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RP: Cirrus Station [Episode 7] It's All Fun and Trains

"This isn't doing anything." Avel thought to herself as she lowered her CSS weapon. She saw one of the men on her cart climb on the crane and try to cross over onto the tram that now had it's doors open. She almost smacked her head when he clung to it in fear. "So much for being the hero." She turned to the other three on her cart. "Extend the boon to that rear car over there!" Was all she said to them before she climbed on top of the crane.

Avel crouched low so she wouldn't lose her balance and knelt down behind Blake. She looked down at him through her helmet. "Get up and get ready to jump!" she ordered in a harsh tone. Then she noticed the junker drones. "Stay down and help me take out those drones." She stood up straight, readied her gun and started firing at the drones on the rear car.
 
Shit.

Keziah looked to Serra, and saw the junker scraping against the windshield. And, judging from the behavior of the others, they only moved in packs.

"How many are there?" she said into the comms. She pushed away from the railing and moved towards one of the open doors, holding herself to the inside of the tram as she carefully took a look outside at the top of their tram. "Claire, Himiko, be ready to cover Stovaa and the passengers."
 
As if being switched on like a machine, Blake sat up and skittered across the crane's boom, crouched down and prepared to jump. He looked back at the woman who prodded him with a sort of curious stare for a moment, before turning away; his focus on the other cart instead. As their cart pulled closer and closer to the others, Blake found himself loading some bullets into his HHG. He looked down at his hands quizzically, as if to ask them, 'Where did you get those?'

Shaking off the obvious logical inconsistency with his ammunition, Blake instead steeled himself for the oncoming jump. He ignored all of his fears and focused on the potential to get out of the gusty tunnel and back to the places on the station where his bald head would be warmer.
 
"I counted about five to eight junker drones landed on the fore of the cabin, so you're looking at about that many." Serra said back as she continued her mission of piloting the tram train.
 
"We have bugs under the tram!" Noboru shouted, again stating the obvious. Looking down over the railing, he watched as some more sparks skittered down the rails behind them, then turned back to the crew. Shrugging, he turned and looked back over the railing again, then frantically looked back to the crew.

"Someone's going to need to go down there and scrape them off!" The Yamataian shouted.
 
The first burst of fire from Claire's gun that day sounded off. It hit it's mark of the drone crawling down into the nearby doorway from the roof of the tram. Without even waiting to see it's effect, she moved away from Serra, giving one glance back to make sure she was ok and moving on over to where Keziah had ordered her to. She seemed unusually quiet for right now, focusing purely on her task of covering Stovaa and the other passengers.
 
Stovaa gave the short Freespacer on the opposite tram a friendly smile then slid the door-bridge into place on the far tram. Thankfully, it fitted pretty snugly, and there wasn't a lot of space for it to slide around. The hulking Id-Sol clamped his hands around the sides of the bridge and the edge of the door frame, holding it solidly in place.

"Ok, one at a time, Peke..." Stovaa shouted loudly, over the noise of the trams speeding along the track. He glanced around as his teammates prattled about junkers, but he could only see a few on the roof of the other tram.
 
As Avel and Blake stood poised to make a rather complicated leap, Lenny's large arms shot out and grasped the two by their CSS suit's backpacks, preventing them from an ill-fated meet with the speeding rails beneath them. "Whoa whoa whoa! Where are you two goin'?!" George shouted from atop Lenny's massive shoulders, lifting his visor to catch a better glimpse at what had just happened. Instead, however, the short, sharp-eyed Nepleslian caught sight of something more distressing than two of his squadmates taking death-defying leaps.

Off to the left, the small group of CSS members had been faring well enough fending off what little attempts the junker drones were throwing at them from the rear end of the Squad 35 controlled Tram 1. In the confusing scuffle, however, a few of the skittering robots could be seen milling about below their cart, in a similar fashion to how they drones beneath Noboru, Method and Sean's cart were acting. At first their presence beneath the crane maintenance cart seemed to have little to no detrimental effects other than an occasional rattle or burst of sparks. Suddenly and without warning, however, the crane cart began to emit some very distressing creaks and screeches as the front end dipped forward. The small group of miscellaneous CSS members froze almost instantly, each of them not fully realizing what was happening until it was too late.

The loud scream of warping metal soon led to the crane cart across from Avel, Blake, Lenny and George to unhinge itself from the track in a rather violent fashion, the CSS members aboard holding onto whatever they could find for dear life as they were thrown about. The cart eventually completely unhinged itself from the tracks, throwing itself into a spin as it clattered and spun hazardously towards George and Lenny's maintenance car.

---

Back in the conductor car of Tram 1, Keziah and her group were running into their own sets of problems. At the front of the tram, Serra's comfortable position at the front of the train was suddenly disrupted as, with one mighty metal swing, the junker drone skittering in front of her behind the glass smashed through. The crash sent both glass and dog-sized droid to the floor, sending a small shower of shards towards the Elysian maintaining Tram 1's blazing speeds.

---

Across from Stovaa's position, the short Freespacer Administrator nodded once, beginning to turn to the group of frightened to inform them to take the makeshift bridge slowly. The message, however, didn't seem to get through to them in time, however; a couple of the more ambitious Cirrus Station personnel rushed onto the short bridge ahead of the others. A slight bump on Tram 2's track shook the platform slightly as they reached the middle point, however, upon which they all dropped onto their hands and knees in fear, desperately attempting to remain balanced atop the increasingly hazardous bridge.

---

As Keziah peered carefully at the top of the front car, she would catch sight of several junker drones milling about aimlessly, seemingly without any real purpose as they crawled across the thing metal roofing plates. Suddenly, however, Keziah would catch sight of one of the closer drones lunge at her, swinging its front legs forward on top of her head. The force of the blow was barely noticeable behind her helmet...but in an unfortunate turn of events, the junker drones legs had caught hold of some of the nicks on the back of her helmet and backpack. The junker, also seeming somewhat confused by this dilemma, began to hurriedly step backwards with its remaining legs, dragging Keziah with it. Some of the other junkers noticed the odd goings on happening on the edge of the tram and began to slowly advance, curious as to see what their brother drone was doing.
 
Avel was about to protest when the ID-SOL grabbed her but turned her attention to the sound of grinding metal and her blood ran cold with fear when she saw the cart barreling towards her.

For a split second she stood completely frozen but in her mind a million thoughts had run through her head. Was this it? All that training and effort just to be crushed by a derailed cart? Images of the scientists disappointed looks flashed into her mind and her fear was immediately replaced by raw hatred. The same hate she felt when she discovered the scientists considered her a complete failure. If she died here, not only would they be right but they wouldn't care about her death in the slightest. That thought alone made her blood boil and successfully snapped her back into the real world. She knew what she had to do.

"Brace for impact!!" She yelled in a commanding voice as she climbed into the back of the cart where she was the least likely to be crushed. Crouching down and making herself as small as possible, she then grabbed onto the cranes framework as tightly as she could and waited for the inevitable.
 
Her attention had been split too many ways when the junker lunged for her. She barely raised her arm in defense when it hit her, making her see stars for a brief second as she reeled backwards...

Except she couldn't go backwards. The junker claws were dug in snugly, and she began to stagger unsteadily forward, made all the worse by the speed of the tram. "Shit!" she yelped, her footing getting worse and worse with each backwards step the junker took. Her arm lashed out, her body spinning as she grabbed one of the vertical bars in the tram, synthmuscles priming to full power as she wrapped her hand around it.

The grab made her lose her balance completely and she fell on her chest, the junker's arms twisting together as it wrenched her head up. She groaned loudly, a mixture of frustration and pain, as she tried to keep both herself and the junker in the tram.
 
Method snapped out of her daze with a small grunt as the crane tram began to shake. Her hobnailed boots screeched loudly as she lost her balance, and the jerks of the tram subsequently threw her facedown as the cart spun out of control. It was all she could do to hold on.
 
Blake yelled out to the derailed cart in vain, as if telling it to stop. He cringed as he watched the car spinning towards him. In an effort to help the situation, he reached for and pulled on the brake lever. The crane moved slightly, but the train maintained speed. This time, Blake struggled to reach the real brake lever. Two more no-go's later and he was yanking every single lever available, pressing any buttons or pedals he could touch as the spinning wreckage came ever closer.
 
While Avel and Blake clung on desperately for their inevitable turbulence, the derailed crane cart harshly spun around over the tracks. Blakes attempts in changing their carts course were moments too late; the edges of the two platforms collided violently, uprooting Avel and Blakes' cart in the process as their ride began to dip and shake, the sounds of scratching metal screaming through the tunnel. Behind them, the unfortunate trio of CSS members and their derailed tram continued towards the opposing wall of the long tunnel, eventually crashing harshly into the nearby Tram Terminal (the terminal for the Cirrus Station Weapon Labs, to be precise) and coming to a sudden and rather messy halt.

Avel, Blake, George and Lenny, however, were in for more than a simple crash, as it would seem. Their whirling crane cart spun across their track towards the rear end of Tram 1 as crane and its industrial hooked swung along the short length of steel chord directly into the side of the final car. A handful of junker drones that had been observing the mayhem from the relative safety of the side of the car unlatched from the side of the tram car as the shock from the hook reverberated through the paneling. Instantly, the steel chord pulled taut and jerked the crane cart behind it, dragging it along as the metal hook held firm into the pierced metal siding. Although a little bumpy and not the safest of places to be, the small group of CSS members were on relatively stable ground...for the moment, anyway; the amount of time the industrial hook would remain set was very questionable.

---

As Keziah pulled back against the junker, the drone continued to scurry backwards, occasionally attempting to yank its forelegs from Keziah's backpack. Seeing one of their hivemates in potential danger of falling off of the tram, several of the other junkers skittering across the roof grabbed hold of the Junker Drone's body-carriage and began to assist in the tug-o-war.

Below all of this, at the head of the first car of Tram 1, the droid that had broken through the front window had up-righted itself. The sets of glowing red round eyes whizzed about for a moment before setting on Serra, at the controls of the tram. Instantly, the dog-sized drone reared band and lunged for the Elysian, its front legs lifted upwards menacingly.
 
Serra dodged as best she could from the lunging Junker and brandished a 8 and 3/16ths wrench in one hand, and a pair of open vice grips in thew other.

"I helped put one of you together, so I have intimate foreknowledge of how to take you apart." She said, attempting to intimidate a machine with the intelligence of of an ant.
 
"Argh!" Noboru shouted as he was thrown up against the thin safety rail at the front of the tram. It was all he could do to hook his arm through the railing and cling for dear life as the cart hurtled off the tracks.
 
Avel hung onto the crane tower for dear life as the cart came off the tracks. So far she had yet to be crushed or dismembered. Maybe she wouldn't be seriously injured after all.
 
As Serra's words of warning passed through the hostile junker's sound-intake, the droid disregarded the Elysian's threats and lunged at her again.

---

Method, Noboru and Sean, relatively safe from the deadly whirling vortex behind them, seemed to be having a moment of reprieve. While they had been thinning out the numbers of junker droids on the tram car in front of them, there were still plenty of them milling about the chassis. All of a sudden, however, the skittering swarm began to pull back and move farther up and out of sight from the three CSS members still set on shaky but steady ground.

While it might have appeared to be a full retreat, however, moments later Method and her small group would see what was really happening. Apparently, while the fight had been raging at the rear of the Runaway Tram between the two sides, a small contingent of torch-equipped drones had been eating away at the coupling holding the rear car to the rest of the tram. At first, nothing seemed to be happening out of the ordinary, other than the junkers quickly crawling away. Soon after, however, the back end of the tram in front of them began to slowly but surely inch towards them, the speed of their crane cart compared to the slowing velocity of the single tram car quickly closing the distance between the two.

---

Back in Keziah's group on Tram 1, the small handful of fearful Cirrus Station employees had come to their senses and began to swiftly vacate Tram 2 via the makeshift bridge that Stovaa had constructed. After crossing, they gathered along the cushioned seats of Tram 1 few by few until all but Peke had crossed the speeding threshold...and it would appear that the little Freespacer had little intention of crossing, her arms set on her hips as she tapped her foot impatiently.

"Okay okay, they're all over now. You guys gonna get in here or what?!" Peke Twenty-Two asked them, shouting above the clatter of the trams on their tracks.
 
"What the..." Sean paused in the middle of reloading his CSSVW. "Why'd they just break off like that?" He turned his head. "Did one of you... Oh. Wow. That's why."
 
"Uh, I suppose. Though I'll have to wait until last, really..." the Id-Sol said, still holding the bridge in place. He paused and glanced around. "Uh, you wouldn't happen to know why shit went crazy would you? 'Cause I'm not really a tech guy, but this looks a bit like something technological went bad. And, uh, what're those little robotic crab-tards doing back there..?"

Stovaa wasn't aware of what the tiny robots were really supposed to be doing, but he was fairly sure that this wasn't it. He reached for his pistol, hauled it into the air and aimed for a second before squeezing the trigger, targetting one of the junkers that was dissapearing from view over the top of the tram.
 
"Shit!" Noboru shouted, watching the crane tram's latest obstruction come screeching towards them. He pounded the railing in front of him, looking towards the rear of the tram ahead. He looked back towards the crane, then back towards the tram.

No plan so far...

Waiting...

Noboru held up a fist in success. "Can we shoot the magnets off that thing and see if we can tilt it enough to throw it off the rails?" Noboru shouted frantically.
 
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