1540: Mortal Kombat: A New Hero’s Journey – Chapters 12, 13, and 14
Posted: September 22, 2016 Filed under: Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat: A New Hero's Journey | Tags: Herr Wozzeck, Mortal Kombat, Parody, Porn, Romance, Video Game, What The F*** Is Wrong With This Person? 91 CommentsTitle: Mortal Kombat: A New Hero’s Journey
Author: cw2k
Media: Video Game
Topic: Mortal Kombat
Genre: Parody/Romance
URL: Chapter 12
URL: Chapter 13
URL: Chapter 14
Critiqued by Herr Wozzeck
Disclaimer: Blah blah sex blah blah riff is not safe for work, blah blah penises and vaginas and graphic sexual activity blah blah read at your own discretion. Can we get on with the riff now?
Hello, folks, and welcome back for more Mortal Kombat porn! I’m your host Herr Wozzeck, and… well, I think you know what’s gonna happen now, right? Underdeveloped plot that’s only there for sexytimes to happen.
And I think this is the part where I’ll start skipping the sex unless there’s something really fucked up in there. It’s just become a slog otherwise, and nobody wants that, amirite?
Anyway, let’s get started!
So we start our next chapter with this:
Sonya and Johnny got married and had a daughter named Cassandra, but Sonya was more focused on her military work that spend time with her newfound family, which led to Johnny divorcing her.
Ah, right, a single sentence devoted to where Sonya went. Um, yeah. Question about that: what about the other lady Chris fucked? You know, Jade? We know what happened to Mileena, but what about Jade? And why is this relevant if it has nothing to do with—
Chris and Tanya got married a year later, but their marriage fell apart
Oh. Huh. You know, I should’ve expected it would fall apart. I mean I didn’t, but I should’ve. And really, how predictable is that? “Hey, we’ve fucked a few times, let’s put a ring on it!” Yeah, brilliant idea!
…
So, um… how did this marriage fall apart?
when Kotal Kahn and his henchmen stole her back to Outworld for execution.
…
Wait, what?
Chris tried to rescue her with Johnny Cage’s help but they were too late. Tanya was executed before his very eyes. The woman he loved was dead before him.
…
…
…
REALLY!? REALLY, NOW!?
*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*
Wow. Okay, so you frame Tanya as this woman who loves Chris. Whether or not we believe that is irrelevant right now, because according to your fic, they’re so much in love that they can’t live without each other. So you make them get married, make them have lots of sex, have Tanya do this whole heel-face turn, you make her a major character…
…and then you unceremoniously kill her off in four sentences. In narration. Offscreen. During a time skip.
*BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM*
This is a major character! You don’t just kill her offscreen like that for no reason! Character deaths are kind of important, for the reason that “hey, you’re never going to see this character alive again, you better give them a good send-off”! And even if the Netherrealm exists and characters are sometimes brought to life, guess what? Mortal Kombat 9 at least had the decency to send off most of the characters it killed with a damn good bang!
This is just… this isn’t even a send-off, let alone a good one! It literally just takes Tanya—who was built up by the story as a goddamn major character—and unceremoniously tosses her to the side like a toy.
*BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM*
Jesus fuck, someone finally dies in a Mortal Kombat fanfic, and I can’t even be happy about it because it’s handled so poorly. What the fuck is my life?
*headdesk*
They returned to Earthrealm. Chris couldn’t contain his sadness as he was returning home.
And that is exactly why we’re never going to actually see this sadness, right?
6 months later, he returned to action with the Special Forces with no memory of Tanya’s death.
Oh, right: we’re going to get Tanya out of the way, because guess what? Our author has run out of ideas on how to make sex with Tanya interesting, so it’s time to move on in the harem, ‘cause we’ve got a whole host of other hot ladies to bang, don’t we!?
*BAM*
Jesus Christ, I knew that Mortal Kombat porn would only go further in objectifying women for the titillation of the male audience of this game considering that most of the outfits and the boob sizes of the female characters already did that, but I didn’t think it would go as far as fucking discarding a female character when the potential for interesting lemons has dried up!
*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*
I don’t know what I was expecting from a Mortal Kombat porn story, but holy Christ crackers, I was expecting it to be better than this!
*headdesk*
On with the story!
He traveled the world, stopping terrorists from launching nukes, killing civilians, stopping drug trades and more. He and his team were decorated for their services in protecting Earthrealm. For once, Chris was happy of his accomplishments and hopes to do more in the future.
And then the story ended, right?
18 years later, he retired from service. Until one night, General Sonya Blade calls him:
“Hello?”
“Chris, this is General Sonya Blade.”
“Sonya! It’s been a long time.”
“18 years.
Nope! Because guess what? We’ve gotta get going to regurgitate the second half of MKX’s story mode. No time for stories to end now, especially when they’ve had shitty endings!
Listen, we are located at the Refugee Camp and we need you to swing by.
And what the hell is that gonna do? Granted, the story tells us he’s now extremely decorated, but what the hell is he gonna do? Last time he went up against the Mortal Kombat characters, he got abducted by them and fucked them, before pretty much bumbling away from any major story events in the actual game. What the fuck do you think he’s gonna do there?
I want you to meet my daughter.”
“Your daughter?”
“Did you forget I had a daugher?”
“I guess I did. I’ll be there.”
*headdesk*
This banter is about as amusing as rubbing my scrotum on sandpaper.
Anyway, that ends that chapter. We open our next chapter with…
Chris traveled to the Special Forces Refugee Camp to meet with General Sonya Blade.
“Chris, good to see you again,” Sonya said with a firm handshake. Chris only notices Johnny and Kenshi.
“it’s been a long time,” Chris said.
Yes it has, and the dialogue is still as exciting as a damp toilette.
“Age hasn’t slowed you down one bit,” said Sonya.
*cringe*
I know what Sonya means in this case, but given that they fucked once upon a time I really don’t want to think too hard about what that could mean…
“YO!” Johnny yelled. “My man! How’s it going?”
“What the hell happened to you, man?”
“Hey, come on, man. You know I still got it!”
“Got what, exactly? Prune juice? Extra-strength Denture cream? Dick pills?”
Proper dialogue attribution?
“Ok, guys.”
“Chris, I don’t believe we met. I’m Kenshi Takahashi and this is son Takeda.”
Chris and Takeda shook hands. “How’s it going, man?”
“Shootin’ the breeze, man.”
“And also anyone who wants to know who is actually saying what here. It’s not like we’ve got, oh…” *does a quick head count* “Five people in this scene! Nope, we can just carry on and assume everyone knows who’s saying what! And if they disagree, they die!”
“Come with me, Chris,” Sonya said. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Let me guess, Cassie and Jacqui? Because we all know this fic isn’t complete without you being around a woman. It’s like if you hang around men for ten minutes you might actually turn gay, and who would want that, right?
Chris followed Sonya to the Conference Room. Chris caught a glimpse of a two girls, the blonde one wearing tactical gear with two holsters with Springfield Armory XD pistols and half-shaven with a ponytail. The other is African-American with cornrows. She’s wearing her U.S. Army with a silver bulletproof vest. She also has some type of armwear and upon close inspection, the armwear is equipped with shotgun barrels, something he’s never seen before.
At least this time, the first thing he describes is their weapons, and not their… um… bazookas…
“Sargeant, this is Chris, no last name.
Wait, what? How does a person not have a last name in this day and age?
*headdesk*
Good God, you might as well call him M3 if that’s true!
He worked for us for over 20 years. He’s currently retired. Chris, this is daughter, Cassie.”
“Mom told me a lot about you, Chris.” They shook hands.
I’d make a joke about how they would fuck in a few chapters, but really now: knowing this fic, would you be at all surprised if they started fucking right after this meeting?
“This is my friend, Jacqui Briggs, daughter of Jackson Briggs.”
“I’d shake your hand, but…”
“Yea, these… you’d set them off accidentally,” Jacqui said.
Yes, because we all know that Jacqui wears those cuffs 24/7. Because that makes fucking sense. Not like creating more character models wouldn’t be a strain of resources that a dev team would like to avoid, nooooooo…
“Yea, I’ve never seen those.”
Sonya explains: “Those are prototypes. We are making these as the new generation of military weaponry. Jacqui was the first to test it.”
Oh. Oh! So the death of a major character didn’t warrant being shown, but the explanation of how a side character’s weaponry works did?
*BAM*
Priorities, author! Learn them!
“I noticed they have shotgun barrels.”
“Oh yeah, but they also fire rockets.”
“Interesting.”
“So interesting, in fact, that we’re just going to skip any further dialogue to get to the sex, right?”
“Anyway, Chris, I know you retired, but we may need you again,” said Sonya.
“What’s going on?”
I don’t know what he could possibly do given that the plot regurgitation happened all around him to absolutely zero changes whatsoever, but please, do enlighten us!
“Jacqui, could you give us a minute?”
“Sure.”
Wait, why is Jacqui—?
Jacqui leaves the room and it’s just Chris, Sonya and Cassie. Sonya locks the door.
Oh, for fuck’s… Don’t tell me this is going to be another goddamn sex scene already!
“Cassie, I want to talk to you.”
“What’s up?”
A new chapter, that’s what.
Speaking of which, yes, we’re in the new chapter, folks!
“I dont’ want to put Chris on the spot, but, long ago, before me and your father got married, Chris and I… had sex.”
*facepalm*
Wow, really. You’re just opening with that, right out of the fucking blue? Weren’t you supposed to be talking tactics, here? God, I knew this fic had a one-track mind when it came to Chris’ interactions with female characters, but I didn’t think it was this one-track!
Cassie was shocked by the news, and looked at Chris, who is completely embarassed.
Oh hey, Chris is displaying a completely logical reaction to Sonya just mentioning this out of the blue! Who’d’a thunk it?
“You had sex with my mother?!” Cassie yelled.
“Cassie…”
“Please… Jacqui might have her face pressed against the crack.”
“That’s fucked up! You’re a war veteran but…”
“Cassie, please understand.
Yeah, because there sure is so much understanding to be had when you tell your daughter out of the blue “hey, you know the guy I called as back-up, yeah, I fucked him before I married your dad, have fun!”
*BAM*
I don’t know where you’ve been in the past 18 years, Sonya, but most people do not have the comfort level around discussions about sex that KSI and his dad have…
Long ago, he was in love with a woman named Tanya from Edenia.”
“Dog breath?
“Enough, Cassie. He loved that woman, and… I took advantage. It’s just that I knew what she was talking about when they had sex. I wanted to feel it myself.”
And now, eighteen years later, we get an explanation for why she jumped his bones like that?
*headdesk*
Honey, you are writing porn. What’s more, you’ve been writing porn for fourteen chapters at this point, across… shit, I don’t remember how many sex scenes. I think half this fic has been nothing but sex. Or has it been less than half? I don’t know.
Either way, I think it’s a bit late to start justifying all the sex scenes with in-character reasoning! Especially since half the time, they came out of nowhere anyway.
Chris sat next to Sonya as she explains this.
“He felt real good.” Chris slowly placed his hand on Sonya’s thigh.
‘Does Dad know about this?”
“No.” Chris massages her thigh. Sonya’s hand slowly crept towards his member.
Wait…
“We are divorced, hun. I know how you feel about it.”
Sonya found Chris’ member and slid her hand in his pants to stroke it.
…
Wait, you’re not seriously going to start fucking in front of your daughter, are you?
“What are you doing, mom?”
She caught Sonya’ s hand in Chris’ pants, stroking him slowly.
Cassie gasped as Sonya pulls out Chris’ member in front of her and proceeds to slide it in her mouth.
…
…
…
What… I… I can’t…
Cassie had no idea what to think,
MAKE THAT TWO OF US!
but seeing Chris’ member being lovingly devoured by her mother made her moan softly. She reaches her hand between her legs and caressed her vagina. She then decided to sit next to him.
“So, you fucked my mother, huh?” He nodded yes. Sonya removed her pants and unbuttoned her jacket. Cassie caught a glimpse of his penis. “Like what you see, Cassie?” Cassie’s mouth began to water.
“It’s so big and thick…?”
“Well, Chris, time to show Cassie what she’ll be working with.” Sonya climbs on to Chris’ lap, kisses him and slides him in.
Literally, what do you even say to this?
Sonya Blade is having sex in front of her daughter. She is literally having sex in front of her daughter, and talking like Chris is going to fuck her. Which, granted, it is this fic so that’s not that surprising, but why the fuck is Sonya so nonchalant and even encouraging about this? And she’s treating it all like a fucking primer for Chris to do the nasty with Cassie. Yeah, she’s giving Cassie a taste of Chris’s cock…
…which gets more disturbing when you consider Cassie’s age. Oh, yeah, it gets worse. So, you know that it’s an 18-year time skip, right? Well, due to the fact that MKX is not exactly explicit with when in that 18-year time skip Cassie was born, Chris fucking Cassie might technically be considered statutory rape! So this is Sonya Blade, possibly in the throes of not caring that she might be condoning a sexual crime!
*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*
I can’t… I can’t even. I just can’t even. Next you’ll tell me Sonya will take this time to debrief Chris on his mission, while his attention is stolen by the vagina currently writing his dick!
She rode him slowly. It’s been 18 long years since he had sex, but he felt it was time to get back in the game. Chris began rubbing her body and thighs while Sonya took him deep.
“I want you to know that you need to join my daughter on a solo mission.”
“Where?”
“In Outworld.”
I give up. I just… I give up. I literally can’t be assed right now. I just literally can’t even be assed.
I know this is Mortal Kombat porn, but come the fuck on, man! Even porn has some standards!
*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*
Right, so Sonya hands the debriefing off to Cassie (which is probably the only smart idea that anybody in this fic presently has), and then Cassie tells Chris they’re investigating D’Vorah. In between lewd comments, we eventually get to this:
Chris looks at Cassie lickin’ her lips. Oh, yes. She wants the D!
“I wouldn’t mind fucking her,” he said.
“Oh, you will fuck her, Chris. You’re leaving tonight.”
“Don’t worry, Chris. I’ll be gentle.
Chris continues pumping hard and deep.
Cassie comes to Chris’ face and whispers:
“You know you want me. Once we set up camp, I will be ready.”
You know, just in case you doubted my word that Chris was about to commit statutory rape and all that.
Anyway, they then finish up the sex, they then leave the tent, and then Johnny comes up and says:
Johnny came to her. “What are you smiling about?”
Sonya replied,” Our soldier is, let’s just say, ready for anything, and I mean… anything.” Sonya’s thought of Chris inside her kept her smiling. Johnny, on the other hand, is completely clueless.
*sigh*
Great, so our hero fucked a woman in full view of her mother, right after he fucked her mother in front of her. I mean, I think age differences are hot, but holy shit!
*headdesk*
I just don’t even…
I’ll see you guys next week. I need some fucking strong-ass vodka right about now, and I have the feeling Smirnoff ain’t gonna do jack shit.
Library of the Damned 
Don’t most SWAT-style security operations try to avoid killing civilians?
Oh, that’s a good point. Why the hell was he killing civilians
And the narration doesn’t even specify that the civilians are criminals, so they could be regular unarmed civilians. That makes SuperPenis here sound like a serial killer.
…
Shit, my mind must’ve been too addled by the whole “Tanya was killed off-screen” thing to notice that was listed!
Uh oh.
:offers Admiral a swig from her bottle of whiskey:
The what now?
I don’t know. The second half of MKX starts up around another fucking Outworld/Earthrealm conflict. Not that the fic actually cares enough to establish that shit…
That’s a thing from the games. The Special Forces are, MK-wise, a specific organization, which is international and mainly focused on dealing with threats from other realms. Currently, there’s a civil war in Outworld, so they’ve set up the camp for refugees from that war. It’s also the main characters’ base of operations for the post-timeskip parts of MKX
Or BatJamags can explain it for me. Thank youse!
So… Does he still think she’s alive? Or were all memories of her erased via plot loophole?
Given where the story goes, I would say all memories.
Which just makes it stupider, so…
And I bet Chris never questions why he can’t remember this woman Sonya claims he was in love with.
Who the fuck cares, it’s this fic! Logic was thrown out the window in favor of non-stop sex!
:pops top off whiskey bottle and starts chugging:
Dude, don’t Bogart the whiskey.
MINE!
:clutches bottle to chest:
You wouldn’t believe what I had to do to get this away from Syl!
Her tactical gear was half-shaven and had a ponytail?
Hey, half-shaved hair and ponytails are in vogue! Don’t fault the tactical gear for wanting to fit in!
Joke A: Yeah, that would almost be an interesting plot development. At least we wouldn’t see it coming.
Joke B: I doubt that, since the author’s clearly not been around women for longer than ten minutes.
Hey, I would totally go gay for Shao Khan. He may be dead as of MKX, but goddammit, those chest muscles!
*swoon*
But he’s a mass-murdering interdimensional
conquerorkonquerorKahnqueror!I’m not saying I don’t agree with you, I just thought I’d point it out.
Hey, guess what?
I think you’re already there, dude.
*BAM*
Shut up, you. *points*
:lays on the floor, twitching:
Totally worth it.
*gives Ghostie sympathy fist bump*
Fixed that for you.
She’s wearing the entire US Army?
Jesus, Leatherface on speed isn’t that productive!
Would Leatherface on any amount of speed be productive, though?
I wonder if she’s wearing the vehicles and equipment, too?
And does she have a literal spare tire?
She in training to use Tarzan grammar like mother.
“Catching a glimpse” of something implies that you only saw it for a very brief time period – these two are standing in the frickin’ room with you!
How do you half-shave a holster and give it a ponytail?
Because reasons.
Why is she wearing armor that’s only effective against silver bullets? Is she a vampire?
Knowing that she inherited Johnny Cage’s latent powers of some variety, I wouldn’t be surprised…
Because that’s a dumbass idea. Even if these are small bore barrels, that’s still like strapping a bunch of pieces of half-inch metal pipe to your arms. And since the length of the barrels isn’t mentioned, I’m assuming that they are the standard length and run from shoulder to wrist so she’s effectively lost the ability to bend at the elbow.
Even if the barrels aren’t that long, what happens if she has a jam or has to reload? She’s wearing the gun on one arm, which limits her to using only the other hand to make any repairs. And guns get really hot, so she’s setting herself up for some very unpleasant burns.
I don’t see how this would be an advantage over using just a regular gun.
“Interesting” in a “high probability of catching your face on fire with rocket exhaust” way.
Well, unfortunately, it’s part of Jacqui’s character design in MKX. That said, it might just be shoddy description, because yeah, the arm cannon only goes the length of her forearm. Here, it’s better if you see it yourself:
That said, one of her Brutalities does make it look like a shotgun shell is emitted, but… yeah.
Ok, my only question is, was it the ‘fic or Mortal Kombat that ripped off Yang’s shotgauntlets?
Neither. See, Jacqui can wear two shotgauntlets. That’s a big difference.
Also, she uses them a lot like Jax’s mechanical arms.
Seems like more of a coincidence. MKX had already been in development for a year before the RWBY “Yellow” trailer was released.
And from a historical standpoint, wrist-mounted guns aren’t exactly a new concept; though typically you wouldn’t see them much outside of power-armor or a steam-punk setting.
Meanwhile, I’ll just ignore how stupid the weapon concept is.
I included a very similar weapon in Palaven’s Dogs, and as a result spent some significant time developing it.
For one thing, it’s a Mass Effect gun, and a very expensive one at that, so it’s mostly electro-gravitational in operation and can be miniaturized to fit in a regular gauntlet.
For another, both Yang and Teron (the character in PD who uses those weapons) are “sword Elites”- relatively fast units that can soak a lot of damage to close in on their targets and use a powerful melee attack. However, both also have a ranged mode for their weapons, so they’re not completely useless in other roles- Teron carries both a standard shotgun and a heavy assault rifle in addition to the gauntlets, and Yang’s gauntlets have a mode that allows her to fire what look like small rockets or large explosive bullets. While Yang’s version is a bit more well-balanced, I deliberately designed Teron’s combat build to be vulnerable to snipers and other long-range enemies that she can’t really damage effectively- that’s why the story often puts her in a unit alongside Garrus.
The PD shotgauntlets were actually originally intended to function as an assassination weapon- they are fully concealable and don’t show up on scans- although since a lot of PD’s combat takers cues from ME1 in having a few strong opponents instead of just waves of mooks and Teron typically engages those opponents hand-to-hand (basically, the intended function of a sword Elite in general), they are also relatively useful in conventional fighting.
Really, my big problem with the PD shotgauntlets as they currently exist is why, if a gun that powerful can be made so small, Teron’s regular-size shotgun isn’t some kind of superweapon. I’ve tossed around different limitations on the design and not really settled on anything yet, but I’m thinking I might take another page out of RWBY and have the shotgauntlets draw power from another system in her armor that acts as a capacitor for delta-m effects and only charges from pretty major energy sources (meaning she would have to ration their use pretty heavily under most circumstances).
I don’t know if it will make it into the story, but I always thought of shotgauntlets as a Krogan weapon- either something their warriors actually charged into battle with (and got cut down in huge numbers while wielding), or something they put on for staged deathmatches or some kind of honor duel where simply pummeling your opponent wasn’t bloody enough. They were subsequently redesigned by more rational manufacturers to serve a very specific purpose- Teron’s were built specifically for her, and I don’t think mass-production models even exist.
That, right there, is about 70% of why shotgauntlets are a bad concept from a logic standpoint. Shotgauntlets by their very nature and design, would have to be a much less effective version of a regular gun, so why not just use a regular gun? A normal gun is going to have more range, better aim control, more damage at range, be more easily reloaded, and would not impair the use of your hands since you can just drop it if you need to. But, even as an assassination weapon they fall short to more conventional things, like ceramic knives, carbon-fiber pistols, or even poison injection, because you’d need to be so close to your target to do any appreciable damage in the first place. Not to mention all those things are going to be a lot less prohibitively expensive or prone to failure than some kind of customized gun-bracer; and once again, the pistol is going to shoot further with greater accuracy and better damage than the bracer anyway.
The other 30% have to do with actual firearm use and knowledge, which, unfortunately, runs abysmally thin in anime and game designers. Things like aiming base, fire centering, joint coupling, and the like. Suffice to say, without some kind of aim-assist computer, you’d be really, really lucky to hit anything more than about five feet away. Essentially it’s the same reason why dual wielding pistols or holding a pistol sideways is stupid and unlikely to actually hit your target when fired.
Shotgauntlets are basically the same creature as gunswords. They’re a rule-of-cool weapon that fall apart when you start to logically deconstruct them. Like everything else rule-of-cool inspired, existing in something by themselves is not damning of the whole package, they’re just not a boon that you can crutch on. They’re a coolness pipedream that fall apart too easily when hard logic is applied, so are something that the plot should distract from rather than focus too much upon providing details of functionality.
Now, that said, arm-mounted rockets I can kind of give a pass to provided that the person using it is thermally shielded (like with power armor or somesuch; you might recall that Boba Fett has something similar at his disposal, actually). Rockets are self-propelled and potentially self guided, so a lot of the drawbacks of gunbraces fall off when using them as a mobile launch platform. Still, you’re going to run into issues with reloading, permanent dexterity reduction while wearing it, and payload reduction due to scale. It’s hard to argue the use of an arm-mounted rocket launcher when you have things like shoulder-mounted RPGs that are going to have higher payload and longer range while still offering overall greater versatility of the troops using them because they can always drop it and grab another weapon if the situation changes.
However, I’ll make the concession that the inclusion within Mass Effect is hardly an issue in the face of how badly mangled physics already is in the ME universe. I stopped trying to apply logic to anything in ME a while ago, so tossing in crazy weapons wouldn’t really change things that much. If anything I think the Krogan would be kinda fun to see wielding double-bladed shotgun-axes with flail hilts.
I’ll let a lot of things slide by as rule of cool, but arm-mounted weapons have always struck me as just a terrible design concept in general. (Especially large knives, like the gauntlets in Assassin’s Creed. I always assumed the characters’ missing fingers were caused by unavoidable accidents during training rather than deliberate choice.) The only exceptions would be if the weapons were part of a suit of power armor or if they were integral parts of a cybernetic or partially cybernetic character, like Cyborg or MegaMan, and the character could safely could switch between weapons and hands.
The wrist mounted shenanigans in Assassin’s creed always made me wince. You’re just asking for a broken wrist using those things.
But I agree. Short of power armor or robotics/cybernetics, I have a hard time giving wrist-mounted weapons a pass.
The whole concept of the Assassins seems counterintuitive to me. They’re supposed to be a shadow society but they outfit their members with very distinctive weapons (that probably produce very distinctive wound patterns since the assassin is limited in how they can use them without breaking the damned things) that would instantly mark the wearer as a member of the Assassins, as well as giving them personal gear emblazoned with their logo.
I mean, I can generate endless reasons why Teron, specifically, would use them- if nothing else, there’s elements of her character that would make her very interested in having a wearable weapon that she could use basically any time her hands were free even if she was completely unable to reach her other guns- the big draw there is that in extreme close-quarters fights where there’s an enemy right on top of her the gauntlets are still usable when she couldn’t bring a proper shotgun into firing position (also, if I take a semi-liberal interpretation of the ME melee mechanics, shotgauntlets could be easier to insert inside an enemy’s shield envelope).
Firing control is less of an issue because the gauntlets are impact-triggered and fire whenever she hits something (still need a reliable system to enable and disable them, but a mandible-activated switch seems to fit with their intended role), leaving her actual hands free (I guess her hand movement is slightly limited in the sense that if she moves her hands upward they could run into the extended barrels, but that doesn’t seem too major).
They’re definitely a closer-range weapon than a real shotgun, though… in fact, I’m thinking Teron carries them specifically instead of a pistol or some kind of bladed weapon- she has a thing about biotics, and probably worries that something handheld could be yanked away.
And how did you know I was planning to make the Krogan the Imperium of Man…?
Is the weapon going to fire a single projectile or have the ability to fire a load containing multiple projectiles like a real shotgun can? Scatter-shot would be devastating at close range, but there’s the potential that she could get clipped as the shot spreads out.
Keep in mind that their protrusion will also hinder her ability to fit her hand into tight places and hinder pronating and suppinating due to the rigid structure bound tightly to her wrist (though it’s possible that difference in biology would make this moot if the arm swiveled at the elbow instead of across the forearm). She would lose significant dexterity, especially for motor tasks that require twisting. Probably not a big deal if she’s just going to punch stuff, though.
You could even utilize those drawbacks as a plot point, actually.
That, or the engineers could do something clever like attach some kind of sensor to her wrist and set the system to retract the barrel and disarm if it senses her hand moving upwards.
And… actually, I really need to work through turian kinematics a bit more, and develop some proper dynamic models (this is what happens when fanfiction is cowritten by a roboticist and a biomechanical engineer).
Even with a retractable barrel, because of the way firearms work, it would require a relatively long base of rigid attachment to her forarm or the potential for damage to both her and the weapon itself would be too high. Not to mention the radial protrusion isn’t going to be debatable since everything has to go somewhere, even if stuff retracts, it’s going to stick out and limit some forms of motion.
So it IS going to limit motion in some way or another.
Now if she’s got a ball-joint at the elbow, it would mean it doesn’t matter how the weapon is attached to the forearm, which would actually be kinda neat. Still doesn’t solve the “fit hands into small places” issue, but it would allow pro/suppinating without hindrance; though, keep in mind, the overall range of motion will be slightly smaller than in a human arm because the rotation limitations of biological ball-in-socket to about +/- 90º as opposed to +/- 110º.
I guess ultimately it’s a question of how much mass-effect magic I want to use- basically, am I willing to literally make recoil and stability concerns disappear?
Some motion reduction is of course inevitable, but can’t the same thing be said of any armor where the gloves are physically attached to the arm segments (which, in ME’s world of many atmospheres, is pretty much a requirement)?
Depends on the armor. And, unlike a projectile weapon, the armor would not necessarily need to be rigidly bound to the wearer, allowing motility beneath the armor.
That’s the real difference, the armor is just a barrier between external forces and the body. It does not need to be rigidly bound to the body to prevent all motion with respect to the underlying structure of the body, it just needs to be snugged up enough to say on and prevent too much gap that might allow secondary impacts. That’s because the body isn’t acting as a platform for the armor to do anything. Now, of course, as you move up to things like power armor, EVO armor, and plate-mail, yeah you’re taking a dexterity hit, but it’s trading off dexterity for greater protection.
And that’s really what this discussion is about: the necessity of trade-offs. So far your implementation of this weapon seems to only concentrate on the technological trade-off, but not on the physical trade-offs; almost like you’re trying to have a free lunch with that half of the design. Assassin’s creed was guilty of this with their wrist-knives. Wrist-mounting is going to come with a physical price in terms of range of motion reduction, you aren’t getting away for free on wearing one; just as you aren’t getting away for free wearing full body armor. So you have to establish what a reasonable hindrance is for what you’re accomplishing, and whether you can justify this trade-off. (Or, how much hand-waving you’re okay with doing.)
In the case of the wrist-gun, you have to rigidly affix the gun to the body since the body is the firing platform. Allowing the same degree of motion as armor means that that aim is going to be thrown off and different with each shot since the bracer will get to move around; not as big a deal with a Big-O style gun-punch, but more critical if she’s going to fire at anything beyond point blank. Not to mention that you’ll have secondary impacts as the weapon moves during firing and then stops/changes velocity abruptly when it reaches the end of the range of motion of the bindings and suddenly becomes coupled to the arm; which is why tight binding would be necessary; it spreads out the area of impact and stabilizes the weapon. It’s the same reason why when you hold a gun to fire it, you hold that sucker with two hands, you hold it tight, and you hold it consistently in the same way each time. The other big difference is that the body is placed directly behind the firearm when you fire it, which supports the recoil force directly. With wrist-mounting, the structural support is tangential to the line of force, which means you need a wide,tight mounting base to provide enough coupling to the body.
If you magic away all recoil, these considerations go away, but not even Mass Effect was willing to do completely away with recoil.
I think that with a weapon like this the question is pretty much academic. Since she’d be using the weapons pretty much only on things that are right in front of her hands, if the projectiles spread out enough to be noticeable to her target they’ll also spread out enough to be noticeable to her fingers.
Pretty much, although I’d attribute the issue more to me being more familiar with the technological half of the system than the biological, and as a result assume that part of the system would be able to do better.
Which is a problem in its own right, of course- the words I hate the most coming from mechanical engineers are ‘it’s just software, right?’.
“Can’t you just-” is the bane of all engineering. I usually try to make it out of the room before that sentence finishes.
I get variants of that at work, mostly “Can’t you just look at your screen?” which usually leads to me having to come up with a tactful way of explaining to the person that my computer is not a magical wish-granting machine. I even had one woman who thought we could track the physical location of her lost debit card and tell her which room of her house it was in “because it got chips in it”. That’s not what the chip does; that’s not even close to what the chip does.
Actually, from a standpoint of research, there’s an easy way to mimic what kind of physical hindrance you’re looking at with a wrist-gun.
Get yourself a non-splinted wrist-brace and tape about a kilogram of weight to it. Now, strap it to your wrist about as tightly as you physically can (it needs to be tight enough to not slip at all through the full range of motion of your arm; ideally it would need to remain rigid with your arm if somebody were to hit the front of the weight with a baseball bat, but I can’t think of an easy way to replicate that for testing purposes) and then go about your day as normal. That’s about what your character would be dealing with so far as dexterity loss (assuming similar forearm structure, of course).
Or just get some wrist weights;
Thankfully, pretty much all armor is modular detachable powered armor in the fourth millennium, because resources are a non-concern and the basic armor systems are really just “here, these help you move and use the ridiculously heavy equipment that is standard weaponry.”
Say… with MJOLNIR-sized powered armor, would shotgun-gauntlets be possible?
Possible? Yes. Most of the physical issues with gun-gauntlets go away when mounting them to power-armor.
Would a gun-gauntlet be more practical/useful than a dedicated, stand-alone weapon? Very unlikely.
I could see something of the sort implemented as an emergency, last-ditch effort device, but even then I find it an unlikely addition for the cost and maintenance requirements.
From an engineering standpoint, it would be much more efficient to put that money and effort into more powerful servos so that if something DID get close, you could just punch the crap out of it rather than rely on some gimmicky wrist-shotgun. Also, putting more resources into troop training and equipment so that they kill more opponents at range would be better spending than developing shotgun-bracers for their niche, highly situational use.
It’s all a matter of the principals of design. Wrist-guns violate several of these principals, which make them an unlikely thing even in the most favorable circumstances to their creation. This is why we don’t see them today despite the technology to create them having existed for well over 50 years. Again, it’s rule-of-cool vs. reality. Rule-of-cool says it’s awesome to have wrist mounted stuff. It looks badass and you can pull off special attacks like shotgun enhanced punches or stealth knifings. It’s also cool because it’s a fantasy weapon; a new special weapon that we don’t have right now. The reality is that we’ve had the technology to create wrist-mounted weapons for a very long time, but development favored the more mundane, yet practical designs we have because they’re cheaper, more effective, safer, and applicable to a much wider variety of applications.
Again, rule-of-cool is not a deal-breaker. But when bowing to it, you have accept that beyond a certain point you need to deflect away from trying to make these kinds of weapons plausible, glaze over or hand-wave the fact that they aren’t, and let the reader concentrate on the rest of the story while suspending disbelief for your one indulgence. Again, going back to Assassin’s Creed, they never bothered to really try to make the wrist-knife plausible, they just put it in and let the rest of the game/story carry it. Sure, you’ll get called on the fact that the weapon is rubbish, but people will still enjoy the overall product anyway. That’s why I could still enjoy Mass Effect despite how utterly ridiculous all the science was.
Freedom of movement aside, probably the best use of a wrist-mounted weapon I could think of would be some kind of energy blade that does damage but won’t get stuck on what you’re stabbing.
In terms of guns, Sakai’s concept of a punch-enhancer could work, though freedom of movement is an issue. Maybe if it were mounted further back on the forearm? Yeah, that would start to get in the way of the elbow, but I feel like the elbow doesn’t have to go as many directions as the wrist.
Alternatively, as Taco says, the limited range of motion on the wrist could just be a flaw of the weapon design.
Problem there is, if you move it back too far, it’s going to blow your hand off, or at least put some holes in it. With as short as the barrels are, you’re going to have a lot of projectile drift, not to mention the possibility that you fire it while moving your arm and end up swinging your hand right into the bullet as you fire. You’d be better off leaving it as close to the hand as possible, maybe even sticking out over it, and just dealing with the reduced range of motion.
The way our arms are built don’t really make mounting something higher up on the forearm any better; in fact, it’s less practical than the wrist-guns. Forearms are naturally wider at the elbows and narrower at the wrists, so mounting a weapon near the elbow is going to require some way to lift the barrel up into a better angle to avoid blowing the user’s hand off. Given the range of motion our wrists have that’s going to be a pretty steep angle, which would make aiming even more of a problem.
We as a species are just too damn dexterous to have cool arm-mounted weapons.
And this is somehow relevant to them having sex? Does Sonya have a know fetish for vets?
Umm… why?
I mean, sure, we know it’s fucked-up because we read the rest of the ‘fic, but all Cassie knows is that at some point before meeting her father, her mother had some sort of relationship with another man.
Since Sonya never bent over and is still sitting upright beside Chris, I can’t help but picture her yanking his penis off and holding it in front of her like a hot dog.
But Ghostie, that would mean these lemons would actually fit in this universe!
Umm… why? He seemed to have no trouble at all finding partners when he was on missions before…
Also, weren’t he and Tanya married for part of those 18 years?
:snorts:
Yeah, right. SuperPenis here can’t go five minutes without a woman throwing herself on his dick.
Yes, but then the author would have to do this:
You have a very different definition of “solo mission” than I do.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s just the author who’s going to go on a… solo mission.
So the whole time Cassie is debriefing Chris, he and Sonya are actively engaged in sexual intercourse and then – while he is still inside her mother – he tells them both that he wants to have sex with Cassie while they are on a dangerous mission.
That’s just wrong on so many levels.
No kidding, you know what I mean?
I (reluctantly) did a very brief Google search for “mother daughter porn” and got 13,500,000 results. Apparently it’s really a thing.
Did I miss the part where Chris and Cassie had sex? I thought they were going to wait until they got to Outworld and pitched their tent?
And is it just me, or has every single sex scene taken place in a tent?
I might’ve been too addled by what I has just witnessed when I wrote that. That’s totally what happened…
And no. Two of them took place in a house!
Fuck my life. Cassie is Chris’s kid, isn’t she?
On the one hand, I wasn’t right, which is refreshing.
On the other, WHAT THE FLYING FUCK WAS THAT!?
I don’t think he’s had sex while flying yet, but that would make him a literal SuperPenis.
Thankfully, no. Canon paints her as strictly Johnny’s child, so unless there’s some really fucked up shit that happened, she’s Johnny’s.
If canon violation stopped fics from doing things, I’d be a happier person.
We’d all be happier, and have significantly fewer hangovers.
“Age hasn’t slowed you down one bit,” said Sonya.
*swats story with rolled-up newspaper*
NO! Bad story! You do not shoehorn in MGS lines like that! You have to earn/> it!
“Age hasn’t slowed you down one bit,” said Sonya.
*swats story with rolled-up newspaper*
NO! Bad story! You do not shoehorn in MGS lines like that! You have to earn it!
*wipes tea off her monitor*