Limit Theory is the sixth major Planetary Annihilation Self-Insert fic. It is being written by ltmauve.
Rachel Ezros is a Progenitor Commander with some memory of being a human. She winds up in the Stargate universe and things proceed from there.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The "Combine" and ALREN strategic oversight A.I.s are responsible for a lot of genocides.
- Mentioned as the backstory of the Furlings a few times.
- Grace O'Conner has actually been puppetted by an AI designed for cybernetics research, as well as a lot of Macross Galaxy's military staff and civilian leadership.
- The fic differentiates between "hardware-based A.I.s," who essentially have brains made out of artificial materials, and "software-based A.I.s," which are the ones that cause problems.
- Alternate Universe Fic: Present to a certain extent in all universes visited so far.
- In Stargate, there's no time travel. The history of the Ori, the Ascended, and the Destiny Expedition are also changed.
- In RWBY, Aura and Dust are greatly different, everyone wears armor into combat, and the history is very different.
- Apocalypse How: Class 6, Total Planetary Extinction - when Rachel is crippled to the point she defaults to Xziphid War protocols, she outright destroys everything she encounters while in the Universal Century solar system. She later notes that Earth resembles Venus now, after a saturation bombardment by naquadah-enhanced nukes.
- Beam Spam: After getting the particle laser technology from the Galactic Alliance of Humanity, Rachel proceeds to cover all her combat units with them, and take advantage of her superior power sources to spam them fast enough to intercept a lot of incoming fire. Not just missiles, but also bullets. The 4th generation of the Skylord battleship has nearly a million of them.
- She also has plenty of other types of beam-style directed energy weapons, ranging from the complex Exotic Principle cannons to simpler Photon Molecule cannons.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: The humans of Remnant (Remmans), despite looking like Terran humans, are more like self-replicating, psychic, nuclear-powered killbots. They can survive indefinitely without lungs, can eat radioactive metal (and often do so for flavor), reproduce via tiny eggs that they dunk in water, and have a redundant nervous system that allows them to walk off a severed spine.
- Chest Monster: After Roman Torchwick and two people from the White Fang spend twelve hours checking over a quartet of Altesian Paladins, it turns out they were actually some of Rachel's own Dox Calibers.
- Command & Conquer Economy: As is standard for the genre. However, Rachel and the other Exiles can use macros to offload the need for tedium
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Between superior firepower, defenses, and the fact that the first knowledge of the Exiles for opponents tends to come in the form of incoming fire, most battles in the fic tend to be very lobsided in the Exiles' favor.
- Deflector Shields: Present in a variety of flavors, of which most people use one. Rachel integrates multiple layers and types into her units. Her units start with an outer "matrix" bubble shield, followed by a "standing-wave" bubble shield and a conformal "matrix" shield. The matrix shields can be bypassed by various methods, but can be easily shaped and there are a variety of tricks to make them recharge faster. Standing-wave shields have to be brute-forced down and can't be bypassed, but shaping them is difficult.
- We also see "hardlight barriers" which block fire coming in and out. Rachel finds them annoying because her bullets (made of "metastable crystaline" neutronium) go through them without doing much to the integrity of the barrier.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: Rachel's adventures in the world of Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn end with her wiping out everyone due to defaulting to Xiphid War protocols after her avatar is destroyed. Which means everyone gets killed by her. Cue angst.
- Failsafe Failure: During the Xiphlid war, having your units default to "kill everything without an IFF" in case of a crash is a good idea. It's safer than them sitting around and giving the Xiphlid the opportunity to capture them. For Rachel, working in and around civilians, the "Safe Mode" she shipped with causes a Class 6 Apocalypse How.
- Later averted when she creates a new "Realsafe mode," which works when she passes out from Aura depletion.
- Fix Fic: Rachel does her best to intervene and make the universes she live in come out better than canon.
- During Stargate, she:
- Stops Thor from being kidnapped by Anubis
- Rescues Eigeria before she suffers too much that she's about to die
- Kills all the Wraith and Asurans before they can wake up
- Prevents Daniel Jackson from revealing Avalon (the Milky Way) to the Ori
- Rescues the crew of the Aurora, Tria, and other Lantean warships with functioning stasis pods
- Her daughters, working on their own, don't know canon but they do want to make things better.
- Lindy intervenes to prevent Macross Galaxy from collapsing after destroying a3x, helps make peace with the Vajra, and makes sure Macross Frontier makes it to a habitable planet.
- During Stargate, she:
- Hand Cannon: Rachel (and other Exiles) dual-wields a pair of pistols when she goes into combat with her human-sized avatar. They have multiple kinetic and plasma firing modes. One of the modes is "The GAU-8 Avenger, but with smaller, denser bullets, infinite ammo, and no overheating." (You know, the gun on the A-10 Warthog.) And she has two of them, which she can dual-wield or fire both at the same time when the guns are strapped to her shield.
- Heroic BSoD: Rachel falls into that after committing genocide due to Failsafe Failure. Not helped by her getting literal brain damage from a power spike that happened during the crash.
- King Incognito: During RWBY, the former King Vale is going by his middle name, Ozpin. His three surviving siblings are doing the same.
- Psychic Powers: Shows up in multiple universes
- The Nox's ability to heal people and raise the dead is a psychic power.
- Newtypes count as well.
- Every Remman is a psychic, though they use their powers a bit differently than normal. Rachel guesses that any Remman "born" without Aura will instantly die, as their nuclear metabolism will damage all their intracelluar anatomy.
- Penny and Rachel use "Auraframe" to hold their souls onto their cores, allowing them to use psychic powers despite being robots.
- Both the vortigaunts and Combine are psychic, capable of doing things like levitation and electrokinesis.
- The Vajra and many humans in Macross are also psychic.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: For one Ha'tak, Rachel brings thousands of warships of a similar scale. They turn out to be unneeded, by the Exiles generally have no problem with having plenty of extra firepower on tap.
- When meeting Orlin, Rachel has fun with gratitous nuclear bombardment. Orlin is grateful that he's no longer bound to protect the Ascendtech ruins, but he's less happy about nearly getting stuck in a scattered state for months.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: The infamous "Exploding Cancer Ray" from Stargate Atlantis sounds dumb, but is very effective against the Wraith, who have specced entirely into the biotech tree.
- Wham Episode: Chapter 68. Turns out ROB isn't a perfect coder, causing Rachel's support systems to crash and for her to suffer physical core damage when her avatar is destroyed. This causes her units to revert to the standard Xiphild War protocols: Anything moving without an IFF is hostile. Cue Everybody's Dead, Dave and angst.
