• Nobles of Null is a forum based roleplay site where sci-fi and magic collide. Here, Earth remains fractured and divided despite humanity reaching out to the stars. Worse still, the trans-human slaves of one major power have escaped, only to establish their own Empire, seething with resentment at abuses of the past. Even the discovery of aliens, though medieval in development, has failed to rally these squabbling children of Earth together with its far darker implications. Worse still, is the discovery of the impossible - magic. Practiced by the alien locals, nearly depleted and therefore rare, its reality warping abilities remains abstract and distant to the general populace. All the while, unseen in the darkness of space, forces from without threaten to press in. For those with eyes opened by insight, it is clear that an era is about to end, and that a new age will dawn.

Chapter 2: Practice Makes Perfect

"yes ma'am" žana said to Mari before slithering in the killzone. she knew how to use the ak well becouse of its simplicity yet effectiveness. her movement was agile as she slithered from room to room following the same training she had in the police force whole trying some new moves even going to a target and crushing it with her tail as she curled around it before moving on...for now she was still in the training room
 
Renee was acutely aware of the animosity towards Zana, and gave the two Soyuz agents a rather unhappy stare at their behaviour. She knew she had to stay in line, and that Zana's form was fairly unusual within both the GDW and Soyuz, but she was still a teammate and it fell to her colleagues to support her. At her question, Renee didn't look towards Zana, but nodded nonetheless. Without the translator, she wasn't sure was Toybob had said, but the tone seemed gruff enough to realise it had been hostile.

As Shephard spoke, Renee tilted her head back. "Your jealousy is showing, Shephard," she quipped back, referencing the so called 'technically advanced' gun. In Renee's opinion, a gun was a gun, no matter how much technology or modifications were attached to it. She smirked a little as Shephard flicked the gun over, accompanying her analysis with a string of complaints. "Mmm," she murmured under her breath, before giving an exaggerated sigh. "What a shame you can't use our own weapons against us," Renee finished the sentence with an obviously sarcastic and fake smile, which was somewhat... unsettling... and just in time for Caleb's entrance.

It had been a while since Renee had used a trigger, but she had been taught with one at the CSC academy before earning the qualifications to have her own Lancaster suit. Although she smirked at Caleb's comment, she was able to pick up the sincerity of Shephard's question, and so she shook her head, taking a sauntering step towards the small wall made of immobile but distanced targets and lying the gun down at one of the stations. "If you're so worried, you can demonstrate for us." It would be interesting to see how good Shephard was outside of the simulation, Renee thought, crossing her arms over her chest.

As Mari entered, Renee flicked her eyes towards her, unsure of whether to salute or not. She shook her head at the question. "I appreciate the concern but... we should be fine, ma'am. Operational changes or recommendations should be directed towards-" Renee stopped short, nearly about to name-drop Eberhard "towards Cobalt." Renee noted the tones of irritation in Mari's voice, and tilted her head sideways this time, almost like a falcon. "A demonstration of your technical warfare would be interesting to all of us, ma'am."
 
"A bullet is a bullet." Shephard responded coldly, walking into the kill room, strapping on her goggles and headset and smashed a red button bordered by yellow and black warning stripes. A red light on the edge of the ceiling and the wall glowed, indicating the presence of live fire. Toybob followed behind, watching all the Lancers present carefully. "I don't need your fancy toys to kill you. I don't even need a rifle." She dropped all pretense of pleasantries, eyeing Caleb. "Especially you. I can recognize an American dog a star system away. One wonders why you were allowed to join the Commonwealthers. At least they still have some pretense of nobility to them."

She eyed the static target, shaking her head. "That won't do." Tapping her datapad, another light glowed, now indicating active drone movements. Indeed, the mannequins started moving erratically as Shephard entered the maze of plastic wall panels. She breathed out, checked her rifle, making sure she had a spare clip, and moved through the killzone methodically. On monitors, the Lancers could see the Soyuz woman down the mannequins one by one with brutal efficiency, weaving through the maze like a hungry, determined wolf as her rifle roared with violent life. Every mannequin received no more than three shots as Shephard wasted nothing. Within two minutes, Shephard left the maze with a smirk as drones swarmed the area, cleaning up the broken mannequins and the debris on the ground while others went into a side room to fetch new mannequins and paintball guns.

"Was that enough of a demonstration? Surely you can do just as well." The woman challenged the Lancers.
 
Jamison fitted his suit back on, the still uncleaned suit stuck to his clean-ish skin more than he wanted but he could ignore it for now. Once he had his exosuit on the big guy turned to his weapon of choice, the heavy machine gun he brought along with him, using the manipulator arm on his harness he grabbed the gun and swivled it around making sure the suit was opperational before heading for the gathering area.

Stomping his over armored self into the basement wasn't the hardest thing to find though he did open a few wrong doors because nobody bothered to tell him where the basement entrance was. He proceeded to standby the entrance waiting to be noticed by the rest of the group.
 
Just as the Lancers already in the basement were butting heads with members of the Task Force, Eberhard walked down with Billhook, Beatrix, Froststorm, and Groundhog. Billhook proved to a man of large stature, bald and pale, with a intimidating horseshoe beard. Groundhog was a tanner man, his origin most likely Arabic as he sported a light amount of facial hair and a black buzzcut. Froststorm meanwhile was a complete mystery, besides his attitude anyways, as he kept his goggles, mask, and hood up, tightly keep his facial features under concealment. He kept a laser focus on Zana.

"So you've made any friends yet?" Eberhard asked in a mixed Commonwealth dialect to address the Lancers. Billhook, meanwhile was speaking in a low tone at his own men in Russian. He eyed Shephard and Toybob, who had mixed expressions on their faces, then looked at Caleb, Zana, and Renee. "Try to keep it professional. The sooner we finish this investigation, the sooner we can go home. Right now, focus on practice. You'll be learning hand signals from these folks and clear out mannequins with them. It's pretty simple. The drones'll try to shoot you with paintball guns, you hit them back with whatever firearm you deem appropriate. I don't expect it to be anything difficult for you, unless you let attitude get in the way of work. Any questions?"

Billhook, in the meantime, was just about done talking to his team members as well. Zana could hear something along the lines of, "--- You don't have to like them, but you better play nice with them, or is the presence of some Commonwealthers, a GMO, and an American too much for you to handle?"
 
as Žana finished with the AK she was on her way to change guns with her grau lancer gun, she heard billhook ask her a question as she places the ak on the table and goes to him in a good manner she replys "no sir I'm doing pretty well with them sure they might be at times just a bit nervus around me but we are a team after all and we did had some nice socializations on the ship when we were in space...for now il continue the training sir!" she gives billhook a small salute before heading off to get her grau lancer gun and on her way to the killzone for the drone shooting.
 
Sometimes, Caleb's attitude tended to grate on others, but keeping his mouth shut was really something he had trouble doing, as a defense mechanism for tense situations. But he gritted his teeth, and sighed. "Yes sir, I can be professional. I just have trouble sometimes"

He checked his holsters and the weapons held inside, running his fingers along the engravings on the weapon, his fingers brushing the word "Integrity" scrawled on the side of the handle of the weapon on his left. He calmed himself, reminded of his objective, and the opportunity he was being given, and made his way to the practice area, determined to do well.
 
Mari continued to observe, though as the Lancers started to play with their GDW-issued rifles Mari would switch from a rather passive-observance to a more active-observance. From the exterior it would look like Mari's form was still just sorta standing their motionless but now close attention was being paid to the trigger assembly of the GDW rifles. A former potato-chip-based-snack-turned-Cantenna would be aimed at the trigger from under Mari's cloak. Were they using some sort range wireless signal for authentication for the gun? Some other thing? Maybe if she was able to get an optic up close she'd get a better understanding.

The cohesiveness of the group also seemed suspect. Mari decided it would do to employ a little bit of snark. "Yes, much in the same way the GDW recognizes my people's right to exist, I too recognize the professionalism on display here."
 
"Watch your tongue, conasse," Renee took a step forwards as Shephard began to insult Caleb. "You're not special," she quickly followed up her previous statement, and although it sounded like a childish insult, there was a commanding tone to Renee's voice that seemed to change it's mood a little.

Renee had to fight back the look of awe on her face at Shephard's 'display', shifting her position and gripping the gun in her hands slightly more firmly. Although her face didn't 'admit' her admiration, there was a little twinkle in her pale eyes. As Eberhard entered, Renee straightened up and afforded him a salute, keeping the gun pressed to her chest, before standing in an armed at-ease position. She stared towards Groundhog, and then Froststorm, instantly a little suspicious at his concealed identity. "Looking handsome, Froststorm," Renee murmured, a little smirk on her face at the prospect of irritating someone.

At Eberhard's question-reprimand on the subject of friends, Renee eyed the others nervously, hoping that neither her or Caleb would get a slap on the wrist. She repeated 'professional' under her breath in French in a tone of irritation, low enough in volume to not register on the translator. At Caleb's remark, she flitted her eyes towards him and mouthed "Sometimes?" in a repetition of his speech, eyebrows raised in sarcastic disbelief.

At Mari's comment, Renee's mouth curled into a tiny snarl, but she caught herself before she was able to say anything, shooting Eberhard an apologetic look.
 
Beatrix looked around the basement, sensing the tension that had built up, but not sure what, if anything, she could do about it. Shaking her head, both at the situation and Mari’s attempt at sarcasm, she picked up her trusty machine pistol and walked over to the range, getting ready for the show to start.
 
Jamison also looked around at the room from his position by the door, and still had no idea what tension anyone was talking about, deciding team cohesion would be better served by going along with the exercise. Picking up one of the guns he got a feel for it, after approaching the range, he didn't shoot any of the targets yet just getting a feel for the weight and mobility that he had. Worst came to worst he could just pull the big gun off his back and throw down some indiscriminate supressive fire.
 
Eberhard echoed Beatrix's reactions, massaging his nose bridge. "Good god we're awful," He remarked in a clearly joking tone and shook his head with a small smile. "Mari, let us do our job," He remarked to her in heavily accented English, taking up an SAk-47 himself. "Leave the politics out of this for now." He then put his helmet on and walked into the killzone.

Despite 52's previous snark and insults, they were remarkable professional once the safeties are their rifles were off. They first explained the the Grau Lancers their own hand signals, trading tactics and coming to a compromise. Fortunately, body language wasn't all that different between the Soyuz and GDW personnel; centuries of tactical development in short range combat led to similar conclusions that defied political and cultural boundaries. The only difference was how to say "fuck you"; laughing, 52 put their thumbs between their index and middle finger, while the Lancers simple put up their middle finger.

When it came to clearing out the mannequins, the combined force of Task Force 52 and the Grau Lancers proved overkill. Each and everyone of them was shredded by focused accurate rifle and pistol fire. 52 and the Lancers practiced moving in from a single entrance, then splitting off to methodically clear every room. They then practiced coordinating assaults from different directions, at first with safeties on to avoid friendly fire, then with live fire against mannequins sandwiched in between the two forces. Throughout the exercise, comms were shut off, forcing the two groups to coordinate purely through their hand gestures.

After three hours of practice, with only a couple minutes for water break afforded in between long exercise, both teams emerged from the basement, sweaty and tired. All of the 52 members had taking off their masks and goggles at this point, save for Froststorm, who stubbornly kept his face hidden. Eberhard and Billhook stayed in the back of the group to discuss the next day's strategy, while Shephard led her pack, hitting up the Lancers for conversation.

"Not bad... for a bunch of Commonwealthers." She smirked, remarking between tired snorts.
 
žana was pretty happy she did well on the training she also saw how others were doing it and tried to copy it a bit. for now she was standing close to her friends as she listened to shephard.

"I think we did pretty well to be honest yeah...was a bit fun"

she would then looks at her squad that insulted shephard in some way

"hey as for now on please stop with the insults and all you're making me emberesed..."

she then turns back to shephard her face pretty neutral and slightly tired looking
 
Caleb's brow was slick with sweat, and again, he missed the weight of his hat on his head. He reached up, and wiped the sweat from his brow. He thought they had all gotten the hand signs and the like worked out, and his team and TF52 had worked together pretty well considering the original antagonism brought by both sides. "I can't say I disagree with the assessment, you did pretty well yourselves, for Soyuz" He smirked at the end, lending it a bit of mirth and trying to mend the peace that they needed. He extended a fist towards Shepherd.
 
Jamison stood and accepted the praise with the same stony face he would greet the end of the universe with, accepting the congradulation with a small nod and waiting for something to be said that wasn't a snarky comment about their temporary teammates, not that the hulk would do so himself. He did however eye their duplicates with some level of suspicion behind his blanked faceplate, something felt off and it wasn't his normal near compulsive level of paranoia.
 
Mari remained motionless off to the side, her face pointed generally towards the kill-house while the training was going on, her attention focused elsewhere entirely as she worked on penetrating the cyber security of their target. Rather than the imitation training of shooting fake-things, she was carrying out on the very real attacking of people's mobile devices and personal accounts to build a bridgehead into Omnigrow.

Hand signals seemed like an archaic way to communicate. There were tools like context sensitive pings, geo-tags, and AR-overlays that could be used to better effect but perhaps it was best the soldiery-stuff was left to the soldier types.

... Regardless, she set her optics to watch the hand signals and commit them to a database in case she needed to use them.
 
Renee aced the training, barging into the front line as per her training as a counter-terrorism officer. The hand gestures were familiar to her, and she couldn't help but crack a grin at the 'fuck you' signal. They were capable - not that Renee had doubted that in the slightest - but it had made her respect them all that bit more. She popped off her faceplate once more, face sleek with sweat, before removing her helmet in its entirety. Her impeccable bun had come undone, prompting the French woman to quickly redo it in a matter of mere seconds.

Renee gave Shephard an upward nod, a sign of respect, before letting her eyes flit to Froststorm again, with a frown evident on her face. This guy was suspicious as all hell - it was fair enough that he would be suspicious of the GDW with his history, but suspicious enough to not show his face... Renee didn't like that one bit. And when Renee didn't like something, she would bring it up in conversation. "Are you not warm, Froststorm?" she asked nonchalantly, idly cracking her knuckles through her combat gloves.
 
Shephard lightly bopped Caleb's fist with her own, eyeing him warily, still keeping up a prideful smirk. "We have our eyes on you, American." She warned through her translator. "But you might prove to be an ally through this whole shitshow. Don't give me reasons to doubt you further."

Froststorm scoffed at both Shephard's comments and Renee's direct questioning towards him. His barely visible eyes swung from Shephard, then over to Zana, before leering at Renee. "A sauna is preferable to the cold, Kitezh seasons, both summer and winter. You wouldn't know that, in your air conditioned suits. You might've proved your marksmanship today, but without your suits and toys, what are you?" His teammates coughed and looked away awkwardly. Even they weren't in the mood for hurling insults right now. In the background behind the curt words output by Froststorm's translator, he spoke in the Slavic tongue. Except, it wasn't just a Slavic accent, as Zana could tell. There was something else in his voice, an accent beyond Earth. Perhaps it was a unique accent developed by the people residing on Kitezh?

The leaders of the two parties pretended to not hear the exchange as the guided their teams into the common, kitchen area. Eberhard put up a 3D map of Omnigrow's building layout while Billhook took off his winter wear, revealing a great muscular body as he worked the electric stovetop, throwing familiar, grounded lab grown steak into a large pan, along with Earthly spinach and barley, genetically modified to further survive Kitezh's cold environment, despite being raised in indoor vertical farms.
 
Žana would be close to renee now still she was just silent for now she did put some interested in froststorm slavic translation but what language it was she didnt knew. after shephard told renee her small insult? she did spoke up to shephard in a sarcastic tone. "well renee will be just a normal human but me even without this suit on or my weapons I can still be pretty deadly at giving hugs" she would hiss a few chuckles then before having a little smug smile. "I'm sure we will all work together just fine still" she said to shephard in a nice tone.
 
Reading the room, and Zana's putting-him-in-his-place response, Renee nodded to herself and then raised her fingers to her head as if scratching her forehead. Except, as Froststorm would notice, her fingers would be formed into the Soyuz 'fuck you' symbol that they'd been taught only hours before. The gesture was gone soon enough, and Renee turned on her head, slinking into the kitchen like a cat trying to leave a loud party but ending up in the kitchen instead.

She stowed her helmet on a table, drawing up a stool at one of the tables, one arm resting on a counter whilst her legs made it seem like she was ready to run at any moment. The sheen from the sweat had almost vanished, leaving her with some sort of post-training exercise glow, if not for the tiredness in her eyes. She flicked her eyes over each member of both teams, stopping on all of them for a brief moment, as if evaluating them like prey.
 
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