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RP: 5th Fleet [Chapter Three] Attackers

Anzu poked her head out, then hopped over the chunk of pillar and began running across the ceiling once again. "You heard the boss! Second verse, same as the first!" The Neko was still near the rear of the group, trudging along with her bazooka jutting out in front of her, bobbing on her shoulder. She kept her shield up, not bothering to return fire. She was waiting for another good shot, they only had a few more strays to worry about, but they needed to hurry.
 
Aya felt relieved as the makeshift pillbox collapsed in on itself (and more importantly, nothing else followed it). Their opponents seemed to sense the tide of battle turning against them, and they once more began to retreat. Biting back both her impatience and a less than polite word, Aya hopped out of cover and sent a volley of LASR shots at the enemy.

Realising that time was rapidly becoming of the essence, Aya activated her own Daisy's thrusters, though she tried to avoid outpacing the rest of the group. Hopefully they wouldn't have to chase their enemies through the entire tunnel; this game of cat-and-mouse was rapidly wearing thin on the Nekovalkyrja's patience.
 
Tunnel Entrance

Shrugging slightly Niel followed the neko's lead and dropped into the tunnel. He wasn't quite sure what to make of his commanding officer. He had never really met a mini-neko before and wondered how it affected her combat prowess. 'Ah well I guess the firefly knows what she's doing'

Seeing that his teammates were pulling away from him he rushed to catch up. For the fifth time in half an hour he made a quick check that his Large Katar blades still rested at his sides. He would only use his rifle as much as he needed to preferring to resort to more physical methods of death dealing. His instructor had said it was a weakness in him. Personally he liked to be sure that he had killed his enemy.

Ahead he could hear the sharp retort of gunfire as it echoed through the tunnel. It's distance was hard to place but it was creeping closer.
 
Sif coldly spoke, her small armor still flying forward towards the rapidly growing noise of combat deeper within the tunnels. "There are four hostiles ahead - the rest of the squad is attempting to subdue them before they potentially reach and alert others or slip away." Despite the impersonal, businesslike manner and serious topic, the words felt sharp and pointed right at Freyja. But that passed quickly as a shade or two of tension was thrown away. "Accelerate and join the rest of the squad immediately," the Mini-Neko ordered, the initial harshness relatively gone. A brief pause later however, a small, grudging, frustrated mumble could be heard by the two newcomers over their comms.

"You can go shopping later."
 
The continued pressure from four of the squad's members kept the three remaining enemies quicken their pace, and return fire became less and less accurate as they barreled down the ruined subway tunnel. However, this portion of the tunnel was perfectly straight, and not much farther past the fleeing enemies, there seemed to be an immense wall of rubble, causing them to suddenly slow down, forcing the enemies to stop and find cover. As the fireteam Kai sent ahead approached, their return fire suddenly became much more intense, and since everyone was moving, their camouflage was less than perfect, giving these now prepared enemies decent shots.

From this distance, however, only grazing blows contacted the Daisy II power armors, making shield warnings pop up on Damien, Aya, and Anzu's barriers, though the distance that Rin stayed at kept her relatively safe, as did the cover she found.

**********

The Juni, from his perch on the pile of rubble, dug through the debris until the enemy power armor was exposed. As expected, it wasn't moving, a sign that the blow had knocked the pilot unconscious, despite the armor being quite perfectly intact. Looking over the armor, Kai pulled it completaly out of the rubble pile, gently resting the downed enemy against its former tomb instead, and then pulled out his Zesuaium katana, using the oversized weapon to forcefully pry off one of the spiked 'ears' on the helmet, exposing components and wiring underneath.

Ponderously, Kai pulled one of the wires out, and attached it to one of the empty hardpoints on his armor, for reasons those nearby probably could not figure out; but then the enemy armor started convulsing, as if it were fighting against something until it gave a final jerk and shut itself down, the glow of its sensors and whine of its generator dimming to nothing as the armor first went limp, and then set itself into a frozen position.

"One prisoner, down..." the Juni muttered to himself, before looking up to see April rejoining the squad. With a nod, she continued, heading up to join the forward squad, just in time for Kai to note Sif coming down the hallway, trailed by two new squad members.

"Sif, I need you to secure the other prisoner, and then you and I will join the rest of the squad."

**********

"We've got 'em cornered, so I'd suggest waitin' and makin' good shots if ya can!" April's voice suddenly announced itself over the squad's comms. "We want 'em down quick, afore they can get through that wall. they obviously know a way out or they wouldn't be in here, most likely" the blonde observed, mimicking Anzu's anti-gravity tactics by positioning herself on the right wall to get a better shot at the enemies before them.
 
Relatively close quarters, underground and plenty of shadows. This is my kinda place. Niel thought as he jogged behind his other squadmates gradually winding up to a full sprint to catch up with the others. There was blood in the air, or at least he hoped there was about to be.

Niel skidded to a halt behind the red armour. "Requesting permission to engage in melee combat." he asked hopefully. His fingers itching to feel the sensation of flesh parting beneath the monomolecular edges of his Katar blades.
 
Almost as soon as Sif finished speaking Freyja was racing ahead to catch up with her new squad mates activating the active-camouflage she saw the squad engaging in a fire-fight with the enemy.

Sprinting toward a fight is a great way to make yourself full of bullets and holes she thought to herself hunching down as she ran sliding the last meter or so into cover she readied her gun and waited for the first fool to pop their head up and say hello to a plasma bolt. Freyja not wanting to give the same opportunity to the enemy kept herself as hidden as possible.
 
The red power armor came to a fast and hard stop right by the downed, unconscious enemy moments after the order.

Reaching down, Sif firmly grasped the back plate of the fallen Reaper's armor - her fingers neatly fit in between the recessed, hidden maintenance seams before she gave a tug. Metal screeched and screamed as fasteners and bolts stressed, warped and finally gave way. Tossing the panel aside, her fingers dove into the exposed electronic guts, ruining the systems. "Denied," her voice uncaringly addressed Niel. "You could have just done so without asking and died from friendly fire though," she replied matter-of-factly, busy as she was.

Just as Freyja's eyes clearly caught the exchange between friend and foe something else joined the harsh RaTa-TaT-TaT of rifles and whining 'PHwiiiiSH' of plasma rifles and particle rifles. A singular, high pitched screech of agony scraped down on to the bone - Sif had bent the elbow of the unconscious enemy backwards, and was already starting on the next. "If you look carefully, this terrain is very poor for melee combat," the dainty figure explained, the enemy woman inside sobbing and crying as she tried to struggle against her barely mobilel coffin. "It's a straight line with some rubble - they'll see you coming, and you'll merely block the rest of the squad's rifle fire at the least."

A horrible crunch, followed by another scream of terror echoed through the subway tunnel - mercifully, the enemy infantrywoman fell silent as pain overwhelmed her.
 
Rin moved forward with the rest of the squad, firing controlled bursts from her Plasma Rifle at one of the cornered enemies.

She raised her shield as she advanced in an attempt to weather the intensified fire from the hostiles.
 
Anzu loved the direct approach. Sometimes, though, she knew it wasn't the best choice. She had a feeling this was one of those boring 'stop and think' kind of moments. Sighing inside her helmet, she hunkered down behind her shield, still attached to the ceiling. Thankfully, the others were still laying down plenty of fire and drawing a good chunk of the attention. Her camo even worked a bit better as she stayed still.

Her sensors were collecting data from the others, adding it to what she already saw. A big, precarious wall of junk. There was probably some way to wriggle through, but it must be pretty delicate, if the enemies were stopping to fight instead of bolting. The Neko focused on the rubble, trying to pick the perfect spot to do the most damage. Hopefully only to the enemy.

Another armor piercing round was fired from Anzu's bazooka, as she tried to send the wall of debris crumbling down around the hostiles. Hopefully it would not only ruin their escape plans, but destroy their cover and do a bit of damage to them personally as well.
 
Damien followed in hot pursuit of the fleeing hostiles until they stopped to turn and fight. Apparently they had reached wherever they were going and needed to shake the squad to get away. Damien was expecting return fire and took quite a bit of it as his shield absorbed the impact from the enemy fire, giving him a low energy warning as it did.

Not totally surprised by this fact, Damien dove for cover and returned fire against the enemy units. He felt like bait, but someone had to keep the enemy busy while the rest of the squad caught up to their position. He was hoping that the rest of the squad was approaching their position so that they could overwhelm and destroy the enemy units. They had them cornered and now was the time to finish them. Of course, Damien also knew that a cornered animal was the most deadly...
 
"Hmmm. A couple of grenades in the right places would make this mess a hell of a lot easier." grumbled Niel as he dropped down to a crouch resting his rifles bipod on the top of some relatively flat rubble.

The Hei watched for the enemies thermal signatures taking shots whenever the AIES fireing solution came up positive. Meanwhile he was readying his SLAG, in the confined spaces of the tunnel the explosives could be devastating. Privately he wondered how long it would take the enemy to break and run.

With little further ado Niel fired three shrapnel grenades attempting to arc them over the enemies defensive line.
 
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Aya skittered to a halt yet again, sparing only a moment to check the insistent shield warning vying for her attention as she did so. Her eyes flicked from there to the sturdiest looking piece of cover she could find, and the Nekovalkyrja sprinted to it and almost dived the last metre or two.

The wall of garbage seemed to have grabbed Anzu's attention, since she sent another bazooka round screaming toward it. Aya bit her lower lip unconsciously; hopefully that wasn't a load-bearing wall or they could have something more serious than a gaggle of hostiles leading them on a wild goose chase to wrangle with.

Hoping to garner the squad some extra time, Aya reloaded her LASR and began spraying the enemy position with as much fire as she could muster in an attempt to suppress them.
 
The tunnel echoed with a series of resounding booms as first Anzu's Bazooka, and then Niel's grenades, combined with the incessant firing of both Squad XIII and their targets. Suddenly, however, everyone's HUD's lost contact with the three hunkered down enemy armors, as if they had suddenly disappeared, not to mention the return fire had stopped as well. Kai Issued a cease-fire, and everyone's weapons stopped shooting, regardless of input, for the moment. Rubble could be seen falling, behind the veil of dust blown up by the explosions, and the wall that they had come against seemed to pulsate. There then came a horrible sound, like the scraping of metal against stone, followed by a loud cracking noise, and suddenly Anzu's footing on the ceiling became incredibly unstable.

"Awww, Shit" April toned over the comms, sounding a bit worried "it looks like the roof's coming down. Everyone! Back, NOW!" She yelled, boosting backward from her spot on the wall just in time for sunlight to come pouring through gaps as the ceiling collapsed completely, large and small chunks alike spilling down one by one around the squad, and causing more than just a bit of concern, as many of the rocks were large enough to crush their armors like empty soda cans.

Except, that was not the main worry. Through the enormous hole in the crumbling ceiling, came something rather large, covered in scaly yellow armor. It was entirely too tall to fit in the tunnel, but the hole it had smashed through the ground seemed to take care of that problem, as it wasted no time in reaching for the nearest thing it could- One of the squad's Powered armors. Though the squad had known they were called the Unluckies, so far they had been rather fortunate. But that all ended as Maximilian Geiger suddenly realized that he really should have tried to remain a shuttle pilot. Though he unloaded his rifle at the beast from point blank, the massively thick frontal armor absorbed or deflected everything, leaving the Nepleslian helplessly screaming as the claws slowly closed in, first crushing his Daisy II's midsection, causing the fusion reactor to explode, and then slicing what was left to little bits. The render mecha threw Geiger's charred, mangled remains to the side like some kind of useless broken toy, and then opened fire, its Gatling cannon spraying bullets everywhere as the crude Aether cannons on its shoulders began to take a bead on the rest of Squad XIII.
 
Rin yelped in surprise as the roof of the tunnel began to collapse, a large chunk of rubble landing not far from her location. And then a giant NMX Render dropped down into the tunnel. Rin turned and retreated to behind the fallen pillar she had taken refuge behind previously, only to see the Render kill the squadmate that she had rode in on the APC with.

Faced with such a powerful foe, Rin holstered her Plasma Rifle and retrieved the Gauss Bazooka stowed on her back. Extending the weapon to its full length, Rin placed the stock of the bazooka against her shoulder and held it tightly in both hands.

Using her HUD, Rin aimed carefully at the Render's four "eyes" and fired a penetrator sabot at the enemy mecha. She then had the presence of mind to duck behind the fallen pillar while the next round cycled into the chamber.
 
"GAH!" Niel gaped at the massive mechaniod filling the tunnel. He ran a quick mental catalogue of the weapons he had on him. His service rifle was a dud. It wouldn't even scratch the pain on this monster, that left him with just his blades and grenade launcher and even he wasn't stupid enough to try to take this ting in a melle fight. He only had five thermite grenades and those would be hard to land effectively, especially if the pilot noticed them but it was all he had to work with.

Wincing in sympathetic pain as his squadmate was disected he quickly loaded his SLAG hoping beyond all hope he could do at least some damage. He fired off two rounds aiming for the front knee joints before loading and firing another at the gatling cannon mount. That weapon seemed to be the most pressing concern.

Sweating slightly from the battle pressure Niel ducked back into cover.
 
The sabot round shot forward like a fiery yellow arrow before several explosions followed up!

A brief show of light and energy crackled as the frame's energy barrier briefly flickered, the long metal rod shoving through with brute force to overwhelm the defensive threshold. It was like a giant flywheel had struck the Render, sparks flying off the point of impact - but the sabot bounced off of the transparent durandium lens, leaving a deep dent in the material! Grenades detonated across its barrier, the briefly concealing the war machine - its silhouette rapidly became clear as it pushed forward, smoke clinging to its semi-conformal field. A mouthless roar seemed to escape from the rampaging frame and groaning tunnel as it struggled to bring its largest gun to bear but failed as the ceiling hemmed it in - instead the large hip mounted weapon spun up again to sweep across the squad, hailing barrier weakening explosions among them all!

Its smaller, shoulder mounted Aether cannons were being brought to bear as it gave up on the larger anti-ship weapon.

Several bright purple lances lashed out and splashed across the frame's barrier, four points neat on its left shoulder weapon glowing white hot as armor ablated! "Spread out and keep your distance!" Sif's voice commanded over the comms - the red form leaped up into the air and flipped to try and distract the Render, feet landing on the ceiling as she fired her arm guns while the cannon-drones recycled. "There's no point in going for the optics - the backup systems are more than enough at this short range! Get its joints or weapons!"
 
Anzu swayed as the tunnel rumbled, the ceiling shaking roughly. She dropped away, flipping to slam her feet back onto the floor of the tunnel, as April shouted her warning. She boosted backwards as the ceiling she'd been standing on just moments earlier fell inside, along with a rather large surprise. "Woah!" The Neko didn't have time to add to that thought right now, as she put more space between herself and the Render, watching bits of the unlucky Unlucky scatter around the tunnel. There wasn't much of a choice in this situation, as she was forced to continue backing away rapidly, keeping as much rubble in front of her as possible.

"I thought this was supposed to be one of those secret missions! How'd they know to send a Render to an abandoned tunnel!?" Simo was frustrated by what they were faced with, and the lack of options available in this setting. "They got slightly less weapons on the back end, but the best place to be is right underneath!" She helpfully marked the large dead zone underneath the machine, easily enough room for one or two Daisys, although there was a problem with that idea. Anzu loaded her high explosive rounds, doing her best to at least move to the side of the tunnel, trying to stay away from the zone directly in front of it. "Of course, we ain't exactly got the room for fancy maneuvers down here!" She went with Plan B for now, firing at the side of the large, crotch-mounted gun, hoping to put at least one weapon out of commission. Every little bit helped.
 
Aya blanched as the Render ended Maximilian's involvement in the fight in a brutal fashion. Up until now, it had been relatively easy to hide behind the squad's good progress, but now the reality of their sobriquet hit home with full force. Silently she wished that she had had the good sense and good fortune to take along a heavy weapon as she tried to keep moving. Aya felt that if she stayed still for too long she was inviting a similar fate to Geiger. However, she was also aware that she would have to stop eventually, even if only because there wasn't that much room to work with.

Relying on her Daisy II's targeting systems, she fired a few rounds from her SLAG at the Render's joints. With that done, she skidded to a stop at the fallen pillar and hunkered down next to Rin. "This is gonna be a tough one..." she muttered.
 
Rin watched in dismay as her sabot simply bounced off the Render, but then she heard an unfamiliar, but commanding voice over the comm.

"There's no point in going for the optics - the backup systems are more than enough at this short range! Get its joints or weapons!"

One of Rin's squadmates, tagged as Miyamoto, slid behind the fallen pillar and stopped next to her.

"This is gonna be a tough one..." Miyamoto muttered.

"Not if I can help it!" answered Rin.

Rin raised the gauss bazooka to her shoulder again and popped up above her cover. She took the time to carefully aim at one of the missile pods on the side of the Render's body, firing another sabot round at the enemy mecha. Rin hoped that her shot would damage or ignite the projectiles within and damage the Render further.
 
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