LAST EDITED ON Jan-27-15 AT 05:07 PM (EST)
 
This started airing off and on during various afternoon and evening shows on Avalon Broadcasting's various channels not long after Our Witches at War premiered.

INT. DAY. The 501st Joint Fighter Wing's hangar. A couple of the Striker Unit launch stages can be seen in the background; in the foreground is the "conference table" from the last scene in Episode 01. Off to the left of shot, IVAN IVANOVICH can just be seen, slumped in the corner.

SANYA V. JUUTILAINEN-LITVYAK enters from frame right, carrying her Fliegerhammer rocket launcher. She addresses the camera in a comically thick Orussian accent - much thicker than she actually has on the show.

SANYA
I am heavy weapons witch, and this...

She places the Fliegerhammer heavily on the table, then rests a hand proprietorially upon it.

SANYA
... is my weapon. He weighs thirty kilograms and fires custom-built 40mm fin-stabilized unguided rockets with high explosive armor-piercing warheads, up to nine at a time.

She smiles.

SANYA
It costs 450,000 rubles to fire a full salvo from this weapon.

JUMP CUT. Same scene, but SANYA is in a different position (and so, very subtly, is IVAN). She stands by the table, looking fondly down at the Fliegerhammer, then takes on a look of dismay and bends down for a closer inspection.

SANYA
Боже моя. Who touched Eino?

She straightens up and turns angrily to her left, facing toward the (unseen) main room, her face going red.

SANYA
(furious, at the top of her voice)
WHO TOUCHED MY ROCKET LAUNCHER?!

JUMP CUT. Same scene again, from a different camera angle. SANYA, calmer now, is seated at the end of the table with her feet up. Behind her, IVAN's pose has changed slightly again. (He's giving a V-sign this time.) From this angle the sign inside his visor can be read; it says ЛЮБОВНИК ("LOVER") for no readily evident reason.

SANYA
(contemplative)
Some Neuroi think they can outrun me.

She nods thoughtfully.

SANYA
Maybe. Maybe.

With a nasty smile, she holds up a round of Fliegerhammer ammunition. The overhead lights twinkle from the copper cap on the warhead.

SANYA
I have yet to meet one who can outrun rocket.

JUMP CUT. EXT. DAY, aerial battle scene. Various members of the 501st dart here and there, harassing a badly damaged Neuroi. In the foreground, Sanya finishes reloading her Fliegerhammer with a thing like a giant revolver speedloader, then shoulders it and starts ripple firing all nine rockets.

SANYA
(maniacally)
AAAAAH HA HA HA HAAAA! CRY SOME MORE!

The NEUROI'S core shatters; it explodes into fragments.

REVERSE ANGLE on SANYA'S face; she's flushed and sweating, panting for breath, her eyes sparkling. Smoke curls up from the muzzles of her Fliegerhammer. To her left, EILA hovers a safe-ish distance away, eyeing her with a combination of wariness and lust.

SANYA
(satisfied, breathless murmur)
Cry some more.

TITLE CARD

Avalon 17 Presents

Friday nights at 8:30

AHAHHA!

That is without a doubt the most hilariously incongruous mental image I have encountered in quite some time. Bravo sir, my hat off to you.

LAST EDITED ON Jan-26-15 AT 10:10 AM (EST)
 
>AHAHHA!
>
>That is without a doubt the most hilariously incongruous mental image
>I have encountered in quite some time. Bravo sir, my hat off to you.

The best part is that I don't even really need to write the rest of them. If you (the reader) are not familiar with the Team Fortress 2 shorts, the whole joke fails anyway; but if you are, then now that I've established the baseline, all I have to do is throw out bits like

LYNNE
(muttering to herself)
I think its mate saw me.

A red NEUROI PLASMA BEAM narrowly misses her head as she ducks.

LYNNE
Yes, yes it did.

or

SANYA
(puzzled)
What was noise?

YOSHIKA regards the MIYAFUJI ENGINE in her hand with bemusement for a moment, then gets an I-have-an-idea look on her face and casually flicks the remains of SANYA'S HEART off the electrodes.

YOSHIKA
The sound of progress, Sanya-chan.

or

MIO
I'm a grim bloody fable with an unhappy bloody end!

or

TRUDE
And that's why it's called a zoo!

and you can fill in the rest for yourselves. :)

(Particularly fond of Lynne as Sniper, I think. "Professionals have standards." :)

--G.
"I'm not a crazed cultist, Dad, I'm a witch. Well, the difference being one is a job and the other's mental sickness! Dad.... Dad. Put Mum on the phone."
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LUCINI
Do you have any idea - any idea who I am? Basically? Kind of a big deal

or...

SHIRLEY
'How do I stop some mean mother-Neuroi from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind?' The answer - is a Striker.

Orrrrrrr...

MINNA
Do you believe in magic/In a young girl's heart/Where the music can free her whenever it starts

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

LAST EDITED ON Jan-30-15 AT 12:43 PM (EST)
 
>MINNA
>Do you believe in magic/In a young girl's heart/Where the music
>can free her whenever it starts

PERRINE drags lugubriously on her cigarette, then exhales the smoke slowly.

PERRINE
One shudders to imagine what inhuman thoughts lie behind that smile. What dreams of chronic and sustained cruelty.

("behind that eyepatch" would work as well, if Mio hadn't already been established as the Demo. :)

--G.
"They've got more [CENSORED] than they have the likes of me."
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>("behind that eyepatch" would work as well, if Mio hadn't already been
>established as the Demo. :)

I'd've used Sanya as the Pyro, myself, given that her schedule makes her the most mysterious of the girls, but she was already the Heavy.

Perrine as the Spy is bang-on, though.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

>Perrine as the Spy is bang-on, though.

YOSHIKA opens the fridge in the corner of sickbay. Inside are several hearts in Petri dishes and, in the back corner, the severed head of PERRINE, hooked up to a lantern battery and still smoking a cigarette.

PERRINE
Kill me.

YOSHIKA
Later.

She picks up the heart labeled MEGA BABOON and shuts the fridge.

--G.
LUCCHINI
You would not BELIEVE! How much this hurts.
-><-
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LAST EDITED ON Jan-30-15 AT 12:46 PM (EST) by Gryphon (admin)
 
Brings these two images to mind.

LAST EDITED ON Jan-30-15 AT 01:22 PM (EST)
 
>Brings these two images to mind.

Now, now. Just because Minna once threatened to shoot Mio herself if she didn't retire, that doesn't automatically make her yandere. Poor girl wasn't thinking clearly,* that's all. It happens to the best of us sometimes.

That second image is weirdly adorable, though, for all that I'm generally not down with the "depict habitually lovelorn characters as psychos" fanart thing. To me that doesn't say she's just buried a romantic rival so much as "well, now we know what happened to General What's-His-Face," though. :)

--G.
* Her familiar was probably in heat or something.
-><-
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Jan-31-15 AT 02:42 AM (EST)
 
>Now, now. Just because Minna once threatened to shoot Mio herself if
>she didn't retire, that doesn't automatically make her yandere.
> Poor girl wasn't thinking clearly,* that's all. It happens to the
>best of us sometimes.
>
>--G.

>Her familiar was probably in heat or something.

These things will happen when both emotions are processed by the same chunk of brains, no doubt.

>That second image is weirdly adorable, though, for all that I'm
>generally not down with the "depict habitually lovelorn characters as
>psychos" fanart thing. To me that doesn't say she's just buried a
>romantic rival so much as "well, now we know what happened to General
>What's-His-Face," though. :)

I tend to agree, and there is in fact a non-psycho version of the second one (that is also unreasonably adorable) that I ran across while tracking down the one that popped into mind to begin with.

>That second image is weirdly adorable, though, for all that I'm
>generally not down with the "depict habitually lovelorn characters as
>psychos" fanart thing. To me that doesn't say she's just buried a
>romantic rival so much as "well, now we know what happened to General
>What's-His-Face," though. :)

Matt suggested an improvement.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Poor, poor General LeMay.

>REVERSE ANGLE on SANYA'S face; she's flushed and sweating, panting for
>breath, her eyes sparkling. Smoke curls up from the muzzles of her
>Fliegerhammer. To her left, EILA hovers a safe-ish distance away,
>eyeing her with a combination of wariness and lust.

It's always the quiet ones you have to watch out for. <snrk>

Of course, this doesn't actually answer the question of what is a "safe-ish distance" from a slightly overexcited and slightly heavily armed witch...?

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

>Of course, this doesn't actually answer the question of what is
>a "safe-ish distance" from a slightly overexcited and slightly heavily
>armed witch...?

Well, she's out of rockets, so that's where the "ish" part comes in. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>
>Of course, this doesn't actually answer the question of what is
>a "safe-ish distance" from a slightly overexcited and slightly heavily
>armed witch...?
>

Thirty feet away, avoiding her primary aiming arc and the backblast zone of her rocket launcher.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

EXT. DAY. Clear blue sky; a lovely day. Beautiful green countryside spread out far below, with a few scudding white clouds in between.

CLOSEUP on the face of SHIZUKA HATTORI. She looks preoccupied. Thoughtful. Not scared, particularly, but like she's considering something very hard. Her bangs are whipping around, blowing upward. There is considerable wind noise, and above it a sharp CRACKING sound can be heard, steadily repeating at about 120 beats per minute.

SHIZUKA
(voiceover)
It's funny, the things you remember. When I was in basic flight training at the Naval Academy last year, a famous Striker test pilot from the Army came to speak to my class one day. She mostly talked about the different foreign Striker models we were likely to see once we were in the field, and how we'd have to adjust our tactics to work with the people who were flying them. But at the end...

CUT TO - flashback. INT. DAY, a classroom in a hangar on a Fusō naval base. Outside the windows, various Strikers and regular aircraft can be seen going about the day's business. Inside, a group of CADETS (including SHIZUKA) are being lectured by MAJOR AYAKA KUROE. One of them has her hand up.

AYAKA
Yes.

CADET
Is it scary being a test pilot? It seems like a dangerous job.

AYAKA
It can be dangerous, that's true. We're working with experimental aircraft, after all. Sometimes things go wrong. To be a successful test pilot, though, you have to be able to focus past that and concentrate on the job. When things go wrong, you don't have time to be afraid. You're too busy trying to figure out what went wrong and how you can fix it.

She grins.

AYAKA
A test pilot doesn't think, "I'm gonna be dead in ten seconds." A test pilot thinks, "Hell, I got ten whole seconds!"

CUT TO - SHIZUKA'S face again. That snapping noise is still happening. The camera slowly pulls back; we see that she's wearing a white uniform jacket instead of her usual blue one. We keep pulling back until it's apparent that she's not wearing a Striker Unit, then still more to reveal that she's not alone: GRYPHON is there too, right behind/above her. They almost seem to be tandem skydiving, except she doesn't have a proper harness on - she seems to be lashed to him with in a markedly ad-hoc way with a length of canvas-web cargo strap - and he's not wearing a parachute. Instead, he has a red-painted single-engine jetpack on his back... and it doesn't seem to be working, other than to make that repetitive electrical snap. It's hard to tell with the goggles and Fallschirmjäger helmet he's wearing, but he seems to be no more than annoyed about this as he fiddles with one of the hand controls.

SHIZUKA
(voiceover)
Well, I guess I'm a test pilot now.

When she speaks aloud, she has to shout to be heard over the wind noise, but is otherwise oddly calm.

SHIZUKA
So... now what?

GRYPHON
I'm thinking.

A beat. They fall past a small cloud.

SHIZUKA
(with just a hint of urgency)
Well, think faster.

TITLE CARD

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Fridays at 8:30

"Shizuka, there's no use getting overwhelmed by the gravity of the situation."

Facepalm goes here.

>"Shizuka, there's no use getting overwhelmed by the gravity of the
>situation."

Ye gods, man, you don't pun at a woman on the second date.

--G.
-><-
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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Ye gods, man, you don't pun at a woman on the second date.

I punned at a woman on the first date.

We're married now.

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

>>Ye gods, man, you don't pun at a woman on the second date.
>
>I punned at a woman on the first date.
>
>We're married now.

Yes, yes. Things were different in 1946. :)

--G.
-><-
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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>he's not wearing a parachute. Instead, he has a red-painted
>single-engine jetpack on his back... and it doesn't seem to be
>working, other than to make that repetitive electrical snap.

I'm trying to decide whether to think of this as like the engine of a Heinkel 162 (an actual jet engine) or a Fiesler 103 (the same pulse-jet as the V-1).

Definitely looking forward to the new episode.

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

>>he's not wearing a parachute. Instead, he has a red-painted
>>single-engine jetpack on his back... and it doesn't seem to be
>>working, other than to make that repetitive electrical snap.
>
>I'm trying to decide whether to think of this as like the engine of a
>Heinkel 162 (an actual jet engine) or a Fiesler 103 (the same
>pulse-jet as the V-1).

Visually, more like the latter, albeit a great deal smaller. Or one of the engines on an Me 262, or a Boeing 707, for that matter. I mean, there wasn't a lot of visual variation in early-generation podded turbojets. :) It doesn't have that weird stovepipe thing the V-1 had, anyway.

(Also, ye gods, a pulse jetpack? That would be horrible.)

--G.
-><-
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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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>(Also, ye gods, a pulse jetpack? That would be horrible.)

Only marginally more so than the Fi103 itself, with the intake and its clattering shutters (and all the noise and vibration!) directly above and behind the pilot's head. I still find it hard to believe that flying assembly of kluges actually got to the point of flight training for operational use, before the project was cancelled.

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

LAST EDITED ON Feb-04-15 AT 00:18 AM (EST)
 
>>(Also, ye gods, a pulse jetpack? That would be horrible.)
>
>Only marginally more so than the Fi103 itself, with the intake and its
>clattering shutters (and all the noise and vibration!) directly above
>and behind the pilot's head. I still find it hard to believe that
>flying assembly of kluges actually got to the point of flight
>training for operational use, before the project was cancelled.

... Well, in fairness(?!), the Fi 103 was a suicide weapon. It didn't just have the engine from a V-1, it was a V-1, just with what we might now call a wetware guidance system. As such, it didn't really matter if the pilot was miserable and went deaf.

--G.
-><-
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

EXT. DAY. A rotten, rainy, blustery day, but day nonetheless. A group of Witches slog through the dreadful weather, their hair and uniforms sodden. They look utterly miserable. Far below, a lead-grey sea churns ominously, and only vague impressions of a coastline can be made out.

EILA JUUTILAINEN-LITVYAK drops back from the front and pauses amid several of her colleagues in the middle of the formation. GRYPHON is among them, wearing his Orussian low-light goggles.

EILA
Where the heck are we?

GRYPHON peers thoughtfully at the theoretical coastline below, then points to what looks like an island.

GRYPHON
We must be over the Irish Sea by now, so... I think that would be the Isle of Man.

EILA snickers audibly. GRYPHON raises his head to give her a puzzled look.

GRYPHON
What?

EILA
(grinning)
You said "I love man".

Nearby in the formation, LYNETTE BISHOP giggles, ERICA HARTMANN laughs outright, and SHIZUKA HATTORI snorts a little guiltily. At the front of the formation, HEINRIKE PRINZESSIN ZU SAYN-WITTGENSTEIN rolls her eyes.

HEINRIKE
(testily)
Oh, DO grow up, Eila.

LYNNE
("innocently")
At least it isn't the Isle of Dogs.

EILA nearly collides with ERICA as both of them burst out laughing. SHIZUKA coughs. HEINRIKE facepalms.

TITLE CARD

Avalon 17 Presents

Friday nights at 8:30

*SNRK*

Who's Heinrike? Have we seen her before?

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

>*SNRK*
>
>Who's Heinrike? Have we seen her before?

She's a Night Witch, normally part of the 506th JFW out of Sedan. Had a cameo in the Strike Witches movie; turns up in fan art with Heidemarie a lot.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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Aha! Can't shake the feeling Heide isn't going to be courted so much as run over. Should be very entertaining! XD

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her