Mecha Nezumi/Tank Nezumi

**Key Features** | »» *"Nazrin"* 250mm gun (x3)»» Kinetic-burst cannon (x2); mounted on turret»» Articulated crew compartment w/ suspension»» High-friction mechanical feet (x2)»» Weighted stabilizing tail

*"Sorry, but if you don't take mice seriously, you'll die."*

- Nezumi battery commander to an enemy base being fired upon
## Tactical Analysis

* **Fear of mice**: The harmless sounding Nezumi (Jap. *"mouse"*) is all but. Mounting three 250mm guns on a turret, the Nezumi packs a serious punch over long range with a high spread and thus area damage. However, it walks rather slowly to make sure the gun can be properly aimed. And unlike what one would expect, the Nezumi is a big vehicle. Big enough, in fact, to crush other vehicles under it. This is especially useful when the enemy is not watching out or distracted.

* **Don't forget - mice are fast!**: In addition to that, it also mounts a pair of kinetic burst cannons to at least meagerly defend against foes who came too near to it. When not using the artillery guns (i.e. in this mode) it is also quite capable to reach higher speeds, making it semi-useful for kiting enemies.

* **...and yet, it's still just a mouse**: The Nezumi has some drawbacks, of course. Like most artillery pieces, adding too much armour would make it go too slow for its purpose and its aim is anything but good - that's what the Wave-Force Artillery exists for, after all. Combined with a considerable price, deploying Nezumi must be well considered.

* **Why elephants fear rodents**: High-ranking Nezumi crews are granted access to more powerful, but expensive, nanite shells that release a spray of nanites that eats its victims alive until its battery eventually dies.

## Background

When Allied and Soviet intelligence began to assemble data about the Imperial military, they all noted the lack of long ranged, indirect artillery guns, a glaring omission in any modern army. Because the Wave-Force Artillery was an extremely powerful unit that fired directly at targets unlike the V4s, it was not until the end of the war that the Wave-Force Artillery was classified as an indirect fire unit (Mainly because the Wave-Force Artillery could never miss its target, it was thought as a long-range heavy tank).

The Empire attempted to make due with close air support, the inclusion of squad-level light mortars (such as the infamous *"Knee Mortar"*, which had English or Russian instructions to fire it while braced against the leg, and Japanese instructions for rigging splints for the broken legs of prisoners of war) and capturing enemy guns, but it was a stopgap at best. This was never the intention of the Shogunate; both Yoshiro and Tatsu were ardent supporters of the artilleryman, but rather a result of shortages.

The **Nezumi**, deceptively translating to *"mouse"*, was a project for the world's largest transforming mecha, designed to transport heavy artillery guns and provide stable firing platforms on any terrain.

The machine had two modes; in tank mode, the Nezumi is carried along on four wide tread pods, which, as in many other Empire designs, double as pontoons for amphibious transportation, and carries a turret with a pair of kinetic-burst cannons capable of laying down massive amounts of firepower and chewing up enemy positions with ease.

This only would have been a devastating weapon, as the heavily armoured vehicle could simply plow through enemy positions while laying down protective fire for warriors following it.

However, the true role of the Nezumi lies in its mecha form. From deep in the machine's core, powerful engines separate the armoured plates and articulated sections of the tank, turning it into a hunched bipedal machine that bears surprising resemblance to its namesake despite the great disparity in size and mass.

Mounted on its back is a trio of 250mm guns which would be able to crush enemy emplacements in a single shot, allowing the ponderous mecha to effortlessly destroy massive amounts of enemy machinery and infrastructure from far beyond retaliatory range.

At least, in theory.

The 250mm gun ran into the largest array of production delays, design oversights, and sheer stupidity that has ever plagued the manufacture of a weapon. The first guns delivered had no mountings, as the data drive containing the production order of the mounts had been carelessly used as a paperweight and forgotten about by a drunken employee.

Then, a malfunctioning batch of nanites caused serious weaknesses in the gun's casting as shown in the first test, overseen by the Shogunate themselves, resulting in the gun exploding after it had fired a superheated slug directly at Prince Tatsu's brand new Model 66 Mitsubishi Daitengu sports car after the cannon had inadvertently caused a manual override of the targeting system due to its weak integrity.

A year later, after the second contractor contracted to develop the 250mm gun went bankrupt due to internal scandal; the Shogunate declared the 250 mm gun to be cursed and decided to move on with the invasion, leaving the Nezumi without a weapon, and directly, leaving it to collect dust in hangars.

After the devastating blows suffered by the infrastructure of the Imperial Navy, an opportunity arose as Shirada Shipworks began to sell off various obsolete pieces of equipment for next to nothing to pay off expenses, including a stock of twenty-year old naval guns that never saw service. Imagine the surprise on the face of Atsuto Fujiwara, Kanegawa Industries' CEO, when a low ranking sarariman arrived at his office with news of several hundred 250mm cannons being sold at a warehouse down the road for twenty five thousand yen a piece!

Fortunately for Kanegawa Industries, the 250mm guns Shirada Shipworks was selling were actually fully developed and not the preliminary models that exploded when firing; the credit went to several engineers who were not involved in the 456mm gun project. Being a combination of creative new minds and old experienced brains with a single target of ‘We want to keep on working’, they looked at Shirada’s projects on hiatus and found only one: The 250mm gun.

After researching on the 456mm gun on the Shogun Battleship, the group of engineers utilized the finest of nanotechnology, weapon specifications and data combined with their brains, they yielded the final 250mm gun design, formally named **Model 0120, 250mm gun, Nazrin**.

Although the 250mm Nazrin gun is not as powerful in comparison to the 456mm gun, the 250mm has a faster rate of fire, allowing it to sustain a barrage of superheated slug fire on its target. Strangely enough, crews of Wave-Force Artilleries do not seem to have a rivalry with Nezumi crews, even though they are same in purpose. When interviewed, a Wave-Force Artillery gunner was happy to share his views:

*"Rivalry? There is no point in rivalry, since we are both the same in purpose, yet different in deployment. The Nezumi that accompany us on our way to the designated bombardment area help to defend us against enemy units in transit and if they are too much to handle for the Nezumi, they would use themselves as decoys and allow us to pull back and eliminate the gaijin with our Wave-Force cannons.*

*However when we are given the green light to bombard our targets, the Nezumi would fire at the more trivial of structures and defenses, allowing us to use the devastating full potential of the Wave-Force cannon on the more critical or stronger structures. With this complementing relationship, our efficiency is increased drastically since we do not have to take apart the weaker structures, as enemy production structures could build more units while we are taking apart the trivial matters. There will instead be a constant bombardment of the enemy base to prevent them from getting back on their feet during the time we have to recharge our Wave-Force cannons."*

The Wave-Force Artillery gunner would pat a Nezumi gunner on the back as they would laugh together, sharing their hard-earned sake as they would turn and look at the Sea of Japan, which only floating corpses and pieces of hulls and other things floating about on the sea after a short confrontation with speedboats as a Naginata would cruise past with Burst Drones flying overhead into the horizon.

## Behind the scenes

The use of the name *"Nezumi"* for such a powerful machine could be a reference to the *"Maus"* super heavy tank planned by the Germans during the real life World War II.