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[1st XF] Site clearing

The armor did not move as Tsuya came closer to it. The crack in the hump was more than superficial, but no light from the armor's internal displays could be seen through it.

Perhaps the armor had lost power. But a twitching pinky finger holding the large rifle suggested there was still some energy left.
 
Tsuya saw the lack of light coming from the cracks in the armor, but she wasn't quite ready to believe it was actually deactivated. She crouched down low, steadied her hand, and fired a few shots at the damaged area.
 
The shots blasted into the hunched part of the armor, but only scored it further. Perhaps one of the shots had put a nick in the metal; it was hard to tell. The NSP definitely did not have the strength to pierce it outright, even cracked, unless perhaps it was in grenade mode.

The armor didn't react, though Tsuya did hear ... a groan? Coming from the crack?
 
Tsuya sighed. She hated to waste ammunition, but it looked like delivering another grenade blast to the armor would be the only way to crack it open, aside from sticking her knife in there and prying it apart with her hands... which seemed ill-advised. She wrapped her fingers more firmly around the knife in case of rabid pilots, then raised the pistol and blasted a pulse of energy at the damaged section of the armor.
 
The grenade blast landed just on the crack, and the sound of its explosion thundered off of the cinderbrick walls of the loading room. Kaida had taken a sniping position by wheeling a metal cart and hiding behind it.

When the sound was finally exhausted, Tsuya could see the damage she'd (finally) caused — a 30-by-30-centimeter chunk of the armored hump was gone, and inside was a grizzled, dirty pilot in an old flightsuit. She could only see his hairy neck, brown mullet-like haircut and the flightsuit.

That is, it was all she could see before the armored appendage holding the power armor's rifle swung her way and pulled the trigger as it did so.

If Tsuya could still hear, that capability was likely gone, as the blazing chaingun unloaded in a menacing sweep toward her, raging fire as outside streetlights suddenly found hundreds of holes in the wall to filter themselves through.
 
As soon as she caught sight of the pilot within the suit, Tsuya began to lunge at the poor man, knife and pistol at the ready. Unfortunately, she was interrupted by the sudden eruption of gunfire. She was already in motion in quite the wrong direction, though, and only barely managed to put her neko skills to work, leaping outside the range of the chain gun before it fully reached her - but a bullet or two barely clipped her leg, and she was grateful for the lack of pain in the sim.

Once she'd avoided the gunshots, she pushed herself forwards, aiming to land on the disabled Demon's arm.
 
The arm was too small a target to land on, so she managed to land on the larger arm, full of blades. She was out of range of the gun and the blades, but the armor was starting to rise fast.

"Note you'll be docked points for the near-nick on your leg from the very large caliber bullet," the Director said flatly.
 
Tsuya grunted in frustration at the director's words. "Excuse me, Director, but I am sorry I was not quick enough to avoid chaingun fire from a power armor I thought I had disabled, and at the very least severely damaged, on my own, whose pilot I was under the impression had been gravely injured. Please, by all means, take off as many points as you like."

During this miniature tirade, she ran up the Demon's bladed arm towards the broken hump.
 
"Temper, Hei," the Director sent back.

The armor rose slower than Tsuya, and the Neko could see the broken hole in the hump clearly.

She only had a few shots left.
 
Tsuya's ears flicked, but she didn't let herself get distracted again. The matter of those docked points would have to wait. She balanced herself as best she could on the rising arm, got the pilot in her sights, and fired off a pair of shots at him.
 
One shot nicked the edge of the armored hole, but the second caught the pilot in his shoulder, and he cried out in pain.

This lead to the armor, and its appendage, hurling in one direction, and inadvertently attempting to throw Tsuya with its movements.
 
Tsuya clung to the armor as it lurched, then used its own momentum to spring off and towards the hump, firing off a few more shots as she went.
 
The blasts came down on the pilot, one searing through the skin in the nook of his neck. A choked cry and a cough of blood were the last sounds the pilot made as he fell face-first into the display of his cockpit. The chaingun started going off again as the armor tumbled to the ground in a miserable pile of scraps and charred flesh, at least on the inside.

The NSP fizzled; Tsuya had used the last of her pistol battery's energy.

"Scenario complete," the Director sent. "Successful enough, Hei. Nice acrobatics."
 
Tsuya landed with a thump, tossing the spent pistol aside. "Thank you, Director. Now shall we talk about those docked points?"
 
The scenario's surroundings, save for the discarded weapon, disappeared into a cool white-grey room not much larger than a big conference room.

The Director entered from behind Tsuya. He was a small Yamataian man with a pointed nose, a crisp red jumpsuit, squinting eyes set behind narrow glasses and a thin face. His hands were clasped behind his back as he walked to Tsuya.

"Talk, Hei? As if your leg being blown off leaves room for discussion?"
 
Tsuya bowed respectfully and rather deeply to the director before moving to attention. "My leg was hardly blown off, Director. The bullets barely clipped me."
 
"Ohhh, I see, I see!" The Director's tone was purely pejorative, and though he came out a good few inches shorter than Tsuya, he continued to walk straight toward her with all the stiffness of a rifle stock. "So 35-millimeter rounds grazing your leg mean nothing? You would merely hover that off, hm?"
 
Tsuya made quite a point of looking down at the director, one eyebrow raising. "Yes. If I let pain and injury get the better of me in combat, it would hardly have been worth the resources it took to grow me, Director."
 
"Hei, a 35-millimeter round would have torn your leg clean off and the shockwave would've hurled you entirely off-balance. Don't make me send you back to basic to test it." The Director's voice made significant use of his nose; Tsuya saw it firsthand, since he raised his head enough for her to see partially up his nostrils.

He pushed his glasses up higher on said nose, his thin eyebrows perfectly straight lines along his head. The glint of a white rank pin backed by a gold flower touched Tsuya's eyes. "What other options did you have before you, Hei? What else could you have done other than engage the enemy?"
 
"Yes. I am fully aware of what the rounds would have done if they had actually hit me, Director. That is why I made sure they did not.... my other options? Other than engage the enemy? I was under the impression that the purpose of this simulation was to eliminate the enemy combatants. Also, you have something unsightly inside your left nostril."
 
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