NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shayuri" data-source="post: 5357670" data-attributes="member: 4936">Since Deezy's 'metal beast' wasn't allowed within the city limits, she had take it around the perimeter to the rendezvous site the long way. This deterred Deezy not at all, but it did mean that Brian had plenty of quality time to converse with her. If by 'converse' one means 'listen to inane prattle.'It was certain that any given sentence of hers made sense if one was of the inclination to follow it, and the technical knowledge to grasp it. She just seemed to have little discrimination between the things she said which were genuinely interesting, and the things that were only of interest to people like herself.And all the while, the Metal Beast tromped on.Being inside the Beast was unsettling. It was like being in a coffin. You didn't sit down, as in a crawler. You stood fully extended in a slim, oblong hollow space within the Beast's massive frame. There were two such spaces, placed back to back in the mid-torso. The controls for operation were midway down the coffin-shaped space, about where one's hands should be. The displays were projected at your eye level. According to Deezy, both could be adjusted for different pilot sizes...though the size of the chambers dictated the maximum size of the operator. It was cramped, and stuffy, and claustrophobic. The rumble of the machine was all around, creating the sensation that at any second one could be caught in massive gears and crushed. And of course, needless to say, the fluctuating bar graphs and readouts hovering in front of his face were completely useless to him."...so I had to tell him to keep his kids from shoveling sand in there, or of COURSE it's going to explode," Deezy was saying; capping off another anecdote about her time fixing odds and ends in her community. "Oh hey, we're here."From the outside, the Great Metal Beast, as it had been dubbed by the elders at her village, looked like a bizarre metal cross between a gorilla and an ostrich. Its body was stocky and barrel-chested, all curves and angles to deflect and reduce incoming firepower, with a flattened spherical sensor cluster placed about where a neckless head would be. Its forearms were much thicker than its "biceps," giving it a ham-fisted look. This was necessary to support the weapon mounts though, with heavy barrels exposed behind each robotic fist. The body rode high atop a pair of digitigrade legs, heavily built with hydraulics supporting and supplementing the internal myomers. Its feet were splayed, with wide pads that could fold to downward-facing points...designed to walk on soft, shifting sands without sinking in spite of the machine's heavy weight and high ground pressure. It made grinding, clanking noises as it strode jerkily up to the rest of the caravan and as Deezy brought it to a stop it belched dark, acrid fumes from vents in its back.Her voice crackled in some electronically amplified speaker stashed somewhere on the machine. "Deezy and Brian, reporting for duty!"</blockquote>

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