Steel Nation - Stage 05

Steel Nation Tournament held by ~dire-musaera

Steel Nation Tournament - Final Stage

Late once again--sorry for the extremely long delay... Too many things were going on that slowed down my work flow.

Well, as promised, I have created an epic piece for all of you to enjoy. Hopefully, this is epic enough, heheh.

If you see an infrequency in the line quality, that is because I drew some panels on the computer, before and after my trip, and the rest were done on paper during my trip.

Continuing the tradition of ~The-Russian-Gestapo, here links to some epic music to make this entry more epic:
- "Dance of Curse" by Yoko Kanno (Just replace "Es-ca-flow-ne!" in the lyrics with "Shi-ning-PSE-UDO!")
- "Mr. Adam" by Kota Hoshino (For the epic battle scenes towards the end)

I wish I could have cameoed everyone, but I tried my best to cameo as much characters as I could.

Cameos (and notable mentions):
- Santris Industries Logo © ~Degulus
- BIA Production Model © ~Red-Rook
- Jennifer "Dee" and "Mick" © ~Khaiya
- Z-Infected A.E.R.O. Soldiers © ~Degulus and *balrogon
- Ramirez's Unit 00541 © ~DRa90NBoi
- MIRA Steel Nation Security Forces mech © ~DarknessSealed
- Ailes Noires, Shadow, and Princess Luna, and "The Lunaris Royal Guard Mech (Ailes Custom)"© ~DarkeAngel
- Ally "IceFire" Kell, Athos Corporation Employee, and "Tarasque" © ~ShipMaster
- "The Two Doctors" (Dr. Ralph Smiffington III and Dr. Ivanovich Gregori Romani Gyrode) and "Deathbot 2.0" (a.k.a. "DeathAngel") © ~The-Russian-Gestapo
- Clyde Dore © ~Serain
- Biode Transformed Gregorovich Tjernikov XV and "Gigil, Unit III" © ~Tenkyougan
- Advent Core (a.k.a. Biode) © ~Degulus and ~Tenkyougan
- Jay, Chloe, "A.C.T.E.V. II", and "Seraphim" © ~Asgar19
- Steffi Frohlich and "Kiwibot" © *ShikakuSuika
- Mul Kirtap, "D.O.G.", and "Kay-Nine" ("K9") © ~Mul
- Jeff Castlerock © *Sketchfighter316
- Otamie's Mech © ~Otamie
- "Pamela MMMII" © ~quronocci
- "LoLi-CHAn" © ~Drakhael
- "Captain Rosko"© *CaptRosko
- "Mac" the Knight Tank © ~TheArashi
- "AW-X2" © ~StarBomber109
- "The Fantastic Fight Machine" © ~Mooglepinoy22
- "Reurodzona Duma"© ~Guncannon
- "Taurus" and "Gemini" © ~koeb
- "Vangaurd" © *CloudSlide
- "GOLENS unit" © ~wansworld
- "Akbam"© ~Inum
- "Alastor"© ~BlueNavy
- "Tejon"© ~Toresky
- Jasmine © ~Jazzfox
- Natasha Chevka © *kitfox-crimson

Plotline tie-ins:
- The Lunaris Royal Guard vs. Da iLLMaTiC CReW by ~DRa90NBoi
- Steel Nation Tournament - Post-Stage 04 Intermission #01 by ~DRa90NBoi
- Steel Nation fight 4 by *kitfox-crimson
- Steel Nation fight 5 (pages 1 and 2) by *kitfox-crimson
- War by ~The-Russian-Gestapo
- Welcome to the Steel Nation... by ~Jazzfox
- Round Two Extra: Testing Ground by ~Asgar19
- All Your Base by ~Degulus

Side notes:

- A fight in the Dire Marshes--heheh, "dire..." I was interested in making the battle being fought on air, under water, and on land--making use of all the mech's modes.

- The MTX Center has many buildings--big and small!

- I apologize for this story jumps around a lot when it comes to settings. Basically, Santris' infected minions raid the entire MTX Center. It's basically everyone for themselves and some have allied with each other to defeat the common threat. In the fray involving the USB, DeathAngel, and BIA models, Ralph is in the USB with Clyde (most likely escaped after their life-threatening run-in with Dr. Grenner) and Gyrode is piloting the DeathAngel. Towards the end, Tai and Dee, as well as some others who rely on communicating to their mechs, are in a transport helicopter flying over MTX. Unfortunately, I didn't draw panels illustrating this--as well as other things I wished had better clarification.

- I'm not exactly sure how Mr Rudolph Renaldo resurrected his Fantastic Fight Machine. I assume that Thor had the back-up plans and Tai's crew rebuilt it from the ground up, also finding a fix to alleviate the massive combustion problem.

- This must be some kind of Russian party!

- Dark PSEUDO uses the Force (of Gravity) to defeat those annoying BIA units. Conceptually, the PSEUDO creates mini black holes and anti-black holes to both implode and explode the interior of the enemy--ripping them to shreds. However, this is physically not possible, because we all know that gravity is dependent on mass, and black holes are extremely massive, despite their tiny size. Now, due to the conservation of mass, mass cannot be created nor destroyed--therefore, PSEUDO can't make black holes, even if it tries to manipulate the mass of the objects inside the enemy; all that mass has to come from somewhere. So how does this work? Maybe the PSEUDO takes pieces from existing black holes somehow, but we would never know...

- Why is Joan crying? Well, maybe because it's over, or because the PSEUDO could have used the Force killed her, or the fact that she sacrificed her victory to ensure that her friends were safe. It could be a combination of all these things.

- The ending is a little mysterious. I wanted to go with a cliff hangar, 'cuz that's how I roll, heheh.

- Yes, that is a giant mutated fish--the one from ~Asgar19's extra comic. Dr. Grenner must have forgotten about that little experiment. Primarily, the fish had traveled from the City Ruins to the Dire Marshes, where it mutated. Afterwards, it was awakened by the battle, and following the combatants to the MTX Center.

- Who will join the battle to save the Earth from utter chaos? Maybe a super-modified version of Gregory?! It is a mystery...

$0RRy 4 N-E TyPo5...

Steel Nation Tournament © ~dire-musaera
Tai Lam, Joan, Arthur "Ace" McMath, José M. Ramirez, "Da iLLMaTiC CReW", and "B-BoT RoCK.STeaDy" © ~DRa90NBoi
Vincent LaPerouse, "Shining PSEUDO", and "Dark PSEUDO" © *kitfox-crimson