LucyKitsune

  Targets eliminated!

  Model 3 x 20: 200 points

  Model 4 x 5: 75 points

  Model 6 x 1: 15 points

  New point total: 383

  Combat summary, dismissed by Vanguard Dr. Luna Sol Doppler MSc, November 2024

  I stepped into one of the Cafés, smelling the lingering aroma of bread and pastries that had presumably been confiscated by the aliens. It made me want a piece of Apfelstrudel.

  “Lyona, how many points do we have?”

  Just under 400. If you are looking to upgrade your gear, you can afford most of the things we discussed earlier if you wish?

  “Can you summarize it again for me?”

  Of course:

  For 50 points you can buy the Subsonic Rail Catalogue. For an additional 40 points you can buy a smart rail-pistol that will basically do the aiming for you. It will be genuinely hard to miss with it.

  Assuming of course you are willing to drop 150 points on a new catalogue and an augmented reality impnt about as powerful as a medium end ptop. Nothing too impressive but definitely enough to run DOOM.

  That would leave me with 60 points before hitting the 300 limit.

  “Do you have any armour or especially helmets for 60 points or under?”

  So is that a yes?

  “I’m still considering my options. I do need some better protection. Having a ranged weapon would be nice, but I feel like protecting my most vital organ should come first.”

  That is a fair hangup. In that case I recommend the Focussed Urban Combat Helmet System Mk-5. It’s a helmet that can fold in around your neck and deploy within a millisecond if it needs to.

  It can also be equipped with nanites for additional functionality ter on.

  In general, I would recommend considering upgrading your Nanomechanized Warfare Catalogue at some point, as nanites will be very versatile and are capable of supporting many catalogues.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Fuchs, really? I know I said I like foxes, but I don’t think my equipment needs to be named after foxes.”

  I may or may not have spent some few nanoseconds working out an acronym that works. So what do you say?

  I sighed. It sounded good, even if I was wary about having additional chips in my head, but supposedly Lyona would keep it safe. Plus, that probably meant an end to the possibility of losing my phone. Assuming it came with an e-sim-card or something. Whatever, that was for Lyona to figure out.

  “Sure, but make sure the helmet has space for if I ever decide I want fox-ears.”

  That will actually make it cheaper, since I won’t have to modify the helmet. It was originally designed by and for Snow Pouncers.

  New purchases!

  Css 1 Augmented Reality and U: 100 points

  Augmented Reality impnt: 50 points

  Css 1 Subsonic Railguns: 50 points

  Smart Rail-Pistol: 40 points

  FUCHS Mk.5: 55 points

  New point total: 98 points.

  Three boxes appeared on a nearby table. I opened the smallest one, to find two disks, connected via some wires.

  That’s the aug-gear. You want to put one of the disks over your right eye and the other on the base of your neck. The instaltion process might lead to momentary dizziness, that is normal! You might want to consider sitting down for it though.

  Not really seeing a reason to disagree, I sat down at that table and did as instructed. As soon as I did, I was gd I sat down.

  It was definitely more than just a bit of dizziness. But after some brief moments of disorientation and fighting to keep the burger from earlier down, the feeling was gone. I blinked, confused, as I found a HUD filling my vision.

  After spending some time getting used to it, I opened the other two boxes that had appeared on this table. One of them contained a sleek, modern handgun, while the other contained a helmet, not unlike a motorcycle helmet, except for the protrusions on top, meant to fit vulpine ears into.

  I put on the helmet and, like advertised, it folded itself down around my neck.

  I then picked up the gun and, in an almost disorienting manner, a red crosshair popped up in the center of my vision, accompanied by an ammo-count, which currently read 20.

  After taking in one st whiff of the lingering pastry and roasted coffee beans aromas, I grieved the delicious food, lost to the aliens. I pocketed the two extra magazines and spent some more time getting used to the aug-gear. Getting up, I started moving towards the epicenter of the incursion once again.

  It wasn’t long, before I could try out my new toys and quite frankly, they felt a little unfair. I would point the gun in the alien’s general direction, wait until the HUD turned green before pulling the trigger, and the head of whatever alien I aimed at exploded.

  Needless to say, I asked Lyona to keep repcement magazines coming as needed. The spent ones, I kept until the next trash can, where I would dispose of them. They were useless without ammo in them and new ammo came neatly pre-packaged in new magazines.

  I kept running into bigger and bigger numbers of aliens, which probably, hopefully, meant I was going in the right direction. I had decided to keep my helmet deployed, after a close call with some bird-alien, that I DID shoot out of the sky, but it carried enough momentum to scratch up my face anyways.

  Fortunately I’d still had those nanites, which fixed up the scratches without any issues. It had hurt though, and Lyona commented that healing me depleted the nanites, so my time in a bottle thing would be less effective as I got hurt.

  I had asked Lyona to stop announcing how many points I’d spent and made every single time something happened, so she instead added a live counter to my HUD. By the time I reached my destination, my points had reached 4-digits, even after subtracting the 100 points medical emergency fund.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I like the pistol, but it feels almost boring to gun down aliens from a distance. Am I crazy for thinking I enjoyed the melee engagements better?” I asked, while trying to get the card-reader to accept my key-card so I could enter the building.

  “Like normally you’d think boring is good in a life or death job, but it’s not. At least for me it’s not. But I don’t really have a way of dealing with being crowded and overwhelmed by sheer numbers. It’s also more dangerous to be in melee I’d imagine. But pulling the trigger and watching the points go up has lost its novelty, you know?”

  While your assessment is correct, being in melee range is indeed far more likely to result in injuries and even fatalities, you would not be the first vanguard to focus more on a melee fighting style. Nor do I suspect you would be the st.

  As for the crowding problem, there are lots of potential solutions. Most of which unfortunately involve relying on others to take care of the small-fry whilst you focus on dealing with the big heavy hitters, which is not an option currently, seeing how there’s not a lot of Vanguards on earth yet, but there are some other options to add crowd-control to your skillset.

  In fact, still far too many for me to go over, so I suggest you go over some characters from fiction and how they deal with crowds and draw inspiration from them and I will try to implement it to the best of my ability.

  That got me thinking. How did characters from fiction that I liked deal with crowds? I finally got the door open, only to be greeted by a model 3.

  I drew my knife and stabbed it through the monster’s skull. Mostly with magic and big aoe spells. Also bombs. Neither of which were really options for if I wanted to stay melee. I did very much not want to blow myself up.

  More aliens came through the corridor, so I sheathed my knife again and instead grabbed my spear in my right hand and my railgun in my left. Maybe if I expanded the search from stories to mediums like games?

  I kept killing the aliens, stabbing my spear at them and shooting them. As much as I hated League of Legends the question of AOE or waveclearing was a big one in it.

  Most champions solved that by buying a Tiamat. Maybe that was an option? I paused stabbing and shooting to reload my pistol.

  No, shockwaves are an extremely inefficient way to transfer energy, especially through air. Maybe I should look away from gamepy and towards lore?

  I definitely wanted some kind of sword. Spears were far better than swords in most areas, yes, BUT swords were just so much cooler than pole-arms.

  Champions with swords… The first that come to mind are Yasuo and Yone. But they’re both using shockwaves for aoe. And I don’t want to base myself off a windshitter.

  I thought back to all the ways I had killed Antithesis today. I stabbed my spear through a particurly overzealous alien. One that stood out was that time I bought a spear to be in a position where it killed the alien.

  If I had enough spears, like that, and I could control them… Irelia!

  “Lyona, how feasible is ‘basically Irelia from League of Legends’?”

  After double-checking to ensure I got all the Antithesis in the hallway, I moved them onto a pile and threw in a flesh-eater.

  That would be very possible. Autonomous floating bdes are a good choice. There will be an issue with controlling them however: You would need an additional brain-impnt to connect to your bdes and help you handle the cognitive load.

  Alternatively, you could just augment your brain and nervous system directly. With the proper upgrades, you would be able to think and react faster, your nerves would be more resilient, you could permanently immunize yourself against model 7s and stly you could purchase and access some dream-learning courses, allowing you to pick up new skills as you are sleeping.

  This st one is the main reason I recommend this, because dream learning is a very potent tool, and if you wish to engage Antithesis in melee range, you will need to be exceptionally skilled with your weapon of choice. It will also save you from having to learn how to walk again, should you ever add anything to your body that might throw off your bance.

  I pondered my options for a bit, watching the pile of dead aliens slowly dissolve.

  “How much would that cost?”

  The bdes can be made with a combination of your already existing melee weapons catalogue and an antigravity-engine, from the css 1 antigravity catalogue, costing 50 points. After that it would be a cost of 30 per bde. For the brain-augmentations, I would recommend something from your Snow Pouncers Technologies catalogue, they are a species that is very good at bionic and genetic enhancements. This might also be a good time to add in some ears, if you wish. You would need to lie down for a while, as the nanites work on upgrading you, so I recommend doing this after you check this building for survivors and evacuate them to the barracks next door.

  You could take a break there in a retively safe pce. All in all, 8 bdes, which is the highest amount I would recommend for now with the upgrades I’m proposing, the augmented Snow Pouncer Brain as well as Ears and the antigravity-engine catalogue would leave you with about 300 points plus your 100 points emergency fund.

  I checked my point total. That would be a big purchase. About two thousand points. But it WOULD cover a big weakness in my loadout.

  “Fuck it, let’s do it after I evacuate whoever is still alive in here. Also I want better body-armour if we’re splurging anyways.”

  LucyKitsune