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RP: Cirrus Station [Episode 8] That Sinking Feeling

"I don't think that was the best idea Administrator." Serra said while she was bodily floating in midair from the velocity. After a second to stare, she shrugged. "Hollow bones," which was her attempt to explain why she was in midair. After another second, she crossed her arms. "I can't extend my wings in here so if you were planning on having me hover us both into not being paste smears on the floor when this thing crashes, well, I guess we're going to die unless you can rewire the emergency breaks back in."
 
Captain Bell had not even finished her sentence before Tweak had placed a pair of bullets en route to Bell's nose. Whether they hit was a matter of time and how fast the Unique captain was. Or whether that sneaky holo-technology was in play here like it had been when facing Bell's boss back on the Cirrus the first time around...

The neko went low as soon as the shots left the barrel, ducking behind the nearest stack of containers as one hand slipped inside her suit to grab Kess' module. She paused only long enough to speak over her channels to Claire and Kess:

"It's Bell with a plasma rifle in the server room! Be careful!"

Then Tweak pushed off the crate dart behind the server tower, her hand brushing by the SavTech interface port and plugging Kess in on a side of the server where Bell wouldn't notice before rounding the server and taking cover at the crates on the opposite end of the stack Bell had been hiding behind, keeping them between her and the mad Unique.
 
Claire had been paying attention to the other end of the room, but even without Tweak's warning, Claire very well recognized the voice before the shooting started. Bell...

It took all but a tenth of a second, but the memories that had been plauging her since the start of the mission rushed forth. A meeting in the hallway, the lights going out, the melting armor, the strewn corpses, the hangar bay, the beach, the...

Bell.

Claire's rage boiled inside of her mind, barely constrained by her training. Were it not for that, she would likely have snapped into a beserker already. As soon as the first two shots were fired, she moved away from her wall, firing a burst of three shots at Bell's center mass as she moved into cover by the nearest metal crates.
 
"I'll need a couple minutes!" Kess said shortly as Tweak inserted her unit into the server node.

Bell's face twitched in surprise as Tweak retaliated in lightning-fast action. The Unique Captain's reflective visor faceplate suddenly shot down as Bell attempted to dodge, but at the distance and in the surprise of the moment, the two bullets collided with the woman's helmet. The first bullet glanced off harmlessly, but the second collided flatly against the rounded visor, creating a small impact crater that left small cracks stemming outwards from the center. Bell's head was thrown back a bit as she lost her balance from the force of the rounds, but it would appear that she was miraculously unharmed from the exchange. The momentary confusion made certain that Bell herself wouldn't notice Tweak slipping Kess into the server node.

It took Bell less than a second to recover from the attack. The Unique raised her hand and plunged a set of fingers into the side of the shattered visor, using her armored hand to rip the shards of broken material away to no longer obscure her vision. Bell's eyes were narrow slits, smoldering blue eyes above a coy grin. "Good!" Bell screamed as she rounded the server, able to match Tweak's stride with surprising ease. Her speeding form made it difficult for Claire's shots to accurately strike the Unique Captain, although a quick turn of Bell's head revealed that she also now knew that Claire was in the room with them. This apparently only made Bell grin wider. "Good! GOOD! YES! I LOVE IT WHEN THEY FIGHT BACK!! I LOVE IT!!!"

Bell's maniacal call could only be heard by Tweak, as the Unique didn't pursue all of the way on to the hidden Neko. Instead, Bell reached over to her hip and pulled a small, disk-like object off of her thigh. Without stopping for a moment, the Unique Captain flung the object at the area to the side of Tweak's cover while quickly running in a wider arc around the crate to expose Tweak's position. Bell fired off several blue plasma bolts at the corner of the crate, the collision of superheated plasma and metal playing harshly with Tweak's natural senses as Bell suppressed her.

The object was metallic, and a little fat in the middle. While traveling in midair, the object appeared to excrete a clear, gel-like substance to its outer layer, fizzing softly. The object landed a few yards away from Tweak as she hid behind the storage crate, hitting the ground with a splat and sticking to its point of impact. Tweak would notice the object as it landed... moments before it detonated, sending a rush of intense heat, white-hot liquid and lethal shrapnel cascading around the point of impact.

---

Cassefin could quite make out what Serra was saying, mostly due to the fact that she was screaming at the top of her lungs as her body was suspended in the air for a couple seconds. As luck would have it, the two wouldn't need to make any immediate action; the elevator must have been near the bottom of the shaft before Cassefin's brash actions. The dropping elevator suddenly came to a halt, causing both Head Administrator the Cirrus Station Security member to hit the floor. Cassefin squeaked in both surprise and pain as she landed flat on her rump, her face contorting in pain in response to her bruising hips but otherwise unharmed. Luckily the fall appeared to have very little detrimental effect on the elevator as well, although the yellow light strips began to flicker above them.

"Gah! Ouch! OUCH!" Cassefin moaned in pain as she lay on the ground. "What the hell?!"

---

Kokuten's strike against the Unique's weapon was met with mixed results. The Unique known as Davis must have expected it, as the harsh blow didn't knock the weapon from her hands. Instead, the Unique recovered quickly and gave Kokuten a shove. "Back up asshole, I know what I'm doing!"

Davis said this, ironically, a split second before one of the terrorists behind the barricade stood up and aimed a high-powered rifle at the ground, spraying it with a guttural yell. The wide arc of fire he laid down encompassed most of the group, including Davis. The rifle rounds crashed through the tinted visor faceplate, not shattering it completely but leaving sizable holes in the material before the Unique immediately slumped backwards. "Davis!" Nell yelled, who was behind Kokuten, gasping in surprise as she watched her sister-in-arms fall. The silver-haired Unique quickly retaliated by shooting her own weapon towards the eco-terrorist that did Davis in, the blueish-white bolts colliding with the man's upper chest, knocking him down behind the cover. It was unlikely that he survived.

The other terrorists continued to fire sporadically upon the group. The remaining Uniques did what they could to suppress them in their cover, a couple shouts of pain screaming through the room every once in a while when a lucky shot from the Unique's penetrating heat-based weapons found a mark behind the cover.
 
The sum of our actions, it seems... Kokuten thought, watching the Unique die right in front of him. It felt cold of him to dismiss the woman's death in such a way, but despite their current alliance, she was still their enemy. It was likely that the moment Davis knew they were truly Squad 35, that they wouldn't be spared from her wanton anger. The Marine within him settled the doctor down with that fact. Fools were beyond saving.

When Davis hit the floor, and Nell leaned out to open fire, Kokuten holstered his pistol and placed the wall panel out stiffly, to provide her cover. While he did that, he pilfered the dead Unique's rifle and got back in line behind Stovaa.

"Noboru!" Kokuten said over the Radio, holding the rifle out to the man, before turning his head forward, shaking the wall panel out towards the barricades. "Suppressing fire! Either keep their heads down or blow them off! Do not relent until we've reached Administrator Popjoy!" Kokuten ordered out loud and squad-wide, an order that hopefully Uniques with them would understand.
 
Bullets rained against his shields and around him, the air alive with the smell of gunfire, the taste of steel and the scent of death. As he barreled towards the terrorists, he was bearing down on Purina as well. At the last second before he would have hit her, he threw his arms apart then slammed them down behind her, embedding the shields into the ground behind her, protecting the administrator from the eco-terrorist's fire.

"Ma'am, are you ok? Didn't hurt you did they?" He pulled his crowbar from his belt, gave her a salute and spoke again. "Hope you're ok but I've got to go, my crowbar hungers for the blood of fools!"

He ducked to the right and slammed bodily into the nearest upturned desk, pushing it back towards the wall for a few feet before his powerful fingers grasped the bottom of it, throwing it over and onto the unlucky terrorists behind it. His free arm lashed out at the nearest ecoterrorist who wasn't under a desk, crowbar aimed at the rifle barrel levelled at him.
 
Sensory filters made for battlefield conditions automatically activated as the noise and lighting levels rapidly increased, numbing the pain of audio and visual overloads to prevent disruption of concentration. Nekos never suffered hearing loss and the NH-7 series had hemosynthetic retinas, so whatever damage was done was small-scale and quickly repaired.

Of course, louder sounds make it difficult to hear softer sounds, not that there were many left now. The helmet and the hat hindering the movement of Tweak's ears also made it difficult for her to pinpoint sound origins, so she didn't even bother looking for where that object Bell had thrown was. She just knew it wasn't above her.

The explosion was a live demonstration of the dangers of grenade-jumping. Tweak cleared the top of the stacked crates she was hiding behind when the white phosphorus grenade went off, the blast ahead of the burning giving her a rough boost. Bouncing off the ceiling rather hard, Tweak managed to conserve her momentum as she landed on the ground on the other side of the crate stack, protected from the majority of the blast, but not all of it. A glop of the burning white liquid hit the heel of one of her boots as she came over the crates and searing through the material unnervingly fast. A sizable shard of metal from the grenade made a new home in her backpack, nicking the reactor inside. Alarms immediately started sounding in the helmet. Another, much smaller, shrapnel piece impacted a large, dorsal muscle group near the neko's hip, nearly taking Tweak off-balance when she landed. Her face screwed into a grimace but she kept moving, keeping low and weaving erratically with purpose as she tried to close the distance between herself and Bell.

Popping the quick-release on her backpack, Tweak fired off a couple more shots (bringing her ammo count down to six) at Captain Bell's face again as she dropped the now-hindering piece of useless armor. She then spun, sweep-kicking the hunk of gear at Bell's face while using the temporary splitting of Bell's attention to get closer. She nearly used her CRT jets to increase the speed of her approach when Claire appeared in the corner of her vision.

"FACE!" was all Tweak yelled as she moved behind her flying backpack toward the Unique. Shoot the face!
 
The explosion itself covered half of the crate in a blazing inferno. The shrapnel lodged itself into the surface, while the abrasive heat and unidentified superheated goo instantly ate away at the metal crate, revealing that it contained several large iron girders, most likely intended for use in the construction. The explosion was so potent that several of the girder ends were also bright orange, the heat reaching dizzying levels.

The sticky, glowing white liquid caught to Tweaks heel remained quite hot after Tweak's daring escape from the detonation. At the moment, Tweak would only feel a warm sensation on the soles of her foot, but it wouldn't be long before this warmth would become more of a problem as the substance slowly ate away at the boot. Stepping quickly across the floor helped alleviate the problem slightly as bits of the stuff came off and stuck to the floor.

Bell immediately turned on here heel as she watched Tweak quickly vault over the crate to avoid the explosion, returning back to the other side to confront Tweak. While many would be in awe of the nimble CSS member's stunt, it seemed to only serve the purpose of widening the Unique Captain's canary-eating grin. Her piercing blue eyes captured every one of Tweak's movements; the neko's .45 pistol rounds were expertly aimed, but Bell merely moved her head from side to side, the bullets glancing off as they did nothing to break her stride. The Unique Captain's reaction time was astounding, to say the least... far and above the Captain Bell they had fought once before in the cramped Cirrus Station corridor.

As Tweak utilized her ruined backpack as a diversion, Bell released a short, scoffing laugh as she reached down to her thigh and pulled another disk off of the surface of her suit. "YES!" Bell tossed the disk straight at the pack, the explosive once again covering itself with the strange expanding adhesive which stuck fast to the surface of the pack in mid-air. Bell then ducked underneath the flying object and grabbed it in the crook of her arm. "YES!!! FIGHT ME, LITTLE GIRL!! DIE! DIE!!" Bell screamed as her body went near-horizontal, leaving the ground with the backpack powered by Tweak's kick. Using the momentum of Tweak's throw, Bell turned it around and hurled the pack back at Tweak in a single instantaneous motion. The Unique Captain landed on one knee and instantly raised her rifle, unleashing another volley of plasma in Tweak's direction as the volatile backpack soared straight into the approaching Neko.
 
Purina was slightly in awe of the daring and very unorthodox rescue, flinching back instinctively when Stovaa slammed his shields around her. "I... ah..." Purina spoke almost wistfully in admiration... only for her eyes to widen in surprise as Stovaa left as quickly as he came. "H-hey! At least untie me! Get me out of here!" The pink-haired professor said as she continued to struggle with the bonds behind her back.

Above her, the desk that Stovaa had picked up landed square on top of one large, burly man whom was still reeling from being pushed back into the wall by Stovaa's girth. The swing crowbar collided with the gun of the next eco-terrorist beside him, knocking the weapon out of the man's grasp. Disarmed, the unshaven fellow stumbled backward. However, the others behind the cover and farther down the line had taken notice to Stovaa's breach of their defenses, all of them raising up with their weapons and peppering rounds in the large ID-SOL's direction.
 
"Argh, I've got it!" said Kokuten, just tossing the Cirrus weapon underhanded at Noboru. After freeing up one his hands, he pulled out his hypolathe, and set the nanomachines to form a three-inch blade. It was longer than the usual scalpel, but the nano-constructed blade needed enough length to slice through Purina's bonds.

"No worries, Administrator Popjoy!" reassured the Captian, crouch-running over to the woman. When he reached her, he opened the visor on his helmet, and gave her a warm, comforting smile, and set down the other wall-panel in place to keep her fully covered. "We'll be getting you out of here soon enough." he explained, stepping over her to grab her hands and saw through her restraints. He kept himself over Popjoy, in case any of the terrorists felt like taking pot shots in their direction. In his mind, it was better for him to get shot, than risk her, an unarmored person, taking a bullet.
 
Claire, realizing that all the attention was on Tweak and her ridiculous displays of acrobatics, leaned out of cover to fire. However, she only saw the bullets Tweak fired bounce off the sides of the helmet harmlessly. She heard Tweaks panicked order of 'face' but she did not pull the trigger. A different memory came to light in how Bell was blocking every shot.

Stainball.

Yes, that game that had won the squad the kitchen suddenly bore a striking resemblence. Claire, for all her usually accurate fire, was up against an opponent who could not be 'hit'. She did, however, have an incredibly agile teammate once more. Except Deacon wasn't here this time.

'Then maybe we'll improvise...' Claire ducked back down, deigning to not remind Bell of her presence just yet. There wasn't much time, as Tweak would not last very long against Bell. But if she could just get in the right positioning...

The private channel opened up once more. "Move to the other side, get her to face away from me. I'll give you an opening." Claire once more tensed up, readying her burst of speed for when it would count the most.
 
Tweak dropped to the floor as her pack was returned with its new bonus to fire damage, performing a quick horizontal spin and kicking the armor out into the void of the Sinkhole to do what it had to while she weaved around the plasma bolts. She almost kicked it back at the captain, but with Bell's new reaction times Tweak may have ended up with the hot potato when it exploded. It was better to remove it from the situation.

How was Bell moving like that, anyhow? A plasma bolt seared the side of her helmet, melting the outer layer as the bolt passed and fusing the visor's raising mechanism. Tweak attempted a scan even as she continued her motion of kicking so her boot hit the server and allowed her to push off into another half-spin, just as the grenade exploded, followed quickly by another explosion that was more boom than burn.

The grenade breached the power unit's containment but the plasma burst from the fusion portion quickly cooled as pressure was released, leaving enough of a shockwave to push Tweak straight to the side, landing near the revealed pile of girders.

The channel beeped in response to Claire's request and Tweak flung a girder at Bell like a javelin as she weaved back toward the unfinished side of the room, taking a single pot-shot while the girder was in flight in an attempt to keep Bell's attention.
 
Noboru caught the weapon Kokuten tossed with a simple underhanded grab, a tactic used by most Nepleslian Battleball players. The expatriate clipped the spare armament to the side of his pack and continued to crouch behind Stovaa for a moment as the bullets continued to fly. The Yamataian tried to lay down suppressive fire, but he couldn't leave cover without risking himself. He needed something mobile -

A heeled foot poked Noboru in the rear as he settled into a crouch. It was Davis' corpse. A light came on in the expatriate's skull. He grinned, slid back to where Davis' shoulders, slid one arm under them, and lifted her into a sitting position. The expatriate slipped his spare arm around her bosom from behind - quipping "pardon me, madam," as he did so - and supported her weight against his torso. The arm not being used to support Davis' corpse cradled his submachine pistol, and rested in the nook of her shoulder.

"Roger, suppressing," Noboru said, poking his head around beside Davis', looking at a terrorist, and then opening up with the automatic pistol.
 
Noboru caught the marauder unawares, his spray of fire catching the man in the chest. The terrorist twisted around from the force of the rounds and slumped back against the wall.

"G-get me out of here, Captain!," Purina latched herself to Kokuten's chest out of instinct, clenching her eyes shut as the sounds of battle continued to cry out through the room. Suddenly, Purina's eyes shot open and she turned her head, looking around where she originally was set to rest. "Wait! Wait! Where's my box?!" Pink-haired Purina cried out, frantically looking around until her eyes fell upon what she was searching for.

A few feet away from where they had bound her was the large green-tinted glass case that she had brought with her from the Cirrus Station. However, it was no longer empty; it was filled half-way with a multitude of what appeared to be a brownish-green mulch. Purina Popjoy immediately began to crawl towards the terrarium... and was quickly noticed by one of the eco-terrorists hiding behind a large filing cabinet. The man quickly took aim with his pistol, aware that their hostage was apparently important enough to warrant this headstrong attack.

---

The heavy i-beam that Tweak tossed soared through the air, the orange-hot end acting as an impromptu flaming arrowhead. Bell, however, was much too focused on Tweak to be struck by such an attack. "I knew it! I KNEW IT!" Bell yelled as she skillfully sidestepped the flying girder as it soared straight out into the unfinished area of the room. The bullet that Tweak had fired found it's mark against Bell's chest, however only managed to bounce off harmlessly, doing little to break Bell's stride. "You're that neko from before, aren't you?! I KNEW YOU WERE!!"

The time Tweak had used to toss the i-beam gave Bell the precious few seconds she needed to close the gap. The crazed Unique didn't take her closed chance to fire upon Tweak, however. Instead, Bell reached her weapon behind her and placed it horizontally on the small of her back just above the contour of her rear-end; the weapon stuck there automatically as Bell utilized her free hands to pull another two Unique explosive off of her thighs.

The first one, in her right hand, Bell threw in a wide arc over and behind Tweak, missing the neko entirely. Bell did something different with the other, however; the foamy gel quickly began to expand from the device as it remained in her hand. Captain Bell then made a diving leap at Tweak's midriff in an attempt to tackle Tweak. It was clear what Bell was planning now; the device she had thrown behind Tweak made it nearly impossible for her to run away from Bell without weathering the explosion, and Bells increased athleticism would make certain Tweak wouldn't break the close distance Bell had been working to achieve.
 
"D-Dammit! Purina!" Kokuten yelled, cursing himself for letting her get away. The Doctor took no chances as dove on top of the administrator, grabbing his pistol mid-flight. When he landed in the terrorist's line of fire, he tensed up in response to any already fired shots, drew his pistol and fired wildly at the gunman.
 
Tweak went to the side; only two directions were blocked off by Bell. She jumped back over the crates stacked near the right wall (directions relative to the entrance of the room), and in the second or less that Bell couldn't see her, landed behind the crates and immediately jumped back up, rebounding off the wall to get the right angle and preparing to kick the captain if Bell indeed thought that the neko was now cornered. If Bell wasn't there, Tweak would land on top of the crates and drop backward to avoid the explosions that were sure to come.
 
Bell skidded to a halt as her lunge failed, underestimating Tweak's ability to flee. The Unique stood straight up and watched Tweak vault over the crates, the explosion from her tossed grenade lighting up the room once more as she pensively opened and clenched the second grenade, gelled onto her left hand. Bell's shoulders heaved up and down smoothly, her eyes narrowing onto the crates... she appeared to be getting a bit frustrated with chasing Tweak down.

Instead of continuing after Tweak, Bell simply shook her hand violently towards the ground; the gel-covered grenade disk instantly flung off and spattered on the ground next to Bell's stiletto-heeled foot. "You're so boring, kitty cat," Bell spoke suddenly in a calm voice. Claire would have a hard time distinguishing it, but Tweak would be able to hear it quite well. "You're a little lost, don't you think... so far, faaar away from home..." Bell's calm demeanor was unsettling, to say the least, especially so when coupled with her ever-present smile.
 

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There was nothing Tweak had to say in reply. The time Bell took talking, though, allowed the 'Spacer to rest and vent the heat her body had built up over the fight. She frowned, looking down at her arms and noticing the suit crinkling around the edges of the metal armor. Underneath, something wet and hot dripped down her arm, the heat vents had melted through to the gel layer of the suit.

Turning her environment controls as cold as she could, Tweak took off a glove. The girder had given her an idea, and Bell was finally giving her time to prepare. Clawed fingers scored three lines into her palm as she clinched her hand, the blood remaining in the slices instead of pooling. 

Tweak peered in the narrow space between crates to watch Bell, noting the lack of a second explosion and hearing the slap of the third grenade on the floor. Meanwhile, the cuts took on a dull silvery look, then the new needles rose out of the broken skin to roll out into the neko's hand. The metallic slivers were three inches long, dulled so they wouldn't catch the light, and thin as a piece of hay while being heavy enough to remain in flight. (An engineer can consider these things.) Another trio appeared by the time Bell's last sentence ended, then Tweak put her glove back on..

ping. ping.

Two nearly-invisible needles streaked toward Bell's face. Tweak loved throwing things by nature, and was good at it. Targeting was only helped by her tactical mind, and sent one per eye.
 
Throughout the struggle for Purina's safety, Blake had been crawling along the floor on his stomach, staying out of sight and moving slowly. He held his pistol close to his face in one hand and dragged himself sluggishly with the other. When he was nearing the pink-haired administrator, Kokuten had already managed to free her. Once she was free of his grasp yet again, Blake moved forward, standing at a run. When he reached her, Kokuten was already on top her, firing away at her most recent assailant. It had come time for Blake to move again.

He stood and strafed the terrorist Kokuten was attacking as he dashed for the Administrator's case. Within one motion, he grasped it and turned around on one heel, making his way back to the Captain at a crouch.

"Sir!" he shouted unnecessarily over the radio, "If you can cover my escape, I can move the Administrator with minimal exposure to fire. It's what I was trained for."
 
Most of the rounds aimed for Purina collided heavily against Kokuten's CSS suit, the lightweight armor plates denting slightly with each successive hit. One of the rounds, however, managed to find itself into the area between two of the thigh plates, sinking a bullet into the black undersuit and into the Captain's leg. Kokuten's return fire was much more effective, however, catching the surprised criminal off-guard as he fell over behind the filing cabinet.

Purina gasped heavily, clutching the green glass container to her chest as she glanced at Kokuten with a twinge of pity on her face. "Are you alright?" Purina whispered, her eyes a little wide in disbelief; she did realize that his injury was her fault, but she was more concerned about the here and now than her past faults. As Blake came down to lend his assistance, the pink-haired Administrator looked between the two for their solution.

---

Noboru's shots missed their target by a hairs' breadth as the scraggly eco-terrorist ducked down behind a large desk. It wasn't long before he was back up again, using his free hand to toss something over in the direction Noboru was. As the object soared through the air, Noboru could see clearly what it was; a circular fragmentation grenade, small in size but undoubtedly distinguishable in appearance.
 
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