RP: YSS Eucharis [Mission 27, Part 4] The Sleeping Giant (YE 39)

Metal Planet, Surface

With the attacking robots finding a bigger problem in Eucharis and Bronzi diving toward the hole it was the perfect time for Candon to fulfill his word. Diverting power from his shields and shunting it into the graviton projectors on his forearms. His aether reactor howled and projectors cracked as he created a small bubble-like field of attractive gravity and wrapped it in separate field of repulsive gravity. Light was bent and twisted as it passed through this grapefruit sized ball of compressed gravity as continued compressing the fields. As his draining shields began to buckle he launched it toward the opening just ahead of Bronzi's exo-suit.

The repulsive field bent the metallic 'ground' open, away from the hole the orb of gravity struck and slowed the Hierophant as it hopefully landed within. Theoretically the exo-suit would have been slowed down enough to land heavily rather than just crash, but Candon had been wrong before and he was still experimenting with gravity projectors.

As the Hierophant passed through the effect of the attractive gravitons took effect, folding the metal planet shut… too well.
"Huh, that's neat," he commented to himself as he floated slowly toward the surface, gravitational propulsion working to reset after losing his shields. As his armored boots contacted the metal surface in the bottom of the crator he could instantly feel the impacts from Eucharis' cannons, hearing the vibrations from the floor as he watched the light show in the sky.
"Ground team, I'm stuck outside," he radioed, "Please relay coordinates of, ah, anywhere safer than here."

Machine Planet Labyrinth - Outside Room #74

As the ancient doorway was pried open, Noriko could see into the 3x3 meter room, where there was one doorway immediately on the right side (South wall), and ahead was an open archway leading to another room (OOC: Room #32), where there were multiple oversize purple mushrooms, each as tall as a power armor. The mushrooms were swaying around but froze in place when the door opened. A thick, pale purple coating of powdery, greasy spores clung to the walls of both rooms.

Machine Planet Labyrinth - Inside Room #74

Though the Neko kept herself clear of the doorway as she opened it to avoid incoming fire, she could have sworn there was movement. Shaking. Shifting The shrooms perhaps? Bizarre.

"Potential environmental hazards identified," Noriko's sultry voice began, clipped and cool. Cautiously watching her step as she entered, she stayed on point. "Recommend avoiding contact. Do we have confirmation of prior movement?" she asked, trying to double check. It couldn't have been just her, could have it? The young woman couldn't tell for certain. Stepping into the room and giving the mushrooms a good berth, Noriko added, "Three passageways identified - one immediately right, another left, both sealed. Open passageway directly forward - moving to guard." Walking at a half crouch, her steps silent and rifle at the ready, the white haired Neko quickly sliced the pie at the open doorway to peer into the next room and identify any potential threats.

It was up to Hanako to choose which direction to go herself; Noriko wasn't the type to path-find and pull them all forward unless told to.

Bridge

As Takao eased off the battery and silenced the guns, he reengaged the safeties but kept them locked on the same vector. He gave the the robots on the surface a final look as he sounded off, "Surface targets have disengaged it looks like, safeties are on and we are back at the ready, Taii." His voice was normal, not too loud but not at all soft.

He leaned back in his chair and moved his hands to silently practice playing his guitar but in air form. His eyes were locked on his screens and his SPINE was still looking through the sensors, watching the surface intensely.

Machine Planet Labyrinth - Outside Room #74 > Inside Room #74

The impact of the main guns vibrated the ground Freyja was standing on. She could hear another, smaller impact on the metallic surface as well. Candon's announcement allowed her to finally relax a little. She caught up to Noriko, barely managing to slip by the others. With her ABSR ready, she took a moment to examine the room more closely.

As far as she could tell, this room was just a junction connecting several passageways. She trailed closely behind Noriko, eyeing the mushrooms nervously. "I didn't see anything, but keep your eyes peeled, Noriko-hei. Killer fungus wouldn't surprise me in here." Freyja said seriously. "I would rather take my chances with the robots. Better fungi than Rixxikor though."

Machine Planet Labyrinth - Room #74

As soon as Noriko reached the open archway to the adjoining room, the mushrooms began the vibrate and emit a defeaning shrieking noise as a self-defense. It was louder than a starfighter's aether engine. Nothing anyone said was audible any more. It was really intense. It sounded like a vehicle-mounted audio weapon crossed with a screaming girl from a horror film. And there were four of them!

Machine Planet Labyrinth - Inside Room #74 /Inside Room #32

Entering the room after Freyja, Junko's ears twitched when the high-pitched noise assailed her audio sensors. However, Junko's Mindy compensated for the noise, freeing the reactive Neko from having to turn down her receptors. Although she had temporarily dampened the noise, she was uncertain if the Mindy would be able to filter audio communications and the deafening noise that seemed to be originating from around the room.

Junko quickly scanned her surroundings and found what she presumed to be the source of the noise: the four visibly vibrating mushrooms that Noriko had noted as she entered the room.

Reflexively, Junko activated a volumetric blade on her left arm and aimed a strike at the base of the closest mushroom to her position. She followed up with another strike towards the next closest one, this time utilizing the blade of her ABSR to strike at its base...

Machine Planet Labyrinth - Room #74

It didn't matter that Noriko's suit automatically made to protect her from the noise - it shook the Neko down to the bone.

The shrieking noise pierced through her suit, vibrating every single bit of flesh before hitting her reinforced skeleton, the sound conducting its way straight up to her ears all over again. Nevermind that the power armor was between herself and the source. Her helmet had become a horrible echo chamber. Not that she cared of course. Pain tossed to the wayside as it was silenced, she simply followed Junko in and began firing her wrist guns into the giant mushrooms at point blank. Spraying them down with bolts of energy, the white haired Neko made to burn them to death before doing the same to the fallen trunks chopped down in the other Neko's wake.

After this, she had a few words for Junko. Assuming they could all still hear.

Machine Planet

Masumi gasped as she heard Candon's plea and turned around immediately, moving away from Tugs as she did. She looked back and addressed the oni by briefly sending a message to her superior that she would relay coordinates to Candon. They would be a dozen meters behind the members of the away team in the tight crevice towards where they had come and she added that she would meet him there. She heard the hemosynth curdling screams coming from deeper in the labyrinth. Her pink brows knit together as she pursed her lips and worked to not let the sound bother her. She persevered towards the coordinates as she spoke to Candon.

"I'm comi—" She caught her breath as her heart rate quickened. "I'm coming, Suites-heisho!!"

Machine Planet

A telepathic grunt hit Masumi in the back of the head like a backhand, actually the result of a surprised Tsuguka wincing in pain mid-message. She was only tolerating Hanako storming ahead because her software suite was observing the sensor inputs of half the team at once, but this also meant that she got three or four times the shock of that damn shriek piercing her virtual eardrums.

The next orders, then, very much came without time for words or necessary politeness.

'Here' said the thought to the pink haired scientist, emulating the feeling of a finger hitting a map. It was slightly past the corridor behind them, with teleport coordinate data for both Masumi and Candon.

The clattering of blue heels. The oni stumbled, slipping on the broken plates of the ancient floor, then righted herself with her left hand. Audio feeds cut off, the grim past experiences it brought to mind now an instruction manual of how to continue functioning.

Were the mushrooms some kind of bio-weapon, or the original owners of the station?... She had ordered the team to wait before opening fire regardless, damn it. They were also in the exact kind of situation the Mindy wasn't designed for, yet again.

"Jax... the Shosho..."

A quick remark, and then a flash of blinding multicolored light where the power armor once stood.

Rematerialization. Tsuguka knew they couldn't squeeze past in these tight corridors, to they just beamed themselves directly into the spore-infested room directly. Fire axe gleamed like a lightning bolt, before arcing downwards and becoming dull with inhuman vital fluid.

A mechanical decision clunked through the red nekovalkyrja's heart. Right or wrong, it didn't matter. The cat was out of the bag. They could not be friends now.

An visual appraisal; Were Junko, Freyja and Noriko still in a good condition?...

Machine Planet

Pain exploded in Freyja's head. She grabbed at her ears reflexively, the intense pain making her forget she was in armor. Her armor compensated and for a moment all she could hear was silence. Quickly regaining her bearings, she saw what the others were doing and activated her ABSR. She rushed forward and attacked the base of the final mushroom with a wide slash. The aether blade shined with energy, illuminating the mushroom.

The relief she felt at not being the one to strike first felt wrong, not just because the woman she loved could be in trouble now. She would back her up if it came to it. It had seemed like the logical thing to do. Could the shriek not be considered a hostile action, even if it was defending itself? She did feel bad about killing a potentially sentient species. Even if they were sentient, they might be too different to ever communicate properly. She would most likely never know the answer. Unless it's on one of these computers. If I come across anything that resembles data storage, I'll ask the Shosho if I can bring it back for Jax to look at, she thought.

Metal Planet, Surface

As coordinates started to come through a single crab-like robot began sliding down the wall of the crater as it barreled toward Candon, catching him off guard with its twin arm-mounted plasma repeaters. He face planted into the ground as his legs were swept out from under him, KEAA tiles shattered with a small explosion as they detonated like popcorn from the intense heat.

Without shields and restricted in altitude he evaded as automatically as he breathed, firing his left wing thruster from under his arm to launch himself into a barrel roll across the ground away from the gunfire. The pain was their but his mind was focused, dying would hurt a lot worse and cause more problems for the man who'd only just started feel alive. Pushing up off of the ground he brought the Gauss Sniper Rifle up to play, firing thrice off the hip as he sidestepped the incoming fire.

Three uranium slugs vaporized off the robot's shields, not the standard from what he'd seen, but the robot never even flinched. There was no time to evade as he realized this and shields were still down. He returned his sniper to the waiting mount as he trust out his left hand and ran using the graviton projector to deflect the incoming fire.

Seeing his defense the robot ceased fire from its twin overheating plasma repeaters. A door opened on its flat roof and out came a trio of missiles. As they zeroed in on Candon he converted the gravity field into a wave, batting the missiles into the ground. With his power reserves far too low to use his teleporter he knew the robot had earned his full attention.

Turning away from the opponent he reached both hands down for the quick-draw weapon carrying mounts on his back to deposit their items into his waiting hands. Facing away from the opponent and running across the angled wall of the crater he once more fired up the wing thrusters and threw himself backwards as he launched into the space above the crab. His rocket assisted back flip sent him sailing over the exploding missiles and gave him the perfect view as he brought the two guns to bear.

Bolts of aether spewed from the SMG as if it were a string as three more uranium slugs burst through the now heavily disturbed shield to lance the crab's armored hull. The legs on the right of the robot went limp as the left side scrambled to turn the its hull to face where Candon had landed behind. It made no difference now as the soldier emptied the last two rounds in his sniper into the crab's backside, detonating it's remaining ammo and littering space with more debris in the low gravity environment.

"Class dismissed," he muttered sarcastically as he released the empty sniper magazine and lowered the huge weapon into its mount. Then connecting the power cable on his wrist to the SMG he began draining it's battery into the teleporter until full.
"I'm coming down."


Machine Planet Labyrinth - Outside Room #74

Candon teleported to the exact spot he was sent as a matter of not desiring to be in a wall. A small bang introduced his arrival, a smaller bang that usual due to the extremely thin atmosphere present.

"I'm here, Masumi," he said looking around to get his bearings straight.

Machine Planet Labyrinth - Outside Room #74

Masumi sighed out as she gripped Candon's black Mindy-clad forearm and then let go as quickly as she had grabbed it. Underneath her helmet a deep pink blush formed on her brown cheeks. She moved to go into the room where the high-pitched screaming was coming from, but halted in her tracks.

"What are they—!?" Masumi asked Candon telepathically, turning her head to look away from those peppering the large entities with firepower and slicing them with aether to Candon. "Shosho, is there an actual threat we are unaware of?" Masumi said. She looked back at the Neko as they wildly created a slight bit of chaos in the room they were in. She gritted her teeth and knew she she at least had faith in her betters. Then got out of the way for Candon to be able to take the lead if he so chose. She began reading her gauss and LASR on her shoulders as her ABSR stayed lowered.

Machine Planet Labyrinth - Room #32

Interrupted by aether and the explosive forces of the teleporters, the shrieking halted as the four startled mushroom aliens were summarily cut down, reduced to a smoldering pile of goo in the center of the dark, spore-encrusted room. The mushroom room had one doorway near the northeast corner. This one looked tougher than the previous door, as it if was some sort of blast shutter.

Machine Planet Labyrinth - Passageway Outside Room #74

Hanako was immensely frustrated with the lack of order. There seemed to be no rules of engagement, and her enlisted soldiers were shooting everything they came across without any communication to or from their leaders. Her planned exploration mission was looking more like a Viking raid. She didn't even know what they had just killed because these passageways were so narrow and twisting that it was difficult to move around.

"Nito Hei Hasegawa, give me a situation report for grenadier team," Hanako ordered.

Machine Planet

Wazu was doing his best to check the surroundings of the Heirophant. The large mech had just been wedged into the opening, and cratered much of the hallway beyond with its inertia.

There wasn't room for the top turret to move about, much less to maneuver the machine.

There wasn't time to worry about killer robots or screaming... whatevers, just yet.

There wasn't much time to talk about Vishta either. Maybe he could avoid that subject for a little while longer...

"... Bronzi..."

...

"You know we are stuck right? That means we either stay here and wait for them to teleport us out, or we dismount and move further in with them."

Machine Planet Labyrinth - Room #32

"Shôshô, we have identified four potentially hostile flora and have dispatched them. I believe that the shrieking noise could potentially trigger the Rixxikor's swarming instinct.", replied Junko in a shaky tone, her mind focused on her sensors, believing that the sound would trigger the arrival of a large conglomeration of Rixxikor.

"How should we proceed, Shôshô?", Junko asked over the comms, her voice more even this time as she eyed the door in the northeast corner of the room.

Machine Planet Labyrinth - Room #32

"Area clear. Doorway spotted, standing by," her sultry voice coolly spoke, weapons at the ready as she continued to scan. The incessant shrieking had stopped as quickly as it had begun, and with that, Noriko allowed her sense of pain to return. It was difficult to tell the extent of the hearing damage she had taken, but the soldier knew that was irrelevant - hemosynthetic flesh didn't know that permanent damage existed. Even then, she completely switched to her suit's audio sensors instead, just to be safe. Right now though, Noriko didn't feel safe despite declaring the area clear; she might have been unsocial, but she could tell that something was off.

The Shôshô gave an order, a demand, did not seem happy. It was best to let Junko deal with her, however, there was something that Noriko wanted to address too, something she wasn't going to let wait. It was likely now or never after all.

"Hasegawa-san, please warn me in the future if you will move past me and into melee range," she began, speaking to the other Neko, mind to mind. "Friendly fire is not friendly," Noriko added, repeating the little saying that they were taught in training. Naturally, the new little Neko also knew this echoed the last tragedy as well - she didn't want to be on the giving or receiving end if it happened again.

Room #32

"Grenadiers. Secure the area. I want scans of the door, reports of possible surveillance devices, and pictures of these bodies for our records. If they try and counter, get into the corners on either side, and turn on your camo. Smoke grenades, then melee. No cross fire, understand?" Tsuguka was shoving one of the hacked up corpses in parallel parking even whilst Junko was still talking, sounding stubborn and unwilling to let the situation get any worse. "Suites-Heisho, Masumi-Hei, please move up from our rear and secure the Shosho. Also, information on any radio signals would be helpful... If anybody is moving in on us, we should at least be getting their chatter."

A calm, morbid glance down to the spores growing all over the floor. The soldier, more than anything, just hoped they wouldn't kick the door down and find a full blown hatchery... Technically immoral to destroy AND a waste of effort. But it might already be too late to back down, now...

Room #32

Freyja nodded to Tsuguka's order, then realized she wasn't looking at her. "Hai, Heisho," she answered, "Understood." The blue Neko scanned the remains of the mushroom entities, taking several pictures from different angles. She moved on to the door, scanning specifically for any electronics running from the door that might be triggered when it opened.

Next, she tried to get an idea of exactly how much force it would take to get through the door. With her explosives left behind, she wasn't equipped for breaching a door. She cursed herself for not bringing the backpack. If she had to, she could try grenades but it would make a distinct racket. Especially in these narrow corridors. She stepped back from the door to allow others a look.

Machine Planet Labyrinth - Room #32

Junko blinked nervously as Noriko transmitted to her. Quite frankly, she wanted very much to ignore it, as the message only reminded her of how poorly she was performing her job. However, Junko respected Noriko, in spite of her own insecurities and past failings. She was obligated to respond.

"Thank you for the warning, Yukimura-san. I will maintain clearance in the future."

Eyeing the corners of the room, Junko summarily began to scan the possible areas where surveillance devices would be located. It would be easy to hide such a device within the mass of damaged machinery on the walls. Taking screenshots, Junko ordered her Mindy's sensors to search for reflective surfaces that could potentially be utilized as a lens, or pockmarked machine surfaces that resembled ancient recording technology.

After completing her reports, Junko moved to the door, positioned just behind Freyja as the tall, blue-skinned Neko scanned the thick barrier.