Naoko Aihara walked.

Casually.

Her miniskirt was black and gold plaid, and aside from that, there was nothing over her legs, and normally this would have drawn attention; Naoko had nice legs. Short socks, neatly laced combat boots - otherwise, nothing. It was a really short skirt.

The problem was that nobody wanted to tackle a Nekovalkyrja with a Handcannon, let alone two at once. This spared her most of the nonsense until she’d walked up just behind the Phoenix crew. The holstered irons swinging at her hips, brushing against her skirt, about as long as her forearm, deterred most smart people.

And when she drew them -

KRA-KOW

- it became readily apparent why. Somebody on the far end, crouched against a vehicle, died. He did not die because Naoko had good enough aim to skim the top of his skull, which had been showing over the hood ever-so-slightly, he died because Naoko shot through the hood of the van, and sent a hundred splinters of twisted metal through his body at several randomized points, spraying crap all the way into the next vehicle and sending the evil denizens of this world on to the next, which some people - particularly the Seraphim - believed to be hell.

Well, Naoko thought, let them burn brightly.

KRA-KOW!

Zeta still stood in middle of the street firing her gatling at anything that fired their way. As bad is she though of herself, she was enjoying this. Action is always nice, hacing adrenalin in her veins and all. She noticed Luca charing the enemies and swiftly dispatching them. Part of her though Nice! while other though Why does he risks to much?

Zeta was wondering why he took cover behind the car suddenly. His warning about sniper came too late as bullet hit Zeta's shields. Bullet was only slowed by shields, came through adn pinged of her shoulder guard.

"Yikes," Zeta said as she boosted into cover next to Luca. "Hey, boss. They are packing some serious heat! This is gonna be a lot of fun!" She said to him and peeked out. "THermal imaging Wesley please. Time to hunts us donw some snipers." She said to her AI.

Smith hummed to herself a devilish little tune as the rifle coughed - the back of a man's head exploded, showering the person behind him with gore. This horrified individual's chest then suddenly puckered as a hole appeared. More gore out the back. Match grade bullets out of a match grade gun was exciting! Her rifle coughed again as the large suppressor at the end fought the explosive force of the rounds into quiet modesty. "You know Mr. Pavone, you're best sticking to things like this." Smith pointed out to the man. She quickly relocated.

"I mean, you're great at this. Why bother wandering into lecturing?" she happily chattered over the comms.

Another cough. Another fell.

"I can't be a one trick pony my whole life, can I Mr. Smith?" Luca replied as he gave Seiren a nod and watched inadequate sniper bullets bounce off his armour. The bullets weren't enough to do damage, but they were giving Seiren a headache, "Seiren, you're a big target. You'd better open up before they start focussing on-" Luca heard the gunfire start to thin out and he popped his head out of cover.

Smith, Naoko and Zeta had done a good job in taking out the people on the ground who were keeping Luca pinned down. "Nevermind. Move, move, move!" He commanded.
There were still snipers on the roof though, but Luca found himself able to get out of cover and keep pressing his advantage while dodging sniper fire. A large crater scored the ground and kicked up a cloud of debris where Luca was standing just a couple of paces away to his left.

Someone had a gauss rifle, and they were smart enough to refrain from using an aiming laser. Luca's best defence was to keep mobile and unpredictable. He was vaulting over cars and concrete barriers, firing in the air wildly towards where he thought the Gauss-using rifleman was and made use of smoke screens and concealment that'd been kicked up by the warzone.

Luca could've sworn that a shot had whizzed between his legs as he dove.

Meanwhile, behind a slightly bullet-addled car, the Beta member looked at Uriel and was prompt to reply, "I'm calling reinforcements! An enemy of the Zeroes is a friend 'o the Betas, sir!" He then felt the need to justify his being in a gang to the Elysian, "Their brand of crime goes too far! We don't firebomb businesses and kill their families for not paying rent! We just stop supplying them with our stock, see?"

It was clear from the gang goer's accent that he or his family were of richer, more refined Nepleslian stock, averse to direct confrontation and better suited to word games, burglary, cons, old non-destructive vices and coercion, but never a direct firefight or confrontation. However, if push came to shove, it appeared as though he and his kind could retaliate.

"Man, who is that guy out there in the shades?" He peeked over his car and pointed to Luca, "Is he your boss or something? He's like some sorta one man army who hates the Zeroes!"

His phone acted up, "Russel, Russel! Are you sure all this is true?!"
Russel responded, "I kid you not sir. Can't you hear the explosions?"

Russel's answer was too coherent to be anything but a pathological lie or the honest truth- and if it was the former, that would be soon discovered. Besides, it was very likely fact: after all it verified the words of a beggar this man had likely never met. So Uriel nodded, accepting this response.

"It's time to be quiet; the adults are speaking." With his free hand, the Archangel wrested the phone from the Beta. Simultaneously, he gave the Beta's skull a little nudge with the Tiger's Tears- a gentle reminder of who was calling the shots. "Russell's telling the truth. Now I have an inquiry of my own: who are you? Better yet, are you one of those hip, color-coordinated gangs?" Sarcasm gave the Elysian's severe tone a very unusual sound; clearly it was unfamiliar territory for him. "Because it'd be good to know who we should and should not be shooting."

Some would say recruiting help from a lesser gang was hypocrisy; Uriel considered it foresight. If he was an ally now, he would be presumed nonthreatening in the future- which, of course, would be folly on their part.

Naoko found herself next to the Seraphim. It was kind of a joke; a long time ago the two of them would be shooting at each other, instead of watching each other's backs. He had probably killed a lot of Nekovalkyrja. She knew she'd killed Elysians.

When a bullet caught her in the torso, plugging through her shirt and the flesh beneath it to exit out the other side - some high caliber round with a full metal jacket - Naoko staggered, but didn't falter.

KRA-KOW!

She fired, decapitating the man in the window on the second story floor of some dump across the way as the hemosynth blossomed beneath her clothing, creating roses wherever the leak touched her skin. The bastard who'd shot her took a lot of the wall behind him to the grave as well.

KRA-KOW!

Her arm buckled beneath the blowback, nearly - or had it just cracked? She let it drop to her side while the angry red and purple bulge denoting the break slowly began to knit itself back together. Unphased, the next shot came from her other gun, the one she hadn't even fired yet.

KRA-KOW!

A bit of blood trickled from her nose, but the son of a bitch near the front of the building was blown apart along with a large part of the entryway door. Only then did Naoko Aihara step for cover, one arm raised and ready, the other limp, and with blood on her chest.

"Taihen mo."

Seiren was about to respond, but a rather powerful explosion triggered by a haphazard bullet hitting a car knocked his LEAF off-balance, causing him to slam into the building backwards. He sat there, dazed, while regaining his wits.

"Big target. . . riiiiight. . ." He groaned, trying to understand the situation. While he was lying there, he wasn't a threat. Who would look at a slumped frame twice when there were far more dangerous one-man armies on the loose? So he took this opportunity to study the surroundings. Something flew at Luca - judging by the size of the explosion, a gauss-fired or HE round. But he couldn't quite pinpoint the location just yet.

To Luca, he pinged,

Zeta moved with Luca. It was not easy to run with large gatling but with her armours boosters she had no trouble with obstacles. Not to mention that she did not need to go around some, but she could go right trough.

"Beta is taking his sweet time. I will kick him into his bollocks if he comes late!" Zeta shouted. She stopped for a while to spray the rooftop with gatling fire. "Eat this wankers!" She shouted as she fired.

The way Smith had been taught was a simply more elegant way of playing sniper. It was almost cheating even.

After the initial opening shots, the Ori-Rep had gone silent and moved to another rooftop by traversing across fire escapes, ears perked and listening to the numerous gunshots. The glasses' datafeed was working hard and doing the very same thing with the built-in microphone of the earbud Smith wore. A familiar, heroic HHG barked. The more powerful 17mm followed suit with a sound holding the authority of a death-god. A gamma ray vulcan hissed and ripped the air with an insatiable hunger. A mechanized monstrosity thundered about with rage. He didn't hear a Tiger's Tears though - was Uriel busy, silent or dead? Didn't matter.

The crackles and pops of many different guns sounded, but they were nothing that Luca and Co. couldn't handle on their own. Just as Smith believed they could do fine without, a new sound cracked across the killzone, an alert popping upon the glasses' display. The Ori-Rep got ready. "A shipwright who fancies himself a soldier is in for a world of hurt, and a soldier who fancies himself as a shipwright is going to get a lot of people killed Luca."

The gauss rifle cracked again, prompting Smith to rise, aim and fire.

As though following a trail like a dog, Enzo pulled his air-bike slowly up to roof level. He peered over the lip of one of the buildings to catch a glimpse of Smith taking fire at the big gun. His eyes darted to the next target, a sniper who'd stopped to reload. Enzo grinned a smoky grin and gunned the accelerator on the beast beneath him.

The air-bike shot forwards in an arc over the street. As he sailed through the air on the back of the beast, Enzo threw fire from his own Tigers' Tears into the firefight below. The power of the weapon jammed his wrist hard, nearly spraining it. Adrenaline kept this furthest from Enzo's mind.

The cigarette peeled away from between his teeth as Enzo's bike completed its arc, pointed just to the left of the sniper, who took a mighty hook to the chest. The bike swooped around so Enzo could deliver a boot to the sniper's back-- and send him tumbling to his death on the street below. Enzo didn't waste time looking and gunned the throttle again, darting off before one of the other snipers could get a bead on him.

He searched for his next target from above Smith's roof, a new cigarette finding its way almost magically to wind-burned lips.