Update: April 7th, 2016
So here is that new story I've promised. This is only chapter one, and again, don't be expecting consistent updates. This is an Appleseed movie-verse fan fiction, and a whole bunch of cameos are going to appear. I mean a lot. I'm spreading these cameos out over eleven different animes/cartoons/tv shows, with multiples per show sometimes.
Now this is the story where I'm going to try something. If you can guess the cameo and the anime/cartoon/tv show that he/she/they/it is/are from, you get a small prize. Virtual cookies, an idea for a story, a collab, a question hat I must answer truthfully, etc., and I will announce them all at the beginning of the next chapter. But you also have to be truthful and tell me whether or not you got the right answer before they are revealed.
That being said, the cameos aren't appearing just yet, but keep your eyes peeled!
Disclaimer: i te le lava appleseed (Samoan)
It was dark outside the craft that carried three figures. There were no stars out; the clods had obscured them all, even the supposed-to-be full moon. But this was preferred for this particular mission. Darkness would be the best cover they could get. They would be little more than dark blobs moving against a dark sky, which - hopefully - their enemy would assume to be sea birds.
Speaking of their enemy, a dark shape, an island, loomed out of the sea that they were crossing. At first glance, it was exceptionally unexceptional. Dense jungle looked like short curly hair. A tiny mountain range made like a strange type of hat. Gorges and canyons became the mouth that the island used to breathe and swallow trespassers up whole. The island was definitely big enough to be home to a small, self-sufficient city, but even now there was no sign of light. No houses, not even a campfire to indicate human life here.
One particular figure peered out of a window. Well, this was strange. They were told that there were at least a hundred people on this island. The figure sighed and turned, checking in one final time with Headquarters before this mission actually started.
"HQ, this is officer 109, we've reached the drop point without any complications. Preparing to enter enemy ground in T-90 seconds," a female voice spoke into her comlink as she tightened the straps on one of the specialized gloves of her combat suit. Besides her, two other larger figures were checking their weapons, the soft shick, shick of metal against metal unnaturally loud in the cabin of the aircraft they all rode. They stayed silent as their teammate communicated with their Commander.
"Copy 109. 113, 117, keep an eye out for anything unusual. I expected some type of retaliation from them by now, but it appears as if they are either waiting for you three, or just didn't see you, which is highly unlikely. Be on your toes, and remember your mission. Find out why all those planes and boats went MIA," a gruff male spoke into the communication system, his voice distorted over the long distance. The three operatives confirmed their mission and cut communications with HQ for the time being.
"119, copy. Out."
"113, copy. Out."
"117, copy. Out."
All three climbed into the cockpits of huge machines, Said huge machines coming alive to secure their riders and provide for their safety. The figures maneuvered over to the jump door and dropped from the invisible WASP carrier and landed in the dense brush of the jungle-esque island after a short free-fall. The heavy mechanical bodies crashed easily through the dense multi-layered canopy, protecting the figures inside them from the snapping branches and stiff leaves. All three landed almost at the same time, in the same position – one knee down on the ground, the opposite hand bracing the huge form. Dust and rocks shot up from the large impact, partially obscuring the forms of Olympus ESWAT landmates. The one with a different head than the other two got up first and hoisted his oversized Seburo Cento-Master onto his shoulder with one of his bigger arms and activated his personal comlink.
"What's up with this? How can so many heavily armed vessels and aircrafts just up and vanish when we get in without even air turbulence?"
The figure in the middle got up and tilted its head slightly. "Beats me," came the female voice from before. "I thought all this disappearing stuff ended when they figured out the game at the Bermuda Triangle."
The third figure finally stood, his voice similar to that of the first, only lacking a slight mechanical touch. "Yeah, well we're probably expected. Best not keep them waiting, hmm?"
The other two figures nodded and all three turned as a single unit and made their way through the heavy foliage, careful to leave as little of a trail as possible while maximizing on speed.
"What's this?" The first figure got sidetracked with a mark on a tree. Kneeling besides the tree trunk, he called to his other two partners. "Hey, Deunan, Tereus, get over here and look at this."
"What is it Briareos?" came the female voice. She knelt carefully next to her partner and analyzed the markings on the tree quickly but thoroughly.
Deep gouges bit into the very heart of the tree, while lighter scrapes decorated the surrounding area with a distinct pattern. "Looks like a serrated hunting knife. Probably an antique, seeing as how those things aren't made like that anymore." the female voice said. The final voice spoke up from behind the duo.
"My question is, who was using it?" the third voice called from behind the two. The female turned around.
"What do you mean Tereus?"
"He means, Deunan," Briareos said, easily making the same connections his clone had, "that this wasn't done with a landmate. The knife marks are too small and too low down for the machine to make if it was made in the heat of battle, and there aren't any other marks of battle around; but they're deep, meaning whoever did this is either an insanely strong human or bioroid, or a cyborg."
"Right," Tereus agreed. Deunan hissed in annoyance.
"Probably a cyborg. Great. Probably all tricked out too," she groused as she got up and looked due east. Just their luck. Frankly, Deunan had had a lifetime's worth of homicidal cyborgs crammed into the past year. Halcon was bad enough, and they all nearly died that time. She was not eager to get mixed up with another. "Come on then boys; let's go meet our new friend."
Both males nodded and followed as Deunan took point and charged through the trees. After all, even if they weren't right and it was a human or bioroid, they wouldn't have already known of the trio's presence yet, so no sense in letting themselves get spotted. Despite the fact that you just can't miss three huge landmates falling out of the sky. So much for stealth.
Deunan Knute, ESWAT hostage rescue operative at 34 years old, kept her eyes on her panoramic projection screens inside her personalized landmate, her short-cropped blond hair held back by her headband that doubled as a comlink and vision goggles. She urged her landmate into a faster pace, despite all the trees and branches in her way. To her left, her cyborg partner and lover Briareos, age 43 ESWAT wingman, was hot on her trail, his mechanical side giving him the advantage of eight eyes instead of just two. He used one of his landmate's arms to push a large fallen tree out of their way to save time and keep them under the cover of the trees. And behind him, Briareos' bioroid clone Tereus took care of watching their six. Nothing ever riled that man, ever, so it would make a weird but valid kind of sense that he watched their back, as nothing could ever really surprise him. He may have only technically been a year old chronologically, but his 26 year old body kept up easily with her and Briareos as her other ESWAT wingman.
"Who do you think is doing all of this?" Deunan asked through the private line all three shared. "I mean what could have been on all of those carriers that one person would want so badly? And why would they have to go through all the trouble to make the entire craft disappear? And-"
"Easy Deunan," Tereus said as he pushed his landmate off of the ground to avoid a small gorge in the landscape. "We'll get our answers later, if all goes to plan."
"Worst comes to worst, you'll get a good fight either way, you hellcat," Briareos mocked. Deunan scowled at her monitors inside the cockpit, wishing she could stick her tongue out at her partners for them to see. But no matter, at the moment the hardest job for her was maneuvering her two ton landmate through this maze of trees.
Ten minutes later the three teammates came upon a tree line to see a fully operational and high-tech center. One second they were looking at nothing but dense underbrush, the next they could see bright lights everywhere. At least three stories towered up towards the treetops, and everything was lit up like it was one big LED lamp. Even from over a hundred meters back, the team could make out the insanely expensive security system hidden in the innocent-looking twenty-foot-tall barbed wire fence, which was probably crawling with electricity should someone decide to try and climb it.
"Shit, that was probably a holographic cloaking grid we just crossed," Deunan said.
"Yeah," Briareos agreed. "We probably just tripped a bunch of sensors. Let's be careful from here on in."
Tereus took this chance to update their team leader about this. Lord knew, it was things like this that could make Lance call off the entire mission if he deemed it too dangerous. "117 to HQ, status update. We're assuming that there is at least one cyborg on the island, and have come across a military-grade facility with impressive protection, approximately 165000 square feet and extremely well lit. We didn't even notice it as we were coming in, meaning they have a cloaking device powerful enough to hide all of it and we went through it on our way over. If they're smart at all, they would have equipped it with an alarm for when the cloak barrier was breached. Do we attempt to infiltrate?" Tereus gave their current situation back to Headquarters.
"Can you gather anything of use from your current position?" Lance asked, seriousness dripping from his voice.
Tereus looked over at his teammates, not at all surprised to see that Briareos was already wirelessly trying to hack into the place's mainframe, his Hecatonchires cyborg systems manipulating not only himself and his landmate but breaking into the highly fortified camp. After a minute, however, he came up out of his hacking attempts and shook his head.
"Negative, HQ. They apparently have a system firewall or an anti-hacking signal around the compound strong enough to keep 113 from reaching any important data without risk of compromising himself."
"109 to HQ, can't we just fly in and take over the system?" Deunan all but whined.
"Negative, 109. Even if your presence is known to be on the island, maintain as much stealth as you can. We need this info, yes, but we also don't need a mini war with whoever is living there, and we definitely don't need any of you captured or dead. Dismount and proceed on foot with the cloaking shield Yoshitsune gave you." Lance sounded like he wanted to pull his hair out because of how many times he had to deal with Deunan's impulsiveness. Said woman huffed at her superior but said no more.
"Copy," all three said at once as they all dismounted from their landmates.
Deunan sighed again and grabbed her Bobson automatic pistol and Colt M1911 handgun, holstering them on her thighs before slinging her Gong over her shoulder and strapping on a belt with extra magazines for each onto her hips. Grabbing her cloaking patch last, she slapped it onto her chest and turned to her two wingmen, who were also armed and ready to go. Well, she assumed they were, as they bad both donned their cloaking patches as well. Deunan took a deep breath and relaxed her body. Time to get serious.
So. What'cha think?
Again, first chapter, so nothing too terribly important has happened yet. But in a chapter or two it'll pick up, I promise.
Chronologically, this takes place after Ex Machina, about a year or two later, but I am taking some elements from the anime and the manga. None of those I own, by the way.
Remember, I'm open to chat with all the time. Meanwhile, like, favorite, and review me!
Take care!