NOTICE SKIES: Part ONE
by
Bashiri J. Jones
I was having a lovely dream when the Monkey King kicked me awake.
"Scrip waits for no clan."
I was surprised to find that the monkey King felt that way, but brushing the cobwebs of sleep away I recognized my clan mate, WELLERANE. He was sporting his new armor, stylized after the mythic figure from China. A figure known for its mischief and power. It was a fitting outfit.
A boot to the backside was not a way to start your day. I prefer eggs, scrambled with buttered toast. Especially on this "good" morning!
I was feeling the effects from the night before as I pulled on my own armor.
I had just gotten out of the Earth Republic Infirmary the night before only to find myself at the Crater being fed a steady dose of high proof alcohol by John Cooper and Torq. As a sort of welcome home.
If home is waking with your brain feeling two sizes too big in a skull three sizes too small, then I was definitely there.
I picked up the helm of my Anubian armor, armor stylized after the ancient Egyptian god Anubis. Its surface is all jet black and gold trim, accented by ribbons of incandescent blue light. Placing it upon my head I became the Jackal of Death to all that stood in my way. Antartica or bust, *****!
Fortuitous was my booted alarm.
Arkfall!
1.3 clicks West of the Crater!
"Muir!" WELLERANE blurted out as he fast traveled away in a dance of spinning particles, dust motes on electric highs. I follow after from my private room I purchased at the new Ark Hunter bunker, a retrofitted skyscraper located in the water just east of Ara Shondu's Consulate. The rooms were expensive, but where else were you to keep your shtako. Surrounded by water it provided no protection from those humanoids of the Bay Area that wished us dead. Boats, sails, and motors still exist. Shtako! Most of them have better air support than we do!! But bugs didn't mess with the old H2O.
Arriving at the Muir Processing Plant my clan-mate was already launched and gone, headed to the battle. WELLERANE is not the only one with a pretty new toy. Newly released and fresh out-of-the-box I tossed my Von Bach Industries Hover Platform onto the ground. Quickly it's antigravity gyros balanced it on a cushion of air four inches off the ground. The fastest thing in the Bay Area but also one of most deadliest. All it would take is one skitterling or a Raider crossing the road without his mama, and it's all road rash for yours truly. Von Bach calls it a "Hover Platform" but we all no a hover board when we see one. I don't think McFly visited this particular time line.
I take off West.
Halfway to the Arkfall I'm joined by another clan mate, sunroc. He's driving his matte gray challenger lined with neon green. It cost him a lot of scrip. It had all the bells and whistles, and even supported the new Turbo Jump.
"Tired of being taken out by that Monarch in the middle road when you're in a hurry! Have no worry! Turbo Jump the chump! "
It was on my list of things to acquire.
We both arrived at the Arkfall to find WELLERANE and are other clan-mate, the impetuous, Denestro putting a hurt on the crystal and the Hellbugs that swarmed around it. Denestro was decked out in his Bull armor, the tips of his horns glinted with the Arkfall crystal's alien light. Above, liquid red streamers of falling Ark debri clawed the daytime sky into imperfect patches of softest blue.
I began my attack on the crystal, timing each successive strike against the weaknesses the enemy skits created in their feeding frenzy. But if I waited on them the job would take that much longer.
Out of the corner my eye I can see an elite Hellbug has me in its sights. Out of pure reflex I grab a Biosurge grenade and tossed it at its scrambling form. Immediately it is caught in the tar like substance of the grenade. Time is a precious thing, especially when something is trying to shorten yours. My time would be better spent focusing on the real task.
The crystal wasn't going to destroy its self.
Get the job done, get it done quickly, then get the hell out!
Reaching to my chest again I grabbed a Phermone Grenade and chucked it at the crystal. The grenade immediately exploded sending out a small burst of skit-loving pheromones, and where there wasn't a skit - one appeared. And it was hungry!
It attacked the crystal... and, moments later the other skits, sensing one of their own had defected to the humaniod cause, attacked it, but they were too late. The damage was done. The glowing red and yellow blister on the Arkfall crystal accepted without complaint the typewriter staccato of my fiery VOT Pulser. Fire against fire.
Across the battlefield, two Ark Hunter's, of the female persuasion battled an Elite Monarch. One was armored as a cheetah, a field of yellow spotted with blacks and browns. The other a Valkyrie, a Norse man's vision from Valhalla.
Crymson and MISSRAINBOWKITTY. Two finer Ark hunters you will not meet... okay, maybe you will, but that still doesn't change their level of the bad ***-ness. Taste the Red Rainbow!
I knew if Crymson was on the field then her man, Duck, wouldn't be far behind, and sure enough he was also in attendance.
Unable to produce a duck armor outfit, even after repeated pettioning to Von Bach Industries, he had finally settled on, at least for this battle, Black Bear armor. It looked good. He was just finishing off a Elite Archer with a blast from his Fragger.
Around me, a pantheon of animal-headed and mythic faced Ark Hunters blazed war against the crystal and the enemy who sought to take it from us.
Boom! Boom! - BOOM!!!
Blast Pods!
I was sent hurtling and almost passed out from the impact with the earth. I rolled to my right.
"Where the skruggin' hell did that come from?!!!" I cursed aloud at the battle field. I spotted the offending pod just off my 9'O'clock, but as quickly as I could recover to bring my Ground Pounder onto the may-it-rott-in-Hell Blast Pod, sunroc, lion armor flashing in the strange shifting lights of the Arkfall, sent it back to the dirt from whence it sprang with a sprinkle of molten metal from his assault rifle. If Blast Pods could have registered pain, this one had just been saved from my Inquistion!
More and more Ark hunters arrived as the seconds swept by, and with them more and more Ark hunters new to the game of crystal destruction. In their naïve desire is to be counted amongst the true warriors these novices began attacking anything that moves, including the skits. Without the skits loving nibbles upon the Ark Crystal, and the subsequent blistering upon the Ark Crystal surface, the task before us became a long and drawnout one.
"Don't kill the skits!"
Wolf Deltore. Young, brash, and a true talent when he's focused, shouted his order into local area communication, where it fell on deaf ears. If anything, the newly spawned skits were killed even quicker under a torrent of the launched explosives. Arkfall crystals are not some piece of terrestrial granite that you can blow up with a stick of dynamite. These babies are made of stronger stuff!
Wolf wasn't the first one to try to inform the ignorant and he certainly won't be the last.
Though it takes longer, our persistence succeeds, and in one of final burst the Arkfall crystal released its Earth-deforming energy back into the skies above our heads in a swirling column of light.
And, that's when I looked down..and there it was!
A God Mod!
Of unknown origins the God Mods were the most prized of weapon accessories to be found in the Bay Area, if not the world. All that is truly known of them is that their numbers are limited(perhaps for each weapon type there is only one God Mod) and that they can be found anywhere. Big mission, small mission, minor Arkfall, major Arkfall, even helping someone on the roadside could lead to one.
Now, I have one.
Pistol. Barrel. BMG conversion. Each shot a shock!
With this mod my situation had improved... and worsened.
A God Mod could be sold and traded, or you and another God Mod owner could duel it out. Winner take all!
Do I really want to be a gunslinger?!
Welcome to the wild West!
ARK HUNTER: Notiss Skii (ARJUNAJI10 PSN)
Rather than putting a list of ideas on the forum, thought I'd get a little creative a put them in a short story featuring my Ark Hunter family. Enjoy..or not!
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