Re: Mission 5: Amaya's Gate
@Yukari:
"No visuals on it yet," Mara shook her head before turning to Hinoto. "If she was here, she could be using CFS stealth. Would that work here without any caveats we could exploit to see where she could be lurking, you think?"
Hinoto did not immediately reply, being still while giving her console a glassy look.
"Oi, Hinoto!" Mara said again.
The white-haired sprite suddenly blinked. "What?" Hinoto exhaled sharply, bringing both hands up to grab the sides of her head. "I- I don't know..."
@Tom:
The coolant leaks in the opened up section that had once been the starboard capacitor and shield generator compartment stemmed from two locations on each end of the chamber - the tubing through the compartment had been torn off, so both ends now bleed out the green liquid into the vaccuum of space at very high pressures.
There were valves on each ends as well, just before where the lines were ruptured. Tom's access to one was easy: one the hatch not ten meters to his right, steps through an atmospheric retention field to enter the opened up section, and then turn the valve to a close. If Tom could get one of the sprites in the starboard wingpod to step out and handle the valve on their end, they would be able to stop the leak sooner.
@Kotori:
Kotori felt rather than saw the heavy stare
Vermillion's operator had settle on her, on
Surtur.
"She's stalling," Mani telepathically shared, Kotori's abilities cracking the encryption with what had become practiced ease to the NH-29 Signaler.
"She has no allies out. The longer she talks, the sooner she has reinforcements to even the odds."
"Does it even matter?" Meni retorted.
"We came to take over the ship. She's a signaler - from the moment she dies, their minds are Eve's."
"I can play the waiting game as well," a third telepathic voice cut in. That one felt heavier, as if Kotori's suite of Signaler abilities took more effort to get through.
Kotori's brow furrowed. Eve could afford waiting? Why? Meni had a point - the battle would just get uglier if they waited for the Black Knights to get out.
"I decline, Ketsurui Kotori," The third person spoke. Kotori found the voice oddly familiar for a reason she couldn't place. "I am certain you will understand. Seeing you've enjoyed my hospitality once, I do not believe I would enjoy receiving the same from you."
"Wh-" Kotori reared her head, not understanding right away. But then, it dawned on her, and the realization made her speechless.
She recalled one information taken out from the Bowhordia datacore, one of the first entries Amaya had logged in on the inception of her own signaler abilities.
Eve has interrogated Hanako and Sydney's XO, Kotori. Both appear likely candidates to use the new NH-29 body seeing their recent involvement with Scorpio base. Seeing that the Sakura is a high-profile figurehead vessel with ties to Lor, it seems likely they might eventually stumble into Melisson.
If we could have either one of them - preferably Hanako - jump into the Signaler variant they've concocted in the SARA, we could possibly get rid of Melisson while keeping our hands clean.
Wait? That was her?
Sakura said:
Replacing Pumpkin was a very pale Nekovalkyrja woman with cold, sharp, black eyes, salmon lips, and chocolate hair. She wore a flowing tunic of black silk and velvet, black fur boots, and sheer black tights. There was a slowly bubbling anger in her expressions.
Sensing the other's approach, Kotori gritted her teeth, made an effort to compose herself and turned around to look at the other, her golden eyes evenly meeting the other's. "Nice dress." She said, her eyes having a guarded look.
"You will answer my questions," the neko stated flatly, "or you and Hanako will suffer."
That was really her? It had been Eve all along?!
Despite the now giant pieces of evidence laid down before her, she was still in denial. Her interrogator had not facially had the appearance of either Eve or Naraku. No horn, none of the signature colors, nothing.
...and yet, they knew that Eve had hopped bodies since Naraku's NH-17T. They knew Eve was using a NH-23. Not to mention that the interrogator had been very familiar when speaking of Hanako, and of Yui, with insights over PANTHEON and ST backups that Kotori doubted - now that she reflected on it - Nagase Nagako's crew on board the Black Spiral gunship Black Swan could have had known.
Eve's name and face were well hated. Naraku's face was known. If Eve intended to eventually settle as the Empress of the True Nekovalkyrja Empire, it was a credible to assume she could take on a new identity. After all, even the mentally deranged could balk at knowingly letting a woman crazy enough to devour live children over a live broadcast rule over them.
It... made a twisted sort of sense.
Vermillion held Eve, the person whom interrogated Kotori and Hanako. The person that had Hanako tortured when Kotori resisted. The person that robbed Kotori of her innocence.
The Taisa grit her teeth, glaring daggers at
Vermillion. She had wanted revenge on her interrogator, on Black Spiral so badly. It lead her to ask SAINT to allow her to participate on anti-Black Spiral operations. Her desire to hurt them all for what she felt they had done to her had driven her.
In exchange, Kotori had earned
Miharu, her quest to beat the Daughters of Eve, and also gained all the things that gave Tom his reasons to be so vehement with her, about her and how she did things now. With the rose-tinted lenses of her innocence shattered - as Tom once put it - she had grown into the person she was presently... and she knew well that she wasn't the kind of captain her crew could feel the kind of family-like fellowship others could experience.
Kotori couldn't keep herself together. Had she a heart, it would be pounding in her ears and filter her eyesight through a mist of crimson rage. The 4-years old nekovalkyrja's shock had her breathing go to pants, rasps of breath, and just shy of dry heaving. In her breast nested a feeling like molten metal, the long nursed words
'I hate you so much!' that could not be spoken simply because words alone could not properly express her resentment.
She was still on a live channel. They could hear her every ragged breath.
"Good job. I think you struck a nerve," Meni wryly noted.
"She's young, so, I guess she'll vocalize her hate for you at length before actually doing something about it."
"How far have you gone, Eve?" Mani asked.
"Farther ahead than expected," came Eve's cold, focused reply.
"What they have on hand has far less processing power than I expected, and most of it was actually busy speedhacking something else. It never saw me coming. Give or take a minute, the ship is ours."
A chill ran across Kotori's back. That's what the waiting game was about! Eve was a NH-23, just like her original... so, if her original managed to take control of
Dominion, so could Eve do with
Miharu! Eve was simply going the long way around, though through the open comm with
Surtur, then through the link she had with
Hoshi's CIES. With the opening now made to the CIES, there was no stopping her from eventually winning over the it, and shortly afterwards all the networked AIES.
Eve would win. They couldn't even afford to shut down the CIES: without computer control, life support systems over the main hull - in particular the atmospheric retention fields - would collapse. The hull breaches were large enough to threaten explosive decompression. That could bring about the ship's destruction!
The realization was a sobering one.
Attack! I have to attack now! There was little reason to resist the urgency of that impulse - after all, she did want Eve dead very badly.
Surtur leapt into action at her mental command, pouncing down toward them as aetheric claws sending long gouts of aether fire at her three opponents whom scattered out of the way. As her Akuma's clawed feet crunched through the square containers that had formerly been holding
Miharu's miniature garden, the three counterattacked.
Meni, to Kotori's right, pointed her two saber-rifles at
Surtur's flank and fired with a withering volley of aether darts - an assault
Surtur's powerful energy barrier stopped cold. However, the real threat as Mani, whom took advantage of Meni drawing most of the attention with her offensive by making a quick fly-by, releasing a subspace collapsing mini-missile point blank.
Kotori had no time to counter or dodge it. The SDM warhead smacked into her powerful shield protection and entirely eliminated it. She tried backing away in alarm, but her unfamiliarity with large mecha her her maneuver more sluggishly than Eve, whom bore in to attack with a smash from an aether-limned claw.
The attack came too quick - Kotori barely even saw it coming.
Surtur, with long lines of molten armor over its beaklike torso, was tossed away as a mere rag doll, bowling out of control through the wardroom to finally crash back first through the buffet, one of the wingcovers scything through a kitchen counter and another cleaving through an oven.
"Ugh!" Kotori was seeing stars.
How did she move so fast?! she tried to gather
Surtur's legs from over the ruined buffet case so she could try and stand up, but Meni quickly came in to take advantage of her vulnerability, both aether swords lit.
Can't let her close! Without shields she could just carve right through me! Surtur's tusked maw snapped open to belch a preventive sheet of plasma. Meni veered off, a bubble of protective energy briefly flickering.
Shield modules too?! she realized in dismay, seething as she got
Surtur back into a crouch... just in time to get her torso armor further chewed at by a spray of attack from Mani's aether submachinegun.
Fortunately, the Mani's attack was cut short by the arrival of Nimura, Nyton and Masako, whom crested out of armor bay's opening to land atop
Hoshi's dorsal hull, a few meters away from the ruins of the observation deck where they flanked Mani and Eve.
"Nyton, Eve's using her NH-23 abilities to take over
Hoshi's AI.
She has to die yesterday~!"
