Autumn 1 – Meeting of Two
I DO NOT OWN INFINITE STRATOS
|I|
September 19th, 20XX
? POV
I glance around the area. Even if Char has already confirmed there are no enemies here, I will still make sure there is no-one here, not after the last time we were ambushed. That woman over there is looking at the dresses – quite well-made dresses, they've got lavender flower patterns– and her husband, I think, is watching over her to make sure she doesn't get hurt. He seems to dote on her, even if females hold most of the power in this world now.
Of course, a single female without one of our younger sisters would be nothing for a group of males. Although they don't seem to be armed, I'll still stray away from them – although, it is unnaturally quiet out here, with so few people in this shopping mall. Usually it's busier than this, but the recent terrorist attacks by Phantom Task have stopped most of society from going out and congregating into groups. It wouldn't limit their actions though, only harm the economy – businesses slowly dying because nobody'll purchase anything. Still though, some businesses hang on to dear life. That café is one of them.
Charlemagne's sitting on the side of the café, two coffees in front of her. It's quiet – the waiter is cleaning the coffee machine endlessly and reading off his phone. There's some background music, but it only adds to the ambient atmosphere. I sit down across from Char, wooden seat creaking, and reach for a coffee. She pushes it into my reach, and I duck down for a sip. Her red hair shifts as she leans back into her seat.
[Choose your own background music, preferably something soft and non-distracting]
"It's been a while since we last met, Kuron. Did you buy new shoes? These ones don't make much noise." We both settle into observation of each other while our coffees let off a little steam.
"Yes. Well, you said my last ones made me too loud for your liking. I have some news, but has Shirone passed any on yet? She's been surprisingly quiet." Char's eyes light up at the sound of news, but settles down when I ask about Shirone.
|II|
"Shirone's been surprisingly quiet. I still have some news about her though – have you heard of IS Academy?" She's leaning over the table, one hand extended. Her Eternal 12 is sitting in it – a sleek black phone with a protective casing. A video of an IS Academy duel's shown on it, a white IS facing off against a blue IS.
"Everyone has on this side of the world. Is that Orimura Ichika's duel for class rep?" One moves between the other's laser shots, raising a large sword before stopping.
"Yes. Ichika's apparently Shirone's partner. It seems like Tabane did go through with her plan. Do note that he's using a sword, and only one sword. It's a Yukihira – Yukihira Nigata. You do know what this means, right?" My eyes widen. The Yukihira is the perfect weapon for single-target assassinations. Seen once before with Orimura Chifuyu's Kurazakura, it is a sword designed for duels, although it is far more effective with the One-Off Ability Reiraku Byakuya, an energy-neutralizing field that uses shield energy to power itself.
"You have confirmed this? She knows that Shirone is one of us Forgotten Knights, and is a pseudo-Eternal herself with her open IS AI. If she's organized this, then she's doing something to help us." A pseudo Infinite-Eternal Stratos, Shirokishi has both the power of an Eternal Stratos and the form of an Infinite Stratos. Tabane has simply taken the power and condensed it into a single weapon – Reiraku Byakuya. Only one other confirmed machine has held this power before, even if it is currently frozen - Kurazakura.
"Yes, I confirmed it visually myself. I took the footage, and if that doesn't mean enough to you, here's IS Academy's files on Byakushiki." My E12 beeps – files have been transferred. I digitally transfer them, ensuring integrity by scanning it with anti-virus suites. Cyberwarfare suites scan the file, ripping copies of the file apart, looking for hostile intentions – all ES take care of their own cyber-security, due to their lives being made of code. Once complete, a glance at the data shows a full IS Academy breakdown of the suit.
"'Yukihira Nigata, a 1.4 m blade that when charged with Reiraku Byakuya will instantly enable the Absolute Barrier to ensure the pilot's safety, draining all shield points in the process.' Tabane, why have you done this…Oh, and his opponent?" I switch to the information on his opponent.
"The pilot's Cecilia Alcott, flying a suit with BiTs equipped. They're rather low-level BiTs in comparison to ours, but they're equipped with lightweight lasers totalling around 50 points per hit, distance and shield resistance uncounted. Four of those, and then two missile launchers and her main weapon, a plasma sniper rifle." I glance back to the footage of her fighting – it's almost a dance of danmaku, only not coordinated at all. A bull chasing after a fairy with four points of attack, in a china shop. Not what you want to see on the battlefield.
"Called Blue Pierce, it deals roughly 100 points her bit, shield resistance uncounted. Range doesn't seem to matter in a close-range duel but it may still be a factor at further ranges. She doesn't use it when using her BiTs to fire, I think the English may have forgotten something when coding her BiTs because we give ours simple commands. If the English were copying our BiT control system, it would've been a simple 'flank and covering fire'..." Char continues blathering on about control systems while I examine the missile launchers used on the Blue Tears. They're self-manufacturing units, capable of one output per ten seconds. However, it can hold two while preparing to create a third – essentially, it can fire three in a single barrage before having to reload over the course of thirty seconds.
Compared to my own Tsunami drunk missile launchers, their missiles can do more damage individually and reload faster. However, they're worse in almost every other respect – less damage than a full cluster, less missile types and slower firing speeds. Since my Tsunamis never fire individual missiles and always fire their full cluster, I'd say the Blue Tears would hit harder if its four missiles launched and hit together, but would almost instantly lose once two full clusters hit it. After all, a cluster of eight drunk mini-missiles, each capable of 45 points, hitting a single target would deal around 400 points. Two is enough to put most little sisters down, let alone the full list of sixteen in Eternal form or 128 in Stratos form.
"…so if anything, the English engineers screwed up by giving her full control of her BiTs." Char stops talking after about a minute of tuning her out. She pouts, having noticed my eyes focus again. "You completely tuned me out, didn't you? No matter, no matter."
"Well, I think that's enough about Shirone's own work. She'll probably overhear us and tell us to shut up if we went any further, anyways. Do you want to hear about the news I gathered recently? It's quite interesting in my opinion."
|III|
"Of course! Your news is always about the bounty-hunting business we're both in. How does it go by the way? The tip I give catch you a new fry?" We start slipping into code. Although we're both rather carefree about Phantom Task overhearing us, considering there's no-one else here, it's more for public opinion that we don't actively discuss killing others. Making sure PT's information network doesn't overhear any juicy details is a side-effect.
"Yes, actually. I caught myself one juicy bounty, and I got a few more clues on some of his friends." Haven't checked any out, but they should all be valid bounties.
"Of course they would be! Come on, tell me of some of them. My blades haven't been cleaned recently, and I want to make sure there's a reason to." For Char, cleaning her blades on the bodies of her enemies is a good way to ensure it says red. Her broadsword doesn't rust due to its composition, so the red colour works well as a psychological weapon.
"Calm down, calm down. I was always going to give you some of the clues. One of his friends is in Nepal, with one of that person's subordinates in Thailand, kicking up a fuss. Another friend is in Spain, his most trusted in France and one of her more renowned in British lands. Sadly, there's no information on his best friend – information on that fellow has been poorly lacking, wherever we look." An information hub in Spain and Nepal would be perfect to hit, but the Thailand and France surface launch bases would also be a good hit. The British group would be infiltrating into British IS operations, likely to steal the next version of the Blue Tears.
"Of course, I still have the main bounty to hand in. It came with a little extra, though, that one of my requesters wanted to get a hand on. I'll have to hand it to her, the moon rabbit really is protective of her little gems." Tabane's an interesting person, I'll admit. While she is considered a criminal in almost every corner of the world (the Pacific Ocean withstanding), she also is overly protective of her IS Cores. She's also probably the best person to hand any IS Cores we come across to – can't really go to the country it was stolen from and say, "I found your IS Core!" A Core being stolen is never divulged, for fear of looking weak, and all the combat data on it could prove useful in assassination of the retrieving factor.
"Well, I'll ask about Nepal then. This friend of his have fingers everywhere, or just a person who makes stuff for them on the side?"
"It's a person with ears to the ground and all his fingers in many different pies. It's been hard figuring out where all the data's coming from, so it'd probably be best to sneak in and take the information straight from him. After all, that's one end of the information network tapped. Of course, he'll probably not say anything, but that doesn't mean we can't read it – he's stored it into old books. They're stored in large bookshelves, probably best to make sure not to damage them while you remove those for later reading."
That base is located almost directly opposite of Mount Everest's Base Camp, on the Tibetan side. While not technically inside of Nepal, it's close enough that we just call it Nepal. Saying Tibet or China would be misleading, since China and Tibet cover a much larger area than just the area across from Base Camp.
"And his subordinate? Since you said they were kicking up a fuss, it's a large fuss?"
"Ah, yes. It was large enough that IS had to be deployed to stop it. Still didn't matter in the end – the mess made was significant. Couldn't find any data links from Nepal to Thailand, but it's still possible that he's doing targeting for them." Several IS testing facilities were destroyed and two factories were destroyed before the PT-deployed IS was disabled.
|IV|
"Hm. Well, I'll go straight for the friend then, and disable his subordinate later. The bounty will be big enough to live off for several months, if the value you're giving me is correct." Char waves a little, displaying a map on her phone. It highlights Nepal and Thailand, then draws a dotted line between the two locations. It starts displaying suspected and known PT bases around that line, with their separate firing ranges and sensor distances. None come close to the line, although several come within one or two kilometres.
"Please, make sure you don't kick up too much noise. We still want to tap into their information network." One of our side objectives for taking down Phantom Task is taking over their information network – knowing what they know, some of their locations and how we can respond to that. While our cyberwarfare suites would do excellently in taking down the network, it'd only alert them that we know it exists.
"It doesn't really matter, though, does it? You're just making it an assassination mission – erase the target, his guards, then borrow the books permanently. Oh, and clean the sword."
"Haaah. Well, if you're going to be like that, I'll go after the European split. They manufacture a few things on the side in France, from what I can tell. Might want to look the results over before we break them. Shame Shirone's still in her funk, but she'll get in contact soon enough." I look over the floor plans for the French base – a simple two story-house, it seems, with several modifications to ensure integrity in a launch and include a small auto-manufacturing machine.
"Oh, give her a break. Let her have her fun, because we both know it'll all come crashing down at some point. Let her be childish, at least for this period of 'peace'." You know peace won't stay for long… "We both know that. And you should really stop voicing thoughts aloud. It's starting to become a problem."
|V|
"Yeah, it is starting to become a problem. I'll need to head off and pass the extra onto the requester before cashing in the bounty – surprised my phone hasn't started endlessly ringing yet, knowing her impatience with me." I get up, leaving enough money to pay for the coffees on the table.
"I'll head off as well – I need to prepare. After all, my blades need cleaning." I turn around and start heading out. I hear her follow, but pay little attention as I head off to the right. It seems business has resumed somewhat, although it's still well below what it should be. Nobody from before hung around, although I do see a few people in IS Academy uniform…
|END|
AN: I'm really not sure what to call a group of Stratos. They're similar to birds, so I'll just call them wings when they're in groups. It's what groups of aircraft are called anyways, so I can't really argue the matter…
The Eternal Stratos. I'll have to thank i'mherepresent for the idea of a different Stratos. The exact difference between an Infinite Stratos and an Eternal Stratos is in their AI – The Eternal's AI is both an upgraded version, and is also capable of communication with the outside. They've communicated with each other and upgraded their own tech so far it's got its own generation number (in my files at least). It usually guarantees a pub stomp in their preferred ranges of combat. A normal IS AI would never communicate with the outside. That'll be important in future chapters.
The Forgotten Knights. As of right now, it's a group formed by 3 IS/ES: Shirokishi (pseudo-ES from an IS), Kurokishi (ES) and Charlemagne (ES). Each specializes in a single type of combat – Shirokishi in single-target assassination, Kurokishi in long-ranged combat and Charlemagne in close-quarters combat. Charlemagne focuses more on crowd control while Shirokishi focuses on single-target duels. Of course, Shirokishi no longer responds to that name…
I took weapon statistics from Agent Orimura: The Declassified Files (written by Generatedname). If tournament statistics are available, I used them.
And as for review responses:
Kerlongsj: Yep, a lot of things will go so deliciously wrong. I'm kind of expecting things to do a little flop, but that's half the fun of it, isn't it?
PearlTapioca: Yeah, I do actually need to get my hands on the LNs and use them as a reference point. I know there are some differences between it and the anime, but the text usually contains more information so I'll continue looking around. Of course, not being able to read Japanese makes things a little harder…
Date started: 04/07/17 (DD/MM/YY)
Rewritten: 1 time
Date ended: 10/07/17 (DD/MM/YY)
