War In Jessie: Is It Upon Us?

*pulls out her flaming rat launcher and baby bazooka" Don't worry Osprey, I'll find you, or at least sent you some well cooked eats!

*Gnaws on a rat*

You are close!

/me arranges the rat bones to read "OS WAZ HEER" and lies down, arms folded.

<Overviewing the trenches strewn with sculpty noobs, mud, blood & popcorn>
I thought the war moved to Bear for a while, is it back?

Sending in a ferret...

The very clods underfoot in Jessie writhe in bellicosity, it seems, when one treads upon them. I may have neared my final exhalation, yet do hope my struggles have not been in vain.

*faints*

Air drops food and high explosives to Osprey.

6 full days of marching. Of course the soldiers didn't complain. Despite missing limbs and broken joints. Despite the electric short circuits from the constant damned rain. Despite the fact that they were rebuilding their comrades from salvaged spare parts as they marched. They didn't complain. How could they? The bot army wasn't programmed to complain. It was programmed to march. And destroy.

The bot army under General Elanthius had arrived on the outskirts of Jessie and was in the process of digging more trenches and setting up baricades. With their super human strength and speed the work was progressing quickly. Once they were hunkered down it would take more than tanks and bombs to dislodge them. If war was upon us then the bots were ready.

Meanwhile, on a serene mountain-top in Ambiance Falls, far far from war-torn Jessie, a slip of a girl reclines, feet up on the book-strewn table. She takes a sip from her World Cup mug and gazes idly at the cardinal circling below. (Odd behavior for a cardinal ... this one always seems to circle, like a hawk).

She returns her attention to her laptop and, with a small frown of concentration, tweaks the virus. Soon, the very rocks around Elianthus' army will ooze bits deadly to bots.

It is a small thing, but all she can do for her comrade Osprey.
.

The spybots had done their job well. Despite the counter measures employed by the wiley General Elanthius, his horde of combat bots had finally been located.

Her tail twitched with excited anticipation as the clan leader studied the intelligence. "So, war is once more upon us in Jessie," she sighed. Gently ringing a golden bell, inlaid with rare Heteroceran Jade, she summoned her Mistress of Blades.

"The renegade Ninja and his diabolical host have finally been discovered. Summon the Samurai and prepare to depart at once for Jessie."

Turning away, she padded to the ebony cabinet and opened its doors. Gazing upon the legendary blade residing therein she purred, "It is now time to wash away the shame of our clan with the blood of our foe."

An unnatural sound roused Osprey. What was that plink-clink-plink borne faintly on the morning's fresh breeze? The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. It couldn't be... Biting her lip, she rose to her full height and looked down from her hiding place atop the ruined tower. Hers was a tiny figure posed against the sky, a lone warrior in filthy rags, with half-healed wounds attesting to the violence of the world she now lived in.

Below her, in a relentless march, the army of bots crossed Jessie like one organism. The heavy artillery bots, recognisable by their immense forearms, the winged scout bots, the silver repair bots - all in formation, moved towards her in near silence.

Overlord Tegg looked at the Atari vacumn tube display showing the major players.

"FOOLS! let them squabble over Jesse, MINIONS! Inflate my Diridgable, and get the megaprim cannon mounted under it! We're invading Urlsaa!"
<Answers Phone>
"Yes, I knew the blimp is only half the length of the cannon, zip over to Caladon and just steal a second blimp or 4 if you need to"

The seargent snapped to attention with a clang, saluting so sharply it left a small dent in his forehead.

"General, we have located the target in section Delta-Delta-5. Shall we proceed with the strike force?"

"Good work soldier. I shall initiate the launch sequence myself. Soon we see will see the end of Jannae and her accursed Samurai. She never should have followed us here."

Elanthius' fingers danced at lightning speed across the familiar control panel. Launching in 5. Target acquired. Nuclear warheads primed. Launching in 4. Thrusters status red. Detonation countdown proceeding. Launching in 3. Elanthius paused, something wasn't right. The control valve on the oscillator micro switch wasn't engaging. Some sort of software malfunction. No matter, he would just reroute the command unit through the backup processor. He tried to engage the backup processor but the data stream was shutting down and there was nothing he could to to bring it back. Some sort of corruption in the core.

"Sir, there's been a security breach. Some kind of virus has purple hatter fish roland"

Elanthius raised an eyebrow and stared at the seargent.

"That is to say, some kind of ironing board, ocelot, wibble, bleep, bleep, bleep...."

The bot just kept saying "bleep". Elanthius reached over and tried to reboot the poor guy but it was no use. The virus had struck the central asset server. Elanthius checked the status blog and sure enough logins were down. He'd have to act fast to eliminate the threat and pray he didn't crash in the process.

Clenching her fists so tightly her fingernails dug into her palms, Osprey watched the approach of the bot army. "You... shall... NOT PASS," she whispered, then dropped to her knees and faced the east.

"Almighty G'al, protector of the grid and benevolent ruler of all creatures upon it, turn your Eye to the land of Jessie. Your guidance is needed, for only you have the power to change the course of events. If it be your desire, G'al, turn back the bots. "

Arising, she looked out at the approaching army. The sound was louder, now, and she could hear the crackle of Voice and the whump of physical prims. Her heart felt as though it would burst, and her breathing grew irregular from the wind-driven dust and acrid smoke.

Ruthlessly, relentlessly, the army advanced. As she watched pinpoints of red flashed - a hundred in an instant. Osprey knitted her brows. Again - hundreds of tiny flashes occured, and an echoing tinny sound came from a thousand circuits. "Bleep."

And then... nothing.

The dirigible cleared the hulk of the ruined wall. Jannae saw a sign, "Welcome to Jessie, you can die here."

Turning to her War Mistress she ordered, "Bring us down near that warehouse, open the ramp upon landing. We must deploy swiftly."

All around her, the Neko Samurai of Clan Karas drew steel. To her right, her sister Jalissa drew the deadly pair of Katana that she favored. There was a lurch, the ramp dropped and out they rushed.

Drawing her blade, Soul Stealer, she led them onto the flat of a plateau. Ahead was a ruined tower. Beyond that, the approaching bots of twice cursed Elanthius advanced relentlessly.

"Let us move forward and meet them sisters. But leave the despicable Elanthius for my blade."

The gap between the two forces narrowed. A scattering of push projectiles riddled the front ranks of the onrushing Samurai. Suddenly Jannae's ears shot upright as she heard an incredible racket of beeps and what sounded like gears winding down. Incredibly the bots began to wander aimlessly or fall where they stood.

Urging her warriors to hasten their pace she cried out, "Thank the creator for her blessings, nothing can save the renegade Ninja from justice now! Forward my kittens, the day of our revenge has arrived!"

/me wipes the sweat from her brow as she hovers above Jessie, exhausted from peddling the blimpocycle to and fro thousands of feet above the clanking horde, seeding it with virus-infected nanobot lichen. She glances at the small monitor screen mounted on the handlebars.

Black again. DAMN!

She removes a steel-heeled Schmooz boot and whaps the screen, which flashes a tempting array of data before going dark again, too swiftly to read. What is happening on the ground?? What is that beyond the bots ... are there TWO bot armies?

Warily, she drops altitude, hovering above a high butte and squinting through her goggles. She can't see anything through the dust raised by the armies ... but what is that dot below her? Could it be????
.

The first smile in many moons lit Osprey's face as she realised the army of bots had received a mega shipment of fail. Catching up the sides of her dark cloak and leaping around in glee, she looked like fire-blackened paper twisting and rising in a column of hot air.

A shadow fell across the pitted stone of the tower. Looking up she saw an outlandish sight - an airship with pilot peddling rapidly, her puffed out cheeks as air-fattened as the blimp itself. "Ahoy," and a wave - accompanied by a drop in altitude and sharp list to port before the pilot steadied the airship - reassured Os that she had nothing to fear.

Calming herself she gave quick thanks to G'al, then cupped her hands around her mouth. "Is the danger over?" she called.
"Not sure," came the reply, "I... I see SOMETHING."
"What direction?"

A sudden updraught sent the airship out of chat range, and Os could see the pilot struggling to regain control.

Rage consumed her very being. Joy of battle was upon her. On her right she saw Jalissa's blades flash in the red tinged sunset. Everywhere her warriors surged forward. Just ahead was the tower, scarred and blackened. Ducking a clumsy blow from a bot, she danced to one side and felt the warm flow of it's hydolic fluids as her blade cut it in half.

From a vast distance she heard the chime of an incoming IM:

"Gorean raiders! They have taken the walls. We have fallen back on the nursery to protect the kittens. All glory to Clan Karas..."

Unable to contain her bitterness at the turn of events, Jannae reluctantly issued orders to disengage and fall back on the dirigable. Elanthius had escaped once again.

What was that strange vehicle hoveing above the tower?

BWAHAHHHHHAHAA! Foolish, Fools, Elanthus! That's why I still use a minion with a match and fuse to set of my WMD'S
<Answers phone>
What do you mean my airship is missing?
Ninjas stole it?
Didn't we have a sculpty noob dressed as Chuck Norris guarding it?

Os waved a quick goodbye to the receding blimpocycle, then turned to scan Jessie for hostile forces. Nothing moved except a few scrubby trees, swaying gently in the sim breeze as a result of RenderAnimateTrees set to True in the debug settings. The dust had settled and old faction banners left in place years earlier looked unnaturally bright and unworn in the clear light.

She could see the waves on the inland sea, and when she reset her draw distance in RenderFarClip in order to see further, Hog Island came into view. The billowing smoke from the crashed spaceship was the only movement to the south.

Could it be safe, now? Were the dangers of the past years gone? Not trusting that the magical appearance of peace in this most blood-soaked of damage-enabled sims could be more than a temporary lull, Os kept lookout on the ruined tower. Pausing only long enough to wear a slice of cake left over from Friday's birthday surprise party (which unaccountably squealed "Joyeux Noel!", she watched and waited.

Another brave soldier went down with nothing more than a feeble "bleep... bleep" as the neko samurai attacked. Their timing had been impeccable. Suspiciously so. Elanthius cursed the Lindens from A to Z as he watched his disabled army get mowed down like so many stalks of wheat.

"To the Botmobile", he cried, although no-one was there to hear him.

His airborne scout division had stolen a tiny blimp earlier in the day. Apparently the owner had been distracted by a constantly ringing telephone while the stealthy ninja bots had pilfered an entire megaprim sized airship from under his nose. Fortunately Elanthius had the foresight to store a couple of offline models aboard the ship. With these few brave men as his only companions he fled the site of the greatest bot massacre since the Great Camping Ban of '09.

He would retreat to a nearby sim and use stealth to infiltrate the neko forces under the cover of darkness. Jessie be damned. This was personal.

The battle against the Gorean raiders had been short and brutal. The dead had (of course) been teleported back home, and their abandoned equipment auto-returned. The few invaders unlucky enough to have been captured were frozen at the moment. Neko kittens laughed as they outfitted them with ears, tails and very hot outfits.

Jannae reflected on the events of the day, as she watched her enslaved LDPW moles repair damages sustained by the sim's builds. Her informer within LL had supplied her with a machinima secretly taken of the battle on Jessie. She watched again as General Elanthius made his escape. Just how did he manage to acquire that blimp? Her spy bots had recorded the agonizingly slow process of the bot army as it marched on Jessie.

No matter. He could be hiding on any one of the numerous sims controlled by his faction. Undoubtedly creating a new army of bots, with better scripting so as to avoid the problems encountered today.

Of one thing she was sure, the renagade ninja would try to move against her next.

Venturing down from the tower to scavenge in the last hour of daylight, Os searched for water. Food, and a secure place to sleep, were next on the list, but for now water was the thing. In one of these abandoned buildings there must be water! Hoping for a tap that gushed clean water at a twist, she knew a flooded basement would be a more likely find. The waves of the salty inland sea lapped the pilings of the outer-most builds, and she felt taunted by their merry gurgles. Unacccustomed to feeling so stiff, so wind burnt and dehydrated, her progress was slow; she picked her way through a rubbish-strewn gully along the side of a windowless concrete bunker.

A dandelion - toughened by its life in the hard pan - went into Os's pocket, as did a piece of wire. Looking up to note the surrounding builds, she saw that she was moving roughly north according to the minimap. Deciding to veer east around a raised parcel, and knowing her condition was poor and left her open to mistakes, she pulled the wire from her pocket and bent it at ninety degrees an inch from her thumbnail. It might... serve as a reminder... a route without a map... better than nothing...

She moved on, not seeing the shadow behind her, not hearing the scrape of an arm on the bumpmapped foundation.

The wind! The wind! Every evening Jessie takes a deep breath, sucking sea-laden air over war-scorched plains ...

The lone blimpocycle tossed like a child's pinwheel, the rider desperately clinging, until she encountered the sim boundary and the vehicle vanished, unceremoniously dumping her on the roof of a deserted mall.

On finally reaching home, her viral wall readout told the entire story. Success undreamed! She panned rapidly through dizzying images beamed from the nanobots ... heard the bleeps ... saw the botlord scuttle away ... wondered at the neko warriors' uncanny onrush. Which, she pondered, was the greater threat? And yes, before they self-destructed the nanobot web caught one single image of Os ... tattered, a dancing crow on ruined ramparts, some no-doubt-deadly full bright weapon appearing in her hand.

The girl touched the pulsing tree by the river, dispatching a message to her unlikely ally that she had survived. And dove deep into the river curling around her land ... peace here, and in Jessie. Tonight.

But, in a cubicle lit only by a lone LCD screen, tapping fingers sent a message she would see only on the morrow ... the forums ... doomed ...