Home » The Crystal Hall » Fan Fiction » The Tampa Twins (A random yarn of glitz, glitter, and grenades)
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| The Tampa Twins [message #57310] |
Wed, 25 April 2012 21:52  |
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 Tsureai
Messages: 126
Registered: July 2008
Location: Texas Y'all! |
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The original Buccaneer left one hell of a legacy for an alcoholic 'Nam vet with PTSD and trunk of souvenirs.
He first showed up in the 70's, a lone nutcase wearing a jumbled mix of air force body armor, NFL gear, and a football helmet over a skull mask. He'd fire off flares when the Buccaneers scored, blow up the occasional car full of cocaine dealers, and generally was more a local character than hero.
That changed when he came down with some kind of cancer from a combination of agent orange and napalm fumes. The original Bucc passed his gear on to the quarterback of the team, who had no real idea what to do with a a suit of military spec body armor, a trunk of ammunition, and a grenade launcher. But the team rather liked the lovable nutcase, and when he passed on their winning streak almost immediately dried up.
So they hired a stadium guard to dress up in his gear on game days, and things kind of escalated from there. Thirty years later Bucc had picked up a baby sister Bolt, sponsored by the local NHL franchise. Instead of a mishmash of the spoils of war, they're armed with heavily themed army surplus power armor and custom weapons. They spice up halftime shows, do conventions and events, and help out with the really dangerous crimes.
Bucc is actually two suits of heavy assault armor, painted up in Buccaneers colors while still retaining the characteristic skull face helmet. Bucc carries a 40mm rotary grenade launcher, and a pair of electrified cutlasses. Bolt is again actually a pair of light recon suits, up-armored to have a female silhouette and limited flight capabilities. Bolt carries a 40mm grenade pistol, and a pair of retractable whip tazers.
Instead of a single security guard Bucc and Bolt are piloted by a hand picked corps of pilots. The six of them rotate out being on standby, giving Bucc and Bolt the appearance of inhuman stamina and health. They're all picked for their ability to accurately portray the characters, fit into the Taiwanese armor, and conduct themselves in law enforcement and combat.
This makes recruiting for the Tampa Twins... problematic.
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| Re: The Tampa Twins [message #57314 is a reply to message #57310 ] |
Thu, 26 April 2012 00:06  |
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Tsureai
Messages: 126
Registered: July 2008
Location: Texas Y'all! |
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Greg shifted nervously as he grabbed his bag and walked out into the sticky oppressive heat that blanketed Tampa International Airport. Instantly he could feel his shirt stick to his skin beneath his suit, the sweat beads running through his close cropped hair already pooling against his tie and collar.
He had to stand on a planter to see over the herds of beluga whale like tourists cluttering up the place. Being just shy of five foot and one inch tall, he was used to it. At least from that vantage point he could spot the driver holding up the sign with his name on it.
As he tried to push past the overweight sweaty masses he questioned again if this job was really worth moving so far away from home. It seemed too good to be true. It wasn't like New Jersey was the most expensive place in the country to live, but even so his family was hurting bad after his eight months of unemployment.
The driver helped him load his two meager bags into the trunk of the car. He had plenty of time to brood as he sat in the air conditioned comfort of the back seat. Five years on the force at Trenton. Five years of pushing for a spot on ESWAT. Years of training to qualify on all the weapons and systems. And then BOOM. The recession hit, and he and 150 fellow officers were out on their asses.
So who was going to hire a cop who was barely over five foot tall? A guy who'd been making ends meet by wearing a Gladiator costume in Atlantic City. Well... Some company he'd never heard of down in Florida apparently. And for what they were offering, a chance to drive armor... Well he couldn't very well turn them down. Not with the bills piling up to his eye balls.
He snapped out of his melancholy when the car pulled into a clean, brightly lit garage. He could see them, the hulking and powerful shapes somehow awesome even in the maintenance gantries. Holy shit... They hadn't been kidding... It was a Yun Pao attack armor. Sure the suits were ten years out of date, but still! Just looking at that beautifully maintained crimson armor was giving him a stiffy.
So he was totally shocked when a perky little blond woman punched him in the shoulder and pointed to some much, much smaller armors racked on the wall.
"There's your ride new meat." she taunted. "Say hello to Bolt!"
The blue and white armor clearly had breasts.
"The hell?"
[Updated on: Sun, 29 April 2012 01:03]
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| Re: The Tampa Twins [message #57358 is a reply to message #57314 ] |
Fri, 27 April 2012 00:10 |
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Tsureai
Messages: 126
Registered: July 2008
Location: Texas Y'all! |
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The Republic of China's Yun Pao attack armor is something of a bastard off spring.
In the early 80's Taiwan had a great need for the new generation of battle armor that was just starting to be fielded, and American industry jumped at the chance. However pressure from China prevented the planned sale of the resulting export design. To bypass the arms embargo, American corporations instead offered technical aide, and were allowed to sell civilian components for the indigenous Taiwanese design.
It's amazing what can be classified as "civilian" when you don't ask anyone elses opinion.
In fact the only part they really weren't able to build and sell to Taiwan was the high energy power plant, forcing the suits to run of bulky generators or short life batteries. Armored chassis, musculature, electronics and sensors, all of it produced in separate little kits for final assembly in Taiwan.
Given the political constraints the end result was actually superior to a number of other designs. It's modular nature made repair quick and painless, as well as very upgradable. The armor was made thick enough to withstand carpet bombardment, and it had universal hard points for a variety of weapons load outs.
Visually, the suit was rather impressive. Designed to go toe to toe with the entire Chinese army on the beaches, it looked like a squat juggernaut. The Yun Pao had a thick slab of a glacis plate, a heavy gauge exo skeleton, and superior target acquisition system. It's performance became rather less impressive once it was realized that the thick armor was only possible because it was designed for a minimum sized pilot. A minimum sized Taiwanese pilot. And even then, it could only get ten minutes of combat time from the batteries it shipped with.
Taiwan ordered two hundred fifty of the Yun Pao. In 1991, two years after the design was finalized, tested, and put into production, a new presidential administration reversed the arms embargo, and the entire order was cut to a fraction of it's original size. This left a considerable number of American defense contractors with parts for hundreds of suits. Suits that were deliberately under powered, and designed for men the size of children.
[Updated on: Sun, 29 April 2012 01:07]
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| Re: The Tampa Twins [message #57423 is a reply to message #57358 ] |
Sun, 29 April 2012 00:20 |
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Tsureai
Messages: 126
Registered: July 2008
Location: Texas Y'all! |
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Greg realized that a certain amount of hazing was inevitable the first day anywhere. At a new job, at a new school, anywhere there was an established order to things and someone new came in.
Still, putting him in armor with boobs? That had to be some kind of abuse. Or like... Maybe there was a law against it? He didn't get much of a chance to protest, because his first day was spent filling out like a million HR forms. Taxes, insurance, benefits (Paid for! Score!), contracts, non disclosure forms, and then a lovely battery of drug tests.
The next morning he felt a lot better. That had to have been some kind of joke. It was the same kind of FNG crap he'd seen in the academy.
The lead pilot was this hard little half Chinese guy who was maybe even a little shorter than Greg, if bulkier and more muscular. Nick used a lot of creative profanity to direct Greg to the locker room, where he found a scrawny black kid already undressing.
"Hey. I'm Larry." He said, offering a handshake to Greg as he stood. "You must be the new guy. Are you a sight for sore eyes. This 12 hour duty shit is killing me."
"Yeah. I'm real excited to be here." Greg said, giving the whole committed and motivated speech to his fellow pilot. After the small talk wound down, Greg started to hunt for his name on a locker.
"So, Larry... I kind of noticed. Everyone here is like... short."
"Yeah. Comes from buying cheap armor. Way less expensive to hire short people to drive it than buy bigger armor."
Greg glanced over, and then quickly looked away as Larry undressed and started to pull on some kind of black unitard.
"I mean, most of us?" Larry continued. "We got hired from like Disney land and Universal studios. Mary? Bolt's lead pilot? She used to be a fucking terminator. I mean like, a no shit, piloted a metal skeleton from the inside Terminator."
Greg found his locker and popped it open. To his surprise and horror, the only thing in it was a unitard. A bright pink unitard.
"The Fuck?"
Larry chuckled. "Ah. You got the pink one. Don't sweat it man. Every new guy gets the pink one."
Greg looked over at Larry and his jaw dropped as he saw the young man expertly adjusting a bra, a bra fairly generously filled with something that sure moved like the real thing.
"Seriously. It's just till your measurements come in, and you get your own slicks."
Greg had been at crimes scenes. He'd handled the dead and dying. He'd seen some truly fucking horrible things in his years on the force. But not one of them had made him feel as unclean as this moment, when he lifted out the pink unitard and found his own bra and falsies neatly hung behind it.
"Oh HELL no. Fuck this. This is some kind of sick joke, right? Ha ha... No. No ha ha. I'm not laughing. First that little blond girl, and now this? This is going to far!"
Larry looked at him funny, which is not something you expect from a black guy in a skin tight body suit and breasts.
"What the hell is your problem? Mary is Bolt's lead pilot. I'm her back up. And so are you. Now man up, get your tits on, and zip me up. Or we're both going to be late."
[Updated on: Sun, 29 April 2012 01:09]
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| Re: The Tampa Twins [message #57493 is a reply to message #57310 ] |
Sun, 29 April 2012 16:59 |
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Tsureai
Messages: 126
Registered: July 2008
Location: Texas Y'all! |
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To his disgust, Greg found out the pink body suit also came with built in Thunder Thighs and Bubble Butt. Under threat of murder most heinous, Larry promised to never speak of the ensuing costume change.
Out in the garage Larry was still showing Greg how to adjust the girls when a dark sedan with heavily tinted windows pulled in. The window rolled down to reveal Mary's smiling face. Greg tried not to speculate how much the look of shame on his face contributed to that smile.
"Awww, aint that cute. Now get in the car you unorganized, grabasstic pieces of amphibian shit."
"Hey!" Larry grumped as he took shotgun. "I am NOT unorganized."
Silent and humiliated, Greg got in the back. At least the window tinting prevented anyone from seeing him squirm as he tried to get used to hips inches wider and deeper than he was used to, or his annoyance at the seat belt putting extra pressure second hand on his chest.
"So it's like this." Mary began, talking as she pulled out of the garage and onto the streets of Tampa.
"We picked up Bucc for a song in the 90s. Back then, the Colombians ran the drugs around here. It was almost like a game you know? They'd try to smuggle stuff in, and we'd try to find it. And if they lost six tons of cocaine in a broccoli shipment, they really didn't care. Cause they had a boat off shore with ten tons ready to get through while we were off chasing vegetables."
"That's why we bought the armor, to threaten the pukes into going somewhere else with their shit. And you know what? It worked. Between us, the DEA, the coast guard, and the police? We actually managed to entirely chase all the Colombians out by 95. And you know what? We thought we'd won."
"Which was just stupid." Larry chimed in.
"Which was just stupid." Mary sighed. She pulled into a Starbucks and ordered three iced mochas. "The Colombian cartels just started outsourcing to the Mexican cartels. And those guys... Those guys were a whole different kind of beast."
Greg gulped, "I, I've heard stories. You can't exist in law enforcement without hearing stuff from the front lines."
"The Gulf Cartel? Those guys? They didn't appreciate losing ANY money. So they hired a bunch of army goons to run enforcement for them. A bunch of guys who called themselves the Zetas. After that..." She sighed and leaned out of the car to grab their drinks.
"After that it was a shit show." Larry finished. "You bust one of their shipments? They take your family hostage until they get their drugs back. Or they just straight up murder everyone they can find that might have tipped us off."
"Which is why Bucc was more important than ever." Mary continued between sips of her morning wake up call. "Bucc has no family. As long as we remained anonymous and secret, Bucc could make any bust he felt like without having to worry about finding his kids dead the next day."
"But then that stopped working too. We lost one of our best combat pilots when the Zetas upped their game. JB used to be great, until he took a Javelin in the knee. They started coming in with shipments of drugs and buying heavy weapons. They started hunting heroes."
"And that's when we finally lucked out. In 2005, we got tipped to a big weapons buy in town. We scored three tons of cocaine, and a half dozen suits of armor busting it up. Bucc finally got some backup."
Greg mulled things over, and finally spoke up. "But Bolt doesn't look like any armor I've ever even heard of. I mean, if you know what you're looking for it's hard to mistake Bucc, but Bolt looks like an original."
"Which is the whole point." Mary nodded, her eyes meeting his for a moment via rear view mirror.
"We captured a shipment of Gizmatic light suits. And given that at the time, we were down to one suit and two pilots, and had druggies with fucking ANTI TANK rockets gunning for us... We weren't about to part with them."
"But, at the same time, we couldn't just use them as is. I mean, it's pretty much admitting failure if we start using the very weapons the bad guys buy wholesale."
Greg had a light bulb moment of clarity, as he understood just why Bolt looked so feminine. "So you modded them. You made Bolt a girl!"
"Look at the big brain on Greg!" Larry laughed. "But 'made her a girl' way understates what actually happened."
"Now don't get me wrong. I loved piloting Bucc. There's nothing like 90mm of armor plate to make you feel like a real titan." Mary grinned, "But he's slow as hell, and he needs a pitstop every ten minutes. He's a generation behind the times. Bolt? With Bolt you can dance in the sky..."
Larry grinned as he looked over his shoulder. "And we're going to teach you how. Bolt style."
[Updated on: Wed, 02 May 2012 21:51]
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| Re: The Tampa Twins [message #57843 is a reply to message #57310 ] |
Sun, 06 May 2012 23:29 |
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Tsureai
Messages: 126
Registered: July 2008
Location: Texas Y'all! |
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From Karedonian Sunday morning TV
< Local celebrity Clone Ricardo Montalban #4 steps out onto the set, trademarked white suit immaculate. Thirty years old, his chiseled good looks at the peak of their attractiveness, Ricardo #4 is widely regarded as having the best hair in the country. He's got smouldering latin depths in his eye as he addresses the camera. >
"I know my own needs ..."
<A hand falls to his waist, and he flips open the buttons of his jacket. He shrugs it over his shoulders, tossing it off camera. He begins to smoothly undo his cuff links and buttons.>
"And what I need from a power armor I know I get from this new ... "
< He dramatically throws off his shirt, his movement holding the grace and flourish of a bullfighter. But instead of his famous bare chest, he's wearing an inky black body suit beneath it. The pants follow moments later, giving the camera a split second to linger on the hard planes of his abs as he steps into a hunched over suit of armor. >
"Ginja."
< Spotlight on a sleek, glossy black armor on a minimalist modern studio set. The backdrop is white, the floor black. The armor drinks in the light, and looks like a photo negative against the set. His legs settle into place and it begins to come to life, the hinged frame closing to bring its arms up to his.>
"I could ask for nothing beyond ..."
<The suit's back plate hinges up and seals with the front, and Ricardo stands. The Ginja has hard shell boots, gauntlets, chest, back, and shoulders. The rest is a flexible, loose material that looks a to be no more than a centimeter thick. When the suit seals and powers on fully, it contracts down on Ricardo, molding to his muscular form like shrink wrap. >
"The quality of Gizmatic's workmanship ..."
<The form fitting armor gives the man wearing it the look of a greek god sculpted of onyx. A muscular god of darkness. Along the rear of the limbs, connecting the hardshell sections, are thicker conduits of material. They bulge slightly as he picks up a two hundred pound plasma cannon as if it were a super soaker. >
" ... the tastefulness of its appearance ..."
<The camera rotates around Ricardo as he reaches back one handed and draws a hood over his head. It seals to the collar and contracts as well, forming an anonymous black mask that's eerily featureless. Even though it doesn't have the bulk and mass common to most power armor, it's sleek predatory appearance and the exceptional grace of motion bring to mind a panther or shark.>
"I request nothing beyond the luxury of kinetic impact harnesses available even in soft Corinthian leather..."
< The viewer gets almost zero warning as a grenade blurs across the screen and impacts on Ricardo's chiseled chest. The light armor gets blasted backward by the high explosive, yet recovers in mid air to land on its feet. Again the agility and speed of the armor is highlighted as it begins to advance and return fire. The heat from the plasma blasts makes the backdrop catch fire and burn away.>
"Yet, it is on the battlefield where Ginja best answers my demands."
< With the backdrop gone, Ricardo Montalban clone #4 is revealed to be in the arena of "Who wants the antidote?" He literally throws himself into the fray, the plasma cannon incinerating limbs from lesser armors with ease. What is most astounding about the Ginja is the ease of motion it enjoys. It leaps, rolls, and flips like a world class gymnast, dealing death the entire time.>
"I have much more in this concealable Ginja than great protection at a most pleasant price. I have great confidence for which there can be no price."
< It takes only seconds to montage through the Ginja slaughtering the remaining competitors. It moves like an anime ninja, springing from ground to wall to even the shoulders of its enemies. It deploys a mono whip from it's gauntlet and dices an orc. It's strong enough to finish off the last opponent with a sword thicker than an oar and longer than it is. >
"In Ginja, I have what I need. In Karadonia, I have what you need."
< The camera pans across a lineup of GizThug, GizStooge, and GizGrunt robot models. Stepping up into the lineup is the Ginja, blood dripping off it's unmarked boots. Spot lights illuminate optional accessories, including a plethora of weapons and after market enhancements. The GizThrust turbo boots, The GizGlide jet pack, the entire line of Gizsu mono-filament weapons, the GizSnitch tactical awareness system.>
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| Re: The Tampa Twins [message #58317 is a reply to message #57310 ] |
Tue, 15 May 2012 23:21 |
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Tsureai
Messages: 126
Registered: July 2008
Location: Texas Y'all! |
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Greg watched nervously as the car pulled up outside what looked a lot like a hanger and nowhere he wanted to be. The sign on the outside was kind of faded, and caused a chill to sweep through him. Even in the sticky heat, the chill wasn't a welcome one.
"The Dance and Gymnastics Academy of Tampa"
The inside wasn't any better. It was exactly what was promised. There was a wooden dance floor, lined with full length mirrors and ballet barres. The rest of the space was given over to tumbling mats, gymnastic gear, and a large trampoline pit.
Larry began to do stretches on the dance floor, and after a moments hesitation Greg joined him. Immediately the pink suit irritated the hell out of him. It wedged up between his legs and induced ball aching pressure. It wobbled and jiggled at the slightest provocation, something he tried to endure with stoic dignity.
The one part of the whole experience Greg didn't mind was watching Mary do the same thing. She set up some kind of movie thing in one corner, then stripped off a jacket and joined them. She was dressed in the same skin tight slick suit as he and Larry were. And unlike Larry, he was positive her figure wasn't part of the suit.
His suit didn't dimple like that.
Watching her kept his eyes of Larry, and off his own image in the mirrors. With the three of them standing around he could see that from the neck down they were nearly identical. They were all the same height, had the same lean runners build, and with the padding they all had the same figure. Well, almost the same.
Larry tucked. Greg didn't.
"Explain why we have to do this?" Greg asked, trying hard to sound professional and not whine as he gingerly tried to do a split while sitting on the floor.
"It's just the first part of getting into character." Mary said as she grinned at Greg and turned the camera on. "You think that once we put on the armor, we're all going to look the same. But that's not enough. You can't just look like Bolt. You have to FEEL her. You have to BE her when you move. Every step, every nuance... It all has to be Bolt."
Mary demonstrated by strutting across the tumbling floor, and then doing a few cartwheels. Her walk had a smooth, self assured swagger to it that was all confident woman. Larry did it next, the scrawny black kid suddenly moving like Beyonce as he strutted with the same rolling gait and grace as Mary had.
Greg grunted as the pair gestured for him to do the same. After seeing the pair of them do it, he figured he had a pretty good handle on this. He tried to picture the way his wife walked on the beaches back in Jersey as he strutted across the floor. And then, when he tried to cartwheel, he landed painfully on his ear before he knew what had happened.
Larry didn't even try to hide his laughter. He doubled over, belly laughing as Greg pulled himself unsteadily to his hands and knees. "God Damn Greg! You ate that mat like it was BBQ!"
Mary snickered as she put the video of Greg face planting on the projector, letting him see the look of surprise and pain on his face.. "And that is the other reason why we make you guys train like this." She slow motioned the sequence where he tried to cartwheel. "Greg, you're being prepared to pilot a hyper maneuverable suit of power armor. A suit of armor that has a center of gravity VERY different from yours."
Mary rewound the video, and pointed out what caused him to lose control. "See? You pivoted right here, way lower than you were aiming for." His hands hit the mat too far in front to support his weight. Instead he got to watch yet again as his head snapped back and to the left. "If you did that with 500 pounds of armor behind you at 50 miles an hour, you'd dig a gopher hole with your skull and we'd find the rest of you fifty yards away."
"This is Bolt Bootcamp. Bolt Basics 101. This is training to keep you from killing yourself, and ruining a very expensive suit of armor. But mainly, it's to keep Bolt from looking like THIS in public."
Mary rewound the video to the part where Greg was trying to walk. To call his performance graceless would be charitable. To say that he moved like a drag queen, with the drag of a bowlegged alligator and without the grace of a queen would be more accurate.
"You've got the look, but you can't walk the walk." Mary began. "But we can work with that. When Larry first hired on he was almost as bad as you." She walked forward and inspected the still slightly dazed Greg. He was out of uniform, as one of his breasts hadn't been put in properly and was now giving his shoulder an attractive B cup.
"God, I wish we could get rid of this dumb pink one." Mary sighed. "Hopefully we'll get your tailored pair of slicks in less than two weeks." She pointed at Larry to illustrate, and against his better judgement Greg turned to see the black man striking what he hoped was a Bolt pose and not a personal hobby.
"The slicks serve several purposes." she began to explain. "First, they're cut resistant. That means if something shatters but still makes it through the armor, they'll keep the shrapnel from gutting you like a fish."
Greg gulped.
"Second, they're slick and tight. There's no wiggle room designed into that suit, so if you wear it without your slicks on, you WILL get chaffed like you wouldn't believe. You'll be floating in puss and tears in no time."
Greg gulped harder.
"Third, and most importantly, the inserts give you a center of gravity similar to the suits. Training in your slicks will teach you to adjust to the movement profile of Bolt. You will suit up first thing in the morning, every morning, and work your ass off until we're confident that you will be a capable and credible Bolt."
She eyed his shoulder again, and shook her head. "And for Christ's sake, get your tits on straight. That's just embarrassing."
Greg began to wish very hard that he had never left New Jersey.
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