>ON Kasairyuu Wing, Virtuous Mission (The Fury, The Sorrow, and the End)
The pack of creatures continued their vicious, blood-crazed frenzy with no end in sight. Bishop was caught up in the middle of the swirling maelstrom created. One of the beasts collided with the submerged shuttle and, in its death throe's, knocked the shuttle loose from its crashed position. Tumbling to its side, the shuttle crashed to its side with a tremendous about of pressure. The last words of Nami continued to echo in Tachiko's head. Just below the medical neko, the alpha male of the pack was opening up its maw, the size of a Lion shuttle's loading ramp, and gaining ground on the possible meal.
Tachiko's eyes widened in horror at the final transmission. She was all but too lost in it to notice the huge thing breaking the surface of the water and making a lunge at her. Tachi began to shoot upwards, trying to get out of range of its might leap, but was perilously close to being too late to accelerate out of the way of those rows of teeth.
Roger had been only paying minor attention to the comm over the last couple of minutes as he was furiously planting explosive charges in the near and far soft dirt in an effort to create a second pathway to divert the furious river. He had just planted the last explosive, when the transmissions of the group came screaming over his radio. SHIT! He swore, and in fluid motion, armed himself with his GP-7 and bolted from his current position back to the river. The situation had indeed worsened; it appeared the group was being attacked by the indigenous reptilian species, angered through some recent event.
The armor pilots had plunged into the depths of the river in an attempt to extract the victim from the submerged shuttle, but as he looked, the shuttle was slowly rotating down the riverbed, no longer embedded into the dirt. Double Shit! If the damage to the Trotter was as bad as I think it was, that's going to fill the ENTIRE interior with water and drown the survivor inside.
Suddenly a noise caught his attention, and he snapped his head up, only to see TT desperately attempting to get out of reach of a huge member of the reptile family. With a rapid velocity check, he came to a shocking conclusion. She's not going to make it! With all other options rapidly disappearing, he did the only thing left he could think of. With a wild shout, he sprinted into the river as close as possible to the gigantic beast, shouldered his shotgun, and unleashed shell after shell of 00 buckshot into the scaly being's hide
Bishop looked around him; he was surrounded by these monsters. The ship he was trying to rescue was falling deeper underwater and would crack under pressure if it got any deeper and TT above him about to become lunch to these beasts. He thought for a spilt second before making up his mind. "Corro's not gonna let her die." He decided firmly and shot out of the ring as with the monsters close behind him heading for the ship. Catching up with the quickly falling shuttle he ignited the aether projection blades and began cutting into the ship. "You better be smart enough to hold you damn breathe! H shouted as he forced himself into the hole.
The alpha male's lunge barely missed the retreating medic; its teeth snapping shut within inches of Tachiko's feet. As it reared up for another lunge, Roger's buckshot impacted the beast. While the buckshot failed to penetrate the gnarled hide it did however change the creatures attention. Sure enough, the lumbering beast began to swim towards the young Nepleslian, gradually picking up speed.
Meanwhile, Bishop's attempts at splitting the Trotter's hull apart were met with success. Easily breaking through the out hull he opened up a hole wide enough to fit his armor through. But before he could slip inside the shuttle a massive vice-like grip seized his upper torso. One of the beasts was beginning to crush his him between its jaws. While the pointed teeth did not immediately penetrate the armor's metal skin, the pressure the monster was placing on him would surely crush the suit like a tin can soon.
For a moment, Tachi was just looking up at the sky, unwilling to look down as she tried to get away. The shotgun blasts and subsequent splashing didn't quite register with her right away, but then she looked down and saw the beast heading for a Roger Kard with smoking gun in hand, and she swooped by, strafing the thing with her Type 28Aon heavy.
Yes! It's turning away from TT! I did it! I di... wait.... Uh oh. Seeing the monster of a reptile begin to head toward him, Kard began panicking slightly. Damnit, damnit! He began to back up out of the river as quickly as possible, franticly searching through his explosives satchel to see if any remained. Don't tell me I used them all...
Bishop screamed in pain as the creature clamped down on him at one end and the pressure forced the bulkhead on him at the other. Trying to think properly Bishop tried to fend off the reptile about to bite his upper body off, he reactivated his energy blade and stabbed at the roof of it's mouth from the inside. "Take this you son of a bitch!" He screamed as he felt the teeth clench tight around the armor. He continued stabbing while trying to think of a backup plan. "Just die god damnit!"
The beast continued to follow after engineer, seemingly unfazed by Tachiko's shot, despite the fact the energy bolt opened up a decent sized wound in its side. A deep, guttural roar echoed from the alpha male's mouth as it opened up the huge maw to attempt to swallow Roger as he was fleeing. Roger was being slowed by the jungle's underbrush, but the creature was unhindered thanks in part to its size and power. Reaching into his pack, Roger felt one final satchel charge on the tips of his fingers.
Bishop's quick thinking quickly ended the melee that now engulfed Bishop and the creature. His first stab with the plasma stabbed through bone and muscle and penetrated the creature's brain, killing it instantly. His succeeding stabs removed the dead creature's maw from his armor, freeing up his movement again.
Tachi looked on in panic, pulling the trigger over and over again as she made strafing runs on the creature. She screamed down to Kard as it got too close to him for her to fire safely, and pulled up, looking down aghast. "KARD!"
... One left... Thank god. Dropping the shotgun, Roger withdrew the last charge with one hand and flicked open his detonation controller with the other. As the creature opened up is enormous jaws, which could crush his entire being in a single snap, the engineer could not help but remember an old adage he'd heard from a boxer in his hometown. "Kid, in boxing, there's one particular kind of punch we boxers really worship, and that's the counter-punch. Anybody can clobber another guy until they're black and blue in the face, but it takes something special to lower your guard and strike just as the enemy thinks he's got you. It looked like he would find out. Stopping his retreat path, he now stood his ground, waiting right until the creature was about to strike. Then and only then would it find out why you shouldn't trifle with an angry engineer. "Come and get me, you sunnuva bitch..."
Bishop breathed a little easier now that the beast's corpse had been lifted from him floating down to the bottom. That's when he remembered how fast he was falling. Still being crushed, by the remains of the Trotter. The Neko in there didn't have much time, and the pressure was starting to affect his instruments, not to mention his head which was beginning to feel as though it was splitting in two. "I've got no choices left, now or never!" He told himself as he felt a blood vessel pop and the salty taste of blood on his lips. He ripped the bulkhead apart, knowing he wasn't very far from the survivor, spotted her and made a grab for her, before speeding towards the surface.
The second Roger stopped was all the creature needed, lunging with its mouth wide open. The beast began to swallow Roger whole, the only thing preventing that being his legs braced at the back of the monster's throat. He had narrowly avoided being crushed by the jaws but things were in a hairy situation for the engineer.
Bishop grabbed hold of the survivor's forearm and felt the survivors other arm grab hold of his arm to hang on. As Bishop began to speed towards the surface, he felt a snag for a brief second before it came loose and he continued upward. Behind him Nami held on as best she could, despite a murky trail of red flowing behind her.
Tachiko put out a call over the comm, "SIR! We need assistance back at the crash site! Mayday~" The comm was cut off by the sound of a Type 28 again. Tachiko had flown around, staring into the maw of the thing and firing into its gullet over Kard's shoulder, trying to yank him free and fly off.
Roger saw the blast of energy fly by him into the beast, and turned. "TT! There's a wounded pilot you should be attending to! I'm fine, just got a little ahead of my self. Treat her wounds first!" Roger yelled, still trying to fight off the powerful muscles of the beast. The explosive charge had, miracle upon miracles, gone straight down the gullet of the gigantic maw. But detonation right now meant obliterating himself, which was unsurprisingly, not an appealing idea to him. With all of his might, he attempted to free himself even slightly, but it was of no use. Damnit... I should have realized a counter-punch takes training... I just wish screwing up meant becoming a KO as opposed to becoming a BM...
Suddenly his fingers grasped around a hard cylindrical tool attached to his backpack. The plasma torch! There was no way in hell this thing was rated for a situation like this, but when the chips were down, he really couldn't care less about the manufacturer's recommended usage. It was going to be engineering all the way, or death. Time to find out which.
Bishop was trying to keep his eyes open. He was disoriented and felt as thought near death but he knew two things; that this way was up and that he couldn't afford to stop. Just a little further. He told himself as he reached the surface of the river, not far downstream from the groups position. His helmet breaking through the water as he saw the sun again and laid the survivor on the ground and seeing what was going on he shouted into the comm his voice hoarse but audible. "TT! Let me worry about that, help her!" He shouted.
The blast from Tachiko's Type 28 seemed to aggravate the wounded beast even more as it began to try even harder to swallow it's current prey and move on to the more annoying one. Roger was able to free the plasma torch from his back and was able to ready it. Above the group the sound of a sonic boom sounded overhead as Corro's armor began decelerating towards the two non-powered armor personnel. He landed feet first on the spine of the creature causing it to buckle and wrench open its mouth. "Move it!â€
