RP: NSS Sledge Mama Ep. 5.5 - I Hear You Like Cats?

Sawyer would snarl as the voice came over his comms, he figured that all things considered the voice was likely right. The way the systems were going batshit, it definitely said that they had been hacked, shields were offline and the sensors were sending back absolute garbage responses. He'd pop the seals on his armored helmet and yank it off, setting it onto his armor as he turned and looked around, his hand going to his hyper induction sword that was on his right hip as he tried to find the being that they were after. If he was able to locate the cyber-neko visually, then he'd end up breaking loose of the shieldwall and moving to engage with his blade.

Stripe quickly undid his Helmet and, once he located the nearest twit trying to kill him, chucked his Helmet at them with a yell of "Catch!". He didn't have time to ponder the hows and whys of the situation, instead trying to move back and get some breathing room.

Mark cautiously activated his lung's filtration system before removing his helmet. Considering last time he'd lost part of an arm fighting one of these things he decided to take no chances. He turned a full 360 as he swept the area around him and tried to fight the anxious feeling in his stomach.

Alec screeched and tried to push Ylfa out of the way as he rolled away from slashing sword. He tried to bumble out some words but it seemed that his ability was stunted by the sudden appearance of the cyber neko. Instead, he drew out his LSP and tried to place a few shots around it.

Richard heard the orders over his radio but he hesitated a moment, he figured he was being hacked again after the last time, but he was not too keen on removing his helmet while a sniper as about. However seeing others do so he took his off as well, raising his shield to keep his head safe form any oncoming bullets. Once his helmet was off he looked around to try and evaluate the situation.

Jaime winced as his already annoyingly damaged helmet when haywire. He popped the seals and ripped it off with a audible, "Fucking Hell..." and dropped it. He raised his shield and rifle to adjust to the new stance and looked around forward as the Sniper made her movements. His head hurt from the distortions created by the screen crack and the sudden hack. His eyes began to readjust as he lined up his sights roughly on the Cyber-Neko. He put a few bursts down and began to grit his teeth looking to the Sergeants and the Corporal for battle orders.

The blade brilliantly flashed as it sliced towards Jaime's head, but the loud sparking clang of metal on metal stopped it in its tracks as Ylfa fended it off with her own sword.

"Damnit, you gonna cap us or something Sniper? Or you going to say something, huh?!" She heard it. The fear, the doubt in the other person's voice. It was perhaps their best source of hope, since right now? It was chaos.

"Die already!" Screeching, swearing and tear streaked, the Cyber Neko literally dove right into their midst and began swinging with her sword with wild abandon. The marines could literally feel dull thuds through their suits as red-hot scars were cut into their armor. Scrambling to meet her, several of them raised their own blades against the Cyber Neko, but she kept on moving through their heavy, towering forms. Sawyer instinctively swung his blade out as he caught sight of rainbow streaked pigtails as Stripe managed to get the hell out of the fray. He watched as Mark spun around, only to come face to face with Sawyer's sword, stopping just short of the marine himself. Alec, gripped with fear, scrambled with his LSP, but found nothing but marines in his sights as she kept on moving. Jaimie barely got some shots off, but they went wide of the Cyber Neko, and landed far too close to the others.

She moved in, kicking off of the observant Richard, only to land right by Jamie's side, her head smoothly turning like a mechanical turret, eyeing him in a horrific split second.

The blade came stabbing right at his face as their suits lit up again, shields online.

Shadow’s boots found the ground and she landed heavily, again counting on her suit to soak the impact.

It did.

Yay.

She had dropped down into the Tavern at the End of the World, which is where she had meant to be. She leapt the bar and swung past the mechanical bartender, presently engaged in cleaning a few of the unused glasses, which were to presumably be used by robots for their varied, sporadically collected, unused liquor. Rather than getting her Drank on, Shadow had quite a different idea.

The controls for the parade grounds were here, where the cash register might sit on a back, mahogany-looking panel.

She pulled them down and stared at the user interface intently.

Shit.

At least she knew where the intercom button was, and she felt for it beneath the bar with her good hand, triggering it.

“Listen,” she told it, eyes trying to make sense of the booting control panel’s rapidly expanding options. “Take a good look around. I’ve got you, like, surrounded, down there. All of you. Explosives, activate-able soldiers you're right in the center of, so there's no reason to fight anymore. Proved the point and everything. So we're going to, uh, talk for a bit like civilized folk. We’re gonna back off, now, right Jerry?”

Come on Jerry stop giving blondes a bad reputation do you have even any idea what you are doing right now. I'm going to rip your stupid pigtails off if they don't do it first.

Shadow found the floodlights, and turned them on. The effect flooded the huge staging ground, one light after another first illuminating the control tower, then the rest of the area by sections. The fighting had damaged some of the lights, but most of them turned on.

Like someone's mom had opened the door on a dark room while they were huddled over a computer screen doing something naughty.

And then the parade music started.

It had become a clusterfuck. Unduly chaotic. Whatever you wanted to call it. The lithe form of the Cyber-Neko cutting in their midst had set off a chain reaction of stupidity. Shots mixed into the crowded scene, a robotic organism with a death wish was swingin' her weapon away at the clustered unit. And it was all Yuriko could do to get the hell out of dodge. Clearing some distance between the main group, the Sergeant got a better, clearer view of the mishmash going on in the ranks.

Honestly, she doubted the Marines were trained to handle someone smaller than themselves when fighting in armor. Was enough to make her want to spit on the ground. Muttering a curse, shoulders squared, a concave section of armor popped open. The hilt of a knife jutting forth to which she grabbed. Thumbing the activator, the Vibroknife hummed as the Geshrin surged back into the fray. Just in time to see a blade heading right for Jamie's helmet.

Locking her shield in close, Yuriko preparing to shoulder into the Private's suit to push him aside. The knife in her other hand coming up in a forty-five degree slice toward the sword wielding terror's weapon-laden wrist.

"Called it." Stripe stated blandly as he took out his axe and shifted his stance, prepared to go in on the Cyberneko when an opening presented itself. Shaking his head, he took the time to take shots at the motionless mechanical corpses with his shoulder mount.

Jaime's eyes went wide as he raised his shield to make one hell of an attempt at his life. He switched his stance to take the brunt of the Cyber-Neko's weight and use his shoulder railgun to go for the kill. He'd faced axe wielding maniacs before, his right arm's scars under the metal armor and cybernetic arm showed this. Just when he began to lean forward did he see Yuriko's moves out of the corner of his eye. He braced himself for whichever person rammed into him first and set his railgun for the Cuber-Neko alone.

Mark recoiled as he registered Sawyer's blade. Taking a step back he drew his blade before dropping into a defensive stance. Mark had to be prepared to block either an attack or a stray blade.

The Cyber neko was an unwelcome discovery, but it explained the situation, at least in part. The radio message from anotehr party was concerning, but he didn't have time to deal with that. H already knew from experience, without aim assist from teh suits, hitting this thing with bullets would just be a matter of luck, might as well shoot targets blindfold. A sword wouldn't be much better, however there was something that at least might throw her off guard. With everyone dropping their guard towards the sniper, and no head shots yet, he didn't need to keep his shield up, so he found a chance and swung it face forward in the neko's direction, it was at least wider and might be a bit more difficult to dodge. However mid swing the flood lights came on, quickly disorienting him without his helmet on to filter out the light.

Alec scrambled back to up his feet to at least get a more solid stance. His LSP waved around wildly as he tried to point his sights on the cyber neko before the lights came on. This did not help in help in the least bit. "Anyone know what the hell is going on any more?"

Sawyer would brace his shield just in case as he waited for either an action of the cyberneko or for the others of the squad as he kept his sword in motion just enough to keep the other one's blade from hitting his armor.

It was as if the marines pounced on the lone Cyber Neko like a blood thirsty pack.

Sparks flew as a red mark marred the surface of Jaime's shield, but already, a knife came swinging as Yuriko charged in, their suits colliding with the massive, heavy impact of metal on metal as the Sergeant shoved him out of harm's way. As Stripe pumped rounds into the fallen Super Militants for safety's sake, Alec struggled to get a bead on Jerry; the pigtailed Cyber Neko literally leaped off of Jaime's shield, nimbly dodging Yuriko's blade. Already, she was quickly evading Richard's blade as well, but Jerry watched as hardened metal rushed up right into her face as the young man slammed his shield into her. The abomination was sent skipping across the floor like a pebble across a lake, but landed right on her feet. Just as she literally started to fade from sight like a ghost the whole world shook and turned into a blurred, ringing nothing as Jaime's railgun boomed.

Disorientated by the powerful blast, their hearing was shot to hell as everything spun, spun, spun and slowly came to. Without their helmets, they could see Jerry, but now? It also meant they were far more vulnerable, energy barriers or not. As the marines just started to recover, their suits updated their status, a small projection displayed directly in their eyes as it recovered.

Sensors: Offline
Sensors: Booting
Sensors: Online

She did something to their suits, messing with the helmets. Without them, they could see again, but now? Now she vanished from sight, their suits fully coming to life again as she did so. Almost like it was an exchange. Ylfa noticed this and started to put the pieces together, but already she was searching for their enemy. Searching for an edge. A splash of translucent red marked the floor, and surrounded by the fallen, deactivated militants, the Master Sergeant's mechanical ears heard it. The faint sound of sobbing came from all over, the same voice, the same person, the same thing; the sound of the Cyber Neko faintly weeping to itself could be heard from the field of motionless mechanical bodies around them, just barely audible over the parade music. The sniper was grating on her nerves, but someone beat her to the first words.

"O-only one of us was going...going to make it. You just have to sit there, and not do a thing. But. They'll take me apart. Scoop me out of my body. Kill me. Again," they could hear the Cyber Neko sob.

"She's right about you, Sniper. Just do the smart thing and sit there, since, even if you got us to surrender, you won't stop the others. They'd be out for blood if any of us died." The truth Ylfa gave them was less than pleasant.

They could hear a faint gasp from a pile of mechanized bodies just a few dozen meters away.

“Yes,” Shadow agreed, her voice coming from one of the nearby machinations, “But you will be dead.”

She thought that she understood some of the controls for these things. She had, after all, watched Vináttu do it. So, Shadow began to activate them, one after another. And besides, hadn’t she sort of partially built the things? Well, not her, per se, but someone employed for her. Originally, they were supposed to be activated locally, but never mind that. Someone had decided to piss that away. Even if they just stood up, maybe that would be enough.

So, they began to stand. One by one, each of the automatons. In all directions. Not every one of them; some of them had been rigged to explode, instead. But the second or third row stood, like toy soldiers in front of some child's pretend-base.

Nothing to lose now, Shadow paused to light a cigarette and try to calm her nerves and take the edge off, at the same time discovering this was the last one she had on her. Today had seen her go through the rest of the pack. At least she didn’t have to bother hiding it; just at the moment, she was standing behind one-way ballistic glass.

Didn't stop her hand from shaking slightly. Took a try or two to light the thing.

Still going to plan, she reassured herself,

“So here’s what I wanna do,” she continued. “We’re gonna surrender, but we’ve got terms.

“You’re gonna help Jerry down there not die, whatever she’s, like, going on about. I can see through a camera she’s bleeding something and I, uh, don’t know what. You said you were tryin’ to capture someone anyway, easy day for you, and her boss left her to die or kill herself, I think.

“Secondly, I want amnesty.” Deep breath. Shadow looked out the window at the far specks that represented the Nepleslian Military in all its confused glory. “Plus, this shit like, wasn’t supposed to involve me but it did anyway, and I sort of want some revenge . You’ve seen what we can do, now, so tah-dah, we’re switching sides. Voluntarily. Having shown you we don't have to.”

Gambling had never been her strong suit, but she figured this was a safe enough bet.

Stripe glanced at Ylfa tiredly. "Your call." He said grimly as he readied himself for the worse, keeping an eye out for any more surprises.

Jaime took a second to get his bearings with his tinnitus ringing like mad. Once he was able to hear himself think he caught the Sniper's words. He looked at Ylfa with a raised eyebrow, "Not the first turncoat I've seen," he then looked to the far side of the room looking at the ground a few times in between, "Order's were clear." He kept his finger on the trigger expecting the Militants to explode and tear off his skull, and he seemed tense flexing and tapping his fingers on the front stock of his HPAR.

'If I wasn't weighed down by this clunky ass armor. . .' Not for the first time the thought crossed the Sergeant's mind. Hostiles were big, heavily armored tanks. Not what she was truly used to. "Perform scan on the enemy combatant and analysis of secretions." saying more to her on-board AI than over squadnet. She knew better than being the first to take that step forward. However, Yuriko flicked on her external speaker. And began speaking in accented Yamataigo. Where one would imagine a Nepleslian bent on speech, instead the Sergeant effected a scarily authentic Central Uesuryan accent.

<"What's your name, designation and species?"> directing it at the pitiful thing that had just moments ago terrorized the squad.