|
|
Post by Kuro on Jan 21, 2013 19:21:52 GMT -5
This fight will serve as an example of what a battle in the war may look like. The introduction of the fight that would take place after this will serve to show how supply lines would affect the war. This theoretical and non-canon fight will be between me and Sprite.
The sun would have been shining were it not blotted out by the giant metal construct traversing the sands. It was much larger than any two-story building, which would just barely reach the "hip" or "waist" of the machine. It's eight, spidery, iron legs stretched out and slammed into the sands, making a large puff of yellow dust with each "step". What it also made with each step was creaking and grinding and hissing, all of which were so painfully loud that the soldiers around it were almost getting headaches, despite their lives in the tumultuous factories of A.I.
The mammoth machine's upper half vaguely resembled a human's in that it had a chest and two arms, but its head was naught but the small, glass window of the pilot's cockpit. From the elbow and down, its left and right arms were very long cannons that seemed to be made up of many different parts put together instead of one long shaft. A multitude of tubes connected the bases of the cannons to the back of the mech, although it could not be told what the cannons were being supplied with. The black Arkady symbol were perfectly painted onto the white chest and shoulders of the metal colossus.
Underneath and around the mech were vehicles and soldiers that had no worry of being in the path of the spider's way. The soldiers numbered in the hundreds, at least half a thousand, and each of them were in hard, white-and-gold armor. Some of them held rifles in their hands, while others were odd: They moved rigidly and had no hands, only a new type of gun from the elbow down for each arm. This gun seemed to be eight long shafts put together and attached to a large canister that had ammo inside. Tubes connected these guns to a large, black mechanism on their backs that had pipes sticking out of it that would either hiss steam or continuously spew black smog. The faces of these mechanized soldiers were white masks with three black circles serving as the eyes and mouth.
In the soldier's ranks were two tanks, large metal vehicles with two cannons near the top. One cannon was one long shaft while the other was like a miniature version of the cannon that the mech had; made up of many different parts. The tanks went across the sands easily with their treads and their cannons faced forwards.
They were currently on a flat desert plain. There was no real cover, no real terrain to consider. Just the heat, wind, and shifting sands, which the soldiers and machines of A.I were going through with ease.
Galeel sighed as he marched alongside the soldiers near the back. He couldn't believe that his airships had been taken down in the last fight by these savages; how they had managed to do it was beyond him. Not only that, but his supply line had been cut off - again, not his fault - so he couldn't get any more airships! Now, instead of safely commanding his troops from the safety of his airship like all other generals, he had to actually walk amongst them and risk death. Of course, he wouldn't deny that his skills were the best of the military, that he was a force to be reckoned with! However...It was just nice to be extra-safe, for good measure. And the heat! He thought the constant blizzards of Sector 3 were bad, but the heat! It was just too much, he was a general, not a common soldier, he didn't deserve this!
Unlike the other troops, he was slim and dressed in a long, white jacket with silver shoulder pads and chestpiece strapped on. A white hat topped his short black hair and gave some shade to his gaunt face. He was of average height and in his right hand was a large rifle that was unlike any rifle that anyone outside of A.I had ever seen. Along the sides of the long barrel were bright-red lines that seemed to pulsate or glow, while the rest of the rifle was gold in color but not material. The gun was a little longer than his leg and like the cannons of the mech, it was segmented and made of many different parts overlapping each other to form the shaft. It was a mystery how he could carry it with just one, slender hand. Perhaps that mystery would be solved soon enough...
|
|
|
|
Post by Sprite on Jan 21, 2013 19:47:41 GMT -5
The forces of A-Land had been pushed hard in this fight against domination by the ever-spreading Arkady Industries. Now here they were, at the last line of defense on their home sands of Non-Canon Alabasta.
Thankfully, in the last two engagements they had managed to slow the mechanical progress of the cursed cyborgs and mechs. Thanks to the heroic efforts of their scouting force, the supply train running from the AI homeland to A-Land territories had been severed. Encouraged by this fortuitous news, the Homeland Army had rallied and managed to destroy AI's fearsome airships. Though it had cost many lives and many precious fighter planes, it still gave them hope for this penultimate confrontation.
A couple miles from Galeel's approaching platoon, the forces of A-Land lay crouched and hidden in a series of sand dunes they had made camp in. As opposed to the half-thousand ground troops that AI possessed, the homeland forces were smaller, perhaps number at about four-hundred.
The brave men and women of A-Land were all garbed in sand-colored robes and wraps. Turbans and head-wraps providing some minor relief from the harsh sun and sandy winds. On their home-turf they had the advantage in the natural camouflage that their military uniform provided in the deserts. Though if it would be enough against the mechanized might of Arkady was yet to be seen.
Each soldier was armed well, sturdy curved sabers that were known to be able to sheer through even the hardened armor of the cyborgs. Strapped to their hips and backs were simple pistols and rifles, a couple bore shotguns.
Lying in wait behind the soldiers were the trademark war weapon of A-Land, the Sandsharks. The stream-lined tank vehicles could race across the deserts and pepper enemy forces with explosives before nimbly wheeling about to repeat the process many times. How they would stand up against the hulking metal monstrosity and the two tanks of Arkady was questionable.
Everyone stood to attention as the commanding officer who had been peering at the approaching forces shouted a command. The enemy was almost to the collection of dunes, they would have a brief window of surprise. Approaching the platoon over flat plains would have been suicide, but here they had a chance to engage safely.
With a fierce collective war cry, the soldiers of A-land sprung up above and around the sand dunes, opening fire on the Arkadians. Pistols, rifles, and shotguns all roared as a wall of bullets and pellets raced at the cyborgs and human soldiers. Just as quickly as they sprung up, the A-Land soldiers would attempt to duck back behind cover and start moving deeper into the dune formations.
Meanwhile, higher in the clear sky the battered fighter jets of A-Land appeared. Pilots glancing down to see that the fight had just begun, they raced forward until they were just above the giant mecha that AI had brought to the war. With a unified screech, doors on the undersides of the fighter opened to drop a heavy payload of bombs and gunpowder casks on top of the metal spider.
---
Having been observing the approaching platoon, Joe squinted through his binoculars. A half-thousand troops, the same giant spider monstrosity, and two heavy tanks. He saw no sign of Galeel and could only assume he was tailing the platoon towards the back, the coward.
Signaling his men to begin the surprise attack, Joe slide down the sand dude he had been using as a perch and grabbed his weapons. His scimitar belted to his hip, his pistols in their holsters, and of course his signature heavy rifle, Cracker, on his back. Whistling for his boys, Joe raced off to the side of the dune formation, intending to move around the Arkadian division to find Galeel. If he could defeat the AI General in combat, perhaps that would demoralize the enemy troops.
After a few minutes frantic travel, Joe and his small collection of men charged at the back ranks of the Arkadian platoon, spotting Galeel.
They had been waiting behind a small rise in the terrain, for the majority of the enemy platoon to pass by. With their attention hopefully forward, Joe and his couple dozen men jumped out from their cover and opened fire on Galeel and his accompanying men. Cracker resounded harshly, as its name implied, propelling a large explosive shot straight at Galeel. The weapon's work done for the moment, he slung it back across his back and drawing his dual pistols charged forward with his men firing into the Arkadians with a hateful fury.
|
|
|
|
Post by Kuro on Jan 21, 2013 21:44:27 GMT -5
The surprise attack was just that; a surprise. The sudden rain of bullets killed some of the humans and robots, but a significant amount of the bullets were deflected by the armor. Right when the enemies revealed themselves, the miniguns of the cyborgs began spinning. After a moment of delay, the guns - of which there was a great number - filled the air with their screaming as they fired. The cyborgs were the vanguards of the platoon, so their onslaught of bullets did not hit their own. Each gun, of which the many cyborgs had two each, fired at a rate of 4000 rounds per minute, and even in a few seconds it was more than enough. The bullets flew almost as soon as the people had risen from behind the sands, so whether or not the thousands of bullets that had been shot in the timespan of a few seconds had been able to kill any depended on whether the desert soldiers had been able to duck quickly enough. To answer the problem of the sand dunes, the cannons of the two tanks turned to the huge piles of sand and fired from their non-advanced cannons. An explosive high-caliber round was fired from each of the tanks with the intention of simply blasting the cover of the sand dunes and those behind them to pieces; surely the sands could not stand up to such power.
The pilot of the mech looked up at the incoming explosive apocalypse. He quickly pulled at some of the levers and handles in front of him, which made the huge mechanical arms rotate with a loud creak, one that could be heard across the battlefield. Now, both of the massive cannons were facing upwards. As the spider mech began to slowly move towards the side, parts of the cannon glew red as if under extreme heat or being smelted. The explosives were getting closer, closer...
The sudden and blaring hum was the loudest noise in the area. A huge beam of bright, blue light shot out from each cannon in one continuous stream. The lasers destroyed the explosives before they could reach the pilot, cutting through them like nothing and causing several explosions above. The machine then directed its beams of light, which seemed to go on into the sky forever, towards the fighter planes. The machine was not very flexible, but there was a chance that if the fighter planes were not careful, they would be cut straight through by the lasers as if they were nothing at all.
After a while, the lasers disappeared with no warning. The cannons, which had been glowing red the entire time, were still glowing but the glow was beginning to fade. The parts of the cannons began to shift back and forth and several pipes came out from places in the cannons and vented large amounts of steam with hisses. The steam sent from hidden mechanisms inside the mech's torso through the tubes to the cannons gave much heat to the crystal inside each cannon; if any human had been inside the cannon at the time of heating up, they would have melted instantly. The crystal, however, had absorbed the heat and with a good amount of force provided from another mechanism inside the cannon, it blasted it out.
The bombs had certainly kept the mech from using its lasers on the ground forces. But it would it distract it for long?
The surprise attack on the back had also worked, to an extent. The Arkadian soldiers, already kept busy with the sudden frontal extent, now had to deal with another threat. The Arkadians were no strangers to ambushes, however; just as there had ben robots at the very front, there were robots at the very back with no Arkadian troops in front of them, and so they fired with their screaming miniguns at the incoming forces. Some of the robots had their heads shot off while others simply took too many bullets and their strong armor was pierced after many shots. The humans fared no better as they crouched and fired their rifles at the enemies, their guns firing 3 bullets almost at once with each pull of the trigger. Their crouching allowed them to aim very well at the robed soldiers, whom they were not firing blindly into but at one soldier at a time. A number of the Arkadians fell, but likely not as many as Joe would have liked.
PSEW
Joe's bullet exploded, but not because it hit a target. A beam of red light had cut straight through it and set it off mid-air. Several Arkadians were blasted back, but it did not touch its intended target. Galeel looked at the enemy general, his laser rifle now glowing bright-red and ventilating much steam. He sneered as he surprisingly and quickly brought up his large heavy rifle as a shield that deflected any stray bullets that came towards him. The soldiers took the brunt of Joe's fire, while none successfully touched the Arkadian general.
"You idiot. Why did you attack the back? Now I actually have to do something, you insignificant twat."
He hid amongst his ranks, surrounding himself in armored soldiers to take the incoming bullets for him. When the hissing from his gun stopped, he ran out from his ranks and discharged the crystal's heat at Joe and any soldiers near him. What one may have noticed was that the lasers from the mech were continuous beams while the one Galeel had fired lasted for only a second, a single shot if you will. The laser that Galeel fired now was like the mech's, a lasting straight line, and he moved it from one side to the other to cut through the troops like a child with a magnifying glass.
|
|
|
|
Post by Sprite on Jan 23, 2013 13:31:29 GMT -5
The troops yelled and screamed in panic as the full force of the Arkadian artillery and firepower was turned against them. Thankfully, they had retreated quickly enough that only a few of them were caught by the miniguns of the robots, what was left couldn't even be recognized as human.
The cannon blasts succeeded in destroying the first couple sand dunes, dozens of A-land soldiers were sent flying and sprawling from the blast, a couple did not rise again. As if in response to the heavyily armored minigun robots, the Sandsharks pepped out momentarily from between the last couple sand dunes, behind which the troops had retreated.
Bucking backward slightly, the Sandshark shot explosive shells at the front row of the Arkadian platoon, wheels churning they quickly attempted to pull back and out of range of a counter attack. All the while, A-Land troops popped in and out amongst the dunes and cover attempting to pick off the more vulnerable unarmored Arkadian human troops, taking headshots at the robots when possible.
The fighter planes were taken completely by surprise. The lethal blue beam managed to catch perhaps about a third of the jets, completely erasing them. The remainder caught their nerve again and managed to spread out and scatter. Seeing the futility in trying to attack the giant mech directly, they began circling around in a spread out pattern, and dropped their final load of bombs towards the two tanks and the surrounding troops. There were only about two dozen fighter jets left.
---
"If only I can kill you today you Arkadian scum, than I shall happily accept my death for my country!" yelled Joe in retaliation. His men fell all around him, torn apart from minigun fire. He himself had dropped to the ground, half his group was already dead.
Loosening their cloaks, the remaining A-Land troops began to dive about the sand, throwing up dust and sand as they attempted to avoid the lasers and bullets flying at them. Bullets shot the edges of their cloaks to pieces but the simple tactic was working, with their cloaks loose and flying about it was hard to determine where their actual bodies were, buying them a couple precious seconds.
Still, the miniguns and lasers were taking their toll. Two A-landers were brutally cut in half by Galeel's laser rifle, another was reduced to bloody mist by direct minigun fire. Gritting his teeth in frustration, Joe shoved Cracker past his cloak and took another shot, this time at the legs of the minigun wielding robots, intent on taking them out. Noticing their commander's action, the remaining troops levelled their firearms at Galeel and let loose.
|
|
|
|
Post by Kuro on Jan 25, 2013 22:15:17 GMT -5
The sight of the enemies running, screaming, and being shot down like the savages they were filled the Arkadians with confidence. The A-Land troops were nothing compared to Arkadian technology and would be decimated, just like all the others. They continued their full assault, several robots still remaining and their guns not stopping. While there was no shortage of human soldiers, they were not invulnerable to enemy fire. Since there was no cover for the Arkadians, many of them were getting down one knee for stability and looking down their rifles so that they could have sure shots on individual soldiers instead of firing haphazardly into the enemy crowd. This rendered them very vunerable however, and several of them fell to the sands and never got back up. Each time one of them did so, another would take their place.
The explosives forced them to change their strategy. They were unexpected and decimated the humans in the front. The robots were blown apart and their metal pieces flew through the air. The Arkadians who were close to the blast but far enough to not be killed yelled and backed away, their aim now not as focused and their bullets acting more as suppression than anything else for the moment as they tried to make a good distance from the sandsharks.
The pilots could now see that the mech's upper half could rotate 360 degrees with no trouble at all. As the planes dropped their bombs, the mech's upper half with the cannons turned to face them as they fell. The laser cannons fired once again in large, continuous streams that vaporized whatever they touched, but they did not last as long as last time; they had still been cooling down when they were suddenly reactivated again. It had not been aiming for the planes, but destroyed most of the bombs instead. Since the lasers could not have lasted as desired however, some of the explosives got through and hit the troops. A significant number of the Arkadian troops were destroyed, along with one of the tanks. The other tank pointed its cannons at the Sandshark and fired the laser one. It was a continuous stream that went straight through any sand dunes, and the tank could move the laser if necessary. Whether or not the lethal Sandshark could survive would depend on the A-Land weapon itself.
The tactic of using the cloaks as a distraction was working on the Arkadians, who found themselves missing more and more. The robots were destroyed by Cracker's power, although one of them was still functioning as just an upper half. The robot had been torn into two, but even on the ground its miniguns continued to fire at the A-Land soldiers.
"Agh! To me, to me! You'll all be officers, to me!"
When a large number of the A-Landers began to point their rifles at the general, he crouched down and put his hands over his head as several of the Arkadians rushed to protect their superior. They deliberately positioned themselves so that their chest armor would intercept and deflect the bullets, but two out of seven were killed anyways. Knowing what to do next, the Arkadians in front of Galeel got down and raised their own rifles. They shot in response to the A-Landers and Galeel, with a cruel smirk, activated his weapon as soon as his soldiers had crouched. His laser rifle was nothing compared to the mech's in power and size, so his cooldown period had been relatively quick. He made another continuous stream and, aiming at the midsections of the soldiersd, swiped his laser rifle to one side as if slashing with a sword; this made his laser move to one side and cut down anything in it's path - with Joe being the prime target.
|
|
