The Rocket Angel


Designation: Elite Airborne Infantry
Training Headquarters: Women’s War Academy, Hokkaido
Trained at: Imperial Dojo
Motto: "Do not underestimate us, for we channel the wrath of the heavens."

Equipment:

• Twin Photon Cannons
• Wrist-mounted paralysis whip
• Colour-coordinated battle armour
• Stabilising wings
• Air-cooled helmet with targeting deployment



To the uninformed observer, the Empire of the Rising Sun appears to be deeply stratified along class and gender lines, suggesting that such a regimented society would never deign to allow women to take on the role of warriors and engage in frontline combat. This assumption, however, could not be further from the truth. We now know that, more than ten years ago, acting on the advice of his son, the Crown Prince, Emperor Yoshiro saw fit to establish the Imperial Women’s War Academy in the heart of the island of Hokkaido, with the aim of training the Empire’s most outstanding and suitable women in a combination of both traditional and modern combat techniques, segregating the academy by gender to ensure proper order and discipline.


Formidable on any battlefield, the Rocket Angels have proven capable of easily defeating even the most hardened Soldiers.

Although presented to the public as a return to the Empire’s legendary all-female ‘pole-arm’ cavalry, this social change proved to be highly controversial amongst the Emperor’s ultra-conservative subjects, with many families forbidding their daughters from taking up arms and enlisting (they would not necessarily have been accepted into the AIFG anyway). Expressing his frustration publicly, Crown Prince Tatsu took it upon himself to intervene. Soon afterwards, dissent was quelled and the Academy’s ranks began to swell with determined young women, eager to learn the ways of war.

As disapproval gave way to fascination, legions of cynical journalists, inspired schoolgirls and depressed young men set up camp around the Academy’s impenetrable walls, waiting in vain to catch a glimpse of the women undergoing their training. Public anticipation soon reached a fever pitch, fuelled by the massively popular weekly manga series Azami: The Flying Girl and its television adaptation. The public asked: when would the Academy’s gates finally open? When would the fruits of the Emperor’s labour be revealed?

“Soon,” was always the answer.

And after eight years, the Academy’s gates finally opened.

But the frenzied public’s anticipation turned out to exceed all expectations: those doors were on the roof of the Academy.

The eager young girls who had entered the Academy so long ago now appeared as formidable women, warriors armed to the teeth and ready for battle, trained to within an inch of their lives – the Elite Women’s Aerial Infantry Division, soon christened by an excited public as “Rocket Angels”. Instantly recognisable by their state-of-the-art, colour-coordinated flying battle armour, their shoulder-mounted Photon Cannons and their famous ‘paralysis whip’, these Angels soon proved to be anything but merciful.

By cutting off enemy reinforcements across the battlefields of Europe and destroying convoys of Allied Mirage Tanks and Soviet Bullfrogs alike, The Rocket Angels swiftly earned a reputation for fierce tenacity, descending from the heavens in a shower of light and destruction, tearing the Emperor’s enemies to pieces and securing victory for the Empire even when the odds seemed stacked against them. Over time, it became clear to Prince Tatsu that few were willing to resist his Desolators, and that those who recklessly sought to do so would perish swiftly – and thus the Prince of the Rising Sun concluded that his Rocket Angels enjoyed unrivalled success.


Reconnaissance on the battlefield has at least revealed the following facts about the Rocket Angels:

• To the heavens!- Equipped with the latest asynchronous lift technology, The Rocket Angels’ high-technology flight armour, combining the most advanced Imperial gyroscopic stabilisation systems, enables these proud female warriors to traverse land, sea and air with the greatest of ease. They never need to touch the ground during battle and, indeed, their doctrine strictly forbids them from doing so.

-Rapid Deployment- The Rocket Angel’s flight armour is as swift as it is manoeuvrable, giving rise to the most oft-quoted truism on the battlefield: “By the time you see one of them [Rocket Angel], you’re already dead, but you’re just too stupid to realise it.” Rocket Angels are vulnerable only to anti-aircraft weapons, but are nevertheless capable of countering such weapons.

-Ready to explode- Capable of being fired in a spiral, whirling like a whirlwind of destruction, the Rocket Angel’s twin Photon Cannons are deadly to both armoured vehicles and heavily reinforced structures. The sustained fire of the Rocket Angel is so intense that it can destroy even the most imposing enemy fortress.

-Dominance and Submission – the Rocket Angels possess a second, significantly more insidious weapon: the paralysing whip. This flexible beam of high-intensity energy is wielded like a whip by its wielder; any contact renders its target completely paralysed. The purpose of this weapon is undoubtedly to render the target harmless, although the whip’s ‘beam’ detaches from the target for this very reason. Furthermore, due to the technical difficulties of fitting a target-locking system to high-speed aircraft, as well as aerodynamic and debris concerns, the paralysis whip has only been calibrated for use against ground targets.