Part 17: A Shameful Display

PART 17 - A Shameful Display

Welcome back to Advance Wars, gang, where today we fight smug asshole.

You remember smug asshole, right?



This guy. I've no idea if he is actually smug or an asshole, but hey, let's find out.



He's gonna be on AGDQ soon with the legendary Start-To-Smug-Asshole run in just 2 sentences. Incredible.



Who told you that? We have defeated them at every single goddamn turn.

And when I say we, I mean me.



...Wait, you're gonna 'entertain' us? By, uh, murdering our troops?

Wow, nobody in this world cares about their goons except me, apparently. Time to teach this idiot a lesson.

And to do it, I will need the help of my personal idiot. Where is he?



There he is. What I said, Andy, if you'd been listening, is that we're teaching an idiot a lesson. Come on.



I love how anime the mission names got in the campaign.

Air Ace! Defeating The King Of The Skies!



Nothing will top the classic "It's War!" though.



Yeah, this is our, uh, entertainment.



Ah, the best part of every mission. Hey Nell!



I already said hi. Hi! Is this thing on?



Oh, of course Andy's transceiver is working. God dammit.



Huh, so they aren't. They're green!



Hold the position, hm? I think somebody said "utterly body the enemies".



That's wonderful, Nell, thank you.



Ah, don't go, I just got my transceiver working! ...Fuck.

Yeah, sure, I'll babysit the little shit.



A tank and a bro copter right at my gates? Ordinarily I'd be concerned, but they're nowhere near threatening enough to worry me; Tina and co. will make short work of them.



Don't think I didn't see you, though. Looks like any unit that kills the first bro copter will have to deal with a second from above. That could be troublesome.



There's plenty of cities along the way, so I load Steve into the Michael Multitude...



And Barold into the Bernard Batch.

"Hey, Bernard. It's been a while." Barold says, grinning. Bernard nods.

"Same here. Ready for a fight?"

"Eh, I don't see this being too tough."



I move, uh...

Hang on, who is this?



"Hi." comes a voice, and the leader of the battalion removes their helmet to reveal soft, white-blond hair and pale eyes. "...My name is Cassandra, and I am the designated leader of my team, the Cassandra Corps. We were ordered to join your cause."

"Nice to meet ya." Tina grins. "Not enough gals in this army at the moment. Show us what you're capable of!"

"I shall..." Cassandra says, staring at the bro copter in her range. "Poor spirit, they must be brought back to earth..."



Cassandra does as she promised and brings the copters crashing down to earth in fucking style.

"...I am sorry, comrade." she mutters, lowering her eyes.



"Now allow me to cover you!" Tina yells, and the Tina Team roll out to fight the tank.



It's not a kill, but it may as well be. This tank is a complete non-issue.

...I am just a little concerned that it might still do damage to Cassandra, though, so-



...GOD DAMN. I forgot what their range was like. Please don't approach until I'm your range... please...



Still, I can safely attack the tank with Larry without being in their range, so hey, let's do it.

Also, Larry Lot, it's been too long.



Ah, yes, it is good to have you back.





I want to capture those cities over there as soon as possible, so I begin preparations to ferry Steve and Barold over there.



Alright, Mysterious-Figure-Definitely-Not-Called-Eagle, do your worst.



FUCK THEY DO CHARGE YOU

God damn it.



Right, this needs dealing with immediately.



Hey, you remember how last time I dealt with planes, I kept putting enemies next to planes and then hitting Wait because I forgot you can't fire on them with most units?



Yeah. That.

There's more where that came from.



The Cassandra Corps roll out to delete one of these planes for me. I'd rather not deal with two fighter jets.



...I swear anti-air used to one-shot these things. Perhaps I'm mistaken.

Either way, it's a real spanner in the works.



Still, Cassandra does decent damage to them.



The Carl Crew, not one to be outdone...



Utterly eliminates this second bro copter.



Let's just pray that the attacks aren't too harsh this time.



This bodes well.



Eh, that wasn't so bad.



Oh, this could be worse.



A ONE-SHOT?

"Dammit! We're going down!" Bernard shouts as he tries to control the copter crumbling to pieces around him.

"What do we do?" Barold yells.

Before Bernard can answer, the copter crashes into the ocean and sinks into the waves.



Oh, for god's sake. It gets worse.



Siiiiiiigh.



Yeah, no.



No, no, no, no, no.

Nell, what's your handy you-got-beat advice for this guy?



A CO POWER THAT WHAT.



WHY DOES HE-



WHY CAN HE-



THAT WASN'T EVEN MY PROBLEM BUT THANKS FOR WARNING ME, I GUESS



Oh my god.



Cool, this map gets worse! Good to know that I lost three units before the mission gets even harder.

Fuck this.




-----------~~~~THE LL LOG~~~~-----------

hi guys! i'm lucy, from the lucy lineup!

i dunno if you remember me, but i was in the mission with the bombers! i tried my best to stand out but i know that everyone else is so cool, so no worries if you don't remember who i am.

anyway, that's not the point! commander my dude was in a real huff before.

we had a couple of hours before the enemy were to engage, so he was doing some mock strategy battles to figure out a good approach.

i don't think it went very well. he was so demoralised that he couldn't be bothered writing the log, so i'm doing it for him! i'll give you ALL the highlights, don't worry~



silly my dude! he thought you could fire on fighter jets with battle copters.



but he can't. goodness me, you'd think he'd have learned that in all his training...



then he made another anti-air!

i wonder, if this had been a real battle, whether we would have made a new friend?



then larry blew up.

thank goodness it wasn't the real larry, anyway!



my dude was getting really annoyed at this point. even my patented Lucy Hugs~ didn't cheer him up!



when he tried it next, he decided to go for a defensive strategy. he left michael in range of that battle copter. genius!



except the copter went for bernard instead. oh no!



he decided to retry it again. man, he's not having very good luck, is he?

i bet that's because he didn't have me on the field!



my dude kicked us out of his strategy room after that. he said he had to "make a savestate", whatever that means.



next time, the bait went perfectly! the copter went for michael, on the stronghold, and that was enough to lure it in safely!



all the other planes started to advance.



look at that big range! thank goodness that fighter jets can't fire on ground units, right?



my dude does KNOW that fighter jets can't fire on ground units, right? he's moving them all out of the way!



at about this point my dude slapped his forehead and went "THEY CAN'T FIRE ON GROUND UNITS, F*** ME" (i'm not allowed to swear)

at least he figured it out! and he lured them into the range of mulligan, like the strategic genius he is!



my dude punched a wall.

-----------~~~~END LL LOG~~~~-----------





OK. I took a shit, drank some coffee, screamed at the sky and now I am feeling much better. Let's get this done.



I set up the bait properly this time. The Mulligan Missileers are far enough away that they can actually hit the bloody planes this time, and Bernard is safely out of the way so he can't be arbitrarily one-shot.



Come on, you fucking dick. Give me this one.



Man, I can't wait for the day that this stupid strategy stops working.



To be fair, I'm pretty sure they'd one-shot Michael if he wasn't on defensive terrain. Each star is 10% damage reduction if I recall correctly.



Ah! This should help a lot. The jets are way less of a threat now that I know that can't hit ground units (god, I'm stupid) so if we get rid of the bro copters, we should be golden.



TASTE REVENGE, FUCKER.

I wonder if Mulligan gets more powerful with each time that I take a mulligan on a map?

...This needs further testing.



The Cassandra Corps can then deal with this guy. Apparently Nell's advice was somewhat right - holding out is somewhat easier.



Nice work, Cassandra.

I have to wait another turn or two before I can advance - those fighter jets are on their way, and I'm not ferrying any infantry around until they're wreckage at the bottom of the sea.



This guy goes to capture a base. It's not that interesting, so I didn't mention it on previous runs, but I guess it's cool that bases where you can make new units are also capturable property on maps.

Wow, capturable is so not a word and I love it.



This guy's been doing his thing for a while, too.



Right. Let's deal with the new threats, shall we?



Mulligan, if you would.



"Been a while since my services were needed." Mulligan says, staring at the jet in the sky. "...Looks like I'm losing my touch a little. Ah well, that's what second chances are for."



I use the Carl Crew to finish this guy off, but if I attack from above, I can also prevent the bro copter from going for Mulligan.



"Give me..." Carl whispers. "Your blood."

He catches Gareth's eye, and the mech lifts an eyebrow.

"I, uh... did anyone catch the blood- I mean, game, last night? What a match." Carl says.



"Oh, the game? Yeah, it was legendary!" says Larry. "Didn't realise you were into football, Carl."

Carl grins at Gareth, who nods knowingly.



Almost all the big threats are dealt with now. Come on, come to papa...



This guy captures this thing.

This would be problematic, but since you can't build air units with them, they're not that much of a threat to me at the moment.



Man, watching units capturing things is cool about the first two times that you see it.



The last jet and copter approach, and neither of them attack anything.



They will regret that.

Time to att-



oh god hi nell



...I'm sorry, it took you FOUR DAYS to work out that the green troops were from the country called GREEN EARTH?



That seems like a weird thing to do. Surely an armed division wandering around in someone else's territory would be an act of aggression, whether they were independent or not? What the hell, Eagle?

I guess when you're that smug, anything you do is an act of aggression.





It is at this point that I will spectacularly fail to mention how many times I've attempted this mission.



For once, I'm with Andy.



"Man, there's enemy units there! I'll go away for four days, I'm sure nothing will go wrong in the meantime!"



Wait, Nell?



Oh my god.

Well, this hasn't been Nell's finest moment, certainly...



Just kill them.



God, Mulligan Missileers, I have missed you. Never leave my side again.





With the combined efforts of the Carl Crew and the Cassandra Corps...





We put paid to all the planes. Right then.

That took way too long.



Next time, we'll finish this map and knock the smile of smug asshole's face.

***

The Barracks: Cassandra and Lucy 1

Lucy looks up as a girl walks into her room.

“Uh, hi!” she says. “Sorry, have we met?”

The girl is holding a suitcase, and she begins to unpack it on the bed opposite Lucy’s. “My name is Cassandra. I was told that I would be staying here from now on.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Cassandra! Cass? Can I call you Cass?”

“I’d prefer Cassandra.” the girl replies stiffly, turning to Lucy, who nods.

“OK! Well, I’m Lucy - I specialise in flying, and I’m a bomber pilot! What do you do?”

The girl falls silent and sits on the bed. She fixes Lucy with a strange, ethereal glare.

“I am an anti-air squadron leader at the moment. Of course it should fall to me to have the bad luck of staying in the same room as a pilot.”

“What’ve you got against pilots?”

“Nothing.” Cassandra replies, flicking her hair behind her shoulders. “I… have a fear of heights. I also grow scared for others who fly. I will be stressed to no end watching your antics, I am sure.”

“Huh.” Lucy says. She shrugs. “Well, I guess that’s fair, we’re all scared of something. But hey, if you ever want to face your fear, I can take you up in the-“

“No!” Cassandra hisses. “…Sorry. No. I shouldn’t like to ever leave the ground again. Not after… doesn’t matter. Tell me, Lucy, how do you spend your spare time? I’m not to be deployed until tomorrow officially.”

Lucy grins and takes Cassandra’s hand. “We hang out, play cards, sneak a drink when my dad’s not watching, and meet all the crew! Come on, I’ve gotta introduce you to Tina and Selena! Oh, and we can’t forget Raynald of Châtillon! He’s a right laugh.”

Unable to say anything, but quite amused by Lucy’s optimism, Cassandra allows herself to be forcibly dragged out of the room and down the corridor.

Perhaps this won’t be as bad as they told me it would be.