Month: December 2015

Since nobody can be expected to just sit and wait for XCOM 2 to come out, we’ll be having ourselves a little countdown for the 19 sundays left between us and salvation. Each week I’ll be showcasing another soldier living aboard the Avenger, who they are, and why exactly it is they fight for XCOM. When the game comes out, I’ll be creating all of these and release them as a content mod for your character pool. But for now, this’ll have to do.

Keep in my that this is all completely fanfiction-based and I am in no way affiliated with Firaxis. I just do this as a fun writing exercise, because I can.

An encounter with:

Cadence “Bird” Spencer, from the United Kingdom:

 

At the bar, Spencer’s custom GREMLIN hovers around the room with a tray of gin. This round is free, in celebration of the full house and the most recent flawless mission, but usually she makes quite a lot off her booze.

“I dream of a world where people will see a bottle of ‘Spencer’s Dry Gin’ and say ‘Oi, that’s what they used to drink on the Avenger innit?’ It’s gonna be forever a reminder that humans like to have a kitchen sink even when the world’s in the bloody shitter. Look around you!”

She opens her arms toward the crowd the bar is packing tonight. One of the returnees is standing on the bar, being cheered on as he downs a pint of beer in one go. They then erupt into an almost intimidating collective roar as the first notes of AC/DC’s Highway to Hell resound from the jukebox.

“This is what they don’t understand. Have you ever seen a game of muton cricket? Chryssalid concert? A sectoid night club maybe? They got no notion of fun! That’s why they’re so angry when we pull their plonkers, because everythin’s just always serious with them. We’re probably being followed by a bloody UFO right now that wants to fucking kill us all brown bread. We don’t care, we get fucking pissed, the laugh, dance and shag all night, because that’s the true meaning of life, innit? Sure, we do this rebellion shite because we want our freedom and such, but, honestly, it’s just fun killing aliens and ADVENT cunts both. It’s fun rescuing people, it’s fun being a bunch o’ bloody heroes, like we’re on a high-stakes never-ending party, and the grim reaper is the guest of honour. You gotta live every day like it’s gonna be your last, and on board this nanny goat it just might be! We kick the aliens in the family jewels, run away, and have fun doing it! They could really learn something from us. Maybe they’ll figure out our secret to having fun one day and convert to our lifestyle, eh?”

She laughs at the notion and opens another bottle.

“Before this I used to work for me old man in The Cask Emporium. We had all the whiskeys, vodkas, beers and ciders, even the exotic stuff like Canadian icewine, vodka from South Africa and Japanese Whiskey, which is quite good actually. Greatest liquor store in all of Brixton, all of London even if you ask me. Then this geezer came along, childhood friend of my dad’s, never seen him for years. Apparently he asked for help blowing up bloody parliament! Couple days later, ADVENT rozzers roll into the shop, say they caught the guy and ask me dad why he didn’t say anything. Old man says he’s not a nark, he’s not gonna rat out his crazy friend with the bonkers plan. So they take him away and bang him up for twenty bloody years for ‘Collaboration in Conspiracy’. It’s not fair, innit? My dad worked hard for his Emporium, all his life he did. Then some bloke comes in, tells him about something he wants no part in and suddenly he’s baddie! I fight for XCOM because my dad deserves to cherish the fruits of his life’s work, and he ain’t got twenty years left in him.”

 

Since nobody can be expected to just sit and wait for XCOM 2 to come out, we’ll be having ourselves a little countdown for the 19 sundays left between us and salvation. Each week I’ll be showcasing another soldier living aboard the Avenger, who they are, and why exactly it is they fight for XCOM. When the game comes out, I’ll be creating all of these and release them as a content mod for your character pool. But for now, this’ll have to do.

Keep in my that this is all completely fanfiction-based and I am in no way affiliated with Firaxis. I just do this as a fun writing exercise, because I can.

An encounter with:

Bahadur “Dentist” Al Baghdadi, from Saudi Arabia:

 

 

Al Baghdadi is bartering in the vending machine corner of the mess hall, which he has dubbed ‘the bazaar’. Currently, he is offering a broken pocket watch, a packet of licorice candy, a necklace made of chryssalid pincers and his ration of breakfast bacon for a month to an engineer, who has a deck of playing cards, a stick of lip moisturiser and slightly battered real cashmere gloves on the table. A crowd has formed around them, observing the proceedings as though they were a game of poker, some getting ready to trade themselves. After several minutes of haggling, he trades the watch, the necklace and the bacon for the gloves and the cards. Additionally, he has gotten the engineer’s promise to give him a very good deal at some point in the future.

“You have to invest in tomorrow to get ahead. Lose a little when you have it, gain more when you need it. The most important commodity in times of trial is not goods, but people. Doing favours for each other makes us grow closer together, it’s like psychology.”

He taps two fingers on his heart.

“We write favours out as cheques, because the westerners don’t understand the validity of anything if it isn’t put on paper, and we even trade them, so you may find yourself cleaning the weapons of someone you barely talk to because he made that deal with the man you just bought a softer mattress from, and you paid with the debt of having to cash in that favour for him. It’s great. People used to do that in the Great Caravan of ’22 and I was surprised that nobody knew about it on this ship. Then again, the ADVENT kept the existence of the Great Caravan out of the media.”

Al Baghdadi takes out a vacuum flask and pours himself some tea.

“I was barely a man when people all over my country started leaving their cities and settlements behind, banding together in a huge convoy and making their way across the land. It was a form of peaceful protest, taking from the aliens the only thing they could not force us to give them: our souls. Smaller caravans soon started in other countries and caught up with us until we were thousands, making our way through mountains and deserts, without a real goal or direction. Nobody could stop us, all national borders had been lifted, we were doing nothing illegal, we weren’t even really protesting, just leaving. Personally, I was part of our police. It was difficult, keeping the tensions between different cultures and languages in check, especially without a clearly defined command structure or even knowledge of who was and who was not police. We were people with guns, but so were the criminals, who sometimes acted like police also. There was this gang of Turkish bootleggers, always at odds with the Egyptian porn-peddlers because each thought what the other did was immoral and against God. They kept arresting each other and cracking down on deals, and then we had to roll in in hopes that they would recognize our authority.”

Before taking a gulp, he gives a fond chuckle.

“But when the time came, we all banded together against the ADVENT – and lost. Most of the Great Caravan consisted of families, not soldiers. The aliens didn’t care. They just opened fire from plasma mortars near Ashgabat and then sent a platoon of soldiers in to deal with the rest of us. But some survived, probably due to the law of large numbers. Yes, waking up in a pile of bodies, half my face feeling like it was on fire was a horrible experience, but at least there is someone who can keep the tale of the Great Caravan alive. I fight for XCOM, because I carry with me the ghosts of thousands dead, and peace is no longer an option.”

Since nobody can be expected to just sit and wait for XCOM 2 to come out, we’ll be having ourselves a little countdown for the 19 sundays left between us and salvation. Each week I’ll be showcasing another soldier living aboard the Avenger, who they are, and why exactly it is they fight for XCOM. When the game comes out, I’ll be creating all of these and release them as a content mod for your character pool. But for now, this’ll have to do.

Keep in my that this is all completely fanfiction-based and I am in no way affiliated with Firaxis. I just do this as a fun writing exercise, because I can.

An encounter with:

Hiro “Warlock” Yoshida, from Japan:

 

 

Yoshida is sitting in a lounge chair on the balcony of his Barcelona apartment, sipping on a glass of bitter lemon. The city’s summer nightlife can be heard raging in the distance like a typhoon of sweat and laughter.

“XCOM was a natural reaction to a foreign object entering the collective human body. We are not a very accepting species, and to be fair, the aliens did barge in weapons at the ready. I remember my time with XCOM very fondly. We were idealists, the best of the best, united in what appeared to be the first righteous fight in generations. It feels good, being the hero, not having to doubt yourself when you kill a man for your country. They were evil, a canvas for us to project upon whatever we hated. I thank the universe every day that they aren’t, because we would have lost regardless. An organization so well-funded, equipped with the best weapons on the market, staffed with the smartest engineers and scientists in the world, clandestine and protected by every secret service even after official support was dropped. The location of our base was so secret, even most people working in it did not know where it was, and those who did were explicitly forbidden from telling anyone. Most of us soldiers pieced it together, of course.”

An old, petrol-fueled motorcycle rides down the street, the staccato from its exhaust resounding like an angry machine gun. Yoshida shakes his head in disappointment.

“Why so many shun their gifts remains a mystery to me. When the aliens came for the base, I was in a pod in what the scientists called the ‘Psionic Labs’, having been fed through a tube for eight days straight. Testing wasn’t complete when they found me, but they could feel it: the Gift, I had it. The Irish girl next to me also did, but she attacked them instantly. Their leader, the Ethereal, touched my mind. I was not trained in telepathy yet, but this magnificent being, it aided me. To this day, I could not have a conversation of such clarity with any other Gifted. It was honest with me, told me more than my superiors ever had. The destruction of XCOM was unfortunate, but it had to happen so humanity could ascend, so we could join their community of species and take our special place in it. The only other species capable of psionics are the sectoids, and look how far they have made it. The technology, the knowledge, the protection from other species, species who would mean us real harm, all of those things were given to us, and they expected nothing in return. Yes, they may be a little firm at times, not understanding of our ways, but I have seen their true faces, and they are benevolent creatures imbued with a vision no human mind could ever hope to comprehend. We scorn their gifts, kill their soldiers and condemn those who would side with them, yet they still love us. They have made concessions to our primitive ways so that we might feel safe. When they understood that we are fiercely independent, they allowed us to self-govern under their guidance with the ADVENT Coalition. And they continue to give and give and give. I fight for the ADVENT, because I will do whatever it takes to see humanity flourish in this new world the aliens have opened up to us.

Since nobody can be expected to just sit and wait for XCOM 2 to come out, we’ll be having ourselves a little countdown for the 19 sundays left between us and salvation. Each week I’ll be showcasing another soldier living aboard the Avenger, who they are, and why exactly it is they fight for XCOM. When the game comes out, I’ll be creating all of these and release them as a content mod for your character pool. But for now, this’ll have to do.

Keep in my that this is all completely fanfiction-based and I am in no way affiliated with Firaxis. I just do this as a fun writing exercise, because I can.

An encounter with:

Genevieve “Loup Garou” Lesauvage, from France:

 

Lesauvage is in the galley, preparing restaurant-grade reindeer steaks from an animal she hunted herself, and with the very limited supplies given to her.

“Certainly quite civilized for someone likened to a savage animal, no? I was a chef in my real life, before they found out the truth about who killed collaborateurs all over the Normandie and made it look like the attacks of a huge wolf. They compared me to Alain Passard, Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal first, Joseph Vacher, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Cooper were added to the list later. The first three I can agree with, but I’m nothing like those mentally deranged psychopaths.”

After seasoning the steaks with rosemary, thyme, salt and, strangely, a little of her own curry mustard, she puts them in a pan, where one of her infused olive oils (this one with garlic, mint and lemongrass) goes from sizzling to roaring.

“I would never kill an innocent person. I don’t do it for fun, for gratification, or just because. I do it because it needs to be done. When the Nazis invaded my beautiful country, people of all creeds and colours came together to slit their throats, and the throats of the traitors that helped them. I was the chef and owner of the most prestigious restaurant in Caen, L’elefant, and everybody knew I hunted the most choice pieces myself. It was the perfect cover: I got to talk to collaborateurs, because of course they were rich and had to flaunt it, and then I got to go out at night, armed, with no one batting an eye. I remember one man saying ‘be careful Genevieve, there’s a monster prowling in the darkness, and it might just pick a young woman like you for its next meal.’ I killed him in his garden two days later. They figured out it wasn’t really a wolf soon, but still nobody suspected me. Why would they? I am only a woman, after all.”

Grinning, she flips the steaks with the swift, confident moves of a professional.

“I grew more bold, going into buildings and dragging my victims outside. The story of the Loup Garou de la Normandie became legend soon. There was even a movie made about it last year. They paint me as a literal werewolf, sneaking into homes and mauling people’s children in their sleep. The rebels of course, they knew. They were not afraid of me, they even changed their emblem to a wolf. And the more the media all over the country reported on how gruesome the killings were, the more wolf graffities appeared. Of course it couldn’t last forever. A man, I don’t know who, called my cell phone one morning, saying only two words: ‘They know.’ I fled just in time.”

She flips the steaks again, already preparing the next batch without even needing to look.

“I am a patriot, not only of France, but of earth. I fight for XCOM, because three Michelin Stars and seventeen collaborateurs are not the only things I want to accomplish in life.”