The funny thing is, that's not even a particularly tricked-out car; in fact, it's a bit of an antique. In 2032, they got cars you don't even need to be in. :)

> "Shades. Night mode with flash comp. Record still
>exposure
>every two seconds," he ordered. "Mnemonic record mode." A red light
>flashed in the upper right corner of his field of vision.
>
>I have absolutely no idea why, but this is making my mind flash back
>to the combat helmets in David Drake's Hammer's Slammers stories...
>*shrug* They do do similar things, I guess...

A bit. The direct reference is to the liveshades in Transmetropolitan, although Ben Stark's are considerably more conservative in design than Spider Jerusalem's. Presumably they weren't made by a nanoassembler with an addiction to cybernetic hallucinogens. (They look like black-on-black Oakley Gascans, if you care about that kind of thing.)

>*raises hand* Umm, wasn't that what the needle guns were for?

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. Well, it'll come out in issue #2. The reason Priss was having so much trouble with that guy was that she was having a pretty major weapons malfunction - her whole right arm array (linear accelerators + autocannon) was offline, leaving her with pretty much just the chaingun.

>It's completely off point, I know, but I can't help wondering about
>the relative performance that'd be gotten by taking the K-series
>design lineage to the same level of technical advancement as the
>Sabers' suits

It's called the "D.D." - it's in the fifth episode of the original Bubblegum Crisis and it is, indeed, badass as hell.

>He had a set of wolverines
>(funny name for a cyberweapon, that)
>
>So that franchise is dead by 2032?

Well, it is at least not All That Big in Japan. (And I rather doubt Priss reads many comics.)

>Is there a reason he's phrasing it that way, rather than 'I probably
>shouldn't be doing much...', or did it just come out that way?

... that's just the way he talks.

>Who now had her hardsuit?
>
>Um, 'Who had her hardsuit now?'

Jeez, if I'd known you were going to punk my phrase structure I might not have leaned on you for specific commentary.

> "There you go," she said. "My complete dossier on
>Benjamin
>Stark, alias Benjamin Hutchins."
> Sylia raised an eyebrow. "Alias?"
>
>Using 'alias' as a noun like that, the older name should come first.

It's not a noun, it's standing in for the phrase "also known as". She gave the name Sylia asked her to research first.

>Sylia could certainly afford
>to hire a trustworthy outside contractor who wouldn't care that he
>didn't have a clue who was on the other end of the voice-scrambled
>phone line as long as he got his agreed pay.

She could... but would she?

>"Great," Linna replied. "Now every time I look at them I'm
>going to think, 'Hey, there go the Knight Stalkers.' I hate you,
>Milkman Dan."
>
>*doesn't get the cultural reference*

Apparently Linna is fond of Red Meat.

>The small size, the continued civilian lives, and most of all the
>flashy color schemes, don't make sense for a real (that is, for
>profit) mercenary group, nor, for that matter, for a private army
>aimed at significantly hindering Genom using open force.
>
>They do make sense, though, for a showpiece group - for a
>symbol, for heroes. They gather attention, then their mysterious MO
>gets John Q. Public to think about what they're doing...
>
>And look at who their opponents are, who's making themselves the
>villain in the piece.

You may be onto something there!

In that case, it's just possible that she's been researching the world situation for quite some time, considering her options, looking for just the right person or persons with whom to strike up a... strategic partnership, shall we say.

> "She's fine," Zoner said. "I just startled her a little,
>is
>all. I'm not sure how I manage to sneak up on people like that - I'm
>a big guy, it's not like I'm at all stealthy. How's your knee?"
> "... It's fine," Priss replied after a few seconds' nonplussed
>pause.
>
>*blinkblink* Err, she didn't actually talk to them at any point, did
>she?

TO them, no.

But, as is demonstrated a little bit later in the story, Zoner has an implant that allows him to listen in on nearby cellphone conversations.

Including all the ones the Knight Sabers have had coordinating their surveillance operation all week.

D'oh! :)

>IN THE GRIM FUTURE OF HELLO NENE THERE IS ONLY WAR! A simpler,
>cleaner life.
>
>...hello... nene...
>
>*goes away to remember how to breathe*

>This entire bit of backstory had me cheering madly, if you're
>wondering. Personally I wouldn't have picked that mech even from among
>the Unseen - I like armor, firepower, and speed in that same order -
>but I'd be the first to admit that I'm nowhere near the kind of pilot
>he's being cast as.

Heh. Ben has a Warhammer mainly because it's always been my favorite heavy. It had the perfect balance of everything in the original game system, and weathered the successive raisings of the ante that the Star League and Clan tech introductions caused better than almost all the other old-school 'Mechs.

Virtual MechWar is set in the 3070s (when it launched, it was set in 3050, and its background story has progressed in something like real time), so Stark's Warhammer is far from stock, though he has at least preserved the distribution of weapon types. It has a pair of ER PPCs, four ER medium pulse lasers, a couple of machinegun arrays and a Streak SRM6 rack - a pretty respectable load for a heavy, even in the Clan era.

>Ben's style of operation seems like it'd be fairly suitable for use in
>his suit - intentional, or coincidence?

Well, combat is combat, so with similar equipment his mindset is probably going to be pretty much the same, yeah. It probably hasn't occurred to him that he fights like Iron Man in a 'Mech, if only because to that point he'd only had two fights as Iron Man, and for the second he wasn't wearing the full suit.

>And, the phrasing of Nene's
>thoughts sort of suggests to me that their game supports melee combat
>between mechs - which is the number one item on my wishlist for the
>next real-world game...

Not exactly - by "gunnery fighter" she means as opposed to someone whose play style focuses on piloting skill - jumpjetting around, varying speeds a lot, generally screwing with the opponent's firing solutions. Stark tends to favor the "take them out before they can get through my armor" approach. :)

> "So... your proposal is that we cast prudence and caution
>aside and trust each other without sufficient evidence that that trust
>is warranted," Sylia said skeptically.
> "More or less," Stark replied. "Look at it this way. We're
>already showing each other some trust right now. You four could have
>blown us away and gotten away with it a dozen times over the past
>week. I could have plastered your faces all over the InfoWeb and had
>the AD Police at your door at any hour of the day or night for the
>last few days. But you haven't and I haven't. Isn't that a start?"
> Sylia considered him for a long, long moment, her slim hands
>folded on the table before her, her face completely impassive. She
>almost seemed to be weighing him, trying to judge him, with her eyes.
> Then she said, "I don't - "
>
>I'm consumed by curiosity as to what she was planning to say, you
>know. ^_^

"I don't think that would be a good idea."

> The unconventional suffix was due to the sudden sharp pain
>that stabbed through his right arm near the wrist, which had suddenly
>been transfixed with what looked like a foot-long needle of gleaming
>steel. He stared at it for a second, then turned to see where it had
>come from, and then realized that he'd dropped the grenade.
>
>Err... wouldn't a projectile with enough kinetic energy to bury itself
>halfway into a 55C's armor plating just go straight through a soft
>target like a human wrist?

Oh, probably. I just thought it made for a fun "panel", the guy looking at his arm with the needle stuck through it like "What the hell?!"

If you need an in-story explanation, you may take it that he has a skin weave and bone reinforcement, and between those and his armor, the projectile was halted. Or maybe Linna's also having a problem with her accelerator array.

>I'll agree with the others who've spoken up and say that this is a
>pretty funny exchange, but the real reason I like it is that it makes
>a nice change from the anti-cyber stance most fanfic attributes to
>her.

I can find little, if any, evidence to support that particular fan convention, so I'm disregarding it.

That doesn't mean she's about to go and get her legs replaced just for the hell of it, but she's not automatically repelled by cyberware in general nor the idea of having some herself. (I have not yet decided if this version, like the HL one, has bionic eyes already.)

>I can't speak for their veracity one way or the other, but the RPG
>game sourcebooks describe the knuckle bombers as being a wierd-ass
>application of otherwise fairly conventional anti-armor shaped
>charges. Certainly it's the most plausible theory I know of...

My take on them is that they're some kind of charged field effect, which explains why they can be used more than once. In fact, in Iron Age, it may have to do with the stuff Sylia and Tony Stark traded emails about back in the '20s; he did a lot of work with electromagnetics and force field technology (the latter of which is still in its infancy in the TIA world).

>
> Priss looked for a moment as though she were considering
>which
>man to kill first.
> Then she gave Leon a cold glare and said, "Look, pal, I dunno
>about you? But where I come from, 20,000 yen is 20,000 yen."
>
>...meep?
>
>It... somehow doesn't feel wrong - I can see Priss saying that... but
>it also destroys my brain every time I try and think about it.
>
>Gah?

Oh, relax, she's just screwing with Leon's head. She wouldn't actually put out for some gaijin businessman for a measly 20,000 yen.

("A nickel?! I HAVE NO MOTHER!" - Tom Servo reacts to a kid on screen buying a gumball, MST3K: Valley of the Giants)

>My only real problem with this sequence (yeah, the saving-Nene's-life
>bit was maybe a bit melodramatic, but it's in genre and well done so
>there's no reason not to let it slide)

Well, he didn't necessarily save her life (if you're talking about lifting the K-suit off her), but he certainly kept her out of jail. Anyway, I agree that it was a bit melodramatic, but there are character reasons behind it that you haven't got all the details of yet, so bear with it 'til issue #2.

>is that K-suits are much
>shorter than buildings. Unless his suit is a lot clunkier than
>I think it is, going over the guy shouldn't be that much of a
>problem...

Iron Man Mark I is pretty darn clunky, but its biggest problem is that its mobility goes down as its energy level drops - and its energy level drops pretty fast. So here's the thing - by the time that part of the scene happens, he's pretty well shot his wad, battery-life-wise. With a fresh charge on his belt pods, sure, he could long-jump a K-suit easily. With his batteries low enough that he's not sure his repulsors will work? That's not a sure bet any more. It takes a -lot- of RPMs to life 800 pounds of cast iron and cardiac patient with nothing but some little fans for thrust. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/