A lot of the "turd" headphones require pretty serious boosts and cuts to hit your response target, and the stronger the adjustments are the more distortion you'll get. In addition there is also physics to account for so if the driver is rattling at high volume there isn't really any way to compensate for that.

For an extreme example try processing a set of free/cheap airline earbuds. You'll soon realize that if you crank the bass, all you'll get is mud as the driver simply can't reproduce those sounds. Ditto for the highs, all you'll get are harmonics on lower frequencies. And even if the midrange by design already hits your target curve, it'll still sound horrible as the driver distorts the original signal. Flat frequency response does not equal faithful reproduction!

"Jump it again!" I ordered.

Percy stood before the open hood, his shield up and glistening. The translucent sheen sparked sharply as a round skimmed off its surface, hitting the armor plate beside him with a loud twang.

His hands were in the engine, one touching the block and the other on the positive terminal of the battery. From his concentration I knew he was preparing the regulator that would convert his arcane force into the fourteen volts or so needed to get our lifeboat going. From the cab Flissa fired her handgun out the armored slits to keep the insurgents back.

On the back of the beast the turret spun, followed by a brief moment of hollowness as the mage within precharged. I fell to a crouch on the other side of the vehicle, my rifle peeking out from behind the heavy plate.

My LPVO had a beamsplitter before the eyepiece leading to a CCD. I could see everything in the square box floating in the middle of my vision, my targets glowing in the vestiges of false-color. My mind focused through the weapon to tag the shot while my index felt the steady resistance of the trigger.

The HK417 let loose a single round, curving as it latched on the predestined path in my mind. I felt it arc around a corner and drop the nearest insurgent, the enchanted bullet biting through his barrier with a purple flash.

A heartbeat later I felt a magical explosion hit the shack in the distance, followed by raking fire as Jen opened up with the PKM inside her overhead perch. Hot brass fell from the turret onto my shield as I heard the engine roar to life.

"Karl! Percy!" Flissa yelled into my mind. "Get in!"

I tapped my palms against the back of the truck and did a contact jump through the plates, my body slipping through the ether and landing in the bed just as the floor began to rumble beneath me. She put the pedal to the metal and accelerated out of the warehouse as shots and spells glanced off our side. A quick mental scan confirmed that Percy was safely onboard as well.

The basket right beside my head spun as Jen fired again, the muzzle flash silhouetting her elven features in the dim interior. I stumbled to my feet and was about to make my way to a gunport when I felt the distinctive energy of a powerful mage preparing for a showdown. One who's aura I could feel on the road ahead of us.

"On me," I called into my squadmates' minds. They responded immediately, each flashing a light mental tug to indicate their readiness. I saw the world in slow motion as three tendrils of magic snaked in my direction, combining with my fourth to send a bright beam of power through the cab.

Right into the violent ball of energy she'd shoved in our direction.

My senses were overwhelmed at once, my mind shutting down as unfathomable forces swarmed us from all directions. With my remaining neurons I sensed a rift open, and we plowed straight into it.

When I came to I saw sunlight, beating down from the overhead hatch to fill every nook and cranny. I savored it as Jen crouched beside me, the remnants of a healing spell steaming off her fingers.

My bionics compensated for the light, and I let loose my painblocker spells while sitting up. Percy was manning the gun and Flissa was squeezed up there with him. By then I could hear the din of conversation coming from outside. A crowd. My sixth sense could visualize the hundreds of untamed auras probing from outside.

It felt both wrong - and right. This place felt familiar and foreign at the same time, and it certainly wasn't the Chihuahuan Desert. Everything from the climate to the noise floor was off.

"Karl?" Jen said cautiously. Now I could see the uncertainty in her eyes and the new bruise on her cheek. "Look outside."

"What is it?" I replied quietly. My internal computer had switched to its hardened mode due to heavy magical interference. We were likely far from the NAF insurgent base we just escaped from, though my clock only reported that ten minutes had passed. Portals were strange like that.

"It's best if you take a look." Without further ado she flung open the closest gunport and gently guided me towards the slit.

The homemade APC we'd stolen, an armored shell atop a Chevy 5500 frame, now sat smack dab in the middle of a medieval courtyard. Hundreds of people stood staring at us, the majority elves with a smattering of humans and dwarves in the crowd. Their genetic makeup was hard to identify.

On their faces were a mix of fear and awe, which I expected. What however drew me in was the sense of hopelessness that absolutely permeated the air.

In the distance I could see towers of stone, and farther out wood and plaster homes built along the walls. Just like the pictures in my history texts. On a raised wooden platform I could see a group of what were clearly nobles, and the look of defeat on their faces was as plain as day.

"Have they approached?" I asked.

"Nope," Flissa called down from above. "We put up our shield and have been in this staring contest for a few minutes."

I signed. "Stay on guard for now. Were any of you awake when we fell through the rift?"

"I was," Percy answered. "We were translocated, the flight time was probably several minutes. Then the entire vehicle landed right here in this courtyard."

"How about the enemy mage? Did she fall in as well?"

"Yeah she did. I felt her briefly during the first ten seconds or so but our paths soon diverged. She can't walk the ether though, that's for sure."

"Well she's not here, so that's a good sign." I managed a small smirk at that, the small gesture hopefully helping to keep morale up. We would bloody need it.

"Do you have any idea where we are?" Flissa suddenly asked. "Our comms are totally dead, though we can try rocket beacons or roll out the shortwave."

"So naive, Flissa," Jen snorted. "Unless this is an elaborate prank, we're not on fucking Earth. Just scan the environment and you'll know the truth. Hell, look at your integrated accelerometer. We also don't have two moons the last time I checked."

I quickly glanced around the interior, eyeing the racks of assorted munitions and small arms. Such technology would either be a godsend or a curse in the days to come. The next five minutes turned into a methodical search as our tendrils and instruments probed the area in detail. My mind was blown by how similar this place was to Earth.

"Two elves are walking up to the vehicle," Percy called from above. His basket creaked as he turned the crank to bear his weapon on target. "At 205 near my marker."

This world had a magnetic pole of some sort, and our compasses automatically treated that as "north". Floating in the air at the bearing was Percy's marker, a semietheral stain now hovering over the elves. They looked like men-at-arms with breastplate and mail, and carried sword and spear. Clearly they were aware of our magical emissions but the two were not perturbed by it.

My heart pounded audibly as they stood behind the truck, merely four feet away from me. I could see them clear as day in my mind's eye. Once of the elves raised his gauntleted fist and proceeded to knock three times on the hatch.

I went with an (improvised) APC instead of a MBT as this prompt seemed to be inspired by The Doomfarers of Coramonde. The vehicle itself is based off the "narco tanks" used by Mexican drug cartels.

/r/digitallyfreestories

This response is part of my Magsci collection.