- - -
POV: Arthur Sinclair. Five days later.
With a final click of the enter key, the compads of everyone in the room activated. At once, every compad in the room opened the newly presented document.
For almost ten minutes, the room was silent as everyone focused on the device in front of them. As fifteen minutes came to an end, and the final person put down their compad, Ma'chello walked to the front of the room and took a deep breath.
"Anyone who has an issue with the current document, stand now." His gaze slowly flitted between everyone who sat before him. For a full minute, no one said a word.
So, with a final deep breath, Ma'chello spoke. "Alright. Let's print it."
At the back of the room, a printer began pushing out pieces of paper. As the final sheet was dropped into the output tray, Elder Callum picked up the documents and brought them to the front of the room where he handed them off to Ma'chello.
Ma'chello placed the papers on the table, and taking out a pen, signed his name.
Taking a deep breath he nodded. "Alright then. Next."
Everyone in the room stood up and got in line. I was at the back, alongside Egeria and Echo, who had been asked to sign as observers to the proceedings.
One by one, we all signed. Finally, as my turn came around, I stepped up to the table, grabbed the pen and began to write my name. I had been expecting something from the forge, but nothing happened. With that, I placed the pen on the table and stepped out of the way.
At the bottom, there were two spots for Egeria and Echo to both sign as well. I watched as Egeria did so, before Echo did as well. It was truly strange to watch a Centurion sign a document; the perfect mechanical precision behind the process was eerie.
Finally, Echo stepped aside. With another deep breath Ma'chello spoke. "I hereby announce the official beginning of the Republic of Kaelastrum."
Special Achievement: Convince Multiple Independent Factions to Unite.
Perk 'Computation Technologies' missed due to insufficient points.
(Available Points: 300, Required Points: 400, Points Doubled, New Point Total: 600)
Special Achievement: Major Contributor to the Creation of a New Nation.
Choose a perk:
1: Mechanical Genius (Final Fantasy IV, 300 Points)
- Description:
Your ability to understand machinery is on a different level entirely. Working with a metal you've never touched to brace a machine? Cakewalk. New attachments on a precariously balanced airship? Might take a day, less with an assistant. You know machines, and exactly how to calibrate them to your exact specifications inherently without needing to actually run the numbers. It just works.
2: Grease Monkey (Bubblegum Crisis, 300 Points)
- Description:
What can you fix or build? What CAN'T you fix or build? Nothing, that's what. From hyper-cars to Buma, computers to Hardsuits, with the right tools and enough time and experiments, you can build it all, weaponry included.
I twitched as the notifications pushed their way into my mind. Elder James seemed to notice, but I was quiet as everyone filed out of the room to make the official announcement.
As the last person to exit, I nodded to the Elder. "The Forge activated again."
The Elders face lit up. "Alright. We'll discuss this in a few hours."
- - -
Word was quickly spread throughout the city, and then the rest of the planet, and then to those not even on the planet. It was three hours later before the excitement finally dialed down a bit.
The very first thing that had to be done was to elect someone as president. It was obvious to everyone that it would be someone from Dendred; the Dendredans simply had an overwhelming population advantage.
Ma'chello was popular enough that he could very easily secure the position, but he wasn't interested – especially now that he could focus on his real passion; invention. The Serkha, Elders, and Colonials all had guaranteed positions in the military, so the two people who were running for the position were Ariston Pyrros and Elpir Stavrou, the leaders of the Dendred Resistance in the North and South continent.
That wasn't really all that much of a concern for me. I had gotten a new perk; to say I was ecstatic was an understatement.
So, once the day had been announced, Arktos, Elder James, Ma'chello and I had all found our way to one of the rooms in the main office building.
As we all sat down, Elder James nodded for me to begin. So I did.
Unfortunately, I had never heard of Bubblegum Crisis, and the limit of my knowledge of Final Fantasy was that it existed, and a vague memory of a Matpat video about not being able to use a Phoenix Down on a character named Aerith.
Ma'chello tapped his fingers on the table. "Well, that certainly isn't all that much to go off. It sounds like the first perk would do well for retrofitting existing designs with new technology, while the second option is superior for building something from scratch."
We continued the discussion for another twenty minutes, but it quickly became clear that no one had anything to add. If we had been in a rush and needed to modify existing technology to suit our needs, then I would have chosen the first option, but we had the time and resources to make our own tech from scratch, and my second perk meant we could create fully automated factories for our own tech at some point. Together, that made the description of the second perk much more enticing.
With a deep breath, I selected the second option.
4th Perk: (Previous Points: 600, Subtracted: 300, Current Points: 300)
- Domain: Knowledge: Intelligence
- Title: Grease Monkey
- Universe: Bubblegum Crisis
- Description:
What can you fix or build? What CAN'T you fix or build? Nothing, that's what.
From hyper-cars to Buma, computers to Hardsuits, with the right tools and enough
time and experiments, you can build it all, weaponry included.
- Points: 300
I blinked. This was nothing like the second perk which had felt like decades of knowledge and experience had been dumped into my brain. In fact, it was like nothing had changed at all.
Elder James raised an eyebrow. "Arthur, are you alright."
I nodded. "Yeah. Everything feels fine." I looked down at my hand.
Ma'chello raised an eyebrow. "Let's have Lieutenant Moretti look you over."
- - -
The Next Day.
It was the instant that I got a good look at the model of our prototype fighter craft that I knew what had changed.
"No, no, no, no." As I looked over the 3D-model of the vessel, I immediately saw a dozen glaringly obvious flaws with the initial design.
I turned to look over to my assistant. "Stop everything. I have to redesign a lot of the primary components."
Time passed in a flash.
I turned back to look and found Ma'chello glaring down at me. "Go. Sleep."
I blinked at him. "Why? I just started."
He stared at me incredulously. "You've been sitting here for two and a half days."
My mouth dropped open and I turned back to my noteputor. Half of the schematic had totally changed. The previous design had looked similar to maybe an Earth, fourth-generation fighter craft, I now realized that I'd basically redesigned the entire exterior of the craft.
I had written code to simulate wave dispersion patterns around the craft. Even without the stealth field, the ship would be almost impossible to detect with standard EM based signal detection.
Then it hit me. The feeling of total exhaustion. I reached over and grabbed the cup of water and chugged down what was left, before putting the glass down and nodded to Ma'chello. "Yeah. Some sleep sounds good."
- - -
POV: Ma'chelo. Two hours later.
I sat down at the table and took a deep breath. "It seems that Arthur has taken it upon himself to totally redesign the hull of the fighter craft."
James raised an eyebrow. "I see. How is this… endeavor going?"
I almost groaned in response. "He spent almost three days in front of a computer, and he's almost half way done. He even designed the individual components of the ship to be easily manufacturable with his constructor."
Arktos nodded. "Is this not what we expected? The last perk he got led to objects materializing out of thin air. "
I sighed in response. "Well, with how fast he's rushing through our work, I expect to have a completed prototype within five months."
James blinked at me. "You previously said nine months. Does this perk really have that much of an effect?"
I nodded at him. "It really does."
Arktos chuckled. "Well then, we will have the perfect opportunity to test out this new vessel when the fleet reaches the Inner Sphere."
James seemed to shrug at that. "Well, I suppose that is certainly one piece of good news."
- - -
POV: Egeria.
I watched on as the pair bickered. It was only recently that the Colonials had learned enough English to actually begin conversing with the members of the SLDF, the Terrans, with a few exceptions. Those few exceptions had even greater worries.
"The Sacred Scrolls tell us that life started on Kobol. It isn't possible for life to have started on your world." The man who was speaking was one of the Colonial representatives, and a priest in training before their Cylon War.
"I don't know what to tell you. The earliest human ancestor we've discovered on Terra was 600,000 years ago. We have hundreds of thousands of intact fossils going back that entire time. There are ruins that are almost 30,000 years old in some places." The respondent was Callum Voss, one of the older members of the Manassas' crew.
The priest's brow furrowed, lips thinning as he processed the words. "But Kobol was where the Lords created humanity. It's where we lived before the Exodus."
Callum shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you. Every scrap of evidence we have has shown us that Terra was the birth place of Humanity."
I couldn't help myself. My host's eyes glowed and I let out a light chuckle. Annelise took back control and frowned while everyone at the table turned to look at us. Callum raised an eyebrow. "What?"
My host furrowed her brows even further. "She knows something, but she won't tell me."
Callum seemed to realize something. "Thats right! Egeria was on Terra!"
Orion seemed confused, before his eyes widened and he turned to stare at Egeria. "Explain."
Had I been in control, I would have let out a sigh. I took over. "Should it not be obvious? Kobol is just the old name for Terra, before your peoples' Exodus."
The table was silent for several long moments as the Colonials seemed to process my words. After a moment, Callum nodded. "Yeah. That tracks."
The priest, meanwhile, was flabbergasted. "But… we were told there was no one left on Kobol…"
I snorted. "An obvious lie. The Olympians likely did not want their children to be caught should the Goa'uld return. As it so happened, they did not."
Now it was Callum's turn to frown. "The Olympians?"
I nodded. "Ohh yes. Zeus, Hera, the rest. Ra was obsessed with capturing them. Not that he would have ever been capable of it. Zeus alone could have obliterated one of his fleets single handedly."
They were absolutely stunned. One of the Serkha nearby seemed to raise an eyebrow. "Are you saying that Ares… is not Ares?"
It took me a moment to parse the question. "Ahhh. Yes, Ra chose several Goa'uld to try and supplant the Olympians. Not that it did all that much."
One of the Colonials who had been listening in this whole time spoke. "If this is true, does this mean we can find the Colonies?"
No one moved for several long moments, before everyone, except the couple of Serkha who had been listening in on the conversation, ran off. I watched on in amusement as they did so. My host also had many questions, they would be answered in time.