"What is this?" I asked, still a little confused.

Yup, that's pretty much the feeling we all have...

c'mon lec, don't be a dick for once.

The guard stood up and left to go check on a strange noise. Perfect. It was working. I had been stuck in a Corvus jail cell ever since I appeared out of nowhere onboard the "Excaliber", an old Earth heavy carrier that had been retrofitted to house a cloaking generator that was large enough to make an entire moon disapear. Fortunately for me, this was hardley a jail break, at least compared to the time they captured me after I had engaged and destroyed a fighter flown by a high ranking Corvus pilot.

Immeadiately after the guard was out of sight I turned on a weak EMP to turn off an energy based duct cover and slipped into the small opening. I knew that once it was discovered that I was no longer in my cell they'd be after me, so I moved quickly. Leaving the ship wouldn't be an option until I could secure it, so I found a frequency that the ships information computers were operating on and downloaded a map into my head to find the captains quarters.

"Bingo," I said to myself after securing an entire blueprint with almost all the information about the ship.

I also found a roster of the ship crew, their duties, and their shifts, it would come in handy, and I could keep a kill list to make sure I get everyone if it did become a blood fest. For once I wasn't operating in the dark, which felt good, I had spent too mcuh time not knowing exactley who I'm fighting or what I was up against.

"What do you mean Talos has escaped? How did he get out of his cell?" I heard nearby, but I wasn't surprised, I was right by the duct opening for the captains quarters.

"We're not sure how he got out sir, but we suspect that since he is Serco that he manipulated the jail cell somehow," the guard reported.

"Well, don't just stand there, I want Talos in my room in one hour, or else you know the punishment for this kind of failure," the captain replied and sent the guard out of the room.

I dropped in behind the captain and quickly injected a weak, but effective, nuerotoxin into the back of his neck so that he wouldn't be able to shout for a guard to come help. I knew they probably had a camera watching me, so I went to the desk and pulled out the captains sidearm, placed the barrel at the captains head, and waited for the guards to come.

As expected, several gaurds came into the room and took aim, but did not fire. I clicked off the safety and made it very clear that the moment any pulled a trigger their captain would be dead. This was a little too easy, and I knew it. Corvus would never let me take their captain without a fight, but I had also forgotten that they were criminals and weren't exactly the most loyal group in space. Before I knew what had happened the guards had begun firing and the computer in my brain caused me to jump behind the desk for cover.

Without hesitation I kept my promise to shoot the captain and returned fire against the guards. Hitting them in their formation with them having no cover wasn't very difficult at all, and I was out of the room quickly. I could hear more guards rushing to the scene from both directions, so I used the duct trick again and slipped away, I needed a better weapon, and the armoury was the best place to get one.

"Grab your weapon and go, soldier," the gun manager said to several soldiers, who were clearly trained unlike the guards.

As soon as that particular group left I popped out of the duct and, taking the gun manager by surprise, shot him and grabbed an assault rifle from a gun rack. Some more footsteps were coming my way, so I pulled the gun manager out of the line of sight for someone entering the room and took aim by the doorway.

"Hey, where's the gun guy?" one of the soldiers asked before walking through the door.

I patiently waited until I had the entire squad in my sights before surprising them and eliminating them before they even knew what was hitting them. After grabbing some light explosives and some ammunition I continued down the halls until I came to the barracks where I found a large portion of the crew sleeping. It wouldn't have been right to kill them in their sleep, so I released a stronger nuero toxin than before that would put them all into a chemically induced coma that would last three weeks to a month depending on their health.

Half the crew had either been killed or disabled, this was going well, and the scattered remainder of the crew knew it. I knew that no ship this size could operate with half a crew, so I moved quickly to destroy the cloaking generator so that the ship could be captured. I knew that the guards would be expecting me to take the control room, so getting to the generator wouldn't be a problem, maybe even a free run.

There had only been a couple gaurds blocking the generator, but they had been easily eliminated using my duct-jump tactic. Unlike the rest of the ship, there were no actual pathways inside the generator intended for people to use, so I had to release a small drone to carry the explosives to where I wanted them to be delivered. As soon as all the explosives were in place I went straight to the hangar and slipped into a Corvus built vulture and got out of the ship.

After leaving the explosion radius I sent out a signal for the explosives to detonate, disrupting the core and causing the generator to explode. The ship remained intact for the most part, but it wasn't going anywhere fast, if at all.

"FreedomBird, what just happened? We picked up your flight signature and then a class five nuclear explosion in your immeadiate vicinity," a flight control tower operator asked.

"It's clasified, requesting clearance to land, oh, and get a UIT salvage collection team over here with escort," I replied.

"Yes, sir, you're cleared all the way in... I just recieved a call from SkyCommand, they need you down there right away, sounds important, sending you the re-route information now," the operator answered.

I set the vulture to autopilot, I didn't have the energy to fly this thing right now. I felt different than normal, as if something important had been lost, but I wasn't going to worry about it now, maybe later.

(1) "gun guy" = "armorer" Try the 'Vocabulary Building For Dummies" series, it might help.

(2) "It wouldn't have been right to kill them in their sleep, so I released a stronger nuero toxin than before that would put them all into a chemically induced coma that would last three weeks to a month depending on their health." Yep, FB's a baaaad man! Look at 'em take down that whole ship using nothing but his 1337 typing skills and a Manharu-eque godmoding RP style! Wowzah!

(3) Is there any point to this beyond 'i get to talk about me being all bad and stuff, sweet'? Seriously, someone get this guy some hand lotion.

Funny since Lecter says it :)

Humor +1

Lecter, I read your post from a while back that's obviously an edited post because I haven't seen it before, you said comething about compliments being allowed but not critisism, and here's my response to that particular post:

There is a massive difference between critisizing and attacking. What you are doing is attacking. Basically, what you're saying is that my writing sucks because it isn't good, and that I should learn to write, however you are providing minimal, if any, tips toward writing better. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but for the most part I have taken whatever tips you have given, which isn't very much.

Now, in response to your latest post: You have repeatedly attacked my posts without knowing the whole story. I request that you refrain from further insults toward the story-line until the entire thing is all wrapped up, packaged, sealed, delivered, burried, forgotten about, dug back up, and read again. I bet you did not read this entire post. What I'm trying to say is wait until it's finished, read it again, and then tell me what's wrong with my story. If you refuse to reread the story, it'll only further prove that you're attacking me, not critisizing.

With all that being said, I will now wrap up the story. Oh, and I never said that the entire ship was destroyed, and I hinted that it was simply disabled and incapable of running if anything came to get it.

Criticism is, quite simply, pointing out what sucks.

Telling you how to fix it would be instructing, tutoring, teaching and/or spoon-feeding your ass. You may carry on now.

(yes, I read all of the posts; no, I haven't edited anything)

"Thanks for being so patient with us, you really left behind a trail of destruction, and it wasn't exactly easy to piece together our final report of the events you just described," the officer said turning on the debriefing computer, "it seems as though the cloaking technology that you encountered had been under developement for years. The cloaking generators apparently opened up some sort of gateway to an alternative universe that only a few people, you, Sorio, and Oshalla have encountered."

"Wait, you said that Oshalla has encountered this alternate universe also?" I asked, knowing that if this were true, Oshalla may come back and try to finish our fued.

"Why, yes, we were able to uncover a journal that he kept that describes the things he saw when he went into the other reality. His descriptions match yours so closely that we can confirm that it was indeed the same place. Is there something your not telling us that may make this journal important?" the officer asked.

"Oshalla may still be alive, I had a near death experience in a Corvus station and was pulled into the alternate reality before being hit by a stray bullet that was fired by a drunkard in a bar, and as you know Oshalla is an international criminal," I answered, beginning to realize that Oshalla's survival was more than a probabillity.

"Ok, we'll put in a search for him, but we really need to get back to this debriefing sir," the officer said, clearly irritated and wanting to go check out for his lunch hour. "Now on to the next thing, we have no records of your existence prior to you joining Eagle Squadron just over a year ago. The immeadiate reaction to this revealation was that you were a spy However, the UIT and Itani have sent investigators to eachother's territories to look for records of your existence there and have found nothing up until your desertion to the UIT. We believe that you are a product of the gateway that was opened by the cloaking generators, but proving this at the time being is impossible."

"So, what was found onboard the Excaliber?" I asked, curious if there was anything I had missed because I was rushing through files, and couldn't scan the brains of the crew.

"The UIT team found half the barracks full of guards, officers, a second captain, and soldiers who were put into a chemically induced coma. Some of them suffered some radiation exposure, but the old Earth ships were well built to contain nuclear explosions, so they'll all survive. We also found some bridge officers, but they commited suicide the moment they realized the recovery team was not from Corvus," the officer answered, looking at the clock.

"So nothing was found so far that I haven't provided?" I asked irritated.

"Oh, they did find a log of messages from the Akanese that show a transaction... They didn't want to sell the generator, but Corvus was paying big money, and your little stunt of flying to their base and causing a rebellion cost them sorely. The rebels did find there way back here, and we gave them a decent place to stay until we can sort everything out," he answered.

I got up an left, the officer didn't even try to stop me, but instead went strait to his lunch. If I knew Oshalla, he'd be hiding in the ruins of the SkyCommand station that the Akanese destroyed years before. I knew that killing Oshalla wouldn't work, I'd have to bring him into custody, which was probably the hardest way to take a criminal off the streets.

A gunmetal warthog was waiting for me in the hangar, apparently someone had placed the order for me while I was in the debriefing. It was a nice ship, apparently a standard Mk III set up with a starflare and a mega positron blaster, not exactly a loadout I'd set myself, but it wouldn't be a very fun opponent for most pilots.

****************************************************************

"So you came, I was beginning to wonder," Oshalla said, slipping out of the wreckage in a black marauder.

"I'm not here to finish you, I want to take you into custody. If you come willingly I will testify on your behalf," I announced, but I knew that he wouldn't comply.

"Negative, you'll have to take me by force," Oshalla replied firing off three rails directly into my ship.

I boosted toward Oshalla at a fifteen degree angle off center to make myself a harder target until I was close enough to stay out of his targeting reticle. After closing the difference I strafed upward and fired a rocket toward the slow moving, weighed down marauder. It was a terrible shot, but his ship wasn't able to get out of the way. The ship in front of me spun out of control as I hammered it with more rockets, it was an anti-climatic ending and a great ending at the same time to an old rivalry. He had set me up to win, but I didn't know why.

Little did I know, another ship slipped out behind me while I was dragging the critically damaged marauder out of the sector. It wasn't until I reached the hangar and pulled the pilot out of the wreckage that I realised I had captured an entirely different pilot. They refused to tell who they were or where Oshalla had gone. Whatever the cause of recent events was, I knew the truth had slipped away with Oshalla. There was no point in going after Oshalla again, he no longer had anywhere to hide, even Corvus had placed a bounty on his head, but would not declare why.

I spent a couple days on the surface of Sol II to try to forget thae last month before returning to grey. As I stood at the launch pad to go back to active duty I saw a seagul fly into the sunset as free as I had felt during my first flight, and I knew it was time to get back to the patrol.

Lecter, since it's clear that you're completely dogged in this matter I'm going to stop argueing with you. If I can't make you stop, then why should I even try? It's become a waste of energy, and everyone knows that you're attacking me, not actually critisizing me.

(btw, you got the definition of critisize wrong, it means to judge the merits and faults of; analyze and evaluate. Not to find what sucks. As a matter of fact, Armarath was also critisizing when he complimented my writing. Just letting you know.)

"fued", huh?

And while you listed 1 of the 2 given definitions, I am amused at your utter non-mention of the other: " to find fault with : point out the faults of "

Gosh, Lecter, good thing you're here...
“There's nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there?"
- Randall, Clerks

Leebs, I submit the following for your consideration:

The cloaking generators apparently opened up some sort of gateway to an alternative universe that only a few people, you, Sorio, and Oshalla have encountered.

I had a near death experience in a Corvus station and was pulled into the alternate reality before being hit by a stray bullet that was fired by a drunkard in a bar, and as you know Oshalla is an international criminal," I answered, beginning to realize that Oshalla's survival was more than a probabillity.

We believe that you are a product of the gateway that was opened by the cloaking generators, but proving this at the time being is impossible.

curious if there was anything I had missed because I was rushing through files, and couldn't scan the brains of the crew.

And that's just the latest, most coherent post. Seriously now, what else should I say?

Beyond that, if you will read over this thread, you will see a definite improvement over time. I submit that perhaps my mocking has had a positive result!

Meh, I'd say nothing. Have you considered that your mocking is driving young FreedomBird towards writing more and MORE, in an attempt at ever-increasing coherence? I think his coherence curve is asymptotic, but now he's gonna just keep going.

Spite is a powerful motivator.

Anniversary (ish) BUMP!

Wtf?
/me is confused

See! SEE!?! I knew I was right :P