NERVous Breakdown 9: Polka polka polka!
The Commander had a lot of places where he could work. He could work in his personal quarters, he could work in his office, and he could usually try to do work in the Geofront.
When Bradford found The Commander in what looked like a disconnected industrial fridge full of computers and monitors and power strips, he had to hold his head in his hands. He'd done this before, back in the Long War, going 'off the grid' and camping out in some corner of the base to do things he probably should have delegated down to Someone Else. Walking in, Bradford sniffed quietly at the empty liter of Mountain Dew and just sighed.
"Hello?" he asked, trying to draw his boss' attention.
"Schiesse!" the Commander yelled, flying back in his discount rolley-chair. "Bradford, you nearly gave me a heart attack!"
Bradford shook his head and took a look at the computer screens. The computer screens looked back in their Yotsuba glory and image-filled cancer.
"Really, Commander?" he asked, looking at one mirrored monitor with an instance of Grokit, an advanced translation software running full blast on it. "Really?"
"Call it social networking and me playing a hunch." The Commander huffed, clicking away at a keyboard. "According to my inbrief, we declassified about one and a half years after the end of the Long War, shortly after the Antarctica Event. So, don't you think it's fishy that next to nobody knows about us? We only own six giant underground facilities, the most advanced air to air combatants known to man, giant mechanized supersoldiers, and advances in physics that would make CERN piss themselves in joy."
"Slow dissemination of information?" Bradford asked, foiling off the Commander to keep him going.
"No way in hell. I looked through the MP reports- we've had multiple instances of guys going off the deep end of a bender in Alpha Site, and the closest bit of information I found was an article in a Los Alamos paper. Likewise, Delta Site- three guys go on a half-assed expedition into the mountains, wake up in Uruguay, and there's literally nothing except a few newspaper articles as they canoe their way home. So, I decided to run an experiment to kill time before the next Angel arrives."
"Okay…"
"It's fairly simple- I took the uniform restrictions off here at Foxtrot Site, and explicitly made sure our young Pilots never learned there had ever been any restrictions. Not hard, exactly, but worth it. You know what I'm seeing?"
"What?"
"Fucking nothing! Not a goddamn peep! We've had guys running laps in Warden Armor for chrissake, and the most I've gotten is some blather on a few discount image boards and pothole forums viewed by leftist sci-fi geeks! Conventional news? I've been running drone flights, and we have yet to pick up an honest-to-god local news truck in the city! It's the biggest gag order I've seen in YEARS! Not even the Ruskies pulled off something this big back in the Cold War days, and I should damn well know!"
Bradford hissed. The Commander had cut his teeth with the Afghanistan Mujahedeen as a 'technical advisor' sent from America back during the Soviet-Afghan war, and had another stint as an 'advisor' to pro-American forces in the Middle East during the First Gulf War. In terms of black ops, The Commander's file in America wasn't so much a tank of black ink in a censor facility as even knowing he existed frequently warranted some very stiff questions and trips to the Air Force base in Greenland or Guantanamo Bay.
"Whatever is causing this," The Commander snarled, "is second only to EXALT in terms of potential damage. We need to find it, root it out, and burn it before they try the same to us."
Several hundred meters away in Tokyo-3 Public School #2, Shinji was frantically trying to both take notes and respond to the chatroom firestorm that Asuka was feeding avidly. Between public messages that alternated between declerations of love, thanks, and praise, there was also a very brisk set of orders from said PR-firestorm generator dictating most of his responses. It sucked.
When the class finally got out for lunch, Shinji could barely feel his fingers from all the typing. Heading to the cafeteria, he went through with buying his lunch on autopilot, grabbing a little of everything. Miso soup, some okay-looking sushi, and an apple.
Sitting down, he quickly realized two things. One, Lilly was glued to his side. Two, most of the girls in his class were too. Sitting down, he slowly took a sip of his miso, before almost spitting it out. It was horrible! A closer look at the sushi revealed it didn't look near as good on second glance, and just smelled faintly… off.
"'ere." Lily deadpanned, handing him a couple of pieces of her bento. "I made home cooking today, so there's plenty of leftovers."
As the girls recoiled from Lily raising a flag on their Shinji, he accepted the offered food and ate it. It wasn't bad, per say, but it was odd. "What is this?" he asked, eating another piece.
"Oh, just a Guam Roll."
Eating another, Shinji shrugged. It wasn't bad, per say, but it was really odd. "So, what's in it?"
"Oh, the normal. Little bit of mustard and diluted radish, rice, seaweed, spam…"
Shinji's eyes bugged out at that. He'd heard Vessening wax eloquent about the horrors of Spam. And if it was from Guam…
"Well, Shinji," the memory of Vessening began calmly. "the trick to Spam is that there's several kinds of spam. The most dangerous and insidious type of spam, though is Guam Spam. Back in the Second World War, we had a backup plan to invade if the nukes didn't work, so we started stockpiling rations at key bases like Guam and Iwo Jima- Iwoto on your maps. The first things to get stockpiled, though, were rations. The entire military might of America set about to make sure there was enough food, and we crammed those islands to the brim with it. Now, since nobody really likes Iwo Jima, when we handed it back you guys just took all the food and distributed it and it got eaten up pretty fast because America tried to bomb you guys back into the Warring States period. But Guam? Well, when we pulled back to the bare bones, we left all that food there, and they had to eat it. The veggies and rice and potatoes, well that got eaten right quick. But the meat? That went slower." Now, in a conspirtical whisper, he added; "Some of the guys who were stationed there before they joined say the island still hasn't run out yet, sixty years later. They're still slowly working their way through it, one little Hormel-marked can at a time, hiding it new and different foods…"
"ehehehehehe…" Shinji said as the rest of the girls started to sloooooowly move away.
"Fine, fine. Here- Hawaii orinogi."
Sniffing it, Shinji delicately picked it up and started eating. It wasn't bad, it just tasted a lot…like… pork…
"Does… does this have Spam in it too?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Do you have anything… without spam?"
"No."
Looking down at his increasingly less-edible bowl of miso and Mystery Sushi, Shinji gulped.
"No reason."
Grumbling quietly, Asuka tried to listen to the presenter in the depths of the Geofront. After talking it over with Perez, her 'adjunct' that was really equal parts minder and snafu prevention system, she learned that she'd have to take some supplementary classes on weapons and equipment, along with basic infantry marksmenship courses. After her disaster on the field with the carbine, she'd gotten a brief dressing-down from the TAGO to the tune of 'you're not just here to beat things with a progressive spear.' that still smarted.
Once she was done here, she'd be going to the personal ranges and get some learning on how to use regular guns. In the spirit of competition, there was a semi-formal ranking system that averaged together Synch Scores, average accuracy on stills and moving targets, melee efficiency, and tactical acumen which would be determined by seeing how fast they could counter angelic 'hat tricks' in the simulations, if there were any.
Right now, the scorebored was Shinji, Asuka, and Rei in that order. Shinji had turned out to be a remarkably good shot with the rail carbine, and his low synch scores were balanced out by the fact he was the best shot. Conversley, Rei was a low-end jack of all trades, while Asuka just needed to bring her aim up to and on the top of the pile.
Thus her rattling her teeth and bruising her shoulder behind the gauss rifle.
"Verdammt." She muttered, looking over the target. Her grouping was getting better, but she was still not good enough.
"You consider maybe asking for advice yet?" Perez asked, grinning from where she supervised the exercise.
"Nien."
"Well, I'll tell you now you might want to start by maybe dialing down your gun's accel strips. You're shooting at full throttle, which is awesome at turning cover into confetti, but most of the time we'd set them to sixty-ish percent for fighting most things. That's going to bring your kick down, plus it's also going to drop the round from hypersonic to supersonic."
Asuka blinked. "You can do that?"
"Oh, my sweet summer child, let me give you the real explanation on how this shit works…"
Looking into his Entry Plug, Shinji breathed in and out. It was just a simulation run. It was just a simulation run.
"All pilots, prepare for sim." The announcing voice called out "All pilots, enter plugs."
Taking a deep breath, Shinji hopped in, and slammed the hatch shut behind him. Time to be brave, let others fear. As he got saddled up in the command couch, the LCL started pouring in, the blood-like fluid pooling and dripping. Clipping in his crash harness, he felt the cool webbing keep him from floating in the watery redness. Taking a last deep breath, he ducked his head under the layer and pushed it out, just like when he'd been a trumpeter for a day. Now, breathe in!
"All Pilots, sound off."
"Unit Zero-Zero, Ayanami. Light The Way."
"Unit Zero-One, Ikari, Stand And Deliver."
"Unit Zero-Two, Soryu, Lion From The North!"
Okay, sound-off done. Now, the false-feed sensor training data would be pouring in, coming to light up his HUD, there!
"All Pilots, scramble for launch, all pilots, scramble for launch." The digitalized announcer said, its recording for the training run let them know how this was going to play out. Shinji didn't expect them to start underground, but he could handle it. As the lift cradle slammed his feet into the floor, he watched the ground rocket past his face as he got to the surface.
At that point his jaw dropped.
"All pilots, engage at your discretion." The same voice said, and just like that the Sim-Angel engaged. With a sword of fire and a whip-like tail, giant wings of embers on its back, it tickled the back of his memory faintly.
"Is that a Balrog?" Asuka asked, incredulous. "Please tell me we're not about to fight a Balrog. C'mon. You're kidding me."
A loud roar was the answer, as the Balrog roared again and started slowly tromping towards the trio.
"For fuck's sake, I got this." Asuka said, unlimbering her Progressive Spear and counter charging.
As she approached, the Balrog seemed to smile, and whipped out with it's tail. Blocking adroitly, Asuka countered, but the flame sword parried it in turn. Stabs and slashes met parries and riptoses, the massive monster a surprisingly dexterous fencer.
"So, er, Rei," Shinji asked, unlimbering his carbine. "Got any ideas on how to handle this?"
"No."
Shaking his head, Shinji just slowly started moving to the right of the running battle, carefully making his way through the buildings and trading off his umbilical on a regular basis. Once he got into what he considered a good position, he knelt down, braced his carbine, and pulled up the Targeting Program. A little bit of script-kiddy work, it was originally designed for the Minskovy Cannon but had been easily re-tooled for the rail carbines.
So, when Shinji pulled the trigger, one round flew out, and slammed into the Balrog's torso right into the armpit. This then led it to howl in pain and loose it's rhythm, letting Asuka server its tail. Between the follow-up round from Shinji and Asuka's Progressive Spear, it was very much dead. As their HUDs cleared out from the simulated battle, they all relaxed. They won.
"Alright," The Commander said, deigning to appear in person for this test, "Time to hotwash this Charlie-Foxtrot and see just how many more simulations we're running tonight. Because I guarantee you, if I do not see some noticeable improvement then life's going to get interesting."
"What's to debrief? I killed the thing!" Asuka complained.
The Commander sighed. "One, Shinji actually got the core breaching hit. Two, the fact you don't see a reason to debrief is why we're doing this. Three, I want you all to describe this little encounter- Rei first."
Rei began, monotone. "As per the designed paramaters, I exited the EVA elevator and waited for orders from The Geofront on engagement."
"You had orders, Rei. 'All pilots, engage at your discression.' You did not engage. Can you see the problem here?"
"Yes. I did not engage because I did not see an engagement profile that would not cause issues with EVA 0-2's engagement of the Angel. My marksmanship is too poor to provide direct fire support without undue risk of friendly fire, and my melee combat skills are not effective in group combat."
Some muttering was heard, before the Commander got back on the mike. "Okay, Shinji. Your turn."
Shinji gulped, and thought his answer through. "Well, when I saw Asuka get in that spear fight, I got kinda nervous- that whip tail looked nasty. I didn't want to get in her way either, but I couldn't just stand there. Instead, I wheeled right around the combat, and tried to get a flank shot. Once I thought I could hit, I got in a good stance and shot… three times? I think I did three shots. Then things ended."
The Commander murmured to himself, and made a smile-like sound. "Good job, Shinji. You saw the situation, drew a conclusion, and made a logical and smart decision based on the information you had. Right now, killing the angel in the sims is ancillary to getting you thinking the right way about fighting. Killing the Angel comes in later. Asuka, your turn."
"Well," Asuka said, nose high in her Entry Plug, "I knew that as a cheap Tolkien knockoff the Balrog was stupidly tough, so I just needed to engage him with my best weapon for handling armor!"
"Asuka… your Progressive Spear has seventy-five centimeters of penetration on anything, because that's how long the blade is. On unangled homogenous steel at full power, your Rail Carbine has seventy-five decimeters of penetration. Your Progressive Spear is a backup weapon. It gets used after you try and engage at range. Did you consider drawing your pistol and spraying away with that as you advanced?"
"No, that would just eat up a hand-"
"WRONG ANSWER. We like to engage at range because when the enemy is far away, we can shoot him and he can't shoot back! This Angel had no ranged attacks- none! Zero! You could have all drawn carbines and buried him in lead, and if you did we'd be done! Nope, we must wait for orders! We must engage in melee right off the bat! We can't talk to our team! Techs! Boot up another sim- we're gonna be here all night at this rate!"
