
Always the ranger, this RAmar had a quick comeback. "Well, my dear Watson, the first clue was the platform shoe prints in the moss on the sides of the rocks, where you escaped from the Boomas and wolves. More importantly, there was when I got up here and found you desperately screaming for your life, being swung around in the air by a Hildebear. Plus, a guy as loosely built and otherwise gangly as yourself obviously doesn't get much workout time. You're quick to come up with a reply to insist your rightness, no matter how wrong you may be, so I would guess that you're probably a college professor."
I wanted to reply to this, but alas, his ranger-logic was correct. After openning my mouth to speak, and pointing a finger in his face for a moment, I backed away, and instead offered my hand for a handshake and said, "My name is Professor Crankshaft R. Differential."
Given that, he took my hand and replied, "They call me VanGarrett." We shook hands, then I quickly turned around and took a few steps, only to find myself in a teleporter.
Looking down at my personal terminal, I said, "Oh, inside the Central Dome... I wouldn't mind taking a tour."
As I reached to hit the button, I heard VanGarrett dive in with me and yell, "Noooooo!!!!" Alas, to my misfortune, I didn't comprehend his intentions until I found myself looking at a terrible fire lizard. Though technically a wyvern, this thing was considered to be a dragon for its sheer size and verociousness.
"What the heck is that thing??" I yelled, terrified. I nearly soiled my pants. I was personally threatened by a Hildebear, and now THIS thing.
"Well," VanGarrett said, "Though it's technically a wyvern, this thing is considered to be a dragon for its sheer size and verociousness. No one's really determined how it got in here, but supposedly there's a whole colony in the Central Dome. Now RUN!!"
We split off, he went left and I went right. Or maybe I went right and he went left. It doesn't matter, he went one way and I went the other. With a series of jumps and screams, I managed to avoid being hit directly by its talent of breathing fire. I was frightened.
VanGarrett yelled at me, "Crankshaft!! Go smack its ankle once or twice with your cane! Prod it really well right at the joint!"
With a grunt, I complied, and dramatically run at it from the side, while he shot at it, providing a distraction. As per VanGarrett's instructions, I jammed the skinny end of my cane into its ankle, and realized that if I could lodge it in between the bones, I'd have a crude lever to really mess it up with. As such, I did. The dragon squeaked, and I pushed it up, until the dragon fell over, and VanGarrett started pounding away at its head with his gun.
I started to charge at its head to triumphantly stomp and jump up and down on it, but VanGarrett yelled at me. "No!" he said, "Don't get up there! You've done your part! Now just hang back and don't get killed!"
My next reply was, "What did you say?" At which point, the dragon jumped into the air, just as VanGarrett got in one last fatal blow, and the dragon consequently fell on top of me.

When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed. I felt okay, though more or less like I'd had a dragon fall on me, and I spent the next several hours being healed at a hospital. My thought at that moment was, "Hey! I'm in a hospital! Where're the hot nurses??" So naturally, I started looking around and drueling. I didn't notice any nurses right off, but I did notice Laya. "Oh!" I said, "Laya! Sorry, I was expecting to see a hot nurse. Am I drueling?"
Laya got up, approached me, and I was expecting to get to study her knuckles again. "You are lucky, Fender, that they found my BEE address on the back of a picture of myself in your pocket."
I stared at her blankly for a moment. I remember thinking that it was too bad that I hadn't gotten to see any nurses yet, but on the other hand, seeing Laya being so friendly was a reasonable consolation. I considered what it would like to see both a nurse as well as Laya. "I wonder," I said, "What you would look like in a nurse's uniform?"
My next interior monolog consisted of something to the effect of, "Those are the knuckles of a woman who is very gentle inside."
Fortunately, I just happened to be in a hospital, so all was well. When I woke up again, there was a nurse standing next to me, filling out some manner of paperwork stuck to a clipboard. She soon hung it up on a hook next to the bed, and looked at me. She told me, "Your friend seemed rather aggrevated when she left."
"Yeah. She always takes my compliments the wrong way. So am I ready to leave?"
"You sure are. Just so you know, the ranger that brought you in has already paid for your stay."
"Woohoo!"

HUnewearl_Meira
Feb 26, 2003, 03:18 AM
Great gobs of gravy, a new chapter!! Err, yeah. Sorry this took so long. There just aren't enough hours in the day anymore, so I robbed some time from some random unimportant task like, eh, sleep or something, so that I could finish this chapter. Don't tell anyone, but I also wrote the first sentence or two of the next chapter, while I had the idea rolling.
Heh, so, yeah, here's the next chapter of Crankshaft's absurdity. A bit more beating around the bush, and but some vague foreshadowing has been included. Maybe after this chapter has been read a bit, I'll post a poll concerning whether or not you'd want to be one of Professor Crankshaft's students. Because, well, indeed, we get to see what he's like in the class room in this chapter.


[EDIT] Goodness! I posted the message, and forgot to post the chapter! Bad I! No cookie!


Chapter 4

I returned to my office, and sat down behind my desk, at which point I started shuffling around papers to look busy and otherwise important. After a moment, Laya, the short lass that she is, entered the room. Now, I had something rather lewd written here, but after proof-reading this chapter for me, Laya hit me and told me to remove it.
So, anyway, moving on, Laya entered the room, and I observed how stunningly short she really is. Possibly about as short as an adult can possibly be, by my figuring. She does pack quite a punch, though. "Your vertical prowess pleases me greatly," I said.
She looked at me like I was some sort of a freakish, freak-thing, and said, "What?"
"You're short. It looks good on you."
Her look got more disturbed and she proceeded carefully toward the restroom.

As I sat, I pondered my trip to Ragol. Just who was that unmasked RAmar? He said his name was VanGarrett. As I pondered, I placed my personal terminal into a device sitting on my desk, and proceeded to download my new information onto my computer. After doing so, I realized that I had a message. Evidently, he'd also exchanged with me, something called, a 'guild card', which, I assume, is a selection of data used by Hunters' Guild members so they can get a hold of eachother at any time. A quick catch phrase was included in the guild card. "If I can't fix it, then I can shoot it," it said. I found this mildly humorous, though I suppose that this was his attempt to describe his specialties.
Then, I was about to read the message, when Laya came back out of the bathroom. I looked at her, she looked at me. So I wiggled my eyebrows at her, and she looked at me like I was crazy again.
"What is wrong with you?" she asked.
"Well," I said, "Now that you ask..."
She looked at me with this expression like she was thinking, "Oh my Light, he's going to say something that I probably don't want anything to do with."
So, I carried on, saying, "See, I've got this weird sharp pain in my--"
She cut me off saying, "--I do NOT want to know, Crankshaft!"
To this, my reply was, "Well, you did ask, didn't you?"
She shook her head and gave a frustrated look, then came over to my desk and sat down. "So what happened down on Ragol, anyway?" she asked.
"I ran some laps around stuff, and jumped a few fences. Then a dragon fell on me. You should've seen the horned ape I killed. It was pissed," I bluntly claimed.
"You killed it?"
"Well, yeah, sort of."
"Sort of? What do you mean by 'sort of'?"
"I mean that a ranger ran up and blew its head off, right before it would've used my spiky cranium to write its name on the ground."
"I almost wish it did..."
And then I had a thought that was bothering me. "I just had a thought that's bothering me," I said.
"I'm going to regret this, I'm sure, but what was your thought?" I knew she'd bite. She always does. She's got a soft-spot for me in there somewhere, I know it. Sooner or later, I shall find that soft spot and exploit it. That's right. All the macaroni and cheese I can eat.
So, I told her of my strange thought. I said that I thought, "I just thought," I said, "That we could've just spontaneously popped into existence five minutes ago with all of our memories set in place, and everything around us, just poof, right there the way it was five minutes ago." That is what I said.
She looked at me, and I think she was about to say something, but then I continued, only louder, so I don't know what she said, but I said, "And the thing that REALLY bothers me is!... There is absolutely no way that you or I could ever prove that what I just said isn't true!!!"
Then she stopped talking, and looked at me, as though she were in thought, I and I stared back at her blankly. If I could read her mind, I would think that she would probably have been thinking about a way to prove, well, something that would make certain, err, well, I think that she would've been thinking about how one would go about uh, hm. I think she would've been thinking about some sort of way to create evidence that you can indeed cause a HUcast to grow a full beard over night. Since I can't read her mind, however, at the time I was only able to assume that she was thinking about Kelley Murphy's scene on the previous night's episode of The Guild, where his character, Infurno, had to strip down to his boxers to cope with the heat of some cave type place he was in, where there was lots of lava and hot stuff. Myself, I had to eat a plate of hot peppers to get into the mood.
So anyway, Laya was about to say something else, but she stopped, and continued to appear to be thinking, as she walked out of my office, and into hers. Then I heard a noise that I couldn't identify at first. It was a sort of beep. Not an alarm, but some sort of an alert. It alerted me. It alerted me, and my first thought at this was that someone was trying to alert me, and they were succeeding greatly.
I observed a funny shape on my terminal, it appeared to be a box with a "V" in it. Further analysis revealed to me that this looked strikingly like an envelope. Given this revelation, I curled my lips to create an "Ooo"ing sound, because I like to make that sound when I realize something. I also like to make that sound when I want to confuse someone greatly.
The message was short and to the point. It came from VanGarrett. The just of the message was something to the effect of, "I would like to learn more about you. Meet me on the Skyly deck at @800 beats."
The mention of time, reminded me that it was currently @600 beats. This is a fairly early morning class for most of my students, and I sometimes forget to sleep between my @350 beat class, and my @600 beat class. Today, however, I was fresh out of the hospital, so I was well rested. The strange thing about living on a starship, is that there is no sun, so there is nothing to prompt you to say, "HEY! It's late at night! You should be in bed, you flaming insomniac!!"
Flaming. Now there is a multi-purpose adjective I've never quite understood. I've been told that it's used to describe you if you're queer. I've been told that I'm strange, and I've also been told that I'm weird. Weird and queer are synonyms, but from what I gather, you would describe me as being weird, but you wouldn't describe me as being queer. Though furthermore, I sometimes wonder what the difference would be if someone were described as being flaming weird, as opposed to flaming queer? I suppose I could continue on this, but Laya tells me that what I had intended to write here could get me into serious trouble, mostly concerning this 'political correctness' thing that I seem to be oblivious to. The whole thing sounds like a vicious evil plot by people with low self-esteem to bring the rest of us down. They're against The Man! Great Light help The Man! They're against the Man! Who's the man? I'm not certain, but it may be Principal Tyrell.

So anyway, it was time for my class. This particular class was in chapter 23 of the text book, which happens to be on the subject of Protonic Combustion Engines. Mind you, that's Protonic, not Photonic. There is no typo, the typo does not exist. I speak of positively charged matter components, not individual building blocks of energy mass gravitically pulled together to form a tangible effect. Pay attention though, the lecture I gave in this particular session applies to what happens later.
So, I said to my class, "What can any of you tell me about the concepts behind Combustion Engines?" A perfectly legitimate question for a highly generalized category.
The jester in the back raised his hand and immediately yelled, "They make things go!"
My response to this was a hearty, "Very good, Mr. Overmind. Tomorrow, I will quiz you on the mechanical principles behind poor grades." I grunted and nodded, then looked around, and continued, "Does anyone have an idea that can be regarded as resembling an intelligent response?"
A lovely young woman raised her hand and waited patiently. I stepped toward her, and pointed. "Yes, Kataclyn?"
"They make utilize energy for motion by combusting fuel?" By combusting fuel, she said! Indeed, I agreed with her, but I have a particular way I like to describe it.
I jumped up and did a little happy dance, that I sometimes see athletes perform variants of after they score a goal. "HOO-YEAH!" I shouted, then took a very serious overtone to calmly state, "That is correct, Kataclyn. Very good." I then proceeded to energetically (and indeed, I do so energetically because I've got this obscene level of metabolism) explain, "Now, now, you see, combustion engines, to borrow the copyrighted term from Andrew 'Overmind' Gonzalez up there, make things go BUUUUME!!! And that BUUUUME! causes energy to fling about in whatever direction it's allowed!"
I stopped for a moment, to walk to the photon board hanging from the wall, so that I could illustrate. I drew a diagram at first. I drew a little box, with the word "FUEL" in it, and from there, I drew a line to a box that said, "ENGINE", and then I drew a plus symbol (+, for those who aren't sure), and then I drew, in big colorful letters, "HOT THING", and then I drew and equal sign, followed by, with extra underlines, "BUUUUUME!" I then pointed dramatically at it, and explained, "This is, for all intensive purposes, what a combustion engine does. There are several kinds of combustion engines, however. The most basic of which, is the External Combustion Engine, otherwise known as a Rocket Engine, which you should've had explained to you in a class about the time you were knee high to my platform shoes." I gestured concerning this last comment.
Then I continued, "There is also the slightly more interesting Internal Combustion Engine, which works by using pressure and electrical charges to shove a metal cylinder back and forth down a hole cut to fit it, which in turn, makes a rod turn. Really really fast. But those are inefficient, as they tend to pollute air, which can be rather bad on a ship like ours, and even more bothersome, an internal combustion engine doesn't make things fly, except when propellers are put to use, and those are noisy and dangerous. Some people have lost pets due to these things." I went on.
"The subject of Chapter 23, however, is the Protonic Combustion Engine. Does anyone know how the heck that thing works?" Silence. "Good, no one's been reading ahead. So anyway, a Protonic Combustion Engine works on the idea that Protons contain energy that can be tapped through a complex series of magnetic, electronic, and stupidly obvious solutions. Now, can anyone explain to me, how Protonic energy differs from Nuclear energy? Yes, K-420?"
A stout android popped up and properly explained, and I might add, with an accent that makes me think he was built by stoners, "Nuclear energy results from forcefully breaking down the atoms, most easily resulting from the use of radioactive, and therefore unstable, materials, where as Protonic energy results from fusing electron-starved protons into clusters of new atoms, most ideally, O2 or NO2."
"Very good, K-420. Now can you also explain what makes this ideal for personal vehicles?"
"It produces non-toxic exhaust, and streets can be paved in any three-dimensional path using magnetic leads."
"My goodness, you paid attention last semester! Now, now now, tell me why it's not ideal for large vehicles such as space ships!!"
"The magnetic load would be sufficient to destroy the ship, instead of a trace amount, and having to pave its own path, and the Proton generation would generate more gravity than the matter can sustain."
I did my happy dance again, but then stopped suddenly, noticing something. "Hey!" I said, "Is that an antenna I see behind your shoulder?"
"Err, no, sir."
I approached K-420, and examined his shoulder. "Like poofy hair, it isn't! You're surfing the net!"
"Um..." the android gurgled, and it looked at me. "Does that mean that I'm losing points on my grade?"
I looked at him sternly, with fury like that of an angered professor looking at a cheating student, and I said to him in the harshest voice, "No." Then I walked back to the front of the class, looked at him and explained, "Heh, don't worry, I asked a question, and you gave me a correct answer. But if I catch you surfing the net while taking an exam, I'll flunk you like you've never been flunked before. Ever seen a grade so bad, that it had to resort to a dead alphabet to describe it? Oh yeah, baby."
I further explained that day, that Protonic Combustion Engines are slowly being replaced by Photon Drives, though the same systems of streets are still to be used, but perhaps without the need for paving. Then I assigned homework consisting of a number of questions within Chapter 23, a question ripped off from chapter 2, and one random question from chapter 35 of the text, mostly because I like to mix and match-- I sometimes assign a question from a previous chapter so they have to remember what the heck it was, and I sometimes assign a question from a later chapter just to confuse the heck out of my students, and figure out which are resourceful enough to figure it out, and which aren't.
Class being over, I went to meet a drinking buddy of mine, Dux, at a cozy tavern near the college. Dux never really gave me details about his occupation, though I do believe he's a member of the Hunters' Guild. Nonetheless, I enjoy listening to him talk when he's smashed. Which, this was a convenient time, because my morning class was over, and I didn't have another class until late that evening, so effectively, between @690 beats and @350, I am totally devoid of anything resembling class.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HUnewearl_Meira on 2003-02-26 00:21 ]</font>

Kupi
Feb 26, 2003, 07:16 PM
Funny as always, Meira. And, since nobody's home, I got to practice my improvisational reading skills by reading the whole of this later chapter aloud as fast as I possibly could while evading errors. Only slipped up once or twice. I don't know why, but Crankshaft's idiom is quite compatible with mine. ^_^

Keep up the good work!

Dagger
Mar 16, 2003, 03:00 PM
Good job Meria I like it I still dont know which one to say is better ROM or ROC. Well I hope my Fan Fic will stand up to yours. I already have the Prologue out.

HUnewearl_Meira
Mar 16, 2003, 06:49 PM
Thanks Kupi, and Dagger for the kind words. Oh, and thank you Dagger for PMing me, as it reminded me that I had finished Chapter 5 so that I can go ahead and post it. I just went through it one more time to clean it up a bit, and now it's all ready for the posting.
Oh, yeah, and anyone looking for a bit more information on the 'Recollection' series, if you look at my PSO World profile, you'll find a listing of all the fics I'm planning for the series.

In any case, onto the 5th chapter of The Recollection of Crankshaft. A few, slightly more concrete connections to The Recollection of Meira in here, as well as some of Crankshaft's antics in the Mines.



Chapter 5

My departure from my office included the obligatory prodding of my head into Laya's office to kindly ask, "Wanna go get piss-faced drunk?" Which, after dodging an airborne paperweight, I removed my head from her office, and proceeded out to the tavern down the street.
Already there, upon my arrival Dux greeted me with a big, loud, "Bleh!!" or some other similar noise, as he'd already been drinking and I don't believe that he was able to come up with a traditional greeting on such short notice.
I replied with a brief, "Zoot zoot!" for lack of a better greeting, myself. I then excused myself to apprehend the bartender's attention and get a drink for myself. "Give me something obscene!" I said to him. Which, he agreed and got creative with his service. He soon gave me a large bowl on a stem, that I might consider a glass, and it was full of several liquids of different colors, creating a layered effect. I looked at this funny, then observed the garnish constructed of the flesh of several fruits, in the general shape of a bipedal sort of being, and it was positioned in such a manner that it looked like it'd been shot or kicked or otherwise assaulted so it was going to fall. My inquiry as to what this thing is called revealed to my knowledge that this drink was commonly referred to as the "Yakuza Hit". "Obscene, indeed!" I told him, and promptly pounded down as much of the beverage as I could in one session of lifting the glass to my lips.
When I stopped twitching I looked to Dux, whose beverage was constructed of roasted and fermented hops and barley. Beer, I believe it is commonly referred to as. What exactly is a hops, anyway? It makes me think of some bizarre green thing you might find when you go somewhere and look for bizarre green things. Sorry, I have no idea what that means, either.
What is it about drunken rambling that refuses to stick to your mind? I'll just make something up that sounds about right. So Dux said, "Urrrrooo?" to which, I replied, "Gooobah!"
Then Dux said, "Whaash you shay???" We continued something like this, until we finally forgot to keep ordering drinks, and therefore sobered, and found eachother looking at eachother with strange drunken expressions, and could only say to eachother, "What?"
Then, I noticed the time and said, "Hey, I'm supposed to meet someone on the Skyly deck. Are you interested in coming with me?"
Dux pondered this one over an empty glass. "My mug appears to be without fluid grains. I suppose that this means that I'm finished with it. Furthermore, this gives me the options of either ordering another liter, or leaving. Though, I suppose that if we are to go to the Skyly deck, then we'll probably end up going down to Ragol and randomly killing things, which I suppose can be amusing enough, but it seems like I've done an awful lot of that." So, I looked at him with a strange expression, and he finally agreed to go with me.

We met up on the Skyly deck, as previously arranged. Upon my arrival, I discovered that VanGarrett, Dux and I were not there alone, but there was another goateed RAmar, dressed similarly, by the name of HuBBsDoctor along with VanGarrett.
"Hello, Crankshaft. I didn't realize you were acquainted with Dux," VanGarrett expressed. I hadn't realized Dux was acquainted with VanGarrett.
"I didn't realize you were acquainted with Dux, VanGarrett," I said. It seemed like the obvious reply. Dux has become a hub, it seems.
Dux seemed more interested in talking to VanGarrett, though. "Where the heck have you been anyway, Vee-Gee?"
Strangely enough, VanGarrett looked thoughtful for a moment. Then carried on, "I was with Randon when he was taken, Dux. I've only just returned within the last few days, from the aftermath."
Evidently Randon was someone of great importance, as Dux replied with great exclamation, "You were with Randon?!"
VanGarrett continued, "Yes. As were Artemis and Guybec."
"So what happened down there?"
"I dunno, we got separated. It was almost as if the monsters were deliberately trying to split us up."
Then I yelled, "Monsters?!" I yelled this, because I was feeling left out. And also because they were talking about monsters, and monsters scare me. They're monstrous.
HuBBsDoctor pulled me aside, while VanGarrett and Dux continued to chat about this Randon fellow. "On Ragol, Crankshaft, there are creatures that used to be native to the lands, but've become mutated by something. We commonly refer to these as monsters."
"But what if I don't WANT to be mutated by something?"
"I didn't say you would be."
"But but but, you just said they were mutated by something!"
"Yes, the animals have."
"But what about their rights and free will?"
"What rights and free will? They're animals!"
"Do they not bleed red blood?"
"As a matter of fact, some don't."
"Oh... Well let's kill them all, then!"
"Hey, take it easy, boss. We only kill what we need to kill to survive."
This flabbergasted me. "Do you mean to say that a hunter doesn't really, erm, hunt?" It seemed to make sense to me at the time.
HuBBsDoctor sighed and explained, "Hunting isn't just about killing animals, Crankshaft. It's also about finding lost loved ones, braving danger to further research, solving the unsolved, recovering precious items, and indeed, exploring the unexplored."
I almost shed a tear. "That was beautiful, man. I want a section ID, now."
HuBBsDoctor looked at me like I was a flaming weirdo, and said, "That's not your section ID right there on your tie?"
"Oh this little trinket? Yeah, I like it, too."
"But it's not yours?"
"Yes, I'm very tall."
"If that's not yours, then where did you get it from?"
I'm not exactly sure why I replied the way I did, but at this point, I turned around toward the teleporter and started walking, shouting absurd things like, "I take pleasure in bonsai trees!" and "I know very little about watching TV?"

I was followed by the rest of the group, and randomly choosing a location from the teleporter, as I like to do random things because they're unexpected, and I soon found myself in an area known as "The Mines". Funny, they don't look like mines. More like a laboratory. Through from what I understand, this facility was more used to produce research materials than actually research them. Go figure. It made me happen to think that I might be able to find a computer that can read Fender's disk, here. Because well, I wanted to know what the heck is on that disk. Because it's a disk, and it's got something on it, and at the time, I hadn't a clue. You should consider yourself fortunate, as I did eventually find out, and that's why I'm writing this. See, I'm not just writing this to ramble on and on and on and on totally aimlessly. Sometimes, things DO have a purpose!
I was soon joined by Dux, VanGarrett, and HuBBsDoctor, and they all looked at me as though I were some obscene thing. Then Dux and HuBBsDoctor yelled at me for just running into a dangerous area with no other form of protection, and I stared blankly, but interestingly enough, VanGarrett only mumbled something about 'interesting behavior'. Strange, indeed.
Then we dashed out into the next room. Here we were confronted by a group of mechanical beauties. gillchics, a variety of robot often used for mining or security purposes. These particular drones seemed to be fitted for both. "Hey! Gillchics!" I yelled with excitement.
Dux yelled at me, "Crankshaft! Get back! Those things will pound you to mush!"
Mush, he said. Any substance containing both liquid and matter that has been beaten back and forth until the solid portion has been broken up and has become saturated with the liquid portion. Indeed, these things are capable of that. I should know, I've studied them extensively. I am, after all, a professor of mechanical physics. I looked back at Dux and replied to him, "What? These things? They're harmless. Look." I turned around just as one approached me. My thought on this, was that it was convenient that it was so near, even though it was about to ram a metal hand into my body. Now, you see, one of the odd things about Gillchics, is their habit of not protecting their own vulnerabilities. Before it could hit me, I flipped open its chest cavity, and disconnected the power supply. Limp it fell, fall it limped. But then more came at me, so I ran behind the others, and watched them zap and shoot them to bits.
HuBBsDoctor looked at me like he wanted to know what I did. "Just what did you DO, Crankshaft?"
I stood matter of factly on my platform shoes, dusted off my shoulder, breathed on my nails and wiped them on my shirt. "It's simple, really. I opened up its chest cavity, and disconnected the power supply. Those things really aren't designed with the consideration that someone will get close to it. And of course, they topple easily because they're top-heavy-- Their battery is located in their chest cavity."
The group looked at eachother in a state of impressment from my vast knowledge of these mechanical things. "Hey!" I said, "What did you expect? I am, after all, a professor of Mechanical Physics."
We carried onward, and I examined more things here. We came to a room containing a number of large, mean looking androids, known as Sinow Beats. A Sinow Beat is a very aggressive Security and Attack android. there are more advanced versions than the Sinow Beat, and its superior buddy, Sinow Gold, which also evidently inhabits the Mines, but they don't inhabit the Mines, as they are the result of some top-secret research that occurred on an island on Ragol, by the top scientists of Pioneer 1.
In any case, a Sinow Beat more or less looks like a beefed up gillchic that's had a superior casing added, consisting mostly of blades and spiky things. Effectively, it looks like someone glued a giant cheese grater on a lesser android. Indeed, that's a mean cheese grater.
Interestingly enough, what my adventurous companions didn't know, is that the technology that Sinow Beats were developed on, actually started as a design for a children's 'fighting robot' kind of a game that, when its deranged developers realized what they were making, decided to abandon the toy industry in favor of the security industry.
So, my friends weren't surprised when I disappeared from the fray, but they were surprised when one of the Sinow Beats started fighting on their, and belly dancing. I had, as any obscenely intelligent and well informed FOnewmn such as myself would, cracked into a computer terminal and took over the Sinow Beat, myself.
Controlling it, I made my own sound effects when it hit things, by yelling noises like, "Clank!" "Smack!" "Kerchunk!" and my personally favorite, "SHA-BOW-WOW!" Of course, I couldn't keep the Sinow Beat under my control forever. Eventually I would have to relinquish it, at which point Vol Opt would take over again, and it would continue to go wild. So I had it pose dramatically and belly dance, to give the others an opportunity to destroy it. I had to yell at them though, "Break the stupid thing!" because they were just standing there looking at it, as though it were a dancing robot or something.
When that was all finished with, there were the obvious questions of, "What the heck did you do?" and "How did you do that?" Except for VanGarrett, who said, "Y'know, I've never been able to get that to work." VanGarrett evidently knew a little bit.
Our trip had to be canceled, however, as VanGarrett soon recieved some simple mail. "Holy crap..." he said.
I pranced about, "What is it? What is it?" and tried to look at the screen on the terminal he had on his arm.
"HuBBsDoctor," he said, "We've got some work to do on Pioneer 2, it seems."
HuBBsDoctor looked at him expectingly, and I posed dramatically. "What's up, boss?" HuBBsDoctor said.
"The Principal wants to speak to us about a specially commissioned job," claimed the gallant VanGarrett.
I poked my finger into his face and said, "The Principal wants YOU specifically? Why's that?"
VanGarrett grabbed my finger, and much to my own distress, he pulled it off into some direction that he preferred it point. Which hurt. "HuBBsDoctor and I are among a number of hunters that the Principal will call for by name when there's a problem. Evidently, this task calls for rangers, so he chose from the Ranger portion of the list. Just the same, it's good for us, because performing jobs for him like this will improve our reputation."
"Ow!" I said, and liberated my finger from his hand. "I see. I think." So with that, the rangers left, and I looked at Dux, and Dux looked at me. I reached into my pocket, and pulled out the disk. I held it above my head and waved it about. "Hey Dux, have you ever seen a disk like this?!?"
Dux snatched it from my hand, and looked over it. "I can't say that I have. It's no technique disk, and it's not a typical data disk, either. Certainly not something you want to drop in your video disk viewer, either, just to cover all the bases."
Which, that was about what I thought about it. "That's about what I thought about it," I said. I continued, "Think we can find a computer here that can read it?"
Dux looked at me blankly for a moment, looked at the disk, then handed it back, "We can look, I suppose, but the disks that I've commonly seen in use here don't look like that. They're usually physically larger. We can look, though."
To sum it up, we didn't find anything and there was some cursing involved. That was the last time I'd gone down to Ragol for a while. The next time I went down, however, I had finally convinced Laya to go with me.

AzureBlaze
Mar 17, 2003, 12:41 AM
Have you ever read "Sir Apropos of Nothing"?

It has a narrative that sounds somewhat like Crankshaft does as he tells his story. Sir Apropos is somewhat depressing though, and tends to ramble a bit less, but they're both a funny and creative narrative. (however, Apropos' is not a very satisfying story, which, if the name didn't warn you of, then I guess it's apropos that you read through the whole thing and came off dissatisfied. I did.)

Confusing fun!

Kupi
Mar 17, 2003, 08:09 PM
One of the signs of a great fanfiction is the inclusion of the little things that make up the source material. You've just got to love random tangents about bonsai trees as people run in circles. XD

Zeebo
Mar 17, 2003, 08:15 PM
Even though it's long I enjoyed reading it. Continue writing man!

HUnewearl_Meira
Apr 25, 2003, 03:37 AM
I apologize if the previous chapter seemed kinda rushed toward the end. The truth is, it was, and honestly, I don't feel very satisfied with it. I finished it because I'd determined that it'd taken too long to get it up, and I was starting to lose interest with the tangent it had taken.

In the case of Chapter 6, my own interest levels have perked, as I'm moving on to introduce a number of key elements for the entire series. Plus, Dragoon is re-appearing. I've burned the midnight oil to finish this off, and I hope that it's as good as it was in my head when I was coming up with the ideas for it.

Also, AzureBlaze, no, I've not read "Sir Apropos of Nothing", though it sounds like it may be quite entertaining. I have however, read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which will forever be a classic.

I also want to take a moment to thank everyone who's made all of these favorable comments, and also to those that've PMed me to express their like of The Recollection of Meira as well as The Recollection of Crankshaft. You're the reason I keep writing this stuff.

All right, enough with the procrastination, here is the sixth chapter of The Recollection of Crankshaft.



Chapter 6

Sometimes, crazy things happen on Pioneer 2. It wasn't long after the aforementioned trip, that a HUcast freaked out, and killed a three-eyed, burrowing primate known as an "Orangoo". This happened at the Zoo of Pioneer 2, only two blocks away from the University of Pioneer 2. As I recall, I could hear the vicious android from my office. I shall attempt to quote exactly what I heard. Ahem. "Give me that third eye, you triclopped froop. Don't just sit there and look at me. You give me that third eye, or so help me, I will take it from you. All right, that's it. Give me that eye. Don't run, give me that eye, you freak. Give it to me. I want it now." Then there was a series of loud, squishy sounds that left me cringing. Among these sounds, was the sound of metal against flesh, in an absurdly loud fashion. Then a hearty, "Ha ha, now I have it. Now just stay over there and think about what you've done. And over there. And over there. And there, too. And get off of me." Of course, what was said, was considerably more vocal and exclamatory. By this time, the sirens and people screaming blocked out his words. The thunks of metal against metal that followed, however, were quite clear.
That wasn't the last incident of a HUcast randomly killing things on board the ship, though it was certainly the most mild. A number of weeks later, another HUcast, said to be of similar build, but different color, and a decidedly different model massacred a number of people who were wandering the downtown district down the street from UP2, where there are an absurd number of trendy clothing stores, and also a nice little cafe, across the street from an electronics store.
I remember quite clearly. That day, Laya and I had lunch at the cafe. The number they gave us was 28. Interesting how they give numbers at cafes and such restaurants, to know who ordered what. I suppose they could give letters, but then prankster children would each order individual orders, for the express purpose of using the letters to spell curse words on their tables.
So anyway, Laya and I had lunch at the cafe, as I had finally managed to convince her to eat with me, under the allure of telling her about what it's like in the gardens of the Central Dome. In the end, I didn't have a terrible lot to tell her, but it did the job, in any case. I told her about the ferocious Rappies, though. I told her all about their beaks full of jagged teeth, and laconium claws, stained black with the blood of their victims, and about their sharp feathers, and those eerie, beady little eyes, and how they just kinda fall on you out of the sky, and try to peck away at your flesh like scavenger birds, except that you're still alive! AHHHH!! Scary! So, yeah, that's what I told her.
Her reaction to coming across one for the first time, much, much later, was something to the effect of, "That thing doesn't look nearly as mean as you said... Look at it's soft feathers, shiny beak, and-- Great Light, it tried to bite me, DIE!!!"
In any case, the streets were calm when we walked back to UP2, but I'd only been in my office for a few minutes, when I heard screams coming from down the street. I looked out the window, which conveniently overlooks said street, and saw a horrid sight. At first, I couldn't believe it. I saw a pitch-black HUcast, standing in the middle of a running crowd. He made an unidentifiable sound, which sounded something much like, "BWLAARRRGGUAH!!!" if you tried to scream it through a tin can with a slinky in it. There was also blood in the street, which was the first thing I noticed to be strange about the sight. Indeed, it wasn't the people running from the pitch-black HUcast that I found strange, but the concept that there seemed to be wholly, three large peoples' entire contents of blood, flowing toward the sweep drains.
The next ghastly thing, was when it seemed to pick an individual out of the running crowd, and with a mad dash, and I mean MAD, grabbed him, literally picked him apart, and started beating others to death with the limbs. You might say that he went out that afternoon, to paint the town red.
As I saw a news van pull up to the scene, Laya ran in to tell me to turn on the news broadcast, which I did. The next thing we saw, we will never forget. Though they were a considerable distance away from the massacre, it was the focus of the background. That wasn't the disturbing part. The disturbing part, was when the camera spotted the HUcast in the crowd, just as the HUcast poked his head up to see the news van, and in a period of about a second and a half, proceeded to run up to the reporter, jam a fist through the poor man's lower torso, and then throw him through the window of one of the aforementioned clothing shops. The camera then fell to the ground, and the signal just sorta stopped, as this monstrosity turned toward the cameraman.
This scene inspired Laya to run into the restroom, and relieve her stomach of the lunch I so generously bought for her. All right, I insisted on paying for her, because I wanted to pretend that it was a lunch date.

It was between those incidents, that I was contacted by a one Fender Clutch. He asked that I meet him on the Hunters' Deck, in the Redia section, which, now that I've further checked on things, just happens to be the section ID that Fender had given me before. I agreed, and convinced Laya to come with me.
When the time came, Laya and I took off from the university, canceling a few classes for the day. I rushed her passed the HUmars posing dramatically in their fearsome dudeness, in a futile attempt to get her through the lobby, before they started hitting on her. They did, however, begin the instant she appeared from the teleporter.
Soon enough, however, we'd joined with Fender. We walked out to him, in front of the hospital, and we were surprised to see him standing with a very tall, very broad HUcast, with a mildly black paint job. This HUcast ran up to me immediately and yelled, "I want to KIIILLLL you!!!!" I nearly soiled myself, but he very quickly, and in a truly absurd manner, stopped where he was, stood up straight, gained some composure, and said very matter-of-factly, "But I won't, don't worry. It's nothing personal, I want to kill everything."
And then it hit me. I'd heard this voice before. "You're the loon that slaughtered the three-eyed burrowing primate!!!"
"EYE! That would be me. It was looking at me funny with its third eye. But only its third eye."
"That's certainly strange. They're not supposed to be able to do that. They have to use all three eyes to focus, I thought."
"It did, though!"
"What were the other eyes doing, then?"
"I don't know, I wasn't paying attention to them, just that creepy THIRD eye. It pissed me off. I warn you now, don't look at me with your third eye, I may not be able to take it."
"But I only have two eyes."
"Good, then be sure to keep your third eye under control."
"Yes, I'm very tall," I said as I stepped around the scary pillar of destructive energy.
As I stepped around him, I noticed him bend over, and yell, "I want to KIIIILLLLLL you!!!" I promptly scowled and grabbed Laya, to pull her with me. Luckily for her, I think that she was expecting it, but on the other hand, I don't think anything can fully prepare you for being yelled at by a scary mechanical feat of destruction, such as this particular HUcast.
I then whispered to Fender, "Who the heck is this scary mode of mechanized destruction that nearly made me soil my pants?"
Fender then calmly said, "His name is Dragoon. He is a HUcast of brutal strength and savage bloodlust. Yes, he is the one that killed the Orangoo at the zoo. I hired him for protection."
"Protection... Whatever from?"
"You should hope that you don't have to find out. Nonetheless, those men that I was running from have very much to do with it."
I looked at him with the most bizarre expression I could muster, then said, "All right. But before I give you your disc back, I want to know what the heck is on it."
"I was hoping that you'd say that, Crankshaft. There's a computer terminal that the military has put in the Ruins, that can read that disc. Come with Dragoon and me, and I'll show you," he said. He had the most serious look on his face that I've ever seen, as he turned toward the large door to the teleporter room. He looked to Dragoon, who was explaining his urge to kill, to a poor scientist near the check room. "Dragoon!" he yelled. "We're going down to the Ruins! Join us, if you would!"
Dragoon stopped in mid-sentence, and dashed for the teleporter, chanting, "KILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILL..." As though it were his own deranged engine noise. We then followed him.
When we got down there, Laya said to Fender, "Can't you get in trouble for bringing civilians down here?"
Fender then replied, "Only if found down here by the military. In which case, you get to tell them that you're on a special assignment from the University of Pioneer 2."
Laya nodded, and then we found Dragoon waiting for us, at the entrance to the next room. He looked at us anxiously, but then charged in. The room was quite crowded to begin with. The insane android, however, reveled in this, and took advantage of the situation. Before this, I had never seen a HUcast lay waste to a large quantity of things so quickly.
I'm not entirely sure what I saw that day. I did learn later, however, that Dragoon is the prototype of his own class of HUcast, designed for the express purpose of being the ultimate killing machine. He ran in, and as he breezed by a devilish creature, I would hear the sound of a smack of metal against something that sounded like a metallic substance with gooey stuff behind it. And then purple liquid would fly into the air, and a thing that I'm told is called a Dimenian-- a demonic-looking bipedal thing with sword-like arms, would fall to the ground, sometimes in several pieces.
Then, as he spun around something that looked like a hunter gone terribly wrong (which I'm told is referred to as a Delsaber), I swear his shoulders opened up, and launched a missile attack, consisting of dozens of little rockets, which went boom all over the place, and kinda paved the way for the rest of us, while he finished off the last few of them.
Possibly one of the strangest things I've ever seen though, was when Dragoon came across two Delsabers in the room, right next to eachother, and chose to wind his arms through them. That is to say, he rammed his arms into them in such a manner, that he then used one Delsaber as a shield, then one as a saber. With this combination, he hurt things. Which seems to be what he's best at. Hurting things. Hurting things like Delsabers and other things that intend physical harm.
The next room after this, was more of the same, and we were very much just fighting our way to this computer of which Fender spoke. Dragoon was the first into the fray, and when a large, mean looking thing known as a "Bulclaw" bit down around him, Fender yelled to Dragoon, "I'll save you!" At which point, Fender focused his energies, and cast the light technique, Grantz, on the creature.
Dragoon then made a screeching noise at Fender, and scowled at him, "Nooo!!! You should've let it do its thing!! There's more to kill, that way."
Fender commented to Dragoon, "You really like to kill..."
To which Dragoon bluntly replied, "What's your point?" Dragoon then proceeded to kill most of everything else, and we proceeded onward.
In the next room, Fender was flogged by two or three Delsabers. Dragoon rushed onto the scene and yelled, "I'll save you!" At which point, he proceeded to beat the tar out of the Delsabers, using the other two Delsabers that were, by this point, dangling from his arms.
Around this time, I was standing next to Fender, when I noticed Fender freak out, and scurry away. I scratched my spiky head, and wondered what inspired him to do this. I then turned around, and discovered a large, somewhat bell-shaped creature, known as a Dark Belra, right behind me. It flashed its eyes at me, as though it was confused. Perhaps it was confused that I hadn't run away. Perhaps I was confused that it was still there. Perhaps I don't remember exactly what I was thinking at that moment, because it smacked me at that time, until I felt something like a great, tall, sculpted stack of ground meat of some sort.
I remember stumbling around in a daze for a moment, and I seem to recall something to the effect of Dragoon making noises, and beating the thing to death with its own appendage. I couldn't really move my appendages with very much conscious awareness of them, and furthermore, I'm sure I would've been in pain, except that I felt nothing. I remember being pinched between its arms, and I think I felt a vertebrae slip out of place, and maybe even wander off to some tropical island, where it could meet attractive female vertebrae. I like tropical islands. Especially the sort that have attractive females.
As I started to regain my self-awareness, and realized that I was indeed somewhat paralyzed, stumbling around and drooling without realizing it, Laya ran up to me and shouted, "I'll save you!" as she cast the techniques, Anti and Resta on me. I felt better, but not quite perfect yet.
I didn't feel quite perfect yet, so I kissed Laya, full, on the mouth, then promptly blamed it on the delirium of being smacked around by a giant bell-shaped thing, and being paralyzed and punch drunk. Then I felt as though I were in perfect health. Then Laya smacked me.
"If you were still feeling the effects of being paralyzed and punch-drunk, then you probably wouldn't have used your tongue, Crankshaft!" she said.
Without missing a beat, and in my own defense, I replied, "But I was still confused... I saw your big yellow hat, and thought you were a--" It was then, that I got slapped. Evidently, Laya didn't want to hear the rest of it.
Shortly thereafter, we arrived at a computer terminal. It was actually a dual terminal, having a unit on either side of one of the peculiar crystalish monuments that appear in the Ruins. They seemed to be running a program that was examining the structure.
As we stepped up to the terminal, Fender passed gas right next to Laya. In her moment of need, I jumped between them, shouted to Laya, "I'LL SAVE YOU!!!!" and promptly began sucking the fowl gas through my nose as quickly and noisily as I possibly could. Hey, we use our strengths to help eachother out, don't we? The group looked at me strangely, and as they did so, I hyperventilated. Not one to give up at a sign of adversity though, I continued until I passed out.

When I came to, Laya was leaning over me. I blinked, and she stood. Fender helped me up. Then I said, "I had this dream," I said, "I had this dream, where I was in these Ruins, and you were there, and you were there, and YOU, YOU were there, too!" They looked at me strangely again. Of course, after fifteen years of life being the one and only Crankshaft R. Differential, I'm used to this by now. I continued, "And you, you you, you cut a fat one, and it was just Buh-EEEERRRRRRPTFT!, and I was just, 'Oh no!' and 'Zoom!' and I got between IT and Laya, and Laya was just 'Eeewww!' and I was just, 'I'll save you!' and then I was just, 'SSSHHHHFHFHFFFHFSSHFHHFSFFHH*SNORT*SSSHHSHFHFFHSH SSHFPHPHHSSHSFH!!*HONK*SNORT*... And then everything went black."
Fender smacked his forehead, then looked back up to me. "Crankshaft, where's the disc?"
I held up a finger, then removed it from my inventory. A personal inventory is an interesting device. It's actually a storage container at a remote location, but it has a very limited amount of storage space, though certainly more than you can carry on yourself. The second component of this storage space, is a program on your personal terminal, that tells the storage container to teleport the selected item into your hands. Very interesting indeed.
So anyway, yeah, I claimed the disc from my personal inventory, and handed it to Fender. Fender then took the disc, and slid it into a computer terminal. Fender looked at Dragoon. Then he looked at me. I looked back at him, and said, "What? Is there something hanging from my nose? It's not a nose goblin, is it? Ah! Nose goblin! Get it off, get it off!" Then I frantically brushed my hands down my face, until Laya kicked me in the knee, which inspired me to stop. Of course, then I was rubbing my knee, but that's beside the point.
Fender brought up the information that was on the disc, and had me look at it. "Do you understand what this is, Professor Differential?"
I leaned over and studied the hologram. "This looks like a set of mechanical plans. For a HUcast."
"Yes," he said. "That's precisely what they are."
Laya looked in, under my shoulder. "That HUcast looks familiar," she suggested.
Dragoon leaned in to look, and actually pushed me a bit. Fender, too. We all stared blankly for a moment, and then Dragoon suddenly had an out burst. He abruptly pointed at the hologram, knocking all three of us over, and shouted, "Hey! That's me! That's me! That's me!" Then he did what seemed to be a happy dance of some variety.
Rubbing his face, Fender got up, shut down the viewing program, removed the disc, and said, "More specifically Dragoon, it's the mechanical plans for a Dragoon-type HUcast, developed by the Bortevo Corporation as the ultimate machine for combat with large numbers of enemies. A HUcast designation of which, YOU are the prototype."
"I suppose that this would make me feel special, if I didn't already know about that," Dragoon stated. "I want to kill something."
Laya jumped up and outburst, "Wait wait, you mean that this walking lump of violence is the first of many?!?"
As I stood up, and brushed myself off, Dragoon said, "Dragoon is first of one. Bortevo go down the hoooole."
Fender started to say something with, "Actually Dragoon--" but was interrupted by someone who had snuck up on us.
A deep and almost broken voice said, "How kind of you to bring that back for us. We were afraid we'd have to execute our search-and-recover team for general incompetence."
A group of men with guns stood there with us. They all wore black uniforms, with black helmets. Each had a section ID, and each of their visors were colored according to their section ID. The one with the Pinkal section ID looked almost downright silly. As the others stood there with photon launchers, and varying varieties of rifles and high-powered handguns, he stood there holding a Love Rappy by the legs with one hand, with his other hand around its neck. Very strange indeed. Definitely the odd one out. Maybe he grew up too close to the power lines, or maybe he was just weird like that. He far exceeded my own absurdity.
The one with the Greenhill section ID was the only one that spoke, and he was naturally the one that interrupted Fender. He continued, "Now, if you would, please hand over the disc. We're very busy you see, and Lord Guybec has been so immensely impatient, lately."

HUnewearl_Meira
Jun 28, 2003, 12:22 AM
I do love that "I'll save you!" thing in Chapter 6.
Anyway, this took a while to finish writing. Mostly due to the distraction of getting married, moving, and all that stuff. In any case, I think I've come up with a worthy chapter, full of some Dragoon-ish antics.

So, here we go with the 7th Chapter of Crankshaft.




Chapter 7

As I stood there, I felt like I was somehow detached from the events, and I took a moment to look over everyone else. Each of the rangers were cold and emotionless. And that Pinkal one was just confusing the cheesers out of me. Let me tell you, looking menacing in pink of all colors, is rather difficult, but this guy did an absurdly good job of it. The whole time, I was less afraid of the other RAmars shooting me down with their guns, as I was afraid of that guy smacking me around with that Love Rappy. I could just see it. The other RAmars are shooting at me, I'm running through the woods, and this guy just drops down out of nowhere with this Love Rappy and just pounds the snot out of me.
I looked at Fender. The expression on his face was one of worry and caution. His lips curled in a failed smile, the upper lip having a slight bend toward one of his nostrils. The sweat hadn't started to bead yet, but I could tell that he was dreading this, as he was most certainly trying to keep his cool, and was definitely worried about whether or not Dragoon would make good on his assignment.
Laya seemed worried as well, but not as much as Fender was. Laya had this strange expression of being able to take care of herself, but yet recognizing that she had a worthy adversary. This kind of threw me off though, because I always looked at her as just a short woman that taught a class at the college.
Dragoon, on the other hand, was fairly unemotional at this. Of course, when your entire face is made from a number of metal plates, I suppose it would be difficult to express a facial expression. I suppose that this is what made it so amusing to me, in retrospect, when Dragoon, with his unchanging expression, approached the Greenill RAmar, and leaned down over him.
The RAmar first looked up. Evidently only seeing the android's collar, he then bent backward a bit to see his face. Due to the helmet, I couldn't tell what he was considering at this point. I mostly couldn't see what was on his face, though I assume that he was probably thinking about Laya in a bikini. This is what I was thinking about at the time, at least.
On the other hand, he could've been thinking about how absurdly large Dragoon is. Then thinking either about how easily he'd lose his balance, or how much Dragoon's immense weight would hurt, if it were to be applied to his spleen. I would imagine that this would be a position that one would not want to sleep in. Can you imagine that? "Hey, Dragoon, I'm going to go to bed now." "Okay, I'll be there to stand on your spleen in just a second." How silly!
So Dragoon stood over the RAmar, then lifted his finger up, and poked him in the forehead. The tension was growing among the RAmars, and it was indeed growing with us. Now the beads of sweat started to form on Fender's forehead. No one was prepared when Dragoon suddenly jumped and stuck his chest out to yell, "EVIL MEN!" and after a sufficient pause he continued with, "I WANT TO KIIIIIIIILLLLLL YOOOOOOUUUUU!! DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE!!"
No one was prepared for this. Especially the RAmars. While Fender, Laya and I were falling backward, the RAmars jumped, and a couple of them fell off of the platform we were on, down to the floor below. The Pinkal RAmar, however, stayed calm for some reason, and rallied the troops. Swinging his big pink Rappy around by the feet, he yelled to the others, "Com'on yall! Let's get it to it!" and while Dragoon was doing his dance of death, this RAmar just walked up to him, and smacked him over the head with the Rappy.
This startled Dragoon, as he'd never been hit with a Rappy before. Let alone, a Love Rappy. For an instant, he seemed perplexed. For the next instant, he seemed to be moving. Following that, he seemed to be removing the Love Rappy from the RAmar's hand, and beating him down with it. If pillows were big, pink, and had beaks, and squirt blood all over the place when they hit RAmars, Dragoon's assault-assault of the RAmar very much would've resembled a tremendously one-sided pillow fight.
Before I knew what else had happened, the Rappy was somehow embedded in a distant wall, and the Pinkal RAmar was being lobbed at the greater portion of the group, which still remained on top of the platform on which we stood, or stumbled as the case may be. This all occurred in the time it took the RAmars to re-orient themselves after Dragoon's outburst, which indeed, the Rappy beating occurred quite quickly.
On further recollection, the blood that squirt may very well have been the RAmar's. The group in any case, had lost another two of the RAmars to the edge of the platform, making a total of five RAmars below, and five RAmars on top.
The five RAmars below, however, were putting themselves on top of things. In a manner of speaking. The three that had fallen initially were on the run for the teleporter pad back up to the top of the platform. Meanwhile, Dragoon was proceeding to attack the RAmars.
He charged against the Greenill RAmar, as he seemed to be the leader of the pack. I assume that was his logic. Or it could've been because he was the only one standing. Dragoon stopped in front of the Greenill RAmar, smacked him upside the head, kicked him in the shin, and while distracted by that, he proceeded to pick him up by the ankles, and shake him out like some deranged woolen rug. The kind you just kinda toss on the floor, because it might conceivably be decorative, or maybe just so that people step on that and get it all filthy and not clean instead of your absurdly expensive carpet that you paid too much for, and could've gotten a discount on, had you been only 30 years older. Personally, I was waiting for Dragoon to hang him up, and beat him with a racket, carpet-beating thing. Smack. Smack. POW!
When the other three RAmars returned to the platform from the teleporter, the Greenill RAmar became a weapon. Albeit, in my observations, anything in Dragoon's hands, or on his body, or in the same general vicinity as him, may potentially become a weapon. Dragoon seems to have a talent for hurting things in a most severe and absurdly effective fashion.
For example. I could have sworn that I saw that Greenill RAmar's head bend backward when he smacked into the Purplenum RAmar. And I don't just mean, like, looking up kinda position. I mean like, he was banging the back of his head between his shoulder blades. Which, with a helmet like that, I was rather impressed.

For the next few moments, I watched these color-coded RAmars get pounded-- err, smacked-- err, profoundly hurt, or um, yeah, something like that, by Dragoon the Pain Inflictor. Meanwhile, Fender was snagging the disc from the ground, Laya was watching Dragoon and making excited punching motions, and I was ogling at the combat, wondering why they hadn't died yet. Indeed, these fellows seemed to be mortality-impaired! Like being mentally impaired, I think, but like, instead of being unable to think, you're unable to lose your life.
People who lose their life intrigue me. Do you think they're just wandering around looking for it? People think they're going, "WOOOO!!!" and "AhhhH!!" and "BOOO!!" but they're actually saying, "What the heck? I just had it a moment ago, where the heck did I put that thing?" What if they found it? "Oh! Here it is!" Dust it off... Spit shine it, and stuff it back in their pocket. Would that make this individual alive again? I can just see someone being upset after finding their life, going home, and finding that their apartment has been rented out to someone else. They'd be like, "Hey! That was my apartment! All my stuff was in there!" Then, without hesitation, the collection of beer cans and burger wrappers must be started over. There was more to this tangent, but Laya hit me. Hard.
So, yeah, these things took a beating, and kept on ticking. So I yelled. I yelled, "Hey!" And then I yelled, "These guys, they're on PCP or something!" And then I yelled again, "Dragoon, how many times have you broken Pinkie's neck? And that bird! There's something wrong with that bird! That bird ain't right!" At which point, Fender grabbed me, put his hand over my mouth, and rushed me for the teleporter.
"Let's just get out of here, and let Dragoon handle these guys, shall we?" Fender suggested.
To which, I replied, "So, what're we gonna do now?" I stumbled a couple of times, going through the teleporter with Fender and Laya.
"Run, you idiot!"
"Oh, well, that makes sense," I said, and we ran.

When we ran passed the fray, the RAmars diverted their attention from Dragoon, who was drastically beating his fists into one of them on the ground, screaming, "WHY!!! WON'T!!! YOU!! DIIIIIIIIIEEEEE!!!!!"
This RAmar was convulsing, I do believe. The others saw us running away with the disc, and following an astute order from the Viridia RAmar, they began jumping down to us, and following us. Seeing his crowd leaving him, Dragoon grabbed his broken and pulped Viridia RAmar, and followed them. Looking back, I was able to see Dragoon doing this, and I happened to notice that he was dragging this RAmar, in very much the same way that a puppy drags a large new toy in its mouth, when it's proud to be destroying something.
We ran through hallways for a distance, but were soon confronted with a room full of baddies that wanted to fight. With Dragoon dealing with the RAmars, our room-clearing machine was preoccupied. We stopped, and Dragoon and the RAmars seemed to roll by in a mobile skirmish. Fender looked at the Dimenians and Delsabers over his oddly colored 3D goggles. "Hmm... This... This is not good, Crankshaft."
To which, I aptly replied, "This is about as desirable as closing your head in a nuclear mini-fridge. Yes, very bad, indeed." I grunted after this, and nodded, while posing in a semi-dramatic fashion. Fender just looked at me, as though he were oblivious to what I was saying, and I snorted in return.
As the monsters approached, Laya seemed to be getting frustrated, or maybe even a little bit nervous. She started hurling fireballs at the monsters, repelling them back decently. They kept coming though, and she started becoming subtly more desperate. I heard her, under her breath, saying, "Foie! Foie! Foie!" as she shot these fireballs off, and but before long, she ceased tossing fireballs. Fender and I looked at eachother, then looked back at her.
At this point, she was just gasping for breath, like someone who's just done something physically exhausting for a while. Then she squeezed a comment between breaths, saying, "Now that I'm warmed up..." This was followed by her standing in a tense stance, and four huge fireballs forming in front of her. She closed her eyes as sweat dripped from her forehead, and when she looked up, she shouted, "FLAELI!!!" With this outburst, the huge fireballs burst outward, with great flaming glory.
They whooshed through the room, each one impacting in the center of clusters of Dimenians and Delsabers, and as they hit, they went BOOOOOOOM! Really big-like! Just Boom! And the monsters went flying. Some splattered against the ceiling, some were squooshed where they were, and others were smeared across the floor. It was glorious. Fender and I had to brace from the shockwave. It was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen.
One of the other coolest things I've ever seen, was the time when I found an old Meseta coin from before the electronic currency revolution, and having nothing better to do with it, threw it into a magnetic matter combustion chamber, and forgot to close the door before turning it on. All of the pretty colors. It melted into a cluster of shiny sparks, and an odd smelling gas. I still get woozy and goofy when I think about it.
So, Laya cleared the room at great physical expense, while Dragoon tangled with the men in black, that wanted to take away our disc full of contraband information. When Laya collapsed, Fender and I picked her up, and ran to the next room. The RAmars lead Dragoon after us.
This next room began with a huge, horse-guy-thing charging at us. With a yelp, we indeliberately tossed Laya back into the hallway connecting this room and the previous room, and split up. Before long, however, we found the horsy to be spontaneously beat to death with a pair of RAmars in Dragoon's possession. He stood there, spinning them around like nunchukus, making a "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!" sound, with a varying pitch throughout the pronunciation. With a low, "Huuuwaaahh..." sound, Dragoon jumped back at the RAmars, with rangers a-blazing.
Then I happened to notice something. This room appeared to be a bridge. A bridge over an engine room! Then I narrowly dodged a Dimenian's sword-like arm, and ran to a place that would be temporarily safe. Then I shouted to Fender, "FENDERER!!!" Hee hee, I called him Fenderer.
Anyway, he shouted, "What!?" As he tossed a couple of Foies at some encroaching upon his person.
I yelled back, observing the electric current freeing itself from the top turbine, down to the bottom turbine. What I yelled was, "This room has a HUGE Protonic Combustion Engine! And it's at a LOW idle! This is a ship!!" At this point I dodged another Dimenian and moved again, and yelled further, "They aren't supposed to be able to work safely at this size!! I have an idea!"
I ran to him, pulled him aside and told him all about the gravitic lethality of a large-scale Protonic Combustion Engine. We ran out into the hallway, and while Fender yelled at Dragoon to drop a freeze trap to freeze the RAmars, and quickly run out of the room, I shook Laya awake, and even reached into her pocket, pulled out a bottle of Trifluid, and dumped it down her throat. She awoke with a smack in my face. Dragoon arrived, and the RAmars were frozen.
"Laya!" I shouted at her. "Joo! Joo must doo-doo that voo-doo that joo-doo soooo well!"
She looked at me and said, "What?!"
Then I pointed at the turbines. "Zap that thing! Like, really really hard! You've gotta overload it! Then we've gotta get outta here... Fast! Yeah..."
Laya rubbed her head, and squinted. Fender cast Ryuker, and generated a 'pipe up to Pioneer 2, which would be our heroic path of escapage. We would flee the destruction through the pipe! The gravity spike shall set us freeee!
So, Laya prepped herself. A few Zonde bolts flew between her hands, she sweat, held her hands up, and screamed, "TANDLE!" With her yell, I did a happy dance, and an electric bolt that far exceeded any blast of Zonde I've ever conceived of, ripped through the air, like a big lightning boltish thing, which, indeed, it was. The current in the turbines swelled, the Protonic combustion increased, and the ice holding the RAmars shattered. The ground shook underneath us, and all the Dimenians and RAmars started succumbing to their own increasing weight. We started feeling it too, but we chose to shoot up the Telepipe instead, dragging the fainting Laya along with us.
Back on Pioneer 2, the Telepipe collapsed behind us. Presumably by the increased gravity we just caused in the Ruins. Before Fender and I brought Laya to the hospital, Dragoon collected some meager pay from Fender, then said something about meeting some friends on the Viridia deck, before digging his fingers into a wall, and dragging himself up the side of it. Fender and I looked at eachother, shrugged, then took Laya to the hospital to be treated. Still, there was more adventuring yet to come.

Vantamiath
Jun 28, 2003, 04:25 AM
It's good to see your fic back in action.

Once again--you have my attention http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif

BOC
Jun 28, 2003, 10:27 AM
i haven't read any of this fic yet - apart from the title and like the first three lines.

so im printing it out (all twenty seven pages of it size ten arial) so i don't go blind sitting in front of this computer screen! http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

if its half as good as The Recollection of Meira then i guess im in 4 a real treat!!!!!! http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

keep up the excellent work!!!

PEACE!!!

BOC
Jun 29, 2003, 05:53 PM
well i sat in the garden (thank god it was sunny http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif) and read the whole thing!

i laughed my ass off at it! i nearly cried i was laughin that much!

funniest fic ive read since.... well the recollection of Meira!

can't wait for the next chapter!!!

PEACE!!!!

Logical2u
Jun 29, 2003, 07:08 PM
Its a very wellwritten story, yet very long. It is the first story that made me laugh at almost every sentence. Keep up the good work!

HUnewearl_Meira
Jul 12, 2003, 03:26 AM
This chapter was going to be like... Considerably longer... Like... Two or three times longer... But now it's like, 1:30 in the morning, and I realized that having already fully 3 printed pages worth at a size 10 font, this would be sufficient for a full chapter. In any case, I think I'm on a roll now (A new chapter two weeks in a row, all right!), so hopefully there'll be another chapter, or possibly even two new chapters next week. Wow, I must be feeling silly lately... Hope you enjoy it!


Chapter 8

One of the most troubling parts of writing a personal account is deciding what to include, and what to exclude. In terms of what to exclude, Laya has proven to be helpful, as she has been proof reading this for me, and when she reads something that she particularly doesn't like, she will hit me. My logic tells me that she might not hit me if I don't watch over her shoulder as she reads my work, but do I recognize this logic and take it to heart? No way, screw that, I want to lean my head over her shoulder, smell her hair, and ask her what she thinks after each paragraph! Yeah, now THAT is how to write! Just so you know in advance, this particular chapter is going un-proof read, as Laya has taken a holiday at this present time.

So I was sitting at my desk after finishing grading some papers. It was about @910 Beats, and my ear called to my pinky finger. Without further contemplation, I raised my arm, and thrust the smallest finger of my right hand into my right ear, and wiggled it around in there. I wiggled that finger, and before retracting it, I made a scooping motion.
Mission accomplished, I withdrew my invading digit from my pointy listening apparatus, and brought it a reasonable distance in front of my face. The rest of my fingers balled into a fist, and my pinky curled to point straight up for optimal viewing convenience, I examined the yellowish-brown cone of wax on my finger; because well, it came from my ear, and this is what you do with things that you remove from your body.
I then proceeded with the next step of things you do with things you remove from your body, after you examine it visually. I lifted my finger just below my nose, and took a whiff. I winced, and wiped the mess on the most convenient receptacle, which turned out to be a term paper belonging to a student of mine by the name of K-420. His reaction upon receiving the paper back was, "Professor Differential, I can understand the red ink asking me to be more specific when I detail the principles behind Neutron Relays, but what's this yellow mark next to the heading on Propulsion Arrays mean?"
To that, I deftly answered, "It means... uh... No cookie for you! Ha." Then I continued passing out papers.
So, yeah, I wiped the mess onto K-420's term paper, and then I happened to think that I was hungry, and Laya was just finishing a class, so I poked my head in her office. "Hey Laya!" I yelled.
Sitting at her desk, resting her forehead on her hand, and her elbow on her desk, she made a growling noise and said, "No, Crankshaft. I don't want to get piss-faced drunk."
I thought about that for a moment then said, "I wasn't going to ask that, though that doesn't sound entirely like a bad idea. Still, I think that Dux went to visit a friend of his today, Meira, I think he called her. In any case, that leaves the drunk thing out of the question. Besides, I have a class later, so I figure, I should avoid being piss-faced drunk, albeit that might prove for an interesting class. I'm lecturing on logic-solving constructs this week."
Evidently confused, she asked, "What do you want then, Crankshaft?"
I stared blankly for a moment, as shiny objects easily distract me, and she was putting her nifty paperweight back on her desk. Then I said, "Actually, I was going to offer to buy you lunch. Because I'm hungry, and I've run out of papers to grade."
Laya lifted her head from her hand and looked at me. "Buy... me lunch? Um, excuse me Crankshaft, but are you insinuating that we should go on a lunch date?" Her other hand approached the shiny paperweight again.
"I like to have something to do while I eat," I replied. It was interesting, thinking about it. The whole conversation, the only part of my body entering her office was my head, so effectively I was just this head poking through her door.
Then she was like, "Excuse me?"
And I was like, "Well, I mean, I have no more papers to grade, somehow, and I'm hungry, so I figured I could, uh, buy you lunch, and then I'd have someone to talk to."
So she was just totally, "You? Talk? Eh, yeah, I could see it. But what would we talk about?"
So I just, "We could speak of my phearsome tallness!" With that, her hand lifted the shiny paper weight, and I quickly added, "Or, or or, we could, uh, I could tell you about the court yards of the Central Dome, yeah! And the vicious man-eating birds there, yeah!"
Her hand with the paperweight stopped, and she set it down again, once again distracting me. "Hm. The Central Dome's gardens..." she said. "All right, Crankshaft. I'll go with you. That cafe down the street?"
"Best burgers in town," I replied. Indeed, they are the best burgers you can get on Pioneer 2. That's fairly universally agreed on, though as popular as the cafe is, many people don't know about it. I think that this is best.

So we walked down the street, past the promenade of clothing shops. Laya stopped to look at the window at the front of an establishment titled, "Apparel Boulevard". I asked her, "I never understood window shopping. What is the appeal, exactly?"
She didn't look at me, but she continued to examine every detail. "Well, you see Crankshaft, sometimes it's just fun to look at the things that you don't own, and sometimes you may get an idea of what you want to get, next time you go to make a purchase." After saying that, she leaned closer to the window, "Hey, that's pretty!"
I scratched my head, and looked strangely in some direction. Then I looked at the window. I leaned in, and looked at what she seemed to be looking at. I didn't see anything special about it. "Soooo... is it me that's weird, that I'm not particularly amazed, or is it you that's weird because you're amazed, 'cause one of us is with the rest of the universe, and it's either me for not being terribly impressed, or it's you for your fetish, 'cause I mean, it's only glass... Is it making colors or something?" I stared harder. Then my head hurt. My initial reaction was something along the lines of, "Oh, I see, it makes your head hurt. What's so impressive about that? GAH!"
That's when I'd realized that I was no longer looking at the glass window, but at the ground. Laya hit me. Hard. "The CLOTHES, Crankshaft! I was looking at the CLOTHES! Great Light, you're so dense!"
"Hey!" I yelled. "I am not dense!" She looked at me with angry eyes. "I float very well, as a matter of fact, so there."
"Lutz, Almighty... you go and prove every word I say, Crankshaft," she sighed as she shook her head, looked down and folded her arms. Her hand rose, and she put her fingers to her forehead for a moment. Presumably, she was thinking. If I were to guess, I'd have to say she was probably thinking about how many photon drops it would take to completely engulf the statue of Principle Tyrell in front of the university with monomates. Actually, this is what I was thinking about. Later, I worked out the math, and figured out that it would take roughly seven hundred.

We got to the cafe, and stepped up to the counter to order. There was an attractive young woman behind the counter, taking orders with a smile that I could believe. This is how all stores should be. All customer service representatives at food serving places should be pretty young women who look like they genuinely enjoy taking your order. Just barely young enough for you to feel the moral obligation to not look at them as something you want to take back to the ol' bachelor pad, and just pretty enough to make you wish they were old enough so you could. Plus, I think that the smile makes you enjoy the experience more. Happiness is infectious, you know.
And who wants to order food from some dude with a face full of red volcanoes that look like they're about ready to burst, and a couple of premature little follicles posing as the meager beginnings of a beard, anyway? Not exactly the most appetizing site to see. You'd be looking over the menu, he'd be like, squeaking, "What would you like to eat, sir?" and you'd be like, looking down from the menu at him, going, "Hm, well, I think that I'd like to have-- OH GOOD GREAT LIGHT! Gah, um, zit-- I mean, pimple, I mean, kaaa-pop!, Er, um, nothing, yeah, actually, I think I have to use your bathroom!" and then you'd leave, and you'd be thinking, "Y'know, when I went in there, I was hungry, but now I just want to go home and groom myself." Then you'd be reviewing it in your mind later, and you'd have these mental images in your head of the whole thing, and you'd be thinking, "Oh Light, I think I saw one pop..." Yeah, I'd rather have such a fellow explain complex arithmetic to me, as he'd probably be more skilled at it.
So, um, yeah, anyway, there was this lovely young woman there to take our order. Laya ordered first, because I refused to go before her. "I'll have the Barbeque Burger combo with a regular cola, please," she ordered.
"Is Smoca-cola okay, ma'am?" asked the lovely customer service representative.
"That'll be great, actually."
Then I stepped up. "What can I get for you, sir?" she asked. I pointed at the Classic Hamburger combo on the menu, and looked at her with no expression on my face. She looked at the menu behind her, then back at me. "Sir?" she asked.
"I want that," I said, "Give me that."
She looked at the menu again. Then back at me. "Wh--...Which one, sir?"
She stumped me with this one. "Uh," I stuttered. "The, um, with THE hamburger. Y'know. The good one." I had the description figured out, now. "The one that comes with a tasty beverage and side of carefully sliced potatoes fried in the grease of dead vegetables."
She looked at the menu again, then again back at me. "But they're all good, sir... And they all come with the same options for beverage and fries... Can you be more specific?"
I thought for a moment. "The hamburger has, like, stuff on it. Some green stuff, and, oh, yeah, that hot, meaty stuff! Yeah! And, uh, those red juicy things that're all sliced up... Tomatoes, that's it! Yeah!"
"The Green Burger?"
"No..."
"The Chiliburger?"
"Hmm... Not that one, no."
"The Classic Burger?"
When she said that, I jumped in place, pointed to my nose, then to her, and did my happy dance. Then I said, "And I want the sides, err, with that deal, um, like me!"
"Like you... You want them, uh... like you... You want them tall?"
"Yes, I'm very tall."
After punching in my order, she repeated the whole thing to us, as cheerful as ever, and after I concurred that she got it right, she said, "That'll be 750 Meseta, sir."
With prestige, I paid the girl, and even included a 100 Meseta tip for putting up with me. Laya was standing off in the background somewhere pretending not to know me.
She handed me a receipt and a plastic, standing object with a number on it and said, "You're number 28, and your food and drinks will be out in a few minutes."

So we were sitting down, we recieved our food, and I was telling Laya about my first trip to Ragol. I told her, "See, see, there were these wolves with fangs like, uh, they were as big as my, err, Nuclear mini-fridge!-- Wait, no, they were like elephant tusks! But sharp and pointy, and they wanted to just grab me by the head and go, BURWURPWURPWUURRRPURUR!"
Then I wiped the drool from my chin, and continued, "Then there were these Kung Fu gopher things the size of professional wrestles, and they had these big gopher claws, and they wanted to do me physical harm!"
She looked at me dully and said, "And what did you do, Crankshaft?"
To this I replied, "Well, I did what any intelligent young Newman would do."
"And what's that?"
"I nearly wet my pants, and hopped the fence. You didn't think I'd actually FIGHT the things, did you?"
"Ugh... Y'know, your buddy Dux would've blasted them, and been through with it."
I blinked at that one. Then I said, "Yeah, but I'm tall. I can see high over the heads of midgets!" I continued, "So, anyway, yeah! Then these devil birds fell from the sky, and they looked at me like they wanted to pick my living flesh off of my bones, and I stood up bravely, and I said to them, 'Bow down before your king, young Rappies! There is much work to be done!' ... But then they just walked up to me, and attacked me with their 12 rows of upper and lower TEETH, and flapped their wings at me with their razor-sharp, rusty metal feathers at me, and I had to give myself a tetanus shot right there, and I was like, 'Gah! Devil birds!' and I ran, and hopped over another fence."
Laya continued to look at me funny. "I thought that the gardens were supposed to be in a residential area?"
"Yeah, I think I saw something like that. There was another area though, right in front of the dome. It was raining there, though. There was this big horned ape there, that chased me in circles for a while, until I beat it to death with the cane I'd bought before going down there."
"You beat it to death? With a cane?"
"Yeah, either that, or some ranger named VanGarrett came and shot the cheese out of it, and saved my life before it used my head like a crayon. I think it wanted to write curse words in the concrete with me. You should've seen those birds though. They had these beady little eyes that just make you want to cringe in fear, and and and laconium claws to tear your eyes from your sockets..." Before long, the food was finished, and we walked back to our offices.



[EDIT] Fixed some accented e's. Tsk, tsk! No accents in posts! That's a no-no!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HUnewearl_Meira on 2003-07-14 10:13 ]</font>

Logical2u
Jul 12, 2003, 07:13 AM
Great chapter, Meira! (And just so you know, for future reference, e's with ' dont cut and paste well)

BOC
Jul 13, 2003, 12:51 PM
My bro is startin to look at me funny for laughing like a diseased jester at my PC screen.

quailTy (with a capital T)meira!

Can't wait for the next part!

PEACE!!!

Kupi
Jul 14, 2003, 06:17 PM
Your fanfic has done the impossible, Meira; Mag farming is actually tolerable when I have your fic to read. And I mean that in a good way. http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

HUnewearl_Meira
Aug 13, 2003, 01:15 AM
Bit of a delay on this... Not sure why... Kind of a writer's stumble, I guess. Not to be confused with writer's block... I suddenly became more interested in scenes that are to appear in later chapters... In any case, I'm giving myself a big push to move this fic along, so I'm hoping to have chapter 10 up by Friday... Hopefully, I won't get distracted with other things like, uh, in-laws and Whose Line Is It Anyway... All right, so poomba! Here we go! Chapter 9!


Chapter 9

When something terrible happens, it's interesting how things go about. Someone dies and your first thought is, "Does this mean I get to go home now?" Unless you see it happen. In which case, your first thought is, "OUCH!! Well THAT guy is certainly dead!" When a large number of people die, and you see it, you don't have a first thought. You may not even have a thought. Just a whole bunch of, "!!!!" Your eyes bug out of your head, and curse words you've never heard of before spew forth from your mouth.
I had returned to my office, and I was just about to sort through a pile of envelopes that appeared on my desk in my absence, when I heard a ruckus down the street. At first, I ignored it. Then it got louder. I dropped down a partially opened letter, and ran to the window. Opening it, I yelled, "What in the name of great historical cheeses is WRONG with you people?!?" Then I looked at what was happening, and if I had been chewing on something tangible, I would've choked. Instead, I dropped my mental hoagie, and said, with great zeal, mind you, "!!!!" Then I made some odd noises, most of which were quite loud, and many of which, I'm told were rather obscene.
This, of course, summoned Laya's attention to my presence. As she burst through the door between our offices, she screamed at me, "Crankshaft!!" I didn't turn around, but she continued, "You see it, too?!?"
In a moment of striking reality, I turned to her and shouted over the noise, "No, I just like shouting obscenities at my people!"
"This is no time, Crankshaft! Turn on the news, they've got a news van out there!"
"But we've got a front-row seat!"
"Turn it on, Screwball!"
"Yes, ma'am!" And thus, I did. I ran over to my desk, and poked a few buttons on my terminal's control pad, calling upon a news video stream. The live crew was already on the scene. The censor blocks flew. A pitch-black HUcast was making a mess of things. It wasn't terribly long before the newscaster became part of it. I remember what he said, even now.
He said, "Here we are, at the scene of the massacre in progress." He moved aside, providing a better view. "As you can see, a rather lar--" Then he got thumped by an airborne limb. Almost instantly, the black HUcast was on top of him, tearing him apart. Frames later, it jumped up, and attacked the camera. Video silence. It went back to the anchorman, who stuttered for a moment, before the cheesy "SOPHISTICATED DIFFICULTIES" flower scene thing popped up.
Meanwhile, Laya was in the restroom, recalling the lunch I bought her. I returned to the window at this point, to see what was still happening. More carnage was going on. Body parts flying. Blood spurting. Vehicles were landing on the roof. Shots fired Unfortunately, the photon bullets were deflected by Mr. Violence Personified, down there, typically smacked in the direction of the few fleeing survivors.
The door from the hallway slammed open. At first, I thought it was Laya coming from the restroom, but when she did that, it was much more gingerly. I looked at the door, and VanGarrett was standing there. "Crankshaft!" he shouted.
I shouted back. "GAH!" I shouted. "That seems to be today's standard greeting! VANGARRETT!" Then Laya stepped out of the restroom slowly. "LAYA!" I yelled. She jumped.
"CRANKSHAFT!" she yelled. "WHAT?!?"
"Just the standard greeting for today."
"Ugh, whatever..."
VanGarrett ran over to us. "Crackhead! Let's go, there's no time!" he grabbed me, and started to pull me out of the room. Suddenly he stopped and looked at Laya. I heard him mumble as he looked at her. "So that's why he--" Then he spoke up, "You too! Let's go!"

A moment later, we were running down the hall. I was content to just run, and ask questions later, but Laya was all confused, and wanted to know why we were running to the emergency stairs. "What is going on? Why are we running? What the heck?" she questioned as we ran.
"It's not a random attack!" he yelled as he kicked a door open.
"What?!?"
We kept running. We were coming up to another door, where we were seeing a desperate janitor lock it in front of us. VanGarrett cursed at him and yelled, "Open up the door!" Then he cursed at him some more, though he could only gesture an apology and run. VanGarrett grumbled as he smacked the door and tried to open it. He looked back, and cursed. When I looked back there, I saw something big coming and made a noise.
"Stand back!" VanGarrett yelled once more. Laya and I stepped back, as VanGarrett pulled out what I quickly identified as a Suppressed Gun, and shot the lock off. "Go! Go! Go!" So we go'ed. We ran through the door. I heard a few more shots fired off, and soon he was right with us again. "He's in the building!"
Laya shouted, "Who's in the building?!? That crazy HUcast?!"
"Yeah, that crazy HUcast!"
We kept running. A huge creature burst through the wall in front of us, and shoot the janitor off its foot, before looking at us. It was like some sort of d-cellular cow, except it was really really mean. I've since learned that it was called a Delbiter.
"Crap! A Delbiter!" VanGarrett yelled. We tried to run passed it, but it wouldn't let us by. VanGarrett started pelting it with bullets, but was unable to phase it much; though he did manage to blast a few holes through its hard skin, causing this bizarre purple substance to spurt all over the place. Just as the Delbiter was on top of him, and about to come down, something huge crashed through the roof, and effectively crushed the beast.
I though we were surely dead, that the HUcast had caught up with us. Certainly, it was a HUcast, but this one was white and covered in purple stuff. It pulled some sort of Glaive from the remains of the beast, and looked at VanGarrett.
"Paladin!" VanGarrett yelled. "You were supposed to wait!"
"You took to long. I decided you needed help."
"Glad you did! Can you hold off Akolyte?"
"That's what I do..." With that he started to take off toward the quickly approaching Akolyte. Before taking off for the fight, he yelled back, "HuBBsDoctor and Zeirom are on their way down!"
With an acknowledging, salute-like gesture at Paladin, VanGarrett holstered his gun, grabbed our arms again, and we were running again. The loud sound of metal against metal echoed in the hallway, as we got ran by another office, mere yards from the door to the emergency stairs. There was a crashing sound from the office next to us, and I thought, "Why did that office make a crashing sound?" I looked back, as we ran through the door, and saw the door on the office shatter behind us, and those creepy darkly dressed RAmars run out.
We ducked behind the door, just as they started shooting at us, and I actually caught a photon bullet in my arm. With a shriek and a whimper, I grabbed my arm, then looked at VanGarrett. "Come ON!" he yelled, and jerked me up a couple of stairs.
HuBBsDoctor dropped down behind us. Photon bullets were flying all around us. He remarked at VanGarrett in a certain sarcastic tone, commonly associated with intelligent donkeys. "Trying to get a shower, boss?"
VanGarrett recovered flawlessly however with, "That's what it looks like, but I generally prefer to bathe in water. We're gonna need some cover!"
There was a clanking above us, which was decidedly the noise made by the RAcast soon identified as Zeirom while running down metal stairs.. That clanking was soon muffled by a series of precision sharp shots. The next thing I heard was the "reeeeeeeeeeearrrrooountphpt!" of metal stairway breaking from the wall above us, soon followed by Zeirom shouting, "TALLY HO!"
Zeirom landed with a metallic thud, and with a few more curses from HuBBsDoctor and VanGarrett, and a shout from Laya, we were forced to jump from our position on the stairs, to a lower portion of the stairway across the spire from us. I hurt myself upon landing, and Laya hurt me more when she landed on me. That's okay, though. She's small, and I was able to make due with only one kidney until I could make a trip to the hospital.
We regrouped. Everyone stood, except for me. I mangled. Zeirom was nearby, and looked up at the wreckage, which by this time was several stories worth of stairway, all piled in front of the door we'd gone through. The shower of photon bullets continued, but now it was hampered by the debris. Zeirom surveyed the brokenness. "That the cover you wanted, VanGarrett?"
"That'll due..." he replied, then checked his holster. "Ah, curse words..."
HuBBsDoctor turned his attention from the flying photons to VanGarrett. "What?"
"My Suppressed gun. It must've fallen from my holster when we jumped."
Zeirom was still looking at the wreckage. "The one I gave you? It's right there." He pointed up at the broken stairway.
VanGarrett looked at me, then at Laya. Then he looked up at the gun. "Ugh..." He paused for a moment.
Zeirom looked up. Another segment of the stairway fell loose. "They're trying to make the rest of the stairs fall on us."
VanGarrett nodded. Huffed. Stroked the facial hair he had, that I lack (Facially speaking, I'm like a little hairless dog. I'm skinny and smooth skinned). "All right," he said. "I'd better go up there and get it before it's too late."
At this point, I looked to Laya. "I think I punctured a kidney, Laya." Then I made a puppy-dog face.
Laya was busy watching HuBBsDoctor and VanGarrett, however, as HuBBsDoctor gave VanGarrett a boost up to the next broken segment of stairway. "Not, now Crankshaft! VanGarrett's doing something risky!"
I cringed, and turned away, "Urgk, you can pull the jagged metal thing out of my BACK now..."
"Crankshaft! Look, I know you hurt, but please!"
"No, no, I mean, pull the jagged metal thing out of my back! I landed on something when we jumped..."
"OH! I'm so sorry Crankshaft! I'll help you..." Then she jerked the thing out of my back. I yelped. She did a little bit of Resta. Ahhh, it was worth it.
VanGarrett jumped back down, rather haphazardly, this time, with his gun. Stumbling back up to his feet, and wiping some blood from his lip, he looked at HuBBsDoctor and said, "Good crap! Almost got killed out there!"
HuBBsDoctor stepped out of the way of a falling stair, and asked him, "How do we get ourselves into this kind of situation, anyway?"
"Screwing up this bad takes mad talent, dude." He looked around for a moment, and watched another piece of stairway fall and pile on top of other broken segments. Then he looked at Zeirom. "I have an idea... Hey Zeirom!"
"My first thought, VanGarrett, is that I should say no."
"Can you do me a favor, and transfer your traps to your inventory?"
"Err... Okay..." Zeirom quirked his shoulders for a moment. "All of them?"
"All of them!"
Zeirom made a strange movement, almost as though he were stretching his back. "...Done."
"Great!" VanGarrett immediately began punching buttons on the terminal on his ranger's bracer.
I stumbled over to him, to watch. "What're you doing?" I asked.
VanGarrett pulled out a visor device, turned it on, and handed it to me. "Put on this Trap Vision, and look at the area above our cover, up there."
I took it, and looked up there. My pointy ears picked up one last poke of a button on VanGarrett's terminal. Then I saw no less than thirty traps materialize on just the other side of the stairway heap. The gunfire stopped, and I heard a collective, "OH CRAP!" Just before "KA-BOOOOM!" The sound of dozens of traps of all sorts blowing up.
Our cover was, err, well, blown. HuBBsDoctor jumped up and tackled me. "GET DOWN!" he yelled. Get down, indeed.
Meanwhile, I distinctly heard Zeirom jump and yell, "Laya! I'll save you!" Then I heard Laya yelp, and the clank of Zeirom landing. Thus, the stairway wreckage was fallen. On top of us. It wasn't over, but it sure made getting to the top of the building more complicated.

Logical2u
Aug 13, 2003, 02:27 PM
Ouch. A shard of metal in your back is nothing compared to several millions shards of metal covering your entire body. Nice new chapter!

BOC
Aug 13, 2003, 05:08 PM
mmmmmmmmm, rib shattering, toe tickling, large jagged piece of metal in the back, kidney punturing fun!!! http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif

good to read about zeirom again!! http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

roll on friday and chapter 10!!!

PEACE!!!

HUnewearl_Meira
Aug 15, 2003, 03:03 PM
Hey, thanks for the encouragement, everyone. Now, with the rush I've put on it, I've managed to finish Chapter 10. I should note, that Chapter 10 completes what I originally intended to be just Chapter 8. Egad? Yes.
So, um, yeah, here's Chapter 10, fresh off the chopping block.



Chapter 10

It was somewhat dark under the rubble. I fidgeted and HuBBsDoctor rolled off of me. I looked up, and the stairway above us was moving slightly. I looked at this strangely for a moment, then heard Zeirom a few feet away. "Ugh..." he said, as he stood up, and lifted the staircase from his shoulders. "Why did I have to be the biggest person here?"
VanGarrett stood and watched the disembodied staircase fall many floors below, as Zeirom tossed it off. "I think it worked out for the best, Zeirom. If one of us stood out over you, we would've been in severe pain. A rod stopped only inches from my back. I can't imagine the pain if it had hit me."
I jumped up and waved my hand. I shouted, "I can! I can!"
VanGarrett looked at me, then he looked around at everyone else and said, "All right, those guys are gonna be paralyzed and confused when they thaw out, but that's not going to last very long. We'd better get moving!"
HuBBsDoctor piped up, "But how're we going to get back to the roof now that the stairs are busted? There's no way we can accomplish anything on foot either, with all the ruckus outside."
I pointed at a door on the other side of the spire from us, only a floor down from where we started, "More stairs if we go there."
HuBBsDoctor looked at me funny. "Huh?"
Then I spoke really fast. "See, see, ontheothersideofthisbuildingthereisanotherspireofs tairs, andifwegothroughthatdoorit'sonlyabriefjogdownalong hallway, pastanumberofclassroomswhichshouldn'tbeinsessionby thispoint in... the... CHA-OS!!..." Then I gasped for air.
Everyone looked at me funny. VanGarrett twitched his eyebrows at me, and said, in an absurdly confused tone, "Huh?"
I was about to say something, but Zeirom stepped up behind me, put one hand behind my head, and his other over my mouth. "He says that there's more stairs if we go through that door, and run down the hallway behind it."
I slid out of his grip and shouted, "YES! That's what I was trying to say really quickly!" I jumped around and did my happy dance.
To this, Zeirom replied in a slow, calm voice, "Yes... It's a wonder what you can do by using fewer words."
We started to run toward the door, but then it blew up, and smoke just came from it. HuBBsDoctor nearly choked on his own breath. "Well, uh... I don't think we're gonna be taking THAT door..."
VanGarrett, Laya and I were the first to drop ourselves over the railing, down to the stairs beneath us. Of course, Laya had told us, "I'm wearing a dress. I go first."

Our jog kept going down and down and further down, until we'd gotten to the ground floor, and logic dictated that we could go no further. First, we had to slide and tumble down some wrecked stairway, but once on the floor of the massive lobby, we booked it across the marble tile, and past the giant statue of Lubetz, the ancient god of Learning. Just as we'd passed the statue, it became apparent as to what was causing the explosions on each floor. Just behind us, Paladin and Akolyte crashed through the ceiling, cracking the marble behind us.
When we got to the second set of stairs spiraling up to the square spire leading to the roof of the building, I stopped and looked back. Akolyte had Paladin down on the ground, and was starting to do something rather strange. He held Paladin to the ground, with his hand, palm flat on Paladin's chest. Something began seeping from his arm's seams, soon forming a number of darkly colored tentacles, which wrapped around each other, and held Paladin down in one place. Paladin struggled, but his movements only forced him deeper into the ground.
When Zeirom smacked me upside the head and grabbed me, Paladin had come up with a slick move to just stop fighting it, and dive into the ground to escape. As we charged up the stairs, I could hear Akolyte's shouts of frustration. Meanwhile, VanGarrett was cursing about stairs. Though perhaps not terribly fat, VanGarrett is something of a chubby RAmar, though that RAmar uniform does a lot in the direction of making its wearer look more physically fit. Hm. Still, I think he'd be considerably larger if he had a job where he like, sat in front of a computer and drew construction plans for parking lots all day, or something. And people kept feeding him donuts. Yes, he'd be larger.
Still, we were running up the stairs for quite some time. After a floor or two, inspiration exploded among us, when another Delbiter busted through a door behind us, and chased us up for or five flights, before our rangers turned around and shot it all to Abyss. Let me recap what happened there.
This thing busted through the door, just BOOOM! And it made this "RROOOOOOUUUPPPHTH!" noise. Then it just totally started chasing us, and we were like, "AH!! Big thing! Scary!" Well, I was, everyone else just cursed, and we started running faster. So we just kept running, and this thing was catching up. In an effort to gain some lead on it, I jumped to the ramp above us, and pulled Laya up behind me, while Zeirom gave HuBBsDoctor a boost. Meanwhile, VanGarrett just kept running, and Zeirom followed behind him. Now, where VanGarrett had been in the lead, he was now followed only by the hulking android.
After a few floors, VanGarrett shouted, "OKAY! That's ENOUGH! I'm TIRED of running from this infernal thing! Turn, aim and shoot him all to Abyss!"
HuBBsDoctor shouted in reply, "Count of three!?"
"Lutz curse it, THREE!!!"
With that, we all stopped, and the rangers among us pulled out their weapons and just started shooting it in a most excessive manner. It was stopped pretty effectively, and when they were done, all that was left of it was a big, chunky purple stain on the stairway they had shot down. We looked at each other. VanGarrett seemed out of breath. He stepped up a few stairs, holding onto the rail for support. "All right," he said. "Let's keep going!"
So, we ran up the stairs some more. Two of the dark RAmars popped out a door in front of us. The first was pushed over the railing by VanGarrett, the second was snatched up and carried with us by Zeirom. I think the rest were about to come through the door, but I slammed into it with all my weight, which may not normally be a whole lot, but when running at full tilt, I can still put a good whomp on.
Of course, when confronted with the strength of eight Dark Falz infected RAmar, even my inertia at full tilt will get shot off a door. Which I was. Just BOOM! And I was riding Zeirom's back. Zeirom promptly pulled me off, tossed me forward, and dropped the RAmar, which he'd been dragging behind him. By this point, Laya was starting to lag behind. Zeirom noticed this, and shouted to her, "Let me help you, Laya!" At which point he pulled her onto his shoulder, and proceeded to run by me.
I was just like, "Um, Hey-ey! I'm lagging, too!"
To this, Zeirom replied, "You're a man! Deal with it!"
Meanwhile, on Zeirom's shoulder, Laya had the chance to really observe our situation. "Time to cut their path out from in front of them! Eye for an eye, I say!" With that, she raised her hands above her head, and cast a huge burst of Rafoie, destroying the stairway behind us, and propelling me up a level ahead of everyone. It hurt, but bleh, I got ahead for free. The RAmars tumbled behind us, and we were safe again for the moment.
It wasn't long, however, before Akolyte himself shot up at us from below, caught a railing, and mangled the stairs in front of us in the process of pulling himself up. Not to be stopped so easily though, of course, we hoisted each other up to the next level, leaving only Zeirom below, because well, the four of us combined aren't enough to pull a full-size RAcast off the ground a millimeter, let alone an entire floor.
Akolyte quickly turned around to chase us. We ran. I believe that Akolyte was soon tackled by Zeirom, promptly stomped on, and then Zeirom caught up with us at a rather frantic pace. Looking down, I saw Paladin jump up as well, and once again struggle with Akolyte. I heard the stairway beneath us bending and breaking underneath their combined weight and constant jerky movements. Most of us tripped, when the entire staircase started coming loose. We were only three floors from the roof, when the whole stairway broke from the wall.
I clung on to the railing for dear life. The slope of the stairs kept adjusting in sudden jerking motions. HuBBsDoctor and VanGarrett were above me. I took a moment to look down, past Laya and Zeirom. Zeirom was looking straight up. I suspect he was looking straight up at Laya, who was directly above him. He seemed to have an oddly thoughtful expression, despite our situation.
Past Zeirom, some distance, I could see Akolyte moving his odd tentacle things about the staircase, pulling himself up, and straightening the whole thing while he was at it. Paladin was standing at the last remaining step where the staircase broke off. He was sparking a little, and appeared to be going through some sort of personal trauma; he was slouched over, holding onto the railing with one hand, and had this other hand on his helmet-looking head. He swayed back and forth a bit, but when the top portion of the staircase, which we were dangling from, swung and hit the lower portion, which he was standing on, he must've regained the resolve at that point, to continue fighting.
I know this, only because while I was falling, I heard him yell at the top of his decibel range, "AKOLYTE!" in a rather angry tone, and by the time Zeirom caught me by the ankle, and I was looking straight down at them, I saw Paladin latching on to Akolyte, and trying to tear him from the staircase.
For some ambiguous reason, Zeirom mentioned, "I seem to be getting into a habit of catching falling Newmans by their ankles..." Evidently, he'd done this before.
As he was hoisting me back up, I saw Paladin ignite some sort of photon blade, yellow in color, and slice through Akolyte's tentacle things, thus causing them both to fall back down the thirty or so stories we'd climbed. I grabbed back onto the railing, and we all watched as they smacked down into the marble tile again. After a moment, they got back up, looked at each other, and resumed their skirmish.
VanGarrett looked back up at the door at the top of the dangling staircase. "He should be all right. He knows Akolyte inside and out. Once we're out of the area, Akolyte should leave." At this point, we all looked up at him. Except for maybe Zeirom, who was looking up, but I don't think it was at VanGarrett. I started scurrying up the railing. Holding on to a step, VanGarrett continued, "Dangit. I always think to myself that I should do a few pull-ups before bed, but do I ever? Noooo, what does a ranger need to exercise his THAT motion for? Pffft..." With a little more effort, we finally got back up to the top. By this time, Laya was on top of Zeirom's shoulder again. One at a time, we stepped through the door, and out onto the roof.

On the roof, a large vehicle was parked. VanGarrett tossed the keys to Zeirom. "You drive this time."
Zeirom caught the keys and shrugged. "Oh-kay." The doors on the vehicle were unlocked, and we all piled in.
Laya looked at VanGarrett, who was sitting next to her. I was sitting in the third, and back row of seats in the vehicle, right behind her. "We're just going to leave Paladin?" she asked.
To this, VanGarrett replied, "Yeah. He can handle himself. He's a DRAGOON-type, just like Akolyte is."
Laya jumped in her seat, as we started taking off. "How many of those violent constructs ARE there?"
"Only three. Dragoon, Paladin, and Akolyte-- in that order. They were part of a project by the Bortevo Corporation, to create a powerful mass-war soldier for the military. The only problem, was that while the Bortevo Corporation--"
I cut off VanGarrett, and finished it myself, "-- while the Bortevo Corporation employed absurdly talented designers, those eccentric crackpots would always either overshoot the client's requirements by WAY too much, or just get it entirely wrong."
"Exactly," VanGarrett replied. "Akolyte was their last creation."
Laya was puzzled, "He was their last? Did they go bankrupt or something?"
"No," VanGarrett looked her squarely in the eye now, "He killed them. All of them."

BOC
Aug 15, 2003, 04:52 PM
hmmmmmm, another scientific equation:

dragoon X 3 = mass chaos and fun

excellent stuff!!!

its really cool the way you've tied the series in and it works like a charm!!!

excellent work!!! keep it up!!!

PEACE!!!(! - extra ! for ya http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wink.gif. does that make two extra?)

MQuantum
Aug 15, 2003, 06:22 PM
This is really good. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time, especially at words.

On a side note I'm going to re-read this whole story, because it wasn't until about the 9th chapter I realized the main character's name was Crankshaft. I might have missed some other minor details...

HURAFO
Aug 18, 2003, 05:41 PM
Really good. I couldnt get out of this chair. ( even though my stomach was screaming at me) cant wait for chapter 11

Remember when in doubt make it up

Logical2u
Aug 26, 2003, 04:19 PM
"He killed them all"


Thats one profession I wouldn't want to be in.

Nice new chapter.

HUnewearl_Meira
Sep 17, 2003, 03:42 PM
Heh, I've been missing my own deadlines. I intended to have this all done two months ago, but I've found that finding the time to get writing done has been more difficult.

Even still, Meira gets a cameo this time. This is possibly the most confusing chapter yet, in a very Crankshaft sort of way. So, in short, this has taken longer, but hopefully, it should be worth it.



Chapter 11

I leaned over the seat in front of me, and looked at VanGarrett. I stared at him for a moment. He turned his serious look toward me, and we stared at each other for a moment. He did a fairly poor job of trying not to smirk. I just looked at him with my usual goofy expression. Eyebrows lowered, eyes wide open, nostrils flared, and my lips were positioned in a fashion I cannot begin to explain. Finally, the silence was broken. VanGarrett pushed aside a snicker to say, "Yes, I am aware that you have a hang-up with asking questions directly to people you aren't intimately familiar with. What do you want, Crankshaft?"
I jumped, and said with great enthusiasm, "Well, if you're REALLY that interested in knowing..." I paused and tried to look thoughtful, though I suppose that this probably wasn't to very much success. I continued with a pointing gesture which poked VanGarrett in the shoulder, "Just WHAT did Akolyte want from me?"
VanGarrett leaned back, and let out a breath. "Sit back, Crankshaft." I did just that. He continued. "Last night, around @137 beats, a FOnewmn identified as one 'Fender Clutch' was found mutilated in a Starboard-side apartment. He was, very much dead. I could go into the details, but the short of it is that some limbs were in different rooms."
I gasped. "Gasp!"
VanGarrett continued. "We believe that Akolyte went to Fender looking for something that you are in possession of."
"Well if he was looking for a pin-up calendar featuring Laya, then even I don't have one, so there."
VanGarrett leaned toward me again. "What did Fender give you, Crankshaft?"
I gave a puzzled expression and replied, "A good time?"
VanGarrett somehow became more serious. I could HEAR him getting more serious. "This is a very serious matter, Crankshaft."
I looked at him and then stared off at the ceiling of the van. "Well, there WAS that disc containing schematics for Dragoon-type androids."
VanGarrett, HuBBsDoctor and Zeirom all jumped. The van swerved. We almost hit three other vehicles, and narrowly avoided hitting a building in the chaos that ensued.
VanGarrett looked at me wide-eyed. "YOU have the schematics for Dragoon-type androids?!"
"Yeah... Didn't get much time to look at it, though. Those RAmars interrupted us when Fender showed me what was on the disc."
"Where is the disc now?"
"Hmm... Well... When Fender left the hospital-- Heeeey, now wait a minute, I have a request-- where are we going?"
Zeirom shouted back, "Right now, we're just going."
I shouted forward, "Well, if you kindly would... I'd very much appreciate a trip to the City Medical Center... I did puncture a kidney, after all..."
VanGarrett jumped again. "Great Light, Crankshaft! Why didn't you tell us?!"
I looked down and tried to look more pathetic than I normally might. "We were running... Laya Resta'd me, but that can only get a Crankshaft so far before he urinates blood and freaks out..."
Zeirom shouted back to VanGarrett, "We can visit with Meira while the doctor is attending him, too."
VanGarrett nodded. "Indeed. City Medical Center... That's where the Emergency Room on the Hunters' Deck transferred her after her initial wounds were treated."
I made a cheerful noise, and that's the direction we started heading in.

It wasn't too long, though, before the trip to the hospital was interrupted. As VanGarrett had predicted, Akolyte indeed left the University. Which, in some ways, was fortunate. It meant that repairs and recovery from the attack on the University could commence; including restoration of that beautiful marble floor, and indeed reconstruction of the building's emergency stairwells, which were thoroughly mangled after the skirmish. Bodies could be found and survivors could be treated. All was to be well at the University.
The unfortunate thing, was that Akolyte was causing repeated traffic accidents, jumping from one vehicle to another, trying to get to us. More specifically, trying to get to ME. I groaned, and held my back. VanGarrett slid the side door open, and hung out to observe Akolyte's ascent. He didn't appear too happy.
Zeirom shouted at him, "I hope you're not thinking of shooting at him! If you miss, you're sure to hit something you don't want to!"
I wondered what VanGarrett was thinking about at that moment. Fortunately, I didn't have to wonder for very long, because he replied to Zeirom, "I think it's a moot point--"
Upon hearing the word, I felt compelled to shout, "m00t!" I was looked at strangely by the bunch, then coughed, and smacked my chest a couple of times. "Buwuh-huh..." I said, "Urm, bleh. Sorry, I had something in my throat..." Then, I was conveniently able to draw attention away from myself. I pointed out a window, "Look! A moot point!"
Everyone looked away from me, just in time to see Akolyte fly by the window. VanGarrett cursed again. So did HuBBsDoctor. In synchrony. I had a key curse word in stereo. It was like, POW! From both ears. I cringed, and covered Laya's ears. Laya slapped me. There was a thump on the roof. The van shook, and Zeirom shouted a word I didn't recognize.
First a few dents appeared. Soon, however, the roof was torn open. Tentacles ripped the top of the van open like the key on a can of rancid specially prepared artificial meat. I started getting spooked at this point. I'd felt it before, but ignored it. The first time, was when I accessed the computers in the Mines, the second time, was when Fender and I wandered through the Ruins. The first time, I passed it off as my pantaloons riding up. The second time, I had thought that Fender had just cut one.
This time, there was no denying it. This stinky was Akolyte. He stuck his head in, but I felt like he wasn't alone. Then I saw it. His face was hidden behind a startling visage. Small, red orbs floated in dark, otherwise empty eye sockets. It had no lips. Actually, it was as though its upper lip had been pulled over its nose, and secured into position. Its gums were huge. Long, disturbingly straight teeth alternated position, top and bottom. As Akolyte approached, it opened its mouth, and to my ears, it made a shrieking sound, and revealed a pit of endless darkness. Its breath somehow smelled of hate, and other incredibly bad things.
I began to scream in a most absurdly frantic fashion. I was just, "AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" then I took a breath, and was just, "AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!" And then I did it again. I saw Akolyte reaching for me. The van shook again, and with his hand inches from my face, Akolyte was ripped from my presence. Paladin had torn Akolyte away, in a moment of vulnerability.
Upon further observation, Paladin was looking rather torn up, though perhaps not as torn up as Akolyte appeared when Paladin gripped the beastly HUcast by the sides of his head, and much to Akolyte's dismay, suddenly jerked it further than was ever designed to. Paladin and I looked at each other, and he tossed Akolyte's body and head from the van, one at a time. They made a smack in the street. It was a relieving sound.
Everyone was looking at Paladin. Except for Zeirom, whose attention was focused on driving the van, and not killing us all. Rightfully so. Paladin shook a little, before finally falling in. VanGarrett looked up at HuBBsDoctor. "Good thing we're headed for the hospital, huh?"

Oddly enough, the emergency room wasn't really any busier than normal. There were a number of injuries related to Akolyte's attack. There were a few other miscellaneous injuries around as always, but I'll spare you the description of most of them. There was, however, a big orange HUcast that had evidently gotten into an argument with a bread oven, and was at the hospital to have it removed.
VanGarrett and HuBBsDoctor both carried Paladin by a leg each, while Zeirom burdened the weight of his upper body. When the nurses saw him mangled and sprawled between the three of them, they immediately came with an android-sized gurney. If you've never seen one, they're actually quite interesting. A normal gurney is designed with the consideration that the occupant typically won't weigh more than 250 pounds or so. Perhaps up to 500 pounds as an extreme. A typical male android, on the other hand, will generally weight no less than a ton. The largest of RAcasts may weight as much as 8 tons. Even more, if he's got plenty of auxiliary equipment built in.
An android gurney must therefore be designed to withstand this weight, without smacking into the floor, and crashing like some big, unbalanced, overweighted thing. Let's consider a normal gurney, and what would happen if someone were to try to relocate a somewhat large HUcast on it.
The gurney itself is held a few centimeters above the ground by a device that takes advantage of its presence on a ship, by counteracting the gravity inducers. This device takes a whole level of the gurney, which itself, is about three meters long by one meter wide. This device will displace up to 500 pounds, which is to be supported by four simple steel pipes that lead up to the actual bed platform. The bed platform consists of a large metal tray, inset several centimeters, so the cheap generic foam rubber mattress won't slide off when the patient goes into epileptic seizures from staring at those accursed bright lights flinging by on the way to the operation room. GAH! Bright!
All right, so we have our typical gurney figured out. Now, take a 4 ton HUcast, and consider a number of hospital aids gently placing the huge android on it. Presume that they manage to set him gently enough, to keep from destroying it immediately. The steel pipes buckle like thin steel pipes trying to support something far heavier than they really should be able to. The aids rub their muscles, and lament about their backs, while another crew comes in to replace them.
The next crew begins to carefully move him down the hall. Oh no! An escaped psychiatric patient is running through the hall! A security guard tackles him, and the injured HUcast on the little gurney is safe. The trip continues. Some inconsiderate fellow has tossed his toothpick on the floor. An unfortunate hospital aid steps on it, and jumps. A security guard tackles him, and the injured HUcast on the little gurney is safe. A doctor walks by, and says, "You'd better get that HUcast on a big gurney, you silly fellows!" and the aids curse at him and continue on.
Finally, they come to an incline. They get to it. They try to ascend it. What's this? Oh no! The gurney is too low to handle the incline! The bottom edge of the gurney scrapes the floor, and leaves quite the boo-boo on the floor! The aids become hysterical. They desperately try to prevent the HUcast from going off balance. Someone lift in the front! Lift in the front! Ah! A volunteer lifted in the front. The aids give more support behind, to keep the HUcast from sliding off.
The gurney makes it to the top of the incline, with only a few scrapes on the highly-polished floor. Now that this is over, who was the kind fellow that saved the HUcast from falling by giving support in the front? Ah! It's the psychiatric patient! And he's still lifting in the front! Let go! Let go! No cookie! He's trying to tip the HUcast over! A security guard tackles him, and the injured HUcast on the little gurney is safe.
The trip to the reconstruction room is almost complete. The HUcast's foot has a sudden surge of electricity, and twitches. An aid jumps, startled by this. His foot taps one of the steel bars when he jumps. The gurney slips forward. It tilts in that direction, perhaps slightly to the left. The HUcast begins to slide, head first. The steel bars in front break. The aids are abandoning ship! They run for life and limb! The HUcast crashes into the floor! Boom! Crunch! Chaos! The ground shakes! A small child's ice cream falls from its cone! It cries! Complaints are issued to the ice cream vendor! A law suit is filed! It's appealed! Appealed again! A few more appeals, and it's taken before Principle Tyrell! What's this?!? Tyrell sends it to the Council! Egad! A lawyer has been paid off by Black Paper! He's an assassin! Key members of the Council have been assassinated! There's chaos! Midget blue hedgehogs are running at sonic speeds on the ship! Riots in front of the clothing stores! Oh no!!!
So, um, yeah, they have a heavier-duty gurney, because if they didn't, it would destroy civilization as we know it, and that's a fact.

So, they brought an android gurney, and with some additional help, they got Paladin on it. A nurse asked, "What class of android is he?" or something like that.
Zeirom replied, "He's a Dragoon-type."
The immediate response was two nurses looking at each other with concerned expressions. One of them finally said, "We'll have to page Dr. Oscar..." Then some urgency was called for, and Paladin was hurried away.
Laya grab me by my wrist. "Come on, Crankshaft. We need to get you registered at the desk, if you are to be treated," she told me, as she dragged me to the front desk. I was in bliss. When we got up to the desk, Laya peered over the counter and told the nurse, "My associate here punctured a kidney while falling on a sharp metal object. I cast Resta on him, but that only goes so far..."
I leaned above Laya, and put my hands on the desk, because well, I can do that. She's short, I'm tall, and I just lean right over her. I said to the nurse, "I had an ouchie, and Laya healed it, but it's still kinda sore." While she processed that information, I looked around, noted the lack of patients, then asked her, "Why aren't there more people here, after that whole thing at the university?"
The nurse looked disturbed, but replied, "There've been only a few injuries... But the Guaron Memorial Morgue is going to be backed up for days..."
I felt humbled. I nodded remorsefully. Then I got back to business. "So, when can I be seen by the doc?"
"It'll be a few minutes. Can I get your name?"
She asked, and I gave. Posing dramatically, I replied, "I am Professor Crankshaft R. Differential, Ph.D."
Without looking up, she wrote down my name, and asked me to take a seat, which, I did. HuBBsDoctor, VanGarrett and Zeirom waited with us for a few minutes, but before long, Zeirom decided he had something better to do.
"I think I'm going to go pay Meira a visit." he then looked at VanGarrett and HuBBsDoctor, "You guys want to come along?"
VanGarrett nodded, "I haven't stopped in to see her since I've gotten back from Ragol. I suppose I probably should. I'll have to come back later with Maegan, too." With that, he stood and looked at HuBBsDoctor.
HuBBsDoctor stood. "I'm down with it." He then looked back at me, "I'm sure it won't be too long before they come to get you, Crankshaft. We'll be in room 42B."
I saluted him and replied, "I'll be fine, so long as I've got Laya right here." Then I gave Laya a pat on the back, and she looked at me strange. Her strange look was soon accompanied by her sliding a seat away from me.
She looked at the rangers and said, "We'll be all right, guys... If he does something wrong, I won't be afraid to hit him... We're in already in a hospital, after all."
I watched them all leave, then looked around at the other people waiting. Periodically, a doctor would come in and lead someone behind a pair of large doors that presumably lead to treatment rooms. After an hour or so, my presumption was confirmed, when I was finally taken and treated. Until that point, however, I passed the time by talking to other patients. Mostly about their ailments. This is when I learned why the HUcast, whose name turned out to be Delfine, had a single-loaf bread oven embedded more or less in his armpit. I told him he should keep it, so that he could get some dough, and sell Armpit Loaf at discount prices, but he animatedly disagreed, and asked me to leave him alone.
Soon enough, I was taken in by a content-looking doctor with a shiny head and long gray mustache. I'll spare the details, but when I awoke from the anesthesia, I felt considerably better. Laya was there with me again, and once again, I had thoughts of Laya in a nurse's uniform. This time, however, I learned from my previous experience, and through sheer force of will, managed to keep my mouth shut about it. We've seen what happens when I suggest to Laya that she should wear a nurse's outfit.

After I was given my clothes, and instructed to urinate in a cup, Laya and I made our way to room 42B. I slid into the room, exchanging a usual dramatic pose, for a more traumatic pose-- The Disco Dancin' Fever pose. Ideal for sliding into rooms, and it's easy to spark your dancin' groove from there. Makes a good ice breaker at parties, too. A yelp of, "Ow! Watch it now!" and a bit of grooving to music that only I can hear, and I was finished. Laya slowly crept in behind me, unsuccessfully attempting to look like she doesn't necessarily know me.
Everyone was looking at me, and the lovely young woman in the bed at first gave a confused look, which soon mutated into a giggle. Zeirom looked at her, and introduced us. "Meira, this is Crankshaft and Laya. They're Physics professors from the University."
I bowed. With exaggerated quantities of enthusiasm, I announced, "Tis good to meet you!!!" With another bow and a stern salute, I continued, "Professor Crankshaft R. Differential, at your service!"
Laya was much more reserved, as she chose to walk over to her, shake her hand and say, "Nice to meet you, Meira. Don't mind Crankshaft, he's still coming off of anesthesia." When I asked her why she said this later, she told me that she didn't have the heart to tell her that I'm always like that.
Still, Meira smiled and said to us, "It's nice of you two to come visit me with these guys!"
My immediate response was, "Well, I had to puncture my own kidney on a sharp thing, but Potent Guacamole, we made it here, today!"

MQuantum
Sep 17, 2003, 05:03 PM
Good as ever! I wondered when it was coming...

BOC
Sep 18, 2003, 06:12 PM
I slid into the room, exchanging a usual dramatic pose, for a more traumatic pose-- The Disco Dancin' Fever pose. Ideal for sliding into rooms, and it's easy to spark your dancin' groove from there. Makes a good ice breaker at parties, too. A yelp of, "Ow! Watch it now!" and a bit of grooving to music that only I can hear, and I was finished.


this, along with pretty much all of chapter 11 almost caused me 2 wet myself with laughter.

note i said almost!! *whistles nervously*

and i wouldn't worry about missing deadlines, cause when a fic is this funny, its always worth the wait http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

still, i can't wait for the next part!! -the sooner the better!!

PEACE!!!

excellent work meira!

Bradicus
Sep 25, 2003, 04:16 PM
that disco thing hit WAY too close to home... thank god he didnt grab himself M J style, or i might think he was me.

Keep up the good work, I will be sad when the next main character doesnt dance around like an idiot!

HUnewearl_Meira
Oct 8, 2003, 02:30 PM
We're nearing the end of Crankshaft's absurdity. I'm figuring on 14 chapters at this point. Furthermore, I'm aiming to post the last couple of chapters Wednesdays this month. Meaning, next Wednesday, I'll post Chapter 13, then the following Wednesday, we'll finish this mess.

Concerning Chapter 12... Heh, finally, a comment that seemed obscure, confusing, and out of place in the first chapter makes sense. If you miss it, I encourage you to go back and read the first chapter again after reading Chapter 12.

Here we go...



Chapter 12

The visit with Meira wasn't very much longer. She gave Laya and I a brief run down of how she'd been looking for her lost roommate/boyfriend/close friend without benefits-type guy, Randon Bragwin, down on Ragol, and ended up breaking a number of bones and piercing vital organs in a resulting explosion. Indeed, it was a miracle that she was alive. She also explained that she'd been writing the whole thing down while she was recovering. Which is what gave me the idea for this thing. The next time I found myself able to sit at my desk, I started writing this very document that you, as the reader, are reading right now.
As fun as all the silliness has been, I must say that it's about this point that things are going to start to get down to business. After Meira told us about her writing, she offered to show it to Laya, which, Laya gladly accepted the offer. After downloading it to a terminal device, she sat down in a chair, and began reading. Meanwhile, the rangers and I began discussing what was going on. Meira, of course, was in on the conversation as well, though I don't think she had quite as much to contribute.
VanGarrett looked to Zeirom and suggested, "I think the same group that captured Randon is responsible for Akolyte and Fender's murder."
Before Zeirom could answer, I shouted, "Excuse me?!?"
VanGarrett looked at me puzzled for a moment, then lifted his eyebrows and nodded, realizing that he'd neglected to inform me of a rather important detail. He explained, "Fender was found dead in his apartment early this morning, which, in turn, was pretty well ransacked. The investigation that ensued made us decide that we'd better find you, before Akolyte did."
I stumbled without taking a step. Zeirom explained the logic a bit further, "We believe that Akolyte was after that disc that Fender gave you. When he couldn't find it in Fender's possession, Akolyte went after you."
I sat down next to Laya, with the feeling of a locomotive swooping through my rib cage. After a moment, I adopted a sterner look, and with eyebrows flared, I replied, "But I DON'T have Fender's disc... Fender took it back while we were in the Ruins."
HuBBsDoctor started in, "But Fender didn't have it when Akolyte attacked him. Are you sure he didn't give it back to you?"
At this point, Laya made a squeaking noise and slowly lowered her terminal device. We all looked at eachother. "The... That monster is after the disc?" she said.
VanGarrett confirmed, "Yes Laya, that's what his conversation has established."
Laya shivered. "But I have the disc..."
We all jumped. Or I did, at least. "YOU have the disc!? How'd YOU get the disc??"
"I found it on the table next to my bed, after you and Fender left. He must've set it down, or something." As she said this, she procured the object from her pocket to show us all.
VanGarrett acquired it from her, and examined it. "This is an album from that Boonies Street Boys boy-band..."
Laya shouted, "WHAT?!"
VanGarrett smirked, and handed the disc to Zeirom. "I'm just messing with you. It's the real deal, from the looks of it."
Zeirom examined it further. "Well, the binary code on the cover DOES match the DRAGOON project's ID."
HuBBsDoctor interrupted, "Hey guys, it's all good that we've located the disc and all, but seeing that we'd assumed we had it with us all along, I don't think it matters as much to us as where we're to go next."
Meira suggested, "Don't you need to know what they wanted to do with the disc?"
VanGarrett gave a thoughtful pose, then said, "Indeed. Regardless of what they were going to do with it, the equipment present in the Ruins wouldn't be sufficient for anything than viewing its contents." He paused, either for dramatic effect, or to think of what to say next. Continuing, he said, "Beyond that, it's easy to get to that location, so even if they imported the equipment, they'd be quickly discovered and, for lack of a better word, foiled."
Zeirom brought up an interesting point of interest. "The Delbiters we saw at the University are normally found in the Seabed facility on Gal de Val Island."
HuBBsDoctor further pointed out, "They're also commonly found in the East and West Towers."
VanGarrett considered this information, holding his beard with his thumb and the middle knuckle of his index finger, and staring out the window behind me. I looked at him like he was strange. Soon he turned back to Zeirom and HuBBsDoctor. "The Seabed facility's equipment is mostly busted, due to the chaos in said facility. While I suppose it's possible that they may intend to use that equipment, my money is going on the East Tower."
Evidently Meira'd heard a bit about the East Tower. Skewing her eyebrows as though she were confused, she asked "Dux has told me about the towers. What's so special about the East Tower that makes you choose it?"
The response was prompt. "The East Tower has the Mother unit. They say that 'Mother' designs the most advanced logical AI's we've got. Vol Opt, Olga, and Calus among them. If that weren't enough, the pinnacle of Dr. Osto's research in conjunction with Dr. Calus' research brings us Mother's capacity to produce physical components to those AI's... Machines... D-Cellular sub-life forms... If they're planning to use the information on that disc to build an army of Dragoon-type HUcasts, then THAT is the sort of equipment they're going to be wanting."
At this point, all six of us in the room, including VanGarrett, knowing what just a single Dragoon-type HUcast is capable of, stopped whatever we happened to be doing, and imagined, to great dismay what someone could achieve, if they had an army of Dragoon-type HUcasts. Bad. Much bad. So much bad, that the very thought stirs up thoughts of people dieing violent deaths. Everyone could be a Fender.
HuBBsDoctor brought up a more practical subject. "So which of us is going to stick around and wait for Paladin?"
VanGarrett looked over at him. "You volunteering, HuBBsDoctor?"
HuBBsDoctor looked over at the lovely HUnewearl in the hospital bed. "I suppose I couldn't mind keeping Meira company while Paladin's getting his bolts tightened."
I believe that Zeirom wanted a shot at the job, as well. "That's a mighty tempting task indeed, HuBBs," he said, "I'd volunteer for the job, but the trip to the Tower may require a tank like myself."
HuBBsDoctor nodded. "Well, before you guys leave, I think I'll go see if they've gotten Dr. Oscar to come and work on Mr. Kill, yet." Pausing, he looked at Meira, "I'll be right back," he said before walking out of the room.
Since the business was finished, Meira decided to change the subject. Changed to something more important to her, of course. "VanGarrett? What happened to Randon when you guys went down there, anyway?"
My best powers of observation indicate to me that this was a question that VanGarrett didn't want to have to answer. Of course, this was fairly obvious. Which, typically, things have to be rather blatant for me to notice them. Especially when it comes to facial expressions and such. Still, after a bit of hesitation, and looking out the window, he finally looked back at her and replied, "I wish I knew the answer to the extent that you're asking for it. We all got separated. The combat got hectic. We were getting attacked by a bunch of hunters and rangers. I'd taken cover behind a pile of junk, and when I looked up, Guybec was gone. Artemis and Randon were soon to follow. Then I got hit by someone, and when I woke up, I was at the bottom of a pit, looking at a Telepipe warp."
Of course, in that official statement, VanGarrett said a name that I recognized. I jumped up and did some deranged maneuver that I'd be hard-pressed to describe. Especially considering that I'm not entirely sure what I did. I stood too close to VanGarrett and barked, "Did you say Guybec?!?"
VanGarrett raised one eyebrow, and lowered the other. Looked at me like that for a moment, then put his hands on my shoulders, and pushed me away. "Give me at least one meter there, pilgrim." Letting go again, he nodded and said, "Yeah, Guybec. He's a FOmar. Two kids, lovely wife. Think he had a little bit of a temper, but overall he was a good guy."
I stood back, held my chin between my thumb and index finger in a most thoughtful dramatic pose, and pondered. I'd heard the name recently, but I couldn't place it. Laya got my back though. Looking up from her terminal where she was reading Meira's account of her troubles, she said, "Guybec? Isn't that the guy that the RAmars indicated they were working for? Yeah, that one guy called him 'Lord Guybec'. I remember that much."
Meira nearly choked on the water she was sipping when Laya said that. Zeirom jumped to her side to help her. After he'd pat her on the back a few times, she looked at him, and said, "Thanks, Zeirom..." after which, she looked back at Laya and said, "You've gotta be kidding me? Guybec? He's like a big teddy bear..."
Laya insisted, "Hey, that's what the guy said." Which, indeed, that was what he said.
So soon after my own show of eyebrow-dexterity, Meira lowered her eyebrows in a thoughtfully confused look, staring more or less at the part of her sheets that her feet were sticking up and said, "I wonder what he's doing down there? For that matter, I wonder how long he's be doing it."
VanGarrett gave a little confirmation, stating, "I dunno how long he's been down there, but it makes me think that I should pay his family a visit. Just to see if they're all right, y'know. In any case, that'll be something to worry about when we get back from the East Tower."
HuBBsDoctor walked in just as VanGarrett finished his comment. "Dr. Oscar's working on Paladin right now. They say it'll be about six hours until he's done," he said as he entered.
VanGarrett nodded. "All right. Zeirom, Crankshaft, Laya and I will be off, then." He looked at Meira. "It's been a pleasant visit, Meira. We'll be back another time." With that, he gave a strange, salute-wave gesture, and turned to leave.
Meira had a request, though. "Hey! Don't just leave without giving me a hug!" She smiled, and held her arms out. VanGarrett smirked, and complied.

After Meira solicited hugs from everyone (Yay! I got hugged!), we were on our way to the lab. A number of shiny lights, and security scans later, we found ourselves at a big orange door, negotiating with a guard. VanGarrett was negotiating, at least.
"I cannot let you through during these hours," the guard said.
VanGarrett would not be denied, however. "I am on orders from Principle Tyrell, himself. Let us through."
The guard stood firm. "My instructions are to not allow anyone through without official Lab authorization. A number of unauthorized hunters have been sneaking to the beach area at night, and Natasha's been rather upset over it."
VanGarrett stared at him blankly for a moment. He sighed, and seemed to slump over. Which, really, only made it stranger when he suddenly straightened up, stuck the business end of his Suppressed Gun in the guy's face and with quite the frustrated tone, said to him, "Here's my official authorization. I'm assuming you've got someone waiting for you at home. If you intend to have a complete face the next time they see you, then you'd do well to open that door."
The guard's reaction was rather unoriginal, but not unexpected. Nervousness with a standard forgetful agreement. "Oh! Yes! Of course! I should've recognized your authorization sooner! Yes, please, be my guest!" The door was opened, and we proceeded.
We arrived on Gal de Val Island, at the entrance to the Central Control Area. The big door was, however, rather firmly closed. VanGarrett and Zeirom didn't seem surprised by this, but they did seem to be rather annoyed. "Eh... We'll have to open the lock manually. Wasn't really wanting to run through the jungle, today."
Zeirom was examining a local terminal. "Doesn't look like you'll have to. From what I'm seeing here, it looks like the signals in the Jungle and Mountain areas have already been activated. All that leaves is the beach area."
This went pretty well over my head. In fact, I never did find out precisely what that referred to. The end result, in any case, was that we all stepped into the teleporter conveniently located next to the large retracting wall of a door, and teleported off to a lovely beach.
The beach was quite pleasant. It was fairly quiet, aside from the calm washing of waves upon the shore. This is the sort of thing on the surface of Ragol that makes me glad we found this planet-- though I do have mixed feelings about it, for issues that'll be specified before too long. Then there was this buzzing noise. My first reaction was to smack my ear around. Maybe that's where the noise was coming from. My ears are indeed, quite large. And long. A Newman be I.
Soon, however, I realized that my ear, beyond what I expected, was not making the noise, but rather, it was just receiving it. I was alerted to this, when a huge insect flew near me, and probably would've attacked me, but was shot all to crap by one of my Ranger buddies. I squeaked and ran behind Laya.
Laya smacked me and yelled, "Crankshaft! It's about time you learned to defend yourself! Here!" She violently stuffed a disk into my hand. I looked at it. Tried to gnaw on it.
Then I looked at her and said, "What do I do with this? You realize this makes you the second person to stuff a disk in my hand. It's not top secret sensitive information, is it?"
She smacked her forehead and took it back. "All right, look Crankshaft. I'm a professor of Technical Physics. Now listen to me, I'm going to explain Foie to you, so that you can defend yourself. From there, I'll expect you to use technique disks to learn more techniques."
I looked at her for a moment, then nodded blankly, as photon bullets flew all around us and blew apart these giant insects called Gees.
She turned, and pointed at a Gee. "Hey guys! Let me get that one. I'm teaching Crankshaft something." There was some manner of acknowledgement of this request, and she focused on the Gee. "Matter, Crankshaft, as you know, is subject to energy fluctuation," she began. She continued, "By concentrating on your body's own life energy, you can cause your body to produce an energy field, and thereby control that energy fluctuation." This far, I followed her. Being a Newman, I've got a very strong sense of my own body's energies, and what they're doing, so I did understand what she was saying. Honestly, in retrospect, I'm not sure why I didn't accidentally do any of this before.
"Now, let's focus on increasing the temperature of a bit of air. To the point of flaming. Observe, Crankshaft." She brought her hands together, and before long, BOOM! She threw a hulking fireball of DEATH at the Gee. The fireball flew with such great speed that the Gee, as fast as the little bugger is, could not even begin to hope that it might be able to begin to hope that it might possibly be able to almost maybe dodge it. So, it just kinda went, BOOM! and it was dead.
I jumped up and down excitedly. I shouted vibrantly, "I've got it! I've got it! Let me try!" At which point I turned toward some sort of peculiar plant that was walking toward me, and shouted, "FOIE!" in a most absurd and drawn out fashion. At this moment, I put together several of said fireballs as quickly as I could and lobbed them at the thing, which caused it to go, "BLAWWAAAHAHAH!!" and run away.
Then I turned around and looked for other things to cook with my mighty ball of Foie. Before long I was charring rabid, overgrown insects from the sky and sending massive burning balls of hurt hurdling through the air. At one point I even bounced a whole bunch of fireballs off of trees and rocks, closing in on an ape-like creature referred to as a Gibbon, and fried it pretty good. I jumped around and shouted some more, and of course, got plenty of strange looks.
Eventually my antics of experimenting with these Technical Physics, and running away from Laya and the others as they tried to get me to calm down, sparked something rather strange. At least, I think I caused it. Well, maybe it was already there, but great gobs of stoppers, I killed it. A large tentacled beast came from the ocean, and I fried it pretty good with a little bit of Foie. It toppled over, and when I realized what it was, I was rather startled.
We all looked at eachother, and walked over to it. Laya and I hadn't seen anything quite so grotesque before, and VanGarrett and Zeirom just seemed to be rather confused. "Well this is confusing," Zeirom said.
VanGarrett scratched his head. "No kidding. Dolmolms are typically found in the Seabed Facility, but not on the beach."
I stepped over to it, and prodded at it with my stylish platform shoes. Because, well, I wanted to poke at it, and bending over or kneeling to do so would've been harder to accomplish than just prodding at it with my platform shoe. So I prodded at it with my shoe. And it totally moved. Not like it was alive or anything, but it just like, shook and one of the tentacles unwrapped, releasing a digital writing device, not unlike the one that I am writing this very document with. I carefully kneeled down and picked it up. "Hey guys... It has a letter." Then I looked back at them all strangely.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HUnewearl_Meira on 2003-10-08 13:14 ]</font>


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HUnewearl_Meira on 2003-10-14 20:25 ]</font>

Logical2u
Oct 8, 2003, 04:37 PM
Man, I really like your story.

Too bad it's coming to an end... and the references to new quests really brings the reader into the story.

BOC
Oct 8, 2003, 05:55 PM
*imagines an army of dragoons rampaging over the ragolian countryside.*

oooooooo, that would indeed be a sight to behold http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif.

keep up the knee-cracking, foot-stooping writting!

PEACE!!!

MQuantum
Oct 8, 2003, 06:44 PM
I know how Crankshaft feels... Foie is such a wonderful thing...

Really, reading this story is great... I'm going to miss Crankshaft *sniff*

HUnewearl_Meira
Oct 15, 2003, 10:49 AM
Great CheseAndRice... This story feels like it could go on forever. Still though, just this chapter and one more, and it'll be done. Chapter 14 may end up pretty long, though. I may consider pushing chapter 14 back to Friday of next week instead of Wednesday, but I haven't decided yet. I'll have to see how long it takes me to tie up the remaining loose ends, and how long it takes me to place new loose ends to be addressed in later fanfics.

Oh yeah, and just to make it known, I went back and changed something in the previous chapter. Before they had decided to go to the West Tower, where Mother would be. This is incorrect. Mother is in the East Tower, and that is therefore, their destination.

Anyway, here comes Chapter 13. We're coming to the final stretch, now.




Chapter 13

"Let me see that," requested VanGarrett, as he approached me.
I turned, and said, "No, it's mine! It's addressed to me!" Then I opened it up and looked at it. "See! Right there! Says right here... 'Please help me'. If that isn't addressed to me, then my name isn't Please."
He gawked at me with a confused expression, which soon changed to the expression one gets when they've just about emptied their bladders of all fluid resembling patience. "Your name is Crankshaft, you gimp. Let me see that." With that, he snatched the device from my hand. At first a stared blankly at the place where it was in my hand, then I prodded at the place it was, hoping I'd hit a button to make it visible again. Needless to say, it didn't work.
VanGarrett examined the device before reading the letter. "This is written on a research pad. Igglanova brand. Very popular company in the field of Experimental Biology." Then he looked at me, and I was like, 'what did I do?', but he said, "Your genetic code was probably written on one of these, Crankshaft."
I replied the only way I really should have. "See, I told you it was mine."
Though, and I've since confirmed this, she didn't realize that I heard her say it at the time, Laya made a quick comment to Zeirom, "Pity the battery didn't run out halfway through the project."
VanGarrett looked at the actual message, and began reading it out loud. As clearly as I can remember, the messages was as follows--

Please help me.
I believe I am somewhere in the East Tower. I am not sure how I got here, and my android-friend seems to have been destroyed. I am cold and scared. Something happened, and somehow I don't feel completely like myself. I am in a small, dark room, which seems to be closed off by a large crate and my android. Please, help me!

VanGarrett scratched his head. "Y'know," he said as he looked at everyone, and shook the device loosely in his hand, "I've come across a lot of stories where the hero had to save a damsel from a tower, but I never thought that I'd be participating in one. In any case, since we're going there anyway, I think we can help her."
By this time, Zeirom had Laya on his shoulder, and indicated his approval. "I'm always keen on saving a damsel in distress."
I was puzzled though. VanGarrett seemed to make an assumption that I wasn't so certain about. He was right, mind you, but I felt a need to question it. "How do you know it's a girl?" I asked.
He looked at me, smirked, and explained his logic. "Well, to keep it simple, an old man would've been more descriptive of his surroundings, and possibly could've identified the contents of the crate. A young man that got too far over his head would've been more like, 'dood! wtf! i sux!', and an old woman simply wouldn't have been there. Beyond that, you know that most guys would sooner die than ask for directions, and this sort of a situation falls under the same jurisdiction. Seriously, any guy that would be down there would be too prideful to hide in a little room and wait for help that might never come. He'd sooner run out there and fight to his death. That actually sounds like what the android did for this girl."
Zeirom wiped his index finger under one of the cameras he calls an eye. "If I had tear ducts, I'd be crying. I can relate to the guy." After that though, Zeirom straightened up. "But we've got a few things to do before we can help her. Let's go find that switch and hit it."
There was a some exchange among us about that, and we proceeded through a hole in a rock face, where we were soon confronted by more Gees, and then soon after, the mother of ALL Gees. The Gee Gue, as it is called, gave my hind end to me on a silver platter. Service with a smile, over 2 million served, your way, right away. Though, after wrestling with it, and Laya repeatedly casting Reverser on me, Zeirom finally tackled the thing out of the air, and beat it down like a redheaded stepchild. It kind of reminded me of the time that B.O.C., on The Guild, tore a Sinow Blue from the ceiling, and pounded it until it was mushy.
Once the thing was dead, the rest off the annoyance was all in popping some nasty poison spitting bubble things, which was taken care of rather effectively by VanGarrett using a pair of what I believe were mechguns; though, admittedly, while they behaved like mechguns, in his rush to run around and do what he was doing, the glimpse I got of his weapons looked like a large pair of maracas. And that RAmar was shakin' them to the rhythm, let me tell ya. Oh yeah, then there were more Gees, which seemed to be rather irate over the fact that a three-ton RAcast had liquefied their grand master and schemer of schemes.
After that, VanGarrett went and pushed a button or something, and we took a teleporter back to the Central Control Area.

At the Central Control Area, we all stood in front of the big door. It was a wall of a door, really. After it detected us, and descended into the ground, I observed that it was tapered, with the thin side at top, and the thick side at bottom. It's worth noting that the top was about two meters or so thick. Big door.
The first area behind the door that we were introduced to, contained a sloped surface, stuffed in between two sets of stairs. At the top there were a couple of doors, and a bunch of Gibbons ready to shriek, pound their palms on the ground and make noise at us, before spitting fireballs and ice showers at us.
One Gibbon landed right in front of me, and with breath that would make even a sewage treatment plant employee ph34r, shrieked at me, making a loud "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHCHK!!!!" sound.
At first, I jumped, but then I got brave and with a mighty flare of what one might consider to be a stressed out-looking, vein-in-forehead-popping expression, I drew a long, deep breath and replied, "AAAAaaaAAAaaAAAHHhhHHHhHHhhhHHCHKPFffFFT!!" With extra spittle. This was promptly followed by a platform shoe thrust where the sun doesn't shine, and a big ball of Foie crammed in its mouth. Hope it liked spicy food, because that's what it got.
Then something smacked me from behind that I couldn't see. I've since been informed that it's a new variation on a Sinow-type android-- a Sinow Berrill. Don't let the name fool you, this sort of android is NOT a ninja often used to contain alcohol. A Sinow Berrill is actually quite a formidable opponent. It hits hard, it hits fast, and even bends light around itself to achieve a deranged sort of invisibility. Actually, it's more of an obfuscation, or a obscurity, or some other word I'd have to make up. From what I've observed, it's more or less just a trick done with a pulsating density shift of a film on the inside of its armor layer, which effectively causes the gravity field the android's mass produces to move around, pulling light this way and that. It's a very efficient method of camouflage, as, while the film is rather difficult to make, it only takes a small electrical charge to cause the pulsing gravity field. Very interesting.
So, anyway, yeah, as I was flying through the air, I was contemplating whether it was my 3rd or 4th rib that I was feeling out of place. I think it may have been both. Fortunately, they popped back into place when I slammed into the slope, and skid to the top. The initial tissue damage and pain was, of course, quickly remedied by Laya's Resta technique.
When the Sinow Berrill became visible again, Zeirom found it to be directly in front of him. So he dropped his rifle, and grappled with the machine. The first step was to rip the huge knuckle-ish weapons from its hands, which was then followed by Zeirom grunting and locking hands with it. They struggled with eachother for a bit, while VanGarrett shot down a couple more Gibbons, and Laya used Zonde to lay some righteous smack down on another Sinow Berrill.
The Sinow Berrill was at least twice the weight of Zeirom, but Zeirom managed to plant one foot firmly behind himself, in the concrete. I'm certain that his support frame must've been buckling when he lifted his other foot, but the physics of his strategy, I must say, were fairly sound. The foot he wasn't using to anchor himself, he lifted as high as he could, and applied pressure to the Sinow Berrill's shoulder.
Now, on first thought, you might think that such a maneuver would apply more pressure to the leg that was supporting him. But, if you were to continue on that assumption, you'd be WRONG. The pressure on his leg stayed the same, while the pressure on his arms was divided onto his lifted leg, and furthermore, the focus of the pressure on the Sinow Berrill’s side was shifted toward its shoulder. What else did this do to the Sinow Berrill? Shifted its balance. Now the Sinow Berrill’s heavy frame was tilting to one side. Being so heavy, a Sinow Berrill can't handle sudden balance shifts that haven't been pre-designed.
Of course, when it fell, it didn't fall to its right side, the side that Zeirom was applying the pressure to. Nooo, it fell to its LEFT side, because Zeirom focusing his pressure on that shoulder, and after its armor bent, the joint-pin gave way and the arm fell off in Zeirom's hand. The resulting smash into the concrete shook the entire pad.
The Sinow Berrill didn't seem to know how to handle this occurrence, and slowly began trying to get up, not seeming to understand that its arm was missing. With a grunt and a limp, Zeirom picked up his Justy and pointed it at the beastly machine. "You look so miserable, and mercy killing is soooo not my thing... But I'm going to kill you, anyway." The trigger was pulled, and the Sinow Berrill was officially off-line.
With that immediate area taken care of, Laya Resta'd Zeirom, as his skirmish did cause an amount of structural damage from all the stress involved. That cured his limp. We then proceeded up the stairs, and as we got to the top, and VanGarrett had already walked through the door, I heard a voice.
It was a metallic, though decidedly feminine voice. She asked, "Who's there? Do you know me?"
We all turned, and VanGarrett stepped back into the area with us, to see a tall HUcaseal. Her paint job was teal, and her figure was slender. Her pale face was further accented by a messy metal hair do, topped off with a large pair of sensor arrays sticking out of the top of her head. Zeirom was the first to reply, "I don't think we do Miss, but perhaps I might like to. Can we help you with something?"
She approached us, and lowered her head, almost humbly, to Zeirom. "I... I'm afraid that I'm lost..."
Zeirom seem confused. "Your sensor arrays look..." he paused for a moment, examined her, and placing a hand on her shoulder continued, "Quite good, actually. Is your GPS software malfunctioning? I can tell you that you're at the entrance to the Central Control Area on Gal da Val Island..."
She quickly clarified herself, "No, no, I know that much. I've wandered this place a great number of times, and have the whole island quite thoroughly mapped out. I mean, I'm... Unsure of how I got here, and furthermore, I can't find my master..."
VanGarrett stepped forward. "Your master... It's been several generations since androids have had masters. How old a model are you?"
"I wish I could say. I am of the Neo_Meiu series, however. My name is Ceres," she said.
VanGarrett chose to take opportunity of her vast knowledge of the area. "Ceres, you say you've explored this area thoroughly. Do you know the fastest route to the East Tower?"
Her response consisted of, "Yes, I do. There is a teleporter on the level just on the other side of the railing in the next room."
Zeirom questioned, "What's the best way to get there from here?"
"Well, the safest method is to use the teleporter down the dam a little distance. I suppose you could also jump down, but you might hurt yourself."
Then I jumped up, and yelled, "Yay! I might be able to hurt myself!"
Then everyone looked at me. VanGarrett smacked me upside the head. I flinched, and rubbed the back of my head, while he continued, "Can you join us? We're investigating a conspiracy, and trying to save a young woman."
Then she said, "I can show you as far as the teleporter on the other side, but I'm afraid that'll be as far as I can go." I was puzzled, so I shrugged. With VanGarrett's acknowledgement of her promise, we moved on.

There were more fights with Sinow Berrills, as well as these Sinow Spigell things, that were slightly more agile, and really, quite, um, disarming. Gibbons and Gees were set ablaze, and Laya even taught me to use Zonde and Barta techniques, so that I could zap and freeze things, respectively. So, my usual rounds went something along the lines of Fry, Zap, Freeze, Fry, Zap, Freeze, Zap, Zap, ZAPZAPZAP, Fry, Freeze, Thaw, Fry, Zap, and kick! And then I'd get up and try to hit something again.
Ceres was a pretty good fighter. She came to my rescue on a number of occasions when I probably would've been beaten into a pulpy goo. Of course, so did VanGarrett and Zeirom, and once or twice, I had to be Resta'd again and again by Laya.
We did eventually fight our way to the teleporter, and Ceres had to go her separate way. "Just head in the other direction once you're down there, and you'll get to the entrance to the East tower," she said.
Zeirom did want to know why she couldn't come with us, though. "So, why can't you come any further, anyway?"
Ceres had trouble answering this one, though. All she could come up with was, "Something keeps me away. I don't know why. I just can't enter the towers."
Zeirom nodded, and VanGarrett offered a thanks. "We appreciate your help. It's been great. Thanks. I hope that you find who you're looking for."
Ceres started to solemnly walk away. She turned her head to look back at us, as she stopped and said, "Thanks... So do I."
We watched her walk off. Then we all looked at eachother, and Laya commented, "Well, that was creepy. Let's hop on the teleporter."
So then we were on a lower platform on the dry side of this dam that we call the Central Control Area. We started our charge, and were soon confronted. Now, I had previously thought that a Hildebear was large and menacing. I had previously thought that a Hildebear must be the biggest, most vicious, evil ape-like creature on all of Ragol. What I WASN'T counting on, however, was this huge buffalo-monkey known as "Gibbles" to come falling out of the sky right in front of us, and start furiously pounding the ground as though someone had been force feeding it pissed-off pills. VanGarrett flew back a few feet, and as he got back onto his feet, he yelled at it, "Take a CHILL pill, man!" He and Zeirom then got into it with this thing, and they just pounded it with photon bullets, soon to be assisted by Laya with a good hearty BOOM! of Rafoie. BOOM! Yes, very much boom.
After that, we carried on, being confronted by more Gees, Gibbons, and the occasional upgraded Sinow-type android. About halfway through our trip though, I was running through some rather large vegetation sprouting out of the cracks in the concrete, and I tripped over something. Which, I know, wearing stylish platform shoes, you'd think that I would trip more often. But I'm used to them, so when I tripped, I thought something of it.
Using Foie, I burned some of the vegetation away, and yelled at the others, "Hey! Take a look at this!"
I stood up, and Laya read it out loud for everyone. It was a stone plaque, embedded in the ground. It read, "In memory of Zinkin First, AUW 3018 - AUW 3083. His civilization was his duty, his family was his life."
I stared at it for a moment. I'd heard the name before. I knew I had. I was trying to flip through my mind to see if I could drag up who it was. I didn't have to flip long, however. Zeirom did it for me. Well, he said who it was; he didn't flip through my mind to drag the information up. That would just be silly. He would've been like, cut open my head while I pose appropriately, stick a couple of electrodes in there, and be all 'here it is!' No, what he said was, "Zinkin First. I'd heard he'd gone missing, as did his family. He was the Technical Engineer aboard Pioneer 1. Very high-profile."
Laya wiped a tear. "Such a sad thing. I wonder what happened to him?"
Zeirom shrugged, "No one has been reported to know of their fate. The entire First family line. Gone. Just like that."
VanGarrett nodded. "Very interesting indeed. All right, let's keep moving!" He prodded us, and kept saying, "Come on, come on," until we finally moved on, killed a few more beasts, and went ahead to the teleporter to the East Tower.

BOC
Oct 15, 2003, 01:47 PM
On 2003-10-15 08:49, HUnewearl_Meira wrote:
Zeirom finally tackled the thing out of the air, and beat it down like a redheaded stepchild. It kind of reminded me of the time that B.O.C., on The Guild, tore a Sinow Blue from the ceiling, and pounded it until it was mushy.


lol, tis true! when not getting knocked about in group fics, the MyTea B.O.C. is also the co-star of pioneer 2's favourite show: THE GUILD

every thursday at 800 beats, only on HTN: hunter television network!

excellent chapter meira!!

im all chuffed with having a mention in there http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wink.gif.

roll on chapter 14!

PEACE!!!

Logical2u
Oct 15, 2003, 02:00 PM
Whee! Cameos and Crankshaft back to his old self (Yeah! I can hurt my self!)!

I can't wait for the next chapter.

MQuantum
Oct 15, 2003, 09:13 PM
OoooOOOOooooo... Spooky 'Caseal...

Good chapter!

I'm torn between reading chapter 14, and saying goodbye to Crankshaft... Maybe I won't read chapter 14...

*VanGarret smacks me upside the head*

Or maybe i will... Heh heh...

HUnewearl_Meira
Oct 22, 2003, 02:31 PM
I honestly didn't think I'd have it done in time, indeed, here we have the final chapter of Crankshaft. I do believe that chapter 14 is the longest of them all, and does bring the whole thing about to the shocking conclusion. Before we begin, I'd like to thank those of you who've cheered me on. This is finished because of the reactions I've gotten from you. It's your enthusiasm that has allowed me the continued inspiration to complete this full, novel-sized fanfiction. For the record, Crankshaft is well over 40,000 words, and it's all because of the support I've been given here on PSO World. Thank you all.

Also before this thing starts, I'd like to mention that I'll be taking a week or two off from writing. I'm going to try to read some of the other great fanfictions on this site (Such as AUTO_'s The Six Ghosts), as well as clear my mind of Crankshaft's demeanor, so that I can concentrate on VanGarrett's. I'd like to try to get several chapters of VanGarrett finished before I start posting, so that I can try to put one out each week. With any luck, I'll still be posting VanGarrett when I start on Paladin.

So... Enough chitchat... Let's see Crankshaft's Grand Finale!





Chapter 14

Once inside the East Tower, we took a good look around. Well, at least Laya and I did. VanGarrett and Zeirom had been there several times before, it would seem, so their level of interest in our surroundings was rather like my level of interest in a well-thought out plan-- I'll look at it because it's there, but I won't bother to try to really grasp the details.
We found three security access terminals in front of us. I examined one, and went to press a button, but VanGarrett grabbed my wrist before I was able to. "Two of them are decoys, Crankshaft," he said. He let go of my wrist and continued, "If you try to open the door using that terminal, you'll release a Mericarol."
This statement confused me, and I asked, "Why wouldn't I want a miracle? We're gonna need it!" Then I went to press the button again, and once again, VanGarrett stopped me.
He explained further, "No, not a miracle, like, the Great Light comes down and shows you the meaning of life, or causes the photon bullet about to pierce your noodle suddenly bend around your head, leaving you unscathed... A Mericarol-- Something of a large plant that can move freely and really mess you up."
I stared at him blankly, and shrugged. I still didn't understand. Then I heard Zeirom yell, "One of these!" then shoot the terminal at the far right, leaving it rather thoroughly trashed. A large, plant-like beast was teleported into the room. It reminded me of a giant, chlorophyll-filled scorpion, except that whatever legs it had were completely hidden underneath it, and its stringer more resembled the business end of a carnivorous plant.
I screamed, "I don't want to die!" and promptly assumed an angry pose and or facial expression, and with a mighty grunt, I smacked it with a ball of Foie.
I would like to say that my ball of Foie lit it ablaze and sent it into a flaming death, where it cried out, "Oh cruel world! Why have you forsaken me? The wrath of the Almighty Crankshaft has shown me my doom! Oh had I only followed the path of light, I may've lived on as perhaps a potted plant of some variety, and maybe even as a fragrant potpourri!"
But no, instead I think I only pissed it off, as its tail spit something at me that made me forget who I was, where I was, and what direction I wanted to move in. I was rather thoroughly confused, indeed. I stumbled around, making drooling noises. In the mean time, I'm fairly certain that VanGarrett and Zeirom dispatched the Mericarol, as by the time Laya cast Anti on me, and I was able to comprehend my surroundings again, the beast was a lump of fertilizer.
Without much further word on that subject, VanGarrett hit a button on the middle terminal, and we carried onward. The floor was sloped, and curved around the exterior edge of the tower. On our right, we had a pleasant view of the stormy sky over Gal de Val. On our left, a gaping hole, in which to fall down. Beyond that was a room, filled with research workstations. Altogether, it was quite a sight to be seen. There were two doors at the end of this segment, one seemed to be sealed shut, and the other was unlocked. I would presume that the sealed door lead to the research facilities we could see from our vantage point in the corridor.
Passing through the unsealed door, we entered a smaller, security corridor that can be locked down to keep things out as necessary. Entering the next segment of the spiral, there were more, flashy decoy terminals, much like the previous segment, though most of them in here were destroyed. This segment, however, also had something that the previous segment hadn't-- The destroyed remains of Recoboxes and a large, dead ape-like thing, that looked very much like the one that ambushed us on the side of the dam outside. The door on the other side was opened already, so without any further thought about it from my part, we carried forward.
Zeirom, however, did make an observation. "Someone's come through here within the last twelve hours. The auto-repair systems haven't repaired the terminals, and the security hasn't reset yet, either."
As we entered the next security corridor, VanGarrett made the observation, "We must be getting close to the girl that sent the message, then." His reasons for coming to this conclusion, I still do not understand, but I suppose that he was reasonably correct. We wouldn't find this out for a little bit, however.
When we stepped into the next segment, we found ourselves confronted with the rabid-bull-like Delbiters. Sitting on top of one, was a fairly attractive young Newman woman, though she had burn scars all down her arms and legs. Her hair was long, and a very very dark purple. I stopped to admire her, and I didn't really notice what the others did, except that Zeirom shouted, "YOU!" then shot at her with his massive rifle-type weapon.
She stood, and backflipped off of the Delbiter, as it charged at Zeirom. We all dived out of the way, except for Zeirom, who instead chose to brace himself, and plant both of his fists into the beast's exposed face, as it impacted him. The result was that he left a trail dented in the metal floor, all the way into the previous segment of the spiral, and we were without him for a period.
So, while Zeirom was wrangling with the Delbiter, we got up, and watched as the woman approached us. Laya slid up next to me, and elbowed me in the hip. She would've elbowed me in the ribs, I suppose, but her elbow is at like, hip level to me, so she elbowed me in the hip, and I jumped and yelled, "Ow!" then looked down at her.
Laya pulled my ear down to her, and whispered into it, "I think her name is Lynn Darkstrike. Meira wrote about her. I don't know why she was on the Delbiter, but I do know that she and Zeirom don't get along very well."
I nodded, and whispered back, "I'll relay the information to VanGarrett."
At this point, I leaned over to VanGarrett and whispered to him, "Her name is Lynn Darkstrike. Meira wrote about how she used to ride a Delbiter and trample Zeirom for fun and profit."
VanGarrett looked at me like I was a freak, then looked back at Lynn. So I did the same. Except he spoke. "You must be Lynn Darkstrike, I presume."
The only reply that we were given was VanGarrett getting slammed with a rather potent bolt of Zonde. Well. I guess that wasn't the only reply. Before the Zonde, she laughed, and then while VanGarrett was on the ground, she shouted to us, "You do not belong here. You may not interfere with my Lord Guybec's plans."
The best response I could come up with was, "Err... Oh yeah!?" Then I turned to Laya and said, "Ha. I sure showed her, now didn't I?" Thus I smiled smugly, and posed semi-dramatically. Lynn evidently wasn't terribly pleased with this, and I nearly became next to get fried. Luckily for myself, I felt a tingly feeling all over myself before the strike of Zonde, and as a result, I squeaked, squirmed, and jumped, thereby narrowly avoiding the bolt-- entirely by accident, at that. See, I have mad electricity dodging skills.
VanGarrett stood up, rubbing his head, then wiped his armor off a bit. "Well that was perhaps just the slightest bit rude. For the record, this Lord Guybec of yours has a wife and children that're missing him. I intend to have a chat with him."
At about this time, the Delbiter slid back into the room, full of holes, and covered in Photon burns. Without any variety of hesitation, like a cube of butter in a deep fryer, the carcass dissolved into a puddle of purple goo. Zeirom soon followed. Well, I mean, he came back into the room after the thing slid in and dissolved, I don't mean he dissolved into purple goo. No Purple Goo-mode for Zeirom, uh-uh, no way. He's all made of metal and stuff. He is, what we in the Physics department say, 'Mechanically Secure'.
So, anyway, Zeirom came back in. Immediately, I overheard Laya ask Zeirom, "Zeirom, what's up with Lynn? She wasn't this way in Meira's writing..."
Zeirom replied, as he watched Lynn, "Meira's not finished with it yet, either. Lynn turned Dragoon crazy, and when Meira wouldn't join her under the control of Dark Falz, she tried to kill us."
Laya looked confused. She looked up at him and asked, "Wait, so Dragoon's that way because of Lynn, here?"
Zeirom paused for a moment to give a frustrated look, before he answered, "Well, no, I mean, err-- dang it, you saw him normal; in whatever sense that word can be applied to Dragoon. Lynn made him go crazy-- twice, and made him try to kill Meira both times. Last time, Dux had to hold him down with a continuous bolt of Zonde."
Laya got wide-eyed, and just kinda mouthed the word, "Oh..." as she looked back at Lynn.
Zeirom shouted at Lynn, "Was that the best you've got?? I could handle a barge load of those things, and still have enough battery power left to take a dozen runs through the VR Simulator!"
She hissed at him, and much to my surprise, she suddenly sprouted wings, and took to the air. Her skin turned a shiny metallic color, and she began lobbing balls of energy at us, at this point. So, we ended up dodging around. She began summing up Delbiters, as well, which, as you might imagine, put a real cramp in our day.
Laya began casting Gifoie, sending fireballs spiraling around her, thus keeping the baddies away. She also kept casting Razonde, which functioned to further hurt things. By the time most of the Delbiters had been taken care of, she'd worked up a good sweat, and left the remaining Delbiters to the rangers and my random bursts of Foie.
I stopped casting Foie to see her do what she did next. I'd seen her do it once before, in the Ruins, but this time I wasn't in a hurry, and got a chance to watch her. Whenever she pulled off a technique, she did it as though it were no big deal. What she was doing this time, however, she had to concentrate on for a moment. I could see her lips moving, just before she reached her hand into the air, and screamed at the top of her lungs, "TANDLE!"
This was no technique. What she did, is to Razonde at level 30, what barrel of pure industrial alcohol is to the cheap, 20 proof stuff you buy in liquor stores. This "Tandle," as I understand it, is not a technique, but rather, it's true magic. Her spell called forth a massive bolt of lightning (and by "massive", I don't simply mean big-- I mean it had a discernable MASS!) from the clouds that shattered windows, destroyed Lynn's wings, and slammed her into the ground the way that a metric ton of bricks would smack a Mothmant out of the air, in ten times normal gravity. Just SMACK! and she was down.
Laya was breathing hard, as VanGarrett shot down the last of the Delbiters. Hearing Lynn shout in pain, Zeirom and I ran over to her, soon to be joined by VanGarrett and Laya.
The rain splashed on the ground, washing broken glass around in the various puddles left behind by the Delbiters. Lynn looked up at Zeirom. Her skin had returned to a normal tone, albeit, she was now covered in burns. She drew a deep breath, and said, "Zeirom... I have a request... please..." There was a gentleness in her voice now, that even I could recognize wasn't there before. Beyond that, I could sense that a great amount of hatred and malice had left her. Just completely gone. Like she was someone else entirely.
Zeirom kneeled next to her. "I'm listening, Lynn."
She continued, as she stared blankly toward the ceiling, "Zeirom... Please... Apologize for me... To Meira... I've done her a grievous wrong." She stopped for a moment, and closed her eyes. I noticed a tear slide from the corner of her eye, and mix with the puddle of purple stuff underneath her, as she drew another breath. She opened her eyes again, and said, "I joined Dark Falz and his Dark Force after..." she choked, breathed, and continued, "After someone brought me... brought me to the Ruins, and showed me the body of my lover... Transfigured... Made into... one of them... Now my soul will stay with Dark Falz forever... But at least it can't continue to use my body..." She continued to stare at the ceiling, took one last breath, and pushed out another quick few words, "Tell Meira... Don't kill the dragon... He's still in there..." With those words, she let go, and her body disappeared in a cloud of white fog.
We all looked at eachother. Zeirom said something. "Well, looks like I'll have something to tell Meira about, next time I go visit her."
VanGarrett nodded. "Yeah," he paused, then looked up, "Hey, I think we've found our broken RAcast." He pointed at a pile of parts blocking the entrance to a little room that I think may've been used as some sort of storage closet at one time.
The RAcast was rather large, and positioned on one knee, in such a way that he managed to block the entire door way. Zeirom walked over, and examined it. "Looks like a Prime-type. Or what's left of one." He knelt down, and examined further. "Hm. There's no significant external damage. A piercing in his armor here and there. A few dents. Not much more than can be said for myself. He's seen some good battles, though."
I walked up, and examined the RAcast, myself. "This guy wasn't kaputi'd. Actually, judging from the smell, and ash around the piercings, I'd say that he burned out..."
VanGarrett interrupted us, "Guys, I know the RAcast is interesting, as you're both mechanically inclined, but look at this." He gestured behind the RAcast, in the room that he was blocking. There, lying on top of what appeared to be torn clothing, blood, and some other fluid I've not identified, lay a pale, young woman. Mid to late teens, by all appearances, though she was a Newman, so she could've been incredibly young, like 1 or she could've been some absurd age like 80.
Zeirom pulled the RAcast out of the way, and holstering his Suppressed Gun, VanGarrett stepped inside to pick her up. As he lifted her, he said, "I wish we had something to wrap her in. We really shouldn't let her stay like this."
Zeirom pulled out a towel, and held out his hands. "Give her here."
VanGarrett gave a surprised expression, but nonetheless handed her over anyway. "Dude, you carry a towel with you?"
As Zeirom wrapped her up, and placed her on his shoulder, he said, "Hey... A man who doesn't know where his towel is, is as lost as the towel he cannot find."
VanGarrett shrugged. "Well, it's certainly been a convenience. Let's find Guybec, and get out of here."
I protested. "Hey! What are we going to do about this RAcast??"
VanGarrett looked at me. "We'll have to leave him here, for the time being. HuBBs and I can come back after him, later. Right now, it's important to get the business done, and find Guybec."
Then a disturbing voice said, "You've found him, RAmar."
We all looked. He seemed to be a FOmar, but his eyes were black, and I didn't get a terribly good look at him. VanGarrett immediately stepped forward. "Guybec! What in the Great Light's forgotten name have you been doing? What is all this?"
Guybec just stepped back, shifted his weight to his back foot, and began to explain. Rolling his eyes to indicate his lack of care for the subject, he said, "Well, you see, my agenda consists of unfurling an elaborate plan to achieve some purpose, and in the mean time, not telling you any useful details that you could use to your advantage."
To this, I replied, "Well, as long as we've got our bearings straight."
VanGarrett nodded. "I see. Well, I guess I couldn't expect you to just reveal your plan, like they do in the movies. I can I get just one honest answer, though?"
Guybec looked at him like he was a freak. Not like VanGarrett was a freak, but like, he, himself, Guybec, was a freak. Perhaps he was. I dunno, really. VanGarrett took it as a queue. He asked, "How long have you been doing this?"
Guybec spazzed for a moment, as though trying to say something, but soon stopped, and just said, "I'm sorry, VanGarrett. He won't let me tell you. It's beyond my own control. It's unfortunate that I have to kill you all now, too." He turned around, and started to walk away. "At least, I don't have to do it, myself."
As he entered the next corridor, four soldier-like creatures appeared, each wielding some sort of Partisan. Zeirom grunted, "Ill Gills... Great."
VanGarrett nodded. "Yeah. Fortunately, they're still way over on the other side of the room, and we're rangers."
Zeirom nodded. "I hear that." Then he handed the young woman to me, and pulled his rifle back out to start shooting at them.
The Ill Gills moved quickly, however, dodging shots, and making their way toward us. It was when they just got to where they were starting to overtake VanGarrett, and he was having to start trying to contend with them, hand-to-hand, that the young FOnewearl woke.
She groggily looked up at the Ill Gills, and lifted a hand. One by one, they fell to the powerful light element that powers the Grants technique. Just Pooowooo-WOOM! and they're gone. Then she fell asleep again. We each looked at eachother again, and without any further argument we made hast to leave the building. We were finished.
I gave the girl back to Zeirom, and like Rappies who'd gotten smacked from a hundred meters off, we ran away from the tower. We dared not lay a Telepipe anywhere near it, for fear of what may follow us. We ran back the way we came, forsaking all enemies we saw along the way. There was a single Sinow Beryl that gave us trouble, but he was quickly dispatched by Laya's technical goodness.

We took the girl back to the emergency room, on the Hunters' Deck. It was the quickest place we could get her to. To sum things up, the doctors told us that she was in rather good health, but exhausted. So we waited around for her, and when she finally woke up we talked with her for a bit.
We took a census, and decided that Laya's would likely be the most pleasant face for her to wake up to. So we got a stool for her to stand on, and when she started to stir, Laya got up, and looked over her.
When she awoke, she looked at Laya and said, "Who... Who are you?" I might add that HuBBsDoctor had shown up, by this time.
I can only imagine what Laya must've looked like, standing over her, with the light right behind her head. Laya answered her, "My name is Laya. My friends and I recieved your letter, and brought you to this hospital."
"You saved me..." she sat up suddenly, "Where is Mota Storm?? Did you bring Mota Storm??"
VanGarrett stepped up to her bed and answered, "I presume you're referring to the RAcast that was with you. Regrettably, we were ill equipped to bring him back. We were planning to make a return trip for him, however.
HuBBsDoctor stepped up, "Yeah, don't worry your pretty little head. We'll bring your friend back."
Zeirom spoke from his position at the foot of the bed, "Mota Storm was in fairly bad condition. I'm not so certain he can be repaired without replacing some major parts. We may be able to help him, but he was in pretty bad shape."
She stared down at the sheets, and a few tears rolled from her eyes. "He did it for me," she said.
Zeirom leaned forward. "What'd he do?"
She continued, "He gave his life. For me... He always used to say... 'Those who can be repaired, must give their all, for those who can't'... I think he may have given a bit more than he could spare."
VanGarrett straightened up, and said, "He will have to be honored." Then his posture fixed itself. "And rebuilt. If possible."
She nodded. Then VanGarrett asked the question we all wanted to know. "So, who are you, anyway?"
She thought about it for a moment. I don't think she could remember a lot of details, but she soon looked out the window, at the stars, and she said, "My name is Allanque. I'll tell you that much. Much more, I really don't know. Something happened, though I don't know what exactly. Mota Storm was keeping a live log of what was happening, so we may be able to find out more from his storage device."

This is how it carried on. In summary, VanGarrett, HuBBsDoctor, and Zeirom all volunteered to take her down to retrieve Mota Storm's body, and attempt to rebuild him. Last I knew, Mota Storm was on display in a discrete location of Allanque's choosing. In the end, he'd overheated, and many of his moving parts had fused together. They did get the information from Mota Storm's data storage device. I understand that it's a log going back to the days of Pioneer 1. What it contains exactly, I don't know, as I've not read it, myself.
So this is how a letter changed my life. Due to the letter, I met Allanque, and this encounter with she and Mota Storm inspired me to officially join the Hunters' Guild, as did Laya. Laya worked out a way to manipulate the capitalization of her name, so that she'd get a Pinkal ID, and I didn't really care, so I ended up with Whitill. I've learned more techniques, and in fact, I've actually taken a liking to Grants. It makes things die. Also, because we wanted nothing to do with it, Laya gave the disc to VanGarrett and HuBBsDoctor. Let them deal with Akolyte. They seem to be more readily prepared for the task.
I've not been back to Ragol since I started writing this. After all, I've had classes to teach, since the University finished renovating. The guild work did get me a few extra Meseta during the extended break, and the investigation that I did in the week or so that it took the repair crew to fix everything, I learned something about Ragol.
Hey, I said at the beginning of this thing, that I could've told you right off the bat, and indeed, I could've. So here's the deal. The government says that we came to Ragol to escape the overpopulation of our planet, which has been causing our ecosystem to go all whack. The popular opinion among many hunters is that someone has pulled some strings so that our researchers could come here and research the D-Factor found in beasts in the Ruins, and a few in the Seabed facility, and use that knowledge to make Super Soldiers.
My opinion is different though. I've observed Dr. Osto's research myself, and while he was definitely trying to control the D-Factor, I don't think that it was for the purposes of making super-soldiers. Think about it. The Pioneer Project did a very successful job of attaining world peace, as all seven of our nations have banded together for it. Furthermore, it can't be a deal involving world-domination, as it's been proven already, just that the research was being done, that large scale manipulation of the government is indeed possible by whoever it is that may be behind the whole plan. So, it really wouldn't make sense to generate a race of super-soldiers, now would it? They'd stand around going, "Hey Bob, you have anything to do?" And the other guy would be like, "No, Bob. I've got nothing to do. You?" "No way."
Our people do have a legacy, though. Most've forgotten about it. This isn't the first time we've encountered Dark Falz. Dark Falz is a demon, or god, representing our worst qualities. Now, I don't know exactly what the purpose is, but I think that Dr. Osto was trying to control the D-Factor, not so that he could make soldiers, but so that Dark Falz could be safely transported a long distance. Perhaps even back to where we came from. Back to our ancestral home. Before we settled Coral. The legends of Algol still float in our culture. Still, I can't prove anything.
So, yeah, that's my point. That and, flaming marshmallows, there is poultry on Ragol that will KILL you! I'm not kidding, one of those Rappies totally bit me, and I was just, "AH!" and I've still got a welt. Stupid bird. I smacked it good for that. Then I smacked it again for good measure. Dumb thing.
So anyway, yeah, a letter changed my life, even though I get lots and lots of letters. I do apologize for the huge tangent I had to take to get to this, but really, if I hadn't gone on about the disc and the androids, and the magic, then this would've been really really short, and that's just not my thing. If you want my information, you have to earn it. So if you've made it this far, earn it you have.
In closing, I'd just like to state that my hand is hurting. Ouch. I've been writing this thing for quite some time now, and now my hand is hurting. My biggest thought right now, is to take a good drink of temporally preserved milk, lean back, and take a nap. It's been a good run, I think. I do hope you've enjoyed reading this, 'cause hey, I've enjoyed writing it, and chronicling my experiences. Have fun, kiddies!


http://www.angelfire.com/anime5/vangarrett/crankshaft3.jpg
Picture courtesy of Navi (http://www.pso-world.com/user.php?op=userinfo&uname=navi)

M_BlackHawk
Oct 22, 2003, 02:51 PM
Man, Meira, You've just told one heck of story. Can't wait for the story with VanGarrett.

BTW: Is it just me, or has there been an insurgance of good fanfics lately? Your fics, Mr. Rubbish, Odie (an entertaining read), Sarunakai, Davion's fic (which finished a while ago), among others, all of them have been quite a job to finish reading them all with the little free time I have these days.

Thank goodness I take the time to check out the fic boards here.

later

M_BlackHawk

Bradicus
Oct 22, 2003, 03:42 PM
I will always remember Crankshaft's phearsome tallness *sniff*

MQuantum
Oct 22, 2003, 05:01 PM
What a great end!

I have to say, Crankshaft's story ranks among one of the most funny stories I have ever read.

And have fun on your fanfic break, but don't take too long!

navci
Oct 22, 2003, 05:43 PM
Darn multi-part stories.
Now I will have to wait and wait and wait and wait some more. ={

Logical2u
Oct 22, 2003, 05:46 PM
*sniffles*
Yes. I have a cold. But I'm sorry the story is ending! Noo! Good think I have it bookmarked for easy reference... I need to read your other fiction...

HUnewearl_Meira
Oct 22, 2003, 05:52 PM
On 2003-10-22 15:46, Logical2u wrote:
*sniffles*
Yes. I have a cold. But I'm sorry the story is ending! Noo! Good think I have it bookmarked for easy reference... I need to read your other fiction...



There's a link to The Recollection of Meira in my footer, for your convenience.

BOC
Oct 23, 2003, 03:48 PM
"Oh cruel world! Why have you forsaken me? The wrath of the Almighty Crankshaft has shown me my doom! Oh had I only followed the path of light, I may've lived on as perhaps a potted plant of some variety, and maybe even as a fragrant potpourri!"


when faced with humour like this.....i can do naught say that the recollection of vangarrett cannot come quick enough http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

and a nice piccie at the end!

excellent end to an excellent story meira! is end the right word? i mean we still have eight more of these bad boys to look forward to, dont we?



Also before this thing starts, I'd like to mention that I'll be taking a week or two off from writing


enjoy your time off! you earned it!!

PEACE!!!

HUnewearl_Meira
Oct 23, 2003, 10:33 PM
Not 8 more-- 10 more. One for each class. I've only finished 2.

TalonHUcast
Oct 24, 2003, 01:51 PM
I've Read Recollection of Meira and Crankshaft and lved them keep up the good work

BOC
Oct 24, 2003, 04:52 PM
On 2003-10-23 20:33, HUnewearl_Meira wrote:
Not 8 more-- 10 more. One for each class. I've only finished 2.



i usually try not to curse on psoworld, but fuck!

it will indeed be a great challenge, that will take much time, skill and dedication.

but if anyone can do it, you can!

im just glad that it means 10 more, rather than 8 more of ur spectacular fics!

PEACE!!!

HUnewearl_Meira
Oct 24, 2003, 05:18 PM
Yeah... Hopefully, I should be able to kick out the fanfics faster as they go on... As time goes by, I keep getting more and more ideas and less and less space to put them in, so therefore, the last one, The Recollection of Randon should be a long series of mind blowingscenes one after another, and all chapters released over the course of a few weeks.

Heck, I finished that last chapter of Crankshaft in the course of one day (well... The first half of the first sentence was written a week before BUT...)
Maybe I'll get lucky, and by the time I get to Randon, I'll be kicking out a chapter a day.

SuzukaCC
Feb 4, 2008, 09:44 PM
I read this back in the day and it's still freaking awesome