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RP: YSS Kaiyō Pre-Mission Eight: Meet The (new) Soldier

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Arbitrated

The Smollest Smol
🦊 FM of Neshaten
YSS Kaiyo II
Virtual Reality Chamber



The new infantrywoman, Santo Hei Arinori, was immersed in an artificial world. Her body seemed to be perfectly relaxed in the small chair it had chosen, a shuttered helmet upon her skull, obscuring it. This was the 'real' side of her, in little danger and like a statue in the room.

On the other side of her mind, Sora was fighting for the lives of the armored soldiers around her, storming into a L'kor carrier through a breach in its hull. Immediately upon entering what resembled a depressurized corridor, a wall of physical bluish light formed a disc on her right which significantly obstructed movement in that direction. As her glowing Mindy swept left, her aetheric assault weapon was brought to bear on the floating corpse of an unfortunate enemy soldier, burnt and broken by the impact that had likely breached the ship. Both of her capacitors were at one hundred percent, implying that the mission had only just started. "Left side clear!" Her voice boomed through the communications array, before the hardlight barrier faded away as the patrician faced it. Another impact seemed to have twisted the metal of the hull, cutting the corridor off; the simulated Arbitrated did a good job from a distance, it seems.

Meissa watched her own simulated self on the screen, shouting and pointing troops around. She watched the new Santo Hei clear her engaged enemy.

"All units, move to left side!" the simulated Meissa shouted. "Aether Gatlings, don't stop firing! I need teams mowing down potential enemy cover!"

"She didn't make sure to block off the right." the real Meissa contemplated, as she watched her own self command. "She should have split the command between Yoshida and herself."

A long time ago, these mistakes would have passed over Meissa's head. But now she was the right hand of Eden in terms of squad command. She couldn't afford to make a mistake like that. No "deploy drones" instruction, either.

This Meissa was asking for her troops to get shot. While it was good for a simulation, the real Meissa couldn't stand Boss making her look like a fool of a commander. Although the improvised phalanx using the gatlings was a good idea.

Meissa took a quick glance at the map. It was a good layout, but it wasn't the layout that was the exact L'Kor cruiser she remembered.

Sora held her gatling level, kicking at the armored door which blocked the team's path. She then chose the more flashy option, the barrels of her main weapon spooling up and flashing like a star in nova, melting through the door in a matter of seconds as a sudden burst of return fire from within bounced around her shielding. She kicked again to knock away the loosened slag, and shouted out as she essentially waded to the small, heavily-covered enemy armor squadron, "Barrier module activating! Stay behind me!" Taking the initiative, the archangel's shields rapidly supercharged, reducing a significant amout of the enemy fire into nearly harmless bursts of energy. Her mindy's UI warned her that the power consumption between this and her gatling would overload the base energy capacity in less than two minutes.

"Okay, the simulation's making a fool of me." Meissa grumbled as she set a VR helmet on herself.

The tactical mismaneuver may be forgivable, but her own self not using her own devices to breach was silly, especially since while plastic explosive was valuable on a mission, it wasn't too valuable. Using it early was better than using it never. The stuff came cheap on Yamatai, so it wasn't like losing, say, a gunboat.

The disorienting feeling of entering another world came over Meissa as the VR helmet plugged her into the simulation. For a moment, she was weightless, a ghost in the wires of the world.

Then, reality settled on her skin as she assumed herself in the simulation.

She first deployed her drones, letting them cover their exposed flank. "Lessen your reactor load, Sora." Meissa told the new Santo Hei. "Let Yoshida be your firing buddy. Orion, Matsuvo, cover our backs."

"Turn the difficulty higher, Boss." Meissa thought. "I need some command practice. Stretch my resources."

Immediately from behind them, the sound of aether discharges flooded the halls as a boarding party began flanking from behind.

Almost immediately after the new command, Sora knelt down and... Spread out her wings, covering the entire hallway with room on her part to spare in a just-below-chest-high wall. she disconnected her weapon from her Mindy, allowing it to draw upon its internal capacitor rather than her own-the timer until power outage jumped to about five minutes, though a dedicated assault would deplete the shields long before then. "We've got attackers from behind, duck and push them off! I'll hold here!" The archangel eyed her mindy's overview nervously. Shields suddenly started dropping like mad, and the armor isn't as durable as her barrier. Hardlight could- but not long enough. She shouted as her gatling prattled away terrifyingly in her arms.

Not bad, Boss.

"Abart, shoot those grenades down right side! Madoka, Muyomi, Leeta, cut the incoming enemies down on left with me! Sora, Yoshida, teleport behind the enemy group on the left side! All other units, hold right!" Meissa ordered.

Relieve pressure first. The L'Kor are aggressive and tend to cluster. This makes their shock damage high but their formations tend to be too grouped. Vulnerable to explosives. Meissa drew her Aether Saber-Rifle and, with the help of the three infantry Nekos, engaged in melee combat with the cheap knockoff birds.

"HAI!" The confirmation rang out, dang was this girl loud sometimes. She tapped her left capacitor to boost the charge of her teleporter, and internally hesitated-with her finger still pulling the trigger on her gun. Odd, that wasn't like the other orders... Her armor beeped when the teleportation device had fully charged, ready to rapidly relocate her.

The two Aether Gatlings teleported behind the L'Kor, who weren't expecting a teleport to appear behind them. Some spun around with better reflexes, but most of the ones in the back looked confused as a wall of energy effectively deleted them from the universe.

In the front, the four began to butcher the ranks of the L'Kor, pushing them backwards with grenades and beams of Aether, straight into the deadly maw of the gatlings.

Now no longer dividing the two fronts, Santo Hei Arinori disabled her barrier field, the vibrant and potent shielding cooling to the more standard Mindy variety; the excess energy output was directed towards her discharged capacitors. She marked her next target before firing at it, pairing with Yoshida on her own targets to clean the room... For now.

The left flank was quickly cleared as the maneuver cleaved apart the enemy L'Kor, the five quickly meeting face-to-face with the two carrying the Aether Gatlings. Meissa turned around, quickly working to set up a line of explosives to catch their pursuers, using the shaped explosive canisters as effective land mines.

"Alright, left side clear, move down left!" Meissa shouted.

"Taking point." The words cooly echoed towards Meissa, as if the oversized birb had put herself into some sort of low-power mode now that the fight had been stalled. Her armored feet marched strategically on the dirtied and damaged floor panels, barely stumbling when a blast rocked the ship. They turned a corner into a shot of fire, ducking back briefly after but a second. "Blast door ahead, guarded by multiple armors. Command bridge, perchance?"

"Could also be engineering." Meissa replied, as she hit the detonator button, blasting a large group of L'Kor into nothingness, the simulated Hanna wiping the rest with a grenade and some bullets. "We can make an exit path at the area where the hull is thin. Destroy the enemy reactor. All guns, mark your target. No more than two guns on each armor. On my mark, fire on targets."

On the owl's command, Sora's gatling gun, now reattached to her armor's power supply, tore through the pathetic enemies like a very, VERY hot knife into spreadable butter. Where there was once probably an elite squadron lay a pile of smoking corpses and rubble in front of a damaged door.

Meissa planted two shaped charges on the blast door, waving everyone to stand back. Shortly after, the explosion blasted through the door as Hanna threw a flashbang in to stun whoever was inside.

"Alright, move!" Meissa shouted. "Clear the room!"

Arinori paused deliberately until the distinctive flash of a stun grenade bounced angrily through the ruined doorway, before leaping in with her Mindy's mobility enhancements and opening fire before she even landed, blasting at anything and everything that moved in front of her. As her barrier module warmer up again a hardlight projection formed in front of her, with a few notable holes for friendlies to fire through as they went in, the bubble-like shield defending the temporary bottleneck of the doorway.

The wall of gunfire from the Kaiyo's crew began to shred its way into the engineering room, the gatlings and saber-rifles cleaving through the L'Kor's relatively weak armor, and the SMG fire finishing what the blitzkrieg of sword and storm could not. In due time, the room was clear and charges were planted up and down the reactor.

"Nashira Hei, I recommend we teleport out of the carrier rather than attempt to fight our way out." The words came cleanly, but not gently as they crashed through the Yamataian commmunications network.

"We are teleporting out. Then we're blowing this carrier up and finishing the mission." Meissa told Sora. "Charge teleports, crew. We're finishing the mission here."

Was she always this... colorful a character? She seemed more methodical in the beginning... the Patrician thought.

The Kaiyo's teleporters began to hum as Meissa held out the detonator button.

"Boss, you know what to do from here with myself. Pull me out." Meissa thought. And just like that, she suddenly snapped back to reality.

Inside the simulation, the entire crew teleported to the maximum range. The simulated Meissa hit the button, and the carrier blossomed outwards in a fireball.

"SIMULATION: BOARDING L'KOR CARRIER. PASS." the VR readout said in Sora's face.

The real, as in ACTUAL Sora Arinori breathed a sigh of relief, shaking her head a little bit as the sim disbanded and the shutter for her helmet slid open as she pulled it off. She spoke in fluent Yamataian to herself, "Better than expected. Still needs work, though..."

"You'll get there, trust me. I started my first mission going the wrong direction and almost blew up my on-field commander," the owl in the corner replied, also in fluent Seraphim.

Sora jumped in her seat as she turned towards Meissa, her deeply violet wings twitching nervously. "N-Nashira Hei!I'm sorry, were you waiting on me?" She didn't seem to catch wind of Meissa's comment, be it ignorance or some other reason.

Unusually...timid for a Patrician. But it didn't matter. She was already a special case.

"What were your thoughts about your commander in that simulation?" Meissa asked.

"She seemed fairly standard. At least..." At this point both birbs had started speking in trade, "At least until about halfway through the boarding. Something... Changed? She seemed a lot more direct in her commands, less strategic and more tactical."

Just about what she was good at. Strategy wasn't her strong suit, but tactics was. But, next question. Here's the clincher to tell what stuff this Patrician was made out of, be her sacrifices for her simulated team made in the name of Kleos or good faith.

"What defines the worth of a person in this world?" Meissa asked.

"It depends on more than just one thing. Some people are better fighting, others sowing fields and building cities. Just because you cannot do something does not mean you are useless; even the elderly people will have wisdom." The response sounded... Not quite recorded, but not wholly original either. It's like she read half of it out of a book.

Time for the killer. "How then, does one person distinguish oneself superior to another?" Meissa asked, her expression the entire time having been straight and unreadable.

She was sure the Santo Hei would give the right answer. At least, to Meissa.

"A person is only at their best when they are willing to sacrifice themselves for what they believe in; they must be willing to risk more than their body and mind." The purple-based female was looking Meissa up and down.... Kind of like a new recruit to a commanding officer, really. Even though for all intents and purposes she didn't look afraid like a recruit or snooty like a 'true' Elysian; a sort of modest pride wrapped tightly around her. She also seemed a fair bit quieter than in the simulation.

Meissa's lip curled upwards into a gentle smile. Not the exact right answer, but the correct answer in one of its many interpretations.

"Welcome aboard the YSS Kaiyo, Arinari Sora. I was in that simulation with you." Meissa told the Patrician, walking over and holding out her hand. "Meissa Nashira, demolition tech and away team second-in-command. That last mission was the one I had my first experience commanding the away team, and we finished the mission the same way you did today."

The 'patrician' stood up and took Meissa's hand in a firm, solid shake. Okay the height was a bit much... "That may have explained the sudden change. I have to admit, the more aggressive tactics seemed to be much more... Comfortable, I guess the word would be? Regardless, thank you. I was unaware of the fact that you had commanded that mission; Only I thought you were always in command."

"Don't apologize for something you couldn't have known about. Your crew introduction portfolio probably barely even said anything past name, rank, and position." Meissa told the taller angel. "As for the tactics, I've been working on them. You'll be more than a valuable addition to the team, although I'd prefer if you didn't use yourself as living cover. I'd much rather prefer us pull through missions without any people returning in a tube."

It wasn't perfection Meissa sought -- just the value of people's memories.

"I can't make promises. At least not when I'm set up for it. That IS what the barrier module is for, after all." She smirked a little bit. And besides, I can cover more than five of you at once by myself. Five is greater than one... "I'll try to use the solid volumetrics more, though."

"The cover destruction was a pretty bad call from my part, anyways. But yes. That'll be good. Trust me to not act so formal in the future, by the way." Meissa replied back.


@META_mahn
This post was made in approximately 3.5 hours.
 
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