Aboard the Atuan

Sometime in the Future:

The Impulse ran and rounded the corner, sticking it's handheld gauss rifle around; depleted uranium slugs smashed against diamond coated steel and finally penetrated as the blind fire randomly tore into the Demon Power Armor. The charging mass tumbled and fell, momentum carrying it forward. A second Demon rounded the corner, which she shot in the head with a burst before the rifle clicked empty. She backed away, but it pitched forward, knocking her onto her fanny. Soon enough, a terribly battered Crooked Demon was clambering over the remains of the first with it's primary arms. A 35mm rifle in the clutches of the sub-arms began to swing at her while firing. Heart racing, she fired her knuckle spikes at the heavy duty rifle and fried it, but not before a few rounds struck her shields. The final round hurtled through the air, barely slipping through the threshold of her field and slamming into Yoshiko's visor.

When the spall entered her right eye, she screamed in agony like the little girl she was. Yoshiko clutched at the helmet, hands over the blackened crater as she writhed in pain. New pain lanced up her body as the Crooked Demon grasped her with it's vibro claws. Yoshiko's fist fired out her second and last group of electrified spikes, one of them penetrating into a joint and jolting it to a standstill. As she painstakingly wriggled out of the trapped and mangled Impulse, another Demon looked over the pileup. Bare and bleeding, Yoshiko tried to drag herself up onto her feet with a hand railing in an attempt to flee.

'How did it come to this?' she cried.

*****

Aboard the Atuan

The Present:

"Good, you're both here. Come on, we're just about to start the briefing Vintropolis, Victoria." The dark man spoke, greeting the two newcomers. "With luck, I won't have to shout at anyone to get up. Though...well, I got to admit, I'd rather have Ged do the shouting. He's technically capable of being louder than any of us here."

"Yeah, yeah. I'm coming, I'm coming." Yoshiko despondently replied from the rear. Her uniform was uncharacteristically messy, oil and grime marring it's surface. Since getting put on probation, she'd been working harder than ever in an attempt to drown out her descent deeper into depression. He felt sympathy for her, he really did. After all, most people would feel this way after being banned from the cockpit of one's own giant mecha, right?

"It's not all that bad. Just another week, hang in there." he replied, hoping to cheer her up just a tad. She gave him a weak, sleepy eyed smile as she filed in. He shook his head after Yoshiko passed by, watching the floor at her feet as she went. Kelly's short cornrows shook back and forward with him in agreement. It wasn't good. "Well?" he asked all the other pilots, putting more life into his words. "You guys coming or not? Double time it! Move-it, move-it!"

"I loathe mornings." Taela observed, crawling out of her bunk. "They always involve me being woken up by Kelly."

The Neko's bare body was obscured by a projection of a skin-suit, which she promptly covered up with a Frame pilot's uniform once she had sure footing on the ground beneath her.

"Another day, another 20 ton giant mecha." She yawned on the way out of the room.

The one Kelly referred to as 'Vintropolis' kept his distance from Kelly and any other crew members he encountered on the way to the briefing. He carefully eyed the Abwheran next to him. She was identified as 'Viktoria'. Mark Vintropolis had never seen an Abwheran, but had heard their voices many times on the phone, the radio, the news. He carefully considered the moment and his surroundings, and decided to introduce himself to her first. He stuck out his right hand as he walked, offering it to Viktoria as he spoke.

"It seems we're in the same situation here, new employees. It's my first real day of work with this company. I'm Mark Vintropolis, and you're Viktoria, right?"

Mark eyed her from the side briefly, expecting an answer.

Atuan looked pretty amazing. VIktoria just arrived but she was looking forward to the work she will be able to do here. She was also looking forward to learn how to use mecha. So far she know infantry combat and this will be pretty interesting and new for her.

She just arrived so she was sill in full Orisec uniform even with her saber at her side. And saber was there because it is impossible to put it into dufflebag that was on her back.

Viktoria walked a few steps behind Kelly. He was her new CO and she was still not sure how laid-back are things on Atuan. She had no idea if Orisec likes to play military. When Kelly talked about shouting Viki smiled and said. "I have no problem with some shouting at all sir. Although it would create rather awkard situation Ja?"

Then they walked on and met with Yamataian woman who was apparently pilot too. Viktoria greeted her with a nod. Then second newbie whom she arrived with. She turned her head to him and smiled. "I am Viktoria Ritter, pleased to meet you." She replied and shake his hand.

Lucien had woken up without a headache or hangover, since he'd become so used to walking around in a semi-drunk haze for most of his waking hours. All he needed was a shot from his flask, and he was, paraphrased, "Roight as fockin' rain, aye!"

Still, he'd come down and tried to make himself look some semblance of tidy and dressed up in his Frame Uniform, even though most of the clothes he touched eventually got a crumpled, flawed but charming look to them.

He remained quiet as he watched the newcomers, giving them a nod and a small smile as they walked by. He raised his flask in a toast too, before taking a quick swig whilst Kelly wasn't looking, and stashing it quickly.

Async shambled along in her brightly (and we mean brightly, folks) painted Voidwalker suit, the neon pink scrawlings almost squiggling under the Atuan's lighting as each fixture passed by, sending varied wavelengths of light onto the suit's photo-reactive coating, causing Async's childish scrawls to literally dance (some a bit lewdly... for lines, that is). The Freespacer was still recovering from the mild infection she'd caught at the bath house and sniffled inside the bulky contraption that provided her with sufficient radiation to slowly kill off the normally harmless bacterial strain.

"I can't believe I was dumb enough to get sick," she griped, lamenting the lost possibilities with Yoshiko and that bag of goodies that fate, with help from her more modest comrades, so kindly dumped into her room; to anyone who could read minds, those squiggly lines were definitely much more lewd than they first appeared to be.

Unbeknownst to most of the crew, Async had been watching Yoshiko during her work, too self-conscious after her delirious attempt at a come-on to approach the youthful and innocent ex-neko, so she did the next best thing; she stalked the Yamataian for the safe distance of 50 yards in her bulky, and uncomfortably noisy, Voidwalker.

Meena was already present, her standard Origin uniform in proper working order and looking sharp and clean, the colors standing out brilliantly as they were wont to do. The Dark skinned Nepleslian girl simply stared at Kelly, seeming somewhat annoyed by his excessive enthusiasm.

******

Shinji shambled his way into the compartment, smelling a bit of matches and explosive compounds, his characteristic match in the corner of his mouth looking to have been lit recently, as it was burning away- until the man noticed and quickly blew it out with a puff of air, letting it smolder in its place. His dark green A-shirt was smudged with several types of metals and other materials- it seemed he had been making fireworks- the results of these efforts hanging out of his cargo pants pockets, barely hidden by the Origin uniform shirt tied around his waist.

"Well, it can't be helped when some people have a hard time waking up on time. I'd say an hour and a half past is plenty enough time." Kelly shrugged. Inwardly, he noted that Viktoria was perhaps the first Abwehran to step aboard the Atuan since it's maiden voyage, a sign of the rising friendliness between Origin and the Abwehran Star Empire. And inwardly, he noted something else. 'Why does everyone have the word Star in their government or military's name?' As everyone filed into the briefing room, swig of alcohol noticed, Kelly had a slight smirk on his face as he thought. 'Right. Because it's awesome!' It had been a week since that Onsen fiasco, and though it was full of...unexpected...unpleasant things, it left him feeling a little better overall.

"Ok everyone, go ahead and grab a seat if you haven't already. We're getting started now, since the Captain's feeling a little apathetic today." The Ensign spoke in a deadpan tone before waiting for everyone to do so, and continue on. "Long story short, we got some of our big giant robots stolen a short while back, and just decrypted the data we recovered on our last mission proper." He sighed. "Before the squiddies came along and screwed everything up." The Ensign typed something into the volumetric display, and a hologram of a system with many asteroids and a single terrestrial planet encased in toxic atmosphere and lakes of sulfur. A dreary moon floated about.

"Halna system. Don't pay attention to the planet or the asteroids, we're reaching for the moon." Kelly paused for a moment and furrowed his eyebrows. "Ok, that was terrible. I'm sorry. Anyways, the data we collected lead us to believe that the stolen M1's were taken here before being shipped elsewhere." He looked at the group and sighed. "And sadly no, there probably won't be any action with the mechs we have. We've got some contacts that will get us in. We send out an away team, me included, find out the destination of the ship with our M1's, and leave."

"With luck, we won't even have to raise a finger and kill someone. But, just in case, here's the loadouts." The volumetric display changed to a list of who was getting what frame. He then pulled up a second display, but this time, with a list of equipment available. "This time, we got some new orders from above about what they want to see. Unlike last time, where you were assigned weapons so they could collect information, they're letting you pick whatever you want from our stocks." The Nepleslian explained. "They just want to know what you all prefer. We've got one Gauss Cannon, three Hyper Rifles, two Graser Rifles, one Heavy Laser Weapon and enough Chain Swords and Spears for all our units."

"So, any questions?"

Viki sat in a chair and listened to the briefing. She was somewhat surprised that her firs actualy mecha piloting will be right away on the mission. So far she had only few simulation and read all the important parts of manual. Well she will have to do her best then.

When briefing endend and Kelly asked question Viki was first to ask one. "So what can we expect down there on the move. Is there some kind of colony or something?"

"That's not 'anything we want', sir," The Freespacer noted through her suit's external speaker, silently miffed at being assigned to the Oban, "but I'd like a pair of W3105s, if they're available, a W3106, W3202, and I'd be more comfortable with a W3109 rather than the W3205; the pun you thought you referenced was more along the lines of 'reach for the stars', which sounds much better, but we're going to the moon... not the stars..."

The woman trailed off into a mumbling silence with her thought, a small icon on Kelly's volumetric display indicated Async's requested loadout, each item blinking into existence as she ticked it off in her verbal request.