Numbers' New Year's Newsletter: Mi-24 Hind-sight is 2020

[Other years' letters: 2011 / 2012 / 2013 / 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / 2017 / 2018 / 2019 / 2020 / 2021 ]

My eyes darted throughout the sky, desperately seeking the source of the noise.  And then I saw it.  My fingers reached for my radio.

"Admiral Killthunder, what's a Russian gunship doing here?"

But the good Admiral had no answer.  At least, none that I would like.

I'll rewind a bit, for those of you just joining me.  As explained in my previous years' Newsletters (linked above for your convenience), the misadventures of my friends and crew on our good-intentioned romp through time and space knows no end, no sanity.

Upon parrying the lightning in our modified performance street racer to escape a planet with a drifting-based economy while defeating its biggest villain who'd weaponized the weather (all while faking our own deaths to cover our tracks), what was left of my team found itself in the farmlands of Bratislava.

Bratislava, USA.

Our ripping and tearing of the fabric of spacetime had sent us into the year 2020, where America's unstoppable decline had at long last giving the Soviets the chance to win the Cold War.  Now Hinds like the one above us filled the air, part of the invading army's battle to save America from the Americans.

My team and I had to move fast.  We used the parts of the Ten-Lightsecond Car to fashion hastily-built exosuits, not even full mechs or powered armour and left what we couldn't use behind.  We linked up with the local resistance.  It was there that we met...  I'll be honest, I've forgotten his name.  He had a trench coat and a shotgun and taught us to make pipebombs.  But his name reminded me of a kind of candy I desperately wanted to eat again.  And I could've sworn I'd seen him before somewhere, possibly as a cowboy, a space marine, or maybe just a regular marine capable of driving a mini-sub.

Maybe I'd seen him before in another dimension, but if anyone understood our plight, it was this guy.  It wasn't our battle, and all we wanted was to get home, but if lending our hands was our only option, my team and I would do whatever we could.

According to our new friend's intel, this place was now called the U.S.S.A., and the leadership within the Red House had a Dimensional Map.  The resistance wanted into the Red House to, I don't know, finally take their country back like they should've done years ago, and my team and I wanted in to find that Map.

So, for the moment, we had a temporary and fragile alliance.  And these exosuits weren't going to last.  We scrapped them, and used their pieces to fashion some new weapons: energy machetes, hardlight axes, power tridents, and my personal favourite, the beam katana.  In this fallen world, there were no more heroes, and my friends and I fully admitted we were in this for ourselves.

But isn't everyone?

I write this as we make preparations for our assault.  We have already sent in scouts to case the joint, and I think we have a good idea on just how we will pull this job off.  I can't promise anything, though, but with that Map and a lot of luck, we might find our way home in time for New Year's 2021 and finally be able to finish #400.

But let's not say anything crazy.

- Numbers
Somewhere outside New Moscow, U.S.S.A.
January 2020


[Other years' letters: 2011 / 2012 / 2013 / 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / 2017 / 2018 / 2019 / 2020 / 2021 ]