Shining Prospect

[Echo]

Quote:"Of course she is! If you've been studying me and her long enough, you'd know she quit F4 over ten years ago in my old timeline! The whole time, she's done almost nothing but be a housewife and look after the kids. That Sarath invasion showed her that our kind are really no better than humans, and it changed her mind completely. You really should know the answer already to your question."

Amiroo briefly flashed Nail a sinister glance, his amber eyes sizing Nail up like he might be about to give Nail a piece of his mind, but it lingered only a moment, before giving way to a neutral expression. Amiroo didn't actually know why, but that outburst made him slightly angry. He was only trying to cover himself, for all he knows, she could have picked her hatred back up at some point. The stress of what he was about to do was getting to him a bit. He could feel the beginnings of his heart acting up again. He was breathing noticeably harder, and his scales had taken a slight shine as he had apparently begun to sweat.

"I meant no offense Nail, no one is judging her, especially not me. To tell you the truth, we don't know much about you guys, just some of the basics. We just make it a habit to double and triple check everything. Believe me, in this line of work, if you don't it'll get you killed eventually. I promise, if she's out there, we'll find her ok? I'm sorry." He said patting Nail's back as he walked away.

Quote:"Are those crystals anything like Chaos Emeralds?"

"No, the blue ones are blank data crystals. We store data on optical crystals, these are gonna store our signal data. The ones we have up upstairs in the security room, could store enough data to run your Mobian internet without running out of storage space. Incredibly handy stuff. But the dark purple crystal ball looking one.." he said pulling it into view of Nail, "is actually a crystalline confinement chamber for a black hole. We use the radiation pressures from black holes as a power source." he said waving this 'infinitely dense celestial object' in Nails face, "this is a micro singularity, if you hold it up against a light and look close, you can see the little black dot in the middle, that's it. We're gonna use it to power our transmitter.....wanna hold it? So you can brag you've held a black hole in your hands."
---

Quote:"Do you have anything I could use to restore these? I'd rather use these instead. I've grown attached to them."

"We could restore them, but it would take days. I'm afraid we don't have that kind of time." Rye said apologetically.

"You do have enough ammo right? You're going to need a lot."

Quote:"Melee, definitely!"...."What you got? You got like lightsabers or something?"

Rye let out a series of loud caws, that would at least be recognized as hearty laughter, "You're hilarious Gichii" She said playfully pushing him.

"But yes, we have..something like that." She said disappearing deeper into the armory, only to return a moment later with two thick bracelets about forearm length each. She clapped them around each of Gichii's forearms, tapped a button on the sides and then stood back.

"When you tap your fingers to your palm, plasma will extend from those bracelets around your fists, just tap them again to retract it. They're like super energy boxing gloves. You'll be able to punch doors off their hinges, people through walls, and deflect plasma bolts, though being a novice I wouldn't recommend that. They take your natural punch, and magnify it dozens of times. Don't worry about your hands, they have sensors that won't lets your hands and the plasma interact in a harmful manner. Same thing applies with the color, most of the time they're clear, aqua is still good, red = needs to reconstruct. All that."

Amiroo was seemingly having a harder and harder time with breathing, his chest was very tight, and he was practically dripping with sweat as he donned a belt similar to Gichii's and a heat resistant saddle bags, and a back saddle rig to hold extra equipment. The weapon Amiroo had chosen was a basic plasma pistol as a secondary, and a plasma rifle as his primary. Amiroo leaned against a wall AC vent and simply let the cool air rush over him.

Rye approached Nail with a belt, "This is a personal over shield, Gichii will show you how to use it. I suggest it highly."

Rye turned and eyed Amiroo worried, "You think you'll be good in a minute?"

Amiroo nodded, "yeah, just give me a sec."

[Nail Strafer]

Quote:"I meant no offense Nail, no one is judging her, especially not me. To tell you the truth, we don't know much about you guys, just some of the basics. We just make it a habit to double and triple check everything. Believe me, in this line of work, if you don't it'll get you killed eventually. I promise, if she's out there, we'll find her ok? I'm sorry."

"...apology accepted," Nail hesitantly said, but Amiroo might get the impression he didn't mean it.

However, he quickly forgot the subject as Amiroo offered to let him hold the strange crystal. While he felt a bit afraid touching the thing at first, the experience of holding the dark crystal was actually pretty benign. He looked at the black hole inside it for a few moments, before putting it back in Amiroo's hands. The canine gave a little smile, but didn't say much.

"That was interesting," He succinctly stated.

Later, he got SOLIS back from Giichi, and started to talk with Rye about restoring his weapon.

"A couple days to restore it? But we've got 3D printers now that can make usable gun parts. Granted these guns aren't reliable, but I would think you'd have something a lot more advanced. I mean..."

He quickly detached the receiver and barrel from the M1's wooden stock, and held them up for the raptors to see. A lot of the metal looked rather rusted and corroded from the old age.

"Don't you have like a scifi 3D scanner that could scan this old rusty thing and make an instant copy? This is 70-year-old technology so its very simple by Mobian standards today. And if you had one of those, maybe you could even make copies of my bullets."

Rye passed him the same belt Giichi had. It was pretty straightforward, so he figured out on his own to press the button. He guessed this shield around him was supposed to stop projectiles, like a bulletproof vest. That was a very good thing because Nail didn't have one himself right now. It was a good thing he hadn't gotten shot yet...

[Giichi Twinkieland]

Giichi flicked the gauntlets on, staring at the blue aura as it vanished. He appeared entranced by them. Quickly his head snapped back over to Rye.

"Hey, is there something I can try these out on?"

However, he looked up when he realized Rye hadn't answered. She was off to the side talking to Amiroo about something. Amiroo suddenly didn't look so hot. The cat wondered what this was all about.

"Rye? What's going on? Amiroo, you okay?"

[SOLIS]

[Skipping again~]

[Echo]

Quote:"A couple days to restore it? But we've got 3D printers now that can make usable gun parts. Granted these guns aren't reliable, but I would think you'd have something a lot more advanced. I mean..." "Don't you have like a scifi 3D scanner that could scan this old rusty thing and make an instant copy? This is 70-year-old technology so its very simple by Mobian standards today. And if you had one of those, maybe you could even make copies of my bullets."

Rye rolled her eyes and sighed, "we have such things, but the thing is, we need the raw material to work with. Since our supplies have been cut off, we've had to resort to scavenging from your society for raw material. Once we have that, we could make you a brand new set in about a half hour. Why do you think Amiroo and Era were so interested in that gold at that apartment building a while back?"

"He wasn't there *pant* only Gichii and Terra were" Amiroo stated.

"oh...I thought...oh well"

Rye paused a moment to ponder something else Nail had mentioned, 70 year old technology? "Nail, those are ancient weapons are they not, how is the technology only 70 years old? Yes, now that I think about it, that is really a very ancient weapon; from the Humans second great war to defeat the Nazi's. An M1 if I remember right. If that's an original, that has to be more than 1,500 years old, and working no doubt, probably one of the last functioning relics from one of the Human nations of the era...oh..what was it called..um..the American republic..uh..The United States, that's it, The United States of America." Rye said approaching Nail and gently touching the weapon, eying it in awe. "Is it an original?" Rye asked, her inner archeologist/scientist shining through.

"Please don't be committing us to any more adventures just yet, we've got a tight schedule if you haven't noticed." Amiroo was still in full blown attack mode. By this time he had sunk down the wall, his belly laying flat on the floor. "By the stars, just pass already!!" he snarled.

"I wasn't..not yet..." Rye said eying that gun.

"Nail, I'm sorry, we don't have any source material here, we were scouting out more when all this happened. We do have a few Gauss weapons, they're pretty close to what you're *pant* used to. They're projectile weapons at least." Amiroo said.

Quote: "Rye? What's going on? Amiroo, you okay?"

Amiroo smiled faintly, "I'll be fine in a second, don't worry about it bud."

"He has a heart valve issue, not life threatening, but he has episodes. Quite painful ya know? They've tried to fix it, but it keeps coming back. Short of going through the lengthy process of rewriting his DNA, he's stuck with it." Rye said.

"It goes away with exercise, so lets get out of here. You got the stuff?"

"Yeah, we're ready to go."

"good" Amiroo said forcing himself from the floor, "Get Nail a weapon, he can use his until they run out of ammo, then switch. Show him the projectile stuff. I'm gonna take these carts to the ship, I need to shake this before we leave."

Amiroo grabbed hold of the carts, and began pushing them out of the Armory.

"I'll see you guys in the hanger." he said picking up speed until he was jogging out of sight.

"I'm sorry Nail. But um, hey, I'd be interested in making you new ones in exchange for that one if it's an original after this is over, and I can get my claws on some source material. If you're interested that is. Anyways, Lets get you a weapon." she said opening up another door leading deeper into the armory and presumably the projectile weaponry Amiroo mentioned.

[Nail Strafer]

Quote:"Nail, those are ancient weapons are they not, how is the technology only 70 years old? Yes, now that I think about it, that is really a very ancient weapon; from the Humans second great war to defeat the Nazi's. An M1 if I remember right. If that's an original, that has to be more than 1,500 years old, and working no doubt, probably one of the last functioning relics from one of the Human nations of the era...oh..what was it called..um..the American republic..uh..The United States, that's it, The United States of America."

As Rye talked about the history behind the M1 Garand, Nail looked very confused.

"Nazis? America? What? I don't know anything on what you're talking about. And it sure wasn't invented fifteen hundred years ago. You must have been looking at some other timeline besides the one I came from. In my timeline, it was created by a man named Mr. Gerrant, and he founded the city I grew up in ages ago. That's why it's called Gerrant too. He made a few other important guns but the M1 Garand was one of his most famous. And it is 70 years old in my old timeline too."*

He quickly snapped the pieces back together to complete the rifle again.

"If you want to study it, that's fine with me. What I really want is something more modernized, like the M1's modern day descendant: the MK14. I'm only using this M1 because I haven't gotten a chance to pick up anything better in this timeline yet."

He winced as Amiroo cried out from the pain. While he did explain the issue, was it really safe to be bringing him along? It could put everyone else at risk. Nonetheless Amiroo shook it off. It was quickly forgotten to Nail at the mention. He quickly followed after Rye.

"Gauss guns...do you mean coil guns that shoot bullets with electrical current? That's...that's very impressive if you've got ones that can work as good or better traditional firearms. We're not to that level of technology yet."

It would be extremely interesting to see what they had come up with. While he liked the traditional "fire a bullet with an explosive charge" system, scientists were running out of things they could do to make it work better.

[*Trivia - This is a meta injoke for me. It was the other way around for Nail's home city of Gerrant when I wrote his backstory. I named the city after the M1 Garand, and various other things in his backstory had names taken from other guns too. His real name "Augustine" comes from the Steyr Aug assault rifle.]

[Giichi Twinkieland]

Giichi looked with concern at Amiroo's episode. He decided he would help push the carts too. As he took a cart and pushed it alongside the raptor, he decided to ask more about the condition.

"Are you sure it's OK to be going with us like this? What if you have another episode while we're in the middle of a battle? It's not like you'd have time to sit there and wait for it to recover?"

It was a very easy scenario for the cat to imagine.

"I'm really starting to like you guys and I'd hate to lose you at this point."

[SOLIS]

[Skipping]

[Echo]

Quote:"Nazis? America? What? I don't know anything on what you're talking about. And it sure wasn't invented fifteen hundred years ago. You must have been looking at some other timeline besides the one I came from. In my timeline, it was created by a man named Mr. Gerrant, and he founded the city I grew up in ages ago. That's why it's called Gerrant too. He made a few other important guns but the M1 Garand was one of his most famous. And it is 70 years old in my old timeline too."

Rye paused her searching a moment, to consider Nail carefully, "Indeed you must have come from a different world line. The M1 Garand, in our world line, was designed by a Human named John Garand when he was working for the United States' Springfield armory around 1930AD, the Garand in the M1's name coming directly from his own last name. That has indeed been over 1500 years ago, considering it is the year 3455AD by our alternate Mobious' calender. If what you say is true, we might finally have solid evidence for dimensional bleed through. It seems likely that universes would sometimes imprint on one another, it could explain a whole range of phenomenon, now I'm almost certain of it."

Rye seems to contemplate that for a moment before Nail spoke again.

Quote:"Gauss guns...do you mean coil guns that shoot bullets with electrical current? That's...that's very impressive if you've got ones that can work as good or better traditional firearms. We're not to that level of technology yet."

Rye nodded, "indeed" she said unlocking a series of lockers containing weapons that would be surprisingly familiar to Nail, appearing only as futuristic versions of the projectile weapons common to his planet and era.
"We have had energy weapons for the better part of 60 million years, but we've had projectile weapons of various sorts even longer, at least since the time of the first dawn, 65-66 million years ago. They've never fell out of style, projectile weapons didn't disappear when energy weapons arrived, but rather found themselves co-existing with them. We have found that simply because technology is old, doesn't mean it isn't effective. These weapons are your typical example of modern handheld Saurian projectile weaponry. These models come in various variations you might recognize as pistols, rifles, SMGs, and so on. These are all powered with black hole crystals naturally, they feature room temperature super conducting Arkimytrium coils that use electricity to propel bullets out of a barrel rifled with an interior energy shield. We had to abandon rifling the barrel itself since these 'bullets' travel through it at 9,500 feet per second, otherwise they'd explode in the barrel. The bullets themselves are constructed of an Arkimytrium alloy to make them lighter." Rye picked up a bullet from a bucket of them and handed it to Nail, it was the size a standard 7.62 round...only the bullet comprised the entire thing, no cartridge. It would have the texture of marble, be as light as if it were made of Aerogel, and have the appearance of that rainbow Titanium oxide coating you'd see on knives and lighters sold at fairs and novelty shops...a most bizarre material. "...You'll find the weapons extremely powerful, but extremely light and durable. In fact, some of these weapons are memory Arkimytrium, if they're damaged they'll self heal themselves; Within reason of course. So, what would you like? What's more your style?"

Quote:"Are you sure it's OK to be going with us like this? What if you have another episode while we're in the middle of a battle? It's not like you'd have time to sit there and wait for it to recover?"

"Im ready to go Gichii, it goes away with excercise or extreme fear. It's a heart valve thing, but my docs say I'm still go for combat because combat is all about excercise, ya know? It won't happen while my heart rate is up."

Quote:"I'm really starting to like you guys and I'd hate to lose you at this point."

That actually made Amiroo double take and come to a stop. He just stared as Gichii a moment before smiling, "and I like you to Gichii, I can tell we've made a friendship that'll last a long time. We're gonna make it, and our friendship will last the rest of our lives. Heh, maybe someday I'll take you to my world, we'll go surfing!" he laughed putting a hand on Gichii's shoulder, before continuing on towards the hanger.

The others were busy goofing around the hanger completing various tasks, getting equipment loaded into the back of the ship as they approached.

[Nail Strafer]

The talk about timelines merging suddenly made Nail curious about something. He withdrew SOLIS out of his pocket, pondering a question in his head that suddenly struck him.

"Say...SOLIS, I don't think I ever bothered to ask you, but do you remember where you came from? You're way more advanced than any mobile device I've ever seen."

Nail looked stunned when he heard the muzzle velocity. He stroked his chin, pondering that number.

9,500 feet per second muzzle velocity... At least three times faster than most guns we have available today. You could kill someone almost two miles away with a little over a second's lead time.

The bullets looked very odd too. Caseless, even. The most recent gun he knew of to make use of that was the failed G11 experimental assault rifle, first created many decades ago. He supposed it made sense a coil gun wouldn't need casings. Anyway, it was time to choose his weapon. He held up the M1 Garand once again.

"I think I'd prefer something like this or the later M14. A battle rifle basically, with a full size rifle cartridge and semi-automatic fire."

If they were going up against SWATBots with heavy armor, it would be best to use large rounds to punch through the armor better. Plus he loved marksman-style weapons better than automatic ones.