STRIKE WITCHES: But still, they come!

You are a fighter pilot of the 442nd Night Fighter squadron, newly minted ace-in-a-day, and you've just seen a blonde girl in her underwear hauled backwards out of her bedroom window by a big tentacle.

You process the information, analyze the situation, and come to a reasonable conclusion.

"We're fucked," you state intelligently.

Your radar operator, Sean, has a more eloquent reaction. Sprinting for the window, the crazy motherfucker makes a perfect swan dive right through it without touching the sides.

"Why," you ask empty air. It's all you can think to do, all things told.

In adjacent rooms, you hear the splintering of wood and more high-pitched feminine screams.

WAT DO

Being woken up in the middle of the night after an exhausting day of almost dying by evil martian tentacles has kind of thrown you off your groove. Or whatever it is those beatnik shitheads call it.

The blonde girl was reaching for an end-table drawer. You dash over to it and yank it open, hoping to find some glowing weapon of eldritch and terrible power.

Instead, you find a Walther PPK. Well, one out of three isn't bad. You jam it in your belt and rush to the window to see what the hell is going on. Looking out the third-story window, you see nothing on the ground - but there IS some crushed shrubberies, and a busted ground-floor window.

From within you hear the distinct *popopop* of Sean's S&W .38 caliber revolver going to work, and the hair-raising wail of something slimy and utterly alien.

Horrified screams and cries from the other rooms continue, and you reason that most of the other Witches have been taken by surprise as well - and with a chill you realize the Martians would not have overlooked Sanya, either. You'd better get your ass in gear, and fast.

the shit is gaining amazing authenticity as we speak, hurry up!

With your wits finally turning, you reason there's damn little you can do against prepared Martians on your own. Martians are big, nasty-looking bastards, but not much more durable then a human, unarmored.

Except these bastards most certainly came prepared with body armor, rayguns and all that other Buck Rogers shit. And against that, a pistol and a single pilot ain't going to cut it.

You dimly remember some old guy with a beard who liked to say a lot of things that sometimes sounded deep. One of them was "a pistol is for fighting your way to your rifle." Turns out he was half-right - two pistols are for fighting your way to somebody else's medium machine gun.

You exit the room and go bolting down the hallway, ignoring the rooms and heading for the stairs, taking them two at a time. Your goal is the hangar, or nearby spaces, where weapons and ammo will be stored.

Deeper in the castle, no screams or shouts of battle can be heard - more likely owing to the thickness of the walls then anything else. As you pass the dining area, you notice movement in the kitchen. You dash into it, both pistols up and ready.

It's just Miyafuji, with a sammich on a plate. She squeals when she sees you charging in, mussed up and waving two pistols around.

"Oh, shit. right. Um, hey, Miyafuji. Sup."

"What are you doing!?" she wails, understandably upset.

"Uh, don't freak out, but there are aliens in the base."

She promptly freaks out, with all sorts of "GYAAAAH?" and other half-human sounds you suppose must be common modes of communication in Japan. From what little you've seen of it you assume the Japanese language is a hybrid of actual words and a kind of fucked-up morse code, where different pitches of squeals stand for dots and dashes, with a few special-case phrase-squeals thrown in.

It's funny what crosses your mind in situations to horrible to contemplate.

"Can you show me where the hangar is? Your weapons?" The young girl nods, trembling. You thrust the grips of the PPK at her, and she shakes her head. "I - I don't really-"

"Miyafuji, this is an order. We're in combat now," you say. You don't feel much like an officer, but you are expected to lead your aircrew, and this slightly similar. The girl nods, takes the little pistol, and leads you out of the kitchen at a dead gallop.

The young girl moves like greased lightning, and you're panting in short order. Less then a minute later she's led you outside, and is leading you around the castle walls towards the courtyard in front of the hangar entrance.

As you round one wing of the castle, you see Sean limping towards you, the blonde girl with him. Before you can raise your hand to greet him, a Martian emerges from a high window and drops towards Sean, tentacles extended in all directions like a starfish.

To describe a Martian is an exercise in futility, because no two look exactly alike. Scientists have spent plenty of time arguing the point, but the best guess is they are semiamorphus, extending tentacle-like pseudopods whenever they feel like it.

Suffice it to say that a man-sized mass of tentacle-y facerape is descending towards Sean, and it does not look friendly.

Sean, however, gives zero fucks. Before you can even shout a warning, he's shoved blondie clear and turning to grapple with the alium plummeting towards him from above. It hits with less force then it should, given the distance, and Sean is immediately punching and grappling like a madman.

Thus occupied, he doesn't notice when another alium emerges from the bushes on the shore-side. This one is actually dressed, and one delicate tentacle wields a big, nasty ray-gun of the most Buck Rogerian sort.

You turn, raise your M1911, and empty eight rounds into its rubbery hide in about 1.8 seconds, splattering green ichor all about and putting it down.

At this point the blonde, still wearing nothing but her underwear, lights up like a roman candle, the purple glow of magic outlining her brightly. She winds up with one dainty fist, and swings hard at the Martian grappling with Sean. She manages to put a dainty little hole right in the Martians' blubbery "head," and it rolls of Sean limply, dripping ichor and twitching oddly.

"Nice timing," she says, panting. Despite everything, you find her panting oddly distracting until Miyafuji kicks you in the shin.

Oh, right. Aliums.

"Miyafuji, the hangar!" the other girl says, and all three of you limp towards it.

You get close enough to almost have your head taken off by the Martian crew-served Maser that's been erected in the small courtyard. All three of you yank your heads back in time before your skulls are melted off.

"Fuck me," Sean says by way of commentary.

wat do?

"We go around," Erica says immediately. "This is our turf, we know it better."

She's got a point, and none of you are ready to argue with a Maser emplacement. Masers are nasty motherfuckers; because radiation of any sort has a nasty way of leeching through a Witches shields. It can be blocked entirely with special effort, and is rarely immediately lethal, but with so few Witches in the air, an eventual kill is just as good for the Martians. The masers are relatively new; before that they were trying to bake Witches through their shields with heat-rays.

Which is exactly what the Martian you just shot was wielding. The sally port Erica leads you to is right near where the first shots were fired. You gingerly pluck the heat-ray from the Martian's dead tentacle.

"Are you fucking MAD?" Sean breathes, tensing as if he's ready to either punch you out or dive for cover. "You know what they do with those things!"

"Fucking EXACTLY," you state. Sean catches your meaning after a second, and gives you a look that says 'not when I'm anywhere near you, you crazy fucker.'

Well, actually he says it out loud, but there's also a look. To enforce the matter.

Entering the castle again, Erica leads you through a series of dusty, under-used corridors. In the distance, you hear the muted barks of sporadic rifle fire.

"The engineers," Erica guesses grimly.

"Pinned down," Sean says. "They'll be fine. Hold'em by the nose, rape 'em in the-"

"How can you say such things so casually!?" Miyafuji squealyowls.

"It's easy, I open my mouth and fucking say it!" Sean says, irritated.

Ahead... Erica? Her name comes back to you from the early afternoon, when you were introduced in the lounge. Anyway, she jerks to a sudden halt at an intersection, turns to one side, and hollers. "MINNA!"

Poking your head around the corner, you see Minna, back to the double-doors of the briefing room, still dressed in her shirt and... well, her shirt, holding up an impressive shield against three Martians armed with... pokey stick things and one is, unbelievably, wielding a fucking sap.

That's when Sean shoves past you at a dead run, hands open and eager and ready.

Sean charges for a huge glass display case hung on the wall near the doors of the briefing room, not ten feet away from the Martians menacing Minna. You have no fucking idea why, but the goddamn thing is filled with a wide assortment of bladed massacre and mayhem. Sean presses both palms against the glass and shoves sideways with a grunt of brute strength, breaking the flimsy lock.

A Martian spins in a pinwheel of tentacles and is almost upon him when Sean himself spins, a basket-hilted broadsword in his hands. The steel flashes, and the alium retreats minus two tentacles.

Something barks from the hallway behind you and you go down hard as Erica hits you from behind, pancaking you to the floor. You squirm forward desperately as something fires at you again from the hallway behind you.

Miyafuji is pressed against the wall, shaking like a leaf, the Walther wandering about aimlessly. Erica is eyeing the display case and the chaos further down the hall near Minna, deciding her move.

What about yours?

"How many behind us!?" you ask Erica.

"Fucktons!" she exclaims, then says something extremely colorful in German by way of commentary.

Witches can beat the shit out of nearly anybody barehanded, with enough expenditure of magic, but there's not a damn thing you can do about the melee by the briefing room with a pistol and a heat-ray.

That leaves the imminent aliumrush from behind. "Miyafuji, cover me!"

"Wh-what?"

"COVER me, you fuckwit!"

"O-okay," she says uncertainly, readying the PPK.

"As fucking IF," you say, eyeing the tiny pistol. With no time to explain, you seize the tiny girl and sling her under one arm, then charge into the hallway, high wide and handsome.

Instantly a fullisade of automatic fire comes pounding down the hallway, and even a few small rockets, but they all explode harmlessly on Miyafuji's shield. Miyafuji is busy screaming, at you and the aliums and everything else. You angle for a window alcove on one side of the hallway. The mass of Martian tentacles surge forward eagerly, then dart into nearby doorways just as you reach the alcove, probably anticipating return fire.

"What the why you son of a duck!" Miyafuji howls at you, pounding her hands on your leg until you drop her on the window-seat.

"Sorry," you say. "Now shut the fuck up and cover your ears." You jerk the alien heat-ray out of your belt, and prepare for your ploy.

"ARE YOU CRAZY!?" Miyafuji says, seeing you draw the ray. "THEY EXPLODE!"

"No fucking shit," you say. You take a good flinging stance, pull the trigger of the heat-ray, and twist at the hip, flinging the weapon as far down the hallway as physically possible. You were damn good with the discus in high school athletics, and your toss just manages to reach the position of the alium squad.

Martian weapons are as strange, varied, and incomprehensible as everything else about the miserable bastards. Their weapons operate on mostly-identifiable physical properties, but their power sources are a mystery, as well as their safe operation. At first it was assumed that exploding alium heat-rays were a booby-trap, but now they think the aliens regulate the power sources with psionics or some shit like that.

You don't know and don't care. All you know is, their weapons explode with impressive force when humans fuck with them.

Just like this one does.

The area down the hall simply ceases to exist. The blast blows down the hall, leaving you and Miyafuji mostly unmolested in the recessed window alcove. After a few seconds, you poke your head out and verify that the aliens are dead as shit.

You whoop like a red injun. "SPIN ON IT, XENOS!" Latching onto Miyafuji's shoulder, you drag her back down the hallway at a dead run, hoping all your friends are still alive.

They are, though not in the best of shape. Minna is sitting on the floor, dazed, and you see she's had the shit kicked out of her, with a lump on her skull and blood trickling from her mouth. Erica is kneeling by her, and Sean stands over them, the basket-hilted broadsword held ready in one hand.

"Minna!" Miyafuji cries out, horrified.

"Let's lock her in the briefing room. Me and Miyafuji can still do something if we get to the hangar."

"You're doing okay already," Sean notes.

Erica shakes her head. "Wasteful. Too much magic for too little damage. There's a reason we use weapons!"

"The engineers, are they armed?"

"Sidearms, a few rifles," Minna groans from the floor. "Military. Everybody has a gun. 'Cept Miyafuji. Dumbass."

Miyafuji looks flustered, but says nothing.

Actions?

"Let's arm up, then," you say. "Miyafuji, let me have the gun. You focus on shielding us, okay?"

She nods, looking much more sure of herself. Protecting people comes to her more naturally then attacking, it seems. You tuck it in your waistband - you hate PPKs, but it's still more ammo. You don't exactly go around with a bandolier of 1911 magazines, after all.

Erica picks a smallish-looking mace from the case. It makes a nasty whistling as it whispers through the air. "Always wanted to try these out," she says with relish.

You pull Sean aside. "Now?"

"Witches in the air," he says.

"Before all else," you agree. You share a dark look between yourselves, an understanding as to what "all else" entails, and clap each other on the shoulder briefly before continuing on. Minna, though staggered and bleeding, insists on coming along, and her voice still carries command presence. She does not, however, try to command - probably understanding that there's little to be done at the moment besides get back into the struggle.

They take you right inside the hangar.

As you step into the shadowed recesses of the cavernous hangar, a Martian sweeps your legs from under you with one tentacle and brings a heavy club whistling towards your head. A swift jerk of your skull is the only thing that saves it from being split open like a melon, but the tentacle soon winds about your legs and drags you across the cold concrete floor. From the screams and shouts you know the Witches are similarly grappled and helpless.

And then you hear someone singing, deep and strong.

Your 1911 is lost in the darkness, but you can still feel the PPK bruising your appendix. The alien hauls you closer, its club - clubs - raised and poised, waiting till it can pin you down and stop playing whack-a-human. You were waiting till you had a target. The PPK flashes from your waistband and the gun empties itself into the Martians head with a single squeeze of the trigger.

Well, that's a fucking PPK for you.

You scoot under a nearby table, hoping to buy time to reorient. The strong baritone singing grows louder, and you see Sean standing in front of Erica, who's picking herself up off the floor. A few severed tentacles and a discarded club lie nearby, and before Sean stand two taught, tense Martians, hovering at about torso height on most of their tentacles. They each wield two long double-pronged pokey things, held out before them menacingly.

Behind them, you see Minna twitching senselessly on the ground, and with sudden, awful horror you put a few things together.

They're using cattle prods, which means Sean's in trouble.

It also means they're here to capture.

Both Martians lunge for Sean at the same time, and then you see something you never, ever expected from Sean.

Grace.

The big Irish lout moves faster then a scaled cat with rollerskates, the basket-hilted blade sweeping the Martian prods aside. Nonetheless, they drive him back, towards you, and the remaining Martians are between the girls and their Striker units.

action?

You can't find your gun, Sean is outnumbered and overmatched, and oh FUCK IT. You snatch the dead Martian's club off the floor and rush the enemy. Sean might have some cool war song or whatever, but you're less erudite.

"BADGERFUCKER SHITLICKEERRRzzaaZZASHahahalwkrrrrr" you scream incoherently as your headlong madman charge is met with the end of one of the stun prods.

Everything goes hazy after that, but you hear somebody bellow "FAUGH A BALLAUGH MOTHERFUCKERS!" and then, for as much of it as you're aware, there's nothing but horrid, alien screams, green ichor, and some blood. You cach glimpses of Sean, roaring and raging, lashing out with his fist and his blade, wading through the tentacles and the flailing stun-prods, moving like a furious hurricane.

You come around in a minute or two to find Sean slumped against an engineer's workbench, breathing raggedly, soaked in green ichor and a little of his own blood. The aliens lay all around him, hacked into pieces. Miyafuji and Erica are slipping into their Striker Units and slinging their weaponry.

You dash to Sean, but he just holds up a palm to indicate he needs no help. He doesn't look up at you, however - he seems utterly drained.

Erica says something to Miyafuji, shoots you a wicked grin, and then fires up her Striker, tearing out of the hangar like vengeance itself. You hear horrified alium sounds from the courtyard, and then something like octopi in a blender.

You find your 1911 on the floor, and then stagger over to Minna. She manages to focus her eyes on you, even though her limbs are still twitching a bit.

"Be right back," you tell her, and go in search of heavier firepower.

You find it. "Come to PAPA," you breathe, finding a heavy rifle near a racked Striker with the name "Merlin" painted on the side. You cradle the Browning Automatic Rifle tenderly, like a father with his firstborn. And on the table nearby, you find a pistol belt with two more 1911 magazines, which you swiftly steal.

Sean seems spent, and Minna can barely move. You, on the other hand, are now at the peak of your meager infantryman potential.

Wat do?

You spin on your heel to head out and do... what, again? You're terrified, furious, weary and trembling with battle rage all at the same time. This isn't your turf, literally or metaphorically, and it's not even your command.

You kneel near Minna. "Commander," you say, snapping your fingers over her eyes. She blinks, dazedly focusing on you. "Miyafuji and Erica are airborne. We're in the hangar."

"The others?" she says, dazed.

"They were ambushed in their beds. Dragged out."

She gasps, eyes widening, and manages to struggle into a sitting position. "They've been captured. They're taking them away. Away!"

You grab her hand and try to pull her upright, but her feet slip clumsily on the concrete and she just dangles. Slinging the BAR, you use both arms to sling her to her feet. "Orders?" you ask her.

"Smash and grab," she says. She's speaking a bit disjointedly, but you take the meaning. The Martians will be leaving with their prizes, and soon.

"Breasts bike," Minna slurs.

"The fuck?"

"Big breasted BITCH, the bike, you fuck," she slurs drunkenly, leaning against you. She whimpers clutching at her head. "Charlotte. Merlin. Motorbike."

You glance back at the Striker bay you just looted, and sure enough, there's a motorcycle. Supporting Minna, you both rush to it.

"You know how?" Minna says, nodding at the bike. You shoot her a sardonic look - as if fighter pilots drive *cars.* Indeed. You hand her your 1911 and secure the BAR across your chest before slinging onto the motorcycle and kickstarting it, gunning the engine with pure primal glee...

"Hold on tight, Minna," you say, completely serious. Like everything mechanical, loud, fast and hated by conscientious mothers, you immediately love the motorcycle, and feel an instant kinship with it. Twisting the throttle viciously, you pop a wheelie leaving the hangar, roaring past the pureed remains of the Martian maser crew. When your front wheel comes down again you lean into a steep turn to circle the castle and approach the dormitory wing, gunning the engine for even more power to keep the rear wheel digging for traction. Straightening, you unleash the obviously modified engine, reveling in the deep, mean, throaty roar. Minna hangs on for dear life, her arms tight around your waist and her face pressed into your back.

You don't mind that, not one bit.

Rounding the side of the building, you find the entire eastern side of the island engulfed in the flames of war. Men with rifles and submachine guns lurk behind bushes or crouch behind rocks, popping up to fire now and then. From the shore-side of the island come Martian fire, screeching rockets and and the occasional maser or heat-ray beam lighting up the sky.

"Ten O'Clock!" Minna shouts, and looking, you see Sakamoto crouching behind a low stone wall near the area you saw the Witches using for outdoor training the day previous. Roaring towards it, you turn the bike sideways and halt yourself with a completely unnecessary, showy skid.

God DAMN you love fast stuff.

"Sakamoto, you magnificent thieving bitch hot DAMN!" you exclaim. "What now?"

Sakamoto shoves on Minna's back, forcing you up onto the fuel tank a bit, then sits on the scant seat thus cleared. "NO TIME!" she bellows. "THE SHIP, DRIVE!"

"No rush, they're not going anywhere," you say. As if on cue, you hear the chatter of automatic fire from the sky as Miyafuji and Erica begin their strafing runs.

"Oh," she says, mollified. "Well, they're pinned, then. What now?"

What, indeed?