The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 8

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Chapter 8: Ivy and Bean

Although Nancy now wore her full magical girl outfit, the other girls had nothing but their housecoats. That apparently didn’t bother Junie B., who was too tough to need shoes and too young to understand modesty, but Judy and Amelia clutched the coats about themselves as the rain quickly saturated the terrycloth.

“Time to find out of this works,” said Cam. She raised a hand into the air, much as Nancy had earlier done—but she didn’t give any miniature speech in French. Instead, to Nancy’s shock, she threw off her housecoat, and a suit of metal, like closefitting armor, unfolded across her wiry body. It looked like glossy black plate trimmed with shiny chrome at its edges, and in the joints were what looked like thick blue fabric. Above her temples appeared little boxes that blinked with LED lights. The outfit wasn’t the kind of thing Nancy especially liked, but she had to admit it was pretty in its own way, and Cam somehow looked noble in it, though it might look silly on someone else.

Cam glanced down at herself and flexed her hands in her shiny black gauntlets. “Looks like the nanoprobes finished building my exoskeleton,” she said. “That’s a relief.”

With that, she raised her right hand and pointed it at the robot. A long tube unfolded from the vambrace on her forearm and flashed rhythmically, making the staccato thud thud thud of an automatic gun. A small opening appeared in her wrist and ejected spent shell casings.

Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 8”

Giant Robot Battle Scheduled for August

In other news, Suidoboshi Heavy Industries and MegaBots, Inc., have finally scheduled their mecha battle for some time in August, as reported in The Nerdist.

In case you didn’t know, both of these companies, the former from Japan and the latter from the USA, built giant robots as hugely expensive toys, the KURATAS and Mark II, respectively. MegaBots challenged Suidoboshi to a giant robot fight quite some time ago. I saw the original MegaBots challenge and Suidoboshi’s somewhat muted acceptance thereof back in 2015, but hadn’t heard anything since.

In the beginning, the Mk. II looked likely to take the KURATAS apart, as it was created to be a hulking beast, whereas the KURATAS was more of a rich kid’s toy. Both companies, however, have apparently upgraded their machines. MegaBots has released video of their new but incomplete Mk. III picking up and tearing apart cars, whereas Suidoboshi has kept its upgrades to the KURATAS a secret.

Both these machines are designed to be piloted, but I hope, for the fight, they set it up so the pilots are not actually inside, since they’re hinting of weapons like chainsaws and drills.