Part 21: This Is Complete Bullshit

PART 21 - This Is Complete Bullshit



It's that time of day again. By which I mean, the blue time of day.

Grit's turn. I'm saying it's Grit's turn.

So, last time, we lost Steve, and Rose's squadron was destroyed, though she survived by disobeying direct orders. We'll get to that later - right now, we need to push ahead and start removing some of these big threats.



This anti-air is not one of these big threats. It, uh, just kinda drove towards me and didn't attack anything.



Ah, it's red time of day. Shall we teach this stupid thing a lesson?



Well, Eddie certainly fucking won't.



Thank you, Eric.



I'm so god damn tired of Grit's horseshittery at this point. There can't be that many units left - if we put paid to the rocket squad up there, all that's left is whatever's by the HQ and those couple of artillery that keep ducking in and out of the fog.



Anyway, we need to push forward, and I find it's always good to have an infantry on hand in case anything needs capturing. Barold gets into the Michael Multitude in preparation.



For a moment, I considered moving the Larry Lot down here and scouting out what exactly is near the HQ. Honestly, though...



We've lost enough units as is. I get him back here, we can refuel him and send him out later.



Enemy phase. It's particularly Grit-like, by which I mean that nothing happens besides some artillery moving in incomprehensible ways.



You can't hear them in the screenshots, but I assure you, I heard the artillery-moving noises.

...Treads. Those things. I knew that word.



"Artillery-moving noises"... what the hell, my dude? Get a hold of yourself.

Eddie observes the two artillery units near him and turns back to the receiver on his dashboard. "Uh, should we be worried about these?"

"My dude's getting distracted." Tina replies. "Let's just go ham with Max Force!"



Hm, that is an option. Unfortunately, I have nothing in particular range, so... yeah, we'll have to wait.

"Max can't solve all your problems." Eric muses.

Tina grins. "He solves a lot of mine."

For a moment, she looks at the receiver, as if waiting for a particular somebody to make a sarcastic comment about it. However, Wilbert remains completely uncommunicative, and her face falls.



No time to think about your romantic troubles, Tina. Go shoot this dude.

And wow, I always forget how much RAW DAMAGE Max-powered units do. I love it.



I'm sure you're all entirely unsurprised to see that Tina utterly destroyed that guy.



This guy is still annoying, though. The Tina Team, and more worryingly, Eddie, are in his range. Eddie's hidden by a forest, which I hope helps. Unfortunately, it's been so many turns since we attacked, he's all but healed the damage. Sigh.



"There ya go." Michael says, nodding at Larry, who gives him the thumbs up.

"Thanks, my man. I'm gonna head over the mountain range - stay safe out there, alright?"

"You know me." Michael replies. "I always do."



Grit fluctuates wildly between "completely obliterating everything with CO power" and "doing absolutely nothing except moving artillery in weird ways".



As you can see by the lack of an artillery unit on the above screen, it was a "do nothing but move artillery in weird ways" kind of day.



Gordon makes his move. Him and Eddie are the only units with enough movement to cross that awkward forest and feasibly reach the rocket squadron in a not-unholy number of turns.

Yes, this does mean we're going to poke it for like 2 damage for several turns, but eh, I need my stronger firepower units to clear the path to the HQ.



Oh, I realise why Tina isn't getting attacked by the rockets. They only fire on planes.

God dammit, I always forget what can fire on what. I'd appreciate having coloured danger zone markers for land, sea and sky. That'd be handy. Also, I did just realise this whilst drafting the update, so, uh, get ready for several days of timewasting whilst past me pretends that the rockets are an actual danger to my units.



Hey, an artillery! They do move around so weirdly. I don't get it.



Anyway, right, let's actually make some progress now. God damn, this is slow going. I blame past me entirely for being an idiot.



Also, I can't imagine there's much on this map that Tina DOESN'T one-shot, so may as well get some use out of this in other areas.



See! I'm not poking at it. I'm, uh, inconveniencing it mildly. Which is better!



max force is the best co power guys



As I move the Eddie Ensemble into the forest, ready to go for the rockets next turn, it occurs to me that fuel is running low. Hopefully everyone else is doing OK.



Max Force was probably unnecessary here. But hey, let's do it, Tina.



I wish HP bars dropped harder if you massively overpower the enemy. Like, 175% damage should have the bar just fucking drop in a matter of milliseconds.



I move Eric into a forest. Past me continues to think that the rocket is a threat. Fuckin' idiot.



Now I feel a little better about moving the Larry Lot over here, since some of the artillery have been dealt with. Currently, we don't find anything.



The rocket heals the damage. Not much else happens, really.



Now we continue the bullying.



Yes! Damage! We're getting him down further now!



34%. It's like tearing down a brick wall with a teaspoon.



As I move the Tina Team forward, I note that she's hitting her limit too. Damn, this is getting too close.



The Michael Multitude supply Eric in the meantime.



Ngh. Speaking of fuel troubles, Michael's got problems. He's the last unit I need to have fuel problems right now... he's gotta go refuel Tina ASAP!



I move everyone forward. I was considering retreating Larry once more, but eventually I decided he's probably more useful down here.



Right, let's go. There can't be that many units left on Grit's side.





Oh, mother fucker. I always forget how quickly the enemy CO bar charges. I didn't even kill that much stuff this time!



Eric looks up as he hears the roar of missiles.

"Uh, Bill... you hear something?"

"Eric?" Bill replies, turning to his friend's tank squadron.

"Missiles incoming!" screeches Larry. "Get out of there, Eric!"



The missiles come thick and fast, completely unavoidable. As they explode around Eric, he yells in fright. A direct hit explodes on top of his tank, throwing him to the cold metal floor of the vehicle. Distant noises of explosions fade into the background as Eric desperately scrabbles for the receiver. More missiles are coming, and he knows it.

"Bill..." he whispers into the transceiver. "Look after Ingo for me."

A final volley of missiles explode on the ground all around, leaving very little left of the Eric Echelon, one of the finest tank squadrons that Orange Star had ever seen.

"Eric..." Bill whispers, having heard Eric's final message, for his ears alone. "...Right."

"No. Why does this keep happening?" Larry moans, barely able to focus on keeping his helicopter squad together.

A gritty voice comes through everyone's radio.

"We move forward." Tina grunts, hatred burning in her eyes. "And we completely destroy them. We will make them pay for every good man they take from us!"



"A second attack is coming!" cries Eddie, watching it go overhead. "Bernard, I think it's going for you! Rockets!"

Bernard jerks into life at the sound of the word. "Rockets?!"

His one fear. He reaches the large door of his copter and sees the rockets flying towards him. "Damn... close the doors. Ready for impact! Is everyone else far enough away from my copter? Just in case I-"



Pheeeeeeeeeeew. Holy shit, that was a close one. Well done for hanging on, Bernard. I can't bear to lose anyone else.

Fuck Grit.



Speaking of fuck Grit, let's do that by murdering everything he owns.



STARTING WITH YOU.



KEEP GOING.



GOOD.



I finally get the Tina Team back in order. I'll send in Larry to scout out any more enemies, and Tina should be able to delete them.



That forest behind the HQ looks waaaaaaay too suspicious.



There we go.



...Ah. It's OK, Bill has more movement, he can



son of a bitch



Look at this arbitrarily large range. You're not special, Grit, you're just a coward.



I move Tina down. She'll be able to draw the fire of that artillery and anything else that might be around. There's a lot of forests here and you can never be too suspicious.



Please don't be anything else. I just

can't deal

anymore



The artillery does the thing I expected it to do. Which, to be fair, is a first for Grit's artillery units.



The Tina Team takes heavy damage, but hey, at least she's in range now. I bet she can still one-shot, even like this.



It occurs to me that I might need to get Michael to the HQ to drop off a unit to capture.



...Oh, heavens. This is going to be tight.



Larry annoys the artillery.



And does a good job too. This map should be all but done, unless there's like 4 medium tanks in the forests just down there.



The Bill Battalion also goes on the offensive. I can't imagine the poor guy's heart is really in it at the moment, though.



Perhaps there's some satisfaction into killing those who killed your allies.



Being the overly nervous ACO that I am, I parked everyone around the forests just to make sure there was nobody suspicious in them. The map didn't end on killing that artillery, so there's probably a missile/rocket unit on that north-eastern island. And frankly, fuck that. I'll just capture.



And this...



Was tight indeed. I drop Barold off at the HQ.



Let's not mess around any further. We got through it...



And we're done here.



Oh, shit, there's unique dialogue depending on who you pick. Nice.



Huh. Max actually knows who we're dealing with. He really is better than Andy in every way.





Gasp! They were about to say the g-word in a fucking children's game! Thank god it cut off before he said it.



This one sentence brings into question everything I thought I knew about Grit's, Nell's and Max's pasts.



Like killing two of my hardworking men in one fucking mission, you asshole?



It's not preaching to say "hey, how about you don't murder my units every time you get a CO power off"



...And yet despite my hatred, I can't help but like him. God dammit.



He's gone, Max. Save your breath.



Eh. We'll run into him again soon, I'm sure. Let's just pray it's not fog of fucking war next time.



I dunno. Who in their right mind would sign up to Blue Moon over, you know, Nell?



absolutelad.png



Also, I ranked up. Again. No idea what this does for me.





Ah, Grit/Olaf dialogue, my favourite.





It's like the sweet reward after the difficulty of the mission.



"I drew a detailed plan on the whiteboard!"

"It was a big box with 'TAKE OVER ORANGE STAR' written in it, Olaf"



Grit has actual morals.

This is surprising, considering how casually he deleted Steve and Eric in this map.



Pfft. I love it. They really don't get on at all.



Man, I'd like to fight other COs at some point. There's like five countries in this game, isn't there? Why is it just Grit and Olaf (and that one Eagle mission I guess)?



Knock knock. It's Orange Star, and we want to know who killed Eric and Steve.



Thank you for answering us, Olaf.



Olaf really just reads like a dad in these moments with Grit. It's great.



"And you'd better have done the washing up by the time I get back!"



AHAHAH OH MY GOD

This is the dadliest thing he's ever said. Holy shit, I was joking, but wow.

Anyway, it's that time of update again.



Do we go with Dipshit?



Or Skullfucker?

See you next time, folks! Also, just for that dumb question up there...

Andy's Stupid Question Count: 6

***

The Barracks: Bill and Ingo 1

As he walked into Ingo’s room, Bill could already tell that Ingo had heard the news.

“I’m sorry.”

"Yeah.” Ingo replies morosely. “We all are. Bill, why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did he have to die?”

Bill breathes in slowly, and exhales, buying some time to think of a valid answer for the kid stood in front of him.

“Casualties happen, Ingo. Eric knew that when he signed up. You knew that when you signed up.” Bill says.

“I was conscripted.”

Bill looks up in surprise. “…Ah. I didn’t realise Orange Star did conscriptions. Listen, Ingo, I know it’s hard.”

“I can’t go home to my dad without Eric.” Ingo says. “What would he say? What if- what if I don’t come home either?”

Bill stares at the ceiling, fighting for breath, clawing desperately for the right words.

“Eric died to save us. We wouldn’t have won the battle without him. And that victory gave us back a huge swathe of Orange Star. Think about how many people he saved today.”

Ingo falls silent.

“That’s… that’s why he signed up. To help people.”

“He was supposed to look after me.” Ingo mutters. “I didn’t even want to be here. And now I’m all alone, and the bigger guys are gonna make fun of me…”

“No. They won’t.” Bill replies. “I was told to look after you on your brother’s behalf, and I intend to do that. Come to me if you need anything at all, alright?”

Ingo nods. With little more to be said, Bill rises and begins to walk away. The boy falls back on his bed, and Bill hears his last comment as he exits.

“You will never be my brother."