Partly because I want to share the dialogue without giving away the details of the situation in which it's delivered, and partly because I, uh, haven't written the framing action yet.

SAKURA: Sorry, Sensei. It took me longer than I expected to get - who's this?

BARONESS (bemused): "Sensei"?

GRYPHON (sighing): Baroness, this is my apprentice, Sakura Kasugano. Sakura, meet Anastasia Sergeyevna Onatopp, Baroness de Cobray.

BARONESS: You have an apprentice? (laughs)

GRYPHON: What's so funny about that?

BARONESS: You told me once you would never take a student.

GRYPHON: You told me once you would never leave Destro.

BARONESS: Touché.

SAKURA (skeptically): You didn't tell me you knew any dominatrixes, Sensei.

BARONESS (annoyed): Ach! Why does everyone make that ridiculous assumption?

GRYPHON (amused): Maybe it's the spike-heeled jackboots. Or the leather bodysuit. Or the whip.

BARONESS: It was a gift from a friend, and it is a very useful tool! No one thinks Indiana Jones is a dominatrix.

GRYPHON (patiently): Ana, Indy doesn't wear a black leather catsuit and call himself "The Baroness".

SAKURA: Thank God.

BARONESS: I am a baroness! Dr. Jones is not a state.

GRYPHON: ... You have a point. Of a sort. And you're not really a baroness.

BARONESS: Of course I am!

GRYPHON: Ana. You "convinced" the Prince of Borokovia to ennoble you at gunpoint.

BARONESS: A simple misunderstanding.

GRYPHON: Right. So. Uh. What are you doing here?

BARONESS (lightly): Seeking the secrets of Shadolu's dark power. You?

GRYPHON: I'm just looking for someone. Say, uh, you wouldn't be planning to use that dark power for evil, would you?

BARONESS: Me? Surely not. Do I look like the kind of girl who would do a thing like that?

GRYPHON: I don't think you want me to answer that question, Ana.

BARONESS: Hmph.

GRYPHON: I notice you're not wearing the... snake head... logo... thing any more. Gone freelance?

BARONESS: In a manner of speaking. Why? Are you hiring?

GRYPHON: Well, that depends. Are you still a vicious, amoral terrorist without a shred of remorse or human decency?

BARONESS: Oh, please. You will grant that I have always had a shred of human decency. Or have you forgotten Malta?

GRYPHON: Okay, I'll stipulate to that.

BARONESS: And if I know you, you are going to all this trouble for the sake of a woman.

GRYPHON: That's true. And if I know you, you're going to all this trouble because the danger helps you forget that you still haven't found a meaningful direction for your life.

BARONESS: You are an annoying perceptive man. Have I told you that?

GRYPHON: It seems to me that was why you dumped me. The second time. But then, I think you were only drawn to me in the first place because I was the first guy you really got to know who didn't wear a mask 24-7.

BARONESS: Mmm... possible.

GRYPHON: Speaking of which, how's Destro?

BARONESS (coldly): I would not know. Why don't you check with his "secretary"? I believe her name is Leticia.

GRYPHON: Ouch. Well, I told you that guy was trouble.

BARONESS: You are an annoyingly perceptive man. Have I told you that?

GRYPHON: Oh, you're not still mad at me about what I had to do to Xenia, are you?

BARONESS: It was a trifle unsporting.

GRYPHON: Unsporting? She was trying to kill me! Anyway, I didn't hurt her... permanently. If anything, I like to think that I provided a valuable service.

BARONESS (skeptically): Service.

GRYPHON: Absolutely. If she's at all smart, she learned an important lesson about messing with forces you don't understand.

BARONESS (dryly): I'm sure the thought brings her great comfort.

SAKURA: Uh... I'll just be over here, missing all the subtext.

BARONESS and GRYPHON (in unison): When you're older.

DAmnit, man, I have a sore throat. Laughing hurts.
And would that be Xenia Onatopp Gr is referring to?

Polychrome

>DAmnit, man, I have a sore throat. Laughing hurts.
>And would that be Xenia Onatopp Gr is referring to?

Indeed. Ana's younger sister.

--G.
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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

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------
Jon Helscher

I'm here to slow you down, cost you money, and generally retard the process.

-Mike Rowe: Dirty Jobs

o.0

I'll just be over here, picking up the various shards of my sanity.

It's really not nice to make me laugh like that when I'm having a bad back day, man.

Thank you, Gryphon. This is just what I needed before the two-month-long underway we're about to go on. :D

Black Aeronaut Technologies Creative aerospace solutions for the discerning spacer "To the commissary we should go," Yoda declared firmly. "News of this kind a danish requires."

>Thank you, Gryphon. This is just what I needed before the
>two-month-long underway we're about to go on. :D
>
Two months? bah. Try having a Westpac turn into a world cruise on you.

Seriously. Not only that, but apparently it happend to my ship the cruise before I joined her, too. Fortunaly, at the moment no one else needs to worry about falling victem to her curse, as Clinton had her mothballed as obsolete in the face of Ageis class cruisers like the Ticonderoga, though NONE of them have the endurance of a Nuke...

The Kicker? She was CGN-41... USS... ARKANSAS

>>Thank you, Gryphon. This is just what I needed before the
>>two-month-long underway we're about to go on. :D
>>
>Two months? bah. Try having a Westpac turn into a world cruise on
>you.

>...though NONE of them have the endurance of a Nuke...

<RANT!>

Tell me about it. We can't even get around to the Yellow Sea without seeming to have to make a pit-stop in Sasebo. I think pebble-bed reactors would make for awesome, if slightly pricey, DDG's. Really, they should be a bit more forward thinking when they build these things because I'm getting sick of hearing about how the Zumwalt class is going to be so awesome. It's gonna be another diesel chugger (slight misnomer since it uses turbines) so what's so great about that? And they wanna put railguns on these things? The operational range is gonna go to shit, I don't care how much progress they are making on how much juice railguns consume. If you gotta slow your ship down or stop it all together to fire its main weapon, then somebody somewhere fucked up. And not necessarily the design team either.

Okay, I'm done. ^_^;;

Black Aeronaut Technologies Creative aerospace solutions for the discerning spacer "To the commissary we should go," Yoda declared firmly. "News of this kind a danish requires."

>If you gotta slow your
>ship down or stop it all together to fire its main weapon, then
>somebody somewhere fucked up. And not necessarily the design team
>either.

Just wait until the next-gen of the ship, where there's a four-inch railgun going the length of the ship.

Looks like a destroyer, sinks aircraft carriers.

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

>Just wait until the next-gen of the ship, where there's a four-inch
>railgun going the length of the ship.
>
>Looks like a destroyer, sinks aircraft carriers.

Ah, spine-mounted weaponry. Long a staple of science fiction, but not used on actual warships--yet.

You just know there's a naval officer out there somewhere who can't wait to say, "Fire the Wave Motion Gun!" :)

>Ah, spine-mounted weaponry. Long a staple of science fiction, but not
>used on actual warships--yet.
>
>You just know there's a naval officer out there somewhere who can't
>wait to say, "Fire the Wave Motion Gun!" :)

Two weaknesses there, Meph. First its gotta get a line of sight on the carrier, and she's gotta go bows on to get a firing solution. Carrier defense doctrine calls for us to have any ship on the bottom before they can get over the horizon, and for the most part we can except for submarines, which is why the anti sub warfare people practice their trade so hard.

Star Ranger's got it right. Besides, you ever -seen- a naval warship doing a torpedoe evasion drill? My ship does a paltry thrity-two knots by virtue of four diesel turbines on two screws. Carriers go faster by virtue of two nuclear reactors on four screws. ;)

Although, it -has- suddenly occured to me that with a weapon like that an attack can come from far beyond the horizon and with little to no warning. The projectile is going faster that mach ten. The fastest cruise missiles in the world don't even touch mach five.

Black Aeronaut Technologies Creative aerospace solutions for the discerning spacer "To the commissary we should go," Yoda declared firmly. "News of this kind a danish requires."

>Although, it -has- suddenly occured to me that with a weapon like that
>an attack can come from far beyond the horizon and with little to no
>warning.

Hmm. I'm not sure I agree, Black. We're still talking projectiles here, so unless it has some sort of terminal guidance package, just the wind effects of an OTH shot would proboly be enough to generate a miss.

LAST EDITED ON May-03-08 AT 08:47 PM (EDT)
 
Mk 45's can lob shells over mountains and bombard enemy placements (as long as we have a spotter of some kind) and have a range up to thirteen nautical miles. This is all with nearly as much accuracy as a Tomahawk cruise missile. In fact, it is a tradition that if your gun has completed a training course with zero missed shots then you can get permission from the CO to put the Ace of Spades on your gun mount.

A railgun projectile will, of course, be traveling much faster than a Mk45 projectile and somewhat less subject to the effects of wind currents. :)

Black Aeronaut Technologies Creative aerospace solutions for the discerning spacer "To the commissary we should go," Yoda declared firmly. "News of this kind a danish requires."

Yeah, but how do you elevate something thats basicly built running square down the centerline of the main deck?

Or, if you build it in already with some loft, then you run into having a nasty minimum range barrier.

Two words: guided projectiles.

Stupid, I know, but I'm pretty sure that's how they'll go. We already have GP rounds for the Mk45 Mod4 system (Mine's an older Mod2). They require two rams and two cells in the loader drum: one is the over-sized projectile itself with stabilizing and control fins and all kinds of nifty goodness, and the second is the super-charge powder can.

Lately they've been talking about the successor of the Mk45 that will be on the Zumwalt class destroyers, something that I think is a bit of a lost cause right now. The new gun system will rely entirely on GP rounds, loads at a ninety degree angle, and fires at forty-five degrees. I cannot help bu think to myself what this accomplishes. I feel that with better computers and a few modifications, the Mk45 system would beat the holy crap out of whatever overblown new trick they want to try out.

And on this note, I think we've gone far enough off-topic to either move this over into its own thread or carry on this conversation in private notes. ^_^;;

Black Aeronaut Technologies Creative aerospace solutions for the discerning spacer "To the commissary we should go," Yoda declared firmly. "News of this kind a danish requires."

>GRYPHON: You told me once you would never leave Destro.
>
>BARONESS: Touché.

<sigh>And so, Gryphon destroys another one of my favorite romances.

:-)Just kidding!!!:-)

--
Willard