RP: NSS Acadia [Mission 6] The Cow Level

Avel had decided to stay back and let the other marines take care of things despite Harms orders. Besides, she knew the squid was bound to do something desperate when it retreated back to the train. Her suspicions were then confirmed when the train exploded just as Harm got to the monorail and the entire area was covered in a cloud of smoke.

Being at the back Avel was hit with only the shock wave and easily evaded the small amount of derbies that came her way. She then heard Cedric screaming bloody murder over the comms and boosted over to his position where he was flailing around in the air.

"Hey are you alright? I don't see any severe damage to you armor anywhere."

"Gah! Damn it!"

Naomi growled in frustration as the train car's bulk was consumed in an immense explosion down below, and she instincitvely closer her eyes to keep them safe against the sudden flash. When she opened them again moments later, she was stunned by what she saw.

"Whoa. Sweet explosion."

Explosions can be fascinating things to watch, especially when you had been known to build your own explosives as a young girl. The devices a Funky City gang punk could make were usually quite rag-tag despite an impressive array of materials, but they could raise your insurance rates.

No matter how fascinating the anatomy of an explosion may be, it isn't nearly enough to distract you from the sound of a teammate screaming his bloody head off down below you.

"Sommerville!" she called out, all the time descending to find a place to land. "Somerville, what the hell, man? Shut up!"

"Hey are you alright? I don't see any severe damage to your armor anywhere."

Naomi grimaced inside her own helmet. If the man was screaming...

"Well, something's happened to him," she said matter-of-factly, not yet close enough to look closely. "Keep looking for damages."

The explosion ended up tossing Harm’s armor aside, sending it flying up into the air and then hurdling back through the smoke until it finally came to a stop by crashing through the roof of an apartment complex. Her suit had been torn along the arms and the armored plates had been entirely ripped off.

“Ow…” Harm said, “Drei?... Anyone?... ah fuck…” Her comm system, power source, and just about everything else in the armor had been destroyed on impact. ~I could sit here and wait for someone to find me…~ She thought, figuring that Drei would work it out quickly enough and Wazu did say not to exit the armor, on the other hand, ~Fuck it, I’m immune to disease anyways~

Harm started yanking her helmet off, pulling off enough of the armor so she could get out.

---

Above the marines, the NSS Sugarpea was busy spraying down the dust cloud, its special hazmat mixture raining down and pulling material out of the sky.

“Marines, A decontamination halftrack is heading over here. Make sure Cedric can move and then get everyone in the back. I have a medical facility nearby we can use to patch him up.” Wazu said, looking over the displays onboard the Sugarpea. “Drei, what injuries are we looking at?”

---

Meanwhile down below a transport halftrack was arriving on scene, its back converted to have a UV sterilization system to clean off the marine’s armors while they were in transit.

Drei would then chime in over the all hands channel. “Cedric has received extensive injuries to the skull and has minor internal bleeding. Proper first aid will require sterilizing the exterior of your armors first, then administering a dose of Droksin. Keep his head as immobile as possible and check for swelling once the previous steps have been completed.”

Cedric had touched down on the ground eventually and that was when Avel had confronted him. He was flailing for a few moments, instinctively placing his suit's hands on the helmet of his suit. He was so delirious, that in his pain it was like he didn't register that he was in his Aggressor. As the blood loss took affect, he slowly fell to his knees, and started breathing raggedly (and audibly) through the all hands channel as he tried desperately to tell his fellow Marines of what was happening to him beneath the helmet.

"My eyes . . ." He was grasping for consciousness, ". . . I can't see anything."

He stumbled for a few more steps, "Somebody . . . help me."

He fell to his knees, and didn't stop there. He was barely able to place his hands out in front of him to stop himself from face-planting in to the ground. Instead, he just slowly lost strength, and was barely conscious on his stomach (or rather, the suit's stomach). His blood loss was severe and he would die without attention soon.

Matteo chose to hang back. He knew that with nothing but missiles as his truly effective weapon, there was no way to fire on the train without risking an even larger chain explosion, or derailing it, as Harm said specifically not to. Damn. Forced out of the fight, he could only watch as mayhem unfolded, the psychopathic (more so than usual) Mishhu flinging curses and explosive barrels their way. The exchanges of fire and spite. And finally, the big bang. The ex-hitman turned Marine was far back enough to avoid the worst of it, but that didn't mean he wasn't shaken up.

The image from the drone now sporadically flickered with static, but it was working. For now. Hearing Cedric's pleas for help, Matteo made to move to assist, but stopped short. If he was wounded, who else was? And was there some that couldn't even say so? Matteo counted heads best he could, but as many times as he did it, he came up short. His tired mind gripped with words to speak with, finally coming up with something that seemed fit for speech.

"Squad, someone help Cedric. I can't see for shit. And were'd the cat go? Headcount's one short."

Avel looked around frantically for someone with medical expertise. But it quickly became apparent that she was the only one in the immediate area who could help him. If administering first aid to a wounded marine with no medical equipment or training what so ever counted as 'helping'.

"Alright I guess I'll do it. Sterilizing our armors, I can do that." Avel said to herself and reached for the flamethrower at her side which hadn't yet seen any use. She then turned the weapons nozzle towards herself and engulfed her armor in an inferno. She then batted out the flames and proceeded to do the same to Cedric. She then carefully rolled him over onto his back and gave him a second blast of flames just to make sure she hadn't missed any spots.

With the two of them now sterile Avel went about carefully removing Cedric's helmet. She was rewarded with a large amount of blood dripping out of it and the sight of a huge gash on the mans forehead. His entire face was covered in blood. "Well isn't that a charming sight."

The man was about to bleed to death but she had one idea that might buy him some time and it was going to hurt like hell.

She picked up the flamethrower again and doused her armored hand in fire for a few moments before turning back to him. "I'm going to have to cauterize that wound or else you'll bleed to death. This might hurt a little." She said as she lowered a now scolding hot index finger and slowly trailed it across the open wound.

((OOC: I should have posted the full extent of his wounds. A cracked forehead isn't all he's got.))


Upon removing his helmet, Avel would see that Cedric was suffering from more than just a cracked skull. There was a terrible gash running along his forehead, as she had observed, and most of his face was covered in blood. However, she would also notice something about his eyes. Or rather the lack of one. Dark blood that had just barely started to congeal covered the entire left side of his face, matting down his mutton chops on that side, and it had started to move down for the neck before Avel had taken off his helmet.

His left eye quite literally seemed to have popped.

Despite the pain he felt, Cedric was too weak from blood loss to even scream or thrash around. Instead: he just laid on the ground in an unconscious state.

Harm was taking a look around, thick black smoke choking off the sky and small particles of dust and debris falling down to cover the top of her head. A small burst of flame off in the distance would give her a direction to go in. She pulled off a burnt EMP she had glued to her armor and turned in the direction of the marines, flexing her shoulders to make a short rocket jump in their direction.

It would take a few moments for her to land, and then see what Cedric was doing,

“Grats, you just exposed Cedric to whatever was in those bio-bombs.” She said, as Avel’s finger trailed down Cedric’s face, burning his skin when she touched it, then peeling off the burnt skin as she trailed it down Cedric’s face.

“Harm, There is a transport configured for decontamination duty close by. The marine group is to head there for extraction.” Drei said, using the speaker systems on Cedric’s armor to relay the message. At the same time she highlighted the halftrack on the marine's HUDs, giving them a direction to go in through the smoke.

“Right, Pick up bleedy here and lets get going.” Harm added, “I don’t think you guys have the tools to fix him up here….”

“And do it quickly” Harm added again

…

“And try not to shake him to much, that is bad for the squishy peoples.”

"Did you take his helmet off?" Naomi's tone was shocked. "We haven't been decontaminated here yet! You could kill him, or at least hurt him worse now than he was before."

He drone following along with her, she moved up beside Cedric and got in position to help lift him.

"Somebody help me carry him?" she asked. "We need to get moving, unless we don't like him. Harm's got our destination on the HUDs. Let's move out."

"I had to do something before he bled to death and I was following Drei's instructions." Avel replied in a panicked tone and looked down back at Cedric. "I'll grab his legs." She said, moving over to his legs and picking them up.

"Yeah, but what good's a pair of 'sterilized' armors going to be when the whole environment is contaminated?" Matteo stepped in, irked at the other marine's rash actions. What was she going to do after cracking the armor open? Apply point pressure? Read him a lullaby? He shook his head; not helping. "Forget it. Lets get out of here before he inhales any more of that shit." Though the static filled display, he eyeballed the unsuited Neko next.

"And what about you?" He asked Harm. "Ma'am." tacking on the honorific as an afterthought. "You've been exposed, right?"

It was the nightmare again.

Darkness consumed her existence.

Screams echoed past her ears.

Agony ignited across her flesh.

Failure hung from her neck like a deadweight.

Blame shone in their eyes; blame sprouted from their lips.

Fire melted their faces like hot wax. The skin-wax fell on her flesh and it burned.

---

Phaedra jolted awake, spitting out a mouthful of blood and gasping for air in harsh breaths as if she was drowning. She was covered in sweat, and her eyes were wide in shock.

"What? Where am I?" thought Phaedra, her eyes glancing in all directions and trying to make sense of the now blood-splattered HUD. She tried moving, but found that she could not move her armor. A red warning icon stated that her armor was in lockdown, it was the only way she had survived the landing. She shifted her weight and grimaced in pain as she felt one of her right ribs crackle.

"I fired a shot, there was a blast. And then there was a second blast. Much more powerful. Then someone screamed. Oh no..."

"Oh God...I killed them," said Phaedra out loud. A whimper of utter remorse escaped from tightly clenched lips and a tear rolled down her right cheek. She laid there on the ground staring up at the sky, the hazmat cloud falling to the ground around her like rain.