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

[Tom]

The engineer was grateful for Rin's increased shielding as he watched the last Mishu fall to the ground. He knew that they were incredibly lucky to have not sustained casualties from the surprise attack, but that didn't stop him from acting.

Hearing of Miyoko's death seemed eerily faint while there was so much adrenaline running through his body. He realized what had happened, but couldn't process it. They had all just averted a crisis.

"Stop lallygagging and set up a defensive perimeter!" He shouted to Asher over the comm as he saw the soldier wasting time mauling dead foes and talking.

Good work, team. Let's cover the area until the Shosa gives further orders. Rin, how are you holding up? Yuzuki, are you ok?

 

[Nyton]

Nyton breathed a sigh of relief once his screens showed that no one had been hurt or terribly damaged. He checked his ammo count and felt a twinge of nuisance. Before he could engage in any other recovery actions he then heard the news from Hinoto.

"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."

A brief moment of guilt washed over Nyton as he heard Hinoto announce Miyoko's passing. The last thing he had told her was to protect Kotori with everything she had. At the time he had hoped it would not have come down to that. Until recently, he had still dismissed Miyoko's resolve, even reserving a slight bit of contempt for her cowardice. Regardless of the circumstances of the fight, Miyoko had finally earned his respect. Now he would never have a chance to tell her.

Letting the moment of sorrow wash over quickly, Nyton resumed high alert and got ready to move out again.

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At the fall of both Mishhu and Miyoko, Ayumu nearly dropped her pistol. She still fell to her knees, adrenaline and shock rushing to overwhelm her, and cried out. "Saito-Juni!"

Despite knowing her condition, despite her training and expertise, and despite having held up through everything prior, the nurse lost her composition and shambled over to the dead scientist beside Kotori. Reaching out with one hand she brushed it against Miyoko's face as if that would wake her from some sort of deep sleep. With a powerful heave, she released a pained cry from her chest.

It had simply been too much. So many had died around her too quickly. Patients she had been unable to save, Azumi, now another, it had just been hitting her too hard and fast for the neko to digest it.

 

[Kai]

Kai Opened his mouth to speak- and then the ambush happened. Quickly as Possible, he added his fire to the volume defending Rin, and the Black knights were able to fend off the attack.

And then he heard that Miyoko had fallen as well. Kai hadn't known her that well, but, it was yet another loss. He could deal with it, it just meant they had to hurry, to win, to defeat Melisson sooner.

"Are you alright? What about the silence is making you nervous? Things like that ambush happening?" the Yamataian asked, returning to his vigilance of watching the party's rear.

 

[Kokuten]

"Stop lallygagging and set up a defensive perimeter!" He shouted to Asher over the comm as he saw the soldier wasting time mauling dead foes and talking.

"A defensive perimeter? What tha' fuck? Are we settin' up position or somethin'?" Asked Asher, suddenly confused from the out-of-place order. He complied none-the-less, as Tom was still a superior, despite Yukari being the one in charge.

 

[Tom]

Radio would take too long to relay.

"We're waiting for instructions from Hinoto. We can't afford to let our guard down. Stand ready for enemy attacks in the meantime. We move when the order comes in."

 

[Kyoki]

I'm fine, Freeman-Juni.

Luckily text did not portray just how unsteady Rin was. Her whole body was trembling, and her left arm was a bit sore from using her physical shield. That was the closest to her own death she had come to thus far and it was, simply put, scary. How must Miharu and Ichigo have felt at their own demises?

It was then that her body forced her to let out a wheeze followed by a shaky gasp for air. Right, breathing was important.

At the order for a defensive perimeter, Rin knelt down and aimed her LASR down the hall that nearly brought about her doom. There was no way she could have hit anything should a Misshu or what have you decide to come, but then she had her AIES to aim for her, luckily.

 

[Fred]

@Decon Room:

Somehow, having Ayumu break down next to her steeled Kotori against the urge to sob. It was always like that, Kotori feeling that she always had to be the stronger one because someone needed to be.

Not that it had helped here. Miyoko had died protecting her. Miyoko, the science specialist that had come under her command just shy of Miharu's launch. A flighty, sometimes whimsical, pragmatic yamataian woman whom had nonetheless tried to adapt to better serve Kotori; provided steadfast support to Yukari and near the end had started to demonstrate an ability to lead that came from a more mature sense of responsability and fledgling bravery.

Just like Miharu had become her home, Miyoko had become part of the family Tom romanticized the crew had become. When disaster struck, Miyoko had interposed herself and tried to save her, showing pluckish heroism for which Kotori would never be able to express her pride in the woman.

Miyoko's head bobbed. Her neck swelled. Kotori realized that the smaller mishhuvurthyar in the dead woman were trapped and unable to breach out through the Daisy power armor confining Miyoko's body... so there was only one way out: through the neckpiece.

Dark anger had Kotori bare her canines. Suddenly, Ayumu was hit by a flash-increase in the heat Kotori's body emanated - the Taisa's arm lunging out quick as a striking snake, passing right through the Daisy armor's neckpiece and coming back out of the very-solid yamataium/durandium alloyed armor with a tentacle-wriggling mishhu in her hand.

She discarded it to the side and then plunged her hand in again, phasing in and out with another of the tiny creature scrabbling for freedom, having been selectively grabbed and dragged out. Red lesions and welts appeared on Kotori's skin... she ignored them and again reached in, removing the last creature.

She tossed it toward its three broodmates, whom were recovering from the confusion of being moved out and started to be mobile. "AIES, use your drones to eliminate the Mishhuvurthyar broodlings." Searing beams shot out of the two hovering drones and quickly eliminated the creatures at Kotori's order.

Then, Kotori turned her attention to Miyoko. Melisson's efforts effectively grant me an unlimited supply of power. I may only be able to block her and I certainly cannot even match her with a counter-attack... but I do not have to let this happen!

Kotori didn't pay attention to how pitiful her gasps for air sounded. She ignored the taste of burning blood in her mouth. She pushed aside the dull whine of her eardrums as her hearing started to fail. She concentrated past the pain of her skin cracking open and red steam - her boiling blood - evaporating out.

I do not have to!

Her knowledge of medecine was limited, but some of it fortunately had great ties with the spinal column. She willed herself to be clairvoyant and get insight on the insides of Miyoko's body. With her mind's eye, she telekinetically turned Miyoko's head and adjusted the bone discs, then used the knowledge taken from her fight against Amaya to repair ruptured tissues, rebond severed nerve endings, discharge electrical pulses that would send the commands down those nerve endings to keep the rest of the body functioning.

Technically, Miyoko's brain cells were not dead yet, and the life Kotori forced into her body would soon oxygenate them. Still, she needed Miyoko's mind to become active again. Reaching out at the overwhelming flow of psionic potential she was being a dam against, Kotori's mind seized a part of it and wrapped it around herself like a mantle to make it her own.

With that power hers she used it and psionically attacked Miyoko's undefended and listless mind with dominating power. She forced her to want to break out of the darkness, to wish to survive, to wish to breathe, to wish to-

Miyoko gave a gasp beyond her artificially stimulated breathing Kotori was forcing her lungs into and with a start woke up. Her insides felt violated, her neck felt beyond sore and she had this dreadful headache...

...but she was alive.

@black Knights:

"Stand by," Hinoto bade Yukari and took a few moments to return to her displays and reacquaint herself with what she had been working on before the Ghost Mishhuvurthyar had intruded on her.

"Left was the right direction." She then assured Yukari. "Keep going up, turn around the 180 degree corner. The next corridor you will progress through is mostly lined with what I surmise are executive quarters. You'll get to a fork - straight ahead to descend down to what I think is a secondary control room for this ship; to the right should direct you toward a widening ramp up to what I hope is the observation room Melisson supervises from."

"There will be scant cover, and I'm no longer sure of the value of stealth considering you might encounter more concealed traps. If Melisson has any elite guards on hand, they will have to be-"

Hinoto cut herself off before suddenly blurting out: "Yui's blood! The Taisa just ressurected Saito-Juni!"

 

[Kokuten]

"Y'know, this iss' juss'a thought, Yuka-boss... But uh... Y'think Hino could keep all tha' news back home to 'erself? I mean, don' get me wrong, iss' great that we got Doc Yoko back n'all, but c'mon! We don' need that kinda shit in tha' first place!" growled Asher as his armor flooded back into stealth and steadily lifted from the ground. It appeared that the situation had began to drag on him a little bit. He readied his flamethrower up again, awaiting any fast movers as he began to start his slow pace, to allow the rest of the Knights to catch on. Though, he'd only move so far, unless the Shosa had a different thing in mind.

I ain't sittin' my ass 'round like a bitch juss'ta lose mo' crew mates t'this shit. were the steamed thoughts in Asher's mind.

 

[Nyton]

Had Ayumu not been crying she would have seen what was happening sooner. The ragged gasps that Kotori emitted were barely heard over her sobs until she caught wind of the motions. The Taisa appeared to be pushing herself further, using inhuman power to phase the critters out of Miyoko. The short work of the drones made her jump and brought her crying to a halt. She had no idea those things had been inside Miyoko, making her suffer before dying.

Then Kotori got stranger to Ayumu's eyes. The strained nekovalkyrja appeared to be spreading herself thinner now, her blood coming to a boil and making the nurse fear there would soon be a massive steaming bloody explosion. There was awe in her face while she watched the events in morbid fascination. Already there was little she could do for the Taisa, so what analysis did she have over what was now occurring before her eyes?

Before Ayumu knew it, Miyoko was breathing again. She was alive. The nurse sat there in dumbstruck shock while Miyoko struggled to breath on her own again. One second after she reached out and touched her. "Sh-she's alive-? You're ALIVE!" Ayumu said, in questioning disbelief. Immediately she reached out to examine Miyoko just to physically verify what she was seeing now. There was no way and yet there she was.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nyton listened to Hinoto's directions and tried to verify if he could remember any of the areas they were approaching. Just then Hinoto cut in with the news that Miyoko was alive. This bit was not as easy to compartmentalize as death, he was so used to death by now. But resurrection? This was new. Now was not a good time to focus on it so he forced himself to redirect his attention to the mission on hand with a thought: That is so like her. Now that I have to tell her she did a good job she goes and survives just to slight me.

"Keep those thoughts to yourself, Westwood. We move when we move." Nyton comm'd over.

Shosa, he has an insolent point. Let us hurry on.

Nyton messaged to Yukari.

 

[Kokuten]

Sheesh! Iss' like everybody else thinks I'm tha' one doin' somethin' wrong! said Asher, as he once again hunched over, as if to dodge some sort of bullet.

 

[Rabbit Eclair]

One moment, Miyoko was held in the ghost mishhuvurthyar's grasp. The assault from four different blasters was starting to take its toll on the monster, filling the room with the rather unappetizing smell of burnt flesh. She gritted her teeth, trying to breathe past the pain in her abdomen and the crushing tentacles until she could break free...

The next thing she knew, she was laying on the floor. Her neck, well, her neck felt like it had been broken, she had a throbbing headache, sharp pains through her abdomen, and her limbs felt weak. The Yamataian gave a feeble, sputtering cough as her eyes attempted to focus. She couldn't remember why she was here, and for a moment, she couldn't even remember where 'here' was. Then, it slowly came back to her... the ghost mishhuvurthyar, her last ditch attack on it... the tentacle speared into her stomach.

Miyoko's eyes went wide as that memory came back to mind. If Ayumu had pictured the sensor specialist hugging her and celebrating her return to life, she would be sorely disappointed; instead, Miyoko's hands flew up to her armor, fingers weakly clawing at it as she tried to strip herself then and there to deal with the parasites she thought were still in her. "Something..." she breathed, looking at the nurse while still tugging at the armor. "It put something in me."

 

[Abwehran Commander]

The death of one battlepod was just another threat gone as Masako chambered another DU-NA (depleted uranium - nickel alloy) Round into her Bazooka and fired at the next Battlepod's cockpit. Mechanically, she pulled out a thermite round and chambered it as well. That's all she could do. Methodically put rounds down range towards either the battlepod or the horde. Or at least she could have fired upon the horde with a thermite round until Mara decided to jump into the thick of it. Grimacing, Masako kept her Bazooka aimed at the battlepod and readied to fire if it survived.

 

[Nyton]

Ayumu heard Miyoko speak and took a few seconds to compose herself while rubbing her eyes. The tears she cried earlier were blurring her vision. "N-no, the Taisa,-!" Ayumu gasped, "She removed them! I don't know how but she did!" the nurse sputtered out. Pointing over to the charred remains of the slugs that had been implanted, Ayumu tried to make it clearer to Miyoko that those things had indeed been taken out and destroyed.

 

[Rabbit Eclair]

Miyoko's fingers kept uselessly tugging at her armor, still too weak to get a good grip on it. Fortunately for her, that helped preserve her dignity for the few seconds it took for Ayumu's words to sink in. The sight of the charred broodlings helped convince her that the nurse was speaking the truth and calm her down.

Well, her mind, at least. The mound of flash-fried mishhuvurthyar that had been left by her fight was an unpleasant sight to say the least, and there was still the nausea left from her pain and the profound unease led from having small creatures crawling in her abdomen. Miyoko sat up and propped herself up on one hand, then dry heaved a few times before she gasped for air and managed to steady herself.

"Thank you," she mumbled in Kotori's direction, oblivious to the fact that the Taisa had taken care of a few more problems than just some parasites. Seeing Kotori put her back on edge, though, the woman's skin cracked and bleeding, with literal steam rising off of her. Kotori looked even worse than before, but Miyoko was, indeed, having to reevaluate her estimation of the woman's current combat ability when compared to a toddler.

 

[Doshii Jun]

... Chiharu-sama was a soul. A ghost, perhaps, but neither lost and aimless. With time, though, she became our guiding spirit, our heavenly aid in times of need.

Is Chiharu-sama with Kotori this day? Or is Kotori alone a Goddess among the living, bringing us holy aid?

Yukari hoisted her weapon and ignored Nyton and Asher. "We drop stealth. Accelerate to 100 kph. Resume triangle formation." An electric blue line zipped out from each armor's HUD, showing the way. "If they wish to stop us, they will have to catch us. Let us go."

Life and death are fluid in this place without time. Saito-san, please do not die again.

 

[Fred]

@Decon Chamber:

If Kotori heard Miyoko's thanks, she made no acknowledgment of it. The bloody cracks in her skin bubbled and simmered as the Taisa awkwardly used her hands to drag herself backward, back under the shower stall she had used earlier. Apparently, using her legs was no longer an option.

She hit the edge of the shower stall, and maneuvered around it in a way that looked much more blind than before. With this much damage done to her skin, skin vision had probably become out of the question.

When her body came back under shower's continuing downpour, a loud hissing was heard - a sound more appropriate to a hot skillet being put under cold water - along with matching billowing cloud of vapor rising from her. The water drummed over her skull and it shed off some of the nekovalkyrja's long black hair.

Kotori gave a pained moan, the sort of moan heard from people that were under so much strain and hurt that they did not know how to express it any longer, and wearily reclined her back against the corner of the stall, the side of her head thumping lightly as she left it to rest on wet tiles.

Nekovalkyrja could survive for a time the inhospitable temperature of the vacuum of space. They could very ably operate and survive in desert conditions. Some earlier models had even been capable of voluntarily having temperature spikes to evaporate out blood tainted with Mishhuvurthyar venom, or even cause their skin to erupt with a splash of boiling blood that could be used as a means of attack (with the nanomachines in the blood being the danger behind such attacks).

Kotori had managed to survive everything before, hurt but still toughing it out. But now, the envelope was being pushed past tolerance and fight was coming out of her.

She was dying.

 

[Aendri]

Kyou moved up to flank Asher again, trusting in their linked computers to keep them from straight out colliding with each other as they accelerated. She kept her LASR up, but stowed her Gauss cannon for the time being; no point in risking that hitting something as they went.

 

[Tom]

The idea of someone being resurrected was foreign to Tom. Where he was from, death was a very real and accepted way of life, at least from the stories he had heard from the elders of his village. Not once had he heard of someone coming back to life after perishing in the cold winter.

Preserved in snow to be recovered in the spring thaw, but still dead.

Ressurection? Without an ST tank (which was weird in its own way)? Completely foreign. Tom stopped thinking about it, but there was a tangible sense of relief upon realizing that Miyoko had survived. It didn't matter how.

The order to move out at high speeds came in and Tom quickly considered the situation. They would probably trigger any traps that were on the way, but the Shosa was banking on their speed tempering some of the damage.

He tried to make his team best fit into the idea.

Ok. Rin, Yuzuki. Form a tight wedge, shields out. Do not touch the floor. 
 I will monitor for enemy booby traps. We follow behind the point men.

 

[Rabbit Eclair]

Miyoko flinched away as the cloud of steam erupted from Kotori's body when she moved back under the water. She didn't need any diagnostic equipment to know that Kotori was in poor condition... the fact that her skin was hot enough to boil water was enough of a sign there. Miyoko's medical knowledge was faltering: She knew how to treat a fever, but blood hot enough to boil was another matter entirely. "Taisa..." she breathed, feeling a pang of guilt run through her. Kotori had saved her, though she didn't know the extent of it, and now she felt powerless to return the favor.

 

[Gallant]

"Yea, fine," Yuzuki returned to those concerned, more than a little bit rattled. She lowered her rifle slightly, surveying the area physically as if she didn't fully trust the Daisy's skin-based sensors. If the silence had been grating on her nerves, the sudden violence had strung her out like a lute. She had reacted instinctively without thinking, but it hadn't been enough to prevent damage.

They were alive, still.

She didn't know how to take Kotori resserecting someone, and didn't feel anything but a brief relief that it could be, and had been done. Spiritual experiances were not something that Yuzuki had ever given much thought to - as far as she was concerned, it was odd, but not miraculous. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she reasoned that if a person's mind was in tact, there wouldn't be any good reason why they couldn't return. It would just require a sort of scan...

"Yes," she sent again, to Kai, drifting over to flank Rin, both responding to Tom's order, and also to give some sort of solid comfort to Rin by her presence there. Freeman had said she would need to stay strong for the other sprites. Maybe there was something to it. Or, perhaps, she was drawing some comfort herself.

"If I die," she sent to Kai, over the light-based communication link they were using, "Please, forget me."