RP: OIF Atuan [OIF Atuan] Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

Meena quietly confirmed Kelly's orders, planting the frame where it was and taking aim at one of the enemy frames. She was focusing on its head, the take out the main cameras and hopefully confuse the enemy. Her Hyper Rifle's shot rang out, screaming towards the limit of its effective range, hopefully making an accurate hit.

The small girl's feathers swooped forward ahead of the other frames, and, when within range, suddenly flew up and out from behind cover, nearly up to the ceiling of the sector, and began massing fire on the extremities of the frame Meena had targeted.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

Async's feathers harried the captured frames from all sides with potshots aimed to keep them in cover, feeding targeting data to the Kirin and giving the rest of the squadron a bird's-eye view of the combat zone. The 'spacer aimed upwards with the frame's gauss cannon, tweaking the launcher's output on the fly to land net rounds on the enemy's heads. Partially concealed by a small building the Kirin launched two shells one after the other, making a small adjustment in the frame's stance for the second shot to space the targets apart.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

"Nice move, Lucien." Taela congratulated, taking aim with the Graser. This thing would, hopefully, be better than the last gun. Granted, they weren't going up against Mishu but the objective was to incapacitate them as fast as possible and, failing that, at least do enough damage to them to save the station. With this plan in mind, the Neko covered Yoshiko's other flank as she made the Rifle go into "Magnum" mode, took aim, and fired at the nearest hostile.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

"Hrrrm." It started. Even though Yoshiko was at the front, she wasn't the one to take the opening shot; it irked her plenty. The Ex-Neko quickly pulled up the targeting information from the others' feathers to her heads up display and highlighted the partially obscured enemy frame. Yoshiko's sights locked on to the lower legs in hopes of toppling it over so she could move in for the kill. The Graser Rifle in her Frame's hands hammered away, blasting through the buildings in hope of hitting the opponent's legs behind it.

As the muzzle flashes on the display illuminated her face, she licked her lips in anticipation.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

As Lucien rushed forward to turn an enemy Asura into his own personal human shield, Kelly was closing in from the otherside, firing a spread of HE missiles overhead. The soda-can sized missiles turned downwards, raining down on the other stolen mecha, small explosion shaking them up and keeping them from pinned down. The beams of high-energy radiation from Lucien's Graser rifle struck the shields of a Kirin, quickly burning through them and vaporizing craters of material out of the outer armor.

Meena's round dropped a bit lower than she had wanted, the high velocity round smashing through the throat area of the Kirin and and exploding from sheer impact force, sending its entire head flying into the distance. Kelly's cousin's hail of pulse laser fire, in conjunction with Async's and Kelly's missiles, kept the enemy's heads down enough so that they didn't see the duo of nets dropping on their heads, constricting up two of the enemy Asura.

Yoshiko's graser lacked the power to penetrate through buildings, the only thing it harmed was the building. Taela, on the other hand, had much more success, a blinding flash of energy erupting forth from her rifle, lancing through the lower torso of two Oban's, causing the civilian mecha to lose stability and crash to the ground.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

Async smirked as two of the frames fell squirming under her net rounds, her feathers picking out three more groups huddled together in the industrial block, one feather made a wide pass around the complex, catching Yoshiko trying to fire through a building.

"Tachibani-sempai, these buildings are too dense to be overpenetrated, we're supposed to be avoiding collateral damage" she scolded mildly, as her silhouette calculated two more trajectories and fired the rounds with a hypersonic crack.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

"NOICE!" Lucien commented upon seeing Kelly rain down destruction, before using his chainsword to cut his 'human shield' to size, cutting inwards, and upwards, tearing the inner workings of the opposing frame apart, and its pilot into viscera. Needless to say, the frame wouldn't be a problem, but in the process, the Chain-Straight had to be re-chained.

Lucien took the next few moment to boost down towards a building, and reload his chain-straight, sheathing it, and then using both hands for his Graser rifle for increase accuracy.

Keeping low in the city skyline, and taking care not to make too much damage in transit, Lucien would occasionally pop out of cover to make called shots into the legs of whatever was standing. Otherwise, he'd make a shot at the downed Oban Frames, to make sure they were dead.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

Yoshiko's almost cheerful expression of anticipation went sour as soon as she saw her rounds fall well short of penetrating the building. Her lips curled into a snarl when (a)synch pointed this out, further rubbing into her face the failure of incapacitating the enemy and her carelessness with the environment. She raged. "WHAT'S THE POINT OF HAVING A GUN THE SIZE OF AN 18-WHEELER WHEN IT CAN'T PENETRATE SHIT?!" Yoshiko screeched.

In a moment of absolute, irrational fury, her Asura's thrusters activated, briefly boosting herself over the city skyline of Dawn Station, only to rocket straight back down at high speed. As she rapidly descended on top of her enemy, her Grazer rifle continued to fire at it's head and shoulders from her higher angle.

She tried to Goomba Stomp the Oban.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

"Yoshiko, control your anger!" the Neko barked, moving up to the building opposite Lucien to hide around the corner from enemy fire. "Or else you'll do-"

And at that moment, her friend decided to fly up into the 'sky' for some god-awful reason.

"-something reckless." Taela finished, facepalming with the mecha's free hand. She was still around the corner as she did so. Once the menial action was finished, she shifted past her cover to fire any shots she could (still magnum) at the opposition.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

"Quit killing Employees!" The unknown little girl squeaked, apparently displeased at the very rough tactics the test team was using. "Parasite-infected people can be saved, and are not responsible for their actions when possessed!" she continued, sounding incensed.

Meena gulped, nodding to the girl in the seat behind her, whom had begun takking at her consoles after chiding the pilots. The young frame pilot knew she couldn't miss this time, as she aimed for another Frame's head, this time adjusting just a little bit higher, so she could take the head off cleanly.

the frame's feathers continued their surgical barrages, firing more at weapons and components than at the actual bodies of their enemies, whom seemed to be overwhelmed by the much more talented Frame team.

******

Unfortunately, the firefight had attracted several more of the stolen frames, and the number of enemies in the area began to grow.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

"It was inevitable that something bad would happen eventually." Kelly Williams thought as he saw things go from "not that bad" to "We're in a bit of a sticky situation" in the span of a few seconds. Everyone had been doing fine, sticking to the plan and not doing anything rash... until Yoshiko lost her temper at being unable to shoot through a building, and had decided to deal with her rage by jumping into the air and firing downward, making herself into one big target.

Before Kelly could've reacted, Yoshiko's folly took its tool. A tempest of plasma bolts, laser pulses, solid railgun rounds, full sized missiles, and mini-missiles had risen out of the surrounding area. While her mecha's shields absorbed most of the blast, there was still the manner of the Asura she was jumping at. That pilot had a stroke of competence, stepping to the side to avoid Yoshiko's legs, and uppercutting with the Nerimium blade to her frame's groin area. As Yoshiko's frame began to impale itself, the infected employee threw it to the ground, and began to fire on it sadistically with Graser Vulcans, slowly burning through her chest armor. Only to have it's head blown clean off by Meena's sniper shot. And then have both of its legs blown off by two more precision shots from the 'spacer.

Taela seemed to be having worse luck than Meena. Though her shots hit, she rapidly depleted the rifle's battery. Her hits had only managed to deplete some shields and scorch some paint, unfortunately. Lucien, on the other hand, was having a different problem, as his Asura's Pawn AI refused to fire any weapons at the downed Oban, although he was able to laser the legs off another Oban.

As if to only make matters worse, the stolen Garuda had finally arrived, announcing itself with a strafing Async and Meena, high powered laser pulses causing explosions to erupt around both Kirin's, their shields flickering from the raw force of twin guns designed to harm starships. Following it's strafing run, the stolen support frame hovered above the battlefield, as if searching for something.

That something was apparently Kelly's Asura, because when the Garuda looked at it, its visor glowed a bright red as it drew the Chain-Straight strapped to its waist, and charged at Kelly.

Kelly barely managed to deflect the Garuda's attack with his own sword, as it was just at that time that he had been given new orders. The squad-com clicked on, Kelly trying to focus on two things at once.

"Alright, new plan! We just need to disable this Garuda now. Some techs have come up with a virus to shut down the stolen frames, but the Garuda's EW is preventing them from uploading. Taela, go check on Yoshiko if you would, I'm a bit busy here!"

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

"Yoshiko, you moron. . ." Taela mumbled under her breath before attempting to contact her. "Yoshi-san, you alright?" She asked, approaching the mecha with caution. Her rifle was still recharging, so she had all the Frame's secondary weapons trained and ready to fire on any and every enemy movement that she could see. Happy trigger finger is happy.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

Async fired a single net round at one of the incoming machines before plodding toward Yoshiko's position to protect her and Taela, blanketing the Garuda above with jamming signals in an attempt to distract it and paint the target for her drones. "Ensign, please back away from the Garuda," her silhouette asked politely, using several layers of cheap encryption to hide her move from the Garuda's pilot.

Meanwhile, all eight of her Kirin's Feathers had flipped about and made a beeline for the Garuda, firing their UV pulse lasers at the stolen mecha, showering it and the immediate airspace with high-intensity laser pulses, ready to ram the enemy if the barrage failed to stop the jamming signal. In the event that both phases of the attack failed to work, the Freespacer was already scanning communications channels, trying to find the band being used by the saboteurs.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

"Meena, please focus on keeping us alive, and helping our besieged fiend over there" The dark little girl in the back of the Kirin asked, before continuing "I'll keep using the feathers to bring down the Garuda"

Meena really had no option but to listen, so she sighed, and mved Her Kirin into a place where she could more easily cover the frames f the two girls whom were both fairly well in the open by now. The frame's sensors scanned the area, her hyper rifle making to fire on any of the less important frames that were around.

The young girl controlling in Feathers however, was acting somewhat different. Her actions made the 8 flying bits swerve and swivel, finding precise firing angles on the Garuda, aiming especially for its guns and engines, trying to get it out of the 'sky' so they could meet it on more even terms.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

Yoshiko's Asura rose from the ground on it's jets, eschewing using it's legs due to the damage. "Yeah. I'm fine." she grumpily replied. The sound of blood being spat off to the side could be heard. "Just bit my lip...thanks guys." Yoshiko grudgingly went on. The Asura she rode in on tossed away the rifle analog and watched as it crashed into a building before landing atop a vehicle below it when it finally landed. The hard mounted autocannon belched as Yoshiko fired shells into the downed enemy's remaining limbs, just out of spite.

Her mind went at work, stewing herself in misery and pointing her to the depressing truth as she flew into better cover. 'It's just an analog of the smaller weapons we use on the Mindy or Daisy. I bet if I opened it up, it'd be much the same, except not shrunk down to personnel size. I thought weapons this size would be ship grade.' She paused as a foot caught on the pavement, jostling her inner monologue.

'But it isn't. Instead, it's the same tech, except much cheaper since it's not shrunk down to the same personal scale. With all this space, we can mount a lot more of it, but still. Our advantage is our numbers. We're easier to make than those more advanced Power Armors despite our size. We're even more easy to maintain! We're just fodder! Just fodder!'

With all the chatter going on around her, one would think there was something horri-- The ex-neko started to think a bit more properly again. Yoshiko looked up at the Garuda facing off against Kelly, and actually, finally, took in it's details. "I want that one." She started quietly. Her voice suddenly rose in volume as her excitement climbed, "It...It makes perfect common sense!"

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

Lucien frowned as he realised that his artificial intelligence system either had a sense of honour, or was preventing him from mashing the ground and station beneath the downed Oban.

"Ah, cripe," He mumbled over Squad-Com as he watched the Garuda come in hit, "Why kinnae I foight dirty-like?" He fired a Graser round into space, but missed the Garuda as it came down to engage Kelly by Chain-Straight.

He let fire a few more rounds at the legs another Oban that was in the distance before drawing his Chain-Straight and letting it whirr away satisfyingly.

He avoided buildings as well as he could, accidentally knocking into one in haste, and stood by Kelly. He hadn't gotten the message to back away from it, only to disable it. He looked for an opening in the defence, and noticed Async's Kirin feathers annoying it. This gave him an idea.

"Orrighty then... I'll put more pressure on't," He announced his intentions over Squad-Com. He waved his Chain-Straght in the Garuda's direction, not actually hitting, more baiting and feinting to throw it off balance and create more openings for the Feathers. Sometimes his swing would come close, but not hit.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

The Garuda ignored Lucien waving his sword at it, and instead pressed the attack on Kelly, both hands on the chain-straight and putting force behind it, making Kelly move so that his frame was blocking Lucien and Async from directly attacking the Garuda. As the two blades clashed, sparks and pieces of metal flew out, evidence that both blades were rapidly deteriorating. It seemed that Kelly was on the defensive, the back of his chain-straight pressed against the Asura's chest, both hands holding onto the hilt.

Then the chains on both swords gave out and snapped automatic shut-offs kicking into to prevent the swords themselves from being damaged, Kelly dropped his, quickly drawing the other chain-straight from its waist sheathe, then pressing the attack. Holding the blade with both hands, Kelly easily smashed through the other sword, the force of the strike continuing to push the sword down through the Garuda's right arm, slicing it off. The sliced off forearm dropped for a few seconds, before exploding from the massive amounts of laser fire that the drones directed by Asynch and Kelly's "cousin" were putting out.

Seeing that Kelly now had the advantage, the Garuda decided to make a move of its own. Using its array of thrusters to slide back away from Kelly, both of the Heavy Pulse Lasers took independent aim and started firing, a maelstrom of laser fire quickly chewing through their shields as a hail of full size and mini-missiles found their way through defenses, exploding in fiery conflagration of antimatter and shrapnel.

Meena's overwatch paid off, as the pilot's rifle opened fire on an Asura that had attempted to sneak up on Taela from behind, rounds smashing into its head and exploding. Asynch, Taela, and Yoshiko would be able to see a pair of Kirin attempting to get into position to counter-snipe at Meena.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

"Meena, You might want to turn around" The little backseater's voice chimed to her pilot, the girl's ability with the machine's sensors, had spotted the enemies the other pilots had, despite their current inability to visually find them.

The drones, however, continued on their dogged effort to take out the Garuda, as it zoomed around just out of reach raining fire and brimstone down upon everyone.

The two enemy Kirin had managed to find a spot where they were hidden partially behind buildings, making it doubly difficult to hit them because of their cover added with the requirement of doing as little damage as possible.

Meena swung the Kirin around and began taking a bead on her enemy, reinforcing the forward shields in case she took a hit in return.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

"Yoshiko, get out of the way!" Taela barked, spotting the Kirin taking aim from around their respective corners. By this point, her rifle had finished its recharge, so she immediately began laying down some surpressing fire while the Neko urged her friend to get behind something preferably bigger than a Frame's corpse.

Re: Episode 3: The Terror Attacks at Dawn!

In rage, Yoshiko almost attacked Taela believing the Neko was firing at her due to the prior failure, but she squashed that idea as hard as she could. How could she think so lowly of herself, and her friends? Her Asura about faced and knelt down the best it could to provide Taela a better shot, but it's damaged hip and leg joints had her unit fall over, forcing Yoshiko into a Spetsnaz prone. As her Asura was lying on her side, the ex-neko fired autocannon and hip railguns at the enemy she could now see.

The Kirin Meena had decapitated began to get back up after falling over; with it's head gone, it relied on crude telemetry to find it's assailant. The enemy mecha opened fire, autocannon and laser rounds hitting everything and anything with it's nearly random barrage. A few stray rounds impacting both Taela and Yoshiko with little inconvenience.

Async's net round entrapped the hostile Kirin that both Taela and Yoshiko were firing upon; the fire forced it back, but the net entwined the legs as well, tripping it. A single arc of fire slashed across the two as it went down, lowering their shields slightly, before it doggedly struggled at Meena and lashed out at her with it's phased array lasers and gamma vulcans.

Up above, the combined assault was quickly whittling down the Garuda, forcing it back away from the Origin forces and down to the streets below. It's cannons continued to fire, but with each miss, wreaked havoc on Dawn Station. One of Lucien's feints connected with it's shoulder, lightly slicing into the armor and knocking it off balance; this made Kelly's cleave miss the center of mass and drive the blade into the foot of the Garuda; it's thrusters activated again as it leveled itself off and aimed both it's heavy cannons at Ensign Kelly.