As usual, my sections are in bold, his are in italic, and notes will follow.

6.4.3. 18:32

They stopped the missiles. So I ordered long-duration laser fire. This time we did move back. The enemy started to come out, thinking we were retreating. Then it came. A focused pillar of light so intense my light adjusting visor could barely compensate for it, and so wide it engulfed the entire building. Invisible heat waves bounced off the building, leaving crackling air in place of the building. After half a minute, the beam shut off as quickly as it began. Only a small metal cube was left at the bottom, shiny and obviously refractive enough to defy the laser. Probably separately shielded, too. Obviously something important, I concluded it was most likely a command station. I gave the order to ray it up. The cube slowly faded away, then flashed as it was shuttled back to the ship, to be put in an isolation chamber. Maybe it would have prisoners.

A warning light blipped on my armband. We had hostiles incoming, probably backups or reserves.

“Troops stand in formation,” I said over my headset. “Let’s give them something to remember.”

And with that, all the organized troops, suddenly faded away, just like the cube had. We were all rayed up. Then there was a brief moment inside a very large chamber, on a ship in space. All the troops got into battle ready poses, and we were rayed in.

Right behind them. Having taken them completely by surprise, We opened fire, and the rear lines began to fall.

-Ground Commander Hhelosta Dharvak, R.O.F.

6.4.3. 18:35

The ground troops had to get out of there. The test cube had survived the laser fire. Good. That must be added to the ships and everything else. I was underground in the bunker, along with everyone else. 12 of us didn’t make it in time. He got destroyed. The reinforcements had arrived. The enemy had beamed aboard the ships in space and started firing.

“We need to get back to base. Everyone through the supply tunnel.”

Everyone rushed to the supply trolleys, and went off to headquarters. The ground troops got beamed down and were sent off to headquarters. I got on the last one and headed off to H.Q.

The first aerial battle had been won, but the ground battle had been lost. If things didn’t change, we would lose the war for sure.

-Major Morvagim

6.4.3. 18:35

Their reinforcements had been crushed easily. Surprised, they turned around and had started firing on us. Too late. My flankers, in their somewhat unorthodox but surprisingly effective commercial brand hoverboards had flanked them already, and fire came in from three sides. I also had antigravity jet troops lifting off, and lobbing grenades into the thick of the troops. Every time one of them was hit, the plasma displacement sent them spinning off, right into their own troops, who were then thrown off balance themselves. We mowed through them like an herbivore goes through feed. Then, seeing the battle was hopeless, they retreated by beaming away.

We had received a transmission from the command. Shortly after our ray transfer, the orbital ships had picked up a tunnel leading somewhere beneath the destroyed building. I sent five squads of crack troops to move in and seal it off, and report to me if anything interesting came of it. They also said the cube had interesting properties that we would soon be transferring to our own ships, and we were working on exploiting it’s weakness for when they used it.

A line opened opened up on my communicator. It was Colonel Svandyaris, the head of the team I’d sent to investigate the tunnel.

“Sir,” he said, calmly excited in that strange but very professional way he has. “It’s a supply tunnel. It’s a clear shot straight to their central headquarters. Requesting backup troops,” he said with the slightest hint of a smile around his eyes. “This is a huge break.”

I agreed, and called in for a larger portion of the army immediately. We were moving in. Right now.

-G.C. Hhelosta Dharvak, R.O.F.

6.4.3. 18:37

We made it back to Headquarters and collapsed the tunnel behind us. The tunnel had an emergency cave-in if one of the Supremacy got in the underground structure, The tunnel would collapse, and the the entrance would then seal up, thereby preventing any escape, and leaving them to starve. Plus, the entrance door was made especially so nothing could blast through. Once the tunnel had collapsed, we went into the main complex.

“The Supremacy learned of our underground complex.”

“How do you know?” Asked Commander Ungramz.

“The tunnel caved in.”

“Oh, yes. The old safety measures. I forgot.”

“Maybe they already know of the other tunnels.”

“Perhaps. But the safety measures will do the same thing. Whoever tries to go in the tunnels, stays there. You know that.”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. We don’t need to worry about that right now.”

“Yes sir.”

I left. No more talk needed to be done. There was a job to do. There were other battles that needed attendance. I decided that I would go in the one thing I preferred. Time to do some flying.

-Major Morvagim

6.4.3. 18:40

The tunnel had sealed up before our eyes. Fortunately we could get around that. Just because a tunnel collapses doesn’t mean it can’t be re-dug. The entrance couldn’t be blasted open, due to a sealing method that would be absolutely impractical in any other situation. Easy, however. We exposed it to extreme high exposure radiation. It aged the equivalent of thousands of years in a matter of minutes. We mopped up any excess, and moved into the tunnel area. There was a small chamber which hadn’t collapsed, thick with dust and dirt, from the implosion. I switched to sonic location mode, and echolocating images bounced back. Clear.

I dropped down. First priority, get our boys out. Their locaters were functioning, and thanks to the external armor, they’d be fine and well, despite having hundreds of pounds of earth dumped on them.

Next step, get this place drilled out. I measured the width of the tunnel, and relayed the dimensions back to the technical people. In a few seconds, a driller had been rayed down, in the exact dimensions necessary.

We powered it up and let it loose. Sonic vibrations whipped and smashed through the collapsed tunnel, dulled by our helmets automatically to keep the sound from killing us, loosening the dirt. Giant robotic arms and force fields lifted and shoved the dirt into the previous tunnel wall, compacting it tightly. Behind it it left metal walls, an instant corridor, easily accessible. It was even lit. It moved quickly, almost faster than we could run, moving through the tunnel, and leaving us with an impervious route, straight to the main nexus.

Troops were standing by. I had report that the assaults were going well, although signs pointed to the fact that the Kassisii may be stepping up fighter resistance soon. As if they were begging to meet the fighters waves. Perfect. A pincer movement, us from below, them from above, and already chaos on the surface. Confusion is a major impediment to military functions, and they were about to get even more confused. We were already halfway to the headquarters, with more than ten thousand armored, elite troops behind me, armed with everything from antipersonnel weaponry to anti-anti-personnel weaponry, from tank crashers to jet snipers, and the Kassisii people were in for a nasty shock.

-G.C. Hhelosta Dharvak, R.O.F.

6.4.3. 18:41

The Supremacy troops had entered the tunnel. So they thought they could enter the base. They were wrong. They could never enter the base. They had about ten thousand armored troops. We knew the weakness of their armor. The blast doors were closed, and they would be coming any minute. Since the blast doors were closed, that gave us more time to get ready to fight.

More of my men were coming every second. We now had around nine thousand, ready and waiting for battle. More were still coming, making the number greater. Soon, we had 10,500. Then the blast doors got older and older before our eyes, until it dissolved. They started pouring in, and fired. We also fired and people on both sides died. The battle grew horrible, and they kept on coming. They had about 4,000 left, and we had 4,300. They kept on fighting until we had 1,000, and they had 500, then they surrendered.

We relieved them of their weapons and beamed them into secure holding cells. They would be questioned for any information they knew. The weapons would be studied and examined, so we could make armor to block their shots. They had an assortment of weapons. And their armor was especially interesting. The armor would also be tested to see if it could withstand their own weapons. The tunnels would be well guarded from now on. They would never get in here.

-Corporal Velarcon: Telar sq.

6.4.3. 18:50

The management had decided it would be best to lull them into a false sense of security. They cut my troops in half. Our armor easily dispersed their shields, but the intentionally slipped information about it’s ‘weakness’ was pretended to be real, and our troops laid down as if dead. Fortunately, the ones they took armor and weapons off of were actually dead, and the rest were dumped in holding cells. The weapons and armor would be no good to them. It was specially designed for each warrior, using laser measuring, and without the ID markers located under the skin, it would dissolve before tampering occurred.

Meanwhile, while our attack was providing a diversion, the bulk of the land forces had captured major cities along the southern coast, important trade routes, and we had docked their crude metal supplies drastically. Their power situation could not be very good, either. With no solar power, and orbital bombardment continuing nonstop, their power supplies were going down. They would have to try something drastic soon. In the meantime, I surveyed my surroundings.

We were in a large building, and I could sense it was underground. It was domed, typical of their architecture, and there were no exits. Obviously the only way in or out was through raying.

However, we had a number of tricks. All of us had hidden objects. They were easily concealed. In addition to our miniaturized gadgets, we all had pieces for a number of larger pieces of equipment.

We assembled them into an industrial strength laser driller. My men activated their emergency shields, located under the skin. Our equipment told us we were directly beneath the classified material area, as we were to be questioned later, and all our gear was probably up there. I couldn’t have asked for it to be better. We drilled through the ceiling, and the hole was so precise that nothing fell through.

Once we had a path to the surface, I beamed our situation to the fleet. We needed a diversion, and hopefully weapons. In minutes a squad of attack fighters moved in, and we could hear the bombs rumble on the surface. We rigged up the small ascender, and moved up as quickly as possible. We couldn’t have come out in a more ideal spot. Luck was with us. There was shelter on all sides. Men began moving up, while I, armed with only a few tiny weapons, made my way to the hangar. There had obviously been no time to put them in a more secure place. Maybe they didn’t have room, but anyway, that’s where my suit’s locator was at, and so I moved across. There were too few people. Most were busy fine-tuning the shield, or sending the honey-yellow defense beams at our fighters. I got to the warehouse.

It was locked, but one specially shaped explosive took care of that detail. I swung the door back. Two men looked at me, alarmed, and were quickly dropped with a blast from a finger Natala.

I grabbed my suit, and jumped into it quickly. Moving in ones and twos, my men made their way to the warehouse, under cover of the curtains of sparks that fell from the shield with every impact. They began to carry the suits back as well, two or three at a time. In less than half an hour, we were all suited up, loose in the most information critical area they had, and ready for carnage. This time we would not be faking our deaths, and they had almost no weapons that could defeat our armor, as I knew from personal experience.  Teams scrambled out, some to steal information, others to bring in more troops, and my group to go take down the shields. They didn’t have a chance, or the recources to stop us. Good bye, Kassis.

-G.C. Hhelosta Dharvak, R.O.F

[Notes] First Section: See, this is the problem with teleportation. What’s to stop you from just beaming in armies or bombs wherever you please? Jamming cannot always be the answer. Why didn’t we use it earlier in the story? I hadn’t thought of it, and now that it’s in there, it changes everything. Anyway, he insisted that he had an indestructible bunker underneath, and so I wrote it in, but did what I wanted to do with it.  Heh heh.

Second Section: “12 of us didn’t make it in time. He got destroyed?” Is the guys name 12 of us? Hey, that’s maybe not too bad an idea… anyway, that was an accident. Anyway, he is now adding another immovable object to counter my unstoppable force. As usual. Also, now he is also using beaming. This stuff really should have been laid out between us at the start. The underground tunnel system presents some interesting tactical options…

Third Section: Maybe we kicked too much butt here? It’s entirely too easy. But you know the tunnels have to be more dangerous than that. Highly cramped quarters, one long corridor all the way down? Ambush City.

Fourth Section: Or you could just collapse them. That works, I guess. Also, he gets to fly because he prefers to? What kind of army is this? Didn’t they learn anything from the Holdars? Sheesh.

Fifth Section: This is not exactly how radiation works, you guys. Still, the entrance is sealed? DIG AROUND IT. No duh. That would not have been hard. Sonics are an underused recourse a lot of the time, I think. They’re quite versatile. And we have the tunnel digging machine of the future right here. Holy cow. Of course, now I’m the one who’s the invincible fighting machine, what with my super army.

Sixth Section: No you can’t no you can’t no you can’t! He’s super defensive here. And have you ever heard a more thrilling description of combat? He’s essentially counting off hit points here. And then we surrender and he gets all our weapons and armor. BS. (Things rapidly decline from here.)

Seventh Section: He did crazy, stupid stuff, I did crazy, stupid stuff. This marked the end of the story, as he refused to allow my escape from prison just as much as I protested our defeat and incarceration in the first place. He was already getting bored of the story, and it was getting kind of too clunky for me too. So we quit.

But the basic idea still remains, and is due for an overhaul, with a consistent and hopefully interesting array of combat technology, and what I hope will be a compelling story about the man from each side that might be able to change the course of this war…

Until then, I hope you enjoyed this series. There was a brief attempt at a rewrite a while back, with no real strength behind it, although it was better written, which may be posted at some point in the future. That’s all for now, though. Thanks for reading.

As usual, sections I wrote are in bold, sections he wrote are italics, and there will be notes on each section at the bottom. Here we go.

6.4.3 17:69

One weapons factory was gone. At least it wasn’t a barracks. Oh well. I was manning the Plazma cannon which had been upgraded to use an assortment of missiles. The missiles had  been brought up here. We have about 2,000 missiles in this chamber alone. You can tell just how big this Plazma cannon was. It can hold up to fifty Nemhan missiles. But we kept the range of missiles open. So it could hold fifty assorted missiles. That would last us for awhile.

“Sir. Ship coming in.”

A computerized voice spoke.

“Supremacy ship. Classification: Bomber. Name: Lhornaya.”

The ship appeared on my screen. It fired 1 or 2 missiles that were unfamiliar to me. It was targeted and I fired 5 Nemhan missiles. They fired and hit with the accuracy of a top marksman. The ship was badly damaged. And it was about to get worse. The Nemhan missiles left behind a fairly large electrical shock, thereby shutting down all systems by short-circuiting it. And if it didn’t short-circuit, the missile that hit the command deck would. Needless to say, the ship had short circuited, and fell to the ground. The explosion was enough to get the shields down to 60%. Add that to the missiles it had fired before we shot it down, The shield was at 21% working capacity. I decided to see what the missiles were called.

The database said those were Lattices missiles. Grim and deadly. There were also ground troops on the way. How lucky for us. I thought. They were never going to get this place as long as I’m around.

-Major Morvagim

6.4.3.  17:70

The Lhornaya had been shot down. Apparently they didn’t notice us, the rest of the wing, in time, however, as they failed to dispatch the Lattices that we then dropped upon the weakened shields. One was sufficient to bring it down, and I watched the Torches spiral and twist their way into smack down, sending flares of fire and destruction throughout the compound. The ground troops were moving in again. A couple of reserve fighters dropped out of formation, and began firing on the buildings the Torches had spared. The ground troops were moving in now, and were moving through the buildings. Apparently they had assumed their shields would hold us, and had neglected to provide sufficient troops to repel a ground attack.

They hadn’t neglected to provide backup fighters, though, and some streaked in from a different location. Our fighters jumped into formation. Soon the first fighter aerial battle of the war would be engaged. We would win easily, although we wouldn’t let our guards down. All they had brought was five fighters of the type we had codenamed “Zap” fighters, for their high speed. They had lousy maneuverability, compared to ours. We had fifteen Vardos’ awaiting them, excellent fighters for close quarters work or presenting a blockade. They were outmatched, outgunned, and outmanuvered. They were going down, just as I could see the Kassisii’s ground troops were.

Captain Klerhe, Bomber wing, H.S. Sadvar

6.4.3. 17:72

The aerial battle was a big mess. Every time a fighter crashed, 100 or so people died. We were out numbered, 50 to 30 [they had gotten renforcements]. And to make matters worse, our ground troops were losing too. I had to call for more reinforcements. Major Morvagim was helping in the air and on the ground as much as possible with the modified plazma cannon. Sending missiles towards the enemy on the ground and several towards enemy ships. The missiles were destructive, but they weren’t helping much. Laser fire! Dodge to the left.

“This is Captain Omgrav! We need back-up! I repeat, we need back-up!”

I cut the transmission. I fired 2 angler missiles. One hit dead center on one of the enemy fighters. The other went and hit one of the big ships, causing a big explosion. The fighter crashed to the ground, and it exploded, killing about

86 people. The bigger ship was severely damaged, and crashed too, killing more people. My screen showed that about 40 of our fighters were closing in. Now we had firepower. It took about 50 minutes to kill off the rest of the enemy fighters. The bigger ships turned and retreated. But the battle wasn’t over. Below us, the battle had pulled into the building. And it was horribly clear who was winning.

-Captain Omgrav

6.4.3. 18:30

The fighters had been driven back. The enemy fighters, although taking heavy damage, were throwing missiles left and right, exhausting their ammo, but the wanton over-compensation had driven us back. I watched from the ground. Every time a ship fell down, fire plumed around and portions of the battlefield were cloaked with smoke. Our bombers had made it away from the extravagantly firing fighters, although both of our aerial sides had received reinforcements. Occasionally one of the bigger fighters had plowed down, but none of the bombers were killed. Their fighters, although reduced to a handful of their original numbers, were now swinging about, and were obviously going to try and assist the besieged and badly losing Kassisii ground forces. I could just see the sparkle of their lasers powering up.

Fortunately, once again our military expertise came to the rescue. Trained ground-to-air specialists were already assisting the battle, lobbing Apogee SAM’s towards the fighters, which detonated with a concussive pulsing flash of white. Now, as the fighters came towards us, they dropped the Apogee firing tubes and armed the shoulder cannons. The streamlined bulges on the back of their body armor moved to the side, and slipped upwards, to mount on the shoulder. A viewscreen popped open. Communications links, coupled with a computer, had already picked out a target for each of them. All they had to do was point and fire. Within two seconds, the enemy ships had incoming fire. A couple of shots came from them, vaporizing one or two men. However, they were fairly tightly packed, and did not have much room to maneuver. They all executed almost mirror-image moves, but the Edgetracer missles had highly simple and effective tracking techniques, and all but two of the fighters met a sudden, vicious end.

The other two were still trying to outrun the missiles. They were fast too, and almost did it. But then another ground trooper from the land-to-air squadron fired a laser burst that disrupted its steering and orientation controls, and the Edgetracer connected. One pilot was left, out of reach, and already too far away, with the missile still trailing him. Well, that was his problem. He wouldn’t be bothering us anymore. Now, about the ground situation.

The enemy were all driven into one building. Almost too easy. It was simply a matter of how long. We weren’t going to move in. Yet.

“Attention, Kassisii!” I called over the voice enhancer, after my troops had established a perimeter. “You are surrounded. You have no shields. You have a very simple choice. Surrender, or we send down a missle or two to finish you off. You have twenty seconds.”

“We need no time to decide, you savages!” said a man from the building, broadcasting over the exterior speakers. “We will never surrender to your kind!”

“Very well,” I answered. I pressed the confirm button. High above, I could see Angelflames descending on them like messengers of death. We wouldn’t even have to step back. The Angelflames used shaped charges, and there would be no fallout.

“May you be treated mercifully on the other side.” I said, sealing their fates. Their own shattered building would serve as their grave.

-Ground Commander Hhelosta Dharvak, Rapid Occupation Forces

6.4.3. 18:31

The Angelflames had almost gotten us. I had hit them with Selar missiles. The Selar missiles were meant to stop other missiles. They track the course of the incoming missiles and fire special nets to hold the missiles. Then the missiles go to the nets and explode. The nets disintegrate a millisecond before explosion. So the missile in the net gets destroyed instead of the net protecting it, then just the net being destroyed. Quite ingenious.

Anyway, the missiles got destroyed, so I started firing on the enemy ship that fired the missiles. It was down in minutes, crashing to the ground with a big explosion, and a lot of enemy dead. My comlink flashed.

“Reinforcements are on the way. Try to stay alive as long as you can.”

“We’ll try.”

“Good. Stay on this secure channel.”

The link was terminated. Help was on the way.

-Major Morvagim

[Notes] First Section: Yes, he spelled it “Plazma,” but I don’t know whether or not it was on purpose. He’s got some pretty vague descriptions, and he was saying unnecessary things. He was really trying to get that section overwith. His shields went down very quickly (in a section he wrote), and he still thinks he has the upper hand? Weird.

Second Section: Yeah, I may be a bit domineering here, but I’d like to think I’m doing it with a bit of style. After all, he’s not defending himself to aggressively.

Third Section: See, not defending himself. Oh, wait, now he is, he shot down our fighters. Oh, wait, they killed his own soldiers. Oh, wait, we’re winning on the ground, and I didn’t have to say so? Yeah, he really wanted to be done with the story about now, he was getting bored.

Fourth Section: Welp, they’re screwed. I must say, the Holdars have some pretty sophisticated equipment. Yes, I know some of the body armor stuff (Iron Man, anybody?) has been done before, but I hadn’t seen much if any of it when I wrote this.

Fifth Section: Did that missile description confuse you? It confuses me. It sounds like it deploys a net that explodes before it hits our missiles, but that wouldn’t stop it. Whatever. He had a really short segment here.

Next time will be an extra long installment, so I can get to the end of this madness.

Allow me to explain.

The point of this (freely available, open source) game is to create other games. By using very simplistic models, one could create a first or third person shooter of nearly any genre. For instance, the simple rods and spheres of which 3D stick figures are constructed would be extremely easy to skin. Basic clothing, hats, etc could also be provided and re-colored according to your preferences with a simple in-game editor. By having talented people upload the blank, basic shapes of clothing items, it should be very easy to quickly stock a library from which anyone can download.

Given a sophisticated enough approach to modeling, non-human stick figures could even be created, such as animals, robots or aliens, and possibly even morphing between them, to create games with Terminators, werewolves, or Transformers.

As for the rest, Google’s free Sketchup program would provide an ideal solution. Google is best at creating basic polygonal shapes, and with a sufficiently advanced plugin, it could easily be adapted to export to the game, creating weapons, vehicles and maps with ease.

For instance, let’s review the process of making a bow and arrow weapon. First, model a simple bow in one file, and an arrow in another. Then export them to the game. In game, you would scale the model appropriately, and define a few points where the weapon is held, where projectiles come from, etc. For more advanced models like a bending bow, additional models of the bow being bend may  be required. Next, choose a projectile, in this case the simple arrow we modeled earlier, and then define the attributes of the weapon.

All weapon types in the game would fall under a few basic categories, no matter what they were. Sniper weapons would have highly accurate crosshairs and possibly a scope. Shotguns or other inaccurate weapons would have a circle, inside which the projectile would land somewhere randomly, meaning closer is better. Laser weapons would fire on a straight line. In our bow example, the projectile type is ballistic, meaning it is affected by gravity. Other weapons in this category would include grenades or rocks. So, selecting ballistic, we then have an option of seeing either a dotted arch through the air, showing expected trajectory, or a circle on the ground, inside which the arrow will fall randomly. Then we define a few basic properties about the arrow, making it an impact weapon, instead of an explosive one, and mess with a few sliders to determine damage amount, armor piercing capabilities, explosion radius, and so on. This same process could be applied to any weapon type, from superpowers to guns to knives.

Hand to hand combat would most likely be represented by using different keys to attack from different angles, and with a circle on the ground to show your reach. A keyframing system would allow you to set up attacks and combos as desired, and attacks could be blocked by performing the same attack within a given amount of time. Movement could also be defined, ranging from simple running, to full blown parkour moves, keyframed by those with patience, and then uploaded. Game creators could then pick and choose the available moves, and assign key combos to each.

As for maps, this is also easily solved by Sketchup. It’s extremely easy to build all sorts of boxes, pillars, etc, to create any sort of map. By having some predefined textures to determine building materials, it would be child’s play to create maps. For instance, a certain shade of blue applied to a material would mark it as a booster in the game, which could then have its settings adjusted. Gray could mean the material is concrete, and is so resilient to certain kinds of attacks, but crumbles easily. Other textures could mean climbable surfaces, water, etc. Various components could represent spawn points and power-up locations.

Another benefit of using very simple geometry and textures is that this game could still run quickly but have accurate, adjustable physics. For instance, materials marked as concrete will crumble, vehicles will react accurately when taking damage, objects might get underfoot. With very simple models, it should be very simple to have all sorts of effects, which can be toggled and adjusted accordingly, such as gravity strength, Planes could have a wing ripped off, for example, with each wing section providing a certain amount of lift, and if blown off, would make the plane that much harder to control, rather than just a basic crash scene.

Which brings us to vehicles. Vehicles would undoubtedly be more difficult to create, but definitely within reach. By using appropriate grouping, certain sections could be defined as wheels or engines, and by choosing the vehicle type, various options would appear. Car vehicles would have adjustable suspension amounts, or planes would have varying speeds, spaceships would maneuver with specific control schemes, and so on. And of course, weapons and interiors could be designed, so that one player can fly the plane like a flight sim, while others man machine guns or bombs. Once again, all weapons and vehicles are available freely for all projects, able to be re-colored or have their attributes changed freely.

Essentially, the game provides a way to make your own game, easily. Some could be collaborative affairs, with many people working to create free, precise knockoffs of Halo or other games like Assassin’s Creed, some could be single person affairs, representing some bizarre mashup. All would be freely available, and the best would be voted to the top, available to be played online or in single-player campaigns, again, defined by the creator.

Let’s examine this concept fully. Let’s say you want to create a ninja combat game. Well, first you load the basic un-textured stick figure. Then you color him black, and then download various hoods and vests from the online warehouse. Make several different colors, or perhaps find some samurai armor and make a new class. Next, you can either download or create a simple ninja sword, choose from predefined combos, and assign it to your various player classes. Next, get some ninja throwing stars by either method, define them as inaccurate ballistic weapons with low damage, and equip them to your ninja class. Do likewise with bows and arrows for your samurai.

You can then create a dojo or Japanese-style castle for your people to fight in, making sure to define some surfaces as climbable, so that you can have your ninjas climb around, using gymnastics moves also available to download for your project. Add whatever other details you like, such as lighting or additional weapons, and upload the finished product. Other people can chime in with suggestions or upload their own versions.

Altogether, this would be very powerful tool, allowing nearly anyone to create anything from superheroes to science fiction to old west shootouts to cavemen battles, and everything in between. Nearly any first or third person shooter or adventure game could be recreated with simpler graphics, and made freely available to play. This could easily become the most popular game in existence, given a large enough userbase. Is there some feature missing, like a power-up that can reverse time? Someone can code it! Want to hack together that crazy robots versus dinosaurs idea you just had? Or maybe a group of assassins stalking each other like Sam Fisher or Batman in a humungous city? Slap together other peoples elements, and you could be playing it in an hour, as long as you don’t mind simplistic stick figures.

Let your imagination run wild.

A simple example I made. The actual game could look more sophisticated than this, but this gets the point across. This is your standard modern weapons pack, with machine gun.

An example of sniping, in the same basic game. This weapon would have high firepower, a slow reload rate, and accurate shots.

Side-scrolling. Yeah, there are a few out there, but that’s not all.

Stick figures.

Why do I like stick figures so much? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s because they’re easy to draw, maybe it’s because they’re so dynamic. One of the things you’ll always hear from good artists is about the line of motion, a simple line that all the anatomy is based on. With stick figures, that’s all you have. (Good stick figures anyway.)

But what I’m proposing is a game that’s side-scrolling, with occasional top-down views. Sometimes it would play like Canabalt, running around on the roofs, sometimes like Stickman Sam, shooting with the mouse and moving with the arrow keys, or Matrix Bullettime Fighting, with sweet kung-fu combos, and sometimes like Spy Hunter, zooming around in your car or motorcycle or whatever.

You could customize your character, putting on custom graphics if you wanted, and choose from nearly any theme you want. Spartan? Punk Rock Terminator? Parkour Karate expert? Assassin? It’s all good. Basic archetypes could have their own deignated areas, with large crossover sections where anything goes. There would have to be a huge, sprawling city in 2D, but it couldn’t be too hard compared to World of Warcraft. Perhaps multiple “levels” could be used, like sheets of paper stacked on top of each other, that would allow you to have places several maps deep.

Essentially, the game should not be monotonous grinding, spending hours to gain a level. It should be fun, fast, lighthearted arcade action, whether you have superpowers or swords or your own private helicopter. Basically, a casual fun game with tons of people playing. It really shouldn’t be too hard to make, and it’s something I’d be interested in checking out.

A potential screenshot for the game, with your character, a green-haired guy with fire powers, about to be attacked by some sort of ninja. Obviously, you wouldn't be able to see into other peoples apartments.

My sections are in bold, his are in italic. You know the drill by now, if you’ve read the previous entries in this series. Notes will follow, as usual.

6.4.3. 17:60

We now had the necessary adjustments made to the weapons. Specialty weapons for this particular purpose would be online in a matter of hours. There was no time to lose. We already knew of the structural weakness, but that was not convenient enough a flaw, as we had to get on-site to manage it. But now we had a positive weakness that could penetrate their shields.

We had found a paper detailing a part required for the shields to function. Our own developments had followed a similar path from the earlier shields we had left behind when we left, but they had, again, taken a different route somewhere down the development path. We had toyed with such designs, but passed them off as too unstable to function. They had apparently worked around this problem, where we had taken a different idea and developed them into our current shields.

But in bypassing the instability, they had opened up a new problem. The shields could be prompted back into imminent overload by special firing at strategic points in the dome. Calculating carefully, we could easily cause their domes to collapse, and the shield generators to explode with a highly potent radioactive blast. Also, we had come up with a method that would weaken the shield far more than regular straightforward blasts.

The shields allowed varieties of non-concentrated light to pass through it, such as sunlight. By beginning at a level below the threshold level, then increasing to above it, back and forth, we could use the strobe effect to greatly weaken their shields to the point where our blasts would have regular effect.

As a side note, we could blanket the entire shield area in concentrated light, causing the area to black out, and allow no external light sources to enter, which would have the bonus ability of completely destroying their huge solar generator plants, which provided power to ninety percent of their functions, including many military ones. And of course, if they weren’t shielded, we could just destroy them the good old way.

In less than an hour, Operation Prometheus would begin, stealing their fire, as the legend went, and shutting down their power generators. And soon, we would begin Operation Strobe, and obliterate their shields for good.

-Holdar Supremacy report

6.4.3. 17:62

The shield was being adjusted. The weakness would hopefully be fixed before the Supremacy got to one of our buildings. We had put up another shield that didn’t have the same weakness. They would have to get new weapons. By then, the shields would be fixed. No new weapons would be able to get through this. The sooner the better. I was one of the only people in the field that knew the workings of a shield. We started only 3 minutes ago. We had made some progress. The hard part would be to fix the main flaw. We would have to turn it down to 3% capacity. So we did. When the outer shield was up, we would get the shield done within the hour. The Supremacy would be unable to do anything about it.

-Major Morvagim

6.4.3. 17:64

There was a scurry of activity to every shielded building in the Kassis planet. They carried large crates, presumably with new She’esh components. Obviously they were switching to more conventional shields. That was fine with us. We knew how to take them down too. They must have discovered our access of the database, and realized we might have discovered the weakness.

Oh, well. It was far too late. For them. We were finally pulling in a fairly large percentage of the fleet, about five hundred ships. All of them heavy fire, with newly reprogrammed laser fire. All of them were under heavy escort, which their fighter squadrons could not hope to reduce below working standards without getting their entire fleet demolished. We had already begun the draining of their power generators. Satellite systems were now sending down huge beams of light, and the shields, true to design, were now blotting out all incoming light.

With a war on, their energy reserves could not last more than a few days without rationing, which would put a severe crimp in their operations. The huge lasers were turned down enough to avoid major power drain on our part, but still had plenty of firepower to destroy the panels if the shields ever dropped. Any second now, the fleet would begin its first run, and even if they accomplished nothing more than causing their shields to eat up more power, it was worth it. And we expected to cause far more damage than that. The first strike would begin in approximately one minute. And counting…

A.C. Telyon

6.4.3. 17:65

The Supremacy was starting an attack run. They were fools. They were wrong to think they could drain our shields. They could never hope to drain them. We could switch the power sources every time they were almost out of power, if the shields weren’t done by then. We were almost done with the shields. Any moment now, the signal would hopefully come and they would turn off the outer shield, and see how the main shield holds. A green light came on the communicator.

“That’s the signal. Turn off the outer shield on my command!”

You had to have precise timing to pull this off. The outer shield had to be turned off before the main shield could be turned on. And to prevent the Supremacy from hitting us while the shields were off… that required exact timing.

There appeared to be a certain order that they attacked in. One ship would fire 50 laser bursts, then pull away, while another ship took it’s place. It had to be done when the ships were switching places. Exactly 2 seconds to switch shields. The laser fire stopped.

“Now!”

The outer shield turned off, and the main shield turned on. Just as the next ship started firing. That is talent. That’s why I  am such a good pilot. The shield would only hold for days under this pressure, but power sources were replaceable. It was a spectacular sight, the lasers against the shield. If we lived through this war, I would remember that sight.

-Major Morvagim

6.4.3.  17:65

They had switched off their newly exploited shields, only to be replaced with regular shields, just as our pilots were getting in their first trial runs. Oh, well. We had plenty of experience with regular shields. No one can become as proficient as we are at war and not know how to deplete them. They must be very smug right now, I thought. Let’s wipe those grins off their arrogant faces.

I was commanding the Lhornaya, a ship loaded with heavy implements and bombs. Perfect for draining shields. I started sending down the Lattice missiles. These were much larger, much more competent versions of the smaller Nimbi missiles. These weighed well over a ton each. The Lattices used nuclear power, in comparison to most other energy weapons. More unstable, a bit shorter explosion time, but energy that was hard to counter. We also had various compounds to help stabilize, increase, and prolong its force.  These would send out the pressuring strands with a light that made the Nimbi look dimmer than a low wattage bulb. In addition, they had Miniature Angelflames, known as Holy Torches, mounted around the body, and when the shield dropped, they would slam into whatever the shield used to be protecting.

I, along with several of my fellow pilots proceeded to drop several Lattices. I looked down, through the transparent floor in the bombing bay, and watched the missile slide away, disappearing from sight miles away, towards the giant shield protecting the weapons production factory that made all their military grade lasers. Then it struck. Flashing across like a reflection in a pond, the vivid green began straining, with the streams of draining energy moving across the shield like lightning, moving slowly, sliding around, then snapping into another randomly determined pattern. The greenish shields glowed brighter, fringing into gold at the contact point. Then two more struck. The shield began to lose opacity, and I could see the fountains of light where the shield’s broadcasters were sending it up. Then the whole thing collapsed in a shower of sparks.

Similar developments were occurring at a few other locations across the globe, and we would soon be taking others down. The Torches suddenly lit up, illuminating the distant landscape with fiery light, only to give way to actual fire as they struck. Buildings were coming down. Our mission was accomplished here. We would move to the next location. Time for the ground crews to mop up. In fact, as we headed to our next target, I could see the immensely powerful Colossus Tanks and Behemoth Land ships moving in, trailing thousands of soldiers behind them, even now beginning to sweep into the enemy occupations.

-Boldaer Qhinil, Captain, H.S. Lhornaya

[Notes] First section: The shield weakness arose from a “conversation” between me and Josh over his so-callled “invincible” shield. I asked if it let light in, and he said, yes, but it blocks out dangerous levels of light. Thus, by beaming down concentrated light towards their solar farms, it will block out their power.Also, I made another reference to Earth culture, in Prometheus. I need to stop doing that, they’re not from earth…

Second section: Blah blah blah we’re invincible blah blah blah for some reason a pilot with the rank of major is one of the only people who knows about our shield technology blah blah blah.

Third section:  I told him his people would obviously use some sort of environmentally stable energy source, and aside from wind and solar, he could not think of a single other one, so he was forced to lose his solar plants. I specifically didn’t tell him about thermal energy from the planet core, though, heh heh heh. Energy, baby, it’s the currency and ammo for the war of the future.

Fourth section: “They were fools. They were wrong to think they could drain our shields. They could never hope to drain them. We could switch the power sources every time they were almost out of power.” No you can’t no you can’t no you can’t! My plan is foolproof! “The outer shield turned off, and the main shield turned on. Just as the next ship started firing. That is talent. That’s why I  am such a good pilot.” Because you can push buttons on time?

Fifth section: I included a fifth section because I wanted to wrap up this whole stupid “War of the Shields” thing. Anyway, we’re now getting into the full-scale invasion, and things get pretty dumb…

My sections are in bold, his are in italic. You know the drill by now. If you don’t, read the previous entries in this series. Notes will follow.

6.4.3. 17:08

The holardram had destroyed our main Barracks! I was getting very annoyed. My name is Private Yamorthen Negber of the Telar squad. The Holdar Supremacy was getting too bitter. It was a bit past dawn. I had taken a fighter to take out a couple of the ships. I had just gotten past the enemy buildings when I saw the Telyon. I opened fire. The shields were kind of strong, but I fired enough shots to deplete the shields. My own shields were almost gone. I fired 3 missiles. They took out the starboard engine and left a big hole in the hull. I smiled. Now that was a sight that Major Morvagim would have loved to see. Of course I would tell him about it later.

Now that the Telyon was out of the way, I went to take out 1 or 2 ships. They proved difficult. I had taken out 2 ships, when I began to be fired upon from behind. I raced away as fast as I could, but I was too slow. The ship behind me was pounding my shields. Then they gave way. They followed me and took out my port engine and communications array. I myself was hurt, but not too badly. I decided that it was the Telyon that had fired on me. I would have to land soon, or else the sparks would ignite something else and explode. I landed as soon as I was close enough to walk back to base. I got about a half mile when my ship exploded. I then continued my long walk back to base.

-Private Negber: Telar sqaudron

6.4.3. 17:10

This is Fodavva Oleras, acting captain of the Telyon, in absence of Cptn. Phinirri. Now, an incident had occurred. A fighter had snuck up and attempted a run, practically suicidal, zipping in too close for us to fire, and shooting far more missiles than were prudent. Then three shocks came, presumably the last of his missiles, and the Telyon bucked. I surveyed the damage, quickly, with an eye trained from long practice. One structural impact, a large dent in the hull, with negligible penetration, and two hits to the starboard engine side. The damage appeared worse than it was, but it was still moderately bad. Computer analysis indicated functioning capacity at 60%. We would have to refit the starboard engine immediately afterward.

Now, however, it was time to take out the our little friend. We sent a good-bye present in the form of a volley of the green inferno from the Ionicannons. He spun, but the flash of a vivid emerald flare broke on his port engine, and a rift was shorn from it. We also appeared to have destroyed the bulbous communications array on the rear. He plummeted toward the ground, managing to stabilize himself. Inexplicably, he landed and ejected from his craft. He hadn’t gotten [thirty feet] when his craft exploded. Obviously unstable or using flammable fuel.

He began to walk towards his base when a brilliant red light engulfed him, and rayed him aboard the holding section on the Telyon. We extracted his knowledge. He would be put in a larger hold when we refitted at Spacedock III, which we were already on our way towards. I relayed a report to the fleet.

Fodavva Oleras, A.C., Telyon

6.4.3. 17:13

When Private Negber didn’t come back, I assumed he was captured by the enemy, and they would undoubtedly interrogate him with one of their machines. Oh well. He didn’t know much about the full extent of our military operations. But he did know all about fighters. But that’s about all. All they would be able to get out of him was how fighters worked, how to defend himself, and what he knew about the military while he is a private.

Anyway, I was making repairs on the VELANYM. The recruiting had gotten boring. So I chose something new to do, leaving the recruiting to Major Trinthré. This was slightly more fun, plus, Major Morvagim was in charge of the repairs. It would take several days to repair, but it would be worth it. It had lost most of the ammunition it had, so we had to refit it. The VELANYM would be done within a week. I went back to recruiting. Boring, boring, boring. Oh well. At least I was helping the military ground forces grow.

We had moved all the people on the planet into various refugee camps. The camps were well guarded, so the Holdar Supremacy couldn’t get them. And after what happened to the Vingré, the barracks were updated so they could not be destroyed. The time was well worth the effort. As it turns out, after the defense mechanisms were up, one of the Holdar ships had come and tried to destroy one. The cannons had destroyed the ship before it had time to get away. Almost nothing could destroy them now. And the enemy didn’t know the thing that could get through.

-Corporal Velarcon: Telar sq.

6.4.3. 17:42

A.C., H.S. Telyon

Well, well, well. It seemed we had caught a greater prize than we anticipated. The pilot was a mere private, which gave us some information on their military condition in and of itself, seeing as how they had privates handling fighters, but he knew all of the basics.

Their preliminary boot camp training, all of his fighter’s stats and characteristics, and it’s armaments, to begin with. He also knew the culture, and the people, etc., which gave us confirmation to our database, and provided some new insights The civilian population was quite primitive, as they were not allowed to have computers, a weakness we could exploit.

Also, he was fairly clever, and had managed to compile some of the information he had, and make some highly innovative guesses, which we calculated had a 90% chance of being correct. And, using his hypotheses, combined with our data, allowed us to make even more conclusions. But the real prize was that we found was his Military Computer ID, or MCID. So, utilizing a little hacking, we managed to get information up to the lower priority but still secret information, the FOREL levels of clearance, [upper low, and lower middle level info] but also one item of a BERODE level intelligence, [upper mid level], which was the absolute highest we could get with a private’s ID. A routine paper involving the development of those new shields. It was somewhat buried, but with our knowledge of mechanical and technological devices, they had gained the secret to their seemingly invincible shields big, and a cleverly concealed weakness, and we were going to exploit it in minutes, as soon as the technicians had made the necessary adjustments, and they were whipping together some prototype weapons. Now, even if the enemy learned that we knew their shield’s weakness, it was physically impossible to fix the weakness without making the shields so weak as to be almost nonexistent. The assault would begin anew in a matter of hours.

-Fodavva Oleras, A.C., Telyon

6.4.3. 17:57

No doubt the enemy knew the shields weakness by now. That would have to be fixed before the Holdar Supremacy had a chance to destroy it. We would have to put up another shield a prototype of the new ones so the Supremacy wouldn’t be able to get through while the weakness was fixed. The new shields would be out in a couple of days. These had been checked and checked again several times over, so there were no weaknesses. Who knew? Maybe the war would be over by then. The spies had told us only minutes ago that the Supremacy were making new weapons to get through the existing shield. The Supremacy would not get through this. Since privates don’t need to know all about what’s going on, and since the war started, privates always carry misinformation. The cannons would take care of them.

-Major Morvagim

[Notes] Okay, there was a LOT of crap going back and forth in these sections.

First Section: Yeah, right. ONE fighter practically takes out the Telyon (A missile cruiser, and a pretty big one at that.) and two more? Even if they “proved difficult,” he still gets taken down almost immediately after. I argued with him for a long time afterwards, but he refused to change his mind. (This happens often in arguments with him, even after he’s PROVED to be wrong.)

Second Section: So, in retaliation for the stupidity of that last section, this happens. I put the last run into more realistic terms, then capture the pilot. Then we get into some really, really dumb stuff on Josh’s behalf, I must say.

Third Section: Well, recruiting is boring! I’ll just go do something else. Well, back to the boring recruiting! Oh, hey, invincible shields! Okey dokey. But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Fourth Section: The reason I say that none of the civilians are allowed to use computers is because Josh himself said so. We were “discussing” the type of information I’d get from the captive, and he said that here, NO civilians were allowed to use computers, they were illegal. He used it to counter a point, but I decided to use it. Basically, he cannot have invincible shields, and I’m just calling him on that. Also, I put in there the “even if they found out we knew” bit because Josh wasn’t too good at taking what he knew and keeping it separate from what his characters know.

Fifth Section: So he does it anyway. Let’s deconstruct this for a minute. An hour ago, his characters thought the shields were invincible. We had already captured the private, and he assumes we’ve read his mind. He has no problem with this. Now, I’ve hacked into his computers, (something he couldn’t have predicted, at least not what we’d find,) extrapolated a heck of a lot of information, (which he has no way of knowing what we’d make of it,) and found a design flaw (in the shields he thought were invincible.) So, without any reason other than the fact I wrote it, he suddenly assumes both that his shields have a weakness, and that I’ve found it, and probably due to the captured pilot. Really, that’s almost certainly not the only person we’ve captured by now, but still. It’s completely illogical.

Furthermore, he decides to replace his previous invincible shields with another type of invincible shield, without stating why it’s different, or why they didn’t just put up the fully tested invincible shields in the first place. Also, it was stated clearly at the beginning that all their spies (the Gorohond Resistance) were discovered and eliminated. There’s no possibility that he has spies working among our engineers (remember, we just got here, we’ll know everybody with us, especially with the scientists/engineers, we’ve wiped out any spies that may have been traveling with us, there’s no way their culture is advanced enough to pass off as one of our engineers, especially with all the technological development we’ve gone through, hence, it’s ridiculous.)

Furthermore, the privates (the ones flying their highly advanced fighters) don’t need to know what’s going on? Information is critical on the battlefield, and always has been. If soldiers can’t make informed choices about what’s going on, they will almost certainly die. Battles have been won or lost over misinformation, and if your troops don’t know what’s going on in the battlefield at least, they’re toast. So, just to counter me, he states that the obvious solution to making sure privates can’t reveal information in the unlikely-compared-to-death situation of capture, is to deliberately load up all privates with false information. He said this to try and create a reason I won’t be able to get data out of privates, but it’s going to end up killing a lot more men than it saves, especially if the people with the misinformation are your gorram air support!

It’s still no guarantee I won’t just capture somebody of higher rank anyway! And it’s not like you can just lie to them about growing up, about the experiences they’ve had. They know what flying fighters is like, they’ve flown them. They know how to use every weapon they’ve trained with, they have all their experiences going through boot camp, growing up, on and on. And if you’ve deliberately lied to them during this phase, teaching them how to use their weapons wrong, just so they can’t reveal the truth, then you’re huge idiots! Is the real boot camp if you’re lucky enough to survive past private?

Really, the only thing you could lie to them about is where everybody is at. Guess what? We know where we’re at. And with our space observation, we most likely know where you’re at. Most privates aren’t really going to know where the armies are located on the other side of the globe anyway, so the only thing you can really deprive them of if you care about their survival at all is the location of their potential backup! Which is counter-intuitive!

This whole mess was really stupid. I brought up several of these points to him, but he wouldn’t listen. Although he’d be sure to protest if I started using any of the logical extensions of what he’d written. Mainly I was arguing about his new invincible shields, which led to the new weakness he inadvertently exposed, as you’ll see in the next installment. Oh well…

In today’s section, we’ll meet some different viewpoint characters, taking the battle to the ground. As usual, sections that were written by me are in bold, sections written by my brother are in italics. Enjoy.

6.4.3. 16:65

So, the fools thought they took down the communications building. Their Thunderer bombs had drained the shield a small amount. These new shields were so strong. And it’s amazing what you can do with holograms these days. To our eyes, it looked like the building was blown to smithereens. Not so. Even if the shields hadn’t been able to withstand the thunderer bombs, the building would have been able to withstand 3 or 4 of them. As the ship that had been following us left, we made our way to the compound.

“We need to call the ships in. They are preparing for a ground attack,” I told the general.

“The ships have been called in as of…” The general checked his watch. “16:58. We need to gather more people to fight. You are in charge of recruiting. Now get to it.”

“Yes sir.”

-Major Morvagim

6.4.3. 16:83

I am Talosa Varak, major in the Holdar Ground Forces, and Skipper of Talon squadron. Cptn. Phinirri had joined to assist the ground effort, controlling from Invasion HQ. I was somewhat unsure why a space navy captain was controlling ground forces, but I knew the Supremacy must have a good reason. Most likely, I assumed, he was a tactics and strategy expert, a talent that would give him a nice edge on the battlefield of the stars. Turns out I was right. Our team moved through tunnel after tunnel. Individuals had been apprehended, and promptly disabled with a nucleus charge. They were shipped off to HQ as prisoners of war. The Kassisii may have had an excellent assortment of ships and other craft, as well as large scale weapons; after all, they were based off of our designs, but nothing matched the power and innovation of the Holdar Army. This was why we had decided to open the invasion with ground troops. My unit snapped against the walls.

We wore XO body armor, outfitted with micro hydraulics, that made us more than a hundred times stronger than we already were. We could run at [65 mph], jump more than [50 feet], and our senses were highly attuned and enhanced. Added to state of the art technology, our squadron alone could withstand thousands of Kassisii. We came to a door. The map on my screen showed the room behind to be a station designed to control one of the ground to space cannons. This was a secondary objective, but the opportunity was to good to pass up. The door was double enforced steel/rhodium alloy, that looked like it could take a pounding. I kicked it in. The hinges and locking mechanisms were nowhere near as tough as the door itself, or my enhanced strength.

The guards were firing at me even before I cleared the door. Most shots went wide, due to the prismatic effect projected by my suit, but a couple hit me and bounced off, scoring a light mark on the door. By that time of course, our squad was in, and everybody disabled by a blast of siesta flare, which was dimmed by our helmets. We rounded them up, and secured the hallway. Twenty seconds later, a computer tech winged up on a hover board, which, although unorthodox, turned out to be highly efficient. He moved into the room, and my men kept the door covered while I talked to the tech.

“Can you shut down the cannon?” I asked.

“Yes, sir.” he replied. “I can hack directly through the hardware, in fact, and bypass encryptions and security features as easily as you would step around an obstacle.” He had a scanner hooked up to the console. It showed a password screen. He literally shoved it aside and followed a trail from the confirm button to another screen, Flak Controls.

“Got it,” he said. “Now then, I can disable this cannon, and even some others as well, but I can’t take the whole system down.”

“Why not? These have got to have communications with each other.”

“Yes, but for security reasons,” he gestured to our assembled security threat, “Each cannon can only connect through a link to two other cannons, in a triangle. If I had a guy onsite at each control station, or at least at one corner of each triangle, I could do it, but I can’t take it down remotely, I would have to be physically on-site.”

“All right,” I replied, “Do your thing. I want a fleet link installed here, so we can control the whole place from the fleet.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll have it up in five minutes.”

“Good,” I said, moving down the halls. “ I’ll get a guard for you, and set up a barrier at this point.” The barriers are basically blanket shields. You put a relay at each corner, and activate it. If you’ve got a suit or an access key, you can walk right through, if not, you bounce off, just like everything else, matter or energy. We’d installed them at all the points we’ve captured, and I’ll bet the enemy is not pleased.

-Major. Varak, Skipper: Talon sqaudron

6.4.3. 16:96

I raced down a corridor, heading to the Invasion protection HQ. The H.S. had pulled in their ships from around the sun. This meant only one thing. They were going for a ground invasion. My name is Corporal Brocka Velarcon. I am in charge of most of the ground troops. The Telar Squad to be precise. The bulk of the ground forces. The HQ was packed. I made my way to the briefing room. It took about 10 minutes. Simply because I had to take the stairs, and the levied was packed. Once I was in the briefing room, I sat down.

“Welcome. As you may know, the Holdar Supremacy has taken their ships out of orbit. Our spies have told us that they are massing a huge army. Nearly 10,000,000 soldiers. Corporal. How many soldiers are in your division?” The Admiral asked.

“7,000,000.” I said.

“Good. Now then. Major Morvagim, how many in under your command?”

“2,000,000.”

“Excellent. Now then, we need another 20,000,000 to be able to beat this army of theirs. You have two weeks. Get to it. Major Morvagim. I need you to have at least 6,000,000 at the specified time. Corporal. I need you to have 10,000,000 5 days before the specified time. If possible, get more. Meeting dismissed.”

We all left to do some recruiting. Somehow, I got the feeling that I would have the hardest time.

-Corporal Velarcon: Telar sqaudron

6.4.3. 17:03

Their troops were unable to oppose us. Our far superior military skill, honed and perfected by hundreds of years of war, easily beat their rudimentary at best military, grown lazy and indulgent by hundreds of years of peace. But the Holdars had been in many wars, and we hadn’t lost a war yet. (The Gorohond Overthrow was considered a battle in the war for the Kassisii System, which we are fighting even now.) The Gorohond had been their main hope, to throw us into confusion and chaos with their subtle works of deceit and sabotage. Now the Gorohond were out of the fight, flushed out by their own devices.

I had three battalia of cannon on the surface, under the able command of my colleague, General Poloscar, pounding at their shields and we were in position on the first building, and the first step towards their defeat. We had moved into the enemy’s biggest troops barracks they had, used to shelter a million soldiers and vital supplies. Almost all of their troops were gone to counteract our attack on the agriculture facilities, and we quite easily took command of the building.

They were obviously going to try to recruit more people, they had no choice, in fact. They also had no time. I would make sure that their troops had nowhere to come, and nowhere to return to. The building was equipped with their new shields, which we had termed Achilles, and we now intended to exploit the weak spot. After we had scanned the generator and beamed up the schematics, we affixed a grenade to the lower thorax.

The critical weakness for any shield designed to be as quick an install and as powerful as this, must inherently be A) Relatively small and self contained, and B) Fairly Unstable. As soon as we cleared the blast range, we broadcast the detonate frequency. We watched through the small viewscreens we had placed in the area. They would be destroyed soon, but we wanted video feed.

A flash appeared, seeming small because it was contained, but of an intensity that was so dazzling it seemed much bigger. Then came the big one. Tons of pressure slammed with the strength of titans into the building. The shield collapsed as the columnar generator fell in on itself, disintegrated into meaningless dust, failing to even provide the smallest hint of its former power. The walls in the large, magnificent dome were bent outward, stretched to the breaking point, yet, in a testament to the architectural prowess of the Kassisii, remaining standing, supporting the roof with groans and creaks.

Then the Generator core, which might have remained relatively stable under the controlled conditions of the column, was unleashed, with fury few can comprehend, lashing out with multicolored radioactive torrents, aging the walls by thousands of years in a second, and poisoning the area for a star’s age if untreated. The dome began to fall, almost slowly, with kinetic power so great and unimaginable as to defy reason or the science behind it.

Before it could touch the ground, however, the ships had begun firing. The dome, a monument in and of itself, suddenly snapped and shattered like a broken window, with pieces as thick as trees blown about on the superheated air like dried leaves in an autumn gale, slamming into the blackened turf with vengeance, tossing up huge blocks of previously fertile soil like a child throwing mud balls. Our cameras were destroyed by then, and we watched it from the feed from the satellite surveillance cams. The shockwaves were visible from space, and were sufficient to knock a group of their soldiers [twenty miles] away off their feet.

One million soldiers now had no quarters. We moved to the next target. Which, they did not know. And they didn’t have enough recourses to guard them and their food. There was no time to get enough recruits, either. They must choose, and the choice was going to be difficult…

-Major. Varak, Skipper: Talon squadron

[Notes]  First section: Yep, there’s me and Josh, making it so that neither of us really accomplish anything, it just looks like it.

Second Section: Yay, we get a different viewpoint! Although you can see me doing the same thing as Josh, bringing in a space commander for ground forces, but at least I justify/lampshade it a little. Yeah, harduits/body armor may be relatively standard by now, but I like the way it works here, as XO (exo) armor, although it may be overpowered. Also, calling it a “siesta” flare is too Earth cultural, really. Otherwise, the use of hoverboards for rapid transportation, the prismatic deflectors, hacking, turret system, and tunnel blocking shields are all quite good, I think.

Third Section: This whole recruiting thing is pretty bizarre. This is a global emergency, if you don’t fight, you and all your people will be enslaved. There should be no need for recruitment, they need a draft, and instead of recruiters, they need someone finding draft dodgers. Also, the major, who is a simple fighter pilot, commands two million troops? WTH? Also, despite my troopers boasting up there, they probably won’t need three to one odds to really defeat us, not really, It’s just a weird tangent he took there.

Fourth Section: So, I took the whole recruitment/troop quarters thing and decided to destroy it, although really, do you need a building that huge for troop quartering? Anyway, Achilles is also a term that should have been changed. However, those three paragraphs paint quite a vivid picture of the explosion. A bit overdeveloped, but hey, it’s a huge explosion.

More installments coming soon.

This is the original draft, the first story ever done with these characters, and as I’ve said, it’s not nearly as developed as it should be, although it has a sweet prison escape, I’ll tell you what. That makes up for a lot.

STILL, it is being overhauled right now, so that hopefully one day I’ll be able to point you to a finished book or amazing characters and say, “here, superheroes! Enjoy! Sequel underway!” presumably followed by adoration and demands that I get it published.

So, anyway, here’s the first draft in it’s entirety. Enjoy.

Chapter One: Dawning

Jefferson City: 2:00 p.m.

It was a dry, hot Thursday afternoon. One of those days where everything stands still and seems hushed and quiet. Even the traffic on the crowded downtown streets seemed quieter, as if reluctant to break the gentle cushion of silence. For better or for worse, the day had the fate of several people entwined in it, standing out simply because their lives were to be changed in an unforeseeable way.

Many impossible things happen. The minds of science are puzzled, and then the discovery is made, and the seemingly irrefutable laws of science are changed yet again, leaving the world a different place.

Today, one of those events was about to occur. A small research laboratory had just installed a new machine. It had been flown in from a government installation for testing. Jefferson City Labs was small, and relatively unknown, but had a very good reputation. They were going to perform tests on this machine which inexplicably seemed to output, rather than its intended energy source, a new and unknown source of power.

Unfortunately for them, the device was activated by accident, and without being detected, sent large amounts of this mysterious energy pulsing through the city. Fortunately for the inhabitants of Jefferson City, it was nearly harmless and affected almost nobody. It’s who was affected that is the focus of this tale.

A few people, no more than twenty, in a city whose population was more than thirty thousand individuals had something happen to them. If science ever had the chance to analyze them, they would have found that all of them shared exactly one group of unidentified genes, one little piece of DNA, that would later allow them control over abilities no member of the human race has been endowed with before. All from the same piece of DNA. The abilities varied from individual to individual. DNA is not the sole reigning factor in a persons makeup, and slight differences like environmental, social, and mental variances caused changes in the way their powers manifested themselves.

The faulty generator was shut down in a few minutes, thanks to an astute employee, but it was already too late to reverse the consequences.

[Notes on Chapter One: The story was always meant to take place in late summer, for some reason. I don't know why, it just was. And as for the generator accident, that's since been decided that it should be a mystery, one, because it's more interesting, and two, because it's not so important to the story. Something I've realized is that it doesn't necessarily matter where their powers come from, but instead what they do with them. The new Superhero story will be character driven, that's for sure. Besides, radiation, magnetism, and many other phenomena are invisible to the naked eye, Who's to say what caused it? Also, I was trying to work in a real philosophical angle on this for some reason, about fate and all. That will be either toned down, ascribed to character, or actually have a point in mind.]

Chapter Two: Revelation

Jefferson City, next day, 8:00 a.m.

The first to discover his new abilities was Walter Richardson. Walter was a teacher in the Jefferson City Middle School. He taught fifth grade math and science, in Room Three.

Today the kids seemed even more rowdy than usual. It was fall, after all, and they were now recently imprisoned again. In addition, they were all ten years old, which explained a lot. In fact, maybe they weren’t noisier, maybe it was just that he was more used to quiet. He had spent the summer months living in his brothers summer home, a log cabin in the mountains in the next state over, working on a research paper, and there wasn’t a lot of noise up there.

Time to get down to business, he thought to himself, and prepared to employ his attention getting gimmick, as tradition dictated. In other words, he would soon make a complete fool of himself. In the name of science, of course.

“Hey, kids!” he yelled above the din. “Check it out!” Summoning up his deepest bass tones, he stretched forth his hand. “I am the Eraser Master! All living erasers must obey my every word! Fly to my hand, Destroyer of Chalk Marks!”

To make his act more convincing, he actually tried to pull it to him with his mind, as he’d heard from his acting cousin, ‘getting into the role’. It ended up turning his act into something a lot more convincing than he’d planned. The aptly named ‘Destroyer of Chalk Marks’ obeyed his silent command and floated swiftly into his waiting palm. For Richard, there was a brief period, just a few seconds, that he could not do anything. It reminded him of a concussion he’d received when playing football in high school. His brain seemed unable to process for a few seconds, and it seemed like he the things he was seeing were far away, a long time ago, and easily forgotten. Then he snapped out of it, and was still unable to do anything, but this time because of astonishment.

He stood there, staring at the eraser in his palm, trying to make sense of it all. The few kids who’d actually been paying attention and got a good view were shocked silent too, and the silence spread to the rest of the class. New anomalies in the human race. Telekinetic powers, and a room full of silent ten-year-olds.

Walter stumbled over and flopped into his special chair. He seemed to remember his surroundings suddenly, and said distractedly, “class dismissed.”

The kids quietly filed out of the room, with curiosity and bewilderment almost drowning out their excitement at being let out of school early. Walter sat there for fully half an hour, then walked to his car and drove home, still absentmindedly clutching the eraser.

[Notes: I felt the need to have him try to reach out for the eraser, so I concocted this little scenario. Now though, I see I may have been trying to hard, and really the class clown teacher doesn't really fit his character, I realize. This scene will be amended in the rewrite.]

Charlotte DeVries was hot, tired, and sweaty. Charlotte worked as a salesperson at a shoe store, and they didn’t have air-conditioning there. It had been a busy day, and she had been kneeling every five minutes to help someone with a new pair of shoes, and all she wanted to do now was get a big glass of cold water and relax on her couch.

She stood impatiently in the elevator, wanting nothing more than that water. Oh, it would be good. She unlocked her apartment door, and went straight for the fridge. She was out of ice. Frustrated, she set it down on the counter, and stared pointedly at the glass, just wanting nothing more than for it to be cold. Suddenly, it white tendrils swirled over the glass. Mystified, she picked the glass up, assuming it had somehow fogged up, like the glasses she wore sometimes did. She picked it up, but to her surprise, it was freezing cold. Her reflexes forced her to let go before she realized the glass was cold. It broke into two large pieces on the floor. She bent over, and looked at it. There was no water. It was frozen solid.

Her distinctive quizzical look came over her face, wrinkling and creasing it to the point of looking almost ridiculous. She tried to ignore it, to block it from her mind, but the sensation that had come over her when the cup froze would not leave her mind. The delightful tingle, that came over her whole body, making her feel warm and secure; it wouldn’t leave her. On an impulsive whim, not unlike her, she threw a glance at a neglected house plant. This time the sensation was that of shivers, still delightful, like you get when listening to beautiful classical music, and seemed clarify her thoughts, and heighten sensations. Suddenly some new type of vision flashed across her mind. It looked like thermal vision, if that Animal Planet documentary was anything close to what it actually looked like. She could instantly sense, and see, but not quite see, how the heat was dispersed, all over the room, and suddenly realized she could transfer that energy. In fact, that’s what she’d been doing since the ‘cold tingle’ began. With her regular vision, she could see the houseplant she’d looked at begin to wither and blacken, and the air danced and jiggled around it, a flameless heat. She could sense that she was not generating the heat that burned the plant, but was instead pulling it from the heat in the room. In fact, the room was noticeably cooler now. Charlotte made herself a sandwich, and ate, pondering over what this new development meant to her. She would be pondering that for the next couple of days.

[Notes: Charlotte has now got herself the affliction of undiagnosed ADHD, which is really going to affect her character. Still, this section isn't all too bad.]

Nelson Bates was an inmate in the maximum security facility. Mass murderer, serial killer, and altogether an evil man. Serving a life sentence, as it happens, although if his still continuing legal case progressed to much further, he’d be getting the death penalty for sure. As it was, he was currently fighting six guards, after he tried to kill another inmate at the institution. It was pretty easy to hear him.

“I’LL KILL YOU ALL!!!” he screamed in his infamous rage. “YOU WILL ALL DIE! EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME!? YOU WILL PAY!”

The inmate he’d been trying to murder was cowering in a corner of the room. He’d been winning the game of poker they’d been playing, and Nelson had accused him of cheating. Characteristically, he got a little upset.

“ALL OF YOU! I’LL KILL YOU, I WILL KILL YOU! JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE WHO MESSES WITH ME!” he said, backhanding a security man with a power that took the man’s breath away. But they were winning. Two men had pulled out clubs, and one had his arm around Bates’ throat. Suddenly, Nelson became very quiet. The guards, trained to read body language, did not see this a good thing. He had frozen in position, trembling and shaking. Nelson was experiencing something new to him. New to anyone, in fact, as no one had ever had powers like this before, close as some may have come. He was suddenly, inexplicably, exhausted, trembling and shaking, feeling deathly cold. But then, warmth began to creep into his weakened body. The guards stepped back, and one of them moved towards the door, drawing his weapon. Nelson began to straighten up. The warmth was spreading through, flooding him now, and banishing the cold fingers that had gripped him moments before. It felt empowering. His judgment felt somewhat clouded, although his brain seemed to operate faster than ever. It was now suited for action, instantaneous and quick, with no morals. If these abilities had graced a better man, the morals might have been there, but Bates had long ago stopped listening to his better half. Now, in fact, he couldn’t remember what had been bothering him.

He felt better than he ever had in his entire life, vibrant, full of energy, as if he was connected to a power grid. Instant, effortless power! His pupils swelled, filling the whites, and bringing in so much light that he would have been blinded had his system not been bolstered. Now he could see so much more, so much better. His hearing was more acute too. He could actually hear the guard’s hearts beating hard in their chests, and barely hear the voice of the P.A. system far away in another part of the compound. Everything was more alive. Now nothing could stop him. He felt invincible. For all purposes, at this time he may have well been.

He snapped up out of his slouch, and with a wild and crazy laugh, flew at the guards. He sprang with more force than an Olympic long jumper, and smashed one guard into the wall, breaking half his ribs at one time and rendering him unconscious. Two more closed in on him, from both sides, but Nelson was already on one,slamming him in the face with all his might. The unfortunate man’s nose collapsed into his face, leaving him with an appearance rather like that of a mugged Michael Jackson. He slid into the next, knocking him off his feet, and on the way down, slammed with both hands, sending him spinning off to the right, into the wall. There were now three guards left, one of whom was pointing a gun right at his chest. He fired. Three shots, straight at the ribcage. But something strange happened. Where they struck, the skin tightened and stretched, and the texture of his skin became more pronounced, and felt stronger than metal. Through his unzipped uniform front, he could see the bullets strike. The veins in the surrounding area turned blue, flashing around the area of impact for a brief second, and then the skin receded, leaving him with not a mark on him. The slugs had simply flattened and bounced off.

Now he realized he was practically invincible. It had only taken about six seconds for this mini-episode to occur, from the jump to the first shot, and now Nelson took out the rest of them with one flying leap, throwing his body horizontally, and smacking into the three of them at one time. So, excited for his newfound powers, and exhilarated at the thought of being free again, he had fortunately completely forgotten the inmate that he’d been trying to kill in the first place. He kicked the door, right where the doorknob on the other side was located. The metal dented deeply, and the handle on the other side was knocked several inches out of alignment. Then he simply pulled the door open, and walked out.

He ran down the narrow corridors. An alarm sounded. One of the guards had remained conscious enough to hit the alarm button. He came to the set of narrow metal stairs that led to a guard tower. He shouldered his way throughout the metal screen and the heavy wooden doors that blocked it. Two shots came for him, from the guard on duty who’d heard the alarm and the ruckus at the bottom of the stairs and put two and two together to reach four, plus two bullets. The bullets, as before bounced off of his head, and Bates bypassed the stairs that turned back on themselves to reach the top, instead leaping up the space between them, easily eight feet, to dispatch the guard with one swift kick. He raced the remaining twenty-something feet to the top of the tower at speeds that would have easily been twice as fast as the current world record, had anybody been timing him. Nelson had been casing the prison since he’d arrived, deciding on various escape routes had the opportunity ever arisen. He now reached the top of the watch tower, where he forced the window open. A power cable ran from the spotlight to the outer ring of the prison. He used a pair of hand cuffs he’d stolen from the tower guard and slung them over the wire. He began to zip line down the wire, just as he’d seen in that movie on television one night.

More guards had followed the trail of broken doors up, and began to fire at him. The bullets only served to propel him down the rope faster. One had a dart rifle, probably loaded with fast-acting anesthetic or even poison, but it to just ricocheted off his back like everything else. Once there, he dropped down and shimmied down the pole carrying the wire elsewhere back inside the prison. He dropped down, into the outer ring, where prisoners where rarely allowed. Barbed wire and high stone walls still stood in front of him. His plan at this point, he managed to remember around the fog that kept him from clear thinking, was to make his way throughout the buildings until he got to a gate.

He was saved this trouble when another body dropped beside his. He spun around, ready for anything, when he saw it was Adam McCollister, another inmate. He smiled a cocky smile. Adam, although outwardly charming, was convicted of drug dealing, armed robbery, gang violence, and was finally incarcerated on a murder charge after he killed his girlfriend. He and Nelson knew each other well, and sadly, were excellent comrades.

“What’d you get?” he asked hurriedly. “I didn’t set off the alarms, and you wouldn’t have got this far if ya didn’t get nothing. So hurry up and show me.”

For an answer, Nelson flexed his muscles, and shoulder slammed the outer wall. The stones buckled slightly, but their weight from the stones above kept them from falling through. It was still more than almost anyone else could do with an industrial strength sledgehammer and mechanical aid. He added, “Bulletproof, too.”

Adam nodded, then stretched out his hand, fingers tense and stiff. The wall around the area described by his probing fingers collapsed in a heap of dust. Completely disintegrated.

“I just walked out,” he said in his Chicago accent.

They stepped out, regrettably unleashed on society yet again, and already planning their new partnership in crime.

[Notes: That "close as some may have come nonsense should have been cut, but I left it in there for you to see anyway. Nobody has ever seen anything close to what Nelson is capable of. Imagine original Superman if he was pure evil. Nelson is worse. I'm sorry about the Michael Jackson joke, not because Michael Jackson is dead, (he wasn't when I wrote this,) but because it's not really funny, and it probably killed the guy. I apologize. Adam's powers have since been changed to microwave generation, but he still walks out easily. I'm going to have to make a more plausible reason to have them join up, though.

Cathy Deanham was filing papers in her job as a secretary in a life insurance company. The file cabinet wouldn’t unlock, and the keys were missing. (Another employee had picked them up by accident and taken them home, thinking they were his spare car keys.)

“Well,” she said, resignedly. “I guess I’ll just have to call the locksmith.”

She leaned against the file cabinet. She fell straight through it, too, with a surprised little squeal. It didn’t just fall away from her, but fell on top of her. The whole cabinet dissolved, becoming a smooth cool liquid, as the particles lost cohesiveness. Before she hit the floor however, she stopped, just as she’d realized she was falling and trying to cushion it. She looked to see what had stopped her fall. There was nothing there. She dropped around to her knees, and felt the area where she had stopped falling. It was solid. But there was nothing there. The particles had frozen in place, in effect ceasing to be a gas, and becoming a psuedo-solid. She glanced around, to see if anyone else was there, then promptly timed out and scheduled an appointment with a psychologist. Was she crazy, she asked herself?

She would have to find out.

[Am I crazy? Lets find out! Remarkably logical thinking for an insane woman. Also, I was trying too hard to have little "accidents" that conveniently showcased their powers. In the next draft, it's going to be involuntary, and much messier.]

Susanna was blond, young, popular, and, regrettably, had a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. After a bout of seizures, she was again in the hospital. She seemed to have no memory of who she was, she didn’t act like herself, and she couldn’t think straight or balance right. She would become agitated for no reason, becoming violent. After the generator malfunction, she was laying in bed, staring at the ceiling with a blank stare, seemingly oblivious to the world around her. To her confused and scattered mind, suddenly only one thing was clear. The power socket on the wall to her right. She swiveled her head over to look at it. Out of curiosity, and also out of an urging she couldn’t understand, she tried to pull at it mentally.

All of a sudden, her mind cleared. She could feel herself getting better, as if she was waking up from a bad dream. She could think clearly again, although the past remained a horribly detailed and clear experience.

Over at the wall socket, something was happening. A small arc of electricity was moving, coming from one socket and heading into the other. Susanna was almost too emotionally overwhelmed to notice this, but there was a pull on her mind, steady and strong, that would not allow her to forget it. Smiling like a lunatic, but with a puzzled expression in her eyes, she mentally manipulated the pull she was feeling. The electric arc moved and stretched. She gasped, her newfound elation almost forgotten. She found she could move it, shape its path, tell it where to go. It was now large, reaching almost to the ceiling.

Suddenly she seemed to flip it around, and inside out, like a napkin, changing it, showing a different side of itself. Right along with the mental image, the electricity spun around, then was sucked into one small area. The small area, she could feel, could not be manipulated, only pointed, and so she quickly sent it towards the ceiling. Tile shattered.

Susanna tried to think of what had happened, but seemed to be being drawn back into a dark pit. The brain injury was reinstating itself. With energy born of desperation, Susanna grabbed for the electrical power again, yanking it this time. It sprang forward, like a bungee cord, where you have to pull it farther back than you would have thought to get it where you want it to go.

Her mind cleared again. She sobbed, thinking of how close she had come to being back in that horrible state. This strange power, the power of being able to move and convert energy, as she remembered from high school, was the only thing that kept her thinking clearly. It was a savior to her. She’d obviously just converted electricity to kinetic energy. She decided to experiment.

She seemed to be able to control energy. She found she could manipulate things like electricity and light, moving them and marshaling them on command, and she could instantly convert any energy into another type, say, kinetic energy, which she could not control as much, as she had found out from the now broken section of roof. She realized that although she would never want to give up this power, even if only so that she could be herself again, she could never reveal it. She had seen far too many movies to not realize that the government would want to perform tests, etcetera.

She resolved to keep a small refraction of incoming light bent, continuously, to keep her mentally clear. She then called her family to tell them about her miracle cure, happier than she had been in her entire life.

[Notes: "like a napkin" was probably not the best way to explain it, but the bungee cord simile I still like, although it could be expressed better. This self-healing factor is now a major part of her character motivation, as its the only thing keeping her from darkness. She could be one of, if not the most powerful heroes, if she could only regain her lost confidence to use it.]

For a few others, this day would be fateful as well.

Jeremy Cole received a very big shock, when during a pickup basketball game, he suddenly found himself falling down. What was unusual about this was that suddenly down to him happened to be sideways to the rest of us. He hung onto the basketball pole until realizing that he was causing it, then fell down the normal way.

[Notes: Still works for me, somewhat, although the incident will now probably occur in private. Jeremy is one of my favorite characters]

For Rebecca Van Rompuy trying to make herself as light as possible in her ballet class, she was surprised to be floating several inches above ground, having somewhat unintentionally altered her density to become lighter. Alarmed and not fully understanding what she was doing, she panicked and instinctually reversed the density change. She promptly fell straight through the floorboards, however, without injury, as the density augmentation had left her extremely tough. When the dance teacher asked what happened she said the floorboards must be weak, not allowing herself to recognize what she had done.

[Rebecca is a discontinued character, at least for the time being, having been replaced in the young girl department by Missi and Chrissi Brooks. The main reason for this is that I thought her power (density alteration) was less "realistic" than I would have liked, although I may bring this character back in one form or another in the sequel.]

Officer Carl Ng of the Jefferson City Police Department found he had the ability to alter peoples perceptions about him. It became rather apparent after an armed gunman had suddenly treated him like an old friend, and seemed to regard the fact that he had just been pointing a weapon at him as a joke. “I’m just kiddin’ with ya, man.”

Later in the day, a belligerent speeder had inexplicably cowered and seemed unable to look him in the face, as if he was suddenly revolting. He almost got another speeding ticket as he drove away from him.

[Notes: Also dropped, as he didn't fit into the overall powers set. Also, as soon as I watched Heroes, I found out the whole "psychic cop" deal had already been done. He was then changed to a dentist, then dropped. I will eventually use his power in another character in some other story, though, because in the right hands, it could be extremely powerful.]

A mugger had just cornered college freshman Tyrone Miller. Suddenly he noticed absolutely everything, and his brain kicked into turbocharged mode. He had lifted his hand and a white mist sprayed from the pores, reminding him of that alien movie, which suddenly was not as scary as himself. The attacker fell back clutching at his face and howling in agony. He sprayed a nearby cinderblock with a different, yellowish compound, and the block had dissolved, eaten away by acid. Tyrone decided he should probably change his major to chemistry.

[Notes: Again, dropped character. Unique power, but better suited for a minor X-Men character than this story's updated mythos. Also, it was kind of lame.]

Scientist William Elliot was in the desert by himself, fourwheeling later the next day. Suddenly he had a very unusual feeling, of great power, and great foreboding. He stopped his ATV. Pointing a gloved finger at a cactus, he allowed some of the power to leave. He felt terrible. The earth shook, and the air trembled, and a small nuclear explosion blasted its way through the desert. He had just split a few atoms. The blast strangely did not kill him. He was not blinded by the explosion. In fact, it seemed regular, not much worse than a flashlight in his eyes. However, as the mushroom cloud went up, he realized what he had just done. He knew he had done it too, no doubt about it.

In order to stop fallout, he attuned his newfound powers to the radiation. He could feel it being pulled into him. This time, instead of that sickening, gut-wrenching feeling he’d had when he caused it, a warm feeling flooded him. He felt strangely calm, and knew the area would be safe from the errant energy. With little more than mild interest, he noted he was glowing. He realized that since the radiation had to go somewhere, probably being discharged as a much less toxic form of radiation; electromagnetic radiation, in the form of light particles. Interesting, he thought to himself. If it were safer I would study this. Then the warm feeling left, and the light gradually faded away, like a light bulb that’s been on for a while. His ATV had been destroyed in the explosion. He was left to walk the two miles to his car at the highway.

[Notes: This character is not abandoned, but has been pushed back to the eventual sequel. Kind of lucky that the NUCLEAR PHYSICIST gets NUCLEAR POWERS, amiright?]

Chapter Three: Obligation

This comprises most of the major players at this stage of the account. Others may come later, but it is these individuals who set the stage for later developments. As the days progressed, some decided to commit themselves to the higher good, to make the world better. Others decided to get even with the higher good, and make the world better for them, despite everybody else. A few still were unsure of what do make of it. Some were trying to forget, pretending it hadn’t happened. It wasn’t working. You can’t forget a thing like that, when your world changes. They tried anyway. However, eventually, all of them would have to choose one side or the other…

[Notes: Well, of course some of them would try to deny it, but doubtless someone will want to try out these amazing new powers. Also, I quite like the line, "get even with the higher good."]

Walter had not been himself. For three days he had stayed in his apartment, and the only reason his concerned friends knew he was there was because he kept ordering food over the phone.

The only light in the room came from the slitted blinds, casting barred shadows over him. All he had been doing was sitting there. For three straight days. Thinking, mulling over the possibilities in his mind.

Questions came unbidden, and, unbidden, answers rushed to fill his head, but he wasn’t sure whether or not anything helped.

The first, after the initial shock had worn off, was do I even have it, this- this- he didn’t even want to think it.

However, that was quickly dispelled when he found the eraser, which he’d absentmindedly carried home, hovering in front of his face, turning over and over like the thoughts in his head.

Rolling his eyes, he snatched the eraser from in front of his face, and tossed it over his shoulder. Somewhat annoyingly, he caught himself lifting it and setting it gently on the fake fireplace.

It seemed almost automatic, and he realized it might be harder to stop it than to use it. Then he woke up from the stupor surrounding the use of his power, and couldn’t remember what he’d been thinking, like when you have a dream and can’t remember what you were dreaming, only that you were dreaming something.

He continued to sit. Issues and concerns playing over and over. Questions of power, responsibility, suitability, but eventually he came to the conclusion that, no matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t honestly come up with anything that felt right, except what the old superheroes always said, ‘with great power come great responsibility.’

And caution, he made himself remember. Governments and organizations the world over would kill for people with his power.

So, to be a hero, and ‘save the world, ‘ or maybe not that dramatic, but on the sly. No one could know his secret identity. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking the old comics clichés.

Newly resolved, he called to say he’d be into work tomorrow.

[Notes: So, Walter isn't exactly the type to be comic-literate, but he'd still arrive at the same conclusion. Also, instead of an amnesia-inducing stupor, it is now massive amounts of pain. Fun]

Cathy could not decide what to do. She wasn’t sure she even had them. The psychologist was no help at all. He thought maybe she was hallucinating. She might have thought that herself had it not been for the feelings that had accompanied it. It had not been so noticeable at the time, but that was because it was drowned out by the surprise and confusion, but now, the more she looked back at it, the more obvious it had become. The feeling of destiny, and power beyond her own, mixed with an awe and appreciation for the world around her, which she could now sense in a way she had never done before. Undecided, she continued her daily business, still wondering at the marvel of it all.

[Notes: "Them" being powers, by the way. Her mental state, that of abject awe and a sense of majesty and wonder, has been changed, although she'll still think she's crazy.]

Nelson and Adam had stolen a car by disintegrating the locks, driven it to a rather decrepit part of town, and broken into an abandoned apartment room. Nelson had eventually settled down, and his powers had gone into remission for the time being. As soon as he had slipped out of his enhanced state, he was heavily fatigued. His body wanted rest, and the weariness was deep set. He collapsed, on the cigarette-burned mattress and slept for a few hours. His body’s advanced metabolism allowed him to recover in a short period. Adam had had trouble thinking straight for a while, and experienced something similar to a hangover. He was used to it. He too, was recovered in a few hours. Together they deliberated on what to do next. They decided to try themselves on something fairly easy. So they decided to rob the Stevens & Sons bank that afternoon.

[Notes: Nothing too much going on here, not much to say. The Bank is an immediately resolved plot point, though. I mainly just wanted to show the aftereffects of Nelson's intensive power usage.]

Susanna had not even begun to think about anything like how she should use her powers, as she was so elated to be well again. The only reminder of it at all was the small shaft of light kept bent around her, causing a small and almost unidentifiable shimmer. It stayed at the back of her mind, and she could never quite forget about it. This was a small price to pay for her healing, though. Friends and family came in a never-ending stream, expressing their joy and happiness. Susanna had no time to even begin to think about her new talents, and was far too busy trying to get back to normal life to bother trying to get into a new one as a super hero.

[Notes: Surprise! Susanna is going to be psychologically devastated by crippling self-doubt in the new version. It's all fun and games in this draft!]

Cathy was at the largest bank in town, Stevens & Sons, to cash her paycheck. Stevens was the largest bank in town, second largest in the state. It handled millions of dollars, and conducted a lot of international business. In fact, an armored truck was parked out front, loading crates of bills into the large and heavily protected vaults. The bank was big enough to hire guards. Armed guards.

Cathy was in a very long line, and used the time to think about possible uses of her powers, if indeed she had any. Not what she would do with them, just ways she could use them. She hadn’t tried anything, but the file cabinet was missing.

Two men, the spitting image of T.V. bank robbers walked into the bank. Cathy froze. Everyone froze, except the guards, who drew their pistols. Not pointing or shooting; yet, but still definitely drawn.

The man in front, big, burly, and all business, stepped forward. “Everybody down on the ground!” he commanded. No one moved. The men did not appear to be armed. The man grew angry. “Everyone down on the ground! Or somebody gets hurt.”

The guards, trained to read body language, noticed the man getting ready to do something, ready for violence, and lots of it. Strangely enough, they saw his pupils of his eyes swell, replacing the whites. Time for action. “You two,” said the security guard. “Hands up.” He lifted his gun and pointed it straight at them. “Now.”

Nelson, far from cowed, began walking towards the guard.

The guard took another step back, but was still not scared. “Take another step and I’m shooting.” he said, but Nelson just shrugged as if to say ‘whatever’, and kept on walking. Several people shrieked as his gun went off. The bullet struck Nelson in the chest. Nothing happened. Slightly scared, the guard emptied the entire clip at him, grouping shots at his chest, stomach, and head. No penetrated at all. The only reaction was a slight push from the force of the impact. The guards eyes widened, and Nelson floored him with a vicious kick.

The other guard was about to shoot too, but Adam disintegrated the gun in his hand, and he was dispatched with a brutal chop from Nelson.

“Now,” said Nelson, not even breathing hard. “Everybody, down on the floor, now.”

Everybody did. The tellers had obviously pushed the silent panic buttons, but after the demonstration by the thieves just a minute ago, nobody thought that would change much.

Everybody was panicking, except Cathy, who almost wanted to be, but couldn’t. When the masked men had used their powers, she realized with a shock that there were others like her, and they were not exactly working to improve humanity. Obviously she wasn’t hallucinating, because everybody else was seeing it too.

Now, all she could think, I’m the only person who can stop them. No one else. Just me.

By this time, Adam and Nelson were in the vault. McCollister had simply disintegrated the door, which now lay as a heap of shiny dust on the floor. The men unloading the armored van had seen Nelson and Adam. They were two unarmed men. The guards were six trained professionals with submachine guns. The guards didn’t stand a chance. The banks patrons, lying on the floor, heard shots rattled off, followed by grunts and a few nauseating cracks. Cathy stood up, and with courage she didn’t know she had, walked into the vault. She was scared, but that was all underneath what she felt she now must do, like that quote, that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. She strode into the large, cold room, lined with concrete and steel. The men were standing there, stuffing thousand dollar bills into backpacks. They looked up at the sound of her approaching.

“You can’t do that,” she said, with a conviction that surprised even her. “Leave, or I’ll make you.”

Nelson glanced at Adam. They had just taken out eight armed men with nothing more than their newfound powers, and now some woman was telling them she’d kick them out? Yeah right.

“I wouldn’t say things like that, if I were you.” said Nelson, rising. “You could get hurt.”

Almost overwhelmed by what she was doing, the words slipped out of her mouth, a tribute to the classic banter in the comics of her day, “I’ll risk it.”

Adam growled, deep in his throat. Like the first time he’d killed someone, he allowed the anger to overcome him. He leapt through the air, shooting like an arrow from a bow, hands outstretched.

Cathy felt the awe-inspiring feeling come over her, and for the first time, purposefully used her abilities. The air molecules in a thin sheet froze in place, not moving, harder than any metal known, and completely invisible. Like a force field, thought Cathy, listing it with the other ways she could use her powers, and almost completely ignoring the fact that a homicidal maniac was leaping at her, murder in his eyes. She felt perfectly safe. Adam, slightly disconcerted by her calm, then bounced off of the hardened air so hard he left a dent in the safe-deposit boxes he bounced off of on the way down.

He was surprised. His mind was still too active, too action and reaction to fully recognize what had happened. He ran forward again, charging like a wild elephant. Again, he smacked off of the wall. Hard. He shook his head, slightly dazed with the force of his collision. The whites had begun to creep back around the edges of his eyes. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, somewhat hesitantly. The whites disappeared again. “We’ve got enough. We don’t need anymore trouble. Move!”

Adam shrugged, not one for giving orders, and he reduced the wall behind them to dust. They ran off. Sirens sounded in the distance. Cathy realized she couldn’t be here either. They would want to know what happened, and she couldn’t give them an answer without being put in an asylum. She, too, ran out the hole in the wall, stopping only to grab her purse before leaving.

[Notes: Man, I need to stop making everyone so comics-literate. Story-wise, this showdown probably should have occurred much later on, the beginning of Cathy's return from suspicions of psychological breakdown, but I felt like I wanted to write an action scene, so here it is. Cathy's powers are extremely versatile, given a quick mind, and this should also mark the beginning of her serious experimentation with it. I thought I was conveniently ignoring the extreme temperatures that would occur from completely stopping molecules in place, or making them move enough to flow like water or gas, but actually, I was thinking of it wrong. She's not freezing the molecules in place, she's causing them to stick to one another differently. Again, I'm probably missing some fission or fusion related explosions, but hey, it can't be perfect science if people are doing this with their brains.]

•••

Well, that concludes this draft. Look forward to the redesigned and much improved version of the story coming sometime in the future.

So, here goes!

The cover to the crazy amazing choose-your-own-adjective comic. That bottom right space is left blank because I really honestly couldn't think of any more motifs to include. Top left is the heads of numerous superheroes, in stick-figure form. Please nobody sue me for the copious superhero usage in this comic.

So, in this, we meet our protagonists in the middle of a field, they pull lightsabers and blasters from nowhere, and are interrupted by ninjas on hang gliders. It's pretty easy to tell who drew what, if you ask me.

Our unnamed heroes are falling to the ninjas assault, but are saved when Batman shows up. Batman then defeats a giant robot with a can of spray paint and a single grenade, thus coming in second to MacGyver.

Batman leaves, after explaining that the protagonists will always have a superhero guardian, due to a stupid bet. The Flash shows up, and they decide to trace the Ninjas to their headquarters.

The Flash leaves as quickly as he came, and Deadpool shows up and sneaks them into Ninja headquarters. He is then summoned to an unknown place for breaking the Fourth Wall. Superman shows up instead.

The ninjas defeat Superman with their handy kryptonite, but Phoenix then blows up all the ninjas. Yeah, we had no sense of pacing. Who cares? Huge spread by me.

The last page before we abandoned it. Phoenix immediately dissapears, They find out Darth Sidious is gunning for them. Iron Man and Plo Koon show up, and they all hitch a ride on the Enterprise. Mashup City, here we are!

As usual, sections written by me are in bold, sections written by my brother are in italics, and notes are available at the end.

6.4.3. 16:53

The surrender button was my only hope of stopping the 9 Angelflames. So I had pushed it and the missiles halted in midair. We waited for a communications link to be established. When the link came through, I stated my terms.

“I am Major Hethim Morvagim, of the ASMF. I wish to negotiate my terms of surrender.”

“This is Captain Reddis Phinirri of the Holdar Supremacy. You may state your terms.”

“I wish to be let free, and ask that you not fire on my ship again. As you probably know, I have destroyed the hangar.”

“We know what you have done. But I wish to state my terms. You will not be let go. you and your ship will be escorted to the auxiliary control building. And you will do so willingly.”

I was not about to let myself get captured. There was no way I would allow myself to sit in one of their ships, trying to drag all the information out of me that they could. With torture devices!

“Never.” I said.

The connection was terminated.

I knew what would happen next. The Angelflames would head for me again. Which is what they did.

I had to think fast. Then I had an idea. I maneuvered the ship, going straight down. The plan was risky, but it might work. Once the underside of the ship was almost touching the ground, I had to wait. The missiles were fast. I almost got hit. Once they were close enough, The ship shot forward. I zoomed across the landscape. The missiles had been destroyed when they hit the ground. There had been no room for the missiles to turn and follow. So, they crashed. I headed back to the docking bay.

-Major Morvagim

6.4.3. 16:54

So, the our clever little pilot knew the Angelflames had only minimal tracking abilities. The lander ships were away, and the cannon and turrets were in place and on standby. The pilot was heading back to the landing bay for some reason, hugging the ground as much as possible in a ship that size. We followed, obviously, and stayed higher above the ground, keeping them down. If they rose, they would be snuffed out in seconds. I dogged them with the ionicannons, making things more difficult for them then they already were. He was a fool to break terms. He probably feared torture. What is the point? They were unlikely to reveal information, anyway, and there were much more sophisticated methods available. We could extract the information from him without him even knowing we had done so, and he would have been kept confined, but not unpleasantly so, unless, of course, he proved difficult.

The VELANYM was swinging around, almost with a hint of recklessness, or could it be… panic? Blast after blast shredded the ground ahead of his path, tossing up rocks and dirt like geysers. All part of not letting him fly straight, keeping him so distracted he had no time to take countermeasures. Of course, there were other people on board…

As if to fulfill my expectations, two missiles came at me. They erupted from two holes that almost could have been passed off as design features, or streamlining, if I hadn’t already known better. They were somewhat strange, as they seemed somewhat similar to the missiles we had had when we first came here, the Angelswords, but these had obviously taken an alternate route of development than the one which had led to our current Angelflames. Instead of a reddish orange hue, these took a deep blue – aqua cast, and seemed like they had been designed for the opposite intentions as the Angelflames. Angelflames were intended for about 60% to 70% air to ground, or at least air to stationary target, and 40% to 30%, air-to-air, space-to-space, etc. These seemed to be designed for vice-versa, judging by the way they quickly and efficiently sought our ship, and dodged the interceptor “Jellyfish” that automatically shot out and inflated to detonate an incoming explosive. Fortunately, nothing moved faster than light, in real space, and our new, somewhat experimental lasers fired straight down the middle of them, causing them to explode to early, leaving an energy pool easily mopped up by the shields. For future reference and reports, I codenamed the missiles Cascades, seeing as how we didn’t know what they were called.

Time to stop messing around. The VELANYM had been herded to one of the broad, featureless plains that took up a proportionately large amount of the planet. I fired two JMP torpedoes. These were designed to hunt out and seek ships, no matter what. They were too smart to be eluded, and could follow in air, space or sea, or even underground if the ship took to a tunnel. Even if they made it behind a shield the JMP’s couldn’t jam their way through, they would wait for the second the shield dropped. No jamming frequencies would hinder them, and they could not be fooled by any countermeasures. They streaked after the target, moving in with frightening agility and celerity not to be dreamt of.

-Cptn. Phinirri

6.4.3. 16:59

I was desperately trying to outrun and outmaneuver what looked like torpedoes. With the blue streak they left behind, they actually looked kind of cool. Then I remembered. JMP Torpedoes. I read about those once. They never gave up their lock on a target, and they would never run into obstacles. Wherever you go, they go. You could try countermeasures. It wouldn’t work. Then I had an idea. If only I could get them into spheres, then they would halt in midair.

I spoke to the chief engineer.

“Is there any way you could get those torpedoes into a sphere?”

“Maybe. But what good would it do?”

“Those are JMP Torpedoes. Do you know what those are?”

“Yes. But I still don’t see…”

I cut him off.

“Do you know how once they are locked on to a target they will dodge obstacles?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now here is what I want you to do.”

I told him what to do. Understanding was etched all over his face.

“I see. I’ll get to work on that right away.”

Then he left. I continued to pilot the ship so we wouldn’t get hit while the chief engineer worked on the sphere.

The comlink flashed. “Spheres ready sir.”

“Good. Launch sphere #1.”

Several moments later,

“Sphere has reached destination. Sensors indicate that the JMP has stopped dead.”

“Good. Launch sphere #2.”

More waiting.

“Sphere has reached destination. The JMP’s are awaiting the removal of the obstacles.”

I smiled. What do you think of that? I thought as we continued on our way. The Telyon had been watching the whole episode. Perfect. We sped onward to the docking bay.

-Major Morvagim

6.4.3. 16:59

The JMP torpedoes had been detained by a sphere that exploited their own locking capabilities. This problem would have to be brought up in a design committee sometime. For now, however, we blasted the shells away, inadvertently destroying one in the process. The other streaked after it’s target, only to be engulfed by another sphere. We sliced it open, too, but more kept coming. The gunner made a shot that almost hit a sphere before it deployed. All during this, we were pounding away with Ioni-cannons, but by this time their shields were back at low operating strength, and I didn’t want to waste any more missiles on this guy.

We followed behind, but from a distance. I sent for a ship to pick up the missile inside the sphere. It probably could be disarmed, but it would take a while. It docked in a bay nearby the military compound. I dropped a few Thunderer bombs as a reminder, and was highly pleased to see that it had taken a large chunk out of the automated defense towers, and that had allowed us to send some towards the communications relay, which went up in a large plume of blazing metal. We went back. I was to dock the Telyon and assist in the tunnel scourging, which was progressing nicely. We put in at the secret, undetectable bay, and I was rayed over to Invasion Command.

-Cptn. Phinirri

[Notes] Section One – Josh: Never heard of THAT little maneuvering trick before… oh wait, yes I have, I’ve seen it in everything known to man. For some reason he assumes after the first missiles are shot, we will completely ignore him. Huh.

Section Two – Ty: For some reason I apparently let him get away with dodging the missiles. Okay, I follow him. Basically, he refused to switch characters ever, and didn’t want his dude to die, so I kept letting him have near death experiences. I kind of countered the torture accusations there, as the Supremacy doesn’t necessarily have to be super evil. The Angelflame explanation is a bit awkward, I must say, but the basic idea is that the Kassis have had to copy Holdar technology. Also, Jellyfish are awesome. JMP torpedoes are somewhat misnamed, as they’re actually more like missiles than Angelflames. I also probably tried to fit unnecessarily fancy words in too often

Section Three – Josh: This was actually a pretty good counter to these missiles, although it seems kind of odd that they’d have the exact type of spheres on board the ship, and then act like the Major thought of it. Also, “understanding was etched all over his face”? That’s sounds like a line that’s deliberately so bad, it’s funny. But it isn’t.

Section Four – Ty: Rays equal beaming. I’m not sure about keeping this technology in future drafts of the story.

So that concludes today’s section. We’ll take a break from this for a while, and then return, with different viewpoint characters!