Modern Armed Force: Are you speaking ODIN as from Call of Duty or Mortal Engines?

Ridli Scott: Luckily, those two dragons are probably the only ones that would probably be a large threat.

BrokenLifeCycle: You now made me wonder if the Special Region's gods have any control over space.


Giselle was kneeling in front of Hardy's shrine, speaking to her God.

"I have done my duty," Giselle said. "However, I was not able to retrieve Rory for you."

"That is... unfortunate, to say the least," Hardy replied back, speaking through the shrine. "It seems we may have miscalculated a bit. The Kerbal's powers are strange and difficult to understand."

"I will go and attempt to retrieve Rory again, Hardy."

"No, don't attempt to retrieve Rory. Her power is too strong, and alongside the Kerbals she is nearly unstoppable. It is also extremely difficult to plan attacks on them, too."

Giselle looked up. "What do you mean by that, Hardy? They are clumsy fools, and most of them can't even stand on their two feet without tripping."

"You already know this, but whoever you kill goes directly to me, instead of Emroy, right? The thirty-seven Kerbal creatures you killed went straight to my realm."

"What are you implying?"

"I hate them! I absolutely hate those stupid, annoying Kerbal souls! Right after they died, they kept asking me these nonsense questions, and after that they nearly destroyed a few other souls I was hosting, using these weird rocket fuel metal objects that they got from who knows where!"

Giselle was caught off-guard by that, as she never saw Hardy in such an angry state.

"You know what? I'll give these souls to Emroy, because that's how bad they are!"


"We lost about forty Kerbals in the dragon attack, and about eighty were injured."

A group of high-ranking Kerbals, Jebediah included, were sitting around a table. "About thirty of our aircraft were damaged. Two-thirds of them are beyond repair, while the rest are in various states of damage. We also lost the second and third hangar."

That Kerbal looked down the paper report. "Thank goodness, we did not lose any refugees or other important facilities. Who knows what would've happened if the Kethane platform caught ablaze?"

"Don't forget about the second part of the report," Jeb interjected.

"Right. About an hour after the dragon attacks, we spotted an army on the horizon, presumably the Empire's. We sent out our undamaged planes and bombed three-fourths of them before they got here. The rest were promptly blown up by mines or mowed down by machine guns."

The Kerbal looked up from his piece of paper. "You know, as much as I hate the Empire, I don't think they'd do something as drastic as sending two dragons here, otherwise they would've attacked us when the dragons were on with their assault."

"I can confirm it wasn't the Empire's doing," Jeb interrupted. "According to Rory Mercury, that strange person that killed several Kerbals was her rival, named Giselle. She technically works independently from the Empire, under the command of this Goddess named Hardy."

All the Kerbals took a bit of time to digest the info. "If so, then why don't we nuke Hardy? It can't be too hard, all we need to do is find out where she lives."

Jeb sighed. "Solving our problems isn't as simple as nuking stuff. We don't even know where Hardy lives, and nuking a Goddess does not guarantee death to them."

"Then what else should we do, then? We can't fight them, we can't nuke them, and our weapons are useless against them!"

Jeb sighed. "You know, since we have no idea of what to do right now, let's resume this meeting in another day or two."

"Even you ran out of ideas, Jeb?"

"No, I'm just thinking of a way to present my idea in a format that won't blow your minds."

"You always make our minds explode, one way or another. Not literally, mind you."

All the Kerbals in the area left the room, including Jeb. Walking out the door, he said to Bob and Val, who didn't attend because they were helping the injured.

"So?" Bob asked. "What's their plans?"

"Nothing so far. Nobody has any idea what to do."

"That's a shame," Bob replied.

Bill Kerman walked up to the group. "The prisoner is awake. Should we interrogate?"

"Wait for me, I'll be there in just a minute."


Jeb walked into the interrogation room. Made up of M-Beam 200 I-Beams, M-1x1 Structural Panels, and Modular Girder Segment XLs. Jeb himself admitted that it might've been a little overkill as an interrogation room, and quoted from he, himself: "It'd probably take someone that could harness the Kraken's power and shoot lasers out of their eyes to break out of here."

Of course, as they were in a mostly unidentified world, practically anything was possible.

Their subject was sitting in a chair, her arms strapped to the armrests. The chair, which was metal, was bolted to the ground. In front of her was a metal table, which, too, was bolted to the ground. Just in case. Jeb wasn't able to get a good look at her face, because the room was dimly lit and the light that shone through the windows were facing opposite of the person. Looking up at the ceiling lights, which were off, Jeb tried flicking the light switch.

"Won't work," Valentina said. "The dragon attack cut off the wires that run to this building. We'll have to wait for about three more hours of we really want light."

"Well," Jeb replied. "I'm not going to stand around, y'know. Wasted time. Let's just start this interrogation right now." Jeb sat down in a chair opposite of the prisoner. Jeb could see her ears twitch when he did so.

"So, anything you want to say right now?" Jeb asked. He was met with no response.

"Look, we found you near a weapon that, although inferior to ours, poses a threat to our flying vehicles. Even if you aren't related to it in any way, you still have to explain yourself for attacking me."

She remained silent.

"Should we make her speak?" Rory, who was nearby, asked. Lelei was next to Rory, holding her staff.

"Not yet," replied Jeb. "Where's Tuka?"

"She left earlier. She said that she was looking for someone of importance to her."

"She finally found a friend?"

"Tuka didn't specify."

"Alright, we'll worry about that later."

Jeb redirected his attention to the Cat-Person. "You can talk, or you can stay here until you talk. We aren't letting you go without an explanation."

After about a minute of silence, Jeb simply asked Lelei,"Do you know any spells of the sort that can read one's minds?"

"I don't -" Lelei was about to say, but she was interrupted by a strangled sob from the Cat-Person. Despite the dimness of the room, Jeb could see a few tears running down her face.

Jeb, although slightly confused, kept calm in this situation. "This is the first time I've forcibly interrogated someone not of my own species. Even though I'm not too experienced in it, I can easily tell you're not making it any easier for us," he simply said to the Cat-Person. "So, just please tell us your intention when you were attacking me, and if you have any involvement in the contraption."

She took a few moments to calm down. When she spoke, her voice was still very shaky. "I don't... want you to..." She took a deep breath. "...destroy my home and kill everyone."

Jeb remained emotionless. "Destroy your home?" He asked. "I don't know about you, but we don't destroy homes and kill people."

"L... liar," she responded. "We saw you... You killed all the Empire's soldiers that were... fighting against you, right?"

"Only reason we killed them all was because they weren't surrendering and giving up," Jeb replied. "It was technically self-defense, though slightly overkill. But we're straying from our original conversation here: Why were you shooting down our aircraft with the crossbow-like weapon?"

"Huh...? Are you talking about the Flak-Fire?"

Jeb decided a slightly different approach. "A few days ago, you saw an object flying in the air. You then shot it down. Why did you?"

"...we thought it was a dragon sent from you. We use... our Flak-Fires to kill any dragons nearby."

"Flak-Fires? So you have multiple of them? Interesting."

"And," Rory interjected. "Where, and how, did you get those clothes?"

"...these?" the Cat-Person asked, looking down at her gray uniform-like clothes.

"Yes, those. The last time I saw a style of cloth like that was about a hundred years ago, and a group of men wore them. I didn't understand them; they all spoke in a different language, but they've intrigued me. They disappeared about ten years after, with no signs of them." Rory smiled, and she didn't smile in the happy kind of way. "So, tell me, where did you get that uniform?"

"...I got this from my family. They said to me that it came from a powerful ancestor of mine, who was a soldier. These clothes were enchanted to last forever after he died."

"And what was this ancestor's name?" Rory spoke.

"...it has been lost to time."

After no one said anything for about a minute, Jeb concluded,"Well, looks like the interrogation is over." He looked towards the Cat-Person. "And you... erm, sorry, I don't know your name."

"My name is Ima."

"Alright, then. Sorry to break this to you, but we'll have to check out your town, assuming its a town, to make a treaty with the locals so they'll stop shooting us. We don't want to lose any more aircraft."

A Kerbal rushed into the room. "Jeb, there's more dragons out to attack us!"

Jeb's eye twitched. "What?!"

The Kerbal looked outside for a second. "Never mind, we killed them already, false alarm. Looks like just a few of the Empire's Dragon Riders."

"Good."

Thus, Jebediah walked out of the interrogation room, just as the lights of that building turned on.


"This is the Kerbal X Orbital Bomber, ready for liftoff!"

"Engine is go! Fuel is go! Control surfaces are go! SAS is a go! Begin countdown!"

"Ten. Nine. Eight."

Lelei La Lalena watched the large vehicle, called a 'rocket', laying on the 'launch pad' of the KOB.

"Seven. Six Five."

Earlier, she had watched the Kerbals design this piece of machinery. She asked them lots of questions, and they answered all of them.

A few hours ago:

"How do these propel themselves into the sky?"

"Well, it's simple, really. It's just a tube of explosive liquid that is channeled out of the bottom, the fuel explodes and pushes it forward."

"Why doesn't the explosion go into the rocket?"

"We make a special thing to control the explosions, called engines."

"What happens if the liquid inside explodes?"

They were silent for a moment.

"Very bad things happen. It happens more than we'd like it to. We've lost lots of Kerbals in the past years to disasters like that. An art like this is hard to master, and we still haven't mastered it... yet."

At the Launch:

"Four. Three. Two."

Lelei could see fires gathering at the bottom of the rocket.

"One. Zero."

And then, a deafening roar sounded across the KOB. This rocket was larger than all the other ones launched before, and the refugees living in the KOB were advised to stay inside for the duration of the launch or to wear earplugs.

The huge vehicle started the launch slowly. It slowly gained speed, and cleared the tower quickly. Soon, it bypassed the Aeris 3A Observation aircraft, which monitored the launch from above, and it disappeared from sight.

Lelei kept watching the small flash of light from the engines of the rocket, until that too disappeared. She knew that this mission was important to the Kerbals. Why?

It was the first time they launched a Kerbal in orbit around this planet. The rocket was loaded with a Tungsten Rod orbital bomber, and they planned to put it in a geostationary orbit. It would then be robotically controlled, but they needed one Kerbal to set up the bomber. So they asked for volunteers for this mission.

The Kerbal that volunteered and was accepted?

Valentina Kerman.


Well, now you know.

If I may ask, what do you guys love doing in Kerbal Space Program? You can respond in the reviews.

What I like doing: Building oversized planes and oversized spacecraft.

...you know how it ends up most of the time.