NationStates Jolt Archive

"My Lord!"

Lord Xemu, the Elected Ruler of the Galactic Confederacy, Supreme Magnate and sole survivor of the Arslychus, inventor of Mass, Grand Admiral of the Pentultimately Powerful Warfleet of the Galactic Confederacy, Grand Marshal of the Infinite Strategic Arsenal of the Galactic Confederacy, annihilator of the Helatrobus, inventor of the R6 Implant, inventor of the electronic ribbon standing-wave field, inventor of the three-D super colossal motion picture, inventor of the very concept of God, discoverer of the vacuum zones of Teegeeack, relaxes back as best he can in his decidedly less-than-comfortable steel throne, doing his best to look regal as the hard plates of the long back of his headdress grind uncomfortably against his backside. "Arise and speak, my most loyal Chief Sniveling Minion."

Chief-Minion gets up from off his flabby knees and bows his head, staring at Lord Xemu's hobnailed boots. "My infinite and most magnanamous Lord, I have good news!"

Finally. I'm still bloody sore from hacking that traitor's head off. The dark visage under Xemu's headdress smiles, the cruel tear of a mouth under burning eyes turning up in a fearsome grin. "Good, good. Do tell it to me."

"Sir, our scientist reports that the cloning was a success, and he is hypnotraining a whole crop of more scientists as we speak. As you demanded in your infinite wisdom, we've built up the military first and are just now incubating clones for agricultural and industrial support roles. The robots you invented with your truly unbelievable creativity will keep what the Confederacy has from degrading."

"Good, good." Lord Xemu relaxes a bit. "Any news on my cushions?"

"It makes me only wish to cower further in your radiance to say no, my Lord. The seamstress is currently searching for the right type of thread to mend the tear that appeared in your traitorous cushion."

The grand ruler of the Confederacy nods and shifts a bit now, only exacerbating the problem. "Any other news to report?"

"Yes, indeed, my Lord. We have discovered that the lowly "Lady" Waennkar has found the gumption to form a pitiful state of her own. Our intelligence analyst says that we outnumber her two to one."

"EXCELLENT ODDS." Lord Xemu leaps to his feet, boots clacking against the hardened diamondoidmarble, silently thankful for a reason to look imperial standing up. "Get me my rocket legions. My rocketmen. My rockettanks. My rocketPhantoms, my rocketThunderchiefs, my rocketHercules... are you getting this all down?"

Chief-Minion starts suddenly, looks up at his lord, and then fumbles through his flowing multicolored robes for a pad of paper and a pencil. "My most humble apologies, my Lord, I did not anticipate--"

"Stop grovelling just this once and get yourself prepared, Chief Minion; this is important and I don't want to repeat myself."

Blinking, Xemu's right-hand man nods, thinks for a moment, then smoothly retrieves his pad and pencil. "Ready, your Lord."

"Right. Get me my rocket legions."

"Rocket... legions." The head snivelling minion of the Confederacy scribbles quickly.

"My rocketmen and rockettanks."

"Rocketmen... rocket... tanks. My great and ineffable Lord Xemu, may I just write an 'R' for 'Rocket?'"

"Whatever. My rocketPhantoms, my rocketThunderchiefs, my rocketHercules."

"R-Phantoms... R-Thundercheefs... dammit..." The pencil flips over in the man's corpulent hand, eraser rubbing away the spelling error before he brushes away the remains and flips the pencil over again. "Thunderchiefs and R-Hercules."

"Send them to her domain under the command of the Captain of the Guard and bring her lands under my dominion! So wills Lord Xemu! Do it now!"

"At once, my Lord!" The Chief-Minion drops from standing to on his knees and fully kowtowing within an instant, then hops back up and runs off.

"Oh, and get me some pillows or something from the lobby," Lord Xemu calls after him.

"At once, my Lord!" Another drop to kowtowing and energetic leap back to his feet, running away at full tilt, huffing heavily.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Lord Xemu smiles as wave after wave of sharp-nosed Phantoms and Thunderchiefs, identical to their later 1960s brethren except in that they have the latest in Confederate aerospace technology, tilt their wings in salute and arc up into the sky. The long, hard, mottled brown-and-green shafts of their fuselages penetrate the space/atmosphere interface and keep going before kicking in their afterburners, followed by round and fat Hercules cargo spaceplanes and blocky rockettanks that look identical to M60 Pattons, leading the way with their raised barrels, rounds loaded and ready. Last are the entire armies of rocketsoldiers, their spacedrives concealed cunningly in their M1 steel pot life support helmets, holding their M16 rocketrifles close as they arc up into space and speed off towards the homeworld of Lady Waennkar at a hundred trillion light years a day.

Somewhere in between the toga party and general celebration of the purging of the heretics, word trickled down through the almost magically developed military infrastructure of House Waennkar that the heretic threat was not yet gone from the land.

"My Lady! Lady Eza Veeg Waennkar, Matriarch of House Waennkar, the most impossibly beautiful woman in the multiverse, who the very vision of blinds the unworthy heretics with her divinity and bestows upon her faithful the most infinite of mercies!" The messenger pauses to catch his breath after the string of titles. "I bring grave news!"

The woman gracefully turns to face the messenger, her gaze lingering seductively on the majestic view from the window of the land and the starlit sky. "What is the news?"

"The heretics come! It will only be some small time before they are upon us!" The messenger gasps out, still losing the battle between talking and supplying his lungs with direly needed oxygen.

"So long as there are those who do not see the beauty of my tender mercies, there shall be those who walk the path of heresy to unutterable damnation." Lasy Waennkar shuts her eyes briefly against the magnificent view and sighs. "So must the pure faithful take up arms to defend these lands against the dark forces of the heretics."

"A more tragic tragedy has never been seen." The messenger turns the overdramatic waterworks on full force. "The blood of those faithful to our Lady will be spilt so that the blood of heretics may be offered to honor House Waennkar."

"Send forth the High Priest of Killing Heretics!" Lady Waennkar snaps from her place by the window, shifting from angst to command in between one thought and the next.

The messenger starts to run from the room to fetch the Priest before his lungs finally give up the fight and he stumbles, his face having a nice intimate meeting with the ornate gem-encrusted flooring. It takes the poor guy a few minutes to get his bearings and to get upright, and he departs at a much more sedate pace, trying to hide a blatant gimp in his step.

Moments later the High Priest of Killing Heretics comes in at a trot, bowing easily to the almost deific visage of Lady Waennkar. "My Lady Waennkar has called, and this humble priest wishes only to serve." He intones.

Now, when most people think "Priest", they probably think "doddering elderly fellow in robes that are easy to trip in". Not the case with the High Priest of Killing Heretics, nosiree. Clad in bejeweled power armor of some variety, his face obscured by a dark visor, and of a build that clearly implied he didn't just read Mass in some church somewhere, the High Priest cut a very imposing profile, hand resting easily on the hilt of some sort of strange gun-sword weapon. This Priest doesn't dole out sacraments- he dishes out pure, unadulterated asskick.

"The heretics are coming to plague us again, HPKP." Lady Waennkar surveys her loyally violent minion. "We will be badly outnumbered, I forsee it. Can we fight them?"

"We can fight them!" The priest bellows, hefting his weapon for a stat bonus of machismo +1. "Until the land is slick with the blood of the heretics, and the world sees the mercy of Lady Waennkar!"

"Yes, that's all well and good." The lady finally gives her slender legs a break and seats herself comfortably on a big cushion. "But what do we have to fight them with?"

"Robot ninjas!" The priest beams so bright that a nearby curtain ignites from the beam of light reflected from his teeth. "Seraphs summoned by our most holy Lady! Daemons summoned from the very pits of New Jersey itself to render judgement on the heathens!"

"I like..." Lady Waennkar smiles slightly. She does have a certain fondness for summoning the dark forces to rend heretics into little blobs of red-colored jell-o. "What about their technology?"

"With the help of our Lady's most amazing of powers, we have several designs that will drive back the heretics and doom them to fall from the sky like the broken things they are!" The priest bangs on his chestplate for an Inspiration +1 stat bonus.

"Excellent. Make ready for battle then, HPKP! Let them tremble before the robot ninjas, the seraphs, the daemons from the darkest pits of New Jersey! Let's Xemu's rocket-things fall before my V-Jets, my V-Tanks, my V-Artillery!"

"A pardon, my Lady, but how do you know it is Xemu who is leading these heretics?" The priest drops the macho act for a moment of confusion.

"I know for Xemu is a stupid poopyhead! This entire heretic assault has 'POOPYHEAD' written all over it. For I am great and wise and really sexy, and know these things." Lady Waennkar stands imposingly, one hand on her hip and a suitably sneery expression on her magnificent face. "Send Xemu this missive!"

The priest quickly grabs a small pad of paper and a fine quill pen from some unknown place in his armor.

"Xemu, you are a poopyhead and a heretic! Stop this futile quest and come to accept the superiority of my beautiful mercies! You have no chance to survive to make your time! Or I shall share with everyone that you still wet the bed in grade school!

Signed,
=Lady Eza Veeg Waennkar, Matriarch of House Waennkar, the most impossibly beautiful woman in the multiverse, who the very vision of blinds the unworthy heretics with her divinity and bestows upon her faithful the most infinite of mercies"

"..."most... infinite... of... mercies...'" The priest mumbles as he scribbles everything word for word. "Got it! My Lady's will be done, that the heretics burn!"

"Yes, go send the message now, and then send out the ninja robots!" Lady Waennkar waves the enthusiastic priest away, and he exits swiftly to beam the message off to the leadership of the Confederacy.

"'Impossibly beautiful?' Ha!" Lord Xemu scoffs before throwing his head back, cackling in his tremendous voice that shapes the fate of worlds. "Back in Junior Achievement World Oligarchs and Historic Legends in primary school she was this dumpy, short, pudgy thing with freckles that bordered on premature acne! She dares try to appeal to some sort of ethereal beauty in order to escape my inevitable wrath as my forces grind hers to dust? Such insolence cannot and will not be tolerated in a future vassal of the Confederacy!"

Chief-Minion simply nods at appropriate times. He never did too well in JAWOHL, never really having a presence. Where he really shone in primary school was the junior Tertiary Organization of Adulators, Doormats, and Ingratiating Entourage Sycophants club. Set him up perfectly for this job. "Of course not, my most powerful and commanding Lord!"

"Tell my legions to prosecute the battle without mercy, but to take 'Lady' Waennkar alive. She will gladly accept a position of groveling prostration at my feet like all Sniveling Minions inducted into my Great New Order. Although not for long. I wouldn't want to look at her for that long." The gread Lord of the Confederacy's voice dwindles to a mutter, ending with a shiver. "Poor kid, in hindsight. However, she cannot be cured of her affliction, that being having been beat to within an inch of death with an entire orchard of ugly trees, and so in my mercy I shall either have her executed by being shot into a star or simply encased in a metal box and sent far, far, far away where no one of my great and glorious Confederacy will suffer the loss of sanity her vile visage would cause."

"I'll let you know, my Lord. The Captain of the Guard reports that he and his forces arrived above the enemy homeworld seventeen years ago--"

Lord Xemu blinks and raises a claw. "Pardon?"

"Relativity has something to say about going ten trillion light years a day, my Lord."

"Bah. I invented relativity, which is how my glorious and brilliant inventions can break it at whim."

Chief-Minion nods emphatically, bouncing his head off of the marble floor from his prostrate position. "Ow. Yes, my Lord. I will inform them of the change in plans."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

In those seventeen years of there being no nation belonging to Lady Waennkar, the Captain of the Guard had the foresight to constantly train his men in every tactic and strategy he could think of or look up on GlobalSecurity.org across the terrain of the entire nation, making all 1.8 million of his rocketinfantrymen elite warriors on the enemy's home turf. The five hundred thousand rockettanks and three hundred thousand rocketjets served similarly, now knowing the terrain of the entire planet like the operation of the consoles in front of them--hypnotrained into them from since before their birth from cloning vats. Having had to deal with minor insurrections before Waennkar's rise to power, they were all blooded combat veterans and willing to die to the death so the glorious Confederacy of their great Lord Xemu could expand and prosper.

Still, the Captain of the Guard and the armies of the Confederacy are honorable, and so instead of preventing Lady Waennkar's rise to power (which would of course induce untenable temporal causality loops), they simply waited, in orbit, until the time came--about thirty minutes after the order to go forth and conquer was given by Lord Xemu himself. That instant approached, and passed... then the Captain of the Guard looked at his watch, muttered a mild expletive, and led the charge. Rocketinfantrymen screaming down from orbit, their M1 steel pots acting as heatshields, supported and led by rockettanks while rocketPhantoms prepare to launch their rocketSidewinders from any Waennkar forces foolish enough to be airborne. For those foolish enough to still be on the ground, rocketThunderchiefs with normal boring dumb bombs--even 55-grain 5.56 NATO rocketbullets had a tendency to destroy planets--to bomb them where they lay.

/\/\/\/\/\/\

"Chief among my Sniveling Minions, prepare a response to this so-called 'Lady' Waennkar!"

"Of course, my Lord!"

"Dictation begins. Single-open-quote Lady close-quote Waennkar colon. Paragraph. I comma the great and omnipotent Lord Xemu comma et al period comma remember you and your ilk from jay-ay-doubleyou-haich-oh-ell and if I remember correctly comma you were a pimply hyphen faced little freak with an unfortunate addiction to picking all of the fatty bits out of your bologna sandwiches and eating them before discarding the rest period you sickening cur period just remembering this makes me want to vomit all over my splendorous white comma gold comma and red robes period your pitiful attempt at independence from the great and glorious Confederacy is over period prepare to watch as my imperious forces in their ineffable strength roll over your hopeless state and add it to my own period. Paragraph. Hugs and kisses comma you sick intolerable little cootie hyphen ridden girl comma Lord Xemu period. Dictation ends."

Impossibly so, tens of thousands of robot ninjas sprang forth to meet the enemy, launching volley after volley of laser shuriken at the opposing rocketmen, while V-artillery sprayed forth a thoroughly soaking spray of red anti-aircraft missiles at the enemy rocket aircraft.

Their aim and skill in predicting the enemy was amazing to those not in the know. After all, who would guess that Lady Eza Veeg Waennkar, Matriarch of House Waennkar, the most impossibly beautiful woman in the multiverse, who the very vision of blinds the unworthy heretics with her divinity and bestows upon her faithful the most infinite of mercies would use her powers to forsee the decidedly premature arrival of the enemy and to send her robot ninjas seventeen years into the past (she had to really throw them hard to get up to the proper speed!) to observe the enemy and return a month ago full of useful intelligence on the enemy forces.

Pink V-jets tore through the sky, many a missile simply passing through their uniquely not-phallic design as they cut loose with red blasts from their Photon Maser Shockwave cannons, etching designs in red fire throughout the sky. V-tanks deflected the worst of the enemy fire with surprisingly powerful Hormonal-class shielding.

While all this is going on, of course, Lady Waennkar herself is hopping mad. Literally. She hops up and down in a childish display of displeasure upon receiving Xemu's missive. "So says the heretic who outright flunked Socio-Economic Xenotyping! And he was the smallest little incapable brat in Physical Education Night-Intensive Study!"

"He can hardly call himself a MAN!" The High Priest of Killing Heretics bellows for +1 to Insulting Male Egos. "Even I passed Socio-Economic Xenotyping! And I was no slacker in Physical Education Night-Intensive Study!"

"And I ACED Variable Anomaly Generation In Neutral Avatars! While he sat eating his boogers in a corner, the heretic dunce!" Lady Waennkar gripes, in a most beautiful of rages. "No more Missus Nice Waennkar! Prepare a video transmission to that heretic!"

"You mean to grace that heretic scum with a vision of my Lady Waennkar?" HPKH gasps, -1 to Belief.

"I mean to blind the unworthy heretic with my limitless sexiness! No man lives today that can stand against the might of my bra size or the most beautiful shape of my waist!" Lady Waennkar hops up and down once more to emphasise this, noting smugly that HPKP is really standing at a attention now. "Now set up for a video transmission!"

"Y-yes, as my most wonderous Lady Waennkar commands, so shall be done!" The HPKH hurries off. He returns after just enough time for a cold shower, with a technician in tow to set up for transmission.

She glares right at the camera, beautiful even in anger. "Xemu, you infantile twat! Your forces face the might of my robot ninjas and my V-jets! Do you honestly think your forces can touch THIS?" To emphasize, she half-turns, so that it is most decidely clear that the deific visage wearing the rather revealing red and pink dress is no longer the pudgy freckle-faced child of Xemu's memory. Her torso seen in profile more than definately confirms it, and footsteps in the background indicate that HPKH had to run to the showers again, the camera wobbling briefly as the technician locks it into place and likewise runs off. "Surrender now, and perhaps I shall grace your undeserving self with my mercy!"

"Incoming video transmission, my Lord!" Chief-Minion calls from the opposite end of the huge nave.

Ah hell, Lord Xemu thinks as he leaps to his feet. "Begone, my Chief Minion! Escape before the cruel visage of Waennkar harrows your very soul! Watching his portly hanger-on literally leap out the huge double-doored portal and slam it shut behind him, Lord Xemu sits back down and prepares an air-sickness bag just in case he catches a glimpse of that poor little social reject. A huge super-colossal three-dimensional cinema screen of Lord Xemu's own design pops down from the ceiling with a tinny trumpet fanfare, the room goes dark, and the Lord of the Confederacy resists the urge to call for popcorn. It would simply be more to keep down. With that in mind, he doesn't actually bother to watch the message, just in case. Listening works well enough.

First step is to take the initiative by talking first and looking later. "Insolent fool, speaking as if such an ethereal concept as so-called 'beauty'--which, like everything else in this universe is a result of my scientific genius--could stop the glory of the Confederacy! You know full well I was too busy eradicating the Helatrobus to have time for Socio-Economic Xenotyping and anyone who takes mindless pride in their scores in Physical Education Night-Intensive Study are low, low individuals closer to base animals than real people! They are not thinkers, not like me, the glorious Lord of the Confederacy that will swallow you down to the last! Muahahahahahaa!" He opens one eye by accident. "Haha ha huminahuminahuh?"

Noticing his jaw has dropped, he blinks and leans forward, simultaneously trying to see what sort of treachery this is and just how much that slinky red and pink dress reveals. Hey, if someone's going to go through the effort of providing a rather smashing body 'double,' one may as well take advantage of it. Muttering something about "lies and guile," he cuts the feed and sits thinking for a moment, one hobnailed boot ticktickticktickticking on the steps of the dias in front of his steel throne, thinking.

"Bah. Must be a lie. I'll go myself to prove it. CHIEF-MINION! I SALLY FORTH TO BRING MY GLORIOUS PRESENCE TO THE CRETINS OF WAENNKAR! HOLD MY CALLS!"

"At once, my Lord," comes the response muffled by the heavy oaken doors.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

A few hundred rocketinfantry fall in the first burst of fire from the Waennkar defenders, but that is but a miniscule portion of the entire force, rocketinfantry flying about and shooting wildly yet accurately with their rocketM16s on full automatic, hot hardened rocketsteel barrels spitting fire relentlessly with no sign of their stamina letting up, much less stopping. With the battle joined, all the Confederate forces start jinking wildly, not going to let simple things like speed-of-light weaponry prevent them from dodging and avoiding nearly all damage. Those shots that they don't manage to dodge either glance off of the armor of rockettanks or the steel-pot helmets of rocketinfantry who, remembering their training, take everything on the head and just suck up the damage like real men.

Rocketinfantry and rockettanks land to take the fight to the V-artillery, even though their missiles are absolutely useless against rocketfighters that can outrun them until the end of time. The rocketThunderchiefs with their patented Ballistic Infinite Generation Bomb Armament Lock-Load Systems simply generate more bombs on their external ordinance hardpoints and swoop around to carpet bomb whatever seems even vaguely strategically important: military bases, ports, airports, ice cream trucks, so on and so forth. Absolutely nothing (so they think) can escape the splashing, rolling hot stream of bombs literally poured everywhere. Meanwhile, rocketPhantoms chase down the V-fighters, like all good pilots wanting to take them from behind.

Forward intelligence is not enough to stop the valiant fighters of the Confederacy. What may be enough, however, is the overly superb quality of the Confederacy's weapons. Having the same time-bending properties of the Confederacy's rocket technology (being one and the same) the planet-smashing rifle rounds and star-exploding missiles have to be reverse-led, aimed not at where a target will be but where it was fifteen minutes ago. Due to the relativity-raping nature of these weapons, it also has to be aimed fifteen minutes ago from a sidereal inertial reference point, meaning that they also completely fail to hit planets if they don't take time to aim carefully. They have had seventeen years to practice this, however, so it's not a completely dehabilitating problem.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Meanwhile, Xemu sidesteps the whole battle-thing with his rocketheaddress and smashes through the window looking out from Lady Waennkar's chambers. Tucking into a roll, he lets his momentum die down before he hops to his feet and points. "AHA! I catch you in your trickery--ee... ee... uh..." He blinks, and although he can't keep from staring, he at least manages to stare halfway imperiously. "Okay, you weren't lying. You've certainly grown up. And out. Very much out. Yes."

He snaps his tear of a mouth firmly shut, the kind of snap that would be audible if he were less amorphous.

As the enemy forces come to land, they are ambushed by yet more of the robotic ninjas, as well as hoardes of regular ninjas, and even ninjas at the helms of impressive armored giant V-tanks, the unyielding machines stomping through the battlefield, movements unpredictable as they wobble about on stout legs, laying flaming waste to anything that is foolish enough not to get out of their way. Those that don't get flamed to death by the massive machine are likely to simply be stepped on, squished like oversized ants by unruly children. Unruly children with really nasty Photon Maser Shockwave cannons and Helium-Argon-Radon Directional Omnipurpose Nullifiers.

A few of the more crafty ninjas seem to realize that headshots will not easily fell the rocketinfantry that stand as their opponents, and many begin aiming elsewhere, seeking to figuratively kick the heretic forces smack in their Ballistic Infinite Generation Bomb Armament Lock-Load Systems. In many cases, quite literally as headshots against the rocketinfantry shift, laser shuriken whizzing through the air aiming a great deal lower than the steel-pot head protections.

In the air, V-jets twist and turn in ways that probably hideously violate entire university textbooks worth of physics, though some of them take mild damage, crippling their weapons. Photon Maser Shockwave cannons silenced, these fanatical supporters of Lady Eza Veeg Waennkar wheel about to face their enemy head-on, their pilots crying out, hands tightly gripping the smooth surfaces of the control joysticks, as the agile ships claw their way above the enemy rocketPhantoms. Within moments, the pilots' warcries increase in intensity to a climactic fever pitch, and with a flick of the afterburners (blessed by the Lady Waennkar herself!), the damaged V-jets all come down atop the rocketPhantoms, their unique designs resembling dark gateways to forbidden places, their wing edges moist with water that had condensed on the mobile craft during the dogfighting.

In the palace, Lady Waennkar doesn't even flinch at the smashing entrance of her heretic counterpart. While the High Priest of Killing Heretics bristles with weapons previously hidden on his bejeweled power armor (for +5 to Intimidation!), she merely shifts her weight to one leg, one hand resting easily to the raised hip, and sneers at Xemu. "So the booger-muncher himself comes before me!" She booms, taking a few steps forward to maximize the Bounce Effect. While she is doing a most beautiful job of appearing smug and elite, the HPKH notes to himself while brandishing weapons of questionable size that his Lady seems to be studying the enemy heretic with a critical eye.

"Though it seems I am not the only one to have left the school lifestyle far behind." Waennkar remarks offhandedly. "Now you know that my beauty is real, have you come to accept my mercies, or shall you be ground beneath my heel like all the other heretics?"

A random priest meanders into the room, the look on his face clearly indicating that the temple caretaker has been helping himself to the ritual wine, and quite possibly the sacrificial offerings, if the barbeque sauce speckling his robes are any indication. "Whoops, wrong room!" With a brief fit of bowing and apologizing profusely, the man scrambles from the room, glad not to be present for what would likely be a mighty spectacle as the Lady takes on her heretic nemesis!

The rocketsoldiers' olive-drab uniforms made of super-advanced Camouflage Originally-Native-Designed Opaque Material has the Helium-Argon-Radon Directional Omnipurpose Nullifiers covered in an impenetrable sheath of protection, giving them some time to find cover amongst the broad, fat trees thrusting into the sky before blooming in spurts of iridescent white foliage above, creating a glistening canopy for the growing battle. Sweating profusely amongst the rough, curly underbrush along the bases of the trees, the rocketsoldiers return fire with their rocketM16s, the rocketbullets automatically annihilating in the throbbing hot barrels to erupt in gouts of white-hot fire directed at the many and varied ninjas. There is no protection from Photon Maser Shockwave effects, though, and hundreds are incinerated before they find the protection of the ground or the rolling hills where they can take cover behind the hard rocks that cap them or the crevices inbetween the walls of canyons all across the nation. Resourceful troopers throw out their Magnetic Ion Dart Ordinance Launchers to try and mitigate the effects of the Photon Maser Shockwaves, but all too often get nothing but complaints and arguments out of it as the enemy weapons seem to keep on unabated, long and strong and full of stamina.

Then come the rockettanks, truly finding where they're used to fighting when they splashdown in glittering white pools. While a few bog down in the sticky morass, far more grind Waennki wet beavers just out to the ponds for a swim into viscous pulp as their battlearmorplasglasadmantinesteel treads grind into the moist earth. Raising their long War Armor-Nullifier Guns in mock salute to the stomping enemy V-tanks, they gift them with solid shots, hopefully bringing the war machines to their knees so their pilots may eventually service the infinite glory of Lord Xemu.

Their guns simply too powerful for reality to take standing up, the pilots look up towards the V-jets coming down towards them. With a primal yell, they pull their planes vertical, following the pulsing purple marker of their Global Laser Airborne Navigation System all the way up to meet the V-jets, hard steel fuselages shaking with both the force and effort of their firey rockets as thrust exceeds weight by a wide margin and with the anticipation of their pilots at the inevitable conjoining of the aircraft in a firey kamikaze explosion.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Meanwhile, down below, Lord Xemu represses the need to gulp. The High Priest doesn't bother him much; if he could be killed, perhaps it would, but the Creator of Mass need not fear any man. Lady Waennkar, on the other hand, is clearly skilled in various arts and a formidable adversary--or, perhaps, a powerful ally? "The mighty Lord Xemu accepts no mercies like the sniveling supplicants in my employ, although I am also not blind to the truth." He thinks for a moment, his shadowy face unreadable. "In my omniscience I see that our goals are not necessarily mutually exclusive. If your definition of heresy is that one does not admit your beauty, well, then you have a convert." The cruel tear that serves him as a mouth twists into a sly smile. "My goal is simply for the Galactic Confederacy, and me by extension, to hold all in its sway. This does not of course necessarily prevent the possibility of being held in sway in return on a wholly equal basis.

"I offer to you, like all others, the opportunity to serve me of your own free will. I am also the first to admit that I will of course serve you in return if this is the case. Perhaps simultaneously."