RP: 188604 [AdVenture Capital] Angel Investor

The Pit

For a brief moment, the Wild Rabit was the brightest thing anywhere, the ship slicing right through one of the unfinished starship hulls in its way before crashing into the factory at the base of the facility.

A plume of fire would shoot upward, the light being so intense that it would set fire to the buildings nearby, scorching the paint on the starships that were readying for takeoff.

Uso was on the comms shortly after.

"Ace's guys, looks like we have some of our people on one of the carriers. Clear off the mecha still on its flight deck."

There were still two M3s that were intact after the U-1's first flyby, their pilots scrambling to get the machines to power up and take off.



Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pit, a full squad of M3s were launching. Their pilots all opening channel's to Alex's Mech.

"Stop shooting!"

"Surrender. I don't want to have to hurt you."

"I'm flying a mech, this is so cool...."

The voice was quite familiar to Alex. As was the voice of their commanding officer that cut in shortly afterward.

"CUT THE CHATTER," Hazel said, the voice of the Hound-Squadron flight lead shutting out all the Alex-clones. A jet black AF-15 fighter shooting out of one of the remaining carriers, a new heavy cannon attached to the underside. In mere moments the U-1 had dozens of mecha following it though only a few were shooting. 2 of the carriers also launched a large barrage of missiles, and Hazel's AF-15 would take aim at nearly point blank range, firing her cannon. The sheer amount of firepower heading towards Alex and Sarena was enough to destroy even a large starship and with so many people shooting, doging everything was impossible.

Then a split second before the U-1 was vaporized, Vier switched on the installed Phase organ. Alex and Sarena would find themselves in an endless black void for a second or two before phasing back in. The missiles and cannon shots having harmlessly passed through the U-1.

Alex felt nauseous, not only from the phasing, but also from hearing his own voice speaking to him. What was going on? Alex was visibly shaken. As he tried to process what was happening, he continued evasive maneuvers, firing off missiles at noncritical parts of the enemy mechs that he wasn't directly looking at while firing his lasers in short, precise bursts at the enemy. His aim was to disable, not to kill.

Once the crowd had been thinned slightly, he stopped firing, but continued his efforts to avoid taking damage. He also sent out a message to the enemy mecha forces as well as Hazel. His voice was somehow... off.

"Why... Why do you all sound like me?"

The majority of the M3's would end up flying up high above Alex, making them easy targets.

"You sound like us,"

"I SAID STOP SHOOTING!"

"so coool...."

The pilots responded, Hazel would then cut in over the other pilots again,

"FOCUS ON YOUR JOBS," She shouted, ".... ALEX, That is some interesting kit you have. You are causing some serious problems, and putting a lot of lives at risk. Bring this to a end and stop the attack or I will shoot you down myself."

Alex shook his head. "I can't do that. Everyone else is depending on me. If I stop now I put all of them at risk too. Besides, you're hardly one to talk about risking lives. You put the lives on everyone on the Necromancer at risk when you picked money over friendship. Over family."

Alex pointed at Hazel's fighter, singling her out. "I don't want to put... whoever they" at this he gestured to the mecha above him, "are at risk. They didn't choose to fight this fight. You and I did. Lets settle this, you and me."

"Augh!" Sarena shouted, seizing the controls. Yes, she hadn't been able to figure them out, still--good thing Vier was meddling, even if she was starting to get tired of being rescued from this--but she felt the need to start mashing buttons when she noticed that Alex was flaking off again.

"Were you not listening during the briefing?" Maybe this was unexpected--Sarena didn't have a complete grasp of what was going on, either--but it seemed well within the mission's parameters, relatively speaking. "The whole mission is about killing the ST copies of innocent people to protect others. This is no different!"

To make her point, she started fighting back, and talked back to the enemy team leader, too. "You're with us or else get behind us--either we blow this place, or we go down trying! Get out of the way!" Now, which button was it to fire all the missiles?

Alex looked backward at Sarena, inadvertantly leaving the broadcast on. "No. I think that whoever these people are working with, they're the ones that made me... kill... back on B7R. I've taken too many innocent lives already, I refuse to take any more."

He lifted back up into the air, looking around at all of the copies of himself. "Please... Don't make me do this."

The Pit

"On it Uso." Ace and his team would rush to the carrier.
Once they reached the ship they would begin to sweep it of enemies. The NOZH sent one man off the side and let him plummet to his death."Deck is clear."

The Pit, Enemy Carrier

The Onset shuttle zeroed in on one of the carrier's missile batteries at full throttle, well over the speed of sound to ram the ship with as much force as possible.

A cloaked object descended on the battlezone with far more velocity and all the grace of wind. Silent and stealthy, Spectre aimed for an opening on one of the carrier deck's elevators. The shuttle was merely a diversion, an overt attention grabber to occupy the an anti-aircraft defenses as Candon infiltrated the vessel in search of the reactor. At no point would he drop his cloak during the maneuver.

The Pit

The original Corgan charged in after Uso with the pistol in one hand. His HPAR was held in the other hand. The armor's nanomuscle helped him keep his aim steady. Wendy, the suit's AI, displayed a path on his HUD that would keep him out of the line of fire. When he was sure he was close enough to pull off the shot, he targeted one of the holes Uso created, aimed, and fired.

Not knowing what the effect would be, Corgan dropped the pistol and held his HPAR in both hands. He started running the other direction looking for targets.

The Pit - Tower

Corgan's bullet would follow a lazy arc upwards, sailing through one of the holes Uso had blown in the tower and easily penetrating through a few walls, its kinetic energy being eaten up each time until it finally plunked down onto the floor.

The from Zesu shell of the bullet then slowly began unscrewing itself from the rear half, both parts separating, the tip of the bullet auto-balancing so that the whole thing was resting on its pointed tip. Inside was a Freespacer layline gate, only about 3 mm in diameter, the small rip in reality would suddenly have a long, ultra thin loop pass through it, extending until it hit the ceiling, another wormhole gate that was paper thin but ultra wide, the entire apparatus turning and falling sidewalls so that this new wormhole was along the ground. This was followed by another wormhole, a large, wide, gate that rose up from the floor.

And the other end of THAT gate, was at the bottom of Nepleslia's oceans.



The Pit - Enemy Carrier

One of the M3 mecha charging out of the carrier would blow right past Candon, its leg slamming down right beside him before launching itself into the air to go after Alex while another M3 took aim at the shuttle and started shooting, tagging it with weapons fire and causing it to fall a bit short of the command center, the shuttle smashing into the side of the carrier.

The Spectre would make it all the way to the open lift before being spotted.

There was a Seraph on the other side of the lift. The creature's robe had tightened up, hugging its form, its marble-white hands and large, toothy, grin were exposed. The creature spotting him even though it didn't have eyes or a nose... or really anything other than smooth upper face like someone had forgotten to finish carving their statue.

It was clearly aiming its weapon at him, but it never got a chance to fire. There was a loud rumble... and then the tower overlooking the pit started to overflow with water. A flood of liquid pouring out of the side like someone had hidden a river inside, the typhoon splashing onto the deck of the carrier, the intense force sweeping aside even the M3 standing on the deck, slamming it into the Seraph and squishing it against the wall, the water continuing to flood outwards, pouring down into the lifts and starting to fill the carrier from the inside.




The Pit - Alex and Alex and Alex and Alex....

"BAH! YOU TWO..." Hazel's voice was furious, frustrated... "TAKE THEM NOW!"

The Alex clones all charged forward, their M3's looking to grab a hold of the U-1's arms and legs. Each one jinking left and right to avoid the U-1s weapons fire. Even though the U-1 was able to score a few hits here and there... it was up against dozens of M3's, Hazel's own fighter pulling up to get some distance, and then turning back around to prepare for a high speed pass.



The Pit

"Come on guys, lets toast those last two carriers and get out of here." Uso said, watching from a nearby structure, still stealth-ed. There were three carriers... one of which Werner was busy taking over. Ace's team was on the flight deck, a trio of Seraph's descending upon the upper decks of the carrier, each one taking up a firing position and starting to shoot at the power armored squad from range.

Of the two other carriers, one was being flooded by water surging out of the side of the tower. While the other was seemingly intact, its point defense weapons now powered up and sending a stream of projectiles towards the U-1, towards Ace's team, and really towards anything it could see as its engines started powering up, the ship trying to pull away from the pit.

Alex activated the booster module, the Aether exhaust flaring onto those behind him. "Sarena, can you phase us? I want to try to disable most of them, and find out just what they are, but I need you to help me get free so I can strike with precision, and not just flail around wildly."

Alex flared the booster again, pulling on the M3s holding him down.

"What, you mean right now?" Owing to inertia, Sarena had already mashed the button halfway through asking this... and froze, because she had no idea how to keep shooting while the U-1 was phased, or how the phase organ worked. She just looked sideways at Alex to see what he would do.

"Thanks Sarena!" Alex said. "Can you concentrate on phasing us when I can't dodge?"

While he was saying this, he had stowed his rifle on his back and taken out energy blades, using them and the added mobility from the booster module, he was a whirlwind through the M3's ranks, slicing at arms and legs. When the enemy's numbers were sufficiently thinned, he transformed into fighter mode and boosted up and towards Hazel, evading at the last moment to avoid collision.

Sarena's growl wasn't any more audible than before. She eventually muttered, "That's like asking if I can shoot them before they shoot us."

She resented both equally, and wanted to answer neither, but whatever she felt about it, the lower parts of her brain took no such issue with experimentally developing heuristics to follow based on what didn't seem to immediately result in more damage to their mech, or what helped reduce the amount of fire against them.

Smoke grenades, a phase organ, and the weapons Alex had chosen weren't her preferred way to do this, but her preferences didn't really come into it... especially when she didn't activate the U-1's systems on purpose to begin with. She started to tune things out.

Alex transformed again, this time looking down upon the M3's and Hazel. He needed answers. He needed to know what was happening, and if Hazel was working with the people who had controlled him.

"Just who are you people anyways? Hazel, what's going on?"

Alex was afraid he already knew the answer.

"I'm getting paid to fly," Hazel responded, nosing her fighter over to point at Alex, taking careful aim, "And clean up the Mess you, Uso, Van Banning, and the Foxx are making."

"But whats the story with them?" Alex asked. "Why do they sound like me?"

He dodged some more, trying to keep himself out of Hazel's firing arc.

Carrier, Flight Deck

Ace and most of his team would scatter trying to avoid the oncoming fire. The twins would cloak and head after the Seraphs while the Agressor and Hostile would attempt to shoot back with coordinated fire. Ace and the NOZH would jump ship and head to the other carrier zigzagging while trying to close distance once in firing range they would release missiles before returning to the flight deck. "Could use an assist over here!!" Ace would yell over the comms before pulling his team inside the ship.

High Rise Building
Spacecase would take aim at Hazel's fighter and lob multiple rounds at the cockpit and wings in an attempt to put her out of commission before turning towards Alex's situation. He began to diminish the swarm of mecha while avoiding the U-1. "Alex try to get that fighter to slow down for me then I can take her down."

"Are you kidding me? They're ST clones of you!" Sarena chided Alex, not aware that she wasn't entirely accurate because they were in fact non-ST clones. "We're fighting people who steal ST data and use it in secret, remember?"

Lich Carrier:

Werner and his bridge crew scrambled to get the ship operational. "Move move move! Kovac. how is it going in engineering?" He yelled into his comm set.

"Engineering secured. We found the chief engineer, and he has... agreed to give us the codes to activate the ship and authorize access. Transmitting clearance codes now. Werner watched as the console flashed from red to green.

"Good job! Now get up here." He ordered, Werner moved to the Helm and began detaching from the dock as Kovacs ran in. "Get to the Tactical and give them some help!" He said to Kovac.

"Hell this ship's main weapon is it's missiles. There are no big guns... that is disappointing." Kovac's remarked as he spooled up to anti ship missiles. at such close range, the enemy carrier's would be able to take it down in time. Plus it was coming from one of their own ships... "Firing." Two missiles streaked away from the stolen carrier and slammed into the two opposing carriers.

"Nice shot! We are getting out of here! Hey Corgan, tell them to not fire at us." he said as the ship slowly began to rise.