Re: Mission 5: Amaya's Gate
As the Black Knights recovered from the latest shockwave, Nyton started barking orders over the Black Knights' comm channel: "You heard the Taisa everyone! Break through the barrier and focus on the sensor arrays. Stop it's missiles from hitting the Taisa!"
"Gunshin-hei, I want a volley of Subspace Missiles now," Masako telepathically ordered, fleshing out Nyton's commands. "Westwood-Hei, take out its last pair of eyes once the barrier collapses. Everyone else - stand by for missile suppression fire and ready missile avoidance counter-measures." The petite nekovalkyrja wing leader for her part released one of her drones to scout out Nimura's present predictament.
"Hai, Heisho." Kyou complied with her superiors orders, firing off a small volley of her shield-collapsing missiles. While she could've timed her next attack with the collapse of the mishhumachina's, she instead backpedaled, her rifle held at the ready.
"Roga' that, fuckin' up the selected target!" Asher responded with gusto as Kyou attacked. He pulled up his Gauss Bazooka and locked himself in a ready stance, then letting loose two rounds from his Bazooka.
Kyou's subspace detonator warheads struck and misted away the mishhumachina's shielding, allowing for Asher's two gauss rounds to zip past the energy protection unopposed to impact hard against the front of the enemy machine. With twin deafening impacts, the twin eyebeam assembly left to the mishhumachina was shattered to raining debris, cutting off the laser tracers from the Ryusei II's pilot canopy.
The artificial mishhuvurthyar was left recoiling from the Malifarian's attack, allowing the unmolested Ryusei II to get a missile lock on it first. The second internal bay opened, releasing another four-missile volley that also connected with the mechanized horror. The second mishhumachina was destroyed, its explosion also scattering debris into the back of the hangar.
As for Masako's drone, it did not have far to go. As the second mishhumachina was destroyed, it left room for the third mishhumachina make its entry. Within the grasp of four of its pincers was the power armored Nimura, stretched out almost past tolerance of the M6 Daisy's flesh insert. Another four tentacles were poised behind Nimura, hammering at her vulnerable back with heavy NSP fire that - slowly but steadily - had blasted open the dorsal armor and were now in the process of piercing through the much more vulnerable hemosynthetic layer.
* * *
In her cockpit, Kotori clenched her jaw in frustration. There was no way she could loose her remaining mini-missiles on the third mishhumachina while it held Nimura in the way like that... and the sprite obviously did not have very long left to live. She had beam cannons, but those wouldn't get across the the mishhumachina's barrier fast enough. Neither would the power armors - especially not while trying to do surgical attacks - too much could go wrong while Nimura was being held hostage like that.
What she needed was a powerful enough projectile to breach the barrier in one hit and total the mishhumachina while leaving Nimura safe, and the only thing that applied to that was...
"Get out of the way!" the Taisa yelled as she pushed the throttle forward, causing the fighter-bomber to accelerate into the hangar bay. One moment the Ryusei II was hovering outside, and the next the craft was clashing nosefirst into the mishhumachina's main body with a shriek of metal, scything through its underbelly and tentacle cluster supports.
Nimura was freed from suddenly limp tentacles and fell to the hangar's floor like a rag doll. The yukata-clad Kotori, for her part, escaped her Ryusei II in the nick of time by popping her canopy and flying out before the collision, eventually landing in a crouch upside-down over the hangar's ceiling.
Both massive machines grinded against each other, the Mishhumachina twisting about, its remaining tentacles flailing at it resisted, but the Ryusei's still accelerating engines eventually won the struggle, driving the both of them to crash at the end of the hangar. The Mishhumachina's plasma weaponry breached, causing it to explode and in turn cook off the remaining ammunition of the Ryusei II for an even greater explosion.
Kotori flattened herself over the ceiling, gritting her teeth as she used one of the yukata's sleeves to shield her eyes. Eventually, the blast subsided, and the only thing that vied with Blue Rift's luminous haze was the raging inferno at the end of the hangar. Amidst tangles of metallic tentacles, Nimura dry-heaving could be heard over the comm channel, her power armor's back a frayed tangle of hemosynthetic muscle fibers.