This really should have gone up BEFORE the awards post by Casske. Oh, well.


The Real World: Filthy Kislev Tour

or

Joe and Casske's Excellent Adventure


Over the course of the past several months, semi-corrupt Gebler officers and overall malcontents Joseph Richardson and Casske Klassa have been living under the dark veil of Nortune's trademark mixture of steam, smog, fog, and soot. And they hate it. Having grown accustomed to the comparatively lavish style of living they enjoyed in Dazil; where the beer was cool, the women hot, and the air clean and refreshing, they couldn't stand the ruin and decay of their makeshift prison. Now, with the Shevvite barrier in place, able to shield the nation at a moment’s notice, escape seemed impossible.

But you can't keep good men down.

The two resourceful officers have brainstormed a plan to precise, so ingenious, that really, it can't fail. Unless one of a hundred possible things goes wrong. But that's just Casske's paranoia, right? Right!

Joseph Richardson, through his contacts within Nortune as well as his almost fanatical preparedness, has on hand a number of explosives that, if placed on key structural points of a building, can bring most standard, non-military structures down, and are designed to cause as many casualties as possible. Using these explosives, he plans to hold hostage the Morningstar Elementary School, located in A-block. He will issue an ultimatum to the military forces that the school will be detonated should the Nortune barrier not be lowered. When the barrier is lowered (on the assumption that Kislev cares about its children) a Solarian agent will have gained access to the Mass Driver, located to the east of the industrial city, covered somewhat by a cove of rocky hills and mountains. Using the rail gun, and Kislev's targeting technology, he will shoot a heavily armored gear sized sword into Nortune, which will, if precisely done and shot strongly enough, break an opening into the Kislev Gear Bay. Casske Klassa will be waiting for this to occur nearby, at which point he will retrieve his gear, along with Joseph's, and head straight for the Morningstar School. At this time, the Solarian agent will fire a second blast from the Mass Driver, this time a number of flares and fireworks that will go off low across the top of Nortune, scrambling the military forces. Casske will airlift Joseph out of the Morningstar Elementary School, and make their break past the lowered barrier, heading south into Aveh, and hence, freedom.

Viva GA-GS! Freedom! Bout time. Hu-frickin'-zzah.

Sadly, these things never work as well as they’re supposed to.

First off, the thing Joseph wasn’t exactly telling anyone was that he had used most of his explosives earlier when he and Casske were escaping from a group of cops. While blowing up most of the street WAS a bit excessive, it at least let the two of them get away. And only a few of the monsters came crawling out of the sewers, and certainly nothing the battlers and amazonnesses couldn’t handle. Instead the school was mostly rigged with smoke bombs, ones that would, at worst, cause a fairly severe purple haze. Another problem was the accuracy of the first rail cannon shot, knocking a hole not so much in the gear bay doors as plunging into the ground directly in front of them.

Luck turned their way again when the Kislev army came pouring out at the sudden appearance of a giant freaking sword sticking out of the ground. Taking advantage of the confusion, Casske slipped into the gear bays, mugged an engineer, changed into his clothes, allowing him to get close to the officer’s offices. There he mugged an officer, changed into his clothes, and was about to leave when a group of soldiers came around a corner and saw him standing over a prone form with a bloody pipe in one hand.

Meanwhile, Joseph wasn’t having too much fun either. Kislev police forces had surrounded the school much faster than he thought they would, he could see a flight of gears scrambling towards him across the city, and little Timmy was threatening to go all over the floor of Joseph didn’t disarm the bombs on the bathroom door. In a desperate ploy to buy Casske more time, he demanded a bullhorn, and began reciting 501 reasons why the mighty empire of Aveh was better than this backwater Kislev place.

Casske had spent a few minutes running full-speed down the halls when he came upon ANOTHER group of soldiers. Thinking quickly, he took advantage of his officer’s disguise to point at the soldiers chasing him. Ordering their execution, Casske slipped away as the two groups of soldiers clashed.

About then, the fireworks reached the city. Unfortunately, the shield had come back up when a giant sword was fired at the city, and they impacted rather noisily with it. Unsurprisingly, the shield held. The explosions did draw a fair amount of attention, and a fairly large group of the Kislev military went to stop whoever was attacking.

Casske finally found his gear, the Galia, and hopped in. Although the controls had been torn apart by Kislev engineers in a futile attempt to reverse-engineer them, the induction ports were still built into the armrests of the chair. Starting the gear up, he grabbed the Loki, a masterpiece of Solarian engineering totally wasted on Joseph, and blasted off towards the school, pausing only to wrench the sword outside out of the ground. Hell, no one else was using it.

Joseph was meanwhile up to reason 478 why Aveh was better than Kislev, the far lower prices for sand. The cops were getting tired of listening to the fat blowhard talk, and were about to storm the building when the Galia landed on a fair number of them. Joseph took advantage of this brand new wave of confusion to climb into the Loki. Saddly, these controls had been ripped up to, but Joseph also had preparations. The Loki was installed with a primitive Autopilot, designed to get Joseph the hell out if he was ever rendered unable to pilot. The Loki kicked in its massive jets and flew straight for the city limits, the Galia desperately trying to keep up, and at least twenty Kislev gears blazing along behind them.

The two would have escaped then and there, were it not for the fact the shields had come back up. The Galia skidded to a halt when it reached them. The Loki rammed into them repeatedly.

Still, from that point on it was smooth sailing. The two demanded to be allowed to leave peaceably, or they’d destroy the school and all the kids inside. After a surprisingly brief discussion, the Kislev brass agreed. The shields dropped just long enough for the Galia and Loki to blaze across the city limits, and then they came back up again to protect the city from the attack undoubtedly going on.

The next day, one of the men responsible for the decision to let the two wanted criminals go simply commented, “Hell, I figured Aveh didn’t even want ‘em back.” He was later commended for his quick thinking, and given several medals.