RP: YSS Miharu Mission 5, Part 2: The Fight For The Lost

Kai followed with the rest of the group, deciding at this point to keep his senses trained behind him, acting a sort of rear guard, as he had been assigned no specific task and no one else had been assigned to guard their rear. While he did remain facing 'forward' compared to their direction of travel, that wasn't his primary area of focus for the time being.

"Hai Juni."

Rin rushed forward to take her position, her LASR up and ready and her breathing felt labored with the emotions running through her mind. Still she was prepared to take out any hostiles but she wouldn't worry too much should either of the enlisted take a hit or two, espcially Asher. She kept her eyes and sensors out for anything moving that wasn't designated as part of their team.

Before Shizuka could accept Masako's weapon payload she and her sister were blasted about by the mass of explosions caused by the battlepods railguns and missiles. Tossed away from Masako and nearly blinded and deafened by the overwhelming of the Daisy's dampeners, the neko found herself thrown into the defensive structure before chunks of it collapsed, a piece managing to impale itself through the left flank of her lower abdomen despite her Armor. Pinned down by structure, the railgun fire was closing in. Ironically enough, the piece that held her was torn apart by enemy fire enough that she was no longer immobile.

Unfortunately Shizuka lacked the strength to drag herself to safety when, completely unseen by her until now, a pair of hands managed to pull her out of the line of fire. As though bound by some fate, Akiko, her own Armor barely functional, dragged the elder sister to some temporary shelter. As Shizuka realized who her savior was she then noticed that Akiko's right leg was twisted at an off angle while she limped.

"Onee-ch-chan," gasped Akiko through the crackling radio, "this time I'll protect you."

Shizuka blinked back tears of pain and sorrow as she was laid beneath the remains of one of the shelters. She did not want to see her sister die but it would seem that this would be their fate.

Kaasan, gomen. I could not keep Akiko-chan and myself alive and return to you. Shizuka thought to herself.

Akiko meanwhile, still in possession of her LASR, began to fire at the approaching horde of monsters.

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Ayumu saw the Ghost whip a tentacle through Miyoko but she could not have known just how much damage it had caused to her. Seeing the monster unfazed by her shots she determined that perhaps she needed to fire something stronger. Setting her pistol to Heavy mode, Ayumu then aimed it again, ducking slightly so as not to hit Miyoko, and fired at the now solidly visible Mishhu.

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By the time the door opened, Nyton had finished preparing his ensemble. It was not the most aesthetic job; attaching the pieces of armor to better shield his ammunition had been a rushed makeshift job. But for the most part it was functional, secure, and it still allowed Nyton to go into stealth mode without looking like a bunch of suspended pieces of armor floating in midair.

When Nyton heard the shocked cry of Hinoto he felt his chest tighten unbidden. More shouts followed, mainly the one by Yukari to charge forward. The man had to file the concern for the neko aside and trust in what he had seen in Hinoto to help her survive whatever she was facing right now. He had an Infection Queen to destroy. At the same time this meant that Kotori's position was likely compromised as well. If she were in danger then they must move with increased urgency now.

While everyone charged, Nyton could not help but feel as though they were being forced into haste. The hallway seemed too quiet for them to just simply charge ahead and blow a door open. Being the typical paranoid man, he went into stealth mode and began moving quickly but a little more cautiously, preferring to sweep the room and scan for any signs of enemy presence just waiting to ambush them. Besides, it wasn't like he had much explosive ordinance to contribute in the demolition of the door.

He noted he wasn't the only one being guarded since Kai had designated himself as rear guard of the movement. Tom had also settled into a defensive posture, assigning the engineers around them as security.

"Nimura, cover the team and watch out for any enemy ambush. If not here, then the enemy must be waiting for us somewhere. Melisson is not yet done playing her games." he telepathically messaged to the newly freed sprite.

Yuzuki shot forward, taking up her position as the Juni had instructed, APR shouldered snugly. She almost engaged the suit's thermoptics, but thought better of it last minute - if they were covering the rest of the armor team as they worked, in the event of an attack, there would need to be something dangerous-looking for the enemy to start shooting at before they decided to dig into the people who were actually important. How very morbid.

Even operating as she was, Yuzuki couldn't figure out whether she was actually beginning to calm down, or whether she was being numbed and simply didn't care anymore. She noticed Kai taking rear guard, and for a few moments she paid a little bit of attention to the other armor pilot. Then something odd struck her.

"Hey," she offered, opening a private encrypted channel.

That was all she could think of to say, though.

Though it was not visible, Kai blinked. he had been contacted, and it wasn't an officer giving orders. The Yamataian took a moment to figure out who it was, before realizing the voice he had heard was Yuzuki's.

"Hey." He answered over the private channel, before continuing "you holding up?" it wasn't much, he knew, but he really wasn't sure of what to say, and, was somewhat distracted by virtue of his vigilance in keeping up the rear guard.

@Decon Chamber:

The Ghost Mishhuvurthyar had more than dozen-dozen powerful tentacled limbs and Miyoko was already in reach of most of them. When her weapon came up, her opponent batted it aside, ruining its aim and spelling the destruction of innocent shower tiles.

As cracked debris from the defunct tiles flew around, the creature attacked on, battering Miyoko's Daisy with flail-like hits that not only carried a lot of strength behind them but also wrapped around the armor in an undesirable embrace. The power armor of course absorbed most of the bludgeoning, but the jolts did not help Miyoko maintain even the semblance of a defensive posture.

Added to that was the squirming of the three painful lumps in her body, whom unfurled their small tentacles to scrabble for purchase, firing off Miyoko's nerves with liquid pain in their vicinity.

Even worse, some of the tentacles had wrapped around her helmet and with a heaving wrench, the broke the helmet's seal and got it off her head. Miyoko saw the rubbery coils discard her helmet, her head likely being next. Behind her, the crouched Kotori's hand had drifted to her longer blade and seemed on the verge of of making a draw-cut to free Miyoko.

Then came Ayumu's attqack, which burst against the Ghost Mishhuvurthyar, tearing a angry shriek from its undermaw as the stink of roasted meat wafted in the chamber, the base of its leftmost tentacles left sizzling by the NSP's shot. The heat of the area burst felt almost unendurable to the nearby Miyoko, whom squeezed her eyes close from the temperature. The concussive blast of the heavy-mode attack sent Kotori crashing back into her shower stall's wall, her own attack ruined.

The Ghost Mishhuvurthyar cast a resentful look at Ayumu with half its eyes and the dark beast turned around, using Miyoko as cover. If Ayumu dared another such attack, with Miyoko's exposed head in the vicinity, she would kill the science officer in the process.

@Bridge:

Hinoto and the Ghost Mishhuvurthyar stared each other down. The nekovalkyrja was about to attack when the creature surprised her by speaking.

"WHITE IRIS. THE MISTRESS BIDS YOU GREETING."

Hinoto stopped just shy of attacking, narrowing her eyes. The mishhuvurthyar had answered one of her suspicions. "You came specifically for me, not the Taisa."

"YOU ARE THE DAGGER AT THE BREAST OF THE MISTRESS. THE GUIDING VOICE TO THE HAUNTED VALKYRIE AND HER GROUP. IF YOU DIE, ALL FALTER AND FAIL JUST AS SURELY AS IF THE SIGNALER WOULD FALL. YOU FOILED THE MISTRESS ONCE; I AM NOT TO ALLOW YOU TO DO SO AGAIN!"

"Enough with the theatrics!-" Hinoto threw her dagger at the mishhu's eyes and dashed forward at the mishhuvurthyar's front. The creature was quick to reply as after a brief snort of annoyance at the largely ineffective thrown weapon with coils of whipping tentacles sent her way, tentacles that hammered the air right in front of Hinoto as a forcefield barrier fizzled to life. Hinoto dropped, kicking her feet ahead to send her into a slide under the forcefield barrier, under the Ghost Mishhuvurthyar's tentacle, and slipped off the edge of the bridge's upper tier...

Right under the ventral side of the Ghost Mishhuvurthyar's shell, the open, teeth-filled, sphincter undermaw greeting her with its fetid breath while curtains of tentacles surrounded her on all side.

It was a bad place to be, but it was exactly where Hinoto wanted to be. She gathered her limbs, balling up, and used gravity manipulation to make the her mishhuvurthyar enemy her center of gravity, She dropped in a crouch on its underside and with a high-pitched yeowl, plunged her right arm deep into the mouth cavity of the beast.

She squeezed the trigger, and the semi-automatic weapon discharged repeatedly, roasting through tender flesh and beyond, as Hinoto had angled her weapon to eventually reach the upper frontal portion of the Ghost Mishhuvurthyar's shell, right between the eyes where its brain rested.

The upper-front of the exoskeleton soon exploded in a shower of bone and gore and the creature's weight soon crashed down, its shelled body and mass of tentacles balancing on the upper and lower tiers of the bridge.

The white-haired sprite squeezed her way out from between the tentacles and stood up, pausing a moment to blow at the smoking muzzle of her gun before holstering it.

Hinoto lost no time in returning to her console. She didn't even take the time to wipe off her slimy hand before her fingers again tapped over volumetric displays.

Miyoko was in a bad situation, but there was little Hinoto could do for her. The Ghost Mishhu already was in melee, and besides the shower stalls had no nearby internal field generators.

The defense line was near collapse, and that Hinoto could help with: the two weapon pods set up as artillery mounts were charged and ready...

@Defense Line:

Masako's two mini-missiles rushed in and took out the shielding of the first battlepod, the bazooka them hammering into the cyclopic eye on its front.

It as not the killing blow Masako hoped, as the smoking battlepod survived, but it ruined the effectiveness of its next attack as it tried to rain down a hail of suppressive fire over the recovering defenders.

Which was when the artillery mounts behind came to life, and bright energy beams lanced out from the weapon pods, one engulfing the already-damaged battlepod and turning it to a smoking wreck that crashed into the midst of zombies and yelling thralls before it exploded, killing even more. The second beam struck against the still intact shield of the other battlepod and depleted it.

The surviving pod continued on the attack, firing its railguns in an attempt to keep the defenders at bay the other remaining half of its missile packs - yet unused - snapped open to launch another volley of mini-missiles.

While the rockets roared to life, there was another clamor as Mara explosively erupted out from debris, making a prodigious leap out and answering with her own volley of flare countermeasures that widely spread around the ceiling, drawing the majority of the battlepod's homing payload off-course.

Mara's power armor landed from its jump in a crash through the leading zombies, battering them aside with sheer weight and momentum. Miharu's avatar wasted in time and pushed offensively ahead, drive back the nearby zombies with explosive volley's from her forearm cannons.

@Nao:

Using her Daisy's enhanced strength Nao moved weighty girders and warped structural struts out of her way, and finally managed to step into the miraculously intact starboard wingpod of the main hull.

Of course, 'intact' was a bit of an overstatement. It meant that the place could still be called a room, with most of the hardware components recognizable instead of being crunched or twisted beyond recognition like the rest of the main hull. Nao had worked in that very section not even an hour ago, squeezing into a nearby maintenance passage to verify an anti-matter containment pod magnetic seal and she knew: the room was a wreck.

A wreck her eldest sister Mara hoped could be salvageable and of some use.

"I'll check the fusion reactor," Suzume proposed, making sense: with power lines from Hoshi severed, the fusion reactor - if still functional - would be able to power anything else still functioning in here. "You'll look up the gravimetric engine and the aether generator?"

@black Knights:

After six successive battering hits, Asher and Kyou punched through the door, sending its flying back into many shredded pieces of something that looked like steel-gray cartilage and bone.

The passage ahead was an upward 30-degree slope that ended 15 meters away into a T-intersection, each sides of the intersections again slopping up.

No signs of counter-attack so far.

Miyoko squirmed in the mishhu's grasp, limbs straining against its tentacles as she tried to break its grip on her. But, it was no use: Even with the augmented strength of her Daisy, she couldn't overpower the monster. The smaller tentacles running through her internal organs as the hatchlings started moving didn't help matters, sending a nauseating spike of pain through the Yamataian's abdomen. As it wrenched her helmet off, she squeezed her eyes shut, half-expecting the deathblow to come at any moment...

The mishhu's shriek of pain, along with the wave of heat blasting over Miyoko's face, signaled that she was going to live for another few seconds, at least. She opened her eyes again, squinting up at her attacker and gritting her teeth as she feverishly tried to think of a way out of this situation. It wasn't good... with its strong grip on her, she had little mobility, and Kotori and Ayumu's proximity, plus her own lack of a helmet, meant that she couldn't use her augmentation pods to blast it.

At her bidding, her Daisy's two tactical drones came flying around the corner, shooting the mishhuvurthyar from behind with their point defense lasers. She didn't expect them to be that effective, but they'd hopefully provide a distraction. As the drones attacked from behind, Miyoko's forearm weapons popped out in an attempt to hit her assailant's unarmored underside, or at least the forest of tentacles suspending her, with twin pulse blasts.

"Juni! I'm so sorry!" Ayumu telepathically messaged to Miyoko reflexively.

Ayumu kept the NSP pointed at the Mishhu even as Miyoko was being used as a shield. The barrel of her pistol was obviously trembling in her grip. While her fear was obvious her shame at having inadvertently injured Miyoko could be read on her face. She had little experience with firearms as it was and the proximity the science officer had in conjunction to the blast was not clear to her. So she stood there, shivering a bit, trying not to let the Mishhu's tentacles close in on her and remaining on the defensive. She was not only afraid for her life but for the life she managed to injure as well.

Then Miyoko began her counterstrike.

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As if some miracle allowed them to live a little bit longer, Shizuka watched the first battlepod be destroyed. The destruction brought some hope but there was still a second one to be dealt with. Then a brave Daisy pilot then managed to avert disaster by using her countermeasures to redirect homing missiles away from them. And there, just beside her, Akiko was still firing away with her LASR. Now that the Daisy had crashed into the group of zombies, the younger Shimabumi sister began to focus her fire on the horde to Mara's flank and try to relieve some of the pressure off of her.

Seeing all this Shizuka knew she could not allow herself to sink into despair again. Painfully, with gasps exerting much effort, she began to pull herself towards a discarded plasma rifle.

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Keeping sensors alert, Nyton swept the halls with his weapon for any sign of enemy. It was almost unnerving seeing that there were no enemies encountered yet. Had they truly managed to circumvent the horde of enemies and make their way to Melisson's chamber?

Either we managed to avoid the majority of the enemy or Melisson is dangling herself closer to make us drop our guard. We should remain cautious. Nyton thought while he waited for some sort of ambush.

Yukari could not stand by to discover Hinoto's fate. She pinged Hoshi with a general "copy when available" message, then pressed on.

"Left!" she shouted in Yamataian, urging the Knights onward. "If Hoshi has been compromised, our only path to safety is to kill the demon! Resume triangle formation!"

"Roger that, Yuka-boss!" said Asher, floating off the ground and blending out into stealth as she shot forward, moving slow at first to allow the rest of the team to fall in formation as he led the way through the left passage. His barrier unit stayed active, and his shield stayed raised, only dropping to reload his Gauss Bazooka.

Kyou followed, allowing her gauss cannon to cycle more rounds in out of her backpack extension as she re-stealthed, taking up a position off to the left of Asher in support. "Kinda worried that we haven't seen anything since we got in the elevator, what do you think," she sent to Asher as she went.

"Y'neva know. Mel seems like one'a them types who might get enough of tha' whole god-complex thing, n'gets tired a livin'. Or maybe she juss' wants t'meet yours truly in person 'fore she dies." responded Asher with chuckle, still keeping pace for the rest of the unit, "Or maybe she' juss' likes fuckin' wit' us, and she's juss' tryin' t'figya' out tha' next mind-fuck to juss' throw on tha' god damn road, so we can spend 'bout thirty fuckin' hour--..."

It was then that Asher slowed down a bit, dragging the speed of his thrust. "Say, y'don' think she's juss' stallin' us til' she kills Koto-boss, do ya?"

"I'm on it." Nao called out. The sprite moved quickly, but slightly clumsily; the hemosynthetic insert of the power armor had been working on her for a little while now, and while Nao's back was much better than before, it still smarted now and again. As she moved through the mess of strewn wires, stray metal panels and sparks, brief flittering memories went by her mind. Memories ff her checking on containment. Going up and down the ladder. The small self applicators of painkillers. It was a miracle Nao was ordered into a Daisy before she was forced to use it. That, or her sheer stubbornness kept her away from its sweet release.

As distant, oh so distant weapons fire and explosions went off, it pushed against her mind again that there hadn't been any time to think, any time to reminisce. And there still wasn't, not even now! Everything up to now had been a blur of constant activity and terror. Even the brief moments of silence as the body of Miharu made its last charge were filled with worry and angst. Mother gone, and what of the others? What of Junko? Even if it was a spur of the moment, it was still important...wasn't it? She squashed those thoughts, the doubts, as another series of wires came crashing down, writhing on the floor in sparks.

"I'm going over the gravmetric and aether generator right now! They're..."

Tom led the engineering team towards the junction.
He had his team form a small wedge where they would cover any attacks from the right side of the hallway. The others would advance to the left while they covered the rear, and then his team would follow them up from behind.

Tom continued to scan for enemies.

She drifted along, strafing sideways so that her rifle was pointed to the hallway that the Juni had indicated. Although she wasn't sure precisely what was wrong with her, she was aware that her hindbrain and secondary memories were beginning to adopt more of a prominant role in this adventure than her more emotional primary. It hadn't seized control, but it was certainly exerting its influence.

She was grateful to hear a reply to her transmission, enough that for the second time within the last ten minutes, it felt as if she were breathing as opposed to simply drawing and processing oxygen. Dropping to light-based, lasor transmissions, she began to communicate with Kai's Daisy more securely. It wasn't that she was paranoid - she just wanted the conversation private.

"Yes," she said, "If it isn't bothering you, can you keep talking? The silence is making me nervous."

Following Tom's orders, Rin headed onward. She gave a quick scan over her HUD, not that it was really needed what with the SPINE interface and all, continuing to make sure everything was working as it should.

While the armor was working fine, she felt as if her hands were weak. Her mind went back to the equivalent of basic that was inside her head. Emotions were the bane of an efficient soldier, somewhat exemplified by the old Nimura, though it hadn't been tested whether having emotions would affect her abilities. For Rin, though, they were a serious problem.

As she had so many times before, the lavender-haired sprite took deep breaths to calm herself. However, it only made her feel twitchier.

@Decon Chamber:

When Miyoko's forearm weapons opened up on the Ghost Mishhuvurthyuar the creature shrieked out of its undermaw, the dreadful sound echoing through the shower stalls. Miyoko kept firing, the beast writhed in agony and the odor of charred meat became more and more poignant.

Eventually, her point defense drones joined in, their beams slicing across the monster's armored shell, turning it blotched black and steaming.

The Ghost Mishhu's levitation faltered as it weakened under her assault, but in once last surge of its failing strength, to of its tentacles whipped around Miyoko's head. One moment, her face and sight were covered up by the thick ropery limbs...

...and the next the mishhuvurthyar gave a yank and her neck snapped, her shock alone enough to prove fatal.

Ironically, unfairly, it was the last action her enemy made: Miyoko's drones kept attacking it and finally had their beams carve though the carapace, reaching deeply into the Mishhu's innards. By the time the creature and its entangled opponent fell to the ceramic floor, both were dead.

The next moment of stunned silence was shattered by Kotori yelling "Miyoko!" before she scrabbled on all four to the side of her fallen science officer. The way Miyoko's neck was unnaturally twisted, though, left no illusion about her condition being well past medical aid.

@black Knights:

Shortly after Asher and Kyou came across the intersection and headed left, a concealed proximity charge hidden under the slime released a discharge of plasma that crackled over their barriers, the glare sufficient to ruin the thermoptic stealth of the two soldiers and the three techs whom had come next to protect their rear.

From ribbed alcoves in the right corridor, four mishhuvurthyar that had been laying flat on the walls emerged and fired at the nearest visible Black Knights with four railguns each. The maneuvering of Tom's team had saved Kyou and Asher from being torn to pieces from behind, but unfortunately they were left to cope with the brunt of the assault.

Rin was closest and the combined the firepower of Mishhu's 16 railguns was all concentrated on her. In usual circumstances, they might have had been able to mow down through one or two Daisy armors with that much punishment brought to bear before the Black Knights could react... but fortunately Rin's chosen loadout proved to be a saving grace - she actually was the only one able to cope against that much abuse.

Magnetically-propelled solenoids crashed into her shielding, tore through it and slammed over her barrier, disabled the barrier only to have the damage to the armor thwarted by the AIES flushing capacitor power back into both protective layers. By the time the mishhu had worn the renewed protection thin the team managed a counter-attack.

The four mishhu quickly perished from the combined firepower of the Black Knights. Rin's shield arm felt a bit rattled from having warded off many hits, her shield generator and barrier were down, one of her two capacitors was drained, the heat indicator of her shield generator was a tad high, a glancing hit on her left thigh had turned it yellow on her armor condition diagram and she had forgotten to breathe... but other than that she was still whole.

"Knight Leader," Hinoto's voice cut in. "Two Ghost Mishhuvurthyar intruders attacked us..." The mission operator paused and then said more softly: "Saito-Juni saved the Taisa... at the price of her life."

Asher cracked his neck side to side as their recent opponents had fallen to the ground, dead. He looked back over to the other members of the armor team as his barrier began to recharge back up to full. An audible grunt escaped his lips as he looked back at one of the engineers who had taken the brunt of the attack.

"That was some bullshit. Wass' that all they were gunna' throw at us? Somethin's fuckin' wrong here, and I don't fuckin' like it. We're next door t'tha' god damn leader a'this shit, n'all there is iss' four Mishhu?" growled Asher, putting another plasma bolt through one of the dead assailants. "I'm gettin' sick of this shit."

Kyou opted to save her ammo, on her part, rather then waste it on now very dead enemies. "I agree. We're too deep in for that too be all that's waiting for us at this point. If there's that little of a response to our presence, there must be something going on behind the scenes. I find it hard to believe they'd send that little after the Taisa, and still only send something that small against us."

"Hahh ... hahh ... hahh ... "

Yukari had taken no damage and had returned only a pair of ineffective rounds with her rifle. Rin's damage was not life threatening and she remained combat capable.

All Yukari could think about, however, were clouds swirling on purple hair, and a warm smile.

" ... Iiya ... " the Knight Leader quietly said over the radio, the word sticking in her mouth. "Saito-san." The team could her Yukari unsteadily take a breath, then slowly, more firmly, let it out. She cast no glance on the dead bodies of the attackers.

"Where now, Hinoto-san," she asked.