The day the beings later known as youma
first hit San Francisco, California.  One hundred and

fifty-seven people

died that day.  The monsters just teleported in and went on a
rampage.  It

   Just a rampage?  I bring this up because, while the
Generals do seem
slightly less than tactical geniuses in canon (I blame their mental
domination by Beryl), I don't think they'd just throw youma away on
pointless rampages all over the world.  "You" wouldn't know this
in-story, of course, but one wonders if there was no
discernable pattern
or intent to the youmas' actions.  Particularly, someone should notice
eventually that the youma are trying to drain people's energy
(assuming
that Jadeite&Co were just looking for cities without Senshi.
Otherwise,
they really need *some* kind of reason to be attacking the rest of the
planet).

Research is ongoing for the reason.  Suspicions point towards the
development to harvest death-energy and transmit it home without somebody
having to come back.  Youma are cheap.

ended up taking a SWAT team, some citizens with heavy

rifles, and a brave

EOD man who improvised a large mine attached to his truck

to take five of

   Five of them, after which the rest retreated, or *all*
five of them?

All Five.  And the EOD guy didn't take them all down, but he helped alot.
These Youma don't retreat.

them down.  Suddenly the war on terror, Iraq and

Afghanistan took a back

seat.  Sure, the attack killed less than Pearl Harbor or

September 11

did.
It didn't matter.  Sure, the mullahs whined that the 'Great

Satan' was

reaping his just rewards.  They soon learned differently.

I had recently

read an essay about the "Jacksonian Tradition".  It rung a chord in
me.  It
was to ring a greater one later.

   Sug:  "And with this new situation, it rang..."  Or something to
indicate that the "chord" is related to these new events.

Looking into it.

Me, I took stock of my finances, and ordered a .50 BMG sniper rifle.
Cost
me close to $8,000.  Took every cent I had saved in my career.

   Ah... lemme guess.  That price tag means a Barret M82, I bet.
Semi-auto is normally overkill for a .50BMG, but in this case
I suspect
it's gonna come in handy.

I like semi-autos.

Fortunately,
the same day, Barrett had announced that they were going to

sell at cost,

plus tool-up costs.  They were going to expand.

Precipitously.  The next

attack came three days later in Tuscan, just long enough for the
public to

   SP:  isn't that "Tuscon"?  "Tuscan" is a region in Europe, IIRC.

fixed ;).  Oops.

start wondering if the attack was a once-only event.

Aliens, monsters,

radioactive mutations, all the theories expressed in the movies were

   What, no time-travelling killer robots?  (:)

They were pretty obviously organic.  And not in a Terminator skin way.

proposed.  The fact that the bodies decomposed to dust so

quickly didn't

help.  We didn't know anything but that it took large amounts of
damage to

   Yeah.  Makes it difficult to find any weaknesses to exploit.

kill them.  Until then they were a nightmare out of hell.

How little we

knew, and yet, how right we were.  The second attack was

with six of the

suckers.  But Nevada was a different proposition than

California, and

they

   I'd suggest moving the line about "Tuscon" down here.

He's rambling a bit.  I tend to do that.  But I think you're right.

had some warning.  Only seventy-eight people died that day.  Eight
civilians
opened up on the youma, delaying them long enough for many people to
escape.

   I'd suggest "just long enough".  Merely IMHO, but eight civilians,
likely not very heavily armed, are going to have a hard time
containing
six youma.  But with every SWAT team in the country on edge,
"not long"
should still be "long enough."

There wasn't any 'just' about it.  If they had sacrificed their lives saving
the rest of the civilians, it would have been just.  78 people still died
that day.

Curiously, one man was more effective that what seemed

right.  Pastor

Jack
Newman's bullets, from a unimposing .38 revolver, did more

damage than

the
.45's fired by several others.  But it was several weeks

before this news

came out.

   It would have been easier if any bodies had survived to be
post-mortemed.  But yeah, eventually someone should notice
this pattern.

Took extensive analysis of video footage along with interviews of surviving
wounded who saw the shootings.  Jack Newman, btw, in my world is up for
saint hood.  The Army managed to weasel around various restrictions and use
the fact that he served a four year stint, and the startings of a universal
recall, to give him a number of post-humus medals.

At this point, President Bush started calling up military

forces.  Every

base was in Charlie, with west coast bases in Delta.  We

were scared.

Troops overseas were clamoring to come home and help.

   "Charlie" and "Delta" I'm not familiar with, but from context it's
fairly clear that they refer to alert status of some kind.  I
know some
people would suggest more explication here, but I'm not sure
that would
match the narrative "tone" established so far.  Author's
choice, I suppose.

I stuck 'force protection' in there.  Charlie is 'I think bad things might
happen', Delta is 'Bad things are going to happen, or the shit's hit the
fan'

The attacks accelerated and spread.  We learned that Japan had been
suffering from them, and some 'Sailor Scouts' or 'Sailor

Warriors' had

been
fighting them.  It was discovered that blessed bullets,

especially from

certain pious individuals, were more effective.  It

certainly resulted in

certain priests being, well, marked as fraudulent.

   Naming no names, but I bet most televangelists didn't fare
too well.

Negative results.  Even previously blessed bullets lost their force.

Our reaction was,
well,
extreme.  This was a HOLY fight.  Many mullahs were torn apart after
their
'blessings' proved less than effective in killing the

beasts.  After Fort

   I *think* I know what you mean here, but you might want to
make it more
clear just which varety of mullahs you're referring to.
   There's also Wiccans, buddhists, Shintoists, neo-pagans,
and who knows
how many others.  The Army has a least a few of each.  I
wonder how they
fared.  And what about things like protective charms, "warded"
buildings, etc?  Just food for thought.

It's too general.  A church occupied by generations of monks would itch.
Bullets are a little different, it's like having something you're allergic
to on the ground verses it being in your bloodstream.  It's enough that
blessing sniper bullets is effective, but working on machine-gun loads isn't
time effective.

Carson was attacked, killing 12 soldiers, I was issued an

M-16.  But that

was discovered to be capable of little more than harassing

to the youma.

   Too bad the Army never adopted the H&K G-11.  In burst mode, it
essentially puts three rounds through the same hole (triple damage
score!).
   I bet Marines are pulling lots of M-14s out of storage.

Every gun is getting pulled out storage.  Elementary school kids are being
taught with the .22's.

They had gotten tougher.  Well, so did we.  You quickly

started seeing

weapons worn openly by people.  First it was mostly

handguns, but people

   Sug:  "but soon people..."

fixed

started carrying the heaviest rifle they owned.  I started

carrying my

Barrett instead of the M-16, and nobody questioned me.

   Except for Lt Baka, but the Sarge had a quiet word with him.

Chief.  He is a Sarge.

Anti-firearm laws
were repealed at a local level as a fast rate if they

weren't ignored

   Hmm.  Most restrictions would have to be repealed at the
State level.
I could see some "executive orders" from Governors' offices,
though, in
states whose constitutions allow for that.

Try getting around a 'I will parden any person arrested for carrying a
weapon for the defense of the people in these trying times'

completely.  The youma mostly hit population centers, but

anywhere people

gathered was a target.  We, the military, just couldn't

cover everywhere

sufficiently.  The NRA and other groups started setting up carefully
staged
'parties', complete with .50BMG machinegun demonstration centers...

   BYOG?  Heh.  Although since most enthusiasts own more than
one firearm,
I suspect a lot of loaning started going on.  Local NRA branches would
probably get right into the middle of that.
   Minor factoid:  during the Lend-Lease phase of WWII, many
US civilians
donated rifles and ammunition to Britain to arm the woefully
underarmed
Home Guard.

Think of them as large gun shows, with prearranged firing zones.
And sad part about the lend-lease program was that most of the guns were
destroyed rather than be returned like promised.

It was
the rebirth of the militia.  In Colorado Springs, the local

Class 3 arms

dealer happened to be close to a youma attack with his...

vehicle.  He

   "Vehicle."  Ohboy.

managed to dust 3 youma in short order with the two machine guns
mounted on
his SUV.

   Wouldn't a pickup truck work better?  Most SUVs aren't really good
prospects for mounting heavy weapons, to my mind.  A lot have light
frames, and the cargo area is roofed over.

This is an actual guy.  Called the Dragon-man.  It's not like most of
today's SUV's.  It's hard to describe.  He has a place to stand in the back,
and the guns are mounted to the reinforced roof.

This, to me, marked the start of the full restoration of the 2nd
amendment.

   Woo. *That* gets into some sticky political territory.
But it does
match the narrational tone established so far.

Read the jeffersonian essay.  It'll explain viewpoints.

Meanwhile, every scrap of evidence about the attacks were

gathered up and

analyzed.  I heard rumors of new weapons, even as precision-guided
artillery
was being set up in strategic points in and around cities.

Police were

given GPS devices and hasty training in calling in fire support.  I

   Now here my suspension of disbelief hits a snag.  Without using
precision rounds, even the best artillery needs ranging shots to get
on-target.  Between that and the fact that the youma are generally
hitting densely populated urban areas, I can't see anyone using
artillery this way.  Maybe, if the battle has gone on long
enough that a
large area has been totally evacuated, yeah, but not before
then.  Even
perfectly targetted arty is going to do massive collateral damage.

Our artillery is *very* accurate.  True, you don't want civilians close, but
the Youma have a tendency to clear an area of living humans, then regroup a
bit to hit somewhere else.

still

remember the how the youma looked shocked when they were

hit with the

first
artillery strick.  For all of six seconds, when the second

shell hit.

   Sug:  "until the second..."

ummm....  I like my way better.

Heck,
at Minot AFB we had a B-52 flying at all times armed with JATO laser
guided

   JATO=Jet Assisted Take-Off.  I suspect you mean JDAM?
This has the

Too close to bedtime.

same problem as artillery, though -- JDAMs have a CEP of 13m,
at best --
30m if using inertial guidance.  There *are* improvements slated to
bring that down to 3m, but even so, I sure hope those are
500-pounders,
not their larger siblings.

500 pounders initially.  Smaller ones were quickly improvised.  And the
laser guided ones can be pinned closer.

   Another problem is how fast the Youma can move, rendering
GPS-guided
bombs less effective -- it takes those bombs several seconds to fall.
In that time the youma could move a block or more.  I'd go for
laser-guided, by preference.  Best would probably be AGM-65s from
Warthogs, and Hellfires from Apaches.  Gives the target less time to

Youma might be fast, but they don't have the experience to associate falling
object from plane with:MOVE NOW.

bombs.  And people around with radios and pointers.

Washington D.C. had

alot of the protection, of course, with an A-10 constantly circling
between

   Ah, the A-10 -- the FINAL answer in close air support.  I bet
somebody's going to start making more of them (since IIRC
Fairchild-Republic is either extinct, or was bought out).

Ayep.  A10 becomes very popular plane with whole nation.  Especially the
high-linger ones capable of staying up even longer.

the white house and congress building.  The 30MM rounds

>from the GAU-8

don't
need any blessings to kill youma.  Hotlines were set up so people

   It *is* a bit hard to hit something smaller than a tank
with one, but
the fact that you don't have to correct for gravity or windage helps.
Plus burst fire....

Youma are plenty big enough.  Especially in groups...

could call
in attacks.  Fast reaction heavy weapon patrols were formed.  They
usually

   Since you use it as a acronym below, I'd suggest
capitalizing the name
here.

Doesn't look right to me.

finished up what the citizens didn't kill.  Youma started to learn,
but they
didn't have much of a learning curve, that's for sure.

They had a hard

time, even when they popped up in the dozens, learning to

keep out of

view

   Wait -- had a hard time *learing,* or a hard time
*despite* learning?
The grammatical construction is a bit ambiguous.

Hard time learning.

of rooftops and towers.  Most of them had snipers firing blessed
ammunition.

   "most of them" sounds like "most of the youma."  Took me a
re-read to
realize you were taling about the towers and rooftops.

Did a slight re-write.

One round usually wouldn't kill one, but they would do

rather serious

damage.  Three or four rounds would finish most of them off.  Of
course, it
would be all over when the FRHWP, or 'FRAP', showed up.

Heavy machine

guns
would keep the youma from charging the HMMWVs long enough for the
others to
nail them with RPGs and wire-guided missiles.

Construction codes have been revised again.  What, with the

attacks, most

public places are guarenteed to be attacked sooner or later.  We

   SP:  "gauranteed"

fixed

refuse to
give up our lives for the youma.  And that includes gathering.

   I'm not sure the time scale supports changes in building
codes.  *Mods*
to public buildings, yeah, especially since so many older ones
are built
to the old Civil Defense fallout-shelter standards.

Sorry, 'reinforcement' can mean anything from sand-bags to titanium plating.
Mostly it's reinforced concrete.  Deleted.

Anyways,
public places have all been reinforced.  After all, they

have to take

monsters, and the high-caliber response to them.  The

highest-risk sites

have guards armed with machine guns just in case.  Crime has dropped
to just
about zero.  Everybody's armed, and any gunfire attracts an

overwhelming

response.

   Which has certain drawbacks of its own, though.  Like collateral
damage.  And regrettably, I'd bet that accidental shootings
have gone up
-- at least until people wise up some.  While I'll cheerfully admit to
being a 2nd-Ammendmant supporter myself, arming large portions of the
public with heavy weapons isn't going to happen without *some* things
going wrong.  The Swiss show it *can* be done, but the transitional
period is likely to be rough.

Minor compared to the murder rate drop and deaths from the Youma.

Sure, we still take casualties.  But we're in a fight for HUMANITY.
Many of
us view it as the preview of the final coming.  Praise god

and pass the

ammunition type of thing.  Even now, less than a year later, there's

   Sug:  quote marks around the 'praise...ammo' line.
   Might want to modify the 'second coming' line, too -- the
USA has a lot
of non-Christians who are not going to look at it in that light.  And
even a lot of Christians wouldn't, either, IMO.

What he sees it on the news, local area.

talk of
a monument to all those who've fallen to the monsters.

   We put up monuments to *everything* these days.  Not that I'm
*objecting,* really, but at some point we're going to run out
of room...

War monuments generally take longer.

And the talk about pulling out of the other countries

evaporated once we

learned that other countries were suffering attacks as great, if not
worse
than us.  China was direly struck, and became our ally once more.

   "direly"?  I'm not sure that's a legal word.

Dire: Warning of or having dreadful or terrible consequences; calamitous: a
dire economic forecast; dire threats.
dire'ly adv.

They were
unable to maintain their state as it was under the assault.

Everybody

had
to be armed to hold back the tide, and you can't oppress an

armed people.

   While arming the Chinese populace *would* have a serious
effect on the
structure of the PRC government, I'm not sure it would be so simple as
suggested here.  At this point, you're in danger of sounding
less like a
'fic than a political leaflet.  Authorial "preaching" turns
off a lot of
readers.

The USA showed once again how much war material it could

produce when

threatened.  We're the largest arms exporter in the world now.  The

   Weren't we already?  Well, except maybe for the fUSSR
states, if you
count them as one block.
   And I bet the Russians would be big players in this, too.  They're
better than almost enyone at making simple, idiot-proof, dependable
infantry weapons.  And infantry weapons are going to make up
the bulk of
this war, especially in 2nd- and 3rd-world nations.  American weapons
are usually good, but dependent on heavy logistical support.
The M-16,
frex, performs as well in battle as the AK-47, but is substantially
higher-maintenance.

new
M-20, firing an explosive 10MM round is the most popular,

followed by

the

   Rifle or pistol?

Rifle.  I'm thinking of switching it to something like 8.5MM

venerable .50BMG.  I've heard some troops are being issued an
experimental
variation on the gyrojet round.  Supposed to do more damage

at longer

   The gyrojet's biggest problem was a severe lack of
accuracy.  Whenever
you have propulsion taking place beyond the end of the gunbarrel,
accuracy suffers.
   OTOH, I could see rocket-propelled ammo making a comeback,
using rounds
that did all their burn *inside* the length of the rifle barrel, in
order to allow heavy rounds without heavy recoil.  Recoil, weight, and
ammo reequirements are going to be big design drivers for this new
generation of battle rifles.

Actually the gyrojet's biggest problem was expense per round.  Accuracy was
accepable at the ranges it was for.
And this is grapevine level stuff.  No real clue.

ranges.  Thing is, if you're that far from youma, you call

in for an air

strike or artillery, know what I mean?

   I just hope the target area's been evacuated, as noted above.

Humans don't last long close to Youma.

I hear that we've had some
success
in the research on how they manage to teleport in.  The other day, I
heard
on TV that the youma might be coming using Antarctica as a relay
point.  If
so, I can see us nuking the area...

   Pity the poor penguins.  I *would* hope that the NCA would
decide on
more precise recon before resorting to such measures -- carpet-nuking
Antarctica would be just a *tad* extreme (I'll refrain from the
obligatory Evangelion jokes).

I'm sure the higher ups would do some recon.  But if they found a thriving
base...

Thanks for your response,

Firethorn


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