"Bloody hell, what's he got on his arms?"
Twilight and Celestia found the humans just as the next wave began. Just as notable was the large creature that had a yellow glowing... thing in its chest, and a set of painful-looking devices on its hands. Like the "doctor" monster before, the humans didn't shoot at it immediately, and in fact started running away from it, easily outpacing its lumbering steps.
"So, what does that one do?" Celestia asked.
"I'm not sure, I think that's a new one..."
Suddenly, the creature stopped in place and started roaring and waving its arms around, the yellow thing turning blood red. The monster suddenly ran forward at a formidable speed, quickly catching up with the humans who were now firing at it as much as they could. The creature just shrugged the damage off, however, and started pounding on the nearest human. More punishment was dealt out to the creature, and eventually it fell. The attacked human immediately injected himself with the red thing he had, and went on his way killing more monsters.
"Well that certainly was... something," Celestia commented.
"Honestly, princess, I think I'm getting to the point where I just want to let whatever's happening, happen," Twilight said, exasperated. "I mean, it's not like there's anything we could really do."
Celestia thought on this, as she watched one of the humans tear through a line of creatures with a sword, each decapitation resulting in slow motion. "Do you think that you should try the Elements?" she finally tried.
"I doubt that would do much, and I don't think there's even a reason to, really." Twilight sat down with a sigh. "Is it always like this, being a princess?"
Celestia chuckled. "Well, it's usually not this weird, I admit. But, if you feel that no action can, or should, be taken, then there is little we can do but watch."
By now, the wave was finished, and the humans all ran by, eager to re-arm for the next one.
"Although the townsponies seem to be taking it rather well," Celestia added.
"When you've been living in Ponyville this long, weird things become part of the norm," Twilight joked. The two shared a laugh at this, and the humans returned again. Both of them noted that by now, their weapons were rather large in size, most likely to compensate for how the creatures they were fighting were also getting larger.
"I think this is... the eighth wave?" Twilight said, trying to remember.
"Do you think it will end at some point?" Celestia asked.
"I don't know... it seems that each wave has more creatures than the last, and bigger monsters seem to appear every so often, so who knows?"
Another large glowing monster lumbered into view, following behind a chainsaw one. As before, the yellow one turned red, and started barreling forward, tearing apart any other creature unlucky enough to be in its way. The chainsaw one, however, was simply knocked aside, something that made it run forward about as quickly as the raging beast. It caught up, and the two began fighting each other. The humans also noticed this, and simply watched while taking out any other monsters that reared their ugly heads. Soon, the glowing creature won, and a jet of flame launched from one of the human's devices, finishing it off.
"Do you think someone is controlling them?" Celestia asked, once the humans were again out of battle.
"What? The humans?"
"Well, them too, but I was talking about the... other things. They just walk forward and attack, hardly the actions that free thinking creatures would perform."
"...I haven't thought about that, honestly." Twilight rubbed her chin in thought. "But then why are they all intangible? Is this like some kind of ghost of the past, or something?"
"I do not think so, but with how much we know about it, anything is possible."
Another wave attacked, and Celestia watched as a few of the humans ended up dying in battle. The others, rather than pay any respects or even ignoring it, decided to insult their fallen comrades while running from the horde. In fact, now that she thought about it, these six acted more like people who didn't really like each other, despite working together. Sure, they healed each other and kept the creatures off of the others, but they didn't hesitate to run when they spotted a losing battle, leaving their fellow fighters to their death.
Of course, all of this was cheapened a bit when the wave ended, and those that died just popped back into existence, the only acknowledgement of their death being them returning to where their corpse was to pick up whatever weapon they dropped.
"This will be the tenth wave, correct?" Celestia asked. Twilight nodded in answer. "Do you think something will happen, now?"
"Only one way to find out..."
The humans returned once more, and one of them dropped a rectangular object on the ground. Shortly after, it began beeping, which soon got on the ponies' nerves.
"Bloody hell, you stink!" one of the humans taunted, lopping off head after head, only stopping to inject himself every once in a while. Another lumbering creature walked into view, heading straight for the beeping thing. The moment it stepped on it, it made a couple of faster beeping sounds, and then blew up, reducing the creature to a pair of covered arms and a cloud of blood. The moment was topped off with a bit of slow motion.
"There certainly is a lot of fire and explosions, aren't there?" Celestia commented.
"Don't remind me, I think I might be losing some of my hearing," Twilight said, half-joking.
The humans continued their battle, only two of them dying this time. That two quickly became four, however, and when the last two split up, one of the small, gray creatures grabbed one of them, allowing a raging pounding creature to maul him to death.
"Who do you think you are, bleeding Action Man?" the last human standing said, reloading one of his weapons while running away.
"Oh dear," Celestia said. "You said there were six humans?"
"Yes, but they've never all died at once, before..."
The lone human didn't stop fighting, though, and soon had cleared a large number of the creatures. He'd run and create a trail of creatures, before mowing them down in just a few shots. It was actually somewhat impressive.
Soon, all that remained was a single small, black creature. Instead of killing it, however, the human ran away, likely to whichever metal door would open next. He quickly put ground between him and the crawling creature, which, oddly enough, eventually just died from seemingly nothing at all. The five fallen humans appeared yet again, and they made their way to the library, where the one was waiting.
This time, Celestia and Twilight followed, seeing that the humans were now wielding the largest weapons yet, some of them nearly as big as themselves.
"Now this, is a big, sodding gun!" one of them said, holding a large green tube over his shoulder. They soon filed out, and placed not one, but about ten total of the beeping bombs they used before. The noise wasn't deafening, but it sure was annoying.
"They seem to be preparing for something... But what?"
"I don't know," Twilight said, "but whatever it is, it must be big..."
FINAL WAVE INBOUND
3466548 I melted my video card once.
3466859 Melted the soldering clean off, so I somehow managed to get it to a temperature hotter than the boiling point of water.
3466867
Speaking of hardware troubles, my video card wouldn't work once because one, just one, of the cylindrical capacitors got bent out of place. Not bent off mind you, or even bent loose, just bent out of place. I nudged it slightly and all was well again. That was when my Dad told me I earned my techie wings.
3466911 I broke physics and heated my video card up to at least 115 degrees celsius. I know because my sisters techie friend said so, and he knows too much about computers.
3466916 One day my computer stopped working and then my sister got her techie friend over to see why, the problem was a fifty-fifty split between viruses and a melted video card.
3466946 It had so, so many viruses. And apparently gaming fifteen hours a day, every day of the week is a bad thing, who knew?
3467022 No one, that's who.
3467044 CPU is perfectly fine only the video card suffered anything ill.
3467056
When I first booted up my computer, my fan was loose. My CPU was RIDICULOUSLY hot. Like, it skyrocketed to over 90 celsius. I think it was just around 95. This was in BIOS, by the way. Before even getting to anything CPU intensive. I fixed the problem and it dropped to a reasonable temperature, but 115 celsius is not outside of the realm of insufficient cooling. Electronics run HOT if they're not cooled enough.
3467099 considering the fact that I'm in a well ventilated room with a fan running almost indefinitely? I'd say it was pretty far out there, no the least in the fact that it's been gaming since sometime 2006 or 2007.
3467145 What's tactics ogre?
3467134
The temperature for various parts of the computer has no real significant correlation to the temperature outside the case. I was in a formerly unused room with the window open in early Spring. Also, gaming for a long time can mean dust buildup, which also slows thermal dissipation.
3467151 Well, the bastard IS over four or five years old, wouldn't surprise me if it contained a pocket dimension of dust by now.
3467148 Okay then, Tactics Ogre doesn't look good in my opinion, and I've heard only glancing remarks about Fire Emblem.
3467220 I've got XCOM: Enemy Unknown, most of my veteran squad is dead and I lack the funds to purchase more recruits.
3467242 I have no satellites left and every country is at maximum panic, your move, Sherlock.
3467250 I have ookies and my only choices of missions are either to attack the Alien base with fuck all equipment and training, or to go after a terror attack in Sydney. With is almost exclusively cyberdiscs and drones. How does one beat that?
3467259 I'm on Iron Man mode, meaning I can't undo my loses unless I make a new game, and I also accidentally sold all my guns and armor to Canada whilst all my alien stuff went on a clearance sale. So no way to buy more recruits, no satellites, no high tech weapons or armor, no alien stuff to make more, three guys that have fuck all stats, and it's the day before the end of the month.
3467287 Well I can only really top that in my Borderlands save, I'm stuck in Crawmerax's plateau of death and the lift has glitched out. I'm only level twenty as well.
3467304 Well I have another terrible strategy game save, but I highly doubt you could beat it.
3467344 It is my Fallout: Tactics save, which is right before I detonate the nuke to get into vault zero, except the fucking bunker you're supposed to take cover in is behind several dozen minigun and rocket launcher armed deathbots and all my people are on less than 30% health with barely any ammo left, and I have ninety seconds until molecular vaporization.
3467355 A mix of both. I have a set number of action points for each character that slowly recharges whilst they are under real-time attack from enemies that also have a limited amount of action points that is far greater than my own teams. And worse off, my level twenty five Deathclaw was shredded at the nuclear reactor.
3467376 I have ninety seconds to kill around thirty robots with hollow point rounds from 9mm pistols otherwise I lose via nuclear annihilation.
3467400 I lose if my main character dies, regardless of wether or not I have other squad members left. And worse still, I don't have any power armor because I lacked the script to purchase it.
3467415 I lose in ninety seconds unless I get at least my main character in the bunker, which requires a lock picking skill of at least 150% to even have a chance at, as well as an electronic lockpick, both of which my squad have a severe lack of, what with my hacker and lock picker being beaten to death by super mutants and their being no one else with the qualifications to take their place.
3467429 Also my main character has a concussion, broken legs, a broken arm, and is about to come off a hyper-stimpack boost.
3467437 Yeah. And what's more, once I get inside there's legions MORE robots, a robot boss with Frank Horrigan levels of OPness, and then I have to kill the disembodied brains of the vaults AI processing network, and choose to either die to save the vault, by having my brain removed, or to let it die and doom he wastes to a loss of immense knowledge and technology.
3467449 Worse still I can't use my strategy of pile into the APC and shoot them silly, because it's not there, and I can't afford the ten thousand script for the necessary number of 75mm shells for my tank to be effective... plus I never figured out how to use its cannon.
Patty time!
Ever since i read this i call Moneys in TF2 MVM DOSH Lol
3467459 holy shit that was a long comment chain. it was almost an entire page!
"Is this like some kind of ghost of the past"
That would make sense when Humanity is losing against hordes of clones. Almost like if Humans came before the smol equines. But hey that's just a theory... A pony theory, thanks for reading.