Avatar of Double

Status

User has no status, yet

Bio

User has no bio, yet

Most Recent Posts

@mattmanganon I think I'd be interested in joining. Not sure about the human character yet but I rather dig the Coronamon line if it's allowed.
@Crimson Lion

The mobile armor's next movement told Riku all he needed to know. The pilot was out of options and was opting to try and deliberately crash them all to the ground, "Naoki, disengage! She's trying to take us down with her!" he warned his teammate over the comms. But unfortunately, as long as the Mobile Armor's propulsion system still worked, she'd just keep trying to ram them. That left Riku with one option to end this for good... and he wasn't particularly fond of the idea. He was gonna have to get close again, and try to kill her power-plant in order to disable her propulsion system. Of course that meant that he would be in danger of being dragged down with her if he couldn't pull out fast enough once the damage was done.

"Go ahead and check on Kai's status, Naoki... I'll finish this one off myself." Riku finally said over the comms. He really wasn't thrilled about this plan, but it was the only feasible one he could pull off. The Shin Musha made another lunge for the Apsaras II. Given that it was actively trying to ram them, it wouldn't be hard for him to aim his strike where he wanted. He pointed the blade straight ahead of him, aiming for a thrust right into the underside of the Mobile Armor. This particular model was able to fly due to a special propulsion system powered by its Minovsky Fusion Reactor. The reactor itself would be located behind the protective armor of the machine, but would require a direct connection to the propulsion surface in order to power the Minovsky Craft System currently keeping it afloat.

Riku's plan was surprisingly simple. If he could wedge his blade deep enough through the underside, there was a chance the blade would penetrate the reactor's I-field. This would cause it to start feeding energy directly to the sword, where the energy absorbing hilt awaited to collect a percentage of the excess energy. The combination of Izanagi's draining effect along with the leak the blade would cause in the reactor would theoretically drain the Apsaras II of it's remaining power, and pretty rapidly. The trick was that Riku needed to get himself out of there before he could be dragged down by the plummeting machine.

And he really only had one surefire way to accomplish the last part. He needed the Izanagi to absorb enough particles from the reactor to use one more Shining Flash. Hopefully this only took a few seconds, but those few second would be rather dangerous in this particular scenario. Still, once he had collected enough energy, he made the blade once again glow with red particle energy, producing an outer aura around it to enhance its length and cutting power, "...S-Shining Flash!" Riku put as much power has he could spare into making the Gunpla fly back upwards, while the rest of the excess energy went into the Shining Flash. If he calculated this right, the empowered blade would cut its way up through the Mobile Armor thanks to being supercharged by the Shining Flash. If all went well, this would get Riku out of danger and potentially slice the mobile armor in two to finish it off for good.
@FalloutJack

While listening to Niko's response and his subsequent suggestion thereafter, Han had appeared to take a knee. His eyes were closed in thought, and while he very much paid attention to what he was hearing, his finger began to write something in the red Martian sand. Letters that would spell words, and words that would eventually form one of those Haikus that Han had enjoyed composing so much:

Blood soaks the red sand,
Foes await beyond the wall,
Our path, uncertain...


This was far from the first Haiku he had composed while traveling with Niko. In fact, Niko had likely heard or seen several of them on their trip here alone. But none of them had been quite this... ominous. Most of them were about the things Han saw and did, either in the past tense or in the present tense. This one was different, instead describing something that was about to happen in the future tense.

But in just a matter of a few moments, the winds blew away the haiku written in the sand. And once it did, as if waiting for such a cue, Han returned to his feet. His eyes opened once more and looked to his newfound partner with agreement and intent, "I'm ready when you are."
In case anyone's curious:

"Tenkagomen Kogane no Samurai" roughly translates to: The Golden Samurai Authorized by Providence.

And "mairu!" translates to: going forth!
@Crimson Lion@Shiyonichi

Riku was spending the remaining time figuring out how best to utilize the Manticore's loadout for the mission at hand. He'd already planned to use the sniper kit to survey the area and try to locate the Taurus suits. Beyond that his plan was to be the one to destroy the Taurus units while Naoki and Kai dealt with the enemy team. After this, Riku could then turn his attention to providing squad support to both his teammates by providing them cover fire from a distance. Yes, that sounded like the best way to go about-

“Warning, Warning, Enemy Approaching!!!”

That was the harbinger of things to come. Immediately afterward, Naoki reported an incoming Apsaras II. A moment later, Kai confirmed there was enemy units shooting up at them from the forests and that he would descend to the ground to deal with them. That meant it was up to Riku and Naoki to dispatch the Mobile Armor. But there was a problem. The Manticore was not optimized for aerial combat at all. It could handle space and the ground, but high altitude aerial zones like this would be a no-go. He had no other option, Riku would have to switch to one of his other Gunpla. Thankfully the Manticore hadn't launched from its catapult yet, so Riku still had time to get it off there and trade it for another Gunpla without wasting too much time.

"Naoki," Riku said over comms as he hurriedly made the preparations for the Gunpla swap, "The Manticore's a no-go for aerial combat. I'm switching to one of my other builds instead. I have a plan, but it might be a bit risky. Just keep the I-Field up and wait for me. When I put my plan in plan motion, it will give you an opportunity to shoot back with whatever you've got. You'll know the opportunity when you see it."

By this point, Riku had already removed the Manitcore from his GP Base. He swiftly, but carefully, replaced it with the GP Base for the Shin Musha Hyaku Shiki. Truth be told, it too was better suited for ground combat. But thanks to it partially being a Hayku Shiki it still had plenty of atmospheric flight capability. This in fact was one of the builds Riku could say with confidence that he had nearly perfected, since it was capable of combat in space, the air, or on the ground.

"Tenkagomen Kogane no Samurai!" Riku said when the Gunpla was secured to the catapult, "Shin Musha Hyaku Shiki, mairu!" and with that, the Gunpla launched from the catapult and out into the combat zone.

Outside, Riku finally emerged from the Yamato's catapult bay. But he wasn't piloting his Manticore as he had originally planned. Instead he was piloting one of the other Gunpla he had brought with him. It was no less than a shining golden samurai appearing to bear design motifs of a Musha Gundam and Hyaku Shiki. It's golden coloring was also a strong indicator of the Anti-Beam Coating the Gunpla's armor was coated with.

After launching, Riku maneuvered to stand on the bridge of the Yamato nearby where Naoki's Gunpla stood. The SMHS almost glistened in the sunlight with its golden armor, "She's going to fire any moment now. When I move from here, I need you to lower the I-Field to allow me through it. And make sure Haro keeps the Yamato steady. No sudden evasive movements. Like I said, my plan's a little risky, but if we pull it off we can render that Mobile Armor practically useless." during this, Riku had been watching the Apsaras II very intently. Keeping an especially close eye on its mega particle cannon. As soon as he spotted the telltale glow of its shot beginning to fire, his Gunpla shot forward without any warning, right toward the I-Field and the Mobile Armor beyond it.

He really hoped Naoki trusted him and would lower the I-Field. If he had to cut through it or navigate around it, then Riku would never reach his intended destination in time. If the I-Field lowered, the Shin Musha Hyaku Shiki would launch itself off from the tip of the Yamato's bow. It flew straight into the trajectory of the incoming mega particle cannon beam, the gunpla's hand reaching for the hilt of Izanagi. Like something out of a futuristic samurai film, the Shin Musha Hyaku Shiki drew its weapon in an iaido-inspired attack and brought the blade into the line of fire of the incoming beam.

Truth be told, the Shin Musha Hyaku Shiki had never deflected a beam of this magnitude before. And Riku suspected a full deflection of this beam was likely not possible. But the blade could do more than deflect beams, it could also slice through them as well and that was what Riku was counting on. The beam from the mega particle cannon would hit the edge of Izanagi's blade, resulting in the beam becoming split into two. The resulting split beams would each veer off at opposite angles, and as long as Haro had kept the Yamato on its current heading, they would miss the ship entirely - albeit barely. However, all of this would only work if Naoki and Haro had followed his instructions.

Assuming it all did work, Riku wasted no time with making his follow up. He continued flying toward the Apsaras II. With its mega particle cannon fired, it needed to recharge. And unless its pilot had bothered to customize it with additional armaments, then it would be unable to shoot at Riku as he made his move. He let the blade of Izanagi glow with whatever amount of particle energy it had absorbed from slicing the mega particle beam. It probably wasn't anywhere near full power, but it would be enough to suit Riku's purposes, "Secret Technique! Shining FLASH!" Riku cried out, unsure where the sudden need for theatrics had come from. But nevertheless, his charged up sword was brought down for a powerful slash aimed for Mobile Armor's mega particle cannon. If this worked, the weapon would become too damaged to keep firing.

Hopefully, Naoki also saw the opening created by Riku's risky maneuver, as it would render the Mobile Armor wide open for a follow up attack from him and his Fantastic GM.
@FalloutJack I think we left off with Han suggesting they create a distraction and then make their actual entrance on another side of the city.
@Crimson Lion What are the exact rules for changing Gunpla in WARS Format?
I also wanted to apologize for essentially hijacking the choices for how our ship is designed. You know, in case that may have rubbed someone the wrong way.

I guess you could say I wanted the design of the ship to be the thing that really solidifies Riku's place on the team. Kai and Jun are already well known and even have cool nicknames to intimidate people with. So I hoped this would be Riku's way of firmly establishing himself in the world of Gunpla, particularly as a builder.
Hurray, I posted!

Sorry about the ship's description being so uh... wordy. But at this point it's safe to say that the flagship has kinda become my (or rather, Riku's) pride and joy.
@Shiyonichi@Blade17@KenjuGuy@Crimson Lion

Riku had to admit, he was a little anxious. He hadn't had a chance to run as many tests on the Yamato's secret weapon as he would have liked. This left him feeling uncertain it would work if they needed to use it today. And so, to alleviate those nerves, he addressed those concerns to the team, particularly Naoki and Haro.

"Hey, Naoki? You too, Haro." Riku said over comms everyone broke off and went to their positions, "Let's try not to use the trump card today if we can help it. I haven't been able to test it as much as I'd like to. And besides, I think we'd all prefer a grander stage to really show it off on, yeah?" he said, but was quick to add, "But Haro can go ahead and keep it on standby in case it comes to that."

For this first mission, Riku chose to deploy in his Manticore. He'd given it some slight modifications in the intervening two weeks. Namely, he added a wrist mounted retractable Heat Rod to give the suit a close range option for attack. Other than that, the only other change was to the paint job. The urban camo on the suit's armor had been replaced by a much greener jungle camo. So for areas with heavy foliage, it would blend in pretty well. Riku figured his could use the long range scope functions of his Long Rifle to survey the area after they launched and pinpoint the locations of the Taurus on the ground. He could destroy them pretty simply with his armaments but predicted that he might need backup against the enemy team. He was in a mass production unit, after all, so any fight against an ace unit would be an uphill by default. He'd only beaten Seo as soundly as he did because of good tactics and terrain advantage.

Eventually, their ship launched into the simulated battle zone. There had been much discussion between himself and Naoki about which class of battleship would best suit Riku's idea for replicating the Space Battleship Yamato. Eventually they were able to settle on using an Amalthea-class ship, as its relatively simple and symmetrical bow made it suitable for fitting it with the secret weapon: the Wave Motion Gun. The ship of the original series used a vastly different power system for the gun, a Wave Motion Engine, that could be overclocked up to 120% to provide the necessary power to fire the weapon. Riku's build, on other hand, sported a different method of powering the weapon. It probably didn't look like it on the surface, but the Amalthea model that Riku had built had actually had its original engine parts replaced entirely. In their place was a 00 series GN Condensor fitted with two GN Drive Units. It not only gave their ship the ability to use the Trans Am System, but the Trans Am System itself was the ship's primary method of overclocking its engine output to power the Wave Motion Gun. As for the look of the ship, on the outside it appeared to keep the same shape as an actual Amalthea-class. Of course, Riku wouldn't allow the ship to have anything less than a completely original paint job. In this case, the ship was painted to have a color palette reminiscent of Japanese WW2 Era Battleship. The bottom third or so retained it's official red color, being the part of a battleship that is traditionally submerged in the water. The upper deck sections on the other hand, was given a classic bluish steel color, again as an homage to the armored hull of a WW2 Battleship. And finally, a large golden yellow emblem could be seen on the top of the ship's bow in the middle section. It was a stylized anchor, the image often used as a symbol of the Earth Defense Forces in Space Battleship Yamato. Just above it, the ship's name painted in romanized letters: Yamato. And on each side of the anchor's center bar, there was a stylized "I" and "V" respectively which stood for the name of the team: Imagine Victory.

"Oh, uh... I may have sort of... created an insignia without running it by you first." Riku said to Naoki with an innocent chuckle, "I kinda only came up with it late last night, so I didn't have time to show it to you guys first. Sorry about that."
© 2007-2025
BBCode Cheatsheet