Joe Phoenix > did you hear about todays narsty occurances..

Caldari News Network

CNN Sobseki

>>>>>BREAKING NEWS BREAKING NEWS BREAKING NEWS<<<<<

Anchorwoman: Good Evening, I'm Swifty Frisko reporting live from Sobseki with a CNN Special Report!

Reports have been received of a showdown between local corporations at one of our jump-gates.  Local CONCORD police ships are at the scene, and I'm being told that Achuran reporter Trisha Takinawa is there live.  What's the situation Trisha?

>Scene changes from news studio to the observation deck of a CONCORD Caracal

Trisha:  Thanks Swifty.  You can see behind me three Battleships belonging to a several different owners, apparently awaiting the arrival of a fleet belonging to the Imperial Commonwealth.  Commanders Alpin Wolf and Paul Moon, indentured Deputies of the organisation Standards & Practices, have stated their intention of "Preventing further loss of life and destruction of resources at the hands of Grand Commander Joe Phoenix and his followers, even at the point of a gun".  The Commander of the Armageddon that is accompanying them, one Captain AltBoy, has also made clear his intention to aid the fleet with batteries of heavy remote repair modules.

CONCORD have offiicially stated that after looking into this, Wolf & Moon's Declaration of War against the Imperial Commonwealth is legal and they will not interfere unless the parties involved.... oh wait!  Something is happening!

External: The three allied warships sit motionless at various points around the Gate, CONCORD orbiting like angry hornets.  The gate flares suddenly and space seems to ripple as three more Battleships materialise, all three bearing Imperial Commonwealth insignia

Trisha:  That's the Imperial Commonwealth fleet alright, according to their ID beamers they are commanded by Captains Allko, Tito and SpaceWizard.  I can see the turrets swivelling and.... yes, they are engaging!

External: Space lights up as the battleships begin firing at each other.  Moon's Dominix is wreathed in fire, seemingly taking the brunt of the IC firepower.  A bright beam of energy crackles out from AltBoy's Armageddon, reinforcing its shields and patching armour holes.  However, after a few seconds of maneuvering under fire, it becomes clear that the massed firepower is more that the Dominix is capable of taking.

Trisha:  It seems that the Deputised fleet is becoming overwhelmed.  That Dominix surely can't take much more of that kind of punishment.

>Studio:

Swifty:  Can you tell if there is any real risk to space users attempting to use the Gate?  Any attempts by the parties to deploy area-effect weapons or ECM generators?

>CONCORD Caracal:

Trisha:  No Swifty, from here it looks like a fairly clean fight..... one moment....

>Researcher hands Trisha a note from off-camera

Trisha:  This just in, CONCORD ship scanners report that Commander AltBoy's Armageddon appears to be only using one of its repair modules!  A ship that size can often have as many as half a dozen or more, it doen't make sense it should only be using one.......

>External:  The Dominix begins to try to align to the Gate, gaping wounds in its sides blazing brightly revelaing internal fires on many decks.  Just as it begins the spin-up sequence for its engines, the Armageddon's engines flare, and it lurches at the Gallante-built vessel, causing its proximity thrusters to fire, pushing it off alignment and causing the jump to fail.  A split second later, and a massive fireball rips the squat round shape of the battleship into thousands of tiny spinning metal shards.

Trisha:  Oh my!  Swifty, did you see that?  Oh the humanity!  It looked like AltBoy's ship purposely rammed the Dominix, forcing it off the Gate just long enough for it to be destroyed!

>External:  Without remote repair beams or any other targets, the Commonwealth Battleships destroy Alpin's Raven in short order, its escape pod warping through the gate almost as soon as it ejects for the ship as it explodes.

Trisha:  Well Swifty, that looks like the end of..... wait!  Are..are we getting this?!

>External:  AltBoy's beams, all of them this time, begin repairing SpaceWizard's armour and shields, boosting them signifigantly as SpaceWizard fires on the unprepared Imperial Commonwealth Ravens. Clearly a highly skilled and very well equipped pilot, SpaceWizard's weapons carve the already damaged Imperial ships up in seconds, and the escape pod belonging to one of the Captains is destroyed in the explosion of the other's ship.

Trisha:  SpaceWizard has just attacked his Imperial Commonwealth allies!  And now is jumping through the Gate as AltBoy's Armageddon scoops the most valuable cargo and is preparing to leave also!  It would seem that it was a rouse by two very well organised Commanders to take advantage of the War between the two sides here today Swifty!  If anything, a lesson for us all I think!

>Studio:  Swifty:  Indeed Trisha!  I think there is a lesson for anyone out on the space lanes tonight:  Do You Know Who Your Allies Are?  Reporting for CNN, I'm Swifty Frisko.....

>CONCORD Caracal: Trisha:  And I'm Trisha Takinawa, Good Night!
>Behind Trisha, barely noticable through the view port of the Carcal, a Minmatar Probe-class scout frigate decloaks, and scoops as much of the abandoned wreckage as possible before looking around shiftily and running for it.

Joe Phoenix > a professional wanker is not hard to achieve

Things had been strangely quiet around the offices of the IEEE recently. Alarm bells had rang once or twice but very little of interest had materialised in the last fortnight. I found myself staring out the window of our sparsely appointed Perimeter office once or twice too many times in recent days, the strain of Skin-Walking was starting to take its toll. My real body, that is my current clone, was quite unwell after any sustained periods of my concious mind moving around. I wasn't sure if it was the New Eden drugs, the cybernetic implants or the really bad Caldari coffee that the machines here urinate into the plastic cup, but I decided it was time for a rest from all of that sort of thing for a bit. It was time to get out there for real again.

Just as I started thinking thoughts about Rifters and enforcing good Standards on some Achuran jetcan-miners, my PDA beeped.

"Agent Damien McCandless is away from his clone currently, please feel free to leave a message at the sound of the tone. TONE." I quipped.

"Knock it off D, this is P.Q., have you fallen asleep or does Local not get your attention anymore?"

Agent P.Q., one of my oldest associates, barring The Boss himself, had never forgave me for letting Joe get away once because it was 4am and I had literally fallen asleep at the controls of my ship.

I glanced down at the constantly streaming gibberish that clogged the local comms channel regularly. Sure enough, in the "Persons In Channel" frame was a twinkling red dot. A dot labelled Joe Phoenix.

"What the hell....?"


"Yeah D, he's right next door to you and you never noticed, ehh? Lol, you must be gettin' old. See ya outside the Navy Yard in 5."

When PQ says 5, he means 5 ago. So I leapt down the stairs to the flight deck. What to pick what to pick...... er not much as it turned out. My cache of ships was a little low in recent times, most of it spread over a wide area of Providence in very very tiny pieces due to the alignment of the IEEE investigation into Joe and the -A- "investigation" into CVA. I was comforted that the violence in Provi had also caused Joe to become an unwilling refugee too.

Anyway, my Hawk Assault Frigate was sitting at the back of the bay, covered in dust, scratches and was looking very forlorn. Persecutor 13 was probably the biggest waste of money I had ever spent. Statistically a poor ship, I had tried to make the most of this dog by fitting her with Energy Vampire modules and Tackle gear, but had never really had an opportunity to use them. Maybe tonight I would.

So there I was sitting outside the Navy Yard in Perimeter, and Joe had us all blocked on the local chat, so not much was happening as usual. We had a Deputised Neutral pilot with us, let's call him Alpin (in-joke for me), and him and Joe were smacking away in local. At about this time the proximity alarm started to ping, and an Armageddon class battleship heaved its enormous bulk from the station and began trying to occupy the same spacial co-ordinates as PQ's Raven.

"What the….. What is this guy trying to do?!" PQ sounded legitamately annoyed.

The Armag wasn't showing known Imperial Commonwealth designators, but it was showing a known Internal Anarchy registration code. IntAn claimed to be mercenaries, but spend most of their time neutral-repping outside Jita in an attempt to cause fire-fights and generally declaring war for lulz. IEEE had once been decced by them, but we ignored it as we had been elsewhere at the time.

I commed the pilot, a jovial character we shall call SpaceWizard. Before long PQ and I were chatting away with him. It appeared that he was in a long standing feud with Alpin over some ancient slight from literally years ago, and assumed we were friends of his. We explained he had been deputised for the war against the Imperial Commonwealth and was tagging along. SpaceWiz started getting all friendly like, and I started to smell a big ole tarp. This was confirmed when (after talking in a friendly manner with Joe in local and smacking us lightly) he suggested in private that he could get Joe to undock. For lulz I agreed.

SpaceWiz docked up and we moved our battleships out of system. I sat orbitting in my Hawk with a big sausage tied around my neck acting as bait. Joe would come out and it would be Battleships everywhere with me jamming, though I figured SpaceWiz ( and his alt AltBoy) would fall on the winner of the fight anyway.

Fortunately for all concerned, just as Joe came out, the other half of the IEEE fleet, who had been on long range manuevers in low-sec, appeared on local and warped to the station at the wrong time, and Mr Phoenix ran back inside cackling maniacally to himself about failed tarps and victories due to his tactical genius again. Though a botch-job, I suggested to SpaceWiz that as Joe seemed to trust him, he should get AltBoy into the Imperial Commonwealth as it would be very lulz worthy and he agreed. Now, dear reader, I must point out that at no time did I suggest that he spy for us or anything remotely like that. But I did kind of figure having a 30 million skill point psychopath inside the IC ready to gank anyone for lulz would lead to an exciting adventure.

Boy was I right……….

Joe Phoenix > in and out of game i live to make a better world...

So for the last few days I have been working on my Skin Walking.  At first, I wasn't quite getting what /Emote had meant, and I lost quite a few Rifters to various things; TestBed A became one with an asteroid as I tried jamming the warp drive on, TestBeds B, C and E were all gunned down by various ne'er-do-wells and Testbed D vanished as I tried, though my pod remained in space as per normal. 

Then, not long ago, I got it.

Its wierd, it kinda seemed to work when I have ore in my hold, not to mention being out of my mind on Elite Angel Dust.  I was in this Osprey in Perimeter, trying to fit in with the locals, and nicking out of cans, and such, you know, wolf-in-carebear clothing kind of thing, when all of a sudden, I s-jumped.  For a second I felt at one with every facet of the universe at once.  I could see stars being born, I could see the complex mathematics that control why the sky is a particular colour, I could see a thousand Goons, voices raised at once, then suddenly silenced, I could see waves of Minmatar ships swarming at a shining golden beacon deep in Providence, scattering all before them.

It was pretty fucking awesome, dude.

And then -zoink-  I was in.  Who and where, I wasn't sure, but I was definately in a pod, and that pod was attached to a ship.  Zooming in I saw familiar Imperial Commonwealth markings on the hull of this particular craft.  I also noticed someone was talking to me on open comms.

"Well, what do you think?  I dont like it, no sir I dont!"

The comm panel showed me that my ship was fleeted, and an icon labelled Arabasta was flashing.  DefaultName23234 was the only other ship in our little fleet, and I guessed my name was Techiko, judging from the layout.  We hung suspended in an asteroid field, wrecks of rats all around us and curiously, a Coercer class Destroyer in front of us, asking if we wanted help towing them back to station.

"C'mon guys it would be fun, lets waste the lil puke!" laughed Default
"Seriously Tech, won't CVA take it badly if we do this?  Won't Joe kill you?!" asked Arabasta

I smiled, targetting up the defenseless ship, figuring it was fitted with salvage rigs and nothing else.
"Nah, he'll think its funny" I laughed, launching a volley of missiles.

Now, I gotta give it to the plucky DD pilot, he really did survive a lot, but just as his warp engine was spinning up, my last rocket caught him on the dorsal plate, and he detonated.  Persumably none of us were carrying webs, because the guy's pod warped off at top speed.  I took that as my cue to leave and promptly returned to my body, hoping that would at least start some thing running.
How right I was.

Two days later, I s-jumped back to Techiko to see how he was doing.  Imagine my suprise to find myself in a court room, with Joe serving as Judge, Judy and Executioner, banging his gavell and ranting about "Order in court!"-this and "You will respect the Judge!"-that.   Techiko and Arabasta were being charged with "Actions Unbecoming a Memebr of The Commonwealth", "Endangerment of the Commonwealth in Providence" and numerous other charges.  The little puke and his large CEO were also there, presumably playing the part of the prosecution.  Seems that the penalty for murdering neutrals in CVA (and not letting CVA find out) is somewhere like 80 million IsK and 6 months community service, whatever that is.  Of course, I pleaded guilty as charged, after all I was there.  Apparently Tech had been pleading ignorance of the rules and being badly led-on by Default, but hell, I decided that I should plead guilty to all charges without exception and throw my self at the Court's mercy before jumping out of Tech's body again before I suggested I be executed.

Last thing I heard, a very confused Techiko is on holiday/left/was kicked out of the IC, his POS "impounded" (i.e. confiscated) by Joe and went to work on Arabasta's tomato farm in Lonetrek.

Joe Phoenix > so you are saying you are an acception to the rule?

As I have previously mentioned, in a previous life I had powers which I seem to have lost.  The problem with jumping from one universe to another is that rules that govern the reality of one world do not necessarily travel over to the next.  I think there is some kind of rationale, but I'm no Theoretical Physicist so I couldn't even begin to bore you with what the current thinking on this is, suffice to say that Page 42 in one Universal Rule-Book does not have to exist in the next, and there are far to many instances of "Turn to Page xx" where nature has not bothered to proofread properly.  The upshot of this is that when you jump to another world, what you are trying to do many have massively unforseen circumstances.

Recently I had been trying to keep up with Joe Phoenix during his forays into Providence and Catch regions.  Unfortunately, my investigations kept being cut short both by the local CVA-friendly heavies, the Alliances at war with them (who keep putting up those infernally annoying blockade bubbles) and also generic reds who like to have a go.  I decided after too many lost Stealth Bombers I needed to return home for rest and resupply and gathered up some crap, ran the WT camp at Esa and set a course for Empire Space where I finally stopped.  My wallet felt far too light, the stench of burning ship lingered in my uniform and the pile of junk in my hangar was pretty much just that, junk.  I headed to the suite I rent from this station in a really foul mood and collapsed onto the bed.  For the first time in ages I fell asleep without the aid of large quantities of illicit drugs and I must say, it was a very unpleasant experience and one I don't wish to repeat.

When I woke up, I was siezed by an idea.  I realised I hadn't felt the sudden drop in reality that usually accompanies my movements between worlds.  Now it wasn't so much that the universe felt super-real, not like it did back on Mort, but more that it was static, that there was no ebb or flow of reality, no "eddies in the time-streams" so to speak.  No Eddies at all in fact.
I decided to try out  a theory.  I pulled the trunk from under my bed where I keep my large stash and loaded my two hypo-pnuematic syringes with about 50ccs of the hardest, most evil-looking narcotics that this New Eden can produce and placed the tips of the needles at the base of my skull where I inject for maximum outage.  A collegue once commented this was the Emergency Eject technique, as I have used it in the past to remove my concious self from sticky situations where I would be forced to take responsibility for my actions.  I pulled the triggers.  Everything went white.

Damien > .......
Damien > .......
Damien > ..................
Voice > Hello Damien
Damien> Wh-who's there?
Voice > Its /emote
Damien > Oh!  Hi!  Good to know your alive
/emote > Shut up for a second, I haven't got long.  I figured out how to Skin-Walk again.  You have to do it either mid-jump or in WormHole Space.  For some reason the normal rules work in there.
Damien > Oooookay.  Sounds risky.
/emote > Of course it is!  But you should try it.  Find me again once you got it working.  I gotta go, I'm nearly in the top five for Hulk kills and theres this one that refuses to die......

I woke up suddenly.
Could it be true?  Could I Skin-Walk again?  I picked up the syringes and stuffed them back in the case.  Running down the launch bay to where my ships were parked, I ran up the ramp of the first one I came to clutching the drug case to my chest like a child.

Soon.... soon all will be as it should be......