"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle"
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War
I sincerely believe that my soul is scarred after the Great Clown Mime War, as I still remember so much after I get my mandatory memory wipes. Since my memory refuses to lose these burning images, I shall share my story with you. This story is one of a massive loss, and in no way a victory. This is the story of a tragedy.
After the Clown Uprising and upheaval of its hierarchy, the Clowns were united and stable enough to maintain its own resources too focus on their ancient enemy. The Mimes. We stood fast against the tide, but as time worn on, it was clear that our enemy was getting closer to stamping us out. Life became hard and desperate as the proximity of our homeworlds were close enough that the hostilities were never-ending. Many had left both our homeworlds during those harsh times. One of the few blessings of our trials, as it may be the only way I have met several of my own brethren, though, not many. Our options were growing grim, and our resources were quickly depleting, we started to seek new ways to fight the war in the quickest of fashions.
I was a member of the Ghost Division, the Spec Ops of the Mime Homeworld. The tension was high as we sat in the dimly lit shuttle. Our morale was low when we learned of the stakes of our task. We were too assassinate King Squiggles the Eighth during his latest speech to his people. We had no information to work with and we were going to have no backup or support during the entire mission. We knew we were dead men. The shuttle docked and we slowly advanced into the Clown Compound, dispatching their security with ease. We knew he would be on the balcony to make his speech. So we proceeded to the destination until we came across an unknown machine, a behemoth of a machine to behold. We were unable to figure out its make or design, and were forced to ignore it. We were fools to slow down so much by curiosity, as it gave the enemy time to realize that they have been breached. Alarms were going off and we were having to run and gun before the king could catch wind of it to escape. I reached the balcony first, in time to see the king was being escorted off the balcony by a Clownkopter. I pushed my legs as hard as I could to perform a running jump off the balcony, dodging the HONK Mech's as they attempted to block my path. I latched on too the clown shoe feet of the copter, holding on too dear life. I looked back to see two of my comrades being beaten down by the airblasts of the HONK Mechs. I heard a laughing above me, as I saw the clown kings face hover out of the Clownkopter doors to launch a Banana Mortar at me. Being pelted hard by the disgusting peels, I climbed up towards the doors and grabbed his ugly mask. The last thing I heard was loud laughter as I was shot in the gut with a Mortar. I woke up in the forest barely clinging too life. Pulling the peel out of my gut, I realized that I was still clasping that Clown Mask with a deathgrip. I may have failed to kill him, but I knew that I left a mark. The remaining members of our squad gathered up and we left the planet hanging our heads in shame.
In the early morning, I woke up in my bunk to massive explosions. Running to the portside window of the shuttle, I was able to witness that our planet was being sundered by massive explosive beams shot off-world. I did not even have to turn on the Gesture Network on our screens to know what was happening. The Clown King was striking back. Our error was now hurting everyone we cared about and everything we were fighting for. The captain of our squad had burst through the airlock to my chambers, and threw an SMG into my hands. His frantic hand signals alerted me that we were going to perform a drastic maneuver, and required us to be on high alert as High Command performed their operation. Then I saw it. I would be awed if it did not make me weep at the realization of it all. The planet had started moving towards Clown Planet. It was insane! The very idea of such a dramatic measure is for the clowns, not us. Before I could even utter my dismay, a Clown Warfleet had appeared. I knew there was no turning back. We were all going to sleep with the Eternal Silence of the Gods if we did not go to such extremes. The end of an era was in our faces, and it was our time to end the war.
Our shuttle docked with the Flagship of the Clowns, the C.C. Honkstratus. It was already firing on our homeworld's engines that were put in place. As soon as our doors opened, we were met with extreme force, as they had rigged explosives in their docking bays. We had already lost half the force, however I was undeterred by this, and had glided past the wreckage determined in my goal. I was going to return that mask right up his ass. We were laying into their forces on the ship heavily, we were joined by a supporting division and our advance started cleaving through to the bridge. We were met by an obscene amount of Honkmechs as they were launching a monstrous destructive noise as they activated their horns at the same time. The Honk was so great, I swear it was a visible tangible force. It ruptured and peeled away at the metal panels of the walls and floor. The merciless explosion laid waste on our force. I crawled under some of the broken sheets of rubble after I was tossed and defeaned like a doll. I found a maintenance tunnel under the floor, drug two of my comrades with me that were able to shrug off the attack. After some time crawling, I assumed where the bridge would be above us, started carving the top of the tunnel open like a tuna can with a welding torch, pulling ourselves out of the breach we found that the bridge was abandoned, all having fled for a safer position during the battle. We went to their command consoles, changed the trajectory of the ship to align in front of the moving planet. A HONK Mech unit had spotted us, barging in for us, knowing we had everything to lose, my comrades had dropped to their knee's and began unloading all of their ammo into it, as I went to work dismantling the controls to prevent anyone from stopping our work. I pocketed the circuit board and dived into the hole I made. Only a single one of my comrades had followed me into it. We pulled ourselves back where we entered through the shuttle. As we hastened towards the shuttle area, we were stopped in our tracks by yet another squad of Honk Mechs. Already launching their explosive sound wave without hesitation, the windows next to us had shattered, sucking us into space. We could hear that awful laughter as we tried to cling to the supports. We had given in quickly and were sent spiraling out into space. We grabbed eachother in desperation and watched as the flagship begin its slow collision into the planet. We created propulsion behind us by throwing our guns away, towards some of the few surviving Mime Ships. As we finally boarded we had nothing left to do but watch as our homeworld collided with Clown Planet.
After the madness died down, and the planetary debris had begun to drift away. The Planetary chunks were left partially fused. The smaller Mime Planet enveloping a third of clown planet around itself. The atmospheres combined into the new mass. Our planets had notably changed its position in the solar belt, and we had constant issues trying to coordinate ourselves with our allies. The planet was finally beginning to cool down and we sent off a new mission to detail the damage. After Several weeks of survival searches and debris cleanup, me and my comrade John had ran across something peculiar while in the salvage ship. We were landskipping near the Mime/Clown planetary boundaries, most of it still being unobserved due to the heat and magma. Near by there was a large speck in the distance. We flew on towards it to be greeted by a massive blue streak flying by our ship. An explosion behind us that was so massive, you thought a nuke had been let off occurred. We were being fired upon by a weapon of epic proportions! There was no outrunning such a monstrous device. We flew towards it as quickly as possible, preparing myself to jump out of the back of the shuttle to arrive on top of the machine. Before I knew it, we were wrapped up in an explosion where I was forced out of the shuttles airlock by it. Barreling through the air, I had no time to worry about what just happened, and had to focus on getting to that machine. The parachute trip was short, and I was soon running across its short deck when I realized that it was the same device that I saw during our assassination attempt. It was made mobile, slowly moving towards the boundary, perhaps to dislodge the planets. I resolved that I could not have that happen and therefore made my way towards the back end of the weapon. Only to find the Clown King present at the control panel surrounded by a small amount of troops. A wicked grin crouched on my lips as I ran across the top of the machine and threw myself, tackling the Clown King off the platform. As we fell he caught on too a beam, grappling him, I pulled the clown mask out of my pack, and slapped it on his face, having it hooked up to my oxygen line, where I then set it too its maximum pressure setting, rupturing his lungs. He let go of the beam, plummeting to the ground below, softening my fall by aiming for bushes. I climbed up its massive treads, dispatching the remaining guard. At the console I set the machine to fire right next too itself hoping it would cause its destruction. After setting it up, I was suddenly struck from behind by the Clown king as he was coughing up copious amounts of blood. His anger from the situation intensified, stabbing through my right shoulder with an Energy Blade. Unable to hear his angry rants as he was dislocating my arm from my torso, he failed to notice the machine suddenly firing at the ground near us. The explosion was vast. I blacked out from the pain, only knowing that I was blasted off from the explosion. I remember seeing helicopters with the letters "NT" hovering about us. After that I woke up in a cot in a space station. Since then I have been serving NanoTrasen. Perhaps to never see my home again.
