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RP: NSS Sledge Mama [NSS Sledge Mama] Into Steel (Aside): Crash Course!

Listening to her speak, it was obvious that Ylfa was smiling at him.

"And yet, we're not flying anywhere, are we. And why?" The way it was asked, the woman was happily stringing him along towards a particular direction. "You already know that if a squad of power armors flies high, they'll get shot down by Triple-A," she answered, expressively holding the armored hand of her Daisy palm-up and high. It quickly became a thumbs down however. "Of course, an op-for that's taking it slow and easy will at the least know where they are, and at most just shoot them up while they're speed-blind. That doesn't mean that kind of speed is tossed out the window though, am I right?" Though they were standing apart from one another like a pair of gunslingers about to reach for their revolvers, the Daisy in front of him suddenly leaped forward in a flash of blue fire, hot exhaust buffeting his Hostile as she suddenly landed right in front of him.

"So what someone Salty does is do a Thruster Dash. It's basically setting up your suit AI so that when you pick a spot to go to, your propulsion pushes and then stops you as hard and fast as it can without killing you." Rapping her knuckles against his chest plate, she added, "Your suit's tougher than you are, and this is one of the things that make it show - you'll only be able to dash as fast as you're able to handle. Still, wanna give it a try Marine?"
 
Richard listened to Ylfa's explanation attentively there were even times where he was going to answer but she was answering her questions herself, which saved him from being embarrassed at least, since his answers were not correct. The sudden appearance right in front of him was not expected though, and he jumped just a little, normally not enough to be seen but that close she'd notice. When he collected himself however he replied. "So we can use the on board computer to automate the process for precision that we can't get normally...how fast can you activate it like that? And does it work back to back?" He sounded rather interested in this technique now, of course it was something that would fit in well with how he did things, after all he tried to have a similar effect using the Push/Pull Plating on his Hostile when fighting in the brig,but with a much less desirable outcome.
 
"That's right. And you can activate it as fast as you have the app set up to," the Daisy in front of him explained. "Most people, when they get the hang of it, have it set to be instant the moment they decide to 'punch it' - people newer to it typically need a second to brace before going at it."

Reaching up to her helmet, the seal hissed as it became undone, her blond hair in a bit of a mess. "It's honestly not about your suit or the programming being able to do it back to back you know," Ylfa pointed out, brushing away stray strands of hair. Though it only fell to her neck, it was still long enough to fall over the raised armored collar of her suit. "It's about whether or not you can - think about it. You're suddenly jumping up to going really fast from nothing, and then from really fast to nothing. That's going to be a lot of Gs," the Sergeant explained to him, tossing aside the helmet into the rusted dirt. "It's one reason why power armor users are typically referred to as 'pilots' even though we're nothing like those fighter jocks." Taking a few steps to his side, she added, "It's kinda pointless doing the maneuver if you're either too disorientated to keep fighting, end up with G-LOC, have an eyeball or two implode, or just flat out die."

With a sparkling smile, she pointed to the far end of the street, "Now, I'd like you to try one - I've already set up the sim to think you have everything you need, all you have to do is want, real hard and deliberately, to get to that far end."
 
"I see...it didn't seem like the shields were doing much to lessen the Gs..." He had never considered why they were called pilots before but with Ylfa explaining it it made sense. "We don't get the cool jackets they get though, but I guess we could put skulls on our shoulders for each armor we take down." He tried to keep the conversation going whenever there was a pause. Talking to Ylfa up close isn't that hard when she's in uniform or in the less flattering Nepleslian suits. But having just discovered about how Yamataians wear their power armor he was having trouble keeping his mind from wandering in regards to the matter.

"Sarge that sounds like advice from one of those anime." He rolled his neck and shoulders and looked down the street and carefully picked out a destination and getting a mental image of how he was going to get there. One the suit indicated that it was aware of his intent he thought about an experience familiar to him, the moments just before a play starts on the field, waiting for that final call. The moment he heard the call in his head he took a step forward as if he was about to run and the thrusters on the suit kicked in as well.

There was just one problem, he was about to run, he had gotten lost in his thoughts and forgot about the thrusters. The sudden jerk forward mixed in with his dash caused him to trip, but his course was already set. So rather than being carried at high speeds t his destination it was more like the suit picked him up and hurled him there like a shotput, landing with all the elegance of a sack of bricks on his back.
 
"Pfft! Skulls are tacky," the big blond in front of him remarked, dismissing it with a casual wave of an armored hand. "Ha! If this were anime, this'd have booblets or something!" the woman remarked, knocking her plated knuckles against the flat faced breastplate of her suit. "Well, go all Anime on that patch of dirt then! Go on!" she encouraged him.

No matter how the young man eyed her up in the curvy power armor the Yamataians favored, it didn't seem she noticed and continued to coach him. Placing her hands on her hips as she looked on, Ylfa watched expectantly as he began his dash. The moment he tumbled however, he heard sweet, sweet laughter. Air suddenly cracked and popped as she did a dash of her own, landing right by him. Bending over with her hands on her knees, the expression she had was a mix of worry and utter amusement. "Oh. My. Gosh! Are you ok?" Pausing for a moment, the blond Sergeant in front of him facepalmed at her own remark, realizing what she just said. "Forget that last part. Doesn't matter if you are since it's a sim after all. So get up and try again!"

"Run, leap into it while activating the thing, and focus everything you got on just landing on your feet. Remember, like Anime!" Ylfa half coached, half taunted him.
 
Richard could just barely notice the sound of laughing as his body flipped through the air, he didn't have much time to think about it though and soon was on the ground on his back. He didn't bother to get up right away and just looked up at Ylfa as she stood over him. He let out a low groan as he heard her question and then her own correction, rather glad himself that it was a simulator, otherwise he'd probably be sore in the morning and it'd probably go on his record that he failed so bad.

He pulled himself up and shook off the bust. "Jump then believe and try not to get hurt...sounds easy enough." He would glances around and find a new target location that had a clear line of sight and was wide open. Though he said it sounded easy after that fall he wasn't that confident so he decided to pick a closer target.

After picking his new destination he took a breath and in his mind started the process over once more. However when he got to the start of his dash, he leaped rather high, obviously compensating for the last trip, and the suit launched him in a rather high arc, landing him at the proper spot, but giving him quite a bit of air time and rendering the dash just about useless.
 
She was silent, staring at him dumbstruck after he landed. Right as the wind blew a tumbleweed between them.

"....WAHAHAHAHAHAHA! My sides!" Ylfa laughed, clutching the plates of her Daisy. "That bush thing was so perfectly timed!" The experience of being coached by Ylfa was completely different from the stereotypical boot-camp training that Marines usually got. Instead of her yelling at trainees, red faced and 'knife-hand anger gauge' rising, she was completely demoralizing in another way altogether. Whereas the traditional Drill Instructor had people trying harder out of fear, it seemed that Ylfa got people trying harder out of embarrassment. After all, just how much could a man's ego take of a blond bombshell laughing at their failures? Even most ID-SOLs would break pretty quickly.

"Ok, ok. I think I got that out of my system now," she remarked, strolling over to him. "Remember, you're not an Itali Plumber trying to jump and punch out the brick ceiling," the Sergeant explained to him, moving behind him. Grabbing his thruster pack firmly, and shifting him about by it, the woman explained it to him a bit more. "When you make the thruster dash, pretend you're doing either a running or a long jump normally. What happens is that once it starts, you're going to feel like something's grabbed you by the pack and is holding you from there to pick you up and put you down somewhere else. So just focus on making sure your legs are ready to touch down. Look."

Stepping back, her Daisy's main propulsion system lit up so she was hovering off the ground in front of him, kicking her legs about. No matter how much Ylfa did, she never budged - the heavy fusion thruster and its control system made sure of that. "Your legs are independent of your pack, see?" she asked him, touching down. "So try again. And remember, it's just like doing a running jump, so the important part is to just make sure you land with a seven out of ten at least. Otherwise, you'll trip up and get gunned down," Ylfa grinned.

The LASR she magically pulled out from nowhere was very encouraging.
 
Richard was flush with embarrassment as he heard Ylfa's loud laughter, he was thankful that no one else was watching. He listened to her advice once more trying to figure out what he was missing, he didn't get the reference about a plumber though. The shaking around by his thrusters was rather awkward as well but it did feel kind of like what happened when he tried to thruster dash all ready but now he could remember the feeling on its own. Then he saw her hovering in place at such a low altitude and blinked, if it could his monoeye would probably blink as well.

"Wait...can my suit do that too? Just hover in place that close to the ground without using the Push Pull systems?" He looked down at his feet and thought about it a moment trying to control the thrusters and lifted himself off the ground just floating there a moment. The thrusters were a lot more delicate than he had first thought and he wished he realized this a little earlier he probably wouldn't have made a fool of himself. "Okay...." He let himself back down and nodded.

However once he was back down he noticed that Ylfa had a rifle in her hand and he could see her grinning since she had taken off her helmet earlier. "W-Wait what's that rifle for..don't we feel pain in this simulation right?"
 
"Oh yeaaaah....I should have started with that then," Ylfa's eyes looked away as she fought to fight back a smile.

The truth was, she was a little embarrassed - knowing what she knew, it all seemed like another instinct, and keeping track of it all to tell someone who had no clue was a bit odd and clumsy. After all, how did you tell a person how to breathe? "Well, whenever you're ready," she remarked. Checking over the rifle, she made sure it was loaded with proper armor piercing ammunition, a round was chambered, and that the safety was off. The startled remark Richard gave in regards to it though, had the blond woman standing next to him purse her lips. "It's just some extra encouragement, that's all!" She was trying as hard as she could to keep a straight face and not to break out into a toothy grin.

Obviously, Ylfa had already failed. Miserably.
 
Richard looked at the rifle in Ylfa's hands and her obviously eager expression, he knew that that look meant he was about to become a moving target. The only way out of it was is he could get the thruster dash right, though she still might fire on him anyway just for fun. So he had to get it right, and move fast, fast enough that she wouldn't be able to shoot him.

He looked around for his next location, finding a good spot let himself drop back to his feet and focused on that spot, running the process over yet again in his mind, keeping the sensation of hovering in place in mind. However he could not shake the thought of the rifle that would be at his back while he did this, his mind filling with simulations of just how she would shoot him and ways to evade it and at the end of all of it he really could only think of speed. When he finally leaped into the dash, his thrusters surged at full power catapulting him forward.

In the blink of an eye Richard had over shot his target location, all the excess thinking had confused the suit's AI, and rather than trying to perform a nicely executed dash, it was helping him escape at full speed. He needed to get the suit to stop or he'd just go on until he hit something. Of course he had learned about stopping from high speed in training and managed rather easily landing over 100 meter away, with a landing that was obviously not done by the AI systems but by a pilot, the thruster control was too clunky for that, but he was still going to play it off like he had wanted to go this far and that he didn't totally screw up.
 
When Richard took off, his thrusters kicked into maximum, its flaming wash blowing rusty red dirt everywhere.

"HEY, I SAID DASH, NOT FLY!" a voice screamed at him at the top of its owners lungs. A power armor didn't get to full speed immediately, and took time to accelerate, meaning that a 'dash' was merely flight where flight wasn't practical. This meant that he saw her coming. Just barely. Before Richard knew it, Ylfa caught up and landed not a meter away. Still in the Daisy armor, and with the LASR in her hands leveled right at him. "Dash boy! Dash!" the blond woman deliberately yelled at him like a cowgirl, hair whipping in the wind. The rifle's muzzle started spewing flames as depleted uranium bullets sparked of his shields.

"C'mon, I wanna see some dashing boy!" Ylfa eagerly got into the little game she concocted. "Break LOS with a dash or I fill you with lead!"
 
Richard was rather nervous when Ylfa approached, judging by her voice she was not deceived by his poor acting and that she was not happy about it either. Before he had a chance to say anything though she was firing at him with the rifle and he did not want to stick around to see if it would hurt. His feet were the first things to move quickly taking off with what would actually be impressive agility outside of a power armor.

As he ran his mind tried to work out where he had gone wrong and take things through step by step. This constant thought of dashing began to produce numerous small dashes and hops, but they were all only a few steps worth, and not well directed, it was mostly just reflex to get away from the bullets.
 
Shields crackled and drained as his suit was pelted with rounds from the LASR in Ylfa's hands.

"Just look at ah spot ahead and DASH, BOY!" Despite all the yelling coming from behind Richard, it was starting to sound like she was happy about his failure. Chasing him through the complex, the young marine found himself at the edge of a circular clearing between the buildings. And right in the center of it all, was a HPAR standing with its stock up in the air, muzzle down on the ground. A green streak flew past him as Ylfa landed on the opposite end with her Daisy, thrusters quickly reversing to stop her dash and then spin her about to face him. With a leather hat on her head and a length of straw in her mouth, the blond woman was definitely hamming it up as much as she could for shits and giggles. "Shucks kid, just remember everything ah said; all ya gotta do is figure out where yer gonna go and take ah leap," Ylfa told him, stowing the rifle at the small of her back. Bending her knees like she was getting ready to draw, the Daisy clad woman asked him, "Think ya can git past me?"

Unless he dashed past her, he wasn't going to get that gun - it was just too far away!
 
Richard was cornered before he knew it, standing across from Ylfa in a circular room. He of course noticed the gun in the middle of the room, but right now it might as well have been on the other side of the town since Ylfa was standing between it and him. She was right however, if he just followed through with the steps in order, he should be able to thruster dash with no problem and hopefully get by her, since she wasn't wearing a helmet to help her track fast moving targets.

Realizing that fact Richard grinned lightly under his helmet. "Hey Sarge, what if I manage to not just get a proper dash, but what if I can shoot you instead?" Now he was getting cocky, thinking that he had found a glaring weakness that he could exploit so of course he was going to milk it for all it was worth he was somewhat a jock.
 
"Haw! It's sorta the whole point of having it there!" the power armor clad woman told him

Only holding onto her rifle by the foregrip, Ylfa reached behind her back and pulled out the Daisy's trademark Elliptoid Shield. Out of nowhere. Clasping it onto her forearm mount for it, the role playing Sergeant went on, "Still, ya think it's gunna be that easy?" Despite the playful tone, it seemed far more ominous thanks to her mischievous grin. "Ya screw up here, and yer gunna git it good in the butt!" To emphasize her point, a blue-white blade of plasma burst to life from the wrist.

"Now come and git it!"
 
Richard continued to look rather confident until Ylfa implied that she would be stabbing him in the rear with that plasma blade, that was a lot scarier than some bullets pelting his back. However he couldn't back down, not after talking big like he just did, though part of him felt like it might have been a trap in the first place.

He took a breath and stepped back just a single step, starting to hover a few inches off the ground. It would be easier to work out the dash if he was already hovering he figured. Once his hovering was quickly stabilized he looked at her with a serious expression, almost a glare and though it was hidden by the helmet it could still be felt. There was on obstacle however, a curved dash was a bit to complicated for him at the moment so he would have to dash twice in more of a triangle to get the gun. So he quickly committed to the idea before he could over think it or chicken out.

His suit's thrusters flared as rocketed him towards the side wall on the side of Ylfa's sword arm. The acceleration was very high and this time he did not lift far off the ground, but the deceleration would be a problem at this speed and distance. At least that would be the case normally but as he reached the wall his maneuvering thrusters fired to turn him away from it and face the rifle, then his primary thrusters activated a second time, much stronger than before to cancel the inertia and hurl him towards the rifle at full speed which unless interfered with he would manage to grab.
 
The young man's vision gray gray before it narrowed down to just what was in front of him, finally turning to darkness as the G's hit him, only for his vision to suddenly turn red from the hard-break the suit pulled off to get him to stop. All in less than a second - he fought it as hard as he could, but it didn't stop there.

Ylfa spat out the piece of straw in her mouth the moment the second thruster-dash began, his move ending before it even hit the ground. Having pulled the move back to back, Richard's brain literally had the blood pulled out of it and then shoved back in twice over. Which meant that he was on all fours in front of the rifle as the world rushed back in. The 'Clang-clang-clang' of the Master Sergeant's shield against him after she did a quick jog up was more humiliating than anything else. "You're already going to be having a hard time with just one dash."

"Still, you did manage to do one properly," she grinned at him. "Even if you cheated a bit - want to try again?"
 
Richard was on his knees groaning, trying to get the helmet off his head. He kind of expected this to happen, but he did not think it would be so crippling. Once the helmet was off he was gasping for breath and trying to regulate his body. "That was...a lot worse...than a hard tackle." To his own surprise he didn't need to throw up, but he really didn't want to go through that feeling again.

"Can't they put something in these things to stop that from happening?" He groaned once more and began to slowly pull himself up, still somewhat shaky but deciding to tough it out.
 
"They do marine. Otherwise, you'd kill yourself trying to run away from a fighter if your dropship gets torn apart in orbit," she began to explain, a hand on her armored hip. "It's just that the inertia dampeners aren't rated to protect you from changes that sharp and fast, so most marines never really even bother to pick up the skill, let alone try mastering it." Taking a step over to the standing rifle, Ylfa pushed it with a finger, sending it toppling down. "There's ways around it though," the Master Sergeant began, plopping herself down in front of him, cross legged. Despite being in power armor herself, her landing didn't have the typical impact most Nepleslians did - considering she was wearing the Daisy however, it made sense.

"The most common and 'easiest' - ," the woman began, air quoting for emphasis, " - would be to get upgraded, higher performance parts for your armor. Problems with this would be whether or not the CO of the marine detachment you belong to has suits pooled and given to you at random on each mission, and of course getting the parts to begin with," Ylfa went on. "If the suits are pooled, you can likely get your own and the parts by being higher ranked or becoming an ace." The look the blond then gave him as she paused became a lot more sinister.

"Or, you could try blowing the right guys. My bet is that The Cats mow lawns instead, but not many women here in Nepleslia - it's even kinda weird we got three in one squad right now," she pointed out, the smirk still on her lips.
 
Richard nodded his head as he listened to the first part of her explanation, it sounded fairly reasonable technical oversight leads to not really using a feature of the armor. Before he knew it he was sitting down to match her and nodded once more. The second part was fairly easy to get as well, simply upgrade the parts of the armor that are needed and you'll be able to perform better. But Being a grunt he didn't have his own personal armor.

The last part of the explanation was when he spoke up however. "I don't plan on giving out sexual favors for new upgrades, and I'm straight. Plus I don't want to be the guy known for getting his gear for screwin' someone." He said in a somewhat matter of fact tone, crossing his arms.
 
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