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baelpenrose · 5 months ago

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Project Praetorian 60: Arrival, Part VI

The Battle of Philidelphia finally ends, with a maneuver that sees the Praetorians take the fight out of Earth's gravity well, and the enemy finally withdraw.

Beta-read by @canyouhearthelight and @writing-with-olive

Mark

“Okay. Here’s the plan.” He was looking at the radar, which exhaustingly revealed that the aliens were coming in hot on more dropships - though not the command shuttle. He had to find some way of stripping their shields again, even if it nearly killed him, to try to stop off that trickle of reinforcements.

Which meant that he’d probably be out of action for a while, but it also meant he could do the most damage on the ground - with Xavier and him splitting focus to rip apart the enemy assault.

Which, in turn, led to the conclusion that Echo would be leading the attack on the ship, but while she was actually doing techy shit, she’d need someone else managing the operation…

He glanced at Jared. From what he’d seen so far, Jared was capable of balancing risk and reward, and good at improvising. He wasn’t sure he liked the ex-Nazi, yet, but Jared had been an excellent and ruthless fighter, and one who’d repeatedly proven willing to put himself on the sharp end. The fact that Jared was, in his own right, a decent tactician, and had done the math Mark had hoped after their initial confrontation…

Mark made his snap decision and divided his command.

“Okay. Two teams. Ground team, for discouraging alien landings and tearing apart any Ascendancy trooper who manages to touch Terran soil: me, Seraph, Boombox, Deadeye, Mags, and Titan. We’re going to support the troopers on the ground and keep them alive as best we can. Cipher, you and Frost are in command of the Shuttle Assault team. You will take Siren, Whiplash, Cat and Glitch. Get aboard the carrier, and take it down. Return alive. Do not waste any time or take any unnecessary risks. Skyflower, do not leave the shuttle.”

Jared looked at him in surprise, and Echo blinked.

“Yes. I trust you two to manage. Frost, do not let Cipher come to any harm under any circumstances. This war, as it stands, hinges on her as our most vital strategic asset. Keep her alive.”

Jared looked him up and down, then glanced at Echo, pale eyes inscrutable. Then he saluted. “Understood, Lieutenant.”

Echo shot him a look. “They’re gonna get the guns back online before too much longer, you know that, right? And once I’m on, I’ll be too busy to take them back off before we take the carrier down.”

“Then take it down fast, because I’d rather do that than wind up retreating and have them glass this place off the map once they get the guns online again anyway.”

Echo nodded. “Got it. I’ll get the shuttle online.”

Mark was already looking at the GPS, already praying he hadn’t sent friends to their deaths, and was already hearing Vergil note the positions of more alien dropships coming in, the screams of troopers minding radar. Bastards couldn’t even bother hiding from radar, like they knew human interceptors weren’t a…hm. No, wait. Shielding itself made radar irrelevant, but it also increased radar profile because of the way it projected…hm. If things were already locked…

He sprinted over and started drawing in the standing static from all the plasma shots. “Skyflower, hold takeoff. Mags, standby with AED.”

Then he raked the sky with lightning again.

And this time he dropped, seizing, vision gray, arm alight with agony, chest burning, and found himself breathing again, his arm no longer destroyed. He could barely stand, his nerves having been regrown a second time in less than a day, and Shiloh was shaky.

But the sky above Philly was now being torn with interceptors, and as he watched another dropship was blasted from the sky.

And their captured shuttle streaked skyward, under the cover of hundreds of surface-to-air missiles.

“Okay. Start the battle. Fuck this. This city is fully evac’d, right?” He said, thinking. “There a gas main along any of the avenues they’re advancing through?”

***

Molly

She was still buzzing with anxiety when she climbed into the shuttle. But felt, without knowing how, that this ship would be the death of someone she loved, maybe herself, maybe others. Needed to say it. As Echo booted the drives up, and Amaryllis touched the controls, she strapped in, nervously.

“Skyflower, are you sure?”

“I don’t love that Storm decided my first flight on this thing should be in live fire combat, but I’ll manage. Fly in, fly out. Survive. Hold on.” They started heading up, and Molly held on.

She had read somewhere that astronauts usually got sick when they started breaching the atmosphere, but whatever this shuttle was built from, whatever alien machinery it had, was keeping her from feeling the acceleration.

She didn’t dare look back, but she saw, on the instruments, that they were clearing atmosphere. Echo had forced her language model onto the alien computer. “Approaching alien ship. Cipher, send the signal, let them think we need to dock.”

Echo nodded, then did something Molly couldn’t see. She had to pray that it was going to work. She could see - through the viewport, that thing had to be enormous - the carrier. Massive, sleek, grey-green, with weapon emplacements all over. The ship loomed, shaped like a massive claw, in orbit - though absent the beacon, it now seemed a little less perfectly orbiting than it had, as though the navigators were trying to actively keep it on course.

Molly bit her tongue as Echo nodded. “We’re clear for landing. Docking port at your 2.”

“10-4.” Amaryllis was already steering in.

Jared nodded. “Unstrap, everyone. Lock and load, we’re probably dropping hot. Siren, get ready for another one of those interference frequencies - I don’t want us eating plasma on entry. See if you can’t spray down whatever their hangar security is with your carbine while you do it.”

Echo nodded. “Right. Looks like our first stop is along this wing by the hangar - there seems to be a shaft we can take almost straight to the main reactor. We could make a play for the guns to try to get pressure off the team if…”

Almost as if on cue, the massive ship shuddered and a massive pulse of actinic fire erupted from a weapon emplacement on it’s belly. Molly didn’t see what it hit, but she knew the guns were back online.

To her surprise, Jared shook his head. “Longer we can go without them being aware we’re here, the better. I don’t like our chances if we have to fight our way in and out of this place. Honestly, Micah - how far can you straight teleport us? Like if I ask you to get you and me to the reactor, can you do it from the hangar?”

Micah thought. “Cipher, how far from the hangar to the reactor?

“Just pure space? About half a klick if you could go in a straight line. Problem is you can’t.”

Micah thought. “Yeah. I can do that. If I only have to take one person.”

Amaryllis was almost in. Skyflower gently set the ship down. Molly bit her lip, then stopped. She took a breath in as they landed. Their hangar port was slowly repressurized - and she took a breath as a group of aliens moved into the hangar - a handful of the big Hulks, who mostly seemed to be here to check on the machinery, one that was carrying what looked like power cells - and many, many Croaks who were carrying containers of something else.

None of those were what had Molly worried. None of those, in fact, were even armed. No, what had Molly worried was the team of Spikes, almost twenty of them, that had moved into the hangar as a security team, blasters at their shoulders. She took a breath, warmed up her voice, and double-checked her rifle.

Then Amaryllis dropped the ramp and she desperately cried out the note, twisting it as it ripped through the air, hoping to stall the aliens before they could fire. If even one got a shot off, she knew, they were all dead.

Jared snap-threw a grenade out through the gap in the door, and even as she started singing, she heard the horrible buzz that meant an alien was trying to shoot but couldn’t, that buzzing itself would mess with her frequency - but then they were in sight and already they were out of the hatch, moving, guns blazing. She felt her heart pounding as she kept the note up, firing as rapidly as she could, Spikes dropping. She found her magazine empty, then rapidly reloaded, took a breath, and dove as a plasma bolt struck the shuttle they’d taken in. She fired again and saw a Spike’s leg blown off at the knee before Jared executed it, then saw Mia run around the side of the shuttle and lit up more of them.

Then Kimmy was among them SMG blazing, and the last of them were down. The Croaks were running and before she was even aware of what she was doing she was throwing a frag into the midst of them, and watching as Jared and Micah coldly gunned down the bigger worker aliens. After her grenade exploded in a rough thump, Molly walked over and began gunning down wounded Croaks.

Maybe, maybe once it would have bothered her.

But that was before one of these things had turned Annette into a smear on the wall. One of the aliens tried to crawl away, its forelimbs burned and damaged, one of its back legs missing entirely.

She raised her pistol and executed it without pausing. Only after the last of them was dead did it hit her that the girl she’d been when she’d arrived would never have recognized the girl she’d become.

Jared was already grabbing Micah. “Okay. Can we get to the reactor?”

“Are you certain we can take it solo?”

Molly watched as Mia zipped over to the hangar door, and checked it. “No company!”

Kimmy was breathing hard, but all the blood drying on her armor right now was the wrong color to be hers. The gymnast gave her a weak smile. “You okay?”

Molly nodded, blushing a little at the acrobat’s grin. “Doing fine. You?”

“So far.”

Jared and Micah had apparently reached some kind of decision, one that Micah clearly didn’t care for. They were talking to Echo and with barely an effort Molly brought the sound of the conversation to herself and Kimmy.

“-Just keep on the comms. Guide us in, and tell us when we’ve cracked it so we can get out.”

“Take out the pylons, then I’ll turn the shielding off once you’re clear. Once that’s taken care of, I upload a virus that takes them offline while the ship fails.”

Mia screamed. “Guys we have company!”

Molly rushed to the bulkhead, deeply amused to finally, finally, have a place where cover existed against the alien machines. She saw, out of the corner of her eye, Jared and Micah vanish.

Vergil

Headshot. Another Spike slumped down, brains splattered over a wall behind it. The eye not close to the scope picked up movement, and Vergil twitched his crosshairs just a little over, then fired again. Another Spike dropped, the round having slammed straight through its spine and leaving an exit wound the size of a small plate.

Jonathan was raining hell, but Vergil’s concern was far more precise. Spot enemy elites, kill them. Honestly, at this point, he was starting to note indicators of rank. Some of what seemed to be the officers wore adornments on their horns, or slight changes in the limited armor the aliens wore, and Vergil was learning to target those.

“Deadeye, check west?”

He did - “Uh…Scope’s clear. No contact. Wait, small fireteam setting up north of west. Four blocks. Be careful on approach.”

“Understood. Start potting them. There’s a bigger force coming up and we want to cut it off.”

Vergil was still confused about why the higher ups weren’t just letting Mark call down artillery on the bigger groups, but Mark seemed like he already had a plan.

That sounded entirely too ominous for Vergil’s taste, but he dutifully focused his fire on the advancing squad. It was at that point he actually started seeing the force that Mark was worried about - a small group of armored vehicles, at least a few tanks, a huge group of Croaks. Dozens of Spikes. Not in formation, but Croaks were being used as infantry screens even as the Spikes were moving along the buildings.

Mortars were still pounding other avenues, further off - and Vergil dropped another of the Spikes that was trying to reposition.

Then he got a sight of Casey and Xavier, acting stealthy for once. That surprised him. He could see from here that Mark was checking some kind of map, then indicating something to Xavier. Xavier raised his launcher, focused, and fired.

A thump, a crack, then a roar. Vergil saw something blow, beyond just the grenade, or even what Xavier could do with it. Then a blast of flame, one that tore open part of the street, one that raced up the avenue, ripped the fronts off buildings as the noise escalated and the flames ripped down the street towards the aliens.

The aliens had turned towards the formation - and Mark whipped the bits of shattered building with magnetism, raking them deeper into the damaged cover, flushing out any enemy hiding in them, and Vergil watched Spike blood trickle out the broken store high rises as Mark turned the now burning buildings into blenders.

It hit him all at once what had happened. Xavier had blown open a gas main and then he and Casey had turned it into a fuel-air bomb. Mark had taken metal blown loose by the explosion and used it to flush out anything too well covered to be killed.

Vergil snapped out of it, head pounding from the noise. They were already pulling away from the tanks, calling for Jonathan over the comms.

He was already redirecting his own fire, knowing that when Jonathan moved he’d need to start fucking up the alien officers to let Jonathan reposition and disrupt the Ascendancy enough that they’d be off balance when the other three jumped into the force Jonathan and Shiloh had been standing off with more conventional arms.

He didn’t get the chance to see what happened next - a blast rocked his bones, and he glanced over.

“Alien orbital fire back online!”

“Yeah, no shit. Just keep Titan covered. I need that switch to go smooth. Leave downtown to the US Army - unless they were the ones that just ate that shot.”

Jonathan was racing across, smashing something out of his way. Vergil was reloading, then firing, keeping up. It was strange to watch Jonathan serve as the mobile anti-armor, but it was what they had, even as Mark used plasma static to fuck up the tanks’ ability to target Jonathan.

Xavier and Casey were already repositioning to start firing on the alien forces that Jonathan had pinned down - but they’d circled from the north, and when they descended, they began slaughtering with fire and thunder like murderous angels.

There were a small group of troopers - Imperator troopers - fighting their way up the avenue. Shiloh rushed towards them. Vergil immediately saw why. Leading that squad was Curtis, face blistered and armor splattered.

That group was already pushing back into cover, engaging an advance with light machine guns and rifles, and Vergil added the weight of his fire to them. A plasma blast tore open a building and sent shrapnel flying, ripping one man’s face open, and Shiloh almost casually threw him to the ground, healed him, and shoved him back into cover.

Curtis flashed the kids a grin as Shiloh began firing at the aliens, face distorted in a savage snarl. Vergil saw a strange blur in the window and for a moment felt a surge of panic - then he fired, and saw a spray of dark blood. He kept his weapon closely trained on them. Not a chance were those invisible fuckers coming near his family again.

Micah

Being alone with Jared wasn’t exactly the most comfortable. Neither was flying into space with a totally untested craft they’d just captured. Neither was teleporting into an unknown part of a starship with unknown opposition.

Actually, almost every part of this had Micah ready to have a full tilt panic attack, and when they appeared in the reactor room, only for Jared to immediately shoot the two Spikes in the room and then immediately turn on the Croaks��

He started hyperventilating. Then he saw something new. An alien they hadn’t seen yet. There were the big ones, the Hulks - Jared was already firing on them, and grimly, Micah joined - but there was a species they knew existed but hadn’t seen.

Skinny, extremely gangly, with oblong, sloping skulls that looked almost like beetles in shape, with bodies that resembled upright salamanders, limbs more akin to those of a sloth…These must be the Slenders that had become the Ascendancy’s ruling caste. Supposedly incredibly intelligent, but physically weak. Used high technology to compel the allegiance of the Spikes, who had then…

Jared, face distorted in hate, was already walking over, and smashed one of them in the face with his rifle butt. It raised it’s hands, too slowly, and Jared smashed it again. And again. Micah was hyperventilating, but there was a rage in him. All the Spikes, all the death - it was the fault of these things. Being taken from his home wouldn’t have happened if not for the things standing in front of him. He shouldn’t have been here and next thing he knew he was screaming at them and had pulled his combat knife.

The ruined bodies of the Slenders would have been useless for Koleth to autopsy, but Jared grinned savagely at it. “Damn. Okay. Micah, I want it out loud and not just because of what we just did. I am sorry I ever called you a pussy. You are a badass.”

Micah looked at what he’d done to an enemy incapable of defending itself and felt sick. He started checking his ammunition, started checking the distance from here to the hangar…Jared put a hand on his shoulder. “Dude. You alright?”

Micah gave a half-hearted laugh. “No! We just murdered those things! We’re going to be doing this til we die or we’ve gone so insane that that makes sense! Allah yagfir lana, Frost, that doesn’t terrify you?”

Jared paused. “I’ll answer that on the way down. For now…” He keyed the comms.

“Cipher, we’re in position.”

“Yeah, uh…checked the schema. We’re holding out. Fuck up the pylons before I take down the shielding, and have Glitch move you the minute the pylons are down. There’s gonna be enough free-flowing radiation once both those are out that you don’t want to be there without shielding.”

Micah nodded. He looked around. There was some kind of dome of translucent material he didn’t know, and inside glowed a sphere that looked like a tiny sun. It didn’t hurt his eyes to look at it, though it was painfully bright. Surrounding that were several things that looked almost like…he’d seen a Tesla coil at a museum once, and this almost looked like that, but the connections looked…off.

Jared picked up the blaster and began heating the pylons. “Okay. Here goes. Keep anything that comes in off me.”

The next few minutes were the most tense in Micah’s life as Jared did it over and over. Shattering and melting one pylon after another. He let the sounds of cracking, screaming metal wash over him, collected the vibration, collected the sound, focused on the distance, and when Jared at last tore free the last one, it felt loud. Too loud. Like the ship was starting to shake. Jared grabbed him and they both shook, he went dizzy, and they were back in the hangar.

The first thing he saw was Kimmy backflipping. Then he saw that she’d done it to get away from a Spike. She pulled her pistol and shot it - her rifle had been shattered and lay away from her. Echo was still at a distance. Mia had picked up one of those fast-firing needle weapons that some of the aliens carried as sidearms and was spraying it down a corridor.

Echo cursed. “Okay, shielding down, can’t keep them from just flushing the airlock, get on the ship, NOW NOW!”

They bolted for the ship, Kimmy, then Micah heard Jared shout for him to get Echo. He sprinted to Echo, on the far side of the hangar from the boarding ramp to their captured shuttle.

He saw Jared go for Mia - start covering her as she bolted back, then back up onto the boarding ramp.

And Jared still wasn’t aboard the ship, even as Mia sprinted for it, starting to cover him, and Kimmy grabbed Amaryllis’s SMG and started covering them too.

Micah grabbed Echo as she started running and they warped back onto the ship.

“SKYFLOWER GET US OUT OF HERE!” Jared jumped aboard and the ramp came up.

Echo grinned as they took off. “I lied. I had started the depressurization when I said it. I didn’t want them evacuating. We’re out.”

They started falling through the atmosphere, Amaryllis laughing. “Holy shit. WE just took it down.”

Micah was laughing - but he saw how Jared looked at him, and fist bumped the other boy. He saw Mia looking at Jared, and he saw Kimmy and Molly staring at each other.

Jared muttered to Micah. “No. It doesn’t bother me. Because long as I’m here, I never have to go back to where I was, the people I was dealing with that made my cousin look good, and I can stick with you all. Probably going to die, but before I do, maybe I score with someone I would have been too stupid to notice before I got here. There’s definitely worse ways to live.”

“We’re coming down - Cypher, help me out, this is gonna be a trick. I know it was helpful but I do wish we hadn’t trashed that beacon.”

Xavier

“Almost got them!”

The aliens were now fully panicking. Groups of them were falling back, retreating, or otherwise bolting. The Army had managed to push it’s way out of an attempted encirclement and repay the attack, and now the Imperator troopers they were fighting alongside were pressing the attack.

Shiloh had been heroic - after Curtis’s squad had arrived, almost all of them were swearing up and down that the medic was the only reason most of them would be serving, and not a one was exaggerating. They now moved as a living screen around Shiloh when the medic broke cover, ignoring Shiloh’s pleas for them to stop.

Then Mark said something. “Colonel, General, I’m going to switch to all channels and ask you to repeat that, if it is convenient.”

“Acceptable, Lieutenant,” Xavier suddenly heard someone say. “The enemy are routing. Additional forces are surrounding the remainder. There seem to be some kind of pods dropping from the destroyed ship - your team is closest. Can you retrieve them? Once you do, fall back to base. You’ve already won this battle.”

“Understood, Colonel.”

Echo’s voice rattled over comms on their way over to the indicated coordinates. “Carrier eliminated. We’re all okay! We’re coming down, Amaryllis wants her normal gunship back.”

Xavier started laughing.

The drop pods turned out to contain a species whose existence Echo had confirmed but which Xavier had never seen. A handful of them, only. Sloping, large heads, slothlike limbs, and salamander-like bodies. The creatures panicked when captured. But they did now have prisoners - ones they hoped could be exchanged or used as diplomatic tokens.

When they got back aboard the gunship - with the prisoners in tow - they looked out over Philly. Over half the city was in ruins, and God only knew how many had died.

But their first major battle had been a victory, at least on paper.

Echo cursed as she glanced at the data pad. “‘Report. Multiple Ascendancy super carriers detected. Predicting simultaneous arrival within the month.’”

The team froze. Multiple supercarriers.

All of that had just been with one.

Molly glanced at Kimmy, and Xavier saw her desperately reach out a hand.

Casey spoke. “Not over, is it?”

“Not close. We’ll need to make some kind of statement. Ideally before they get here. People are scared. Let’s give them something to believe in.”

At that, Xavier smiled. It was time for them to commit. To really go for broke on keeping that promise to each other, made under the stars when they’d first heard the rumor of what was coming. To make themselves the public face that couldn’t be ignored.

#writblr #writers on tumblr #Project Praetorian #my writing #original fiction #science fiction #traumatized characters #found family #my fiction #sci fi #fiction #tw: guns #tw: violence #tw: explosions

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folklorespring · 1 year ago

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Vovchansk, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine

russians use scorched earth tactics: first, a certain territory is bombarded with artillery, guided aerial bombs, all living things are burned, and then they can enter this territory.

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waywardwizzard · 1 year ago

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With a groan Mal pushed himself up into a sitting position, hissing when his head gave a vicious throb.

The ruined market place spun in slow circles and he put a hand to his head, frowning when it came away bloody.

What the -

" - hell happened?" Wash hissed, groaning when Zoë accidentally elbowed him in his side.

"Think it was an IRA-149*," Mal said, shakily standing up. Gorram it, why couldn't everything stand still -

"Always hated 'em," Zoë said and rolled over, letting go of Wash, "Still do."

She sat up and pulled a piece of wood out of her hair, watching as Mal unhooked his comm from his belt.

Pressing the worn button, the thing fizzled, gave an ear piercing screech and died. Mal cursed and threw it on the ground, cursing again when it almost cheerfully bounced away.

"Here," Wash handed the captain his comm, grabbing Zoë's hand. Gently she squeezed it, dark eyes watching a thick column of smoke rising into the sky a few blocks over.

"Crew of Serenity, I repeat, crew of Serenity, come in, over."

The comm crackled, the white noise loud despite the cries of the people filling the air, and went silent.

The three of them exchanged worried glances and the pilot nervously cleared his throat.

"So, does anyone remember where the others went?"

♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧

Author's note -

This is the third 'Neon Moon' installment and I don't know when the one-shot became more than just a one-shot but it's steadily turning into a whole story😂

Thanks for all the likes/reblogs so far <3 Y'all are the best

*The IRA-149 is a type of bomb the Alliance developed and used in the War. Just before it goes off it sounds like the buzzing of angry bees.

@juneofdoom

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minty-sweet-art · 1 year ago

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Warning: explosion, loud sounds

Me anytime their a Kaufmo mention /positive

This is a reference to my last reblog tags.

I am happily shaking with joy until I explode.

(Oh yeah my character has little paws like hands now. Only four fingers lol she had no pinky)

#MintySweetArt #•_• stare #MintySillyArt #explodes cutely #tw: explosions #Tw: loud sound #kaufmo #Tadc #im just being silly don’t mind me #The Plushy #art #artists on tumblr #digital art #TADC oc #I was the anon hahahahahahah #oc x canon #self insert x canon #C!Minty #live laugh Kaufmo <3

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neptune-akoya · 10 months ago

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part three. /3

She could have been better prepared for the explosion. After all, she knew it was coming in a roundabout sense. Perhaps not exactly this explosion, exactly this timing, but there had been rumors. Murmurs. Whispered conversations behind closed doors and under the guise of nights. She had heard that there was a plan to eventually break the Tributes out of an Arena, but she hadn't known it would be her Arena, this Games.

It shouldn't have been a surprise. It was a long time coming, after all. Neptune had spent decades organizing, working, sabotaging, storing, helping, smuggling - all for this aim. To show the entire country that it didn't have to be like this. These Games didn't have to control their lives. That the Hunger Games didn't represent all of Panem.

But she hadn't thought it would be this one. No, there had still been use to the Games. If she could just win - if she could bring back the spoils of Victory to Four, they'd be that much closer. Six months of feasting for her District. Six months of not scrounging for meals, of worrying if everyone had enough to eat. It would have been such a boon. There were foods she could smuggle across District lines to neighboring spaces, where they, too, could benefit. If she could win, she would help bring the Games that much closer to their end.

So that was why she left Gage and Wiley behind. Wiley wouldn't last long, and if Gage was determined to stay with her, then she would also fall soon enough. It didn't need to be by Neptune's hand. She struck out north, towards the mountains. Perhaps there was more there. Perhaps not. But she was the only dot of red amidst the sea of white that she saw for many, many hours. The mountains loomed large ahead of her, rising out of the snow like waves on the ocean.

They called to her, in a way. She trudged forward, pressing a hand to the duct tape on her snowsuit. Something about the mountains cried, Neptune, I'm here. Neptune... in a soft voice. In the back of her head, she heard it, pressing her forward. Hours upon hours of walking later, she had barely made them any larger, hardly brought them any closer. And still that voice urged her onward. Neptune! Come here.

Hours. Hours. Hours. Neptune hadn't thought to count, as it didn't exactly matter. If she were to run into someone, she would kill them. There hadn't been a single cannon since the Bloodbath, so either everyone was hidden or cooperating. And good for them. They would all fall in time. But the mountains pulled Neptune forward.

It was countless, of course. The deeds, the acts. The actions she had taken over the years that led her here. The foot of a mountain finally drew ahead of her. Finally, a streak of grey contrasted against the blinding white. Finally, a piece of stone amidst the powder. Finally. Neptune broke into a run, as if she could outrun the government, the Games, the past. Neptune, the voice said. You're so close. Keep going.

She put one foot forward, stepping onto the stone. It was as if she was meant to do this very thing, this very summit. One foot, then the other. Then the other. Her run fell into a methodical climb. After hours on the snow, she was ready for this - hours on the mountain. Up. Up. Go, she said. Go on, Neptune.

Neptune grit her teeth as the climb increased. Steeper and steeper the face of the mountain got, but it wouldn't slow her. Whether it was step by step or hand over hand, Neptune knew she'd reach the top. She would see this through. She would summit this mountain. What stood at the top, she couldn't say. But she knew this was her Games. This was her Victory.

Neptune, Tetra whispered. It's going to be okay. Neptune shook her head, surprised to find tears falling. I'm here, Neptune. I always have been.

Hand over hand over hand over hand. Time and distance didn't matter to Neptune, only progress. Only motion. Only up. There was so much mountain to climb yet. There was so much yet to do, so many lives to save, so many moments to earn.

She could have been better prepared for the explosion. If she had known, maybe she would have made different choices. Neptune. Maybe she wouldn't have started climbing the mountain. Maybe she wouldn't have left Gage and Wiley. Maybe she wouldn't have Volunteered at all. Neptune, look up. Neptune, it's beautiful.

She threw a hand up, clutching onto the sheer rock face. Her neck craned up and she saw it happen in real time. A small, silver missile crashed into the sky. It should have continued down, but it struck the forcefield, exploding into a billowing, fiery curtain. Then there was nothing. A moment later, though, the shockwave hit. Thunderous, like when a tsunami collapses against the flat of the ocean. The noise was deafening, but she could still hear: Neptune. You're going to be okay. Neptune, I love you.

The second missile hit lower, closer to the ground. A cacophony of explosions erupted as the forcefield failed and bits of wire and electricity showered around the Arena.

She could have been better prepared for the explosion. But when a third missile hit the mountain she was scaling, it wasn't in her favor. Neptune Akoya had only a moment to call back Tetra! I'm coming! before the fire and the flames ripped her from the mountain and sent her flying, countlessly, to her wife.

#tw: explosions #tw: death #good night neptune

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billygoat26 · 11 months ago

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TW: explosion (just to be safe. It was just in some weird dream I had tho)

Y’all I had a weird dream last night where me, my mom, and my dad were at my grandpa’s for Friday night dinner (Shabbat dinner) and we were leaving. I made it out to my mom’s car and was waiting for her, my dad soon came out and made it over to his car and I hear something that I thought was a plane overhead but it was going super fast and getting low quickly. There wasn’t any airports close to where we were, so I thought it was a plane crash but then I saw the shape of it and it looked like some sort of missile, and then some huge explosion went off. (By dreaming standards I guess it was far enough away for the dome of an explosion to not affect us and the shockwave was nonexistent? And by “huge explosion” I mean it looked huge from where I was.)

I just remember being terrified in the dream and my mom had rushed out and we quickly left, driving to some other place (not home though, we live close to my grandpa’s) and I dunno how but we ended up at other family members’s home (before they sold it, which now that I think about it is kinda weird, but so is the missile) and one of my uncles asked me about it and I had to explain the whole thing to him, give an estimate of how far it was from where we had been at the time of the explosion, blah blah blah.

Eventually we left and somehow we ended up in my grandpa’s garage and left there, got back in the car and left. I was basically hoping to god that another missile wouldn’t strike a building we were gonna be inside, and I remember my mind running with scenarios on what the death would be like and how sudden it might be. Guess my mind runs scenarios even in my dreams lol.

Anyways, uh, I woke up soon after that soooo…

I’m kinda lost- I mean, I know I’m scared that a war will happen here where I am but I also know that we have some damn good military (or so I’ve been told, but I’m just taking their word for it). Doesn’t erase the fear of it though… It’s honestly one I forgot I had 😅

#billygoat talks #weird dreams #tw: explosions

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toxic-potions-productions · 1 year ago

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The explosion (Zakiko & Yuzuki's reactions) (Demon slayer) (MASSIVE manga spoilers!!!)

Since Ado is Zakiko's Japanese voice, I can only imagine my girl going off on this one She's already a good screamer from her songs, I'm sure she would kill it with voice acting Zakiko, especially on this panel On the 8th panel, read from right to left

All of the text is 100% Zakiko talking

Is it sacrilegious of me to take a panel from the official manga cuz I was too lazy to draw all of that? Cuz you can obviously tell I screenshotted that panel from the Manga XDDD

So, it's pretty self explanatory, but I'm explaining it anyway! When they get the emergency summonce because of Muzan confronting Kagaya, Yuzuki & Zakiko are the most scared for him since they are the closest to him. This is mostly based off of some C.AI stuff, but they were actually able (consensually, of course) to hug him. So, they're both terrified for their master just as much as the rest of the hashira. Zakiko is the most scared out of her & Yuzuki & the entire time she's booking it back to his estate, she's repeatedly saying "Master Ubuyashiki! Gotta protect Master Ubuyashiki!" in her head over & over. When the estate explodes, Yuzuki is petrified & this was the final breaking point for Zakiko due to already losing & outliving everyone else she loves. So, she yells out to him, but instead of saying something like Ubuyashiki, she actually yells out his actual name "Kagaya" instead. As if that part of the Manga couldn't get any sadder. Not only that, but he's the last person she wanted to lose, so now that he blew himself up, she lost any spark she had for life & just wanted to be put to rest. & it also shows more of who Zakiko truly is instead of crude, standoff-ish, & violent. So, this panel humanizes her to the readers alot more than you think

You can tell this is my first time drawing Kagaya. Hope I did him justice, cuz a precious angel like him deserves it

You can also tell I'm in an angsty mood just from this. I got more ideas for some KNY angst, too, don't think it's just this one ----------------------------------------------------- Zakiko Shibata & Yuzuki Kyoshi by: Me

Kagaya Ubuyashiki from: Demon slayer

Demon slayer by: Koyoharu Gotouge

Do not steal, trace or copy. (Cuz this took way too long)

#Toxic's doodles #Toxic waking up & choosing angst #demon slayer #KNY-sona #kny oc #kny oc art #kny angst #slight manga spoilers #demon slayer ubuyashiki #tw: explosions #kimetsu no yaiba

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movedtoferinehuntress · 2 years ago

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⌜ ♥ @knightfeared ⌟ ―― Caitlyn & Jayce ► random starter = ❝ Jayce finds Caitlyn after Jinx bombs the Haas Hall Tower ❞

Black smoke whiffed through the air, shrouding out the stars and moon as she struggled to process the previous few seconds. The back of her head ached, hitting the cobblestone hard as she looked at the Haas Hall burning, and no way to stop it. Her ears were ringing painfully, blood slipping down the side of her ears as they were ruptured being so close to the explosion at face value. Blue hair, she remembered the fragmented image of braided blue hair and the sickening laughter from inside the hall. The sound echoed in her mind as she struggled to stay conscious though she kept slipping in and out of consciousness.

Blood pooled from her left temple down the side of her face, coated in the shimmering red of her life force. Shrapnel had cut up her uniform and the bottom of her dress was burned in black, along with her shoulder pads and the front of her uniform. Soot covered parts of her cheek and along her skin. Shrapnel was embedded in her left arm, blood coated her forearm all over her glove. Lifting her head, she tried to push up with her arms but they shook so much that she collapsed back down onto the ground. 'Get up Kiramman', she told herself in her mind but her voice sounded as distant as the sirens going off.

Ash floated down like snowfall, gray and black as it started to cover her body and the ground as she tried to focus her eyes on someone coming near her. If he was saying something, she couldn't hear him at first as her head fell forward and hit her lower arm, struggling to maintain her focus. The smell of burning flesh stung her nose; not realizing it was her shoulder and arm that had been burned so badly it would scar in the future. Her breathing was ragged and staggered, as blood slipped from the corner of her mouth as she tried to focus on the man again. "Help…need help," She gasp through a few coughs as she reached her hand forward to touch his leg.

The heat radiated off the stone of the ground; as if she stood in the fire of the burning building. The natural light of the flames caused an orange hue to be cast across the person in front of her as she struggled to focus her blue eyes and was finally able to make out his face. Jayce. Flames behind her paid no heed to her life nor of the others; the fire consumed whatever it pleased. If it could burn, the fire violently crept its flames over it and burned it to charred loss. The fire took and had no pity or mind of what it burned. Too much blood, pooled around her leg where she had been severely wounded as she reached out and grabbed his hand. "Hall, she's in the hall," Or was she anymore? She couldn't process time, not with her inability to stay awake for longer than a few minutes (or was it a few hours?) she didn't know anymore.

Anguish ripped through her body as she dropped her head back against her arm as her hand wouldn't stop trembling. Labor breathing pained her chest as she lay there with the one person she didn't expect to see out there.

#knightfeared #[muse] caitlyn — interactions.#[default verse] — welcome to piltover.#[panda speaks] — tracker.#thread: the heat of loss #tw: explosions #tw: blood

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baelpenrose · 6 months ago

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Project Praetorian 56: Arrival, Part II

The battle of Philidelphia starts in earnest. Shiloh and Echo engage in a deadly battle of maneuver - and Echo begins a dangerous contest to level the playing field against the Ascendancy's orbital guns. Sorry about the delay by the way, everyone! I was busy travelling with my fiance! This chapter was beta read by @writing-with-olive and @canyouhearthelight

Shiloh

Shiloh was flooring the pedal on the commandeered SUV, knowing full well that Amaryllis was flying overhead, with Echo backing her up. In the car behind them, Jonathan drove, his movements if anything wilder.

Weave through the burned out cars - then suddenly see a small mob of Croaks, pull into a skidding turn as Mia stuck an arm out the window, a machine pistol in hand, and held down the trigger. At the end of the shooting, Shiloh threw the car into reverse and kept driving - even as they saw Jonathan splatter the one Croak that had survived the sudden spray of bullets with his car, leaving the vehicle dented.

They allowed themself a grim smile - but they admitted Mark’s point. The fighting hadn’t really started yet - they were mostly getting bombed, with whatever forces were moving around the city mostly here to call orbital strikes and destroy anything that still had people in it.

It struck Shiloh how empty the city was. Most people had very clearly evacuated - too late, maybe, or maybe they’d tried to hide, but there was no one moving around from what Shiloh saw. Many of those who hadn’t had put up some kind of fight - as they drove around, Shiloh saw scattered bodies, alien and what was left of human corpses. Aliens bore the wounds of small arms fire, civilian weapons fired at close range, the humans had died with Glocks or home defense shotguns in hand, oftentimes failing to take an attacker with them - but sometimes succeeding. At the door of one house sprawled the corpse of a Spike - though from the fact the house was in flames, Shiloh could easily guess that it’s companions had still torn the place apart with plasma.

Kimmy tapped their shoulder and signed. “Mark wants an ammo check?”

They signed, off hand. “Haven’t fired yet.”

“Right and Mia’s only down one mag. I’ll let him know.”

Thus far, battle was going their way - sort of. They were still trying to probe out what enemies they could before shit got really real.

The Pennsylvania Historical Society was a beautiful old, brick building, arches, high windows - the kind of place that Shiloh could appreciate aesthetically, if only because places that looked like that were usually libraries of some kind and Shiloh could almost always find something to do in a library that didn’t require struggling with some hearing person.

Then again, today, it was surrounded by Spikes moving up towards it, fanned out in a wedge like they were trying to figure out if it had humans inside. They had little doubt that if the Ascendency forces discovered it had in fact, become a survivor rally point, it would shortly be blasted from orbit, and Shiloh applied the brakes.

Everyone hopped out, even as the Spikes turned to engage the car - everyone was already shooting. Molly opened her mouth and Shiloh felt something move in the air.

Some of the Spikes dropped immediately, but the Praetorians were fortunate. Some of the enemy were fast - this wasn’t a rabble of Croaks, these were the Ascendency’s proper warrior caste, and they were trained, disciplined, and motivated. There was a tiny delay as the team scattered - and Shiloh realized that Molly must have bought them just a tiny delay in the enemy firing their weapons for the team to scatter from the vehicles before the Spikes could open fire.

As it was, Shiloh felt a flash of pain on their right side, and slapped the new burn until it faded. They glanced around, another blast turning the wall they were hiding behind to dust and forcing them to dive again, even as they felt a hum in their teeth - and only a few moments later, saw a Spike’s head vanish in a welter of gore.

Mark was clenching his teeth, hand clamped over a burn on his neck and face, and Jonathan was laying down a welter of fire to force the aliens to keep their heads down.

The aliens kept shooting, and Xavier lobbed another grenade at them, even as Kimmy got back to her feet - the damage on her armor indicating she’d actually gotten fucked up by a blast herself.

Another spike died and Shiloh realized that Vergil had vanished - and so had Micah.

Shiloh glanced at Jonathan - realized he was too busy pinning down the enemy to see them. Mia was moving like she was going to try to flank the enemy and get an angle - and the next moment, Mia made her move, bolting around the side, heedless of the plasma blasts that zipped around her, detonating just inches too far for her to be burned, Mia already speeding away from them. The speedster zipped between cover, and as Shiloh watched, found herself around the corner of the building that the Spikes had hidden - and emptied her clip into the exposed flank of three of them, who went down in a shower of too-bright gore.

THe last alien soldier dropped as Vergil fired again.

Shiloh rushed over to Mark, getting him back to his feet, and checked in with Kimmy, who gasped as she shrugged.

Mark was talking into the comms.

Echo

“Cypher, I’m going to need you down here after all.”

“Clarify, Storm.” The callsigns still sounded a little ridiculous, but since they were likely to run into civilians this time, it made more sense to use them rather than names, at least for now.

“Enemy forces are using some kind of communicator to call down orbital strikes. I need you to hack that communication net and compromise it. We have the civilian rally point secured for aerial evac, but the city is crawling with teams of Spikes calling down orbital strikes and if we start an evacuation this place is going to get glassed. I need you to come collect some tech we recovered and compromise their comms so they can’t call in the bombing - I’ll deal with whatever bigger ground forces come as a result.”

She realized he was asking her to save a city and very possibly the war until Raytheon actually developed actual sci fi weapons like Mass Accelerator Cannons or anti-orbital railguns or equivalent. Then again for all she knew, those had been in the works since first contact. “I’m not certain I can do…”

Mark’s voice grew very tired. “I need you to try. Tell Skyflower to get you down here- civvie base secured, but I can’t open the place up or get the rest of the transports here until I’m not going to be painting a target for the assholes in orbit.”

“Fuck, Storm.”

“Cope, Cypher.”

She leaned back from her comms. “Skyflower, the Lieutenant says we have to land, apparently he captured alien comms he wants me to look at.”

“Understood, Warrant Officer.” Amaryllis switched to general frequency and then said, probably to Mark, or maybe Vergil, “Make sure the area is actually fully clear before I drop her in - I don’t want some spotter calling in a different strike once they see me landing.”

“10-4.”

Echo felt a knot of tension in her chest - she scolded herself for being a coward, she knew she shouldn’t be so worried about stepping onto a battlefield, kind of hated sitting it out when all her friends were fighting for their lives, but at the same time, her powers were best kept in reserve for when they could actually turn the tide.

“Negative contact - Vergil got one way out at the edge of visual range but there’s no indication it was in range to accurately call coordinates for a strike.”

They touched down only a few minutes later, and she was greeted by Casey and Jonathan. Casey reeked of burning alien, Jonathan of gunpowder and blood. He was splattered in the too-dark gore of a Spike from what had probably been a close-contact fight. Jared, Mark and Xavier were watching the perimeter.

Then Casey was pressing a device into her hand, something that wasn’t a weapon and seemed to be some kind of scanner, covered in alien blood but undamaged, and Echo was running back to the gunship to take off at the insistence of Amaryllis, hugging Casey and Jonathan before she left, hoping she’d see them again when the battle ended.

“Keep them from raining hell on us.” Casey called after her. “We’ll handle the guys on the ground.”

Echo had her hand on the device almost the minute Amaryllis took off, saying something about repositioning, making sure that they could maneuver so that the enemy didn’t get a lock on wherever Echo was while she worked - or that if they did, it only killed the two of them rather than the whole team.

As they took off, Echo took a breath. “I’m going to turn off my comms til I’m done, guys. Until it’s done, I can’t help anyway - and hearing chatter is only going to distract me.”

“Understood. Be back in contact once you finish.”

She took a breath and pushed her brain into the captured alien communicator, feeling her consciousness impose itself over circuits and code. It was a communication device, which brought down her first anxiety - now to make sure it was dialed into the surface-to-orbit frequency.

As she pushed herself into the channels, her vision, her senses blurring, distorting each time she did, brain filling with alien signals before her brain was able to impose its own language model and shift it into standard code languages she knew and understood. She was able to determine that there was some kind of ground channel - maneuver, ground command…

“Cypher…”

She felt a violent jolt as Amaryllis did something, then heard the clatter of the ship’s chainguns as Amaryllis made someone miserable below them.

Focus, focus. High command - she wanted some data out of that, but she’d almost certainly be locked out if she started compromising it, and higher priority was shutting down the orbital strikes. Surface to orbit - that was probably it.

What to…

Amaryllis gave another shout, and Echo found herself slammed against her spine as the ship began moving much, much faster - as though it’s engines had all shifted orientation abruptly. “Hurry up, Echo! I think they noticed you!”

They had, something was trying to lock her out. Scrambling for purchase, shoving pieces of code in places they didn’t belong, not enough to stop the net, just enough to confuse it and whoever was trying to punt her out. She was already in, now she had to create confusion. She put in one false signal, one matched to the coordinates of where a ground force was, apparently, and saw a distress signal and a panicked cancellation as something that was probably a confirm call came up.

Then she started trying to override the cancellation - when that failed, she ordered a second shot at a different ground force, before ordering a check fire on a third location and creating a ‘ghost’ spotter unit - a spotter force that didn’t exist, but would look like it did in the computer - then, as she realized whoever she was up against was clearly overwhelmed, she began setting in orders on just about every present ground unit - then canceling half of them, letting the other units cancel the other half, letting her ‘ghost’ spotter unit get hit and causing panic about friendly fire even though she’d just erased a building they’d already passed and confirmed as empty.

In the midst of all this, Echo had begun seeding the net with more and more bad code, signal interference, the kinds of things that made a signal weaker and less direct - more vulnerable to the kind of chaos all out fighting would cause - until she saw the net crash.

She got back into her normal comms. “Orbital strike capacity neutralized, continue search and destroy and call in Evac for civvies while we can.” She leaned against the bulkhead on the dropship, head pounding, and took a swig of water.

Amaryllis laughed. “Already working on search and destroy. Pretty sure Whiplash and Titan are on it too.”

Mark’s voice came across the comms. “Understood. If you can, get back into their comms and let me know when they go to their very obvious backup and send a fuckton of ground troops, atmo-craft, and armor.”

“Give me one minute, then I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks. We’ve got the infantry C130s coming in to drop off the troopers and pick up the civvies already.”

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #original fiction #my writing #Project Praetorian #science fiction #original sci fi #sci fi #traumatized characters #found family #tw: guns #tw: explosions #tw: orbital

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