Kamen Rider Hime Vol. 1

The following is a summary of the first - and only - volume of Kamen Rider Hime. There was only a single, short print, leaving possibly - at most - one-hundred copies. Estimates are difficult to make due to the non-euclidean method of procurement practiced by the Manga Carta collectibles shop.

~

Welcome to Bridge City! Anyone familiar with The Underground will recognize it as the Former Capitol except with a bright, blue sky, fluffy clouds, and a shining sun. There are also more paved roads. The narration establishes the city as a hub of activity, the largest city underground (there are visible cave walls and ceiling in the distance despite there also being a visible sun) and a really nice place in general.

A small explosion is heard! A bank is being robbed by the infamous Kappa Mob led by the equally-infamous Kappa Boss Ni. As the narration explains, they're a small gang that specializes in stealing technology and, when they're broke, money to fund Ni's sinister experiments.

Police arrive at the bank to stop the gang, but the right-hand Kappa, Mi, pulls out a bazooka that launches a giant ice cube, freezing the cops in their tracks as Ni, Chi, and Ki run out with huge sacks of cash. The gang begins to flee, firing more ice cubes as more squad cars pull up.

Maneuvering through the streets, Kamen Rider Hime arrives on her rider machine, a motorcycle called Envy Driver, and begins bantering with Ni. The other Kappa back into the van while Ni uses the bazooka. Kamen Rider Hime weaves around the shots until she's close enough to kick the front driver's side wheel to crash the van.

Three Kappas are flopped around the crash site with spiral eyes while Ni climbs out, shaking her head. Kamen Rider Hime taunts her foe and she climbs off her bike and then looks a little surprised when Ni suddenly sprouts robot armor that resembles Hisou Tensoku. The two come to blows until Kamen Rider Hime manages to trip Ni onto her back, trapping her like a turtle as the police arrive.

Kamen Rider Hime gives a quick speech and rides off. From a nearby tower, the infamous "legitimate businessman" Satori watches the scene with interest as another panel establishes two more enemies making their way into Bridge City: the Shine Maidens Raymu and Sunae.

~

After the real Kamen Rider Hime lost her Fite against Hecatia on live television, the publisher immediately ordered the current printing of Volume 1 ended and all copies destroyed, then canceled future volumes, citing predictions that the target market would not materialize.

Plot Wrap-up Season 6

Dracoplot

Dracoplot 2016 is the amalgamation of five years of characters and plot points established in prior seasons but never followed up on for one reason or another throughout the years. After getting the confidence to think I could do a better plot after 2015, I decided it was time to finally wrap up these things in one big plot. Particulars of the plot, like Cobra and the Metal Wolf Chaos inclusion, weren't conceived until they were needed.

MALP Draco: The "Mammals Are Lazy Patrol" universe was established by Jumpropeman in the first season as an alternate universe where the group formed by Draco, James, Jumpropeman, Air Man, and Erebus became a Kobber-esque group after finding James' trainer and continued solving problems and fight villains until they went their separate ways. I don't remember if each of them forming an empire was in the original plan. Oh well.

Upon learning of this alternate universe, Draco Prime got furious at his counterpart abandoning business for heroics (later proven a mistaken assumption) and began forming plans to travel to the MALP-verse and slap some sense into MALP Draco, sparking the trip to Dimension X to get the Technodrome (also when Air Man picked up his claw) and preparing a corporate takeover of a company called Studio Nue (the animation studio behind Macross) to acquire their spaceship. This plan was put to a halt by his Fite and (at the time) permadeath at the hands of Sarah. The plan was confirmed abandoned when Draco Prime and his mate Fergie was reincarnated during the finale of Zoofights 7.

Unbeknownst to him though, the MALP-verse was planning a counter-invasion, leading to...

Hyde: In Season 3's half sci-fi/half fantasy setting, I briefly introduced a group of characters who walked in a trio and traveled Porphyrion in search of antiquities. It was briefly revealed that this group was actually a Hydra using magic to disguise most of his body, but after that reveal he never appeared again that season. Still the son of MALP-Draco, he would've eventually gathered up an arsenal of anti-dragon weaponry covered in hydra venom and challenged Draco Prime to a fight. The plan at the time was that Draco Prime would hire Hyde and use him as a source of info on the MALP-verse.

Verne: Introduced late in Season 5 selling Metal Gears to interested corporate groups, Verne was created to be the right-hand man to MALP-Draco, interacting with potential buyers and the hired help. Basically the second-in-command of the MALP-Dra Co. Some backstory I never got around to in RP is that he is both the greatest success in MALP-Draco's breeding program and the second-biggest failure, cloned by combining MALP-Draco's DNA with a humanoid's to create Wyvarans, the most intelligent and cunning of Draco's progeny. It was to MALP-Draco's shame that he was only able to create a worthy successor by introducing mammal DNA.

Beth: Beth was created to be a big, dumb warrior. A cross between MALP-Draco and a Final Fantasy-esque Behemoth, she came out of the iron womb as a loyal, bloodthirsty brute with no interest in business at all. She was kept around as an enforcer, which she was good at, but always essentially kept on a leash because she couldn't be trusted with anything that didn't involved intelligence. She appeared a few times as Dra Co muscle, but fell out of sight due to not being, more or less, trusted on the furniture until Dracoplot DLC when there was nobody left but her and Levi.

Levi: A spur-of-the-moment creation, Levi was made up when Parsee was accidentally sent to a deserted island by Dawn after showing off her Persona. I'd intended him to be the least Draco-like dragon I could think of: aquatic, amiable, and a bit dopey or foppish. Slow to anger and more interested in actual business than economic domination. I think I briefly touched on him being considered the biggest failure of MALP-Draco's breeding program for his lack of aggression combined with, as a result of combining Draco and giant squid DNA, being only barely amphibious, requiring vast amounts of moisture to keep his gills moist out of water.  He and Verne being MALP-Draco's least favorite children made an alliance between them feel kind of natural.

And there IS a naming convention to the names of the Dracolings, even the non-canon Gwen that appeared in one barpost: all the names are based on what kind of dragon each is supposed to be. Wyvaran, Hydra, Behemoth, Leviathan, and Duinuogwuin (a race of sentient space dragons from Star Wars).

Labrys: Admittedly, I was kind of scrambling for a reason to bring Labrys back after she'd gone to Washington DC to try out politics and making her formerly a tool used by MALP-Draco to cross into other dimensions that got lost seemed like a good way to do it. Coming up with the Alternate Dame alias was mostly for fun and a thin kind of way to hide her identity. I liked the idea so much I had a picture of Alternate Dame drawn.

She got a lot of random backstory to tie in how she's related to MALP-Draco and giant robots buried underground and I have been using the reality-manipulating powers she displayed in the Persona 4 Arena game is a lot of weird ways, I'll admit.

Draco Prime: As soon as I came up with the idea that Dra Co had been taken over by MALP invaders, I knew I needed to think of something for Draco Prime to be doing in the meanwhile. Figuring that he wouldn't just sit back and let someone else run his company, I began coming up with ways for him to be trying to take it back. My original concept was that he would use magic to disguise himself as a Kobold grenadier leading a resistance group that was actively bombing Dra Co facilities. In this original idea, Armor, Cloak, and Goggles the Kobolds would've had a bigger role in fighting this resistance group to prove that Kobolds still had a place in Dra Co. Around Christmas '15, I received Fallout 4 and was introduced to the in-universe fictional character of the Silver Shroud, a radio serial hero who gunned people down, so I eventually molded the Kobold resistance group to being Draco Prime as the Silver Shroud and Labrys as Alternate Dame.

The resistance group concept spawned a second group: the anti-Dra Co group that Yamame was a member of.

Mecha Kobbers: Over the years, I've made pictures of Gundam versions of several characters, either on my own or as Christmas requests to y'all and I wanted to find a way to use them in RP. An early concept for Dracoplot '16 became that MALP-Draco would have recruited Robotnik to make robot versions of Kobbers to use as weapons against the real Kobbers. The Robotnik angle seemed unnecessary and yet another bad guy to talk about when I already had so many to use and not a lot of time. They were used mainly to pad boss fights except for the last and most dangerous of them all, Mecha Tut-Tut, which almost didn't appear at all.

Dracoplot DLC: One day, RubyChao joked that Dracoplot and Deceptiplot were actually connected, so I began plotting the end of Deceptiplot around the idea that it would also set up Dracoplot DLC two weeks later. I literally rewrote that ending at the last second; I had the post typed up and ready to hit Post when, as a result of the controversy surrounding Cornwind's Aggie plot, I decided that the original ending of MALP-Draco taking over Deus and going to Luxendarc was no good and improvised the "we gotta get Spongebob back destroy Deus before it wakes up" ending.

This necessitated a lot of reworking to Dracoplot DLC. I couldn't cancel, especially after having established that Dra Co invaded the planet with local help, and I scrambled to find a reason why the invasion would still be happening without MALP-Draco to push for it. This also meant I needed a new opponent for Kamen Rider Parsee to fight at the Great Chasm, so Mecha Tut-Tut was brought out of storage.

One thing that had been planned from the beginning was that, like Yamame, Levi would've been able to be talked down if anyone really tried.

Parsee:  I enjoyed RPing her in '15. Wish I'd thought of more things for her to do.

Kamen Rider Hime, Parsee's new Kamen Rider form, came about as a result of me wanting to actually give her some cool to do after more-or-less having her serve as a butt monkey on my cast. Originally, she was going to take on MALP-Draco by herself, using her Touhou canon powers, Kamen Rider Double (somehow obtaining the Heat, Metal, Luna, and Trigger Gaia Memories so she and five clones could each use a Kamen Rider form to fight), and the Envious transformation I'd introduced in '15. Having her use so many powers and transformations felt like it would've been a huge, bloated filler.

So I conceived of the Henshin Device being broken and her having to jumpstart it with her own power, commissioned an artwork of Kamen Rider Hime, and spent a week writing the speech she gives when transforming.

Yamame: Yamame's role in Dracoplot went through a lot of writing and rewriting. I think I'd decided in December I was going to include her in RP if only to give Parsee someone to talk to. Originally, she was going to be more like Sarah and she turned out to be not much like her at all. When I hit on the idea of having Dra Co-sponsored terrorists blowing up Dra Co stuff, she seemed a good fit, joining for thrills. The sponsored-by-the-enemy angle was part of the plan all along, but the original idea is that eventually Verne would reveal himself and order the team to keep the Kobbers from attacking Dra Co. That particular idea got modified extensively. One draft had the entire squad refuse and be mind-controlled by MALP-Draco. Another had Yamame get recruited to fight Kobbers as MALP-Dra Co's Greed shrine maiden (based on the Touhou concept of gods getting power from worship). None of the scenarios I initially came up with seemed likely since Yamame cares more about friendship and her pals than money or power.

Talking about her backstory in RP gave me the idea of having her be kidnapped after the Brawl and bribed into fighting the Kobbers with the promise of perfect children. I had plans for that event if there'd been a fight or talking; a fight would've been Yamame doing only defense rolls due to realizing that it was wrong of her to destroy the Calico family in exchange for one of her own. In the end though, there was no fight because nobody but Raspberry tried attacking.

Glorimame was not planned from the start, but grew from Gloria beating Yamame at arm wrestling. As it developed though, I deliberately wanted to avoid mentioning Yamame particularly liking boobs or butts; her natural form is an arachnid, which has neither or those, so she instead likes Gloria for things she can relate to: enjoying cookies, friendship, and intelligence. The other things are nice bonuses though and Parsee writes her best flirty lines for her.

Some of Yamame's backstory and the image for her spider form come from a translated doujin I saw on Danbooru. Long story short, Yamame is heading to the underground when a firefly asks her to help an insect youkai that turns out to be Wriggle Nightbug. Yamame is impressed with the power this insect youkai and gives it a cloak that allows it to hear the appreciation of all the insect souls for caring about them.

Deceptiplot

I wish I had given this plot more attention this year, but the blogpost I'd written before the season started put me in a bit of a corner: Decepticons wouldn't go to Earth and Kobbers wouldn't be asked to join the war effort against them. So the war itself went mostly unmentioned and the Sealanders made few appearances prior to the end of Dracoplot. This was intended to be the Sealanders' send-off: finish destroying all the Decepticons and go back to how things were before crazy robots got involved in their lives. This plot got to combine a lot of random things together: some OCs of mine, Tenchi Muyo (no relation to Tenshi), Transformers, the Bolo book series, and Xenogears, a mecha RPG from the 90s.

Borodan: For years, I've had a picture of a Gigan-styled Transformers sitting on my computer and I decided I wanted to do something with that, so he got to be the guy who actually enforced the Brandes/Scourge treaty forbidding Kobbers from going to the war and Decepticons from coming to Earth. The position of "Duly Appointed Enforcer" comes from IDW's Transformers comics; Ultra Magnus is an appointed enforcer of the Tyrest Accord, which enforces certain codes of military conduct between Autobots and Decepticons. He got to be an honorable, law-abiding warrior - something rare amongst Decepticons - to get him out of the way of Scourge's less-than-honorable plans and because a jerk-ass would've gotten himself blown up ages ago.

Gigatron and the Predacons: Aka Megatron from the early 2000s "Robots in Disguise" cartoon given his Japanese name because ZFRP already has a Megatron. I brought them in because Scourge and Team Ruination also came from that show and Scourge had tried to overthrow Megatron in the show. Intended to show that Dra Co was trying to move into space in exchange for supplying the Decepticons with technology, it ended up being the only crossover between my two plots. Gigatron's appearance as a King Ghidorah Predacon also came about because I had a picture of such a thing on my hard drive and one of his original forms was a two-headed dragon.

Scourge: Not a lot to say about this guy. Rather ordinary Decepticon tyrant. Even allying with humans isn't unprecedented in Transformers history. The biggest changes I'd made to plans involving him were adding in the Space Godzilla transformer I'd found a few days before and, at RubyChao's request, Kiss Players to give Scourge a little extra energy to kill folks with!

Lumen and Baffle: The last two members of the Beatbox crew ended up getting diminished roles compared to what I'd planned, but then I realized I didn't have time to really do much with them. They'd both been fought in Season 4 as part of the Deceptiplot finale then and showed up briefly at the end of Deceptiplot in Season 5. Since they didn't take over the army like Quick Fix and Breech had, Lumen became a glorified errand girl and Baffle became the heart of the Decepticons' flagship, Pia Decem, which I picked because it'd been King J-Der's evil counterpart in the GaoGaiGar FINAL OVA. They each got their chance at fighting during plot events so they didn't just disappear. Lumen had originally been planned to survive her Kobbering in her original Minicon body so she could backstab Scourge for marginalizing her and Baffle, but then Utsuho made a point of vaporizing her body. I was pretty satisfied with their endings though.

Deceptiplot Finale: Originally conceived off as just a one-day thing. That changed when I realized that two boss fights was too much for one day. The original ending of this event, as joked by RubyChao, was that MALP-Draco would've planted a Phylactery on the Siebzehn before selling it to Scourge and would've had it inserted into Deus somehow, giving him a new body to terrorize Luxendarc with. I had the post for it all written too, including an image for the new Mecha MALP-Draco: https://youtu.be/BTMgFynIrC0 , but decided to scrap that because it would've cheapened the ending of Dracoplot and there would've been some grumbling over this guy showing up and not being able to punch him for two weeks.

And The Rest

Zeldoten and Nibbles: The dynamic duo was originally conceived for a Pathfinder game that ended up not happening. I didn't have any particular plans for her besides being a less-than-heroic figure, someone who went on plots for the sake of finding loot and not helping folks and actively talked about her illegal activities and other things. Then she somehow won the Big Bar Brawl and started appearing slightly more often. The only things about her I really changed for ZFRP were some of her abilities that didn't translate well to freeform RP and I gave her a Cadillac that was retconned with RubyChao into being stolen from the Elvis Impersonator.

Aside from the Brawl, her most significant contribution to RP was being used as a victim for Mulcifer, an act I do regret because I try not to deliberately torture my characters and she stopped being relevant to events once Mulcifer ditched her. It felt to me like no matter what happened to Zeldoten, it would have literally no effect on how the plot turned out.

DeMonde and Nurse Teacups: Another Pathfinder character, except one that is actually in a game. I brought her in to give Zeldoten a way to revive after the Brawl, sent her home after Zeldoten won, and then brought her back for Mulcifer because I felt nobody else had a good reason for wanting to find Zeldoten. She ended up sticking around to poke at all the weird creatures in Las Vegas, including Pteron. She never went on any plot with the intention of combat because she's a Level 16 character and there was no way the tractor would allow her to be as badass as I think a level 16 character should be. She went looking for Zeldoten and to keep Pteron from getting himself killed looking for Armstrong.

Heart of Steel, Heart of Glass

Atom Cats Garage, Southeast corner of Boston, MA

Clad in a suit of power armor salvaged from the Brotherhood of Steel, Vina stepped forth with determination to challenge an enemy she had never faced, one that made her nervous beyond anything she'd seen before with few exceptions: freestyle poetry night with the Atom Cats. Sammy was spending the evening with her sister and most of the Pokemon had chosen to roam the wilderness; only Shaggy lay in the back of the improvised stage as a small gathering of fellow power armor enthusiasts waited patiently.


"When I wear my plates, I feel as if I could move the Earth,

No bullet can stop me, no blade can pierce,
Yet when I think of love, the thing that is of most worth,
Armor cannot guard from a pain most fierce.

My dearest fights in the depths of space,
She rides a horse with silver wings,
But I know she yearns to return to this place,
And out to her, my soul doth sings.

Thank you."

Vina stepped down from the hand-built stage as her audience politely clapped and cheered, many of them wearing power armor suits of their own. She murmured thank yous as she took a seat next to a being in a suit of T-60 armor with red flames painted on it; his name was Duke, if Vina remembered correctly.

"Far out poem, pal," Duke said with a nod.

Vina nodded back. "Thanks. Never tried poetry before."

"Could've fooled me," the Atom Cat answered with a verbal grin.

Vina leaned over and began scratching one of Shaggy's heads while another visitor began reciting something about the joys of personalized armor. She politely clapped along with the rest of the group when he finished. Everyone took a turn reading, a generally-positive atmosphere purveying, until throats were dry and fonts of inspiration dryer. Once the event turned to mingling, Vina turned to leave, whistling to Shaggy before leaving the garage.

"You can read a poem next time, Shaggy," Vina promised. "Might even get you a suit of your own."

The Zweilous snorted.

Making a Treaty with the Devil

Princess Sasami's fleet, Rebecca Brandes commanding - Deep Space

Following the victory over the Decepticon supply depot, Rebecca was prepared for more boring cruises through space. The grand offensives against the Decepticons and - to her surprise - their allies from a presently-undetermined organic race were being fought by the regular Juraian military. Fleets of Juraian cruisers and battleships were on the front lines, engaging Decepticon ships in captured territory and unclaimed systems the robots had begun colonizing for their war efforts. The irregular fleet Rebecca commanded, consisting of the Juraian Soja-type battleship that served as the princess' flagship, the J-Ark, and a dozen-plus Mandalorian vessels, was being used to patrol the outskirts of the Juraian empire's territory for enemy incursions. The robot aggressors seemed content to avoid Cybertron and other Autobot worlds, preferring instead to plunder the resources of unaffiliated planets teeming with uptapped resources.


That made for pretty boring patrols, but things were about to get more interesting.

Rebecca, currently commanding from the flagship's bridge, was in the middle of studying a map of the overall war effort when an alarm began to ring.

"Enemy fleet incoming!" an officer reported. "Estimated strength twenty Supreme-type vessels and one unknown!"

"Give me a visual of the Unknown," Rebecca ordered, her curiosity piqued. "And put the fleet on yellow alert."

The bridge crew was clearly puzzled at only going to yellow alert with enemy ships in sight, but complied. The image of a large vessel, almost resembling Terran aircraft carriers, appeared on the screen with the now-familiar Decepticon emblem painted on its bow.

"Calculate their speed and trajectory," Rebecca continued ordering. "Have they launched any fighter analogues?"

"Direct intercept course for our ships, no fighters deployed, and..." the officer paused for a moment. "They're coming in at a cruising speed, not a combat speed."

"Enemy flagship is hailing us, sir," the communications officer reported. "Their leader says he wants to parlay."

"Oh, great, some random flunky probably wants to challenge me to a duel or something..." Rebecca sighed. "Prepare cannons and..."

"Negative, Admiral!" the officer rudely interrupted. "It's...it's their Emperor, Scourge."

Rebecca's interest was really piqued now. A personal chat with the bastard machine who'd helped Quick Fix almost drop a giant floating island on Las Vegas?

"Well, I'll take the call this time," Rebecca feigned nonchalance. "Main screen turn on."

Moments later, the metallic visage of Scourge appeared. The would-be Decepticon Emperor of Destruction sat comfortably in a chair almost ostentatious enough to call a throne, his posture casual.

"Greetings, Admiral Brandes. I thank you for taking my call!" Scourge beamed, gesturing grandly.

"I still have a few minutes left on my cell phone I wanted to use," Rebecca deadpanned. "May I ask the purpose of this social call?"

"Ah, straight to the point. Excellent." Scourge rumbled happily. "I have come to negotiate a treaty with you."

"Ending the war so soon?" Rebecca gasped melodramatically. "Unfortunately, the only thing I have the authority to offer you is a prison cell and three Energon cubes a day."

"Generous indeed," Scourge answered. "No, this is not to be a treaty between the Decepticons and Jurai. This is one you have all the authority you need to negotiate."

"Oh, now I AM interested in this," Rebecca chuckled. "Alright, Emperor, what are your terms?"

Scourge's throne moved to the side and a display appeared, showing the planet Earth.

"They're quite simple: Decepticons of all factions, not just my own, will avoid Earth for the duration of the present Decepticon/Jurai war. I will even appoint an Enforcer to the planet to uphold my end of the agreement."

"Why should I care if Earth is neutral?" Rebecca asked. "I don't live there; I just visit once in a while."

"Ah, but your Conjunx Endura, your....spouse, I believe you would say, currently resides there, does she not?" Scourge countered. "Not to mention dearest Princess Sasami."

The display changed from Earth to a live image of the Royal Pain, showing Vina giving Sammy a lesson in how to use a Power Armor frame. The two practiced martial arts for a moment, pulling at Rebecca's heart until the moment Scourge returned the focus to him.

"As you can see, my agents are already watching them," Scourge continued. "Maybe they could repel the ones I have in place now, but what about the next?"

Rebecca gripped the armrest of her chair until she hurt, using that pain to keep a straight face. "I see. It's obvious how I and Jurai would benefit, but what good does it do you to stay off Earth?"

"Quite simple: it doesn't. The planet is rich in energy sources, which is why Decepticons have been drawn to it for decades. However..." Scourge began.

The tyrant rose from his throne.

"In exchange for the boon of leaving Earth free of Decepticon influence, you - in turn - would not be allowed to call upon your Kobber friends for assistance in our war, no matter how vested an interest they might have because of Beatbox and Quick Fix."

Ah, so there it was. Forfeit any possible assistance from a living, breathing, drinking group of living weapons and the robots would ignore Earth until the Juraians were crushed.

"An interesting proposal. Please give me a moment to consider it," Rebecca considered, trying to keep panic from her face.

"Take two," Scourge added as the channel was cut.

There was no way she could realistically believe that a robot called a Decepticon would do anything BUT deceive her. She could hardly believe he'd keep his word to keep robots off of the planet and definitely believed he'd made this proposal to keep Kobbers from wrecking his fleets. On one hand, she hadn't even PLANNED to ask them for help. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't such a bad idea. Indeed, she could agree to the terms and violate them later; it wasn't a binding agreement between two governments. More like a gentleman's agreement that both sides knew the other was going to violate eventually. Not to mention, if Scourge DID gun for her family, he'd bring the Kobbers upon him, treaty or not.

"Open the channel back up," she ordered. "Emperor Scourge, I accept your terms. Decepticons will leave Earth alone and Kobbers will leave the Decepticons alone."

"Excellent! I'm quite pleased to find you so...reasonable about this," Scourge beamed, clapping his hands together. "Then the...oh, it needs a good name...the Brandes Accord has been struck. I shall immediately appoint an Enforcer and send him to Earth."

"And he'll just be there to keep other Decepticons away?" Rebecca asked.

"Of course," Scourge answered. "Well, he will also be there to make sure your Kobber friends don't try interfering. Enforcement DOES run both ways."

Rebecca rolled her eyes. Of COURSE it did. "Very well. Who is he?"

"You may have seen him in action once already in one of those Fites. He is Borodan the Hunter and thoroughly and bafflingly-incorruptible."

"I'll send word ahead to expect him then," Rebecca nodded, satisfied.

"Very good, and in the spirit of parlay, my fleet shall depart this system immediately," Scourge stated, waving to one of his officers to carry out an order. "I expect, in turn, for you to honor our parlay and not seek to strike while our backs are turned."

"Of course. Good day, Emperor."

Rebecca motioned for the connect to be cut and muttered under her breath, "Arrogant bastard."

On board his flagship, Scourge muttered, "Organic twit."

~

Las Vegas

A Gigan-shaped robot approached the Den of Lions. He had received word from his Emperor and immediately set out to begin his assignment.

The Postsee

Parsee

Obligatory Parsee Blogpost

parsee is (probably) alive

~

Explosions! Chaos! Anarchy!

All of these described the movie Parsee was spending Saturday morning watching. Despite having the occasional attack by Middle Class extremists and strange demons, Las Vegas was considerably more boring since "Kobber Season" had ended, giving her plenty of time to catch up on movies people insisted she needed to see. She still wasn't sure what the movie was about but, as the end credits began to roll, she began to wonder how bad the Lost World could be if this Warrior could find a cabal of psychic monks to fix his robotic motorcycle.

She briefly considered asking someone to build her one of those motorcycles, but decided the dump truck with the flamethrower - "Megaweapon" - would be more interesting to drive around.

She soon put the DVD back in its case and went back to planning a birthday party for Cian, Vanessa, Alvin, and any of the other former Sins who happened to be hanging out at the time. She didn't know if it really was their birthday - they probably didn't remember either - but it was a good excuse to have a party.

Then she took a nap. The end.

What? They can't all be about assassinations and space wars.

Escape from DC

Several days had passed since Labrys and the President of the United States of America had almost been assassinated mid-meeting. The FBI, CIA, and Army had all launched investigations into the events, including beginning technical analyses on what was left after Michael Wilson had single-handedly disposed of all three robots with a suit of power armor. Labrys, in her guise of Larissa Joyce, had been interviewed no less than eight times, each by a different agent of each branch. She'd given them as much information as she could without compromising her own identity, but she was quickly running out of things to say. She also knew she was, to a limited extend, under surveillance from numerous agencies; she'd managed to spot agents from at least three foreign agencies, based on their methods. She also knew she was poorly-trained in the art of non-electronic surveillance. Thus, she'd taken to keeping her disguise on at all times and maintained what she calculated to be the minimum number of appointments she needed to make to keep from arousing suspicion.

Thus she found herself in the middle of preparing another speech, this one to some corporate bigwig who was vacationing in the nation's capital for some reason; she hadn't yet tried to find out why but at present it seemed like a minor concern. Admittedly, she was distracted by the need to keep a sensor open for potential threats.

Thus, when someone knocked on her door, she did a backflip over her couch and reached for an axe that was hidden in her closet. Fortunately, to her knowledge, there weren't many things currently in DC she couldn't crush with her bare hands if need be.

She briefly considered getting out her bear hands, but that was a joke for another blogpost.

She answered the door like a normal, semi-frightened human being, but was surprised when there was nobody at the door. Had she been....PRANKED?! Dang kids and their not having anything better to do...

"Good evening, Miss Joyce," a voice said from behind her.

Labrys once more did a backflip and, out of reflex, fired a rocket punch behind her, hoping she'd remembered to shut the blinds. The figure, an anonymous humanoid in a concealing dark trench coat and fedora, behind her dodged out of the way and grabbed the chain of her Chain Knuckle.

"Be at peace, Labrys. I'm an ally," the figure said.

"Oh yeah, eh? Well, my allies don't need ter sneak into me apartment wile I'm answerin' me door!" she countered, drawing her arm back in.

The figure chuckled, a flat, mechanical voice devoid of any way to tell who was speaking. "In this case, yes, I do. Maybe you haven't noticed, but you're being watched."

"I know I'm bein' wotched. It's why I 'aven't tried leavin' tahn yet; they'd follow me wherever I went and I'm not getting me mates caught up in this," Labrys growled. "But woss yor story, guv? 'oo are yer?"

The figure chuckled and adjusted an expressionless mask. "I'm someone who knew you were Larissa Joyce without having to do more than look up your address. I've been around the Kobbers before and I'm here to provide you assistance in getting back to Las Vegas."

Labrys glanced at her windows; she HAD remembered to close them. She made a note to complain about loud neighbors and gaudy signs loud enough that a careful listener could hear her. Then she realized someone probably WAS listening right now. The figure noticed and held up a hand to calm her.

"I'm not unaware of the danger; I'm using a white noise generator to interfere with listening devices. You are still safe."

"But for how long?" Labrys muttered, neglecting her accent.

"Not long," the figure answered. "Some careful infiltrations and sabotage have kept the army's analysts from uncovering the origins of your dopplegangers thus far, but there are too many pieces in too many places to keep your connection quiet for long."

Labrys hesitated. Leaving meant months of work would be undone, her new reputation as an impassioned activist for numerous causes would likely be drowned by the untruth that she was an assassin trying to get close to the president. She felt like breaking something, but she liked her furniture too much. Her place was...homey.

"Fine. I take it you have more for me than just this obvious news," Labrys said, going to retrieve her axe.

"Indeed. I have a plan and resources to get you away from here undetected," the figure confirmed. "Get anything you need to take ready; I've got a distraction coming in five minutes."

"Five minutes?! You just showed up with five minutes and expect me to be able to get ready that quickly?!" Labrys protested.

"FOUR minutes."

The anti-Shadow weapon muttered with annoyance as she packed her most important possessions: a few knickknacks and photos, a laptop computer she'd upgraded extensively, a love letter a secret admirer had slipped her one day. She packed it all into a suitcase and turned to leave, but remembered one more treasure.

In the other room, the figure counted down the seconds until it felt the floor rumble. Right on time.

"Labrys, the distraction is here. A little kaiju called Trespasser is coming to make a splash here, but don't worry; I've also arranged something to stop it."

Heavy footsteps answered the voice.

"I've called in some favors and gotten Yongary of the Neo-Kobbers to appear and battle Trespasser. You can slip out of the city while they're battling; your shadows will be too busy requesting orders and doing what they can to protect the president to chase you."

More heavy footsteps.

"And then you will head south along the coast where a train is waiting...are you listening, Labrys?"

"Labrys isn't here," a deep, male voice answered.

Six feet tall, covered in freshly-plainted, finely-polished, meticulously repaired armor, Labrys entered the room, hefting her axe and her suitcase.

"You can call me Hal, stranger."