A/N: I know, I know... Took Me Long Enough. What's it been? A month? I'm terribly sorry. Life interviened. Woulda gotten this up last weekend, but got sick. Not fun. Anyway...... some clarifications.
SOTP,VOTF stands for Spectres of the Past, Visions of the Future. It'll be appropriate.
A few people have suggested I take the time to 'splain sommat bout Battletech to ya. I'm lazy, so I'll just give you links. First up, the official Classic Battletech Website. www.classicbattletech.com Go buy the Box Set 5th Edition. only 30 bucks for the complete game! and has lots of background on the Eridani Light Horse, The Clans, Inner Sphere, and everything else. Another good site for Battletech information is Sarna.net They have lots of Mech Designs and programs there. Also give Patrick's Battletech Archive a try. lotta links and info! get there at http://www.kerensky.tierranet.com/btech/btech.shtml
Cannae thing o Nuttun else. Read on! Enjoy!
*******************************************************************************************
Shinji couldn't believe what had just happened. Rei was dead, Asuka was in an even deeper depression than she was after the fifteenth angel had raped her mind, and there were two admittances to the hospital that were under heavy security. He wanted to run, to crawl down into a hole and hide.
^No,^ he thought. ^I musn't run away. I'm tired of running.^ Someone else was though. Three boys his age, dressed in green jumpsuits, carrying what looked like helicoper flight helmets in hand; went running to the secure wardroom and into it. Shinji went over to see if he too could enter it. "I.D. please." was all one of the NERV security guards said.
Shinji pulled out his I.D. card, and the guards allowed him entry.
...
It began with an explosion. Mike shook, not from the blast, but from adrenalin and fear. He sweat and trembled and moaned. Machine guns sounded. Lasers seared the air. Screams, Blood, Death, Pain. "DIE!" was the cry. Dual Slaughter. Mike moaned more. A blast, a scream, a hundred screams. Killer. Murderer. ^NO!!^ Mike thought. A crash. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
...
AWAKEN
"NOOOOOO!!!!!" Mike screamed as he shot upward from the bed.
"Easy there! Calm down!" soothed a dark-haired woman. "You're allright! It was just a dream..."
Mike shook his head. Sweat was flung as his hair waived. "N-n-no. It was real....."
The brunette woman shrugged. "Whatever. Listen, do you speak Japanese?"
Mike spun to face her immediatly. "I do...." he said in Japanese. "Why?"
She looked at him like he was crazy. She opened her mouth, as though to speak, but as soon as she did, the door to the room opened, and three familiar faces entered. "Kris! John! Sean! Sup!"
"Well, not you jackass......" Sean said in his usual dour tones. "You and your sonombeech Clanner Battlemech went flying. The Field Techs are still wondering why you're in one piece with only a light concussion."
"So THAT'S why my head hurts. Not a hangover, eh?"
"Nope, now what the hell's goin on here?" John asked.
Mike gave the pilot a curious glance. "You tell me. Why do I need to speak Japanese?" He gasped as a sudden thought hit him. "Don't tell me that House Kurita has broken the Treaty of the Star Leauge! Have they joined banners with the Clans? Are we taken prisoner? What th-"
"CALM YOUR ASS DOWN SIR!" Kris yelled. "THIS AIN'T THE BOONIES OF INNER SPHERE SPACE!"
"Cap'n," Sean said. "What the Lieutenant here is tryin' to say is that, well, we aren't exactly in 3060 anymore...."
Mike began to get very confused. "Wha?"
"Cap'n, we're in Japan of Terra, in the year 2015"
...
Dr. Akagi hated cleanup duty, but she had to get over it. EVA guts were part of her job. This outing, she'd have to see human guts too. ^Poor Rei, it wasn't her time. Despite everything.^ she thought. Looking around, she saw a familliar shape. "Ah! There's the Entry Plug. Head that way," she said to the driver of the jeep.
It was twisted and mangled, but recognisable. As the jeep stopped next to it, the workers in the back leapt out and began to cut it open. During this, Dr. Akagi studied the rest of the debris. The Self-Destruct wasn't something they could test any day. Thankfully it appeared to have deatonated in the exact way the MAGI predicted. ^Good. Makes this job that much easier.^ thought the doctor. A startled cry interupted her thoughts, and she looked over to the workman who had given it. He was backing up slowly, hand over his mouth. ^Must be very bloody,^ Ritsuko thought.
She walked over to the plug. Dead bodies weren't new to her, but they still creeped her out. Especially when they were that of a friend or co-worker. When she looked inside, she braced herself for anything from an empty plug with a suit to a red, gooey paste. What she saw nearly sent her into cardiac arrest. Rei Ayanami, lying seemingly unharmed within the battered plug, intact and very much alive. "Get her out! Destroy the plug and classify everything!"
...
Shinji Ikari stood a few steps from the entrance to the hallway. The three boys in green jumpsuits he had seen earlier were clustered around the bed with a fourth boy occupying the afore mentioned bed. It looked like they hadn't seen him quite yet. ^Which is probably to my advantage,^ thought Shinji. Looking to his right, Shinji spied a coatrack, with the fourth boy's clothes. On the left breast of the suit was a name, but not in kanji. It was in regular letters. ^Michael Rutz, odd name,^ thought Shinji. He began to look the suit over. The collar had two sabers crossed on either side, and a strange double bar pinned to the right side of the collar. In the back of the collar were the words: "MechWarrior," ^What's that mean?^ Shinji wondered. Then he came to the shoulders. More importantly, he came to the patch on the shoulders. A black horse, trotting against a backdrop of desert yellow, encircled by a black ring. Shinji's further explorations of the uniform, however, were interupted by a voice. "Who the Hell are you?" It had come from the boy in the bed.
Shinji was caught off guard by this, not knowing how to respond. ^Perhaps they are angry with me for looking at their clothing?^ he thought. In anycase, he decided to apologise. "I'm sorry," he said
"For what? What's your name?" He returned in excellent, if odd sounding, Jappanese.
Shinji looked the boy over. About 6 foot tall, blondish hair, lightly tanned skin, and a very Germanic looking face. Why did his Japanese sound so wierd? Even Asuka's Japanese sounded normal! ^Maybe he learned it wrong,^ Shinji thought. "Shinji Ikari."
"Greetings Shinji! I'm Mike Rutz. This here's Kris Silver," he guestured to the boy who gave him the device. Kris immediatly straightened up, reveiling a thin build and a great height. "This is Johnathan Lindsay," He guestured to a heavyset boy with dark hair, an eternal grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye. "And this is Sean Taylor, the token pessimist." He guestured to a shorter, blond, thin boy with a pointy, yet smooth face.
Sean began to quake with mock anger. "I'm not a goddam pessimist! I just state the facts. And it ain't my fault were stuck in 2015! If it were up to me, i'd love to have stayed in 306-mmphhh!" he was cut off by Kris's and coming over his mouth thus preventing him from disclosing classified info. "Not a word about that, Sergeant Taylor!"
"Shut the fuck up!" yelled the one called 'Mike'. His face became serious, and he turned back to Shinji. "Now tell me what the Hell happened,"
"He doesn't know," Came a sweet, yet strangely sad, voice from the hallway. "I, however, have pieced it together from what your MechWarriors have told me, and from the data the Magi collected," She pushed some of her considerable mass of purple-ish hair out of her face. "It seems that there was an explosion in 3060, caused by a 6-way proton stream collision. Ordinarily, this would have just caused a normal explosion, but it so happens that all 6 streams were operation on identical wavelengths. This caused the temporal-vortex that sucked you through time, but what focused you here was something else,"
Through all this, Mike just sat listening. When the woman was done, Mike looked her over. Tall, about 28, deffinately good-lookin, but obviously having a little emotional baggage. ^Well who the Hell doesn't?^ He saw some insignias on her collar, but he didn't recognise their meaning. "Continue," was all he said.
"There was an explosion on our end, here in 2015......" Mike heard a barely covered sniffle from Shinji. "... that was also on the same wavelength. It acted as a-"
"Kinda like a NARC beacon to an LRM cluster, sir," Kris interrupted. "Anyway, we're here with no way home,"
Mike nodded. "What of the Jags?"
"Nobody knows..." John said, somber for once.
Mike returned his gaze to the woman. "May I know you?"
"I am Major Misato Katsuragi, Operations Officer of NERV," she said.
At this, all four MechWarriors shot up to attention. "Lance, Salute!" Mike bellowed. ^A Major! We must be important!^ he thought.
Misato stared, with a funny look on her face. A funny look, that was rapidly becoming a mischevious grin. ^What? We can't be all that odd. Maybe they have a different salute?^ Mike thought.
Just then, another child walked into the wardroom. She was tall, but not far above average for a girl of 14. Her hair was long, yet fiery, and her eyes were crystal blue. But what was really striking about her was the sadness, the pain in those eyes. She seemed to barely have a will to live even. ^Hm... odd. Probably sommat insignificant.^ Mike mused. ^Probably a lost boyfriend, or a failed test. Who knows, who cares.^
Whatever the case, she walked over to the Major, without even a glance at Damocles lance. "Misato, can we jus-"
Misato turned. "Not now Asuka! I'm dealing with an important situation right now!" As she said this, she guestured towards the Mechwarriors standing at attention. Asuka followed her arm, and looked at them. Her eyes widened, jaw dropped, and she went slack. "PERVERTS! Misato! THEY'RE PERVERTS!" She yelled. "HOW CAN A BUNCH OF PERVERTS BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN ME?"
^Perverts? Why would she... wait. The Major DID have an odd look on her face, and it is a little cool, uh oh...^ Mike looked down at his clothes. Or rather, lack thereof. He snapped up, ran to the coatrack, grabbed it up, and ran around the corner yelling.
Mike began to dress. Quickly. "I c-can't believe that girl saw me, saw me, AHG!" He pulled on his underbreeches, slipped on his socks, then pulled on his jumpsuit. "Damn it! She thinks we're pervs. God damn it!" He slipped on his boots, tied them, then slid his hands into his gloves. ^Where's my cooling vest? Where's my helmet? Oh well....Gotta go face the Major, and the Lance........^
Rounding the corner, Mike noted everyone. This 'Asuka' was sullen yet again, the Major still had a grin on her face, and his lance was, well...., they were his lance. So Mike threw his best salute, and said, "Lanceleader-Captain Michael Rutz reporting for duty Major. And I regret to inform you that the personal cloaking device had only partial success... Sir."
Misato burst out laughing, Kris and John busted out their winning smirks, and Sean doubled over. ^Well, when I retire, I guess I know my career,^ Finally, as the laughter died down, the Major returned his salute, and spoke. "So, Captain. We have much to discuss. Let's talk...."
SOTP,VOTF stands for Spectres of the Past, Visions of the Future. It'll be appropriate.
A few people have suggested I take the time to 'splain sommat bout Battletech to ya. I'm lazy, so I'll just give you links. First up, the official Classic Battletech Website. www.classicbattletech.com Go buy the Box Set 5th Edition. only 30 bucks for the complete game! and has lots of background on the Eridani Light Horse, The Clans, Inner Sphere, and everything else. Another good site for Battletech information is Sarna.net They have lots of Mech Designs and programs there. Also give Patrick's Battletech Archive a try. lotta links and info! get there at http://www.kerensky.tierranet.com/btech/btech.shtml
Cannae thing o Nuttun else. Read on! Enjoy!
*******************************************************************************************
Shinji couldn't believe what had just happened. Rei was dead, Asuka was in an even deeper depression than she was after the fifteenth angel had raped her mind, and there were two admittances to the hospital that were under heavy security. He wanted to run, to crawl down into a hole and hide.
^No,^ he thought. ^I musn't run away. I'm tired of running.^ Someone else was though. Three boys his age, dressed in green jumpsuits, carrying what looked like helicoper flight helmets in hand; went running to the secure wardroom and into it. Shinji went over to see if he too could enter it. "I.D. please." was all one of the NERV security guards said.
Shinji pulled out his I.D. card, and the guards allowed him entry.
...
It began with an explosion. Mike shook, not from the blast, but from adrenalin and fear. He sweat and trembled and moaned. Machine guns sounded. Lasers seared the air. Screams, Blood, Death, Pain. "DIE!" was the cry. Dual Slaughter. Mike moaned more. A blast, a scream, a hundred screams. Killer. Murderer. ^NO!!^ Mike thought. A crash. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
...
AWAKEN
"NOOOOOO!!!!!" Mike screamed as he shot upward from the bed.
"Easy there! Calm down!" soothed a dark-haired woman. "You're allright! It was just a dream..."
Mike shook his head. Sweat was flung as his hair waived. "N-n-no. It was real....."
The brunette woman shrugged. "Whatever. Listen, do you speak Japanese?"
Mike spun to face her immediatly. "I do...." he said in Japanese. "Why?"
She looked at him like he was crazy. She opened her mouth, as though to speak, but as soon as she did, the door to the room opened, and three familiar faces entered. "Kris! John! Sean! Sup!"
"Well, not you jackass......" Sean said in his usual dour tones. "You and your sonombeech Clanner Battlemech went flying. The Field Techs are still wondering why you're in one piece with only a light concussion."
"So THAT'S why my head hurts. Not a hangover, eh?"
"Nope, now what the hell's goin on here?" John asked.
Mike gave the pilot a curious glance. "You tell me. Why do I need to speak Japanese?" He gasped as a sudden thought hit him. "Don't tell me that House Kurita has broken the Treaty of the Star Leauge! Have they joined banners with the Clans? Are we taken prisoner? What th-"
"CALM YOUR ASS DOWN SIR!" Kris yelled. "THIS AIN'T THE BOONIES OF INNER SPHERE SPACE!"
"Cap'n," Sean said. "What the Lieutenant here is tryin' to say is that, well, we aren't exactly in 3060 anymore...."
Mike began to get very confused. "Wha?"
"Cap'n, we're in Japan of Terra, in the year 2015"
...
Dr. Akagi hated cleanup duty, but she had to get over it. EVA guts were part of her job. This outing, she'd have to see human guts too. ^Poor Rei, it wasn't her time. Despite everything.^ she thought. Looking around, she saw a familliar shape. "Ah! There's the Entry Plug. Head that way," she said to the driver of the jeep.
It was twisted and mangled, but recognisable. As the jeep stopped next to it, the workers in the back leapt out and began to cut it open. During this, Dr. Akagi studied the rest of the debris. The Self-Destruct wasn't something they could test any day. Thankfully it appeared to have deatonated in the exact way the MAGI predicted. ^Good. Makes this job that much easier.^ thought the doctor. A startled cry interupted her thoughts, and she looked over to the workman who had given it. He was backing up slowly, hand over his mouth. ^Must be very bloody,^ Ritsuko thought.
She walked over to the plug. Dead bodies weren't new to her, but they still creeped her out. Especially when they were that of a friend or co-worker. When she looked inside, she braced herself for anything from an empty plug with a suit to a red, gooey paste. What she saw nearly sent her into cardiac arrest. Rei Ayanami, lying seemingly unharmed within the battered plug, intact and very much alive. "Get her out! Destroy the plug and classify everything!"
...
Shinji Ikari stood a few steps from the entrance to the hallway. The three boys in green jumpsuits he had seen earlier were clustered around the bed with a fourth boy occupying the afore mentioned bed. It looked like they hadn't seen him quite yet. ^Which is probably to my advantage,^ thought Shinji. Looking to his right, Shinji spied a coatrack, with the fourth boy's clothes. On the left breast of the suit was a name, but not in kanji. It was in regular letters. ^Michael Rutz, odd name,^ thought Shinji. He began to look the suit over. The collar had two sabers crossed on either side, and a strange double bar pinned to the right side of the collar. In the back of the collar were the words: "MechWarrior," ^What's that mean?^ Shinji wondered. Then he came to the shoulders. More importantly, he came to the patch on the shoulders. A black horse, trotting against a backdrop of desert yellow, encircled by a black ring. Shinji's further explorations of the uniform, however, were interupted by a voice. "Who the Hell are you?" It had come from the boy in the bed.
Shinji was caught off guard by this, not knowing how to respond. ^Perhaps they are angry with me for looking at their clothing?^ he thought. In anycase, he decided to apologise. "I'm sorry," he said
"For what? What's your name?" He returned in excellent, if odd sounding, Jappanese.
Shinji looked the boy over. About 6 foot tall, blondish hair, lightly tanned skin, and a very Germanic looking face. Why did his Japanese sound so wierd? Even Asuka's Japanese sounded normal! ^Maybe he learned it wrong,^ Shinji thought. "Shinji Ikari."
"Greetings Shinji! I'm Mike Rutz. This here's Kris Silver," he guestured to the boy who gave him the device. Kris immediatly straightened up, reveiling a thin build and a great height. "This is Johnathan Lindsay," He guestured to a heavyset boy with dark hair, an eternal grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye. "And this is Sean Taylor, the token pessimist." He guestured to a shorter, blond, thin boy with a pointy, yet smooth face.
Sean began to quake with mock anger. "I'm not a goddam pessimist! I just state the facts. And it ain't my fault were stuck in 2015! If it were up to me, i'd love to have stayed in 306-mmphhh!" he was cut off by Kris's and coming over his mouth thus preventing him from disclosing classified info. "Not a word about that, Sergeant Taylor!"
"Shut the fuck up!" yelled the one called 'Mike'. His face became serious, and he turned back to Shinji. "Now tell me what the Hell happened,"
"He doesn't know," Came a sweet, yet strangely sad, voice from the hallway. "I, however, have pieced it together from what your MechWarriors have told me, and from the data the Magi collected," She pushed some of her considerable mass of purple-ish hair out of her face. "It seems that there was an explosion in 3060, caused by a 6-way proton stream collision. Ordinarily, this would have just caused a normal explosion, but it so happens that all 6 streams were operation on identical wavelengths. This caused the temporal-vortex that sucked you through time, but what focused you here was something else,"
Through all this, Mike just sat listening. When the woman was done, Mike looked her over. Tall, about 28, deffinately good-lookin, but obviously having a little emotional baggage. ^Well who the Hell doesn't?^ He saw some insignias on her collar, but he didn't recognise their meaning. "Continue," was all he said.
"There was an explosion on our end, here in 2015......" Mike heard a barely covered sniffle from Shinji. "... that was also on the same wavelength. It acted as a-"
"Kinda like a NARC beacon to an LRM cluster, sir," Kris interrupted. "Anyway, we're here with no way home,"
Mike nodded. "What of the Jags?"
"Nobody knows..." John said, somber for once.
Mike returned his gaze to the woman. "May I know you?"
"I am Major Misato Katsuragi, Operations Officer of NERV," she said.
At this, all four MechWarriors shot up to attention. "Lance, Salute!" Mike bellowed. ^A Major! We must be important!^ he thought.
Misato stared, with a funny look on her face. A funny look, that was rapidly becoming a mischevious grin. ^What? We can't be all that odd. Maybe they have a different salute?^ Mike thought.
Just then, another child walked into the wardroom. She was tall, but not far above average for a girl of 14. Her hair was long, yet fiery, and her eyes were crystal blue. But what was really striking about her was the sadness, the pain in those eyes. She seemed to barely have a will to live even. ^Hm... odd. Probably sommat insignificant.^ Mike mused. ^Probably a lost boyfriend, or a failed test. Who knows, who cares.^
Whatever the case, she walked over to the Major, without even a glance at Damocles lance. "Misato, can we jus-"
Misato turned. "Not now Asuka! I'm dealing with an important situation right now!" As she said this, she guestured towards the Mechwarriors standing at attention. Asuka followed her arm, and looked at them. Her eyes widened, jaw dropped, and she went slack. "PERVERTS! Misato! THEY'RE PERVERTS!" She yelled. "HOW CAN A BUNCH OF PERVERTS BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN ME?"
^Perverts? Why would she... wait. The Major DID have an odd look on her face, and it is a little cool, uh oh...^ Mike looked down at his clothes. Or rather, lack thereof. He snapped up, ran to the coatrack, grabbed it up, and ran around the corner yelling.
Mike began to dress. Quickly. "I c-can't believe that girl saw me, saw me, AHG!" He pulled on his underbreeches, slipped on his socks, then pulled on his jumpsuit. "Damn it! She thinks we're pervs. God damn it!" He slipped on his boots, tied them, then slid his hands into his gloves. ^Where's my cooling vest? Where's my helmet? Oh well....Gotta go face the Major, and the Lance........^
Rounding the corner, Mike noted everyone. This 'Asuka' was sullen yet again, the Major still had a grin on her face, and his lance was, well...., they were his lance. So Mike threw his best salute, and said, "Lanceleader-Captain Michael Rutz reporting for duty Major. And I regret to inform you that the personal cloaking device had only partial success... Sir."
Misato burst out laughing, Kris and John busted out their winning smirks, and Sean doubled over. ^Well, when I retire, I guess I know my career,^ Finally, as the laughter died down, the Major returned his salute, and spoke. "So, Captain. We have much to discuss. Let's talk...."