Reincarnated in Another World as a P. 1000 Ratte

Age of Titans: Cerberus

(A/N): Any religious or cultural views expressed in this chapter are for entertainment purposes only and are not meant to offend anyone.

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Time passed, and the days of bumpy rides were over.

Well, kinda. 

Gyroscopes can't make the ground smoother, but they can make the stability of a turret smoother. 

Without getting into the knit-pick details of gun stabilization, in essence, all of the Ratte's turrets, i.e the 183, 128, and 380 mm's can now aim at a target without constantly bobbing like a boat on the ocean. 

He's not sure if the Oerlikon's already had this feature, but if they didn't, well, they do now. 

Shooting and moving suddenly got a whole lot easier. If you point a gun bearing 30 degrees north, then it will continue to point 30 degrees north no matter how much you move the chassis. The same applies to the turret. 

That is of course, if he's using a turret and not the hull mounted gun. In that case, stabilization only applies to the cannon since there's no turret. 

A cannon's elevation, depression, and direction from which it is pointing is preserved regardless of what's happening outside. The cannon and turret looks at a target and stays locked on it unless manually moved. 

Of course, if the Ratte maneuvers in a way that's beyond a cannon's elevation, depression, or direction, then not much can be done about that. 

The stabilization upgrade makes it so that looking through the gun sights is a normal experience rather than a headache-inducing one. Long drives through the empty wilderness become a peaceful kind of boring instead of a nerve-racking kind of boring. 

And it was during one of these drives, late at night when the sky was pitch black and there were no stars out, that he encountered something new.

At first, he couldn't see anything because visibility during nighttime is garbage, but he heard growling somewhere off to his left. Stopping, he turned his turrets in that direction and saw a very faint silhouette. 

He couldn't identify what it was even as it got closer to him. Despite zooming in nearly all the way, he couldn't make out any definite details.

Then suddenly, a duo of fireballs appeared out of nowhere, hovering in midair and revealing what the night was hiding. 

It was a small doggo, a little over half his size, which in hindsight didn't really make it that small since it's essentially 4-5 times taller than a man, but compared to him it's not that big. 

It had 3 heads, with each head having a pair of red-tinted eyes and a jaw full of razor sharp teeth. Its tail was lengthy, having spikes on it for some reason, and ended in an arrow tip. 

Its long, brown fur was standing up as its tense posture displayed a muscular body with 4 legs, each complete with a set of dog nails that looked closer to claws than anything else. 

Out of all the mythological creatures he could have encountered, none were as familiar as the one before him. Hellhound of the underworld, guardian of dead souls; a cerberus. Or is it "the Cerberus"? 

Is Cerberus a name for a specific hellhound, or is Cerberus a specific species of hellhound? Whatever the case, the one in front of him seemed pretty close to the myths he's heard about the creature. 

Cerberus could apparently manipulate fire, but he's not entirely sure if shooting fireballs out of its mouths is a thing. True or not, it semi-explained the floating fires next to it. The 3 heads part of it was true, but he's never heard of a version where Cerberus had a snake-ish tail.