Re: Mission 5: Amaya's Gate
@Amaya's Gate:
Meni apparently did not like her chances against Asher's mini-missile volley - her right arm with the aether-powered aether saber-rifle had been hurt at its base (prohibiting the fast reactions needed to shoot the missiles down before they connected) and her left arm was weighted down by an unpowered saber-rifle and its encumbrance equally hampered targeting the scalar cannon mounted over the back of that forearm. Dodging the homing missiles at this distance was too much of a long shot either, and even if she was zesuaium-armored, Asher's five MSAP were capable of dealing her great harm - if not killing her outright.
So, she teleported. The five mini-missiles explosively crashed on the floor she had previously stood on, and Asher's plasma flame (which he used in case she was just trying to be stealthy) found no target. Masako's corpse also failed to contribute in any way: Nyton discovered that the AIES had no actual control over the limb movements of the Daisy power armor.
Meni reappeared further away on the other side of the Akuma, closer to where Mani was engaged against her opponents. Tom, whom had been holding his attack, saw a golden opportunity to attack Meni the moment she was taking her bearings.
The chief engineer's LASR let loose a tight, precise 3-round burst that mercilessly slammed into the Black Mindy. The kinetic impact of the volley had her reel aside, with kinetic force sufficient to tear off the frontal chestplate from the inner titanium supports.
As the dislodged zesuaium plate with unanchored lengths of zesuaium mesh bounced off the floor - leaving Meni's chest protected only by her hemosynth insert - Tom scented blood and squeezed the trigger again for three more shots. Meni twisted aside to expose more of her left side/dorsal armor and that trio of armor-piercing rounds turned out being less effective than the former... except from one crack over the scalar cannon mounted on Meni's left forearm, followed by a puff of smoke.
As for Mani, she was kept very busy by Kyou and Ichigo. With Ichigo harassing Mani with weak but kinetically powerful attacks from her Daisy's forearm weapons set on heavy, and Mani being limited to using a weapon that could fire only every 2 seconds, instead of one that fired 18 pulses a second, Kyou found it much easier to weave, dodge and block her opponent's attack.
While both Kyou and Ichigo were unable to land any decisive hits, neither could Mani. She seemed to have her hands full tumbling around their attacks.
In the meantime, the beaked chestplate of the Akuma groaned open, and a dazed looking human woman of nordic descent (comely, with loose shoulder length blonde hair and blue eyes) stumbled out. She gave a cursory look of the battlefield and then rounded around the Akuma to try to make a run for the hangar.
Kotori, gritting her teeth, struggled to her teeth and telepathically reminded her people: "Don't bother with Amaya. Leave her alone, unharmed, and focus on the Black Mindy armors. I'll handle her." That said, the Taisa's form blurred into invisibility.
Upon Amaya retreating from the battlefield, Mani took notice. "Useless nepleslian bitch!" She commented via encrypted telepathy to her twin. "You realize the piss-eyes is probably going after her, right?"
"I'm pretty sick of babysitting Amaya anyways. Let her," came the reply. "We can always kill the Signaler later, after we're done with these guys."
Upon that point Nyton's AIES bleeped for his attention and revealed a status display, showing how the restorer nanomachines had juryrigged his zero-point generator to be functional again. The energy conversion system, was only partly restored though and that denied Nyton the use of gravimetric propulsion, barrier shielding or plasma. But at least now Telemachus was at least able to again live up to its name as a power armor.
@YSS Miharu:
Shortly after Miyoko lowered Miharu's shields, the three on the bridge were sent rocking from the shockwaves signaling the appearances of not one, two or three teleporting invaders... bout four of them.
Four mounds of bubbling durandium and sizzling flesh, that is.
The same phenomenon happened again outside the MEGAMI's armored door, leaving the remains of three Mindy armors on the floor.
The same happened in the medlab, the shockwaves sending the doctor, his nurses and the patients on the beds careening aside. However, the only thing left of those potential invaders were five twisted mounds of flesh and durandium.
The same incidents happened in the subdecks, with eight more unfortunate teleporters ending up scattered through it, thoroughly warped beyond saving.
Hinoto picked herself back up to face her console and pumped her fist, crying out a triumphant: "Yes!" The total accounts was 48 teleportation incidents scattered throughout the entire ship. None of them successful.
It was too early to celebrate, though. There were still three unwelcome guests onboard as well as Takumi outside. Takumi immediately monopolized most of the attention by seizing the unshielded Miharu with two graviton beams to hold the ship immobile and cause it to rotate its nose downward in order to get itself out of the narrow firing arc of Miharu's main gun.
With Miharu caught, Takumi used its maneuvering thrusters to perform a barrel roll to expose its dorsal side while also laboriously turning around to have its nose face Miharu. The turning around would take a few more seconds, but the rollover was fairly quick, bringing part of Takumi's powerful arsenal into play: the raker beams.
One dome swiveled toward Miharu and four beams blazed out, striking at the port base of the rollbar and then the beams ran through the inner-side of the port crew compartment, boring in through armor and structural supports to open up the corridor inside and some of the cabins there up to space. The damage diagram told an ugly story, showing the rec room/suite portions as red while most of the crew compartment armor had turned to black.
"Multiple hull breaches in port crew compartment. Atmospheric retention fields in-place and holding," Hinoto more somberly reported. She improved the targeting resolution over the Takumi's embedded tachyon communication dish as well as the two graviton projectors holding Miharu. "Shosa, we should energize our armor."
* * *
As Akiko and Miko dragged away the two incapacitated nekos, Suzume and her partner advanced, switfly taking down the enemy drones with blasts from their forearm weapons.
Both Daisy armors braced as there were several teleports around. Shortly afterwards, they quickly engaged themselves into the left corridor. Striding over the twisted remains of teleport failures.
In an eyeblink, the life of Suzume's partner ended. From above, a gauss cannon round crashed into the M6's armored collar, boring deeply into the pilot. As that Daisy staggered from the attack, the enemy Mindy II fell atop her and shredded her helmet apart with a cross-slash from her forearm-mounted aether sword.
Suzume cried out, reflexively jetting further inside to avoid getting caught in the ambush, before twisting around at the armored door to face her adversary, loosing a burstfire from her LASR. The Mindy II almost disdainfully blocked the attack by twisting around with feline grace to block with a forearm shield.
Suzume swallowed hard. Her adversary was obviously a trained infantryman, whereas she was a tech sentry, and one specialized in computer hardware at that.
* * *
Things in engineering didn't get worse with the failed appearance of many dead mindy pilots. Unfortunately, they did not get much better: most of Yukari's orders to Miharu about activating forcefields to immobilize or crush the opponents present were unfeasible, to which Miharu apologetically replied: "Sorry Shosa. I can't really do what you asked. Leave it to me: I'll do my best."
Forcefields came into existence around the Mindy II's to corral them in a restrained space, but again the invaders defeated them rather easily - this time by firing subspace detonator warheads to create gaps to stride through. They split up, sweeping aether fire across the deck which was, for the most part, stopped at the important places (important systems, people) with forcefields. Unfortunately, with Yukari's insistence that Junko's team stay in the main passageway, the enemies splitting up meant they were now out of sight.
"Damn!" Junko swore. "Shosa, I can't obey that order. We're engaging the enemy!" Both M6 Daisy's stomped out of the passageway, each splitting up to engage one Mindy II each.
The invaders were swift to counter-attack, and with the subdeck's forcefields partly disabled by the subspace warheads fired earlier, Miharu had nothing to spare to the two Daisy armors.
The first initial exchanges were mostly neutral, with forearm forcefields or barriers absorbing the attacks... though Junko quickly realized one big disadvantage implicated in 'fighting on her own turf' - if one of her LASR round so much as missed the enemy and glanced off something like a high-pressure hydrogen conduit, there'd be hell to pay.
