AN: I've rewritten the entire story to the point it isn't the same thing anymore. Please return to the first Chapter to read again as this one won't make sense otherwise. This entire act is complete at ~80k words and 18 chapters.
How I wrote the first story didn't sit well with me and how I've improved. When I read it again, I had to rewrite it and then I got board and stopped six months ago. This time I started over once again and completed the complete act in January and edited it with a re-read, but I know there are some issues still. If you have suggestions, please let me know, so I can write better in the future!
BattleForge
Chapter 1
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The Shadowed Being looked down upon the troublesome soul that forced him to intervene. Only karmic imbalances of a vast proportion summoned him before they wreaked havoc on the system. Its task was to balance karma. He only had to do a few times over the multiverse, and most of those were vast in the negative.
This soul, however, saved too many souls over countless realities for no reason but a duty. That was something the verse couldn't ignore, and now he was here to settle the debt. The Being examined the soul, seeing how ragged and spiteful it was. It lashed out at everything near it, trying to rip it to shreds.
A disturbing smile crossed his face as he came up with the beginning of a solution. The permanent dissolution of a soul carried a heavy karmic negative, and this soul would do the work for him.
He reached out into the pool of souls and grabbed one at random before smashing it into the hateful soul. The soul popped instantly, and the counter dropped just a hair. He set up another counter to count how many souls it killed.
'One down and countless numbers more to go.'
Number 2048, pop.
Number 4821, pop.
Number 6843, not pop?
The being curiously stared down at the two souls touching. It looked at the soul he grabbed at random, and it looked a bit raw around the edges, losing some deep memories and experience, but it lined up with the spikey hateful soul in such a way they melded together.
"Board, display the odds of finding a soul that's compatible with problem soul."
1:3,670,509,315,731,884
This was the exact reason they called him in. The verse tried to correct the imbalance and screwed up everything along the way. He looked at the soul to determine how long ago it died. The person died two milliseconds before he reached into the stream by a micrometeorite shielded by a minor God messing around two universes away. This soul was then slammed with a karmic imbalance that drained the god to nothing and launched it up the stream into his grasp.
The Being rubbed his metaphorical forehead as it readjusted the plan. If he broke these two souls apart, it would saddle him with the karma spent lining it up. Something no higher Being would touch if they knew better. He laughed about that minor god getting swatted out of existence for practically no reason, but if one looked deeper, the god was in the slight negative.
He needed to do something else now. The two souls still just floated there. Neither was happy with the other and, if left alone, would pull apart at some point. So he cashed on some of that karmic goodness by grabbing a Celestial Forge package with a built-in Entertainer personality and godhood potential removed before using it to stitch the two souls together with the extra soul hosting it as a base. The jagged tears in it, just added more benefits for him as he fixed a damaged soul. The Being wasn't past gaming the system while doing his job.
Now there was the rest of the debt to settle. He flicked through options and came upon a sneaky one: time travel recursion. Just place the soul back into their original timeline to disrupt themselves and spend the karma removing the issue from which they were going to get it all. He settled it! The soul may contain more karma than most still, but it wasn't enough to disrupt the system! It shifted everything over to the new entertainer personality and set the ball rolling, his job was now done!
Miles
A gag ripped me awake as nausea rolled over me. My whole body felt like I sandpapered it, including the insides. The pain quickly faded away along with the massive headache with it, but I felt like I was missing something. Like I had forgotten some critical things, not that I could remember what I forgot.
My eyes still refused to work from whatever happened. The world was just a gigantic blur.
'Did I need glasses?' I thought to myself, and I couldn't remember the answer.
When I reached up to rub them, my hand bounced off something hard. To my shock, something surrounded my entire head! I tried to turn my head, but the cover held it in place, forcing me to look forward. No matter how hard I strained, I could not move it. The Saw movies flashed into my mind at that moment, and I wondered if a giant saw blade was waiting to cut my head off. To my relief, when I felt around behind, I only found a headrest.
The need to see was paramount, so I blinked rapidly while rolling my eyes around in a hopeful effort to regain my vision. I wasn't confident if my efforts helped or just enough time passed, but my vision slowly returned. The contraption on my head was some sort of helmet with two blank screens that filled my peripheral vision. From my limited view, I could make out that I was in a cockpit of some sort. A highly advanced cockpit, too.
Small screens lined the large viewport, with buttons surrounding each one. It reminded me of an aircraft simulator I tried once, except they labeled nothing. Of course, this had to be a sick joke, or a prank turned abduction, but that didn't explain my vacant memories! I slammed my fist into the armrest, venting some of my anger.
Bam
Combined with the outlet and the pain in my forearm, I resettled my mind and pushed the anger away.
Okay, the first thing to do was to feel for some clasps. I drifted my hands around the helmet and felt up every portion. Two bulges that felt like clasps refused to move on the side of the helmet that connected to the shoulder pads. The glove-covered fingers skittered across the clasps, finding no purchase. I fidgeted around with the clasp for a good minute before I gave up and concluded it was a solid chunk of metal.
'So, the helmet wasn't coming off any time soon. Was my body similarly bound?' The thought exploded in my mind, and I instantly went to find out.
I wiggled around with my head anchored in place and found out that yes, I really couldn't move my body either. There was about a millimeter of slack on the cross straps that held me in place. I was concerned about how they dug into the bare skin of my shoulders and belly, but not my chest.
'What clothes was I dressed in?' Even with no one present, the thought of being in a belly shirt was embarrassing, if not impractical.
I explored my clothes, or lack of them, and the straps. The results were disappointing in both regards but not unexpected. A skin-tight vest lined with tubes covered my chest and only my chest. That carried scary implications. Distantly, I hoped it wasn't a bomb and just bizarre clothing. Similar to the helmet, the chest straps had a solid piece of metal connecting them; it felt like a clasp, but my finger couldn't get enough traction to force it open.
When I considered I couldn't get out by manipulating the clasps, the next step was obviously force. With both of my hands firmly gripping the armrest and both of my legs pressed up against the floor, I pushed as hard as I could. My muscles strained with newfound weakness as my mind had a hard time connecting my current situation to how I was before I awoke. Some memories remained!
The straps bit deep into my skin as my arms burned and my knees creaked. Finally, I slumped back down in the chair in failure. I pulled my hand up to the helmet, and I saw a stick-thin arm with a gloved hand attached. My arms hadn't been that thin for a couple of years, at least. It was a shock to see! Another thing that I tucked away in the growing pile of horror.
Now that I had explored and tested everything keeping me attached to this chair, I looked beyond the cockpit I was in. The view out of the viewport froze me for a second as I looked down at the ground, which was far away with only a piece of glass and some straps holding me in place, and from falling to my death. Then, I was suddenly thankful for the clasps that wouldn't come undone. If I had to guess, it was three stories up before I had to pull my eyes away.
Once I got over the height, I took in the cockpit with a critical eye for detail. Near my left hand was a lever that looked like it went back and forth, and if the arrow along the side said anything, it was forward and backward. I had put that into the 'look into later' pile and continued. Near my right hand was a joystick. It looked like any other joystick in my life, and when I grabbed it, it fit perfectly. Though the number of buttons covering it worried me, I let go before I accidentally pressed the wrong one.
Next was the dashboard. It had rows of toggle switches right out of the 80s sci-fi with the warning patterns and all, not to mention a glass-covered one. My hand twitched to flip some of those crisp-looking switches. The allure was great, and my sanity was fleeting. My eyes instantly went to the green, yellow, caution striped, and bright red switches. The rest were just gun-metal gray and quickly forgotten about.
An urge filled me, similar to the one that fills you when driving, like the urge to go into oncoming traffic for no reason. That same urge pushed me to flip a switch. My hand tingled as my eyes jumped from one toggle to the next. Finally, I licked my lips and gave it a go.
"Eenie, meenie, minie, moe," I said out loud, only momentarily surprised by my higher pitch voice.
After the first pass on the switches, a voice came through my helmet with my finger ready to go. "Why don't you guys settle your asses down?"
I caught the plural, and some stress left me now that I wasn't the only person abducted. I might've even considered myself an ass by being glad that I got to share my misery. But, at least it will be an ass with some company. I certainly wouldn't be holding my breath, waiting for whatever this guy would do to us.
"You ruined my grand entrance by jumping the gun, Mister Twitchy Fingers. I mean, who starts flipping random switches within a few minutes?" But, of course, being the smart ass everyone knew me to be occasionally, I raised my hand.
"Yeah, I know, Miles. I was watching you reach for them." I couldn't see him, and I didn't see any cameras from where I was at. Not that it meant a lot in the end. At least he did his research about his victims and knew their names.
"Now onto you, Taylor, why are you so close to foaming at the mouth? I hope I didn't get the one with rabies." That gave me some new information. Taylor was an androgynous name, so the name revealed no gender just yet. But the foaming at the mouth had me worried.
"Like I give a fuck about what was happening when I acquired you. I had to put your silly little brain back together after what I would call a botched 9mm surgery. To my understanding, it wasn't a recommended procedure."
'Now, what would be better? For them to deserve that or not,' I thought darkly to myself. I would withhold my judgment for now.
A blue hologram suddenly emerged on the other side of the cockpit, and It gave me some severe Jeff Goldbloom vibes, not the good ones.
"Welcome participants to my grand pocket dimension! A place for fights to the death! To receive power beyond imagining! All you have to do is entertain me." The man demanded.
My breath caught in my throat as a heavy pressure descended on me. For all that I was worth, I wanted to avoid opposing that. I felt it in my bones that it would be best to play along as well as I could.
"Now, I hope it doesn't affect our working relationship; All doom and gloom stories are never entertaining. Just keep it in mind that I have a zapping stick that I use on miscreants and prisoners with jobs."
"Okay, okay." He gave a few coughs. "Now to get back on track. The pocket dimension will be your place of habitation for the next few years, decades, centuries, or millennia. It really depends on you!" He said before he smiled and winked at me.
"Tens wins in a row to move on to the next setting. Both of your deaths will get you reset back to the beginning. The participants will keep only two things between the time loops: first, your bodies. Anything you do to them that isn't an injury will stay through the loops. I'm just doing that for myself. A sense of progression helps keep the participants sane."
"Second and final thing you will keep are the Perks! That's right, Perks! You, as in you, Miles, will receive a Celestial Forge connection. I've trimmed all the pesky magic perks and the crazy exotic ones; to make it even more streamlined!"
"You will earn the points for perks from the fights. Win, and you get more. But no matter what, at the end of every thirty days, you will receive a Perk roll."
I could live with this. I've always dreamed of making crazy technology. Though, It was a shame that the thing removed magic; same for the exotic perks.
"Little Miss God Killer here is going to get her power tumor connected to Miles' new Celestial Forge connection. Now you might wonder why not two connections? Well, I'm cheap! And it lets me fudge some things a little."
There was only one person who fit, god killer, 9 mm execution, and named Taylor. The protagonist from Worm. At least I wouldn't be going to that shithole, and I couldn't ask for a more competent companion. I was just worried about the mental state she would be in.
"Want to know a secret? Shh, if you don't tell anyone, I'll tell you. I rented out a timeline for Worm for just a 'thrown back in time, Taylor'. He-he. But with that mental connection, I'm going to shove Miles back with you!"
I had spoken far too soon. Not only did this guy cheapen out on Celestial Forge, but he was also sneaking me into Worm without paying whatever for it. I will make sure never to mention any of this, ever. There probably would be dire concurrences for me if they ever found him out.
"Now we get to the fun part, how you're going to fight battles! In mechs! You are in some BattleTech mechs that I picked based on your personalities."
BattleTech! That was pretty sweet, but they didn't really have advanced tech for being a thousand years in the future. Their stuff was just ridiculously robust. Most of it could last centuries with just maintenance. However, they fought at extremely close range. Compared to what ranges they should be at with weapons that powerful. I'd heard many excuses for why that was, and most of them came down to lousy targeting computers and ECM(electronic countermeasures).
"Miles received an older model but still powerful in its own way. I gave you the Helepolis HEP-2H. For you, Taylor, I got you a special one. I couldn't let you go unrewarded after such determination! You get a Black Knight, Ian!"
I knew I enjoyed playing for the second line, but that was over the top! The Helepolis had an artillery piece for a right arm! At least it was heavily armored, if a tad bit slow.
"Now, before we get to the rules, I can't have my stars getting crusty! Imagine montages ruined by your ever-progressing wrinkled faces. The height of folly! So, as long as you are within my pocket dimension, you are ageless!" He said. His hands were flying all over the place as he talked, eyes far too wide open with craziness oozing out of him.
That was the reason my arms looked like wet noodles! When I was eighteen, the same age as Taylor was, I was a stick figure with no muscles to speak of. It also made sense to have both people around the same age, not that I appreciated it! I felt like a random schmuck plucked from my mysterious old life and dropped in this one!
"Now for the rules!" He held his hand out. "The Rules!" He said again. "RULES" This time, he bellowed with the mech vibrating underneath me from the volume, and a notepad appeared in his hand.
"As I was saying, the rules. Pay attention or not. I will strictly enforce these at all times, but only if you find a loophole in a way that is not entertaining," His voice took a decidedly serious turn, "if not, you will be eternally damned!"
'I'm sticking with what I said earlier and continue doing what he has asked.' I thought.
"Ahh, yes" He flipped the notebook a few times before taking out some glasses.
Mechs are vehicles that move on legs.
Each Mech has to be piloted by at least one sentient.
It has to be classified as a mech to enter the battle.
Miles and Taylor have to be in every battle.
Perks that I don't want you to have will be removed.
No people or magic perks.
One scheduled battle every thirty days.
Perks are randomly rolled after a battle.
That was about what I expected. However, it disappointed me by not controlling more than one mech. "Can we have more than one person controlling the same mech?" I asked
"Yes, you can, Random Schmuck #6843."
Ow, I guessed he could listen to our minds.
"Yup, your minds are like an open book to me. How else would I be able to make thought captions? Gah, amateurs." He said.
'Nope, I would continue to pretend that he wasn't reading every single thought. That could lead to some serious mental issues.'
"Now, did I forget anything? Hmm. I did! So, the Wormverse will have me replacing Scion with some simple computer program, Contessa will get taken care of, and I will insert you at the exact time of her trigger; maybe, I might change my mind. That seems to be it! Have fun! And remember the golden rule! Be entertaining!"
Pop
The noise was audible, like a bubble popping, and little sparkles of light drifted down from the hologram.
'Was it a hologram? Or did he seriously make himself just look like one?' The stray thought came to mind before I shook it away.
I looked at the multitude of buttons without a single idea of where to start. This mech looked complicated, and I knew the pilots went to school to pilot one with a whole profession built around it. It dampened my spirit, but I still could press random buttons! I focused on the four switches that I picked out last time. That one! I flipped the red one, and it made a satisfying click, but nothing happened, and I reset it. How about this? I flipped the yellow one, and nothing happened again.
Okay, fifty-fifty, green can mean start, but the caution colored one could also mean reactor. Hmm, I jabbed my finger down and flipped the caution-colored one, and a great kick slammed into me from underneath. The cockpit rocketed up into the sky as the straps held me in place.
"AHH!" I screamed in shock as my vision went fuzzy. This was worse than any amusement ride I ever experienced!
The pressure plastered me into the seat until it suddenly didn't. There was no warning, and my stomach went in the opposite direction, and for the second time in a few minutes, I gagged.
I blinked away the dark spots to only get a sight of a vast, thick forest far beneath me. I hazarded a guess, and that was the emergency eject button. At least I got a good look around the area we were in with my 'tiny' mistake. I sure hoped that this counted as entertainment and not pain stick worthy.
The cockpit slowed to a stop as its momentum ran out, and I felt weightless for a moment before I fell back to the earth. Then, a sudden lurch jolted me as the cockpit's descent slowed to a snail's pace as the parachute deployed.
The cockpit swayed back and forth as I fell to the ground at a subdued pace. That launched me far into the sky, not far enough to see past the absolute monster of cliffs that surrounded the area we appeared, but I saw a clearing with two mechs standing tall amongst the swaying grass. The one with a giant cannon was missing a head. That was my mech. The forest surrounded the clearing, and it was thick enough that I couldn't see through the dark green canopy at any point.
It wasn't too long before my cockpit impacted the forest's trees. The cockpit barely smashed through the canopy, and boy was I right. This forest was dense! From what I could remember, a cockpit weighed three tons, and it didn't even make it to the ground! Instead, the heavy cockpit sat wedged between two giant trees that dwarfed it.
The blue guy appeared and pressed both of his fingers against his lips. He pulled them away to say something, but pulled them back before saying. "I have a question, Miles. How did you end up out here?"
"I flipped switches randomly," I said matter-of-factly, not the least bit ashamed of what I did.
"Didn't I tell you, 'Not' to do that?"
"Ahh, yeah, but I didn't know what else to do. I don't know how to pilot one of those mechs."
"Yes, that, wops? Don't worry, I'll fix this little tizzy, and you won't even have to worry about the shock stick this time. I've got some good ratings on that snafu." He waved a long cattle prod around that crackled menacingly.
I was apprehensive at first, but my view changed back to where I started with a snap of his fingers. That was slightly spectacular. No weird feelings were accompanying the transition, and considering that I was from a world without superpowers, that was my first look at a genuine, unexplainable event.
He looked to the side and whispered, "notebook" before muttering to himself. "Remember to start Celestial Forge. Maybe do it before they wake up? Or more dramatic-like. Hmm." He looked back at me before he swore and disappeared with a flash.
That's when I felt something poke my brain. It was like something metaphysical digging through my consciousness. 'That was what I was looking for! The instructions say gently string the connection throughout the brain, but that sounds annoying! My body involuntarily shivered, and goosebumps formed.
'Ahh, he seemed to have zeroed out. I know the trick. A good slap always works!' My fingers curled as awareness came back. So many stars- there were thousands of them, all beyond my reach.
'Now for Taylor's connection. It should be easier, just a direct connection.' I felt her, just for a split second, but the amount of anger she held was terrifying. I felt her need for justice bubbling under the surface. She didn't like how it ended, and now she had to go back. I shuddered at what was waiting for some people.
He extracted himself from my brain, and I couldn't wait to take a shower. That violated my body and my mind like nothing else! It made me wonder how much had changed from when I left my world. 'I lacked memories; I knew that, but what had that changed about my mind? Nothing felt different, but how could I trust myself? Ahh, that was going into the repressed folder. Maybe a future therapist could help.'
A star then illuminated and crashed into my head like a fiery comet of knowledge.
Trained Technician (Battletech) (100CP)
You may not understand why this works, but you can make it work and fix it when it doesn't. Pick one sort of mechanical system (BattleMechs), and you can repair it as long as you've minimal access to parts and tools.
As it integrated into my mind, a copy of it shoved itself down the link at Taylor. If I concentrated, I knew what everything did in this mech. I could figure it out, but it would be slow. Knowledge was fine, but that didn't mean I could use it well in only a day. The perk only covered how to work with mechs and that only covered so much on how to drive one.
I looked at the buttons I'd pressed before my sightseeing trip. So, the red switch was an emergency coolant flush, good to know. The yellow switch was an override button for emergency shutdown. Finally, the green switch was reactor startup.
'Meh, no harm done.'
I wiggled my finger around the green switch before I flicked it on. The mech rumbled underneath me and came to life. Screens lit up, and a gentle thrum emanated below me. My narrow field of view expanded as the two blank screens filled with the world around me.
The Technician perk analyzed everything I had in front of me. The good news was that the mech had close to a year before I needed any maintenance, and decades before the mech required refueling, ammo and coolant leveled out at full. This mech was ready to go!
My attention turned to the compressed view of Taylor's mech. I would be lying if I said I wasn't jealous. A beast of a mech, it even had a hatchet in its left hand! The thing was close to five meters long! Large laser emitters covered the mech with enough heatsinks to fire them reliably.
Its right hand had an ER-PPC(extended range particle projector cannon). That thing was deadly, doing half the potential damage of my artillery cannon. Next were the two 7 cm pulse lasers and four 5 cm regular lasers. One slight problem with them was the enormous heat generation caused by the heat-bleed from power lines and the fusion reactor. It could only fire for a little under a minute before shutting down from overheating. However, I'm confident that it was an issue that we could fix!
My mech wasn't useless itself, but it had far too many weapon systems for my taste. The Helepolis had a 200 mm artillery piece, 7 cm laser, LRM(Long-range Missile)-10 rack, SRM(Short-range missiles)-6 rack, and finally a 5 cm laser, all of them with different optimal ranges. It could fire everything except the artillery constantly, not that I could pay attention to so many things at once in combat.
Both of our mechs had thirteen tons of effective armor on them, leaving them reasonably protected. However, that was still only thirteen tons over a three-story-high mech front and back. No matter how I looked at it, it couldn't be more than a centimeter thick. I hoped the armor itself was fantastic.
The point where my mech fell off was the speed. 54 km/h(33 mph) while Taylor's mech could hit 64 km/h(40 mph) before activating the TSM (Triple strength myomers). I guess that was what you got with a twenty-cm cannon for an arm.
It was then that I heard from Taylor for the first time. "Hello." She sounded dead to the world, devoid of any emotion in her voice. I knew there was enough anger and rage to give Doom Guy a run for his money. Yet not a single speck of it bled through, scary.
That single word brought reality down around me. I was talking to what used to be a fictional character. The amount of trauma in the story would've broken anyone else. And I would be hard-pressed to say it hadn't broken her in the end. "Hi, I guess we are teammates now," I said, trying to stay aloof about it.
I knew she wouldn't trust me for a long time, and that was if I didn't do something she misinterpreted as an attack. So, I was going to treat her as I would anyone else. That would be what I would want in her place. I waited for a bit, but no response came. I guessed she was waiting for me to put more information forward. So, I would have to make the first move.
"My name is Miles Carter. I was born on April 1st, 1999. I was twenty-two before I ended up here. Now, I don't know how old I am and I'm missing some memories." So there, that was decent enough for personal information.
"Taylor Hebert," She said, introducing herself and only that.
It wasn't like I didn't understand her position. Taylor had just spent the last four days fighting to save the local reality from Scion. Once she finished killing the wannabe god after sacrificing everything, they executed her. Now she's forced to fight for entertainment with someone she didn't know. It had to be hell for her.
Then, moving on from what would surely blossom into painful drama. I reached down to grab the joystick and throttle. The hard rubber conformed to my gloved hands and felt utterly comfortable to hold. My feet settled on the foot pedals below as I mentally assigned what each one did.
I had seen what Taylor's mech looked like from the tiny screens, but not with my eyes. So I pressed down on the left foot pedal and thought about rotating to the left. That was something that the perk shoved in my face. The helmets were not just for protection, but also used data from my mind to help make the mech more responsive. More advanced mechs reacted to thought without input and allowed people to dodge as fast as they recognized the threat.
One booming step after another, my mech rotated to the side. I released the pedal and spun my torso the rest of the way. Both of our mechs stood at just over twelve meters(39 ft), but hers was a glorious sight to see. I was even more jealous now. The mech looked like a scaled-up futuristic knight with polished armor. Weapons covered it, and the hatchet drew my eyes once again. That would do some serious damage.
I could almost picture her narrowing her eyes as she looked at my polarized cockpit. We needed to practice because I'm sure we would see combat soon. Considering the area we found ourselves in. I would bet that it was a tutorial area. I mean crazy tall cliffs, impossibly dense woods, and a nice clearing in the center. It was too easy. They did not technically trap us with the weapons we had. But tactically, the area constrained us.
