RP: YSS Kaiyō Mission 30: Sugoi Dekai

"Morgana, Isuke, find us a way to get out of here not on foot! We're losing her," Hoshi said to the Lorrfolk and scientist as she took a furtive glance back at Molli, who was fading fast. "Molli, keep a lookout on our six and sides. We need you!" With no way for the team to revive her, let alone heal the wound in her shoulder. The only thing left to do was keep her mind on the battle at hand and hope she didn't lose consciousness tucked behind Hoshi, who continued to shield Molli with her own small frame.

An expression of incensed rage on the face of William and Aiko's attacker morphed into something more confusedly irate as William blocked and parried every blow coming at him. Dropping his lip to seethe his breaths out from between his clenched teeth, the security guard seemed to be at his mind's bounds. Suddenly faced with William's shin tucked into his knee, he was out of his body's bounds, too. He was William's shield, but he was a strapped one as he grasped at his belt to pull a gun from his hip.

The security guard Sif targeted had been waiting for an opportunity to get in on the fight and she gave it to him. When she knocked his shin out from under him and grappled in close, he was quick with a retaliatory blow, palm striking into her face as she got close, then bringing his fist back for a punch to her gut. It wouldn't be enough, he knew that, and he too drew a pistol from his hip.

Aiko had been the only one to follow Hoshi's orders, but the order to have everyone target one man only worked if everyone did so. So far, nobody had been able to take out the man they were taking on alone.

Taking this in, Hoshi honed in on the man with the AR just as Aiko shot then spun against him. Unarmored but still able to move with the graceful precision she was known for in her Kirie, Aiko's movements and line of sight leading her meant Hoshi could track her movements even before they happened. Avoiding her XO even as she shot the lethal Type 45 came second nature to the captain as she dealt a finishing blow to the man. His semi-automatic clattered to the ground, no longer spraying out gunfire into the old sandstone walls behind Hoshi and William. Captain Hoshi followed Aiko's crimson eyes as they sparked on another target. Hoshi couldn't fire on him from her position without clipping Sif, so she simply watched with cold satisfaction as she saw Aiko's brisk shot at him knock him asunder.

Unlike his compatriots, the ID-SOL had unequivocally impaired the crew and Hoshi took comfort knowing Aiko's sights had been laid on him, hoping for some kind of justice for Molli behind her. Sustaining an injury to his hand, the man's Zen Arms gun flew into the air, but it was soaring only briefly as he lunged his neck forward and clasped the .45 between his teeth. His lip curled into a smile as he raised his arm. At first, Hoshi thought he was showing off his gruesome wound from Aiko, then she realized it was the other hand which she had shot. This one he was raising was flopped down beneath where it should biologically connect. It had opened on a hinge, revealing that his arm was a cybernetic gun of some sorts. From it came a bright blue muzzle flash that elongated as it exited his arm into a rod-like shape that was bordered by a light pink color. Hoshi realized, appalled, that he had a hidden plasma gun within his arm that he was aiming and firing directly at Aiko. She aimed her own stolen pistol at him after, shooting at his head, but the bullet dinged off of it like it had hit a ship hull.

Being below average in her batch meant that she's been hit more than she's landed in training, so the impacts, while still hurting, didn't make her flinch as much. Her grip with her good arm held and upon noticing the guard's hand reaching below him, Sif's other hand darted to his throat to get her clutches on his trachea which she would then squeeze with force while her good arm kept a solid grip on his uniform to keep him from weaseling away. Strength was not in short supply for a nekovalkyrja, despite her weakened arm, and the windpipe doesn't take a huge amount of force to crush. And besides resorting to dirty tactics, this was the most pain she could cause in such a short time, and she was betting on it to be painful enough to paralyze the guard or just knock him out.

It was perhaps for his sake too because of Hoshi's words that implied that one of them was fading fast. Sif was in a rattled state and was tunneled onto her current engagement and only partially aware of what the others were doing, but she knew they didn't have much time, even without the risk of someone dying. More guards could come up any second now, and she couldn't waste any more time tussling with the guard. If he didn't go limp or freeze up, she was going to have to tear his throat out.

When she caught the guard with her little gambit, she braced her other foot against the guard's abdomen as he fell over her so she could have the leverage to kick him off later, either when he was unconscious, dead or if she failed to grab a hold of his throat.

Getting shot at wasn't new to Isuke, although she had to admit, she had never seen someone have an implanted arm gun like that before. Molli's condition was also of a grave concern, and a bit of a hit to her old professional pride. Molli maybe wasn't her most important target to protect, but the fact someone had gotten so grievously wounded still made her furious.

She would likely not have taken that injury much better, but Isuke was used to taking injuries. Although, if she'd be able to take that kind of punishment without any problems... she shoved the thoughts aside, they weren't important right now. For now, she had to focus on her orders - finding some way to help transport a wounded comrade. Maybe once she had taken care of that, they could at least try to perform some basic first aid to stop the bleeding...

"Got it!" replied Isuke calmly, and clearly, the Lorrfolk woman quickly looking around her surroundings for something with wheels that was going to be able to transport an individual... and whatever was close by...

Aiko was already bounding toward the ID-SOL by the time he'd performed his flourish and big plasma gun reveal. Her forward pace hadn't paused for even a second since they'd left the control room a few minutes prior, her body always in motion and in the fight. No hidden gun-hand in her face would stop the princess now, as much because—in that moment—she considered herself to have stood up against far worse as it was due to her being mid-stride with both feet off the ground only a step away from the mammoth Nepleslian grunt.

When Aiko's front foot met the ground, the sizzling blue energy bolt fired out from her gargantuan foe's hinged wrist just as she made herself small beneath his towering shadow. Hoshi's own counterfire plinked off the big guard's zesuaium plated skull, though Aiko didn't recognize the sound nor see it happening in the heat of battle. The enemy's shot burned through the flat cape of disguised purple hair that followed behind her, frying a singed circle of sparkling fiery orange in her regal mane's trailing fringe.

And then she leapt up, meeting the unfriendly ID-SOL's eyes with a furious stare of her own while passing high enough to land on his outstretched gun arm. Her bare left foot only made contact with the pallid synthskin that covered his bionic forearm for a moment before she pushed off again, immediately thrusting her right knee up into his jaw with all the power her strapping legs could muster combined with a full vector of Nekovalkyrja inertia control behind it. She could feel his teeth crack and crumble as they were forced to bite down around the gun he'd so proudly bit out of the air a second ago, watching his face with grim satisfaction as long as she could until she passed over his left shoulder.

The Kaiyō's own ID-SOL William was Aiko's most enduring training partner other than her samurai bodyguard Rei, and the princess had on many occasions wrestled with her friend's subordinate Marines who served with Legion 777 for practice. Thusly, she was well-versed on facing down Nepleslian supersoldiers in personal combat—and knew that a swift knee to the teeth wouldn't stop any ID-SOL in the sector. So Aiko kicked back once she'd made it over the giant guard's head in order to get some space between them while letting off a parting shot into his meaty trunk with the NMX Type 45 pistol she still carried.

It'd all happened so quickly, both from Aiko's perspective and any onlookers, that the report from her gun snapped her back to a more realistic perception of time. By now, the princess was breathing hard as she twisted her body in the air and landed on both feet at once in a wide stance while her left hand skimmed along the ground to steady her. Aiko kept her gunsights trained on the ID-SOL guard, ready to react to whichever way he moved next.

Molli wasn't sure that the bullets she fired found a mark -- the same blood that splattered against the door coated her face, irritated her eyes, and made it hard to see. Moving her body felt like crawling through fire, but Molli knew it was preferable to lying still and letting shock claim her consciousness. Hoshi's orders rang loud and clear, so Molli pivoted to peek down the hallway with her pistol leveled. The movement made her body shriek in protest and produced an ugly cracking sound as fragments of her shoulder scraped against each other. The sound of boots pounding the ground echoed down the hall, and sure enough, more people armed with guns bound into the Nepleslian's sights.

Though her body was close to broken, Molli's cybernetics were there to support their wounded owner. The software within her crimson eyes flagged targets while her metal arm snapped to those coordinates and pulled the trigger sequentially. It was an extra step that Molli didn't often take, given the strain it put on the portions of her mind where flesh and machine met, but Hoshi's orders echoed in her thoughts. It didn't matter how much it hurt, how much it risked killing her.

She couldn't let them down.

William cursed as his opponent reached for the weapon on his belt. Shifting his grip, the captain attempted to pin his arm. The last thing William needed was to get pumped full of bullet holes.

In the midst of his fight, he saw the ID-SOL reveal a hidden gun in his cybernetics. "Rocket arms and now gun hands. Why didn't I think of that..." William mused to himself as he tried to choke out his opponent.

"That's the ticket" Hoshi applauded Molli. Her half mumbled words came only after Molli had laid her cybernetic sights on the men coming up the hallway. The men fell in quick order, something the captain looked away from almost immediately to refocus on the alleyway fight. She had only expected Molli to lookout and alert her, not shoot rounds off, though, and the captain applauded and warned, "Don't spend too much of yourself."

Not able to get a clear shot on the man William was choking out, Hoshi shot off an energy round into his knee with a click of her tongue. He fell, overcome with pain and not even oxygen to deal with the battle any longer. Sif, meanwhile, had punctured or broken something in the man's trachea and he made a chortling rattle, a deathly harrowing sound that spewed from his insides out.

"Sasuga!" Hoshi breathed out, watching Aiko flit on top of the ID-SOL then back again to a distanced position in a small matter of time. The man had lost some teeth in the process of Aiko's knee jab up to his jaw and from the Ketsurui's vantage, Aiko watched the man glowering at the Nekovalkyrja with a look that turned into a vile smirk. His lips peaked upwards at the edges and blood spilled out of the new gaps where his teeth were gone, dripping past his bottom lip and down his chin with the slow viscosity of spit-laden blood. His chilling smile betrayed the belligerent elation of a brawler who's met a contender they would very much like to defeat. When she shot him in the stomach, he pushed forward marginally, then caught himself, giving Hoshi an idea. Sputtering from his bloodied smile came a vicious laugh and the man swung his gun on the position where Aiko had only just landed, shooting at the ancient tiles she touched.

"She's tanking him," Hoshi noted to her crewmen, all devoid of their own personal assailants and targets. "We need to go at him with a plan. Molli and I will keep firing from this position. William, you and Sif target the areas Aiko targets directly after she hits them. Don't give him a moment to catch his breath!"

Launching off from where she'd stopped, Aiko pushed her powerful Nekovalkyrja form to stay ahead of the ID-SOL's sweeping aim. It was easy to see where he would be pointing because the barrel of his hidden plasma pistol was affixed to his forearm. But he was still a quick combatant, so the tall Ketsurui girl leapt while she ran a semicircle around her assailant. Plasma bolts continually impacted into the sandstone wherever Aiko had just been standing while she kept on the move, hopping over the alleyway's detritus and weaving through whatever assortment of odd items for cover as the ID-SOL's angry gunfire followed on the Neko's heels.

She knew not to simply rush back in. Although the princess had little confidence in her foe's wit or intelligence, she still respected whatever possible combat experience he might have. ID-SOL were Nepleslia's equivalent of Nekovalkyrja, after all, and besides their programming all possessed some measure of martial instinct. Nonetheless, Aiko found herself drawing ever closer to striking distance as she attempted to stay a step ahead of the juggernaut's gun-arm shots.

Aiko gave hardly any forethought before choosing the moment, suddenly aiming the NMX pistol in her right hand at the enemy ID-SOL's feet when she felt close enough. Squeezing off two shots into the old sandstone bricks not an inch from his feet, Aiko aimed to send a plume of yellowy dust and chipped sediment up through his sights. And just when the cloud spat up into the air, the princess jumped toward him again, finally calculating that it was time to punch him again.

Swiftly, she shrugged off her gossamer green kimono that covered up most of her rosy, pale flesh and whipped it across the side of his tiny little meat-head—tiny, at least, compared to the rest of his behemoth bulk—and caught it as its leading end wrapped around and swung into her hand. Such a flimsy piece of attire wouldn't be able to restrain any ID-SOL's strength, even layered into a makeshift rope like it was, but Aiko had no intention of tying him up. All she did was land her feet on the ground behind her target, pulling him backward with her from his teetering height.

"Lay down," Aiko grunted through her teeth, tugging the sling of a robe and ID-SOL tangled in it like a heavy sack hefted over her shoulder as she squatted lower to the floor. She could feel the threads of her once pretty garment pop and stretch as they strained against the considerable resistance the man gave. "Now!"

Hearing the unsettling sounds of the guard's gurgling as she felt the trachea crumbling, Sif was assured that he was no longer in fighting form. Even if he could have stood up from this, he'd probably be too busy choking. The good news for him was that he had a high likelihood of surviving, but his voice may sound a bit different when he recovered. A good alternative than being shot and bleeding out, though he'd probably be ST'd either way. Letting go of his throat, Sif pushed him off with her leg that had been bracing him over her.

Hoshi's order came through and Sif quickly pulled herself to her feet just in time to see Aiko restrain the enemy ID-SOL. Target the area Aiko targets, Sif repeated to herself, looking for a spot to attack. Well, the throat was around that spot where Aiko had him entangled, and as she had just seen, the throat was a very effective spot.

Sif dashed towards the ID-SOL and hopped up slightly to get a good height angle, her left hand outstretched towards the enemy's arm on her side while the opposite hand was raised behind her, wound up for a palm strike to the trachea. And once she's landed, she would also try to lock his arm, pinned to her side so she could send a couple of jabs right to the kidneys.

After choking out his opponent, William reached down and grabbed the pistol the guard had been reaching for. With a dispasionate glance, he pressed the barrel into the back of the guards head and pulled the trigger.

The captain had to eliminate the threat. The guard may have passed out from the choke hold but he would have recovered sooner rather than later. The away team didn't need any unexpected attacks from someone they thought had been neutralized already.

William moved as ordered towards Aiko and the downed ID-SOL. As Aiko restrained him and Sif struck at his neck and kidneys, William made his own move. Cocking his arm back, he put all of his power into a straight punch aimed right at the man's nose. If their combined efforts weren't enough to knock the ID-SOL out, William would unloaded his newly aquired pistol into the man's temple.

"Kuso," Hoshi murmured the curse to herself as she saw Aiko hadn't shot or kneed into the ID-SOL after she had given her order. But the two began focusing instead on the part of the ID-SOL Aiko had restrained best—his head. With William punching into his face and Sif striking at the trachea, it was obvious the team knew how to pivot and how to think quick on their feet. His hand gun flailed as they struck him and Hoshi shouted to Aiko, ready to rope her in to the plan this time.

"Shoot with me!" Hoshi said to the Ketsurui, recalling how Aiko's shot to his trunk had given the guard pause, indicating it was somewhere another shot should be placed.

William's shot absorbed into whatever shielding the man's head had and he was actively sliding out of Sif's grasp like a trained ground wrestler. Hoshi watched as Sif jabbed his kidneys, then aimed the horrid enemy's pistol at the same spot, giving pause to be sure Sif's knife-like hand wouldn't be caught up in the shot the captain was taking. From her corner in front of Molli and the door, two quick energy bursts from Hoshi dispersed from the M3 Pistol at his center.

"Stay with me," Hoshi whispered, turning to look at Molli through her peripherals as she hadn't heard much from the woman since Molli had taken down the guards at their back. As she did so, Hoshi saw Isuke slip away even further out of sight and that there was a developing crowd at the far end of the alley, some of which were even more security. The captain tried to make out if there were any more ID-SOL coming at them; the last thing they needed was to fight another hired super soldier.

Molli was aware of the scuffle, or at least the broad scope of it, from aside glances to the edge of her peripheral vision. She considered turning and lending her gun to the cause that was putting an ID-SOL into the ground permanently, but soon decided against it. The soldier wasn't operating at her best, and with so many of the squad fighting in close quarters, the Neplelsian didn't trust her ability to avoid friendly fire without taxing her targeting sub-systems any further. Holding the door had put enough strain on Molli as is, though the blood that trickled from her nose like a river was indistinguishable from the dried splotches on her face.

"M'fine," Molli replied, though her faint voice suggested otherwise. Worse, her bronzed skin had taken on a ghastly, pale pigmentation. She'd lost a lot of blood, and her wound was still untreated. Molli realized at that moment that her odds of survival were slim, and that was enough to crack the facade she'd put up to reassure her captain. "Ah don't wanna...git'y'kilt." Molli's bottom lip began to quiver, "Don'- Don' die ferme."

Molli desperately wanted to beg Hoshi to keep her alive at all costs, but deep down, she knew in her heart that it wasn't the right thing to do. Even though she feared the pain and the question of what lay beyond, she had to handle moments like this with valor and dignity -- even if she didn't want to. And she didn't want to, not in the slightest.

William grimaced as his fist made contact, not with cartilage but with a shield. Hearing Hoshi's words to Aiko, he pressed his newly obtained pistol into the ID-SOL guards abdomen and began to unload the entire contents of the weapons magazine. "Would you just die already!" He yelled, exasperatedly.

William knew they needed to get to the Kaiyo quickly, between Molli and Sif's injuries. He didn't see the ID-SOL guard as a person, only as a big obstacle that needed to be destroyed.

Sif heard that Nepleslians were hardy people, but this guy just didn't fold. Was it just his ID-SOL genes or did he have cybernetics made for this kind of situation? She'd have to ask William about his thoughts on this guy if she survived this encounter. Because despite the ongoing assault on his person, this guard was still managing to slip from her grip and it seemed apparent that he was shrugging off projectiles with his head.

Seeing William aim his gun at the guard's abdomen, Sif switched where she was hitting to not get accidentally shot, though if he had some kind of shielding implant where he was getting shot, she could only hope it didn't ricochet to her. Her new target for her punches while William was shooting was towards the guard's elbow joint, hitting it from underneath. She thought that if he managed to break free, then perhaps she could at least disable a limb for their benefit, and it allowed her to be spaced a bit away from the impacts of the bullets.

Hoshi's order rang out loud and clear through the sandstone Urtullan alleyway, prompting the away team's freed up soldiers to converge on the determined ID-SOL security guard. Aiko heard it, too, as her comrades descended upon their stubborn foe and eased some of her tense attention on bringing him down solo. But luckily her gambit just before had paid off and toppled their hulking mark, pulling him crashing down onto the dusty cobbles with a rumble that sent a shockwave through that little street's neglected stacks of containers and flimsy canvas eaves.

Aiko wrenched her wrapped up robe off of the enemy ID-SOL's head like a whip—the once pretty kimono now ruined with sweat and soil far less delicate than anything she could produce—and discarded it to the floor without second thought. She readied her body in an exacting stance, stepping her left foot forward while grasping the NMX pistol she'd carried for the team's whole flight with two hands for the first time, and then fired into the ID-SOL's side. The princess made sure to choose her shots well with both Sif and William in full assault between Hoshi's directing gunfire.

With that eye toward avoiding friendly fire, Aiko fired once and then twice. And then again and again for as long as she could keep the firing vector locked in her Type 33A body's integrated AIES. She'd keep going, steadily plugging the Mishhuvurthyar gun's heavy energy bolts into the ID-SOL's torso, until ordered to stop or the target moved again. He'd refused to die thus far, so Aiko didn't let her guard down just yet.

Pulling herself away from the battle was difficult for the captain, but she had to after she gave her best bet to her team. She pulled her aloha shirt off and slid the Type 45 into the back of her flaired skirt, wrapping the top around Molli.

"We keep having to share clothes today, huh?" Hoshi asked Molli quietly. "Gonna give you a bit of help while they shoot em up." Her eyes were on the passage behind them and Molli's gunshot wound, trying to not give one too little attention as she worked on securing her shirt. It wasn't much, but it was putting enough pressure where it mattered. Hoshi then put her hand on Molli's shoulder, where the huge round had entered, pressing down on where the bleeding was.

Behind her, the ID-SOL was ready to rampage again, pushing off the floor as if he was in the ring and unwilling to have the referee count him as pinned for long. But being hit from so many directions quickly took its toll. Sif hit his arm that was pushing him up predominantly, making him slump downwards momentarily, but he tried to get back up, head spinning to William as the other ID-SOL unloaded a magazine into him. It looked like he was ready to say something with his last words when Aiko took her stande and joined in on the targeted assault. He didn't have whatever shielding his head did over his organs, but he seemed to be rushing to enact some new tech. A little metal popped up out of his belt, something he must have enacted with cybernetics, but it was too late. The damage had been done and while a little dribble of blood came out of his mouth, the light left his eyes as well.

"We have to get Molli back," Hoshi said, taking a peek over her shoulder then back down the hall. "Going to pick you up, that good?" Hoshi asked quieter to the infantry woman herself, prepping to hold Molli bridal style.

Feeling hands at her back, reflexes and sheer adrenaline almost made the startled Nepleslian whirl around to face an unseen threat, but Hoshi's familiar voice stopped her short of that. The micromovement she had made sent a fresh wave of pain through Molli's shoulder, which was only exasperated by Hoshi's treatment. "GNNNGHFFFUU-" she clenched her teeth, wrenched her eyes shut, tried and failed to stop the tears from flowing. A bullet to the head sounded nice right about now, but it wasn't looking like that ID-SOL was going to finish the job, not after what the Kaiyo's finest had done to him.

Turning to face Hoshi with a tear-stained face, Molli didn't trust herself not to bite her own tongue off, were she to speak. So instead, she nodded in response to Hoshi's request, and marveled, quietly, at how someone so small could lift her up so easily. Yet another Nekovalkyrja miracle, Molli thought.

William roared in exasperation and exhaustion as the ID-SOL finally succumbed to the combined assault. "Man we are hard to kill." He said, turning from the grizzly scene.

Taking in Molli's injury and Hoshi first aid, he quickly undid his belt. "If my pants fall off while we are running, it's on you Molli." He said, wrapping the belt just above the wound on her shoulder. "Also this is gonna hurt like a bitch. On 3. 1... 2!" On 2, the marine synched the belt as tight as he could, before locking the impromptu tourniquet in place.

With that done, he turned to Hoshi. "That should stop the bleeding, but we need to get her out of here or she's gonna have a matching rocket arm. Sounds pretty cool to me but she might think otherwise. I can move faster with her." He explained, scooping Molli up in one arm. It spared Molli being carried bridal style, though she was now being cradled like an infant.

Sif could hardly believe it took so much to take down a single ID-SOL. She had already took a step or two back away from him, but she was expecting him to jump up to his feet any second now. But she took a chance and looked behind her to see that it was Molli that had been hit before. She looked pretty pale and that pool of blood she was sitting in did not look reassuring. The captain and William were already assisting her, so Sif decided to look through the bodies for anything useful. The first thing she took being the assault rifle from one of their assailants which was promptly slung across her back, and the sidearm of the one she had tackled, another .45 that she had tucked into her pocket. While she was at it, she found a pouch on his belt with a plus printed on its flap.

Looking through, she found a tiny bottle of antiseptic, a roll of bandages paired with a pack of gauze, and some pills labeled 'Biapiline', painkillers. There was also a pair of syringes with red liquid inside, but she couldn't find any markings at first glance. She unbuttoned the loop that kept it attached to the belt and rushed over to the captain, presenting the contents inside. "Captain, I found some supplies that could be helpful. If its not enough, I'll look through the other bodies."

Full-glad as she was to see William mostly unharmed, Molli felt a cold chill once he took off his belt. The agony that she'd gone through from Hoshi's improvised tourniquet was still fresh in her body and mind, and when the Kaiyo's friendly ID-SOL drew closer with the intent to help, Molli weakly raised her metal hand, a fearful expression on her face. "No, no. Wait-"

But he was already counting down, and Molli could feel what was coming. It was like fire and sharp knives. "She alreadAAGHHHGHNNN!" Molli shrieked at the second tourniquet tightening over her mangled shoulder, which felt like her fragmented bones were being crammed into a tight crevice and rubbed together. It was enough to make her go light-headed, her crimson eyes rolling high, black spots consuming the world around her.

When William carried her, the smaller Nepleslian was more akin to a limp doll than an infant.