Fresh off the Farm (Jac Dagger's Training-Zialan Society)

[Niner]

Jac Dagger's foot touched down on the planets surface as he got off the transport that had brought him this far. He cracked his neck from side to side to relieve the cramping and picked up his duffel bag that contained all his worldly possestions other then the clothes on his back and the old blaster pistol at his side. As he walked towards the exit from the star port people moved out of his way, at six foot two and built like an ox Jac wasn't a man people wanted to get in front of.

He waited by the street, the message he had gotten said that someone would meet him here....

 

[Gambler]

"So you want to be part of the Sodality eh?" A gravelly distorted voice asked from Jac's left. The approaching figure was wiry and thin, compact compared to the bullish man he was speaking to. The figure was armored in a thin gray exoskeleton with an ocular lens on the helm that glowed a light shade of cobalt. "The name's Vashni. You can refer to me as Sergeant or Sir from this moment forth," his tone was sharp and punctual. "I might not look it, but I'm from the Sodality. Shocking ain't it?" He took off the ocular helm, revealing crisp raven hair and pale eyes on a face darkened by the growing stubble of a beard. He was weaponless except for a rather large chaingun that was strapped to his back. The gun was huge in comparison to his body, but there was little doubt that he could and would use it with adroit precision if and when the time came.

"C'mon. Our armor is 'round back," he said, walking towards the large double doors of an abandoned factory just down the street. He punched a few buttons on the door, opening it up and cuing the lights. inside there were two sets of armor. One was blue, plated with durasteel and a few basic weapons. It's chestplate was slightly reinforced and the visor in the helm was similarly augmented. And then there was the other armor. It was rust in shade with crimson lines etched through the body. The chest plate shone of the ultrachrome make and the helm was obviously intricately designed. Even more eye catching was the dagger on the left arm and power generator on the right.

"This," he said, motioning to the blue armor. "Is your armor on a temporary basis until you either get promoted or are trusted enough for some of the good mecha." He turned, walking towards the other set of armor that looked as well armored as a starship. "This is mine. If you ever touch it, you die. If you ever scratch it, you die. If you breath on it, you die. This isn't Sodality property. It is mine," he added extra emphasis on the possessive word. Oh yeah, that baby was his custom power armor made from the best materials on the market. He wasn't going to share with some grunt now.

"Get in yours and test the weaponry here. Shoot up some stuff or try to make mincemeat of me if you are bold enough."

 

[Niner]

Jac followed the man around to the building and then gazed in wonder at the two armored mechs. He walked up to the blue one and looked all over it. He realized something and his face turned a shade of crimson.

He turned around and looked at his instructor and said, "Uhh...sir? I...well...I don [FONT=&quot]’[/FONT]t know how to use a mecha. We never had anything this complex on the family farm."

 

[Gambler]

Vashni sighed heavily. This was going to be a hell of a lot harder than he thought. "It doesn't matter if you know how to use the power armor. That's what you're here to learn. Now, just get in the back and let the auto systems strap you in," he tried to explain. How was one supposed to explain how to use power armor? It had to be experienced rather than taught. He jumped in the opened back of his armor, falling into the demonic suit comfortably. He had worn that suit for quite a few years after all. Once the hatch in the back was shut and his exoskeleton adjusted to the inner workings of his armor, he turned the systems online and put on the helmet. If his armor alone looked like something spawned from hell, his helmet was the devil himself. The eyes glowed crimson as all of the life support and other systems synchronized to his vital signs and the environment around him.

It was good to have top of the line equipment.

"Get in like so. Make sure everything is secured and pick up your weapon. Walk around a bit to get used to the feel of the armor. When you are ready, take your weapons and start firing," he pointed to a couple of make shift dummies littered around the ground level of the factory. "This place has eighteen floors and no elevator that will hold the weight of your armor. Show me what you can do," at this point his expectations weren't very high, but there was nothing to be done about that. Power Armor might seem foreign to those who have never fought in it, but usually it didn't take long to adjust. And sooner or later it would feel like a second skin. "You get to chose your first target. It's either me, or one of the wooden dummies. If you're up for a challenge you could try your luck, but since you aren't used to the armor, I wouldn't want you to embarrass yourself..." It didn't take a genius to see that Vashni was baiting him.

"Let the games begin, eh?"

 

[Niner]

Jac imitated the seargeant with not a little trepidation. Once inside the armor however it auto adjusted to fit to his body. He went to reach forward to pick up the helmet but his mechanically enhanced arms went faster then he thought and he almost knocked the helmet off the stand. He managed to catch it in time before it fell though and secure on his reddened face. He picked up the gun, finally something he actually knew.

He ignored the seargeant obvious bait. Jac was level headed and wasn't prone to rush into something. He decided to play it safe with the wooden dummies, that wouldn't attack him back. He hoped.

He raised the rifle like he always did and it clunked against the side of the helmet, "Fierfek," he muttered under his breath, "This will take some getting used to." He realized that the gun had auto syncronized to his helmet's display and there was now a reticule on his visor. He brought the rifle back up to his shoulder but instead of leaning down to look down the barrel instead used the reticule on his visor to nail three of the dummies in the chest and the fourth one took a salvo of bullets through the head.

 

[Gambler]

From a few feet away Vashni watched the bullets crack into the wood, disintegrating the block dummies on contact. The man was adjusting at least. Slowly, but he was getting there. "Not half bad," he said in a voice that sounded like a professor rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Try it again with the chainsword over there," he pointed over to a stone slab over by a yellow and black crane lift. The chainsword wasn't the subtlest of weapons, but it was quite effective against flesh and some types of steel. In truth it was just a vibroblade with a jagged edge and a revolving chain fused to it, but it was an intimidating sight for most people who had to encounter it. Who wouldn't be slightly scared when confronted by a blade that could easily rip through flesh and bone in the most painful of ways? "Keep up with the practice dummies for now. The drones can wait." There was a grin on Vashni's face, obscured by both the power armor's helmet and the ocular visor of his exoskeleton.

Training was fun when he wasn't the one going through it.

 

[Niner]

Jac beamed underneath his helmet, glad that he had made his trainer happy in some regard. He hefted the chainsword and looked at it.

It almost had an aura of fear surrounding it. The jagged edges were wickedly sharp and when activated moved at highspeeds. Jac smiled appreciativly and walked over to the stone slab. By now he was getting more used to the power armor compensating for his every move and it was becoming less of a hassle. He revved up the chain sword and brought it smashing down onto the stone slab, his own natural strength, coupled by the suit, brought the sword ripping through the entire slab, sending it crashing to the ground in two halves.

 

[Gambler]

Sparks flew into the air, mixing with scraps of destroyed slate as the stone table cracked down the middle. The two slabs of rock hit the ground hard enough to echo through the factory. Vashni looked down towards the trainee, a bit of satisfaction shining behind his visors. Not that Jac could see it of course, but it was there. "Good job. Now that you have adjusted to the basics of using power armor, allow me to fill you in on the rest. On your right bracer there is a grappling hook with a range of approximately fifty yards of fiber rope. The hook on the end is durasteel thin enough and sharp enough to latch onto most things. As I said before, there are seventeen floors in this building. On each one there are ten drones. On the top floor there are three assault droids. I'll be waiting up there for you," the simplicity couldn't last forever. Vashni walked over to one of the beams, a stream of flame jutting from his ankles. He grabbed onto a dangling wire and began his ascent to the top floor.

"See ya at the top."

 

[Niner]

Jac looked around and sighed, "Nothing can ever be easy." He groaned to himself.

He looked around the ground floor for any openings to the next floor and spotted the elevator. It would hold his weight that's for sure...but...

He walked over to the doors and brought back his armored fist and punched it. The doors almost flew apart. He wrenched them open with little strain and looked up the shaft, it was empty except for the elevator on a higher floor.
Jac aimed his grappling hook and it latched on too a solid support bracket opposite the third floor door. Hopefully skipping a couple floors wouldn't be all that bad....
As he was hangining in front of the door Jac used the chain sword to saw his way in and then climbed into the room. He immediatley started looking around for the promised drones.....

He soon saw the small cluster of them and sighting the gun with the crosshairs fired, taking down the first drone with one shot through the processor and the second with five shots to the torso. The third drone jumped at him but Jac sidestepped out of the way, his movements enhanced by the suit. He pulled the chainsword out and after revving it up cut through the last drone.

He continued up in this manner, skipping whole floors, once he was able to skip five floors. So that by the time he reached the last floor he was still fresh and polished off the drones with relative ease, only a few scorch marks on his armor where bolts has connected and glanced off.

 

[Gambler]

Click. Bang. The final droid on the highest floor was blown to pieces, completely destroyed by the high powered weapon. Vashni stood calmly, the frozen demonic expression steadfast on his helm. Beneath the helm there was a semblance of a smile on his face. It was quite clever how Jac had taken flight rather than battling all the way through. Sometimes violence wasn't always the best answer and keeping oneself prepared for the harder tasks ahead was the best goal. "Well done for a new guy," he said blithely, no emotion portrayed by the static filled voice changer within his helm. The hiss of burning oxygen filled the air as his power sword exploded into being. "Now that you're used to the armor, let's begin the real fun." Blue tinted fire jutted from his ankles, scalding the floor as he skated across the metal like a blade against ice. The tinted blade slammed down vertically towards Jac's neck, the wicked dagger shooting forth at his chest.

 

[Niner]

"The hell?" was all Jac managed to get out as Vashni sped towards him. There was just enough time to throw himself to the side and land heavily on the ground before the blades would have connected with his armor, doing serious damage, if not piercing it.

He rolled onto his back and, aiming his gun, fired three shots at Vashni.

 

[Gambler]

The bullets, powerful shells that could rip through durasteel, ricocheted off of the ultrachrome protecting Vashni's chest like a rubber ball in a steel room. He turned with more speed than should have been possible, cutting off his explosive movements curtly. The armor, a second skin to him, felt like nothing more than a set of robes to him. He maneuvered, using the systems in his armor he had come to take advantage of in the past decades. He whipped his body around, charging at Jac again, this time without the boosters on his ankles. His blade, a long and wide beam of blue plasma, arced towards the man's armored chest in a vicious stab. Normally he would have simply drawn his chaingun and pulverized his enemy at point blank, but his goal wasn't to kill Jac. It was to train him. And the last time he checked, filling someone with hundreds of armor piercing shells ended up killing them.

 

[Niner]

Jac scrambled backwards, still not fully used to the armor. He looked more like a large metal crab scuttling across the floor then a person. The blade hit the ground between his legs as he moved backwards and he kept moving, turning over to crawl forward until he could get to his feet.

He pulled out the chain sword and revved it up to it's full speed, "What the hell did I get myself into?" he said to himself.

 

[Gambler]

Cobalt tinted energy sliced clean through the durasteel ground. Sparks flew as a space was opened in the floor. The hole revealed the level bellow through a good three or four inches of hardened metal. Fragments of metal still fell to the previous level. The melted shards did little damage to the ground, but served as a point of terror. If that blade of plasma could cut clean through such a thick substance with apparent ease, what would it do if it hit Jac? The question hung silently in the air, disrupted by the growling of the chainsword. Beneath his helm Vashni grinned as he twisted his body, dragging the sword of plasma through the floor until it was in front of him again. He slashed out, slicing through a support beam with the blade as it sped with deadly momentum towards Jac's arm. Unwilling to relent, Vashni punched his other arm forward, the thick dagger more akin to a railroad spike as it arced with lethal speed at the man's chest.

 

[Niner]

Jac blindly swept the chain sword towards his foe and it unfortuantley met it's match against the plasma sword, which sliced the end off of the chainsword, sending the chain hurtling at highspeed towards where the sword had been pointed, Vashni's helmet, so maybe that wasn't so unfortuante.

What was unfortuante was the veritable railroad spike that hammered into Jac's chest, punching through the armor just enough to pierce his heavily muscled chest down about an inch. He flew backwards, blood pouring from the hole in his armor. His head his a concrete support beam, sending concrete chips flying. His visor went staticy and then resynched and he stood up again, slowly but surely to prepare for another attack, though it appeared he had no more weapons to defend himself with....

 

[Gambler]

The chain wrapped around Vashni's helmet and would have tore into the metal had it not been coated with a layer of expensive ultrachrome. So instead of braining him, it whipping his neck down, forcing his ocular helm into his demonic one with enough force to break the skin on his forehead. He winced inwardly as the stimulants seeped through his blood and crawled to his opened forehead, clotting the blood and sealing the skin almost instantly. It was still a wound and could be reopened with ease, but it wasn't bleeding any longer and wouldn't cause him any pain. Vashni looked down at the dagger on his arm, frowning at the blood there. Surely he couldn't have punctured the power armor with such a weapon. Maybe he underestimated the amount of force he used for that attack.

"You all right?" He asked, looking over to where Jac was standing in a battle ready position. Damn, that one had to hurt. The man had been slammed into a concrete beam with enough force to dent the beam itself and the helmet. But what Vashni noticed most of all was the blood that dripped from the man's chest. Whoops. He better not die on me yet, he thought callously. He wasn't there to make friends. He was there to beat the ways of the Sodality into the new recruit. And apparently he was doing that a bit too well. Oh well. Not that his brutality mattered. As long as the job got done, everyone would be happy.

 

[Niner]

Jac nodded, "I'm fine," His voice didn't quaver, yes the wound hurt but he had gone through worse on the farm, no farmer lived long without sustaining wounds that would black others out with pain, and that was one thing Jac's large body never let him down on, pain tolerance.

He reached behind him and pulled an durasteel strut from the dented beam he had hit and held it in his right hand, his only defense now.

 

[Gambler]

"If you insist..." Vashni trailed off with a shrug. He would have offered Jac a medpack or something to staunch the bleeding. Maybe a new chestplate and helmet. There were plenty of those in the factory. But he had to admire the man's persistence. Even when he knew that it was pointless to continue fighting he still gave it a shot. He would make a fine warrior if he survived the training. There was quite a large 'if' involved there though. Vashni paused for a moment and let his two ocular visors scan his opponent. Switching spectrums, he viewed the weaker links in the armor, namely the wound on the man's chest. Now if he could get a good blunt strike on the side of Jac's chest plate, it could cause the armor plating to break.

"I'd brace myself if I was you," Vashni said. A moment later the reason for those words became clear. The boosters on his ankles ignited and he exploded forward like a streak of demonic lightning. His thick dagger was held so that the blunt edge was forward. He neared Jac and threw his arm forward with all of his momentum at the man's chest in one staggering assault.

 

[Niner]

Jac felt the adrenaline coursing through his body, things seemed to slow down and he saw the man's attack coming at what was almost half speed.

Jac roared loudly, to him it was long and drawn out as if played through an audio editer at half speed. He pulled back his own large and heavily armored fist and let fly, punching with all his strength at his opponent's incoming strike. Jac was built like an ox, and he was throwing everything into this last defence.

 

[Gambler]

Vashni's arm was thrown to the side with Jac's punch. That armored joint with the ridiculously sized dagger attached to it threw his balance off. Now, had he been running towards Jac with his own two feet, he could have kept going or even followed it up with a slash of his power sword. As it happened though, the boosters on his legs wobbled with him, throwing him not just off his balance, but off his desired course. His rapidly moving metal body slammed into Jac as it turned towards a pillar. "F#%k," Vashni muttered as he came close to the cement support beam. He threw his hand out in front of him and willed that invisible wave of energy some called the Foce to break his crash. Still, his arm smashed into the beam, sending spikes of pain up to his shoulder. Grimacing again, Vashni whirled around for another slash of his power sword. The blue beam once more cut through the ozone as it arced towards Jac.