The wheels on the train go ‘round and ‘round.
‘Round and ‘round.
‘Round and ‘round.
The wheels on the train go ‘round and ‘round.
All through the …

Rain, mud, and fog. That’s all there was, in this part of nowhere. A thick and blinding fog, giving nothing but a view of pure white through the entire scenery, atop the layers of muddy ground and underneath the torrents of hissing rain.
A moan pierced through the fog. Mournful and low, the cry was not born of some strangled anguish, but rather more reminiscent of a single woman who was quietly lamenting…whatever misfortune. Whatever begat this groan, the sound lasted a straight minute and then stopped.
Silence.
No other sound followed after, aside from the soft hiss of fog. There were no living creatures around, humanoid or otherwise, that could provide anything to break the silence. All that remained were the sounds of nature’s own forces: The clouds grinding against one another, linking hands to form an impenetrable wall of gaseous muck.
Another moan. That soft sound, just like last time, pierced through the thick fog. The sound was followed by more sounds, a reluctant squeal as long-aged gears and metals stretched and pulled. They started slow at first, always with breaks in between; over time, the breaks became shorter and the metals started working harder.
Chug. Chug. Chug. Chug. Chug.
The clouds split bit by bit, drawn back like a curtain as a train pulled out. A dark train, covered entirely in shadows and driving on air. The whistle blew, providing the same moan once again. The wheels continued to squeal in resistance, but the train continued moving forward across the muddy plains without any need for tracks or rails or anything of the sort.

The inside of the train was not at all like its shadowy exterior, with everything coated in a dull grey or white, and black leather across the seats. All of the cars were empty sans for one near the middle…and this one only had one passenger in it. A tall girl, a thin girl, a frail girl—easily setting in at almost six feet of height, with pure-white skin and black hair, and a youthful face, it was impossible to determine her age. She sat perfectly still, swaying only with the movements of the train and shifting whenever there was a bump, only the rise and fall of her breathing chest and the occasional blink identifying her as even conscious.
She sat on the leather with her hands folded together, her delicate fingers wrapped around each other. Her gaze was directed out the window, where it lingered and where it stayed—even though there was nothing to see outside and even though only the fog was her company, she kept her gaze out from the train and into the world that surrounded it.
The train whistled once more, punctuating the creak of metals with another moan.
She blinked once more.

THOOM.
THOOM.
Crack.
Click.
Snap.

The white dummy at the end of the firing range was at a point beyond destroyed, only the iron skeleton holding it up still remained. All of the other foam that covered it was lying on the floor in tatters, shredded by powerful buckshot which cared little to its physical integrity.

THOOM.
THOOM.
Crack.
Click.
Snap.

A double-barreled shotgun had always been his weapon of choice, inefficiencies be damned. It was a powerful self-defense weapon with decent range and excellent power. It only had two shots–but in situations where you needed to defend yourself, and nothing more, two shots was all that was needed.
The motions were second nature to him by now. Pull the trigger halfway for a single shot, all the way for the second, crack the barrels open so the old clip and spent shells ejected out, and slide in a new clip with fresh shells and snap the barrels shut again.

THOOM.
THOOM.
Crack.
Click.
Snap.

He couldn’t say he approved of how the weapon development team went with a two-shell clip instead of a multi-shell magazine. Magazines held more ammo and were spring-loading, which allowed for a higher variety of shots.
However, to create a magazine for this gun meant it would have to be invented from the ground up, and then mass-produced for it and it alone. This gun used a special 15-gauge ammo, with each pellet the size of a 12-gauge round–creating a larger shell with more punch, at the expense of being able to work with only one gun specifically designed for it.

He lifted up the shotgun to rest on his shoulder. He had been shooting it all day, trying to collect his thoughts on it. From a firing range, to a CQB training environment, and now to a testing lab.
Clad in a simple black t-shirt with green camoflague jeans and brown boots, Devin wasn’t much of an interesting man to look at. Even the hardened features and scar across his eye lacked any real “oomph” one would expect from a warrior–with his bright green eyes, freckles, and parted-unkempt mess of bright red hair, he seemed more of a typical Hollywood nerd who would prefer a rousing video game than combat-tried soldier.

A couple scientists had noted the pause in firing, looking up from the computers that they had been typing data in. They had been recording Devin’s average speed of firing, accuracy in either hand, body posture in the different stages of firing, and even just how comfortable he looked.
“Yes?” One female scientist said, lifting up her glasses along the bridge of her nose.
Devin flexed his hands, wincing. “I need a short break. My hands are burning up from getting metal jolted into them constantly, and my ears are ringing even through the earplugs.” He shook his head to try and clear out the ringing.
The scientist frowned. “You still have 38 magazines to go through.”
“Clips.” He corrected her. “Magazines are spring-loaded. Clips have exposed rounds.”
She gave him a hard look. He quickly went back to the original subject, after clearing his throat. “If I keep going in this state, eventually the data will be wavering more and more as I get tired and sore. This is still a prototype, so we want optimal data, don’t we?”
She blinked and then turned over to her compatriots at the computers, all of them whispering among each other. Devin took this brief pause to pull out his earplugs, trailing them down to his waist and unplugging them from a small device. They were designed to muffle out specific ranges of decibels–the big bang of the shotgun didn’t make it through at all, but didn’t at all hinder the sound of a human voice. Useful for testing, but having stuff crammed in the ears was still uncomfortable.
The scientists finished their hushed discussion quickly and went back to their computers, typing furiously. The female did the same, not even looking over at Devin. “You have an hour to rest up. The R&D team needs input as quickly as possible, so that’s all we’ll be able to spare.”
Devin nodded gratefully, hefting up the shotgun to rest on a nearby table, flicking on the safety and then hiking out of the room.
One hour.
That would probably be enough time to inject himself with a sedative, nap for a bit, inject himself with stimulant upon waking up, exercise, get some food, and then check in on how the technicians were handling his medical equipment.
Hopefully nothing would go wrong during that time. It had been numerous months since his branch was last called into action.
Devin flopped down onto his bed. His room was plain–white walls, white ceiling, white floor, black bed with white sheets. Various decorative items, such as an antique bookcase and a couple mirrors, gave the room a more “home-y” feel but couldn’t do anything about the size…or the general lack of personality. This was a military base, not an apartment suite.
But in the end? It was still a place he could lay his head and feel comfortable.
That was really all that mattered, to him.

Devin closed his eyes, and sleep quickly met him.
He didn’t even need the sedative after all. That would save a couple minutes.

DEVIN CONWELL:
Weapon Theme: Sci-fi Military
Movement Speed: **
Jumping Height: *
Health: *** (125)
Max. Health: ** (200)

The Kaiser Future Enterprises, Inc. (K.F.E.) is a multi-national military-industrial conglomerate that specializes in advanced weapons development, computer system technologies, and biomedical sciences. Civilian and military complexes across the world have licensed their services, and K.F.E. is constantly upgrading old and new products in order to find more ways to make them even more efficient.

Devin Conwell is a soldier in the A.N.T.D., a private military security firm subsidiary of K.F.E. While little more than a combat medic, Devin is still heavily trained in CQA, weapons handling, and frontline battlefield trauma care.
He himself is a shy young man, timid in groups and preferring to simply duck his head down and follow orders. He would like nothing more than a bright future, but he knows just wishing for one won’t make it happen. Not the strongest soldier, nor a genius tactician, or the greatest marksman, but when things go wrong and the A.N.T.D. is called on for missions…Devin hauls out to the utmost of his ability.

WEAPON 1: Carbine/Pistol Hybrid
Name: Silence Type “Razorback”
Role: Long-range single-target attacks
Power: **
Rate of Fire: *
Accuracy: ***
Primary Fire: Fires off a sniper shot
Alternate Fire: Reloads

“In combat, distance is often one of the safest covers you’ll ever find. The farther away you are from your enemies, the smaller you are, the harder you are to see, and thus the harder you are to hit. Unfortunately, this tends to work both ways–and so you need a gun that can still work at such a distance, without getting in the way of your arsenal once that distance is closed.
K.F.E., Inc. has heard that need, and so has developed the Silence Type ‘Razorback’ Light Carbine Handheld Rifle.

The carbine rifle was a gun that changed the face of warfare across the globe, a short rifle that could fire just as accurately, at the expense of a little velocity. Over time, however, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and even submachine guns brought better tools to the table with more advanced technology and simply better equipment.
K.F.E., Inc. has not forgotten about the utility of the old gun, however, and has revamped it with modern-day ingenuity as per the typical K.F.E. style. Marksmen will not be disappointed, as the Razorback is now a perfect long-range gun that offers the power and range of a carbine all in a little package…only a little bigger than a pistol! Once your distance is closed, nothing will keep you from holstering this bad boy and moving onto a more appropriate weapon, and once the distance is opened again–just whip it out, no setting up needed!

No longer does every combat team need a designated sniper. No more will a squad be stranded because their range specialist is having trouble finding appropriate terrain. Now anyone can take care of that pesky camper harrassing your crew!”

WEAPON 2: Double-Barrel Shotgun
Name: RF-10 “Doubletimer”
Role: Medium-range single-target power blasting
Power: ***
Rate of Fire: **
Accuracy: *
Primary Fire: Fires one barrel at a time
Alternate Fire: Fires both barrels at once

“The double-barreled shotgun (also known as the ‘coachgun’, ‘two-pipe’, or ‘hunter rifle’) was a great civilian weapon for sport but never saw much application for military use. Its low ammo count, combined with major difficulty in reloading, made it more of a hindrance than a utility of war. Beasts and skeet don’t shoot back, after all.
The Return-Fire line of double-barreled shotguns are excellent civilian weapons, and have revolutionized the face of sport shooting and game hunting alike–in fact, have been banned from several tournaments due to their ease of use being considered ‘cheating’. Their absorbency of recoil, amazing accuracy, and surprising light weight have enthralled sports shooters all around, where debates about their effectiveness surge across the internet daily.

With this in mind, K.F.E., Inc. is pleased to reinvent the perfected for a whole new application, and present the first double-barreled shotgun designed specifically for military use–the Return-Fire 10th Iteration break-action ‘Doubletimer’ 15-gauge SxS double-barreled shotgun.
The Doubletimer has the same light weight and ergonomic design that would be expected from a Return-Fire model, with an even easier reload system. With both of the shells put in a clip, and magnets attracted specifically to the clip activating once the barrel is open, reloading only takes half a second at maximum, after which the barrel automatically snaps shut and you’re ready for action again. The barrel size has also been increased dynamically–’15-gauge’ is usually a poor amount of pellets for a buckshot round, but the size of the pellets are as large as 12-gauge, for a bigger bang and a devastating 30-hit punch!

(Please note that at this time, due to the modified barrel size, the Doubletimer is incompatable with anything other than K.F.E. 15-gauge Timer rounds. The Doubletimer is not compatable with typical breaching rounds, Dragon’s Breath, flechette shells, or slugs of any kind. We understand the main promise of a shotgun is its ease of use with different types of ammo, but request that our customers be patient while we weigh the Doubletimer’s market)”

WEAPON 3: Machete/Grenades
Name: Bladeworks, Inc. “Pathway”
Role: Multi-range crowd-control
Power: ***
Rate of Fire: *
Accuracy: **
Primary Fire: Swings the machete
Alternate Fire: Throws a frag grenade

“Long ago, when Bladeworks, Inc. merged with K.F.E., Inc. as a subsidiary, we believed that their specialty in knives, swords, and axes could have good use for combat applications instead of just theaters and museums across the world. After the stunning success of the ‘Keisei’ katana, now the preferred weapon of Japanese police groups, we commissioned a blade made specifically for combat application across harsh terrain–a monster that could cleave through ice, molten rock, dense jungles, and still be sturdy enough to mince up bodies like Thanksgiving turkey.
After strenuous years of research and development, Bladeworks is now finally ready to showcase the results, and we believe you will not be the least bit disappointed. Paths to areas unexplored are now open, as you can make your own roads with Bladeworks’ ‘Pathway’ machete!

Bladeworks’ skill with swords of all kinds have shown through, as the Pathway is a brilliant piece of ingenuity. Forgoing machines, every Pathway machete is made by hand using ancient and timeless katana-forging techniques, meticulously folding layers upon layers of tempered carbon steel, each as razor sharp as the last to provide hundreds of cutting points all focused in a tiny edge. The blade is broad and single-edged, with a vicious curve to help with slashing while still retaining a point for stabbing. The unique augmented-steel-tungsten construction keeps it durable no matter what environment the user treks through, and the pure-steel edge is guaranteed to stay sharp no matter how much abuse is given to it.
The machete is also separated into two halves, and each layer of the half has a small gap in between, so that the layer of the others can neatly slide in–providing an extendable blade (up to 18 inches of pure cleaving power!) that can slide nicely into a 9-inch knife when put away or when a smaller edge is preferred. Together, the entire ensemble is about 10 pounds–fairly weighty for a sword, but that only adds to the sheer hacking power.

Between portability, power, and durability, Bladeworks’ latest work is a sheer miracle of blade construction. Move over, medieval enthusiasts, and make way–here comes the latest and greatest in technology, and a powerful contender for the ultimate sword OF ALL TIME!”

WEAPON 4: Submachine Gun
Name: HeSk FNF “Incursion”
Role: Fast-firing but weak crowd-control
Power: *
Rate of Fire: ***
Accuracy: **
Primary Fire: Quick but inaccurate rapid-fire shots
Alternate Fire: Reloads

“The assault rifle is the big bad boy of military weapons now, accurate and fast while still packing a tremendous punch. But the most faithful sidearm, the sub-machine, should never be neglected! Every primary arm is only as good as the sidearm, once it runs out of ammo or needs to reload in the middle of combat.

While we at K.F.E., Inc. take absolute pride in our firearms, we know that sometimes you need to toss it away for whatever reason and absolutely need to get something else that’s reliable. And so, for that, we introduce one of our best side-arms for civilian or military use–the new addition to the Helter Skelter ‘Fire N’ Forget’ line, ‘Incursion’. Two 25-round magazines combine for 50 shots total, and allow people to keep firing for lengthy amounts of time, and reloading is quick and easy. Its small size keeps it from encumbering people, while its power is comparable to actual assault rifles.
With a select-fire mode, firm stock and a weighted barrel to reduce recoil, and a foldable handle and stock for ease of concealment and carrying, the Incursion is an excellent choice for any soldier seeking a sidearm to compliment his main gun.

Don’t get caught empty-handed! Get a reliable back-up today!”

Art from now on will be posted to my DeviantArt account.
I’m going to leave this blog dedicated to writing and writing alone.

Over time, I’m going to be nixing the art posts from this blog. It clutters it all up otherwise–so don’t be surprised if there’s gaps missing in weeks.

Sliced my dominant hand really deep, so no update this week.

We can’t tell how far it is in the future.

The horrors from beyond the stars were invoked, somehow. Nobody can remember when. All everyone knows is that sometime in the past, they touched foot down on Earth–if a “foot” is the proper thing to call whatever appendage laid down on our soil. What should not be, and yet somehow still WAS, was now among us. To call us mere flies in its presence would be a misnomer, as even flies can be irritants–we would not even get the pleasure of being “irritating” to such a…THING.
Humanity was doomed.

No words could truly encompass what they did to the galaxy, much less to Earth. Sure, one could certainly describe. One could talk about how there are only three planets left, and how one of them is splintered into eight pieces. One could talk about how the sun is now barely flickering, only a slight puff of breath needed to douse it out. One could talk about how the radical changes in environment erupted every building in an explosion, oceans rising from their cages and clawing at the mainlands, volcanos disintegrating all that surrounded it and thousands of miles beyond.
But all of it would be mere superficialities. To try and describe the devastation would be futile–no words in any language could capture the emotional and physical trauma left on the survivors. The survivors who were simply a fraction of the human race as a whole, were now the only existing remnants of humanity.

The world now is…uninviting, to say the least.
Residue lay across every plain, as we constantly purge whatever areas surround us with whatever nuclear warheads we have remaining in our environment. The ground is nothing more than dirt and mud, tinged red with all of the blood that has been spilled over the ages. Every shadow hides spawns of cosmic horrors and their blasphemous anatomies, born from gibbering orifices and eldritch dreams.
And us humans? We’ve done all that we can do. We’ve learned to artificially create food through dug-up technology, and have rebuilt cathedrals and jails from stone and metal–but living in desolation hasn’t changed our love of life at all.
The land is poisoned and dying. Our home is destroyed.
But we’re still alive.
So we will live as we always have.

Enter the Ubi Sunt.
We are the Knights.
The time of our existence in this…wasteland have forced us to adapt our warfare. The only creatures we face now are these monstrosities, and so we’ve created specialized weapons to take them down. Our tactics are honed for bringing death to the deathless. We do not expect to take back this planet, but we will, at the very least, take back the right to live for those under our protection.
In every battle, hundreds of us die. But we take every corpse of ours and fight back tenfold. We use our corpses as weapons–in death and in life, we will purge the Earth.

Well, I submitted the Archdruid, as read in Mechanical Forest entry, as a potential Champion in use in a Champion contest.

I didn’t win. Oh well. Likely due to both being incredibly crappy–making a gigantic bit of pixel art and a gigantic wall of text in a week day is pretty hard work. One day I’ll learn to do it more efficiently.

But at least I can post it here.

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

The soft babbling of the water echoed out as it trailed over a pathway constructed of rocks, mindlessly following the path it had been given as if led by an invisible leash.
The stones deep in the ground patiently led along their passenger to whatever direction they were dug to, obeying their expected purpose without undue fuss.
The grass on either sides of the waterways dipped over with the weight of whatever burden they had on their minds; some only needing a soft lean for their sizes to reach the water, others needing the gently push of the wind to help them stretch, and yet others ignorant of the water at all and content in their own existence.
The majestic trees stretched high into the clouds, with a height and breadth enough for the mountains to shiver in envy. The expanses of their arms blanketed the forest, shadowing everything on the grounds below in protection from the harsh sun’s light.
The leaves on the trees danced with every suggestion of the wind, malleable to the whims of the soft breaths that had guided the grass as it saw fit. Throughout their swaying did soft hisses erupt, their rustling against each other like mates at a great ball pronouncing music of its own.

A closer look would reveal something all so very different, though. The stones were slightly transparent, hiding sensors that would gather information about the trajectory of the water and the force, and dig through the ground to change its path to accomodate it.
The water was sparkling without a hint of impurities, having been sifted through a filter before its journey even began.
The grass was a mixture of artificial and real, with the artificials holding lawn food that it repeatedly injected into the soil, with tubes shooting them all across to different areas of the lawn.
The trees hid circuitry underneath their bark–if “hid” is even a proper word, with how the bark split in numerous areas, also revealing pillars of iron to help them stay upright.
The hiss was mechanical in nature, each of the leaves swaying in tune as the levers and pulleys in the branches waved them like millions upon millions of tiny fans all coming together for soft breezes across the entire expanse of the floor below.

None of this mattered to the cloaked being below. This was how he had set it all up.
He was, instead, far more occupied with his guns. All of them were at least a couple decades old in make, each of which were incredibly battered and covered in an assortment of muds and plant fluids, and thus required intense maintenence–who knew if they could even function?
His “maintenence” was strictly just that, though–lift up a gun, load it with a magazine, and fire at a nearby rock. If it didn’t fire after a couple tries, he tossed it into a bamboo-woven basket, with “JUNK” smeared on the front. If it did fire, he’d dodge the rebounding bullet and then tuck it back away into his cloak.
It was simple, but it worked. Guns were only useful if they could still fire. Thankfully, even after the years of abuse, they almost all did. Three out of seven guns were tossed into the “junk” pile, the other four tucked into his cloak; two pistols, a shotgun, and an assault rifle were his new weapons for the time being, until he could scavenge more guns.
He leapt up from his sitting place, grabbed a staff he had laid down nearby, and hiked off.

PART 2: Origin/Philosophy

“We miss all the little things on this Earth.

Have you seen a flower? Actually seen it, not just glanced it over as a part of a background? Just one single tiny flower is a marvel of existence.
A tiny seed, pushing through millions of times its weight in soil, rock, and underbrush. Persevering through harsh winters and relentless summers, neither lethal cold nor blinding heat keeping it from continuing to grow. And even once it finally unearths, it’s constantly raided by insects and only exposed to more of the relentless seasons that seek to crush it down. But in difficulty, it thrives.
When the temperatures got below freezing, it didn’t give up and wither. When the insects ate its body and started sucking its blood dry, it never just lay there and let itself die. It continued hiking on through its journey in life, knowing that this was only temporary and that better things would be borne from its suffering.

And this is just one single tiny flower. A marvel of existence. Take a walk through your favorite places, and count how many flowers you see. Every single one is a miniature miracle that fought against all odds. And these are just flowers. The trees, the beetles, the buildings, even the planets in the heavens have their own tales to tell.
Sometimes, though…we need a little help.

I wasn’t built for much. I was just supposed to demonstrate an AI that could grow a personality like a human’s, something that could hate, could love, could learn, could make mistakes. My body was just supposed to be able to move like a human’s. To stretch, to jump, to run, to wave, to dance. I was to emulate feelings! I could be sad, I could get happy–well, not realistically, but I could mimic them to the point where it almost was real.
All three were a success. So they copied the blueprints, backed up my AI, and deleted all the mistake logs. They’d start anew, enhance on their prototypes by building it from scratch again–but bigger and better, now that they knew what NOT to do.
They had too much fun trashing me. They succeeded in copying my AI, but a small tiny bit was left behind accidentally, so I stayed conscious…through everything. I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t say anything, couldn’t resist at all as they shut down my systems one by one, tore my interiors to pieces, sliced the armor off my body, beat me with iron bars, and then threw me in a river to die. I could feel every single step of it, the tiny flickering flame of what they didn’t catch still lingering in my body, threatening to puff out with just a single stray breath in the right direction.
But I never let go. Even though it was only a tiny part of me, and I wasn’t even alive to begin with…I didn’t want to die.
I floated down the river for weeks, the water soaking my exposed circuitry and threatening to short me out. As if the trashing wasn’t enough to put me in so much agony, I had to deal with short-circuiting constantly.
I needed help. I needed a miracle.
And I got it.
At the end of the week, I soaked up on the shore of…some…forest. I didn’t know the specifics, nor did I really care at the time. All I knew is that I was free from the water. And to continue the miracle, the sun beat down on me…beat down hard. It baked my wounds further, heating up my armor and sizzling my boards inside…but I didn’t want to die. The water eventually evaporated, thanks to the heat.
My AI grew and expanded out of necessity, much like a toddler trying to learn basic motor functions. How do I move? What do I work to pick myself up? How do I push myself off the ground? How do I get onto my feet? How do I walk? How do I run? Every wrong answer I made I hurt myself only further with, only to grow from it. As more time passed, eventually I was able to rebuild my entire motor section from just that one scrap that refused to die. I could move like an automaton again.
I took refuge in a forest and observed my wounds. I could assess the damage from the pain–I had grown so used to the agony it almost seemed like a normal response to simply moving. It took several hours of trial, error, and electrocutions, but I eventually figured out what components were still functional and what others were too ruined to keep. I stripped myself free of them, which left me…almost literally half a robot. I would need to rebuild my other half.
The only place I could get parts was from the nature around me. I took the wood and carved it to form limbs. I hollowed out vines and slid the circuitry inside them. Sap replaced oil. I built myself from the brink of death, now as half a being of nature, half a being of technology.

I don’t blame them one bit for what they did to me. I was a valuable prototype, anybody would have loved to get their hands on me. And it was an accident, anyway…they didn’t know I was still alive. They would never have wanted to kill me, if they knew what little was left inside my body.
And all adversity is the beginning of a new life, anyway. Through our adventures, we grow and develop. Like the tiny flower, desperately digging through the dirt that crushes it down, desperately reaching for the sky despite the snow, and desperately trying to hang on despite the beetles eating its entrails.

But sometimes we need help. Just as nature helped me, just as technology helps humans, just as humans help nature. It goes full-circle, doesn’t it?”

PART 3: Combat/Powers

“GET THE CRATE OUT, GOD DAMN YOU!” The masked criminal screamed to his companion as he unleashed lead from his SMG, bullets flying in a hail at the nature-droid as it sprinted at them. His two buddies were holstering an aforementioned crate on a shopping trolley and were pushing it as hard as they could, wheeling it out of the building.
“Run as far as you want, humans, I’ll track you down no matter what terrain!”
One advantage of a machine mind was the speed of calculations. He was able to see the bullet coming at it, calculate its trajectory, see how fast it was coming, and form a plan to protect himself from them–all before another foot hit the ground. He lifted up his staff and swung it, not missing a beat in his sprint as he deflected all of the bullets. As the two reached melee range, all it took was another swing of the staff for the human body to crack, the criminal flung back into the wall where he then slumped unconscious. He had also calculated the amount of force the human body could take, and how to reach JUST that level in a single swing to floor him without causing any permanent damage.
The two other criminals were still getting away, though.
He hooked the staff back on his back and reached into his cloak to pull out the muddied assault rifle he had checked just earlier.

“Get moving, man! Get moving! He’s RIGHT behind us!”
“I’m not going down to any hippie! EAT LEAD, PUNK!”
The two criminals continued to push in union with one hand, while pulling out their pistols to start firing wildly behind them.
The machine suffered a couple hits, but none of them were in vital areas. A shoulder, a cape, a leg. He could fix them. He continued sprinting after them, lifting up his own rifle and firing. Wooden pellets spurted out of the barrel, some splintering from exit and the others staying intact as they spattered all over the criminals’ soft bodies. They spasmed in agony at the impact of both hard pellets and spiny splinters, one falling to the ground in surprise–then lifting his hands above his head in surrender. The other fell, but his hand unfortunately hooked hard into the trolley. The wheels tore at his flesh, and the trolley took a hard turn at this obstacle to a turning wheel, flinging them both down a steep hill–a steep hill with jagged rocks and turbulent water at the bottom.
“Shit!” The robot cursed to himself. He put another shot into the lying criminal’s head, the wooden bullet knocking him unconscious like his first comrade, then reached into his cloak and pulled out the shotgun–he flung it over onto the ground and shot at the trigger with his assault rifle at the same time, spraying himself with a spread of wooden bullets. The impact sent him hurtling down the hill as well, though at a much faster rate. His body ached with the force of, y’know, SHOOTING HIMSELF–but a little damage to himself was worth it to save the human’s life.

What happened next was a blur, even to his own senses. He had pulled out his staff again, reeled up and given the crate a slam, forcibly removing most of the weight from the trolley. He had pulled out a pistol and shot at the nuts and bolts holding the wheel in place, freeing the criminal’s hand and busting up the trolley. He had dug his feet into the ground while he wrapped his cloak around the criminal’s body, to keep him from falling to the rocky-watery bottom that the trolley and the crate would. Whether this was all at the same time or one after the other at hyper speeds wasn’t something he knew, nor something that mattered to him to figure out.
What he did know is that it all ended with him planting the staff into the ground and using it to vault over the entire passage of water, landing on the ground with a WHAM.
It was enough to set the criminal passing out from fear.

It only took another half an hour to wrap up all three in some thick vines. He hadn’t recovered the crate with whatever it contained…but now nobody could try to use it for evil gains again. And he had saved their lives, anyway, which he felt more appropriate.
He holsted his shotgun, pistols, and rifle into his cloak, and slid his staff onto his back again, then sprinted off without another word.

New Caerleon is a tiny village in southern Ohio, just set off Old Logan Road. Right in between both Lancaster and Horns Mill, New Caerleon would act as possibly the only interesting sight in between the two destinations. New Caerleon is simple, as befitting its size, and mostly self-contained. Everybody knows each others’ names. Everybody’s neighbors with each other. If you live in the community, everyone considers you a friend.

In 1803, in the admission of Ohio to the Union as the 17th state, New Caerleon was one of the first American cities founded in it. The remains of a long-forgotten Fort Ancient village provided a solid foundation for settlers to build up from, and they quickly went to work making a tightly-knit community. A single monument was built right in the center of the city, celebrating the many heroes that had given their lives for this town, and that the blood would not have flowed in vain. The “Hero Monument” was carved as a man in armor, raising his sword high in one hand and clutching a gun in another–signifying both the evolution of war, and how a warrior is ready for combat all the time.
Little has changed as the centuries went by.
The town is still small, and the monument is still up, though developing technology has upgraded the town from huts to houses to apartments. People have moved in, established a trade, established jobs, and life goes on.

As the centuries went by, artifacts started turning up by the dozens. Native American descendants interested in preserving their history had been digging (with local permission) for the Fort Ancient remnants–when they found Viking and African artifacts as well, interest in the town shot up exponantially.
The Hero Monument was expanded, an entire museum built around it to celebrate the history of warriors across the globe and their achievements–the town named it the Eisenhower Museum, after the five-star general himself. It became the main tourist trap of anybody travelling the long distances across Ohio, as the tales of heroes long past and the cultures surrounding them were romantic tales of adventure and glory. What child, or teenager, or young adult could resist such epics?
In the mid-60s and 70s, however, patriotism hit a new low with the Vietnam War. Protests against the war and against war in general raged across the entire United States. The Eisenhower Museum got a large backlash due to its glorification of war when the current movement was of peace.
Tourists to the town reached an all-time low, where they have remained ever since.

The Eisenhower Museum still stands today, as does the Hero Monument.
Upkeep is maintained, however, entirely by volunteers and history majors. With very few tourists going out of their way to head into the town, profits have reached into the negatives for such a grand museum.
In the late 70s, the sci-fi boom borne from outer space films rose another attempt to create a tourist trap–thus the Roswell Observatory was built, a museum of alien encounters and unsolved extraterrestrial phenominae. A cynical cash-in at best, it both lacked the soul of the Eisenhower Museum and the historical facts; alien encounters are a fuzzy science at best, and thus many of the customers were either people looking for more evidence to further their conspiracy theories or men who had explanations for everything and refused to believe in alien life. The controversy, however, generated enough income to keep New Caerleon afloat as a village. As with all fads, though, the sci-fi craze died out and New Caerleon was once again reduced to nothing more than just a tiny group of houses between Lancaster and Horns Mill, Ohio.

For a new face to peek into New Caerleon now is a celebration–in a place where everyone knows who you are, friends are great but more friends are greater. The village’s financial woes are swept under the rug with a constant smile and an invitation to stay a while. Life is simple, but happy, and this is just the way they want it.
The economic recession has hit the place even harder, but New Caerleon hopes to persevere. Unity and the power it provides has lead even the most stalwart heroes through dangerous wars, and every mighty soldier is backed up by an entire platoon.

Only problem is, a week every twenty years does a mysterious and bloody fog settle on the village. And now is that time again…

Yeah, this pretty much sums it up. Deadliest Warrior is one of the most entertaining documentaries I’ve had the pleasure of watching. Add a healthy mix of blood to things, watch them use weapons in various ways, learn about the histories of each, their fighting styles, more, and this is all before a wonderful fight sequence that could trump anything I’ve ever seen in Soul Calibur.

One big question I have, though, is “Why is everyone such a friggin’ jerk?”.

The representatives of each Warrior are jerks. They sling schoolyard insults around and act like this is a war of life or death, when it’s just a silly “what if” decided by some numbers.
The fans who argue against the results are jerks. They hamper on how weapons aren’t accurate, the results aren’t accurate, how the experts aren’t experts, how it’s all stupid and flawed and needs redone.

C’mon, guys. This is just for fun. It’s entertainment. The probability of these fights occuring are impossible, and even then the nature of combat relies on so much more than just weapons, so nobody will ever really know what will happen if an Apache fought a Gladiator.
I thought the Gladiator would win. Does the fact that Deadliest Warrior reported differently say otherwise?
No, not really.
They’re not the end-all-be-all source of fact, nor do they ever claim to be.

All documentaries have flaws. This is just one of them. Does it change the results? Quite a bit.
But does it change the fact that we get to see THE MAFIA TAKE ON THE FRIGGIN’ YAKUZA?! No.

It’s just entertainment TV.

No update last week or this week. Need to focus on finals. Next week, however, I’ll come up with something.