Collide Gamer

The fact that John would go on an important extraction mission, the thing in this war that he held the most personal investment in, freshly showered and in prime condition was a thing that he was equally astonished and weirded out by.

With all the modern news about the terror of the trenches, he had expected at least something like it. Fireballs ravaging over fortified positions, lightning and alchemical explosives falling from the sky as martial arts users clashed on a giant battlefield.

As John passed a battalion of normal soldiers, their faces waxen and pale from a nightshift of snuffing out remainders of enemy sleeper cells within abyssal Prague and the surrounding areas, a realization struck him. They must have been out for more than 20 hours now, dragging themselves from one theatre to the next.

The trenches, the horrible reality of extended engagements, all that existed. John was just too powerful to experience them because, every fight he was part of, he was the deciding factor in. With him, there were no extended stalemates to be had.

It was like everyone else was stuck with medieval weaponry and he swooped in there with a squad of fully modernized special ops. There was no way he could not win that engagement.

One of the soldiers tripped, fell over and then spend a good few moments trying to get up. Two of his comrades, looking like they would sooner join him on the pavement than lifting him, tried to help.

“Let me,” John offered, stopping in his way for just long enough to pull the man to his feet with a minimum of effort. Thanks to him spreading the love to his physical stats to at least some degree, he was capable of feats that average people would regard as super strength.

He deliberately helped the man up with his right hand and had healing energy flow into him during that short moment of touch. It was no substitute for sleep, but it warded off the immediate effects of exhaustion for just little while.

“Thanks,” the guy said, his mind too far gone into the misty realm of forceful consciousness that followed prolonged adrenaline rushes to even notice what John had done.

“No problem, good job out there,” the Gamer said and tapped the man on the shoulder before walking off.

“Nice guy,” he heard through the ears of Jack. The trio, probably a small clique inside the bigger company, went further on their way. “Wonder who that was.”

“Dude, don’t you watch any news? That was the Gamer; he is with the Princess of Steel,” another one of them answered, and the conversation devolved into a tired exchange that John shortly afterwards tapped out off.

“Nice PR move,” Momo said from his side. “Yes, I know you didn’t do it for the PR,” she answered his complaint before he could even voice it, “but it will help anyway.”

“Help with what? Once I free Lydia, I have no reason to be further involved in this war,” John explained. “Not going to stick my neck out for these people at large. At least not if I don’t get something out of it.”

“How about Score?” Momo suggested. “Also, I believe you that you won’t go to the hotbeds of the war, but come on, we both know you aren’t selfish ENOUGH to just sit around as the world burns around you.” He had to agree to that.

“Yeah, also that sounds boring,” Rave added. “How about we go where it’s the most dangerous actually.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” John insisted; she shrugged. They postponed this topic until it would actually be a thing they could decide. There was a bit of certainty that a rather important brunette princess would get them to where she needed them anyway, once they had gotten her out.

John arrived where he was supposed to be exactly when he was supposed to be there. It was a barrier, just in front of town, filled solely with a rather large industrial hall whose purpose eluded John for the moment. As expected from a rather elite formation, everyone else was there already as well. The people he immediately recognized were Maximillian, Nariko and Magoi.

John had expected the former two to have at least something resembling a conversation to go on, but instead it was Maximillian and Magoi who were chatting it up. They were talking about walking sticks, of all things, a topic the Fateweaver had a heavy artistic interest in while the one of Maximillian was also driven by a recent need.

John scanned the rest of the crowd. There was one girl who was loaded with tools and mechanic enhancements, the kind that was almost part of the body but allowed the wearer to still go back to reality if she really wanted to. The rest were about a dozen people in tabards that depicted a black cross on white ground. It wasn’t a big stretch to imagine who they were.

“Guten Tag, John Newman,” Konrad Kamradsrat, leader of the Knights of Teuton, greeted. Seeing the man without his helmet was weird. He was younger than John had thought, somewhere in his thirties, with a clean shaven face and a stylish haircut that reached his chin. He looked ready to save a princess from a dragon guarded keep. Although his nose was a bit bigger than was fitting for his face. “It pleases me to see you as part of the endeavour to return the princess to her land and people.”

“Say Deus Vult for me!” Sylph, popping into existence how she usually did, in a shower of flowery smells and small rainclouds, babbled. “I like it when you do that, can you do that? I like it, so please do it! No, wait, scratch the please, I am the pretty princess and you are the knight, I demand that you do it, pretty please.”

“I am afraid me and my order have sworn to stop our roleplaying until we have washed the shame from our name,” the crusader said. “So I am sorry, cute fairy.”

“Hihihihi, he called me cute, I like that,” Sylph palavered, having already forgotten about the sadness this denial caused her just because she was being complimented. She was such a simple-minded thing.

“Yeah, you are cute,” John said and patted her on the head with his index finger. “But we shouldn’t dwell any longer. What is the plan and what do I need to do?”

“Hi, let me explain!” that was the mechanic girl who walked over with strident steps. She seemed like the kind of person that had almost too much energy. “This operation will be a three-front effort. Front one: the Sons of Odin attack from the north in a concentrated push towards Novgorod. This attack will start in 4 hours. Front two: A large part of the Knights of Teuton voluntarily took a plane directly to Warsaw. They are acting as an inland distraction force and making sure that there won’t be any evacuations of the target. This happened yesterday, but they stayed dormant until now and will start causing widespread confusion in 4 hours, 30 minutes.”

John could easily make out a redemptive move if he saw one. The knights were trying to wash the shame for their failure away but also the suspicion many people had regarding their loyalty. The fact that the Blood had been in possession of artefacts that were theirs hadn’t gone by unnoticed. John felt reserved towards them as well, but the fact that they had been chosen to lead this mission meant that Romulus trusted them, at the very least. But John had a way to make sure anyway.

He threw a Reveal at Konrad, using up all of his and Momo’s mana in the process.

The knight didn’t seem to have realized what had just happened. John felt more at ease now that he had it black on white. At least regarding emotions, Observe had never been faked out, only blocked, and he had just used more than 7000 mana on this. He continued listening with a light heart.

“Without the stealth skills necessary, we cannot take that route as the airport is under constant surveillance and we would get locked down. We will advance from here to Ostrau, rest there for the remaining time between arrival and the beginning of the Scandinavian attack and then begin our advance towards Katowice. We are to act as shock troops in that battle, only break through the defences and then advance directly towards Warsaw.

“Projections say that we should arrive in Warsaw in about 8 hours from now, 19:00 o’clock, moving above the speed of the average highway but having to deal with delays due to fights. That’s the optimistic projection.”

“What is the realistic one?” John asked, now that the briefing was over. It sounded like a good plan; as always, the travel times were the most inhibiting thing. Still felt like he was going to Blitzkrieg into Poland. That was a majorly weird impression to have as an American. ‘The things I do for love,’ he joked to himself.

“Another hour on top, maybe two. We have a lack of information about what is on the way to Warsaw. We did, however, already manage to locate the facility. Largely thanks to you, providing the data, and the knights then spying out the area. They may have escaped via teleportation, but we cannot verify that for now. We have good reason to believe that their teleportation equipment has been destroyed, however.”

John could imagine why. During the battle against Thana, Nathalia unleashed a fire breath that filled the sky together with the dimensional gap. Whatever had been on the other side had, without a doubt, been consumed as collateral damage. They still could have teleported using magic users rather than equipment, like the former Supreme Fateweaver who whisked Lydia and her father away in the first place, but there was absolutely no way of knowing if this was the case until they got there.

All they could hope for was that the Blood actually didn’t care as much for Lydia as to invest such resources into her. They would have to go and see for themselves and take the risk of her not being there. The alternative was the cautious approach, which gave them even more time to relocate her.

“I see, well then, how will we get there?” John asked.

“I am rather interested in that myself,” Nariko added. “I haven’t seen a lot of cars inside or outside of this barrier.”

“We won’t take a car, who do you take me for?” the mechanic girl said, puffing up her cheeks. She was actually rather cute, black, long hair, weird glasses, probably about 25 years old. The eccentric type.

“They won’t know, you forgot to introduce yourself,” Maximillian said with a sigh. He walked over; if one hadn’t known about it, the stumble would have been unnoticeable. “May I introduce, Maria Theresia the third von Habsburg, Technomancer, my older sister and the weird girl that rather wanted to play with gears than govern the empire.”

“Oh, shut it, not like I got through all the fighting that qualifies the heir anyway. My actual fighting abilities are trash. Also you all can call me Ria,” the mechanic announced. Taking a playful swing with a small wrench at her brother, who just reversed the gravitational pull and made it fly up into the air.

“I won’t,” Nariko straight-up denied, crossing her arms in a stuck-up fashion. “Now answer my question. Does it have anything to do with that hall behind you?” That’s the same conclusion John had come to; actually, it was the only conclusion anyone could come to. Even Rave nodded to that.

“What hall?” Ria was clearly confused, looked over her shoulder and then made an understanding sound. “Ah, well, he looks like that in maintenance mode. One sec.” she fished out a remote from her many pockets and then turned a few things on top of it before flicking a switch. The earth rumbled.

The industrial hall started to move. Roof parting and walls splitting into smaller segments, the whole thing began to shift. Arms and legs constructed themselves in a fashion that shouldn’t have been possible and reserved for Japanese sci-fi movies. An iron giant rose, around a hundred metres tall. He was largely just raw, grey metal, but on the shoulders, he had the flags of Austria and the Roman Empire.

Now that also explained what that ‘mobile barrier’ thing meant. A heart of blue energy was set into the middle of his chest, about where the solar plexus for normal people would be. “I never get to use him because my brother is stingy, so this is great!” Ria said.

“It’s because he eats the daily GDP of Vienna per hour,” Maximillian told John. “Completely over-designed thing. It needs its own barrier generator because its too big, and it wont even work without a Fateweaver around.”

“Hi, that’s why I am here,” Magoi waved while already on his way towards the iron giant. The thing seemed to have something resembling intelligence, as it picked the Fateweaver up rather gently. Its breastplate swung upwards with the sound of hydraulic vents pumping like mad and revealed something like a room between thousands of gears, energy cells and cables inside.

“Let’s hurry and get this done, not just for Lydia but because every second here costs me a fortune,” Maximillian declared, and soon they all had boarded the iron giant. The room inside was not exactly cosy nor big. To say it was a practical big vent for extended maintenance would have been more accurate. There was no furniture aside from a screen on the inside of the metre-thick plate that allowed them to see what was going on outside.

The only person not dwelling in that room was Ria; she climbed up some shaft, and then they heard her voice coming from… somewhere, John didn’t see any speakers around. “Okay, everyone, I am ready and in my piloting seat! Let me just put on the proper sound effects and we are ready to go!”

“The hell do you mean proper sound effects?!” Maximillian, in the tone of an annoyed younger brother, another side John hadn’t actually thought would fit on that person, shouted up the shaft. “Just get us movi-“

“DEMOCRACY IS NON-NEGOTIABLE!” it thundered around them as everything around them started trembling and the giant began moving. “LIBERTY PRIME ACTIVATED!”

John had a way too giant nerd boner now to point out that this didn’t fit whatsoever. After all, he was fighting with monarchists of an ancient empire, not to mention on eastern European soil. Still, he couldn’t deny that the voice he knew from Fallout was pretty much the best war cry that there was.

“DESTROY ALL COMMUNISTS!”