The orange streak fell from the skies at several hundred miles per hour, a blast of fire and flame coming out of its pack to slow the fall only moments before it landed. A powerful, earth shaking impact rippled through the dirt, soil beneath its feet compacted into something akin to rock.
Red iris dilating, the Hostile took everything in.
The entire squad had landed towards the edge of a nice, open city park that was depressed a handful of feet down. It looked like a killzone, but she knew better. Being filled with rolling green hills and trees, that meant there was plenty of cover if a person was smart enough to use the terrain to their advantage. They just had to hide behind the reverse slopes, and try not to peek over the crests or get their heads shot off in doing so. Like their formation when coming in, there was still a good amount of spacing between them all - good for not getting fragged by Triple-A, but not so much when fighting on the ground. Her powerful suit took heavy steps walking up the berm that separated the park from the city's cement. Looking more closely at her recruits, and the city ahead of them as well, she realized something else. Almost all of them had landed face first. Except for one. Perhaps. She couldn't get a good enough look at all of them and tell quite yet, because
what she saw made her blood run cold.
Screaming was everywhere. Men, women and children were all running in every direction they could find as the city burned. As weapons fire in the distance became closer and closer. As figures started to close in and cut them down. One in particular, a single
Heavy Power Armor, painted in a mottled puke-tan camouflage scheme, waded into the fleeing people. A wickedly toothed blade sprung from its wrist before raising it above its head, the weapon bursting into furious, blazing white Aether-Fire to strike down a young woman and her child. But before it even touched them, the glare had their skin and hair catch on fire, blackening their flesh as they slowed and began keeling over from the heat. And in an instant, the blade came down, turning them both to gray ash in the wind. In front of this machine, just a few dozen meters away was a single human figure, clad in heavy armor of his own and heroically bringing a rifle to bear. The alien machine took notice of him and smoothly turned to raise both of its arms.
"F&$%ing IDIOT! YOU'RE OUTGUNNED!"
Dehy's rifle spat hypersonic jets of liquid metal, striking the energy barriers of the alien hard enough to punch through and begin blasting small holes into the surface of its armor! But it didn't mind, didn't flinch, replying in kind. Both of its forearm guns rained a hail of energy blasts onto the young man, rapidly draining his suit's energy reserves, but it didn't stop there - a cannon unfolded over its shoulder and locked right onto him. Swearing, Dia launched a quartet of mini-missiles, just as the
50mm Gauss Cannon thundered, air rippling in the projectile's wake. The massive, two inch wide shell shoved its way through Dehy's weakened energy field and smashed into Nerimium plate, sparks sputtering as though a massive grinding wheel had struck, toppling him over. At the same time, Flames enveloped the Ripper as missiles detonated and fuel in nearby cars burst - the very tar within the asphalt caught on fire. Acting fast, the Chief fired a burst of gravitons from her Push-Pull Plate, instantly yanking him across asphalt and cement and over the lip of the berm, into the lower park.
"Get up! It only rung you like a bell! " Chief Dia yelled again, kicking him with the back of her armored heel while keeping her weapon trained on the flames. He was stunned, with a shallow moon-crater in the suit's chest, but she was right. "Get up, you son of a - "
Heavy footsteps plodded through the softening, melting asphalt, the flames silhouetting the Ripper as it strode forward like a hellish, unrelenting nightmare.