Re: Episode 7: Mine
A single pilot sat and watched from the burnt out forest as a lone star rose off and into the darkening sky above. He was envious of them, and wished he could join, but knew that day was likely far off, assuming he even had a chance. The pilot murmured to himself, almost as though he were a regretful mourner,
"That ass...them tits..." he sighed, flicking the ashen cig away.
That day was very far off indeed.
*****
Moments Ago:
"You're kidding me!" Yoshiko yelled in panic, her own frame accelerating up to speed. The Ex-Neko could only watch in horror as the daring Abwehran woman exited out of her fuel leaking frame to make a leap of faith - the scene about Victoria looked almost like something out of a movie as she jumped, landing on Lucien's frame. Like a monkey on a person's shoulder, she deftly moved and plunged into the depths of the cockpit - a sigh of relief exploded over the comms as Kelly sunk back into his seat as Taela saw to getting them extracted.
Their destroyer was rapidly growing in size.
But this wasn't the end of their problems, not yet - the hole in Lucien's craft really was getting bigger. Volumetric projecting panels started to peel off and away from his cockpit as the frame accelerated, the metallic structure groaning around him. Thinking fast, the man reached up and plugged the hole with one of his frame's fingers. But that wasn't the end of it. The damaged head above his cockpit rattled around until something snapped - the head hung from its shoulders, lolling about.
Fortune was smiling on them this time however, as the cavernous depths of the Atuan opened up to take them all in. Even as Lucien's frame's head bobbled around like it was on a spring. As though to sound off their arrival, one of the main cannons boomed. "Just cleaning up a little mess that was left behind," Ged casually explained. "Taela's frame was still intact, so I had to take care of that with an empty shell," the AI added..
A fireball erupted below as Blitzkrieg, Victoria's frame, released its reactor. "And with that, their headquarters is no more it seems - and we're off!"
With that, the Atuan departed Morant.
*****
Dawn Station
Murakami Kensuke reclined in his seat, feet propped up on a table. So what if the Atuan team was sent off with the experimental weapons? It didn't matter, he knew. Though they were tactically well armed, strategically, the ship was undermanned, with a crew complement well below even skeleton levels. And with most of said crew sortied out in power armors as he ordered them to? The ship would sink. And with that, their fate was sealed - HIGA would pick off and kill all the survivors on the planet, just as they had arranged.
And with that - the entire test team being dead with most prototypes AND early production models gone - Origin Armor Works was as good as finished. Its stocks would plummit as knockoffs flooded the market far faster than anticipated, spoiling the expected initial sales already hampered and held back by missing and lost equipment. It was all going according to plan.
"Mine, mine, mine, mine~" he hummed to himself, relaxed as he was.