i just wanted rusty to yell worm
-
Rusty paid little notice to the PCA's System droning over the spaceport's failing network, its feminine voice rasping with static and its syllables stated with clinical flatness. He was more focused on his heart beating rabbit-fast in his chest, uncomfortably hot as his body came down from the adrenaline rush of going toe-to-toe with the PCA's most cutting-edge mech.
He'd grown too reliant on STEEL HAZE's nimbleness. The 'HC' he had fought had been just as nimble and precise, its feet never touching the ground as the gigantic boosters installed on its shoulders gave the mechanical impression of wings, elegant and authorative when combined with its sleek body.
He wouldn't be surprised if the PCA named those mechs 'Archangels' or something equally pretentious, Rusty thought darkly. Their cold guardians wielding burning blades of plasma, and cutting down the innocent sinners fighting to survive in a scorched eden, condemned for the simple sin of living.
"Tired," Rusty mumbled, realising the caustic poeticness of his own thoughts. He always did find his mind travelling in odd directions after a hard battle. "But at least that should be the end of it."
The PCA's System had finally shut up for once, leaving a ringing silence in its wake. Rusty cast a quick glance over his HUD, seeing nothing but the blinking blue dot of Raven's AC somewhere out of sight. The battlefield they had fought the HCs was a twisted maze of two collapsed warships, debris crafting towering walls of bent metal that threatened to topple over from a too-powerful gust of wind. Rusty's HUD indicated Raven was somewhere slightly elevated. On one of the crashed ships?
He activated their comms, wondering what Raven was up to. Maybe it was a little self-centred to point it out so bluntly, but after a successful shared sortie, Raven usually came gamboling up to him with a muted sort of eagerness. It was odd for him to simply wander off without (figuratively) saying a word.
"Hey, buddy," he said. "What're you-"
The ground trembled minutely, and a few of those towering metal walls shuddered warningly, their shrieks drowning out his words. Rusty tensed, but his HUD didn't indicate an artillery strike or an orbital bombardment. Tectonic activity, maybe? The Central Ice Fields were prone to devastating earthquakes every few years or so. They had caused the earth to swallow up more than a few old cities, the capital included.
Another tremble, more violent, and one metal wall collapsed with a tremendous crash. One of the shipwrecks started to peel apart as well, its broken skeleton causing the already split hill to fall away from the continuous vibrations.
"Buddy, we need to go," Rusty said, keeping his tone calm but threaded with a taut urgency. STEEL HAZE leapt upwards in a boost-assisted jump, and he chanced a glance towards Raven - seeing his AC standing atop of the sturdier shipwreck, staring East-Northeast.
"Buddy," he said again when Raven stayed in place. He made STEEL HAZE hover, a hint of impatience in his voice as the vibrations grew worse: "This place isn't tectonically safe. We need to-"
«Worm.»
What?
Rusty stared at that word blinking across his HUD in open bafflement. He opened his mouth slowly, wondering if the vibrations had Raven mistyped, and asked: "W-"
The ground exploded in a shower of frozen rock and cement, a metallic groan-shriek reverbing through the air in deafening volume. The snow that plumed upwards with the explosion created a brief obscuring haze, but it quickly thinned, revealling something huge- no, massive, towering, jet-black, rusting metal coated in permafrost, its flat head bending low towards them, a great, massive, unearthly-!
"Worm?!" Rusty blurted in disbelief, and was very nearly crushed as a result when said worm promptly bellyflopped at them.
-
Later, far later, after the pang of terror at coming face to, err, face with an ancient C-Weapon capable of squashing him like an ant unintentionally had faded, and a sharper, colder fear at realising the entity was utterly impervious to any and all weaponry, Rusty was forced to sit in a dark meeting room with the other Vespers where they reviewed the Ice Worm's first appearance.
Forced to sit there, and listen to his past-self's high-pitched, comically startled shriek of "woRM?!?!" echo over his combat log's recording, as said worm aimed a deadly bellyflop his way.
He hadn't died, obviously... but it would've been one embarrassing way to die, in retrospect.
"...worm," Pater mumbled under his breath. A muted, not-quite titter rippled through the rest of the Vespers - sans Snail, of course - and Rusty had to fight the urge to sink low in his seat until he disappeared entirely underneath the table.
Would've been even more embarrassing to have 'worm' as his last word, though.
35 notes
·
View notes
My Incredibly Serious pitch for twew3 takes place around 10-15 years in the future where many of the protags have since settled down, gotten married, and had kids, most importantly Neku and Rindo, with three kids between them and their respective partners. All's well until one day, through some good 'ol fashioned UG bullshittery, the kids are pulled into the Reaper's Game and are left wandering Shibuya scared and confused and alone until they're noticed by a hoard of Noise and attacked...but just before any blow can land, they're saved by a mysterious figure in a long black cloak and...are those cat whiskers??
Sho doesn't have a clue how or why these kids ended up here, but he does know whose they are. And he definitely knows that he can't just leave them like this...
Meanwhile, back in the RG everyone's understandably freaking the fuck out over their missing kids, and it only helps slightly when Uzuki shows up to explain the situation to them.
"Relax, alright! Your kids are fine. We have someone looking after them while we try to figure out how to get them out of this mess."
"Who?? Is it Kariya? Coco? Is it one of the Shinjuku Reapers?"
"Well, no. It's...someone else you all know."
"Someone we...NO-"
47 notes
·
View notes