RP: Cirrus Station [Episode 8] That Sinking Feeling

Kokuten gasped in pain as he felt the bullet pierce his thigh. He gave another curse and scanned the room for more targets.

Light to medium muscular damage... Bullet impact likely reduced by the ablative, but... noticeable loss in muscular control... Kokuten looked down at his leg with a grimace.

I am impeded...

"Sir!" [Blake] 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."

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Kokuten looked up at Blake, with a relieved face. With Blake taking care of Purina, the Captain wouldn't have to leave the center of the fighting. He gave the man a short nod, and grunted with a hiss as he helped himself up.

"Are you alright?" Purina whispered.

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The Captain offered the ditsy administrator a slightly pained, but comforting smile.

"Yes, I will be fine, but Mr. Morris here will be the one escorting you out." said Kokuten, helping the pink-haired woman off the floor. He looked at Blake, and gave the man a trusting nod, "Mr. Morris, she's in your care. Take one of the panels, and cover your escape." With that, Kokuten stood, with a stinging groan. "Squad 35! We have the administrator." radioed the Captain, "Cover Morris as he escorts Popjoy back into the corridor. Stovaa..."

The wounded doctor looked over at the ID-SOL, noting his position and the amount of threat he had accumulated. He had hoped to direct the man elsewhere, so he'd be less likely to get shot, but in the end, Kokuten figured that Stovaa was serving their suppression effort in the best way he could.

"...carry on with what you are doing."

There wasn't much time to react for the expatriate; and, lacking the advanced OS and calculating powers of the more advanced Nekovalkyrja, he was caught off-guard for a moment as the grenade soared through the air. His thoughts finally caught traction in his mind, and he opened up his public speakers. Thumbing the volume to maximum, Noboru took another look at the grenade, then turned towards the Captain.

"Kokuten! Stovaa! Grenade!" The Yamataian shouted, still watching the path of the grenade. Noboru thought again, and suddenly realized he was still holding Davis the Meatshield. The Yamataian grinned, and watched the grenade clunk onto the floor. He lifted his knee into the small of Davis' back, then kicked out with as much force as he could summon, and hurled the corpse on top of the grenade.

Without another word, Blake wrapped one firm arm around Purina and dropped his handgun. In the next motion, he swung the pink-haired administrator around, putting himself between her and any incoming fire. His arm swept across the nearest wall panel and pulled it close. With his charge in hand, he pushed for the door, almost at a sprint. His hand covered the top of her head as he rushed her to the door. With a lunge, he hopped over a littered corpse corpse and carried Purina in from of him. The wall panel fell to the floor.

The next moment was critical. In order to get Purina out the door and into the hall without exposing her to fire, Blake had to twist his torso. Pushing her forward with one arm and pulling against the door frame with the other, Blake was able to shove her into the hall. He stumbled out the door behind her and fell flat on his face. With the moment past him, he turned to the pink-haired woman and examined her carefully, searching for wounds.

He radioed to the rest of the team, "The Administrator is clear! She's in the hall!"

After his message, Blake tore off his helmet and collapsed on the the floor, gasping from exertion. "I hope that wasn't too uncomfortable, Administrator, but please remain calm." he almost perfectly quoted the book, holding his gasps for a moment to speak eloquently. He smiled in spite of himself; having finally gotten a chance to spend the taxpayers' DA which gave him his training.

As Tweak moved away, Claire let up on her tensed form a little bit to quickly but quietly move up to the grenade coated crate behind Bell. As she moved up she saw Tweak remove her glove. Figuring she was attempting to do something else, she paused and crouched. Keeping her eye peeked around the corner, but not just standing up like an idiot. She waited once more, withing a few steps from rounding the corner and towards Bell, but it wasn't time yet. Bell, for all her reflexes, would still hear her approach otherwise and possibly but Claire into danger that would truly serve no purpose unless Tweak would get what she was trying to do fast enough to rush in.

He brought his crowbar arm back heavily, leaning into the swing to try and embed the weapon into a terrorist's head. His other hand grabbed at what he thought was a bundle of cloth, but was apparently the leg of the dazed criminal he had half-crushed with the desk. Grunting, he thrashed the limb backwards, pulling the no doubt petrified man backwards underneath the desk. The man's head would probably clatter against the now abandoned shields, but Stovaa didn't think about that, only upon his next move. With a flourish, he brought the weaponised figure overarm and down into a terrorist to his left, partly catching the desk with some part of his new toy, probably a thigh or something.

"Yeah, I'll keep this up a bit longer captain. Don't worry" he radioed, bullets occasionally whizzing past him from the enemies who hadn't become obsessed with the administrator.

"What's wrong, afraid of lil' old me and my lil' old MAN-FLAIL?"

"OH my!" Purina yelped as she was lifted up, squeaking with each of Blake's steps as she clutched her terrarium close to her chest. Pink hair bobbing in motion, Purina wasn't exactly expecting to be tossed into the hallway, doing her best to land gracefully on the flat of her thighs. "I'll be fine," Purina replied as she glanced up at Blake, then back into the room. "I'm more worried about the rest of them in there!"

Mere moments after Noboru shifted Davis' body over the grenade the detonation kicked the corpse right back up. Surprisingly, the explosion itself and subsequent shrapnel didn't do all that much to Davis' Unique armor, other than some serious scorch marks on the shining finish. The close proximity and position of the body funneled a lot of the shrapnel back in the direction of the wall, peppering the eco-terrorists cover in small shards of metal. The one who had thrown the grenade, in turn, couldn't be seen rising again as his desk suffered the brunt of most of the shrapnel.

Between grenades going off, four Uniques spraying them with bright blue plasma and spinning ID-SOLs, the remaining terrorists weren't too thrills in their predicament. Most of them had concluded that the fight was indeed lost and had remitted themselves to simply hiding behind the cover and firing blindly at any break in the fight.

From off to the side near the door, the Unique Squad 35 knew as Swann held up an open palm. Nell and the rest of the Uniques glanced at Swann for a moment before ceasing fire and kneeling down behind whatever cover they could find, keeping their weapons raised but no longer suppressing. "Cease your fire immediately!" Swann's audio output blared loudly, apparently not speaking to a single side but the entire room as a whole.

Kokuten kept himself up against his cover, setting up the hypolathe needle to inject his wound with some nanomachines. Hopefully, his bleeding would stop in time, and he wouldn't have to need any assistance to get out of there. As he mended his wounds, he observed the room once again, noting the victorious turn that the situation was taking. Upon hearing Swann's call for a cease fire, Kokuten opened the radio channel for the squad.

"Squad 35, cease fire, Stovaa, find some cover." ordered the Captain, surveying the defeated nature of the enemy, "I think this fight has very well been won."

After a moment of contemplation, Kokuten felt the need to speak, but felt that if Swann had called the cease-fire, she meant to take the situation into her own hands. So, the Captain decided to keep his matters in the area of his own squad until further notice.

The setting sun, combined with the numerous small fires from Bell's explosives cast a vibrant orange over everything. As Captain Bell stood, eyes focused on Tweak's hiding place, her vibrant blue eyes looked over towards where Tweak, with amazing speed and accuracy, launched a counter attack. It looked as though the needle spines would hit their mark... but at the last second, Bell turned her head to the side and just slightly raised her chin.

The first needle collided with the edge of the helmet near her cheek, just on the area where the alloy helmet and bits of remaining visor material joined. It bounced off harmlessly, while the second lethal needle impacted just to the left of where the last hit. Instead of reflecting it, however, the angle at which the helmet curved caused the needle to spin upward, grazing Bell's other cheek as it spun back behind her. "Ah..." Bell exclaimed a small sigh of surprise as she felt the needle scratch her cheek, a small bit of blood welling in the insignificant wound. Bell's unsettling smile never left, nor did her eyes divert from where she had seen Tweak throw the spines. "I know all of your tricks, kitty cat," Bell said softly as she slowly lifted a hand and ran her index finger delicately over the small wound. The Unique Captain couldn't feel the red liquid, of course, her hand covered in the expertly-crafted glove. Feeling the slight pain of the wound itself as she applied pressure with her fingertip was enough.

"If you don't want to play with me, Miss Kitty," Bell said suddenly, her eyes widening madly as her voice rose back to a shrill shriek. "THEN MAYBE YOUR FRIEND DOES!!!"

Bell instantly turned on her heel, retrieving her plasma weapon from the small of her back and began sprinting towards the sets of crates in the back. The Unique Captain couldn't see where Claire was, but she knew she could not have gone anywhere else without her noticing. When Bell had reached a certain distance, the explosive she had dropped suddenly detonated, obscuring much of Tweak's vision of the Unique with a haze of intense heat. As Bell ran, she fired several shots from her plasma rifle at the various edges of the crates in front of her, perhaps poking at Claire to see if she would reveal her position.

Tweak also had a vague idea of where Claire was supposed to be, and a much more specific idea of where Captain Bell was headed. A short hop lifted the neko, a push off the corner of the crates she was peering around propelled her higher and arced her flight over the explosion and down on top of Bell, whether the augmented Unique was ready or not.

Claire was suddenly very, very glad that she had moved. When Bell turned and started firing towards her previous position, she knew her chance had come, but perhaps not how she had planned it. Either way, she had to make her move.

Shifting towards the other end of the crate, she swept her leg out as Bell attempted to run past towards where she just was. The Geshrin was probably asking for a broken leg by doing this, but since Bell was not aware of her presence, the chance of her not getting tripped up by it was next to none. When Bell stumbled Claire planned on attempting to grab hold of the struck leg to ensure she fell, perhaps pinning her down for Tweak's attempt to move in. Of course, the formost goal was to disarm Bell, and manipulating her arm to make sure that rifle wasn't pointed at her was the top priority.

For all of Bell's uncanny reflexes, she couldn't dodge something she didn't expect to see. As Claire's leg shot out, the toe of the Unique Captain's armored foot caught and caused Bell to stumble forward. Claire wouldn't be quick enough to catch hold of Bell as she sailed forward, however in her confusion Bell hit the ground with her elbows and chest, the plasma rifle in her hands hitting the floor abruptly and remaining where she landed. Bell cursed loudly as she landed, instantly turning over to her back... just in time to see Tweak baring down on her.

Bell sneered through her smile as she lifted her legs up and planted them onto Tweak's shoulders as the neko soared into her, letting Tweak carry herself over Bell's body and sending her careening further into the cluster of storage crates that she had previously been running towards. When Tweak was well on her way in flight, Bell continued along with the motion she had made with her counterattack and rolled back into an upward position, facing where Claire had tripped her just seconds earlier. Bell poised to charge the woman, her hands empty but still quite lethal if her previous actions were any indication.

Remembering how ridiculously agile Bell was, Claire changed up her tactics a little bit. She would need to keep Bell busy while Tweak picked herself up from their partially failed attempt at subduing the woman. She kept moving towards Bell, but only did so to create the illusion that she was attacking. The Geshrin holstered her gun, not intending for Bell to disarm her and use it against her, and where it was, Bell would have to leave herself open if she tried to grab it.

Claire's stance was aggressive, but she was ready to parry the first attempt. She was strongly playing to the idea that Bell was all reflexes and crazed bloodlust and not thinking tactically in melee.

Unlike the Administrator, Serra landed hard on her feet, partly due to her experience with break falling and also she was mostly upright during the plunge. Looking over Serra came to Cassifin's aid. "Are you alright?" She asked, shortly before Cassifin's outburst.

Backing up, the engineer/security guard looked around in the elevator. "I'm not sure, since you tore the security break lines out I guess we crashed into the basement floor."

Tweak's leap had carried her in a high arc so that she would have landed almost as if she had dropped straight down, not like a typical low-angle tackle, so she had approached Bell feet first intending to land on her shoulders and slide down to pin the Captain's arms to her sides...

...but that didn't quite work. "No plan survives an encounter with the enemy" and all that. Instead, Bell's fortunate roll and subsequent preparation to receive incoming falling objects enabled the Unique to redirect Tweak's falling momentum into horizontal motion. And, in what little fortune Tweak could still claim, the neko still had time to prepare for that when she realized that her attack was no longer a surprise, rolling forward in mid-air. Bell's feet impacted Tweak's shoulders and she made a grab for the Unique's ankles to take her along, but failed as the boots kept Tweak's shoulders from rolling up and restricting her arms' movement. The kick sent Tweak into the crates, but she landed on the side of the stack as if she had landed on the floor, crouching to absorb the energy of the motion and preparing to propel herself back toward Bell.

A tearing noise and a sharp stab of pain prevented that idea. The shrapnel from the first grenade was still in her backside, something she had been careful to avoid putting much stress on, not just because of the pain it would cause, but the damage it would do to the muscle it was embedded in. The crouch did just that. As the muscles tightened around the shard, they rubbed against its edges and were severed, reducing the limb's effectiveness. The hemosynthesis repair system kicked in, but the shard was still there and hindered the healing process until it could be expelled. Meanwhile, the burning liquid on the foot of the same leg finally finished eating through the heel of the boot only to be extinguished by foam that had filled the boot and leaked out the coin-sized hole with a cold hiss.

Tweak squeaked in pain from the shrapnel wound but continued trying the rebound. The leap was only able to use one leg now and she was set off-balance, managing to land just over half the distance she needed to reach Bell again. So much for a quick counter. Rolling to her feet, she took up a standard Close-Quarters Combat ready stance. Maybe if Bell's attention was split...

"Claire, I'm going to try activating those grenades on her leg. Be ready to run if I can. But until then...what's the plan? The grenades are my last idea."

Watching as Claire stood to oppose her, Bell wasted no time in bridging the gap between them. Along the way, Bell scooped up her lost plasma rifle and quickly reattached it to the area at the small of her back, her heels clicking harshly at the tiled floor as she raised her right hand back to deliver a punch. As her arm flew back, however, Claire could hear a soft shhick and would catch sight of of small, sharp protruding object thrust out from the top of Bell's wrist. A hidden blade, installed in the Unique armorsuit; one that would make Bell's incoming blow a markedly larger threat.

When Bell had reached a close distance, she threw her fist forward, aiming her balled fist and protruding knife straight for Claire's visor.

"Aye sir, standing down." Noboru dropped back into a crouch behind a desk formerly used as cover, but was now being used by the expatriate as a place to rest and gather his thoughts, if only temporarily. The Yamataian let out a breath and popped the seals on his helmet, letting a rush of fresh air cycle into the helmet, before sealing it again.

Okay, time to take stock. Primary objective secure: Purina retrieved, terrorists suppressed. Kokuten? Wounded, but he would survive. The cease fire caught him unaware, and seemed surprisingly out-of-place in the current situation. Noboru thumbed his COMM to the squad's private channel. "Cease fire acknowledged, sir, but something doesn't seem right. I suggest we play along, but stay frosty."

With reflexes that would make her drill instructor proud, Claire took advantage of exactly what she was hoping for; an outstretched arm. The blade was a threat, but with Bell's newfound strength and speed, it was largely the same as her fist. The Geshrin held no illusion that out muscling the woman would work, and had no intention of trying.

She shifted to the left, the other woman's right, intending to not put herself within easy reach of her other hand which likely would also have a blade. Her arm hooked up and moved sideways across Bell's punch, Her other arm coming down on it to push the joints out so that Bell couldn't retract her arm.

Undoubtedly, the unique's other arm was still a threat, But Claire did her best to keep pressure on the one arm and try to keep her own body away and preferably towards the back of her without letting up. Claire couldn't hear much of what Tweak was saying, but she heard the bit about grenades. "Think we- mmph, had enough explosions yet? Don't want to damage the server... just help me!" Claire understood self-defense, but she doubted that a drawn out fight between the two women would end with her victory.

She didn't have time to say it, but the fact that Bell had put away her plasma rifle also meant that it could be an option for Tweak.

Swann cut through the dying melee like a knife, but the Uniques weren't filling Stovaa with confidence. He dropped his man-flail to the ground, the poor soul dead without a doubt. The hulking id sol placed his crowbar in his belt and retrieved his shields before turning to try and cover himself from both the Uniques and the terrorists.

"So, Purina is safe and these guys are dealt with. Now we need to secure our other administrator and a way out of this hellhole before they bite it."

After the Unique Captain Swann saw that the CSS members had followed along with her order, she turned her faceless visor back towards the cover. "I am giving one chance to surrender yourselves, throw down your weapons and come out slowly," Swann spoke calmly yet sternly through her audio system, Nell and the two other Uniques standing beside her, their guns poised at the ready if any of the eco-terrorists still felt up for a fight.

"Alright! Alright," one of the men said almost instantly, jumping at the chance to surrender themselves out of an obvious losing battle. One by one the rest of the group slowly rose out of their hiding places, hands in the air. Swann motioned for her Uniques to disarm and detain them, to which Nell and the other two set about doing. Swann, in the mean time, stood next to the door and looked over at Kokuten. "A job well done, captain," Swann nodded once as she gave the rest of the room another once over. Swann also seemed to note that their Administrator was safe and sound in the hall behind her, keeping a close eye on her as she slowly got to her feet before turning back to Kokuten. "Are you going to be alright?"

---

"Argh... I know what I did, Evangelle!" Cassefin barked as she slowly got to her feet, rubbing her bum as she rose. A quick look at the door to the elevator would reveal that they were indeed on the bottom floor of the shaft. The doors had been jostled open during the impact, revealing another short hallway laden with closed doors. At first glance there were no immediate threats to the duo. However, Serra could hear muffled, hushed voices above Cassefin's harsh curses and mumbles. Once again, Cassefin seemed oblivious beyond her own current personal pains.

---

As Claire attempted to lock Bell's arm after her skillful dodge the Unique Captain huffed a short breath of surprise. Despite Claire's best efforts, however, Bell snapped out of her confusion rather quickly and slung her left arm around. The Unique armor allowed Bell some impressive flexibility, which she abused as her left fist swung down below her elbow. Another blade like the one she had attempted to use earlier flipped out in mid-flight. Bell aimed the attack into one of the small nooks of Claire's CSS suit, between the chest and shoulder. The force of the penetrating attack was buffered some by the black undersuit, but it wasn't enough to completely halt the attack; Claire would feel a sharp pain on the underside of her right shoulder while Bell simultaneously yanked her right arm forward, either in an attempt to break Claire's hold or bring the woman along with it.

An opening?

Tweak darted in toward Bell's back, but angled her approach from directly behind Bell's line-of-sight. With Claire holding her in something of a joint-lock, occupying the captain's attention, Tweak hoped to come in a blind spot. She kept low, again, this time to increase her chances of not being seen.

She swatted at the gun at Bell's back, trying to dislodge it, before she jumped and slammed into Bell's back while attempting to put Bell into a submission hold. Tweak's arms looped under Bell's armpits and pulled up and back, forcing Bell's arms up into the air. When that happened, Tweak grabbed at her wrists and pulled them back down. The end result had Bell with her elbows up and her wrists held behind her head so her hands were at the back of her neck and the blades were safely crossed. Meanwhile Tweak's legs latched around the captain's waist. Even if Bell could still reach back and grab Tweak, the neko was not going anywhere.

Hopefully Claire had let go of her hold by now...and there was now a plasma rifle free for her taking.

"Plasma her legs first! Keep her from running!" she said quickly, restraining herself from yelling over the radio. That should help us with hitting her again... Tweak's own legs, being around Bell's waist, would be out of the line of fire if Claire fired at the knees.