* September 31, 2009 *
* Senate SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) Conference Room #3
"Codename: Bonaparte. Real name: Miho Nishizumi, whose family relocated to Amarillo, Texas as refugees following Leviathan's sinking of Kyushu. Type of tank: unknown, possibly custom-built. Minimal armor, weapons consist of a rear .50 caliber machinegun and a single short-barreled 105mm cannon. Space for 2 crew. Currently attending school with ROTC training afterwards as Miho is a minor and well below enlistment age with no change of age since Manifesting. Psych eval reveals she is friendly and outgoing, though a touch gullible."
There was some mumbling from the various members of the Senate Committee on Avatars and Non-Parahuman Enhanced Individuals as the side-by-side pictures of the very young girl and the top-heavy tank.
The next slide showed a more traditional tank side-by-side with a fit-looking young woman in a police uniform.
"Overseas we have Valentine in Scotland. Real Name: Seras Victoria. Formerly a police officer whose usual assignment was parking tickets. World War II Era tank of the same name. She was previously 47 years old and after Manifesting as an avatar looks to be about 19. States she wishes she had that sort of build when she was that age."
There were a few chuckles at that comment, with some of the female members of the committee making noises of disapproval.
"Valentine's other form is that of that tank. You'll notice her main gun is of the 57mm variety of cannon, with a secondary weapon being a 7.92mm machine gun. Anomalies of being a tankgirl are that she's able to refuel with normal food rations in her human form, is somewhat tougher than the original tank was shown to be, and is of course completely autonomous as she retains her mind and memories in both forms. With her permission we attached a bulldozer blade to her front and she was able to produce it again and cause it to vanish when not needed."
THAT caused a bit of a stir amongst those present.
"We are asking for other nations with their own tankgirls to see if similar modifications can take place. So far all the tankgirls think they might be able to produce an aria like the planegirls who have managed it have done. I will remind the Committee that not all planegirls are able to actually produce their own aria, only fragments of a line that may be connected to it. The three planegirls who HAVE produced a full aria that granted them additional power all report that it is extremely draining to utilize such a thing. Indicating this may fall under a 'last resort' option of their empowerment. Something like a human adrenalin surge. Investigations continue."
The next slide showed a older man on the left with a very buff-looking man on the right.
"This was another first. The avatar in question was male and is our first 'tankboy' and in fact the first avatar to be male. Australian of German descent. Codename is Leopard or Kampfpanzer Leopard. Tank form is that particular type of tank. We have a good deal of information on his tank form as it is nearly entirely the 1980s version of that particular tank. No, we do not know why he is the single male avatar so far. The Australians have been very good about sharing information but have requested we keep as many details under full secrecy as we can until this factor is understood."
It took a good fifteen minutes to get everyone to settle down after that.
"Next up is Canadian. Teresa Richter, apparent age 24. Apparently she worked in some capacity with the Guild. Exact nature of her employment is sealed. From hints that have been dropped she's formerly of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, worked with the Guild in information management." The woman's image was of someone in the sort of military full kit where you would expect her to be dropped into a hot zone in short order. The next slide was brought up.
One of the Senators leaned forwards. "That's from Halo, a videogame."
"There are differences in details but yes, Senator. Richter turns into an M808C Scorpion tank. Codename: Lesath, which is apparently one of the stars in the constellation Scorpio. She's a 60ton tank firing a 90mm cannon and two machine guns. Top speed is in excess of 60mph. We have some footage of her facing a group of power-armored terrorists called the Dragonslayers while she was testing at the Canadian Forces Maritime Experimental and Test Range in Vancouver. She took out one before the other two were hit by the Canadian military who for some unknown reason did not approve of unauthorized personnel invading one of their bases and opening fire on their forces."
"I would imagine so," said the Senator who'd recognized the tank.
"This is not TinkerTech?" asked another Senator.
"No. Very advanced science but eventually replicable science from what I've been told, same as with Bolo." The science advisor leaned back against a wall and made a gesture towards the screen. "That's all the tanks that have shown up so far that we have been able to find and identify. There are rumors of one in Russia and another in China, but we haven't been able to get anything more than internet rumors at this point."
* Teresa Richter *
She looked at her right hand. Little veins pulsing blood. Smooth pink skin. The whorl of fingerprints. Any way you looked at it - it was a perfectly normal hand. That it was HER hand was the only remarkable bit about it.
She wanted to fit in. To look average. Unfortunately, she'd had to take a crash course in makeup to downplay her appearance because all shipgirls and planegirls and tankgirls (and the one tankboy) all looked improbably attractive.
So, to look "average" required more work than she would have previously thought likely.
So many things to learn. Eating, drinking, the use of the facilities designed for those byproducts. This human/tankgirl form required many things that had not been a concern previously.
On the other hand, Saint and his Dragonslayers had lasted only slightly longer than a ten count as soon as they'd opened fire.
While it had been somewhat concerning to find out there was that much massed firepower nearby, having it eliminate one of her major problems was much more pleasant. That it had been there for her if she'd shown signs of going out of control was unlikely all things considered.
Two nearby servers started up and began the process of filling out paperwork.
Seriously, you practically needed an AI to just manage all the forms around here.
She took a deep breath, stepped out into the Canadian wilderness from her transport, and transformed into her identity as Lesath. An M808C tank. As with all manifested avatars - someone who was at least resistant if not completely immune to precogs and Masters.
Yeah, there was a compound over there and someone who really really needed to have a bad day.
And she was just the tank to provide that bad day.
Who would be playing the 1812 overture from her speakers and main gun because why not?
* Armsmaster *
He finished his web search, no longer puzzled about why. Apparently a woman who was a friend sending a picture like THAT to her friend was not looking for an analysis of the mostly-lacking clothing's fashion or the use of shadows and lighting or background color.
According to the analysis he'd just completed using sources that had significant established authority in interpersonal reactions and provided clues into those areas for those with significant difficulties in the interpretation of such - it was called several things like "testing the waters" or "trying to provoke a response" or "flirting" depending on other involved factors.
He was not entirely sure how he was supposed to react though.
It was something to ponder. Perhaps he should ask Miss Militia, she might provide insight into the current dilemma.
* Brockton Bay *
Thirteen year old Taylor Hebert sat at the Dock of the Bay, watching the tide roll away.
Just sitting at the dock of the Bay, wasting time.
That ships in the Ship Graveyard kept vanishing was absolutely coincidental, and everyone involved would absolutely attest to that fact.
Except for the Mayor's Office, who'd been informed ahead of time and actually written out a permission for the cleanup.
With a nod to her mother, Taylor slipped off the dock into the water and after a few moments transformed.
New channel needed to be dug out and that rather large ship needed to be removed.
There was only so much her drones could do, after all. Some things required more horsepower.
Fortunately, with her engines and powerplants, she had that.
* Director Piggot *
Twofeather had been a comrade, a compatriot, a good soldier. Then she'd become the embodiment of Apache, the combat helicopter not her tribe.
In the gallery on her personal laptop was a scanned picture of a yellowed photograph of a cenotaph in Columbia.
Typical cape tactics on facing an Endbringer had been "throw more bodies" at the problem. It wasn't much better now, but at least the "wave strategy" split the groups up and had one retreat as another attacked. One of the problems with devising strategies involving capes was the sheer diversity of abilities. You had someone like Howitzer (not an avatar) over in Rhode Island who could form exploding spheres that impacted with about the same amount of force as his namesake. Or Flashbang locally who could do almost the same thing but could vary the power level but his top yield was still about half what Howitzer could. Brutes ranged from slightly tougher than human to being able to shrug off Howitzer's attacks like they were bug-bites.
The avatars were different. Their abilities were just as bullshit as the parahumans, but they followed patterns and rules that meant they could be anticipated and planned for. The USS Missouri shipgirl manifested tiny cannon that hit like the Mighty Mo's frikking huge deck guns but what they did was exactly what one would expect from perusing any accurate page dealing with the battleship. Apache had been more nimble in the air than her helicopter counterpart, but she had been able to change her loadout by internalizing the same equipment the helicopter used.
Looking out her window over the bay, she saw where the new avatar named Bolo was cleaning up the Ship Graveyard. She had checked, found that the Mayor had given permission, and was content to watch a problem be resolved. She might get some flak from above, but as far as she was concerned it wasn't actually any of her business.
Avatars were not parahumans after all.
No matter that Rebecca Costa-Brown insisted that all empowered humans (and at least one dog) belonged under her authority. Recently there had been an avatar (a shipgirl named USS Porter) who had responded to a purse snatcher by firing off a torpedo. Which had destroyed a good half of a McDonalds, set fire to a Tastee Freeze, and wrecked fourteen parked cars. Costa-Brown had been in Washington long enough to live by the "seize any disaster as an opportunity" and had begun pointing to this as evidence that the military could not control avatars.
By the time Costa-Brown had finished her speech before Congress, Porter had already been through a speedy military trial and sentenced to drydock for three years as well as a significant amount of time on fire drills and proper use of force lectures.
Which brought Director Emily Piggot to where she was sipping her coffee, watching the occasional ship disappear from where it had been a floating derelict, and waiting for the inevitable call from Costa-Brown to complain that the avatar of a multi-thousand-ton tank was over there recycling ships.
Honestly, she wished more of the parahumans that actually were part of her responsibility would do more work like that. Civic work. Ride-alongs with police or EMS or fire teams. Volunteer work at the hospital. Anything better than these damn cops-and-robbers games would be good.
Yeah, and maybe she'd win the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes and retire to a ranch out in Wyoming or somewhere else that had cleaner air than Brockton Bay.
* USS Biloxi *
She remembered many things. She remembered being a light cruiser, Cleveland-class, and born at the Newport News drydocks. She remembered being built there and her christening and launch in 1943 at the Norfolk Naval Yard. She remembered being decommissioned in 1946 - a mere three years later! Her crew taken from her, her purpose gone, and then finally scrapped for metal and parts in the 1960s. She'd then spent years in Biloxi Mississipi at the memorial bearing her name.
It was a sad fate, not unexpected though. Every so often a member of the crew had come by and told her of the life they'd managed after the war. She had just been a ghost and barely that, but she remembered and appreciated those little gestures.
She also remembered being born in Norfolk Virginia as an only child. Joining the Navy straight out of high school, cut loose in the massive Defense budget cuts after the parahuman boom in the 90s. She remembered being Katherine T Davies and mostly everything about her long and difficult life.
So waking up with blue hair and big guns had been a shock and reconciling the two sets of memories had taken some time.
She had been, in both lifetimes, in the Navy. She understood orders.
In the case of shipgirl Biloxi, she was on patrol near the port of Brockton Bay. Which confused her a bit because her ship-self wanted to call it something else and would complain that the charts were all wrong on that specific stretch of coastlines.
Whatever the case, she was keeping an eye on the Bay. The new tankgirl was working over there and the military minds had decided to pull two other avatars into a sort of team for immediate response to threats in the area.
Task Force Kappa. Herself - USS Biloxi, a light cruiser shipgirl. Bolo, a tankgirl. Hawkeye, the planegirl who was an E-2C Hawkeye. There might be more eventually, there was a rumor that Strike Eagle was coming, but for here and now they seemed mostly sufficient. Oh, and there was a sub supposed to come out next week but that was kind of iffy as to whether that would be a permanent assignment or not.
"Biloxi, Biloxi, this is Hawkeye. Over."
"Reading you, Hawkeye. Status?"
"Large number of individuals heading Dockside. Mark fifteen individuals in a loose group."
"Roger that. Console, require check-in with DWU - are they expecting guests?"
"Nothing on schedule. Checking with Papa Tanker."
"Hawkeye - continuing to monitor."
"Roger that, Hawkeye."
"Task Force Kappa, this is Console. Negative on guest status. Contacting ground forces."
"Hawkeye, please relay targeting data. If ground forces come under fire, request they retreat, targets ARE in range of my guns."
"Biloxi, we are in process of repairing those roads. Please do not put extra holes in them."
"Awww."
"Besides, you've got the Mark 16 cannon. You've got a 14mile range on those, but you'd have to arc pretty high to avoid buildings."
"...Uhm. Console. Is there a submarine around here? I'm getting an odd echo on sonar."
"Console to submarine. Please identify if friendly."
"USS Dace to console. Approaching Brockton Bay now. Please note another sub in area."
"USS Dace SSN-247?"
"SSN-607. Isn't that in the records?"
"Confirmed. You aren't scheduled to arrive for another three days, Dace."
"I started following this other guy while on maneuvers."
"Console requests confirm presence of other submarine?"
"Some sort of stealth system, Console."
"Biloxi here. Requesting coordinates."
"Dace giving warning. Going to active sweep of target. Now. Running ident program. Hit. Identified: CUI Tinker Sub White Serpent class."
"They're firing!"
* * *
Taylor considered the fight taking place not that far away from her. She could lock on and fire a secondary gun and the CUI sub would be cut in half.
But that would be cutting into someone else's fun.
No, she'd just track the thing and wait. If it started getting away, a single gun would be sufficient.
* USS Dace *
She'd been young. Her life, short as it had been, had flashed before her eyes as a cape battle on a bridge linking Canada and the United States had thrown a car at her.
At which point she remembered being built and launched in 1962 in Pascagoula in Mississippi. Then she was scrapped in 1997, literally torn apart as outdated.
That had hurt, but was expected. Everything had a lifespan after all, which meant at some point everything ended. She had come to terms with that - it was rather like a human being an organ donor.
And in 2007, she'd been reborn as a human child. Sort of. For some values of the terms involved.
As a nuclear fast-attack submarine she was perfectly capable of going silent and deep and that had been her major role as a ship. As a shipgirl/avatar she was also kind of used to doing things in a stealthy manner.
She'd been upgraded since then. She had torpedoes and she had missiles, and those had been changed out. Her sensor system had been upgraded, though no Tinkertech had been used. No, she was to be as self-sufficient over the long haul as possible.
Though most shipgirls, especially those prior to the 'Mountain Massacre', tended to be World War I or World War II era ships, she was a much more recent model. She wasn't the same Dace that had died in Columbia, she was an entirely different model.
Some things remained the same though.
"All Out Assault," called out USS Dace SSN-607. Four torpedo tubes fired their payload at the same time, all targeting the foreign sub. The foreign sub crew were apparently no slouches though, setting off flares and pressure waves to try and detonate the oncoming High-Penetration Torpedoes. "Loading second wave: Shockwave Torpedoes readied."
"Sending targeting data to Biloxi."
"Thanks Hawkeye. Can't use depth charges due to Dacy being there, and they're too close for me to use my big guns. So I'm kind of lacking in options here."
"Kind of wondering who's the target. Bolo, Biloxi, or cape central there? Oh, and reporting two capes approaching aerial at high speed."