Laduguer

Advent of the Dawn —A Mecha Musume/Tokusatsu-Inspired RP

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Louisa felt an uncomfortable film of perspiration condensing inside Grendel, which - despite its insulation and high thermal stability - was by no means entirely isolated from its environment, and as she trudged through the burning ash and embers of the superheated earth she became aware of the temperature steadily rising. To use the technical term, she thought, things were getting "bloody hot".

Feeling an animalistic anger rising at her discomfort, she gritted her teeth and began to run after the distracted komainu, kicking up clouds of cinders and occasionally pausing to pummel or decapitate an immolated warped dredge. As she gained momentum she began to close in, but due perhaps less to her own speed and more to the creeping effects of Xuan-yu's poison, as the monster's pursuit of Deathstalker became more sluggish as it gradually took effect.

With the threat removed from the frontlines - where she felt its uncontained destructive potential could quickly shatter and rout the advance of the Japanese infantry - and the odds made somewhat more even through Xuan-yu's impairing hit-and-run attacks, Louisa decided that it was time to tag in. Extending her glaive, she hefted it up above her shoulder like a javelin, and with two bounding leaps hurled it squarely at the exposed rear of the komainu. I don't know much about warped physiology, she thought, but things normally hurt when you shove a harpoon up their ass!

"Engage your camo, Lang! Cool off for a minute and let me take some of the heat!"

Grimacing at her pun, she recalled her weapon and advanced forward.

Advent of the Dawn —A Mecha Musume/Tokusatsu-Inspired RP

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Through a red mist, Louisa saw a myriad of monstrous shapes encroach, dissassemble, and disintegrate as she flowed with heavy momentum through the cycle of shove, cleave, shove, cleave that characterised the rhythm of her frontline strategy. Her enemies blended into a homogenous swarming mass, simple and animalistic in its fixation on her - an object in its path that dominated its limited zombified attention with its unusual refusal to die. In the gaps between the bestial and monstrous forms of the horde, she tried to ignore the twisted masks of human faces, clawing with uncannily familiar limbs, staring with eyes that remained frighteningly human in spite of their hollow absence. They were animals too. They were just as monstrous. Still... she wished the echidna parasite wasn't so cruel as to leave those last haunting vestiges of their humanity on show.

She felt the assault dwindling, and with a triumphant flair she threw her glaive with tremendous force into the hardened carapace of a heavier Warped lifeform, recalled it to her hand in a spray of ichor, and then leaped forward to decapitate the creature with a spinning arc of her blade. As it collapsed to the floor, her comms lit up with Teodora's warning. Feeling tremors in the ground, she snapped her vision upwards just in time to see the hulking shape of the Komainu warped hurtling towards her.

With little time to react, she made a short evasive hop backwards at the last moment, but was struck by a glancing blow from the impact and flew backwards, her body smashing through a crumbling barricade before crashing into the hood of a troop transport and coming to rest. She felt the reactive shock-plating in Grendel relax, leaving her with bruises where a regular human would be left with 206 broken bones. She stubbornly pulled herself out of the twisted and crumpled metal, as Seraphima announced the plan.

"Copy, KOI! Concentrating the dog -- something tells me I don't have a choice!"

The Komainu warped closed in, with Seraphima's aerobatic combat in the area giving Louisa enough space to gain a footing. Parrying a swipe of a massive paw and barely holding her footing, she bounded back with a heavy leap and hurled her glaive at the flank of the Komainu in an effort to harpoon its vitals. But missing its mark, it glanced off and Louisa recalled it to her hand with a frustrated grunt.

Already concerned about the course of the battle, her heart sank as Teodora and Seraphima turned their attention towards the new threat.

"Alright, Supplice, good spot! But can someone engage the thing that's visibly about to kill me?!"

Advent of the Dawn —A Mecha Musume/Tokusatsu-Inspired RP

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At three hundred feet above the ground, the R2D2 unit roared into life, kicking back against the rapidly encroaching earth with a monumental shove of remote thrust sufficient to slow several tonnes of metal falling from orbit. Suffice to say, it performed its intended function of softening Grendel's fall.

When Louisa's head stopped spinning, and the ringing in her ears faded, she found herself standing in a billowing cloud of ash and cinders kicked up by her impact, that was rapidly dispersing in the downdraft of the airlift vessel. Tearing off the spent R2D2 unit and hurling it indiscriminately away from herself, she resolved to elect for a different method of transport next time.

The full visual spectrum of the battle revealed itself as visibility was restored, and looking down at her feet she beheld a small impact crater in a mass of scorched and hideously deformed bones and viscera. Well, there was certainly no mistaking Pyra's handiwork. She began to stride over to where the blue flashes of Teodora's rifle fire indicated the position of her squad, before their voices crackled into life over the intercomm.

She grimaced as she listened to Xuan-Yu's directions, continuing to push forward through the rear lines of Japanese infantry and towards the front. Physically activating her comms with a little more force than she intended, she sharply replied:

"Copy that, Lang, I wouldn't expect anything else from you -- she grunted as her boot caught on a tangled Warped ribcage -- other than trash!"

The twitching, surging expanse of steadily advancing Warped opened up before her as she reached the frontline. Feeling her heart beat faster, she thrust her blade forward to extend it into a glaive, and with one heavy leap forward she planted herself firmly in the vanguard.

Advent of the Dawn —A Mecha Musume/Tokusatsu-Inspired RP

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Louisa followed the group of Pilots into the hanger, stepping through the airlock doors into a familiar but no-less noxious space of cold air, bright lights and the noise of industry and battle preparations. She sometimes wished the whole thing could be conducted with a little more peace and ceremony. She remembered watching some lame American samurai movie back when she was a kid, where prior to battle they would be quietly dressed by an attendant and drink tea and read poetry or something. She figured the historical accuracy of that was dubious at best, but with a budget as large as the one afforded to the Chi-Mechframe programme... couldn't someone pull a few strings? How about at least burning some essential oil or installing some mood lighting? Wouldn't that be a better idea? As she pulled on her sleek sea-gray combat leotard (her third outfit change of the day), she made a mental note to put that in the hypothetical Horizon suggestion box.

Heading over to the armoury area, she hefted up her mechframe core. It was a sort of choker that clamped around her neck, but it hang as a plate over her breast. Compared to the armour plating in the mechframe itself, it was far lighter, but the thing still weighted a few kilos. She felt the heavy presence of it pressing down on her body, and walked over to her deployment area. She ran the briefing through her mind one last time, squared her shoulders, exhaled deeply... and hammered the central activation unit on the core with her fist.

"Grendel, breach!"

A layer of opaque shimmering film appeared over her body, ethereal and bright, taking the form of a tight mesh covering her limbs, head, neck and torso. It extended to thin blade-like projections skirting her lower body, and in her right hand a long and graceful blade materialized. The light grew brighter, until suddenly it reached some critical point, and piece by piece each part of the ethereal mesh began to darken and condense into itself with brutal force. Across her body it tightened into carapace armour, the blade-like projections snapped into a palisade-skirt hybrid that hung menacingly at her waist, and the graceful blade twisted and lashed into a strange and jagged glaive. Finally, the ethereal light crowning her head clamped shut into a long beak-like visor akin to an old European knight.

Feeling her psuedo-Warped body react and adjust to the inhuman weight of the condensed mechframe, she tentatively raised a foot and stomped it down, sending a screaming shudder of protest through the reinforced hanger floor.

Satisfied, she signalled to a member of the hangar crew to bring over her 'R2D2' (Rapid Retroburn Deployment Device) - a dumb name, she thought, and made another mental note to put that in the suggestion box too - and connected it to her 'frame. Owing to its high mass, conventional flight and gliding capabilities were not practical for Grendel, and the R&D team were still experimenting with solving the deployment issue. The 'R2D2' device was essentially experimental aeronautics tech developed by some abandoned pre-Warped space programme designed for use on self-landing drone shuttles, able to deliver a large amount of reverse thrust with high control and all in a very small package. In other words, it was basically a jetpack that would turn a regular human operator into jelly given the massive deceleration, but worked surprisingly well when operated by Grendel.

She glanced to her side, and caught the lithe form of Teodora soar out of the launch bay. That was her cue.

"Grendel, launching!" she yelled over comms, and with two earth-shuddering bounds she leaped out of the hangar.

Advent of the Dawn —A Mecha Musume/Tokusatsu-Inspired RP

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As the other Pilots began to wrap up in the dining area and file out towards the briefing in the command room, Louisa glanced at the smartwatch on her wrist and sprang away from the table without excusing herself, lunging out the dining area door and towards the residential deck. If she was as fast as her average time to sprint between her room and the main deck (two minutes and forty-seven seconds -- not bad, right?) then she could get there, change clothes, and sprint back whilst only being a couple of minutes late. There was no way she was reporting for duty in her gym outfit.

[00:02:30]

Oh, a new personal best -- forget it!

Almost tearing the door off its hinges, she barreled into her room and threw open her wardrobe, pulling out a suit of sleek grey military fatigues and a light jacket in urban camoflague.

[00:03:00]

Pulling a boot onto her left foot whilst running with the other, Louisa left her room open and nearly tackled a member of custodial staff to the floor as she began sprinting back up the auxiliary access stairwell...

[00:05:40]

... to the command room, snapping off a salute and filing into the assembled Pilots as Sandra continued her briefing.

As she listened, Louisa realised her geography was pretty poor. She had no idea where Saitama Prefecture was, but after studying the map on the monitor she guessed the region was to Tokyo what Surrey was to London back home.

She glanced at Seraphima and Teodora as their squad allocation was announced and smiled, but felt her nerves building. That was pretty much the ideal team composition for Grendel's basic combat strategy, but lacking any flight capabilities herself (the added weight of high density plating came at a cost) meant that there was no redundancy for her if the situation on the ground became too hot.

She rolled her shoulders and sighed. No pressure.

Advent of the Dawn —A Mecha Musume/Tokusatsu-Inspired RP

Louisa Faye

Following Elise's comment, Louisa elected for a strategy of burying her shame quietly in her food. This proved to be a wise choice, as it gave her an acceptable way of hunkering down to dodge the strafing fire of Hoshiko's boundless energy. If she was being honest, out of all of the other Pilots she'd met, she felt the most comfortable with Hoshiko - after all, someone who wears their heart on their sleeve is someone you can trust - but extraversion didn't lend itself particularly well to Louisa's personality, and again... mission days had a way of putting her out of sorts.

She breathed a sigh of relief as the meal wound down and Elise continued speaking.

"Teams? Huh..."

She glanced around the dining area at the assembled Pilots, and crossed her arms.

"Yeah, I guess it would take me a while to figure that out too. It isn't exactly clear how we all fit together..." she said, before realising how that might be construed, and quickly adding with a sudden shift of posture, "Uh, tactically, that is -- we haven't got a clear team coordination yet, I mean."

Advent of the Dawn —A Mecha Musume/Tokusatsu-Inspired RP

Louisa Faye

Louisa wasn't sure a person's buffet selection was a particularly fair judge of their character, but as she stood examining her plate of beans (plain), rice (plain) and as much tuna (plain) as she could convince the kitchen to give her, she couldn't help but feel like it said something about her character relative to the other Pilots. She wasn't sure how food worked beyond 'maximum carbs, maximum protein', and as one of the oldest Pilots onboard (or so she was told), she felt asking for help would be too embarassing. As a result, her usual approach was to eat when no one else was around.

Unfortunately, today that wasn't an option. She had woken up late, spent an extra hour in the physical training facilities, and had only half-changed out of her workout leotard before realising she barely had time to eat before the briefing. Mechframe sortie days were always like this. She got in her head - probably the nerves - and sleeping or working out was all she could do to keep her mind steady. So, now there was no alternative than joining the others.

Still... given some of the awful examples of human beings she had to eat with back in the evacuee camps, and given in a few hours they would be fighting tooth and nail with aberrant alien lifeforms... having lunch with her pretty smiling team-mates in the luxury dining lounge aboard The Horizon didn't seem so bad.

Walking over to the table where Elise and Pyra were sitting with her plate in-hand, she sat down quickly and smiled.

"Good mor-..."

Wait, what time was it?

"...-I mean, what's good, guys?"

Advent of the Dawn —A Mecha Musume/Tokusatsu-Inspired RP

Louisa Faye

• Name: Louisa Faye
• Age: 23
• Gender: Female
• Appearance: An tall young woman with short fair hair (apparently cut by herself or otherwise cut badly by someone else), a pale complexion and dull blue eyes. Her build is angular and muscular, with any fat that might have gone towards a charming feminine physique ruthlessly utilized elsewhere.
• Personality: Louisa (or 'Lou' as she is more commonly known) is approachable, straightforward, and rational in her demeanor, but internally she is haunted by a constant feeling of malaise and dissonance with regards to the path her life has taken, as if her mind has never quite caught up to the massive and traumatic changes of the last five years (i.e. the world ending, moving to the other side of the world, and becoming an experimental bio-weapon), or as if by some vague yet terrible mistake she has ended up living someone else's story. As a result, she can appear distant, or uninterested, or forgetful, and it can take a while for others to make an impression on her. In a practical sense, this resulted in her scoring below average on the psychometric tests of leadership and psychostability issued during her induction to the mechframe programme.
• History:
  
  History

  Louisa grew up in an utterly unremarkable and featureless housing development somewhere in the English midlands. At 18, she was working part-time as an agricultural worker, whilst her few friends had left to attend university elsewhere in the country, and looking with anxiety towards a decidedly uninteresting future. Needless to say, her plans of small-town angst were cut short when the Warped appeared, and disaster after disaster after disaster followed.
  
  Her family was not among those lucky enough to be at the front of the queue of evacuees awaiting resettlement, and after almost two years of delays and confusion they ended up stuck in a temporary housing settlement when an outbreak of Warped swept through.
  
  Louisa was seriously injured, but not fatally, and with the queue of evacuees infront of them substantially shortened by the attack, within a week her family was abled to receive settlement inside the Greater London Fortified Zone. With the medical services under massive strain, Louisa was given rushed and largely inadequate triage surgery for her wounds, and kicked out with little more than a dose of antibiotics and a prayer. Almost miraculously - or, in hindsight, suspiciously - she seemed to recover successfully with incredible speed, and disappeared into the obscurity of the desperate millions clining onto civilization.
  
  Two years later, whilst receiving an X-ray for a fractured rib she received whilst working as a labourer on the city walls, she was surprised when a squad of men resembling a SWAT team in business suits unceremoniously black-bagged her and tossed her into emergency military quarantine. It turned out that whatever doctor had triaged her two years previously had not noticed, or at least not considered, the Echidna parasite well-established but apparently dormat in her body.
  
  The following months - was it a year now? - passed as a blur, as after threats of jailtime, medical experimentation, and exile were thrown around, Louisa met with a woman representing a Japanese organization launching some kind of scholarship programme targetted at rare parasitized but stable humans. She offered protection, evacuation and specialist training to Louisa, with apparently no strings attached. With weeks of isolation and a lifetime of boredom pressing on her mind, it was the easiest choice she had ever made.
  

  ---

• Skills: Louisa does not have many party tricks. She had few hobbies before the end of the world, and fewer after. Her main penchant is her raw physical potential, possessing a strong naturally frame trained by (at this point) years of labour and occassional contact rugby with her local evacuee community team. In a professional capacity as a mechframe pilot, this makes her a reliable and competitive training partner. In an everyday capacity, this means she can... get the lids off jars with ease, carry heavy bags, and move furniture without any trouble.
• Chi-Mechframe: Grendel
  
  • Appearance:
    
    Mechframe Appearance

    
  • Abilities: The Grendel Chi-Mechframe was developed using a core taken from a monstrous, heavily armoured wyrm-like Warped, inspiring a bulky design with high-density plating. The frame is not designed to be maneuverable or fast, instead opting for sheer mass and defensive capabilities, allowing the user to pull off a high impact charge once or twice to insert them into the center of combat, and then giving them the protection to endure staying in place afterwards.
    
    In line with this, Louisa has trained in a static, highly defensive style of combat, opting to tie down enemies, get in their way, and otherwise provide openings for her teammates to do their thing.
    
    Grendel comes with an attuned heavy glaive, that can be thrown at short range and recalled to the mechframe. The glaive itself is configurable, extending either to its default glaive-configuration or retracting to form a cleaver sword.
    
    In essence, Grendel is uncomplicated and elegant, harnessing the Warped power of a Chi-Mechframe into a classic suit of frontline armour.
• Other:: N/A.

Advent of the Dawn —A Mecha Musume/Tokusatsu-Inspired RP

Hey! Here's my character, hope she fits the theme! Let me know if there's anything I can change or add.

Louisa Faye

• Name: Louisa Faye
• Age: 23
• Gender: Female
• Appearance: An tall young woman with short fair hair (apparently cut by herself or otherwise cut badly by someone else), a pale complexion and dull blue eyes. Her build is angular and muscular, with any fat that might have gone towards a charming feminine physique ruthlessly utilized elsewhere.
• Personality: Louisa (or 'Lou' as she is more commonly known) is approachable, straightforward, and rational in her demeanor, but internally she is haunted by a constant feeling of malaise and dissonance with regards to the path her life has taken, as if her mind has never quite caught up to the massive and traumatic changes of the last five years (i.e. the world ending, moving to the other side of the world, and becoming an experimental bio-weapon), or as if by some vague yet terrible mistake she has ended up living someone else's story. As a result, she can appear distant, or uninterested, or forgetful, and it can take a while for others to make an impression on her. In a practical sense, this resulted in her scoring below average on the psychometric tests of leadership and psychostability issued during her induction to the mechframe programme.
• History:
  
  History

  Louisa grew up in an utterly unremarkable and featureless housing development somewhere in the English midlands. At 18, she was working part-time as an agricultural worker, whilst her few friends had left to attend university elsewhere in the country, and looking with anxiety towards a decidedly uninteresting future. Needless to say, her plans of small-town angst were cut short when the Warped appeared, and disaster after disaster after disaster followed.
  
  Her family was not among those lucky enough to be at the front of the queue of evacuees awaiting resettlement, and after almost two years of delays and confusion they ended up stuck in a temporary housing settlement when an outbreak of Warped swept through.
  
  Louisa was seriously injured, but not fatally, and with the queue of evacuees infront of them substantially shortened by the attack, within a week her family was abled to receive settlement inside the Greater London Fortified Zone. With the medical services under massive strain, Louisa was given rushed and largely inadequate triage surgery for her wounds, and kicked out with little more than a dose of antibiotics and a prayer. Almost miraculously - or, in hindsight, suspiciously - she seemed to recover successfully with incredible speed, and disappeared into the obscurity of the desperate millions clining onto civilization.
  
  Two years later, whilst receiving an X-ray for a fractured rib she received whilst working as a labourer on the city walls, she was surprised when a squad of men resembling a SWAT team in business suits unceremoniously black-bagged her and tossed her into emergency military quarantine. It turned out that whatever doctor had triaged her two years previously had not noticed, or at least not considered, the Echidna parasite well-established but apparently dormat in her body.
  
  The following months - was it a year now? - passed as a blur, as after threats of jailtime, medical experimentation, and exile were thrown around, Louisa met with a woman representing a Japanese organization launching some kind of scholarship programme targetted at rare parasitized but stable humans. She offered protection, evacuation and specialist training to Louisa, with apparently no strings attached. With weeks of isolation and a lifetime of boredom pressing on her mind, it was the easiest choice she had ever made.
  

  ---

• Skills: Louisa does not have many party tricks. She had few hobbies before the end of the world, and fewer after. Her main penchant is her raw physical potential, possessing a strong naturally frame trained by (at this point) years of labour and occassional contact rugby with her local evacuee community team. In a professional capacity as a mechframe pilot, this makes her a reliable and competitive training partner. In an everyday capacity, this means she can... get the lids off jars with ease, carry heavy bags, and move furniture without any trouble.
• Chi-Mechframe: Grendel
  
  • Appearance:
    
    Mechframe Appearance

    
  • Abilities: The Grendel Chi-Mechframe was developed using a core taken from a monstrous, heavily armoured wyrm-like Warped, inspiring a bulky design with high-density plating. The frame is not designed to be maneuverable or fast, instead opting for sheer mass and defensive capabilities, allowing the user to pull off a high impact charge once or twice to insert them into the center of combat, and then giving them the protection to endure staying in place afterwards.
    
    In line with this, Louisa has trained in a static, highly defensive style of combat, opting to tie down enemies, get in their way, and otherwise provide openings for her teammates to do their thing.
    
    Grendel comes with an attuned heavy glaive, that can be thrown at short range and recalled to the mechframe. The glaive itself is configurable, extending either to its default glaive-configuration or retracting to form a cleaver sword.
    
    In essence, Grendel is uncomplicated and elegant, harnessing the Warped power of a Chi-Mechframe into a classic suit of frontline armour.
• Other:: N/A.

Warhammer Fantasy: The Guild of Esteemed Sellswords - An adventure in the Warhammer Fantasy world!

Prior to the entrance of the - Tilean... Estalian... whatever - umgi recruiter, Vargni had staggered outside past Balgrim and Galadred to relieve himself in a nearby hedge, and quite missed their arrival. The pleasant thing about hating living as much as Vargni did, was that you began to appreciate the little things. Voiding his bowels had become a highlight of his otherwise despondent daily routine of alcoholism, and he strode back towards the inn with something of a spring in his step.

He paused by a trough at the entrance to splash some water on his face and wash the oily sweat from his naked torso. As the waters stilled, he spent an uncomfortable moment looking at his reflection. The reflection of something ruined. Something that couldn't be put back.

Furrowing his brow at this surprisingly bleak thought, he dried his face using his thick beard as a towel and walked back through the threshold of the inn to see a gaggle of the patrons crowding around the umgi recruiter.

"I step outside for not five leaps of a hare and suddenly work crawls out of the woodwork! That's just my bloody luck." said Vargni to no one in particular.

As he navigated his way through the array of tables and stools occupying the tavern, he heard the recruiter speak up:

"If there are any others who wish to sign their name, make yourself known. I shall be here for ten minutes, and not a minute more. Until then, I thuggest you finith your drinks."

Clearing his throat, Vargni pushed his way through the milling crowd of newly contracted mercenaries to the front, as Galadred finished his signature.

"Hold your britches, friend - I'll sign up, and I'll do it for naught but a supply of ale and a good meal a day, as long as you don't mess us about and sell us off to the service of some petty umgi lord wot needs some rats catching."

After he added a series of jagged dwarfen runes to a contract, he caught sight of Galadred standing to his side out the corner of his eye, and turned to give the Elf a brief, hard look.

"You're a bit ugly for an elgi, aren't you? All those scars on your pretty face. I like that."

@Lucian