A Dragon's Tale #Watty's2015

Heavy Metal

If there was one thing I was a cut throat about it was my policy regarding personal armament. I preferred huge weapons, that held more ammo than I could carry, and could empty that ammo down range indiscriminately and continue to do so indiscriminately, to admittedly, using the words down range and indiscriminately in the same sentence might be giving myself too much credit.

It was later that afternoon after I explained what I had been doing out of the house at 4 in the morning that Hudson, Fireclaw, Sozenn, Shadow and I hit the MYT and headed to the Bomb Range to train on Elite Power armor. Nolan had called me a few minutes before and said that he had the brand new model that had just gone into production there waiting for us and they had some new toys to play with as well. When the MYT pulled into the sandy, hilly area, I could see Nolan standing by his SUV doing something with his phone and I could see the urban camouflage power suits close by.

The model that was made to be used by humans looked like a tank on legs. I was a rounded rectangular suit with a pyramid shaped front end that had six ruby red infrared cameras on the front and what looked like wings on the back. There was a triple barreled machine gun bolted to the right shoulder and there was what looked like a giant Saga 12 bolted above the left. There was what I assumed was a deploy-able weapon on the right arm, but from the truck I couldn't tell. The arms were about as big around as the base of my tail and it had spiked knuckles which I assumed were meant to be used, against what? Buildings were my best guess. The suit was armored at every conceivable spot and it looked like it was ready to step on people just by sitting there.

The suits for us dragons looked far worse, it was like an armored, metal exo skeleton, from the truck I didn't even see a way to enter. Above the right shoulder was a long barreled rifle that I'd never seen before. It was covered by a steel grate that was glowing a bright blue and it looked like the barrel had fingers. The other gun was a belt fed, 30mm autocannon that looked like it was packing AP rounds. The armor looked like the stone armor suits I'd seen at the Tombs of The Seven when I was little. The face masks and the tail armor was covered in spikes, some of which were pointed forward, others were facing behind it. The suit was painted urban camouflage just like Hudson's, but it was far bulkier and looked heavy as a mountain made of pure lead.

"Damn", Hudson said as the truck pulled to a stop, "look at this shit man."

"No kidding", I said as I hopped out, "looks like ancient Mountain Battle Armor."

"Battle armor it is", Nolan said, "shall we begin?"

"Hell yes!", Fireclaw shouted.

"I'm sorry", Shadow commented, "but I thought Fireclaw was supposed to be here, not Ator?"

Nolan laughed, "who doesn't like power armor? Just walk up to the suits and they'll open up, Hudson, you just climb in the back, dragons, pay attention to what I tell you and take these."

Nolan handed us each a small, black collar with a piece of steel pop riveted to the front with a microchip on it.

"They look like dog collars", Shadow said, "is this one of those, "put it on and you need surgery to remove it kind of things?"

"No", Nolan said, "you wear the collar that is synced with that suit and the collar picks up on your pulse and your individual DNA pattern, think of it as the key to a car, without it, it wont start."

I nodded at him and tied it loosely around my neck, beginning to approach the biggest of the three power suits.

"Operator detected", it said in a deep, raspy, mechanical voice, "initializing suit protocols, ready."