| “ | They weren’t invulnerable. Humans could kill them. Unless somebody got amazingly lucky, the usual cost was about two armored divisions and all their matériel for one Krolp.
— Harry Turtledove, Vilcabamba
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” |
The Krolp are a race of "centauroid" aliens appearing Harry Turtledove's short story "Vilcabamba". The Krolp are larger than a horse, with gray skin and heads similar in appearance to a jack-o-lantern and mouths lined with a sharp edge, but no true teeth, and large, glowing, cat-like eyes. The Krolp also have been described by humans as smelling like Limburger cheese.
The Krolp invaded Earth in the 22nd century, and quickly overwhelmed humanity's defense, easily shooting down or disarming the nuclear weapons used against their initial invasion forces. The US and Canada joined together to fight the Krolp, but their efforts were for not. The Krolp were not invincible, but it took large amounts of human resource to kill just one of them, to the point that two division of men and materiel were lost for every Krolp soldier killed. The Krolp quickly took control of most of Earth.
Battles here were deemed to be unfair or otherwise not in accordance with wiki standards, and have been removed from the statuses of the warriors and displayed below.
Battle vs. Homura Akemi (by SPARTAN 119)
Intro
In the voice of Akemi Homura:
From the depths of space they came, armed with a lust for conquest, and a boundless greed. Humanity had hoped that when we finally met the aliens, that they would be friendly. They weren't. We tried to destroy them with nuclear weapons. They shot down most of them, most of the the rest of the warheads failed to detonate, those that did barely chipped the paint of their ships. Their forces crushed the world's militaries in days, while they sustained only a handful of losses. And so it was that the Earth fell under the domination of the Krolp.
Even after the surrender of the human race, there were those who tried to fight back. One such man was right here in Mitakigahara. He actually managed to steal a Krolpish weapon and kill one of them. The Krolp retaliated without mercy. They rounded up two hundred citizens at random, and now they are threatening to execute them all unless the perpetrator surrenders.
One of their number was a girl I know quite well: Madoka Kaname, my only friend. I girl I have fought for what must have been decades now, perhaps centuries, turning time back again and again, through an eternal maze, in search for the one way out, the one way to save her from a different alien horror. The Krolp are just one more obstacle, and like all I have faced before them, I will keep fighting. They may have the power to manipulate gravity, and even the strong and weak nuclear forces. But I have two things they do not: First, the power to manipulate time itself, to stop even their deadliest weapons in their tracks, and unleash an army's worth of firepower in a fraction of a second. Second, I have my burning, all consuming desire to save the life of the one I love. The Krolp... and the Incubator... I will keep fighting until I put a stop to both of their plans.
Main Battle
Outside the Krolp Headquarters at Mitakihara City Hall, Mitakihara, Japan
Akemi Homura pressed the center of her shield, allowing time to continue. She stood outside the Mitakihara City Hall. Standing at the door were six Krolp guards. Homura drew her M249 Squad Automatic weapon and opened fire on the group.
The bullets, however, simply bounced off the exceedingly thick body armor of the Krolp. The Krolp guards raised their weapons, firing a off a burst of plasma bolts which struck Homura several times in the chest. Homura was covered by a flash of blue flames. The Krolp lowered their weapons, assuming the human insurgent had been incinerated.
Homura, however, was far from dead, for her soul gem remained intact. Akemi Homura pressed down on her shield, pausing time again and summoned five AT4s from her "hammerspace". Homura fired them in rapid succession, the rockets pausing an inch from one of the Krolp soldiers.
Homura then walked several feet away away, as casually as if she were walking home from school, before pressing the "button" in the center of her shield. One of the Krolp was hit by the AT4s, the multiple hits overwhelming even the alien's heavy armor. Jets of molten copper burned into the alien's flesh as its body was blown apart by the explosive force.
The surviving Krolp felt something they had not felt during the entire Earth campaign: fear. In a panic, one of the Krolp opened fire with its singularity generator, creating a black orb several feet away from Homura. Homura felt herself pulled towards the orb, along with everything else in the vicinity.
Homura stopped time again, walking around a destroyed car suspended in mid-air in its flight, having been drawn towards the miniature black hole, before walking right up the Krolp themselves, holding a C-4 charge in hand. Homura carefully slide the C-4 under the uniform of the nearest Krolp, then got out an M67 frag grenade and tossed in into the gaping open mouth of a Krolp officer, caught in the midst of shouting orders in the time.
Homura then got to a safe distance and de-activated her time stop. At once, the C-4 charge detonated, the blast being reflected off the inside of the Krolp's body armor and pulverizing the alien within. A second later, the Krolp officer's head exploded in a spray of alien blood and brain matter.
As time reset itself, a Krolp exclaimed, "By the stars! How is this human so powerful?!"
At the same time, a Krolp fired its deatomizer, vaporizing the fountain in which Homura was standing behind.... or rather she had been standing behind. For a split second, the Krolp thought it had won... until it saw a blue of grey and black appear a few meters in front of it.
The Krolp turned to face Homura, dual-wielding an MP5 submachine gun and a Krolp plasma rifle. Homura opened fire, sweeping across the staircase in front of the city hall, a hail of lead and plasma impacted the Krolp soldiers, plasma bolts burning alien flesh as bullets tore through areas unprotected by the armor. The final two Krolp fell dead as Homura ascended the staircase.
Epilogue
Inside the city hall
Madoka Kaname closed her tear-filled eyes, not wanting to see the face of the alien, or the barrel of the energy weapon that would surely bring about her demise. Series of loud bangs and the smell of burning flesh filled the room.
After a few seconds, Madoka opened her eyes, realizing she was not dead. Her would-be executioners were sporting dozens of bullet wounds and third degree burns. Stand in at the door, armed with an M249 SAW and an alien weapon was none other than...
"Homura-chan!", Madoka yelled. As soon as Homura had cut the binds of Madoka and the rest of the hostages, Madoka ran at Homura and pulled her into a tight embrace. Homura smiled momentarily, satisfied with her victory.
... But there was more work to be done.
A few days later, aboard a Krolp space battleship hovering over Mitakihara
Thanks to the Krolpish weaponry, Homura had killed a number of "witches", gaining enough Grief Seeds to use all the magic she wanted against the Krolp menace.
Alarms rang out on board the Krolpish space battleship Gilex. The Krolpish crew had been forced into the central control room, by a force of human insurgents. However, unlike the massive human uprising that now took place on the ground, the Krolp reported only one insurgent an adolescent human female.
This insurgent, however, seemed to teleport around, appearing and disappearing at will, and could cause legions of Krolp troops to fall dead.
Suddenly, the door to the control room bursts. The Krolp opened fire, but before the plasma bolts could make impact, they were suspended in midair. When time returned to normal, every last one of the Krolp crew lay dead.
Homura sat in the seat of the ship and grasped the controls. It was just like when she stole the Type 88 missile from the JSDF. At once, she understood how everything worked. The ship would obey her very thoughts. Homura took personal command of the ship's considerable firepower, rain beams of superheated death on Krolpish troops sent to quell the uprising in the streets below.
The surprise attack left the Krolp in Mitakihara crippled. Within the next few days, whispers of a mysterious human girl who destroyed armies of Krolp soldiers and even hijacked a spaceship spread like wildfire across the occupied earth. At the same time, the Krolp fleet was decimated by surprise attacks from a rogue battleship.
The Krolpish leadership ordered a full retreat from Earth a week later, and soon afterwards, a computer terminal in the free United States received a mysterious message from an unknown sender. The message detailed the technology behind the Krolp's weapons.
To the amazement of the American physicists, everything in the message actually worked. With the Krolp having fled from Earth, humanity began a game of catch up. In several years, they had launched their first space battleship.
Not long after that, the fleet was sent for the first time, to deliver an ultimatum to the Krolp leadership: "If you ever return to Earth, you will face the consequences.
But there was one human-controlled spacecraft that was not part of the fleet, a vessel that now went under the name Guardian Angel. Cool as ever, Homura fired up the faster than light drives on the former Krolpish battleship.
"Madoka is now safe from the Krolp... now, to deal with at "Inucubator"... at the source of the problem..."
WINNER: Akemi Homura
Expert's Opinion
While the Krolp had Homura outgunned considerably, the effects of her time manipulation powers more than evened up the odds. The experts also pointed out that the Krolp were not expecting anything near the level of threat that Homura provided.
To see the original battle, weapons, and votes, click here.